Home » behaviour (Page 89)
Category Archives: behaviour
The Bedroom Scale
Our minds shine not through the body. She managed his correspondence and kept his books, while he concentrated on getting his building ready for the World’s fair. They dined together in his office, on meals brought in from the across the street. He touched her and caressed her and let his eyes fill with tears of adoration. Then they sat down to pray: Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us today, our daily nourishment. Forgive our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but delivers us from the evil one. Can the mind forget the history of its own life? For if you forgive people when they sin against you, your Heavenly father will also forgive you. However, if you do not forgive people their sins, your father will not forgive you. As deep cries unto deep, so my thoughts cries unto thee and you do answer. I am renewed and refreshed; my whole being responds to your love, and I am complete in thee. All my ways are guarded and guided, and I shall live with thee eternally. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
The road to misery is often through the most pleasing paths. When God breathed his life into you, he put something in you to give you an advantage. There is something about you that makes you stand out, something that draws friendly people and opportunity, something that causes you to overcome obstacle, to accomplish dream. Sometime I wonder how did I get to where I am? This is not just my own ability. All of our knowledge is based on our experience. I have good fortune to meet with success, I shall proceed to the examination of morals, politics, and criticism. All of our simple ideas in their first appearance are derived from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent. I first make myself certain, by a new review, of what I have already asserted, that every simple impression is attended with a correspondent impression. The application of ideas beyond their nature proceeds from our collecting all their possible degrees of quantity and quality in such an imperfection manner as may serve the purpose of life, which is the proposition I proposed to explain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The skeptic who maintains that we cannot know there are other persons is already contradicting oneself by supposing in referring to the plural, we. If such-and-such is not instance knowing, then no one has ever known anything and there cannot be such a thing as knowing. When these norms are arranged I order of their indefeasibility, it would seem that where observation unequivocally reveals just that when we look at an inkwell we directly perceive a sense datum and that is claim is indefeasible in that observation unequivocally presents us with a sense datum. The image in the mind is only that of a particular object, though the application of it in our reasoning be the same, as if it were universal. The postulation of God and immortality can by no means insure that the ultimate moral goals will, in fact, be reached, even though it was precisely to insure their attainment that the postulates were made. The moral order is an objectively valid order, that moral values belong to the nature of reality, and the history of the World process is fitted to realize this order. If we were to assume that the goal of World-process is the realizing of happiness, there would be the weightiest empirical evidence against us. #RandolpHarris 3 of 5
With moral worth and goodness, it is different. Conditions that work against happiness may work for, not against the developing, trying, and testing of moral fiber. The very imperfection of the World is an argument pointing to the theistic conclusion. There remains yet a gap between the claim that the Universe works toward a moral purpose and the full claim that God exists. Belief in God is presupposed by belief in an objective and eternally valid morality. If the moral law is eternally valid, and valid whether we recognize it or not, how could this eternal validity stand alone, not embodied in matter and neither seen nor realized by finite minds, unless there were an eternal mind whose thought and will were therein expressed? One can readily agree that the World as we experience it is better adapted to be a vale of soul-making than a hedonistic holiday camp. Yet, there are difficulties about even the soul-making view. Some human suffering (the unmerited suffering of young children, for instance) cannot always be treated plausibly as developing moral fiber, or as realizing any other moral value. #Randolphharris 4 of 5
The natural environment can figure as the destroyer of moral personality as well as its preserver and nourisher. The validity of the law to an eternal mind, surely contains a confusion of the logical and psychological. Christianity provides a uniquely helpful way in which we can see the unlovable neighbor, admit one and about our neighbor, we bring our view of one into relation with God’s action—his action in creating our neighbor and his constant and costly redemptive action on our neighbor’s behalf. Good and evil are relative to the person who uses these words; and when people are joined together in a commonwealth, then good and evil are subject to the determinations of the commonwealth. As for our motives for pursuing good and avoiding evil, they may be summed up as self-interest. Were it to our own interest to purse what others, or the commonwealth, have designated as evil, we certainly would. Our observation of an instance of virtuous action is the occasion for a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction, which enables us to distinguish that action as virtuous. The rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Heaven Below and the Heaven Above—I speculate No More
We may summarily reject all miracles, prophecies, narratives of angels and demons, and the like, as simply impossible and irreconcilable with the known and universal laws which govern the course of events. There is a sympathetic power in all states of mind, and they who have reached the deep secret of eternal rest have a strong power of imparting calm to others. His absence broke her heart. She had fallen in love. His visits thrilled her, his departures destroyed her. She was perplexed—had seemed to be conducting a courtship and even urged her to abandon her studies and run with him to Shanghai, China, but now he was gone and his letters came only rarely. She gladly would have left London under the flag of marriage, but not under the reckless terms he proposed. He would have made an excellent husband. He was affectionate in ways she rarely encountered in men, and he was adept at business. She missed his warmth and touch. As she gazed out of her window and the sparkling stars, she said to herself, “Let me not mar that perfect dream by an auroral stain, but so adjust my daily night that it will come again.” #RamdolphHarris 1 of 7
He was credulous inasmuch as the miracles, as they are narrated, cannot, in the light of our modern knowledge of the uniformity of nature, be accepted as historical facts. Protagonists of the supernatural, and opponents too, take it for granted that well all possess some natural (as oppose to revealed) way of knowing that and where the unassisted potentialities of nature (as opposed to a postulated supernature) are more restricted than the potentialities which, in fact, we find to be realized or realizable in the Universe around us. We must be careful not to overpsychologize our poltergeist agents. As many critics of psychoanalysis have complained, it is easy to find psychopathology and stress conditions anywhere one looks for them. Now that parapsychologist expect to find psychopathology, it is not surprising that they do find it in these cases. If poltergeist outbreaks are simply due to young people with repressed hostility who are under psychological stress, we should expect to see whole school buildings come crashing down by the dozens each year around finals time. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
At any given time, there are probably hundreds of thousands of young people who have more severe psychological disturbances or who are enduring far greater stress than any of the poltergeist agents who have been studied. The real question is, what are the catalysts that set off so very few individuals, turning them into poltergeist agents? What is it in their psychological (or physical) makeup that can cause such gross violations of the laws of physics? It must be work effected in a manner different from the common and regular mode of providence, by the interposition either of God himself, or some intelligent agent superior to human beings. The occurrence of poltergeist is to serve for the proof or evidence of some particular doctrine, or in attestation of the authority of some particular person, then surely poltergeist agents must be conceived in this way. It is only and precisely insofar as it is something really transcendent—something, so to speak, which nature by itself could not contrive—that such an occurrence could force us to conclude that some supernatural power is being revealed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Poltergeist activities are not essentially overridings, but signs. If a sign is to signify to the unbeliever, then there must by some means independent of the doctrinal system itself by which the signs may be identified and read. It is necessary to insist on two fact that seem to be often overlooked—namely, that part of the price which must be paid for this method of interpretation is the sacrifice of the use of these incidents as independent evidence of the genuinely revelatory character of the doctrines; and that such a sacrifice presumably entails the rejection of sensible operations, which, being above the comprehension of the spectator, and contrary to the established course of nature, is taken to be the divine. Nature is the will of God, and hence that a portent is not contrary to nature, but contrary to our knowledge of nature (Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura). Neuroelectric discharges become blocked in the body and are instead reflected in the surrounding environment. When the agents cannot deal with disturbances in the traditional way, such as headaches, vomiting, and seizures, then the poltergeist are activated within the agent and the energy is transferred to something in the environment that reflects the disturbance that the body is trying to resolve. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
People who are basically possessed or haunted by a poltergeist indicate signs of abnormality in their brainstem, and it may be associated with alterations in brain structure and function. There is no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life than that derived from the testimony of people and the reports of eye-witnesses and spectators. Yet all testimony must ultimately be subject to assessment by the supreme court of experience. Certainly, there are a number of circumstances to be taken into consideration in all judgments of this kind. Yet the ultimate standard by which we determine all disputes is always derived from the experience and observation. The weight of the testimony required must depend on the apparent credibility of the events reported. If the events are in some way marvelous and rare, then the testimony for them has to be treated with more circumspection than the witness to everyday occurrences. A poltergeist agent is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a poltergeist, from the very nature of the fact, is as an entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
However, if there is sufficient historical evidence to establish that a poltergeist agent exists or there is real paranormal activity, like the universal eight-day eclipse that had occurred in January 1600, then our present philosophers [scientists], instead of doubting the fact, ought to receive it as certain; and ought to search for the causes whence it might be derived. Therefore, it seems more likely that the poltergeist are not of a violation of the laws of nature, but rather, and more weakly, of violation of the usual course of nature. Divine companionship—I have an inner friend who walks and talks with me daily. He is not afar off, but is within me, a constant companion. I shall never become lonely, for my friend is always near. I have but to speak and he answers. Before ever my lips spoke, he told me of his love. Oh, my kind friend, how dear to me is your presence. The spirit within me is my friend. Eternal peace, undisturbed and quiet, I feel you calm. I would enter your gates with joy and live in peace in your house. Eternal and blessed presence, illumine my mind and command my will that my soul may be refreshed and that my life may be renewed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
One blessing had I, than the rest so larger to my eyes that I stopped gauging, satisfied, for this enchanted size. It is the limit of my dream, the focus of my prayer—a percent sustaining bliss contended as despair. I knew no more of want or cold, phantasms both become, for this new value in the soul, supremest Earthly sum. The Heaven below the Heaven above obscured with ruddier hue. Life’s latitude leant over-full; the judgment perished, too. Why joys so scantily disburse, why paradise defer, why flood are served to us in bowls—I speculate no more. Lover of my soul, and keeper of my spirit, none can separate us, for we are one. So shall your wisdom guide me, your presence dwell within me, your love keep me and your life envelop me now and forever for. It is forever calm and peaceful. It is, therefore, a principle of complete satisfaction which knows no unsatisfied desire. The only appetite or desire of Infinite Mind is for the complete manifestation of its own constructive contemplation. My life is a part of the Universal Life; its peace, calm and satisfaction are manifesting in and through me now in absolute perfection. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Deprivation Dwarfism
All hours and all seasons are alike to the genuine lover of nature. The Kingdom of God is also revealed through you and me. If we have faith, we will be able to accomplish great tasks, and nothing will be impossible. Faith centers us in God’s mind. However, if we focus on how the picture looks and only consider our means and resources, but not God, we limit our blessings to that which has already been accomplished, and few miracles will be manifested. The person who prefers the highroad (virtue) to a more reputable way of making one’s fortune, does it because one imagines the one easier than the other. When, through intuition, faith finds its proper place under Divine Law, there are no limitations, and what are called miraculous results follow. Measurements of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length. Resources do not depend upon gross amounts, but the proportions of spendings to takings. If we are to have an active faith—the faith of God instead of merely a faith in God—our thought must be centered in the Universal mind of God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
We are convinced that under God’s law all things are possible, if we only believe, and work in conformity with Godly ways. Such a faith does not spring full-glory into being, but it takes days, years, months, and decades to develop and it grows by knowledge and experience. No matter what seems possible to us, we must cling steadfastly to the knowledge that God is great, and God is all, underneath, above and round about. There is no place but the Universe; no limit but the limitless; no bottom but the bottomless. Miracles seem impossible, just because they break the laws of nature. A miracle is something which would never have happened had nature, as it were, been left to its own devices. A miracle can be worked only by God or by his specially deputed agents, and miracles have in fact occurred and they are legitimate and miraculous. They are a striking interposition of divine power by which the operations of the ordinary course of nature are overruled, suspended, or modified. Mental or spiritual treatment should bring into actual manifestation the health and happiness which are mankind’s normal and divine heritage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Such healing includes the emancipation of the mind from every form of bondage through a new concept of God, which causes the heart to beat with joy and happiness. Every problem is primarily mental, and the answer to all problems will be found in spiritual realization. Have a full sense of sacredness in your trust of the Lord; this means being confident and patient, which impels him to pour out his soul. This is the key stone to all spiritual progress as well as success in the World. It means letting go of resistance and finding the joy of going one hundred and one percent. Unpleasantness is due to resistance, and when resistance is let go, it is replaced by feelings of strength, confidence and joy. There will be a release of enormous energy, an emergence into an almost enlightened state in which all is happening of its own. One will experience a peace, a serenity, and an increased sense of security. Truth is only relative and not absolute. All truth is only a certain level of consciousness. For instance, to forgive is commendable, but at a later stage, one sees that there is actually nothing to forgive. This is an attitude of withdrawal of emotional entanglement in Worldly affairs. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
In a broad philosophical sense, every human being begins to die the very moment his or her life beings. Although everyone is inexorably marching toward his or her demise, the trek can be significantly hastened or slowed by factors which appear extraneous to that inevitable biological process. While certain forms of adult death occur abruptly and without precursors, most fatalities typically involve long period between onset of the illness, the appearance of symptoms, and eventual death. Certain forms of death, however, appear in a manner which tends to obscure this latter reality. For example, heart attacks often strike an individual suddenly, with few apparent warning signs, leading to the widespread illusion that the precursors of such attacks also developed rapidly. And yet, the opposite situation more closely approximated clinical reality. Typically, years before a heart attack occurs, the process of coronary atherosclerosis is already slowly placing the individual at greater and greater risk. While certain physical and behavioral factors have been singled out as contributors to the process of coronary atherosclerosis, by no means have the exact mechanisms been identified. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Nor is it at all clear exactly when coronary atherosclerosis begins, although it has been established that by age 50 most American males already have what the National Heart Institute has labeled moderately advanced coronary atherosclerosis. Coronary atherosclerosis is fatty deposits that can clog the arteries in the heart, which restricts the blood flow. They are made of cholesterol, fatty substances, cellular waste products, calcium and fibrin (a clotting material in the blood). Exactly how atherosclerosis begins or what causes it is not known, but some theories have been proposed. Many scientists believe plaque beings when an artery’s inner lining (called the endothelium becomes damaged. Three possible causes of damage are: elevated levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood, high blood pressure, and cigarette or drug smoke. Smoke has a big role in the growth of atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries, aorta, and arteries in the legs. It makes fatty deposits more likely to form and to grow bigger and faster. Eventually, it causes significant blockages. Pain in the chest or legs when you exert yourself is the usual symptom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
The worst happens when plaques suddenly rupture, allowing blood to clot inside an artery. In the brain, this causes a stroke; in the heart, a heart attack. It seems possible that atherosclerosis, once viewed as a degenerative disease restricted to older people, may even begin during childhood. By late adolescence some people already have reached an advanced stage of this disease. Autopsies performed on U.S. service members killed on the battlefield during World War II revealed that a startling number of these young individuals, mostly in their early twenties, already had developed significant coronary atherosclerosis: their coronary arteries resembled those usually seen in men over 60 years of age. Even now, the reasons for their premature development of this disease have not been clarified, in part because the necessary research studies have not been conducted. Even today, a large number of young people without symptoms have evidence of atherosclerosis. A study shows 52 percent of people have some atherosclerosis. It is present in 85 percent of those older than 50, and 17 percent of teenagers have it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
No concept is more central to psychiatric and psychological thinking than the belief that human personality and emotional development are significantly influenced by childhood experiences. It is possible that in addition to childhood experiences, that blood pressure, diet, and exercise regiments can possibly be linked to the development of coronary heart disease. Excessive drinking, stress, smoking, not eating fruits and vegetables, not exercising regularly, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol, and loneliness are linked to coronary heart disease. In a report entitled “Deprivation Dwarfism,” Frederick II, ruler of Sicily in the thirteenth century, believed that all people were born with a common language, such as Hebrew. In order to test his theory, he took newborn infants away from their natural mothers at birth and gave them to foster mothers. He ordered these foster mothers to care for these babies physically, but never to speak to them, so that he might learn what language they would naturally speak. The experiment was, however, a failure—all of the children died. For they could not live without petting and the joyful faces and loving words of their foster mothers. Childhood experiences are vitally important to the ultimate development of adult personality. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
The psychiatric research clearly indicates that bereavement, divorce, sudden loss of love and lack of love, chronic human loneliness are by no means felt only by adults. Children suffer from the loss of love and lack of love perhaps more than adults do. There can be extensive physical, emotional, and intellectual damage that can result from a child’s separation from its parents (especially from the mother) for extended periods of time, particularly if this separation occurs in the first few years of life. Marasmus, or physical wasting away, is usually caused by infants who suddenly lost their mothers. Some infants who suddenly lost their parents would refuse to eat and would eventually die when forced fed. Anne Winchester was born 15 June 1866 and died 24 July 1866 from marasmus. Perhaps she died at a young age from the stress she endured from being haunted by the ghost of the Winchester rifle. It is said that babies pick up on their parents’ emotions also. Then William Wirt Winchester passed away in 1881 at the young age of 44, leaving his wife Sarah Winchester nearly $600,000,000.00, adjusted for inflation. Sarah Winchester used this money to build the beautiful Winchester mansion and lived to be 82. That shows life is extended when you focus on something you love. The rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
That Wretched, Rash, Intruding Fool, Farewell! I Took Him for Better!
In human nature, the Scriptures center on the fact that so many different interpretations are possible and are accepted by so many different sincere believers. Traditional religion, therefore, is not infallible but only probable, as is all history. Reason and tolerance are the only cures for vindication of human nature. In all behavior there occurs an unrestricted concomitance of physical and physical events. Hence, each behavior episode is susceptible of interpretation in both physiological and psychological terms. There are two stories to be told, each throwing light on the other, but neither story as such makes the other what it is. The twofold story is really about one natural order of events. Moreover, that one order of events has a progressive natural history designated by the word evolution. An adequate description of this process requires us to recognize that evolution has not been uniformly continuous, as Darwin believed, but has involved from time to time major discontinuities or critical turning point. These turning points are marked by the abrupt appearance of certain phenomena called emergents. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
An emergent supervenes upon what already exists, arises out of what already exists, is something genuinely new in the history of the Universe, occurs in a manner that is unpredictable in principle since it conforms to no general laws, and cannot be naturalistically explained but must be accepted with natural piety. The successive emergent in the panorama of evolution mark stages of progress from lower to higher. In picturing the totality of nature, we have a pyramidal scheme. The full significance of emergent evolution cannot be grasped, however, as long as one remains at the level of a philosophy based on the procedure sanctioned by the progress of scientific thought. A basic presupposition of the system is one in which the existence of a physical World is nowise dependent on being perceived or thought of by any human or sub-human mind. Physical events exert an advenient influence on the sense receptors of organisms. By virtue of their physical power, the organism respond by respond by referring the signs arising within the psychophysical system to regions of physical space in the process called proficient reference. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The result is an emergent object correlated with the externa event in such a way as to be biologically useful to the organism. The pyramid of emergent evolution is a hierarchy of kinds of relatedness. Four basic concepts are needed to unfold it consequences—stuff, substance, quality, and property. The ultimate stuff consists of psychophysical events, and the mode of their relatedness in a given system is that system’s substance. Each system has intrinsic qualities grounded in its substance and extrinsic properties grounded in its relation to other systems. Besides the emergent there are resultants, or phenomena that are repetitive, predictable, and the source of quantitative continuity. Emergence generates progress in continuity, but through resultants there is continuity in progress. The universal correlation of physical and physical events. The mind is a quality emergent at a high level of evolutionary advance. The directing activity, otherwise called spirit or God is manifest. Thus, the whole course of events subsumed under evolution is the expression of God’s purpose, which embraces all that has been and all that will be brought about in the course of evolutionary advance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
The view of evolution, a mystery, unexplained, and inexplicable except, perhaps, to God. However, doing this research, it has been revealed that the spirit and soul are two different essences. The spirit is God in us, the soul is also from God, but it is the essence of human that causes the body to live. Is it possible, however, for one to live without a soul? It seems probable. It has been thought that babies who are born through invitro federalization do not have souls. More than 26,000 children are born from invitro fertilization treatment in the United Kingdom, and as they reach adulthood, many will discover they are too unable to have babies naturally. There are genetic causes of infertility that you can pass on. It means that the next generation may be infertile as well. If there is a genetic origin this genetic origin of infertility may be transmitted to the next generation. It is also believed that invitro fertilization removes conception from the marital act and because it treats babies as a product to be manipulated, violating the child’s integrity as a human being with an immortal soul from the moment of conception. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
With embryotic stem cell research, genetic engineering, and cloning are things that have arisen with invitro fertilization. However, nothing can move a body that God wills to be at rest or impede or alter the movement of a body that he wills to be in motion, bodies in themselves are inefficacious; and since there is a necessary connection between the volition, God is the true cause of the motion in bodies, and the action of his will is their moving force. Accordingly, when one ball strikes a second ball and the second ball moves, God is the real or true cause (cause reelle, veritable) of the second ball moving. Since God acts not at random, but in accordance with general laws of motion that he has enacted, the impact of the first ball may be called occasional, or particular, cause (cause occasionnelle, particuliere) of the second ball moving. Granted that bodies are inefficacious, it is true fortiori that they cannot necessarily produce changes in the mid. And God being the true cause of movements in bodies, it follows that the mind cannot produce changes in the body. We may, for instance, exert ourselves to do something without success, and it is possible that God might have conjoined to our volitions effects contrary to them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
As it is, God acts according to laws connecting mental events and cerebral events in such a way that, if the body is suitably disposed, our volitions are executed. Evils exists in the World not to create despair, but to create activity. It is perfectly impossible to conceive that any creatures of God’s hands can be condemned to eternal suffering. Could we once admit such an idea, all our natural conceptions of goodness and justice would be completely overthrown, and we could no longer look on God as a merciful and righteous Being. The doctrine of life and immortality is brought to light by the gospel is the doctrine that the end of righteousness is everlasting life, and the wages of willful and wanton sin are death. It is wrong to cause a decedent to suffer serious and fatal injuries, as well as fear and terror of impending death. Along with the loss of support, loss of net earnings of the descendent, loss of services, loss of inheritance of prospective accumulations, mental anguish, emotional pain and suffering, loss of society, care, love, affection, solace, protection, companionship, comfort; to endure conscious physical pain and mental suffering. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
These acts and omissions were outrageous and gross in that they knew or, in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have known that these people were unqualified, inexperienced, and ill-prepared to have positions of authority. These individuals acted oppressively, and in such a manner that was despicable and subjected others to cruel and unjust hardship in conscious disregard for the safety of Randolph Harris and others. As a direct and proximate result of the negligence, recklessness and carelessness, plaintiffs have suffered foreseeable damages in an amount to be proven at trial. The aforementioned conduct of each of the defendants was despicable and oppressive and subjected Randolph Harris to cruel and unjust hardship in conscious disregard of his health, safety, and welfare. Each of the defendants willfully, wantonly, recklessly, maliciously, and despicably chose not to properly act. Some people may come off as gentlemen of the situation, for his own master’s purpose, manipulates human beings, including his own children, and who does not even do it very well. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
These types of individuals are plausible, not monsters, but they appear to have grown morally blind—a verdict which, in due course, evidently applies also to the more immature manipulators, whose loyalty to their master’s seems to know no reservations. It is never good to become deeply involved in a situation of increasing ugliness, some people might see these types of individuals and their associates as incarnations evil, they are corrupted enough from any balanced point of view, a condition that is also intimated by the heavy-headed revel. In a World where people are forced to act, there appears to be no room for passive and obedient innocence. It is crushed, and perishes. That wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took him for better. Take your fortune; you will find to be too busy is some danger. The death of my father has shaken me so profoundly that I refuse to accept it as natural, and look at the events that occurred shortly after, which were caused by negligence, recklessness and carelessness of defendants. They negligently failed to warn me as to the risks inherent in this situation. Their acts and omissions were outrageous and gross in that they knew. In a World where people are forced to act, there appears to be no room for passive and obedient innocence. It is crushed, and perishes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Please Help Save the Life of this Mother
No child should have to go through life without loving parents. Every being and specifically their life belongs to God. Therefore, life is something of great importance and has meaning and significance because we are attached to some goals which we do not consider trivial and in that sense these goals are obtainable for us. In declaring that one’s life is worthwhile in the objective sense, one is saying that he or she is attached to certain goals which are both attainable and of optimistic value. To let things advance is enlightenment. Humans are outstanding because they are astonishing and extraordinary beings with amazing physical and extraordinary talents. Cognition of the magnitude of a human being allows us to enjoy wisdom, discernment, insight, discretion, knowledge, will power, conscience, love, perfectionism and management. Human life is so important that it has always attracted the attention of scholars and philosophers. The most important principle of human rights is the right to life. There are no other rights for humankind without the right to life. According to Article III of the Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person, and this right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his or her life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
One institution that is found in any society is the family. Family is an integral part of everyone’s house. In some societies, the common units are the small groups made up of parents and children (called nuclear or primary families) and larger groups (called the extended or secondary family), which also includes aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins. Before the turn of the century, most Americans and Canadians lives in extended families—either several generations within the same house, or several sub-units, each living in a nearby house. However, today, the households of most people in North American include only the nuclear family. Urbanization and the Industrial Revolution have been responsible for the change. The number of farmer decreased and the number of those in factory and office jobs grew enormously. As individual’s job became more important to them, people were more willing to move away from home town and family ties and establish an independent life. This trend has had an important effect in reducing the socializing influences of the extended family, which often continued strongly throughout the whole life of a rural adult. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Originally, the family served as almost a self-contained society. Perhaps one of the reasons for the immense popularity of the film “The Godfather.” That sort of solidarity and support is strangely attractive to modern people in America, Canada, Europe, Africa, Russia, and Mexico, who are largely cut loose from their own extended families. What are the traditional functions of the family? They provide long-term personal intimacy and companionship, regulate sexual relations, ensure the continuance of society through birth and socialization of children, and provide economic support for dependents, and later, for the parents, through their children. The family of any person starts with parents itself. Parents understand the child’s strengths and weaknesses and guide the child to the right path. If the parent models thrift, the child will be thrifty. This is one reason why some children get lifted out of poverty—because their parents model good traits even if they are of meager means or could not attend the best university. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Parents play the biggest role in our development. Mother and Fathers are essential for our mental, physical, social, spiritual, financial, educational, and career development. Parents help us in every step of our lives. They comfort us when we are babies who come into the World crying and fussing. They provide us with love, nourishment, values, security, pleasure, culture and are the most precious gift of God for humans. A person can expect unconditional love from their mother and father and parents take great care of our upbringing. They help us overcome our negative attributes and insufficiencies. Parents are there to change our pampers when we wake up in the middle of the night wet and soiled. They take time off work to nurse us back to health when we are sick and take us to the doctor. Parents go out of their way to make us feel special on our birthday by showering us with gifts, balloons, cake, ice cream, hugs and kisses. A child with good parenting rarely fails in life. In many people’s success, the role of the parents is the foundation. Many World leaders and philosophers describe the role of their parents in their life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Love and care are essential elements to human beings. Parents gift many blessings to their children and are directly involved in their development. They share in our happiness and sorrow equally. When a kid is sad, the parent is sad, and when you are happy, your parents are happy. They love you more than you can imagine and share a psychic bond that allows them to detect your emotions when you are unwilling to express them. Without parents, it would be very difficult for anyone to have a great life. Without parents, people have an unfulfilled life. They become isolated and face more hardships in life. The financial support of parents is a virtue of parents that helps children receive an education, develop hobbies, make long life friends, without worrying or having to work while they are still developing and forming their own personality and ideas about the World. Also, parents are your best friends, when the World seems to turn against you and harasses you, parents are there offer you moral support. Having parents at your side is a great bonding experience, as they provide immediate moral support and the strength to handle any situation. If you want your child to succeed, model the behavior you want them to embrace. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Every life is of equal value. There is a mother in Canada, with two young children who has cancer and needs a lifesaving treatment in America. The cost of the procedure is $650,000.00. Birch Hill Studio Inc located at 3208 30th Avenue, in Vernon, British Columbia V1T2C5 and Lbvlifestyle at 107-2900 Pandosy St. Kelown www.Lbvlifestyle.com are selling items and donating the proceeds to help save the life of this young lady. And there is also a “Go Fund Me” charity donation page setup at https://www.gofundme.com/23txyjck . As a person who had a father who suffered from cancer and ended up passing away from complications when I was young, I wanted to share this story for you and pray that if you can, you will help save the life of this mother so she can be there to support her child(ren). The most devastating thing for a child is to lose a parent or a sibling. I do not want to see these kids going through life looking at other people and wishing that was their parent still living. Or wondering if their parent is in Heaven with a new family and forgot all about them. Or walking around praying that their parent will give them a sign to show that they still around and still care, even if they are in spiritual form. If you can give and save a life, please do so. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Until He is Dead– Fear is a Paralyzing Agent
Somewhere there are phantoms having their own funerals over and over again. The same scene for centuries. Therefore, it is socially inappropriate to speak ill of a person in the aftermath of their death. De mortuis nihil nisi bonum (of the dead, nothing unless good). Demortuis nil nisi bene dicendum (of the dead, nothing spoken unless truthfully). Do not speak evil of the dead because once you do, you cannot apologize and take back the things you said. Their spirits may also put a curse on you. So, that sin cannot be forgiven. Perception is primarily of mental representations of external objects. People often feel that because a person is dead that they can say anything they want about the individual and it will not hurt them. However, some overlook the possibility that there may be people alive who love that individual and they will be offended by the unkind words. When you slander a dead person, you offend their relatives, friends, and fans. And it is not easy for you to locate each one of them and ask for forgiveness. This is more difficult than seeking a pardon of one who is alive, and it may also cause some to want to retaliate. Also, it is commonly noted that poltergeist cases tend to involve agents who are in their adolescent or teenage years. The median age of the agent is 14 years. Around 37 percent of the cases have an agent who is under 20. However, sometimes the agents can be as young as 8 or as old as 70. In many poltergeist cases, it has been found that the RSPK agent may be in a situation that is bringing about psychological tension for him or her, usually in relation to interpersonal problems with other people who live or work with the agent. There is hostility in the agent which cannot be expressed in normal ways, the main target for the anger being people with whom he is associated on a daily basis. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Psychokinesis means movement by the mind. The idea is what perhaps some people sometimes may be able, whether consciously or unconsciously, to move or otherwise affect things without pushing or pulling them and, indeed, without in any way touching either things in question or any other things involved in the process. Perhaps, it is suggested, these people or, indeed, all of us really can in some condition bring about changes in things by simply willing, as a gambler might wish that by simply willing and without any detectable cheating he or she could get dice to fall in ways one desires. Once this suggestion is allowed there seems to be room for an alternative description of many experiments which might otherwise have appeared to be unambiguous evidence of the reality of precognition. Such a description will be in terms of psychokinesis, guided perhaps by a measure of straight telepathy or straight clairvoyance. The subject may not, after all, really be the precognizing target. Perhaps that individual or somebody else is consciously or unconsciously influencing psychokinetically the target-determining mechanism in order to increase the degree of correspondence between the guess series and the target series. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
A body/skeleton was found in a Gage County, Nebraska riverbed in March of 1873, and it was thought to John Cameron’s remains. William Jackson Marion was suspected of the murder because the year earlier, he and John Cameron left Nebraska and headed to work on the railroad. However, just days later, William Jackson Marion returned alone with John Cameron’s team of horses. William Jackson Marion was eventually convicted for murder and was hanged in Beatrice, Nebraska 25 March 1887. An article in the Omaha Daily Bee on 26 March 1887 declared there was, “No doubt that he was guilty and also guilty of other murders in the Indian Territory.” However, four years later in 1891, after William Jackson Marion was executed, John Cameron turned up alive and explained that he had, in the nearly twenty years since his “murder” traveled to Mexico, Alaska, and Colorado. He had fled out of fear of a paternity allegation, and sold his team of horses to William Jackson Marion and still have the note William Jackson Marion had given him for payment of the remainder. One Hundred years after his hanging, on the 25th March 1987, William Jackson Marion was pardoned posthumously by the State of Nebraska. We just recently reached the 130 year anniversary of Mr. William Jackson Marion’s hanging. May God bless you and restore you house, horses, and provide you with a happy life in Heaven. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Poltergeist experiences or cases of RSPK, are, but the currently held model, related to the subconscious mind of a person in the situation where the disturbances are going on. That person is generally in a stress-related tense, and frustrating situation or relationship. Where most people would respond to the stress in a variety of normal ways, from punching the walls or throwing things to have nervous breakdowns or experiencing physical illness, or poltergeist agents have an alternate means of blowing off steam. For some, the reaction to stress is a subconsciously directed psychokinetic outburst. Called a subconscious psychokinetic temper tantrum. There was a local playhouse, and a movie was made based on a fictional character, but experiences that really happened. When the directors of the film, The Gallows wanted to remake a high school paranormal activity reenactment of the hanging of William Jackson Marion, they may have gotten more than they bargained for. When you watch the tape, it is labeled as “Police evidence.” The plot is set in 1993, when high school students are in a theater putting on a production The Gallows. Charlie Grimille, who is playing August, is in love with Mary (Pfeifer Ross) in the play is accused of murder and is accidentally hanged and killed after a prop malfunction with the gallows, and the trap door broke, he fell through with a noose around his neck and died. A live audience witnessed the unbelievably morbid event. Charlie’s death haunted the town and his spirit never really seemed to leave the theater. Now, here is where the twist comes in. While watching the film, I thought to myself this seems really real. However, just wrote it off as good acting. The part that seemed really real to me was when the students, 20 years later, put on the play The Gallows, again. So, anyway, there is a reason it seemed real because some of it was. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The film had a low budget of $100,000.00 and is a Warner Brothers production, but the total remuneration of more than $43 million. The Directors, Chris Lofing and Travis Cluff wanted the film to seem real and they decided they were not going to tell the audience that Charlie Grimille was going to hang, so when they hang him, the audience would think something went wrong in the movie. Like, in the Crow, when Brandon Lee was really shot and killed on set, much like his father Bruce Lee was. Once Charlie dropped and there was chaos, the directors wanted to see how long they could let it go before people freaked out and called the police. The actors knew that Charlie was going to be hanged. They even practiced the play in a fake way with the audience watching, and Charlie took the noose off and got away, so everyone thought that is how it was supposed to go. And they practiced that way three or four times and then they rolled the cameras. However, the directors wanted the cast to be scared and freak the audience out, so they changed the script a little and hanged Charlie a lot soon than anyone expected. And everyone was shocked, they thought someone had just died. It has been noted that when a RSPK agent is upset, strange things happen, things blow up and such, and the the individual feels less stressed out. Investigators notice higher levels of paranormal activity when an RSPK agent is upset. So, the consequences of torture and oppression may not be as isolated as the tormentors would like. However, you also have to keep in mind, if there is an RSPK agent, and people suspect this, there may be cases of fraud when things are staged to make it look like the agent was responsible. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Nevertheless, the real creepiness does not stop there. To make the movie feel real, the directors told the actors that the movie was based on real events that took place in Beatrice, Nebraska USA, and after doing research, I discovered that it was; just not in the theater. Still, the directors took it a step further to scare the cast, they had pictures, newspaper articles, websites that they had fabricated to make it seem that the movie plot was exactly real and happened in the timeline that they created. So, the actors were afraid. And this is exactly why people do not want actors and movie producers to be involved in government or media because they can stage events with all the technology, get people to lie and turn news into terrorism and pure entertainment for profits. When Cassidy Gifford was interviewed, she said they did not want to say Charlie Grimille’s name. The directors and actors said that weird things that were not scripted did happen on set. The movie was shot in the most haunted location in Fresno, California USA. They said it felt like a place where someone would drag someone and lock them up for a long time, and that it felt like something else was living in the theater. Ryan Shoos, one of the main characters said that he was acting tough, but really scared. Pfeifer Brown in a haunted bathroom heard a loud thud and started screaming like she was scared for her life. Perhaps this could be traced back to some causal ancestor common to both the anticipated and the fulfillment, or it could be the law of averages. If you play around with unknown forces long enough, you are likely to be confronted with a remarkable case of genuine telepathy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
In 41 percent of the paranormal cases, the phenomena began after a move, an illness, or another kind of event that me be stressful or upsetting to people. In 20 percent of the cases, the phenomena started when a bout of rage, disappointment or great frustration was displayed by the suspected RSPK agent. In 8 percent of the cases, the agents were characterized, prior to the start of the disturbances, as already suffering from a mental or emotional problem, or were in a state of physical distress likely to have emotional consequences. This may have important implications for the human side to poltergeists. Cassidy Gifford said that they locked her in the haunted bathroom and they were supposed to stay in there for fifteen minutes, but after five minutes in the faulty building one of the water faucets turned on and she turned on the lights and started crying. And there was no one there. It is possible that some people may be able, whether consciously or unconsciously, to move or otherwise affect things without physically touching them. The director Chris Lofing said that most of the weird stuff happened late at night on the stage. That they would hear loud thuds and then the chains in the rafters would start rattling. And I believe that they did experience paranormal things. Perhaps he or somebody else was consciously or unconsciously influencing psychokineticaly the target-determining mechanism in order to increase the degree of correspondence between the guess series and the target series. I was doing research on King James and how he thought witches tried to sink a ship he and his wife were on with a storm and then a pot of water on my stove had a huge bubble, a water bubble shot into the air. Also, while I am writing this, the grapefruits on the tree keep falling and making loud thugs, in the past hour in a half, ten have fallen, which is unusual. And another time I was doing research on witch craft these big moths came out of nowhere when I was in my bedroom and I killed one and flushed it down the toilet. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Then the next few days another one appeared and flew around and I went to get a newspaper to kill it and it hit the floor and disappeared and I move everything and vacuumed and could not find it, so kept the light on for a few hours, I was freaked out. Because the research I was doing talked about the spells and moths and bones and blood and such. Much like that theater, this building I live in is old and four people on my floor have died and about ten people have died in the nine years that I have been here. One lady told me that someone died in my apartment before, too. One of the actors from the actual film, Reese Mishler, said he had some pretty weird experiences. Reese did not like the auditorium because he and Ryan both head something at the same time, and they have it on camera. It sounded like metal chains to them and as Reese talks about his experience, his eyes are bulging out of his head, he looks scared. Pfeifer Brown said as actors, the thing they experienced scared them to death being on set. One of the scenes they were filming, Reese and Ryan Shoos were having an argument, and the directors says this was not supposed to happen, but the ropes on the fly rig were recorded vibrating and it got intense, but Ryan and Reese did not notice it, but it is on tape. 41 percent of the paranormal cases involving moving objects were described by the witnesses to be floating, fluttering, falling in a zigzag patter, or curving around sharp corners. Similarly, objects that displayed unusual flight paths were described in 45 percent of the cases. Some objects were also described as changing their speed while in motion. We are confronted with causes operating backward in time and they may have spring from something less discreditable than complacency. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
The paranormal on set might even be one manifestation of a conviction that wanted to accommodate such a phenomenon and produce something much more radical and much more retiocinative than a paradoxical screenplay. Ryan said that things you do not see are the things that scare you the most and sometimes he would go a week without sleeping. Pfeiffer said that scariest scene takes place in the attic because the things that happened in the attic were not planned. She said they do not know some of the different things that happened and some of the different things they heard. And each take they would go deeper and deeper into the attic, and each time they were going they did not think it was a good idea. Reese looked scared and did not want to walk down the hallway. On the eighth take in the attic, which ended up being the last take, they heard a quiet sound saying, “Reese.” Reese and Pfeiffer got really scared and ran and were screaming like they were in danger. And actually, watching that movie and the outtakes did kind of freak me out. As I was watching it, I remember thinking, “A movie has not scared me in a long time.” The way I came across the movie was odd, too. I was shopping and two guys were looking at videos and I wanted one, and a movie fell on the floor, so I reached down to pick it up and then saw The Gallows sitting on the floor and bought it. Like it was waiting for me. The poltergeist is both an expression and a release mechanism (or safety valve) of an for this inner hostility. This explanation also tells us a great deal about the specific dynamics of the poltergeist—that is, it actually explains quite neatly just why the poltergeist acts the way it does. I am sure that all readers have seen what happens when a young child becomes frustrated, or when one becomes angry after being scolded for being naughty. The child is apt to throw a tantrum by slamming doors, throwing toys about, banging on the walls, and displaying other aggressive acts. Newton’s III laws state energy is not destroyed, it is only transferred and each action has a separate, but equal reaction. So poltergeist usually are a product of the youth because they have no means to resolve their issues on their own since they have no authority. It does not take much insight to realize that these are the exact activities in which poltergeist engages. Like a frustrated youngster, it too bangs on the walls, throws things, and slams doors. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
It seems that any explanation or, if that now becomes too strong a word, any account of precognition as such will have to center on the notion of coincidence or something very like it. The laws, if there are any laws to be discovered, will describe the conditions under which we may expect to find precognitive correlations. Perhaps, there is a built-in suggestion that such phenomena are both more common and also somehow more significant than might be thought. Upon hearing all of those thuds of grape fruits falling from the tree, for two hours, the last one being the loudest, I stepped out on the balcony and see nothing, but circular water spots, and a white bird screamed and flew overhead. Then there were sounds of something in the bushes. So, yeah, I find this stuff interesting, but it is spooky. I really think you can open gate ways by what you choose to focus on. Playing with things occult like the Witch (Oujia) board is very dangerous. If you try to contact dead family members, you are not speaking with them. You are speaking with demons and you will indeed open your body up to them. All it takes is one time. Updated to the mystery of the thuds I have been hearing, I just head another and it is someone throwing water bottles off a balcony above me. And now, about 13 “fireworks” just rapidly went off. Anyway, remember Poltergeist, which was an American horror film series? It was rumored that a curse attached itself to the poltergeist trilogy and its crew, because two of the young cast members died, and the oldest cast member died. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
In each case the reason for talking of precognition is not that any particular guess can, at some stage, be identified as precognitive but, after the guesses have been checked against the targets, the proportion of hits in a series of guesses is found to be significantly above mean-chance expectation, it seems likely that there is some parapsychological phenomena. In poltergeist cases, the object movements and noises may be seen as a similar kind of psychokinetic influence, but on a much larger scale than dice or random numbers. An emotional expression seems to be a factor in many poltergeist cases. The rumors of the curse of the Poltergeist was said to be caused because they used real skeletons as props. Dominique Dunne, who played the oldest daughter Dana in the first filmed died 4 November 1982, at the age of 22 after being strangled by her abusive former boyfriend John Thomas Sweeny. Heather O’Rourke, who played Carol Anne, died 1 February 1988 at the age of 12 due to complications from an acute bowel obstruction. Zelda Rubinstein, who played Tangina Barrons, died 27 January 2010 at the age of 76 from kidney and lung failure. There are countless other tails of Supernatural terror. Rosemary’s Baby, the producer came down with kidney stones and allegedly sent Charlie Mason to murder the director’s wife. And there is the curse of The Omen. It came out 6 June 1976. John Richardson, the special effects consultant, was involved in a car crash that killed his girlfriend/assistant, Liz Moore, on Friday the 13th. The accident was similar to one he planned in The Omen and when Richard regained consciousness, his car odometer was at 66,6XXX. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
A poltergeist is a large-scale form of psychokinesis or mind over matter in which anomalous physical phenomena (such as moving objects, electrical disturbances, and noises without any obvious source) repeatedly occur in the presence of a certain person over a brief period of time. The large-scale psychokinesis (PK0, occurs largely on the unconscious level, is known as recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis, or RSPK, and the person around whom them phenomena occur is known as the RSPK agent. Actor Gregory Peck was cast as ambassador Robert Thorn, the adopted father of the Devil child, in the Omen. Shortly after Gregory Peck took the role, his son shot himself in the head without the slightest warning or explanation. Then Gregory’s plane was struck by lightning, causing the engine to catch fire and nearly crash. Three days later, The Omen’s screenwriter David Seltzer was also on a flight on his way to the United Kingdom and his plane was struck by lightning. Now, for you plane to crash, you have to take the same exact flight for nearly ten years, everyday. That is how unlikely a plane crash is. However, shortly after, the executive producer Mace Neufeld was in a plane that was struck by lightning. And the producer Harvey Bernhard was in Rome, a lightning bolt barley missed him. Then the production rented a plane to shoot an aerial view of London, the rental company had a last-minutes switch, resulting in the plane going to a group of Japanese businessmen instead. It hit a car, killing everyone in that as well. Also, on the first day of shooting The Omen, several of the main crew members were in head-on car crashes. Gregory Peck was attacked by a vicious pack of Rottweilers (hellhounds are said to attack people who sell their soul). #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Poltergeists are person-oriented phenomena rather than spirit-oriented. So it is almost like an individual is haunted by spirits, ghost, supernatural powers who have some affect on the being and what happens around the individual and these ripples can be magnified depending on what is happening to that being. Although apparitions are sometimes witnessed in poltergeist cases, this tends to be rather uncommon. The apparitions in poltergeist cases do not always seem to represent human figures, but can also take on the form of animal figures, body limbs, demonic figures, and amorphous shapes that may be indistinct, shadowy, or mist-like. If we were to limit ourselves only to those involving human figures, we may find that the apparitions more often reflect the personalities of living people rather than those of dead people. The day after shooting The Omen was done at the Longleat Safari Park, a London zookeeper names Sidney Bamford was killed in the lion area. He was working for the production as a big cat wrangle for a scene that was meant to appear in the movie. In a scene that showcased zoo tigers, who were menacing the possessed son, Damien, one of the tigers was not properly secured post-filming, leading to a fatal attack on the animal expert. The hotel of the crew members was attacked and a restaurant the cast and crew was in route to eat at suffered an explosion before they got there. The Omen was remade and releases 6 June 2006, and Pete Postlethwaite, who portrayed Father Brennan suffered the loss of his brother, Mike. This was after mike drew three sixes at poker. Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective. People tend to fear ghost in their own family. You feel these family curses and think, “If it happened to my father, it could happen to me.” There are a lot of curses and mysticism and real scares. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
With More Knowledge We can Create Better Work and a Feeling of Knowledge
The fields of air are open to knowledge. The person who can join ideas with the most propriety will separate them with the greatest nicety. Human well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues are the requisite skills and dispositions needed to attain it. If the code of ethics are taught to people for several successive generations, the code will become congenital. Every individual inherits some predisposition from one’s predispositions from their predecessors, and later generations are therefore supposed to be more advanced intellectually than earlier ones. Good is what gives people pleasure in the long run. Ethics is the science of conduct, and conduct deals with the adjustment of acts to ends. The lower animals find their satisfaction in using the environment to their best advantage; human beings find their satisfaction, or happiness, in a similar way. Appropriate adjustments result in pleasure; inappropriate adjustments result in pain. We ought to look to our own pleasures, but we ought to do this by using intelligence, which gives us some insight, no matter how small, into what the future may bring; present pleasures may be outweighed by possible future pains. #RandolpHarris 1 of 5
Unlike primitive people, we have the ability to form ideas about remote ends, and disaster befalls us easily when we refuse to entertain such ideas or to construct them in accordance with the scientific data available to us. In fact, the whole conception of a moral consciousness is no more than a rule emphasizing the need to consider the consequences of its actions, to examine whether more or fewer possible benefits to itself and to society would result. The notion of duty is also a rule emphasizing the need to consider future benefits in contrast with present temptations. Without the feeling of duty we would simply act for ourselves alone and, in this way, in the long run act against our own best interests. Much earlier in history, an analysis of utilitarianism and biological behavior leads us to concrete educational proposals. Since people are in constant struggles with environmental forces, they ought, first and foremost, to be subjects that will help them most in this struggle. A knowledge of science, therefore, is crucial because it is the primary means by which people may be able to avert possible natural disasters. After the sciences, one ought to study psychology, education, and the social sciences because these will give insight into ways of resolving family and social problems. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The antiquated Roman literature survives, and creates for us an intimacy with the classic ages, which we have no means of forming with the subsequent ones. Light literature is the garden and the orchard, the fountain, the rainbow, the far view; the view within us as well as without. The choice public will have good writing for light readings. All art is convention of one kind or another, and each demands its own interpretation. People should also study art because it produced the kind of satisfaction that needs no justification nor analysis in terms of future satisfactions. It is an immediate good in itself, producing an immediate feeling of mental well-being. Learning should begin by introducing the child to actual experimental situations from which one should deduce the law involved. The child should be taught to regard the World as a place in which one must makes one’s own decision in accordance with the best scientific data. Therefore, teachers should encourage initiative and free expression of ideas, and they can best do this by being actively engaged in inquiry and study. A teacher who is interested in one’s work, will be more apt to produce research oriented students. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Ardent souls, ready to construct their coming lives, are apt to commit themselves to the fulfillment of their own vision. Life never seems so clear and easy as when the heart is beating faster at the sight of some generous self-risking deed. We feel no doubt then what is the highest prize the soul can win; we almost believe in our power to attain it. There is nothing that human imagination can figure brilliant and enviable that human genius and skill do not aspire to realize. What we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the future estate for which people drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love. The people who have many gratifications are apt to wander in imagination from daily and familiar joys, and confidently to reach after things yet untried. No human being springs forth from the womb as a fully-grown, sophisticated, wise, ready-for-anything adult. Nor does one possess all the necessary skills for effectively interrelating when one comes into the World. We have to learn the techniques of relating to other humans. However, we do bring some characteristics into the World with us. Exactly what is inherited and what do we learn? #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
The newborn child is new in a lot of ways. One’s new at being out in the open. One is new to one’s parents, and they are certainly new to the child, even though the baby has been pretty close to one of them for nearly a year. The baby is doing new things to meet some familiar needs, too. When the baby was a resident inside of the mother, the baby had a nice thing going—the most comfortable, most protected environment it is possible to imagine. Until birth, the infant is pretty much a product of their heredity. Heredity refers to the genetic traits and characteristics that are inherited—that come with the child when one is born, passed down from the parents. It is as possible for a baby to know something without having been at school, as it is to have been at school and to know nothing. Almighty God, kindle, we pray, in every heart the true love of peace, and guide with your wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of Earth, that in tranquility your dominion may increase until the Earth is filled with knowledge of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God and forever. The rest of your life will be the very best of your life. Happy Canada Day. Amen. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Memories of a Lifetime–I Stumbled on this Photograph
The heart is initially no more than an enlarged blood vessel, and eventually becomes the four-chambered structure found in human beings. Every great discovery is just like perception, an operation of the understanding, an immediate intuition, and as such the work of an instant, a flash of insight. They are not the result of a process of abstract reasoning, which only serves to make the immediate knowledge of the understanding permanent for thought by bringing it under abstract concepts, i.e, it makes knowledge distinct, it puts us in a position to impart it and explain it to others. The experience we undergo is the result of the interaction between reality and the particular human organism, but even though we are required to acknowledge the existence of the external stimulant, we can never know exactly what it is like it our own right. This is a unique case in that, although we can investigate the effects of the stimulant, the cause is inherently unknowable. The keenness of the understanding in apprehending the casual relations of objects which are known indirectly, does not find its only application in the sphere of natural sciences (though all the discoveries in that sphere are due to it), but it also appears in practical life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Since we cannot know the nature of reality apart from its effects, we are led to a belief in some Unknowable; this does not mean, however, that we are committed to a belief in the existence of God. First of all, our complete dependence on sensory data for knowledge makes it impossible for us to tell whether this Unknowable is at all comparable to any kind of divine substance. We are never in the position to test whether our idea of what the Absolute is, corresponds to what it actually is. Second, reasoning, which is no more than an advanced physical ability by which an organism can meet environmental problems, cannot cope with data that are not reducible to observables. When such an endeavor is made, reasoning, like any machine whose function is abused, breaks down. Consider what occurs when we attempt to analyze a concept whose reference is take to be necessarily outside of the domain of experience—the concept of God. All questions are either unanswerable or productive paradoxes. If there is a God, then how did he come into existence? If he created himself out of nothing, then how can something come out of nothing? #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
The fact that God is treated as an immanent, existing or operating within; inherent, permanently pervading and sustaining the Universe, rather than an external power, does not eliminate the questions that are raised with theism. It is still impossible to imagine the Universe arising uncaused out of nothing. This is why I believe that the Universe is like a sea-walnut, which produces its own light to sustain life and ward off predators, but is contained in the ocean. It is only logical that we would think of the Universe as existent in some potential form prior to its becoming actual; and even if it were meaningful to speak of the potential Universe, the question would still remain how a potential Universe could have been created. Are we then necessarily led to atheism? No. The fact that we do not know whether a God exists does not mean that therefore no God exists. The rejection of theism and pantheism entails only that we can have no knowledge about the Unknowable, not that the Unknowable does not exists. At most we can simply say that we do not know whether there is a God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Many religions still cling to beliefs that arose because primitive people could not account for natural phenomena. Thus, the notion of a soul, or of a ghost, arose because primitive people could not account for dreams, shadows, and reflections. All such phenomena led to the belief that people were dual personalities, one of which remains unchanged regardless of changes in the visible human. From this conception there gradually developed the theory that there were eternal, unchanging, omnipotent personalities. In this way, people came to believe in gods; and, for similar reason, the Judaeo-Christin God has many strictly human traits. This religious anthropomorphism which depicted God as filled with hatreds and desires that were appropriate only to human beings. Nevertheless, religion can serve as a means of fostering friendships and cooperation among human beings and also of guaranteeing the retention of the most worthwhile values of the past. Furthermore, religion can be useful as a way of developing interest in the various enigmas that are found in the Universe, a means of motivating people to initiate scientific inquiries. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
The fact that we can never know what the Unknowable is in itself does not imply that we cannot have any genuine knowledge. Good sense or prudence signifies exclusively understanding at the command of the will. However, the limits of these conceptions must not be too sharply defined, for it is always that one function of the understanding by means of which all animals perceive objects in space, which, in its keenest form, appears now in the phenomena of nature, correctly inferring the unknown causes from the given effects, and providing the material from which the reason frames general rules as laws of natural now inventing complicated and ingenious machines by adapting known causes to desired effects; now in the sphere of motives, seeing though and frustrating intrigues and machinations, or fitly disposing the motives and the people who are susceptible to them, setting them in motion, as machines are moved by levers and wheels, and directing them at will to the accomplishment of the ends. Deficiency of understanding is called an intellectual disability. It is dullness in applying the law of causality, incapacity for the immediate apprehension of the concatenations of causes and effect, motives and actions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
A stupid person has no insight into the connection of natural phenomena, either when they follow their own course, or when they are intentionally combined, i.e., are applied to machinery. A stupid person does not observe that persons, who apparently act independently of each other, are really in collusion; that person is therefore easily mystified; and outwitted; one does not discern the hidden motives of proffered advice or expressions of opinion. But it is always just one thing that the individual lacks—keenness, rapidity, ease in applying the law of causality, i.e., the power of understanding. The domain of phenomena of the Unknowable is characterized by features which are not controllable by our desires or even by our manipulations. Certain relationship consistently appear in spite of our objections or antagonistic attitudes. Also, in all objectsions, including ourselves, there are many varying degrees of energy—or force. These aspects of reality are manifestations of the Unknowable, and information about them is the only kind of knowledge human beings can obtain or ought to see. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
It is clear that knowledge, for human beings, is not a study of the Unknowable but rather of the manifestations of the Unknowable among phenomena. There are beginnings, middles (or periods of equilibrium), and ends; but all these processes take place in a finite space and a finite time. A person is born; one matures; one passes on, generally. Similarly, a society begins, reaches a stage of equilibrium, and is destroyed by something internal or external. All around us we can see the workings of the law of evolution and dissolution, but we can never know whether the Universe as a whole is undergoing this process. Feelings, too, arise through evolution. Life seeks to survive, and feelings of pleasure are necessary to sustain this urge. If the organism experiences no rewards for maintaining its own life and reproducing its kind, if there were no sense of accomplishment, then the urge to survive might easily be extinguished. Therefore, behavior that contributes to survival is accompanied by the feeling of pleasure, and behavior that endangers survival is accompanied by the feeling of pain. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
Similarly, feelings of sociality and sympathy developed in human beings because in the struggle for survival people came to recognize that human cooperation is necessary, and the pleasures that accrue to the feeling of sociality were the rewards that guaranteed the continuation of such cooperation. The development of the feelings of sociality and sympathy led to the emergence of a new kind of entity, society, which is the subject of sociology and ethics. Here, too, the principle of evolution holds. Society, like other organisms, has its period of infancy, of maturity, and death. Therefore, strive to possess yourself of what you have inherited from your ancestors. The problem would appear more difficult if we could admit that they leave no traces whatsoever behind them. However, our memories are colored by emotions, judgments, and quirks of personality. What we remember depends on what we pay attention to, what we regard as meaningful or important, and what we feel strongly about. Memory structure is that pattern of associations among items of information stored in the memory. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
I stumbled on this photograph, it kind of made me laugh, it took me way back, back down memory lane. I see the happiness, I see the pain where I am. I see us standing there, such a happy pair. Love beyond compare. The way you held me. No one could tell me that love would die. Why, oh why did I have to find this photograph? Gaps in memory, which are common, may be filled in by logic, guessing, or new information. Indeed, it is possible to have memories for things that never happened (such as remembering broken glass at an accident when there was none). People with pseudo memories (false memories) are often quite upset to learn they have given false testimony. A filmed automobile accident was showed to people. Afterwards, some participants were asked to estimate how fast the cars were going when they smashed into each other. For others the words bumped, contacted, or hit replaces smashed. One week later, each person was asked, “Did you see any broken glass?” Those asked earlier about the cars that smashed into each other were more likely to say yes. (No broken glass was shown in the film.) The new information (smashed) was included in memories and altered them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
The updating of long-term memories is a common problem in police work. For example, a witness may select a photo of a suspect from police files or see a photo in the news. Later, the witness identifies the suspect in person (in a lineup or in court). Did the witness really remember the suspect from the scene of the crime? Or was it from the more recently seen photograph? Even an innocent person may be remembered as the criminal. It is quite possible for a photo to update or blend with the original memory. Many tragic cases of mistaken identity occur this way. Indeed, the fading of memories and the weak affect of impressions which are no longer recent, which we are apt to take as self-evident, and to explain as a primary effect of time on our psychic memory-residues, are in reality secondary changes brought about by laborious work. It is the preconscious that accomplishes this work. Networks of associated memories may help explain a common experience: Imagine finding a picture taken on your sixth birthday or tenth Christmas. As you look at the photo, one memory leads to another, which leads to another, and another. Soon you have unleashed a flood of seemingly forgotten details. This process is called redintegration. Redintegrative memories seem to spread through the branches of memory networks. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Many people find that such memories are also touched off by distinctive events from past—like a visit to Grandma’s kitchen, pleasant scents, going to the farm, the seashore, a doctor’s office, the perfume or after-shave of a former lover, and so on. The key idea in redintegration is that one memory serves as a cue to trigger another. As a result, an entire past experience may be reconstructed from one small recollection. Personally, I have had no real anxiety-dreams for a few months, but I do recall one. The dream was very vivid, and showed me my beloved mother, with a peculiarly calm, sleeping countenance, carried into the room and laid on the bed by two (or three) persons with birds’ beaks. I awoke crying and screaming, and disturbed my parents’ sleep. The peculiarly draped, excessively tall figures with beaks I had taken from the illustrations of the Philippson’s Bible. I believe they represented deities with the heads of sparrowhawks from an Egyptian tomb-relief. The analysis yielded, however, also the recollection of a house-porter’s boy, who used to play with us children on a meadow in front of the house; I might add that his name was Philip. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
It seemed to me then that I first heard from this boy the vulgar word signifying sexual intercourse, which is replaced among educated persons by the Latin word coitus, but which the dream plainly enough indicates by the choice of the birds’ heads. I must have guessed the sexual significance of the word from the look of my Worldly-wise teacher. My mother’s expression in the dream was copied from the countenance of my grandfather, whom I had seen a few days before his death snoring in a state of coma. The interpretation of the secondary elaboration in the dream must therefore have been that my mother was dying; the tomb-relief, too, agrees with this. I awoke with this anxiety, and could not calm myself until I had waked my parents. I remember that I suddenly became calm when I saw my mother; it was as though I had needed the assurance: then she is not dead. However, this secondary interpretation of the dream had only taken place when the influence of the developed anxiety was ready at work. I was not in a state of anxiety because I had dreamt that my mother was dying; I interpreted the dream in this manner in the preconscious elaboration because I was already under the domination of anxiety. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
The latter, however, could be traced back, through the repression to a dark, plainly disturbing period I had in my life, which had found appropriate expression in the visual content of the dream. It was a time when I felt like savage humans were trying to break up my family, and take the only people who cared about me in the World away, and then do away with me. As I grow up, and I think most adults are the same, they fear losing their parents and siblings because you have known them all of your life and that is all you have in this World. And while after you lose a parent, you can still feel their presence and sense them looking over you, but that sense of communication in the physical World is gone and that means so much. People spend so much time on social media, but think about it this way. What if someone took away everyone you care about in your life and replaced them with social media profiles and pictures and videos was your new community and social circle, but never actually see them in person. You would feel isloated, incomplete, and alone. Do not let social media rob you of reality and life. We are only here on this planet for so long and once you lose someone you care about chances are you can never talk to them again. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Make more time for your family and spend time with the people you love. Ask your grandparents to recall vivid and important autobiographical memories and what do you get out of it? Up to a point, the results are like the memories of people at any age: Most recollections come from the 2 or 3 most recent years. Fewer and fewer autobiographical memories come from earlier years, tapering off back to childhood. However, something interesting occurs for older adults as they scan over a lifetime. If you tally their memories, you will find a bulge or bump in the curve between the ages of 10 and 30. In other words, many more memories come from this period than would be expected. Why do memories from this period of life stand out for older adults? Because memories formed during this time are encoded in ways that make them easier to retrieve later in life. Just why these years are so memorable is not known. However, if you are between the ages of 10 and 30, take note: These are the days, my friend. You know me. Every time you try to forget who I am, I will be right there to remind you again, you know me. Answer me when I call, God, defender of my cause; you set me free when I am hard-pressed; have mercy on me and hear my prayer. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Seek Not to Mystify the Mystery
A spirit of reform is a salutary temper of the times; because there is at all times need for reformation. Some believe that people only emerged from savagery with the help of the civil state and penal laws, as well as through the deliberate invention of gods in order to inspire fear in the evildoer. The belief that virtue can be taught is universal among many philosophers, so much so that some have regarded it as their sole distinguishing feature. The effect of this doctrine upon society was revolutionary, since it implied that anyone, after instruction, might become qualified for the exercise of power, and it leaves no special place for privilege by birth or the inheritance of a special family or class tradition. The greatest object in the Universe, is a good person struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good person that comes to relieve it. The idea of a personal God who is the creator of the natural World with its casual connections as well as the supreme source and bearer of values can be satisfy all the facts of experience. God who would regenerate society must first regenerate himself, and then his virtues must act as a contagion acts, by contact of human with human. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
A great voice is an ocean. You cannot drain it. It is something found—an addition to the wealth of this life. This God sufficiently unifies the scheme of things to overcome the disjunction between fact and value, and yet, since he is less than an all-inclusive absolute, he allows for that relative independence and diversity that seem to be a presupposition of genuinely personal and individual experiences. Our manners and customs go for more in life than our qualities. Time, patience, and fortitude often conquer fate. The presence of evil in the World creates difficulties for any theistic solution, but the fact of evil is not fatal, if we bear in mind that the solution offered is not a rigid monism. God limits himself by his creation, for moral values can be realized only by being free beings, and the gift of freedom makes possible evil as well as good. In spite of the evil that may, and does, arise, such a World is not only better than any World that lacked freedom but alone can be setting of the creation of value. What caused Satan to be cast from Heaven? Perhaps the reason Lucifer and the other angels fell from Heaven is because they were forced to be good. They were not given freedom like humans to choose to be good or evil. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
Chance and change love to deal with one’s settled plan, not with their idle vagaries. Incidents little in speculation are great in the eye of fortune. Satan supposedly fell from Heaven because of pride that originated from his desire. While Satan was the highest of all the angels, he was not happy. Little did he know of his life to come, he was not very sure, for one thing, that the good he aimed at would not be obtained. Satan wanted to be God instead of a servant of God. He desired to rule the Universe. Therefore, God cast Satan out of Heaven as a fallen angel. Supposedly, Satan acted as leader of the fallen angels. These demons, existing in the invisible spirit realm yet affecting our physical World, rebelled against God, but are ultimately under God’s control. There is an ongoing spiritual war between God and Satan, good and evil. However, Satan masquerades as an angel of light deceiving humans. We should not fear Satan’s limited power. We ought to be wise, however, in resisting his tactics. Every prohibition conceals a desire. An unconscious impulse need not have originated where we find it expressed; it can spring from an entirely different place and may originally have referred to other persons and relations, but through the mechanism of displacement, it reached the point where it comes to our notice. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Though angels and demons live in the World, they do not wage war as the World does. The weapons the good angels fight with are not weapons of the World. They have divine power to demolish strongholds. They demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and they take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. The intellect is a nobler power than the will. Both civil and ecclesiastical power derive ultimately from God, but the civil power proceeds through the medium of society; the people concertize authority received from God in the person whom they designate as rulers. Observational learning is achieved by watching and imitating the actions of another person or by noting the consequences of a person’s actions. In other words, information is imparted by example, before direct practice is allowed. The value of learning by observation is obvious: Imagine trying to tell someone how to tie a shoe, do a dance step, crochet, preach, or play a piano. Anything that can be learned from direct experience can be learned by observation. Often, this allows a person to skip the tedious effects of attempting to accomplish something by trying various means until the correct one is found. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
Witches are believed to be able to exercise a malign influence even after death unless they are buried with their toes downwards. Culmstock is a village and civil parish in Mid Devon, England, about 12 miles from Tiverton. Not very long ago, a woman suspected of being a witch, was buried in this way within twenty miles of Tiverton. In no part of the country is witchcraft more believed than in the Culm Valley. There is a local saying that there are enough witches in the valley to roll a hogshead of cider up the Beacon Hill, at Culmstock, and old people living there are not ashamed to say that they believe in witchcraft. The witches are two kinds—black and white. The former profess to have the power to condemn those on whom they are asked to cast a spell, to kinds of misfortunes: the latter impose on credulous clients by making them believe that they can remove evil spells and bring good fortune—for consideration, of course. For obvious reasons visits to witches are generally kept dark, but every now and again particulars leak out. In Culmstock district, not so very long ago, a young girl went with her mother to a witch, in order to get a spell cast over an errant swain, who was suspected of bestowing his affections on another. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
The witch professed to be able to bring the young man back to this young lady, or to condemn him to all kinds of torture, but her price was prohibitive, and so the young man was left to marry whom he would. Farmers are the witches’ most profitable clients, and it is a noteworthy fact that they generally contrive to visit the wise woman when they are away from the house, at market. A few years ago, farmers used to go to Exeter for many mils round to consult a witch whenever they had any misfortune, and it is commonly reported that they can get the same sort of advice in the city at present day. At many farmhouses Bibles are kept in the dairies to prevent witches from retarding the butter-making operations. “I am witched,” or “I must have been witched,” are expressions heard in Devon every day in the week. Generally speaking, it is animals that are supposed to sustain the most harm from being overlooked. The loss of cattle that have died has been put down to the power of evil spirits, and according to many superstitious people, witches have a peculiar power over pigs. These are only hints, but a careful elaboration of them would show how important they may become for understanding of the development of civilization. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
In the analytical consideration of taboo phenomena we have hitherto allowed ourselves to be guided by their demonstrable agreements with compulsion neurosis; but as taboo is not a neurosis but a social creation we are also confronted with the task of showing wherein lies the essential difference between neurosis and product of culture like taboo. A young man who believed his pigs had been bewitched was told, not so long ago, to take the heart of a pig, stick it full of pins and needles, and roast it at the fire. He did this believing this would check the mortality among his swine. The power of truth; its conquest is slow and laborious, but if once the victory be gained it can never be wrested back again. Besides the ideas we have as yet considered, which, according to their construction, could be referred to time, space, and matter, if we consider the, with reference to the object, or to pure sensibility and understanding (i.e. knowledge of causality), if we consider them with reference to the object, another faculty of knowledge has appeared in humans alone of all Earthly creatures, an entirely new consciousness, which, with very appropriate and significant exactness, is called reflection. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
From the knowledge of perception, we derive that a reflected appearance is on it. For primitive people believe in an animation of human individuals. Human beings have souls which can leave their habitation and enter into other beings; these souls are the bearers of spiritual activities and are, to a certain extent, independent of the bodies. Originally souls were thought of as being very similar to individual; only in the course of a long evolution did they lose their material character and attain a high degree of spiritualization. The soul conceptions are the original nucleus of the animistic system, that spirits merely correspond to souls that have become independent, and the souls of animals, plants, and there were formed after the analogy of human souls. How did primitive people come to the peculiarly dualistic fundamental conceptions on which this animistic system rests? Through the observation, it is thought, of the phenomena of sleep (with dreams) and death, which resembles sleep, and through the effort to explain these conditions, which affect each individual so intimately. Above all, the problem of death must have become the starting point of the formation of the theory. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
To primitive humans the continuation of life—immortality—would be self-evident. The conception of death is something accepted later, and only with hesitation, for even to us it is still devoid of content and unrealizable. Very likely discussion have taken place over the part which may have been played by other observations and experiences in the formation of the fundamental animistic conception such as dream imagery, shadows and reflection, but these have led to no conclusion. If the primitive human reacted to the phenomena that stimulated one’s reflection with the formation of conceptions of the soul, and then transferred these objects to the outer World, one’s attitude will be judged to be quite natural and in no way mysterious. All are the necessary psychological product of the myth-forming consciousness, and primitive animism may be looked upon as the spiritual expression of human’s natural state in so far as this is at all accessible to our observation. There is a universal tendency among humankind to conceive all beings like themselves and to transfer to every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted and which they are intimately conscious. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
Sailing with sealed orders, we ourselves are the repositories of the secret packet, whose mysterious contents we long to learn There are not mysteries out of our selves. Animism, witchcraft, and such is a system of thought, it gives not only the explanation of a single phenomenon, but makes it possible to comprehend the totality of the World from one point, as a continuity. This behavior can still be demonstrated in the life of today, either as worthless survival in the form of superstition, or in living form as the foundation of our language, our belief, and our philosophy. Myths are based upon animistic foundations, but the detailed relation of myths to animism seem unexplained in some essential points. What is a country village without its mysterious personage? 2010 January 13, Pagan worshippers are suspected of weaving horses’ manes to cast spells on the animals after police investigated a series of bizarre incidents. Almost 20 animals were targeted over a period of three months. Residents in Hemyock, Culmstock, and Clayhidon, Devon, Exeter as well as parts of Dorset and Somerset started a horse watching scheme after incidents were reported. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Police initially believed the horses were being marked for theft by organized criminals until it was discovered that none had been stolen. Officers now suspect white witches who practice knot magic are using the horses to help them cast spells. It is thought that Pagan gods have a close connection with horses, which adds strength to spells that incorporate the animals. To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible. We can easily guess that magic is the earlier and more important part of animistic technique, for among the means with which spirit are to be treated there are also found the magic kind, to frighten away a ghost with noise and cries is a form of pure sorcery; to force him to do something by taking his name is to employ magic against him, and magic is also applied where spiritualization of nature has not yet, as it seems to us, been accomplished. Magic must never serve the most varied purposes. It must subject the process of nature to the will of man, protect the individual against enemies and dangers, and give him the power to injure his enemies. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Magic is used to assist the gods against evil demons. Every night when the Sun God Ra in ancient Egypt sank to his house in the glowing west he was assailed by hosts of demons under the leadership of the archfiend Apepi. All night long he fought them, and sometimes by day the powers of darkness sent up clouds even into the blue Egyptian sky to obscure his light and weaken his power. To aid the Sun-god in this daily struggle, a ceremony was daily performed in his temple at Thebes. A figure of his foe Apepi, represented as a crocodile with a hideous face or a serpent with many coils, was made of wax, and on it the demon’s name was written in green ink. Wrapt in a papyrus case, on which another likeness of Apepi had been drawn in green ink, the figure was then tied up with black hair, spat upon, hacked with a stone knife and cast on the ground. There the priest trod on it with a stone knife and cast on the ground. There the priest trod on it with his left foot again and again, and then burned it in a fire made of a certain plant grass. When Apepi himself had thus been effectively disposed of, waxen effigies of each of his principal demons, and of their fathers, and mothers, and children, were made and burnt the same way. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
The service accompanied by the recitation of certain prescribed spells, was repeated not merely morning, noon, and night, but whenever a storm was raging or a heavy rain had set in, or black clouds were stealing across the sky to hide the Sun’s bright disk. The fiends of darkness, clouds and rain felt the injury inflected in their images as if it had been done to themselves; they passed away, at least for a time and the beneficent Sun-god shone out triumphant once more. The Biblical prohibition against making an image of anything living hardly sprang from any fundamental rejection of plastic art, but was probably meant to deprive magic, which the Hebraic religion proscribed, of one of its instruments. Modeling as a powerful effect on behavior. In a classic experiment, rain is produced by magic means, by imitating it, and perhaps also by imitating the clouds and storm which produces it. It looks as if they wanted to play with rain. The Ainos of Japan, for instance, make rain by pouring out water through a big sieve, while others fit out a big bowl with sails and oars as if it were a ship, which is then dragged about the village and gardens. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
However, the fruitfulness of the soil was assured by magic means by showing it the spectacle of human sexual intercourse. To cite one out of many examples; in some parts of Java, the peasants used to go out into the field at night for sexual intercourse when the rice was about to blossom in order to stimulate the rice to fruitfulness through their example. At the same time, it was feared that proscribed incestuous relationships would stimulate the soil to grow weeds and render it unfruitful. After looking at magic and rituals and superstitions, it seems to me that being a good person and believing in God and having faith seems to be the easier thing to do. Everything else takes all the rituals and potions and spells and probably drives some people mad. Almighty God, our Heavenly Father: We have sinned against you, through our own fault, in thought, and word, and deed, and in what we have left undone. For the sake o your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, forgive us all our offenses; and grant that we may serve you in newness of life, to the glory of your name. May the Almighty God grant us the forgiveness of all our sins, and the grace and comfort of the Holy Spirit. Amen. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
A Charm against Yielding to Temptation
Things perceived as real are real in their effects. As from the direct light of the Sun to the borrowed light of the moon, we pass from the immediate idea of perception, which stands by itself and is its own warrant, to reflection, to the abstract, discursive concepts of the reason, which obtain their whole content from knowledge of perception, and in relation to it. As long as we continue simply to perceive, all is clear, firm, and certain. There are neither questions nor doubts nor errors; we desire to go no further, can go no further; we find rest in perceiving, and satisfaction in the present. Perception suffices for itself, and therefore what springs purely from it, and remains true to it, for example, a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through a lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself. However, with abstract knowledge, with reason, doubt and error appearing in the theoretical, care and sorrow in the practical, illusion may at moments take the place of the real. Chance actions differ from erroneously carried-out actions only in that they disdain the support of a conscious intention and really need no pretext. They appear independently and are accepted because one does not credit them with any aim or purpose. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
In the sphere of abstract thought, error may reign for a thousand years, impose its yoke upon whole nations, extend to the noblest impulses of humanity, and, by the help of its slaves and its dupes, may chain and fetter those whom it cannot deceive. We execute them without thinking anything of them, by mere chance, just to keep the hands busy, and we feel confident that such information will be quite sufficient should one inquire as to their significance. In order to enjoy the advantage of this exception position, these actions which no longer claim awkwardness as an excuse must fulfill certain conditions: they must not be striking, and their effects must be insignificant. It is the enemy against which the wisest people of all times have waged unequal war, and only what they have won from it has become the possession of humankind. Culture is constantly threatened by a relapse into barbarism and disorder that would make history sheer meaningless succession. Against perpetual decadence people struggles heroically to establish limited zones of law, order, and cultural significance. To succeed is this for a time, they must do violence to their own natures by imposing on themselves a hard discipline and accepting moral isolation amid their mediocre fellows. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
This means living in conformity to the ethic of the producers and seeing the good life to be a cooperative creative enterprise carried on in a self-reliant spirit. Against the good things to be obtained rather than a way of acting. In the consumers’ view typical goods are welfare, prosperity, distributive justice, and the classless society, things to be aimed at for the future and enjoyed if secured. Enterprises undertaken in that spirit were based on envy and inevitably fell under the control of adventure (usually intellectuals) who duped the masses. Such instances are citizens revolting, peasant wars, anti-Semitism, and contemporary welfare-state socialism. It has often been said that we ought to follow the truth even although no utility can be seen in it, because it may have indirect utility which may appear when it is least expected; and I would add to this, that we ought to be just as anxious to discover and to root out all error even when no harm is anticipated from it, because its mischief may be very indirect, and may suddenly appear when we do not expect it, for all error has poison at its heart. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
The symbolism in the infantile life of the normal plays a greater role than was expected psychoanalytic experiences. A doctor, on rearranging his furniture in a new house, came across a straight, wooden stethoscope, and, after pausing to decide where he should put it, was impelled to place it on the side of his writing-desk in such a position that it stood exactly between his chair and the one reserved for his patients. This act in itself was certainly odd, for in the place, the straight stethoscope served no purpose as he invariably used a binaural one; and in the second place, all his medical apparatus and instruments were always kept in drawers, with the sole exception of this one. However, he gave no thought to the matter until one day, it was brought to his notice by a patient who had never seen a wooden stethoscope, asking him what it was. On being told, she asked him why he kept it there. He answered in an offhand way that that place was good as any other. This, however, started him thinking, and he wondered whether there had been an unconscious motive in this action. Being interested in the psychanalytic method, he asked me to investigate the matter. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
The first memory that occurred to him was the fact when a medical student, he has been struck by the habit his hospital interne had of always carrying a wooden stethoscope in his hand on his ward visits, although he never used it. He greatly admired this interne, and was much attached to him. Later on, when he himself became an interne, he contracted the same habit, and would feel very uncomfortable if by mistake he left the room without having the instrument to swing in his hand. The aimless of the habit was shown, not only by the fact that the only stethoscope he every used was a binaural one, which he carried in his pocket, but also in that it was continued when he was a surgical interne and never needed the stethoscope at all. From this, it was evident that the idea of the instrument in question had in some way or other become invested with a greater psychic significance than normally belonged to it—in other words, that to the subject it stood for more than it does for other people. The idea must have become unconsciously associated with some other one which it symbolized, and from which it derived its additional fullness of meaning. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
I will forestall the rest of the analysis by saying what this secondary idea was—namely, a phallic one; the way in which this curious association had been formed will presently be related. The discomfort he experienced in hospital on missing the instrument, and the relief and assurance the presence of it gave him, was related to what is known as a castration complex—namely, a childhood fear, often continued in a disguise form into adult life, lest a private part of his body should be taken away from him, just as playthings so often were. The fear was due to paternal threats that it would be cut off if he were not a good boy, particularly in a certain direction. This is a very common complex, and accounts for a great deal of general nervousness ad lack of confidence in later years. The stethoscope association was formed through many connections. In the first place, the physical appearance of the instrument—a straight, rigid, hollow tube, having a small bulbous summit at one extremity and a broad base at the other—and the fact of its being the essential part of the medical paraphernalia, the instrument with which the doctor performed his magical and interesting feats, were matters that attached his boyish attention. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
He had had his chest repeatedly examined by the doctor at the age of six, and distinctly recollected the voluptuous sensation of feeling the latter’s head near him pressing the wooden stethoscope into his hat; he found it interesting that the doctor should carry his chief instrument concealed about his person, always handy when he went to see patients, and that he only had to take off his hat (i.e., a part of his clothing) and pull it out. At the age of eight, he was impressed by being told by an older boy that it was the doctor, who was young and handsome, was extremely popular among the women of the neighborhood, including the subject’s own mother. The doctor and his instrument were therefore the objects of great interest throughout his boyhood. Probably because the boy also wanted to be popular as an adult. It is probable that, as in many other cases, unconscious identification with the family doctor had been a main motive in determining the subject’s choice of profession. It was here doubly conditioned by the superiority on certain interesting occasions of the doctor to the father, of whom the subject was very jealous, and by the doctor’s knowledge of forbidden topics and his opportunity for illicit indulgence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
The subject admitted that he had on several occasions experienced erotic temptations in regard to his women patients; he had twice fallen in love with one, and finally had married one. This shows that the way a lot of adults act and the things they do, are behaviors they learned in their childhood, which appear to be enjoyable or pleasurable to them and they want to do these things to others when adults. For me as a boy, when I would visit my doctor, Dr. Ezekiel, would have Gold Dial soap in his office and when I would wash my hands I remembered how good it smelled, and if a doctor used it, it must be good stuff. So, that Gold Dial is the only hand and bath soap I used because I want to smell good like Dr. Ezekiel. Also, as a child growing up, we lived in a nice suburban community where everything was new and clean and nice and quiet, and everyone had jobs, and so that is what kind of life style I want for my adult life. When people ask me about what I like most about being a son, I always reply, “Everything.” And even when talking to my parents now I try to conceal my true feelings at times and say something pleasant. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Like, if I do not like someone and do not want to go to their party and my parents ask me about it, I will say something like, “I am very excited about the party, but I am busy that day. I am sure they will have good company and food as always.” Sometimes, however, I feel like I try too hard to be nice and pleasant and it really takes a lot of energy. I am more of a person who likes to be quiet, mind my own business and keep to myself, but when living in a city and not the suburbs, it requires one to be more social. Now back to the subject, the next memory he has was of a dream, plainly of a homosexual-masochistic nature; in it a man, who proved to be a replacement figure of the family doctor, attacked the subject with a sword. The idea of a sword, as is so frequently the case in dreams, represented the same idea as mentioned above to be associated with that of a wooden stethoscope. The thought of a sword reminded the subject of the passage in the Nibelung Saga, where Sigurd sleeps with his naked sword (Gram) between him and Brunilda, an incident that had always greatly struck his imagination. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
The meaning of the symptomatic act now at last become clear. The subject had placed his wooden stethoscope between him and his patients, just as Sigurd had placed his sword (an equivalent symbol) between him and the maiden he was not to touch. The great act was a compromise-formation; it served both to gratify in his imagination the repressed wish to enter into nearer relations with an attractive patient (interposition of phallus), and at the same time, to remind him that this wish was not to become a reality (interposition of sword). It was, so to speak, a charm against yielding to temptation. I might add that the following passage from Lord Lytton’s Richelieu made a great impression on the boy: “Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword. I wear my pen as others do their sword,” and that he became a prolific writer and uses an unusually large fountain pen. When I asked him what need he had of this pen, he replied in a characteristic manner, “I have so much to express.” We all live in different psychological Worlds, there is no correct view of a life situation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
A person who feels that his or her view of a life situation has been understood feels freer to examine it objectively and to question it. (Accepting and understanding the perspective of another person can be especially difficult when cultural differences exist.) Heavenly Father, you have filled the World with beauty: Open our eyes to behold your gracious hands in all your works; that rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for the sake of the one through whom all things were made. May we commend to your fatherly goodness all those who are in any ways afflicted or distressed, in mind, body, or estate; [especially those whom our prayers are desired]; that it may please you to comfort and relieve them according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of their afflictions. God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus Christ, your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the ignorance and arrogance and hatred which infects our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purpose on Earth. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
Randolph Harris II International Institute 