Home » Angelical (Page 8)
Category Archives: Angelical
He Opened the Book and a Demon Spoke to Him
All good religions need some kind of Apocalypse. Thelema—the new religion of Aleister Crowley—was no exception. The Great Beast fully expected his new holy age, the Aeon of Horus, to be ushered in with an orgy of violence and bloodshed. With the advent of the First World War, the prophecy seemed to have been satisfied. Over four long years, the optimism and complacency of nineteenth-century Europe drowned in the mud of the Western Front, along with hundreds of thousands of young soldiers. However, Crowley seemed curiously indifferent to the whole affair. With typical arrogance, when the British Government refused his offer to produce war propaganda, the Luciferian man of letters travelled to the US to write anti-British propaganda. If he could not find recognition on the side of the angels, the Great Beast was always ready to side with the opposition. However, Crowley later claimed he wrote deliberately absurd material to discredit the German cause. His article on the bombing of London by Zeppelin airships gives credence to this eccentric defense: “For some reason or other in their last Zeppelin raid on London the Germans appear to have decided to make the damage as widespread as possible, instead of concentrating it in one quarter. A great deal of damage was done at Croydon, especially at its suburb Addiscombe, where my aunt lives. Unfortunately her house was not hit. Count Zeppelin is respectfully requested to try again. The exact address is Eton Lodge, Outram Road.” If World War One had been too minor a cataclysm to introduce Crowley’s Age of Horus, 1939 heralded a new orgy of human suffering. The Beast always maintained that the first nation to adopt his Book of the Law as a state religion would dominate the World. During the 1930s, however, as the Third Reich came to power, his ambivalence towards Germany—the country where his magical doctrines were taken most seriously—is perhaps understandable. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Some of his German followers saw in their new Fuhrer a political equivalent to their prophet, the Great Beast (perhaps even his “magical child”)—a new World order was to be created by the pure will-power of those extraordinary men. Some of his German followers saw in their new Fuhrer a political equivalent to their prophet, the Great Beast (perhaps even his “magical child”)—a New World Order was to be created by the pure will-power of these two extraordinary men. However, in 1935 the Nazis banned the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Order of the Silver Star, throwing numerous occultists (including Karl Germer, one of Crowley’s foremost disciples) into the concentration camps. There may have been similarities between Crowley’s Thelemic doctrines and emergent Nazi dogma (elitism, irrationalism, transcendence of morality), but the Great Beast could see on which side his future depended: Britain would “knock Hitler for six!” he announced. Whether or not the horrors of the Second World War signalled the advent of the Age of Horus, Adolf Hitler emerged from the blood and pain of that conflict as a secular Satan. Indeed, a minor literary industry has grown up around the idea of Hitler as a very literal Satanic figure suggests that the Fuhrer really did, in Dennis Wheatley’s words, “use dark forces.” The roots of this belief return us to the occult lodges of the late nineteenth century. In 1875, the writer and occultist Guido von List climbed a hill overlooking Vienna to conduct a strange ritual. Von List was dedicated to returning greater Germany to an older purer faith—the worship of Wotan, and the other pagan gods of the Teutonic race Upon the hill he commemorated the summer solstice by buying a number of empty wine bottles, carefully arranged into a sacred symbol: the swastika. In 1908 von List Founded the Armanen Initiates, the inner order of his modestly-titled Guido von List Society. His doctrines centered around ideas of racial purity—von List believed the German peoples, the Armenen, had originally been a race of supermen, but mongrelistation had weakened the race until bashful old Guido was its last pure-blood survivor. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
According to the race mystic, “The hydra-headed international Jewish conspiracy” was behind it all. To reverse matters, von List prescribed a study of ancient Teutonic religious runes and –more practically—laws to precent further racial interbreeding. His eventual gal was a racial state ruled by “a self-chosen Fuhrer to whom [Germany] willingly submits.” Alongside the swastika, the emblems of this new state would include the sig rune: the symbol later used to form the insignia of the SS. Guido von List was one of the leading Germanic mystics dedicated to “volkisch” occultism. “Volkisch” basically translates as “folkloric,” but this was also leavened with a hard-edged nationalism. Chief obsession among the volkisch orders were the sacred nature of race (or “blood”), an interest in the culture and beliefs of the Germanic peoples in the early Middle Ages, and a strong current of anti-Semitism. Among the most important of the volkisch occultists—some of whom fancied themselves the priests of a revived Norse religion—was Dr. Jorg Lanz von Libenfels. In many ways, a sorcerer in the classic mould, von Liebenfels adopted his aristocratic name to increase his mystique (his real name was Adolf Lanz), and began his career as a Catholic priest before being defrocked for “harbouring carnal and Worldly desires.” His response was to found an “order of New Templars”—quite what the original Templars had to do with racial purity is not clear, but it did not stop von Libenfels preaching a message of race war from his temple on the banks of the Danube. In 1909, a young Austrian named Adolf Hitler secured an audience with von Liebenfels to secure some back issues of Ostara, the journal of the New Templars. In 1932, von Liebenfels would write to a fellow occultist that “Hitler is one of our pupils…You will one day experience that he, and through him we, will one day be victorious, and develop a movement that will one day make the World tremble.” The most direct link between the occult underground and the Third Reich is the Thule Society. Thule, according to northern European myth, was a version of Atlantis, and island that sank beneath the sea. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Thule Society ideology decreed this legendary island to be the home of the German supermen, who they hoped to contact using magical techniques. In 1919, the Thule Society formed a tiny political group called the German Workers Party in Munich—the seed from which Hitler’s National Socialist Party grew. In the 1920s Germany of the Weimar Republic, volkisch occult groups sense that their time was coming. Losing the First World War left Germany politically chaotic, economically bankrupt and profoundly demoralized. Weimar Berlin earnt a reputation for decadence exceeding that of 1890s Paris—though there was a cynical desperation among the German hedonist that never surfaced amongst their French counterparts. For many ordinary citizens of “Greater Germany” (which included Austria), however, their feelings of disillusionment hardened into suspicions of betrayal. One such was the young war hero Hitler—who was convinced Germany’s forces were defeated by treachery at home, rendering the huge loss of life futile. Hitler, along with many others, was sure that the “November criminals” (government signatories of a peace treaty in November 1918) were responsible for the fatherland’s defeat and humiliation. And behind the November criminals were the treacherous Jewish people. In this environment, volkisch occultists found an eager audience for their fables of an ancient, noble Ayran race. They not only offered up a scapegoat for their defeat, but also created the mythology of a sacred Germanic blood heritage from which a humbled people could rebuild their pride. It is a long way from accepting that volkisch occultism helped create a spiritual environment friendly to Nazism to believing the Third Reich was a Satanic cult. (Buffy the Vampire Slayer was said to be symbolic of the rebirth of the Third Reich, maybe you can see the symbolism. This interesting thing is that Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played Buffy Summers is Jewish, but also reminiscent this Ayran super race.) #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The relationship between Nazism and volkism is similar to that between the radical African-American political groups and Black Islamic leaders who proclaim that the Man (the White Man) to be the Devil. Political leaders, as soon as they achieve any real power, are usually quick to distance themselves from such emotive spiritual propaganda. However, it is interesting how light and dark are used in Christian terms not to reflect colour, but the nature of one’s spirit. And when you see these people with soft features, pale skin, and these colourful eyes, it is hard to believe they do dark things, but when one sees someone with darker skin, people almost always consider them guilty. It is as if religious light has also been used to frame people based on skin colour, but when it comes down to it, people are capable of things that are bad no matter what colour their skin is, and as one grows up, once can see that skin colour matters very little in guilt or innocence. Nonetheless, total revolution also demanded a spiritual revolution. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had a similarly religious aspect. Communists were determined to uproot the Christian Church and replace it with religious loyalty to the State, and its socialist principles, which is why so many religious symbols in America are now banded on public builds, and next to be banned with be the America flag. Many people may thing that journalist Tomi Lahren of FOX News is a racist, but one should actually listen to what she is saying, and be objective about it. America is actually becoming a communist nation where the people have no power, laws are just recommendations, and the U.S. Constitution is being removed and stored in someone’s basement, much the Confederate Statues, and flags. Next, slavery will just be a conspiracy theory—it will be considered a myth. It is just like music, most real artists listen to all genera of music, but they have a typical style they love, and many scholars read all kinds of material so they can have a comprehensive view of what is going on in the World, instead of just be told only what the masses want them to know, but people love to label, which is why they are stuck in ignorance. #RandolpHarris 5 of 21
Bolsheviks held wild revels, called “African nights,” where Christian festivals were parodied in atheistic rites such as “Red Prayers,” and “Red Mass.” Obscene hymns were sung, and children were encouraged to spit upon and destroy puppets representing God, and other holy figures, in powerful echoes of the Black Mass medieval peasants. Hitler’s doctrines were no less revolutionary. Nazism was designed to revolutionize every aspect of life—even the way people thought—and the old ways were denounced as “Jewish,” “liberal.” Hitler despised “intellectuals,” advocating intuition, or even irrationalism, over logic and rational thoughts. In many ways the Nazis turned back the clock two hundred years, to when science and sorcery were still reluctant bedfellows. In the field of military technological innovation and instinct were promoted at the expense of methodology, liberating German scientist to creates some of the most efficient weapons of war the World had seen. Alfred Rosenberg, an intimate of Hitler and high-ranking Nazi official drew up plans for a National Reich Church, which was not going to destroy Christianity but “supercede” it, and called his new faith “positive Christianity.” He concluded: “On the day of its foundation, the Christian cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals, and chapels and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the Swastika.” However, what did the Swastika symbolize? Rosenberg wrote: “Today a new faith awakens: the myth of the blood, the faith that by defending the blood were defend also the divine nature of man. The faith, embodies in scientific clarity, that the Nordic blood represents the mystery which has replaced and conquered the ancient sacraments.” The historian Konrad Heiden beings his book on Der Fuhrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power with a curious story concerning Rosenberg: “One day in the summer of 1917 a student was reading in his room in Moscow. A stranger entered, laid a book on the table, and silently vanished. The cover of the book bore in Russian the words from the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew: “He is near, he is hard by the door.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
The sent sensed the masterful irony of higher powers in this strange happening. They had sent him a silent message. He opened the book, and the voice of the demon spoke to him. It was a message concerning the antichrist, who would come at the end of days. The Antichrist is no mythical being, no monkish medieval fantasy. It is the portrait of a type of man who comes to the fore when an epoch is dying. The Antichrist was supposedly Hitler. The Nazi began suppressing occultists and secret societies in 1934, in a purge that reached its peak in 1937. Thousands of astrologers and mystic disappeared into the concentration camps, never to appear again, which also proves Whoppie Goldberg’s states, “The Holocaust was about race.” Anyone who was deemed a threat to national security was sent to concertation camps, but in the same sense, the holocaust was about race, it was about preserving the Ayran race. Just anyone who was not Aryan could be a target, as it was more about preservation of their bloodline. Volkisch occultists were not spared. Even the Thule Society—the magi at the nativity of Nazim—was devoured by its ravenous offspring. The Nazi State would not tolerate anything outside its control, or that it had not created itself. Its tenant of faith was the destiny of the Aryan race, as expressed by its prophet Hitler. If this policy of spiritual and intellectual monopoly sounds familiar, it is because it resembles the doctrines of one of the institutions of the Nazis sought to replace: the Church. The Nazi party created its own priesthood—the Black Oder, better known as the Schutzstaffel, or SS. The SS began as Hitler’s bodyguards, but under Heinrich Himmler, manoeuvered and massacred their way to become the most powerful organization in the Nazi establishment. Like “house of God” of the medieval Inquisition, the SS policed the souls of those under their ever-expanding jurisdiction. The faithful were monitored, the suspect—even the volkish occultist who shared the Nazi vision of race—purged, the unholy exterminated. Himmler became the second most powerful man in the Third Reich. Any occultist who wished to survive in Nazi Germany was well-advised to find a place under Himmler’s wing. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Several men did—most significantly Karl Weisthor. Weisthor was born Karl Maria Wiligut in Vienna, 1866, to a family with a long military tradition, and was decorated for his service during the First World War. Following the war he became involved in volkisch occultism, adopting doctrines which were extreme even by volkisch standards. With the modesty characteristic of his ilk, Weisthor claimed to be descended from Ayran gods, the last living representative of the Irminist Church. The Irminists—who worshipped the true Christ, an Aryan called Krist—had been opposed throughout history by the false religion of the Catholic Church, their racial enemies the Jewish people, and Aryan heretics who worshipped the pagan god Wotan. Weisthor knew all of this because he possessed clairvoyance that allowed him to recall the heroic lives of his ancestors, thousands of years ago. Not everyone was impressed by the evidence, however, an in 1924 he was committed to a lunatic asylum. Undeterred, when he was released, he changed his name and headed to Munich. In 1933 he attracted the attention of Himmler, who installed the cranky medium in the Ahnenerbe department of the SS. Under Weisthor’s advice, a castle at Wewlsburg in north-west Germany was chosen as the spiritual headquarters of the Black Order. It became the Nazi equivalent of the Vatican, with great echoing chambers dedicated to the heroes of the Aryan race, and a central hall where Himmler and his twelve closet disciples would meet. Weisthor designed the SS “Totenkpfring” –a scared ring decorated with skulls and runes, personally bestowed upon SS members by Himmler and retuned to Wewelsburg upon their deaths. He also conceived and presided over neo-pagan solstice ceremonies, and the Weddings of SS officers to good Aryan girls. The Black Order was not just a military organization but a sect, a fraternity of warrior priests. Though it never claimed the heritage of the Knights Templar, the parallels between these two orders are striking. Both snowballed into vast international forces. Both maintained independent economic systems that allowed them to accumulate vast wealth. Both were composed of highly-disciplined warriors, fanatically dedicated to their creeds. Both were exempt from the laws that governed their contemporaries, answerable only to the head of their orders (Himmler of the Grand Master) and the representative of the sacred creed on Earth (Hitler or the Pope). Both planned to establish their own independent states. And both were, at least ostensibly Christian. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Weisthor’s faith may have incorporated much bizarre German paganism, but at the core he believed he was preaching Christianity. One of the oaths taken by SS candidates before the full initiation ran, “We believe in God, we believe in Germany which He created in His World and in the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, whom he has sent us.” One of the titles Himmler had bestowed on him by is peers was “the Black Jesuit,” as he based the structure of the SS upon the fanatically-secretive Catholic Society of Jesuits. Himmler, brought up in a devoutly-Catholic Bavarian household, never lost his belief in the importance of ritual symbolism. When he used the term “Satanic,” or evoked the Devil, it was applied to the enemies of the Aryan race—never in connection with his own faither. Persecution of Jewish people was often inspired by accusation that they poisoned wells and drank the blood of children, or, more traditionally, that they had killed Jesus. They were commonly believed to be part of an international conspiracy—sometimes decreed to be Satanic—against all Christian values. The Catholic Church, concerned that the Third Reich was stealing souls that were rightfully theirs, had certainly preached against this new paganism. Nazis believed that they were breeding babies for God, or “for race and nation.” Occultic suggestions that the Third Reich was, as one author puts it, a “demonocracy” with the Fuhrer himself as a black magician, a “psychic vampire,” demonically possessed, even as the Antichrist himself—are based on Hitler’s skill at taking political military gambles (precognition), his inner voiced and violent rages (possession), and the way simultaneously drew upon and released great emotion with his speeches (physic vampirism). Some still say that there is no evidence for one to consider the Third Reich as a manifestation of supernatural evil. Yet people believed because Hitler consulted an astrologer that Hitler was evil; Satan is Evil personified, therefore Hitler is Satan. Even level-headed historians have described Hitler as possessing almost supernatural powers—whereas the terms “mesmeric” or “hypnotic” best described the psychological effect this frantic, grim little man has on the vast audience at Nazi rallies. Political figures such as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King also based their careers on charismatic oratory, and few would suggest either man was possessed by demons. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
However, it is worth confessing that the Third Reich is of legitimate interest to occultists. Something about Hitler’s meteoric rise—from penniless tramp to omnipotent dictator—and Germany’s similarly rapid rise—from near-collapse to near-World domination—confounds rational explanation. Still, the philosophy of Hitler, and the psychological symbolism employed by the Nazis, are no more inherently Satanic than that of the Catholic Church. However, there were eyewitness accounts of wartime sorcery in England: Witches cast spells to stop Hitler landing after France fell. They met, raised the great cone of power and directed the thought at Hitler’s brain: “You cannot cross the sea. You cannot cross the sea. Not able to come. Not able to come.” We are not saying they stopped Hitler. All we say is that we saw a very interesting ceremony performed with the intention of putting a certain idea into his mind and this was repeated several times afterwards; and though all the invasion barges were ready, the fac that Hitler never even tried to come. The witches told us that their great-grandfathers had tried to project the same idea into Boney’s [Napoleon’s] mind. Exploration of the Great Beast’s (Aleister Crowley) darker doctrines—of a World divided into masters and slaves, with good and evil sacrificed on the bloody alter of a new morality—would be the province of a far less gaudy crew than the hippies. Marianne Faithfull—a former child of the upper-middle classes—was a long-time consort of English rock band the Rolling Stones, and an icon of “swinging London.” In her autobiography, written much later, she displays little doubt as to the source of the era’s dynamism. Speaking of her most famous lover, Mick Jagger, she says: “Her harnessed all of the negative forces into entities. Out of these destructive impulses, he created all the incredible personate of the late sixties: the Midnight Rambler, Lucifer, Jumpin’ Jack Flash. They are all manifestations of malignant and chaotic forces, the ungovernable mob. The dark, violent, group mind of the crowd—chaos, Pan. That frenzied power caused many of the causalities of the sixties.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Foremost among the musicians who pioneered the first colourful wave of psychedelia were the Beatles. Their high-profile transformation from chirpy, mop-headed scousers to long haired peaceniks reflected the cultural tide of their generation. However, in the United States of America, the FBI compiled a two-inch thick file on Lennon upon which FBI director J. Edgar Hoover scrawled, “All extremists should be considered dangerous.” Fundamentalist Christians—with their endearing disrespect for facts or common sense—discovered the occultic secrets behind the Beatles’ success. They maintained that the Lennon-McCartney sound was a magical beat stolen from the ancient Druids. According to them, in ancient times these pagan priests would beat out the demonic rhythm on drums made of human skin to summon evil spirits. In the hands of the Beatles, this Druid beat could be used to send the young people of American insane—or even worse, pinko. There were Christian protests of the Beatles, where the Ku Klux Klan burnt their records and Lennon was held up as a Satanists or something. The next years, Christian suspicions of the Beatles were confirmed by detailed perusal of the cover of their catchy, innovative Sgt. Pepper album. The cover design is a collage of people admired by the Beatles, all standing being the band: among them, in the top row, can be seen Aleister Crowley. In 1994, a prominent Vatican official, Father Corrado Balduci, would reinforce the Christian view that the Beatles were “the Devil’s musicians.” Sadly, in 1980, Lennon was shot dead outside his New York apartment by a dazed-looking young man named Mark Chapman. Chapman had become a big Beatles fan, but had become increasingly convinced that Lennon was evil. An interview with Chapman by a psychiatrist, published in Rolling Stone magazine, reported that the holy assassin could feel the presence of Satan’s demons around him. “I can feel their thoughts. I can hear their thoughts. I can hear them talking, but not from the outside, from the inside.” The unfortunate Chapman had become a “born-again” Christian, learning about the evils of Beatles music from his new faith. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Next to the affable efficiency of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones were a maelstrom of creative chaos. Black Magicians thought that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were acting as unknow agents of Lucifer and others thought hey were Lucifer. One of the “Black Magicians” Richards referred to was Kenneth Anger. Anger stood at the crossroads where many of the Satanic elements of the 1960s met. Anger happily announced Crowley’s dictum that the Key of joy is disobedience, and declared that not only was the Aeon of Horus upon, but the Aeon of Lucifer. Shortly before he became involved with the Rolling Stones, Anger helped found the Church of Satan. His blend of Crowleyism and Satanism entranced the band, though—in a familiar pattern—Anger was often keen to dissociate from Satanism, referring to his personal Prince of Darkness by the less inflammatory title of Lucifer. He later confessed, however, that his Lucifer had always been the “cosmic villain,” the Miltonic Satan. Whatever effect Anger had on the band’s professional lives, he touched them personally to varying degrees. Keith and his lover Anita later got into this black magic stuff. Mick Jagger dabbled in it. However, every one was just a little afraid of Kenneth Anger. Inexplicable things involving him would happen. Stores about the magus’ association with the band include Anger seeming to appears and disappear in various places. He offered to perform a pagan ritual wedding for Keith and Anita that involved a golden door. When they awoke the next day, a heavy oaken door had been painted gold, with the paint already dry. The house was heavily secured, and nobody could explain this occultic interior decoration. Faithfull talked about falling off a mountain during the making of Anger’s second version of Lucifer Rising, sustaining only a mild concussion. Anita Pallenberg was so spooked by all of this that she slept in a protective circle of candles with a string of garlic around her neck. Anger’s next overtly magical project Lucifer Rising was his first religious film, a weird, mesmeric narrative combined with a real magical ritual, it also embodied his love/hate relationship with the 1960s counter culture—both in the film itself, and the events surrounding its strange history. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
As Anger once observed, “Making movies is casting spells.” A screen director and editor, the theory ran that the magus could fully control both the characters to screen and the entities they invoked. Lucifer Rising depicted the downfall of the oppressive Aeon of Osiris (or Christian era), and the movement into the Aeon of Horus (or Lucifer). “My reason for filming has nothing to do with “cinema” at all, explained Anger. “It’s transparent excuse for capturing people…I consider myself working Evil on an evil medium.” On 21 September 1967, Anger organized a celebratory event titled the Equinox of the Gods at the Straight Theatre in Haight-Ashbury, the epicenter of hippie culture in San Francisco. However, Beausoleil proved a more capricious Lucifer than Anger anticipated—according to Anger, the pretty hippie he called “Cupid” ripped off 1600 feet of footage from Lucifer Rising and some camera equipment before the performance. Anger was livid, smashing a rare magical cane that once belonged to Crowley. He then pronounced a cruse upon Beausoleil, sealing it with an amulet he put around his neck. On one side was a picture of his erstwhile protégé, on the other a toad with the inscription “Bobby Beausoleil—who was turned into a toad by Kenneth Anger.” Cupid never turned into a toad, but a could of uncommonly dark fortune did follow him as he headed south for Los Angeles. In 1970 Anger remade his masterpiece, Lucifer rising—though even then he still tinkered with elements of the film to produce dozens of subtly different versions. Once again, Anger himself plays the Magus, invoking a new aeon through the door opened by the occult events of the 1960s: A film about the love generation—the birthday part of the Aquarian Age. Showing actual ceremonies to make Lucifer rise. Lucifer is the Light God, not the Devil—the Rebel Angel behind what is happening in the World today. His message is that they key of joy is disobedience. Isis (Nature) wakes. Osiris (Death) answers. Lilith (Destroyer) climbs to the place of Sacrifice. The Magus activates the circle and Lucifer—Bringer of Light—breaks through.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Bad luck had begun calling upon the Rolling Stone, in the shape of a series of tragedies. The first was the death of the band’s guitarist, Brian Jones. It was Jones who, in 1962, formed the band named it after a Muddy Waters song. On 2 July, in classical rock ‘n’ roll styles, he drowned in his swimming pool on a cocktail of vodka and pills. Two days after Jones’ death, the Stones turned their free concert in London’s Hyde Park into a memorial for their ex-guitarist. Jagger read a poem by Shelley, then tried to release hundreds of white butterflies from boxes by the stage. They have been in the boxes too long and most of the delicate creatures were dead. The summer Woodstock free festival, in New York State, represented for many the hazy apex of the Love Generation. At the suggestion of scheduled support band the Grateful Dead, the Stones hired the Hell’s Angels as security for their Altamont gig. The Angels were very affordable, but their brand of frightening freedom still had a devilish chic in the naïve 1960s. The Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club was formed after the Second World War, by bike-loving ex-servicemen who found civilian life too bland to bear. The Hell’s Angels moniker was taken from a notorious American Air Force squadron, but the Satanic implications of the name became increasingly appropriate. The Angeles were hellraisers, prototypes for the whole biker culture—particularly the outlaws, or “1%ers” (the “one percent of motorcyclists’ labelled as ‘hoodlums and troublemakers” by the American Motorcycle Association in 1967). Many 1%er gangs emulated the Angels’ Satanic-sound title, adopting infernal names like the Straight Satans, Satan’s Slavers and the Pagans. Some took their title at face value. One member of the powerful Canadian gang Satan’s Angels said in a 1970s interview, “There are definite spirits and we identify with that particular one that has been called Satan. It’s an upsidedown World. Our virtues are other’s vices. You could say we were Satanists.” Hell’s Angels, and other outlaw gangs, are symbols of the more destructive, volatile aspects of the Satanic canon. Their readiness to fight, their revelling in intimidation and fear, their rapacious passion for pleasures of the flesh in all their basest forms, all these characteristics made them into icons of willful alienation and violent self-indulgence. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
When Jagger finally came onstage at Altamont on 6 December 1969, things were beginning to get ugly. Marty Balin of support act Jefferson Airplane had been in in the face with a pool cue by a Hell’s Angel. He tried to intervene when he saw the Angels beat up an African America kid in front of him. Paul Kantner, band founder, began to shout at the Angels until his microphone was snatched from him in the brawl that immersed the from of the stage. Jagger took the stage clad in his psychedelic sorcerer’s robes. Dancing under the red lights, surrounded by the dark wall of threatening, black-clad Angels, the vocalist could have been Anger’s Lucifer served by a surly army of warlike demons. Two songs into the set, things just kept getting uglier. Naked hippies cast themselves at the stage as offerings for their rock gods, and the Angels cast them back into the audience after beating them bloody. The third song began, “Sympathy for the Devil,” and all Hell broke loose. In the audience, an African American youth named Meredith Hunter pulled a gun. According to some he was aiming it at Jagger, other claimed he was defending himself against the Angels. Whichever is true, it was scant moments before a pack of black-leather Angels fell upon him and, in a flurry of kicks and knife blows, Hunter was killed. The Stones could see that the Angels were brutalizing the audience rather than controlling them—but Jagger was out of his depth, bleating weakly for everybody to “cool it.” As the killing of Meredith Hunter played itself out to the strains of “Sympathy for the Devil,” the song had to be stopped briefly as Jagger quipped, with unintended understatement, that “something very funny always happens when we start that number.” As the tide of panic and fury rose, the death count escalated to three with 100 injured. Following Altamont, the shaken Stones turned their back on the whole Satanic scene. Jagger wore a large wooden crucifix for some time after. The revolutionary stance and allusions to street violence were quietly dropped in favour of the stately image of rock ‘n’ roll aristocrats. The Rolling Stones abandoned any pretension to occultic chic or streetwise cool, letting themselves into the World of polite high society through the back door. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
It is always just a few days before the Winter Solstice when the forces of darkness are at their most powerful. Because the immense size of the Winchester Mansion, Mrs. Winchester included forty-seven fireplaces in her mansion, and seventeen chimneys. One rambling section in particular, the Hall of Fires, was designed to produce as much heat as possible—perhaps to ease Mrs. Winchester’s extreme arthritis. In addition to many windows that let the sunlight stream through, the three adjoining rooms have four fireplaces and three hot air registers from the coal furnace in the basement. Mrs. Winchester is very significant, not only for a vast estate, but one of many reasons was because she was known to have encounters with the supernatural. While I was at Mrs. Winchester’s mansion, I was asked to meet with a group of high school students who had gotten into spiritualism just for kicks. We had a meeting that night and I listened as the young people told me their experiences. At a part a friend had fascinated them with stories of trances and séances. He told them how to use a Ouija board and how to enter a state of trance. They were seeking spirit manifestations. When they began to get reactions, they became frightened. The spirit had guided them back in time. A boy appeared and stated to tell a story, he said: “When I was about ten years old, I came to visit my aunt Sarah. I met a girl who lived on the estate Ethel—aged eight. I never had the courage to speak to her. My aunt Sarah asked me to stay three months, and I did.” The statement was so quietly serious, so destitute of any suspicion of humor, that the audience looked on with great apprehension. “I had to work hard in those days. I saw Ethel, later that evening, asleep in one of the carriages, and that was the last time I saw her. I ended stay with my aunt for three years. There was a glimmer of a summer gown under the trees; a figure passed from the shadow to sunshine, and again into the cool dusk of a leafy lane. While I was walking in the garden, I found her seated in the shade of a pine. She looked up serenely, as though she had expected me, and we faced each other. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
“When I stroke to speak, my voice had an unknow tone to me. Her upturned face was my only answers. The breeze in the pine-tops, which had been stirring monotonously, ceased. Her delicate face was like a blossom lifted in the still air; her upward glance chained me to silence. The first breeze broke the spell; I spoke a word, then speech died on my lips; I stood twisting my shooting-cap, confused, not daring to continue. The girl leaned back, supporting her weight on one arm, fingers almost buried in the deep green moss. ‘It has been three years today,’ I said, in a dull voice of one who dreams—’three years today. May I not speak?’ In her lowered head and ears I repeated acquiescence; in her silence, consent. ‘Three years ago, today,’ I repeated; ‘the anniversary has given men courage to speak to you. Surely you will not take offense—we have travelled so far together!’ –from the end of the World to the end of it, and back again, here—to this place of all places in the World! And now to find you here on this day of all days—here within a step of our first meeting-place—three years ago today! And all the World we have travelled over since, never speaking, yet ever passing on paths parallel—paths which for thousands of miles ran almost within arm’s distance—’ She raised her head slowly, looking out from the shadows of the pines into her sunshine. Her dreamy eyes rested on acres of gold-rod and green grass in the December coolness. ‘Will you speak to me?’ I asked. ‘I have never even heard the sound of your voice.’ She turned and look at me, touching with idle finger the soft hair curling on her temples. Then she bent her head once more, the faintest shadow of a smile in her eyes. ‘Because,’ I said, humbly, ‘these long years of silent recognition count for something! And then the strangeness of it!—the fate of it,–the quiet destiny that ruled over our lives,–that rules them now—now as I am speaking, weighting every second with its tiny burden of fate.’ She replied, ‘I have never forgotten you—never!’ She looked into my eyes. ‘Dear, do you not understand? Have you forgotten? I died three years ago today.’ The unearthly sweetness of her white face started me. A terrible light broke in on me; my heart stood still.’ #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“And that very day, I died of a broken heart. Legend has it that I came to visit my aunt Sarah to pick up a check and no one ever saw me after that day, but truth is I never left. When God takes the mind and leaves the body alive there grows in it, sometime, a beauty almost supernatural. ‘Be with me when the new moon comes,’ she whispered. ‘It will be so sweet. I will teach you how divine is death, if you come.’” About 4 o’ clock in the morning, one of the students started to levitate, and he saw all kinds of beautiful sights. I asked him if he were concerned whether or not this was from God. He said it must be because it was in the spiritual realm. The one of the other students went into a demonic tantrum. I asked God to rebuke the demons and set her free. The demons said, “We are going, but we will come back.” And come back they did, with reinforcements. I worked with this young woman for several months, but because she was unwilling to give up this traffic with spirits she was later placed in a mental institution. I am convinced that she could be perfectly healed of this oppression and indwelling by demons if only she would consent. Sometimes lewd demons trick well-meaning people into following their sensual behavior. Not all spirits are evil. However, it is a serious matter to become involved with spiritualism in any form, but also the atoning blood of Christ always gives us His purity and power. All who desire protection from Satan and His demons will receive it. In the case of levitations, apports, and telekinesis, God allows the physical and natural laws of the Universe to be superseded temporarily and in a restricted sense by higher laws of the spirit World. The Winchester mansion is known for having spiritual events take place, even today. These phenomena are diabolic miracles. In distinction to divine miracles, diabolical miracles are supernatural acts that imitate the power and benevolence of divine miracles. It is as if God said to the powers of darkness what he said to the sea in the day of creation: “Hitherto shalt thou come but no father, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed,” reports Jon 38.11. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
The demonic powers are allowed only a very small intrusion into the orderly realm of nature, and the miracles they produce are characterized by a rigid sameness. Everywhere in the domain of occultism there are reminders of God’s absolute sovereignty. He is in majestic control. Demonic power makes such a poor show by its severe restrictions and drab sameness, that it actually advertises the glory of God for those who can see evil supernaturalism in the proper focus of divine revelation. Levitations (from the Latin verb levito, “to raise or lift”) are objects or people that are raised up and appear floating in their air. Such phenomena are frequently reported in occult literature and experienced in haunted houses, where strongly psychic people have lived and died or where spiritistic séances have been heled. Objects on occasion sail through the air as if thrown by an invisible hand, or spooks (ghost) appear hovering in space. Furniture is lifted, often when a strong medium is present. Human, either in a conscious or unconscious state, are included in the phenomena of levitation. We would oppose the belief that a word has any power of its own, and that the charmer is only the representative of this power. Words are only neutral instruments. They can be used for either good or evil. It depends on the inspiration behind the words. A Christian employs the Word on God’s authority. The magician and charmer employs his words and phrases as demonized instruments of magic. One of Mrs. Winchester’s servants had died. The man in question had the reputation of being a magician—it makes sense that a house built by spirits would have some magical employees. Two weeks before his death, as he lay in bed seriously ill, he began to groan, “Take the charm away from me, take the charm away from me.” The relatives had gone to the minister for advice, but he had warned them against doing as the man requested. The magician finally died in terrible agony. The minister told Mrs. Winchester that the man looked black as coal when he had seen him in the coffin. Many magicians only find rest when someone takes the spell of charm away from them, together with the responsibility of carrying on the occult practice. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
A description of magic ritual can be found in various books on magic. These books have the same significance to the magicians as the Christian Bible has for the Christian. There is a great amount of literature on the subject of magic, the most widely distributed book on the spiritual subject being the 6th and 7th Book of Moses. Unhappily a publisher in Braunschweig has published new editions of this book. The use of the name Moses is only a camouflage. Magicians look on the miracle connected with the staff of Moses as a piece of magic. In this way they try to elevate Moses to the position of their patron saint. The first part of the book reveals how a human may enter into a relationship with the devil. The latter part gives instructions as to how a person can achieve dominion over all the forces of nature as well as the powers of Heaven and Hell through the use of magic. The book has already caused untold harm in the World and people who read it invariably suffer in the process. A house in which the book is kept is also a place where misfortunes often occur. There are many examples which illustrate this fate and we will deal with this problem soon in greater detail. In or about the 27 of December of 1899, a girl about eighteen years of age, Miss Mary Dunbar, was hired as a maid by Mrs. Winchester. Mrs. Winchester described her as “having an open and innocent countenance, and being a very intelligent young person.” She and her aunt, Mrs. Haltridge, were staying at Winchester mansion. A rumor was afloat that the latter had been bewitched into her grave, and this could not fail to have its effect on Miss Dunbar. Accordingly, on the night of her arrival, her troubles began. When she retired to her bedroom, accompanied by another girl, they were surprised to find that a new mantle and some other wearing apparel had been taken out of a trunk and scattered through the house. Going to look for the missing articles, they found laying on the parlour floor an apron which two days before had been locked up in another apartment. This apron, when they found it, was rolled up tight, and tied fast with string of its own material, which had upon it five strange knots. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
These she proceeded to unloose, and having done so, she found a flannel cap, which had belonged to old Mrs. Haltridge, wrapped up in the middle of the apron. When she saw this she was frightened, and threw both cap and arpon to young Mrs. Haltridge, who was also alarmed, thinking that the mysterious knots were boded evil to some inmate of the mansion. That evening Miss Dunbar was seized with the most violent fit, and, recovering, cried out that a knife was run through her thigh, and that she was most grievously afflicted by three women, who she described particularly, but did not then give any account of their names. About midnight she was seized with a second fit; when she saw in her vision seven or eight women who conversed together, and in their conversation called each other by their names. When she came out of her fit she gave their names as Janet Liston, Elizabeth Cellor, Kate M’Calmont, Janet Carson, Janet Mean, Latimer, and one who they termed Mrs. Ann. She gave so minute a description of them. Mrs. Dunbar said there was something in her stomach which she would be glad to get rid of. She fell into such violent fits of pains that three men were scarce able to hold her, and cried out, “For Christ sake take the Devil out of the room.” In her fits she often had her tongue thrust into her windpipe in such a manner that she was like to choak, and the root seemed pulled up into her mouth. Upon her recovery she complained extremely of the one Mean, who has twisted her tongue and spoke of someone who had tore her throat, and tortured her violently by reason of her crooked fingers and swelled knuckles. Her joints where all distorted and the tendons shriveled up, as she had described. However, through 38 years of residence, Mrs. Winchester’s employees remained fiercely and faithfully loyal, defending every eccentricity. Although usual things did occur in her home, they said she was very strong minded and firm, but always fair and kind. Laziness, theft, gossip or revealed confidences met with instant dismissal. Mrs. Winchester, they claimed, was deeply concerned with the welfare of their families. They were well paid and often additionally rewarded with gifts, even homes or real estate, and left lifetime pensions. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House on a rainy day is a sight to see 😍 Come see for yourself this weekend!
🎟 link in bio. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
One Side’s Abundant Eden is the Other’s Vast Wasteland
The real community of humans, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers of all humans to the extent they desire to know. The face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings—is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the World was mad in the past; humans always though they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all. Many students, of course, cannot defend their opinion. It is something with which they have been indoctrinated. The best they can do is point out all the opinions and cultures there are and have been. What right, they ask, do I or anyone else have to say one is better than the others? Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum. It wants to produce a certain kind of human being. This intention is more of less explicit, more or less a result of reflection; but even the neutral subjects, like reading and writing and arithmetic, take their place in a vision of the educated person. In some nations the goal was the pious person, in others, the warlike, in others industrious. As a nation, we began with the model of the rational and industrious human, who was honest, respected the laws, and dedicated to the family. Above all one was to know the rights doctrine; the Constitution, which embodies it; and American history, which presented and celebrated the founding of a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all humans are created equal.” A powerful attachment to the letter and the spirit of the Declaration of Independence gently conveyed, appealing to each humans’ reason, was the goal of the education of democratic humans. This called for something very different from the kinds of attachment required for traditional communities where myth and passion as well as severe discipline, authority, and the extended family produced an instinctive, unqualified, even fanatic patriotism, unlike the reflected, rational, calm, even self-interested loyalty—not so much to the country but to the form of government and its rational principles—required in the United State of America. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
There is no enemy other than the human who is not opened to everything. However, when there are no shared goals or visions of the public good, is the social contract any longer possible? Hobbes and Locke, and the American Founders following them, intended to palliate extreme beliefs, particularly religious beliefs, which lead to civil strife. The members of sects had to obey the laws and be loyal to the United States of America’s Constitution; if they did so, other had to leave them alone, however distasteful their beliefs might be. The insatiable appetite for freedom to live as one pleases thrives on this aspect of modern democratic thought. In the end it begins to appear that full freedom can be attained only when there is no such knowledge at all. The effective way to defang the oppressors is to persuade them they are ignorant of the good. History and social science are used in a variety of ways to overcome prejudice. We should not be ethnocentric, a term drawn from anthropology, which tells us more about the meaning of openness. We should not think our way is better than others. Then intention is not so much to teach the students about other times and places as to make them away of the fact that their preferences are only that—accidents of their time and place. Their beliefs do not entitle them as individuals, or collectively as a nation, to think they are superior to anyone else. Instinct and intellect must be suppressed by education. The natural soul is to be replaced with an artificial one. The dominant majority gave the country a dominant culture with its traditions, its literature, its tastes, its special claim to know and supervise the language, and its Protestant religions. The reactionaries did not like the suppression of class privilege and religious establishment. For a variety of reasons, they simply did not accept equality. Critics knew full well that the Constitution’s heart was a moral commitment to equality and hence condemned segregation. The Constitution was not just a set of rules of government but implied a moral order that was to be enforced throughout the entire country. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The Americans who were demanding civil rights, were the true Americans because they understood that equality belongs to them as human beings by natural and political right. It was a demand for American identity. However, with history, nothing has taken place except a smattering of facts learned about other nations or cultures and a few social science formulas. None of this means much, partly because little attention has been paid to what is required in order truly to convey the spirit of other places and other times to young people, or for that matter to anyone of other places and other times to young people, or for that matter to anyone, partly because the students see no relevance in any of it to the lives they are going to lead or to their prevailing passion. No longer is there a hope that there are great wise humans in other places and times who can reveal the truth about life—except for the few remaining young people who look for a quick fix from a guru. Gone is the real historical sense of a Machiavelli who wrested a few hour from each busy day in which “to don regal and courtly garments, enter the courts of the ancients and speak with them.” Some critics of the United States of America’s Constitution, which provided rights for all citizens, truly believed that some people were inferior to them, and they thought that Jim Crow was necessary, as it was part of their unique way of life. Different strokes for different folks. Like said before, the only way to defang them is not with hate, but to show them the beauty of equality. The point is to persuade students to recognize that there are other ways of thinking and that Western ways are not always better. It is again not the content that counts but the lesson to be drawn. Such requirements are part of the effort to establish a World community and train its members—the person devoid of prejudice. However, if the students were really to learn something of the minds of any of these non-Western cultures—which they do not—they would find that each and every one of these cultures is ethnocentric. All of them think their way is the best way, and all others are inferior. Western phenomenon, and in its origin is obviously connected with the search for new and better ways, or at least for validation of the hope that our own culture really is the better way, a validation for which there is no felt need in other cultures. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The reason for the non-Wester closedness, or ethnocentrism, is clear. Humans must love and be loyal to their families and their peoples in order to preserve them. Only if they think their own things are good can they rest content with them. A father must prefer his child to other children, a citizen his country to others. That is why there are myths—to justify these attachments. And a man needs a place and opinions by which to orient oneself. This is strongly asserted by those who talk about the importance of roots. The problems of getting along with outsiders is secondary to, and sometimes in conflict with, having an inside, a people, a culture, a way of life. A very great narrowness is not incompatible with the health of an individual or a people, whereas with great openness it is hard to avoid decomposition. When people take on the good from another culture, this may be considered a dangerous business because it tends to weaken wholehearted attachment to their own, hence to weaken their peoples as well as to expose themselves to the anger of the family, friends, and countrymen. Loyalty versus quest for the good introduced an unresolvable tension into life. However, the awareness of the good as such and the desire to possess it are priceless humanizing acquisitions. Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason’s power. The unrestrained and thoughtless pursuit of openness, without recognizing the inherent political, social, or cultural problem of openness as the goal of nature, has rendered openness meaningless. Cultural relativism destroys both one’s own and the good. True openness is the accompaniment of the desire to know, hence of the awareness of ignorance. To deny the possibility of knowing good and bad is to suppress true openness. A proper historical attitude would lead one to doubt the truth of historicism (the view that all thought is essentially related to and cannot transcend its own time) and treat it as peculiarity of contemporary history. Historicism and cultural relativism actually are a means to avoid testing our own prejudices and asking, for example, whether humans are really equal or whether that opinion is merely a democratic prejudice. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
One has to have the experience of really believing before one can have the thrill of liberation. Prejudices, strong prejudices, are visions about the way things are. They are divinations of the order of the whole of things, and hence the road to a knowledge of that whole is by way of erroneous opinions about it. Error is indeed our enemy, it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment. The mind that has no prejudices at outset is empty. It can only have been constituted by a method that is unaware of how difficult it is to recognize that a prejudice is a prejudice. Without getting misty-eyed about it, I think we can fairly say that universities have a sacred responsibility to define for their society what is worthwhile knowledge. These definitions are most clearly visible in university catalogues, where you will find lists of courses, subjects, and “fields” of study. Taken together, they amount to a certified statement of what the university thinks a serious student ought to think about. In what is omitted from a catalogue, you may also learn what a serious student need not think about. However, these are bad times for scrupulous efforts at gatekeeping, and, happily, many universities are now busily engaged in rewriting their catalogues. Some tend to think that living in California; Florida, and other warm climates tends to shrivel the brain and makes people dumber than those living in colder climates, such as New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Iowa. There was a study by two doctoral students at Texas Technical University who found that the ten states with the highest average SAT scores all had cold winters. Indeed, every state with an average of 540 or higher on both the verbal and quantitative parts of the SAT had an average higher temperature in January of less than 42 degrees Fahrenheit. At the other end, five of the ten states with the lowest SAT scores were warm-weather states. Moreover, temperature has a significant relationship to SAT scores even when the researchers took into account such factors as per-pupil expenditures on schooling. So there! Now, there is also an important reason to keep authority figures on the right side of the law. Not only will it accord them more respect, but also more compliance. In the face of what they construe to be legitimate authority, most people will do what they are told. Or, to put it in another way, the social context in which people find themselves will be a controlling factor in how they behave. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Many people who consider themselves scientists, are not. Dr. Freud’s work is exemplary—indeed, monumental—but scarcely anyone believes today that Dr. Freud was doing science, any more than educated people believe that Marx was doing science, or Max Webber or Lewis Mumford or Bruno Bettelheim or Carl Jung or Margret Mead or Arnold Toynbee. What these people were doing was weaving narratives about human behavior. Their work is a form of storytelling, not unlike conventional imaginative literature although different from it in several important ways. The work of these people is called storytelling because this suggest that an author has given a unique interpretation to a set of human events, that one has supported one’s interpretation with examples in various forms, and that one’s interpretation cannot be proved or disproved but draws its appeal from the power of its language, the depth of its explanations, the relevance of its examples, and the credibility of its theme. And all of this has an identifiable moral purpose. The words “true” and “false” do not apply here in the sense that they are used in mathematics or science. For there is nothing universally and irrevocably true or false about these interpretations. There are no critical tests to confirm or falsify them. There are no postulates in which they are embedded. They are bound by time, by situation, and above all by the cultural prejudices of the researchers. Quite like a piece of fiction. There is more hypocrisy in Heaven and Earth than is dreamt of in some of our philosophies. What we know about ourselves—can be more terrifying than what we do not know. Most of us generate piles of junk—unconvincing stores without credible documentation, sound logic, or persuasive argument. Books are, in many cases, written by men and women who are concerned not to improve scholarship but to improve social life. Thus, the purpose of doing this kind of work is essentially didactic and moralistic. The purpose of social research is to rediscover the truths of social life; to comment on and criticize the moral behavior of people; and finally, to put forward metaphors, images, and ideas that can help people live with some measure of understanding and dignity. Specifically, the purpose of media ecology is to tell stores about the consequences of technology; to tell how media environments create contexts that may change the way we think or organize our social life, or make us better or worse, or smarter or dumber, or freer or more enslaved. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Sometimes the stories media ecologists have to tell are rather more important than those of other academic storytellers—because the power of communication technology to give shape to people’s lives is not a matter that comes easily to the forefront of people’s consciousness, though we life in an age when our lives—whether we like it or not—have been submitted to the demanding sovereignty of new media. And so we are obligated, in the interest of humane survival, to tell tales about what sort of paradise may be gained, and what sort lost. We will not have been the first to tell such tales. However, unless our stories ring true, we may be the last. Now the TV tends to be a beast, too, as so many people know. The TV news media is usually there to frame certain stories they way they feel will be more entertaining, and they will also suppress or ignore others when they are involved in the corruption or paid to cover it up. To fight corruption, people need to learn the legal system, its tactics, and their means of manipulating media. To learn these, individuals have to restructure their mind and conceptions. And so to stand against the enemy, many engage of the process of self-destroying what remained of their own culture. When news television crews learn of a struggle they want to profit from, reporters are flown out from Hollywood and other areas to shoot images following the networks news guidelines for “good television” and “balanced reporting.” When it comes to the people, they often juxtapose with the people, others in suits and ties, who are responsible government officials concerned about jobs, and a lot of savage-looking types in funny clothes, speaking jive about their land, which does not seem credible because they way the people are dress and the emotions of their language. People are most likely to believe a professional in a suit, than someone who is wearing regular clothes and has been a victim of crime. After 40 million viewers see a Caucasian, modishly dressed TV newsman explain the crosscurrents in the struggle, and plaintively ask whether something of an earlier culture could not be permitted to remain, he finishes his report by saying, “From Sacramento, California, this is John Doe reporting.” This is followed by a commercial for the need to build affordable housing, how it creates jobs, and how green energy will be used to power the buildings during this energy crisis. The next is a story talking about gas prices and the need to suspend the gas tax. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Surely this story and the advertisements did not help the people concerned about their land. It was certain that they did not come through as well as the businessmen, the government officials and the reporter’s objective, practical analysis. They were attempting to convey something subtle, complex, foreign and ancient through a medium which did not seem able to handle any of that and which is better suited to objective data, conflict and fast, packaged information. When a struggle is revealed, usually the people become fixed into the model of artifact. The medium cannot be stretched to encompass their message. On the other hand, what if one had four minutes, or even one minute, to convey the essence of a product? A BMW? A stereo set? A toy? Could one accomplish that efficiently? One certainly could. It is obvious that a product is a lot easier to get across on television than a several acres of land or a cultural mind-set. Understanding cultural ways enough to care about them requires understanding a variety of dimensions of nuance and philosophy. You do not need any of that to understand a product, you do not have problems of subtlety, detail, time and space, historical context or organic form. Products are inherently communicable on television because of their static quality, sharp, clear, highly visible lines, and because they carry no informational meaning beyond what they themselves are. They contain no life at all and are therefore no capable of dimension. Nothing works better as telecommunication that images of products. Might television itself have no higher purpose? Most Americas, whether on the political left, center, or right, will argue that technology is neutral, that any technology is merely a benign instrument, a tool, and depending upon the hands into which it falls, it may be used one way or another. There is nothing that prevents a technology from being used well or badly; nothing intrinsic in the technology itself or the circumstances of its emergence which can predetermine its use, its control or its effects upon individual human lives of the social and political forms around us. The argument goes that television is merely a window or a conduit through which any perception, any argument or reality may pass. It therefore has the potential to be enlightening to people who watch it and is potentially useful to democratic process. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
If you accept mass production, you accept that a small number of people will supervise the daily existence of a much larger number of people. You have to accept that human beings will spend long hours, every day, engaged in repetitive work, while suppressing any desires for experience or activity beyond this work. The workers’ behavior becomes subject to the machine. With mass production, you also accept that huge numbers of identical items will need to be efficiently distributed to huge numbers of people and that institutions such as advertising will arise to do this. Once technological process cannot exist without the other, creating symbolic relationships among technologies themselves. If you accept the existence of advertising, you accept a system designed to persuade and to dominate minds by interfering in people’s thinking patterns. You also accept that the system will be used by the sorts of people who like to influence people and are good at it. No person who did not wish to dominate others would choose to use advertising and all technologies created to serve it will be consistent with this purpose, will encourage this behavior in society, and will tend to push social evolution in this direction. In all of these instances, the basic form of the institution and the technology determines its interaction with the World, the way it will be used, the kind of people who use it, and to what ends. And so it is with television. Far from being “neutral,” television itself predetermines who shall use it, how they use it, what effects it will have on individual lives, and, if it continues to be widely used, what sorts of political forms will inevitably emerge. Television is not reformable. If our society is to return to something like sane and democratic functioning, it must be gotten rid of totally. This is not about the television itself. It is about a process, already long underway, which has successfully redirected and confined human experience and therefore knowledge and perceived reality. We have all been moved into such a narrow and deprived channel of experience that a dangerous instrument like television can come along and seem useful, interesting, sane and worthwhile at the same time it further boxes people into a physical and mental condition appropriate for the emergence of autocratic control. Television has been used and expanded by the present powers-that-be, and that was inevitable, and it should have been predictable at the outset. The technology permits of no other controllers. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
One also has to worry about the effects of television upon individual human bodies and minds, the effects which fit the purposes of the people who control the medium. Furthermore, television has no democratic potential. The technology itself places absolute limits on what may pass through it. The medium, in effect, chooses its own content from a very narrow field of possibilities. The effect is to drastically confine all humans understanding within a rigid channel. And as mentioned before, these aspects of television are reformable. What is revealed, however, is that there is ideology in the technology itself. To speak of television as “neutral” and therefore subject to change is as absurd as speaking of the reform of a technology such as social media. The medium is the message. Many do not recognize the transformative power of new communication technologies. They need to come with a warning about the threat the power poses—and the risk of being oblivious to that threat. The electric technology is within the gates, and we are numb, deaf, blind, and mute about its encounter with on and through which the American way of life was formed and is changing. When people start debating (as they always do) whether the medium’s effects are good or bad, it is the content they wrestle over. Skeptics, with equally good reason, condemn the crassness of the content, viewing it as signaling a “dumb down” of culture. One side’s abundant Eden is the other’s vast wasteland. The Internet is the latest medium to spur this debate. In the long run a medium’s content matters less than the medium itself in influencing how we think and act. As our window onto the World, and onto ourselves, a popular medium molds what we see and how we see it—and eventually, if we us it enough, it changes who we are, as individuals and as a society. The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts. Rather, they alter patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. Media work their magic, or their mischief, on the nervous system. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Our focus on a medium’s content can blind us to these deep effects. We are too busy being dazzled or distributed by the programming to notice what is going on inside our heads. In the end, we come to pretend that the technology itself does not matter. It is how we use it that matters, we tell ourselves. The technology is just a tool, inert until we pick it up and inert again once we set it aside. We are too prone to make technological instruments, like guns, scapegoats for the sin of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value. However, it is also our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that count, which is the numb stance of the technological idiot. People have been replacing God with false idols and that is the problem. So many people say they believe in God, but so few read the Bible or pray daily. They are too busying watching TV and using the Internet to. Many people are essentially being sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine because is it calmly, coldly, discounting their memory circuits that control their brains. Many people can feel it, too. They have an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with their brains, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. Their minds are not going—so far as they can tell—but it is changing. They do not think the way they used to think, and it can be felt most strongly when they are reading. Several people are no longer able to immerse themselves into a book or a lengthy article. Their minds used to get caught up in the twists of the narrative or the turns of the argument, and they spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. For many, that is rarely the case anymore. Now their concentration starts to drift after a page or two. They get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. They feel like they are always dragging their wayward brains back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. The Net has become the all-purpose medium, the conduit for most information that flows through one’s eyes and ears and into their mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich and easily searched store of data are many, and they have widely described and duly applauded. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
While the Inter is an astonishing boom to humanity, gathering up and concentrating information and idea that were once scattered so broadly around that World that anyone could profit from them, now all this information is at your fingertips. When one is writing a report for school and using mostly book sources, some of the information may be outdated, and now what they can do it go online, find a reputable site and supplement the new information. It is better than gathering all your information from the silicon memory system. The more people use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some worry they will become chronic scatterbrains. Because of the Internet, some people have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a long article on the web or in print. Even electronic Web pages that are more than three or four paragraphs is too much for some to absorb. They just skim it. There are people that think the Internet is the most creative thing that was invented. One could hardly meet anyone who says it has not been helpful. Many individuals like to go online because they love the ability to review and scan tons of information on the web. It is believed that reading lots of short, linked snippets online is a more efficient way to expand one’s mind than reading a 250-page book. These technopagans also believe in superiority of the Internet and think others have not been able to recognize it yet because they are measuring it against our old linear thought process. In many ways, the Internet is making people less patient readers, but could possible be making them smarter. They have more connections to documents, artifacts, and people, which means more external influences on their thinking and thus on their writing. Regardless, more people know they have sacrificed something important, but they will not go back to the way things used to be. For some people, the very idea of reading a book has come to seem old-fashioned, maybe even a little silly—like driving your own car when you can just schedule a ride share service. This generation thinks thing sitting down and reading a book from cover to cover does not make sense. It is not a good use of their time, as they can get the information they need faster through the Internet. These skilled Internet hunters think books are superfluous. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The digital immersion has even affected the way people absorb information. They do not necessarily read from left to right and from top to bottom. They might instead skip around, scanning for pertinent information of interest. The Net has become essential to their work, school, or social lives, and often to all three. Some log on only a few times a day—to check their e-mail, follow a story in the news, research a topic of interest, or do some shopping. And there are, of course, many people who do not use the Internet at all, either because they cannot afford to or because they do not want to. What is clear, though, is that for society as a whole the Net has become, in just the thirty years since software programmer Tim Berners-Lee wrote the code for the World Wide Web, the communication and information medium of choice. The score of its use is unprecedented, even by the standards of the mass media of the twenty-first century. We seem to have arrived, at an important juncture in our intellectual and cultural history, a moment of transition between two very different types of thinking. What we are trading away for the riches of the Internet is our old linear thought process. Calm, focused, undistracted, the liner mind is being pushed aside by a new kind of mind that wants and needs to take in and dole our information in short, disjointed, often overlapping bursts—the faster, the better. When people go online, they feel their brains light up, and feel like they are getting smarter. The feelings are intoxicating—so much so that they can distract people from the Net’s deeper cognitive consequences. Many people miss the days of the old box TV with rabbit ears sitting on the floor, and the bulky avocado telephone fixed to the wall in the kitchen with its rotary dial and long, coiled cord. And the den filled with books on the bookshelves—lot of books—with their many-colored spines, each bearing a title and the name of a writer. There was something calming in the reticence of all those books, their willingness to wait, years, decades, our centuries even, for the right reader to come along and pull them from their appointed slots. Take your time, the books whisper. We are not going anywhere. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The computer, however, is more than just a simple tool that does what one tells it to do. It is a machine that, in subtle but unmistakable ways, exerts an influence over you. The more one uses it, the more it alters the way one works. Reading lone feels new and liberating because for many kids who did not like reading books because of the lack of pictures, not have hyperlinks and search engines which deliver an endless supply of words to their screen, alongside pictures, sounds, and videos. People have started letting their newspaper and magazine subscriptions lapse. Who needed them? By the time the print editions arrived, dew-dampened or otherwise, the felt like that have already seen all the stories. The Internet is exerting a much stronger and broader influence over any one than their old stand-alone personal computer ever could. Their way their very brains work is changing. And this when most start worrying about their inability to pay attention to one thing for more than a couple of minutes. It is not just a symptom of middle-age mind rot. One’s brain is not just drifting. It is hungry. It is demanding to be fed the way the Internet feeds it—and the more it is fed, the hungrier it becomes. Should I check another e-mail, clink another link, look at another web page. Cause I am falling on the floor. I am climbing up the walls and everytime I get a grip, I seem to lose myself just a little more. Cause I am here and it eats me up, but I love the way it feels. I really should not stay online, but I cannot give up. The more it hurts, the more I need it more. It is like an addiction. I want to be connected. Just as Microsoft Word had turned me into a flesh-and-blood word processor, the Internet, one may sense, is turning one into something like a high-speed data-processing machine. Maybe that is a good thing because today more than every we are governed, all over the World, by the students of economics professors. Presidents and politicians, treasury secretaries or ministers of finance and chancellors of the exchequer, central bankers, investment bankers and senior officials of the World’s biggest and more powerful corporations have all dutifully sat in their classrooms listening to them, pouring over their key ideas. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The same goes for brokers, financial advisers and newspaper and television pundits who take these ideas to the public. Unfortunately, many ideas remembered from college days belong in the “obsoledge attic,” or better yet, in the cemetery of ideas. The media is sometimes behind big bloopers. In February of 2004 U.S. president George W. Bush stiff-armed his own Council of Economic Advisers, refusing to publicly back its forecast that the economy would provide 2.6 million new jobs that year. But as The Washington Post reported, That forecast, derided as wildly optimistic, was one of the more modest predictions the administration has made about the economy over the past three years. Two years ago, the administration forecast that there would be 3.4 million more jobs in 2003 than there were in 2000. And it predicted a budget deficit for discal 2004 of $14 billion. The economy ended up losing 1.7 million jobs over that period, and the budget deficit [for 2004]…is on course to be $521 billion. No doubt, some of this is political exaggeration. Any statistic can be tortured into submission. Nor are the torturers jut Republicans. The discrepancies between the forecast and subsequent results began to widen under the previous Democratic administration. It was clear that, even allowing for political fact manipulation, something was seriously amiss. In the words of a Republican White House press spokesman, “The old theories…proved themselves wildly wrong…Nobody saw this happening—not on Wall Street, not Vegas, not Poor Richard, not Nostradamus.” Economists have failed to anticipate more than job numbers and deficits. They have contributed to some of the most publicized, embarrassing financial debacles in recent decades. In the last two months of 2022, inflation has averaged 0.85 percent. If these hikes continue over the next three months, the headline inflation rate would approach 9 percent by spring. If they persist for a year, it would surpass 10 percent—the first time the United States of America would have a double-digit inflation since the early 1980s. President Biden’s entire economic team has consistently played down inflation’s threat all year. They lied about helping the American people through the pandemic and ignored the warnings from former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers that the American Rescue Plans massive size would reduce inflation. Then said initial upticks in prices were simply statistical glitches caused by the dramatic price drops during the pandemic’s initial phase and would fade away once that glitch dropped out of the calculations. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
When that did not happen, they started blaming supply chain woes for the problem, even though that cannot possible explain things such as the fast and steady rise in housing costs. When consumers are fast losing purchasing power during two-digit inflation, consumers’ goods industries suffer symptoms of contraction and recession, especially unemployment of capital labor. Two-digit inflation only comes to an end with the advent of three-digit inflation which signals the approaching demise of the paper currency. In the final convulsion of inflation fever, millions of men and women will be in a panic rush to exchange their rapidly depreciating money for real goods. When there are mistakes made during a financial crisis by macroeconomists of the International Monetary Fund—errors can trigger ethnic clashes. Experts also occasionally miss anticipating major changes like the industrial slowdown in 1995, as we have seen with the 2020 pandemic. Along with the hyperinflation of the late 1980s, which we are also starting to see happening now and more so in late 2022-2023. The Fed does not know if it wants to raise interest prices because that will hurt human capital and businesses, while this war is going on and gas prices are skyrocketing, as well as consumer goods and services, and home prices. So we turn to our crucial problem: What to do that is self-justifying when the great social World is pretty unavailable? The essential Hipster problem is: to heighten experience, and get out of one’s usual self. To heighten experience is a common principle of Hipster and Delinquent, but the difference are marked. Among the Hipsters, the craving for excitement and self-transcendence is darkly colored with violence and death wish, and they therefore dread flipping, which they interpret as weakness, castration, and death. Among the younger delinquents, we shall see, it is fatalism, the wish is to get caught and be brought back into society. However, for some others, it is a religious hope that something new will happen, a revival. Not everyone gets self-destructive. The risks of delinquency, criminality, and injury rouse some in a normal apprehension, and they express a human amazement at the brutality and cruelty of some with whom they keep company. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
In taking drugs for the new experience, many largely steer clear of being hooked by an addiction. On the other hand, if the aim is to get out of the World, one can hardly play it safe. So if they push their stimulants, sleeplessness, and rhythmic and hallucinatory exercises to the point of having temporary psychotic fugues, or flipping, it is not surprising. For some people, going to the municipal psychiatric hospital is an expected and regular occurrence. The young actualized Christians seek enlightenment, and the city hospital succors them when they break down. Let us now go back to the jargon. The supreme words are “crazy,” “far out,” “gone,” ‘high,” “gas,” “sent.” These mean not in this World but somewhere, not rational but something. “Flip” is generally used with enthusiastic self-deprecation. When the crazy or far-out moment can be maintained for long enough to be considered a something and somewhere, it is “groovy,” that is, one is like somebody else’s phonograph record. One is “with it” or falls in.” The “it” or the understanding “where” is not, of course, definite, for the pure being has no genus and differentia. “Swinging with it” is the condition of passing from here and now to the heightened experience of “it.” Contrariwise, it is bad and painful to be “nowhere,” to “fall out” (take an overdose), or to be “drug” (dragging). The way of being-in-the-World, that is, is to be either cool and mask-faced, experiencing little; or to be sent far out, experiencing something. However, since the cool behavior of these usually gentle middle-class boy looks like adolescent embarrassment and awkwardness rather growth in experience would not be a more profitable enterprise and ultimately get them much further out. A possibility that has interestingly dropped from popular culture as the exploitation of shared athletic or wildly physical agitation, which belonged grandly to the old jazz-for-dancing and revival meetings. This is certainly an important truth that jive is energetic, in words like “go” and “dig.” (To the jazz-for-listening one is not supposed to respond overtly by more than a quietly tapped toe. It can be hypnotic and speak to the listener like a crustal ball or a foundation or a hearth fire. As it is remarkably thin gruel (no doubt I am tone deaf). For the performer, of course, it provides the deepening absorption of any simple improvised variations, plus the solidarity of the group.) #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
I can think of two reasons why the overtly shared crazy physical rhythms are spurned. First is that this motion is in fact too much in the extremities of the body rather than in the solar plexus, it is too superficial an excitement and more fit for teenagers. The difference is between the lostness in juvenile jitterbugging and the “central” experience of an Eastern Dance or Mary Wigman. Some young men have taken to the Eastern dance, but most who love popular culture do not practice physiological yoga either, just as their Zen is without breathing-exercises or correction of posture. So perhaps another reason for their dropping the old physical jazz and revival is just the opposite, that the display of energy would upset their coolness, it would be embarrassing and make them feel too young. I would wonder if this is not the simple explanation of their disdain social dancing as “dry” pleasures of the flesh; for certainly one of the reasonable uses of social dancing is body contact and sometimes foreplay involving pleasures of the flesh. However, these boys are embarrassed to get excited, to betray feeling, in public, though they are more than willing to get into their birthday suits and exhibit themselves, or to beat a drum wildly in public as an exhibition for others, but not as contact with them. Celibacy necessitated by castration—the excision of the private parts—sends shudders through our modern sensibilities. Yet for more than four thousand years, millions of males have endured this mutilation. The Persians were perhaps its first authors. As an eighteenth-century scholar noted, “The Latin word spade, which comprehended several sorts of eunuchs, was taken from a village of Persia called Spada, where…the first execution of this nature was made…The first eunuch mentioned in the holy scriptures was Patiphor…who brought Joseph from the Midianites…and it is observed…that Nebuchadnezzar caused all the Jewish people, and other prisoners of war, to be gelt or cut.” Throughout the centuries, a large percentage of eunuchs have been youngsters from families whose poverty precipitated the decision to castrate the child. In these cases, parents expected to advance their son’s career in areas closed to all but eunuchs: certain types of domestic service in aristocratic homes or royal courts, or as castrati opera singers. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Other boys were neutered after their enslavement by enemies victorious in wars: Nebuchadnezzar’s policy of castrating male prisoners of war that he might have none to attend him in his private service but eunuchs is a case in point. Sometimes older males voluntarily sought out the surgery, almost always as a means of earning a living as an entertainer or court functionary. Occasionally, men gelded themselves in full adulthood for religious reasons—the Church Father Origen; the obscure Valesii, a heretical Christian scet of the third century about whom little is known; and the nineteenth-century Russian Skopts are examples of these self-determined celibates. Much closer to home and closer in time is California’s Heaven’s Gate celibate computer cult, the members of which committed mass suicide in 1997 and whose leader, Marshall Applewhite, had turned to castration as a desperate measure to obliterate his uncertain sexuality. Hundreds of thousands of people have also been subjected to castration as punishment for imagined or real crimes ranging from “self-love” to nonconsensual pleasures of the flesh. The mentally or physically disabled have been neutered to prevent them from reproducing. African-American men have been brutally desexed by lynch mobs, which some say are starting to pop up again in a different form, terrified of their sexuality. We shudder at castration for a host of reasons. It assaults the private core of human existence. It has almost always been a butchery, performed inexpertly by unqualified quacks and costing the lives of a majority of its victims. Its consequences are lifelong, visible, and far-reaching, affecting appearance, stance, and above all, psychological development and adjustment. We know now how important, perhaps crucial, the male organ is to psychosexual development. However, some men are now choosing to castrate themselves and keep their manly appears, which creating another gender’s private part in its place. Lessons harshly learned from routine circumcisions gone wrong have hardly taught us that gender is not an amorphous variable physicians can successfully alter simply by radical surgery. When we read about eunuchs, whether in medieval China or the Ottoman empire, or as victims of Nazi eugenics, our growing knowledge of the effects of castration colors our perceptions. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The issues surrounding castration are complex and as fascinating as they are disturbing. Eunuchs who have left written records reported that they reflected deeply and incessantly on their mutilation. Though a dearth of such documents prevents a thorough study of eunuchs’ reactions, all anecdotal evidence suggests that most of them brooded bitterly about the physical effects of castration and about the contempt and ostracism that mainstream society directed at them, including the mightiest military commanders of the Byzantine empire. However, eunuchs often simultaneously understood and valued another dimension of their condition, seeing it as a means—their only means—of gaining access to certain positions. They or their parents neutralized poverty by trading their sexuality for opportunity, often nit not always realized. Afterwards, eunuchs had lifetimes of confronting the other, less desirable consequences of the procedure. In particular, they had to deal with incessant humiliation and enforced celibacy, though much evidence exists that they experienced longings for intimate passions their ravaged bodies could not satisfy. And these were the luckier men who could at least rationalize about their situation. Others, victims of brute force alone, had not even that consolation. “Search me [thoroughly], O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting,” Psalm 139.23-24. A light exists in Spring, not present in the Year at any other period when March is scarcely here. A color stands abroad on Solitary Fields that Science cannot overtake but human nature feels. When you pass through waters, God will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you; when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon you. I shall strengthen you, yea, I shall help you, yea, I shall uphold you with the power of righteousness. Behold, all they that contend with you shall be ashamed and confounded; they say that strive with you shall be as naught and shall perish. In righteousness shall you be established; you shall not fear. You who have been forsaken, shunned and hated, now will I make you an eternal pride, a joy to all ages. Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. Every weapon that is formed against you shall fail, and every tongue that shall rise against you, shall disprove. This is the inheritance of the Lord’s servants, and their salvation from Me, saith the Lord. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
Custom light fixtures in the bedroom are one of our favorite parts of living at Meadows Residence One at #PlumasRanch.
Other highlights include the walk-in shower and large soaking tub in the owner’s suite. Who knew you could get luxury like this in a single story home?! We did. 😉
Cresleigh Homes make the most enchanting homes you’ll ever find.
#CresleighHomes
The Problem with America it is Submerged in Old Atlantis
The problem with America it is submerged in old Atlantis. It has become like a refugee camp where all the geniuses have been driven out of their jobs and country by unfriendly regimes that are idling. The World of streets are so seductive that a person can ask you where you are from, then tell you what you are and you will believe them. People are too dependent on history and culture. However, the World belongs to those who understand it. Still, countless individuals bring their broken hearts and shattered dreams to the altar and hope they will be accepted, and they pray that rejection will not throw them into a rage and turn them into a Cain. Perhaps a vast number of those in society naively produced their favorite treasures and piled them in an indiscriminate heap. Those who do not recognize their value now may do so later. However, while some may be flattered by being tested, others resent it. People reserve their best thinking for their professional specialties, and next in line, for serious matters confronting the alert citizen—economic, politics, the disposal of nuclear waste, etcetera. When the day’s work is done, they want to be entertained. They cannot see why their entertainment should not simply be entertaining. Yet, it is not amusing to send oneself back to high school. Higher education must offer the individual much more than it does. For in the end, several people realize that they have no education in the conduct of life, at the university who was there to teach the students that drinking is not fun, and how to deal with their erotic needs, with other genders, and with family matters, and one graduates to some primal point of balance. In this great confusion, there is still an open channel to the soul. In many be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. However, the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves—to that part of us which is conscious of a higher consciousness, by means of which we make final judgments and put everything together. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The independence of this consciousness, which has the strength to be immune to the noise of history and the distractions of our immediate surroundings, is what the struggle is all about. The soul has to hold its ground against hostile forces, sometimes embodied in ideas which frequently deny its very existence, and which indeed often seem to be trying to annual it altogether. What makes the journey through life singularly difficult is the disheartening expansion of trained ignorance and bad thought. For to put the matter at its baddest, we live in a thought-World, and the thinking has gone very bad. Thinking alone will never cure what ails humanity, and so many should be grateful for a naïve grace which puts them beyond the need to reason elaborately. It is time for people to shed superfluities so that their mental bodies can recover its ability to breathe, and protect the root-simplicities of being. The University has never been a sanctuary or shelter from “the outer World.” It can be the place where megalomaniacs, heretics, tyrants, and illiterate athletes get the training and documents they need to make the cities turbulent, and torment humanity. The odor of their egos now is no more pleasant than they were 400 years ago. The heat of the dispute between the Left and Right has grown so fierce in the last decade that the habits of civilized discourse have suffered a scorching. Antagonists seem no longer to listen to one another. The World is so ready for an anti-hero that almost anyone can get voted into office or steal an election. Even criminals are being voted in to run cities like Sacramento, California—one after the next. Preoccupied with quests of Health, Pleasures of the Flesh, Race, War, academics make their reputations and their fortunes and the university has become society’s conceptual warehouse of often harmful influences. It makes an important statement and deserves careful study. For instance, it is interesting how sweetheart Lori Loughlin was sentenced for what she allegedly did, but Kevin Johnson was allowed to become mayor of Sacramento, and displayed more criminal behavior, never was prosecuted for what he actually did and was even invited to the White House. I guess we have to keep the cook book witches in check, but let dangerous felons go free. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
What each generation is can be best discovered in its relation to the permanent concerns of humankind. This in turn can best be discovered in each generation’s tastes, amusements, and especially angers (this is above al true in an age that prides itself on clam self-awareness). Particularly revealing are the various impostors whose business it is to appeal to the young. These culture peddlers have the strongest of motives for finding out the appetites of the young—so they are useful guides into the labyrinths of the spirit of the times. However, there is a human nature, it is guided by awareness. Humans are not just creatures of accident, chained to and formed by the particular cave in which they are born. One with a joy, and pleasure for life is far more effective in motivating others than anyone who is disinterested in what their moral duty is. The youth need to be helped to recognize and avoid deforming forces of convention and prejudice. The vision of what that nature is may be clouded by the fake news media. The soul may at the outset require extrinsic rewards and punishments to motivate its activity; but in the end that activity is its own reward and is self-sufficient. Fascinations with the youth leads to an awareness of the various kinds of soul and their various capacities for truth and error as well as learning. Every age has its problems, and things in the past may not have been wonderful. Society needs to be taught to be highly intelligent, materially, and spiritually free. So many are confused by the emerging perception of what needs to be done. Every time there is a disaster, people are told to “donate money,” so the youth are brought up in a consumer driven economy and taught that money can solve all problems. This makes it harder for people to learn what truly matters. Since in any specific struggle we might be outspent by several hundred times, we need to be more clever, more creative. The population is being inundated with conflicting versions of increasingly complex events. People are giving up on understanding anything. The glut of untreated sewage spewing from the TV news media is dulling awareness, not assisting it. Overload. It encourages passivity, not involvement. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Specific victories are possible, but overall understanding of the forces that are moving society seem to be diminishing. People’s minds seem to be running in dogged, one-dimensional channels which are reminiscent of the freeways during rush hour. As mass media has grown to become a kind of environment, it is not really contributing to any pool of useful knowledge. The real community of humans, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers, of all humans to the extent they desire to know. Television has become the major mental and physical experiential field for most of the people in the country, and the confusion of television information with a wider, direct mode of experience is advancing rapidly. Become so many are confusing television experience with direct experience of the World, we are not noticing that the experience itself is being unified to the single behavior of watching television. Switching from channel to channel, believing that a sports program was a significantly different experience from a police program or news of a Russian war, all 121 million viewers are sitting separately in dark rooms engaged in exactly the same activity at the same time: watching television. It is as if the whole nation has gathered at a gigantic three-ring circus. It has become possible for a nation of 325 million people to be spoken to as individuals, one to one, the television set to the person or family, all at once. So many should be chilled at the thought, realizing that these conditions of television viewing—confusion, unification, isolation, especially when combined with passivity and the effects of implanted imagery—are ideal preconditions for the imposition of autocracy. President Trump have uncovered, through an exhaustive investigation by law enforcement agencies, that the TV news media is involved in a massive conspiracy to destroy our democracy, a conspiracy which enjoys at least the tacit support of thousands of students, journalist, attorneys and even certain judges and elected officials. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Television is the perfect instrument to help bring tyrannical control. We can all be spoken to at the same time, night or day, from a centralized information source. In fact, we are. Every day, a handful of people speak, the rest listen. In many ways, as we saw with the recent Presidential Election, television makes the military coup and mass arrests of the imagination unnecessary. People thought that these subtle coups would make brutal and heavy-handed means of confining awareness unnecessary, but it seems to be making it worse. The riots, violence, kidnappings, hijacking, bombings—the sole purpose of these actions is often no more than media exposure. Sensing that the television is now the country’s main transmitter or reality, individuals began to take person action to affect it. Something in the nature of television imagery allows form to supersede content. However, the gravest mistake that can be made by a media creature is to assault the machine. The machine does not care about its fantasies. A new one will do. Bringing down Trump was just as good for ratings as supporting him. Better. More action. The only goals of the machine are to contribute to be the real power behind the throne, no matter who is king, and to remain the primary factor in all public perception. Television has the power to create presidents, and it has the power to destroy them. Most people do not raise complaint against a machine doing what it is designed to do. After all, who expects a machine to notice its own side effects? To care about the social and psychic consequences of its own presence? Machines asks no questions, have no peripheral vision or depth perception. They see the future through the fixed eye of their technical possibilities. However, it is well said that in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is kind. In America, and increasingly in the rest of the World, technology is a one-eyed king ruling unopposed amidst idiot cheering. Globally, there are 5.36 billion people Worldwide who are TV users, and that number is expected to reach 5.7 billion by 2026. Humans cannot live by electric wiring alone, and this obvious fact must be part of any plans we make for the future. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Power, utility, and prestige of the word have significantly diminished. All most all of the presidential candidates found their vote-getting power in their images and left content out as confusing and irrelevant. They were correct to do this. As we know, a campaign run on content could not possibly work on television. During the years that television was coming into its own as the central factor in American personal and political life, its basic nature and the effects it had on human beings and their institutions were rarely examined The problems that people did discuss were concentrated in three main areas: commercialism, access and programming. The speed, range, and impersonality of modern media undermine the oral tradition and therefore weaken the possibility of a nourishing community life. And in these days when lying is called misspeaking or disinformation, Newspeak becomes the normal mode of discourse. Psychologist, parents’ groups and educators lobbied against the dominance of sensational, superficial, irrelevant and violent programs. They sought programs with “prosocial values.” They especially wanted new emphasis on humanistic and educational shows for children. These groups saw no reason why such values as cooperation, loving and caring could not be as appropriate for television programming as violence and competition, but yet, no one still has censored the news nor warned readers that the informational may be fiction and not necessarily scholarly. Historians lobbied for more documentaries, believing that television has no greater inherent limits to its ability to present historical truth than the media that had preceded it. They succeeded in getting legislation requiring that TV networks permanently store their news and documentary footage. Now we can look to a future in which the present era will be understood in terms of the television treatment of it. Ecologist assumed television could be a potentially useful tool in expanding knowledge of how our species interacts with natural forces. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Political radicals believed television could stimulate deeper understanding of complex issues. Some groups believe there is a possibility to build sensitivity to their culture and philosophy through TV. Listen, everybody is watching TV. If we handle this the right way, we can reach everyone. Because of this, the decline of language may have proceeded so far that most people no longer perceive it as a problem. An analogy here might clarify this. It is said that the brain in the only organ of our body that feels no pain and therefore does not know when it is injured. The brain does not regard brain damage as a problem. If we think of language as the brain of a civilization, the it is possible that severe language-damage may not be perceived by the social body as a problem. It is possible that we have adapted ourselves to disinformation, to Newspeak, to public-relations hype, to imagery disguised as thought, to picture newspapers and magazines, to religion revealed in the form of entertainment, to politics in the form of a thirty-second television commercial. In adapting ourselves, we come to accept the present situation as the only available standard and conclude that this is the best of all possible Worlds. However, perhaps this is not the case. There does appear to be a national concern about illiteracy, aliteracy, and the persisting decline in our young people’s analytic ability. There is even a movement that wants to give the highest priority to teaching critical thinking in schools. Education, a subject never far from the issues raised by technology and language, attempts to understand and resolve new conditions of culture. Nonetheless, sometimes it is great fun to complain and, in America, it can even be profitable. However, unless one’s complaints are grounded in a sense of duty to one’s country or to a recognizable humane tradition, they are not worthy of serious attention. Everybody engages in creative arts and is likely to carry a sketchbook, proving when the psychologists and progressive educators have always claimed, that every child is creative if not blocked. Resigning from the rat race, they have removed the block. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
They work at these arts honestly, with earnest absorption, and even if they do continually subject one another and passers-by to listening to readings, and encourage the community by exclaiming, “It is the greatest!” Such creative activity sharpens the perceptions, releases and refines feelings, and is a powerful community bond. In itself it has no relation to the production of art works or the miserable life of sacrifice that an artist leads. It is personal cultivation, not much different from finger paintings. Like the conversation just described, its aim is action and self-expression and not the creation of culture and value or making a difference in further World. There is, of course, no reason why it should be. All men are creative but few are artists. Art making requires a peculiar psychotic disposition. Let me formulate the artistic disposition as following: it is reacting with one’s ideal to the flaw in oneself and in the World, and somehow making that reaction formation solid enough in the medium so that it indeed becomes an improved bit of real World for others. This is an unusual combination of psychological machinery and talents, and those who, having it, go on to appoint themselves to such a thankless vocation, are rarer still. These few are not themselves Hipsters, for they have a vocation, they are not resigned. (My observation is that is artists are blocked in their vocation, they cannot resign themselves to seeking other experiences, and certainly they do not do finger painting, for if they can do finger painting they can make art.) Nevertheless, living among the Hipsters, there will be a disproportionate number of artists, for the same reason that artists gravitate to any bohemia. Also, some of these genuine undersigned artists will make works that speak for the Hipster community that they live among. That is, the “Hipster” artists are not themselves Hipsters, for they are artists; but their art work tell us about the Hipster. This situation rises interesting questions about the relation of an artist and his immediate audience, and it is worth exploring. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
It is both an advantage and a disadvantage for an artist to have around him an intensely creative gang of friends who are not rival artists. They provide him an immediate audience that helps assuage the sufferings of art loneliness and art guilt. On the other hand, it is a somewhat sickening audience because it has no objective cultural standard, it is not in the stream of ancient and international tradition. So its exclamations, “It is the greatest!” or, “Go, man, go!” do not give much security. The artists finds that he is a parochial group hero, when the culture hero for the immortal World. Let me tell a few anecdotes to illustrate this fascinating dilemma of the relation of the “Hipster” artist both to the Hipster and the objective culture in which he must finally exist. An incident at a party for Patchen. Patchen is a poet of the “previous” generation, of long-proven integrity, with an immense body of work, some of which is obviously good, and the importance of the whole of it (may much still be added!) not yet clear. The point of our anecdote is that Patchen has the respect of writers but has received no public acclaim, no money, no easy publication. Now at this party, one of the best “Hipster” writers, a genuine young artist, came demanding that the older poet give some recognition to the tribe of Hipster poets, to “give them a chance.” This was ironical since, riding on the Madison Avenue notoriety that we have mentioned, they had all got far more public acclaim, invitations to universities, night-club readings, than all of us put together. However, Patchen asked for the names. The Hipster spokesman reeled off twenty, and Patchen unerringly pointed out the two who were worthwhile. This threw the younger poet into a passion, for he needed, evidently, to win artistic recognition also for his parochial audience, among who he was a hero, in order to reassure himself that he was a poet, which he was and as Patchen would at once have said. So he insulted the older man. Patchen rose to his height, called him a young punk, and left. The young man was crushed, burst into tears (he was drunk), and also left. At this, a young woman who often accompanied him, came up to me and clutched me by the knees, pleading with me to help him grow up, for nobody, she said paid him any attention. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
That is, the Hipster audience, having resigned, is not in the World; yet being an eager creative audience, it wins the love and loyalty of its poet who becomes its hero and spokesman. However, he too, then, doubts that he is in the World and has a vocation. As a Hipster spokesman he receives notoriety and the chance of the wide public that every poet wants and needs; but he cannot help feeling that he is getting it as a pawn of the organized system. Here is a simpler illustration of the relation of the spokesman-artist to the objective culture. This fellow is a much weaker poet, more nearly Hipster himself, and quite conceited. At a reading of some other poet who is not a Hipster spokesman, he tries to stop the reading by shouting, “Do not listen to this crap! let us hear from X.” His maneuver is to make the parochial the only existing culture; then, by definition, he himself is an artist. And here is an illustration of the most elementary response. A Hipster spokesman, not ungifted but probably too immature to accomplish much, gives a reading in a theater. During the intermission, he asks a rather formidable and respected critic what he thinks of a particular poem, and the critic says frankly that it is childish. At this the outraged poet, very drunk, stands in the lobby screaming, “I hope you die! I hope art dies! I hope all artists die!” These illustrations and the analysis of the Hipster conversation brings out the same point: In a milieu of resignation, where the young men think of society as a closed room in which there are no values but the rejected rat race or what they can produce out of their own guts, it is extremely hard to aim at objective truth or World culture. One’s own products are likely to be personal or parochial. Shared creative expression has a therapeutic effect, and so results in transference, unconscious attachment. The striking, and often amusing, example of this is the young ladies who take modern dancing, with its beautiful exercises that release tense muscles; they are all head over ears in love with Paris and Beyonce, and fiercely loyal and sectarian. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The same occurs among the young Hipster, except that, since there is no “leader,” the emerging love attaches either to the community or to each one’s self-image narcissistically. This makes for a powerful warmth of life—“the warmth of assembled animal bodies,” as Kafka said—but it makes even harder to get into the World. It gives the young men a daily interpersonal excitement, more satisfactory than the empty belonging or conformity of the organization, and happier than the loneliness of art. However, it does not give them “something to do.” The wretchedness of a widow’s life was, however, perhaps not the worst consequence of her husband’s death. After all, she was still alive, in a manner of speaking. Many Hindus, mostly men, considered this intolerably lenient. They believed that if a woman’s husband was happy, so should she be. If he was said, so should she be. And if he was dead, so should she be. So even creeping miserably around a relative’s or spiteful in-law’s home was too soft an existence. Any good widow (a Hindu oxymoron) would know better than to impose her tainted self on this World. That was what suttee—immolation on the husband’s funeral pyre—was for. The “paramountcy of a woman’s chastity” was the most compelling reason for suttee, although financial and property considerations also cost many an inconvenient widow her life. One anti-suttee crusader explained that relatives and in-laws feared that “if there was no cremation, widows may go astray; if they burn, this fear is removed. Their family and relations are freed from apprehension.” From this perspective, suttee becomes “the ultimate chastity belt.” The widow who willingly clutches her husband’s sandals and climbs up unaided to lie beside his corpse as the fagots are fired is truly reverenced. Once they are safely crisped, such widows are lauded and mythologized much like Muslim suicide bombers who eagerly launch themselves as human explosives to ascend directly to paradise. The great difference is, huge numbers of suttees have not gone willingly to their incineration. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Those who did were driven either by religious conviction or, more probably, by despair at their lot. Though suttee was legally banned in 1829, it has flourished until well into the twentieth century—a mere three and a half decades ago—when teenaged Roop Kanwar shared her husband’s cremation in September 1987. For centuries, witnesses have reported force in supposedly voluntary suttees. In the seventeenth century at Lahore, Frenchman Francois Bernier watched as a few Brahmins and an old woman immobilized a shivering and sobering twelve-year-old widow with ropes, then forced her onto the pyre. He saw another suttee prevented from escaping the billowing flames by men carrying long poles. In the eighteenth century, a Western observer saw a widow tied down beside her dead husband on heaped logs that were then set ablaze. However, in the dark and rainy night, the widow managed to free herself from the scorching flames and hid nearby. Soon, however, her relatives noticed only one body on the pyre. They raised the alarm and quickly found the wretched woman cowering under some brushwood. Her son hauled her back and ordered her to either hurl herself back onto the funeral pyre or at least to drown or hang herself. If she refused, he warned, she would cause him to lose his caste. Such stories abound. Widows were drugged, beaten, bound, terrorized, and tied down beside their dead husbands. Often, they were bound with slow burning shots of green bamboo that would hold them until the died. In 1835, despite livid protests by the British agent, the fives queens of a deceased ruler were hauled, screaming and protecting, to their death of his pyre. In the 1950s, a suttee who escaped from the flames lay charred and dying for two days under a tree, and nobody offered her the slightest assistance. Roop Kanwar was eighteen when her husband of eight months died of gastroenteritis in Deorala, a village in Rajasthan. Hours later, still on September 4, 1987, stern men armed with waving swords escorted her to her husband’s hastily contrived funeral pyre. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Some eyewitnesses thought she walked unsteadily and foamed at the mouth, while to others she was cheerful and composed. (Statements were impossible to corroborate, with participants understandably reluctant to admit they had attended the illegal event.) “Mummy! Papa!” Roop cried, thrashing her hands as the flames, ignited by her conveniently unindictable, underage brother-in-law, licked at her body. Neither Mummy nor Papa were there, of course; the were informed of the daughter’s “courageous decision” only after the fact. Roop Kanwar was the (hopefully) las victim of centuries of tradition, her death facilitated by authorities who civic-mindedly seized upon this fortuitous opportunity to bring some pilgrimage business into their little village. As Roop’s in-laws swaggered about, proclaiming their honor, Deorala suddenly became a shiny new dot on the religious map. The heat of passion is ice-cold compared to the inferno of a suttee’s sad ending. Millions of suttees have undoubtedly quavered to their terrible deaths, secure in their righteousness and proud of, or at least grateful for, the honor the flames will soon reflect on their entire family. Millions more have been forced onto the flames by relatives and in-laws. These latter are determined to eliminate the unwanted presence of the widows, and above all, to guarantee they will never disgrace themselves or their loved (even if unloving) ones by an unchaste thought, much less a deed. Suttee is, after all, a preemptive stive against potential unchastity. Thinking matters. However, many of the facts we think about are false. And much of what we believe not always the most enlightened perspective. Despite the tidal waves of data, information and knowledge crashing over us today, a greater and greater percentage of what we know is, in fact, less and less true. Even if we could believe the media, even if every advertiser were truthful, every lawyer honest, every politician sealed one’s lips, every adulterer confessed and every fast-talking telemarketer went straight, much of the information we consume, as we will see, would still not be truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
If this is the case, how should individuals—or, for that matter, companies or countries—turn the deep fundamental of knowledge into wealth? Some knowledge has always been needed to produce wealth. Hunter-gatherers had to know the migratory patterns of the animals they pursued. Peasants came to know a lot about soil. Normally, however, once learned the same knowledge remained useful generation after generation. Factory workers had to know how to operate their machines quickly and safely for as long as they had the job. Today work-relevant knowledge changes so rapidly that more and more new knowledge has to be learned both on and off the job. Learning becomes a continuous-flow process. However, we cannot learn everything fast enough. And if some of what we think is stupid, that helps explain why there is no need to be embarrassed. We are not alone in believing stupidities. The reason is that every chunk of knowledge has a limited shelf life. At some point it becomes obsolete knowledge—what might more appropriately be called “obsoledge.” Does Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Poetics constitute “knowledge”? Or the ideas of Confucius or Kant? We can, of course, describe their ideas as wisdom. However, the wisdom of these authors or philosophers was based on what they knew—their own knowledge base—and much of what they knew was, in fact, false. Aristotle, whose views held sway across Europe for almost two thousand years, believed that eels were asexual and “originated in…the entrails of the Earth.” He also believed that the Indian Ocean was a landlocked sea—a geographical error that was still shared centuries later by Ptolemy and other European and Islamic scholars. In the third century AD, Porphyry, the biographer of Pythagoras, assured his readers that is you took park of a bean plant, put it into an earthenware pot, buried it for three months, then dug it up, you would surely find either the head of a child or female private parts. In the seventh century, Saint Isadore of Seville assured contemporaries that “bees are generated from decomposed veal.” Half a millennium later no less a genius than Leonardo da Vinci declared that beavers knew the private parts where being used by humans for medicinal purposes. When trapped, he asserted, a beaver bites them off “and leaves them to its enemies.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
When tomatoes, native to South America, first reached Europe in the sixteenth century, perfectly intelligent people knew that they were toxic to humans. It was two hundred years before Linnaeus declared otherwise. And as late as 1820 when he risked eating two tomatoes to prove Linnaeus was right, a particular daring fellow attracted a large crowed. However, obsoledge is not always assuming. As late as 1892 it was common knowledge—and scientifically accepted since the time of Galileo—that the planet Jupiter had four satellites. That knowledge became obsolete, however, on September 9 of that years, when astronomer E.E. Barnard of the Lick Observatory discovered a fifth moon. By 2003, astronomers had counted six. Similarly, scientists for decades had assumed that there were only nine planets in our solar system. However, in 2005, a California Institute of Technology astronomer discovered an object he named Xena, which he and other scientists believed may be a tenth planet orbiting our sun. Then there was London physiologist L. Erskine Hill, who reported in 1912 that experimental evidence showed the “purity of air is of no importance.” If, over the last few decades, we have not learned otherwise, how many more people around the World would have died of pollution related caused? And how many patients will die today because somewhere an otherwise intelligent doctor is manipulating information or relying on outdated “fact,” learned or manufactured years ago in medical school or by junk scientists? How many companies will go belly-up because of a marketing strategy based on yesterday’s fad? How many investments are doomed because of out-of-date financial data? What if your employer decided to manipulate your personal information so he could reinvest your earnings into his shell corporation? And what about tomorrow’s deaths or disaster just waiting to happen? #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Look, for example, at the minutes of the September 2002 meeting of the Advisory Committee of CERN users. (CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research.) Tucked away among references to decisions about providing ashtrays “close to the outside doors of major buildings for smokers” and notifications of “changes in mail delivery service” is the following item: “The names of persons to be contacted in case of accidents should be restored in the Human Resource database.” Why on Earth, one might ask, should the list of persons to be contacted in case of a nuclear accident be missing? The answer: Because “for the majority of people the information became obsolete” and the administration “did not have the resources to ensure systematic updating.” It took the chairman of the users’ group to point out that “the potential human cost in case of a serious accident is immense, and a solution should be found.” What is clear is that wherever knowledge is stored, whether in digital databases or inside our brains, there is the equivalent of Aunt Emily’s attic overstuffed with obsoledge—facts, ideas, theories, image, and insights that have been outrun by change or replaced by later, presumably more accurate, truths. Obsoledge is a big part of the knowledge base of every person, business, institution and society. By accelerating change, we also speed up the rate at which knowledge becomes obsoledge. Unless constantly and ruthlessly updated, experience on the job becomes less valuable. Databases are out of date by the time they are published. With every passing semi-second, the accuracy of our knowledge about our investments, our markets, our competition, our technology and out customers’ needs diminishes. As a result, whether they are aware of it or not, companies, governments and individual today base more of their daily decisions on obsoledge—on ideas and assumptions that have been falsified by change—than ever before. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Occasionally, of course, some antique bit of obsoledge comes back to life, as it were, and proves useful today because the context around it has changed and given it powerful new meaning. However, more often than not, the reverse is true. Ironically, in advanced economies, companies brag about “knowledge management,” “knowledge assets” and “intellectual property.” Yet with all the numbers crunched by financial quants, economists, companies and governments, no one knows what obsoledge costs us in the form of degraded decision-making. What, one might ask, is the drag placed on individual investments, corporate profits, economic development, poverty-reduction programs and wealth creation in general? Beneath all of this, moreover, lies an even more important, hidden epistemological change. It affects not merely what we regard as knowledge but the tools we use to acquire it. Among these instruments of thought, few are remotely as important as analogy, in which we identify similarities in two or more phenomena and then draw conclusions from one to apply to the other. Humans can barely think or talk without making analogies. The Irish golfer Padraig Harrington tells a sports reports that “ A U.S. Open is one that really tests your ability to hit….you sort of want to be like a machine.” Which takes us back to the followers of Newton who said the entire cosmos was “like” a machine. Then there are all the people described has having “a mind like a computer,” or who “sleep like a baby,” or who are told to invest “like a pro” or think “like a genius.” Implicit analogies are built into language itself. Thus we still rate cars in terms of their “horsepower”—a leftover from the day when they were seen as analogs of horse-drawn coaches and were know as “horseless carriages.” However, the thought-tool we call analogy is growing harder to use. Analogies, always tricky, are growing trickier. For as the World changes, old similarities can turn into dissimilarities. Once-legitimate comparisons become strained. As parallels with the past break down, often unnoticed, conclusions based on them become misleading. And the faster the rate of change, the shorter the useful life span of analogies. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
In this way, a change in one deep fundamental—time—affects a basic tool we use in the pursuit of another—knowledge. In sum, then, as we have seen, even among experts on the knowledge economy, few have thought much about what might be called the law of obsoledge: As change accelerates, so does the speed at which still more obsoledge accumulates. All of us carry with us a far bigger burden of obsolete knowledge than our ancestors did in the slower-moving societies of yesterday. And that is why so many of our most cherished ideas will set our descendants roaring with laughter. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Keep your loins girded and your lamps burning, and be like people who are waiting for their master to return home from the marriage feast, so that when one returns from the wedding and comes and knocks, they may open to one immediately,” reports Luke 12.34-36. Behold, my people, the spring has come; the Earth has received the embraces of the sun. And we shall soon see the results of that love. One may have never seen fiercer wonders—past the wit of any spirit to tell, but one of those who, when this planet’s sphering time doth close, will be its high remembrancers: who are they? The mighty ones have an eternal day. All souls are of equal importance before God. The soul, in the sense of the true self, is only spiritual. Of great importance are the evolutionary changes through which humankind in general has been passing during recent centuries. In the coming age, balance will be restored for people of both genders and all races, and everyone will take their rightful place alongside the dominant groups in the leadership of the whole race. Evolutionary trend of things are being the human race closer and closer to enlightenment and thus making it possible for everyone to claim and receive what is best for them in life. Fear not, neither be dismayed, O America; for lo, God will save you from afar, and your children from the lands of captivity. O America, you shall again be quiet and at ease, and none shall make you afraid. For a brief moment God has forsaken us, but with great compassion will He gather us. For even if the mountains depart and the hills move, God’s kindness will not depart from us. Nor His covenant of peace be removed. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Cresleigh Homes
Sometimes, driving up to our home at Brighton Station Residence 2 feels like coming up to a movie set.
That sunshine! That sky! Those clean lines! But it’s real, and it’s ours at #CresleighRanch. 😍
Convenient single-story living is just what you need in this beautiful 2,427 square foot home.
Brighton Station Residence 2 is certainly a thoughtfully designed living space, with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a flex space, dining room, a highly sought after butler’s pantry, laundry room, private backyard, and a three car garage.
#CresleighHomes
A Devil Who Has Unity Will be a God
Behind the accepted history of our civilization—of great leaders and mass movements, of politics and progress—there is an alternative history, a shadow tradition. It is an oft-neglected World full of villains and vice, scoundrels and sorcerers, with an impact upon our culture out of proportion with the numbers of people involved. Almost everything about magic, including the forms it takes and the customs associated with it, gives one the impression that it is a religion of the devil. It everywhere seeks to mimic the World of faith as we find it revealed in the Christian Bible. There is a dark side of Western culture: the Satanic tradition. Even the serpent in the Garden of Eden—who tempts Adam and Eve to “Original Sin”—does not become a manifestation of evil (“that Ancient Serpent,” as Satan is sometimes know) until later. This change occurs with the advent of Christianity, which promotes Satan from a mischievous servant of God to His implacable opponent. The Roman Empire had thrived by absorbing, rather than destroying, the cultures they conquered, welcoming foreign gods into their temples as part of policy of conquest by integration. The Christians could not stomach this. Their God was supreme, and all other deities—initially regarded as hollow superstitions—began to be portrayed by their theologians as actively evil, demonic. This doctrine, demonization, defined the totalitarian nature of the Christian creed. These demons required a leader, and so Satan was reborn not just as an adversary, but as the Adversary. Myths began to grow up around this new Prince of Darkness, cribbed from fanciful reinterpretations of existing doctrine and the ravings of Christian hermits driven half-mad by isolation in the desert. Satan’s power is first suggested in the New Testament, when He tempts Jesus Christ with mastery of the kingdoms of the World—implying He has them all in His possession. The Old and New Testaments claim that the Devil was once the leader of the Watcher angels. These angels were commanded by God to watch over humankind, but they pitied moral men and lusted after mortal women. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
For teaching forbidden knowledge and copulating with their charges (in theological terms, the equivalent of a shepherd disgracing himself with his flock) these disobedient angels were cast from Heaven to become the denizens of Hell, whilst their children became demons and monsters. Satan—or Semjaza, as He is known here—is the leader of these disobedient angels. Another more widely-accepted version of the same story has Satan trying to claim God’s throne before loyal angels cast Him and his co-conspirators into darkness. Traditionally, the question of whether one personally regards Satan’s act as one of treachery or bravery is the definition of an individual’s loyalties in the war between darkness and light. Significantly, however, many traditions state that, before His fall from grace, Satan was known as Lucifer: derived from the Latin “Light bringer.” As an act of worship is composed of certain elements, so too is an act of magic. There are basically four constituents that are necessary. Invoking, charming, a symbolic action, and the use of a fetish. One may invoke either Satan or even the Trinity, and it is this that decides whether the magic is to be black or white. Such invoking is a counterpart to our addressing of God in prayer, as for example, when we say “Our Father.” The charm or spell that then follows brings the force of magic into play. This imitates our use of the Scriptures and our reference to the promises of the Christian Bible. The symbolic action underlies and supports the charm and mimics such scriptural actions as, for instance, the laying on of hands or kneeling in prayer. The use of a fetish, that is a magically charged object, corresponds perhaps to the use of water in baptism or bread and spirits in the case of the Lord’s supper. Though Christians never got their Apocalypse, they did win their spiritual war when, in the fourth century, an embattled Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the state religion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The short-term benefits were obvious: Christianity appealed to the oppressed, promising them great reward in the afterlife; it also appealed to the oppressor, demanding the downtrodden obeyed their obeyed their superiors if they wished to enjoy rewards. The glories of a classical World built on pagan pragmatism were eroded, then destroyed, by Christian intolerance. As the Roman Empire fell in one of history’s many dark ironies the Catholic Church set itself up in its place. Imperial purple was the uniform of colour for the Church leaders’ new robes, Latin their sacred tongue, Rome their headquarters. However, while this new Roman Catholic Church could steal the superficial glories of the empire they had destroyed, they could begin to emulate the culture, comfort or security that Imperial Rome had provided to its citizens. The end of the World had failed to arrive on schedule, but the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—War, Death, Famine and Plagued—still characterized the medieval era, when the Christian creed held Europe in its thrall. The Middle Ages had arrived, and with them an era of cultural depression, a millennium of darkness, squalor and misery. The Gnostics believed that there were two equally-powerful gods—one “good,” the other “evil.” Some though the evil God was the one described in the Old Testament, the creator of this World, while the benevolent God described in the New Testament was His foe. In Gnostic doctrine, only pure spirit was “good.” All matter, including the human body, was “evil,” and humankind was made up of spirits trapped in prions of flesh. Widely suppressed with increasing severity, Gnosticism began to take on a variety of increasingly dark and erotic forms. Some Gnostics believed that, as all flesh was evil, it did not matter what use it was put to—in this sense, carnal excess could even be seen as redemptive, as with cults like the third-century Carpocratians, who indulged in ritualized pleasures of the flesh. Widely suppressed with increasing severity, Gnosticism began to take on a variety of increasingly dark and exotic forms. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Others, like the Cainite sect of the fourth century, reasoned that if the Old Testament God was evil, then His opponents must be good—therefore revering Old Testament villains like Cain, who proved his virtue in combat by murdering his brother, Abel. It is tempting to regard these early movements as the first Satanic sects, but the attitude of most Gnostics—that the flesh was inherently evil—was just as pathological as that of their pleasure-hating Catholic oppressors. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the Cathar sects. The first of these, the Bogomils, was formed in the Balkans during the tenth century. The Bogomils believed that Man was created when Satan vomited into an empty human vessel—a vivid illustration of their unhealthy attitude to their own bodies. Some have suggested Gnostic roots for the mysterious Luciferian cult that appears to have thrived secretly in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Germany thought Lucifer was a curious, cadaverous figure whose body glowed during their subterranean rites—has been unjustly cast from Heaven by a treacherous God, and honoured Him in orgiastic ceremonies that also featured cats as objects of worship. One other medieval cult has generated more fanciful theories than the Cathars and Luciferians combined. The Order of the Knights Templar was founded in 1118 to protect Christian pilgrims visiting Jerusalem, combining the military skills of a trained warrior with the pious dedication of a monk. Feared by their heathen foe and revered by their Christian brethren, the Templars rose from poverty-stricken obscurity to become one of the wealthiest, most powerful institutions in Europe. Their fall from grace was just as dramatic when, in 1314, King Philip of France smashed the Order with a campaign of mass arrests. King Philip claimed that, beneath their pious exteriors, these warrior monks were in fact an international Devil-worshipping cult and many of their number, including their Grand Master Jacques de Molay, were burnt alive for their alleged crimes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The blood lust of the medieval Church was far from sated by the persecution of such heretics. In the 1480s, with full papal backing, two monks named Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer issued a practical witch-hunting manual entitled Malleus Maleficarum (“The Hammer of the Witches’), describing how to identify witches and force confessions from them under torture before consigning them to the flames. Previously, witchcraft was officially regarded as a delusion, but Malleus Maleficarum helped trigger an international campaign of witch-hunts that lasted over two centuries and claimed upwards of 250,000 lives in the most brutal circumstances. The history of witchcraft is swathed in controversy. Did the witch-cult truly exist? And, if it did, did it consist of isolated, eccentric old women, or was it a coherent international movement? Some modern theorists maintain that the witch-cult was a benevolent religion that worshipped ancient nature gods, ancestor of the modern Wiccans. However, several more substantial historical accounts refer to Satan as “the God od the Serfs”: the Middle Ages were desperate times for the peasantry, and, if the Christian clergy supported the nobility, where else could the desperate and downtrodden turn but to the Devil? The witch-cult, therefore, many have been a creed of social rebellion based upon orgiastic revels, drug abuse and the deliberate adoption of heretical symbols. Certainly, the medieval peasantry regarded the Devil in a very different way to the medieval Church. The grinning gargoyles that leered from church roofs, the slapstick demons that peopled the “mystery” plays put on by rural villagers, and the Devil who appears in the folk tales of the day—all suggest a view of Satan among ordinary working folk that was sympathetic to Christianity’s supposedly terrifying, hateful anti-hero. It was not only the peasantry who made resort to the demonic in times of need. In 1440 the French Baron Gilles de Rais, once one of the most wealthy and powerful men in Europe, was executed for conjuring devils. There were also other charges laid against this licentious warlord. In fact, de Rais was a medieval serial killer, and was also a fervent Christian. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
However, Gilles de Rais was certainly involved in black magic, but this was largely separate from his recreational crimes. On the one occasion he made use of the remains of a victim in a magical rite, the Baron was seized by remorse and, uniquely for him, gave the corpse a Christian burial. Like all good Christians, Gilles de Rais was more concerned with his own immortal soul than the actual physical suffering of those around him. De Rais employed sorcerers as part of his staff when his extravagant lifestyle threatened to bankrupt him. Sorcery and science were, as that time, close bedfellows. In fact, as recently as the eighteenth century, such black arts as alchemy, necromancy and astrology were regarded by many intellectuals as valid areas of scientific study. Then, just as now, many involved in pioneering research were motivated by avarice, with fast-buck schemes a favourite occupation among the scholars and sorcerers of the Middle Ages and Reminiscence. Gilles de Rais employed a number of such characters to discover the alchemical secret of creating gold from base metal. It was generally believed that the darker the magic, the higher the risk—and the higher the risk, the higher the potential reward. The most Satanic sciences was therefore the invocation of devils, the most dangerous and rewarding of all the dark arts. Medieval serial killer Gilles De Rais have a castle in Machecoul, France. Sorcerers employed by Gilles de Rais were part of a loose underground of travelling scholars who piled their wares secretly across medieval and Renaissance Europe. Operating outside the authority of the Church-controlled universities, these maverick academics were equally at home translating Greek, brewing strange medicines or confounding their clients with conjuring tricks. As far as the Church was concerned these men had made pacts with Satan, and, in many cases, they were right. Christian authorities forbade research into the mysteries of the Universe as blasphemy. Anybody whose greed or curiosity led them to ignore these warnings had knowingly or not, throw in their lot with the dark forces. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Of all the rituals of black magic none are as notorious as the Black Mass. At its most basic level, the Black Mass is a mockery of the orthodox Catholic Mass that substitutes the erotic and profane for its sacred elements. Black Mass priest, the French cleric Father Guiborg, who stood trial in 1678 alongside a notorious sorceress named Catherine Monvoisin, accused of the attempted murder of Louis XIV by magic. The case was a scandal of epic proportions, involving allegations of illicit abortions, child sacrifice and poisoning, all implicating people within Louis’ court. When it became clear that the King’s beautiful mistress, the Marquise de Montespan, was so heavily involved (perhaps even serving as the naked altar in once ceremony), Louis decided to draw a veil over events and proceedings were halted. Nevertheless, the macabre episode is dramatic evidence not only that the Black Mass was more than a myth, but that it was employed secretly at the highest levels of European society. Other groups existed at this time whose parodies of holy rites were if no less heartfelt, were more satirical. An informational network of Hellfire Club thrived in Britain during the eighteenth century, dedicated to debauchery and blasphemy. With members drawn from the cream of the political, artistic and literary establishments, they became sufficiently scandalous to inspire a number of Acts of Parliament aimed at their suppression. Historians have been inclined to dismiss the Hellfire Clubs as nothing more than riotous drinking societies, but the significance of many of the nation’s most powerful and brilliant men dedicating themselves to Satan is difficult to ignore. That they did so with laughter on their lips, and a drink in their hand does not dimmish the gestures so much as place them more firmly in the Satanic tradition. The inspiration for the Hellfire Clubs did not come exclusively from sorcerous sources, but also drew heavily from profane literature—such as Gargantua, an unusual work combining folklore, satire, coarse humour and light-hearted philosophy, written in the sixteenth century by a renegade monk named Francois Rabelais. Like any monastic abbey it is a place of seclusion, but in other respects it is an “anti-abbey,” dedicated to the pleasures of the flesh. Only the brightest, most beautiful and best are permitted within its walks, and its motto is “Fait Ce Que Vouldras” (“Do What You Will”). #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
One of the last and best known of the Hellfire Clubs was founded in emulation of the Abbey of Thelema, taking on its distinctive motto. The club was known as the order of Saint Francis, with headquarters in Medmenham Abbey near London and on its founder Sir Francis Dashwood’s estate in Buckinghamshire. The Order finally collapsed in the 1760s due to internal conflicts between members over the pressing political issues of the day, the demand for increasing independence by Britain’s American colonies. It is a measure of the club’s distinguished membership, however, that it contained prominent politicians from both sides of the debate. Sir (Saint) Francis was a close personal friend of Benjamin Franklin, the leading spokesman for the colonists in London, and one of the most important figures in founding the independent United States of America. Franklin was a frequent guest at Dashwood’s home, and it is tempting to image the fate of the American colonies—destined to become the World’s most powerful nation—being discussed at a smoky Hellfire Club meeting over fine spirits and harlots. (This may explain why the American Constitution, partially written by Franklin, made such a revolutionary separation between Church and State.) Anton LaVey, the twenty-first century’s foremost Satanist, claimed in typically bombastic fashion: “If people knew the role the Hell Fire Club played in Benjamin Franklin’s structuring of America, it could suggest changes like: One Nation Under Satan, or United Satanic America.” Many historically famous people were true Poets and of the Devil’s party without knowing it. For instance, this applies to William Blake and John Milton, as well as others. It also seems strange that the author (William Blake) of “Jerusalem,” still one of the most popular hymns sung in English churches, should belong to the Satanic tradition. But belong he does. Blake is often regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement. Today the term conjures images of willowy fops pressing flowers in flowing, loose-sleeved shirts, but in reality these young men were wild-eye radicals whose antics led a more restrained poet of the day to label them “the Satanic School.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Pleasures of the flesh and barbiturates and poetry were the fuel that inspired the fashionable rebel of the early nineteenth century. “I feel confident that I should have been a rebel Angel had the opportunity been mine, opined the poet, John Keats. Percy Bysshe Shelley, in many ways the most thoughtful of the romantics, was expelled from Oxford University in 1811 for his anti-Christian beliefs. He also had a strong demonic vein running through much of his own works. While the Romantics flirted with Satan, by the end of the nineteenth century a literary movement appeared that absolutely adored Him. The Decadents were poets, painters and authors who championed extremes of sensation over common sense or convention, their quest taking them to the brothels, opium dens and morgues of the World’s most fashionable and exotic cities. Inevitably, Satanism is a prominent them in the work of these artists. Most notorious among them is the foppish Isidore Ducasses, better know under his pennanme of the Comte de Lautreamont. De Lutreamont was absorbed by strongly Satanic idea about religion and human existence, potently expressed in his masterpiece, the bizarre 1868 epic The Songs of Maldoror, which combines nauseating horror and delirious absurdity in a surreal story of a war with God. The most significant figure of the nineteenth century maintained a burgeoning interest in the occult that also centered on Paris, capital city of decadence. The most significant figure of nineteenth-century sorcery was Eliphas Levin, whose shadow still falls across the history of the occult. In 1856, he published his magnum opus Dogme et ritual de la haute magie, (translated as Transcendental Magic), quickly building a reputation as Europe’s foremost authority on the magical arts. While outwardly a devoted Christian, a more careful reading of Levi’s works implies he thought Christianity was all well and good for the masses, but that more enlightened souls were entitled to probe deeper. There is a definite ambivalence about Levi’s relationship with Satan—sometimes he roundly denounced the Prince of Darkness, at others he suggests that Satan is potentially a useful or even beneficial force. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Another important anti-Christian figure of the late nineteenth century was the American writer Samuel L. Clemens, better known by his penname of Mark Twain. Many would be surprised to find Twain—author of the wholesome, much-loved Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn—credited as a Satanic thinker, but his own sentiments bear it out. As Twain once wrote in an essay, “I have always felt friendly towards Satan. Of course that is ancestral; it must be in the blood.” As his life progressed, Twain became increasingly bitter towards Christianity and its brutal, unenlightened God. Mark Twain also a chapter called 2006 A.D., which he feared if it was published at the time, he would be burnt alive for writing it. His final thoughts were issued in 1995, entitled The Bible According to Mark Twain. It appeared at the end of a century when American had come to dominate the World. It would be nice to believe, however fanciful the idea, that America’s best-loved writer was somehow hovering around taking notice, as the World entered a new Satanic era. To mark this new era, a couple global events happened back-to-back. On 25 August 2001, after filming Queen of the Damned and release a hugely successful self-titled Album, one of the most beautiful pop stars, Aaliyah Haughton was killed in a plane crash. Then there was an attack on the nation on 11 September 2001, when the Twin Towers were destroyed, as well as other American sites and over 3,500 people were killed. Since then, the Satanic spirit has been in a persistent state of conflict with the Universe—it constantly seeks knowledge and experience, in order to imprint itself upon its surroundings. It is the same spiritual rough edges that Eastern mystics wish to file off, in order to reach “enlightenment.” As many can see with Church doctrines being destroyed, God being removed from the government and buildings, national monuments being snatched down and relocated to someone’s basement, and some people no longer seeing themselves as men or women, loss of law and order, God’s vision Earth is being taken over by Satanic Libertinism, as people are indoctrinated by the media to “Live out Loud,” and “discover the true self,” as the TV new media sees it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
America is becoming a nightmarish laboratory for spiritual experimentation and mind-control games. A Devil who has unity will be a God. Sunday newspapers will always find it easier to print headlines of child murder than discuss masturbation. If you recall Dennis Wheatley’s stories of Satanic cultus and suburban Devil-worshippers—in satisfying the appetite, he helped create the popular image of Satanism. Wheatly dabbled with magic and was terribly dangerous, he lost touch with his friends after he slipped up in a ceremony and failed to master a demon, who has caused all his teeth to fall out. Wheatley prefaced his Satanic thrillers with dire warnings on the Devil and all His works—just thinking too long on Satan was dangerous enough, let alone his engaging in a Black Mass. Many people believed that Wheatly’s stories were more than just fiction, that the Satanic forces described in his novels were a real threat to the civilized World. It has been hinted at in popular culture, but is also believed that the Germans did use black magic during World War Two. Some truly believed that the power lurking behinds it eyes was literally Satanic. Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, was also known to be under attack by demonic forces, which is why many believe she built her beautiful, but bizarre mansion in San Jose, California with hidden rooms, secret passageways, and trap doors. The house was furnished with the finest materials and was a showcase of Victorian elegance and taste. However, prior to moving to San Jose, William Wirt Winchester and Sarah Winchester gave birth to a daughter named Anne. While enjoying Christian fellowship in their home in New Haven, they were disturbed when they prayed by the screaming of their newborn daughter. This happened consistently for two weeks. Mr. and Mrs. Winchester assured the prayer group that their child was all right, but they were as concerned as their guest were. One of the members in the prayer group started to think about the situation in connection with demons. However, he kept telling himself that surely such a small child could not be an object of demonic spirits. Nevertheless, they decided to experiment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
During the usual time, of fellowship after service, the group leaders asked that everyone pray. They knew that the baby, who was busying sleeping, would have a hard time hearing the prayer. To their amazement, at the very first words of Mr. Merrill’s prayer, the baby began to scream and cry frantically for her mother, Mrs. Winchester. Mr. Merrill was convinced then that this was some kind of demon demonstration. To make sure, they did the same thing the next night, and again the child screamed hysterically. He decided the Holy Spirit was speaking to him to do something. He could not stand to see the child so tormented. So Mr. Merrill audibly cried to God to rebuke the demon powers and give the child complete deliverance with the Holy Spirit and angelic protection. Instantly she stopped sobbing and seemed quite normal. Mr. Winchester and Mr. Merrill spent much time in prayer that night. After another week, Mr. and Mrs. Winchester told Mr. Merrill that their child appeared completely delivered from the demonic assaults. However, less than a month later in July 1866, Annie Pardee Winchester died, ironically the same year the Winchester Repeating Arms Company was established. In March of 1881, William Winchester also died. It is easy to imagine how the combined grief of losing both a child and a spouse could be very crippling. However, if you have $20,000,000 and all the time in the World to help you cope, can you imagine what you would do? Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the deaths of her child and husband left a beautiful, mysterious, and impressive architectural reflection of her psyche. The fascinating story of the Winchester Mystery House has its roots in the personal tragedies suffered by Mrs. Winchester and in the legacy of the Winchester rifle, “The Gun that Won the West.” According to some sources, the Boston medium consulted by Mrs. Winchester explained that her family and her fortune were being haunted by spirits—in fact, by the spirits of American Indians, Civil War soldiers, and others killed by the Winchester rifles. Supposedly the untimely deaths of her daughter and husbands were caused by these spirits, and it was implied that Mrs. Winchester might the next victim. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
However, the medium also claimed that there was an alternative. Mrs. Winchester was instructed to move west and appease these spirits by building a great house for them. As long as construction of the house never ceased, Mrs. Winchester could rest assured that her life was not in danger. Building such a house was even supposed to bring her eternal life. On a more practical note, maybe a change of scenery and a never-ending hobby were just what Mrs. Winchester needed to distract her from her grief. Whatever her actual motivations, Mrs. Winchester packed her bags and left New Haven, Connecticut to visit a niece who lived in Menlo Park, California. While there she discovered the perfect spot for her new home in the Satan Clara Valley. In 1884, she purchased an estate just three miles west of San Jose. Soon after the construction started, the architects discovered that the site was characteristic of an Irish ruin. Standing on a slight elevation, in the midst of a flat country, the castle lifted its turreted walls as proudly as when its ramparts were fringed with banners and glittered helmets and shields. In olden times it was a citadel of the town, and although it was fortified by a strong wall, protecting it alike from predatory assault and organized attack, it was clear that by treachery, surprise, or regular and long-continued siege that the castle had been taken. The central portion was a large square structure, this central fort was connected by double walls, the remains of which covered passages, with smaller fortresses, little castles built into the wall surrounding the citadel; and over these connecting walls, over the little castles, and over the piles of loose stones where once the strong outer walls had stood, the ivy grew in luxuriant profusion, throwing its dark green curtain on the unsightly masses, rounding the sharp edge of the masonry, hiding the rough corners as through ashamed of their roughness, and climbing the battlements of the central castle to spread nature’s mantle of charity over the remains of barbarous age, and forever conceal from human view the stony reminders of battle and blood. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The success of the ivy was not complete. Here and there the corner of the battlement stood out in sharp relief, as though it had pushed back the struggling plant, and, by main force, had risen above the leaves, while on one side a round tower lifted itself as if to show that a stone tower could stand for six hundred years without permitting itself to become ivy-grown; that there could be individuality in towers as among humans. The great arched gateway too was not entirely subjugated, though the climbing tendrils and velvet leaves dressed the pillars and encroached on the arch. The keystone bore a rudely carved, crowned heard, and ivy vines, coming up underneath the arch, to take the old king by surprise, climbed the bearded chin, crossed the lips, and were playing before the nose as if to give it a sportive tweak, while the stern brow frowned in anger at the plant’s presumption. However, only a few surly crags of the citadel refused to go gracefully into the retirement furnished by the ivy, and the loving plant softened every outline, filled up ever crevice, bridged the gaps in the walls, toned down the rudeness of projecting stones, and did everything that an ivy-plant could do to make the rugged old castle as presentable as were the high round mounds without the city, cast up by the besiegers when the enemy last encamped against it. The old castle had fallen on evil days—and over the next thirty-eight years Mrs. Winchester produced the sprawling complex we know today as the Winchester Mystery House. One day while on the estate, the sun had barely cleared away the thick, heavy mist, which was still slowly rising here and there, and the birds were majestically in search of their breakfast. While the famers were out tilling the fields, a long, lanky figure was draw to its full height, the white eyeballs and jagged teeth had a red glow about them, and he waved his hand triumphantly in the direction of the vanishing cloud of birds. Then there came a loud gun shot, then next thing anyone say was the quivering body of this of a man on the ground, and wild eyes staring open in the agony of death. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The farmers ran over and glanced at the body of this man. They figured they better hide him in the long grass and come back after dinner to bury him. After dinner, they walked slowly at first, gradually increasing their pace as they became more distant from the mansion, and they never spoke a word. Then suddenly the, as they drew closer, the man clutched one of the farmer’s arms. It he pleading for help, so they hit him with a shovel and began to dig its grave. For more than an hour they worked desperately with the chopper and hunting-knife, being greatly assisted in their task by a rift in the ground where the soil had been softened by water running from the creek, and they stood up with sweat pouring from their faces, and stamped down the Earth to cover all traces of the man. They had filled the grave with some large stones that were lying about (remnants of some ancient temple, long ago deserted and forgotten), thus feeling secure that it could not easily be disturbed by animals. From the night on, a wolf would come howling around their cottages on the estate, which would make their blood run cold. They swore they were being haunted by the spirit of that man they murdered and that he some how much have entered this animal’s body, bent on obtaining vengeance. One of the farmers grew ill, he was thin, very pale, and haunted by a ghastly expression. He was a married man who had carried on an adulterous relationship with one of the maids the took care of Mrs. Winchester’s house. The maid was reputed to indulge in black magic. They day of the murder, the man had tried to end his illicit affair. He told the woman that he wanted to break off his relationship with her. She was very upset and threatened him, saying that if he did then his wife and children would suffer in the process. The man however, was determined to break it off and stuck to his decision. Later that day is when they suspected one of their fellow famers was a demon and shot and buried him. Two days later, the adulterous farmer’s son became ill. They rushed him to the hospital and he died there. The doctors were unable to diagnose the disease. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Later still, the adulterous famer’s wife and daughter fell ill. The man was by now quite frightened and remembered the threats of the woman with whom he had had the affair. He went to her and begged her not to use black magic against his family. She softened and said that she would stop. Thereupon his wife and daughter recovered quickly, but he died. During Aleister Crowley’s visit to the Winchester Mansion, He spoke to a farmer about his saw being stolen. Crowley, as you may know was a black magician, and called “the Great Beast 666,” after the devilish monster of the Book of Revelations. The farmer paid Crowley a considerable amount of money, and in returned he promised his immediate help, stating that the thief would die. The farmer and Crowley walked around the grounds of the mansion, and within three hours of his interview with Crowley, the thief had a fatal heart attack. At the Winchester mansion, Crowley claimed that black magic was very literally invoked against him. In 1898 Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn by its founder, the influential occultist S.L. MacGregor Mathers while at the Winchester mansion. Mathers was one of the “the Masters.” They were believed t be benevolent supermen, or demigods, who has spokes women on Earth. Mather become the “Supreme Magus,” and all members of the Golden Dawn signed an oath of obedience to him. It was unclear if Mrs. Winchester was part of the Golden Dawn, but some of these sorcerous rituals which were supposedly aimed toward gaining power and enlightenment, supposedly took place in her home. After a few séances at the Winchester mansion, Crowley fell out him Mathers. He alleged that Mather summoned a middle-aged vampiress Called “Mrs. M,” who confronted Crowley while they were at Mrs. Winchester’s mansion, where the vampiress transformed into a beautiful young woman. She subjected him to a near-fatal seduction. According to Crowley’s account, he repelled her with his mystic forces, whereupon: “She writhed back from me, and again approached me even more beautiful than she had been before. She was battling for her life now, and no longer for the blood of her victim. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
“The odour of man seemed to fill her whole subtle form with feline agility. One step nearer and then she sprang at me with an obscene word sought to press her scarlet lips to mine. As she did so I caught and held her at arm’s length and then smote the sorceress with her own current of evil. A bluish-green light seemed to play round the head of the vampire, and then the flaxen hair turned the colour of muddy snow, and the fair skin wrinkled, and her eyes dulled and became pewter dappled with the dregs of blood. The girl of twenty had gone; before me stook a hag of 60. With dribbling curses, she hobbled from the room.” If spiritism pertained only to pagan religions and had never affected the people in so-called Christian lands, then a careful study of its practices and phenomena might not be imperative. Interest in the occult is reaching alarming proportions and even some professing Christians are being duped into complicity with spiritistic traffic. This was true of the late Bishop James A. Pike. Worldwide spiritism is conservatively estimated to have at least seventy million adherents. Kurt E. Koch, a German evangelist and student of the occult for thirty years, enumerates sixteen different varieties of spiritistic practices. If spiritism is to be accurately evaluated and its somber relation to human experience comprehended, all of these must be carefully understood. Spiritistic phenomena may be conveniently divided into the following categories: physical phenomena (levitations, apports, and telekinesis); psychic phenomena (spiritistic visions, automatic writing, speaking in a trance, materialization, table lifting, tumbler moving, excursions of the psyche); metaphysical phenomena (apparitions, ghost); magic phenomena (magic persecution, magic defense); cultic phenomena (spiritistic cults, spiritism among Christians.) There are very scarce published accounts of Daisy, Mrs. Winchester’s niece, being haunted while staying at the Winchester mansion. However, she was reportedly strangely molested by spirits and witches; also the aforesaid Winchester Mystery House is still being haunted by spirits. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
While staying in Mrs. Winchester’s house, Daisy also suffered great annoyance every night from some invisible object, which threw stones and turf at her bed, the force of the blow often causing the curtains to open, and even drawing them from one end of the bed to the other. About the same time, also, the pillows were taken from under her head, and the clothes pulled off; and though a strict search was made, nothing could be discovered. Continuing to be annoyed in this way she removed to another room, being afraid to remain any long. Then about the 11th of December 1898, she was sitting in the twilight at the kitchen fire, a little body came in and sat down beside her. He appeared to be about eleven or twelve years old, with short black hair, having an old black bonnet on his head, a half-worn blanket about him trailing on the floor, and a torn vest under it, and kept his face covered with the blanket held before it. Daisy asked him several questions: Where he came from? Where he was going? Was he cold or hungry? and so on; but instead of answering her he got up and danced very nimbly rough the kitchen, and then ran out of the house and disappeared in the cow-shed. The servants ran after him, but he was nowhere to be seen; when they returned to the house, however, there he was beside them. They tried to catch him, but every time they attempted it, he ran off and could not be found. At lest one of the servants, seeing the master’s dog Zip coming in, cried out that her master was retuning home, and that she would soon catch the troublesome creature, upon which he immediately vanished, nor were they troubled by him again till February 1899. On the 11th of that month, which happened to be a Saturday, Mrs. Winchester was reading Dr. Wedderburn’s Sermons on the Covenant, when, laying the book aside for a little while, nobody being in the room all the time, it was suddenly taken away. She looked for it everywhere, but could not find it. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
On the following day the apparition already referred to came to the house, and breaking a pane of glass in one of the windows, thrust in his hand with the missing volume in it. He began to talk with one of the servants, Angus Spear, and told her that the kitchen, and that her mistress would never get it again. The girl asked him if he could read it, to which he replied that he could, adding that the Devil had taught him. Upon hearing this extraordinary confession she exclaimed, “The Lord bless me from thee! Thou hast got ill lear (learning).” He told her she might bless herself as often as she liked, but tht it could not save her; whereupon he produced a sword, and threatened to kill everybody in the mansion. This frightened her so much that she ran into the parlour and fastened the door, but the apparition laughed at her, and declared that he could come in by the smallest hole in the house like a cat or mouse, as the Devil could make him anything he pleased. He then took up a large stone, and hurled it through the parlour window, which, upon trial, could not be put out at the same place. A little after the servant and child looked out, and saw the apparition catching the turkey-cock, which he threw over his shoulder, holding him by the tail; and the bird making a great sputter with his feet, the stolen book was spurred out of the loop in the blanket where the boy had put it. He then leaped over a wall with the turkey-cock on his back. Presently the girl saw him endeavouring to draw his sword to kill the bird, but it escaped. Missing the book out of his blanket he ran nimbly up and down in search of it, and then with a club came and broke the glass of the parlour window. The girl again peeped out through the kitchen window, and saw him digging with his sword. She summoned up courage to ask him what he was doing, and he answered, “Making a grave for a corpse which will come out of this house very soon.” He refused, however, to say who it would be, but having delivered himself of this enlivening piece of information, flew over the hedge as if he had been a bird. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
For a day or two following nothing happened, but on the morning of the 15th the close where mysteriously taken off Daisy’s bed, and laid in a bundle behind it. Being put back by some of the servants they were gain removed, and this time folded up and placed under a large table which happened to be in the room. Again they were laid in order on the bed, and again they were taken off, and this third time made up in the shape of a corpse, or something that very closely resembled it. When this strange news spread through the neighbourhood many persons came to the house, and, after a thorough investigation lest there might be a trick in the matter, where obligated to acknowledge that there was something invisible at work. Reverend N. P. Wallgren and Reverend Osborn of the Swedish Evangelical Mission Church of San Jose stayed the whole of that day and the following night with that distressed family, spending much time in prayer. At night Daisy went to bd as usual in the haunted room, but got very little rest, and at about twelve o’ clock she cried out suddenly as if in great pain. Upon Mr. Sinclair asking her what was the matter, she said she felt a knife had been struck into her back. Next morning she quitted the haunted room and went to another; but the violent pain never left her back, on the 22nd of February, she almost died. During her illness the clothes were frequently taken off the bed which she occupied, and made up like a corpse, and even when a table and chairs were laid upon them to keep them on, they were mysteriously removed without any noise, and made up as before; but this never happened when anyone was in the room. The evening before she almost died, they were taken off as usual; but this time, instead of being made up in the customary way, they were folded with great care, and laid in a chest upstairs, where they were only found after a great deal of searching. At it height the Winchester Mansion encompassed 761 acres, was 9 stories high, approximately 125,000 square feet, and possessed as many as 500 to 600 rooms. Because so many changes were made, the mansion now stands 4 stories over 4 acres, is about 25,000 square feet, and has an impressive 160 remain. It is still a beautiful, rambling mansion and sure is worth a visit. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Winchester Mystery House
Watch your step in Sarah’s Séance Room! There are three exits in this room and only one entrance 😳 Those exits include the main door, a secret passageway leading into an unfinished closet, and this door that opens to an 8-foot drop into a kitchen sink below. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
🎟 link in bio. A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
We are Globalizing Our Vices More Quickly than We are Globalizing Our Virtues
You cannot do a kindness too soon, and never be too ruined by praise than saved by criticism. In 1900 the turn of a new century was celebrated in Paris with a Grand Exhibition devoted to progress, and the newspaper Le Figaro, barely able to contain itself, crowed: “How fortunate we are to be living on this first day of the 20th century!” One source of enthusiasm was the World’s advance, as the rich nations saw it, toward global economic integration—a rational process that, by changing spatial and political relationships, would make economies flourish. Sounding much like the true believers in economic globalization today, economists spoke enthusiastically of how more and more of the World was being stitched or bolted together. Foreign trade as percentage of World output had risen nearly ninefold between 1800 and 1900—some of it going into colonies in Asia and Africa. Anyone projecting these trends forward could have concluded that the process of economic globalization would complete itself long before the year 2000. However, trends do not continue indefinitely, the future does not arrive in straight lines, and the World was not ready for what happened next. Within fourteen years of the Grand Exhibition, the “stitches” or “bolts” broke and the slaughter of World War 1 violently disrupted flows of trade and capital. The Bolshevik Revolution followed in 1917, the Great Depression in the 1930s, World War II in 1939-45, the Communist takeover of China in 1949 and from the 1940s and into the ‘60s, and successive decolonizations in India, Africa, and Asia. Together, these events and countless smaller, less visible ones shattered long-established trade arrangements, encouraged tit-for-tat protectionism and touched off violence and instability—all discouraging border-crossing trade, investment and economic integration. In short, the World went through half a century of de-globalization. In the post-World War II years, America, its industrial base intact and if anything, strengthened by the war, needed export markets for its goods and, above all, its capital. The World was hungry for American products, often the only products available. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Moreover, advancing technology made it cheaper and easier to serve larger-than-national markets. Thus, convinced that global economic reintegration would serve their own purposes while generally advancing World economic growth, American elites undertook to create cross-border markets through which goods, capital, information and skills could once more flow with minimal friction. This, then, took on the form of an ideological crusade for re-globalization. As late as 1990, vast areas of the World were still essentially closed to the trouble-free exchange of goods, currencies, people and information. Only a billion people lived in any form of open economy. However, by the year 2000, that number had, by some counts, leaped to four billion. China alone, with well over a billion people, became committed to “market socialism,” perhaps better described as “social capitalism,” and opened its doors to foreign plants, products and money. Postcommunist Russian invited investment from outside. Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia followed suit. Much of South America, urged on by the United States and led by Chile and Argentina, deregulated, privatized, invited Wall Street capital and became for a time “more capitalist than thou.” Currencies, too, as we have seen, were increasingly unleashed from their countries of origin. We expanded the spatial reach not only of a giant, globe girdling corporations but of tiny firms, even Internet-connected, microfinanced village enterprises in remote regions, encouraging once more the dream of a fully integrated World economy—one in which no part of the 510 million square meters of the Earth’s surface is beyond reach. The re-globalizers were on a roll. It is true this drive toward re-globalization has not gone quite as far as many of its friends and enemies assume. Even within the financial sector the lose term globalization masks sharply different rates of change. While currency markets are truly global, bond markets lag, and stock markets, in the main, continue to list largely domestic securities. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
In Europe, where intense pressures for economic integration have led to a single currency and central bank, equity markets remain highly fragmented, with a mosaic of different rules and regulations. Despite hundreds of frequently questionable new laws and regulations intended to produce uniformity is not exactly working due to things like cost of living and shipping costs. Far more significant on a global scale, only 18 developing countries have regular access to private capital, even if more countries did, it would not mean that a unified global capital market existed. At yet another level, accounting methods still differ around the World, despite a drive to adopt a universal standard. Nonetheless, as early as the 1990s, thirty-five to forty thousand multinational corporations operated two hundred thousand subsidiaries or affiliates around the World. Worldwide foreign-currency deposits soared from $1 billion in 1961 to $1.5 trillion by the end of the century. World foreign direct investment had grown to $1.3 trillion. Cross-border debt reached $1.7 trillion by 2001. And World trade had hit $6.3 trillion. One of the most comprehensive recent attempts to determine the extent of globalization today is an index developed by A.T. Kearney and Foreign Policy. It measures such things as trade, foreign embassies a country maintains and the number of intergovernmental agencies to which it belongs. On the basis of all these, the 2003 Kearney study ranked sixty-two countries and found that small ones topped the list of the most globalized—Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore and Netherlands. The United States of America was number 11, France 12, Germany 17, and South Korea 28, ahead of Japan at 35. The level of cross-border economic integration actually declined in 2002 because of a slowdown in the United States of America’s economy a drop in FDI in 2001. However, the total amount was still above that for any year before 1999. In spite of these figures, Foreign Policy expressed little doubt that re-globalization would continue. And if to these measures we add the growing cross-fertilization of currencies already described, the reasons for that optimism are strengthened. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Ironically, still another reason lies hidden in the remark of Harriet Babbitt, former deputy administrator of the U. S. Agency for International Development, who has noted, “We are globalizing our vices more quickly than we are globalizing our virtues. Illegal drugs, for example, are a $500 billion business Worldwide, and adds up to about 5.3 percent of the World economy. The narco industry, using the latest technologies, forms a giant unter-economy that actually overshadows the aboveground or formal economy in many countries and reaches from one end of the Earth to the other. From Afghanistan and Colombia to the schoolrooms and slums of Rio de Janeiro to the sidewalks of Chicago, narco-traffickers operate one of the most globalized industries in the World. Even if it has the will to do it, no one government can, nor wants to control the drug trade. For instance, California’s revenue from marijuana taxes alone is soaring. The state collected about $817 million in adult-use marijuana tax revenue during the 2020-2021 fiscal years. That is 55 percent more cannabis earnings for state coffers than was generated in the prior fiscal year. The business of pleasures of the flesh is similarly global. In an Albanian refugee camp, young women kidnapped in Romania await shipment to Italy to serve as slaves for pleasures of the flesh. In Bucharest so-called “agencies” peddle “dancers” to the trade of pleasures of the flesh in Greece, Turkey, Israel, and as far away as Japan. According to UNICEF, an estimated one million impoverished young people, most girls, and are up in the trade of pleasures of the flesh each year. Drugs, arms, intellectual property, people and money are not the only commodities traded illegally for huge profits by international networks. They also trade in human organs, identification, hair, endangered species, stolen art, blood, medical records, photographs, and toxic waste. Precisely because these activities are illegal and need to escape detection, traffickers constantly change the routes they take to deliver their “products.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Smugglers, armed with fake papers and aided by bribed officials, slip easily past frontier guards. However, police in hot pursuit of them are often stopped at the border. Governments will huffily protect their “sovereign” space from one another. Yet that same spatial sovereignty is compromised daily, not by nation-states, but by stateless networks that break laws and cross borders in pursuit of trade. Venezuela, for example, would not allow U.S plans in its airspace to hunt for drug traffickers from Colombia—who regularly violate the same so-called sovereignty with impunity. Our efforts to control these illegal and antisocial activities in the under-economy will fail because government strategies are rooted in wrong ideas, false assumptions and obsolete institutions. It will take a global—or at least a multilateral—effort to stop them. Then there is the rain of dust from China’s deserts that periodically blankets Seoul, Korea. And there are the fires in Indonesia that unleash choking smog that sends thousands gasping and coughing in Malaysia and Singapore. And the cyanide spill in Romania that poisoned rivers in Hungary and Serbia. Global warming, air pollution, ozone depletion, desertification and water-supply shortages, like the drug trade and slavery in pleasures of the flesh, are all problems that demand organized regional or even global effort. Whether anyone wants it or not. Today a widespread—indeed, global—controversy rages over the benefits and costs of further cross-border integration. One thing is clear. Life is unfair. Economic integration and its spatial consequences do not deliver anything like a “level playing field”—a metaphysical concept with no existence in reality. We need not replay all the arguments about the benefits and costs of extending spatial reach and globalizing economies. Even identifying the pros and cons accurately is more complex than it seems. Thus the Hungarian economist Andras Inotia, director-general of the Institute for World Economics in Budapest, has analyzed the pluses and minuses for countries joining the European Union. His words apply to economic integration at the global level as well. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Referring to the two deep fundamentals so far discussed in these pages, benefits and losses do not spread evenly in space, and results differ in time as well. Short-term gains or losses can turn into their opposites in the long term. Some payoffs or losses are here and now. Others are spatially here but not now. Still others are now but not here. Both sides reduce these complexities to bumper-sticker slogans. Pro- and anti-globalization literature threatens to swamp us, with Google’s search engine alone pointing to over 1.5 million relevant documents. However, some good things have happened. Since opening and economic reforms in 1978 Chinese GDP (GDP per capita) experienced a period of unprecedented growth, increasing from 367.9 billion Yuan (386 Yuan) in 1978 to over 90 trillion Yuan (64,644 Yuan) in 2018. During the same period, over 850 million Chinese were lifted out of poverty Many attribute this impressive achievement to the successful implementation of the globalization. Globalization being given all the attention make it easy to point out it’s evils—though many of them have more to do with corruption, environmental degradation and brute enforcement than with economic integration as such. Nevertheless, reality shouts. China has been—and still is—guilty of all those evils—corruption up to the nostrils, massive ecological damage, unashamed suppression of social unrest. Yet these negatives must be weighed against the facts that China has systematically integrated itself into the global economy and is on its way to become the World’s Superpower, taking America’s place. Pro-globalization forces, their enthusiasm slightly dimmed by criticism and by the current weakness of the World economy, nevertheless remain optimistic for the long term. Some religiously believe that complete globalization is our destiny—that whatever the backward steps and stumbles, it will triumph in the end, linking not only every person but every place. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
These true believers argue that no country will indefinitely turn its back on globalization’s “breathtaking” potential for raising living standards; we face new problems that cannot be solved without it; and new technologies will increasingly facilitate it. To which skeptics might replay that the benefits of peace could also be breathtaking, yet they have been passed up repeatedly; not all problems get solved; and history is full of counter-technologies developed to infacilitate what earlier technologies facilitated. If oil prices continue to soar as reserves decline and are restricted, re-globalization could also screech to a halt at some point. We could see gasoline in California increase to $8 a gallon by this summer, mortgage rates hit 11 percent in the near future, and the median home price in America increasing to $630,000.00. And you notice financial instutions are reducing their hours and opening at 10am? That is not a good sign. When things get that bad, consider how much it will cost to rent an apartment in America and what will happen to those who are not making nearly $200,000 a year, who have not bought a home yet. So the real question looming over us is this: Is the decades-long drive toward re-globalization pausing briefly for a breath? Or is it about to suddenly go into reverse once more? Are we, in fact—despite the increased mobility of factories and FDI, despite the Internet and cyberspace, and despite the massive movements of people—about to undergo another historic shift from re-globalization to de-globalization. However, that is not the whole—or real—story. The early Protestants made a profoundly happy connection between Justification and a man’s Calling or Vocation in Worldly society. Max Webber famously drew attention to this, in his book on the Protestant Ethic, as an explanation of the acceptance of ascetic self-righteous capitalist enterprise and the modern rationalized “specialized division of labor” which he equated with calling. I think that he missed the simple meaning of the connection and has thereby taken sociologists off on a wrong track. (Modern sociology can hardly stand much poor theology since it has so little at all.) #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
In the Christian Bible, there are two kinds of prescription about callings. First, the simple proverbial wisdom: “Modestly attend to your business and you will do all right.” Second, the apocalyptic gospel advice that a man should carry on in his station in a damned World for the few years till the Second Coming, because he would be lacking in faith to make long plans. However, the point of the Protestant connection was that, in a religious community, the various occupations in fact justify by giving people the right ongoing activity. This idea was accompanied by a whole spectrum of radical and sometimes violent programs to make the community religious, from anarchies and communities of love, to congregational churches, to puritanical theocracies. (A modern enterprise with the identical philosophy is the Zionist kibbutz. There is no need of a particular “supernatural” sanction.) Vocation is the way a man recognizes himself as belonging, or appoints himself, in the community life and work. We saw, in Jespersen, how a child takes on the languages of the peer groups that he chooses because they are his ideals as he grows up. So his occupations. A good community has, for the most part, positions and calling that facilitate a man’s activity and achievement. It is a World for him. A man might have the vocation, know it, in various ways: by childhood and family traditions; through a teacher who brings him out; by inspiration; or even by recognizing that a certain job must be done and responsibly accepting the necessity as his own, because it is his community and various jobs may be equivalent to him (his real vocation is being a citizen). A man may do a job because he can, noblesse oblige. Sometimes the community does not offer the needed opportunity, but had to make a place for it when it is wrested by the man: this is the case of original creative persons who appoint themselves to an ideal new for the community, a vocation not provided by the community tries to provide every youth with his right calling, understanding, however, that its providence is not a Providence. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Vocation, therefore, is a solid means of finding one’s opportunities, things worthwhile, useful, and honorable to do and be justified by. As such, vocations are neither traditional nor rationalistic in some system, but whatever happens to be the ongoing work of the particular community of human interests. The religious point is that a man can work hard, as every man wants to do; can do it boldly and “lose himself,” because his community supports him; and he can thereby miraculously satisfy the stringent demands of conscience. Such a man is in a state of grace. On this interpretation, the “Protestant Ethic” is correct; and when our society now turns against it, it is admitting that it has lost a saving grace. If this is what Luther had in mind when he spoke of “callings,” I do not know. Presumably he was referring mainly to farmers and guild craftsmen, who did have a community in their unquestionable callings, and the knights who were essential in the World as he saw it. Such callings are earnest; I fail to see why they should be ascetic, self-denying or self-abasing, though hopefully they are self-transcending. However, by the time (1905) that Max Weber came to write, the notion of a human-centered community had so faded into the modern system of alienated production and distribution that he could think of calling only as an imposed discipline, more mild in the “traditional” Luther, more severe in the “rationalistic” Calvin. They irony is that in our decades, the combination of rationalism, asceticism, and individualism (the so-called Protestant Ethic) had produced precisely the system of boondoggling, luxury-consumption, and statuses (and rejection of the Protestant Ethic)! As the elders were preparing the revelations for publication, they expressed a desire to know more concerning the Gathering and the preaching of the gospel. Joseph Smith made this a matter of prayer, and on November 3, 1831, a revelation was given which has become knowns as the appendix to the Doctrine and Covenants. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
In this revelation the Lord said: “Hearken, O ye people of my church, saith the Lord your God, and hear the word of the Lord concerning you; the Lord who shall suddenly come to His temple. Wherefore prepare ye, prepare ye, O my people; sanctify yourselves; gather ye together, O ye people of my church, upon the land of America. Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord. Call your solemn assemblies, and speak often one to another. And let every man call upon the name of the Lord. Send forth the elders of my church unto the nations which are afar off; unto the islands of the sea; send forth unto foreign lands; call upon all nations. And, behold, and lo, this shall be their cry, and the voice of the Lord unto all people: Go ye forth unto the land of America, that the borders of my people may be enlarged. Let the cry go forth among all people: Awake and arise and go forth to meet the Bridegroom. Behold, and lo, the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him. Prepare yourselves for the great day of the Lord. Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour. Go ye out from among the nations, even from Babylon, from the midst of wickedness, which is spiritual Babylon. Behold, the Lord God hath sent forth the Angel, crying through the midst of Heaven, saying: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, and make his paths strait, for the hour of His coming is nigh, when the Lamb shall stand upon Mount America. I have sent forth mine Angel, flying through the midst of Heaven, having the everlasting gospel. And this gospel shall be preached unto every nation and the servants of God shall go forth, saying Fear God and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship him calling upon the name of the Lord day and night.” The conference decided that after the revelations were ready for printing Oliver Cowdery should take them to Independence, Missouri, to be published in W. W. Phelps’s printing office. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, at this time a revelation was received through Joseph Smith in which the Lord said: “For my servant Oliver Cowdery’s sake: it is not wisdom in me that He should be intrusted with the commandments and the money which he shall carry unto the land of America, except one go with him who will be true and faithful; wherefore I, the Lord, will that my servant John Whitmer should go with my servant Oliver Cowdery. And also that he shall continue in writing and making a history of all the important things which he shall observe and know concerning my church.” By revelation Jesus Christ proclaimed that every human is a steward and that the laws of the storehouse should be in operation in America. He gave a commandment to the people of His church concerning their money in which He said: “Inasmuch as they receive more than is needful for their necessities and their wants, it shall be given into my storehouse, and the benefits shall be consecrated unto the inhabitants of America. Behold this is what the Lord requires of every human in His stewardship. And behold, none are exempt from this law who belong to the church of the living God.” About the middle of November, 1831, Oliver Cowdery and John Whitmer left Kirtland with the precious bundle of papers containing the revelations, and they began the journey to Missouri to have them printed. Upon their arrival in Missouri, they began the work of printing them. However, circumstances prevented their completing the work in Missouri, and they were not printed and published until 1835 in Kirtland, Ohio. On August 17, 1835, a General Assembly of the church met to hear testimonies by various men and groups in the church concerning the truth of the revelations to be published in the Doctrine and Covenants. The twelve apostles prepared a written testimony in which they wrote, “We are willing to bear testimony to all the World, to every creature on the face of the whole Earth, that the Lord has made it known in our souls through the Holy Spirit, that these commandments were given by inspiration of God, and are good for all humans, and are true. We rejoice exceedingly, and pray that the children of humans may profit by them.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
All those present at the meeting voted unanimously to accept this as a “doctrine and covenants,” for the church. The minutes of that meeting have been included in the Doctrine and Covenants as Section 108 A. The Doctrine and Covenants contains the revelations of God’s will given through His prophets to His church in the latter day. It is a growing book. Each time God gives a revelation to his church through His prophet, and after it has been accepted by the vote of the people of the church, it is added to the book. The Doctrine and Covenants testifies of Jesus Christ—that He lives; that He loves His people; that He will bless with the greatest blessing from Heaven those who love Him, obey Him, and serve Him. In the litany of deprivations in a male prison, the absence of available women probably heads the list. Indeed, an inmate sees almost no women save a few guards and classification officers and perhaps a chaplain, nurse, or librarian and the occasional visitor. Mainstream correction thinking endorses this—womanlessness or celibacy, it is argued, is part of the punishment. A few institutions, concerned about widespread same gendered activity in the primarily heterosexual population, have instituted conjugal visiting programs. Many others permit contact visits so that, under the vigilant eye of the visiting-room guards, a prisoner may embrace family and friends, even hold hands or cuddle children. The biggest issue in single-gendered prisons—at least, what should be the biggest issue—is non-consensual pleasures of the flesh among inmates. Ever since Fortune and Men’s Eyes, the 1971 movie based on John Herbert’s play, which treated the subject with sensitivity and compassion while portraying several non-consensual acts in all their terrible brutality, the public has known what happens “inside.” If he is attractive and has an alluring rear-end, a vulnerable, terrified, inexperienced young inmate so much the better, is targeted from the moment he meets his colleagues. Whether he likes it or not, he has become a “punk” and will probably not sleep that night without being physically forced into pleasures of the flesh by wither a special “daddy” or a gang of inmates who will hold him down, pull off his breeches, and spread his legs and then violate him one after the other in an assembly line of abuse. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Quite apart from the physical pain and injury, the psychic trauma, unending shame, and terror of realizing this is just the beginning, the punk and his assailants have just played out the penal system’s most common nightly drama. Quite likely his assailants, too, are heterosexual and somewhere, deeply buried, wish they were not doing this, know they should not be doing this, not the physically forces activity on another man. The destruction of esteem is as intense as in any violated woman. The helplessness, the horrifying knowledge that authority stands idly by and does not intervene, of actually condones the behavior, the glimpse of the hell of his future life in prison, are just part of it. With ever-rising, uncurable and potentially deadly virus that infect inmates, as well as those living with that potentially deadly virus, the chances of contracting the deadly virus are enormous. The inmate predators and their victims by no means represent the majority of the population. Many men look away or frown at non-consensual pleasures of the flesh, understanding it as the violence it is. They may themselves, however, engage in pleasures of the flesh with a special partner and rationalize this unaccustomed same gendered activity as “jailhouse love.” This can vary from the tough-master/submissive-“mistress” relationship to mutual affection expressed not only in constant companionship, protection, and other assistance but physically, with hugging and kissing as preliminaries to mutual “self-love” or other activities. Other inmates—roughly half or more, depending on the institution—engage in no pleasures of the flesh other than “self-love.” These men accept and endure their celibacy as part of the overall prison experience. Some have wives or girlfriends on the outside, others are merely able to maintain the values that most of them shared before incarceration—on the street, men do not attack and indulge in non-consensual gang pleasures of the flesh with other men. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
These celibates are the prison system’s excuse for permitting what is, in fact, an intolerable status quo; not every inmate goes in for same gendered relations, correctional apologists say. In fact, much of “jailhouse love” and non-consensual pleasures of the flesh in prison is only peripherally based on being the same gender. Rather, both are responses to coerced celibacy in a system inmates hate and defy, a system solidly maintained by the outside World against which they have also rebelled. That these episode of pleasures of the flesh take place between men is pure necessity and has nothing to do with essence of the acts. If prisons were started in Greece, a lot would be explained. Men who assault and injure and humiliate are, among other things, protesting their incarceration with its attendant womanlessness. They are proving to themselves, their peers, and their guards that they are still powerful, that although they, too, are humiliated daily, they can instill terror and dominate others. They create solidarity with other men with the same needs. They protect their reputations—in prison, a reputation that includes toughness is crucial for survival—and ensure that they themselves will never be victimized. What they say they are doing is quite different, and many are probably unaware of their true motivation. The excuse or explanation they articulate—to themselves as much as to each other—is that they need some outlet to release their intimate energy. In fact, the violence and harassment are far more integral to the act than the climax and even serves as titillation. Much the same is true of men who strong-arm a weaker inmate into serving as their man. They are not as violent, but develop unequal relationships based on their dominance—which requires constant reasserting—over the submissive and defenseless but resentful and sometimes rebellious young inmate. The cost, of course, is enormous, especially to the vulnerable man, whose loss of self-esteem is incalculable, but also to the daddy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
If he is heterosexual—and the great majority are—he has to deal with his own internal conflicts, his basic contempt for what he is doing versus his urgent need to prove he has resisted the total disempowerment of prison. Even if he does sleep with the same gender, he now admits, excite him, he is, he tells himself, not really into his same gender. He is, he says, just goofing around with jailhouse love, just sticking it to “the system,” whose henchmen, the detested guards or screw, ridicule what they call his same gendered attractedness but—oh, so complicit in this travesty of life—do absolutely nothing. The rare man acknowledges as well his need for affection. “Can you imagine not being able to touch another human being (adult) for twenty-three…years?” demands inmate Carl Bowles in the maximum-security Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kanas. Because he has resorted to jailhouse love, Mr. Bowles scorns the celibates who manage without partners. “Why? Because they are scared of becoming homosexuals,” he sneers. And “‘Oh my God, am I turning day because I want someone to hold, to touch, to love me?’” they wonder. Prison authorities may call him a predator, Mr. Bowles says, but like most jailhouse daddies, Mr. Bowles portrays himself as a misunderstood, caring guy, impoverished as best he can in an inhuman system. Prisoners respond differently to their coerced celibacy. Typically, some accept it for want of an alternative. Others rebel, sublimating their rage against the authorities and presumably life itself—for rage is what drives so many of them inside the first place—into physical assault on other, vulnerable men. There are certain parallels to unwilling nuns in medieval convents, namely overt resistance to celibacy and the collective creation of a tolerable way of life, despite their grievous circumstances. The more brutal the coercion, the more determined and audacious the opposition. Celibacy is seen as part and parcel of an alien lifestyle and brings no rewards at all. Without any stake in respecting it, the captive is usually an unwilling collaborator in his celibate condition. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
To give up the religious community of work is a great loss. However, even more terrible is that our society weakens the growing youth’s conviction that there is a Creation of the Six Days, a real World rather than a system of social rules that indeed are often arbitrary. Many things conspire to weaken this conviction. The trouble occurs, for instance, when the city life turns into Urbanism; and when the use of our machines is submerged in the Industrial System. Airplanes and their engines are beautiful, but consider how the ancient dream of man to fly among the stars and go through the clouds and look down on the lands and seas has degenerated in its realization to the socialized and apathetic behaviour of passengers who hardly look out the windows. City life is one of the great human conditions but in Urbanism, no one gives birth, or is gravely ill, or dies. Seasons are only weather, for in the Supermarket there is no sequence of food and flowers. We have seen just how with the maturity of the Industrial System, children cease to learn mechanical aptitudes. When the sciences are supreme, average people lose their feeling of causality. And all different timbres of music come from one loud-speaker (an earnest musician, therefore resignedly composes with the tapes). However, this same socialized weakening of the sense that there is a nature of things corrupts the social nature itself. For instance, in the newspapers you will rarely read the words envy, spite, generosity, service, embarrassment, confusion, recklessness, timidity, compassion, etcetera—the actual motives of life. As if the doings of politicians and financiers happened otherwise, they might occur, typically, in little items of “human interests.” However, the doings of financiers, etcetera, do happen otherwise, by rational accommodations in the system; there is little room for “motives” in making decisions. The question is, What is occurring with the social animals who are, with other hats, the agents of the rational accommodations? This fascinating question used to be the great realistic subject of Balzac, Zola, Dreiser. Later it came to be treated “weirdly” by Kafka and Musil; and then not at all. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The big stories of crime and divorce are treated in stereotypes of “passions,” as if people were characters in movies. However, nature soon imitates art, and people imitate the stereotypes and produce further big stories. So with the workaday occupations of people. There are standards and categories of employment, certificates and union cards, that may have little relation to the concrete tasks and capacities required; but they do make it easier for the tabulators, and they more or less guarantee that the ones chosen to fill the Roles will not be the ones peculiarly able to do the jobs; and they will initiate nothing. The work is determined not by the nature of the task but by the role, the rules, the status, and salary; and these are, then what a man is. Typically, a man cannot accept a position at a lower salary and status, even though he may want that task and does not care about money; it would give an altogether wrong notion of him and jeopardize this whole career. Or again: A well-known magazine asks a man how they should refer to him, as Psychologist X, as Author X? He suggests man of letters, for that is what he is, in the eighteenth-century meaning. However, they cannot buy that because the word does not exist in Time-style; he cannot be that, and presumably the old function of letters cannot exist. However, Time-style, alas, exists. If its members have diplomas and “accreditation,” an organization has High Standards. If it is sponsored or carried out by an Institute with a Regents license, a piece of research is important. In such cases these organizations and enterprises can get substantial tax-dodge Foundation grants and perhaps public money. However, often these licenses have no relation to reality whatever. Exempli gratia, can you imagine that a chap who at thirty-five would make a splendid leader of youth or adult recreation, experienced in life and having decided to serve in this field, could possibly have majored at twenty in physical education? #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Dr. Freud pointed out long ago, in his Problem of Lay-Analysis, that it is extremely unlikely that a young man who would throw the best years of his life into the cloistered drudgery of getting an M.D. degree, could possibly make a good psychoanalyst; so he preferred to look for analysts among the writers, the lawyers, the mothers of families, those who had chosen human contacts. However, in their economic wisdom, the Psychoanalytic Institute of Vienna (and New York) overruled him. The notion that colleges are the right sponsors for creative research is quite disastrous. It both corrupts the right function of the school, to teach, and it guarantees that the research will be incestuously staffed by academics. The cynical pork-barreling of these “projects” is a scandal; but the damage is not that the worthless makes a good things of it, but that those who have been absorbed in real nature and creative thought, and therefore out of this World, are the least likely to know the arts or have the connections to get any support at all. They cannot possibly be “safe”—how could they be? They will rarely have a smoothly continuous career resume; years at a stretch might be lacking, or there might be a couple of years of working as a house painter, a taxi driver, a piano tuner—all wrong. (Let me mention an episode that made me see red when I heard of it: A young fellow, needing to eat, applied for a job as stock boy at a self-reputed and very successful Advance-Guard publisher in New York. He was hired and told to report; but the president, seeing his name, said, “Isn’t that the poet whose book we rejected last year? We can’t have a literary man as a stock boy, it would not be fitting. Phone and tell him not to come in.”!!) There is, of course, a real and hard question: how to find these creative people and give the means and encouragement? However, that is the task, and not processing certified and affidavited applications. In order to make good bets on the best leader and the inspired research, somebody has got to take the risk of making concrete unablated judgments, and perhaps even using his legs. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
However, it is the essence of the organized system to sit on its behind and take no risks, and let the tabulator do the work, and strengthen its own position by incestuously staffing itself, and then fostering the lie that outside of the system nothing exists. We are so out of touch with the real work in the field that, in America, a dean is superior to a professor and a board of trustees or regents is superior to a faculty. The editor knows better than the author what should be in a book, and the publisher knows better than either. Naturally everything sounds alike. And top managers and generals map out the lines of basic research. Think of it. If the university is controlled by a board of trustees, the student, the pick of the youth in the final period of his training, is left high and dry with no contact with responsible men. Or think of this: an important executive of a very large publishing house has carefully explained to me that the criterion of their printing books, and of the books they choose to print, is the need to keep their several huge printing-press occupied. That is, will the book promise enough sales (200,000) to warrant setting one of these presses going? and on the other hand, they must manufacture some books or other to keep all their presses going. As an author, I think this example is remarkable; one can turn it like a beryl and examine its prismatic lights. In the elementary schools, children are tested by yes-and-no and multiple-choice questions because these are convenient to tabulate; then there is complaint later that they do not know how to articulate their thoughts. Now Dr. Skinner of Harvard has invented us a machine that does away with the creative relation of pupil, teacher, and developing subject matter. It feeds the child questions “at his own pace” to teach him to add, read, write, and “other factual tasks,” so that the teacher can apply oneself to teaching “the refinements of education, the social aspects of learning, the philosophy of it, and advance thinking.” However, who, then, will watch the puzzlement on a child’s face and suddenly guess what it is that he really does not understand, that has apparently nothing to do with the present problem, nor even the present subject matter? and who will notice the light in his eyes and seize the opportunity to spread glorious clarity over the whole range of knowledge; for instance, the nature of succession and series, or what grammar really is; the insightful moments that are worth years of ordinary teaching. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
I wonder how Dr. Skinner’s machine would compare in efficiency with the method of Socrates in the Meno? Dr. Skinner proposes to organize the collections of “facts” by big-idea lecture of the type of the New School for Social Research. This appallingly fails to understand that philosophy and science occur in scrutinizing the concrete. However, the worst effect of losing the created World is that a young man no longer knows that he is a creature, and so are his friend creatures. This has three fatal consequences. He feels that the social roles are entirely learned and artificial; he cannot begin to belong and play a part just being himself and following the promptings of nature and ordinary human associations. Conversely, his own creaturely feelings then seem to him to be private and freakish. Instead of being a course of strength, they become a cause of guilt and of feeling worthless and excluded. Most important of all, not being a creature, with its awe and humility, he does not dare to be open to the creator spirit, to become himself on occasion a creator. If, by exception, he does create something, he is conceited about it and contemptuous of others, as if it were his; and conversely, he is gnawed by fear that he will lose the power, as if it were something he had. A society that so discourages its young has nothing to recount it. Nor does our present society foster the noble need of Honor. I am filled with joy when the day dawns quietly over the roof of the sky. Life was wonderful in Winter, but did Winter make me happy? Yes, life is wonderful. Life is wonderful and I still feel joy each time the day-break whitens the dark sky, each time the sun climbs over the roof of the sky. Prayer makes visible the right, and reveals the false. In its radiance we behold the worth of our efforts, the range of our hopes, and the meanings of our deeds. Envy and fear, despair and resentment, anguish and grief, which lie heavily upon the heart, are dispelled like shadows by its light. The purpose of prayer is to be brought to God’s attention, to be listened to, to be understood by Him; not to know Him but to be known to Him; not to form judgments about God but to be judged by Him. To pray is to behold life not only as a result of His power, but as a concern of His will, or to strive to make it divine. When discarded by man, God is not alone. However, man is alone when one discards God. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
CRESLEIGH HOMES
With a new Cresleigh Home, enjoy the benefits of being together while still allowing yourself some personal space.
Featured is a large open great room that connects to the kitchen and dining area, creating a hub of connectivity for the entire family. A private den off the foyer offers a quiet space for work or relaxing.
Some homes feature a large loft, which offers an enchanting space for family fun, or could double as the kid’s living room. Standard in each home is a large laundry room with room for storage.
I have found my inner peace with my gorgeous Cresleigh Home. Come and see one for yourself.
The Spirits Connected to Her Haunted Mansion
One of the many signs of someone being possessed is when one starts speaking in different voices, languages, and explaining things like you just met them that are out of context for the situation. However, scientific research has been unable to find an explanation for some well-documented speech occurrences. The so-called charismatic movement in our own country with its emphasis upon speaking in tongues has focused a great deal of attention upon this subject. Many people in Christian churches believe they are reproducing the gift of tongues reported in the book of Acts and discussed by the apostle Paul in the first letter to the believers in Corinth. The Biblical soundness of their belief lies outside the scope of this study, but we can report that scientifically conducted investigations have shown all instances of tongues-speaking to have the same characteristics wherever they are encountered. The variation between the tongues spoken in a state of hysterical frenzy among primitives is only superficially different from that practiced in a quiet, composed Christian setting. He considers that all tongues experiences are a means by which uneasy and unsatisfied people identify with the supernatural, securing psychological compensation for the spiritual vacuum in which they live. Some Christian scholars believe that added to the psychological element is the possibility that demons are involved in tongues-speaking, but results of investigations in this field are not yet conclusive. Tongues-speaking can be a language of ecstasy; that is, articulated sounds which do not constitute an actual language. Reports keep coming of an even more astonishing phenomenon—speaking a real dialect that was never learned. Hundreds of missionaries, especially those working among people in Asia, report that they often have encountered the mysterious ability of natives to speak in real languages that they never knew. These accounts come from Christian workers who represent widely divergent opinions regarding the charismatic movement. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
One of Mrs. Winchester’s staff members that worked in the greenhouses on her property, who was born and reared on the Tibetan border used to report hearing the Tibetan monks in their ritual dances speak in English with quotations from Shakespeare, with profanity like drunken soldiers, or in German and French, or in languages unknown. A maid also reported the same experiences in the mansion. Reports of this nature are so numerous and come from such reputable people that one cannot set them aside lightly. Perhaps this is the reason Mrs. Winchester installed the mysterious windows in the Grand Ballroom? Christians must not jump to hasty conclusions on such delicate and complicated subjects, but they certainly must recognize the possibility of demonic activity and exercise extreme caution in an attitude of prayerful dependence upon God. We will be able to analyze these reports far more adequately after they have been thoroughly researched by competent investigators. Research teams have found that many of the physical and psychical phenomena declared impossible by the rationalistic scientists of the early 1900’s actually do take place. Most researchers do not even pretend to have a full explanation of how or why these occurrences transpire, but Christians are aware that some of them may be the result of evil spirits who work under the control of Satan. Regarding the occultic, the believer should walk the pathway of extreme caution. One should avoid any so-called magic that claims to bestow unusual knowledge or power through a psychic gift or ritualistic performances. It goes without saying that one must keep a safe distance from any form of black magic, and that one must examine carefully the doctrinal teaching of anyone who purports to provide healing or other temporal benefits in the name of the Lord. Biblical faith is built upon trust in God and expresses itself in submission to His will. Every follower of Christ should be wary of magical cures and all outward demonstrations of allegedly supernatural power. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
As children of God, we must remember that we “walk by faith, not by sight,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.7, and that the faith through the senses. When we received Christ, we were brought into a vital union with Him, and the apostle Peter was writing to us when he said, “Who, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and fill of glory,” reports 1 Peter 1.8. When a believer discovers the emptiness of this World’s enchantments, Satan tries to lure one into accepting his help through some form of occultism. Through these devices, the devil and his organization of evil spirits may attempt to bring defeat and misery into the lives of God’s children. Satan is unable to harm a believer, however, if that person accepts the instruction of the Bible, maintains a life of prayer, and submits oneself to God, and resists the devil. If one is hypocritical and dishonest, one will successfully resist and overcome the evil influence of Satan and his armies. The child of God must not merely say that one desires victory over sin, but must truly long for it. One’s spiritual vows and public statements must always be sincerely spoken, for the devil has no difficulty in defeating the hypocritical and half-hearted. The devil cannot effectively tempt a Christian who is actively living a joyful Christian life. Some believe that the door-to-nowhere in The Winchester Mystery House is just a wing of the mansion that was never finished, but perhaps it was a biblical metaphor. “I am the door; by me if any one enter in, one shall be saved,” reports John 10.9. It is elevated to a high level on the estate with no entrance reminds use to raise or consciousness, but by going the wrong way through the door, it may be a plunge into the pit of hades. There was once a woman who worked at Mrs. Winchester’s estate whose hand was terribly mangled by a gun explosion. Little did Mrs. Winchester know, that some men on the estate, amiable farmers, when not performing their specific functions, they were wizards, necromancers, exorcists, but above all priests, representatives of the people in offering sacrifices and making contact with the spirits. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Over one hundred years ago, human sacrifices had been made in some places, members of the community offered up by the noblest lords, but now animal sacrifices are made. They exhort their listeners about Heaven and hell in which they firmly believe, the one a place of joy and the other of torment…They keep the register of all males born and are intimate contact with sorcerer-priests, who can read ancient manuscripts and incantations for use on all religious occasions. While working on the estate, a man of Asian decent went to the farmers and asked for medical assistance for his wife. It was a moment of weakness—but he needed help. After the wizards, sorcerer-priests, necromancers, and exorcists evaluated the grounds keeper’s wife several times, they found she was suffering a higher fever also. While making preparations to treat her, they noticed the husband cutting three little bamboo sticks about eight inches long and a quarter of an inch in diameter. Oblivious to all that was taking place around him, he silently moved across the room with these three sticks and a rice bowl. After placing a little water in the bottom of the bowl and ordering his wife to dip the fingers of her right hand in it, he waved the bowl over her prostrate body. His next act was to place the bowl on the floor and try to balance the three sticks in the center of it. While this balancing process was going on, he kept calling out the names of demons. The men of supernatural powers soon awakened to the fact that this man was preparing to call a demon out of his wife. The men of supernatural powers suggested that the man’s wife’s fever was probably due to an attack of malaria, but the man insisted that she was demon-possessed. The naming of demons continued until the name of “Lin,” and then the sticks stood on end. Upon learning this was the demon’s name, the man placed some rice in the blow and mixed it with the three sticks—a little salt was added to give it flavor. He then waved the bowl in circles over his wife and politely called out, “Please, Mr. Lin Demon, come out—come out—look at this, tasty bowl of rice—it’s for you if you’ll only come out—please, oh, please come out, Mr. Lin Demon.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Then he moved slowly toward the door and outside, sprinkling a little of the rice along the way and begging the demon to follow him. When he reached the end of the estate, he flung the remaining portion of rice as far out as he could and then returned to the house. This was too much for some of the men of supernatural magic. They were determined to find out the shenanigans behind this thing, even if it meant calling down the wrath of the gods and demons combined. They asked the fellow if her would let them try to stand those sticks on end. He smilingly gave them the go-ahead signal; but he tried and those things just would not stand. Still not satisfied, they asked the man with the injured wife if he would show them how to do it. The whole process was reverently repeated, even to the standing of the sticks when the name “Lin” was called out. However, the men of supernatural magic finally despaired of ever making those sticks stand. They asked the man where did he learn this art. He answered through a séance with Mrs. Winchester. Six scrolls of some ancient script containing incantations appeared in the Blue Séance Room, along with other radical writings. The men of supernatural magic then realized this was the employment of evil angels they were dealing with. They were dealing with the rulers of darkness of this World, and spiritual wickedness in high places. In another case at the Winchester Mansion, these men who doubled as farmers met a fifteen-year-old girl who had a disease of the eyes. She spent quite a time in an eye clinic, but in spite of the treatment she was not cured. Since medical help had failed, she turned to the men of supernatural magic. These men, using white magic, case some spells over her. Within 24 hours of the charming, the girl’s eye trouble disappeared, but thereafter she felt a terrible inner unrest. She prayed but found no peace. Later, when she visited her former eye specialist, he could only shake his head in astonishment and ask her how she had been healed. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Although white magic has been able to heal people, some still believe it is inspired by the powers of darkness. Through white magic some may even obtain what they actually desired, and so it is often only in the effects that its true nature is revealed. The boundary between prayer and magic can be very fluid. If one is able to differentiate between the genuine and the imitation articles, it is essential to have the gift of discerning of spirits. However, whether it sails under a black, white or neutral flag, many people believe they have evidence to prove that the effect of magic in any form is the work of the devil. Yet, that is not what I believe. I have met some very nice people who claim to be witches and warlocks, and they are some of the most kindest people you will every meet. They define those that Christians, who pontificate about the bible, harass and attract and really listen and get to all sides of the story, some it makes some wonder, who is really evil? I am not saying that all Christians are bad, but the witch hunts were started by Christians, as well as lynching in the Southern states. I am not telling anyone what to believe, I am just presenting information that is fascinating. Part of being educated is to remain unbiased and be able to have a discussion, until you draw your own reasonable conclusion based on the evidence presented. If one does not have a case, or does not want to be contradicted by evidence that would prove their argument false, of course they turn to slander, harassment, and terrorism. That is what ignorant people do. They gang up and try to lie so loud to make sure no one can hear the truth they are suppressing. But as the Bible says, all things will come to the light. Everyone has things they need to deal with inside of themselves and sometimes it is more comfortable to try to find fault with others and blame others instead of taking responsibility. For instance, the dynamic of idolatry is demonism since idolatry is in reality the worship of other gods who are demons (1 Corinthians 10.20), headed by Satan the “god of this World,” (2 Corinthians 4.4). #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Occultism involves dealing with demonic forces through fortune-telling, magic, spiritism, or religious cults, which are supposedly closely allied to idolatry. Persons who deal in the occult often discover that they have spiritistic sensitivity, extrasensory perception, or abnormal intellectual powers enabling them to engage in clairvoyance, precognition, divination, psychometry, magic, and spiritism. Dealing in the occult often results in the subjection to the powers of darkness to such a degree that the mind becomes blinded to truth, immersed in deception and error. This frequently results in acute depression with thoughts of self-destruction. However, not all emotional problems or suicidal tendencies should be attributed to occultism. However, demons can also oppress that human mind. Enslavement to demons sometimes reaches a point in which the demonic spirits harass and torment their victims. In the preceding stage of subjection, the evil spirits sporadically dominate their victims, but they do not necessarily harass them, at least not as they do in this deeper and more tragic state of oppression. Oppression in some form will be the final outcome of all who become psychically enslaved, even though some are not psychically gifted with spiritistic or magical powers. One well-attested and widely occurring form of demonic oppression is poltergeist phenomena. “Poltergeist” is German for “noisy ghost.” In such a case, the oppressed person is hounded by strange noises and sounds, such as shouts and obscene threats, rattling of chains, moaning, weeping, or piercing laughter. Dishes clatter, furniture is moved by invisible hands, and myriads of other strange happenings occur, invisibly produced by spirits connected with a haunted house where spirit activity has been practiced. Some who are oppressed continue to be tormented even though they may move to another residence. Also, common in the victims of demonism are the appearances of ghosts, specters, and monstrous phantasms. These phenomena are often explained away as hallucinations, but are well attested in occultism as spirits appearing as dwarfs, animals, dismembered parts of a human body, etcetera. At times these hideous spirits will strangle, bite, strike, or attack their victims in some way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Perhaps the most terrible and revolting form of demonic oppression is what is known in the history of religion as incubi and sccubae experiences. This is the assault by an unclean spirit upon its enslaved victim for the purpose of lust involving pleasures of the flesh. Both men and women have been attacked and molested by “seducing male and female demons.” Such fully established phenomena show that angelic-human union, a major cause of the flood (Genesis 6.1-4; 2 Peter 2.4; Jude 1.6-7), has its parallel in occultism today. The account of the following portent is given us in Aubrey’s Miscellanies. “When King James II first entered Dublin after his Arrival from France, 1689, one of the Gentlemen that bore the Mace before him, stumbled without any rub in his way, or other visible occasion. The Mace fell out of is hands, and the little Cross upon the Crown thereof stuck fast between to Stones in the Street. This is well known all over Ireland, and did much trouble King James himself with many of his chief Attendants”; but not doubt greatly raised the hopes of his enemies. A few years later a witch-story comes from the north of Ireland. “At Antrim in Ireland a little girl of nineteen (nine?) years of age, inferior to none in the place for beauty, education, and birth, innocently put a leaf of sorrel which she had got from a witch into her mouth, after she had given the begging witch bread and beer at the door; it was scarce swallowed by her but she began to be tortured in the bowels, to tremble all over, and even was convulsive, and in fine to swoon away as dead. The doctor used remedies on the 9th of May 1698, at which time it happened, but to no purpose, the child continued in a most terrible paroxysm; whereupon they sent for the minister, who scarce had laid his hand upon her when she was turned by the demon in the most dreadful shapes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
She began first to rowl herself about, then to vomit needles, pins, hairs, feathers, bottoms of thread, pieces of glass, window-nails, nails drawn out of a cart or coach-wheel, an iron knife about a span long, eggs, and fish-shells; and when the witch came near the place, or looked to the house, though at the distance of two hundred paces from where the child was, she was in worse torment, insomuch that no life was expected from the child till the witch was removed to some greater distance. The witch was apprehended, condemned, strangled, and burnt, and was desired to unto the incantation immediately before strangling; but said she could not, by reasons others had done against her likewise. But the wretch confessed the same, with many more. The child was about the middle of September thereafter carried to a gentleman’s house, where there were many other things scarce credible, but that several ministers and the gentleman have attested the same. The relation is to be seen in a pamphlet printed 1699, and entitled The Bewitching of a Child in Ireland.” People in ancient times used to rely more on the spiritual, witchcraft, magic, séances, curses, potions, and meditation. Perhaps that is why there were so many more instances of supernatural things happening today. Some of these claims sound so outrageous and many of them report the same types of instances. Then today, we have all these technologies and medications and machines that we rely on and people who tell us what is actually possible and how many of these stories from the past happen to be something else explained by medication or a camera that so many people start to disbelieve in the supernatural. However, just because it can be explained by science, does not mean it is not supernatural. The Christian Bible even speaks about miracles, which are things that are supernatural. Supernatural phenomenon is real. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
However, supernatural phenomena may be less common today because land is so densely packed, so many people turn into TV and Music and digital entertainment, so they spend less time praying and tuning into nature. In the 1800s, one could life in a house and not see another person for years because there was so much space to spread out on. People had time to read books and gaze at the moon and the sky and think up inventions. By now, everyone has probably heard of the legendary Sarah L. Winchester. She is the one who built the most mysterious mansion in the World. One thing that surprises me is that no one has, as of yet, tried to duplicate or create something just as wonderful. Nonetheless, it has been said that Mrs. Winchester slept in a different bedroom every night, supposedly in order to confuse evil spirits. And it totally makes sense. Because even now, people say when bad things are happening to you, you need to figure out what you are doing to cause it and draw closer to God. Back in Mrs. Winchester’s day, the 1800s, people were into spiritualism and also believed that spirits were the source causing bad things to happen to people. So they would try to appease them to protect themselves from curses and demons and so forth. Every generation has their methods and religions and that is just how it is. Some say Mrs. Winchester also held special dinner parties for her spirit friends. Legend has it that she would serve her phantom friends on solid gold plates, offering them delicious cuisine like caviar, truffles, and pheasant stuffed with pate. The mansion’s staff was also well-fed. On a stormy night, the front of the house was dark and silent, for it was long past bedtime. It was thirteen past one, and raining like blazes. It was thirteen years ago this day that Louis Le Prince had been seen alive, for Black Knight, one of Mrs. Winchester’s mares kicked the life out of him in the house stable one morning. One could feel the present and all its dangers towering around. Staff who walked by the horse stable this day reported feeling lost, a ghost dislodged from time. Indeed, it struck many people as unusual that the lad was left for the to care for the horses by himself. It might have been a fancy stable, but there was a queer feel about the place. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
The sun was just beginning to set as they headed back to the estate. By the time they got inside, the night was as black as your hat: not a vestige of a moon, not a single star to break the uniform of darkness of the sky. With sunset a noisy blustering wind had sprung up, rattling about one of the chimneys, clashing the wet branches, and deadening the sound of cautious footfalls creeping across the paddock in the direction of the stables. The wind dropped suddenly, making the silence all the more intense by contrast with the previous roar; and through the stillness, Mrs. Winchester heard the clink of a bucket, and the sound of someone moving about in the stables. She sprang to her feet and snatched up her lantern. She thought that someone was trying to get at one of her horses, and her hand was on her father-in-law’s ivory-gripped Winchester pistol when she opened the door. So strong was the impression that she was absolutely surprised to find no sign of an intruder. The horses were perfectly quiet. Mrs. Winchester looked all around. There was certainly nothing to see, but it struck her that the air felt very cold, and she shut the door. The instant it closed behind her, a dark shadow fell across the square of light issuing from the entrance to the saddle-room. She figured it must have been the wind she heard and locked the door and went back inside. However, the butler Henry Boynton Clitz, was also suspicious. He turned the key in the lock and looked into the horse stable; then he gave a slight start, and drew quickly back. There was light inside, but where is came from would have been difficult to say. Beyond the shadow lay black and impenetrable, a wall of darkness. As he crossed the threshold Henry felt a blast of cold air sweep towards him, striking a strange chill into his very bones. Straight opposite stood a horse, and before him was an old man who appeared to be asleep. However, even in that intense stillness the tout could catch no sound of his breathing. His own heart was thumping against his ribs with the force of a sledge-hammer. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Henry felt his flesh creeping with a sensation of fear that was almost sickening. Fear? Yes, that was the word; he was horribly afraid. And of what? Of a weak old man, for whom he would have been more than a match single-handed, and they were two to one. What a fool he was, to be sure! With desperate effort he pulled himself together and went forward, his eye warily fixed on the silent figure. Neither man nor horses moved. As Henry moved forward, he heard a low chuckling laugh. The man was looking at him. The gleaming eyes fixed on him with a sort of mesmeric power. His face fastened on the figure, taking in every item of the quaint dress, the high gill collar and ample bird’s eye stock, the drab coat and antiquated breeches and gaiters. His mouth was open, but for the life of him he could not speak. He was waiting in the helpless fascination of horror to see the face of a man who had been dead and buried for thirteen years. Slowly, like an automaton, that strange watcher turned his head. The square, resolute mouth was open as if to speak; the shrunken skin was a greenish yellow color, like the skin of a corpse; along the temple ran a dull black mark in the shape of a horse’s hoof; but the eyes burned like two living coals, as they fixed themselves on the face of the terrified publican. Next, Henry heard the crash of a lantern on stones and the sound of Louis’s flying feet, and an awful terror came upon him, a great fear, which made his teeth chatter in his head and curdled the blood in his veins. The place seemed full of an unnatural light—black flames. The air was foul with the horrible odors of decay. Above all, Henry felt the fearful presence of that which was neither living nor dead—the semblance of a man whose human body had for thirteen long years been rotting in the grave. It was not living, but it moved. Its cold, shining eyes were looking into his, were coming near. There was no mistaking the look of that helpless body, the limp flaccidity of those outstretched arms. “He’s dead,” said Henry, as he turned up the white face. Its coat was wet with—something. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
It was blood. But it was strange there should be no marks of violence about him, and yet he looks as if he had died hard. And truly, the dead man’s face was terrible in its fixed expression of mortal fear. The eyes were staring and wide open, the teeth clenched, a little forth hung about the blue lips. It was a horrid sight. Henry locked the door on the corpse until the police could arrive, and spent the remainder of the night in the butler’s pantry. However, when the Henry awoke, he could throw very little light on the matter. There was no one in the horse stables. No body, no foul odor, no broken lanterns. Just the horses and an old noose in one of the empty stalls. Whatever happened remain a mystery. The old living soul who knew the truth held her tongue. Mrs. Winchester simply told him, “Leave it to other staff members and never set foot in that cursed place. The poor boy is dead, and there is no reason for me to get myself mixed up in the business.” Demons can cause physical ailments such as dumbness (Matthew 9.32-33), blindness (Matthew 12.22), and various other defects and deformities (Luke 13.11-17). In all such cases medical and psychiatric treatment are of no avail, because the cause is demonic. Only be dealing with the spiritual causes of the malady can it be cured. Besides actual sickness, demons can cause speech and behavior abnormalities. In demon possession, which is an extreme form of enslavement and oppression, the speech and behavior abnormalities appear in greatly accentuated form with such violent physical manifestations as retching, screaming, blaspheming, cursing, foaming at the mouth, convulsions and display of tremendous physical strength. So completely does the demonic spirit gain mastery that one takes over the body of the victim and speaks through it with one’s own voice and language, which may be completely foreign to the language of the demonized. Sometimes evil spirits endanger humans’ temporal safety by exercising a certain control over natural forces. “I’ve covered my brother completely (That bump on the right is his knee) I will dig him out when I am ready to find how he liked it, you see.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Tickets are almost sold out for tonights Flashlight Tours! 👀🔦 March 5th & 12th nights still have availability – hurry and purchase before they are all gone! You don’t want to miss this 👻
I’ll bet you wonder whether poor Whitney’s race is run. I hate to keep you guessing, but I must have my fun. 🎟 link in bio. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
REGARDLESS OF VACCINATION STATUS, ALL PERSONS IN SANTA CLARA COUNTY MUST WEAR FACE COVERINGS AT ALL TIMES WHEN INDOORS. WHILE THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA LIFTED THE UNIVERSAL MASK MANDATE AS OF FEBRUARY 16, 2022, SANTA CLARA COUNTY MASK MANDATES ARE STILL IN EFFECT UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
Why is there Never Any Happy News?
Evolution has been able to create the advanced structure and metabolism of modern organisms. Biological evolution is the change in inherited traits over successive generations in populations of organisms. Adaptation is a key evolutionary process in which variation in the fitness of traits and species are adjusted by natural selection to become better suited for survival in specific ecological habitats. The environment acts to promote evolution through changes in development. Therefore, determining how developmental changes are mediated is critical for understanding the mechanisms of evolution. In our early speculation about the primitive coacervates, before the nucleic acid mechanism appeared upon the scene, we pictured the development of a number of cell-like characteristic. The external membrane, which made an individual out of a modern cell, was such a characteristic. Another consisted of solid inclusions such as microsomes, on the surface of which certain kinds of chemical reactions might take place more rapidly. And we had no difficulty, in terms of the primitive mechanisms alone, in accounting for the existence of fluid-containing regions within the coacervates shielded by their own membranes from the chemical influence of the surrounding material. To the space-varying chemistry permitted by such complex structures, we were even able to add time-varying chemistry by postulating suitable combinations of membrane selectivity and reactions time lags. We have seen how the appearance of nucleic acid provided a powerful new line of evolutionary development. In the past, we have devised an imaginary course of natural history capable of refining the first fumbling architectural inclinations of nucleic acid into the remarkable precise and effective control properties of the modern nucleic acid/enzyme apparatus. In this way, our discussion has bridged the gap between primitive coacervates and modern cells with respect to the basic metabolic mechanisms underlying the control of growth and reproduction. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
However, we should not allow our recent preoccupation with development of the genetic mechanisms to blind us to the fact that other refinements of the primitive mechanisms were also necessary if modern cells were to evolve from the coacervates. Let us consider two or three examples of these less spectacular, but nonetheless important, refinements that characterize living cells today. First, consider the properties of membranes. The physical laws that had to be obeyed by large-molecular-weight material in water would sometimes result in the formation of a semipermeable membrane enclosing the coacervate. In the ensuing treatment extensive use was made of the selectivity of such membrane—their confining effect on large molecules but relative permeability to small ones, for example. In general, the ability of an enclosing membrane to sustain substantially different chemical reactions in contiguous regions and to permit the interpenetration of selected products of these reactions is fundamental to the life process. Therefore, it might be imagined that the economic of natural selection would have caused today’s membranes to have much more highly developed properties than those of the primitive progenitors of cellular life. And indeed this is true, although it is true in a somewhat curious way. Apparently, just as in the case of the nucleic acid/enzyme apparatus, the processes of natural selection have discovered one basic structure that is superior to all others; for electron microscope observations have revealed that all cell membranes have essentially the same two-dimensional arrangement of protein and lipid material. However, this does not mean that the permeability properties are the same for all cells. The important differences needed to meet the metabolic requirements of different cell species are the same for all cells. The important differences needed to meet the metabolic requirements of different cell species are produced by means of enzymes of special class called permeases. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Different varieties of permease can cause the standard membrane to pass or block the passage of different kinds of molecules. The combination of a suitable permease and the membrane also frequently results in one-way permeability, in which molecules of a certain kind will pass through the membrane in one direction but not in the other, even though they have to oppose a strong concentration gradient in their migration. It is easy to see how valuable this property can be in permitting a cell to extract selected ingredients from the surrounding fluids and concentrate them internally. Another example of a detail of cell structure that must certainly have undergone extensive evolutionary refinement consists of the solid inclusions in the cytoplasm—the microsomes—that we have seen play such an important role in the nucleic acid control of protein formation. By a combination of electron microscope and chemical techniques, it is clear that “working parts” of the microsomes consist of a myriad of very small subparticles, or ribosomes, that are densely distributed over the surface of the much larger microsomal particles. Each ribosome is of about the right size to support a single molecule of messenger RNA while it engages in its process of multiple marriage with the amino-acid-conveying transfer RNA molecules. In addition, these ribosomes have been found to possess a special chemical composition that presumably contributes to their mission. They themselves contain RNA, mixed in about equal proportions with protein. Apparently, this ribosomal RNA does not perform any control function of the kind that we have come to expect of nucleic acid. Instead, its binding with protein appears only to provide a surface with properties favourable to the attachment of the messenger RNA molecules that do participate in the control activities. Incidentally, studies of the ribosomal processes have led to the conclusion that the lie of the messenger RNA molecule is frequently a short one after it has stretched out on the ribosomal surface. In bacteria, at least, it last for only two or three minutes before it breaks up and its fragments float away. (However, some messenger RNA, especially in cells of higher organisms, persist for much longer periods.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Experiments employing radioactive tracer elements, by means of which determinations can be made of the time intervals involved in the capture of amino acid segments by transfer RNA and these subsequent assembly of the segments into protein molecules under the guidance of messenger RNA, have shown that in two or three minutes only a few protein molecules can be constructed Thus, the formation of enzymes under the guidance of the nucleic acid mechanisms can be a very active process, with messenger RNA continually being manufactured by the DNA molecules and the ribosomes continually receiving newly arriving messenger molecules and then recleansing their surfaces after a small amount of protein-construction activity. It is only because every cell contains hundreds of microsomal particles each covered with thousands of ribosomes that this seemingly inefficient process can produce adequate numbers of protein molecules to sustain life. Modern cells contain a number of different types of inclusions in addition to ribosomes. Some possess such complexity of structure and function that they are called organelles, or “small organs.” Organelles are specialized structures that perform various jobs inside cells. In the same way organs, such as the heart, liver, stomach, and kidneys, serve specific functions to keep an organism alive, organelles serve specific functions to keep a cell alive. The mitochondria constitute an important kind of organelle. They are rod-shaped and about one three-thousandths of an inch long. There are perhaps 2,000 of them distributed throughout an average cell. Each tiny mitochondrion is a complete processing plant that takes in a standardized raw material—the sugar glucose—and puts out, in addition to by-products, and energy-rich chemical—adensoine triphosphate (ATP). More than a dozen separate chemical reactions are involved in this transformation, and each reaction is catalyzed by a different enzyme. The mitochondrion must store all these enzymes as well as the intermediate products in a structure that permits the continuous assembly-line manufacture of its end product ATP. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
ATP, sometimes called a coenzyme, differs from the nucleotide adenylic acid only in its possession of three phosphate groups instead of one. It is by all odds the most important source of chemical energy in present-day organisms. No modern cell could survive without it. And the origin of this vital ingredient is the complex chain of reactions, many of the steps of which are identical for man and dandelion, that continuously take pace in the mitochondria. One of the most conspicuous structural features of modern organisms is the cell nucleus. In terms of our previous discussion, it is easy to regard the nuclear structure as a straightforward example of the kind of “drop within a drop” development that we postulated for the later stages of coacervate evolution. Nevertheless, it seems likely that the kind of nucleus we now know, with its clear-cut membrane separating certain internal structures and organelles from others of quite different kinds in the surrounding cytoplasmic fluid, is a relatively late development. For bacteria and a few other primitive organisms do not have well-developed nuclear membranes, although they frequently exhibit other inclusions and organelles of a considerable degree of sophistication. In short, modern cells differ from primitive coacervates not just in their possession of the power genetic mechanisms but also in their incorporation of other features of a degree of sophistication and refinement unheard of in bygone days. There is no reason for this to be surprising, in view of the inevitable ubiquity of the evolutionary effects on which all biological progress is based. However, it seemed worthwhile to call explicit attention to these other developments before proceeding to a consideration of what must be some fairly late evolutionary development related, once again, to the genetic mechanisms. Four our treatment of the modern cell, cursory though it is intended to be, would yet be unjustifiably incomplete if it failed to describe some of the techniques employed today to hold together and protect the all-important book of instructions contained in the DNA molecules for directing the chemical activities in the organism. Specifically, we must examine the properties of modern cells that minimize the effects of chance on the architectural activities of the nucleic acid control mechanisms. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The problem we must consider is not fundamentally different from one which we encountered in connection with the reproduction of the early coacervates. When one of our primitive bags of chemicals broke up, we saw that the ability of any one of the resulting smaller droplets to support a chain of chemical reactions similar to that which had been responsible for the growth of the parent depended on whether chance provided that smaller droplet with an adequately representative inventory of ingredients. If so, the new individua could survive and grow; if not, death ensured. The development of the genetic mechanisms would have modified the problem of viable heredity, but would not have eliminated it. In particular, as DNA molecules assumed control of the chemistry of the cell by means of the powerful enzymes they generated, the survivability of an offspring of an adult individual would have become less dependent on the chance incorporation in the offspring of many of the ingredients normally found in the parent; the strong directing influence of the enzymes would have quickly made up for any initial imbalance in the proportions of most of the vital juices. However, nothing could have made up for the absence of an important enzyme resulting from the accidental failure of one of the generating DNA molecules to be captured by the offspring when the adult broke up into smaller pieces. This discussion so far has demonstrated how DNA is perhaps the most famous biological molecule; it is present in all forms of life on Earth. virtually every cell in your body contains DNA of the genetic code that makes you. DNA carries the instructions for the development, growth, reproduction, and functioning of life. Differences in the genetic code are the reason why one person has brown eyes rather than green, why some people are susceptible to certain diseases, why birds only have two wings, and why giraffes have long necks. However, we will continue more of this interesting topic in future reports. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
When it comes to the past, it is not wrong to look back if we understand the purpose for doing so. The Lord wants us to learn from our mistakes. However, we can learn from them only by keeping them in perspective and not dwelling on them. We fall into a deep pit of discouragement if we continually dwell on past mistakes. This is particularly true of sins. We can also become discouraged by blaming ourselves for sins we did not commit. For example, victims of abuse often feel responsible somehow for the abuse they received. They sometimes even feel guilty for having survived the abuse. In the same way, those who have been victimized by the sins of others continue to be victims if they blame themselves and dwell on the past. Healing comes when they seek the Lord’s help to rise above the sorrow and turn their pain into a blessing. Sometimes the fear of the consequence of confessing a sin keeps people living in the past. Some people even spend a lifetime trying to recreate the past. This relates to a most confusing psychological phenomenon called “repetition compulsion.” In repetition compulsion, a person repeats a traumatic event or its circumstances over and over again. This includes reenacting the event or putting oneself in situations where the event seems likely to happen again. Many people who are stuck in the past, regardless of if it was a trauma or their “heyday,” expose themselves to people or places they are stuck on, so they can create reminiscent scenes of the original situation. These behavioural reenactments are rarely consciously understood to be related to earlier life experiences. Humans seek comfort in what is familiar and predictable—even if this means repeatedly harassing and stalking people who want nothing to do with them, nor the past. Through these behaviours, individuals believe they are recreating history and changing the outcome, thereby gaining mastery over what they could not control in the past. When one re-enacts scenarios from the past, it involves the hope that this time they will get it right. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Consciously or unconsciously, some believe they are omnipotent in other individual’s lives and they have the power to satisfy them, by trying to make the past the present. Compulsive repetition of the past, especially if the person you are focusing on had a bad experience with you, or has not talked to you in decades, may not be the best idea. Social media is there and it is virtually easy to contact anyone you want. Sometimes it is best to let others reaching out to you, especially if you are fixated on the past. Their lives may have changed, they may not be interested in the past, or they may be in a situation where they are not willing to reconnect with the past or even may not want new friends. Compulsive repetition of fantasies may provide a temporary sense of mastery or even pleasure (but ultimately leads to chronic feelings of helplessness and a sense of being bad and out of control). Change, even when healthy, feels foreign and scary. When we consider that all patterns of behaviour contain ulterior gains, we can better understand the cycle of repetition. It is important to note that the motivation to not change is not necessarily an action that brings happiness, relief or other beneficial emotions. Sometimes people revert back to familiarity because the outcome is predictable. To venture into uncharted waters is to invite intolerable anxiety. Tragically, some people remain so preoccupied with the past that they are not able to develop meaningful life experiences. This fixation often results in difficulties with assimilating subsequent experiences, almost as if their emotional development has stopped at a certain point. Perhaps some people may benefit more from therapy than obsessively trying to recreate the past. Often times, people even forget who they are and make believe they are the person they traumatized. To recover rationality after being irrational, to recover normal life, is a great thing. A variety of insight therapies, from cognitive to psychodynamic, may be used in cases of schizophrenia. Such approaches may be offered in individual or group formats. Studies suggest that the particular orientations of insight therapists are often less important than their levels of experience with schizophrenia. In addition, the therapist who are most successful tend to be those who take an active role, setting limits, expressing opinions, challenging patients’ statements, providing guidance, displaying empathy, and gaining trust. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
The area of patriotism is intermediate between childhood and adulthood. We must understand it carefully or we play into the hands of fools and rogues who have done our country plenty of damage. To what can we correctly attach the adjective “American”? Well, America is supposed to be a “slice of Heaven,” where everyone has a beautiful house, fancy cars, a high paying job, and two kids. Being American meant to have security, safety, material wealth, excellent health, religion, be proud of your country, well educated and innovative, and a successful career. American was supposed to mean all the good God made and none of the bad stuff. During the 1950s, the economy boomed, and many Americans enjoyed material comfort. The American Dream because a reality. By 1956, the majority of Americans no longer held blue-collar, or industrial, jobs. Instead more people worked in higher-paid, white-collar positions—clerical, managerial, or professional occupations. Unlike blue-collar workers, who manufactured goods for sale, white-collar workers tended to perform services in fields like sales, advertising, insurance, and communications. Though achieving job security did take a psychological toll on some Americans who resented having to repress their own personalities, it also enabled people to provide their families with the so-called good things in life. Most Americans worked in cities, but fewer and fewer of them lived there. New highways and the availability of affordable automobiles and gasoline made commuting possible. By the early 1960s, every large city in the United States of America was surrounded by suburbs. Of the 13 million new homes built in the 1950s, 85 percent were built in the suburbs. For many people, the suburbs embodied the American Dream of an affordable single-family house, good schools, a safe, healthy environment for children, and congenial neighbours just like themselves. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
In between, there is an American landscape, as American primary and secondary education, an American classlessness, and American Constitution, and Anglo-American language, and American kind of enterprising. That is, just where a child ventures from home and grows up through adolescence, the great environment becomes one’s scene, and this is American, a characteristic geography and history, place and community. It is just in growing up that a patriotic opportunity is essential. It is just this opportunity that, for ingenuous youth, is corrupted. And so it is hard to grow up. Let us be quite clear what this American landscape and community is. 95 percent of U.S. teens have their own mobile device, nearly 64 percent of teens have televisions, 93 percent of teens go online, 69 percent of teens have their own computer, 63 percent of teen Internet users go online every day. The average teen in American spends $2,150 per year. That is 42 million teens in America spending their money on a variety of products. And the average American dad spends $9,486 annually per kid, while the typical American mom spends just $8,789. So, annually, teens are spending $90.3 billion of their own money. That is just a little bit less than the $90.4 billion quarterly net income of TFC Financial, or more than the $76 billon net income of Alphabet Inc. On the high end, parents spend $752 billion on their teens, which is slightly less than the $800 billion Microsoft is worth. The teenage market is tremendously powerful. Perhaps that is why advertisers spend more than $12 billion per year to razzle-dazzle promotional stunts (right) to reach the youth market. If parents have any idea of organized revolt, it is already too late. Teenage spending is so important that such action would send quivers through the entire national economy. This is a description of the landscape. There are just a few examples of fundamental that lie beneath the “fundamentals.” And they are even more important than they may seem because they form a system. Thus, changes in the deep fundamental interact with one another. Moreover, the limited examples cited so far are just that—limited. A fuller list would surely include others—energy, the environment and family structure, for example—all changing at high speed, all shaking the ground under the more superficial, everyday fundamentals. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Many of the deep fundamentals have received scrutiny from time to time. For example, in 2020, the relationship between the biosphere and wealth creation once again became the center of global concern and controversy. By contrast, several of the deep fundamentals most relevant to revolutionary wealthy have, in fact, received scant attention. That, therefore takes us on a journey to strange, largely unknown territory to probe three of the fastest-changing, most powerful and most fascinating of all the deep and fundamentals today—three will that without question shape the future of wealth. The countries with the key economics in today’s World—the United States of America, Japan, China and the European Union—are all heading for a crisis that none of them wants, that few political leaders are ready for and that will set limits on future economic advance. This looming crisis is a direct result of the “de-synchronization effect,” an example of how we mindlessly deal with one of the deepest of all the deep fundamentals: Time. Nations all over the World today are struggling at different rates of speed to build advance economies. What most business, political and civil leader have not yet clearly understood is a simple fact: An advanced economy needs an advanced society, for every economy is a product of the society in which it is embedded and is dependent on its key institutions. If a country manages to speed up its economic advance but leaves its key institutions behind, it will eventually limit its potential to create wealth. Call it the Law of Congruence. Feudal institutions everywhere obstructed industrial advance. In the same way, today’s industrial-age bureaucracies are slowing the move toward a more advanced, knowledge-based system for creating wealth. This is true of Japan’s Okurasho (its Ministry of Finance) and other government bureaucracies. It is true of China’s state-owned enterprises and of France’s ingrown, elitist ministries and universities. It is also true of the United States of America. In all these countries, key public institutions are out of step with the whirlwind of change that surrounds them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Nowhere has this been more evident than in the inability of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to cope with the skyrocketing speed and complexity of the private-sector financial institutions it is supposed to regulate. In the great Enron scandal, in the illegal mutual-fund machinations that directly involved time and timing, and in case after case of overcreative accounting, regulators were left in the dust by the accelerated manipulations of less than honourable companies. This was matched elsewhere by the striking failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to shift quickly enough from a focus on Cold-War targets to anti-terrorism capabilities—leaving the door open to the horror of 9/11. More recently, the impact of de-synchronization was dramatized by the embarrassing, tragic ineptitude of governmental responses to COVID-19 in 2022, when the president Biden admitted he had “no national plan,” and while prices are rising substantially, he refuses to help those who truly need help. Everywhere, as we will see later, attempts to change or replace an industrial-era agency spark resistance from its traditional beneficiaries and their allies. This resistance creates, or at least contributes to, drastically uneven rates of change. Which helps explain why so many of our primary institutions are dysfunctional—out of sync with the accelerative pace that a knowledge-based economy demands. Today’s governments, in brief, have a severe problem with time itself. Nonetheless, many think there is too much criticism abroad today, too little affirmation. Millions of humans think and live largely on negatives. It is because all humanity is approaching the threshold of a new era, a better era, that all the devils of the old era put forth their fiercest efforts, whilst there is yet a little time, to degrade human character, to drag it down into the hades of the worst forces and emotions—hate, envy, aggressiveness, and brutality. If there is physical pollution in the atmosphere, the water, and the Earth, there is another kind in humans, a moral depravity and mental baseness not less repellent. If there is so much friction, violence, and tension in the World, it is only because so many individual persons themselves are inwardly experiencing these things. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
People fill the World’s aura with bad thought which, if sustained, prolonged, and strong enough, break out on the physical level into undesirable or evil happenings. If there is so little real peace in the World, it is only because there is so little real peace in the individuals who live in the World. Their thinking, their emotions, and their passions have affected the mental atmosphere of the World. The most violent selfish passions and the most aggressive of emotional urges abound in this decade only because they have been brought up to the surface the better to attack and curb them. Just as association with a master throws the disciple’s virtues and vices to the surface, so contact with the higher forces being released in the World brings both great evil and great spirituality to the surface. The evil, in disciple’s as in humanity’s case, must manifest itself so that it may not lurk untouched but may be got at, grappled with, and eventually destroyed. Let us not misunderstand appearances, therefore. Since last century, things have been getting worse only to get better. Today most people feel frustrated, restless, and discontented. They search for happiness here and there, in this thing of that thing, through one person or another, or by moving from excitement to sensation. All this is their unconscious reaction to the new spiritual forces arising in their midst and destined to be vigorously active in a couple of hundred years. Today humanity has already largely lost faith in itself, doubts its goodness, worries about its future, and is bewildered about its present. Compulsive fears and corrosive anxieties, enfeebling doubts and neurotic complexes trouble the minds of so many millions in our age, as thwarted hopes and enchaining environments depress their hearts. Idealism presses them to become servants of Good; passion distorted into destructive violence deceives them into becoming servants of Evil. The thoughts which have gestated unspoken in humans’ minds and the feelings which have fermented unexpressed in their hearts have been and are being thrown up to the surface through the upheavals of our times, externalized, as it were, in their events. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Humanity did not come into its present grievous situation by chance. The whole picture of thoughts and their consequences, passions and their evils, acts and their effects, must be seen under the light of immutable Universal Law. The policy of fear and suspicion has not brought peace nearer; but, on the contrary, pushed it father away. We live in a World which, today, is populated with too many insane humans, too many unbalanced maladjusted persons. However, because they re not actually raving and jumping so as easily to be identified for what they are, this seldom is understood. This leaves many to wonder, when and where was the concept of celibacy first articulated? Did it originate as an actualized Christian instrument later adopted by ambitious hunters and warriors? Or was it fries imposed on people to guarantee their purity for those they would later breed with? The story of celibacy, in the guise of virginity and chastity, is shrouded in the mists of eons past. Though the hunger to know too urgent to dismiss, we can only suckle it on pap distilled from prehistoric gleanings, glimpses, and guesses and hope that some true nourishment seeps in Myriad pieces of data confirm the near-universal subordination of woman from the earliest times. Despite consoling myths about great matriarchies, it is a rare society where women are equal to men. One study of over eight hundred societies reveals how overwhelming males dominate leadership positions, including their kinship groups. Enormous China, with the World’s largest population, typifies humankind’s perspective. China has traditionally stifled women, and even today in its rural areas, woman have a 40 percent higher suicide rate than men because, they, too, undervalue their lives. The mechanics of this process of universal submission can only be guessed at. What is certain is that, unlike hunter/gatherers and horticulturists, most stable agricultural societies base social continuity and internal stability largely of female celibacy—virginity in girls, chastity and fidelity in wives—the best guarantee for successful genetic transfer. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
This rule’s rare exceptions underlie its universality. The male virgins of Papua New Guinea’s tiny Enga culture are prime examples of the infrequency of the phenomenon of compulsory male virginity. Conversely, a few cultures value fertility so gratefully that their men refuse to waste themselves on women who have not provided themselves by bearing a child. As we shall, see, these, too, are anomalies. Less rare is the societal standards that accepts or even expects premarital pleasures of the flesh with the intended spouse, with pregnancy followed swiftly by marriage. A European example is eighteenth-century Georgian England, where in rural perishes—the overwhelming majority—illegitimate births not followed by marriage were a mere 1.5 percent of births in the early seventeenth century, 3 percent in 1750, and still only 6 percent in 1810. However, births within seven months of marriage—though conception was prior to it—were 10.2 percent of first births from 1650 to 1699, 25.5 percent a century later, and by the nineteenth century, over 30 percent. Clearly, in most cases, premarital pleasures of the flesh were acceptable with the intended mate and pregnancy precipitated the actual marriage ceremony. However, many societies that tolerate a lack of chastity among lower-ranking women demand premarital virginity of women of higher status. This class element is complex. It operates partly to reinforce more stringent moral standards on members of its female elite, thereby emphasizing their superior moral worth. Paradoxically, the opposite is often true for its males, who are permitted or even encouraged to indulge in experimentation with pleasures of the flesh. A second major reason for valuing chastity is moral or religious. As humankind evolved, so did belief systems, and we have already seen how spiritual values deal with pleasures of the flesh and govern its expression. Celibacy, one such manifestation, has its advocates and practitioners such as widows and shamans, or priests. Except in isolated communities, it is only selectively practiced; after all, wholesale enforcement would be collective genetic suicide. Virginity in brides, however, is the religious ideal of the great majority of societies. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The third and perhaps the driving force behind this policy is economic. In many societies, a wealthy man’s daughter used to be his chattel and, as such, a vehicle for distributing his land and other holdings through a dowry or for acquiring property through a bride price. Chastity, as evidence of the pure and pristine nature of the goods, was at the forefront of qualities necessary in the bride-as-merchandise. Here is a brief breakdown of the most important consideration underlying this fixation on virginity. First, the bride’s chaste maidenhood carries several important guarantees for her Husband: that the child she conceives—least the first one—will be his; that she is not to dishonour him by allowing another man to take her maidenhead and have intimate knowledge of her body; that by refraining from pleasures of the flesh, she has demonstrated the likelihood of marital fidelity; tht by obeying the dictates of her relatives, her culture, and/or her religion, she has proved she is dutiful and likely to submit as well to her husbands authority; and that by coming to her husband unburdened by a child, her dowry and future labour will be devoted exclusively to the new family he and she have just founded. The bride’s family and in-laws also benefit, because her virginity enables her family to negotiate favourable marriage terms; she has shamed neither her own nor her husband’s family by acquiring a bad reputation; and she has not violated her religion’s strictures against premarital pleasures of the flesh, bringing down on her family’s head the wrath of offended deities. For a combination of these reasons, defloration has developed an almost mystical significance. Its imperatives override the urgent stirrings of awakening young bodies and impose chastity. This despite the fact that chastity runs counter to the human female’s evolution as a creature unique in her capacity for seasonless, round-the-clock copulation. This is why, of course, most societies that insists on maidenly virginity tacitly acknowledge that it is unnatural. They do this variously. They devise stringent methods to enforce it—foot-binding and female genital mutilation are examples. They inculcate the principle of virginity into their youth or preach it as a religious tent. They punish the unchaste, often severely. They marry girls off when they are still too young to be lustful. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Lastly, they reward virgins and/or their families. Young women who sacrifice immediate, intimate pleasure may gain considerable economic payback: husbands who will support them, who may even pay—to their families—a hefty bride price for the virtuous young bride. This trade-off has its ironic dimensions. The indefatigable intimate passions that virgins must suppress was part of an evolutionary strategy to attract the strongest, most productive males. Now women must achieve the same goal by repressing their intimate passions, tantalizing prospective mates to purchase it for the price of a marriage vow. (As late as 1981, when the British royal family calculatingly selected an appropriate consort for the heir to the throne, they let the World know that the teenage Diana Spencer’s vaunted virginity was one of her most important qualifications.) This social construct places an enormous responsibility on a woman’s shoulders. If, in a single weak or willful moment, she surrenders to her physical nature, she can destroy her future or shame her family. We are now living in a historical period, characterized by a radical and revolutionary transformation of one historical era into another. Nobody can doubt this fact seriously, and nobody who has even a minimum of historical understanding would do so after what has occurred during recent years. We are in the midst of a World revolution affecting every section of human existence, forcing upon us a new interpretation of life and the World. What about ethics in this connection? Does it represent a realm above change? It is superhistorical in its foundation, its values, and its commands? Or does it follow the stream of historical becoming, and will it be transformed as rapidly as the other realms of life are transformed in our days? If the latter be true, what authority, what power of shaping human life remains in it? Can the unconditional claim with which every moral demand imposes itself on human conscience be maintained if the contents of the demand are different in every period of history? However, if the former be the case—if ethics constitutes a real above history, immovable and unconcerned by historical change—how can it influence man, living in history and transformed by history? Would it not remain a strange body within the context of human experience, separated from it in untouchable remoteness, perhaps worthy of awe but without actual influence on the life-process? #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Truth twisted into service of the lower purposes or even the evil forces must be carefully inspected, analyzed, and lastly corrected or rejected. The kings of the Earth did not believe, nor did any of the inhabitants of the Earth, that the oppressor and enemy could enter the gates of America. [But this happened] because the sins of her [false] prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed the blood of the just and righteous in the midst of her. [The false prophets and priests] wandered [staggering] in the streets as if blind; they had so polluted themselves with blood it was not [lawful] for men to touch their garments. We must preserve nature and the human soul. You are the last whale, washed up on a far beach. The waves are pushing against you. Your brothers and sisters are gone. You cannot breathe. Small children are throwing rocks and laughing, climb onto your body. You die alone, your ears full of wid. You are the last buffalo. The sun is setting over the plains. You stand alone, enormous, heavy with fur, lovely. You are tired of running, tired of running. All of your friends have gone. It seems even the Earth has turned against you. There is not one to say goodbye. You rest, listening to the wind. When the time is right, the spirit of the wolf returns. The pastures of the wilderness overflow, and the hills are girded with joy and transmuted into spiritual force to start a new current of creative power. Several feel the benefits too. Spirits are revived and cures depression. There is a stimulation and awakening influencing the whole person. The meadows are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, yea, they sing. Our garners are filled to overflowing with all manner of store; our flocks increase by thousands in our fields. There is no attack and no enslavement, and no cry of distress in the broad places. Blessed be the Lord for the precious gifts of Heaven; for the precious gifts of the Earth, and the fullness thereof; praise the Lord. May the Lord give us of His abundance, and establish the work of our hands. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Cresleigh Homes
A bedroom with a statement wall is on our list of must-haves…good thing we’ve got the space in our new home at Brighton Station Residence 2. 👌
Wait until we show you the kitchen – complete with quartz countertops and a giant island!
This single story home boats an ideal layout with 2,427 square feet, of thoughtfully designed living space, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a three car garage.
The great room is spacious and its open floor plan allows all parts of the home to flow.
The Owner’s suite nestled away from the secondary bedrooms allowing for maximum privacy, yet still accessible. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-2/
Life is Very Short When You Look Back and Realize How Long You Spent Not Living Your Dreams
One of the interesting things that has happened in extant genetic codes is the discoveries that have to do with the degeneracy of the genetic code—the existence of several different sequences of bases in the messenger RNA molecule that can cause the same amino acid segment to be incorporated in the protein under construction. For example, the evidence strongly suggests that the amino acid arginine can be evoked by any one of three messenger RNA triplets CGC, AGA, and UCG. The related inference also appears to be correct: that three different types of transfer RNA molecule, each capable of carrying the amino acid arginine, correspond to these three messenger RNA triplets. Such degeneracy in the code is compatible with the fact that 4 X 4 X 4, or 64, different messenger or transfer RNA triplet combinations can be made of the 4 bases of the nucleic acid molecule, whereas only 20 amino acids must be specified by the various combinations. The evidence to this point suggests that every one of the 64 possible combinations may ultimately be found to be “meaningful” in the sense of specifying one or another of the 20 amino acid constituents of the end-product protein molecules. It should be noted that this kind of degeneracy does not lead to ambiguity in the genetic code. To be sure, it means that messenger RNA molecules with different base sequences can govern the production of the same kind of protein. And the existence of such alternative “words” within the genetic language suggests that different species of organisms may employ somewhat different dialects in the nuclear books of instruction with which they control their cellular chemistry. Nevertheless, the code could still be universal in the sense that a given messenger RNA molecule, if capable at all of operating the genetic mechanisms of different types of foreign organisms, would always produce the same kind of protein molecules. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Not only did Bonner’s successful crossbreeding of the genetic mechanisms of pea plants and E. coli cell-free extracts in experiments with synthetic messenger RNA has provided further confirming evidence. While much less work has been done with mammalian than with bacterial components, it has at least been established that the messenger RNA triplets that evoke specific amino acids in the finally fabricated protein molecules are the same for mammalian as for bacterial systems in the case of the half-dozen kinds of messenger nucleic acid that have been tested. In general, while making allowance for some degree of variation from species to species in the details of the genetic mechanisms, biochemists today are confident that the genetic code has essentially been “broken”—that they are on the point of being able to line up every possible messenger RNA triplet with a particular amino acid in the resulting protein molecule. However, the specific sequence of amino acid segments in the manufactured protein molecules determine their catalytic properties and therefore controls the specific set of chemical reactions that take place in the cell. Therefore, the solution of the genetic code in this way implies the ultimate ability of the scientist to “read” the molecules of messenger RNA (or the nuclear DNA which produces them) and thereby learn the properties of the cell whose metabolism they control—whether the cell is to have the properties of pea plant or intestinal bacillus, for example. Inasmuch as the higher organisms, including humans, are believed to employ the same system of genetic control (plus a few complications yet to be treated), the implications of this work are that one day the biochemists are now able to determine the colour of eyes and shape of the nose of a yet-to-be-developed human individual by analysis of the structure of the nucleic acid molecules in the cells of the embryo! #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Before we move on to some of the additional complexities that characterize the structure and metabolism of higher organisms, we should make sure that we understand how the discussion how all of this information contributes to our basic thesis as to the purely physical origins of life. The experimental evidence reported here can only strengthen our faith in the soundness of our nonvitalistic philosophy; for strong support for the thesis of the fundamentally physical nature of the life processes is provided by the success of the biochemists in extracting from living cells the pertinent nucleic acid/enzyme apparatus and in stimulating it to perform its architectural functions by means of the addition of nucleic acid from other organisms. Ans the successful employment of human-made chemicals for this purpose even verges on the dramatic in its demonstration of the workability of our physical explanations. Not even the evidence for the similarity of the principal features of the genetic mechanisms in all forms of life is particularly disturbing. To be sure, this might at first glance appear to be more reconcilable with the vitalistic view of the supernatural purposiveness of life than with the materialistic view that everything has happened as the result of the blindly probabilistic physical laws of the Universe. However, there is really no great problem in imagining evolutionary developments that could have led to a considerable degree of ultimate standardization in the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms. And such evidence of variety as the degeneracy of the genetic code, with the accompanying implication of divergence from species to species in some of the details of the genetic mechanism, seems comfortably consistent with our views of the normal consequences of the evolutionary process. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
As we address ourselves to some of the further complexities that characterize modern higher organisms, we shall find that our considerations will continue to be intimately involved with the genetic mechanisms that have occupied so much of our attention to this point. We shall not be able to escape being enormously impressed by their overriding power and importance in the phenomena of life. While evolution is clearly the great technique employed by nature for developing its biological novelties, we shall find it easy to conclude that the genetic mechanisms may constitute the most ingenious and important invention yet achieved by the use of that technique. Now, looking ahead. Did you know that your DNA determines your reaction to caffeine? Caffeine is widely consumed in foods and beverages and is also used for a variety of medical purposes. Despite its widespread use, relatively little is understood regarding how genetics affects consumption, acute response, or the long-term effects of caffeine. Twin studies find the heritability of caffeine-related traits to range between 0.36 and 0.58. Analysis of poly-substance use shows that predisposition to caffeine use is highly specific to caffeine itself and shares little common disposition to use of other substances. Genome association studies link variations in adenosine and dopamine receptors to caffeine-induced anxiety and sleep disturbances. Polymorphism in the metabolic enzyme cytochrome P-450 is associated with risk of myocardial infraction in caffeine users. Modeling based on twin studies reveals that genetics plays a role in individual variability in caffeine consumption and in the direct effects of caffeine. Both pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic polymorphisms have been linked to variation in response to caffeine. These studies may help guide future research in the role of genetics in modulating the acute and chronic effects of caffeine. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Caffeine is the World’s most widely used stimulant. Nearly 90 percent of adults in the United States of America alone consume an estimated 30 million pounds of this psychoactive substance annually. It is the most consumed psychoactive substance in the World. Seventy-five percent of this caffeine is taken in the form of coffee (from the coffee bean); the rest is consumed in tea (from the tea leaf), cola (from the kola nut), chocolate (from the cocoa bean), and numerous prescription and over-the-counter medications, such as Excedrin. Caffeine’s popularity Worldwide can be attributed to its ability to promote wakefulness, enhance mood and cognition, and produce stimulatory effects. It is used clinically to treat premature neonatal apnea and as an analgesic adjuvant. Around 99 percent of ingested caffeine is absorbed by the body and reaches its peak concentration with an hour. It acts as a stimulant of the central nervous system, again producing a release of the neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine in the brain. Thus it increases arousal, mild euphoria, alertness, enhanced cognitive performance and motor activity and reduces fatigue. It also disrupts the performance of motor tasks and may interfere with sleep. Finally, it increases the rate of breathing and gastric acid secretions in the stomach. More than two to three cups of brewed coffee (250 milligrams of caffeine) can produce caffeine intoxication, which may include such symptoms as restlessness, nervousness, anxiety, stomach disturbances, twitching, and increased heart rate. Grand mal seizures and fatal respiratory failure or circulatory failure can occur at doses greater than 10 grams of caffeine (about 100 cups of coffee), but there is a decreased risk in neurodegenerative disorders. Many people who suddenly stop or cutback on their usual intake of caffeine experience withdrawal symptoms—even some individuals whose regular consumption is low (two and a half cups of coffee daily or seven cans of cola). #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
It is likely that several factors contribute to individual differences in responses to caffeine, including demographic and environmental factors such as age, other drug use, circadian factors, and sleep hygiene. One important source of variability that has received some attention in the recent year is genetic predisposition. There is growing evidence that individual differences in caffeine response or caffeine consumption are related to genetic factors. Genetic factors may influence responses to caffeine directly, by altering acute or chronic reactions to the drug, or indirectly, by affecting other psychological or physiological processes that are related to the drug effect, such as sensitivity to anxiety, rewarding and reinforcing effects of substances in general, or related personality traits. Finally, genes can also alter the body’s adaptive responses to long-term caffeine use. The biological mechanisms of these possible sources of variation likely involve interactions at multiple sites. One study had adult subjects consume their usual caffeine-filled drinks and foods for two days, then abstain from such foods for two days while taking actual caffeine pills. More subjects experienced headaches (52 percent), depression (11 percent), anxiety (8 percent), and fatigue (8 percent) during the two-day placebo period then during the caffeine periods. In addition, subjects reported using more unauthorized medications (13 percent) and performed experimental tasks more slowly during the placebo period than during the caffeine periods. Genetic contribution to caffeine consumption changes through different stages in life. It appears that genetic contribution becomes more pronounced throughout adolescence and then stabilized during adulthood. Researchers found that genetics influence individual sensitivity to caffeine toxicity, tolerance, and withdrawal in female twins. On average the woman reported slightly higher level of caffeine-induced insomnia and greater sleep disturbances in general health than men. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Epidemiological studies indicate that smokers drink more coffee than nonsmokers, but it is not clear whether these associations are related to genetic factors or to drug interactions, social conditioning, or other variables. One approach to solving this question is to correlate the use of caffeine to other drugs and using the common pathway model and mapping the genetic contribution to a common joint use factor and substance-specific factors. Using this technique, researchers found that the heritability for coffee use overlapped with that of nicotine and alcohol, though 0.72 of the total heritability was specific to caffeine, which was considerably higher than that for nicotine and alcohol. Investigators often assess caffeine’s impact by measuring coffee consumption, yet coffee also contains other chemicals that may be dangerous to one’s health. Thus, although some studies hint at links between caffeine and cancer (particularly pancreatic cancer), the evidence is not conclusive. Similarly, studies demonstrating correlations between caffeine and heart rhythm irregularities (arrhythmias) or high cholesterol levels are not fully reliable. Caffeine does, however, appear to cause at least a slight increase in blood pressure over time in regular users and a larger but short-lived increase during the first few days of consumption by new users. As public awareness of these possible health risks has increased, caffeine consumption has declined. Around half of Americans now drink coffee daily, whereas 80 percent did so in 1983. Heavier caffeine users appear to be more influenced by genetics than lighter caffeine users. People who tend to consume more alcohol also tend to drink more coffee. Genetic association studies have been used to identify specific genes that are responsible for the heritable components of these caffeine-related traits. Caffeine and its metabolites belong to the methylxanthine class, which are structurally similar to cyclic nucleotides, and interact with cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterases. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Caffeine is absorbed rapidly and completely from the gastrointestinal tract. It is metabolized by cytochrome P-450 enzymes, which represent the rate-limiting step for plasma clearance, and its elimination follows first-order kinetics. P-450 1A2, which is coded for by gene CYP1A2, is the primary isoenzyme responsible for the demethylation of caffeine into dimethylxanthine metabolites paraxanthine, theobromine, and theophylline. Each of these metabolites is subjected to further demethylation into monimethylxanthines. Variation in the CYP1A2 activity, both within and between individuals, represents a major source of variability in pharmaco-kinetics of caffeine. The clearance of caffeine can vary to up to 40-fold within and between individuals. Notable exogeneous factors that affect clearance include numerous drugs, medications, and smoking status, as well as caffeine itself. Endogenous factors include pregnancy, ethnicity, and genetics. Asian and African populations, for instance, appear to metabolize caffeine at slower rate than Caucasians. Genetic variations in a number of neurotransmitter functions could influence responses to caffeine. Because 10 grams of caffeine can be fatal, the substance is classified as a medical poison. The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we will miss it, but that it is too low and we will reach it. A leader is someone who has the capacity to create a compelling vision that takes people to a new place. In 1783 Washington sent a circular letter to the States, describing the situation of the new nations as he saw it. “We have equal occasion to felicitate ourselves,” he said, “on the lot which Providence has assigned to us, whether we view it in a natural, a political, or moral point of light.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
He pointed to the natural resources of the new nation, its independence and freedom, the Age of Reason during which it had come of age, an age of “the free cultivation of letters, the unbounded extension of commerce, the progressive refinement of manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, and above all the pure and benign light of Revelation….if these citizens,” he concluded, “should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be certainly their own. Such is our situation and such are our prospects.” It is hard to read these sentences without agitation and tears, for they are simply true and simply patriotic. In the next generations, almost to our own times, patriotic rhetoric did not cease to sound, more pompously and falsely, but never without a core of truth. There was always something special in the American destiny to be proud of. In 1825 it was the broad democracy. In 1850 it was the magnificent spread and settlement from coast to coast. In 1875, the material progress, the cable and the Pacific railroad, the building of modern industrialism. In 1900, America was the melting pot, the asylum of the poor and the oppressed. In our century, the patriotic rhetoric began to be unbelievable—not by accident, for foreign wars (1898 and 1917) are incompatible with reasonable rhetoric. In recent decades there has been almost a surcease of such speech. Even references to the American Way, free enterprise, high production, and the economy of abundance have finally died out, because they call up the idea of tail fins and TV commercials. Highbrow journalists mention the American Way with scorn. Our case is astounding. For the first time in recorded history, the mention of country, community, place has lost its power to animate. Nobody but a scoundrel even tries it. Our rejection of false patriotism is, of course, itself a badge of honour. However, the positive loss is tragic and I cannot resign myself to it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
A man has only one life and if during it he has no great environment, no community, he has been irreparably robbed of a human right. This loss is damaging especially in growing up, for it deprives outgoing growth, which begins with weaning from Mother and walking out of the house, of the chance of entering upon a great and honourable scene to develop in. Culture is, first of all, city and patriotic culture. Patriotism is the culture, we come with a fatal emptiness to the humane culture of science, art, humanity and God; and this emptiness results in the best people not turning back, like Plato’s philosopher who has emerged from the cave, to serve their country. Many of the best Americans have a strong philanthropic and local community zeal, yet it would seem odd for somebody nowadays to put himself to a big and hard task just to serve his country, to make her better, and be proud of that. Young people aspire mightily to appearances on television and other kinds of notoriety, but I doubt that many now thing of being honoured by a statue in the park and winning “immortal” fame, the fame of big culture. Let me make the same point by analyzing a remarkable proposition of Otto Jespersen, the grammarian. He shows that, contrary to expectation, a child does not learn his mother tongue at home from his mother and immediate family, he does not pick up their accent. The accent, vocabulary, syntax, and styles that form his speech are learned from his first peer groups, outside the home. Jespersen does not explain it, but the psychology seems evident. Speech occurs at the stage of the developing of the “I,” it is a forming of the image of the self, it is a self-appointment to one’s ideal and putting on its uniform. Changes occur as we appoint ourselves to one peer group after another. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
At certain stage a lad appoints himself or commits himself to a band of friends and puts on its jargon, jacket, tattoo, and masculine ring on the fourth finger of the left hand. If he is insecure and disturbed, this conformity is a cowering protection and the band is a delinquent gang, but in every case it is also, we see by the blazon, an achievement. And one way in which the Governor of California does not take the juveniles seriously, when he speaks of giving them a sense of belonging, is that he does not offer an ideal that promises equal manliness. He has none to offer. It is tragic when there is no great adult peer group to meet growth. Consider the case of an artist, my own case. To have simple and sounding language, rather than merely the lovely colloquialism of Sherwood Anderson or William Carlos Williams, it is necessary to believe in the great national culture of one’s people. Our popular culture does not warrant the belief, even to make the sacrifice that Virgil made when he sadly gave up his best vision because strife-torn Rome needed a national poet. True, an artist can then jump to the international and universal, for a mankind and God do not let him down (mankind is the fellow on one’s own block), but this is at the loss of pomp and glitter, of the glancing present. Without a patriotic peer group, it is impossible to have the brilliance of Handel, the material grandeur of Venice. With us the style of the big bright sensation belongs to cheap musical dramas on Broadway. Now, an analogy to the “triumphant conscience,” as developed by Luther personally as well as theologically, appeared in the enthusiastic philosophy of Giordano Bruno. The moral conscience is overcome by the “heroic affect” toward the Universe and the surrender to its infinity and inexhaustible creativity. Participation in the creativity of life universal liberates the moral conscience, the bad as well as the good. Humans, standing in the center of being, are bound to transform life as it is into higher life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
These living souls take upon themselves the tragic consequences, connected with the destructive side of finite creativity, and must not try to escape them for the sake of a good moral conscience. While in Bruno the transmoral conscience is based on a mystical naturalism, Nietzsche’s transmoralism is a consequence of his dramatic-tragic naturalism. Nietzsche belongs to those empiricists who have tried to analyze the genesis of moral conscience in such a way that its autonomy is destroyed—Hobbes and Helvetius, on the ground of a materialistic metaphysics; Mandeville and Bentham, on the ground of a utilitarian psychology; Dr. Darwin and Dr. Freud, on the ground of an evolutionary naturalism—all have denied any objective validity to the voice of conscience, according to their rejection of any universal natural (rational) law. Nietzsche carried these ideas further, as the title and the content of Genealogy of Morals shows. He says, “The bad conscience is a sickness, but it is a sickness as pregnancy is one.” It is a creative sickness. Humankind had to be domesticated, and this has been done by its conquerors and ruling classes. It was in the interest of these classes to suppress by sever punishments the natural instincts of aggressiveness, will to power, destruction, cruelty, revolution. They succeeded in suppressing these trends. However, they did not succeed in eradicating them. So the aggressive instincts became internalized and transformed into self-destructive tendencies. Humans have turned against themselves in self-punishment; they are separated from their innocent terrestrial past from which they had derived strength, joy, and creativity. However, humans cannot prevent their instincts from remaining alive. They require permanent acts of suppression, the result of which is the bad conscience, a great thing in human evolution, an ugly thing if compared with humanities real aim. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Nietzsche described this aim in terms which remind one of Luther’s descriptions of the transmoral conscience: “Once in a stronger period than our morbid, desperate present, one must appear, the man of the great love and the great contempt, the creative spirit who does now allow his driving strength to be turned to a transcendent World.” Nietzsche call him the man “who is strong through wars and victories, who needs conquest, adventure, danger, even pain.” The man is “beyond good and evil” in the moral sense. At the same time, he is good in the metaphysical (or mystical) sense that he is in unity with life universal. He has a transmoral conscience, not on the basis of a paradoxical unity with God (such as Luther has), but on the basis of an enthusiastic unity with life in its creative and destructive power. Recent “existential” philosophy has developed a doctrine of transmoral conscience that follows the general lines of Luther, Bruno, and Nietzsche. Heidegger, the main representative of existential philosophy, says, “The call of conscience has the character of the demand that humans in their finitude actualize their genuine potentialities, and this means an appeal to become guilty.” Conscience summons us to ourselves, calling us back from the talk of the market and the conventional behaviour of the masses. It has no special demands; it speaks to us in the “mode of silence.” It tells us only to act and to become guilty by acting, for every action is unscrupulous. One who acts experiences the call of conscience and, at the same time, has the experience of contradicting one’s conscience, of being guilty. “Existence as such is guilty.” Only self-deception can give a good moral conscience, since it is impossible not to act and since every action implies guilt. We must act, and the attitude in which we can act is “resoluteness.” Resoluteness transcends the moral conscience, its arguments and prohibitions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The good, transmoral conscience consists in the acceptance of the bad, moral conscience,which is unavoidable whenever decisions are made and acts are performed. The way from Luther’s to Heidegger’s idea of a transmoral conscience was a dangerous one. “Transmoral” can mean the re-establishment of morality from a point below morality. The empiricists from Hobbes to Dr. Freud have analyzed moral conscience, but they have not destroyed it. Either they were dependent in their concrete ethics on Anglo-Saxon common sense; or they identified utility with the social conventions of a well-established bourgeoisie; or they cultivated a high sense of conscientiousness, in scientific honesty as well as in the fulfillment of duties; or they did not dare, unconsciously or consciously, to draw the radical moral consequences of their dissolution of the conscience. In Nietzsche and Heidegger none of these inhibitions is left. However, it is not without some justification that these names are connected with the antimoral movements of fascism or national socialism. Even Luther has been linked with them, as have Machiavelli and Bruno. This raises the questions: is the idea of a transmoral conscience tenable? Or is it so dangerous that it cannot be maintained? However, if the idea must be dismissed, religion as well as analytic psychotherapy would also have to be dismissed. For in both of them, the moral conscience is transcendent—in religion by the acceptance of the divine grace that breaks through the realm of law and creates a joyful conscience, and in-depth psychology by the acceptance of one’s own conflicts when looking at them and suffering under their ugliness without an attempt to suppress them and to hide them from oneself. Indeed, it is impossible not to transcend the moral conscience because it is impossible to unite a sensitive and good conscience. Those who have a sensitive conscience cannot escape the question of the transmoral conscience. The moral conscience drives beyond the sphere in which it is valid to the sphere from which it must receive its conditional validity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The celibacy movement was rather interesting. The “silent strike,” with its contingent of proud spinsters, generated an inevitable backlash. This came in the form of gender discrimination. Scientists started to expressed the biological differences been men and women. Havelock Ellis said that, “women’s special sphere is the bearing and the rearing of children, with the care of human life in the home. Man’s primary sphere remains the exploration of life outside the home, in industry and inventions and the cultivation of the arts.” With this observation of the status quo cloaked in scientific garb, Ellis proceeded to extrapolate conclusions. One was the ideal the relations involving pleasures of the flesh would be between male dominance and female submissiveness. Another was that the ideal female, a paragon of Motherhood, was very definitely not a spinster, a word that in Ellis’s writings elaborated on the nasty connotations our century has inherited from his. Like so many Motherhood aficionados, Ellis claimed and was credited with a feminist agenda: surely praising the wonderful work of mothers must be women-positive. In Ellis’s case, this seemed irrefutable, for he also preached the novel idea that women should, indeed must, enjoy pleasures of the flesh. No more lying rigid, clenching fists, and teeth, enduring bimonthly intimate invasion by obliterating it with thoughts of England and the empire. (Ironically, Ellis himself had earlier lost an adored lover because he failed to reach a “proud status” during romantic interlude. His predilection in pleasures of the flesh was to observe the other species using the water closet, which stemmed from his unforgettable boyhood experience of watching his mother relieve herself of fluid in the garden.) #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Ellis’s espousal of the great Motherhood or, in Germany, Mutterschutz, movement particularly explains his enormous influence. From the 1800s onward, fewer children were born but infant mortality soared. Physical exams revealed the poor condition of many schoolchildren, and military recruits were rejected at a high rate for a plethora of disabilities. Something was wrong—at least, these authorities now knew something was wrong—and the solution seemed to be a nation of Super Moms who would reverse the physical decline. In Ellis’s words, these women would undertake the “regeneration of the race” and the “evolution of a supermankind.” Women, too bought into the Motherhood ideal. Some felt it validated the roles they had chosen or that had been chose for them. Others were persuaded that this form of biology was scientific truth and so believed the conclusions its thinkers so convincingly reported. These conclusions clashed with feminist beliefs, particularly the silent strike, the voluntary spinsters’ movement in which women took control of their lives by refusing to surrender their rights to husbands. Censuring spinster became the keynote of antifeminist attacks. One Motherhood proponent, herself a woman, decried spinsters with an analogy to a beehive, in which infertile workers were like “surplus woman” who refused or had no opportunity to marry. Since the workers bee’s poisoned sting required the egg laying tube, spinsters who relinquished “the power of life” would, by definition, gain possession of “the stinging weapon of death.” Another male antifeminist spoke in alarmist terms of eventual civil war between wives and spinsters, “the waste products of our female population.” In Modern Woman and How to Manager Her, another male writer called spinsters “man-condemning, man-hating…women who are ‘independent of men,’ a motely host, pathetic in their defiance of the first principle of Nature, but of no serious account in the biological sense.” He even proposed polygamy as a solution to “spinsterhood, and the right to live one’s life—the supreme consummation of a large number of revolutionary British women.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
In later years, charges of women who lonely loved other women and frigidity, both caused or worsened by spinsterhood, bolstered the attacks on single, independent women. Given that British women outnumbered men by 2 million, this was heavy artillery indeed. The women were acknowledged—negatively—as the prime movers behind reforms for all species, human and animal. The “fanaticism and crankiness” of these dangerous virgins, charged virulent antifeminist Charlotte Haldane, impelled them to espouse “freak science, freak religions, and freak philanthropy,” and to embrace wholeheartedly such contemptible crusades as antivisection, the bane of England’s scientific advancement, dogs’ homes and cats’ homes, missionary endeavors, and “‘Kill-joy’ propaganda.” Furthermore, “enough is known [about the psychological effects of permanent virginity],” Haldane opined, “to make us aware that in entrusted responsibility towards individuals and the State to elderly virgins we may be acting unwisely.” Women and loved other women, styled “intermediate women,” were even more problematic. They should be allowed only inferior jobs because as educators or nurses or doctors, “intermediate women may do an enormous amount of harm.” In the manipulative hands of the “anatomy biologists” and their unlikely Motherhood allies, the celibacy that women seeking independence had once embraced with such delight and firm purpose was now portrayed as sullied and suspicious, a witch’s mantel for freaky madwomen or a masquerade for reviled women who love women. Society still demanded virgin brides, but their virginity was their supreme offering to a husband who would maneuver them through the rest of their life. Aging girls—women—who failed to contract a marriage were pitied, but self-styled spinsters with agendas, no matter how noble and important, were condemned in vitriolic terms, their brand of feminism repudiated as antisocial and unworthy of any regard but the most evil eye. Their celibacy had become as loathsome as its object: women’s independence and personal fulfillment. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
With so many people in the World today whose outlook is negative, whose emotions are twisted and thinking is warped, it is more needful to stand firm in one’s own spot of optimistic thinking that ever. Whoever doubts the truth of this message, thereby deprives oneself of its benefits. However, this is equally true of the believer who fears its truth. If the future holds distress and suffering, blows and disasters, it is to be met with courage sought and asked from the higher self. According to our faith, it will be given us. It is not a question of what we like or prefer to believe. It is a question of accepting quietly, or else defying vainly, the chose of events and the trend of destiny. If catastrophe and obliteration threaten humanity and if the individual is hopeless when confronted by them, it is logical to conclude that although humanity might not be able to save itself, the individual can save oneself from these disasters if one believes that inner salvation is at least a possibility where outer salvation is not. Yes, you and I can save ourselves from within even when we cannot save ourselves from without. That at least is a better lot than the one of the humans who can save oneself neither from within nor from without and puts one’s faith in political action alone. For politics is merely a system of human bargaining actuated by self-seeking. It can invoke the assistance of no higher power because it does not rise higher than this self-seeking interest itself. However, the individual is free to life oneself above this sordid plane and therefore one is in a position to invite the attention and assistance of higher powers. One who consciously inhabits reality will live independent of the mutations of fate, the catastrophes of history, and the crises of an epoch in dissolution. Even in crisis of war, where danger or even death is lurking, philosophy reveals its immense practicability. For the philosopher can meet them with the utter calmness, effective capacity, and resolute heroism with which one’s studies, reflection, disciplines, and ideals have formed one’s character. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Amid the surging tides of postwar chaos, one sets the example and shows the value of philosophic principles by standing firm as a rock. Just as one kept cool in the very midst of global conflagration, so one now keeps clear-sighted amid the gloom of its dusty aftermath. In the very midst of World confusion, one becomes a little oasis of strength and peace, wisdom and certitude, calm and holiness. If one has to live in a chaotic disordered environment, the sad heritage of war, one still lives one’s own constructive ordered pattern of existence. The very example of such a human keeping steady and balanced thus silently helps some others who are bewildered or aimless. Now, when considering American capitalism, there are a few things we should keep in mind. According to Adam Smith, “Labour was the first, price, the original purchase—money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the World was originally purchased.” It many come as a surprise that, until field of labour was replaced by factory work, few of our ancestors ever held a job. This surely was not because they were rich. Most were wretchedly poor. They did not hold jobs because the “job,” in today’s sense of formally committed work in return for stipulated pay, had not yet been invented. Like the steam engine and other industrial innovations, jobs and wage labour became widespread only during the last three centuries. Work itself was transferred from outdoors to indoors, or schedules set no longer by sunrise and sunset but by the punch clock. Most payments came in the form of wages based on hours worked. Indeed, these arrangements essentially define the term job. However, the job is only one way of packaging work. And as the latest, knowledge-based wealth systems unfold, we are moving toward a future in which, as we will see, more people “work” but fewer hold “jobs.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
It will drastically alter labour relations, human resources departments, legislation and the overall labour market how the offices of employment are conducted in the future. It is bad news for trade unions as we know them. The deep fundamental of work is changing more profoundly than at any time since the industrial revolution. Division of labour, like work itself, traces back to hunting and gathering, when the division was mainly based on gender. However, here, too, we are approaching a turning point. Ever hear of a “metallurgy and failure analysis litigation consultant” or a “post-harvest horticulturalist”? Neither have most of us. (The latter is the superspecialist who determine such things as how many microscopic holes are needed to admit oxygen into the plastic bag that holds vegetables in the supermarket.) Adam Smith in 1776 called the division of labour the source of “the greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour.” And this has been true ever since. However, the more refined and specialized tasks become, the harder and more expensive it becomes to integrate them—especially in an innovation-driven competitive economy. At some point, the costs of integration may exceed the value of such superspecialization. Moreover, narrowly focused specialists may be good at incremental innovation. However, breakthrough innovation is often the product of temporary teams whose members cross disciplinary boundaries—at a time when breakthroughs in every field are, in fact, blurring those very boundaries. And this is not just a matter for scientists and researchers. The new wealth system demands a complete shake-up in the way increasingly temporary skill sets are organized for increasingly temporary purposes throughout the economy. Nothing is more deeply fundamental to the creation of wealthy. Now only are work and the division of labour changing, but income distribution itself—the “who gets what?”—may be heading, over the long term, toward truly revolutionary change. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
The temple of the animals has fallen into disrepair. The pad of feet has faded. The panthers flee the shadows of the day. Tired, I recall the animals of last year: the altars of the bear, tribunals of the ape, solitudes of elephantine gloom, rare zebra-stripped retreats, prophecies of dog, sanctuaries of the pygmy deer. Were there rituals I had forgotten? Animal calls to which those animal voices replied, called and called until that jungle stirred. Were there voices that I heard? Love was the very animal made his lair, slept out his winter in my heart. Did he seek my hear or ever sleep there? I have seen the animals depart, forgotten their voices, or barely remembered—like that last speech when the company goes or the beloved face that the heart knows, forgets and knows—I have heard the dying footsteps of fall. The sound has faded, but lingers here. Ah, bitterly I recall animals of last year. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power, and the glory and the victory and the majesty; all that is in the Heaven and in the Earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted above all. Both riches and honour come from Thee, and Thou rulest over all; in Thy hand is power and might, and in Thy hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. Therefore, our God, we thank Thee, and praise Thy glorious name. O give thanks unto the Lord who alone doeth great wonders; His lovingkindness endureth forever. Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God; He covereth the Heavens with clouds, He prepareth rain for the Earth, and maketh the mountains to be green with grass. He maketh your borders peaceful, He giveth you the fat of the wheat in plenty. He is good to the Earth, and watereth her with His rivers that are full of water. He maketh the Earth soft with showers, and blesseth the growth thereof. He crowneth the year with His goodness, and showereth the Earth with rich bounty. #RandolpHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
Stand-out style meets convenience with airy living spaces for sparkling entertainment.
This Valentines Day, we can’t let the holiday pass by without sharing our love for our new address at Mills Station Residence 1. Amazing home; amazing view; amazing life! 💖💖💖
His Formula Was Wrong: It Was Not Nearly Complicated Enough!
The greatest gift you can give society is the roots of responsibility suffused with excitement, engagement, passion, challenge, creativity, and joy. Before the end of the eighteenth century the attention of chemists had been attracted to a group of organic substances that behaved in an odd manner. These substances, upon being heated, changed from liquid to solid, rather than the other way around. The white of eggs, a component of milk, and a substance in the blood were early identified as having this property. These materials were also found to be similar in a number of other respects. In particular, they were found to consist principally (though not entirely) of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen and to contain approximately (though not exactly) the same percentages of these elements in their composition. Because of certain early clues as to its key importance in vital processes, this strange class of substance was named protein (from the Greek, meaning of first importance”). There has never been a cause to regret the choice of the term “protein.” To begin with, protein substances are found in all living organisms. In the human body, for example, proteins are easily identified in all the tissues and organs. They are also essential in the food we eat. Higher animals can survive quite well on diets that are almost entirely protein (plus a few vitamins), but carbohydrates, fats, oils, and vitamins alone will not sustain life. If there is any one class of substance that deserves to be called the “stuff of life,” it would appear to be protein. Although the techniques available to the early-nineteenth-century chemists permitted them to measure the relative amounts of the different elements in proteins, the determination of the molecular composition of proteins was quite another matter. The evidence did suggest, however, that molecules of protein were much more complicated than those of any other known substances. Indeed, as early as 1839 the Dutch chemist G.J. Mulder proposed a formula for a protein molecule consisting of 40 atoms f carbon, 62 of hydrogen, 12 of oxygen, and 10 of nitrogen. His formula was wrong: it was not nearly complicated enough! #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
While early attempts to work out precise formulas for protein molecules were doomed to failure by the great complexity of the substances, there was another line of exploration that did lead to useful results. To appreciate the significance of this successful trend of development, we must bear in mind that “protein” does not refer to one specific substance, as “urea” does, for example, there are probably tens of thousands of different protein substances in the human body alone. All possess such points of similarity as complexity of molecular structure and approximate proportions of the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. However, the differences are important too not only in the precise proportions of the constituent elements but in gross physical properties as diverse as those of muscle fibers and digestive juices. The impressiveness of the work we are about to consider rests, in fact, on these great differences in the appearance and properties of different proteins. For the nineteenth-century chemists discovered that, despite such differences, all proteins are constructed of molecular components of only a few standardized types. A French chemist H. Braconnot, took the first important steps toward an understanding of protein constructions. As early as 1820 he put some gelatin (a protein obtained by boiling animal gristle) in a dilute acid and applied heat to see what would happen. One result was that, after prolonged heating, there appeared some sweet-tasting crystals, which ultimately came to be called glycine (from the Greek word for “sweet”). In a later experiment, by heating muscle tissue in acid, Dr. Braconnot isolated another crystalline substance, this time tasteless and white in colour, which he called leucine (from a Greek word for “white”). Some years later the German chemist J. von Liebig obtained a third crystalline substance by heating a milk-curd cheese in an alkaline solution; the was called tyrosine (from the Greek word for “cheese”). #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Glycine, leucine, and tyrosine were interesting both for their differences and their similarities. Glycine was sweet, but leucine and tyrosine were not; glycine was quite soluble in water, leucine only slightly soluble, tyrosine practically insoluble. Yet each was extracted from an animal protein, each formed crystals, each exhibited acidic properties when in solution, and each would release ammonia when suitably treated. Because of the last two properties—acidity and ammonia content—the three substances came to be known as ammonia when suitably treated. Because of the last two properties—acidity and ammonia content—the three substances came to be known as amino acids. As the years went by, other crystalline substances were obtained from proteins. All were found to possess properties entitling them to be called amino acids. Evidence also accumulated that the amino acids, which may have been obtained by heating a protein in hydrochloric acid, for example, were not formed by chemical recombination of smaller fragments into which the protein might have been torn by the action of the hot acid. Instead, it was ultimately established that the amino acid molecule; the hot-acid treatment seemed to soften the “mortar” that held them in place and thereby permit them to fall out of the structure themselves. The discoveries went further. Not only were molecules of the amino acids structural units of protein molecules, but they were found to be the only structural units involved. Complete analysis of protein material, when it finally could be carried out, shows that it consisted of nothing except amino acid molecules. And despite the discovery of tens of thousands of different kinds of proteins, it was found that they employ only 20 different amino acid components! It must be emphasized that these components are completely standardized. Glycine, leucine, tyrosine, and all the rest, can be obtained out of human protein, whale protein, or bacterial protein. The determination that the tremendously varied class of proteins—the most typically “organic” of all materials—employs only a handful of basic structural units was rendered even more spectacular by the later discovery that these units greatly resemble one another in their molecular structure. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
When chemical techniques permitted the determination of the detailed spatial relationships of the atoms in a molecule, it was found that all amino acid molecules have similar “backbones.” Each backbone consists of 2 carbon atoms, 2 hydrogen atoms, 1 oxygen atom, and 1 nitrogen atom arranged in a standardized three-dimensional configuration that stabilized by the cohesive forces produced by the sharing of electric charge among the adjacent atoms. (The formula given here applies to an amino acid constituent of a protein molecule. An isolated amino acid segment in aqueous solution attaches an extra hydrogen ion to one end and an OH ion to the other, to achieve its acidic properties. When two amino acid segments link together in protein formation, these attachments are cast off in the form of a molecule of water.) The chemical and physical properties distinguished one amino acid from another were found to be due to the attachment, always at the same spot of this basic backbone, of one of 20 distinctive “side chains” of atomic configurations. The unique properties of glycine were found to be due to the simplest possible side chain—one hydrogen atom. The leucine side chain consists of a characteristic spatial arrangement of 4 carbon and 9 hydrogen atoms; the tyrosine side chain contains 7 carbon atoms, 7 hydrogens, and 1 oxygen; and so on. (For some amino acids the ide chain contains more atoms and is bigger that what we have called the backbone. Thus it is not necessarily correct to think of an amino acid molecule as a long, narrow structure.) However, different though the side chains and the resulting chemical properties of the different amino acids are, the backbones are all the same—always the same three-dimensional arrangement of 2 carbon atoms, 2 hydrogen atoms, 1 oxygen atom, and 1 nitrogen atom. Befitting the structural utility of the amino acids, the backbone was found to have an important property: because of the natural chemical forces resulting from its configuration of electric charge, one end of the backbone of one amino acid molecule has a strong affinity for the opposite end of the backbone of another amino acid molecule. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Thus, amino acid molecules have a tendency to form long linear arrays by hooking together end to end. Such an array constitutes a protein molecule. The specific kind of protein formed in each case is determined by the specific sequence of amino acid molecules in the liner array. The evidence is that every molecule of a given protein type contains exactly the same number and kinds of amino acid molecules, arranged in exactly the same order, as every other protein molecule of that type. Since each protein molecule may contain hundreds or even thousands of amino acid components and the properties of the protein may be changed if only one of these many components is altered, there exist almost limitless possibilities for variety in protein materials. The number of possible combinations of the 20 basic structural units in an averaged-sized protein molecule of 500 amino acids is an approximately 10^600—a 1 followed by 600 zeroes! The task of the best teacher is to balance the difficult juggling act of becoming vitally, vigorously, creatively, energetically, and inspiritingly a leader no one will ever forget. Cape Cod, August, bring sun, warm sand, children, beach blankets, sling chairs, bikinis, sunscreen, nymphets, novels, I find a table at the edge of the terrace, sit beneath an orange umbrella. Next to me is an Italian family: a young man, slender, tanned, athletic, handsome in the manner of Rudolf Valentino, his wife and baby and a corpulent mature woman with red hair, sedately eating ice cream—the wife’s mother, I think, an image perhaps of what is in store for her. A small black and white do is gnawing at a tennis ball. The young woman is seated under a red umbrella at the table beside me. “How old is the baby?” I ask. For a moment she is blank, then realized that I am speaking to her in English and, to her delight, that she understands. A dazzling smile. “Eight months,” she says. I am astonished, exclaim about the baby, how beautiful. She holds my eyes, knows I speak rather of her. I study her lithe and girlish figure, the small waist, the firm belly. She wears a lot-cut black halter, thin black shoulder straps, silken smooth mocha-brown skin. Now she lies on her back in the grass, hold the baby up in the air before her. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Brief brown shorts, long slender legs. She rocks the baby side to side in her hands, coos at him, squints against the sun. I watch the umbrella bathes her flesh in a dark hair. She brings the baby down to her face, then rapidly up in the air again, rocks him side to side, down to her face again, plays with his face with her own face, rubbing noses, mouths, ears, foreheads. She glances at me, smiles. I think she knows she is torturing me, making me want to ask her own. I turn away from her. The green meadow slopes down to a rushing stream. I look up at the blue sky, white clouds drifting peacefully. All is clam around me, blissful, pastoral. Why am I caught up in such agitation? Why do I pursue such a mad fantasy? What am I after? The World withdrawn into its future without me, and so this narrowing down to the I which knows itself excluded from the common experience of the future. All that remains this the made desire for present identity though a woman. I feel weightless. Would I, if adored, acquired substance? Yes. I do seek this—or something like this—through a woman. These fantasies are anti-mortality dreams. It is my interiority I am trying to save, my spirit, my soul. Consciousness is going to end. That is what I protest, the waste. Ans not just mine but mine multiplied into eternity. Whenever anyone dies, anyone, just such a vast, unique, irreplaceable weight of knowing and of spirit plunges into nothingness. The Universe is a charnel house, a cataract of soul pours unendingly over the brink. We all swim upstream against the overpowering current, ever more doomed and desperate, trying at the last moment to throw something ashore, some little thing that will, remain, bear witness that we were here. I marvel at this girl. Mid-twenties, perhaps, so fruitful, and yet—eight months after childbirth—pristine, slim-waisted, virginal. Could be her wedding day. I am full of admiration. And dizzy. My mouth is suddenly dry. She takes my breath away, is beginning to drive me mad. She glances at me. The pain begins. I veer away—to her mother: corpulent, mid-forties, a short generation removed, yet already, far, far from her daughter. Nothing left of that dangerousness, that mystery. Flaccid, slowly licking her ice cream, and pleasures of the flesh behind her, her only remaining adventure being vanity, and the changing colour of her hair. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
It does not work, I am already caught. I try once more to dodge it turn my attention to the young man. Early twenties, lithe, muscular, dark curly hair. About six feet, a skier perhaps, or a dancer. Perfectly sculptured features, dark sin—more likely a model!—anyway an Adonis, and knows it, his manner and expression serene, perhaps indolent. Nothing in him of my incompleteness, my yearning, my passion; he is content to be the object of desire. Were I of a different disposition I might swoon over him. For a moment I try, put myself in the mood of Achenbach in Death in Venice. It does not work. My take on this boyish beauty is detached, uncaring; it means nothing to me. Then I give up. No way to avoid it or abort it. I am already caught, am being swept away, know with a kind of mournuful inevitability what I am in for. I turn back to her. Again she glances at me. I see in her eyes recognition of what I feel—which but confirms her expectation, she knew without looking Good. And what does she feel—which but confirms her expectation, she knew without looking. Good. And what does she feel? Is she triumphant? What do I want her to feel? I want her acknowledgement of a special connection between us, a sign, a clue, that she knows something has begun, that already between us is the germ of something…what?….something grand or violent. A wound, a deep, burning private and somehow shameful. It can neither be acknowledged not complained about. It will not go away. A fetid sickness rises from the cut. This is the cruelty of a great beauty, that it inflicts this wound, that the pain is forever. The young man gathers up baby, carriage, dog, provisions, and sets off across the meadow with the meadow with the baby in the bouncing carriage, followed by the mother-in-law. The young woman gathers up toys, paper towels, purse, stuffs everything into a large olive-drab rucksack, swinging it over her right shoulder, glances back at me, “Arrivederci!” she says, and strides off across the meadow after her disappearing family. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
God is just, He would not subject us to pain or suffering without a divine purpose. Such a God, therefore, wants His people to experience all the wondrous aspects of the life He created. However, this does not imply free love. In Christianity, marriage along is the proper context for pleasures of the flesh. Once married, spouses may glory their pleasures of the flesh within certain limits. Seed is the means of procreation and consequently deplore its loss as the male’s failure to replenish the Earth. Celibacy is permissible as vigilantly monitored chastity for youth when it comes to premarital virginity. Indeed, it is essential. Everyone else should be married, reveling in what some church leaders call “legitimate physical satisfaction.” (However, I think trying to convince all youth to be celibate is a great idea, it may lower depression, and suicide rates also as they will focus on their education and careers.) However, marriage has the added advantage of promoting the spiritual salvation of both husband and wife by keeping them from carnal sin. Marriage also advances God’s grand design of perpetuating humankind, and it sustains the family as a social unit. Fertile marriage has additional blessings. As a people battling exile, defeat, and other calamities, it is, by fusing family and spirituality, a key instrument of unity. However, what happened in the Garden of Eden, from a Christians view in the Middle Ages, is a reason for the extension of celibacy. Still, God encourages people to make joyful their beloved companions in marriage. “Blessed are you, O Lord, who makes bridegroom and bride rejoice.” Yet, although God wholehearted endorses marriage, some Christians are still attracted the Old World’s ways of celibacy. Some men and women swore to celibacy so they could devote themselves more completely to their spirituality, education, and/or career. Also, even in modern times, and in the East, when there are harsh economic conditions, people encourage their children to consider celibacy as a way to advance and in their studies and careers and become successful before it is too late. A lifelong scholar can even remain unmarried so he or she could dedicate one’s life to one’s studies. Because we live in a World, with slogans like “Sex Sells,” sometimes virgins and/or celibate people are looked at as foreign and unwelcome. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
However, many adults actually admire youth who are virginal and/or celibate or abstinent because it shows a certain level of commitment and self-control. Some of your peers may actually admire you for it because they are spiritual and do not believe everyone needs to test the waters. It is a background awareness that humans have a gap between what one essentially is, and therefore ought to be, and what one actually is, a consciousness of estrangement from and contradicting of their essential being. The emphasis on this estrangement by some radical Protestant thinkers has induced them to reject the theory of natural law completely. Humans have totally lost what one essentially—or by creation—is. There is no knowledge of their true nature in them, unless it be given one by divine revelation. The revelation through a human’s created nature is veiled by his separation from God. A new revelatory experience is necessary, such as that which inspire the Mosaic law of the Sermon on the Mount. However, there is self-deception in every denial of the natural moral law. For those who deny it, must admit that a divinely revealed moral law cannot contradict the divinely creature human nature. It can only be a restatement of the law that is embodies in human’s essential nature. And after having conceded this, these critics must go one step further toward affirming the doctrine of natural law. Human being’s essential nature cannot be lost as long as humans are human. It can be distorted in the process of actualization, but it cannot disappear. They very statement that humans are estranged from their created nature presupposed an experience of the abyss between what one essentially is and what one existentially is. Even a weak or mislead conscience is still a conscience, namely, the silent voice of human’s own essential nature, judging their actual being. To defend the natural law theory against its religious critics is also to attack the nominalist rejection of the idea of universal moral norms and its attempt to explain all ethical demands as expression of social needs or of political power structures. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
If this were possible (which it is not), the concept of “human’s essential nature would have to be eliminated, and the experience of the conflict between what humans essentially are and what they existentially are would have to be explained away. Undoubtedly, the concrete formulation of moral commands and their interpretation in ethical systems are largely conditioned by the social situation. However, in all the varieties of cultures and religions and, consequently, of ethical systems, some basic norms appear. They are rooted in human’s essential nature and ultimately in the structure of being itself. Their elaboration is the task of a developed theory of natural law. And here it might be added that such a theory underlies not only all ethical systems, but also all systems of “law” in the sense of jurisprudence. The discussion of relativism has shown that basic ethical norms must unite an absolute element and a relative element. They must be universally valid and, at the same time, adaptable to the concrete situation. This tension appears conspicuously in the contrast between the Roman Catholic and a possible Protestant theory of natural law. The Roman Catholic theory asserts that it is possible to derive a considerable number of particular demands from certain universal principals through rational deduction. If reached by sound methods of reasoning, such demands are valid for all times and all situations. No revelatory event is necessary in order to discover them, and no change of the historical conditions can undercut their validity. There is, however, a point of uncertainty: those who analyze and deduce are human beings, and consequently, open to errors and distortions. Therefore, the church must decide what is the real natural law. Only the supernatural can confirm the validity of the natural, although the natural is true in itself. In this way the Catholic church has developed a system of natural moral laws which can be established and defended rationally, but which requires, because of human errors, supernatural sanction by the church. The discussions regarding admissible methods of birth control or the educational authority of parents are actual examples. We have to constantly devise new ways to bring about a challenge to these young folds and to provide an outlet for their energies and give then a sense of belonging. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The statement is on the highest level of current statesmanship. It has been coached by sociologist and psychologists. It has the proper therapeutic and not moralistic attitude, and it does not mention the police. However, after problems, leaders who care about the youth want to play the role that Thrasher assigns to the teenage gang leader. They have to think up new “challenges.” (The would could not have been more unfortunate.) However, it is the word “constantly” that is the clue. If another must constantly and obsessively de devised to siphon off a new threat of “energy,” a challenge can hardly be worthwhile, meaningful, or therapeutic. Is not this raising the ante? Solidly meeting a real need does not have this character. (The leader,” says Thrasher, “sometimes control the gang by means of summation, id est, by progressively urging the members from one deed to another, until finally an extreme of some sort is reached.”) My guess is that in playing games leaders will not have so lively an imagination as the lad on want to displace as leader; unlike the grownups, the gang will never select him. One of the objective factors that make it hard to grow up is the leaders are likely to be men of mediocre humane gifts. The psychology of community leader’s ideas can be puzzling. There often times, are no such undifferentiated energies as one speaks of. There are energies of specific functions with specifically real objects. In the case here they might be partly as follows: In adolescents a strong energy would be carnal reaching. For these boys, as for other adolescents, it is thwarted or imperfectly gratified, but these have probably not learned so well as others to cushion the suffering and be patient; so that another strong energy of the delinquents would be diffuse rage of frustration, perhaps directed at a scapegoat. If they have been kept from constructive activity making them feel worthwhile, a part of their energy might be envious and malicious destructiveness of property. As they are powerless, it is spite; and as they are humiliated, it is vengeances. As they feel rejected, they are humiliated, it is vengeance. As they feel rejected and misunderstood, as by governors, their energy is woe; but they react to this with cold pride, and all the more fierce gang-loyalty to their peers. For which of these specific energies does the governor seriously plan to devise an outlet? #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
What is the sociology of “belonging” here? In the great society they are certainly uprooted. However, in the gang their conformity is sickeningly absolute; they have uniform jackets and uniform morals. They speak a jargon and no one has a different idea that might brand one as queer. Since they have shared forbidden behaviour, they are all in the same mutually blackmailing plight and correspondingly guilty and suspicious toward the outsider. It is a poor kind of community they have; friendship, affection, personal helpfulness are remarkably lacking in it; they are “cool,” afraid to display feeling; yet does the Governor seriously think the he can offer a good community that warrant equal loyalty? Egoistic suicides are committed by people over whom society has little or no control. These people are not concerned with the norms or rules of society, nor are they integrated into the social fabric. This kind of suicide is more likely in people who are isolated, alienated, and non-religious. The larger number of such people living in a society, the higher that society’s suicide rate. Altruistic suicides, in contrast, are committed by people who are so well integrated into the social structure that they intentionally sacrifice their lives for its well-being. Soldiers who threw themselves on top of a live grenade to save others, Japanese kamikaze pilots who gave their lives in air attacks, women who sacrifice their live so they do not have to terminate their pregnancy—all were committing altruistic suicide. Societies that encourage altruistic deaths and deaths to preserve one’s honor are likely to have higher suicide rates. Anomic suicides, are those committed by people whose social environment fails to provide stable structures, such as family and religion, to support and give meaning to life. Such a societal condition is called anomie (literally, “without law), leaves individuals without a sense of belonging. Unlike egoistic suicide, which is the act of a person who rejects the structures of a society, anomic suicide is the act of a person who has been let down by a disorganized, inadequate, often decaying society. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
When societies go through periods of anomie, their suicide rates increase. Historical trends support this claim. Periods of economic depression and pandemic may bring about some degree of anomie in a country, and national suicide rates tend to rise during such times. During 2020, the proportion of mental health-related emergency department (ED) visits among adolescents aged 12-17 years increase 31 percent compared with that during 2019. In may 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, ED visits for suspected suicide attempts began to increase among adolescent aged 12-17 years, especially girls. During February 21-March 2020, 2021, suspected suicide attempt ED visits were 50.6 percent higher among girls aged 12-17 years than during the same period in 2019; among boys aged 12-17 years, suspected suicide attempt ED visits increase 3.7 percent. Periods of population change and increased immigration, too, tend to bring about a state of anomie, and again suicide rates rise. In 34 countries with increase in immigration, each country with a 1 percent increase in immigration was associated with an increase of 0.13 percent in the suicide rate. A major challenge in an individual’s immediate surroundings, rather than general societal problems, can also lead to anomic suicide. People who suddenly inherit a great deal of money, for example, may go through a period of anomie as their relationships with social, economic, and occupational structures are changed. Thus, it has been predicted that society with greater opportunities for change in individual wealthy or status would have suicide rates, and this prediction, too, is supported by research. Despite the influence of sociocultural theories, they cannot by themselves explain why some people who experience particular societal pressures commit suicide whereas the majority do not. The final explanation probably lies in the interaction between societal and individual factors. Suicide prevention requires a comprehensive approach that is adapted during times of infrastructure disruption, involves multisectoral partnerships and implements evidence-based strategies to address the range of factors influencing suicide risk. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
We must also begin a new effort by realizing that the guns may stop shooting, but this is not enough to make peace. We need something more. We need a reconstructed society where the moral and physical causes which may ultimately set guns shooting again will themselves be liquidated. We must proceed by understanding the historical and geographical accidents which divine the people one from another, one class from another, one nation from another, have fostered dislike, suspicion, and even hatred in the past. The limited nationalistic outlook can no longer be accepted uncritically. The developments of modern scientific civilization have filed it with contradictions and imperfections, with dangers and inadequacies. In its prewar form, it has become antiquated. It must now be revised and brought into line with postwar needs. Every major situation today is not only a national one but also an international one. Nations will have to broaden their outlook and give up some fraction of their nationalistic fervour not merely for the benefit of all but more so for their own individual benefit. And they will have to do this not only because the war’s practical lessons have left them no alternative, but also because their moral evolution has left them no alternative. The necessity of curing the power and authority of competitive nationality in the interests of international welfare is pain. One aspect that one of the last furious struggles for nationalism became aggressive and bellicose in an endeavour to save itself from impending and enforced limitation. The animosities and prejudices, the rivalries and hatreds, of the old-fashion nationalistic outlook must be replaced by the co-operative outlook of a new internationalism. Whether we like it or not, we are in the process of swiftly becoming a World community in this Fourth Wave World. The quicker we cut out the time-lag between the dissolution or our prejudices and the realization of our evolutionary needs, the less painful it will be. The sympathetic interest in foreign peoples, the feeling of connection with the wider human race, is something new in history but it is something which has come to stay. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
No continent can now afford to forget—as it has so often in the past—that it is a part of the same planet as the others. The great globe whose monstrous size frightened medieval minds has shrunk to a little ball which humans now play with. The way has taught more people more geography than any school ever did. This is not merely something to make us smile but also something to make us think. For it has forcibly brought home to them the fact that life today is an international affair, that they are being brought into ever-closer relations. We have to realize that we are approaching the first quarter of the twenty-first century and not the middle of the seventeenth. Wireless, cable, Internet, social media, digital streaming, telephone, mobile phone, flying cars, hydrogen and electric car, cars with bi-turbo, steamer, jet, high speed railway, computers, and printing press have made a new international relationship both necessary and possible but they have not made it actual. If we wish, to foster friendships, understanding, and goodwill in the future, the technological and commercial developments which have dissolved so ma of the physical divisions in the present may be used. The problems which have to be settled are now too large to be settled successfully on a prewar basis. A new international order must be instituted as being the only effective way to deal with them. Henceforth, the major events in every country must be looked upon as an integral and inseparable part of the planetary situation. The separate peoples are today too interdependent to carry on successfully with anything short of such an order. Every people is a part of a social organism and must share the general fate of that organism. If such a federation is still far off, it is near enough that a Third World War will precipitate it overnight. For the difficulties of achieving it are really less then the difficulties into which another great war will plunge everybody. One must take a realistic view of the situation, yes, but one need not throw all one’s idealism overboard to do it. We have in the past enlarged the meaning of the word “patriotism” from a merely local to a tribal significance and then from a tribal to a national one. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
It is no longer enough to be only Fiji Islanders or Frenchmen. We must also, and alongside that, be World Patriots. The political frontiers which separate one country from another separate them also from prosperity, peace, and advancement. The time will surely come one day to pull them down, when the United World of America will come to birth as a single entity. The ultimate evolution will certainly be towards a universal humanity. The immediate evolution is towards a consciousness that we are all human beings just as much as we are tribesmen or race members. This need not mean that total destruction of national sentiments and the total wounding of national vanities. It need not necessarily exclude an enlightened patriotism or a balanced devotion to a particular national or racial group It would exclude, however, the hatreds, the prejudice, the dislikes, and the intolerant fanaticism bred by false patriotism and narrow insularity. Just as a large circle does not exclude the smaller concentric one contained within it, so loyalty to humankind as a whole need not exclude the lesser loyalties to race, creed, and class. What is does is to subordinate them. Each people could carry on its own autonomous existence and independent activities within the framework of an international association. The right of freedom and self-rule need not be menaced by the broader rights of such as association. When the forms, interests, and arrangements of humankind become internationalized, the benefit will be moral as well as material. For group selfishness, false national pride, and racial prejudices will be forced down into second place behind human fellowship and common welfare. The administrative essentials of a fully developed new international order must consist of a World legislature, a World executive, and a World tribunal. The link between communications and character is complex, but unbreakable. We cannot transform all our media of communication and expect to remain unchanged as a people. A revolution in the media must mean a revolution in the psyche. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
During the Third Wave period, people were bathed in a sea of mass-produced imagery. A relatively few centrally produced newspapers, magazines, radio and television broadcasts, and movies fed what critics termed a “monolithic consciousness.” Individuals were continually encouraged to compare themselves to a relatively small number of role models and to evaluate their lifestyles against a few preferred possibilities. In consequence, the range of socially approved personality styles was relatively narrow. The de-massification of the media today present a dazzling diversity of role models and lifestyles for one to measure oneself against. Moreover, the new media do not feed us fully formed chunks, but broken chips and blips of imagery. Instead of being handed a selection of coherent identities to choose among, we are required to piece one together: a configurative or modular “me.” This is far more difficult, and it explains why so many millions are desperately searching for identity. Caught up in that effort, we develop a heightened awareness of our own individuality—of the traits that make us unique. Our self-images thus changed. We demand to be seen as, and treated as, individuals, and this occurs at precisely the time when the new production system requires more individualized workers. Beyond helping us to crystallize what is purely personal in us, the new communications media of the Fourth Wave (Internet, social media, digital streaming) turns us into producers—or rather prosumers—of our own self-imagery. In yesterday’s mass media the technical distinction between TV, print, and radio reflects the social division of labour to producers and consumers. Throughout the Second and Third wave ear, this meant that professional communicators produced the messages for the audience. The audience remained powerless to respond directly to, or interact with, the message sender. By contrast, in the Fourth Wave, major, minor, and individual producers are reaching out to interact with their audience. This is a most revolutionary feature of the new means of communication that many of them are interactive—permitted individual users to make or send images and other digital content as well as merely to receive them from the outside. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Internet, social media, digital streaming, mobile phones, two-way video communications systems, text messages, and email all place the means of communication into the hands of the individual. Looking ahead, one can imagine a stage at which even ordinary television becomes interactive, so that instead of merely watching Chicago One, Dynasty, S.W.A.T, Archie Bunker, Steve Harvey, or Mary Tyler Moore of the future, are actually able to talk to them and influence their behaviour in the show. Even now, the Qube cable system makes it technologically possible for viewers of a dramatic show to call on the director to speed up or slow down the action or to choose one story ending over another. The communications revolution gives us each a more complex image of self. It differentiates us further. It speeds the process by which we “try on” different images of self and, in fact accelerates out movement through successive images. It makes it possible for us to project our image electronically to the World. And nobody fully understands what all this will do to our personalities. For in no previous civilization have we ever had such powerful tools. We increasingly own the technology of consciousness. The World we are fast entering is so remote from out past experience that all psychological speculations are admittedly shaky. What is absolutely clear, however, is that powerful forces are streaming together to alter social character—to elicit certain traits, to suppress others, and in the process to transform us all. As we move beyond the Third Wave civilization we are doing more than shifting from one energy system to another, or from one technological base to the nest. We are revolutionizing inner space as well. In the light of this, it would b absurd to project the past upon the future—to the people of the Fourth Wave civilization in Third Wave terms. If our assumptions are even partially correct, individuals will vary more vividly tomorrow than they do today. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
More of them are likely to grow up sooner, to show responsibility at an earlier age, to be more adaptable, and to evince greater individuality. They are more likely than their parents to question authority. They will want money and will work for it—but, except under conditions of extreme privation, they will resist working for money alone. Above all, they seem likely to crave balance in their lives—balance between work and play, between production and prosumption, between headwork and handwork, between the abstract and the concrete, between objectivity and subjectivity. And they will see and project themselves in far more complex terms than any previous people. As Fourth Wave civilization matures, we shall create no a utopian man or woman who towers over the people of the past, not a superhuman race of Goethes and Aristotles (or Genghis Khans) but merely, and proudly, one hopes, a race—and a civilization—that deserves to be called human. No hope for such an outcome, no hope for a safe transition to a decent new civilization is possible, however, until we face one final imperative: the need for political transformation. And it is this prospect—both terrifying and exhilarating—that we explore. The personality of the future must be matched by a politics of the future. We bless you, World as you shine like a king. What you see is yours: all the soft meadows and furry mountains. You are loved by all. Wise Earth, ancient age does not waste you. Feeling and with blood, you are a God. I created the utterance of the lips; peace, peace, to one that is far off, and to one that is near, saith the Lord; an I will heal one. A spirit of inspiration came upon America, chief of captains, and she said: Peace be to thine helpers; for thy God helpeth thee. Then the people of America received God. and thus shall ye say: All hail and peace be both unto thee, and peace be to thine house, and peace be unto all that Thou hast. May the Lord gives strength unto His people; may the Lord bless His people with peace. “Keeping mercy and lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,” reports Exodus 34. 7. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Cresleigh Homes
Work from home takes on a whole new ring when you’ve got a gorgeous office like ours in the #Havenwood Model 4!
Zing zome zentimental melody about a chapel of an apple tree, about a couple living happily in the Cresleigh Home and I’ll be glad to zing along! I love my Cresleigh Home for sentimental reasons.
I hope you do believe me. I’ll give you my heart. I think of my Cresleigh Home every morning, dream of it every evening.
My darling Cresleigh Home, I am never lonely whenever you are in my sight. You’re every thought, everything, every song I hear.
Time to get some work done…in the most beautiful way possible! https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-four/
Why Do You Close Your Eyes to Pray?
Demonic activity is not uniform in the World over nor in historical experience. It appears that there was a great increase in demonic activity preceding and during the life of the Lord Jesus Christ here on Earth. There does appear to be a present increase of an awareness of the part of the powers of darkness that their time is short and that the second coming of Christ is at hand. It is therefore particularly imperative for Christians to be informed in spiritual warfare. There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. My file of occult cases has already grown to other 20,000 in number in regards to the Winchester Mansion. A woman, one of Mrs. Winchester’s servants, appeared at the police station and stated that she had just shot and killed her son. A demon had told her that her son would never regain his full mental health. Wanting to save the boy from his terrible future, she shot and killed him. The woman was arrested and finally sentenced after a long trial. This day-to-day experience show the suggestive powers and effects that demons and spirits have. This is an age of phenomenal progress in human’s conquest of the Universe. Awestruck observers are flocking to the altars erected by science to revere human achievements in the realm of the natural laws. Meanwhile, the alters of God are forsaken as naturalism in theology threatens to eliminate the supernatural from every day life. The situation is particularly ironical to the Christian who sees God permitting man to achieve feats bordering on the miraculous. Why should humans become skeptical and apathetic toward religious supernaturalism at a time when science is demonstrating how “close” the natural and supernatural can be? The fact that supernaturalism embraces not only the morally good—God and his elect angels—but the morally evil—Satan and the fallen angels or demons—aggravates modern human’s unbelief. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
For while some people have always denied the existence of God and the holy angels, skepticism has especially attended the sphere of evil supernaturalism. Many who profess faith in God question the existence of personal devil and casually relegate evil spirits or demons to the realm of folklore and superstition. If Satan and demons are merely the creation of superstition and imagination, the whole filed of demonism belongs to the World of fairytale and folklore, and not to the sphere of Christian theology. If there are n demons, evil cannot be traced to their activity and depraved aspects of human behaviour must be attributed to other cases. The Word of God attests the reality of evil supernaturalism through the career of both Satan and his myriads of helpers called demons or evil spirits (Luke 10.17, 20). Satan is presented as Lucifer, the first and most glorious creature of God, who subsequently sinned (Isaiah 14.12, 13; Ezekiel 28.11-19; Revelation 12.7-10). In his rebellion, Lucifer drew a multitude of angels with him and became “Satan,” a Hebrew word meaning “opposer” or “adversary.” Satan reigns over a kingdom of darkness organized in opposition to God (Matthew 12.26). This opposition crystallized in connection with humans and God’s purpose for him upon the Earth (Genesis 3.1-15). The angels who followed Satan became the demons or evil spirits, Satan’s minion. Apparently Lucifer, the first of the angels, was created to have dominion over the Earth (Job 38.1-7; Ezekiel 28.11-19). Satan was exalted and sinless before he rebelled and brough judgment and chaos upon the Earth. The Creator was now faced with the problem of evil and sin in a hitherto sinless Universe. God chose the Earth as the theater in which to present the great drama of human redemption. This great redemptive demonstration not only shows how God, in his infinite love and holiness, deals with evil, it will culminate in the conquest of sin, its banishment from a sin-scarred Universe, and its rigid isolation for all eternity, together with its perpetrations, in a place of confinement called “the lake of fire,” Gehenna or eternal hell (Revelation 20.11-15). #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
The Old Testament is replete with demonological phenomena because since the Fall of man in the Garden of Eden, God’s saints have been the object of satanic attack (Genesis 4.1-6; 6.1-10). Israel was surrounded by pagan nations which manifested the whole gamut of demonological practices and beliefs and clashed with Israel’s monotheistic faith. The New Testament presents overwhelming evidence for the existence of demons. Jesus’ powerful spiritual ministry precipitated a violent outburst of evil supernaturalism. Satan and demons opposed his mighty mission among humans, know well it could lead to their own undoing (Matthew 4.1-10; Mark 5.1-10). Our Lord gave his disciples authority to expel demons (Matthew 10.1) and expelled them himself (Matthew 15.22, 28), viewing his conquest over the demons as over Satan (Luke 10,17, 18). The New Testament speaks of demons (James 2.19; Revelation 9.20), described their nature (Luke 4.33; 6.18), their activity (1 Timothy 4.1; Revelation 16.14), their opposition to the believer (Ephesians 6.10-20), their abode (Luke 8.31; Revelation 9.11) and their eternal doom (Matthew 25.41). The tormentors and troublemakers of nature offer an interesting analogy to the evil agencies of the spiritual realm. In the planet kingdom, pest, insects, and blight continually harass the famer. In the animal kingdom, all creatures have their deadly enemy. And the human body is relentlessly attacked by a multitude of bacteria which cause disease and death. Those who hesitate to accept the testimony of Scripture about the reality of demons may thus find both scientific and philosophical corroboration in the nature which has been called God’s “oldest testament.” The natural World vividly illustrates the activity of demonic beings in the spiritual World. Of all the current methods of foretelling the future, the most popular is astrology. Astrologers claim that by observing the position of the sun, moon, fixed stars, and planets they can predict significant events that will take place on Earth. Palm reading is another method of fortunetelling, but it is close related to astrology that it does not require special consideration. The person who engages in this practice divides the hand into seven mounds which are named after Heavenly bodies—Venus, Mercury, Apollo (the Sun), Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and the Moon. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
In addition, the palm has four lines, which are “read” by the palmist. He calls them the heart, head, life, and fate lines and sees each of them as having special significance. Everything we will say about the evils, dangers, and deceitfulness of astrology applies to palmistry as well. One must, however, recognize that astrology is classified as a pseudoscience, and it should not be confused with astronomy, a legitimate field of study Astrology originated about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and flourished in Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, and Greece. It began with people who worshipped the sun, moon, and the five known planets of that time as gods They thought each of these seven deities owned a certain section of the Heavens as his “house.” They there established the zodiac the wild belt of fixed starts that appear in the course of a year, and divided it into twelve “houses.” As a result, there were twelve dwelling places for seven deities. The early astrologers decided that the sun and moon needed only one “house” each, and therefore assigned two dwelling places to Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Mercury. These planets had one “house” for the day and another for the night. This heathen concept of the planets as gods with dwelling places in the Heavens gradually developed into a detailed system of religion. Men carefully studied the Heavenly bodies, and noted how they positions of the planets changed. They theorized that whenever two or more of these planets (which they considered gods) were positioned in a direct radial line or within a ten-degree angle, some extremely significant events World occurs upon the Earth. They called this a “conjunction” of the planets. Since the movements of the Heavenly bodies is perfectly predictable, they had given to each of the “houses” through which the planet moved. For many years educated people mingled their astrological superstitions with their studies of nature, mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Some have assumed that the Magi, who came to Jerusalem looking for the King of the Jews when Jesus was born, came because of an astrological sign. This is a mistaken assumption, and the idea should never be used as evidence that the New Testament condones the practice of astrology. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Although the wise men as learned sages of the East undoubtedly shared in some superstitions of their day, the light that led them to make their journey to Jerusalem was a miraculously placed sign of God, not a mere configuration of the stars. It has been theorized that the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, which took place in 747 A.U.C (7 B.C.), or with Mars added in 748 A.U.C. (6 B.C.), led the to look for Jesus Christ. This supposition is without validity, however. In the first place, the Christian Bible nowhere declares that Heavenly bodies in their normal movements furnish this kind of information. Second, a similar conjunction of planes had taken place about fifty-nine years earlier, but this had not led an investigating body to Jerusalem. Third, when the planets move near to one another to form a conjunction, they are never so close tht they appear as one star. Fourth, the light miraculously appeared over the house where Jesus was living when the Magi arrived. These factors prove conclusively that the light in the Heavens was a miracle. We repeat, the wise men who presented their gifts to Jesus Christ did not receive information of His birth through astrology. However, I am not really convinced that astrology, all demons, and all spirits lie. I think perhaps messages are distorted or maybe they are seeing the future and warning people about what their actions will cause. Maybe some things are destined to happen and messages are incomplete. To further illustrate this example, Mrs. Winchester servant, who shot and killed her own son, after the message from a demon, perhaps what was to happen was fate and the demon was seeing the future and warning her not to shot her son. Of course, no one who is dead can regain their mental health because they cease to exist. I think that is why it is dangerous to peer into the future and listen to spirits sometimes. Maybe one may distort the message and actually cause the situation to happen. So it is not necessarily that demons and spirits are lying, but most people do not have the psychic ability to see what they see and cannot understand the context of the message. The story is told of how an astrologer Stoeffler made a complete fool of himself. He predicted a diluvian flood for February 1524. The population was terrified. Nobody wanted to work. The fields were not tilled. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The rich either had ships built for themselves or they retreated for safety into the mountains. Even the Elector of Brandenburg made preparations to escae the flood. The great astronomer Kepler was also not free from the contamination of astrology. A well-know example of this is his prediction tht Wallenstein would die a peaceful death in his prediction that Wallenstein would die a peaceful death in his 70th year. However, he was killed in his 50th year. Yet Kepler only engaged in astrology out of economic necessity. He wrote, “Astrology is to me an unbearable but necessary slavery. To keep my yearly income, my title, and my living quarters, I have to comply with ignorant curiosity. Astronomy is the wise mother, and astrology the foolish daughter who gives herself to anyone who pays her, so that she can support her wise mother.” Maybe consulting demons reduced the life of Wallenstein by 20 years. Perhaps he unknowingly made a deal and soul his soul to a crossroads demon, and would have lived to 70 had it not made a deal with the devil. Perhaps that is why people say make the best out of your life and enjoy what is here and now, and try not to look into the future. When consulting spirits and demons, you may be unknowingly entering into a contract. And it is possible that by listening to the supernatural will sometimes avert tragedy. The demons and Satan do have dominion of this Earth, and they could be testing your faith. So when Stoeffler consulted as Astrologer, and took action, perhaps this leap of faith diverted the flood, and if they had set idol, it would have happened. It is truly hard to understand how the supernatural works, which is why so many place their faith in God and choose not to work with demons and the devil. An important witch-case occurred in Scotland in 1678, the account of which is the interest to u as it incidentally makes mentions of the fact that one of the guilty persons had been previously tried and condemned in Ireland for the crime of witchcraft. Four women and one man were strangled and burnt at Paisley for having attempted to kill by magic Sir George Maxwell of Pollock. They had formed a wax image of him, into which the Devil himself had struck the necessary pins; it was then turned on a spit before the fire, the entire band repeating in unison the name of one whose death they desired to compass. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Amongst the women was “one Bessie Weir, who was hanged up the last of the four (one that had been taken fore in Ireland and was condemned to the fyre for malefice before; and when the hangman there was about to cast her over the gallows, the devil takes her away from them out of their sight; her dittay [indictment] was sent over here to Scotland), who at this tyme, when she was cast off the gallows, there appears a raven, and approaches the hangman within an ell of him, and flyes away again. All the people observed it, and cried out at the sight of it.” A clergyman, the Rev. Daniel Williams (evidently the man who was pastor of Wood Street, Dublin, and subsequently founded Dr. William’s Library in London), relates the manner in which he freed a girl from strange and unpleasant noises which disturbed her; the incident might have developed into something analogous to the Drummer of Tedworth in England, but on the whole works out rather tamely. He tells us that about the year 1678 the niece of Alderman Arundel of Dublin was troubled by noises in her uncle’s house, “as by violent Sthroaks on the Wainsocts and Chests, in what Chambers she frequented.” In the hope that they would cease she removed to a house near Smithfield, but the disturbances pursued her thither, and were no longer heard in her former dwelling. She thereupon betook herself to a little house in Patrick Street, near the gate, but to no purpose. The noises lasted in all for about three months, and were generally at their worst about two o’clock in the morning. Certain ministers spent several nights in prayer with her, heard the strange sounds, but did not succeed in causing their cessation. Finally the natator, Williams, was called in, and came upon a night agreed to the house, where several persons had assembled. He says: “I preached from Hebrews ii. 18, and contrived to be at Prayer at that Time when the Noise used to be greatest. When I was at Prayer the Woman, kneeling by me, catched violently at my Arm, and afterwards told us that she saw a terrible Sight—but it pleased God there was no noise at all. And from that Time God graciously freed her from all that Disturbance.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Many strange stories of apparitions seen in the air come from all parts of the World, and are recorded by writers both ancient and modern, but there are certainly few of them that can equal the account of that weird series of incidents that was seen in the sky by a goodly crowd of ladies and gentlemen in Co. Tipperary on 2nd March 1678. “At Pointstown in the country of Tepperary were seen drivers strange and prodigious apparitions. On Sunday in the evening several gentlemen and others, after named, walked forth in the fields, and the Sun going down, and appearing somewhat bigger than usual, they discoursed about it, directing their eyes toward the place where the Sun set; when one of the company observed in the air, near the place where the Sun went down, an Arm of a blackish blue colour, with a ruddy complection’d Hand at one end, and at the other end a cross piece with a ring fasten’d to the middle of it, like one end of an anchor, which stood still for a while, and then made northwards, and so disappeared. Next, there appeared at a great distance in the air, from the same part of the sky, something like a Ship coming towards them; and it came so near that they could distinctly perceived the masts, sails, tacklings, and men; she then seem’d to tack about, and sail’d with the stern foremost, northwards, upon a dark smooth sea, which stretched itself from south-west to north-west. Having seem’s thus to sail some few minutes she sunk they perceived her men plainly running up tacklings in the forepart of the Ship, as it were to save themselves from drowning. Then appeared a Fort, with somewhat like a Castle on the top of it; out of the sides of which, by reason of some clouds of smoak and a flash of fire suddenly issuing out, they concluded some shot to be made. The Fort then was immediately divided in two parts, which were in an instant transformed into two exact Ships, like the other they had seen, with their head towards each other. That towards the south seem’d to chase the other with its stem [stern?] foremost, northwards, till it sunk with its stem first, as the first Ship had done; the other Ship sail’s some time after, and then sunk with its head first. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
It was observ’d that men were running upon the decks of these two Ships, but they did not see them climb up, as in the last Ship, excepting one man, whom they saw distinctly to get up with much haste upon the very top of the Bowsprit of the second Ship as they were sinking. They supposed the two last Ships were engaged, and fighting, for they saw the likeness of bullets rouling upon the sea, while they were both visible. Then there appear’d a Chariot, dawn with two horses, which turn’d as the Ships had done, northward, and immediately after it came a strange frightful creature, which they concluded to be come kind of serpent, having a head like a snake, and a knotted bunch or bulk at the other end, something resembling a snail’s house. This monster came swiftly behind the chariot and gave it a sudden violent blow, then out of the chariot leaped a Bull and a Dog, which follow’d him [the bull], and seem’d to bait him. These also went northwards, ad the former had done, the Bull first, holding his head downwards, then the Dog, and then the Chariot, till all sunk down one after another about the same place, and just in the same manner as the former. These meteors being vanished, there were several appearances like ships and other things. The whole time of the vision lasted near an hour, and it was a very clear and calm evening, no cloud seen, no mist, nor any wind stirring. All the phenomena came out of the West or Southwest, and all moved Northwards; they all sunk out of sight much about the same place. Of the whole company there was not any one but saw all these things, as above-written, whose names follow: “Mr. Allye, a minister, living near the place. Lieutenant Dunsterville, and his son. Mr. Grace, his son-in-law. Lieutenant Dwine. Mr. Dwine, his bother Mr. Christopher Hewelson. Mr. Richard Foster. Mr. Adam Hewelson. Mr. Bates, a schoolmaster. Mr. Larkin. Mrs. Dunsterville. Her daughter-in-law. Her maiden daughter. Mr. Dwine’s daughter. Mrs. Grace, and her daughter.” The first of the sixteen persons who subscribed to the truth of above was the Rev. Peter Alley, who had been appointed curate Killenaule Union (Dio. Cashel) in 1672, but was promoted to livings in the same diocese in the autumn of the year the apparitions appeared. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
There is a townland named Poyntstown in the parish of Buolick and barony of Sliveardagh, and another of the same name in the adjoining parish of Fennor. It must have been at one or other of these places that the sights were witnessed, as both parishes are only a few miles distant from Killenaule. Another supernatural event was Mrs. Winchester’s arrival to the Santa Clara Valley in the late 1800’s was a sensation event. Our valley was thrilled by this dramatic entrance of a millionairess; by those freight cars sidetracked in Sant Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building a two-story farm house into a 26-room mansion, in the first six months, and she did not stop going, she kept building for 38-years. Mrs. Winchester had nine cooks, and supervised 113 employees. She also devoted much energy to managing her estate, trading in gold and diamonds, renting out fields, orchards, houses, employees and horses. Here was fair gamed for all! The town talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like—but everyone enjoyed Talk begat rumors and as the years passed and new towers gables rose behind the six-foot hedge of Llanda Villa, the rumors grew to established legend. We shall recall a few, some containing a faith faint hint of truth, others, the inevitable product of unbridled conjecture. I want to share some of the astounding things that took place in the famous Blue Séance Room of Mrs. Winchesters mansion. Her family gathered there frequently before going to bed to find out what the spirit World might reveal to them. Here they experienced the thirteen séances of spiritualism: passivity, vocal reality, golden key revelation, lights, transfiguration, and levitation. Séances are noted for quietness. As the participants enter and meditate, they block out their tensions, worries, anxieties, and problems. Through mental discipline they try to be as passive as possible, with eagerness and expectation for what the spirit has for them. Lights are turned down at every séance. Shades are drawn in the daytime and at night. At some places rheostats dramatically control the lighting. Once when Mrs. Winchester asked a spirit why the lights were turned down, the reply was, “My daughter, why do you close your eyes to pray?” “For better concentration,” she said. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
“Just so it is,” said the spirit, “that you turn down the lights. It is for better concentration.” Séances always start on time. The exact hour is eagerly anticipated. To arrive late would grieve the spirits. Séances have top priority in the plans of those who attend regularly. Young people give the séance priority in their schedules over athletic events and other school activities. Sometimes the spirit messages came to them in other languages. Mrs. Winchester heard Spanish, German, French, and the language of the Chippewa Indians being spoken. When they did not recognize a language the control spirit would tell then what is was and would interpret the central message. It often went something like this: “Jesus Christ is coming soon. He is even now at the threshold of the parapet of the Heaveniles awaiting the word of the great spirits of lights. Wherefore, comfort ye one another with these words, and be ye ready; for ye know not what hour he will come.” When Mrs. Winchester asked the spirit how they could be ready, the answer was always,” “Live a good life, my child. Follow in the steps of the master the greatest medium of all.” This was a vague reference to Jesus Christ, without instructing them in what those steps were. When a medium went into a trance for any length of time, his or her body became very tired, causing the medium to spend a day or two in bed after the séance. Because of this, they could not have a séance as often as they wanted in Mrs. Winchester’s Castle and they went to séances in the homes of other mediums. However, the most striking phenomenon was a séance of vocal reality some witnessed in Mrs. Winchester’s estate in connected with her deceased cousin, Richard Pardee, who had been in the Spanish American War; he was a drummer. During the séance they wars feet marching in perfect cadence, the music of a fife, and the beat of drums. Each time, the music was a popular tune of the times, “The Jingo’s Soliloquy.” No one knew how all these sound vibrations could be distinctly produced through the vocal apparatus of the medium. The spirit constantly reminded them that public manifestations were for a later time, and so they must keep those revelations to themselves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The séances of lights were always preceded by a half hour or so of passive meditation during which each person prepared oneself by discipline of mind and emotions for the coming of the spirit. In this séance, the darkened room was filled with drifting lights until it became a mass of colours, each light indicating the spirit of someone who had passed on Each colour had significance. Little blue lights meant that the spirit of a departed baby was present. There were large orange lights and many yellow and green lights. Green represented spirits that were growing or progressing to a higher plane of spiritual development. A white light indicated a spirit that had progressed to the level of the master oneself. Spiritual advancement at this level was signified by the size of the white light. A read light was considered an “evil” spirit. It was greeted in the circle with a gasp of disappointment and sometimes fear. If a read light appeared, all the other lights would disappear, usually ending the séance. In the séance of transfiguration, the transfigured form of a loved one who has died appears. Mrs. Winchester was really plagued by a lot of deaths in a short time. It started with a new born daughter, her parents, mother and father-in-law, then her husband. You can be she was grieving to have almost her entire family wiped out like, many all within the same year. During a séance her deceased mother seemed to appear, cloth with light. Sarah W. Burns Pardee drifted across the room to her daughter, Sarah Winchester, stopped and gave her a gentle smile. Them medium said she was trying to tell Mrs. Winchester she was proud she was building a house for earth bound spirits. Mrs. Winchester shouted “Mother!” she leaped up to embrace her, only to have her disappear. Little is known about the séance of levitation. Levitation is sometimes called “soul travel,” the phenomenon of spirit development whereby a medium or advances convert to spiritualism can leave one’s body by complete yieldedness to control spirit. One is not completely disunited from one’s body, but is able to take conscious flight from it to distant places. Mrs. Winchester said she experienced this: she was taken into the spirit dimension and witnessed indescribable beauties. It was something she did not want to talk about, but tried to reproduce in her mansion and the Victorian gardens. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Two people in Mrs. Winchester’s spiritualist group enter the stated of levitation from time to time. During these periods they could read the headlines of the Oakland Tribune as it came off the press before it hit the city streets. Because Mrs. Winchester took architectural precautions to enlist the assistance of her friendly spirits, they were able to protect her from the Great San Francisco Bay Area Earthquake of 1906. The quake registered 8.3 on the Richter scale and stretched all the way from Oregon to Los Angeles It severely damaged Mrs. Winchester’s home, toppling the nine-story Observation Tower and some cupolas. She herself was badly shaken in her favorite Daisy Bedroom near the front of the mansion. It took several servants hours to locate her and then pry open the bedroom door and recue her, but Mrs. Winchester and everyone in the estate survived. Mrs. Winchester, however, felt the Earthquake was a warning from the spirits that they did not want her estate visible from the freeway that would be built in the future and also that such a large estate of 500 rooms, a nine-story tower, and 65,000 square feet would be too expensive to maintain after her passing, so she removed the tower, and much of the fourth floor. However, scientists, to this day, have said the mansion is one of the saftest places in the state to be during an Earthquake. Later, after having the structural damage repaired, the spirits ordered Mrs. Winchester to immediately bored up the front thirty rooms—including the Daisy Bedroom, Grand Ballroom, and the beautiful front doors—sealed up. The heavy, ornate front doors, which had just been installed just prior to the Earthquake had only been used by three people—Mrs. Winchester and the two carpenters who installed them. Apparently, the spirits used the reflections of spiritual light in the Daisy-stained glass windows to power beams of light energy to protect her and not allowed the nine-story tower to crash on the house and rip the mansion in pieces. Matter is composed of energy and energy is never destroyed. When the voltage of an electric current to atom-smashing velocity, certain elements, when they are bombarded with this electrical force, can be transformed into other elements. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Perhaps, similarly, the energy in humans can be attuned to a vital spiritual force to make matter visible. The number 13 occurs often on the grounds as well as in the house; for example, there are 13 cupolas in the greenhouse, and 13 fan palms lining the front gate. A craftsman in Italy, called Pietro Bossi, was told by a spirit to create an ornate sink made of Italian porcelain with 13 drain holes. There is a striking account that in which the a medium’s control spirit much wanted this sink and it appeared in the table in the Blue Séance Room from 6,212 miles away and there was a receipt explaining it had been paid for in gold and was addressed to Mrs. Winchester. There was a convincing story of the events. Mr. Bossi was renowned for his Neoclassical fire surround with exquisitely detailed inlaid marble work and specialist craftsmanship. Very little is known about Pietro Bossi. He was a man of mystery, and it is not known when or where he died. His legacy, however, has had long lasting implications for this history of art and design. Spiriting writing is accomplished by a medium who possessed the gift of writing while under the power of a spirit. The medium takes pen or pencil in hand and relaxes one’s arm on a table. One goes into a trance, yielding completely to the spirit force. The following is an actual sample of spirit writing. While Mrs. Winchester was alive, a tree in front of the Winchester mansion turned blood-red and it was blood. (The tree actually did exist and was cut down approximately in the first decade of the 2000s.) Huge slate-coloured clouds gathered around the tree. They whirled as they feel, and became darker It was symbolic of the waste of blood. The deadly clouds portend the battle of the near future when they very tree of life, every branch leaf, shall suffer unto death, for as this tree is, so is the World scene and its many branches, its may countries, for every branch shall be affected. Prepare the way for the Lord and He shall do battle He shall make war with the elements, and you shall stand. Yes, in the midst of chaos, ye shall stand and messengers of peace, love and unity. The battle will rage and rage, but by the law of polarity it will be met by its own destruction. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The light of the higher forces, God-sent, shall redeem the World. Yes, even as the twinkling of an eye can this be made to pass. Again, the servant of the Light are countless—their name is Legion. Have no fear, ye of Christ, for ye shall see what ye shall see—miracles. Yet shall ye know them as the working of the Word of Light, for surely one in the power of Light may rule this World unto its God-purpose. So from the realms of light I come—I am that I am. Amen. Mrs. Winchester said Emoah and Amoah were two of the control spirits she had when she was in spiritualism. In the séance wither one could be a control spirit, or they might speak occasionally when another control spirit was presiding. Hundreds of spirit messages came through the seances. They referred to God as Light and always contain a smattering of Scripture. Because these messages used scared terminology and came from a spirit, many people accepted them as God’s messages. When the construction workers were working on the Winchester Mansion, an occasional black spot, dotted against the grey distance, marked a hay-rick or labourer’s cottage on the estate. Mrs. Winchester provided a tenth of her income to provide for the poor farmers in California. One night on the Winchester estate, it was beginning to rain steadily. A worker, Jesse Evans, could see that he was in for dirty weather, and became a little anxious about how he was to get back to his cottage, especially as it was now rapidly growing dark. So thick was it that one could not see the low land anywhere, and could only judge of its position by remembering where the mansion was. He had not seen sign of a human being the whole day. It was not likely anymore would be about at night. However, he shouted as loud as he could, and then waited to hear if there were any response. There was not a sound, only the wind moaned slightly through the trees, and something creaked loudly. The prospect was not inviting. The light was dim; Jesse could scarcely make out objects near him, all else was obscurity. What little light there was came through the mansion’s windows. A small round speck of light looked at him out of the darkness ahead. Jesse took this as a sight to take shelter in the mansion. Groping his way with increasing caution, he stepped across the field and made his way to an opened window. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
In the window was blackness itself. He felt it would be useless to attempt to go further. As Jesse stood looking into the darkness, a cold chilly shudder passed over him, and with a shiver he turned round to look. Deeper patches of darkness on his right suggested it was best seek refuge inside the mansion. Here at least he could find rest, if he found it impossible to get to his cottage on the estate. Having some wax vestas in his pocket, he struck a light and examined the room. It was better than he had expected, It was quite clear that Jesse must pass the night here. Before going to look around, he shouted at the top of his voice, more to keep up his own spirits than with any hope of being heard and then paused to listen. Not a sound of any sort replied. Jesse now prepared to make himself as comfortable as he could. However, the silence only seemed the more oppressive, and the blackness all the darker. “It is no good; I will turn in,” Jesse though dejectedly. By contriving a succession of matches, Jesse was enabled to have enough light to see to eat his frugal supper; for he had kept a little sherry and a few sandwiches to meet emergencies, and it was a fortunate thing he had. The light and the food made him feel more cheery, and by the time the last match had gone out, he felt worse might have happened to him by a long way. As Jesse lay still, waiting for sleep to come, the absurdity of the situation forced itself upon him. As if he were cast away upon a desert island, here was Jesse, to all intents and purposes as much cut off from all communication with the rest of the World. The silence of the place was perfect; and if silence can woo sleep, sleep ought very soon to have come However, when one is hungry and we, and in a beautiful and uncanny place, besides being in one’s clothes, it is a very difficult thing to go to sleep. After sighing and groaning for sometime, Jesse sat up for change of position, and nearly fractured his skull in so doing. There was nothing for it but to it still, or lie down and wait for daylight. He had no means of telling time. Fixed upon the arduous business of counting an imaginary and interminable flock of sheep pass one by one through an ideal gate, he went to sleep. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
He was awakened by the sound of the two most horrible yells ringing through the darkness. Jesse sat bolting upright; and as a proof that he senses were “all there,” he did not bring his head up this time. There was another sound. The silence was as absolute as the darkness. He though his must have been dreaming, but the sounds ringing in his ears, and his heart was beating with excitement. It would have been madness to attempt to move in that blackness. And so he lay still and tried to sleep. However, now there was a sound, indistinct, but no mere fancy; a muffled sound, as of some movement in the forepart of the mansion. What was the sound? It did not seem like Mrs. Winchester’s dog Zip. It was a full, shuffling kind of noise, very indistinct, and conveying no clue whatever as to its cause. It lasted for only a short time. However, now the cold dam air seemed to have become more piercingly chilly. The raw iciness seemed to strike into the very marrow of his bones, and his teeth chattered. Rising to put this resolve in execution, he was arrested by the noise beginning again. Jesse listened. This time he distinctly distinguished two separate sounds: one, like a heavy soft weight being dragged along with difficulty; the other like the hard sound of boots on boards. Could there be others in the mansion after all? If son, why had they made no sound when he made his present noticed by shouting and firing his gun? Clearly, if there were people, they wished to remain concealed, and his presence was inconvenient to them. However, how absolutely still and quiet they had kept! It appeared incredible that there should be anyone. Jesse listened intently. The sound had ceased again, and once more the most absolute stillness reigned around. A gentle swishing, wobbling, lapping noise seemed to form itself in the darkness. It increased until Jesse recognized the chattering and bubbling of water. And he could not get rid of the chilly horrified feeling those two screams had produced. He derided the fear of the supernatural when comfortably seated in a drawing-room well lighted, and with company. Jesse felt her could face any number of spiritual manifestation. But the icy coldness of the air was eating into his bones, and he shivered until his teeth chattered. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Suddenly he became all attention again. An entirely different sound now arrested him. It was distinctly a low groan, and followed almost immediately by heavy blows—blows which fell on a soft substance, and then more groans, and again those sickening blows. He was frightened. He heard shrieks, the blows, the groans, the dull thumping sounds, and it compelled him to suspect the worse—to feel convinced that he was actually within some few feet of a horrible murders then being committed. Jesse could form no idea of who the victim was, or who was the assassin. He actually heard the sounds and they were growing louder and more distinct. He was painfully aware The horror of the situation was intense. Bump, thump, the thing was dragged up the steps with many pauses, and at last it seemed to have reached the landing. A long pause now followed. The silence grew dense around. Jesse dreaded the stillness—the silence that made itself be heard almost more than the sounds. What now horror would that awful quiet bring forth? He felt something drop on to his head and slowly trickly over his forehead. It was blood. The bewildering realization that he was not in bed, that he did not know where he was, which way to go, or what to do to get back again; everything he touched seem strange, and one piece of furniture much the same as any other. The reality of his struggles had almost made him forget the mysterious phenomena he had been listening to. No one knows what became of Jesse. The fact is, we cannot, in this prosaic age, cannot dismiss the supernatural. Mental illness, drugs, money, and the supernatural can be a dangerous combination. People let their id (the id operates based on the pleasure principle, which demands immediate gratification of needs. Many people confuse the id with ego. However, the ego eventually emerges to moderate between the urges of the id and demands of reality. The id tends to be infantile, instinctive and primal; it is not in touch with reality, or logic, or social norms.) If the ego cannot balance the id, people began to think they are a god, always right, better than others because of their economic standing, and they turn into everything the Bible calls a demon. God tells people to be humble, love thy neighbour, share, and forgive. I would say, be careful when consulting the supernatural and with judgment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Winchester Mystery House
Unique from all angles 😮
What do you think inspired Sarah Winchester to continuously build such a beautiful and bizarre home? http://winchestermysteryhouse.com
Randolph Harris II International Institute 