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The Spirits Connected to Her Haunted Mansion
One of the many signs of someone being possessed is when one starts speaking in different voices, languages, and explaining things like you just met them that are out of context for the situation. However, scientific research has been unable to find an explanation for some well-documented speech occurrences. The so-called charismatic movement in our own country with its emphasis upon speaking in tongues has focused a great deal of attention upon this subject. Many people in Christian churches believe they are reproducing the gift of tongues reported in the book of Acts and discussed by the apostle Paul in the first letter to the believers in Corinth. The Biblical soundness of their belief lies outside the scope of this study, but we can report that scientifically conducted investigations have shown all instances of tongues-speaking to have the same characteristics wherever they are encountered. The variation between the tongues spoken in a state of hysterical frenzy among primitives is only superficially different from that practiced in a quiet, composed Christian setting. He considers that all tongues experiences are a means by which uneasy and unsatisfied people identify with the supernatural, securing psychological compensation for the spiritual vacuum in which they live. Some Christian scholars believe that added to the psychological element is the possibility that demons are involved in tongues-speaking, but results of investigations in this field are not yet conclusive. Tongues-speaking can be a language of ecstasy; that is, articulated sounds which do not constitute an actual language. Reports keep coming of an even more astonishing phenomenon—speaking a real dialect that was never learned. Hundreds of missionaries, especially those working among people in Asia, report that they often have encountered the mysterious ability of natives to speak in real languages that they never knew. These accounts come from Christian workers who represent widely divergent opinions regarding the charismatic movement. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
One of Mrs. Winchester’s staff members that worked in the greenhouses on her property, who was born and reared on the Tibetan border used to report hearing the Tibetan monks in their ritual dances speak in English with quotations from Shakespeare, with profanity like drunken soldiers, or in German and French, or in languages unknown. A maid also reported the same experiences in the mansion. Reports of this nature are so numerous and come from such reputable people that one cannot set them aside lightly. Perhaps this is the reason Mrs. Winchester installed the mysterious windows in the Grand Ballroom? Christians must not jump to hasty conclusions on such delicate and complicated subjects, but they certainly must recognize the possibility of demonic activity and exercise extreme caution in an attitude of prayerful dependence upon God. We will be able to analyze these reports far more adequately after they have been thoroughly researched by competent investigators. Research teams have found that many of the physical and psychical phenomena declared impossible by the rationalistic scientists of the early 1900’s actually do take place. Most researchers do not even pretend to have a full explanation of how or why these occurrences transpire, but Christians are aware that some of them may be the result of evil spirits who work under the control of Satan. Regarding the occultic, the believer should walk the pathway of extreme caution. One should avoid any so-called magic that claims to bestow unusual knowledge or power through a psychic gift or ritualistic performances. It goes without saying that one must keep a safe distance from any form of black magic, and that one must examine carefully the doctrinal teaching of anyone who purports to provide healing or other temporal benefits in the name of the Lord. Biblical faith is built upon trust in God and expresses itself in submission to His will. Every follower of Christ should be wary of magical cures and all outward demonstrations of allegedly supernatural power. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
As children of God, we must remember that we “walk by faith, not by sight,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.7, and that the faith through the senses. When we received Christ, we were brought into a vital union with Him, and the apostle Peter was writing to us when he said, “Who, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and fill of glory,” reports 1 Peter 1.8. When a believer discovers the emptiness of this World’s enchantments, Satan tries to lure one into accepting his help through some form of occultism. Through these devices, the devil and his organization of evil spirits may attempt to bring defeat and misery into the lives of God’s children. Satan is unable to harm a believer, however, if that person accepts the instruction of the Bible, maintains a life of prayer, and submits oneself to God, and resists the devil. If one is hypocritical and dishonest, one will successfully resist and overcome the evil influence of Satan and his armies. The child of God must not merely say that one desires victory over sin, but must truly long for it. One’s spiritual vows and public statements must always be sincerely spoken, for the devil has no difficulty in defeating the hypocritical and half-hearted. The devil cannot effectively tempt a Christian who is actively living a joyful Christian life. Some believe that the door-to-nowhere in The Winchester Mystery House is just a wing of the mansion that was never finished, but perhaps it was a biblical metaphor. “I am the door; by me if any one enter in, one shall be saved,” reports John 10.9. It is elevated to a high level on the estate with no entrance reminds use to raise or consciousness, but by going the wrong way through the door, it may be a plunge into the pit of hades. There was once a woman who worked at Mrs. Winchester’s estate whose hand was terribly mangled by a gun explosion. Little did Mrs. Winchester know, that some men on the estate, amiable farmers, when not performing their specific functions, they were wizards, necromancers, exorcists, but above all priests, representatives of the people in offering sacrifices and making contact with the spirits. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Over one hundred years ago, human sacrifices had been made in some places, members of the community offered up by the noblest lords, but now animal sacrifices are made. They exhort their listeners about Heaven and hell in which they firmly believe, the one a place of joy and the other of torment…They keep the register of all males born and are intimate contact with sorcerer-priests, who can read ancient manuscripts and incantations for use on all religious occasions. While working on the estate, a man of Asian decent went to the farmers and asked for medical assistance for his wife. It was a moment of weakness—but he needed help. After the wizards, sorcerer-priests, necromancers, and exorcists evaluated the grounds keeper’s wife several times, they found she was suffering a higher fever also. While making preparations to treat her, they noticed the husband cutting three little bamboo sticks about eight inches long and a quarter of an inch in diameter. Oblivious to all that was taking place around him, he silently moved across the room with these three sticks and a rice bowl. After placing a little water in the bottom of the bowl and ordering his wife to dip the fingers of her right hand in it, he waved the bowl over her prostrate body. His next act was to place the bowl on the floor and try to balance the three sticks in the center of it. While this balancing process was going on, he kept calling out the names of demons. The men of supernatural powers soon awakened to the fact that this man was preparing to call a demon out of his wife. The men of supernatural powers suggested that the man’s wife’s fever was probably due to an attack of malaria, but the man insisted that she was demon-possessed. The naming of demons continued until the name of “Lin,” and then the sticks stood on end. Upon learning this was the demon’s name, the man placed some rice in the blow and mixed it with the three sticks—a little salt was added to give it flavor. He then waved the bowl in circles over his wife and politely called out, “Please, Mr. Lin Demon, come out—come out—look at this, tasty bowl of rice—it’s for you if you’ll only come out—please, oh, please come out, Mr. Lin Demon.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Then he moved slowly toward the door and outside, sprinkling a little of the rice along the way and begging the demon to follow him. When he reached the end of the estate, he flung the remaining portion of rice as far out as he could and then returned to the house. This was too much for some of the men of supernatural magic. They were determined to find out the shenanigans behind this thing, even if it meant calling down the wrath of the gods and demons combined. They asked the fellow if her would let them try to stand those sticks on end. He smilingly gave them the go-ahead signal; but he tried and those things just would not stand. Still not satisfied, they asked the man with the injured wife if he would show them how to do it. The whole process was reverently repeated, even to the standing of the sticks when the name “Lin” was called out. However, the men of supernatural magic finally despaired of ever making those sticks stand. They asked the man where did he learn this art. He answered through a séance with Mrs. Winchester. Six scrolls of some ancient script containing incantations appeared in the Blue Séance Room, along with other radical writings. The men of supernatural magic then realized this was the employment of evil angels they were dealing with. They were dealing with the rulers of darkness of this World, and spiritual wickedness in high places. In another case at the Winchester Mansion, these men who doubled as farmers met a fifteen-year-old girl who had a disease of the eyes. She spent quite a time in an eye clinic, but in spite of the treatment she was not cured. Since medical help had failed, she turned to the men of supernatural magic. These men, using white magic, case some spells over her. Within 24 hours of the charming, the girl’s eye trouble disappeared, but thereafter she felt a terrible inner unrest. She prayed but found no peace. Later, when she visited her former eye specialist, he could only shake his head in astonishment and ask her how she had been healed. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Although white magic has been able to heal people, some still believe it is inspired by the powers of darkness. Through white magic some may even obtain what they actually desired, and so it is often only in the effects that its true nature is revealed. The boundary between prayer and magic can be very fluid. If one is able to differentiate between the genuine and the imitation articles, it is essential to have the gift of discerning of spirits. However, whether it sails under a black, white or neutral flag, many people believe they have evidence to prove that the effect of magic in any form is the work of the devil. Yet, that is not what I believe. I have met some very nice people who claim to be witches and warlocks, and they are some of the most kindest people you will every meet. They define those that Christians, who pontificate about the bible, harass and attract and really listen and get to all sides of the story, some it makes some wonder, who is really evil? I am not saying that all Christians are bad, but the witch hunts were started by Christians, as well as lynching in the Southern states. I am not telling anyone what to believe, I am just presenting information that is fascinating. Part of being educated is to remain unbiased and be able to have a discussion, until you draw your own reasonable conclusion based on the evidence presented. If one does not have a case, or does not want to be contradicted by evidence that would prove their argument false, of course they turn to slander, harassment, and terrorism. That is what ignorant people do. They gang up and try to lie so loud to make sure no one can hear the truth they are suppressing. But as the Bible says, all things will come to the light. Everyone has things they need to deal with inside of themselves and sometimes it is more comfortable to try to find fault with others and blame others instead of taking responsibility. For instance, the dynamic of idolatry is demonism since idolatry is in reality the worship of other gods who are demons (1 Corinthians 10.20), headed by Satan the “god of this World,” (2 Corinthians 4.4). #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Occultism involves dealing with demonic forces through fortune-telling, magic, spiritism, or religious cults, which are supposedly closely allied to idolatry. Persons who deal in the occult often discover that they have spiritistic sensitivity, extrasensory perception, or abnormal intellectual powers enabling them to engage in clairvoyance, precognition, divination, psychometry, magic, and spiritism. Dealing in the occult often results in the subjection to the powers of darkness to such a degree that the mind becomes blinded to truth, immersed in deception and error. This frequently results in acute depression with thoughts of self-destruction. However, not all emotional problems or suicidal tendencies should be attributed to occultism. However, demons can also oppress that human mind. Enslavement to demons sometimes reaches a point in which the demonic spirits harass and torment their victims. In the preceding stage of subjection, the evil spirits sporadically dominate their victims, but they do not necessarily harass them, at least not as they do in this deeper and more tragic state of oppression. Oppression in some form will be the final outcome of all who become psychically enslaved, even though some are not psychically gifted with spiritistic or magical powers. One well-attested and widely occurring form of demonic oppression is poltergeist phenomena. “Poltergeist” is German for “noisy ghost.” In such a case, the oppressed person is hounded by strange noises and sounds, such as shouts and obscene threats, rattling of chains, moaning, weeping, or piercing laughter. Dishes clatter, furniture is moved by invisible hands, and myriads of other strange happenings occur, invisibly produced by spirits connected with a haunted house where spirit activity has been practiced. Some who are oppressed continue to be tormented even though they may move to another residence. Also, common in the victims of demonism are the appearances of ghosts, specters, and monstrous phantasms. These phenomena are often explained away as hallucinations, but are well attested in occultism as spirits appearing as dwarfs, animals, dismembered parts of a human body, etcetera. At times these hideous spirits will strangle, bite, strike, or attack their victims in some way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Perhaps the most terrible and revolting form of demonic oppression is what is known in the history of religion as incubi and sccubae experiences. This is the assault by an unclean spirit upon its enslaved victim for the purpose of lust involving pleasures of the flesh. Both men and women have been attacked and molested by “seducing male and female demons.” Such fully established phenomena show that angelic-human union, a major cause of the flood (Genesis 6.1-4; 2 Peter 2.4; Jude 1.6-7), has its parallel in occultism today. The account of the following portent is given us in Aubrey’s Miscellanies. “When King James II first entered Dublin after his Arrival from France, 1689, one of the Gentlemen that bore the Mace before him, stumbled without any rub in his way, or other visible occasion. The Mace fell out of is hands, and the little Cross upon the Crown thereof stuck fast between to Stones in the Street. This is well known all over Ireland, and did much trouble King James himself with many of his chief Attendants”; but not doubt greatly raised the hopes of his enemies. A few years later a witch-story comes from the north of Ireland. “At Antrim in Ireland a little girl of nineteen (nine?) years of age, inferior to none in the place for beauty, education, and birth, innocently put a leaf of sorrel which she had got from a witch into her mouth, after she had given the begging witch bread and beer at the door; it was scarce swallowed by her but she began to be tortured in the bowels, to tremble all over, and even was convulsive, and in fine to swoon away as dead. The doctor used remedies on the 9th of May 1698, at which time it happened, but to no purpose, the child continued in a most terrible paroxysm; whereupon they sent for the minister, who scarce had laid his hand upon her when she was turned by the demon in the most dreadful shapes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
She began first to rowl herself about, then to vomit needles, pins, hairs, feathers, bottoms of thread, pieces of glass, window-nails, nails drawn out of a cart or coach-wheel, an iron knife about a span long, eggs, and fish-shells; and when the witch came near the place, or looked to the house, though at the distance of two hundred paces from where the child was, she was in worse torment, insomuch that no life was expected from the child till the witch was removed to some greater distance. The witch was apprehended, condemned, strangled, and burnt, and was desired to unto the incantation immediately before strangling; but said she could not, by reasons others had done against her likewise. But the wretch confessed the same, with many more. The child was about the middle of September thereafter carried to a gentleman’s house, where there were many other things scarce credible, but that several ministers and the gentleman have attested the same. The relation is to be seen in a pamphlet printed 1699, and entitled The Bewitching of a Child in Ireland.” People in ancient times used to rely more on the spiritual, witchcraft, magic, séances, curses, potions, and meditation. Perhaps that is why there were so many more instances of supernatural things happening today. Some of these claims sound so outrageous and many of them report the same types of instances. Then today, we have all these technologies and medications and machines that we rely on and people who tell us what is actually possible and how many of these stories from the past happen to be something else explained by medication or a camera that so many people start to disbelieve in the supernatural. However, just because it can be explained by science, does not mean it is not supernatural. The Christian Bible even speaks about miracles, which are things that are supernatural. Supernatural phenomenon is real. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
However, supernatural phenomena may be less common today because land is so densely packed, so many people turn into TV and Music and digital entertainment, so they spend less time praying and tuning into nature. In the 1800s, one could life in a house and not see another person for years because there was so much space to spread out on. People had time to read books and gaze at the moon and the sky and think up inventions. By now, everyone has probably heard of the legendary Sarah L. Winchester. She is the one who built the most mysterious mansion in the World. One thing that surprises me is that no one has, as of yet, tried to duplicate or create something just as wonderful. Nonetheless, it has been said that Mrs. Winchester slept in a different bedroom every night, supposedly in order to confuse evil spirits. And it totally makes sense. Because even now, people say when bad things are happening to you, you need to figure out what you are doing to cause it and draw closer to God. Back in Mrs. Winchester’s day, the 1800s, people were into spiritualism and also believed that spirits were the source causing bad things to happen to people. So they would try to appease them to protect themselves from curses and demons and so forth. Every generation has their methods and religions and that is just how it is. Some say Mrs. Winchester also held special dinner parties for her spirit friends. Legend has it that she would serve her phantom friends on solid gold plates, offering them delicious cuisine like caviar, truffles, and pheasant stuffed with pate. The mansion’s staff was also well-fed. On a stormy night, the front of the house was dark and silent, for it was long past bedtime. It was thirteen past one, and raining like blazes. It was thirteen years ago this day that Louis Le Prince had been seen alive, for Black Knight, one of Mrs. Winchester’s mares kicked the life out of him in the house stable one morning. One could feel the present and all its dangers towering around. Staff who walked by the horse stable this day reported feeling lost, a ghost dislodged from time. Indeed, it struck many people as unusual that the lad was left for the to care for the horses by himself. It might have been a fancy stable, but there was a queer feel about the place. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
The sun was just beginning to set as they headed back to the estate. By the time they got inside, the night was as black as your hat: not a vestige of a moon, not a single star to break the uniform of darkness of the sky. With sunset a noisy blustering wind had sprung up, rattling about one of the chimneys, clashing the wet branches, and deadening the sound of cautious footfalls creeping across the paddock in the direction of the stables. The wind dropped suddenly, making the silence all the more intense by contrast with the previous roar; and through the stillness, Mrs. Winchester heard the clink of a bucket, and the sound of someone moving about in the stables. She sprang to her feet and snatched up her lantern. She thought that someone was trying to get at one of her horses, and her hand was on her father-in-law’s ivory-gripped Winchester pistol when she opened the door. So strong was the impression that she was absolutely surprised to find no sign of an intruder. The horses were perfectly quiet. Mrs. Winchester looked all around. There was certainly nothing to see, but it struck her that the air felt very cold, and she shut the door. The instant it closed behind her, a dark shadow fell across the square of light issuing from the entrance to the saddle-room. She figured it must have been the wind she heard and locked the door and went back inside. However, the butler Henry Boynton Clitz, was also suspicious. He turned the key in the lock and looked into the horse stable; then he gave a slight start, and drew quickly back. There was light inside, but where is came from would have been difficult to say. Beyond the shadow lay black and impenetrable, a wall of darkness. As he crossed the threshold Henry felt a blast of cold air sweep towards him, striking a strange chill into his very bones. Straight opposite stood a horse, and before him was an old man who appeared to be asleep. However, even in that intense stillness the tout could catch no sound of his breathing. His own heart was thumping against his ribs with the force of a sledge-hammer. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Henry felt his flesh creeping with a sensation of fear that was almost sickening. Fear? Yes, that was the word; he was horribly afraid. And of what? Of a weak old man, for whom he would have been more than a match single-handed, and they were two to one. What a fool he was, to be sure! With desperate effort he pulled himself together and went forward, his eye warily fixed on the silent figure. Neither man nor horses moved. As Henry moved forward, he heard a low chuckling laugh. The man was looking at him. The gleaming eyes fixed on him with a sort of mesmeric power. His face fastened on the figure, taking in every item of the quaint dress, the high gill collar and ample bird’s eye stock, the drab coat and antiquated breeches and gaiters. His mouth was open, but for the life of him he could not speak. He was waiting in the helpless fascination of horror to see the face of a man who had been dead and buried for thirteen years. Slowly, like an automaton, that strange watcher turned his head. The square, resolute mouth was open as if to speak; the shrunken skin was a greenish yellow color, like the skin of a corpse; along the temple ran a dull black mark in the shape of a horse’s hoof; but the eyes burned like two living coals, as they fixed themselves on the face of the terrified publican. Next, Henry heard the crash of a lantern on stones and the sound of Louis’s flying feet, and an awful terror came upon him, a great fear, which made his teeth chatter in his head and curdled the blood in his veins. The place seemed full of an unnatural light—black flames. The air was foul with the horrible odors of decay. Above all, Henry felt the fearful presence of that which was neither living nor dead—the semblance of a man whose human body had for thirteen long years been rotting in the grave. It was not living, but it moved. Its cold, shining eyes were looking into his, were coming near. There was no mistaking the look of that helpless body, the limp flaccidity of those outstretched arms. “He’s dead,” said Henry, as he turned up the white face. Its coat was wet with—something. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
It was blood. But it was strange there should be no marks of violence about him, and yet he looks as if he had died hard. And truly, the dead man’s face was terrible in its fixed expression of mortal fear. The eyes were staring and wide open, the teeth clenched, a little forth hung about the blue lips. It was a horrid sight. Henry locked the door on the corpse until the police could arrive, and spent the remainder of the night in the butler’s pantry. However, when the Henry awoke, he could throw very little light on the matter. There was no one in the horse stables. No body, no foul odor, no broken lanterns. Just the horses and an old noose in one of the empty stalls. Whatever happened remain a mystery. The old living soul who knew the truth held her tongue. Mrs. Winchester simply told him, “Leave it to other staff members and never set foot in that cursed place. The poor boy is dead, and there is no reason for me to get myself mixed up in the business.” Demons can cause physical ailments such as dumbness (Matthew 9.32-33), blindness (Matthew 12.22), and various other defects and deformities (Luke 13.11-17). In all such cases medical and psychiatric treatment are of no avail, because the cause is demonic. Only be dealing with the spiritual causes of the malady can it be cured. Besides actual sickness, demons can cause speech and behavior abnormalities. In demon possession, which is an extreme form of enslavement and oppression, the speech and behavior abnormalities appear in greatly accentuated form with such violent physical manifestations as retching, screaming, blaspheming, cursing, foaming at the mouth, convulsions and display of tremendous physical strength. So completely does the demonic spirit gain mastery that one takes over the body of the victim and speaks through it with one’s own voice and language, which may be completely foreign to the language of the demonized. Sometimes evil spirits endanger humans’ temporal safety by exercising a certain control over natural forces. “I’ve covered my brother completely (That bump on the right is his knee) I will dig him out when I am ready to find how he liked it, you see.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
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I’ll bet you wonder whether poor Whitney’s race is run. I hate to keep you guessing, but I must have my fun. 🎟 link in bio. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
REGARDLESS OF VACCINATION STATUS, ALL PERSONS IN SANTA CLARA COUNTY MUST WEAR FACE COVERINGS AT ALL TIMES WHEN INDOORS. WHILE THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA LIFTED THE UNIVERSAL MASK MANDATE AS OF FEBRUARY 16, 2022, SANTA CLARA COUNTY MASK MANDATES ARE STILL IN EFFECT UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
Time Belongs to God Alone and it is Worth More than Money
The person who does not read good books has no advantage over the person who cannot read them. The American Airlines 757 airplane was approaching the Rocky Mountains on a flight from Boston to Los Angles when a passenger called Michael Tighe’s, arm and head, suddenly lurched into the aisle. His wife, a nurse, who was sitting alongside him, immediately knew something terrible was about to happen. Mr. Tighe’s heart had begun beating erratically, failing to send an adequate blood supply to his brain. Mr. Tighe, sixty-two, was at the edge of death when flight personnel appeared with a laptop-sized device. Attaching electrical leads to his body, they shocked him—once, twice, several times—and literally brought him back to life, making him the first person to be saved in-flight by a defibrillator. It has been installed on the plane only two days earlier. Like the human heart, societies and economics, too, are subject to premature beats, local tachycardias, fibrillations and flutters, as well as “chaotic” irregularities and paroxysms. While this had long been true, the uneven, ever accelerating pace of change and continual de-synchronization that comes with it may now be pushing us toward temporal incoherence—without a defibrillator on board. When our institutions, companies, industries, and economy are out of sync with one another, what happens to us as individuals? If we are, indeed, running faster and panting harder, where will it end? How did we get chained to time and speed in the first place? Start here with a point made earlier that in less affluent societies, ancient China or feudal Europe for example, people were not generally paid hourly wages. As slaves, serfs or sharecroppers, they typically received or kept some fraction of what they actually produced. Work time, as such, did not directly translate into money. Add to that the facts that weather, the limitations of human and animal energy, and extremely primitive technology all set upper limits on human productivity, no matter how many hours a less affluent family might work. The result was a relationship to time remarkably different from our own. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
As late as the fourteenth century in Europe, according to French historian Jacques Le Goff, clerics were sill preaching that time belong to God alone and therefore must not be sold. Selling work for time was almost as bad as usury—the selling of money for interest. And as far as the fifteenth-century Franciscan monk Bernardino of Siena was concerned, humans were not even supposed to know how to tell time. The industrial revolution changed all that. Fossil fuels and factories smashed the agrarian limitations on human productivity. Clocks and watches made it possible to monitor and measure time more accurately. And how long or fast you worked did make a difference. Second Wave employers, in hopes of maximizing output, sped up assembly lines of paid piecework to squeeze additional muscle power from workers. And based on the “time is money” formula, factory workers came to be paid by the hour. Which explains why the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics still typically measures “labor productivity” in terms of output per hour. The early modernizers went further, forging another link in the chain that inextricably bound wealth to time. The New World gradually did away with traditional anti-usury laws and legitimized interest payments based on time. This was ultimately followed by a vast expansion of other time-based payments by consumers, corporations and, above all, governments. In this way, the pricing of labor and the pricing of money both became increasingly based on time. Introduced separately and gradually, these twin changes were momentous. They meant that the same individual as worker, as consumer, as borrower, lender and investor became chained to time as never before. Workers grumbled about the rat race. Artists, writers and filmmakers satirized it, as did Fritz Lang in his scenes of workers and clocks in his amazing film Metropolis (1927) and Charlie Chaplin in his classic Modern Times (1936). However, the chains of time only tightened over the years as punch clocks and time-based Taylorite. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Temporal incoherence is often seen in modern times because of globalization and international business. With countries like China being 13 hours ahead of America, it means in most cases they are often a day ahead. And while we are sleeping, they are waking up. So some business people will need to be up at 1am or 2am to do deals with China and prepare to get their projects in a day ahead to make sure they are delivered on the day expected. With everything moving at rapid pace, Americans needs to sometimes be ahead one or two days, so this often means there are no weekends, it is just a constant cycle of business everyday of the month. Nonetheless, even today some employers in call centers and factory-style offices equipped with the latest Third Wave technologies continue to use Second Wave methods of management. Counting an employee’s keystrokes or calls per hour, they apply the traditional speed-up methods of the old-line textile mill or auto assembly line. The pace of life—not just at work—is in for a jolting further acceleration. Acceleration has clicked into ultra-drive and an avalanche of words has been devoted to elaborations by others. An entire new vocabulary of terms—“twitch speed,” “hurry sickness,” “time deepening,” “Internet time,” “digital time,” “time famine”—reflects the accuracy of that early forecast. Today millions feel harassed, stressed out and “future shocked” by the compression of time. London’s Evening Standard reports the unsurprising arrival of therapists who specialize in helping “rushaholics” to slow down. We hate to wait. The epidemic of attention deficit disorder among American kids may be chemical rather than cultural in origin, but it perfectly symbolized the growing refusal today to defer gratification as the future speeds up. However, if businesses necessarily want instance gratification, faster and larger returns and even automated services to reduce conversation and speed up transactions, why do we blame kids for wanting the same? However, this chemical reaction combined with the loss of patients due to having anything and everything at one’s fingertips has created a perfect formula for addictive tendencies and poor impulse control. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The inability to control impulses leads to short term pleasure and reduces the ability to reach one’s highest potential. One recommendation is that when you do give in to instant gratification for something, spend time reflecting on how it made you feel and whether you want to make decisions that way in the future. Yet also remember the demand for instant gratification is everywhere. Consumers expect to find the services, products, and information that they want quickly and easily. As it stands, 60 percent of women say they do not have enough free time and 60 percent feel guilty for spending the free time they have on themselves. Around the World, multi-tasking and multi-focus replace single-minded concertation as an entire generation grows up in a culture and an economy moving from sequential to simultaneous processing. Even when some people have a long-term injury or sickness, they are still training themselves and focusing on a project like it is their job because no one knows what the future holds, so it is best not to set around like a vegetable, you have to train yourself for something and keep your mind sharp so you can participate in intelligence conversations. If and when you recover, people will be impressed by how much you know and the ways you can contribute to conversations and projects. This may give you an advantage over others who have more experience and a better education on paper. A lot of people like to hire people based out how they feel about a person because when you can see someone is knowledge able, trustworthy, possesses important skills, and are loyal, that is the type of person you want to take a risk on. Corporations are not faceless giants, behind that name are several people who have staked lot of money, in hopes of making more. And if you see intelligent and are business friendly, that will go a long way. However, it is also good to make sure you are truly ready for paid labor, because a physically or mentally unprepared employee can cost a firm hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars if they breakdown. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
People are all processing more and more input at faster and faster rates and are bored with anything they regard as slow, so that is important to keep in mind. A person can get approved for a mortgage, car loan, credit card, or personal loan within seconds. They can find out the results of medical examinations, with detailed results in minutes. All these pressures for speed explain why a covey of “time management” consultants and shelfload books offer advice on how to reschedule our days and relate time to our personal priorities. Yet all this advice scarcely touches on the less obvious reasons for the speed-up of life. Several forces have been converging to drive the acceleration needle off the gauge. The 1980s and ‘90s saw a global shift toward liberal economics and hypercompetition. Combine that with the eighteen-month rate of semiconductor-chip power and you get near-instantaneous financial transactions. (Currency traders can find out about a trade within two hundred milliseconds of its completion.) Put differently, behind all of these pressures is the historic move to a wealthy system whose chief raw material—knowledge—can no move at nearly real-time speed. We live at a pace so hyper that the old law that “time is money” needs revision. Every interval of time is now worth more than money than the last one because, in principle if not in practice, more wealth can be created during it. In turn, all this changes our personal relationship to the deep fundamental of time. In yesterday’s work World, time was packaged in standard lengths. “Nine-to-five” became the template for millions of U.S. workers. Half an hour or an hour for lunch were the norm, along with so many days of holiday time. Labor contracts and federal laws made overtime expensive for employers and discouraged deviance from standard time packages. These standard time packages spread from the factory throughout the rest of life as well. Paralleling the factory, virtually all industrial-age offices also set fixed, standardized schedules. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Schools, meanwhile, prepared future generations of factory workers by submitting children to a similar time discipline. In America, kids in their conspicuous yellow buses were unwittingly being prepared to commune to work on time. Inside, the school bells rand and the children were (and still are) marched through a sequence of standard-length classes. By contrast, today’s emergent economy, for which those schoolchildren are being misprepared, runs on radically different temporal principles. It is, we are fragmenting yesterday’s standard time packages as we shift from collective time to customized time. Put differently, we are moving from impersonalized to personalized time in parallel with the moves toward personalized products and markets. Now, consider some incidents of pleasures of the flesh and marriage in a more “privileged” and more “underprivileged” situation. For the first, we can return to the remarkable boom in early marriages and child bearing occurring especially among the economically privileged who previously would have married late. No doubt this has been partly due to the war and the Cold War, clinging to life and clutching to something safe in an era of anxiety. However, it seems to be also partly a strong reaction to drift toward formlessness which these young persons could observe in their own parents. These young-marrying, contemporaries or juniors of the Hipster Generation, have often expressed themselves as follows: “My highest aim in life is to achieve a normal healthy marriage and raise healthy [non-neurotic] children.” On the face of it, this remark is preposterous. What was always taken as a usual and advantageous life-condition for work in the World and the service of God, is now regarded as an heroic goal to be striven for. Yet we see that it is a hard goal to achieve against the modern obstacles. Also it is a real goal, with objective problems that a human can work at personally, and take responsibility for, and make decisions about—unlike the interpersonal relations of the corporation, or the routine of the factory job for which the worker could not care less. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
However, now, suppose the young man is achieving this goal: he has the wife, the small kids, the suburban homes, and the labor-saving domestic devices. How is it that it is the same man who uniformly asserts that he is in a Rat Race? Either the goal does not justify itself, or indeed he is not really achieving it. If marriage and children are the goal, perhaps the truth is a man cannot really achieve it. It is not easy to conceive of a strong husband and father who does not feel justified in his work and independent in the World. Correspondingly, if he is running a Rat Race, his wife feels justified in the small children, but does she have a man, do the children have a father? Into what World do the small children grow up in such a home? If its personnel are married and have homes responsibilities, it is advantageous to the smooth function of the organized system. (Exempli gratia, it is much harder for them to act up and quit.) However, the smooth functioning of the organized system may not be advantageous to the quality of marriage and the fatherhood. It is a troubling picture. On the one hand, early marriage is excellent and promising, especially in the probable case that both the young people have had experience in pleasures of the flesh and could have others, and they have chosen the marriage as a reasonably steady and jealousy-free alternative. And having children early is admirable, rather than delaying for the empty reasons that middle-class people used to give. On the other hand, to take on such early responsibilities indicates an early resignation: the marriage seems partly to be instead of looking ambitiously for a worth-while career. If the highest aim in life is to achieve a normal marriage and raise healthy children, we can understand the preoccupation with Psychology, for the parents do not have much activity of their own to give rules to the family life. The thousands of happy marriages, then, have the touching dignity of evangelical tracts, as is indeed their tone; they teach how to be saved, and there is no other way to be saved. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
On the children is lavished an avalanche of attention. They cannot possibly reward so much attention, and the young father, at least, soon gets pretty bored and retires to his Do-It-Yourself. Now it used to be said that middle-class parents frustrate the children more, to meet high standards, but the frustration is acceptable because it leads to an improved status, esteemed by the children; the lower classes, on the contrary, are more permissive; nor would the discipline be accepted, because the father is disesteemed. What then is the effect, in the ranch houses, if the discipline is maintained, because the standard is high, but the status is disesteemed, first by the father himself, who talks cynically about it; then by the mother, who does not respect it; then by the growing children? Is it possible to maintain and pass on a middle-class standard without belief in its productive and cultural mission? I wonder if we are not here describing the specific genesis of a Hipster Generation: young men who cannot break away from the father who has been very good to them, but who simply cannot affirm father’s values; and there are no other dominant social values to compensate. If this is the case, where now there are thousands of these young men, there will be hundreds of thousands. The organized system is the breeding ground of a Hipster Generation. Now, after the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, the moral pursuits and other reformers focused on the age of women of the evening. In England, the age of consent was far too early. Grown men eagerly sought out undeveloped girls, knowing they had nothing to fear from the law. Some were a class of men who are disgraced in every society because the mates they choose are far, far too young for anyone to consider, and this was because in many cases they wanted to protect themselves from diseases, which virgins did not carry. In consequence, a supply of very young girls, often spurious virgins, came onto the market to become women of the evening. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The opposition to changing this was powerful and persistent. Many legislators were themselves unrepentant brothel habitues and resisted all efforts to modify the legislation. In 1875, they relented slightly and raised the age of consent to thirteen. Moral reformers saw this as a cynical reaffirmation of the double standard. Underclass women over the age of thirteen remained virtually unprotected, and men of all classes considered them fair game. For an entire decade, nothing changed while the spotlight was on the Contagious Diseases Acts. Then in 1875, the Herculean efforts of reformers and a crusading journalist named William Thomas Stead convinced the reluctant lawmakers to raise the age of consent to a more “acceptable” sixteen. Mr. Stead was the son of a Congregational minister and the doting father of six children. At the age of sixty-two, he went down on the Titanic, quietly reading in the first-class smoking room, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee on a doomed journey to a peace conference. In his prime, Stead used his editorship of The Pall Mall Gazette to research and expose flaws and inequalities in his society. His grandstanding journalistic campaign on behalf of ruined young girls was startlingly unorthodox. Frist, he found a London police officer willing to be quoted about how abysmally the law protected girls. When Mr. Stead inquired, “Is it or is it not a fact that, at this moment, if I were go to the proper [brothels] houses, well introduced, the keeper would, in return for money down, supply me in due time with a maid—a genuine article, I mean, not a mere women of the evening tricked out as a virgin, but a girl who had never been seduced?” The police source replied without a moment’s hesitation, “Certainly.” Having established the situation surrounding his issues, Mr. Stead proved his point in a manner that went far beyond investigative-reporting techniques. Through a brothel-keeper, he actually negotiated with certain Mrs. Armstrong, an alcoholic mother, to purchase her virginal daughter Eliza (a pseudonym for Lily), “a bright, fresh-looking little girl, who was thirteen years old last Christmas.” Mr. Stead and Mrs. Armstrong struck a deal, and Eliza was his for the price of five pounds. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
However, before he paid the entire sum, Mr. Stead had the girl’s virginity professionally certified by Madame Mourez, an abortionist/midwife, whose skills in pronouncing upon the physical evidences of virginity is generally recognized in the profession. After a brief examination, Madame Mourez issued a written certificate of virginity. She was even moved to exclaim to Mr. Stead, who she assumed was about to deflower young Eliza, “She is so small, her pain will be extreme. I hope you will not be too cruel with her.” With his certified virgin in tow, Mr. Stead stepped firmly off the path of acceptable journalistic practice and into a netherworld of quasi-criminality, morally justified, tactically sound, but legally indefensible. Mr. Stead instructed his brothel-keeping agent to take Eliza to a house of solicitation on Regent Street. There, despite her extreme youth, she was admitted without question, Mr. Stead reported. She was also undressed and put to bed, quieted with chloroform purchased from Madame Mourez, the abortionist, who had enthusiastically recommended it for deflowering virgins. Mr. Stead then entered Eliza’s room, closing and locking the door. Silence. Then, with a scream like the bleat of a frightened lamb,” the drowsy child, “in accents of terror, ‘There’s a man in the room! Take me home—oh, take me home!’” Eliza need not have worried. She was in no danger of being assaulted by physical force. She was merely the sacrificial lamb in Mr. Stead’s blazing crusade to reform the age-of-consent laws. Once his cautionary drama had been played out and documented, Mr. Stead arranged for Eliza’s passage out of merciless England to France. Then her sat down at his desk and penned his account of Eliza’s adventure. “The Maiden Tribute of Babylon” caused a sensation. “An Earthquake has shaken the foundations of England,” proclaimed the bishop of Truro. Ironically, Mr. Stead soon replaced Eliza as principle victim of the expose. He was charged, convicted, and condemned to three months in prison for exporting a minor without parental consent. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Mr. Stead responded bitterly. “What else could one expect?” he declared, given that the very legislators he had hoped to prod into reform were themselves patrons of Mrs. Jeffries’s brothel in Chelsea or Berthe’s on Milton Street. Despite this, Mr. Stead’s revelations created an outpouring of public outrage, including a four-hundred-thousand-name petition that, unrolled, was two and a half miles long. The legislators, secret clients of brothels or not, caved in and raised the age of consent to sixteen. Though women over sixteen remained unprotected against predatory males, this legislation was nonetheless a heavy blow to England’s historically entrenched double standard. It is clear to see money is not the root of all evil. Today, hard-won laws in North America and much of Europe have established a measure of equality that has deeply eroded the most blatant manifestations of the double standard. Feminists of both genders keep vigilant watch to ensure the old ways of thinking, acting, and legislating do not creep back into use, at least in the law. However, even now, remnants linger on. Randy young men still sow their wild oats, but the girls they sow them with are often times unchaste, sometime chaste. Yet, the double standard is eroding, but chastity still bears a woman’s face. Now, while interviewing for the job of editor, Frederick said, “This may sound self-serving, but I am extraordinarily gifted. I am certain that I will do great things in this position, that I and the newspaper will soon set the standard for journalism in this city. The committee was impressed. Certainly, Frederick’s credential were strong, but even more important, his self-confidence and boldness had wowed them. A year later, many of the same individuals were describing Frederick differently—arrogant, self-serving, cold, ego-maniacal, draining. He had performed well as editor (though not as spectacularly as he seemed to think), but that performance could not outweigh his personality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Colleagues below and above him had grown weary of his manipulations, his emotional outbursts, his refusal every to take the blame, his nonstop boasting, and his grandiose plans. Once again, Frederick had outworn his welcome. To be sure, Frederick had great charm, and he knew how to make others feel important, when it served his purposes. Thus he always had his share of friends and admirers. However, in reality they were just passing through, until Fredrick would tire of them or feel betrayed by their lack of enthusiasm for one of his self-serving interpretations or grand plans. Or until they simply could take Frederick no longer. Bright and successful though he was, Fredrick always felt entitled to more than he was receiving—to higher grades at school, greater compensation at work, more attention from girlfriends. If criticized even slightly, he reacted with fury, and was certain that the critic was jealous of his superior intelligence, skill, or looks. At first glance, Frederick seemed to have a lot going for himself socially. Typically, he could be found in the midst of a deep, meaningful romantic relationship—one in which he might be tender, attentive, and seemingly devoted to his partner. However, Frederick would always tire of his partner within a few weeks or months and would turn cold or even mean. Often he started affairs with other women while still involved with the current partner. The breakups—usually unpleasant sometimes ugly—rarely brought sadness or remorse to him, and he would almost never think about his former partner again. He always had himself. Each of us has a personality—a unique and enduring pattern of inner experiences and outward behaviour. We tend to react in our own predictable and consistent ways. These consistencies, often called personality traits, may be the result of inherited characteristics, learned responses, or a combination of the two. Yet our personalities are also flexible. We learn from experience. As we interact with our surroundings, we try out various responses to see which are more effective. This is a flexibility that people who suffer from a personality disorder usually do not have. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
A personality disorder is an inflexible pattern of inner experience and outward behaviour. The pattern is seen in most of the person’s interactions, continues for years, and differs markedly from the experiences and behaviours usually expected of people. Frederick seems to display such a disorder. For most of his life, his narcissism, grandiosity, outburst, and insensitivity to others have been excessive and have dominated his functioning. The rigid traits of people with personality disorders often lead to psychological pain for the individual and social or occupational difficulties. The disorders also bring pain to others. Witness the upset and turmoil experienced by Frederick’s co-workers and girlfriends. Personality disorders typically become recognizable in adolescence or early adulthood, although some start during childhood. These are among the most difficult psychological disorders to treat. Many sufferers are not even aware of their personality problems and fail to trace their difficulties to their inflexible style of thinking and behaving. Approximately 9 to 13 percent of all adults may have a personality disorder. Disorders of long standing that usually start before adulthood may continue into adulthood. More acute disorders that often begin as a noticeable change in a person’s usual behaviour are, in many cases, of limited duration. People with avoidant personality disorder, who fearfully shy away from all relationships, may be prone to develop a social phobia. That is why, even though 64 percent of students, sometime in their grade school career want to be homeschooled or transferred, parents make them stay in the schools they are in so they can become social and confident adult. Another point while we are on the topic of school, detention is a really great program. If kids did not have responsibilities, did not have to play sports or work, for those performing below standards, think how much reward they would get from staying after school and reading a chapter they did not complete or finishing up a worksheet. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Nonetheless, diagnoses of personality disorder can easily be overdone. We may catch glimpses of ourselves or of people we know in the descriptions of these disorders, and we may be tempted to conclude that we or they have a personality disorder. In the vast majority of instances, such interpretations are incorrect. The cluster of “odd” personality disorders consists of paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal personality disorders. People with these disorders typically display odd or eccentric behaviors that are similar to but not as extensive as those seen in schizophrenia, including extreme suspiciousness, social withdrawal, and peculiar ways of thinking and perceiving things. Such behaviours often leave the person isolated. Some clinicians believe that these personality disorders are actually related to schizophrenia, and they call them schizophrenia–spectrum disorders. In support of this idea, people with these personality disorders often qualify for an additional diagnosis of schizophrenia of have close relatives with schizophrenia. Of course, such findings may simply reflect the difficulty of distinguishing these personality disorders from schizophrenia, rather than some kind of direct relationship between them. Clinicians have learned much about the symptoms of the odd personality disorders but have not been so successful in determine their causes or how to treat them. In fact, people with these disorders rarely seek treatment. Now, what the scientists have done with atomic energy is to destroy the atom, the stud which God made and used to make the Universe. They have released destructive forces into the World and degenerative forced along with them among humankind. Even the peaceful commercial use of nuclear energy in reactor-installations brings these evils among us and the precautionary safeguards fail to overcome them. Human intellect, when not balanced by intuitive feeling and when directed by one’s wild and egoistic impulses, can only lead one to self-destruction in the end. In total sense, this will not be permitted by the World-Mind. Therefore, its course will be hindered and on oneself restrained as soon as the time is appropriate. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
The physical starvation or privation which afflicts so many millions in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas is deplorable but the spiritual starvation or moral degeneration which afflicts many more is really a worse evil. This idea may seem strange, even repulsive, to most people. For its truth can become evident only after carefully thinking out the causes and consequences of both situations, although it is evident in a flash to those who have enough intuitive insight. There is a grimmer prospect than overpopulation. By destroying their home, humans as a species are destroying themselves, not to mention animals and plants who will pass with them. If this planet dies a new one will be born, yes, but one will carry the moral guilt. In an unsympathetic society, what is deep in a human heart may be deliberately denied expression and not allowed to come out. The large cities have become large blots on humankind’s inner life and outer health. They are marvels of ingenious arrangements but monstrosities of nervous strain and psychoneurosis. Their inhabitants follow an artificial existence under the delusion that it is human existence. Everything within them is abnormal yet custom and cowardice, ignorance and selfishness have proclaimed it normal. The air is filled with chemical poisons by travelling vehicles and factories and industrial plants. Their water flows through miles and miles of sediment-lined pipes. Their food is stale, devitalized, adulterated, and often disease-breeding. The unnatural living and high tension of millions of city-prisoned people exposes them to physical and nervous sickness. It becomes harder with each year for the inhabitants of modern London or modern New York to achieve this gentle receptiveness to intuitive spiritual moods. If its industrial constructions have turned wandering streams into foul gutters, green fields into filthy slums, and pleasant valleys into mean joyless streets, science had not served the World. Worse is the poisoned air and food, the mechanized worker. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
In destroying woods and forests, in building over glades and dells, humans have been destroying one of their principal resources of spiritual welfare. The message which their loveliness and silence could give is lost; the benefit to feeling and thought is not received. Battlement in the face of the World problem produces inertia and paralyses initiative. We are all suffering the evil effects of dispersed radioactivity even now. The dosage is mall but cumulative, worsening with every year that passes. An exhausted people may become too tired to believe in anything or to hold on to principles, may live from moment to moment in weary opportunism. Despite delusions about their progress in conquering Nature all humans are still controlled by Nature’s higher laws. Violation of those laws always brings suffering but the present-day violation will bring disaster. An ethically blinded World may not perceive the actuality and factuality of Universal Law. However, there is no other God pulling historic stings than the Universal Laws of retribution and re-adjustment. And let us not forget that this destiny is not an arbitrary tyrannical power; it is self-earned by the nations as by individuals and thus self-called into operation. The sufferings it brings to peoples are really the reactions of their own near or remote deeds. They are visited by the consequences of their own making. Universal Laws work on their own time to set straight all crooked things, not in ours. Nevertheless we can sometimes see it move quickly enough to teach a vivid lesson both to those who suffer its consequences and those who observe that suffering. Because sufficient people were unable or unwilling to learn the proper lessons of the first World War, they had to suffer the consequences of this failure in a worse form—the second World War. If the latter’s lessons are in turn also left unlearned, then those consequences will come in the worst possible form—a Third and Atomic World War. When a civilization becomes so mechanized or brutalized or sensualized or materialized as to be quite insensitive to the higher values of life, it invokes its own slow passing away or abrupt disappearance. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
When we are aware of the Earth’s processes, seeing ourselves as parts of a whole, we learn to let go of the need to control life. We are reminded to accept the inevitable cycles of green and dry, birth and death, cold and warm, emptiness and fullness, light and dark, that characterize the events and activities of our daily life. Use this energy to achieve magically and create mentally whatever specific physical or mental objective one is aspired to. It becomes a vehicle of sacred consecration of spiritual force. Our prayers remind us of our role in shaping not only our physical existence but our human consciousness as well. Just as the spring has been celebrated for tens of thousands of years as the point of fertility, as when nature displays its beauty to bring about the conception of life, so too our own life has its birthing seasons. As a newborn babe, I can stand on my wobbly legs in the new World, wash the new body that has just been so tenderly born from a lifetime labor, and walk to stand before the bright sun. O Lord of hosts, happy is the human that trusts in Thee. Though I am fallen, I shall raise again, though I dwell in darkness, Thou art my light. Thou art my lamp, O Lord, Thou dost illumine my darkeness. My heart is not turned away, neither have my steps departed from Thy path. In earthquake and storm, I shall not fear, though mountains be moved into the heart of the seas; though surging waters roar and foam, and mountains shake under the storm; though the fig tree may not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines; though the olive crop has failed, and the fields yield no food; though there be no flocks in the field, and no heard in the stalls; yet will I have faith in Thee, O Lord; I shall rejoice in the God of my salvations, for with Thee is the foundation of life; in Thy light we do see light. To have faith is to perceive the wonder that is here, and to be stirring by the desire to integrate the self into the holy order of living. Faith does not spring outside of nothing. It comes with the discovery of the holy dimension of our existence. We live by the certainty that we are not as dust in the wind, that our life is related to the ultimate, the meaning of all meanings. God’s existence can never be tested by human thought. All proofs are mere demonstrations of our thirst for Him. Does the thirsty human need a proof of one’s thirst? There is neither advance nor service without faith. Nobody can rationally explain why one should sacrifice one’s life and happiness for the sake of the good. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Let that sunshine pour in! It’s a stunning #Thursday and we’re so excited to be hosting guests in our #Havenwood home today!
There’s enough space for a crowd, but the thoughtfully designed floorplan works just as well for a small gathering. Best of all the worlds!
The eye-catching design is as stunning on the inside as it is on the outside. If you want to add more stylish, functional living space for all to enjoy, the upper-level loft is a popular choice.
Nature’s Stillness or Environmental Quietness Chooses Dusk, Dawn or Midnight
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. Study a small lake or pond and you are likely to find many intertwined lifeforms, including host and parasite species, some reproducing quickly, other slowly, all changing at different speeds as they interact with one another in a kind of ecological ballet. Inside of every business, too—and every hospital, school, government agency or city hall—there is what might be called an “ecology of time,” with different subunits and processes all interacting and running at different speeds. Though truly perfect synchronization is never attainable, under ordinary conditions the lack of synchrony may be maintained at a tolerable degree. However, conditions today are far from ordinary. The gurus’ advice was unrealistic, but the acceleration they sought to address was—and is—very real. Never have the pressures been greater for companies—and other organizations as well—to speed up their operations. Cascading technology innovations and consumer or client demands for instant gratification, added to the competition, all conspire to drive up the pace of change. If one department or division falls behind, multiplier effects ricochet throughout the entire organization. One often-overlooked cost reflects the diversion of energy and attention from other needed tasks as time becomes increasingly politicized. Often, organization leaders find themselves clashing bitterly over conflicting schedules and time horizons, and I.T. departments become battle zones. The time needed for software development or for a major system overhaul is notoriously difficult to estimate. It can even be hard to estimate how long it will take to make the estimate. However, that is what I.T. executives are often compelled to do. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Software managers who insist they need a long time to complete a project catch flak from bosses and from department chieftains whose work might be slowed or disrupted. On the other hand, I.T. managers who promise quick results are frequently fired when subsequent glitches impede progress. As various business units are de-synchronized and schedules need revision, budgets, power and egos come into play and a lot of emotional artillery is called up. Time itself, in the form of deliberate delays or imposed deadlines, may be used as an internecine weapon. Battles over timing are even more common in connection with research and development. Pressed by investors demanding faster returns, CEOs often feel compelled to slash spending on R&D. Or they shift funding away from research to development and reallocate whatever is left from basic to applied research. The result slows major innovation when it is most needed. Time battles inside a fast-changing firm take many other forms as well. They can kill important deals and, ironically, can actually waste so much management attention and energy that they slow down the firm’s overall capacity to adapt to change. Things become even more complicated when they involve two or more companies, each with its own internal ecology of time. Fights over synchronization greatly complicate partnerships, joint ventures and other alliances and are particularly stressful before and after mergers. If your company is undergoing a merger or acquisition, you are likely to feel anxious. Roughly 30 percent of employees are deemed redundant when firms in the industry merge. For individual managers and employees, this corporate strategy may be disruptive and traumatic. Postmerger integration is typically a period of tension, uncertainty, and chaos. Workloads ramp up, as to pressure and stress. Even when the main hurdles are overcome, trying to sync up the internal rhythms of two firms after their marriage takes time, costs money, sucks attention from other matters and upsets already upset people. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Though little is written about it, many partnerships and mergers founder precisely because synchronization turns out to be so painful. In such situations, most people tend to fixate on what they cannot control: decisions about who is let go, promoted, reassigned, or relocated. However, researchers indicate that individuals faced with organizational upheaval have much more power over what happens to them than they realize. If your company is involved in in one of the tens of thousands of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals struck annually around the World, you can respond in a few ways. The first option is to remain humble, focus on the tasks at hand, and hope that every thing turns out well. A second takes is to polish your resume, reconnect to your outside peer network, and start looking for alternative employment. One can also embrace the dynamic, intense integration process and use it as an opportunity for introspect and growth. It is estimated that nearly 50,000 mergers took place in 2019, ranging from huge multinational arrangements to smaller regional deals. Some of these companies were Verizon and Vodafone, Heinz and Kraft, Pfizer and Warner-Lamber, AT&T and Time Warner, and many others. AT&T spent $85 billion on Time Warner, and it wants the money back because AT&T is primarily focused on its phone services, and Timer Warner is primarily in to making films and TV shows, but competing with Netflix is really difficult because they are the biggest player in digital streaming. Netflix is going to spend $17 billion this year on programing, and Disney is not far behind. The technological issues are not necessarily the most difficult. Within any firm, de-synchronization can occur among divisions, functions, hierarchical levels, regional offices and in other dimensions as well. Often it is culture that is the breaking point. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
When a new CEO took over Siemens Nixdorf some years back, he seemed, according to the Financial Times, “more worried about units of time” than dollars. Siemens, the German electronics giant, had acquired Nixdorf, a PC firm, to supplement its mainframe-computer business. The CEO knew that part of the firm needed to “have a major technical feature change every six months.” The parent firm, however, was older, more hierarchical and slower to react. Changing a product is one thing. However, as he complained at a press conference, “changing a corporation’s mentality usually takes three to five years, and we don’t have it.” The CEO is no longer at Siemens—and neither is Nixdorf. Scaling up from companies, we find even bigger examples of costly desynchronization at the level of whole industries. Some, indeed, are infamous for being out of sync. Ask any American who has ever hired a contractor to build or remodel a house. Chances are the estimated completion date is a fairy tale. Delays may run to months. Needed parts—everything from flush toilets and bidets and drawer pulls and windows—rarely seem to arrive on schedule. They only experience even more frustrating is dealing with the municipal zoning and building bureaucrats who must issue various permits or variances along the way. We asked a prominent California developer to look closely at the issues of construction delays in his project to build hundreds of homes in a high-tech center. “I was shocked,” the not-easily-shockable contractor told us on the promise of anonymity. Including land, our houses cost between $358,000 to $600,000 to build. They should take 120 days to complete. However, we have had houses take as much as 180 days. That means 60 days of extra interest on a $150,000 to $300,000 loan. So that is going to be an extra $1,190 to $2,381 per house—more, of course, if interest rates go up. And that is just in actual construction—it does not begin to include costs of delays in permitting, environmental approvals, failure of the utilities to install the electrical, gas and water lines on schedule. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Subcontractors do not show up on time. Sinks arrive that are defective—they have to go back and we wait for replacements. If the subs are delayed, they want more money on the next contract to build in protection against lost time. Add up all the other expenses. How about property taxes? How about management fees? I pay a management firm to oversee the project. Their bill runs up. What if buyers cancel because of the delays? I had my accountant quantify the known cost of construction time glitches. I run an extremely tight ship. And yet, at least on this project, they add up to almost 4 percent of the cost of a house. Bigger firms might be able to cut that somewhat. But if I were just a private person, building one house, for myself, delays are even more expensive percentagewise. All that lost time adds up to a penalty—a kind of time tax on every project. From 2019 to 2022, despite the impact of COVID-19, new residential construction in the United States of America is expected to have increased by 33 percent, which is equivalent to 182 billion U.S. dollars. This increase mostly stems from single-family housing, as well as home improvements—additions, alternations and major replacements. Single-family houses being built also increased, but not as much. The value of new residential construction in the United States of American is expected to increase to $729.89 billion in 2023, $757.83 billion in 2024, and $798.14 billion in 2025, a 3 to 5 percent “time tax”—the overall cost of wasteful, never-on-time, de-synchronized operations—would run into the $23-$38 billion range annually. At say, $216,000 a unit, that is roughly what it might cost to provide more than 1.4 million homes or apartments for low-income Americans every decade. That could make a dent in the problem of homelessness. However, a more cost-effective system would be a federal voucher program which allows them to rent and buy in the private market, would reduce the amount of money spent to maintain and staff these properties. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
However, that is only the amount for the residential end of the housing industry. Its erratic, costly performance in turn reflects (or causes) desynchronization among its supplier industries and labour pool as well. Shortages of drywall, insulation, skilled carpenters and the like are common. Track this all the way down the chain, and the cost must swell significantly. If housing is a skinhole of unsynchronized operations, what needs to be said about a very different example—America’s giant defense industry? Here are major firms making everything from the highest of high-tech communications gear, satellites and weapons systems to relatively simple products like shirts and boots. It is an industry perennially attacked by Congress for cost overruns, waste and inefficiency. Its seven-hundred-dollar hammer or toilet seat—whether apocryphal or not—has become a national symbol of scandalous waste. However, it is worth noticing that de-synchronization in an industry may sometimes be partially imposed on it from outside. And that is the case here. Thus, to prevent corruption and maximize efficiency, the U.S. Defense Department’s procurement processes, many of them mandated by Congress, are so byzantine, so complex, and aggravating, that many sensible firms refuse even to bid for a Pentagon contract. Worse yet, those firms that do undertake defense work often find themselves caught in a steel cage largely constructed by Congress itself. An editor of Armed Forces Journal International once summed it up in a single, hard-to-forget sentence: “Faced with a twenty-year threat,” he wrote, “government responds with a fifteen-year program in a five-year defense plan, managed by three-year personnel funded with single-year appropriations.” We have seen the de-synchronization effect within individual firms, groups of firms and whole industries. However, de-synchronization occurs on an even larger scale when two related industries develop at different speeds. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
The rise of the personal computer (PC) from the 1970s on was marked by a kind of technological pas de deux as Microsoft launched bigger and more powerful versions of its Windows software for PC, and Intel successively developed the faster and more powerful chips needed to support them. For years, the two symbiotic companies were referred to in the media as though they were a single firm called “Wintel.” The synchronization, imperfect as it was at times, powered the phenomenal spread of the PC Worldwide. In sharp contrast, however, the closely linked computer and communications industries have more then once found themselves without a dance partner. No ballet here. In the United States of America, the rise of the computer industry throughout the last half century has been wild, wooly, and unregulated. Computer makers were frequently frustrated by far slower rates of change in the tightly and confusingly overregulated telecom industry. As the basic technologies of these two industries converged, their rates of change diverged. According to many analysts, advances in chips, computers, and related fields could have come even faster but for this discrepancy. Similarly—and more interestingly—in recent years the development of networks trailed far behind increases in the speed of computer chips. By 2005, however, this de-synchronization went into reverse. We simply do not know the aggregate costs of the de-synchronization effect at the level of firms and industries, but we can only imagine how much greater the effects are when we look at de-synchronization in whole sectors of an economy in the age of revolutionary wealth. Now, when Minoru Naito, a small-business owner, decided to celebrate his daughter’s birthday at a posh sushi restaurant in Tokyo, it was on a Saturday. He went to a nearby Automated Teller Machines (ATM and also still called the “Versatell” by some) to withdraw some cash. However, it was 6.00 p.m. and the machine had shutdown at 5.00. Hence, no sushi that evening. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The fact that banks used to close their ATMs so early was, in the words of Nihon Keizai Shimbu, Japan’s Wall Street Journal, “particularly striking because more retail stores in Japan are operating around the clock.” In short, the banking sector was out of sync with developments in the retail sector of Japan’s economy. Faced with competition from foreign banks and securities firms that did offer twenty-four-hour services, the relatively small Tokyo Sowa Bank eventually opened the first “twenty-four-hour” ATMs at a Japanese bank (never mind that they initially closed down at 10.00 p.m.). It was not until 2003 that one of Japan’s major banks, UFJ, followed suit. Closing the gap between shopping hours and banking hours requires new I.T. systems. That normally means ditching or upgrading older, so-called legacy I.T., piece by piece, program by program. And that cannot be done without altering the timing of data flows, accounting procedures, work schedules, reports and other matters, spending some work units up but necessarily leaving others to lag temporarily. Every new computer, software operating system, application or change in a network inescapably changes the tempo, rhythms and synchronization levels in the organization. In Japan, too, one man’s synchronization is another’s de-synchronization. Moreover, it can legitimately be argued that disparities in rates of change open countless opportunities for entrepreneurial synchronizers who, by synchronizing some functions or organizations, create new disparities elsewhere. The problems of synchrony are becoming more, not less, difficult because, as during the industrial revolution, we are once more transforming the way humans work, play and think in the time dimension. We are profoundly altering the way we deal with the deep fundamental of time. Until we understand time’s relationships to wealth creation, we will never free ourselves of today’s crushing time pressures—or huge unneeded costs. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Let us next talk about marriage and so-called “animal” functions of the social animal. Everyone agrees that an important condition for the troubles of growing up is the troubles between the parents at home, brutal quarrels and drunkenness, coldness, one or the other or both parents getting away as often as possible and being withdrawn while present, and marriages breaking up. The most common popular, and mayoral, prescription for delinquency is “more parental supervision.” In the usual circumstances this would likely increase the tension and the trouble, but be that as it may: the question remains, how? how to have reasonable supervision when the marriages do not have the problem children. (The frequent recommendation to fine or jail the parents is a lulu.) I do not think the public spokesmen are serious. For powerful and well-known modern reasons, some of them inevitable, the institution of marriage itself, as we have known it for several hundred years, cannot work simply any longer, and is very often the direct cause of intense suffering. Urbanism, the economic independence of women, contraception, relaxing the inhibitions against unmarried and extramarital sexuality, these are inevitable. A dispassionate observer of modern marriage might sensibly propose. Forget it; think up some other form of mating and child care. The pastor of a large church in an ordinary Midwestern town told me that, in his observation, not one marriage in twenty was worthwhile; many were positively damaging to the children. If very many marriages could simply let themselves dissolve after a few years, the partners would suddenly become brighter, rosier, and younger. However, of course, in this field there are no dispassionate observers. We are all in the toils of jealousy of our own complexes, and few f us can tolerate loneliness and the feeling of being abandoned. Nor do we have any other formula for a secure intimacy, companionship, and brining up children. This is not a newsy story. It is kept in mind by the Mayor of New York whose canned voice says every night on the radio that parents who are not affectionately supervising the children are failing in responsibility? #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Has the Mayor not seen an harassed mother hysterically and unmercifully whacking a three-year-old in the sand pile? Does he think it is some different parent he is now appealing to? (I heard one mother scream, “I ask you only one simple thing, to obey me!”) “Most of the children we see [in King’s County Domestic Relations Court] have been so seriously damaged by their environment that they need 24-hour-a-day corrective treatment. I will say unequivocally that most of the children we see should be separated from their parents for their own health and welfare.” (Dr. J.M. Fries.) Outraged women demand chaste men to lessen the double standard. Legions of Victorian men accepted and honored the code of premarital celibacy, but many spoiled and randy young blades saw no need to repress their intimate longings. When women of their own class refused to succumb, they found a vulnerable and cooperative woman elsewhere. She was, perhaps, a domestic servant that a higher-ranked young man could force himself on, or the shop girl he paid or flattered for a few minutes of extracurricular pleasure. At one time or another in his life, she was likely the “public stew,” the lady of the evening whom that compromised servant or shop girl might eventually be forced to become. To desperate, reckless, or ruined women, the calling of the streets was irresistible. It supplemented that pittance they earned elsewhere at their day jobs. Henry Mayhew, an investigative journalist and author whose expose of London’s seething, suffering labouring class in the mid-nineteenth century continues to shock, discovered, for instance, that a seamstress who stitched together moleskin trouser could earn five shillings and sixpence a week, scarcely enough to survive, if she worked sixteen hours daily. When work was slack, she could either starve or “go a bad way” and sell her most valuable possession. Because so many women were struggling to survive by needlework, lacemaking, and other trades, with occasional forays into become women of the evening, the competition was ferocious. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
As a result, incomes remained law, arrests and imprisonment common, and their unhealthy bodies were susceptible to illnesses. Some managed to support themselves through pleasures of the flesh alone, and a few lucky and clever ones did better—they parlayed their amorous skills into marriage. “Why shouldn’t we?” inquired one confident woman of the evening. “We are pretty, dress well, we can talk and insinuate ourselves into the hearts of men by appealing to their passions and their senses.” However, in the last half of the nineteenth century, illnesses double standard became the concern of reformers of every ilk. In earlier centuries, and despite alarm, only inconsequential numbers of deaths were attributed to the so-called French pox, as syphilis was called in England. In London, according to the Bills of Mortality, it struck down eleven victims in 1813, eighty-six in 1817, and only nineteen and fourteen in 1818 and 1819. Women of the evening and their clients, and those secondarily infected, endured nasty and debilitating symptoms, but doctors could provide effective treatment and restore most patients to health. For centuries, illnesses related to pleasures of the flesh were seen as a disturbing problem rather than a critical one. In 1864, a drastic change occurred, after horrified medical officers reported that some of these illnesses affected up to 30 percent of the troops in British garrison towns, including many ports. The military capacity of the nation was called into question. In panicky attempts to stamp out or at least control these illnesses among soldiers and sailors, Parliament passes a serious of Contagious Diseases Acts between 1864 and 1869. These Acts authorized police in towns with substantial military installations to seize any suspected women of the evening and force them to submit to a gynecological exam every two weeks. Infected women (but not men) could be confined to a hospital for up to nine months. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The object was to diminish infections related to pleasures of the flesh by controlling women of the evening, but the real effect was a witch hunt, to persecute thousands of women, active in pleasures of the flesh or not. Any woman out alone in public without a reasonable excuse was a target. Girls without homes were routinely hauled off and painfully examined, and one widow afterward committed suicide. Women plucky enough to resist were charged in police court, where it was their word against that of a plainclothes government spy. Furthermore, women of the evening not their clients were charged in criminal court. “What think you of sending a wench to Bridewell [prison], and doing nothing to the fellow that debauched her, tho’ sometimes the first is single, and the other married?” demanded one opponent of the double standard. Until the passage of the Contagious Diseases Act, being a woman of the evening and its underlying moral duplicity had had mainly muted challengers. The Acts, embodying the worst features of the double standard, provoked sustained and widespread protest. One group of critics proposed a novel solution, that men stop being unchaste. Chastity in men? How preposterous, given their naturally lecherous natures and irrepressible intimate impulses! (This would have a surprised the ancient Aztecs, Chinese, Greeks, and a few million other people who “knew” that women were the culprits when it came to intimate desires.) And yet, if men couple only get a grip on themselves (but absolutely not with int masturbator handshake tht so distressed the Male Purity contingent) and just tell themselves, “No!” This at least was the thinking of the Church of England Purity Society, as well as thousands of feminist activities in late-Victorian England. The Purity Society was formed at the instigation of Jane Ellice Hopkins, a lifelong celibate dedicated to ending the degradation of women through being a woman of the evening by the novel expedient of reforming men’s bad behaviour. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Hopkins also worked with young women at risk for becoming women of the evening, providing counseling, clothes, lodging, and a job registry with real jobs rather than fake come-on ads that duped gullible, desperate, and unemployed girls into servitude as harlots. Men’s chastity leagues, Hopkins declared, should be developed to deal with the “real cause” of rampant solicitation and moral decay—that pesky double standard. “What I crave,” she wrote, is to instill in wayward men “a good, strong passionate sense of the pitifulness of degrading women, inflicting a curse which they do not share with so much as their little finger.” These men indulge, then return to their “jolly” lives and friends, their “pleasant” homes and their careers, their “power of marrying” intact. Behind them, in the debris of the flings in intimate passions, are their female victims, destined to lives as social outcasts, barred forever from the safety and comforts of marriage and motherhood. The women might be infected with a “hideous” disease and could expect only “a degraded life and [then to] die a Godless, Christless, hopeless death.” After Hopkins exposed the Anglican Church’s complacency and tacit complicity in upholding the double standard, the Church was shamed into creating its Purity Society. Its pledge cards, signed by hundreds of men and strikingly reminiscent of today’s Promise Keepers, listed five obligations: to respect all women and defend them from wrong; to reject indecent language and jokes; to maintain purity and chastity equally for men and women; to proselytize these principles; and to maintain personal purity. Hopkins hated solicitation and blamed men for driving women, consumed by “disease, degradation, curses, drink, despair,” into it. “Ay, I know that it is often the woman who tempts; these poor creatures must tempt or starve. However that does not touch the broad issues, that it is men who endow the degradation of women; it is men, who make the demand, create the supply.” And thunderingly, “Is it fair for you men, who can compel a fair wage for your work, to sit in judgment on her, and say it is her fault?” #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Hopkins’s dream for starving out (rather than institutionalizing) solicitation consisted of three kinds of coexisting municipal societies: male purity leagues to inspire men to learn self-control; vigilante committees to see that they did and to prosecute those who failed; and women’s associations to work directly with at-risk girls. Hopkins’s was as radical a proposal as others. Each individual man provoked into feeling his guilt could be induced to take responsibility for his actions and stop sinning. Another group to which Hopkins belonged, the Moral Reform Union, founded in 1881, rejected the double standard and accepted as a principle that men and would should abide by the same morality. They were convinced that both could be chaste and denounced as a blasphemous fiction the age-old endorsement premise that solicitation was essential for a few to ensure moral purity in the majority. What the Union members wanted was quite simply virtue and rectitude in men. The Contagious Diseases Acts were, the Union said, inequitable laws based on the double standard and its outrageous hypothesis that a group of bought women was necessary to the smooth functioning of a society. Decades of sustained outrage against this monstrous assumption and their Acts themselves produced their suspension in 1883 and their repeal three years later. Feminist purists rejoiced, but their rapture was modified by the reality that solicitation continued to thrive as a nightmarish degradation of womanhood. If she was with child, the seduced maid was still kicked out onto the street. The women of the evening caught solicitating was still locked up in jail. The battle against The Contagious Disease Acts had been won, but not the greater ward against solicitation and the double standard. The moral purists attacked the issue from several angles. One was to stamp out the notion that men’s intimate desires were too urgent to curb. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
For centuries, ever since women crazed with intentions of pleasures of the flesh had been erased from the moral lexicon and replaced by men crazed with intentions of pleasures of the flesh, this unstoppable male urge had justified women of the evening and other intimate abuses. If it could be exposed for what it was—an unscientific fabrication—then self-control would take on new possibilities as men (and women) learned to regard male intimate passions as a normal physical trait, akin to any other hunger. A man who overpowered a vulnerable woman by subterfuge or muscles would be judged as reprobate as one who stuffed food into his mouth before the grace or snatched cutlets from other people’s plates. As one suffragette put it, “The man or woman who is incapable of self-control (in pleasures of the flesh) should be walking about on four legs, and not on two, because lack of self-control is incompatible with human nature.” The other myth to be combated was that celibacy weakened the male physiology, for ironically, while millions of men worried about the loss of even one drop of vital force, others anxiously observed their caste private area for signs of atrophy. The medical establishment was also coming around, and some physicians admitted publicly that modern scientific thought ran counter to a persistent superstition that chastity was physical harmful to men. (Even today the old heresy limps on, as some men and some women weight celibacy against the mantra, “If you do not use it, you will lose it.”) The moral purity movement holds for its members that chastity in vulnerable young women was a right that self-indulgent men imperiled. Chastity in men, on the other hand, was a proud, moral measures of self-control and constituted the best possible protection against male sexual abuse against women. Conscious of danger in its depth around the World, truth is accompanied by great power. It cannot be separated from its sayer. The truth is like electricity, which is so useful a servant of man but so dangerous when not rightly treated, which may save life or destroy it altogether. When humans become insensitive to the sacredness within oneself, one is lost. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
It is a sin to deny the Power from which one’s body draws its life, one’s mind its consciousness and intelligence, one’s soul its very existence. It invites punishment, which comes through being left alone with the opposing force in Nature, with its physical, intellectual, psychical and subtle forces, unguided by the intuitive and unprotected by the divine. Humans then try to live by their own light alone. One fails, stumbles, falls, and suffers. This is one’s position today and that is why there is a World-crisis of stupendous proportions. This is one’s hour of real need. This is when one must turn, as in Christian Biblical history, to one’s true Deliverer. Every other way out except this one is closing for one. There is no doubt that effective community programs can help people with schizophrenia recover. However, fewer than half of all the people who need them receive appropriate community mental health services. What are the consequences of inadequate community treatment? What happens to person with schizophrenia whose communities do not provide the services they need and whose families cannot afford private treatment at all; many other spend short time in a state hospital or semihospital and then are discharged prematurely, often without adequate follow up treatment. Many of the people with schizophrenia return to their family and receive medication and perhaps emotion and financial support, but little else in this way of treatment. Around 8 percent enter an alternative institution such as a nursing home or rest home, where they receive only custodial care and medication. As many as 18 percent are placed in privately run residences where supervision is provided by untrained individuals—foster homes (small or large), boardinghouses, congregate care homes, and similar facilities. These residences vary greatly in quality. Some of them are legitimate “bed care” facilities, providing three meals a day, medication reminders, and at least a small degree of staff supervision. However, many fail to offer these minimal services. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Another 31 percent of people with schizophrenia live in totally unsupervised settings. Some of these individuals are equal to the challenge of living alone, support themselves effectively, and maintain nicely furnished apartments. However, many cannot really function independently and wind up in a rundown single-room occupancy hotel (SROs) or rooming houses, often located in inner-city neighbourhoods. They may live in conditions that are substandard and unsafe. The following newspaper account from the mid-1980s describes the kinds of conditions that continue in many locations today: Hundreds of mentally ill patients throughout Sacramento County are being packed into aging hotels and homes that are little better than slums, according to health officials, who say that appalling living conditions virtually ensure patients will skin deeper into insanity. Many of the buildings contain the stuff of nightmares. Piles of trash and cockroaches, feces, urine and vomit litter the floors. Half-naked men wander purposelessly through hallways, and doors swing open into hot and fetid rooms where other, gazing vacantly at the ceiling, lie neglected on dirt cots. Men and women gamble, drink, use drugs, play amplified music daily and make the community members feel sacred and threatened. In one instance, [the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services] released patients to a building run by a landlord who three years earlier lost his state license to operate public housing because of its life-threatening conditions. The landlord did not apply for a license for his latest building. He bought a home and used plywood sheets to divine the coral rock house into 12-foot by 14-foot boxes and then told HRS worker he would take in the mentally ill. Each of the boxes, strung along trash-strewn passagesways in the two-story house, contains a narrow bed, a fan and a chest of drawers. Hot meal containers and plastic forks fill waste bins. Most of the boxes also contained people whose bed sores attest to hours spend in bed, staring at a paint-chipped wall a foot from his pillow. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Most of the residents in poorly supervised or unsupervised settings survive on government disability payments, and many spend their days wandering through neighbourhood streets. Thus it is sometimes said that people with schizophrenia are now “dumped” in the community, just as they were once “warehoused” in institutions. Finally, a great number of people with schizophrenia have become homeless. There are nearly 600,000 homeless people in the United States of America, and approximately 33 percent have a severe mental disorder, commonly schizophrenia. Many such persons have been released from hospitals. Others are young adults who were never hospitalized in the first place. Another 235,000 or more people with severe mental disorders end up in prisons because their disorders have led them to break the law. Certainly deinstitutionalization and the community mental health movement have failed these individuals. And if they are able to return to hospital life, many report actually feeling relieved. Let us pray for everyone in our community and Worldwide that they will feel the love of God and be freed from all affliction and suffering and be welcomed into a loving home where they feel safe and loved and can experience a life of abundance and gain promotion on the job. To pray is to try to experience the reality of God, to feel the purity and exaltation that comes from being near Him, and to give to our souls that serenity and peace which neither Worldly success nor Worldly failure, which neither the love of life, nor the fear of death, can disturb. O Lord, I have set Thee always before me, indeed Thou art at my right hand; I shall not stumble. Thou art my Lord, I have no good but in Thee. Thou makest me to know the path of life; in Thy presence is fullness of joy. Whom have I in Heaven but Thee? And on Earth I desire none else. When my heart and my flesh fail, Thou art my strength and my portion forever. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter—birth, growth, fading, death—the cycles of life turn, and we turn with them. Ideas are born, projects are consummated, plans prove impractical and pass away. We fall in love, we suffer loss; we give birth, we grow old. We are renewed, we are reborn, even as we decay and die. Our psychic energies are renewed in their deepest sources by this participation in the cycles of change within the natural World. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Our Meadows Residence 1 home has an outdoor space that’s equal to our indoor space! Entertaining is effortless, and our guests never fail to be impressed.
We’re so glad we chose the #PlumasRanch community!
No More Cold Eggs–Societies for the Reformation of Morals
How simple it is to see that all the worry in the World cannot control the future. Leaders set aside a portion of each day (even if it is only a matter of minutes) for quiet time devoted to prayer, meditation, imaging, or just daydreaming. Learn to value your time alone—when you value something you are keener to protect it. Humans who are wholly selfish, cunning, combative, ambitious, and unscrupulous represent the dark principle and become dangerous to society. Sentimentality is not spirituality. It is true we give our goodwill to all humankind, and so we give it to those who are the instruments of dark forces. However, that does not mean weakness or foolishness in our dealings with them. Life will teach them. Leave them alone. Brotherhood? No, be the thought far from me. They are Adam’s children—alas, yes, I well remember that, and never shall forget it; this rage and sorrow. However, they have gone over the dragons; they have quitted the Father’s house, and set up with the Old Serpent; till they return, how can they be brothers? They are enemies, deadly to themselves and to me and to you, till then; till then, while hope yet lasts I will treat them as brothers fallen insane. Those who have scientifically engaged in psychical research know that a psychological belt wherein a host of evil Earth-bound spirits are congregated surrounds this planet. Physical researchers are aware too that such obsessing entities become most active at night, as anyone may discover by watching the conduct of a possessed person. A human being can be infested astrally with psychic vermin as one can be with physical vermin. The wise human refuses to accept removable evils and avoidable sufferings. If one finds oneself brought by circumstances into the society of evil-minded people, the first step to self-protection should be to switch the mind instantly into remembrance of the witness-self and to keep it there throughout the period of contact. To turn inwards persistently when in the presence of such discordant persons is to nullify any harmful or disturbing effect they might otherwise have on our thoughts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
This instant and unhesitating turning inward is also an effective method of insulating oneself against the currents of fear, despair, and weakness which misfortune often generates. If the student feels evil forces have attacked one from time to time, let one pray earnestly every day for self-purification and make the sign of the cross whenever one becomes aware of their presence, at the same time invoking the help of whatever power or personage one feels inspires one most. In times of terrible danger, one should stick to one’s faith in the divine power as a protective talisman. Whenever one is in difficulty, one should drop all fear and trouble temporarily from one’s mind and imagine oneself handing them over to one’s higher Self, thereby surrendering oneself to its will, help, and protection. When there is evidence of being obsessed by a spirit-entity, the only radical cure is exorcism. Unless one has the guidance of an actualized Christian, the following is suggested: First, one should try sleeping with a green-coloured night light burning throughout the night. It should be placed not more than eighteen inches from the bed. If this fails, then an ordinary non-coloured bulb may be substituted, thus giving a stronger light. The inconvenience of trying to sleep with the bedroom illuminated will only exist for a few days or a few weeks and will vanish as the eyes become accustomed to the new habit. It may even be averted by covering the eyes with a black silk bandage. In addition to this, one must pray, and combine this with creative meditation, wherein one actually pictures the freed condition desired during the night. One should also pray and meditate prior to retiring. One must learn to control one’s thoughts—deliberately driving out the memory of undesirable psychic experiences or of any individual possessing “evil powers.” One should take the protective words, “Jesus Christ, I am with You always” and repeat them to oneself, trying to realize their truth and meaning. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The student who has got involved with sorcery or black magic must cut off every possible connection and communication with the source of evil. Then, one must destroy or get rid of any articles or writings in one’s possession coming from it. One must express repentance for one’s errors of judgment and pray for guidance in the future. One needs for such psychic encounters the faith, the courage, and the knowledge which may come with time and growth. One needs such an attitude as George Fox had when, thrust into a cell haunted by the ghost of men’s murderers, he exclaimed, “I told them if all the spirits and devils in hades were there, I was over them in the power of God, and feared no such thing.” One who is confronted with a choice of evils must call in the help of the higher power. Even trouble can be turned to self-educative uses, and some kind of benefit gained out of the experience. However, this can happen more easily and more quickly only if the willingness to learn is there, and only if a corresponding surrender of self is present. It is then that so-called evil is converted to so-called good. What Jesus Christ taught over two thousand years ago is still true—even more true, if that could be, for it has the proofs afforded by all history during that time: hatred cannot end by being returned, nothing will dissolve it save a generous and patient goodwill. A friend who has turned against you and become an enemy can be met in a better way. Instead of getting angry or resentful for one’s unkind words or actions, try to turn one over benevolently to the higher power. If you succeed in entering the Stillness for a period with your last thought being such a wish for one, this will be, in the end, more effective. It will make it possible for one’s attitude to be modified and for one’s own hurt feelings to calm down. The more you forget one in the Stillness, the better the result will be for both of you. Some religions associate grief with the evil principle, and therefore shun it. Summon the strength to refuse to receive other people’s negative opinions. Say plainly that they are certainly entitled to their views, but you would rather not discuss them and would prefer some other subject—providing it is optimistic. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Instead of hating your enemy, and meeting punches with punches, one’s sin with your sin, try another way, Christ’s way. This involves real risk, moral courage, and mental flexibility. It requires willingness to endure and suffer for what is right, a trust in spiritual principle rather than in brute power. One is competent to deal with life who equips oneself to deal with its darker sides as well as with its brighter ones, with its difficulties and sufferings no less than with its joys and successes. We cannot ignore the spirit of our times without inviting failure, and we cannot despise it without inviting danger. We must need to face its reality. Throw out negative feelings, expel resentments against other persons, and one will be better and happier person. Every negative thought about others cut it out at once by a smile to yourself, looking at your higher Self dealing with it. At the heart of every atom of every Universe there is Spirit, divine and deathless. It is for this reason that any human society based upon its denial has no future and cannot survive. As long as humans exists, one will need to satisfy inner hunger, to find spiritual comfort, to receive holy communion, and to hear words of eternal truth. The sight of evil humans rising to power over stupid or stupefied masses has brought good human to despair. However, the Universe has room for both. It is a school for all and the outcome of its instruction is yet to be seen. It may well be that those who have banished the religious faith of childhood from their hearts and replaced it by the scientific scepticism of adulthood, followed by the political cynicism of maturity, will end by banishing hope, too. The perversity of humankind, the hypocrisy of its leaders, and the presence of materialistic society may well seem to justify it. Through ignorance of destiny’s laws and through weaknesses in one’s psychological being, humans create the conditions which must finally express themselves in violent conflict with one’s fellows. Most people have failed to recognize that the forces of destiny are back of these events. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Even the powerful impact of such stirring events as history has recorded in our times has not been enough to bring about this recognition. Yet they sense their own helplessness, although they do not understand that it is the very inevitability of their retribution from misusing the Universal Law which has made them feel this helplessness. Some humans radiate animosity as others radiate goodwill. The unfortunate members of the first class are victims of their own negative thinking. Those of us who have been born and brought up in democratic countries like England and the United States of America rightly resent the idea of living under oppressive dictatorship. Yet we tend to overlook the fact that even in such countries the State is itself becoming more and more formidably dictatorial as it becomes more and more centralized. Those of us who value individuality and freedom are coming into inner conflict with it—some of us even into outer conflict. Humans who are scarcely sane, who are either pathological cases or in need of psychological treatment, become heroes and leaders among the young. Confronted in actual firsthand experience by the terrors and errors, the tragedies and sufferings of these decades, the serious mind could lose its balance enough to declare life an unmitigated evil. The disciples of Materialism say that the execution of 3000-odd persons in the French Revolution was a small price to pay for the beneficial reforms which it brought about. However, only the philosopher can trace the line of connection between its hatred and violence and the Napoleonic wars which soon followed it, taking a half million French lives and hundreds of thousands wounded, mutilated, or crippled French bodies; these too must be added to the cost of hatred, the price of violence. Cunning criminals and brutal plotters have found whole nations willing to follow them. These sinister figures seek, and often get, key positions in politics, organized groups, etcetera, and from there manipulate the mass and use them as blind unwitting tools. If we are to report faithfully at all, when we examine the forces which are active in the heart of sick humanity today, we must report little hope for the patient’s future. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Spiritual faith is stronger in a few individuals but weaker in the great masses. The future is bright for better machines yet dark for better morals. A moral awakening and religious renewal was hoped for. That, unfortunately, is not the situation which has actually developed. Humanity has suffered but has not been prepared enough by its sufferings to let the new spirit have entry into its heart. Nothing is gained by blinking at these facts. The end of the war did not bring that new spirit amongst humankind which is the prerequisite to a better era. The social, political, and economic structures now being erected will not succeed without it. It is a waste of time to enter any public activity which is foredoomed to defeat. This disadvantage of attempting to avoid sufficient consideration of these truths and of shutting one’s eyes to their consequences, is that the pleasanter time thereby gained is much more than offset by the immense worsening of the climax when it does come. Too many find their work boring, their careers futile, and their lives aimless. The result is spiritual torpor. In other times what they sought from drink or pleasures of the flesh, ambition or adventure, was happiness. However, in these times what they seek from them is—short of ending their lives (which is NOT recommended)—refuge from unbearable hopelessness and fatiguing uselessness. They must be uneasy whose hearts are spiritually empty but whose World is full of menace. The past has become a grave of buried hopes, the present a dulled waiting for better times, and the future a bitter blankness which will not bear contemplation. Just as the introduction of poisons into the human body harms it, so the introduction of unsuitable materials and forces into the Earth’s body will harm it too. Nature brings its own retribution to its dwellers for what they do to the planet. This applies just as much to the introduction of mental and psychical pollutions into the invisible atmosphere or aura. The magnetic relationship between the two Earth poles has been disturbed by the excessive amounts of radiation poured lately into space, with great weather disturbance as a result. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
A despondent outlook can be an effective obstacle to hearing the Overself’s voice. History, both ancient and modern, shows that there is much evil in humankind, that its stupefying effects leads not only to an unwillingness to listen to truth and an unreadiness to understand it, but also to a hostile malignity against it expressed through vituperation and opposition. Resistance to the spiritual forces and rejection of their message must lead in the end to the destructive penalties of which war, pestilence, and flood are instances. We have tried broadly to paint some of the background conditions that discourage patriotism: the lack of bona fides about our liberties, the dishonourable politics in the Universities, the irresponsible press, the disillusioning handling of the adventure in space, the inferior and place-seeking high officers of the State, the shameful neglect of our landscape and the disregard of community; later we shall speak of our trivial leisure which has no community meaning. However, besides these not usually mentioned background conditions, there are of course the persistent immediate uglinesses that everybody talks about and every child sees: the cases of graft, social injustice, stupid law, and injustice to persons. Yet in an important sense, these scandals do not discourage patriotism, so long as there is the feeling of a persistent effort against them. My guess is that more pride of country is engendered by one good decision, or even a good powerful dissenting opinion, of the at least traditional Supreme Court, than by billions of repetitions of the pledge of allegiance. Racial segregation and prejudice destroy community by definition, and we need not discuss them. Here again the revolution commenced in Jefferson’s time and recommenced by the abolitionists, went unfinished; and we have inherited the consequences. However, it is perhaps useful to point out again that, when there is prejudice, the community of the dominant class is equally destroyed. Some people, for instance, talk a blatant patriotism and a specious regionalism grounded in nothing but keep some groups of people marginalized. The result is that flag and cross have become contemptible in their own eyes. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Real regionalism, that finds its culture and satisfaction in its own geography and economy and can withstand the temptations of the national cash-nexus, has long ago succumbed to Madison Avenue, Hollywood, and Wall Street. Now that law and religion side against them, the groups who like to discriminate are manic with wounded conceit and intimate fear; their behaviour or integration should be referred not to the Attorney General but to the Public Health Service. All this has come banging down on the children as the battleground. Yet, paradoxically, among all young people it is perhaps just the young people are the ones who find life worth living these days, because something real is happening in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. (In some cities and towns, also, the children are thrown into a central position in the community crisis of exclusion and prejudice, but sometimes as peacemakers. Here is an interesting architectural example. It has become common to use the new centralized school building as the community building for meetings and recreation. One reason is economy. However, another reason that is given is that the school is the one community function that brings together the otherwise discordant elements in the neighbourhood, so maybe the adults can get together in the school. It is a curious situation when the grownups have to rely on the children to make sense for them and when the school building is the chief community building. However, it is better than nothing.) Deep in the organized system itself there has been an important new effort toward community. The postwar boom in young marriages and the sensational rise in the urban birth rate that for the first time promises to surpass the rural birth rate, have been accompanied by the moving of affluent workmen to suburban projects and of the middle status to ranch houses. These new settlements devote time and energy to common interest. Do they do anything for local patriotism? They are communities for small children, one to five, and for women as the mothers of small children. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
These are the groups in society unequivocally benefited by high production, full employment, and the high standard of living. They thrive on animal security. Labour-saving devices make the World of the infants much pleasanter. Morally and vocationally, there is no question that having and caring for the children is justified work for the mothers, necessary, honoured, and using good human capacities. Women have real jobs, and men are likely to be certified public accountants or politicians. Today, when so many work in the Rat Race, few would deny that this is correct. So now men too try earnestly to devote themselves to the small ones as a secondary but real career. This is called the New Fatherhood. The child World, in the suburbs and surrounding country, and somewhat less in the city, is the best that small children have had in modern times. The new psychology of belonging is feeble stud, but the new psychology of infant care has been radical: no toilet training, permissive thumb sucking and so forth, free crying and movement, exposure to the grownups’ bare skin, honest answers to questions. The new medicine gets them quickly over the usual diseases (though there is debate about the later consequences). The school system as a whole is poor, but the nursery schools are often first-rate, progressive, and have intelligent and dedicated young teachers. It is said that children’s toys and games are excellent, practical and imaginative, up to the age of six, when the commercial criteria of the eleven-billion-dollar market begin to operate. For the adults, the improvement of this child’s World results in genuine community participation, committee meetings and lectures on psychology, concern for traffic and zoning, and even extension courses in cultural subjects to create the proper atmosphere for growing up. It seems astonishing, given so much active participation, that these community activities have not much developed into other important political and social action. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
However, courage gives out at the political issues relevant to age six. The sponsorship and control of the organized system are everywhere apparent. (For instance, in a recent agitation that has prevented some marginalized groups from moving into Deerfield, a suburb of Chicago—average income per person $93,026.91-$103, 363.24—an “attractive young married couple” explained that most of their friends had most of their money tied up in their houses: “We do not expect to live in them very long. Some of the junior execs expect to become seniors and move to the real North Shore, and a lot of us will be transferred all over the United States of America. When this happens, we want to be sure our houses have resale value.” The spiritedness of this speaks for itself.) Unfortunately, when the adults devote themselves thus to the child’s World, there is not much World for the child to grow up into in the next stage. For Father to guide his growing son, it is necessary for him to have a community of his own and be more of a man. In the circumstances this is difficult. However, if there is no big environment, there are no grounds for patriotism. The corporations, however, have now entered into this arena too, to organize the next stage of growing up. This is the meaning, surely of the publicity that has been trumped up for the Little League, the baseball teams of subteen-agers sponsored and underwritten by various business firms. What value the Little League has as play, I do not know, I have not watched games. The high-pressure advertising has been violently denounced by the older sports writers as giving kids an unsportsmanlike taste for publicity. As a school of rulemaking, responsibility, and impersonality, the Little League certainly cannot compare with the free games of the street, but we saw that these have been passing away. Economically, however, the function of the Little League is clear-cut: it is child labour, analogous to ten-year-olds picking hemp in the factory one hundred and sixty years ago: it keeps idle hands out of mischief; it is not profitable as production, but it provides valuable training in attitude and work habits. Viewed so, the suburban and exurban trends are the formation of a new proletariat, producers of offspring. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Naturally the Public Relations have been unable to restrain themselves from invading the public schools. The classes are flooded with pamphlets and documentary films on electronics and the introduction of cows into New Zealand (Oh, and in America, we are do thankful to the Europeans because so many of us love red meat and it is not native to America.), put out by Consolidated Edison, Ford, Shell, Westinghouse, the National Dairy Council, Union Carbide, Bell, etcetera, and even Merrill Lynch. These proclaim their sponsorship with more or less discreet plugs. In the ninth grade, however, at a New York City school I know well, they have spent class time with an item called The Educational ABC’s of Industry, a collection of advertisements interlarded with reading matter; and the class was actually required, by a teacher distracted by overwork, to copy out jingles in which C stands for Orange-Crush, “taste it and see,” and F for the Ford Motor Company, “where the first car grew.” I would gladly share this literature with the reader, but is publisher has not given me permission. Also, why not allow corporations to advertise in schools. Like for example when teaching the ABC. A could stand for Audi, B for BMW, C for Cadillac, instead of charging a Mello-Roos. We need to find ways for government institutions to make money besides through taxes and consumer spending. Allow, for instance, NASA to build private airplanes that car fly to space and manufacture cars. Imagine how good they would be with the technology they have. Now, when we consider some of uncontrolled debaucher in society, there are some consequences for this. There were countries that proposed to protect a great many virgins by legalizing a limited number of people who were allowed to solicitate intimate passions. The rationale for this moral triage—for every three virgins, there would be one person who was allowed compensation for indulging in pleasures of the flesh. However, solicitation became so widespread that Societies for the Reformation of Morals, moral vigilantes who hunted down and prosecuted sinners, had sprung up everywhere. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The gravest consequences of solicitation were illnesses, which, in two Centuries, made such incredible Havock all over the World. The Innocents had to suffer by it as well as the Guilty: Men gave it to their Wives, Women to the Husbands, or perhaps their Children…so that no Age, Gender, or Condition could be entirely safe from the Infection. Other terrible consequences were that children without a father to claim them were terminated after birth, lascivious young men refrained from marrying because they prefer to indulge in pleasures of the flesh with hired help, and marriages were destroyed by errant husbands. Seduced young maidens are were ruined when a “slip of this nature was discovered” because afterward, they have no chance of marrying and were often forced into becoming women of the evening. However, at the bottom of it all, the blame is with human nature. Because pleasures of the flesh are taught to be something everyone should enjoy. To counterbalance their innate sensuality, social pressures were employed. All young woman were to have strong notions of honour carefully inoculated into them from their infancy. Young girls were taught to hate solicitors, because they knew what the “word” is implying in these circumstances; and when they grow up, they find their Worldly interest entirely depending upon the reputation of their chastity; and it is upon this compound of natural and artificial chastity, that every woman’s real actual chastity depends. This shrewd analyses of seduction and courting rituals, painfully reminiscent though cleverer by far than the offerings in many modern women’s magazines, explained how women calculate their dream guy will continue to love them as they have struggled to maintain their chastity and surrendered it only after being “stormed” or seduced. Wrong, wrong, wrong, of course—but by then, chastity is a thing of the past, but many would like to revive it. Especially because many people dislike the double standards between genders. At the heart of the matter, they only way to preserve female chastity, is to prevent the men from laying siege to it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Legislation against impropriety, of course, will not work well because cities and states cannot claim they own human bodies, as slavery was already outlawed. However, a campaign to advocate abstinence and celibacy is an excellent idea because it will advise people of the risks involved in being unchaste and make it clear that the male and the female are both responsible from preserving their own bodies and health. Yet many critics say that is the job of the church and the parents. Also, a system of carefully regulated “solicitation” is not a solution. The double standard would remain in full force, laundered and made tolerable by decriminalizing “solicitation.” All women suffer a hangover from our long understanding of the relationship between wives, nuns, and virgins. Virtually every woman who was not an aristocrat had to uphold an ideology of respectability and chastity that is distinguishes her from an unchaste person. Of course, there are some other things people were outraged about involving this double standard, which we will discuss tomorrow. Now, people recovering from schizophrenia need medication, psychotherapy, help in handling daily pressures and responsibilities, guidance in making decisions, training in social skills, residential supervision, and vocational counseling—a combination of services sometimes assertive community treatment. Those whose communities help them meet these needs make greater progress than people living in other communities. Some of the key features of effective community care programs are coordination of patient services, short-term hospitalization, partial hepatization, supervised residencies, and occupational training. When the Community Mental Health Act was first passed, it was expected that community care would be provided by a community mental health center, a treatment facility that would supply medication, psychotherapy, and inpatient emergency care to people with severe disturbances, as well as coordinate the services offered by other community agencies. Each center was expected to serve a geographic area with a population of 50,000 to 200,000 people. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
When community mental health centers are available and do in fact provide these services, patients with schizophrenia often make significant progress. They are better integrated into the community and function more effectively than patients who receive only standard outpatient care. Coordination of services is particularly important for the so-called mentally ill chemical abusers (MICAs), patients with schizophrenia as well as a substance-related disorder. When people develop symptoms of schizophrenia, today’s clinicians first try to treat them on an outpatient basis, usually with a combination of antipsychotic mediation and psychotherapy. If this approach fails, short-term hospitalization—in a mental hospital or a general hospital’s psychiatric unit—that lasts a few weeks (rather than months or years) may be tried. Soon after the patients improve, they are released for aftercare, a general term for follow-up care and treatment in the community. Short-term hospitalization usually leads to greater improvement and a lower rehospitalization rate than extended institutionalization. Countries throughout the World now favour this policy. People’s need may fall between full hospitalization and outpatient therapy, and so some communities offer day centers or day hospitals, all-day programs in which patients return to their homes for the night. Such programs actually originated in Moscow in 1933, when a shortage of hospital beds necessitated the premature release of many patients. Today’s day center provides patients with daily supervised activities, therapy, and programs to improve social skills. People recovering from schizophrenia in day centers often do better than those who spend extended periods in a hospital or in traditional outpatient therapy. Another kind of institution that has become a popular setting for the treatment of people with schizophrenia is the semihospital, or residential crisis center. Semihospitals are houses or other structure in the community that provide 24-hour nursing care for people with mental disorders. Many individuals who would otherwise be cared for in state hospital are being transferred to these virtual hospitals. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Many people do not require hospitalization but, at the same time, are unable to live alone or with their families. Halfway houses, also known as crisis houses or group homes, often serve individuals well. Such residences may shelter between one and two dozen people. The live-in staff usually are paraprofessionals—lay people who receive training and ongoing supervision from outside mental health professionals. Those houses are usually run with a milieu therapy philosophy that emphasizes mutual support, resident responsibility, and self-government. Research indicates that halfway houses help many people recovering from schizophrenia adjust to community life and avoid rehospitalization. Here is how one woman described living in a halfway house after 10 hospitalizations in 12 years: “The halfway house changed my life. First of all, I discovered that some of the staff members had once been clients in the program! That one single fact offered me hope. For the first time, I saw proof that a program could help someone, that it was possible to regain control over one’s life and become independent. The house was democratically run; all residents had one vote and the staff members, outnumbered 5 to 22, could not make rules or even discharge a client from the program without majority sentiment. There was a house bill of right that was strictly observed by all. We helped one another and gave support. When residents were in a crisis, no staff member hustled them off or increased their medication to calm them down. Residents could cry, be comforted and hugged until a solution could be found, or until they accepted that it was okay to feel bad. Even anger was an acceptable feeling that did not have to be feared, but could be expressed and turned into constructive energy. If you disliked some aspects of the program or the bahviour of a staff member, you could change things rather than passively accept what was happening. Choices were real, and failure and successes were accepted equally. Bit by bit, my distrust faltered and the fears lessened. I slept better and made friends. Other residents and staff members who had hallucinated for years now were able to control their hallucinations shared with me some of the techniques that had worked for them. Things like diet…and interpersonal relationships became a few of my tools.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Paid employment provides income, independence, self-respect, and the stimulation of working with others. It also brings companionship and order to one’s daily life. For these reason, occupational training and placement are important services for people with schizophrenia. Many people recovering from this disorder receive occupational training in sheltered workshop—a supervised workplace for employees who are not ready for competitive or complicated jobs. The workshop replicates a typical work environment: products such as toys or simple appliances are manufactured and sold, workers are paid according to performance, and all are expected to be at work regularly and on time. For some, the sheltered workshop becomes a permanent workplace. For others, it is an important step toward better-paying and more demanding employment or a return to a previous job. In the United States of America, occupational training is not consistently available to people with severe mental disorders. Some studies find that fewer than 15 percent of such people are completive employed. The way the World works, is not always perfect, but many people try hard. In a perfect timed World, friends would never show up late, breakfast eggs would never be cold and kids would always come home on schedule. Better yet, inventories would be reduced to zero, eliminating their various costs, including storage, maintenance, management and warehousing. Best of all, meeting would always begin and end on time. However, what kind of economy would result? In economics, the term balanced growth has been loosely used to mean many things. For some, it suggests that environmental factors are taken into account. For others, it signifies the inclusion of transportation or take your pick of other factors in the definition of “growth.” It can mean growth that occurs when capital and labour inputs (adjusted for productivity) increase at the same rate. Alternatively, it can imply an equal emphasis on agriculture and industry in development policy. In the 1960s, and ‘70s, a school of “balanced growth” economists argued that the best way for an economy to develop was for all sectors to grow at the same rate, with the relations of all inputs and outputs held steady. This was, in fact, a call for perfectly synchronized development—a belief that the path to ever-growing wealth was through ever-greater synchrony. However, things are not that simple. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
These theorists brushed aside something important. Perfect synchronization, holding key variables in fixed relationships, makes any system inflexible, inert and slow to innovate. It creates an all-or-nothing game in which you have to change everything at once or change nothing at all. And changing everything at once, still less proportionally, is extremely difficult. By contrast, as economist Joseph Schumpeter showed, economic development also requires “gales of creative destruction”—winds of change that annihilate old, backward technologies and industries to make way for the new and disruptive ones. And the first thing creative destruction tears up is yesterday’s timetable. Every firm, every financial system, every national economy needs, therefore, both synchronization and some degree of de-synchronization. Unfortunately, at present we lack both the data and the metrics that would help us know when we are about to crash the limits of either. What might be called “chronomics”—the study of timing in the economy—is still primitive at best. What is clear, however, is that time adjustment is now so complex and important that a big, booming synchronization industry has grown up around it. This industry experienced three “great leaps forward” between the mid-1980s and the first quarter of the new century. Today it is a gain. Tomorrow it will be even bigger. In 1985, when the Institute of Industrial Engineers published a book called Innovations in Management: The Japanese Corporation, the term Kanban—what the West came to call the “just-in-time” principle or JIT—hardly rated mention. Manufacturing in the United States of America was still dominated by something called material requirements planning or MRP, a mainframe-based system for scheduling factory resource requirements. MPR’s purpose was to produce parts and products according to a present schedule. The JIT system, by contrast, first developed by Toyota, allowed the customers’ changing needs to set the schedule. It made flexible timing practical. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
By 1990, when the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences in the United States of America published its Competing in World-Class Manufacturing report, JIT had already become a buzzword in America and was spreading throughout manufacturing. Soon management consultants jumped on board the JIT express and sped its implementation. IBM, Motorola, Harley-Davidson and scored of other leading firms adopted it. A study of 291 diverse manufacturing facilities in the United States of America and in 128 in thirty other countries found that, as the NCMA summarized it, “of the many potential means of improving productivity, only JIT-related ones were statistically shown to be consistently effective. What JIT did, however, was shave time tolerances even more closely. And that required far more sophisticated synchronization than ever before. Another burst of change in business began when consultants Jim Champy and Michael Hammer, in their best-selling book Reengineering the Corporation, told managers to “reengineer” their firms when “leading competitors achieve significantly shorter cycles,” when the organization responds a single supplier and required the restructuring of entire long supply chains in the 1990s and early 2000s. Not only did first-tier markers of components have to deliver them as needed, but second-tier suppliers did as well, in order to accelerate through-put and reduce inventories. The goal was tighter synchronization at every level. Huge companies such as Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft and scores of others offering enterprise resource planning (ERP) and related software owe their very existence, in substantial measure, to the mounting demand for smarter and closer timing in business. Hundreds of consulting firms by now were heavily into the synchronization business. SAP or Oracle, say, would sell the software. Then I.T. consultants would be called in to implement it. Anderson Consulting (now Accenture), one of the largest consulting firms in the World, owed much of its remarkable growth to the new synchronization systems. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The greater the synchronization, the greater the value added to the entire supply chain’s performance. No wonder some UPS delivery trucks bear the slogan: “Synchronizing the World of Commerce.” The synchronization industry still has a long way to go—and grow. First, many small firms that have not yet restructured their supply and/or value chains will increasingly be compelled to do so. Second, synchronizing supply and distribution chains is only one step toward tomorrow’s deeper and more comprehensive temporal integration. Now the synchronizers want to do more than sell just the initial software. They also want to service their direct customers and tier after tier of downstream customers stretching all the way to the end user. Indeed, it may even extend beyond that someday because more and more products may be returned to the manufacturer for recycling, as is already the case with autos in European and printer ink cartridges in the United States of America. All these changes multiply layer after layer of suppliers, distributors, servicers and users needing synchronization. Last, the synchronization industry will expand because rising competition requires innovation after innovation, each of which, in turn, changes timing requirements and requires resynchronization. However, the hidden paradox of the law of de-synchronization is that the more you synchronize at one level in a system, the more you de-synchronize at another. If price decisions are taken neither continuously nor in perfect synchronization, the process of adjustment of all prices to a new nominal level will imply temporary movements in relative prices. It might then well be that, to avoid these movements in relative prices, each price setter will want to move one’s own price slowly compared to others. The result will be a slow movement of all prices to their new nominal level, and substantial inertia of the price level. Even small departures from perfect synchronization can generate substantial price level inertia. If price decisions are desynchronized, even anticipated movements in money will usually have an effect on economic activity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
It is however possible to find paths of money deceleration which reduce inflation at no cost in output. Price desynchronization has implicated for relative price movements as well as for the price level. Goods early in the chain of production have more price and profit variability than good further down the chain. Price inertia, if it is due to price desynchronization, may be difficult to remove. It may well be that, given the timing decisions of others, no agent has an incentive to change one’s own timing decision: the time structure of prince desynchronization may be stable. Until recently, a mindless cult of acceleration led by numerous business “gurus” in the United States of America urged companies to “Be first! Be agile! Shoot now, aim later!” This simplistic advice led to the launch of many low-quality, poorly tested products; angry customers; unhappy investors; a loss of strategic focus; and a high turnover of CEOs. It ignored the problems of synchronization and de-synchronization. It was a superficial way of dealing with the deep fundamental of time. Mismatched timing can damage—even kill—individual companies. However, this is not just a problem of particular enterprises. It can upset relations among multiple firms. Moreover, anecdotal evidence at least suggests that it can impact the whole industries, entire sectors of a country’s economy, and even the global economy. Now, time to close in prayer. Little by little roads eat away the hearts of mountains. Fires burn through, come back in huckleberries, trails close in August, too many bears. Too many bears, now following avalanche chutes, glacier lily, early spring. Caribou in old growth spruce, lichen, banks of snow and fog. Bear tracks in the mud. Treat each bear as the last bear. Each wolf as the last, each caribou. Each track the last, gone spoor. Gone scat. There are no more deertrials, no more flyways. Treat each animal as sacred, each minute our last. Ghost hooves. Ghost skulls. Death rattles and dry bones. Each bear walking alone in warm night air. To pray is to mediate on events of the past which testify to God’s guiding spirit in the affairs of humans, and which give us courage to fight for justice and freedom, and to look confidently and hopefully to the future. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul by God. The human mind is fascinating. A young officer working on a ship wrote that he would awaken during the night and discover himself under an undesirable physical and mental condition. He seemed to be clearly in a mesmerized condition, caused by someone or something giving the powerful posthypnotic suggestion to wake up and obey. The remedy is to use the same technique in reverse. That is, practise auto-hypnosis, give the self-suggestion that on waking up there will be full conscious and full rejection of the negative idea. If one must hate something, let one hate hatred itself. The storms of violent passion are to be resisted as the smoothness of inner peace is to be invited. To keep one’s temper in a single provocative situation may be easy, but to keep it consistently equable is a real feat. Life is a conflict. One must not let these negative feelings take up lodgement within in one longer than a single moment. All humankind must awake from its materialistic apathy and cast out something of its selfishness. It is called upon to renounce its violence and meannesses, its intolerance, unkindnesses, and injustices. It must either emerge from its animal brutality or else suffer itself to be extinguished by it. It must come out from the shadows of ignorance, selfishness, and materialism. Only then will it find the sunshine of a larger life that awaits it. It is not always one oneself who acts in a particular way at a particular time. Impulses from lower sources or outside contacts may be strong intuitions from higher levels or outside sources may influence one to wise choices which bless one’s future. We must not hate those who are born of the same divine essence as ourselves but we may hate the sins they perpetrate and the evil they radiate. The seeker has to contend not only with limiting environments but also with internal enemies. Apathy delays one, depression obstructs one, and loneliness frustrates one. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The more one becomes sensitive, intuitive, responsive to the spirit, the more one is unfolding exceptional passivity. However, this puts one in peril, for one feels the negative presence too. Hence the more one must restrict one’s contacts until one’s strength is above them. It is prudent to escape from a situation where there is much pressure to commit a foolish action or to make a foolish decision leading to calamitous results—and not continue to stay in it until the danger materializes. One whose presence is felt to be odious, whose personality is regarded as distasteful, is better left alone. One should never allow the actions or words of ignorant human to arouse in one reactions of anger, envy, or resentment. The years are too few and there is too much to be done—both on oneself and for oneself—to waste them in negative, resentful thought and decaying, neurotic emotion. When one comes to understand its importance, one will begin to exercise some vigilance over one’s thoughts. Resist beginnings—that is the most practical way to deal with negatives. The destructive thoughts of fear and self-doubt which whine at your door, whine at the door of every human. However, you can make them powerless to hurt you. For—there is n chance, no destiny, no fate can circumvent, can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul! If the negative thought persists then one has to wrench oneself away from it with the assent and use of all one’s being—feeling, reason, intuition. One’s own attitude towards events holds the power to make them good or bad, whatever their nature of itself may be. Those who are unable to think correctly about this tragic World situation must be pardoned, but those who refuse to think correctly about it do not deserve pardon. The counsel of Jesus to “resist not evil” does not apply to other men’s acts but to our own thoughts. We are to turn aside from a negative thought-habit by the simple method of substituting the opposite and the beneficial one. We need not to spend our strength resisting the thought of misery, for example. We are to substitute hope for misery, whenever the latter appears. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Wrong-doing will be avoided not because it is punished by the law of recompose even when it is not punished by the law of society, but because of the strong inner conviction that right-doing is its own reward, its own satisfaction. The beautiful is allied to the good. If we cultivate beautiful feelings, evil ones begin to get dissolved. One will not risk rebuffs by expressing one’s views and describing one’s experienced to the uncomprehending of the unsympathetic. It I cowardice to refuse to face the fact that one has made a mistake and to continue following the same course because it is to stop it and return to the right road. The easier way is too often the worse way, leading to trouble for one’s self and others. There is a limit to the extent of concessions to prejudice; we must not beyond it. Beware of those whose mind is vindictive and whose speech is venomous. If they are born of emotional prejudice or passionate bias, it is of little use to meet irrational arguments with rational statements. The ancient saying that where goodwill exists agreement will not be hard to find, still remains true. The crowds which delighted in the gladiator shows of ancient Rome and, to a lesser extent, those which delighted in the bullfights of modern Spain, do not see to understand how bestial they allow themselves to become at such times. If one is to be distinguished from a member of the savage species, the true human being, the fully evolved human, must have the quality of pity in oneself. Do not attempt to fight evil with evil. Overcome it by calling on a higher power to bring out the good in you wherewith to meet it. In this way you obey Jesus’ counsel, “Resist not evil.” Synesis (fourth century): “This would be the most extreme of ills—not to be conscious of the presence of evil. For this is the condition of those who no longer try to rise…for this reason repentance is elevating means…[but] both deeds and words [must] lend a helping hand.” A philosopher may not ignore the negative side of one’s or another’s life: one has to deal with it because circumstances force one, like everyone else to do so. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
However, one’s way will be different, because one will use all one’s faculties and capacities: intellectual, practical, and intuitive. One will keep calm and not let passion or negative emotion carry one away. However, all that done, one hands over the results to the higher power (which includes destiny). One’s mind must stay in That which transcends negativity, sin, evil, even if one must grapple with them. Philosophy will not disregard the bad in others, and the sin in ourselves, but having seen them clearly it does not react negatively in useless condemnation. Instead, it reacts constructively in trying to realize the meaning of evil, the consequence of sin, and then proceeds to cultivate the opposite quality, the good of that particular evil—as honesty where there is dishonesty and so on. If practical dealings are involved, we may regret the existence of these faults in others, but we may not refuse to recognize them. Amid all the pessimistic reflections which the state of the World so easily induces in the thinking human, one may yet be buoyed up by the hope which the eternal verities must again and again give one, that is, the hope that the end of it will be immeasurably better. The existentialist view—so popular with so many young people today—that we begin with oblivion and end with annihilation, that what comes between is either meaningless or mysterious, with no solutions to problems, no answers to questions, is a view which the tragedy and evil and catastrophe of our times tempt us to accept. However, religion and philosophy release us from this despair. In such critical times as these even some faith in the existence of a higher power, and some aspiration towards serving it, has protective value. Trust, not tension: trust in the higher power producing serenity rather than tension; because of the pressures of life this is a great need today. However dark or desperate World history may seem at times, we must always remember no one can disrupt the divine World-Idea, or spoil its manifestation, or prevent its glorious outcome. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Fear of the power and cunning of these evil opponents causes them to rely on obvious but ordinary human forces and weapons for protection. They forget the divine forces they could, and should in this crisis, call on—and neglect the superhuman and extraordinary. To express a half-amused contempt for the intelligence of our time is not at all the same thing as to make a jaundiced indictment of it. To witness the magnificent parade of a civilization of almost unredeemed triviality is less likely to arouse bitterness in the soul and more likely to give it a good half-hour’s amusement. On the one hand, carried away by the idealistic enthusiasm and millennial promises of merely emotionalist cults, some believe that a spiritual teaching has only to be propagated and it will spread triumphantly everywhere. On the other hand, confronted by the formidable spectacle of a whole World plunged in ignorance, conscious that the ordinary individual can do so little to uplift it, others drift into bewildered defeatism and actually do nothing at all. However, this second attitude, although much more sensible and much more justifiable than its opposite one, is not quite philosophical. According to the old classical fable, we had to look for truth in the bottom of a well; today we have to look for it in the bottom of a bitter disillusionment. In the dismal World conditions of today it is a paramount necessity to obtain some glimpse, however meagre, of the divine plan which is working out for all our lives. Only in this way can we co-operate with it understandingly and adequately. Instead of relying on flight into the unknow and uncertain, it is better to rely on God. In the first case one may be making a false escape and duping oneself, but in the second case one opens the way for true guidance in the matter. With peace in the mind and harmony in the feelings, both completed by knowledge of the universal presence of divinity—who could harbour evil thoughts, hatreds, or destructive plans? #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Every evil person who crosses our path provides an opportunity, in the injury one attempts to do us, to keep ourselves from being provoked into retaliation, anger, or resentment. If we succeed in overcoming our own feelings, we mount upward a step. In a negative situation, where negative criticism and negative emotions are rampant, other persons may try to involve one in it, or at least get one to support their attitude and endorse their criticism. However, a feeling may come over one preventing one from doing so. If so, one should obey and remain silent. With time the rightness of this course will be confirmed. One the injunction to return good for evil, the question arises, with what then will you return go? Return good for good, but justice for evil. Is this not wiser counsel? Does not the other punish goodness to an extremist position, rendering it almost ridiculous by condoning bad conduct? Inner and outer difficulties are often related. What appears to be an ugly state of affairs may well be a definite attack of certain evil forces using interested human instruments. In such a situation, the individual should never practise nonresistence in any way, but, on the contrary, should fight them off as hard a one can. At the same time, one must remember that weakness in self-control can give these evil forces an opening which they might not have had otherwise. If one wishes to emerge victorious in the struggle, one must be on one’s guard. If one does not throw off this condition, one, oneself, unwittingly erects a barrier though which the divine help sent one finds it difficult to penetrate. Although the temptation to seek release as such a time through, for example, the easy way of drink is understandable, one must nevertheless remember the duty one owes to one’s spiritual life, to one’s personal interest on the relative plane, and to others. Although the student must forgive those who mistreat one, one need not think tht forgiveness implies one has to associate with such people thereafter. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Whenever the thought of them, or their abuse, comes into one’s mind one must exert one’s willpower to drive it out, and immediately direct one’s thoughts toward God, or toward any inspired individual in whom one had faith. Only the actualized Christian is entitled to dismiss evil and to deny its existence: all others must look it in the face, understand it, and overcome it by slow gradations. It is better to keep out of the way of evil humans, especially when they are in power, until or unless we are driven by the necessity of circumstance of the inward voice of duty to oppose ourselves to them. It is always a certainty that the practice of active goodwill directed toward those who regard one harshly will benefit one’s own development, while it is always a possibility that this practice may dissolve the harsh feeling against one. It is all gain and no loss. This is one part of the case for Jesus’ advice to return good for evil. It is a technique of this evil power to paralyse its intended victims by frightening them. If we give way to fear, we give assistance to its effort. It cannot be beaten without open defiance and ready valour. One must remember that one will meet with those individuals who are themselves the bearers of antagonistic forces, instruments of darkness—sometimes consciously, most unconsciously, people used by evil forces. So far as possible one must avoid such people. Certainly never enter into intimate associations with them, whether the relation be business or personal. If one does one will find that sooner or later some of their unfortunate behaviour will be returned by Universal Law and tumble on one and one with have to suffer with the afflicted individual. These people make talk as believers in spiritual things—indeed, they often belong to some cult or other. However, they do not understand truth or live it. They cannot help one and one is not strong enough to carry them. So leave them alone. And that is not always easy, because often they are people of a kind that force themselves into one’s life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Sometimes one can know them by this hallmark, by this aggressive way which they try to entangle another individual. It may even be necessary at times to deal with such people with a firm hand, even mercilessly and relentlessly. If so, do not hesitate, but do it without any personal feeling of any kind. The American landscape has been badly corrupted. European writers no longer even notice the natural wonder of it, they are so put off by the ugliness and conformity of the towns. However, worse than the ugliness and conformity is the neglect that baffles pride of place. Our poets try to move themselves by nostalgically repeating the names of towns: “Biloxi and Natchez, Pascagoula and Opelousas”—but beware of paying a visit. The Americans disesteem public goods, and improving the landscape is a big expense. Historically, the neglect of appearance and plan of our scores of thousands of villages and small towns, especially in the Middle West and South—the diner, the Woolworth’s, and two filling stations—can be analogized to the neglect of the present-day less affluent. In the tide of expansion, appearance was disregarded as not essential; later, the matter would be mopped up. However, the neglect rigidifies, it is a hard core not easy to change. Instead, the present tendency is to impose on the countryside a new corporation style altogether, in the form of shopping centers (=national chain supermarkets) on the highway. This works out disastrously for the communities, for these “centers” are not centers of villages, and there cease to be villages at all, simply scattered family houses. This is the end of a long process of disruption, for in any case the industry is gone, then men work in plants thirty miles away. It is possible to travel many miles even in New England and not see a single activity a man could make a living at, except automobile agencies and filling stations; not even a food store. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
The schools too are large and centralized. The families tend to move away frequently, but even while they are put, they are driving around. This does not make much community to grow up in. In more primitive societies, a chief community activity is working together, thatching a roof, net fishing. However, with us, precisely this co-operative labour, for instance the work in a factory, is removed from its community setting ad emptied, by the relations of production, of any community spirit. Places that have no shape have no face-to-face functioning, for the shape is the functioning community. The loveliness of so many hamlets in Europe is that they have shape and are built of local materials by local craft. Perhaps the people had to cluster to attend early masses. In Ireland, where they farm out the back door, the rows of thatched houses line both sides of a little street. In France, where men go off to their farms, there may be a square. In our own early New England villages, where congregational and political spirit was strong, there was a common green with public buildings, though the families lived scattered on the farms they worked. There was the shape of a community, with its economy, its crafts, and its ideas. The advantage of growing up in such a community in one’s early years is evident. It is not family supervision, on which the physicians of juvenile delinquency are now laying such stress; quite the contrary! it is that the family does not have to bear the burden of teaching the culture. In a community, everybody knows the child face to face. There is an easy grading of overlapping ages, right up to the adults who are going about their business in a going concern, and not paying too much attention to children. A good city neighbourhood works in the same way. From this point of view, the swarm of kids in a city housing project form a better community than present-day country boys or the kids on Park Avenue. Therefore they have more local patriotism. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The bother with this community chain, however, is that it terminates abruptly before it reaches the adults, who belong to a different World; so the kids are a gang and the local community spirit turns into loyalty to a Code; it does not eventuate in anything socially cohesive and culturally worthwhile. And such a gang in prone to be delinquent because, as we shall see, in such conditions it is the forbidden tht best cements loyalty. Politically, a delinquent gang is not lawless and not in the state of nature. Balked in its growth, the local loyalty turns on itself and simple reinvents the feud-code of Alfred the Great, marking out safe territories and making provision for special classes of revenge. On this view, if one teenage gang, pursuing its vendetta, falls on another and murders a kid, it would not be our business to interfere in the law of that differently constituted society. Also, like Danes or Vikings of Alfred’s time, they regard our larger society merely as a field of sports and plunder; they have not yet reinvented International Law. However, we, of course, cannot view it so, for we live in an advanced state of politics and law: they are members of our community. We are not children but more experienced and somewhat wiser, and therefore responsible, so we cannot simply annihilate them like pirates (they are small in size, few in numbers, and armed with primitive weapons); and we cannot let them hurt themselves. (I think it is wise sometimes to regard disaffected groups as if there were plausibly these two viewpoints, rival patriotisms. It is better humanity and it might make better law. The advantage is that it takes the disaffected seriously as disaffected, rather than merely pathological; it keeps in the foreground the question of allegiance. We must deserve allegiance.) However, they are children. Let us consider rather the peculiar patriotic problem of an older disaffected group, the Hipster young men, for then we can see that it is a patriotic problem. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Here too, I think, there has often been a strong community influence of growing up together. For instance, fellows who went to Black Mountain College, which was oriented to community and creative arts—a powerful, and powerfully disaffecting, combination—are pillars of Hipster society. Other fellows were buddies in the armed services. However, it was, as Hispters their community spirit is strong. They barge in to sleep, they share property, they share a culture. Now think of this community, disaffected from America, as engaged in a pathetic quest for some other big patriotism, an adult peer group. We saw how, appointing themselves outcast, they affirm the accidental symbol of other marginalized groups: African American, Puerto Rican, the less affluent, and others. However, this is pretty thin gruel for intellectual young men, many of whom have been to college. On the other hand, they are unable to make the jump to the great international humanists community because, simply, they do not know anything, neither literature nor politics. (I once taught at Black Mountain College, and to my astonishment I found that the students had never read the Christian Bible, Milton, Dryden, Gibbon, etcetera, etcetera, nor did they feel—as a lack—that such things existed. However, they knew odd facts about Mayan hieroglyphics which their teacher had been interested in.) What then? Since it is necessary for grown fellow to have some major allegiance or other, they have latched on to the late Japanese masters of Zen Buddhism. (This is a late effect of the early-century discovery of Japan by Fenollosa, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Misses Lowell and Ayscough, and Ezra Pound, suddenly reinforced by the postwar occupation under General MacArthur.) Now, as we shall see, Zen is not irrelevant to those young men’s needs, for it is a theology and style of immediate experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
However, the pathos is that Zen was the flower of an intensely loyal feudal system that fed, protected, and honoured its masters, and to which the Zen masters in turn had fealty. For example, it is said that the haiku was invented by a poet as a public service when one was suicidally despondent because one’s Emperor had died. However, Zen without farmers and servants is an airy business; and the young men, as we have seen, are betrayed into dubious devices to keep body and soul together, nor do they have a flag to salute. Community approaches have worked to resolve many problems. In looking at mental health, the broadest approach for the treatment of schizophrenia is the community approach. In 1963, partly in response to the terrible conditions in public mental institutions, the U.S. government ordered that patients be released and treated in the community. Congress passed the Community Mental Health Act, which stipulated that patients with psychological disorders were to receive a range of mental health services—outpatient therapy, inpatient treatment, emergency care, preventative care, and aftercare—in their communities rather than being transported to institutions far from home. The act was aimed at a variety of psychological disorders, but patients with schizophrenia, especially those who had been institutionalized for years, were affected most. Other countries around the World put similar sociocultural treatment programs into action shortly thereafter. Thus began four decades of deinstitutionalization, an exodus of hundred of thousands of patients with schizophrenia and other long-term mental disorders from state institutions into the community. On a given day in 1955 close to 600,000 patients were living in state institutions; today only around 60,000 patients reside in those setting. The unfortunate result is that mental health lost most of its funding and a lot of people with mental illnesses have to where to go, but jail or to live on the street. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Clinicians have learned that patients recovering from schizophrenia can profit greatly from community programs. However, the actual quality of community care for many of these people has been inadequate through the United States of America. The result is a “revolving door” syndrome: the few patients, who are lucky enough to be treated, have been released to the community, readmitted to an institution within mothers, released a second time, admitted yet again, and so on, over and over. A lot of people who want mental health care are not able to access this precious resource. In fact, 10.3 percent (over 4.7 million) of adults with a mental illness remain uninsured. And, 56 percent of patients want access to a mental health care facility. As COVID-19 continues to rage, Americans are experiencing anxiety and depression. More than 42 percent of U.S. adults reported symptoms, up 11 percent in the previous years. Nearly 1 in 5 Americans has some type of mental health condition. Spending on mental health treatment and social services has reached over $250 billion, which is up approximately 60 percent since 2009. This cost includes spending on things like therapy and prescription medications as well as stays in psychiatric or substance abuse rehabilitation facilities. However, it does not take into account indirect costs, such as lower workforce participation rates and decreased productivity. In fact, depression alone is estimated to account for $44 billion in loses to workplace productivity. And access to care can be prohibitively expensive—even more so than physical health costs. An hour-long traditional therapy session can range from $65 to $250 for those without insurance. A patient with major depression can spend an average of $10,836 a year on health costs. Meanwhile, a person with diabetes taking insulin can spend $48,000 to manage their condition. On a national level, research shows that the United States of America is likely to continue to experience a shortage of mental health professional through 2025. If you are looking for excellent health and wellness coverage, consider becoming a Kaiser Permanente member. You do not need a referral for mental health and addiction care services. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Other ways to help keep health and wellness in check is celibacy. However, there is the double standard that is a Worldwide phenomenon that has many layers of meaning. The first is that one and one is not always two, because the woman or man of the evening is a criminal but their client is a “john,” an also because women are expected to be virginal at marriage and chaste afterward, and some men are expected to be chaste before a relationship and after, and during the marriage and relationship, but one’s husband is not bound by the same constraints. The double standard implies, in other words, that chastity is primarily and woman’s and small percent of men’s domain. Nonetheless, only women are typically judged more harshly than all men whose conduct is identical. Even today, the discrimination is thunderously obvious, preached from pulpits and parliaments and specifically mandated in the law. The double standard is nefarious not only because it embodies egregious gender inequality but because it condoned solicitation as an acceptable outlet for unchaste men. Though it condemns people of “the evening” as social scum and consigns them to lives of degradation and danger and disease, it sanctions their profession. The reason is obvious: without solicitation, lascivious people might seduce rather than marry the virgins of their own social class. It is particularly chilling that the members of many churches and other organizations in positions of authority support the double standard and, albeit reluctantly, swallows the equation that no men or women of the evening equals no chastity. Laws essentially force women to abide by a higher standard of regard in the matters of chastity than men. They also denounce solicitation but at the same time partially exonerate it as the safety valve that kept virgins pure. It is unsurprising, then, that the double standard matured as a code of conduct in pleasures of the flesh that demand female chastity and at the same time approve, or at least tolerate, the dominant group of mostly men, and their carnality expressed in the use of other humans as toys, though this meant sacrificing certain women and sometimes other to unchaste, unrestrained men and a small fraction of women. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Furthermore, not all men honour their obligations to marry their child’s mother. And when men who came from a higher social echelon seduced a working-class girl, they almost never honoured that class’s code. Domestics and shop girls in particular were the pray of privileged men, but being with child destitute these women rather than pushing them into marriage with the baby’s father. However, often times, after these men who have money start to become older and nearing retirement, they will then leave their wives for young women of other ethnic backgrounds and of lower social standings because these women tend to be considered more exotic and attractive. The women will marry for older man for security and to escape labour. However, in a few cases, it is real love. In society, another problem is many people seem to scarcely be able to comprehend what chastity means, or to regard it as a virtue. Among the middle and upper classes, chastity’s double standard wreaked havoc on social decency. Some of these moral puritanical, which even frown on premarital male activities involving pleasures of the flesh, young women are coached to trap husbands without surrendering beforehand even a taste of the delights to come. Men are, in some cases, are frustrated at this implacable wall of chastity and take it as a challenge. They play games. In large numbers, they form unholy crusades to seduce young virgins. This upper-class deviance was depicted on shows like the original on Gossip Girl. “Resist, resist!” the virgins’ elders urge them. “Just say a resounding ‘No’ to your pleading, inveigling, deceiving young suitors.” After all, as the old adage went, “Who would keep a cow of their own that can have a quart of milk for a penny?” However, at the same time, ladies, and a small percentage of men, forgive them for trying to ruin you. This double standard of conduct involving pleasures of the flesh is necessary, because unlike you, the dominant class of men and a small percentage of dominant women, by nature have an urgent, irrepressible need. Brothels used to be officially licensed. Unchaste people play a crucial role in upholding their societies’ notions about chastity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Now, nowhere is a failure to achieve perfect synchronization more lamented than in the bedroom—unless it is when the U.S. Federal Reserve or the Bank of Japan rises or lowers interest rates and get the timing wrong. Timing, as any comedian can tell us, is everything. However, we are, for the most part unwittingly, changing our links to time, and that is no joke. As interested as investors and economists may be about exact timing in finance, they re remarkably uniformed about the role of synchronization—and, even more so de-synchronization—in the creation of wealth and poverty. Yet understanding these can give us a wholly new way of thinking about wealth creation. Some degree of synchronization has been needed ever since hunters and gatherers began working in groups. Historian William McNeill argues that mass rhythmic activities have been used throughout history to promote synchrony, which in turn improved economic productivity. Tribal dancing, he suggests, strengthened teamwork and made hunting more efficient. For thousands of years fishermen have chanted in unison as they hauled in their nets, the musical beats indicating when to pull and when to breathe. Agrarian economies also reflected seasonal change. According to anthropologist John Omohundro, writing about the Philippine island of Panay, “Through the dry season…and into the rainy season…businessmen are in their slowest season. All aspects of the distribution system slow down. By September or October the rice crop begins to arrive in town…Because the wealth of the province is regulated by agrarian cycles, city business activity rises and falls the these cycles.” Economic anthropologist Willem Wolters adds: “Purely local banks have never been viable in the semi-arid tropics because of the seasonality and synchronic timing.” Early industrial economics operated under completely different temporal conditions. Assembly-line work required a different rhythm. Thus, the factory whistle and the time clock were invented to coordinate work schedules. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
By contrast, today, as we will see, business activities are speeding toward real time. In addition, the uses of time are becoming increasingly personalized and irregular, if not erratic. More different tasks need to be integrated, and the acceleration effect truncates the time available for each task. All this makes synchronization harder to achieve. And that is only the beginning. If we look deeper, we find that every economy throbs and vibrates with unnoticed rhythms. We may buy a newspaper daily, pick up soap or milk at the supermarket weekly, gas up the car every ten days or so, cash a paycheck every two weeks and pay credit card bills monthly. We might call a broker sporadically according to what is happening in the stock market, buy a movie ticket or a book on a whim a few times a year, pay taxes quarterly or annually, go to the dentist when a toothache strikes and purchase a gift for a relative who is getting married in June. These and countless other transactions create rhythms that flow through banks, markets and lives. With the very first slap on our infant behind, every one of us becomes part of this ongoing economic music. Even our biorhythms are affected (and in turn influence) the marvelously complex, orchestrated process that pulse around us as people work—making things, providing services, managing others, caring for one another, financing companies or processing data and information into knowledge. At every moment, some tempos speed up, others slow down. New melodies and harmonies are introduced, then fade out. There are choruses, counterpoints and crescendos. Beyond these, throughout the entire society and economy, there is a generalized pulse of life that is itself the average, as it were, of all its subordinate tempos. The “economic music” never stops. The result is not patternless chaos because, within every wealth system, various components or subsystems are continually adapting their speeds, phases and periodicities to one another. In biology this process is called “entertainment.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Neurons, it turns out, do not work alone. They form temporary teams—much as businesses increasingly do today. In the words of Science magazine, “Neurons frequently fall into step with one another, forming ensembles that play the same tune, as it were, firing in relative synchrony for brief periods, before some neurons drop out of synch, perhaps to join another ensemble.” Firing in sync, moreover, apparently predisposes the neurons to “joint processing” at high levels of the system. Today’s breakup of monolithic corporations into congeries of short-lived project team, alliances, partnerships and joint ventures parallels these ephemeral “ensembles” in the neural system. One way the World could survive in joy is if the whole World worships God. We hear you, fellow-creatures. We know we are wrecking the World and we are afraid. What we have unleased has such momentum now, we do not know how to turn it around. Do not leave us alone, we need your help. You need us too for your own survival. Are there power there you can share with us? In the Service of the Heart, nothing is further from the truth than the widespread notion that to pray is synonymous with to beg, to request, or to supplicate. To be sure, to pray means to call upon God to help us. However, we need Him not only when we are physically in danger. We need Him also when we are spiritually in danger. To pray means to seek God’s help, “to keep our tongue from evil,” “to purify our hearts,” “to put into our hearts to understand, to learn and to fulfill in love, the words of the Christian Bible,” and thus to keep us unswervingly loyal to truth, goodness, and beauty. To pray is to feel and to give expression to a deep sense of gratitude. No intelligent, healthy, normal human being should take for granted, or accept without conscious, grateful acknowledgement the innumerable blessings which God in His infinite love bestows upon one daily—blessings of parents and loved one, of friends and country, of health and understanding. To pray is to express renewed allegiance to the moral and ethical principles which we accept as the guides of our personal lives, and which we recognize as the indispensable foundation stones for a decent human society. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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That was Heinous Crime–Do Not Waste Granny’s Delicious Chess Pie Like that!
Various scientists around the World are trying to build cells from scratch. Marileen Dogterom has been piecing together a cytoskeleton in the Netherlands. Kate Adamala is attaching receptors to a lipid bilayer in Minnesota. And Tetsuya Yomo built RNA that can evolve like the real thing in Japan. However, by and large they have been independently working on different cell parts. Now, a growing number of collaborations are melding these efforts together and speeding progress toward an audacious goal: building a living cell out of non-living molecules. A cell constructed from the ground up would let researchers better test drugs, enable bioengineers to build the next generation of cellular machines, and help biologists answer the fundamental questions: What does it mean to be alive? The efforts to find out is driving toward a common purpose: constructing organisms that have some properties of cells, such as the ability to divide and pass on information to their offspring. Scientists can also customize these new creations, building cells to do things that might not occur in nature. Perhaps most interestingly, they might build something that meets our definition of “alive” but looks nothing like existing cells—perhaps it has a different information storage molecule than DNA, or it is enclosed not by lipids but by proteins. Creating and studying such a thing might help answer the basic question of what it means for something to be alive. Researcher J. Craig Venter Institute announced that they had created a minimal bacterial cell—a Mycoplasma bacteria that contained just enough genes to stay alive. That number is 473. Cut one more gene off, and the bacteria will not work properly. Add an extra gene, and not the bacteria is carrying unnecessary baggage. However, at the time of the study’s publication, the scientists only knew the function that 324 those genes actually served. The remaining 149 did something to keep the cell chugging along, but scientists do not know what. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
As cellular chemistry became more and more complex, requiring increasing numbers of different enzymes to direct the many separate metabolic reactions on which life depended, the problem of ensuring that the individuals of each generation received a complete complement of the corresponding types of DNA molecules must have become more and more critical. It seems unlikely that modern cells, with their survival requiring the successful completion of complex reaction sequences depending on thousands of different enzymes, could ever have developed if a way had not been found to pass DNA along from parent to offspring in an orderly manner. Fortunately, orderly procedures were possible and evolution succeeded in finding one. All the principles governing continuity of general characteristics withing species and inheritance of detailed characteristics by individual derive from the nature of the particular procedure that is now universally employed by living organisms for the precise handling of DNA. The processes we are about to consider occur in the nucleus. With a small exception, to be discussed later, that is where all the DNA of the cell resides. In very primitive organisms such as bacteria, in which a definite nucleus/cytoplasm boundary is hard to detect, there is still a localized nuclear region within which the processes in question take place. The key to the modern genetic protection mechanism is packaging. Within the nucleus the thousands of different DNA molecules do not simply mill around, each performing its functions of self-replication and manufacture of complementary RNA molecules independently of the rest. Instead, the DNA molecules carry, a big step further, the long-chain structural concept that led to their own formation. They themselves hook together end to end, thereby forming nucleic acid “strands”—giant giant molecules composed of individual DNA components, each of which is already a giant molecule because of its own linking together of hundreds or thousands of nucleotides. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
In the cell of a complex organism there may be thousands of different DNA molecules strung together to form each such gigantic array. All of such strands or arrays possessing the same configuration of DNA molecules then line up side by side, along with some protein material about whose function we shall later speculate. The resulting package is called a chromosome. (Evidence suggests that, in most cells, there are only few copies—perhaps only one—of each type of giant giant molecule. However, certain special cells, such as those in the salivary gland of the fruit fly, develop giant chromosomes containing thousands of times as much DNA as the average cell. In such special cases the chromosome appears to be a bundle of thousands of parallel and identical strands of DNA.) The separate types of DNA molecules that compose the chromosome are called genes. Higher organisms package many more different genes in each chromosome than do lower organisms, in order to carry the book of instructions that directs the complex chemistry of the cell. Frequently there are also more chromosomes. Thus only 8 chromosomes are found in the nuclei of fruit-fly cells, 46 in those human cells. Each stand of a chromosome acts partly as if it were a single molecular entity, partly like a loose aggregation of separate molecules. It reproduces itself as a unit—each ordered array of DNA molecules begets another similarly ordered array of the same types of DNA molecules. On the other hand, the individual DNA molecules seem able to perform their chores of manufacturing messenger RNA independently of one another. However, in the movement of DNA from the nucleus of an old cell to that of a new one, during cell division, again unit action occurs: the separate DNA molecules are evidently tied together tightly enough that only completely strands participate in the migration. It is, of course, cell division (mitosis) that plays for modern organisms the same kind of reproduction role that plays for modern organisms that same kind of reproduction role that was once played by the physical forces of wind and wave as they broke into smaller pieces the primitive coacervates. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Nowadays, however, it is the chemical state of the cell, rather than the physical conditions of the environment, that sets into motion the reproduction process. For example, it is possible that the complex interrelated chemical activities of mitosis are triggered by the approach to some built-in limit by the amount of DNA in the nucleus. Certain it is that, between successive divisions of a growing cell, the amount of nuclear DNA doubles. Whatever may be the initiator of the processes of mitosis, the events that take place are known to every student of elementary biology. They are featured by a doubling of each of the chromosomes, a dissolution of the nuclear membrane, and an orderly migration of the two resulting sets of chromosomes to opposite sides of the cell. This is followed by a pinching together of the walls of the extended cell to form two separate cellular units and finally by the reestablishment of nuclear membranes to contain the chromosomal material. The result is two cells instead of one, each possessing approximately half of the original cytoplasmic material and a set of nuclear DNA molecules identical with that with which the parent cell started life. However, we have explicitly localized these DNA packaging and distribution mechanisms in the nucleus. And references have been made to the fact that not quite all of the DNA of the cell is confined in the nucleus. The time has come to explain thee references and to examine whether the existence and properties of the nonnuclear DNA can be accommodated in our picture of the DNA protection mechanisms. The nonnuclear DNA—of an amount totaling a very few percent of that located in the nucleus—is found in some of the organelles of the cytoplasm. Mitochondria contain a small amount of DNA; so do chloroplasts, the chlorophyl-containing inclusions that perform photosynthesis in green plants. And this DNA clearly carries out genetic functions. This is been proved by experiments in which mutations were induced in the DNA of the cytoplasmic organelles by microbeams of ultraviolet radiation so directed as to miss the nucleus; physically abnormal organelles were then observed to occur in all subsequent descendants of the irradiated cell—showing that the undamaged nuclear DNA did not provide the structural specifications involved. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Further elaboration of the details of the nonnuclear genetic mechanisms, which is under way today in a number of research laboratories, is clearly of great scientific importance. The discoveries already made render it untenable to attribute all of the genetic control of an organism to the nucleus, as was once done. However, there is as yet no evidence calling for other major changes in the picture we have drawn of the genetic mechanism. For the experimental results are compatible with the hypothesis that the nucleic acid/enzyme processes related to the small amount of DNA of the organelles are just like those related to the much larger amount of DNA in the nucleus. The organelle DNA appears to manufacture messenger RNA which assembles corresponding enzymes. And, during mitosis, not only does the nucleus of the cell divide but so also do the organelles we are considering. It seems likely, too, that there are chromosomal mechanisms within the organelles that cause their genetic material to be accurately apportioned between parent and offspring, just as in the case of the nucleus. Thus, while it is interesting to speculate about the course of evolutionary development that has withheld from the nucleus of modern cells, there is as yet no indication that the anomaly of nonnuclear DNA requires any other major revision in our basic concepts pertaining to the genetic mechanisms. Whether we have in mind the nuclear or the nonnuclear DNA packaging arrangements, it is clear that their net effect is to remove most of the element of chance from the basic mechanism of genetics. The precise propagation of DNA molecules from one generation of cells to the next results in similar precision in the chemical and physical nature of the progeny. A splitting amoeba process more amoebae, a paramecium more paramecia, a human cell more human cells. Even though the environmental conditions within which the new generations develop differ somewhat from those which nourished their parents—in temperature, chemical composition of the surrounding fluids, and so on—the relatively tight control over the specific cellular chemical processes exercised by the powerful protein enzymes, which in turn owe their creation to the specific roster of DNA molecules in the chromosomes, results in the remarkable continuity of species characteristics that features modern living forms. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
A final comment about what may seem to be a curious inconsistency in one aspect of our argument would appear to be in order. We have just expressed admiration for the effectiveness of the chromosomal mechanisms in preventing change in the nature of the vital DNA material in going from one generation to another. And yet, only a few days ago or so, our sympathies seemed quite different. For the development of our theories then we emphasized the existence of mechanisms capable of causing accidental changes in the ingredients responsible for the structure and metabolism of our organisms. We even went so far as to postulate the presence in the primordial seas of a small quantity of “nucleotide-linking catalyst” that encouraged the accidental formation of nucleic acid molecules of increased length and complexity. We could in addition have expressed satisfaction with the knowledge that thermal collisions and radioactive particles are also capable of causing mutations in the structure of nucleic acid molecules. Is our earlier emphasis on change consistent with our later emphasis on genetic stability? Fortunately, it is not too difficult to reconcile these apparently incompatible points of view. During the era of preanimate coacervates, when extensive refinement in structure and metabolism was necessary before anything like living organisms could exist, there was obviously a premium on “mutagenic agents.” This led not only to a corresponding emphasis in our literary treatment but probably also, by the normal economics of the evolutionary processes, to a relative abundance of such agents in the primordial seas. However, after eons of the trial-and-error refinement of the properties of organisms, a time must ultimately have come when random change in their properties was so much more likely to be harmful than helpful to the species that the advantage would all have been on the side of a combination of environment and organisms leading to relatively low rates of mutation in the hereditary mechanisms. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Natural selection would then not only have brought to prominence such techniques for protection of the property-determining ingredients as we have just considered in connection with the nuclear DNA but might even have acted to diminish the abundance in the environment of some of the mutagenic agents. For example, if in certain regions primitive organisms were spilling into the seas such a quantity of nucleotide-linking catalyst as to lead to an undesirably high rate of mutation in the properties of most other organisms in the vicinity, there would have been a tendency for the main line of evolutionary development to be retarded in such regions; the result would ultimately have been the starving out of the undesirable mutagen-producing species as the course of evolution in remoter regions accelerated the proliferation of more modern strains. Whether such developments occurred to slow down the rate of mutation or whether it was always slow (with the extensive accomplishments of evolution attribute only to the great time periods available), it is certain that today the combination of environment and organism seem usually to emphasize stability rather than change. When modern cells successively divine and send some of their precious DNA to guide the construction of new individuals, we expect the DNA that each new individual ultimately sends on to its progeny to be identical with that which it received, and we are rarely disappointed. It is likely that, on the average, each individua DNA molecule duplicates itself 100,000 or more times without the change of even a single atom in the thousands of which it is composed. Changes do occur occasionally, to be sure; if they did not, evolutionary development would be impossible. However, in terms of the few dozen or few thousand years over which the human species makes most of its observations, the protection provided to the large majority of the DNA by its nuclear environment and the precision of the mitotic distribution mechanisms, together with the relative scarcity of mutagenic agents, now contributes a remarkable degree of stability to the structure and metabolism of living organisms. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The sophisticated membrane properties of the modern cell, the ribosomal and mitochondrial structures, the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms, the chromosomal/mitosis processes—these and other features have been achieved at a tremendous cost of time and painstaking trial-and-error experiment. It is fortunate that the natural forces of evolution operate in such a way as to require convincing evidence of superiority before novel processes are allowed to replace such tried-and-true structural and metabolic principles. Looking ahead, does bullying qualify as a national crisis? Bullying is an unacceptable behaviour that adults and students have a responsibility to stop. Most people think of bullying as teasing someone and make lighthearted jokes about an individual. However, it is a blanket term to downplay serious crimes. Bullying and cyberbullying can become a crime if you: physically assault someone, vandalize property, harass someone especially if the harassment is based on gender or racism. Furthermore, violent threats, death threats, obscene and harassing phone calls and texts are also criminal acts. The list goes on to include explicit photos of an adult or minor used to extort the person, or sharing these photos with other, stalking someone, committing hate crimes, taking a photo of someone in a place where they expect privacy, and extortion. Do not think these acts are not a crime. The Secret Service released a report examining the dozens of school shooting that have taken place across the United States of America since 1997. It found that bullying was a factor in two-thirds of them. In some cases, the shooters had been bullies; much more often, they had been the victims of bullying. A survey released by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Nickelodeon asked a national sample of children aged 8 to 15 what issues in school concerned them most, and all age groups pointed to teasing and bullying as “big problems” that ranked higher than racism, deadly illnesses, and peer pressure. Reports such as these have elevated bullying from a narrow concern that is best dealt with by students themselves (or perhaps by the teachers and parents of those directly involved) to wide speared problems that requires the attention of school-level programs and statewide policies. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
A recent study found that a full 30 percent of American students are involved in moderate or frequent bullying—11 percent have been victims, 13 percent have been bullies, and percent have been both. Other studies report even higher results. When you sit down to talk to someone who has been a victim of noted death threats, felony assault and vandalizing, stalking, and trespassing never says, “So you are being bullied.” That is totally making the situation seem like someone has just been teased by children on the playground. However, when someone in a political position is hit in the face with a pie, it suddenly becomes a very serious problem and is called “assault,” no bullying, or “just horsing around.” In 2016, when Sean Thompson walked up to the defunct mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson, and hit him in the face with a pie. The Johnson then tackled Thompson, then punched him more than half a dozen times until his face looked like a “bloody pulp.” Sean Thompson hit Kevin Johnson with a pie because he put more than half a billion dollars into the King’s arena, instead of projects that could actually help people in the community. Sacramento then charged Sean Thompson with many believe was the stiffest potential penalty a pie-thrower has ever received: felony assault and misdemeanor battery, with a bail of $100,000. Many believe the punishment was unconstitutional. However, when you look into Kevin Johnson, many may wonder why he got away with so much when he was far more than a bully, then rewarded by becoming mayor, where he racked up more crimes that as of yet, have still gone unpunished? Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot and a European American mayor had responded to a young African American male the same way. The World would have been outraged. While the issue of equality is important, African Americans do not want to be perceived as aggressive victims. The issue is equal rights under the law for all. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
How easy can it be for clinicians to identify which children will turn dangerously violent if indeed 33 percent of all children have experienced bullying? One thing to keep in mind about self-defense, is often times it is, in many cases, better to walk away from the situation because it may not go the way you think it will. Certain people, and those in certain positions get more leeway when it comes to how they react to “bullying.” However, keep in mind, when it comes to self-defense, you will need to prove you had a reasonable belief that you were in imminent danger of suffering harm or death, you have reasonable belief that using force was necessary to prevent such harm, and you used an amount of force that was necessary to stop that threat. Because if some person hits you in the face with a pie, and you beat them to a bloody pulp, you might actually go to jail for that because that is called excessive force. How can we rid ourselves of a problem as pervasive as this? Short of raising kinds in isolation chambers…bullying behaviours can never be eliminated entirely from the sustained hazing ritual knows as growing up. Remember bullying and the force you use to defend yourself can be considered a criminal act. Think about it, is assault or a hate crime worth being sent to jail for? Is being mean and cruel and hurting other people worth running their life and yours? Next time you think it is funny to hurt someone in person or online, think carefully about the consequences. You may think it is funny at first, but think about how much fun it would be for you to be spending time in jail! Think about how being in jail could prevent you from attending college, having a great career? Think about having a criminal record for the rest of your life, which could even impact who is willing to marry you, rent to you, or hire you for a job. Think about how funny you think it is when you bully others. However, if you go to jail, think about how others will feel about you. None of these things would be too much fun…would they? #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Equal to some businessmen, some of our government and public spokesmen have a knack for debasing the noble and making the excellent trivial. The current disease is to make Cold War capital out of everything, no matter what. We cannot dedicate a building of William Carson’s of Sarah Winchester’s in California without criticism for being so beautiful and creative. This type of criticism is tasteless; the matter becomes serious when our freedoms are involved. Many civil rights leaders and organized friends of culture keep repeating freedom of speech, freedom of culture. (You would think that we did not have our own means of censoring, by commercial selections and by swamping.) However, many Americans are facing Cold War censorship, not only have they been forced to wear masks, and get two and three vaccinations, there is also talk out of Washing about having Americans receive a COVID vaccine every year. In addition, many people had to shut down their businesses and stay locked in their homes during the pandemic. The concern is that this sort of treatment could turn into tyranny. This resulted in an inconceivable loss of revenue and tourists. Such behaviour is inconceivable by Americans. We are not at Cold War with the American Dream of working hard will afford you a nice lifestyle. However, tyranny is patriotically disastrous; it teaches that our spokesmen and women are not earnest; they pick and choose when to stand up from freedom of thought. How then can a boy be proud? (But to be sure, we have little such freedom, compared with the British, for our mass media are not, like their, open to fundamental controversy. It is not surprising, therefore, that for English Angry Young Men an important topic is their outraged patriotism, whereas our Beats do not care about that.) Racial antipathy leading to actual violence is not limited to humans, although it is only the less evolved humans who resort to it. In the tropics one sees black ants fighting the red ones, mutilating and even ending the lives of one another. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
The final tragedy of Humans: that they let themselves go along with destructive forces which in the end could gravely injure the whole species, when they could go alone with the constructive ones. This fleshly body, in which we live and move and have our being, has, through pleasures of the flesh and sport, become a cult to the modern World. We fall in our millions, prostrate votaries at its shrine, forgetful that its quick growth is followed by quick decay, that our idol is doomed to crumble. Too many moments of highest enthusiasm on the part of youth are often reserved for the new religion—sport. A whole theology has been built up around the strokes of a bat and the throws of a ball; hard hitters are now canonized as saints. One who throws one’s ball far enough may yet send oneself, with it, to the new Heavenly America! And as far as pleasures of the flesh, the passions and emotions of the young are deliberately stimulated by the arts of literature, journalism, cinema, and advertising just at the age when they ought to be disciplined. How little humans collectively learn from the past is show by every textbook of history, which teems with constant repetitions of the ugliest passions. The Worldwide condition of human mass, its hates, ignorance, and violence, brings despair to many a thoughtful mind. Violence is a destructive force which in the end and when excessive destroys even itself. Among the negative emotions we must include prejudice and bias. The negative emotions include arrogance and vanity, cowardice and moral weakness. All the negative thoughts and feelings show a misuse of mental power. Temptations and beguilements, illusions and deceptions, beset the path of ordinary life just as they do the inner life of the quest. However, in the latter case they may also assume a subtler form. Here there are telepathic, psychic, spiritualistic, and neurotic possibilities. There are times when a person is more vulnerable to attack by negative thought than at other times. In great emotional excitement, anger, or passion of any kind, we are most susceptible. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Yet, there are three great types of life and thought representing three different solutions of the problem of ethics in historical change: first, the static supranaturalistic solution, represented by the Roman Catholic church and expressed in the ethics of Thomas Aquinas; second, the dynamic-naturalistic solution, represented by the National Socialist movement and expressed in the ethics of the philosophers of life; third, the rationalistic-progressive solution, represented by Anglo-Saxon common sense expressed in the ethics of the philosophers of reasons. With tremendous psychological power the static supranaturalistic solution maintains the eternal and immovable character of the ethical norms and commands. Philosophy and theology co-operate in this direction. The World is conceived as a system of eternal structures, preformed in the divine mind, which are substance and essence of everything and which establish the norms and laws for a human’s personal and social practice. Philosophy discovers these structures and laws, and revelation confirms and amends them. Revelation adds some superstructures of its own that are new and higher laws, but equally eternal and immovable. Both the natural and the supranatural together form a hierarchy of powers and values that control nature and are supposed to control human activities. The church, itself a hierarchical system, teaches this system, educates for it, fights for its political realization, and defends it against new systems. However, in so doing the church cannot disregard the actual situation and historical changes. The church must adapt its ethical system to new problems and new demands. The Catholic church has been able to do just this, admirably, for centuries, and the living authority of the Pope is still a marvelous instrument for achieving adaptations without losing its immovable basis. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the Catholic church did not fully succeed in dealing with the presuppositions and demands of the bourgeois era. Protestantism and the Enlightenment created new systems of ethics standing in opposition to the supposedly eternal system of the medieval church. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
And when the church tried to proceed with the stream of the rising bourgeoisies, as, for example, in the moral preachings of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuitism and in the teachings of nineteenth-century modernism, either it lost its seriousness and authority or it gave the unhappy impression of rearguard action in which every position is defended as long as possible and then surrendered. And the important utterances of the Holy See during the nineteenth century concerning social and political problems presuppose, in order to be applicable, the unbroken unity and authority of the Christian church, which no longer exist. Therefore, they did not at all influence the spirit of modern ethics and the direction of bourgeois society. The price paid by the static supranaturalistic answer to our question has been the loss of a determining influence on the changing World of the last centuries. The opposite solution, represented by national socialism, was prepared for in two main ways—by the Continental vitalistic philosophy and by Angelo-American positivism and pragmatism, the latter being only a different form of the vitalistic philosophy. National Socialism has used and abused philosophical motives of the Continental philosophy of live, especially of Nietzsche, Pareto, and Sorel. Philosophy must express life in its changing forms and trends. Truth, according to Nietzsche, is that lie which is useful for particular species of being. Values are produced and withdrawn in the dynamic process of life—biologically speaking, by the strongest kind of living beings; sociologically speaking, by the strongest kind of living beings; sociologically speaking, by the new elite; and politically speaking, by the eruptive violence of a revolutionary group. Change, being the chief character of life, is also the chief character of ethics. There are no independent norms above life, no criteria by which power can be judged, no standards for a good life. Good life is strong life, or violent life, of the life of a ruling aristocracy, or the life of conquering race. This implies that the individual, instead of being guided by the ethical norms that are manifest in one’s conscience, is obliged to merge one’s conscious with the group conscience. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
One must co-ordinate one’s standards with the group standards, as represented by the leaders of the group. The dynamic-naturalistic type of answer to the question of ethics in a changing World has a primitive-tribal character. It is, historically speaking, at the same time the most recent and the most ancient of all solutions of the ethical problem. Now a quantum leap, from reasoned dedications about the general principles governing the behaviour of long-vanished societies to three real societies: traditional and modern China, ancient Greece, and several nations in today’s Muslim Middle East, all demanding bribes preserve their virginity for their husbands. For long periods of history, the Chinese increased the chances of maintaining large-scale chastity by crippling little girls’ feet so that, as nubile woman, they could barely hobble from room to room, much less down past the garden gate to indulge in pleasures of the flesh adventures. Nonetheless, some unmarried women—maimed and unmaimed—were unchaste. Of these, many concealed the fact or got caught by their families or were publicly exposed—for example when the bridegroom feld from the wedding chamber, bleating about having married a “wing-broken bird.” How did these lapses occur? In the usual way, and sometimes, even women with bound feet defined probability and were wanton, willful, or seduced. These unmaidenly maidens felt no spiritual guilt, for their deed had no religious connotations—as females, after all, they were considered lesser beings than males. However, they had violated China’s pervasive principle of yin and yang, the essential harmony that governed society. Those who were caught dreaded the consequences, for the price of unchastity was dishonour for the entire family. They had defiled the national culture of mianiz, honouring one’s family’s prestige. For women, a peccadillo in pleasures of the flesh was costly in other ways. It was difficult or impossible to find a husband for sullied women except by subterfuge—passing her off as a virgin. And if a man agreed to accept a nonvirgin, he would not send his bride’s family the expensive gifts they could otherwise have expected five or six times a year. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
In China today, the old values have not disappeared, though communism and modernity have modified culture expectations. However, female virginity is still very crucial to a love relationship. For chaste bride’s, the groom’s family often paid a large price forth the wedding. However, sometimes weddings are just an economic affair. As in China, celibacy in ancient Greece was also a uniquely female virtue. As we have seen, the Greeks did not value celibacy, but their daughters had to remain virginal. Because they regarded girls as lustful, early marriages seemed sensible—less time for brides to succumb to temptation. Sometimes, however, marriage did not come soon enough. If she was caught, the young woman was in terrible trouble. Fathers were obligated to obliterate all reminders of such shameful daughters from the household. Selling them selves into slavery was a common solution. One Athenian official took more drastic action: he fed his “ruined” daughter to a starved horse. Why not? By her unchastity, the girl had rendered herself a nonentity whose worthless body might as well sate another sort of bestial hunger. It was, of course, natural for a young woman whose secret lover had actually cause her to be with child to fight with the wiliness of desperation against her dreadful fate. The most common ploy was to swear the pearl inside was holy and that one of the gods had done this to her. Any girl (Parthenos) who managed to pull this off—and a few did—was not merely saved but was afterward treated as someone protected by divine immunity. After all, punishing a Parthenos, whom a god rather than a moral man had made unchaste, would inevitably provoke divine retribution. Palestinian Muslims are reminiscent of the ancient Greeks in their fanatical concern about premarital virginity. If they even suspect a girl has been unchaste, then brothers and fathers’ storm into action, terminating their own sists and daughters in sacrifice rituals. Often, these are disguised as accidents by burning the body. This usually happens to one woman a week. “They feel that women should take care to be a virgin when married, and not sleep around,” said Suheir Azzonuni Mashi, director of the Women’s Affairs Technical Committee in Ramallah, West Bank. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Now, moving on to the economy. The dream of a perfectly synchronized, machinelike society tantalized many of the “modernizers” who influenced the industrial age. The object was to create a state and a society that ran with the efficiency of a machine: every bureaucracy acting as one, every individual moving in lockstep. However, human beings and human societies are, in fact, open systems. Messy and imperfect. In our lives and in our societies, regions of chaos and chance alternate with, and give rise to, regions of temporary stability. We need both. Stability and synchronization provide the degree of predictability we need to function as individuals in social groups and especially in the economy. Without some stability and time coordination, life is reduced to oppression by anarchy and chance. However, what happens when instability and de-synchronization take over? Despite decades of bloodshed and internal suppression, the United States of American never complete the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. In modern times, many people fear that COVID and high inflation could lead to the middle class being frequently being reduced to eating nothing but potatoes and cabbage. And that we will wander through ghostly supermarkets with virtually empty shelves. Some can envision in their mind’s eye the few jars of gray, moldy pastas that are on sale. And the freezing old woman standing on the steps of public buildings trying to sell a single ballpoint pen or a potholder—their only possession. Fearing a total economic breakdown, they very social order on which the country depends on will dissolve, and along with it any pretense of synchronized efficiency. Imagine is no knew when, or even if, promised products will arrive. Picture instead of just-in-time, American enterprises running on not-on-time. During a trip, one may be prevented from flying to New York from California as scheduled, forced to take a midnight train instead because, one was tole, no one is sure whether aviation gas will arrive in time for flight #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
People fear hungering for things to work, for predictability, for someone—as the Italian dictator Mussolini once put it—“to make the trains to run on time.” However, societies need more than just trains that run on time. They need institutions that run on time and law enforcement which does their jobs and listens to citizens before things snowball into an avalanche. What happens, however, when one institution runs at such high speeds that it leaves society’s other vital institutions miles behind? No one can answer this question scientifically. The hard data are not there. Nevertheless, it is revealing to see what is happening to key institutions in America, where the race in the twenty-first-century economy is, at least for now, most advanced. What follows, then, is a first sketch, purely conjectural and surely controversial, that may help not just business leaders and government policy makers, but all of us as we try to cope with rapid change. And while we use the United States of America as the example, the implications are international. Let us focus, then on rates of change. Start with a mind’s-eye image of a freeway. At its side a police officer sits astride a motorcycle, pointing a radar gun at the road. On the highway are BMWs, each representing a major institution in America. Each BMW travels at a speed that matches that institution’s actual rate of change. Tomorrow we will look more into this equation. Grey Wolf, we are sending you to the Great God. Please tell Him that we, who invented forgiveness do not forgive; that we, who speak of trust can not trust; that we, who invoke faith would not believe. I write as though you could read. However, I know you understand. When you have left the forests and tundras and no longer lave your sinewy trails with the snows, tell Him that you were made on a different day. Your howls of bewilderment will echo with the mountain winds. And your songs will join those of the whales. Please tell Him for me, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
There may be those who feel that they can live quite happily without either religious discipline or communion with God. However, they are grave error. The restlessness which characterizes us, the confusion which has come on our times, the increasing percentage of neuroses among us, and the general unhappiness of all of us in the midst of the greatest affluence the World has yet seen, has come upon us primarily because of the lack of that sense of communion with God which made our forefathers happy in spite of their poverty and their physical suffering. We relearned to interpret the symptoms of weariness and hunger, cry when bedtime or mealtime comes, and yet refuse either to go to bed or take their food. Living in a gilded palace, as it were, we are still miserable, for we are essentially orphans, having lost that most precious of all values in life, the sense of the Fatherhood of God. The feeling of deprivation grows sharper and more poignant, instead of less severe, as we grow older. The time comes to each of us when the burdens of life seem far too heavy to carry, when the brightness of youth begins to fade, and we notice the lengthening shadows which presage our end. More than ever then do we become homesick; homesick, not for our houses or for our countries, but homesick for the Universal Parent of all of us, for that deep affection which is the heart of the Universe itself, for the mercy of God; yet a wall of iron has been placed between us and Him, and we cannot find Him. What greater good can a human achieve, either for oneself or for the World, than to contribute one’s effort to piercing this wall and bring the Father and the children once more into loving communion with one another! Also, the about the national security risk racist against fellow Americans is. You are all American and if you use racism to suppress other Americas and keep them from advancing, it is a loss to the economy, it is a loss of tax revenue, and it is a loss of skill that may keep America number one. Remember, China has a population of 1.4 billion and America only has 3.25 million. Therefore, every American who can work needs to be allowed to work so they can innovate and keep the country strong. Politicians should address racism as a threat to national security. You do not have to welcome people you do not like into your homes, but it is important to respect the United States Constitution and give everyone equal opportunity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Life is Very Short When You Look Back and Realize How Long You Spent Not Living Your Dreams
One of the interesting things that has happened in extant genetic codes is the discoveries that have to do with the degeneracy of the genetic code—the existence of several different sequences of bases in the messenger RNA molecule that can cause the same amino acid segment to be incorporated in the protein under construction. For example, the evidence strongly suggests that the amino acid arginine can be evoked by any one of three messenger RNA triplets CGC, AGA, and UCG. The related inference also appears to be correct: that three different types of transfer RNA molecule, each capable of carrying the amino acid arginine, correspond to these three messenger RNA triplets. Such degeneracy in the code is compatible with the fact that 4 X 4 X 4, or 64, different messenger or transfer RNA triplet combinations can be made of the 4 bases of the nucleic acid molecule, whereas only 20 amino acids must be specified by the various combinations. The evidence to this point suggests that every one of the 64 possible combinations may ultimately be found to be “meaningful” in the sense of specifying one or another of the 20 amino acid constituents of the end-product protein molecules. It should be noted that this kind of degeneracy does not lead to ambiguity in the genetic code. To be sure, it means that messenger RNA molecules with different base sequences can govern the production of the same kind of protein. And the existence of such alternative “words” within the genetic language suggests that different species of organisms may employ somewhat different dialects in the nuclear books of instruction with which they control their cellular chemistry. Nevertheless, the code could still be universal in the sense that a given messenger RNA molecule, if capable at all of operating the genetic mechanisms of different types of foreign organisms, would always produce the same kind of protein molecules. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Not only did Bonner’s successful crossbreeding of the genetic mechanisms of pea plants and E. coli cell-free extracts in experiments with synthetic messenger RNA has provided further confirming evidence. While much less work has been done with mammalian than with bacterial components, it has at least been established that the messenger RNA triplets that evoke specific amino acids in the finally fabricated protein molecules are the same for mammalian as for bacterial systems in the case of the half-dozen kinds of messenger nucleic acid that have been tested. In general, while making allowance for some degree of variation from species to species in the details of the genetic mechanisms, biochemists today are confident that the genetic code has essentially been “broken”—that they are on the point of being able to line up every possible messenger RNA triplet with a particular amino acid in the resulting protein molecule. However, the specific sequence of amino acid segments in the manufactured protein molecules determine their catalytic properties and therefore controls the specific set of chemical reactions that take place in the cell. Therefore, the solution of the genetic code in this way implies the ultimate ability of the scientist to “read” the molecules of messenger RNA (or the nuclear DNA which produces them) and thereby learn the properties of the cell whose metabolism they control—whether the cell is to have the properties of pea plant or intestinal bacillus, for example. Inasmuch as the higher organisms, including humans, are believed to employ the same system of genetic control (plus a few complications yet to be treated), the implications of this work are that one day the biochemists are now able to determine the colour of eyes and shape of the nose of a yet-to-be-developed human individual by analysis of the structure of the nucleic acid molecules in the cells of the embryo! #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Before we move on to some of the additional complexities that characterize the structure and metabolism of higher organisms, we should make sure that we understand how the discussion how all of this information contributes to our basic thesis as to the purely physical origins of life. The experimental evidence reported here can only strengthen our faith in the soundness of our nonvitalistic philosophy; for strong support for the thesis of the fundamentally physical nature of the life processes is provided by the success of the biochemists in extracting from living cells the pertinent nucleic acid/enzyme apparatus and in stimulating it to perform its architectural functions by means of the addition of nucleic acid from other organisms. Ans the successful employment of human-made chemicals for this purpose even verges on the dramatic in its demonstration of the workability of our physical explanations. Not even the evidence for the similarity of the principal features of the genetic mechanisms in all forms of life is particularly disturbing. To be sure, this might at first glance appear to be more reconcilable with the vitalistic view of the supernatural purposiveness of life than with the materialistic view that everything has happened as the result of the blindly probabilistic physical laws of the Universe. However, there is really no great problem in imagining evolutionary developments that could have led to a considerable degree of ultimate standardization in the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms. And such evidence of variety as the degeneracy of the genetic code, with the accompanying implication of divergence from species to species in some of the details of the genetic mechanism, seems comfortably consistent with our views of the normal consequences of the evolutionary process. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
As we address ourselves to some of the further complexities that characterize modern higher organisms, we shall find that our considerations will continue to be intimately involved with the genetic mechanisms that have occupied so much of our attention to this point. We shall not be able to escape being enormously impressed by their overriding power and importance in the phenomena of life. While evolution is clearly the great technique employed by nature for developing its biological novelties, we shall find it easy to conclude that the genetic mechanisms may constitute the most ingenious and important invention yet achieved by the use of that technique. Now, looking ahead. Did you know that your DNA determines your reaction to caffeine? Caffeine is widely consumed in foods and beverages and is also used for a variety of medical purposes. Despite its widespread use, relatively little is understood regarding how genetics affects consumption, acute response, or the long-term effects of caffeine. Twin studies find the heritability of caffeine-related traits to range between 0.36 and 0.58. Analysis of poly-substance use shows that predisposition to caffeine use is highly specific to caffeine itself and shares little common disposition to use of other substances. Genome association studies link variations in adenosine and dopamine receptors to caffeine-induced anxiety and sleep disturbances. Polymorphism in the metabolic enzyme cytochrome P-450 is associated with risk of myocardial infraction in caffeine users. Modeling based on twin studies reveals that genetics plays a role in individual variability in caffeine consumption and in the direct effects of caffeine. Both pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic polymorphisms have been linked to variation in response to caffeine. These studies may help guide future research in the role of genetics in modulating the acute and chronic effects of caffeine. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Caffeine is the World’s most widely used stimulant. Nearly 90 percent of adults in the United States of America alone consume an estimated 30 million pounds of this psychoactive substance annually. It is the most consumed psychoactive substance in the World. Seventy-five percent of this caffeine is taken in the form of coffee (from the coffee bean); the rest is consumed in tea (from the tea leaf), cola (from the kola nut), chocolate (from the cocoa bean), and numerous prescription and over-the-counter medications, such as Excedrin. Caffeine’s popularity Worldwide can be attributed to its ability to promote wakefulness, enhance mood and cognition, and produce stimulatory effects. It is used clinically to treat premature neonatal apnea and as an analgesic adjuvant. Around 99 percent of ingested caffeine is absorbed by the body and reaches its peak concentration with an hour. It acts as a stimulant of the central nervous system, again producing a release of the neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine in the brain. Thus it increases arousal, mild euphoria, alertness, enhanced cognitive performance and motor activity and reduces fatigue. It also disrupts the performance of motor tasks and may interfere with sleep. Finally, it increases the rate of breathing and gastric acid secretions in the stomach. More than two to three cups of brewed coffee (250 milligrams of caffeine) can produce caffeine intoxication, which may include such symptoms as restlessness, nervousness, anxiety, stomach disturbances, twitching, and increased heart rate. Grand mal seizures and fatal respiratory failure or circulatory failure can occur at doses greater than 10 grams of caffeine (about 100 cups of coffee), but there is a decreased risk in neurodegenerative disorders. Many people who suddenly stop or cutback on their usual intake of caffeine experience withdrawal symptoms—even some individuals whose regular consumption is low (two and a half cups of coffee daily or seven cans of cola). #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
It is likely that several factors contribute to individual differences in responses to caffeine, including demographic and environmental factors such as age, other drug use, circadian factors, and sleep hygiene. One important source of variability that has received some attention in the recent year is genetic predisposition. There is growing evidence that individual differences in caffeine response or caffeine consumption are related to genetic factors. Genetic factors may influence responses to caffeine directly, by altering acute or chronic reactions to the drug, or indirectly, by affecting other psychological or physiological processes that are related to the drug effect, such as sensitivity to anxiety, rewarding and reinforcing effects of substances in general, or related personality traits. Finally, genes can also alter the body’s adaptive responses to long-term caffeine use. The biological mechanisms of these possible sources of variation likely involve interactions at multiple sites. One study had adult subjects consume their usual caffeine-filled drinks and foods for two days, then abstain from such foods for two days while taking actual caffeine pills. More subjects experienced headaches (52 percent), depression (11 percent), anxiety (8 percent), and fatigue (8 percent) during the two-day placebo period then during the caffeine periods. In addition, subjects reported using more unauthorized medications (13 percent) and performed experimental tasks more slowly during the placebo period than during the caffeine periods. Genetic contribution to caffeine consumption changes through different stages in life. It appears that genetic contribution becomes more pronounced throughout adolescence and then stabilized during adulthood. Researchers found that genetics influence individual sensitivity to caffeine toxicity, tolerance, and withdrawal in female twins. On average the woman reported slightly higher level of caffeine-induced insomnia and greater sleep disturbances in general health than men. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Epidemiological studies indicate that smokers drink more coffee than nonsmokers, but it is not clear whether these associations are related to genetic factors or to drug interactions, social conditioning, or other variables. One approach to solving this question is to correlate the use of caffeine to other drugs and using the common pathway model and mapping the genetic contribution to a common joint use factor and substance-specific factors. Using this technique, researchers found that the heritability for coffee use overlapped with that of nicotine and alcohol, though 0.72 of the total heritability was specific to caffeine, which was considerably higher than that for nicotine and alcohol. Investigators often assess caffeine’s impact by measuring coffee consumption, yet coffee also contains other chemicals that may be dangerous to one’s health. Thus, although some studies hint at links between caffeine and cancer (particularly pancreatic cancer), the evidence is not conclusive. Similarly, studies demonstrating correlations between caffeine and heart rhythm irregularities (arrhythmias) or high cholesterol levels are not fully reliable. Caffeine does, however, appear to cause at least a slight increase in blood pressure over time in regular users and a larger but short-lived increase during the first few days of consumption by new users. As public awareness of these possible health risks has increased, caffeine consumption has declined. Around half of Americans now drink coffee daily, whereas 80 percent did so in 1983. Heavier caffeine users appear to be more influenced by genetics than lighter caffeine users. People who tend to consume more alcohol also tend to drink more coffee. Genetic association studies have been used to identify specific genes that are responsible for the heritable components of these caffeine-related traits. Caffeine and its metabolites belong to the methylxanthine class, which are structurally similar to cyclic nucleotides, and interact with cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterases. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Caffeine is absorbed rapidly and completely from the gastrointestinal tract. It is metabolized by cytochrome P-450 enzymes, which represent the rate-limiting step for plasma clearance, and its elimination follows first-order kinetics. P-450 1A2, which is coded for by gene CYP1A2, is the primary isoenzyme responsible for the demethylation of caffeine into dimethylxanthine metabolites paraxanthine, theobromine, and theophylline. Each of these metabolites is subjected to further demethylation into monimethylxanthines. Variation in the CYP1A2 activity, both within and between individuals, represents a major source of variability in pharmaco-kinetics of caffeine. The clearance of caffeine can vary to up to 40-fold within and between individuals. Notable exogeneous factors that affect clearance include numerous drugs, medications, and smoking status, as well as caffeine itself. Endogenous factors include pregnancy, ethnicity, and genetics. Asian and African populations, for instance, appear to metabolize caffeine at slower rate than Caucasians. Genetic variations in a number of neurotransmitter functions could influence responses to caffeine. Because 10 grams of caffeine can be fatal, the substance is classified as a medical poison. The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we will miss it, but that it is too low and we will reach it. A leader is someone who has the capacity to create a compelling vision that takes people to a new place. In 1783 Washington sent a circular letter to the States, describing the situation of the new nations as he saw it. “We have equal occasion to felicitate ourselves,” he said, “on the lot which Providence has assigned to us, whether we view it in a natural, a political, or moral point of light.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
He pointed to the natural resources of the new nation, its independence and freedom, the Age of Reason during which it had come of age, an age of “the free cultivation of letters, the unbounded extension of commerce, the progressive refinement of manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, and above all the pure and benign light of Revelation….if these citizens,” he concluded, “should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be certainly their own. Such is our situation and such are our prospects.” It is hard to read these sentences without agitation and tears, for they are simply true and simply patriotic. In the next generations, almost to our own times, patriotic rhetoric did not cease to sound, more pompously and falsely, but never without a core of truth. There was always something special in the American destiny to be proud of. In 1825 it was the broad democracy. In 1850 it was the magnificent spread and settlement from coast to coast. In 1875, the material progress, the cable and the Pacific railroad, the building of modern industrialism. In 1900, America was the melting pot, the asylum of the poor and the oppressed. In our century, the patriotic rhetoric began to be unbelievable—not by accident, for foreign wars (1898 and 1917) are incompatible with reasonable rhetoric. In recent decades there has been almost a surcease of such speech. Even references to the American Way, free enterprise, high production, and the economy of abundance have finally died out, because they call up the idea of tail fins and TV commercials. Highbrow journalists mention the American Way with scorn. Our case is astounding. For the first time in recorded history, the mention of country, community, place has lost its power to animate. Nobody but a scoundrel even tries it. Our rejection of false patriotism is, of course, itself a badge of honour. However, the positive loss is tragic and I cannot resign myself to it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
A man has only one life and if during it he has no great environment, no community, he has been irreparably robbed of a human right. This loss is damaging especially in growing up, for it deprives outgoing growth, which begins with weaning from Mother and walking out of the house, of the chance of entering upon a great and honourable scene to develop in. Culture is, first of all, city and patriotic culture. Patriotism is the culture, we come with a fatal emptiness to the humane culture of science, art, humanity and God; and this emptiness results in the best people not turning back, like Plato’s philosopher who has emerged from the cave, to serve their country. Many of the best Americans have a strong philanthropic and local community zeal, yet it would seem odd for somebody nowadays to put himself to a big and hard task just to serve his country, to make her better, and be proud of that. Young people aspire mightily to appearances on television and other kinds of notoriety, but I doubt that many now thing of being honoured by a statue in the park and winning “immortal” fame, the fame of big culture. Let me make the same point by analyzing a remarkable proposition of Otto Jespersen, the grammarian. He shows that, contrary to expectation, a child does not learn his mother tongue at home from his mother and immediate family, he does not pick up their accent. The accent, vocabulary, syntax, and styles that form his speech are learned from his first peer groups, outside the home. Jespersen does not explain it, but the psychology seems evident. Speech occurs at the stage of the developing of the “I,” it is a forming of the image of the self, it is a self-appointment to one’s ideal and putting on its uniform. Changes occur as we appoint ourselves to one peer group after another. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
At certain stage a lad appoints himself or commits himself to a band of friends and puts on its jargon, jacket, tattoo, and masculine ring on the fourth finger of the left hand. If he is insecure and disturbed, this conformity is a cowering protection and the band is a delinquent gang, but in every case it is also, we see by the blazon, an achievement. And one way in which the Governor of California does not take the juveniles seriously, when he speaks of giving them a sense of belonging, is that he does not offer an ideal that promises equal manliness. He has none to offer. It is tragic when there is no great adult peer group to meet growth. Consider the case of an artist, my own case. To have simple and sounding language, rather than merely the lovely colloquialism of Sherwood Anderson or William Carlos Williams, it is necessary to believe in the great national culture of one’s people. Our popular culture does not warrant the belief, even to make the sacrifice that Virgil made when he sadly gave up his best vision because strife-torn Rome needed a national poet. True, an artist can then jump to the international and universal, for a mankind and God do not let him down (mankind is the fellow on one’s own block), but this is at the loss of pomp and glitter, of the glancing present. Without a patriotic peer group, it is impossible to have the brilliance of Handel, the material grandeur of Venice. With us the style of the big bright sensation belongs to cheap musical dramas on Broadway. Now, an analogy to the “triumphant conscience,” as developed by Luther personally as well as theologically, appeared in the enthusiastic philosophy of Giordano Bruno. The moral conscience is overcome by the “heroic affect” toward the Universe and the surrender to its infinity and inexhaustible creativity. Participation in the creativity of life universal liberates the moral conscience, the bad as well as the good. Humans, standing in the center of being, are bound to transform life as it is into higher life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
These living souls take upon themselves the tragic consequences, connected with the destructive side of finite creativity, and must not try to escape them for the sake of a good moral conscience. While in Bruno the transmoral conscience is based on a mystical naturalism, Nietzsche’s transmoralism is a consequence of his dramatic-tragic naturalism. Nietzsche belongs to those empiricists who have tried to analyze the genesis of moral conscience in such a way that its autonomy is destroyed—Hobbes and Helvetius, on the ground of a materialistic metaphysics; Mandeville and Bentham, on the ground of a utilitarian psychology; Dr. Darwin and Dr. Freud, on the ground of an evolutionary naturalism—all have denied any objective validity to the voice of conscience, according to their rejection of any universal natural (rational) law. Nietzsche carried these ideas further, as the title and the content of Genealogy of Morals shows. He says, “The bad conscience is a sickness, but it is a sickness as pregnancy is one.” It is a creative sickness. Humankind had to be domesticated, and this has been done by its conquerors and ruling classes. It was in the interest of these classes to suppress by sever punishments the natural instincts of aggressiveness, will to power, destruction, cruelty, revolution. They succeeded in suppressing these trends. However, they did not succeed in eradicating them. So the aggressive instincts became internalized and transformed into self-destructive tendencies. Humans have turned against themselves in self-punishment; they are separated from their innocent terrestrial past from which they had derived strength, joy, and creativity. However, humans cannot prevent their instincts from remaining alive. They require permanent acts of suppression, the result of which is the bad conscience, a great thing in human evolution, an ugly thing if compared with humanities real aim. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Nietzsche described this aim in terms which remind one of Luther’s descriptions of the transmoral conscience: “Once in a stronger period than our morbid, desperate present, one must appear, the man of the great love and the great contempt, the creative spirit who does now allow his driving strength to be turned to a transcendent World.” Nietzsche call him the man “who is strong through wars and victories, who needs conquest, adventure, danger, even pain.” The man is “beyond good and evil” in the moral sense. At the same time, he is good in the metaphysical (or mystical) sense that he is in unity with life universal. He has a transmoral conscience, not on the basis of a paradoxical unity with God (such as Luther has), but on the basis of an enthusiastic unity with life in its creative and destructive power. Recent “existential” philosophy has developed a doctrine of transmoral conscience that follows the general lines of Luther, Bruno, and Nietzsche. Heidegger, the main representative of existential philosophy, says, “The call of conscience has the character of the demand that humans in their finitude actualize their genuine potentialities, and this means an appeal to become guilty.” Conscience summons us to ourselves, calling us back from the talk of the market and the conventional behaviour of the masses. It has no special demands; it speaks to us in the “mode of silence.” It tells us only to act and to become guilty by acting, for every action is unscrupulous. One who acts experiences the call of conscience and, at the same time, has the experience of contradicting one’s conscience, of being guilty. “Existence as such is guilty.” Only self-deception can give a good moral conscience, since it is impossible not to act and since every action implies guilt. We must act, and the attitude in which we can act is “resoluteness.” Resoluteness transcends the moral conscience, its arguments and prohibitions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The good, transmoral conscience consists in the acceptance of the bad, moral conscience,which is unavoidable whenever decisions are made and acts are performed. The way from Luther’s to Heidegger’s idea of a transmoral conscience was a dangerous one. “Transmoral” can mean the re-establishment of morality from a point below morality. The empiricists from Hobbes to Dr. Freud have analyzed moral conscience, but they have not destroyed it. Either they were dependent in their concrete ethics on Anglo-Saxon common sense; or they identified utility with the social conventions of a well-established bourgeoisie; or they cultivated a high sense of conscientiousness, in scientific honesty as well as in the fulfillment of duties; or they did not dare, unconsciously or consciously, to draw the radical moral consequences of their dissolution of the conscience. In Nietzsche and Heidegger none of these inhibitions is left. However, it is not without some justification that these names are connected with the antimoral movements of fascism or national socialism. Even Luther has been linked with them, as have Machiavelli and Bruno. This raises the questions: is the idea of a transmoral conscience tenable? Or is it so dangerous that it cannot be maintained? However, if the idea must be dismissed, religion as well as analytic psychotherapy would also have to be dismissed. For in both of them, the moral conscience is transcendent—in religion by the acceptance of the divine grace that breaks through the realm of law and creates a joyful conscience, and in-depth psychology by the acceptance of one’s own conflicts when looking at them and suffering under their ugliness without an attempt to suppress them and to hide them from oneself. Indeed, it is impossible not to transcend the moral conscience because it is impossible to unite a sensitive and good conscience. Those who have a sensitive conscience cannot escape the question of the transmoral conscience. The moral conscience drives beyond the sphere in which it is valid to the sphere from which it must receive its conditional validity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The celibacy movement was rather interesting. The “silent strike,” with its contingent of proud spinsters, generated an inevitable backlash. This came in the form of gender discrimination. Scientists started to expressed the biological differences been men and women. Havelock Ellis said that, “women’s special sphere is the bearing and the rearing of children, with the care of human life in the home. Man’s primary sphere remains the exploration of life outside the home, in industry and inventions and the cultivation of the arts.” With this observation of the status quo cloaked in scientific garb, Ellis proceeded to extrapolate conclusions. One was the ideal the relations involving pleasures of the flesh would be between male dominance and female submissiveness. Another was that the ideal female, a paragon of Motherhood, was very definitely not a spinster, a word that in Ellis’s writings elaborated on the nasty connotations our century has inherited from his. Like so many Motherhood aficionados, Ellis claimed and was credited with a feminist agenda: surely praising the wonderful work of mothers must be women-positive. In Ellis’s case, this seemed irrefutable, for he also preached the novel idea that women should, indeed must, enjoy pleasures of the flesh. No more lying rigid, clenching fists, and teeth, enduring bimonthly intimate invasion by obliterating it with thoughts of England and the empire. (Ironically, Ellis himself had earlier lost an adored lover because he failed to reach a “proud status” during romantic interlude. His predilection in pleasures of the flesh was to observe the other species using the water closet, which stemmed from his unforgettable boyhood experience of watching his mother relieve herself of fluid in the garden.) #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Ellis’s espousal of the great Motherhood or, in Germany, Mutterschutz, movement particularly explains his enormous influence. From the 1800s onward, fewer children were born but infant mortality soared. Physical exams revealed the poor condition of many schoolchildren, and military recruits were rejected at a high rate for a plethora of disabilities. Something was wrong—at least, these authorities now knew something was wrong—and the solution seemed to be a nation of Super Moms who would reverse the physical decline. In Ellis’s words, these women would undertake the “regeneration of the race” and the “evolution of a supermankind.” Women, too bought into the Motherhood ideal. Some felt it validated the roles they had chosen or that had been chose for them. Others were persuaded that this form of biology was scientific truth and so believed the conclusions its thinkers so convincingly reported. These conclusions clashed with feminist beliefs, particularly the silent strike, the voluntary spinsters’ movement in which women took control of their lives by refusing to surrender their rights to husbands. Censuring spinster became the keynote of antifeminist attacks. One Motherhood proponent, herself a woman, decried spinsters with an analogy to a beehive, in which infertile workers were like “surplus woman” who refused or had no opportunity to marry. Since the workers bee’s poisoned sting required the egg laying tube, spinsters who relinquished “the power of life” would, by definition, gain possession of “the stinging weapon of death.” Another male antifeminist spoke in alarmist terms of eventual civil war between wives and spinsters, “the waste products of our female population.” In Modern Woman and How to Manager Her, another male writer called spinsters “man-condemning, man-hating…women who are ‘independent of men,’ a motely host, pathetic in their defiance of the first principle of Nature, but of no serious account in the biological sense.” He even proposed polygamy as a solution to “spinsterhood, and the right to live one’s life—the supreme consummation of a large number of revolutionary British women.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
In later years, charges of women who lonely loved other women and frigidity, both caused or worsened by spinsterhood, bolstered the attacks on single, independent women. Given that British women outnumbered men by 2 million, this was heavy artillery indeed. The women were acknowledged—negatively—as the prime movers behind reforms for all species, human and animal. The “fanaticism and crankiness” of these dangerous virgins, charged virulent antifeminist Charlotte Haldane, impelled them to espouse “freak science, freak religions, and freak philanthropy,” and to embrace wholeheartedly such contemptible crusades as antivisection, the bane of England’s scientific advancement, dogs’ homes and cats’ homes, missionary endeavors, and “‘Kill-joy’ propaganda.” Furthermore, “enough is known [about the psychological effects of permanent virginity],” Haldane opined, “to make us aware that in entrusted responsibility towards individuals and the State to elderly virgins we may be acting unwisely.” Women and loved other women, styled “intermediate women,” were even more problematic. They should be allowed only inferior jobs because as educators or nurses or doctors, “intermediate women may do an enormous amount of harm.” In the manipulative hands of the “anatomy biologists” and their unlikely Motherhood allies, the celibacy that women seeking independence had once embraced with such delight and firm purpose was now portrayed as sullied and suspicious, a witch’s mantel for freaky madwomen or a masquerade for reviled women who love women. Society still demanded virgin brides, but their virginity was their supreme offering to a husband who would maneuver them through the rest of their life. Aging girls—women—who failed to contract a marriage were pitied, but self-styled spinsters with agendas, no matter how noble and important, were condemned in vitriolic terms, their brand of feminism repudiated as antisocial and unworthy of any regard but the most evil eye. Their celibacy had become as loathsome as its object: women’s independence and personal fulfillment. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
With so many people in the World today whose outlook is negative, whose emotions are twisted and thinking is warped, it is more needful to stand firm in one’s own spot of optimistic thinking that ever. Whoever doubts the truth of this message, thereby deprives oneself of its benefits. However, this is equally true of the believer who fears its truth. If the future holds distress and suffering, blows and disasters, it is to be met with courage sought and asked from the higher self. According to our faith, it will be given us. It is not a question of what we like or prefer to believe. It is a question of accepting quietly, or else defying vainly, the chose of events and the trend of destiny. If catastrophe and obliteration threaten humanity and if the individual is hopeless when confronted by them, it is logical to conclude that although humanity might not be able to save itself, the individual can save oneself from these disasters if one believes that inner salvation is at least a possibility where outer salvation is not. Yes, you and I can save ourselves from within even when we cannot save ourselves from without. That at least is a better lot than the one of the humans who can save oneself neither from within nor from without and puts one’s faith in political action alone. For politics is merely a system of human bargaining actuated by self-seeking. It can invoke the assistance of no higher power because it does not rise higher than this self-seeking interest itself. However, the individual is free to life oneself above this sordid plane and therefore one is in a position to invite the attention and assistance of higher powers. One who consciously inhabits reality will live independent of the mutations of fate, the catastrophes of history, and the crises of an epoch in dissolution. Even in crisis of war, where danger or even death is lurking, philosophy reveals its immense practicability. For the philosopher can meet them with the utter calmness, effective capacity, and resolute heroism with which one’s studies, reflection, disciplines, and ideals have formed one’s character. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Amid the surging tides of postwar chaos, one sets the example and shows the value of philosophic principles by standing firm as a rock. Just as one kept cool in the very midst of global conflagration, so one now keeps clear-sighted amid the gloom of its dusty aftermath. In the very midst of World confusion, one becomes a little oasis of strength and peace, wisdom and certitude, calm and holiness. If one has to live in a chaotic disordered environment, the sad heritage of war, one still lives one’s own constructive ordered pattern of existence. The very example of such a human keeping steady and balanced thus silently helps some others who are bewildered or aimless. Now, when considering American capitalism, there are a few things we should keep in mind. According to Adam Smith, “Labour was the first, price, the original purchase—money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the World was originally purchased.” It many come as a surprise that, until field of labour was replaced by factory work, few of our ancestors ever held a job. This surely was not because they were rich. Most were wretchedly poor. They did not hold jobs because the “job,” in today’s sense of formally committed work in return for stipulated pay, had not yet been invented. Like the steam engine and other industrial innovations, jobs and wage labour became widespread only during the last three centuries. Work itself was transferred from outdoors to indoors, or schedules set no longer by sunrise and sunset but by the punch clock. Most payments came in the form of wages based on hours worked. Indeed, these arrangements essentially define the term job. However, the job is only one way of packaging work. And as the latest, knowledge-based wealth systems unfold, we are moving toward a future in which, as we will see, more people “work” but fewer hold “jobs.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
It will drastically alter labour relations, human resources departments, legislation and the overall labour market how the offices of employment are conducted in the future. It is bad news for trade unions as we know them. The deep fundamental of work is changing more profoundly than at any time since the industrial revolution. Division of labour, like work itself, traces back to hunting and gathering, when the division was mainly based on gender. However, here, too, we are approaching a turning point. Ever hear of a “metallurgy and failure analysis litigation consultant” or a “post-harvest horticulturalist”? Neither have most of us. (The latter is the superspecialist who determine such things as how many microscopic holes are needed to admit oxygen into the plastic bag that holds vegetables in the supermarket.) Adam Smith in 1776 called the division of labour the source of “the greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour.” And this has been true ever since. However, the more refined and specialized tasks become, the harder and more expensive it becomes to integrate them—especially in an innovation-driven competitive economy. At some point, the costs of integration may exceed the value of such superspecialization. Moreover, narrowly focused specialists may be good at incremental innovation. However, breakthrough innovation is often the product of temporary teams whose members cross disciplinary boundaries—at a time when breakthroughs in every field are, in fact, blurring those very boundaries. And this is not just a matter for scientists and researchers. The new wealth system demands a complete shake-up in the way increasingly temporary skill sets are organized for increasingly temporary purposes throughout the economy. Nothing is more deeply fundamental to the creation of wealthy. Now only are work and the division of labour changing, but income distribution itself—the “who gets what?”—may be heading, over the long term, toward truly revolutionary change. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
The temple of the animals has fallen into disrepair. The pad of feet has faded. The panthers flee the shadows of the day. Tired, I recall the animals of last year: the altars of the bear, tribunals of the ape, solitudes of elephantine gloom, rare zebra-stripped retreats, prophecies of dog, sanctuaries of the pygmy deer. Were there rituals I had forgotten? Animal calls to which those animal voices replied, called and called until that jungle stirred. Were there voices that I heard? Love was the very animal made his lair, slept out his winter in my heart. Did he seek my hear or ever sleep there? I have seen the animals depart, forgotten their voices, or barely remembered—like that last speech when the company goes or the beloved face that the heart knows, forgets and knows—I have heard the dying footsteps of fall. The sound has faded, but lingers here. Ah, bitterly I recall animals of last year. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power, and the glory and the victory and the majesty; all that is in the Heaven and in the Earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted above all. Both riches and honour come from Thee, and Thou rulest over all; in Thy hand is power and might, and in Thy hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. Therefore, our God, we thank Thee, and praise Thy glorious name. O give thanks unto the Lord who alone doeth great wonders; His lovingkindness endureth forever. Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God; He covereth the Heavens with clouds, He prepareth rain for the Earth, and maketh the mountains to be green with grass. He maketh your borders peaceful, He giveth you the fat of the wheat in plenty. He is good to the Earth, and watereth her with His rivers that are full of water. He maketh the Earth soft with showers, and blesseth the growth thereof. He crowneth the year with His goodness, and showereth the Earth with rich bounty. #RandolpHarris 21 of 21
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Whatever Person Posses this Book, Lucifer Promises to Carry Out One’s Plans
The latter part of the nineteenth century was an anguished and tortured period. Gentility was a terrible strain. Beneath the appearance of stiff propriety there ran currents of anger and aggression frightful in their intensity. Some indication of the dark, baleful aspect of the lives of our great-grandparent went untold. Black and white magic. Contemporary forms of magic are being studied carefully by parapsychologists. (Parapsychology is the study of apparently supernatural phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, apparitions, and related forms of ESP.) Researcher in this field who operate from a completely naturalistic standpoint deny the existence of a personal devil or evil spirits. They may speak of two vital forces in the Universe, however, one working upward in an evolutionary manner, and the other counteracting these ascending steps. These investigators of psychic phenomena do not make any effort to explain the origin of these invisible powers, and simply declare that some people have special psychic gifts which give them access to these forces. They may even say that some religious practitioners appear to have superhuman power, and refer to their work as white magic. They may also acknowledge that some individuals can mysteriously bring harm to their enemies, and this evil use of power they call black magic. The majority of these parapsychologist insist, however, that they do not believe in a personal God or the devil, and simply affirm that at the present time we do not fully understand some of these esoteric powers in this Universe. The Christian student of occultic activity has a distinct advantage over the naturalist, for one accepts the reality of a personal God and an invisible World of angels and evil spirits. This does not mean that one rejects a scientific approach to the problems that are encountered. One must avoid the temptation to declare dogmatically that every unexplainable occurrence is the result of supernatural activity—either by God or the forces of evil. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Some manifestations that now puzzle us may in the future be understood within the framework of the natural. The fact remains, however, that Satan is a real personality, and that a multitude of evil spirits have joined him in opposition to God and His people. The Christian Bible records numerous instances which clearly reveal their activity, and we have good reason to believe that some of the unexplainable phenomena in evidence today are the works of these demonic beings. Practitioners of black magic usually declare openly that they are serving the devil. Many of them say that have made a pact with Satan, and some have indicated their allegiance to him by signing a document with their own blood. Missionaries have reported that acts with the devil are not at all unknown among many primitive peoples. Reputable followers of Jesus Christ are convinced that these religious leaders actually can bring illness or death to people through ritualistic incantations. Black magic is practiced extensively today in many parts of Germany, France, and Switzerland, as well as in primitive cultures. Dr. Kurt Koch cites numerous instances of conjurers casting spells which have brought about the death of animals and even humans. He also tells us of amazing healings, but points out that when a person is cured of a physical disease by such a practitioner, one usually suffers such severe mental depression that the new condition is worse than the old. As one reads the examples of black magic—cattle being milked dry in a mysterious manner, the sudden unexplainable death of animals, healings followed by terrible psychic disturbances, and the appearance of frightful apparitions—he finds his credulity stretched almost to the breaking point. If one has not witnessed such occurrences, one is likely to dismiss these reports as untrustworthy. However, serious scholars who have investigated these accounts do not deny the reality of such phenomena. They may not believe them to be the work of Satan or evil spirits, but they admit that many of them cannot be explained at the present time. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Professor Adolph Koberle, from the University of Tubingen, in the introduction to Christian Counseling and Occultist, says: Readers who approached this study with a purely rationalistic bent will experience spiritual difficulty in following the author in many areas because we have here a report of cases and experiences which seems to conflict with all sound human intelligence. However, perhaps such persons can be brought to listen, since research first tries the immanent solution of the problems and only where this is proved to fail does one break out and propose the added dimension, the dimension of the eternal. Even though research may evoke contradictions here and there—from medics and pastors, from parapsychologists and psychotherapists—yet the questions that are here posed cannot be evaded by any person who concerns oneself in a genuine and responsible manner with a fruitful diagnosis and a helpful therapy. Clearly sane, scholarly, and since humans have examined the apparently superhuman powers evidenced in black magic and other forms of occultism, and made every effort to find naturalistic explanations, before finally concluding that Satan and evil spirits are actually at work. Black magic as a specific form of witchcraft has its own literature. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses are the primary source, and are well known in Europe. They constitute one volume, and are alleged to have been written by Moses himself. Strangely enough, they maintain that this great national leader was a servant of Satan, and set fourth detailed instructions for establishing a mystical relationship with the devil. This research tells readers how they can gain power through black magic over all the people they will encounter both in this World and the next. It makes this solemn assertion: “To whatever person possesses this book at any given time, Lucifer makes promise to carry out one’s commands, but only as long as one possess this book.” Dr. Koch comments on the strange and sinister nature of this writing by saying, “In the many cases which the pastor-counselors have come to know, there is no possessor of The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses who have no psychic complication.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
White magic is declared by its practitioners to be in direct opposition to black magic. Whereas black magic includes an open allegiance with the powers of darkness, in white magic the name of God is invoked, and Biblical phrases are utilized. Most people who practice it, however, have no understanding of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. Some possibly are endowed with an unexplainable psychic power, and their desire to use it was not totally selfish at the beginning. However, many find very soon that they become enslaved to a yearning for self-exaltation. The Radio Bible Class has received letters from a number of people for a time had engaged in a “healing ministry” of this kind, but who abandoned it because it led to a gradual departure from God. Although some cult leaders and those endowed people, they are using the name of God and Christ in a manner that violates the Lord’s will. The danger of mistaking an enigmatic psychic power for the gift of the Lord must be recognized. Dr. Kurt Koch points out that Dr. Henry Drummond, fellow-worker of D.L. Moody, possessed psychic ability which enabled him to have mental power over person who were miles away. While working with Moody, Drummond found that he could hypnotically influence the large crows who had gathered, but concluded that to use this power would be a hindrance to the activity of the Holy Spirit. One prayed that the Lord would take this psychic gift away from him, and his prayer was answered. Had Dr. Drummond decided to exercise this ability, he would soon have established a Worldwide reputation as a great healer. However, his accomplishments would not have honoured the Lord, and real blessings would not have resulted from his ministry. In Biblical faith, trust is placed solely in the Lord Jesus Christ. In white magic it is deflected to someone else (the human agent) or to something else (one’s own faith, etcetera). In the Biblical prayer of faith, the praying person subjects oneself to the will of God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
In white magic, the help of God is demanded under the assumption that exercising such power is in accordance with God’s will. Also in white magic the Christian markings are mere decorations that camouflage the magical means of knowledge for power. Certain influences, as we might call them, can be termed elementary forms of magic. Firstly, we have an example of the criminal use of hypnosis. A girl reported in a counselling session that a doctor who she had consulted had hypnotized her. While hypnotized he had seduced her. The doctor had done the same to her girl friend. It was later discovered that he has also done this with other girls. When these stories leaked out, the doctor left the town and settled elsewhere. The girl said that for a long time after this incident she had not been able to read her Christian Bible. She had felt a strong aversion towards religion, and evil thoughts had always come to her mind when praying. Another example, a doctor at a hospital had indecently assaulted women and girls under hypnosis. Once the ward sister caught him in the act. To cover up his scandalous behaviour, he used to question the patients about their sexual relationships and included their answers in their case histories. He thus tried to protect himself in the event of anything being discovered. A respectable gurl who was engaged to a Christian young man became pregnant at the hospital. Following this her fiancé left her. The girl herself denied all knowledge of having an intimate relationship with anyone. The doctor had lain with her when she had been hypnotized. The assistant matron and the ward sister had finally reported the doctor. However, the result was that they themselves were dismissed by the medical superintendent. The doctor in question stayed. Other nurses, who also had incriminating evidence against him, were forced to keep quiet now because of the fear of dismissal. After a few years, though, when the situation became too hot for the doctor, he left and went abroad. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Scientific advocates of hypnosis believe that a man could not be forced to do anything under hypnosis that he would not be prepared to do when conscious. They are of the opinion that crimes are not possible under hypnosis. However, not all the experts share this opinion. Moreover, in my counselling work I have met many cases in which crimes have taken place under hypnosis. From the point of view of the Scriptures it is understandable that an innocent girl can be molested this way. Jesus Christ said that out of the heart come evil thoughts and so on. Evil lies dormant even in the most moral of people. Normally these instinctive reactions are held in check by one’s consciousness, which is moulded by education, religious training and is affected by one’s disposition. Under hypnosis however, this regulator is switched off. Instinctive impulses can arise unhindered from the subconscious, and can be exploited by unscrupulous and uninhibited people. Besides this, some take no account of the fact that magical hypnosis exists in addition to the normal type of hypnosis, and that this can have far deeper effects. Magical hypnosis can often be recognized by the fact that afterwards the patient is no longer able to pray or to keep one’s faith. Here are some actual examples. A Christian girl went to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist used magical hypnosis far more often than he did ordinary hypnosis. I have occasionally come across such doctors in areas where magic is commonly practised. In reply to the girl’s question, the doctor admitted that he had not received his gift from God. He went on to tell the girl that he had wanted to conduct suggestive experiments on her. After the treatment, the girl lost her faith and could no longer pray. She suffered from doubts and other serious difficulties in believing. I think a lot of people who have had good lives, and then are abused and tortured over a long period of time have these same problems. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
When they restart reading the Christian Bible, it may make them upset and angry and they do not know why, but they keep going and praying hoping to overcome their situation. They know that God is there and guiding them, but they have just been able to sustain, not yet overcome the situation. So they keep forcing themselves to pray and thank God so they can rebuild their faith, and it can really take a lifetime, especially when the situation has been going on for decades. Abusers just kind of rob some people of faith and joy. And year after year, they keep praying it is over, and it never is, so it makes it hard for them to trust anyone, including God. So they have to keep reminding of his words and praying and seeking mental health treatments so they can live, and they pray they will still have some youth left, if the situation is ever resolved. Another example is a man, in his spare time a minister dabbled in magic. He experimented in various areas and learned card-laying, how to use a pendulum, magic charming and magical hypnosis. Since he had no suitable people to experiment on, he used his wife for the purpose. As his magical abilities increased, so too did his own and his wife’s dislike for the Christian Bible and prayer. This dislike developed into a strong resistance, and as time went on psychic disturbances appeared in the wife. She exhibited a serious anxiety hysteria and always had to lock the door of whichever room she happened to be in. There also was once a businessman who had the strange ability of being able to influence his customers hypnotically or magically, causing them to accept the business offers that he makes to them. In this way, his yearly income exceeds $75,000.00. He rejects Christianity altogether. A woman allowed a masseur to hypnotize her. Before the treatment she had regularly read her Christian Bible, prayed and attended the local church services. Afterwards when she tried to pray, she felt a compulsion to blaspheme and to curse. She then lost her faith. These effects indicate that the masseur had used magical hypnosis. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Plato derived the etymology of the word “demon” (Greek, daimon) from an adjective meaning “intelligent” or “knowing.” If this derivation is correct, it suggests that intelligence was considered a prominent characteristic of demons. If demons are fallen angels, this would be expected. As Satan’s vast wisdom became vitiated when he sinned (Ezekiel 28.12, 17), the great wisdom that characterizes angels in general (2 Samuel 14.20) must also have been corrupted in his followers. This is undoubtedly why demons use their great but perverted knowledge so relentlessly in an effort to frustrate God’s purpose. Humans who consult professional mediums and use other methods of divination to obtain knowledge of the future seem to imply a degree of confidence in the intelligence of evil spirits. The superior knowledge demons possess is not a holy or saving knowledge. Demons “believe” but only to “tremble” (James 2.19). They are confirmed in depravity and never seek forgiveness. As preeminently unclean spirits, they never long for purity. They confess Jesus Christ is Lord, but they do not trust Christ or submit to him. Although they recognize his authority (Mark 1.24; 5:6, 7). They cleverly withhold knowledge of his incarnation and completed redemption (1 John 4:1-6), corruption sound doctrine (1 Timothy 4.1-3), discern between those who have God’s seal and those who do not (Revelation 9.4), and know full well their own tragic destiny and inevitable doom (Matthew 8.29). Their superhuman intellect is accomplished by superphysical strength. The psalmist celebrates this angelic characteristic: “Bless the Lord, ye His angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word,” reports Psalm 103.20. The Apostle Peter also speaks of the “power and might” of angelic spirits (2 Peter 2.11). Our Lord Himself indirectly referred to demonic strength (Matthew 12.29). #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Perverted power and strength are thus conscious attributes of fallen angels. This titanic energy is displayed in the supernatural strength demons can impart to the human body when they enter it and possess it. The Gadarene demoniac who was dominated by a “legion” of demons (Mark 5.9) could not be bound even with chains. “Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetter broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him,” reports Mark 5.4. The great strength of this demoniac was due to the vast number of demons who possessed him. “A legion” in Roman military history consisted of three-to-six-thousand-foot soldiers, and three to seven hundred cavalries. The term “legion” was not only the name of the possessed human but probably also served to indicate the phenomenal strength of the demoniac. The demons were so powerful that when the Lord ordered them to enter a herd of two thousand swine, they cased the entire herd to rush violently down a hill into the sea (Mark 5.13). No wonder the demon-possessed human was disturbed physically, mentally, and emotionally. However, the superphysical strength of demons is not limited to the physical energy they impart to their victim. Their power is broad enough to cause occult oppression of mind and body. They can produce physical disabilities and sickness unrelated to organic disorders and which medicine or natural therapy cannot alleviate. Perhaps the most terrible power of demons is to derange the mind by upsetting the nervous system. In this way they can afflict the body with a psychosomatic disease. Demons are aware of the close relationship between physical and mental health. By jangling the nerves and the emotions, they can cause mental Instability (Luke 8.26-36), producing suicidal mania (Mark 9.22). Their purpose is to drive their occult-enslaved victim to self-destruction. “I’m tired of his bleary-eyed tootling—I have warned him to lie down and nap. So now that I have told him to stop it, I will give him a sharp little rap.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Dealing with necromancers who claim to contact the dead. The writer of 1 Samuel 19.9-10 describes in incident in which King Saul tried to impale David on his javelin. His attack is attributed to an “evil spirit from the Lord.” This indicates that God allowed a demon spirit to enter Saul and possess him. The kingdom of evil spirits is within God’s control, though not acting on his direction. God allows spirit activity, just as he allows evil men to prosper, within the boundaries of his ultimate plan for humans. God’s sovereign control over the realm of evil spirits is further illuminated in 1 Kings 22:18-23. “And the king od Israel said to Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil? And Micaiah said, Therefore hear the word of the Lord; I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the hosts of Heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the Lord said, Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, I will entice him. And the Lord said to him, By what means? And he said, I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go forth and do so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has spoken evil concerning you.” From this passage, too, it is clear that God overrules the World of evil spirits and permits them to do their work when it accords with His sovereign will and purpose. A unique incident involving spirits of the dead is recorded in 1 Samuel 28. King Saul had banished mediums and wizards out of the land as commanded by God (v.3). When confronted by the philistine army he was fearful and sought guidance from the Lord. When no guidance came, he told his servants to seek out a medium who could give him counsel (vv. 5-7). Having found one at Endor, Saul went to her in disguise. She feared a trap because of Saul’s decree against mediums, but Saul promised her protection and asked her to bring forth the spirit of dead Samuel (vv. 8-11). #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The medium screamed in fear when she saw Samuel himself—apparently she was used to communicating only with evil spirits. This is the only account in the Old Testament of God’s permitting a departed person’s spirit to return to Earth. This was not by the lower of the medium, however; in fact, she was not prepared for it at all. Samuel told the piteous kin it was no use: God would take the kingdom from Saul and give it to David (vv. 15-17), and the Philistine army would rout Saul’s army (v.19). 1 Chronicles 10.13 provides the epitaph to the tragic story: “So Saul died for his unfaithfulness; he was unfaithful to the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance.” Saul’s case is a chilling warning from Scripture against consulting with mediums or trying to communicate with departed souls; the judgment of God is upon it. A case of supposed witchcraft occurred in Cork, Ireland in the year 1685-1686, the account of which is contained in a latter from Christopher Crofts to Sir John Perceval (the third Baronet, and father of the first Earl of Egmont) written on the fifteenth of March in that year. Though the natator professes his disbelief in such superstitions, yet there seems to have been an unconscious feeling in his mind that his strict administration of the law was the means of bringing the affliction on his child. He says: My poor boy Jack to all appearances lay dying; he had a convulsion for eight or nine hours. His mother and several others are of opinion he is bewitched, and by the old woman, the mother of Nell Welsh, who is reputed a bad woman; and the child was playing by her that day she was upon her examination, and was taken ill presently after she was committed to Bridewell. However, I have not faith to believe it was anything but the hand of God. I have committed the girl to Bridewell, where she shall stay some time.” At one period in their history that peculiar people, known amongst themselves as the Society of Friends, and by their opponents as Quakers, appear to have been most troublesome, and to have caused a good deal of annoyance to other religious bodies. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Not unnaturally their enemies credited any wild tales which were related about them to their detriment, especially when they had referenced to their doctrine of the influence of the Spirit. Dr. More, in his continuation to Glanvill’s book, has in the sixth Relation an account of man, near Cambridge in England, who was possessed by an evil spirit which led him to do the most extraordinary things in its attempts to covert him to Quakerism. In the Life of Mr. Alexander Peden, late Minister of the Gospel at New Glenluce in Galloway, who died in 1686, there is an account of a Quakers’ meeting in this country which the Devil appeared in most blasphemous parody of the Holy Ghost. As Mr. Peden was travelling one time by himself in Ireland, “the night came on, and a dark mist, which obliged him to go into a house belonging to a Quaker. Mr. Peden said, ‘I must beg the favour of the roof of your house all night.’ The Quaker said, ‘Thou art a stranger, thou art very welcome and shalt be kindly entertained, but I cannot wait upon thee, for I am going to the meeting.’ Mr. Peden said, ‘I will go along with you.’ The Quaker said, ‘Thou may, if thou please, but thou must not trouble us.’ He said, ‘I will be civil.’ When they came to the meeting, as their ordinary is, they sat for some time silent, some with their faces to the wall, and others covered. There being a void in the loft above them there came down the appearance of a raven, and sat upon one man’s head, who started up immediately, and spoke with such vehemence that the froth flew from his mouth; it went to a second, and he did the same; and to a third, who did as the former two. Mr. Peden sitting near to his landlord said, ‘Do you not see that? Ye will not deny it afterwards?’ When they dismissed, going home Mr. Peden said to him, ‘I always thought there was devilry among you, but never thought that he did appear visibly among you till now that I have seen it.’ The poor man fell a-weeping, and said, ‘I perceive that God hath sent you to my house, and put it into your heart to go along with me, and permitted the Devil to appear visibly among us this night. I never saw the like before. Let me have the help of your prayers.’ After this he became a singular Christian.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Mr. Peden was also somewhat of a prophet, and his specialty appears to have been the prognostication of unpleasant events, at all events to persons in Ireland. Two instances will suffice. When in a gentleman’s house in Co. Antrim he foretold that a maid-servant was enceinte, that she would murder the child, and would be punished. “Which accordingly came to pass, and she was burnt at Craig Fergus.” On another occasion two messengers were sent to inform the Lord-Lieutenant that Presbyterian ministers in Ireland should affirm that they had nothing to do with the rebellion at Bothwell Bridge. Mr. Peden said they were on the Devil’s errand, but God would arrest them by the gate. Accordingly one was stricken with sickness, while the other fell from his horse and broke his leg. In another cause of the supernatural, during the late 1800s, the Santa Clara Valley, in California presented sweeping vistas of rural open space. It was a serene setting for Mrs. Winchester to begin her building project, which she did with steadfast determination. She immediately hired carpenters to work in shifts around the clock. By the turn of the century the eight-room house had grown into a nine-story mansion! The estate eventually grew to about 730 acres of farmland (according to documents), which included orchards of apricots, plums, and walnut trees to supplement Mrs. Winchester’s income. Her dried plums, which turned into prunes were very popular. Some people believe that prune juice is what kept Mrs. Winchester’s screen so wrinkle free, gave it a natural growth, and made her look so young, as it flushes toxins out of the body (word of caution, make sure to use it in moderation and start in the morning with a few ounces, and do not go anywhere for 24 hours until you see how it work with your system). Nonetheless, Mrs. Winchester also owned homes in Atherton, Los Altos, and Palo Alto. The combination of her wealth and her eccentric building of this beautiful mansion gave rise to many rumors in the local community. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Jeremiah Haralson was waiting for a tour of Mrs. Winchester’s beautiful mansion, and he had been waiting an hour to have tea with her—he was really impressed with the mansion as it seemed to twinkle. It was really a rural setting and very pretty. The estate had a lot of thick green foliage and beautiful flowers and what seemed to be miles of green lawns. So he waited for her. It was August 1894, and the chill of an unusually evening entered into his bones. The construction workers passed him with a surely response to his “Good Night.” Many of the servants went by him like ghosts with soft voices; and it was nearly midnight, and she still had not come. He then heard a ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. The bell in the belfry high in the gables began to toll. Jeremiah shrugged his shoulders and turned towards the gates that lead to the main road. He looked back, but there was still no sign of movement about the mansion, so sign of life, no lights even in the windows. He paused by the gate, wondering. Then he noticed that the front doors were open—wide open—and the porch lamp shone a little way into the foyer. There was something about this that did not please him—that scared him a little, indeed. The house had a gloomy and deserted air. It was obviously impossible that it harboured a rich widow. The must be away on business. In which case—Jeremiah walked up the path, tower the stairs to the front porch, and listened. Yet, still no sign of life. He passed into the foyer. There as no light anywhere. Where was everybody, and why were the beautiful jeweled front doors open. There was no one in the front parlour, nor the drawing room, the dining room and the study were equally empty. Everyone was out, evidently. However, the unpleasant sense that he was, perhaps, not the first casual visitor to walk through that open door impelled him to look through the house before he went anyway and closed it after him. So he went upstairs, and at the door of the first bedroom, Jeremiah turned on the gasolier, as he had done in the siting rooms. Even as he did so, he felt that he was not alone. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Jeremiah was prepared to see something, but for what he saw he was not prepared. For what he saw lay on the bed, in a white loose gown—and it was Mrs. Winchester, and her throat was cut from ear to ear. He did not know what happened then, nor how he got downstairs and into the street; but he got out somehow, and the policeman found him in a fit, under the lamp-post at the crossroads of the road. He could not speak when they picked him up, and he passed the night in the police cells, because the policeman had seen plenty of drunken men before, but never one in a fit like Jeremiah Haralson. The next morning he was well, though still very pale and shaky. However, the tale he told the magistrate was convincing, and they sent a couple of constables with him to her house. There was no crowd about it as he had fancied there would be, and the curtains were open. As Jeremiah stood, dazed, in the front of the doors, they opened, she Mrs. Winchester came out. Jeremiah held on to the upside-down posts on the front porch for support. “See, my boy! Mrs. Winchester is just fine as can be,” said the constable, who found him hiding before one of the posts. “I told you, you were drunk, but you would know best!” When Jeremiah was alone with Mrs. Winchester, he told her how he had come into the rambling mansion, and had found the front doors open and the lights out, and how he had seen something—in even trying to hint at which he turned sick and broke down and had to have a little Vin Mariani given to him. “Oh, heavens, boy,” Mrs. Winchester said, “I dare say the house was dark, for we were all at St. Joseph’s Cathedral with Daisy, and no doubt the door was open, for the maids will run out if they are left. However, you could not have been in any of the bedrooms on the second floor, because I have my staff lock them when I am away, and my dear sweet boy, they key was in my pocket. I dressed in a hurry and I left my odds and ends laying about.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
“I know,” Jeremiah said; “I saw a gold scarf on the chair, and some gold gloves, and a lot of hairpins and ribbons, and a prayerbook, and a lace handkerchief on the dressing table. Why, I even noticed the almanack on the mantlepiece—16 January 1895. At least it could not be that because this is 16 August 1894. And yet it was. Your almanack is at 16 January 1895, is it not?” “No, of course it is not,” said Mrs. Winchester, smiling rather anxiously; “but all the other things were just as you say. You must have had a nightmare, of a vision, or something.” Jeremiah was a very ordinary, commonplace, City young man, and he did not believe in visions, but he never rested day or night still he got away from the Winchester mansion. Now the curious and quite inexplicable part of this when Mrs. Winchester came down to breakfast on the morning of 17 January 1895, she found Jeremiah looking like death, with the Oakland Tribune in his hand. He caught hers—he could not speak, and pointed to the paper. And there she read that on the night of the 17th a young lady had been found with her throat cut from ear to ear, in a second story bedroom of that Beautiful, but Bizarre Winchester Mansion. Although demons reveal various degrees of wickedness (Matthew 12.45), they all are depraved. This aspect of their character appears in the terrible things they do to their victims. The Christian Bible often refers to them as spiritually and morally “unclean” (Matthew 10.1; Mark 1.27; 3.11; Luke 4.36; Acts 8.7; Revelation 16.13). People who deal in the occult are sometimes found to be vulnerable to Satan and demonic powers. Sometimes these “unclean spirits” take possession of vulnerable people. The character of demons reveals what they can do to their victims. Invisible, extremely intelligent, strong, and totally depraved personalities can do a great deal of harm to the vulnerable person. Since the supernatural exists and does interact with the natural World, the truly scientific investigator must take this into consideration. Prayer and faith can heal the mind and the body supernaturally, just as medicine and rest can do it naturally. By the same token, unbelief and sin can harm body and mind as a result of demonic bondage. (However, many mental and emotional illnesses are, of course, due to natural causes, such as overwork, tension, fatigue, malnutrition, organic disease, etcetera. Such disorders can be treated effectively by a physician, neurologist, psychologist, or psychiatrist. Demonic spirits may have little or nothing to do with such disorders of the mind. The causes are purely natural and may be corrected by purely natural means. This is not surprising since the Creator has placed the creation and His creatures under the normal operation of the laws of cause and effect.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
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In the Cup of Omens there is a Baptism into Black Magic!
In popular thinking, the term “magic” refers to the tricks of a sleight-of-hand artist, the optical illusions created by a clever trickster, or the cunning exhibition of seemingly supernatural powers by money-hungry charlatans. Undoubtedly many of the amazing demonstrations performed by such people have a completely naturalistic explanation, but honest scholars who have investigated occultic phenomena in many parts of the World agree that science at present is unable to account for some of the apparently supernatural events they have witnessed. The Bible also sets forth the view that not all magic is merely hocus-pocus. In the Biblical portrayal of magic, the Scriptures acknowledge that real superhuman power can be accomplished through sorcery, but clearly teach that the source of such manifestations is evil. The Egyptian magicians actually were able to change their rods into serpents by throwing them on the ground. Some say these rods were really snakes which had been hypnotized into becoming as rigid as a cane, but even so we must admit that no scientist today can explain how these men were able to perform this feat. They also were successful in changing water into blood, and in producing a miraculous multiplication of frogs, thus apparently duplicating what Moses and Aaron had done by God’s supernatural power. The Egyptian sorcerers undoubtedly believed their gods gave them the ability to perform these amazing exploits, and they viewed their encounter with Moses and Aaron as a contest to determine whether or not their gods were more powerful than God. The Bible implies that supernatural beings take advantage of the practices of heathenism to further enslave their adherents, but declares that these invisible agents are neither holy angels nor gods. It states that they are demons—spirit beings who rebelled against God and now are dedicated to Him. For this reason, Moses and Aaron convincingly demonstrated the superiority of God over these demonic forces. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
When Aaron’s rod became a serpent, it swallowed up those the Egyptians had cast to the ground. The greater power of God also was manifested when the pagan sorcerers were unable to remove the plague of frogs, but Moses simply prayed to the Lord, and “the frogs died out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields,” reports Exodus 8.13. God’s servants then brought about the third plague, a changing of dust into lice, a judgment which made life almost unbearable for human and beast. This time the magicians of Egypt were unable to duplicate the miracle, not could they bring about the sudden death of the pests. They therefore humbly acknowledged, “This is the finger of God,” reports Exodus 8.19. In this manner, the Lord demonstrated His absolute superiority over the powers of evil which the Egyptians worshiped as gods. It does important for us to note again that the Bible does not indicate that the magicians were frauds. A careful study of this history of Egypt, Babylon, and other nations of antiquity reveals that heathen priests accomplished many unusual feats, and kept the people under subjection through what appeared to be supernatural abilities. In seeking to understand some of the mysterious phenomena of heathenism, we must bear in mind the declaration of the apostle Paul, “But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.20. The apostle was definitely saying that the worship of idols involved more than merely bowing down to lifeless images. Furthermore, the fact that the Bible repeatedly forbids sorcery, divination, and every other form of occultism is evidence that God links these practices with actual demonic power. We repeat, the death penalty would not have been the prescribed punishment for all mediums, fortunetellers, and sorcerers if they were only quacks guilty of deception for gain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Critics of the Bible insist that its attitude toward some forms of witchcraft is inconsistent, and even sincere believers have been puzzled by several passages which appear to condone these practices. A careful examination of these instances, however, reveals that such critical assertions are unwarranted. Genesis 30: 14-18 records the story of Leah and Rachel bargaining for mandrakes, showing that they believed these so-called “love apples” increased a woman’s fertility. However, the fact that Jacob’s wives held to this ancient concept does not necessarily indicate that the Bible expresses approval. Then, too, modern investigation has shown that some primitive medicines, scorned by medics a generation or two ago, actually do possess qualities which make them valuable. At any rate, this passage of Scripture does not indicate that the Bible encouraged the use of magic. In another instance of apparent superstition, Jacob peeled the bark from saplings to give them a spotted appearance become he believed that they offspring of the cattle bred before them would then be speckled and spotted. This story is declared to be an indication that the writer of Genesis held to the notion that the colour of the unborn young would be affected by what the female animal saw at the time of impregnation. (See Genesis 30.37-43.) A careful study of the entire account reveals, however, the truth that God actually was controlling the breeding process through the laws of heredity, not by means of Jacob’s efforts. The angel of the Lord later told the patriarch that the male animals possessed genetic characteristics which brought about the birth of so many striped, speckled, and spotted animals. (See Genesis 31.11-12.) Therefore, we can assert with confidence that this passage of Scripture in no way encourages the use of magic. The statement of Joseph to his brothers about his silver cup also poses a problem for Bible students, because his words seem to indicate that he used it for purposes of divination. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
After the steward had hidden the cup in Benjamin’s sack of grain, Joseph told him what he was to do and say. The King James Version records Joseph’s instructions as follows, “Up, follow after them men; and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this it in which my Lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth? Ye have done evil in so doing” (Genesis 44.4-5). Scholars today know that the heathen sorcerers of Joseph’s day often sprinkled small particles of gold or sliver into a cup of water, or poured a small amount of oil in it, and then “read” the resulting design in the cup of omens. While it is possible that Joseph fell into this sinful and heathenish practice, we doubt very much that he did, for he had one of the finest characters of all the men portrayed in the entire Old Testament. In addition, we can present good reason for our conviction that Joseph never really used the coup to find out about the unknown. In the first place, Joseph did not need such sources of information. God had spoken to him through dreams and other forms of revelation, and therefore Joseph did possess knowledge ordinarily hidden to humans. In that sense he was able to “divine.” His instruction to his steward may be translated, “Is it not from this cup that my Lord drinks, and concerning which he will assuredly divine?” In other words, Joseph made it clear that he possessed a power which would enable him to find out what happened to the cup. (We must remember that Joseph was play-acting in order to test his brothers. He wanted them to be puzzled by the knowledge he possessed, and did not want to disclose his real identity at this time. For this reason, he did not speak of obtaining information directly from God.) This interpretation of verse 5 fits well with the statement of Joseph recorded in verse 15, “What deed is this that ye have done? Know ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?” #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
He let his brothers know that he was a special person with unusual powers of perception, but did not reveal the source of his ability. Later he told them about his faith in God. Therefore, the story of Joseph and the silver cup is certainly not an indication of Biblical approval of magic, and the likelihood exists that Joseph never practiced the heathen customs of his day. Certain elements of the Mosaic law sometimes are thought to be a form of magic. In Numbers 5, for example, we are told that if a man suspected his wife of unfaithfulness, he was to take her to the priest for trial. The woman would then drink a liquid potion to determine her guilt or innocence. If certain physical results became apparent immediately, she was deemed guilty. If not, she was innocent. On the surface this appears to be a superstitious practice, but when we remember that Israel lived under a theocracy and that God has ordained this test, we can believe He would in this manner declare infallibly the guilt or innocence of the person being tried. The Urim and Thummim as a means of revelation and the long hair of Samson as the secret of his strength are further examples of divinely ordered and controlled phenomena which cannot be compared to the magic of the heathen. Therefore, we can say assuredly that nothing in the Old Testament or the New can be properly interpreted as divine sanction of sorcery or magic. Shortly before the Exile, the prophet Ezekiel delivered a scorching denunciation of women who were using amulets and veils in a magic ritual to bring joy or sadness, blessing or cursing, even life or death to certain individuals. “Likewise, thou son of man, set thy face against the daughters of thy people, who prophesy out of their own heart, and prophesy thou against them, and say, Thus saith the Lord God: Woe to the women that sew amulets upon all wrists, and make kerchiefs for the head of every person of stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you? And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear you lies? #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
“Wherefore, thus saith the LORD GOD: Behold, I am against your amulets, with which ye there hunt the souls to make them fly; and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly. Your kerchiefs also will I tear, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand to be hunted; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, who I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life; therefore, ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations; for I will deliver my people out of your hand; and ye shall know that I am the LORD,” reports Ezekiel 13.17-23. Exactly what these women did is not easy to ascertain. Some Bible students have conjectured that they performed a rite in which they symbolically bound up the soul of a person so that the individual would gradually waste away and die. Then, for a fee they would bring about his release. Other scholars think that Ezekiel describes features of “sympathetic magic,” whereby the sorceress fastened something around her own wrists or enshrouded her own head to place a curse upon a specific individual. In either case, the practice of these women appeared to have consequences so serious as to warrant divine condemnation and a prophetic declaration that God would deliver His people from their grasp. The Old Testament acknowledges the existence of real magic, and consistently condemns it in every form. Furthermore, the rites and ceremonies prescribed for Israel were not equivalent to the practices of the heathen, but were instructions that came directly from God and over which He would exercise control. At the very threshold of human history stands God’s command, “Fill the Earth and subdue it,” reports Genesis 1.28. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The task and right of man was the peaceful conquest of the Earth’s powers in accordance with the will of God. In opposition to this command Satan, the great master of confusion came and put forward his arch-temptation, “You will be like God knowing good and evil,” reports Genesis 3.5. Magic is the very antithesis of the commandment of God as it reveals a hunger for knowledge and a desire for power in opposition to the will of God. When faced with this temptation humankind was at the crossroads. The decision has to be made. Either voluntary subordination to the will of God or rebellion against His statues and His ordinances caused by a greed for power and a desire for knowledge. The decision still faces us today. We either conform to God’s revealed way of salvation or we carry on the rebellion, trying to rule the created World in unforgivable opposition to God. Magic is thus at its roots a rebellion, and it has been so from the beginning. It is the climax of man’s revolt against God. Any talk of harmless forces of nature and neutral applications is criminal in the light of this scriptural fact. On the surface, parapsychology (the science of extrasensory experience) still recognizes something of the double nature of magic. The differentiation is made between Psi-Gamma phenomena and Psi-Kappa phenomena. (Gamma representing gignoskein, to perceive; kappa representing kinein, to move). Here we have again the two basic elements of magic: knowledge and power through supernatural means. Through a great deal of pastoral work, I have noticed four ways in which magical powers can originate. These are through heredity, subscription of oneself to the devil, occult experiments and occult transference. The evidence drawn from many actual case histories goes to prove that magical abilities can be passed on by means of heredity. Often mediumistic powers can be traced back over three or four generations in one family. There are two possibilities here, one being that it is a matter of the genes and the other that it is a matter of succession. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
By this we mean the custom of a person on one’s deathbed actually bestowing the magical abilities upon the eldest son or daughter in order to die peacefully. Often tragic scenes occur when the children do not want to have these abilities passed on to them. A person may cry out for weeks on his deathbed for someone to relieve him of his magical powers. Sometimes a distant relative or an outsider is willing to accept the succession. The reason for this may differ from case to case, be it pity, curiosity or maybe lust for power. The death of some magicians can drag on over a period of weeks till the office of “succession” has been settled. This is not an apostolic but a diabolic succession. Magical powers on the other hand may originate through subscription to the devil. One can see in this the counterpart to baptism. To every event recorded in the Bible, there seems to be a demonic parallel to it in the field of magic. Subscription to the devil accounts for some of the most terrible and formidable cases met with by Christian workers. For example, in Paris there is an occult church with the name or title, “We Worship the Prince of this World.” This church has sister congregations in Basle and berne, and a few decades ago one was opened in Rome. In order to become a member of this church, one has to subscribe oneself to the devil. This is a baptism into black magic! For years a man in Toggenburg, Switzerland, had a flourishing practice as a nature healer and charmer. He could even sure come people who the doctors had given up as hopeless. He had healed the blind, the lame, cases of advanced cancer, tuberculosis, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma and other serious diseases. On one occasion however, the man’s own personal need came to the surface. He said, “I can help others, but for myself there is no help, no not in all eternity!” In his youth the man had subscribed himself to the devil. It was since that time that he had obtained his unearthly healing ability. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Another way in which magical powers may develop is through experimenting with occultism. A Swiss factory worker grew tired of his job. Since he had often heard that occult healers and mesmerizers made a lot of money, he bought some magic charms, underwent various devil ceremonies and then began healing experiments. His magic healing ability developed rapidly and ultimately his income surpassed his previous earnings many times over. The next example will illustrate all three factors together, that is, the factors of heredity, subscription and experimenting in occultism. A young woman told me this story. Here great-grandmother had subscribed herself to the devil with her own blood. She had practiced black magic and had healed both animals and people. On her deathbed she had suffered terribly as is often the cause with magic conjurers. The daughter, that is the grandmother of my storyteller, took over the magic powers of her mother. The magic literature of her mother also passed into her hands. Later the apparition of the great-grandmother was seen by the relatives. The grandmother however, continued to practice magic. During nights of the full moon, she would charm diseases. She was also in the habit of using a key suspended over a Bible as a pendulum, and she could also successfully stop people from bleeding. If she ever attempted to read the Bible, she found it quite a trial. As she grew older, she began to see black figures in her home, and finally when she died it was again an unpleasant time. Her ghost was also seen after her departure. The story went on that the young woman’s mother had then taken over the magical literature and practices. She too had become a well-known healer, but her fate had been the same as her predecessors’. The fourth member in this terrible line of succession was not the young woman. As a small child, her mother had cast spells over her. Shortly after this, she had become clairvoyant and had also begun to see black figures in the house. Her brother and sister had suffered from depression and she herself had has serious psychic and nervous disturbances which had led her to seek the help of a minister. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Occult transference is the fourth source of magical powers. A young man told me that he had once had three black magicians lay their hands on his head and murmur some magic charms over him. He had afterwards possessed magic abilities which astonished even the family doctor. The doctor had investigated his powers and had to acknowledge that they were genuine. The laying on of the hands of the magicians would again be a counterpart to the scriptural laying on of hands. Another example, a young man saw someone searching for water with a pendulum. He was asked if he would like to have a go, but the pendulum did not react in his hand. When the dowser took hold of his hands, though, the pendulum had at once reacted. Later when he had tried to repent the experiment by himself, he was again successful, and he discovered that he now had the ability to search for water with both a rod or a pendulum. Yet the young man felt a change in his Christian life. Previously he had been regular in his reading of the Bible and in prayer. After this transference of pendulum ability, however, his love for the Word of God and for prayer declined. Spirits are not normally subject to human visibility or other sensory perception. God’s universe operates undeviatingly in accordance with the purpose for which He created it. The all-wise and all-powerful Creator is not permitting Satan and demons to throw his ordered Universe into confusion by violating the laws he has established. Nor is He permitting His own people to do so through haphazard miracles. Though not ignoring the laws of nature, God’s Word also recognizes the possible transcendence of natural law in divine miracle both in good supernaturalism (Exodus 14.19-31; 17: 5-7; Joshua 3.16-17; 6.20; John 2.9; 11:44) and in evil supernaturalism (Exodus 7.10-11, 22; 8.7; 2 Thessalonians 2.8-10; Revelation 13.15). #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
When natural law is transcended by divine miracle, the natural eye may see the spiritual reality. An illustration is provided in 2 Kings 6.17. In answer to Elisha’s prayer, the Lord “opened the eyes” of the prophet’s servant who saw “the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” In like manner Elisha saw the “chariot of fire, and horses of fire” when Elijah went up by a whirlwind into Heaven (2 Kings 2.11). Similarly John saw the demons coming up from the abyss in their last-day eruption as locusts (Revelation 9.1-12). He also saw the three hideous demons issuing from the months of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet as froglike spirits (Revelation 16.13-14). The apocalyptic seer glimpsed these fouls spirits prophetically and by supernatural vision. However, when they are sent against human, they will be invisible to the natural eye. Their presence will be known by the excruciating pain they inflict and the gross deception they cause. The harm they inflict will be inescapable, because their victims will be unable to shield themselves from an invisible enemy. However, spirits can become discernible to humans through transcendence of natural law. Evil spirits may be seen and communicated through an intermediary or medium. Just as Peter and Paull saw and talked with an angel (Acts 5.19; 27: 23-24), so human beings today can communicate with evil spirits through magic rites and incantations. Communication with the demon World results in supernatural manifestations, but these, strictly speaking, are not miraculous. Occult enslavement and extrasensory phenomena await people who enter the realm from which God would protect his own people (Deuteronomy 18.10-11) and against which He solemnly warns (Leviticus 19.31; 20.27; 1 Samuel 28.9; 1 Timothy 4.1, 2;1 John 4.1-3). When humans ignore God’s warnings and enter a forbidden realm, they may witness materializations, levitations, and luminous apparitions, as well as experience spirit rappings, trances, automatic writing, magic phenomena, clairvoyance, oral and written communications and other forms of spiritistic phenomena. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Such manifestations are not miracles. They represent the operation of the occult within a certain well-defined sphere tolerated by God. Occult subjection and oppression are the inevitable penalties to all who traffic in the realm of evil supernaturalism. The Scriptures are markedly reticent on the matter of spirits being seen by humans. Here again, the Bible stands in contrast to ethnic and rabbinic systems. Multitudes of demons in bizarre forms are described in ancient semitic demonology. Rabbinic demonology, for example, divides demons into two classes: one composed of purely spiritual beings, the other of half-spirits. The latter were though to have a psycho-sarcous constitution that involved them in physical needs and functions. Although the Bible is silent concerning such “halbgeister,” they would seem to be what the offspring of the angels and mortal women (Genesis 6:1-4) might have been, half-angelic and half-human monsters. Many spiritualists say they accept the Christian Bible as the Word of God. To understand it, however, spiritualists go to the control spirit in the séances, and the spirits reputedly give the proper interpretation. Spiritualists frequently ask, “Why go to the Bible, when you can go directly to the spirit and receive personal instruction from such people as Moses, Abraham, Joshua, Isaiah, David, Peter, James, John, and Paul—even the Master himself?” With that kind of opportunity, few spiritualists prefer to read the Bible—and hence they know little of what it teaches. For the Christian, 2 Timothy 3.16-17, is a key teaching regarding the inspiration and purpose of Scripture: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfectly, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” Spiritualists do not accept the plain meaning of that verse, and they distort another key verse, 2 Peter 1.21, which speaks of “holy men of God” producing prophecy “by the Holy Ghosts.” Spiritualists say this means that the prophets were inspired by the spirits. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Dr. Moses Hull, an accepted authority among spiritualists, wrote in Biblical Spiritualism, a book he published in 1895: “The Bible is, I think, one of the best of the sacred books of the ages. It is supposedly the sacred fountain from which two, if not three, of the great religions of the World have flowed…While the Bible is not the infallible or immaculate book that many have supposed it to be, no one can deny that it is a great book…Yet it must be confessed that the age of critical analysis of all its sayings and its environments has hardly dawned…John R. Shannon said to his Denver audience, ‘We do not believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. The dogma that every word of the Bible is supernaturally dictated is false. It ought to be shelved away…Verbal inspiration is a superstitious theory; it has turned multitudes in disgust from the Bible; it has led thousands into infidelity; it has led to savage theological warfare’…All these facts would show, if brought out, that the Bible, like all other books, is exceedingly human in its origin. While the Bible is, none of it infallible, none of it unerring—when rightly interpreted it is all of it useful; all of it good. Even the parts which the people called infidels have ridiculed the most, become beautiful when examined in the light of modern spiritualism. In the following chapters the sacred light of spiritualism is applied to the Bible and it becomes indeed a ‘lamp unto our feet and a light to our path.’” To show something of how spiritualists interpret Scripture, I have chosen five examples from Hull’s book. Isaiah 21.4-5. “My heart panted, fearful affrighted me: the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me. Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink; arise, ye prices, and anointed the shield.” The spiritualists interprets the phrase “prepare the table” as meaning a table to be used for spirit manifestation at a séance. Ezekiel 9.4-6. “And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
“And to the other he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women; but come not near any man upon whom is the mark and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.” Dr. Hull comments: “Ezekiel was considered an excellent medium, but like many of the nineteenth century he makes wrong predictions. It is thought that very few, if any, of his predictions ever met their accomplishments.” Amos 7.7. “Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand.” Hull writes: “Mediums see such manifestations in connection with departed human spirits nearly every day.” Acts 8.26-30. “And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south…and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch…had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him.” Dr. Hull asserts that Philip was carried by a control spirit to speak to the Ethiopian. Galatians 1.11-12. “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” In his handbook for spiritualist, Hull concludes from this text that the Apostle Paul received the gospel by spirit revelation through the mediumship of Jesus. It is noteworthy that to both the spiritualist and the Christian, Satan is God’s archenemy. I was at a séance one time when Satan supposedly entered. It ended abruptly, and we were told it was because of the presence of an evil spirit. It is tragic that many spiritualists never realize they are being deceived by this very devil who can ingeniously adapt his tactics to lure any type of prey. Satan is openly honoured, of course, by some practitioners of the so-called “black arts” or “black magic.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Generally, some of these people are obsessed with hexes and spells, sexual indulgence, weird rituals, and hints of violence. Spiritualists, who consider themselves followers of God and the “good spirits,” regard such people as self-centered “spiritists” who follow the “bad spirits.” However, these “good” and “bad” spirits serve the same master, Satan, and serve him well, because they each give their followers what Satan dispenses: a sense of goodness and of guidance without dependence on Christ; and a sense of power and self-fulfillment in defiance of God’s commands. However, many spirits do believe in God, and the Christian Bible says there is a Holy Spirit and Angels that guide us, and in many cases, these spirits do prevent people from facing hardships, and these people still depend on Christ. So, it is really hard to generalize and give Satan so much power. Nonetheless, all people are baffled by occult mysteries! Revelations 13.14 says, “Satan’s representative deceiveth them that dwell on the Earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do.” Generally, people think of miracles and blessings as good omens. So, everyone has to make their own decisions as to what they believe, but many people on Earth are always looking for evidence of the supernatural because the very fact that we live on a globe that floats in the sky and provides of with nature and fruit and meat, and sun and a nightlight at night is evidence of a supernatural power. Once upon a time, at the instigation of a ghost, a lawsuit took place at Downpartick in 1685. The account of this was given to Baxter by Thomas Emlin, “a worthy preacher in Dublin,” as well as by Claudius Gilbert, one of the principal parties therein concerned: the latter’s son and namesake proved a liberal benefactor to the Library of Trinity College—some of his books have been consulted for the present work. It appears that for some time past there had been dispute about the tithes of Drumbeg, a little parish about four miles outside Belfast, between Mr. Gilbert, who was vicar of that town, and the Archdeacon of Down, Lemuel Matthews, whom Cotton in his Fasti describes as “a man of considerable talents and legal knowledge, but of a violent overbearing temper, and a litigious disposition.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The parishioners of Drumbeg favoured Gilbert, and generally paid the tithes to him as being the incumbent in possession; but the Archdeacon claimed to be the lawful recipient, in support of which claim he produced a warrant. In the execution of this by his servants at the house of Charles Lostin, one of the parishioners, they offered some violence to his wife Margaret, who refused them entrance, and who died about a month later (1 November 1685) of the injuries she had received at their hands. Being a woman in a bad state of health littler notice was taken of her death, until about a month after she appeared to one Thomas Donelson, who had been a spectator of the violence done her, and “affrighted him into a Prosecution of Robert Eccleson, the Criminal. She appeared divers times, but chiefly upon one Lord’s Day-Evening, when she fetch’d him with a strange force out of his House into the Yard and Fields adjacent. Before her last coming (for she did so three times that Day) several Neighbours were called in, to whom he gave notice that she was again coming; and beckon’s him to come out; upon which they went to shut the Door, but he forbad it, saying that she looked with a terrible Aspect upon him, when they offered it. However, his Friends laid hold on him and embraced him, that he might not go out again; notwithstanding which (a plain evidence of some invisible Power), he was drawn out of their Hands in a surprising manner, and carried about into the Field and Yard, as before, she charging him to prosecute Justice: which Voice, as also Donelson’s reply, the people heard, though they saw no shape. There are many Witnesses of this yet alive, particularly Sarah (Losnam), the Wife of Charles Lostin, Son to the deceased Woman, and one William Holyday and his Wife.” This last appearance took place in Holyday’s house; there were also present several young persons, as well as Charles and Helen Lostin, children of the deceased, most of whom appeared as witnesses at the trial. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Upon this Donelson deposed all he knew of the matter to Mr. Randal Brice, a neighbouring Justice of the Peace; the latter brought the affair before the notice of Sir William Franklin in Belfast Castle. The depositions were subsequently carried to Dublin, and the case was tried at Downpatrick Assizes by Judge John Lindon in 1685. On behalf of the plaintiff, Charles Lostin, Counseller James Macartney acted—if he be the Judge who subsequently makes his appearance in a most important witch-trial at Carrickfergus, he certainly was as excellent an advocate as any plaintiff in a case of witchcraft could possibly desire, as he was strongly prejudiced in favour of the truth of all such matters. “The several Witnesses were heard and sworn, and their Examinations were entered in the Record of that Assizes, to the Amazement and Satisfaction of all that Country and of the Judges, whom I have heard speak of it at the time with much Wonder; insomuch that the said Eccleson hardly escaped with his life, but was Burnt in the Hand.” Whether or not one believes in Mrs. Winchester’s superstitions about spirits, it is hard to dismiss occurrences of the number 13 throughout her gorgeous mansion. Many windows have 13 panes and there are 13 bathrooms, with 13 windows in the 13th Bathroom, 13 steps leading to that bathroom. The Carriage Entrance Hall floor is divided into 12 cement sections. There are even 13 hooks in the Blue Séance Room, which supposedly held the different coloured robes Mrs. Winchester wore while communing with spirits. Here are even more thirteens: 13 rails by the floor-level skylight in the South Conservatory, 13 steps on many of the stairways, 13 squares on each side of the Otis electric elevator, 13 glass cupolas on the Greenhouse, 13 holes in the sink drain covers, 13 ceiling panels in some of the rooms, and 13 gas jets on the Ballroom chandelier (Mrs. Winchester had the thirteenth one added!) It is interest to note that Mrs. Winchester’s will had 13 parts and was signed by her 13 times! #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Mrs. Winchester sat by herself on the fourth-floor balcony of her mansion. It was an October evening, and the sun was setting. The west was all aglow with mysterious red light, very strange and lurid—a light that reflected itself in glowing purple of the sky. Mrs. Winchester had a poet’s soul. She sat there long, watching the livid hues that incarnadined the sky—redder and fiercer than anything she ever remembered to have seen growing up as a child. She knew it was getting late and was expecting guests for dinner. Mrs. Winchester was always such a stickler for punctuality and dispatch. However, there was something about that sunset and the lights on the bracken—something beautiful but bizarre—that absolute fascinated her. She took it as a sign from the spirits that something was about to happen. The Universe was always teeming with mysterious secrets to unfold. Many of the guests in her mansion felt something desired to possess their soul, and it made them want to stop and give way to this overpowering sese of the mysterious and the marvellous in the dark depths of the estate. She was expecting Claude Duncan for dinner. Mrs. Winchester dined at 6.00 p.m. punctually. However, Claude seemed to be having some issues that evening. He was an art dealer, and was being haunted by many strange shaped. However, he saw and heard absolutely nothing; yet he realized that unseen figures were watching him close with bated breath, and anxiously observing his every movement, as if intent to know whether he would rise and move on, or remain to investigate this causeless sensation. He could feel their outstretched necks; he could picture their strained attention. At last he broke away. “This is nonsense,” he said aloud to himself, and turned slowly homeward. Ad he did so, a deep sigh, as of suspense relieved, but relived in the wrong direction, seemed to rise—unheard, impalpable, spiritual—from the invisible crowd that father around him immaterial. Clutched hands seemed to stretch after him and try to pull him back. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
An unreal throng of angry and disappointed creatures seemed to follow him over the moor, uttering speechless imprecations on his head, in some unknown tongue—ineffable, inaudible. This horrid sense of being followed by unearthly foes took absolute possession of Claude’s mind. It might have been merely the lurid redness of the afterglow, or the loneliness of the moor, or the necessity of being at the Winchester Mansion, no one minute late for Mrs. Winchester’s dinner-hour; but, at any rate, he lost all self-control for the moment, and ran-ran widely at the very top of his speed, all the way from the barrow to the door of the Winchester Mansion garden. There he stopped and looked round with a painful sense of his own stupid cowardice. This was absolutely childish: he had seen nothing, heard nothing, had nothing definite to frighten him; yet he had run from his own mental shadow, like the verist schoolgirl, and was trembling still from the profundity of his sense that somebody unseen was pursing and following him. “What a precious fool I am,” he said to himself, half angrily, “to be so terrified at nothing! I will go to Mrs. Winchester’s dinner just to recover my self-respect, and to prove to myself, at least, I am not really frightened.” There is nothing like a light for dispelling superstitious terrors. The Winchester Mansion was fortunately updated with electric light; For Mrs. Winchester was nothing if not intensely modern. He went to dinner, however, in very good spirits. He told Mrs. Winchester and her niece Merriam “Daisy” Marriot that, “I felt a most peculiar sensation. Just after sunset, I was dimly conscious of something stirring inside, not visible or audible, but—” “Oh, I know, I know! Said Merriam. “A sort of feeling there was somebody somewhere, very faint and dim, though you could not see or her them; they tried to pull you down, clutching at you like this: and when you ran away frightened, they seemed to follow you and jeer at you. Great gibbering creatures! Oh, I know what all this is. I have been here, and felt it.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“Daisy!” Mrs. Winchester shouted, “what nonsense you talk! You are really too ridiculous. How can you suppose Mr. Duncan feels haunted?!” Mrs. Winchester darted at him a look of intense displeasure. She said, in a chilly voice, “at a table like this and with such thinkers around, we might surely find something rather better to discuss than such worn out superstitions.” Claude replied, “Mrs. Winchester, it has been shown conclusively that the Winchester mansion, was built on the grave of Aryan invaders, and that they are the real originals of all the San Jose hills and surrounding lands. You have heard the story of how your dark observation tower came, of course. People say the spirits built it because they were deeply religious people, who believed in human sacrifice. They felt they it would have a high spiritual benefit. That it lit up your palace, so that the spirits could find you.” “It is a very odd fact, Mr. Duncan, that only ghosts people ever see are the ghost of a generation very close to them. One hears lots of ghosts in nineteenth-century costumes, because everybody has a clear idea of wigs and small-clothes from pictures and fancy dresses. One hears of far fewer in Elizabethan dress, because the class most given to beholding ghost are seldom acquainted with ruffs and farthingales; and one meets with none at all in Angelo-Saxon or Ancient British or Roman costumes, because those are only known to a comparatively small class of learned people. Millions of ghosts of remote antiquity must swarm about the World, though, after a hundred years or thereabouts they retired into obscurity and cease to annoy people with their nasty cold shivers. However, the queer thing about these long-barrow ghost is that they must be the spirits of humans who died thousands and thousands of years ago, which is exceptional longevity for a spiritual being; do you not think so, Mr. Duncan?” “You mansion must be chock-full of them,” replied Mr. Duncan. “Daisy, my child, go to bed, said Mrs. Winchester. “This is not talk for you. And do not go chilling yourself by standing at the window in your nightdress, looking out on the common to search for the ghosts. You nearly fell to your death last year with that nonsense. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
As Claude Duncan went for a tour of the mansion by himself, he saw a child’s white face gaze appealingly across at him. Slowly the ghost boy raised one pale forefinger and pointed. His lips opened to an inaudible word; but he read it by sight. “Look!” he said simply. Claude looked where he pointed. A faint blue light hung lambent over the door-to-nowhere. It was ghostly and vague. It seemed to rouse and call him. Claude was now in a strange semi-mesmeric state of self-induced hypnotism when a command of whatever sort or by whomsoever given, seems to compel obedience. Trembling he rose, and taking his candle descended the stair noiselessly. Then, walking on tiptoe across the tile-paved hall, he opened the door-to-nowhere, and fell out into the garden below. Claude felt a creep sense of mystery and the supernatural. And he saw the pale face still pressed close against the window, and a white hand still motioning him mutely onward. He looked once more in the direction of where the ghost boy pointed, the spectral light now burnt clearer and bluer, and more unearthly than ever, and the observational tower of the mansion seemed haunted from end to end by innumerable invisible and uncanny creatures. As Claude groped on his way, speechless voices seemed to whisper unknow tongues encouragingly in his ear; ghosts appeared to crowd around him and tempt him with beckoning figures to follow them. As it seemed, by invisible hands, he staggered slowly forward, till at last, with aching head and trembling feet, he stood beside the front door of the mansion. Something clogged and impeded him from moving. His feet would not obey his will; they seemed to move of themselves back into the mansion. Steadying himself, and opening his eyes, Claude walked through the closed front doors. Then at once his feet moved easily, and the invisible attendant chuckled to themselves so loud that he could almost hear them. His terror was infinite, there was a ghostly through of people. They were spirits. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Claude Duncan was powerless in their intangible hands; for they seized him roughly with incorporeal fingers. Their wrist compelled him as the magnet compels the iron bar. A dim phosphorescent light, like the light of a churchyard or decaying paganism, seemed to illuminate the mansion faintly. Things loomed dark before him; but his eyes almost instantly adapted themselves to the gloom, as the eyes of the dead on the first night in the grave adapt themselves by inner force to the strangeness of their surroundings. The Grand Ballroom had a silver chandelier from Germany, and the walls and parquet floors were made of six hardwoods—mahogany, teak, maple, rosewood, oak, and white ash. And there were two mysterious stained-glass windows. The room was full of sumptuous music, the San Francisco orchestra was performing and ghosts dressed for a ball were dancing. Claude’s attention was too much concentrated on devouring fear and the horror of the situation to enjoy the mysterious beauty of it. There was also a grinning skeleton turning its head to reveal to Claude its eyeless orbs with vacant glance of hungry satisfaction. Claude, held fast by the immaterial hands of his ghastly captors, looked and trembled for his fate, too terrified to cry out or even to move and struggle, he beheld the hideous thing rise and assume a shadowy shape, all pallid blue light, like the shape of his jailers. Bit by bit, as he gazed, the skeleton seemed to disappear, or rather to fade into some unsubstantial form, which was nevertheless more human, more corporal, more horrible than the dry bones it had come from. Then it busted into a loud and fiendish laugh. It was a hideous laugh, halfway between a wild beast’s and a murderous maniac’s: it echoed through the long hall like the laughter of devils. It said, “You are mine. You soul now belongs to the Winchester mansion!” The men and women spirits, with a loud whoop, raised hands aloft in unison. Next instant with a howl of vengeance even louder than before, they crowded around Claude and jostled and hustled him. And the moon burned bright and bluer as Claude Duncan now became the Winchester Rifle’s victim. You see it is not a bullet, but an all-powerful spirit, which chooses victims even if they did not die at the hands of the Winchester Rifle. Curious about the Winchester Mystery House? #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
TONIGHT! Roam the halls of the iconic Winchester Mystery House with nothing but a flashlight 👀🔦 You don’t want to miss this. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Don’t Go Out Like Whitney Huston–Can I Leave A Million at Your House and You Won’t Touch it?
Great changes require administrative support and necessary and necessary resources. A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. The World changes faster than the people in it. We must now try to imagine what the nucleic acid molecules, in the late coacervate/early cellular era, could have done besides reproduce their own kind. For definiteness, let us consider a coacervate or cell containing large numbers of nucleic acid molecules of different compositions and lengths. Let us assume, moreover, that much of the nucleic acid is in its single-stranded form at the time we commence our observations. This could be because not enough time has yet elapsed for the growth of the Siamese-twin configurations since the cyclically changing chemistry of the cell last produced the conditions that split the double molecules into single ones. In any event, let us follow the adventures of a single nucleic acid molecule as it floats around in the cellular fluid. We know, of course, that the floating around of such a molecule would not be a completely passive performance. We have already dealt with the tendency, arising from the electric fields associated with atoms and molecules, for some of the small organic and inorganic molecular fragments that inhabit the cellular fluid to attach themselves to local regions of the nucleic acid molecules. In the past, we concentrated on one type of such attachment process—that which cases a single molecule of nucleic acid to grow into a double one by conjugation of its bases. At that time, we did not concern ourselves greatly with competition from other kinds of attaching molecular fragments, although we knew that such other attachments were bound to occur from time to time. Our lack of concern for such competition was based on our awareness that most of these other attachments would be tenuous and quickly broken, since the randomly encountered molecular fragments would usually not “mate” very well with the nearby parts of the nucleic acid. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Our discussion implied that, upon the approach of a free nucleotide to a suitable region of a molecule of nucleic acid, the strong binging forces that would come into play would result in the displacement of any lightly held “impurity” in favour of the attachment of the arriving nucleotide. Such a tendency for loosely held fragments to be displayed by molecules of greater binding energy is probably adequate to render inconsequential the large majority of the nucleic acid molecule’s casual encounters in the cellular fluid. Nevertheless, there would appear to be possibilities for attachments of kinds that would not necessarily yield to such displacement forces. For example, two different nucleic acid molecules would occasionally bump together. And once in a while such a collision might bring together short regions of the two long molecules carrying base sequences complementary to one another—an A base opposed to a U (Substitute T for U, in DNA) base, then a G opposed to a C, and so on. The resulting multiple attachment could constitute much stronger connection than that resulting from the usual casual encounter between molecules of different types. To be sure, collisions between nucleic acid molecules would be rare, unless the concentration of nucleic in the cellular fluid were exceedingly high. There is a related kind of encounter, however, that would occur much more frequently—the collision of one part of a long nucleic acid molecule with another part of the same molecule. For the nucleic acid backbone is supple; it can turn back upon itself like a rope. Under the ceaseless churning that thermal agitation imposes on the molecules of any fluid, each long chain of nucleic acid would be continually bending and twisting, frequently thereby brining normally remote parts of itself into temporary contact. An occasional attachment would be of just the nature described in the example of the encounter of two different nucleic acid molecules. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
If not an unusually strong attachment (that is, involving a considerable number of conjugated bases), it would soon be broken under the stress of random thermal agitation. However, if a special way of folding the long molecule back upon itself could result in a binding together of the two halves strong enough to survive, it would eventually be “found”; the random processes would ultimately make nearly the right kind of fold, the resulting attractive forces would do the rest, and the long molecule would lock together in a characteristic folded configuration. Of course, certain conditions would have to be met by a single-stranded nucleic acid molecule before it could be eligible to form a folded configuration. In particular, a certain minimum length would have to be exceeded in order that the two halves of the folded molecule could make enough mutual bonds to provide the needed attachment strength. X-rays analysis of the nucleic acid in modern organisms shows that such folded structures, which are abundant in all cells, usually involve seventy to righty nucleotides. A combination of speculation and evidence suggests that there may be nothing very critical about the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of a successfully folded molecule. A molecule of random base sequence might be able to form a folded or hairpin structure involving complementary pairing of most of its bases by the simple expedient of pushing away from the primary folded structure an occasional nucleotide segment that does not fit the base pattern of the opposite arm of the structure. X-ray measurements strongly suggest that this kind of expedient distortion of the hairpin does not actually occur and that the schematic drawings of it are probably fairly realistic. Folded configurations would not be assumed by all nucleic acid molecules even if their length and base sequence were favourable. For the reproduction process would sometimes prevent the formation of folded molecules; to the extent to which the projecting bases had already been mated with conjugate nucleotides from the surrounding fluid, there would be a decrease in the probability that the different parts of the flailing molecule would stick together. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
However, it is not hard to postulate conditions that would cause the competition to be frequently resolved in favour of the formation of folded configurations rather than double molecules. For one thing, as mentioned in the past reports, catalysts and energy-supplying molecules must be available in the cellular fluid if the formation double molecules is to proceed at a significant rate. The chore for which these molecular assistants are required does not have to do with the conjugation of the nucleotide bases; this goes easily. Rather, the additional energy and catalytic assist are needed to connect the sugar phosphate ends of the nucleotides. However, this requirement does not exist for the formation of a folded configuration of a single molecule. Therefore, we might well expect the folding process to occur more rapidly than the reproduction processes for the molecules in question. This would be particularly true if, as we can easily postulate, the supply of catalysts and energy-contributing molecules were low in the vicinity of some of the single-stranded nucleic acid. Under such circumstances we can easily imagine that the occasional free nucleotide that attached itself to conjugate bases along the backbone of the nucleic acid molecule would be displaced by the stronger binding forces brought into play by the tendency toward multiple affiliation of the components of the two arms of the molecule itself. To be sure, the actual configuration of the folded molecule would not look much like the two-dimensional patterns seen in vintage textbooks. The same electric forces that cause double-stranded nucleic acid molecules to form a double helix would operate to impose a twist on the folded molecule. The imperfections caused by the nonmatching bases would probably also distort the helix, and the final result would be a three-dimensional configuration with a patten of atomic arrangement and external electric fields that, in the last analysis, would be completely determined by the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of the original unfolded nucleic acid molecule. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Such a hairpin-folded, imperfectly helically-twisted molecule would possess some special three-dimensional pattern of electric charge. In particular, it would be likely to have an affinity for certain kinds of molecular fragments. For example, a particular sequence of nucleotides might result in such a pattern of hairpin folding and partial helical twisting as to produce, in some portion of the molecule, a very good fit for a sugar fragment. Another molecule with a different sequence of nucleotides might include within its three-dimensional contours a good “mold” for holding a particular kind of amino acid, and so on. Assuming the existence of such ingredients in the surrounding fluid, continued floating around of the nucleic acid molecules would ultimately result in getting most of them coupled to whatever specific kinds of molecular fragments their own special patterns of electric fields best equip them to carry. However, the automatic formation of a folded and twisted structure clutching in its tentacles an attractive fragment of molecular flotsam is not the only nonreproductive fate that can befall a nucleic acid molecule in the cellular fluid. Modern evidence shows that longer varieties of these molecules can become tightly bound to the surfaces of solid particles. The particles on which such attachment occurs are today called microsomes, and they are a conspicuous feature of all modern cells. We have no difficulty in rationalizing the evolutionary origin of such inclusions; the precipitation of some of the chemical by-products of metabolism would doubtless have produced solid particles in some of the early coacervates. The requirement of length in the surface-bound nucleic acid molecules (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides, although, of course, it is unlikely that the primitive forms were of this degree of complexity) is probably generally understandable in terms of the ever-present competition between combining and disrupting forces. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Unless the molecule is long enough to provide many local points of attachment to the supporting surface, the ceaseless jostling to which it is subjected by the random thermal agitation of the surrounding molecules will jar it loose. Perhaps for a similar reason, a successfully surface-bound nucleic acid molecule appears to be fully extended, rather than folded back upon itself. Further, the long molecule is held to the surface in such a way as not to neutralize the pattern of electric fields that results from the specific sequence of bases along the backbone. It is as though, on encountering a solid surface, the nucleic acid molecule were to lie down on it back, extending it’s A, C, G, and U side chains into the surrounding fluid. For the bound molecules are chemically reactive. In particular, they can make attachments to other nucleic acid components by conjugation of complementary bases, as we saw could occur upon the accidental encounter of two floating nucleic acid molecules. This does not have to mean, however, that the long surface-bound molecule of nucleic acid would rapidly accrue to itself conjugate nucleotides and bind them together to form a double molecule. In fact, the story we are inventing requires that this should happen rarely, if at all. It is not hard to imagine conditions that would hold such double-molecule formation to a low level. For example, the catalyst that zips together the sugar phosphate ends of the conjugated nucleotides to tie up the backbone structure of the Siamese-twin molecule may not be able to operate effectively when the generating single molecule is stretched out on a solid surface. Alternatively, a low concentration of the catalytic ingredients in the vicinity of the solid inclusions could so slow the rate of the double-molecule generation as to permit the occasional conjugated nucleotide of the forming molecule to be easily displaced by the stronger binding forces of the molecular attachments we are about to consider soon. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
To get others to do what you want them to do, you must see things through their eyes. It is notorious that the physical plant and social environment have grown out of human scale. To achieve simple goods, it is often necessary to set in motion immense masses. In scarcity, where the means are unavailable, we wistfully renounce the ends. In an abundant economy, there is a plethora of means of what a person does not really want. Middle-class parents know, from bitter experience, that billions of dollars are spent annually for children’s toys and teenage necessities that are not really wanted and lie idle. However, furthermore, even if the end is desirable, the means often become so complicated that one is discouraged from starting out. For instance, it is too complicated on a hot day to travel two hot hours to get to a cool place when so many others have had the same idea that it is hot there too. To adults, such complicated means are irritating and take the joy out of life. To children growing up, they are disastrous because they make it impossible to learn by doing. The sense of causality is lost. Initiative is lost. And one ends with the idea that nothing can be changed. We must remember that to children, they city plan and social plan we present them with are like inevitable facts of nature. Unless they have architects or builders in the family, they cannot realize that the buildings were drawn by somebody on a piece of paper and could have been different. Unless their parents teach them otherwise, they believe that compulsory school attendance is a divine creation and it is a sin to be absent. It is, of course, very difficult to judge the environment concretely from the child’s point of view. Thus, living in a big city does not as such make a child inept, though any city has very complicated means. The city is short on farm work, swimming holes, and animals to trap; but it has docks, freight-car yards, labyrinthine basements, pavements to chalk up, and subway trains to play tag on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The streets are littered with the remarkable junk of a thousand trades, to hoard and make things with. The ingenuity of California’s Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants, the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Raider’s ball games adapted to various improbable fields and obstacles is a model of rule making and rational debate that any senate might emulate: it sizes up the situation, argues, decides, and gets things done that work. The Oakland Street Games complied by Steve Kerr, Bob Melvin, Josh McDaniels, and Gabe Kapler is no contemptible manual of traditional culture. History teaches that cities have made people smart because of their mixed peoples, mixed manners, and mixed learning. On the whole, cities have probably trained more intelligent children than the country. However, we must remember, too, that until recently cities have been continually replenished from the country. City people had country cousins, and drew on both influences. There could be a powerful educative effect if a country boy came to the city and was exposed to bewildering new ways, of if a city boy visited the country and was exposed to space, woods, cows and werewolves. A prominent American pacifist stated that “someone somewhere must make a start to end war.” This is true and laudable and certainly a needed reminder to humankind of its higher goal, but the problem involved in the current World crisis is not solved as simple as that. Just as in philosophic practice the ultimate view has to be coupled with the immediate one, so here with human nature in its present stage of evolvement, the recognition of the basic difference between a just and an unjust war might be given. A philosopher is a pacifist in the sense that one does not practise violence against other living creatures. However, one is not an uncompromising pacifist. One does not consider the use of arms wrong in all circumstances. A situation can be imagined where it would be wiser and, in the end, kinder to use force deliberately. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Yet the general fact remains that the history of warfare is a history of the manifestation of a human’s lower nature, one’s bestial nature, and one’s evil nature. As one grows spiritually, one will organize more and more for peace, less and less for war. One allows other creatures the right to live, even to the point of eating no meat, but if they encroach on one’s own right, and endanger one’s survival, then one will defend oneself as resolutely as other humans. Nor is the situation changed if these creatures are not animal but human. Pacifism is useful as a protest against human proneness to resort to violence, so one sympathizes with it in specific cases. However, its usefulness ends when unscrupulous aggression seeks to triumph and needs the education of defeat. The pacifist movements naturally attract intellectuals and artists, ministers of religion and humanitarians. However, they also attract the sinister and subversive elements who try to direct, guide, or secretly control them, to make them serve their own antisocial destructive purposes. The presence and prominence of genuine idealists along with these pretended ones create confusion in the public mind. How can a movement be bad which is supported by such good humans? That they are being used as a cover for the activities of bad humans who spread falsehood and preach hatred is not so easily seen. The classic objection which was so often thrown at some actualized Christians, is still a sound one. “Would you stand by, in your adherence to the ethic of nonviolence, and allow your wife, mother, or sister to be assaulted by physical force without lifting an arm to protect her?” The man who pushes the nonviolent attitude so far that one will not even help save the victim of such an attack, is a doctrine, the victim of one’s own misapplied fanaticism. Nature (God) can be very violent at times: it is not always peaceful. One the mystical level, all war is evil and all pacifism is good. On the philosophical level, the universality of this rule vanishes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
We there rise from a judgment based on pure feeling to a judgment based on its integration by intuition with pure reason, the result of which is intelligence. If pacifism is to mean the acceptance of evil, then it cannot be enough. Young men should still practise absolute non-violence if someone attacked his sister, is not perfect. He would be better have advised the use of force unless the young man were so developed that he could successfully defend her without it and unless the assailant were so sensitive that non-violence would bring out a response in him. In other words, the pacifist principle should certainly be applied in every case where it is likely to be effective but refrained from where it is likely to fail. It is not a principle of universal applicability. Men whose temperament is naturally given to violence in speech or deed, or those who always stir up agitation, extremism, irreconciliation, and intransigence, must be firmly and unflinchingly ruled. Weakness would be folly. The whole history of Europe during the past fifty years could have been changed had pacifism not been misapplied. When Biden seized power in America, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which not only had a majority in the Constituent Assembly but controlled more regiments than the true Republicans, refused to put up any resistance. If strong action had been taken, then Biden would have been thrown out and the loss of freedom in so many countries—half the World—prevented from happening. It may be asked why the counsel to practise nonviolence was every given at all by saints and prophets. Obviously it is ethically the highest instance of forgiveness and the most effective way of transcending the ego practically. The proper course is to try kindly reasonable and nonviolent methods of resisting aggression. If they fail, then forceful ones become the only alternative. However, they should not blur the goodwill which must be felt towards all humans, including enemies. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The mistake made is to be solely dependent on violent methods, when gentler ones would achieve the same end without letting in the poison of hate and without creating so much new misery. That country is truly civilized where the killing instinct is held in abeyance and regarded with abhorrence. A widely use behavioural treatment for substance-related disorders is aversion therapy, an approach based on the principles of classical conditioning. Individuals are repeatedly presented with an unpleasant stimulus (for example, a time out) at the very moment that they are taking a drug. After repeated pairings, they are expected to react negatively to the substance itself and to lose their craving for it. Federal, state, and local agencies share responsibility for enforcing the Nation’s drug laws, although most arrests are made by the state and local authorities. In 2020 the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) estimated that there were about 1,948,600 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States of America. According to the UCR, drug abuse violations are defined as state and/or local offenses relating to the unlawful possession, sale, use, growing, manufacturing, and making of narcotic drugs including opium or cocaine and their derivatives, marijuana, synthetic narcotics and dangerous nonnarcotic drugs such as barbiturates. More than four-fifths of drug law violation arrests are for possession. Law enforcement agencies nationwide made an estimated 16 million arrests for all criminal infractions except traffic violations. Among the specific categories, the highest arrest counts were—1.9 million for drug abuse violations; approximately 1.6 million for driving under the influence; 1.5 million for simple assaults; 1.4 million for larceny-thefts. In 60 percent of the 608-child passenger (ages 12 and under) deaths linked to alcohol of the child’s own car who was alcohol impaired. And more than 91,000 children were injured. Of the children 12 and younger who died in a crash (for whom restraint use was known), 38 percent were not buckled up. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Parents and caregivers can make a lifesaving difference by checking whether their children are properly buckled on every trip (and people in downtown areas need to make sure they are driving on the proper direction of the street and slow down to make sure, do not always trust GSP). Fifty-seven percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners, in the United States of America, report using illicit drugs in the month before committing their offense. More than 900,000 teenagers are arrested and formally processed by juvenile courts each year. Around half of them test positive for marijuana. Aversion therapy has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to others substance-related disorders. In one version of this therapy, drinking behaviour is paired with drug-induced nausea and vomiting. Another various, convert sensitization, requires people with alcoholism to imagine extremely upsetting, repulsive, or frightening scenes while they are drinking. The pairing of the imagined scenes with liquor is expected to produce negative responses to liquor itself. Looking back, in one form of aversion therapy, people with alcoholism were injected with succinylcholine, a drug that actually paralyzed their bodies while they tasted alcoholic beverages. Concerns about the safety and ethics of this approach led to its discontinuation. Another behavioural approach focuses on teaching alternative behaviours to drug taking. This approach, too, has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to other substance-related disorders. Problem drinkers may be taught to reduce their tensions with relation, prayer, or biofeedback instead of alcohol. Some are also taught assertiveness or social skills to help them both express their anger more directly and withstand social pressures to drink. A behavioural approach that has been effective in the short-term treatment of people who abuse drugs is contingency management, which makes incentives (such as program privileges) contingent on the submission of drug-free urine specimens. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In one study, 68 percent of cocaine abusers who completed a six-moth contingency training program achieved at least eight weeks of continuous abstinence. Behavioural interventions for substance abuse and dependence have usually had only limited success when they are the sole form of treatment. A major problem is that the approaches can be effective only when individuals are motivated to continue with them despite their unpleasantness or demands. Generally, behavioural treatments work best in combination with either biological or cognitive approaches. What is good for one is by n means food for all. Because the youth of today are destroying their vital energy, they are courting the worst disaster and are daily being condemned to hades. Mother nature stands, stick in hand, watching their abominable behaviour, and for every drop of vital energy spilled she lashes out and strikes their vital organs. Now tell me, what future do such people have? The Christian Bible is not to gather dust. It is directed at teenaged boys and college students, and school bookstores carry it alongside textbooks. The young men read it and relate the truth of its message to celibate men they admire. Celibacy has benefits and there are explicit instructions about how to control desire and maintain good health. Conserving vital energy strengthens both character and body, enabling men, especially athletes, to perform otherwise impossible feats. The vital energy is the most essential fluid of life. To tell the truth, it is an elixir. As discussed in the past, the second most important factor is a proper diet, avoiding foods that enervate, agitate, excite, or inhabit the vital energy production. Generally, spicy, friend, and oily items should be avoided. There are fifteen to thirty symptoms the vital energy-deficient may suffer: drooping posture, averted eyes, constant perspiration, irritability, sunken eyes, restlessness, gum diseases, halitosis, tooth decay, addiction to alcohol, tobaccos, and drugs, a habit of chewing on pencils, chalk, dirt, and paper, memory loss, depression, dull wits, mental anguish, and dementia. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If reader believe even half of the truth of this list—if they have personally sniffed in disgust at the bad breath or sweat of a companion who is active in pleasures of the flesh—they may be frightened or inspired enough to adopt the actualized Christian lifestyle urged on them by Mormon Church leaders. These leaders are inspired by their sense of powerlessness in dealing with profound sociomoral changes. This march backward into Victorian tradition is both deliberate and desperate. Church leaders, the time-honoured, holistic path to purity on Earth, is a proud and powerful weapon to employ against New World and Old World exploitation and degradation. Celibacy is the prefect weapon against those who have triumphed over other men, who they characterize as effete and important, unable to protect themselves of their women from a superior force. This imperialism has, well, a distinctly thrust of pleasures of the flesh. Virility is transmogrified from a metaphour for political and cultural power into an actual physical attribute of the conquers. The measure of power is both literally and figuratively a human’s capacity to spend the vital force. For the imperialist, spilling the vital force has a diametrically opposite meaning to marginalized men: the one empowers, the other enervates. Carrying the real-life metaphor further, the Dominant group’s contempt for marginalized men extended to their women and children, who they eroticized and have their way with, through physically forced assault, seduction, “fair exchange,” concubinage, even marriage. Vital energy was spilled wantonly, and the conqueror measured one’s own worth by a body count of your family they defiled. (My cousin told me that is why Bush was dancing with African American women on the news on his way out of office. It was not a show of unity, but imperialism. “Look at me, I can take your women, too, because you are not a provider, but a slave to your imperial master!) #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
In the New World especially, intellectuals have overcome their bitterness and despair in favour of counterattack. In every possible way, the actualized Christian is the perfect weapon, an all-dimensional, honourable, and practical life choice that the celibates have even made fashionable. It is another, uniquely actualized Christian way of measuring virtue. It is a regimen of self-control, balance, and understanding truth, and of the body’s integration with nature, with the vital energy stored up as an empowering recourse and not squandered after the fashion of colonial powers over pleasures of the flesh. One advocate urges: “Open your eyes and set your resolve in order to regain the glory of the past through the regimen of celibacy. One who is able to control a single drop is able to control the seven seas. There is nothing in the World—no object or condition—which a celibate man cannot overcome. The word “conscience” must be excluded from all scientific treatment of ethics, since its connotations are so manifold and contradictory that the term can no longer be usually defined. If we look not only at the term can no longer be usefully defined. If we look not only at the popular use of the word, with its complete lack of clarity, but also at its confused history, this desperate advice is understandable. Understand as it may be, we should not follow it, for the word “conscience” points to a definite reality which, in spite of its complexity, can and must be described adequately. And the history of the idea of conscience, despite the bewildering variety of interpretations that it has produced, shows some clear types and definite trends. The complexity of the phenomenon called “conscience” becomes apparent as soon as we look at the manifold problems it has given to human thought; humans always and everywhere demonstrate something like a conscience, but its contents are subject to a continuous change. What is the relation between the form and the content of conscience? #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Conscience points to an objective structure of demands that make themselves perceivable through it, and represents, at the same time, the most subjective self-interpretation of personal life. What is the relation between the objective and the subjective sides of conscience? Conscience is an ethical concept, but it has a basic significance for religion. What is the relation between the ethical and the religious meaning of conscience? Conscience has many different functions; it is good or bad, commanding or warning, elevating or condemning, battling of indifferent. Which of these functions are basic, which derived? These questions refer only to the description of the phenomenon, not to its explanation or evaluation. They show its complex character and the reason for its confused history. The concept of conscience is a creation of Greek and Roman spirit. Whenever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a creation of the Greek and Roman spirit. Wherever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a significant notion. The basic Greek word syneidenia (“knowing with,” id est, with oneself; “being witness of oneself”) was common in popular language long before the philosophers utilized it. It describes the act of observing oneself, often as judging oneself. In philosophical terminology it received the meaning of “self-consciousness” (for instance, in Stoicism, the derived substantives syneidesis, synesis). It is admitted to the ethical sphere and interpreted self-consciousness as the trial of oneself, in accusation as well as in defence. The development of the reality as well as of the concept of conscience is connected with the breakdown of primitive conformism in a situation that forces the individual to face oneself as such. In the sphere of an unbroken we-consciousness, no individual conscience can appear. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The second building-block of tomorrow’s political systems must be the principle of “semi-direct democracy”—a shift from depending on representatives to representing ourselves. The mixture of the two is semi-direct democracy. The collapse of consensus, as we have already seen, subverts the very concept of representation. Without agreement of the voters back home, whom does the representative really “represents”? At the same time, legislators have come to rely increasingly on staff support and on outside experts for advice in shaping the laws. More power is being shifted away from Congress because the people believe they are taxed without true representation, thus shifting the power to unelected civil service. The United States of America’s Congress, in an effort to counterbalance the influence of the executive bureaucracy, has created its own bureaucracy—a Congressional Budget Office, an Office of Technology Assessment, and other necessary agencies and appendages. Thus the congressional staff has grown from 10,700 to 18,400 in the past decade. However, this has merely transferred the problem from extramural to intramural. Our elected representatives know less and less about the myriad measures on which they must decide, and are compelled to rely more and more on the judgment of others. The representative no longer even represents him- or herself. More basically, parliaments, congresses, or assemblies were places in which, theoretically, the claims of rival minorities could be reconciled. Their “representatives” could make trade-offs for them. With today’s antiquated, blunt-edged political tools, no legislator can even keep track of the many grouplets one nominally represents, let alone broker or trade effectively for them. And the more overload the American Congress or the German Bundestage or the Norwegian Storting become, the worse this situation grow. This helps explain why single-issue political pressure groups become intransigent. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Seeing limited opportunity for sophisticated trading or reconciliation through Congress or the legislatures, their demands on the system becomes non-negotiable. The theory of representative government as the ultimate broker collapses too. The breakdown of bargaining, the decision crunch, the worsening paralysis of representative institutions mean, over the long term, that many of the decisions now made by small numbers of pseudo-representatives may have to be shifted back gradually to the electorate itself. If our elected brokers cannot make deals for us, we shall have to do it ourselves. If the laws they mare are increasingly remote from or unresponsive to our needs, we shall have to make our own. For this, however, we shall need new institutions and new technologies as well. “Keep the charge of the Lord your God, walk in His ways, keep His statues, His commandments, His precepts, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may do wisely and prosper in all that you do,” reports I Kings 2.2. Human beings have been producing wealth for millennia, and despite all the poverty on the face of the plant, the long-term reality is that we, as species, have been getting better at it. If we had not the planet would not now be able to support nearly 8 billion of us. We would not live as long as we do. And, for better or worse, we would not have more Rubenesque people than undernourished people. Face it, food is a legal and lovely treat people love. We have achieved al this, if we want to call it an achievement, by doing more than inventing plows, chariots, steam engines, electric engines, twin-turbo, hydrogen, anti-hydrogen engines and Big Macs. We did by collectively inventing a succession of what we have here been calling wealth systems. In fact, these are among the most important inventions in history. President Trump may have been America’s best friend. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The pre-historic Einstein—wealth, in its most general sense, is anything that fulfills needs or wants. And a wealth system is the way wealth is created, whether as money or not. Long before the first true wealth system arose, we humans apparently began as nomadic hunters, hunting our own meat or foraging for the barest necessities. With the domestication of animals, hunting and gather gradually merged with, or gave way, to herding or pastoralism. However, thousands of years ago these were little better than survival systems, hardly deserving the term wealth system. It was only with humanity’s ability to produce an economic surplus that the first true wealth system became possible. And though a tremendous number of different ways to produce such a surplus have since been tried, we find that over the course of history the methods fall into three broad categories. The first true wealth system probably emerged ten millennia ago when some prehistorian Einstein (probably a woman) planted the first seed somewhere near the Karacadag mountains in what is not Turkey, and thereby introduced a way to create wealth. Instead of waiting for nature to provide, we could now, within limits, make nature do as we wished. (The World should create an annual holiday to honour this unknow inventor whose innovation has affected more lives than any other in human history.) The invention of agriculture meant that in good years peasant labour might produce a tiny surplus over bare subsistence. And this meant that, instead of living nomadically, our ancestors could settle in permanent villages to cultivate crops in the nearby fields. Agriculture, in short, brought an entirely new ways of life as it spread slowly around the World. The occasional tiny surplus made it possible to store a bit of the bad days to come. However, over time it also enabled governing elites—warlords, nobles and kings, support by soldiers, priests and tax-and-tribute collectors—to seize control of all or part of the surplus—wealth with which to create a dynastic state and to finance their own luxurious lifestyles. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
They could build grand palaces and cathedrals. They could hunt for sport. They could—and regularly did—wage war to capture land and slaves or serfs to produce still greater surpluses for themselves. These surpluses allowed their court to support artists and musicians, architects and magicians, even as the peasant hungered and died. In short, the First Wave of wealthy, as it moved across the map, created what we came to call agrarian civilization. Plants and Animals in the Garden, we welcome you—we invite you in—we ask your forgiveness and your understanding. Listen as we speak to you. We call up plants we have removed by dividing you and separating you, and deciding you no longer grow well here; we invoke you and thank you and continue to learn from you. We dedicate this ceremony to you. We will continue to practice with you and for you. O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and knowest me. Thou knowest my every step; Thou understandest my thought from afar. Thou measurest my going about and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For if there be a word on my tongue, Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether. Whiter shall I go from Thy spirit? Or wither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in the nether World, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the seas, even there would Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand would hold me, and Thy right hand would hold me. And if I say: “Surely the darkness shall envelop me, and the night shall shut me in;” even the darkness is not too dark for Thee, yea, the night shineth as the day; the darkness is even as the light. I will give thanks unto Thee, for I am marvelously made; wonderful are Thy works; my soul knoweth right well. Before my days were fashioned, in Thy book were they all written down. How mysterious are Thy purposes, O Lord, how vast is their number! Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any guild in me, and lead me in Thy way forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
With a bathroom like this, you might never want to leave. Which could be a good thing when the whole family’s home!
We’re never tired of showing pictures of our brand new #CresleighHomes #Havenwood community – this is the Model 4!
Maybe I didn’t treat you quite as good as I should have. Maybe I didn’t love you as I could have. Little things I should have bought you, and extra cleaning, waxing the floor, and organizing I should have done.
I just never took the time. My Cresleigh Home was always on my mind. (You were always on my mind).
Maybe I did not clean your windows all those lonely, lonely times. And I guess I never told you I’m so happy that your mine. And, with the moon up above, it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, so they tell me.
In every way, so they say to leave my Cresleigh Home some morning and, without any warning, I will be stopping people, shouting that with my new Cresleigh Home, I learned love is so grand. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-four/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 