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Where there is Official Censorship, it is a Sign that Speech is Serious!
Time is not the enemy. It is not an obstacle or an unfair restraint. The main thing is to keep the main thing the most important goal. While the physical scientist has not been able to dispense completely with the concept of the unexplainable or supernatural, one has at least managed to consign it to a corner of one’s mind where it does not greatly interfere with one’s day-to-day activities. One accepts as “given” the laws and particles of nature and spends little time worrying about the metaphysical problems associated with their origin. However, one accepts absolutely nothing else as given. One conceives of the World of physical and chemical phenomena with which one deals as a completely orderly and lawful World, with every detailed event, whether it be the formation of a new galaxy or the fall of a raindrop, being the effect of causes, which are themselves the effects of other causes, and so on, going back ultimately to the fundamental particles and the basic laws of the Universe. Even the existence among one’s laws of a principle of indeterminacy limiting the precision with which the future can be predicted does not permit the entry of caprice into the World of the physical scientist. Within a calculable and frequently very narrow range of uncertainty, the future is completely determined by the past. Given the laws and the particles, all else follows inexorably. It is a measure of how far the modern World has come that few who read the preceding paragraphs will find either strange or objectionable the ideas expressed there—as long as they are clearly understood to relate only to the properties of inanimate matter. However, when it comes to biological science, a different situation exists. There is by no means universal agreement on the extent to which living organisms resemble nonliving matter in having structure and properties determined entirely by the operation of immutable and unchanging laws. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Many are convinced that there is a basic difference between biological and physical phenomena in the degree of their ultimate scientific explainability. And even those who believe generally in the validity of natural law in biology may still feel that the laws applicable to living matter differ in profound essentials from those which control nonliving matter. In former periods it was not difficult, even for practicing scientists to employ entirely different philosophies when interpreting biological and physical phenomena. There were obviously vast differences between living creatures and inanimate objects. The overall properties of reproduction, growth, purposive behavior, adaptability, and the like just did not exist in the World of the physical scientist. And even when the structural and functional details of living organisms were investigated, the conspicuous features were found to be complex organs, nervous system, tissues, and cells that seemed to have nonbiological counterparts. Since the biologist possessed the normal human genetic endowment, one could not help looking for cause/effect relationships, or “natural laws,” to help explain the complexities with which one had to deal in terms of a smaller number of simpler concepts. In this one was partially successful, but one’s laws, dealing with such things as the response of living organisms or parts of living organisms to environmental change, had little resemblance the physicist was steadily establishing among his particles and forces. Biology and physics appeared to be entirely separate fields. The biologist, with subject matter incomparably more complex than that of the physicist, had an even greater need for recourse to the supernatural to bolster the underpinnings of one’s science. For the purpose the particles and laws of the physical scientists did not seem relevant. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Instead, there appeared to exist underlying purposive and directive forces in living organisms of a quality lying completely beyond the reach or cause/effect considerations. The term “vital force” and “vitalism” were coined to represent the many aspects of the phenomena of life that, it was believed, would never be susceptible to scientific explanation. There was a certain tidiness about the clear cleavage between biology and physics, each possessing it own separate sphere of action and each governed by its own religious dogma. Such separation also has the great advantage of consistency with one of the most humanly compelling of all philosophic tenets—the anthropocentric notion placing humans above and beyond the workings of natural law designed for the regulation of an impersonal World. For the idea of the fundamental irreconcilability of life processes with the principles of physical science has always been a popular one almost automatically accepted as true, at least until proved false by overwhelming evidence. Nevertheless, with the growth of knowledge both in the physical and the life sciences, the neat separation between the fields became difficult to maintain. Despite the essential convictions of practicing scientists, biology and physics had a tendency to come together. In retrospect, it seems more than coincidental that the event generally considered to have launched biology as a true science—Harvey’s discovery in 1628 of the circulation of the blood—consisted of a demonstration that ordinary principles of hydraulic engineering could be successfully applied to explain a vital function of the human body. In the nearly 400 years since Harvey’s discovery one after another of the aspect of biology that were originally believed destined to be eternally dependent upon the mystery of vitalism for their explanation has been moved out of the realm of the supernatural by the application of the ordinary laws of physical science. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Not only the gross functions of the body organs but many of their details of structure and operation have been found amenable to explanation by the methods of the physicist and chemist. Even the substances that go into the composition of the tissues and cells of living organisms have been found to owe their architecture and properties to the operation of the same physical laws of atomic particles and forces that govern the chemistry of nonliving matter. In short, the coalescence of the physical and the life sciences has progressed so far that many scientists in both disciplines now suspect that there is no fundamental difference between them—that ultimately all aspects of the structure and behaviour of living matter will be explainable in terms of exactly the same fundamental particles and natural laws as those underlying the load carrying qualities of a bridge, the flight capabilities of a rocketship or the colour of the sun when it changes angles in the sky. According to this magnificently unifying concept, there is but one ultimate science, and that is the science of the physicist. However, if there is only one ultimate science, there must also be only one ultimate supernatural, and that mist consist in its totality of the postulate of the original existence of the fundamental particles and natural laws of physical science. All else in biology, as well as in physics and chemistry, must follow. Since living matter is only a different manifestation of the operation of the same particles and natural laws as those governing nonliving matter, there can be no “vital principle,” “vital force,” or “vitalism” that pertains to the one but not to the other. These thoughts, of course, are not new. The Greeks formulated many of them. However, there is something about the context in which they arise in the twenty-first century that is significantly different from that of previous eras. The thesis of the possible unity of all science emerges today, not just from the contemplative mind of the philosopher, but from the laboratory of the science. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
In the twenty-first century this is no longer merely one of many competing these, all similarly unverified and seemingly unverifiable. Instead, we are now confronted with an unbroken path of scientific discovery, extending back several hundred years, each successive step of which moves closer to what had for some time seemed to many to be an inevitable ultimate conclusion. What was once Greek philosophy has become a scientific hypothesis worthy of objective consideration and treatment by the techniques of the scientific method. When it comes to matters related to the probable unity of science, in terms of the loose categories that we popularly apply to the functions of higher animals, the subject matter there treated was “mental” rather than “physical.” In that area it seemed that the evidence was rather convincing that all aspects of complex behaviour and intellectual activity will ultimately find satisfactory explanations in terms of the purely physical laws of nature. Although it was harder to do, I though it was even possible to reconcile the subjective phenomena of personal awareness with the concept of the reign of the natural laws of physical science in the domain of human experience. Obviously, even if it has been entirely convincing, the earlier treatment could not have been considered complete demonstration of the ultimate identity of biology and physics. For it remained to be shown that the so-called physical properties of living organisms could also be expected to arise by the normal workings of the laws of physics. There is the accumulated evidence for the essential continuity between nonliving matter and living organisms. Insofar as the evidence is convincing, the age-old “mystery of life” is indeed exposed as a clever, but essentially nonmagical, trick of the ordinary laws of physics. The establishment of values and their relationships presupposes a valuating subject, and the question arises: how can values that are relative to a valuating individual or group (exempli gratia pleasure values) be separated from values that are valid by their very nature regardless of personal or social attitudes? #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
If there are such “absolute values” (absolute in the same sense of being independent of a valuating subject), what is the source of their absoluteness, how can they be discovered, how are they related to reality, and what is their ontological standing? These questions led unavoidably to a situation that the value theory by its very nature tries to avoid—namely, a doctrine of being, an ontology. For only if they are rooted in reality, then the values have reality. Their validity is an expression of their ontological foundation. Being precedes value, but value fulfills being. Therefor, the vale theory, in its search for absolute values, is thrown back upon the ontological question of the source of values in being. A third way in which the religious dimension of the moral imperative is questioned can be described as the attempt, with the help of psychological and sociological explanations, to deny the unconditional character of the moral altogether. The psychological impact of realities like the demanding and threatening parents, or doctrines like that of the commanding pushing God, evokes the feeling of something unconditionally serious from which there is no escape and with which there can be no compromise. The same argument can be strengthened by sociological considerations. For example, one can derive, like Nietzsche, the shaping of the conscience of the masses from centuries of pressure exercised by the ruling groups, who did not hesitate to employ all, even the most cruel, tools of suppression—military, legal, education, psychological. From generation to generation this pressure produced an increasing internalization of commands, namely, the sense of standing under an inner unconditional command, an absolute moral imperative. This type of argument seems convincing. However, it is circular because it presupposes what it tries to prove—the identity of two qualitatively different structures. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
In the one case, persons and groups are bound by traditions, conventions, and authorities, subjection to which is demanded by the conscience, which may be weak or strong, compromising or insistent, healthy or compulsory, reasonable of fanatic. Psychological or sociological explanations of such states of mind are fully justified. Nothing that happens in the mind should be exempt from psychological or sociological exploration and explanation. However, within this structure of causation, another is manifest—what we might call the “structure of meaning” or, to use a famous medieval terms revived by modern phenomenology, the structure of “intentionality” or the noetic structure (from nous, “mind”). This structure would be evident, for example, should a mathematician, psychologically and sociologically conditioned like everyone else, discover a new mathematical proposition. The validity of this proposition is independent of the series of conditions which made the discovery possible. In a similar way, the meaning of the unconditional in being and in what ought-to-be appears within the psychological and sociological processes which make its appearance possible. However, its validity is not dependent on the structure in which it appears. Psychological and sociological pressures may provide occasion for the appearance of such structures; but they cannot produce the meaning of the unconditional. However strong the pressures be, they are themselves conditioned, and it is possible to contradict them and to be liberated from them, as, for example, from the father-image or from the socially produced conscience. This is not possible with regard to the unconditional character of the moral imperative. One can, of course, discard every particular content for the sake of another, but one cannot discard every particular content for the sake of another, but one can discard the moral imperative itself without the self-destruction of one’s essential nature and one’s eternal relationship. For these reasons, the attempts to undercut the unconditional character of the moral imperative by psychological and sociological arguments must fail. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
There is, however, a more fundamental question, raised and thoroughly discussed by the ancient ethical philosophers, namely, the question of the moral aim. We have called it “becoming a person within a community of persons,” and we have indicated that the centered person is the bearer of the spirit, its creativity, and its self-transcendence. Insofar as it is the moral aim to constitute and preserve the person with these potentialities, we can say tht the moral imperative demands the actualization of human’s created potentiality. However, now the question arises: is this an unconditional demand? The answer depends on the idea of human’s intrinsic aim, of the telos for which one is created. If the aim implies something above finitude and transitoriness, the fulfillment of this aim is infinitely significant, or unconditional in its seriousness. The Jesuit fathers who had joined the Spanish military conquerors were shocked and distressed. Incan maidens, they complained, were quite unlike their counterparts in Europe. There, virginity was highly prized in brides, but in the far-flung Incan empire of the Andes, young women were as free to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh dalliances as young men. The priests, metaphorically wringing their hands, deplored this behaviour. “Women are considered of less value while they are virgins,” lamented Jesuit father Costa, “and thus, whenever possible, they give themselves to the first man they find.” Given the Incas’ pragmatic approach to sexuality, so different from the Europeans’, the divinely inspired institution of the acllas—chosen women—is all the more intriguing. At first, these cloistered virgins seem like the Incan version of the vestals. The reality was different. The acllas—chosen women—is all the more intriguing. At first, these cloistered virgins seem like the Incan version of the vestals. The reality was different. The acllas’ religious role did parallel that of the vestals, but unlike them, the acllas also had significant political impact. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
By 1532, when Pizarro and his conquistador arrived and crushed the Incas into defeat, the Incan empire extended from what is today Quito, Ecuador, down to central Chile. As imperialists ruling a patchwork territory of defeated enemies, the Incas faced constant opposition, ranging from sullen subterfuge to outright rebellion. Their genius was to devise a multifaceted administrative apparatus that melded the diverse conquered cultures into a cohesive political structure and made them governable. The Inca himself, absolutely ruler and descendant of the Sun God, was at the apex of the Incan pyramid. Underneath were his officials, privileged and educated nobles whose positions were hereditary and whose children were sent off to Cuzco, the administrative capital, for formal training. These curacas were highly paid and, unlike the millions of toiling peasants, did not pay taxes. The cleverness of this system was how it co-opted the intellectual elite and former rulers of the conquered peoples. Most curacas belonged to vanquished peoples, so Incas bestowed on them the enviable status of Inca-by-privilege, which was not noticeably different from Inca-by-birth. The more talented and loyal they were, the more gifts and promotions they could expect. Through this rigidly hierarchical structure, the Incan bureaucracy imposed its imperial standards and demands—heavy taxes, for example—on millions of Indian peasants. It certainly did not eliminate dissension, but it greatly facilitated the work—and the rewards—of empire. The parallels between the imperial function of the curacas and the acllas are striking, except the acllas derived their power from the very different sphere of religion. Religion suffused Incan life. Ritual was paramount, for ceremonies and sacrifices ensured the fecundity of crops and animals and the health of the humans who tended them. The Incan pantheon was crowded, but Inti the Sun God, founder of the Incan dynasty, was among the most important deities. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
As the Sun God’s Earthly descendant, the Inca had unique needs. Unlike other men, for example, he required virgin wives. With typical Incan brilliance, he sent his agent to locate the most beautiful virgins in every province of his dominion. Because Andean women had no predilection for chastity, the girls chosen far, far were too young. These acllas were selected strictly for beauty, rank, and of course virginity. Once chosen, neither they nor their parents could object. Henceforth the new aclla was alienated from her community and belonged only to the Sun or Inca. The acllas went into training, sequestered in convents called acllawasis, under the guidance of mamaconas, older acllas promoted to this rank. One crucial lesson was that for the rest of their lives, they must remain virginal. Four or five years later, the Inca intervened, reserving some novices for wives. The he married, though exempted from virginity, were honored and held in awe and respect, and Indian men and women greatly venerated them. Most acllas, however, were ritually wed to the Sun, and as his wives, shared his divinity and were referred to as “sainted people.” Like the Inca’s wives, the acllas were revered throughout the empire. A popular myth even held that they were so spiritual, they subsisted only on the odor of certain fruit. Daily life in the acllawasi was structured and busy, as befitted the industrious Incas. The acllas learned both religious duties and womanly chores, though the latter were always performed in a religious context. The acllas spun and wove fine, brightly coloured cloth to adorn the idols, to burn in sacrifice, and for they Inca’s garments. They brewed chicha liquor and cooked, and at sunrise they said, “Sun, eat this food that your wives have cooked for you.” After sacrifices, this food nourished the Sun’s priests, attendants, Acllawasi guards, and the acllas themselves. Like the vestal virgins, they also tended the temple fire, feeding it special carved and painted wood. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Older acllas—the mamaconas—had even greater responsibilities. During a month devoted to special ceremonies, for example, they distributed vast quantities of balls of bred baked with the blood of animals sacrificed in religious ceremonies. They gave tiny bits to all the foreigners in Cuzo and sent larger portions to all the foreign temples through the kingdom and to various curacas, as a token of political bonds and their loyalty to the Sun and to the Inca. By this simple ritual with its powerful symbolism, the venerated mamaconas demonstrated what a valuable role they played in the Incan political strategy of strengthening the bonds between Cuzo and the provinces. Their virginity underlay the allas’ existence. The acllawais were heavily guarded and the acllas could leave them only to preform liturgical duties such as procession. However, longings for pleasures of the flesh sometime overpowered them, and the male gatekeepers, the custodians of the acllas’ virtue were sometimes the thieves who stile it. Once, for acllas had pleasures of the flesh relations with certain men who were posted to guard the acllawsi gates. When it was discovered they had broken their scared vows, the offending acllas and their lovers were arrested and the high priests sentenced them all to death. The acllas had been warned. They were the brides of the Sun, and their divine husband demanded perpetual celibacy. Still, it is said that, more than once, an Inca crept into acllawasi and had his way with a virginal aclla. After one such tryst, one of the elderly guards respectfully clasped the Inca’s robe as he sat in the Square of the Sun. “Inca,” he murmured, “last night you went into the House of the Sun and you were with one of his women.” “I sinned,” replied the Inca in a muted voice. The guard went away, satisfied he would not be executed for negligence for not defending the virtue of the acllas. Most acllas, however, fell victim to neither the Inca nor their own passions. These women shared “the life of great queens and ladies, and a life of tremendous pleasure and amusements, and they were highly regarded, esteemed, and loved by the Inca and by the Great Lords.” And as unwitting agents of imperil reconciliation and consolidations, the acllas were so effective that twice, when Cuzco was sacked, the conquerors spared only two places: the Temple of the Sun and the acllawasi, the home of the revered Incan virgins. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
In legend at least, the acllas live on today. Peruvian descendants of the Incas tell this story. A young aclla and a peasant boy became lovers. The Inca learned the maiden had violated her vow of perpetual chastity. He condemned the young couple to a living burial, faceup in the ground. That night, the elements were so agitated that rivers dried up, stars shifted positions, and all the soil was contaminated, except the Earth where the lovers were interred. The priests were alarmed. They decided the bodies should be dug up and burned. However, instead of corpses, they found only two tubers lying side by side. These were the first potatoes. One of the World’s best-loved staple foods was the product of divine retribution against a sinning aclla and the lover with whom she had violated her sacred vow of perpetual virginity. Many psychodynamic theorists believe that suicide results from depression and from anger at others that is redirected toward oneself. This theory was first stated by Wilhem Stekel at a meeting in Vienna in 1910, when he proclaimed that “no one kills himself (or herself) who has not wanted to kill another or at least wished the death of another. Some years later Dr. Sigmund Freud (1920) wrote, “No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which one has not turned back upon himself (or herself) from murderous impulses against others.” Agreeing with this perspective, Karl Menninger called suicide “murder-in-the 180th degree.” Dr. Freud and Abraham proposed tht when people experience the real or symbolic loss of a loved one, they come to “introject” the lost person; that is, they unconsciously incorporate the person into their own identity and feel toward themselves as they had felt toward the other. For a short while, negative feelings toward the lost loved one are experienced as self-hatred. Anger toward the loved one may turn into intense anger against oneself and finally into depression. Suicide is thought to be an extreme expression of this self-hatred. The following description of a suicidal patient demonstrates how such forces may operate: A 27-year-old conscientious and responsible woman took a knife to her wrists to punish herself for being tyrannical, unreliable, self-centered, and abusive. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
She was perplexed and frightened by this uncharacteristic self-destructive episode and was enormously relieved when her therapist pointed out that her invective described her recently deceased father much better than it did herself. In support of Dr. Freud’s view, researchers have often found a relationship between childhood losses—real or symbolic—and later suicidal behaviours. One study of 200 family histories found that early parental loss was much more common among suicide attempters (48 percent) than among nonsuicidal controls subjects (24 percent). Common form of loss were death of the father and divorce of separation of the parents, especially during either the early years of life or late adolescence. Late in his career, Dr. Freud proposed that human beings have a basic “death instinct.” He called this instinct Thanatos, and said that it opposes the “life instinct.” According to Dr. Freud, while most people learn to redirect their death instinct, by aiming it towards others, suicidal people, caught in a web of self-anger, direct it squarely upon themselves. Sociological findings are consistent with this explanation of suicide. National suicides rates have been found to drop in times of war, when, one could argue, people are encouraged to direct their self-destructive energy against “the enemy.” In addition, societies with high rates of homicide tend to have low rates of suicide, and vice versa. However, research has failed to establish that suicidal people are in fact dominated by intense feelings of anger. Although hostility is an important element in some suicides, several studies find that other emotional states are even more prevalent. By the end of his career, Dr. Freud himself expressed dissatisfaction with his theory of suicide. Other psychodynamic theorists have also challenged his ideas over the year, yet themes of loss and self-direction aggression generally remain at the center of most psychodynamic explanations. In our times the usual principle of such speech is that the others, the delinquent boys, are not taken seriously as existing, as having, like oneself, real aims in a real World. They are not condemned; they are not accepted. Instead they are a “youth problem” and the emphasis is on their “background conditions,” which one can manipulate; they are said to be subject to “tensions” that one can alleviate. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
The aim is not to give human beings real goals that warrant beliefs, and task to share in, but to re-establish “belonging,” although this kind of speech and thought precisely calculated to avoid contact and so makes belong impossible. When such efforts do not work, one finally takes some of the boy seriously as existing and uses force to make them not exist. Let me give a childish but important illustration of how this works out. A boy ten or eleven has a few great adventures involving pleasures of the flesh—he thinks they are great—but then he has the bad lucky to get caught and get in trouble. They try to persuade him by punishment and other explanations that some different behaviour is much better, but he knows by the evidence of his senses that nothing could be better. If he lives on in a profound disbelief, a disbelief in their candor and a disbelief even of one’s own body feelings. However, if he persists and proves incorrigible, then the evidence of his senses is attached to what is socially punished, explained away; he may even be put away. The basic trouble here is that they do not really believe he has had the pleasures of the flesh experience. That objective factor is inconvenient for them; therefore it cannot exist. Instead, this is merely a case of insecure affection at home, slum housing, comic books, and naughty companions: tensions and conditions. My hunch, is that this kind of early pleasures of the flesh adventure and misadventure is fairly common in delinquency. It is called precocious, abnormal, artificially stimulated, and so forth—an index of future delinquency. In my opinion that is rubbish, but be that as it may; what is important in a particular case is that there is a stubborn new fact. Attempting to nullify it makes further growth impossible (and creates the future delinquency). The sensible course would be to accept it as a valuable part of further growth. However, if this were done, they fear that the approved little hero would be a rotten apple to his peers, who now would suddenly all become precocious, abnormal, artificially stimulated, and prone to delinquency. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The plight with pleasures of the flesh of these children is officially not mentioned. The revolutionary attack on hypocrisy by Ibsen, Freud, Ellis, Dresier, did not succeed this far. It is an eccentric opinion that an important part of the kids’ restiveness in school from the onset of puberty has to do with puberty? The teachers talk about it among themselves, all right. (In his school, Bertrand Russell thought it was better if they had no pleasures of the flesh, so they could give their undivided attention to mathematics, which was the main thing.) However, since this objective factor does not exist in our schools, the school itself begins to be irrelevant. The question here is not whether the pleasures of the flesh should be discouraged or encouraged. When existing facts are treated as though they do not exist, there is an important issue, far more important is that it is hard to grow up. For then there is no dialogue, it is impossible to be taken seriously, to be understood, to make a bridge between oneself and society. In American society we have perfected a remarkable form of censorship: to allow every one one’s political right to say what one believes, but to swamp his little boat with literally thousands of millions of newspaper, mass-circulation magazines, best-selling books, broadcasts, and public pronouncements that disregard what he says and give the official way of looking at things. Usually there is no conspiracy to do this; it is simply that what he says is not what people are talking about, it is not newsworthy. (There is no conspiracy, but it is not undeliberate. “If you mean to tell me,” said an editor to me, “that Esquire tries to have articles on important issues and treats them in such a way that nothing can come of it—who can deny it?” Try, also, if your view on the issues calls attention to an essential factor that is not being generally mentioned to get a letter printed in the New York Times.) Naturally, the more simply true a statement is in any issues about which everybody is quite confused, the less newsworthy it will be, the les it will be what everybody is talking about. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
When the child is the story said, But the Emperor has no clothes!” the newspaper and broadcasts surely devoted many columns to describing the beautiful new clothes and also mentioned the interesting psychological incident of the child. Instead of being proud of him, his parents were ashamed; but on the other hand they received $89,000 in sympathetic contributions towards his rehabilitation, for he was a newsworthy case. However, he had a block in reading. Where there is official censorship, it is a sign that speech is serious. That is why social media and congress teamed up to block President Trump out. Where there is none, it is pretty certain that the official spokesmen have all the loud-speakers. The proclaiming of morality by the state is so loud and so constant, becomes such a litany, that the leaders of a nation may hypnotize themselves, may come to believer their own public relations act. Concurrent with careful plotting for the annexation of the Philippine Islands, the American government advanced the fiction that the unpredictable fortunes of war were making America the unwilling and reluctant recipient and custodian of the islands. And when, later, the conquest achieved, a group of clergymen called upon President McKinley, he explained just how he had arrived at his decision: “I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you gentlemen that I went on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance more than one might. And one night it came to me this way—that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them. And by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellowmen for whom Christ also died. And then I went to sleep and slept soundly.” Morality is not a vision of ends, however desirable, but a system of restraints in the pursuit of any end. States speak the language of morality without the intention of being limited by it. They behave as they see fit, and the way they see fit is then declared to be moral. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
If they invade and take over a neighbouring state, it is at the “invitation” of that state to maintain order, liberty, justice, etcetera. Since there is no tribunal with the authority to disallow such claims, the state had the last word. And its last word is always a pious assertion of morality. When we condemn, as we often do, the action of a sovereign entity as wrong—the torture of political prisoners, for example—we do so on the basis of an individual morality that obtains within the collective. We extend those limits, rules, and restraints, and demand that the state itself observed them. And how does the challenged state respond? It says: “Like all civilized nations, we absolutely condemn the torture of political prisoners. Be assured it does not happen here.” When presented with names, dates, photographs: “There regrettable incidents were the unauthorized actions of certain guards, who will be apprehended and punished. “When it is demonstrated that the practice continues: “We do it only when absolutely necessary for national security.” When pressed further: “Other nations do it, too, including your own.” And finally: “Your visa is canceled. Go home.” So what then does it man when we condemn a state for evil acts? It means that we believe there should be limits, rules, to which the state is subject, however lofty the ends in view which might call for their suspensions, and that is it does not conform to thee limits, it should be forcibly restrained and punished. Which is to say, there should be a morality of sovereign states. And so perhaps there should. However, there is not. And should ever it come about, the states it restrained would no longer be sovereign. A double standard is unavoidably at work in the life of a strong and flourished state: Its citizens observe limits in their conduct with each other, whereas foe the state nothing is forbidden. If the individuals in the pursuit of their private aims were to consider themselves as free of limits as Machiavelli’s Prince in his conduct of the state, nothing being absolutely forbidden, then the actions of these individuals would immediately reduce society to chaos. The state would have been a mob; the Prince would have nothing to rule. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
The great Cuban crisis of 1962 resulted in a situation which brought about a postponement of the menace of World War III, but did not, fully and finally, avert it. All efforts to obtain peace may succeed or not succeed—the results are variable—but any effort to establish peace permanently cannot possibly do so fully and finally until the human race comes into a larger obedience to the higher spiritual laws. If philosophy can do nothing for the peace of the World, then it is worth nothing. However, it can do something. Indeed, if the politicians and militarists would recognize its inner worth, its private firsthand knowledge of the higher laws, it could redeem civilization from the evils and horrors of war. We may find any number of excellent arguments against war. We may demonstrate conclusively that was as a process for achieving national aggrandizement is now entirely unnecessary, because applied science has opened the way for every nation to increase its wealth many times. However, if arguments alone were sufficient to convince rulers, then war would have disappeared when the first flood of League propaganda was sluiced out on the World. The fact is that something more than appeal to reason is required, for humans contain passions, prejudices, greed, and fears also. One must batter down the barriers which wall in one’s view of life. One must stop thinking in terms of one’s own country alone. One must learn that the frontiers of England, of America, of India, lie far beyond England, beyond America, and beyond India. One must open out one’s philosophical horizon and bring one’s thinking up to date. Know that this century demands that the Indian peasant learn that one’s fate is inextricably bound up with the fate of the British factory worker, and both with that of the American trader. When chaos and disorder, violence and materialism become widespread, the spiritual forces reassert themselves, restate the truth, and inspire a renewal of faith, religion, and mysticism. A society which is based on a hierarchy of wealth, position, appearance, and Worldly skill is unbalanced and cannot function properly or healthily of fully. It must look deeper and add inner spiritual correspondences to these things. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The political conferences to prevent or end war appear ridiculous; they are foredoomed from the start: selfishness and insincerity render them futile. The hope for a lasting peace—so often unrealized—can become satisfied but only by looking for it in a new direction—within. The World situation is very unpromising. Humanity has not learned as much as it ought to have learned from its terrible sufferings of recent years. Or, as in certain countries, it has even learned the wrong lessons and become more selfish, more brutal and violent, and more unco-operative. There is no escape, no new shortcut through political or economical change out of the chaos in which the nations find themselves, other than the oldest one in history—which is to avoid evil, to do good, to believe in God and the moral laws. The helmet of salvation—“And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints,” reports Galatians 5.17-18. Praying always with all prayer. The Word of God praying. Paul is talking about prayer armour. Part of that armour is the helmet of salvation. The word salvation means “deliverance, preservation, healing, and soundness.” “All those ideas are present in the word salvation and they all belong to us. David said, “Let the redeemed of the Lord says so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy,” reports Psalms 107.2. Many people are not walking in the full provision of salvation because they are not saying it. They remain in the hand of the enemy,” reports 2 Timothy 2.24-26. Deliverance, healing, preservation, and soundness belong to us. Jesus Christ paid for it! (Isaiah 53: 4-5.) Why do so many thousands of apparently intelligent, seemingly successful people allow themselves to be sucked into the myriad cults sprouting today in the widening cracks of the Fourth Wave system? What accounts for the total control that a Jim Jones was able to exercise over the lives of one’s followers? #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
It is loosely estimated today that some 13,000,000 Americans belong to about 5,000 religious cults, the largest of which bear nations like the Unification Church, the Divine Light Mission, the Hare Krishna, and the Way, each of which has temples or branches in most major cities. One of them alone, Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, claims 60,000 to 80,000 members, publishes a daily newspaper in New York, owns a fish-packing plant in Virginia, and has many other money-creating enterprises. Its mechanically cheerful fund raisers are a common sight. Nor are such groups confined to the United States of America. A recent sensational lawsuit in Switzerland called international attention to the Divine Light Center in Winterthur. “The cults and sects and communities…are most numerous in the United States of America because America is, in this matter, too 20 years ahead of the rest of the World,” says the London Economist. “However, they are to be found in Europe, west and east, and in many other places.” Just why it is that such groups can command almost total dedication and obedience from their members? Their secret is simple. They understand the need for community, structure, and meaning. For these are what all cults peddle. For lonely people, cults offer, in the beginning, indiscriminate friendship. Says an official of the Unification Church: “If someone’s lonely, we talk to them. There are a lot of lonely people walking around.” The newcomers is surrounded by people offering friendship and beaming approval. Many of the cults require communal living. So powerfully rewarding is this sudden warmth and attention that cult members are often willing to give up contact with their life’s earnings to the cult, to forego drugs and even pleasures of the flesh in return. However, the cult sells more than community. It also offers much needed structure. Cults impose tight constraints on behaviour. They demand and create enormous discipline, some apparently going so far as to impose that discipline through beatings, forced labour, and their own forms of ostracism or imprisonment. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Psychiatrist H. A. S. Sukhedo of the New Jersey School of Medicine, after interviewing survivours of the Jonestown mass suicide and reading the writings of members of the Peoples Temple, concludes: “Our society is so free and permissive, and people have so many options to choose from that they cannot make their own decisions effectively. They want others to make the decision and they will follow.” A man named Sherwin Harris, whose daughter and ex-wife were among the men and women who followed Jim Jones to death in Guyana, has summed it up in a sentence. “This is an example,” Mr. Harris said, “of what some Americas will subject themselves to in order to bring some structure into their lives. The last vital product marketed by the cults is “meaning.” Each has its own single-minded version of reality—religious, political, or cultural. The cult possesses the sole truth and those living in the outside World who fail to recognize the value of that truth are pictured as either misinformed or Satanic. The message of the cult is drummed into the new member at all-day, all-night sessions. It is preached incessantly, until he or she begins to use its terms of reference, its vocabulary, and—ultimately—its metaphour for existence. The “meaning” delivered by the cult may be absurd to the outsider. However, that does not matter. Indeed, the exact, pinned-down content of the cult message is almost incidental. Its power lies in providing synthesis, in offering an alternative to the fragmented blip culture around us. Once the framework is accepted by the cult recruit, it helps organize much of the chaotic information bombarding one from the outside. Whether or not that framework of ideas corresponds to outer reality, it provides a neat set of cubbyholes in which the member can store incoming data. It thereby relieves the stress of overload and confusion. It provides not truth, as such, but order, and thus meaning. By giving the cult member a sense that reality is meaningful—and that one must carry that meaning to outsiders—the cult offers purpose and coherence in a seemingly incoherent World. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
The cult, however, sells community, structure, and meaning at an extremely high price: the mindless surrender of self. For some, no doubt, this is the only alterative to personal disintegration. However, for most of us the cult’s way out is too costly. To make Fourth Wave civilization both sane and democratic, we need to do more than create new energy supplies or plug in new technology. We need to do more than create community. We need to provide structure and meaning as well. And once again there are simple things we can do to get started. Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, do not harass them, do not deprive them of their happiness, do not work against God’s intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the Earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you—alas, it is true of almost every one of us! Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy kneading-trough. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy land and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy cattle, and the young of thy flock. The Lord will command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou puttest Thy hand unto; and He will bless Thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. The Lord will open unto thee His good treasury, the Heaven to give the rain of thy land in its season, and to bless all the work of thy hand; and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. Happy art thou, O America; who is like unto thee, a people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and the sword of thy triumph! And thine enemies shall dwindle away before thee, and thou shalt tread upon their high places. “And they yearn for you while they pray for you, because of the surpassing measure of Go’s grace (His favour and mercy and spiritual blessing which is shown forth) in you. Now thanks be to God for His Gift, [precious] beyond telling [His indescribable, inexpressed, free Gift!]! reports II Corinthians 9.14-15. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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I Should Have the Right to this Possibility, and to Waste Myself!
The truth of the matter is tht you always know the right thing to do. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. The development of science can be descried as the process of transferring one after another aspect of human experience from the supernatural category into the realm of natural law. The rain and wind, lightning and earthquake, the rising and setting of the sun and stars have long since been accepted as the manifestations of the workings of the laws of gravity, mechanics, thermodynamics, and electricity. In more modern times the aurora borealis, the Van Allen belt, the propagation of radio waves, the properties of chemical dyes and plastics, and the principles of rocket propulsion are all “understood” in terms of generally accepted natural laws. And there are surprising few of these laws. With a couple of dozen subnuclear particles and a similar number of fundamental physical laws we are today able to derive explanations for a tremendous variety of physical and chemical phenomena, and most of those we cannot explain appear to be beyond our reach because of their complexity, rather than because of any inadequacy in the fundamental laws. To be sure, the last word has not yet been said relative to the basic particles from which matter and energy are derived and we have good reason to believe that we have not yet precisely formulated the natural laws, since new discoveries require us to refine and restate them from time to time. We cannot even be sure that there do not still exist undiscovered phenomena whose explanation will require major additions to our present statement of the body of natural law. However, all this is beside the point. The fact that our knowledge of the laws and particles that govern and inhabit the Universe is less than perfect must not obscure the tremendous body of evidence attesting to the orderliness of all natural phenomena that are generally classified as “physical” or “chemical.” In this very broad area, the crutch of a supernatural explanation now has to be used almost not at all. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Almost, but not quite. The explanations of physical phenomena must always start with the fundamental particles and the natural laws. Assuming the laws always existed and the particles were somehow provided in suitable number and distribution, plausible theories can be devised for the formation of the stars, the planet, the galaxies, and even for the subsequent course of billions of years of geological development that have made the Earth what it is today. However, since science is by its very nature based upon the process of reasoning from cause to effect, or of deducing probable causes from known effects, it is intrinsically incapable of carrying us back behind first causes. No scientist can “explain” the natural laws on which one’s science is ultimately based. One may invent a term such as “gravitational attraction” to enable one to discuss a phenomenon one wishes to deal with, and one may agree with other scientists on techniques for measuring the gravitational attraction between material object. One may then perform experiments that ultimately permit one to deduce relations, or “laws,” connecting gravitational attraction between material objects. One may then perform experiments that ultimately permit one to deduce relations, or “laws,” connecting gravitational forced and the masses and positions of the bodies involved. Thus one can learn how to predict the gravitational effects that will be produced by a specified configuration of objects or, conversely, to arrive at valid configurational deductions in terms of measured gravitational forces. However, what is gravity, really? What causes it? Where des it come from? How did it get started? The scientist has no answers. One’s delineation of the relations between gravitational forces and other properties of matter and space, and one’s discovery that the relationships so delineated are immutable and unchanging, may cause one to develop such a sense of familiarity with gravity that one is no longer curious about it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Nevertheless, in a fundamental sense, it is still as mysterious and inexplicable s it ever was, and it seems destined to remain so. Science can never tell us why the natural laws of physics exist or where the matter that started the Universe came from. It is good that our ancestors invented the concept of the supernatural, for if we are to answer such questions, we need it. We define ethic are the “science of the moral.” However, this is not a generally accepted definition, the chief reason being that the word “moral,” through historical accidents, has received several distorting connotations. Since the eighteenth century, at least in Europe, it has carried the implications of “moralism” in the sense of graceless legalistic ethics. And the United States of America, it has, under the influence of Puritanism, taken on a significance in pleasures of the flesh: to be “amoral” means to be lawless in the pleasures of the flesh, or at least to deny conventional pleasures of the flesh ethics. Because of these two connotations, one has tried to replace “moral,” and there would be no change. Therefore, I recommend that “ethical” be reserved for the theory of morals, and that the term “moral” and its derivatives be purged of those associations, and used to describe the moral act itself in its fundamental significance. We have discussed the nature of the moral act, its all-permeating character, and its immanence in the other two chief functions of man’s spirit—the cultural and the religious. We must now ask: what is the religious dimension of the moral imperative, and what is the relation of cultural creativity to morality? We can say: the religious dimension of the moral imperative is its unconditional character. This, of course, leads to a subsequent question: why is the moral imperative unconditional, and in which respects can one call it so, and in which not? In our daily life we used innumerable imperatives; but most of them are conditional: “if you want to catch your plane, you ought to leave now.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
However, perhaps you prefer to stay, even through you miss the plane. This is obviously a conditional imperative. However, if getting to the plane should be a matter of life and death, as, for example, in the case of a physician who must immediately operate upon a patient, the conditional imperative becomes unconditional. To miss the plane through negligence would than be an antimoral act, and would affect the person of the physician in a disintegrating manner. We might compare the disintegration effect that the failure to save a drowning woman has on the main character in Camus’ The Fall. There are many cases in which conditional imperatives have some bearing on an unconditional imperative. The missing plane might also arouse anxiety in those who expect the arrival of a friend. And there are cases in which several imperatives compete for supreme validity, and in which the decision is a moral risk. However, despite these “mixed” cases the moral imperative in itself is, as Immanuel Kant called it, “categorical” rather than “hypothetical,” or as I would say, unconditional as opposed to conditional. We may ask, however, if the decision is a moral risk—the “risk” implying that it might prove to be the wrong decision, whether a moral decision can stand under an unconditional imperative. The answer to this question is that the unconditional character does not refer to the content, but to the form of the moral decision. If it be a moral decision, it is dependent only on the pure “ought to be” of the moral imperative, whichever side of a moral alternative might be chosen, however great the risk in a bold decision may be. And should anyone be in doubt as to which of several possible acts conforms to the moral imperative, one should be reminded that each of them might be justified in a particular situation, but that whatever one chooses must be done with the consciousness of standing under an unconditional imperative. The doubt concerning the justice of a moral act does not contradict the certainty of its ultimate seriousness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The assertion of the intrinsically religions character of the moral imperative can be criticized from different points of view. Theology can strongly affirm that unconditioned character of the moral imperative, but deny that this character makes it religious. Moral commands, one argues then, are religious because they are divine commandments. They are ultimately serious because they express the “Will of God.” This alone makes them unconditional. God could have willed differently, and we must open our eyes to His revelation in order to know what His Will actually is. Such an argument, of course, would exclude any kind of secular ethics. Not only the content but also the unconditional character of the moral imperative would have to be sanctioned by a divine command, and conserved in holy traditions or scared books. I maintain, however, that the term “Will of God” can and must be understood differently. It is not an external will imposed upon us, and arbitrary law laid down by a Heavenly tyrant, who is strange to our essential nature and therefore whom we resist justifiably from the point of view of our nature. The “Will of God” for us is precisely our essential being with all its potentialities, our created nature declare as “very good” by God, as, in terms of the Creation myth, He “saw everything that He made.” For us the “Will of God” is manifest in our essential being; and only because of this can we accept the moral imperative as valid. It is not a strange law that demands our obedience, but the “silent voice” of our own nature as man, and as man with an individual character. However, we must go a step further. We can say: to fulfill one’s own nature is certainly a moral demand intrinsic in one’s being. However, why is it an unconditional imperative? Do I not have the right to leave my potentialities unfulfilled, to remain less than a person, to contradict my essential goodness, and thus to destroy myself? As a being that has the freedom of self-contradiction, I should have the right to this possibility, and to waste myself! If I choose to affirm my own essential nature, and this is a condition, the moral imperative is unconditional! The experience that has been expressed in the doctrine of the infinite value of every human soul in the view of the Eternal. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
It is not an external prohibition against self-destruction—bodily, psychologically, or morally—that we experience in states of despair, but the silent voice of our own being which denies us the right to self-destruction. It is the awareness of our belonging to a dimension that transcends our own finite freedom and our ability to affirm or to negate ourselves. So I maintain my basic assertion that the unconditional character of the moral imperative is its religious quality. If we maintain the immanence of religion in the moral command, no religious heteronomy, subjection to external commands is implied. The intrinsically religious character of the moral imperative is indirectly denied by the philosophy of values. Its representatives think in terms of a hierarchy of values, in which the value of the holy may or may not find a place; when it does, it is often on the top of this pyramid, above the moral, legal, social, political, and economic values. For our problem, this means first of all that values lie above and below each other and that there can be no immanence of one within another. The value of the holy, for example, cannot be immanent in the value of the good, and conversely. The relationship is external and may lead to the elimination of one or the other—most frequently, in this case, the value of the holy. In the World’s atavistic religions, where omnipresent gods reside in the trees, rocks, rivers, and Earth, and in animals, shamans or priests are charged with the delicate task of communicating across Earthly boundaries into the realm of the supernatural. Most come to the vocation at the invitation of divinities who appear to them in dreams. These men and women require a special sensitivity, and their training requires intense concentration, profound spirituality, and psychic and carnal purity achievable only through ritual purification. Usually this involves a retreat from daily life, dietary restrictions or fasting, and prayer and other devotions. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Almost always, a period of enforced celibacy is essential. Removed from intimate human relations, the shaman or priest experiences heightened spirituality, and can focus fully on the spirits and the work at hand. In the stake, late-nineteenth-century northern World, Heave had no snow, ice, or storms, and hell was a sunless darkness with raging snowstorms and massive ice blocks that kept it cold. Every object was governed by an invisible force, and spirits could be contacted by wise humans. Only when a hooded, well-mitted, surrendered to a trance religious human sat, and, being careful not to spit on the ground or to take off one’s mittens, surrendered to a trace, could this communication could take place. Often one would have visions or successfully summon one’s spirit helpers. Such an individual had undergone initiation rites so rigorous one risked dying at any moment from cold, hunger, drowning, or bullets. The two things most dangerous to humans are hunger and cold. One’s monthlong fast, doubly dangerous in the arctic chill, was broken only twice, by single mouthfuls of warm water. For the next year, this individual ate only certain foods. When one was exhibited to the spirits, one sat for a month, without daring to lie down, in an unprotected snow hunt on an exposed ledge, with no caribou cover and only a scrap of hide to sit on. As one’s novitiate took place in the dead of winter, this individual who never got anything to warm one, and must not move, was very cold, and it was so tiring having to sit without daring to lie down that sometimes it was as if the individual died a little. This torment continued for a month, after which this spiritual person no longer had the strength to stand. He was not very much alive anymore, and now so completely emaciated that the veins on his hands and body and feet had quite disappeared. For an entire year, this spiritual individual was forbidden to sleep with his wife. Even his food, which she cooked in a separate little pot, was segregated. No one else was permitted to share his meat. After he had recovered from his ordeal and maintained strict chastity, his reward was that his village approved him as the new religion leader of his community. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Such extended abstinence was exceedingly rare in his culture, though among ordinary folks it was fairly common in the short term—for example during mourning the whaling season, and the Bladder Festival, when the spirits were known to be deeply offended by any violation of the prohibition against pleasures of the flesh. The Bladder Festival lasted one month, during which the humans moved into the dance house and women visited them only to bring food. Even then, they had to bathe before their daily visit and swaddle themselves in waterproof raincoats. These precautions were crucial, for without the assistance of the spirit World, starvation was inevitable. When the spirits demanded that the mortals abstain from pleasures of the flesh, defiance would have been suicidal—there was simply too much at stake. Their rites of passage were, in their intensity, harshness, and celibate isolation, typical of truly religious beings everywhere. In many societies, actualized Christians are the only religious practitioners, and they hone their ability to communicate with the spirits through subjecting themselves, body and psyche, to grueling and terrifying experiences. The other denominator that cuts across cultures north to sound, east to west, is abstinence, which is always required at least for short periods and often extensively, even for years. Far away from the frozen north, actualized Christians exact similarly distinctive requirements, with strict observance of abstinence always a crucial factor in strengthening candidates for their roles as mediums between mortals and spirits. Their World was a treacherous quagmire of mystic forces, spirit helpers, cunning enemies, and vengeful clients. They believed that witchcraft caused most sickness and nonviolent deaths and that daily, waking life is mere illusion, “a lie.” Reality is supernatural, and they key to perceiving it was through prayer and fasting. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Only the most powerful in the church, however, can traverse the barriers between the human and the supernatural Worlds and interfere with the spirits sent to work there by rival church leaders. This form of Christianity has two dimensions: bewitching or cursing, and curing, the opposite sides of the same machine. Both kinds of Christians rely on blind faith, for the power to penetrate and interpret the supernatural World. In intercessional prayer, the trances that become bridges between the spirit and the real World and are so widely available that anyone can experience their wonders. As a result, about one in four actualized Christian’s humans are leaders in the church. These leaders work through spirit helpers. The learn and teach by apprenticeship. They accept novices, who pay them to reveal their skills and transmit their knowledge. To initiate a novice, the actualized Christian will spend ten days praying. To fortify oneself for upcoming battles with the otherworld, the novice must rest for three months and abstain from pleasures of the flesh. If one is too weak to observe this rule, one will be a feeble, unsuccessful actualized Christian. After one month, one will release one’s spirit helper. Now one faces a curious decision. One will long to send this spirit to someone else, or if one decides to hold on to it, it is believed that individual has healing powers. Celibacy and abstinence play a crucial role in the actualized Christian’s future. This prolong chastity is allows one to gain truly great power. However, celibacy is considered an ordeal that deters many men from pursuing a career as an actualized Christian. The period of abstinence is not wasted. The novice makes use of the energy he is conserving by learn how to heal others and speak the Lord’s Word. When this period of abstinence is over and one has amassed all the flora and fauna one intends to use, the new actualized Christian sets about invading one’s neighbor’s body, or alternately, setting spirit helpers to suck out evil another human has lodged inside the ailing person. About five years after one’s novitiate, when he swallowed the evil out of one individual, the actualized Christian subjects oneself to a sort of performance review. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
More rest is expected to help the cycle of accumulating enough energizing celibacy. Finally, one is again ready to male a foray into the World of Heavenly spirits. People also turn to priests to guide them through their complicated and confusing World. However, as children, they do not choose their vocation, which is revealed at birth by divination. Infants born to hold these positions in the church, their callings are revealed at birth by divination. Infants born to be actualized Christians are removed from their parents and takes them high into the mountains for years of preparation. The priest and his wife raise the child in darkness, forbidden to look upon the sun or even the moon when it is full. The child sleeps by day and rises at night to eat and learn all the actualized Christian’s songs, dances, legends, divine secrets, the language known only to priests. This lasts nine years and is followed by deeper education in the mysteries of the Earth and the sky. During this time, the novice actualized Christian eats only simple, traditional food and must never taste salt. At puberty, one is first given men. After eighteen years of instruction, the young man is taken outside at dawn and for the first time permitted to see the World illuminated. One is ready to receive its knowledge, the next stage in his priesthood. Until then, the young man who has never seen sunlight had also been prevented from seeing a woman of reproductive age. During adolescence, when one is absorbing the accumulated wisdom of one’s priestly mentor, the experienced actualized Christian ensures one is never exposed to temptation. If one is to concentrate all one’s energy and force on assimilating the vast amount of material the experienced actualized Christian has spent so many years imparting, the strictest celibacy is necessary. One angel enlightens another. We must observe intellectual light is nothing else than a manifestation of truth, according to Ephesians 5.13: “All that is made manifest is light.” Hence to enlighten means nothing else but to communicate to others the manifestation of the known truth; according to the Apostle (Ephesians 3.8): “To me the least of all the saints is given this grace to enlighten all humans in God.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Therefore one angels is said to enlighten another by manifesting the truth which one knows one self. Theologians plainly show that the orders of the Heavenly beings are taught Divine science by their minds. One angel can notify the known truth to another. First, by strengthening one’s intellectual power; for just as the power of an imperfect body is strengthened by the neighborhood of a more perfect body—for instance, the less hot is made hotter by the presence of what is hotter; so the intellectual power; for just as the power of an imperfect body is strengthened by the neighborhood of a more perfect body—for instance, the less hot is made hotter by the presence of what is hotter; so the intellectual power of an inferior angel is strengthened by the superior angel turning to one: since in spiritual things, for one thing to turn to another, corresponds to neighborhood in corporeal things. Secondly, one angel manifests the truth to another as regard the likeness of the thing understand. For the superior angel receives the knowledge of truth by a kind of universal conception, to receive which the inferior angel’s intellect is not sufficiently powerful, for it is natural to one to receive truth in a more particular manner. Therefore the superior angel distinguishes, in a way, the truth which one conceives universally, so that it can be grasped by the inferior angel; and this one proposes it to one’s knowledge. Thus it is with us that the teacher, in order to adapt oneself to others, divines into many points the knowledge which one possesses in the universal. This is the expressed by Dionysius (Coel. Hier. Vx): “Every intellectual substance with provident power divides and multiples the uniform knowledge bestowed on it by one nearer to God, so as to lead its inferiors upwards by analogy.” All the angels, both inferior and superior, see the Essence of God immediately, and in this respect one does not teach another. It is of this truth that the prophet speaks; wherefore he adds: “They shall teach no more every human one’s brothers, saying ‘Know the Lord’: for all shall know Me, from the least of them even to the greatest.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
However, all the types of the Divine works which are known in God as their cause, God knows in Himself, because He comprehends Himself; but of others who see God, each one knows the more types, the more perfectly one sees God. Hence a superior angel knows more about the types of the Divine works than an inferior angel, and concerning these the former enlightens the latter; that the angels are enlightened by types of existing things. An angel does not enlighten another by giving one the light of nature, grace, or glory; but by strengthening one’s natural light, and by manifesting to one the truth concerning the state of nature, of grace, and of glory, as explained above. The rational mind is formed immediately by God, either as the image from the exemplar, forasmuch as it made to the image of God alone; or as the subject by the ultimate perfecting form; for the created mind is always considered to be unformed, except it adhere to the first truth; while the other kinds of enlightenment that proceed from human or angel, are, as it were, dispositions to this ultimate form. The word-of-mouth publicity that attends suicides in a school, workplace, or small community may trigger suicide attempts. The suicide of a recruit at a U.S. Navy training school, for example, was followed within two weeks by another and also by an attempted suicide at the school. To head off what threatened to become a suicide epidemic, the school began a program of staff education on suicide and group therapy sessions for recruits who had been close to the suicide victims. Most people faced with difficult situations never try to kill themselves. In an effort to understand why some people are more prone to suicide than others, theorists have proposed more fundamental explanations for the self-destructive action than the immediate triggers considered in the past. The leading theories come from the psychodynamic, sociocultural, and biological perspectives. As a group, however, these hypotheses have received limited research support and fail to address the full range of suicidal acts. Thus the clinical field currently lacks a satisfactory understanding of suicide. 3.5 percent of suicides in which someone else—a spouse, intimate friend, relative—is murdered at the same time 5 percent of individual who make a suicide attempt soon after committing a homicide. 20 percent of persons who a suicide attempt soon after killing a child. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
The simple job plight of these adolescents could not be remedied without a social revolution. Therefore, if the most well-intentioned public spokesmen do not mention it at all, it is not astonishing. However, it is hard to grow up in a society in which one’s important problems are treated as nonexistence. It is impossible to belong to it, it is hard to fight to change it. If one is smothered by well-meaning social workers and PaL’s who do not seem to understand the real irk, the effect must be rather to feel disaffected, and all the more restive. The boys cannot articulate the real irks themselves. For instance, what public spokesman could discuss the jobs? The ideal of having a real job that you risk your soul in and make good or be damned, belongs to the heroic age of capitalist enterprise, imbued with self-righteous beliefs about hard work, thrift, and public morals. Such an ideal might still have been mentioned in public ninety years ago; in our era of risk-insured semimonopolies and advertised vices it would be met with a ghastly stillness. Or alternately, to want a job that exercises a man’s capacities in an enterprise useful to society, is utopia anarcho-syndicalism; it is labour invading the domain of management. No labor leader has entertained such a though in our generation. Management has the “sole prerogative” to determine the products and the machines. Again, to speak of the likelihood or the desirability of unemployment, like Norbert Wiener of J.K. Galbraith, is to b politically nonprofessional. Yet every kid somehow knows that if he quits school he will not get ahead—and the majority quit. During, let us say, 1890-1936, on Marxist grounds, the fight for working conditions, for security, wages, hours, the union, the dignity of labour, was mentioned, and it gave the worker or the youth something worthwhile. However, because of their historical theory of the “alienation of labour” (that the worker must become less and less in control of the work of his hands) the Marxist parties never fought for the man-worthy job itself. If workmen accept their alienation, and are indifferent also to Marxist politics, it is not surprising now. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
When humans live each other on one’s own, should ever this have been the case, morality does not exist. Such humans have freedom without limit, but the enjoyment of that freedom is slight; for each must be on guard against all others, and each must scrounge alone for food and shelter. If each surrenders a bit of freedom in exchange for group solidarity, it appears advantageous of all. So each gives up one’s right to murder, to steal, to deceive. Now all are less free but more safe. Without fear they live together, secure against predators, hunt more successfully in a group, build better shelters. The group comes into being by collecting the surrendered rights of its constituent individuals. The group itself surrenders nothing, is subject to no rules, is free to use its aggregate force for such acts of murder, of stealing, of deceiving, as it may see fit. And it does often so see fit. The members of the group is now the predator. The individual freedoms constitute the stuff of morality. The aggregate power of the surrendered rights is exercise not by all acting in concert but by rulers. We hope that the freedoms we have surrendered will be exercised by our rulers for the benefit of all. Such is rarely the case. The relationship of the individual to the state is not that of cell to multicellular organism. For the cell surrenders all autonomy to the organism, whereas the individual person withholds some initiative from the state. The state, in its will to power, would have it that individual become like cells; and occasionally, when the state is exceedingly powerful, it may bring this about. The autonomy we retain as individuals constitutes a limit to the degree to which the state may command our compliance. The extent to which the individual is committed to the shared beliefs of one’s community measures the extent to which one has been willing to give up individual power in the interest of community. When shared beliefs are firm, the collective wields great power, its constituents correspondingly less. When shared beliefs are destroyed, the collective loses power. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
At the top of the hierarchy of social organization is the realm of sovereignty, where there is no effective constraint. Here the hypocrisy is extreme; for the security of the collective is dependent upon the confidence of its constituents that the government is itself bound by those principles which protect its constituents, as well as its neighbours, from the abuse of its power. So the spokesmen for the sovereign amoral nation are constantly proclaiming the nation’s morality, its commitment to justice, freedom, and peace, whereas in fact they are leading the nation in the pursuit of more power by whatever means promise success. Insofar as this pursuit is cured at all, it is curbed by fear of retaliation by other sovereign states and fear of insurrection at home. When seeking the ultimate sources of human error and human wrong-doing, the philosopher must look very far into human history and very deep into human nature. One must look farther than their social, economic, and political courses. This done, one will trace them to the animalistic instincts inherited from pre-human and primitive human incarnations. As long as these instincts remain undisciplined, and as long as the higher nature is not more eagerly cultivated, so long must we expect to witness the strife which produces war—whether between nations of inside them. It is quite proper to make the necessary remedial efforts through social, political, educational, organizational, and other means, but their benefits will disappear in the end if they are not made side by side with the effort to teach the necessity of liberation from these instincts by the appropriate mental and spiritual techniques. The more numerous the individuals who can find peace and joy inside their own hearts, the more will the dangers and horrors which threaten humankind be curbed. There is no perpetual peace anywhere on this planet, only perpetual strife. However, it is open to humans to take the violence, the murder, and the war out of this strife. One may purge it of its savage beast qualities. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
The greatest spiritual needs of the modern World are more depth and more width. It needs to deepen its field of consciousness so as to include the true spiritual self and the divine laws governing life. It needs to widen out into loving thoughts and compassionate deeds. With right ethical ideals and sound nonmaterialistic ideas the external activities which will fill the postwar stage would then bring true progress to humankind. However, with unworthy ideals and false ideas humanity would only fall into greater disaster and eventual destruction. Without knowing the real and hidden causes of the malady of war, we cannot find the real and lasting cure of war. The reconstruction of community, however, must be seen as only a small part of a larger process. For the collapse of Third Wave institutions also break down structure and meaning in our lives. Individuals need life structure. A life lacking in comprehensible structure is an aimless wreck. The absence of structure breeds breakdown. Structure provides the relatively fixed points of reference we need. That is why, for many people, a job is crucial psychologically, over and above the paycheck. By making clear demands on their time and energy, it provides an element of structure around which the rest of the lives can be organized. The absolute demands imposed on a parent by an infant, the responsibility to care for an invalid, the tight discipline demanded by membership in a church or, in some countries, a political party—all these may also impose a simple structure on life. Faced with an absence of visible structure, some young people use drugs to create it. “Heroin addiction,” writes psychologist Rollo May, “gives a way of life to the young person. Having suffered under perpetual purposelessness, one’s structure now consists of how to escape law enforcement, how to get the money one needs, where to get one’s next fix—all these give one a new web of energy in place of one’s previous structure World.” The nuclear family, socially imposed schedules, well-defined roles, visible status distinctions, and comprehensible lines of authority—all these factors created adequate life structure for the majority of people during the Third Wave era. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Today the breakup of the Third Wave is dissolving the structure in many individual lives before the new structure-providing institutions of the Fourth Wave future are laid into place. This, not merely some personal failing, explains why for millions today daily life is experienced as lacking any semblance of recognizable order. To this loss of order, we must also add the loss of meaning. The feeling that our lives “count” comes from healthy relationships with the surrounding society—from family, corporation, church, or political movement. It also depends on being able to see ourselves as part of a larger, even cosmic, scheme of things. The sudden shirt of social ground rules today, the smudging of roles, status distinctions, and lines of authority, the immersion in blip culture and, above all, the breakup of the great thought-system, indust-reality, have shattered the World-image most of us carry around in our skulls. In consequence, most people surveying the World around them today only see chaos. They suffer a sense of personal powerlessness and pointlessness. It is only when we put all this together—the loneliness, the loss of structure, and the collapse of meaning attendant on the decline of industrial civilization—that we can begin to make sense of some of the most puzzling social phenomena of our time, not the least of which is the astonishing rise of the cult. Hear our humble prayer, O God, for our friends the animals, especially for animals who are suffering; for any that are hunted or lost, or deserted of frightened or hungry; for all that must be put to death. We entreat for them all thy mercy and pity and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words. Please make us, ourselves to be true friend to animals and so to share the blessings of the merciful. And God will love thee and bless thee and multiply thee; He will also bless the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy land, thy corn and thy wine and thine oil, the increase of thy cattle and the young of thy flock, in the land which He promised unto thy fathers to give thee. Thou shalt be blessed above all peoples; there shall be n more barren or sterile ones among you or among your cattle. And the Lord will take away from thee all sickness; and He will put none of the evil diseases of sin, which thou knowest, upon thee; but will inflict them upon all them that hate thee. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
When one prays the Word of God, you are praying the perfect will of God. It will tear down Satan’s strong hold. “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart,” reports Hebrews 4.12. The Word of God is alive and powerful, more powerful than any tongue that could speak against you. That is the towedged sword He is talking about. One translation says, “The Word of God is a living thing.” Revelation 1.16 says, “And out of His (Jesus’) mouth went a sharp twoedged sword. The tongue will cut or heal. “There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health,” reports Proverbs 4.22. Therefore we should proclaim it. You might pray this way: “I am redeemed from the curse of the Law; and in the name of Jesus Christ, I refuse to bow to sickness or disease. Every disease germ and every virus that touches this body dies instantly, in the name of Jesus. Then make that your confession everyday, not just when you feel like it. Your body is like a child, it will do anything you let it do, and sometimes it would rather be sick than have to go to work. “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would,” reports Galatians 5.17. If you give in to the flesh continually, your body will be sick. Galatians 5.19-21 lists the works of the flesh. Each one, or any combination of these, is very capable of producing sickness and disease in the body. Paul said, “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live,” reports Romans 8.13. No, this is not the power of optimistic thinking. It is the power of God’s Word. It is creative power—the ability of God released when you pray the Word of God. Take the things God has said about your situation and put them in prayer from. Here is a simple way to pray the World of God: “Father, in the name of Jesus, I am the body of Christ. I overcome evil with good. Satan has no power over me for the Greater One dwells in me. Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the World. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“No evil will befall me; neither shall any plague come nigh my dwelling, for He has given His angels charge over me. They keep me in all my ways and in my pathway is life. I thank You, Father, that no weapon formed against me will prosper, but whatever I do will prosper. I am like a tree planted by the rivers of water. My God supplies all my need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. I have all sufficiency in all things. I do abound to all good works for my God has made all grace around toward me. Every word is based on the Word of God. You are proclaiming the answer, not the problem. Someone says, “You do not understand. I do not have abundance.” No, if you continue to disagree with God, you never will. Learn to call those things that be not as though they were. It is when you continually agree with and proclaim boldly the things God has said about you that He will perform His Word. Most Christians have tried it for a day or two, then given up. For nearly two years I prayed the World of God before some things became a revelation in my spirit. Just because we have said it two or three times does not mean we believe it. Sometimes it is necessary to say it over and over to bring faith. The Bible says, “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. If we hear ourselves speaking what God said, it will get in our spirits more quickly than if we hear someone else say it. If we confess God’s Word audibly, faith will come more quickly. The angel who hath redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named in them, and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac; and let them grown into a multitude in the midst of the Earth. The Lord your God hath multiplied you, and behold ye are this says as the stars of Heaven for the multitude. May the Lord, the God of your fathers, multiply you a thousand-fold, and bless you, as He hath promised you. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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It Was the Control Spirit–Shall I Never be Delivered from this Mystery?
The Christian Bible tells us plainly there will be a great increase in demon activity as we approach the end of human history. The Apostle makes specific reference to this in 1 Timothy 4.1. The Book of Revelation, chapters 16 and 18, predicts almost universal demonic domination in the final days of God’s judgments on the Earth. This surge of demonism will be amazingly deceptive, luring the masses and even converting nominal Christians. Veneration for the evil spirits will lead to depraved conduct, and the pinnacle of demonic achievement will be their control of World leaders. As incredible as it may seem, this revelation from the Word of God assures us that dependence on these unseen spiritual forces will increase even as scientific knowledge increasing. There is a lot of reality and power that evil spirits possess. Many people have become involved in communication with evil spirits, these spirits—both appealing and loathsome—enslave them, but Jesus Christ can set them free. There are people in this World that have firsthand experience dealing with spirits. Spiritualism is very attractive because it promises knowledge of the future and communication with dead loved ones. Many people will be influenced by demonic spirits in this way without realizing it. However, the only sure guide into the shadowy spirit World is the Christian Bible, and we neglect it at the peril of our souls. The person who denies the phenomena of spiritism today is not entitled to be called a skeptic, one is simply ignorant. A finial, clinching reason for our refusal to consider any of today’s seers as divinely inspired is our conviction that the gift of prophecy ceased when the Scriptures were completed. Prophets uttered truths they had received directly from God, and the Lord used this means of revelation during the years from the creation of man until the time of Malachi. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
From Malachi until John the Baptist can on the scene, Israel had not prophets. Then, in the brief period between Christ’s ascension and the completion of the gospels and epistles, the gift of prophecy was present in the Church. However, gradually the New Testament writings took the place of a prophetic ministry. The apostles were aware that God had given them special authority when they wrote, and that believers were to place greater value upon these gospels and epistles than so-called prophetic declarations. For example, although Paul was not speaking primarily of prophets, he definitely asserted the authoritative nature of his writings when he made the demand, “if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him,” reports 2 Thessalonians 3.14. Again, writing to the Christians in Corinth, he said that his words were they very commandment of God, and that they constituted the standard by which God’s people could evaluate the declarations of men considered to be prophets. “If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord,” reports 1 Corinthians 14.37.” The priority of these apostolic writing over the declarations of other humans who claimed to be prophets is further indicated by the apostle John as he brought the book of Revelation to a close. He know that he was writing the authoritative message of God, and therefore could issues this strong warning: “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book,” reports Revelations 22.18, 19. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
No one claiming a prophetic gift had any right to tamper with the written Word. It is obvious, therefore, that the inspired writing of the apostles gradually superseded prophetic utterances in the early church. Special gifts like prophecy, knowledge, wisdom, healings, and tongues were gradually withdrawn, and in 1 Corinthians 13 Paul declared that the quiet, unselfish pursuit of love is a far more excellent path than that of always desiring the more spectacular activities. He continued, “whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; where there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophecy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, the that which is in part shall be done away,” reports 1 Corinthians 13.8-10. When Paul writes these words, the New Testament as a whole was not yet in existence, but he declared that special gifts of the Holy Spirit such as prophecy and tongues would become a thing of the past. They would merge into the complete revelation of the New Testament and no longer be needed. They belonged to the childhood state of the Church; therefore, we conclude that the gift of prophecy cannot be in existence today. God has spoken in the Scriptures, and it is to them that we must turn to find His message to us. No one today can rightly claim that he speaks a message by direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We do not believe that anyone today who claims to receive visions directly from the Lord should be acknowledged as a spiritual leader. None of these so-called prophets are correct in every single prediction they make, and therefore they do not meet the test the Lord prescribed in Deuteronomy 18. Most of them are also guilty of disobeying the Biblical warnings of Paul against occultism. In addition, they tend to speak ambiguously and manifest an ignorance of what the Bible really teaches. Finally, we believe that we have logical, historical, and Biblical grounds for affirming that the gift of prophecy was temporary, and that it gave way and disappeared from the Church when the New Testament was completed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
In the year, 1663, a quaintly humorous story of a most persistent and troublesome ghostly visitant comes from the Ireland, though in this particular instance its efforts to right the wrong did not produce a lawsuit: the narrator was Mr. Alcock, who appears in the preceding story. One David Hunter, who was neat-herd to the Bishop of Down (Jeremy Taylor) at his house near Portmore, saw one night, as he was carrying a log of wood into the dairy, an old woman who he did not recognize, but apparently some subtle intuition told him that she was not of mortal mould, for incontinent he flung away the log, and ran terrified into his house. She appeared again to him the next night, and from that on nearly every night for the next nine months. “Whenever she came he must go with her through the Woods at a good round rate; and the poor fellow look’d as if he was bewitch’d and travell’d off his legs.” Even if he were in bed he had to rise and follow her wherever she went, and because his wife could not restrain him she would rise and follow him till daybreak, although no apparition was visible to her. The only member of the family that took the matter philosophically was Hunter’s little dog, and he became so accustomed to the ghost that he would inevitably bring up the rear of the strange procession—if it be true that the lower classes dispensed with the use of night-garments when in bed, the sight must truly have been a most remarkable one. All this time the ghost afforded no indication as to the nature and object of her frequent appearances. “But one day the said David going over a Hedge into the Highway, she came just against him, and he cry’d out, ‘Lord bless me, I would I were dead; shall I never be delivered from this misery?’ At which, ‘And the Lord bless me too,’ says she. ‘It was very happy you spoke first, for till then I had no power to speak, though I have followed you so long. My name,’ says she, ‘is Margaret—-. I lived here before the Wat, and had one son by my Husband; when he died I married a soldier, by whom I had several children which the former Son maintained, else we must all have starved. He lives beyond the Ban-water; pray go to him and bid him dig under such a hearth, and there he shall find 28s. Let him pay what I owe in such place, and the rest to the charge unpay’d at my funeral, and go to my Son that lives here, which I had by my latter Husband, and tell him that he lives a very wicked and dissolute life, and is very unnatural ad ungrateful to his Brother that nurtured him, and if he does not mend his life God will destroy him.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
David Hunter told her he never knew her. “No,” says she, “I died seven years before you came into this Country”; but she promised that, if he would carry her message, she would never hurt him. However, he deferred doing what the apparition bade him, with the result that she appeared the night after, as he lay in bed, and struck him on the shoulder very hard; at which he cried out, and reminded her that she had promised to do him hurt. She replied that was if he did her message; if not, she would kill him. He told her he could not go now, because the waters were out. She said that she was content that he should wait until they were abated; but charged him afterwards not to fail her. Ultimately he did her errand, and afterwards she appeared and thanked him. “For now,” said he, “I shall be at rest, and therefore I pray you lift me up from the ground, and I will trouble you no more.” So Hunter lifted her up, and declared afterwards the she felt just like a bag of feathers in his arms; so she vanished, and he heard most delicate music as she went off over his head. In the late 19th century, Mrs. Winchester used to have séances in the Blue Séance Room in her mansion, which was constantly being expanded and remolded for 38 years. It once stood nine stories high, had 500 rooms, and was approximately 65,000 square feet. Here is the transcript from one of her sessions: “I could hardly wait for the next séance to take place so I could talk to my departed husband….six more days seemed like an eternity. I had not doubt that William would be present, though we had failed on the first attempt. I had talked with the spirit World many times in in my forty-four years, just as I talked with anyone else. I had listened to the spirits give lectures, sermons, exhortations, and counsel to the construction crew assembled at the seances in my mansion. However, I never tired to talk with a dead person. My family, especially my mother’s relatives, had been involved with spiritualism for several generations. They came to the United States of America on the Mayflower. My father was a very religious mand. He often remarked that if any of his children were to die, he would become a spiritualist. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
“On March 7th 1881, my brave forty-four-year-old husband died, and soon afterward a family from New Haven, Connecticut, told me they had contacted the spirit of my dead husband and the he was eager to talk to me. I was very excited, and I agree to let the spiritus to come to my home at the appointed time for a séance in the Bule Séance Room. There were perhaps thirteen people gathered in my home for the séance. We sat quietly, meditatively, and expectantly. The medium sat at one end of our circle of chairs and led us in singing hymns and prayer. It did not seem strange to us to open the séance by saying the Lord’s Prayer. We even ended: ‘…in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.’ A prayer for a séance went like this: ‘Eternal God and Father of Lights, we gather as thy expectant children. We are eager to communicate with the spirit World and the spirits of our departed friends and loved ones. We pray that you would look favorably upon us. Bless us this night with communications from our friends in the spirit World. In the name of the great Father of Lights. Amen.’ Then we sang familiar church hymns such as: ‘Face to Face,’ ‘In the Garden,’ ‘Beautiful Isle of Somewhere,’ and ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ While we were singing, the medium slumped into unconsciousness, and before long a strange voice spoke through the medium’s lips; it was the control spirit. ‘Good evening, my children. There are many of the departed here, and all are eager to speak with you. The spirit World welcomes you to another opportunity to contact your departed loved one.’ We listened eagerly to the spirit as the medium sat limply, eyes closed, in her chair. The spirit said that a family was present whose departed loved one wanted very much to speak with them, but since he had been in the spirit World so short a time he was still adjusting to his new spiritual dimension and would have to communicate the following week. That was a terrible disappointment, and the whole family could hardly wait until the next séance when we could contact my beloved husband. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
“At the second meeting we encountered another phase of spiritualism, the gold key séance (sometimes called a séance of vocal revelation). A metal key, made of solid gold, stood upright in a damp saucer on a table in the middle of the room. When the medium entered her trance, the solid gold key rose slowly from the table and dipped into a horizontal position. Eerily, it began spinning with a soft whir and moved around the room, stopping at intervals in midair. I sat rigid in amazement. I saw the floating key, but I could not believe it. The others in the séance seemed to accept the experience as a very common thing. The key went first to my father and then to other members of our family. And we heard a voice, supposedly my departed husband’s, but at first we could not distinguish the words. Then the key came to me. My first reaction was to grab it, and I snatched at the key, but it darted away with amazing swiftness. I tried again, but it moved faster than I did. The key finally settled directly in front of me, just out of my reach. Then the control spirit launched into a lecture about my unbelief, speaking through the unconscious medium. She said if I were to get anything for this meeting, I must conduct be patient. As my emotions subsided, the golden key hovered closer and closer to me until it was near my ear, the key was stroking my hair in the way my husband used to comb it. A voice flowed from the key saying, ‘I love you; I love you.’ It was supposed to be my husband’s voice, but it did not sound like him to me. Everyone else accepted it as William’s voice, but I was disappointed; it was not William. That was the first of many occasions when he supposedly spoke to the family, but I was never convinced. At later séances my niece and I were told we could become gifted spirit mediums. By following the instructions of the spirit voice in the séance of passivity we would in time be able to contact the spirits in our own home. My niece and I began to practice the séance of passivity for thirteen minutes each evening. During these periods we tried to blot out every conscious thought from our minds. Eventually we could sit for an hour and thirteen minutes without being distracted by a single conscious thought. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
“In one of the longer periods, the phenomenon finally took place that we had been waiting for. I witnessed the spirit taking control of my niece as she lost consciousness and a voice completely foreign to her soft contralto boomed out: ‘My child, be not afraid. You have done well. If you only believe, greater things than these you will do. Continue in this way, and the marvels of the spirit World will be revealed to you.’ With that, the spirit departed and my niece regained consciousness. She asked what had happened, and I told her the words of the spirit. She was thrilled! She had arrived at a coveted place of spiritual development, and from that time on we held séances in my mansion in private, with my young niece as the gifted medium. Some people say this is all a hoax, that spirits do not talk with human beings and that floating objects are mere trickery. I would agree that a great many of the eerie demonstrations we hear about are clever illusions, but I believe on the basis of personal experience and the plain words of Scripture that spirits of the invisible World do communicate with humanity and do wield supernatural power in our visible World. And the ominous truth is that these spirits are not from God, but fallen angles controlled by Satan. Their unholy mission is to lead human beings—by refined or gross means—away from dependence on God, their Creator, and they are active in spiritualist churches, séances, psychic phenomena, witchcraft, and idol-worship. However, some of these spirits are good and convey helpful messages. Yet, individuals and nations who reject God, no matter how educated and prosperous they are, fall prey to the other god, Satan.” Believe it or not, the key to the massive front door was made of solid gold and the keys for the other 2,000 doors of this Eight Wonder of the World filled two water buckets. One day, Mrs. Winchester stood at the sitting-room window, after the butler left her, looking at the dull grey of the January sky and the yellowing pastures of the dairy county. There was no rain, but also no gleam of sunshine. I always wanted a private tour of her mansion. My father was on the construction crew and he promised one day when Mrs. Winchester was away, I would get my chance. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
One morning Mrs. Winchester went off in her carriage for a trip to San Francisco, California. My father let me in the mansion and told me I could look around, but warned me not to touch anything and not to get lost. I walked through the beautiful jewel crested front doors, and they closed behind me. I did not think anything of it. However, suddenly, I stumbled, tripped over the carpet, and fell on my hands and knees, managing—and only just managing—to save the lantern which I carried from being extinguished in the fall. The floor of the mansion was very uneven in that part, and I had inadvertently walked into a sort of loose floor board, more or less I was pulverized. I rose and looked about me. evidently, I had strayed from the direct track, thanks to my old habit of indulging in reverie, and had mechanically taken a wrong turning among some of the many passages. The place where I now found myself was by no means similar to the part of the mansion that was in full yield, and from which I had wandered. Instead of being dry, airy, and full of life and bustle, the passage where I stood was damp, and quite silent, not a sound being audible except the drip, drip of blood that oozed through the roof in fifty places, and fell splashing into the little pools of bright red blood that lay among the bricks. The floor was of brick, not wood. It was plain that I was in some neglected corner of the mansion; it was plain, to, that I had lost my way. Now the warning my father gave me came back to me with unwelcome emphasis, and as I breathed with difficulty the clammy and heavy air of the mansion, a shudder ran through my whole frame. In the next instant, I rallied my courage, laughed contemptuously at my own fears, and stepped out manfully along the passage. I knew I must have entered the mansion from the right. But alas! On emerging from the hallway into a sort of square chamber, in which some rude benches, carved out of mahogany, were cut in the gleaming walls, I found that no less than thirteen openings gave access to different parts of the mansion, and I was fairly at fault. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
How I had strayed so far without paying any attention to the bearings of my heedless course, is what, perhaps, none but an absent man can understand; and I, unluckily, was an absent man. It was strange to be lost, or to roam in circles among the great hallways of this estate, and to be lost in what seemed to be an underground tomb, which had dank air and darkness for miles to come. I remarked, too, that the candle in my lantern would not last very long—from one to two hours perhaps, but certainly not longer. It was annoying, very annoying, to be left thus alone. I did not like to own to myself that it was dangerous. How strange it was, I thought, that I did not hear the very faintest sound from the scene of all those busy construction workers working on the Winchester mansion. I listened—listened intently. Not a sound; not so much as the faint hammer; not the welcoming sound of a human voice; not the tramp of one of those shaggy ponies that drew the wood. I had never before realized what the weight of solitude—enforced solitude—could be. I listened; I waited. Not the faintest indication that any other mortal but myself was below ground, reached my ears. Angry with my own fears, vexed with my own carelessness, that had brought me to this pass, I selected at hazard one of the passages opening into the mansion, and entered it, walking fast, but holding the lantern well in front, to avoid any fresh trip falls which might lie in wait for the unwary foot. The hallway was but some thirteen yards long, and then into two narrower corridors, the widest of which led me to a narrow pathway of tiny stairs that seemed to zigzag up the mansion. I entered it stooping, but soon found it was so dizzying that I should be obliged to proceed on hands and knees, if at all, so I retraced my steps: and, tracing them to another stairwell, and found myself atop of the stairs, but unable to proceed any further for the top was cut off by the ceiling. I was wondering aimlessly, as in a labyrinth, unless my candle was spent, and then I should be indeed in sorry case. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Already my feet were cold and wet with the tenacious brine; the cold moist air had brought back my cough, and I shivered in the chill atmosphere of the vault where were I stood. Yet, perhaps there were people near me, within earshot all the time, for I could not believe that the mansion had been suddenly deserted. I shouted, and shouted again, the many hallways and rooms giving back the sound of my voice with strange and sullen dissonance. Presently, though no answering call was returned, I saw a light, far off and dim, but rapidly advancing towards me along the gallery that lay on my left, and which was one of the six I have mentioned. Nearer and nearer it came; no flare of torches, but the steady gleam of a small lamp; and then, to my surprise, I saw that the human figure that soon became visible was not that of a construction worker. The light of the lantern fell faintly on the pale face, colourless as marble, but delicate and pretty enough, of a young and slender girl—a lady, evidently, by her dress, and whom I instantly conjecture to have been one of the staff. However, how she came there, and alone? Was she lost, like me? or—“Did you not call a minute ago? I can show you the way, if you like.” Common-place words these; but they were spoken with a peculiar quiet intonation, that impressed me in spit of myself. The voice was sweet and low, but almost solemn in its calm. There was something strange, too, in the composure and the unsmiling gravity of one so young, while her very presence in the out-of-the-way part the mansion perplexed me. My first idea was, that the young lady, like myself, had lost her way in the intricacies of the mansion; but this supposition her confidence of bearing seemed to contradict. No doubt she knew the mansion well, or she would scarcely have offered to guide me to safety. This was an additional proof the she could not have been one of the merry, rosy-cheeked servants in the mansion. Most likely, some young lady had entered the mansion to see the mysteries inside, and she was some resident in the neighbourhood. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Nonetheless, the beauty in this place was in the infinite variety of fantastic columns, some of pure white marble, others of mahogany, and shimmering gold wallpaper, that composed the walls. As the feeble light of the lanterns flashed on the pellucid surfaces and frail, some more elaborate in the intricacies of their mouldings than the than the Corinthian or Byzantine, I could not restrain my exclamations of surprise and delight. For a moment I forgot the cold, the damp, the discomfort, and said, half to myself: “What a wonderful sight! If a human artist had carved those delicate capitals and rich decorations, what a rush would there be to see his handiwork! But I dare say even the county handbook does not condescend to describe this place, which is worthy to be the palace of the king of gnomes.” “Few know of this place,” said my conductress, in the same measured, passionless voice as before. She had stopped when I stopped, and she stood motionless as a statue, and as pale as if she had been a figure hewn out of alabaster, rather than a creature of flesh and blood. It was the first word of the nature of a remark which had fallen from her, and I tried to draw her into conversation by descanting on the beauty of the singular grotto, and the spaciousness of the mansion. She said very little, but her reticence sis not seem to be caused by any poverty of intellect. There was, however, a peculiar want of warmth or enthusiasm, whether the subject were are or nature, in what little my fair guide could be induced to say. Nor was she by any means communicative as to herself. My attempts to discover whether she really lived in the neighbourhood, were quietly baffled, and when I said that “doubtless her friends would begin to be alarmed at her long absence for which I feared that my own stupid blundering was to blame,” she was merely bowed, and led the way as before. On we went, through a network of hallways, that only seemed to grow more Daedalian every moment, but through which my companion glided along the as unswervingly as if she held in her hand an unfailing clue. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Many of these galleries were evidently the work of man. In all, however, the air was heavy, chill, and moist, and blood dripped from the walls, and fell gurgling down hidden fissures into some unseen depths below. I was confident that I had passed none of these places that day, and began to suspect that my guide was leading me a long round, so as to shew me all the lions of the mansion, instead of taking a short-cut to the workings. At another time, this desire to impress a stranger with a full notion of local marvels would have amused me; but my cough got worse; I shivered, and longed for the excursion to come to a close. Yet there was an awkwardness in suggesting this. I ventured on a safe remark. “It is bitterly cold,” said I, with a shudder, for the damp seemed to be piercing to the very marrow of my bones. “Do you not find it so?” “Very cold!” She said no more; but those two common-place words were spoken in a voice that awed me, somehow, in spite of myself, and seemed to freeze me into silence. On we went, and I trusted that we may be approaching the work-part of the mansion, for the candle in my lantern was reduced to a mere morsel, and must soon be burned out. However, ill as I felt, and hard as it was for my weak lungs to endure the unwholesome air, I almost forgot this in my perplexity as to my conductress. I could not make her out at all. I have met with romantic young ladies, silly young ladies, sensible young ladies, even haughty and vain young ladies, but never with anyone like my guide. Why was she leading me thus, what I felt must be a circuitous course through the mansion? Why—She came to a dead stop, slowly-turned, and confronted me. The hood of her grey cloak, an old-fashion article of attire, such as I had not seen for many years, was drawn over her head, and it threw her pretty face partly into shadow; but her eyes were bright and clear, though there was something in their cold steady look that made me shiver afresh, as if the air of the mansion had grown even more icy and oppressive than before. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
“Tell me about yourself. Tell me what you are going to do. What are your plans, I mean,” she said in the same manner as before, like a sleepwalker unconsciously uttering words that volition does not prompt. I laughed, and blurted out some could-be witty rejoinder on my own good-fortune in having inspired so charming a person with sufficient interest in my fate to suggest the question; but the flippant words died away on my lips half spoken, as she waved her hand, not impatiently, not coquettishly, but with a calm dignity of bearing that matched well her bloodless cheek and the carriage of her proud head. “You are to sail in the Chester—is it not so?” said this singular girl, without a smile or a falter in her low but very distinctive voice. I owned the fact, in so slight surprise. I had not mentioned to no one at the Winchester Mansion the name of the ship in which my passage was taken. The idea of a mystification, of a trick, dawned upon me, but I was at a loss to guess how my beautiful nightmare of a guide could have obtained the information she evidently possessed. Did she know more of men than this? My name, for instance, my profession, and my reason for quitting the Bank of Italy? If so, at any rate she made no parade of her knowledge. She merely raised her hand for a moment—it was ungloved, and there were rings of price sparkling on the thin white fingers—and her eyes seemed to gather a new expression of sadness and warning as she said: “Beware of the Chester! If you love your life—and on, it is bitter to die young—do not sail in that ship.” Slowly the hand she had lifted in warning fell to her side, and holding up the lamp as before, she turned away, and preceded me along the galleries. I followed her, perplexed, half angry, half alarmed. I began to fear that I was the sport of a mad woman. And then a new fancy sized me. Perhaps I myself might be delirious, and the mansion, the endless galleries, and my beautiful nightmare guide, were visions of a disordered brain, a sweet dream or a frightful nightmare, from which I vainly strove to awake. Presently, it occurred to me for the first time that my new-found friend’s feet made no sound as they trod the wooden floor, and twisted stairways. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Certain it was that she moved firmly and swiftly on, without any sign of difficulty or fatigue, while I stumbled and slipped, slipped and stumbled, and at times found it hard to keep up with her. However, as regarded the noiselessness of her tread, I could not solve the doubt. If I stopped, she stopped too, not after a pause, but instantly. And I heard nothing but my own labouring breath and hacking cough, and the sound of my own weary feet. A little while, and even this was forgotten in a new source of apprehension. I had for some time vaguely conceived the idea that, as in labyrinth, we were walking in a circle; and gradually I began to fancy that I had seen this or that sofa and parlour table or that mahogany arch before, and that I had passed through some of the corridors at least once before. However, suspicion was changed to certainty when I suddenly espied, lying on the ground in one of the galleries, one of my own gloves. I had dropped this glove some time before, for I had missed it soon after the arrival of the Unknown. As I picked it up, I glanced keenly around me, and thought I recognized the opening that led into the hall of fires. I was right; in another moment I had followed my mysterious guide into the hall of fires itself. More than an hour’s weary toil, for my candle was all but spent, had brought us back to the point from which we had started. I was angry at last; all my involuntary awe for my strange conductress was lost, and I stamped my foot hard upon the floor as I asked if she had been amusing herself at my expense, or whether she, too, were unaware of the topography of the mansion, and had misled me by accident. I spoke in wrath, and almost in menace; but there was no reply, save one long moan, as from a child in pain, that rang sadly through the mansion. I turned my head, but I could see nothing; and when I again confronted what I now deemed my treacherous guide, a sort of mist seemed to dim my eyes, and I saw, or thought I saw, her form grow faint and indistinct, fading and fading like breath upon a mirror, but with still the same calm face, the same grave look of sorrow and warning, until that too faded, and nothing was left opposite to me—nothing but a masonry wall. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
I sprang forward, incredulous, and touched the wall with my hand. As I did so, a repetition of the moaning cry made me start, and far down the passage where I had seen her first, I saw her again—the pure, pale outline of the young face, the tall slender form in the grey mantel, with the hood drawn over the head, the lamp shining in the outstretched hand. How came she there? “This is too much!” cried I passionately, and convinced that I was the victim of a trick, though how such a trick could have been effected, I did not care to consider. “I will not bear this juggling. I will not—” As I spoke, I darted forward to overtake the receding figure, and my foot tripping among the loose stones of the floor, as I ran, I fell heavily, crushing the lantern beneath me, and being instantly involved in the demonic darkness. Bruised and hurt, I have no heed to the pain of the fall from the door to nowhere, but sprang up, and strained my eyes in the direction where the lamp had been last seen. There was not a spark—not a sound. No light, no rustle of her dress, no faint sound of a distant footfall, nothing but darkness and silence. Eagerly I listened, eagerly I watched, but in vain. I tried to call aloud, but my tongues refused its office; and when I did raise a weak shout, I felt natural repugnance to the darkness deepen as no answer came. “She is doing this to frighten me,” I murmured; “she is hiding behind some bush. Whoever she is, she could be cruel enough to leave me here in the dark alone, to perish.” Silence, still silence. Any sound, even that moan, at which my very heartstrings had quivered, would have been better than that. Darkness, blank, blank darkness. I tried to shout, tried to group my way back in, but I was limp. I had not the strength to rise. Oh, it was very cold, cold and dark. This must be death. “A drop more brandy, Jim; the last did him good, I cannot feel any pulse yet, though. Do not crowd so about him, lads. Give him air! That is enough brandy, do not leave off the chafing the hands. He will come round!” #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
With my dulled ear, I heard these words, but scarcely understood them, and from between the half-closed lids my weak eyes could feebly distinguish a glare of torches, and several rough me in construction garb, and one in black with a kind, shrewd face—the doctor, no doubt. I saw all his, in a stupid sort of indifferent way, as if he had been a pageant, and then I seemed to sink down into a black sea of roaring water, and fainted for the second time. I was in bed at last. I had been in bed some days, very ill, and with a brain too deadened, and a frame too exhausted, to take note of time. When my senses returned, I asked what was the date, and hearing it, knew that the Chester had sailed without me, and that my passage-money was lost. It was not for weeks, and until my slow convalescence had ripened into recovery from the illness brought on by cold and the wetting I had experienced, that the doctor asked me how I came to separate myself from the construction crew, and to get lost in the Winchester Mansion. “It so happened,” he said, “that work was suspended unusually early on that day, as there was a wake at Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco, and the construction workers had a sort of half-holiday by annual custom. The mansion was therefore abandoned, and but for the lucky chance, that when you were missed at home, and inquiries were made, and intelligent boy, the son of another construction worker, declared that you have never left the estate at all, it is probable that no search would have taken place. As it was, long hours passed before a party started in quest for you; and it is fortunate they there were in time. The Winchester has witnessed more than one tragic incident, even in my day.” “To what do you allude, doctor?” asked I eagerly. “Three year ago, a young lady, a Miss Mary Seward, because separated from her friends, as you did, in that mansion,” answered the doctor. “I had not as yet settled in the district, and only know the details from report, and very imperfectly. I believe, however, that the poor girl, who had made one of a large family art, was bound on a visit to an aunt who lived in England; her own parents then residing at the Rengstoff House, near here. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
“The day was a stormy one; the carriages drove off in a heavy fall of rain; and I believe the missing one was understood by her mother to be staying at her aunt’s, and vice versa, for there was no alarm till help was impossible. The poor girl’s body was found—for she perished of cold and hunger in that maze of galleries. Bless me, how pale you look, my dear sir. Take some cordial, and lie down, and no more talking—not a word more, I insist.” I have no explanation of the above facts to offer. I have endeavoured, far from San Jose, to set down every detail of the occurrence as simply and succinctly as possible. If I could disabuse my mind of the ghastly doubt and horror that cling to it, and which haunt me when I recall the events of that day in the Winchester Mansion, I should be very thankful. The good doctor, when he heard my statement, did his best to convince me that what I saw was a mere hallucination, due to my disordered health and excited nerves. I wish I could think so; but further inquiries, made before I left San Jose, served to assure me that I was not the only person who was supposed to have seen the presence that I had beheld in the disused portion of the mansion. One word more. The warning was no idle one, though I doubt whether I should have been ashamed to have heeded it, had not illness chained me to my sick-bed. Before I was able to quit the Winchester Mansion, news came that a dense fog enveloped the iron and wood steamship City of Chester and its 106 passengers as they began the slow journey north from San Francisco Bay to Eureka. It was 1888, and family members bid their loved one’s safe passage from the Broadway dock as the vessel disappeared into the pea soup fog. Moments later, the Chester was split in two by a ship more than twice its size, killing 16 people—13 passengers, including two children and three crew members—and becoming the bay’s second-worst maritime disaster. Some people may believe all spirituals are evil and trying to harms us or that they are demonic, but it seems some are good and really trying to save our lives. Perhaps some of these spirits are our guardian angels. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Winchester Mystery House
What a lovely weekend for a bit of mystery👻 winchestermysteryhouse.com
We Are Endangered, Our Way of Life is Threatened, We Must Avenge Our Loss!
One thing I know: kindness is more important than wisdom. To know others is to know wisdom, to know oneself—enlightenment. “Peace!” was the watchword of the World into which baby George Baker was born in 1879, in Rockville, Maryland USA. The founder of the USA’s most successful twentieth-century Christian celibate communities was the son of former slaves whose struggling family needed even the tiny wages he earned as a part-time child labourer. George also attended school long enough to become an avid reader and a lifelong devotee of his teachers’ dogma of punctuality, cleanliness, temperance, and hard work. Rockville’s Jerusalem Methodist Church was George’s other transformative experience. Its African America lay preachers inspired him and its tightly knit community embraced him, protecting him against those who sneered at his slight stature: a mere five foot two when fully grown. When he was a teenager, George’s mother died, at 480 pounds “the largest woman in the county, is not the state,” the local newspaper noted. Soon after Nancy Baker’s death, George left home for Baltimore. In a permanent break with his past, he renounced all family ties and set out alone in pursuit of his personal truths. Baltimore taught the newcomer about urban-style brute labour, poverty, unionism, and racism as destructive as the lynch mods of rural Maryland. However, God had not abandoned the wicked city. George took refuge in its storefront churches, where he molded his oratorical powers and deepened his religious commitment. Gradually he developed a theology that combined African-American spirituality with current beliefs about the power is optimistic thinking, achieving oneness with God, embracing celibacy, and obliterating not merely racism but race itself, a construct he came to believe did not exist. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
George Baker’s intense religiosity led to a mystical experience in which he spoke in tongues and reached a new level of being. Afterward, he began to call himself the Messenger. By 1907, the Messenger believed he was the son of God and tht his destiny was to spread God’s word to the unenlightened and unredeemed. Once again, the God of celibacy had chosen as His representative one of the reviled, this time a man from a people recently delivered from slavery, still ground down by hatred and fear, habit and history, the might of unmajestic law and the forces of repressive order. The Messenger’s antiracist mission sent him south, to destroy Jim Crowism—“if it costs me my life,” he declared. It well could have—lynching, often accompanied by castration, was a common enough fate for unlucky or unwise Black men. Ignoring these dangers, the Messenger traveled to Georgia. There, the electrifying itinerant preacher exhorted his audiences to follow a loving God who had created a World where gender and race were meaningless labels. How were his listeners to experience this World, to defy the illusory existence of gender and race? Through the power of thought, the Messenger taught, for thought, clarified through celibacy, could overcome the terrible obstacles that race and gender created. This was a unique and stern message gently told: transform society by conquering your own most basic urges. In challenging the notion of race, the Messenger struck at the very foundations of American social structure. Here was a Black preacher, handsome and adored by his congregations, so scrupulous in his personal chastity that no undercover investigator or dissident follower would ever find a particle of evidence to suggest even a single lapse. The actual practice of and primacy of celibacy in the Messenger’s teachings strongly suggested that he was an honest man. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The Messenger’s devotees found his strictures against pleasures of the flesh unusual and exacting. However, to overburdened women, celibacy had the same enormous appeal Mother Ann Lee had encountered generations earlier. Before long, many wives attempted to break off pleasures of the flesh relations. Several even left their homes and moved in with the celibate Messenger. Suddenly, through celibacy, the Messenger had liberated the women in his impoverished commune. Most of these women were exhausted from lifetimes of drudgery, prolapsed uteruses from too frequent childbearing, and subservience to their “so-called males”—for the Messenger, remember, taught the gender, like race, did not exist. Frustrated husbands and African-American religious leaders banded together against the diminutive but handsome preacher. He had cast spells, they charged, and cause their wives and mothers to lose their minds. “If something was not done, the whole community would be crazed.” The police were brought in and the Messenger’s Black male accusers backed them up. Their combined strength overpowered the phalanx of enraged women protecting the Messenger and he was thrown into jail. The Messenger flourished. Visitors swarmed to his cell and converted en masse, even Caucasian men who seemed to be as wild over him as the African Americans. In segregated, small-town Georgia, this was a near miracle and strong testimony to the Messenger’s sincerity and charisma. Afterward, the Messenger led his mainly female followers throughout the South on a punishing, five-years trek of proselytizing. Finally, in 1917, with the handful of faithful who continued to travel with him, he settled down in Brooklyn. He also married the most devoted woman in his entourage, tall, stately Penniniah, who lived with him in obviously contented celibacy until her death. #RandolphHarri 3 of 23
Why would this virgin bachelor who preached the sanctity of celibacy get married? Of course, skeptics questioned whether the marriage was, indeed celibate, but all evidence indicates it was. It seems likely that, from the Messenger’s perspective, Mother Penniniah fended off seductive women attracted to the larger-than-life (figuratively if not literally) leader. She also lent credibility to her husband’s mission and, with the power of her own religious fervor, attracted many new disciples to the former bachelor’s movement. About this time, the Messenger adopted a new name, the Reverend Major Jealous Divine, implying religious and military authority, the jealousy of the biblical God, and his own divinity. His flock shortened this to Father Divine and chanted, “God is here on Earth today. Father Divine is his name.” Penniniah, of course, became Mother Divine. Soon after, Father Divine scraped together $700 plus a mortgage and purchased a Sayville, Long Island, property to house his commune. To maintain it, he established the Busy Bee employment agency, which furnished his neighbours with trustworthy hired help made up of his own people. In this commune, everyone worked with evenings and Sundays devoted to religious services. Even Father Divine tended chickens and gardened on top of his onerous pastoral duties. The difference between the new and the old way of life, however, was through his savvy management, Father Divine provided the Busy Bees with lodgings in a fine home, generous quantities of food, security from all want. On their own, as they well knew, they could never have achieved this. Like the old Shaker communes, Father Divine’s household was rigidly structured and monitored to ensure strict celibacy, devout religious observance, hard work, and shared prosperity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Smoking, swearing, drugs, and alcohol were banned. The house was “heaven” and Father Divine was “God.” His followers were “angels” who addressed each other as “brother” and “sister.” Each angel had a single room—surely a luxury for most—with men and women separated except when religion or business required their collaboration. As in Shaker communities, with their vitriolic, self-righteous lyrics, language in Heaven was also regulated. However, Father Divine forbade his angels to use negative words and banned (rather than trumpeted) hell, Devil,and even hello, which he believed was a corruption of hell. He originated today’s wide spread greeting “Peace!” and the mantra “It is wonderful,” which dispelled negative ideas and conjured up optimistic thoughts that would lead, one day, to a peaceful World. Like the Shakers, Father Divine welcomed parents and their children, though he believed the latter were products of the sin of pleasures of the flesh that drained the body of “spiritual energy.” Also like the Shakers, he required his disciples to renounce Earthly kinships, including marriage, and substitute fraternal kinships with his other angels. Like Mother Ann, Father Divine devised mechanism to enforce celibacy by providing acceptable outlets for sublimating pleasures of the flesh. Not surprisingly, given Nancy Baker’s fatal obesity, her son was so obsessed with food that he used it as a took of ministry. The tasty fare at his bulging tables consoled, nursed, and converted, and his “Holy Communion banquets,” modeled on the Last Supper, were legendary. Decades earlier, he had inaugurated them in the South as potlucks. Later, they nourished overworked, underpaid Africa-Americans who packed into his dining room in such numbers that he had to host multiple sittings rather than turn anyone away. On the weekends, Father Divine often spent twelve hours daily hosting them. The banquets also plumped up his angels and ensured that at least one of their Earthly appetites was sated. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
For Father Divine eating was a consuming passion. Twice weekly he weighed the angels and chided any who lost weight. This, it would appear, was difficult to do. Consider a typical, Depression-era Holy Communion banquet menu: macaroni, rice, potatoes, peas, tomatoes, turnips, baked beans, turkey and pork chops, corn bread, biscuits, Graham bread, cake, pie, peaches, tea, milk, and Postum. After these feats, the stuffed diners burst into song and prayer, witnessing and confessing, shouting and dancing and speaking in tongues. Like Mother Ann, Father Divine favoured these exhausting and emotional outpourings, which obviously served to dissipate any erotic feelings that gluttony had not obliterated. (Even though gluttony is also a sin.) Father Divine’s commune had at least a couple of scandals. After an initial period of tolerance, the neighbour’s decided they hated living close to a large, pulsating community of Black people. They went on the attack, beginning with false rumors. They only actual scandal involved “John the Revelator,” a California millionaire disciple, who lured a seventeen-year-old he christened “Virgin Mary” into the movement, seduced her, then confessed his evildoing. Father Divine immediately expelled him and separated him from the young woman. Yet despite Father Divine’s overwhelming probity, the Heavenly movement was tarred by gossipmongers skeptical about the dapper little preacher’s personal chastity. His neighbours’ hostility, coinciding with an intensive crusade in New York City, finally drove Father Divine to relocate to welcoming Harlem. There an explosion of disciples recast his sect into a movement, as new angels replicated his commune in other location and baptized his crusade the Peace Mission. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Ironically, the Peace Mission’s expansion into business, and from East to West Coast, precipitated its decline. Its mainstay continued to be less affluent Blacks, though a small number of wealthy Whites also joined. One problem was that the public vastly overestimated the movement’s membership, making Father Divine more influential than the true number of his followers warranted. In consequence, the Mission was increasingly drawn into political debates and destructive ideological battles with other Black movements that deplored Father Divine’s steadfast refusal to segregation. Yet how could he, when a fundamental part of his creed was that race did not exist? By the end of the Depression, the Peace Mission was restructured as a church. Its membership shrank and new orders were born. A flamboyant California branch sprouted the Rosebubs, young virgin females who swore eternal celibacy, wore uniforms emblazoned with Vs for virginity, and celebrated Father Divine in giddy song. The male Crusaders, though not necessarily virginal, pledged themselves to celibacy and to Father Divine’s theology. However, the Rosebuds’ subservience—they strove to be submissive, meek, and sweet; they have hearts where Christ alone is heard to speak”—and the Crusaders’ militancy clashed with Father Divine’s genderless teaching. They were celibate but far from egalitarian. By 1943, when Penniniah died, Father Divine and his churches were in free fall. In 1946, he made the situation worse by marrying Edna Rose Ritchings, aka Sweet Angel, a pretty Caucasian, twenty-one-year-old Canadian. Father Divine justified this risky adventure by claiming that the new Mother Divine was Penniniah and the Virgin Mary reincarnated, and he likened their union to “the Marriage of CHRIST to HIS Church.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Ah, Father Divine! At sixty-seven, he was suddenly seized by irresistible longings and reincarnated in the skin of the young George Baker so long ago shucked off. Yet from all accounts, this second marriage was as successful as the first, with the new Mother Divine thriving on the same celibate regimen as her predecessor. And celibate she was, for Father Divine preempted suspicion about any possible pleasures of the flesh by assigning a Black angel to monitor her and presumably be a living witness to his Heavenly wife’s intact virginity. From a larger perspective, its leader’s questionable remarriage and, in 1965, his death certainly did not help the Peace Mission. However, the root causes of its decline lay elsewhere. By then, in a new era of permissiveness with pleasures of the flesh, widely available birther control, and the civil rights movement, celibacy was a harder sell except to those who could be convinced it was a moral imperative. The Peace Mission’s communal life seemed rigorous and restrictive, even bizarre. Its insistence on severing the parent-child bond has serious psychological and judicial implications. And though he was very old, Father Divine made the tactical error, nineteen years after he married again, of anointing his untested young wife, rather than a well-groomed protégé, to head his shriveled church. Today the Peace Mission sighs on in anachronistic relics, including Mother Divine’s mansion. Another is Philadelphia’s Divine Tracy Hotel, which segregates guests in gendered floors and prohibits tobacco, alcohol, and swearing. Women, in obligatory dress and hosiery, and men, in pants and shirts, mingle together only in the lobby. In the Divine Tracy Hotel, only the most determined guests can avoid a celibate sojourn. It is an odd but fitting monument to a movement that, at one time, ushered thousands of weary and oppressed converts into similar Heavens on Earth. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
America’s Shakers and Father Divine’s angels had much in common, and he proudly acknowledged his debt to Mother Anne Lee’s theology. Most important of their shared tenets was the pleasures of the flesh were the root of human evil and therefore celibacy was essential in a righteous life. Their notion of celibacy stretched further than mere sexual negativism. It allowed them to redefine gender differences, so they effectively offered feminist lifestyles to their followers. Unlike cloisters, however, their communes included men and women, and Father Divine’s Heavens were located in the World into which most angels trooped out to work. Just as important, in America’s racially troubled society, celibacy defused the minefield of interracial pleasures of the flesh. It permitted African American Shakers to head communes and African American angels to live alongside European American ones, all under the guidance of a Black leaders who dismissed race as a meaningless designation and celebrated chaste marriage, first with an African American woman, and them with a Canadian European woman. Both Mother Less and Father Divine proselytized among people oppressed by an unfair World and offered them safe haven in a new, righteous one. They taught tht celibacy was a great moral good that required the sacrifice of all blood ties, including children, who became the responsibility of the commune rather than individual parents. The rewards for joining either sect were immediate and substantial. Women won unheard-of equality, while hard work, discipline, and obedience provided collective material comfort, security, and the camaraderie of the spiritual fraternity that replaced blood relationships. Mother Ann and father Divine adopted remarkably similar strategies to enforce celibacy. They segregated men and women, permitted them to mix only in controlled situations. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
They addressed the need to sublimate passions of pleasures of the flesh through rituals of frenzied dancing and singing, speaking in tongues, public confessions, and near-hysterical worship. They even regulated language to promote their sectarian metaphors. Above all, Mother Lee and Father Divine exemplified the celibate life they demanded of others and never succumbed to temptation. Ironically, the twice married but never bedded Father Divine faulted Mother Ann for having once had a life involving pleasures of the flesh. That she had terminated it, after divine revelation taught her that pleasures of the flesh were the root of all evil, was not sufficient. From the vantage point of his own sinlessness, the virgin Father Divine judged the long-celibate Mother Ann and found her wanting. He believed her pleasures of the flesh experience in marriage, though short-lived and unwilling, had deprived her of immortality. However, if it is not taught by their parents as being necessary, it is rare that someone would adopt celibacy and remain a virgin before having a divine revelation because everyone else teachers that pleasures of the flesh are natural, normal, and the thing to do. So it takes one to mature and establish their own values after they are socially engineered in a particular manner. Perhaps Father Divine was trying to do that very thing, stop people from engaging in pleasures of the flesh and keep their virginity and stay celibate, which is why he called out Mother Ann. Shakerism and the Peace Mission were not failed experiments, though neither outlasted its founder for more than a few decades. What has endured are their legacies of a courageous celibacy that dared to challenge society’s underpinnings of women’s inequality and racial subjugation. The illiterate immigrant women and the disempowered African American man defied their social realities and bestowed on their followers the equality and personal dignity the law denied. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Celibacy, combined with highly structured discipline and hard work, was briefly the answer for thousands of aliened, mostly unaffluent Americans. However, what turns people from Christian morality to secular ethics is the loss of the reality of grace, the power to accept the unacceptable person, and the turn to moralistic preaching centered on religious and moral law. Yet unless principles for right action are rooted in being and thus in some religious depth to existence, one can never escape relativism. The reality of grace is the principle of morality rooted in being itself. Still, modern moral philosophers have insisted that morality is autonomous, unrelated to religion. The question of what is right and good must be determined on grounds other than appeal to God and God’s will because one can always ask whether obedience to the divine will is itself good. Yet to ask that question is to demand a standard outside of the will of God. Ethics is thus autonomous, independent of religion. Second, in reaction to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century liberal theologians, from Friedrich Schleiermacher to Albrecht Ritschl, Wilhelm Herrmann, and the Social Gospelers, who often granted the autonomy of morals, many twentieth-century theologians have attempted to reassert the distinctiveness of Christian ethics. This was done, as in the case of Karl Barth, through the revealed Word and command of God or, more recently, by appeal to the distinct practices, beliefs, and narratives of the Christian community insofar as these constitute a distinctive way of life. In making these arguments, theologians claim that the validity of Christian ethics can be established only internal to Christian beliefs or God’s commands. Once again, the connection between religion and general moral reflection seems cut. However, one can find graceless moralism, ethical relativism, and the reduction of reason to merely technical rationality. The moral aim is becoming a person within a community of persons. This aim is essentially religious. The modern philosophical attempt to sever the connection between religion and morality is foiled at the outside. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
However, by the same token, the demand that this places upon the theologian is not to establish the particularity of the Christian moral vision, but rather to show how Christian faith answers the moral aim. We must relate properly ethical thinking to systematic theology. A thought experiment. I am in the World alone. I have always been alone. Nothing and no one to protect me. Just my wits and my strength and such weapons as I find or contrive. In the driving wind the freezing rain is like arrows. I find a cave—a cave, I discover, that has been found already by a bear. If I can, I will drive him out. I do not think: This is not fair, it belongs to him. I do not wonder: Who has the greater need, he or I? I drive him out. I am hungry; a fawn comes within range of my stone/ I do not ponder contending rights, do not weigh the fawn’s life against my own; I kill. I am warm; I am full, the day is over, I lie down to sleep. I keep my club close to hand. One day I encounter another man. I cannot read his gestures or understand his strange sounds. I give him a wide berth, go on my own way. He follows. I make threatening gestures, he retreats. At night I do not sleep well. How close is he? What does he intend? The next day, at my bidding, he comes closer. I kill him. For the solitary savage, should ever a creature have existed, there is no guilt, no right and no wrong. Years pass. Millennia. Now I live in a community. There are thirty or forty of us. We hunt together, sit around the fire together, are frightened as one by the evil spirits of the forest. Withing this group I do not kill, do not steal, do not deceive. I am no longer free, I live within limits, I have become moral. Another group moves into our territory. They are fishing in our streams, killing our game. One of our men is found with an arrow in his back. We lament, we wail, we rage. Our chief calls a council. We are endangered, he tells us; our way of life is threatened; we must avenge our loss. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
We beat our drums to drive away our fear, paint horizontal stripes of red and white on our bodies. At midnight we set forth. In silence and stealth we approach the sleeping camp. We drink strong spirits. Two boys with torches set fire to the straw huts. As the occupants rush out, silhouetted by the flames, we let loose our arrows, our spears. When our enemies are in blind panic, we fall upon them, club them to death. And totally destroy the village and everyone in it and violate their ways of life. On the march home we are content, relaxed, fulfilled. We sing, we laugh, we are triumphant. The members of the group have become moral, they live within limits, while the group itself there is no good and no evil. Morality is conservative, aims to preserve what is valuable in life. Meaning, therefore, must be antecedent to morality. For meaning establishes value. If life is without meaning, there is nothing worth preserving: All is equal, anything goes. What binds us together in a community is shared beliefs. Vital yet unnoticed, like the air we breathe, they constitute the meaning of life, tell us how to interpret our experience, determine what we experience. With them we grasp the World, make sense of what happens to us, find our place, arrange our lives into know patterns. We feel at home; we know how to live. They constitute our scheme of things. However, something is left over. Something of bereavement or pain or mystery is unaccounted for, experience of which we cannot make sense, with which we cannot come to terms. This is the margin of terror. If we are loyal to the received wisdom, we look away, pretend it does not exist, is of no importance, a deviation, a neurosis perhaps; experience is falsified, but the scheme of things is not impugned. The received wisdom spreads it sheltering umbrellas. If one is loyal to deviant experience, to the pain and the mystery, one is apostate to the common faith and hence estranged from those who live by it, which is pretty much everybody. Once finds oneself alone in a desert where one’s specialness is scant comfort. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Nothing stays. The World would fling us away, spins like a carousel. Do you know? Do you feel it, this losing of grip? The received interpretations no longer work, do not fit, do not take hold. We cannot grasp the World. Some people do not hear the screaming; the old fictions still work. Some hear it keenly: The chalk has worn down, the fingernail drags across an endless blackboard, the sky is empty. In times of peace most people find it possible to believe, at lest nominally, in the received wisdom. In times of great social upheaval—the Napoleonic Wars, the Russian Revolution—the received wisdom is shattered for everyone. The World is lost—because it was those shared beliefs, now overturned and discredited, that constituted the World. Our holiest fictions designate what is right and what is wrong, constitute a scheme of things that redeems the way things are. The way things are is the will to power of groups. The scheme of things conceals the ways of power behind a lofty and glittering façade. The whole system hands on the efficacy of images and words, the keeping of promises, the observance of convention. The reign of order which is that of symbols and signs, always results in fairly general disarmament, beginning with visible arms and gradually spreading to the will. Swords get thinner and vanish, characters get rounder. The age when fact was dominant fades imperceptibly away. Under the names of foresight and tradition, the future and the past, which are imaginary perspectives, dominate and restrain the present. However, the general disbarment is only within the system of order. The brutality and barbarism of the individual have but passed to the collective. The sword of the citizen gets thinner, vanishes; the sword of the state gets longer and sharper. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Parts serve the whole. The organism grows larger and more powerful by virtue of finding better and better ways to exploit its constituents. Slaves may be made to man the oars and drive the galley, but it requires the constant attention of a slave master cracking the whip. However, if the slaves can be converted to a faith in the ship and its mission, then no slave master will be needed—he will now be free to help with the cannon—while the ship slices forward ever fast, with more power, more dangerous to its enemies. There is no alternative to power, no other position—not Christianity nor the Golden Rule nor brotherly love nor nonviolence; not self-sacrifice nor the turning of the other cheek. For all these various abnegations of power by parts of a whole are, unwittingly, in the service of increased power to the whole; and the whole morality created by such renunciations is used by the aggregate to increase the power with which it then pursues more power. Good and evil come into existence as defined by power and are shaped to protect power. They filter down from rulers, magistrates, educators, from bishops, priests, and Sunday school teachers to parents, who shape the conscience of children, imprint the limits, instill the guilt. Order and safety are maintained; citizens need not bear arms; violence is proscribed, banished beyond borders. (More important than gun control is violence control and self-control.) And so it comes about that the modern state is thought to be a moral state, even a Christian state, the source and the defender of morality, of civilization, of high culture. However, the morality that is here, rightly, ascribed to the state is internal, the lawfulness of cells within an organism. In its conduct with other states, and with those barbarians beyond its borders, the state is a killer. And utterly self-righteous in its exterminations. The state claiming morality is like a murderer claiming innocence by pointing out that his hands and feet moved lawfully during the performance of the crime. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The state does not intend itself to become moral; it requires morality of its subjects as the necessary basis of its own amoral power, of its continued ability to conduct international brigandage abroad and the torture of political prisoners at home. The unselfishness of individuals empowers the selfishness of states. The selflessness of patriots becomes the arrogance of nations. Morality constricts and diminishes the life of the individual as its strengths and enlarges the life of the collective. The cohesiveness of the group, achieved by the morality and lawfulness of its constituents, enables the group to become larger and stronger. The morality of the individual thus has survival value for the amora collective and, insofar as the safety of the individual depends upon the power of the collective, also for the individual. However, the group can never, as a group, govern itself, cannot organize and exploit its potential power. For this, leaders are required, leaders with a vision of how the group may become even stronger. If only certain individuals within the morally organized collective are themselves immoral, and break the rules in pursuit of personal power, such leaders can appear. So the greatest chance of survival falls, paradoxically, to that collective which has achieved solidarity by mortality and, at the same time, contains within itself a leaven of opportunists who will exploit that morality for personal power. Let us go on to the Occupational Outlook of those who are verbally bright. Among this group, simply because they cannot help asking more general questions—exempli gratia, about utility—the problem of finding man’s work is harder, and their disillusion is more poignant. He explained to her why it was hard to find a satisfactory job of work to do. He had liked working with the power drill, testing the rocky envelope of the shore, but then the employers asked him to take a great oath of loyalty. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
“What!” cried Rosalind. “Do you have scruples about telling a convenient fib?” “No, I do not. However, I felt uneasy about the sanity of the director asking me to swear to opinions on such complicated questions when my job was digging with a power drill. I cannot work with a man who might suddenly had a wild fit.” “Why do you not get a job driving one of the big trucks along here?” “I do not like what is in the boxes,” said Horatio sadly. “It could just as well drop in the river—and I would make mistakes and drop it there.” “Is it had stuff?” “No, just useless. It takes the heart out of me to work at something useless and I begin to make mistakes. I do not mind putting profits in somebody’s pocket—but the job also has to be useful for something.” “Why do you not go to the woods and be a lumberjack?” “No! they chop down the trees just to print off the New York Times!” The more intelligent worker’s “indifference” is likely to appear more nakedly as profound resignation, and his cynicism may sharpen to outright racketeering. “Teaching,” says the Handbook, “is the largest of the professions.” So suppose our now verbally bright young man chooses for teacher, in the high school system or, by exception, in the elementary schools if he understands that the elementary grades are the vitally important ones and require the most ability to tech well (and of course they have less prestige). Teaching is necessary and useful work; it is real and creative, for it directly confronts an important subject matter, the children themselves; it is obviously self-justifying; and it is ennobled by the arts and sciences. Those who practice teaching do not for the most part succumb to cynicism or indifference—the children are too immediate and real for the teachers to become callous—but, most of the school systems being what they are, can teacher fail to come to suffer first despair and then deep resignation? Resignation occurs psychologically as follows: frustrated in essential actions, they nevertheless cannot quit in anger, because the task is necessary; so the anger turns inward and is felt as resignation. (Naturally, the resigned teacher may then put on a happy face and keep very busy.) #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
For the job is carried on under impossible conditions of overcrowding and saving public money. Not that there is not enough social wealth, but first things are not put first. Also, the school system has spurious aims. It soon becomes clear that the underlying aims are to relieve the home and keep the kids quiet; or suddenly, the aim is to produce physicists. Timid supervisors, bigoted clerics, and ignorant school boards forbid real teaching. The emotional release and the pleasures of the flesh expression of the children are taboo. A commercially debauched popular culture makes learning disesteemed. The academic curriculum is mangled by the demands of reactionaries, liberals, and demented warriors. Progressive methods are emasculated. Attention to each case is out of the questions, and all the children—the bright, the average, and the dull—are systematically intellectually disabled one way or another, while the teacher’s hands are tired. Naturally the pay is low—for the work is hard, useful, and of public concern, all three of which qualities tend to bring lower pay. It is alleged that the low pay is why there is a shortage of teachers and why the best do not choose the profession. My guess is that the best avoid it because of the certainty of miseducating. Nor are the best wanted by the system, for they are not safe. Bertrand Russel was rejected by New York’s City College and would not have been accepted in a New York grade school. What we see here are the outlines, therefore, of a wholly new way of life, affecting not only individuals but the planet as well. The new civilization sketched here can hardly be termed a utopia. It will be agitated by deep problems, sone of which we will explore in the future. Problems of self and community. Political problems. Problems of justice, equity, and morality. Problems with the new economy (and especially the relationship between employment, welfare, and presumption). All these and many more will arouse fighting passions. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
However, the Fourth Wave is also no “anti-utopia.” It is not 1984 writ large nor Brave New World brought to life. Both these brilliants books—and hundred of derivative science fiction stories—paint a future based on highly centralized, bureaucratized, and standardized societies, in which individual differences are eradicated. We are now heading in exactly the opposite direction. While the Fourth Wave carries with it a deep challenge for humanity, from ecological threats to danger of nuclear terrorism and electronic fascism, it is not simply a nightmarish linear extension of industrialism. We glimpse here instead the emergence of what might be called a “pratopia”—neither the best nor the worst of all possible Worlds, but one that is both practical and preferable to the one we had. Unlike a utopia, a practopia is not free of disease, political nastiness, and bad manners. Unlike most utopias, it is not static or frozen in unreal perfection. Nor is it reversionary, modeling itself on some imagine ideal of the past. Conversely, a practopia does not embody the crystallized evil of a utopia turned inside out. It is not ruthlessly antidemocratic. It is not inherently militarist. It does not reduce its citizens to faceless uniformity. It does not destroy its neighbours and degrade its environment. In short, a practopia offers a beneficial, even a revolutionary alternative, yet lies within the range of the realistically attainable. Fourth Wave civilization, in this sense, is precisely that: a practopian future. One can glimpse in it a civilization that makes allowance for individual differences, and embraces (rather than suppresses) racial, regional, religious, and subcultural variety. A civilization built in considerable measure around the home. A civilization that is not frozen in amber but pulsing with innovation, yet which is also capable of providing enclaves of relative stability for those who need or want them. A civilization no longer required to pour its best energies into marketization. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
A civilization capable of directing great passion into art. A civilization facing unprecedented historical choices—about genetics and evolution, to choose a single example—and inventing new ethical or moral standards to deal with such complex issues. A civilization, finally, that is at least potentially democratic and humane, in better balance with the biosphere and no longer dangerously dependent on exploitative subsidies from the rest of the World. Hard work to achieve, but not impossible. Flowing together in grand confluence, today’s changes thus point to a workable countercivilization, an alternative to the increasingly obsolete and unworkable industrial system. They point, in a word, to practopia. Life brings humans what they need, which is sometimes what one desires but at other times what one fears. The modern World badly needed a shake-up, and got one. However, it received only what it deserved. The war descended on it in accordance with Universal Law. When nation arouse against nation, it was only an end-expression of the innate selfishness which had been actuating them. We must expect such situations, for they are the natural and inevitable consequence of all that has happened before. Unless the war has brought a vivid realization of the truth of law of compensation, it has not brought any spiritual progress. However, it is too much at this time to expect the modern World to understand the cause of its tribulations. What valuable ethical and psychological significances, what striking illustrations of the inexorable law of retribution, could be drawn from the War! The evolutionary pressure upon humanity is not to give up its fratricidal warfare, although it will eventuate in that, but to give up the aggressive selfishness in which such warfare has its roots. If the nations cannot settle their differences peacefully it is because the ego in them is too strong, the passions too violent, and the antagonisms too blind. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
The differences must be faced on deeper than physical levels, and the refusal to do this on the grounds that such are idealistic and not practical results in superficial and not true considerations and results. How hard it is to get people to draw accurate conclusions from their experience one can read from the annals of history. Again and again the people of one nation, race, or religion who have been subjected to persecution by a different one, have failed to behave justly and tolerantly when the turning wheel of destiny put them later into power. The gusts of hate or anger or greed which blow humans off their mental balance, blow them eventually to war. In spite of the spiritual messages which have been given to humankind by the great prophets, the savagery of war still continues to show the strength of the animal in humans. If their compassion for helpless animas is so small that they will not give up fighting each other, by what right do they call upon God to show compassion toward them and stop war? The World war was not only the consequence of the desecration of the Egyptian graves, of course. It was much more a consequence of the evil thoughts and feelings which exit in human’s hearts and of the spiritual ignorance which exists in their minds. The desecration was itself only one of the symptoms of that ignorance. Evil desires and unjust acts were the seed: the horrors of war were the fruit. The awful retribution which fell upon whole nations was impelled and guided by the power behind the eternal an immutable law of consequences. Up to a certain point, it could have been modified and even prevented, but beyond this point nothing could annul its appointed course. Let us blame none but ourselves. This holocaust was needed in order to bring humanity fully to its senses, to purge its materialistic atheism of its pride, and to show it how hollow and hypocritical was its façade of civilization. When we penetrate these social, economic, political, educational, and national problems to rock bottom, we find that they are really ethical problems. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Virgil, the Roman, dreamt of Universal Peace. Many today entertain the same dream but at the same time they are contradicted by piled-up evidences of the violence in human nature, the strife engendered by blind self-interest, the killing instinct that is a heritage from the animal. So long as egos come into conflict with one another, so long will nation do the same. We are to expect the brutal carnage and concentrated massacre of war until and unless we are impelled to renounce it at last as a method of removing affronts to justice. Be open and honest and tell the whole truth. Learn to listen to your conscience. God put that inside of you so you would have an inner rule by which to know right from wrong. When you start to compromise, you will hear that alarm go off in your conscience. Do not ignore it. Do what you know in your heart is the right thing. Is somebody watching you? Oh, yes; people are watching, and so is your Heavenly Father. Live this day to please Him, and you will be pleased with yourself. “Never be lazy in your work, but serve the Lord enthusiastically,” reports Romans 12.11. Make a decision that you are not going to live another day without the joy of the Lord in your life; without love, peace, and passion; without being excited about your life. And understanding that you do not have to have something extraordinary happening in your life to be excited. You may not live in the perfect environment or have the perfect job or the perfect marriage, but you can still leave each day with enthusiasm. Wherever you are in life, make the most of it and be the best that you can be. Do your work with such excellence that others will be impressed with your God merely by observing you excellent work ethic. We should be so excited, and so full of joy that other people will want what we have. In other words, are you drawing people to God because of your joy, your friendliness, your enthusiasm, your attitude of faith? If you want to point people to God, or simply to a better way of living, have some enthusiasm and be excited about life. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Dear Lord in Heaven, please help me to do the right thing whether anyone is watching or not. I know you see my actions, and beyond that, You know the motives of my heart. I want my words and deeds to be pleasing to you. Please let my enthuaism for life be contagious; may I live in such a way that causes other people to want to know You and how they can discover a different, better quality of life now and forever. Listen with the night falling we are saying thank you, we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings, we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky, and say thank you. We are standing by the water looking out in difference direction, back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging, after funerals we are saying thank you, After the news of the pandemic, we are saying thank you. Whether or not we knew those who died, we are saying thank you. Looking up from tables we are saying thank you. In a culture up to its chin in shame, we are saying thank you. Living in the stench it has chosen, we are saying thank you. Over telephones, we are saying thank you. In doorways and in the backs of cares and in elevators, remembering the wars and the police at the back door, and the beatings on stairs, we are saying thank you. In the banks that use us, we are saying thank you. With the crooks in the office with the rich and fashionable unchanged we go on saying thank you. With the animals dying around us, our feelings we are saying thank you. With our forests falling faster than the minutes of our lives, we are saying thank you. With the words going out like cells of a brain, with the cities growing over us like the Earth, we are saying thank you faster and faster with nobody listening, we are saying thank you. We are saying thank you and waving, dark though it is. And wind lifted me up, and I heard behind me a mighty chorus proclaiming: Blessed be the glory of the Lord everywhere. [Then a wind lifted me up, and I heard behind me the mighty moving sound of those who uttered praises and said: Blessed be the glory of the Lord from the place of His abode.] The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. [The kingdom of the Lord is established forever and to all eternity.] #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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You Pay More Attention to Your Profits than to Your Liberty!
The problem is not that there are problems. The World changes faster than the people in it. Every since the late 1940’s a single dominant strategy has governed most efforts to reduce the gap between the World’s rich and poor. I call this the Second Wave strategy. This approach starts with the premise that Second Wave societies are the apex of evolutionary progress and that, to solve their problems, all societies must replay the industrial revolution essentially as it happened in the West, Russian, or Japan. Progress consists of moving millions of people out of agriculture and into mass production. It requires urbanization, standardization, and all the rest of the Second Wave package. Development, in brief, involves the faithful imitation of an already successful model. Scores of governments in country after country have, in fact, tried to carry out this game plan. A few, like South Korea or Taiwan, where special conditions prevail, appear to be succeeding in establishing a Second Wave society. However, most such efforts have met with disaster. These failures in one Impoverished country after another have been blamed on a mind-bending multiplicity of reasons. Neo-colonialism. Bad planning. Corruption. Backward religions. Tribalism. Transnational corporations. The CIA. Going to slowly. Going too fast. Yet, whatever the reasons, the grim fact remains that industrialization according to the Second Wave model has flopped far more frequently than it has succeeded. Iran offers the most dramatic case in point. As late as 1975 a tyrannical Shah boasted he would make Iran into the most advanced industrial state in the Middle East by pursuing the Second Wave strategy. “The Shah’s builders,” reported Newsweek, “toiled over a glorious array of mills, dams, railroads, highways, and all the other trimmings of a full-fledged industrial revolution.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
In June 1978 international bankers were still scrambling to lend billions at hair-thin interest rates to the Persian Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation, to the Mazadern Textile Company, to Tavanir, the state-owned power utility, to the steel complex at Isfahan and the Iran Aluminum Company, among others. While this buildup was supposedly turning Iran into a “modern” nation, however, corruption ruled Teheran. Conspicuous consumption aggravated the contrast between the rich and poor. Foreign interests—mainly, but not exclusively, American—had a field day. (A German manager in Teheran was paid a third more than he could have earned at home, but his employees worked for one tenth a German worker’s pay-packet.) The urban middle class existed as a tiny island within a sea of misery. Apart from oil, fully two thirds of all the goods produced from the market were consumed in Teheran by one tenth of the country’s population. In the countryside, where income was barely a fifth of that in the city, the rural masses continued to live under revolting and repressive conditions. Nurtured by the West, attempting to apply Second Wave strategy, the millionaires, generals, and hired technocrats who ran the Teheran government conceived of development as a basically economic process. If only the dollar signs were got right–religion, culture, family life, sexual roles—all these would take care of themselves. Cultural authenticity meant little because, steeped in indust-reality, they saw the World as increasingly standardized rather than moving toward diversity. Resistance to Western ideas was simply dismissed as “backward” by a cabinet 90 percent of whose members had been educated at Harvard, Berkeley, or European universities. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Despite certain unique circumstances—like the combustive mixture of oil and Islam—much of what happened in Iran was common to other countries pursuing the Second Wave strategy. With some variation, much the same might be said of dozens of other poverty-stricken societies from Asia and Africa to Latin America. The collapse of the Shah’s regime in Teheran has sparked a widespread debate in other capitals from Manila to Mexico City. One frequently asked question has to do with the pace of change. Was the pace too accelerated? Did the Iranians suffer from future shock? Even with oil revenues, can governments create a large enough middle class rapidly enough to avoid revolutionary upheaval? However, the Iranian tragedy and the substitution of an equally repressive theocracy for the Shah’s regime compel us to question the very root premises of the Second Wave strategy. Is classical industrialization the only path to progress? And when industrial civilization itself is caught in its terminal agonies, does it make any sense to imitate the industrial model at a time? So long as the Second Wave nations remained “successful”—stable, rich, and getting richer—it was easy to look upon them as a model for the rest of the World. By the late 1960’s, however, the general crisis of industrialism has exploded. Strikes, blackouts, breakdowns, crime, and psychological distress spread throughout the Second Wave World. Magazines did cover pieces on “why nothing works anymore.” Energy and family systems shook. Value systems and urban structures crumbled. Pollution, corruption, inflation, alienation, loneliness, racism, bureaucratism, divorce, mindless consumerism, all came under savage attack. Economists warned of the possibility of a total collapse of the financial system. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
A global environmental movement, meanwhile, warned that pollution, energy, and resource limits might soon make it impossible for even the existing Second Wave nations to continue normal operations. Beyond this, it was pointed out, even if the Second Wave strategy did, miraculously, work in the poor nations, it would turn the entire planet into a single giant factory and wreak ecological havoc. Gloom descended on the richest nations as the general crisis of industrialism deepened. And if the Second Wave strategy could not work, suddenly millions around the World asked themselves why anyone would want to emulate a civilization that was itself in the throes of such violent disintegration. Another startling development also undermined the belief that the Second Wave strategy was the only path from rags to riches. Always implicit in this strategy was the assumption that “first you ‘develop,’ then you grow rich”—that affluence was the result of hard work, thrift, the Protestant Ethic, and a long process of economic and social transformation. However, the OPEC embargo and the sudden flood of petro-dollars into the Middle East stood this Calvinist notion on its pointed head. Within mere months unexpected billions spewed, splashed, and spumed into Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya, and other Arab countries, and the World saw seemingly limitless wealth preceding, rather than following, transformation. In the Middle East, it was the money that produced the drive to “develop,” rather than “development” that produced the money. Nothing like that, on so vast a scale, had ever happened before. Meanwhile, competition among the rich nations themselves was heating up. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
With South Korean steel being used at California construction sites, television sets from Taiwan being marketed in Europe, tractors from India being sold in the Middle East and China emerging dramatically as a major potential industrial force, concern is mounting over how far developing economies will undercut established industries in the advanced nations of Japan, the United States of America and Europe. Striking French steelworkers, as one might expect, put it more colourfully. They called for an end to “the massacre of industry” and protesters occupied the Eiffel Tower. In one after another of the older industrial nations, Second Wave industries and their political allies attacked the “export of jobs” and policies that spread industrialization to the poorer countries. In short, doubts mushroom on all sides as to whether the much-trumpeted Second Wave strategy could—or even should—work. Once public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they prefer to serve with their wallet rather than with their person, the state is already near its ruin. It is necessary to march off to battle? They pay mercenary troops and stay at home. Is it necessary to go to the council? They name deputies and stay at home. By dint of laziness and money, they finally have soldiers to enslave the country and representatives to sell it. The hustle and bustle of commerce and the arts, the avid interest in profits, softness and the love of amenities: these are what change personal services into money. A person gives up part of one’s profit in order to increase it at leisure. Give money and soon you will be in chains. The word finance is a slave word. It is unknown in the city. In a truly free state, the citizens do everything with their own hands and nothing with their money. Far from paying to be exempted from their duties, they would pay to fulfill them themselves. Far be it from me to be sharing commonly held ideas. I believe that forced labour is less opposed to liberty than taxes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The better a state is constituted, the more public business takes precedence over private business in the minds of the citizens. There even is far less private business, since, with the sum of common happiness providing a more considerable portion of each individual’s happiness, less remains for one to look for through private efforts. In a well run city everyone flies to the assemblies; under a bad government no one wants to take a step to get to them, since no one takes an interest in what happens there, for it is predictable that the general will will not predominate, and in the end domestic concerns absorb everything. Good laws lead to making better laws; bad laws bring about worse ones. Once someone says what do I care? about the affairs of state, the state should be considered lost. The cooling off of patriotism, the activity of private interest, the largeness of states, conquests, the abuse of government: these have suggested the route of using deputies or representatives of the people in the nation’s assemblies. It is what in certain countries is called the third estate. Thus the private interest of two orders is given first and second place; the public interest is given merely third place. Sovereignty cannot be represented for the same reason that it cannot be alienated. It consists essentially in the general will, and the will does not allow of being represented. It is either itself or something else; there is nothing in between. The deputies of the people, therefore, neither are nor can be its representatives; they are merely its agents. They cannot conclude anything definitively. Any law that the populace has not ratified in person is null; it is not a law at all. The English people believes itself to be free. It is greatly mistake; it is free only during the election of the members of Parliament. Once they are elected, the populace is enslaved; it is nothing. The use the English people makes of that freedom in the brief moments of its liberty certainly warrants their losing it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
The idea of representatives is modern. It comes to us from feudal government, that iniquitous and absurd government in which the human race is degraded and the name of humans is in dishonour. In the ancient republics and even in monarchies, the people never had representatives. The word itself was unknown. It is quite remarkable that in Rome where the tribunes were so sacred, no one even imagined that they could usurp the functions of the people, and that in the midst of such a great multitude, they never tried to pass a single plebiscite on their own authority. However, we can size up the difficulties that were sometimes caused by the crowd by what took place in the time of the Gracchi, when part of the citizenry voted from the rooftops. Where right and liberty are everything, inconveniences are nothing. In the care of this wise people, everything was handled correctly. It allowed its lictors to do what its tribunes would not have dared to do. It has no fear that its lictors would want to represent it. However, to explain how the tribunes sometimes represented, it is enough to conceive how the government represents the sovereign. Since the law is merely the declaration of the general will, it is clear that the people cannot be represented in the legislative power. However, it can and should be represented in the executive power, which is merely force applied to the law. This demonstrates that, on close examination, very few nations would be found to have laws. Be that as it may, it is certain that, since they have no share in executive power, the tribunes could never represent the Roman people by the rights of their office, but only by usurping those of the senate. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Among the Greeks, whatever the populace had to do, it did by itself. It was constantly assembled at the public square. It inhabited a mild climate; it was not greedy; its slaves did the work; its chief item of business was its liberty. No longer having the same advantages, how are the same right to be preserved? Your harsher climates cause you to have more needs. (To adopt in cold countries the luxury and softness of the Eastern cultures is to desire to be given their chains; it is submitting to these with even greater necessity than they did.) Because of the climate, six months out of the year the public square is uninhabitable; your muted tongues cannot make themselves understood in the open air; you pay more attention to your profits than to your liberty; and you are less fearful of slavery than you are misery. What! can liberty be maintained only with the support of servitude? Perhaps. The two extremes meet. Everything that is not in nature has its drawbacks, and civil society more so than all the rest. There are some unfortunate circumstances where one’s liberty can be preserved only at the expense of someone else’s, and where the citizen can be perfectly free only if the slave is completely enslaved. Such was the situation in Sparta. As for you, modern peoples, you do not have slaves, but you yourselves are slaves. You pay for their liberty with your own. It is in vain that you crow about that preference. In find more cowardice in it than humanity. I do not mean by all this that having slaves is necessary, nor that the right of slavery is legitime, for I have proved the contrary. I am mere stating the reason why modern peoples who believe themselves to be free have representatives, and why ancient peoples did not have them. Be that as it may, the moment a people gives itself representatives, it is no longer free; it no longer exists. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
With the Third Wave on its way out, the age of information, perhaps the Fourth Wave will be the age of slavery. The public started by destroying and removing their statues, which were part of history. They teach important lesson. Patriots are becoming rare and being shamed. The nation does not protect its boarders and disallows law enforcement to work together, which puts national security and public safety at risk. Tyrants locked you in your homes, make you wear pampers on your face and forced medication on you. Next, the American people will be so offended by knowledge that the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden will be confiscated and/or destroyed. And people with sit in their tiny, low budget, low-rise, mid-level rise, and high-rise apartments (which should be red tagged and condemned because of code violations such as leaking pipes, asbestos growing mold, roach, rat and demon infestations, thick foul stenches assaulting the hallways) because real estate has become so expensive. Instead of working, they will be eating government rationed food, spending all day watching television, or smoke dope and have seances. They will not be able to go outside without permission or a valid doctor’s note. All things considered, I do not see that it is possible henceforth for the sovereign to preserve among us the exercise of its rights, unless the city is very small. However, if it is very small, will it be subjugated? When it comes to “Youth Problems,” one can make little distinction in value between talking about middle-class youths being groomed for one to three hundred-thousand-dollar “slots” in business and Madison Avenue, or underprivileged hoodlums fatalistically hurrying to a reformatory; or between hard-working young fathers and Hipsters with beards, McMansions and chicken farms. For the salient things is the sameness among them, the waste of humanity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
In our society, bright lively children, with the potentiality for knowledge, noble ideals, honest effort, and some kind of worthwhile achievement, are transformed into useless and cynical bipeds, or decent young men trapped or early resigned, whether in or out of the organized system. It is desperately hard these days for an average child to grow up to be a man, for our present organized system of society does not want men. They are not safe. They do not suit. Our public officials are now much more concerned about the “waste of human resources.” One of my favourite professors and former President of Harvard, Dr. Conant taught me a lot about the Mayflower, which was a ship his maternal family came to America on. As his paternal family was involved in the founding of Salem, Massachusetts, which was home of the witch trials, we also spent countless hours discussing the subject. Anyway, Dr. Conant surveyed high schools. He was always looking for students who showed promise. The ones who were exposed to the more advanced texts and techniques. Those who stressed about college entrance exams. The students at the top of their class, the ones who were scholarship worthy, and participated in clubs. However, he could not find too many serious students, and some considered his reports superficial because they avoided “the real issues” on the part of our public officials, which many think is one of the big causes for failures in student success. It seems our leaders are setting our youth up to be slaves, which is why they do not care about their futures. However, our society cannot have it both ways: to maintain a conformist and ignoble system and to have skillful and spirited humans to man that system. A better World requires no deep wisdom or astonishing imagination to know what we need. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
The prevalent sentiment that it is infinitely impractical to follow the suggestions of common reason, is not sound. If it is impractical, it is because some people do not want to, and the rest of us do not want to enough. For instance, there is a persistent presumption among our liberal statesmen that the old radical-liberal program has been importantly achieved, and that therefore there is no familiar major proposal practical to remedy admittedly crying ills. This is a false presumption. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the radical-liberal program was continually compromised, curtailed, sometimes realized in form without content, sometimes swept under the rug and heard of no more. This has occurred, and keeps occurring, by the mutual accommodation of both “liberals” and “conservatives” in the interests of creating our present coalition of semimonopolies, trade unions, government, Madison Avenue, et cetera (including a large bloc of outlaw gangsters); thriving on maximum profits and full employment; but without regard for utility, quality, rational productivity, personal freedom, independent enterprise, human scale, manly vocation, or genuine culture. It is in this accommodation that our politicians survive, but it does not make for statesmanship. We have only had three reputable statemen in ninety years, two of them died seventy years ago. Agree or disagree, we have been living in political limbo and with voodoo economics when it comes to the economy. Naturally this unnatural system has generated its own troubles, whether we think of the unlivable communities, the collapse of public ethics, or the problems of the youth. These ills are by no means inherent in modern technological or ecological condition, nor in the American Constitution as such. However, they have followed precisely from the betrayal and neglect of the old radical-liberal program and other changes proposed to keep up with the advancing technology, the growth of population, and the revolution in morals. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
When they were ripe, important forms did not occur, and we have inherited the consequences: a wilderness of unfinished situations, unequal developments and inconsistent standards, as well as new business. And now, sometimes the remedy must be stoically to go back and carry through the old programs (as we are having to do with racial, gender, and immigration status integration), exempli gratia, finally to insist on stringent master-planning of cities and conserving of resources, or on really limiting monopolies. Sometimes we must make changes to catch up—exempli gratia, to make the laws more consistent with the cultural revolution, or to make the expenditure on public goods more commensurate with the geometrically increasing complications of a more crowded population. And sometimes, finally, we have to invent really new devices—exempli gratia, how to make the industrial technology humanly important for its workers, how to use leisure nobly, or even how, in a rich society, to be decently poor if one so chooses. For it is impossible for the average boy to grow up and use the remarkable capacities that are in every boy, unless the World is for him and makes sense. And when it understands that its chief wealth is these capacities, a society makes sense. Most people eventually detach themselves to some degree, both emotionally and physically, from their families of origin. In so doing, people shift their focus from relationships with parents and siblings to relationships with a partner and children. These relationships in the family of orientation consume substantial physical and mental energy. Furthermore, whereas in family-of-origin relations there is a natural progression toward some degree of independence, marriage and parenting are relationships that are pledged for life (at least in principle). Consequently, these relationships have a powerful impact on psychological well-being, and the psychological well-being or illness of an individual in such a family context has a powerful impact on these family relations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
There is an exceptionally robust relationship between mental health problems and marital distress. This interpersonal problem can be found among those with depression, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, alcoholism and other substance use disorders, and psychogenic sexual dysfunctions. It is extremely difficult to locate an individual whose spouse has major depression or alcoholism, but who otherwise feels that the two of them have a great marriage. Marital distress would presumably be problematic for many people with social anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, or personality disorders, were they actually able to initiate and maintain marriages. Scientists and philosophers alike might debate which is the more intimate human bond: parent and child, or husband and wife. A parent-child relationships is one of blood; yet a marriage is a relationship of sustained intimacy until death, at least in theory. When a marriage goes bad, mental health can suffer as a result. In this regard, marital distress may act as a stressor that triggers symptoms of psychopathology. A failing marriage can raise questions of blame, faltered responsibility, self-doubt, feelings of personal failure, and uncertainty about the present and future. The catastrophic and dysphoric feelings that accompany marital distress can exhaust the strongest of egos. In many such cases, psychopathology could be interpreted as a result of marital distress. An alternative account of the relationship between marital distress and psychopathology sees the deterioration of marriage as affected by symptoms of psychological disorder. To state the case plainly, how enjoyable is marriage to a depressed person? What marriage is strong enough to tolerate and absorb the radical shifts in mood and behaviour associated with bipolar disorder? How fulfilling can a marriage be to a wife who is starving herself to death and eschewing pleasures of the flesh, or to a husband drinking himself to death and generally incoherent or belligerent? These symptoms are a burden that even the best marriages often cannot bear. When the mental health of one member depreciates, a union between two people that is this close is inevitably upset. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Psychological disorders also appear to generate parenting problems. If any, there are few interpersonal tasks that require as much energy, effort, and skills as raising children. Effective parenting requires undivided attention and emotional resilience. When a parent’s mental balance is tipped by problems such as depression, bipolar disorder, or alcoholism, the possibility for effective parenting declines considerably. For this reason, people with mental health problems often raise children with behavioural or psychological problems of their own. Fortunately, many factors that moderate the relationship between parental mental health and child distress can render a child resilient to the ill effects of troubled parenting. Some consideration should be granted to the possibility (although it is somewhat speculative at this time) that children’s behavioural problems may trigger symptoms of psychopathology in parents. Mental health problems are sensitive to a variety of interpersonal contacts, including those with relative strangers. It is reasonable to assume that a child with conduct, attention, emotional, or behavioural problems may stress a parent, perhaps leading to depression when this “failure” at parenting is internalized, or to alcoholism as a means of coping and escape. Some interpersonal phenomena, such as conflict, EE (expressive emotions), negative AS (affective style), and the provision of a “solution” to a system problem, appear in both family-of-origin and family-of-orientation contexts. Though many scientists often conceptualize and test fairly linear cause—effect relations in these context (exempli gratia, family conflict leads to depression, bipolar disorder leads to marital distress), family systems theorists see cause and effect in all members of a system. For example, a key assumption is that regardless of how problems originate, they persist as aspects of current, ongoing interactions systems. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Cybernetic feedback processes provide a framework for understanding how systems are maintained, which is of greater interests than etiological hypotheses, or linear (historical) notions of cause and effect. It is further assumed that problems occur not so much within people are between them—that psychological “symptoms” and interaction systems are inextricably interwoven. Thus, from a systems perspective, neither the effect of psychopathology on the family nor the effect of the family on psychopathology is a primary focus. Rather, the concern is with the way in which all members of the system maintain the psychological problem. In many situations the psychological problem is functional in some way for the family. Families that structure their lives around alcoholism or eating disorders are collectively maintaining the psychological problem. Therefore, the problem is clearly not an individual problem, but a system problem. And sometimes maybe even your loud dog is having a psychological problem that needs to be addressed. The popularity of Prozac and related antidepressant drugs skyrocketed in the 1990s. Many clinicians believe that Prozac is being prescribed much too often. They worry in particular about its se with children, elderly people, and people whose psychological problems are relatively minor. However, I wonder if more people took Prozac, would they stop using marijuana because often times people “have to smoke marijuana to stay calm.” It is not just for pain and entertainment. Nonetheless, clinicians have been given something else to worry about when it comes to Prozac. Prozac is also being described to dogs with mood and behavioural problems. Dr. Peter Neville, an expert on animal behaviour, described dogs given Prozac. Jannie, a pointer with a shadow-chasing problem, was prescribed the drug for an obsessive-compulsive disorder. George, a Staffordshire bull terrier, was given it to combat “sustained rage assaults” on other dogs. And Henry, an English bull terrier, kept pinning his owner every time she tired to leave home. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
At first glance, there may seem to be something odd or wrong about human beings serving as testing ground for medication that is later given to animals. However, the animal doctors who proscribe Prozac argue that it would be wrong to withhold a helpful treatment from pets simply because such applications initially make us uncomfortable. After all, they assert, if Prozac does help produce beneficial feelings and better behaviours in these troubled dogs, it can make an enormous difference for both the patients and their family members, just as it does in many cases of human depression. Should ever any scheme of things acquire absolute authority it would exclude from awareness anything beyond its limits. Nothing then could content with it and no change could occur. It and the society it organized would be static and immortal. Each individual by allegiance to that scheme would share in that immortality. The dread of death would be overcome. No scheme of things has ever achieved such authority, though some schemes have endured for millennia. Change is unstoppable; for no scheme of things has ever convinced everyone. All schemes involve limitation and denial. They are humanmade. They reach out into the way things are, the realm of the existing, and make order. Then claim to be eternal. A scheme of things is a plan for salvation. How well, it works will depend upon its scope and authority. If it is small, even great achievement in its service will do little to dispel death. We seek the largest possible scheme, not in hunger for truth, but in hunger for meaning. The more comprehensive the scheme, the greater its promise of banishing dread. If we can more our lives mean something in a cosmic scheme we will live in the certainty of immortality. The very great success of Christianity for a thousand years follows upon its having been of universal scope, including and accounting for everything, assigning to all things a proper place; offering to every human, whether prince or beggar, savant or fool, the privilege of working in the Lord’s vineyard; and upon its being accepted as true throughout the Western World. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Beguinage’s were groups of women who dedicated themselves to chastity and poverty, pooled their possession, and formed spiritual or residential communes. Often they lived together, but some continued to live at home with their families. Beguines chose to be eternally celibate rather than vow eternal celibacy. The Albigensians (Beguinage’s were suspected of having the same origin sometime in the twelfth century) taught that marriage and pleasures of the flesh prevented salvation and that parents, who had by definition already fornicated, were domed souls. Albigensianism must have influenced at least some women to look elsewhere than unlikely marriage for a satisfying life. In fact, many women needed no prodding to consider abstaining from marriage. Living, as most did, in cramped quarters with no privacy from their families, they observed their parents’ marriages firsthand and understood well what lay in store for them. Centuries earlier, Ambrose had discouraged women from abandoning their virginal state with his succinct reminder of what marriage would bring: “Pregnancy, the crying of infants, the torture caused by rival, the cares of household management.” Women who married were often the most melancholy mourners of the virginity they had surrendered and the most fervent advocates for the celibacy that would restore a modicum of serenity and control to their frenetic lives. Church officials could not believe such celibate free agents as the Beguines could manage to survive chastely in the wicked World and so they must be locked up. Furthermore, the private or informal vows of sexual purity they had previously sworn were now forbidden—they were directed to swear formal oaths. Then these formally avowed celibates had to be cloistered lest they face temptation, weaken, and default on their vows. In the tradition of the early Fathers, who wrote that “sin came from a woman, but salvation through a virgin,” these men revered virgins but hated women. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
In the sixteenth century, Angela Merici established a noncloistered women’s order, the Company of St. Ursula, the legendary British saint martyred, with her eleven thousand virgin companions, as she rode to her wedding. Angela’s choice of St. Ursula was significant; virginity was the cornerstone of her Company, and social work, teaching, and nursing its mission. Novices required their parent’s permission and had to be at least twelve, the minimum legal age for women to marry. Angela directed novices to preserve their virginity, which she considered an angelic quality. The Company of St. Ursula survived until 1810, its sisters grateful that the Church granted them permission to maintain their chastity in the World of their blood relatives, neighbours, and the struggling poor they were dedicated to serving. However, in general, because of the way Mary Ward was treated, a lesson all devout and celibate woman learned that was that if they were also independent, strong-minded, ambitions, and visionary, their virtue was suspect. While some believe there is freedom in having the charism of virginity, we also need to say something about how one arrives at that freedom, and about the price to be paid. In fact, one of the greatest dangers to guard against in this whole area is precisely the danger of delusion. After sin, sexuality is no longer a neutral reality which we can easily dominate. It has become ambiguous. The Christian Bible is familiar with this ambivalent, dramatic character of sexuality. It knows that passion is capable of dragging a person to ruin: “For love is strong as death”—we read in the Song of Songs—“passion as relentless as Sheol,” reports SG 8.6. The Old Testament is full of dismal stories in which individuals or entire cities appear as victims of the devastating power of sexual disorder. It is true that Jesus came to redeem humanity therefore also human sexuality. It is also true that “condemnation will never come to those who are in Christ Jesus,” reports Romans 8.1. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
However, redemption has not exempted human beings from concupiscence and the need for struggle. Certainly Jesus redeems and saves human sexuality, but He redeems and saves it as He does with everything else, through the cross, in other words, by calling us to share His struggle, so what we can later share His victory. When Israel entered into possession of the Promised Land, it is written that “the Lord allowed these nations to remain; He did not hurry to drive them out, and did not deliver them into the hands of Joshua,” reports Jg. 2.23. The Lord did subject to Israel the nations who occupied the land of Canaan, but not all of the, and not all at once. He allowed some to remain, in order to put Israel to the test by their means, and to teach Israel the art of war. He has done the same with us in Baptism. He has not taken away all our enemies, our temptations; some, our appetites, He has left with us, so that we would learn to fight and to hope in Him, and experience our weakness. Christ, then, did not eliminate the concupiscence of the flesh in us, but He has given us the means not to give in to it. The first and most common means available to us to preserve and increase virginity of the heart is mortification. St. Paul assures us: “If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live,” reports Romans 8.13. This is spiritual mortification, where “spiritual” does not mean an internal type of mortification, as opposed to an external, bodily one, but mortification that is both external and internal, practiced with the help of the Holy Spirit. In short, a type of mortification that is not itself a work of the “flesh,” but of faith. For a soul tht wants to be the spouse of Christ, mortification is necessary, just as, in the case of a human love, it is necessary to learn the language of the beloved. “Consider,” writers the philosopher we have already mentioned, who remained celibate for love of the divine majesty, “a purely human situation. If a lover is unable to speak the language of the beloved, then he or she must learn the other’s language, however difficult it may be. Otherwise their relationship could never be a happy one; they would never be able to converse with each other. So it is with mortifying oneself in order to love God. God is spirit: only a mortified person can in some way speak His language. If you do not want to mortify yourself, then you cannot love God either. What you are speaking is something quite different.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
Some first-century Christians were struggling to survive in the Greek town of Corinth. The Bible says, “The people were in deep poverty and deep trouble,” reports 2 Corinthians 8.2. What did they do in their time of need? Did they complain and pout? Did they say, “God, why do we have so much trouble coming against us?” Not at all. The Scripture records, “In the midst of their great trouble, they stayed full of joy and they gave generously to others.” Notice they sowed a seed in their time of need. They knew if they would help to meet other people’s needs, God would meet theirs. In your times of difficulty, do just what they did. Number one, stay full of joy. Number two, go out and sow a seed. Help someone else, and you will be helped. The Bible says, “Give generously, for your gifts will return to you later. Divide your gifts among many, for in the days ahead you yourself may need much help,” reports Ecclesiastes 11.1-2. Notice, God is giving us a principle here that will cause us to have our needs supplied during those tough times that occasionally comes. Give generously right now, because in the future you may need some help. God is keeping a record of every good deed you have ever done. He is keeping a record of every seed you have ever sown. And in your time of need, He will make sure that somebody is there to help you. Your generous gifts will come back to you. God has seen every smile you have ever given to a hurting person. He has observed every time you went out of the way to lend a helping hand. God has witnessed when you have given sacrificially, giving even money that perhaps you needed desperately for yourself or your family. God is keeping those records. Some people will tell you that it does not make any different whether you gibe or not, or that it does not do any good. However, do not listen to those lies. God has promised that your generous gifts will come back to you. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
Put some action behind your prayers. If you are believing for a promotion at work, do not just say, “God, I am counting on you.” Certainly, you should pray, but do more than pray. God out and help your family, or do something to get some seed in the ground that God can bless. Your gifts will go up as a memorial before God. Perhaps you are hoping to buy a new Cresleigh Home or get out of debt. So a special seed that relates to your specific need. We cannot buy God’s goodness, but we can exercise our faith through our giving. The Scripture says, “When we give, God is able to make it all up to us by giving us everything we need and more so there will be not only enough for our needs, but we will have plenty left over so that we can give to others,” reports 2 Corinthians 9.8. God has promised us that when we give, He will give back to us. Sow a special offering. So something out of the ordinary as an expression of your faith. If you will do that, God will pour out His favour in a new way. If you want to live a successful life now, do not hoard what God has given you. Learn to sow it in faith. Remember, when you give, you are preparing the way for God to meet your needs today and in the future. The luminous understand of cosmic truths given one by this experience has still to be connected to, and brought into relation with, one’s everyday human character. What one feels in these beautiful minutes is really a far-off echo from a higher, diviner World. The echo wanes and vanishes but its origin does not. One day, soon or late, one may pick it up again and this time learn of the greatness secreted within one. No glimpse is wasted, even if it does pass away. For not only does it leave a memory to stir comfort guide, inspire, or mediate upon, but it also leaves a beneficial advance forward. Each glimpse is to be regarded as a step taken in the direction of the goal, or as a stage in the process of work needed to be done on oneself, or as a further cleanings of the accretions impurities animalities and egoisms which hide the true Self. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
If one’s own work is fully and faithfully done, the time comes when the power to prolong a glimpse is at the disciple’s command. One is then able not only to bring it on at will but also to extend its length at will. The higher awareness falls like pollen for a few short hours, perhaps, only to be blown away for long years. Yet this intervening period need not be wasted. It should be used to cut down the obstructions in one’s character and to fill up the deficiencies in one’s equipment. This done, one will grow more and more into one’s spiritual selfhood with every return to temporary awareness of it. When it comes to the faith of Sacrament, though, some are gravely tempted; at first blush, that would seem to be their fault, but act, at second blush, it is the Enemy’s. My suggestion? Do just the opposite of what the Devil suggests. That is to say, try to hold your water, but do not try to make sense out of commandments the Devil has turned into conundrums. Just believe in the words of God. Put your belief in His Saints and Prophets, and the Vociferous Enemy will throw up his hands in despair; the same sort of advice is found in the Letter of James (4.7). Often when one has to bear up under such affronts, there is some small consolations, perhaps even a compliment. That is to say, the Devil does not spend must of his precious time trying the virtue of Infidels and Sinners; these poor blokes he can have served up to him anytime he wants. It is always the Faithfull that are the delicacies at his dinners. Continue your intellectual journey, My Friend, with simple and undoubting faith, and receive the Sacrament with the reverence of a suppliant. When your intellectual capacity reaches its natural limits, remember God’s knowledge knows no bounds. When intellectual failure does happen—and it happens more frequently than Humankind likes to admit—know that God is not the cause. You are the cause because you put your faith in yourself. Which is a roundabout way of saying the person who believes in oneself has a fool for a god. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Release your faith in words. Even though God desires to answer the prayers and meet the needs of every individual, someone has to request it in this Earth either by saying it or praying it. He already knows the problem or the need before you ask, but it seems as though God cannot move until someone on Earth has requested it. He has given the authority of this Earth to humankind, and He cannot violate His Word. “The Heaven, even the Heavens, are the Lord’s: but the Earth hath He given to the children of men,” reports Psalms 115.16. This passage of scripture agrees with Jesus’ words in Matthew 16.19, “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven,” and also in Mark 11.24, “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” God cannot violate His Word. It seems as though He does not come in the Earth to destroy the works of the devil unless someone on the Earth uses their authority by requesting or demanding it in the name of Jesus. The authority of the Earth has been given to man. In Galatians 3.13 you can see that you are redeemed from the curse of the Law, which includes poverty, sickness, and spiritual death. Here again, someone must enforce it. You must demand your rights in Jesus’s name. You have legal authority in this Earth through that name. In Mark 16.17-18, Jesus said, “These signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. Jesus has given us the power of attorney to use His name and that name is above every name. (Phil. 2.9-10). To change fear into perfect loving requires a clear definition of grace. Perhaps the most profound type of core experience comes in what it means to be “struck by grace.” By grace we mean the gift of God that we are loved and accepted without effort on our part. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
Grace is often referred to as unmerited love from God. Do we know what it means to be struck by grace? It happens; or it does not happen. Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we talk through the dark value of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel our separation is deeper than usual. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, or hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after years, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear. At that moment it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted,” accepted by that which is greater than you. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. However, everything is transformed. It is through grace, the in-flowing of God’s love, that we become able to love our neighbour from the great reservoir of God-given love within. Dear Lord in Heaven, I want to do something out of the ordinary in the realm of giving, something that will expand my faith, and cause me to know that when the answer comes, it is directly attributable to You and Your blessings on my willingness to give. God, you are all things graciously. You are the mystery unfolding cosmos and humanity. You are my homeland, my most original ground. Your Presence welds all things together. You are the caring love that carries me like Mother Earth does forest, flower, and tree. Your Presence alone is lasting home. Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing though night and day—and to her soil: rich, rare, and sweet in our minds so be it. Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing light-changing leaf and fine root-hairs; standing still through wind and rain; their dance is in the flowing spiral grain in our minds so be it. Gratitude to Air, bearing the soaring Swift and the silent Owl at dawn. Breath of our song clear spirit breeze in our minds so it be. Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers, teaching secrets, freedoms, and ways; who share with us their milk; self-complete, brave, and aware in our minds so be it. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers; holding or releasing; streaming through all our bodies salty seas in our minds so be it. Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where bears and snakes sleep—one who wakes us—in our minds so be it. Gratitude to the Great Sky who holds billions of stars—and goes yet beyond that—beyond all powers, and thoughts and yet is within us—Grandfather Space. The Mind is his Wife so be it. As for slanderers, may their hopes come to naught, and may all wickedness perish. May all Thine enemies be destroyed. Do Thou uproot the dominion of arrogance; crush it and subdue it in our day. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who breakest the power of the enemy and bringest low the arrogant. May Thy tender mercies, O Lord our God, be stirred towards the righteous and the pious, towards the leaders of Thy people America, towards all the scholars that have survived, toward the righteous proselytes and toward us. Grant Thy favour unto all who faithfully trust in Thee, and may our portion ever be with them. May we never suffer humiliation for in Thee do we put our trust. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who are the staff and trust of the righteous. The throne and dynasty of David are historic symbols of righteous government and the restoration of American’s home land. Please return in mercy to America, Thy city, and dwell Thou therein as Thou hast promised. Please rebuild it in our own day as an enduring habitation, and speedily set up therein the throne of David. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who rebuildest America. Cause the Dynast of American soon to flourish and may it be exalted through Thy saving power, for we daily await Thy deliverance. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who causest salvation to come fourth. Please hear our voice, O Lord our God, have compassion upon us and receive our prayers in loving favour for Thou, O God, hearkenest unto prayers and supplications. Please turn us not from Thy presence without Thy blessing, O our King, for Thou hearest the prayers of Thy people America with compassion. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hearkenest unto prayer. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Why Can they Not Understand the Cold Logic of it?
Leaders have a significant role in creating a state of mind that promotes wisdom. They can serve as symbols of the moral unity of a community. They can express values and show one how to make the impossible dream become attained in possible stages. To know how to do it is skill. This World as we know it is passing away. God wants us to be free from anxiety. These are now the end times in which it is possible to live already as “children of the resurrection” in the manner of the World to come. However, there is a danger in seeing virginity and celibacy as a wonderful opportunity for a tranquil life, with no problems or worries. God wants us to be free from all anxiety. No matter what lifestyle one leads, there may be some things that one faces that are unpleasant. Yet, the goods, or affairs, of the Lord are the souls He died for: the Kingdom. This is why celibates and virgins exist: so that there will be someone, in the Church and in the World, who is concerned solely for God’s interests. It is not true that such people do not marry. Virgins are not people who renounce marriage. They are people who renounce life-long commitment to a creature. This becomes true and obvious for virgins from the moment when they make the person discover of Jesus as “Lord” of their life, and realize that this Lord is not Someone Who belongs only to the past (when He was on Earth), or only to the future (when we too will be with Him in Heave), but that, in virtue of His resurrection He is alive “in the Spirit” and is present at every moment in His Church. So it is not a questions of a virgin man or woman renouncing a “concrete” love for the sake of an “abstract” one, a real person for an imaginary Christ and with God, even leaving aside all the mystical significance usually associated with this term in religious language. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
We say of someone metaphorically that they have “espoused” a cause when they have given themselves wholly to it, body and soul, making the interests, risks, and success of that cause their own. In this sense we are entitled to say that the virgin has espoused the Kingdom or the Lord, but to a much greater degree, because virginity is not just espousing a “cause,” but also a person; not just for a time, but for eternity. The bond that binds the celibate and the virgin to the Lord is so total, so exclusive, that its only equivalent on the human level is when a man marries a woman. With all the more reason, the Christian celibate or virgin can make these words their own and say: “My soul is in love with Jesus Christ. Others will make sure that the World survives.” Having espoused the cause of the Kingdom of Heaven, we are called to serve that cause; having married a person, the Lord, we are called to please that person. “The unmarried person,” St. Paul says, “is concerned with the Lord’s affairs, with how to please the Lord.” Manicheanism was a dualistic, contrasting a Prince of Darkness with a God of Light. In this contest between light and dark, good and evil, the body of the Manichean was no more than a prison, created by demons, which trapped the good light withing. The great Manichean goal was to liberate that imprisoned light. The only way to achieve this was through celibacy, which would prevent the creation of new prisons, and other ascetic practices, which would release trapped light. In a maze of lost, we search for an informing principle, a truth that will teach us how to live, will define our task, enable us to transcend our folly and cruelty, to use ourselves up in a way that counts. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The way to live should issue from our nature, from what it is we believer ourselves most deeply to be. We tend to assume that we know what we are, that our nature is obvious, given to us by direct observation of others and of ourselves; Just look around the World and look into your own heart and you will know the human condition. It is not so. What it is to be a human being is not clear at all, but deeply shrouded. Because, in the evolution from medieval times to present awareness, we have gained knowledge and the ability to deceive ourselves. We arrange not to know our nature, not to see what we are up to. Our self-deceptions are so dense, piled on so thick, like layers of paint on a Victorian being painted without stripping for over a century, layer after layer, laid on until it gets so thick it becomes an enamel. We have gone from stories to book, to the Internet and Television. There are so many layers of what we are supposed to be that it is hard to get a clear view of what we really are. Behind our loudly professed values of freedom, justice, and equality lies a propensity to violence far stronger and far deeper than is known to any of us, even the most cynical. It is all but invincible, invades even the bedroom, and corrupts what we call love. We indulge in vast hypocrisies, flagrant and subtle, to conceal from ourselves this destructiveness. We are in fact largely the opposite of what we think we are. And as we deceive ourselves, we deceive also others. Self-awareness comes into being in the midst of struggles for power and is immediately put to use. One defends oneself, or seeks advantage, by misrepresenting oneself. One does not think about it; it happens instantly, automatically, inalienably. It is not possible to abstain. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
One cannot be oneself. To be human is to be false. Awareness is inseparable from misrepresentation. The soul of self-awareness is deception. Somatoform disorders are often accompanied by other psychological problems. A study of over 1,000 adolescents indicated that almost half of those with a somatoform disorder also had at least one other documentable psychological disorder. Among adults with somatization disorder, 23 percent had one personality disorder, and 37 percent had two or more. The most frequently occurring personality disorder among the patients with somatization disorder in this study were avoidant, paranoid, self-defeating, obsessive-compulsive, histrionic, and antisocial. Some have estimated the rate of personality disorders to be as high as 60-70 percent among people with somatoform disorders. The pure heart, blind to its own purity, sees only outward; the reflective heart is devious. They reality to which that “truly” refers is a slippery item. “Say everything that comes to mind,” the analyst says to the analysand, “nothing must remain hidden”; but the first association scurries for cover as the second is being staged by the third, and the bottom of that barrel can never be scraped. Below the deepest uncovering one yet deeper is possible. From an interpersonal perspective, the coincidence of somatoform disorders and personality disorders is understandable. In most patients with somatoform disorders, illness behaviour is a lifestyle in which the sick role is a mode of relating to self and others…in relation to others the role provides strategies for eliciting care and exercising control. Recall that, by definition, personality disorders involve inflexible and maladaptive patterns of behaviour, with problems in the interpersonal domain. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
People with personality disorders often related to other people in ways that ill suited for the situation. The same reasons for this maladaptive relating to others undoubtedly also cause the somatization. In fact, somatization could be understood as an interpersonal manifestation of a personality disorder. Instead of communicating with other directly and openly, the person with a somatoform disorder develops symptoms in an effort to convey a message (neediness, desire for attention, et cetera) to other people. It is ways to envision how somatization could be a “functional” form of communication for persons with avoidant personality disorder, who shun direct communication with others; those histrionic personality disorders, who have a taste for drama; or those with dependent personality disorder, who want to be taken care of. However, the most important thing about human life is that we come upon from within and can know only from within. Many people stage their existence and block it from view with contrived sets that they call reality, and though they know those sets to be fake, so many labour endlessly to make them look real. And they go about those actions on that stage which accord with those sets, individuals come finally to believe they are real. The backdrop being them is forgotten. Somatoform disorders involve the experience and expression of distressing physical symptoms in the absence of any medical cause. The expression of distress through physical symptoms serves a number of social functions, such as secondary gain, signaling intrapersonal and interpersonal distress, and providing a temporary solution to a systemwide problem. The unchanging backdrop, the raw nature of existence, unadorned, unmediated, overwhelming one with dread, the way things are becoming too awful and too fearful to be endured. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The set changes over the course of history, though they may seem fixed over the course of a lifetime. The set, as in a play, is the arrangement in which one lives, the scheme of things. Psychoanalysis attends to those distortions of mind that have come about as a result of mishaps and mistreatments in childhood. Not just analysts and analysands, but all of us, simply by being members of a culture permeated with the promise of psychology, share in the belief that such is possible. And as one, acting on tis belief go about the processing of analyzing the miseries visited upon us by the preceding generation, it comes insidiously to seem that all misery is of this kind, not destiny but mishap, that therefore if people generally were free of neuroses they would no longer torment themselves and their families, nor would tyrants torment their subjects (nor themselves even want to be tyrants), and that human life would then be happy and secure. Thus psychology slides into place as the modern ideology, the heir to religion. It is the scheme of things in which we live. Many people with somatoform disorders have a history of adverse childhood experiences, ranging from growing up in a family characterized by conflict, poor boundary regulation, little intimacy, excessive control, and exaggerate demands for success, to outright physical and sexual abuse. As in the case of substance use problems and eating disorders, modeling may play a role in the pathogenesis of somatoform disorders. Many such patients witnessed serious illness in their parents, and have a history of illness themselves. Two psychodynamically oriented theories of somatoform disorder postulate that insecure attachments prompt excessive care seeking in the form of physical symptom expression. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Many investigators see somatoform disorders as maladaptive attempts to communicate psychological and interpersonal distress. Research findings reveal a number of interpersonal problems that tend to covary with somatoform disorders, although some of these problems may be due to psychological distress more generally, rather than to somatoform disorders in particular. What is the minimum penalty for being a conscious and self-conscious creature living simultaneously in an eternal symbolic World of one’s own construction and in the natural World in which, looking straight ahead, one sees one’s death oncoming? Indeed, suffering that one might wish to consider as avoidable or treatable must one conclude issues, not from mistreatment, but from this condition? And, further, what portion of that mistreatment of human by human and of child by parent, all of which appears gratuitous, may prove to be the unavoidable outcome of conditions that define the human state itself? Alexithymia is a communicative phenomenon that is common among people with somatoform disorders; it entails an inability to express emotions and feelings to other people. This condition may contribute to the expression of distress through physical symptoms. At a sociological level, somatoform disorders may represent cultural idioms of distress. In many cultures, it may be more socially acceptable to have a “physical” illness than to express psychological distress. In such cultures, the expression of physical symptoms may be a proxy for conveying emotional distress to others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Somatoform disorders tend to be comorbid with personality disorders. In many cases, the somatization may be a manifestation of the maladaptive interpersonal styles that are inherent in personality disorders. However, it is still possible to set forth—with great clarity, concision, and bluntness—what one knows of the ways of power and the ways of the heart. Magic money and commerce keeps problems far away, their screams unheard. So it comes about to teach us what life is, or should be. The innocence we ascribe to the childhood of humanity is the innocence we have come to know only much later, east of Eden, the innocence possible to us within the knowledge of good and evil. Such innocence consists in following the rules that banish violence. Therefore, as one projects such obedience backward, one pictures a gentle Eden wherein the lion and the lamb lie down together. And right there we have got it dead wrong. The innocence of our prehistory, our Garden of Eden, is the innocence of our prehistory, our Garden of Eden, is the innocence of unlimited violence, of acting according to nature. There were then no taboos to set limits, hence no good and no evil. The boundary zone of our existence is a forbidden territory called the sacred. We know we are there by signs. Voices are lowered and hushed, we tread softly, look up respectfully, apprehensively. We are warned to keep away. Near the boundary itself we are taken over by fear and trembling. We are too close to God. Common sense tugs at our sleeve: Turn back! Beyond the limit is great power. Those who cross that limit are struck down. Some few, able to seize and control the thunderbolts, become gods. The sacred is a minefield barring the way back. It lies between us and the freedom we have lost, the violence we so fear and so desire, the rush, the oneness of life, the fusion, the continuity, the not-knowing. The approach is posted with taboos. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
God patrols the border ceaselessly, drive us onward, warn us not to look back. We can never go home again. Nor can we ever forget or stop longing. Before humankind was enlightened, the awful power beyond the natural limits, securely removed from the ability of humans to reach control or to manipulate, was invoked by our priests and medicine men and women to strengthen those moral and pleasures of the flesh limits that human, by one’s own will, is capable of violating. The giant lurking in the Earth who shakes our house down, one or some other giant just like him or her, we are told, patrols also the pleasures of the flesh and moral boundaries. Watch out! God is everywhere. If you transgress, He will punish you. Now we are enlightened; and enlightenment, it transpires, draws in its train strange, perhaps sinister implications. After the initial grand victories of reason come disturbing aftershocks. Natural limits have been devastated of meaning. If famine sweeps the land, that is bad luck, but it is not God punishing us or telling us something. It is but the impersonal, meaningless operation of natural forces. The awful and the terrifying beyond the natural limits, therefore, cannot be used to maintain the inviolability of moral and pleasures of the flesh limits. No longer can we lend to morality the authority of lightning, of earthquake, of tidal wave. The Enlightenment has washed us up on an alien shore: All of our limits are variables, all are withing our control. We may draw them in closer or push them out farther. With no authority beyond humanity, by what standard can we designate anything as absolutely wrong? Wrong beyond reach of reconsideration? Whatever the nature of the limit, beyond that limit lies power. And that further increment of power will increase the temptation to yet further violation for a yet further augmentation of power. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Free to choose how to live, the way we choose is meaningless; living in the certainty of meaning, we live a life that is imposed. How did we arrive at such a condition? Try to imagine it. People are so bemused by the way business and politics are carried on at present, with all their intricate relationships, that they have ceased to be able to imagine alternatives. We seem to have lost our genius for inventing changes to satisfy crying needs. However, this stupor is inevitably the baleful influence of the very kind of organizational network that we have: the system pre-empts the available means and capital; it buys up as much of the intelligence as it can and muffles the voices of dissent; and then it irrefutably proclaims that itself is the only possibility of society, for nothing else is thinkable. Let me give a couple of examples of how this works. Supposed (as is the case) that a group of radio and TV broadcasters, competing in the Pickwickian fashion of semi-monopolies, control all the stations and channels in an area, amassing the capital and variously bribing Communications Commissioners in order to get them; and the broadcasters tailor their programs to meet the requirements of their advertisers, of the censorship, of their own slick and clique tastes, and of a broad common denominator of the audience, none of whom may be offended; They will then claim not only that the public wants the drivel that they give them, but indeed that nothing else is being created. Of course it is not! not for these media; why should a serious artist bother? Or suppose again (as is not quite the case) that in a group of universities only faculties are chosen that are “safe” to business people trustees or the politically appointed regents, and these faculties give out all the degrees and licenses and union cares to the new generation of students, and only such universities can get Foundation or government money for research, and research is incestuously staffed by the same sponsors and according to the same policy, and they allow no one but those they choose, to have access to either the classroom or expensive apparatus. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
With such a limited selection being allowed, it will then be claimed that there is no other learning or professional competence; that an inspired teacher is not “solid”; that the official projects are the direction of science; that progressive education is a failure; and finally, indeed—as in Dr. James Conant’s report on the high schools—that only 15 percent of the youth are “academically talented” enough to be taught hard subjects. This pre-empting of the means and the brains by the organization, and the shutting out of those who do not conform, can go so far as to cause delusions, as when recently the president of Merck and Company had the effrontery to warn the Congress that its investigation of profiteering in drugs might hinder the quest of scientific knowledge! as if the spirit of Vesalius and Pasteur depended on the financial arrangements of Merch and Company. However, it is in these circumstances that people put up with a system because “there are no alternatives.” And when one cannot think of anything to do, soon one ceases to think at all. To my mind the worst feature of our present organized system of doing things is its indirectness, its blurring of the object. The idea of directly addressing crying objective public needs, like shelter or education, and using our immense and indeed surplus resources to satisfy them, is anathema. For in the great interlocking system of corporations people live not by attending to the job, but by status, role playing, and tenure, and they work to maximize profits, prestige, or votes regardless of utility or even public disutility—exempli gratia, the plethora of cares has now become a public disutility, but automobile companies continue to manufacture them and persuade people to buy them. The indispensable premise of city planning, according to vice president of Webb and Knapp, is to make a “modest long-term profit on the promoter’s investment.” (His exact sentence, to a meeting of young planners, was, “What we’re going to build will be built only if some developer is going to make a profit from it.”!) #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Obviously he is not directly interested in housing people or in city convenience and beauty; he is directly interested in being a good vice president of Webb and Knapp. That is his privilege, but it I not a useful goal, and an idealistic young fellow would not want to be such a man. Another example: Some earnest liberal Congress people are baffled “how to give Federal aid to education and not interfere in the curriculum and teaching.” However, when the teaching function is respected and assayed by the teacher’s peers-in-skill, no one can interfere, no one would dare (just as Harvard tossed out McCarthy). The sole function of administration is to smooth the way, but in this country we have the topsy-turvy situation that a teacher must devote oneself to satisfying the administrator and financier rather than to doing one’s job, and a universally admired teacher is fired for disobeying an administrative other that would hinder teaching. To further illustration the situation, these same Congress people are concerned “how to discourage low-level programming in private TV stations without censorship.” Their questions presupposes that in communication the prior thing is the existence of networks and channels, rather than something to communicate that needs diffusing. However, the prior thing is the program, and the only grounds for the license to the situation is its ability to transmit it. Nothing could be more uneducated than for the communications commission to give people who handle the means of broadcasting the inventing of what to broadcast, and then, disturbed at the poor quality, to worry about censorship. We live increasingly, then, in a system in which little direct attention is paid to the object, the function, the program, the task, the need; but immense attention to the role, procedure, prestige, and profit. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
We do not get the shelter and education because not enough mind is paid to those things. Naturally the system is inefficient; the overhead is high; the task is rarely done with love, style, and excitement, for such beauties emerge only from absorption in real objects; sometimes the task is not done at all; and those who could do it best become either cynical or resigned. “One human gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty,” reports Proverbs 11.24. When you center your life around yourself, not only do you miss out on God’s best, but you rob other people of the joy and blessings that God wants to give them through you. The Scripture says, “We should encourage one another daily,” reports Hebrews 3.13. It is easy to criticize and condemn, to point out everyone’s flaws and failures. However, God wants us to build people up, to be a blessing, speaking words of faith and success into their lives. It does not cost anything or take a lot of time to give somebody a compliment. What does it cost to tell your wife, “I love you. You are great. I am glad you are mind”? How long does it take to tell your employee, “You are doing a fine job. I appreciate your hard work”? Many people think those nice thoughts, but faith to verbalize them. It is not enough to think kind compliments; we need to express them. As the old saying puts it: Love is not love until you give it away.” We should get up each morning with an attitude that says: I am going to make somebody else happy today. I am going to help met somebody else’s need. Do not go through life as a taker; become a giver. Waste no time. Hop to it! Look for the grace of devotion. Alas, the search for it may take some time. Be patient and faithful. Accept the fact that there may be a waiting period. When it does return, welcome it warmly, and do not let it out of your grasp. Follow it wherever it leads. What else can you do? Except perhaps to commit to God the when’s and how’s of the Supernal Visitation. Just know that if devotion has come and gone, it will come again. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
What do you do when you feel interior devotion ebbing? Take great pains to humble yourself—that is about the only thing one can do. At the same time keep your spirits up. Why? Simple. God often gives you in one moment what He has denied you for a long time. That is to say, He sometimes waits for the end of your prayer before He gives the grace of devotion; He could just as well have given it at the beginning. Whatever, whichever, just do not get caught with a hangdog face when the Hound of Heaven comes a-calling. If grace were always sudden—that is to say, came when you prayed for it—it would catch you in your infirmity, and you would not be able to lift it off the floor. However, if it came later, when hope was green and Impatience wore Impatiens—that is when the grace of devotion seems destined to come. However, what happens when devotion does not come? What happens when it comes but then tiptoes out the back way without your noticing it? Well, if you are looking for someone to point a finger at, blame it all on yourself and your sins. What gets in the way of grace is often something quite small and manageable. However, if it is minuscule, then it should not be labeled majuscule. Except that in the matter of grace nothing is small, everything is humongous; any obstacle whether small or large, stops that flow of good. Remove it, the flow is restored, and all of the sudden, right before your eyes, is the grace of devotion you have been seeking so strenuously. What happens then? Immediately one has handed oneself over to God from the bottom of one’s heart, no longer hithering and dithering with this with this or that thing. Place yourself in His palm, and you will find yourself at home with you One True Friend. Why? That is because nothing will please or taste so well as the pleasure of the Divine Will. Who is the sort of person grace will occasionally grace? The one who pulls one’s intention up to God with a simple heart as one’s only winch and hoists oneself out of the slough of self-love. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Yes, My beloved friend, you re a vase, an empty vase, and yes, Jesus Christ sometimes parades around with an empty watering can. However, some days the can is full, and would He bother to water one with His blessings if He thought one was full? One must renounce more perfectly than the lowest and, using contempt of self as a tool, die more to oneself, if one ever wants sudden grace to come again, to flood one till one overflows, and to save one’s heart from drowning. Then one will feel enriched, and one’s eyes will wonder, and one’s heart will enlarge, as Isaiah descried the phenomenon (60.5), because the hand of God is with one—an expression from Acts (11.21), and one has placed oneself on that hand forever. Behold that this is the kind of person who is blessed because one seeks God with one’s whole heart—a thought from the Psalmist (119.2)—and “does not let one’s soul slip into vanity,” as the Psalmist described one’s own spiritual journey (24.4). This person in receiving the Holy Eucharist is promised the great grace of Divine Union. That is because one does not dote on devotion and consolation as personal gifts to oneself. All one is concerned about is the Grand Dote, that is to say, devotion and consolation only as they are applied to the glory and honour of God. Get your mind off your problems and begin to help others, you will not have to worry about your needs. God will take care of them for you. Something supernatural happens when we get our eyes off ourselves and turn to the needs of those around us. The Old Testament teaches, “When you feed the hungry, when you clothe the naked, when you encourage the oppressed, then your life is going to break forth like dawn. Then your healing is going to quickly come,” reports Isaiah 58.7-8. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
In other words, when you reach out to hurting people, that is when God ensures that your needs are supplied. When you focus on being a blessing, God make sure that you are always blessed in abundance. When you are feeling sick, refuse to dwell in that sickness. In your time of greatest need, go to church and pray for other people who are sick and in need. Sow those seeds of healing. And just as the Scripture says, as one begins to help others people in need, you light will break forth like the dawn, and your own healing will come. If they would simply turn their attention away from their own needs and problems, and start to focus on being a blessing to other people, I am convinced that may people will receive the miracle they have been praying about. All too often we spend most of our time trying to be blessed. “God, what can You do for me? God, here is my prayer list. Can I have it by next Monday?” We need to look for opportunities to share God’s love, His gifts, and His goodness with others. The truth is, the more you help other, the more God will make sure that you are helped. You can do this in many practical ways. If you have things lying around your house or in storage that you are never going to use again, why not give those things away to someone who could use them? Those extra things are not doing you any good stacked in your attic, basement, or garage. If it is not meeting a need, turn it into a seed! Our minds can conjure up all kinds of excuses when God begins unclasping them. Human nature wants to hold on to everything. However, you probably have some clothes you have not worn in years; cooking utensils still packed in boxes from your last move, books, your children’s crib, and baby clothing, and all sorts of other things that you have not used in ages! #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Most clutter experts say, “If you have not used an item within the past year, give it away!” If it is not meeting a need, turn it into a seed. Remember, we will reap what we sow. When you do good for other people, that is when God is going to make sure that His abundant blessings overtake you. If you want to live your best lie now, you must develop a lifestyle of giving: living to give instead of living to get. Have an attitude that says, Who can I bless today? Rather than Who can I get over on today? Dear Lord in Heaven, I know You have blessed me, and I want to be a blessing to others. Please help me not to be simply a consumer of Your blessings, but a person who passes blessings on to others. Other than God, the best-publicized and most powerful of the new forces is the transnational, or more commonly, the more commonly, the multinational corporation. What we have seen in the past 50 years is an extraordinary globalization of production, based not merely on the export of raw materials or finished manufactured goods from one country to another, but on the organization of production across national lines. The transnational corporation (or TNC) may do research in one country, manufacture components in another, assemble them in a third, sell the manufactured goods in a fourth, deposit its surplus funds in a fifth, and so on. It may have operating affiliates in hundreds of countries. The size, importance, and political power of this new player in the global game has skyrocketed. Unilever, McDonalds, Apple, and BMW are all examples of TNCs. Transnational Corporations are among the World’s biggest economic institutions. Some experts suggest that the 300 largest TNCs own or control at least one-quarter of the entire World’s productive assets. This is worth approximately $5 trillion USD. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Recent years have seen rapid growth in global trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) in all sectors of activity. Transnational corporations from developed countries have been driving this growth, but increasingly, TNCs from developed countries have been driving this growth, but increasingly TNCs from developing countries are contributing. Between 1990 and 2003, the values of assets of foreign affiliates of the World’s TNC’s increased by a factor of five, and sales and employment have multiplied respectively by three and two. At the same time, World gross domestic product (GDP) in current prices increased by 160 percent. Today, there are an estimated 77,000 TNCs in the World, with more than 770,000 foreign affiliates. As stated above, these affiliates generated approximately $5 Trillion USD in value added, employed some 65 million workers, and exported goods and services valued at more than $4.5 trillion USD. Even those figures probably understand the role of TNCs in the global economy, both because of measurement difficulties and because firms carry out their transnational activities through a variety of non-equity arrangements—subcontracting, franchising, licensing, and the like, as well as through the formation of strategic alliances. One of the most “transnational” major TNCs is Nestle, the Swiss food giant; 91 percent of its total assets, 98 percent of its sales, and 97 percent of its workforce are foreign based. These TNCs represent a crucial new factor in the World system—and a challenge to the nation-state. TNCs have invested significantly in developing countries. During the period 1996-2006, such commitments amounted to about $246 billion, with a concentration in Latin America. That is more than the approved budget for the 2021-2022 of the United Nations, which is $6.37 billion. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Currently, General Motors annual sales revenue of $122.5 billion is higher than the Gross National Product of Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and several other countries. It was once said that the sun never set on the British Empire. Today the sun does set on the British Empire, but not on the scores of global corporate empires including GM, BMW, Samsung, and Maytag. Marxists tend to see national governments as handmaidens of corporate power, and therefore stress the commonality of interests between the two, yet the TNCs very often have their own interest that run counter to those of their “home” nations, and vice versa. “British” TNCs have violated British embargos. “American” TNCs have violated U.S. regulations. During the OPEC embargo the transnational oil companies rationed deliveries between countries according to their own, not national, priorities. National loyalties fade quickly when opportunities present themselves elsewhere, so tht TNCs transfer jobs from country to country to escape environmental rules, and play off host countries against one another. So it is not just because of taxes that companies are leaving the California and the United States of America. For the past few centuries, the World had been neatly divided into a set of independent, sovereign nation-states. With the emergence of literally hundred of multinational or global corporations, this organization of the World into mutually exclusive political entities is now being overlaid by a network of economic institutions. In this matrix, the power that once belonged exclusively to the nation-state when it was the only major force operating on the World scene is, at least in relative terms, sharply reduced. Indeed, transnationals have already grown so large that they have taken on some of the features of the nation-state itself-including their own corps of quasi-diplomats and their own highly effective intelligence agencies. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The multinationals intelligence needs are not much different from those of the United States of America, France, or any other country. Indeed, if it does not describe the increasingly important roles played by the apparats of Exxon, Chase Manhattan, Honda, Lockheed Phillis and others, any discussion of the intelligence battles among the CIA, KGB, and their satellite agencies will be incomplete. Sometimes cooperating with their “home” nation, sometimes exploiting it, sometimes executing its policies, sometimes using it to execute their own, the TNCs are neither all good nor all bad. However, with their ability to shunt billions back and forth instantly across national boundaries, their power to deploy technology and to move relatively quickly, they have often outflanked and outrun national governments. It is not just, or even mainly, a question of whether international companies can circumvent particular regional laws and regulations. It is that our whole framework of thought and reaction is founded in the concept of the sovereign nation state [while] international corporations are rendering this notion invalid. In terms of the global power system, the rise of the great transnationals has reduced, rather than strengthen, the role of the nation-state at precisely the time when centrifugal pressures from blow threaten to part it at the seams. And with that in mind, many are also concerned that Russia has 12,000 tankers, while the United States of America has 6,000. Looks like America needs to bulk up its defense budget, and take care of its own people to make sure they remain “The World’s Super Holy One.” Dear Lord in Heaven, I ran through the fields and gathered flowers of a thousand colours—and now I pour them out at Your feet. Their beauty and their brightness shout for joy in Your presence. You created the flowers of the fields and made each one far more lovely than all the skill of humans could design. Please accept my joy along with theirs, this field of blossoms at Your feet. Holy One, as the wind blows through these flowers till they dance in the ecstasy of creation, please send Your Spirit to blow through my being till I too bloom and dance with the fulness of Your life. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
The glimpse is a precious thing but it is not enough. The human who has had it has also a new problem: how to find it again and how to turn it into an all-time state of mind, continuing through all kinds of circumstances and experiences. And how can one bring one’s everyday life into harmony with it? Please cause us, O Lord our God, to lie down in peace, and raise us up again, O our King, unto life Spread over us Thy tabernacle of peace. Direct us aright through Thine own good counsel. Save us for Thy name’s sake. Be Thou a shield about us. Remove from us every enemy, pestilence, sword, famine, and sorrow. Please help us, O Lord, to resist temptation. Please shelter us with Thy protecting love, for Thou art our guardian and deliver. Yea, Thou God and King art gracious and compassionate. Please Guard Thou our going out and our coming in unto life and peace, hence forth and forevermore. Please blessed be Thou, O Lord, who guardest Thy people of America forever. Blessed be the Lord forevermore. Amen and Amen. Blessed from America be the Lord who dwelleth in America. Praise the Lord. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of America, who alone doeth wondrous things. Blessed be His glorious name forever. Let the whole Earth be filled with His glory. Amen and Amen. May the glory of the Lord endure forever; let the Lord rejoice in His works. Blessed be the nae of the Lord from this time forth and forever. For the Lord will not forsake His people for His great name’s sake; for the Lord taketh delight in making you a people for Himself. And when all the people beheld the glory of the Lord, they fell on their faces and exclaimed: The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God. And the Lord shall be King over all the Earth; on that day shall the Lord be One, and His name one. May Thy lovingkindness, O Lord, be upon us, for we have placed our hope in Thee. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
With 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, and the largest square footage in the Mills Station community, you wouldn’t think that we’d need any extra space. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/
You’d be wrong. Backyards are made for secret clubhouses! 😉
If Sparta and Rome Perished, What State Can Hope to Last Forever?
It is never too late to be what you might have been. This is the first motive for virginity and celibacy, deriving from the fact that the Kingdom has already come. Let us now go back to the foundational words of Jesus Christ to discover the second motive: it, too, is inherent in the nature of the Kingdom. We were saying that, in another sense, the Kingdom of God has “not yet” come, it is on the way. It has to come in intensity within the Church (how many areas inside ourselves are still pagan and need to be evangelized!). It must come in extension, until it reached the ends of the Earth. How many nations and entire continents are still waiting for the light of the Gospel! Now here is the motive that flows from this: since God’s Kingdom has not yet come but is on the way, we need men and women who will devote themselves full-time and wholeheartedly to the coming of that Kingdom. And this brings us to the missionary or apostolic dimension of virginity and celibacy, which flows quite obviously and without any forcing from Jesus’ words “for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Today there is a great deal of talk about the “quality of life.” It is said that the most important thing is not to increase the quantity of life on our planet, but to raise its quality. By “quality” people generally means the quality of hygiene, health care or culture. However, there is also a spiritual quality of life, which is the most important, because it concerns the human soul—what remains of a person in eternity. Those who are virgins for the sake of the Kingdom are called to spend all their energies in raising this spiritual quality of life—quite apart from the fact that they are often the ones who do most, in the best and most disinterested way, to raise the other quality of life, in hygiene, health care, and culture. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
In every act of procreation there is an element of selfish desire. When a man and woman produce a child, they give a gifts, certainly, but they also “gift each other.” They fulfill themselves, but they also “fulfill each other.” They need the encounter with the other for their own fulfillment and enrichment. On the other hand, when the Trinity creates, it confers fulfillment. Since it is already perfectly happy and complete in itself, it has no need of further fulfillment. “You have created all things” says Eucharistic Prayer IV, “to fill your creatures with every blessing and lead all men to the joyful vision of your light.” Here, virginity shows its most beautiful characteristic, which is gratuity. Christian virgin men and women imitate this gratuity to some degree when they love and care for children who are not their own according to the flesh, nurse the sick people of others, care for other people’s old folk, and when they carry the weight of other people’s sins, bring them before God in intercession for the World. Celibate childlessness is tragedy but rather a sign of holiness. A number of themes emerged over the years: the virtue of virginity, or the reborn virginity of celibacy; the primacy of God’s community of believers rather than human families in society; and increasingly, the carnal, lustful, seductive nature of humans. There is no greater calamity connect with [marital] captivity than to be the victim of another’s lust. It is laws which seem to make the difference between marriage and fornication; through diversity of illicitness, not through the nature of the things itself. The body is not meant for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. While you remain chaste and virgins you are equal to the angels of God. For chastity has made even angels. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
As Christianity matured, its devotees strove for lifelong celibacy in the face of intense social pressures to marry and procreate. Celibates lived the lives of angels and built around themselves another, unsecular society of believers no longer bound by the familiar blood ties of family and kinship. Moreover, because each individual had free choice about reserving one’s body for Christian celibacy or giving it to mainstream society, alternative communities eventually sprang up for those choosing the former; convents, nunneries, and a celibate upper clergy. Christianity also developed striking and satisfying rituals of participation, transformation, and promotion. Baptism, for example, delivered believers into angelhood; the Holy Eucharist transported them into an intimacy with God. Early Christianity’s ongoing theological debate about virginity sought to clarify how humans related to each other, and whether their bodies belonged to society or to themselves, to manage as they chose. Against the backdrop of their highly stratified World, even the poorest Christians were offered the virginity of their bodies as vehicles to carry them to an angelic life, with access to the holiest of holies, the one God. Faithful Christians, poor as well as rich, woman as well as men, could wrest control of their bodies from society and dedicate them to Godly celibacy, an empowering act that raised them up to the company of angels. Christianity’s obsession with chastity has blazed at meltdown intensity ever since Christ’s birth to his virgin mother. This obsession targets all Christians, and though it focuses especially on women and religious, it embraces even married believers. However, somatoform disorders are often a means of expressing psychological and/or interpersonal distress to others. The audience for these displays my well be the same individuals who were instrumental in creating the distress. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Evidence for this cause of somatoform disorders can be found in research showing that people with these disorders have obvious interpersonal distress, and the expression of these symptoms has implicit communicative value. People with hypochondriasis often exhibit symptoms of social phobia and fear of criticism from others, as well as elevated loneliness. Patients with somatic symptoms not attributable to organic causes report greater interpersonal and social problems than those with organically caused pain. In a study of over 5,000 patients there was an association between psychological distress and symptoms without a medical explanation was generally consistent across different cultural groups. Studies of specific types of somatic symptoms present an equally compelling case for distressed interpersonal relationships at their core. When people with myofascial disorders were compared to those with medically documented arthritis, the patients with arthritis indicated that they had more available family and network support than those with myofascial disorders, who also appeared to experience significantly more conflict with members of their social networks. The extent to which patients’ personal relationships were supportive rather than conflictual was significantly, and negatively, correlated with their reports of pain. A similar pattern of findings is evident in a study of elderly people, whose rated satisfaction with social interaction protected against the experience of somatic symptoms that are commonly associated with depression (exempli gratia, trouble falling asleep, diminished appetite). One can find vigorous somatization in distressed marital and other family-of-orientation relationships. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Early family studies of patients diagnosed with hysteria (somatization disorder) showed a high prevalence of separation, divorce, and sexual dysfunction. The elevated incidence of sexual problems and impairment in social roles among married patents with pain disorder lead researcher to conclude that the chronic illness or pain becomes a scapegoat towards which the couple can direct their energies rather than to the underlying material dysfunction, so affording the marriage a degree of stability. In the family context, individuals with somatization are also more likely to be married to spouses with alcoholism, to abuse or neglect their children, and to have serious marital problems. Patients who perceive high levels of criticism in their families have been known to report poorer physical health and to make more office visits to physicians than those reporting less family criticism. A unique experimental study with married couples shows that the experience of physical pain can be exacerbated by interpersonal stress. Researchers were randomly assigned patients with chronic back pain and their spouses to discuss an issue that was stressful or to simply describe some line drawings to each other. After this manipulation, subject were instructed to ride an exercise bicycle at a steady pace, assisted by feedback from their spouses, for 20 minutes or until they felt too much pain to continue. Over twice as many subjects in the stressful-interaction condition as in the nonstressful-interaction condition terminated the bicycle ride prior to the 20-minute time limit. This rare experimental investigation shows that interpersonal stress can precipitate the experience of pain and the avoidance of physically demanding activities. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The expression of somatic symptoms and complaints tends to be synchronous with feelings of negative affect. In this longitudinal study, depression and anxiety improved and worsened in conjunction with physical symptoms. Since these symptoms often had no physiological basis, these findings suggest that the symptom expression may have been a proxy for more direct expression of psychological distress. A key assumption is that such symptoms are not mere artifacts of inner distress, but that they are interpersonally functional indicators of that distress. Somatic symptoms may be an alternative to direct communication of distress. Among children with low levels of social competence at time 1, there was a positive relationship between the experience of negative life events and somatic complaints at time 2. However, there was no such relationship for children with higher levels of social competence. Socially competent children have good communication skills and satisfactory relationships at their disposal. Presumably such individuals can cope with the experience of stress through expressing their reactions and concerns to others and through soliciting social support. However, these mechanisms are unavailable to the child lacking in social competence; hence the expression of somatic symptoms. People with somatization disorder often suffer from alexithymia. Alexithymia is a difficulty in describing emotions and feelings verbally. People with this problem tend to focus on external events rather than on inner emotions and wishes. In this context, physical symptoms may be a means of communicating some emotional distress when the person is unable to express it verbally. For example, anxiety and fear are often accompanied by a number of bodily sensations that may include stomach pain and muscle tensions. Rather than convey feelings of fear to other people, an individual with alexithymia will focus on one’s physical symptoms, complaining of muscle aches and stomach pain, instead of talking about the feeling of anxiety and what is causing that feeling. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The alexithymia hypothesis has received some empirical support. Researcher obtained 5-minute speech samples from patients at a family practice center. Those with somatization disorder used many words in the “not” category (exempli gratia, “not,” “cannot,” “never”), suggesting a preoccupation with negativism, and very few words from emotion categories (exempli gratia, “angry,” “happy”), compared to patient controls. A further analysis of this data set revealed that the patients with somatization were 4.5 times more likely to make statements that involved “I am,” such as “I am going off deep,” “I am tired,” and “I am going to fall,” than groups of patients with paranoia. These examples illustrate that equation of self with negativity in the discourse of patients with somatization disorder. The role of culture in the somatoform disorders cannot be overlooked. Somatic symptoms have been described as cultural idioms of distress. Cultures vary in their acceptance of individuals who express and experience largely “emotional” problems. In some cultures, it is more appropriate to have physical symptoms than psychological problems. Accordingly, the somatic symptoms of people in these cultures and subcultures are considered to be idioms of distress—their own unique and culturally accepted, if not prescribed, mechanisms for expressing their emotional distress. Asian cultures are often held up as examples of contexts in which depression and other psychological disorders are not tolerated to the same extent as physical problems. Consequently, a high prevalence of somatization is expected in such cultures, although this notion has been challenged. Researchers has also question the role of culture in promoting somatization, given the ubiquity of the relationship between psychological distress and somatic symptoms across the range of cultures that they have studied. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Although this is obviously a hypothesis that is indeed of more attention and evaluation, somatization may be a socially and culturally constructed mechanism for communicating psychological distress to others. “What is in it for me?” everyone wants to know nowadays. Many people are blatantly unashamedly living for themselves. They are not interested in other people. They will not take time to help others in need. They focus only on what they want, what they need, what they feel will most benefit themselves. Ironically, this selfish attitude condemns them to a living shallow, unrewarding lives. No matter how much they acquire for themselves, they are never satisfied. God, however, is a giver, if you want Him to pour out His blessings and favour in your life, then you must learn to be a giver and not a taker. Quit trying to figure out what everybody can do for you, and start trying to figure out what you can do for somebody else. We were not made to function as self-involved people, thinking only of ourselves. No, God created us to be givers. And you will never be truly fulfilled as a human being until you learn the simple secret of how to give your life away. You may not realize it, but it is extremely selfish to be dwelling on your problems, always thinking about what you want or need, and hardly noticing the many needs of others all around you. If you are having a problem, one of the best things you can do is to help solve somebody else’s problem. If you want your dreams to come to pass, help someone else fulfill one’s dreams. Start sowing some seeds so God can bring you a harvest. When we meet other people’s needs, God always meets our needs. We were created to give, not simply to please ourselves. If you miss that truth, you will miss the abundant, overflowing, joy-filled life that God has in store for you. #RnadolphHarris 8 of 20
However, when you reach out to other people in need, God will make sure that your own needs are supplied. If you are lonely or down and discouraged today, do not sit around feeling sorry for yourself. Get your mind off yourself and go help meet someone else’s need. Go visit the nursing home or children’s hospital. Call a friend and encourage that person. If you are struggling financially, go out and help somebody who has less than you have. You need to sow some seeds so God can bring you a harvest. Even giving a smile or a hug can be a meaningful task. Or mowing someone’s law, going to the grocery store for them, or writing someone an encouraging letter. Someone needs what you have to share. Somebody needs your smile. Someone needs your love. Someone needs your friendship. Someone needs your encouragement. God did not make us to function as “Lone Rangers.” He created us to be free, but He did not intend for us to be independent of each other. We really do need on another. If you want God to bless your life, start being a blessing to others. “God so loved the World, that he gave his only begotten Son,” reports John 3.16. Your body is like a child; you can train it to obey your words. You have trained that old dog at your house to do certain things, or maybe your cat or bird. James says that you can train every beast, bird, serpent, and thing in the sea. Humankind by their natural ability can train a dog, a bird, or any beast. Once we had a parakeet that we trained to talk. We taught it by saying the same words over and over. My grandmother had one whose name was Mr. Peepers. The bird could say it as clear as anyone. It would say, “Mr. Peepers is a pretty bird,” and it would sound just like my grandmother. Parakeets do not really understand words, but they can be trained to talk. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Your dog does not understand either. It is repeating over and over of the same name until the dog comes when you say that name. You train animals with words. Now what makes you think that your body is less intelligent than a dog? What makes you think that you cannot train the human body to obey the voice of your spirit by the words of your mouth? It can be done, for the body was designed to be obedient to words. You had to train your body to pray. It had to be obedient to the spirit human. The words we speak in prayer do have a definite effect on our bodies. When we pray or continue to say the problem, the body reacts in line with our speaking prayer. Learn to use the Word of God to control your body. Paul said, “Mortify the deeds of the body.” How do you do that? You cannot take a knife to mortify the deeds of the body; you will hurt yourself. However, you can use words to put to death its deeds by training the body to react to God’s Word. You can cause your body to come into subjection to your spirit. Paul said, “I keep my body and bring it under lest while I preach the gospel I become a castaway.” In the literal Greek, Paul actually said, “I buffet my body.” Buffet means “to slap with an open hand or clenched fist.” Train your spirit man to believe what you say will come to pass by practicing tongue control. In the area of sickness, I believe we give place to the devil when we say, “Wonder what is wrong with me?” The devil can then get out his little flip chart and say, “Well, would you believe you are taking the flu?” We say, “Well, I have not been feeling too good.” Then we begin to reason, “It could be the flu. My neighbour had it last week and I went over and prayed for him. That must be where I caught it.” Satan suggested it and you reasoned yourself into it! #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Then your first desire is to tell someone that you believe you have the flu. If you will just quit thinking and talking about how you feel and say what God said (Matthew 8.17), you an stop 50 percent of it right there. Now do not misunderstand what I said. I did not say that it was all in your mind. I do not deny that the disease exists—I deny its right to exist in my body. Do not give place to the devil. Just refuse to give him any place. If you do not embrace them, many times the symptoms will go away. Your body obeys your words—positive or negative, good or bad. Some would say, “What if I make a faith confession and still get sick?” Just keep saying what God said. Do not base your faith on experience, but on God’s Word. You keep confessing God’s Word until it becomes a revelation in your spirit. It takes time to train your spirit. You may get sick several times while you are training, but do not quit just because you are not perfected yet. It is not a fad; it is a way of life. If you continue to say, “I am sick,” your words will stop your body’s resistance to that disease or virus. A few years ago, the Lord was dealing with me about the power of words and the authority they have over the body. One morning while attending a meeting at the Lake of the Ozarks, I woke up with a headache. It was just pounding. I seldom have a headache, and my first thought was, “I wonder what I am taking.” Then I said, “Wait a minute, I refuse to have it.” I decided I would act on what the Lord had been showing me about Paul brining his body int subjection. So I just slapped myself on the forehead with the palm of my hand and said, “Head, you stop that in the name of Jesus. You come into line with the Word of God.” Within two minutes, the headache was gone. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Now with other things, it has taken a longer period of time for the manifestation to come. Several years ago, I had ulcers. I received my healing by confessing God’s Word over a period of about three months. Those symptoms tried to come back from time to time, but I learned to resist them instead of receiving them. I would slap my body with my hand and say aloud, Stop that in the name of Jesus. Body, you come into agreement with the Word of God. I am healed by the stripes of Jesus. Someone said, “Why, that is silly.” Well, it was not their body that was hurting. It was mine, and it worked! They do their dog that way. They slap him and say, “Stop that,” or “Get out of the house. Get out!” They think nothing of it. However, if you slap your body and tell it what to do, they think you are strange. If your dog understands that language, you know that your body must be more intelligent than an animal. “O how great is the multitude of Your candies, sweets that the fearful know not of,” wrote the Psalmist (31.19). When I call to mind some Devouts approaching your Sacrament with great devotion and affection, O Lord, I turn a hundred shades of pink that I should even think of approaching Your altar, the table of Holy Communion so tepidly, so frigidly. The result is that I remain arid and without affection of heart, that I am not totally ascended to Your presence, my God, not so vehemently attracted and affected as many others have been. These last could not restrain themselves from crying when confronted with the desire for Communion and sensible love of the heart. However, they longed, equally with the mouth of the heart and body, for You, God, the Living Fountain, the Source of the Well. They were not able to temper, let alone to satisfy, their appetite except when they received Your Host with all spiritual eagerness. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
How truly flaming is the faith of Devouts! And how truly amazing that that is not a bad proof of the existence of Your Sacred Presence! For the Apostles truly knew their Lord in the breaking of the bread, as noted by the Evangelist Luke (24.35); their hearts burned strongly in them as they walked with Jesus by the lakeside. Such great affection, such vehement love and ardour are often a long way from my reach and devotion. I know I am a pathetic case, Good Jesus, my Divine Friend, sweet and mild. Grant that I a poor pauper who has always had his hand out, may feel a little of the cordial affection of Your love as it is found in Holy Communion. May my faith convalesce more quickly, and my hope progress in Your goodness. Your charity once holocausted and Your manna once tastes, may they never fail me. Since Your mercy is powerful, O Lord, grant me the desired grace, ad in the spirit of ardour, when the Day of Your Pleasure comes, greet me like Your long lost friend. Although I do not flare up with the great desire of those special Devouts of Yours, nonetheless I do keep a steady flame with the help of Your grace, that is to say, a desire for that Great Desire, praying and desiring that I might become a participant in all such friendships of Yours and to be numbered among that Holy Company. Father, please help me to get my eyes off myself and to see the many needs in the people all around me. May I be a means of help, comfort, and encouragement to someone else today. When, through the medium of meditation exercise of the awakening by human skill or Nature’s charm of aesthetic appreciation, beginners feel a new joy or an unusual peace, they are too often carried away into extravagant exaggeration of the happening. What seems like a tremendous event may be so in its effect on their inexperienced minds, but mostly it is only a skimming of the surface. To realize its further possibilities, it ought to be used as a starting point for exploration in depth. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
When one is willing to let of the self-centered ego and the grace can manifest, there may be this union with one’s higher nature, with the Overself. It is usually not a permanent experience but the possibility of its becoming one is always there. Then then new outlook seems perfectly natural. Let one not be presumptuous. One has not attained the true goal yet despite these noteworthy experiences. For one’s present knowledge of the Overself comes to one partly through the imagination, partly through the emotions, partly through the intellect, and only partly through the Overself. It is authentic but inferior. One must learn to get it through the understanding which is also authentic, but superior. A continuous insight, present all the time, is the goal, not a passing glimpse. What one has gained is good but not enough, is mystical but not philosophically mystical. For it is not but a flash when it has yet to become constant; it is now partial when it has yet to become full. Its felt presence should be intimate and inseparable as well as clear and complete. When insight continues whatever one’s occupation of the hour may be, it can be called philosophic. The notion that the glimpse is the goal is a wrong one, usually corrected by time. A glimpse is only a beginning, and those who are willing to follow it up may be ready to study philosophy and learn why this World is only a husk. It must be penetrated, the husk removed and the kernel revealed, for a truer understanding, both of the World and oneself, to be gained. Because they come to an unprepared and unpurified person, these transient glimpses are not adequate, full, and clear. Insight, however, possesses all these qualities. Aspirants should understand that they have no right to expect a spiritual illumination to prolong its brief duration and stay forever with them, much less demand it, so long as they have not made themselves scrupulously fit for such a quest. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Just as the private will acts constantly against the general will, so the government makes a continual effort against sovereignty. The more this effort increases, the more the constitution is altered. And since there is here no other corporate will which, by resisting the will of the prince, would create an equilibrium with it, sooner or later the prince must finally oppress the sovereign and break the social treaty. That is the inherent and inevitable vice which, from the birth of the body politic, tends unceasingly to destroy it, just as old age and death destroy the human body. There are two general ways in which a government degenerates, namely, when it shrinks, or when the state dissolves. The government shrinks when it passes from a large to a small number, that is to say, from democracy to aristocracy, and from aristocracy to royalty. That is its natural inclination. If it were to go backward from a small number to a large number, it could be said to slacken, but this reverse progression is impossible. In fact, the government never changes its form except when its exhausted energy leaves it too enfeebled to be capable of preserving what belongs to it. Now if it were to become still more slack while it expanded, its force would become entirely nil; it would be still less likely to subsist. It must therefore wind up and tighten its force in proportion as it gives way; otherwise the state it sustains would fall into ruin. The dissolution of the state can come about in two way. First, when the prince no longer administers the state in accordance with the laws and usurps the sovereign power. In that case a remarkable change takes place, namely that it is not the government but the state that shrinks. I mean that the state as a whole is dissolved, and another is formed inside it, composed exclusively of the members of the government, and which is no longer anything for the rest of the populace but its master and tyrant. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
So that the instant that the government usurps sovereignty, the social compact is broke, and all ordinary citizens, on recovering by right their natural liberty, are forced but not obliged to obey. The same thing happens also when the members of the government separately usurp the power they should only exercise as a body. This is no less an infraction of the laws, and produces even greater disorder. Under these circumstances, there are, so to speak, as many princes as magistrates, and the state, no less divided than the government, perishes or changes its form. When the state dissolves, the abuse of government, whatever it is, takes the common name anarchy. To distinguish, democracy degenerates into ochlocracy, aristocracy into oligarchy. I would add that royalty degenerates into tyranny, however this latter term is equivocal and requires an explanation. In the ordinary sense a tyrant is a king who governs with violence and without regard for justice and the laws. In the strict sense, a tyrant is a private individual who arrogates to oneself royal authority without having any right to it. This is how the Greeks understood the word tyrant. They gave the name indifferently to good an bad princes whose authority was not legitimate. (For all are considered and are called tyrants who use perpetual power in a city accustomed to liberty.) Thus tyrants and usurper are two perfectly synonymous words. To give different names to different things, I call the usurper of royal authority a tyrant, and the usurper of sovereign power despots. The tyrant is someone who intrudes oneself, contrary to the laws, in order to govern according to the laws. The despot is someone who places oneself above the laws themselves. Thus the tyrant need not be a despot, but the despot is always a tyrant. Such is the natural and inevitable tendency of the best constituted governments. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
If Sparta and Rome perished, what state can hope to last forever? If we wish to form a durable establishment, let us then not dream of making it eternal. To succeed, one must not attempt the impossible or flatter oneself with giving to the work of humans a solidity that things human do not allow. The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from the very moment of its birth, and carries within itself the causes of its destruction. However, both can have a constitution that is more or less robust and suited to preserve them for a longer or shorter time. The constitution of humans is the work of nature; the constitution of the state is the work of art. It is not within humans’ power to prolong their lives; it is within their power to prolong the life of the state as far as possible, by giving it the best constitution it can have. If no unforeseen accident brings about its premature fall, the best constituted state will come to an end, but later than another. The principle of political life is in the sovereign authority. Legislative power is the heart of the state; the executive power is the brain, which gives movement to all the parts. The brain can fall into paralysis and yet the individual may still live. A human may remain an imbecile and live. However, once the heart has ceased its functions, the animal is dead. It is not through laws that the state subsists; it is through legislative power. Yesterday’s law does not obligate today, but tacit consent is presumed from silence, and the sovereign is take to be giving incessant confirmation to the laws it does not abrogate while having the power to do so. Whatever it has once declared it wants, it always wants, unless it revokes its declaration. Why then is so much respect paid to ancient laws? For just this very reason. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
We must believe that nothing but the excellence of the ancient wills could have preserved them for so long. If the sovereign had not constantly recognized them to be salutary, it would have revoked them a thousand times. This is why, far from growing weak, the laws continually acquire new force in every well constituted state. The prejudice in favour of antiquity each day renders them more venerable. On the other hand, whatever the laws weaken as they grow old, this proves that there is no longer a legislative power, and that the state is no longer alive. Orthodox Communism is a typical nineteenth-century product. The doctrine arose out of a completely materialistic view of history. It was formulated in an age when the mechanistic conception of life had captured the thinking World. It led naturally to an ethic of hatred and violence. It excluded all consideration of the higher destiny of humans. Consequently it is emotionally unbalanced and intellectually unsatisfactory. The evil lies less in the doctrine itself, which is a confused mixture of nonsense and wisdom, of justice and crime, than in its human leaders. They are humans without a conscience and maniacs entrenched in the seats of power. They trade on this confusion of doctrine to suborn the masses who lack the capacity to understand the inner source of Communism and its inability to redeem its promises. They achieve for themselves positions of power because they mercilessly push aside and trample all who are hapless enough to stand in their way. One who thinks in terms of class hatred and class murder reveals oneself as being naturally neurotic or malignant. As such one is unfit to lead people into a better condition than before and can only lead them into a worse one. The average Communist is unfit to lead a people or govern a nation. One is an extraordinary compound of keen critical thinking and irrational obsession and class prejudices; consequently one’s thinking is distorted and unbalanced. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The Communist rulers lives in a private Marxist World of one’s own, which one stupidly imagines to be a real World. However, the greatest defect in oneself and the greatest danger to others is the powerful hatred which actuates one and which has made one in fact a pathological case. One has become semi-insane because one cannot escape from it. Many Communist revolutions fail to bring a better society, a happier, healthier, and more honourable World for the underdog, because they fail to recognize that the only way this could be achieved was by leaders of disinterested character and superior quality descending to the service of the lower classes. If it comes from the mentally ungrown and ethically immature passes themselves, the reconstruction of the World’s social and economic order cannot succeed. This has been clearly demonstrated by the melancholy history and comparative failure of the brutal attentions by some nations. It could not be achieved by leaders of inferior character and merit rising from the ranks of the masses. The right way of socioeconomic progress is from the top downwards and not from the bottom upwards. The fruits of wisdom cannot come from below. However, this does not mean they come from the aristocracy of blood; they can come only from aristocracy of mind and character. The masses will be best served by the human who disdains their approbation and waves aside their applause. For intellectual awakening of a people does not begin as awakening of the masses; it begins as an awakening of the educated classes and proceeds downwards to the people. The masses must naturally follow more intelligent leaders, assimilate the ideas which are earlier embraced by their betters but which are gradually filtered down and thus rendered more acceptable. For it is not the ignorant blind toilers who can perceive the crowning principle of right reconstruction; they can perceive only their immediate needs, not their ultimate ones. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Therefore the creation of a new order must not come from below but from above. It must come from the intellectual cream, the spiritual elite of society—from those who can reflect philosophically and serve selflessly and act calmly. They stand on the mountain peak, as it were, and see clearly what ought to be done whereas the masses are herded on the plains and can only run hither or thither as their emotions drive them. Praise wet snow falling early. Praise the shadow my neighbour’s chimney casts on the tile roof even this gray December day that should, they say, have been white. Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney’s shadow. Praise God and the Angels, the unknow, that which imagined us, which stays our hand, our murderous hand, and gives us still, in the shadow of death, our daily life, and the dream still of goodwill, of peace on Earth Praise flow and change, night and the pulse of day. True and certain it is that there is one God, and there is none like unto Him. It is He who redeemed us from the might of tyrants, and executed judgment upon all our oppressors. Great are the things that God hath done; His wonders are without number. He causes us to triumph over our enemies and raise up our glory above our foes. Wondrously He visited judgment upon Pharoah, Performing signs and wonders in the land of the United States. He brought forth the child of America from slavery unto freedom. In every age the Lord hath been our hope; He rescued us from enemies who sought to destroy us. May He continue His protecting care over America, and guard all His children from disaster. When the children of America beheld the might of the Lord, they gave thanks unto Him and praised His name. They accepted His Sovereignty willingly, and sang a song unto Him. Moses and the Children of America exultingly proclaimed: Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the mighty? Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness, revered in praises, doing wonders? When Thou didst rescue America at September 11, 2001, Thy children beheld Thy supreme power. This is my God! they exclaimed, and said: The Lord shall reign forever and ever. As Thou didst deliver America from a power mightier so mayest Thou redeem all Thy children from oppression. Blessed art Thou, O Lord. Redeemer of America. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
You’re home! Who would expect so much cabinet space in a home?
We would! When it comes to #Havenwood we’re not surprised anymore; honestly, we’re pretty used to the luxury. 🤷♂️ Sorry, not sorry. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
If You Do Not Ask the Right Questions, You Do Not Get the Right Answers!
I am a citizen of the American Dream, and the revolutionary struggles of which I am a part, is a struggle against the American Nightmare. When it comes to mental health, assessment is simply the collecting of relevant information in an effort to reach a conclusion. It goes on in ever realm of life. We make assessments when we decide what Cresleigh Home to buy, or which colour we want our Ultimate Driving Machine to buy. College admissions officers, who have to select the “best” of the students applying to their college, depend on academic records, recommendations, achievement test scores, interviews, and application form to help them decided. Employers, who have to predict which applicants are more likely to be effective workers, collect information from resumes, interviews, references, and perhaps on-the-job observations. Clinical assessment is used to determine how and why a person is behaving abnormally and how that person may be helped. It also enables clinicians to evaluate people’s progress after they have been in treatment for a while and decide whether the treatment should be changed. The specific tools that are used to do an assessment depend on the clinician’s theoretical orientation. Psychodynamic clinicians, for example, use methods that assess a client’s personality and probe for any unconscious conflicts one may be experiencing. This kind of assessment, called a personality assessment, enables them to piece together a clinical picture in accordance with the principles of their model. Behavioural and cognitive clinicians are more likely to use assessment methods that reveal specific dysfunctional behaviours and cognitions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The goal of this kind of assessment called a behavioural assessment, is to produce a functional analysis of the person’s behaviours—an analysis of how the behaviours are learned and reinforced. The hundreds of clinical assessment techniques and tools that have been developed fall into three categories: Clinical interviews, tests, and observations. To be useful, these tools must be standardized and have clear reliability and validity. A given assessment tool may appear to be valid simply because it makes sense and seems reasonable. However, this sort of validity, called face validity, does not by itself mean that the instrument is trustworthy. A test for depression, for example, might include questions about how often a person cries. Because it makes sense that depressed people would cry, these test questions would have face validity. It turns out, however, that many people cry a great deal for reasons other than depression, and some extremely depressed people fail to cry at all. Thus an assessment tool should not be used unless it meets more exacting criteria of validity, such as high predictive or concurrent validity. Vincent van Gogh led a tortured and unhappy life. In a legendary incident the artist cut off one of his ears. Later he was admitted to a mental institution, and ultimately he committed suicide at the age of 37. Van Gogh wrote a great deal about his pain and anguish, describing mental and physical torment and hallucinations. Indeed, he observed, “There is quite definitely something or other deranged in my brain.” For years clinicians have typically agreed with van Gogh and have speculated that the artists suffered from mood disorder, schizophrenia, or both. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
However, approximately twenty years ago, these assessments were challenged. A Harvard neurologist, for example, has suggested that van Gogh in fact suffered from Geschwind’s syndrome, technically known as interictal personality disorder, caused by brain seizure disorder, or epilepsy. Van Gogh displayed many of its symptoms, including excessive drawing (hypergraphia), hyperreligiosity, and aggression. In contrast, medica specialists in Colorado have concluded that van Gogh suffered from an extreme form of Meniere’s syndrome, a disorder marked by an excessive buildup of fluid in the inner ear. The enormous pressure may produce nausea, dizziness, poor balance, pain, deafness and constant buzzing or ringing sensations. Perhaps van Gogh cut off his ear in an effort to reduce the pain. And perhaps his other problems and pains arose from severe secondary psychological problems that can accompany. Perhaps nowhere in the mental health literature has family systems theory had more of an impact than in the area of alcoholism. Family systems theory is a conceptual model, rather than a true theory, that locates causes and consequences of problematic behaviour in the larger family system in which it is embedded. Family behaviour is thought to be responsive to regulatory mechanisms that maintain the status quo, as well as a tendency to grow and change in response to dynamic qualities within and outside the family. Viewing a family as a system suggests that a disturbance in one part of the system will have an impact on other parts of the system. Applying family systems concepts to alcoholism, has uncovered that some families organize their lives around the alcoholism of an adult member, just as other families might organize their lives around children or work. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
In an early investigation of adults with alcoholism and their family members, the expression of previously inhibited positive affect between family members became extremely pronounced during drinking periods. This and later studies revealed that interactions in such families were actually more patterned, organized, and predictable while the adults with alcoholism were intoxicated. Thus alcohol ingestion serves an adaptive function in family relationships through a stabilizing phenomenon. This prompted a suggestion that there is an alcoholic system in some families, in which drinking is an integral part of the family structure that actually maintains and stabilizes the family. Similar positive effects on the family were evident in a study where family members viewed and rated video tapes (recordings with audio and visual information on them, which can be played back) of their own interactions, in the absence of actual drinking. Both mothers and adolescent children in families with paternal alcoholism rated family members as less anxious and their interactions as more friendly than those of families without alcoholism. Unfortunately, drinking and intoxication may provide only a temporary “solution” to a family’s problems, at the cost of what may ne more serious long-term ill effects. Although drinking can temporarily inject positivity into some family relationships, several laboratory investigations have also documented negative effects associated with drinking. For example, families with an alcoholic father discuss items from various questionnaire inventories while the fathers were drinking or not drinking. During their discussions, the families expressed more negative affect during the drinking versus the no-drinking condition. The nature of interactions in families without paternal alcoholism was not affected by the drinking conditions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The ill effects of parental alcoholism on family interactions and child rearing may begin to have an impact on family members as early as 1 year of age. In this study, families with alcoholism in at least one patent were observed interacting with their 12-month-old infants for 5 minutes in a room filled with toys. Observations of the parents’ behaviour indicated that the parents with alcoholism were less sensitive to their infants during the free play; such fathers in particular made fewer verbalizations, expressed more negative affect, and were less responsive to their infants. Self-report measures further indicate that the parents with alcoholism were more aggressive toward their spouses than those without alcoholism were. The family observation study was unique in showing that parents with alcoholism were far more depressed than those without, and that this depression mediated the relationship between parental alcoholism and sensitivity to the infants during interaction. So for many adults with alcoholism, effective parenting may be disrupted directly by the alcoholism, or by comorbid problems such as depression that in and of themselves have a negative impact on parenting behaviour. Different subtypes of alcoholism have been identified to explain the variable effects of alcohol consumption and alcoholism on family interactions and relations. In one such instance, researchers were able to characterize subtypes of alcoholism as episodic or steady drinking. Another useful distinction in alcoholism is that between high-antisociality and low-antisociality subtypes. These subtypes are defined on the basis of a measure that taps into negative social consequences of drinking, feeling of alienation, interpersonal disruption, and negative attitudes toward authority (higher scores = higher antisociality). #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Home observations of family dinner conversations revealed that wives, husbands, and children in families with high-antisociality alcoholism were all less positive, and less inclined to communicate disagreement, than were control family members. Although family interactions in the high-antisociality condition were characterized by diminished optimism, they appeared to have a cautious appearance as well, in that family members were careful to avoid open disagreement with each other. This pattern of interaction could have interesting implications for the genesis of alcoholism. For the person who develops alcoholism, the tendency to avoid communicating disagreement may lead to the internalization of problems with other family members. Instead of airing complaints, the individual is left to ruminate over them on one’s own—perhaps without seeing any change in the offensive behaviour by other family member, since they may be unaware of the problem. For this individual’s family members, the tendency to be cautious and avoid disagreement may inadvertently cause one’s problem drinking behaviour to go unchecked. In some cases, families have some ability to regulate problem drinking through punishing responses in reaction to the behaviour. However, in a family system affected by high-antisociality alcoholism, this regulatory function may be inoperative. Recognizing considerable diversity in alcoholism’s effects on family interactions, there is a proposed family alcohol phase model. According to this perspective, a family moves through various phases that correspond to the drinking behaviour of the member with alcoholism. The stable-wet phase is marked by consistent drinking, whereas the stable-dry phase is marked by general abstinence. The family is in a transitional phase either when a period of abstinence begins, or when a period of abstinence ends with episodes of drinking. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It has been found that content variability (the range of affect and decision-making behaviour in verbal interaction) in family interactions, as well as distance regulation (use of space and rate of movement in the home), varied as a function of phase. In the stable-wet phase, families maintained the greatest distance, interacting only for purposeful reasons, while exhibiting midrange variability in their interactions. Families in the stable-dry phase exhibited a great deal of content variability in their interactions, with midrange distance regulation. Finally, those families in the transitional phase exhibited a great deal of content variability in their interactions, with midrange distance regulations. Finally, those families in the transitional phase showed a decrease in distance regulation, manifesting physical closeness, with a slight decrease in the content variability of their interactions. A 2-year longitudinal study suggested that families in the stable-wet phase were the most likely of the three to dissolve their marriages. In particular, those families in the stable-wet phase that exhibited the least intrafamily engagement during home observations of family interaction were more likely to break up over the course of the study. It has been noted that in families of alcoholics’ relationships change when parental drinking occurs. However, sometimes these changes are beneficial and sometimes they are negative. Where there are beneficial changes or adaptive outcomes, these may be somewhat short-lived. Researchers have been working to identify different subtypes of alcoholism that are associated with more negative family consequences. The poorest family processes and outcomes appear to be associated with the episodic (vs. steady), high-antisociality (vs. low-antisociality), and stable-wet (vs. stable-dry or transitional) alcoholism. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Perhaps you are in a trial today, and you are praying for God to deliver you out of that adverse situation. That is a legitimate prayer, but maybe you are missing the point of why you are being allowed to go through that trying time in the first place. Recognize that God is moulding you and refining you. God often allows one to go through difficult situations to draw out those impurities in one’s character. One can pray one can resist, one can bind, one can loose, one can sing and shout, one can do it all, but it is not going to do any good. God is more interested in changing you than He is in changing the circumstances. And the sober one learns to cooperate with God, the sooner one will get out of that devil’s web. The quicker one learns one’s lesson and starts dealing with those bad attitudes and starts ruling over one’s emotions, the quicker one will go to the next level in one’s spiritual journey. We must recognize the refining purpose of trials. We cannot run from everything that is hard in our lives. Perhaps one gets worried and fearful when important things do not go one’s way. Have you ever thought that God may be allowing those events to teach you to trust Him and to see if one will stay peaceful and clam in the midst of the storm? Has one ever considered that God may be allowing some of that to teach one how to rule over one’s emotions? He may be trying to toughen one up, to help one develop some courage. For our sins—that is why Jesus Christ wanted to do it, and that is why He did it. And what did they do? They ripped off His clothes and hammered His hands to the cross. It was a sacrifice the old-fashioned way. Perhaps that is why God the Father seemed so pleased. In the same way, you, My beloved Devout, ought to be willing to offer yourself to Jesus Christ—He asks us the way His Father asked Him—in pure holy oblation, everyday in the Mass, with all strength and affection, until the day one drops. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, we often pay, “God, if You will change my circumstances, then I will change.” No, it works the other way around. We have to be willing to change our attitudes and deal with the issues God brings up; then God will change those circumstances. Surrender. Unconditional surrender. That is all Jesus requires of us. Not our possession—He could take those things anytime and scatter them over the landscape; one will find this in Philippians (4.17). Just you—that is all Jesus Christ wants. Of course, Jesus could take us as a prisoner of war and do with one as he wanted. However, what He really wants is for us to give ourselves to Him as a gift. Of course, the same is true for us. If we have all the baggage in the World, but did not have Jesus Christ, would we be any better off? One would have a full cart, maybe, but also an empty heart. And the other way around is also true. It is not our silly stuff Jesus Christ wants—it is our silly selves! Offer yourself to Jesus Christ. Make that the only package, and it will be an oblation that will be welcomed. Look at Jesus! He offered Hus whole self to the Father for us; He also put His whole Body and Blood into food and drink that He might be totally ours and that we might be totally Him. If, however, we hold something of ourselves back or are slow to give our all, it will be a pretty poor offering made not by any friend of His, but by a pretty poor acquaintance. To prevent that and to acquire illumination and liberation of spirit, one ought to make a spontaneous oblation of one’s self into the hand of God. When? Before each and every thing one does. Such an attractive proposition, Jesus thinks, but He must ask, “Why are there so few Illuminati and Liberati today? That is because so many do not know how to denude themselves of imperfections. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Jesus Christ’s firm opinion is this, and it appears in the Gospel of Luke (14.33): “Unless a person renounces everything that one had and everything that one is, one cannot be His Disciple.” Therefore, if one wants to be His Disciple, offer one’s whole self to Jesus; that includes one’s scruffy affections. God will often permit pressure to be applied in our life to test us, and only as we pas those tests will we advance. He will put people and circumstances in our path that grate on us like sandpaper, but He will use them to rub off our rough edges. One may not always like it; one may want to run from it; one may even resist it, but God is going to keep brining up the issues again and again, until one passes the test. Remember, the Bible says, “We are [God’s] workmanship,” reports Ephesians 2.10. That means we are a work in progress, not a finished product. Be willing to deal with any issues that God brings up. Work with God in the refining process rather than fighting against Him. Scripture says that God is the potter and we are the clay. Clay works best when it is pliable, malleable, and mouldable. However, if we are hard, crusty, and set in our ways, God will have to pound away on that old, hard clay to get out the lumps. Certainly, none of us enjoy going through struggles, but one has to understand that one’s struggle may be an opportunity for advancement and promotions. The very thing one is fighting against so tenaciously may be the springboard that catapults one to a new level of excellence. One’s challenges may become one’s greatest assets. Without the resistance of air, an eagle cannot soar. Without the resistance of water, a ship cannot float. Without the resistance of gravity, we would not be able to walk. Without opposition or resistance, there is no potential for progress. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Yet our human tendency is to want everything easily. “God, cannot You teach me patience without having to go through the traffic jam? God, cannot You teach me how to love and trust You without ever having a problem?” Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts; there is no easy way to mature physically, emotionally, or spiritually. One may remain determined and work with God. The Bible says, “Work out your own salvation,” reports Philippians 2.12. Salvation is more than a onetime prayer. It is constantly cooperating with God, dealing with the issues He brings up, keeping a good attitude, and allowing Him to change one as He sees fit. Dear Lord in Heaven, I realize that You never promised I would not have trials and adversities. However, I also recognize that nothing can touch my life without going through You first, so I will dare to praise You in the midst of my trails. I know You will bring me out stronger, better, faster, and more prepared for the good things You have for me. “Be truly glad! These trials are only to test your faith, to see whether or not it is strong and pure…So if your faith remains strong after being tried in the test tube of fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honour on the day of His return,” reports 1 Peter 1.6-7. James said that you put bits in a horse’s mouth to turn its whole body and you put a rudder on a ship to tun the whole ship; so is the tongue so situated among our members that it defiles the whole body. (James 3.3,4.) If you control the tongue, the body will respond to your words. If you talk sickness, it becomes impossible to live in health. The more you believe it, the less you believe in healing. The thing you continually talk will consume you. Faith will only come by hearing the Word of God and it will come more quickly when you hear yourself quoting and speaking God’s Word after Him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The seed of truth in why many Christians have not wanted to express their anger is valid: expressing one’s anger manipulatively as blaming or attacking is destructive. As Paul says, “Let all bitterness and wrath…be put away from you, with all malice,” reports Ephesians 4.31. One needs to learn to express anger constructively. A basic guideline is to assert and express oneself rather than to blame and attack the other person. For instance, when a Critical Christian says, “Why are you so stupid?” The individual has already made an assumption that the other person is stupid. This results in an attacking form of anger. A healthier way of dealing with this anger would be for one first to recognize that one feels angry that one’s friend is “stupid.” One moves now to one’s feeling, not the fact, that one’s friend is stupid. Now if the Critical Christian listens, one can have a dialogue with one’s core. (This is the principle Dr. Maslow meant when he referred to one’s “inner Supreme Court.”) Simply by asking oneself inwardly, the Critical Christian may get the answer from one’s core that “you are angry because the bank teller this morning treated you as if you were stupid.” The Critical Christian can the realize that because he did not deal with his anger then, he is now projecting his anger on to his friend—calling him stupid, when in reality he is angry at the bank teller. Or, the Critical Christian may get the answer from his core that he is upset because the project he and his friend are working on together is more important to the Critical Christian than he had realized and now his friend is not fulfilling his share of the work. In this case, the Critical Christian needs to take the time to examine whether he thinks his friend is capable. If he is callable, the Critical Christian may now decide that he needs to express to his friend that his not fulfilling his share of the work is delaying the project. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
If the Critical Christian realized that his friend cannot do the job, he may let him go and bring in someone else. Blaming his friend for his inability at this point would not be actualizing; but, expressing to him that he is not showing the needed skills, and that that is why he is being let go, would be actualizing. Many answers come quickly from the core—the preceding possibilities could surface in seconds. The more we listen to our cores, the more we hear—and know how to listen. Sometimes, though, we ask and do not hear an answer. Or we get what we think is an answer and then proceed to act on it—and make things worse. Remember that becoming actualizing is a process. If we were perfectly actualized now, the answers would always be there, crystal clear, and our behaviour would be “perfect.” As we are in the process of becoming actualizing, sometimes we do the most effective thing and sometimes we make mistakes. Mistakes are just that—“miss-takes.” Our lives become most meaningful when we live from our own core, finding our own truest answers. So it is a process worth living—and the mistakes are worth making. The real key here is not to blame and attack ourselves for those miss-takes, but to keep learning with more “takes.” Having patience with ourselves often makes it easier to become more patient and forgiving of others. It can sometimes relieve our anger just to remember that other people are in the growing process, too, and not always taking what to us would seem the most effective action. As actualizing Christians, we seek to do the will of God. Doing His will involves having good will toward others and ourselves. We do this by listening to our anger, taking it to out core, and then responding from our core. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If one deals with it by expressing and asserting it, rather than blaming and attacking someone, only then can anger become actualizing. Blaming and attacking are simply manipulative, whereas expressing and asserting include a quality of genuine respect for everyone involved. In communicating our anger honestly, we get it off our chests, and the rhythm of life is reestablished. We finish with it and move on to experience a new and different feeling. The range of feelings in the anger polarity includes irritation, annoyance, resentment, and anger. The intensity of the feeling increases as one passes from irritation to anger. Recognizing irritation, boredom, or annoyance at the lower levels of intensity within the anger spectrum enables us to avoid unwittingly building up to levels of resentment, hostility, and hatred. In handling these feelings, it is important to learn to acknowledge the mild forms and deal with them on a “cash and carry” basis. That way we do not save them up like coupons to be redeemed in one sudden, destructive explosion. While our anger may sometimes reach intensities approaching hatred, we need never go so far as to write a person off completely. It is really possible to have compassion for and pray for our enemies—that God in His mercy might help them through their own dilemmas, frustrations, and pains. Yet, we can be honest about the effects on us of their behaviour. “Turn again, we beseech You, O God of hosts! Look down from Heaven and see, visit, and have regard for this vine! [Protect and maintain] the stock which Your right hand planted, and the branch (the son) that You have reared and made strong for Yourself. They have burned it with fire, it is cut down; may they perish at the rebuke of Your countenance. Let Your hand be upon the human of Your right hand, upon the son of man whom You have made strong for Yourself. Then will we not depart from You; revive us (give us life) and we will call upon Your name. Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; cause Your face to shine [in pleasure, approval, and favour on us] and we shall be saved!” reports Psalm 80.14-19. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Dr. Ilya Prigogine and his teams of coworkers at the Free University of Brussels and the University of Texas at Austin have struck directly at Second Wave assumptions by showing how chemical and other structures leap to higher stages of differentiation and complexity through a combination of chance and necessity. It is for this work the Dr. Prigogine was awarded the Nobel Prize. Brown in Moscow, brought to Belgium as a child, and fascinated since youth by the problems of time, Dr. Prigogine was puzzled by a seeming contradiction. On the one hand, there was the physicist’s belief in entropy—that the Universe is running down and that all organized patterns must eventually decay. On the other, there was the biologist’s recognition that life itself is organization and that we are continually giving rise to higher and higher, more and more complex organization. Entropy pointed in one direction, evolution in another. This led Dr. Prigogine to ask how higher forms of organization come into being, and to years of research in chemistry and physics in pursuit of the answer. Today Dr. Prigogine points out that in any complex system, from the molecules in a liquid to the neurons in a brain or the traffic in a city, the parts of the system are always undergoing small-scale change: they are in constant flux. The interior of any system is quivering with fluctuation. Sometimes, when negative feedback comes into play, these fluctuations are damped out or suppressed and the equilibrium of the system maintained. However, where amplifying or positive feedback is at work, some of these fluctuations may be tremendously magnified—to the point at which the equilibrium of the entire system is threated. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Fluctuations arising in the outside environment may hit at this moment and further amplify the mounting vibration—until the equilibrium of the whole is destroyed and the existing structure is smashed. It is illuminating to think of the economy in these terms. Supply and demand are maintained in equilibrium by various feedback process. Unemployment, if intensified by positive feedback and not offset by negative feedback elsewhere in the system, can threaten the stability of the whole. Outside fluctuations—such as oil price hikes—may converge to make the internal swings and fluctuations wilder, until the equilibrium of the whole system is shattered. Whether the result of runaway internal fluctuations or of external forces, or both, this breakup of the old equilibrium often results not in chaos or breakdown, but in the creation of a wholly new structure at a higher level. This new structure may be more differentiated, internally interactive, and complex than the old one, and needs more energy and matter (and perhaps information and other resources) to sustain itself. Speaking mainly about physical and chemical reactions, but occasionally calling attention to social analogues, Dr. Prigogine calls these new, more complex systems “dissipative structures.” He suggests that evolution itself may be seen as a process leading toward increasingly complex and diversified biological and social organisms, through the emergence of new, higher-order dissipative structures. Thus, according to Dr. Prigogine, whose ideas have political and philosophical resonance as well as purely scientific meaning, we develop “order out of fluctuation” or, as the title of one of his lectures expresses it, “Order out of Chaos.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
This evolution, however, cannot be planned or predetermined in a mechanistic fashion Until quantum theory came along, many leading Second Wave thinkers believed that chance played little or no role in change. The starting conditions of a process predetermined its outcome. Today in subatomic physics, for example, it is widely believed that chance dominates change. In recent years many scientists, like Jacques Monod in biology, Walter Buckley in sociology, or Maruyama in epistemology and cybernetics, have begun to fuse these opposites. Dr. Prigogine’s work not only combines chance and necessity but actually stipulates their relationship to one another. In brief, he strongly suggests that at the precise point at which a structure “leaps” to a new stage of complexity, it is impossible, in practice and even in principle, to predict which of many forms it will take. This presumably goes for the leap from Second Wave to Third Wave civilization as well as for chemical reactions. However, once a pathway has been chosen, once the new structure comes into being, determinism dominates once more. In one colorful example he describes how termites create their highly structured nests out of apparently unstructured activity. They begin by crawling about a surface in random fashion, stopping here and there to deposit a bit of “goo.” These deposits are distributed by chance, but the substance contains a chemical attractant so that other termites are drawn to it. In this way, the good begins to collect in a few places, gradually building up into a pillar or wall. If these buildups are isolated, work stops. However, if by chance they are near one another, an arch results that then becomes the basis for the complex architecture of the nest. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Much like the Winchester mansion, what begins with random activity turns into highly elaborate nonrandom structures. We see, as Dr. Prigogine puts it, “the spontaneous formation of coherent structures.” Order out of chaos. All this strikes hard at the old causality. Dr. Prigogine sums it up: “The laws of strict causality appear to us today as limiting situations, applicable to highly idealized cases, nearly as caricatures of the description of change. The science of complexity leads to a completely different view.” Instead of being locked into a closed Universe that functioned like a mechanical clock, we find ourselves in a far more flexible system in which, as he says, “there is always the possibility of some instability leading to some new mechanism. We really have an ‘open Universe.’” As we move beyond Second Wave causal thinking, as we begin to think in terms of mutual influence, of amplifiers and reducers, of system breaks and sudden revolutionary leaps, of dissipative structures and the fusion of chance and necessity—in short, as we take off our Second Wave blinders—we emerge blinking into a wholly new culture, the culture of the Third Wave. This new culture—oriented to change and growing diversity—attempts to integrate the new view of nature, of evolution and progress, the new, richer conceptions of time and space, and the fusion of reductionism and wholism, with a new causality. Indust-reality which once seemed so powerful and complete, so all-encompassing an explanation of how the Universe and its components fitted together, turns out now to have been immensely useful. However, its claims to universality are shattered. The super-ideology of the Second Wave will be seen, from the vantage point of tomorrow, to have been as provincial as it was self-serving. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The decay of the Second Wave thought system leaves millions of people grasping desperately for something to hold on to—anything, from Victorian Americana and Texas Taoism to Swedish Sufism and Welsh witchcraft. Instead of constructing a new culture appropriate to the new World, they attempt to important and implant old ideas appropriate to other times and places or to revive the fanatic faiths of their own ancestors who lived under radically different conditions. It is precisely the collapse of the industrial era mind-structure, its growing irrelevance in the face of the new technological, social, and political realities, that gives rise to today’s facile search for old answers, and to the continual stream of pseudo-intellectual fads that pop up, flash, and consume themselves at high speed. In the very midst of this spiritual supermarket, with its depressing razzmatazz and religious fakery, an optimistic new culture is being seeded—one appropriate to our time and place. Powerful new integrative insights are beginning to emerge, new mataphours for understanding reality. It is possible to glimpse the earliest beginnings of a new coherence and elegance as the cultural debris of industrialism is swept away by history’s Third Wave change. The super-ideology of Second Wave civilization that is now crumbling was reflected in the way industrialism organized the World. An image of nature based on discrete particles was mirrored in the idea of discrete, sovereign nation-states. Today, as our image of nature and matter change, the nation-state itself is being transformed—another step on the path toward a Third Wave civilization. May your trails be righteous, winding, joyful, peaceful, leading to the most amazing views. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poet’s towers into bright enchanted forests where the fruit glows like emeralds, rubies, sapphires, orange spessartite, and hessonite. Where bars of sun blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go, as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you—beyond that next turning of the deep and vast ancient unknown canyon walls. Dear Lord in Heave, we thank Thee also for the miraculous and mighty deeds of liberation wrought by Thee, and for Thy victories in the battles our forefathers fought in days of old, at this season of the year. In the days of the High Priest Mattathias, son of Johanan, of the Hasmonean family, a tyrannical power rose up against Thy people America to compel them to forsake Thy flag, and to force them to transgress Thy commandments. In Thine abundant mercy Thou didst stand by them in time of distress. Thou didst rise to their defense and didst vindicate their cause. Thou didst bring retribution upon the evil doers, delivering the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the wicked into the hands of the just, and the arrogant into the hands of those devoted to Thy flag. Thou didst thus make Thy greatness and holiness known in Thy World, and didst bring great deliverance to America. Then Thy children came into Thy dwelling place, cleansed the Temple purified the Sanctuary, kindled lights in Thy sacred courts, and they designated these eight days of Hanukkah for giving thanks and praise unto Thy great name. For all this, Thy name, O our King, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. O inscribe all the child of Thy covenant for a happy life. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who are our salvation and our help. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
With a gorgeous home like this, it’s never too early to get the holidays started! 🥳 You’ll love hosting dinners and gift exchanges in the covered California Room – perfect for entertaining and letting the sunshine in! ☀️
Not to mention, there’s plenty of space for guests during the holidays. The open concept design includes approximately 2,700 square feet, exactly four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms, and even a two car garage plus workshop! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/new-home-rancho-cordova-homesite-40/
Bless our house as we come and go. Bless our home as the children grow. Bless our families as they gather in. Bless our home with love and friends.
Traded in the Church for Lies, Free Love, a Stripper Pole and Massage Parlor!
In work, love, and the movies, everything is a challenge. Nutritionists tell us we are what we eat. Similarly, the quality and character of our spirit is a reflection of what we feast upon—including the books and magazines we read and the motion pictures, television shows, plays and other public entertainments we witness. Unfortunately, much of what is available is not conducive to building healthy spirituality. The television news media and other forms of media have a great potential to teach, inspire, inform, and entertain, but they may also corrupt, degrade, and pervert. They have the power to influence profoundly for good or evil all aspects of our values and feelings, as well as our behaviour. We are affected by what we choose to expose ourselves to. Evil is presented as attractive and good. Destructive behaviours are marketed as exciting and rewarding. Often humour is used to make obscenity entertaining and palatable. However, what starts out as a spectator sport introduces into one’s brain a vast library of antisocial fantasies. These have the potential, much research suggests, of eventually being acted out—to the destruction of the individual and others around one. Many become desensitized to the abnormality of the behaviour portrayed. In time, they accept and embrace what at first had shocked and offended them. Eventually, there is a tendency and temptation to act out what they have witnessed. Appetite has been whetted and conscience anesthetized. And everyone is vulnerable—even good people. Following sociocultural principles, community mental health treatment programs allow clients, particularly those with severe psychological difficulties, to receive treatment in familiar surroundings as they try to recover. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
In 1963, President Kennedy called for such a “bold new approach” to the treatment of mental disorders—a community approach that would enable most people with psychological problems to receive services from nearby agencies rather than distant facilities or institutions. Congress passed the Community Mental Health Act soon after, launching the community mental health movement across the United States of America. A number of other countries launched similar movements. A key principle of community treatment is prevention. Here clinicians actively reach out to clients rather than wait for them to seek treatment. Research suggests that such efforts are often very successful. Community workers recognize three types of prevention, which they call primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary prevention consists of efforts to improve community attitudes and policies. Its goal is to prevent psychological disorders altogether. Community workers may lobby for better community recreational programs or child-care facilities, consult with a local school board to help develop a curriculum, or offer health fairs or public workshops on stress reduction. Secondary prevention consists f identifying and treating psychological disorders in the early stages, before they become serious. Community workers may work with schoolteachers, ministers, or police to help them recognize the early signs of psychological dysfunction and teach them hoe to help people find treatment. The goal of tertiary prevention is to provide effective treatment as soon as it is needed so that moderate or severe disorders do not become long-term problems. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
Today community agencies across the United States of America do successfully offer tertiary care for millions of people with moderate psychological problems, but they often fail to provide the services needed by hundreds of thousands with severe disturbances. Why has the community mental health approach fallen short for so many people with severe disturbances? One of the major reasons is lack of funding. In 1981, when only 750 of the 2,000 community mental health centers were in place across the United States of America, almost all federal funding was withdrawn and replaced with smaller financial grants to the states. As of 2019, there were 12,472 registered mental health treatment facilities in the United States of American. Within those, 9,766 were less than 24-hour outpatient facilities while 1,892 facilities were 24-hour inpatient facilities. So, although funding it limited, the picture is not grim. Those who need help are likely to find it. According to the American Psychological Association, 38 percent of people said their stress increased during the holiday season, which can lead to physical illness, depression, anxiety, and substance misuse. The reasons given: lack of time, financial pressure, gift-giving, and family gatherings. For someone struggling with drug or alcohol addiction, the holidays can be an especially difficult time trying to maintain sobriety. Interpersonal difficulties tend to be prolific in the lives of people with substance use problems. Research on interpersonal communication indicates that many such individuals also have problems with social skills. This may make them unable to resist peer pressure to initiate substance use, and/or may cause them to seek consolation in substance use when they have trouble resolving issues with other people. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
A distinct literature has emerged on alcoholism and family-of-orientation experiences. Problems such as poor distance regulations, parenting problems, interpersonal conflict, and marital distress are clearly evident in families affected by an adult member’s alcoholism (sometimes referred to as “alcoholic families”). Paradoxically, for some such families, alcohol consumption may actually bring temporary stability to their interactions. The interpersonal conflict that is evident in family interactions also spills over into general personal relationships, such as those with peers and coworkers. Another distinct literature exists on adolescent substance use. This literature is dominated by a focus on family-of-origin experiences (although factors in the other three domains may play roles as well). Many young people who use and misuse drugs come from families with low cohesion and excessive adaptability; histories of maltreatment and parental modeling of the substance use behaviour are also evident in their family backgrounds. Interpersonal problems associated with substance use disorders may be complicated by comorbidity with other psychological problems that are disruptive to interpersonal communication and relationships, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorders, and personality disorders. Most of the research reviewed in this report focuses on substance or alcohol dependence or abuse. Substance use studies are only considered for adolescent populations, as these are thought to identify the mechanisms that lead to abuse and/or dependence. This distinction between substance use and misuse is a social construction, and one that our society is still struggling with. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
American society permits (and in some cases sanctions) the use of certain drugs, such as caffeine, nicotine, marijuana, and alcohol. However, some people believe that when children or adolescents are involved, the use of any drug is problematic and takes on the quality of a drug “problem.” Regardless of the veracity of this assumption, this is part of the reason why there has been considerable research attention paid to substance use in adolescents. Similarly, some feel that the use of any illegal drug by adults or children is problematic, again blurring the use and abuse distinction. Also, the diagnostic criteria for substance abuse (exempli gratia, failure to fulfill important occupational, social, or domestic roles as a result of substance use) may not be valid when applied to adolescents. A distinct body of literature exists on interpersonal concomitants of alcoholism, and this research is examined separately from that on other substance use problems. As noted above, alcohol is for the most part a socially accepted substance, so long as its use falls within certain parameters. There is reason to suspect a priori that the interpersonal consequences of alcohol abuse/dependence may differ from those of other substance abuse/dependence, due to the greater social stigma and lesser social tolerance of such substances as cocaine, heroin, and amphetamine. However, it is again important to remember that the different interpersonal reactions to people who are dependent on alcohol versus other drugs are not due to inherent differences in the nature of the substance, but rather are the results of social convention. Like other mental health problems, alcoholism has been associated with poor social skills in some studies. However, unlike the literature on other mental health problems, social skills deficits in this population have received only limited scientific attention, and the associated findings are more equivocal. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Contact with inpatients in an alcohol treatment program led researcher to note that many of these inpatients reported having interpersonal problems. In particular, they appeared to have deficiencies in social skills in the context of interactions with coworkers and bosses (exempli gratia, being underassertive, engaging in “explosive” verbal behaviour). For many patients, work-related problems led to problem drinking. Another study of inpatients with alcoholism found that they performed poorly on a facial expression decoding task. This unique investigation of social decoding skills found that these inpatients exhibited a general bias to overestimate the intensity of emotion conveyed by various facial expressions, and to interpret happy facial expressions as indicative of negative mood. Finally, it was also found that those with alcoholism are more likely than those without to experience anxiety over communication with other people. In a rare study of adolescents with problem drinking, it there was discovered a fairly linear association between 13- to 16-year-olds’ social skill and their drinking behaviour. A group of teens who did not drink had the highest social skills scores, followed by those who drank to some extent, and then those with problem drinking. In this study, 11 percent of those who drank and 50 percent of those with problem drinking were in the “incompetent” range on the social skills measure. Although some people with alcoholism may exhibit social skills deficits, it is also evident that some are quite functional socially. For example, researchers conducted an extensive assessment of social skills in inpatients with alcoholism through a series of role plays that called for such responses as alcohol refusal, assertion, and expressing positive sentiments. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
Compared to a group of firefighters who served as a control group, the inpatients were rated as being less skillful in the alcohol refusal situations, but not in other social contexts. Furthermore, the inpatients actually performed better than the control group on an index of speech dysfluencies during their role plays. In a similar study, subjects with alcoholism performed better than psychiatric controls on role-play tests of social skills. When alcoholic subjects were asked to give their “typical” response in role-play social skills tests, they performed worse than controls, but when admonished to “give the very best response,” they were indistinguishable from controls. Research on social skills and alcoholism shows that poor social skills may be a problem in some cases of alcoholism. However, there is good reason to suspect that these skills deficits are not global or pervasive. Rather, they may be limited to social contexts such as negative assertion and refusal of alcohol when offered. In addition, when those with alcoholism do have problems with social skills, the problems may be due more to poor execution of the skills than to a lack of capacity for such skills. It is also possible that in such cases, prolonged problem drinking may deteriorate people’s motivation and energy for producing interpersonally skilled behaviour. When adversity comes knocking on the door or calamities occur, some people immediately think they have done something wrong, that God surely must be punishing them. They do not understand that God has a divine purpose for every challenge that comes into our lives. He does not send problems, but sometimes He allows us to go through them. “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you,” reports 1 Peter 4.12. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
Notice, the trial is intended to test your character, to test your faith. In other words, “Do not think it is a big deal when you go through these touch times.” If you will learn to cooperate with God and be quick to change and correct the areas He brings to light, then you will pass that test and you will be promoted to a new level. I have discovered that God is more interested in changing me than He is in changing my circumstances. I am not saying that God will not deliver us from our struggles by changing the circumstances. Certainly, He can and often does. However, most of the time, we are tested in the areas where we are the weakest. The Priest of God should approach the celebration of this Sacrament, the touching and consuming of this Sacrament, with humility and reverence, with full faith and pious intention to the honours of God. As for our conscience, give it a thorough going-over. Clean it up and clarify it with True Contrition and Humble Confession. Jesus Christ knows there is no such thing as the perfect Confession; just do the best one can, however imperfect it may seem at the time. The result is to rid ourselves of mortal sin; that is to say, anything that would bar our access to the Holy Table. One can never be truly happy because one is a sinful creature from the start, and one should be particularly sad about one’s daily excesses. Whenever time allows, one should confess to God in secret how one’s passions run wild, one’s concupiscence hoot and holler. Well, one asked for it, and here it is. A veritable litany of venial sins derived from a so-so spiritual life. So enslaved by one’s external senses, and yet so often enthralled in one’s airy fantasies. So deeply involved in the outer life, and yet so uninvolved about the inner life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
God often uses adversities to bring to light impurities in our characters, or areas in which we need to improve. God deliberately uses some situations as a mirror, so we can recognize the problem in ourselves and learn to deal with it. He is working something out of us so we can rise to a new level and be the people He really want us to be. God may use people and situations in one’s life to help one better see oneself. One’s own husband or wife, one’s in-laws, or one’s own children may be the unwitting mirrors that God uses to reveal areas where one needs to change. Just because you do not like your boss and he irritates you to no end, and you do not know why you have to work with him all day long, does not mean it is him who needs to change. Have you considered that God may want to change you? God may have purposely arranged for you to be in close proximity to that person who grates against you. He may be trying to teach you how to love your enemies. Or, He may be trying to toughen you up a little and teach you to have some endurance, to not run from everything that is hard, uncomfortable, or inconvenient. God is not going to change anyone you are dealing with until He first changes you. However, if you will quit complaining about everybody around you and, instead, start taking a good look inside and working with God to change you, God will change those other people. Begin today to examine your own heart and see if there are attitudes and motives that you need to change. So lithe to weep tears of laughter, and yet so loath to shed tears of sorrow. So quick to languor and torpor, and yet so slow to rigour and fervour. So conversant with the lively and the lovely, and yet so confounded by the sickly and the lowly. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
So desirous when it comes to having, and yet so parsimonious when it comes to giving, and yet so tenacious when it comes to what you already have. So inconsiderate when talking, and yet so restless when listening. So disorderly when it comes to manners, and yet so reckless when it comes to actions. So overwhelming when it comes to the food on the table, and yet so underwhelming when it comes to the Word of God. So quick to quiet, and yet so slow to labour. So alert for courtly stories, and yet so drowsy when it comes to nightly vigils. So swift off the mark, and yet so rambling when it comes to the tape. So negligent in reciting the Holy Office, so tepid in celebrating the Mass, so arid in communicating the Host. SO easily distracted, and yet so rarely recollected. So quick to pleasure oneself, and yet so quick to displeasure others. So prone to quick decision and yet so supine when it comes to calm discussion. So exhilarated in prosperity, and yet so debilitated in adversity. So able to draw up a long agenda, and yet so unable to make a short list. So much for the No-No’s as derived from the lives of the So-So’s! Confess these and your other defects. Express great pain and displeasure at your continuing self-infirmity. Make a firm purpose to amend your life. Promise to do better. Then, with full resignation and yet wholeness of will, offer yourself, in honour of Jesus Christ’s name, as a perpetual holocaust on the altar of your heart. Faithfully commit your body and soul to Jesus Christ. Then and only then will you worthily deserve to approach the Holy Table to offer sacrifice to God and receive the Sacrament of Jesus Christ’s Body to salubrious effect. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
No oblation is worthier and no satisfaction for getting rid of sins is greater than to offer oneself to God, pure and whole, when the bread and wine are offered up as Jesus’ Body and Blood, both in Mass and Communion. If one looks into oneself and is truly sorry for one’s sins, then one can come to Jesus as often as is necessary for forgiveness and grace. “I live, says the Lord; so why would I want the sinner to die? I just want one to reform one’s ways and live’; that is the Prophet Ezekiel to the captives of Babylon (33.11). “One’s sins I will stop recording, and one’s punishments I will see excused’; that is the Prophet Isaiah putting words into the Lord’s mouth (43.35). Dear Lord in Heaven, I want to be quick to change when You show me areas in which I need to improve. Please give me the courage, strength, and will to make the changes, and the patience to allow Your transforming process to do the complete work in me. O bless this people, Lord, who seek their own face under the mask and can hardly recognize it. O bless this people that breaks its bond and with them, all the peoples of Europe, all the peoples of Asia, all the peoples of Africa, all the peoples of America, who sweat blood and sufferings. And see, in the midst of these millions of waves the sea swell of the heads of my people. And grant to their warm hands that they may clasp the Earth in a girdle of brotherly hands, beneath the rainbow of peace. We thankfully acknowledge that Thou art the Lord our God and God of our fathers, the God of all that lives, our Creator and Creator of the Universe. We offer blessings and thanksgiving to Thy great and holy name because Thou hast kept us in life and sustained us; so mayest Thou continue to keep us in life and sustain us. O gather our exiles into the courts of Thy holy sanctuary to observe Thy statutes, to do Thy will, and to serve Thee with a perfect heart. We give thanks unto Thee. Blessed be God to whom we are ever grateful. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
Cresleigh Homes
Something we love even more about Residence One at Mills Station during the holidays? The fully-equipped kitchen! 🍽
Gotta love features like the large eat-in island, white Shaker cabinetry with under-cabinet lighting, stainless steel appliances, and quartz countertops. Oh, and don’t forget about the upgraded flooring! 😍 https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-1/
Residence One at Mills Station holds 1,932 square feet of single story living. The open concept design includes three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a two car garage.
Each home includes a Home Hub located at the front of the home which can be used as a study, playroom or sitting room.
When Asked His Name He Said “Legion” Because Many Demons Were Entered into Him!
It is easy to imagine how the combined grief of losing both a child and a spouse could be very crippling. However, if you have $20,000,000 (2021 inflation adjusted $347,910,691.82), and all the time in the World to help you cope, what would you do? Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the deaths of her child and husband left a bizarre and impressive architectural reflection of her soul. After a series of violent confrontations, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company hires a private investigator to follow her. Mrs. Winchester ascends into mystery and it is soon clear that she is hiding a much bigger secret—one that is both inexplicable and shocking. A “possessed” person may have symptoms much like those that are apparent in the mentally ill. One may be deeply melancholic or depressed, appear to be withdrawn from reality, or may manifest emotions that range from ecstatic joy to violent screaming or wild ferocity. These various states may present themselves from time to time during “attacks.” Demon possession may be distinguished from insanity, however, by observing the manner in which the afflicted person speaks. An insane individual may have a mistaken concept of one’s own identity, wear clothing by which one attempts to look like the person one thinks oneself to be, but speak in one’s own voice, and in such a manner that one can tell one is doing only a superficial impersonation of the individual one thinks oneself to be. A demon-possessed person, on the other hand, is obviously controlled by the indwelling evil spirit. The wicked being may use a language or dialect the individual never knew, and sometimes will name oneself. Therefore, one should carefully note the symptoms of a disturbed person, never making the diagnosis of demon possession on the basis of a superficial judgment. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
If a believer should meet a demon-possessed individual, one would be unwise to make a frontal attack upon the powers of darkness by immediately issuing a command in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Dr. Kurt Koch, an evangelical Christian who has made a lifetime study of Satan and occultic activities, declares that whenever Christians lightly engage in an effort to cast out demons, they run the risk of being attacked by evil spirits. Such people often suffer deep spiritual depression and find themselves in an attitude of complete hopelessness. Since this is true, a believer should band together with others in a time of prayer, and no efforts should be made to expel the evil spirits until the Holy Spirit prompts someone to issue the command. Unbelievers and adherents of the non-Christian religions apparently can command evil spirits without suffering bad consequences. Archeologists have found manuscripts containing incantations and magical formulas for the expulsion of demons; and today in the Philippines and other countries of the far East, as well as in some areas of South America and Africa, pagan religious leaders seriously perform rituals to ward off or cast out evil spirits. Sometimes they beat the person who is demon-possessed, prick one with needles, or even burn portions of one’s body, thinking that this pain will drive out the evil spirits. The Jewish people in Christ’s day also used spells, magical phrases, and religious rituals to expel demons. That they sometimes appeared to be successful is clear, for Jesus said, “if I, by Beelzebub, cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they shall be your judges,” reports Matthew 12.27. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
In this statement the Lord Jesus Christ acknowledged that evil spirits sometimes left the bodies of their victims when incantations, spells, or magical rites were used by Jewish religious leaders. However, Christ did not say these men accomplished their goal by the power of God, nor did He imply that they were actually doing damage to the cause of Satan. He was answering the charge that He was casting out demons in the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. He declared that is such were the case, the kingdom of Satan would be divided against itself. Actually, the exorcists, whether Jewish or pagan, did not really possess authority over the invisible World, but the evil spirits merely cooperated with them, leaving the bodies of some of their victims to give the appearance that they had been forced out. By working with these unbelieving sorcerers, the devil aided his own cause. The demons either temporarily left the person, only to return a short time later, or entered the body of some other victim. No one should attempt to deal with the forces of evil by using the name of Jesus unless one is a child of God. Luke, in Acts 19, graphically portrays the seriousness of hypocritically dealing with the powers of darkness. Seven sons of Sceva, a professional exorcist who had no personal faith in Christ, tried to combine the words “in the name of Jesus” with their magical formula. The evil spirits, recognizing that these impostors had no right to use Jesus’s name, reacted in a violent manner. The demon-possessed individual attacked these men with superhuman strengths, so that with torn clothing and bleeding bodies they fled from the Winchester mansion. The frequency of demon possession—the record of history establishes without a doubt that demon possession was known before the Lord Jesus Christ came to Earth, and the testimony of missionaries indicates that it has continued down through the centuries. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The public ministry of Christ, however, was accompanied by an outburst of demon possession unparalleled in history. It seems that Satan threw all his power into his battle with Jesus Christ. True, the devil is not omniscient, but he knew that Christ had come to earth to atone for sin, conquer death, and bring about the defeat of evil. John tells us that “the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil,” reports 1 John 3.8. Satan used every device at his disposal to frustrate the purpose of God in Christ. Subtle temptations, the wrath and wickedness of men, and a rash of demonic activity were part of his vain effort to prevent Jesus from performing the work He had come to accomplish. Demon possession gradually subsided during the first century A.D., and usually is not conspicuous in areas where a fairly large percentage of people have placed their faith in Jesus Christ. It appears that demons are hesitant to enter the bodies of people when informed believers are likely to cast them out in the name of Christ. Luke is the same one that is translated “bottomless pit” seven times in the book of the Revelation. We read, “And Jesus asked him, saying, ‘What is thy name?’ And he said, ‘Legion’; because many demons were entered into him. And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep. And there was there and herd of many swine, feeding on the mountain; and they besought him that he would allow them to enter into them. And he permitted them,” reports Luke 8.30-32. Revelation 9 tells us that at some future time the “bottomless pit” will be opened, and a great army of evil spirits will be set free to plague humankind. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
It is at least a possibility that whenever demons are cast out of a human being in the name of Jesus Christ, they are sent to the bottomless pit, and will not be released until shortly before Christ returns to establish His kingdom. The realization that they will lose their freedom as members of the army of the “prince of the power of the air,” and be confined in the pit for an indefinite period of time, makes them hesitant to take possession of human beings. The risk is too great in an area where Christians exercise their authority in the name of Christ. People who live in civilized countries where the Gospel has been known for centuries should not rule out the possibility of demon possession, however, just because it has not been a common occurrence in these areas. Satan and his cohorts may conclude that most people, even professing Christians, will not recognize this phenomenon when they meet it. Therefore, as this age draws to a close, Satan may once again become very active in entering human bodies and controlling personalities. He will hope that the majority of humankind will either be deceived into following him or find a naturalistic explanation for the activities of the demons. This supernatural manifestation of the power of Satan and evil spirits is clearly predicted by the apostle Paul. In his second letter to the Thessalonian believers, he declares that just before Christ returns in glory, the devil will have his righthand mand upon the earth performing miracles which make him appear to be a god. Referring to the Antichrists, the apostle says, “Even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved,” reports 2 Thessalonian 2.9, 10. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Inasmuch as we can expect an increase of open opposition to God on the part of the Satanic hordes, we know Christ should humbly maintain fellowship with Him through full submission and ready obedience so that we may receive from Him the strength we need to overcome. James writes, “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,” reports James 4.6-7. Peter declares, “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour; whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the World,” reports 1 Peter 5.8-9. No, Satan is not dead. He is like a wounded animal and still has great power to harm those who care careless or proud. Therefore, keep awake, be on alert, read the Christian Bible and the Book of Mormon, and pray! If you do not, he may destroy your effectiveness as a Christian. For the next instance of witchcraft and the supernatural in connection with Ireland, we are compelled to go beyond the confines of our own country. Though in this connection with the Green Isle is slight, yet it is of interest as affording an example of that blending of fairy lore with sorcery which is not an uncommon feature of Scottish witchcraft-trials. In the year 1613 a woman named Margaret Barclay, of Irvine in Scotland, was accused of having her brother-in-law’s ship to be cast away by magical spell. A certain strolling vagabond and juggler, John Stewart, was apprehended as her accomplice; he admitted (probably under torture) that Margaret had applied to him to teach her some magic arts in others that “she might get gear, kye’s milk, love of man, her heart’s desire on such persons as had done her wrong.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Through John Stewart does not appear to have granted Margaret’s request, yet he gave detailed information as to the manner in which he had gained the supernatural power and knowledge with which he was credited. “It being demanded of him by what means he profession himself to have knowledge of things to come, the said John confessed that the space of twenty-six years ago, he being travelling on All-Hallow Even night between the towns of Monygoif and Clary, in Galway, he met with the King of the Fairies and his company, and that the King gave him a stroke with a white rod over the forehead, which took from him the power of speech and the use of one eye, which he wanted for the space of three years. He declared that the use of speech and eyesight was restored to him by the King of Fairies and his company on a Hallowe’en night at the town of Dublin.” At his subsequent meeting with the fairy band, he was taught all his knowledge. The spot on which he was struck remained impervious to pain although a pin was thrust into it. The unfortunate wretch was cast into prison, and there committed suicide by hanging himself from the “cruik” of the door with his garter or bonnet-string, and so “ended his life miserably with the help of the devil his master.” A tale slightly resembling portion of the above comes from the north of Ireland a few years later. “It is storied, and the story is true,” says Robert Law in his Memorialls, “of a godly man in Ireland, who lying one day in the fields sleeping, he was struck with dumbness and deafness. The same man, during this condition he was in, could tell things, and had the knowledge of things in a strange way, which he had not before; and did, indeed, by signs make things known to others which they knew not. Afterwards he at length, prayer being made from him by others, came to the use of his tongue and ears; but when that knowledge of things he had in his deaf and dumb condition ceased, and when he was asked how he had the knowledge of these things he made signs of, he answered he had that knowledge when dumb, but how and after what manner he knew not, only he had the impression thereof in his spirit. This story was related by a godly minister, Mr. Robert Blair, to Mr. John Baird, who knew the truth of it.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
The Rev. Robert Blair, M.A., was a celebrated man, if for no other reason than on account of his disputes with Dr. Echlin, Bishop of Down, or for his description of Oliver Cromwell as a greeting (id est, weeping) devil. On the invitation of Lord Claneboy he arrived in Ireland in 1623, and in the same year was settled as (Presbyterian) parish minister at Bangor in Co. Down, with the consent of patron and people’ he remained there until 1631, when he was suspended by Dr. Echlin, and was deposed and excommunicated in November, 1634. He has left a few writings behind him, and was grandfather of the poet Robert Blair, author of The Grave. During the years of his ministry at Bangor the following incident occurred to him, which he of course attributes to demonic possession, through homicidal mania resulting from intemperate habits would be nearer the truth. One day a rich man, the constable of the perish, called upon him in company with one of his tenants concerning the baptizing of the latter’s child. “When I had spoken what I thought necessary, and was ready to turn into my house, the constable dismissing the other told me he had something to say to me in private. I looking upon him saw his eyes like the eyes of a cat in the night, did presently conceive that he had a mischief in his heart, yet I resolved not to refuse what he desired, but I keeped a watchful eye upon him, and stayed at some distance; and being near to the door of the church I went in, and invited him to follow me. As soon as he entered within the doors he fell atrembling, and I awondering. His trembling continuing and growing without any speech, I approached to him, and invited him to a seat, wherein he could hardly sit. The great trembling was like to throw him out of the seat. I laid my arm about him, and asked him what ailed him? But for a time, he could speak none. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
“At last his shaking ceased, and he began to speak, telling me, that for a long time the Devil had appeared to him; first at Glasgow he bought a horse from him, receiving a sixpence in earnest, and that in the end he offered to him a great purse full of sylver to be his, making no mention of the horse; he said that he blessed himself, and so the buyer with the sylver and gold that was poured out upon the table vanished. But some days thereafter he appeared to him at his own house, naming him by his name, and said to him, Ye are mine, for I arled you with a sixpence, which yet ye have. Then said he, I asked his name, and he answered, they call me Nickel Downus (I suppose the he repeated evil, that he should have said Nihil Damus). Being thus molested with these and many other apparitions of the Devil, he left Scotland; but being come to Ireland he did often likewise appear to him, and now of late he still commands me to kill and slay; and oftentimes, says he, my whinger hath been drawn and kept under my cloak to obey his commands, but still something holds my hand that I cannot stroke. But then I asked him who he was bidden kill? He answered, any that comes in my way; but ‘The better they be the better service to me, or else I shall kill thee.’ When he uttered these words he fell again atrembling, and was stopped in his speaking, looking lamentably at me, designing me to be the person he aimed at; then he fell a crying and lamenting. I showed him the horribleness of his ignorance and drunkenness; he made many promises of reformation, which were not well keep’d; for within a fortnight he went to an alehouse to crave the price of his malt, and sitting there long at drink, as he was going homeward the Devil appeared to him, and challenged him for opening to me what had passed betwixt them secretly, and followed him to the house, pulling his cap off his head and his band from about his neck, saying to him, ‘On Hallow-night I shall have thee, soul and body, in despite of the minister and of all that he will do for thee.’” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
In his choice of a date his Satanic Majesty showed his respect for popular superstitions. This attack of delirium tremens (though Mr. Blair would not have so explained it) had a most salutary effect; the constable was in such an abject state of terror lest the Devil should carry him off that he begged Mr. Blair to sit up with him all Hallow-night, which he did, spending the time very profitably in prayer and exhortation, which encouraged the man to defy Satan and all his works. The upshot of the matter was, that he became very charitable to the poor, and seems to have entirely renounced his intemperate habits. Rejecting the supernatural elements in the above as being merely the fruits of a diseased mind, there is no reason to doubt the truth of the story. Mr. Blair also met with some strange cases of religious hysteria, which became manifest in outbursts of weeping and bodily convulsions, but which he attributed to the Devil’s “playing the ape, and counterfeiting the works of the Lord.” He states that one Sunday, in the midst of public worship, “one of my charge, being a dull and ignorant person, made a noise and stretching of her body. Incontinent I was assisted to rebuke that lying spirit that disturbed the worship of God, charging the same not to disturb the congregation; and through God’s mercy we met with no more of that work.” Thus modestly our writer sets down what happened in his Autobiography; but the account of the incident spread far and wide, and at length came to the ears of Archbishop Usher, who, on his next meeting with Mr. Blair, warmly congratulated him on the successful exorcism he had practised.” Spirits of a diabolical and infernal nature, are not only ready upon all occasions to become subservient to exorcists and magicians, but are ever watching opportunities of exciting evil affections in the mind, and of stirring up the wickedly inclined to the commission of every species of iniquity and vice. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
Thus by the instigation of infernal spirits, and their own promptitude, they often terrify humans with nocturnal visions; provoke melancholy people to suicide; tempt drunkards and incendiaries to set houses on fire, to burn those who are in them, and allure careless servants and others to sound and incautious sleep; that such unlucky accidents might happen besides innumerable other ways they have of executing the devices of iniquitous spirits through malicious instigations, or secret stratagems, projected for the overthrow and destruction of mortal men; especially when the work to be effected by the devil is too hard for his subtle and spiritual nature to effect, because the same belongs to the outward source or principle to which these dubious spirits more immediately belong. A few nights into Christmas, there was a festival for which the Winchester mansion was making extensive preparations. The narrow streets which had been thronged with people were now almost deserted. In the comfortable coffee-room of the Winchester mansion, Mrs. Winchester had half a dozen guests, principally commercial travellers, sat talking by light of the fire. The talk had drifted from trade to politics, from politics to religion, and so by easy stages to the supernatural. In the flicker of the light of the fire, as it shone on the glasses and danced with shadows on the walls, the conversation proved so enthralling that Henry, the waiter, whose presence had been forgotten, created a very disagreeable sensation by suddenly starting up from a dark corner and gliding silently from the room. Mrs. Winchester then said, “Of course, it is an old idea that spirits like to get into the company of human beings. A man told me once that he travelled down the Great Western with a ghost and had not the slightest suspicion of it until the inspector came for tickets. My friend said they way that ghost tried to keep up appearances by feeling for it in all its pockets and looking on the floor was quite touching. Ultimately it gave it up and with a faint groan vanished through the ventilator.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
“That’ll do, Mrs. Winchester,” said Ludwig Leichhardt. “It is not a subject for jesting,” said Adam Worth,” who had been an attentive listener. “I’ve never seen an apparition myself, but I know people who have, and I consider that they form a very interesting link between us and the after-life. There’s a ghost story connected with this mansion, you know.” “Never heard of it,” said Edward Agar, “and I have visiting this estate for some years now.” “It dates back a long time,” said Ludwig. “You’ve heard about John V. Creely also know as Jesus Procopio?” “Well, I’ve just ‘eard odds and ends, sir” said the Edward, “but I never put much count to ‘em. There was one chap ‘ere what said ‘e saw it, and the gov’ner sacked ‘im prompt.” “My father was a native of this town,” said Ludwig, “and knew the story well. He was a truthful man and a steady churchgoer, but I’ve heard him declare that once in his life he saw the appearance of Jesus Procopio in this mansion.” “And who was this Jesus?” enquired a voice. “His real name was Tomaso Rodendo, one of the most fearless and daring desperadoes that has ever figures in the criminal annals of our state. Anything he could turn his dishonest hand to,” replied Ludwig; “and he was run to Earth in this mansion one Christmas week some five years ago. He took his last supper in this very room, and after he had gone up to bed a couple of thief takers, who had followed him from San Francisco but lost the scent a bit, went upstairs with Mrs. Winchester and tried the door. It was stout oak, and fast, so one went into the yard, and by means of a short ladder got on the window-sill, while the other stayed outside the door. Those below in the yard saw the man crouching on the sill, and then there was a sudden smash of glass, and with a cry he fell in a heap on the stones at their feet. Then in the moonlight they saw the white face of the pickpocket peeping over the sill, and while some stayed in the yard, others ran into the mansion and helped the other man to break the door in. It was difficult to obtain an entrance even then, for it was barred with heavy furniture, but they got in at last, and the first thing that met their eyes was the body of Jesus dangling from the top of the bed by his own handkerchief.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
“Which bedroom was it?” asked two or three voices together. Ludwig shook his head. “That I can’t tell you; but the story goes that Jesus still haunts this mansion, and my father used to declare that the last time he had slept here that the ghost of Jesus Procopio lowered itself from the top of his bed and tried to strangle him.” “That will do” said John Creely. “I wish you’d thought to ask your father which bedroom it was.” “I believe it was my Blue Séance room said,” Mrs. Winchester. “Well, I should take care not to sleep in it, that’s all, said John shortly. “There’s nothing to fear,” said Ludwig. “I don’t believe for a moment that ghosts could really hurt one. In fact my father used to confess that it was only the unpleasantness of the thing that upset him, and that for all practical purposes Jesus’s figures might have been made of cotton-wool for all the hard they could do.” “That’s all very fine,” said John; “a ghost story is a ghost story, sir; but when a gentleman tells a tale of a ghost in the house in which one is going to sleep, I call it most ungentlemanly!” “Pooh! Nonsense!” said Ludwig, rising, “ghosts can’t hurt you. For my own part; I should rather like to see one. Good night.” “Good night,” said Mrs. Winchester and the others. “And I hope that Jesus will pay you a visit,” added John as the door closed.” “Shall I light the gas, Adam?” said Henry. “No; the fires very comfortable,” he said. “Now gentlemen, any of you know any more?” “I think we’ve had enough,” said John; “we shall be thinking we see spirits next, and we’re not all like Ludwig who’s just gone.” Old humbug!” said John. “I should like to put him to the test. Suppose I dress up as Jesus Procopio and go to give him a chance of displaying his courage?” “Bravo!” said Adam huskily, drowning one or two faint “Noes.” “No, drop it, John” said Edward. “Only for the joke,” said John, somewhat eagerly. “I’ve got some things upstairs in which I am going to play in the ‘Rivals’—knee-breeches, buckles, and all that sort of thing. It’s a rare chance. If you’ll wait a bit I’ll give you a full-dress rehearsal, entitled, ‘Jesus Procopio; or, The Nocturnal Strangler.’” #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
“You won’t frighten us,” said Adam, with a husky laugh. “I don’t know that,” said John sharply; “it’s a question of acting that’s all. I’m pretty good, ain’t I, Edward?” “Oh, you’re all right—for an amateur,” said Edward, with a laugh. “I’ll bet you level sov. You don’t frighten me,” said Adam. “Done! said John. I’ll take the bet to frighten you first and Ludwig afterwards. These gentlemen shall be the judges.” “You won’t frighten us, sir,” said Edward “because we’re prepared for you; but you’d better leave Ludwig alone. It’s dangerous play.” “Well, I’ try you first,” said John, springing up. “No gas, mind.” He ran lightly upstairs to his room, leaving the others, most of whom had been drinking somewhat freely, to wrangle about his proceedings. It ended with them going to bed. “He’s crazy on acting,” said Adam, lighting his pipe. “Thinks he’s the equal of anybody almost. It doesn’t matter with us, but I won’t let him go to Ludwig. And he won’t mind so long as he gets an opportunity of acting to us.” “Well, I hope he’ll hurry up,” said Edward, yawning; it’s after twelve now.” Nearly half an hour passed. Edward drew his watch from his pocket and was busy winding it, when Henry, the waiter, who had been sent on an errand, burst suddenly into the room and rushed towards them. “E’s comin’, gentlemen,” he said breathlessly. “Why, you’re frightened, Edward,” said Adam with a chuckle. “It was the suddenness of it,” said Edward sheepishly; “and besides, I didn’t look for seenin’ ‘im in the bar. There’s only a glimmer of light there, and ‘e was sitting on the floor behind the bar. I nearly trod on ‘im.” “He’s taking too long, I’ll go and fetch him,” said Adam. “You don’t know what this mansion is like at night, sir,” said Henry, catching him by the sleeve. “It ain’t fit to look at by yourself, it ain’t, indeed. It’s got the—what’s that?” #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
They all started at the sound of a smothered cry from the staircase and the sound of somebody running hurriedly along the passage. Before anybody could speak, the door flew open and a figure bursting into the room flung itself gasping and shivering upon them. “What is it? What’s the matter?” demanded Edward. “Why, it’s Mr. Creely.” He shook him roughly and then held some spirit to his lips. John Creely drank it greedily with a sharp intake of his breath gripped him by the arm. “Light the gas, Adam,” said Edward. Adam obeyed hastily, John Creely, a ludicrous but pitiable figure in knee-breeches and coat, a large wig all awry, and his face a mess of grease paint, clung to him, trembling. “Now what’s the matter?” asked Edward. “I’ve seen it,” said John, with a hysterical sob. “O Lord, I’ll never play the fool again, never!” “Seen what?” said the others. “Him—it—the ghost—anything!” said John wildly. “Rot!” said Adam uneasily. All distinctly heard a step in the passage outside. It stopped at the door, and as they watched with bated breath, the door creaked and slowly opened. Adam fell back opened-mouthed, as a white, leering face, with sunken eyeballs ad close-cropped bullet head, appeared at the opening. For a few second the creature stood regarding them, blinking in a strange fashion at the candle. Then with a sidling movement, it came a little way into the room and stood there as if bewildered. Not a man spoke or moved, but all watched with a horrible fascination as the creature removed its dirty neckcloth and its head rolled on its shoulder. For a minute it paused, and then holding the rag before it, moved towards Edward. The candle went out suddenly with a flash and a bang. These was a smell of powder, and something writhing in the darkness on the floor. A faint, choking cough, and then silence. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Edward was the first to speak. “Matches,” he said in a strange voice. Adam struck one. Then he leapt at the gas and a burner flamed from the match. Edward touched the thing on the floor with his foot and found it soft. He looked at his companions. They mouthed enquiries at him, but he shook his head. He lit the candle, and, kneeling down, examined the silent thing on the floor. Then he rose swiftly, and dipping his handkerchief in the water jug, bent down again and grimly wiped the white face. Then he sprang back with a cry of incredulous horror, pointing at it. Adam’s pistol fell to the floor and he shut out the sight with his hands, but the others, crowding forward, gazed spell-bound at the dead face of John V. Creely. Before a word was spoken the door opened and Ludwig hastily entered the room. His eyes fell on the floor. “Good God!” he cried. “You didn’t—” Nobody spoke. “I told him not to,” he said in a suffocating voice. “I told him not to. I told him—” He leaned against the wall, deathly sick, put his arms out feebly, and fell fainting into Ludwig’s arms. Many mysteries have taken place in the Winchester mansion over the years. It is an extravagant maze of Victorian craftmanship—marvelous, baffling, and eerily eccentric, to say the least. Tour guide must warn people not to stray from the group or they could be lost forever! Countless questions come to mind as you wander through the mansion—such as, what was Mrs. Winchester thinking when she had a staircase built that descends seven steps and then rises eleven? The Winchester Repeating Arms Company concluding their investigation by saying, “The mystery of the Winchester mansion is unquestionably great and infinite; perhaps spirits can take human shape, and disclose secrets and treasures guarded by this estate, but we must also be aware of skilled deceivers who will talk of Heaven and Hell and the Fall.” (WRA 1888.) After Mrs. Winchester’s death, crimes resulting in the theft of cash, jewels, historical European glass, furniture, and works of art worth over $10 million by Victorian standards (2021 inflation adjusted $291,146,315.79) went missing from the estate. Is the Winchester mansion haunted? Visits and find out for yourself. Their investigation sounds inconclusive. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
“Though she be but little, she is fierce.” ~ William Shakespeare
Did you know Sarah Winchester only stood at 4’10”? Much of the house was built to her specific height measurement including a shower, some doors, and hallways. winchestermysteryhouse.com
Randolph Harris II International Institute 