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All Love is the Love of Some Degree of Beauty
The love of God is the force that holds the universe together. Thus, it is asserted that love is a single principle permeating all things, from the material through the spiritual, and that this principle is the dynamic factor in cosmic change. There is no difference in essence between the attraction the elements have for one another and the forms of love that exist in human beings. Love, shame, gratitude, contempt, jealousy, and other affective states are experiences frequently and vividly in everyday social life. These states often include a psychic excitement expressed through bodily gestures, and, therefore, may seem to be too private and psychological to bear much relevance for sociology or to be amenable to sociological analysis. The sociological perspective allows us, however, to demonstrate how seemingly individual behavior and experience are shaped by social features, culture shapes the occasion, meaning, and expression of affective experience. Love, pity, indignation, and other sentiments are socially patterns of feelings, gestures, and meaning. One must lose oneself in order to find oneself, but in so doing, one finds that what one has really discovered is God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Differences in feeling, action, and meaning among sorrow, guilt, and love are socially created, and that is how we learn enduring societal relationships. Social life produces emergent dimensions of emotion that resist reduction to properties inherent in the human organism. One strong tradition takes the conscious feeling to be the emotion. Thus, a passion of the soul is perception, a conscious state, in which the soul is passively affected, as in sense perception, but in which what is perceived is attributed to the soul itself, rather than some physical body. Emotion is merely a sensual feeling, but is refined by communication and sympathetic imagination in primary-group relationships. Thus, love is a sentiment, while lust is not; resentment is, but not rage; the fear of disgrace or ridicule is, but not terror. Shame originates through the organizing influence of social processes upon arousal sensations, bodily gestures, and other emotional elements. If similar sentiments are found in different societies, their origin should be sought in similarities among social relationships, rather than in innate human nature. The one and only way to know what love, happiness, joy, and remorse is, is to actually experience these feelings. Gratitude, for example, supplements exchange and reciprocity relationships everywhere as a powerful means of social cohesion that effects the return benefit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Thus, the emotion is only cognitions which give rise to it and its expressions, whether voluntary or involuntary. A socially emergent dimension of affect is the prolonged time span of love, hatred, resentment, and most other sentiments. In enduring social relationships, previous interaction and anticipations of the relationship’s future course influence feeling. These social affects transcend the single situation, while rage, surprise, terror are confined to the duration of intense arousal and its transient stimulus. In contrast, a feeling like love or hatred reflects the developing properties of the social relationship over time. The significant sociological problem here is how changes in the social relationships are linked with shifts in the associated feelings. Sometimes when we say what we are feeling, we are actually saying what we are thinking. For example, “I feel that you are not hearing me” is a statement of perception or opinion, rather than of actual feeling, a statement that is debatable (unlike a straightforward statement of real feeling). If you cannot figure out what emotion(s) you are feeling, then give data about what sensations you are feeling: “There is a good fragrance in here” or “My heart is fluttering” or “I feel like a light just turned on in my head.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Many people suffer by shutting themselves off from their own depths. The structural coherence of feeling, gesture, meaning, and occasion for jealousy or indignation is maintained by social, not psychological, forces. The structure or pattern of jealously, for example, is socially constructed and meaningful. Jealously can be accompanied by diverse psychological dynamics and motives across individuals. One person may be mainly angry at the rival, another person may fear losing his or her partner, while yet another’s jealousy has to be prompted by pressure from concerned friends. The structural coherence of jealousy does not derive from these diverse psychological factors, but from social forces, such as how people respond to expressions of jealousy and how the course and meaning of jealousy are socially defined. Faithfulness to a relationship gradually supplements the psychic forces that originally brought the relationship about. These initial feelings and motives gradually weaken, but in spite of all variety of origin, the original psychic states attain, in the form of faithfulness, a certain similarity. Even a relationship begun for extrinsic reasons develops its own faithfulness which, in turn, gives rise to deeper and more adequate feeling states. That is how that popular term “catch feelings” came to be. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Truly fulfilling relations encompass empathy, vulnerability, and capacity for emotional literacy. The true power and resolve of relationships also comes from their authenticity, their capacity to anchor themselves in real integrity. Emotion is the modifiability of feeling, expression, and meaning in response to social interaction and cultural norms and beliefs. Love, guilt, and compassion are not fixed in innate human nature. Instead, we identify and act upon them in terms of social events, relationships, and values. Psychologists usually conceive of emotion as acting through the person, motivating and directing his or her behavior and experiences. In addition, that activation process may work mainly in the opposite direction, from consciousness and ongoing action toward feeling and gesture. The social person is sentient, reflecting upon feelings and sometimes changing feeling about how they are interpreted. For example, we may summon up feelings of love, or strive to diminish their intensity. We can also try to mobilize love in another person, directing our gestures to shape their feelings. There is a deeper life for humanity, a life in which responsibility and freedom are connected, a life in which happiness not the foundation of what we have, but in what we fundamentally are. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
On a larger, historical scale, love and other sentiments change in how they are expressed, where they are appropriate, and what they mean culturally. These social levels of change in feeling and expression are irreducibly independent from the physiological dynamics of emotion, and are an appropriate and important subject for sociological explanation. Emotion is activity and reactivity of the tissues and organs innervated by the autonomic nervous system. An emotion can occur without its typical overt expressions. One can be happy, or feeling love, or excited, or overjoyed, or even angry without anyone else even knowing it. Thus, it seems that the emotion itself is something inner which may or may not issue in overt behavior. Each of your emotions is worth getting to know very well—its nature, its purpose, its expression, its containment, its values, your history with it, your use and misuse of it. Even plants have emotions. I have two potted trees that have been touching for eight years, I move one of them, it took a month, but the other started leaning towards its mate. “And blessed at thou because thou hast established a church among this people; and they shall be established, and they shall be my people. Yeah, blessed is this people who are willing to bear my name (God); for in my name shall they be called; and they are mine” (Mosiah 26.17-18). #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
That was the Straw that Broke the Camel’s Neck!
Newcomers may have been prodded by dreams of self-betterment. They did not always provide for others or for the justice necessary between persona and peoples. Social movements are organized collective manifestations of issues for which people have considerable concern. Movements deliberately attempt to promote or resist change in a group, society, or World order of which they are a part. They do so through a variety of means, not excluding violence, revolution, or withdrawal into Utopian communities. Depending upon the degree of correspondence between the goals of a movement and the value orientation of the observers, a movement can be heroic or despicable, on the side of the angels or in the league with the devil. Some movements are more dramatic than others; some are more successful than others; and some are more significant than others in terms of the range and depth of their consequences. However, seldom are they bland or without controversy. Rarely do they not reflect the ongoing dialectic between the individual and society. Hardly ever do they not demonstrate the relativity of belief systems and the importance of human agency or social action in the ebb and flow of social life. Social movements can function as an important bridge for understanding the relation between the individual and society, between structure and process, and between psychology and sociology. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
People power is one of the most important resources movements need in order to advance their interests. If a movement is to make headway in its goal attainment efforts, it must reach out, make contact with, and secure potential participants, and then transform at least some of the new recruits into committed members or devotees. Father gives meaning to the environment in which they (the participants) live. Complexity, confusion, hopelessness, and purposelessness are changed into simple understanding, peace, happiness, and a faith in the abstract principles embodied in the person of Father. (He thus) provides an escape from a tortuous mental confusion caused by complex, conflicting circumstances. He gives meaning to the individual life and to the World. However, Individuals who are seen as being especially susceptible to the appeals of movements on the radical right and left are usually dogmatic, highly prejudice, and insecure. The submission to an external cause or authority compensates for the feelings of self-inadequacy, and the desire to escape from an unwanted self. The permanent misfits can find salvation only in complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
By renouncing individual will, judgement, and ambition, and dedicating all their powers to the service of an external cause, people involved with movements are lifted off the restless treadmill which can never lead them to fulfillment. Their moral failing often stems from their own wounded vanity, and perhaps from their well-grounded fear that someone or something has indeed successfully unmasked their pretensions. The underlying participation in various contemporary movements is a collective search for identity. It is a search symptomatic of mass society’s failure to generate and sustain meaningful symbols and anchorages, which are seen as the functions of rituals. These people are demanding that society guarantee each individual a sense of personal worth and dignity. Movement participants are seen as those individuals who lack a series of institutional affiliations and group loyalties. In contrast, those people who are well integrated into kinship groups, cohesive local communities, and various intermediate associations are less susceptible to the appeals of social movements. Readiness to participate thus comes from an absence of those conditions that integrate people into the system and constrain them from involvement. Participants in such movements hypothetically meets the previously isolated participants’ needs for social affiliation, a sense of belongingness, and group identity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
The belief that one’s life situation is largely a matter of fate or destiny has also been discussed in relation to movement participation. It is hypothesized that subjective powerlessness or little internal control renders the person susceptible to movement appeals and participation. It has also been hypothesized that a strong sense of personal control or system blame, is more likely to lead to movement participation, particularly when the movement is political in orientation. A riotous husband, or a loose wife, has an easy opportunity, assisted by means of the persecution, to rid themselves of one who is a check to their vices. When the inquisitors have taken umbrage against an innocent person, all expedients are used to facilitate one’s condemnation; false oaths and testimonies are employed to prove the accused to be worthy of torture and sacrificed to the bigoted revenge. When making a martyr, people involved in the movement pretend to wish the individual well and act like they are advising one well; and pretended kind hints. If the individual is mute, they will shut that individual up without light, or some other necessity to cause harm; and if that individual declares innocence, they torment one till one either dies with pain or confess oneself guilty. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
As an important determinant of movement susceptibility is the frustration or tension that supposedly results from status dissonance or inconsistency. The more frequently acute status inconsistencies occur within a population, the greater will be the proportion of that population willing to support programs of social change, even if it is harms innocent people. Some people are, as odd as this sounds, still seeking retribution for the Iberian Conquest of America. From 1492 to 1518, Spanish and Portuguese explores opened up vast parts of Asia and the Americas to European knowledge. In some of the bloodiest chapters in recorded history, the Spanish nearly exterminated the native peoples of the Caribbean islands, toppled and plundered the great inland empires of the Aztec and Incas in Mexico and Peru. Within a single generation of Christopher Columbus’s death in 1506, Spanish conquistadores explored, claimed, and conquered most of South America (except Brazil), Central America, and Southern parts of North America from Florida to California. Led by audacious explorers and military leaders, and usually accompanied by enslaved Africans, they established the authority of Spain and Catholicism over an area that dwarfed their homeland in size and population. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
They were motivated by religion, growing pride of nation, and dreams of personal enrichment. “We came here,” explained one Spanish foot soldier in Cortes’s legion, “to serve God and the king, and also to get rich.” In two bold and bloody strokes, the Spanish overwhelmed the ancient civilizations of the Aztec and Incas. In two bloody strokes, the Spanish overwhelmed the ancient civilizations of the Aztecs and Incas. In 1519, Hernando Cortes set out with 600 soldiers from coastal Veracruz and marched over rugged mountains to attack Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico City), the capital of Montezuma’s Aztec empire. At its height, centuries before, the ancient city in the Valley of Mexico had contained perhaps 200,000 people, but in 1521, following two years of tense relations between the Spanish and the Aztecs, it fell before Cortes’s assault. The Spanish use of horses and firearms provided an important advantage; so did a murderous smallpox epidemic in 1520 that felled thousands of Aztecs. Of course, Puritan Protestantism forcefully shaped much of early America and indirectly influences it still, but millions do not recognize the ethos and many reject it. God exists within and also beyond our World. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
The past is done. We are supposed to learn from it so not to repeat it. Trying to make one individual pay for the sins of many is insane. Also, if you do not like your own country, you are welcome to leave. “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3.13). Thanksgiving is a day that should be celebrated. It is a day of giving thanks to God for his goodness and his enduring love. It is also a day that we can take time from our busy lives to come together with our families and have a meal. The federal government gives people time off school, and sometimes work so they can go home, eat and bond with their families. Family, gratitude, and thankfulness are the true meaning of Thanksgiving. Put aside differences. Families can be wonderful and enjoyable, focus on the aspects of your family which you are grateful. Have some fun. Maybe you can start a new tradition like baking a cake together, or sharing happy stories. And eat some turkey, but “No legs for me, you can never tell where a bird’s been walkin’” says Archie Bunker. You are children of God, “I covenant with thee that thou shalt have eternal life; and thou shalt serve me and go forth in my name, and shalt gather together my people” (Mosiah 26.20). #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
That there is an Invasion of my Privates
A new high in lowness. Prejudice is a social attitude propagated among the public by exploiting class for the purpose of stigmatizing some group as inferior so that the exploitation of either the group itself or its resources or both may be justified. People are generally exploited in hard economic times or competitive economic situations or in periods of major socioeconomic change—bringing special trouble; and corporations or individuals may have profited (commercially, agriculturally, economically, legally, and so on) at the expense of an underrepresented group or individual. The structure would produce the kind of alienation from human identity (alienation of human from human) that is expressed not only in economic terms and not only among the subjugated classes. The person is also estranged from the essential source of identity and if purpose for the human species by making one concerned for their safety and unable to trust former connections or new ones, as they tend to be frustrating and unsatisfying. Scapegoating (the practice of singling out any party for unmerited negative treatment or blame) is used to explain the flow of hostility toward the underrepresented individual under conditions of economic stress. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
A wishing of misfortune upon an individual, is one step short of hating them. Ill will can manifest emotions like contempt, jealousy, envy, and schadenfreude (the emotion of taking pleasure in others’ suffering). When one is carrying ill will toward another, they may not look aggressive, but feel it and emanate it (however subtly), reducing the target to something less than human. Relative deprivation is another oppressive method used by oppressors. They make sure the person has a lack of resources to sustain the diet, lifestyle, activities and amenities that the individual is accustomed to or that is widely encouraged or approved in the society to which they belong. That makes the person not only feel alienated, but as if they not worthy because no matter what they do the individual cannot seem to advance in life. So, an individual is not only enduring poverty, but also facing social exclusions. Relative deprivation has important consequences for both behavior and attitudes, including fear, stress, political attitudes, and participation in collective action. People generally operate so as to maximize their own self-esteem. The individual’s sense of personal mastery over life circumstances is one important ingredient for the achiever. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
The sense of low self-control is generated by extensive prejudice and discrimination and is a significant element in mobility behavior. One can have control over themselves and gain empowerment by having faith in God, and putting actions behind what one believes in. Demonstrate your faith by knowing that you are a child of God and no matter what circumstances you are facing, you are still worthy of life and worthy of achieving your dreams. God will open doors and create new opportunities and you will have the strength to do what you could not always do. God will show you his favor in unusual ways. Find the dreams in your heart, and keep them in mind every day knowing that they will become a reality. Know that God will comfort your souls, and give unto you success and also those who are with you will experience success. God will grant the strength to bear afflictions, whether they be internal or social. Our souls are precious to God and many people have things in common with us and we will eventually be encouraged and empowered in society. There is a natural power that comes from being a human being. Find your voice and authority to exercise the empowerment that you naturally have. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Keep a healthy attitude about life so that you have the requisite competence and clarity to make successful decisions. As we exercise our faith in God, he will lift us up and carry us through all our trials and, ultimately, save us in the celestial kingdom. Do not be sidetracked from achieving your new goals. Harness your faith in God and adopt a healthy lifestyle. The human mind is an exception to otherwise Universal natural laws, as a thing that is conscious, that is capable of good and evil, or that can be an uncaused cause of action. Humans strive to experience their desires, human freedom, and the expressions of the power of God. Patience preserves pace of the mind in the face of injury, suffering, and sadness. It prevents us from being discouraged—from losing courage. The patient person, therefore, possess a great freedom. One is free to stay in course with one’s life and fulfill one’s responsibility, even when things are difficult. Courage enables us to persist firmly against difficulties. The power of the subconscious mind, when it becomes aware of one’s goal, it provides the means to reject a particular characteristic or adopt it, if it is consistent with our goal attainment. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Our natural drive to achieve, along with our urge to move forward and be out front on the issues, tends to appeal to those who are leaders and bearing responsibility for their own visions, goals, objectives, and expected outcomes. Have a willing commitment, communicate with confidence, courage, and obvious intelligence characterized by determination and resilience. People are born with traits that can be cultivated in the direction of leadership. However, there is no doubt that leadership can be cultivated. The characteristics of leadership, necessarily has to have certain decisiveness and confidence comes from knowledge based on studies and training. The fundamental thing is your basic knowledge, the development of your mind, and your ability to apply this knowledge as you go along in life. There are no mistakes in life; there are only lessons. Great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great. With internal discipline there goes together a whole set of moral traits, among others perseverance, conscientiousness, and planning one’s actions. Perseverance enables one to reflect—at length strenuously, and patiently—on some selected issues. This reflection helps to overcome discouragement, apathy, self-indulgence, or laziness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Be mentally awake! Every work – and especially a scholarly one—calls for a rationally thought-out regularity, planned action, correctness, order and harmony, to avoid sliding into chaos. Exactness and conscientiousness is important so one can finish all details without leaving any gaps or bundling, and as such is the opposite of superficiality. Dear God, thank you for all of our blessings and help us to welcome challenges in our lives. Please give us the strength to persevere in them. When we are feeling weak, tired or discouraged, please help us to remember we depend on you, God. God, also please bless this great nation, for its people and government as well. Bless humanity and the beautiful creatures and environment you have created. May we take better care of ourselves and our planet. We ask for forgiveness for any disobedience, laziness of spirit and lack of faith. God remembers the dreams he placed in our heart. Get your passion back and know that things will work out to your favor. God is going to finish what he started. Forgiveness is the economy of the heart. Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits. Bless it be. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The American Public have Become Increasingly Liberal
The American family structure and the distribution of occupational roles has changed significantly since the 1950s. Specifically there has been changes as the increase of the number of women who combine paid employment with more traditional family roles, the increased divorce rates, the decline in fertility, the increase in the age at marriage, and the increase in female educational attainment. With the female employment rate increasing and education confers benefit in the labor market, then progressive families will invest more in girls’ education. However, the increase in female mobility in education and careers has been of such magnitude and importance that they have affected all groups of women irrespective of their experiences and characteristics. Women have an increased desire for the independence that working outside of the house affords. Attitudes towards women’s roles have become liberalized, but sexual harassment and equal pay have still been problems that women face in modern times. Still, because more women are going to work, their roles are changing and they may no longer stay in relationships that are pleasing and that may be why the divorce rate has increased. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
In general, attitudes of the American public have become increasingly liberal. The liberal shift has been a slow, but steady movement at least since 1942. Attitudes, institutional action, legal developments, and public behavior have moved in a consistent direction. Careful tracing of events will show that in government, in the armed forces, on television, on college campuses, and in most public spheres of life, people are more accepting of women and individuals of different ethnic backgrounds. The consistency between general attitudinal changes and macro-level social movement is seductive. However, the United States is also experiencing what is probably the most acute crises in race relations since the end of the Civil War. City after city has suffered racial violence. A spasm of riots has shaken the nation, Colin Kaepernick has decided to take a knee during the National Anthem. People have become more militant as they no longer have civilized leaders encouraging them to calm down, get an education, and respect people in positions of authority, and that even goes for people who are in positions of authority, as they no longer show respect others higher up in the hierarchy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Many have resorted to aiming themselves and the trade papers have carried accounts of guerrilla warfare. In several cities gunfights have broken out, and mass shootings in churches, nightclubs, concerts, and in schools has taken place. Concurrently with these dramatic events the attitudes of Americans toward integration and acceptances have continued to increase almost as though nothing was happening. Perhaps Americans, given their increasingly liberal attitudes, interpreted the violent acts as justified expressions of rage. This interpretation might then have led many Americans to the conclusion that, to prevent further disruption, a more integrated society was a social necessity. And that is why Barack Obama was elected president, it is why Jerry Brown has been Mayor of California four times, and the very reason Kevin Johnson, with his shady past, was elected the first Black mayor of Sacramento. Some of these positions may not have been earned by the people elected. However, with Americans becoming more liberal, so have the communities, like Sacramento, California building a $600 million sports complex with no parking, which 50 percent of the complex was paid for by tax payers, at a time when there is a housing crisis in California. People have also complained that the many reporters are acting unlawfully and as if they are on drugs and many of this would not have been tolerated in the past when people were more conservative. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
A Universe may form a scale for a population at a given time and may not at a later time. Such a change in time would tend to indicate that a change is one of kind, rather than degree. Still, a different issue is raised by the response pattern to the integration in neighborhoods. Large cities have become increasingly diverse, and there is a widespread of acceptance of residential integration. Nonetheless, neighborhoods that were once mostly populated by Whites are seeing White Flight. Whites are moving to more upscale communities. With the houses costing $350,000.00 to $500,000.00, White must be making a lot of money to afford to more to real suburban communities where the houses costing $600,000.00 to $1 million and more. Overall, the trends in general attitudes concerning gender roles and race relations apparently have moved in an egalitarian, liberal direction. Perhaps these shifts are but a part of a general societal trend toward greater tolerance. If you consider only the negatives, you will be discouraged and doubt will creep in, keeping you from God’s best. When you focus on God instead of your circumstances, doubt, fear, anxiety, and negativity do not have a change. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Hostility is probably the most common expression of aggression, ranging from mildly edgy to snarling. Being on the receiving end of hostility can be not only very unpleasant but also sometimes scary, because we know that whoever is delivering it has us in their sights and out of their heart, with attack weaponry ready for the reloading. We need community leaders to be shinning stars and to promote that community members keep the peace, protect their communities, get their education, and act responsible. When we magnify God instead of magnifying your difficulties, faith rises in your hearts. That faith will keep your fully persuaded that God will make a way, even though you do not see a way. And the beauty is that God will show up and do amazing things! Is not a soul at this time as precious unto God as a soul will be at the time of his coming? Is it not as necessary that the plan of redemption should be made known unto this people as well as unto their children? Is it not as easy at this time for the Lord to send his angel to declare these glad tidings unto us as unto our children, or after the time of his coming? Lord, please forgive our unworthiness, and remember our families, friends, and community in your mercy. May the Lord bless your soul, and receive you at the last day into his kingdom, to sit down in peace. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Unconscious Does Not Lie
Particular attention has been directed toward determining the consequences of various types of communication on the attitudes of those receiving messages since social psychology has begun to treat attitudes as dependent variables. For some, powerful propaganda is seen as having the capability of molding opinion. An interpretive problem was introduced by a significant number of studies reporting that some subjects changed toward the position advocated while other subjects altered their attitudinal positions in the opposite direction. There is no question, according to the theory of social judgment, that after engaging in certain actions we may behave in a certain fashion, the behavior is a part of the totality upon which we can reflect. For example, a prospective patient, who had corresponded with me relative to treatment, finally wrote for an appointment for a certain day. Instead of keeping his appointment, he sent regrets which began as follows: “Owing to foreseen circumstances, I am unable to keep my appointment.” He naturally meant to write unforeseen. He finally came to me months later, and in the course of the analysis, I discovered that my suspicious at the time were justified; there were no unforeseen circumstances to prevent his coming at that time; he was advised not to come to me. The unconscious does not lie. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
Attitudes are constantly shifting and changing as people interact with the attitude object and with their social environment. Attitudes flow from social interaction and evolve in the course of it. In turn, attitudes feed into social interaction and help to guide the interaction process. Attitudes are links between individuals and the various collectivities to which they belong. The formation, expression, and functioning of attitudes simultaneously represents both individual and collective process. The suppression and inversion of affects is useful even in social life. If I am conversing with a person to whom I must show consideration while I should like to address him or her as an enemy, it is almost more important that I should conceal the expression of my affection from that individual than that I should modify the verbal expression of my thoughts. If I address this individual in courteous terms, but accompany them by looks or gestures of hatred and disdain, the effect which I produce upon the person is not very different from what it would have been had I cast my unmitigated contempt into that individual’s face. Above all, then, the censorship bids me suppress my affects, and if I am a master of the art of dissimulation I can hypocritically display the opposite affect—smiling where I should like to be angry, and pretending affection where I should like to destroy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Attitude-behavior relations can be distinguished from most other formulations in terms of the attention one devotes to the concept of action. Behaviors differ in the degree to which they have the character of action. Action is overt behavior that produced some change for the actor. The more public, irreversible, active, and committing the behavior is, the greater the change in produces in the environment and the more real-life consequences it has for the actor. An elderly gentleman was awakened at night by his wife, who was frightened because he laughed so loudly and uncontrollably in his sleep. The man afterwards related that he had the following dream: I lay in my bed, a gentleman known to me came in, I wanted to turn on the light, but I could not; I attempted to do so repeatedly, but in vain. Thereupon my wife got out of bed, in order to help me, but she, too, was unable to manage it; being ashamed of her negligée in the presence of the gentleman, she finally gave it up and went back to her bed; all this was so comical that I had to laugh terribly. My wife said: ‘What are you laughing at, what are you laughing at?’ but I continued to laugh until I woke. The following day the man was extremely depressed, and suffered from a headache: ‘From too much laughter, which shook me up,’ he thought. It is non-trivial actions characterized by active participation, public commitment, and important real-life consequences—that I have in mind as the usual context for significant attitude change. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Analytically considered, the dream looks less comical. In the latent dream-thoughts the gentleman known to him came into the room is the image of death as the great unknown, which was awakened in his mind on the previous day. The old gentleman, who suffers from arteriosclerosis, had good reason to think of death on the day before the dream. The uncontrollable laughter takes the place of the weeping and sobbing at the idea that he has to die. It is the light of life that he is no longer able to turn on. This mournful thought may have associated itself with a failure to effect adult night time intimacy, which he had attempted shortly before this, and in which the assistance of his wife en neglige was of no avail; he realized that he was already on the decline. The dream-work knew how to transform the sad idea of impotence and death into a comic scene and sobbing into laughter. One point may appear obvious: some behaviors are of greater consequence than others for a range of individual dispositions, including attitudes. Nevertheless, if the impact of behavior on attitudes is to be clarified, greater conceptual attention to behavior is to required. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
If attitudes are constantly shifting during the course of action, then the determination of the magnitude of the relationships between the attitude and behavior becomes problematic. I began the psychoanalytic treatment of a boy of fourteen who was suffering from tic convulsive, hysterical vomiting, headache, et cetera, by assuring him that after closing his eyes he would see pictures or idea would occur to him, which he was to communicate to me. He replied by describing pictures. The last impression he had received before coming to me was revived visually in his memory. He had been playing a game of checkers with his uncle, and now he saw the checkerboard before him. He commented on various positions that were favourable or unfavourable, on moves he was not safe to make. He then saw a dagger lying on the checker-board—an object belonging to his father, but which his phantasy laid on the checker-board. Then a sickle was lying on the board; a scythe was added; and finally, he saw the image of an old peasant mowing the grass in front of his father’s house far away. This attitude-action problem was very insightful. Viewing the connection between attitudes and behavior as a dynamic interactional relationship introduces vexing complexities into the design of appropriate research. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
The boy’s conceptualizations seemed closer to reality than the linear determinism that characterizes many alternative formulations. This lead me to discover the meaning of this series of pictures. Disagreeable family circumstances had made the boy excited and nervous. Here was a case of a harsh, irascible father, who had lived unhappily with the boy’s mother, and whose educational methods consisted of reprimands; he had divorced his gentle and delicate wife, and remarried; one day he brought back to the house a young woman as the boy’s new mother. If attitudes change in the course of social action, then we should expect important social events to have an impact on the attitude distributions of those involved in such events. The illness of the four-teen-year-old boy developed a few days later after the substitute mother was brought back to the house. There is no question that the immediate changes in attitude produced by this event were large and significant. The illness was the result of the suppressed rage against his father that had combined these images into intelligible allusions. The material was furnished by a mythological reminiscence. The sickle was that with which Zeus castrated his father; the scythe and the image of the peasant represented Kronos, the violent old man who devours children, and upon whom Zeus wreaks his vengeance is so unfilial a manner. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
Such an analysis reflects a general concern with social change at a micro- or familial level, and the use of attitudinal data in the effort to monitor or assess such change. The level of concerns shifts. The problem now becomes that of determining the interrelationships between aggregated measures of attitude and indices of the behavior of collectivities. The father’s marriage gave the boy an opportunity of returning the reproaches and punishments which the child had once heard his father utter because he played with his genitals (the draught-board; the prohibited moves; the dagger with which could kill one). Masturbation is supposed to be a sin and not to be indulged in, much like pornography. We have here long-impressed memories and their unconscious derivatives which, under the guise of meaningless pictures, have slipped into consciousness by the devious paths opened to them. However, we cannot take dreams literally in a sense that would cause of to take unlawful and adverse reactions, but they can be used as warnings to be more vigilant or show more attention and concern for others. For instance, the Roman Emperor was in the wrong in ordering one of his subjects to be executed because the latter had dreamt that he killed the Emperor. He should have first of all have endeavoured to discover the significance of the man’s dream; most probably it was not what it seemed to be. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
And even if a dream of a different content had actually had this treacherous meaning, it would have still been well to recall the words of Plato—that the virtuous person contents oneself with dreaming of that which the wicked individual does in actual life. I am therefore of the opinion that dreams should be acquitted of evil. Whether any reality is to be attributed to the unconscious wishes, I cannot say. Reality must, of course, be denied to all transitory and intermediate thoughts. If we had before us the unconscious wishes, brought to their final and truest expressions, we should still do well to remember that psychic reality is a special form of existence which must not be confounded with material reality. It seems, therefore, unnecessary that people should refuse to accept the responsibility for the immorality of their dreams. With an appreciation of the mode of functioning of the psychic apparatus, and an insight into the relations between conscious and unconscious, all that is ethically offensive in our dream-life and the life of phantasy for the most part disappears. However, if possible, I still encourage people to try and control their impulses in their dreams because they seem so real that it is possible that one could do things they dream about in real life and discover that one is not dreaming. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Nonetheless, for all practical purposes in judging human character, an individual’s actions and conscious expressions of thought are in most cases sufficient. Actions, above all, deserve to be placed in the front rank; for many impulses which penetrate into consciousness are neutralized by real forces in the psychic life before they find issue in action. Indeed, the reason why they frequently do not encounter any psychic obstacle on their path is because the unconscious is certain of their meeting with resistances later. In any case, it is highly instructive to learn something of the intensively tilled soil from which our virtues proudly emerge. For the complexity of the human character, dynamically moved in all directions, very rarely accommodates itself to the arbitrament of simple alternative, as our antiquated moral philosophy would have it. “My son, do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way; for so was it prepared for them, that if they would look they might live; even so it is with us. The way is prepared, and if we will look we may live forever. And now, my son, see that you take care of these sacred things, yeah, see that you look to God and live. Go unto this people and declare the word, and be sober. My son, farewell (Alma 37.46-47).” #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
The Prisoner’s Dilemma is the Best-Known Game of Strategy
The World is incredible and there are so many amazing opportunities available to a large percentage of people. Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. This may perhaps be surprising, for most people—at least those in the Christian cultural tradition—are likely to think that beliefs in God and in immortality must go together. They are inclined to take it for granted that the main if not the only point of immortality—and sometimes perhaps of God, too—is to provide inordinate rewards and punishments. People tend to resist accepting evidence that contradicts their beliefs. Sometimes however, they have no choice. Eventually, people admit that Ariel the Little Mermaid does not exist. Belief perseverance, the persistence of notions people already accept, is a powerful thing. Motivated to protect self-esteem and avoid feeling foolish for believing incorrectly, people can ignore inconsistencies, make up rational-seeming explanations, reject new evidence, or otherwise justify sticking to their original beliefs. They might be right to do so. The new evidence might be wrong. Beliefs can be wrong, too, though. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
A belief is a probability judgment that links some object or concept to some attribute. The terms object and attribute are used in a generic sense and both terms may refer to any discriminable aspect of an individual’s World. For example, I may believe that cigarettes (an object) are harmful to health (an attribute) or that my quitting smoking (an object) will reduce my capacity to work (an attribute). The content of the belief is defined by the object and attribute in question, and the strength of the belief is defined by the person’s subjective probability that the object-attribute relationship exists (or is true). An attitude is a bipolar evaluative judgement of the object. It is essentially a subjective judgment that I like or dislike the object, that it is good or bad, that I am favorable or unfavorable toward it. Once again, the term object is used in a generic sense. Thus, I may have attitudes toward people (exempli gratia, smokers), institutions (exempli gratia, the Federal Trade Commission), events (exempli gratia, the release of the Surgeon General’s report on smoking), behaviors (exempli gratia, my quitting smoking), outcomes (exempli gratia gaining status in the eyes of my friends), and so on. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
An intention is a probability judgment that links the individual to some action. An intention is also an impulse for an action which has already found approbation, but whose execution is postponed for a suitable occasion. An intention can be viewed as a person’s belief about his or her own performance of a given behavior. Intentions can be general (exempli gratia, I will quit smoking) or specific (exempli gratia, I will not smoke any cigarettes at John’s party tonight), and they vary in intensity. Like other beliefs, intentions are usually measured by obtaining some index of the individual’s subjective probability that he or she will perform the behavior in question. Now, in the interval thus created, sufficient change may take pace in the motive to prevent the intention from coming to execution. It is not, however, forgotten, it is simply revised and omitted. For the case in which a specific behavior is to be predicted, the individual has certain beliefs about the probable consequences of the specific act that are the determinants of the attitude toward that act. In addition, the actor attributes specific behavioral expectations to references groups, individuals, or other social agents. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
The totality of these expectations as perceived by the individual constitute the subjective norm concerning the behavior in question. Thus, a person’s behavior and one’s subjective norm. It is important to emphasize norms and attitudes are predictive of behavioral intentions. Thus, the ability of attitudes to predict behavior is dependent upon the strength of the link between behavioral intentions and behavior. One variable that can have an effect on the strength of the relation between behavioral intentions and behaviors is the time that has elapsed between the measurements of the intentions and the observations of the behaviors. Among the problems involved are the stability of the independent variable (intentions) and the operation of unanticipated situational factors that reduce the relationship between the variables of immediate concern. If I resolve in the morning to carry out a certain intention in the evening, I may be reminded of it several times in the course of the day, but it is not at all necessary that it should become conscious throughout the day. As the time for its execution approaches, it suddenly occurs to me and induces me to make the necessary preparation for the intended actions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
If I go walking and take a letter with me to be posted, it is not at all necessary that I, as a normal, not nervous individual, should carry it in my hand and continually look for a letter-box. As a matter of fact, I am accustomed to put it in my pocket and give my thoughts free rein on my way, feeling confident that the first letter-box will attract my attention and cause me to put my hand in my pocket and draw out the letter. This normal behavior is a formed intention corresponds perfectly with the experimentally produced conduct of a persons who are under a so-called post-hypnotic suggestion to perform something after a certain time. The suggested intension slumbers in the person concerned until the time for its execution approaches. Then it awakes and excites the action. However, other variables can effect the strength of the link between intentions and behavior. First, an individual has to have a high degree of correspondence in the levels of specificity at which both behavioral intention and behavior are measured. Second, this relationship depends upon the degree to which the individual’s behavior is under volitional control. Contextual variables do limit the choices available to the actor. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
There is some evidence that the incorporation of measures of personal normative beliefs (that is, the degree to which individuals feel that they personally should perform the behavior in question) would improve the predictive power of the model. The situational variables may alter the individual’s beliefs about the consequences of the behavior which, in turn, will result in a change in attitude. The situational variables may alter the individual’s normative beliefs which, in turn, will result in a change in the subjective norm. The situational variables reduce the association between behavioral intentions and behavior. Therefore, if the link between behavioral intentions and behavior is tenuous, then a mode that predicts behavioral intentions may be of limited interest to those still concerned with the prediction of behavior. That is why staging a crime and predicting how an individual will respond, then by passing a jury trial and sentencing an individual based on a likelihood that they will respond as predicted is unlawful. People often base predicted behavior on how they would respond and it may not be an accurate prediction for the target because there may be other variables at play which have not be considered. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
Dispositional factors are combined measures of attitudes with measures of personality traits, values, beliefs, or perceived norms in the attempt to explain additional variance in behavioral criteria. Also, the probability of attitudinal change is greater when the individual is unfamiliar and not highly involved with the attitudinal object. Such results suggest that predicting the behavior of the uncertain, uninvolved, and uninformed may require knowledge of more variables than are needed to predict the behavior of those who are certain, involved, and informed. Behavior can be more predictable when one considers attitudes toward the particular act toward a particular object. Situational variables prove that even if attitudes are highly stable, salient, personal characteristics, we should not expect high correlation between attitudes and behaviors under all conditions. Attitudes have predictable relationships with behavior to the extent that the actor has reliable expectations of the behavioral situation. However, it is hard to imagine anyone playing Prisoner’s Dilemma outside the laboratory. Two completely rational individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interest to do so. There could be underlying factors, such as moral, values, logic, finances, and health that would act as inhibitors. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Even when situational variables also have been manipulated by a number of investigators in an effort to explore the impact of such variables on attitudinal-behavioral consistency, there could still be some strong inhibition to reacting as predicted. Even though, consistency can be influenced by direct interpersonal pressures and apparently by anticipated behavioral visibility or disclosure. Individuals who are informed and involved are resistant to attitudinal change. Therefore, staging crime and treating the victim’s response as a geometrical proof is not only illegal so you can convict them based on algorithms and predictions, can lead to a criminal conspiracy because it is an abuse of justice and it is not what the criminal justice system is about. No one should be able to abuse the law in such a matter just to seek revenge. In addition, such an act would take several parties to produce and would leave behind a lot of evidence as to what actually occurred and once the conspiracy is unraveled, all of the participants will be punished. We have seen cases where a criminal seeks revenge on the victim and spends years plotting the perfect take down and gets others involved. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
People in high positions of authority and in prominent positions may help to facilitate the criminal in getting revenge on one’s target, but in doing so they are aiding and abetting a criminal in the commission of a crime, which means not only are they supporting the criminal and deeming his or her criminal act as acceptable, but they are now also an accessory to the crime itself. An accessory is a person usually not present when the crime itself is committed, but he or she has knowledge of the crime before or after the fact, and may assist in its commission through advice, actions, or financial support. Someone aids and abets a crime if he or she knows of the perpetrator’s unlawful purpose and he or she specially intents to, and does in fact, assist, facilitate, promote, encourage, or instigates the perpetrator’s commission of the crime. At some point, the group involved in the conspiracy has to admit they are wrong, but more than likely, they will keep playing the game, which has become a criminal conspiracy until they are arrested. “All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced; those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish (Isaiah 41.11).” #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
When You Write with a Wright Pen You Will Always be Right
Although it is usually difficult to find the person responsible for printers’ errors, the psychologic mechanisms underlying them are the same as in other mistakes. Typographical errors also well demonstrate the fact that people are not at all indifferent to such trivialities as mistakes, and, judging by the indignant reactions of the parties concerned, one is forced to the conclusion that mistakes are not treated by the public at large as accidents. An attitude is the disposition to behave in particular ways toward specific objects, and the degree of optimistic or pessimistic affect associated with some psychological object. Attitude can also be a predisposition to evaluate some symbol or objects, and a delimited totality of behavior with respect to something. A typesetter was imprisoned because instead of ending an article with the official formula ‘Heil Hitler,’ he inadvertently permitted a ‘t’ to attach itself to ‘Heil’ so that it read ‘Heilt Hitler,’ meaning ‘Heal Hitler’ instead of ‘Heil Hitler.’ His pleading that it was a mistake was of no avail. It seems that the Nazis who burned Dr. Freud’s works, nevertheless, recognize the truth of Dr. Freud’s teachings. This mistake plainly showed the typesetter’s view of Adolph Hitler’s personality. His mistake was unconsciously expressed his wish that the Lord may heal Hitler of his perceived tyranny. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Ordinarily, we should not have noticed one of the expected inevitable slips in writing. In fact, William Randolph Hearst said, “Do not be afraid to make a mistake, your readers might like it.” All writes for the press know what pits they are liable to fall into any day. Why does a mistake that glares and gibbers at you in print hide itself so successfully in the copy or the proof? How do you come to set down Rudolf when you mean Randolph? Some students of demonology believe firmly in the constant presence and maleficence of the writer’s devil. We venture to doubt the editor’s assumption of demonological influences. Examination of a great many typographical errors clearly shows that they are based on the mechanisms of a certain kind of situation. Psychologist believe that contributions of typographical and spoken errors sometimes provides evidence to support the postulated existence of stable, underlying attitudes within the individual which influences both his or her verbal expressions and actions. Adolph Hitler was the only person to hold the position of Fuhrer, which is a German word meaning leader or guide. Attitudes are alive and well and gainfully employed in the sphere of action. Despite the confusion, pessimism, and negative evidence some social psychologist refuse to give on their commitment to the belief that attitudes and behaviors must be related. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
However, even those who are nearest to the Fuhrer and constantly sing his praises to the Germans, do not really believe what they say, as shown by the wireless from Berlin to the New York Times (12 November 1936), congratulating eighteen hundred boys and girls of the Hitler Youth for taking part in the mightiest Freiheitsbewegung (movement of liberty) in German History. Rudolf Hess, the vice-leader of the Nazi party, used instead the word Freiheitsberaubung (robbery of liberty). The last word appeared in the Lokalanzeiger and caused the publishers no small amount of annoyance. Abstract statements of a highly moral content are not seldom changed erotically through a typographical mistake. Though, the correlations that do occur are large enough to indicate that important causal forces are involved, whatever one’s model of the underlying causal process may be. Evidence must conclude that attitudes and behaviors are related under a variety of conditions and over a range of substantive areas. There is something to this relationship that is sufficient to suggest the operation of causal forces. To establish a pattern or a motive, measures of attitudes that range from a single survey, personal letters, multi-item scales, field observation, task performances, archival records, and self-reports of daily activities must be analyzed. Again, interpretations often vary. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
When modest relations between variables are found repeatedly, social scientists frequently recite a litany of reasons that might explain the results. The measures of the variables are unreliable. The measures of the variables are unreliable. The measures are inappropriate or invalid. The independent variable is only one of several determinants of the dependent variable. If time elapses between the measurement of the independent and dependent variable, other variables intervene to mask the relationship or alter the variables under investigation. In one way or another, social psychologist have involved all of the above explanations for their findings regarding the relationship between attitude measures and behavioral criteria. A woman wrote to her sister, felicitating her on the occasion taking possession of a new spacious residence. A friend who was present noticed that the writer put the wrong address on the letter, and what was still more remarkable was the fact that she did not address it to the previous residence, but to one long ago given up, but which her sister had occupied when she first married. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
When the friend called her attention to the incorrect address, the writer remarked, “You are right; but what in the World made me do this?”, to which her friend replied: “Perhaps you begrudge her the nice big apartment into which she has just moved because you yourself are cramped for space, and for that reason you put her back into her first residence, where she was no better off than yourself.” “Of course, I begrudge her new apartment,” she honestly admitted. As an afterthought she added, “It is a pity that one is so mean in such matters.” The growth of the mind is the widening of consciousness and each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement. If anyone should be inclined to overrate the state of our present knowledge of mental life, all that would be needed to force one to assume a modest attitude would be to remind one of the function of memory. Ego development inevitably entails the rejection of some parts of the person that are threatening a relatively painless experience of living. The unconscious mind often represents the individual’s discordant desires, instincts, or shortcomings. Because the conscious ego can only know itself, the contents of the Persona and the hidden messages reside in the unconscious. Father in Heaven, may we all learn to love unconditionally and treat each other with respect and workout or own problems instead of taking them out on innocent beings. Bless it be. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Don’t Insult the Guest in Your Own Home
Heroes and villains are largely defined by their treatment of others. “I don’t hate my dad. I feel sorry for him. But Clint is always taking things differently. I always felt like I had to be the middleman. I gotta…pull everybody together. I never wanted to be anything other than a baseball player. That’s it. I never thought about anything else. Whenever we played ball, we felt important. Whenever we played ball we were happy. Everything changed, and I don’t know why or when it did. I just know that it isn’t there anymore (Lane Winston).” Groups that are part of a person’s life identity will ensure conformity to basic values during a vulnerable condition of the individual, typically in childhood in the socialization process. The family becomes the strongest group, one that can accept deviations from many standards, secure in the ultimate adherence of the individual. Consequently, if a split occurs, such as the disowning of a child, it is most severe and traumatic. A similar situation occurs in the community; since communities are defined primarily by contrast to other groups and by their strong boundaries, the principal opinions for which conformity is required are those that assert identity of the group. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
In the Film, Touching Home (2010), starring Ed Harris shows the enduring importance of groups, in our society, in this case, the importance of the family in socialization. The film is based on a true story. Ed Harris plays Charlie Winston, who has two twin sons, Lane Winston and Clint Winston, and the boys love baseball. It is their dream to grow up and become major league baseball players. When the boys were around eight years old, the police had to bring them home from their baseball game late at night in the rain. When they got there no one was home to greet them. They had won a trophy that night and left it on the table for their dad with a note that read, “FOR YUO DAD.” When Charlie got home, he saw the trophy, and picked up and threw it across the room. After he realized what he had done, he tried to glue the trophy back together with Elmer’s glue and passed out on the couch. Charlie’s sons, Clint and Lane woke up, saw what he had done, fixed the trophy, put it on the top shelf of their closet. “Everything is going to be okay, Lane. We just have to stick together,” said Clint, as the boys turned off the closet light and went back to bed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Clint and Lane end up going to a community college where they play baseball. However, Clint’s grades dropped below mandated level and he lost scholarship and was kicked out of school, even though scouts had been looking to draft him. Lane also gets kicked off of the baseball team that same day and the boys had to go back home. They were ashamed that people would tease them for not being able to make in out of their small town and for having to come back home. Clint and Lane went to work at the quarry with their father, Charlie to save money so they could go to Arizona and try out to play baseball. At this point, Charlie is working every day and lives in his truck, which he parks in the woods. After work, Charlie askes the boys to join him for dinner at the “Redwood Restaurant.” They agree, but telling him that he cannot drink. However, later on, Clint refuses to go to dinner with his dad because he is afraid of being disappointed and Lane goes alone. The Redwood Restaurant is actually a wooden park bench in the forest, right by where Charlie parks his truck. Charlie and Lane share four cans of cold Chef Boyardee Beef and Cheese Ravioli by lantern light and have a pleasant meal. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
Apparently, Charlie has a drinking problem, but has cut back to one beer a day. He lives in his truck because all of his money is spent paying restitution to the courts. However, we can see the optimistic effects of group memberships is displayed here as Charlie recognizes that the family serves as a source of comfort and protection, and assertion of identity in the community, so to reestablished his role as a father and responsible member of the community, he conforms to societal norms as closely as he can. Clint and Lane love their father and can see that he is a good man who has made some mistakes, but is trying to overcome them. While they are back at home, the boys end up living with their grandmother and they pay her rent, as the boys work to save up to go to Arizona for baseball try outs. Clint is really enthusiastic about saving up money, so he moonlights (gets a second job) at a laundromat. Lane spends more time with his father than Clint does. However, Lane’s priorities change as he spends more time in town when he meets a young lady name Rachael, and he wants to use his money to buy a car to impress her because he starts to doubt his ability at succeeding as a baseball play. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
What is amazing about Lane is he is not embarrassed of his father at all and takes his girlfriend, Rachael and even shows her were his dad lives. Clint is not embarrassed, but they have some issues that need to be worked out. Clint has about $4,000.00 saved up, but Lane does not want to play baseball anymore, so the boys fall out and their friends tell them that they are twins and two halves of one thing and that they should stick together. Everyone can relate to how hard it is when there are barriers to your goals and how sometimes an individual gets tired of trying and experiencing up and downs in relation to their goals and just wants to give up. And it is nice that the boys have family and friends who care for them and they can stay in town and make a living. In a way, it is refreshing that in this small-town people are not as materialistic. And as fate would have it, Clint gets a wrench thrown in the program just when he is about to leave town. Clint sneaks into his room and steals the money. When he gets to Per Mill Creek Saloon, he shows the guys a picture of his twin boys that he has been carrying in his wallet since they were about three years old. Everyone tells him that his boys are good-looking. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
After looking all of Clint’s money gambling, Charlie gets arrested and the Sheriff calls the boys down to come get their father. However, Charlie begs the officers to take him to jail, but they refuse to because no one got hurt. Charlie then tells his boys he is sorry and they take him home. The boys had been out when they got the call, so they did not know the money was missing, but after they drop their dad off, they go back to their grandmother’s house and Clint finds the jar of his money on the floor empty. He goes to confront his dad, and beats him up, Lane shows up and pulls Clint off of their dad. It just seems destine for the boys to stick together and perhaps that is why Charlie stole their money? Nevertheless, at work, Charlie passes out and the boys have to take him to the hospital, and Clint says he hopes his dad dies. Although the words are harsh, one can understand how it feels when a family member or someone you do not know robs you of your future and your hopes and dreams and all your time and effort seems to have gotten you nowhere. However, everything in life happens for a reason and sometimes we cannot see why God closed certain doors, but it may be to protect us from something. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
Nonetheless, when you question if your parents love you or if someone makes you feel like you are alone and that even your family member who has passed away did not love you, and they are not around to defend themselves, think back on all the things they did for you and realize money is not everything. It turns out that Charlie had a binder full of newspaper articles about his sons and their accomplishments and it always made him feel better when he would look at it. Now, that is true love. Charlie is like a true American man, it is in his blood to work, in fact, it looks like he is working himself to death, but that is what keeps him alive. That is his love for his sons because it seems like he is barely hanging in there. Any outsider can tell that he seems to be just clinging to life. However, to his sons, Charlie is like a superman and will live through anything. They do not realize that he is getting older and that he is not as strong as he used to be. Clint and Lane do not really grasp the concept that their father is mortal, like most young people. Charlie ends up cleaning up his life and buying new clothes and going to therapy for his problems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
He takes his sons for baseball try outs again, and Lane almost got drafted, but scouts did not want to take a chance on him because he hurt his ankle during tryouts and they did not draft Clint because he was throwing 87 miles per hour and they needed the radar to clock him at 90 miles per hour. So, the family comes together and has Christmas together and Charlie tells his boys that he wishes that he was a better father and promises to pay them back every penny. After dinner, Charlie makes up an excuse to leave. The next morning the sheriff goes to get Charlie out of his truck to take him to therapy and finds him dead under a tree. The film did foreshadow Charlie’s death especially through reliving of the emotional undertones, and the intense emotional experience of chasing after dreams and the twins potentially being separated. However, it seems that Charlie took the money because he knew he was dying and he wanted time with his precious boys and knew he would not be around to protect them and that it was vital for them to stick together. Therefore, the experience of blowing the money was to get a few more moments of joy out of life and to protect his family, it was not sought for its own sake, not simply as a means to an end. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
The time Charlie got to spend with his sons, his mother and his brother over Christmas was a movement that was very powerful, educational, and therapeutic. It was a tool for solving individual problems and for bonding. Clint and Lane buried their father under and Oak tree, and said their good byes. It was so important for them to have closure and a place where they can go to remember their father and communicate with him and show him respect. Clint finally gets his tooth fixed and they boys go to Arizona together for baseball tryouts. It was a very emotional movie and a great show. By the ending, I silently cried and had to wash my face and blow my nose. It was so touching. This film shows you how important families are and that forgiveness is a virtue. I am happy that Clint and Lane got to spend time with their father before he passed into Heaven, so they do not have to live with a hole in their hearts. Charlie may not have been a perfect father, but he loved his family and tried hard to overcome his affliction. Once a person is dead, that is it, they are gone, and your live is forever changed. Therefore, enjoy your family while you have them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Acceptance is the calm recognition of the loss and the ability to carry on. Not everyone who suffers a loss reached this stage. “I told you of a place that I had been. It was dark and I was supremely alone. No matter now if the compass fails again because in your love, I built a home. We’re all we need, oh darling. Yeah, we’re all we need. Most certainly I’m where I’m supposed to be. In a molten Sun, with you I am free. Today our hearts won first prize because we’re wise with the feeling. Yeah, we’re all we need (We’re All We Need by Above and Beyond).” God, we ask you for your forgiveness for the wrongs that we have done and for the things that we have neglected. We ask you forgiveness for the people we have hurt along the way and those who we have failed to love as you Love. We ask for your forgiveness. God, we receive your forgiveness and resolve in our hearts that with your strength we determine not to make these errors again. God, we receive your forgiveness and by the power of your Holy Spirit, we walk away from everything we know to be wrong and embrace everything we know about you for the Kingdom, glory, and the power are always and forever yours. Bless it be. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Yes, Cry Over that Spilled Milk!
People often say that there is no use of crying over spilled milk. However, sometimes there is a point; maybe crying over spilled milk today will help me to avoid spilling more milk tomorrow. My old man? Do not be stupid. My old man? Let me tell you, he was never wrong about nothing. Do not tell me my father was wrong. Let me tell you something, a father who made you is wrong? A father, the breadwinner of the house there? The man who goes out and busts his butt to keep a roof over your heard and clothes on your back you call him wrong? Father, that is the man that comes home, bringing you candy. Father is the first guy to throw a baseball to you. And take you for walks in the park holding you by the hand. My father held me by the hand, hey, my father had a hand on him though, I tell you. He busted that hand once, and he busted the other on me to teach me to do good. My father, he shoved me in a closet for seven hours to teach me to do good, because he loved me. Do not be looking at me. Let me tell you something, you are supposed to love your father because your father loves you. How can any man whose loves you tell you anything that is wrong? My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
It is important to consider the past carefully in order to learn from it. Sometimes we also need to consider the future carefully. Planning for the future is an important part of life and something that all parents try to teach their children. We find societies that are open to outsiders are extremely careful and strict in the behavior of individual members toward each other. We may find a romantic revolutionary system that wants to create a new World for everybody; in this case, the behavior of the members toward each other becomes of extreme importance and is firmly controlled. Thus, the social self—self-presentation—becomes crucially important and well defined. There is corresponding pressure on social rules to make self-presentation identical with the private self, that is, to open the private self to inspection. Authenticity, public self-analysis, and communal living become accepted life styles. Our sense of time is altered in these moments of deep and intense experience, so we know what now means. We feel at home in that now, in that eternity, because this is where we really are. We cannot be in the future and we cannot be in the past; we can only be in the present. We are only real to the extent to which we are living in the present here and now. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
At the other extreme are societies that overemphasize group conditions. These societies stress duty toward society, show suspicion of outsiders, use magic to protect their personal boundaries, and distrust having new ideas come in our having their own knowledge go out. Fatherhood is something of prestige and power. The father possesses the idea and ideas as part of his inheritance. The virtual and spiritual gem that he receives and transmits eminently contains that specific and social characteristics of human being: stable essence, entelechy, final cause and supreme reason. Group memberships has consequences for the person, and these consequences are what make groups in society so important. We can represent this aspect of group membership by the statement that a group has power over its members. There is something distinctive in this power: it goes beyond the power of one individual may have over another; the channel of influence of one person over another cannot account fully for the effect of various group members on each other. There is something in the group as an entity which in itself is a source of power. The moral premise is that the law requires us to promote the highest good, which involves a perfect correspondence between the morality and happiness of every individual. However, the only guarantee of the possibility of this correspondence would be the existence of God, presumably because God alone would possess the power necessary to achieve it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
The group itself is the source of power above and beyond the power of the individuals composing it. In this sense, the group has an individuality, a separate meaning for its members. This meaning may be given by a name, “our family,” “our community,” but also by goals that membership in the group can mediate, say, prestige through being in a select circle, making the congenial friends through being members of the community. We speak of this attraction to the group itself as cohesion. The average strength of the motives enforces group cohesion. Loyalty to a group may differ over space and time; family and community cohesion may last over a long time and is often reinstated when it is lost. However, even weak cohesion, dependent on a short, common experience can be reinstated; alumni of one event, such as one blizzard, will arrange meetings after years. By being part of cohesive groups, a person accepts a willingness to cooperate as the price of staying a member. Thus, membership in a group leads to openness of influence by the group. A certain uniformity in behavior or attitudes results: this may be expressed quite formally—members of a group wear certain clothes or certain badge or profess certain beliefs. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Circles, especially, are founded on common beliefs. In determination of attitudes, communities are seen to be important. The stronger the cohesion, the stronger the influences toward conformity in general. This rule is not uniform over all potential issues, but only on issues that are important to the existence of the group. A church group may allow differences on supporting baseball teams; a fan club may include people of different religions. In fact, the longer and more intensely a group exists, the more easily can important and unimportant issues be distinguished. A secure, established group can tolerate differences about peripheral issues, that a new, insecure group cannot. Even without formal rules, the group members are dependent on the agreement of those who are members of those intimate groups. In fact, people may join groups to obtain this reinforcement. When this core of belief is established, an effort will be made to have all the members of group accept these standards. Efforts will be made to convince those who disagree, but if these fail, deviates will be excluded from group membership. We love strength. We love the World. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
I Don’t Want it!
A variety of interpersonal and intrapersonal processes lead people to underestimate the degree to which the personality of others is in varying degrees from one relationship to another. They also help to explain why outsiders often misjudge the character of a relationship. Not only are many facets of a relationship shrouded in privacy, but an outsider’s view is greatly colored by his or her relationship with each partner. The partners are different persons to some extent when interacting with the outside observer than they are when interacting with each other. Also, each partner’s assessment of a relationship, like its form, is unique, dependent as it is on the distinctive characteristics of the persons involved and the history of the relationship. Relationships are occurring at two levels, the cognitive and the emotional. People may experience a variety of feelings and engage in particular behaviors they feel belong with a specific type of relationship. Their responses reflect individual differences in personality, including their responses reflect individual differences in personality. They also reflect shared cultural and subcultural definitions of the appropriate feelings and behavior of person who are linked in a particular relationship, as friends, as lovers, as parents and child, and so forth. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Attractions appears to be augmented by both unpleasant as well as pleasant experiences. Emotional arousal whatever its source, optimistic or pessimistic, maybe experienced as attraction or love and is likely to happen because of the existence of an ideology in Western culture that suggests how persons in the early phase of a heterosexual relationship are supposed to feel. These ideas about how a person should feel and behave when in love are reflected in popular songs and literature throughout the Western World. I have often wondered because of the media, do people actually understand their own emotions, feelings, attitudes, and beliefs, or are the just being programmed by the media and do not understand it? “I want all my clothes designer, I want someone else to buy them. If I can’t get it right now, I don’t want it. Give me all of your attention, give me Summer in the Hamptons. If I cannot get it right now, I don’t want it,” are the lyrics of a song by Kim Petras called I Don’t Want it at All. The lyrics are significant because it shows the attitude of many youth and adults today. They want fancy things and your love, but are not willing to work for it or wait. Society has become increasingly materialistic and focuses on products and instant gratification. After all, people are willing to spend ten hours waiting in line to buy a $1,000.00 phone just because it is new. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
We are raising a bunch of Machiavellian persons, and they consider their goals to be of prime importance. The more extreme the Machiavellianism, the greater harm the person will be ready to indirectly (or perhaps directly) inflict on others to achieve their own goals. If parents were serious about helping their children retire in the future, that $1,000.00 could be put in a wealth account, and at a 6 percent a year interest rate over 65 years, it would produce $44,145 in tax-deferred savings. That is enough for a retired person to live on for a year. Also, the existence of a wealth account from birth would encourage more saving. Delaying gratification and spending can be beneficial. And if parents or grandparents invested $20 more a month, for twenty years, when the child retired that account would be worth over $240,000.00. It requires mindful planning and self-reflection to accomplish bliss within your life. When people go to work they goal is to create more freedom and happiness. The Holy Spirit works sanctification in our mind and soul in the present, and our Heavenly Father will align our minds with our spirits, so we are happier. The more we align our thoughts, will, and emotions with our flesh, instant gratification, and materialism, the less joy we experience. We must renew our minds daily in order to align our thoughts, will, and emotions with the Holy Spirit. And we are happiest when that worthy purpose is the kingdom of God. Labor much in the spirit, wrestle with God in mighty prayers, that he will pour out his Spirit upon you. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Attraction can be explained in some part based on what is generally acceptable or thought of as normal. Love occurs as a rule in heterosexual relationships rather than in same sexed ones because of our culture encourages the labeling of states of arousal and consequently the experiencing of emotions in the form of love. The development of identity interdependence, along with sexual exploration and other activities typical of courtship, leads to both pleasurable and, at times, uncomfortable states of arousal. The heightened expectations concerning these matters fostered by romanticism, and the uncertainty of their realization, may explain why the intensity of feeling during this early phase of the initiation and consolidation of a relationship is followed by a more placid phase where uncertainty and unevenness in the rewarding quality of experience are replaced by certainty and routine, and the feeling between partners become more like those identified as companionate love. Companionate love is a kind of bond that is characterized by a deep commitment to one another, such as in a long-term marriage where the passion has left but not the deep affection for one another. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The intensity of feeling characteristic of romantic love or passionate love does appear to recur, either where the situation is heavily laden with supporting cues and definitions, for example, a second honeymoon, or during periods of heightened physiological arousal. A variety of interpersonal and intrapersonal processes lead people to underestimate the degree to which the personality of others is in varying degrees different from one relationship to another. They also help to explain why outsiders often misjudge the character of a relationship. Not only are many facets of a relationship shrouded in privacy, but an outsider’s view is greatly colored by his or her relationship with each partner. The partners are different persons to some extent when interacting with the outside observer than they are when interacting with each other. And that is why married men are sometimes deemed more attractive than single men. Not only are they stable, but outsiders see how nice they are to their wife and children and it paints a picture that makes a man look monogamous and stable and that is what people look for in a mate. Whereas, single people seemed to be influenced by popular culture and are just looking for instant gratification and materialism. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Commitment can be both viewed as a process and a state of mind. Perhaps because homosexuality is not seen as something desired by parents, many children repress their true feelings and marry the opposite gender because they feel it is the right thing to do. Not that I question Kevin’s sexuality on the situational comedy This is Us, but he was not ready to settle down with his girlfriend because he was not really happy with his life and he forced himself to go buy her three engagement rings, and showed up at her door step, but ended up tell her that he saw nothing but misery in their future because he was not happy with his personal life and did not want to be forced into a marriage, but would marry her if that is what she wanted. That just might explain why companionate love is what happens to most people after years of marriage. They just stick together because it is comfortable and they are committed to each other. Also, because opposite sex couples are deemed as more normal, it could by why homosexual tend to display characteristics that are not in alignment with their gender roles. Perhaps they assume they need to emulate a different gender role to be homosexual. For instance, most gay men are very flamboyant and call each other girl. Whereas a lot of gay women tend to be masculine. Acts of commitment not only increase outcomes and resulting attraction, but are also inherent in the development of power within a relationship. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Randolph Harris II International Institute 