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Dabbling in its Dark, Cruel Possibilities
It was one of the brisk winter mornings that begins in a fog, promising the cold to come. A mist was rising from the fruit orchards as I dropped down the hill into Llanada Villa in the valley below the mansion. It was a fair-tale mansion, all turrets and towers, stained glass and plush Victorian gardens, sitting majestical on the most valuable plot of land. As I entered my home, I heard the music playing softly from the morning room. I sat sipping coffee at nine thirty, glad it was Saturday. I knew that life was going to be vastly more complicated now. Well, it was going to be more dangerous, too. Overhead, the morning sky had turned a vivid blue, intersected by fading vapor trails. It was bright enough blue, the sky. However, it had a depth and stillness suggestive of the steady retreat of sunlight and a slight warmth. I have seen real ghouls in my home, and I knew that magic was something that could be harnessed and exploited and there were people in the World with hunger for power and influence enough to risk dabbling in its dark, cruel possibilities. The whisper of water dropping on to leaves as the rain began to fall could be heard. The lights flicked on and off. I looked around, half-waiting for the sound to stir again. The rain strength. I heard drops begin to fall on the roof. For many years the staff reported hearing a little girl crying. She has been seen on occasion, and is described as about seven years old. She has been seen in the house at the main stairwell, on the lawn, and on the third floor. I passed on through the passages of crystal and rooms of silver—spacious chambers, empty and silent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
This house felt older than the memory of man. It was an accursed mansion. There were strange noises in the mansion. Every night the wailing of a woman could be heard above the moaning of the wind. If ghost must walk the Earth, they could find no spot on the globe where their appearance would be more natural, or better understood. The staff tells tales of disembodies footsteps, lights that switch themselves off and on at will, and objects moving. The Daisy Bedroom has lights that switch themselves on and off after dark and phantom footsteps are often heard in the hallway near the room. One day a housemaid was speaking to a guest as she served dinner downstairs. To everyone’s surprise, the serving tray sitting on the table picked itself up and tipped itself upside down. The tray was filled with plates of hot foot that went everywhere. The sacrificial stones of the Druid priests, oriented after the fashion of the ruin of ruins of Stonehenge, the blood-vats, imperishable adjuncts to human sacrifice, have stood through the ages, grim guardians of the mysteries of the haunted fruit orchards. If someone were to tell me that the fruit orchards at Llanada Villa echoed nightly with the shrieks of sacrifice and that the ghost fires of forgotten priestcraft still glowed in the morning, I would find it hard to disbelieve. That ghastly curse remained on my family and fortune. The mansion has picked up a few permanent guests. One evening, from the observation tower, I saw a huge black figure gliding along the grounds. It could not be human because of the rate of speed it was going. I felt not just fear, but absolute dread. I experienced a bone-chilling could throughout my body. I ran down nine flights of stairs, while crying uncontrollable and my heart was pounding. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Only in the understanding of the stock from which the Victorian mansion’s ghosts are sprung can one appreciate the immortality with which long-accepted tradition has endowed them. Ghostly itself is the history of the Winchester Mansion. While the carpenters were painting on the fourth floor, one of them was startled to see the word MURDER appear in the freshly rolled paint, as if written with someone’s finger—only the words were backwards, as though being written from the other side of the wall. One of the painters explained: “We were quite surprised when a shadow started moving towards us.” As they realized that the “shadow” was approaching them, they also realized that area of the mansion was a very lonely place, especially at night. Not many people ventured up there. And although in their haste to leave, they could only give brief glances at the dark figure, they were sure of one thing: “The only outstanding feature was the outline of a wide brim hate.” Another evening while the carpenters were painting, they heard a quiet creaking emanating from the wood floors. They steeled their nerves before investigating. That is when they saw a young woman sitting in a chair directly behind them. The woman was there for just a moment before disappearing. Later the evening as the farmers were picking fruit in the fields, the dark figure “floated” diagonally across the field. It drifted rapidly to a clump of trees with two flat rocks near by and disappeared over a slight drop-off beyond. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
One of the farmers screwed up his courage and, in spite of the bizarre, dark figure’s mysterious and even menacing appearance, volunteered to walk down to the spot where the apparition disappeared. After five minutes of observation, he returned, like an efficient scout, with his report, unsettling as it might be. He said when he reached the far side of the hill there were two “soldiers-dressed” figures stilling on the two flat rocks near the clump of trees. Neither one spoke to the other; nor did they acknowledge the other’s presence. Instead they just sat, seemingly rigidly fixated, staring down into the field. Other ghost haunting the mansion include those of two little boys, who have been heard running on the second floor. One night, while I was preparing for company, I found two sets of muddy boot prints coming from the door to nowhere and crossing the room. When I told Daisy about the boot prints. She said they must be made by the same boys who keep coming in the door the opens to the wall, and we had locked them out. Looking toward the door she said, “It’s OK, if you prefer this door, go ahead and use it.” Immediately the door swung open. Needless to say cold chills ran through both of us. We never worried about the door that opens to the wall again. My idea for the mansion was not only to create a place for the spirits, but also to build an estate that would inspire awe. The gorgeous series of fields gardens, forests, and grassy acres are as fascinating as they are beautiful. However, when the sun goes down, the shadows creep and spread, giving the Victorian Mansion an entirely different look and feel. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
With grounds lit by a full moon hanging low in the sky, just to the side of the columns of the mansion, one begins to ponder the many mysteries surrounding the Winchester Mansion. One night I was putting out a candle when I heard the sound of a singing voice. At first I thought: “Oh, that sounds nice.” However, then I wondered what it was and where I could be hearing singing from. After all, the staff was asleep and there was no one around, and the sound definitely was not coming from outside. It was frightening, but it was not explainable. It was just a couple of phrases of singing and it took me by surprise. I could faintly see the hazy shape of a woman moving down what the hallway. One night, a group of farmers were packing up for the evening. A they looked around with a lantern for their tools, they were shocked to see what appeared to be the black form of a man moving toward them. The figure was larger than human and had no features—it was a black mass that seemed to sway toward them in the bright light. The man wielding the lantern quickly put it out and they all ran away. For weeks the men thought about what they had seen; they just could not forget it. They spoke to other servants about the vision or sighting. They were quite disturbed and unable to let the subject drop. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Take heed! Come, all Spirits! By the virtue and power of your king, and by the seven crowns and chain of your Kings, all Spirits of the Hells are forced to appear in my presence before this circle of Solomon, whensoever I shall call them. Come, then, all at my order, to fulfil that which is in your power, as commanded. Come, therefore, from the East, South, West, and North! I conjure and command you, by the virtue and power of Him who is three, eternal, equal, who is God invisible, consubstantial, in a word, who has created the Heavens, the sea, and al which is under Heaven. I conjure thee, Lucifer, by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, who spake and all was made, who commanded and all things were created and made! I conjure thee by the ineffable name of God, ON, ALPHA, and OMEGA, ELOYM, YA, SADAY, LUX, MUGENS, REX, SALUS, ADONAY, EMMANUEL, MESSIAS; and I adjure, conjure. I command you, O all ye demons dwelling in these parts, or in what part of the World soever ye may be, by whatsoever power may have been given you by God and our holy Angels over this place, and by the power Principality of the fernal abysses, as also by all your brethren, both general and special demons, whether dwelling in the East, West, South, or North, or in any side of the Earth, and, in like manner, by the power of God the Father, by the wisdom of God and the Son, by the virtue of the Holy Ghost, and by the authority I derive from our Savior Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The idea that we survive physical death, that some part of our being is immortal, profoundly affects the loves of those who harbor such a belief. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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All is Well that Ends Well?
The family is sacred to the ultimate concern and is the most important social unit in time and eternity. The ultimate cause established families to bring happiness to its creations, allowing them to learn correct principles in a loving atmosphere, and prepare them for eternal life. The home is the best place to teach, learn, and apply virtuous principles. It is where individual learn to provide love, food, clothing, respect, shelter, security and other necessities they require. The mother and father, as equal partners, should help each family member. However, sometimes things do not go as planned. Because we live in a World with many influences, people may become criminals. Men and women can both become involved in crime. When it comes to burglaries, for the females who worked as partners, this could involve a variety of tasks. Many of these tasks were indistinguishable from those traditionally associated with men, such as gaining entry, searching the house, carrying goods outside, and disposing of them. The following interview segment describes some of the tasks performed by a female acting as a partner. Although this was her first offense, she heled to find the transportation to reach the target (by stealing a truck) and took part in the actual break in: “Well, it wasn’t up on me, somebody else who was in there different, not state, in a different county. He just came up and told me he knew about it, a rich guy that was gonna be gone for the weekend. He knew this person, knew who it was, and he knew about it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
“When he left that night about two or three in the morning, we went down there. We had stolen a truck, we had stolen my ex-boyfriend’s father’s truck, went down there. We tried to get in, but we couldn’t get in. Everything was locked. Right…We couldn’t get in for nothing, so what we does was, we had some sh*t in back of the truck and we took some tape. Then we put it over the window real tight, then we busted it, and then we took the tape down and the window was shattered. It had no window in it. So—everybody used gloves of course—so we went in there, you know, and we knew when we went, we knew nobody was gonna be home. There wasn’t a house around for two blocks, each way you went. So…my first one was basically the easiest one.” The target often was located by a female partner, who also took the lead in planning the offense. In these cases the women had a substantial say in determining how the proceeds of the crime were divided: “…whatever you chose to give to the other person. We tried to split everything equally. We were all good friends, you know, so I got the best deal out of it because of the fact that I needed the money more than everybody else. Me and my sister needed the money more than everybody did and…we were the ones that said hey, we pointed it out, we found a way to get in, we knew where everything was, we told them how, we had everything planned out down to the TV. This is where this is at and this is where this is at.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
The roles played by female burglars are dynamic and can chance over time. Many of the women who currently participate in offenses as partners started out as accomplices. The woman quoted below clearly has an equal relationship with her co-offender, but this was not always the case: “The first burglary I ever committed, I was in the house and I was smoking weed at the time. A friend came in and said ‘I want to go in this house.’ I said ‘Okay, it was around the corner….what part am I going to play?’ He says ‘All you got to do is watch the doors for me. The bags I bring down, take them out, and you also drive the car for me.’” As should be obvious from above, women who work as accomplices in burglary play much more limited roles. They seldom participate in planning the crime, and often do not even enter the dwelling. Some claimed to prefer working with others because they lacked the skills needed to be a successful burglar: “I can’t do all by myself…I haven’t mastered that yet.” Others simply felt more comfortable when relying on a colleague’s expertise; they were uncertain about their ability to work alone. In the following case, a woman reports that she deferred to her boyfriend’s judgment in determining the suitability of a given target. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
“He can look at them and tell. He’s better at it than me. Sometimes I give him tips to go on, but he checks them out. I feel safer for him to check them out.” A common work assignment for accomplices was acting as a lookout or driver. Several of the women stated that driving was their primary job in burglaries: “Well, see, me and my boyfriend had been together for a year, and he done them all the time. Well, not all the time, but it was no big deal, and all I had to do, all I ever do, is drive. I just go like he’ll go, him and his friend. He don’t do ‘em every week or anything like that. Like it’s not really ‘cause we need the money or anything either. Like he’ll go during the day and he’ll look at a house and he’ll find one, and then he’ll tell me about where the house is…all I have to do is drive to the place and wait for them to start bringing out the stuff, and then drive off.” Other said that they typically kept a lookout for their colleagues: “They came and picked me up with a stolen automobile. I didn’t know that it was stolen. We went out there to this house and they got out. I just assumed—I didn’t know what was going on at first. We got out and they went in first, and then they came back out. One of the men came back out and told me to come in and to keep an eye out to see if anybody was there or anybody comes down the sidewalk or if anybody drives down the street or anything.” In both of these cases the women, as accomplices, did not choose to perform these secondary tasks. Instead the tasks were assigned to them by a dominant co-offender. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
What light does this quantitative and qualitative information shed on the nature of female criminality? Our sample was not generated randomly; with this fact in mind, the quantitative findings suggest that women involved in residential burglary do not differ significantly from their male counterparts on a number of relevant dimensions (exempli gratia, drug and alcohol use, degree of offense specialization). Nevertheless, the results show that some important differences may exist as well. Compared to the males, for example, the females more often committed burglaries with others, began offending at a later age, and had less contact with the criminal justice system. Further examination of these apparent differences is warranted. The qualitative data demonstrate that women’s involvement in residential burglary is marked by diversity and that the debate about whether women play a primary or a secondary role in the offense is probably a red herring. In fact, as among males, some assume primary roles exclusively, some adopt secondary roles exclusively, and others move from one type of role to another s they become more experienced. This observation has important implications for research into women’s involvement in crimes committed more often by males. To be sure, a much lower percentage of women than of men participate in residential burglary. Even so, our qualitative data reveal substantial similarities be tween males and females. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This fact suggests that the activities of women who do engage in such offenses may be explained by some of the same factors that explain men’s participation. When it comes to the stole property system (SPS), we must consider the law of supply and demand shape the SPS. This term refers to the loosely formed relationships that bring about the theft of property and the subsequent repackaging and resale of these goods via the “black market.” We use contacts with law enforcement authorities to formulate a revised view of property crime. Instead of viewing burglaries as isolated incidents of theft, we argue that we should conceive of the acts and actors involved as spanning a more broadly defined set of roles and behaviors. They identify the thief, fence, and person who buys the stolen goods as key players in the SPS. They also identify multiple stages in the process: research and planning, extraction, exchange (id est, conversion of the goods to money), marketing, residtribution/resale, and evaluation. Moreover, the roles and behaviors of the various players are said to be interchangeable and flexible. In the end, we reconsider the way that we think about property crime. We become more sensitive to the potential for business concepts such as division of labor, entrepreneurial spirit, supply and demand, and marketing to manifest themselves in the World of property theft. In doing so, we are able to drive home the complexity and fluidity tht can beset property crime events. Moreover, we illustrate how the criminal calculus can lead to mutually beneficial relationships and roles that allow the criminal subculture to expand and innovate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Perhaps no area of contemporary criminal activity holds more potential for improved understanding and successful intervention through analytical reorientation than does that of property theft. This area of crime is by no means new, a situation which may in fact constitute the greatest barrier to fresh thinking on the subject. Centuries of experience with thefts of property have give us a fairly strong conceptualization of this crime area, a conceptualization which centers almost exclusively on the thief. There is of course nothing illogical or erroneous about a concern for this individual; it is one after all who steals property. What is argued here, however, is that an exclusive concentration of the thief yields a myopic view of the process of theft, a view which draws the boundaries of the crime too tightly around that individual. It is a view which tends therefore to consider each incident of theft as a unique event, determined and constrained by the motivations, needs, and skills of the perpetrator. This “conventional view of theft” (if we can use this phrase) prescribes a response to this crime which largely consists of a fairly sophisticated sorting process, linking one individual (or one group of individuals) with each event as it occurs. Such an “individualistic” approach to crime and criminals is not, of course, confined to the property theft area. For example, we suggest that it is the most prevalent approach to crime in general. Consistently, both the popular and scientific tendency is to view the criminal’s behavior as a problem of individual maladjustment, not as a consequence of his participation in social systems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Perhaps it is for this reason that in criminology we have had thousands of studies that have sought some damaging trait in the personalities of individual criminals, but very few studies of the organizational arrangements among criminals who commit crimes in concert. The tendency toward an individualistic interpretation of criminal behavior cannot be laid to the idiosyncrasies of either the public or the scientist, but rather is undoubtedly influenced by the nature of the legal systems, with their concepts of individual responsibility an intent, upon which most democratic societies are based. However, while such an interpretation may conform well to the needs of a legal system, it may have the additional effect of causing us to ignore some important dimensions of contemporary criminal behavior. It is the perspective that property theft is one area of criminal behavior that has sorely suffered both conceptually and practically from a failure to probe the relationships among criminals (and)…the structure and operations of illicit organizations. Perhaps the mot glaring evidence of this failure concerns what the President’s Crime Commission called “little research…done on fencing,” id est, on the criminal receiver of stolen property. This crime figure, although tallying an impressive list of protestations to one’s importance over several centuries has remained little explored, while one’s relationship with the thief has been virtually ignored by the criminologist. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
However, if the popular and scientific tendency has been to overlook the fence, the police detective assigned the responsibility of dealing with property theft has not found it possible to do so. Instead, as the authors discovered in the course of an ongoing study of patterns of criminal receiving, police detectives possess a great deal of information about the fence. Other researchers have reported similar experiences. Because the police know about the fence does not imply that one’s activities are either successfully or efficiently interdicted, for the police agency is as influenced by an individualistic approach to crime as is the social scientist. Thus the bulk of enforcement resources and activity against theft is directed to the thief, and the situation in which police effort is devoted directly and exclusively to the fence appears to be rare indeed. The criminal receiver remains a curiosity to the criminal justice system, being infrequently arrested and even less often convicted. The model of property theft employed here—the Stolen Property System—is an operationally based one, derived from the author’s research into patterns of criminal receiving in a large urban area of the northeastern United States of America. As a part of this study, access to police intelligence reports on the activities of burglars and fences has been obtained, as well as records of these activities maintained in a special investigative unit in the office of the district attorney. Now, as burglaries are crimes of economics, this indicates that economics plays a kay factor in our lives. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
China is an economic power house, and it growing production and export power enhances its financial strength as well. This is natural. However, compared to its sensational emergence as a leading manufacturing and trading nation, the process of its ascending to the position of a major financial power is more fragmentary and complicated. China has by far the largest foreign exchange reserves in the World, about three times as large as Japan, which is number two. It is also rapidly emerging as the leading international lender. In contrast, China’s role as a foreign direct and portfolio investor is still considerably smaller than that of America, major European countries, and Japan. For the time being, the story of China’s growing financial clout is, first and foremost, the story of the unprecedented increase of the financial power of the Chinese state. As of the end of 2021, the gross financial assets of China increased 13.6 percent to USD $29,689 billion. That is an increase of USD $25,563 billion since 2010. In December 2022, the reserves of China stood at USD $3,120 billion. The exact composition of China’s foreign exchange reserves is classified information. Foreign direct investment into China totaled $42.5 billion between July and December 2022. That constituted a 73 percent decline on the year. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
China’s net international investment position reached USD $2,531.328 billion in December 2022. As of the year 2022, the United States of America’s net international investment position was USD -$16.12 trillion. The United States of America is currently the World’s largest debtor nation. Thinking about the pre-cybernetic machine—with minor exceptions, state socialism had led not to affluence, equality, and freedom, but to a one-party political system…a massive bureaucracy…heavy-handed secret police…government control of the media…secrecy…and the repression of intellectual and artistic freedom. Setting aside the oceans of spurting blood needed to prop it up, a close look at this system revealed that every one of these elements is not just a way of organizing people, but also—and more profoundly—a particular way of organizing, channeling, and controlling knowledge. A one-party political system is designed to control political communication. Since no other party exists, it restricts the diversity of political information flowing through the society, blocking feedback, and thus blinding those in power to the full complexity of their problems. With very narrowly defined information flowing upward through the approved channel, and commands flowing downward, it becomes very difficult for the system to detect errors and correct them. In fact, top-down control in the socialist countries was based increasingly on lies and misinformation, since reporting bad news up the line was often risky. The decision to run a one-party system is a decision, above all, about knowledge. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
The overpowering bureaucracy that socialism created in every sphere of life was also, a knowledge-restricting device, forcing knowledge into pre-defined compartments or cubbyholes and restricting communication to “official channels,” while de-legitimating informal communication and organization. The secret police apparatus, state control of the media, the intimidation of intellectuals, and the repression of artistic freedom all represent further attempts to limit and control information flows. In fact, behind each of these elements we find a single obsolete assumption about knowledge: the arrogant belief that those in command—whether of the party or of the state—know what others should know. These features of all the state socialist nations guaranteed economic stupidity and derived from the concept of the precybernetic machines as applied to society and life itself. Second Wave machines—the kind that surrounded Mr. Marx in the 19th century—for the most part operated without any feedback. Plug in the power, start the motor, and it runs irrespective of what is happening in the outside environment. Third Wave machines, by contrast, are intelligent. They have sensors that such in information from the environment, detect changes, and adapt the operation of the machine accordingly. They are self-regulating. The technological difference is revolutionary. While Mr. Marx, Mr. Engels, Mr. Lenin all bitterly assailed the philosophy of “mechanical materialism,” their own thinking, reflecting their era, remained steeped in certain analogies and assumptions based on pre-intelligent machinery. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Thus for Marxian socialists the class struggle was the “locomotive of history.” A key task was to capture the “state machine.” And society itself, being machine-like, could be pre-set to deliver abundance and freedom. Mr. Lenin, on capturing control of Russia in 1917, became the supreme mechanic. A brilliant intellectual, Mr. Lenin understood the importance of ideas. However, for him, symbolic production, too—the mind itself—could be programmed. Mr. Marx wrote of freedom, but Lenin, on taking power, undertook to engineer knowledge. Thus he insisted that all art, culture, science, journalism, and symbolic activity in general be placed at the service of a master plan for society. In time the various branches of learning would be neatly organized into an “academy” with fixed bureaucratic departments and ranks, all subject to party and state control. “Cultural workers” would be employed by institutions controlled by a Ministry of Culture. Published and broadcasting would be monopolies of the state. Knowledge, in effect, would be made part of the state machine. This constipated approach to knowledge blocked economic development even in low-level smokestack economies; it is diametrically opposed to the principles needed for economic advance in the age of the computer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The Third Wave wealth-creation system now spreading also challenges three pillars of the socialist faith. Take the question of property. From the beginning, socialists traced poverty, depression, unemployment, and the other evils of industrialism to private own-unemployment, and the other means of production. The way to solve these ills was for the workers to own the factories—through the state or through collectives. Once this was accomplished, things would be different. No more competitive waste. Completely rational planning. Production for use rather than profit. Intelligent investment to drive the economy forward. The dream of abundance for all would be realized for the first time in history. In the 19th century, when these ideas were formulated, they seemed to reflect the most advanced scientific knowledge of the time. Marxists, in fact, claimed to have gone beyond fuzzy-headed utopianism and arrived at truly “scientific socialism.” Utopians might dream of self-governing communal villages. Scientific socialists knew that in a developing smokestack society such notions were impractical. Utopians like Charles Fourier looked toward the agrarian past. Scientific socialists looked toward what was then the industrial future. Thus, later on, while socialists regimes experimented with cooperatives, worker-management, communes, and other schemes, state socialism—state ownership of everything from banks to breweries, rolling mills to restaurants—became the dominant form of property through the socialist World. (So complete was this obsession with state ownership that Nicaragua, an imitative latecomer to the socialist World, even created “Lobo Jack,” a state-owned disco). Everywhere, the state, not the workers, thus became the chief beneficiary of socialist revolution. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Socialism failed to meet its promise to improve radically the material conditions of life. When living standards fell in the Soviet Union after the revolution, the decline was blamed, with some justification, on the effects of World War I and counterrevolution. Later the shortfalls were blamed on capitalist encirclement. Still later, on World War II. Yet thirty years after the war, staples like coffee and oranges were still in short supply in Moscow. In the period preceding Mr. Gorbachev’s perestroika, the diet of a middle-class researcher at a state institute in Moscow was heavily based on cabbage and potatoes. In 1989, four years after the start of Mr. Gorbachev’s attempt at reforms, the U.S.S.R. had to import 600 million razor blades and 40 million tubes of shaving cream from abroad. Remarkably, though their number is declining, one still hears orthodox socialists around the World calling for the nationalization of industry and finance. From Brazil and Peru to South Africa and even in the industrialized nations of the West there remain true believers who, despite all historical evidence to the contrary, still regard “public ownership” as “progressive” and resist every effort to de-nationalize or privatize the economy. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
It is true that today’s increasingly liberalized global economy, uncritically hailed by the great multinational corporations, is itself unstable and could suffer a massive coronary. The distended debt balloon on which it rests cold be punctured. Wars, sudden interruptions of energy or resources, and any number of other calamities could cause its collapse in the decades ahead. Under catastrophic conditions, one might well imagine the need for temporary emergency nationalizations. Nevertheless, incontrovertible evidence proves that state-owned enterprises mistreat their employees, pollute the air, and abuse the public at least as efficiently as private enterprises. Many have become sink-holes of inefficiency, corruption, and greed. Their failures frequently encourage a vast, seething black market that undermines the very legitimacy of the state. However, worst and most ironic of all, instead of taking the lead in technological advance as promised, nationalized enterprises, as a rule, are almost uniformly reactionary—the most bureaucratic, the slowest to reorganize, the least willing to adapt to changing consumer needs, the most afraid to provide information to the citizens, the last to adopt advanced technology. For more than a century, socialists and defenders of capitalism waged bitter war over public versus private property. Large numbers of men and women literally laid down their lives over this issue. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
What neither side imagined was a new wealth-creation system that would make virtually all their arguments obsolete. Yet this is exactly what happened. It is super-symbolic. It is knowledge. The same knowledge can be used by many people simultaneously to create wealth and to produce still more knowledge. And unlike factories and fields, knowledge is, for all intents, inexhaustible. Neither socialist regimes nor socialists in general have yet come to terms with this truly revolutionary fact. An established firm in an industry stands to gain by keeping out new competition. Then it can raise prices to monopoly levels. Since monopoly is socially harmful, the antitrust authorities try to detect and prosecute firms that employ strategies to deter rivals from entering the business. In 1945, the Aluminum Corporation of America (Alcoa) was convicted of such a practice. An appellate panel of Circuit Court judges found tht Alcoa had consistently installed more refining capacity than was justified by demand. In his opinion, Judge Learned Hand said: “It was not inevitable that it [Alcoa] should always anticipate increases in the demand for ingot and be prepared to supply them. Nothing compelled it to keep doubling and redoubling its capacity before other entered the field. It insists that it never excluded competitors; but we can think of no more effective exclusion than progressively to embrace each new opportunity as it opened and to face every newcomer with new capacity already geared into a great organization. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
This case has been debated at length by scholars of antitrust law and economies. Here we ask you to consider the conceptual basis of the case. How could the construction of excess capacity deter new competitors? What distinguishes this strategy from others? Why might it fail? An established firm wants to convince potential new competitors that the business would not be profitable for them. This basically means that if they entered, the price would be too low to cover their costs. Of course the established firm could simply put out the word that it would fight an unrelenting price war against any newcomers. However, why would the newcomers believe such a verbal threat? After all, a price war is costly to the established firm too. Installing capacity in excess of the needs of current production gives credibility to the established firm’s threat. When such capacity is in place, output can be expanded more quickly and at less extra cost. It remains only to staff the equipment and get the materials; the capital costs have already been incurred and are bygones. A price war can be fought more easily, more inexpensively, and therefore more credibly. This makes sense in the logic of strategy, but will such a device work in practice? There are at least two qualifications that limit its success. First, if there are many firms already in the industry, then discouraging newcomers gives more profit to all of them. Will any one firm bear the costs of capacity when it gets only a part of the benefit? #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
This is a standard prisoners’ dilemma. If one firm is large enough, it may in its own interest provide such a service to the rest of the industry. Otherwise the firms must collude in building capacity; this may be hard to hide from the antitrust authorities. In the Alcoa case, only may not regard the dilemma of whom will install capacity as a serious problem, because Alcoa had a 90 percent share of the primary aluminum ingot market. However—and this is the second qualification—is that the relevant market? Even if there are no other producers of primary ingots, secondary production from scrap is a source of competition. So is Alcoa’s own future production. Many aluminum-based products are highly durable. If Alcoa puts more aluminum on the market in the future, then the values of these durable goods will decrease. If the company cannot credibly guarantee the users that it will restrict its own future, output, they are willing to pay for aluminum now. This is just like IBM’s problem of pricing mainframe computers. The solution of renting is much harder here: you cannot rent aluminum as such; Alcoa would have to extend its operations into all sorts of aluminum-based products. In accordance with the directions of the ultimate concern, and in view of the critical time through which the World is passing, every expression, “view,” or theory which we hold concerning things should now be examine carefully, and brought to the proof, with open and hones desire to know the pure truth of the ultimate concern—as well as every statement that comes to our knowledge from the experience of others, which may throw light upon our own pathway. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
Every criticism—just or unjust—should be humbly received and examined to discover its grounds, apparent or real; and facts concerning the verities from every self-actualized being should be analyzed, independent of their pleasure or pain to us personally—either for our own enlightenment or for our equipment in the service of the ultimate concern. For the knowledge of truth is the first essential for warfare with the lying offenders, and truth must be eagerly sought for and faced with earnest and sincere desire to know it and obey it in the light of God: truth concerning ourselves, discerned by unbiased discrimination; truth from the virtues, uncolored, unstrained, unmutilated, undiluted; truth in facing facts of experience in all members of the hierarchy of self-actualization. Sometimes we are we can be too engrossed in our own internal struggle to intervene and prevent someone else from being hurt, but gradually the fragments and splinters and hurts began to disturb us. We may experience internally the broken moments, shattered dialogues, and cruelty of neutral faces. Here were people committed to the rescuing of “dropouts” and “rejects” from the public school, blatantly ignoring the crucial feelings being expressed. In this room, in the many passing hours and in that moment were people who hungered for a vital, active, listening human presence. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
However, what they get are intellectual arguments and words with little or no feeling. What they get are dead faces and lifeless bodies. Within one is growing an indignation against these denials or elemental human values until at last one’s own existence, one’s own isolation, one’s own desire for a solitary state crumbles away and vanishes. For the first time in weeks, one may experience intense and vital feelings from within, a full response to others. One’s anger mounts at the surface way in which fundamental matters are handled, at the ignoring of potential for intensity and depth, and at people committed to serving abused and rejected children failing to reach out, recognize and affirm each other. It may take one back to another time and place. This may cause of to reflect on the coldness and indifference others have to the personal struggles and feelings, an avoidance of intensity and depth in interactions, an intellectualizing and professionalizing or values and concepts of the ultimate concern. Mystery, spirit, feeling, the human sense, the unspoken and ineffable, the sense of awe and wonder, aesthetic appreciation—all might be missing. What else is the ultimate concern but a willingness to submit to the unknown, to learn from the unseen and intangible what we must fulfil? Where else do powers of life, actions to living in the deepest and fullest sense, come but from felt presences that awaken us to a fuller realization of what it means to be unique and human. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
There will be pronouncements, lineal objectives and goals, definitions, rules, all carefully edited and articulated. We must be concerned with deviance and social injustice, and be aware of the importance of using political and economic powers to being about beneficial social changes. We have to speak about poverty and war, the end of killing and hunger. However, these are devotions to abstractions: for there before us are instances of human suffering, and individuals struggling to rise, and they are being met with indifference, with a refusal or inability to listen and respond. Some may speak glibly of the value of love in enlightenment, but these words do not strengthen and affirm, not support or encourage individuals in their search and struggle. The words are empty. The soul of life dies quickly in the presence of doctrines, rituals, and intellectual reactions. The central concern, the only immediate and intense here-and-now feeling, is a fear of the people who rate us, an incessant anxiety boarding on paranoia that they are being judged in every detail and nuance. Without exception, the fear of being tossed out, or of being put on probation, is paramount. The way to success is to be silent, to speak in abstractions, to avoid action in any living, breathing terms. They will be startled at one’s indignation, at one’s efforts to arouse genuine caring, interpersonal involvement, and decent human responses. When we examine the sacred of the “is” namely, actual purity, or the present reality of the revered it is the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
The mysterium tremendum et fascinosum is the experience of ‘the ultimate’ in the double sense of that which is the abyss and that which is the ground of man’s being. The mysterium tremendum et fascinosum is the beneficial side of sacredness; it attracts because, as the ground of being, it implies the fulfilment and the beatitude of the creature. The negative side is the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum which terrifies because, as the abyss of being, it implies an infinite, unbridgeable distance between the finite and the infinite. In the ecstatic experience of revelation one feels both the elevating power of the divine presence and its annihilating power. This is the experience of the actual sacredness of the ultimate concern. A man who has never tried to flee from the ultimate concern has never experienced the ultimate concern that is the ultimate concern. The ultimate concern of our own making, fashioned after the image of man, is easy to live with, but man cannot stand the ultimate concern that is really the ultimate concern. Man tries to evade the ultimate concern, and hates it, because one cannot escape it. The protest against the ultimate concern, the will that there be no ultimate concern, and the flight to nihilism are all genuine elements of profound philosophy. Such is the shaking power of the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. The eyes of the Witness we cannot stand are also the eyes of One of infinite wisdom and supporting benevolence. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
The center of being, in which our own center is involved, is the source of the gracious beauty which we encounter again and again in the stars and mountains, in flowers and animals, in children and mature personalities. The scared can be viewed not only from a phenomenological point of view, but also from an ontological one. The sacred contains the meaning of individuals and of the whole, and is the ground of meaning. It is also the abyss of meaning because it transcends every individual meaning and cannot be fully grasped in any act of meaning. Unconditioned meaning is the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum, the abyss and the ground of the meaning of things, not only in so far as they are, but also in so far as they ought to be. Against this ontological background, the sacred is not unperceptible, but it is not objective. The sacred is contemplated not as an object; it I contemplated as transcendent meaning. To be sure, there exist also sacred objects to see them as purity is to grasp through them the meaning of the unconditioned. The sacred is being-itself or the power of being. What is required in the professional sense is the fullness and depth of a truly human commitment to self and others, and the love that connects one man with other men. This love must be allowed to develop because love is immediate and grows out of a willingness to enter into interpersonal dialogue and communication, out of the willingness to permit the unknown in one’ self to connect with the unknown in others. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
Los Angeles Will be Two and a Half Hours from Tokyo
Given that burglars are disproportionately young, poor, city-dweller, they tend to have frequent contact with other habitual offenders. There are various structures and processes that go along with the “stolen property system”—the underground market through which in-demand goods are stolen, housed, marketed, and resold on the street of America. Burglary is a crime that is marked by varied levels of social organization. Only on rare occasions do we find burglars who work as loners or within formal organizations. More often, burglars will operate as colleagues—the offender commits the crime along but relies on other members of the criminal subculture to supply him or her with inside information or to assist in converting stolen property into cash. Burglars who take the situation to the next level and enlist help in the actual break-in follow a more peerlike existence. Here, loose partnerships are maintained and invoked when a burglary opportunity presents itself. A primitive example of the peer model would be two or three drug users who randomly stumble upon an unlocked home or unsupervised business and decide to work together to take it down. In some cases, burglary offenders will align themselves in a teamlike format. These offenders invoke a division of labor with each participant serving an owned predetermined role and duties. One person might be assigned to lookout/driver role. Another might serve as the entry specialist, defeating any lock and alarms that are confronted. Still another person can take on the “muscle” role, responsible for doing the heavy lifting. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Socialization scripts play an important part in how and why burglars commit their crimes. Interview-based research suggests that novice or occasional burglars often rely on the tutelage of more seasoned offenders as a way of learning the proverbial ropes of burglary. Novices receive advice and instructions on issues such as target selection, how to foster informants, how to defeat burglary countermeasures, and how to best convert stolen goods into cash. This socialization generally takes shape as informal street corner conversations or jailhouse bravado. On paper, burglary appears to receive serious treatment from the criminal justice system. The Model Penal Code classifies burglary as a felony in the third degree. In most jurisdictions, such as offense is subject to 1 to 5 years in prison. If the burglar is armed or threatens or inflicts bodily harm on another while unlawfully within a dwelling, that individual might see the charges elevated to second degree felony. In practice, however, burglary receives mixed levels of formal response from the various components of the criminal justice system. First, let us consider the response of law enforcement authorities. Police agencies were able to effect an arrest for only 13 percent of the nearly 2.1 million burglaries that were reported to them in 2022. No other form of index crime yields such a dismal clearance rate. Some of this slippage can be attributed to the covert nature of the crime—police often have no witnesses and minimal clues to guide the investigation. However, these low clearance rates are also impacted by the fact that many police officers and police agencies afford a low priority to burglary cases. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Court data reveal a different trend in terms of the veracity with which burglary cases are adjudicated. U.S.A. courts produced nearly 90,000 felony burglary cases in 2022. This figure represents 10 percent of all felony convictions that year. In fact, 68 percent of the burglary cases that were tried resulted in a conviction for the same offense and only 24 percent avoided some sort of conviction. The researchers found that burglary defendants do not receive a reprieve from the courts when it comes time for sentencing. A full 74 percent of the convicted burglars were sentenced to time behind bars. This rate was surpassed only by murder, robbery, drug trafficking, and driving-related offenses. While the median prison sentence for a convicted burglar was 41 months, nearly 10 percent received sentences in excess of 10 years. Our correctional system does not appear to be particularly forgiving to persons who are convicted of burglary. On average, burglary offenders can expect to serve almost half of their sentence—roughly two years. These time-served figures are on par with those of other property offenses (theft, fraud, and motor vehicle theft) but somewhat lower than that observed for violent (54 percent) and weapon-related offenses (60 percent). Accounts from known burglars clearly suggest that informal social control efforts go as long way to deter and/or displace burglary activity. A minimal amount of vigilance on the part of homeowners can go a long way. Measures designed to combat the relatively small population of high incidence “professional” burglars tends to overemphasize the skill and determination of most burglars. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Burglaries are expensive, complex, and require long term commitment at many levels. In fact, most burglars are young, unskilled, and opportunistic. This suggests that emphasis should be directed at such factors as surveillability, occupancy, and accessibility. More specifically, dogs, good locks, and alarm systems deter most burglars. Community-level informal social control can also play an important role in burglary prevention. When it comes to surveillability cues, burglars tend to avoid neighborhoods with a lot of foot traffic or active neighborhood watches. This implies that observant or even nosy neighbors can have a measurable impact on burglary. However, these types of collective efforts are difficult to enact and maintain in the areas that burglars most prefer—urban neighborhoods. If nothing else, tenants of “crime prevention through environmental design” should be considered at a neighborhood level. Simple environmental characteristics such as cul-de-sac street design, high levels of lightening, and well pruned landscaping that minimizes unobservable entry and exit points can have a significant impact on burglary victimization levels in a given community. The aforementioned informal social control efforts represent examples of target hardening strategies aimed at deterring would-be burglars from victimizing a given house or displacing offenders from a given community. Also, measures should be designed that aim to undermine offenders’ strong attachment to street culture. Expanded employment opportunities are one possible, but foreboding avenue to lure offenders out of street life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
There exist even more simple and realistic measures that might effect change in this area. For example, a coordinated burglary prevention program that was implemented in a midsize U.S.A. city during the early 1980s. Community activism and community involvement (id est, block meetings, neighborhood cleanups, and raised awareness of vulnerabilities and potential offenders) showed promise for reducing burglary. If community members care about the condition of their neighborhood and are willing to take steps to clean it up and exercise vigilance over problem people and places, there is hope for reducing burglary and other forms of street crime. Most crime occurs during the nighttime. A close examination of NCVS and UCR data suggests that 50 percent to 60 percent of all residential burglaries go unreported. The figure reported here was derived by adding the NCVS data on residential burglaries to an adjusted estimate of nonresidential burglaries that were reported in the UCR—one that factors a 60 percent nonreporting rate. These data must be viewed with caution because 50 to 60 percent of all burglaries go unreported to police and only 14 percent of these lead to arrest. Over time, the crime of burglary has slowly slipped down the list of crime fighting priorities. At present, less than half of all burglaries get reported to police, and only 13 percent of those result in an arrest. What kinds of social and legal factors have contributed to this present level of empathy when it comes to the formal and informal society control of burglary? #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Adjudication data suggest that accused burglars face a high certainty of being convicted and sentenced to prison. This should send a message to police that burglary is a high priority for our nation’s prosecutors and judges. Still, burglary investigation and arrest efforts remain lukewarm at best. What kinds of factors contribute to police officers’ attitudes and behaviors regarding burglary patrol and enforcement? Considerable evidence suggests that burglars refine strategies and cues that help them identify soft and potentially lucrative targets. Does this mean that burglars are more rational and planful than other types of criminals? The Lord has declared that “no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of Heaven,” reports Alma 11.37. Our sins make us unclean—unworthy to return and dwell in the presence of our Heavenly Father. They also bring anguish to our soul in this life. Repentance is sometimes a painful process, but it leads to forgiveness and lasting peace. The power of sin is great. To become free from it, we must turn to your Heavenly Father, pray in faith, and act as He asks us to. The Holy Spirit should never become the center and object of thought and worship, place which He Himself does not desire, and which it is not the purpose of the Father in Heaven that He should have or occupy. “He shall not speak from Himself,” reports John 16.13, said that Lod Jesus before Calvary, as He foretold the Spirit’s coming at Pentecost. He would act as Teacher (John 14.26), but teaching the words of Another, not to Himself (John 15.26); He would only glorify Another, not His own; He would bear witness to Another, not Himself (John 16.14); He would only speak what was given Him to spear by Another (John 16.13). #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
The Spirit’s entire work would be to lead souls into union with the Son and give proper knowledge of the Father in Heaven, while He Himself directed and worked in the background. If a man who is untaught in the scriptural statements about the work of the Triune God makes “obeying the Spirit” his supreme purpose, the deceiver will aim to counterfeit the guidance of the Spirit, and even the presence of the Spirit Himself. It is just here that the ignorance of the seeker about the spiritual Word now opened to one, the working of evil powers in that realm, and the conditions upon which God works in and through one, gives the enemy his opportunity. It becomes the time of greatest peril for anyone unless one is instructed and prepared by the Lord, as the disciples were for three whole years. The danger lies in the area of supernatural “guidance,” for one must know the conditions of cooperation with the Holy Spirit in order to discern the cooperation with the Holy Spirit in order to discern the will of God and be able to recognize counterfeit manifestations. The “discerning of spirits” is required to detect the workings of the false angel of light, for he is able to bring about counterfeit gifts of prophecy, tongues, healing, and other spiritual experiences connected with the work of the Holy Ghost. Those who have their eyes opened to the opposing forces of the metaphysical realm understand that very few believers can guarantee that they are obeying God and God only, in directly supernatural guidance, because there are so many factors liable to intervene, such as the believer’s own mind, spirit, or will and the deceptive intrusion of the powers of darkness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Knowledge is essential here. Scripture teaches that there is a God-given gift of “discerning of spirits” (1 Cor. 12.10) which enables one to detect that an unwelcome spirit is at work, but there is also a test of spirits which is doctrinal (1 John 4.1-6). In the former, a believer can discern in his spirit that lying spirits are at work in a meeting, or in a person, but one may not have the understanding needed for testing the doctrines being set forth by the teacher. One needs a level of knowledge in both cases: knowledge to read one’s spirit with assurance in the face of all contrary appearances, that the supernatural workings are not “of God,” and knowledge to detect the subtlety of “teachings” bearing certain infallible indications that they emanate from the pit, even while appearing to be from God. As to personal obedience to God, the believer can detect whether or not one is obeying God in some “command” by judging its fruits, and by being aware of the character of God—such as the truth that God has always a purpose in His commands, and He will give no command out of harmony with His character and Word. Often times people wait for something to happen, for some sure way to nurture oneself, to live from within. Music, art, poetry, hot baths, savory foods, wind, rain—nothing affects them. In the past, within days after a solitary retreat, many had found solace and strength in their loneliness. They had always found a way, at least a beginning that would lead to action and to life with others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
However, it is impossible to find what one is looking for, and one is still on a lonely journey, waiting from a spark from within. Because some people feel empty and eroded inside, they avoid all significant communication. More than anything else the interpersonal aspects of living exhaust some and move them to withdraw from real meetings with others. This leaves an individual certain that one does not want to struggle anymore. Doubt, risk and anxiety—inherent elements of faith—can be overcome only by another of its elements, courage. Courage is an ontological concept, the self-affirmation of being in spite of non-being. Faith is the experience of the holy; it is the state of being grasped by the power of being-itself. From this experience flows the power to assert oneself in the face of anxiety. Faith is participation in the object of faith, and yet is the separation from it. In spite of separation, courage expresses participation in the power of being and meaning. This in spite of element is the courage that takes all doubt, risk, and anxiety into itself and overcomes them without removing them. Faith, then, is the basis of courage, and courage is the manifestation of faith. In the extreme situation of a person seized by radical doubt and confronted with the specter of universal meaninglessness, the question arises: Is there such a thing as the courage of despair? Such a courage is entirely possible, for that act of accepting meaninglessness is in itself a meaningful act. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The courage of despair enables one, even while in the grip of meaninglessness, to declare one’s situation, and this declaration has meaning. In other words, there cannot be an infinite regression of negatives—in this case, negativity of meaning. At least, one has to admit, negation of meaning is meaningful, or meaninglessness will have lost all meaning. The faith which feeds the courage of despair is called “absolute faith,” for it can have no specific content. Its content is indefinable, since everything defined is dissolved by doubt and meaninglessness. However, certain elements that constitute absolute faith can be discerned. There is an experience of the power of being in the face of nonbeing, an awareness of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning. There is the dependence of nonbeing upon being, of meaninglessness upon meaning, of the negative upon the positive. And, lastly, there is the acceptance of the power to accept meaninglessness. Thus, absolute faith is faith which has been deprived by doubt of any concrete content, which nevertheless is faith and the source of the most paradoxical manifestation of the courage to be. Faith is without a special content, yet it is not without content. The content of absolute faith is the “God above God.” When people speak of God, they usually refer to the God of theism. Now theism can mean either a vague, unspecified affirmation of God, or a divine-human encounter of persons, or theological theism which makes God a being beside other beings. However, the God of absolute faith is above and beyond the God of any theism, for the God above God is the power of absolute faith as experience of the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The morning traffic from Oakland to San Francisco across the Bay Bridge gets backed up from 7.30 to 11.00 A.M. Until the jam clears at 11.00, each additional car that enters the traffic makes all those who come later wait just a little longer. The right way to measure this cost is to sum up the additional waiting-times across everyone who is delayed. What is the total waiting-time cost imposed by one additional car that crosses the bridge at 9.00 A.M.? You may be thinking you do not know enough information. A remarkable feature to this problem is that the externality can be calculated based on the little amount you have been told. You do not need to know how long it takes the cars to cross the toll plaza, nor the distribution of cars that arrive after 9.00. The answer is that same whether the length of the traffic jam stays constant or varies widely until it cleans. The trick is to see that all that matters is the sum of the waiting time. We are not concerned with who waits. (In other circumstances, we might want to weigh the waiting times by the monetary value of time for those caught in the jam.) The simplest way to figure out the total extra waiting time is to shuffle around who waits, putting all the burden on one person. Imagine that the extra driver, instead of crossing the bridge at 9.00 A.M., pulls his car over to the side and lets all the other drivers pass. If he passes up his turn in this way, the other drivers are no longer delayed by the extra car. Of course, he has to wait two hours before the traffic clears and the road is clear. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
However, these two hours exactly equal the total waiting time imposed on all the other drivers if he were to cross the bridge rather than wait on the sidelines. The reason is straightforward. The total waiting time is the time it takes for everyone to cross the bridge. Any solution that involves everyone crossing the bridge gives the same total waiting time, but distributed differently. Looking at the solution in which the extra car does all the extra waiting is the easiest way to add up the new total waiting time. Looming on the horizon is a dangerous de-coupling of the fast economies from the slow, an event that would spark enormous power shifts throughout the so-called South-with big impacts on the planet as a whole. The new wealth-creation system holds the possibility of a far better future for vast populations who are now among the planet’s poor. Unless the leaders of the less developed countries (LCDs) anticipate these changes, however, they will condemn their people to perpetuated misery—and themselves to impotence. For even as Chinese manufacturers wait for their steel, and traditional economies around the World to crawl slowly through their paces, the United States of America, Japan, Europe, and in this case the Soviets, too, are pressing forward with plans to build hypersonic jets capable of moving 250 tons of people and cargo at Mach 5, meaning that cities like New York, Sydney, London, and Los Angeles will be two and a half hours from Tokyo. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Jiro Tokuyama, former head of the prestigious Nomura Research Institute, and now a senior adviser to the Mitsui Research Institute, heads a fifteen-nation study of what are called the “three T’s:” telecommunications, transportation, and tourism. Sponsored by the Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference, the study focuses on three key factors likely to accelerate the pace of economic processes in the region still further. According to Tokuyama, Pacific air-passenger traffic is likely to reach 134 million…at the turn of the century. The Society of Japanese Aerospace Companies, Tokuyama adds, estimates that five hundred to one thousand hypersonic jets must be built. Many of these will ply Pacific routes, speeding further the economic development of the region, and promoting faster telecommunications as well. In a paper prepared for the Three T’s study, Tokuyama spells out the commercial, social, and political implications of this development. He also describes a proposal by Taisei, the Japanese construction firm, to build an artificial island five kilometers in length to serve as a “VAA,” or “value added airport,” capable of handling hypersonics and providing an interactional conference center, shops, and other facilities to be linked by high-speed linear trains to a densely populated area. In Texas, meanwhile, billionaire H. Ross Perot is building an airport to be surrounded by advanced manufacturing facilities. As conceived by him, planes could roar in a day and night bearing components for overnight processing or assembly in facilities at the airport. The next morning the jets would carry them to all parts of the World. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Simultaneously, on the telecommunications front, the advanced economies are investing billions in the electronic infrastructure essential to operations in the super-fast economy. The spread of extra-intelligence nets is moving swiftly, and there are now proposals afoot to create special higher-speed fiber optic networks linking supercomputer all across the United States of America with thousands of laboratories and research groups. (Existing networks are regarded as too slow. The proposed new nets would send 319 Terabits per second streaming across the country). The new network is needed because the existing slower nets are already choked and overloaded. They argue that the project merits government backing because it would help the United States of America keep ahead of Europe and Japan in a field it now leads. This, however, is only a special case of a more general clamor. In the words of Mitch Kapor, a founder of Lotus Development Corporation, the software giant, “We need to build a national infrastructure that will be the information equivalent of the national highway-building of the ‘50s and ‘60s.” An even more appropriate analogy would compare today’s computerized telecom infrastructures with the rail and road networks needed at the beginning of the industrial revolution. What is happening, therefore, is the emergence of an electronic neural system for the economy—without which any nation, no matter how many smokestacks it has, will be domed to backwardness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
In its commercial service trade, in 2021, India trade balance for 2021 USD$-79.19, a 665.96 percent increase from 2020. The United States of America is the largest services exporter in the World. In 2019, U.S.A. exports of service were USD $875.8 billion, up 1.6 percent (USD $13 billion) from 2018. U.S.A. exports of services account for 35 percent of over all U.S.A. exports in 2019. Germany World Development Indicators (WDI) 2020: trade balance in USD$221,534 million. Trade services as a percentage of GDP is 5.82 percent. Trade in services with the United Kingdom (exports and imports) totaled an estimated USD $140.7 billion in 2019. Services exports were USD $78.3 billion; services imports were USD $62.3 billion. The U.S.A. services trade surplus with United Kingdom was USD $16.0 billion in 2019. Trade in services with China (exports and imports) totaled an estimated $56.0 billion in 2020. Services exports were USD $40.4 billion; services imports were USD $15.6 billion. The U.S.A. service trade surplus with China was USD $24.8 billion in 2020. Trade in services with Japan (exports and imports) totaled an estimated USD $68.6 billion in 2020. Services exports were USD $38.0 billion; services imports were USD $30.6 billion. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
The U.S.A. services trade surplus with Japan was USD $7.4 billion in 2020. Japan was the United States of Americas’ 4th largest goods export market in 2020. As for the services, France exported around USD $303 billion worth of services in 2021, while it imported services for the total value of USD $258.3 billion. Service trade in Italy in 2020, Italy exported $73.1B worth of services. The outsized U.S.A.-Ireland commercial relationship, which exceeded USD $1 trillion in 2021 is significant by international standards and is particularly impressive relative to the country’s population of five million people. In 2021, U.S.A. good exported to Ireland exceeded USD $13.8 billion. The statistics for services from 2012 record the value of U.S.A. service exports to Ireland at $74.8 billion. In 2021, global services exports were valued at USD $6.1 trillion, representing 6.3 percent of total World trade in both goods and services. Overall, as far as the nations’ trade balances are concerned, the picture in the services sector is almost the opposite of the one in the merchandise trade. In services, the West has a significant competitive edge versus China and is in a good position to establish a much wider presence in the Chinese market. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Give Me a Laundry-List and I Will Set it to Music!
Chemistry is applied theology. In order to actualize our potentialities, in order to become fully human and completely ourselves, we must not merely think; we must also permit ourselves to be thoughts. Both the historical record of creative thought and the laboratory report of its appearance today, indicate clearly that creative intelligence can spring from the mind that is not strained to its highest pitch, but is utterly ease. Our is a civilization in which vast numbers of children and adults are so chronically bored that they have to resort during their leisure hours to a regimen of non-stop distractions. Any method which promises to make life seem enjoyable and the commonplaces of everyday experience more interesting should be welcomed as a major contribution to culture and morality. It is most certainly very difficult, perhaps quite impossible, to serve two gods simultaneously—to pursue the most sordid interests while aspiring to realize the highest ideals. This is obvious. Only a little less obvious, however, is the fact that it is very hard, perhaps quite impossible, to serve God wile failing to make the best of both Worlds—of all the World of which, as human beings, we are the inhabitants. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Rightness as fairness is to be understood as a replacement for existing conceptions There is no necessity to say that sameness of meaning holds between the word “right” (and its relatives) in its ordinary use and the more elaborate locutions needed to express this ideal contractarian concept of right. If the theory of justice as fairness, or more generally of rightness as fairness, fits our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium, and if it enables us to say all that on due examination we want to say, then it provides a way of eliminating customary phrases in favour of other expressions. So understood one may think of justice as fairness and rightness as fairness as providing a definition or explication of the concepts of justice and right. we are not to gain from the cooperative labours of others without doing our fair share. The two principles of justice guarantees the equal basic rights and liberties needed to secure the fundamental interests of free and equal citizens and to pursue a wide range of conceptions of the good. These two principles of justice define what is a fair share in the case of institutions belonging to the basic structure. So if these arrangements are just, each person receives a fair share wen all (one’s self included) do their part. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Further, the content of obligation is always defined by an institution or practice the rules of which specify what it is that one is required to do. And, obligations are normally owed to definite individuals, namely, those who are cooperating together to maintain the arrangement in question. As an example illustrating these features, consider the political act of running for and (if successful) holding public office in a constitutional regime. This act gives rise to the obligation to fulfill the duties of office, and these duties not as moral duties but as takes of responsibilities assigned to certain institutional positions. It is nevertheless the case that one may have a moral reason (one based on a moral principle) for discharging these duties, as when one is bound to do so by the principle of fairness. Also, one assumes public office is obligated to one’s fellow citizens whose trust and confidence one has sough and with whom one is cooperating and running a democratic society. Similarly, we assume obligations when we marry as well as when we accept positions of judicial, administrative, or others authority. We acquire obligations by promising and by tacit understandings, and even when we join a game, namely, the obligation to play by the rules and to be a good sport. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
All of these obligations are, I believe, covered by the principle of fairness. There are two important cases though that are somewhat problematical, namely, political obligation as it applies to the average citizens, rather than, say, to those who hold office, and the obligation to keep promises. In the first case it is not clear what is the requisite binding action or who has performed it. There is, I believe, no political obligation, strictly speaking, for citizens generally. Psychologically, humans are highly educated products of the twenty-first century civilization, chained, in a state of uneasy and hostile symbiosis, to a disturbingly dynamic unconscious, a wild phantasy and an unpredictable id—and yet capable of falling in love, writing string quartets, and having mystical experiences. They feel pride. They are proud to be members of a community where there is so much caring and concern for others, a caring that is broader and more sensitive than one individual is capable of. However, at times people are so frustrated with life because they work so hard and are tired and do not realize that they are burnt out and need a vacation that it can make them wonder if coming to the community is worth it. However, the other reaction they have is much stronger. People watch with awe the birth pangs of something new in the World. And their earlier state of mind returns. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
If humanity can live together without destroying one another, can live together with a caring concern for the full development of each person, can live together in the richness of diversity instead of the sterility of conformity, then we may have found a truth with many, many implications. Some people themselves are painfully confused, uncertain where they stand or who they really are. To provide themselves with a recognizable identity, a niche in the scheme of things that they can call “home,” they will give assent to the unlikeliest dogmas, conform to the most absurd and even harmful rules of thought, feeling, and conduct, put on the most extravagant fancy dress and identify themselves with masks that bear almost no resemblance to the faces they cover. The inhabitants of all these personal ideologies must somehow learn to make the best of the community in an ability to discover anything that is approximately true and Earthshaking as revolutionary power. And I believe we are making some such discovery. So there is hope that some of the overwhelming World issues may be touched, in ways we cannot even dream of now, by what we are doing. However, a good education may be defined as one which helps the boys and girls subjected to it make the best of all the Worlds in which, as human beings, they are compelled, willy-nilly, to live. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
An education that prepares them to make the best of only one of their Worlds, or of only a few of them, is inadequate. Mens sana in corpore sano (a Latin phrase, which means “a healthy mind in a healthy body”) is an ancient educational ideal and a very good one. Unfortunately, good ideals are never enough. Unless they are accompanied by full instructions regarding the methods by which they maybe realized, they are almost useless. Hell is paved with good intentions, and whole periods of history have been made hideous or grotesque by enthusiastic idealists who failed to elaborate the means whereby their lofty aspirations might be effectively, and above all harmlessly, implemented. Just how good is modern education? How successful is it in helping young people to make the best of all the Worlds which they all have to live in? At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in other schools where similar problems have arisen, the answer to this question has found expression in a renewed interest in the humanities. Excessive scientific specialization is tempered by courses in philosophy, history, literature, and social studies. All this is excellent so far as it does. However, does it go far enough? #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Do courses in the humanities provide a sufficient antidote for excessive scientific and technical specialization? Do they, in the terminology we have been using, help youth to make the best of a substantially greater number of their Worlds? Our natural duties are to help one another when one is in need or jeopardy, provided that ne can do so without excessive risk or loss to oneself; the duty not to harm or injure another; and the duty not to cause unnecessary suffering. The first duty is a positive duty, the duty of mutual assistance. We have a duty to do something good for one another. Whereas the last two duties are negative in that they require us not to do something that is bad. The distinction between positive and negative duties is intuitively clear in many cases, but often gives way. Now in contrast with obligations, it is characteristic of natural duties that they apply to us without regard to our voluntary acts. Moreover, they have no necessary connection with institutions or social practices; their content is not, in general, defined by the rules of these arrangements. Thus we have a natural duty not to be cruel, and a duty to help another, whether or not we have committed ourselves to these actions. It is no defense or excuse to say that we have made no promise not to be cruel or vindictive, or to come to another’s assistance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Indeed, a promise not to kill, for example, is normally ludicrously redundant, and the suggestion that it establishes a moral requirement where none already exited is mistaken. Such a promise is in order, if it ever is so, only when for special reasons one has the right to kill, perhaps in a situation arising in a just war. Another further feature of natural duties is that they hold between persons irrespective of their institutional relationships; they obtain between all as equal moral persons. In this sense the natural duties are owed not only to definite individuals, say to those cooperating together in a particular social arrangement, but to persons generally. This feature in particular suggests the propriety of the adjective “natural.” One aim of the law of nations is to assure the recognition of these duties in the conduct of states. This is especially important in constraining the means used in war, assuming that, in certain circumstances anyway, wars of self-defense are justified. From the standpoint of justice as fairness, a fundamental natural duty is the duty of justice. This duty requires us to support and to comply with just institutions that exist and apply to us. It also constrains us to further just arrangements not yet established, at least when this can be done without too much cost to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Thus is the basic structure of society is just, or as just as it is reasonable to expect in the circumstances, everyone has a natural duty to do one’s part in the existing scheme. Each is bound to these institutions independent of one’s voluntary acts, performative or otherwise. Thus even though the principles of natural duty are derived from a contractarian point of view, they do not presuppose an act of consent, express or tacit, or indeed any voluntary act, in order to apply. The principles that hold for individuals, just as the principles for institutions, are those that would be acknowledged in the original position. These principles are understood as the outcome of a hypothetical agreement. If their formulation shows that no binding action, consensual or otherwise, is a presupposition of their application, then they apply unconditionally. The reason why obligations depend upon voluntary acts is given by the second part of the principle of fairness which states this condition. It has nothing to do with the contractual nature of justice as fairness. In fact, once the full set of principles, a complete conception of right, is on hand, we can simply forget about the conception of original position and apply these principles as we would any others. There is nothing inconsistent, or even surprising, in the fact that justice as fairness allows unconditional principles. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
It suffices to show that the parties in the original position would agree to principles defining the natural duties which as formulated hold to principles defining the natural duties which as formulated hold unconditionally. The same principle of fairness may establish a bond to existing just arrangements, the obligations covered by it can support a tie already present that derives from the natural duty of justice. Thus a person may have both a natural duty and an obligation to comply with an institution and to do one’s part. The thing to observe here is that there are several ways in which one may be bound to political institutions. For the most part the natural duty of justice is the more fundamental, since it binds citizens generally and requires no voluntary acts in order to apply. The principle of fairness, on the other hand, binds only those who assume public office, say, or those who, being better situated, have advanced their aims within the system. There is, then, another sense of noblesse oblige: namely, that those who are more privileged are likely to acquire obligations trying them even more strongly to a just scheme. I shall say very little about the other kind or principles for individuals. For while permissions are not an unimportant class of actions, I must limit the discussion to the theory of social justice. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
It may be observed, though, that once all the principles defining requirements are chosen, no further acknowledgments are necessary to define permissions. This is so because permissions are those acts which we are at liberty both to do and not to do. They are acts which violate no obligation or natural duty. In studying permissions one wishes to single out those that they significant from a moral point of view and to explain their relation to duties and obligations. Many such actions are morally indifferent or trivial. However, among the permissions is the interesting class of supererogatory actions. These are acts of benevolence and mercy, of heroism and self-sacrifice. It is good to do these actions but it is not one’s duty or obligation. Supererogatory acts are not required, though normally they would be were it not for the loss or risk involved for the agent oneself. A person who does a supererogatory act does not invoke the exemption which the natural duties allow. For while we have a natural duty to bring about a great good, say, if we can do so relatively easily, we are released from this duty when the cost to ourselves is considerable. Supererogatory acts arise questions of first importance for ethical theory. For example, it seems offhand that the classical utilitarian view cannot account for them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
It would appear that we are bound to perform actions which bring about a greater good for others whatever the cost to ourselves provided that thus sum of advantages altogether exceeds that of other acts open to us. There is nothing corresponding to the exemptions included in the formulation of the natural duties. Thus some of the actions which justice as fairness counts as supererogatory may be required by the utility principle. I shall not, however, pursue this matter further. Supererogatory acts are mentioned here for the sake of completeness. Children should be taught that words are indispensable but also can be fatal—the only begetters of all civilization, all science, all consistency of high purpose, all angelic goodness, and the only begetters are the same time of all superstition, all collective madness and stupidity, all worse-then-bestial diabolism, all the dismal historical succession of crimes in the name of God, King, Queen, Nation, Party, Doctrines, Beliefs. Never before, thanks to the techniques of mass communication, have so many listeners been so completely at the mercy of so few speakers. Never have misused words—those hideously efficient tools of all the tyrants, war-mongers, persecutors, and heresy-hunters—been so widely and so disastrously influential as they are today. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Generals, clergymen, advertisers, and the rulers of totalitarian states—all have good reasons for disliking the idea of universal education in the rational use of language. To the military, clerical, propagandist, and authoritarian mind such training seems (and rightly seems) profoundly subversive. To those who think that liberty is a good thing, and who hope that it may some day become possible for more people to realize more of their desirable potentialities in a society fit for free, fully human individuals to live in, a thorough education in the nature of language, in its uses and abuses, seems indispensable. Whether in fact the mounting pressures of overpopulation and overorganization in a World still enthusiastically dedicated to nationalistic idolatry will permit this kind of subversive linguistic education to be adopted by even more democratic nations remains to be seen. Make the body capable of doing many things, this will help you to perfect the mind and come to the intellectual love of God. Education is desirable and indeed, if the child is to grow into a fully human being, absolutely necessary. The detailed curriculum for an education in what maybe called the nonverbal humanities has still to be worked out. Humanities is a process that should be started in the kindergarten and continued through all the years of school and college—and thereafter, as self-education, throughout the rest of life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Education is to life in general—an indispensable condition for any kind of improvement. School children need to learn a kind of internal awareness that can lead to a creative conscious control. All our mental processes depend upon perception. Inadequate perceiving results in poor thinking, inappropriate feeling, diminished interest in and enjoyment of life. Systematic training of perception should be an essential element in all education. Awareness has to be assigned to each special significance and value for the human being who aspires to make the bet of both Worlds and so, by teaching one’s psychophysical organism to do many things to perfect the mind and come to the intellectual love of God. It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing humans, more for the sake and evident purpose of talking to one and teaching one, than in any of her other works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There is not a moment in any day of our lives in which nature is no producing (in the sky) scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working always upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us and intended for our perpetual pleasure. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
We never attend to the sky, we never make it a subject of thought. We look upon it….only as a succession of monotonous and meaningless accident, too common or too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness of a glance of admiration. Who, among the chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow Sunbeam that came out f the south and smote their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? All has passed unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be ever shaken off, if even for an instant, it is only by what is gross or what is extraordinary. A habit of wise passiveness in relation to the everyday drama of the clouds and mist and Sunshine can become a source of endless pleasures. However, most of the products of our educational system prefer Westerns and alcohol. In the United States of America, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are constitutionally guaranteed. However, if life hardly seems worth living, if liberty is used for subhuman purposes, if the pursuers of happiness know nothing about the nature of their quarry or the elementary techniques of hunting, these constitutional rights will not be very meaningful. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
An education in that wise passiveness recommended by the saints and the poets, by all who have lived fully and worked creatively, might help us to transform the papers promises of a democratic constitution into concrete contemporary fact. The mentally ill are the victims of their phantasy, and even more or less normal people find themselves tempted into folly, or inhibited from behaving as they know they ought to behave, by what goes on in the superreal but unrealistic World of their imagination. How can we make the best of this odd, alien, almost autonomous Universe that we carry about with us inside our skulls? Truth lives, proverbially, at the bottom of a well, and wells are often muddy. No genuinely scientific investigator has any right to be squeamish about anything. Made the worst of, our imagination will destroy us; made the best of, it can be used to break up long-established habits of undesirable feeling, to dissipate obsessive fears, to provide symbolic outlets for anger and fictional amends for real frustrations. In the course of the last three thousand years how many sermons have been preached, how many homilies delivered and commands roared out, how many promises of Heaven and threats of hell-fire solemnly pronounced, how many good-conduct prizes awarded and how many immature buttocks lacerated with whips and canes? #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
And what has been the result of all this incalculable sum of moralistic words, and of the rewards and savage punishments by which the verbiage has been accompanied? The result has been history—the successive generations of human beings comporting themselves virtuously and rationally enough for the race to survive, but badly enough and madly enough for it to be unceasingly in trouble. Can we do better in the future than we are doing today, or than our fathers did in the past? Can we develop methods more effective than pious talks and Pavlovian conditioning? Moral equivalents must be found not only for war but also for delinquency, family squabbles, bullying, puritanical censoriousness, and all the assorted beastliness of daily life. Hope is anticipation of good not yet here, or as yet “unseen.” It is of course inseparable from joy. Sometimes the good in question is just deliverance from evil, which is here. Then “we are saved by hope,” (Romans 8.24), and “we rejoice in hope,” (Romans 12.12), because “if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it,” (Romans 8.25). That eager anticipation strengthens us to stay faithful to God and to stay on the path of what is right. One of the remarkable changes brought by Jesus and his people into the ancient World concerned the elevation of hope into a primary virtue. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Hope was not well regarded by the Greco-Roman World. It was thought of as a desperation measure. And whole, according to the myth of Pandora’s box, it may be all we have left with which to endure the agonies of life, it must be grimly held in check or it will give rise to vain expectations that only cause more misery. Christ, by contrast, brings solid hope for humanity. Clearly, then, hope also is closely related to faith. Faith is confidence grounded in reality, not a wild, desperate “leap.” It is, as Hebrews 11.1 says, substance, and evidence, or poof, not—as contemporary translations usually have it—subjective psychological states such as “being such of” or “having a conviction of.” Rather, faith sees the reality of the unseen or invisible, and it includes a readiness to act as if the good anticipated in hope were already in hand because of the reality of God (compare 2 Corinthians 4.17-18). One that believes dare trust God for the morrow, and is not more solicitous for the next year than one is for that which is past. No one worries about what was going to happen last year. Accordingly, Moses “left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king,” reports Hebrews 11.27. Egypt and its king were in the realm of “the seen.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Moses was able to disregard them to stick with his goal because he saw the One who is invisible but none the less real for that. For one endured, as seeing Him who is unseen” (Hebrews 11.27). That is faith as the Bible portrays it. “And now it came to pass in the seventy and second year of the reign of the judges that the contentions did increase, insomuch that there were wars throughout all the land among all the people of Nephi. And it was this secret band of robbers who did carry on this work of destruction and wickedness. And this war did last all that year; and in the seventy and third years it did also last. And it came to pass that in this years Nephi did cry unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, do not suffer that this people shall be destroyed by the sword; but O Lord, rather let there be a famine in the land, to stir them up in remembrance of the Lord their God, and perhaps they will repent and turn unto tee. And so it was done, according to the words of Nephi. And there was a great famine upon the land, among all the people of Nephi. And thus in the seventy and fourth year the famine did continue, and the work of destruction did cease by the sword but became sore by famine. And this work of destruction did also continue in the seventy and fifth year. For the Earth was smitten that it was dry, and did not yield forth grain in the season of grain. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“And the whole Earth was smitten, even among the Nephites, so that they were smitten that they did perish by thousands in the more wicked parts of the land. And it came to pass that the people saw that they were about to perish by famine, and they began to remember the Lord their God; and they began to remember the words of Nephi. And the people began to plead with their chief judges and their leaders, that they would say unto Nephi: Behold, we know that thou art a man of God, and therefore cry unto the Lord our God that he turned away from us this famine, lest all the words which thou hast spoken concerning our destruction be fulfilled. And it came to pass that the judges did say unto Nephi, according to the words which had been desired. And it came to pass that the people had repented and did humble themselves in sackcloth, he cried: again unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, behold this people repenteth; and they have swept away the band of Gadiantion from amongst them insomuch that they have become extinct, and they have concealed their secret plans in the Earth. Now, O Lord, because of this their humility wilt thou turn away thine anger, and let thine anger be appeased in the destruction of those wicked humans whom thou hast already destroyed. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“O Lord, wilt thou turn away thine anger, yea, thy fierce anger, and cause that this famine may cease in this land. O Lord, wilt thou hearken unto me, and cause that it may be done according to my words, and send forth rain upon the face of the Earth, that she may bring forth her fruit, and her grain in the season of grain. O Lord, thou didst hearken unto my words when I said, Let there be a famine, that the pestilence of the sword might cease; and I know that thou wilt, even at this time, hearken unto my words, for thou sadist that: If this people repent I will spare them. Yea, O Lord, and thou seest that they have repented, because of the famine and the pestilence and destruction which has come unto them. And now, O Lord, wilt thou turn away thine anger, and try again if they will serve thee? And if so, O Lord, thou canst bless them according to thy words which thou hast said. And it came to pass that in the seventy and sixth year the Lord did turn away his anger from the people, and caused that rain should fall upon the Earth, insomuch that it did bring forth her fruit in the season of her fruit. And it came to pass that it did bring forth her grain in the season of her grain. And behold, the people did rejoice and glorify God, and the whole face of the land was filled with rejoicing; and they did no more seek to destroy Nephi, but they did esteem him as a great prophet, and a man of God, having great power and authority given unto him from God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And behold, Lehi, his brother, was not a whit behind him as to things pertaining to righteousness. And thus it did come to pass that the people of Nephi began to prosper again in the land, and began to build up their waste places, and began to multiply and spread, even until they did cover the whole face of the land, both on the northward and on the southward, from the sea west to the sea east. And it came to pass that the seventy and sixth year did end in peace. And the seventy and seventh year began in peace; and the church did spread throughout the face of all the land; and the more part of the people, both the Nephites and the Lamanites, did belong to the church; and they did have exceedingly great peace in the land; and this ended the seventy and seventh year. And also they had peace in the seventy and eighty years, save it were a few contentions concerning the points of doctrine which had been laid down by the prophets. And in the seventy and ninth year there began to be much strife. However, it came to pass that Nephi and Lehi, and many of the brethren who knew concerning the true points of doctrine, having many revelations daily, therefore they did preach unto the people, insomuch that they did put an end to their strife in that same year. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And it came to pass that in the eightieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, there were a certain number of the people of Nephi, there were a certain number of the dissenters from the people of Nephi, who had some years before gone over unto the Lamanites, and taken upon themselves the name of Lamanites, and also a certain number who were real descendants of the Lamanites, being stirred up to anger by them, or by those dissenters, therefore they commenced a war with their brethren. And they did commit murder and plunder; and then they would retreat back into the mountains, and into the wilderness and secret places, hiding themselves that they could not be discovered, receiving daily an addition to their numbers, inasmuch as there were dissenters that went forth unto them. And thus in time, yea, even in the space of not many years, they became an exceedingly great band of robbers; and they did search out all the secret plans of Gadianton; and thus they became robbers of Gadianton. Now behold, these robbers did make great havoc, yea, even great destruction among the people of the Lamanites. And it came to pass that it was expedient that there should be a stop put to this work of destruction; therefore they sent an army of strong humans into the wilderness and upon the mountains to search out this band of robbers, and to destroy them. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“However, behold, it came to pass that in that same year they were driven back even into their own lands. And thus ended the eightieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And it came to pas in the commencement of the eighty and first year they did go forth again against this band of robbers, and did destroy many; and they were also visited with much destruction. And they were again obliged to return out of the wilderness and out of the mountains unto their own lands, because of the exceeding greatness of the numbers of those robbers who infested the mountains and the wilderness. And it came to pass that thus ended this year. And the robbers did still increase and wax strong, insomuch that they did defy the whole armies of the Nephites, and also of the Lamanites; and they did cause great fear to come unto the people upon all the face of land. Yea, for they did visit many parts of the land, and did do great destruction unto them; yea, did kill many, and did carry away others captive into the wilderness, yea, and more especially their women and their children. Now this great evil, which came unto the people because of their iniquity, did stir them up again in remembrance of the Lord their God. And thus ended the eighty and first year of the reign of the judges. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“And in the eighty and second year they began again to forget the Lord their God. And in the eighty and third year they began to wax strong in iniquity. And in the eighty and fourth year they did not mend their ways. And it came to pass in the eighty and fifth year they did wax stronger and stronger in their pride, and in their wickedness; and thus they were ripening again for destruction. And thus ended the eighty and fifth year,” reports Helaman 11.1-38. I am praying to God of Heaven, may the Earth be blessed with a sweet smell and bring Him to mind, to give Him the best of what I have, as is only His proper share. Our God and God of our fathers, accept our rest. Sanctify us through Thy commandments, and grant our portion in Thy Torah. Please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, grant that Thy holy Sabbath be our joyous heritage, and may Israel who sanctifies Thy name, rest thereon. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life f all the house of Israel, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Cresleigh Homes
When planning #MillsStation Residence 1, we did not *just* create an open floor plan—we incorporated windows, lighting, and slanted ceilings to maximize light and space in this room! This charming home is 1,932 square feet, three bedrooms, two bathroom, and a home hub, which could function as a den, playroom, fourth bedroom, office or formal dining room. There is also a private backyard and a two car garage.
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Lives Have Been Elevated and Lives Have Been Cast Down by Human Speech!
Life is an answered question, but let us believe in the dignity and importance of the question. All laws being founded on rewards and punishments, it is supposed as a fundamental principle, that these motives have a regular and uniform influence on the mind, and both produce the god and prevent the evil actions. We may give to this influence what name we please; but, as it is usually conjoined with the action, it must be esteemed a cause, and be looked upon as an instance of that necessity, which we would here establish. The only proper object of hatred or vengeance, is a person or creature, endowed with thought and consciousness; and when any criminal or injurious actions excite that passion, it is only by their relation to the person, or connexion with one. Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some case in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to one’s honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil. The actions themselves may be blameable; they may be contrary to all the rules of morality and religion: However, the person is not answerable for them; and as they proceeded from nothing in one, that is durable and constant, and leave nothing of that nature behind them, it is impossible one can, upon their account, become the object of punishment or vengeance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
According to the principle, therefore, which denies necessity, and consequently causes, a human is as pure and untainted, after having committed the most horrid crime, as at the first moment of one’s birth, nor is one’s character any wise concerned in one’s actions; since they are not derived from it, and the wickedness of the one can never be used as a proof of the depravity of the other. Humans are not blamed for such actions, as they perform ignorantly and casually, whatever may be the consequences. Why? but because the principles of these actions are only momentary, and terminate in them alone. Humans are less blamed for such actions as they perform hastily and unpremeditatly, than for such as proceed from deliberation. For what reason? but because a hasty temper, though a constant cause of principle in the mind, operates only by intervals, and infects not the whole character. Again, repentance wipes off every crime, if attended with a reformation of life and manners. How is this to be accounted for? but by asserting, that actions render a person criminal, merely as they are proofs of criminal principles in the mind; and when, by an alteration of these principles, they cease to be just proofs, they likewise cease to be criminal. However, expect upon the doctrine of necessity, they never were just proofs, and consequently never were criminal. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain than an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may. We believe that our actions are subject to our own will, on most occasions; and imagine we believe, that the will itself is subject to nothing, because, when by a denial of it we are provoked to try, we believe, that it moves easily every way, and produces an image of itself, even on that side, on which it did not settle. This image, or faint motion, we persuade ourselves, could, at that time, have been completed into the thing itself; because, should that be denied, we find, upon a second trial, that, at present, it can. We consider not, that the fantastical desire of showing liberty, is here the motive of our actions. And it seems certain, that, however we may imagine we feel a liberty within ourselves, a spectator can commonly infer our actions from our motives and character; and even where one cannot, one concludes in general, that one might, were one perfectly acquainted with every circumstance of our situation and temper, and the most secret springs of our complexion and disposition. Now this is the very essence of necessity, according to the foregoing doctrine. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
It seems a proposition, which will not admit of much dispute, that all our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions, or, in other words, that it is impossible for us to think of anything, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal senses. I have endeavoured to explain and prove this proposition, and have expressed my hopes, that, by a proper application of it, humans many reach a greater clearness and precision in philosophical reasoning, than that they have hitherto been able to attain. Complex ideas may, perhaps, be well known by definition, which is nothing but an enumeration of those parts or simple ideas, that compose them. However, when we have pushed up definitions to the most simple ideas, and find still some ambiguity and obscurity; what resources are we then possessed of? By what invention can we throw light upon these ideas, and render them altogether precise and determinate to our intellectual view? Procedure the impressions or original, sentiments, from which these ideas are copied. These impressions are all strong and sensible. They admit not of ambiguity. They are not only places in a full light themselves, but many throws light on their correspondent ideas, which lie in obscurity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
And by this means, we may, perhaps, attain a new microscope or species of optics, by which, in the moral sciences, the most minute, and most simple ideas may be so enlarged as to fall readily under our apprehension, and be equally known with the grossest and most sensible ideas, that can be the object of our enquiry. To be fully acquainted, therefore, with the idea of power of necessary connexion, let us examine its impression; and in order to find the impression with greater certainty, let us search for it in all the courses, from which it may possible be derived. It may be said, that we are every moment conscious of internal power; while we feel, that, by the simple command of our will, we can move the organs of our body, or direct the faculties of our mind. An act of volition produces motion in our limbs, or raises a new idea in our imagination. This influence of the will we know by consciousness. Hence we acquire the idea of power or energy; and are certain, that we ourselves and all other intelligent beings are possessed of power. This idea, then, is an idea of reflection, since it arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and on the command which is exercised by will, both over the organs of the body and faculties of the soul. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
This influence, we may observe, is a fact, which, like all other natural events, can be known only by experience, and can never be foreseen from any apparent energy or power in the cause, which connects it with the effect, and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other. The motion f our body follows upon the command of our will. Of this we are every moment conscious. However, the means, by which this effected; the energy, by which the will performs so extraordinary an operation; of this we are so far from being immediately conscious, that it must for ever escape our most diligent enquiry. For first; is there any principle in all nature more mysterious than the union of soul with body; by which a supposed spiritual substance acquires such an influence over a material one, that the most refined thought is able to actuate the grossest matter? Were we empowered, by a secret wish, to remove mountains, or control the planets in their orbit; this extensive authority would not be more extraordinary, nor more beyond our comprehension. However, if by conscious we perceived any power or energy in the will, we must know the secret union of the soul and body, and the nature of both these substances; by which the one is able to operate, in so many instances, upon the other. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
However, consciousness never deceives. Consequently, we are ever conscious any power. We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. And experience only teaches us, how one event constantly follows another; without instructing us in the secret connexion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable. Interest in the truth is at the heart of our conversation. Our word “conversation” derives from the same Latin root as “conversion” does, and the possibility of a conversation, of a “turning around,” is always inherent in any true conversation, for when we converse we take part in a game in which exchange, not victory, is the goal, an intellectual game in which no one stars and everyone wins. So much for the preliminaries. We are witnessing the quiet demise of the art of letter writing. Can we still rescue the art of conversation? I fear we cannot, and I find that—to put it mildly—a great pity. I would even go a step further and call it a dreadful shame, for it is symptomatic of a defect in our culture that is no only regrettable but may also prove lethal. Perhaps I can put what I mean this way: We find ourselves giving more and more of our time and energy to things that have a point, that produce results. And when all is said and done, what are those results? Money, perhaps, or fame or a promotion. We hardly ever consider doing something any more that has no purpose. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
We have forgotten that it is possible, even desirable and, above all, pleasurable to do something without a specific goal in mind. One of life’s greatest pleasures is to make use of our powers not to attain a goal but for the sake of an activity itself. Take love, for example. Love has no purpose, though many people might say: Of course it does! It is love, they say, that enables us to satisfy our pleasures of the flesh, marry, have children, and live a normal, middle-class or upper middle-class life. That is the purpose of love. And that is why love is so rare these days, love without goals, love in which the only thing of importance is that act of loving itself. In this kind of love it is being and not consuming that plays the key role. It is human self-expression, the full play of our human capacities. However, in a culture like ours, which is exclusively oriented to external goals like success, production, and consumption, we can easily lose sight of that kind of love. It fades so far into the distance that we can hardly even imagine it as a reality any more. Conversation has become either a commodity or a way of doing battle If the conversational battle takes place in the presence of a large audience, then it assumes the quality of a gladiatorial contest. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The participants go for each other’s throats, and each one tries to destroy the other. Or they converse merely to show how clever or superior they are. Or they converse to prove to themselves that they are in the right once again. Conversation is a way of demonstrating to themselves that what they happen to think is indeed correct. They go into conversation determined not to admit any new thoughts into their minds. They have their opinion. Each knows what the other will say. Let me give you a little example of what I mean. Suppose two people are on their way home together, two colleagues of mine, two psychoanalysts, and one of them says, “I am kind of tired.” And the other replies, “Me, too.” Now that many sound like a rather banal exchange, but it is not necessarily, for if these two people do the same kind of work, then they know just what the other’s tiredness is like, and so they have engaged in genuine, human communication: “We are both tired, and we have each let the other know how tired we are.” That is much more of a conversation than when two intellectuals start throwing big words around in a discussion of the latest theory about this or that. They are simply holding two separate monologues and do not touch each other at all. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The art of conversation and joy in conversation (conversation in the sense of being open, being together, usually takes verbal form, but it can also take the form of movement in dancing; there are many ways to converse)—these things will become possible again only if major changes take place in our culture, that is, only if we can rid ourselves of our monomaniacal, goal-oriented way of life. We need to cultivate attitudes that recognize the expression and full realization of human potential as the only worthwhile goals in life. To put it in the simplest possible terms: What matters is being as opposed to having, to just using and consuming and getting ahead. We have much more free time than we used to have (in many cases, as a society people have more leisure time, but a minority of the people have no free time at all), and therefore more opportunity for conversation. However, the more the external circumstances of our lives encourage it, the less internal inclination toward it we seem to have. There is too much that interferes with that being together that keeps a community sane and healthy; there are too many gadgets and Facebook and machines that get in our way. It seems that a very specific and pervasive attitude prevents us from engaging in what we have been calling “conversation” here. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
And now with COVID-19, people are afraid to talk to each other, they will not hug each other nor shake hands, they are prohibited by law from going to church or the hair salon, and schools. Many people can no longer gather in large groups, even in their own homes, so society is becoming anti-social out of fear and the fear is being enforced by state and local governments in the forms of fines, jail time, and other penalties. However, even before COVID-19 was instilling fear in society, I think we could even say that many people (probably the great majority) are afraid of being left alone with each other without some plan of action, without a radio, or Smart TV, without a subject to discuss, without an agenda. They are afraid and feel totally lost. They have no idea what to say to each other. I do not know if this is holds true in Germany or Japan or China, but in the United States of America it is customary never to invite a single individual or just one other couple to your home. You always have to have more guests, because it can be embarrassing if you are only four. In a small company you have to work hard to keep things from being boring, unless you plan to play all your old Motown records. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
If you have a party of six, you still will not have any real conversation, but you will at least avoid painful lulls in the chatter. Somebody will always have something to say. When one person runs out of subjects, someone else can step in. It is a kind of double concert. The music never stops, but no real conversation takes. Place. Victorian times where different, houses were sectioned off into many rooms and often times had a front parlor, near the foyer, to great guest, and another parlor in the back of the house for family. People also had intimate and meaning conversations because traveling was more complicated and communication in general was. So the Victorians enjoyed their intimate gathers and their conversations were as deep as diary entries. In modern times, homes are built for entertainment. The many of the homes have an open concept, which allows for connection of the main living areas and there is even an upstairs lobby in many of the new homes where people can gather out in the open. Many of the new homes made by Cresleigh are designed for entertainment, multi-generational living, spaces where people can come together and communicate in groups. However, in modern times, I suspect a lot of people think that if a form of entertainment does not cost anything it cannot be very satisfying. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Industry propaganda has trained us all to think that happiness comes from objects that we can buy, and very few of us are ready to believe any more that we can live and live very happily without all that stuff. That is a great change from the last, as we have discussed. One hundred and fifty years ago people bought very few things for their entertainment, even people with comfortable middle-class incomes. There was no radio, or Smart TV; there were no cars and no Facebook. However, there was conversation. People even built séance rooms to converse with “spirits.” Of course, if you look upon conversation as a means of “diversion,” hen your conversation will be mere twaddle. Real conversation does not “divert.” It requires concentration, a gather of our powers, not a scattering of them. If a person is not alive within oneself, then one’s conversation cannot be very lively either. However, if they were not afraid to step out of themselves, to show who they really are, to cast off the crutches they think they need to keep from tumbling down to nothingness, if they were not afraid to be alone with themselves and others, there are many people who could be much livelier. The power or energy by which this is effected, like that in other natural events, is unknown and inconceivable. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
We are conscious of a power or energy in our own minds, when, by an act or command of our will, we raise up a new idea, fix the mind to the contemplation of it, turn it on all sides, and at last dismiss I for some other idea, when we think that we have surveyed it with sufficient accuracy. When we know a power, we know that very circumstance in the cause, by which it is enabled to produce the effect: For these are supposed to be synonymous. We must, therefore, know both the cause and effect, and the relation between them. However, we do not pretend to be acquitted with the nature of the human soul and the nature of an idea, or the aptitude of the one to produce the other. This is a real creation; a production of something out of nothing; Which implies a power so great, that may seem, at first sight, beyond the reach of any being, less than infinite. At least it must be owned, that such a power is not felt, nor known, nor even conceivable by the mind. We only feel the event, namely, the existence of an idea, consequent to a command of the will: But the manner, in which this operation is performed; the power, by which it is produced; is entirely beyond our comprehension. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The command of the mind over itself is limited, as well as its command over the body; and these limits are not known by reason, or any acquaintance with the nature of cause and effect; but only experience and observation, as in all other natural events and in the operation of external objects. Our authority over our sentiments and passions is much weaker than that over our ideas; and even the latter authority is circumscribed within very narrow boundaries. Will any one pretend to assign the ultimate reason of these boundaries, or show why the power is deficient in one case not in another. This self-command is very different at different ties. A human in health possesses more of it, than one languishing with sickness. We are more master of our thought in the morning than in the evening: Fasting, than after a full meal. Can we give any reason for these variations, except experience? Where then is the power, of which we pretend to be conscious? Is there not here, either in a spiritual or material substance, or both, some secret mechanism or structure of parts, upon which the effect depends, and which, being entirely unknown to us, renders the power or energy of the will equally unknown and incomprehensible? #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Volition is surely an act of the mind, with which we are sufficiently acquainted. Reflect upon it. Consider it on all sides. Do you find anything in it like this creative power, by which it raises from nothing a new idea, and with a kind of FIAT, imitates the omnipotence of its Maker, if I may be allowed so to speak, who called forth into existence all the various scenes of nature? So far from being conscious of this energy in the will, it requires as certain experience, as that of which we are possessed, to convince us, that such extraordinary effects do ever result from a simple act of volition. The tongue, so tiny, is immensely powerful. Four reporters, good old body, having a few beers in a Denver bar in 1899, provided the specious spark that ignited the infamous Boxer Rebellion. The tongue is indeed mightier than generals and their armies. It can fuel our lives so they become fiery furnaces, or it can cool our lives with the soothing wind of the Spirit. It can be forged by Hell, or it can be a tool of Heaven. Offered to God on the altar, the tongue has awesome power for god. It can proclaim the life-changing message of salvation: “And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who good news!’” reports Romans 10.14-15. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
The tongue has power for sanctification as we share God’s Word: “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth,” reports John 17.17. It has power for healing: “For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn—conflict on the outside, fears within. However, God, who comforts the downcast, comforts us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming but also by the comfort you had given him. He told us about your longing for me, your deep sorrow, your ardent concern for me, so that my joy was greater than ever,” reports 2 Corinthians 7.5-7. The tongue has power for worship: “Though Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name,” reports Hebrews 13.15. Humans, it is up to us. No sweat, no sanctification! First, we must ask God t cauterize our lips, confessing as Isaiah did, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” reports Isaiah 6.5. Then we need to submit to the cleansing touch: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘who shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me,’” reports Isaiah 6.8. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Isaiah’s outline as a spiritual exercise, performed with all one’s heart, will work wonders in our lives. Let us all do this today! In conjunction, there must also be an ongoing prayerfulness regarding the use of our tongues—regular, detailed prayer. This, coupled with the first step, will work a spiritual miracle. We must also resolve to discipline ourselves regarding the use of the tongue, making solemn resolutions such as the following: to perpetually and loving speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4.15). To refrain from being party to or a conduit for gossip (Proverbs 16.28; 17.9; 26.20). To refrain from insincere flatter (Proverbs 26.28). To refrain from running down another (James 4.11). To refrain from degrading humour (Ephesians 5.4). To refrain from sarcasm (Proverbs 26.24-25). To memorize Scriptures which teacher the proper use of the tongue (speech). Human, discipline your tongue for the purpose of Godliness! “Who keeps the tongue doth keep one’s soul.” A flaming spear out of the chaos Dear Lord in Heaven, come to your people and be a skillful hand against the chaos. God, please come to your people and be a mind keenly ordered amidst the chaos. God, please come to your people as a faithful protector through all the chaos. God, please come to your people as we are lost in the expanse of limitless space containing infinite numbers of stars but filled with emptiness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
We cast ourselves into your measureless darkness, confident that you will come if only we wait. Though the night may be long, we will still wait for you, God, offering our patience in sacrifice to win your presence. “And now, my son, I have somewhat to say concerning the restoration of which has been spoken; for behold, some have wrestled the scriptures, and have gone far astray because of this thing. And I perceive that thy mind has been worried also concerning this thing. However, behold, I will explain it unto thee. I say unto thee, my son, that the plan of restoration is requisite with the justice of God; for it is requisite that all things should be restored to their proper order. Behold, it is requisite and just, according to the power and resurrection of Christ, that the soul of humans should be restored to its body, and that every part of the body should be restored to itself. And it is requisite with the justice of God that humans should be judged according to their works; and if their works were good in this life, and the desires of their hearts were good, that they should also, at the last day, be restored unto that which is good. And if their works are evil they shall be restored unto them for evil. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Therefore, all things shall be restored to their proper order, every thing to its natural frame—mortality raised to immortality, corruption to incorruption—raised to endless happiness to inherit the kingdom of God, or to endless misery to inherit the kingdom of the devil, the one on one hand, the other on the other—the one raised to happiness according to one’s desires of happiness, or good according to one’s desires of good; and the other to evil according to one’s desires of evil; for as one has desired to do evil all the day long even so shall one have one’s reward of evil when the night cometh. And so it is on the other hand. If one hath repented of one’s sins, and desired righteousness until the end of one’s days, even so one shall be rewarded unto righteousness. These are they that are redeemed of the Lord; yea, these are they that are taken out, that are delivered from that endless night of darkness; and thus they stand or fall; for behold, they are their own judges, whether to do good or do evil. Now, the decrees of God are unalterable; therefore, the way is prepared that whosoever will may walk therein and be saved. And now behold, my son, do not risk one more offense against your God upon those points of doctrine, which ye have hitherto risked to commit sin. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“Do not suppose, because it has been spoken concerning restoration, that ye shall be restored from sin to happiness. Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness. And now, my son, all humans that are, in a carnal state, are in he gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity; they are without God in the World, and they have gone contrary to the nature of God; therefore, they are in a state contrary to the nature of happiness. And now behold, is the meaning of the word restoration to take a thing of a natural state and place it in an unnatural state, or to place it in a state opposite to its nature? O, my son, this is not the case; but the meaning of the word restoration is to bring back again evil for evil, or carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish—good for that which is righteous; just for that which is just; merciful for that which is merciful. Therefore, my son, see that you are merciful unto your brethren; deal justly, judge righteously, and do good continually; and if ye do all these things then shall ye receive your reward; yea, ye shall have mercy restored unto you again; ye shall have justice restored unto you again; ye shall have a righteous judgment restored unto you again; and you shall have good rewarded unto you again. For that which ye do send out shall return unto you again, and be restored; therefore, the word restoration more fully condemneth the sinner, and justifieth one not at all,” reports Alma 41.1-15. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Time to explore more #CresleighHomes! Our blog today takes a look at #Bluffs, the cul-de-sac community located at #PlumasRanch! Click the link in our bio to give it a read. 👍 https://cresleigh.com/blog/
On the edge of sight I can see a wonder: The Lord in all His glory. If I send swift thoughts racing after Him, I cannot overtake Him; His careful steps keep ahead of my impetuous racing. I call out to God: “Father, for the sake of the one who loves you, I beg you to stop.” He comes to a halt and I can approach. God says, “If you had done that first, it would have been better.” I remember, and call to God in love, and wait for Him to stop for me. May God, who pressed out, is life, is power, may God whose roaring calls us to the ritual, to drink, may God, granting gifts, filling us with immortality, may God, King of the Universe, be praised in His prayer. May God, hear me, come to join me in this rite. May my words draw God hither.
Without Love Intelligence is Dangerous; Without Intelligence Love is Not Enough!
Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer’s Day? Thou Art More Lovely and More Temperate!
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You Do Not Love Me, You Do Not Care What Happens to Me! Give the Heaven’s Above More than Just a Passing Glance!
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
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The Soul is One of the Few Places Left Where One Can be Private–The Edge of Sleep Can be Such a Precious Time!
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How Long is it Since You were Really Bothered? About Something Important, About Something Real?
Cans. Beer cans. Glinting on the verges of a million miles of roadways, lying in scrub, grass, dirt, leaves, sand, mud, but never hidden. Piel’s, Rheingold, Ballantine, Schaefer, Schlitz, shinning in the Sun, or picked by Moon or the beam of headlights at night; washed by rain or flattened by wheels, but never dulled, never buried, never destroyed. Here is the mark of savages, the testament of wasters, the stain of prosperity. These wise souls contemplated their past lives in a long wrathless reverie, and sought to answer prayers from below as I have said. They watched over their kindred, their clansmen, their own nations; they watched over those who attracted their attention with accomplished and spectacular displays of religiosity; they watched with sadness the suffering of humans and wished they could help and tried to help by thought when they could. However, who are these beings who defile the grassy borders of our roads and lanes, who pollute our ponds, who spoil the purity of our ocean beaches with the empty vessels of their thirst? Who are the beings who make these vessels in millions and then say, “Drink—and discard”? What society is this that can afford to cast away a million tons of metal and to make of wild and fruitful land a garbage heap? #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Randolph Harris II International Institute 