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May the Father of Compassion Have Mercy Upon a People Who He Lovingly Tended!
As long as you are curious, you defeat age. Experience is what enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. Out everything into final perspective. You live and work in this century, but the judgment, Final Appraisal, of who you truly are will come at the end of time. Yes, you will stand before the Judge of Judges, as Paul promised the Romans (14.10), you and everyone else who has lived on the face of the Earth. Look smart. This judge cannot be hoodwinked—that is what Job found out (31.14). He cannot be softened up with a bribe. He knows a bad alibi when He hears one. All He has to do is render a just verdict, and He can do that in no time flat. O thrice miserable and thoroughly insipid sinner, just what do you think you are doing? What will you respond to the God who knows no tremble, but all of your evil? You will turn jelly, that is what you will do. Why now, you start to shiver and to shake when someone just makes a face at you! On the Day of Judgment, you will need to bring papers, proof of all the stuff you did. Why? Well, you will have to defend yourself; no defense counsel here. Each defendant will be presented with a detailed indictment. Examine it closely. Not an error on the list! All that is the indefinite future. Today your labour can bear fruit, plums and pomegranates. Your spiritual pain can bear fruit too, elephant tears, waterfalls of sorrows. Fortunately, they can be considered purgative and, happily, in an amount equal to your guilt. Purgatory is a lot like the life of a patient self-actualized person on Earth. One bears up under the terrible weight of injustice. One worries more about the human who hit one in the mush than the bloody nose one sustained. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
One prays for the contrarians who always seem to be buzzing about. One indulges the bad behaviour of others; and yet one is slow to seek indulgence for one’s own shortcomings. One is quicker o pardon a mugger than the mugger to pummel one. Such violence as one may engage in is directed only toward oneself as one vainly tries to whip one’s flesh into spiritual submission. Purge your sins, exercise your vices—that is the message of Purgatory. And better now than later, in the hairy hands of another. One more thing, and I wish it were not so, but in all of this there is just one continuing and complicating factor. It is that flaming love we have for the flesh! What else will that Fire of fires devour but your sins? As for now, you make a serious mistake when you spare yourself the spiritual rigors. Follow the flesh, an easier path now, but it is the harder one down the line. In fact, keep going as you are, and you will just be piling up the kindling for your own pyre. However, fire is not the only grief. Each sin has its own particular punishment. The Lazy will be pricked with pointy tips. The Gluttonous will be choked with the glutinous. The Lustful will burn like pitch and stink like sulfur. And for their own particular grief, the Envious will be set to how like rabid dogs at midnight. In Hell ever vice will have its own excruciating punishment. For example, the Prideful will be flustered with confusion. The Greedy will be bent over like famine victims. One hour in this hellhole will produce more pain than a hundred years of penitential practice. There, there is no rest for the Wicked, no consolation for the Condemned. At least here on Earth, there is some respite from the spiritual rigors—one does not have to fast forever—and some consolation from one’s spiritual friends. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
The Day of Judgment is approaching at a gallop. So now is the time to look to your life. Do daily sorrow for your sins, and the Blessed above will greet you at the terminus of time. As the Great Solomon said in his book of Wisdom, “The just will stand in great constancy against those who pinned them down” and oppressed them (5.1). At the Final Bar you who subject yourselves to the judgments of Humankind will be able to stand up and look the Final Judge in the eye. Then the Poor and the Humble will come into new boldness, and the Proud will face fear for the first time. In Heaven everything will be turned upside down. The one who gave up everything to follow Christ—a dreadful mistake in the eyes of the World, as Paul found out, to his own discomfort, and passed the word on in his First Letter to the Corinthians (4.10)—will be considered wise. The one who endured every trail and tribulation will be pleasantly surprised when one is called patient. As the Psalmist has sung, “Every iniquity will be nailed to the wall once and for all” (107.42). Every religious person will rejoice, and every irreligious person will recoil. The cheeks of those who have never shown cheek to others will have a Heavenly glow. Modest designs will become the rage, and designer raiment will be left on the rack. The pauper’s hovel will attract visitors while weeds will overrun the magnate’s manse. Patience will overpower Force. Obedience will outwit Cunning. In Heaven there will be many rewards. Clear conscience will rejoice over Learned Philosophy. Contempt of Riches will weigh in over Earthly Goods. Devout Prayer will be more consoling than Delicious Food. Guarded Silence will out-talk Excessive Conversation. Holy Works will have more value than Pretty Words. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Strict Life and Hard Penance will be more than a match for Silkness and Softness. School yourself in how to suffer a little now so that you will know how to suffer a lot later on. Practice now what you will have to put into practice then. If you can sustain so little pain in your regular spiritual regiment now, how will you be able to suffer eternal torments then? If just a handful of penitential practices gives you the hives now, what will Gehenna do? Face up to it. You just cannot have two joys. Either regale yourself in this World, or rule with Christ in the next. Pick one. Suppose you lived every day up to your hip, up to you lip even, in honors and pleasures. If you dropped dead this instant, what good would they do you? Not a whit! That is why I say, everything is vanity, except to love God and serve Him alone. However, what good do love and service do? Well, you who love God from your whole heart have nothing to fear, neither death nor punishment nor judgment nor Hell. That is why perfect love makes so much sense; that is to say, it makes access to God a sure thing. Summing it up, then, love alone should be enough to call you back from the brink of spiritual disaster; but if it is not, then fear of Gehenna should do the trick. What is the trick? To stay good for as long as you can. Sad to say, whoever postpones one’s commitment to God will not have the strength to stay god for very long. What then? No matter which way the traipses through the forest, or so Paul wrote in his First Letter to Timothy (6.9), one will not be able to outstep the Devi’s outlandish snares. The principle of agriculture was known long before its practice was established, and it is hardly possible that humans, constantly preoccupied with deriving their subsistence from trees and plants, did not rather quickly get the idea of the methods used by nature to grow plant life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
However, their industry probably did not turn in that direction until very late either because trees, which, along with hunting and fishing, provided their nourishment, had no need of their care; or for want of the means of preventing others from appropriating the fruits of their labor. Having become more industrious, it is believable that, with shape stones and pointed stick, they began by cultivating some vegetables or roots around their huts long before they knew how to prepare wheat and had the tools necessary for large-scale cultivation. Moreover, to devote oneself to that occupation and to sow the lands, one must be resolved to lose something at first in order to gain a great deal later: a precaution quite far removed from the mind of the savage human, who, as I had said, finds it quite difficult to give thought in the morning to what one will need at night. The invention of the other arts was therefore necessary to force the human race to apply itself to that of agriculture. Once humans were needed in order to smelt and forge the iron, other humans were needed in order to feed them. The more the number of workers increased, the fewer hands there were to obtain food for the common subsistence, without there being fewer mouths to consumer it; and since some needed foodstuffs in exchange for their iron, the others finally found the secret of using iron to multiply foodstuffs. From this there arouse farming and agriculture on the one hand, and the art of working metals and multiplying their uses, on the other. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
From the cultivation of land, there necessarily followed the division of land; and from property once recognized, the first rules of justice. For in order to render everyone what is ones, it is necessary that everyone can have something. Moreover, as humans began to look toward the future and as they say that they all had goods to lose, there was not one of them who did not have to fear reprisals against oneself for wrongs one might do to another. This origin is all the more natural as it is impossible to conceive of the idea of property arising from anything but manual labor, for it is not clear what humans can add, beyond their own labor, in order to appropriate things one has not made. It is labor alone that, in giving the cultivator a right to the product of the soil one has tilled, consequently gives one this right, at least until the harvest, and thus from year to year. With his right, at least until the harvest, and thus from year to year. With this possession continuing uninterrupted, it is easily transformed into property. When the ancients, says Grotius, gave Ceres the epithet of legislatrix, gave the name Thesmophories to a festival celebrated in her honour, they thereby made it apparent that the division of lands has produced a new kind of right: namely, the right of property, different from that which results from the natural law. If talents had been equal, and if the use of iron and consumption of foodstuffs had already been in precise balance, things in this state could have remained equal. However, this proportion, which was not maintained by anything, was soon broken. The strongest did the most work; the most adroit turned theirs to better advantage; the most ingenious found ways to shorten their labor. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
The farmer had a greater need for iron, or the blacksmith had a greater deal while the other barely had enough to live. Thus inequality occasioned by the socialization process. Thus it is that the differences among humans, developed by those of circumstances, make themselves more noticeable, more permanent in heir effects, and begin to influence the fate of private individuals in the same proportion. With things having reached this point, it is easy to imagine the rest. I will not stop to describe the successive invention of the arts, the progress of languages, the testing and use of talents, the inequality of fortunes, the use or abuse of wealth, nor all the details that follow these and that everyone can easily supply. I will limit myself exclusively to taking a look at the human race placed in this new order of things. Thus we find here all our faculties developed, memory and imagination in play, egocentrism looking out for its interests, reason rendered active, and the mind having nearly reached the limit of the perfection of which it is capable. We find here all the natural qualities put into action, the rank and fate of each human established not only on the basis of the quantity of goods and the power to serve or harm, but also on the basis of mind, beauty, strength or skill, on the basis of merit or talent. And since these qualities were the only ones that could attract consideration, one was soon forced to have or affect them. It was necessary, for one’s advantage, to show oneself to be something became two completely different things; and from this distinction there arose grand ostentation, deceptive cunning, and all the vices that follow in their wake. On the other hand, although humans had previously been free and independent, we find them, so to speak, subject, by virtue of multitude of fresh needs, to all of nature and particularly to one’s fellow humans, whose salve in a sense one becomes even in becoming their master; rich, one needs their service; poor, one needs their help; and being midway between wealth and poverty dose not put one in a position to get along without them. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
It is therefore necessary for one to seek incessantly to interest them in one’s fate and to make them find their own profit, in fact or in appearance, in working for one’s. This makes one two-faced and crooked with some, imperious and harsh with others, and puts one in the position of having to abuse everyone one needs when one cannot make them fear them and does not find in it one’s interests to be of useful service to them. Finally, consuming ambition, the zeal of raising the relative level of one’s fortune, less out of real need than in order to put oneself above others, inspires in all humans a wicked tendency to hard one another, a secret jealousy all the more dangerous because, in order to strike its blow in greater safety, it often wears the mask of benevolence; in short, competition and rivalry on the one hand, opposition of interest[s] on the other, and always the hidden desire to profit at the expense of someone else. All these ills are the first effect of property and the inseparable offshoot of incipient inequality. Both secure and insecure people may be tormented, sad, full of doubt and anguish and uncertainties. This is not what distinguishes ontologically secure people from others. Being secure does not mean being happy, only being secure. There are three kinds of danger which characteristically beset the insecure. First the danger of engulfment—I may be taken over and swept away by someone of something. Second the danger of implosion—I may be invaded and impinged upon and totally filled with whatever they put into me when I am empty. In reaction to these dangers, I may withdraw, which leads to the third danger, which is the danger of depersonalization—I may feel that nothing and no one is real anymore: “This is not happening to the ‘me’ that matters.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
I may begin to thing of my “real” self as inviolable—no one can reach it. I may tell myself that whatever I am being forced to do, whatever roles they feel I must play, this is not happening to my real self. And indeed this is so—ontologically insecure people are not consenting to what they are saying or doing. Their true self is hidden away. Their behaviour and their bodies are being coerced, but somewhere is a “me” that is not involving itself. This is the “unembodied self.” It I as though the person said, “I must keep in mind that this is not happening to me, only to my body; it does not touch the real me.” Instead of being the core of his or her true self, the body is felt as the core of a false self which a detached, disembodies “inner,” “true” self looks on at with tenderness, amusement of hatred as the case may be. However, this divorce of role from self destroys the integrity of the personality. We shall suggest that it was on the basis of one’s exquisite vulnerability that the unreal human became so adept at self-concealment. One learnt to cry when one was amused, and to smile when one was sad. One frowned one’s approval, and applauded one’s displeasure. “All that you see is not me” one says to oneself. However, only in and through all that we do see can one be anyone (in reality). If these actions are not one’s real self, one is irreal: wholly symbolical and equivocal. One is a purely virtual, potential, imaginary person, a “mythical” human, nothing “really.” If, then, one stops pretending to be what one is not, and steps out as the person one has come to be, one emerges as Christ, or as a ghost, but not as a human: by existing with no body, one is no-body. “Here are people constantly reminding themselves “This is not happened to the essential me,” “This does not touch the real me,” “What they say and do to me does not really matter,” “This is a dream.” What is happening to that part of the person which the person does experience as “me”? What does “touch me”? The answer is, nothing from the senses touches “me”. That part of the person has retreated from the World of ideas. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
However, the sense of self started with body-imagery, which, if all goes well, is refined and structured and in various ways continually confirmed by messages from the sensory World. If, now, there is a constant inhibition of messages from the sense which would confirm that the World exists, then the body-image, the self-image, and they very self are inevitably weakened. The experience of being connected with the body will be weakened and confused. However, the body-imagery has been connected with the sense of well-being from the early days on, when all well-being was physical, and so the sense of well-being is dissipated. Moreover, even when good things are happening (regular breathing, good digestion, regular heartbreak, the soft touch of clothes, the good taste of food), the effect does not enhance well-being as it would do in a less divided self. As the science of medicine becomes more reverent, it will bring the spirit to the healing of the body in addition to its medicine. Life on Earth is so short, so beset by dangers of many kinds, so exposed to our own ignorance and Nature’s indifference, that we cannot afford to turn our eyes away as to the Christian Scientists from the discoveries and knowledge of humans who have devoted their years to patient sacrifice and research for the alleviation of human sickness. It is usually wise to consult a physician, wiser still to consult a specialist. Why reject the knowledge they have accumulated, the experience they have gained? However, blindly to follow their advice is quite another matter. Here a critical judgment is needed, for medicine is immensely far from being the perfect science that mathematic is. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
So long as orthodox medicine fails to recognize the mental or emotional origin of so many cases of sickness, so long will its cures be temporary and incomplete. Ever drawing us toward Itself, Its power to attract block by the layers of thoughts, emotions, desires, and passions which compose the personal self, much time and many lives are needed to unblock a passage to the soul. Follow the self’s track within, not slipping down into its muddy bogs but ascending up to its diviner sources. Is it possible to recapture these wonderful sensations? Long intervals of aridity may inspire a negative answer to this question, but adequate knowledge of the laws at work and the mental process involved inspire a beneficial one. Know Consciousness without its objects—and you are free! If one is willing to take the training of one’s mind seriously in hand one can, either during or at the end of one’s course, live again in such experiences. In that condition of passive emotions and paralysed thoughts, consciousness can receive That which otherwise shuts it out. When one retreats to one’s center, one has retreated to the point where the Glimpse of truth may be had. An event, a book or a person, a piece of music or a piece of landscape may bring the mind to brief spiritual consciousness. The evanescence of all these glimpses is saddening to most of us, but the causes once understood, the remedy is at hand. It is harder to find amid the din of city streets, and when found, easier to lose in the press of thronging crowds. Believe in the higher Self and look up to it. Sometimes one word may flash a light into one’s mind which goes far and wide. At other times a short phrase may do the same work for one. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
One realizes that one has had an important experience which will be followed at intervals by others, when one stands on the fringe of cosmic consciousness. Through proper metaphysical study, meditation practice, and philosophic action, it will not be difficult for one to come into the awareness of one’s own Overself to some extent, although it is difficult to acquire full consciousness in the present age, when the opposition of a materialistic society is so strong and intense. However, even to enjoy a fraction of this wider consciousness is to transform one’s life in every way. Look back into imagination upon those wonderful glimpses and try to recapture the feeling they produced. Just as the lotus flower opens its buds bit by bit, so should one open one’s mind to this great truth. It becoming conscious of the not-thinking hinterground of my personality, I attain true being. When its thinking faculty is put out of gear in the proper way, what peace fills the mind! What ever-remembered moments of illumination this happening produce! Eating food of a special kind or sitting in an isolated cave cannot of itself make anyone spiritually minded. However, it can lessen the number of obstacles in the way of anyone who seeks to become spiritually minded. The sensitive and humane person who does not pause to consider one’s guilt in life’s matters have let oneself take the easy conscience-drowning way, partly because it is the popular way and partly because one is duped by a science and religion which are blindly playing the ego’s game. The road to truth ought to be persuasive education, and not vehement propaganda. The cause for it ought to be presented temperately and prudently, not aggressively and fanatically. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Here we are, God—a planet at prayer. Please attuned our spirits that we may hear your harmonies and bow before your creative power, that we may face out violent discords and join with your Energy to make heard in every heart your hymn of peace. Here we are, God—a militarized planet. Transformed our fears that we may transform our war fields into wheatfields, arms into handshakes, missiles into messengers of peace. Here we are, God—a polluted planet. Please purify our vision that we may perceive ways to purify our beloved lands, cleanse our precious waters, de-smog our life-giving air. Here we are God—an exploited Planet. Please heal our hearts, that we may respect our resources, hold priceless our people, and provide for our starving children an abundance of daily bread. May the Father of compassion have mercy upon a people who He lovingly tended. May He remember the covenant with the patriarchs; may He deliver us from evil times, curb the evil inclinations in the people whom He has tenderly protected, and graciously grant us enduring deliverance. May He abundantly fulfill out desires and grant us salvation and mercy. May His Kingdom soon be revealed and made visible unto us, and may He be gracious unto our remnant and unto the remnant of His people, the house of America, granting them grace, kindness, mercy and favour; and let us say, Amen. Let us all ascribe greatness unto our God, and render honour to the Scriptures. Blessed be He who is His holiness gave the Scriptures to His people America. And you who cleave unto the Lord your God, are alive everyone of you this day. Bless the Lord who is to be praised. Praised be the Lord who is blessed for all eternity. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
CRESLEIGH RIVERSIDE AT PLUMAS RANCH
Plumas Lake, CA |
Now Selling!
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You Live Because of Something You Just Cannot Give Up—The American Dream!
The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful World. How unhappy are those who do not know their own misery! How unhappier still are those who know this miserable and corruptible life, but also love it! Why? They have embraced this misery even when it has brought them only the barest necessities. Labourers and beggars they are! However, they would still rather hang out on this Earth than give a thought about the Kingdom of God. The home should be the great workshop of the Lord. Here is where children must be taught to walk in ways of truth and soberness, of love and service to each other. The most effective examples a child will ever have—for bad or for good—are one’s own parents. Few of us realize how very pliable and teachable children are in their primary years of life. How quick they are to pick up parental habits and traits and teachings! May I suggest that parents must require more of themselves. May I recommend that parents give more of themselves, that they give more good experiences to their children, experiences that are love-producing and family-solidifying. Whether the times they give are measured in minutes or hours is not as important as what they do in them. It may be five minutes at a child’s bedside each night or a fifteen-minute walk in the evening. It may be a day in the hills or a three-minute phone call at midday. It may be a clever love note a little girl or a night out to a ball game with a boy. It can even be the experience of a family home evening. It can even be the experience of a family learning to pray together and reading the scriptures together. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
We must expand our thinking on ways to develop happy children. As the Lord has said, the power is within us to do so. The ways of the Lord are simple ways. Simple experiences with children develop unbreakable ties that will endure forever. It might be something as simple as smiling more in your home. This wisdom of the flesh—that is all some people know. Insane of mind and soul, they laze about the loam and think they are in Heaven. When their end comes, these wretched folks will surely realize that their love for the things of this Earth is low-down, even loathsome. The Saints of God, on the other hand, and the Devouts, all friends of Christ, paid no attention to their carnal desires and what passed for pleasure in their time. They focused only on their eternal desires. They ogled only the Perennials and Invisibles; the Visibles they ignored lest they drag them down to the lower depths. Do not, dear friend, lose confidence in making spiritual progress. There is still time, still opportunity. Why do you postpone your plan? Arise this instant, and begin to pray. Now is the time to do something—that is what Paul asked the Corinthians, in his Second Letter, to do (6.2)—to stand up and fight, to make the necessary changes. When you are doing badly and your head aches, you think it is the end of the World. If it is, fine. However, if it is not, there is time to do something worthwhile. It is necessary to go through fire and water, before the warmth returns to the coolth. No pain, no gain—at least as far as vice is concerned. As long as you beg off because your body might bruise, you cannot be without sin or live without tedium and pain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
We would like to have a respite from all the misery, but we cannot. We have lost our innocence through sin. In the same Fell Swoop we lost our True Beatitude. Is there no hope? Well, there is always Patience, which the Letter to the Hebrews tries to offer (10.36). We must hold on to it, as we wait for the mercy of God. How long will that be? Until this iniquity that passes for life has ebbed and this mortality has been wrung from our soul; that is Paul’s best surmise in that same letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 5.4). Our porcelain’s perfect, or so we think, but that is when the brown vein come a-creeping. Today we confess our sins, but tomorrow we commit more of the same. Now we propose to be on the lookout; yet after an hour we do what we promised we would not. Deservedly, therefore, we should humble ourselves. But how can we do that? We should go into a corner and not think of the wonderfulness of ourselves. Why? you ask for the thousandth time. We all develop veins, yes, but we also manage to fall off the self. Which is another way of saying the obvious. All too soon what we have acquired with hard labour, and with additional help from Grace, can be lost in a nonce through negligence. If we get up in the morning with a grouch and drag ourselves through the day, what will we have done by nightfall? Peace and Security—those are the virtues singled out by Paul Silvanus, and Timothy in their First Letter to the Thessalonians (5.3). We have to pretend we have them, but why would we work to get them? Why do we want just to lie down and go back to sleep? In our conversation, why is there not a hint, just a scent, of True Sanctity? #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Perhaps we should get back to school, pretend we are novices again, and listen to all those tedious instructions about how to change our behaviour. Perhaps there would be hope we could make some changes now and progress a little father down the road to spiritual perfection in the future. In a matter of decades energy may once more become abundant and inexpensive as a result of startling technological breakthroughs or economic swings. However, whatever happens, the relative price of oil is likely to continue its climb as we are forced to plumb deeper and deeper depths, to explore more remote regions, and to compete among more buyers. Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) aside, an historic turn has taken place over the past five years: despite the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that over 46 billion barrels of oil, 280 trillion cubic feet of gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids are trapped in the Permian oil and gas basin that straddles Western Texas and Southeastern New Mexico, despite skyrocketing prices, the actual amount of confirmed, commercially recoverable reserves of crude oil has shrunk, not grown—reversing a trend that has lasted for decades. If needed, further evidence that the petroholic era is screeching to a halt. Meanwhile, coal, which has supplied most of the remaining third of the World energy total, is in ample supply, though it, too, is ultimately depletable. Any massive expansion of coal usage, however, entails the spread of dirty air, a possible hazard to the World’s climate (through an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), and a ravaging of the Earth as well. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Any massive expansion of coal usage, however, entails the spread of dirty air, a possible hazard to the World’s climate (through an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), and a ravaging of the Earth as well. Even if all these were accepted as necessary risks over the decades to come, coal cannot fit into the tank of an automobile nor carry out many other tasks now performed by oil or gas. Plants to gasify or liquefy coal require staggering amounts of capital and water (much of it needed for agriculture) and are so ultimately inefficient and costly that they, too, must be seen as no more than expensive, diversionary, and highly temporary expedients. Nuclear technology presents even more formidable problems at its present stage of development. Conventional reactors rely on uranium, yet another exhaustible fuel, and carry safety risk that are extremely costly to overcome—if, indeed, they ever can be. No one has convincingly solved the problems of nuclear waste disposal, and nuclear costs are so high that until now government subsidies have been essential to make atomic power remotely competitive with other sources. Fast breeders are in a class by themselves. However, while often presented to the uninformed public as perpetual motion machines because the plutonium they spew out can be used as fuel, they, too, remain ultimately dependent upon the World’s small and non-renewable supply of uranium. They are not only highly centralized, incredibly costly, volatile, and dangerous, they also escalate the risks of nuclear war and terrorist capture of nuclear materials. None of this means that we are going to be thrown back into the middle ages, or that further economic advance is impossible. However, it surely means that we have reached the end of one line of development and must now start another. It means that the Second Wave energy base is unsustainable. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
Indeed, there is yet another, even more fundamental reason why the World must and will shift to a radically new energy base. For any energy base, whether in a village or an industrial economy, must be suited to the society’s level of technology, the nature of production, the distribution of markets and population, and many other factors. The rise of the Second Wave energy base was associated with society’s advance to a whole new stage of technological growth, the exact reverse was also true. The invention of energy-thirsty, brute technology during the industrial era spurred the ever-more-rapid exploitation of those very fossil fuels. The development of the auto industry, for example, caused so radical an expansion of the oil business that at one time it was essentially a dependency of Detroit. In the words of Donald E. Carr, formerly an oil company research director, and author of Energy and the Earth Machine, the petroleum industry became “a slave to one form of internal combustion engine.” Today we are once more at the edge of an historic technological leap, and the new system of production now emerging will require a radical restricting of the entire energy business—even of OPEC were to fold its tent and quietly steal away. For the great overlooked fact is that the energy problem is not just one of quantity; it is one of structure as well. We not only need a certain amount of energy, but energy delivered in many more varied forms, in different (and changing) locations, at different times of the day, night, and year, and for undreamed-of purposes. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
This, not simply OPEC’s pricing decisions, explains why the World must search for alternatives to the old energy system. That search has been accelerated, and we are now applying vast new resources of money and imagination to the problem. As a result we are taking a close look at many startling possibilities. While the shift from one energy base to the next will no doubt be darkened by economic and other upheavals, there is another, more beneficial aspect to it. For never in history have so many people plunged with such fervor into a search for energy—and never have we had so many novel and exciting potentials before us. It is clearly impossible to know at this stage which combination of technologies will prove most useful for what tasks, but the array of tools and fuels available to us will surely be staggering, with more and more exotic possibilities becoming commercially plausible as oil prices climb. These possibilities range from photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight into electricity (a technology now being explored by Texas Instruments, Solarex, Energy Conversion Devices, and many other companies), to a Russian plan for placing windmill-carrying balloons in the tropopause to beam electricity down to Earth through cables. New York City has contracted with a private firm to burn garbage as fuel and the Philippine Islands are building plants to produce electricity from coconut waste. Italy, Iceland, and New Zealand are already generating electricity from geothermal sources, tapping the heat of the Earth itself, while a five hundred-toon floating platform off Honshu island in Japan is generating electricity from wave power. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Solar heating units are sprouting from rooftops around the World, and the Southern California Edison Company is constructing a “power-tower” which will capture solar energy through computer-controlled mirrors, focus it on a tower containing a steam boiler, and generate electricity for its regular customers. In Stuttgart, Germany, a hydrogen-powered bus built by Daimler-Benz has cruised the city streets, while engineers at Lockheed-California are working on a hydrogen-power aircraft. So many new avenues are being explored, they are impossible to catalog in a short space. When we combine new energy-generating technologies with new ways to store and transmit energy, the possibilities become even more far-reaching. General Motors has announced a new, more efficient automobile batter for use in electric cars. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) researchers have come up with “Redox”—a storage system they believe can be produced for one third of the cost of conventional lead acid batteries. With a longer time horizon we are exploring superconductivity and even—beyond the fringes of “respectable” science—Tesla waves as ways of beaming energy with minimal loss. While most of these technologies are still in their early stages of development and many will no doubt prove zanily impractical, others are clearly on the edge of commercial application or will be within a decade or two. Most important is the neglected fact that big breakthroughs often come not from a single isolated technology but from imaginative juxtapositions or combinations of several. Thus we may see solar photovoltaics used to produce electricity which will, in turn, be used to release hydrogen from water so it can be used in cars (BMW already has a model on the market). #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Today we are still at the pre-takeoff stage as far as what non-gasoline powered car will dominate the market. Once we begin to combine these many new technologies, the number of more potent options will rise exponentially, and we will dramatically accelerate the construction of a Third Wave energy base. This new base will have characteristics sharply different from those of the Second Wave period. For much of its supply will come from renewable, rather than exhaustible sources. Instead of being dependent upon highly concentrated fuels, it will draw on a variety of widely dispersed sources. Instead of depending so heavily on tightly centralized technologies, it will combine both centralized and decentralized energy production. And instead of being dangerously over reliant on a handful of methods or sources, it will be radically diversified in form. This very diversity will make for less waste by allowing us to match the types and quality of energy produced to the increasingly varied needs. In short, we can now see for the first time the outlines of an energy base that runs on principles almost diametrically opposed to those of the recent, three-hundred-year past. It is also clear that this Third Wave energy base will not come into being without a bitter fight. In this war of ideas and money that is already raging in all the high-technology nations, it is possible to discern not two but three antagonists. To begin with, there are those with vested interests in the old, Second Wave status quo. And because they are entrenched in the oil companies, utilities, nuclear commissions, mining corporations, and their associated trade unions, the Second Waves forces seem unassailably in charge. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
By contrast, those who favour the advance to a Third Wave energy base—a combination of consumers, environmentalists, scientists, and entrepreneurs in the leading-edge industries, along with their various allies—seem scattered, underfinanced, and often politically inept. Second Wave propagandists regularly picture them as naïve, unconcerned with dollar realities, and bedazzled by blue-sky technology. Worse yet, the Third Wave advocates are publicly confused with a vocal fringe of what might best be termed First Wave forces—people who call not for advanced to a new, more intelligent, sustainable, and scientifically based energy system, but for a reversion to the preindustrial past. In extreme form, their policies would eliminate most technology, restrict mobility, cause cities to shrivel and die, and impose an ascetic culture in the name of conservation. By lumping these two groups together the Second Wave lobbyists, public relations experts, and politicians deepen the public confusion and keep the Third Wave forces on the defensive. Nevertheless, supporters of neither First nor Second Wave policies can win in the end. The former are devoted to a fantasy, and the latter are attempting to maintain an energy base whose problems are intractable—in fact, insuperable. The relentlessly rising cost of Second Wave fuels works strongly against them. The fact that Second Wave methods often require heavy inputs of energy to eke out relatively small increments of new “net” energy works against them. The escalating problems of pollution work against them. The nuclear risk works against them. The willingness of thousands in many countries to battle the police in order to stop nuclear reactors or strip mines or giants generating plants works against them. The tremendous rising thirst of the non-industrial World for energy of its own, and for higher process for it resources, works against them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
In short, though nuclear reactors or coal gasification or liquefaction plants and other such technologies may seem to be advanced or futuristic and therefore progressive, they are, in fact, artifacts of a Second Wave past caught in its own deadly contradictions. Some may be necessary as temporary expedients, but they are essentially regressive. Similarly, though the forces of the Second Wave may seem powerful and their Third Wave critics feeble, it would be foolish to bet too many chips on the past. Indeed, the issue is not whether the Second Wave energy base will be overthrown, superseded by a new one, but how soon. For the struggle over energy is inextricably intertwined with another change of equal profundity: the overthrow of Second Wave technology. As soon as humans begun mutually to value one another, and the idea of esteem was formed in their minds, each one claimed to have a right to it, and it was no longer possible for anyone to be lacking it with impunity. From this came the first duties of civility, even among savages; and from this every voluntary wrong became an outrage, because along with the harm that resulted from the injury, the offended party saw in it contempt for one’s person, which often was more insufferable than the harm itself. Hence each human punished the contempt shown in one in a manner proportionate to the esteem in which one held oneself; acts of revenge became terrible, and human became bloodthirsty and cruel. This is precisely the stage reached by most of the savage people known to us; and it is for want of having made adequate distinctions among their ideas or of having noticed how far these peoples already where from the original state of nature that many have hastened to conclude that humans are naturally cruel, and that they need civilization in order to soften them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
On the contrary, nothing is so gentle as humans in their primitive state, when, placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes and the fatal enlightenment of civil humans, and limited equally by instinct and reason to protecting oneself from the harm that threatens them, one is restrained by natural pity from needlessly harming anyone oneself, even if one has been harmed. For according to the axiom of the wise Locke, where there is no property, there is no injury. However, it must be noted that society in its beginning stages and the relations already established among humans required in them qualities different from those they derived from their primitive constitution; that, with morality beginning o be introduced into human actions, and everyone, prior to the existence of laws, being sole judge and avenger of the offenses one had received, the goodness appropriate to the pure state of nature was no longer what was appropriate to an emerging society; that it was necessary for punishments to become more severe in proportion as the occasions for giving offense became more frequent; and it remained for the fear of vengeance to take the place of the deterrent character of laws. Hence although humans had become less forbearing, and although natural pity had already undergone some alteration, this period of development of human faculties, maintaining a middle position between the indolence of our primitive state and the petulant activity of our egocentrism, must have been the happiest and most durable epoch. The more one reflects on it, the more one finds that this state was the least subject to upheavals and the best for humans, and that one must have left it only by virtue of some fata chance happening that, for the common good, ought never have happened. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
The example of savages, almost all of whom have been found in this state, seems to confirm that the human race had been made to remain in it always; that this state is the veritable youth of the World; and that all the subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species. As long as humans were content with the rustic huts, as long as they were limited to making their clothing out of skins sewn together with thorns or fish bones, adorning themselves with feathers and shells, painting their bodies with various colours, perfecting or embellishing their bows and arrows, using sharp-ended stones to make some fishing canoes or some crude musical instruments; in a word, as long as they applied themselves exclusively to tasks that a single individual could do and to the arts that did not require the cooperation of several hands, they lives as free, healthy, good and happy as they could in accordance with their nature; and they continues to enjoy among themselves the sweet rewards of independent intercourse. However, as soon as one human needed the help of another, as soon as one human realized that it was useful for a single individual to have provisions for two, equality disappeared, property came into existence, labour became necessary. Vast forest were transformed into smiling fields which had to be watered with humans’ sweat, and in which slavery and misery were soon seen to germinate and grow with the crops. Metallurgy and agriculture were the two arts whose invention produced this great revolution. Thus they were both unknown to the savages of America, who for that reason have always remained savages. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Other peoples even appear to have remained barbarous, as long as they practiced one of those arts without the other. And perhaps one of the best reasons why Europe has been, if not sooner, at least more constantly and better governed than the other parts of the World, is that it is at the same time the most abundant in iron and most fertile in wheat. It is very difficult to guess how human came to know and use iron, for it is incredible that by themselves they though of drawing the ore from the mine and performing the necessary preparations on it for smelting it before they knew what would result. From another point of view, it is even less plausible to attribute this discovery to some accidental fire, because mines are set up exclusively in arid places devoid of trees and planet, so that one would say that nature had taken precautions to conceal this deadly secret from us. Thus there remains only the extraordinary circumstances of some volcano that, in casting forth molten metal, would have given observers the idea of imitating this operation of nature. Even still we must suppose them to have had a great deal of courage and foresight to undertake such a difficult task and to have envisaged so far in advance that advantages hey could derive from it. This is hardly suitable for minds already better trained than theirs must have been. City and country dwellers usually have sharp images of their environments, but suburbanites express some difficulty when asked to describe the communities in which they live. They tend to paint an image of suburbia as a middle landscape. Suburbanites delight in not being part of the city, but they know they are not country or small town either. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
In the study of the extent of community ideology and identity, there are three sets of imagery salient to suburban ideology that are frequently volunteered by suburbanites. First, suburbanites describe suburbs as “clean, quiet, and natural places.” Residents view suburbs as small and quitter places with an easygoing ambience. They lack the frenetic pace, and perhaps also the excitement, of the city. On the other side, the suburbs may not be country, but they have openness and provide access to natural things such as birds and trees. Second, the suburbs are seen as a place of “domesticity.” Suburbanites view themselves as interested in home, family life, and children. Suburbs are seen in the suburban ideology as “the best of both Worlds.” This is particularly true when the focus is on raising children. Children are believed to receive a good education in an environment where they have both freedom and security. Third, suburbs are “safe.” The safety of the suburb, in turn, is seen as making other values, such as sociability, family, and good rearing of children, possible. To the extent that crime has move to the suburbs, it is seen as endangering other values. The suburban ideology of the middle landscape as described above is somewhat vague and hazy. It lacks the sharpness with which central city or country residents define their areas. Perhaps this hazy image is because suburbs are often defined by being contrasted with the cleaner vision of the city or country. There is an additional reason for the lack of a compelling image. Based on an interview in Northern California, it was discovered that only one of three suburban residents even designates one’s area as a suburb. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
In addition to those suburbanists who express a suburban ideology, there also are “suburban villagers” and “suburban urbanists.” The first are those residents who think of their community as being a small town rather than a suburb. They identify suburbs, and suppose suburban problems, exclusively with suburban tract-housing developments. Subdivisions, thus, are suburbs, but older and more diverse housing areas are thought of as small-townish. By contrast, the suburban urbanists, including those who have previously lived in the city, are in some respects reluctant suburbanites. They explain their suburban residence in terms of the suburbs being more distant from cultural and other activities, but being a more attractive place to raise children. They believe the suburbs are a good place to live, but their enthusiasm is somewhat muted. There is one image of suburban life that is missing from suburban dwellers’ own descriptions of the suburban landscape. The missing element is any discussion of race or housing segregation. There are several possible reasons for this absence. It might because suburbanites do not consider housing segregation as uniquely suburban. They might think more in terms of specific neighbourhoods rather than entire communities. For some others the urban versus suburban differences in racial composition may not be important. However, for others the avoidance of the topic may simply reflect that it is not considered socially acceptable to speak favourable of housing segregation. In this view the suburban ideology of clean, peaceful places of good housing and domesticity provides an acceptable vocabulary of motives to explain moving to suburbs. Also, race many not be spoken of because it simply is not an issue in racially homogenous communities. Whatever the reason, race is rarely mentioned. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
The “myth of suburbia,” which saw the suburban future as one of togetherness and homogeneity, is now a relic of history. It has now been supplanted by a new popular myth, which sees suburbia not as a place of compulsive group conformity, but rather as one of competitive self-advancement and self-fulfillment. Supposedly, the community counts for less and status and success for more. According to an examination of Naperville, Illinois, as the “new suburbia,” “the suburbs and, by extension, middle-class Americans have gone from glorifying group bonding to glorifying individual happiness and achievement.” “Self-actualization,” “self-fulfillment,” and “self-expression” have become the bywords of contemporary suburbia. The argument goes that while suburbanites have become more prosperous, they have also become more anxious about their standard of living. This greater affluence is largely due to women working. While the suburban women of the 1950s were overwhelmingly homemakers, women today also work full time outside the home and own lucrative businesses. In fact, the younger couple, the greater the likelihood of the wife working. The result is that the coupe has more money but also more stress. There is simply not enough free time. Because people are busier, there is less time for the socializing that was so often seen as characterizing the suburbs of the 1950s. There is now less social cohesion and sense of common community, but also less conformity—that is, if one accepts that living a lifestyle where everyone is concerned about self-advancement is no conformity. An interesting point about the above picture of suburbia as the home of self-oriented and self-concerned status seekers is that it is largely identical to the stereotype of the 2020 self-centered, twenty something, upper middle class technology guru, lawyer, or doctor. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Yuppie homeowners are characterized as focusing on self and success rather than on family and community. Many of these youth own large homes, with many rooms they do not even use, and have homes like look like model homes, more than one car and a water vehicle. As they mature and settle down, they will meet a partner, move than individual into their oversized home, marry, have children and focus on more traditional and communal values. This may, in part, reflect tougher economic times as well as simply the aging of the people in the age of information. It will be interesting to see if a new generation of examinations of suburbia will again report residents heavily involved in community and socialization. Or has the general movement of women into the work force, as opposed to the 1950s, changed the equation? So women who are still responsible for much of home and family work have time for social activities such as preparing dinner parties? Does the time for casual coffee klatching still exist? To err is human. What…then is a human? How strange and monstrous! Depository of truth, yet a cesspool of uncertainty and error…Who will unravel this tangle? We psychologist are found of nothing contradictions in the accumulated cultural wisdom. When noting that almost every conceivable proposition about human nature has at some point been argued by someone, we chuckle. Thus we have proverbs for many occasions, such as for times when “absence makes the heart grow fonder” or, conversely, when “out of sight (becomes) out of mind.” From the self-actualized of the ages we similarly get a confusing portrayal of human nature. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
We know from Juvenal, the Roman satirist, that people “hate those who have been condemned” and from Ralph Waldo Emerson that “the martyr cannot be dishonoured.” We can base our persuasive appeals on the assumption of Shakespeare’s Lysander that “the will of man is by his reason sway’s,” or we can follow the advice of Lord Chesterfield: “Address yourself generally to the senses, to the heart, and to the weakness of humankind, but rarely to their reason.” We see the need for a science of human nature that will winnow fact from falsehood. Yet we know that whether we find that togetherness or separation most intensifies attraction, whether people more often despise or honour those who suffer, whether reason or emotion is generally more persuasive, there will be someone who anticipated our finding. In hindsight, almost any finding—or its opposite—can seem like obvious common sense. Yet there were keen observers of human behaviour in centuries past. These were people who, without modern techniques of research and analysis, observed the same sorts of motives and behaviours that we observe today and anticipated some of psychology’s current themes. One such theme is the puzzling mixture of human wisdom and human foolishness. We today better understand how as the seventeenth-century philosopher-mathematician Blaise Pascal put it, “Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.” We marvel at the capabilities of our brains; we are awed by the seemingly limitless capacities of our visual memory; we extol our abilities to solve problems and learn language. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
Yet, like Pascal, we also have been bemused and even startled by our capacity for error, illusion, and self-deceit. Because, as the psalmist recognized, “no one can see one’s own errors,” psychologist have devoted much energy of late to revealing our most common errors. Several of these were anticipated in Francis Bacon’s remarkably perceptive Novum Organuum, first published in 1620. Bacon, a Christian statesman and philosopher who popularized the idea that science explored God’s “book of nature,” identified several “idols” or fallacies of the human mind. We have our secrets and our needs to confess. We may remember how, in childhood, adults at first were able to look right through us, and into us, and what an accomplishment it was when we, in fear and trembling, could tell our first lie, and make, for ourselves, the discovery that we are irredeemably alone in certain respects, and know that within the territory of ourselves there can be only our footprints. There are some people, however, who never fully real-ize themselves in this position. This genuine privacy is the basis of genuine relationship; but the person whom we call “schizoid” feels both more exposed, more vulnerable than we do, and more isolated. Thus schizophrenic patients may say that they are made of glass, of such transparency and fragility that a look directed at them splinters them to bits and penetrates straight through them. We may suppose that precisely as such they experience themselves. People may have a sense of their presence in the World as real, alive, whole, and in a temporal sense, continuous. As such, the can live out into the World and meet others: World and others experiences as equally real, alive whole and continuous. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
Such basically ontologically secure people will encounter all the hazards of life—social, ethical, spiritual, biological—from a centrally firm sense of their own and other people’s reality and identity. It is often difficult for people with such a sense of their own integral selfhood and personal identity, of the permanency of things, of the reliability of natural processes, of the substantiality of others, to transpose themselves into the World of an individual whose experiences may be utterly lacking in any unquestionable self-validating certainties. Suffering humanity needs all the help it can get. It cannot afford to reject either nature-cure, homeopathy, or allopathy. It needs all three and even more. A prudent and balanced approach to the question of healing requires us o make use of the services of allopathy as well as homeopathy, psychotherapy as well as physiotherapy, spiritual healing as well as mesmeric treatment, herbalism and even surgery—if and when needed—if we are to make the fullest use of developed human knowledge and skill. One who knows one branch of healing is like a bird with one wing. Why should anyone reject the physician and one’s medicines for the osteopath and one’s manipulations, or both for the healer and one’s prayer? The power which cures works through all three; if it did not, if it worked through a single channel alone, the others would never have been needed, found, and used. Whether it is religion or science, official allopathic medicine or less established homeopathic medicine, each can make us its beneficiary and has its contribution to give us. However, each also has its undesirable side too often a sectarian narrow intolerance of the other. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
The World of knowledge, culture, techniques, skills, arts, and worship should be open to all seekers—whether their quest is for truth, God, information, or healing—and not dictatorially limited in its offering to the established, the traditional, the successful, and the conventional. Is there a science of spiritual healing? If there is, we can discover it only by freeing ourselves from the cultist standpoint; for, with conflicting doctrines, and different methods, Christian Science Spiritism, Roman Catholicism, Hypnotism, and Coueism have yet produced similar results. It follows that these healings do not prove all their claims but may prove a part. Every healer orthodox and unorthodox, has one’s percentage of failures, although the figure is generally unknown. Spiritual healing is not a universal cure-all. It is complementary to other systems. From the moment that a healing cult fastens itself to the Bible exclusively it will widen one’s visions and increase powers, but it is still important to see a doctor and allow as many resources God has provided you with to allow His grace and blessings to heal you. When truth gets into the hands of fanatics they do it hard. One human teaches that all disease is caused by wrong diet only, but another teaches that it is caused by wrong thinking only. However, truth says that both these causes are operative in the human World, as well as several others. It will have to be recognized that, since we exist simultaneously on two levels, all our problems of suffering and sickness must be looked at from two points of view if they are to be adequately seen and grasped. There is the common and familiar immediate one, which deals with them as they are in appearance. There is the uncommon and unfamiliar alternative one which deals with them as they are in reality. An orthodox physician treating a case of disease takes the first viewpoint. A Christian Science practitioner treating the same case takes the second one. Neither takes a wholly adequate and truly philosophical view. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
To put the body under a necessary discipline is not the same as putting it under an unnecessary tormenting asceticism. Those who cry out that the body is being maltreated when it is no longer fed unhealthy food, or gorged with oils, or poisoned with fiery liquor, cry a false alarm. During a body purification, which sometimes takes as long as twelve months, one’s efforts should proceed strenuously, and should not only be concerned with the thoughts themselves but also with the physical intake, solid and liquid. In this matter it is better to be fastidious, and to reject much that is offered. As one’s mind becomes purer and one’s emotions come under control, one’s thoughts become clearer and one’s instincts truer. As one learns to live more and more in harmony with one’s higher Self, one’s body’s natural intuition becomes active of itself. The result is that false desires and unnatural instincts which have been imposed upon it by others or by oneself will become weaker and weaker and fall away entirely in time. This may happen without any attempt to undergo an elaborate system of self-discipline on one’s part: yet it will affect one’s way of living, one’s diet, one’s habits. False cravings like the craving for smoking tobacco will vanish of their own accord; false appetites like the appetite for alcoholic liquor or flesh food will likewise vanish; but the more deep-seated the desire, the longer it will take to uproot it—except in the case of some who will hear and answer a heroic call for an abrupt change. It is also inhuman and unreasonable to demand, as the price of spiritual peace, that we shall renounce all Earthly satisfactions to the point of neither enjoying delicious food nor feeling aversion to repulsive food. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
Those who sin against their body in order to keep the good opinion of others, or to appear sociable or convivial, commit the further sin of being weak, insincere, and fearful. It is not by any kind of privilege that anyone obtains the glimpse but by preparation and equilibration, with some amount of purification. To equilibrate is to calm feelings as and when necessary and render them deeper, exquisitely delicate. To suppose that you are going to be wafted into this lofty awareness of the Overself without having to work very hard and very long for it, is to be a simpleton. The glimpse of Heaven comes and the glimpse goes, suddenly or slowly, and this coming and this going are independent of one’s will. This does not, however, mean that one is totally helpless in the matter. Instruction or experience or both can teach one what those conditions are which assist the onset of the glimpse and those which obstruct it. Great Spirit, whose dry lands thirst, please help us to find the way to refresh your lands. We pray for your power to refresh your lands. Great Spirit, whose waters are choked with debris and pollution, please help us to find the way to cleanse your waters. We pray for your knowledge to find the way to cleanse the waters. Great Spirit, whose beautiful Earth grows ugly with misuse, please help us to find the way to restore beauty to your handiwork. We pray for your strength to restore the beauty of your beautiful sky. Great Spirit, whose creatures are being destroyed, please help us to find a way to replenish them. We pray for your power to replenish the Earth. Great Spirit, whose gifts to us are being lost in selfishness and corruption, please help us to find the way to restore our humanity. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
God, we pray for your wisdom to find the way to restore our humanity. You are the God of our salvation; the Lord of hosts be with us; the God of Jacob be a stronghold unto us. O Lord of hosts, happy is the human that trusteth in Thee. Please save, O Lord; O King, answer us on the day when we call. Blessed by our God who hath created us for His glory, and hath separated us from them that go astray by giving us the Scripture of truth, thus planting everlasting life in our midst. May God open our hearts unto His Law, and with love and reverence may we do His will and serve Him with a perfect heart that we may not labour in vain nor bring forth confusion. May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, that we keep Thy statutes in the World, and be worthy to live and inherit happiness and blessings in the days of the Messiah and in the life of the World to come. May my soul sing Thy praise and not be silent; O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto Thee forever. Blessed is the human that trusteth in Thee, O Lord, and whose trust Thou art. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord is an everlasting Rock. And they that know Thy name will put their trust in Thee; Thou hast not forsaken them that seek Thee. Thou, O Lord, desirest for the sake of Thy righteousness to make the Scriptures great and glorious. 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. In man’s unending search for civilizations, his pursuit of science may be the very thing keeping him from his Creator. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Cresleigh Homes
Bathrooms can be dark and cramped, but not in Mills Station Residence 4. 😎 This bathroom has natural light streaming in! When your bathroom is this well designed, you might never come out! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/
There is a magic in that little World, home; it is a Cresleigh Home that surrounds comforts and virtues never known beyond its strong walls.
I Have an American Dream that One Day We Will Live in a Suburbia that Looks Like of Heaven!
The same qualities that make most of us unique also prevent us from changing who we are, even if it might be a change for the better. It is sometimes said that to be more creative, one should try to see the World without preconceptions, as if through the eyes of a child. Any one-year-old child has no trouble turning a metal bowl and a wooden spoon into a rock star’s drum. However, as we get older, knowledge and experience increasingly displace imagination and our ability to see an object for anything other than its original purpose. This is called functional fixedness and while you may not need to build a drum set during your professional career, chances are you do suffer from it and it is impacting your work. Many of us suffer from Functional fixedness. When I was young, I used to sometimes watch the trendy situational comedy Friends. The show was based on young, successful, attractive singles, who were roommates, living in a hip and swinging apartment in New York City. So, it made me believe that is what life in the city would be like and made me think living in a mid-level rise or high-rise building in the city would be cool and I would meet young, attractive people. However, my experience has been anything but that. Living in an apartment house in the city has been a horrible experience. The people are old, unattractive, means, and down right evil. They also smell awful, so bad that it makes people sick. And it nothing like living in the city. It is more like living in a small town in the country side that is not deemed to be very sophisticated. The nearby stores are also expensive, and have a limited selection. So this experience makes me want to move to a beautiful community like Cresleigh Ranch. Where the people are friendly and attractive and care about their reputation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Functional fixedness is a well-known cognitive bias. Companies often struggle to develop breakthrough products because they are hobbled by Functional Fixedness. Technologists, engineers, and designers not only have their own expertise, they have their own way of applying their expertise. Ironically, the more success they have had with their approach to a solution, the harder it is to imagine a different one. If you suspect your Research and Development team will get upset at anything that challenges their abilities, consider setting up a Functional Fixedness SWAT team—a trained group of innovators who embrace the idea of collaborating with solution providers outside their industry specialty. This will allow the Research and Development team to become more creative and please and attract new clients and revenue, instead of being an unfriendly, impenetrable fortress of know-it-alls who are stagnate in their careers and cognitive functions. Functional fixedness is just one of the mental blocks that prevent insight. Here is an example of another: A $20 bill is placed on a table and a stack of objects is balanced precariously on top of the bill. How can the bill be removed without touching or moving the object? A good answer is to split the bill on one of its edges. Gently pulling from opposite ends will tear the bill in half and remove in without topping the objects. Many people fail to see this solution because they have learned not to destroy money. Notice again the impact of placing something in a category, in this case, “things of value” (which should not be destroyed). The list that follows identifies other common mental blocks and fixations that can hinder problem solving. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Emotional barriers: inhibition and fear of making a fool of oneself, fear of making a mistake, inability to tolerate ambiguity, excessive self-criticism. Example: An architect is afraid to try an unconventional design of adding a turret and a stained-glass window to the blue prints of a new house scheduled for development because he fears that other architects will think it is frivolous. However, many buyers are looking to get some aspects of Victorian culture in their homes, which is why farmhouse designs are becoming so popular. Cultural barriers: values that hold that fantasy is a waste of time; that playfulness is for children only; that reason, logic, and numbers are good; that feelings, intuitions, pleasure, and humour are bad or have no value in the serious business of problem solving. Example: A corporate manager wants to solve a business problem but becomes stern and angry when members of his marketing team joke playfully about possible solutions. Being too strict can stifle, but playing around and joking too much can be disruptive and waste a firm’s time and money. Learned barriers: conventions about uses (functional fixedness), meanings, possibilities, taboos. Example: A cook does not have any clean mixing bowls and fails to see that one could use a frying pan as a bowl. Being a cook, it is important to find solutions to problems on demand. The restaurant industry is a fast pace business and customers expect perfection for the high prices of the food they are paying for. Perception barriers: habits leading to a failure to identify important elements of a problem. Example: A beginning artist concentrates on drawing a vase of flowers without seeing the “empty” spaces around the vase are part of the composition, too. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Being an artist requires one to be visual and open to new interpretations. To pay attention to light, dark, textures, lines, and be creative. Much of what we know about thinking comes from direct studies of how people solve problems. Yet, surprisingly, much can also be learned from machines. Computerized problem solving provides a fascinating “laboratory” for testing ideas about how you and I think. Church sermons sometimes have surprisingly little impact. When the people from twelve churches were interviewed at home shortly before and after they heard sermons opposing racial bigotry and injustice, it was found that during the second interview, only ten percent recalled reading anything about racial prejudice or discrimination even though the material had been presented. When the remaining 90 percent were asked directly whether their minister “talked about prejudice or discrimination in the last couple of weeks,” more than 30 percent denied hearing such a sermon. So it is hardly surprising that the sermons had little impact on racial attitudes! However, there are certain requirements that have to be met for an effect sermon. For a sermon to be effect, one has to make sure the worshipper is paying attention. Then it must be clear that the worshipper comprehends the message, which is why audience participation is advised. Many teachers ask questions to the audience to get feedback. The questions are usually things others need clarity on as well. Also, it is important to make sure your audience believes your message, or you are jus wasting your time. They have already made their decision. If the audience believes your message, it is important they remember it. This is why many lecturers provide colourful examples so people are better able to relate to the stories and keep them in mind. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Furthermore, if instruction is to be useful, the worshippers have to follow through and amend their behaviour accordingly to be an example for others to follow and show you that they are practicing these doctrines. And of course, actions speak louder than words. For example, you should not have to verbally reassure someone you love them, your actions should make that clear. Love is no real definition of love, but you can behave in a way to show someone you deeply care about them. This is why many women love when their husbands buy them flowers, diamonds, cars, clothes or compliment them on their new hairstyle, dress or the cuisine they prepared. When you stop to think about it, the preacher has so many hurdles to surmount that it is no wonder preaching so often fails to affect our actions. The preacher must deliver a message that not only gets out attention but it is understandable, persuasive, memorable, and likely to compel action. After all, does it not make you suspicious when someone says, “I’m sorry,” or “I love you”? Because it means they did something wrong or are about to do something wrong. If a person is really sorry, they will repent from the upsetting or deviant behaviour and make a gesture to show remorse. Nonetheless, our concern here is neither theological content nor oratorical style, but with how to create and receive a memorable, persuasive message. What factors make for effective communication? How might ministers apply these factors in the construction of more potent messages? For that matter, how might any of us who teach, speak, or write do so with greatest effects? Finally, what can we ordinary people to receive an extraordinary benefit from what we hear and read? #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Well, vivid, concrete examples are more potent than abstract information. Human judgements and attitudes are often swayed by specific illustrations than by abstract assertions of general truth. Research studies show that a few good testimonials usually have more impact than statistically summarized data from dozens of people. A single vivid welfare case has more impact on opinions about welfare recipients than does factual information running contrary to the case. Another study finds that student impressions of potential teachers were influenced more by a few personal testimonies concerning the teacher than by a comprehensive statistical summary of many students’ evaluations. No experienced writer will be surprised by this principle. As William Strunk and E.B. White asserted in their classic, The Elements of Style, “If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it is on this: the surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definite, and concrete. The greatest writers—Homer, Dante, Shakespeare—are effective largely because they deal in particulars.” Preachers and teachers should do the same, and so should we listeners, by conjuring up our own examples when the speaker begins to get abstract. However, a sermon is never just a string of unrelated examples; the preacher aims to communicate a basic point. We might say that theological truth is to a good sermon what the base of an iceberg is to its tip. Jesus’ vivid parables, for example, embodied basic truths in memorable pictures. And what pastor has not received compliments from adults for a simple but concrete children’s sermon? The children may not have grasped the analogy, but the adults understood and remembered it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
This illustrates the power of principle number one: vivid, concrete examples are more potent than abstract information. Messages that relate to what people already know or have experienced are more easily remembered. Public-speaking experts have long supposed this to be true. Aristotle urged speakers to adapt the message to their audiences. Experimental psychologists have confirmed the point: messages that are unrelated to people’s existing ideas or experience are difficult to comprehend and are quickly forgotten. The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. After the procedure is completed, one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their proper places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life. The statement above may not be what you think it is about. It is actually about laundry. If you knew it was about laundry, it might be easier to remember because it is something most people are familiar with. If you reread it, you will probably understand it better. A message that is hooked to some cue—something we will think about or experience again—is more likely to come to mind in the future. When the cue pops up, it may call to mind the message associated with it. For example, one memorable sermon likened American religion to waiting-room Muzak—bland and soothing. A year after this “sound of Muzak” sermon was preached, we found ourselves eating dinner in a room with music softly playing in the background. Someone noticed the music—and recalled the sermon. This illustrates principle number two: messages that relate to what people already know or have experienced are most easily remembered. Spaced repetition assists memory. If the repetitions are spaced over time rather than grouped together, as every student of human learning knows well, we remember information much better. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
The experimental psychologist Lynn Hasher found that repeated information is also more credible. When statements such as “The largest museum in the World is the Louvre in Paris” were repeatedly presented, people rated them as more likely to be turn when the statements had been presented infrequently. Social psychologists have uncovered a parallel phenomenon: repeated presentation of a neutral stimulus—whether a human face, a Chinese character, or a piece of unfamiliar music—generally increases people’s liking of it. Speakers can capitalize on this finding that repetition, especially spaced repetition, makes messages more memorable and appealing. When preparing a talk or sermon they might ask themselves, What do I most want people to remember from this? They can then repeat that one key idea many times. (We suspect that a little informal testing of parishioners’ recall would reveal that few people can recall the main points of the last three-point sermon they heard.) Given the limitations of human memory, a sermon should probably be the embodiment of only one vigorous idea. Perhaps this could even be taken a step further: that idea should be embodies in the whole worship service—the Scriptures, music, prayers, and closing charge to the congregation. A parishioners we should look for a unifying theme, or at least identify one idea in every service that is significant for us. Sometimes the key idea can be captured in a single statement or pithy saying that becomes the trunk of a talk or sermon, unifying the illustrative branches that grow from it. What listener can forget the refrain in Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” sermon? Principle number three therefore bears repeating: space repetition assists retention. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Active listening assists memory and facilitates attitude change. People remember information best when they have actively processed it—that is, when they have put it in their own words. Experiments reveal that when we read or hear something that prompts a thought of our own, we will often more readily remember our thought than the information that prompted it. Not only do we better remember information we produce ourselves but our attitudes are also more likely to be changed by that information. Social psychologists have found that passive exposure to information, through reading or listening, has less effect on people’s attitudes than information they get through active participation in a group discussion. Other research confirms that when we learn something passively our attitudes toward it usually do no change much. When we are stimulated into restating information in our own terms, we are much more likely to remember and be persuaded by it. Preachers, teachers, and even parents may fail to recognize that their spoken words are more prominent to them (as active speakers) than to their passive listeners. Parents are often amazed at their children’s capacity to ignore them. If instead of constant harping, the parent gently asks the child to restate the request (“Leo, what did I ask you to do?”), the child’s act of verbalizing the request will make the child more aware of it. Mr. Rogers, the television friend of preschoolers, applies this principle by asking a question and then saying nothing for a few moments, allowing children to answer themselves. Preachers would be well advised to do likewise, pausing after giving an instruction or raising a thought-provoking question. As listeners we can discipline ourselves to listen actively. Taking notes on a sermon, as any serious student does in class, forces us to repeat and restate its main points. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
So does discussing it with someone else. No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression—this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget. Therefore, anticipate that active listening assists memory and facilitates attitude change. Attitudes and beliefs are shaped by action. If social psychological research has established anything, it is, as we emphasize that our actions influence our attitudes. Every time we act, we amplify the idea lying behind what we have done, especially when we feel responsibility for having committed the act. It seems that we are as likely to believe in what we have stood up for as to stand up for what we believe Moreover, this principle is paralleled by the biblical idea that growth in faith is a consequence as well as a source of obedient action. The implication of his “attitudes follow actions” principle is clear: a message is most likely to stimulate faith if it calls forth a specific action. The effective talk or sermon will not leave people wondering what to do with it. It will suggest specific actions, or it will stimulate listeners to form their own place of actions. “How will ‘Love your neighbour’ affect you?” the speaker might ask. “Who are you going to phone or visit this week?” In the twenty-one months Joseph Smith had possessed the golden plates, no one expect Joseph Smith had seen them. They were kept wrapped in a cloth when not in use. When Joseph translated, he sat behind a curtain which prevented others from seeing them. God was not yet ready for others to see the precious book. This was a great responsibility for Joseph, because others had to believe the things he said and could not see for themselves. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
However, the Lord had promised Joseph that he was not to be the only one to see them, that three others should be shown the wonderful plates. Joseph was anxious to share his wonderful secret. Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris desired to be the three people who were to see the plates. They asked Joseph to pray to God about this. After Joseph prayed earnestly o God, a revelation came to these three men telling them that is they had faith they should see the golden plates, the breastplate, the Urim and Thummin, the sword of Laban, and the Liahona or compass. The Lord said: “After you have obtained faith, and have seen them with your eyes, you shall testify of them, by the power of God; and this you shall do…that I may bring about my righteous purposes unto the children of men, in this work. Ye shall testify that ye have seen them, even as my servant Joseph Smith, Jr., has seen them, for it is by my power that he has seen them, and it is because he had faith. And he has translated the book, even that part which I have commanded him, and as your Lord and your God liveth, it is true.” A few days after this revelation was received in June, 1829, Joseph, Oliver, David, and Martin were out in the woods discussing this revelation and praying that God would show them the plates. Joseph prayed first. Then each man turned and prayed; but there was only silence in the stillness of the forest. Joseph prayed again, followed by each of the other men. When God did not answer their prayers, Martin Harris blamed himself, think he was not good enough, and that he was keeping them from having their prayers answered. He went away to pray by himself. After Martin Harris left, Joseph and Oliver and David knelt and prayed again. While they were thus praying, a very bright light appeared in the air and rested upon them, extending all around them. It was not like the light of the sun, nor the light of fire, but was more glorious and beautiful. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
An Angel stood before them in this light, and there appeared a table on which were many plates as well as the golden plates from which Joseph had translated. Beside the plates were the Urim and Thummim, the breastplate, the sword of Laban, and Liahona, or compass. The Angel turned the pages of the golden book one by one so the three men could see the engravings. The men were allowed to handle the plates, to feel them as well as to see them, so they would know for sure they real. Then a voice came from out of the bright light above them, saying, “These plates have been revealed by the power of God, and they have been translated by the power of God. The translation of them which you have seen is correct, and I command you to bear record of wat you now see and hear.” When the Angel, the precious thing, and the bright light had disappeared, Joseph went to find Martin Harris to tell him of the wonderful vision they had seen. He found him in another part of the woods praying. Joseph knelt with him and together they prayed that Martin Harris might be the third witness to share the vision. As they were praying, the same bright light came to them as it has to Joseph, Oliver, and David. The Angel showed Martin Harris the golden plates and other precious things, just as he had shown them to others. The four men then went back to the Whitmer home and told the family what had happened. All rejoiced in their wonderful experience. They knew they must make a record of it so that all people might know. They carefully wrote their story. Briefly the words of the “Testimony of the Three Witnesses” are these: “Be it known to all nations and people to whom this work shall come, that we, through the power of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
“We know they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice has told us so. Wherefore, we know for sure that this work is true. We also testify that we have seen the engravings which are on the plates. They were shown to us by the power of God and not of man. We declare that an Angel of the Lord came down from Heaven and brought and laid them before our eyes, and we saw the plates and the engravings on them. We know that it is by the power of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we saw and we make a record that these things are true. It is marvelous to us, and to be obedient to the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. We know that is we are faithful in Christ, we shall dwell with him forever in the Heavens, and the honour be to the Father, and to the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.” Then Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris signed their names to the document. Never in all their lives, even in times of great trouble, did they every deny their testimony. At the time of their deaths, when they were old men, they still told all who would listen the wonderful story of how the Angel visited them and showed them the golden plates. These three men were not the only witnesses who were to see the golden plates. The Lord told Joseph Smith that others were to be permitted to see them. A few days later when several men were meeting together, Joseph showed them the golden plates. They saw them as Joseph turned the pages, leaf by leaf, showing them the writings in the strange language. They were permitted to touch and handle them. There were eight men in this group. They did not see the Angel nor the other things which had been shown to the first three witnesses, but they knew they must bear record of the things they saw. They carefully wrote their story, and the “Testimony of the Eight Witnesses” briefly is this: “Be it known unto all nations and people unto whom this work, has shown to us the plates, which have the appearance of gold. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
“As many of the pages as he translated we did handle with our hands and saw the engravings thereon. We bear record that we have seen and lifted and know for sure that Joseph Smith has the plates of which we have spoken. We give our names to witness unto the World that we have seen, and we lie not, God bearing witness of it.” These eight men then signed their names to the document: four Whitmer brothers, Peter, Christian, Jacob, John; two brother of Joseph Smith, Hyrum and Samuel; Joseph’s father, Joseph Smith, Sr..; an a man named Hyrum Page. The book printed from the translation was called the “Book of Mormon” because Mormon was the man who had prepared the plates many hundreds of years before. The complete testimonies of the “three witnesses” and the “eight witnesses” have been printed in every copy of the Bool of Mormon that has ever been printed. Nearly every man over the age of twenty years who had anything to do with helping in the Lord’s work of translating the golden plates saw and handled the plates. Throughout their lives they testified to the truth of the work. Not one of these men every denied that he had seen the golden plates. Several of these men had not yet been baptized. This had been a wonderful experience as they worked closely with God, and those who had not yet made their promise to God in the waters of baptism did so within the next few months. At every point Christianity has to correct the natural expectations of the Pantheist and offer something more difficult, just as Schrodinger has to correct Democritus. At every moment he has to multiply distinctions and rule out false analogies. One has to substitute the mapping of something that has a beneficial, concrete, and highly articulated character for the formless generalities in which Pantheism is at home. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Indeed, after the discussion has been going on for some tie, the Pantheists is apt to change one’s ground and where one before accused us childish naivety now to blame us for the pedantic complexity of our “cold Christs and tangled Trinities.” And we may well sympathise with him. Christianity, faced with popular “religion” is continuously troublesome. To the large well-meant statements of “religion” it finds itself forced to replay again and again, “Well, not quite like that,” or “I should hardly put it that way.” Thus troublesomeness does not of course prove it to be true; but if it were true it would be bound to have this troublesomeness. The real musician is simply troublesome to person who wishes to indulge in untaught “musical appreciation”; the real historian is similarly a nuisance when we want to romance about “the old days” or “the ancient Greeks and Romans.” The ascertained nature of any real thing is always at first a nuisance to our natural fantasies—a wretched, pedantic, logic-chopping intruder upon a conversation which was getting on famously without it. But “religion” also claims to base itself on experience. The experiences of mystics (that ill-defined but popular class) are held to indicate that God is the God of “religion” rather than of Christianity; that He—or It—is not a concrete Bing but “being in general” about which nothing can be truly asserted. To everything which we try to say about Him, the mystics tend to reply, “Not thus.” What all these negatives of the mystics really mean I shall consider in a moment: but I must first point out why it seems to be impossible that they should be true in the sense popularly understood. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
It will be agreed that, however they come there, concrete, individual, determinate things do now exist: things like flamingoes, German generals, lovers, sandwiches, pineapples, comets and kangaroos. These are not ere principles or generalities or theorems, but things—facts—real, resistant existences. One might even say opaque existences, in the sense that each contains something which our intelligence cannot completely digest. In so far as they illustrate general laws it can digest them: but then they are never mere illustrations. Above and beyond that there is in each of them the “opaque” brute fact of existence, the fact that it is actually there and is itself. Now this opaque fact, this concreteness, is not in the least accounted for by the laws of Nature or even by the laws of thought. Every law can be reduced to the form “If A, then B.” Laws give us only a Universe of “Ifs and Ands”: not this Universe which actually exists. What we know through laws and general principles is a series of connections must be given something to connect; a torrent of opaque actualities must be fed into the pattern. If God created the World, then He is precisely the source of this torrent, and it alone gives our truest principles anything to be true about. However, if God is the ultimate source of all concrete, individual things in the highest degree. Unless the origin of all others thing were itself concrete and individual, nothing else could be so; for there is no conceivable means whereby what is abstract or general could itself produce concrete reality. Book-keeping needs something else (namely, real money put into the account) and metre need something else (real words, fed into it by a poet) before any income or any poem can exit. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
If anything is to exist at all, then the Original Thing must be, not a principle nor a generality, much less an “ideal” or a “value,” but an utterly concrete fact. Probably no thinking person would, in so many words, deny that God is concrete and individual. However, not all thinking people, and certainly not all who believe in “religion,” keep this truth steadily before their mind. We must beware of paying God ill-judged “metaphysical compliment.” We say that God is “infinite.” In the sense that His knowledge and power extend no to some things but to all, this is true. However, if by using the word “infinite” we encourage ourselves to think of Him as a formless “everything” about whom nothing in particular and everything in general is true, then it would be better to drop that word altogether. Let us dare to say that God is a particular Thing. Once He was the only Thing: but He is creative, He made other things to be. He is not those other things. He is not “universal being”: if He were there would be no creatures, for a generality can make nothing. He is “absolute being”—or rather the Absolute Being—in the sense that He alone exists in His own right. However, there are things which God is not. In that sense He has determinate character. Thus He is righteous, not a-moral; creative, not inert. The Hebrew writings here observe an admirable balance. Once God says simple I AM, proclaiming the mystery of self-existence. However, times without number He says, “I am the Lord”—I, the ultimate Fact, have this determinate character, and not that. And humans are exhorted to “know the Lord,” to discover and experience this particular character. The error which I am here trying to correct is one of the most sincere and respectable errors in the World; I have sympathy enough with it to feel shocked at the language I have been drive to use in say the opposite view, which I believe to be the true one. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
In countless writings the prophets of the Lord have been trying to teach us that throughout time and all eternity the most important organization is the family. A loving Father in Heaven organized His church here on the Earth as a means of teaching families how to be eternally happy. We know that none of us can receive the fulfillment of true happiness except at a member of an eternal family. We also know, or should know, that the success we experience in our homes as families, is going to have a most significant effect on the eternal happiness of each of us. Happiness in the life hereafter is geared to our learning and living celestial laws while we are here on the Earth. This being so, then our great need is to establish in our homes an atmosphere that will encourage the learning and living of the teachings of the Saviour. Satan knows that He can cause unhappiness in our homes if he can bring about disunity, discontent, disharmony, and a host of other spiritual illness. By this insidious process He has gained no small measure of success in His plan to lead astray the children of our Father in Heaven. For instance, He knows that if He can cause parents to quarrel with each other, their children may well follow the example. He knows that if parents show little respect for each other, so will their children. He knows that children mirror the actions of their parents. One of Satan’s most effective tools is at work among us today—it is a destroyer of happiness, peace, contentment, family solidarity. Families are stumbling and falling because of is hobbling and crippling effect. This tool of Satan is called the contention. The word contention means: to argue, to bring discord or strife, to dispute, to quarrel. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Now, sone will say, “This is our way of life—everybody is doing it.” Lest we think these acts are not serious and are just our way of life, to be accepted and lived with, let us hear the word of the Lord as expressed by an ancient prophet. “And according as I have commanded you thus hall ye baptize. And there shall be no disputations among you, as there have hitherto been; neither shall there by disputations among you concerning the points of my doctrine, as there have hitherto been. For verily, verily I say uno you, one that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and He stirreth up the hearts of humans to content with anger, one with another. Behold, his is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of humans with anger, one against another,” reports 3 Nephi 11.28-30. It does not take great faith to believe in something that never fails. God has never failed. Lack of understanding of many confused people is due to our own unconscious unwillingness to understand them (and ourselves), and they are confused due to the divided self because we need them (and us) confused. People have identities. However, they may also change quite remarkably as they become different others to others. It is arbitrary to regard any of these functions or “alter” actions as basic and the others as variations. Not only may people behave quite differently in their different alterations, but they may experience themselves in different ways. They are liable to remember different things, express different attitudes, even quite discordant ones, imagine and phantasize in different ways, and so on. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
This a theory of natural splits. It maintains that people will feel they have integrity and identity, provided first that they are not under pressure to be wildly different in different role-relationships, and second that each role-relation is fairly consistent from day to day. Overall, both city dwellers and suburbanites tend to overemphasize the differences between them. Actually, when one controls for income and other social-status variables, there is little difference between the city and country cousins. There is little that makes suburbanites stand out from other similar-status persons. When one looks at similar populations in city and suburb, their ways of life are remarkably alike…The crucial difference between cities and suburbs, then, is that they are often home for different kinds of people. If one is to understand their behaviour, these differences are much more important than whether they reside inside or outside the city limits…if populations and residential areas were described by age and class characteristics, and by racial, ethnic, and religious ones, our understanding of human settlements would be much improved. The truth is that those living in the suburbs are not all that different from city dwellers with similar backgrounds. In many respects suburbs have been maligned by being portrayed as a monochromatic landscape of beautiful boxes holding look-alike middle-class and upper-middle class families. Suburbs now house nearly 60 percent of the American population, and this population is remarkably complex in terms of age, family status, income, ethnicity, and race. Individual suburbs, as is true with urban neighbourhoods, are often homogenous, but suburbia as a whole is diverse. There is a mosaic of all ages, lifestyles, races, cultures, educational and political backgrounds. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
In discussing suburbs and suburbanites, it is important to remember their complexity as well as their commonalities. Not everyone would agree with the portrait of suburbs presented in the statement above. More negative view of suburban life, and especially suburban family life by critics such as M.P. Baumgartner. In a social-anthropological examination of an upper-middle-class commuter suburb of 16,000 outside New York, she describes a community that appears to it Riseman’s, and others’, criticism of suburbia. Baumgartner argues that the pattern she found in the community can be generalized to suburbia elsewhere (or at least upper-middle-class suburbia). She describes suburbia as a place of a “culture of weak ties” and “moral minimalism.” The surface tranquility of suburban life covers an unwillingness to address real conflicts and tensions. Weak bonding to family and neighbours leads not to discussing and resolving conflicts, but to conflict avoidance and suppression as major characteristics of suburbia. As put by Guest in his review work, “Since ties are weak and unimportant, sub urbanities have allegedly little reason to resolve differences. Thus, almost paradoxically, the apparent harmony of suburbia stems from a lack of communal feeling. Suburbia is too diverse to be simply and uniformly categorized. In general, one can say that suburbs have characteristics that tend to fall between those of cities and those of small towns. When one compares suburbs with small towns suburbs have less neighbouring, less community participation, and less localism. Suburbs also are more private and anonymous, possibly because they are not “whole” communities but only the residential piece. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
The suburbs lack the overlapping social networks found in small towns where people work and shop as well as live together. In most suburbs residents must commute outside the proximate community for work or shopping. Suburbs, while having more neighbouring than cities, have less than small towns Suburbs similarly lack the strong informal social control mechanisms of small towns, which leads to suburbs having greater freedom, more anonymity, and more peace and quiet, and less crimes because people are busy working and demand a peaceful environment while they are at home. Socially as well as physically, suburbs are a middle landscape. Wherever you are, whatever you turn to, you are in a wretched state, unless you turn to God. So you do not succeed in everything you do? What is the big fuss? What self-actualized gets everything one wants? Not I, not you, not anyone else on the face of this Earth. No even a king, pope, or Paris Hilton. All Worldlings must wade through the gutters or tribulation and anguish. If anyone fares better, then one is in a good position to suffer rather more for God’s sake. “Look, there goes a man who has got a good life!” That is what the general public says. “He has got a lot of money, a big Cresleigh Home, a 2007 high performance luxury sports car BMW Concept CS, friends in high places!” However, there is another way. Look to the Celestial, and you will see that the Temporal does not amount to a great deal. Possessions are here one day, gone the next. If you are overly possessive, then your mind plays a trick. Everyone you meet is plotting to swipe them. Ten of everything? Having ten BMWs will not make your bottom ten times happier. One of everything will do. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Misery, if you want the true definition of the word, is just living on this Earth. The more your attention to the sweetness of spiritual things, the more you realize how bitter the experience is. That is because you feel more dearly and see more clearly the defects of human corruption. To eat, drink, watch, sleep, relax, labour, and be subject to all the bodily functions, to have to do all these things, that is the truly great misery. That is the great affliction, one has o conclude. Free from sin, and free for Heaven—that is the freedom to pray for. The bag of bones we have to lug around this World is a rackety load. The Psalmist knew (27.17). Hence, his heart-rendering cry, “Grasp my body with one hand, O Lord, and with the other rip my heart from it!” Imagine a place with out air, noise, and water pollution. Imagine a place where there was peace and quiet and happiness. Imagine a land of long white vistas, ice cold saviours, gleaming glaciers, breaking into the sea. Imagine the Earth so awesome, so vast, so pure, we can hardly breathe its air. Imagine the Earth alive with morning, shimmer white nights, no end of sky, no end of sea. Lord God of our fathers, God of American, please keep this forever in the inward thoughts of the heart of Thy people, and direct their heart unto Thee, for Thou, being merciful, full of compassion, forgiveth iniquity and destroyeth not; yea, many a time Thou turnest anger away. For Thou, O Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and abounding in mercy unto all who call upon Thee. They righteousness is everlasting, and Thy Law is truth. Thou wilt show faithfulness to Jacob and mercy to Abraham, as Thou hast promised unto our fathers from the days of blessed. Blessed is the Lord who day by day bears our burden. It is said that our relations deepen the secrets hidden from the truth. It may be said, however, there are some stones better left unturned. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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No One Lives on this Earth without Tribulation–Life is Lived Forwards, but Understood Backwards!
Are lives are defined by our choices. Paths taken and worlds explored. But once we commit, we can never go back, or can we? Bondage of the will is an essential foundation for the doctrine of grace. By ourselves, we are unable to act righteously, to have faith, or to contribute to our own salvation. All credit belongs to God. What then is left to free will? “Nothing! In truth!” insisted Marlin Luther. John Calvin was just as forceful: because the term free will “cannot be retained without great peril, it will…be a great boon for the church if it is abolished.” The divine determinism assumed by the doctrines of God’s foreknowledge, sovereignty, and grace is not identical to naturalistic cause-effect determinism. Yet biblical faith assumes that God works through the created order. Thomas Aquinas argued (in the words of Michael Novak) that “grace operates (except in the rarest cases) through the ordinary contingencies and processes of nature…The whole environment, the whole ‘schedule of contingencies’ that constitutes history is graced.” Believing in God opens one to the possibility of miracles; yet if we accept that all nature is from moment to moment sustained, ordered, and upheld by God, then we no longer need miracles in order to “make room for God.” Whatever their differences, the concepts of absolute determinism and absolute divine sovereignty converge in affirming our dependence on forces beyond our conscious knowledge. Thus they share the problem of how to accommodate ultimate more responsibility. If a superhypnotist were to plant an irresistible suggestion that you should commit a crime, which you then did with a sense of having chosen to do it, surely no one who knew the hidden cases of your behaviour would hold you responsible. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Likewise, if we understand the conditions that triggered someone’s acting desirably, we tend to credit the conditions rather than the person. It is only when we are surprised by a person’s heroism—when we do not expect people to behave o nobly under such circumstances—that we give special credit and honour to the hero. In a deterministic World we can judge any behaviour as worthy of praise or blame, but it becomes more difficult to hold the person as ultimately responsible. One is therefore tempted to create a gap in the schemes of natural and divine determination—to open the door to just a dash of ultimate free will, however much is needed to restore our accountability before God and before our human judicial system. God’s sovereignty, we may tell ourselves, does not extend all the way down to the little things, such as what I ate for breakfast this morning. God is concerned only with big events, the ultimate ends. However, as Jonathan Edwards and the other theological masterminds recognized, this assumption of agent causation creates as many problems as it solves. A God who is detached from what you ate for breakfast (or whether you ate breakfast) is not a God who is continuously involved with all events of the creation. And consider: How are the big ends in life achieved apart from the little means? Looking back on our lives, we see our path winding through countless little event and chance encounters, from our initial conception right up to the present. At any decision point we feel free, but looking back, we see causation. “What I so proudly call ‘myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never stared and which I cannot stop,” suggested C.S. Lewis. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Or as Soren Kierkegaard noted, “Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.” Thus the apostle Paul could sense, “I yet not I, but the grace of God.” So both the absolute determinist and the one who believes in God’s utter sovereignty (perhaps the same person) are left baffled. To limit natural and divine powers makes little sense and only opens that door for pride in self and a judgmental attitude toward others. Yet somehow human accountability must be affirmed. Faced with this paradox of faith, we can take comfort in remembering that we cannot expect to comprehend fully this wisdom and justice of a being whose cognitive stage is infinitely beyond our own. Our situation is like that of someone stranded in a deep well with two ropes dangling down. If we grab either one alone, we sink still deeper into the well. Only when we hold both ropes at once can we climb out, because at the top, beyond where we can see, they come together around a pulley. Grabbing only the rope of determinism or the rope of human responsibility plunges us to the bottom of a well. So instead we grab both ropes, without yet understanding how they come together. In doing so, we may also be comforted that in science as in religion, a confused acceptance of irreconcilable principles is sometimes more hones than a tidy oversimplified theory that ignores evidence. (Remember that advocates of agent causation have no trouble explaining our responsibility, but do face a different mystery—how God could accomplish divine purposes while granting us freedom to do as we choose.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
We also do well to remember both ropes in our everyday attitudes—by viewing ourselves as free and responsible agents and others as influenced by their biology, their past experience, and their current situation. Such a view has the effect of cultivating within us the practical fruits of self-discipline and self-initiative, while being more understanding of the forces that constrain others. Scripture, too, tends to adopt the perspective of self as free and other as caused. When the Bible addresses us directly, it emphasizes our responsibility for our failings. When talking to us about others, especially the poor and disadvantaged, it frequently advocates the complementary perspective: do not judge; act with compassion toward the oppressed; take the beam out of your own eye before worrying about the motes in others; let judgment begin with the house of the Lord. Are we determined or free? Christian psychologists who assume absolute determinism struggle to rationalize human responsibility; those who assume self-causation have solved the problem of human responsibility butt struggle to accommodate natural causation and divine sovereignty in human affairs. Nevertheless, on this much both camps agree: in the fabric of contemporary psychology and Christian doctrine, natural order and human responsibility are the interwoven threads. The new enlightenment which resulted from this development increased human superiority over others terrestrial beings by making them aware that they are from a divine being and created in His image. “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground,’” reports Genesis 1.26. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
And because humans learned they were superior to animals, they trained themselves to set traps for them; they tricked them in a thousand different ways. And although several surpassed them or hurt them, humans became the master of the former and the scourge of the latter. Thus the first glance they directed upon themselves produced within them the first string of pride; thus, as yet hardly knowing how to distinguish the ranks, and contemplating themselves in the first rank by virtue of their species, they prepared themselves from afar to lay claim to it in virtue of their individuality. Although their fellow humans were not for one what they are for us, and although they had hardly anything more to do with them than with other animals, they were not forgotten in their observations. The conformities that tie could make one perceive among the, their female, and oneself, made the human beings judge of those they did not perceive. And seeing that they all acted as one would have done under similar circumstances, one concluded that their way of thinking and feeling was in complete conformity with their own. And this important truth, well established in their mind, made them follow, by a presentiment as sure as dialectic and more prompt, the best rules of conduct that it was appropriate to observe toward them for their advantage and safety. Taught by experience that love of well-being is the sole motive of human actions, one found oneself in a position to distinguish the rare occasions when common interest should make one count on the assistance of their fellow humans, and those even rarer occasions when competition ought to make one distrust them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
In the first case, humans untied with them in a herd, or at most in some sort of free association, that obligated no one and that lasted only as long as the passing need that hard formed it. In the second case, if one believed that one could, everyone sought to obtain one’s own advantage, either by overt force. Of it one felt oneself to be weaker, one sought to obtain advantage by cleverness and cunning. This is how humans could imperceptibly acquire some crude idea of mutual commitments and of the advantages to be had in fulfilling them, but only insofar as present and perceptible interests could require it, since foresight meant nothing to them, and far from concerning themselves about a distant future, they did not even give a thought to the next day. Were it a matter of catching a deer, everyone was quite aware that one must faithfully keep to one’s post in order to achieve this purpose; but if a hare happened to pass within reach of one of them, no doubt one would have pursued it without giving it a second thought, and that, having obtained one’s prey, one cared very little about causing one’s companions to miss theirs. It is easy to understand that such intercourse did not require a language much more refined than that of crows or monkeys, which flock together in practically the same way. Inarticulate cries, many gestures, and some imitative noises must for a long time have made up the universal language. By joining to this in each country a few articulate and conventional sounds, whose institution, as I have already said, is not too easy to explain, there were individual languages, but crude and imperfect ones, quite similar to those still spoken by carious savage nations today. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Constrained by the passing of time, the abundance of things I have to say, and the practically imperceptible progress of the beginnings, I am flying like an arrow over the multitudes of centuries. For the slower events were in succeeding one another, the quicker they can be described. These first advantages enabled humans to make more rapid ones. The more the mind was enlightened, the more industry was perfected. Soon they ceased to fall asleep under the first tree or to retreat into caves, and found various types of hatches made of hard, sharp stones, which served to cut wood, dig up the soil, and make huts from branches they later found it useful to cover with clay and mud. This was the period of a first revolution which formed the establishment of the distinction among families and which introduced a kind of property, whence perhaps there already arose many quarrels and fights. However, since the strongest were probably the first to make themselves lodgings they felt capable of defending, presumably the weak found it quicker and safer to imitate them than to try to dislodge them; and as for those who already had huts, each of them must have rarely sought to appropriate that of one’s neighbour, less because it did not belong to one than because it was of no use to one, and because one could not seize it without exposing oneself to a fierce battle with the family that occupied it. The first development of the heart were the effect of a new situation that united the husbands and wives, fathers and children in one common habitation. The habit of living together gave rise to the sweetest sentiments known to humans: conjugal love and parental love. “God blessed them and said to them ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the Earth and subdue it,’” reports Genesis 1.28. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Each family became a little society all the better united because mutual attachment and liberty were its only bonds; and it was then that the first difference was established in the lifestyle of the two genders, which until then had had only one. Women because more sedentary and grew accustomed to watch over the hut and the children, while the man went to seek their common subsistence. With their slightly softer life the two genders also began to lose something of their ferocity and vigour. However, while each one separately became less suited combat savage beasts, on the other hand it was easier to assemble in order to jointly to resist them. In this new state, with simple and solitary life, very limited needs, and the tools they had invented to provide for them, since humans enjoyed a great deal of leisure time, they used it to procure for themselves many types of conveniences unknown their fathers; and that was the first yoke they imposed on themselves without realizing it, and the first source of evils they prepared for their descendants. For in addition to their continuing thus to soften body and mind (those conveniences having through habit lost almost all their pleasures, and being at the same time degenerated into true needs), being deprived of them because much more cruel than possessing hem was sweet; and they were unhappy about losing them without being happy about possessing them. At this point we can see a little better how the use of speech was established or imperceptibly perfected itself in the bosom of each family; and one can further conjecture how various particular causes could have extended the language and accelerated its progress by making it more necessary. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Great floods or earthquakes surrounded the inhabited areas with water or precipices. Upheavals of the globe detached parts of the mainland and broke them up into islands. Clearly among humans thus brought together and forced to live together, a common idiom must have been formed sooner than among those who wandered freely about the forests of the mainland. Thus it is quite possible that after their first attempts at navigation, the islanders brought the use of speech to us; and it is at least quite probable that society and languages came into being on islands and were perfected there before they were known on the mainland. Everything begins to take on a new appearance. Having previously wandered about the forest and having assumed a more fixed situation, humans slowly came together and united into different bands, eventually forming in each country a particular nation, united by mores and characteristic features, not by regulations and laws, but by the same kind of life and foods and by the common influence of the climate. Eventually a permanent proximity cannot fail to engender some intercourse among different families. Young people of difference genders live in neighbouring huts; the passing intercourse demanded by nature soon leads to another, through frequent contact with one another, no less sweet and more permanent. People became accustomed to consider different objects and to make comparison. Imperceptibly they acquire the ideas of merit and beauty which produce feelings of preference. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
By dint of seeing one another, they can no longer get along without seeing one another again. A sweet and tender feeling insinuates itself into the soul and at the least opposition becomes an impetuous fury. Jealousy awakens with love’ discord triumphs, and the sweetest passion receives sacrificed of human blood. In proportion as ideas and sentiments succeed one another and as the mind and heart are trained, the human race continues to be tamed, relationships spread and bonds are tightened. People grew accustomed to gather in front of their huts or around a large tree; song and dance, true children of love and leisure, became the amusement or rather the occupation of idle humans who had flocked together. Each one began to look at the others and to wan to be looked at oneself, and public esteem had a value. The one who sang or danced the best, the handsomest, the strongest, the most adroit or the most eloquent became the most highly regarded. And this was the first step toward inequality and, at the same time, toward vice. From these first preferences were born vanity and contempt on the one hand, and shame and envy on the other. And the fermentation caused by these new leavens eventually produced compounds fatal to happiness and innocence. On 8 August 1960, a West Virginia-born chemical engineer named Monroe Rathbone, sitting in his office high over Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, New York United States of America, made a decision that future historians might someday choose to symbolize the end of the Second Wave era. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Few paid any attention when Mr. Rathbone, chief executive of the giant Exxon Corporation, took steps to cut back on the taxes Exxon paid to the oil-producing countries. His decision, though ignored by the Western press, struck like a thunderbolt at the governments of these countries, since virtually all their revenues derived from oil company payments. Within a few days the other major oil companies had followed Exxon’s lead. And one month later, on 9 September, in the fabled city of Baghdad, delegates of the hardest-hit countries met in emergency council. Backed to the wall, they formed themselves into a committee of oil-exporting governments. For fully thirteen years the activities of this committee, and even its name, were ignored outside the pages of a few petroleum industry journals. Until 1973, that is, when the Yom Kippur War broke out and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) suddenly stepped out of the shadows. Chocking off the World’s supply of crude oil, it sent the entire Second Wave economy into a shuddering down-spin. What OPEC did, apart from quadrupling its oil revenues, was to accelerate a revolution that was already brewing in the Second Wave techno-sphere. In the earsplitting clamour over the energy crisis that has since followed, so many plans, proposals, arguments, and counterarguments have been hurled at us that it is difficult to make sensible choices. Governments are just as confused as the proverbial human in the streets. One way to cut through the murk is to look beyond the individual technologies and policies to the principles underlying them. Once we do, we find that certain proposals are designed to maintain or extend the Second Wave energy base as we have known it, while others rest on new principles. The result is a radical clarification of the entire energy issue. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The Second Wave energy base, we saw earlier, was premised on non-renewability; it drew from highly concentrated, exhaustible deposits; it relied on expansive, heavily centralized technologies; and it was nondiversified, resting on a relatively few sources and methods. These were the main features of the energy base in all Second Wave nations throughout the industrial era. Bearing these in mind, if we now look at the various plans and proposals generated by the oil crisis we can quickly tell which ones are mere extensions of the old and which are forerunners of something fundamentally new. And the basic question becomes not whether oil should sell at forty dollars (2021 inflation adjusted $363.78) per barrel or whether a nuclear reactor should rise at Seabrook or Grohnde. The larger question is whether any energy base deigned for industrial society and premised on these Second Wave principles can survive. Once asked in this form, the answer is inescapable. Through the past half-century, fully two thirds of the entire World’s energy supply has come from oil and gas. Most observers today, from the most fanatic conservationists to the deposed Shah of Iran, from solar freaks and Saudi sheikhs to the button-down, brief-case-carrying experts of many governments, agree that this dependency on fossil fuel cannot continue indefinitely, no matter how many new oil fields are discovered. Statistic vary. Disputes rage over how long World has before the ultimate crunch. The forecasting complexities are enormous and many past predications now look silly. Yet one thing is clear: no one is pumping gas oil back to replenish the supply. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Whether the end comes in some climatic gurgle or, more likely, in a succession of dizzyingly destabilizing shortages, temporary gluts, and deeper shortages, the oil epoch is ending. Iranians know this. Kuwaitis and Nigerians and Venezuelans know it. Saudi Arabians know it—which is why they are racing to build an economy based on something other than oil revenues. And although we are having issues supplying electricity to major cities in America, and an element used to create batteries in electric cars is expected to run out in the near future, this is why leaders are pushing to increase the demand of electric cars. Petroleum companies know it—which is why they are scrambling to diversify out of oil. (One president of a petroleum company told me at a dinner in Tokyo not long ago that, in his opinion, the oil giants would become industrial dinosaurs, as the railroads have. His time frame for this was breathtakingly short—years, not decades. Perhaps in the next ten years.) However, the debate over physical depletion is almost beside the point. For in today’s World it is price, not physical supply, that has the most immediate and significant impact. And here, if anything, the facts point even more strongly to the same conclusion. The suburban ideology fits somewhat uncomfortably into the urban dichotomy. Suburbs are neither one nor the other. Proponents of suburban living historically have resolved this by emphasizing how suburbs ideally combine the best features of urban and rural living. Opponents stress that they contain the worse of both Worlds. The argument that suburbs have best of both is not new. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
An 1873 promotional tract pushing development of the North Shore of Chicago proclaims, “The controversy which is sometimes brought, as to which offers the greater advantage, the country of the city, finds a happy answer in the suburban ideal which says both—the combination of the two—the city brought to the country. This is a practical and valuable reply. The city has its advantages and conveniences, the country its charm and health; the union of the two (a modern result of the railway), gives to humans all they could ask in this respect.” As the earlier section on romantic suburbs indicates, the suburb was to allow the nineteenth-century city man of business to have it both ways. One would make one’s fortune during the day in the dynamic and vita industrial city and then retire by commuter railroad to the health and domestic tranquility of the picturesque suburb. Although homes in turn-of-the-century streetcar suburbs were far less grand and often occupied minimal size lots, the imagery of suburbs being at least surrounded by country persisted. Sometimes the open spaces lasted only until all the planned housing was constructed. Automobile suburbs built prior to the second World War, if anything, accentuated and sharpened the image of suburbs as being distinct from the city. Real estate developers and realtors found it was good for business to foster the image of both spatial and social distance from the central city. The mass suburbanization during the postwar years may have changed the reality, not the ideology, of suburban exclusivity. Builders and developers continued to advertise based upon the image of suburbia as an exclusive enclave where one’s fellow suburbanites would all be upwardly mobile and community involved. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Advertisements spoke less about square footage than about “moving up” and the “quality of life.” Nonetheless, the reality was that suburbia was now open to virtually all. Exclusively had come down to the basics of being employed and European American. Some of the postwar criticisms by cultural elites of the new suburbs were, in fact, a recognition of his change. Literary and cultural criticisms of standardized subdivision housing as an aesthetic wasteland, and the attacks on the middle-brow values of those inhabiting such housing, were in part an elitist response to rapid social change. This “there goes the neighbourhood” response, combined with a glorification of the past, was clearly evident in the comments of influential intellectuals such as Lewis Mumford. One can feel the disdain when he described postwar suburbia as “a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at unform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group…conforming in every outward and inward respect to a common mold.” To many of the urban critics of the 1950s and 1960s, the major crime of the new suburbs was that they were common. Unlike the affluent and exclusive suburbs of earlier decades, the new suburbs, and suburbanites, were seen as lacking the true urbanite’s sense of good taste. Underlying the criticisms is the assumption that the new suburbanites went to the wrong schools, read the wrong books, and even bought the wrong furniture. It was as if former workers and service help had aspired to rise above their true station in life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
There is a World of other people and things—the point of individuation. At this point, there may be either a more home-loving or a more space-loving orientation, but either way, if all goes well, a person will emerge with an integrated personality. However, all may not go well. A person may be struck by a trauma, after which development will be fundamentally influenced by the method which that person invented to cope with the trauma. The Basic Fault is at the point at which people begin to have to “cope.” Use of the English “coping” refers to ego-function! It gives recognition to our ability to survive and to deal with people and things in order to survive, not necessarily with much regard to the moral dimension. “Coping” has two independent and equally relevant root, according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: A. Form the Old French coper, Modern French couper, to strike (a blow), to cut. From this root we get our meanings (1) to strike; to come to blows; encounter; engage; (2) to be or prove oneself a match for, content successfully with; (3) to have to do with; (4) to meet, to come in contact (hostile and friendly) with; (5) to match a thing with another equivalent. B. From Middle English Kopen – to buy (cf. cheap). From this root we get (1) to buy; (2) to exchange, barter; (3) to make an exchange, bargain. There is even a third root, from cope meaning cape: to cover with a cope, to hang over like a coping. All very appropriate. To return to our theme after this linguistic digression, trauma is not necessarily a single even. Trauma is more likely to be caused by a long-standing situation in which there was some painful misunderstanding—a lack of fit—between the child and the adults around it. #RandolphHarrs 16 of 25
True, despite the general lack of fit, in some cases some adult may be on the child’s side, but much more often, immature and weak individuals have to cope on their own with traumatic situations: either no help is available, or the only help is of a kind that is hardly more than a continuation of the misunderstand, and thus useless. For lack of the right support, the individual is forced to find its own method of coping, a method hit upon a time of despair or thrown at it by some un-understanding adult who may be a well-wisher, or just indifferent, or negligent, or even careless or hostile. This method will be incorporated in the individual’s personality, and thereafter anything beyond or contrary to this method will strike the person as a frightening and more or less impossible proposition. The individual’s further development will then be prescribed or at least limited by this method which, although helpful in some respects, is often costly, and above all, alien. Most patients cannot tell us what causes their resentment, lifelessness, dependence, what the fault or the defect in them is…some can express it by phantasies about perfect partners, perfect harmony, untroubled contentment….Over and over they repeat that they feel let down, that nothing in the World can ever be worth while unless something hey were deprived of is restored to them. Sophisticated patients may express this something irretrievably lost or gone wrong as the male organ or the breast, usually felt to have magical qualities, and speak of male organ or breast, or castration fear. However, in nearly all cases this is coupled with an unquenchable and incontestable feeling that if the loss cannot be made good, the patient oneself will remain no go. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
It is always a dry season until you give way to the sorrowing of the heart. Only then will the drops of devotion come. Heart-felt sorrow opens many a door. Deep-down compulsion slams the door in your face every time. We may stumble onto happiness, but, remember, we are exiles and the World is alive with peril. You laugh at the defects of the World, but your own spiritual defects you shrug off. Yet hey bedevil your soul, and what do you do about it? You laugh. Nobody laughs in public these days, expect you. You laugh uproariously, but the joke is on you. It is the other way around. Your peccadillos are laughing at you when you should be weeping uncontrollably where no one can see. What is missing is the fear of God and a working conscious. If we do not feel the pain of reformation in our souls, Joy or Liberty cannot be true and good. Happy the self-actualized who can scatter one’s distractions and collect oneself into holy sorrowing of the heart! Happy is the self-actualized who can shield one’s snow-white conscience from bilious gray pigeons! That is to say, from the dropping of one’s own inordinate affections. Face it! When it comes to power, it takes a good habit to whip a bad habit. If you do not care a fig for the World, the World will not care a farthing for you. Do not inundate yourself with the affairs of the low and unlovely, and do not insinuate yourself into the affairs of the high and mighty. Remember, you are a member of a holy company dedicated to spiritual progress. Hence, keep a steely eye on yourself. When necessary, unbraid yourself. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
If you cast a knowing wink at the World and the World does not return the wink, do not tear up, do not waste a single tear of your own. Give serious thought to this possibility. You may not have the right stuff to be a servant of God and live the devout life. After all, we do not have many consolations in this sort of life; at least as Flesh counts them. That is what our experience tells us. And rarer still, at least as the Soul counts them, are the Divine Consolations. There has go to be a reason, and it is sin. We just do not seek the sorrowing of the heart hard enough. The least we could is throw our vanities to the wind. Are you worth Divine Consolation? Face it, all you are worth is a bundle of snakes! When you are contrite to the point of perfection, the face your present to the World is never cheerful, always chary. The good person has more than enough to be sorrowful for, to weep for. No matter how you look at it—and your neighbour will confirm it—no one lives on this Earth without tribulation. The more you eye the condition of your own soul, the more openly you weep. The causes of just sorrow and internal contrition are our sins and the vice that lead to our sins. And is it not true that we spend so much time on Earthly grapplings that we have almost no time to give to celestial contemplations? Death is approaching more quickly than life is unfolding. Think about that now, and put more shoulder into your reformation of life. We are on the near side of death now, but on the far side await he pains of Hell or Purgatory. Weigh that in your heart, and maybe now you will be willing to undertake the laborious program of reform, readying yourself for the Final Rigour. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
Why is it that considerations like these do no hit the target? Why are we as blind to the blandishments banded about us? Are we as lazy and loutish as that? What spirit is left in that wretched body of yours? A whistle? A whimper? A whisper? Pray, therefore, humbly to the Lord that He give your spirit of contrition. Say as the Psalmist said (80.5), “With the bread of tears satisfy my hunger, Lord, and with a measure of tears satisfy my thirst.” The number of the predestined is certain, and can neither be increased nor diminished. The number of predestine is certain. Some have said that it was formally, but not materially certain; as if we were to say that it was certain that a hundred or a thousand would be saved; not however these or those individuals. However, this destroys the certainty of predestination; of which we spoke of above. Therefore we must say that to God the number of predestined is certain, not only formally, but also materially. It must, however, be observed that the number of the predestined is said to be certain to God, not by reason of His knowledge, because, that is to say, He knows how many will be saved (for in this way the number drops of rain and the sands of the sea are certain to God); but by reason of His deliberate choice and determination. For the further evidence of which we must remember that every agent intends to make something finite, as is clear from what has been said above when we treated of the infinite. Now whosoever intends some definite measure in one’s effect thinks out some definite number in the essential parts, which are by their very nature required for the perfection of the whole. For of those things which are required not principally, but only account of something else, one does not select any definite number “per se”; but one accepts and uses the in such numbers as are necessary on account of that other thing. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
For instance, a builder thinks out the definite measurements of a house, and also the definite number of rooms which one wishes to make in the house; and definite measurements of the walls and roof; one does not, however, select a definite number of stones, but accepts and uses just so many as are sufficient for the required measurements of the wall. So also must we consider concerning God in regard to the whole Universe, which is His effect. For He pre-ordained the measurements of the whole of the Universe, and what number would befit the essential parts of that Universe—that is to say, which have in some way been ordained in perpetuity; how many spheres, how many stars, how many elements, and how many species. Individuals, however, which undergo corruption, are no ordained as I were chiefly for the good of the Universe, but in a secondary way, inasmuch as the good of the species is preserved through them. Whence, although God knows the total number of individuals, the number of oxen, flies and such like, is not pre-ordained by God “per se”; but divine providence produces just so many as are sufficient for the preservation of the species. Now of all creatures the rational creature is chiefly ordained for the good of the Universe, being as much incorruptible; more especially those who attain to eternal happiness, since they more immediately reach the ultimate end. Whence the number of the predestination is certain to God; not only by way of knowledge, but also by way of a principal pre-ordination. It is not exactly the same thing in the cause of the number of the reprobate, who would seem o be pre-ordained by God for the good of the elect, in whose regard “all things work unto good” Romans 8.28. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Concerning the number of all the predestined, some say that so many human will be saved as Angels fell; some so many as there were Angels left; others, as many as the number of Angels created by God. It is, however, better to say that, “to God alone is known the number for whom is reserved eternal happiness [From the ‘secret’ prayer of the missal, “pro vivis et defunctis.’]” These words of Deuteronomy must be taken as applied to those who are marked out by God beforehand in respect to present righteousness. For there is increased and diminished, but not the number of the predestined. The reason of the quantity of any one part must be judged from the proportion of that part of the whole. Thus in God the reason why He has made so many stars, or so many species of things, or predestined so many, according to the proportion of the principal parts to the good of the whole Universe. The good that is proportionate to the common state of nature is to be found in the majority, and is wanting in the majority. Thus is clear that is the majority of humans have a sufficient knowledge for the guidance of life; and those who have not this knowledge are sad to be half-witted or foolish; but they who attain to a profound knowledge of things intelligible are a very small minority in respect to the rest. Since their eternal happiness, consisting in the vision of God, exceeds the common state of nature, and especially in so far as this is deprived of grace through the corruption of original sin, those who are saved are in the minority. In this especially, however, appears the mercy of God, that He has chosen some for that salvation, from which very many in accordance with the common course and tendency of nature fall short. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
All thinking keeps one’s awareness out of the Overself. That is why even thinking about the Overself merely produced another thought. Only in the case of the self-actualized, who has established oneself in the Overself, is thinking no barrier at all. In this case, thinking may coexist with the larger awareness. So it is not enough to be a good thinker; one also has to learn how to be a good non-thinker. Of course, the way to do this is through the practice of deep and meaningful prayer. Appetite has really become an artificial and abnormal thing, having taken the place of true hunger, which alone is natural. The one is a sign of bondage but the other, of freedom. It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life uncecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of one’s ethical standard. If the body is intolerant of particular treatments and allergic to particular foods, it should not be forced to accept them. When either faith healing or naturopathic treatment is too passive, when it refrains from timely co-operation with nature by the use of positive means, by they nontoxic medicines or essential operations, it becomes guilty of sacrificing the patient to its own narrowness. No healer’s treatment is always successful nor is the cure always permanent. Failures are many and relapses are common. Those who shout and splutter from evangelistic public platforms exhibit the ego’s arrogance, not the Overself’s quiet humility. They hold the view which conforms with their presuppositions, their inborn tendencies and governing prejudices, in short, with their little ego, not their impersonal higher Self. This is why there are so many contesting theories, why the body’s ill health may cause the mind to be governed by negative thoughts, why this conflict of authorities shows their worthlessness. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
All these cults and groups which acknowledge the power of mind over body but which leave out the acknowledgment of the body’s power over the mind, are out of balance and so out of truth to that extent. This statement may be a matter of arguable theory partisan adherents of either side, but it is a mater of tested fact with creative leaders who consciously exercise both powers. If mental and spiritual healing agents are also joined in, the physical cure will surely be accelerated and the physical therapy will surely be helped. In this way the individual limitations of the method of treatment being used will be overcome and each healing agent will contribute to bringing about a complete and successful result. It is foolish to believe that there is any particular healing method which has only to be applied for it to be universally and equally successful or that there is any particular human healer who has only to be visited for one to be cure. If we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed, something will have gone out of us as people; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the World, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural World and competent to belong in it. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
And a redeemer shall come to America and to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, saith the Lord. And as for Me, this is My covenant with them, saith the Lord: My spirit that is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your children nor your children’s children henceforth and forever. Thou art holy, O Thou that art enthroned upon the praises of America. And one called to another and said: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole Earth is full of His glory. [And they receive sanction one from the other, and say: Holy upon Earth, the works of His mighty power; Holy forever and to all eternity is the Lord of hosts; the whole Earth is full of the radiance of His glory.] And a wind lifted me up, and I heard behind me a mighty chorus proclaiming: Blessed be the glory of the Lord everywhere. [Then a wind lifted me up, and I heard behind me the mighty moving sound of those who uttered praises and said: Blessed be the glory of the Lord from the place of His abode.] The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. [Then Kingdom of the Lord is established forever and to all eternity.] The time has come to arouse the conscience of all those who sincerely the Good and the Right to their duty in the matter of harming innocent terrestrial beings and the environment and vehicles, a conscience which, if it could speak unperverted by racial habits, would emphatically repeat the Mosaic commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” These are cruelties practiced on objects to gain wealth and pleasures for others, sometimes clothes, entertainment and medicinal drugs. The human claim of necessity as a justification is a mistake one. Whether forged of metal or born of flesh, every form of life has one unquenchable thirst, the urge for freedom. Christianity is not something to be endured, but something to be treasured. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Here Rests in Honoured Glory an American Soldier Known but to God!
Wars can be won or lost, but the battlefields waged inside a human’s soul, only love can heal those wounds. Without the right people in our life, we will never fulfill God’s purpose. Succeeding at any endeavour is dependent on the nature and quality of your relationships. The scriptures tells us the Lord “established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 101.80. The land was “redeemed” indeed by thousands killed and wounded along the way at Germantown, at Bemis Heights and Charleston, and so many other places in the American Revolution. The singers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution were inspired from on high to do that work. An objective study of the delegates involved—their fears, their limitations, vested interests, and the like—makes it clear that they were not the sort of men we usually think of as prophets. Nonetheless they were inspired, and the Constitution they provided can be designated accurately as a divine document. However, even a divine constitution required something further; it demands a kind of people who will, by their very natures, receive and respect such a constitution and function well within the conditions it establishes. Where indeed shall we find such people today? I recall one. It was in a concentration camp I helped liberate during the American revolution in the 18th century. There were thousands of American prisoners held by the British during the war. Of all the prisoners held in captivity, 80 percent of them died. New York City was the main city were prisoners were held. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
As we blew the lock off the door and tried to assist the miserable and the painful inside, I was interrupted by a tap on my boot and found, wallowing in the mud, a Protestant minister. One of his first request was, “Soldier, do you have a flag?” Later when we retrieved one from the saddle on one of the horses, I gave it to him on a stretcher and with tears in his eyes he said, “Thank God, you came.” Again the Lord said, “Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him who he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them,” reports 2 Nephi 1.7. As Christian’s then, we know why some people came to America and others did not. We have done as well as could be expected, and are richly blessed despite our shortcoming because the Lord has thus far held us in His hands and worked His purposes, His ultimate purposes, through us. During the war, as many of 8,000 soldiers were killed, approximately 20,000 died from illness or starvation. An estimated 25,000 were wounded. Nearly 30 percent of the army was killed, wounded or captured. Can you understand, this is what America is all about? Standing up for your freedom and honor and being willing to risk your life. You and I know, and you and I alone really know, the reason for this blessed and beautiful land. In a World where men have given up on this most vital question, we know the purpose of America. Can you understand the way God has worked?? And if you do, will you join me in this day to committing yourself to preach the message of the Lord’s glorious achievement in America? #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
This is a time when you and I can afford to be patriotic, in the best sense of that term. There is a reason to be proud that we live in an established land that has been conditioned by the Lord so that His gospel could be restored. The purpose of American was to provide a setting wherein that was possible. All else takes its power from that one great, central purpose. Anti-God is Anti-American. By striving to make our citizenry the righteous people the Lord required of us. And by telling the story of what the Lord has done for us is how we make a great church. “Oh beautiful for patriot dreams, that seed beyond the years. Thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears. America! America! God shed His grace on thee. And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.” (Katherine Bates, “Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies,” Hymns, no. 126.) May that be the song of our heart and prayer for fulfillment, I humbly pray as I bear witness to these truths and add my testimony that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that here sits his prophet, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Unless a civilization has some explanation for why things happen—even if its explanation is nine parts mystery to one part analysis—it cannot program lives effectively. People, in carrying out the imperatives of their culture, need some reassurance that their behaviour will produce results. And this implies some answer to the perennial why. Second Wave civilization came up with a theory so powerful it seemed sufficient to explain everything. A sock smashes into the surface of a pond. Ripples swiftly radiate out across the water. Why? What causes this event? Chances are that children of industrialism would say, “because someone threw it.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
An educated European gentleman of the twelfth or thirteenth century, in attempting to answer this question, would have had ideas remarkably different from our own. He probably would have relied on Aristotle and searched for a material cause, a formal cause, an efficient cause, and a final cause, no one of which would, by itself, have been sufficient to explain anything. A medieval Chinese sage might have spoken about the yin and yang, and the force-field of influences in which all phenomena were believed to occur. Second Wave civilization found its answer to the mysteries of causation in Newton’s spectacular discovery of the universal law of gravitation. For Newton, causes were “the forces impressed upon the bodies to generate motion.” The conventional example of Newtonian cause and effect is the billiard balls that strike one another and move in response to one another. This notion of change, which focused exclusively outside forces that are measurable and readily identifiable, was extremely powerful because it dovetailed perfectly with the new indust-real notions of linear space and time. Indeed, Newtonian or mechanistic causation, which came to be adopted as the industrial revolution spread over Europe, pulled indust-reality together into a hermetically sealed package. If the World consisted of separate particles—miniature billiard balls—then all causes arose from the interaction of these balls. One particle or atom struck another. The first was the cause of the movement of the next. That movement was the effect of the movement of the first. There was no action without motion in space, and no atom could be in more than one place at one time. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Suddenly a Universe that had seemed complex, cluttered, unpredictable, richly crowded, mysterious, and messy, began to look neat and tidy. Every phenomenon from the atom inside a human cell to the coldest star in the distant night sky could be understood as matter in motion, each particle activating the next, forcing it to move in an endless dance of existence. For the atheist this view provided an explanation of life in which, as Pierre-Simon Laplace later put it, the hypothesis of God was unnecessary. For the religious, however, it still left room for God, since He could be regarded as the Prime mover who used the cue stick to set the billiard balls in motion, then perhaps retired from the game. This metaphor for reality came like a shot of intellectual adrenalin into the emerging indust-real culture. Of the French Revolution, the Baron d’Holbach, exulted, “The Universe, that vast assemblage of everything that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation nothing but in immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and effects.” It is all there—all implied in that one short, triumphant statement: the Universe is an assembled reality, made of discrete parts put together into an “assemblage.” Matter can only be understood in terms of motion—id est, movement through space. Events occur in a [linear] succession, a parade of event moving down the line of time. Human passions like hatred, selfishness, or love, d’Holbach went on, could be compared to physical forces like repulsion, inertia, or traction, and a wise political state could manipulate them for the public good just as science could manipulate the physical World for the common good. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
It is precisely from this indust-real image of the Universe, from the assumptions buried within it, that some of the most potent of our personal, social, and political behaviour patterns have come. Buried within them was the implication that not only the cosmos and nature but society and people behaved according to certain fixed and predictable laws. Indeed, the greatest thinkers of the Second Wave were precisely those who most logically and forcefully argued the lawfulness of the Universe. Newton seemed to have discovered the laws that programmed the Heavens. Darwin had identified the laws that programmed social evolution. And Freud supposedly laid bare the laws that programmed the psyche. Others—scientists, engineers, social scientists, psychologist—pressed the search for still more, of different, laws. Second Wave civilization now has at its command a theory of causality that seemed miraculous in is power and wide applicability. Much that hitherto had seemed complex could be reduced to simple explanatory formulae. Nor were these laws or rules to be accepted simply because Newton or Marx or someone laid them down. They were subject to experiment and empirical test. They could be validated. Using them, we could build bridges, send radio waves into the sky, predict and retrodict biological change; we could manipulate the economy, organize political movements or machines, and even—so they claimed—foresee and shape the behaviour of the ultimate individual. All that was needed was to find the critical variable to explain any phenomenon. If and only if we could find the appropriate “billiard ball” and hit it from the best angle, we could accomplish anything. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
This new causality, combined with the new images of time, space, and matter, liberated much of the human race from the tyranny of ancient mumbo jumbo. It made possible triumphant achievements in science and technology, miracles of conceptualization and practical accomplishment. It challenged authoritarianism and liberated the mind from millennia of imprisonment. However, indust-reality also created its own new prison, an industrial mentality that derogated or ignored what it could not quantify, that frequently praised critical rigor and punished imagination, that reduced people to oversimplified protoplasmic units, that ultimately sought an engineering solution for any problem. Nor was indust-reality as morally neutral as it pretended to be. It was, as we have seen, the militant super-ideology of Second Wave civilization, the self-justifying source from which all the characteristic left-wing and right-wing ideologies of the industrial age sprang. Like any culture, Second Wave civilization produced distorting filters through which its people came to see themselves and the Universe. This package of ideas, images, assumptions—and the analogies that flowed from them—formed the most powerful cultural system in history. Indust-reality, the cultural face of industrialism, fitted the society it helped to construct. It helped create the society of big organizations, big cities, centralized bureaucracies, and the all-pervasive marketplace, whether capitalist or socialist. It dovetailed perfectly with new energy systems, family systems, technological systems, economic systems, political and value systems that together formed the civilization of the Second Wave. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
It is that entire civilization taken together, along with its institutions, technologies, and its culture, that is now disintegrating under an avalanche of change as the Third Wave, in its turn, surges across the planet. We live in the final, irretrievable crisis of industrialism. And as the industrial age passes into history, a new age is born. The myth of suburbia, like all myths, contained elements of fact. That the new suburbs were architecturally similar was beyond dispute. However, the claim commonly made that this conformity also included all cultural tastes, child-rearing practices, levels of social activity, and patterns of neighbouring carried the argument to caricature. While the image of compulsive conformity and socialization was caricature, it is true that people in the suburbs were more socially homogeneous and more likely to engage in social interaction. There was general agreement that there were some differences, but their consequences were minimal. Nor was there any consensus on why, in suburbs, there was greater involvement with neighbours. Part of the difference, doubtlessly, can be explained by the presence of young children and higher family incomes, but even with these variables taken into account, differences remain. The more localized in nature of suburban friendship networks might simply reflect the relative isolation of the suburb and the greater difficulty of maintaining ties with those more distant. It also was suggested that suburbanites self-select for personality traits favouring sociability. In this view those who opt for the suburbs have chosen a lifestyle emphasizes “familism” over alternatives such as “careerism” and “consumership.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, the data do not appear to support this explanation. Research does suggest that the suburban neighbourhood does foster somewhat greater political participation. Suburbanites as a group tend to be somewhat more affluent than city dwellers and desire a more familistic lifestyle. It appears that those living in suburbs have some minor differences in tastes from city dwellers, for example, preferring gardening and rating cultural affairs lower. However, there is no evidence that suburban living changes tastes. Rather, those who value nature tend to gravitate toward suburbs, just as those who prefer easy access to a full cultural life tend to prefer the city. There is no evidence that suburbanites make less use of museums, concert, and art galleries than do otherwise equivalent city dwellers. Expressways allow suburbanites to get to many events as fast as those living in outer-city neighbourhoods. In recent years popular culture, such as first-run movies or sports events, have occurred outside the central city. For example, the Detroit Pistons’ basketball stadium is outside Detroit, and the New York Giants play their football in New Jersey. Needless to say, postwar suburbanites did not view themselves as living lives devoid of culture or as being excessively conforming, hyperactive joiners. They already knew what researcher such as Bennett Berger and Herbert Gans would confirm. That is, the new suburbanites had not given up their individuality, political affiliation, ethnic identity, or religious heritage as they moved houses. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
For good or ill, studies from the era of the 1950s achieved widespread popular as well as professional attention. The Organization Man was a widely read and discussed best-seller. It and its ilk helped set out contemporary view of suburbia suffered from sone serious limitations. One of the most obvious problems was rooted in the authors having preset expectations. Additionally, questions can be asked about how and why the various study sites were chosen. Rather than being “typical” suburbs, it is clear today that the sites were chosen precisely because hey were “interesting.” That is, they were selected because they were in some respects atypical, not because they were just like everyplace else. This approach to selection of a community may lead to more interesting reading, but it by definition limits generalization. The suburbs written about, for example, were almost invariably new, large-scale developments sprouting at the urban periphery. Little or no attention was paid to other types of suburbs, such as industrial suburbs, working-class suburbs, or even old established WASP suburbs. The focus of the studies was on the new middle-class subdivisions built to house young ex-GIs, their wives, and their children. Although it was not scientifically, or even logically, valid to generalize from these new suburbs to all suburbs, this was commonly done. Additionally, many of the studies fell into the so-called ecological fallacy of trying to generalize from the characteristics of an area to the characteristics of all individuals who live in that area. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Furthermore, their observations of supposedly typical suburban lifestyles were based on a single look at a new suburb immediately following the first wave of settlement. We know that a mature community viewed ten or twenty years later shows a different pattern. For example, the supposed social ability of postwar suburbia can be attributed in good part to that fact that because of the limited housing type in each subdevelopment, most of the new inmovers were approximately the same age, had the same aged children, and had the common experience of all moving into similar new houses at the same time. Most of the men also shared common experience of military service. If there was not a high degree of social interaction under such circumstances, it would be unusual. However, when most of life is frightening, and I usually feel inadequate, I may decide that being an onlooker is safer than being a doer: it is less obtrusive and hence less likely to attract hostile notice in my direction. When watching “I” is out of touch with emotions, feelings, and impulses, I develop something like Fairbairn’s Central Ego, one of whose functions is to keep me out of situations so painful that I cannot cope. Being wounded and terrified, people may withdraw into themselves in order to avoid further hurt. The danger is that they will withdraw so far that they will be left totally bereft, and get so far out of touch with their needs and feelings that they get no signals from them: it appears to such people that they have no needs—they do not feel anything. Paradoxically that may be a terrible feeling! #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The memory of having had feelings once, the capacity for which seems now lost, can fill a person with distress and longing. And in the present, I may want to keep in touch with the signals which come to me, yet be afraid of being overwhelmed by them if I do not attend to them. I may oscillate in and out of my feelings because I do not have the energy or strength to contain them at a practical level. There are other examples of the kind of people, people to whom messages from the World of others come only in very shadowy form, people not much in touch with what happens in the World of living-rooms, streets, or media. At first sight, this may not be obvious. However, slowly we realize that we are listening to someone who is not talking about people as we know them, in the round, but about “them.” We are listening to someone who can perceive only a few highly selected aspects of the World of people and things. “They,” the others, are not realistically perceived, but are experienced only in terms of their imagined capacity to assist, threaten, or frustrate. Sometimes, “they” are selectively perceived in such a way that the speaker can be both in touch with feelings, and yet able to keep them remote. “Do not be silly” or “Do not be so depressing” are examples of people speaking repressively to another person, while perhaps at the same time also disowning their own unacceptable notions. “He is out for what he can get” or “She sets her sights too high” may be said principally to enable the speaker to keep his or her own ideas isolated and disowned. Such people sometimes give us the impression that we and others are no experienced as independent people who existed before they walked into the room and who will continue to exist after they are out of sight; we are known only as experiences which must be controlled and kept away from contact with the self-image. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“Patient: I am very depressed. I had just been sitting and could not get out of the chair. There seems no purpose anywhere: the future is blank. I am very bored and want to change but I feel stuck…
Therapist: Your solution is to damp everything down, do not feel anything, give up all real relationships to people at an emotional level and just ‘do things’ in a meaningless way, like a robot.
Patient: Yes, I felt I did not care, did not register anything. Then I felt alarmed, this was dangerous. If I had not made myself do something, I would just have sat, not bothered, not interested.
Therapist: That is your reaction in analysis to me. Do not be influenced, do not be moved, do not be lured into reacting to me.
Patient: If I were moved at all, I would feel very annoyed with you. I hate and detest you for making me feel like this. The more I am inclined to be drawn to you, the more I feel a fool, undermined.”
Keep in mind that God is restoring to you the years the enemy devoured. And it may not be good to act like a robot, to not have feeling. It could cause you to have an accident. I was doing that one day, while ironing a pillow case and burned it because I was not in touch with what I was doing. It is always import to feel. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
How long with humankind have to go before they realize the only solution to self-annihilation is trust? Cut off from the external World and living in my own phantasy, I cannot feel others, for they are not real to me. My therapist and the other people around me are more than stick figures or balloons which enable me to act according to the phantasies in my head which do seem real to me, regardless of if they open their doors. I can imagine some of them to be so powerful that I must keep an eye on them and manipulate the to keep things smooth for myself, even if they are not knocking on my doors. Or I may act compliant and behave nicely to them because I imagine that is what they want, and I imagine that I must do what they say because they are always right and may feel threatened otherwise. Or I may imagine them as needing my consideration and concern so they will not take their insecurities out of my vehicle, causing me pain and costing me thousands upon thousands of dollars. What I fear to do is to know them as they are, to “discover” them so they do not try to poison me. So I am left with the choice of either feeling well but unreal, or feeling real but terrible and wondering if they are trying to set me up in a clandestine manner. I may veer between these two in an attempt to get some relief from each in turn. Bad relationships may be better than none. Even though they may wish you harm and frustrate, and have no regard for your life, it is hard to do without other people altogether, but it may be a way to say alive. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Yet, I may cling compulsively (and to others eyes tiresomely) to a loved person or valued idea, in order to keep unconscious my feelings about some of their more hateful aspects. Worse, I may cling to a relationship with an unloving or hating or unloved person, in order to keep at bay the sense of hopelessness, meaninglessness, and futility which would result from giving them up and being without anyone at all. Some people may be able to keep anxieties at bay by relating mainly to causes and ideas, and interacting with other people mainly through these. “If I stop believing in what holds me together and gives meaning to my life, only constant and unremitting self-monitoring will keep me from falling apart. I shall believe in psycho-analysis or monetarism or Adam and the Ants—they make life work living.” Somewhat better off are those people who can relate to others more directly, provided everyone’s duties and roles are carefully and minutely defined. They relate to others mainly in the meticulous execution of tasks, not risking more unpredictable and spontaneous contacts. Then there are people who prefer some kind of in/out compromise. However weakened they may be by the continual advance and retreat, it is better than nothing. Yet others may be able to make relationships, albeit tainted by fear and suspicion because they cannot help feeling that people are dangerous and easily cruel or mean. It is hard to do without people and relationships. When I fear and avoid them, something happens to myself, the self which needs to be attached to and in touch with others. Void and emptiness threaten me. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
My very identity feels as though it is disintegrating—it lacks boundaries where I should be in touch with others. I mobilize a host of defences. I look depressed, I feel depressed. However, this depression may be what I hold on to as a defence against feeling overwhelmingly anxious. And indeed, the anxieties which a person is willing to know about may be a cover to conceal anxieties about falling apart or ceasing to be a person at all. The defences against falling apart may be strong enough to be called False Selves; they may be the only parts of the personality that a terrified person dare show. One of the attractive things about this insistence on a person’s defences, is we do not speak of the False Self in condemnatory terms; we see it as a necessary defensive organization, a survival kit, a caretake self, the means by which a threatened person has managed to survive. It is worth reminding oneself, when exasperated by someone who acts flighty, irresponsible, dishonest, evasive, or snooty, that these are all defensive plays. A frightened person may make a show of anger as a way of hiding weak, scared feelings. It is easy for others to see such a person as an angry person (and to attempt a therapy on the basis of the hidden anger and the guilt which goes with it—after all, hidden anger and guilt form par of the psychoneurotic personality which was the first to be analysed and restored to relative well-being by Dr. Freud nearly a hundred years ago). However, anger and hidden guilt are not at the root of all distress, and it is possible to use the appearance of hidden anger as a defence against even ore unacceptable feelings. Our culture has a preference for these “strong” feelings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
In a word, the core of psychological distress is not guilt but fear. Guilt is itself a form of fear, but it arises at he stage when the child is becoming socialized and capable of realizing the effect of actions on other person, and the nature of their reactions of anger and condemnation. The individual feels ashamed, sad and frightened to find that one has hurt those one loves and needs. There are much more primitive fears than that, fears not the effect of our strong and dangerous needs and impulses, but of our infantile weakness, littleness, and helplessness in the face of an environment which either fails to give the support we needed as infants or else was positively threatening. Human beings all prefer to be bad and strong rather than weak. The diagnosis of guilt allows us to feel that the course of our troubles with ourselves and others is possession of mighty and powerful instinctive forces in our make-up, which take a great deal of controlling and civilizing. The philosophies of Nietzsche and Machiavelli, and the “power politics” of the present age, all make it plain that human beings feel at least a secret and often openly admitted admiration for the ruthless strong human, however bad one’s ideas and actions may be. In our competitive New World culture (including communism which is every bit as competitive as capitalism) contempt is felt for weakness. We have always known that sympathetic care for the weak and suffering, fostered by Christianity, had to fight its way forwards, and survive on the basis of much compromise; s in the often cited cases of Victorian capitalist who made fortunes by the most ruthless business methods on the one hand, and endowed churched, charities and hospitals on the other. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The main stream of the World’s active life has been carried on in the tradition of the struggle for power in which the weakest go to the wall. The superman is the criminal who has the courage to fight and does not mind hurting other people. The Christian with one’s slave-morality of self-sacrifice to save others is weak and gets crucified. A diagnosis which traced psychological troubles to our innate strength supports our self-respect and is what is called today an ego-booster. A diagnosis which traces our troubles to deep-seated fears and feelings of weakness in the face of life has always been unacceptable. To protect against occurrences like these, we have to take some positive steps. If we do not, they will continue to trip us up. Scrutinize our Externals and Internals, that is what we have to do, and make whatever realignments are necessary. Why? Because properly pave, both speed the journey toward perfection. You cannot keep yourself in a continuous state of recollection in the monastic life. You know that already, but know also that recollect you must. When? Not les than once a day. Morning or evening? In the morning make a plan; in the evening, check how you did, that is to say, what and how you did in word, deed, and thought. Why? More often than you would like to thin, you have offended God and neighbour in one manner or another. No droopy drawers here! Cinch up that cinture! Be a self-actualized being and face the diabolical onslaught head on! That is what St. Paul exhorted the Ephesians to d (6.11-17). Rein in your gluttony, and you will find it easier to bridle every others inclination of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Never drop your guard. Read or write or pray or meditate, but whatever you do, busy yourself at all time with some form of labour for the community. When it comes to corporal austerities, forget what everybody else does. Use your head. Sting, do not wound. No more. No less. Personal prayers inside the walls should not be paraded around outside the walls. The reason for that is simple. When you pray by yourself, you can hurt only yourself; that is to say, no damage is done to others. As for your own spiritual life, do not become a pig about it, too lazy to come to chapel, yet strong enough to wallow through your own peculiosities. The community’s regular spiritual exercise, participate in them wholeheartedly and single-mindedly. Beyond that—and God forbid there is any time left over!—you can pray yourselves silly. Let devotion be your guide. All spiritual exercise are suitable for all self-actualized. Sadly, not all these exercises are equally profitable to each self-actualized. Happily, no two self-actualized have the same taste. As the year passes, the many varietals of spiritual exercise are always welcomed by a monastic community. Some are good on feasts; others, no ferials. Temptation requires one sort; peace and quiet, quite another. And so on, from the times of spiritual sadness, when the dry tears sting, to the sweet weepiness of True Spiritual Joy. Any say is a hard day to renew our spiritual exercises, but when the principal feast days roll around, it all seems so easy. And, only if the are asked, the Saints, they are waiting to help; they only pretend to be hard of hearing. From one feast day to the next, we ought o make resolutions as if they will be our last. However, how can we do this? We could imagine we are about to take wing from this World to a perch in the next. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
And so we should make these times devout times, preparing ourselves carefully, passing our time prayerfully, and guarding our every observance of the Holy Rule more strictly. What is the rush? In no time we will be brough before the Final Bar, attempting to cash in on our life of spiritual labour. If we mistook the time of departure, let us put the blame on ourselves. From our point of view, we were not all that well enough prepared; from God’s point of view, we are not yet ready for glory. St. Paul described that state in his Letter to the Romans (8.18). As for the next date of departure, who knows? Whenever it is, let us strive to prepare better for the trip out there. “Blessed is the servant,” wrote the Evangelist Luke (12.37, 42), “who, when his Lord came, was found awake. Amen I say to you, all God’s goods will be put under his servant’s watchful eye.” Llanda Villa, Beautiful Victorian. Perfect Grand Queen Anne Victorian Manion by the last Bay in the World. None more beautiful. Today we kneel at Thy feet and cruse the humans who have misused you. Dear Lord in the Shining Heaven, please bless us with insight in this hour of grief, that from the depths of suffering may come a deepened sympathy for all who are bereaved, that we may feel the heart-break of our fellow humans and spirits and find our strength in helping them. Heartened by this hymn of praise to Thee, we bear our sorrow with trustful hearts, and knowing Thou art near, shall not despair. With faith in Thine eternal wisdom, we who mourn, rise to sanctify Thy name. A wise system of healing would coordinate physical and psychological, artificial and natural, dietary and spiritual treatments, using some or all of them as a means to the end—cure. However, as the spiritual is the supreme therapeutic agent—if it can be touched—it will always be the one last resort for the desperate and chronic sufferers when all other agents have had to accept defeat. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Make No Mistake About it–Which of the Five is in Need of Psychiatric Treatment?!
The United States of America was primarily established to serve as a base for the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have not celebrated often or deeply enough the birth of this promised land, this choice and beautiful and still-young land, which we possess as the Lord’s gift in freedom and joy—just as long as we serve Him. Men and women and children of courage and vision and faith, strengthened by God as a part of His plan, who struggled, froze, starved, and when necessary died, that these free states in union might me born, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “To assume, among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them. It is worth a lot to the new Americans of that hour to begat this nation—worth all they had, all they were, and all that they had dreamed. What it was worth today, to you and me, and especially to us Christians, who alone know that the Lord is doing, to asset our free agency toward the fulfilling of His plan? The religious commitment of the self-actulized depends more on the grace of God than on one’s own wisdom. One always relies on one’s vows no matter what the labour one puts one’s hand to. Humans proposes, but God disposes, as the Book of Proverbs has it (16.9). And as a sad prophet has happily noted, “A human’s path is not always a product of one’s own planning”; do look at Jeremiah (10.23). If a scheduled spiritual exercise is omitted for a good reason—say, so that you can hide an act of charity or help a needy brother—it can easily be rescheduled. If, however, the reason it is left undone is soul weariness or just plain negligence, that is enough to make it culpable in itself, and may be considered injurious to spiritual progress. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Try through we do, we know we are going to fall short in many ways. However, that is no excuse. Let us try again as hard as we can. Second Wave civilization not only built up new images of time and space and used them to shape daily behaviour, it constructed its own answers to the age-old question: What are things made of? Every culture invents its own myths and metaphors in an attempt to answer this question. For some, the Universe is imagined as a swirling “oneness.” People are seen as a part of nature, integrally tied into their lives of their ancestors and descendants, stitched into the nature, integrally tied into the lives of their ancestors and descendants, stitched into the natural World so closely as to share in the actual “livingness” of animals, trees, rocks, and rivers. In many societies, moreover, the individual conceives of herself or himself less as a private, autonomous entity than as part of a larger organism—the family, the clan, the tribe or the community. Other societies have emphasized not the wholeness or unity of the Universe but its dividedness. They have looked upon reality not as a fused entity but as a structure built up out of many individual parts. Some two thousand years before the rise of industrialism Democritus put forward the then extraordinary idea that the Universe was not a seamless whole but consisted of particles—discrete, indestructible, irreducible, invisible, unsplittable. One called these particles atomos. In the centuries that followed, the idea of a Universe built out of irreducible blocks of matter appeared and reappeared. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
In the middle of the seventeenth century a French abbe named Pierre Gassendi, an astronomer and philosopher at the Royal College in Paris began arguing that matter must consist of ultra-small corpuscula. Influenced by Lucretius, Gassendi became so forceful an advocate of the atomic view of matter that his ideas soon crossed the English Channel and reached Robert Boyle, a young scientist studying the compressibility of gas. Dr. Boyle transferred the idea of atomism from speculative theory into the laboratory and concluded that even air itself was composed of tiny particles. Six years after Dr. Gassendi’s death, Dr. Boyle published a treatise arguing that any substance—Earth, for example—that could be broken down into simpler substances is not, and could not be, an element. Meanwhile, Rene Descartes, a Jesuit-trained mathematician whom Dr. Gassendi criticized, contended that reality could only be understood by breaking it down into smaller and smaller bits. In his own words, it was necessary “to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible.” Side by side, therefore, as the Second Wave began its surge, philosophical atomism advanced with physical atomism. Here was a deliberate assault on the notion of oneness—an assault promptly joined by wave after wave of scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers who proceeded to break the Universe into even smaller fragments, with exciting results. Once Descartes published his Discourse on Method, writes the microbiologist Rene Dubos, “innumerable discoveries immediately emerged from its application to medicine.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
In chemistry and other fields the combination of atomic theory and Descartes’s atomic method brought startling breakthroughs. By the mid-1700’s the notion that the Universe consisted of independent separable parts and subparts was itself conventional wisdom—part of the emerging indust-reality. Every new civilization plucks ideas from the past and reconfigures them in ways that help it understand itself in relationship to the World. For a budding industrial society—a society just beginning to move toward the mass production of assembled machine products composed of discrete components—the idea of an assembled Universe, itself composed of discrete components, was probably indispensable. There were political and social reasons, too, for the acceptance of the atomic model of reality. As the Second Wave crashed against the old pre-existing Firs Wave institutions, it needed to tear people loose from the extended family, the all-powerful church, the monarchy. Industrial capitalism needed a rational for individualism. As the old agricultural civilization decayed, as trade expanded and towns multiplied in the century or two before the dawn of industrialism, the rising merchant classes, demanding the freedom to trade and lend and expand their markets, gave rise to a new conception of the individual—the person as atom. The person was no longer merely a passive appendage of tribe, caste, or clan but a free, autonomous individual. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Each individual had the right to own property, to acquire good, to wheel and deal, to prosper or starve according to his or her own active efforts, with the corresponding right to choose a religion and to pursue private happiness. In short, indust-reality gave rise to a conception of an individual who was remarkably like an atom-irreducible, indestructible, the basic particle of society. The atomic theme even appeared, as we have seen, in politics where the vote became the ultimate particle. It reappeared in our conception of international affairs as consisting of the self-contained, impenetrable, independent units called nations. Not only physical matter but social and political matter were conceived in terms of “brick”—autonomous units or atoms. The atomic theme ran through every sphere of life. This view of reality as composed of organized sparable chunks, in turn, fitted perfectly together with the new images of time and space, themselves divisible into smaller and smaller definable units. Second Wave civilization, as it expanded and overpowered both “primitive” societies and First Wave civilization, propagated this increasingly coherent and consistent industrial view of people, politics, and society. Implicit in the developing myth regarding suburbanites and their lifestyles was a naïve determinism that assumed that the characteristics of the built environment changed how people believed and acted. Thus, moving from city to suburb could and would change patterns of socialization to say nothing of modifying political, religious, and child-reading practices. In brief, suburban residence changes social behaviour. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
William H. Whyte, if willing to make broad-stroke statements about life in Park Forest, was more careful in his generalizing to other types of suburbs and suburbanites. Other writers showed restraint. Even some scholars such as David Riesman got carried away, charging that the suburban family was surrendering all individuality and creativity. Implied was the view that all suburbs were similar and all produced conformity and a long list of social maladies. As portrayed in the postwar caricatures, suburbia was a producer of conformity, compulsive socializing, adultery, alcoholism, divorce, and boredom. Psychiatrists argued that the stress of suburban living additionally led to psychosomatic illness, suicide, and mental illness in general. Typical of the stereotypic statements was that of the late Margaret Mead, who stated that, “Settled in their new homes and finding themselves with nothing to do at home, suburbanites are caught in the boredom characteristic of the American family when its members are imprisoned with one another.” Suburban life had, in her view, degenerated into “a living room or a recreation room which often resembles a giant playpen into which the parents have somewhat reluctantly climbed.” Particularly influential was an article by David Riseman, “The Suburban Dislocation” (later reprinted as “The Suburban Sadness”), which further popularized the stereotype of suburbs as a monocultural destroyer of urban diversity. Suburbs were, in his view, antithetical to developing a true urban culture, which could only be found in the density and diversity of large unban centers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Moreover, when men (and Mr. Riseman’s focus in this earlier era, when there were few female suburban commuters, was on males) moved from the city to the suburbs, they were accused of removing their attention and abilities from important urban concerns and problems. They were portrayed as wasting their talents on parochial suburban activities such as Little League. They had become obsessed with family concerns to the detriment of their civic responsibilities. Such portrayals of suburban life were widely accepted as factual. Interestingly, the criticisms of husbands being overinvolved with family matters was the reverse of the criticism of progressive writers at the turn of the century. Then, the concern was the middle-class husbands did not become sufficiently involved in, nor spend enough time with, their families. According to the wisdom of the 1950s, suburban husbands and fathers were too family focused. Currently, the pendulum has swung again, and fathers are again portrayed in popular magazines as needing to be more involved in day-to-day family life. A much-quoted social-psychological study of an affluent suburb, Crestwood Heights, (actually not a suburb, but an outer-city neighbourhood of Toronto), carried out by John Seeley and his colleagues, seemed to provide empirical support for the belief that suburban lifestyles were bad for one’s mental health. Crestwood Heights was in many respects a fine ethnology of a suburb where people worn minks and were driven around in limousines, but its analysis was prone o psychological overanalysis. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Also, there is the technicality of Crestwood Heights, one of Canada’s wealthy residential districts—not being a suburb, but an outer area of Toronto. In Crestwood Heights there supposedly little individuality. Children were carefully socialized to conform to their parents’ culture of status consciousness and using their homes more for status displays then for living. Suburbia, thus, was seen as encouraging pathological family and child-rearing behaviours. The children were seen as “overprivileged” because the parents in general took an enlightened rather than a frightened attituded toward their children’s mental hygiene. Because they were enlightened and because they could afford it. The parents and children probably spent more time on personality tests and on psychiatrists’ couches than any comparable group in Canada. The mental health services among these fewer than 2,000 pupils were rated among the best in the country. However, the community was attacked so newspapers could produce something sensational by picking out exciting bits. Such as the descriptions of the large homes being cold and lacking in life, or looking like department stores. There was also an interpretation that one and five of these affluent children needed psychiatric attention. Stories sprouted up about a woman whose fanatic devotion to broadloom caused her to lay it wall to wall—right into the fireplace. Others were censorious: tales of rich children dwelling like mushrooms in the basements of their immaculate homes, or of that school were many kids walked around naked. Many more of these stories were unprintable. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
The immediate result was that demand in Crestwood Heights increased. These shocking stories of Stepford Wives, and children from Keeping Up With The Joneses actually made the community more appealing. These problems that normal people did not have. They were struggling to keep their kids out of jail, pushing their husbands to find jobs, and praying that the rent money would not get “stolen” out of the sock drawer this month. Affluent Crestwood Heights children, baffled at first by the odd stories in the papers, eventually found them hilarious. Five would pose together in yearbook group pictures, and ask, “Which of the five is in need of psychiatric treatment?” The picturesque community full of parks and parkettes, not only were the houses one hundred and fifty thousand dollars more expensive than surrounding communities, but they were ringed by churches. Woman played a distinctly subsidiary role. Their place was seen as restricted largely to child rearing, consumerism, and coffee klatching. The postwar studies took it for granted that suburban women did not work outside the home. The studies also assumed that all suburban women were married. The studies, with the exception of Crestwood Heights, also said relatively little about the effect of suburbs on children, although suburbia was criticized for having a particularly pernicious impact on children rearing practices. It is amazing, in retrospect, that article after article would purport to show parents suffering from suburban-induced conformity, alcoholism, or promiscuity in respects to pleasures of the flesh, but little of this seemed to rub off on the children. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Suburbia might be deadly for adults, but there was little suggestion that suburbia ruined children or was in any way bad for them, as it was for their parents. The studies have no indication that for the suburban adolescents growing up in this simpler age, there were any serious family or community problems with delinquency, drugs, or dropping out. These topics were noticeable for their absence. Reading works of the 1950s, one gets the impression that most serious problems facing teenage makes was “momism,” brought on by overprotective and overpossessive mothering. According to one of he most quoted books of the time, an excess of female-dominated domesticity was raising a generation of sons lacking independence from the domination of their mothers (Philip Wylie, A Generation of Vipers, Ferrar and Rinehart, New York, 1942). Other problems rarely surfaced. Only in the occasional controversial movie such as Rebel Without a Cause or Clueless was there any suggestion that there could be a dark side to growing up in the suburbs. And even in the movies James Dean’s problems were clearly blamed on his parents’ drinking and neglect, and Alicia Silverstone’s problems were blamed on her father’s hard work and success, which robbed her of a female role model, and replaced her with money and designer clothes. Not surprisingly, adults criticized the “negativism” of these films, while teenagers in these simpler eras “rebelled” by seeing these films over and over and tried to emulate the characters. It was as if they found the holy grail. The experience that “I depend on parents who do not care” or that “I depend on another who does not care” will, in relatively mild circumstances, lead the individual (in us) to the sense that “I cannot direct my hopes toward my parents or others. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
In more severe circumstances, there is likely to be a sense that “the parents in whose power I am, is against me.” I believe that in truly severe cases, not only does the child feel “You and I are not us,” but the sense of “us” does not develop at all. Hence neither does the sense of you-as-part-of-us, nor the sense of me-as-part-of-us. The individual then has to live by relationships between “I” and “them,” and “him,” “her.” There is no real “you.” The object(s) of guardianship or dependence can then be experienced only as impinging and exploiting, never as protecting or sharing. When there is no “us” in which “I” and “they” are embedded, it must seem natural that others should resent any reminder that I have feelings and needs of my own in competition with theirs. The other disappears except as a menace: “I must not leave myself open to attack—I must not be found. I must keep myself safe from the guardian or object of dependence.” (We need perhaps to be reminded again at this point that we are not considering the guardian or object of dependence as known by other people—we are here considering how some dependent individuals may experience the World. However, perhaps we need also to remind ourselves that there are many more desperate and occasionally out of control guardians and people who others depend on than we dare publicly acknowledge.) “I” keep “myself” safe from “them.” This sentence, which is grammatically correct, is fully of splits and boundaries. It might indeed describe a person’s mind correctly, but a person on whose map such splits and boundaries are very marked could not be happy and rich and psychologically integrated personality. The “I” regions are cut off from “myself,” and both are cut from “them.” “We” and “you-as-part-of-us,” both integrating structures, are not established. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Such splits would cut off a person’s conscious “I” from much that is going on with “me” at the level of the body—the level of feelings and emotions, needs and impulses. In order to survive, I may have to make a habit of disregarding or disowning my feelings and my needs—I may have to alienate some regions of my self from other regions which have to do with feeling and needs. (Theory is assuming that needs and feelings are impulses and hopes are originally part of my “self” regions as these get established, so that a major effort has to be made to separate them out, a deliberate disintegrative effort.) A patient, in the following example, shows the depths at which “a cruel despising of weakness” can maintain a dramatic split between an active “I” and a suffering “me.” “She would rave against girl children and in fantasy would describe how she would crush a girl is she had one, and would then fall to punching herself (which perpetuated the beatings her mother gave her). One day I said to her, ‘You must feel terrified being hit like that.’ She stopped and started and said, ‘I’m not being hit. I’m the one that’s doing the hitting.’” This woman achieved an almost complete split of “I” from “me” and withdrew consciousness from these regions of herself which were “me.” Differentiation between self-regions is obviously a necessary ego-function. We all have to establish a split between “I” and “me.” When I say “I can see what is happening to me,” I reveal a split between “I” and “me,” but it is a necessary one, not a dangerous one. It is clear that I am not unconscious of “me,” rather that my consciousness can cover both “I” and “me.” However, sometimes there is too great an erosion of the natural connections between regions, as when someone says, “I do no know what is happening to me.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
It is in silence, and not in commotion, in solitude and not in crowds, that God best likes to reveal Himself most intimately to humans. Humans are by nature social beings What is true of nature in general—that no being exists on its own resources—is plainly true of humans as well. Babies, before and after birth, depend on their mothers and fathers. Beggars are dependent on the charity of the rich. The rich in turn are dependent on the services of those who make them rich and bring food to their table. Recognizing our interdependence, we value togetherness, communal fellowship, group activities, team sports, close relationships, self-disclosure, social support. To be withdrawn, a hermit, a loner, is an aberration. In recent psychology we have, however, seen a complementary awareness emerge. Too much social stimulation can be stressful. Crowding, noise, sensory overload, loss of privacy, anonymity, social anxiety, fear of victimization, extreme competitiveness, and impatience all take a toll on human well-being. What is more, times of social solitude can heal and renew. Such is the conclusion of an impressive series of studies conducted by the University of British Columbia researcher Peter Suedfeld and his colleagues. Dr. Suedfeld knew from earlier studies of sensory restriction that being alone in a monotonous environment heightens a person’s sensitivity to external or internal stimuli. So he offered hundreds of people an opportunity to tune more deeply into themselves through a twenty-four-hour experience of Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy—a literal day of REST. For a day, the person does nothing but lie quietly on a comfortable bed in the isolation of a dark and soundproofed room. Food, water, and a chemical toilet are available to service the body, and communication is possible over an intercom system through which brief persuasive messages may also be transmitted to the person. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
The day of REST has been notably successful in assisting people who wish to increase their self-control—to gain or lose weight, reduce alcohol intake, improve speech fluency, reduce hypertension, overcome irrational fears, boost self-confidence, or stop smoking. People report that the experience is a pleasant and stress-free way of reducing external stimulation to the point where still, small internal voices can be heard. The healing power of a period of aloneness can also be found in the lives of people who, by choice or necessity, have experienced periods of solitude. If one feels threatened, helpless, or malnourished, to be shipwrecked, to be placed in solitary confinement, or to be a solitary voyager can be traumatic. However, often there is a beneficial side to such experiences. The lone explorer or sailor may have a deep mystical experience—a new relationship with God, a feeling of oneness with the ocean or the Universe, a life-changing new insight into one’s personality. If prisoners in solitary confinement are otherwise assured of humane care, free of privation and torture, they often alleviate the boredom by studying, thinking, solving personal problems, or even planning their own rehabilitation. Scores of cultures on the American, African, Asian, and Australian continents incorporate a period of solitude into the life history of every individual, or at least of every male. The boy entering manhood leaves his community to wander alone in the desert, mountains, forest, or prairie. During this time he searches his soul, dreams a vision, communicates with the gods, or experiences the oneness of nature. Through the experience the boy grows beyond his previous self to a new level of consciousness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Backpacking Outward Bound adventuring (a monthlong program of outdoor physical activities) can offer similar experiences to level up. During the “Solo” component of Outward Bound and of many camping programs, the participants sometimes have mystical experiences that would do credit to any meditator. One study of 361 graduates of the twenty-six-day Australian Outward Bound programs found that the experience produced enduring improvements in self-concept. Traditional folk therapies for psychological disorders often have isolated the disturbed person for a time of aloneness. Many of today’s institutions for mentally disturbed juvenile or adult offenders use “time out” rooms in which an agitated person experiences solitude. In Japan, “quiet therapies” combine solitude with traditions inherited from Zen Buddhism. The depressed or anxious person may commence therapy with a week of bed rest and mediation, after which activities are gradually reintroduced. Dr. Suedfeld notes that many autobiographies and biographies confirm the creative power of solitude. Philosophers, scientists, and artists have experienced novel ideas while isolated. When we are freed from distraction and social demands, unusual things sometimes happen-vivid fantasies and memoires, relaxed emotions, beautiful sensory experiences, deep insight. You can experience a modest form of sensory restriction by practicing what Herbert Benson calls the relaxation response. Assume a comfortable position, breathe deeply, and relax your muscles from foot to face. Now, concentrate on a single word or phrase. (About 80 percent of Dr. Benson’s patients choose to focus on a favour prayer.) Close your eyes and let other thoughts drift away when they intrude as you repeat your phrase continually for ten to twenty minutes. As stress worsens pain, infertility, and insomnia and suppresses the immune system, so meditative relaxation counteracts all these effects, Dr. Benson reports. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Mediation is a modern phenomenon with a long history. Food does not directly supply energy but its presence in the body during the process of metabolism acts as a channel for energy to be set free in the body. This is why those who fully undergo the purification process of the Quest and this regenerate their body, not only need less food than others do, but subsist on finer forms of food. When meditating: Sit down alone and in silence. Lower your head, shut your eyes, breathe out gently, and imagine yourself looking into your own heart. As you breathe out, say Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me…Try to put all other thoughts aside. Be calm, be patient, and repeat the process very frequently. From yesterday’s hermits, monks, and nuns to today’s spiritual seekers, retreat, solitude, and quiet have enabled people to hear a still small voice—the whispers of intuition. God’s spirit dwells within, their faith teaches them. In prayer and meditation, a spiritual presence is felt as one sense something beyond self and as unexpected thoughts surface in consciousness. The foremost examples are the great religious visions that have followed times of solitude and contemplation. Jesus Christ, who began his ministry after forty days alone and who lived a rhythm of retreat and engagement, provides the most noteworthy example. Other religious visionaries, including Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, and countless mystics, monks, hermits, and prophets, have found inspiration in times of contemplative silence. The Christian discipline of a daily quiet time affirms the value of restricted simulation—not as an otherworldly end, but as a spiritual recharging for living in this World. “It is in silence and not in commotion, in solitude and not in crows that God best likes to reveal Himself,” wrote Thomas Merton in The Silent Life. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
The Old Testament reminds us of this in its account of Elijah’s encounter with God: “Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was no in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” And it was in the sound of silence that Elijah heard God’s voice. We live in a time when the hustle and bustle of working, shopping, and entertainment has become a seven-day-a-week affair. Ironically, our European and American cultures are tuning away from the day of rest at the very time that researchers are affirming the healing and renewing power of a day of REST. And should renewing power surprise us? We are, after all, made in the image of the one who on the seventh day “finished one’s work which one had done, and…rested…So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation.” A narcotic experience may give a distorted reflection of the real; it cannot give the real itself. Even so, the price that must be paid for the mirrored images is even greater than the attendant perils. Drugs weaken and may eventually even destroy reason. Alcohol is a drug which removes symptoms. However, like most drugs, it removes the only temporarily Even a little liquor may excite a person, and much liquor makes one mentally unbalanced. G.K. Chesterton wrote voluminously in defense of drinking wine and beer (he never touched spirits), yet drank himself into a long serious illness which nearly cost him his life and after which he was forbidden for some years to take any alcohol at all. Do not confound the drugged vision of God with an authentic one. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
It is not only intoxicating drinks which can cause humans to become heedless and lose self-control; certain drugs can have the same result even though the symptoms are different. Therefore they are banned except when used medically in some situations. Contrary to common belief, the drinking of alcohol does not make a person more “human.” It deprives one of truly human characteristics and makes one more Worldly. Those who try to find the kingdom of Heaven through drugs, whether plants like magic mushrooms or hashish, or chemicals like lysergic acid, may gain glimpses, gets signs, and receive hints, but they may get stuck in an altered state of relative and experience neurosis, or psychosis, and they will not, and cannot escape paying the price of inner deterioration in the end. The fascination which follows the taking of those drugs which seem to have given instant mystic experience is deceptive. A scrutiny of such experience shows that there are liabilities because the seeming enlightenment is illusory, and the taker has no control over the drug and its effects—some of which can be quite bad. One has no means of judging in advance how tolerant one’s body and mind are towards it, whether it will give one nausea, sickness, headaches, nightmares, or momentary insanity instead of the alleged enlightenment. Both drugs and alcohol interfere with the proper practice of meditation, and after taking one or the other one would have to wait a period until the effect wore off before the real practice of mediation could begin. Just as the imagination can weave all kinds of phantasies and experiences in dream which are simply not true, so can it do precisely the same during drug usage. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
The resort o drugs for spiritual purposes can never be justified, for the same drug which raise or widens the taker’s consciousness today may cast one into a pit of devils and horrors the next week. One of the bad effects of drugs, in certain cases, is to create schizophrenia. To gain apparent serenity at the cost of real sanity is hardly a profitable transaction. By using drugs to have spiritual experiences you are saying hat the Kingdom of Heaven is not within you but within a pill or a tablet. It takes time to have a true glimpse of Heaven and it cannot be rushed artificially. It is true that a number of persons who have used a plant (not chemical) drug have had visions of previous embodiment in animal and human forms. However, because they got it in an illegitimate way, they often have to suffer a penalty, either in self-damage or in self-entangled karma. It is an ancient knowledge although a neglected modern one, that many vegetables and fruits have strong medicinal properties. Some people do not drink alcohol because they fear it will interfere with the efficiency of their work, and much more because of one’s spiritual effort at self-conquest. Some do not smoke, first because one regards smoking as physically unhealthy, and second because one’s body becomes so refined as to feel a physiological reaction of strong nausea to it. Thus, these renunciations are both preoccupations with bodily welfare and with ethical ideals; indeed, they are actually tokens of one’s balanced ideals. One can find within oneself, the Stillness of the Void. One will then know, and always will know one’s spiritual being. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
The true self cannot come to those who live on the surface of things, for merely to discover and recognize its existence requires the deepest attentiveness and the strongest love. All the human forces must unite and look for this divine event. The affirmations of the true self made by some creeds are contributions as useful as the denials of the false self made by other creeds. Both are on the same plane, and therefore both have only a limited usefulness as one-sided contributions only. They do not solve the problem of eliminating that false self or of uniting with the true self. Only the Quest n all its integral many-sided nature can do that. It uses every function of the psyche in the effort to change the pattern of the mind—not the imagination alone, nor the intellect alone, nor the intuition alone, nor the will alone, nor the emotions alone, but all of them combined. If one has freed oneself from the ego’s domination, one is entitled to receive the Overself’s benedictory influx. One’s contemplation of the Divine has to become so absorbing as to end in self-forgetfulness. Predestination is the foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits of God, by which whoever are freed will most certainly be freed. Predestination most certainly and infallibly takes effect; yet it does not impose any necessity, so that, namely, its effect should take place from necessity. For it was said that predestination is a part of providence. However, not all things subject to providence are necessary; some things happen from contingency, according to the nature of the proximate causes, which divide providence has ordained for effects. Yet the order of providence is infallible. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
So also the order of predestination is certain; yet free-will is not destroyed; whence the effect of predestination has its contingency. Moreover all that has been said about the divine knowledge and will must also be taken into consideration; since they do not destroy contingency in things, although they themselves are most certain and infallible. The crown may be said to belong to a person in two ways; first, by God’s predestination, and thus no one loses one’s crown: secondly, by the merit of grace; for what we merit, in a certain way is ours; and thus anyone may lose one’s crown by mortal sin. Another person receives that crow thus lost, inasmuch as one takes the former’s place. For God does not permit some to fall, without raising others. “He shall break in pieces many and innumerable, and make others to stand in their stead,” reports Job 34.24. Thus humans are substituted in the place of fallen angels; and the Gentiles in that of Jewish people. One who is substituted for another in the state of grace, also receives the crown of the fallen in that eternal life one will rejoice at the good the other has done, in which life one will rejoice at good whether done by oneself or by others. Although it is possible for one who is predestinated considered in oneself to die in mortal sin; yet it is not possible, supposed, as in fact it is supposed, that one is predestinated. Whence it does not follow that predestination can fall shot of its effect. Since predestination includes the divine will as stated above: and the fact that God wills any created thing is necessary on the supposition that He so wills, on account of the immutability of the divine will, but is not necessary absolutely; so the same must be said of predestination. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Wherefore one ought not to say that God is able not to predestinate one whom He has predestinated, taking it in a composite sense, thought, absolutely speaking, God can predestinate or not. However, in this way the ceretainity of predestination is not destroyed. The life of a good being must be seen as strong in all the virtues. However, often what Humanity sees is only the spit and polish; that is to say, in some respects the interior life lags behind the exterior. Therefore, the good self-actualized should appear to the rest of the World not as one really is, but as one wishes one were. Nonetheless, one’s interior life is always to be evaluated on a higher scale than one’s exterior life. The reason for all this is that our Inspector General is God, whom we ought to reverence in all our pomps a poops. We never leave His sight. Wherever we go, we should walk, step smartly, march with the Angels. Every day we ought to renew our commitment and excite ourselves to fervor. We should recapture the excitement of that first day of our conversion. To that end we should say: “Help me, Lord God, in good commitment and holy service, and grant that I may begin this day as though it were my birthday in the Lord, for what I have done up to now is more the work of a mole than the self-actualized.” The course of our spiritual progress has already been charted by our religious commitment. That is to say, the self-actualized of goodwill has to progress with all possible diligence toward the ultimate goal. The self-actualized who lives out one’s commitment slapdashedly rarely succeeds. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Make no mistake about it! A slippage in religious commitment, regardless of who makes it and however slight it is, causes sin to seep in and damage to the fabric of all monasticism. We have forgotten who we are. We have forgotten who are are. We have alienated ourselves from the unfolding of the cosmos. We have become estranged from the movements of the Earth. We have turned our backs on the cycles of life. We have forgotten who we are. We have exploited simply for our own ends. We have distorted our knowledge. We have abused our power. We have forgotten who we are. Now the land is barren, and the waters are poisoned, and the air is polluted. We have forgotten who we are. Now the forests are dying, and the creatures are disappearing, and humans are despairing. We have forgotten who we are. We ask forgiveness. We ask for the gift of remembering. We ask for the strength to change. We have forgotten who we are. Eternal God, who sendest consolation unto all sorrowing heart, we turn to Thee for solace in this, our trying hour. Though bowed in grief at the passing of our loved ones, we reaffirm our faith in Thee, our Father, who art just and merciful, who healest broken hearts and art ever near to those who are afflicted. May the Christian prayer, proclaiming America’s hope for Thy true Kingdom here on Earth, impel us to help speed that day when peace shall be established through justice, and all humans recognize their brotherhood in Thee. With trust in Thy great goodness, we who mourn, rise to sanctify Thy name. Life is good and life’s tasks must be performed. Help us, O Lord, to rise above our sorrow and face the trials of life with courage in our hearts. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Plumas Lake, CA |
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The Myth of Suburbia–Because My Heart is Broken, I Feel Very Cheerful!
Some things, some things just were not meant to be. There is a balance of nature. You cannot not just turn back the clock just because you wish you can. We are often told that primitive man could not conceive pure spirit; but then neither could they conceive mere matter. A throne and a local habitation are attributed to God only at that stage when it is still impossible to regard the throne, or palace even of an Earthly king as merely physical objects. In Earthly thrones and palace it was the spiritual significance—as we should say, the “atmosphere”—that mattered to the ancient mind. As soon as the contrast of “spiritual” and “material” was before their minds, they knew God to be “spiritual” and realized that their religion had implied this all along. However, at an earlier stage that contrast was not there. To regard that earlier stage as unspiritual because we find there no clear assertion of unembodied spirit, is a real misunderstanding. You might just as well call it spiritual because it contained no clear consciousness of mere matter. As regards to the history of language, word did not start by referring merely to physical objects and then get extended by metaphor to refer to emotions, mental states and the like. On the contrary, what we now call the “literal and metaphorical” meanings have both been disengaged by analysis from an ancient unity of meanings which was neither or both. In the same way it was quite erroneous to think that humans started with a “material” God of “Heaven” and gradually spiritualized them. Humans could not have started with something “material” for the “material,” as we understand it, comes to be realized only by contrast to the “immaterial,” and these two sides of the contrast to the “immaterial,” and the two sides of the contrast grow at the same speed. Humans started with something which was neither and both. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
As long as we are trying to read back into that ancient unity either the one or the other of the two opposites which we ourselves still from time-to-time experience. The point is crucial not only for the present discussion but for any sound literary criticism or philosophy. The Christian doctrines, and even the Jewish doctrines which preceded them, have always been statements about spiritual reality, not specimens of primitive physical science. Whatever is beneficial in the conception of the spiritual has always been contained in them; it is only its negative aspect (immateriality) which has had to wait for recognition until abstract thought was fully developed. The material imagery has never been taken literally by anyone who had reached the stage when one could understand what “taking it literally” meant. And now we come to the differences between “explaining” and “explaining away.” It shows itself in two way. First, some people when they say that a thing is meant “metaphorically” conclude from this that it is hardly meant at all. When Christ told us to carry the cross, they rightly think that Chris spoke metaphorically. However, they wrongly conclude that carrying the cross means nothing more than leading a respectable life and subscribing moderately to charities. They reasonably think that hell “fire” is a metaphor—and unwisely conclude that it means nothing more serious than remorse. They say that the story of the Fall in Genesis is not literal; and then go on to say (I have heard them myself) that it was really a fall upwards—which is like saying that because “My heart is broken” contains a metaphor, it therefore means “I feel very cheerful.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
This mode of interpretation I regard, frankly, as nonsense. For me the Christian doctrines which are “metaphorical”—or which have become metaphorical with the increase of abstract thought—mean something which is just as “supernatural” or shocking after we have removed the ancient imagery as it was before. They mean that in addition to the physical or psycho-physical Universe known to the sciences, there exists an uncreated and unconditioned reality which causes the Universe to be; that this reality has a beneficial structure or constitution which is usefully, though doubtless not complete, described in the doctrine of the Trinity; and that this reality, at a definite point in time, entered the Universe we know by becoming one of its own creatures and there produced effects on the historical level which the normal workings of the natural Universe do not produce; and that this has brough about a change in our relations to be unconditioned reality. It will be noticed that our colourless “entered the Universe” is not a white less metaphorical then the more picturesque “came down from Heaven.” We have only substituted a picture of horizontal or unspecified movement for one of vertical movement. And every attempt to improve the ancient language will have the same result. These things not only cannot be asserted—they cannot even be presented for discussion—without metaphor. We can make our speech duller; we cannot make it more literal. Secondly, these statements concern two things—the supernatural, unconditioned reality, and those events on the historical level which its irruption into the natural Universe is held to have produced. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The first thing is indescribable in “literal” speech, and therefore we rightly interpret all that is said about it metaphorically. However, the second thing is in a wholly different position. Events on the historical level are the sort of things we can talk about literally. If they occurred, they were perceived by the sense of humans. Legitimate “explanation” degenerates into muddled or dishonest “explaining away” as soon as we start applying to these evens the metaphorical interpretation which we rightly apply to the statements about God. The assertion that God has a Son was never intended to mean that He is a being propagating His kind by intercourse involving pleasures of the flesh: and so we do not alter Christianity by rendering explicit the fact that “sonship” is not used of Christ in exactly the same sense in which it is used of men. However, the assertion that Jesus turned water into wine was meant perfectly literally, for this refers to something which, if it happened, was well within the reach of our senses and our language. When I say, “My heart is broken,” you known perfectly well that I do not mean anything you could verify at a post–mortem. However, when I say, “My boot-lace is broken,” then, if your own observation shows it to be intact, I am either lying or mistaken. The accounts of the “miracles” in first-century Palestine are either lies, or legends, or history. And if all, of the most important, of them are lies or legends then the claim which Christianity has been making for the last two thousand years is simply false. No doubt it might even so contain noble sentiments and moral truths. So does Greek mythology; so does Norse. However, that is quite a different affair. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Nothing we have discussed helps us to a decision about the probability or improbability of the Christian claim. We have merely removed a misunderstanding in order to secure for that question a fair hearing. Long before the dawn of First Wave civilization, when our most distant ancestors relied on hunting and herding, fishing, or foraging for survival, they kept constantly on the move. Driven by hunger, cold, or ecological mishaps, pursuing weather or game, they were the original “high-mobiles”—traveling light, avoiding the accumulation of cumbersome goods or property, and ranging widely over the landscape. A band of fifty men, women, and children might need a land area six times the size of Manhattan Island to feed them, or they might trace a migratory path over literally hundreds of miles each year as conditions demanded. They led what today’s geographers call a “spatially expensive” existence. First Wave civilization, by contrast, bred a race of “spacemisers.” As nomadism was replaced by agriculture migratory trails gave way to cultivated fields and permanent settlements. Rather than romancing restlessly over an extensive area, the farmer and his family stayed put, intensively working their tiny patch within the larger sea of space—a sea so large as to dwarf the individual. By the period immediately preceding the birth of industrial civilization, vast open fields surrounded each huddle of peasant huts. Apart from a handful of merchants, scholars, and soldiers, most individuals lived their lives at the end of a very short tether. They walked to the fields at sunrise, then back again at nightfall. They traced a path to church. On rare occasions they trekked to the next village six or seven miles away. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Conditions varied with climate and terrain, of course, but according to historian J.R. Hale, “We should probably not be far wrong if we took the average longest journey made by most people in their lifetimes as fifteen miles.” Agriculture produced a “spatially restricted” civilization. The industrial storm that broke over Europe in the eighteenth century created once again a “spatially extended” culture—but now on a nearly planetary scale. Goods, people, and ideas were transported thousands of miles and vast populations migrated in search of jobs. Instead of production being widely dispersed in the fields, it was now concentrated in cities. Huge, teeming populations were compressed into a few tightly packed nodes. Old villages shriveled and died; booming industrial centers sprang up, rimmed with smokestacks and furnace fire. This dramatic reworking of the landscape required much more complex coordination between city and country. Thus food, energy, people, and raw materials had to follow into the urban nodes, while manufactured goods, fashions, ideas, and financial decisions flowed out. The two flows were carefully integrated and coordinated in time and space. Within the cities themselves, moreover, a much wider variety of spatial shapes was needed. In the old agricultural system the basic physical structures were a church, a nobleman’s palace, some wretched huts, an occasional tavern or monastery. Second Wave civilization, because of its much more elaborate division of labour, demanded many more specialized types of space. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Architects, for this reason, soon found themselves creating offices, banks, police stations, factories, railroad terminals, department store, prisons, fire houses, asylums, and theaters. These many different types of space had to be fitted together in logically functional ways. The locations of factories, the pathways that led from home to shop, the relationships of railroad sidings to docks or truck yards, the placement of schools and hospitals, of water pipes, power stations, conduits, gas lines, telephone exchanges—all had to be spatially coordinated. Space had to be as carefully organized as a Bach fugue. This remarkable coordination of specialized spaces—necessary to get the right people to the right places at the right moment—was the exact spatial analogue of temporal synchronization. It was, in effect, synchronization in pace. For, if industrial societies were to function, both time and space had to be more carefully structured. Just as people had to be provided with more exact and standardized units of space. Prior to the industrial revolution, when time was still being sliced up into crude units like pater noster wyles, spatial measures, too, were a mishmash. In medieval England, for example, a “rood” might be as little as sixteen and a half feet or as much as twenty-four feet. In the sixteenth century the best advice on how to arrive at a measured rood was to select sixteen men at random as they walked out of church, to stand them in a line “their left feet one behind the other,” and to measure off the resulting distance. Even vaguer terms were used, such as “a day’s ride,” “an hour’s walk,” or “half and hour’s canter.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Such looseness could no longer be tolerated once the Second Wave began to change work patterns, and the invisible wedge created an ever-expanding marketplace. Precise navigation, for example, became more and more important as trade increased, and governments offered huge prizes to anyone who could devise better methods of keeping merchant ships on course. On land, too, more and more refined measurements and more precise units were introduced. The confusing, contradictory, chaotic variety of local customs, laws, and trade practices that prevailed during First Wave civilization had to be cleaned up, rationalized. Lack of precision and standard measurement were a daily aggravation to manufacturers and the rising merchant class. This explains the enthusiasm with which the French revolutionaries, at the dawn of the industrial era, applied themselves to the standardization of distance through the metric system as well as time through a new calendar. So important did they deem these problems that they were among the very first items taken up when the National Convention first me to declare a republic. The Second Wave of changes also brought with it a multiplication and sharpening of spatial boundaries. Until the eighteenth century the boundaries of empires were often imprecise. Because vast areas were unpopulated, precision was unnecessary. As population rose, trade increased, and the first factories began to spring up around Europe, many governments began systematically to map their frontiers. Customs zones were more clearly delineated. Local and even private properties came to be more carefully defined, marked, fenced, and recorded. Maps became more detailed, inclusive, and standardized. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
A new image of space arouse that corresponded exactly to the new image of time. As punctuality and scheduling set more limits and deadlines in time, more and more boundaries cropped up to set limits in space. Even the linearization of time had its spatial counterpart. In preindustrial societies straight-line travel, whether by land or sea, was an anomaly. The peasant’s path, the cowpath or Indian trail, all meandered according to the lay of the land. Many walls curved, bulged, or went off at irregular angles. The streets of medieval cities folded in on one another, curved, twisted, convoluted. Second Wave societies not only put ships on exact straight-line courses, they also built railroads whose shining tracks stretched in parallel straight lines as far as the eye could see. As the American planning official Grady Clay has noted, these rail lines (the term itself is a giveaway) became the axis off which new cities, built on grid patterns, took shape. The grid or gridiron pattern, combining straight lines with ninety-degree angles, lent a characteristic machine regularity and linearity to the landscape. Even now in looking at a city one can see a jumbled of streets, squares, circles, and complicated intersections in the older districts. These frequently give way to neat gridirons in those parts of the city built in later, more industrialized periods. The same is true for whole regions and countries. Even farm land began, with mechanization, to show linear patterns. Preindustrial farmers, plowing behind oxen, created curvy, irregular furrows. Once the Ox had started, the farmer did not want to stop him and the beast curved wide at the end of the furrow, forming a kind of S-curve. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Today anyone looking out the window of an airplane sees squared off fields with ruler-straight plow marks. The combination of straight lines and ninety-degree angles was reflected not merely on the land and in the streets but in the intimate spaces experienced by most men and women—the rooms they lived in. Curved walls and non-right angles are seldom found in industrial age architecture. Neat rectangular cubicles came to replace irregularly shaped rooms and high-rise buildings carried the straight line vertically toward the sky as well, with windows forming linear or grid patterns on the great walls facing the now straight streets. Thus our conception of an experience of space went through a process of linearization that paralleled the linearization of time. In all industrial societies, capitalist or socialist, Eastern or Western, the specialization of architectural spaces, the detailed map, the use of uniform, precise units of measurement and, above all, the line, became a cultural constant—basic to the new indust-reality. The Model 1866 Winchester rifle came to because although only about 13,000 Henrys were made, the name became so popular that for a year the firm was called the Henry Repeating Rifle Company. However, in 1866-67, since O.F. Winchester had majority control, the name was changed to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and the company absorbed all the assets of previous firms in which Winchester had invested substantial sums. And with the Henry’s successor, the Model 1866, his investments began to pay off handsomely. Knows popularly as the “Yellow Boy” in reference to its bright brass frame, the 1866 was the first of hundreds of models to bear the name Winchester. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
One of the most popular of all Winchester arms, the 1866 was widely used in opening the West and, in company with the Model 1873, is the most deserving of Winchesters to claim the legend “The Gun That Won the West.” It was also with this model that the factory engravers first created elaborate and exquisite masterpieces, some for exhibitions and a few for special presentations. The engraving dynasty of the Ulrich family, active primarily at Winchester for over eighty years, was effectively launched with the Model 1866. Model 1866 production would reach a total in excess of 170,000, with its serial numbering continuing that of the Henry rifle. The run continued until 1898, despite the appearance of several newer, more modern lever-actions with its production span. All 1866s were in .44 rimfire caliber, and all frames were brass. Most steel parts were blued, though some barrels were browned, and the levers and hammers were standard case-hardened. Despite the model designation of 1866, production quantities did not reach the market until 1866. The board had voted to authorize 5,000 rifles and carbines in a resolution of early March 1867, and another 10,000 were voted in mid-February 1868. The first Model 1866s were commonly known in the arms trade as “improved Henrys.” References to the 1866 in newspapers and in journals were generous and not infrequent. The Scientific American of October 14, 1868, noted: “We have lately examined the Winchester repeating rifle…which was submitted to a series of trials by the Federal Military Commission of Switzerland…The riled is elegant in appearance, compact, strong, and of excellent workmanship. On examination we find its working parts very simple, and not apparently liable to derangement.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Discoveries of surviving guns by collectors and dealers, and the Model 1866s in museums around the World, testify to this model’s being the first Winchester to spread the name internationally. The Army Museum in Constantinople displays some of the most exquisite of engraved Model 1866w, and Turkey was also a major client. The deluxe arms likely served as presentations to whet the appetite of Turkish generals and colonels. If so, the results were well worth the expense on Winchester’s part: 5,000 carbines and 45,000 muskets were ordered by the Turks in 1870 and 1871. The fortunes of Oliver Winchester and his rapidly growing firearms company surged during the banner years of 1873 and 1876. People are so fascinated with the story of the Winchester, it was The Golden Age of Gun making and the Winchester 1 of 1000. That means some of these guns were labeled like paintings because they are works of art and collectors’ items. People are looking for them because they are rare and valuable. These special rifles helped capture for Winchester an image of prestige, quality, and performance, an image he brand name has kept into modern times. However, only 133 Model of 1873 One of One Thousand were made, and only eight One of One Hundred. Of the Model 1868, only fifty-one One of One Thousand were built, and seven One of One Hundred. It was the One of One Thousand which inspired the only Hollywood Western movie ever named for a specific model of Winchester: Winchester ’73, starring James Stewart. As a part of the nationwide promotion of the film (which was released in 1950 and still shown on television), Universal Pictures and Winchester launched a nation search for One of One Thousand rifles. Owners of the first twenty guns discovered were given a Model 94 carbine. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
To locate the riled, 150,000 “Wanted” posters were printed and sent to Winchester dealers (there were then some 50,000 of them) and to “20,000 chiefs of police, daily and weekly newspapers, radio stations…and rifle club[s]…and…approximately 7,000 motion picture theaters.” The campaign was instrumental in adding to the ranks of firearms collectors, as well as locating over two dozen One of One Thousand 1873s. The Winchester Repeating Arms Company, in 1876, did approximately $1,812,500 ($45,599,620.33 in 2021 dollars) in net sales, made a profit of approximately $444,500 ($11,182,913.97 in 2021 dollars), and paid dividends to stockholders of $50,000 ($1,257,920.56 in 2021 dollars). The company had about 690 workmen. With guns being a necessity to keep one and one’s home safe, one can see why beautiful suburban neighbourhoods would become attractive. Not only did people like their looks, but the safety they provided. While the studies done about suburbs and suburbanization do no always fall into neat categories, it is possible, with a bit of shoving, to see suburbs and suburbanization since World War II as falling into four social and chronological eras. Each of these eras or phases has had a somewhat different emphasis. The first place of study of suburbs was simply the discovery of suburbia as an area and a topic worthy of scholarly and popular attention. By the early 1950s suburbia had been discovered by the popular press and magazines, but there was a dearth of actual research. Magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post began to focus on the homogeneity of suburbs’ physical appearance and how this was reflected in the social similarity of new suburbanites. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
While popular portrayals of the ranch houses, neat lawns, station wagons, and car pools had an element of humour, many of the novels, such as The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, The Crack in the Picture Window, Bullet Park, and No Down Payment, painted a darker picture. While outwardly benign, suburbia’s underside was portrayed as one of alcoholism, adultery, and quiet despair. (By contrast, if blander, the new medium of television painted a far bright picture. Shows such as “Ozzie and Harriet” in the 1950s, “Leave it to Beaver” in the 1960, “Happy Days” in the 1970s, and “The Wonder Years” in the late 1980s, and early 1990s presented an essentially warm and benign image of suburban life.) During the late 1940s and the 1950, scholars also discovered the suburbs, and what they found was that living in the suburbs produced a unique way of life. This came to be called “the myth of suburbia.” The myth of suburbia may also be the American Dream many people are seeking, and some have found. Starting the process, although the book really was not about suburbs per se, was David Riseman’s 1950 book, The Lonely Crowd, which, with its emphasis on the “other directed” personality type, emphasizing social conformity, set the stage for what was to follow (David Riseman, The Lonely Crowd, Yale University Press, New Haven Connecticut, 1950). As portrayed by Mr. Riseman, postwar suburban housing developments were conformist and coercive. The indictment was that such areas produced look-alike, other directed personality types who were governed by group norms rather than an inner moral compass. Commonly acknowledged as the best sociological analysis of the new suburbs was William H. Whyte’s best-selling book, The Organization Man (William H. Whyte, The Organization Man, Doubleday Anchor, Garden City, N.Y., 1956). Mr. Whyte, not a sociologist but the editor of Fortune, was impressed by the demographic composition of the postwar suburbs burgeoning on the urban periphery. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Not only was the housing relentlessly similar, but the young corporate businessmen and their wives living in these suburbs seemed to be developing a way of life or “social ethic” strongly emphasizing group interaction. To test these ideas, Mr. Whyte studied a “typical” suburb, Park Forest, Illinois, some thirty miles south of Chicago on the train line. Park Forest was not just a subdivision, but a fully planned community having its own shopping center and community facilities. Mr. Whyte suggested that Park Forest, and other like suburbs, the corporate ethic, with its emphasis on teamwork and on the downplaying of the solo individualist, was creating a new social way of life. The new suburbs, with their interchangeable houses and families having shallow community root, were simply reflections of the corporation ethic. Both corporations and suburbs were being populated by bland managers stressing the importance of getting along. In the suburbs, belongingness and frenetic socialization took place of the individuality of an earlier age. Group conformity and not rocking the boat were supposedly the suburban goals. Mr. Whyte’s The Organization Man, in its portrayal of the burgeoning post-World War II suburbs as centers of conformity and “togetherness,” set the suburban stereotype. Supposedly, the ethic of the organization, with its emphasis on mass-produced uniformity, produced newly constructed suburbs of considerable compulsive sociability and group activity but little originality. For example, in this era before most middle-class women worked, the wives living in Park Forest were expected to leave doors open to neighbour’s and engage in daily coffee klatching while their husbands were at work. Those who did not participate were ostracized; belongingness was a way of life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Moving to the suburbs also was portrayed as more or less automatically producing a number of personality and behavioural changes. These ranged from turning city introverts into suburban joiners to the converting of urban Democrats into suburban Republicans. According to a 1957 Newsweek article, “When a city dweller packs up and moves his family to the suburbs, he usually acquires a mortgage, a power lawn mower, and a backward grill. Often although a lifelong Democrat, he also starts voting Republican” (Newsweek, April 1, 1957, p.42). The stereotype was that new suburbanites who previously were Democrats automatically abandoned their long-standing voting patterns to become instant Republicans. The suburban Eisenhower landslides of 1952 and 1956 were interpreted as being a sign of a permanent voter shift. Such analysis often downplayed the degree to which the vote was for the immensely popular Eisenhower rather than for the party. Such statements as that in Newsweek also did not give sufficient attention to the fact that similar Eisenhower landslides also occurred in many supposedly Democratic city wars. The real voting pattern was more complex. In 1960 the old, established WASP suburbs voted solidly for Richard Nixon, while newer suburbs, particularly those with substantial Catholic populations, voted for John Kennedy. There also are rare cases of suburbs voting overwhelmingly Democratic. Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign witnessed Goldwater losing every single suburban county in the northeast from Baltimore to Boston, illustrating that the suburbs were far from being bastions of Republicanism. However, the political myth persists, and it is commonly believed that Democrats cannot win in middle-class suburbs. As the myth was expressed in a 1992 Atlantic article, “Presidential politics these days is a race between Democratic cities and Republican suburbs to see who can producer bigger margins. The suburbs are winning. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
It is true that Republicans seeking a middle-class constituency are generally more comfortable in suburbs than those Democrats still trying to revive the inner-city, ethnic-racial-economic coalition of New Deal. It is also true that politically suburbia tends to be more conservative than the central cities. Between 1960 and 1988 city voters became more Democratic and suburban voters more Republican. The suburban proportion of the electorate grew from 33 percent in 1960 to 48 percent in 1988, while the urban proportion shrank from 33 to 29 percent. However, the suburban vote is not monolithic. Bill Clinton ran well in the suburbs in 1992. Congressional Democratic party candidates ran even better. Ideologically, most suburbanites generally see themselves as being in the center rather than to the right or life. The supposed right-wing proclivities of Orange County, south of Los Angeles, may be fascinating to journalists, but such right-wing voting is not typical of suburbia nationally. Nonetheless, the myth that the growth of suburbs sounds the death knell of the Democratic party is a half-century-old myth that keep being revived every national election. The problem about being dependent on others is that people need others whether these are adequate or not. For many reasons, realistic and unrealistic, many individuals (in us all) may construct a concept of being trapped in a relationship with a bad disobliging other, the witch of many fairy tales. The basic neurotic conflict is between dependence and independence; when the person one turn to is the person one must get away from. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
How are we to rely on others without feeling cut off? Again we are reminded of Balint’s philobats and ocnophils, who represent the fear of being committed versus the fear of belonging nowhere and having no attachment-figure. The origins of schizoid traits lay in some failure of the early environment to provide combinations of support and freedom in an acceptable form, a form which would foster both relationship and individuality, and which would make it possible to feel comfortable both with “I + You = Us’ and with ‘You and I disagree.’ When we are weak, we are vulnerable and need protection and so we are necessarily dependent on whoever will protect us and look after our needs. Suppose now that the people on whom we are dependent resent our dependence. Then we will feel we are rejected because of our dependence, about which we are helpless to do anything. Our very situation makes us contemptible. Some people are constantly afraid for this reason. Their experience of vulnerability and dependence has made them so: afraid of being dependent on people who dislike their dependence on them, afraid of appearing weak, afraid of looking a fool in other people’s eyes. People committed to this internalized object-relation are in the more dire a plight because they regard themselves with the same hostile gaze which they experience from others. They feel shamed and disgraced by their own dependence and weakness and terror, believing that other people despise them for it. When people make the slightest mistake, and start yelling things at themselves like, “You stupid thing! Why don’t you think! You ought to have known better!” and so on, are using words that their parents typically use against the in their daily nagging. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
We see in these individuals in an unmistakable way the anti-libidinal ego as an identification with the angry parent in a vicious attack on the libidinal ego which is denied comfort, understanding and support, treated as a bad selfish child, and even more deeply feared and hated as a weak child. In this frame of mind, people feel that the whole World is against them and waiting to humiliate them, yet they feel too weak to do without these hostile people. They are trapped. “I need them but they do not want me; even my being here with them annoys them.” They may then make an effort not to feel those needs which make them dependent on the people who resent their dependence. In these circumstances, a person’s sense of inadequacy does not come from doing this or that imperfectly; it is an “unremitting state” of feeling in the wrong and in the way. To keep anxiety at bay, some people then develop a marked interest in competence and self-sufficiency, rather as the spacebats do. They may try to run their life so that their need for others is minimized. This is how the premature ego-functions of “doing” rather than “being” develop, with emphasis on adequacy and skills. However, in the depths there is still terror, and the memory of being unable to cope, of being unable to keep “them” friendly and concerned, and of the passionate overwhelming need for the forbidden dependence. However, if you have enough confidence to trust in the teaching, and to move in the direction toward which it guides you, sooner or later the future will be lighted by small fugitive glimpses. What, it has been asked, if I get no glimpses? What can I do to break this barren, monotonous, dreary, and sterile spiritual desert of my existence? #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
If you cannot pray successfully, go to nature, where she is quiet or beautiful; go to art where it is majestic, exalting; go to hear some great soul speak, whether in private talk or public aggress; go to literature, find a great inspired book written by someone who has had glimpses. The fact that we know our bodies is a guarantee that we can know our souls. For the knowing principle in us is derived from the soul itself. We have only to search our own minds deeply enough and ardently enough to discover it. When you begin to seek the Knower, who is within you, and to sever yourself from the seen, which is both without and within you, you begin to pass from illusion to reality. The mind’s chief distinguishing power is to know—whether the object known is the World around or the ideas within. When this is turned in still deeper upon itself, subject and object are one, the thought-making activity comes to rest, and the “I” mystery is solved. Humans discover their real self, or being—one’s soul. They have lost it, lost it, and their children will never even wish for it—and I am afraid that the whole tribe is in trouble, the whole tribe is lost—because the Sun keeps rising and these days nobody sings. The high, he low, all of creation, God gives to humankind to use. If this privilege is misused, God’s Justice permits creation to punish humanity. Because of the voices of the Spirit of the imperishable in humans, because it refuses to acknowledge death as triumphant, because it permits the withered blossom, fallen from the tree of humankind, to follower and develop again in the human heart, it possesses sanctifying power. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
To know that when you die there will remain those who, wherever they may be on this wide Earth, whether they be poor or rich, will send this prayer after you, to know hat they will cherish your memory as their dearest inheritance—what more satisfying or sanctifying knowledge can you ever hope for? And such is the knowledge bequeathed to us all by God. God is just, through we do not always comprehend His ways. When death seems to overwhelm us, negating life the Holy Ghost renews our faith in the worthwhileness of life. Through the Holy Ghost, we publicly manifest our desire and intention to assume the relation to the American community which our parents had in their life-time. Continuing the chain of tradition that binds generation to generation, we express our undying faith in God’s love and justice, and pray that He will speed the day when His Kingdom shall finally be established and His peace pervade the World. O Lord and King Who are full of compassion, in whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all flesh, to Thine all-wise care do we commit the souls of our dear ones who have departed from this Earth. Teach all who mourn to accept the judgment of Thine inscrutable will and cause them to know the sweetness of Thy consolation. Quicken by Thy holy word those bowed in sorrow, that like all the faithful in American who have gone before, they too may be faithful to Thy Word and thus advance the reign of Thy Kingdom upon Earth. In solemn testimony to that unbroken faith which links the generations one to another, please let those who mourn now rise to magnify and sanctify Thy holy name. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
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The Earth Dries Up and Withers, the World Languishes and Withers!
They say what you send around, comes around. Perhaps that is true, even if it takes a thousand years. Everyone is born. Everyone will die. This is the short summary of life. Although it is accurate, the story certainly leaves out a lot, does it not? How might we develop a fuller picture of what happens during a lifetime? Perhaps we can begin by studying interesting lives. We are all affected by the same universal principles that guide human development. Each of us will face problems on the path to healthy development. Some obstacles, such as learning to walk of finding a personal identity, are universal. Others are unusual or specialized. The challenges of development extend far beyond childhood and into old age. There really is no such thing as a “typical person” or a “typical life.” Nevertheless, broad similarities can be found in the life stages of infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, and old age. Each stage confronts a person with new developmental tasks that must be mastered for optimal development. The spread of industrialism was dependent upon the synchronization of human behaviour with the rhythms of the machines. Synchronization was one of the guiding principles of Second Wave civilization, and everywhere the people of industrialism appeared to outsiders to be time-obsessed, always glancing nervously as their watches. To bring about this time-consciousness and achieve synchronization, however, people’s basic assumptions about time—their mental images of time—had to be transformed. A new “software of time” was needed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Agricultural populations, needing to know when to plant and when to harvest, developed remarkable precision in the measurement of long spans of time. However, because they did not require close synchronization of human labour, peasant peoples seldom developed precise units for measuring short spans. They typically divided time not into fixed units, like hours or minutes, but into loose, imprecise chunks representing the length of time needed to perform some homely task. A farmer might refer to an interval as “a cow milking time.” In Madagascar, an accepted unit of time was called “a rice cooking”; a moment was known as “the frying of a locust.” Englishmen spoke of a “pater noster wyle”—the time needed for a prayer—or, more earthily, of a “pissing while.” Similarly, because there was little exchange between one community or village and the next, and because work did not require it, the units in which time was mentally packaged varied from place to place and season to season. In medieval northern Europe, for example, daylight was divided into equal hours. However, since the interval between dawn and sunset varied from day to day, an “hour” in December was shorter than an “hour” in March or June. Instead of vague intervals like a pater noster wyle, industrial societies needed extremely precise units like hour, minute, or second. And these units had to be standardized, interchangeable from one season or community to the next. Today the entire World is neatly divided into time zones. We speak of “standard” time. Pilots all over the globe refer back to “Zulu” time—id est, Greenwich Mean Time. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
By international convention Greenwich, England, became the point from which all time differences would be measured. Periodically, in unison, as though motivated by a single will, millions of people set their clocks back or forward an hour, and whatever our inner, subjective sense of things may tell us when time is dragging, or conversely when it seems to be whizzing by, and hour is now a single interchangeable, standardized hour. Second Wave civilization did more than cut time up into more precise and standard chunks. It also placed these chunks in a straight line that extended indefinitely back into the past and forward into the future. It made time linear. Indeed, the assumption that time is linelike is so deeply embedded in our thoughts that it is hard for those of us raised in Second Wave societies to conceive of any alternative. Yet many preindustrial societies, and some First Wave societies even today, see time as a circle, not a straight line. From the Mayas to the Buddhists and the Hindus, time was circular and repetitive, history repeating itself endlessly, lives perhaps reliving themselves through reincarnation. The idea that time was like a great circle is fond in the Hindu concept of recurrent kalpas, each one four thousand million years long, each representing but a single Brahma day beginning with re-creation, ending in dissolution, and beginning again. The notion of circular time is found in Plato and Aristotle, one of whose students, Eudemus, pictured himself living through the same moment again and again as the cycle repeated itself. It was taught by Pythagoras. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
In Time and Eastern Man, Joseph Needham tells us that “For the Indo-Hellenic…time is cyclical and eternal.” Moreover, while in China the idea of linear time dominated, according to Needham, “Cyclical time was certainly prominent among the early Taoist speculative philosophers.” In Europe, too, in the centuries preceding industrialization, these alternative views of time coexisted. “Throughout the whole medieval period,” writes mathematician G. J. Whitrow, “the cyclic and linear concepts of time were in conflict. The linear concept was fostered by the mercantile class and the rise of a money economy. For as long as power was concentrated in the ownership of land, time was felt to be plentiful and was associated with the unchanging cycle of soil.” As the Second Wave gathered force this ago-old conflict was settled: liner time triumphed. Linear time became the dominant view in every industrial society, East or West. Time came to be seen as a highway unrolling from a distant past through the present toward the future, and this conception of time, alien to billions of humans who lived before industrial civilization, became the basis of all economic suit of IBM, the Japanese Economic Planning Agency, or the Soviet Academy. It is worth noting, however, that linear time was a precondition for indust-real views of evolution and progress. Liner time made evolution and progress plausible. For if time were circular instead of linelike, if events doubled back on themselves instead of moving in a single direction, it would mean that history repeated itself and the evolution and progress were no more than illusions—shadows on the wall of time. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Synchronization Standardization. Linearization. They affected the root assumption of civilization and they brought massive changes in the way ordinary people handled time in their loves. However, if time itself was transformed, space, too, had to be repackaged to fit into the new indust-reality. Then suddenly in the 1950s, urban-based intellectual discovered the suburbs. And what they discovered, to their horror, was an aesthetic and social dreamland filled with beautiful, new tract housing with big emerald green lawns, trees, bushes, and flowers, station wagons, sports cars and sedans, and organization men, housewives, and children. However, attention was riveted almost exclusively on the supposed negative consequences of city-oriented intellectuals, particularly those living in New York City, was that the postwar suburbs were an unmitigated aesthetic and social disaster. Suburbia was equated with the emergence of a popular mass culture dominated by the mass media. The neatness and repetitiveness of popular taste was blamed on the suburbs. They became a scapegoat for all that the cosmopolitan critics disliked about modern life. Often, this was accompanied with glorification of the past. In The City History Lewis Mumford bemoaned the growth of middle-class suburbs: “While the suburbs served only a favored minority, it neither spoiled the countryside nor threatened the city. But now that the drift to the outer ring has become a mass movement, it tends to destroy both environments without producing anything but a dreary substitute, devoid of form and even more devoid of the original suburban values.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
Further this mass exodus to suburbia was resulting in: “a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, in uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same tasteless prefabricated food, from the same freezers, conforming in every outward and inward respect to a common mold manufacture in the central metropolis (Mumford, 1961, p. 486). Mr. Mumford, like other cosmopolitan critics, seemed particularly offended that suburbia was developing not as planned communities for those of taste, but as mass suburbanization for the common man. Often, as in the above quotation, the characteristics of the housing and the characteristics of the suburban residents were directly linked. And both were clearly found wanting. The critics embraced an extreme form of environmental determinism in which the characteristics of the area determined the character of the inhabitants. According to a 1964 New York Times Magazine article by elitist Ada Louise Huxtable, the long-time New York Times architecture critic, “It is a shocking fact that more than 90 percent of builders’ homes are not designed by architects…and the consequent damage “is social, cultural, psychological, and emotional, as well as aesthetic” (Ada Louise Huxtable, “Clusters Instead of Slurbs,” New York Times Magazine, February 9, 1964, pp. 37-44). #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Suburbia was thought by some to be a dismal place where mediocrity ruled and about which no intellectual could say anything favourable—even if they lived in one. The same biased criticism of popular tastes and cultural uniformity was delivered with far more humour in Malvina Reynolds’s folksong “Little Boxes.” Sung for decades by Pete Seeger to the point where it has become an American classic, the opening lines to the lyrics are: “Little Boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky, little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same. There’s a green one and pink one and a blue one and a yellow one and they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.” This point that the little boxes and the people who lived in them are all the same was a core belief of the city-based intellectual critics of suburbs. It was a given that suburbs bred conformity. Ironically, the children born in the little boxes would spawn the cultural revolution of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. It was the children of the suburbs who celebrated at Woodstock and Coachella. It should also be noted that this pattern of urban cities detailing the ills of suburbia is not a phenomenon common only to earlier decades. Even in 1993, in The New York Times, one could find a feature article bemoaning the isolation and lack of intellectual and cultural activities in suburbia, As stated in the article, “escapees from Manhattan have found that along with the gains have come unexpected nuisances, even deep feelings of loss. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
“And what is more, the unpleasant surprises are often the flip side of precisely the attractions that drew them to the suburbs in the first place. The emigres discover they can walk virtually anywhere at night without fear. But where to walk? So few places worth walking are open after dark…Some discover that at times their snug home on its separate lot, without a doorman downstairs or neighbor above and below, makes them feel lonely and more vulnerable, not more secure. And when pipes leak and the heat shuts off, they learn that the joys of the suburbs do not include supers” (Joseph Berger, “Emigres in Suburbs Find Life’s Flip Side,” New York Times, January 24, 1993, Metro p.30). Sounds a lot like satire. Nonetheless, there are significant differences between contemporary articles, such as that quoted above, and the typical piece written during earlier decades. While both might decry the absences of all-night take-out, current articles acknowledge that in addition to the opera, the city also has serious problems, such as old buildings with pest, noise, foul smells, a high density of unfriendly people packed into one place, lack of privacy and family values, political tensions are more visible, there are issues with parking and traffic, poor air quality, the menace of muggers and aggressive panhandlers. Contemporary laments are also less likely to be angry diatribes and more likely to be done tongue-in-cheek, with humour. Finally, the authors of contemporary suburban criticisms are more likely to be themselves suburbanites. They miss the city, but they, like most Americans having the choice, have chosen to live elsewhere. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
The writer of the New York Times piece, for example, had moved to Westchester from the West Side of Manhattan some twenty months earlier. Envy impedes our spiritual growth and harms our relationship with others. Yet with hard work and the Lord’s help, it can be overcome. Most of us will experience envy at one time or another. The danger comes when we remain unaware of our envy or do not handle it appropriately; then it has the potential to harm us and may cause us to think or act badly toward others. “For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work,” reports James 3.16. However, by eliminating envy, we can improve our relationships with others and our view of ourselves. When we realize we are not competing with others, we can then rejoice in their accomplishments. The practice of comparing ourselves to others is usually at the root of envy. It causes us to feel that we are not good enough and that in order to be acceptable we have to achieve more, acquire more, or in other ways appear to be “better” than others. It occurs when we do not value ourselves sufficiently as children of God and consequently feel we have to prove our worth by “doing” or “having.” Envy is a form of pride. Pride can create enmity, or hatred, which separates us from our fellow humans. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. Part of the reason envy can be so difficult to recognize in ourselves is that it often disguises itself in other feelings and behaviours. One disguise envy wears is the tendency to criticize. Another is the desire to act in a way that will provoke envy in others. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The good news is, once we unmask envy and begin to eliminate it, we can begin to feel much better about ourselves and others around us. Like layers of accumulated paint, envy covers our true worth, making it difficult to see ourselves accurately and change our beliefs so that we can feel better about ourselves. There are at least five reason why we need to be concerned about envy in ourselves: it blocks us from growing spiritually, it keeps us from having pure motives, it creates an “us against them” mentality, it can make us feel negative toward others, and a desire to be envied can cause others to feel negative toward us. When we grow up feeling that we are not loved for who we are and instead are criticized or are valued for how we compare to others, we can develop the habit of looking outside ourselves to feel good. People who try to pump up their self-worth by gaining the admiration of others for their thought or knowledge in reality may be suffering from a lack of understanding of their worth, and their true relation to God. However, as children of our Heavenly Father, each of us has inherent worth and has been endowed with divine potential. “We are the children of God,” the Apostle Paul declared, “and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ,” reports Romans 8.16-17. Many of us have inner standards of excellence and perfection that are hard or even impossible to meet, often causing emotional pain. We may have a hard time admitting mistake and living with imperfections. If not careful, we can end up envious of those who seem to achieve more or seem more comfortable being imperfect. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
It was once written “To oneself be true.” But who do we know who we are? One must learn to focus one’s assertive aggressive and hostile feelings, so that these do no suffuse too many inappropriate parts of oneself or one’s World. Learn to become less hostile and become more approachable so that better contact can be obtained from those you know and work with. This will allow anxiety to diminish. Self-acceptance is also useful in attacking the inner voices which persecuted oneself at times, denying one right to life and happiness. Having established the right to live, and a channel through which love and care can reach one, one will began to take an interest in the wide and varied World of other people and things. Having established the rudiment of self, mental illness can come to an end and one can be engaged in intellectual activity, accomplishing good work with success and ease. One may not only remain cured, without any recurrences of pathology, but one’s personality may continue to develop and may gain in strength. The basic anxiety-producing conflicts in human beings are no over the “gratification of desires” but over the frightening struggle to maintain themselves in existence at all as genuine individual persons. Of course guilt is a real experience and must be accepted, and there is no therapeutic result unless feelings of guilt are cleared up, but guilt is no at the core of psychological distress. Pathological guilt is a struggle to maintain object-relations, a defence against disintegration, and is a state of mind that is preferred to being undermined by irresistible fears. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The core of psychological distress is simply elementary fear, however much it gets transformed into guilt: fear carrying with it the feeling of weakness and inability to cope with life, fear possessing the psyche to such an extent that “ego-experience” cannot get started. People are dependent on the opportunities which the environment offers; one’s potentialities flourish best in an environment that understands, supports, and encourages individual growth. If the environment is unsatisfactory, development may be distorted or arrested. The True Self is as yet only potential; it will not be realized in unfavourable circumstances. Vulnerability to separation-anxiety exists when the human being is not ego-related. Ego-relatedness allows the individual to be protected by the presence of others without being impinged on by them. Given this, the vulnerable individual is able to develop in one’s individual way, without fear either of devastating loneliness or of devastating damage. People can begin to experience separateness from others, without losing one’s sense of security. The sense of belonging, of being securely in touch, as it grows in an individual by virtue of having relationships that are reliable, becomes an established property of one’s own psyche. When people feel totally secure and invulnerable, they gain proof that their trust is justified by finding they have experienced stable relationships in life. People who have not had enough of this good experience are excessively vulnerable to even the slightest loss of support. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Their chronic overdependence is a genuine compulsion which they cannot evade by effort, will-power, or intellectual understanding. Their only hope is to find someone who can understand them and help them grow out of it. That is what psychotherapy is. The need is for a relationship in which people can experience being securely held while they venture to be in touch with thoughts, feelings, or parts of the self from which fear has long kept them estranged. “Love made angry” is what happens when you want love from a person who is not giving it—you become angry with them in an attempt to force the to give what you want. This is called “coercive anger.” Obviously, at some point this anger must lead to worry hat your anger will drive away the very person you need, and for some this will lead on to guilt at having hurt the feelings of someone they care about. Not getting what you want, worrying about losing a loved person, having to live without love and mutual concern, makes you depressed as well as angry. One the bright side, however, you may in your anger turn to another person in the hope that they will love you better and so you have another chance. “Love made hungry” describes the view of the schizoid position. When you cannot get what you want from the person you love and need, it may be that instead of getting angry you simply feel more and more needy, with an ever stronger craving to get total possession of the loved person, to ensure that you will never be left wanting. However, then you may be visited by the terrible fear that your love has become so overwhelming and devouring that it will destroy your loved one, and that then there will be nothing left of them. And indeed, this can happen. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
The depression which comes from this craving brings aloofness with it: you withdraw from loving because loving destroys those you love. In this case, there is no second chance, because if that is what you believe to be the nature of love and this is what you do, you dare not love anyone for fear that it will lead to the destruction either of them or of you. The love-made-angry depressed person looks on one’s loved one as a hateful denier (a Rejecting Object), while the love-made-hungry schizoid person sees one’s beloved as a desirable deserter (an Exciting Frustrating Object) never to be fully possessed. When people reaching out and finding nothing there, the individual’s excitement about life meets with no response in the World of other people and things, so that one must turn back on oneself and be satisfied with one’s phantasies of what one wants, ceasing to look for satisfaction in a World devoid of interest. (In psycho-analytic language, cathexis is withdrawn from the object-World.) This sense of emptiness and void may be experienced where there would normally be connection with people and things, so that the individual feels one has nothing to hang on to and lacks any sense of secure attachment. In this case, one experiences their loved one’s as void and emptiness. At other times, void and emptiness may be experienced as coming from the self, as a frequent experience of hunger, for instance—the individual experiencing oneself as hungry-empty-needy-urgent-demanding-greedy-tearing-emptying in relation to their loved ones. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Every human must confront the monster within oneself, if one is ever to find peace without. There is always a two-endednes of relationships. This is not the case when one end of the relationship is experienced as not there: the experience that “the World is empty and des not hold anything for me” may be equivalent to “I am empty and cannot hold anything or anyone securely. Similarly “I am empty and will destroy, swallow, overwhelm the World” may be experienced as indistinguishable from “The World is empty and will overwhelm, destroy, swallow me.” People may experience all these possibilities, either simultaneously or in mood-swings up and down consecutively, however mutually contradictory they may seem to common sense (or rather to the “Central Ego”). Some people dread entering personal relationships which demand deep and genuine feeling on both sides. Such people may have felt compelled to withdraw heir consciousness into a relatively small area because, although their need for love is as great as anyone’s, it operates at the emotional level of absolute infantile dependence filled with need and greed and the terror of abandonment. At that level, dimly aware of their enormous need, they feel faced with risk of total loss and destruction, both of themselves and of those they love. It is the form their own love has taken and they have little knowledge of any other. Loving, therefore, seems to present them with a terrifying choice, in which both alternatives lead to loss and destruction for someone. If they let themselves be loved, that means they must let themselves be swallowed up and taken over: they must be totally compliant and cease to be an individual. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
If they let themselves love other people, this means that they themselves will inevitably take them over, insisting on their total compliance and swallowing them whole. Then the loved ones will disappear as real people. In this plight, some people try to comprise. This is called the in/out programme. Driven by their need to love and be with others, they go into a relationship but at once feel driven out again by their fear of exhausting the person they love with the demands they want to make on them, or by their fear of losing themselves through overdependence and compliance. Others escape this painful oscillation by withdrawing from feelings and relationships altogether. They then feel a dreadful meaningless emptiness. Their consciousness is confirmed to the unfeeling Central Ego, which relates only to idealized perfectly good and perfectly bad “inner objects.” Such uncomplicated phantasy-figures are all that they (selectively) perceive of all that the varied World of people and things has to offer. Libidinal relationships are quite disowned, though anti-libidinal ones may be used to keep libidinal strivings down. We can imagine spouses who feel like this being emotionless and unresponsive when their loved one’s tries to relate to them. We can imagine the dependent loved one’ greed for love and their fear of needing it. We can imagine the dependent loved one summoning up all their strength, in turn, to avoid evidence of feeling, and maturing, and becoming independent or single or having to be more of a provider in life. Out of experience in the World, from infancy onward, we form schema—ways of organizing and interpreting reality. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Lacking a schema to interpret ambiguous aspects of life, one probably does not form rational ideas about things they do not understand. As one continues to focus on reality, their mind struggles to make sense out of the apparent chaos. With patience one eventually imposes order, by seeing a reality that makes sense to them. Note, that once your mind forms a social construction of reality it controls your perception—so much so that it becomes virtually impossible not to perceive the many things that we take for granted and believe are objective reality are actually socially constructed, and thus, can change as society changes. The theory of social constructionism states that meaning and knowledge are socially created, and our assumptions and expectations may give us a perceptual set—a predisposition to interpret an ambiguous stimulus one way rather than another. Social constructionist believe that things are generally viewed as natural or normal in society, such as understandings of gender, race, class, and disability, are socially constructed, and consequently are not an accurate reflection of reality. Once preliminary hunches are formed based on a certain construction of reality, even if it is badly distorted, they interfere with accurate perceptions. Having formed a wrong idea about reality, people have more difficulty seeing the truth. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we being to the experience. Social constructs are often created within specific institutions and cultures and come to prominence in certain historical periods. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Our expectations influence how we see things. To see is to believe, but social constructs’ dependence of historical, political, and economic conditions can lead them to evolve and change. For all these reasons, religious perceptions depend on the state of the perceiver as well as on external reality. Depending on one’s perceptual set, a thought that pops into the mind while meditating may be perceived as a random cognition or as the still small voice of God. Moses perceived his burning bush and mountaintop experiences through the eyes of faith and thus assigned them a profound religious significance that would have been meaningless to someone lacking one’s perceptual sets. Imagine yourself looking with a friend at a clear night sky. Your friend points overhead and says, “Do you see the Little Bear?” Looking at the very same stars, you cannot perceive what your friend so clearly sees. Why? Because your friend, having taken the trouble to study star patterns, has eyes to see what you are not ready to notice. Similarly, people may see the Heavens, which declare the glory of God, yet not see that the Heavens, which declare the glory of God, yet not see that the Heavens are declaring God’s glory. Only the heart that already has faith will see the Heavens in the way. The point has been recognized even by religious skeptics, such as the philosopher Paul Kurtz: “I have wondered at times: Is it I who lacks religious sense, and is this due to a defeat of character? The tone-deaf are unable to fully appreciate the intensity of music, and the color-blind live in the World denuded of brightness and hue.” #RandolphHarrs 18 of 25
To have a religious experience is thus to assign sensory experience spiritual significance. It is to interpret phenomena with an awareness of the presence of God. Those who have a schema for interpreting life through the eyes of faith are like those who have a schema for perceiving the dalmatian: they have difficulty viewing things another way, yet sometimes find I hard to get others to see reality as they do. To refer simply to “religious experiences” as if we all knew exactly what we meant by them and had an agreed-upon definition would be naïve. In different religious traditions and in different historical epochs religious experience has referred to many different things. In the last few decades there has been, within the Christian tradition, a wide resurgence of interest in unusual religious experience. What are we to make of them? In the 1950s, Aldous Huxley invited his readers to take advantage of mind-altering drugs to give them new spiritual experiences. In the 1970s, Timothy Leary was a great advocate of altering consciousness with hallucinogenic drugs. Sadly, today, we are living with the tragic consequences to many of those who followed Leary’s advice and who now suffer. Even so, many of the drug takers longed for better spiritual awareness. However, if religious experience can be induced through drugs, what are we to make of what we believe are normal religious experiences? How can we properly understand them and derive the greatest benefit from them? Furthermore, how do we answer those who set aside all religious experiences on the grounds that we can give them an explanation in terms of psychology or physiology? The great philosopher Bertrand Russell, for example, asked, “What is the difference between a person who drinks alcohol and sees green snakes, and a person who half starves himself to death and sees God?” #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
We know from the use of hallucinogenic drugs, as well as from the agonizing experiences of some mentally ill people, that religious experiences can be a sign of psychopathology. The hardheaded and previously skeptical philosopher Simone Weil did not regard her spontaneous mystical experiences as proof of reality of God or of the truth of Christian doctrines. Rather, she saw the as drawing attention to, or helping to focus upon, a spiritual understanding of the things of this World: “If I light an electric torch at night, I don’t judge its power by looking at the bulb, but by seeing how many objects it lights up. The brightness of a source of light is appreciated by the illumination it projects upon non-luminous. The value of a religious or, more generally, a spiritual way of life is appreciated by the amount of illumination thrown up the things of this World.” It is not the experience that matters but the effects of that experience. The evidences for the reality of a spiritual experience should be seen in the subsequent life of the experiencer. The changed life of apostle Paul is the classic example of this. Spiritual experiences matter, but feelings are not the ultimate criterion for judging spirituality. Rather, “you will know them by their fruits.” With the schema of faith, a whole set of perceptions forcefully takes hold of one’s consciousness. Jesus Christ is perceived not as a psychotic but an incarnation of God. The Universe is seen not as a meaningless material reality, but as God’s creative handiwork—the ultimate miracle that makes little sense without a Creator. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
Life itself takes on purpose in a World where humans are viewed as called to recognize their limits and their value to their Creator, to assume their responsibility for the Earth and for each other’s welfare, and to serve and enjoy God forever. Lord, please open our eyes that we may see. Keep vivid in your memory the many splendid exploits of the Holy Fathers of the desert. In their lives true religious perfection has shone out like a flaming beacon on a hill. Sad to say, what we have been able to accomplish in our own modest lives adds up to a guttering candle. As Saints and friends of Christ, they served the Lord in famine and drought, coldness and nakedness, labour and fatigue, vigils and fasts, holy prayers and meditations, persecutions and derisions. Oh, how they suffered, the Apostles, the Martyrs, the Confessors, the Virgins, and all the rest who followed close upon the footsteps of Christ! They did the evangelical thing, at least as described by John (12.25), dispossessing their souls in this World that they might possess them in the next. Oh, how isolated and dedicated was the life of the Holy Fathers led in the desert! Their temptations were long and lurid, but they managed to endure. The Enemy harassed them suddenly and frequently. Just as sudden and frequent were the prayers they shot to Heaven. Their abstinences were rugged, but they managed to swallow their hunger. Crazed was their desire for spiritual progress! Feverish was their battle against what seemed the overwhelming supremacy of their vices! #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Through it all they held fast to God. Through the day they worked hard and prayed quietly to survive their harsh life; through the night they prayed, even in their sleep, their snores rising like incense to the Lord. Every hour of work seemed too long; every hour of prayer, too short. Making time to eat was impossible. The sweetness of contemplation was irresistible. All wealth, title, and honour, every friend and relative, they renounced. Nothing that smacked of all the World did they want to have. The necessities of life they scarcely touched. The pangs in their stomachs they begrudgingly satisfied. And so poor were they in the things of this World, but rich, so very rich, in graces and virtues! They were ravaged on the outside, but on the inside they were refreshed with Grace and Divine Consolation. The Fathers of the desert were aliens in their own World, but close family friends with God. In their own eyes self-esteem had no value, and hence they dressed like castaways. However, in the eyes of God they were precious, chosen ones, and further haberdashery was far from their minds. They stood in True Humility; they lived in Simple Obedience; they walked in Charity and Patience. And so daily they progressed in spirit and obtained great grace in God’s presence. They have been given as examples to all Religious and ought to rouse us to more spiritual progress. Standing in opposition to them are the Tepids, milling around every which way, affirming and denying, mummering and murmuring, whispering the rest of the World to a spiritual standstill. Religious orders, when they were founded, were quite remarkable gardens. Hotbeds of fervour they were. Their prayers were awash with devotion. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Their virtue was pruned and precise. Discipline, sometimes harsh and heavy-handed, took root. Under the rule of their Founder, and indeed under the inspiration of the Founder of Founders, Reverence and Obedience walked hand-in-hand down the garden path. These truly holy and perfect men poured out their lives in the strenuous fight against the World. The footprints they left behind are visible to this day. Odd thing, though. Today’s self-actualized, who is anything but exceptional when compared to the self-actualized of old, seems to be the exception to the rule; that is to say, one is thought to be observant and does no rock the boat, but there is not a great deal else that one does. Ah, the laziness and sloppiness of the religious life today! What Worldly winds could have cooled he fervour of our white-hot forge! Whatever happened to Motivation and Enthusiasm? They are nowhere to be seen! Is it any wonder, then, that the desire to live the religious life has decreased? Once so awake during the nocturnal watch, now you are found snoring on the battlement. Is this any way to live the religious life? And you of all people! You have had the privilege of meeting many of the devout Religious in your own community in the generation just passed. In Earth Prayers, the pain of the Earth is expressed. Knowing that the World is an intricate balance of parts we see that if one of the parts is sick or wounded, its plight and suffering affects us all. Here we humble ourselves before all creation and allow the outcries of despair from around the globe to touch our hearts, opened by the realization of an ecological self. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
Today the ability of the Earth to support life is being deeply eroded. The evidence is everywhere. We are mindlessly destroying the very web of life; millions of people are dying each year as a result of direct ecological collapse. Within the animal and plant kingdoms we are witnessing the greatest holocaust in history. Millions of species are on the verge of extinction. The old forests are being felled, the top soil washed away, and the groundwater contaminated. The air is polluted and the ran is acid. So the litany goes on, as every aspect of life on the planet is profoundly altered by the way our culture has organized the business of its existence. They have lost it, lost it, and their children will never even wish for it—and I am afraid…because the sun keeps rising and these days nobody sings. While many of us are aware of the destruction taking place on our planet, it is difficult to integrate this knowledge into our daily life. What do we do when it is not war that is killing us, but progress? When the problem is not the actions of an evil “other,” but ourselves? We fear the despair such information provokes. We do not want to feel the grief over all that is lost, nor our own complicity in the damage. This denial of feeling takes a heavy toll on us, impoverishing our sensory and emotional life. Ultimately, it puts us out of touch with reality. There is a historical tradition of prayer that foresees the ruination of the World because of human transgression. We find in the Old Testament, we find it again in the prayers of Native Americas as they witness the destruction of their way of life by conquerors. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
We are hearing it again now, as citizens from around the World express their fears and their grief at what is happening to the Earth. We have forgotten who are are. We have sought only our own security, we have exploited simply for our own ends, we have distorted our knowledge, we have abused our power. “The Earth dries up and withers, the World languishes and withers, the Heavens languish together with the Earth. The Earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statues, broken the everlasting covenant,” reports Isaiah 24.4-5. We therefore hope in Thee, O Lord our God, that we may soon behold the glory of Thy might, when Thou wilt remove the abominations from the Earth and when all idolatry will be abolished. We hope for the day when the World will be perfected under the Kingdom of the Almighty, and all humankind will call upon Thy name; when Thou wilt turn unto Thyself all the wicked of the Earth. May all the inhabitants of the World perceive and know that unto Thee every knee must bend, every tongue vow loyalty. Before Thee, O Lord our God, may they bow in worship, giving honour unto Thy glorious name. May they all accept the yoke of Thy Kingdom and do Thou rule over them speedily and forevermore. For the Kingdom is Thine and to tall eternity Thou wilt reign in glory; as it is written in Thy Holy Bible: The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. And it has been foretold: The Lord shall be King over all the Earth; on that day the Lord shall be One, and His name One. After some weeks on a healthy diet, the intellectual type of person will find, as I found, that there is greater mental clarity and greater mental drive. In fact, there may even be a tendency to overwork intellectually in reading and writing. A century ago, John Linton, of England, reported the result of a long period on a healthy diet in these words: “I was able to write with an ease and perspicacity and satisfaction which I had never before known, or had any idea of.” #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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An advantage of biologically programmed behaviour is that it prepares terrestrial beings to survive in their natural environments. A disadvantage is that evolution is slow. Natural selection prepares a species only for a future which resembles the biological past. If know is power, and power corrupts, how will humankind ever survive. As Second Wave civilization pushed its tentacles across the planet, transforming everything with which it came in contact, it carried with it more than technology or trade. Colliding with First Wave civilization, the Second Wave created not only a new reality for millions but a new way of thinking about reality. Clashing at a thousand points with the values, concepts, myths, and morals of agricultural society, the Second Wave brought with it a redefinition of God…of justice…of love…of power…of beauty. It stirred up new ideas, attitudes, and analogies. It subverted and superseded ancient assumptions about time, space, matter, and causality. A powerful, coherent World view emerged that not only explained but justified Second Wave reality. This World view of industrial society has not had a name. It might best be termed “indust-reality.” Indust-realty was the overarching set of ideas and assumptions with which the children of industrialism were taught to understand their World. It was the package of premises employed by Second Wave civilization, by its scientists, business leaders, state’s people, philosophers, and propagandists. There were, of course, contervoices, those who challenged the dominant ideas of indust-reality, but we are concerned here not with the side currents but with the mainstream of Second Wave thought. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
On the surface, it seemed, there was no mainstream at all. Rather, it appeared that there were two powerful ideological currents in conflict. By the middle of the nineteenth century every industrial nation has its sharply defined left wing and its right, its advocates of individualism and free enterprise, and its advocates of collectivism and socialism. This battle of ideologies, at first confined to the industrializing nations themselves, soon spread around the globe. With the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the organization of a centrally directed Worldwide propaganda machine, the ideological struggle grew even more intense. And by the end of World War II, as the United States and Russian attempted to reintegrate the World market—or large parts of it—on their own terms, each side was spending huge sums to spread its doctrines to the World’s non-industrial peoples. On one side were totalitarian regimes, on the other the socalled liberal democracies. Guns and bombs stood ready to take up where logical arguments ended. Seldom since the great collision of Catholicism and Protestantism during the Reformation had doctrinal lines been so sharply drawn between two theological camps. What few noticed, however, in the heat of this propaganda war, was that while each side promoted a different ideology, both were essentially hawking the same superideology. Their conclusions—their economic programs and political dogmas—differed radically, but many of their starting assumptions were the same. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Like Protestant and Catholic missionaries clutching different versions of the Christian Bible, yet both preaching Christ, Marxists and anti-Marxists alike, capitalists and anticapitalists, Americans and Russians marched into Africa, Asia, and Latin America—the non-industrial regions of the World—blindly bearing the same set of fundamental premises. Bothe preached the superiority of industrialism to all other civilization. Both were passionate apostles of indust-reality. The World view they disseminated was based on three deeply intertwined “indust-real” beliefs—three ideas that bound all Second Wave nations together and differentiated them from much of the rest of the World. The first of these core beliefs had to do with nature. While socialists and capitalist might disagree violently about how to share its fruits, both looked upon nature in the same way. For both, nature was an object waiting to be exploited. The idea that humans should hold dominion over nature can be traced at least as far back as Genesis. “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the Heavens and over every living thing that moves on the Earth,” reports Genesis 1.28. Nevertheless, it was decidedly a minority view until the industrial revolution. Most earlier cultures emphasized instead an acceptance of poverty and the harmony of humankind with its surrounding natural ecology. These earlier cultures were not particularly gentle with nature. They slashed and burned, overgrazed, and stripped the forests for firewood. However, their power to do damage was limited. They had no great impact on the Earth and no need for an explicit ideology to justify the damage they did. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Perhaps earlier cultures had no idea the damage they were doing? However, not all capitalist did damage, they may have had good intentions. For instance, Oliver Fisher Winchester, November 30, 1810—December 10, 1880. Went from New England farm boy to World-renowned industrialist and entrepreneur. In addition to his role in building the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, he was a generous patron of Yale University and a founder of the Yale National Bank and the New Haven Water Company, and he was elected lieutenant governor of Connecticut in 1866. The New Haven Palladium eulogized him as “an eminent citizen, to whose public spirit and private enterprise [New Haven] is indebted for much of her present property…The great establishment which he organized, and to which he gave his name, stands to-day as a monument to the great ability and enterprise which marked his whole business career.” Many people credit or blame the Winchester’s for creating guns, but they did not. They only revolutionized gun production. Firearms have been major instruments in the course of history since their first primitive appearance in the fourteenth century. However, in all that time no marker of longarms can equal the international image of adventure attached to the Winchester. The historian, collector, or curator who pursues the Holy Grail of Winchester belongs to a select group of devotees of one of the most fascinating marques in Americana. Arguably it is the Winchester that won the West. And the two most glamorous and sought-after blue chips in gun collecting Worldwide are Colt, primarily a handgun maker, and Winchester, primarily a maker of shoulder guns. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Designed with mechanical ingenuity and made with advanced manufacturing techniques—mass production decades before Henry Ford and the automobile—most Winchester were graceful and handsome in line and form. And for the lover of decorative arts a prized portion of production has the extra merit of hand decoration such as gold-plated engravings of the Goddess of Liberty, inspired engravings on gold plating of deer, and Hiram Powers’s The Greek Slave, and other patterns in silver and gold plating. Increasingly the most prized Winchesters are leaving private hands and becoming permanent exhibits in museums. Some are worth in the range of a nice used car, a mansion, while others are priceless. Among the many guns Mr. Winchester own, two of his prized possessions were a deluxe pair of ivory-gripped Volcanic Navy pistols, which were passed down through the family. Mr. Winchester made magnificent guns like the standard silver-plated and blue navy pistol with rosewood grips, or a pocket pistol with walnut. There were also other guns with hand decorations of checkered or carved select-gain stocks, special finishes, engraving and precious- metal inlaying, and sometimes elegant casings. A few were presentations, even gifts of the state. Tracing its origins back to 1849, Winchester is the oldest maker of lever-action repeating firearms in the World, and at is peak in the twentieth century was the largest gunmaker in the World with over 18,000 employees. As an ammunition manufacturer, Winchester remains the World’s largest. The marque is also possessor of one of history’s most famous brand names. In many respects Winchester is to firearms and ammunition as Ferrari is to automobiles and Tiffany is to silver. Now, you may be wondering why is Winchester so important? Well, there are many reasons. When America did not have law and order, people needed a way to protect themselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
For instance, in a July 14, 1863 newspaper report, in the Louisville Journal, written by its editor George D. Prentice, was highly laudatory: “In the days, when rebel outlaws and raids are becoming common in Kentucky, when guerillas are scouring different countries nightly, and practising the most atrocious outrages, when even the central positions of our State are openly threatened, and when it is understood in high quarters that secret companies are on foot for a sudden and general insurrection as some favorable moment, it behooves every loyal citizen to prepare himself upon his own responsibility with the best weapon of defense that can be obtained. And certainly the simplest, surest, and most effective weapon that we know of, the weapon that could be used with the most tremendous results in case of an outbreak or invasion, is one that we have mentioned recently upon two or three occasions, the newly invented rifle of Henry, now on exhibition, and for sale at Messrs. Jas. Low and Co.’s, Sixth street. This rifle, as we have stated, can be loaded in eight or ten seconds with fifteen cartridges, and the whole number can be fired in fifteen seconds or less, so that one man, with the weapon is equal to fifteen armed with ordinary guns…It may lie loaded for a week at the bottom of a river, and, if taken out, will then fire with as much certainty as if it had been kept perfectly dry all the time. It is remarkably simple, not liable to get out of order, and is utterly free from the objection sometimes urged against other repeating rifles that two or more charges are liable to be fired at once.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Benjamin Tyler Henry was a well-known gun engineer, who was eventually employed by Oliver Winchester when Oliver Winchester became one of the investors in “Smith & Wesson Company,” which changed its name to “Volcanic Repeating Arms Company” in 1855. By 1857, Mr. Winchester had positioned himself as the principal stockholder in the company and relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, changing the name to New Haven Arms Company. The Henry rifle was one of the most noteworthy inventions in the Winchester history. With financial backing from O.F. Winchester, the tooled up revolutionary new repeater had to prove itself. The Henry was of .44 caliber, with a 216-grain conical bullet, backed by a 26-grain powder charge. The birth of this gun was fueled by the Civil War market and by 1862, Henrys were in the field. President Lincoln was so intrigued by them that he test-fired a Spencer repeater on the White House lawn. The future of the Henry was likely boosted by special presentations to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, and even a gift to President Lincoln—all guns with single-digit serial numbers, richly engraved and inscribed, and fitted with rosewood stocks. They Henry was even tested at the Washington Navy Yard (conveniently, Secretary Welles was from Connecticut), reported in May of 1862:187 shots were fired in three minutes and thirty-six second (not counting reloading time). and one of full fifteen-shot magazine was fired in only 10.8 second. A total of 1,040 shots were fired, and hits were made from as far away as 348 feet, at 18-inch-square target—quite impressive accuracy with open sights. The report noted, “It is manifest from the above experiment that his gun may be fired with great rapidity, and is not liable to get out of order. The penetration in proportion to the charge used, compared favorably with that of other arms.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
By July of 1692 the Henry was on the market, and it quickly found popularity with both civilian and military purchasers. An extraordinary encounter between seven Confederates and Captain James M. Wilson, commanding officer of Company M of the 12th Kentucky Cavalry, was widely publicized, appearing in various advertisements and journals. This account shows why protection was needed. H.W.S. Cleveland’s Hint to Riflemen gives an account: “Capt. Wilson had fitted up a long crib across the road from his front door as a sort of arsenal, where he had his Henry Rifle, Colt’s Revolver, et cetera. One day, while at home dining with his family seven mounted guerillas rode up, dismounted and burst into his dining room and commenced firing upon him with revolvers. The attack was so sudden that the first shot struck a glass of water his wife was raising to her lips, breaking the glass. Several other shots were fired without effect, when Capt. Wilson sprang to his feet, exclaiming, ‘For God’s sake, gentlemen, if you wish to murder me, do not do it at my own table in the presence of my family.’ This caused a parley, resulting in their consent that he might go out doors he sprang for his cover, and his assailants commenced firing at him. Several shots passed through his hat, and more through his clothing, but none took effect upon his person. He thus reached his cover and seized his Henry Rifle, turned upon his foes, and in five shots killed five of them; the other two sprung for their horses. As the sixth man threw his hand over the pommel of his saddle, the sixth shot took off four of his fingers; notwithstanding this he got into his saddle, but the seventh shot killed him; then start out, Capt. Wilson killed the seventh man with the eighth shot. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
“In consequence of this feat the State of Kentucky armed his Company with the Henry Rifle.” Wilson’s company was not the only one to be armed with the Henry, but the issuing of such arms was counter to War Department policy. Assistant Secretary of War Peter Watson wrote to O.F. Winchester (August 9, 1862) that “companies arming themselves with Henry’s repeating rifle, will [not] be allowed to retain them in the field…as great inconvenience has resulted from promises heretofore given in other cases to furnish companies of troops with special arms. If you choose to arm and equip a whole regiment at your own expense, or the regiment chooses to arm itself, it will be accepted with the condition that it shall be at liberty to use its own arms and equipments exclusively.” Despite the War Department objections, 240 Henrys were purchased by the federal government for the 1st District of Columbia Cavalry. Inspired by that moral victory, O. F. Winchester gleefully wrote to Brigadier General Ripley stating, “If these arms were sued as efficiently by the men who are to receive them as they have been by our Union friends in Kentucky, the country will have no cause to regret the expenditure.” Still another federal government purchase was 800 more Henrys, to equip the eight companies of Maine cavalry assigned to the 1st District of Columbia Cavalry. Armed also with Spencer rifles, the First Maine had ample opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of breech-loading metallic-cartridge repeaters. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
The regimental chaplain, Samuel H. Merrill wrote in his memoir on the First Maine and the 1st District cavalry units: “This regiment was distinguished by the superiority of the carbines with which it was armed. It was the only regiment in the Army of the Potomac armed with ‘Henry’s Repeating Rifle.’ After having witnessed the effectiveness of the weapon, one is not surprised at the remark, said to have been made by the guerilla chief. Mosby, after an encounter with some of our men, that ‘he did not care for the common gun, or for Spencer’s seven shooter, but as for these guns that they could wind up on Sunday, and shoot all the week, it was useless to fight against them.’” Reports of the successful use of Henrys in the Civil War are numerous, both from the Union point of view and from the Confederates who forced the incessant fire. The incredible firepower, especially in comparison to the muzzle-loading single shots, is evident in Major William Ludlow’s account of the Battle of Allatoona Pass: “What saved us that day…was the fact that we had a number of Henry rifles…These were new guns in those days and [the commander] had held in reserve a company of an Illinois Regiment that was armed with them until a final assault should be made. When the artillery reopened…this company of 16-shooters sprang to the parapet and poured out such a multiplied, rapid, and deadly fire that no men could stay in front of it, and no serious effort was thereafter made to take the fort by assault.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Even though it may have not been the most popular firearm used in the Civil War, it was one of the best and most popular firearm used in the Civil War, the Henry rifle found plenty of use among troops in the Union Army. After the Civil War, O.F. Winchester renamed his increasingly successful firearms company yet one more time, to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Winchester’s lever-action repeating rifles became internationally famous for their speed, ease of use, accuracy, and affordability, the latter of which was assisted by the company’s proprietary use of mass manufactured, interchangeable parts. Sales were also propelled by Winchester’s widespread use of romanticized images of the American west in its marketing. Between the paintings of rugged cowboys, frontiersmen, sportsmen, and enthusiastic endorsements by larger-than-life celebrities like “Buffalo Bill” Cody, and Teddy Roosevelt, who said, “ The Winchester…is by all odds the best weapon I ever had, and I now use it almost exclusively…It is as handy to carry, whether on foot or horseback, and comes up to the shoulder as readily as a shotgun; it is absolutely sure, and there is no recoil to jar and disturb the aim, while it carries accurately quite as far as a man can aim with any degree of certainty…The Winchester is the best gun for any game to be found in the United States, for it is deadly, accurate, and handy as any, stands very rough usage, and is unapproachable for the rapidity of its fire and the facility with which it is loaded.” The Winchester repeating rifle earned an international reputation as “the Gun that Won the West.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
With the coming of the Second Wave civilization one found capitalist industrial gouging resources on a massive scale, pumping voluminous poisons into the air, deforesting whole regions in pursuit of profit, without much thought about side effect or long-term consequences. The idea that nature was there to be exploited provided a convenient rationalization for shortsightedness and selfishness. However, the capitalists were scarcely alone. Wherever they took power, Marxist industrializers (despite their conviction that profit was the root of all evil) acted in exactly the same way. Indeed, they built the conflict with nature right into their scriptures. Marxists pictured primitive peoples not as coexisting harmoniously with nature be as engaged in a fierce life-and-death struggle against it. With the emergence of class society, they held, the war of “man against nature” was unfortunately transformed into a war of “man against man.” The achievement of a Communist classless society would permit humanity to get back to its first order of business once again—the war of man against nature. On both sides of the ideological divide, therefore, one found the same image of humanity standing in opposition to nature and dominating it. This image was a key component of indust-reality, the superideology from which Marxist and anti-Marxist alike drew their assumptions. A second, interrelated idea carried the argument a step further. Humans were not merely in charge of nature, they were the pinnacle of a long process of evolution. Earlier theories of evolution existed, but it was Dr. Darwin, in the middle of the nineteenth century, brought up in the most advanced industrial nation of the time, who provided scientific underpinning for this view. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Dr. Darwin spoke of the bling workings of “natural selection”—an inevitable process that mercilessly weeded out weak and inefficient forms of life. Those species who survived were, by definition, the first. Dr. Darwin was chiefly concerned with biological evolution, but his ideas had distinct social and political overtones that others were quick to recognize. Thus the Social Darwinists argued that the principle of natural selection worked within society as well, and that the wealthiest and most powerful people were, by virtue of that fact, the fittest and the most deserving. It was only a short leap to the idea that whole societies evolve according to the same laws of selection. Following this reasoning, industrialism was a higher stage of evolution than the non-industrial cultures that surrounded it. Second Wave civilization, to put it bluntly, was superior to all the rest. Just as Social Darwinism rationalized capitalism, this cultural arrogance rationalized imperialism. The expanding industrial order needed its lifeline to inexpensive resources, and it created a moral justification for taking them at depressed prices, even at the cost of obliterating agricultural and so-called primitive societies. The idea of social evolution provided intellectual and moral support for the treatment of non-industrial peoples as inferior—and hence unfitted for survival. Dr. Darwin himself wrote unfeelingly of the massacre of the aborigines of Tasmania and, in a burst of genocidal enthusiasm, prophesied that “At some future period…the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the World.” The intellectual front-runners of Second Wave civilization had no doubt about who deserved to survive. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
While Marx bitterly criticizes capitalism and imperialism, he shared the view that industrialism was the most advanced form of society, the stage toward which all other societies would inevitably advance in turn. For the third core belief of indust-reality linked nature and evolution together was the progress principle—the idea that history flows irreversibly toward a better life for humanity. This idea, too, had plenty of preindustrial precedent. However, it was only with the advance of the Second Wave that the idea of Progress with a capital P burst into full flower. Suddenly, as the Second Wave pulsed over Europe a thousand throats began to sing the same hallelujah chorus. Leibniz, Turgot, Condorcet, Kant, Lessing, John Stuart Mill, Hegel, Marx, Darwin, and countless lesser thinkers al found reasons for cosmic optimism. They argued over whether progress was truly inevitable or whether it needed a helping hand from the human race; over what constituted a better life; over whether progress would or could continue ad infinitum. However, they all nodded in agreement at the notion of progress itself. Atheists and divines, students and professors, politicians and scientists preached the new faith. Business people and commissars alike heralded each new factory, each new product, each new housing development, highway, or dam as evidence of this irresistible advance from bad to good or good to better. Poets, playwrights, and painters took progress for granted. Progress justified the degradation of nature and the conquest of “less advanced” civilizations. And once more the same idea ran parallel through the works of both Adam Smith and Karl Marx. As Robert Heilbroner has noted, “Smith was a believer in progress….In The Wealth of Nations progress was no longer an idealistic goal of mankind, but…a destination to which it was driven….a by-product of private economic aims.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
For Marx, of course, these private aims produced only capitalism and the seeds of its own destruction. However, this event in itself was part of the long historical sweep carrying humanity forward to socialism, communism, and an even better beyond. Throughout Second Wave civilization, therefore, three key concepts—the war with nature, the importance of evolution, and the progress principle—provided the ammunition used by the agents of industrialism as they explained and justified it to the World. Beneath these convictions lay still deeper assumptions about reality—a set of unspoken beliefs about the very elementals of human experience. Every human being must deal with these elementals, and every civilization describes them in a different way. Every civilization must teach its children to grapple with time and space. It must explain—whether through myth, metaphour, or scientific theory—how nature words. And it must offer some clue to why things happen as they do. Thus Second Wave civilization, as it matured, created a wholly new image of reality, based on its own distinctive assumptions about time and space, matter and cause. Picking up fragments from the past, piecing them together in new ways, applying experiment and empirical tests, it drastically altered the way human beings came to perceive the World around them and how they behaved in their daily lives. The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into one’s head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe one, was the true founder of society. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes of filled in the ditch and cried out to one’s fellow humans: “Do not listen to this impostor. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the Earth belong to all and the Earth to no one!” However, it is quite likely that by then things had already reached a point where they could no longer continue as they were. For this idea of property, depending on many prior ideas which could only have arisen successively, was not formed all at once in the human mind. It was necessary to make great progress, to acquire much industry and enlightenment, and to transmit and augment them from one age to another, before arriving at this final stage in the state of nature. Let us therefore take things farther back and try to piece together under a single viewpoint that slow succession of events and advances in knowledge in their most natural order. Human’s first sentiment was that of one’s own existence; one’s first concern was that of one’s preservation. The products of the Earth provided one with all the help one needed; instinct led one to make use of them. With hunger and other appetites making one experience by turns various ways of existing, here was one appetites making one experience by turns various ways of existing, there was one appetite that invited one to perpetuate one’s species; and this blind inclination, devoid of any sentiment of the heart, produced a purely terrestrial act. Once this need had been satisfied, the two genders no longer took cognizance of one another, and even the child no longer meant anything to the mother once it could do without her. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Such was the condition of humans in their nascent stage; such was the life of a terrestrial being limited at first to pure sensations, and scarcely profiting from the gifts nature offered one, far from dreaming of extracting anything from her. However, difficulties soon presented themselves to one; it was necessary to learn to overcome them. The height of trees, which kept one from reaching their fruits, the competition of animal that sought to feed themselves on these same fruits, the ferocity of those animals that wanted to take one’s own life: everything obliged one to apply oneself to bodily combat. Natural arms, which are tree branches and stones, were soon found ready at hand. One learned to surmount nature’s obstacles, combat other animals when necessary, fight for one’s subsistence even with humans, or compensate for what one had to yield to those stronger than oneself. In proportion as the human race spread, difficulties multiplied with the humans. Differences in soils, climates and seasons could force them to inculcate these differences in their lifestyles. Barren years, long and hard winters, hot summers that consume everything required new resourcefulness from them. Along the seashore and the riverbanks they invented the fishing line and hook, and became fishermen and fish-eaters. In the forests they made bows and arrows, and became hunters and warriors. In cold countries they covered themselves with the skins of animals they had killed. Lighting, a volcano, or some fortuitous chance happening acquainted them with fire: a new resource against the rigours of Winter. They learned to preserve this element, then to reproduce it, and finally to use it to prepare meats that previously they devoured raw. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
This repeated appropriation of various being to oneself, and of some beings to others, must naturally have engendered in human’s mind the perceptions of certain relations. These relationships which we express by the words “large,” “small,” “strong,” “weak,” “fast,” “slow,” “timorous,” “bold,” and other similar ideas, compared when needed and almost without thinking about it, finally produced in one a kind of reflection, or rather a mechanical prudence which pointed out to one the precautions that were most necessary for one’s safety. Since suburbs during the first half of the century were seen as little more than outlying residential areas, it is perhaps understandable that they attracted minimal literary or scholarly attention. For example, George Babbitt sold real estate in the suburban Glen Oriole development, but he lived in the city of Zenith. Authors and writers in the early decades of the twentieth century largely ignored suburbs while stressing the evils of the city. Typical was Carl Sandburg’s poem “Chicago,” which praised the raw vitality of the city but also noted the city’s wickedness, and brutality. By comparison suburbs were once just a community of beautiful sprawling homes. Overall, it is not an exaggeration to suggest that until the post World War II era, major American writers generally ignored the suburbs. True, Ernest, Hemingway caustically referred to Oak Park, where he had grown up, as a community “of wide lawns and narrow minds,” but he apparently did not think it merited a novel. Sinclair Lewis’s exposure to the meanness of small-midwestern-town life in Main Street (1920) was far more typical of cosmopolitan writers of the first half of the twentieth century. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
In Babbitt (1922) Mr. Lewis, with equal acid, detailed the life of George Babbit, a small-city real estate developer and subdivider. Mr. Lewis’s fictional city of Zenith was a literary twin of the empirical study by Robert and Helen Lynd of Middletown, which was actually Muncie, Indiana. Generally, writes of the era agreed in their viewing small-town and small-city values as fostering full conformity and repression of creativity. Only in the large metropolitan area could one be truly free. Not until the suburban housing boom following World War II were the charges that early-twentieth-century writers had leveled against the small towns and small cities redirected at suburbia and suburban lifestyles. The evils of Sinclair Lewis’ fictional Gopher Prairie became those of Levittown. One major exception to ignoring suburbia as either a literary site a literary metaphour is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 classic, The Great Gatsby. Mr. Fitzgerald places the rootless Gatsby in West Egg, one of the newly developing wealthy suburbs of Long Island. These were places without a background for people who were also reinventing themselves. Although he did not further expand the theme in later works, Mr. Fitzgerald is the first to hint at suburbia as a conscious and artificial creation especially designed to accommodate those possessing shallow roots. Whether it is Gatsby’s wealthy established suburb or the post-World War II mass suburbia of Levittown, suburbia began to be portrayed not as a place of stability, but as a temporary residence for transients. Popular-culture images of suburbia prior to the suburban exodus of the 1950s and 1960s was generally more charitable. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Images of suburbia tended toward the comfortable and mildly comic, such as Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post cover showing suburban wives, still in their bathrobes, driving their husbands in the family station wagon to the suburban commuter train station. Movie versions of suburbia were also benign and inclined toward the small-town nostalgia of Andy Hardy-type communities. The comic dimension of the upper-middle-class city dweller seeking a semirural retreat was reflected in the success of stories turned into movies such as Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. Interestingly, the former began as a cautionary article in Fortune on the perils of suburban living. (Eric Hodgins, “Mr. Blandings Builds His Castle,” Fortune Magazine, April 1946, pp. 138-189). On the other hand, Jean Kerr’s Please Don’t Eat the Daisies was a satiric and ironic look at women’s life in the 1950s suburbs (Jean Kerr, please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1957). In reality, the suburban backyard barbecue became an American cliché during the 1950s. It symbolized the close national association of suburban life with family values. It also has been said that prior to the 1960s, urban-area scholars were not particularly astute or insightful in examining the phenomenon of suburbanization. Social science’s treatment of suburbs can be described in few words: suburbs essentially were ignored. They were the focus of neither theorizing nor research. Even textbooks in the rapidly developing field of urban sociology went little beyond Earnest Burges’s 1924 description of suburbia as an outer-commuter’s zone. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
No one seemed to think the area, or the process, merited further elaboration. The major scholars of suburbia, Harlan Paul Douglass, in his 1934 article on “Suburbs” in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, portrayed suburbs as limited to the well-to-do. Living in the suburbs, in his words, was “virtually limited to the most highly paid types of labor and o the upper middle classes” (Harlan Paul Douglass, “Suburbs,” Encyclopedia of the social sciences, Vol. XIV, New York, 1934, p.434). Even as late as the 1950, Queen and Carpenter, in the urban sociology text The American City, (McGraw-Hill, 1953), gave only 4 of its 383 ages to even a mention of suburbs. One should send out experimental feelers in one’s mental-emotional World until one recognizes an element that seems different from all the others—subtler, grander, nobler, and more divine than all the others. Then, catching firm hold of it, one should try to trace its course back to its source. The point where the personal ego establishes contact with the Overself is reached and passed only through a momentary lapse of consciousness. However, this lapse is so brief—a mere fraction of a second—that it may be unnoticed. A presence enters one’s consciousness and comes over one, a benign feeling to which one is glad to surrender oneself, a mysterious solvent of one’s egotism and desires. The value of letting oneself pass this point can hardly be overestimated, even though it be done only during the limited sessions of prayer or the casual periods of unexpected visitations. For from them peace, wisdom, sanity can be emanated. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
At this point there is the mysterious division between human normal prayer and divine contemplation, between discursive thinking and its dissolution as the divine self takes over, between mental concentration and release into still, timeless being, between imagery and pure Consciousness. Koestler got his glimpse by working out Euclid’s geometrical proof of the infinitude of the number of primes. That he was able to learn of the reality of the Infinite by purely mathematical and precise method, without becoming a vague emotional mystic, so satisfied his highly intellectual and scientific nature that, in his own words, an “aesthetic enchantment” fell upon him. This developed until he became one with Peace never before known. The experience passed away, as it usually does, but it remained to hunt his memory. It inspired his journey to India and Japan several years later, where he spent a year trying to meet holy people and self-actualized. These meetings did not bring him what he sought, but his faith in the authenticity of that earlier glimpse never left him. He knew what few mystics know, that he did not need to violate the integrity of Reason, nor become lost in generally hazy gushy feelings, to know Infinity, which is truth of Reality. The difference of people is determined by their nature. If it is true some people are aggressors, it may be that one day, this quality may be their undoing. Those who seek communion with the Overself, this sublime glimpse of its hidden face, must make the Quest their chosen path. Few things that grow here poison us. Most of the animals are small. Those big enough to kill us do it in a way easy to understand, easy to defend against. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
The air, here, is just what the blood needs. We do not use helmets or special suits. The Star, here, does not burn you if you stay outside as much as you should. The worst of our winters is bearable. Water, both salt and sweet, is everywhere. The thing that live in it are easily gathered. Mostly, you can eat them raw with safety and pleasure. Yesterday my wife and I brought back shells, driftwood, stones, and other curiosities found on the beach of the immense fresh-water Sea we live by. She was all excited by a slender white stone which: “Exactly fits the hand!” I could not share her wonder: Here, almost everything does. It is for us to praise the Lord of all, to proclaim the greatness of the Creator of the Universe for He hath not made us like the pagans of the World, nor places us like the heathen tribes of the Earth; He hath not made our density as theirs, nor cast out lot with all their multitude. We bend he knee, worship and give thanks unto the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He. He stretched forth the Heavens and laid the foundations of the Earth. His glory is revealed in the Heavens above, and His might is manifest in the loftiest heights. He is our God; there is none else. In truth He is our King, there is none besides Him; as it is written in his Holy Bible: Know this say, and consider it in thy heart that the Lord is God in the Heavens above and on the Earth beneath; there is none else. May your mind be so well purified and so strongly concentrated within the Good, the True, and the Beautiful that it is not affected by Worldly disturbances. Do not allow your mind to be muddy and weak like others. A correct example is better for you. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Ten Minutes on the Clock, but a Thousand Centuries in My Heart!
The Greek philosopher Aristotle had a recipe for handling relationships smoothly. You must be able, he said, “to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way.” Psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer call such self-control “emotional intelligence.” Emotional intelligence refers to a combination of skills, such as empathy, self-control, and self-awareness. People who excel in life tend to be emotionally intelligent. Indeed, the costs of poor emotional skills can be high They range from problems in marriage and parenting to poor physical health. A lack of emotional intelligence can ruin careers and sabotage achievement. Perhaps the greatest toll falls on people who are still developing or marginalized members of the community. For them, having poor emotional skills and being subjected to dealing with those who have substandard emotional skills, makes them become victims of depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, unwanted lifestyle choices, aggression, and violent crimes, or they can also become violent criminals. The Devil has a sure foothold in Massachusetts during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692 because many people seemed to be lacking emotional intelligence. People who were skeptical of witchcraft were thought to must undoubtedly be a witch. For instance, that Martha Corey’s skepticism was held against her is clear evidence that by this time the magistrates’ attitudes had hardened into those of the witch hunter. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
It was at Martha Corey’s examination that one typical kind of behaviour first appeared. She bit her lip, and several of the afflicted children complained that they were bitten She was charged with biting her lip, and she quite naturally asked what harm was there in it. The Reverend Mr. Nicolas Noyes of Salem Town explained: “I believe it is apparent she practiseth witchcraft in the congregation; there is no need of images.” That is, instead of tormenting images she was using her own body as an image, biting the children by biting her own lips, and later pinching them by clenching her fingers together. From Martha Corey’s examination on, any motion on the part of the accused was apt to produce a corresponding effect in the afflicted children. It must have been a most convincing spectacle, as though black magic were being worked before the very eyes of the beholders. And as the effects produced on the children were obviously painful, they were that much more convincing. In some cases there were seen to be marks of bites or pinches on the children’s flesh; on other occasions there were pins literally stuck in their flesh. There are at least three explanations for this behaviour. In the first place, hysterics are extremely suggestible, and for hysterics familiar with the idea of image magic, it would be easy to assume that an accused person biting her lip was trying to bit them. A similar phenomenon is the “arctic hysteria” of North American Indians, in which the group imitates the motions of the shaman. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Secondly, hysteric will often try to injure themselves; they will beat their heads on the floor, or run into fire or water. (But they seldom succeed in injuring themselves seriously because they are most apt to make these attempts when other people are present, an able to stop them.) Surely this is the explanation for the pins in their flesh; the afflicted stuck them there themselves. However, this is not to say there was conscious fraud; people in fits are after all not responsible for their actions. Some of the bites and pinches, too, were probably self-inflicted, but it is also probable that some were not. Skin lesions are among the commonest of psychosomatic symptoms, and surely some of these bites and pinches were psychosomatic. Hathorne and Corwin, of course, thought the cause was witchcraft, and they committed Martha Corey to jail for further examination and eventually trial. And with her commitment to jail, Salem had very nearly committed itself to a witch hunt. Yet there would be moments during the succeeding month when the course of events would seem to hesitate and waver; moments wen the slightest change of circumstances might have averted the final catastrophe. On Saturday, March 19, two days before the examination of Martha Corey, the Reverend Deodat Lawson arrived in Salem Village. He has been its minister from 1684 to 1688 and had now returned as a visiting preacher and for personal reasons as well; the afflicted girls were saying that his wife and daughter, whom he had buried there, had been killed by witchcraft. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Reverend Deodat Lawson tells us that there were at that time ten afflicted persons—three girls from nine to twelve years old: Elizabeth Parris, Abagail Williams, and Ann Putnam; three adolescent girls: Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, and Elizabeth Hubbard; and for married women: Goodwives Putnam, Pope, Bibber, and Goodall. He conducted both the morning and the afternoon services on Sunday, but without incident. Several of the afflicted persons were present. This was not Lawson’s first introduction to the behavior of the afflicted. He had lodged the night before at Ingersoll’s Tavern, and there had seen Mary Walcott, who, “as she stood by the door was bitten, so that she cried out of her wrist, and looked on it with a candle we saw apparently the marks of teeth, both upper and lower set, on each side of her wrist.” He had also visited the parsonage, where Abigail Williams “had a grievous fit.” He would see more on Monday, at Martha Corey’s examination, and on Wednesday, when he went to Thomas Putnam’s to see his wife, Ann Putnam, Senior. “I found her lying on the bed, having had a sore fit a little before. She spake to me and said she was glad to see me. Her husband and she both desired me to pray with her while she was sensible, which I did, though the apparition said [id est, to Ann Putnam, Senior] I should not go to prayer. At first beginning she attended but after a little time was taken with a fit, yet continued silent and seemed to be sleep. When prayer was done, her husband going to her found her in a fit. He took her off the bed to set her on his knees, but at first she was so stiff she could not be bended. But she afterwards set down, but quickly began to strive violently with her arms and legs.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Shortly afterward she began to argue with an apparition, and she thought that telling it a passage from the Christian Bible would make it vanish. She said, “I am sure you cannot stand before that text!” Then she was sorely afflicted, her mouth drawn on one side and her body strained for about a minute, and then said “I will tell, I will tell; it is, it is, it is!” three or four times, and then was afflicted to hinder her telling. At last she broke forth and said “It is the third chapter of the Revelations.” I did something scruple the reading it. [Reverend Lawson was reluctant because in this case reading the Bible might be construed as using it as a charm.] However, thought not versed she opened her eyes and was well. This fit [had] continued near half an hour. Her husband and the spectators told me she had often been so relieved by reading texts that she named, something pertinent to her case. The next day was Lecture Day at Salem Village and Reverend Lawson preached the sermon, which he published shortly thereafter under the title Christ’s Fidelity the Only Shield Against Satan’s Malignity. Historians have consistently represented it as an attempt to sir up the emotions of the community, but in fact it was nothing of the sort. To be sure, Reverend Lawson did reaffirm that the girl’s afflictions were the “effects of Diabolical malice and operations, and that it cannot rationally be imagined to proceed from any other cause whatsoever.” Reverend Lawson was far from depending on the magistrates to cure the country of its troubles. In fact he warned the community that there was ultimately no legitimate secular defense against witchcraft. There was, for example, no legitimate means of testing to see whether an accused person was a witch: “we find no means instituted of God to make trial of witches.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Nor could one rightly defend oneself against witchcraft with white magic, such as boiling one’s urine or nailing a horseshoe over the door, because such charms were in themselves, “a kind of witchcraft,” and might well give a more secure foothold to the Devil. Careless accusations of suspected persons might also backfire, Reverend Lawson warned. “Rash censuring of others, without sufficient grounds, or false accusing any willingly…is indeed to be like the Devil, who is a calumniator, of false accuser.” Most important, he warned his listeners that the Devil might appear in the shape of an innocent person. Indeed, he suspected this was precisely what had happened when church members saw the apparitions of other church members afflicting them. The Devil had taken “some visible subjects of our Lord Jesus and [used] at least their shapes and appearances…to afflict and torture other visible subjects of that same Kingdom. Surely his design is that Christ’s Kingdom may be divided against itself.” Given all these difficulties the only sure protection against witchcraft, the “Only Shield Against Satan’s Malignity,” was faith in Christ, and the application of that faith in prayer. And such prayer would be answered, particularly if it came from a people bound to the worship of God, like those of New England, by their church covenants: “whensoever God hath declared a person or people to be in covenant with Him, as the objects of His special mercy and favour, He will assuredly and shortly suppress the malice of Satan, however violently engaged against them.” In the late 19th century, it seemed that San Jose, California had come under a spell. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Mrs. Sarah Winchester moved to San Jose, California after the tragic loss of her baby daughter and husband and began to construct one of the most unique and elaborate Queen Anne Victorian mansions the World had ever witnessed. According to legend, Mrs. Winchester enacted a nightly séance to help with her building plans and for protection from “bad” spirits. While she sometimes drew up simple sketches of the building ideas, there were never any blueprints! In the morning, she would meet with Mr. John Hansen, her dutiful foreman, and go over new changes and additions. During the early years of construction, this resulted in some unusual and impractical concepts such as columns being installed upside down—though some suggest this was done deliberately to confuse the evil spirits. However, this is how the Winchester Mystery House became known as “the house built by the spirits.” Mr. John Hansen stayed with Mrs. Winchester for many years, redoing scores of rooms, remodeling the in one week and tearing them apart the next. It is doubtful whether Mr. Hansen ever questioned his boss. Mrs. Winchester may have been trying to confuse evil spirits, or simply unsure if she was pleased with aspects of traditional designs, but there was so budget ceilings or deadlines to meet. This resulted in many features being dismantled, built around, or sealed over. Some rooms were remolded many times. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
It is estimated that the Winchester mansion once contained 500 to 600 rooms, but because so many were redone, only 160 remains (110 open for touring). This naturally resulted in some peculiar effects, such as stairs that lead to the ceiling, door that go nowhere and that open onto walls, and chimneys that stop just short of the roof! Once a room was completed, and most importantly, not targeted for further alterations, it was adored with some of the best furnishings money could buy. Mrs. Winchester appreciated beauty, and she was a woman with exquisite taste. Freight cars loaded with gold- and silver-plated chandeliers, imported Tiffany art glass windows then valued at up to $1,500 ($39,587.50 in 2021 dollars), German silver and bronze inlaid doors at twice that amount, Swiss molded bathtubs, rare precious woods like mahogany and rosewood, and countless other items were docked onto a side track at San Jose. Everything was then transported to the house, where much of the material was never even installed. However, the employees often times seem to be bewitched by the Devil. “Oh, how I wish I were out of this dreadful, dreadful house!” said Stella the maid. “Please do not think me very ungrateful for saying this, after taking such pains to provide us with a Heaven upon Earth, as you thought, Mrs. Winchester.” What happened could, of course, have been neither foretold, nor guarded against, by any human being. Stella, Mrs. Winchester’s maid came to her with a very long face, and said, “If you please, Mistress, did you know that this house was haunted? #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Mrs. Winchester was so startled. She replied, “Good Heavens! No! is it?” Stella then explained, “Well, Mistress, I’m pretty nigh sure it is,” and the expression of her countenance was about as lively as an undertaker’s; and then she told Mrs. Winchester that cook had been that morning to order in groceries from a shop in the neighbourhood, and on her giving the man the direction where to send the things to, he had said, with a very peculiar smile, “The Winchester mansion–, eh? H’m! I wonder how long you’ll stand it; last cook held out just a fortnight.” He looked so odd that she asked him what be meant, but he only said, “Oh! nothing; only that help never did long at the Winchester mansion. He had known staff go in one day, and out the next, and during the last four years he had never known any remain over a month.” Feeling a good deal alarmed by this information, the cook naturally enquired the reason; but he declined to give it, saying that if se had not found out herself, she had much better leave it alone, as it would only frighten her out of her wits; and on her insisting and urging him, she could only extract from him, that the house has such a mysterious history. “You know, Mrs. Winchester, how firmly I believe in apparitions, and what an unutterable fear I have of them; anything material, tangible, that I can lay hold of—anything of the same fibre, blood, and bone as myself, I could, I think, confront bravely enough; but the mere thought of being brought face to face with the ‘bodiless dead,’ makes my brain unsteady.” Mrs. Winchester had the prettiest mansion in California. She told Setlla, “Most good things that had ever been in the World had had a bad name in their day; and moreover, the grocer probably a motive for taking away the house’s character.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Mrs. Winchester derided Stella’s “babyish fears,” to such an extent that she felt half ashamed, and yet not quite comfortable, either and then came the usual rush of the mansion’s engagements, during which one has no time to think of anything but how to speak, and act, and look for the moment then present. Marriam Marriot, Mrs. Winchester’s niece was to arrive the previous day and, in the morning, the weekly hamper of flowers, fruit, and vegetables arrived. Stella always dressed the flower-vase, while other servants ate so tasteless; and as she was arranging them, it occurred to her—you know Stella’s passion for flowers—to carry up one particular cornucopia of roses and mignonette and set it on Marriam’s toilet-table, as a pleasant surprise for her. As Stella came downstairs, she had seen Ashely, another maid. Ashely was a fresh round-faced country girl—she went into the room, which was being prepared for Mrs. Marriot, with a pair of sheets that she had been airing over her arm. Stella went upstairs very slowly, as her cornucopia was full of water, and she was afraid of spilling some. She turned the handle of the bedroom-door and entered, keeping her eyes fixed on her flowers, to see how they bore the transit, and whether any of them had fallen out. Suddenly a sort of shiver passed over her; and feeling frighten—she did not know why—she looked up quickly. The girl was standing by the bed, leaning forward a little with her hands clenched in each other, rigid, every nerve tense; her eyes, wide open, starting out of her head and a look of unutterable stony horror in them; her cheeks and mouth not pale, but livid as those of one that died awhile ago in mortal pain. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
As Stella looked at her, her lips moved a little, and an awful hoarse voice, not like hers in the least said, “Oh! my God, have see it!” and then she fell down suddenly, like a log, with a heavy noise. Using Mrs. Winchester’s call system, she alerted Mr. Hansen to what area in the mansion they were in. The message was loudly audible and Mr. Hansen came running in, and between the two of them they managed to lift Ashely on to the bed, and tried to bring her to herself by running her feet and hands, and holding strong salts to her nostrils. And all the while they kept glancing over their shoulders, in a vague cold terror of seeing some awful, shapeless apparition. Two long hours she lay in a state of utter unconsciousness. Meanwhile Mr. Hansen, who had been down to his guest house, returned. At the end of the two hours they succeeded in bringing Ashely back to sensation and life, but only to make the awful discovery that she was raving mad. She became so violent that it required all the combined strength of Mr. Hansen and Walley (the butler) to hold her down in the bed. Of course, the sent off instantly for a doctor, who, on her growing a little calmer towards evening, removed her in a carriage to his own house. The doctor had come later to tell Mrs. Winchester that Ashley was pretty quiet, not from any return to sanity, but from sheer exhaustion. Stella, Mrs. Winchester, Mr. Hansen and Walley were, of course, utterly in the dark as to what she saw, and her ravings were far to disconnected and unintelligible to afford them the slightest clue. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Everyone was so completely shattered and upset by the awful occurrence. No one was allowed to occupy that room again. Mrs. Winchester would shudder and run by quickly as she passed the door. Eventually Mr. Hansen boarded it up. Legend has it this room is one of the 50 not opened to guests on tours. Mrs. Winchester was still unconvinced as to the house being at fault. You know, she felt like the mansion was a godmother, a protector to her, and was responsible for its good behaviour. She thought the girl simply had a fit. Why not? She knew of a man who was subject to seizures of that kind, and immediately on being attacked his whole body became rigid, his eyes glassy and staring, his complexion livid, exactly as in that case. Or it was also possible that, if no a fit, that perhaps the girl was subject to madness? The doctor had to ascertain where there was not insanity in her family. Even allowing the possibility, nay, the actual unquestioned existence of ghost in the abstract, is it likely that there should be anything to be seen so horribly fear-inspiring, as to send a perfectly sane person in one instant raving mad, which, after many years of residence in the house that Mrs. Winchester had never caught a glimpse of? According to this hypothesis, everyone in the mansion should have, by that time, been stark raving mad and in a lunatic asylum. Stella told Mrs. Winchester that she was leaving that “terrible, hateful, fatal house. I wish I had escaped from it sooner! Oh, my dear Mrs. Winchester, I shall never be the same woman again if I live to be a hundred.” After Stella left, Ashley was removed to the lunatic asylum, Agnews State Hospital, where she remained in the same state. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Ashely had several lucid intervals, she was closely, pressingly questioned as to what it was she saw; but she maintained an absolute, hopeless, silence, and only shuddered, moaned, and would hide her face in her hands when the subject was broached. Stella went to see her, and on her retuned was sitting resting in the drawing-room, before going to dress for dinner, talking to Mrs. Winchester about her visit, when Theophilus Riesinger walked in, he had always been waling in the last ten days, and Mrs. Winchester always flushed up and looked happy, whenever he made his appearance. He looked very handsome, dear fellow, just came in from the park in a coat that fitted like a second skin, black gloves, and a top hat. He seemed in tremendous spirits, and was as sceptical as Mrs. Winchester to the ghostly origins of Ashley’s seizure. “Let me come here tonight and sleep in that room; Mrs. Winchester,” he said, looking very eager and excited, “with the gas lit and a poker, I’ll engage to exorcize every demon that shows his ugly nose; even if I should find seven white ghostisses, sitting on seven white postisses.” “You don’t mean really?” asked Stella, incredulously. “Don’t I? that’s all,” he answered, emphatically. “I should like nothing better. Well, is it a bargain?” Mrs. Winchester turned quite pale. “Oh, don’t,” she said, hurriedly, “Please, don’t; why should you run such a risk, besides the room has been boarded up? How do you know that you might not be sent mad too?” He laughed very heartily, and coloured a little with pleasure at seeing the interest she took in his safety. “Never fear,” he said, “it would take more than a whole squadron of departed ones, with the gentleman at their head, to send me crazy.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
He was so eager, so persistent, so thoroughly in earnest, that Mrs. Winchester yielded at last, though with a certain strong reluctance to his entreaties. Her eyes filled with tears, she had the room opened up and walked away hastily to the conservatory. Nonetheless, Father Riesinger got his wish; it was so difficult to refuse him anything. Mrs. Winchester gave up her engagements for the evening. And at about 10.00pm, she went to bed. Then he went, jumping up the stairs three steps at a time and humming a tune. The human victims of this tragedy should never be forgotten. With a magnitude registering 7.9, high intensity shaking was felt at 5.13am on April 18, 1906. It felt like the most powerful Earthquake on Earth. All of the sudden the whole Earth started shaking like crazy, and the shaking got worse and worse. Devastating fires soon broke out in the San Francisco Bay Area and lasted for several days. More than 3,000 people died and over 80 percent of San Francisco was destroyed. The position of the people in Agnews was critical; a number of insane persons escaped from the demolished asylum, and were running at random about the country. 117 patients and staff were killed and buried in mass graves on the site. The main building and some others were irreparably damaged. The ground just opened up. Back at her mansion, Mrs. Winchester was in her Daisy Bed Room, when she was awakened by the jolt, “Every time I took a step,” she said, “I fell. I heard an awful sound. The seven-story town went flying up and crashed down onto the house, trappimg me in my bedroom and destroying most of the fourth floor along with it.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
People were running, but the valley just opened up and swallowed them. Dozens of people sank into the Earth. “The house seemed to shake forever and ever. I felt a lump in my throat, a gasping for breath—ten minutes on the clock, but a thousand centuries in my heart. Then again, loud, sudden, a violent banging on the door! I made a simultaneous rush to the door. My servants came and saved me. They said I had been trapped in my room for days. As we walked down the hall, there was Father Riesinger, standing in the middle of the floor of the room we had boarded up, rigid, petrified, with that same look—that look that is burnt into my heart in letters of fire—of awful, unspeakable, stony fear on his brave young face. For one instant he stood thus; then stretching out his arms stiffly before him, he groaned in a terrible husky voice, ‘Oh, my God, I have seen it!’ and fell down dead. Yes, dead. Not in a swoon or in a fit, but dead. Vainly we tried to bring back the life to that strong young heart; it will never come back again till that day when the Earth and the sea give up the dead are therein. I cannot see for the tears that are blinging me; he was such a dear fellow.” Then an omnipresent, malevolent voice, said, “Can you feel that? Drowning deep in my sea of loathing, broken your servant I kneel. Will you give it to me? There is no turning back now. You’ve woken up the demon in me.” This is a true story. The Winchester mansion is a 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester rifle. The study of theology also tells us that a distinction between spirit and soul has remained obtuse till present day. As a result, the learned theologians of the most advanced organized religions take one for the other, keeping the identities and so interrelationship between the two hazy. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
This obtuse relationship has been trickling down for the millenniums, from when humans lived in caves in the Mesolithic era, around 14,000 years BC. Sorcery is also visible in burial rites and construction of monuments. Belief in a deity or an afterlife could be an evolutionarily advantageous by-product of people’s ability to reason about the minds of others. The Victorian period was an era of deep and sustained religious belief in the supernatural. People have a bias for believing in the supernatural. Yet people think there is a dark force behind many of the tragic events that are happening today. A force that has a significant impact on Society. Repeatedly we see cases involving law-breaking, or violence on the rise, and in many cases people believe it proceeds from an unknown dark force. Perhaps the Victorian belief in the spiritual and occult was not too farfetched. And God say everything He had made, and found it very good. And He said: This is a beautiful World that I have given you. Take good care of it; do not ruin it. It is said: Before the World was created, the Holy One kept creating Worlds and destroying them. Finally He created this one, and was satisfied. He said to Adam: This is the last World I shall make. I place it in your hands: hold it in trust. 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. May the prayers and supplications of the House of America be acceptable unto their Father in Heaven; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
The most expensive window was built on the north side of the house with a room built over it. Ever wonder why? Come learn about this beautiful story at the Winchester Mystery House.
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 