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Housing is High, Food is Expensive and People getting Rich on Blood Money
A paranoid is someone who knows little of what is going on. Despite the fact that young people have experimented with cigarettes, alcohol, and other dangerous drugs for many generations, it would be better that they did not. All recreational drug use is associated with at least some risks, and those who begin using drugs earlier are also more likely to use dangerous drugs later. The most commonly used of the depressants is alcohol, a colorless liquid, produced by the fermentation of sugar or starch, that is the intoxicating agent in fermented drinks. Alcohol is the oldest and most widely used drug of abuse in the World. Alcohol use is highly costly to societies because so many people abuse alcohol and because judgment after drinking can be substantially impaired. It is estimated that 50 percent of automobile fatalities are caused by alcohol use, and excessive alcohol consumption is involved in a majority of violent crimes, including unwanted physical sexual activity and murder. Alcohol increases the likelihood that people will respond aggressively to provocations. Even people who are not normally aggressive may react with aggression when they are intoxicated. Alcohol use also leads to rioting, unprotected sex, and other negative outcomes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
A single deed of violence and cruelty affects our nerves more than when these are exercised on a more extended scale. Alcohol increases aggression in part because it reduces the ability of the person who has consumed it to inhibit his or her aggression. When people are intoxicated, they become more self-focused and less aware of the social situation. As a result, they become less likely to notice the social constraints that normally prevent them from engaging aggressively, and are less likely to use those social constraints to guide them. Cannabis (marijuana) is the most widely used hallucinogen. Until it was banned in the United States of American under the Marijuana Tax Act of 1938, it was widely used for medical purposes. In recent years, cannabis has again been frequently prescribed for the treatment of pain and nausea, particularly for cancer sufferers, as well as for a wide variety of other physical and psychological disorders. While medical marijuana is now legal in several American states, it is still banned under federal law, putting those states in conflict with the federal government, Marijuana also acts as a stimulant producing giggling, laughing, and mild intoxication. It acts to enhance perception of sights, sounds, smells, and many produce the sensation of slowing down. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Because drug and alcohol abuse is a behavior that has such negative consequences for so many people, researchers have tried to understand what leads people to use drugs. Individual ambitions, expectations, and values influence drug use. College students who expressed optimistic academic values and strong ambitions have less alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems, and cigarette smoke has declined more among youth from wealthier and more educated homes than among those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Drug use is in part the result of socialization. Children try drugs when their friends convince them to do it, and these decisions are based on social norms about the risks and benefits of various drugs. The use of marijuana among 12th-graders (high school seniors, generally 16-18 years of age) rose to 39 percent. And students binge drink in part when they see that many other people around them also binging. That is why stores used to always provide bags for people who bought liquor, so kids would not see it and become curious about drinking alcohol. The longer an addiction lasts, the more stress and strain it puts on the individual. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
There are a number of long-term physical and emotional effects of addiction that can easily turn a healthy man or woman into a frail shadow of their former self. The human kidney can be damaged by habitual drug use over a period of many years. Kidney failure is not uncommon among long-time users of crystal meth, heroin, and other dangerous drugs. Liver failure is a well-known consequence of alcoholism, but it can also occur with individuals using Vicodin, and OxyContin habitually over many years. Cocaine abusers and stimulant users are doing significant damage to their heart each time they use the drug. The most common conditions among addicted individuals are heart disease and heart failure. The lungs of any individual who is putting drugs they are addicted into their lungs is putting their lungs in jeopardy. Smoking crack cocaine or crystal meth damages the lungs, and so does smoking marijuana. Also, long-term drug abusers will begin to build a tolerance to drugs. Tolerance is dangerous as it causes the individual to use more and more of the drug in order to achieve the desired euphoric or stimulated states, which puts the individual at a constant risk for overdose and even death. Much of these drugs are coming from the Middle East and Mexico. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
Nothing bears so many stains of blood as gold. In Oakland, California USA so many people have built up a tolerance to drugs that they are looking for an even more potent drug to get a high from. Producers have started mixing cocaine and heroin together and they call it a “Belushi” or “Paris Hilton.” And if people overdose from the drugs you are selling, it actually makes you more popular because people are looking to overcome their tolerance. They live to get high. Because of this desire to get high, foreign drug cartels are operating in Northern California and wreaking havoc on the environment and producing marijuana tainted with toxic chemicals. Drugs are not cool. Because of the gun violence between drug dealers, people are afraid to visit the city of Oakland, California. There are so many drug related murders that no one can keep track. Homicide is the number one killer of African American men 15-34. In 2016, there were 88 homicides in Oakland. And 32 homicides as of late June 2017. The forensic anthropologist in the morgues are saying that gun violence is getting more serious, too. Instead of seeing people with one fatal gunshot, they are now coming into morgue in bullet proof vests with 12 bullets in one body, and usually end up with several people from the same gang in the morgue in the same night. These people have military style weapons. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
Violence is a symptom of an unhealthy community. In Oakland’s drug wars, fire as well as firepower is a weapon. The Oakland fire department attributes more than 180 cases of arson to warfare between drug gangs and reprisals against slow-paying customers or residents who complained publicly about the city’s wide-open commerce in crack, a cheaper, potent form of cocaine. In Oakland, California, drugs are sold on more than 150 street corners. When people cannot pay their drug debts, and the dealer cannot find you, they will go after your next of kin. A woman who owed $50.00 to a crack dealer was dragged from her house, and thrown into the trunk of a car. After breaking one of her legs and the bones in one hand with a baseball bat, detectives report the attackers poured gasoline over her and set her on fire. With those cost of living so high in Oakland, California scientists are saying this is contributing to continuing violent crimes in parts of the city. There is a 19 percent unemployment rate in these communities, and the economy is not lifting the poor up. There is a large group of people living below the poverty line. The average household income in East Oakland is $47,318.50 and the citywide average is $80,758.00. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
Is there such depravity in humans as that one should injure another without benefit to oneself? The lack of education, jobs, drugs, and no affordable housing is leading to the increase in violence and crime. And that is why so many people have turned to drugs and drug dealing. People who are abusing drugs feel hopeless and depressed and they have tried to succeed, but have not been able to because they come from an unstable home, live in a violent community, do not have the resources to go to school, or suffer from a cognitive disability. So, they hustle and turn to drugs to get by and forget about life and to feel good. On the other hand, people find drug dealing lucrative and can make $50,000.00 in one weekend, so they do not want to work for $12.00 an hour when they are making more than a doctor does. However, it is very dangerous because it creates super predators. You now have cartels and drug dealers praying on other drug dealers. In places like Oakland Hills, where my father came from, people have a college degree and average household incomes of $188,000.00. However, because there is so much profit being made in the flatlands by dealers, you have to solve this problem with the youth by encouraging them to stay in school and just say no to drugs and drinking. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
There are no devils but those which are begotten upon selfishness and reared by cunning. The bloody drug warfare has caused people in Oakland to promote this urban comeback and improve its reputation. However, just feet away from these revitalized neighborhoods, crack and other drugs can be bought in board daylight just about anywhere. The killings and the sound of gunfire are now a constant in the life of many people who live in Oakland. People are getting rich on the blood money and ruining the lives of men, women, children, animals and the environment. Bears, deer, mountain lions, and rivers are being poisoned by the marijuana grows and many of them are drying. Also, in Oakland, California, there are ten-year old kids with guns in their underwear drawers. People fear that with the rising rent in Sacramento, lack of affordable housing, increase of breweries, and all the legal marijuana for recreational use that Sacramento, California will face the same fate as Oakland, California. Housing is high, food is expensive, and gas is outrageous. People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Aging alone causes people to lose brain cells and mental processing speed, but there are several other causes that you have more control over. There are some adults who seems to be dumber than tar, but they are still working and the work they produce is awful, and yet they continue to still be employed. When these adults, who did drugs in their youth and have clearly lost their cognitive abilities, are hired on as partners or major parts of the firm, the level of productivity and quality of work seriously declines, and many people sit around wondering why these individuals are still employed, why do they not retire? While we cannot recognize a change in brain speed, many people do know that something has changed with their thinking. And if you sense that you are not as smart or quick as you used to be, you know it is an uncomfortable feeling. Some refer to it as “brain fog,” because they know that they used to feel smarter but the thoughts are just not coming together as quickly. What is happening is that when brain processing seed declines, you are literally thinking slower and remembering less. New information that you are presented with is not as easy to understand, and older memories are harder to recall. At the same time, a decline in brain chemical production causes brain cell death. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
People who seem to enjoy their ill temper have a way of keeping it in fine condition by inflicting privations on themselves. Fewer neurons mean an additional decrease in the capacity to retain information. What is more, not only does an aging brain sometimes think slower, but drug use will also accelerate the deterioration of your brain. There is a separation between thinking and then doing. You know that you have things you need to do but you cannot quite figure out how to get them done, or you forget to take care of them. Once you experience these problems repeatedly, you need to start rebalancing your brain. Aging is the number one cause of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). As you get older, your brain develops chemical imbalances. If you do not act to fix them, you are actually leaving your brain and your body open to get sicker. Any type of addiction, including to alcohol, streets drugs (marijuana, cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, Ecstasy, nexus, ketamine, crack, hallucinogens), overeating, gambling, or even excessive shopping can cause an imbalance. One that is shipped with the devil must sail with the devil. However, mutual toleration and forbearance, in our sentiments, with regard to the legality, or expedience of measures, is the soul of democracy. Consistent, sincere prayer helps us to grow spiritually, shape our character, and strengthen our love for our Father in Heaven. Prayer is among the most valuable gifts we receive as spirit children of a loving Heavenly Father. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
A Person is a Certain Sort of Living Organism
A person is a certain sort of living organism whose identity depends on its biological organization. It is obvious that we all frequently use the term personality. However, if you think that personality means charm, charisma, or style, you have misused them. Many people also confuse personality with the term character, which implies that a person has been evaluated as possessing beneficial qualities, not just as described. If, by saying someone has personality, you mean the person is friendly, outgoing, and upstanding, you might be describing what we regard as good character in our culture. However, in some cultures, it is deemed good for people to be fierce, warlike, and cruel. Psychologist regard personality as a person’s unique long-term pattern of thinking, emotions, and behavior. In other words, personality refers to the consistency in who you are, have been, and will become. It also refers to the special blend of talents, values, hopes, loves, hates, and habits that makes each of us a unique person. So, everyone in a particular culture has personality, whereas not everyone has character—or at least not good character. (Do you know any good characters?) #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
A thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking and essential to it. As far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person. Should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince’s past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, everyone sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only for the prince’s actions. Had I the same consciousness that I saw the ark and Noah’s flood, as that I saw an overflowing of Thames last Winter, I could no more doubt that I who write this now, that saw the Thames overflowed last Winter, and that viewed the flood at the general deluge, was the same self than that I who write this am the same myself now whilst I write…that I was yesterday. Self-concepts provide another way of understanding personality. The rough outlies of your self-concept could be revealed by this request: “Please tell us about yourself.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
In other words, self-concept consists of all your ideas, perceptions, stories, and feelings about who you are. It is the mental picture you have of your own personality. Self-concepts can be remarkably consistent. In an interesting study, antiquated people were asked how they had changed over the years. Almost all thought they were essentially the same person they were when they were young. We creatively build our self-concepts out of daily experiences. Then, we slowly revise them as we have new experiences. Once a stable self-concept exists, it tends to guide what we pay attention to, remember, and think about. Because of this, self-concepts can greatly affect our behavior and personal adjustments—especially when they are inaccurate. For instance, a young lady, who is a student thinks she is stupid, worthless, and a failure, despite getting good grades. With such an inaccurate self-concept, she tends to be depressed regardless of how well she does. However, in some cultures people are apt to engage in self-criticism. By correcting personal faults, they add to the well-being of the group. And when the group is successful, individual members feel better about themselves, which raises their self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
The history of some people in America is a record of an oppressed people from conditions of slavery as a moral-legal order to conditions of existence of a low caste and class within the society. It is against this background that the generalized underprivileged classes awareness and the self-concept of their ethnic identity in America is presumed to have developed into negative self-evaluations. Optimistic self-concept is not out of the ordinary. Good personal experiences can outweigh negative social historical experiences in the development of self-concepts. A belief in God and strong spirituality can uplift one’s consciousness and has great potential for helping people who might feel dejected attain self-realization, which will allow them to overcome the strong negative self-imagery emanating from reflections in other members of society. Maladaptive behavior arises from an underlying psychological or biological dysfunction that makes it difficult for people to meet the demands of day-to-day life. Maladaptive behavior most often results in serious psychological discomfort or loss of control over thoughts, behaviors of feelings. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
People involved psychopathological ritualism rely more heavily on emotional and psychological intimidation to get their ways. This is often out of necessity since the consequences of physical intimidation or outright violence in the public spheres of life become obvious. Whether we call it bullying or abuse, the hallmark of this type of maladaptive behavior is instilling doubt and fear in order to maintain control. The abuser finds that one of the most effect means of instilling doubt and maintaining control is harassing a person into keeping silent about the abuse. Another tactic is to rally others to the cause, getting them to view victims as cowards, weaklings, less than human. People love to blame a person for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency because it takes that bright intense scrutiny off their own emotional and psychological problems, letting them focus instead on someone else. The use of psychological, emotional and physical intimidation to instill self-doubt in order to maintain control, trying to feel superior by isolating an individual from the group and making them question their sanity is a sadistic form of cult and ritual abuse. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
It is a type of systematic psychopathological ritualism when groups of adults target another adult and pry into that person’s life to the point they believe they own an individual and have the power to do as they please. However, there is nothing done in that dark that will been hidden from light. If you are a victim of abuse remember, God will turn “wailing into dancing; remove your sacked cloth and clothed you with joy, and your heart will sing to him and not be silent,” (Psalm 30.11-12). We must give the Lord thanks forever. Asking with shameless persistence, the importunity that will not be denied, returns with the answer in hand. It is the nature of faith to believe God upon his care word…It will not be, says sense; it cannot be, says reason; it both can and will be, says faith, for I have a promise for it. There is no saint here who can out-believe God. God never out-promised himself yet. All things will work together for good. Thank you God that you are faithful to your word and will work mightily in the behalf of those who have faith of God. God’s energy can be labeled and traced in its motion or change of form just as a piece of matter is ticketed so that it can be identified in other places under other conditions. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Faith in God is much like the existence of induced currents and of electromagnetic actions at a distance from a primary circuit from which we draw our energy. Faith is the medium surrounding the conductor (God) as the source for the phenomena. If we believe in the continuity of the motion of energy, that is, if we believe that when it disappears at one point and reappears at another it must have passed through the intervening space, we are forced to conclude that the surrounding medium contains at least a part of the energy, and that it is capable of transferring it from point to point. Thus, the surrounding medium or empty space becomes the arena in which energy moves, and energy, disjoined from matter, was raised in its ontological status from a mere accident or a mechanical or physical system to the autonomous rank of independent existence: matter creased to be the indispensable vehicle for its transport. When you believe, God will see to it that it is taken care of. When you believe, you have the Creator of the Universe fighting your battles, arranging things in your favor, going before you, moving obstacles out of the way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
You could not have made it happen in your own strength, but because you are a believer, the surpassing greatness of God’s power is at work in your life. God is an indeterminate cause of finite properties. Thus, goodness exists in God in a supereminent form, proportionate to his infinite mode of being. God is in all things, not, indeed, as part of their essence, or as a quality, but in the manner that an efficient cause is present to that on which he acts. Hence, God is in all things, and intimately. God to the World is bounded on the one hand by the World of form and on the other by pre-existent matter. His task is to impose the forms on matter, and so construct a rationally ordered whole. Being wholly good, and therefore free from jealousy, he wished everything to be like himself. Since an intelligent being is superior to an unintelligent one, and since intelligence cannot be present in anything that is devoid of soul, he put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, that he might be the creator of a work which was by nature best. God is superhuman, supernatural and has great influence on our lives. God is unquestionably transcendent. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Sensuality Often indulges Impurity—The Hugh O’Connor Act
Who you are often determines what you see. It will be found a common case, that when we have yielded to our instincts, and then have to soothe conscience, we must slaughter somebody, for a sacrificial offering to our sense of comfort. As we perceive events, the brain actively selects, organizes, and integrates sensory information into a photograph or model of the World. A man was in the supermarket when an eight-year-old girl suddenly came running around the corner. She looked back and screamed, “Stop! Stop! You’re killing him! You’re killing my father!” Naturally the witness was interested! He quickly retraced her path, and was greeted by a grisly scene. A man was sprawled out on the floor with another man on top of him. The guy on top was huge and looked only half human. He has his alleged victim by the throat and was allegedly beating his head against the floor. There was blood everywhere, and the witness decided to do the right thing and run to get help. By the time the store manager and the witness returned to the alleged scene of the crime, the police were just arriving. It took quite a while to figure out what happened, but it turns out this was not a crime scene at all. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
The guy sprawled out on the floor had passed out and hit his head. This caused a cut that accounted for the blood everywhere. The man that appeared to be on top of him saw the individual fall and was trying to keep him from further injuring himself, and was also loosening his collar. If the witness had never returned, he would have sworn in court that he saw murder. The little girl’s description completely shaped the witness’s perceptions. This perhaps is understandable. However, the witness will never forget the shock he felt when he met the alleged murderer—the man he had seen a few moments before as huge, vicious, and horrible-looking. It turns out that the alleged murderer was not a stranger after all. He was a neighbor of the witness and they had seen each other several times before and actually knew each other by name. Also, he was not a big man, but a small, nice looking man. The mental process of organizing sensations into meaningful patterns is called perception. This process is so automatic that it can take a drastic misperception to call attention to it. Perception creates faces, melodies, works of art, illusions, and other misrepresentations due to a lack of understanding. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Perception refers to interpretations we take in through our senses. “All in the Family” is a television series with a lead character called Archie Bunker, he is the head of the family, hardworking, and very outspoken. His wife, Edith, is a sweet woman, and like to tell stories to express her feelings so that she is considerate of everyone, hoping they will pick up on the message without outright saying what she means. Edith is a housewife and works very hard to do her job, she organizes her work by the days of the week and because she is a woman she faces discrimination in banking and finding employment outside of the house. Their beautiful daughter Gloria is a loving wife and married to a young man name Michael, whom Archie calls “Meathead.” They all live in the same house, while Gloria works at a department store, which she was fired from for being pregnant, and Meathead is in school studying to become a college professor. Many people would assume that Archie is a bigot because of some of the things he says, but he does not really mean them, it was just the way he was raised. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
Archie is not racist, and he actually stands up for women’s rights, like the time he got Edith’s friend a job at his factory. Archie also supports equality and let his neighbor’s son, who is African American move in with them for a while when his father threw him out for being engaged, to a young lady who is half European American and African American. The reason people think Archie is racist is because of some of the things he says, but he learned these words and ideas from his father and never questioned his father because he was the man who raised him, fed him, provided “bread and bored” for him and protected him. So, in Archie’s eyes his father could never be wrong. And although Archie was conditioned to say certain things, he was a very loving man. When Michael finally got a job as associate professor and had to move from the East Coast to the West Coast, Archie was so very sad and did not want him to take the job. He had actually grown to love Meathead, and did not want to be far from his daughter Gloria and his grandson Joey. Sometimes we have to look beyond the surface to see what is really going on. Actions speak louder than words. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
As I was watching this television show, I would call home to my mother and tell her about the funny things that Archie Bunker did and said. I really enjoyed watching the show because he reminded me of my grandfather and Edith reminded me of my grandmother. And I also started watching “The Jefferson’s,” and when I would go home I will tell my mother about the funny things that George Jefferson did. These shows are new to me, but when I was looking up the actor who played George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley), I found out he had died. And it kind of made me sad. I was talking to my mother about how I see this man on TV every day and he is so very much alive to me, but how he was dead. And it is kind of sad to get attached to people and find out they are dead. Then, she broke the news to me that Archie Bunker is dead, too. I kind of had a feeling. So, I went home to look up information on Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor). Carroll O’Connor was Born 2 August 1924 and died 21 June 2001. He suffered a heart attack. His career spanned over four decades. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
Carroll O’Connor went to the University of Montana-Missoula, he was an actor, producer, and director. His wife is still alive, her name is Nancy Fields O’Connor. In 1962, while he was in Rome filming “Cleopatra,” Carroll O’Connor and his wife adopted a six-day-old- boy, and named him Hugh O’Connor. They took him back to America and at the tender age of 17, Hugh worked with his father on the set of “Archie Bunker’s Place, which was starring Carroll O’Connor, of course. Then both father and son went on to work on the television show “In the Heat of the Night.” Unfortunately, Hugh O’Connor became addicted to drugs and when he could not break the habit, he called his father and told him that he was going to kill himself. By the time Carroll was able to get help to his son, he was already dead. Following his son’s death, Carroll O’Connor spent the rest of his life working to raise awareness about drug addiction. He successfully lobbied to get the state of California to pass legislation allowing family members of an addicted person or anyone injured by a drug dealer’s actions, including employers, to sue for reimbursement for medical treatment and rehabilitation costs and other economic and noneconomic damages. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
The law, known as the Drug Dealer Civil Liability Act in California, went into effect in 1997. It is also referred to as the Hugh O’Connor Act. Hugh O’Connor started the fight against the man who sold the drugs to Hugh. He called Harry Perzigian a partner in murder of Hugh O’Connor. “I can’t forget it. There isn’t a day that I don’t think of him and want him back and miss him, and I’ll feel that way until I’m not here anymore,” said Carroll O’Connor. It would be well I those who stifle their consciences, and commit crimes, would set up a sort of medico-moral diary, and record their symptoms minutely day by day. Such records might help to clear away some vague, conventional notions. Drug addiction is a serious problem in America. An estimated 570,000 people in America die from drug overdoses every year. Many people do not understand why or how other people become addicted to drugs. They mistakenly think that those who use drugs lack moral principles or willpower and that they could stop their drug use simply by choosing to. In reality, drug addiction is a complex disease, and quitting usually takes more than good intentions or a strong will. Drugs can change the brain in ways that make quitting almost impossible, even for those who want to. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
Drug addiction is a chronic disease characterized by drug seeking and use that is compulsive or difficult to control, despite harmful consequences. The initial decision to take drugs is usually voluntary for most people, but repeated drug use can lead to brain changes that challenge an addicted person’s self-control and interfere with their ability to resist intense urges to take drugs. These brain changes can be persistent, which is why drug addiction is considered a relapsing disease—people in recovery from drug use disorders are at increased risk for returning to drug use even after years of not taking the drugs. People who suffer from addiction often have one or more accompanying medical issues, which may include lung or cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, and mental disorders. Imaging scans, chest X-rays, and blood tests show the damaging effects of long-term drug abuse throughout the body. For example, research has shown that tobacco smoke causes cancer of the mouth, throat, larynx, blood, lungs, stomach, pancreas, kidney, bladder, and cervix. In addition, some drugs of abuse, such as inhalants, are toxic to nerve cells and may damage or destroy them either in the brain or the peripheral nervous system. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Drug abuse and mental illness often co-exist. In some cases, mental disorders such as increased stress, depression, or schizophrenia may precede addiction; in other cases, drug abuse may trigger or exacerbate those mental disorders, particularly in people with specific vulnerabilities. Some research suggests that marijuana use is likely to precede use of other licit and illicit substances and the development of addiction to other substances. It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of heroin users have used marijuana (and many other drugs) not only long before they used heroin, but while they are using heroin. Like nearly all people with substance abuse problems, most heroin users initiated their drug use early in their teens usually beginning with alcohol and marijuana. There is ample evidence that early initiation of drug use primes the brain for enhanced later responses to other drugs. And Marijuana use is positively correlated with alcohol use and cigarette use, as well as illegal drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine. Allowing recreational use of marijuana is dangerous because of the aggressive commercialization of marijuana is now rampant and growing. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
The legalization of marijuana increases availability of the drug and acceptability of its use. This is bad for public health and safety not only because marijuana use increases the risk of heroin use, but also because it markets marijuana and an array of increasingly potent products in ever more attractive ways that encourage marijuana use. Legalizing marijuana will have lasting negative effects on future generations, it will increase the national drug abuse problem, including expanding the opioid epidemic. Lawmakers in California “have been darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of their ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more,” (Ephesians 2-17-19). People who are addicted to marijuana are three times more likely to be addicted to heroin. With California allowing recreational marijuana to be sold in California, but it still being considered an illegal drug by the federal government, it seems with the Drug Dealer Civil Liability Act, families and employers can now seek help to pay for the problems and rehabilitation cost of their children and family members. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Abandoned Opportunities are Never Lost
Beauty must be exhibited as a necessary condition of humanity, the luxury to apprehend, for this new value in the soul is the supremest Earthly sum; that refinement makes humans whole complete beings. The elegance and delicacy is the quality by which causes love or some passion similar to it. That love is all there is, is all we know of love; it is enough, the freight should be proportioned to the groove. Things are always beautiful in their own nature. You are the loveliest of all lovies, please stay awhile and tell me your name. And yet by Heaven, I think my love as rare. Love is compared to a single soul inhabiting two bodies. Happiness is what all people desire since it is always the end goal of our activities, it is an unconditional good. It does not depend on external things, but rather on how those things are used. Happiness is not to be found in the goods that one accumulates, or even in the projects that form the ingredients of one’s life, but rather in the agency of the individual who gives life a direction and focus. Human nature will discover what brings out the best in human beings. Offer all in your heart and all of your good intentions to God’s gracious majesty. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
The human soul as it is recognized has beauty in its true origin and destiny. What mystery pervades as well softened by nature’s blessing. Love is always in a state of lack and hence of desire: the desire to possess the beautiful. This state of infinite longing is trained on the truth, and is the path to wisdom. The basic idea has been relished many times by romantics. It fuels the cult of idealized or courtly love, which has been strong since the Middle Ages, in which the beloved has become a symbol of the infinite. Beauty is centered in the human experience of pleasure. Beauty is such an order and construction of parts, as either by the primary constitution of our nature, by custom, or by caprice, is fitted to give a pleasure and satisfaction to the soul. Pleasure and pain. Proud of my broken heart since you did break it, proud of the pain I did not feel until you, proud of my sight since it was the limit of my dream. The focus of my prayer, a perfect, paralyzing bliss constitutes your very essence. It was a dream in which I found myself, a brave palace that was all my own. Whether tomorrow’s day shall break the spell, I will remember always it was your hand that I held. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Beauty is the emblem of what we lack, the mark of an art that speaks to our desire. Beautiful things do not stand aloof, but direct our attention and our desire to everything else we must learn or acquire in order to understand and possess, and they give Godspeed to the sense of life, providing new shape and direction. The Heaven below the Heaven above obscured with rosier hue. Whatever we have seen, heard, or understood, delights, pleases, and ravishes us by this joy so scantily disburse. The pleasure of sense accompanies the ideas of sensation. There is vastly greater pleasure in your complex beauty, a regular and harmonious apprehension, which conforms my soul as if it were a church. Everyone acknowledges we are delighted with your fine face, a just picture, than with the view of any one colour, were it as strong and lively as possible. When you smile, it is more pleasing then the Sun arising among settled clouds, and colouring their edges, with starry hemisphere. When roses cease to bloom, dear, and violets are done, the pleasure of your composition has passed beyond the Sun. When dreaming the night shall pass away. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
God above all others is capable of bringing us happiness, as he is the helper of mankind who eliminates those evils, whose cure brings the greatest happiness to the human race. If life is ever worth living, it is when one has attained this vision of the soul of beauty. And once you have seen it, you will never be seduced again by the charm of gold or flesh, you will care nothing for the beauties that used to take your breath away, and when one discerns this beauty, one will perceive the true virtue, not virtue’s semblance. And one has been brought forth and reared this perfect virtue, one shall be called the friend of God, and if ever it is capable of one to enjoy immortality, it shall then be given to that individual. The greatest happiness is the pure vision of God. This overwhelming experience of truth, beauty, and the divine, will make all the sufferings and tribulations of our lives meaningful and worth experiencing. It is something that is earnestly pursued that comes only after all our adventures in the World. Humble yourself deeply before God, and make virtue a necessity. Be thankful for everything that God has blessed you with and show appreciation by taking great care of it, and you will be rewarded with more. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
The righteous person is happier than the unjust individual. We all certainly prefer to be healthy than unhealthy, but health is nothing but the harmony among different parts of the body, each carrying out its proper function. Justice, it turns out, is a similar kind of harmony, but among different parts of the soul. Injustice on the other hand is a form of civil war between parts of the soul: a rebellion in which one rogue element—the desirous part of our natures—usurps reason as the controlling power. In contrast, the just soul is one that possess psychic harmony no matter what comes one’s way in life; just individuals never lose their inner composure, and can maintain peace and tranquility despite the harshest of life’s circumstances. Happiness is the internal benefits and characteristics rather than external ones. Living a virtuous life brings greater pleasure than living an unvirtuous life. Psychic harmony that results from a just life brings with it greater peace and inner tranquility, which is more pleasant than the unjust life which tends to bring inner discord, guilt, stress, and disease. Simplicity, gentleness and modesty are to be desired in all society—there are some people who are so full of affectation in whatever they do that everyone is annoyed by them. Some people are artificial in all they do and spoil the pleasure of society. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
The higher pleasures of the just life are not merely peace of mind, but the excitement of pursuing knowledge, as it produces an almost Godlike state in the human being. The philosopher is at the pinnacle of this pursuit: having cast off the blinders of ignorance, one is able to explore the higher realm of truth, and this experience makes every merely physical pleasure pale in comparison. Most pleasures are not really pleasures at all, but merely an absence of pain. Some pleasures are not relative because they concern higher parts of the soul that are not bound to the relativity produced by physical things. These are the philosophical pleasures—the pure pleasure of coming to a greater understanding of reality. Wrapped in ever-expanding social networks, we are never far from other people. They are always right beside us, just around the corner, or only a phone call, telegraph, or text massage away. In our intensely social World, it is tempting to assume that a person who is alone is a loser, a loner, a social outcast or, at the very least antisocial or shy. However, is this assumption always justified? Well, it depends. On the one hand, it is true that some people are alone because they are socially fearful, self-conscious, or shy, or otherwise dislike social situations. Many of these people are shy and lonely. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
In more extreme cases, people who shun social interaction and are troubled by their isolation may even be diagnosed with a mental disorder such as agoraphobia. On the other hand, it is also true that some people are alone simply because they prefer solitude. In fact, many of history’s most creative and spiritual individuals have found insight in their solitude. “I think it is important to take a break, you know, from the public eye for a while, and give people a chance to miss you. I want longevity. I do not want to get out there and run myself ragged and spread myself thin,” Aaliayh said when she was asked why she took five years off between albums. She went on to say, “There are times in my life when I just want to be by myself.” Environment factors influence intelligence. Social interaction, the media, the internet and video games, much like most of popular culture is becoming so complex. The rich, complicated experiences can require 40 hours or more of intense problem-solving to complete or understand. People must usually figure out by themselves how to figure out the rules because everything is so cognitively demanding. In the end, popular culture may well be inviting us to read, reflect, and problem-solve more than ever before. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
This person is alone. But is that individual lonely? Do you think time alone is healthy or unhealthy? Can we not be around people sometimes and by ourselves at other times? Why not? Perhaps we could all benefit from some alone time. Quiet time for reflection does seem to be associated with creativity, spiritual growth, problem solving, and self-discovery. In our modern World, social contact is a given. Alone time—now that is another story. Did you know that healthy solitude was on the minds of legislatures when they passed the 1964 Wilderness Act? According to the act, national parks should serve “to preserve natural conditions, to provide opportunities for solitude, and to provide a primitive and unconfined type of recreation.” Although little can be done to change neural intelligence, by adding to personal knowledge and learning to think better, people can become more intelligent. Many psychologists believe that to make full use of innate intelligence a person must have good metacognitive skills. Metacognitive skills mean above and beyond ordinary thinking. Such skills involve an ability to manage your own thinking and problem solving. Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Typically, to better manage our lives, this means breaking problems into parts, establishing goals, and subgoals, monitoring your progress, and making connections. Learning metacognitive skills is the surest avenue to become more intelligent. Learning to relax is a way to lower stress, and emotional support also helps. To reduce stress, rehearse how you will cope with upsetting events. Calmly plan how you will handle each situation—by keeping your attention on the task, by focusing on the issues one at a time. Another helpful strategy involves listening to the upsetting thoughts you have during the day. Then you can learn to combat these worries with calming, rational replies. If I prepare well and calm my worries, my day will go fine. Even if I do not, it will not be the end of the World. My friends will still like me, and I can try to improve the next day. We acquire social motives in complex ways, through socialization and cultural conditioning. The behavior of outstanding artists, scientist, athletes, educators, and leaders is best understood in terms of such learned needs, particularly the need for achievement. This indicates our mind is part of our soul. Call to mind that the day now is beginning and you may work for eternity, and make steadfast resolution to use this day for that end. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Minds Rule the World—But What Rules the Mind?
Human life partakes of the untravellable inscrutable and indeterminate law of God. The only true separate agent intellect is God, whose light of understanding fortifies the human agent intellect. Prayer is the most powerful form of energy one can generate, it supplies us with a flow of sustaining power in our daily lives. Once we have steeped our souls in prayer can every anguish calmly bear. The word “God” stands not for a specific being but for a verbal expression: supreme or highest being. Become aware of God, in whose presence you are while you pray, then take a formula of prayer and recite it with perfect attention both to the words you are saying and to the being you are saying them. Our souls are from God alone; thus human reason and will are free. The human soul is directly created by God. It is an incorporeal substance; operationally, however, the soul functions as the vivifying form of the body. Thus, the name “soul” (anima) is derived not from it essence, but from its operation as form of the body, which is accidental to that essence. Since the soul is a substance in itself, it is immortal, surviving the body because it is not dependent upon it. Rather than saying that the soul is in the body, we should say that the body is in (that is, participates in the existence of) the soul. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The will is placed in the soul, and who can enter there but he that created the soul? Divine commandments and prohibitions, as well as reward and punishment, reflect human freedom to obey and disobey since divine justice and retributions is incompatible with determinism (the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will; meaning that human beings have no free will and cannot be morally responsible for their actions). People who do not believe in God and have wicked ways are the ones who will say that someone is affecting their behavior or compelling them to act in a certain way because they do not want to take the moral nor legal responsibility for their actions. And in their mind, these excuses make them feel better about hurting others or sinning. However, God’s foreknowledge of anything could be the cause of its coming to being, and if that is true, then all things would have to be eternal, having existed always, since God has always known of them. Therefore, God has knowledge of things as they are actually constituted. God is not like man, who profiles individuals, then spends over a decade trying to make his bogus predictions come true. You cannot predict what you do not know, even if you manipulate a subject. God knows before anything happens that it will happen. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Furthermore, God is cognizant of what one’s choice will be before one makes it. Since God’s knowledge is not causative, human will is free. Thus, God can know the outcome of an individual’s future choice without determining such an action. God’s knowledge is incidental. His foreknowledge of a phenomenon is not its cause for coming into being. All human decisions are thus in a free climate—they may just as freely occur as not occur—because God’s knowledge of a future event is not the cause. The compatibility of God’s omniscience with human free will, this knowledge is incomprehensible to the limited human mind, since God’s knowledge is a priori (derived by reasoning from self-evident propositions) and part of his unknowable essence, whereas human knowledge is posteriori (derived by reasoning from observed facts). Thus, humans cannot understand how God can immutably foreknow the possible without rendering it necessary. The power to perform one among a number of alternative actions is given to every human. If one wills to turn oneself into a good path and to be righteous, the power is one’s to do so; and if one wills to turn oneself into a bad way and to be evil, the power lies in one’s control to be that way. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
In reality, the undoubted truth is humans are self-determining beings, as they have deliberate rational judgment and act according to their desire or will, free of external constraints, as long as there is no external compulsion controlling an individual. If God had decreed that a person should be either righteous or wicked or is there were something inherent in one’s nature which irresistibility drew an individual to a particular course, what would be the purpose of life? What would be the purpose of church and The Good Book? What would be the purpose of teaching God’s love and forgiveness? By what right or justice could God punish the wicked or reward the righteous? God determines that one can choose, but not what one chooses. After one exercises his or her freedom, the consequences of one’s choice is determined. The consequences of an individual’s actions, since they are subject to the natural order that God has created or to chance. One’s choice, however, is free. Understanding of choice not only necessitates the act being within one’s power, but also the combination of deliberation, a mental act, and desire. Actions caused by desire are determined by predisposition or habituation, it is also possible that there are actions that are the result of deliberation and choice. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The majority of human actions are not caused, but determined. Even though human choice is determined by a casual chain initiated by God, humans are responsible for their choices. Success is not measured by what an individual accomplishes, but by the opposition one has encountered, and the courage with which one has maintained the struggle against odds. Open your heart to God and you will see the jewels of wisdom and treasures fine. God will intervene and reunite the body with his blessings with joy and life and strength. God will remind one of what it means to be safe in one’s body. And when an individual cannot hear God’s reminders, he will draw closer and speak sublimely to your soul until the pain melts into the comfort of his presence. The Lord helps to leave behind frustration fatigue, bitterness, anger, and sadness. Hear the voice of God and accept his guidance. God will love your mind, body, and soul to a good place. One where individuals will feel his blessings and support. A place where we are inspired to gracious living. Those with broken hearts and fragmented lives will be blessed with healing, as their circumstances will change, allowing peace and prosperity to come into abundance. Those who have plenty will share the richness of their souls. Trust in God’s certainty and become consumed by calmness, as ultimate reassurance cradles you. With God all things are possible. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
What are the comprehensible terrors of humans compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God! The eyes, though they do not tell all, they tell much. The eyes are the keys of character, the mirrors of the soul. God will dispel your fear and end your stress and wipe away any worry from your mind. You and those you care about will find good health and complete recovery. God will make known this healing power and give comfort and shelter. All who are tired will be granted restorative sleep and safe passage. Beauty and pureness are everlasting; they are of God, and can never die. They may for a moment be obscured, but they shall reappear in brighter lustre. Angels have charge over them that they dash not their foot against a stone. Let us turn to the pleasant face of God in what is about us. Some people believe that enjoying their garden is a form of prayer, because it is showing an appreciation for the natural blessings that are provided by God and their soul is silently praying and being thankful for what they are enjoying. That love of Earth, which is a recognition of God. God sees at one view the whole thread of our existence, not only that part which we have already passed through, but that which runs forward into all the depths of eternity. God’s knowledge is perfect and immutable over all that is knowable. And through faith in God, the rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Love is a Tender Dialogue Between the Soul and God
Anyone who denies that the rational or intellectual soul is essentially and of itself the form of the human body is to be deemed a heretic. Every hardship, every joy, every temptation is a challenge of the spirit, that the human soul may prove itself. The great chain of necessity wherewith we are bound has divine significance, and nothing happens which has not some service in working out the sublime destiny of the human soul. Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincides. All events are blessings given to us to learn from. It is through solving problems correctly that we grow spiritually. We are never given a burden unless we have the capacity to overcome it. If a great problem is set before you, this merely indicates that you have the great inner strength to solve a great problem. There is never really anything to be discouraged about, because difficulties are opportunities for inner growth, and the greater the difficulty the greater the opportunity for growth. Spiritual opening is not withdrawal to some imagined realm or safe haven. It is not pulling away, but a touching of all the experience of life with the wisdom and with a heart of kindness, without any separation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
A loving heart is the most essential virtue on the spiritual journey. However, Pygmalion saw so much to blame in women that he came at last to abhor their species, and resolved to live unmarried. He was a sculptor, and had made with wonderful skill a statue of ivory, so beautiful that no living woman held a candle to her beauty. It was indeed the perfect semblance of a maiden that seemed to be alive, and only prevented from moving by modesty. His art was so perfect that it concealed itself, and its product looked like the workmanship of nature. Pygmalion admired his own work and at last fell in love with the counterfeit creation. Oftentimes he laid his hand upon it as if to assure himself whether it were living or not, and could not even then believe that it was only ivory. He caressed it and gave it presents such as young ladies love—bright diamonds. One of the many treasures was a Tiffany & Co. Lyrical Paloma’s Melody collection ring, which was crafted from interlocking bands that gently shift shape as they glide with the body, always falling back together as a whole. The dazzling diamonds traced the five bands of the stunning ring set in 18K white gold, with round brilliant diamonds, carat total weight 4.59. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
What is a loving heart? A loving heart is sensitive to the whole of life, to all persons; a loving heart does not harden itself to any persons of things. He put raiment on its limbs, and jewels on its fingers, and a masterpiece of 34 Lucida diamonds alongside marquise and round diamonds, the opera necklace in platinum with Lucida diamonds carat total weight 73.58; marquise diamonds, carat total weight 12.3; round diamonds, carat total weight 17.24 about its neck. To the ears he hung Tiffany & Co. elegant, timeless, captivating hoop earrings in platinum with round brilliant diamonds, for pierced ears, with a total carat weight of 4.50. Her dress became her, a Draper James Parton Check Mary Beth Halter Dress, and she looked not less charming than when unattired. He then took her to Chateau West, a French, European restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee America, and called her his wife. They enjoyed Chatebriand prime center-cut filet seared and craved table side with mushrooms, asparagus, roasted potatoes, and béarnaise sauce, while cherishing the tradition of Southern France in the charming heartbeat of American South. The heart is like a garden of love. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
When a soul has in it the life of the spirit, then does it bring forth blessings from the divine Lord. When your life is filled with the desire to see the holiness in everyday life, something magical happens: ordinary life becomes extraordinary, and the very process of life begins to nourish your soul. The festival of Venus was at hand—a festival celebrated with great pomp in Tennessee. Where a woman would accept the epithet and its responsibilities represented the goddess’ own heart. She was given her own temple and was to persuade people of both genders and every class, whether married or unmarred, to cherish the traditional responsibilities of married and morality known to please the God and benefit the State. When Pygmalion had performed his part in the solemnities, he stood before the altar and bravely said, “God, who can do all things, give me, I pray you, for my wife”—he dared not say “my ivory virgin.” Venus who was present at the festival, heard him and knew the thought he would have uttered; and as an omen of her favor, caused the flame on the altar to shoot up thrice in a fiery point into the air. If peace is our single aim in all we do, we will always know what to do because we will do whatever will protect and deepen our peace. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
When he returned home, he went to see his statue, and leaning over the couch, gave a kiss to the lips. It seemed warm. He pressed its lips again, he laid his hand upon her delicate hand; the ivory felt soft to his touch and yielded to his fingers like the wax of Hymettus. While he stands astonished and glad, though doubting, and fears he may be mistaken, again and again with lover’s ardor, he touches the object of his hopes. Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment. It was indeed alive! The veins when pressed yielded to the finger and again resumed their roundness. Then at last the votary of Venus found words to thank the goddess, and pressed his lips upon lips as real as his own. The virgin felt the kisses and blushed, and opening her shy eyes to the light, fixed them at the same moment on her lover. Venus blessed them nuptials she had formed, and from this union Paphos was born, from whom the city, sacred to Venus, received its name. Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself. Each one has to find peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
As once with prayers in passion flowing, Pygmalion embraced the stone, till from frozen marble glowing, the light of feeling over him shone, so did I clasp with young devotion bright nature to a poet’s heart; till breath and warmth and vital motion seemed through the statue from to dart. And then, in all my ardor sharing, the silent form expression found; returned my kiss of youthful daring, and understood my heart’s quick sound. Then lived for me the bright creation, the silver rill with song was rife; the trees, the roses shared sensation, an echo of my boundless life. God is to me that creative force, behind and in the Universe, who manifests himself as energy, as life, as order, ad beauty, as thought, as conscience, as love. Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole World seems upset. Inner peace is found by facing life squarely, solving its problems, and delving as far beneath its surface as possible to discover its verities and realities. A space opens our hearts, and when two hearts recognize and acknowledge each other, a connection happens. It happens again and again as other hearts are joined in the loving spirit. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
In works of literature, and to some extent in works of visual art, human beings are depicted and their actions are described. Even when there are no historical counterparts to the characters in a work of fiction, critics quite universally apply a criterion of fidelity to human nature in evaluating novels and dramas. Aristotle’s test of how a person of that kind probably or necessarily would behave (in given circumstances) has been applied to art, at least to literary art, throughout many centuries of criticism. The test is roughly as follows: Would a person, such as has been described thus far in the novel, act, think, feel, or be motivated in the way that the author describes in the circumstances presented? It is often very difficult to decide this question, either because our knowledge of human nature is insufficient or because the novelist has not given us enough clues. However, once a critic is convinced that the character in question would not behave in the way that the author describes him as behaving, he will condemn the characterization (at least with respect to that action or motivation) as implausible, and his negative judgment on the truth of the characterization will count against a favorable judgment of the work. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
The essential identity of every human being is a rational and immortal soul, which is entirely out of the order of the physical creation. The metaphor of the ivory statue explains the relationship between the soul and the body: The soul of a human shows that faith illumined and strong enough can make your dreams come true. It is through the exercise of the power of the soul that human progress is achieved. The soul can discover the realities of things, comprehend the peculiarities of beings, and penetrate the mysteries of existence. All sciences, knowledge, arts, wonders, institutions, discoveries and enterprises come from the exercised intelligence of the rational soul. We are able to reflect divine attributes to the extent that we cleanse the mirrors of our hearts and minds through prayer, the study and application of the sacred scriptures, the acquisition of knowledge, difficulties, and service to humanity. I see life as purely benevolent. I gather that God is life, truth, light. He is love. He is the supreme Good. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible Universe, forms my idea of God. To live a spiritual life, we must first find the courage to enter the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Mystery and Magic at the Winchester Mansion
Whoever has been so fired in one’s own spirit by the overwhelming thought of the Divine Being as to kindle the flames of faith in their heart of their fellow humans, has thereby proved oneself to be a prophet of the living God; and thus every great historic religion dates from a genuine inspiration by the Eternal spirit. The Winchester mansion attracted a recorded 27.5 million visits in 1923, when the state of California only had a population of 4 million (3.991 million to be exact). On its best day, the mansion drew more than 700,000 visitors. That the mansion was built at all, however, was something of a miracle. To build it, the Sarah and William Winchester confronted a legion of obstacles, any one of which could have—should have—killed it long before it was completed. Together, the Winchesters’ and their architects had conjured a dream castle, whose grandeur and beauty exceeded anything each singly could have imagined. The house was furnished with the finest materials and was a showcase of Victorian elegance and taste. It is a maze of Victorian craftmanship—there were gold and silver-plated chandeliers, imported Tiffany art glass windows, German silver and bronze inlaid doors, Swiss molded bathtubs, rare precious woods like mahogany paneled walls, and rosewood and parquet floors. Cabinets and fireplaces made of teak, maple, oak and white ash. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Believe or not, the key to the massive front door was made of solid gold. Early in her residence, Mrs. Winchester planned a grand reception and sent hundreds of gold-engraved invitations to all the prominent valley residents. Visitors wore their best clothes and most subdued expressions, as if entering the great Winchester cathedral. Some wept at its beauty, others rejoiced as if they have a revelation of God, as the moonlight cascaded through the beautiful art glass windows. At that time, the Winchester mansion had 600 rooms, was 100,000 square feet, bisected with a ten-story tower and sat on 161 acres of beautifully landscaped gardens, with spouting fountains and blossoming orchards. A sumptuous midnight banquet was the main feature that night, guests were served beef bourguignon, tartiflette, and quiche on honeycomb platters of crystal glass, 12 inches in diameter made by Tiffany & Co, along with the table being set with a $800,000.00 solid-gold dinner service (which was counted at the end of the night to make sure every piece was put away in one of the mansion’s six huge safes). The dinner was supported by a famous orchestra for added entertainment. The mansions was patrolled by a pack of ferocious Hell Hounds, plus, of course she had her staff or armed bodyguards. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The crowing feature of which was the wine. A 1787 Chateau Lafite, was served out of a Tiffany & Co. refresher set in handblown glass with a 68-ounce pitcher and of course, 13-ounce glasses. For dessert, they tasted a new snack called Cracker Jack and a new breakfast food called Shredded Wheat, and brought elegance and tradition to the table by serving the treats out of 12-inch harmony bowls made of crystal glass by Tiffany & Co. The mansion employed two hundred Egyptian and German employees, who were paid in gold coins. There are still more than 10,000 windows, nine kitchens, 47 fireplaces, which are all hand carved and no two alike. And while no one claimed to like gossip, girl, they gossiped about Mrs. Winchester more than any Wendy interview—and everyone enjoyed it. Talk begat rumors and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose behind the 16-foot hedge of Llanda Villa, the rumors grew to established legend. There were also twenty-five distinct Victorian guest houses on the property. Everything about the Winchester mansion was exotic and, above all, immense. Mrs. Winchester also had a sacred blue séance room, where her secret rendezvous with the spirits took place. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
The house was over a square mile, and some people were more impressed with the Winchester mansion, so much so that it eclipsed the tower of Alexandre Eiffel, Madison Square Garden. Mrs. Winchester is reported to have had dinner with Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Henry Adams, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, Nikola Tesla, Jane Addams, Francis Ellingwood Abbot, and his wife but when President Theodore Roosevelt’s entourage passed, he expressed desire to visit the greatest event in the history of this country since the Civil War, at the World famous mansion, but at the great front door, our nation’s leader was more than astonished to be coldly told by the Butler, “Mrs. Winchester is not home!” The Winchester mansion was one of the first in the World to utilize wood insulation. Mrs. Winchester used brass cornerplates on many stairways to prevent dust pocket, and she invented an inside crank to open and close the outside shutters. Her 46 fireplaces were the first hinged iron drops for ashes and concealed wood boxes. The tier of tubs in her immense laundry had moulded-in wash boards. Mrs. Winchester also rode in regal splendor. First with a Victoria with livered coachman. Then a French Renault, a Buick Town-Car and two Pierce-Arrows, one done in stunning lavender and gold. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Mrs. Winchester had a remarkable memory and knew location of every piece of material in the mansion, even in the vast store-rooms. Some of the built-in innovations were decades ahead of the times. Annunciators installed in all rooms could signal her whereabouts to the servants. Illuminating gas was manufactured by a new process directly on the grounds. She improvised a window catch patterned after the Winchester rifle trigger and trip-hammer. Mrs. Winchester was very strong minded and firm, but always fair and kind. Laziness, theft, gossip or revealed confidence met with instant dismissal. Something magical had occurred in that mansion, and it was beyond doubt, but darkness, too had touched the house. Scores of workers had been hurt or killed in building the dream, their families consigned to poverty (for looting the mansion). And a fire had killed more, and an assassin had allegedly gone on a rampage targeting members of elite classes. Worse had occurred, too, but these revelations emerged only slowly. A murdered had moved among the beautiful things the Winchesters had created and the mansion was so large that he would sneak in and out at night killing guests. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Mr. Abbot’s young wife was drawn to the Winchester mansion by the prospect of business and she and many other young women had disappeared, last seen at the mile-long Winchester mansion. Later, Francis Abbot and his colleagues learned of the anguished letters describing daughters who had come to California and had fallen silent. The press speculated that scores of people must have disappeared within the building. After completing “The Syllogistic Philosophy,” Francis Abbot allegedly committed suicide at his wife’s grave. Even Lizzie Halliday was startled by what the fact that such grisly events could have gone undiscovered for so long, and people started to suspect that there really was supernatural activity going on inside of the Winchester mansion and that the Winchester family was being stalked and killed by ghost. Enough strange things began happening to people to make the claim seem plausible. For the supernaturally inclined, the death of the butler alone offered sufficient proof. America is every whit as sacred as Judea. God is as near to you and to me, as ever he was to Moses, to Jesus, or to Paul. Wherever a human soul has uttered its sincere and brave faith in the Divine, and this bequeathed to us the legacy of inspire words, there is the Holy Bible. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Humans impose their own way of life on nature, and transforms it into something with a human shape. There are in consequence two levels of nature: an upper level of human nature and a lower level of physical nature. We are born into the latter World, but do not really belong to it. It is natural to people to be moral, civilized, and socially disciplined; it is unnatural to live like wild beasts. Human’s present relation to nature can hardly be expressed except by paradox. Certain human qualities, such as chastity, are natural, on the human level of nature. The nature God had originally planned for humans was that of the Golden Age or the Garden of Eden: this was lost at the Fall, but in some measure, is recreated by the disciplines of civilization, morality, religion, and the arts. People are subject to death, and on the physical level of nature there can be no more natural event than death. Yet death was not a part of the order originally planned for humans and in that context death is unnatural. Witchcraft, a perceived facility to summon evil spirits and demons to do harm to others, was linked to religion to the extent that the medieval Church had powers to punish those who dabbled in magic and sorcery. Its priests were able to exorcise those who had become possessed by malign spirits. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
During the 16th century, many people believed that witchcraft, rather than the workings of God’s will, offered a more convincing explanation of sudden and unexpected ill fortune, such as the death of a child, bad harvests, or the death of cattle. Witch-hunting became an obsession in some parts of the country. An estimated total 60,000 people were executed during the witch trials. Those accused of witchcraft were portrayed as being worshipers of the Devil, who engaged in such acts as malevolent sorcery at meetings known as Witches’ Sabbaths. In 1552, Parliament passed the Witchcraft Acts which defined witchcraft as a crime punishable by death. It was repealed five years later, but restored by a new Act in 1562. The circling of the immortal Heavenly bodies in the sky is the most eloquent symbol of the order and harmony of the nature that was originally intended for human beings. In 1736, Parliament passed an Act repealing the laws against witchcraft, but imposing fines or imprisonment on people who claimed to be able to use magical powers. At the level of society (or at least the groups of human beings that existed in the evolutionary past), religious belief promotes cooperation, mutual respect, and solidarity, and these features help the group to survive. God wants us to love our neighbors, as we love ourselves, which means show respect. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Faith Laughs at the Impossible
He fumbles at your spirit as players at the keys before they drop full music on; God loves with a great love the person whose heart is bursting with a passion for the impossible. Faith laughs at the impossible. Life with nothing, but material things and money is lonely, if no one really loves you and you have no real friends. People sit around smiling and talking and pretending to be good people, pretending to be worthy, and others play into the delusion because they temporarily are desirable due to success or money. However, when one uses people and takes all they can get from them and then forgets the individuals who helped them gain success, the same thing will happen to you. The friends that your money and newly found popularity has allowed you to rent will drain you faster than Jerry Brown’s Delta Twin tunnel project will drain the Sacramento River. And then when you are desolate and in need, your reputation will make people want nothing to do with you. While you smile and make people feel sorry for you, you can only work the system for so long. I am happy that I have learned to forgive people who have done me wrong because I do not want bitterness to poison my soul. However, even though I have forgiven some, I will never forget what these individuals did, and just because I have forgiven you, it does not mean that I like you—I simply let go of the pain I was holding on to. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
Successful propagandists have succeeded because the doctrine they bring into form is that which their listeners have for some time felt without being able to shape. In my silence, I would love to forget, but restitution has not come quite yet and with one accord I keep pushing forth. I stretch my heat to heal some more. The soul changes and develops through time as it gains further self-determination and self-awareness. Forgiveness means to restore or give back, it is a restoration of oneself, which reinstates the originating bond and allows us to become present with love. Our belief that we are inherently sinful, a state of separation and alienation that seems beyond correction from Heaven or Earth, causes us to experience guilt over what we believe we have done and even more basically, who we believe we are. As a result of this sense of basic wrongness and wrongdoing, we will fear the punishment we are sure is forthcoming because that is deserved. We are seemingly helpless in the face of the basic anxiety and terror that inevitably accompany the belief in our own guilt. When we are mad, we are typically being blocked by something that has been placed in our way. People are unable to control the past or the future, but who remain firmly based in the present can manage their circumstances more effectively. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
Forgiveness is a great gift. It releases the captive; the guilty sinner is set free from the penalty that was due. Understanding restores broken relationships and welcomes a fresh start, and extends a hand and a promise for some kind of future relationship. Conflicts do not mend themselves. People always want to give a situation time and see if the issue will clear up on its own. Yet, the offense will stay, until forgiveness is extended, processed and worked through in a healthy way. If one never goes through the process of forgiveness and release, the offense and pain will reoccur. However, there may be some situations where unconditional love is not the answer. Some offenses committed may dissolve a relationship forever. There are some shattering sins like abuse that can be so tragic and demoralizing that one may be wise to set boundaries around one’s life to stay away from the offender. God does ask us to forgive other people, but he does not want us putting ourselves in danger because one could suffer a life-threatening attack upon one’s life. Therefore, it is important to use great discernment and wisdom. Do not allow yourself to face situations that are so tragic and horrific that they could change one’s life forever. Loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Lies is lies. However they come, they did not ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to the same. Sin is fun to some for a season and if they do not see negative consequences quickly, they will continue in their poor choices. Making others suffer with fresh pain and gaping wounds from being assaulted with sinful acts can alter the offender’s life also. Forgiveness may be granted, but the law of attraction still operates, often inflicting the ones involved with the assault great pain and loss. Some reaping goes dormant for a while, and then the consequences are revealed at a later time. By forgiving the offender, it releases us from the bondage to the dark side and pain. It enables us to let go of resentment, anger, anxiety, and stress. We are alive and we know it. Although self-awareness gives rise to unbridled awe and joy, it can also lead to the potentially overwhelming dread engendered by the realization that death is inevitable, that it can occur for reasons that can never be anticipated or controlled. Humanly constructed beliefs about reality shared by individuals in a group serve to manage the potentially paralyzing terror resulting from the awareness of death. Therefore, to provide meaning and value we bestow psychological equanimity in the face of death. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
For a moment, think about dying. All the sentiments of Worldly grandeur vanish at that unavoidable moment which decides the destiny of humans. This should intensify one’s striving to protect and increase aspects of Worldviews and self-esteem that are conducive to one’s longevity. This reflecting on the conclusion of life also projects negative reactions towards those who violate cherished cultural values. Write down what you specifically think will happen to you when you die and once you are physically dead. Terror management theory serves a couple of psychological functions, it is a way of trying to increase an individual’s faith and supply a sense of personal worth that is attained by believing that one is living up to the cultural system’s standards and values. Many people are worried about the outcomes of their lives because they are not in a place where they feel secure, but when they see that they are doing all that they can and have increased their faith in God, it removes some anxiety because God made promises to provide for those who believe in him and are living righteous lives. Terror management theory is supposed to be a way to protect against fear of death and allowing, at the same time, creative expansion and development. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Love is faith, and faith, like a gathered flower, will ruthlessly live on. Let your life decision be governed by your own beliefs and values and feelings, your sense of who you really are and who you want to be, and not social engineering designed to scare or shame one out of one’s single status. Loneliness should not be equated with a fear of being loved. Everyone has times when they are alone. Being alone and lonely, and the fear of being isolate for the rest of one’s life can make an individual feel insecure, anxious, and depressed. However, some people accept being alone and realizes that they are unloved and will probably spend their life alone until someone goes out of their way to show compassion and altruism towards this individual, and that action awakens the persons heart and makes the individual value humanity and people more. It also restores their faith and makes them want to get to know people because they see that there are kind people in the World. Also, a person can enjoy their own company. Loneliness can be a response to a specific situation or event, such as the death or extended absence of a loved one. Or it can occur when there is a relationship where there is anger and resentment or a lack of loving communication. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
One of the commonest of daily experiences is that of our recognizing our friends. A less common, though still fairly familiar, experience is the decision that a certain person is or is not the person he claims to be. The problem of personal identity is that of clarifying the principles beings these indispensable processes of reidentification. To reidentify someone is to say or imply that in spite of a lapse of time and the changes it may have wrought, the person before us now is the same person we knew before. When are we justified in saying such a thing? We are never justified because sameness and change are, in themselves, incompatible. It is almost paradoxical to say that something has changes and yet is still the same. There is nothing special about the case of person in this connection, except, of course, that we might, as persons ourselves, be expected to be more concerned about this case or might be expected to have access to some of the facts needed to deal with it. One set of such facts is the private set of thoughts, feelings, and images that each of us has, and rapid are the changes in them which our identity has contend. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
All thinking is merely detour from the memory of gratification (taken as a purposive idea) to the identical cathexis (concentration of emotional energy on an object or idea) of the same memory, which is to be reached once more by the path of motor experiences. Thought must concern itself with the connecting-paths between ideas without allowing itself to be misled by their intensities. However, it is obvious that condensations of ideas and intermediate or compromise-formations are obstacles to the attainment of the identity which is aimed at; by substituting one idea for another they swerve away from the path which would have led onward from the first idea. Such procedures are, therefore, carefully avoided in our secondary thinking. It will readily be seen, moreover, that the pain-principle, although at other times it provides the thought-process with its most important clues, may also put difficulties in its way in the pursuit of indentity (memory) of thought. The pain-principle is this: If you can understand why and how pain works to keep your from organizing your life, then you can address it head-on and create a plan for overcoming it. True faiths rests upon the character of God and asks no further proof than the moral perfections of the one who cannot lie. It is enough that God has said it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Hence, the tendency of the thinking process must always be to free itself more and more from the exclusive regulation by the pain-principle, and to restrict the development of affect through the work of thought to the very minimum which remains effective as a signal. This refinement in functioning is to be achieved by a fresh hyper-cathexis, effected with the help of consciousness. However, we are aware that this refinement is seldom completely successful, even in normal psychic life, and that our thinking always remains liable to falsification by the intervention of the pain-principle. Those of us who are avoiding organizing because it is painful will never make lasting changes in our environment or life. We will continue to peck away at the problem, only to find ourselves stuck in the same self-defeating cycle of disorder. The fulfillment of these wishes will no longer produce an affect of pleasure, but one of pain; and it is just this conversion of affect that constitutes the essence of what we call repression. The memories from which the unconscious wish evokes a liberation of affect have never been accessible to the preconscious (Pcs), and for that reason this liberation cannot be inhibited. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
It is precisely on account of this generation of affect that these ideas are now accessible even by the way of the preconscious thoughts to which they have transferred the energy of wishes connected with them. True and lasting order does not come without going through the struggle against self that leads to change. Without learning about ourselves, becoming aware of our habits, and facing the costs of our disorganization, we cannot emerge from our state of disorder. As we struggle through our process we gain skills and make new commitments to establish and protect our quality of life. Once we have gone through the pain, we do not particularly want to repeat it, so we become more committed to maintenance. The blessing of the pain principle is that you will emerge from your process with greater self-awareness and newfound skills to create and maintain order. We have developed our psychology on our own responsibility. Perception then transforms into spiritual vision. This evolution evokes a supportive response from the highest levels of consciousness for it takes great power to overcome the gravity of the Earthly life and its habits of perception. The act of worship is an entreaty and invitation to these higher energies for assistance in one’s spiritual endeavor. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
Faith is living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that an individual could stake one’s future on it a thousand times. Take the limits off of God and release your faith in uncommon ways. God is extraordinary, and believe that he will increase your health, prosperity, and happiness, taking you forward into the fullness of your destiny. There is an inner light that shines through the mist of human beliefs and frees individuals from the bondage of fear and limitation. Walk with God, and learn all the ways of life and freedom. Travel with God from this day, and be united in the perfect bonds of everlasting unity. And the manifestation of the spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the spirit of message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge of the same spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, at another gifts of healing by that one spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another interpretation of tongues. All these are the one of one and the same spirit, and God gives them to each one as he determines. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
Is the Historic Goldfield Hotel Haunted?
Perhaps it is not the souls of the dead, wandering in another dimension, but rather beings from other planets who are trying to establish a relationship with Earthlings but who, because they are made of an intangible matter, can easily be confused with disembodied spirits, which essentially, they are. Mental events may be not causes of physical events but only symptoms of underlying physical events that are the real causes. Despite progress, we are at the present far from understanding the brain. Mental events can have effects either on other mental events or on physical events. However, these effects have been confined within the person (although these mental effects might incidentally result in further effects outside the person. Cases where a mental event of one person directly affects the thought of another person or directly affect some body other than his or her own would be cases of parapsychological phenomena—telepathy and psychokinesis, respectively. Perception nevertheless normally gives us knowledge of material objects and properties. With a few fairly obvious test, like touching and looking closely, or using the evidence of other percipients, we can establish certainty or else correct the first sight or hearing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
In the ghost town of Goldfield, Nevada, USA there is reportedly a haunted hotel. The town Goldfield was born when gold was unearthed in 1902. In 1908, the Goldfield hotel was built on the site of a hotel that had previously burned down. The four-story, 154 room hotel cost an estimated cost of $10,000,000.00 (adjusted for inflation). The Goldfield hotel was so luxurious, boasting of mahogany paneling, crystal chandeliers, black leather upholstery, carpets, rooms with private bathrooms. There were gilded columns throughout the hotel, and gold-leaf ceiling, and besides the Winchester mansion, the Goldfield had one of the first Otis elevators. The Goldfield was so fancy that they imported chefs from Europe and was considered one of the most luxurious hotels in America. It appealed to society’s elite, making it an instant success. Champagne is said to have flowed down the front steps in the opening ceremony. Shortly after the hotel was built, it was sold to mining mogul George Wingfield, the owner of the Goldfield Consolidated Mines Company. George Wingfield was a multimillionaire by the age of 30, a power political figure, and owned a chain of banks, several ranches, and many other hotels. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Reportedly, there are several ghosts at the historic hotel. The infamous is a lady named Elizabeth, and according to legend she was a beautiful woman, with long black hair, thin build and of European descent. She and George Wingfield had become romantically involved and she became pregnant. So, George allowed her to stay in the hotel in room 109, where she gave birth to a baby. One day, George overhead Elizabeth telling another man the baby was his and discovered that they had plans to marry. Later on that evening, he allegedly beat Elizabeth, chained her to a radiator, and took her baby away. Bloody, bruised, and with a broken spirit, Elizabeth kept screaming, “Where’s my baby, where my baby?” George eventually got tired of her crying and entered room 109 with a tied burlap sack, and threw it on the floor and replied, “Here’s your baby, bitch!” And left her in the room to die. People say that Elizabeth still paces the hallways to this very day, calling out to her child. Two more ghost who reportedly committed suicide on the third floor of their hotel rooms have also be spotted. One woman hanged herself, the other is a man who jumped to his death from the hotel. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The Goldfield is also supposedly haunted by a man called “The Stabber,” who attacks people who enter the kitchen with a large knife. And George Wingfield also makes his presence known in the antiquated hotel, people usually see him near the lobby and say when his apparition appears they smell cigar smoke, and cigar ashes are supposedly frequently found in a room on the first floor. Illusions, comprising illusion proper, hallucinations, and cases of the relativity of perception, have traditionally been the most important origin of the major problem of perception. Illusions show that perception is never absolutely certain, and the appearances we are aware of in illusions, especially hallucinations, cannot be identified with the real properties of objects and therefore but private objects of awareness, or sensa (indeed, all perception involved awareness of sense which in correct, or veridical, perception belong to the object or correspond to its properties). However, if you believe in ghost, you are not alone. Cultures all around the World believe inspirits that survive death to live in another realm. Millions of people believe. A recent Harris Poll found that 43 percent of Americans believe in ghosts. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The Goldfield Hotel still stands today. Over the years the hotel has changed hands several times, with each new owner promising to restore and reopen the historical property. A rancher from Carson City called Edgar “Red” Roberts bought the hotel for $360,000.00 USD in 2003. Mr. Roberts had plans to restore the bottom two floors of the hotel, which was supposed to cost an estimated $1 million, and reopen the hotel to the public. The plan was to include 40 guest rooms, a casino, and a café. However, to this day, the haunted Goldfield Hotel left looking spooky and in need of renovation. Many believed that to violate the Earth was dangerous because the Earth harbors ghost and spirits. Belief in underground spirits who sometimes assist and pestered miners is widespread. There is an unsettling suggestion that the ground beneath the Goldfield hotel is in fact riddled with tunnels and crawl-spaces, and there is a trap door in the hotel that opens to a graveyard, and the trapdoors as well are featured in the mines. This is good use, either against thieves, or prying knaves, who may come at unreasonable times to see any work, and thereby take the occasion to do the individual damage. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
So, the calls to the ghost are a sort of debunking of both the ghost’s authority and the authority of illusion. The discarding of illusion, the effect is still frightening. People have tried to (or claimed to) communicate with spirits for ages; in the Victorian era, it was fashionable for the upper echelons to hold seances in their parlors after tea and crumpets with friends and spiritual advisers. Many people are convinced that they have experienced something uncanny, whether at the Goldfield hotel or somewhere else—something inexplicable, extraordinary, mysterious, bizarre, or eerie. In such cases and in hallucinations one has to admit that one seems to see an object quite different from that present to the sense. Perception is more than just sense experience, for we identify and interpret what is given (that is, it involves inference from implicit data, and the conclusion of such an inference must be a judgment). Perceiving, usually tends to be a private mental activity or process because it is not an overt one, is not an activity at all and this provides no evidence of a mental World. However, other researchers claim that the reason ghosts have not been proven to exists is that we simply do not have the right technology to find or detect the spirit World. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
But What does He Owe Me for Five Years of Bread and Bored?
Fire exists the first in light, and then consolidates—only the chemist can disclose into what carbonates. Clearly, certain sites are endowed more richly than others. The natural beauty wandered through the landscape like morning glory through the picket of a fence. The depth and subtlety of this landscape with gardening features, terraces, fountains and statues produces an affect on the mind between eternity and time. The heart asks for pleasure first. The purer the beauty, the more it will be out of the World. The lake was lovely and always changing hue and texture, and it was also a novelty capable of amplifying the drawing power of exposition. Many visitors from the heart of the country will, until they arrive here, never have seen a broad body of water extending to the horizon; will never have seen a vessel under sail, nor a steamboat of half the tonnage of those to be seen hourly passing in and out of the harbor; and will never have seen such effects of reflected light or clouds piling up from the horizon, as are to be enjoyed almost every Summer’s day on the lake margin of the city. And the sweetest in the gale is heard, as it sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all perching hope in the soul. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Indeed, space is an obscure representation of the essence or essential presence of the divine being. When walking through a charming and lush forest setting, one’s thoughts can easily take flights of fancy and shed the layers of city life. The essential feature of the soul is that it initiates movement. To do this, however, it must be where the body is. This is possible because unlike material objects spirits can penetrate both other spirits and material object, contracting or expanding like Newton’s aether, as the occasion makes necessary. Thus, God, an individual mind, and a material object can be all present in the one place without losing their independence as substances. Spirit can be regarded as a sort of fourth dimension; a body which contains a spirit has a certain spissitude, or density of substances. The behavior of living organisms cannot be derived from a collection of particles; spirits are the true cause of all activity. This does not mean that all activity is the work of conscious rational beings. Spirits exists at various levels; seminal forms, which are neither sensitive nor rational but are still capable of initiating motion, are responsible for actions at the level lower than animal feeling. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Pursuing what seems to be in accordance with right reason, our capacity to discover what actions accord with reason and our inclination toward those actions that flow from a special boniform faculty. Reason itself cannot incite action; virtuous action can be instigated only by the passional side of our nature. The ultimate ground of all virtue is intellectual love. You may seem alone, but you are not. There are always eyes watching you. Do not wish you were a priority in someone’s life because you are God’s number one priority. If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end. Most people give up just when they are about to achieve success. Do not feel badly because you are not where you want to be right this moment. Do not focus on the disappointment, failure, or mistakes. They are all part of God’s plan to prepare you for victory. Keep moving forward, doing your best and being your best, and honor God. Be determined and persistent, and God will provide for your future. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
The knowledge of the soul admittedly contributes greatly to the advance of truth in general, and, above all, to our understanding of Nature, for the soul is in some sense the principle of life. Fortunes, as well as reputations, are at stake. Look, life is not fun and games. We could be running multimillion-dollars businesses, and we are not laughing all the way to the bank. Our economy is based on planned obsolescence. God knows what he is doing in your life and put a dream in your heart. There is a promise inside of your soul, and deep down you know that you will succeed. Our aim is to grasp and understand the soul’s essential nature and its properties; of these some are taught to be affections proper to the soul itself, while others are considered to attach to the being owning to the presence within it of soul. To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things to do in the World. The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest. Meaning we will be successful. Righteousness goes before us and prepares the way for our footsteps. Adversity causes some to break; others to break records. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Some philosophers have argued that mental events after death are logically impossible. They contend that a mind or mental events presuppose a person who has them, and what is meant by a person entails a body. A typical line of reasoning would be the following: the concept of a person presupposes criteria for identifying the person, and in the end the criteria will have to be physical if we are to identify people. It does, however, seem perfectly possible and quite graphically describable, too, that I should survive my own death and witness my own funeral. That is why we do not speak ill of the dead. There must be a reason for that superstition. So, the disembodied existence of a person seems to be logically possible. Yet, one the other hand, there does appear to be a difficulty in conceiving of disembodied existence as the general rule, since it is hard to see how we would even have a concept of persons in such a situation. It is only through their bodies that we come to know of the existence, identity, and nature of other persons. Perhaps the concept of a person logically requires that there be at least some cases of people with bodies, but it does not require that all persons have bodies. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
In favor of the hypothesis of survival, there is a large number of reports, investigated with varying degrees of neutrality, of messages from and apparitions of people who have died. In many of these cases it is reported that information was transmitted that only the dead person could have had. It is argued that such occurrences are best explained by postulating that the persons involved survived their physical deaths and are able to communicate with us. Even if such cases did stand up under scrutiny, we would be faced with the difficult problem of distinguishing them from retrospective clairvoyance and telepathy, which in turn, cannot easily be distinguished from usual forms of physical causation. Evidence against the hypothesis of disembodied existence is the fact that certain neural mechanisms are necessary for consciousness. When these mechanisms are interfered with, there is temporary loss of consciousness. Since all neural mechanisms cease functioning entirely in death, it is reasonable to think that consciousness ceases entirely. It is true that there is still the possibility that only as a person has a body that his or her consciousness dependent on it and when the body dies the person is free from this dependency. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
However, this simply points out an inductive argument from known cases to as yet unknown cases, and such induction runs some risk of going wrong. General inductive procedures justify not giving much weight to this possibility. Yet, many people believe that we can gain insight into the mind-body problem by considering the analogous issues involved in machines. The achievements in machine technology are truly remarkable. Machines are able to store enormous amounts of information and perform calculations at incredible speeds. Machines have developed theorems (sometimes more ingeniously than their designers), play games (sometimes more skillfully than their inventors), translate spoken words into different languages, compose music, and write poems. Machines have been constructed that learn from past experiences, adapt their programs to new circumstances, and develop new ways of solving problems. The suggestion might be made that if we can explain machine output solely in physical terms, and if there is no difference in principle between machine output and human behavior, then it follows that we can explain human behavior in physical terms. Might it not be that when we have machines that complex, we would have just as much reason for believing in the intervention of mental events in the case of machines as we have in the case of humans? This remains to be seen. Some thinkers, accepting both premises that the soul is both originative of movement and cognitive, have compounded it of both and declared the soul to be a self-moving number. The same power that raised Christ from the dead lives on inside of us. God is greater than anything that is against us, and controller of our destinies. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Randolph Harris II International Institute 