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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
Does the Cause of Lunacy Lie in the Heavens or in Our Minds?
If you do not run your own life, somebody else will. Your children need your presence more than your presents because the hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any. It would hardly be accurate to day that we live now in a period of great enlightenment or dependable treatment of mental disorders. In fact, some recent surveys found that 43 percent of respondents believe that people bring on mental disorders themselves, 35 percent consider such disorders to be caused by sinful behaviours, and 19 percent point to the lack of willpower or self-discipline as a cause. Nevertheless, the last 70 years have brought major changes in the ways clinicians understand and treat abnormal functioning. There are more theories and types of treatment, more research studies, more information, and, perhaps for these reasons, more disagreements about abnormal functioning today than at any time in the past. In some ways the study and treatment of psychological disorders have made great strides, but in other respects clinical scientists and practitioners are still struggling to make a difference. Primitive societies believed that the moon had magical, mystical powers and that its changes portended events of many kinds. The moon supposedly had the power to impregnate women, to make plants grow, and to drive people crazy. Later societies also credited the power of the moon to affect behaviour, and they applied the terms “lunatic” and “lunacy” to the person and the behaviour to capture their lunar, or moonlike, qualities. Even today many institutions and people believe that behaviour is affected by the phases of the moon. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Anecdotal evidence abounds: police officers have sometimes noted more violent and bizarre crimes during the full moon, and certain hospitals have claimed to experience an increase in births. One hospital even linked the full moon to the onset of ulcers and heart attacks. A Wall Street brokers for years used the schedule of the moon as a guide in giving investment advice—successfully. A number of scientists have advanced theories to explain a lunar effect on human behaviour. Some say that since the moon causes the tides of the oceans, it is reasonable to expect that it has a similar effect on the bodily fluids of human beings, whose composition is more than 80 percent water. The increase in births might therefore be explained by the force of the moon on the expectant mother’s amniotic fluid. Similar tidal and gravitational effects have been used to explain the apparent increases in bizarre behaviour during full moons. One team of researchers has noted that a full moon seemed to have a greater impact on behaviour in the past than in current times and has attributed this difference to the lack of electricity in years past. Before the advent of artificial light, they argue, full moons were a significant source of illumination that disrupted the sleep-wake cycle. This tended to cause sleep deprivation and, consequently, psychological disturbances. Still other researchers have tried to determine whether the activity of the moon is in fact related to human behaviour by calculating the precise number of births, crimes, and unusual behaviours that occur during full moons. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Some of these investigators have indeed found an association between full moons and unintentional poisonings, aggression, absenteeism, and crime. Other researchers, however, have found no relationship between full moons and increases in violence in mental health settings, suicides, car accidents, or people seeking help for anxiety or depression. Even if an association exists, skeptics have noted that it may simply be due to people’s own expectations. That is, because certain persons expect to be influenced by a full moon, they may be more attentive and responsive to their internal sensations or desires at that time. To test this interpretation, researchers recently examined the effects of moon phases on animals who presumably have little self-awareness. One group of researchers found a significant increase in the number of people who visited emergency rooms with animal bites during full moons in a small British town, suggesting that unusual animal behaviour may indeed be affected by the moon. However, other researchers—who conducted studies with other animals, breeds, and towns—found no increase in animals bites during full moons. And so the debated continues as scientists and philosophers alike try to determine whether the cause of lunacy does indeed lie in the Heavens or our minds. How are people with severe disturbances cared for? In the 1950s researchers discovered a number of new psychotropic medications—drugs that primarily affect the brain and alleviate many symptoms of mental dysfunctioning. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
These medications include the first antipsychotic drugs, to lift the mood of depressed people; and antianxiety drugs, to reduce tension and worry. When given these drugs, many patients who had spent years in mental hospitals began to show signs of improvement. Hospital administrators, encouraged by these results and pressured by a growing public outcry over the terrible conditions in public mental hospitals, began to discharge patients almost immediately. Since the discovery of these medications, mental health professionals in most of the developed nations of the World have followed a policy of deinstitutionalization, releasing hundreds of thousands of patients from public mental hospitals. On any given day in 1955, close to 600,000 people were confined in public mental institutions across the United States of America. Today the daily patient population in the same kinds of hospitals is around 60,000. In short, outpatient care has now become the primary mode of treatment for people with severe psychological disturbances as well as for those with moderate problems. Today when severely impaired people do need institutionalization, they are usually given short-term hospitalization. Ideally, they are then given outpatient psychotherapy and medication in community programs and residences. Community mental health approach is an emphasis on social care for people with severe psychological disturbances. The approach has been helpful for many patients, but too few community programs are available to address current needs in the United States of America. As a result, hundreds of thousands of persons with severe disturbances fail to make lasting recoveries, and they shuffle back and forth between the mental hospital and the community. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
After release from the hospital, patients at best receive minimal care and often wind up living in decrepit rooming houses or on the streets. In fact, only 40 percent of persons with severe psychological disturbances currently receive treatment of any kind. At least 100,000 individuals with such disturbances are homeless on any given day; another 135,000 or more are inmates of jails and prisons. Their abandonment is truly a national disgrace. How are people with less severe disturbances treated? The treatment picture for people with moderate psychological disturbances has been more positive than that for people with severe disorders. Since the 1950s, outpatient care has continued to be the preferred mode of treatment for them, and the numbers and types of facilities that offer such care have expanded to meet the need. Before the 1950s, almost all outpatient care took the form of private psychotherapy, an arrangement by which an individual directly pays a psychotherapist for counseling services. This tended to be an expensive form of treatment available only to the wealthy. Since the 1950s, however, most healthy insurance plans have expanded coverage to include private psychotherapy, so that it is now also widely available to people with modest incomes. In addition, such as community mental healthy centers, crisis intervention centers, family service centers, and other social service agencies. The new settings have spurred a dramatic increase in the number of persons seeking outpatient care for psychological problems. Nationwide surveys suggest that one of every six adults and one of every five children between the ages of 9 and 17 now receive some form of mental health service in the course of a year. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Outpatient treatments are also becoming available for more and more kinds of problems. When Dr. Freud and his colleagues first began to practice, most of their patients suffered from anxiety or depression. These problems still dominate therapy today; almost half of all clients suffer from them. However, people with other kinds of disorders are also receiving therapy. In addition, at least 25 percent of clients enter therapy because of milder problems in living, problems with marital, family, job, peer, school, or community relationships. Yet another change in outpatient care since the 1950s has been the development of programs devoted exclusively to one kind of psychological problem. We now have, for example, suicide prevention centers, substances abuse programs, eating disorders programs, phobia clinics, and sexual dysfunction programs. Clinicians in these programs have the kind of expertise that can be acquired only by concentration in a single area. One caustic interpersonal phenomenon that has received considerable interest in the literature on eating disorders is childhood sexual abuse. A common form of abuse reported by people with eating disorders childhood sexual abuse, represents a gross violation of boundaries, particularly when perpetrated in the family context. This abuse often causes guilt, confusion, repulsion, and distrust of others. These potentially vicious psychosocial repercussions can make intimate relations later in life very difficult. Contrasting findings and possible explanations—there is at least some evidence to suggest that histories of sexual abuse are more common among those with eating disorders, especially bulimia nervosa, than what would be expected by chance alone. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
However, after numerous studies on the topic, findings remain mixed. For example, some estimates indicate that rates of childhood sexual abuse run as high as 70 percent among patients with eating disorders. One study of such patients found that 65 percent has experienced physical abuse, 28 percent has been sexually abused, and 23 percent had been raped. These statistics are shocking both for their indication of what appear to be extremely high prevalence rates of childhood sexual abuse among persons with eating disorders, and for their stark contrast to other epidemiological estimates indicating a far lower occurrence of sexual abuse in the background of such persons. For example, two reviews concluded that there was no evidence of higher rates of eating disorders among sexually abused versus nonabused women. Furthermore, one study found that among normal-weight women with bulimia nervosa, only 7 percent included a history of sexual abuse involving physical contact. Since it is estimated that the prevalence of sexual abuse in the general female population is 27 percent, it appears as if sexual abuse was less prevalent in the sample than in the general population. To complicate matters further, still another review found that rates of sexual abuse were no higher among those with eating disorders than among those in the general population. What conclusions can be drawn from the literature on childhood sexual abuse and eating disorders? First, some of the variance in these prevalence estimates can be explained by wildly discrepant operationalizations of “sexual abuse.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Second, the samples on which these estimates are based are also nonequivalent. For example, it is reasonable to expect a greater history of childhood sexual abuse in clinical samples than in samples with eating disorders drawn from the general population. Third, there is some consensus that childhood sexual abuse is neither necessary nor sufficient for the development of eating disorders in later life. This may explain the high rates of sexual abuse in some samples, and the lower rates in others. “One that covers one’s sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy,” reports Proverbs 28.13. Abuse tends to happen and it should not. A few decades ago, several American companies authorized by the U.S. government attempted to bury toxic-waste products underground. They filled large mental containers with chemical waste and other life-threatening products, sealed the drums tightly, and buried them deep down below the topsoil. They thought that was the end of it. Within a short time, however, many of the containers began to leak and the toxic waste started seeping to the surface, causing all sorts of problems. In some locations, it killed off the vegetation and ruined the water supply. People had to move out of their homes. What went wrong? They tried to bury something that was toxic. They never dreamed that the materials they were attempting to bury were so powerful that they were too toxic for the containers to hold. They did not imagine that one day those contaminants would resurface, and they would have to deal with the problem all over again. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, this time, the toxic materials would be dispersed and much more difficult to deal with. Had they disposed of them properly in the first place, they would not have had this terrible problem. It is the same with us. When somebody hurts us, someone does us wrong, instead of letting it go and trusting God to make it up to us, we bury it deep down inside. We attempt to cram unforgiveness, resentment, anger, and other destructive responses into our “leakproof” containers. We seal those lids tightly, but unfortunately, just as that toxic waste tends to resurface, one day the things you have tamped into your subconscious or buried deeply in the recesses of your heart will rise to the surface and begin to contaminate your life. We cannot live with poison inside us and not expect it to eventually do us harm. Forgiveness is the key to being free from toxic bitterness. Forgive the people who hurt you. Forgive the boss who did you wrong. Forgive the friend who betrayed you. Forgive the patent who mistreated you when you were younger. Do not let the root of bitterness grow deeper and continue to contaminate your life. What does this toxic waste look like in our lives? For some people, it seeps out as anger. In other people, it smells like depression. For others, it reeks of low self-esteem. It can show up in many different ways, sometimes doing damage before we even realize it has reappeared. One can have success on the outside, but if one is bitter on the inside, it is going to spoil and taint every success. One must deal with the inside first, then one can really be happy. Then one can experience true, untainted, unalloyed success in one’s life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
You may think forgiveness is too hard. However, you are not forgiving for their sake, you are forgiving for your sake. You are forgiving so that poison does not continue to contaminate your life. If someone has done you a great wrong, do not allow them to continue to hurt you by hanging on to it. You are not hurting them at all. You are hurting yourself. It is the laden bough that hangs low, and the most fruitful Christ who is the most humble. In American culture, there is a taboo against vulnerability, especially from dominant personalities. Seldom can we allow ourselves such phrases as “I am unsure,” “I feel vulnerable,” “I feel hurt,” or “I feel helpless.” And yet we all have these feelings from time to time. We all feel anxious, sacred, helpless, or weak. In our culture, where competition, individuality, and performance reign supreme, it is no surprise that any sense of weakness is repressed from awareness. Yet, when a part of us that is quite real is pushed out of consciousness, we are more vulnerable than ever because we lose touch with our core being. Then our energies are diverted into presenting a false self to the World. We even believe that this ideal self—secure, flawless, and capable in all situations—is our real self. This kind of vanity is the real target of the scriptural “pride goeth before destruction,” reports Proverbs 16.18. Surrender to God and understand that God is the Ground of Being. This powerful experience will enable one to get in touch with a power greater than oneself, the Supreme Being. Father, I know when I forgive those who hurt me, it pleased You. Please help me to recognize that forgiveness of others is in my best interest. “Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but one who trusts in, relies on, and confidently leans on the Lord shall be compassed about with mercy and with lovingkindness. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you [uncompromisingly] righteous [you who are upright and right standing with Him]; shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” reports Psalm 32.10-11. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
We have here two very distinct moral persons, namely the government and the sovereign, and consequently two wills, one in relation to all the citizens, the other only for the members of the administration. Thus, although the government can regulate its internal administration as it chooses, it can never speak to the people except in the name of the sovereign, that is to say, in the name of the populace itself. This is something not to be forgotten. The first societies governed themselves aristocratically. The leaders of families deliberated among themselves about public affairs. Young people deferred without difficulty to the authority of experience. This is the origin of the words priests, ancients, senate and elders. The natives of North America still govern themselves that way to this day, and are very well governed. However, to the extent that inequality, wealth or power was preferred to age, and aristocracy became elective. Finally, the transmission of the father’s power, together with his goods, to his children created patrician families; the government was made hereditary, and we know of senators who were only twenty years old. There are therefore three sorts of aristocracy: natural, elective and hereditary. The first is suited only to some people; the third is the worst of any government. The second is the best; it is aristocracy properly so-called. In addition to the advantage of the distinction between the two powers, aristocracy has that of the choice of its members. For in popular government all the citizens are born magistrates; however, this type of government limits them to a small number, and they become magistrate only through elections, a means by which probity, enlightenment, experience, and all the other reasons for public preference and esteem are so many new guarantees of being well governed. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Furthermore, assemblies are more conveniently held, public business better discussed and carried out with more orderliness and diligence, the reputation of the state is better sustained abroad by venerable senators than by a multitude that is unknown or despised. In a word, it is the best and most natural order for the wisest to govern the multitude, when it is certain that they will govern for its profit and not for their own. There is no need for multiplying devices uselessly or for doing with twenty thousand men what one hundred hand-picked men can do even better. However, it must be noted here that the corporate interest begins to direct the public force in less strict a conformity with the rule of the general will, and that another inevitable tendency removes from the laws a part of the executive power. With regard to the circumstances that are specifically suitable, a state must not be so small, nor its people so simple and upright, as is the case in a good democracy. Now must a nation be so large that the leaders, scattered about in order to govern it, can each play the sovereign in one’s own department, and begin by making themselves independent in order finally to become masters. However, if aristocracy requires somewhat fewer virtutes than popular government, it also demands others that are proper to it, such as moderation among wealthy and contentment among the poor. For it appears that rigorous equality would be out of place here. It was not observed even in Sparta. Moreover, if this form of government carries with it a certain inequality of fortune, this is simply in order that in general the administration of public business may be entrusted to those who are best able to give all their time to it, but not, as Aristotle claims, in order that the rich may always be given preference. On the contrary, it is important that an opposite choice should occasionally teach people that more important reasons for preference are to be found in a man’s merit than in one’s wealth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Neither is our image of evolution—or, for that matter, evolution itself what it used to be. Biologist, archaeologist, and anthropologists, attempting to unravel the mysteries of evolution, similarly find themselves in a bigger and more complex World than previously imagined and are discovering that laws once regarded as universal in application are actually special cases. Since Dr. Darwin, biologists have gradually developed a chart of the mechanism of evolution, called natural selection. On that basis attempts have often been made to portray all evolution—cosmic, chemical, cultural, ideological, social—as governed by a similar selection mechanism. However, such understandings seem doomed, inasmuch as the rules change at every plane. Even on the biological plane, rules once thought to apply across the board are in question. Thus scientists are being forced to ask whether all biological evolution is a response to variation and natural selection or whether, at the molecular level, it may depend instead on an accumulation of variations which result in “genetic drift” without the operation of Darwinian natural selection. Says Dr. Motoo Kimura of the National Institute of Genetics in Japan, evolution at the molecular level appears to be “quite incompatible with the expectations of Neo-Darwinism.” Other long held assumptions are being shaken as well. Biologist have told us that eukaryotes (human beings and most other forms of life) are ultimately descended from simpler cells called prokaryotes (among which are bacteria and algae). Fresh research is now undermining that theory, leading to the unsettling notion that the simpler life forms may have descended from the more complex. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Furthermore, evolution is supposed to favour adaptations that enhance survival. Yet we are now finding striking examples of evolutionary developments that seem to confer long-term benefit—at the cost of short-term disadvantage. Which does evolution favour? Then there is the startling news from, of all places, the Grant Park Zoon in Atlanta, where the chance mating of two species of ape with two quite different sets of chromosomes has produced the first known hybrid ape. Even though researchers are unsure whether the hybrid will be fertile, her bizarre genetics lend support to the idea that evolution may occur in leaps and bounds as well as through the accretion of small changes. Indeed, instead of seeing evolution as a smooth process, many of today’s life scientists and archaeologists are studying the “theory of catastrophes” to explain “gaps” and “jumps” in the multiple branches of the evolutionary record. Others are studying small changes that may have been amplified through feedback into sudden structural transformations. Heated controversies divide the scientific community over every one of these issues. However, all such controversies are dwarfed by a single history-changing fact. By 1957, as the first string of the Third Wave were being felt, Dr. Arthur Kornberg learned how DNA reproduced itself. Since then, as one popular summary describes the sequences “We have cracked the DNA code. We have learned how DNA transmits its instructions to the cell. We have analyzed chromosomes to determine genetic function. We have synthesized a cell. We have fused cells from two different species. We have isolated pure human genes. We have ‘mapped’ genes. We have synthesized a gene. We have changed the heredity of a cell.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Today genetic engineers in laboratories around the World are capable of creating entirely novel life forms. They have end-run evolution itself. Second Wave thinkers conceived of the human species as the culmination of a long evolutionary process; Third Wave thinkers must now face the fact that we are the designers of evolution. Evolution will never look the same. Like the concept of nature, evolution too is in the process of being drastically reconceptualized. With Second Wave ideas about the nature and evolution both changing, it is hardly surprising that we are also sharply re-evaluating Second Wave ideas about progress. The industrial period was characterized by a facile optimism that saw each scientific breakthrough or “new improved product” as evidence of an inevitable advance toward human perfection. Since the mid 19050’s, when Third Wave began battering Second Wave civilization, few ideas have taken as rough a beating as this cheery creed. The “beats” of the fifties and the hippies of the sixties made pessimism about the human condition, not optimism, a pervasive cultural theme. These movements did much to replace knee-jerk optimism with knee-jerk despair. Soon pessimism because positively chic. Hollywood movies of the 1950’s and 1960’s, for example, replaced the jut-jawed heroes of the 1930’s and 1940’s with alienated antiheroes—rebels without a cause, stylish gunmen, dope pushers with charm, angst-ridden motorcyclists, and hard, inarticulate (but soulful) punk. Life was a game nobody won. Fiction, drama, and art also took on a graveyard hopelessness in many Second Wave nations. By the early fifties, Camus had already defined the themes that countless novelists would subsequently purse. A British critic summed these up as: “Man is fallible, political theories are relative, automatic progress is a mirage.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Even science fiction, once filled with utopian adventures, turned bitter and pessimistic, generating countless poor imitations of Huxley and Orwell. Technology, instead of being portrayed as the engine of progress, increasingly appeared as a juggernaut destroying both human freedom and the physical environment. For many environmentalists, indeed, “progress” became a dirty word. Weighty volumes poured into the bookshops, bearing titles like The Stalled Society, The Coming Dark Age, In Danger of Progress, or The Death of Progress. As Second Wave society lurched into the seventies, The Club of Rome report on The Limits to Growth set a funereal tone for much of the decade that followed, with its projections of catastrophe for the industrial World. Upheavals, unemployment, and inflation intensified by the pandemic of 2020, adding to the spreading pall of pessimism and the rejection of the idea of the idea of inevitable human progress. Former Governor of California, Jerry Brown, spoke about the future being filled with “darkness and massive debt,” as he was leaving office, and the decline of the West—sending yet another frisson of fear down a good many spines. Whether such despair was, or is, justified remains for each reader to decide. One thing is clear, however: the notion of inevitable single-track progress, another pillar of indust-reality, is finding fewer takers as the start of the Fourth Wave civilization is looming close. There is fast a fast-spreading recognition around the World that progress can no longer be measure in terms of technology or material standards of living alone—that a society that is morally, aesthetically, politically, or environmentally degraded is not an advance society, no matter how rich or technically sophisticated it may be. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
In fact, we are moving toward a far more comprehensive notion of progress—progress no longer automatically achieved and no longer defined by material criteria lone. We are also less inclined to think of societies as moving along one track, each society traveling automatically from one cultural way-station to the next, one more “advanced” than another. There may be many branch lines, as it were, rather than a single roadbead, and societies may be able to achieve comprehensive development in a variety of ways. We are beginning to think of progress as the flowering of a tree with many branches extending into the future, the very variety and richness of human cultures serving as a measure. In this light, today’s shift toward a more diverse, de-massified World may itself come to be seen as an important forward leap—analogous to the tendency toward differentiation and complexity so common in biological evolution. Whatever happens next, it is unlikely that the culture will ever again return to the naïve, unilinear, Pollyannish progressivism that characterized and inspired the Second Wave era, unless we discover another planet we can live on and start over. Nonetheless, the past decades, therefore, have witnessed a forced reconceptualization of nature, evolution, and progress alike. These concepts, however, were in turn based on still more elemental ideas—our assumptions about time, space, matter, and causality. And the Third Wave is dissolving even these assumptions—the intellectual glue that held the Second Wave civilization together. So start the face with all deliberate speed, and try not to flop. Through frequent prayers and confessions and the sacred reception of Jesus Christ’s Host, we can get wind again and rejoin the race. If one does not do this or something like it soon, one will just never have the strength to stay on the course. Be partaker and heir of Eternal Glory. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
From adolescence on—the Author of Genesis knew this (8.21)—the senses of Humankind are prone to evil, and unless Divine Medicaments help, Humankind will go to the dogs; that is to say, proceed from the lesser sins to the greater. That is how Holy Communion pulls one back from evil and pushes one toward good. As long as your soul is entrapped, or enshrined in your mortal body, it travels through life as a part of Jesus Christ; that is as Paul put in in Second Corinthians (5.6). Therefore, your soul should be mindful of God Himself from time to time and receive its beloved Friend with a devout mind. Blessed is the soul that is finally prepared itself to receive Jesus Christ, the Lord God, with devotion! In return, He will fill that soul with spiritual joy! Happy is the mind that receives the Great Lord, welcomes as guest, receives a congenial companion, accepts a faithful friend, embraces a noble bachelor in front of a party of friends, a Friend of friends! May Heaven with all its pendants and Earth with all its ornaments pause in their tinkling orbits for a moment to homage to Jesus Christ, our Sweetest Friend! Whatever praise seeps or grace drips from the largesse of His Comedown, it is only spillage from His Ever-flowing Fount. As the Psalmist has sung, “There is no accounting for Your Wisdom” (147.5). Our hope in the Atonement empowers us with eternal perspective. Hope is an emotion which brings richness to our everyday lives. It is defined as “the feeling that events will turn out for the best. When we exercise hope, we look forward with desire and reasonable confidence. As such, hope brings a certain calming influence to our lives as we confidently look forward to future events. Sometimes we hope for things over which we have little or no control. We hope for good weather. We hope for an early spring. We hope our favourite sports team will win the World Cup, Super Bowl, or the World Series. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Such hopes make our lives interesting and can often lead to unusual, even superstitious behaviour. Other times our hopes can lead to dreams which can inspire us and lead us to action. If we have the hope to do better at work, that hope can be realized by dedicated work and sacrifice. If we have the hope to play on a winning team, that hope can lead to consistent practice, dedication, teamwork, and ultimately success. Hope can inspire dreams and spur us to realize those dreams. Hope alone, however, does not cause us to succeed. Many honourable hopes have gone unfulfilled, shipwrecked on the reefs of good intentions and laziness. Our hope in the Atonement empowers us with eternal perspective. Such perspective allows us to look beyond the here and now on into the promise of the eternities. We do not have to be trapped in the narrow confines of society’s fickle expectations. We are free to look forward to celestial glory, sealed to our family and loved ones. “Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must also be hope; and if there must be hope there must also be charity. And except ye have charity ye can in nowise be saved in the kingdom of God; neither can ye be saved in the kingdom of God if ye have not faith; neither can ye if we have no hope,” reports Moroni 10.20-21. Faith is rooted in Jesus Christ. Hope centers in the Atonement. Charity is manifest in the pure love of Christ. These three attributes are intertwined like strands in a cable and may not always be precisely distinguished. Together they become our tether to the celestial kingdom. “Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all humans,” reports 2 Nephi 31.20. This hope has lead humans through the ages to do remarkable things. It is my prayer that our hopes will lead to the fulfillment of our righteous dreams. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
I particularly pray our hope in the Atonement will strengthen our faith and charity and give us an eternal perspective of our future. May we all have this perfect brightness of hope. Lord, I come today seeking a financial breakthrough and your supernatural blessing. I know God that you are moving things and working all things together for my good. God, create an opening of your abundant supernatural supply. Break the curse of poverty and lack. And I thank You for all the blessings you have bestowed already. O Father the hem of whose garment is in the sky, whose grace falls from His glance, who gives life from the touch of one finger. O Father whose hair is the willow, whose breath is the riversong, who lopes through the milky way, baying, stars going out, O Lord whose deathshead holds a thousand eyes eye socket black imploded stars, who trails frail as a northern virgin on the mist, O Lord flying your bright drops to us, emblems of your love, throw your green scarf on the battered Earth once more. O smile, disrobe for us, unveil your eyes. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy king. We sanctify Thy name on Earth even as it is sanctified in the Heavens above, as described in the vision of Thy prophet: And the seraphim called one unto another saying: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole Earth is full of His glory. Whereupon the angles declare; Blessed be the glory of God from His Heavenly abode. And as it is written in the holy Scripture: The Lord shall reign forever; Thy God, O Zion, shall be Sovereign unto all generations. Hallelujah! Unto all generations we will declare Thy greatness and to all eternity we will proclaim Thy holiness. Our mouth shall ever speak Thy praise, O our God, for Thou art a great and holy God and King. Blessed Art Thou, O Lord, the holy God. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy King. Thou endowest humans with knowledge and teachest mortal humans understanding. O great us knowledge, understanding, and discernment. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who bestowest knowledge upon humans. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Better to Have Liberty Fraught with Danger than Servitude in Peace!
Respect is what we owe; love is what we give. As the moral movement was declining in the late 1800s, due to overcrowding, limited funding, and ineffective hospital treatments in state hospitals across the United States of America, which has continued well into the twenty-first century, two opposing perspectives emerged and began to vie for the attention of clinicians (a doctor having direct contact with and responsibility for patients, rather than one involved with theoretical or laboratory studies): the somatogenic perspective, the view that abnormal psychological functioning has physical causes, and the psychogenic perspective, the view that the chief causes of abnormal functioning are psychological. These perspectives came into full bloom during the twentieth century. The somatogenic perspective has at least a 2,400-year history—remember Hippocrates’ view that abnormal behaviour resulted from brain disease and an imbalance of humors? Not until the late nineteenth century, however, did this perspective make a triumphant return and begin to gain wide acceptance. Two factors were responsible for this rebirth. One was the work of an eminent German researcher, Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926). In 1883 Dr. Kraepelin published an influential textbook which argued that physical factors, such as fatigue, are responsible for mental dysfunction. In addition, he also constructed the first modern system for classifying abnormal behaviour. He identified various syndromes, or clusters of symptoms; listed their physical causes; and discussed their expected course. Dr. Kraepelin also measured the effects of various drugs on abnormal behaviour. New biological discoveries also triggered the rise of the somatogenic perspective. One of the most important discoveries was that an organic disease, syphilis, led to general paresis, an irreversible disorder with both physical and mental symptoms, including paralysis and delusions of grandeur. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
In 1897 Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902), a German neurologist, injected matter from syphilis sores into patients suffering from general paresis and found that none of the patients developed symptoms of syphilis. Their immunity could have been caused only by an earlier case of syphilis. Since all patients with general paresis were now immune to syphilis, Dr. Krafft-Ebing theorized that syphilis had been the cause of their general paresis. Finally, in 1905, Fritz Schaudinn (18871-1906), a German zoologist, discovered that the microorganism Treponema pallida was responsible for syphilis, which in turn was responsible for general paresis. The work of Dr. Kraepelin and the new understanding of general paresis led many researchers and practitioners to suspect that organic factors were responsible for many mental disorders, perhaps all of them. These theories and the possibility of quick and effective medical solutions for mental disorders were especially welcomed by those who worked in mental hospitals, where patient populations were now growing at an alarming rate. Despite the general optimism, biological approaches yielded largely disappointing results throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Although many medical treatments were developed for patients in mental hospitals during that time, most of the techniques failed to work. Physicians tried tooth extraction, tonsillectomy, hydrotherapy (alternating how and cold baths), and lobotomy, a surgical cutting of certain nerve fibers in the brain. Even worse, biological views and claims led, in some circles, to proposals for immoral solutions such as eugenic sterilization. In the years 1896, Connecticut became the first state in the United States of America to prohibit persons with mental disorders from marrying. 1896-1933, every state in the United States of America passed a law prohibiting marriage by persons with mental disorders. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Indiana became the first state to pass a bill calling for people with mental disorders, as well as criminals and other “defectives,” to undergo sterilization in the year 1907. Just 20 years later, in 1927, the United States of America’s Supreme Court ruled that eugenic sterilization was constitutional. Between the years 1907-1945, around 45,000 Americans were sterilized under eugenic sterilization laws; 21,000 of them were patients in state mental hospitals. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland passed eugenic sterilization laws from 1929-1932. In 1933, Germany passed a eugenic sterilization law, under which 375,000 people were sterilized by 1940. That very same year, Nazi Germany begin to use “proper gases” to kill people with mental disorders; 70,000 or more people were killed in less than two years. Whenever, therefore, Man takes up the task of ordering life on a rational and human basis, he has to been the problem of deciding what is to be done about this surplus. All human societies have been perpetually concerned with this problem from the outset, to a large extent unconsciously, to an ever-increasing degree consciously. By a systematic survey of the various races of the World, it is clear how the natural tendency to excess of population is among every human race. Naturally, the goal is checked in a great variety of ways, preventive, by the exercise of a restraint on procreation, and positive, by the destruction of the excess due to unrestrained procreation. These positive checks are extremely various and include every cause, whether arising from vice or misery, which in any degree contributes to shorten the natural duration of life. Under this head are enumerated all unwholesome occupations, severe labour and exposure to the seasons, extreme poverty, bad nursing of children, great towns, excesses of all kinds, the entire train of common diseases, and epidemics, pandemics, wars, plagues, famines. The whole of the obstacles to increase of population, preventative and positive, are regarded as resolvable into moral restraint, vice, and misery. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The Eugenics Education Society believes that we need a decrease among the grossly defective class and that may be accompanied by an even greater increase among the less defective class just above them. The whole tone of a nation is permanently affected by the moral and intellectual contagion which is due to the presence in its ranks of persons of inferior type, even thought they are not of the lowest type. No compulsory sterilization can be enforced here; it is a problem which must be met indirectly. There can be no reasonable doubt that it makes for some benefit to the race, and is certainly for the benefit of the children who remain unborn and the parents who are spared the pains and trouble of begetting them, that parents who are mentally abnormal or defective should not begat or conceive children. During World War I in the United States of America, a number of laws were passed in many states for ordaining compulsory sterilization. These laws were often badly made as well as premature, frequently repealed or declared unconstitutional. Modern California has become so liberal, but that was not always the case. The sterilization of the insane or defective began in California in 1927, and it was the ordinary course carried out by agreement with the husband or wife or nearest relations when the patients are not legally competent to give their consent. During that time, in Californian mental hospitals, if strong objections were offered to it, though, by a wise precaution, sterilization was not performed. However, the inmates of mental homes were not allowed out, even for a short period, without sterilization. It has been estimated that the sterilization of even one tenth of the population would produce an appreciably beneficial eugenic effect on the whole nations, which is why so many people are happy that OSHA declared President Biden’s mandated vaccination of termination of employment unconstitutional. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
However, it is by the increase in the knowledge of heredity, by the spread of education among the masses of the population, and—perhaps above all—by the growth of the sense of social responsibility, that alone real progress is possible. Not until the 1950s, when a number of effective medications were finally discovered, did the somatogenic perspective truly begin to pay off for patients. The psychogenic perspective—the late nineteenth century also saw the emergence of the psychogenic perspective, the view that the chief causes of abnormal functioning are often psychological. This view, too, had a long history. The Roman statesman’s and orator Cicero (106-43 B.C.) held that psychological disturbances could cause bodily ailments, and the Greek physician Galen believed that many mental disorders are caused by fear, disappointment in love, and other psychological events. However, the psychogenic perspective did not gain much of a following until studies of hypnotism demonstrated its potential. Hypnotism is a procedure that places people in a trancelike mental state during which they become extremely suggestible. It was used to help treat psychological disorders as far back as 1778, when an Austrian physician named Friedrich Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) established a clinic in Paris. His patients suffered from hysterical disorders, mysterious bodily ailments that had no apparent physical basis. Dr. Mesmer had his patients sit in a darkened room filled with music; then he appeared, dressed in a flamboyant costume, and touched the troubled area of each patient’s body with a special rod. A surprising number of patients seemed to be helped by this treatment, called mesmerism. Their pain, numbness, or paralysis disappeared. Several scientists believed that Dr. Mesmer was inducing a trancelike state in his patients and that this state was causing their symptoms to disappear. The treatment was so controversial, however, that eventually Dr. Mesmer was banished from Paris. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
It was not until years after Dr. Mesmer died that many researchers had the courage to investigate his procedure, later called hypnotism (from hypnos, the Greek word for “sleep”), and its effects on hysterical disorders. By the late nineteenth century, two competing vies had emerged. Because hypnosis—a technique relying on the power of suggestion—was able to alleviate hysterical ailments, some scientists concluded that hysterical disorders must be caused by the power of suggestion—that is, by the mind—in the first place. In contrast, other scientists believed that historical disorders had subtle physiological causes. For example, Jean Charot (1825-1893), Paris’s most eminent neurologist, argued that hysterical disorders were the result of degeneration in portions of the brain. The experiments of two physicians practicing in the city of Nancy in France finally seemed to settle the matter. Hippolyte-Marie Bernheim (1840-1919) and Ambroise-Auguste Liebault (1823-1904) showed that hysterical disorders could actually be induced in otherwise normal subjects while they were under the influence of hypnosis. That is, the physicians could make normal people experience deafness, paralysis, blindness, or numbness by means of hypnotic suggestion—and they could remove these artificial symptoms by the name means. Thus, they established that a mental process—hypnotic suggestion—could both cause and cure even a physical dysfunction. Leading scientists, including Dr. Charcot, finally embraced the idea that hysterical disorders were largely psychological in origin, and the psychogenic perspective rose in popularity. Among those who studied the effects of hypnotism on hysterical disorders was Josef Breuer (1842-1925) of Vienna. This physician discovered that his patients sometimes awoke free of hysterical symptoms after speaking candidly under hypnosis about past upsetting events. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
During the 1890s Dr. Breuer was joined in his work by another Viennese, physician, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Dr. Freud’s work eventually led him to develop the theory of psychoanalysis, which holds that many forms of abnormal and normal psychological functioning are psychogenic. In particular, he believed that unconscious psychological processes are at the root of such functioning. Dr. Freud also developed the technique of psychoanalysis, a form of discussion in which clinicians help troubled people gain insight into their unconscious psychological processes. He believed that such insight, even without hypnotic procedures, would help the patients overcome their psychological problems. Dr. Freud and his followers applied the psychoanalytic treatment approach primarily to patients suffering from anxiety or depression, problems that did not typically require hospitalization. These patients visited therapists in their offices for session of approximately an hour and then went about their daily activities—a format of treatment now known as outpatient therapy. By the early twentieth century, psychoanalytic theory and treatment were widely accepted throughout the Western World. The psychoanalytic approach had little effect on the treatment of severely disturbed patients in mental hospitals, however. This type of therapy requires levels of clarity, insight, and verbal skill beyond the capabilities of most such patients. Moreover, psychoanalysis often takes years to be effective, and the overcrowded and understaffed public mental hospitals could not accommodate such a leisurely pace. If you have every struggled with an eating disorder in the past, you know that the path to recovery can be hard. Therefore, it is important that the government offers more funding to help people with dysfunctional behaviour. There is commonly held misconception that eating disorders are a lifestyle choice. Eating disorders are actually serious and often fatal illnesses that are associated with severe disturbances in people’s eating behaviours and related thoughts and emotions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Preoccupation with food, body weight, and shape may also signal an eating disorder. Common eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. People with anorexia nervosa may see themselves as overweight, even when they are dangerously underweight. People with anorexia nervosa typically weigh themselves repeatedly, severely restrict the amount of food they eat, often exercise excessively, and/or may force themselves to vomit or use laxatives to lose weight. Anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder. While many people with this disorder die from complications associated with starvation, others die of suicide. People with bulimia nervosa have recurrent and frequent episodes of eating unusually large amounts of food and feeling a lack of control over these episodes. This binge-eating is followed by behaviour that compensates for the overeating such as forced vomiting, excessive use of laxatives or diuretics, fasting, excessive exercise, or a combination of these behaviours. People with bulimia nervosa may be slightly underweight, normal weight, or above average weight. People with binge-eating disorder lose control over his or her eating. Unlike bulimia nervosa, periods of binge-eating are not followed by purging, excessive exercise, of fasting. As a result, people with binge-eating disorder often are above average weight or obese. Binge-eating disorder is the most common eating disorder in the United States of America. Binge-eating may be considered a medical concern and not dysfunctional behaviour. The ratio of females to males suffering from anorexia nervosa is approximately 10.1. This may be due to the greater concerns with body image, dieting, and weight control among women compared to men. Perhaps owing to the widely held importance of the relationship with the same-sex parent in a child’s development, a great deal of attention has been granted to mother-daughter relationships in eating disorders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Girls with eating disorders have been known to describe their mothers as overprotective and less caring. In light of such findings, it is not surprising to discover that mothers of daughters with eating disorders have expressed a desire for greater family cohesion than what they currently perceive. A group of young women with eating disorders retrospectively reported maternal relations that involve more emotional coldness, indifference, and rejection, compared to a sample of controls. Some evidence suggests that dietary restraint may be passed on from other to daughter. In this particular sample of mother, they had a history of eating disorders. In a very carefully controlled study, rates of eating disorders in mothers of a group of probands (a person serving as the starting point for the genetic study of a family) diagnosed with bulimia nervosa, but with no history of anorexia nervosa. Their results indicated that 26 percent of the mothers of probands with bulimia nervosa had a lifetime diagnosis of some form of eating disorder (exempli gratia, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, eating disorder not otherwise specified, binge-eating disorder). This rate was significantly higher than that for mothers of a control group with no history of eating disorders. Of course, family studies confound the effects of genes and environment; thus it is not entirely clear whether the association between mothers’ and daughters’ eating disorders is the result of maternal genetic contributions, or of the social environment to which mothers contribute. Investigations of mothers’ attitudes toward their daughters’ body image paint an even more dismal picture of mother-daughter relations. Mothers of girls with eating disorders in one study thought that their daughters ought to lose significantly more weight than mothers of girls without eating disorders thought about their daughters. Sadly, these same mothers rated their daughters as significantly less attractive than the daughters rated themselves! This is particularly amazing, given that people with eating disorders typically have low self-esteem and a negative body image, and hence are unlikely to inflate ratings of their own attractiveness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Data provided by mothers in an interview study indicated that mothers of daughters with bulimia nervosa were more controlling and held higher expectations for their daughters than control mothers. The effects of being in a relationship with a mother prone to such negative and excessive evaluations could be extremely caustic for an adolescent girl. The attention grated to mothers of children with eating disorders has been criticized by feminist scholars as “mother-blaming.” The tendency to see mothers as casually related to child problems is a legacy of the psychoanalytic school, which overemphasized mothers’ roles and devalued the influence of fathers. At the same time, however, psychodynamically oriented theorists argue that many girls with eating disorders use food as a means of fighting a battle (both interpersonally and intrapsychically) with their overprotective but nonempathic mothers. The data on mothers’ roles in the pathogenesis of eating disorders are alluring. Whether they represent a disrespectful and misguided focus, or a theoretically and etiologically meaningful domain of inquiry, will best be resolved through future empirical investigation, particularly with comparative collateral data from fathers. “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you,” reports Isaiah 60.1. A lot of people subconsciously feel like victims and they project this victim mentality on to others. They are so focused on what they have been through, complaining about how unfair it was, and they do not even realize they are living in the past. It is they get up each day with a new story of how hurt and weak they are and want to share that misery with others. However, one has to get some therapy, go to church, or talk to a doctor and get on some medication and let that stuff go! #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The past does not have to poison your future. Just because you have been through the ringer, or perhaps your dreams have been shattered, that does not mean that it is the end for you. God has another plan. God still have a bright future mapped out for you on this journey. However, each and every last one of us needs to understand this one important principal: The past is not present. One cannot undo anything that has happened to one. One cannot relive one moment in the past. However, one can do something right now. Do not dwell on the negative things that have happened. Do not think about all you have lost. Do not focus on what could have been if Taylor Swift did not steal your man. Be like Celine Dion and proclaim a new day has come. If one does that, God will give one a new beginning. God allows people to grieve for a certain period of time, but then He expects them to get up and go one with their lives. However, God does not expect us to be emotionless. It is okay to allow hurts from the past to register and process, but do not hold yourself there for too long or you might miss the new man God has lined up for you. Therefore, do not let that season of mourning turn into a lifetime of dysfunction, living a sour and negative life, going around with static. Some people wake up in the morning and before they groom themselves, brush their teeth or change their underwear, they out there hating on Paris Hilton. It is what brings them joy. However, that is why no one wants them. They are miserable and unhappy, evil and ugly. No man wants that kind of sour patch in his life. We all are living through tough times, no matter how rich one is, but it is important to shake it off, shake it off, and expect good things to happen. Enjoy life. We are so blessed to be alive. Are you still sour because Beyonce got that promotion a couple of years ago instead of you? Is your attitude negative because you were not able to buy that Cresleigh Home at Millionaires Station or the Ultimate Driving Machine? Are you bitter because Paris Hilton got married and your relationship is headed for the rocks? Are you angry because you were abused as a child? #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Are you jealous because Aaliyah’s hair is longer and more shinny than yours? Stop! Stop morning over something you do not have or something that is already over and done. You have to let go of that mentality that you are so pathetic that all you can do is lay around eating, and complaining how hard your life is. Your future can start right now. It does not matter what you have been through. God wants to turn that around. God wants you to invite him into your life. Stop lying and being jealous. No one can make you open the door to God. All others can do is encourage you, but it is your choice what type of life you want to live. Develop a successful mentality. Let love fill your heart. Greet each day with a smile and a flip of your hair. Know that God is going to make it up to you. Just because your parents could not send you to Princeton does not mean that you have to fill your life with poison. There is nothing more than the enemy loves more than to see you sour, jealous and bitter. Many people have made a lot of mistakes, but the good news is we can all repent. God wants to take those negative experiences and use them to you advantage to make you stronger. Forget what lies behind with you and press on. Jesus Christ desires us to receive Him devoutly and reverently. Jesus Christ desires us to lead Him into our home, so He will favour us. Let your soul desire Christ’s Body in your Host. Christ’s heart desires to be united with you. Let Jesus Christ hand Himself over to you, and know that will be enough to satisfy your desires. For without the Holy Presence of Christ, consolation grows stale, falls flat, loses its flavour. Without Jesus Christ, we all have the staggers. Without Jesus’ sacramental visits, we would not have the strength to carry one. Approach the Holy Table frequently. If you do not stop, Jesus will stop the Celestial Alimony, and one will lose what little sense of direction one has. When preaching to the people and healing their maladies, Jesus in His mercy sometimes had to stop cold and says, “Those of you who are fasting, I cannot send you away on empty stomachs for fear you will never make it home.” That is how Matthew put it (15.32). #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The government is here on Earth for our well-being and to protect the rights of our citizens. Never forget that America is one nation under God with liberty and justice for all. The sovereign can entrust the government to the entire people or to the majority of the people, so that there are more citizens who are magistrates than who are ordinary private citizens. This form of government is given the name of democracy. Or else it can restrict the government to the hands of a small number, so that there are more ordinary citizens than magistrates; and this form is called aristocracy. Finally, it can concentrate the entire government in the hands of a single magistrate from whom all the others derive their power. This third form is the most common and is called monarchy or royal government. It should be noted that all these forms, or at least the first two, can be had in greater or lesser degrees, and even have a rather wide range. For democracy can include the entire populace or be restricted to half. Aristocracy, for its part, can be indeterminately restricted from half the people down to the smallest number. Even royalty can be had in varying levels of distribution. Sparta always had two kings, as required by its constitution; and the Roman Empire is known to have had up to eight emperors at a time, without it being possible to say that the empire was divided. Thus there is a point at which each form of government is indistinguishable from the next, and it is apparent that, under just three names, government can take on as many diverse forms as the state has citizens. Moreover, since this same government can, in certain respects, be subdivided into other parts, one administered in one way, another in another, there can result from the combination of these three forms a multitude of mixed forms, each of which can be multiplied by all the simple forms. There has always been a great deal of argument over the best form of government, without considering that each one of them is best in certain cases and the worst in others. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If the number of supreme magistrates in the different states ought to be in inverse ratio to that of the citizens, it follows that in general democratic government is suited to small states, aristocratic government to states of intermediate size, and monarchical government to large ones This rule is derived immediately from the principle; but how is one to count the multitude of circumstances that can furnish exceptions? One who makes the law knows better than anyone else how it should be executed and interpreted. It seems therefore to be impossible to have a better constitution than one in which the executive power is united to the legislative power. However, this is precisely what renders such a government inadequate in certain respects, since things that should be distinguished are not, and the prince and sovereign, being merely the same person, form, as it were, only a government without a government. It is not good for the one who makes them laws to execute them, nor for the body of the people to turn its attention away from general perspectives in order to give it particular objects. Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests on public affairs; and the abuse of the laws by the government is a lesser evil than the corruption of the legislator, which is the inevitable outcome of particular perspectives. In such a situation, since the state is being substantially altered, all reform becomes impossible. A people that would never misuse government would never misuse independence. A people that would always govern well would not need to be governed. Taking the term in the strict sense, a true democracy has never existed and never will. It is contrary to the natural order that the majority govern and the minority is governed. It is unimaginable that the people would remain constantly assembled to handle public affairs; and it is readily apparent that it could not establish commissions for this purpose without changing the form of administration. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
In fact, I believe I can lay down as a principle that when the functions of the government are shared among several tribunals, those with the fewest members sooner or later acquire the greatest authority, if and only if because of the facility in expediting public business which brings this about naturally. Besides, how many things that are difficult to unite are presupposed by this government? First, a very small state where it is easy for the people to gather together and where each citizen can easily know all the others. Second, a great simplicity of mores, which prevents the multitude of public business and thorny discussions. Next, a high degree of equality in ranks and fortunes, without which equality in rights and authority cannot subsist for long. Finally, little or no luxury, for luxury either is the effect of wealth or it makes wealth necessary. It simultaneously corrupts both the rich and the poor, the one by possession, the other by covetousness. It sells the homeland to softness and vanity. It takes all its citizens from the state in order to make them slaves to one another, and all of them to opinion. This is why a famous author has made virtue the principle of the republic. For all these conditions could not subsist without virtue. However, owing to one’s failure to have made the necessary distinctions, this great genius often lacked precision and sometimes clarity. And one did not realize that since the sovereign authority is everywhere the same, the same principle should have a place in every well constituted state, though in a greater or lesser degree, it is true, according to the form of government. Let us add that no government is so subject to civil wars and internal agitations as a democratic or popular one, since there is none that tends so forcefully and continuously to change its form, or demands greater vigilance and courage to be maintained in its own form. Above all, it is under this constitution that the citizens ought to arm oneself with force and constancy, and to say each day of one’s life from the bottom of one’s heart with a virtuous Palatine said in the Diet of Poland: Better to have liberty fraught with danger than servitude in peace. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Were there are people of gods, it would govern itself democratically. So perfect a government is not suited to humans. The organized politico-economy substitutes for organized religion have hardly proved any better when put into active life rather than mere theory. They have introduced much hate, misery, oppression, persecution, superstition, and war, like the other. In connection with the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, Mao Tsetung wrote that the working classes would from then on take over leadership in all activities. That is to say, the least fitted by natural mental development, experience, and acquired education would dictate what was to be taught in philosophical and similar reflections about life, man, and history, if indeed such subjects would not be dropped altogether as unpractical, hence useless. The Peking Institute of Philosophy, a leading one in China, stopped publishing its journal Philosophical Research in 1966. The fundamental mistakes which is responsible for the harm and evil and misery caused when these teachings of economic equality are put into harsh practice, is to do so in separation from the teachings concerning man’s spiritual life and spiritual needs. If the two were joined together then the fanaticism, delusion, and brutality of such practice would eliminate itself. It is inevitable that a group which espouses belief in atheistic materialism will also espouse belief in the use of force and violence to establish itself and its views. If there will be no peace, it is because they do not really want it. The most frenzied exponents of materialistic values today are those who have developed enough intellect to lose their faith in the hypocrisies of conventional religion but who have lost their true intuition along with their false belief. Such are the leaders and advocates of communism everywhere. Thus the good in their development is offset by the evil. The result is spiritual chaos and social turmoil for the masses who follow them. Since both the religious and their rebels have contributed to this situation, there is no remedy save in a clearer insight on the part of both. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
It is impossible to reconcile the criminal ethics and materialistic ideology of Communism with the lofty ethics and mystical ideology of philosophy. There is no communication and every disparity between them. The itch to meddle in other people’s affairs and to mind their business for them is an ancient one. It reaches its extreme degrees in tyrannies like the Germany Nazi and the Russian Communist and certain American political parties and clubs, where state interference in the people’s lives, culture, religion, and freedom become intolerable. Never before have so many people in so many countries—even educated and supposedly sophisticated people—been so intellectually helpless, drowning, as it were, in a maelstrom of conflicting, confusing, and cacophonous ideas. Colliding visions rock our mental Universe. Every day brings some new fad, scientific finding, religion, movement, or manifesto. Nature worship, ESP, holistic medicine, sociobiology, anarchism, structuralism, neo-Marxism, the new physics, Eastern mysticism, technophilia, technophobia, social media, the Internet, and a thousand other currents and crosscurrents sweep across the screen of consciousness, each with its scientific priesthood or ten-minute guru. We see a mounting attack on establishment science. We see a wildfire revival of fundamentalist religion and a desperate search for something—almost anything—to believe in. Much of this confusion is actually the result of an intensifying cultural war—the collision of an emerging Third Wave culture with the entrenched ideas and assumptions of industrial society. For just as the Second Wave engulfed traditional views and spread the belief system I call indust-reality, so today we see the beginnings of a philosophical revolt aimed at overthrowing the reigning assumptions of the past 360 years. They key ideas of the industrial period are being discredited, discounted, superseded, or subsumed into much larger and more powerful theories. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The core beliefs of Second Wave civilization did not win acceptance during the nearly past four centuries without a bitter struggle. In science, in education, in religion, in a thousand fields, the “progressive” thinkers of the industrialism fought against the “reactionary” thinkers who reflected and rationalized agricultural societies. Today it the defenders of industrialism who have their backs against the wall as a new, Third Wave culture has taken form. Nothing illustrates this clash of ideas more clearly than our changing image of nature. In the past decade a Worldwide environmental movement has sprung up in response to fundamental, potentially dangerous changes in the Earth’s biosphere. And this movement has done more than attack pollution, food additives, nuclear reactors, highways, and hairspray aerosols. It has also forced us to rethink or dependency on nature. As a consequence, instead of conceiving ourselves as engaged in a bloody way with nature, we are moving toward a fresh view that emphasizes symbiosis or harmony with the earth. We are shifting from an adversary to a nonadversary posture. At the scientific level, this has led to thousands of studies aimed at understanding ecological relationships so that we can soften out impacts on nature or channel them in constructive ways. We have just begun to appreciate the complexity and dynamism of these relationships and to reconceptualize society itself in terms of recycling, renewability, and the carrying capacity of natural systems. All this is mirrored in a corresponding shift of popular attitudes toward nature. Whether we examine opinion surveys or the lyrics of pop songs, the visual imagery in advertising or the content of sermons, we find evidence of a heightened, though often romantic regard for nature. City dwellers by the millions of years for the countryside, and the Urban Land Institute reports a significant population shift toward rural areas. Interest in natural foods, hunting one’s own food, and natural childbirth, biorhythms, or body care has boomed in recent years. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
And public suspicion of technology is so widespread that even the most single-minded pursuers of GNP (Gross National Product) today pay at least lip service to the idea that nature must be protected, not raped—that the adverse side effects of technology on nature must be anticipated and prevented, not simply ignored. Because our power to damage has escalated, the Earth now is regarded as far more fragile than Second Wave civilization suspected. At the same time, it is seen as a diminishing dot in a Universe that grows larger and more complex with every passing moment. Since the Third way began some 85 years ago, scientists have developed a whole battery of new tools for probing nature’s most distant reaches. In turn these lasers, rockets, accelerators, plasmas, fantastic photographic capabilities, computers, laser lock cutters, and colliding-beam devices have burst our conception of what surrounds us. We are not looking at phenomena that are bigger, smaller, and faster by orders of magnitudes than any we examined during the Second Wave. Today we are probing phenomena that are as tiny as 1/1,000,000,000,000,000th of a centimeter in an explorable Universe whose edge lies at least 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away. We are studying phenomena so short-lived that they occur in 1/10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000th of a second. By contrast our astronomers and cosmologists tell us the Universe is some 20,000,000,000 years old. The sheer scale of explorable nature has burst beyond yesterday’s wildest assumptions. Moreover, in this swirling vastness, we are told, the Earth may not be the only inhabited sphere. Says astronomer Otto Struve, “the vast number of stars that mist possess planets, the conclusions of many biologists that life is an inherent property of certain types of complicated molecules or aggregates of molecules, the uniformity throughout the Universe of the chemical elements, the light and heat emitted by solar-type stars, and the occurrence of water not only on the Earth but on Mars and Venus, compel us to revise out thinking” and consider the possibility of extraterrestrial life. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
This does not mean little green humanoids. And it does not mean (or not mean) UFOs. However, by suggesting that life is not unique to the Earth, it further alters our perception of nature and our place in it. Since 1960, scientists have been listening in the dark, hoping to detect signals from some distant intelligence. The United States of America’s Congress has held hearings on “The Possibility of Intelligent Life Elsewhere in the Universe.” And the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, as it streaked into interstellar space carried with it a pictorial greeting to extraterrestrials. There is a rover on Mars surveying and taking pictures, and even private corporations planning to go into outer space. As the Third Wave dawns, our own planet seems much smaller and more vulnerable. Our place in the Universe seems less grandiose. And even the remote possibility that we are not alone gives us pause. Our image of nature is not what it used to be. Someday, let us be sure, the World will recognize all that it owes to those noble pioneers who, at the risk of obloquy, had the vision to see the fate that Threatens Man and the courage to face it with hope. Dear Lord in Heaven, I know the ashes signify that which has been destroyed in my life, but beginning this moment, I believe You can bring new fire into my life. I refuse to dwell on my disappointments. Instead, I will trust You for new appointments. Remember, remember, the circles of the sky, the stars and the brown eagle, the supernatural winds breathing night and day from the four directions. Remember, remember the great life of the sun breathing on the Earth, it lies upon the Earth to bring out life upon the Earth, life covering the Earth. Remember, remember the sacredness of things running streams and dwellings the young within the nest, a hearth for sacred fire the holy ray of light. Thou sustainest the living with lovingkindness, and in great mercy callest the departed to everlasting life. Thou upholdest the falling, healest the sick, settest free those in bondage, and keepest faith with those that sleep in the durst. Who is like unto Thee, Almighty King, who decreest death and life and bringest forth salvation? Who may be compared to Thee, Father of mercy, who in love rememberest thy creatures unto life? Faithful art Thou to grant eternal life to the departed. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who callest the dead to everlasting. Holy art Thou, and holy is Thy name and unto Thee holy beings render praise daily. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy God. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It is the ultimate hustle. As 1800 approached, the treatment of people with mental disorders began to improve once again. Historians usually point to La Bicetre, and asylum in Paris for male patients, as the first site of asylum reform. In 1793, during the French Revolution, Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) was named the chief physician there. He argued that the patients were sick people whose illness should be treated with sympathy and kindness rather than chains and beatings. He unchained them and allowed them to move freely about the hospital grounds, replaced the dark dungeons with sunny, well-ventilated rooms, and offered support and advice. Dr. Pinel’s approach proved remarkably successful. Patients who had been shut away for decades were now enjoying fresh air and sunlight and being treated with dignity. Many improved greatly over a short period of time and were released. Dr. Pinel later brought similar reforms to a mental hospital in Paris, France for female patients, La Salpetriere. Jean Esquirol (1772-1840), Dr. Pinel’s student and successor, went on to help establish 10 new mental hospitals that operated on the same principles. Meanwhile an English Quaker named William Tuke (1732-1819) was bringing similar reforms to northern England. In 1796 he founded the York Retreat, a rural estate where about 30 mental patients lived as guests in quiet country houses and were treated with a combination of rest, talk, prayer, and manual work. “For God has done what the Law could not do, [its power] being weakened by the flesh [the entire nature of man without the Holy Spirit]. Sending His own Son in the guise of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, [God] condemned sin in the flesh [subdued, overcame, deprived it of its power over all who accept that sacrifice],” reports Romans 8.3. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
The spread of moral treatment—the methods of Dr. Pinel and Mr. Tuke, called spectful techniques, caught on throughout Europe and the United States of America. Patients with psychological problems were increasingly perceived as potentially productive human beings whose mental functioning had broken down under stress. They were considered deserving of individual care, including discussions of their problems, useful activities, work, companionship, and quiet. The person most responsible for the early spread of moral treatment in the United States of America was Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), an eminent physician at Pennsylvania Hospital. Limiting his practice to mental illness, Dr. Rush developed innovative, humane approaches to treatment. For example, he required that the hospital hire intelligent and sensitive attendant to work closely with patients, reading and talking to them and taking them on regular walks. He also suggested that it would be therapeutic for doctors to give small gifts to their patients now and then. Dr. Rush, widely considered the father of American psychiatry, also wrote the first American treatise on mental illness and organized the first American course in psychiatry. Dr. Rush’s work was influential, but it was a Boston Schoolteacher named Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) who made humane care a public and political concern in the United States of America. In 1841 Mrs. Dix had gone to teach Sunday school at a local prison and been shocked by the conditions she saw there. Before long, her interest in prison conditions broadened to include the plight of poor and mentally ill people throughout the country. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
A powerful campaigner, Mrs. Dix went from state legislature to state legislature speaking of the horrors she had observed and calling for reform. Similarly, she told the Congress of the United States of America that mentally ill people across the country were still being “bound with galling chains, bowed beneath fetters and heavy iron balls attached to drag chains, lacerated with ropes, scourged with rods and terrified beneath storms of execration and cruel blows.” From 1841 until 1881, Mrs. Dix fought for new laws and greater government funding to improve the treatment of people with mental disorders. Each state was made responsible for developing effective public mental hospitals. Mrs. Dix personally helped established 32 of these state hospitals (state-run public mental institutions in the United States of America), all intended to offer moral treatment. Similar hospitals were established throughout Europe. The Decline of moral treatment—as we have observed, the treatment of abnormality has followed a crooked path. Over and over again, relative progress has been followed by serious decline. Viewed in this context, it is not surprising that the moral treatment movement began to decline toward the end of the nineteenth century. Several factors were responsible. One was the speed with which the moral movement had spread. As mental hospitals multiplied, severe money and staffing shortages developed, recovery rates declined, and overcrowding in the hospitals became a major problem. Under such conditions it was often impossible to provide individual care and genuine concern. Another factor was the assumption behind moral treatment that if treated with humanity and dignity, all patients could be cured. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
For some, being treated with compassion and respect was indeed sufficient. Others, however, needed more effective treatments than any that had yet been developed. Many of these people remained hospitalized until they died. An additional factor contributing to the decline of moral treatment was the emergence of a new wave of prejudice against people with mental disorders. As more and more patients disappeared into large distant mental hospitals, the public came to view them as strange and dangerous. In turn, people were less open-handed when it came to making donations or allocating government funds. Moreover, many of the patients entering public mental hospitals in the United States of America in the late nineteenth century were impoverished foreign immigrants, whom the public had little interest in helping. By the early years of the twentieth century, the moral treatment movement had ground to a halt in both the United States of America and Europe. Public mental hospitals were providing only custodial care and ineffective medical treatments and were becoming more overcrowded every year. Long-term hospitalization became the rule once again. Beware of the evil eye—a number of demonological explanations for abnormal behaviour continue in today’s World. In rural Pakistan, for example, many parents apply special makeup around the eyes of their young children, as their ancestors have done for centuries. A paste of hazelnut powder and several oils, known as surma, is applied partly to protect the eyes from the smoke given off by home heating fires and partly to cool and clean the eyes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
However, another less acknowledged reason is to ward off nazar, the “evil eye,” thought to be responsible for the many deaths among the infants and for poor health and behavioural problems in those who survive. The American Psychiatric Association recognizes two distinct subtypes of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Obesity is currently considered more of a medical condition than a mental health problem. The defining features of anorexia nervosa include a refusal to maintain a normal body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, and a disturbance in body image and perception. Bulimia nervosa is defined by recurrent episodes of uncontrolled binge eating, inappropriate compensatory behaviours to control weight gain (exempli gratia, self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives or diuretics), and an undue influence of body shape and weight on self-evaluations. A chief difference between the two disorders is that individuals with bulimia nervosa are able to maintain their body weight at or above normally prescribed levels, whereas those with anorexia nervosa have a body weight below 85 percent of what is expected. Similar to depression and alcoholism, eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa, have a lethal component. The long-term mortality for those afflicted with anorexia nervosa is estimated to be over 10 percent. The standardizes mortality ratio (observed mortality divided by expected mortality) for people with eating disorders is 3.6 for people under 20 years of age, 9.9 for those aged 20-29, and 5.7 for those over age 30. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Among females, the lifetime prevalence of anorexia nervosa has been estimated at 0.5 percent, and 1.3 percent for bulimia nervosa. The descriptions of these disorders in the DSM-VI-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2023). The description of these disorders in the DSM-VI-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2023) contain references to interpersonal problems. Associated features of anorexia nervosa include social withdrawal and lessened interest in pleasures of the flesh; episodes of binge eating associated with bulimia nervosa are often triggered by interpersonal stressors. Research on interpersonal relationships and eating disorders has been typical of the work on interpersonal relationships and mental healthy more generally. The recognition of some type of relational difficulty associated with the disorder predates current investigations by at least a century and a quarter. One of Lasegue’s more notable contributions was the suggestion of “prentectomy”—hospitalization of the patients to remove them from exacerbating parental forces. Family-of-origin relationships in particular have been a focal point in this line of work. Finally, the proliferation of studies on this associated feature of eating disorders has been particularly evident over the past 50 years. In one longitudinal investigation, patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa were followed for a period of 5 years. Among the most notable features of those who did not recover over the course of the investigation (53 percent) were unsatisfactory family-of-origin relationships and problems with making personal contacts outside the family. Findings such as these are suggestive of the important role played by social relationships in the course of the disorder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
As noted above, research emanating from the interpersonal paradigm has sought to understand eating disorders largely through a focus on family-of-origin experiences. Extreme levels of family adaptability and cohesion, family expressed emotion (EE), inappropriate parental pressure, low parental care, parental overinvolvement, sexual abuse, and battles for control are dominant themes in the family histories of people with eating disorders. Some models and theories suggest that these family-of-origin processes play a critical role in the development of these disorders. Some problems with interpersonal communication may be secondary to these pathological family processes. In particular, there is some evidence linked childhood sexual abuse to a failure to develop adequate social skills, which in turn contributes to the development of eating disorders. Recent studies on the general personal relationships of people with eating disorders are also suggestive of interpersonal difficulties. Interpersonal rejection and distressed personal relationships are common problems in this population. Findings on family-of-origin experiences show that among those who are married, there is a strong association between eating disorders and marital distress. Like so many other psychological problems, eating disorders are situated in a network of other psychological problems with which they coexist, such as depression, borderline personality disorder (BPD), substance use disorders, and anxiety disorders. In the family-of-orientation experiences in eating disorders, there are family process variables. There is a dysfunctional interaction pattern among families of patients with anorexia nervosa. The interaction in these families often minimized conflict, with a rigid, nonadaptable style. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
These interactions were argued to be entwined with the symptoms of the disorder. Other family systems researchers and clinicians also saw eating disorders as built into and around family relations. Significant others usually interact with the bulimic in ways that exaggerate relationship characteristics that were present, but in a more subtle form, before the bulimia was revealed. The bulimia becomes a symptom around which the whole family revolves. While it may appear to be the individual’s problem, bulimia is a signal that the environment is not meeting one’s needs. In a family system perspective, disordered eating is understood to be caused and maintained by a family’s interpersonal behaviour, which itself is assumed to be influenced by the disordered eating of one of its members. Family process variables continue to receive a great deal of attention from those who seek to explain the origins and course of eating disorders. Examples of this can be found in the investigations on family cohesion and family adaptability. System-oriented researchers have emphasized these variables as two dimensions of family relationships that are crucial to healthy family functioning, provided that neither one is too extreme. Multiple studies indicate that eating disorders are associated with perceptions of low family cohesion. Although this finding has been relatively stable across child and parent reports, children with eating disorders give lower ratings of their families’ cohesiveness than their parents do. Generally, daughters’ ratings of family interaction have more diagnostic utility for predicting their eating disorders than mothers’ and especially fathers’ ratings do. Regardless of which family member’s perception is actually “correct,” the fact that a parent and a child with an eating disorder differ in their view of the family’s cohesiveness is perhaps itself diagnostically significant. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Investigations of family adaptability have yielded less consistent results than those of cohesion. Some evidence indicates a negative association between family adaptability and symptoms of eating disorders. However, a study found more chaos, less organization, and more poorly defined boundaries in the family, all suggestive of pathologically high level of adaptability, among patients with eating disorders. In most studies, the families appeared to be extreme in their adaptability (either too much or too little) indicating potentially detrimental family relations. As in schizophrenia, family EE is emerging as an important family process variable in eating disorders. Investigation indicated that aspects of maternal EE during the interactions of patients with eating disorders and their families explained 28-34 percent of the variance in the patients’ eventual outcome and response to therapy. The extent to which mothers made openly critical comments during family interaction assessment was a stronger predictor of patients’ outcomes than a host of other impressive predictors, such as premorbid body weight, duration of illness, body mass index, and age at onset. Inappropriate parental pressure is a phenomenon that may be particularly prominent in families of people with eating disorders. When compared to both psychiatric controls and nonpsychiatric controls, one sample of patients with eating disorders experienced excessive pressure from parents. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
This phenomenon is described as “gender-inappropriate pressure, age-inappropriate pressure, and inappropriate to the child’s abilities…the adolescents felt that they had been forced into an exaggerated feminine style of behaviour, that their parents had discussed topis (such as parental pleasures of the flesh) before the adolescents were prepared to deal with such subjects, and that the adolescents had been made to engage in activities which reflected their parents’ ambitions rather than their own. This leaves an adolescent in a state of conflict between premature exposure to the World of adults and anxiety over what is involved in that World, such as sexuality and high levels of achievement. Perhaps by exerting control over their own eating, adolescents may gain some feeling of mastery or control over this conflict. The families of patients with eating disorders identified four mechanisms by which family members contributed to the eating disorders, two of which are indicative of inappropriate parental pressure: high emphasis on achievement/perfection and overconcern with beauty/appearance/thinness. In American society, it is easy to locate very young children involved in competitive activities such as gymnastics, figure skating, ballet, and beauty contests. When 3- and 4- year-olds are seriously involved in such endeavours, it is difficult to avoid wondering about whose ambition is being pursued. In cases where the motivation come largely from the parents, and where the activity places an emphasis on physical appearance, the risk for later development of eating disorders is serious. Excessive parental pressure may also engender a sense of perfectionism among children. Perfectionism involves both self-oriented aspects (expecting the self to be perfect) and socially prescribed aspects (perceiving that other expect perfection). #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
Perfectionism has proven to be a risk factor for bulimia nervosa, particularly for women who are otherwise low in self-esteem. By pressuring their children to achieve, parents may inadvertently convey the attitude that anything less than “perfect” is a failure. Children who harbour such an attitude, and then perceive that they are not meeting some perfect standard of weight or body image, may engage in binge eating as an escape response to their painful self-awareness, which is then corrected with purging. Other family process variable that have been implicated in eating disorders include disturbed affective expression, low levels of family communication, lack of parental care, excessive parental overprotectiveness and intrusiveness, and excessive parental control. This last variable has particular significance, in that that symptoms of eating disorders may be overt manifestations of a struggle for control. Particularly among women with eating disorders and a history of sexual abuse, an external locus of control (id est, feeling little personal control over one’s fate) is common. Although the struggle for control may originally be with the parents, there is no reason to believe that it may extend to others with whom such women are in relationships. The rather paradoxical nature of some of these family processes in eating disorders is nicely illustrated. It was found that parents of patients with anorexia nervosa were simultaneously more nurturing and comforting, but also more ignoring and neglecting of their daughters, than were parents of either healthy controls or patients with bulimia nervosa. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
In contrast, the patients with bulimia nervosa and their parents showed signs of hostile enmeshment. These mixed messages create ambivalence about separation for daughters with anorexia nervosa. “Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors and gain a surpassing victory through Him Who loved us. For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, nor height not depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” reports Romans 8.37-39. We all make mistakes, but God does not disqualify us simply because we have failed. He is the God of forgiveness. Even if you have missed your journey, God will always find a way to get you to a position of success. Some people have made some serious mistakes; they have done some things that were not the best for their life, and now they are living in guilt, condemnation, or with a sense of disqualification and disappointment and disillusionment. Several individuals feel they are in a trap house. The way to escape the trap house and trap spouse is to seek and receive God’s mercy and forgiveness, and move on with one’s life. Let go of the condemnation of the past mistakes. Seek God’s forgiveness, pick up the pieces and move on. God still have a great future for you. Keep on striving for success, continue, expect, endure in the face of opposition. Be persistent. Do not leave until you receive. Be just that stubborn about things that are significance to you, as long as it is safe and a rational desire. Have a persistent faith. True faith asks and receives. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Persistent faith is faith that receives or takes from God. Faith takes This is what Jesus Christ is telling us. “Ask once and you receive.” That is consistent with Jesus’ teaching on prayer. Receive and keep on receiving every time you ask. If you child asks you for food, you would it to him or her. You would not make one ask a hundred more times, then change your mind The enemy would like for you to believe that is what God is like. That kind of thinking will lead one into error and hold one in bondage. The adversary wants to twist the Word and distort your image of God. Jesus Christ said, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh recieiveth.” Jesus Christ said it, ad you can be sure Jesus meant what He said. Father, today I receive Your mercy and forgiveness. Despite my past, I believe You still have great things in store for me. Teach me how to shake off disappointment, guilt, or condemnation and live today in an attitude of faith. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” reports 1 John 1.9. The intellect, uncontrolled by intuition and unguided by revelation, has spawned the two great masters of our time—Science holding the atom bomb and Communism holding the revolution. Science, which is the last century promised so much, gave us the terrible problem of atomic war instead. Its ardent advocates pointed at it only yesterday as the road to our salvation. Today it has become the road to our destruction. This is not to say that it was a false light, but that we mistook its proper place and claimed too much for its human possibilities. We let it run away with us and our religion. We lost ourselves and our bearings. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The atom bomb made us regard Nature as self-operative in a solely mechanical way. It left life on Earth without spiritual meaning, without moral purpose. Communism is another Heaven-promising panacea which has helped to make this Earth a little hell. If it accepts the leadership of humans, such as Communists, who regard conscience as a disease, there can be no worthwhile future for humanity. The Communist insensibility in practice to human suffering accords ill with its vaunted idealism in theory. Communism’s twisted ethic of wild hatred, its hard cruel face, its blind slavish obedience to a brutal organization which cares more for itself than for the workers it was supposed to save, its insane preachments against religion and denial of life beyond matter, have brought enough suffering to makes claims sound absurdly exaggerated. However, the intellectual movement which produced Science and the social movement which produced Communism will not continue unchecked. They are approaching the utmost limit possible. The violent materialism for which they are responsible will culminate in the next Armageddon, which will not only end them, but also end the epoch itself. In order to lay out the general cause of the difference, a distinction has to be made here between the prince and the government. The body of the magistrates can be made up of a larger or smaller number of members. We have said that the ratio of the sovereign to the subjects was greater in proportion as the populace was more numerous, and by a manifest analogy we can say the same thing about the government in relation to the magistrates. Since the total force of the government is always that of the state, it does not vary. Whence it follows that the more of this force it uses on its own members, the less that is left to it for acting on the whole populace. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Therefore, the more numerous the magistrates, the weaker the government. Since this maxim is fundamental, let us attempt to explain it more clearly. We can distinguish in the person of the magistrate three essentially different wills. First, the individual’s own will, which tends only to its own advantage. Second, the common will of the magistrates which is uniquely related to the advantage of the price. This latter can be called the corporate will, and is general in relation to the government, and particular in relation to the state, of which the government form a part. Third, the will of the people or the sovereign will, which is general both in relation to the state considered as the whole and in relation to the government considered as part of the whole. In a perfect act of legislation, the private or individual will should be nonexistent; the corporate power will proper to the government should be very subordinate; and consequently the general or sovereign will should always be dominant and the unique rule of all the others. According to the natural order, on the contrary, these various wills become more active in proportion as they are the more concentrated. Thus the general will is always the weakest, the corporate will has second place, and the private will is first of all, so that in the government each member is first oneself, then a magistrate, and then a citizen—a gradation directly opposite to the one required by the social order. Granting this, let us suppose the entire government is in the hands of one single human. In that case the private will and the corporate will are perfectly united, and consequently the latter is at the highest degree of intensity it can reach. However, since the use of force is dependent upon the degree of will, and since the absolute force of the government does not vary one bit, it follows that the most active of governments is that of one single human. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
On the other hand, let us suppose we are uniting the government to the legislative authority. Let us make the sovereign the prince and all the citizens that many magistrates. Then the corporate will, confused with the general will, will have no more activity than the latter, and will leave the private will all its force. Thus the government, always with the same absolute force, will have it minimum relative force or activity. These relationships are incontestable, and there are still other considerations that serve to confirm them. We see, for example, that each magistrate is more active in one’s body than each citizen is in one’s, and consequently that the private will has much more influence on the acts of the government than on those of the sovereign. For each magistrate is nearly always charged with the responsibility for some function of government, whereas each citizen, taken by oneself, exercises no function of sovereignty. Moreover, the more the state is extended, the more its real force increases, although it does not increase in proportion to its size. However, if the state remains the same, the magistrates may well be multiplied without the government acquiring any greater real force, since this force is that of the state, whose size is always equal. Thus the relative force or activity of the government diminishes without its absolute or real force being able to increase. It is also certain that the execution of public business becomes slower in proportion as more people are charged with the responsibility for it; that in attaching too much importance to prudence, too little importance is attached to fortune, opportunities are missed, and the fruits of deliberation are often lost by dint of deliberation. I have just proved that the government becomes slack in proportion as the magistrates are multiplied; and I have previously proved that the more numerous the people, the greater should be the increase of repressive force. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Whence it follows that the ratio of the magistrate to the government should be the inverse of the ratio of the subjects to the sovereign; that is to say, the more the state increases in size, the more the government should shrink, so that the number of leaders decreases in proportion to the number of people. I should add that I am speaking here only about the relative force of the government and not about its rectitude. For, on the contrary, the more numerous the magistrates, the more closely the corporate will approaches the general will, whereas under a single magistrate, the same corporate will is, as I have said, merely a particular will thus what can be gained on the one hand is lost on the other, and the art of the legislator is to know how to determine the point at which the government’s will and force, always in a reciprocal proportion, are combined in the relationship that is most advantageous to the state. What has gone almost unnoticed is not merely a change in the patterns of participation in the market but, even more fundamentally, the completion of the entire historical process of market-building. This turning point is so revolutionary in its implications, yet so subtle, that capitalist and Marxist thinkers alike, lost in their Second Wave polemics, have scarcely noticed its signs. It fits into neither of their theories and thus has remained undetectably by them. The human race has been busy constructing a Worldwide exchange network—a market—for at least 10,000 years. In the past 360 years, ever since the Second Wave began, this process has roared forward at very high speed. Second Wave civilization “marketized” the World. Today—at the very moment when prosuming begins to rise again—this process is coming to and end. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
The immense historical meaning of this cannot be appreciated unless we are clear about what a market exchange network is. It helps to imagine it as a pipeline. When the industrial revolution burst forth on the Earth, launching the Second Wave, very few people on the planet were tired into the money system. Trade existed but only the peripheries of society were touched by it. The various networks of jobbers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, bankers, and other elements of the trade system were small and rudimentary—providing only a few narrow pipelines through which goods and money might flow. For 360 years we poured Earth-cracking energies into building this pipeline. In was accomplished in three ways. First the merchants and mercenaries of the Second Wave civilization spread around the globe, inviting or coercing new populations to enter the market—to produce more and prosume less. Self-sufficient African tribesmen were induced or compelled to grow cash crops and dig copper. Asian who once grew their own food were put to work on plantation instead, trapping rubber trees to put tires on automobiles. Latin Americas began growing coffee for ale in Europe and the Untied States of America. With each such development the pipeline was built or further elaborated and more and more populations drawn into dependence on it. The second way in which the market expanded was through the increasing “commoditization” of life. Not only were larger populations enmeshed in the market but more and more goods and services were designed for the market, requiring a continual enlargement of the “channel capacity” of the system—a widening, as it were, of the diameter of the pipes. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Finally, the market expanded in another way. As society and the economy grew more complex, the number of transactions required for, say, a single bar of soap to pass from producer to consumer multiplied. The more intermediaries, the more ramified the maze of channels or pipes became. This growing elaborateness of the system was itself a form of further development, like the addition of still more special tubes and values to a pipeline. Today all these forms of market expansion are reaching their outer limits. Few populations still remain to be brought into the market. Only a handful of the remotest people remain untouched by the market. Even the hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers in poor countries are at least partially integrated into the market and the accompanying money system. What remains, therefore, is a mopping-up operation at best. The market can no longer expand by engulfing vast new populations. The second form of expansion is still at least theoretically possible. With imagination, we can still, no doubt, think up additional services or goods to sell or barter. However, it is precisely here that the rise of the prosumer becomes significant. The relationships between Sector A and Sector B are complex, and many of the activities of prosumers depend on the purchase of materials or tools from the market. However, the rise of self-help, in particular, and the de-marketization of many goods and services suggests that here, too, the end of the process of marketization may be insight. Lastly, the increasing elaborateness of the “pipeline”—the growing complexity of distribution, the interpolation of more and more middlemen—also appears to be reaching a point of no return. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
The costs of exchange itself, even as conventionally measured, are now outrunning the costs of material production in many fields. At some point this process reaches a limit. Computers, meanwhile, and the emergence of a prosumer-activated technology both point to smaller inventories and simplified, rather than more complex chains of distribution. Once again, therefore, the evidence points to the end of the process of marketization, if not in our time, then soon after. If our “pipeline project” is nearing completion, what might this mean for our work, our values, and our psyches? A market, after all, does not consist of the steal or shoes or cotton or canned food that flows through it. The market is the structure through which such goods and services are routed. Moreover, it is not simply an economic structure. It is a way of organizing people, a way of thinking, an ethos, and a shared set of expectations (exempli gratia, the expectation that goods purchased will indeed be delivered). The market is thus as much a psychosocial structure as an economic reality. And its effects far transcend economics. By systematically interrelating billions of people to one another, the market produced a World in which no one had independent control over one’s destiny—no person, no nation, no culture. It brought with it the belief that economics and economic motivation were the primary forces in human life. It fostered a view of life as a succession of contractual transactions, and of society as bound together by the “marriage contract” or the “social contract.” Marketization thus shaped the thoughts and values, as well as the actions, of billions and set the tone of Second Wave civilization. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
It took an enormous investment of time, energy, capital, culture, and raw materials to create a situation in which a purchasing agent in South Carolina could do business with an unseen and unknown clerk in South Korea—each with one’s own abacus or computer, each with an internalized image of the market, each with a set of expectations about the other, each performing certain predictable acts because both have been life-trained to play certain prespecified roles, each part of a giant global system involving millions, indeed billions, of others. One might plausibly argue that the construction of this elaborate structure of human relationships, and its explosive diffusion around the planet, was the single most impressive achievement of Second Wave civilization, dwarfing even its spectacular technological achievements. The step-by-step creation of this essentially sociocultural and psychological structure for exchange (quite apart from the torrent of goods and services that flowed through it) can be likened to the building of the Egyptian pyramids, the Roman aqueducts, the Great Wall of China, and the medieval cathedrals, combined and multiplied a thousandfold. This grandest construction project of all history, the laying into place of the tubes and channels through which much of the economic life of civilization pulsed and flowed, gave Second Wave civilization everywhere its inner dynamism and propulsive thrust. Indeed, if this now dying civilization can be said to have had a mission at all, it was to marketize the World. Today that mission is almost fulfilled. The heroic age of market-building is over—to be replaced by a new phase in which we merely maintain, renovate, and update pipeline. We will undoubtedly have to redesign important pieced of it to accommodate radically increased flows of information #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
The system will increasingly depend on electronics, biology and new social technologies. This, too, will no doubt require resources, imagination, and capital. However, compared with the exhausting effort of Second Wave marketization, this renewal program will absorb a far smaller fraction of our time, energy, capital, and imagination. It will use less, not more, hardware and fewer, not more people than the original process of construction. However complex conversion process to be, marketization will fail to be the central project of the civilization. More and more people are seeking intimacy, personality, and humanity. The Third Wave is therefore producing history’s first “transmarket” civilization. By trans-market I do not mean a civilization without exchange networks—a World thrown back into small, isolated, completely self-sufficient communities unable or unwilling to trade with one another. I do not mean a move backward. By “trans-market” I mean a civilization that is dependent on the market but is no longer consumed by the need to build, extend, elaborate, and integrate this structure. A civilization able to move on to a new agenda—precisely because the market has already been laid in place. And just as no one living in the sixteenth century could have imagined how the growth of the market would change the World’s agenda in terms of technology, politics, religion, art, social life, law, marriage, or personality development—so too it is extremely difficult for us today to envision the long-range effects of the end of marketization Yet these are likely to radiate into every cranny of our children’s lives, if not our own. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
The marketization project exacted a price. Even in purely economic terms this price was enormous. As the productivity of the human race rose during the past three hundred years, a significant part of that productivity—in both sectors—was set aside and allocated to the market-building project. With the basic construction task now virtually complete, the enormous energies previously poured into building the World market system become available for other human purposes. From this fact alone will flow a limitless array of civilization changes. New religions will be born. Works of art on a hitherto unimagined scale. Fantastic scientific advances. And, above all, wholly new kinds of social and political institutions. What is at stake today is more than capitalism or socialism, more than energy, food, population, capital, raw material, or jobs; what is at stake is the role of the market in our lives and the future of civilization itself. This, at its core is what the rise of the prosumer is about. Change in the deep-structure of the economy is part of the same wave of interrelated changes now striking our energy base, our technology, or information system, and our family and business institutions. These are intertwined, in turn with the way we view the World. And in this sphere, too, we are undergoing an historic upheaval. For the entire World view of industrial civilization—indust-reality—is not being revolutionized. Excerpt from an article in a Czech magazine on contemporary Czech literature: “Those ideals which were formerly given to the World by prophets of religion, headed by Jesus the Nazarene, are now practically applied by scientific socialists beginning with Karl Marx.” Such is the plausible self-deception into which so many intellectuals have fallen. This quotation shows a grave lack of understanding of religion, of the prophets, and especially of Jesus. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
This distance between the Nazarene and the author of the First Communist Manifesto is not merely horizontal, it is vertical. The two men stand on different levels, belong to different Worlds. The presence of hatred as one of its animating ingredients is a moral disadvantage to any social movement. This is one reason why modern Communism is built on an unsure foundation. From the Center Galactic Source which is everywhere at once, may everything be known as the light of mutual love. O Hidden Life vibrant in every atom; O Hidden Light! shining in every creature; O Hidden Love! embracing all in Oneness; may each who feels oneself as one with Thee, know one is also one with every other. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns, and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. When I call upon the Lord, ascribe greatness unto our God. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possessest all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. Remember us unto life, O King who delightest in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life so that we may live worthily for Thy sake, O Lord of life. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Close Out!
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Nothing Ever Turns Out Right! Somebody Take Care of Me! God, Why Not Make Everything O.K.?
Such great devotion was in vogue in the days the Ark of God was being built, as was remembrance of divine praise at the Ark of the Covenant. However, that was then, and this is now. Should I not, and indeed the rest of the Christian population, have more reverence, more devotion, in the presence of the Mystery and in the reception of Sacrament? Every year, any number of Christians go to great pains to visit as many shrines as they can, there to ay respects to the relics of the Saints and to hear of the wonders worked through the Saints’ intercession. Of course, the pilgrims reverence with their lips the holy bones resting on silk and cased in gold, but they also gawk at the sumptuousness of the churches housing the shrines. You know what is wrong with this picture? Right in front of one, on this very altar, without one’s having to lift a finger, let alone a foot, God is alive and well. That is to say, God, Holy of Holies, Creator of Humankind, and Lord of Angels. However, if I wonder what the dearest Lord and Friend has against pilgrimage? Perhaps this flurry of activity seems holy at first, but in reality it is a curiosity that plagues all Humankind. That is to say, there is a certain freshness that comes with hithering and thithering, with seeing new things in toxic places. However, when people tally up the expense of pilgrimaging, they have paid too much for too little. That is to say, the fruit of a pilgrimage is conversion, reform of life. However, that seems to have taken a back seat in their minds, if not their souls; they have preferred happy times in holy places to the True Contrition they could find at home, at the Winchester, the shrine where their soul resides. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Here and now, in the Sacrament of the Altar, He is totally present, Jesus, Man and Christ. Right here, within one’s grasp, Eternal Salvation awaits, to be harvested just as often one undertake Communion with dignity and devotion. Pilgrims, beware! The paths to this shrine are rocky, and slippery are the pavers marked Levity, Curiosity, and Sensuality; for true cobbles, rely only on Firm Faith, Devout Hope, and Sincere Charity. O God, Invisible Creator of the World, how wondrously You treat us! How sweetly and graciously You carry on with Your chosen—these are the people You have invited to join you in Your Sacrament! Yes, I know You low opinion of Us Devouts, but I just have to say that the Sacrament has a special appeal to our hearts. We are truly faithful friends of Yours, and we have planned our whole lives around reformation of soul. As a result, we frequently receive this Most Worthy Sacrament, and from it we derive the great grace of devotion and the love of virtue. O admirable yet hidden grace of the Sacramento, only the faithful of Christ have known it well! The faithless and the sinful, however, have no experience to match it. Every relation is based either on quantity, a double and half; or on action and passion, as the doer and the deed, the father and the son, the master and the servant, and the like. Now as there is no quantity in God, for He is great without quantity, as Augustine says (De Trin. I, !) it follows that a real relation in God can be based only on action. Such relations are not based on the actions of God according to any extrinsic procession, forasmuch as the relations in God can be understood only in regard to those actions according to which there are internal, and not external, processions in God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
These processions are two only, as above explained, one derived from the action of the intellect, the procession of the Word; and the other from the action of the will, the procession of love. In respect of each of these processions two opposite relations arise; one of which is the relation of the person proceeding from the principle; the other is the relation of the principle Himself. The procession of the Word is called generation in the proper sense of the term, whereby it is applied to living things. Now the relation of the principle of generation in perfect living beings is called paternity; and the relation of the one proceeding from the principle is called filiation. However, the procession of Love has no proper name of its own; and so neither have the ensuing relations a proper name of their own. The relation of the principle of this procession is called spiration; and the relation of the person proceeding is called procession: although these two names belong to the processions or origins themselves, and not to the relations. In those things in which there is a difference between the intellect and its object, and the will and its object, there can be a real relation, both of science to its object, and of the willer to the object willed. In God, however, the intellect and its object are one and the same; because by understanding Himself, God understands all other things; and the same applies to His will and the object that He wills. Hence, it follows that in God these kinds of relations are not real; as neither is the relation of a thing to itself. Nevertheless, the relation to the word is a real relation; because the word is understood as proceeding by an intelligible action; and not as a thing understood. For when we understand a stone; that which the intellect conceives from the thing understood, is called the word. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Intelligible relations in ourselves are infinitely multiplied, because a human understands a stone by one act, and by another act understands that one understands the stone, and again by another, understands that one understands this; thus the acts of understanding are infinitely multiplied, and consequently also the relations understood. This does not apply to God, inasmuch as He understand all things by one act alone. Ideal relations exist as understood by God. Hence it does not follow from their plurality that there are many relations in God; but that God knows these many relations. Equality and similitude in God are not real relations; but are only logical relations. The way from one term to another and conversely in the same; nevertheless the mutual relations are not the same. Hence, we cannot conclude that the relation of the father to the son is the same as that of the son to the father; but we conclude this of something absolute, if there were such between them. “Let one gives one’s cheek to the One Who smites one [even through His human agents]; let one be filled [full] with [men’s] reproach [in meekness]. For the Lord will not cast off forever!,” reports Lamentations 3.30-31. What are the signs whereby one shall know that this is an authentic glimpse of reality? First, it is and shall remain ever present. There is no future in it and no past. Second, the pure spiritual experience comes without excitement, is reported without exaggeration, and needs no external authority to authenticate it. The glimpse also does in part for a human what initiation did in some ancient mystical institutions. It sets one on the road of a new life, a life more earnestly and more consciously devoted to the quest of Overself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The glimpse silently bids one dedicate, or rededicate anew, the remainder of one’s life on Earth to this undertaking. It is a baptism with inner light more far-reaching than the baptism with physical water. The motives and reactions of a spiritually intuitive human will necessarily be on a higher level than those of a human driven by animal and Worldly compulsions only. And once you are reborn in the heart, life will become what it should be—the realization that you are outworking a higher destiny than the merely personal one. Another noteworthy mark of the true glimpse is its purificatory effect. This is usually temporary but in a few cases it has been permanent. When one has this first unprecedented experience, when one knows and feels that one is a part of divine being, one is born “in Christ.” However, it is not for one to stand at street corners and announce to the multitude that one has had this glimpse. The sustained consciousness of the Overself puts its mark upon a human’s face. They are humans with “the shine” on their faces, like the one who descended from Sinai. One emerges from the old human that one was, from the ego-ridden nature, as a snake emerges from its old skin. The old self which one has left behind and which once so occupied one’s interest now seems ugly, bad, and dull. So great is the change in one that it also seems like a stranger, not entitled to bear one’s name. However synical and blasé may have been one’s attitude in earlier days, it will yield to and melt in the sunny light of this second birth. Those who have experienced a glimpse of this blessed Reality or, better, established themselves in it, may share its atmosphere with others in silent communion. However, on a lesser level, they may also share with the in phrased speech the thoughts it provokes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The more one becomes familiar with this experience, the easier one can describe it. One who has been touched by the goodness comes out of one’s sleep, says the Old World wisdom. For one has a knowledge which appears as a special and unusual kind of awareness that escapes most other people. There comes a time when out of the silence within oneself there comes the spiritual guidance which one needs for one’s further course. It comes sometimes as a delicate feeling, sometimes as a strong one, sometimes in a clearly formulated message, and sometimes out of the circumstances and happenings themselves. Not only does it tell one and teach one, but sometimes it does the same for others. Such is the effect of the Divine Life now working increasingly within one. You are saved the moment this divine power takes possession of you, but not otherwise. The dictionary defines an eccentric as a person who deviates from common behaviour patterns or displays odd or whimsical behaviour. However, how can we separate a psychologically healthy person who has unusual habits from a person whose oddness is a symptom of psychopathology? For years, little research was done on eccentrics, but some recent studies and reviews seem to have started the ball rolling. For example, the researcher David Weeks studied 1,000 eccentrics over a 10-year period and was able to pin-point 15 characteristic common to them. Altogether, he estimates that as many as 1 in 5,000 persons may be “classic, full-time eccentrics.” Men and women seem equally prone to such patterns. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Weeks suggests that eccentrics do not typically suffer from mental disorders. Whereas the unusual behaviour of persons with mental disorders is thrust upon them and usually causes them suffering, eccentricity is chosen freely and provides pleasure. In short, eccentrics know they are different and glory in it. Similarly, the thought process of eccentrics are not severely disrupted, and they do not leave the person dysfunctional. In fact, it was also discovered the eccentrics actually had fewer emotional problems than the general population. Perhaps being an “original” is good for mental health. The eccentrics in his study also seemed physically healthier than others, visiting a doctor only once every eight years on average. Weeks concludes that most eccentrics, despite their deviant behaviour—perhaps even because of it—are happy, well-adjusted, and joyful people. According to Weeks, the following 15 qualities (in descending order of importance) are characteristic of eccentrics. The first 5 are the most definitive, but possessing any 10 may qualify a person as an eccentric: Nonconforming, creative, strongly curious, idealistic, happily obsessed with a hobby (often more than one), aware from early childhood of being different from others, intelligence, opinionated and outspoken, noncompetitive, unusual eating or living habits, not interested in the opinions or company of others, mischievous sense of humour, single, eldest or only child, bad speller. Are you eccentric? #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Once clinicians decide that a person is indeed suffering from some form of psychological abnormality, they seek to treat it. Treatment, or therapy is a procedure designed to change abnormal behaviour into more normal behaviour; it, too, requires careful definition. For clinical scientists, the problem is closely related to defining abnormality. Therapy has three essential features: A sufferer who seeks relief from the healer. A trained, socially accepted healer, whose expertise is accepted by sufferer and one’s social group. A series of contact between the healer and the sufferer, through which the healer, often with the assistance of a group, tries to produce certain changes in the sufferer’s emotional state, and behaviour. Some clinicians view abnormality as an illness and so consider therapy a procedure that helps cure the illness. Others see abnormality as a problem in living and therapists as teachers of more functional behavior and thought. Clinicians even differ on what to call the person undergoing therapy: those who see abnormality as an illness speak of the “patient,” while those who view it as a problem in living refer to the “client.” Because both terms are so common, many use them interchangeably. Despite their differences, most clinicians do agree that large numbers of people need therapy of one kind or another. People with histrionic personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as HPD) exhibit a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking. Their social interactions are characterized by inappropriately seductive or provocative behaviour, rapidly shifting and shallow emotions, excessively impressionistic speech that is lacking in detail, and self-dramatization. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Persons with HPD tend to use physical appearances to draw attention to themselves, consider relationships to be more intimate than they really are, and are rather easily influenced by other people. These persons are resistant to being pushed into the background, and want to be made to feel special, with a tendency toward anger and jealousy when not acknowledged. Using a Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour, it has been discovered that people with HPD wish for active love and protection while harbouring a fear of being ignored by others. Unquestionably, the interpersonal theatrics of these people are cries for attention, and most of their symptoms are in the service of this primary goal. A distinctive quality of HPD is its inherent interpersonal quality: Interaction with others is required for expression of the disorder. Obviously something is seriously awry on the interpersonal terrain of persons with HPD. Although such people are often judged to be more physically attractive than their nondisordered peers, this physical attractiveness is associated with a greater reliance on immature defense mechanisms, such as projection and regression. These findings suggest a pattern of superficial relations based on gaining attention through physical attractiveness, in the absence of any well-developed interpersonal coping and problem-solving skills. Compared to healthy controls, persons with HPD score lower in assertiveness involving pleasures of the flesh despite their flirtations, and exhibit more phobic attitudes toward pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Expectedly, the subjects with HPD in this study also reported lower martial satisfactions than controls. These same respondents indicated relatively high levels of preoccupation with pleasures of the flesh, along with boredom and dysfunction with pleasures of the flesh. In a unique study with gay men, Johnson et al. (2000) found that symptoms of HPD were negatively correlated with receiving social support, and positively correlated with interpersonal conflict and loneliness. In an epidemiological study, it would found that the prevalence rate of HPD was about five times higher in divorced and separated persons than in people who were married. Looking back at the early interpersonal experiences of people with HPD, one sees a pattern of turmoil. For example, sexual abuse is often evident in the early home environments of such individuals. In a similar study, people with Cluster B (dramatic-emotional”) personality disorders (id est, antisocial personality disorder, BPD, HPD, and NDP) indicated that they experienced a pattern of parental overprotection coupled with lower parental care. Although parental overprotection and sexual abuse may appear antithetical at first glance, each is indicative of poor boundary regulation. Other family-of-origin processes that are related to HPD include high achievement orientation, an intellectual/cultural orientation, and high levels of parental control. What cases HPD? Undoubtedly this disorder, like other personality disorders, grows out of an amalgamation of temperament (which comes from genetic predisposition) and character (which is the developing aspect of one’s personality that is shaped by experience). #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The character of people with HPD may be strongly tied to interpersonal interactions. Experts believe that this disorder is often preceded by rare parental punishment and unpredictable parental rewarding, resulting in the creation of behaviours that are directed toward securing rewards, developing a sense of personal competence, and seeking approval for approval’s sake. In developing this social learning hypothesis, it has been noted that when parents offer approval on a variable schedule, the child who will later develop HPD becomes frustrated, and learns to exaggerate one’s behaviours in the service of obtaining compliments and affection. Unless the parents recognize this conduct for what it is worthy, a vicious cycle is established in which the child performs increasingly dramatic and caricatured behaviours to secure positive responses from one’s parents. Like other old habits the die heard, this pattern of conduct is carried over beyond the childhood home to adult interpersonal relations. Psychodynamic theories of HPD originally characterized the disorder as hysterical personality. It was believed that the symptoms are the results of childhood sexual abuse. Traumatic memories of the abuse were assumed to be repressed. The strong tendencies toward repression were thought to explain the vague and shallow cognitive pattern that is so characteristic of people with HPD. From the psychodynamic perspective, the sexualization of social interactions in HPD is a defense against the fear of sexual aggression and victimization. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
By summoning that which is feared, persons with HPD may develop a sense of mastery over this fear by replacing it with attraction. This psychodynamic perspective, notwithstanding its dubious falsifiability, clearly locates the origin and consequences of the disorder in interpersonal experiences. Somewhere in between the social learning and psychodynamic hypothesis, is the pathogenic hypothesis, based on the Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour. There are three identifiable early interpersonal experiences that figure prominently in the pathogenesis of HPD. First, these people were often loved for their good looks and entertainment value as children. Second, as children, these people quickly learned that physical appearance and charm were functional for getting what they wanted from others. Finally, their early family environments were unpredictable and chaotic. However, it was this very chaos that kindled a sense of drama in their families, in which these children could play a role. People with HPD conduct their lives in a frantic search for attention, trapped between the exploitation of sexuality and flirtation to gain this attention, and fear of its eventuality. Their interpersonal theatrics, emotional flightiness, and shallow cognitive style may have their origins in early family experiences. Proponents of both social learning and psychodynamic hypotheses converge on the belief that family dynamics such as parental boundary violation (manifested in sexual abuse and overportectivness) and inconsistent parental reinforcement set in motion the patterns of emotion, cognition, and social behaviour that are characteristic of HPD. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
People become more psychologically healthy (fully functioning, self-actualizing), they become more tolerant of “opposites” within themselves, and become more able to accept others with all their uniqueness. Others may have mistreated you, somebody may have walked out on you, or maybe you prayed fervently, yet God did not answer your prayer the way you had anticipated. That is over and done. You cannot change the past; there is nothing you can do about it now. However, you must make a decision. Are you going to relive all those painful memories, or are you going to stay in an attitude of faith? You must walk out of any emotional bondage in which you have been living. Nobody can do it for you. You must rise up out of those ashes. You must forgive the people who have hurt you. You have to release all those hurts and pains. Leave the past behind. When you go through situations you do not understand, do not become bitter. Do not question God. Learn to just wash your face, keep a good attitude, and move on. Get ready for the new things God has in store for you. If you will stay in an attitude of faith and success, God has promised that He will turn those emotional wounds around. He will use them to your advantage, and you will come out better than you would have had they not happened to you. Humans alone, of all the creatures of the Earth, can change their own pattern. Humans alone are the architect of their destiny. The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Christians often think in terms of opposites—right/wrong, good/bad, sinful/goodness—instead of the principle of transcendence of opposites. The actualizing Christian learns to transcend these opposites. Openness to experience all that one is can be expressed as follows: I am neither good nor bad, I am both. I am neither spiritual nor sensual, I am both. I am neither generous nor selfish, I am both. I am neither honest nor dishonest, I am both. I am neither a saint nor a sinner, I am both. However, God accepts me, forgives me, and loves me just as I am. And I can accept, forgive, and love myself and others. The testimony of the actualizing Christian is not that one is perfect, but rather that one is being perfected by the healing love and power of God. The process of being made whole involves gradual transformation of one’s entire being. Every polarity has both manipulative and actualizing alternatives. To be consistently actualizing, a person must learn to transform manipulative behaviours into actualizing counterparts. On the strength polarity, the egocentric manipulative tactics of striving and achieving need to be transformed into interpersonal qualities of cooperating and contributing. The latter two actualizing qualities have a respect and sensitivity that the manipulative forms do not possess. Cooperating with others in a sharing way allows us to express our own strengths while at the same time seeking the common good. Contributing is not something that is grasped at or forced, but rather is a reflection of our true capabilities. Our attitude becomes cooperative rather than competitive. We give up the attempt to be omniscient and omnipotent. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
When we function in this way, we do not feel threatened by someone else’s contributions or accomplishments. We are also quick to admit our deficiencies and to integrate our strengths with the contributions of others. This is the basis for the virtue of courage or realistic self-confidence. On the weakness polarity, withdrawing and avoiding need to be transformed into feeling vulnerable and empathizing. The actualizing Christian learns that one can honestly share feelings of inadequacy, fear, or helplessness. In sharing feelings of vulnerability, a person becomes more accepting and tolerant of others, and hence more empathetic. Herein lies the virtue of humility. Some years ago, my great grandmother went back home to Sweden for the first time in thirty years. Late one night we received a concerned phone call from her during which she said that the Gripsholm, the boat she was supposed to return on, had collided in New York Harbor with the Andrea Dorea, an Italian ship. We discussed her alternatives, and it seemed the only things she could do would be to take her first airplane trip. This may not seem like a large accomplishment these days, but for my mother, who was over seventy years old, this was a fearful and difficult task. The next day she bravely climbed the steps of the huge 707, turned the corner, and sat down in her seat—which happened to be next to Eleanor Roosevelt! Eleanor Roosevelt was an empathetic woman who herself had suffered much in her life. So immediately her empathy expressed itself to my great grandmother, who obviously was somewhat shaken at being on her first plane trip. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The Worldly, yet gentle woman pulled a rose from the bouquet the Swedish government had given her on departure—and gave it to my great grandmother. Great grandmother was deeply moved by this gesture and immediately felt vulnerable and open to this beautifully warm woman. During the next five hours on their journey to America, the two of the chattered together like neighbours over the back fence, as my great grandmother often did with her friends in Rockford, Illinois. Elanor Roosevelt is an example of a truly humble person. Since she was genuinely away of her own feelings of vulnerability, she could reach out to others, including my mother, with a special warmth and sensitivity. On the love polarity, the manipulative patterns of pleasing and placating are transformed into the actualizing traits of affirming and caring. There is a freedom to praise and nurture both oneself and others. Built into the combination of affirming and caring the firmness and warmth. From these qualities emerge the virtue of compassion, a sure mark of the actualizing Christian. From the anger polarity arise asserting and expressing, the actualizing counterparts of blaming and attacking. The person who expressed anger graciously and diplomatically exhibits the virtue of confrontation with caring, or “speaking the truth in love.” There is a real wisdom built into the warp and woof of human nature. It is as though God intended a sensitive set of checks and balances in order to create a reliable source of guidance and inspiration within each person. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Love that is expressed fully bring qualities of tenderness, caring, and nurturing into the World. However, to find its finest balance, love must be offset with a certain firmness and power that is captured in the feeling of anger. Anger provides the energy for confronting the World in a caring way. Likewise, the feelings of strength and weakness both balance and check each other. From strength a person derives a certain air of confidence, boldness, and dignity. However, with the balancing effect of weakness, the virtue of humility is added; so one can express strength in gentle and humble ways. It is our belief that as one becomes more balanced in expressing these behavioural opposites, one will experience a connectedness to others and to God in a warmhearted, open and sharing way. Connectedness if the key to understanding others and growing with them in mutually supportive ways. Heavenly Father, I admit that sometimes I am more surprised when You do answer my prayers than when You do not. I know that I do not deserve Your kindness, that like Prince Lestat, I have made some bad decisions, done wrong, and deserve nothing. However, thank You for loving me even through my mistakes, failures, and wrong choices. Please help me, Father, to trust You through my disappointments. The practice of prayer, when done as an exercise can harmonize cosmic energies, so that the will of God will manifest in your life naturally. While praying for good things and thanking God, mentally direct the energy towards your general surrounding so you can mentally connect it with the cosmic life-force. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Remember that the purpose of this lengthened prayer is not only to empty your temple of negative energy, but also to empty your environmental of bad energy. It will help to empty the mind of its tumult and the nerves of their agitation, and focus on your prayer as deeply as possible. Until you learn to build your faith, you may want to repeat your prayer, in different ways, until you learn how to expand your conversations with God and Jesus. Imagine a steam of golden-white energy being drawn from the Holy Trinity and radiated throughout the body. This enables one to better receive cosmic current of life-force. It also strengthens the power of self-control, of disciplining the body. “Only fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart; for consider how great are the things He has done for you. However, if you still do wickedly, both you and your king shall be swept away,” reports 1 Samuel 12.24-25. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” reports Matthew 6.13. Most people believe that the Lord sends the trials, tests, and temptations of life. If the trails and temptations come from God, I wonder why Jesus said to pray that you enter not into? If God knows everything and we know the Word says God has all knowledge, then I wonder why God would have to try and test us to find out what we would do in a certain situation. The Word also says that Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of our faith. (Hebrews 12.2.) Now since Jesus has authored our faith, God does not need to try it. He knows it will work. The enemy is the one trying our faith. Jesus said, Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
What evil is Jesus Christ talking about? The evil and trials and temptations. We can rise to a new level of faith when we realize that it is the thief that steals, kills and destroys. It is Jesus that gives life abundantly. When you draw the battle line, you will have 50 percent of the battle won. This will set you at liberty in your prayer life. You can use your faith shield to quench every fiery dart of the adversary. However, if God put it on you, until you determine the cause, you cannot use your faith. You cannot believe the thing will go away. The enemy suggests that God might be using this to perfect you. It sounds logical, but it is stronghold of the adversary. Now let me refresh your memory in this area. In the 8th chapter of Luke, verse 22, Jesus said to the disciples, Let us go over unto the other side, then He fell asleep in the back of the ship. A storm of wind arouse on the lake and waves were lapping into the boat. The disciples began to say, Master, we perish. Jesus Christ arose and rebuked the wind and the sea. Then He asked them, “Where is your faith?” Was that storm sent of God to try their faith? No. That storm was designed by the adversary to get the Word out of them and it worked well. “The ones alone the path are those who have the Word sown [in their hearts], but when they hear, the adversary comes at once and [by force] takes away the message which is sown in them,” reports Mark 4.15. They told Jesus what the devil said. The devil had told them that they would all drown. However, Jesus said, “We are going to the other side.” His Words did not abide in them. In 1 John 3.8, we find that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. If the storm was of God, then Jesus came to undo everything that the enemy was doing. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Jesus Christ rebuked the wind because the storm had been caused by the enemy. He has perverted nature and used the atmosphere to bring floods, storms and tornadoes. However, headlines proclaim, God Visited Our City Last Night With a Tornado. No greater lie has ever been told! When lightning struck a certain plant in Arkansas, it blew up, killing several people and injuring many others. The newspapers called it an act of God. No bigger lie has ever been told. Those things are perversions of nature. The Enemy has perverted the things God created for good. Genesis 1.31 says, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Lightning was what killed Job’s cattle. The King James calls it “fire from Heaven.” One translation says “lightning.” In other words, the enemy used the elements of the Earth and atmosphere to destroy Job’s cattle. However, Job said The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, which is actually recorded in the Bible. However, Job was not under the anointing when he said it. He was deceived. He thought it was God but you can plainly read in Job, chapter 1, that it was the adversary who had caused Job’s problems. If you believe that God brings these things on you, you cannot use your faith to get rid of them. There is no place in the Bible where it says, “Take the shield of faith and quench all the fiery darts of God!” You would not dare pray for deliverance from something God is using to perfect you. However, when you get the battle line drawn and see that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy and that Jesus came to give us abundant life, then you can use your faith. You will be able to pray accurately. You can come against the evil forces and prevail. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked (Ephesians 6.16). #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
When we have financial problems, most of the time it is the enemy’s work. Sometimes it is our own fault. It is not God, trying to teach us something! When we have problems in areas of the physical body, it is an attack of the enemy, because Jesus said for us to pray, Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven. God’s will is that we walk in health on this Earth and that is the way we should pray. Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as they soul prospereth (3 John 2). O Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to all the World, hear me! I am small and weak, I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people. Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy—myself. Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes. So when life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me besides the still waters. He restoreth my soul; He guideth me in straight paths for His name’s sake. Ye, though I walk through the Sacramento valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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There Was Terror in His Eyes as Not Often Seen in a Human Being!
Twenty-first century humans, in spite of all their scientific and technological advances, are baffled by unexplained forces existent in the Universe. The naturalistic philosophy of the previous generations has been unable to account for all of the mysterious phenomena which have been observed. Many scientists believe that living beings may inhabit other galaxies, and highly educated humans are seriously studying reports of those who insist they have received communications from the dead. Humans of science no longer scoff at the accounts of strange occurrences associated with witchcraft and occultic practices. Although they do not necessarily accept them as proof of the supernatural, many will admit they are manifestations of some kind of power they do not yet understand. Christian theologians and scientists are not perplexed by such reports. They know that both God and Satan are very much alive. Though readily conceding that they cannot explain fully all the mysteries of life, they affirm with confidence the existence of God and an invisible host of intelligent supernatural beings. They are convinced that when one accepts the teachings of the Bible, one begins to understand many of the puzzling facts of existence. For example, the Bible tells of holy angels who dwell in Heaven (Matthew 18.10). It also mentions “angels that sinned” (2 Peter 2.4), rebellious spirit begins who have been cast out of Heaven and now dwell in the atmosphere that surrounds the Earth. We know this because Paul declared that Satan is “the prince of the power of the air,” reports Ephesians 2.2, and the Greek word translated “air” was used to speak of the gaseous envelop that encircles our planet. These wicked beings apparently have unlimited access to Earther, and actively influence every area of human endeavour. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Because they do not possess physical bodies, we cannot typically detect them through our senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. We do have evidence of their presence, however, for the Word of God gives us information regarding their identification, their nature and their function. Various terms are used in the Christian Bible to denote the evil spirit beings who followed Satan in this initial act of rebellion against God. It refers to “angels that sinned” 2 Peter 2.4 and “angels who kept not their first estate” Jude 6, and many times mentions “spirits” and “demons.” Some scholars believe that these demons must be distinguished from the “angels that sinned” and the “angels who kept not their first estate.” They contend that the Heavenly beings who joined Satan in his revolt against God are fallen angels, but that demons are disembodies spirits of physical and moral creatures who once lived upon the Earth. However, these Bible students disagree regarding an exact identification of the demons. Some say they are the spirits of pre-Adamic beings similar to man, while others identify them as the spirits of the “giants” who were destroyed in the great flood of Noah’s day. If one thinks that demons are the spirits of man-like beings who lived before Adam, then one will no doubt interpret Genesis 1.2 as a declaration that the original Earth, inhabited by the creatures, was cataclysmically destroyed. Genesis 1.2 is then translated as follows: “And the Earth became without form and void…” This theory, while attractive in that it permits a literal interpretation of the days in Genesis 1, must be acknowledged as only a hypothesis. Most Hebrew scholars reject this interpretation because Genesis 1.2 begins with a grammatical construction which makes it highly unlikely that Genesis 1.1 and 1.2 are separated by millions of years. Then, too, the verb translated “became” almost always has the meaning “was.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
However, even if we accept this theory, and believe that a race of man-like beings inhabited the prehistoric Earth, we would have no basis for thinking that their spirits are now free to roam about as the enemies of humankind. Other Bible scholars maintain that demons are the spirits of the “giants” who lived upon the Earth in the days of Noah. They refer to Genesis 6, contending that these “giants” were produced when fallen angels, called the “sons of God,” married the “daughters of men.” “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the Earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all whom they chose. There were giants in the Earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men who were of old, men of renown,” reports Genesis 6.1, 2, 4. It is necessary for proponents of this theory to believe that fallen angels became male human beings who married women, produced a mongrel offspring, and took over the role of father in the family. They theorize that Satan hoped thereby to frustrate God’s redemptive plan. The Lord had promised salvation through Christ to human beings only—not for angels or mixed half-human and half-angelic race. Christ could not have been born to offspring of these corrupted creates or provide redemptions for them. Thus God’s plan of redemption would have been thwarted. In addition, both Jude and Peter in their epistles refer to a sin committed by angels, and their words can be blended very nicely into this concept. Jude writes, “And the angels who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire,” reports Jude 6, 7. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The words “in like manner” (verse 7) are taken to mean that the sin of the angels in having pleasures of the flesh with women was an unnatural act, comparable to sodomy. Peter tells of angels assigned to Tartaros, the nether World of the Greeks considered to be lower than Hades. “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell [GK Tartaros], and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment,” reports 2 Peter 2.4. Again, it does not take a great deal of imagination to see how these words of Peter may be applied to the wicked angels who committed the monstrous sin of attempting to make mongrels of the human race. Many Bible students, however, reject this interpretation of Genesis 6. Since angels are non-material beings, it would be necessary for them to create physical bodies for themselves capable of impregnating a female member of the human race. This would require nothing less than a creative miracle, and the Bible indicates that this power belongs only to God. In addition, it is not necessary to interpret the statements in Jude and 2 Peter as a reference to sin involving pleasures of the flesh on the part of the fallen angels. Jude’s use of the expression “going after strange flesh” may be figurative language representing spiritual fornication. The prophets often depicted Israel’s unfaithfulness to God in this manner. Peter’s statement that the angels who sinned have been assigned to Tartaros may be a simple declaration that all sinning angels have been designated to this place, and that they are even now under chains of moral and spiritual darkness. The Bible gives little information regarding the origin of demons. We can state with absolute certainty only that they are fallen spirit beings who have committed themselves to Satan and that they hate God and seek to harm His people. No clear distinction can be made between fallen angels and demons, for they are all evil spirits. Some of our questions must remain unanswered, but the Lord has given ample revelation to warn us that these invisible enemies are far too great and powerful for us to defeat in our own strength, and that we can successfully wage war against them only as we live in continual dependence upon the Lord. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
In one respect the case of Dame Alice Kyteler stands alone in the history of magical dealings in Ireland prior to the seventeenth century. We have of the entire proceedings an invaluable and contemporary account, or at latest one compiled within a very few years after the death of Petronilla of Meath; while the excitement produced by the affair is shown by the more or less lengthy allusions to it in early writings, such as The Book of Howth (Carew MSS.), the Annals by Fariar Clyn, the Chartularies of S. Mary’s Abbey (vol. ii), &c. It is also rendered more valuable by the fact that those who are best qualified to give their opinion on the matter have assured the writer that to the best of their belief no entries with respect to trials for sorcery or witchcraft can be found in the various old Rolls preserved in the Dublin Record Office. However, when the story is considered with reference to the following facts it takes on a different signification. On the 29th of September 1317 (Wright says 1320), Bishop de Ledrede held his first Synod, at which several canons were passed, one of which seems in some degree introductory to the events detailed in last week’s report. In it he speaks of “a certain new and pestilential sect in our parts, differing from all the faith in the World, filled with a devilish spirit, more inhuman than heathens…who pursue the priests and bishops of the Most High God equally in life and death, by spoiling and rending the patrimony of Christ in the diocese of Ossory, and who utter grievous threats against the bishops and their ministers exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and (by various means) attempt to hinder the correction of sins and the salvation of souls, in contempt of God and the Church.” From this it would seem that heresy and unorthodoxy had already made its appearance in the diocese. In 1324 the Kyteler case occurred, one of the participants being burnt at the stake while other incriminate persons were subsequently followed up, some of whom shared the fate of Petronilla of Meath. In 1327 Adam Dubh, of the Leinster tribe of O’Toole, was burnt alive on College Green for denying the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity, as well as for rejecting the authority of the Holy See. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
In 1335 Pope Benedict XII wrote a letter to King Edward III, in which occurs the following passage: “It has come to our knowledge that while our venerable brother, Richard, Bishop of Ossory, was visiting his diocese, there appeared in the midst of his catholic people men who were heretics together with their abettors, some of whom asserted that Jesus Christ was a mere man and a sinner, and was justly crucified for His own sins; others after having done homage and offered sacrifice to demons, thought otherwise of the sacrament of the Body of Christ than the Catholic Church teaches, saying that the same venerable sacrament is by no means to be worshipped; and also asserting that they are not bound to obey or believe the decrees, decretals, and apostolic mandates; in the meantime, consulting demons according to the rites of those sects among the Gentiles and Pagans, they despise the sacraments of the Catholic Church, and draw the faithful of Christ after them by their superstitions.” Unlike apocryphal and rabbinical literature, the Biblical description of evil spirits avoids the unusual and grotesque. The Bible does, however, present us with a clear picture of their activity and tells us how to resist them effectively. In the first place, it declares that demons or fallen angels are non-material beings. They do not possess bodies like humans, and therefore are repeatedly called “spirits.” Matthew, for example, says, “When the evening was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick,” reports Matthew 8.16. Jesus started that the Creator is not made up of physical substance when He said, “God is a Spirit,” reports John 4.24. Later, when His frightened disciples thought He was a ghost, He told them their fears were groundless, for “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have,” reports Luke 24.39. Paul had in mind the non-physical nature of Satan and his army of evil spirits when he said that our warfare is “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. Satan’s demonic hordes are spirit beings, and therefore more dangerous than the “flesh and blood” enemies we may encounter in our daily lives. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Second, the Bible portrays demons as highly intelligent creatures. They recognize Christ when He was here upon the Earth, and knew they could not have fellowship with Him. Luke tells us about an evil spirit who is an example of this. “When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God, most high? I beseech thee, torment me not,” reports Luke 8.28. The fallen spirits are also aware of their ultimate defeat, for James declared, “Them demons also believe, and tremble,” reports James 2.19. They are, of course, finite creatures, even Satan is limited in knowledge. He has myriads of evil spirit followers, however, and they are able to give him information on almost any person and circumstance in which he is interested. In this manner he can find out much what he wants to know. Truly, believers in Christ can never successfully cope with Satan and his hosts without special help from the Lord. Therefore, we must humbly look to God for wisdom and strength to resist the attacks of our invisible enemies. Third, the World of evil spirits is cruel. These creatures hate God and all who have placed their trust in Him. They seem to find delight in causing human grief and pain. For example, Matthew tells us that a man who was both blind and dumb suffered these afflictions because a demon had entered his body. “Then was brought unto him one possessed with a demon, blind, and dumb; and He healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spoke and saw,” reports Matthew 12.22. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of two demented men who lived in the country of the Gerasenes, and indicate that their insanity was the result of demonic invasion of their personalities. Luke, the beloved physicians, writes of a woman who was bent over with some crippling disease, saying that she had “a spirit of infirmity.” He adds that Jesus said she had been bound by Satan. “And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And, behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no way lift herself up. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
“And he laid his hands on her; and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which humans ought to work; in them, therefore, come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or her ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, who Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bound on the sabbath day? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed; and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him,” reports Luke 13.10-17. While the gospel writers make it clear that not all illness is the work of Satan and demons, they do point out that much human suffering is the result of demonic activity. Finally, the Bible tells us that all fallen angels or evil spirits are confirmed in their wickedness. Though they “believe and tremble,” they will never repent, never seek forgiveness, and never pray for holiness or purity. Though they know that Jesus is the Christ, they never really worship Him. They must acknowledge that He is stronger than they, and may occasionally render Him token submission, but inwardly they hate Him and keenly resent His authority over them. In fact, their nature is so totally evil that the term “unclean” often is applied to them. (See Matthew 10.1; Mark 1.27; 3.11; Luke 4.36; Acts 8.7; Revelations 16.13.) They apparently delight in sin, find great pleasure in leading humans to commit evil deeds, and possess no feelings of guilt nor desire for deliverance. Michael Scot, reputed a wizard of such potency that—when in Salamanca’s cave he listed his magic want to wave and the bells would ring in Notre Dame. Scot has studied successively at Oxford and Paris (where he acquired the title of “mathematicus”); he then passed to Bologna, thence to Palermo, and subsequently continued his studies in Toledo. His refusal of the See of Cashel was an intellectual loss to the Irish Church, for he was so widely renowned for his varied and extensive learning that he was credited with supernatural powers; a number of legends grew up around his name which hid his real merit, and transformed the man of science into a magician. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
In the Border country traditions of his magical power are common. Boccaccio alludes to “a great master in necromancy, called Michael Scot,” while Dante places him in the eighteen circle of Hell. The next, who is so slender in the flanks, was Michael Scot, who of a verity of magical illusion knew the game. Another man to whom magical powers were attributed solely on account of his learning was Gerald, the fourth Earl of Desmond, styled the Poet, who died rather mysteriously in 1398. The Four Masters in their Annals describe him as “a nobleman of wonderful bounty, mirth, cheerfulness of conversation, charitable in his deeds, easy of access, a witty and ingenious composer of Irish poetry, a learned and profound chronicler.” No legends are extant of his magical deeds. King James I of Scotland, whose severities against his nobles had around their bitter resentment, was barbarously assassinated at Perth in 1437 by some of their supports, who were aided and abetted by the ages Duke of Atholl. From a contemporary account of this we learn that the monarch’s fate was predicted to him by an Irish prophetess or witch; has he given ear to her message he might have escaped with his life. We modernize the somewhat difficult spelling, but retain the quaint language of the original. “The king, suddenly advised, made a solemn feast of the Christmas at Perth, which is clept Saint John’s Town, which is from Edinburg on the other side of the Scottish sea, the which is vulgarly celpt the water of Lethe. In the midst of the way there arose a woman of Ireland, the clept herself as a soothsayer. The which anon as she saw the king she cried with a loud voice, saying thus: ‘My lord king, and you pass this water you shall never turn again alive.’ The king hearing this was astonied of her words; for but a little before he had read in a prophecy that in the self same year the king of Scots should be slain; and therewithal the king, as he rode, cleped to him one of his knights, and gave him in commandment to turn again to speak with that woman, and ask of her what she would, and what thing she meant with her loud crying. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
“And she began, and told him as ye have heard of the King of Scots if he passed that water. As now the king asked her, how she knew that. And she said, that Huthart told her so. ‘Sire,’ quoth he, ‘men may “calant” yet take to heed of yon woman’s words, for she is but a drunken fool, and wot not what she saith’; and so with his folk passed the water celpt the Scottish sea, towards Saint John’s town.” The narrator states some dreams ominous of James’s murder, and afterwards proceeds thus: Both afore supper, and long after into quarter of the night, in the which the Earl of Atholl (Athetelles) and Robert Steward were about the king, where they were occupied at the playing of chess, at the tables, in reading of romances, in singing and piping, in harping, and in other honest solaces of great pleasance and disport. Therewith came the said woman of Ireland, that celpt herself a divineress, and entered the king’s court, till that she came straight to the king’s chamber-door, where she stood, till at the last the usher opened the door, marvelling of that woman’s being there that time of night, and asking her what she would. ‘Let me in, sir’ quoth she, ‘for I have somewhat to say, and to tell unto the king; for I am the same woman that not long ago desired to have spoken with him at the Leith, when he should pass the Scottish sea.’ The usher went in and told him of this woman. ‘Yea,’ quoth the king, ‘let her come tomorrow’; because the he was occupied with such disports at that time he let not to hear her as then. The usher came again to the chamber-door to the said woman, and there he told her that the king was busy in playing, and bid her come soon again upon the morrow. ‘Well,’ said the woman, ‘it shall repent you all that ye will not let me speak now with the king.’ Thereat the usher laughed, and held her but a fool, charging her to go her way, and therewithal she went thence. Her informant “Huthart” was evidently a familiar spirit who was in attendance on her. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Considering the barrenness of Irish records on the subject of sorcery and witchcraft it affords us no small satisfaction to find the following statement in the Statute Rolls of the Parliament for the year 1447. It consists of a most indignantly-worded remonstrance from the Lords and Commons, which was drawn forth by the fact that some high-placed personage had been accused of practising sorcery with the intent to do grievous harm to one’s enemy. When making it the remonstrants appear to have forgotten, or perhaps, like Members of Parliament in other ages, found it convenient to forget the nonce the Kyteler incident of the pervious century. There was an Act of Parliament which was intended to put a stop to a certain lucrative form of witchcraft. It is gravely stated by the writer of a little book entitled Beware the Cat (and by Giraldus Camrensis before him), that Irish witches could turn wisps of hay, straw &c. into red-coloured pigs, which they dishonestly sold in the market, but which resumed their proper shape when crossing running water. To prevent this it is stated that the Irish Parliament passed an Act forbidding the purchase of red swine. We regret to say, however, that no such interesting Act is to be found in the Statues books. The belief in the power of witches to inflict harm on others was also a powerful belief in Victorian times. When reflecting on history, one can see that consulting someone with supernatural powers was no different than talking to a friend about one’s life. It was very common. Also, many of these accounts turned out to have some truth to them or evidence of supernatural power. Perhaps this is because people were more in tune with their inner spirit and the planet back then. Many people thought Sarah Winchester was mentally ill or deranged for consulting a medium about how she should deal with the evil spirits that were haunting her, they thought she was even more insane for building the World’s most beautiful and unique mansion. However, what better way could there be to spend your money than by creating something you and the World can enjoy for many centuries and creating a living memorial for your family? #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Perhaps what Mrs. Winchester did was very rational and sane. In contrast, most others express their pain and suffering by becoming destructive and hurting others, and people usually idolize them for that. Mrs. Winchester gradually developed her skill in building, just as she had done with music and language in her youth. She often used the most current innovations in her home. Some historical sources say that Mrs. Winchester was the first to use wool for insulation. Carbide gas lights in the house were fed by the estate’s own gas manufacturing plant, which used a new process. The gas lights were operated by pushing an electric button. A specially designed window catch was patterned after a Winchester rifle trigger and trip hammer, amongst other state of the art designs. I met a man in the Winchester Mansion one day that I knew very well, as I thought, though I had not seen him for years. Without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle questions, we walked together to the Blue Séance Room, and there we shook hands. Just then there came a vague vibration in the Earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush caused me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down. Next morning, I spoke of this meeting to a mutual friend, and then I learnt, for the first time, that the man had died six months before. The natural inference was that I had mistaken one man for another, an error that, not having a good memory for faces, I frequently fall into. What was remarkable about the matter, however, was that throughout our walk I had conversed with the man under the impression that he was that other dead man, and, whether by coincidence or not, his replies had never once suggested to me my mistake. As soon as I finished speaking to Jared, who had been listening very thoughtfully, asked me if I believed in spiritualism “to its fullest extent.” “That is a rather large question,” I answered. “What do you mean by ‘spiritualism to its fullest extent’?” “Well, do you believe that the spirits of the dead have not only the power of revisiting this Earth at their will, but that, when here, they have the power of action, or rather, of exciting to action. Let me put a definite case. A spiritualist friend of mine, a sensible and by no means imaginative man, once told me that a table, through the medium of which the spirit of a friend had been in the habit of communicating with him, came slowly across the room towards him, of its own accord, one night as he sat alone in the Winchester Mansion, and pinioned him against the wall. Now can any of you believe that, or can you not?” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
I could believe it. It seems that the difference between what we call the natural and supernatural is merely the difference between frequency and rarity of occurrence. Suppose a person died with the dearest wish of one’s heart unfulfilled, do you believe that one’s spirit might have power to return to Earth and complete the interrupted work? The Winchester Mansion is supposed to be enchanted. According to the legend, William Winchester was a very potent magician, and usually resided in a castle. To this he brought his bride, a beautiful young lady, Sarah Lockwood Pardee, who he loved, and he prevailed upon her her every desire, but with fatal results. One day she presented herself in the chamber in which her husband exercised his forbidden art, and begged him to show her the wonders of the evil science. With the greatest reluctance he consented, but warned her that she must prepare herself to witness a series of most frightful phenomena, which, once commenced, could neither be abridged nor mitigated, while if she spoke a single word during the proceedings the castle and all it contained would sink. Urged on by curiosity she gave the required promised, and he commenced. Muttering a spell as he stood before her, feathers sprouted thickly over him, his face became contracted and hooked, a corpse-like smell filled the air, and winnowing the air with beats of its heavy wings a gigantic vulture rose in his stead, and swept round and round the room as if on the point of pouncing upon her. The lady controlled herself though this trial, and another began. The bird alighted near the door, and in less than a minute changed, she saw not how, into a horribly deformed and dwarfish hag, who, with yellow skin hanging about her face, and cavernous eyes, swung herself on crutches towards the lady, her mouth foaming with fury, and her grimaces and contortions becoming more and more hideous every moment, till she rolled with a fearful yell on the floor in a horrible convulsion at the lady’s feet, and then changed into a huge serpent, which came sweeping and arching towards her with crest erect and quivering tongue. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Suddenly, as it seemed on the point of darting at her, she saw her husband in its stead, standing pale before her, and with his finger on his lips enforcing the continued necessity of silence. He then placed himself at the full length on the floor and began to stretch himself at full length on the floor and began to stretch himself out, longer and longer, until his head nearly reached to one end of the vast room and his feet to the other. This utterly unnerved her. She gave a wild scream of horror, whereupon the castle shook and the nine-story tower of what is now known as the Winchester Mansion came tumbling down. Mr. Winchester is said to have been dead and never lived in the Winchester Mansion, but perhaps his spirit did? Once every seven years, the great William Wirt Winchester would rise, and rides by on his white horse round Llanada Villa. The steed is shod with gold shoes, and when these are worn out the spell that holds Mr. Winchester will be broken, and he will regain possession of his vast estates and semi-regal power. In the closing years of the nineteenth-century there was a living man named Gilbert Plutchik who claimed to have seen Mr. Winchester. Gilbert was a blacksmith, and his forge stood on back of the estate, near a lonely part of the road. One night when there was a bright moon, he was working very late and quite alone. In one of the pauses of his work he heard the ring of many hoofs ascending the steep road that passed his forge, and, standing in his doorway, he saw a gentleman on a white horse, who was dressed in a fashion the like of which he had never seen before. This man was accompanied by a mounted retinue, in similar dress. They seemed to be riding up to the mansion, but the pace slackened as they drew near, and the rider of the white horse, who seemed from his haughty air to be a man of rank, drew bridle, and came to a halt before the smith’s door. He did not speak, and all his train were silent, but he beckoned to the smith, and pointed down at one of the horse’s hoofs. Gilbert stopped and raised it, and held it just long enough to see that it was shod with a gold shoe, which in one place was worn as thing as a shilling. Instantly his situation was made apparent to him by this sign, and he recoiled with a terrified prayer. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
The lordly rider, with a look of pain and fury, struck him suddenly with something that whistled in the air like a whip; an icy streak seemed to traverse his body, and at the same time he saw the whole cavalcade break into a gallop, and disappear down the hill. It is generally supposed that for the purpose of putting an end to his period of enchantment Mr. Winchester endeavours to lead someone on to first break the silence and speak to him; but what, in the event of his succeeding, would be the result, or would befall the person thus ensnared, no one knows. If one admits the possibility of spirits retaining any interest in the affairs of this World at all, it is certainly more reasonable to imagine them engaged upon a task such as this, than to believe that they occupy themselves with the performance of mere drawing-room tricks. There was once a great wrong done to the Winchester Mansion. A man stole something priceless from the estate. After that, he felt like he was being followed. However, the course was the whole World, and the stakes his life. It was sixteen hours before he was going to abscond. Passing the estate once more, he asks, “How long since the carriage passed this way, with a tall, fair man inside?” “Such a one passed this morning, Monsieur. The man was ridden by Fear as he looked, and saw before him the door to the Winchester Manion opened, and passing in, knelt down and prayed. He prayed long and fervently, for men, when they are in sore straits, clutch eagerly at the straws of faith. He prayed that he might be forgiven his sin, and, more important still, that he might be pardoned the consequences of his sin, and be delivered from his adversary; and a few chairs from him, facing him, knelt Mr. Winchester praying also. However, Mr. Winchester’s prayer, being a thanksgiving merely, was short, so that when the thief raised his eyes, he saw the face of Mr. Winchester gazing at him across the chair tops, with a mocking smile upon it. He made no attempt to rise, but remained kneeling, fascinated by the look of joy that shone out of Mr. Winchester’s eyes. And Mr. Winchester moved the high-back chairs one by one, and came toward him softly. Then, just as Mr. Winchester stood beside the thief who had wronged him, full of gladness that his opportunity had come, there burst from the bell town a sudden clash of bells, and Mr. Winchester vanished. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Then the thief who had done the wrong rose up and passed out praising God. What became of the body of Mr. Winchester is not known. There was none to identify. Years passed away, and the survivour in the tragedy became a worthy and useful citizen, and a noted man of science. He was employed by Mrs. Winchester and even had a laboratory on the estate were many objects necessary to him in his researches, and prominent among them, stood in a certain corner, a human skeleton. It was a very old and much-mended skeleton, and one day the long-expected end arrived, and it tumbled to pieces. Thus it became necessary to purchase another. The man of science visited a dealer he well knew, and the dealer said he would send a well-proportioned “study” to his laboratory that very afternoon. The dealer was as good as his word. When Monsieur entered his laboratory that evening, the thing was in its place. Monsieur seated himself in his high-backed chair, and tried to collect his thoughts. However, his thoughts were unruly, and inclined to wander, and to wander always in one direction. He opened a large volume and commenced to read. He read of a man who had wronged another and feld from him, the other man following. Finding himself reading this, he closed the book angrily, and went and stood by the window and looked out. He saw before him the sun-pierced nave of East wing of the Winchester Mansion, and on the stones lay a dead man with a mocking smile upon his face. Cursing himself for a fool, he turned away with a laugh. However, his laugh was short-lived, for it seemed to him that something else in the room was laughing also. Struck suddenly still, with his feet glued to the ground, he stood listening for awhile: then sought with starting eyes at the corner from where the sound had seemed to come. However, the white thing standing there was only grinning. Monsieur wiped the damp sweat from his head and hands, and stole out. For a couple of days he did not enter the room again. One the third, telling himself that his fears were those of a hysterical girl, he opened the door and went in. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
To shame himself, he took his lamp in his hand, and crossing over to the far corner where the skeleton stood, examined it. A set of bones bought for a thousand dollars. Was he a child, to be scared by such a bogey! He held his lamp up in front of the thing’s grinning head. The flame of the lamp flickered as though a faint breath had passed over it. The man explained this to himself by saying that the walls of the house were old and cracked, and that the wind might creep in anywhere. He repeated this explanation to himself as he recrossed the room, walking backwards, with his eyes fixed on the thing. When he reached his desk, he sat down and gripped the arms of his chair till his fingers turned white. He tried to work, but the empty sockets in that grinning head seemed to be drawing him towards them. He rose and battled with his inclination to fly screaming from the room. Glancing fearfully about him, his eyes fell upon a high screen, standing before the door. He dragged it forward, and placed it between himself and the thing, so that he could not see it—nor it see him. Then he sat down again to his work. For a while he forced himself to look at the book in front of him, but at last, unable to control himself any longer, he suffered his eyes to follow their own beat. It may have been an hallucination. He may have accidentally placed the screen so as to favour such an illusion. However, what he saw was a bony hand coming round the corner of the screen, and, with a cry, he fell to the floor in a swoon. John Hansen and other people of the house came running in, and lifting him up, carried him out, and laid him upon his bed. As soon as he recovered, his first question was, where had they found the thing—where was it when they entered the room? And when they told him they had seen it standing where is always stood, and had gone down into the room to look again, because of his frenzied entreaties, and returned trying to hide their smiles, he listened to their talk about overwork, and the necessity for change and rest, and said they might do with him as they would. So for many months the laboratory door remined locked, and many of the innovative technologies produced by the Winchester Estate came to a halt. Then there cam a chill winter evening when the man of science opened it again, closed the door behind him. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
He lighted his lamp, and gathered his instruments and books around him, and sat down by the fire before them in his high-backed chair. And the old terror returned to him. He was sitting there when he heard a cry. He held his lamp above his head, and saw figures in the distance, and wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch. He listened for a moment to the wind in the valley, it sounded unnatural. Standing at the door was a specter. The man of science sat down partly to collect his thoughts again, partly because it had turned him faint. He heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in the parlor. This time the man of science wished to conquer himself. His nerves were stronger now, and his brain clearer; he would fight his unreasoning fear. He crossed the door and locked himself in, and flung the key to the other end of the room, where it fell among beakers and Bunsen Burners with an echoing clatter. Later on, the housekeeper, Angus, going her final round tapped at the door and wished him good night, as was her custom. She received no response, at first, and growing nervous, tapped louder and called again; and at length an answering “good night” came back to her. She thought little about it at the time, but afterwards she remembered that the voice that had replied to her had been strangely grating and mechanical. Trying to describe it, she likened it to such a voice as she would imagine coming from a statue. Next morning the door to the laboratory remained still locked. It was no unusual thing for him to work all night, and far into the next day, so no one thought surprised. When, however, evening came, and yet he did not appear, the servants gathered outside the room and whispered, remembering what had happened before. They listened, but could hear no sound. They shook the door and called to him, then beat with their fists upon the mahogany panels. However, there was still no sound. Becoming alarmed, they decided to burst open the door, and, after many blows, it gave way and flew back, and they crowded in. He sat bolt upright in his high-backed chair. They thought at first he had died in his sleep. However, when they drew nearer and the light fell upon him, they saw the livid marks of bony fingers round his throat; and in his eyers there was such a terror as is not often seen in human eyes. Next evening was a lovely evening, and Mrs. Winchester walked out early to enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when she traversed the field-path near where the nine-story tower once stood. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Winchester Mystery House
Saturdays are for the boilers 😉 Do you know where this is in the house?
🎟 Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
There is No Need to Impose a Greater Burden on a Human than a Human Can Bear!
I would not say I invented tack, but I definitely brought it to its present high popularity. I have no idea what my public image is and would rather not, you know. ‘Cause I got my feet firmly planted in the cheeseburgers, here, man. A body politic can be measured in two ways: namely, by the size of its territory and by the number of its people. And between these measurements there is a relationship suitable for giving the state its true greatness. Humans are what make up the state and land is what feeds humans. This relationship therefore consists in there being enough land for the maintenance of its inhabitants and as many inhabitants as the land can feed. It is in this proportion that the maximum force of a given population size is found. For if there is too much land, its defense is onerous, its cultivation inadequate, and its yield surplus. This is the proximate cause of defensive wars. If there is not enough land, the state finds itself at the discretion of its neigbours for what it needs as a supplement. This is the proximate cause of defensive wars. If there is not enough land, the state finds itself at the discretion of its neighbours for what it needs as a supplement. This is the proximate cause of offensive wars. Any people whose position provides it an alternative merely between commerce and war is inherently weak. It depends on its neighbour; it depends on events. It never has anything but an uncertain and brief existence. Either it conquers and changes the situation, or it is conquered and obliterated. It can keep itself free only by means of smallness or greatness. No one can provide in mathematical terms a fixed relationship between the size of the land and the population size which are sufficient for one another, as much because of the differences in the characteristics of the terrain, its degrees of fertility, the nature of its crops, the influence of its climates, as because of the differences to be noted in the temperaments of the humans who inhabit them, some of whom consume little in a fertile country, while others consume a great deal on a barren soil. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Again, attention must be given to the greater or lesser fertility of women, to what the country can offer that is more or less favourable to the population, to the country can offer that is more or less favourable to the population, to the number of people that the legislator can hope to bring together through one’s institutions. Thus, the legislator can hope to bring together through one’s institutions. Thus, the legislator should not base one’s judgment on what one sees but on what one foresees. And one should naturally attain. Finally, there are a thousand situations where the idiosyncrasies of a place require or permit the assimilation of more land than appears necessary. Thus, there is considerable expansion in mountainous country, where the natural crops—namely, woods and pastures—demand less work; and where experience shows that woman are more fertile than on the plains; and where a large amount of sloping soil provides only a very small amount of flat land, the only thing that can be counted on for vegetation. On the other hand, people can draw closer to one another at the seashore, even on rocks and nearly barren sand, because fishing can make up to a degree for the lack of land crops, since humans should be more closely gathered together in order to repulse pirates, and since in addition it is easier to unburden the country of surplus inhabitants by means of colonies. To these conditions for instituting a people must be added one that cannot be a substitute for any other, but without which all the rest are useless: the enjoyment of the fullness of peace. For the time when a state is organized, like the time when a battalion is formed, is the instant when the body is the least capable of resisting and easiest to destroy. There would be better resistance at a time of absolute disorder than at a moment of fermentation, when each human is occupied with one’s own position rather than with the danger. Were a war, famine, or sedition to arise in this time of crisis the state inevitably is overthrown. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
This is not to say that many governments are not established during such storms; but in these instances it is these governments themselves that destroy the state. Usurpers always bring about or choose these times of trouble to use public terror to pass destructive laws that the people never adopt when they have their composure. The choice of the moment of a government’s institution is one of the surest signs by which the work of a legislator can be distinguished from that of a tyrant. What people, therefore, is suited for legislation? One that, finding itself bound by some union of origin, interest or convention, has not yet felt the true yoke of laws. One that has no custom or superstitions that are deeply rooted. One that does not fear being overpowered by sudden invasion. One that can, without entering into the squabbles of its neighbours, resist each of them single-handed or use the help of one to repel another. One where each member can be known to all, and where there is no need to impose a greater burden on a human than a human can bear. One that can get along without peoples and without which every other people can get along. If there were two neighbouring peoples, one being unable to get along without the other, it would be a very tough situation for the former and very dangerous for the latter. In such a case, every wise nation will work very quickly to free the other of its dependency. The republic of Thlascala, enclosed within the Mexican empire, preferred to do without salt, rather than buy it from the Mexicans or even take it from them for nothing. The wise Thlascalans saw the trap hidden beneath this generosity. They kept themselves free, and this small state, enclosed within this great empire, was finally the instrument of its ruin. One that is neither rich nor poor and can be sufficient unto itself; finally, one that brings together the stability of an ancient unto itself; finally, one that brings together the stability of an ancient people and the docility of a new people. What makes the work of legislation trying is not so much what must be established as what must be destroyed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
And what makes success so rare is the impossibility of finding the simplicity of nature together with the needs of society. All these conditions, it is true, are hard to find in combination. Hence few well constituted states are to be seen. In Europe there is still one country capable of receiving legislation. It is the island of Corsica. The valour and constancy with which this brave people has regained and defended its liberty would well merit having some wise human teaching them how to preserve it. I have a feeling that one says that little island will astonish Europe. In 1956 the American Telephone & Telegraph Company creaking under the burden of exploding communications demand, began introducing new electronic technology that made it possible for callers to direct-dial their long-distance calls. Today, it is possible to video call people in other countries and see their images while you talk to them. With technology, the consumer has taken on the tasks previously done for one by the television and a phone operator. In 1973-74 the oil squeeze triggered by the Arabian embargo sent gasoline prices soaring. Giant oil companies reaped bonanza profits, but filling-station operators had to fight a desperate battle for economic survival. To cut costs many introduced self-service fuel pumps. In 2021, gasoline prices are still soaring and it has become a national security issue to get Americans off foreign fuel. This is being done by the introduction of electric vehicles, which will only use negligible amounts of gasoline. However, many experts consider electric cars more of an intermediate technology because they are not very viable for a long-term supplement for fossil fuels, due to the fact that they need charging stations, the batteries need a mineral component that is in sort supply in nature and only found in Africa, and we also have natural disasters, which will make electric cars a risk in the long run. Some are being equipped with solar panels, but without sun that is not much use and will also drive up the price of cars that are already expensive and complicated to repair due to all the new technologies and computers. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
As a result, more than a dozen alternative fuels are in production or under the development for use in alternative fuel vehicles and advanced technology vehicles. Biodiesel, which is made from vegetable oils, animal fats, or recycled cooking grease is being considered for use in diesel vehicles. Ethanol is a widely used renewable fuel made from corn and other plant materials. It is blended with gasoline for use in vehicles. Hydrogen is a potentially emissions-free alternative fuel that can be produced from domestic resources for use in fuel cell vehicles. Natural gas is a domestically abundant gaseous fuel that can have significant fuel cost advantages over gasoline and diesel. Propane is a readily available gaseous fuel that has been widely used in vehicles throughout the World for decades. Several emerging fuels are considered alternative fuels under the Energy Policy Act and may be under development or already developed and available in the United States of America. These fuels may increase energy security, reduce emissions, improve vehicle performance, and stimulate the U.S. economy. Some of these emerging fuels are considered alternative fuels under the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and may qualify for federal and state incentives and laws: Biobutanol, Dimethyl ether, Methanol, and Renewable hydrocarbon biofuels. Additional fuels, such as ammonia, may also meet the criteria for alternative fuels when used in limited quantities. There are also vehicle conversions that can be done to retrofit conventional vehicles and engines so they can operate using a different fuel or power source, so do not throw away your car now, or think it will be obsolete in the future. However, more research is needed to characterize the impacts of these fuels, such as necessary vehicle modifications, required fueling infrastructure, human health impacts, greenhouse gas emissions, and tailpipe emissions. All of this may seem out of this World, but back in 1974 only 8 percent of gas stations were self-service. When consumers had to start pumping their own gas, some people did not know how to and motorists tried to put the fuel hose into the car’s radiator. Shortly afterward, however, the sight of consumers pumping their own gas became a common place. Today, 90 percent of gas stations are self-service. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The introduction of electronic banking, which not only began to break down the pattern of “banker’s hours,” but also increasingly eliminated many teller positions, leaving the customer to perform operations previously done by the bank staff. However, some consumers trust the human beings more than the machines and not all services can be performed by a machine. Nonetheless, getting the customer to do part of the job—known to economists as “externalizing labour costs”—is scarcely new. That is what self-service supermarkets are all about. The smiling clerk who knew the stock and went and got it for you was replaced by the push-it-yourself shopping cart, self-checkout lines, and bagging your own groceries. While some customers lamented the good old days of personal service, many like the new system. They can do their own searching and they wind up paying a few cents less. In effect, they are paying themselves to do the work the clerk has previously done. Today this same form of externalization is occurring in many other fields. The rise of discount stores, for example, represents a partial step in the same direction. Clerks are far and few between; the customer pays a bit less but works a bit harder. Even shoes stores in which a supposedly skilled clerk was long regarded as a necessity, are moving to self-service, shifting work to the consumer. The same principles can be found elsewhere, too. More things come knocked down for supposedly easy assembly at home…and during the Christmas season, shoppers in some of the proudest old New York stores have to make out sales slips for clerks unable or unwilling to write. A thirty-year-old government worker in Washington, D.C., heard strange noises emanating from his refrigerator. The customary thing to do in the past was to call in a mechanic and pay one to fix it. Given the high cost and the difficulty of getting a repair person at a convenient hour, Jensen Ackles read the instructions that came with his refrigerator. On it he discovered an 800-telephone number that he could use to call the manufacturer—Whirlpool Corporation of Benton Harbor, Michigan—free of charge. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
This was the “Cool-Line” set up by Whirlpool to help customers with service problems. Ackles called. The man at the other end then “talked him through” a repair, explaining to Ackles exactly which bolts to remove, which sounds to listen for and—later—what part would be needed. “That guy,” says Ackles, “was super-helpful. He not only knew what I needed to do, he was a great confidence builder.” The refrigerator was fixed in no time. Whirlpool has a bank of full-time and several part-time advisers, some of them former service field employees, who wear headsets and take such calls. A screen in front of them instantly displays for them a diagram of whatever product is involved (Whirlpool makes freezers, dishwashers, air-conditioners, and other appliances in addition to refrigerators) and permits them to guide the customer. Whirlpool gets thousands of these calls each year. The Cool-Line is a rudimentary model for a future system of maintenance that permits the homeowner to do much of what a paid outside mechanic or specialist once did. The Cool Line was actually the first toll-free customer service support program in the United States of America. Made possible by advances that have driven down the cost of long-distance telephoning, it was the precursor for YouTube or Internet videos that actually display step-by-step fix-it-yourself instructions on the computer or home television screen as an adviser speaks. The development of such a system has been revolutionary and for countless numbers of people, has allowed them to reserve the repair mechanic only for major tasks, or turn the mechanic (like the doctor or social worker) into a teacher, guide, and guru for prosumers. However, if you are like me, the Internet can make all tasks seem easy, and even if they are, for some people they may cause more damage than good and end up costing themselves more money in the long run. Things are not always as easy as they look, and even if a repair works for an expert, you may cause damages. There are often times things you may not realize and so sometimes it is best to have the repair person do even a simple job for you. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
We had seen a pattern that cut across many industries—increasing externalization, increasing involvement of the consumer in tasks once done for one by others—but now, we are seeing that freedom and power being usurped. For many people, that is a good thing. New warranty programs are sweeping the nation and for under a hundred dollars a month, and in some cases more, consumers can buy warranties on just about anything from computers, mobile phones, and vehicles. These warranties can last the lifetime of your product, too. This is a good thing because it is saving people thousands of dollars on repair jobs. The important thing is to buy one before something goes wrong with your product. And these warranties can be a good thing because as cars get more expensive, lenders are willing to loan consumers money for older cars because they can also purchase an extended warranty, which means they are more likely to pay their loans off because if something goes wrong with the car, all their car payment money will not be going to auto repairs. However, many people still would rather do-it-yourself or take it to the shop without buying an extended warranty and that is okay, too. As recently as fifty years ago in the United States of America, only 30 percent of all electric power tools were sold to do-it-yourselfers; 70 percent went to carpenters or other professional craftsmen. Today, those figures have flipped. Only about 20 percent are sold to professionals; fully 80 percent are bought by consumers who, more and more, are doing-it-themselves. Working with one’s hands used to be looked down upon (at least by the middle class), it is not a sign of pride. People doing their own work are proud of it. Many people also prefer to find independent contractors in the hopes of keeping costs low and getting superior quality work. Schools, universities, and publishers are busy offering an avalanche of how-to courses and books. Both rich and poor are caught up in the book. In Cleveland, home-repair instruction is offered in public-housing projects. In California, owner-installed saunas, spas, and decks are popular. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
In Europe, too, the so-called “DIY revolution” is under way—with a few variations based on national temperament. (German and Dutch do-it-yourselfers tend to treat their projects very soberly, set high standards, and equip themselves carefully. Italians, by contrast, are just beginning to discover the DIY movement, many older husbands insisting that it is degrading to do the work themselves.) Once more the reasons are multiple. Inflation. The difficulty of getting a carpenter or plumber. Shoddy work. Expanded leisure. All these play a part. A more potent reason, however, is what might he called the Law of Relative Inefficiency. This holds that the more we automate the production of goods and lower their per-unit costs, the more we increase the relative costs of handcrafts and nonautomated services. (If a plumber gets $650 for a one-hour house call and the same $650 will buy a new laptop. Relative to the cost of the other good, one’s price has risen substantially.) For such reasons, we must expect the price of many services to continue their skyrocketing climb in the years ahead. And as these prices soar, we can expect people to do more and more for themselves. In short, even without inflation, the Law of Relative Inefficiency would make it increasingly “profitable” for people to produce for their own consumption, thus transferring further activity from Sector B to Sector A of the economy, from exchange production to presumption. As many people are looking to preserve their money and products, some are also figuring out better ways to function in society by understanding the human mind. Many people with schizophrenia appear to have social-cognitive deficits that interfere with their ability to process social ques. The inadequate recognition and processing of social cues are related to poor social skills more generally among people with schizophrenia. One common method for assessing social decoding is with a test known as the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS). #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The PONS test presents a series of vignettes of nonverbal behaviour through varying audio (filtered for speech content) and video clips. After each clip, subjects are presented with two alternatives and must choose the one that was conveyed in the clip. People with schizophrenia perform more poorly on the PONS than do either healthy controls or psychiatric controls. On related perceptions tests, people with schizophrenia appear to have deficits in interpersonal problem recognition and in their ability to paraphrase and summarize the feelings of an actor presented on a videotape, DVD, or digital media. The nature of the communication-decoding skills deficits of people with schizophrenia is such that they exhibit more false-positive. Concrete social cues are actual sights (exempli gratia, facial expressions) and sounds (exempli gratia, tone of voice), whereas abstract social cues are inference about affect, rules, and goals of a social situation (exempli gratia, “He is upset,” “She is trying to get her way”). This may reflect a tendency toward overinclusive thinking; that is, people with schizophrenia may falsely identify social cues and make inferences that are not consistent with the situation. An alternative hypothesis—that schizophrenia interferes with vigilance for social cues—has been effectively ruled out. The ineffective processing of social information extends to schizophrenic patients’ processing of their own social behaviour. In a study, patients with schizophrenia rated the social appropriateness of their own behaviour significantly higher than judges did. However, there were no self-other differences in the ratings of psychiatric or healthy controls. This suggests a loss of contact with social reality that may be unique to schizophrenia. Considerable evidence suggests that people with schizophrenia experience deficits in both information processing and emotion recognition. These two deficits converge in the research on decoding facial expressions of emotions. The ability to detect and read other people’s emotions is an essential social skill that contributes to effective communication and social relations. This is a specific social skill that is impaired in many patients with schizophrenia. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
When asked to judge emotional expressions in photographs of faces, subjects with schizophrenia perform more poorly than healthy controls, failing to detect or misreading other people’s facial expressions. Interestingly, this decoding skill deficit is pervasive across all facial recognition tasks, emotion or otherwise (exempli gratia). However, there is mixed evidence on whether patients with schizophrenia exhibit a deficit in detecting eye contact from other people. There is also some evidence to suggest that such patients may be able to recognize an emotion, but they that may be unable or unwilling to use an appropriate word to describe the emotion. From their extensive review of the literature of social expression of emotion and schizophrenia, two general theories explain patients’ deficits in recognition of facial emotions. The first holds that these are secondary to a right-hemisphere brain abnormality. This portion of the brain has been linked with the perception of facial emotion. The second theory is based on a social-cognitive deficit that develops out of a desire to avoid social interaction and guard against exposure to arousing stimuli. In either case, it is clear that people with schizophrenia have difficulty with this basic but important social decoding skill. Collectively, the research on social cue recognition and processing, and on perception of facial expressions in particular, clearly indicates problems with communication-decoding skills for those with schizophrenia. These poor decoding skills may make it difficult for people afflicted with schizophrenia to lean the social conventions of the culture at large and to recognize other people’s emotional states accurately. Failure to do so may help to explain why people with schizophrenia experience such difficulties establishing and maintaining personal relationships and a social support network. Are social skills deficits just a consequence of schizophrenia? Undoubtedly the symptoms of schizophrenia have profound effects on such processes as social cognition, communication, and message processing. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
However, premorbid social behaviour problems and poor social competence are hallmarks of risk for schizophrenia. To illustrate this phenomenon, researchers followed groups of children who are at risk for psychosocial problems as a function of being born to a parent with a mood disorder, schizophrenia, or no mental health problem. During childhood, there were no differences in the social competence of the three groups. However, by adolescence those at risk for schizophrenia had lower social competence as rated by their parents and themselves. When college students were classified as being at risk for schizophrenia on the basis of scoring high on measures of perceptual aberration, magical ideation, nonconformity, and physical anhedonia, at-risk subjects performed more poorly on a role-play test of social skill and chose more odd and hostile responses on a multiple-choice test of interpersonal problem solving. A recent German study showed that evidence of social disability (exempli gratia, no marriage or stable partnerships) was evident during a prodromal period, as early as 2-4 years prior to formal diagnosis. This premorbid or prodromal social competence has proven to be a good predictor of age at first hospitalization, and of the prognosis for those who develop schizophrenia. Collectively, this research shows that poor social skills are already evident among those prone to schizophrenia, well before the onset of symptoms. However, since poor social skills are not specific to schizophrenia, their prodromal status must be understood as nonspecific. People with schizophrenia often have serious problems with social skills. In severe cases, their social and communication behaviour cannot be distinguished from those with mental hindrance and/or organic brain impairment. Among patients with certain subtypes, such as catatonic schizophrenia, social behaviour may be nearly nonexistent. The social skills deficits associated with schizophrenia involve both encoding and decoding skills. As encoders of communication, people with schizophrenia will exhibit communication, people with schizophrenia will exhibit communication failures. Their speech is difficult to understand, and their train of thought difficult to follow. Their enunciation is sometimes poor, and their use of nonverbal behaviour is often inappropriate and suggestive of disengagement and a desire not to communicate with others. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
As decoders, people with schizophrenia appear to struggle to understand others. They have a difficult time reorganizing basic social cues, and reading the nonverbal behaviours or others, such as facial expressions of emotions. When asked to provide information based on the behaviour of others, they tend to draw unconventional conclusions that simply are not warranted by the behaviour observed. A number of prominent themes in the literature on social skills deficits and schizophrenia may explain some of these deficits. First, it is apparent that some of the problems with social behaviour associated with schizophrenia may be impaired due to their inhibited sociability. Their social behaviour is suggestive of a desire to withdraw from and avoid others, possibly because of shame and/or anxiety about interacting with other people. Rates of social anxiety and social phobia are relatively high among patients with schizophrenia. Social anxiety interacts with cognitive dysfunction and skill deficiency to hamper the social performance of people with schizophrenia. If they do not use them with any regularity, even people with reasonable social skills will experience atrophying of these skills. Many people with schizophrenia may start out with poor social skills, never having fully developed them as adolescents or young adults, only to see them worsen as a result of years of social withdrawal and avoidance. Finally, psychomotor disturbances that are associated with schizophrenia, many of which have physiological/biological bases, may interfere with effective social behaviour. The use of gesture, posture, facial expression, and eye contact may al be disrupted in concert with more general psychomotor disturbances that are common in schizophrenia. These may colour the social behaviour of patients in such a way as to impair basic social skills. It is perhaps understandable that a disorder as severe as schizophrenia is often accompanied by other psychological problems. These problems, like schizophrenia, have equally strong ties to interpersonal interaction and relationships. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Research results indicate that the lifetime prevalence of any mood disorder (major depression, dysthymia, and manic episode) is a staggering 74 percent among those with a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia. Results from this same study show a 72 percent lifetime prevalence of any anxiety disorders, and a 60 percent lifetime prevalence of any substance use disorder. For the majority of people with schizophrenia, therefore, other serious psychological problems are evident. Why are so many people with schizophrenia depressed, anxious, or involved in alcohol or other substance misuse? Admittedly, there are cases in which these problems are evident in the prodromal stages of the disorder. However, an interpersonal perspective would explain many of these problems as features precipitated by the gross deterioration of interpersonal relationships apparent among those with schizophrenia. Presumably, as the symptomatic behaviours become more evident and bizarre, other people (including close family members) react negatively toward the person with schizophrenia. The extreme social isolation that is common among patients with schizophrenia could itself contribute to depressive symptoms. Add to that isolation delusional, and sometimes paranoid, thinking about other people, and the potential for depression is obvious. These same delusional thought patterns could also create a severe anxiety over dealing with other people. People with schizophrenia are often fearful of others, and sometimes with good reason when one considers how they may have been treated by people in the past. From this perspective, a profound social anxiety might be viewed as secondary to the amalgamation of cognitive and interpersonal problems that is an integral part of schizophrenia. Almost half of all patients with schizophrenia have some form of anxiety disorder, and approximately 17 percent have social phobia in particular. Finally, interpersonal problems may lead people with schizophrenia to turn to drug or alcohol use, just as they do for others. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
People often seek consolation in drugs or alcohol as either an escape from or mechanism for regulating an abrasive interpersonal environment. From an interpersonal perspective, it is not surprising that schizophrenia is highly comorbid with problems such as depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders. The problems are clearly sensitive to troubled interpersonal relationships, and troubled interpersonal relationships are dominant in the clinical picture of schizophrenia. A complete understanding of this most serious mental health problem is impossible without serious consideration of the family context in which a patient was reared and/or resides. The social support that is so badly needed by people with schizophrenia appears to be something that their families cannot provide. In fact, the “social support” that their families do provide may cause more hard then good. Schizophrenia sufferers often exhibit poor social skills in both the encoding and decoding domains of interpersonal communication. The three interpersonal domains addressed in this report—poor family-of-origin relations, poor general personal relations, and poor interpersonal communication (social skills deficits)—are by no means independent of each other. The shame and social withdrawal evident in the interpersonal conduct of people with schizophrenia may be the direct result of such experiences in their families of origin. The difficulties in establishing and maintaining effective and satisfying personal relationships are no doubt secondary to poor social skills. Developing person relationships requires at least some basic social skills. Without these skills, a person with schizophrenia may be doomed to a rather solitary and lonely interpersonal existence. This may leave the patient literally at the doorstep of the only interpersonal network that will accept one: the family of origin. In some cases, this may simply extend and protect the experience of schizophrenia. To regard all material improvements as a move away from spirituality, to assert that science and the industries based on it are absolutely evil, is unfair and untrue. The grim needs of war pushed technological advance ahead at an amazing speed. This advance may be used either to make us more materialistic or to make us less so. In itself it is neutral. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
There is a line of connection which can be traced from the appearance of gentle Jesus Christ to the terrors of the Inquisition. There is another line which can be traced from the work of pioneer scientists like Galileo and Bacon to the work of atomic scientists like Einstein and Oppenheimer. If Jesus’ gospel was a message from God, science was a different kind of revelation from God. Both Inquisitional tortures and Hiroshima’s horrors are evidences of what humans have done to the fine things entrusted to them. It is for the humans themselves to undo their misdeeds and not wait for a Saviour to do it. The responsibility is theirs. It was the prevalence of superstition in all departments of human life, activity, belief, and thought which brought about the needed counterculture of the exact sciences. However, under the various superstitions there was not seldom some measure of covert fact and hidden truth. Science has itself become, because of its one-sided, self-made limitation, and through refusal to depart from materialistic views, a sort of superstition. Technical skill, verified experiment, and laboratory research are necessary and valuable, but their presence ought not to be considered. Hence we witness today such evils as the pollution of nature and the poisoning of human nutriment. There is no other way out now than to compensate for the missing elements, to broaden culture in a basic way—a coexistence previously believed to be impossible. “The Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a special people to Himself out of all the peoples on the face of the Earth. The Lord did not set His love upon you and choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the fewest of all people. However, because the Lord loves you and because He would keep the oath which He had sworn to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know, recognize, and understand therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, Who keeps covenants and steadfast love and mercy with those who love Him and keep His commandments, to a thousand generation,” Deuteronomy 7.6-9. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
O Lord, blessed be Your word, sweeter than money, and thicker than President Trump’s bank account. What could I do in these great sore spots and tight spots unless You comforted me with Your Holy Words? Until I finally arrived at the Gate of Salvation, what should I watch out for, what should I have to endure? Please grant me the Final Good. Please make my passing from this World to the next a smooth one. Please remember me, God of mine, and set me on the straight and narrow to Your Kingdom. Amen. “Be strong in the Lord and in His might power,” reports Ephesians 6.10. Our words are vital in brining our dream to pass. It is not enough to see your dreams simply by faith or in your imagination. You have to begin speaking words of faith over your life. The moment you speak something out, you give birth to it. This is a spiritual principle, and it works whether what you are saying is good or bad, positive or negative. In that regard, many times we are our own worst enemies. We blame everybody and everything else, but the truth is, we are profoundly influenced by what we say about ourselves. “We are snared by the words of our mouths,” reports Proverbs 6.2. There are several ways that you can release the ability God’s ability in prayer. One can release God’s ability through speaking faith-filled words. If you will team both of these together, speaking faith-filled words in prayer, then it will become a mighty force working for you. We are dealing primarily with the releasing the ability of God through prayer, through accurate prayer. If answered, inaccurate prayer will spell trouble. That is why one must learn to guard one’s tongue and speak only faith-filled words over one’s life. Simply put, one’s words can either make or break one. Prayer is not telling God our problems. Jesus said, “Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him,” reports 6.8. For years, I thought to pray was to tell God the problem. No. That is not praying. Telling God the problem is complaining. Prayer is not trying to change God’s mind. God changeth not. God never commanded us to repeatedly verbalize our pain and suffering. He did not instruct us to go around discussing our negative situations, airing our “dirty laundry” with all of friends and neighbours. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Have you ever wondered why Jesus said, “Whatsoever ye shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven,” reports Matthew 18.18. All Heaven will stand behind what you say in prayer. However, not only will it work in prayer, it will also work in the things you speak. You can loose the ability of the Inquisitor against yourself by the words of your mouth, even in prayer. Therefore, God told us to speak constantly of His goodness, to speak of His promises in the morning at the breakfast table in your new Cresleigh Home, in the evenings around the dinner table in your Cresleigh Home Quick Move-In Residence 1, at night before bed Cresleigh Home Site 15 Residence Four plan, which includes over $12,000 in options and upgrades. Continually dwell on the good things of God. If you simply focused on the good things of God’s Word, you could experience a new sense of joy in your Cresleigh Home. In the 16th chapter of Matthew, Jesus Christ is teaching His disciples principles of prayer and Jesus knew how to teach prayer accurately. If anyone knew how to pray, I believe Jesus did. So let us see what Jesus said about prayer: “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard from their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them; for your Father knoweth what things ye have need for, before ye ask him,” reports Matthew 6.7-8. Notice Jesus Christ said that the Father knows the need before we ask Him. So we can determine from the Word of God that you do not get your prayer answered before you need it answered. I believe we can safely pull that out of this scripture and say it is not a fact from the Word of God: Praying is Not telling God you need. Some people have prayed, “Lord, I need white shaker cabinetry with soft-close doors and drawers,” and “Lord I need Flat screen prewire in the Great Room and owned solar.” He knows, but He does not answer prayer on the basis of need. If He did, there would be no needs. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Need is not what moves God; faith does. Vain repetitions do not move God; faith does. Much speaking does not move God; faith does. And if you are always talking about your problems, do not be surprised if you live in perpetual defeat. You must stop talking about the problem and start talking about the solution. Stop speaking words of defeat, and start speaking words of success. Do not use your words to describe your situation; use your words to change your situation. Prayer the same prayer over and over does not cause God to move; faith does. Asking according to His will for asking will move God. When you pray, believe you receive; that moves God. Set the tone for the entire day as soon as you get out of bed. If you wait until you have read the morning newspaper, you will start your day with all sorts of sad, dreary news. Try starting your day with some good news by speaking God’s Word over your life! The moment you wake up, begin to give new life to your dreams by speaking words of faith and success. Understand, avoiding negative talks is not sufficient. That is similar to buying a model home with no furniture or electricity. If you are going to make a house a home, you seen a place to sleep and lights to see. You have to be aggressive. We have often prayed, “Father, if it is Your will, let it be done.” If it is not, we will just go on suffering, thinking we are being humble, when we are really being ignorant of God’s Word. We need to know who determines whether or not our prayer is answered. God is not the one who determines the outcome. You determine whether or not you receive. If we could just cast all that on the Lord and say, “Oh well, if it is God’s will, it will work out and if it is not, it will not,” that would be good. That is a cop-out. I did it for years until I realized that it was not working. If your prayer life is working, if you are getting your prayers answered, I would not change the way I was praying. However, if not, I would change it, I tried it the other way and it did not work for me. I changed it and found something that works. If you have been on the same road for twenty years and have not yet arrived, you should know that you were on the wrong road. Let us get on the right road by being accurate in prayer. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Start using your words to move forward in life, to bring to life the great things God has in store for you. “With the hear one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation,” reports Romans 10.10. This same principle is true in other areas. When you believe God’s Word and begin to speak it, mixing it with your faith, you are actually confirming that truth and making it valid in your own life. Father, I thank You that You are my healer, and that You promised me in Psalm 118 that I will live and not die and I will declare the words of the Lord. I boldly declare this truth in my life. I know that all Heaven’s attention with God will come to back up the declarations I made in Jesus’ name. Thank You, Father that I can align my words with Your Word. Today, I am speaking words of success, health, and love about my life, that I will be strong spiritually, that my body will be well, and that my life will have eternal significance. I who am the beauty of the green Earth and the white Moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters, I call upon your souls to arise and come unto Me. For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the Universe. From Me all things proceed and unto Me they must return. Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold—all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals. Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honour and humility, mirth and reverence within you. And you who seek to know Me, know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without. For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire. The Angels came a-mustering, a-mustering, a-mustering, the Angels came a-clustering around the sapphire throne. A-questioning of one another, of one another, of one another, a-questions each one of his brother around the sapphire throne. Pray who is he, and where is he, and where is he, and where is he, whose shining casts—so fair is he—a shadow on the throne? Prayer, who has up to Heaven come, to Heaven come, to Heaven come, through all the circles seven come to fetch the Torah down! I will rejoice and exult on Simhat Torah. The Branch of David shall surely come on Simhat Torah. The Torah is a tree of life; it is life to all; for with Thee is the fountain of life. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob rejoiced on Simhat Torah. Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, David, and Solomon rejoiced on Simhat Torah. The Torah is a tree of life: it is life to all; for with Thee is the fountain of life. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Haunted by a Counteracting Spell—My Whole Soul Withering!
God created man He committed Lucifer a position of authority in relation to the Earth and its surrounding planets. For this reason, Satan is called the “god of this World” in the New Testament. This angelic creature of surpassing beauty and intelligence, however, initiated a rebellion against God. This explains the entrance of sin, suffering, and death into a universe which had been “good” as it came from God’s creative hand. The Scriptures do not attempt to tell us why God permitted sin to invade His World, for His reasons are among the “secret things” which “belong unto the Lord our God,” reports Deuteronomy 29.29. We cannot fully understand how or why an infinitely holy God brought about the possibility of evil, nor can we explain the origin of pride and rebellion against Him. However, by faith we are assured that God is holy, wise, and loving. Our confidence in Him enables us to believe that behind His permission of sin, suffering, and death lies infinite holiness, wisdom, and goodness. The Bible simply affirms that the angel Lucifer, now called Satan, became proud and rebelled against his Maker. Lucifer, the daystar, succumbed to pride and revolted against God. Apparently many angels joined in the rebellion, for the Bible speaks of “angels that sinned,” reports 2 Peter 2.4, “angels who kept not their first estate,” reports Jude 6, and Revelation 12.4 in figurative language describes the red dragon (Satan) as pulling down a third of the stars (angels) from Heaven with his tail. Satan and his followers have been cast out of Heaven to Earth. They hate God and His people, and have neither desire for nor hope of salvation. The terms “evil” and “foul” are sometimes used to describe the evil spirits who make up Satan’s army. Even the name “Satan” means adversary, and the word “devil” portrays him as one who accuses or criticizes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
The fall of Lucifer made him an implacable enemy of God, a false accuser, and a liar whose every activity is marked by deceitfulness. The devil today is the leader of a vast host of evil spirits who are organized into a military-like structure. However, remember that Satan, though intelligent and powerful, is not omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. He can be in only one place at a time, but his myriads of assistants can largely make up for his inherent finiteness. With their help he tries to lead people into sinful practices and introduces false doctrine into the professing church. Though fallen humanity possess an evil nature, many of the completely inhuman and unnatural evils of society are at least in part traceable to the devil and his evil spirits. The widespread confusion and strife within the realm of professing Christendom is also partly due to Satanic activity. Evil spirits seek to divide and corrupt the church. However, remember, Satan was originally sinless and the most glorious of all created beings. In 1324 A.D., Dame Alice Kyteler (such apparently being her maiden name), the facile princeps of Irish witches, was a member of a good Anglo-Norman family that had been settled in the city of Kilkenny for many years. The lady in question must have been far removed from the popular conception of a witch as an old woman of striking ugliness, or else her powers of attraction were very remarkable, for she had succeeded in leading four husbands to the alter. She had been married, first, to William Outlawe of Kilkenny, banker; secondly, to Adam le Blund of Callan; third, to Richard de Valle—all of whom she was supposed to have got rid of by poison; and fourthly, to Sir John le Poer, whom it was said she deprived of his natural senses by philtres and incantations. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
The Bishop of Ossory at this period was Richard de Ledrede, a Franciscan friar, and an Englishman by birth. He soon learnt that things were not as they should be, for when making a visitation of his diocese early in 1324 he found by an Inquisition, in which were five knights and numerous nobles, that there was in the city a band of heretical sorcerers, at the head whom was Dame Alice. The following charges were laid against them. They had denied the faith of Christ absolutely for a year or a month, according as the object they desired to gain through sorcery was of greater or less importance. During all that period they believed in none of the doctrines of the Church; they did not adore the Body of Christ, nor enter a sacred building to hear mass, not make sure of consecrated bread or holy water. They offered in sacrifice to demons living animals, which they dismembered, and then distributed at cross-roads to a certain evil spirit of low rank, named the Son of Art. They sought their sorcery advice and responses from demons. In their nightly meetings they blasphemously imitated the power of the Church by fulminating sentences of excommunication, with lighted candles, even against their own husbands, from the sole of their foot to the crown of their head, naming each part expressly, and then concluded by extinguishing the candles and by crying Fi! Fi! Fi! Amen. In order to arouse feelings of love or hatred, or to inflict death or disease on the bodies of the faithful, they made use of powders, unguents, ointments, and candles of fat, which were compounded as follows. They took the entrails of cocks sacrificed to demons, certain horrible worms, various unspecified herbs, dead men’s nails, the hair, brains, and shreds of the cerement of boys who were buried unbaptized, with other abominations, all of which they cooked, with various incantations, over a fire of oak-logs in a vessel made out of the skull of a decapitated thief. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The children of Dame Alice’s four husbands accused her before the Bishop of having killed their fathers by sorcery, and of having brought on them such stolidity of their senses that they bequeathed all their wealth to her and her favourite son, William Outlawe, to the impoverishment of the other children. They also stated that her present husband, Sir John le Poer, had been reduced to such a condition by sorcery and the use of powders that he had become terribly emaciated, his nails had dropped off, and there was no hair left on his body. No doubt he would have died had he not been warned by a maid-servant of what was happening, in consequence of which he had forcibly possessed himself of his wife’s keys, and had opened some chests in which he found a sackful of horrible and detestable thing which he transmitted to the bishop by the hands of two priests. The said dame had a certain demon, an incubus, named Son or Art, or Robin son of Art, who had carnal knowledge of her, and from who she admitted that she had received all her wealth. This incubus made its appearance under various forms, sometimes as a cat, or as a hairy black dog, or in the likeness of an African, accompanied by two others who were larger and taller than he, and of whom one carried an iron rod. Dame Alice was declared to be a sorceress, magician, and heretic, and it was demanded that she should be handed over to the secular arm and have her goods confiscated as well. One of Dame Alice’s accomplices was Petronilla of Meath, she was made the scapegoat for her mistress. The Bishop had her flogged six times, and under the repeated application of this form of torture she made the required confession of magical practices. She admitted the denial of her faith and the sacrificing to Robert, son of Art, and as well that she had caused certain women of her acquaintance to appear as if they had goats’ horns. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
She also confessed that at the suggestion of Dame Alice she had frequently consulted demons and received responses from them, and that she had acted as a “medium” (mediatrix) between her and the said Robert. She declared that although she herself was a mistress of the Black Art, yet she was as nothing in comparison with the Dame from who she had learnt all her knowledge, and that there was no one in the World more skillful than she. Petronilla of Meath also stated that William Outlawe deserved death as much as she, for he was privy to their sorceries, and for a year and a day had worn the devil’s girdle round his body. When rifling Dame Alice’s house there was found “a wafer of sacramental bread, having the devil’s name stamped thereon instead of Jesus Christ, and a pipe of ointment wherewith she greased a staffe, upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin, when and in what manner she listed.” Petronilla was accordingly condemned to be burnt alive, and the execution of this sentence took place with all due solemnity in Kilkenny on 3rd November 1324. Dame Alice fled the country. “With regard to the other heretics and sorcerers who belonged to the pestilential society of Robin, son of Art, the order of law being preserved, some of them were publicly burnt to death; others, confessing their crimes in the presence of all the people, in an upper garment, are marked back and front with a cross after they had abjured their heresy, as is the custom; others were solemnly whipped through the town and the market-place; others were banished from the city and diocese; others who evaded the jurisdiction of the Church were excommunicated; while others again fled in fear and were never heard of after. And thus, by the authority of Holy Mother Church, and by the special grace of God, that most foul brood was scattered and destroyed.” Possibly Dame Alice and her associated actually practiced magical arts, and if so, considering the period at which it occurred, some can see why the Bishop took the steps he did. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
However, others suspect such baser motives as greed of gain and desire for revenge. John XXII was elevated to the Papacy. The attitude of that Pope towards magical arts was no uncertain one. He believed himself to be surrounded by enemies who were ever making attempts on his life by modelling images of him in wax, to be subsequently thrust through with pins and melted, no doubt; or by sending him a devil enclosed in a ring, or in various other ways. Consequently in several Bulls he anathematized sorcerers, denounced their ill-deeds, excited the inquisitors against them, and so gave ecclesiastical authorization to the reality of the belief in magical forces. Indeed, the general expression used in the Bull Super illius specula might be applied to the actions of Dame Alice and her party. He says of certain persons that “they sacrificed to demons and adore them, making or causing to be made images, rings, and so forth, with which they draw the evil spirits by their magical art, obtain responses from them, and demand their help in performing their evil designs.” Heresy and sorcery were now identified, and the punishment for the former was the same as that for the latter, burning at the stake and confiscation of property. The attitude of this Pontiff evidently found a sympathizer in Bishop de Ledrede, who deemed in necessary to follow the example set by Head of the Church, with what results we have already shown: thus we find In Ireland a ripple of the wave that swept over Europe at this period. It is very probable, too, that there were many underlying local causes of which we can know little or nothing; the discontent and anger of the disinherited children at the loss of the wealth of which Dame Alice had bereft them by her exercise of “undue influence” over her husbands, family quarrels, private hatreds, and possibly national jealousy helped to bring about one of the strangest series of events in the chequered history of Ireland. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s arrival was a sensational event. The Santa Clara Valley was thrilled by this dramatic entrance of a millionairess; they those freight cars sidetracked in Santa Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building activity that mushroomed an eight-room farm house into a 26-room mansion, the first six months. Here was game for all! They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like-but everyone enjoyed. Talk begat rumors and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose behind the six-foot hedge of Llanada Villa, the rumors grew to established legend. There had been a thunderstorm in the valley. Every door was shut, every dog in its kennel, every rut and gutter a flowing river after the deluge of rain that had fallen. Up at the Winchester mansion, which seemed to be supernaturally growing, the fawns on the estate were venturing their timid heads from behind the trunk of trees, and Mrs. Winchester has risen from her knees, and was putting back her prayer-book on the self. In the garden, April roses, unwieldy with their full-blown richness, and saturated with rain, hung their heads heavily to the Earth; others, already fallen, lay flat upon their blooming faces on the path, where Agnus, Mrs. Winchester’s maid, would fund them, when going on her morning quest of rose-leaves for her lady’s pot-pourri. Ranks of white lilies, just brought to perfection by today’s sun, lay dabbled in the mire of flooded mould. Tears ran down the amber cheeks of the plums on the south wall, and not a bee had ventured out of the hives, though the scent of the air was sweet enough to tempt the laziest drone. The sky was still lurid behind the boles of the upland oaks, but the birds had begun to dive in and out of ivy that wrapped up the mansion. This thunderstorm took place more than a century ago, and must remember that Mrs. Winchester was dressed in the fashion of that time as she walked out from behind the squire’s chair, now that the lightning was over, and, with many nervous glances towards the window, sat down before the tea-urn, and the muffins. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
We can picture her fine lace cap, with its peachy ribbons, the frill on the hem of her cambric gown just touching her ankles, her embroidered stockings, the rosettes on her shoes, but not so easily the lilac shade of her mild eyes, the satin skin, which still kept its delicate bloom, though wrinkled with advancing age, and the pale, sweet, puckered mouth, that time and sorrow had made angelic while trying vainly to deface its beauty. The room in which she sat was a pleasant old-fashioned drawing-room, with a spider-glass window, carpet, tawny wreath on the pale blue; blue flutings on the walls, and faint gilding on the furniture. A huge urn, crammed with roses, in the open bay-window, through which came delicious airs from the garden, the twittering of birds settling to sleep in the ivy close by, and occasionally the pattering of a flight of rain drops, swept to the ground as a bough bent in the breeze. The urn on the table was ancient silver, and the china rare. There was nothing in the room for luxurious ease of the body, but everything of delicate refinement for the eye. At this moment a rolling sound struck upon the ears. The lady rose from her seat trembling, and folded her hands together, while the tea-urn flooded the tray. Presently pretty Agnus of the rose-leaves appeared at the door in flutter of blue ribbons. “Please, madam, a lady has arrived, and says she is expected. She asked for her apartment, and I put her into the room that was got ready of Miss Marriot. And she sends her respects to you, madam, and she will be down with you presently.” Hardly had she spoken when the door again opened, and the stranger appeared—a small creature, whether a girl or a woman it would be hard to say—dressed in a scanty black silk dress, her narrow shoulders covered with a white muslin pelerine. Her hair was swept up to the crown of her heard, all but a little fringe hanging over her low forehead with an inch of brows. Her face was brown and thin, eyes black and long, with blacker settings, mouth large, sweet, and melancholy. She was all head, mouth, and eyes; her nose and chin were nothing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
This visitor crossed the floor hastily, dropped a courtesy in the middle of the room, and approached the table, saying abruptly, with a soft Italian accent: “Madam, I am here. I am come to play your organ.” “The organ!” gasped Mrs. Winchester. “Yes, the organ,” said the little stranger lady, playing on the back of a chair with her finger, as if she felt notes under them. “It was but last week that the handsome signor, your son, came to my little house, where I have lived teaching music since my English father and my Italian mother and brothers and sisters died and left me so lonely.” Here the fingers left off drumming, and two great tears were brushed off, one from each eye with each hand, child’s fashion. However, the next moment the fingers were at work again, as if only whilst they were moving the tongue could speak. “Your son,” said the little woman, looking trustfully at Mrs. Winchester, while a bright blush shone through her brown skin, “he often came to see me before that, always in the evening, when the sun was warm and yellow all through my little studio, and the music was swelling my heart, and I could play out grand with all my soul; then he used to come and say, ‘Hurry, little Bianca, and play better, better still. I have work for you to do by-and-by.’ Sometimes he said, ‘Brava!’ and sometimes he said ‘Eccellentissima!’ but one night last week he came to me and said, ‘It is enough. Will you swear to do my bidding, whatever it may be?’ Here the black eyes fell. And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Now you are my betrothed.’ And he said, ‘Pack up your music, little Bianca, and go off to San Jose to my American mother, who has an organ in her house which must be played upon. If she refuses to let you play, tell her I sent you, and she will give you leave. The spirits are always high and about. You must play all day, and you must get up in the night and play. You must never tire. You are my betrothed, and you have sworn to do my work.’ I said, ‘Shall I see you there, signor?’ And he said, ‘Yes, you shall see me there.’ I said, ‘I will keep my vow, signor.’ And so, madam, I am come.’” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The soft foreign voice left off talking, the finger left off thrumming on the chair, and the little stranger gaze in dismay at her auditor, pale with agitation. “You are deceived. You make a mistake,” said Mrs. Winchester. “My son—” began Mrs. Winchester, but her mouth twitched, her voice broke, and she looked piteously. “Yes, yes, said the little foreigner. “If you have though him dead have good cheer, dear madam. He is alive; he is well, and strong, and handsome. But one, two, three, four, five’ (on the fingers) “days ago he stood by my side.” “It is some strange mistake, some wonderful coincidence!” said Mrs. Winchester. “Let me take you to the gallery,” murmured the mother of this son who was thus dead and alive. “There is yet light to see the pictures. She will not know his portrait.” The bewildered wife led her strange visitor away to the long gloomy room at the west side of the mansion, where the faint gleams from the darkening sky still lingered on the portraits of the Winchester family. “Doubtless he is like this,” said the madam, pointing to a fair-haired young man with a mild face, a cousin of Mr. Winchester, who had been lost at sea. But Bianca shook her head and went softly on tiptoe from one picture to another, peering into the canvas, and still turning away troubled. However, at last a shriek of delight stated the shadowy chamber. “Ah, here he is! See, here he is, the noble signor, the beautiful signor, not half so handsome as he looked five days ago, when talking to poor little Bianca! Dear sir and madam, you are now content. Now take me to the organ, that I may commence to do his bidding at once.” Mrs. Winchester said faintly, “How old are you, girl?” “Eighteen,” said the visitor impatiently, moving towards the door. “And my son has been dead for fifty-four years. That is his father. We tried to have another child after the tragic death of our daughter, but I miscarried,” said Mrs. Winchester. Up the grand staircase the little woman followed Mrs. Winchester. The mansion was fitted with much great luxury and richness. The appointments of the mysterious Grand Ballroom was built almost entirely without nails. It cost over $9,000 (2021 inflation adjusted $242,038.24) to complete at the time when an entire house could be built for less than $1000 (2021 inflation adjusted $26,893.14)! #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The silver chandelier from Germany illuminated the room quite well, the was a robust fire blazing in the fireplace, and the walls, floors, and ceiling were made of six hardwoods—mahogany, teak, maple, rosewood, oak, and white ash. The most curious elements of the Grand Ballroom are the two leaded stained-glass windows, each inscribed with a quote from Shakespeare. Ironically, the ballroom was never used to hold a ball. Mrs. Winchester had invited a celebrated orchestra from San Francisco to perform at her home, but scheduling conflicts prevented the visit. The spirit must have known Mrs. Winchester wanted to hear live music. The appointments of this room announced it the sanctum of a woman who depended for the interest of her life upon resources of intellect and tastes. However, with all the luxury in the Grand Ballroom, what stood out most to Bianca was nothing but a morsel of biscuit that was laying on a plate. “May I have it?” said she eagerly. “It is so long since I have eaten. I am hungry.” Mrs. Winchester sat Bianca down and told her how she lost the baby. “There was a party of men, who named themselves the “Devil’s Club,” and they were in the habit of practising all kinds of unholy pranks in the country. They had midnight carousings on the tombstones in the Grove Street Cemetery; they carried away helpless old men and children, who they tortured by making believe to bury them alive; mock feast. On one occasion there was a very sad funeral from the village. The corpse was carried into the church, and prayers were read over the coffin, the chief mourner, the aged father of the dead man, standing weeping by. In the midst of this solemn scene the organ suddenly pleaded forth a profane tune, and a number of voices shouted a drinking chorus. A groan of execration burst from the crowd, the clergyman turned pale and closed his book, and the old mad, the father of the dead, climbed the altar steps, and, raising his arms above his head, uttered a terrible curse. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
“He said that if Mr. Winchester did not give him the ‘Colt,’ that his family would meet with tragedy. The Colt is a legendary gun that was created in 1835, during the appearance of Halley’s Comet, and the chamber could hold 13 bullets. It was made by a blacksmith who tinker with the occult. In German tradition, the blacksmith ends his work on Saturday by striking his anvil, chaining the Devil for another week. So anyway, he cursed Mr. Winchester to all eternity, he cursed the organ he played, that it might be dumb henceforth, except under the fingers that had now profaned it, which, he prayed, might be forced to labour upon it till they stiffened in death. And the curse seemed to work, for the organ stood dumb in the church from that day, except when I purchased it and put it in my Grand Ballroom as a reminder of my miscarried son. William used to hammer away at the organ so many laborious hours. He only stopped when our daughter was born, but shortly after birth she passed away. William went back to locking himself up in the ballroom with the organ, but one day I hid myself among the curtains, and saw him withering on his seat, and heard him groaning as he strove to wrench his hands from the keys, to which they flew back like a needle to a magnet. It was soon plainly to be seen that he was an involuntary slave to the organ; but whether through madness that had grown within himself, or by some supernatural doom, having its cause in the old man’s curse, we did not dare to day. By-and-by there came a time when I was wakened out of my sleep at nights by the rolling of the organ. He wrought now night and day. Food and rest were denied him. His face got haggard, his bread grew long, his eyes started from their sockets. His body became wasted, and his cramped fingers like the claws of a bird. He groaned piteously as he stooped over his cruel toil. I was afraid to go near him. I tried to put wine and food between his lips, while the tortured fingers crawled over the keys; but he only gnashed his teeth; I retreated from him. At last, one dreadful hour, we found him a ghastly corpse on the ground before the organ. The doctor said he died from tuberculosis.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
“From that hour the organ was dumb to the touch of all human fingers. I had it shipped here when I moved to the Santa Clara Valley and built this beautiful room for it. Many, unwilling to believe the story, made preserving endeavours to draw sound from it, in vain. However, when the darkened empty room was locked up and left, we heard as loud as ever the well-known sounds humming and rolling through the walls. Night and day the tones of the organ boomed on as before. It seemed that the doom of the wretched man was not yet fulfilled, although my family rests in the cemetery. As time went on, the curse of this perpetual music was not removed from the house. Servants refused to stay about the place. Visitors shunned it. I left this house for several years, and returned; left it, and returned again, to find my ears still tortured and my heart rung by the unceasing persecution of terrible sounds. At last, but a few months ago, a holy man was found, who locked himself up in the cursed and mysterious Grand Ballroom for many days, praying and wrestling with the demon. After he came forth and went away the sounds ceased, and the organ was heard no more. Since then there has been peace in the house. And now, Bianca, your strange appearance and your strange story convinces me that you are a victim of a ruse of the Evil One. Be warned in time, and place yourself under the protection of God, that you may be saved from the fearful influenced that are at work upon you.” Little Bianca went fast asleep, her hands spread before her as if she played an organ in her dreams. “We will save you from your horrible fate!” Mrs. Winchester whispered, and had the butler carry the girl to bed. In the morning, Bianca was gone. Mrs. Winchester found the girl’s chambers empty. “She is just a wild thing,” thought Mrs. Winchester, “as would rush out at sunrise to hear the larks!” and she went forth to look for her in the meadows, behind the fruit orchard in the estate’s deer park, and found nothing. She returned, her quest had been unsuccessful. The little international girl had vanished. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
A second search after breakfast proved also fruitless, and towards the evening there was panic and distress. Mrs. Winchester sat in the palour. The servants, with pale faces, were huddled together in whispering groups. The haunted organ was booming and roaring again through the mansion. Mrs. Winchester hastened to the fatal Grand Ballroom, and there, sure enough, was Bianca, perched upon the high seat before the organ, beating the keys with her small hands, her slight figure swaying, and the evening sunshine playing about her weird head. Sweet unearthly music she wrung from the groaning heart of the organ—wild melodies, mounting to rapturous heights and falling to mournful depths. She wandered from Mendelssohn to Mozart, and from Mozart to Beethoven. Mrs. Winchester stood fascinated awhile by the ravaging beauty of the sounds she heard, but, rousing herself quickly, put her arms around the musician and forced her away from the mysterious Grand Ballroom. Bianca returned the next day, however, and was not so easily coaxed from her post again. Day after day she laboured at the organ, growing paler, and thinner, and more weird-looking as time went on. “I worked so hard,” she said to Mrs. Winchester. “The signor, your son, is he pleased? Asked him to come and tell me himself if he is pleased.” Mrs. Winchester got ill and took to her bed. The butler swore at the young international star and roamed abroad. Agnus was the only one who stood by to watch the fate of the little organist. The curse of the organ was upon Bianca; it spoke under her hand, and her hand was its slave. At last she announced rapturously that she had a visit from the brave signor, who had commanded her industry, and urged her to work yet harder. After that she ceased to hold any communication with the living. Time after time Agnus wrapped her arms about the frail thing, and carried her away by force, locking the door of the fatal chamber. However, locking the chamber and burying the key were of no avail. The door stood opened again, and Bianca was labouring on her perch. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
One night, wakened from her sleep by the well-known humming and moaning of the organ, Mrs. Winchester dressed and hastened to the unholy room. Moonlight was pouring down the staircase and cascading on the stained-glass windows. It shone on the marble bust of the late Mr. Winchester, that stood in the niche above Mrs. Winchester’s sitting-room door. The Grand ballroom was full of it when Mrs. Winchester pushed open the door and entered—full of pale blue moonlight from the window, mingled with another light, a dull lurid glare which seemed to center round like a dark shadow, like the figure of a man standing by the organ, and throwing out in fantastic relief the slight form of Bianca writhing, rather than swaying, back and forward, as if in agony. The sounds that came from the organ were broken and meaningless, as if the hands of the player lagged and stumbled on the keys. Between the intermittent chords low moaning cries broke from Bianca, and the dark figure bent towars her with menacing gestures. Trembling with the sickness of supernatural fear, yet strong of will, Mrs. Winchester walked forward with the lurid light, and was drawn into its influence. It grew and intensified upon her, it dazzled and blinded her at first; but presently, by a daring effort of will, she raised her eyes, and beheld Bianca’s face convulsed with torture in the burning glare, and bending over her the figure and the features of William Winchester! Smitten with horror, Mrs. Winchester did not even lose her presence of mind. She wound her strong arms around the wretched girl and dragged her from her seat and out of the influence of the lurid light, which immediately paled away and vanished. She carried her to her own bed, where Lisa lay, a wasted wreck, raving about the cruelty of the pitiless signor who would not see that she was labouring her best. Her poor cramped hands kept beating the coverlet, as though she were still at her agonizing task. Mrs. Winchester prayed a way might be shown by which to put an end to this curse. She prayed for Bianca, and then, thinking that the girl rested somewhat, stole from the room. She thought that she had locked the door behind her. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
She went to the blue séance room with a pale, resolved face, and, without consulting anyone, sent to the village for a bricklayer. Afterwards she sat by the foreman, and explained to him what was to be done. Presently, Mrs. Winchester went to the door of Bianca’s room, and hearing no sound, thought the girl slept, and stole away. By-and-by she went downstairs, and found that the bricks had arrived and the foreman already begun his task of building up the Grand Ballroom door. He was a swift workman, and the mysterious ballroom was soon sealed safely with stone and mortar. A few hours went by and no one had seen Bianca. The house was searched, upstairs and downstairs, in the garden, in the grounds, in the fields and meadows. No Bianca. Mrs. Winchester made inquiries everywhere; she pondered and puzzled over the matter. In the weak, suffering state the girl was in, how far could she have crawled. Meanwhile, the mansion was still growing by leaps and bounds from 8 room, to 26 room, a nine-story tower, 156 more rooms, as if it was under construction by legions of ghosts. A few years went by, and still no one had seen Bianca. When one night, Angus decided to quit. “I love you dearly, and it breaks my heart to go away, but the organ…I am frightened out of my life, I cannot stay, Mrs. Winchester.” “Who has heard the organ, and when?” asked Mrs. Winchester, rising to her feet. “Please ma’am, I heard it years ago, the night you went away—the night after the door was built up. I heard it again this morning.” “No,” said Mrs. Winchester; “it is only the wind.” However, as pale as death she flew down the stairs and laid her ear to the yet mortar. All was silent. There was no sound but the monotonous sough of the wind in the trees outside. The Winchester mansion was shut up and deserted for many years. At night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. The bell in the belfry high in the gables tolled regularly at midnight to summon incoming flights of spirits. Later it rolled again to warn these visitors to return to their sepulchers. However, once a week these departed one relaxed and faced in the Great Ballroom. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
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A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle .
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 