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Kitchen Dramas—Are they Arms Race or Saving Civilization as We Know it?
One a person experiences the full impact of the conflict in consciousness, one turns in an accusing rage on the target object. During the past several years, I have spent a good deal of my time blaming television for many of the more obvious dysfunctions from which Western culture—and especially America—is now suffering. It has been pointed out to me that I do this because I am by nature a negative person, always ready to condemn what is wrong rather than to praise what is right. Several of my students have even gone so far as to observe that had I lived during the period of incunabula—during the first fifty years of the printing press—I would have burdened everyone with a long list of depressing prophecies about the dangers of the machine-made book and universal literacy. However, my students are only half right. Assuming I had the brains to see what was happening in the year 1500, I would certainly have warned the Holy See that the printing press would place the word of God on every Christian’s kitchen table, and, as a consequence, the authority of the Church hierarchy would be put in jeopardy. Had I been granted a papal audience, I would have warned the Pop that armed with a printing press, Martin Luther was more than a malcontent priest suffering from a bad case of constipation. The printed word made him a serious revolutionary. I might also have warned the local princes that their days were numbered, that printing would give form to a new idea of nationhood which would make local potentates obsolete. And if the Brotherhood of Alchemists had allowed me to give the keynote address at their annual convention, I would have told them to go into another line of work, that printing would give great impetus to inductive science and that alchemy would not stand against the glare of publicly shared scientific knowledge. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
I would also have told any wandering bards who came my way that within a hundred years their trade would lie in ruins, that tribal lays and epic poetry were doomed, and that they would be wise to urge their trainees to turn their talents to writing essays and reading novels. Now, not every one of these prophecies foretells a bad thing. That is why I said my students are only half right. Whether or not a prophecy is negative depends on your point of view. For example, since most of you are Lutherans, you probably would have cheered the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire. The Catholics of those times would, of course, have mourned it passing. In any case, there are some changes brought about by new media benefit some, harm others, and to a few do not make much of a difference. This is as true of television as it was of the printing press or any other important medium, although in the case of television there are very few indeed who are not affected in one way of another. For most of you here, television will provide a gratifying career. On the other hand, and in the long run, television may bring an end to the careers of schoolteachers, since school itself was an invention of the printing press and must stand or fall on the issue of how much importance the printed word will have in the future. New media break up old knowledge monopolies; indeed, create new conceptions of knowledge, even new conceptions of politics. If not for television, Joe Biden, for example, would not be President of the United of America, which is good for him and the interests he represents, but not so good for the poor and vulnerable. However, television can people good as it creates a true theater of the masses. For example, between the years 1948 and 1958, approximately 1,500 fifty-two-minute plays were performed “live” on American television. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
“Live” means that these plays were performed at the precise moment they were seen by the television audience, a condition which since the advent of videotape and the widespread use of film has become increasingly rare; “fifty-two minutes” describes the actual running time of the play, eight minutes of the hour being subtracted for commercial messages, the listing of credits, and publicity for the next week’s play. There is no doubt that American television’s finest dramatic moments were provided by fifty-two-minute hours, particularly by such weekly series as the Kraft Television Theater (1947-58), the Philco-Goodyear Playhouse (1948-50), and the Studio One (1948-57). These programs began by presenting adaptations of classic and established contemporary novels but by 1950 had shifted to original dramatic work. By that time, such producers and directors as Worthington Miner, Fred Coe, Delbert Mann, Arthur Penn, and John Frankenheimer has assembled about them several gifted young writers who were prepared to devote their collective talents to a serious exploration of television’s artistic resources. Included in that group, among others, were Reginal Rose, Tad Mosel, Robert Alan Aurthur, Horton Foote, Rob Serling, J.P. Miller, and Gore Vidal. None, however, wrote more fittingly for television than Paddy Chayefsky, whose name, along with Edward. R. Murrow’s, symbolizes what romantics call “the golden age of television.” Mr. Chayefsky was to the “original” television drama what Mr. Ibsen was to the “social drama,” which is to say that he was one of the first creators and certainly its most distinguished one. Like Mr. Ibsen, he achieved an almost perfect union of form and content. Critics have observed, for example, that the effects that Mr. Ibsen achieved in A Doll’s House and Ghosts were a function not only of his themes, with which audience were certainly familiar in 1879 and 1881, but also of the stark, simple, and economical form in which he stated them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Social dramas had been written before Mr. Ibsen, but it remained for him to discover the form for dramatizing social problems. Mr. Chayefsky, of course, did not write for the stage behind a proscenium arch, viewed from a distance in a darkened theater. He wrote for a seventeen-inch screen situated in a family living room, on which the only colors were varying shades of gray. He also had to present his story, from start to finish, in fifty-two minutes, and he could make two assumptions with absolute assurance: that his play would be interrupted at least twice for commercial messages, and that he would have to attract his audience instantly or lose much of it to other channels. He knew, too, as did his director, Delbert Mann, that the picture on the television screen is considerably cruder in visual definition than that on a motion-picture screen. So Mr. Chayefsky wrote his plays in anticipation of the audience’s observing the players in almost unrelenting “close-up.” Mr. Chayefsky realized that some of these technical-aesthetic conditions could create, as could perhaps no other medium, a sense of utter and absolute reality; could create the illusion that what the audience was seeing was not a mere play but life as seen through a seventeen-inch, nearly square hole. Beginning with a play called Holiday Song, which dealt with a rabbi’s re-examination of one’s faith in God, Mr. Chayefsky created a series of dramas that have often been characterized as “small” masterpieces, sometimes referred to as “kitchen” dramas, since much of the action seemed to take place in family kitchens. In any case, they were plays about unexceptional situations. The plots were uncluttered, and undaring, and highly compressed. They had few unexpected turns, little action, no treachery, no perversion, and no heroic gestures (in the traditional sense). #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Mr. Chayefsky’s stories were “small” very much as Sherwood Anderson’s stories are small. The setting was New York, not small-town Ohio, but like Mr. Anderson, Chayefsky explored in economical but meticulous detail the agonizing problems of small people. And thus he elevated the status of both the problems and the people who suffered them. In fact, Mr. Chayefsky once remarked that “Your mother, sister, brothers, cousins, friends—all of these are better subjects for drama than Iago.” He was talking, of course, about television drama. Mr. Chayefsky’s most known play, Marty, tells the story of an unmarried, inarticulate butcher who is attacked to a sensitive but homely woman. Marty’s friends attempt to dissuade him from seeing the woman because she is, in their words, “a dog.” His mother, who fears being abandoned resents the woman bitterly. Against a backdrop of such universal themes as man’s need of loving and being loved, his fear of living alone, and his need to communicate, Mr. Chayefsky pursued his “small” story with persistent literalness, concluding with an equally “small” crisis in which Marty decides, against the protests of his friends and family, to phone the woman and ask her for a date. On the stage of in a novel, the plot would be too flimsy to carry much dramatic weight. When the play was adapted for the movies, it required more “movement” or action and the addition of at least one subplot. On the television screen, however, they play was an artistic triumph, producing a disturbing and edifying illusion of intimacy. Perhaps no other medium is better suited to the “slice of life” drama than television, a fact that is apparently well known to Ingmar Berman. Although television was invented in the 1920s, it did not exist for any practical purposes until after World War II. It is easy to forget that advertising, at least on the scale we have come to know it, barely existed before then either. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
In 1946, advertisers spent about $3 billion. For the previous two decades, advertising expenditure had been fairly constant at about that level. By 1975, however, the national advertising budget had grown by 1,000 percent to $30 billion. In 2021, the national advertising budget reached $82 billion (expected to around $95 billion by the end of 2022). In that same year the television advertising budget has skyrocketed to $68 billion, and could be approximately $80 billion by the end of 2022. As you see, most of the increases in advertising. However, what is significant is that within only tend years of its effective inauguration, television was absorbing 60 percent of all advertising spending and driving hundreds of newspapers, magazines and radio stations out of the market. A symbiotic relationship developed. Advertising financed television’s growth. Television was the greatest delivery system for advertising that had ever been invented. We could call it love at first sight, except in this case, the match may have been prearranged. If you are fortunate enough to recall, think back to the days immediately after World War II. Although I was only ten in 1945, I remember the expectant and uncertain feeling of the times very well. Everyone was relieved that the war was over and was expecting things to get back to normal, but what was normal? Memories of the Depression loomed. I remember listening to my parents talk with their friends on those backyard summer evenings of 1945, and I could feel the fear. Like most ordinary people, my parents know that the war had alleviated the Depression. During the war, American industrial capacity, lying fallow only a few years before, had actually expanded to build the military machine. My father’s own business was an example. Now there were no more uniforms to make, and no more tanks. The war had given men jobs as soldiers and women jobs as factor workers. Full employment had practically become a reality. Now Johnny was marching home again, jobless. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
If this was the talk among ordinary people, one can only imagine what was said in industrial boardrooms and at the Department of Commerce. With industrial capacity and capital investment expanded as they were, the consequences of a drop in production could make the 1930s look like golden years. A long-standing criticism of capitalism—that it can stave off cyclic depression only through war-seemed about to be confirmed. Suddenly in 1946, government and industry started making identical pronouncements about regearing American life to consume commodities at a level never before contemplated. It was not that military production was about to be abandoned. Even now it remains the single most important factor in the United States of America’s economy. However, in 1946 with the war just over, it was not clear that the decline in military spending would be as temporary as it turned out to be. Some new offsetting factor was needed. Thus, a new vision was born that equated the good life with consumer goods. An accelerate economy, continuing booming expansion of wartime, added to a new consumer ideology achieved the greatest economic growth rate in the country’s history from 1946 to 1970. To make such growth possible, both ends of the transformation process described previously had to be hyped up. First, we needed to insure an abundant supply of raw material to convert into commodities. This led to a burst of American investment overseas as well as to enormous assistance programs for sympathetic “underdeveloped” countries. Often we secured our supply by the creation of client governments propped up with military assistance. Raising anticommunism to the status of a holy war in the 1940s and the 1950s formed the political foundation for these military and economic programs and underlay the assertion of the patriotic virtues of foreign investment. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
At the other end of the transformation equation, an accelerated movement of commodities into consumers’ homes was critical. People had to be convinced that life without all these products was undesirable and unpatriotic. It was time to forget the rationing of the war years and consumer for your country. Advertising and television were the dynamic duo that would rededicate the consuming American. Advertising’s ability to create a passionate need for what is not needed was already well established. Since economic growth and a consumer economy had to be based upon selling far more commodities than were needed to meet actual needs, economic growth depended upon advertising. Television, which had been lying around in mothballs since the 1920s, was dusted off and enlisted as the means to deliver the advertising lifestyle fast, right into people’s homes and heads. Quick to spot any new technology that could assist their urgent cause, big advertisers immediately invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing this idle sales tool. And so advertising gave birth to television, and television have advertising a whole new World to conquer. Together they made possible an enormous, though temporary, economic bonanza. Can you recall the TV advertising of the 1940s and 1950s? Smiling, happy people. Scrubbed children. Housewives showing their impossibly clean wash. Smiling junior-executive husbands emerging from their new cars, greeted at the picket fence by their clean, cheerful families? The happy mowing of the lawn. The happy faces reflected off the polished toasters? The nuclear family was idealized to a greater extend than ever before, because the family was the ideal consumption unit. Women had to get out of those factories and overalls and back into little pink dresses in the kitchen. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Those returning soldiers needed jobs. Rosie the Riveter gave way to June Allyson. Separate family units maximized production potential. Private homes. Private cars. Two cars. Private washing machines. Private television sets. Within a few years, the World started changing. The battery-operated lawn mower I saw on television one day appeared on my lawn the next week. So did the car. The whole neighborhood started looking like a television commercial. The woods near my house in disappeared and were replaced by hundreds of identical versions of my house. Neighborhoods everywhere started looking like each other. Freeways replaced country roads. Shopping centers replaced corner markets. Pavements covered everything. “Prosperity,” “security,” “happiness,” studded ads and presidential speeches alike. This incredible outpouring of commodities, this entire revamping of landscape, this filling of houses with gadgets was supposed to constitute some kind of Latter-Day Saints Kingdom of God. That is what everyone was thinking, saying, and believing. It was what made America America. One of my high school teachers during the 1950s told my class that it was America’s commitment to a consumption economy that made our country different and better than all others. He told us that by expanding our economy, we could soon make everyone wealthy. America was already the World’s only classless society, he said. Workers and managers were equal partners in a glorious process benefiting everyone. In America everyone was equal. Our standard of living made it that way. Everyone could have a car. Everyone could have a business. We are not developing nations, where the water is dangerous to drink, and there are few rich people and everyone else is poor and all of them wished they had what we had. Because of this prosperity, we did not have to deal with the chaotic times of psychological and spiritual upheaval nor have actual fear among people of witchcraft, sorcerers, and others who claimed to know how to consort with the demons. The medieval period had died, and the modern period was born. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
A few years later at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, I learned how and why this commodity life and the economic growth it produces was supposed to be so good for absolutely everyone. I learned that they had been talking about in these boardrooms and at the Department of Commerce. It was called the “trickle-down theory.” It goes more or less like this: Industrial expansion, rapid economic growth and the consumption economy benefit everyone. The theory—which is the basis of Keynesian American economics—has it that when people buy more and more commodities, they produce more profits for industry, enabling it to expand. When industry expands, more jobs result. This puts more money into circulation, enabling people to buy more commodities, expanding profits again, yielding more investments, more jobs and starting the cycle around on another turn. This is an oversimplified process, which leaves out such variables as savings, borrowing, and so on. The way it is presented here is more or less the way it is translated through the media and through out educational system into popular understanding: a beautiful circle of activity, everyone helping everyone else, labor and management rowing the boat together, all serving the common good and growing endlessly. It explained the patriotic urgency of people spending more and more on commodities. The benefits would “trickle down” to everyone in this country, including those at the bottom on the pyramid. Jobs, money, prosperity, happiness, security, democracy, equality were all lumped together as inevitable results of this cycle. Most people believe in this “trickle-down-theory” still. Presidents get elected based on whether they can convince the public that they will stimulate the beautiful cycle. President Trump was elected for doing it and he proved his word. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The tickle-down theory is the nice simple kind of economic model that can be sold to a mass population removed from any deeper understanding of how things really work. Trying to come to grips with economic nuance is for most of us no easier than trying to understand how much nuclear radiation is “safe.” Who knows? The “experts” know. Like every other organizing model in our society, economic processes have been removed from personal participation, appropriated into a nether World of flow charts, financial analyses, and circle graphs. Like scientific and technological systems, once economic systems reach a certain size and complexity, they can be controlled only by forces far outside the grasp of the individual and community. One explanation of them sounds as plausible as another. In the absence of a really thorough training in economics—a training which itself supports many arbitrary and fantastic theories—this trickle-down model of the benefits of a consumer society sounds perfectly valid. It certainly seemed valid for a little while. People had jobs, the economy was growing, and homes were filling up with every more intricate gadgets. Only now, thirty years after the trip was launched, can we see the process from the vantage point of joblessness, inflation, bankruptcy and default, and realize that something was terribly wrong somewhere. In fact, it was a fantasy. It was packaged and sold to us like the seven-piece matching living-room sets on the television screen. Buy now, pay later when you are richer than you are now. However, when later came, very few of us were richer (and that usually happens to everyone). It turned out that the pursuit of all those happy goodies did not produce happy people; it produced isolated, frustrated, alienated people. More important, the economic benefits did not trickle down to create some egalitarian democracy. The benefits tickled up. That is why President Trump also used the tickle charger. Not only did he cut taxes, but also infused the less affulent with supercharged unemployment benefits, and helped the veterns, disabled, retirement and others reciveing government transfer pays by sending the a large cash sum of money, and then a few other payments for less, and he also supported businesses get through the pandemic. So the economy was stimulated and had a few trickle charges to keep the market flowing well. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
The democratic revolution succeeded in extending formal self-government and opportunity to nearly everybody, regardless of birth, property, or education. However, it gave up the ideal of the town meeting, with the initiative and personal involvement that alone could train people in self-government and give the practical knowledge of political issues. The actual result has been the formation of a class of politicians who govern, and who are themselves symbolic front figures. Correspondingly, the self-determination won by the American Revolution for the regional states, that should have made possible real political experimentation, soon gave way to a national conformity; nor has the nation as a whole conserved its resources and maintained its ideals. The result is a deadening centralism, with neither local patriotism nor national patriotism. The best people do not offer themselves for public office, and no one has the aim of serving the Republic. Typical is the fate of the hard-won Constitutional freedoms, such as freedom of speech. Editors and publishers have given up trying to give an effective voice to important but unpopular opinions. Anything can be printed, but the powerful interests have the big presses. Only the safe opinion is proclaimed and other opinion is swamped. The liberal revolution succeeded in shaking off onerous government controls on enterprise, but it did not persist to its goal of real public wealth as the result of free enterprise and honestly informed choice on the market. The actual result is an economy dominated by monopolies, in which the earnest individual entrepreneur or inventor, who could perform a public service, is actively discouraged; and consumer demand is increasingly synthetic. Conversely, the Jeffersonian ideal of a proud and independent productivity yeomanry, with natural family morals and a co-operative community spirit, did in fact energize settling the West and providing the basis for our abundance. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
However, because it has failed to cope with technological changes and to withstand speculation, “farming as a way of life” has succumbed to cash cropping dependent on distant markets, and is ridden with mortgages, tenancy, and hired labor. Yet it maintains a narrow rural morality and isolationist politics, is a sucker for the mass culture of Madison Avenue and Hollywood, and in the new cities (exempli Gratia, in California, where farmers have migrated) is a bulwark against genuine city culture. Constitutional safeguards of person were won. However, despite the increasing concentration of state power and mass pressures, no effect was made to give to individuals and small groups new means easily to avail themselves of the safeguards. The result is that there is no longer the striking individuality of free men; even quiet nonconformity is hounded; and there is no asylum from coast to coast. Fraternity—this short-lived ideal of the French Revolution, animating a whole people and uniting all classes as a community, soon gave way to aa dangerous nationalism. The ideal somewhat revived as the solidarity of the working class, but this too has faded into either philanthropy or “belonging.” Brotherhood of races—the Civil War won formal rights for African Americans, but failed to win social justice and factual democracy. The actual result has been segregation, and fear and ignorance from various people of all races. However, in the 2020s, that stigma is fading. Pacificism—this revolution has been entirely missed. Acceleration not only makes facts obsolete but blunts some of the key tools we use when we think. Analogy provides a case in point. It is virtually impossible for us to think without relying on analogies. This “thought-tool” is based on identifying similarities in two or more phenomena and then drawing conclusions from one to apply to the other. Doctors, we noted, will often say “the heart is like a pump” and then describe its “values” and other components in mechanical terms. This model helps them conceptualize and treat the heart. Often this process yields powerful results. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
However, once similarities are identified, it is typically taken for granted that the similarities continue. And in slow-change eras, they may do so for long periods. In today’s hyper-change environment, however, once-similar things also change and very often become markedly dissimilar, often making conclusions based on the analogy false and misleading. To deal with today, therefore, we need not only new knowledge but new ways to think about it. Yet too many economists, consciously or otherwise, cling to the belief that economics is analogous to physics. This notion arose centuries ago, when Newtonian ideas about equilibrium, causation and determinism dominated that science. Since then, of course, physicists have drastically revised their views about these matters. However, many economists still base their findings on crude Newtonian assumptions. Trained to think in industrial terms, many find it difficult to grapple with the odd character of knowledge—the fact that it is non-rival and non-depletable, that it is intangible and thus hard to measure. It is only when we set today’s failures of economics alongside the looming crisis in science that we begin to gauge their true significance. For together these two fields have the greatest—or at least the most direct—impact on how we create wealth. And both are heading for transformation. When it comes to relationships, a university teacher of liberal arts cannot help confronting special handicaps, a slight deformity of the spirit, in the students, ever more numerous, whose parents are divorced. I do not have the slightest doubt that they do as well as other sin all kinds of specialized subjects, but I find they are not as open to the serious study of philosophy and literature as some other students are. I would guess this is because they are less eager to look into the meaning of their lives, or to risk shaking their received opinions. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
In order to live with the chaos of their experience, they tend to have rigid frameworks about what is right and what is wrong and how they ought to live. They are full of desperate platitudes about self-determination, respect for other people’s rights and decisions, the need to work out one’s individual values and commitments, etcetera. All this is a thin veneer over boundless seas of rage, doubt, and fear. Young people habitually are able to jettison their habits of belief for an exciting idea. They have little to lose. Although this is not really philosophy, because they are not aware of how high the stakes are, in this period of their lives they can experiment with the unconventional and acquire deeper habits of belief and some learning to go along with them. However, children of divorced parents often lack this intellectual daring because they lack the natural youthful confidence in the future. Fear of both isolation and attachment clouds their prospects. A large measure of their enthusiasm has been extinguished and replaced by self-protectiveness. Similarly, their open confidence in friendship as part of the newly discovered search for the good is somewhat stunted. The Glauconian eros for the discovery of nature has suffered more damage in them than in most. Such students can make their disarray in the cosmos the theme of their reflection and study. However, it is a grim and dangerous business, and more than any student I have known, they evoke pity. They are indeed victims. An additional factor in the state of these students’ souls is the fact that they have undergone therapy. They have been told how to feel and what to think about themselves by psychologists who are paid by their parents to make everything work out as painlessly as possible for the parents, as part of no-fault divorce. If ever there was a conflict of interest, that is it. There are big bucks for therapists in divorce, since the divorces are eager to get back to persecuting the wretches who smoke or to ending the arms face or to saving “civilization as we know it.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Meanwhile, psychologists provide much of the ideology justifying divorce—exempli gratia, that it is worse for kids to stay in stressful homes (thus motivating the potential escapees—that is, the parents—to make it as unpleasant as possible there). Psychologists are the sworn enemies of guilt. And they have an artificial language for the artificial feelings with which they equip children. However, it unfortunately does not permit such children to get a firm grip on anything. Of course, not every psychologist who deals with these matters simply plays the tune called by those who pay the piper, but the givens of the market and the capacity for self-deception, called creativity, surely influence such therapy. After all, parents can shop around for a psychologist just as some Catholics used to shop for a confessor. When these students arrive at the university, they are not only reeling from the destructive effects of the overturning of faith and the ambiguity of loyalty that result from divorce, but deafened by self-serving lies and hypocrisies expressed in a pseudoscientific jargon. Modern psychology at its best has a questionable understanding of the soul. It has no place for the natural superiority of philosophic life, and no understanding of education. So children who are inclined to believe that philosophy live in a less enlightened state and have a long climb just to get back up to the cave, or the World of common sense, which is the proper beginning for their ascent toward wisdom. They do not have confidence in what they feel or what they see, and they have an ideology that provides not a reason but a rationalization for their timidity. These students are the symbols of the intellectual-political problems of our time. They represent in extreme form the spirit vortex set in motion by loss of contact with other human beings and with the natural order. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
However, all students are affected, in the most practical everyday way, unaware that their situation is peculiar, because their education does not give them perspective on it. Now, Web sites routinely collect detailed data on visitor behavior, and those statistics underscore just how quickly we leap between pages when we are online. Over a period of two months in 2008, an Israeli company named ClickTale, which supplies software for analyzing how people use corporate Web pages, collected data on the behavior of a million visitors to sites maintained by its clients around the World. It found that in most countries people spend, on average, between nineteen and twenty-seven seconds looking at a page before moving on to the next one, including the time required for the page to load into their browser’s window. German and Canadian surfers spend about twenty-one second, Indians and Australians spend about twenty-four seconds, and the French spend about twenty-five seconds. On the Web, there is no such thing as leisurely browsing. We want to gather as much information as quickly as our eyes and fingers can move. That is true even when it comes to academic research. As part of a five-year study, a group from University College London examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium. Both sites provided users with access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. The scholars found that people using the sites exhibited a distinctive “form of skimming activity” in which they would hop quickly from one source to another, rarely returning to any source they had already visited. They would typically read, at most, one or two pages of an article or book before “bouncing out” to another site. “It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense,” the authors of the study reported; “indeed there are signs that new forms of ‘reading’ are emerging as users ‘power browse’ horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The shift in our approach to reading and research seems to be an inevitable consequence of our reliance on the technology of the Net, and it bespeaks a deeper change in our thinking. There is absolutely no question that modern search engines and cross-referenced websites have powerfully enabled research and communication efficiencies. There is also absolutely no question that our brains are engaged less directly and more shallowly in the synthesis of information when we use research strategies that are all about “efficiency,” “secondary (and out-of-context) referencing,” and “once over, lightly.” As people are falling in love with the Internet, reading and its mediums is reminiscence of some of Capellanus’s more universal rules. He believed that love is always in a flux, either growing or diminishing. Making it public usually kills it. Its very nature as next to impossible to consummate is also its most powerful stimulus, and during its fleeting lifetime, jealously will sharpen the intensity of the country lovers feelings. Courtly love is obsessive and best endured by constant contemplation of the beloved. By the fourteenth century, an anonymous poet was refining the notion of love. In his “Ten Commandments of Love,” he advocated faith or honesty, attentiveness, discretion, patience, secretness, prudence, perseverance, pity, measure or moderation, and mercy. The lover in Chaucer’s “Complaint to His Lady” is so excessively long-suffering that he swears to obey his lady in whatever she dies, would rather die than offend her, and begs only for a drop of her grace. Here is his version of courtly love: “But I, my lyf an deeth, to yew obeye, and with right buxom herte, hooly I preye, as [is] your moste pleasure, so doth by me; and therfor, swete, rewe on my peynes smerte, and of your grace, graunteth me some drope; for ells may me laste no blis no hope, no dwelle within my trouble careful herte.” #RandolpHarris 18 of 19
Courtly love was agonizing and admirable, the source of chivalrous virtue. For these same reasons, it was often chaste, both because the logistics of consummation defeated the would-be lovers and also because, in some manifestations, courtly love was inherently pure. As one troubadour sang, “Out of love comes chastity.” As enormous but logical stretch puts courtly love together with the secret feudal societies that adopted then institutionalized a collective devotion to an unattainable woman who inspired their members to deeds of greatest daring and valor. The woman? The Virgin Mary, whose immaculate conception the early medieval Church had just begun to celebrate. The most famous of these secret societies was the Knights Templar, excommunicated knights who swore oaths of poverty, obedience, and chastity and dedicated themselves to the (newly immaculately conceived) Virgin Mary. Unlike their secular counterparts, however, whose courtly love involved personal grooming as a token of respect to their lady loves, virginal or otherwise, the Knights of the Templar who were abstinent, according to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, “never combed, rarely washed, [and wore] their beards bushy, sweaty, and fusty, stained by their harness and the heat. Centuries of literature and lives imitating art transformed courtly into romantic love, intense and unattainable, a phenomenon too high—mindedly impractical to survive marriage and the trials of time, routine, and old age. The precious instant of recognizing the beloved, the stylized pursuit, the exchange of extravagant words penned on scented paper, the self-indulgently obsessive meditating on each other—these became the characteristic of this new kind of love. Attraction based on pleasures of the flesh fueled it, just as it had the courtliest of loves, but in this case as well, intimate passions dominated the lover’s agenda. As literature, romantic love flirted and seduced as it inflamed and seared, titillating its aficionados with its stately ritual of gallant chase, heartsick suffering, rapturous encounters, gushing epistles, all in the name of profoundest if evanescent love. Sometimes this love was chaste by intention. Even when it was not, pleasures of the flesh was usually overpowered by complications of plot and character that, depending on your point of view, either reprieved the lovers from the banality of pleasures of the flesh or condemned them to its nonconsummation. Centuries of courtly and romantic love challenged thousands of lovers. Ultimately, most emerged from its clutches with their virtue intact. If our World is made up of such changes, as these, is it strange that my heart is so sad. prophets. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Our home at #MillsStation Residence 4 is the largest home in the community, but that extra playhouse definitely gives it an edge. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/
The lounge off the entry amplifies this social core; optional bedroom enhances the choices. This design lends a little Victorian formal touch to the arrival for family and guests.
The beautiful quartz counter top island has an optional built-in quartz tablecounter, which allos plenty of island seating.
The abundant cabinet space highlights the kitchen, while gathered windows and sliding door generate seamless connectivity to the home’s outdoor entertainment and leisure spaces.
The Cathedral of the Fallen Angel
During a Connecticut thunderstorm, Mrs. Winchester’s husband and baby lost their lives in a tragic fire. The distracted widow turned to spiritualism and was advised to take a trip around the World. This she did, visiting mediums, spiritualists and wizards in Europe and India. Foretelling her future, one seer warned her of all the countless thousands of departed souls slain by her husband’s rifles; she was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long as it was under construction she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. In the afternoon of Tuesday, July 10, 1888, the inhabitants of Santa Clara Valley, were greatly excited by the sudden appearance, far out in the fields, of a mansion where none was known to exist. The people of the town were farmers and knew the area well. The day before, they had been out on their horses and rode over the spot where the unusual mansion appeared, and where certain that the locality was the best farmland in the valley. And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, for the day was clear and the mansion could be seen as plainly as they saw the hills to the south. It was massive. The estate was surrounded by a six-foot hedge, densely wooded; here and there were deep shadows in its sides indicating glens heavily covered with undergrowth and grasses. At one end the mansion rose almost precipitously from the from the land; at the other, the declivity was gradual; the thick forest of the estate gave way to smaller trees, these to shrubs; these to green meadows that finally melted into the valley. It was patrolled by a pack of ferocious hellhounds, plus, of course, Mrs. Winchester’s staff of armed bodyguards. Hundreds of people from all over California came to investigate; when, as they neared the spot, the beautiful but bizarre mansion became dim in outline, less vivid in color, and at last vanished entirely, leaving the wonder-stricken farmers to return, fully convinced that for the first time in their lives they had really seen this enchanted mansion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
For once there was a topic of conversation that would outlast the day, and the enchanted Winchester mansion passed from lip to lip, both story and the mansion grew in size till the latter was little less than a continent, contain a labyrinth mansion with towers and steeples, stupendous mountain range views, fertile valleys, and wide spreading plains; while the former was limited only be the patience of the listener, and embraced the personal experience, conclusions, reflections, and observations of every woman, man, and child in the valley who had been fortunate enough to see the mansion, hear of it, or tell where it had been seen elsewhere. This is the invariable history of its appearance. No one had ever been able to come close to its grounds, but it had been so often seen on the west coast, that a doubt of its existence, if expressed in the company of farmers, will at once establish for the sceptic a reputation for balderdash of the common affairs of every-day life. In Santa Clara, for instance, the Winchester mansion had been seen by hundreds of people, while many more could testify to its appearance near San Francisco. In San Jose, all the population saw it a few years ago, and shortly before, the villagers of Oakland, saw it, if not by themselves, at least by some of their friends. The Enchanted Winchester mansion, it should be stated that its resemblance to a Victorian/Gothic castle is sometimes very close, and shows that the “enchanter” who has it under a spell knows her business, and is determined to keep her mansion for herself changes its appearance as well as its location in order that her property may not be recognized nor appropriated. At night, passers-by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. Mrs. Winchester’s arrival was a sensational event. They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word, gossip no one claimed to like-but everyone enjoyed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
Talk begat rumor 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. Populations said it just appeared out of nowhere two years ago. Sure two twins could not be like her, and when it appeared in Santa Clara, the mansion would move around to different locations. It had also appeared in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, but it went no further than the Bay Area. Concerning Mrs. Winchester’s mansion, legendary authorities differ on many material points. Some believed that its architecture was due to geometry or some other enchantment, while opponents of this materialistic view were inclined to the opinion that the mansion was not what it seemed to be, that was to say, not Earth, wood, and stones, like as those most people see, but only an illusion that evil spirits or the devil created to deceive the town. Public opinion on the west coast was therefore was strongly divided on the subject, unity of sentiment existing on two points only; that the island had been seen, and that there was something quite out of the ordinary in its appearance. People believe that it would come and go in the night like a light in a bog, and when you do see it, you can see through it. An old fisherman of San Francisco called Ebenezer Thornton knew all about the enchanted Winchester mansion, having not only seen it himself, but, when a boy, learned its history from a “fairy man,” who obtained his information from “the good people” themselves, the facts stated being therefore, of course, of indisputable authority, what the fairies did not know concerning the doings of supernatural and enchanted circles, being not worth knowing. He said that the Winchester mansion was full of temples and round towers all covered with gold and silver till they shone so one could not see it for the brightness. There was a great enchantress in the mansion, and she had all kinds of secrets, and knew where to dig for a pot of gold. She built the castle in one night, and could make herself disappeared when she wanted and could take any shape she pleased. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Ebenezer when on to say that Mrs. Winchester’s husband gave her a charm before he died to use when she was in mortal danger, he also left her a ton of diamonds and millions of dollars. She was a pretty smart woman. One night, Mrs. Winchester was awakened by a noise in one of the kitchens. She tole down, and found her old housekeeper, Madge, with half a dozen of her kidney, sitting by the fire drinking whisky. When the bottle was finished, one of them cried, “It’s time to be off,” and at the same moment she put on a peculiar red cap, and added:–“By yarrow and rue, and my red cap, too, hie over to England!” and seizing a twig she soared up the chimney. As the latter was making her preparations Mrs. Winchester rushed into the kitchen, snatched the cap from her, and placing herself astride of her twig uttered the magic formula. She speedily found herself high in the air over the Irish Sea, and swooping though the empyrean at a rate unequalled by the fastest airplane. They rapidly neared the Welsh coast, and espied a castle afar off, towards the door of which they rushed with a frightful velocity; Mrs. Winchester closed her eyes and awaited the shock, but found to her delight that she had slipped through the keyhole without hurt. The party made their way to the cellar, where they caroused heartily, but the spirits proved too heady, and somehow Mrs. Winchester was captured and dragged before the lord of the castle, who sentenced her to be hanged. On her way to the gallows an old woman in the crowd called out in Irish, “Ah, the enchantress herself, Sarah Winchester alanna! Is it going to die you are in a strange place without your magical charm?” She reached into her pocket and held it in her hand. On reaching the place of execution she was allowed to address the spectators, and did so in the usual ready-made speech, beginning, “Good people all, a warning take by me.” But when she reached the last line, “My parents reared me tenderly” instead of stopped she unexpected added, “By yarrow and rue, good-bye I love you,” with the result that she shot up through the air, to the great dismay of all beholders. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Magic persecution. Genuine magic is the art of bringing about results beyond human powers through the enlistment of supernatural agencies. Black magic deliberately involves the devil and demons, and the resulting enchantment is used for persecution and revenge. A spiritistic circle of twenty members furnishes a good example. Working with black magic, these spiritis experimented to see if they could cause psychic harm or even illness in people they disliked. A strong medium of this occult group chose a minister as a target and vowed to afflict and eliminate her. The minister suffered a nervous breakdown and was unable to work for several months. Some phenomena must be eliminated from the spiritistic magic field. In the psychiatric realm, for example, many schizophrenics claim to be magically persecuted. In reality this is only a symptom in the course of psychotic disease. Eliminating all such cases, there are still large-scale, genuine phenomena, especially in areas where occultism has flourished for many years. One common form of magic persecution is beatings by an invisible attacker. Parapsychology also sees magical persecution as a mediumistic problem in the sphere of materializations. Strong mediums (when under demon control) send out energy with which to build up human phantasms and are also able to transform this energy into animal forms, including dogs, cats, frogs, snakes, or human bodies with animal heads, etcetera. This explains the bizarre spiritistic persecution through phantoms in the form of various animals of human bodies with nonhuman heads. These animals bite, scratch, or otherwise torment their victims. Examples, of these occult phenomena abound in areas where the black arts are practiced. However, such occurrences are denied by many intellectuals. Often peasants and country people, especially in Europe, know more about magic than university graduates, who claim to swindle or hocus-pocus trickery are used instead of occult powers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Magic defense. Magic defense enlists supernatural agencies to counteract or unto the mischief wrought by magic persecution. Various kinds of spells, charms, or incantations are employed. In spiritistic séances it is an established fact that injuries inflicted upon a phantasm are sustained by the medium, even in the case of animal phantasm. Many defensive customs develop to combat this threat since magical persecution involves materialization. If a victim can injure an aggressive phantasm one has won the struggle. Many in the West wanted to remove Satan from the equation of black magic and demonic aspects of life. However, more serious discontent came from Satanists whose concerns were completely the opposite. Anton LaVey did not believe in Satan as a literal entity—He was a name for the dark, brutal aspects of humans and nature, as well as a symbol for the potency of humans’ untrammeled will. The Church of Satan was not a religion, and did not worship deities. For many, however, this was not enough. They wanted a real Devil to worship—belonging to a dark, mysterious coven, in the traditional gothic style, seemed much more appealing than being part of some cultural and social elite. Some believed that Satan, although thrown out of Heaven, was reinstated as the son of God and is directly in contact with him. If any coven members offends, they are a bit evil now and again, given corporal punishment, or is expelled from one’s coven and cursed. However, this is said to be for the members own good. They really believe in love, the sanctity of woman as the child bearer and procreator of life, and in worshipping Satan their master. Aleister Crowley was grooming Kenneth as his successor. Mr. Grant’s work examined lost gods, strange spiritual traditions and forbidden symbols, often leading him to some disreputable spiritual neighborhood where devils and demons might be expected to reside, like the Winchester Mystery House. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
If you have a lot of magic in you, you can be a Satanist and have no idea. As if they are the mafia or something, sometimes those who are suspected of being Satanists have their offices broken into like they are the Mafia or something. The Church of Satan, however, has saved lives because it has given them power, power to come out and be themselves when traditional churches would not accept these people. The Dark Lord, was said to be an anthropoid but faceless. Looking at the concept as a diamond, much like the ones left to Mrs. Winchester by her husband William Wirt Winchester, Satan or Lucifer was just other facets of that diamond, purely ways of achieving workings which encompassed the whole. So, if you are particularly drawn to the gothic Satanist current, fine, use rituals based around that. In the Temple of Darkness one could equally have Satanists, Setians, or followers of other paths, the principle being that the whole thing is a psychodrama anyway. Magic is basically the Western version of yoga. Everything that happens in magic happens first in your head. Set, the Egyptian god of evil, was an older deity than Satan. Satan derives from Set. Set, who is defined as the Prince of Darkness, is a force about which you could say, “As we are now, he once was.” When you die your force can survive. Magic is mind enhancing. When one perishes or passes, instead of going into the cosmic whole—becoming one with the goddess or whatever—by sheer force of the will the existence of that magician’s mind can be sustained. This is the whole idea of the Temple of Set, and they use the word “xeper,” meaning “to become,” to define this. Spiritistic cults. If you did not know, Mrs. Winchester was a spiritists. Spiritism is considered a form of Christianity, practically in all civilized countries. A typical meeting consists of hymns, prayer, and a sermon as in a Christian service. The sermon, however, is allegedly given by a spirit from the other World, through a medium. These cults are said to be affected by the “doctrines of demons” and press into the supernatural World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
However, even born-again Christians often cannot differentiate between the spiritual and the psychic-demonic when under the spell of doctrinal errors, particularly those concerning the work of the Holy Spirit. The result can sometimes be confusion, division, and promotion of certain spiritual gifts accredited to demons. We have sometimes seen people end up suffering from mediumistic psychosis. Quite a number of patients who have suffered serious psychic disturbances through the misuse of such practices have become split personalities. The spirits which they called, confused them. One who tries to discover the promises of the other side through superstition endangers oneself to fall a prey to the dark side of one’s psyche. However, many Christians say that spirits of loved ones cannot be brought back from the dead, and the it is just a demon impersonating them. Yet, consider the case of Saul’s visit to the spiritistic medium at Endor (1 Samuel 28.3-25). Samuel’s spirit was actually brought back from the spirit World when the medium Endor tried to contact him. Yet, God brought the spirit back. The Lord stepped. Still one must be careful because many become enslaved and oppressed by occult powers and become victims of various manifestations of spiritistic phenomena. While overwhelming evidence from Christian counseling confirms the fact that spiritistic complicity serious damages the believer’s spiritual life, adherents of Buddhism, Island, or even false cults of Christianity sense no ill effects. Spiritists claim that spiritism has strengthened their belief in life after death and deepened their religious devotion. Psychiatry, psychology, and medical treatment are not sufficient for the healing of the whole human. The gospel of Christ and the liberating power of the Word of God can fully heal body, soul, and spirit. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Mrs. Winchester had a pain in her right forearm. At first the pain was treated as rheumatism but one day the Mrs. Winchester made the interesting discovery that the pain would suddenly subside if she wrote a letter. Having discovered this, whenever the pain became unbearable, she would always take a pencil and begin to write in order to alleviate the pain. However, after a period of time the Mrs. Winchester when go into her Blue Séance Room, where she developed a writing compulsion. She would write things down that she could normally speaking never have written. Often times, this is where the blueprints from her mansion came from. Added to this the written material on each occasion turned out to be some form of religious treatise. Mrs. Winchester took the articles to her minister to let him examine them. He was surprised at their intellectual content. Mrs. Winchester had become a spiritistic writing medium. The parapsychologist would merely see in this example a psychic automation involving the expression of subconscious thoughts. It is true that we need not consider the Mrs. Winchester to be in direct contact with the dead, or putting it another way we need not assume that this is a case of direct demonization, but God could be speaking to her. This is why some believe Mrs. Winchester to be a prophetess. During one of her spiritistic seances, as it happened, a phantasm did in fact appear during a séance. However, it is still not necessary to believe that a spirit really did appear in this instance. Depth psychology suggest that a phantasm can be produced in the following way. The medium through emitting energy causes matter to form as a result of this. In nuclear physics we have the idea that matter is nothing more than concentrated energy. Einstein’s formula E=M.c^2 illustrates this relationship. A comparison can also be drawn from another branch of physics. It is found that both particles and anti-particles are formed at the cathode of an X-ray tube when a current is passed through it at a very high voltage. Energy in the form of electro-magnetic waves is in this way transformed into matter. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
The next step in the mediumistic process involves the unconscious tapping of the information from some source or other, and then the newly formed matter is physically shaped according to this information. The final step is made when the phantasm is brought under the control of the medium. Looking at it from this point of view there is no necessity to believe that the dead person has in any way been disturbed. An animistic explanation based on the powers of the subconscious is thus sufficient to explain the phenomenon of materialization. Yet this is not to say that the rationalistic explanation does justice to the facts of the case. The problem is not as simple as that. However, we do not have the time to delve further into the scientific side of the issues. We have, on many occasions witnessed a disintegration of the personalities of both mediums and participants where materializations have taken place. In addition to this in every case where a person has frequently taken part in spiritistic séances, there is some kind of reaction, even if it is not immediately notice or if there is no manifestation—something happens. There are also people who are able to practise the excursion of the soul. Spiritists affirm that people can send out an astral body from their material body, and commission it to do whatever they ask. Perhaps that was the case when Mrs. Winchester appeared in another country? Spiritism haunts the dark jungle of human aberration. During a séance as the Winchester mansion, Mrs. Winchester noticed that time was passing somewhat wearily. She could hear an occasional thud, thud. Some time must have elapsed before she became, dimly at first, and then distinctly, aware of a bluish phosphorescent emanation from a skeleton. This seemed to rise above it like a faint smoke, which gradually gained consistency, took form, and became distinct; and she saw before her the misty, luminous form on an unclothed man, with wolfish countenance, prognathous jaws, glaring at her out of eyes deeply sunk under projecting brows. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Although she thus descried what she saw, it gave her no idea of substance; it was vaporous, and yet it was articulate. Indeed, she could not say for sure if she saw this apparition with her eyes, or whether it was a dream-like vision of the brain. Though luminous, it cast no light on the wall of the Blue Séance Room; if she raised her hand, it did not obscure any portion of the form presented to her. Then she heard: “I will tear you with the nails of my fingers and toes, and rip you with my teeth.” “What have I done to injure and incense you?” she asked. No word was uttered by either of them; no word could have been uttered by this vaporous form. It had no material lungs, nor throat, nor mouth to form vocal sounds. It had but the semblance of a man. It was a spook, not a human being. However, it proceeded through the walls, odylic force which smote on the tympanum of her mind or soul, and thereon registered the ideas formed by it. So in a like manner Mrs. Winchester thought her replies, and they were communicated back in the same manner. If vocal words had passed between them neither would have been intelligible to the other. No dictionary was ever compiled, or would be compiled, of the tongue or prehistoric man; moreover, the grammar of the speech of that race would be absolutely incomprehensible to humans now. However, thoughts can be interchanged without words. When we think we do not think in any language. It is only when we desire to communicate our thoughts to other humans that we shape them into words and express them vocally in structural grammatical sentences. The beasts have never attained to this, yet they can communicate with one another, not by language, but by thought vibrations. Mrs. Winchester knew as she conversed with him that she was not speaking to him in English, nor in French, nor in Latin, nor in any tongue whatever. Moreover, when she used the words “said” or “spoke,” she meant no more than that the impression was formed by her brain-pan or the receptive drum of her soul, was produced by the rhythmic, orderly sequence of thought-waves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
When, however, she expressed the words “screamed” or “shrieked,” she signified that those vibrations came sharp and swift; and when she said “laughed,” tht they came in a choppy, irregular fashion, conveying the idea, not the sound of laughter. “I will tear you! I will rend you to bits and throw you in pieces about this mansion!” shrieked this demon man. Mrs. Winchester remonstrated, and inquired how she had incensed him. However, yelling with rage, he threw himself upon her. In a moment she was enveloped in a luminous haze, strips of phosphorescent vapour laid themselves about her, but she received no injury whatever, only her spiritual nature was subjected to something like a magnetic storm. After a few moments the spook disengaged itself from Mrs. Winchester, and drew back to where it was before, screaming broken exclamations of meaningless rage, and jabbering savagely. It rapidly cooled down. “Why do you wish to ill me?” She asked again. “I cannot hurt you. I am spirit, you are matter, and spirit cannot injure matter; my nails are psychic phenomena. Your soul you can lacerate yourself, but I can effect nothing, nothing.” “Then why have you attacked me? What is the cause of your impotent recement?” “Because you are the heiress to the Winchester Rifle, and I lived eight thousand years ago. Why are you nursed in the lap of luxury? Why you enjoy your comforts, a civilization that we new nothing of? It is not just. It is cruel on us. We have nothing, nothing, literally nothing, not even lucifer matches!” Again he feel to screaming, as might a caged monkey rendered furious by failure to obtain an apple which he could not reach. “I am very sorry, but it is no fault of mine.” “Whether it be your fault or not does not matter to me. You have these things—we had not. Why, I saw you just now strike a light on the sole of your boot. It was done in a moment. We had only flint and ironstone, and it took half a day with us to kindle a fire, and then it flayed our knuckles with continuous knocking. No! we have nothing, nothing—no lucifer matches, no commercial travellers, no Benedictine, no pottery, no metal, no education, no elections, no chocolat menier.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
“How do you know about these products of the present age, here, buried one hundred feet of soil for eight thousand years?” “It is my spirit which speaks with your spirit. My spook does not always remain with my bones. I can go up; rocks and stones and earth and your labyrinth mansion heaped over me do not hold me down. I am often above. I am in the gasolier overhead. I have seen your servants plough the fields. I have seen a bottle of Benedictine. I have applied my physical lips to it, but I could taste, absorb nothing. I have seen commercial travellers there, cajoling the patron into buying things he did not want. They are mysterious, marvellous beings, their powers of persuasion are little short of miraculous. Why do you think of doing with me?” “Well, I propose first of all photographing you, then soaking you in gum Arabic, and finally transferring you to a museum.” He screamed as though with pain, and grasped: “Do not! do not do it. It will be torture insufferable.” “But why so? You will be under glass, in a polished oak or mahogany box.” “Do not! You cannot understand what it will be to me—a spirit more or less attached to my body, to spend ages upon ages in a museum with fibulae, triskelli, palstaves, celts, torques, scarabs. We cannot travel very far from our bones—our range is limited. And conceive of my feelings for centuries condemned to wander among glass cases containing prehistoric antiquities, and to hear the talk of scientific men alone. Now here, it is otherwise. Here I can pass up when I like into your mansion, and can see the maid and butlers cleaning, the roses and trees growing, the farmers working the field and the magnificent glow of your fine estate. Give me life. There is a sort of filmy attachment that connects our psychic nature with our mortal remains. It is like a spider and its web. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
“Suppose the soul to be the spider and the skeleton to be the web. If you break the thread the spider will never find its way back to its home. So it is with us; there is an attachment, a faint thread of luminous spiritual matter that unites us to our Earthly husk. It is liable to accidents. It sometimes gets broken, sometimes dissolved by water. If a black beetle crawls across it it suffers a sort of paralysis. I have never been to the other side of the of your mansion, I feared to do so, though very anxious to see your architecture and furniture.” “This is news to me,” replied Mrs. Winchester. “Do you know of any case of rupture of connection?” Yes,” he replied. “My old father, after he was dead some years, got his link of attachment broke, and he wandered about disconsolate. He could not find his own body, but he lighted on that of a young female of seventeen, and he got into that. It happened most singularly that her spook, being frolicsome and inconsiderate, had got its bond also broken, and she, that is her spirit, straying about in quest of her body, lighted on that of my venerable parent, and for want of a better took possession of it. It so chanced that after a while they met and became chummy. In the World of spirits there is no marriage, but there grow up spiritual attachments, and these two got rather fond of each other, but never could puzzle it out which was which and what each was; for a female soul had entered into an old male body, and a male soul had taken up its residence in a female body. Neither could riddle out of which each gender was. You see they had no education. However, I know that my father’s soul became quite sportive in that young woman’s skeleton. Each generation makes some discovery that advances civilization a stage, the next enters on the discoveries of the preceding generations, and so culture advances stage by stage. Man is infinitely progressive; even the brute beast is.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
At that moment, Mrs. Winchester heard a shout—saw a flash of light. The construction workers had pierced the barrier. A rush of fresh air entered. She staggered to her feet. She felt dizzy. Kind hands grasped her. She was dragged forth. Brandy was poured down her throat. When she came to herself, she said, “Thank you. Talking with spirits can be terrible dreadful. When you are trying to summon one, souls get crossed and the one you are seeking may not cross through. They are so desperate to find a medium to communicate with.” As an ingredient of idol worship, magic goes back to antiquity. By virtue of their multiplicity and limited knowledge and power, the gods (demons) of paganism are incapable of establishing stability and security in society. This deficiency forced both gods and men to make use of magic—an inactive power independent of gods and men, but which could be activized by the assistance of incantations and rituals in order to accomplish supernatural deeds. Because of widespread denial of the reality of supernatural power—both divine and demonic, confusion abounds concerning the nature of magic. The history of magic is replete with extraordinary extrasensory phenomena that involve the spirit realm and every phase of the natural World as well, including human beings, animals, plants, and inorganic matter. Spirit-rapping, apparitions, ghosts, moving of furniture, and playing of musical instruments by invisible hands, stones falling from a ceiling, magical killing of cattle and blighting of crops, etcetera, are just a few of the weird occurrences that have happened at the Winchester Mystery House in its 134 years. However, there have also been beautiful supernatural events such as apparitions getting married, giant spirits of light in the shape of a man peering out guests, and on occasion, even rainbows and angels have appeared. Not all spirits or evil or angry, some or loving and welcoming. Few of thousands of annual transient guests are disappointed for here one finds visible truth even stranger than all the weird Mystery House features. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Winchester Mystery House
Beautiful weather calls for a walk around Sarah’s iconic gardens ⛲️🪴Open 10AM – 5PM this weekend!
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle , or who were jealous of its wealth 👻
And a Hair of His Head Shall Not Fall to the Ground Unnoticed
We cannot go to others with what we have received, saying: This is what needs to be known, this is what needs to be done. We can only go and put to the proof in actions. And even this is not what we “ought to” do: rather we can—we cannot do otherwise. This is the eternal revelation which is present in the here and now. I neither know of nor believe in any revelation that is not the same in its primal phenomenon. Joseph Smith returned to Independence in April, 1832, to help the Saints in their conflict with the pioneer Missourians, who did not like the people from the East. The day after his arrival, Joseph called a conference of the Saints in America. One of the first items of business was to vote to acknowledge Joseph Smith as “president of the high priesthood,” or president of the church. Provision was later made for two counselors to the president, making three in the Presidency. A revelation was received at this time in which the Lord said: “I give unto you directions how you may act before me, that it may turn to you for your salvation. I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say, but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise. American must increase in beauty, and in holiness…America must arise and put on her beautiful garments. Therefore, I give unto you this commandment, that ye bind yourselves by this covenant. And you are to be equal, or in other words, you are to have equal claims on the properties, for the benefit of managing the concerns of your stewardships, every man according to his wants and his needs, inasmuch as his wants are just. And all this for the benefit of the church of the living God, that every man may improve upon his talent, that every man may gain other talents; yea, even an hundredfold, to be cast into the Lord’s storehouse, to become the common property of the whole church, every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
“Make unto yourselves friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, and they will not destroy you. Leave judgment alone with me, for it is mine and I will repay. Peace be with you; my blessings continue with you, for even yet the kingdom is yours, and shall be for ever if you fall not from your steadfastness.” After preaching several powerful sermons and visiting and encouraging the Saints, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Newell K. Whitney left Independence for Kirtland, where they arrived in June. During this same month the first issues of the paper, the Evening and Morning Star, was published at Independence. It was a joyous treat for the Saints in Kirtland to receive a copy of this paper. Joseph and Sidney Rigdon spent much of their time on the work of correcting the Scriptures during the summer and fall of 1832. Two revelations were given during this period giving instruction on the priesthood in the church and containing many glorious promises. The Lord praised the Saints for their hard work which had been done by much sacrifice and under unfavorable conditions. The Lord explained the purposes of the two priesthoods, the Aaronic and the Melchisedec. The people were instructed to accept the ministry of men who are called to the priesthood. Jesus Christ, the Lord said: “All they who receive this priesthood receiveth me, saith the Lord, for he that receiveth my servants receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth my Father, and he that reciveth my Father receiveth my Father’s kingdom.” Helpful instruction was given in this revelation: “You shall live by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God. For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light in Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And the Spirit giveth light to every man that cometh into the World; and the Spirit enlightenth every man through the World, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
“And everyone that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit, cometh unto God, even the Father. Whoso cometh not unto me is under the bondage of sin; and whoso recieveth not my voice is not acquainted with my voice, and is not of me; and by this you may know the righteous from the wicked.” The elders were told they should travel without money or provisions—“pure or scrip” were the exact words used—and Jesus promised: “And any man that shall go and preach this gospel of the kingdom, and fail not to continue faithful in all things, shall not be weary in mind, neither darkened, neither in body, limb or joint; and an hair of his head shall not fall to the ground unnoticed. And they shall not go hungry, neither athirst. Therefore take no thought for the morrow, for what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. For consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin; and the kingdoms of this World, in all their glory, are not arrayed like one of these; for your Father who art in Heaven, knoweth that you have need of all these things. Therefore, let the morrow take thought for the things of itself. Neither take ye thought beforehand what ye shall say, but treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be given you in the very hour that portion that shall be meted unto every man. Whoso receiveth you receiveth me, and the same will feed you, and clothe you, and give you money. And he who feeds you, or clothes you, and gives you money, shall in no wise lose his reward.” A little son, whom they named Joseph Smith III, was born to Emma and Joseph on November 6, 1832. This baby was to have an important part in the work of the Lord later. An important revelation was given on December 27, 1832. The Saints were commanded to keep the laws of God. The Lord said: “He who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom, can not abide a celestial glory; and he who can not abide the law of terrestrial kingdom, can not abide a terrestrial glory; he who can not abide the law of a telestial kingdom, can not abide a telestial glory; therefore, he is not meet for a kingdom of glory. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
“And if your eye be single to my glory, your whole bodies shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in you, and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things. Therefore, sanctify yourselves that your minds become single to God, and the days will come that you shall see him. Continue in prayer and fasting from this time forth. And I give unto you a commandment, that you shall teach one another the doctrines of the kingdom. Call your solemn assembly, as I have commanded you; and as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning even by study, and also by faith. See that ye love one another; cease to be covetous; learn to impart one to another as the gospel requires; cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another. Cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated. Pray always, that you may not faint until I come.” Provision was made in this revelation for establishing a “school of the prophets,” in the “house of the Lord.” This school was for all members of the priesthood, from the high priests to the deacons, and it was to be taught by the Presidency of the church. To be humble is to recognize gratefully our dependence on the Lord—to understand that we have constant need for His support. Humility is an acknowledgment that our talents and abilities are gifts from God. It is not a sign of weakness, timidity, or fear; it is an indication that we know where our true strength lies. We can be both humble and fearless. We can be both humble and courageous. The Lord will strengthen us as we humble ourselves before Him. “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble…Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall life you up,” reports James 4.6 and 10. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
When the storms in life come, one can be steady because one is standing on the rock of one’s faith in Jesus Christ. May everyone face the storms with a peaceful heart. The place to begin is to remember that we are each a beloved child of God and that He has inspired servants. Those servants of God have foreseen the times in which we live. Know also that in the last days, perilous times shall come. Anyone with eyes to see the signs of the times and ears to hear the words of prophets knows that is true. The perils of greatest danger come to us from the forces of wickedness. Those forces are increasing. And so it will become more difficult, not easier, to honor the covenants we must make and keep to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. For those of us who are concerned for ourselves and for those we love, there is hope in the promise God has made of a place of safety in the storms ahead. It has never been more important than it is now to understand how to build a strong foundation. “Then Solomon said, The Lord has said that He would dwell in the thick darkness,” reports II Chronicles 6.1. Therefore, do not fear because God is everywhere. The human wish, we are saying, is not merely a push from the past, not merely a call from primitive needs demanding satisfaction. It also has in it some selectivity. It is a forming of the future, a molding by a symbolic process which includes both memory and fantasy, of what we hope the future will be. The wish is the beginning of orienting ourselves to the future, an admission that we want the future to be such and such; it is a capacity to reach down deep into ourselves and preoccupy ourselves with a longing to change the future. However, there is no will without a prior wish. The wish, like all symbolic processes, has a progressive element, a reaching ahead, as well as a regressive pole, a propulsion from behind. The wish thus carries its meaning as well as its force. Its motive power lies in the conjunction of this meaning and force. We can now understand why William Lynch should hold that “to wish is the most human act.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The past is drifting away at a faster and faster rate. When we look back at, say, the first quarter of the twenty-first century, we realize that many of its defining episodes no longer grip us as strongly as they one did. For the generation now coming into power, events like the 911, the civil rights protests of the 2020s, the Ukrainian War, the Cultural Revolution, homelessness, demands for affordable housing and spread of graffiti in small towns seems increasingly more significant and relevant. Therefore much of what will happen in our lifetimes will consist of adaptation to and further development of a process that began three quarters of a century ago—the most revolutionary wave of change in wealth creation since at least the eighteenth century. Let us pause briefly, then, to summarize and draw together some key things. First, this revolution is a matter not just of technology, stock-market swings, inflation or deflation but of profound social, cultural, political and geopolitical changes as well. Failure to recognize the connections between these and economics leads us to seriously underestimate the oncoming challenges we face. Second, while headlines and business chatter continually refer to improving or declining “fundamentals,” we suggest that that these ups and downs are largely superficial responses to far more important shifts in what we have termed “deep fundamentals”—those factors and forces that have governed all economic activity sine our days as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Economists have long studied some of these essentials—things like work, the division of labor, exchange and the sharing of rewards. They have also filled libraries with studies on technology, energy and the environment. Business gurus drawing on these studies pour out advice about everything from human-resource management to network organization, insourcing and outsourcing, leadership and strategy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Yet, if they ignore three key forces driving today’s wealth revolution—dramatic changes in our relations to time, space and, above all, knowledge, how good can advice and proposed strategies be? It is, we have contended, only by recognizing the centrality of these wealth drivers that we can prepare for tomorrow. For this reason, we have looked closely at each of these deep fundamentals and their impacts on wealth. Take, for instance, the de-synchronization effect. As we saw earlier, companies are compelled to shift and re-shirt their products and relationships incessantly. Customer demands, financial imperatives and market forces all change at accelerating, but very different, rates. In doing so, they impose destabilizing cross-pressures on firms whose managers struggle to come to terms with time. In response, a big synchronization industry has grown up to help firms cope with clashing speeds. At the same time, a backward, tortoise-paced public sector—itself badly de-synchronized—imposes a huge “time-tax” on companies by slowing them down with delays in court decisions, procurements process, regulatory rulings, permit procedures and in a thousand other ways. In short, one part of the system is flooring the gas pedal while the other is slamming on the brakes. Nowhere, as we have noted, is this more frustratingly evident than in the contradiction between the fast-changing skill requirements of an advanced, accelerative economy and the glacial immobility of its schools. We have seen also that some degree of de-synchronization is essential to keep competition and innovation going on. However, it is equally clear that excessive de-synchronization can throw companies, industries and entire economies into chaos. Indeed, one can look at the great stock market shakeouts as desperate attempts by the wealthy system to re-synchronize itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
However, time is only part of the story. To understand tomorrow’s oncoming changes, the cumulative effects of time conflicts need to be seen against the equally powerful transformations in the spatial landscape. Thus the World today holds its breath while watching the massive relocation of wealth and wealth creation toward formerly “developing” countries led by China and India—surely one of the biggest and fastest such transfers in history and possibly the completion of a great circle of wealth movement that began some five hundred years ago. Moreover, we have suggested that, instead of asking whether globalization will continue, we recognize a coming split—possible de-globalization on the economic level and re-globalization of campaigns against such problems as pollution, terrorism, drugs, sexual slavery and genocide. Here, too, gas pedal and brake are applied at the same time. Out of this collision will come the accelerated relocation of the globe’s wealth creation to new high-value-added hot spots—leaving behind new pockets of poverty. However, the most dramatic spatial shifts of all has little to do with these terrestrial concerns. Though millions brush it aside, we actually stand at the historical edge of humanity’s serious thrust into outer space. For historians of tomorrow looking back at the twenty-first century, one of most important economic events of all may prove to be the colonization of space and wealth creation beyond our home planet. None of these changes would occur without even more potent transformations in the deep fundamental of knowledge and our relations with it. While shifts in the use of time and space will be easy to recognize, today’s revolution in knowledge—the defining deep fundamental of our time—is far harder to grasp. These changes are, by their very nature, intangible, invisible, abstract, epistemological and seemingly remote from daily life. Yet no attempt to forecast the future of wealth can succeed without a thorough appreciation of the new role of knowledge. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
We have provided an admittedly simplified primer on the scope, nature and role of knowledge as the central resource of advanced economies. However, here again we do not just need to analyze, but to synthesize—to see these deeply fundamental changes in interaction with one another. When we alter our relationship to time, for example, by speeding things up, we inevitably make some knowledge obsolete. We thereby increase the backlog of obsoledge that we lug around with us. Let us proceed to economic and social changes. New Deal. The Keynesian economics of the New Deal has cushioned the business cycle and maintained nearly full employment. It has not achieved its ideal of social balance between public and private works. The result is an expanding production increasingly consisting of corporation boondoggling. Syndicalism. Industrial workers have won their unions, obtained better wages and working conditions, and affirmed the dignity of labor. However, they gave up their ideal of workers’ management, technical education, and concern for the utility of their labor. The result is that a vast majority could not care less about what they make, and the “labor movement” is losing force. Class struggle. The working class has achieved a striking repeal of the iron law of wages; it has won a minimum wage and social security (although future funding is uncertain). However, the goal of an equalitarian or freely mobile society has been given up, as has the solidarity of the underprivileged. The actual result is an increasing rigidity of statuses; some of the underprivileged tending to drop out of society altogether. On the other hand, the cultural equality that has been achieved has been the degradation of the one popular culture to the lowest common denominator. Production for Use. This socialist goal has been missed, resulting in many of the other failures here listed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Sociology. During the past century, the sociologist have achieved their aim of dealing with humankind in its natural groups or groups with common problems, rather than as isolated individuals or a faceless mass. Social science has replaced many prejudices and ideologies of vested interests. However, on the whole, social scientists have given up their aim of fundamental social change and an open-experimental method determining its goals as it went along: the pragmatist ideal of society as a laboratory for freedom and self-correcting humanity. The actual result is an emphasis on “socializing” and “belonging,” with the loss of nature, culture, group solidarity and group variety, and individual excellence. There are 773,000,000 illiterates in the World. There are approximately 43 million illiterates in the United States of America, and according to a report from our Librarian of Congress, there may be an equal number of alliterates. In any case, a general impatience with books will develop, especially with books in which language is used with subtlety to express complex ideas. Most likely there will be a decline in readers’ analytical and critical skills. According to the results of standardized tests given in schools, this has been happening in the United States of America for the past fifty-five years. I suspect concern for history will also decline, to be replaced by a consuming interest in the present. The effect on political life will be devastating. There will be less emphasis on issues, substance, and ideology, an increase in the importance of image and style. Politicians will have greater concern for moment-to-moment shifts in public opinion, less concern for long-range policies. Unless the use of television for political campaigns is strictly prohibited, elections may be decided by which party spends more on televisions and media consultants. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Even if political commercials are prohibited, politicians will appear on entertainment programs and will almost certainly be asked to give testimonials for non-political products such as cars, beer, and breakfast foods. The line between political life and entertainment will blur, and movies stars may be taken seriously as political candidates. Once the population becomes accustomed to spending much of its time watching television—in the United States of America, the average household has television on about eight hours a day—there will be a decrease in activities outside the home: fewer and smaller gatherings in parks, beer halls, concert halls, and other public places. As street life decreases, there may well be an increase in street crime. Young and some older people will, of course, become disaffected from school and reading. Children’s games are likely to disappear. In fact, it will become important to keep children watching television because they will be a major consumer group. In the United States of America, children watch 5,000 hours of television before they enter kindergarten and 16,000 hours by high school’s end. Commercial television does not dislike children; it simply cannot afford the idea of childhood. Consumerhood takes precedence. Naturally, family life will be significantly changed. There will be less interaction among family members, certainly less talk between parents and children. Such talk as there is will be noticeably different from what you are now accustomed to. The young will speak of matters that once were confined to adults. Commercial television is a medium that does not segregate its audience, and therefore all segments of the population share the same symbolic World. You may find that in the end the line between adulthood and childhood has been erased entirely. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Television is itself a commodity, and an expensive one too. Therefore it is physically consistent with the prevalent reality. Its purchase gives the commodity system a boost. Television changes the nature of the artificial environment from passive to active. Unlike buildings and machines, television literally enters inside human beings; inside our homes, our minds, our bodies, making possible the reordering of human processes from the inside. Television is an experience that can be had by virtually everyone at the same time. By substituting for a greater diversity of experiences and unifying everyone with it, it assists commercial efficiency. With all people confined to the same mental and physical condition, a single advertising or political voice appropriate to the common mood can influence everyone. Once diversity of experience is reduced to television, a relative handful of people can control everyone’s awareness. Luckily for advertisers, in a capitalist system, whoever is in a position to pay for the technology has primary access to it. Television is unique in that it smooths out any furrows in the commodity system. Dormant anxieties can be dulled by the television experience. Beyond being a delivery system for commodity life, it is the solder to hold that life together, the drug to ease the pain of confined and channeled existence. Though television passes for experience, it is really more like “time out,” as we shall see later. It is anti-experience. Its interaction with the human body and mind fixes people to itself, dulls human sensibility and dims awareness of the World. This enhances the commodity life by reducing knowledge of any other. By focusing people on events well outside their lives, television encourages passivity and inaction, discourages self-awareness and the ability to cope personally, both of which are dangerous for advertising. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
By speaking in images, television adds a dimension to the mirror-image process. Unlike radio or print media, advertising can now implant internal movies, forever available for self-comparison. Television encourages separation: people from community, people from each other, people from themselves, creating more buying units and discouraging organized opposition to the system. It creates a surrogate community: itself. It becomes everyone’s intimate advisor, teacher and guide to appropriate behavior and awareness. Thereby, it becomes its own feedback system, furthering its own growth and accelerating the transformation of everything and everyone into artificial form. This enables a handful of people to obtain a unique degree of power. You have seen how commercial stress the values of youth, how they stress consumption, the immediate gratification of desires, the love of the new, a contempt for old technology. Television screens are saturated with commercials promote the Utopian and childish idea that all problems have fast, simple, and technological solutions. You must banish from your mind the naïve but commonplace notion that commercials are about products. They are about products in the same sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales. Which is to say, they are not. They are about values and myths and fantasies. One might even say they form a body of religious literature, a montage of voluminous, visualized sacred texts that provide people with images and stories around which to organize their lives. To give you some idea of exactly how voluminous, I should tell you that the average America will have seen approximately 1 million television commercials, at the rate of a thousand per week, by the age of twenty. By the age of sixty-five, the average American will have seen more than 2 million television commercials. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Commercial television adds to the Decalogue several impious commandments, among them that thou shalt have no others gods than consumption, thou shalt despise what is old, thou shalt seek to amuse thyself continuously, and thou shalt avoid complexity like the ten plagues of that the underworld. Perhaps you are thinking that I exaggerate the social and psychic results of the commercialization of television and that, in any case, what has happened in the United States of America could not happen anywhere else. If you are, you overestimate the power of tradition and underestimate the power of technology. To enliven your senses of the forces unleashed by technological change, you need only remind yourself of what the automobile has brought to Austria. Has it not changed the nature of your cities, created the suburbs, made roads through your forest and homes, restructured your economy? You must not mislead yourselves by what you know about World culture as of 2022. May regions around the World are still living in the age of Gutenberg. Commercial television attacks such backwardness with astonishing ferocity. For example, at the present time, less than 20 percent of population in Tuvalu watches television in the evening. A commercial television system will fund this situation intolerable. In the United States of America, approximately 90 percent of people watch television during evening hours, and broadcasters find even those number unsatisfactory. In nations like Korea, television commercials are bunched together so that they do not interfere with the continuity of the programs. Such a situation makes no sense to American commercial systems. The whole idea is precisely to interrupt the continuity of programs so that one’s thoughts cannot stray too far from consideration of consumership. Indeed, the aim is to obliterate the distinction between a program and a commercial. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
In some countries, you do not have many advertising agencies, and those you have are small and without great influence. In America, our advertising agencies are among the largest and most powerful corporations in the World. DDB Needham Worldwide has gross billings of $6.7 billion each year, 6,726 employees and SICs 7311 advertising agencies, and possibly receives $700 million per year for American network television alone. This is serious money and these are serious radicals. They cannot afford to permit a culture to retain old ideas about work or religion or politics or childhood. And it will not be long before they and their kind show up in the most primitive communities. If, like me, you claim allegiance to an authentic conservative philosophy, one that seeks to preserve that which nourishes the spirit, you would be wise to approach all proposals for a free-market television system with extreme caution. Indeed, I will go further than that: it is either hypocrisy or balderdash to argue that the transformation of the World from a print-based culture to a television-based culture can leave that country’s traditions intact. Conservatives know this is nonsense, and so they worry. Radicals also know this is nonsense. However, they do not care. In 1879, a French ophthalmologist named Luis Emile Javal discovered that when people read, their eyes do not sweep across the words in a perfectly fluid way. Their visual focus advances in little jumps, called saccades, pausing briefly at different points along each line. One of the Javal’s colleagues at the University of Paris soon made another discovery: that the pattern of pauses, or “eye fixations,” can vary greatly depending on what is being read and who is doing the reading. In the wake of these discoveries, brain researchers began to use eye-tracking experiments to learn more about how we read and how our minds work. Suck studies have also proven valuable in providing further insights into the Internet’s effects on attention and cognition. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
In 2006, Jakob Nielsen, a longtime consultant on the design of Web pages who has been studying online reading since the 1990s, conducted an eye-tracking study of Web users. He has 232 people wear a small camera that tracked their eye movements as they read pages of text and browsed other content. Nielsen found that hardly any of the participants read online text in a methodical, line-by-line way, as they would typically read a page of text in a book. The vast majority skimmed the text quickly, their eyes skipping down the pages in a pattern that resembled, roughly, the letter F. They would start by glancing all the way across the first two or three lines of text. Then their eyes would drop down a bit, and they would scan about halfway across a few more lines. Finally, they would let their eyes cursorily drift a little father down the left-hand side of the page. This pattern of online reading was confirmed by subsequent eye-tacking study carried out at the Software Usability Research Laboratory at Wichita State University. “F,” wrote Mr. Nielsen, in summing up the findings for his clients, is “for fast. That is how users read your precious content. In a few second, their eyes move at amazing speed across your website’s words in a pattern that is very different from what you learned in school.” As a complement to his eye-tracking study, Mr. Nielsen analyzed an extensive database on the behavior of Web users that had been compiled by a term of German researchers. They had monitored the computers of twenty-five people for an average of about a hundred days each, tracking the time the subjects spent looking at some fifty thousand Web pages. Parsing the data, Mr. Nielsen found that as the number of words on a pace increases, the time a visitor spends looking at the page goes up, but only slightly. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
For every hundred additional words, the average viewer will spend just 4.4 more seconds perusing the page. Since even the most accomplished reader can read only about eighteen words in 4.4 seconds, Mr. Nielsen told his clients, “when you add verbiage to a page, you can assume that customers will read 18 percent of it.” And that, he cautioned, is almost certainly an overstatement. It is unlikely that the people in the study were spending all their time reading; they were also probably glancing at pictures, videos, advertisements, and other types of content. Mr. Nielsen’s analysis backed up the conclusions of the German researchers themselves. They had reported that most Web pages are viewed for ten seconds or less. Fewer than one in tend page views extend beyond two minutes, and a significant portion of those seem to involve “unattended browser windows…left open in the background of the desktop.” The researchers observed that “even new pages with plentiful information and many links are regularly viewed for a brief period.” However, with many people still have 4GLTE mobile phones, advertisers can get several seconds more of free advertisement from certain formats because the phones freeze up and leave their content on the phone for longer than they have paid for, so it is like with the older technology, firms get more for their dollar. Overall, however, results seem to “confirm that browsing is a rapidly interactive activity.” The results also reinforce something that Mr. Nielsen wrote in 1997 after his first study of online reading. “How do users read on the web?” he asked then. His succinct answer is: “They do not.” Many types of reading are important. The most visible sign of our increasing separateness and, in its turn, the cause of ever greater separateness is divorce. It has a deep influence on our universities because more and more of the students are products of it, and they do not only have problems themselves but also affect other students and the general atmosphere. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Divorce in America is the most palpable indication that people are not made to live together, and that, although they want and need to create a general will out of the particular wills, those particular wills constantly reassert themselves. There is a quest, but ever more hopeless, for arrangements and ways of putting the broken pieces back together. The task is equivalent to squaring the circle, because everyone loves oneself most but wants others to love one more than one loves themselves. Such is particularly the demand of children, against which parents are now rebelling. In the absence of a common good or common object, as Mr. Rousseau puts it, the disintegration of society into particular wills is inevitable. Selfishness in this case is not a moral vice or a sin but a natural necessity. The “Me generation” and “narcissism” are merely descriptions, not causes. The solitary savage in the state of nature cannot be blamed for thinking primarily of oneself, nor can a person who lives in a World where the primacy of oneself, nor can a person who lives in a World where the primacy of self-concern is only too evident in the most fundamental institutions, where the original selfishness of the state of nature remains, where concern for the common good is hypocritical, and where morality seems to be squarely on the side of selfishness. Or, to put it otherwise, the concern with self-development, self-expression, or growth, which flourished as a result of the optimistic faith in a preestablished harmony between such a concern and society or community, has gradually revealed itself to be inimical to community. A young person’s qualified or conditional attachment to divorced parents merely reciprocates what one necessarily sees as their conditional attachment to one, and is entirely different from the classic problem of loyalty to families, or other institutions, which were clearly dedicated to their members. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
In the past, such breaking away was sometimes necessary but always morally problematic. Today it is normal, and this is another reason why the classical literature is alien to so many of our young, for it is largely concerned with liberation from real claims—like family, faith, or country—whereas now the movement is in the opposite direction, a search for claims on oneself that have some validity. Children who have gone to the school of conditional relationships should be expected to view the World in the light of what they learned there. Children may be told over and over again that their parents have a right to their own lives, that they will enjoy quality time instead of quantity time, that they are really loved by their parents even after divorce, but children do not believe any of this. They think they have a right to total attention and believe their parents must live for them. There is no explaining otherwise to them, and anything less inevitably produces indignation and an inextirpable sense of injustice. To children, the voluntary separation of parents seems worse than their death precisely because it is voluntary. The capriciousness of wills, their lack of directedness to the common good, the fact that they could be otherwise but are not—these are the real source of the war of all against all. Children learn a fear of enslavement to the wills of others, along with a need to dominate those wills, in the context of the family, the one place where they are supposed to learn the opposite. Of course, many families are unhappy. However, that is irrelevant. The important lesson that the family taught was the existence of the only unbreakable bond, for better or for worse, between human beings. The decomposition of this bond is surely America’s most urgent social problem. However, nobody even tries to do anything about it. The tide seems to be irresistible. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Among the many items on the agenda of those promoting America’s moral regeneration, I never find marriage and divorce. The last time anyone in public office took a crack at anything like this issue was when President Trump urged Federal civil servants living together out of wedlock to get married. He said, “Marriage is a very beautiful and wonderful experience, something that everyone should enjoy. When I married, it was courtly love, and was one of the happiest moments in my parents’ lives.” Courtly love, the literary invention of medieval troubadours, is one thing and, unlike the proverbial and unchanging wheel, has been constantly reinvented. Courtly love is a manifestation that acknowledges the tenderness of romance, but incorporates it into a great passion guided not by carnality but rather by the highest moral and aesthetic values. Courtly love is an exalted state between a man and a superior woman he both respects and adores with quasi-religious fervor. Her love tests his resolve, firmness, and loyalty, for it is difficult to obtain. It is also immensely ennobling, so that his very suffering strengths every aspect of his being: his military prowess, social standards, even his moral and religious perspectives. Sometimes, the mere thought of his beloved triggers these holistic improvements. The rules of courtly love are the inherently painful ceaseless meditation on the beauty of one’s beloved, whom one glimpses from time to time but cannot possess. The ideal, seldom fulfilled, is total union with the beloved, to whom one is almost never married. O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,–Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, its flowery slops, its river’s crystal swell, may seem a span; let me thy vigils keep ‘mongst boughs pavillion’s, where the deer’s swift leap startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
But though I will gladly trace these scenes with thee, yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, whose words are images of thoughts refin’d, is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be almost the highest bless of human-kind, when to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. The moon is full the spring nights grow longer, in the north forests startled crows cry out. Past loves are a thousand miles farther each day, still the season’s changes can stir the heart. As one who with pain and suffering has cut a path through a trackless wilderness, and then looks back to observe joyfully other humans travelling easily the roadway one has chartered, so did out forefathers bless their lot as the bearers of salvation, saying: “How goodly is our portion, how blessed our lot, how beautiful our heritage!” Verily our ancestors regarded their role in history as a sign of God’s grace, a token of the love of the Almighty for America, and through America for all human. (Oh, by the way, America is seen as a brand and live styles in many countries, so there are people in China, Japan, and Korea, for example, who believe they are the real Americans. This shows you how manifest destiny and the America Dream is real.) For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples. May we, the latter day children of America continue our people’s historic quest for God and His law of righteousness, and together with our fellowmen, may we establish His kingdom of truth, justice and peace. And the Lord shall be King over all the Earth, on that day, the Lord shall be One, and His name one. The history of America is the great living proof of the working of divine Providence in the affairs of the World. Alone among the nations America has shared all great movements since humankind became conscious of their destinies. If there is no divine purpose in the long travail of America, it is vain to seek for any such purpose in humans’ life. In the reflected light of that purpose each American should lead one’s life with an added dignity. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Love Can be a Cover for Violence
Everybody poppin’ pain pills is everybody hurt? Victorian men used to push down and suppress what he called “lower” bodily desires. However, one surely cannot be a man of decision without taking bodily desires into consideration. Particularly if the disease or treatment is mutilating, celibacy from impotence as a consequence of various genital cancers, is presumed and understood. The same is true of paraplegia or quadriplegia. Diabetes is another condition that may provoke impotence in men. So are some psychiatric disorders that include symptoms of shame and despair. Another common one is anorexia, which in severe form effectively neuters the victim, who becomes too weak to contemplate, desire, or partake in pleasures of the flesh. Other conditions that may induce celibacy are less well known. One of these is vaginismus, in which muscle spasms around the female private area are so severe that a male organ cannot enter it or causes extreme pain when it does. It is difficult to know how many women are affected by it. In the 1970s and 1980s, Masters and Johnson found it in about 5 percent of research volunteers at their institute. They suspected it was generally underestimated in medical diagnoses of the general population because many women sufferers opt for celibacy to avoid the pain and embarrassment of dealing with it. Because these women do not seek help for what might be perceived as a dysfunction, they are medical research’s unknowns. Vaginismus is uncomfortable sensation for women and can be so severe that pleasures of the flesh is impossible. Masters and Johnson have been consulted by desperate couples unable to consummate their marriages after ten years. Often they are driven to seek help because a longing for children overpowers their embarrassment or their refusal to acknowledge they have a problems. Sometimes vaginismus develops after years of normal functioning. Traumatic events such as nonconsensual pleasures of the flesh may provoke it. If an episiotomy has not properly healed, for example, so may experience pain during pleasures of the flesh. Other painful conditions may also provoke vaginismus as a defensive response. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Negative pleasures of the flesh psychological condition can also produce vaginismus, as a reaction to feelings of extreme guilt. Many women reported to Masters and Johnson that their mothers were intensely puritanical about pleasures of the flesh and refused to allow their daughters to do anything they labeled harlotry, including wearing makeup before age eighteen, dressing in typical teenage style, or having boyfriends. One woman’s mother had zealously clipped newspaper articles describing nonconsensual pleasures of the flesh and, throughout her daughter’s four years at university, sent them to her weekly. In the sphere of pleasures of the flesh, though some women avoid intimate passions altogether, others “service” their husbands through fellatio or manual manipulation. They are distraught that they cannot offer traditional pleasures of the flesh and worry that their spouses will find a more titillating partners. Some do, engaging in extramarital affairs for a release through pleasures of the flesh and also to verify that they themselves are still capable of intimate passions. Couples forced into celibacy that is the direct consequence of a medical condition, as opposed to a religious, ascetic, or idealistic principle, see their abstinence as an unfortunate, even tragic condition that requires professional intervention. It subtly alters the form of a relationship and is extremely stressful. In rare instances, this unwelcome celibacy is seen for what it is: a bearable way of life precipitated by a regrettable medical condition. The body consists of the muscular, neurological, and glandular correlates of intentionality, such as increased adrenalin secretion when we are enraged and want to strike something, increased speed of heart beat when we are anxious and want to run, engorgement of the private organs when we are excited by intimate passions. Therefore, it is important for one to become aware of one’s bodily feelings and bodily state in the moment. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Civilization has seemingly led us around full circle, back to the state of nature taught to us by the founding fathers of modern thought. However, now it is present not in rhetoric but in reality. Those who first taught the state of nature proposed it as a hypothesis. Liberated from all the conventional attachments to religion, country, and family that men actually did have, how would they live and how would they feel reconstruct those attachments? It was an experiment designed to make people recognize what they really care about and engage their loyalties on the basis of this caring. However, a young person today, to exaggerate only a little, actually begins de novo, without the givens or imperatives that one would have had only yesterday. His country demands little of one and provides well for one, one’s religion is a matter of absolutely free choice and—that is what is really fresh—so are his involvements in pleasures of the flesh. He can now choose, but he finds he no longer has a sufficient motive for choice that is more than whim, that is binding. Reconstruction is proving impossible. The state of nature should culminate in a contract, which constitutes a society out of individuals. A contract requires not only a common interest between the contracting parties but also an authority to enforce its fulfillment by them. In the absence of the former, there is no relationship; in the absence of the latter, there can be no trust, only diffidence. In the state of nature concerning friendships and love today, there is doubt about both, and the result is a longing for the vanished common group, called roots, without the means to recover it, and timidity and self-protectiveness in associations guaranteed by neither nature nor convention. The pervasive feeling that love and friendship are groundless, perhaps the most notable aspect of the current feeling of groundless, perhaps the most notable aspect of the current feeling of groundlessness, has caused them to give way to the much vaguer and more personal idea of commitment, that choice in the void whose cause resides only in the will of the self. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The young want to make commitments, which constitute the meaning of life, because love and nature do not suffice. That is what they talk about, but they are haunted by the awareness that the talk does not mean very much and that commitments are lighter than air. At the origins of modern natural rights teachings, freedom and equality were politically principles intended to bring both justice and effectiveness to the relationships of ruling and being ruled, which in the conventional order were constituted by pretended rights of strength, wealth, tradition, age and birth. The relationships of king and subject, master and slaver, lord and vassal, patrician and pleb, rich and poor, were revealed to be purely manmade and hence not morally binding, apart from the consent of the parties to them, which became the only source of political legitimacy. Civil society was to be reconstructed on the natural ground of man’s common humanity. Then it would appear that all relationships or relatedness within civil society would also depend on the free consent of individuals. Yet the relationships between man and woman, parent and child, are less doubtfully natural and less arguably conventional than the relations between rulers and ruled, especially as they are understood by modern natural rights teaching. They cannot be understood simply as contractual relationships, as resulting from acts of human freedom, since they would thereby lose their character and dissolve. Instead they seem to constrain that freedom, to argue against the free arrangements of consent dominant in the political order. However, it is difficult to argue that nature both does and does not prescribe certain relations in civil society. The radical transformation of the relations between men and women and parents and children was the inevitable consequence of the success of the new politics of consent. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
It might be said, with some exaggeration, that the first state-of-nature teachers paid little attention to the natural teleology of gender because they were primarily concerned with analyzing away the false appearances of teleology in the existing political arrangements. (I mean by teleology nothing but the evident, everyday observation and sense of purposiveness, which may be only illusory, but which ordinarily guides human life, the kind everyone sees in the reproductive process.) Each individual is the judge of one’s own best interests and they have the right to choose rulers who are bound to protect them, while abstracting from the habits of thought and feeling that permitted patricians under the colors of the common good to make use of plebs for their own greedy purposes. The plebs have equal rights to selfishness. The ruled are not directed by nature to the rulers any more than the rulers naturally care only for the good of the ruled. Rulers and ruled can consciously craft a compact by which the separate interests of each are protected. However, they are never one, sharing the same highest end, like the organs in Menenius’ body. There is no body politic, only individuals who have come together voluntarily and can separate voluntarily without maiming themselves. Although the political order is constituted out of individuals, the subpolitical units remain largely unaffected. Indeed, they counted on the family, as an intermediate between individual and the state, partially to replace what was being lost in passionate attachment to the polity. The immediate and reliable love of one’s own property, wife and children can more effectively counterpoise purely individual selfishness than does the distant and abstract love of country. Moreover, concern for the safety of one’s family is a powerful reason for loyalty to the state, which protects them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The nation as a community of families is a formula that until recently worked very well in the United States of America. However, it is very questionable whether this solution is viable over the very long run, because there are two contrary views of nature present here. And, as the political philosophers have always taught, that one that is authoritative in the political regime will ultimately inform its parts. In the social contract view, nature has nothing to say about relationships and rank order; in the older view, which is part and parcel of ancient political philosophy, nature is prescriptive. Are the relations between men and women and parents and children determined by natural impulse or are they the product of choice and consent? In Aristotle’s Politics, the subpolitical or prepolitical family relations point to the necessity of political rule and are perfected by it, whereas in the state-of-nature teachings, political rule is derived entirely from the need for protection of individuals, bypassing their social relations completely. Are we dealing with political actors or with men and women? In the former case, persons are free to construct whatever relations they please with one another; in the latter, prior to any choice, a preexisting frame largely determines the relations of men and women. There are three classic images of the polity that clarify this issue. The first is the ship of state, which is one thing if it is to be forever at sea, and quite another if it is to reach port and the passengers go their separate ways. They think about one another and their relationships on the ship very differently in the two cases. The former case is the ancient city; the latter, the modern state. The other two images are the herd and the hive, which oppose each other. The herd may need a shepherd, but each of the animals is grazing for itself and can easily be separated from the herd. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
In the hive, by contrast, there are workers, drones and a queen; there is a division of labor ad a product toward which they all work in common; separation from the hive is extinction. The herd is modern, the hive ancient. Of course, neither image is an accurate description of human society. Men are neither atoms nor parts of a body. However, this is why there have to be such images, since for the brutes these things are not a matter for discussion or deliberation. Man is ambiguous. In the tightest communities, at least since the days of Odysseus, there is something in man that wants out and sense that his development is stunted by being just part of a whole, rather than a whole itself. And in the freest and most independent situations men long for unconditional attachments. The tension between freedom and attachment, and attempts to achieve the impossible union of the two, are the permanent condition of man. However, in modern political regimes, where rights precede duties, freedom definitely has primacy over community, family and even nature. The spirit of this choice must inevitably penetrate into all the details of life. The ambiguity of man is well illustrated in the passion of pleasures of the flesh, and the sentiments that accompany it. Pleasures of the flesh may be treated as a pleasure out of which men and women may make what they will, its promptings followed or rejected, its forms matters of taste, its importance or unimportance in life decided freely by individuals. As such, it would have to give precedence to objective natural necessity, to the imperatives of self-love or self-preservation. Or pleasures of the flesh can be immediately constitutive of a whole law of life, to which self-preservation is subordinated and in which love, marriage and the rearing of infants is the most important business. It cannot be both. The direction in which we have been going is obvious. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Now, it is not entirely correct to say that humankind at large is able to treat pleasures of the flesh as a matter of free choice, one which initially does not obligate us to others. In a World where the natural basis of sexual differentiation has crumbled, this choice is readily available to men, but less so to women. Man in the state of nature, either in the first one or the one we have now, can walk away from an encounter involving pleasures of the flesh and never give it another thought. However, a woman may have a child, and in fact, as becomes ever clearer, may want to have a child. Pleasures of the flesh can be an indifferent thing for men, but it really cannot quite be so for women. This is what might be called the female drama. Modernity promised that all human beings would be treated equally. Women took that promise seriously and rebelled against the old order. However, as they succeeded, men have also been liberated from their old constraints. And women, now liberated and with equal careers, nevertheless find they still desire to have children, but have no basis for claiming that men should share their desire for children or assume a responsibility for them. So nature weighs more heavily on women. In the old order they were subordinated and dependent on men; in the new order they are isolated, needing men, but not able to count on them, and hampered in the free development of their individuality. The promise of modernity is not really fulfilled for women. Love had been assumed to be a motivating force, a power which could be relied upon to push us onward in life. However, the great shift in our day indicates that the motivating force itself is now called into question. Love has become a problem to itself. So self-contradictory, indeed, has love become that some of those studying family life have concluded that “love” is simply the name for the way more powerful members of the family control other members. Love can be a cover for violence. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The same can be said about will. We inherited from our Victorian forefathers the belief that the only real problem in life was to decide rationally what to do—and then will would stand ready as the “faculty” for making us do it. Now it is no longer a matter of deciding what to do, but of deciding how to decide. The very basis of will itself is thrown into question. Is will an illusion? Many psychologists and psychotherapists, from Dr. Freud down, have argued that it is. The term “will power” and “free will,” so necessary in the vocabulary of our fathers, have all but dropped completely out of any contemporary, sophisticated discussion; or the words are used in derision. People go to therapist to find substitutes for their lost will: to learn how to get the “unconscious” to direct their lives, or to learn how to get the “unconscious” to direct their lives, or to learn the latest conditioning technique to enable them to behave, or to use new medications to release some motive for living. Also to learn the latest method of “releasing affect,” unaware that affect is not something you strive for in itself but a by-product of the way you give yourself to a life situation. Every age has its own special forms of imperialism. And so does each conqueror. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the British mastered the art, their method of invasion was to send their navy, then their army, then their administrators, and finally their educational system. The Americans now do it differently. They send their television shows and fake news media. The method has much to recommend it. Neither armies nor navies clash by night; the invasion occurs without loss of life and without much resistance. It is also both pleasurable and quick. In a few years, we shall be able to boast that the sun never sets on an American television show. Political consciousness is born through the winds of technology. Electromagnetic waves penetrate more deeply than armies. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
If nations keep relying on nineteenth-century forms of imperialism while continuing to make terrible television shows, they may find themselves turning into a Third World country. Advertising exists only to purvey what people do not need. If it is available, whatever people do need they will find without advertising. This is so obvious and simple that it continues to stagger my mind that the ad industry has succeeded in muddying the point. No single issue gets advertisers screaming louder than this one. They speak about how they are only fulfilling the needs of people by providing an information service about where and how people can achieve satisfaction for their nee. Advertising is only a public service, they insist. Speaking privately, however, and to corporate clients, advertisers sell their services on the basis of how well they are able to create needs where there were none before. I have never met an advertising person who sincerely believes that there is a need connected to, say, 99 percent of the commodities which fill the airwaves and the print media. Nor can I recall a single street demonstration demanding one single product in all of American history. If there were such a demonstration for, let us say, nonreturnable bottles, which were launched through tens of millions of dollars of ads, or chemically processed foods, similarly dependent upon ads, there would surely have been no need to advertise these products. The only need that is expressed by advertising is of raw materials with no intrinsic value into commodities that people will buy. If we take the word “need” to mean something basic to human survival—food, shelter, clothing—or basic to human contentment—peace, love, safety, companionship, intimacy, a sense of fulfillment—these will be sought and found by people whether or not there is advertising. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In fact, advertising intervenes between people and their needs, separates them from direct fulfillment and urges them to believe that satisfaction can be obtained only through commodities. It is through this intervention and separation that advertising can create value, thereby justifying its existence. Consider the list of the top twenty-five advertisers in the United States of America. They sell the following products: soap, detergents, cosmetics, cars and sodas, all of which exist in a realm beyond need. If they were needed, they would not be advertised. People do need to eat, but the food which is advertised is processed food: processed meats, sodas, sugary cereals, candies. A food in its natural state, unprocessed, does not need to be advertised. If it is available to them, hungry people will find the food. To persuade people to buy the processed version is another matter because it is more expensive, less naturally appealing, less nourishing, and often harmful. The need must be created. Perhaps there is a need for cleanliness. However, that is not what advertisers sell. Cleanliness can be obtained with water and a little bit of natural fiber, or solidified natural fat. Major World civilizations kept clean that way for millennia. What is advertised is Americanism, a value beyond cleanliness; sterility, the avoidance of all germs; sudsiness, a cosmetic factor; and brand, a surrogate community loyalty. There is need for tranquility and a sense of contentment. However, these are the last qualities drug advertisers would like you to obtain; not on your own anyway. A drug ad denies your ability to cope with internal processes: feelings, moods, anxieties. It encourages the belief that personal or traditional ways of dealing with these matters—friends, family, community, or patiently awaiting the next turn in life’s cycle—will not succeed in your case. It suggests that a chemical solution is better so that you will choose the chemical rather than your own resources. The result is that you become further separated from yourself and less able to cope. Your ability dies for lack of practice and faith in its efficacy. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
A deodorant ad never speaks about the inherent values of applying imitation-lemon fragrances to your body; it has no inherent value. Mainly the ad wishes to intervene in any notion you may have that there is something pleasant or beneficial in your own human odor. Once the intervention takes place, and self-doubt and anxiety are created, the situation can be satisfied with artificial smells. Only through this process of intervention and substitution is there the prospect of value added and commercial profit. The goal of all advertising is discontent or, to put it another way, an internal scarcity of contentment. This must be continually created, even at the moment when one has finally bought something. In that event, advertising has the task of creating discontent with what has just been bought, since once that act is completed, the purchase has no further benefit to the market system. The newly purchased commodity must be gotten rid of and replaced by the “need” for a new commodity as soon as possible. The ideal World for advertisers would be one in which whatever is bought is used only once and then tossed aside. Many new products have been designed to fit such a World. As a visitor in your country—indeed, as one who does not even know your language well enough to use it in these circumstances—I feel obliged to add something to the culture. You are entitled to know at the start from what cultural and political perspectives I see the World, since everything I will have to say here reflects a point of view quite likely different from your own. I am what may be called a conservative. This word, of course, is ambiguous, and you may have a different meaning for it from my own. Perhaps it will help us to understand each other if I say from my point of view many political are radical. It is true enough that many of them no longer speak of the importance of preserving such traditional instructions and beliefs as the family, childhood, the work ethic, self-denial, and religious piety. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
In fact, it seems like most politicians do not care one way or another whether any of this is preserved. No one, beside President Trump, wants to put America and Americans first anymore. Kids have to sell their bikes to buy food for dinner. People have to work two and three jobs to pay the mortgage. And other companies turn to increasing fees to make due in these challenging times. That is why I am for preserving tradition; that is not where most politicians’ interests lie. You cannot fail to notice that many are no longer mostly concerned to preserve a free-market economy, to encourage what is new, and to keep America technologically progressive. Many of our political leaders are not devoted to capitalism anymore. No people have been more entranced by newness—and particularly technological newness—than Americans. That is why our most important radicals have always been capitalists, especially capitalist who have exploited the possibilities of new technologies. The names that come to mind are Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, William Randolph Hearst, Willian Winchester, Sarah Winchester, Samuel Goldwyn, Henry Luce, Alan Dumont, and Walt Disney, among many others. These capitalist-radicals, inflamed by their fascination for new technologies, created the twentieth century. If you are happy about the twentieth century, you have them to thank for it. However, as we all know, in every virtue there lurks a contrapuntal vice. We must praise our ambition and vitality but at the same time to condemn our naivete and rashness. A culture that exalts the new for its own sake, that encourages the radical inclination to exploit what is new and is therefore indifferent to the destruction of the old, that such a culture runs a serious risk of becoming trivial and dangerous, especially dangerous to itself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
This is exactly what is happening in the United State of America in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. In today’s America, the idea of newness not only is linked to the idea of improvement but is the definition of improvement. If anyone should raise the question, What improves the human spirit?, or even the more mundane question, What improves the quality of life?, Americans are apt to offer a simple formulation: That which is new is better, that which is newest is best. The cure for such balderdash is a philosophy of conservatism. My version of a President is one who puts America and Americans first and stays out of the business and affairs of other nations. A true conservative, like myself, knows that technology always fosters radical social change. A true conservative also knows that it is useless to pretend that technology will not have its way with a culture. However, a conservative recognizes a difference between nonconsensual and seduction. The former cares nothing for the victim. The seducers must accommodate oneself to the will and temperament of the object of one’s desires. Indeed, one does not want a victim so much as an accomplice. What I am saying is that technology can attack a nonconsensual culture or be forced to seduce it. The aim of a genuine conservative in a technological age is to control the fury of technology, to make it behave itself, to insist that it accommodate itself to the will and temperament of a people. It is one’s best hope that through one’s efforts a modicum of charm may accompany the union of technology and culture. When it comes to technocracy–in our own history, philosophers of the new technology, like Veblen, Geddes, or Fuller, succeeded in making efficiency and know-how the chief ethical values of the folk, creating a mystique of “production,” and a kind of streamlined esthetics. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
However, they did not succeed in wresting management from the businessmen and creating their own World of a neat and transparent physical plant and a practical economics of production and distribution. The actual results have been slums of works of engineering, confused and useless overproduction, gadgetry, and new tribes of middlemen, promoters, and advertisers. With urbanism, as Le Corbuiser and Gropius urged, we have increasingly the plan and style of functional architecture; biological standards of housing; scientific study of traffic and city services; some zoning; and the construction of large-scale projects. However, nowhere is realized the ideal of over-all community planning, the open green city, or the organic relation of work, living, and play. The actual results have been increasing commutation and traffic, segregated HRNs (high risk neighborhoods), a “functional” style little different from packaging and the tendency to squeeze out some basic urban functions, such as recreation or schooling, to be squeezed out altogether. Garden City—in the opposite numbers, the Garden City planners after Ebenezer Howard, have achieved some planned communities protected by greenbelts. However, they did not get their integrated towns, planned for industry, local commerce, and living. The result is that actual suburbs and garden cities are dormitories with a culture centering around small children, and absence of the wage earner; and such “plan” as the so-called shopping center makes such communities fell like small towns without disrupting the village committees too much. The movement to conserve the wilds cannot withstand the cars, so that all areas are invaded and regulated. If you did not know, in Sacramento, California there are still wild jack rabbits, cotton tail rabbits, bevers, duck, swans, geese, turkeys and some people claim that we still have deer, but I have not seen any since I was a kid. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Kansas State University scholars conducted a realistic study. They had a group of college students watch a typical CNN broadcast in which an anchor reported four news stories while various info-graphics flashed on the screen and a textual news crawl ran along the bottom. They had a second group watch the same programing but with the graphics and the news crawl stripped out. Subsequent tests found that the students who had watched the multimedia version remembered significantly fewer facts from the stories than those who had watched the simpler version. “It appears,” wrote the researchers, “that this multimessage format exceeded viewers’ attentional capacity.” Supplying information in more than one form does not always take a toll on understanding. As we all know from reading illustrated textbooks and manuals, pictures can help clarify and reinforce written explanations. Education researcher have also found that carefully designed presentations that combine audio and visual explanations or instructions can enhance students’ learning. The reason, current theories suggest, is that our brains use different channels for processing what we see and what we hear. Auditory and visual working memory are separate, at least to some extent, and because they are separate, effective working memory may be increased by using both processors rather than one. As a result, in some cases the negative effects of split attention might be ameliorated by using both auditory and visual modalities—sound and pictures, in other words. The Internet, however, was not built by educators to optimize learning. It presents information not in a carefully balanced way but as a concentration-fragmenting mishmash. The Net is, by design, an interruption system, a machine geared for dividing attention. That is not only a result of its ability to display many different kinds of media simultaneously. It is also a result of the ease with which it can be programmed to send and receive messages. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Most e-mail applications, to take an obvious example, are set up to check automatically for news messages every few seconds, and people routinely click the “check for new mail” button even more frequently than that. Studies of office workers who use computers reveal that they constantly stop what they are doing to read and respond to incoming e-mails. It is not unusual for them to glance at their in-box thirty or forty times an hour (though when asked how frequently they look, they will often give a much lower figure). Since each glance represents a small interruption of thought, a momentary redeployment of mental resources, the cognitive costs can be high. Psychological research long ago proved what most of us know from experience: frequent interruptions scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory, and make us tense and anxious. The more complex the train of though we are involved in, the greater the impairment the distraction causes. Now, there is a threatening attack brewing that could give powerful ammunition to every science-hater in society. Again, this attack is aimed not at the scientific method as such but on two elements of the ethic associated with it—the ideas that knowledge produced by science should be freely circulated and that scientists should be free to explore everything. The free circulation of scientific findings is under withering fire from both business and government. More and more scientific research is either funded or conducted by corporations that, for high-stakes commercial reasons, are racing to patent their findings or cloak them in secrecy. Simultaneously, governments, reacting to the genuine threat of terrorism, are demanding that more and more scientific findings be kept secret for security reason. The age of the “Super-Empowered Individual”—the terrorist, criminal or psychotic armed with weapons of mass and individual destruction—is fast approaching. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
While it is clear that the media and the Internet cannot continue to offer instruction manuals for bomb building and the manipulation of toxic materials, disquieting debates are under way about how much of science needs to be withheld from public view. On the one hand, in the light of terrorism, registration of laboratories and surveillance of research activity may now be necessary. The most dangerous thing is secrecy. Biological weaponry itself was developed behind walls of secrecy. This is why so many are pushing to fortify all borders. You see how bad COVID-19 was, there could be something worse coming. Making the distinction about which knowledge is dangerous and out to be censored is very hard. The distinction between offensive and defensive uses of biological agents is really a matter of how information is utilized rather than the information itself. You have to know how to defend against bioterrorism, but in knowing that you should also know how to inflict bioterrorism. Preventing disclosure of new findings is one thing. However, even more disturbing are proposals to make whole broad categories of knowledge off-limits to research. Some are even coming from scientists themselves, who conjure up apocalyptic scenarios to support their theses. Some people believe that science needs to “relinquish” research that might lead to the domination of the human species by the runaway destructive self-replication of technologies now made possible by advances in genetics, robotics and nanotechnology. By 2030, computers might be smarter than humans—smart enough to reproduce themselves and essentially take over. Various physicists have discussed, if something went wrong— they could wipe out not only the human race but Earth and the cosmos as well. Other scientists regard this as nonsensical. Arguing that we do not know enough even to assess the levels of risk, critics propose various steps that should precede the undertaking of dangerous experiments in any field, not just physics. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
It has been debated if two teams of scientists against each other—a “red team” to offer reasons why such experiments would not be safe and a “blue team” that would make the cause for going forward would be reasonable. Wow. I never considered how powerful man is or can be. This is something worth taking into consideration. However, the attempt to avoid risk carries risks of its own—thus the most extreme precautionary policy would utterly paralyze science. And with it, one might add, the knowledge of the economy of the future. Self-criticism is at the very heart of science. And science and scientists should never be above criticism from the public. Science is itself a social activity, dependent, to a degree many scientists underestimate, on the ideas, epistemologies and built-in assumptions of the surrounding culture. Nor should scientists alone police science, since, like everyone else, they have their own self-interests. What we are seeing, however, is not just a series of unrelated, disparate attacks on science but a convergent conviction that science needs to be reduced in influence, stripped of the respect it has earned—in short, devalued as a key test of truth. However, the battle over truth is not confined to science. Different groups in society are, for different reason, actively trying to manage our minds by shifting the truth filters through which we, in our turn, see the World—the tests we use to separate true from false. This battle has no name. However, it will have a profound effect on the revolutionary wealth system now superseding that of the industrial age. Many people think there is nothing left to revolt over and that is why they are now attacking others in an increased fashion. Well, there is obviously one thing left to revolt against and that is pleasures of the flesh. The frontier, the establishing of identity, the validation of the self can be, and not infrequently does become for some people, a revolt against sexuality entirely. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
God loves all of His children and He wants them to respect their body because it is a temple that the Father made especially for you. It is precious and should be treated with respect and dignity. God created the many diverse races and ethnicities and esteems them all equally. As the Book of Mormon puts it, “all are alike unto God.” Life did not begin at birth, as is commonly believed. Prior to coming to Earth, individuals existed as spirits, therefore our bodies are only loaners, we do not own them. God has allowed us to use them so we can come to Earth and learn somethings and teach others how to love. Mortal life is crucial to the plan of happiness God would provide for His children: “We will prove them herewith,” God stated, “to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them,” adding a promise to increase glory forever upon the faithful. Faith is a principle of action and power. Whenever you work toward a worthy goal, you exercise faith. You show your hope for something that you cannot yet see. Having faith in Jesus Christ means relying completely on Him—trusting in His infinite power, intelligence, and love. It includes believing His teachings. It means believing that even though you do not understand all things, He does. Remember that because He has experienced all your pains, afflictions, and infirmities, He knows how to help you rise about your daily difficulties. Jesus has overcome the World and prepared the way for you to receive eternal life. He is always ready to help you as you remember His plea: “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 6.36. Faith is much more than a passive belief. You express your faith through action—by the way you live. The Savior promised, “If ye will have faith in Me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me,” Moroni 7.33. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Faith in Jesus Christ can help you overcome temptation. The Lord will work mighty miracles in your life accord to your faith. Faith in Jesus Christ helps you receive spiritual and physical healing through His Atonement. When times of trial come, faith can give you strength to press forward and face your hardships with courage. Even when the future seems uncertain, your faith in the Savior can give you peace. Faith is a gift from God, but you must nurture your faith to keep it strong. Faith is like the muscle of your arm. If you exercise it, it grows stronger. It you put it in a sling and leave it there, it becomes weak. You can nurture the gift of faith by praying to Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ. As you express your gratitude to your Father and as you plead with Him for blessings that you and other need, you will draw near to Him. You will draw near to the Savior, whose Atonement makes it possible for you to plead for mercy. This will create a cycle of growth in your life and allow you to seek happiness through more and more possessions. Striving can cease in the abundance of God’s grace. My you know the contentment that allows the totality of your energies to come to full flower. May you know Jesus Christ and be rich beyond measure. May God take pleasures in your great bounty. But remember to cherish the abundance of the simple things in life which are the true source of joy. With the golden glow of peaceful contentment, may your truly appreciate this day. To humankind contemptful of humans, America’s prophets and sages taught the sanctity of each human being. In an age of cruelty and violence they proclaimed justice, compassion and peace. One law shall be among you, for the native and stranger alike. Through the parables of actualized Christians, the songs of poets, the visions of prophets, a new conception of the good life was born. Embodied in America’s Scripture, it became the precious possession of all humans, giving them strength in weariness and hope in despair. The Law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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However, Again, the Battle Has Been Won
The loves of childhood and of adolescence cannot be subtracted from us; they have become part of us. Not a discrete part that could be severed. It is as if they had entered our blood stream. Our eternal purpose is as simple as making sure anytime we do anything be sure that it helps someone. We must also make and keep our covenants. As we bind ourselves to our goals through covenants and ordinances, our lives are filled with confidence, protection, and deep and lasting joy. The best way for one to improve the World is let the deterministic forces in one’s experience take the place of self-awareness. It must be admitted that some tendencies in the older forms of psychoanalysis can be used to rationalize passivism. Every person is “pushed” by unconscious fears, desires, and tendencies of all sorts, and humans are really much less the masters in the household of one’s own mind than the nineteenth-century human of “will power” fondly believed. However, a harmful implication was carried along with this emphasis on the determinism of unconscious forces. One of the most striking principles in life is treating others with compassion. Compassion is rooted in charity, pure and perfect love. Many people keep busy all the time as a way of covering up anxiety; their activism is a way of running from themselves. They get a pseudo and temporary sense of aliveness by being in a hurry, as though something is going on if they are but moving, and as though being busy is a proof of one’s importance. Compassion is a fundamental character of those who strive empathy, mercy, and kindness. The expression of compassion for others is, in fact, the essence the human being’s development as a continuum of differentiation from the “mass” toward freedom as an individual. One’s development is blocked, and the surrendered freedom for growth turns inward and festers in resentment and anger when one does not have compassion. The World is twofold for humans in accordance with their twofold attitude. One perceives the being that surrounds one, plain things and beings as thing; one perceives what happens around one, plain processes and actions as processes, things that consist of qualities and processes that consist of moments, things recorded in terms of spatial coordinates and processes and capable of being measured against and compared with those others—an ordered World, a detached World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
In our time the tendency to remain enchained is particularly strong, since when a society is so disrupted that it is no longer a “mother” in the sense of giving the individual minimal consistent support, one suffers from a lack of feeling. This World is somewhat reliable; it has destiny and duration; its articulation can be surveyed; one can get it out again and again; one recounts it with one’s eyes closed and then checks with one’s eyes open. If you think of it that way, or if you prefer, there is stands—right next to your skin, nestled in your soul: it is your object and remains according to your pleasure—and remains primally alien both outside and inside you. Have great compassion. The struggle for freedom is presented in one of the greatest dramas of all times. It is a sound hypothesis, based on a good deal of evidence in psychotherapeutic work, that the unconscious guilt which people carry leads then to be sensitive in life. This overemphasis on will, which blocks love, leads sooner or later to a reaction to the opposite error, love which blocks will. Victorian will power lacked the sensitivity and flexibility which goes with love. Not one of us is a stranger to this. It ends in something which is not fully personal because it does not discriminate. What is necessary for “resolutions” is a new consciousness in which the depth and meaning of personal relationships will occupy a central place. A place where measures and comparison have feld. It is up to you how much of the immeasurable becomes reality for you. The encounters do not order themselves to become a World, but each is for you a sign of the World order. They have no association with each other, but every one guarantees your association with the World. The World that appears to you in this way is unreliable, for it appears always new to you, and you cannot take it by its word. It lacks destiny, for everything it in permeates everything else. It lacks duration, for it comes even when not called and vanishes even when you cling to it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
The slightest taint of corruption means that the other World would be neither incorruptible nor eternal. The tiniest flaw in a building, institution, code of character will inevitably prove fatal in the long run of eternity. Some conservatives are heartened by recent feminist discussion about the differences between men and women and about the special fulfillment of “parenting,” forbidden subjects at earlier stages of the movement, when equal rights were the primary theme. However, this discussion has really only been made possible by the success of those earlier stages. There may indeed be a feminine nature or self, but it has been definitively shaken loose from its teleological moorings. The feminine nature is not in any reciprocal relation to the male nature, and they do not define one another. The male and female essence have no more evident purposiveness than do the contrast in tones of skin. However, there always exists a dominant stand point and a submissive one, or so the legend goes. Women do have different physical structures, but they can make of them what they will—without paying a price. The feminine nature is a mystery to be worked out on its own, which can now be done because the male claim to it has been overcome. The fact that there is today a more affirmative disposition toward childbearing does not imply that there is any natural impulse or compulsion to establish anything like a traditional fatherhood to complement motherhood. The children are to be had on the female’s terms, with or without fathers, who are not to get in the way of the mother’s free development. Children have always been, and still are, more the mother’s anyway. Ninety percent or more children of divorced parents stay with their mothers whose preeminent stake in children has been enhanced by feminist demands and by a consequent easy rationalization of male irresponsibility. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
So, if family includes the presence of a male who has any kind of a definite function, we have reproduction without family. The return to motherhood as a feminist ideal is only possible because feminism has triumphed over the family as it was once known, and women’s freedom will not be limited by it. None of this means retuning to family values or even bodes particularly well for the family as an institution, although it does mean that woman have become freer to come to terms with the complexity of their situation. The uneasy bedfellowship of the revolution of the pleasures of the flesh and feminism produced an odd tension in which all the moral restraints governing nature disappeared, but so did nature. The exhilaration of liberation has evaporated, however, for it is unclear what exactly was liberated or whether new and more onerous responsibilities have not been placed on us. And this is where we return to the students, for whom everything is new. They are not sure what they feel for one another and are without guidance about what to do with whatever they may feel. The students of whom I am speaking are aware of all the alternative methods of pleasures of the flesh acts which do not involve real harm to others are licit. They do not think they should feel guilt or shame about pleasures of the flesh. They have had sex education in school, of “the biological facts, let them decide the values for themselves” variety, if not “the options and orientations” variety. They have lived in a World where the most explicit discussions and depictions of pleasures of the flesh are all around them. They have had little fear of venereal disease. Birth-control devices and ready termination of pregnancy have been available to them since puberty. For the great majority, pleasures of the flesh were a normal part of their lives prior to college, and there was no fear of social stigma or even much parental opposition. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Girls have had less supervision in their relationships with boys than at any time in history. They are not precisely pagan, but there is an easy familiarity with others’ units and less inhibition about using their own for a broad range of intimate passions. There is no special value placed on virginity in oneself or in one’s partners. It is expected that there were others before and, incredibly to older folks, this does not seem to bother them, even though it provides a ground for predictions about the future. They are not promiscuous or given to orgies or casual pleasures of the flesh, as it used to be understood. In general, they have one connection at a time, but most have had several serially. They are used to coed dormitories. Many live together, almost always without expectation of marriage. It is just a convenient arrangement. They are not couples in this sense of having simulacra of marriage or a way of life different from that of other students not presently so attached. They are roommates, which is what they call themselves, with pleasures of the flesh and utilities included in the rent. Every single obstacle to pleasures of the flesh relationships between young unmarries persons has disappeared, and these relationships are routine. To strangers from another planet, what would be the most striking thing are the intimate passions no longer includes the illusion of eternity. Men and women are now used to living in exactly the same way and studying exactly the same things and having exactly the same career expectations. No man would think of ridiculing a female premed or prelaw student, or believe that these are fields not proper for women, or assert that medical schools are full of women, and their numbers are beginning to approach their proportion in the general population. There is very little ideology or militant feminism in most of the women, because they do not need it. The strident voices are present, and they get attention in the university newspapers and in student government. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
However, again, the battle has been won. Women students do not generally feel discriminated against or despised for their professional aspirations. The economy will absorb them, and they have rising expectations. They do not need the protection of NOW any more than do women in general, who see they are doing at least as well with Obama as they did with Biden. Academically, students are comfortably unisexual; they revert to dual sexuality only for the act of pleasures of the flesh. Pleasures of the flesh no longer has any political agenda in universities except among homosexuals, who are not yet quite satisfied with their situation. However, the fact that there is an open homosexual presence, with rights at least formally recognized by university authorities and almost all students, tell us much about current university life. Students today understandably believe that they are the beneficiaries of progress. They have a certain benign contempt for their parents, particularly for their poor mothers, who were inexperienced and had no profession to be taken as seriously as their fathers’. Superior experience in intimate passions was always one of the palpable advantages that parents and teachers had over youngsters who were eager to understand the mysteries of life. However, this is no longer the case, nor do students believe it to be so. They quietly smile at professors who try to shock them or talk explicitly about the facts of life in the way once so effective in enticing more innocent generations of students to pay attention to the word of their elders. Dr. Freud and D. H. Lawrence are very old hat. Better not to try. Even less do students expect to learn anything about their situation from old literature, which from the Garden of Eden on made coupling a very dark and complicated business. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
On reflection, today’s student wonder what all the fuss was about. Many think their older brothers and sisters discovered intimate passions. I was impressed by students who, in a course on Rousseau’s Confessions, were astounded to learn that he had lived with a woman out of wedlock in the eighteenth century. Where could he have gotten the idea? There is, of course, literature that affects a generation profoundly but has no interest at all for the next generation because its central theme proved ephemeral, whereas the greatest literature addresses the permanent problems of humans. When syphilis ceased to be a threat, Ibsen’s Ghosts, for example, lost all its force for young people. Aristotle teaches that pity for the plight of others requires that the same thing could happen to us. Now, however, the same things that used to happen to people, at least in the relations between the genders, do not happen to students anymore. And one must begin to wonder whether there is any permanent literature for them. This is the first fully historical or historicized generation, not only in theory but also in practice, and the result is not the cultivation of the vastest sympathies for long ago and far away, but rather an exclusive interest in themselves. Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary are adulteresses, but the cosmos no longer rebels at their deed. Anna’s son today would probably have been awarded to her in the amicable divorce arrangements of the Karenins. All the romantic novels with their depictions of highly differentiated men and women, their steamy, sublimated sensuality and their insistence on the sacredness of the marriage bond just do not speak to any reality that concerns today’s young people. Neither do Romeo and Juliet, who must struggle against parental opposition, Othello and his jealousy, or Miranda’s carefully guarded innocence. Saint Augustine, as a seminarian told me, had hang-ups with intimate passions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
When young people today have crushing problems in what used to be called pleasures of the flesh, they cannot trace them back to any moral ambiguity in one’s intimate passions nature. That was, of course, what was erroneously done in the past. Had John Ruskin lived in prerevolutionary France rather than Victorian England, his medical certified virgin wife Effie’s divorce petition might have forced him into proving his virility the hard way. That is to say, he would have had to demonstrate before court-appointed witnesses that he could indeed stand at “attention.” Almost from the beginning, the Catholic Church condemned marital pleasures of the flesh for any reason but procreation. It forbade eunuch to marry because they could not breed. It also granted annulments to husbands or wives who could prove nonconsummation of pleasures of the flesh of their marriage, with best proof being medically authenticated virginity or impotence. (An important female, defined as “so narrow that she cannot be rendered large enough to have carnal relations with a man,” was a virtually uninvoked category in canon law.) In Catholic France, up to the mid-sixteenth century, “fraternal cohabitation” was cause for divorce only as a last resort. Then, suddenly, Churchmen turned the screws on marriage and the heyday of the impotence trials was born. These trials, which sound like a Jonathon Swift farce, were designed by ecclesiastics obsessed by the notion that an impotent man who married committed “an attack upon the authority of the Church.” The marriage itself they condemned as “a mortal sin,” a “sacrilege,” and “an insult to the sacrament and a profanation of its sanctity.” As if he did not have enough trouble, the impotent man was widely reputed to be extraordinarily lustful, given to secret vices outlawed in Christianity. These men supposedly enjoyed bizarre positions involving pleasures of the flesh that defiled the marriage bed. Furthermore, they were so lascivious that nothing could defuse their burning passion, which pleasure of the flesh merely inflamed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
In 1713, the unfortunate Marquis de Gesvres was subjected to an impotence trial, which discovered no such passions and was public, acrimonious, and ended only when his wife, the complainant, died. The marquis allegedly cuddled throughout the night, whispering tender pledges of love, but even when the marquise summoned up the courage to touch him, he “did hide himself in his nightshirt,” and held her hands for fear she would molest him. After this encounter, he exiled his wife to the country for ten months, where she contracted “nettle rash, smallpox, measles, and fever together with an infinity of alarming symptoms sch as the vapors and fainting fits.” When she finally returned to Paris, she was “half-dying.” The trial, sensational in its testimony, also engendered “poetry,” or narrative limerick, titillatingly descriptive. A sample: “Of a certain young Marquis it’s said he did nothing but sleep when in bed.” These trials demanded inspection of the genitals to prove that the man could achieve “attention.” Sometimes judges insisted on more elaborate evidence that the couple could consummate their marriage and called for “trial by congress,” which forced a husband and wife to attempt to copulate in front of staring, note-taking witnesses.” The Marquis de Gesvres’s trial judges confined themselves to the issues of “attention” and climax. As was routine after an inconclusive physical examination, the marquis had to demonstrate his ability, but could choose the locale and time of the experiment. Like most men, he preferred his own house. He was given more chances. Once, his examiners noted harshly that they had observed him at “attention,” but because of some inconsistences they discounted it as evidence of the ability to procreate. The experts scorned a later attempt at “attention” on the same grounds: more inconsistencies and inadequacies. “Critical and superstitious experts, just looking at you makes me wilt,” the despairing marquis complained. Had his virginal wife not soon expired, the marquis was certainly headed for a verdict of “Impotent!” #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Similarly humiliating invasions performed on women also did not necessarily lead to a conclusive verdict. Too many plausible excuses could explain away lead to a conclusive verdict. Too many plausible excuses could explain away any number of suspicious findings. For example, a virgin’s cervix might have dilated if, for example, she had manipulated it. Her private hair might be matted because of her style of horseback riding. And a broken membrane could be an attempt to cover up an impotent husband or by the examiners themselves, who pocked too hard “out of spite or ignorance.” The competence of the midwife examiners to whom women complainants were entrusted was problematic. Ideally, they ought to have been old enough to have experience, but young enough to have a steady hand and good eyesight. Unfortunately, they often lacked these qualities. Women’s examinations, usually for the virginity that they charged their husbands were incapable of eradicating, were horrendous. They were first bathed, to dissolve any material used to simulate virginity. A male jurist described how the woman had to pose before the examining midwives, matrons, and physician. They spent considerable time prodding at her private area, their expressions so solemn that the judge was visibly amused. The doctor was the worst offender, his invasive weapon either a specially designed, mirrored instrument or a wax tool. His extensive probing alone would deflower a virgin, the jurist protested, even if she had been intact before the examination began. The French Revolution put an end to these risible trials. Married became a civil contract, divorce laws were instituted, and when impotence inspire separation proceedings, civil rather then religious authorities dealt with the petition, sparing both defendant and complainant the ordeal of a Church trial. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The impotence trials were horrendous procedures that masked the human tragedy of unconsummated marriages, broken promises, dashed hopes, and individual despair. The fraudulent cases—women who resorted to artifice to simulate virginity, men who pretended they could neither harden nor climax—were just part of the larger picture of misery in marriage. The genuine cases, which were legion, transformed human frailty into canonical absurdity with a nearly scatological veneer. In the cases, at least one partner was a bitter celibate longing for release from frustration and childlessness. The Catholic Church, through theology and legislation, transformed impotent celibacy int the cruelest of human conditions. The use of history, Benjamin Nelson used to say, is to rescue from oblivion the lost causes of the past. History is especially important when those lost causes haunt us in the present as unfinished business. I have often spoke in this essay of the “missed revolutions that we have inherited.” My idea is that it is not with impunity that fundamental social changes fail to take place at the appropriate time; the following generations are embarrassed and confused by their lack. This subject warrants a special study. Some revolutions fail to occur; most half-occur or compromised, attaining some of their objectives and resulting in significant social changes, but giving up on others, resulting in ambiguous values in the social whole that would not have occurred if the change had been more thoroughgoing. For in general, a profound revolutionary program in any field projects a new workable kind of behavior, a new nature of man, a new whole society; just as the traditional society it tries to replace is a whole society that the revolutionists think is out of state. However, a compromised revolution tends to disrupt the tradition without achieving a new social balance. It is the argument of this report that the accumulation of the missed and compromised revolutions of modern times, with their consequent ambiguities and social imbalances, has fallen, and must fall, most heavily on the young, making hard to grow up. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
A man who has attained maturity and independence can pick and choose among the immense modern advances and somewhat wield them as his way of life. If he has a poor society, an adult cannot be very happy, he will not have simple goals nor achieve classical products, but he can fight and work anyway. However, for children and adolescents it is indispensable to have a coherent, fairly simple and viable society to grow up into; otherwise they are confused, and some are squeezed out. Tradition has been broken, yet there is no new standard to affirm. Culture becomes eclectic, sensational, or phony. (Our present culture is all three.) A successful revolution established a new community. A missed revolution makes irrelevant the community that persists. And a compromised revolution tends to shatter the community that was, without an adequate substitute. However, are we argued in a previous essay, it is precisely for the young that the geographical and historical community and its patriotism are the important environment, as they draw away from their parents and until they can act on their own with fully developed powers. Let us collect the missed or compromised fundamental social changes that we have had occasion to mention; calling attention to what was achieved and what failed to be achieved, and the consequence confused situation which then actually confronts the youth growing up. Now that we know how much our children’s dreams are plagued by fears of a nuclear holocaust, it is time we adults did something about it. Since it would be immature, not to mention irresponsible, to actually eliminate nuclear weapons, what is needed is a new vocabulary of nuclear war, a vocabulary uncluttered by the associations which generate fear and trembling. It is disconcerting and unnecessarily emotional to talk of millions of people, especially if they are going to die. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
What could be more objective and detached, and at the same time more calming, than the statement, “Ten megatons kills twenty anthromegs”? Ask any man if he is willing to lose, say, 65 anthromegs if he could thereby defeat his nation’s enemy, and he will immediately say “Yes.” If you ask him if he is willing to lose 65 million people, he will become confused and depressed. If our nation’s enemy attacks us, they will not come with ice pellets. “Attack” means “nuclear attack.” Why provide ourselves with a double reminder, especially one so anxiety-producing? “Aerial visitation” will help to eliminate unreasonable fears about the future and will do more to encourage us to plan ahead with enthusiasm. Who could possibly get upset by a sign which says: “In Case of Aerial Visitation, Drive over Bridge”? Tell a man that in the event of an aerial visitation his child will be kept at school, and he will probably ask, “And when may I come to get him?” Men have invented an illustrious list of technical words to describe with precision and detachment the various types of killing. “Thermalicide” extends the list by one by providing us with an unemotional, scientific denotation of a perfectly natural, albeit unpleasant, human activity. Besides, there are far too many disgusting associations attached to “genocide.” “To culminate” means to reach one’s highest point, a virtual certainty when one has been exploded by a nuclear weapon. “To experience” means to undergo actively, another certainty when within range of a nuclear explosion. “Culminating experience” is, therefore, a perfectly precise description of the process. Even if the effect is the same, who would not prefer being filterated as against radiated. One filters cigarette smoke or swimming pools or lubricating oil. The word forcefully suggests that the result of the process is some sort of purity, a most apt connotation. For, after all, it is not purifying to suffer? #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Although not much has been said about it lately, when the subject of fallout shelters comes up there is usually a considerable amount of hysteria. It is to be expected. What man would desire to live in a “shelter” even for a day? The word ominous. It hints at alienation and ultimate isolation. “Protective residence” is another matter. The term suggests an extension of one’s home—comfy, warm, intimate, familiar. Moreover, the moral question of whether or not you are obligated to allow others entrance is easily settled. A “shelter” connotes public domain, but a man’s “residence” is his castle. That is that. Is there a more desperate-sounding word in our language than “survivors”? It conjures up visions of groping, disoriented people and surrounding chaos. “The unculminated” logically follows from “culminating experience” and at the same time suggests unfulfilled ambitions, unsatisfied desires; in short, the continuation of life. The vocabulary presented above is, of course, only beginning—basic talk, as it were. In order to suggest how such a vocabulary might be used to create a new rhetoric of reassurance. American scientists assure us that our capacity for thermalicide is the greatest in the World. This fact will, of course, deter our enemies from attempting it on us. However, should our enemies decide to make aerial visitations, we will persevere. If every family has provided itself with a protective residence, the extent of filteration will be sharply minimized. And even if our enemies should launch a 300-megaton aerial visitation, probably no more than 50 or 60 anthromegs will have a culminating experience. Those who are unculminated may remain in their protective residences until al danger of thermalicide is past. Sleep in peace, my children. Science, as we have already seen, is simultaneously under attack by elements of the environmental movement—a movement that itself is increasingly taking on a religious character. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
As the end of the 20th Century approached, a religious vacuum in Western society existed. In this circumstance, the contemporary environmental movement emerged as one way to fill the vacuum. For many of its followers today, environmentalism has been a substitute for fading mainline Christian and progressive faiths. While environmentalists do, of course, rely on scientific data, environmentalism is possessed of a strong missionary spirit. Moreover, its very language is “overtly religious: ‘saving’ the Earth from being sheared of all-natural life and pillage of resources; building ‘cathedrals’ in the wilderness; creating a new ‘Noah’s Ark’ with laws such as the Endangered Species Act; pursuing a new ‘calling’ to preserve the remaining wild areas; and taking steps to protect what is left of ‘The Creation’ on Earth.” At the heart of the environmental message is a new story of the fall of humankind from a previous, happier, and more natural and innocent time—a secular vision of the biblical fall from the Garden of Eden. Despite its modern appearance, environmentalism is closer to an old-fashioned form of religious fundamentalism. Now, the Web combines the technology of hypetext with technology of multimedia to deliver what is called “hypermedia.” It is not just words that are served up and electronically linked, but also images, sounds, and moving pictures. Just as the pioneers of hypertext once believed that links would provide a richer learning experience for readers, many educators also assumed that multimedia, or “rich media,” as it is sometime called, would deepen comprehension and strengthen learning. The more inputs, the better. However, this assumption, long accepted without much evidence, has also been contradicted by research. The division of attention demanded by multimedia further strains our cognitive abilities, diminishing our learning and weakening our understanding. When it comes to supplying the mind with the stuff of thought, more can be less. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
In a recent study, researcher recruited more than a hundred volunteers to watch a presentation about the country Mali played through a Web browser on a computer. Some of the subjects watched a version of the presentation that included only a series of text pages. Another group watched a version that included, along with the pages of text, a window in which an audiovisual presentation of related material was streamed. The test subjects were able to stop and start the stream as they wished. After viewing the presentation, the subjects too a ten-question quiz on the material. The text-only viewers answered an average of 7.04 of the questions correctly, while the multimedia viewers answered just 5.98 correctly—a significant difference, according to the researchers. The subjects were also asked a series of questions about their perceptions of the presentation. The text-only readers found it to be more interesting, more educational, more understanding, and more enjoyable than did the multimedia viewers, and the multimedia viewers were much more likely to agree with the statement, “I did not learn anything from this presentation” than were the text-only readers. The multimedia technologies so common to the Web, the researchers concluded, “would seem to limit, rather than enhance, information acquisition.” In another experiment, a pair of Cornell researchers divided a class of students into two group. One group was allowed to surf the Web while listening to a lecture. A log of their activity showed that they looked at sites related to the lecture’s content but also visited unrelated sites, checked their e-mail, went shopping, watched videos, and did all the other things that people do online. The second group heard the identical lecture but has to keep their laptops shut. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Immediately afterward, both groups took a test measuring how well they could recall the information from the lecture. The surfers, the researchers report, “performed significantly poorer on immediate measures of memory for the to-be-learned content.” It did not matter, moreover, whether they surfed information related to the lecture of completely unrelated content—they all performed poorly. When the researchers repeated the experiment with another class, the results were the same. We are required to discover on a deeper level what it means to be human. Given how critical it is to keep the production-consumption process flowing smoothly, advertising obviously occupies a place of considerable importance. It has been assigned to the specific duty of keeping people buying, buying, and therefore working, working, working to get the money to do so. It is the system invented to break the skin barrier, as it were, by entering the human being to reshape feelings and create more appropriate ones as need be. If suburbs are capitalism’s ideally separated buying units, and suburbs can be built profitably, then we must create humans who like and want suburbs; suburb-people, advertising has the task of creating them, in body and mind. Since before the creation of electric shavers or hair dryers or electric carvings knives people felt no need for these things, the need was implanted into human minds by advertising. Advertising is the instrument of transmutation. It lays the standard-gauge railways track from wilderness to human feeling, assisting in the transformation of both into a unified commercial form. Unplugged from our natural connection to the environment, we are replugged into a new consumer environment. To the degree that advertising reaches us, occupying our time and thought, it keeps us vibrating within strict limits. If forty million people have seen a commercial for a BMW F87 M2 with five-link rear axle made from forged aluminum, then forty million people have a car commercial in their heads, all at the same time. This is bound to have more beneficial effect on the commodity system than if, at the moment, all these people were thinking separate thoughts which, in some cases, might not be about commodities at all. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Of course, advertising people will argue against the notion that the purpose and result of their activities is to unify and homogenize people and culture. They are forever speaking of the dazzling array of choices our market system provides and how advertising provides the information we need to make choices. It is an ominous sign that so many people can accept this argument, which confuses diversity of product choice with diversity of lifestyle or thoughts. It ought to be self-evident that if I choose a BMW and you choose a Ford, we are not expressing diversity, we are expressing unity. Moreover, if you and I at any one moment are both occupied with mental images and feelings related to products—any products—rather than some experience which is not connected to purchasing, then in terms of the commodity system, the gross national product, and the World of advertising, we are indistinguishable; we have merged as “market.” While it might matter to Upjohn or Cutter Laboratories which drug a consumer buys, both are in agreement that they benefit whenever people seek any drug rather than a nondrug solution to a problem. Advertising, then, serves to further the moment of humans into artificial environments by narrowing the conception of diversity to fit the framework of commodities while unifying people within this conception. The result is a singularly channeled mentality, nicely open to receiving commercial messages, ready to confuse brand diversity with diversity itself, and to confuse human need with the advertiser’s need to sell commodities. That is why the task is to unite love and will. They are not united by automatic biological growth but must be part of our conscious development. In society, will tends to be set against love, and focused on product, materialism, and gain. But then, we are also at union with the Universe, we are wedded to it and have the experience of “union with being.” This union yields a satisfaction, calm happiness, self-acceptance and elation. People do not simply want to live to work, they also want to enjoy instant gratification, which is the beauty of living in America. Where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness reigns. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Close Out!
Residence Four at Brighton Station is one of the largest homes available in the market! At 3,501 square feet we are sure you’ll have enough room for the entire family here! The open concept design includes four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms and a three car garage. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-4/
When entering this expansive home, take note of the two story ceiling height at the entry. There is a bedroom on the first floor, located off the entry, with its own bathroom making it ideal for a guest suite or multigenerational living. The formal dining room provides ample space for entertaining and has convenient access to the kitchen via Butler’s Pantry.
The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters and opens onto the spacious great room.
Upstairs you’ll find the Owner’s retreat, two bedrooms, and the loft perfect for a game room or TV lounge. The Owner’s retreat is spacious and inviting with a large bedroom and spa like bathroom featuring a free-standing soaking tub, walk-in shower, dual vanities, and two walk-in closets.
Their Heavy Use Has Neurological Consequences
The little band of Saints who had been in the far western outpost of Independence, Missouri, for eight months, were having difficulties. That their problems might be better understood, it may be well to try and imagine what western Missouri was like in 1831. There were only twenty-four states in the United States of America at that time. Most of the land west of the Mississippi River was Indian country, where few European Americas had ever been. Independence was a very small village at the very western edge of civilization. There were no railroads or automobiles; no electricity, radios, televisions, telephones, daily newspapers, or electrical appliances. Stoves and furnaces were as rare as are long cabins today, and many homes had no glass in the windows. Homes were lighted by hand-dipped candles, oil lamps, or a saucer of lard with a piece of rag for a wick. Each home had two spinning wheels, one for spinning wool and one for flax. A woman’s main job was making clothing for the family. Men usually wore buckskin clothing with fringe at the seams. Shoes were made to order by shoemakers and both shoes were alike—no left or right. The pioneers professed almost no religion and were very rough. Physical courage was much admired. If two men quarreled, they fought it out. Anyone who refused to fight was considered a coward. If a pioneer refused a drink, most pioneers did not get drunk, one was considered a prude. Schooling was not considered important to pioneer Missourians. Some of the wisest judges in western Missouri at that time could neither read nor write. The only schoolhouses, when they could be found, were crude log cabins, usually without any board floor. The only window was a hole cut in the wall with no glass. This hole was covered at night to keep out the wild animals. Some schools were furnished with but two logs. The teacher sat on one and the pupils on the other. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
The settlers did not have to raise meat. There were many buffalo, bear, deer, and wild turkey. Bread was made of corn which was the only grain. Their corn was ground in a crude grinder. Sometimes when it was ground between two stones, tiny pieces of grit would get in the flour, and it was not pleasant to eat the bread made from this flour. While some people in the East had a slave or two, no one there had so many slaves as did the people in Missouri. Slaves were the most valuable asset of these people. (The interesting thing about adjusting for inflation is that these same goods and services would still cost more than they did back in the 19th century, possible due to supply and demand.) A good horse might be worth $25 (2022 inflation adjusted $815.28), a cow and a calf $7.50 (2022 inflation adjusted $244.58), and a sow with five pigs was valued at $1.50 (2022 inflation adjusted $48.92). However, a good slave was easily worth $500 (2022 inflation adjusted $16,305.52), and little children slaves were worth $100 (2022 inflation adjusted $3,261.10). Those who had several slaves were very careful to protect their investments. Accordingly, the laws were made to insure this protection. It was against the law for slaves to be out after dark for fear they might run away. Any slave seen on the street at night without a pass was beaten soundly. A slave could not carry a gun, or go hunting, without a pass from his owner. He could not even carry a club. Anyone who believed slaves should be free was considered to be an enemy, and the Missourians thought anyone who did not have slaves of his own was an enemy also, because they were fearful lest he might be in favor of freeing them (remember we talked yesterday about militia groups enforcing traditions?). Into this pioneer country came the people from the East who were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Saints were trying to achieve the high standard of conduct which the Lord had set for them. Worship of God was important to them and they spent much time in prayer. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The Saints contributed materially to the growth of Independence, and had the two groups been congenial with each other the contributions of the Saints would have benefited both groups. The Saints built one of the first schoolhouses in Jackson County. Two of the Saints were tailors and were kept busy making fashionable garments for the “gentlemen.” Joseph Knight and his sons had been millers in the East, and soon after their arrival they began to operate a mill. Many of the Missourians traded with them. The Saints brought the first printing press and printed the first newspaper in Jackson County. The Saints brought with them their religion—a belief that God talks to his people today, that through his power they would be blessed, that they were a chosen people, and that the land of Zion was to be their inheritance. To pioneer Missourians such beliefs were wicked. To assume that God speaks, to supposed that God had chosen them above all others, to suggest that there were such things as miraculous healings were plain blasphemies to these Westerners. The Saints brought a touch of the East, a bit of refinement, and a love of God to this far western outpost. These things both benefited the pioneer Missourians and irritated them—arousing their jealousy, distrust, and hate. Friction between the Saints and the Missourians mounted, and news of this reached Joseph Smith in Kirtland. There the Saints prayed for the welfare of those in Zion, and the authorities appointed Orson Hyde and Hyrum Smith to write to the Saints in Zion. In their letter, dated January 11, 1833, these two men called upon the people in Zion to red the Book of Mormon and the revelations and obey them, to humble themselves and be diligent and faithful, for they did not go to Zion to sit down in idleness, neglecting the things of God. They called upon the Saints in Zion to repent saying: “We know the judgments of God hang over her (Zion), and will fall upon her except she repent and purify herself before the Lord, and put away from her every foul spirit.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
This letter was read by the elders to the Saints in Zion, but the words feel upon the ears of people who had not yet reached the standards the Lord desire them to reach. At the heart of significant reform is language education. Of all the popular prejudices nurtured by academics, one of the most enduring is their vigorous contempt for the subject of education and especially for educationists, a word often pronounced with an unmistakable hiss. As I consider myself an educationist, I have had to endure the burden of this prejudice for many years, and, as a consequence, have given some considerable thought to its origins. The prejudice is peculiar, of course, because many of the World’s most esteemed philosophers have written extensively on education and may properly be called educationists. Indeed, Confucius and Plato were what we would call today curriculum specialists. Confucius and Plato, but he too was an educationist if we may take that word to mean a person who is seriously concerned to understand how learning takes place and what part of schooling plays in facilitating or obstructing it. In this sense, Quintilian was an educationist, and so were Erasmus, John Locke, Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson. The great English poet John Milton was so moved by the prospect of writing an essay on education that he called the reforming of education one of “the greatest and noblest designs to be thought on.” One might even say that just as it is natural for a physicist upon reaching his deepest understanding to be drawn toward religion, so it is natural for a mature philosopher to turn toward the problem of education. Why, then, this persistent prejudice against the subject and those who make a profession of its study? Definitive answers await a rich and extensive research project to which sociologist, psychologists, historians, perhaps even anthropologist must contribute their perspectives. Anthropology is mentioned because of the intensity of the prejudice varies from culture to culture. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
There are places—China, for example—where the prejudice may not exist at all. However, if we confine ourselves to the West, we are almost sure to find that it is in the United States of America that the prejudice is maintained in its most active states. There are great universities in America—Yale, for example—where a student cannot major in the subject. There are even universities where the subject is held in such low esteem that it is possible for a student to major in, of all things, Business Administration but not Education. Of course, Business Administration alumni are usually better positioned to give large gifts to a university than are Education alumni, but this fact by itself cannot explain the pervasiveness of the prejudice. After all, in many universities where the subject of education is considered a side issue, if considered at all, students may major in such subject as Social Work and Nursing, neither of which promises its graduates the wherewithal to bestow large gifts on Alma Mater. No, I do not think the economics of universities will tell us very much. My own attempts to look into the matter have led in another direction, and by following that path, I believe I have found a way of reversing the prejudice entirely. Even better, I believe my inquiries point toward a solution to a more formidable problem; namely, how to increase our own self-respect. The usual reason given by standard-brand academics for their distaste for the subject of education is that it is trivial. The equal distribution of ignorance among a university faculty, however, invites a question whose answer opens the way to a solution that can free us both of the prejudice and some of our own inadequacies. Is there anything worse about an ignorant professor of education than an ignorant professor of economics, political science, or psychology? Yes. All professors are ignorant, but not all ignorances are of equal importance. And there is nothing worse than ignorance on the subject of education. (By the way, it really helps to physically go to college and have professors, they will teach you techniques and tools you will use later in life. Such as, your first reference book or facts you discovered may not be the best choice. Always consult more than one source. I think a lot of college students are smarter than me, they seem to learn fast. And Mr. Crosby was right, I could and did do better because he was so strict, and someone like me needs that kind of interaction and structure and far less socialization to do well in school.) #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The subject of education claims dominion over the widest possible territory. It purports to tell us not only what intelligence is but how it may be nurtured; not only what is worthwhile knowledge but how it may be gained; not only what is the good life but how one may prepare for it. There is no subject—not even philosophy itself—that casts so wife a net, and therefore no other subject that requires of its professors so much genius and wisdom. A professor of political science or economics who lacks insight and brilliance is far from contemptible; indeed, the deficiency may be hardly noticeable. However, without brilliance and insight, an educationist is a pitiful sight, bereft, fumbling, without clothing looking stupid in a way that can never appear as obviously negligent in other subjects. Without intellectual power, in additional to no spiritual strength, seems arrogant and makes the garden-variety educationist an object of pity and ridicule. The deeper one digs into the science of neuroplasticity and the progress of intellectual technology, the clearer it becomes that the Internet’s import and influence can be judged only when viewed in the fuller context of intellectual history. As revolutionary as it may be, the Net is best understood as the latest in a long series of tools that have helped mold the human mind. The news of what science can tell us about the actual effects that Internet use is having on the way of our minds work is even more disturbing than many had suspected. We will begin to discuss a few aspects of this problem today. Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologist, educators, and Web designers point to the same conclusion: when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. It is possible to think deeply while surfing the Net, just as it is possible to think shallowly while reading a book (sometimes as I am reading a book, the material makes me drift away and think about things as I am reading, and I think I need medication to make me focus better, but remember mind over matter and books are supposed to help one use one’s imagination) but that is not the typing of thinking the technology encourages and rewards. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Sometimes I even read things twice, once at night, and again in the morning. I take seven books to bed at night, take notes on what I read, then go over the material the next day and find information I may have missed while in bed reading, or other things that I did not consider significant actually are. One thing is very clear: if, knowing what we know today about the brain’s plasticity, you were set out to invent a medium that would rewire our mental circuits as quickly and thoroughly as possible, you would probably end up designing something that looks and works a lot like the Internet. It is not just that we tend to use the Net regularly, even obsessively. It is that the Net delivers precisely the kind of sensory and cognitive stimuli—repetitive, intensive, interactive, addictive—that have been shown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions. With the exception of alphabets and number systems, the Net may well be the dingle most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use. At the very least, it is the most powerful that has come along since the book. As we go though the motions of accessing the Web through our various devices, the Net delivers a steady stream of inputs to our visual, somatosensory, and auditory cortices. There are the sensations that come through our hands and fingers as we click and scroll, type and touch. There are the many audio signals delivered through our ears, such as the chime that announces the arrival of a new e-mail or instant message and the various ringtones that our mobile phones use to alert us to different events. And, of course, there are the myriad visual cues that flash across our retinas as we navigate the online World: not just the ever-changing arrays of text and pictures and videos but also the hyperlinks distinguished by underlining or colored text, the cursors that change shape depending on their functions, the new e-mail subject lines highlighted in bold type, the virtual buttons that call out to be clicked, the icons and other screen elements that beg to be dragged and dropped, the forms that require filling out, the pop-up ads and windows that need to be read or dismissed. The Net engages all of our sense—expect, so far, those of smell and taste—and it engages them simultaneously. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
The Net also provides a high-speed system for delivering responses and rewards—“positive reinforcements,” in psychological terms—which encourage the repetition of both physical and mental actions. When we click a link, we get something new to look at and evaluate. When we do an Internet search of a keyword, we receive, in the blink of an eye, a list of interesting information to appraise. When we send a text or an instant message or an e-mail, we often get a reply in a matter of seconds or minutes. When we use Facebook, we attract new friends or form closer bonds with the old ones. When we send a tweet through Twitter, we gain new followers. When we write a blog post, we get comments from readers or links from other bloggers. The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment. The Net commands our attention with far greater insistency than our television or radio or morning newspaper ever did. Watch a kid texting his friends or a college student looking over the roll of new messages and requests on one’s Facebook page or a business person scrolling through one’s e-mail on one’s Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 5G (which is the phone many of the rich people in Asia are using)—or consider yourself as you enter keywords into Google’s Internet search box and begin following a trail of links. What you see is a mind consumed with a medium. When we are online, we are often oblivious to everything else going on around us. The real World recedes as we process the flood of symbols and stimuli coming through our device. The interactivity of the Net amplifies this effect as well. Because we are often using our computers in a social context, to converse with friends or colleagues, to create “profiles” of ourselves, to broadcast our thoughts through blog posts on WordPress or Instagram updates, our social standing is, in one way or another, always in play, always at risk. The resulting self-consciousness—even, at times, fear—magnifies the intensity of our involvement with the medium. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Teenagers and young adults have a terrific interest in knowing what is going on in the lives of their peers, coupled with a terrific anxiety about being out of the loop. If they stop sending messages, they risk becoming invisible. Our use of the Internet involves many paradoxes, but the one that promises to have the greatest long-term influence over how we think is this one: the Net seizes our attention only to scatter it. We focus intensively on the medium itself, on the flickering screen, but we are distracted by the medium’s rapid-fire delivery of competing messages and stimuli. Whenever and wherever we log on, the Net presents us with an incredibly seductive blur. Human beings want more information, more impressions, and more complexity. We tend to seek out situations that demand concurrent performance or situations in which we are overwhelmed with information. If the slow progression of words across printed pages dampened our craving to be inundated by mental stimulation, the Net indulges it. It returns us to our native states of bottom-up distractedness, while presenting us with far more distractions than our ancestors ever had to contend with. Not all distractions are bad. If we concentrate too intensively on a tough problem, as most of us know from experience, we can get stuck in a mental rut. Our thinking narrows, and we struggle vainly to come up with new ideas. However, if we let the problem sit unattended for a time—if we “sleep on it”—we often return to it with a fresh perspective and a burst of creativity. Such breaks in our attention give our unconscious mind time to grapple with a problem, bringing to bear information and cognitive processes unavailable to conscious deliberation. If we shift our attention away from a difficult mental challenge for a time, we usually make better decisions. Our unconscious thought process does not engage with a problem until we have clearly and consciously defined the problem. If we do not have a particular intellectual goal in mind, unconscious thought does not occur. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
The constant distractedness that the Net encourages—the state of being distracted from interruption by interference is very different from the kind of temporary, purposeful diversion of our mind that refreshes our thinking when we are weighing a decision. The Net’s cacophony of stimuli short-circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively. Our brains turn into simple signal-processing units, quickly shepherding information into consciousness and then back out again. The Internet’s power to cause not just modest alternations but fundamental changes in our mental makeup is profound. Our brain is modified on a substantial scale, physically and functionally, each time we learn a new skill or develop a new ability. The Internet is a series of modern cultural specializations that contemporary humans can spend millions of “practice” events at [and that] the average human a thousand years ago had absolutely no exposure to. Our brains are massively remodeled by this exposure. When culture drives changes in the ways that we engage our brains, it creates different brains. Our minds strengthen specific heavily-exercised processes. While acknowledging that it is now hard to imagine living without the Internet and online tools like the Google Internet search engine, their heavy use has neurological consequences. When online, what we are not doing also have neurological consequences. Just as neurons that fire together wire together, neurons that do not fire together do not wire together. As the time we spend scanning Web pages crowds out the time we spend reading books, as the time we spend exchanging bite-sized text messages crowds out the time we spend composing sentences and paragraphs, as the time we spend hopping across links crowds out the time we devote to quiet reflection and contemplation, the circuits that support those old intellectual functions and pursuits weaken and begin to break apart. The brain recycles the disused neurons and synapses for other, more pressing work. We gain new skills and perspectives but lose old ones. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
We have seen how the natural environment has been transformed into secondary, artificial and abstracted forms. This process has been described as though it happened by accident, without purpose. It is true that no small group could successfully plot to dominate social and technological processes that take millennia to evolve. Yet at any one moment, some people may benefit considerably more than others from particular forms of social organization and the technologies that accompany them. These will be the people who sit at the hub of the most critical institutions at any given time. They will naturally seek to consolidate their own position by concentrating their control while widening its effect. In this way, a tendency that may have been going on for hundred of years or longer, beyond the range of human conspiracy, gains power over time. And so the tendency, the social and technological line of development, becomes more monolithic, more dominant, more difficult to stop. Take, for example, the growth and centralization of energy production systems during the last few hundred years. No single human could have planned to reap the great benefits that some have gained from the evolution of wood-burning stoves into coal-burning stoves into electric utilities, gigantic power companies with nuclear facilities and multinational oil companies. Each technology grew out of the pervious one. At each stage, a small number of people occupied key spots and were able to guide change in ways that would concentrate the direct benefits in their hands. By now, the energy technologies and the institutions that serve them are so large, they dominate virtually all the life and even our political and social systems, while an exceedingly small number of people have come to control them. Meanwhile, other technological systems have also become larger and more monolithic at the same time. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Transportation systems, for example, have advanced from horses to horses and buggies to railroad to the BMW E60 M5 S85 V10 and BMW iX xDrive40 and Ford Maverick trucks on the freeways to Supersonic transport (SSTs). Long-distance communication systems have gone from telegraph to mobile telephone to radio to television to satellite to the Net. As these technologies grow, their power and influence grows with them, but the number of people who control them shrinks. In a capitalist, free-enterprise economy, that the controllers of the communications system should become personally acquainted with the controllers of the energy systems, the transportation systems and so on and eventually begin to cooperate with each other ought to be obvious and predictable. The fact that it is not obvious to most of us, at least not so obvious that we act to stop it, has allowed matter to “pop” organically into still larger and more monolithic patterns of domination and control at each turn of the cycle, affecting human lives and political organizations. As some point we begin to call this a conspiracy. Humans get together and discuss how best to help each other concentrate power. However, the human conspiracy did not begin the process. It resulted from another, less personal though more basic, conspiracy: a conspiracy of technological form. The patterns of life, the social and political systems, the narrowing styles of thinking about the World and the technologies that both result from and foster these trends are the ground upon which the conspiracy can grow. In transforming natural environments into artificial form, the United States of America is the most advanced country in the World. This is not an accident. It is inherent in our economic system. To the capitalist, profit-oriented mind, there is no outrage so great as the existence of some unmediated nook or cranny of creation which has not been converted into a new form that can then be sold for money. This is because in the act of converting the natural into the artificial, something with no inherent economic value becomes “productive” in the capitalist sense. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
An uninhabited desert is “nonproductive” unless it can be mined for uranium or irrigate for farms or covered with tracts of homes. A forest of uncut trees is nonproductive. A piece of land which has not been built upon is nonproductive. Coal or oil that remain in the ground is nonproductive. Animals living wildly are nonproductive. Virtually any land, any space, any material, any time that remains in an original, unprocessed, unconverted form is an outrage to the sensibilities of the capitalist mind. Iron, tungsten, trees, oil, sulphur, jaguars and open space are searched out and transformed because transformation creates economic benefits for the transformers. In economics this transformation has a name: “value added.” Value added derives from all the processes that alter a raw material from something which has no intrinsic economic value to something which does. Each change in form, say, from iron ore in the ground to iron or steel to car to care which is heavily advertised adds value to the material. The only raw materials which have intrinsic economic value before processing are gold and silver. This is only because people have agreed on these values in order to define a value for paper money, which certainly has no intrinsic value. It is, then, the nature of profit seeking to convert as much as possible of what has not been processed and exists in its own right into something which has the potential for economic gain. A second element in the creation of commercial value is scarcity, the separation of people from whatever they might want or need. In artificial environments, where humans are separated from the sources of their survival, everything obtains a condition of relative scarcity and therefore value. There is the old story of the native living on a Pacific Island, relaxing in a Cresleigh Home on the beach, picking fruit from the tree and spearing fish in the water. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
A businessman arrives on the island, buys all the land, cuts down the trees and builds a factory. Then he hires the native to work in it for money so that someday the native can afford canned fruit and fish from the mainland, a nice little cinder-block house near the beach with a view of the water, and weekends off to enjoy it. The moment people move off land which has directly supported them, the necessities of life are removed from individual control. The things people could formerly produce for their survival must now be paid for. You may be living on the exact sport where a fruit tree once fed people. Now the fruit comes from five hundred miles away and costs five-dollars apiece. It is in the separation that the opportunity for profit resides. When the basic necessities are not scarce—in those places where food is still wild and abundant, for example—economic value can only be applied to new items. Candy bars, bottled or chemical milk, canned tune, electrical appliances and Coca-Cola have all been intensively marketed in countries new to the market system. Because these products had not existed in those places before, they are automatically relatively scarce and potentially valuable. I doubt, despite Thrasher, that there is a nondelinquent “gang.” The gang begins like the primitive fraternity of boys who live in the boys’ house; but in the primitive culture this is done by social sanction, whereas the defining property of the gang, as we customarily use the term, is that it is a community abruptly cut off from the adults and their sanction. The full-blown gang suits its members not as a fraternity in which to learn growing up, but essentially in s far as they are “grown up” or have ceased to grow: it is a sharing of a common conceit. The members consider it their identity, they appoint themselves to it. However, since it is only a conceit, it is vulnerable, and therefore all the more must be protected by strict conformity of behavior and opinions, it does not tolerate individual interests or wandering off by oneself. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Existing instead of the adult society, the gang is in principle an extraterritorial enclave in society, and therefore it has developed a feud Code. It is this extraterritorial loyalty that is powerfully cemented by the shared danger of the delinquencies: all are in the same boat of having participated in punishable deeds; anyone who would get out is tacitly or explicitly blackmailed. However, this does not follow from this that the gang is delinquent-to-get-caught. On the contrary. Finding one’s gang is a haven from the fatalistic drive toward disaster. One is caught by the gang; the gang provides a supportive structure; it is not so necessary to provoke the old authority. (But of course, as we have seen, running with the adolescent gang accidentally increases the certainty of getting caught. Adult criminal gangs have learned the ropes.) it could be said that belonging to the gang diminished the delinquent behavior of the members of the gang. The chief activity of the gang becomes war against other groups; it is no longer a struggle for the growth of the self by forbidden acts. And correspondingly, the persisting “delinquencies” of the gang members begin to look very much like crime, war against society. They are no longer merely incidents of growing up, but self-conscious acts of responsible achieved-identity. Some such analysis as this is necessary to explain the puzzling predominance suddenly assumed by gang fighting. Adolescent gang wars are not, as such, delinquent, any more than international wars are. Gang wars are significant nowadays mainly because of the technological improvement of the weapons, which used to be mainly sticks and stones. (The same could be said of the international wars.) If the rest of society did not exist, the gang wars would continue as the absorbing interest of these youths. Since the rest of society exists, it becomes a background for plunder—as an any lives on the land. Irate magistrates, trained in Hobbes and on Leviathan, are impatient at having to deal with young punks is they were citizens of a foreign power with its war chief and other grand viziers and it territorial rights. The Youth Board, as we have seen, accepts the situation as it is and tries to win over the youth’s allegiance. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
In this framework of analysis, it is clear why the gangs war on one another. The entire structure, and most of the loyalty, of each gang is grounded in the vulnerable conceit of its members, now socialized and immeasurably strengthened by the gang name, uniform, and territory. So there at once begins to operate, on the gang level, what Dr. Freud beautifully called the “narcissism of small differences”: that is the smallest difference from one’s own self-image of grandeur and perfection that is most threatening and most arouses rage. Living on the other block is quite sufficient to make an enemy. Being a slightly different color is guaranteed. We must remember that the gang has almost no real social or cultural resources to support its tight structure and intense loyalty; it has to make everything out of “points of honor,” out of the formal fact tht its territory has been invaded. (Thus, if it is publicly acknowledged that Allan is no longer a member of the Dragons, he can safely walk to Pocket Road.) Into this formal insult pours all the accumulated real frustration, the undischarged stimulation, the thwarted growing up, and the natural insult that is endemic in our society. In our truly remarkable and unexampled civil peace, where there are rarely fist fights; where no one is born, is gravely ill, or dies; where meat is eaten but no one sees an animal slaughtered; where scores of millions of cars, trains, elevators, and airplanes go their scheduled way and there is rarely a crash; where an immense production proceeds in orderly efficiency and the shelves are duly cleared—and nevertheless none of this comes to joy or tragic grief or any other final good—it is not surprising if there are explosions. They occur at the boundaries of the organized system of society: in juvenile gang fights, in prison riots, in foreign wars. These conditions are almost specific for the excitement of primary masochism. There is continual stimulation and only partial release of tension, an unbearable heightening of the unaware tensions—unaware because people do not know what they want to know, nor how to get it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
The desire for final satisfaction, for climax, is interpreted as the wish for total self-destruction, It is inevitable, then, that there should be a public dream of universal disaster, with vast explosions, fires, and electric shocks; and people pool their efforts to bring this apocalypse to an actuality. At the same time all overt expressions of destructiveness, annihilation, anger, combativeness, is suppressed in the interests of civil order. Also, the feeling of anger is inhibited and even repressed. People are sensible, tolerant, polite, and co-operative in being pushed around. However, the occasions of anger are by no means minimized. On the contrary, when the larger movements of initiative are circumscribed in the competitive routines of offices, bureaucracies, and factories, there is petty friction, hurt feelings, being crossed. Smaller anger is continually generated, never discharged; big anger, that goes with big initiative, is repressed. Therefore the angry situation is projected afar. People must find big distant causes to explain the pressure of anger that is certainly not explicable by petty frustrations. It is necessary to have something worthy of the hatred that is unaware felt for oneself. In brief, one is angry with the Enemy. Contrary to the popular prejudice that America is the nation of unintellectual and anti-intellectual people, where ideas are at best means to ends, America is actually nothing but a great stage on which theories have been played as tragedy and comedy. This is a regime founded by philosophers and their students. All the recalcitrant matter of the historical is gave way here before the practical and philosophical out to be, as the raw natural givens of this wild continent meekly submitted to the yoke of theoretical science. Other peoples were autochthonous, deriving guidance from the gods of their various places. When they too decided to follow the principles we pioneered, they hobbled along awkwardly, unable to extricate themselves gracefully from their pasts. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Our story is the majestic and triumphant march of the principles of freedom and equality, giving meaning to all that we have done or are doing. There are almost no accidents; everything that happens among us is a consequence of one or both of our principles—a triumph over some opposition to them, a discovery of fresh meaning in them, a dispute about which of the two has primacy, etcetera. Now we have arrived at one of the ultimate acts in our drama, the informing and reforming of our most intimate private lives by our principles. Gender and its consequences—love, marriage, and family—have finally become the theme of the national project, and here the problem of nature, always present but always repressed in the reconstruction of man demanded by freedom and equality, becomes insistent. In order to intuit the meaning of equality, we have no need for the wild imaginative genius of Aristophanes, who in The Assembly of Women contrives the old hags entitled by law to satisfaction in pleasures of the flesh from handsome young males, or of Plato, who in the Republic prescribed unclothed exercises for men and women together. If we have eyes to see, we only have to look around us. The change in relations involving pleasures of the flesh, which now provide an unending challenge to human ingenuity, came over us in two successive waves in the last two decades. The first was the revolution of pleasures of the flesh; the second feminism. The revolution of pleasures of the flesh marched under the banner of freedom; feminism under that of equality. Although they went arm in arm for a while, their differences eventually put them at odds with each other, as Tocqueville said freedom and equality would always be. This is manifest in the squabble over adult films, which pits liberated desire for pleasures of the flesh against feminist resentment about stereotyping. We are presented with the amusing spectable of adult films clad in armor borrowed from the heroic struggles for freedom of speech, and using Miltonic rhetoric, doing battle with feminism, newly draped in the robes of community morality, using arguments associated with conservatives who defend traditional gender roles, and also defying an authoritative tradition in which it was taboo to suggest any relation between what a person reads and sees and one’s practices involving pleasures of the flesh. In the background stand the liberals, wiring their hands in confusion because they wish to favor both sides and cannot. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Sir Isaac Newton was either a virgin or nearly lifelong celibate. His only great love affair was unconsummated and began quite late in life, when he was already well into his forties. His companion was Fatio de Duillier, an attractive, twenty-three-year-old Swiss mathematician. Mr. Fatio lived in London, share Mr. Newton’s passion for their common discipline, and reciprocated his affection. For six years the pair where inseparable. Then Mr. Fatio was struck by a serious illness. At the same time, he was shaken by unsettling news about his family and financial crises in Switzerland. For a time, it seemed he would have to return home. Mr. Newton was frantic at the thought and implored Mr. Fatio to move to Cambridge, where Newton had teaching appointments and would support him. For reasons that remain unknown, Mr. Fatio declined, and in 1693, he and Mr. Newton broke off their relationship. As a direct result, Mr. Newton plunged into delirious, delusional depression. He became paranoically suspicious and turned on his friend, accusing them of abandoning and betraying him. “Sir,” he wrote to John Locke, “being of opinion that you endeavored to embroil me with women and by other means, I was so much affected by it…’twere better if you were dead.” To Samuel Pepys he directed a missive terminating their friendship. After his friends reacted with kindness and understanding, Mr. Newton apologized, blaming sleeplessness for his unprovoked attacks. Mr. Newton endured eighteen months of severe depression. He recovered emotionally, but never regained his scientific creativity. Instead, he was appointed to the Royal Mint, first as warden, then master, with a large salary. Though the position was generally regarded as a sinecure, he chose to take it seriously. He saw himself as guardian of the nation’s currency and sought out and prosecuted counterfeiter with the same intensity of passion he had formerly invested in Mr. Fatio. A number of these criminal dies on the gallows as a direct result of Mr. Newton’s efforts, perhaps victims of the same smoldering rage he had earlier leveled at his friends. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
For the rest of his life, Mr. Newton seemed immune to love. He and Mr. Fatio corresponded desultorily but never again rekindled the intensity of their former relationship. Mr. Newton was absentminded and ascetic. His austerities came about more from inattentiveness than principle, and he went hungry and sleepless simply because he forgot to eat, forgot to sleep. His celibacy was probably a combination of the same sort of asceticism and a literally burned-out capacity for live. He had met and fallen for Mr. Fatio relatively late in life, and for six years sustained an almost feverish passion for the young mathematician. When Fatio’s circumstances changed and their platonic affair ended, Mr. Newton was so brokenhearted that his life ground to a halt for well over a year. His recovery was only partial, for he was never again able to systematically apply his great scientific mind to the studies that had made him so famous. Instead, he went off on tangents, hectoring colleagues, tyrannizing the Royal Society, feuding with other scientists. Though he lived to the old age of eighty-four, he never again ventured into an affair of the heart. His obsessive love for Mr. Fatio had shattered his life and probably so seared his heat as to permanently disable it. Many of this have seen this before. Two guys are best friends, and then one of them has a group of friends who introduced one of the guys to a bunch of girls and they hangout and party and there is no more room for the best friend, so he leaves. He feels a little jilted because his best friend is all the sudden popular and prefers the company of women and his other friend over his. I guess one just has to consider what is most important, being popular or having a best friend. I guess Sir Isaac Newton knows the answer. Now, in light of the contributions of science, one might imagine that scientists, not just in the United States of America but around the world, would be held in high regard, as they once were. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
Instead, when medical researchers at the United States universities opened their mail a few years ago they found bare razor blades taped inside the envelope flaps—a warning from extremists in the animal rights movement to stop animal experimentation—or else. The “else” implied car bombs, arson, and other forms of intimidation or violence. A small percentage of Animal Rights Militia’s endorsed violence because some laboratory scientists themselves deal in violence and it is the only language they understand. Animal-rights fanatics are merely one branch of a broad anti-science coalition whose members are recruited from the farthest fringes of feminism, environmentalism, Marxism and other supposedly progressive activist groups. Backed by sympathizers in academia, in politics, and among media celebrities, they indict science and scientists for a lengthy list of what some of them regard as hypocrisy at best, currently and criminality at worst. They claim, for example, that pharmaceutical scientists sell their objectivity to the highest corporate bigger. (Some, no doubt, do, but lack of principle is hardly limited to a single profession.) Zooming in from another direction, neofeminist charge (all too accurately) that, in many countries, girls suffer from gender discrimination in education and women scientists face sexist barriers in hiring and promotion. This is certainly a worthy fight—such practices are stupid and unfair and deprive us all of half the human race’s brainpower. However, again, gender discrimination is not inherent in science, as such, and unfortunately it prevails in countless other professions as well. Science, meanwhile, is simultaneously besieged by radical environmentalists. Scientists, we are told, threaten to destroy entire populations with genetically modified foods. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Eco-extremists in Europe fed the media sensational stories about “Franken-foods” and joined forced with protectionist European governments seeking to block American agricultural imports. In turn, despite a crisis threatening mass starvation in Zimbabwe, some European nations pressured its government, under threat of trade sanctions, to reject food aid sent by the Untied States of America on grounds that it had been genetically modified. However, the genetically modified maize in question had been consumed literally billions of times with no ill effect. So if the concern is food safety, there was no scientific evidence to support that. The raging campaigns against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) severely damaged the Monsanto Corporation, a leader in the creation of genetically modified seeds. In Lodi, Italy, activists set fire to maize and soybean seeds in a Monsanto warehouse and painted “Monsanto Killers” and “no GMOs” on its walls. Campaigns like these have other companies, too, worrying about the dry-up of market science-linked products, over rigorous or ill-thought-though regulation, a switch of investment to other sectors and a decline in smart young people entering the field. Hostility to science slides truly strange partners under the same rumpled bedclothes, from left-wing social activists to Britain’s Prince Charles, who, in a BBC Reith Lecture of “Respect for the Earth,” attacked what he termed “impenetrable layers of scientific rationalism.” He had on an earlier occasion referred to science as trying to impose “a tyranny over our understanding.” In doing so, he echoed those environmentalists, New Agers and others who seek a returned to the supposedly “sacral.” Which takes us to yet another source of anti-science agitation—this from the hard-line, never-tiring religious creationists whose ferocious hostility to Darwin leads to campaigns against science textbooks, litigation over educational curricula and standards, and attacks on secularism in general, which they associate with science. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
To al these anti-science combatants, we must add the occasional freelance warrior, sane or otherwise, ready to commit murder for the cause. The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, killed three and wounded twenty-three in a bombing spree in the 1990s. He blackmailed major newspapers into publishing his lengthy anti-science and anti-technology diatribe by threatening more killings is they did not (but many know newspapers will do anything for attention anyway, so Mr. Kaczynski probably did not have to threaten them). The popular rection was outrage. However, some academics leaped to raise the manifesto, and the Internet came alive with fan sites such as Chuck’s Unabomb page and alt.fan.unabomer. Overall, then we find a loose, diverse anti-science guerrilla movement that merges, as its outer reaches, with legions of believers in the paranormal and in little green me from outer space, not to mention practitioners of various forms of “alternative” medical quackery and Falun Gong levitators. The voices of this movement are amplified by Hollywood’s persistent presentation of the scientist as villain and by television’s endless exploitation of shows such as Ghost Whisperer (offering characters help to communicate with their dead) or Supernatural (offering to help save characters from the paranormal). So shrill has the anti-science chorus become in the United Kingdom that when a leading British reproductive biologist, Richard Gosden, left for a post in Canada, the British Royal Society feared that his going might unleash a flood of departures. Meanwhile, in France, the Sorbonne, after much protest, awarded a Ph.D. in astrology to a former Miss France who was the astrologer for a weekly TV magazine. Ironically, her defense of her dissertation took place before a crowd of glitterati in—where else?—the Universite Rene Descartes in Paris. We survived because of Moses who smashed the popular golden calf, because of Nathan who pointed a finger at his king, “Thou art the guilty man”; because of Elijah who thundered at his King, “Hast thou killed and also taken possession?” There was Amos who demanded, “Let justice well up as the waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.” We cannot all be Moses, Isaiahs, Elijahs, but we dare not forget that we are in the tradition. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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We Joke About it All the Time
In reality, we all rely on more than one form of truth validation. We may turn to science for medical help, to revelatory religion for moral advice, and to face-to-face or remote validating authorities on other issues. We shift among these criteria or use combination of them. Many companies, political parties, religious movements, government and other groups attempt to manipulate us by stressing one or another of the truth filters. Watch, for example, how TV commercials use real doctors to peddle pharmaceuticals, implying that the message is true because it is based on science. Other ads feature celebrities—Bob Dole for Viagra or Lance Armstrong for Bristol-Myers Squibb—as though they are relevant authorities. Dell Computer’s message is delivered by a casually dressed young man roughly the same age as the consumers Dell wishes to reach—suggesting to viewers that, by buying from Dell they would be joining the consensus of that age group. Products like Quaker oat or Betty Crocker cake mix—and the vast number whose names begin with “Old-Fashioned”—imply that being old makes the product good, just as Grandma believed. In these ways, the different truth criteria are themselves exploited commercially. The next step will come when marketing experts segment, then target consumers according to the specific truth filter most persuasive to each. However, it is not just individuals who make up their minds about what is or is not true. Whole cultures and societies have what might be called a “truth profile”—a characteristic preference for one or several truth criteria. Once society may be dominated by a reliance on authority and religious revelation—Iran, say, after the theocratic revolution of 1979. Another may emphasize science and its proxy, technology—Japan, from 1960 on. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
A society’s truth profile profoundly affects the amount and type of wealth it will produce. It will influence how much money it allocates to building mosques and churches as opposed to research and development or how much it basks in post-imperial nostalgia (as France and England have done). It affects the extent of its litigiousness, the nature of its justice system, the weight of tradition, its levels of resistance to change. Ultimately, its choice of truth filters speeds up or slows down the rate of what the late Czech economist Eugen Loebl called “gain”—the pace at which the human beings accumulate the additional knowledge needed to keep raising their living standards. The shape of tomorrow’s economies will be heavily based on which truth filters we use to validate knowledge. Once again, we are changing our relations to a deep fundamental of wealth without anticipating the consequences—and putting at risk one of the key sources of economic progress. The future of science is at stake. Imagine that like some kind of science fiction dictator you intended to rule the World. You would probably have pinned over your desk a list something like this: Eliminate personal knowledge. Make it hard for people to know about themselves, how they function, what a human being is, or how a human fits into wider, natura systems. This will make it impossible for the human to separate natural from artificial, real from unreal. You provide the answers to all questions. Eliminate points of comparison. Comparisons can be found in earlier societies, older language forms and cultural artifacts, including print media. Eliminate or museumize indigenous cultures, wilderness and nonhuman life forms. Re-created internal human experience—instincts, thoughts, and spontaneous, varied feelings—so that it will not evoke the past. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Separate people from each other. Reduce interpersonal communication through life-styles that emphasize separateness. When people gather together, be sure it is for a prearranged experience that occupies all their attention at once. Spectator sports are excellent, so are circuses, elections, and any spectacles in which focus is outward and interpersonal exchange is subordinated to mass experience. Unify experience, especially encouraging mental experience at the expense of sensory experience. Separate people’s minds from their bodies, as in sense-deprivation experiments, thus clearing the mental channel for implantation. Idealize the mind. Sensory experience cannot be eliminated totally, so it should be driven into narrow areas. An emphasis on pleasures of the flesh as opposed to sese may be useful because it is powerful enough to pass for the whole thing and it has a placebo effect. Occupy the mind. Once people are isolated in their minds, fill the brain with prearranged experience and thought. Content is less important than the fact of the mind being filled. Free-roaming thought is to be discouraged at all costs, because it is difficult to control. Encourage drug use. Recognize that total repression is impossible and so expressions of revolt must be contained on the personal level. Drugs will fill in the cracks of dissatisfaction, making people unresponsive to organized expressions of resistance. Centralize knowledge and information. Having isolated people from each other and minds from bodies; eliminated points of comparison; discouraged sensory experience; and invented technologies to unify control experience, speak. At this point whatever comes from outside will enter directly into all brains at the same time with great power and believability. Redefine happiness and the meaning of life in terms of new and increasingly unrooted philosophy. Once you have established the prior seven conditions, this one is easy. Anything makes sense in a void. All channels are open, receptive and unquestioning. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Formal mind structuring is simple. Most important, avoid naturalistic philosophes, they lead to uncontrollable awareness. The least resistible philosophies are the most arbitrary ones, those that make sense only in terms of themselves. There is considerable evidence that the science fiction vision of arbitrary reality inevitably leading to autocracy has already begun to materialize. We can see it in action in the quasi-religious philosophies that are now sweeping the country, gathering in millions of devotees. The techniques used in gather adherents to these burgeoning movements are trying to get the convert to effectively submit to having their minds reconstructed along simpler, flat, narrow, but, most important, unrooted channels. This allows them to embrace arbitrary information as though it were grounded in concrete reality. In a World where alienation and confusion are common conditions, these new philosophies offer a comforting mental order that accepts and absorbs all contradictions. The danger is that once people’s minds are so simplified and receptive, they become vulnerable to any leader, guru or system of forces which understands the simplicity of the code and can speak the appropriate techno-speak. Like a mass of Manchurian candidates, the people whose minds have been retrained into passive channels by these technologically based processes are available at all times for imprinting. In this way they merge with and can accept advertising-mind, television-mind and other simplistic intrusions without the slightest blech of rejection. In America, almost all news shows begin with music, the tone of which suggests important events about to unfold. (Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony would be entirely appropriate.) The music is very important, for it equates the news with various forms of drama and ritual—the opera, for example, or a wedding procession—in which musical themes underscore the meaning of the event. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Music takes us immediately into the realm of the symbolic, a World that is not to be taken literally. After all, when events unfold in the real World, they do so without musical accompaniment. More symbolism follows. The sound of teletype machines can be heard in the studio, not because it is impossible to screen this noise out, but because the sound is kind of a music in itself. It tells us that data are pouring in from all corners of the globe, a sensation reinforced by the World map in the background (or clocks noting the time on different continents). Already, then, before a single news item is introduced, a great deal has been communicated. We know that we are in the presence of a symbolic event, a form of theater in which the day’s events are to be dramatized. This theater takes the entire globe as its subject, although it may look at the World from the perspective of a single nation. A certain tension is present, like the atmosphere in a theater just before the curtain goes up. The tension is represented by the music, the staccato beat of the teletype machines, and the sight of news workers scurrying around typing reports and answering phones. As a technical matter, it would be no problem to build a set in which the newsroom staff remained off camera, invisible to the viewer, but an important theatrical effect would be lost. By being busy on camera, the workers help communicate urgency about the events at hand, which it is suggested are changing so rapidly that constant revision of the news is necessary. The staff in the background also helps signal the importance of the person in the center, the anchorman (or -woman) “in command” of both the staff and the news. The anchorman plays the role of host. He welcomes us to the newscast and welcomes us back from the different locations we visit during filmed reports. His voice, appearance, and manner establish the mood of the broadcast. It would be unthinkable for the anchor to be unattractive, or a nervous sort who could not complete a sentence. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Viewers must be able to believe in the anchor as a person of authority and skill, a person who would not panic in a crisis—someone to trust. This belief is based not on knowledge of the anchorman’s character or achievements as a journalist, but on one’s presentation of self while on the air. Does one look the part of a trusted human? Does one speak firmly and clearly? Does one have a warm smile? Does one project confidence without seeming arrogant? The value of the anchor must communicate above all else is control. One must be in control of oneself, one’s voice, one’s emotions. One must know what is coming next in the broadcast, and one must move smoothly and confidently from segment to segment. Again, it would be unthinkable for the anchor to break down and weep over a story, or laugh uncontrollably on camera, not matter how “human” these responses may be. Many other features of the newscast help the anchor to establish the impression of control. These are usually equated with professionalism in broadcasting. They include such things as graphics that tell the viewer what is being shown, or maps and charts that suddenly appear on the screen and disappear on cue, or the orderly progression from story to story, starting with the most important events first. They also include the absence of gaps or “deadtime” during the broadcast, even the simple fact that the news starts and ends at a certain hour. These common features are thought of as purely technical matters, which a professional crew handles as a matter of course. However, they are also symbols of dominant theme of television news: the imposition of an orderly World—called “the news”—upon the disorderly flow of events. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
While the form of a new broadcast emphasizes tidiness and control, its content can be best described as chaotic. Because time is so precious on television, because the nature of the medium favors dynamic visual images, and because the pressures of a commercial structure require the news to hold its audience above all else, there is rarely any attempt to explain issues in depth or place events in their proper context. The news moves nervously from a warehouse fire to a court decision, from a guerrilla war to a World Cup match, the quality of the film often determining the length of the story. Certain stories show up only because they offer dramatic picture. Bleachers collapse in South America: hundreds of people are crushed—a perfect television news story, for the cameras can record the face of disaster in all its anguish. Back in Washington, a new budget is approved for Congress. Here there is nothing to photograph because a budget is not a physical event; it is a document full of language and numbers. So the producers of the news will show a photo of the document itself, focusing on the cover where it says: “Budget of the United States of America.” Or sometimes they will send a camera crew to the government printing plant where copies of the budget are produced. That evening, while the contents of the budget are summarized by a voice-over, the viewer sees stacks of documents being loaded into boxes at the government printing plant. Then a few of the budget’s more important provisions will be flashed on the screen in written form, but this is such a time-consuming process—using television as a printed page—that the producers keep it to a minimum. In short, the budget is not televisable, and for that reason its time on the news must be brief. The bleacher collapse will get more minutes that evening. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
With priorities of this sort, it is almost impossible for the news to offer an adequate account of important events. Indeed, it is the trivial event that is often best suited for television coverage. This is such a commonplace that no one even bothers to challenge it. Walter Cronkite was a revered figure in television and anchorman of the CBS Evening News for many years, he acknowledged several times that television cannot be relied on to inform the citizens of a democratic nation. Unless they also read the newspaper, magazines, and read reference books, television viewers are helpless to understand their World, Cronkite has said. No one at CBS has ever disagree with his conclusion, other than to say, “We care.” And what of the book itself? Of all popular media, it is probably the one that has been most resistant to the Net’s influence. Book publishers have suffered some losses of business as reading has shifted from the printed page to the screen, but the form of the book itself has not changed much. A long sequence of printed pages assembled between a pair of stiff covers has proven to be a remarkably robust technology, remaining useful and popular for more than half a millennium. It is not hard to see why books have been slow to make the leap into the digital age. There is not a whole lot of difference between a computer monitor and a television screen, and the sounds coming from speakers hits your ears in pretty much the same way whether they are being transmitted through a computer or a radio. However, as a device for reading, the book retains some compelling advantages over the computer. One can take a book to the beach without worrying about a dead battery or about sand getting its works. One can take it to bed without being nervous about it falling on the floor as one nods off. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
One can even spill coffee on a book. One can sit on it. One can put it down on a table, open to the page one is reading, and when one picks it up a few days later it, will still be exactly as one left it. One never has to be concerned about plugging a book into an outlet or having its battery die. The experience of reading tends to be better with a books too. Words stamped on a page in black ink are easier to read than words formed of pixels on a backlit screen. One can read a dozen or a hundred printed pages without suffering the eye fatigue that often results from even a brief stretch of online reading. Navigating a book is simpler and, as software programmers say, more intuitive. One can flip through real pages much more quickly and flexibly than one can through virtual pages. And one can write notes in a book’s margins or highlight passages that move or inspire one. One can even get a book’s author to sign its title page. When one is finished with a book, one can use it to fill an empty space on one’s bookshelf—or lend it to a friend. Despite years of hype about electronic books, most people have not shown much interest in them. Investing a few hundred dollars in a specialized digital reader has seemed silly, given the ease and pleasure of buying and reading old-fashioned books. However, books will not remain exempt from the digital media revolution. The economic advantages of digital production and distribution—no big purchases of ink and paper, no printer bills, no loading of heavy boxes onto trucks, no returns of unsold copies—are every bit as compelling for book publishers and distributors as for other media companies. And the lower costs translate into lower prices. It is not unusual for e-books to be sold for half the price of print editions (thriftbooks.com is a great place to find books at a discount), thanks in part to subsidies from device manufacturers. The sharp discounts provide a strong incentive for people go make the switch from paper to pixels. However, people with weak eyes can get reading glasses which will make reading books much easier. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Many students are seeking to learn and have a balanced view. Regardless of if they are reading e-book or traditional book, reading books is more likely to open them up to realistic and balanced information and one can always check out more than one book on the same subject. Students in their egalitarianism—whatever their politics, they believe that all men and women are created equal and have equal rights. It is more than a belief, it is an instinct, felt in their bones. Whenever they meet anyone, considerations of gender, culture, color, religion, family, money, nationality, play no role in their reactions. The very understanding that such considerations once really counted for something has departed it belongs to mythology. This may seem surprising inasmuch as there is such interest in roots, ethnicity and the scared—the things that once separated humans. However, it is precisely because they are no longer real that they fascinate. A real Italian immigrant in 1920 did not worry about ethnicity. He had it, and although he was an America, his life was by necessity and choice Italian, and he lived with Italians. His grandson at Harvard today might wish to recover Italianness—the social disadvantages of which his father struggled to shake off—but his friends will be the individual he likes, willy-nilly, not because of his Italian origin but as a result of the common features of America life. His attractions that deal with intimate passions, and hence his marriage, will not be influenced by his national origin or even by his traditional Catholicism. And this will not be because he is attracted by opposites or is trying to join the establishment. It is simply because such things do not really count now, even if there is a conscious effort to make them count. There is no society out there that will banish him for marrying out of order, or even parents who will object very strenuously. He is not in any important way looked on as an Italian by his peers. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Even if students have gone to parochial schools, where they were religiously and in effect ethnically segregated, the general culture usually prevails, and when they enter the university they almost immediately find themselves associating primarily with those who were formerly outside to them. They simply drop their cultural baggage. There is none of the solemnity of the interfaith or interethnic get-togethers I knew as a child, where people who felt themselves to be very different and who were quite often both prejudiced and victims of prejudice, pointed piously to the brotherhood of man. These kids just do not have prejudices against anyone. Whether this is because man has been reduced to an unclothed animal without any trappings of civilization that differentiate him, or because we have recognized our essential humankindness, is a matter of interpretation. However, if not very individual, the fact is that everyone is an individual—in our major universities. They are all just persons. Being human is enough for what is important. It does not occur to students to think that any of the things that classically divided people, even in egalitarian America, should keep them away from anyone else. Thus Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are not what they used to be—the last resorts of aristocratic sentiment within the democracy. The differentiations based on old family or old wealth have vanished. The old wounds that used to be inflicted by the clubbable on the unclubbable, in our muted version of the English class system, have healed because the clubs are not anything to be care about seriously. All this began after World War II, with the GI Bill. College was for everyone. And the top universities gradually abandoned preference for the children of their alumni and the exclusion of outsiders. Academic records and tests became the criterion for selection. New kinds of preference replaced the old ones, which were class preserving, whereas some thing the new regulations are class destroying. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Now the student bodies of all the major universities are pretty much alike, drawn from the best applicants, with “good” meaning good at the academic disciplines. There is hardly a Harvard man or Yale man any more. No longer do any universities have the vocation of producing gentlemen as well as scholars. Elitism of the old sort is dead. Of course students are, no matter what they say, proud to be at one of these select universities. They are distinguished by it. However, they believed, and they probably are right, that they are there not because of anything other than natural talent and hard work at their earlier studies. To the extent that their parents’ wealth may have contributed to their excelling in high school whereas less affluent children were disadvantaged, they believe this to be a social injustice. However, they are not very much bothered, at least not so far as the affluent are concerned, for the country that is largely middle class now, and scholarship aid is easily available for those who earned it or qualified for it. They see around them students who come from all kinds of families. Very few feel themselves culturally deprived, outsiders looking resentfully in at the privileged whose society is closed to them. Nor are there social climbers, for there is no vision of a high society into which to climb. Similarly, there are no longer schools of thought, as there always used to be, that despise democracy and equality. Again, World War II finished all that. All the students are egalitarian meritocrats, who believe each individual should be allowed to develop one’s special—and unequal—talents without reference to their race, gender, religion, family, wealth or national origin. This is the only form of justice they know, and they cannot even imagine that there could be any substantial argument in favor of aristocracy or monarchy. These were inexplicable follies of the past. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Again, although the difference between girls and body still have a living meaning—unlike the difference between Wiccan and Catholic, Irish and German, only family and new family, which are mere memories of their parents’ day and do not constitute differences in present way of life—students take women’s equality in education, their legitimate pursuit of exactly the same careers as men and their equal and often superior performance in them, completely in stride. There are no jokes, no self-consciousness, in short, no awareness that this state of affairs is any less normal in human history than is breathing. None of their beliefs result from principle, a project, and effort. They are pure feeling, a way of life, the actualization of the democratic dream of each human taken as human, the essential, abstracted from everything else. Except no abstraction is taking place. Contrary to fashionable opinion, universities are melting pots, no matter what maybe true of the rest of society. Ethnicity is no more important a fact than tall or short, black-haired or blonde. What these young people have in common infinitely outweighs what separates them. The quest for traditions and rituals both proves my point and many teach something about the pride for this homogenization. The lack of prejudice is a result of students’ failing to see differences and of the gradual eradication of differences. When students talk about one another, one almost never hears them saying things that divide others into groups or kinds. They always speak about the individual. The sensitivity to national character, sometimes known as stereotyping, has disappeared. As ordinarily used, the term “juvenile delinquency” is thoroughly confused. First, as we have said, we must distinguish forbidden-and-defiant-acts from behavior-to-get-caught. Then, among the socially forbidden acts we must obviously distinguish those that any lad of sense and spirit will perform if he has to and whenever he can, from those that are indeed harmful to others or disruptive of good society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
And again, as many authorities have pointed out, with respect to any of these acts there is an immense discrepancy in their adjudication and out information: delinquent acts of middle- and upper-class boys almost never get to courts or social agencies; affluent boys are dismissed or put on probation whereas less affluent boys are put away (that is why there is currently such a backlash against those of the upper-class and those who earned money from working and followed the law). It is not surprising, then, if many statistics and analyses of delinquency disagree. Apart from the one factor of getting caught, there is no real concept of delinquency. Yet obviously this factor is not sufficient by itself, for getting caught does have some essential relation to forbidden acts. Let us therefore take a different tack. Instead of looking for a concept of delinquency, let us expand the subject matter as a series of possible punishable relations obtaining between the boy struggling for life and trying to grow up, and the society that he cannot accept and that lacks objective opportunities for him. Roughly, we can name six importantly distinct stages in the series: Acts not antisocial is society had more sense. Acts that are innocent but destructive in their consequences and therefore need control. Acts antisocial in purpose. Behavior aimed at getting caught and punished. Gang fighting that is not delinquency yet must be controlled. Delinquency secondarily created by society itself by treating as delinquents those who were not delinquency, and by social attempts at prevention and reform. There is a certain simplicity to the idea of hacking off offending appendages—the hands of thieves, for example. By the same token, why not the private parts of deviants who take advantage of others in an nonconsensual intimate way? Or the genetically offensive, who might otherwise produce similarly disabled offspring? #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Also added to the list could be those who practice “self-love,” or those who have partners of the same gender, who challenge the standards of decency and risk their healthy? Throughout the ages, the logic of such proposals satisfied many of the authorities responsible for enforcing the law. And so off with their—well, whatever would eradicate the problem. Mutilating private areas is a time-honored practice/ As medieval punishment for nonconsensual pleasures of the flesh or adultery the jus talionis, an eye for an eye. In Europe, from 1906, it was a common sentence for offenders of the pleasures of the flesh. In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton coined the term eugenics to describe the systematic upgrading of the human gene pool by selecting “better” people to reproduce. Sterilization was the obvious way to prevent “inferior” people from doing so. An example may be seen in the 1997 film “Gattaca.” In 1931 the British parliament roundly defeated eugenics legislation, but elsewhere in Europe it was enthusiastically embraced. Hundreds of thousands of unfortunates were sterilized, both to “improve the nation” and, more usually, to save it money. Physical castration—removing the testes—is the same process that was used on castrati to arrest development of their laryngeal structures. In adults, it inhibits desires for pleasure of the flesh and also activity involving intimate passions, which made it an attractive option for treating people who have violated the temples of others. It has also been used for eugenics. In the United States of America, castration of eugenic reasons continued from 1899 until the 1930s, and in several Southern states was the punishment of choice for certain males who convicted or even suspected of a crime involving pleasures of the flesh. In Europe, Germany enthusiastically embraced eugenics, and its 1933 Eugenic Sterilization Act made sterilization obligatory for everyone suffering from hereditary disabilities. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute assisted, by instructing physicians in the niceties of “race science” and training them to carry out their related duties. Nazi “justice,” too, often involved genital mutilation. During the Third Reich, four hundred thousand people judged unfit to reproduce were sterilized, many by castration. One of the first groups earmarked were the “Rhineland Bastards,” mixed-race children of German mothers and African American post-World War I occupation troops. Others were those afflicted with blindness, deafness, physical disabilities, feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, and manic-depression. With suitable semantics, vagrants and alcoholics, too, could be classified as feebleminded and thus desexed. Deviancy involving pleasures of the flesh was particularly targeted, and homosexuals were hounded down. The Reich Ministry of Justice decreed that every homosexual act between adults was almost certainly the consequence of an instinct derived from poor heredity. One prison doctor performed so many castration that he streamlined this technique and speed to the point that he could whip off each patient in eight minutes flat, using only local anesthesia. By 1929, twenty-four American states, notably California and Virginia, had enacted sterilization laws to prevent future genetic defects. By 1958, 60,926 people had been neutered, with police hunting down escapees and forcing them back to undergo the procedure. In Canada, only the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta passed eugenics laws. British Columbia sterilized at most a few hundred. Between 1928 and 1971, Alberta’s Board of Eugenics ordered 2,822 citizens neutered. About 700 survivors are currently suing for compensation. Castration for offenses involving nonconsensual pleasures of the flesh often produced eunuchs, and the older the castrate, the more likely the surgery would render him impotent. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Studies of these castrates have concluded that immediately after surgery, at least 60 percent lost their drive for intimate passions and potency, and with time, so did another 20 percent. Other side effects—hot flashes, decrease in beards and body hair, and the development of fatty tissue, softer, slacker, and flabbier skin, the so-called puckered and lightly wrinkled castrate face—were common. Castration also caused the recidivism rate of those aggressors of nonconsensual pleasures of the flesh to plunge from 84 percent prior to their surgery to about 2.2 percent afterwards. Today, asexualization of those aggressors of nonconsensual pleasure of the flesh is now achieved through chemical rather than physical castration. The former is seen as less drastic and is also reversible. Hormones or other medications are injected, reducing the drive for intimate passions and thereby improving the subject’s ability to respond to various sorts of psychotherapy and behavior modification. Chemical castration is used in the United States of America, and Europe, though it produces more recidivists—about 6 percent in one study—than surgical castration. Currently, overpopulated China’s new Eugenics and Health Protection Law attempts to prevent “inferior births” through a mixture of mandatory castration, sterilization, terminating a pregnancy, and celibacy. It is aimed at people with hereditary, venereal, or contagious diseases—for instance, hepatitis B—or sever psychoses. In Thailand, an amateur form of unofficial but radical castration is on the rise. Over one hundred vengeful women have drugged unfaithful husbands, then hacked off their male organ. Authorities consider the problem so serious they have form a special patrol. This patrol is summoned whenever another victim awakens to discover his genital region bloody and minus its most crucial member. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Like a search party, they look in nearby fields for the butchered male organ, racing against time to rush it to the hospital for reattachment. Often they locate it, but one enraged wife fooled them by attaching her husband’s male organ to a helium balloon to ensure he would never get it back. One consequence of this wave of male organ amputations is that Thai surgeons reconnected thirty-one male organs to their original owners. Another is that Buddhist monasteries are gently swelling, as some of the new castrates reconcile themselves to their desexed state and seek spiritual solace in religion as monks. The amputators, women unwilling to tolerate their spouses’ philandering and mistresses, are escalating their illicit but effective campaign. If found guilty of the crime, they face ten years’ imprisonment, but the cutting edge of this story is that they are prepared to serve their time as long as they make their point by nipping their husbands’ infidelities in the bud. “If you will seek God diligently and make your supplication to the Almighty, then, if you are pure and upright, surely He will bestir Himself for you and make your righteous dwelling prosperous again,” reports Job 8.5-6. May the Lord God take your heaviness away, as the rains pour from Heaven. The garden is rich with diversity with plants of a hundred families in the space between the trees with all the colours and fragrances. May our God remember us in the sacred grove of eternity and we smell and remember the ancient forests of Earth. We have survived because we are inveterate optimists. No obstacle stopped us, no crisis dismayed us, no catastrophe crushed us. We swallowed the bitterness of life and pursued the sweet thereof. We survived because of the Holy Bible. We love life and our actualized Christians know that life needs direction, norms, discipline. We have denied ourselves that we might live. We have the strength to chain the fury of passion, and the wisdom to escae quietism and negation. We placed ourselves under the yoke of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and rejoiced that we have God’s grace. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Where the Wind Blew and the Stars Sone Down
Haunting, eerie, mystical even at times a little frightening to those outside the shadowy half-World of the occult but compelling and demanding out attention. In 1884, Mrs. Winchester left New Haven, Connecticut, and the graves of her husband and only child, moved to San Jose, California, and began the obsession that was to last for the rest of her life. She purchased an unfinished farmhouse outside the small agricultural town, and for the next 38 years, the sound of construction on Mrs. Winchester’s house never stopped. She used to maintain, I remember, that there was no apparition or supernatural manifestation, or series of circumstances pointing to such a manifestation, however strongly substantiated they appeared to be, that could not be explained on purely natural grounds. However, there was a notable instance of what was by many supposed to be a supernatural manifestation that occurred in the water tower on the estate. It was a horrible sight. Barney Ackers and his wife Everly had evidently been waylaid and killed by a blow of an axe just as he was entering the yard gate, and then the door of the water tower had been broken open and his wife had been killed, after which Barney’s body had been dragged into the water tower, and it had been fired with the intention of making it appear that the water tower had burned by accident. However, by one of those inscrutable fatalities, the fire, after burning half of two walls, had gone out. Still, it was a horrible sight and the room looked like shambles. Barney had plainly been caught unawares while leaning over his gate. The back of his head had been crushed in with the eye of an axe, and he had died instantly. The pleasant thought which was in his mind at the instant—perhaps, of the greeting that always awaited him on the click of his latch; perhaps, of his success that day; perhaps, of Mrs. Winchester’s kindness to him for the work he did—was yet on his face, stamped there indelibly by the blow that killed him. There he lay, face upwards, as the murderer had thrown him after bringing him in, stretched out his full length on the floor, with his quiet face upturned, looking in that throng of excited, awestricken men, just what he had said he was: a man of peace. His wife, on the other hand, wore a terrified look on her face. There has been a terrible struggle. She had lived to taste the bitterness of death, before it took her. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
Satan’s presence was haunting. It haunted Mrs. Winchester for years, and for many nights she could not sleep. No one ever found out who did it, and she found herself unable to forget it, or to have peace as she used to. On the night of the 3rd of January 1888, some thieves attempted to commit a robbery on the estate of Mrs. Winchester. They entered the mansion, armed with a dead man’s hand with a lighted candle in it, believing in the superstitious notion that is such a hand be procured, and a candle placed within its grasp, the latter cannot be seen by anyone except him by whom it is used; also that if the candle and hand be introduced into a house it will prevent those who may be asleep from awaking. The inhabitants, however, were alarmed, and the robbers fled, leaving the hand behind them. No doubt the absolute failure of this gruesome dark lantern on this occasion was due to the fact that neither candle nor candlestick had been properly prepared! The Winchester mansion is full of apparitions and specters and perhaps some of them foiled the bulger’s plan. The mansion was continually disturbed by a nocturnal house-spirits. At night heavy steps were heard as of one carrying a heavy load. On occasion a form appeared in a monk’s cowl. Certain ghosts are confined to the Winchester mansion and they plague particularly people. A certain butler, Elton Abram, was an active spiritist while employed for Mrs. Winchester. For years he practiced table-lifting and considered this to be a way of communicating with the dead. He continued with his occult practices so intensively that psychic disturbances set in. The effects of his spiritistic interests also appeared in his children and grandchildren. His oldest son committed suicide. His next son suffered from a persecution mania. His oldest daughter ended up in The Great Asylum for the Insane. Another daughter suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Among his grandchildren the same picture emerged. One of them was a schizophrenic. Another suffered from weak nerves and hypersensitivity, and another lived a dissolute life, and had given birth to an illegitimate child. The first of the man’s great-grandchildren became a psychopath and a delinquent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
From the scientific point of view, one might consider these effects to have a different cause from that of spiritism. The psychiatrist will be interested in the question whether the practicing of spiritism was rather the effect than the cause of the ensuing mental and emotional disorders. Or again, was there some latent disposition in the family that was merely triggered off by the spiritistic activities? The parapsychologist will explain the table-lifting phenomenon as psychic automatism, that is an activation of subconscious forces. The Christian however is concerned essentially with the frequency in which psychic disturbances appear in connection with the practice of occultism. It was well known that Mrs. Winchester donned herself with ceremonial robes and communed nightly with the spirits in the Winchester mansion, and it was the midnight rendezvous for legions of ghosts, with special attention accorded those created by a Winchester rifle slug. It is possible the Mr. Abram stole something from the Winchester mansion, which brought on a curse to him and generations of his family members. A person’s thoughts and actions are like people who populate a community: friendly, contentious, kind, malicious, virtuous, evil, virile, cowardly, optimistic, cynical. We prosper in a pure mental neighborhood and wither in a foul one. And we can choose our mental neighborhood. Tired minds and bodies are signals to be careful. Demonic oppression is not easily discerned. Some people mistakenly blame demons for unrepentant self-will and psychological abnormalities. The source is not always clear, but demon oppression is usually marked by an emotional inability of the individual to do what one wants to do. A young maid staying in the Winchester mansion called Bythesea Atterton, had been a founding member of a thriving witches coven in Essex and the group’s other three members all shared her dedicated to the occult. She began to complain about various mental disturbances which included being tired of life and having depressions. Added to this she often had violent fit of temper, and her marriage was being undermined by her own frigidity. It has also happened that the husband had seen strange figures in the house at night. He had not told his wife about this so as not to upset her, but after a while she too had seen similar strange and maimed figures about the house. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Mrs. Winchester questioned the woman about her past illnesses and about the general health of her parents and grandparents, but she was the only one to have suffered in this way. In answer to Mrs. Winchester’s questions about contact with occultism, after a lot of thought Bythesea told her the following story. She had stolen Mrs. Winchester’s sixteenth century book about magic, and saw a black shadow at the end of her bed. It was a horrible presence that frighted the life out of Bythesea. While Mrs. Winchester was asleep, she would invite her Protestant girl’s group over. The minister’s wife, who had become the leader, used to practice table-lifting with all the girls in the Blue Séance Room. The sessions had always begun with the question, “Spirit, are you there?” One knock had meant “yes,” two had meant “no.” When the spirit had been willing to answer they had all taken part in asking it questions. The minister’s wife had continued this practice for many years until she was paralyzed by a stroke. Bythesea told Mrs. Winchester that all the girls had subsequently been afraid to visit their leader since her face had been changed into a terrible grimace by the stroke. Medical science would classy this example together with the precious one. However, with regards to the stroke, we would like to point out that in the numerous cases connected to the Winchester mansion of suicides, fatal accidents, stroke, and insanity, they usually involve the occult and someone who has in someway broke a rule, stole from the mansion, or offended the spirits somehow. The miles of twisting hallways in the mansion are made even more intriguing by secret passageways in the walls. Mrs. Winchester traveled through her house in a roundabout fashion, supposedly to confuse any mischievous ghosts that might he following her. Mrs. Winchester never slept in the same bedroom two nights in a row, in order to confuse any evil spirits that might be waiting for her. Music has always played an important role in cultural outlook and identity. Hymns, marching songs, lullabies—there are a thousand different aspects of life which are ordered or inspired by a musical beat. Music helps to define your cultural tribe. Even the ghost at the Winchester mansion reportedly had parties at ungodly hours. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
The Satanic underground was celebrated—and eventually propelled into the mainstream—by musicians at the tail-end of the psychedelic era. While the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the public faces of the 1960s youth culture, other voices of that same social and spiritual revolution sang dark hymns of rebellion. Some think that Black Arts Festivals have gone too far, one in particular. Coven might have achieved the popular success that ultimately eluded them. The band’s first album went under the uncompromising title Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls, boasting a gatefold sleeve featuring the band engaged in a Black Mass—complete with attractive blonde singer Jinx Dawson serving as a naked altar. The album features a recording of this Black Mass at the tail end of side two: “Two the best of our knowledge, this if the first Black Mass to be recorded in written words or in audio,” explain the sleeve notes. (Anton Lavey recorded his own Black Mass shortly afterwards.) “It is as authentic as hundreds of hours of research in every know source can make it. We do no to recommend its use by anyone who has not thoroughly studied Black Magic and is aware of the risks and dangers involved.” The rite bears the hallmark of serious study, with notably authentic elements from medieval Gnostic and witchcraft lore. The overall effect, however is curiously naïve, with the high priest’s command to “kiss the goat” sounding more Monty Python than Aleister Crowley. The music that precedes the Black Mass is standard—if well-executed—1960s folk rock. It is something of a jolt to realize that, behind the gentle acoustic guitars, the lyrics are exclusively about Devil-worship and black magic, while the alluring Miss Dawson’s vocals give the effect of a demonically-possessed Join Mitchell. Ultimately, Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls is an interesting musical exploration of the witchcraft tradition which suffused rural America ever since the Pilgrim Fathers landed in New England over four centuries ago. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The infamous Salem witch-trials—which took place in Massachusetts during 1692—had been one of the last major incidents of state extermination by religious fanatics from the “Old World,” making the term “witch-hunt” synonymous with the persecution with marginalized groups. As such, it elicited the sympathy of twentieth-century hippies like Coven toward their satanic predecessors. (In sacrificing the lives of twenty suspected “witches” to the fantasies of hysterical children, it also predated the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s-90s.) Coven’s second album Blood on the Snow followed but, despite its demonic sleeve, the Satanic elements were fare more restrained. By the third album, imaginatively titled Coven, the sinister elements had all but disappeared, replaced by standard hippie material. Robbed of the distinctive image of their early days, Coven faded away. It is interesting that the British rock band Lucifer, formed in 1971, were a curious collection of characters whose sardonically-devilish promotional photos portrayed a Mansonesque image, enlisted the Devil to fight the capitalist-pig system. Lucifer issued two albums, Big Gun and Exit, and a single, entitled “F*ck You,” which was seized by the police. Most outre of the Satanic psychedelicists, Roky Erickson had been the leader of the mid-1960s Texan garage band the Thirteenth Floor Elevators until a bust for marijuana possession. Facing a long prison sentence under the Lone Star State’s sanctimonious laws, he committed himself to a psychiatric institution instead. This was a bad mistake. Three years later, in the early 1970s, the hallucinogen-loving Erickson came out of the lunatic asylum considerably more troubled than when he went in. An obscure cult figure who became known for lyrical tributes to his favorite 1950s horror movies, in the hospital he had formed a close relationship with his own personal Satan. “Ah’m not afraid of the Devil, the Devil is mah friend. He chose me to do his biddin’,” drawled the usual but loveable Erickson. “Those doctors and nurses…They could not mess with the Devil’s chosen one.” To cement this unholy pact, Erickson later vocalized his personal infernal visions in wildly sincere songs like “I Think of Demons” and “Don’t Shake Me Lucifer.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Ny far the most interesting of the Satanic-psychedelic bands were Black Widow. Their 1970s debt album, Sacrifice, was the result of guitarist Jim Gannon’s research into the Black Arts, with occultic lyrics accompanying a blend of traditional folk music and progressive rock. The almost-ubiquitous Alex Sanders warned the band they had done their homework too well, and would attract dark forces. He was right for one, though only inasmuch as Gannon’s lyrics boast a fair degree of authenticity, and some songs—like the catchy “Come to the Sabbat”—are highly evocative of the medieval-European Satanic tradition. Other moments—like the horrible saxophone solo Satan uses to tempt some poor innocent on “Seduction”—are diabolical in a different sense. The band enhanced their image with an elaborately Satanic stage show, professionally choreographed by a Leicester theatre company, complete with sacrificial daggers and an unclothed young woman to adorn the altar (at one point this was Alex Sanders’ wife, Maxine). They reaped the reward for their oddly entertaining work, with Sacrifice reaching the top 40 in the UK album charts. However, their second album, Black Widow, lacked both the Satanic themes and the power of its predecessor. The official explanation for this was that, true to Sanders’ warning, weird things stated to happen—most alarmingly, near-fatal car crashes. (Satan seems particularly keen on causing road accidents, however much more impressive lightning bolts or stampeding elephants might seem.) What is more likely is that, like many rock bands that use powerful Satanic imagery, Black Window may have begun to believe that same imagery was holding back their career. As many have learnt to their cost, however, it is more often the other way around—few dabbling rock stars regain the early excitement once they stop playing the Devil’s music. Suffice to day, Jim Gannon, the major creative force behind the band, cannot have been unduly worried by the curse, as he tried to mount a stage musical version of the Black Widow show on Broadway. Sadly, it never came off, and Black Widow—devoid of Devil worship—dwindled into obscurity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Prosaic accounts of Black Sabbath’s flirtation with occult imagery claim they were impressed by the interest Black Widow had enjoyed in their Satanic stage show. The truth is probably a combination of all these stories. Whatever, it is fair to say that intense interest in their demonic aspects surprised Black Sabbath as much as anyone else. Their eponymous 1969 debut album was recorded in to days for six hundred pounds, treated with contempt and indifference by the press, and rapidly became a commercial success. The Christian Science Monitor, or all publications, noted approvingly that the band did not “condone or promote the less seemly aspects of…an interest in occult matters.” They were right. The song “Black Sabbath” describes the narrator’s state of terror at witnessing a Black Mass. Their attitude to Satan was chiefly the traditional one of fear and loathing, their lyrics even sometime entreating listeners to turn to God as the only source of love. However, the audiences were not listening—they wanted a Satanic band, and that is what Black Sabbath ostensibly became. (Rumor has it that their management had the large cross that decorated the inside of their first album inverted without the band’s knowledge of approval.) Satan appeared in Black Sabbath’s songs as a constant source of fascination and fear, an entity who brings colour into drab existence but can also represent the overwhelming evil of the World. In the classic “War Pigs,” Satanic witched are equated with the evil of politicians and generals who callously kill millions in their power games. (According to guitarist Tony Iommi, the title was derived from “Walpurgis,” the night when evil traditionally rules the World.) However, the most fascinating manifestation of Satan in a Black Sabbath song is also the rarest: when they briefly allow the Prince of Darkness to speak for Himself. In this strange and haunting “N.I.B,” Lucifer, the creator, sings a plaintive love song to His greatest creation and fellow sufferer, humankind. (The song “Lord of this World,” also recognizes Satan as god of the Earth.) #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
N.I.B.’s title is the source of some confusion: according to drummer Bill Ward it was simply his nickname, derived from when the band were stoned and though he resembled a pen nib. Typically, the fans perceived a more Satanic significance—to them, “N.I.B” stood for “Nativity in Black.” Inevitably, the band were quizzed on such apparent occultic beliefs during interviews. “We are into God,” Iommi unhelpfully explained to which Ward added, “But sometimes I feel Satan is God.” Perhaps they were expressing the beliefs of the early Satanic Gnostic groups, fifteen hundred years before. Led Zeppelin emerged in 1968 from London’s lively rhythm and blues scene. The band took off completely and became a huge commercial success. They were also said to have a Satanic influence with their roots being in traditional black blues music—though guitarist Jimmy Page’s outfit, much closer in its sympathies to the blues than to heavy metal, was far more preoccupied with the tradition. The Devil also makes His presence felt, either as a symbol of the inevitable fate awaiting the debauched bluesman, or as the hard-living musician’s comrade and inspiration. The delta blues—the school that had the greatest influence on the rock-guitar style—became known as “the Devil’s music.” Delta bluesmen included Peetie Wheatsraw, who liked to be known as “the Devil’s Son-in-Law and High Sheriff of Hell,” and Robert Johnson. Johnson, the acoustic-playing grandfather of rock guitar, best illustrates the enduring legend of the bluesman who sold his soul to acquire musical talent. (As testified by Satanic Rock star Glenn Danzig during our interview with him: “A lot of the old blues songs are very heavily rooted in occultism. There is Robert Johnson, all the voodoo and juju stuff—‘Got my Mojo Working,’ ‘Black Cat Bone.’”) Johnson’s pact with Satan was said to be struck at the “Crossroads”—one of his best-know song, and a traditionally magical location in many cultures—and thereafter he always claimed to live, as another song put it, with a “Hellhound on My Trail.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Led Zeppelin, and Jimmy Page in particular, were heavily influenced by Johnson, lifting parts of his songs for their own compositions. As with Johnson, so the popular rumour went, Led Zeppelin has made a pact with the Devil, asking the Prince of Darkness to tune their instruments in return for their souls. Only Satanic aid, reasoned the myth, could explain the enormous success the band enjoyed so rapidly, or the power involving pleasures of the flesh these modern pied pipers had over young ladies. These same legends had been linked with musicians from Robert Johnson to Elvis Presley and beyond, but with Led Zeppelin the Satanic-pact myth has proved especially enduring. If you study the supernatural, you cannot ignore evil. The “ZOSO” symbol that became Led Zeppelin’s band’s trademark was also partly derived from the work of another influential British occultist, Austin Osman Spare—a contemporary of Crowley, and occultic artist, best known for his “automatic drawing,” which he claimed worked as a conduit for supernatural forces. One more than one occasion, Page hinted that much of Led Zeppelin’s material (particularly their meditative anthem “Stairway to Heaven”) had been conceived in a similar fashion. (If you recall, this is also how Mrs. Winchester received the plan on how to build her mansion.) Kenneth Anger asked Page to record a soundtrack for his magic ritual film Lucifer Rising, but was bitterly disappointed with the results, saying, “I had asked him for intimacy and strength, rhythms and counter-rhythms. But he gave me a short fragment of chanting voices and sounds that I thought were quite sombre and morbid.” In October of 1976, the two fell out in grand style. Page threw Anger out of the basement of his London house, where he had granted the American magus use of a fil-editing suite. Anger responded with a press conference. Asked if he felt vindictive toward Page, Anger reposed, “You bet I do. I’m not a Christian turn the other cheek kind. In fact, I’m ready to throw a Kenneth Anger curse.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Asked about the incident in an interview the following year, Page observed, “The whole thing about ‘Anger’s Curse,” they were just these silly little letters. God, it was all so pathetic…I had a lot of respect for him. As an occultist he was definitely in the vanguard.” Despite Page’s scepticim, many fans and commentators linked the personal tragedies that were to strike the band with some kind of hex. On 26 July 1977, vocalist Robert Plant’s young son Karac died of a respiratory infection. Three years later, on 26 September 1980, the band’s drummer, John Bonham, died after a drinking binge. Enough was enough. On 4 December 1980, it was announced that Led Zeppelin were no more. The band’s demise only served to fuel rumours. The more lurid stories held that all of Led Zeppelin, with the exception of Bonham, had signed pacts with the Devil for Earthly pleasure, supposedly explaining the drummer’s untimely death. One fanzine reported that black smoke had been seen billowing from Page’s house on the day following Bonham’s death, and that the guitarist was overheard uttering strange curses in unknown tongues. Even the mainstream press got in on the act, with the London Evening News quoting an anonymous source: “It sounds crazy, but Robert Plant and everyone around the band is convinced that Jimmy’s dabbling in black magic is responsible in some way for Bonzo’s death and for all these other tragedies.” What are we to make of the “Led Zeppelin curse”? Many young people still need to hear guitar music that conjured the Devil, and Satanic rock does show a tenacity that surprised all but its most fervent disciples. Kip Trevor from the band Black Widow tells the story about their album Sacrifice and the stage show of the same title. “There is a guy who has lost his wife as a result of an accident to do with some kind of occultic ceremony. Something goes wrong, and she is killed. He comes back through the centuries, is reborn, and remembers this in a dream. In this dream he realizes his wife can be returned to him, if he can perform another ceremony, like the one which had gone wrong. This time he would turn the tables on the Lady Astoroth, draw her, overpower her, and sacrifice her, then she would be banished and his wife would come back. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
“So in the first song, ‘In Ancient Days,’ tells the story of this guy travelling through the centuries. Then there is the conjuration in which we bring Lady Astoroth and the girl appears. We’d have a lot of fun with that, as she would appear from all sorts of odd places, depending on where we were playing. We toured with it all over Europe for around eighteen months. When Black Widow broke up, Jim and myself went off to try and revive the idea of the occultic stage show. We spent a lot of time, money and effort on this new black magic concept, but it did not work out. Black Widow’s first album was quite an achievement, but it would have been lovely to have developed it. The problem was that the band politics got in the way—some of them wanted to be a “normal” band and thought the whole black magic thing was not them. They thought it was overshadowing their playing. The show was written with Jim’s research, using proper conjuration ceremonies. The whole thing was done authentically as we could possibly do it. We drew the magic circles, used all the props—fire, earth, water, and air. We did it exactly as you were supposed to do it. Doing that has an effect, even if it is only psychological, because you know you’re doing it in the correct fashion. You’re stepping over the line. Combined with the power of the music and the power of the audience’s involvement, weird things would happen.” God did not create the devil as such. Lucifer, one of God’s mighty cherubs, rebelled against Him and became the devil. Satan is thus the product of his own evil choice. God created a superbly beautiful and wise being and invested him with power above all the other created beings. His name, Lucifer, means “son of the morning,” “bright and shining one,” or “light bearer.” He had many angels at his beck and call and was prince over all the Earth. A fee moral agent with the power of choice, he was filled with an ambition to which he had no right—to rise above God. Unwilling to rule over the World as a vice-general under God, he became “Satan,” meaning “adversary,” or opponent. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
There is only one devil; there are many demons. A familiar spirit in the service of Satan knows human beings so well that he can disguise himself as those people; there are different kinds of spirits—some are sensual and lewd, and others appear ethical; demons are wandering spirits belonging to the legions of Satan, a class of beings distinct from angels—some are on Earth seeking embodiment in human beings and animals, other already are imprisoned in the bottomless abyss; Satan wins followers by psychic and supernatural phenomena that approximate the power of God; Satan is a created being who presently exercises authority over his domain, the Earth realm, but he can do only what God allows him to do, and eventually he will be deprived of all power and glory. As one can see, it is not only Mrs. Winchester who had experiences with the occult, curses, and spirits. Many people have. Occasionally other theories turn up in the literature of modern parapsychology. Some speak of a magical astral World-soul. This entails the idea of an inner World in which all the occurrences of the visible World have their inner equivalent. The World-soul is supposed to be outside of our concept of space and time. The past and the future, the near and the far are said to be all on the same level. Everything is synchronized and simultaneous. A person who is capable of contacting this World-soul enables such a person to enter into a sphere of higher intelligence where the limitations of space and time no longer hold true. Prophecy is inspired either by the Holy Spirit of by the Devil. The wide scope of the occult power possessed by spiritists helps explain why they can cause so much mischief. Through the phenomena of levitation, apports, telekinesis, and materializations, it is not difficult to see how a person endowed with strong mediumistic powers can do a great deal of harm, especially in closely associated realm of magic. Genuine magic is the art of bring about results beyond humans’ power through the enlistment of supernatural agencies. Black magic deliberately involves the devil and demons, and the resulting enchantment is used for persecution and revenge. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Sarah Winchester was reportedly trapped in her Daisy Bedroom during the 1906 earthquake. Her workers had to pry her out of the room, and the crowbar mark is still on the door to this day… See it on the Mansion Tour!
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
Summoning Devils on Film and in Real Life
Much like the Winchester mansion and Mrs. Winchester, the Hellfire Clubs and medieval Sabbat believed that devils and demons should not be stern masters or slaves, but welcome house-guest, which is why Mrs. Winchester built what is now known as the Winchester Mystery House. It is easy to imagine how the combined grief of losing both a child and a spouse could be very crippling. However, if you had $20,000,000.00 (2022 inflation adjusted $556,305,882.35) and all the time in the World to help you cope, can you imagine what you would do? Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s response to the deaths of her child and husband left a bizarre and impressive architectural reflection of her psyche. The fascinating story of the Winchester Mystery House has its roots in the personal tragedies suffered by Mrs. Winchester and in the legacy of the Winchester rifle, “The Gun that Won the West.” The Winchester Mansion raised its castellated walls and towers in every direction commanding magnificent prospects; like emeralds in a setting of deeper green, gemmed the surface of the surface of the rural landscape and contributed to increase the beauty of scenery not surpassed in the World. Ages ago the voice of prayer and the song of praise used to ascend from this sacred estate. Presented on the estate was a happy country, none better calculated to inspire love and harmony. However, there was a lack of happiness in the circumstances of life for Mrs. Winchester. At first glance, there seems to be no degree of truth in this statement because of all the riches she inherited and her beautiful mansion. Many people assumes that for the rich, enjoying their riches, are likely to be contented and to look no further than this World. There were also a group of seven Victorian houses on the estate, not connected to the main house, of goodly size, and a Holy Cross. The seven Victorian Houses which, according to tradition, were built there under Mrs. Winchester’s direction, along with a graveyard on her 760 acres of land. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
In the garden of the mansion was a curious stone cross, of considerable size, evidently monumental, though the inscription has been so defaced as to be illegible. On the front of the cross there is a deep indentation much resembling that made by the hoof of a cow in soft Earth, the bottom of the indentation being deepest at the sides and somewhat ridged in the middle. Concerning this cross and the depression in its face, the following legend was related by one of the farmers on the estate. “Mrs. Winchester built this mansion, houses, and the church, you see. When she lived, she owned all the land round about. But there was a devil here. If you had meet him on the grounds, you would know in a minute that it was himself and no other that was in it, and so make ready, either for to run away from him, or to fight him with praying as fast as you can, because, you see, it is no use for to strive with the devil any other way, seeing that no weapon can make the last dint on his carriage. In them days, and before the mansion was built, I am telling you, the devil was all as one as a man, a tall felly like a soldier, with a high hat coming to a pint and feathers on it, and fine boots and spurs and a short red jacket with a cloak over his shoulder and a sword by his side, as fine as any gentleman of the good old times. So he used to go about the country, desiring men and women, the latter being his choice as being easier to deceive, and taking them down with him to his own place, and it was a fine time he was having entirely, and everything his own way. As soon as Mrs. Winchester started construction on her mansion, the devil took up his quarters there, to make it as sure as he could. But when he heard what Mrs. Winchester was doing, a four-story mansion, of 500 or 600 rooms, and a nine-story observation tower, he came out to see the castle was rising before his eyes. He heard the construction singing and started cursing to himself, and at 5.13am on Wednesday April 18th, 1906, Satan stomped his cloven hoof into the ground causing a 7.9 Earthquake and brought down that tower. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
After the Earthquake, while the devil was laying about in the bushes a-watching the work, and the tower of the big mansion was lifting itself above the trees, this time just not as high as it used to be. Everyone knows that Satan is slicker than a weasel, and has a memory like a miser’s box that takes in everything and lets nothing go out. When you do anything, sore a bit that it scrapes the devil, and he hugs it close till a time comes when he can make a club have it to bate you with, and so he does. You may think it is queer, but it is no wonder to one that understands it, for the devil can take any shape he pleases and look like any one he wants to, and so he does for the purpose of tempting us poor sinners to destruction, but there is one thing by which he always knows; when you have given up to him or when you have beaten him on the face, no matter which, he has got to throw off the disguise that is on him and show you who he is, and when he does it, it is not the elegant, dressed-up devil that you see and that I was just telling you about, but the rale, old, black anger with a rancorous, without a haporth of rages to the back of him, and his horns and tail a sticking out, and his eyes as big as an oxen’s and shinning like fire, and great bat’s wings on him, and, saving your presence, the most nefarious smell of sulfur you have smelled. However, before, he looks all right, no matter what face he has, and it is only the goodness of God that the devil is bound for to show himself to you, because, Glory be to God, it is his will that humans shall know who they are dealing with, and if they give up to the devil, and after finding out who is in it, go on with the bargain they have made, sure the fault is their own, and they go to hell with their eyes open, and if they bate him, he has got to show himself for to let them see what they have escaped. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Satan was flying around the Winchester mansion, there were the farmers all along the day job, and the construction workers were building as fast as they could and a bottle of holy water were at their side to throw at the devil when he would come. So he went from the and would fly back and forth watching then working, and they restored the Winchester mansion. Old beliefs die hard, especially when their speedy demise is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Magic is only a physical or psychological effect that has yet to be explained, which means for many it is uncomfortable to entertain now. All good occultists must be skeptical—believe nothing in preference to believing everything. All proto-sciences could be defined as magic. You can see the ritual chamber as a kind of intellectual decompression of chamber to prepare your mind for other atmospheres. People who limit themselves to the occult curricula and profess to be wizards are laughable—magic is an interdisciplinary pursuit. You must consider all the options—investigating like a police officer. To perform a summoning, for example, would involve finding the right environment, appropriate retrieval cues, the right atmospheric conditions. The effects of magic are demonstrable. A lot of simple magic is just to do with self-confidence, how much your antennae are up, how open you are to the World around you. Rituals and magical words are not necessary, merely tools or exercises to help train your mind. Scientists are now coming to the conclusion that there is a lot more interconnectedness between man and his environment than they originally supposed, which is a basic occultic concept. The only really dangerous characters are the ones who think they are generational Satanists and their grandfather told them with his dying breath what to do, or whatever. There are a lot of armies of one out there, a lot of coffee-bar revolutionaries. New information technology has bred a lot of desktop Satanists and bulletin boards mean that cyberspace seems to be just full of Satanists. The Christian heretics rarely get much further than designing letterheads. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Many Satanists are fans of people like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears and applaud their outrageous sexuality. They are also huge fans of Aaliyah for making that film Queen of the Damned. Many Satanists are quietly applying Church of Satan philosophy to their lives in their own fashion in a very real way. The best thing they could ask for is that people pass them a nod of respect. In the modern World, the spirit of the age often looms down upon us in strange, distorted forms from the cinema screen. Major production companies spend millions of dollars trying to trap the latest cultural trends on celluloid, while audiences make surprise blockbusters from movies which—accidentally or otherwise—tap into the anxieties and enthusiasms of the day. In the late 1960s and 1970s, 2000s the films which came to be regarded as four “Satanic blockbusters”—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), and Queen of the Damned (2002)—all took the box-office by storm, transforming themselves into cultural phenomena which attracted public interest far beyond that of most “mere” films. Cinema has been the most potent legend factory of the centuries. Despite constant predictions that TV would devour the silver screen, the spectable and ceremony of the cinema helped retain its status as the most sacred of modern temples. Film presents a super real version of the World—louder, larger, essentially more mythic. More people take cues on how to live, love, fight—even on how to die—from the silver screen than from the pulpit or the gospels. Pagan worship is alive and well and being practised at your local multiplex, with Hollywood stars as the gods of our age. And, just as cinema has given us new gods, so it has supplied us with a new hierarchy of devils. The relationship between Satan and the silver screen is a notable one. The father of fantastic cinema was a Frenchman named Georges Melies, who made delightful short films crawling with demons and devils. Melies was himself a Faustian figure, a stage conjurer and photographic illusionist who appeared out of the rump of the French Decadent era. Summoning devils on film, he defended this new sorcery in time-honoured fashion as “white magic.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
In The Laboratory of Mephistopheles (1897), Melies made Satan’s head detach itself and float around the room—to the enchantment and horror of audiences in darkened “picture palaces, resembling nothing so much as séance chambers. Hollywood’s dream factory was not even at the planning stage by the turning of the century, but the pioneer of US cinema, Edwin Porter (partner of the man who virtually invented the movies, Thomas Edison), produced his own version of Faust and Marguerite in 1900. The most striking cinematic fantasies came from Germany at this point—stark, angular exercises in shadow and nightmare. The Student of Prague was an updated version of the well-worn Faust tale, based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, which transformed the lead from an ambitious academic to a devil-may-care student and Mephistopheles into a rakish devil called Scapinelli. The story was retold onscreen in 1913, 1926, and 1936. The 1926 version was by the master of German Expressionist cinema, F.W. Murnua—the last film he made before leaving his artistic roots for Hollywood, where he met with a tragically early death. As a minor masterpiece, it was a suitably grandiose climax to a career which produced Nosferatu (1922), the first gothic vampire film. Now, it is always important to be safe on the road and sometimes to listen to the heartfelt advice of others. Jayne Mansfield, a buxom B-move actress died in a tragic car crash with her lawyer in and lover Sam Brody. Brody had disliked his beloved’s new guru from the start, and the friction led to LaVey placing a ritual curse on his rival. The Black Pope (Anton LaVey) warned the pugnacious lawyer—known to be a dangerous driver—that he would suffer a series of automobile accidents. It was no great surprise when a car crash ensued—but it made World headlines for taking the life of Jayne Mansfield, as well as the top of her cranium. LaVey grimly stated that on the night preceding the crash, as he cut out a newspaper clipping of Jayne, he accidently snipped off the top of the blonde beauty’s head. (By the way, I had no idea The Black Pope was dead, until today. I feel he is very much still alive. I have always felt like he is here, in San Francisco in his black church.) #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
The physical phenomena of spiritism are often closely connected with psychical manifestations, such as spiritistic visions, automatic writing, speaking in a trance, materializations, table lifting, tumbler moving and excursions of the psyche. There is no doubt that today, as in the time of Isaiah (Isaiah 6.1-5), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1.4-28), Paul (Acts 9.1-8), Peter (Acts 10.9-16), and John (Revelation 1.10-18), God may give His people a genuine vision, particularly in great times of great stress. However, genuine experiences of this nature are always accompanied by true spiritual grace and modesty. Sensationalism betrays a lack of authenticity. Unfortunately, genuine experiences are rare, and counterfeit ones about. Christian counselors find that the “ratio is about nine to one over the genuine experiences.” Mrs. Winchester used to have visions. She reported that she saw visions of Christ at night, and it left her feeling a sense of uneasiness and fear. The so-called visions of Christ were mediumistic. They came as a warning. Weeks after the visions started, Mrs. Winchester saw her husband William Wirt Winchester’s spirit departing from his body as he expired in 1881. The visions of Mrs. Winchester bear evidence of the occult, as do the visions of Joseph Smith (1805-1844), who fathered Mormonism. Many of the founders and promulgators of modern cults have had alleged visions from God. However, some say these visions promote “doctrines of demons” (1 Timothy 4.1) among the credulous and those unable to discern spirits (1 Corinthians 12.10; 1 John 4.1-2). When humans depart from God’s Word, they supposedly expose themselves to demon imposture and deception. Automatic writing—some persons endowed with mediumistic powers are able—either in a waking state or trance to write letters, words, or sentences which spiritists consider to be message from the spirit World. This is how Mrs. Winchester came up with the architecture of her mansion, the blueprints were often dictated to her in her Blue Séance room as she took down the notes on napkin. Also, the persistent pain in her legs and back vanished whenever she sat down and dictated these blueprints. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
One day as Mrs. Winchester was taking dictation, a spirit named Apollonius Tyannaeus appeared and said, “In the name of the Lord Jesus, our blessed and exalted Savior.” The spirit then told the woman that she had been chosen by God for special revelations. She would become a prophetess and bless humankind with these revelations. The case is patently that of a simple farm woman turned indeed into a spiritistic writing medium. Rudolf Tischner, a parapsychologist, points out the danger of automatic writing when practiced in immoderation. Although he regards these writing phenomena only as “motoric break up the integrated psychic structure with ensuing peril to mental and physical health. This simply means that occult enslavement can result from mediumistic writing, or from dependence upon the Ouija board or other spiritistic devices to obtain alleged messages from the spirit World. Speaking in a trance—a trance is a condition in which a spiritistic medium loses consciousness and passes under the control of demonic power to effect alleged communication with the dead. The demon (or demons) takes over and actually speaks through the spiritistic medium, deceptively imitating the deceased. As a result this ruse innumerable spiritistic clairvoyants claim communication with the dead, often with famous deceased people allegedly appearing to speak to the living. One evening, Mrs. Winchester went into a trace and soon the “Apostle Paul” approached and preached to the audience. The apostle was not visible but only spoke through the medium who lay in trance. Some critic said it was only another constant instance of deception by demons who ape the deceased but cannot produce them. Other believe it was real. Perhaps the most remarkable phenomena of spiritism are materializations. These are supernatural appearances and disappearances of material images in connection with the activities of a spiritistic medium. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Materializations have been exhaustively studied and photographed and have been found to be manifestations of various degrees of teleplastic morphogenesis. The first stage is the evolution of a gauzelike substance of rubbery consistency from the body cavities of the medium. The second stage is the forming of the various parts of the body in outline—arms, head, etcetera. Frequently in the case of teleplastic forms of this kind, a threadlike connection is maintained with the medium. The third stage consists of the composition into completely outlined forms, which are visible as phantoms near the medium. These three stages of materialization manifest purely visual phenomena. The fourth stage displays telekinetic phenomena. There is an energy output from the teleplasm (telekinesis), such as the ringing of a bell, 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 tolled again to warn these visitors to return to their sepulchers. However, once a week, these departed ones relaxed and danced in the Great Ball Room. In other stages of materializations come automatic writing of a typewriter, and the automatic playing of a musical instrument. In addition to the active energy output of the materialization, there is frequently a passive pain experience of the teleplasm. The fifth stage of the materialization is the penetration of material substance. To his phase belong “apports,” that is, the appearing and disappearing of objects in closed rooms or chests and containers. From locked and cemented containers, for example, enclosed coins are brought out, or stones and other objects fall inexplicably from the ceiling. This often happens in the Winchester mansion, as documented by Mrs. Winchester. In this stage many mediums allegedly have the ability to penetrate solid material substance while they are in a trance. While Mrs. Winchester sat in a small cabinet, a phantom built itself up on the floor outside the cabinet and formed itself into a male person, who moved in and out among the participants of the séance. While the materialization extended his hand to one of those present and she held it, dematerialization began to occur before the eyes of all the participants. Soon there was only a lump on the floor and this rolled up into the cabinet. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
Another example is during a séance, Mrs. Winchester was able to call and help the materializing of the spirit of the deceased German romantic poet, Johann Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862). At the memorable séance a white phantasm was seen, from which the audience demanded a poem. Instead of reciting a poem, the phantasm tore a page from a book in the library. With a pencil from a briefcase in the room, secured through the leather without opening the briefcase, the hand jotted down a few verses and vanished. The page was left and still exists. The examination of the mysterious writing by a graphologist proved to be sensational. He confirmed the ghost writing to be actually the handwriting of the deceased poet. Afterward there was a trial in Berlin over the ownership of the page. The court awarded it to the medium, who afterward kept it among her prized possessions. The phenomena of materialization and dematerialization in case of strong mediums illustrated the conversion of psychic energy into matter and matter changed back again into psychic energy. The problem is illustrated by nuclear physics. Einstein’s formula (E==MC^2), energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared, simply declares that it is theoretically possible to convert energy to mass and back again to energy. We have historical evidence of materializations. Missionaries claim that Mrs. Winchester’s mansion was never actually built, but that it materialized itself on the grounds, and (re)construction only began after the Earthquake caused by Satan. Some say this mansion is to be regarded as a miracle of Satan (2 Thessalonians 2.8-10; Revelation 13.15). Many people used to wonder how Mrs. Winchester used to travel so fast back and forth from San Jose to San Francisco to pick up items she ordered from overseas. Researchers believed that she would be spiritually transported miles away, and this may have been an example of this phenomenon or simply a miracle of transportation of unaltered physical body. It is debatable rather if these are miracles of God or that of Satan. God says He is the Alpha and the Omega. I wonder what that means? #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Mrs. Winchester was said to possess tremendous occult gift and was reported to be able to make tables fly through the air for a space of one hundred feet. Above all, she was extremely adept in telekinesis, materialization, levitation, and black magic. Where Satan’s power remains virtually unchecked, miracles of evil supernaturalism abound. In Victorian days, the supernatural predated the mass hysteria about Satanism. As you may know, long before Mrs. Winchester arrived in California, there was a Devil worshipping conspiracy at large. However, her mansion seamlessly blends the ordinary and nightmarishly surreal. It is a rare treat for fans of demonic conspiracy and occult synchronicity. Some people have believed themselves to be demonically possessed after visiting the Winchester Mystery House, others claimed to have spoken to Mrs. Winchester directly. Directors of the Queen of the Damned claimed that the film was a makeshift occultic ritual, and Aaliyah unleashed the demon within herself. They also said the film poses some kind of supernatural power and they had to edit and voiceover a lot of the footage because not only did the characters act their own version of the script, but there were also some subliminal sounds and images on print. When many of these errors were re-examined, they also saw footage of the original Winchester mansion on the negatives, but rumors began that the original print had been withdrawn, replaced by an expurgated cut to protect the filmgoers from the movie’s insidious effects. The powers behind these manifestations were no doubt demonic. The director faced a terrible psychic assault on 25th August 2001, before they finished filming the movie. However, when the reel was played, the directors found they had all the footage they needed, even some they did not remembering filming. It was so intensified that the demonic oppression became that he was compelled to give up making other Anne Rice books into movies, especially after Aaliyah’s plane crashed later that evening. Although the film was unfished, with the blessing of her family, it was released to the public in February of 2002. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Certain psychic clairvoyants claim that their souls can travel great distances at their command. They always said she makes a room come alive. Much like Mrs. Winchester, Aaliyah had a lot of psychic phenomena around her death. When directors took photos of Aaliyah and Queen Akasha to a clairvoyant, while concentrating on the photographs, the medium declared that one of the women was apparently dead, while the other one, reportedly killed in 2001, was still alive. After more concentration, the clairvoyant said: “I can get in touch with this woman (pointing to Queen Akasha). I see her in a great stone building southeast of Ireland.” By psychic excursion and by psychometry (selecting an object belonging to the missing person and beginning to search from there) the clairvoyant was able to establish contact by occult assistance. The cinema is the Devil’s lantern. In March of 1922, Mrs. Winchester said, “Though it should be borne in the mind that in the persecution of witches many women were put to death on the latter charge, albeit they were really benefactors of the human race; the more so as their skill in simples and knowledge of the medicinal virtue of herbs must have added in no small degree to the resources of our present pharmacopoeia.” In August of 1807 an extraordinary affair took place in the house of Mrs. Winchester. She had a cow which continued to give milk as usual, but of late no butter could be produced from it. An opinion was unfortunately instilled into the mind of Mrs. Winchester, that whenever such a thing occurred, it was occasioned by the cow having been bewitched. Her belief in this was strengthened by the fact that every woman on this estate was able to relate some story illustrative of what she had seen or heard of in times gone by with respect to the same. At length the Mrs. Winchester was informed of a woman named Mary Butters, who resided in Oakland at the Cohen Bray House. Mrs. Winchester went to her, and brought her to mansion for the purpose of curing the cow. About ten o’ clock that night war was declared against the unknown magicians. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Mary Butters ordered old Klaus and a young man named Konrad to go out to the cow-house, turn their waistcoats inside out, and in that dress to stand by the head of the cow until she sent for them, while the butler, the made, and an old woman named Klara Lee remained in the house with her. Klaus and his ally kept their lonely vigil until daybreak, when, becoming alarmed at receiving no summons, they left their post and knocked at the door, but obtained no response. They then looked through the kitchen window, and to their horror saw the four inmates stretched on the floor as dead. They immediately burst in the door, and found that the butler and the maid were actually dead, and the sorceress and Mrs. Winchester nearly so. The latter soon afterwards expired; Mary Butters was thrown out on a dung-heap, and a restorative administered to her in the shape of a few hearty kicks, when had the desired effect. The house had a sulphureous smell, and on the fire was a large pot in which were milk, needles, pins, and crooked nails. At the inquest held at the Winchester mansion on the 19th of August, Jurors stated that the three victims had come by their deaths from suffocation, owning to Mary Butters having made use of some noxious ingredients, after the manner of a charm, to recover the sick cow. She was up to The Great Asylum for the Insane, but was discharged by proclamation. Her various of the story was that a black man (usually indicates a demon or the devil, not one of African descent) was summoned through the floor with a huge club, with which he killed the three person and stunned herself. This paranoid horror fantasies terrified the congregations, as well as the gross superstition displayed by the participants as for its tragical ending, yet it seems to have aroused no feelings in the greater community than those of risibility and derision. However, there is also another version of events. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
A farm-hand had brought an action against Mrs. Winchester for wages alleged to be due to him. It transpired in the course of the evidence that on one occasion he had been set to banish witches that were troubling the cows. His method of working illustrates the Winchester case. All left the house except Mrs. Winchester, and the farm-hand, who locked himself in, closed the windows, stopped al keyholes and apertures, and put sods on top of the chimneys. He then placed a large pot of sweet milk on the fire, into which he threw rows of pins that had never been used, and three packages of needles; all were allowed to boil together for half an hour, and, as there was no outlet for the smoke, the farm-hand narrowly escaped being suffocated. If the forces of darkness triumph, it is a warning not a celebration. Many religious people come close to depicting what evangelists are preaching from their pulpits, or TV shows. Does it not seem strange for fundamentalist Christians to attack them as sinful and dangerous? Sin sells, in a way that the bland platitudes of Christian morality never will. Many of these popular and historical figures will be remember long after the credits have rolled. You could say that it is an “inside job.” Satanism sells, it captures the metaphysics of fear. People like to be haunted and scared, but only when they consent to it. No one wants their house broken into, their children kidnapped, their cars constantly vandalized, or to be attack by a hate group who haunts them like demons of the night. People simply want to tune into a scarry movie or visited a haunted house and leave the fear behind when they walk out the door or turn the TV off. They do not want to fear for the lives like Sharon Tate did for years without anyone to protect them. Humans are often more harmful than any ghost, devil or demon you can ever imagine meeting. Satan, speaking through a beautiful serpent—perhaps as a parakeet “talks” to us—promises know that would make Eve “like God” if she would eat the fruit of the tree forbidden by God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Meanwhile, if the view of the power and knowledge of the people is that “Satan” is evil and not themselves, what can human beings do? Persist being evil, or resist the “devil,” and allow him to feel from them? Or is it they cling to evil because the darkness comes from their insidious mind and depleted soul? Note that it is useless to try to resist the devil unless you have first submitted yourself to God! Maybe YOU are the evil, not Satan. Sitting there, manufacturing all these evil days, so you can laugh at the pain and suffering you have inflicted on others to make yourself feel better. Is that of Satan, or is that YOUR nature on display. It is estimated that there are about 100 million adherents to spiritism in the World. The word “spiritism” comes from the Latin “spiritus,” spirit. The movement of spiritism represents the endeavour to communicate with the dead in the spirit World. Historically, spiritism can also be traced back over thousands of years. We have testimonies concerning it in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 28, and Deuteronomy 18. It is also evidenced in the history of the Christian Church. Spiritism seems to be strongly connected with religion and religions. In so-called Christian countries such a variety of spiritistic forms, and such a range of associated psychic troubles exist, that the need for clarification is a pressing issue. What God do you really worship for “Satan disguises himself as an angel of the light. So it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness,” reports 2 Corinthians 11.14-15. In other words, many of you Christians who claim to serve “God” do evil things and then blame the devil when you are disguising yourselves as children of the light. And you do not repent because you do not fear punishment nor hell, so you must be children of your “devil” and not of God. We live in a World which has turned its back on God. The reason some people fear Jesus is because they feel unworthy, it is not because they are evil. This conviction of inner unworthiness is not to be confused with a feeling of fear. However, people who suffer from schizophrenia and like to go around lying, the psychiatrist will be interested in the question whether the practicing of spiritism was rather the effect than the cause of the ensuing mental and emotional disorders. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Winchester Mystery House
The front gardens of the Winchester Mystery House looked different in the 1970’s! The gardens were restored to what they are today about ten years later.
The sign reads: “The world’s oddest, mysterious, weirdest, and freakish dwelling. Planned and built by Sarah L. Winchester of Winchester Rifle Fame”
Have you ever listened to Alessandro Moreschi sing “Ave Maria,” at night in the Winchester Mystery House? Try it and let me know what you experience. I heard ghosts appear, people have cried and screamed, and some love it. I think I would probably run outside. He sounds like a ghost.
Come Explore the Victorian Gardens this weekend! Open all weekend until 4PM.
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
Are We Willing to Sacrifice Material Satisfactions or Give Up Racial Prejudices?
Dreams of loneliness, like a heartbeat drives you mad in the stillness of remembering what you had and what you lost, fly in the air where one has never been—and yet one knows not. Alan Turning is best remembered as the creator of an imaginary computing device that anticipated, and served as a blueprint for, the modern computer. He was just twenty-four, a recently elected fellow at Cambridge University, when he introduced what would come to be called the Turing machine in a 1936 paper entitle “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem.” Turning’s intent in writing the paper was to show that there is no such thing as perfect system of logic or mathematics—that there will always be some statement that cannot be proven either true or false, that will remain “uncomputable.” To help prove the point, he conjured up a simple, digital calculator able to follow coded instructions and to read, write, and erase symbols. Such a computer, he demonstrated, could be programmed to perform the function of any other information-processing device. It was a “universal machine.” In a later paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Turning explained how the existence of programmable computers “has the important consequence that, considerations of speed apart, it is unnecessary to design various new machines to do various computing processes. They can all be done with one digital computer, suitably programed for each case.” What that means, he concluded, is that “all digital computers are in a sense equivalent.” Turning was not the first person to imagine how a programmable computer might work—more than a century earlier, another English mathematician, Charles Babbage, had drawn up plans for an “analytical engine” that would be “a machine of the most general nature”—but Turning seems to have been the first to understand the digital computer’s limitless adaptability. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
In modern times, we have all these mini-machines and little devices, for things like the phone, the Internet, music, telephone, surveillance, thermostats to control the climate in the house, circuit breakers, sprinkler boxes. However, what many people are looking for is a universal machine to become our medium. Like a mainframe that is built-in to the wall and can control the entire house from lighting and so forth and has little tablet computers also built-in to the wall to control this mainframe so one does not have to go to the universal machine. The goal is to illuminate clutter and to have a machine one does not have to constantly update and replace. One that could be advanced enough to last a lifetime. The speed of computers and data networks has increased at a breakneck pace, and the cost of processing and transmitting data has fallen equally rapidly. Over the past three decades, the number of instructions a computer chip can process every second has doubled about every three years, while the cost of processing those instruction has fallen by almost half every year. Overall, the price of a typical computing task has dropped by 99.9 percent since the 1960s. Network bandwidth has expanded at an equally fast clip, with Internet traffic doubling, on average, every year since the World Wide Web was invented. Computer applications that were unimaginable in Turning’s day are now routine. The way the Web has progressed as a medium replay, with the velocity of a time-lapse film, the entire history of modern media has compressed hundreds of years into a couple of decades. The growth of social media’s influence in our daily digital lives has been astounding over the last few years. The global average time spent using social media platforms per day is 2 hours and 22 minutes. Far higher than the 1 hour and 30 minutes spent in 2012. In fact, people are spending thirty percent of their leisure time online, with the people in China being the most intensive surfers, devoting forty-four percent of their off-work hours to the Net. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
These figures do not include the time people spend using their mobile phones and other handheld computers to exchange text messages, which also continues to increase rapidly. Text messaging now represents one of the most common uses of computers, particularly for the young. The average American sends or receives an average of 41.5 messages per day, with the median user sending or receiving 10 texts daily. Worldwide, well over two trillion text messages zip between mobile phones every year, far outstripping the number of voice calls. Thanks to our ever-present messaging systems and devices, we never really have to disconnect, which may actually prevent virtual kidnapping or help mask it. The average American over the age of fourteen devoted to reading printed works has fallen to 143 minutes a week. Young adults between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four, who are among the most avid Net users, were reading printed works for a total of just forty-nine minutes a week just a few years ago, and that number has now fallen down a precipitous twenty-nine percent. However, because of the ubiquity of text on the Net and our phones, we are almost certainly reading more words today than we did twenty years ago, but we are devoting much less time to reading words printed on paper. Yet, these words we are reading may not be nourishing the soul, which is why so many people are becoming mean, yet so sensitive. That is why the future of knowledge and culture no longer lies in books or newspapers or TV shows or radio programs of CDs. It lies in digital files shot through our universal medium at a speed of light. However, with such rapid technological pace, remember, in the future it is possible that we could have citywide, statewide, countrywide, and even Worldwide shutdowns of the electricity and Internet. So, while electric cars are so popular and digital streaming, you may want to hold on to cars that can use gasoline and your books, CDs, magazines and so forth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
We like to be able to find and be transported instantly to relevant data—without having to sort through lots of extraneous stuff. We like to be in touch with friends, family members, and colleagues. We like to feel connected—and we hate to feel disconnected. The Internet does not change our intellectual habits against our will. However, change them it does. Our use of the Net will only grow, and its impact on us will only strengthen, as it becomes ever more present in our lives. Like the clock and the book before it, the computer continues to get smaller, but as stated before people may want one machine to control all the technologies in their house, so they may get bigger, but be just one device. Public schools are strongly urging students to use physical books instead of Internet sources. However, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger referred to them as “antiquated, heavy, expressive textbooks,” and that is not helping matter. Remember how exciting it was on the first day of class to be able to use a brand-new hardcover Houghton Mifflin Social Studies book? We must not rob our youth of these adventures. My favorite books are hardcover additions, think how good they will look in a home library. However, sometimes to reduce costs or because of what is available, I go with paperback books. A particularly striking illustration of how the Net is reshaping our expectations about media can be seen in any library. Although we do not tend to think of libraries as media technologies, they are. The public library is, in fact, one of the most important and influential informational media ever created—and one that proliferated only after the arrival of silent reading and moveable-type printing. Students these days are, in general, nice. They are not always particularly moral or noble. Such niceness is a facet of democratic character when times are good. Neither war not tyranny nor want has hardened them or made demands on them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
The wounds and rivalries caused by class distinction have disappeared along with any strong sense of class (as it once existed in universities in America and as it still does, poisonously, in England). Students are free of most constraints, and their families make sacrifices for them without asking for much in the way of obedience or respect. Religion and national origin have almost no noticeable effect on their social life or their career prospects. Although few really believe in “the system,” they do not have any burning sentiment that injustice is being done to them. The barbiturates and the pleasures of the flesh once thought to be forbidden are available in the quantities required for sensible use. A few radical people still feel the old-time religion, but most folks are comfortably assured that no much stands in the way of their careers. There is an atmosphere of easy familiarity with their elders, and even of the kind of respect of free young people that Tocqueville asserted equality encourages. Above all, there are none of the longings, romantic or otherwise, that used to make bourgeois society in general, repugnant to the young. The impossible dreams of the sixties proved to be quite possible within the loosened fabric of American life. If not great-souled, students these days are pleasant, friendly, and at least not particularly mean-spirited. Their primary preoccupation is themselves, understood in the narrowest sense. I had a revelatory experience when I chatted quite frankly one evening with a group of bright students at an Ivy League college where I was visiting professor for a short time. I had succeeded in establishing a certain common ground with them in class, for serious reading of Plato frequently has the effect of making students speak, at least for the moment, outside of their conventions. We had a farewell picnic and the atmosphere was easy and conducive to candor. Somewhat disingenuously I introduced some themes into the conversation about which I was eager to know the current state of opinion. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
I had been primed for this encounter by a conversation I had had the previous evening at a dinner with members of the faculty and the administration. The wife of one of the high officials told me of her son’s activities. He had a law degree, but, she said, he and his friends had little ambition and had moved from one thing to another. She did not seem to be very distressed by his behavior—perhaps even a bit proud of it—a modern parent willing to believe in the superiority of the younger generation to her own, especially when the former is most disrespectful of the latter’s standards. So I asked her why she thought they behaved this way. She responded firmly, quietly and without hesitation, “Fear of nuclear war.” This prompted me to ask my group of students whether they were frightened of nuclear war. The response was a universal, somewhat embarrassed giggle. They knew what their daily thoughts were about, and those thoughts had hardly anything to do with public questions. And they also knew that there are a great many right-thinking adults who expect them to use the nuclear threat as an excuse for demanding a transformation of the World political order and who also want to produce their maimed souls in evidence against our politicians’ mad pursuit of the “arms race.” Students today—and I have now asked the question over and over again—are morally unpretentious, and they look at themselves with irony when it comes to the big moral questions. Some look back with nostalgia at students of the sixties as persons who believed in something. The prospect of being drafted to fight in the Ukraine was really frightening me. However, youngsters today are, with few exceptions, no more take in by the psychological quacks who explain their apathy with respect to nuclear was as “denial,” who enlist science in the service of proving that there are causes without effect, than was the American public by a President who tried to persuade it that he sat around discussing nuclear war on a laptop with drug dealing son. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Their concerns lie elsewhere. There is, indeed, a certain listlessness about them, an absence of a broad view of the future, but it was as plausible to attribute that to the lack of frontier to conquer in the American West, or the death of God, as to fear nuclear war It is difficult to say just why this generation tends to be so honest in comparison with the preceding one. And, of course, there are plenty of public posturers among them, as is evident from the vote of the student body at Brown (an institution that was at the forefront of dismantling liberal education in the sixties), which demanded that cyanide be made available by the university in case of nuclear attack. This was a “statement” telling us all about the torment to which we subject young people. However, the great majority of students, although they as much as anyone want to think well of themselves, are aware that they are busy with their own careers and their relationships. There is a certain rhetoric of self-fulfillment that gives a patina of glamor to this that they are busy with their own careers and relationships. There is a certain rhetoric of self-fulfillment that gives a patina of glamor to this life, but they can see that there is nothing particularly noble about it. Survivalism has taken place of heroism as the admired quality. This turning in one themselves is not, as some would have it, a return to normalcy after the hectic fever of the nineties, nor is it preternatural selfishness. It is a new degree of isolation that leaves young people with no alternative to looking inward. The things that almost naturally elicit attention to broader concerns are simply not present. Starvation in California, mass murder in Florida, as well as war in New York and Tennessee, are all real calamities worthy of attention. Because they are immediate, and they are connected to the students’ lives. We have never had war on American social, in modern times, since it had become relatively stable in the 1950s. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The affairs of daily life, however, now involve concerns for a larger community in such a way as to make the public and private merge in one’s thought. It is not merely that one is free to participate or not to participate, that there is no need to do so, but that everything militates against one’s doing so. Tocqueville describes the tip of the iceberg of advanced egalitarianism when he discusses the difficulty that a man without family lands, or family tradition for whose continuation he is responsible, will have in avoiding individualism and seeing himself as an integral part of a past and a future, rather than as an anonymous atom in a merely changing continuum. The modern economic principle that private vice makes public virtue had penetrated all aspects of daily life in such a way that there seems to be no reason to be a conscious part of civic existence. Public virtue can be kind of a ghost town into which the highest investor can move and declare oneself mayor, governor, or president, which is probably why the Clinton’s started globalization. To become rich, suppress wages, especially the minimum wage, and make the United States of America dependent and divided, rather than independent and united, which allowed them to keep taxes high and make the country look like it was profiting, which is why the national deficit is $30.3 trillion. They sold the country and we are borrowing money to rent it back. Then Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped in and started liquidating federal and state assets, which is common in bankrupt countries. Country, religion, family, ideas of civilization, all the sentimental and historical forces that stood between cosmic infinity and the individual, providing some notion of a place within the whole, have been rationalized and have lost their compelling force. America is experienced not as a common project but as a framework within which people are only individuals, where they are left alone. To the extent that there is a project, it is to put those who are said to be disadvantaged in a position to live as they please too. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
The advanced Left talks about self-fulfillment; the Right, in its most popular form, is Libertarian, id est, the right-wing form of the Left, in favor of everybody’s living as one pleased. The only forms of intrusion on the private-life characteristic of liberal democracies—taxes and military service—are not now present in the American students’ life. If there is an inherent political impulse in man, it is certainly being frustrated. However, this impulse has already been so attenuated by modernity that it is hardly experienced. Students may indeed feel a sense of impotence, a sense that they have little or no influence over the collective life, but essentially they live comfortably within the administrative state that has replaced politics. Nuclear war is indeed a frightening prospect, but only when it appears imminent does it cross their minds. Even such a powerful, concerted effort as the nuclear-freeze commotion, with its attendant entertainment like The Day After, has nothing to do with the lives students lead and is little more than a distraction. If the students actually do enter politics, it is by accident, very few of them are destined for a political life, and does not follow from their early training or expectations. For almost no such families remain, in these universities, there are almost no students born of families that have inherited the privilege and responsibility of public service. Neither duty nor pleasure involves students with the political life and that is why there is a disappearance of citizens and statesmen and women. Politics is so taboo, but talking about pleasures of the flesh and other people’s business is so popular and socially accepted because that is what the news and reality shows are programing people to think is normal. Life out loud, act insane, party, harass people, cry to the police, but above all else, ignore your civic, religious, family, and financial responsibilities! Just steal from your family and neighbors and hustle your friends to get ahead in life. Grind all day long on that no dose and coffee. Just do not flip bricks to get ahead, which will actually make a lot of money and is risky, because the feds might catch you at the dock with a flock of snow. Then you will be looking 40 in the 740. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The petty personal interests of youth—“making it,” finding a place for oneself—preserve throughout life. The honesty of this generation of students causes them to laugh when asked to act as though they were powerful agents in World history. They know the truth that in democratic societies, each citizen is habitually busy with the contemplation of a very petty object, which is oneself, a contemplation now intensified by a greater indifference to the past and the loss of a national view of the future. The only common project engaging the youthful imagination is the exploration of space, which everyone knows to be empty. The resulting inevitable individualism, endemic to our regime, has been reinforced by another unintended and unexpected development, the decline of the family, which was the intermediary between individual and society, providing quasi-natural attachments beyond the individual that gave men and women unqualified concern for at least some others and created an entirely different relation to society from that which the isolated individual has. Parents, husbands, wives and children are hostages to the community. They palliate indifference to it and provide a material stake in its future. This is not quite instinctive love of country, but it is love of country for love of one’s own. It is the gentle form of patriotism, one that flows most easily out of self-interest, without the demand for much self-denial. The decay of the family means that community would require extreme self-abnegation in an era when there is no good reason for anything but self-indulgence. Apart from the fact that many students have experienced the divorce of their parents and are informed by statistic that there is a strong possibility of divorce in their futures, they hardly have an expectation that they will have to care for their parents or any other blood relatives, or that they will even see much of them as they grow older. With Social Security going bankrupt, people will probably choose to abort disabled fetuses because they cannot afford to take care of them, which is why so much money is being poured into gene editing. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Catholics have a lot to think about because it seems that there will be a day when social services become extinct, not only because of the corruption and data breaches by CBS, ABC, NBC, and every other media entity willing to oil the mayor, or governors palm to break the laws and micromanage an individual, while violating their rights, but because the money will no longer be there, in many cases from the harm inflicted by these special interests groups which drive of costs and injure vulnerable citizens. And who knows what is going to happen to old people and their children when they did not invest in private retirement and medical care and their own families do not have the financial support, or are unwilling and unable to let them into their own homes to live. Perhaps the mental hospitals will start to flourish to take care of the poor and disabled and elderly before there were taxes and Social Security. That is why so many are advocating anti-racism, reading, writing, and education. Life is not going to be like it was. Spiritually, the family is pretty empty, anyway, and new objects fill their field of vision as the old ones fade. American geography plays a role in this separation. This is not as large of a country as it was in the 1950s and 1960s, and people are very mobile, particularly since 2000 and the expansion of air travel and public transportation. Practically no student knows where one is going to live when one has completed one’s education. Very likely it will be far away from their parents and their birthplace. Mexico is actually pretty expensive when it comes to real estate. They may have to move to Cambodia. Even if the same fundamental cultural winds are blowing, in Canada and France, by contrast, the same fundamental cultural winds are blowing, people have no place to go. The United States of America may have to make new laws that allow the disabled and those on welfare to move to another country where they can actually afford to rent a home so they can have stability. Low-income and middle-income Americas might just be placeholders for immigrants who need asylum and rich immigrants. When a place is needed, they will start sending you to jail or making you flee your own country. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
For an English-speaking Canadian born in Toronto there is, practically speaking, only Vancouver as an attractive alternative, and for a Parisian there is no alternative whatsoever. The unlimited, or dissolving, horizon, which is the hallmark of our age, is in these places somewhat less visible. People are not really more rooted in them, but they are stuck. Hence they continue to see their relatives and all the people they grew up with. Their landscape is unchanging. However, a young American really begins all over again, and everything is open. One can live in the North, South, East or West, in the city, the suburbs, or the country—as long as you are a professional or have a high income. There are arguments for each, and one is absolutely unconstrained in one’s choice. The accidents of where one finds a job and of variable inclinations are likely to take one far away from all one has been connected with, and one is psychically prepared for this. One’s investments in one’s past and those who peopled it are necessarily limited. This indeterminate or open-ended future and the lack of a binding past mean that the souls of young people are in a condition like that of the first men in the state of nature—spiritually unclad, unconnected, isolated, with no inherited or unconditional connection with anything or anyone. They can be anything they want to be, but they have no particular reason to want to be anything in particular. Not only are they free to decide their place, but they are also free to decide whether they will believe in God or be atheists, or leave their options open by being agnostic; whether they will be heterosexual or homosexual, or, again, keep their options open; whether they will marry and whether they will stay married; whether they will have children—and so on endlessly. There is no necessity, no morality, no social pressure, no sacrifice to be made that militates going in or turning away from any of these directions, and there are desires pointing toward each, with mutually contradictory arguments to buttress them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
The young are exaggerated various of Plato’s description of the young in democracies: [The democratic youth] lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to one, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending one’s time as though one were occupied with philosophy. Often one engages in politics and, jumping up, says and does whatever chances to come to one; and if one admires any soldiers, one turns in that direction; and if it is moneymakers, in that one, and there is neither order nor necessity in one’s life, but calling it sweet, free and blessed, one follows it throughout.] Why are we surprised that such unfurnished person should be preoccupied principally with themselves and with findings means to avoid permanent free fall? No wonder that the one novel that remains continuously popular with students is Camus’s The Stranger. That is also why the popular films starring Josh Hartnett The Faculty, O, and Pearl Harbor remain so relevant. It is essential for the intelligent performances of forbidden deeds to keep them under your hat and not have too many accomplices. However, then, how can we know how many gifted kids are performing how man misdemeanors? And would it not be better for less affluent and middle-class delinquents, who have committed non-violent crimes, and petty theft not end up in juvenile hall, or reform schools but in military academies and other schools that promise “to make a man of your boy.” From this point of view, it must be said that the essential property of juvenile delinquency as defined is: such personality and behavior as guarantee getting caught, punished, and tabulated. I do not think that this property is a tautology: it has important content that distinguishes the delinquency of doing-the-forbidden-and-defiant from the delinquency to-get-caught. Getting caught is guaranteed by: compulsive repetition of a behaviour because it is not really giving satisfaction. This tends to allay the alertness and prudence of the routine tries, as well as to multiply the chances of being caught. And it leads to: Raising the ante, in order to force feeling. This must result in disaster. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Conversely, in place of mischief or the attraction of the forbidden or rebelliousness or even malice, the caught delinquent exhibits a profound fatalism, indicating an unconscious need to be saved from his compulsive round or not worthwhile experience and brought back into the “meaningful” structure of authority and punishment. It looks as though the caught delinquent has done the forbidden and defiant deed in order to tease and provoke the authority, to compel his attention. Psychologically, then, though he thinks and operates on his own, he is not “independent.” (Let it be mentioned the touching case of an English boy who stole a watch and then returned it, saying he had found it, “in order that somebody should say he was a good boy.” The next best thing is for somebody to say that one is a bad boy.) The gang is used as a structure for psychological support. However, running with the gang also guarantees getting caught, both because it is conspicuous and because its in-group concentration and habits soon get quite out of touch with the surrounding mores. Aping his friends, a lad forgets what safe behavior is, what ought to be concealed because people are outraged by it. A lad who is infinitely secretive and suspicious gives oneself away by his slouching, his clothes, and every word he utters. Also, they dare one another to excesses that each individual would avoid. Naturally this is all the worse with cultural people who are less affluent, who do not know the “right” behavior to begin with; exempli gratia, some body might be badly judged for behavior that to them is perfectly acceptable. We propose that these four guarantees of getting caught make juvenile delinquency an interesting cultural study. For it is: the powerless struggling for life within, not resigned from, an unacceptable World. At first inspection, this does not seem a promising lesson. However, on reflection, we see that this fatalism is a deeply religious position, bit far from what Dostoevski was tying to tell us. Many of his characters are adult delinquent culture a powerful thought and poetry. The fatalism of juvenile delinquency is a kind of adolescent religious crisis, with a religious passion and content, whereas the conventional religion is empty. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
On the streets, they feel worthless-and-abandoned; in the reformatory, they are accepted back home. This fatalism in the face of the overwhelming and unacceptable is a commentary on the poignant remark of the criminologist: “It must be confessed that it is much easier and hence more “practical” to deal with superficial symptomatic behavior or its immediately observable causes than to strive to cut the deeper roots of delinquency. When those deeper roots are made evident, however, we have to ask ourselves how deep we wish to go in the attack on crime. Are we willing, for example, to sacrifice many of our material satisfactions or to give up our racial prejudices?” reports Donald Taft. The process of going insane begins long before it is detected. It often starts when life is moved from nature into cities. One’s ride from the woods to city is a ride from connection to disconnection, from reality to abstraction, a history of technology, setting the conditions for the imposition of reconstructed realties by a single powerful force. The central technique of oppression is the absolute control of all kinds of information. Perhaps George Orwell’s 1984, was actually a metaphor for what happens when the Internet replaces books and people stop books, but only get information from the web. It will cause hundreds and thousands of years of real knowledge to be destroyed as if by fire. That will lead to a suffocatingly narrow language, Newspeak, which has no vocabulary other than “crazy,” or “unbelievable,” to express ideas and human feelings, and without expression, they begin to atrophy. The danger of a digital society is anything can be altered at any time, and it would take a highly paid lawyer to discover that. Essentially, everything a person says or was guaranteed will become a conflict of opinions with the corporation or government being the authority, which then becomes nearly impossible to dispute because you have no paper record. Many already see this happening, the new on TV today, directly contradicts the news of a month ago. Since it is impossible to prove this contradiction, because democracy no longer exists, it is pointless to try. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
Already, people are being told to focus on their own satisfaction and limit their need to those that could be conveniently satisfied by the social engineers. This precludes discontent. However, it is true that in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. We already see that to many, human feelings and any wilderness experience are complicated and unwieldy, and that is what makes them dangerous to those who do not support democracy. So that is the reason society is producing people ridiculing and eliminating all experiences that make people feel kind and human. Natural experience is being replaced with nonhuman realities. When the TV news media is able to control your mind and whatever research you obtain and tell you what reality is, they are effectively leaving society deprived for their senses, appropriately confused and receptive, and the TV can speak directly into them without interference. The people who are spoken to are precondition to accept what they hear. Technology plays a critical role in this process because it creates standardized arbitrary forms of physical and mental confinement. Television is the ideal tool for such purposes because it both confines experience and implants simple, clear idea. Seen in this way, a new fact emerges. Autocracy need not come in the form of a person at all, or even as an articulated ideology or conscious conspiracy. The autocracy can exist in the technology itself. The technology can produce its own subordinated society, as though it were alive. The TV, TV News Media, and Internet could be the anti-Christ, depending on how you use it. The whole problem with news on television comes down to this: all the words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on one page of a newspaper. And the World cannot be understood in one page. Of course, there is a good deal of truth in this. However, the language of pictures differs radically from oral and written language, and the differences are crucial for understanding television news. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
To begin with, the grammar of pictures is weak in communicating past-ness and present-ness. When terrorists want to prove to the World that their kidnap victims are still alive, they photograph them holding a copy of a recent newspaper (which does not really mean anything with all the technology we now have). The dateline on the newspaper was supposed to provide the proof that the photograph was taken on or after that date. Without the help of the written word, film and videotape cannot portray temporal dimensions with any precision. Consider a film clip showing an aircraft carrier at sea. One might be able to identify the ship as Russian or American, but there would be no way of telling where in the World the carrier was, where it was headed, or when the pictures were taken. It is only through language—words spoken over the pictures or reproduced in them—that the image of the aircraft carrier takes on meaning as a portrayal of a specific event. Still, it is possible to enjoy the image of the carrier for its own sake. One might find the hugeness of the vessel interesting; it signifies military power on the move. There is a certain drama in watching the planes come in at high speeds and skid to a stop on the deck. Supposed the ship where burning: that would be even more interesting. This leads to a second point about the language of pictures. The grammar of moving pictures favors images that change. That is why violence and destruction find their way onto the television so often. When something is destroyed violently its constitution is altered in a highly visible way: hence the entrancing power of fire. Fire gives visual form to the ideas of consumption, disappearance, death—the thing which is burned is actually taken away by fire. It is at this very basic level that fires make a good subject for television news. Something was here, now it is gone, and the change is recorded on film. #RandolphHarrs 17 of 25
Earthquakes and typhoons have the same power: before the viewers eyes in the World is take apart. If a television viewer has relatives in Tokyo, Japan, and an Earthquake occurs there, then one may take an interest in the images of destruction as a report from a specific place and time. That is, one may look to television news for information about an important event. However, if the viewer cares nothing about the event itself, film of an Earthquake can still be interesting. Which is only to say that there is another way of participating in the news—as a spectator who desires to be entertained. Actually to see buildings topple is exciting, no matter where the buildings are. The World turns to dust before our eyes. Those who produce television news in America know that their medium favors images that move. That is why they despise “talking heads,” people who simply appear in front of a camera and speak. That is why the news is into making fake new. They track and terrorize certain people so they can produce a saga that gets rating, people emotional, and can sell books and movies and prefilmed interviews to go with their manipulating “breaking news.” The news really is broken and, in some cases, a criminal business. When talking heads appear on television, there is nothing to record or document, no change in process. On a movie screen, close-ups of a good actor speaking dramatically can be sometimes interesting to watch. When Josh Hartnett narrows his eyes and challenges his rival to shoot first, the spectator sees the cool rage of the Hartnett character take visual form, and the narrowing of the eyes is dramatic. However, much of the effect of this small movement depends on the size of the movie screen and the darkness of the theater, which makes Hartnett and his every action “Larger than life.” The television screen is smaller than life. It occupies about 15 percent of the viewer’s visual field (compared to about 70 percent of the movie screen). It is not set in a darkened theater closed off from the World but in the viewers ordinary living space. This means that visual changes must be more extreme and more dramatic to be interesting on television. A narrowing of the eyes will not do. A car crash, an Earthquake, a burning factory, or someone who is out of their mind and on a rampage are much better. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
That is why TV news media like to terrorize people. They have low budgets, and typically it does not cost much to drive a person insane, record it and make millions off of the footage, like the shooting in Florida, Dylan Strom Roof, or Elliot Rodger. It is possible that these were good boys the media terrorized to get them to lose their minds, so they could make profits. “If it bleeds, it leads.” I am surprised there has been no federal investigation into the TV news media’s ethics. No required ratings. No statements that about it not necessarily being factual, but is a source of entertainment. In 1737, Philip V of Spain suffered from such relentless and chronic depression that his wife, Elisabeth Farnese, feared he would die. To stave off death, she engaged the superb opera singer Carlo Broschi, known only as Farinelli, to enchant her melancholy husband. Each night, the Italian would sing four songs and Philip would listen, entranced. Perhaps because of this, Philip survived another nine years. What manner of music was it that could save a life? Imagine a voice as sweet as a flute and with tones as subtle as the human larynx can produce, a voice that soars upward through the air “like a lark…intoxicated with its own flight.” Imagine a voice that transforms emotion into sound as glorious as a soul rising upward with it, clinging to its wings. Imagine, finally, “a clam, sweet, solemn, and sonorous musical language” that leaves its audience thunderstruck, transported into ecstasy by the power and grace of the most splendid music under the Heavens. This was the soprano or contralto voice that combined the power of the male lungs and physical bulk with a woman’s high, sweet range. This was the voice of a castrato, a gelded boy grown into manhood after years of intensive opera training in the finest conservatories. This jeweled musical miracle did not, however, come cheap, even for the castrati who enjoyed splendid careers in the opera. The cost included a slew of boys killed by botched surgeries explained away as accidents and even more live boys ruined for normal life but equally unsuited for opera. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
These pitiful rejects, whose talents failed to meet the rigorous standard of operatic maestors and demanding audiences, were cast aside to live as they could, sexually mutilated and untrained for any trade. The few truly successful castrati, however, were catapulted from ordinariness to glorious achievement, endless adulation, and careers replete with personal and professional satisfaction, material wealth, and secure retirements. Farinelli, perhaps the greatest of all, epitomized the triumphant consequences that genital surgery could coax out of natural musical brilliance. “One God, one Farinelli!” groaned a fashionable admirer, unwittingly coining her hero’s most memorable epitaph. The origins of the castrati are so hazy, but the cause is not—the prohibition against women singing in church and appearing onstage. Until the fifteenth century, high-voiced boys had substituted. The Spaniards devised a way of singing that forced light male voices into trilling warbles that strained vocal cords but produced femalelike sounds. These “falsettists” performed the new a cappella compositions that became wildly popular in the mid-fifteenth century and created greater expectations in musical range and timbre. By 1600, castrati began to appear, and in considerable numbers. (Some speculate that earlier falsettists had actually been disguised castrati. This is plausible but unprovable.) In 1599, the first castrati were admitted into the Vatican Church choir, despite the official Church ban on castration. In the seventeenth century came the invention of Italian opera, a popular, quasi-international style of entertainment that required contingents of singer with the voice of angels, but to me, many of the sound like ghosts. Since women were still banned from the stage, castrati were the perfect solution. Indeed, until the late eighteenth century, Italian opera and castrati were indistinguishable concepts, and 70 percent of male opera singers were castrati. In the eighteenth century, castrato Filippo Balatri composed a witty and poetic account of his life as a revered soprano. Balatri’s was an ironic commentary tinged by bitterness about his fate and was the first public revelation about the life castrati were compelled to lead. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
By the nineteenth century, Balatri’s keen sense of the indignity of his castration was seeping into the collective conscience of opera lovers. Choirmasters and guilty parents began to lie about how perpetual make sopranos in their charge had been created: “A pig attacked and injured his privates, necessitating the operation” was a typical explanation. Eventually, after two hundred entrancing years, it ended. Opera no longer demanded gelding, though the Vatican chapel and other Roman choirs continued to employ castrati especially maimed for the purpose. The last known castrato was Alessandro Moreschi, who made recordings as late as 1903 and performed in the Sistine Chapel until 1913. Most castrati (but not Farinelli) were poor boys whose parents aspired to greater things. The first stage was a visit to a conservatory for a voice evaluation. A positive response gave the nod to castration, and the parents rushed to make private arrangements. Doctors specializing in the illegal operation were centered in Bologna. The child was drugged with opium or another narcotic and seated in a tub of very hot water until he was nearly unconscious. Then the surgeon pared off the ducts leading to the testicles, which later shriveled and dried up. Surviving patients were admitted to music conservatories, where they studied for up to ten years. Because they were considered delicate, they were given better food and warmer rooms than sexually unmutilated music students, and their health was carefully monitored. However, many hated the school and ran away. Others, though sopranos, proved to have indifferent voices. The real problem was probably the intensity and quantity of the work: six hours daily of lessons, plus additional hours of harpsichord practice and music composition. Somewhere between the ages of fifteen and twenty, after he had passed a series of tests, the successful castrato made his operatic debut—as a woman. His immaturity, slightly effeminate physique, and wondrous voice earned him instant adoration. Fans mobbed him, and both ladies and gentlemen fell in love with him. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Casanova, for example, described his first impression of a certain castrato: “In a well-made corset, he had the waist of a nymph, and, what was almost incredible, his breast was in no way inferior, either in form or in beauty, to any woman’s; and it was above all by this means that the monster made such ravages.” Furthermore, castrati were superbly trained and musically knowledgeable. Nonetheless, some did not make the grade and were relegated to touring provincial opera houses. However, do not get it twisted, most castrati were boy or men and dressed as boy or men, but had the voice of a little boy, or sometimes the voices of six-year-old boys with an echo of death and just a pinch of man. There was a soft voice, that sounded hallow, with a male undertone. Despite star status, castrati faced considerable resentment, even hatred. Jealous colleagues and the general public disdained their neutered state, accused them of luring other men into homosexuality, and detested their arrogance and conceit because many of them did not seem to age nor gain weight. Yet many castrati were famous paramours with legions of female followers eager to make love with a man who could not impregnate her and curious to see what their famous, much discussed genitalia looked like. All this attention, of course, did not improve the castrati’s image with fully sexed men. From the castrati’s own perspective, these sexual conquests were bittersweet, for they were forbidden by law to marry, and at least one died brokenhearted because of this ban. What about celibate castrati? They were rare indeed, though the brilliant Farinelli was likely chaste, perhaps because of shame. Castrator Filippo Balarti, too, opted for celibacy. He feared a woman would soon find him sexually inadequate and tire of him, and he explained in his own ironic words why he never married: “By the grace of God, by my industry, and thanks to surgeon Accoramboni of Lucca, I never took a wife, who after loving me for a little would have started screaming at me.” #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Balatri also specified in his will that his corpse was not to be bathed in the customary way, “not only for the indecency I see in it but because I do not want them to amuse themselves by examining me, to see how sopranos are made.” The operatic castrati were a unique kind of eunuch. Unlike the Chinese Ottoman, and some Byzantine eunuchs and the true hijras, they were seldom celibate, and chastity was never mentioned as one of their qualities. What mattered was the timbre, range, and power of their voices, not their lives outside the opera house. Though they were often scored for their incompleteness and, like all eunuchs, legally proscribed from marrying because of their inability to procreate, most were as sexually active as other men. Nonetheless, they belong in this account of castrated celibacy because of their great fame. In fact, the castrati are proof par excellence that unless castration is so severe that is kills the sexual drive, its victims seldom voluntarily opt to abstain from whatever sort of sexual relations their mutilated condition permits. Even then, there must be a combination of important rewards to maintain celibacy and strong disincentives for violating it. If they were not indulge, most castrati, partial castrates with little motivation to remain chaste and no punishment, in about the same measure as other male entertainers with retinues of adoring and available women (and a few men). Science is different from all the other trust-test criteria. It is the only one that itself depends on rigorous testing. Yet of all these various criteria, science is probably the one we least rely on in our daily lives. We do not, as a rule, choose a puppy because he passes some scientific test; we just fall in love with him. We do not perform lab tests to decide what movie to watch. Or what friends to make. Among all our daily personal—and business—decisions, those that are made scientifically are no more than a trace element. Yet among the six truth criteria, none in recent centuries has had a greater impact on wealth. And one, as we will see, is more endangered. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
Science is not a collection of facts. It is a process—often messy and non-sequential—for testing ideas. The ideas must be testable, at least in principle, and, some would add, falsifiable. The tests involve observation and experiment. Results must be reproducible. Knowledge that has not met these tests is not scientific. Even the most persuasive scientific findings are, therefore, held to be incomplete and tentative—always subject to further investigation, revision and dismissal in the light of new scientifically tested discoveries. This make science the only one of the six truth filters that is inherently opposed to fanaticism of any kind, religious, political, nationalist, racist or otherwise. It is fanatic certainty that breeds persecution, terrorism, inquisition, suicide bombings and other atrocities. And it is fanatic certainty that science replaces with a recognition that even the most entrenched scientific findings are at the best partial or temporary truths and hence uncertain. This idea—that every scientific finding could and should be improved or thrown out—puts science in a class by itself. Thus among all the other main truth filters, whether consensus, consistency, authority, revelation or durability, only science is self-correcting. While the other five criteria have been in use since the beginnings of time and reflect the static or change-resistant character of agrarian societies, science swung the door wide open to change. The pursuit of scientific inquires was by no means always a well-coordinated, disciplined activity, with a clear and share sense of method…Science was still sorting out what the activity really involved, and there were many competing methods, theories and systems in almost all areas, right on down through the eighteenth and even early-nineteenth centuries. There is a heated debate as to whether America is more advanced from China when it comes to science. Many people think America is not because much of their technology is out of date, they are borrowing money from China and sending their jobs to China. It makes the people in China think there is something wrong with Americans mentally because that equation seems irrational. Why can they not do their own work when they have the technology? Globalization also has suppressed minimum wage which should be hovering around $30 an hour by now. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
Only gradually, then, did the elements of empirical observation, experiment, quantification, dissemination of result, replication or disconfirmation, come together, along with randomized blind controls and other techniques so widely used today. The invention of scientific method was the gift to humanity of a new truth filter or test, a powerful meta-tool for probing the unknown and—it turned out—for spurring technological change and economic progress. As we have noted, among all the decisions made in the economy on any given day, only a minute amount can be said to have been made scientifically. Yet that tiniest trace has transformed the World’s capacity to make and expand wealth. If we let it–it will continue to do so in the future. Continue to labor, and make sweet floods to run and noble and abundant fruits to spring. Take this food and drink and carry it to Go as your true worship. You body is one with the Earth. God will put His spirit within us, and cause us to talk in His statutes, and we shall keep His ordinances and do them. For His ordinances which He commands us are not too difficult for us, neither are they far off. His laws are not high in the Heavens that we should say, “Who shall go up and bring them down?” Neither are they beyond the sea that we should say, “Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring them unto us, that we may hear them and do them?” Neither are they beyond the sea that we should day, “Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring them unto us, that we may hear them and do them?” Behold, God’s ordinances are nigh unto us, in our very heart that we may do them. The day will come when God will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the land, and He will make all to lie down safely, and all people shall know God, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, and all shall be His people, and God will be our God. “A happy heart is good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing, but a broken spirit dries up the bones. A wicked man receives a bribed out of the bosom (pocket) to pervert the ways of justice,” reports Proverbs 17.22-23. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Cresleigh Homes
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 