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The Feeling of Being Watched and Impending Danger Gradually Increased
Shortly before nine o’ clock, a butler, dressed in an azure tailcoat and navy-blue breeches, escorted Me to my estate. A coldly sumptuous hall, it was the first point of entry to the 600-room mansion. Rows of muskets, taller than a man, and hundreds of swords, their blades sharp-edged and glinting lined its walls. From the vaulted ceiling hung several beautiful chandeliers. Directly in front of them, a magnificent staircase swept to the state rooms on the upper floors; and yet, as the butler led me across the hall, he veered to the right, heading for its farther corner. There, he ushered me through a discreet swing door. We had stepped into the “invisible World.” Behind the secret door, the entire ground floor was devoted to privacy. A magnificent hinterland of fifty rooms, some cavernous, some no larger than a closet, it was where many of the servant lived and worked. From here, a network of passages coursed through the mansion: hidden routes, which spiraled up the narrow turrets and towers to the splendid rooms above, enabling the servants to carry out their duties unobserved. One might ask, why was I touring the part of my home? It was through this labyrinth of passages, deep in the servants quarters, where the rooms were subjects of wild speculations, fueled by servants’ fears that someone had come back from the dead. It seems a few of the servants had been thinking of ways to make money. One of the servants, Olov told Stellan about a plan to end their money troubles. The scheme was simple. Each of the men would take a life insurance policy out of another one of the servants, twenty-year-old Leif Titus. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
They would say that they had helped raise and support Leif in his life and were looking for reimbursement for their help upon his death. There was nothing illegal about that. Then they would wait awhile before killing Leif, collect on the policies, and all of their money troubles would be over. Stellan asked who would kill Leif. “That’s the beauty of it,” Olov told his friend. “We each kick in a percentage of the policy money to pay an assassin so none of us has to do the killing.” Stellan was quiet for a moment, and then he nodded. They could get someone at the tavern to do it. Olov arranged for a meeting with Duke. They worked it all out the details of the murder plot and agreed to execute the plan. The other men paid Duke $400 to arrange and carry out the murder. This was a lot of money, so Duke agree to do the deed. June 6, 1890, was just another day to Leif Titus as he went about his work on the estate. He was not surprised when Olov told them that their friend Duke had come by to see if he might want to go for a drink later that evening. The two men had hung out at the tavern from time to time, so he readily accepted the invitation. The two men set off after work. It was after dark and Leif and Duke rode horse back to the tavern. However, before getting their Duke fired his rifle, Leif horse was scared, threw him from the saddle. He fell off the horse, hitting his head on the cobble stones and his life had been snuffed out for $9,000 in life insurance policies. It was the perfect crime, or so it seemed to the men. They said that Leif fell off his horse and died on the way back from the tavern. And they seemed to have gotten away with it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Saturday night, Olov arrived back to my estate, and went to his room to lie down on his bed. He had not been there long when he heard noises. As he was just involved in a plot that robbed another man of his life, he became quite nervous. That night, there were doors opening and closing, footsteps of unseen guests. As he got up to go investigate, Olov felt a strange touch at his back; then a tug; then he felt the back of his sweater pulled several inches away from his back. He turned to look over his shoulder and wondered how, without moving, he could have hooked his sweater on something. However, there was nothing upon which his sweater could have been stuck. Just then he saw Stellan, eyes wide with astonishment. He blurted out to Olov, “I just saw the back of your sweater pull out all by itself!” Later the following evening Olov was closing up the mansion for the night, at about 9.00 P.M. Like all Victorian homes, “The House Built by Spirits” has its share of creaks and groans. Creaks and groans are one thing—but witnessing something supernatural is another thing entirely. He was turning out the lights. The house, as the light are slowly being extinguished, does have a certain “feeling” to it: as it grows dark, one gets the inkling that one need to hurry, that someone—or something—cannot wait for you to leave so that they may get on with their existence—if that is what one could call it—in peace. Moving from the parlor to the morning room, he casually looked into the darkened stairwell. His eye was caught by the manifestation of a spectral being. A strange man with long hair appeared in the morning room. Olov mistake this spectral man for a servant. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
When he realized his mistake, Olov hurried forward to see who the person was. As he watched the figure, the long-haired man moved out of the morning room, he followed him. Just as the icy fingers of fear had begun to trace a slow, deliberate path up the length of his spine, the figure floated the through the mahogany wall and disappeared. Stellan arrived to find Olov in a near state of panic. While in the servants’ quarters, he had been sitting in a chair with his back to the door. He heard the door open and close and the sound of footsteps enter the house and approach the spot directly behind his chair. Imagine the horror when he turned around and saw a misty figure take the form of a tall man all in gray. The ghost, wearing a tattered Revolutionary War uniform, looked unkempt with long hair and a grizzled appearance. Olov screamed, but it was only second before the specter faded away. When Stellan reached him, his was quivering and inconsolable. Stellan then figure it would be a good idea for the two men to quit their jobs and move north. After all, they now had the money to do so, they were rich. On that evening, Olov wandered into a dark and deserted section of the mansion. This was the most active area of the mansion and too dangerous to inhabit. The stairway to the attic was narrow and winding. Suddenly a shrill scream came from the attic. Stellan ran to the fourth floor where Olov was discovered lying on the floor, stabbed through the heart. He was dead. Stellan figured the men had been hexed, and he would be the next one to die. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Stellan went into a secret room under one of the kitchens through a trap door—a secret room that house Mrs. Winchester’s magic. He was looking for her book of spells in the secret room. However, there was someone in that room, perhaps waiting for a century or more, for someone to open the trap door. Walking through the small, arched doorway, the room was furnished and there were antique carpets near the alter. He heard music and instruments. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure of a small woman, seemingly cloaked in a long, dark, flowing dress with a wide-brimmed, black hat, standing in the corner. He stood for a brief moment, seeing her out of the side vision, afraid to look directly at her, since he realized that entities can sometimes only be seen through peripheral vision. Indeed, when he turned to confront the dark lady, he was struck on the head with a piece of stove wood, killing him. The story of a mysterious man in the servants quarters had spread throughout the estate, as we were touring the room that belonged to Leif, we herd the sounds of horses hooves and whips. Then sudden sound heralded the appearance of a bright figure we immediately recognized of Leif. He told us how he had died and how his poor mother was near a breakdown; after someone had dug up bushes in her yard, she took it as a sign that Leif’s body would also be dug up. He had him exhumed and reburied in the flower bed outside her house. Here she piled a huge mound of stones over his grave. Vowing to get revenge, she would sit up nights watching for grave robbers and crying for her lost son, until she died from a broken heart. And from beyond the grave, she had discovered who took the life of her son and returned the favor. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Through the years the servants on occasion have hear Olov’s shrill last crimes repeated over and over again. The antique carpets in the secret alter room were cleaned, but the bloodstain frequently reappears. One of the servants mentioned that he saw an injured man, blood, and a woman in a dark dress in the alter room, leaning up against the walls, exhausted, dirty, bloody, smelling like sweat and fear. After hearing the specter’s story, I was trembling. I said nothing for a second or two, trying to find the words. Nothing ever came to mind. It is when things are busiest in their dwelling-places that the spirits are most active. Already disposed once out of their bodies, they react when they are again dispossessed of their homes. There was a great deal of strong, negative energy coming from this particular corner of the room. From the moment on, I closed off this section of the house and had Mr. Hansen build Victorian cottages for the servants to live in and increased their pay three times more than the going rate. The servants were good and faithful people. Perhaps these ghosts and restless spirits return to remind mortals of the evil that can be done in the name of good. Many people whisper that no one can make it through this area of the mansion. It is said that strange fear grips people as they approach the servant’s wing. As they pass through the threshold, they feel that they should turn back. A feeling of being watched and of impending danger gradually rises as they wander deeper and deeper into this wing. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
O thou great and powerful King AMAYMON, who rulest by the power of the Supreme God El, over all Spirits, superior and inferior, but especially over the Infernal Order in the Dominion of the East, I invoke and command thee by the particular and true Name of God, and by the God whom thou dost worship, by the Seal of thy creation, by the most mighty and powerful Name of God TETRAGRAMMATION, who cast thee out of Heaven with the rest of the Infernal Spirits, by all the other potent and great names of God, Creator of Heaven, Earth, and Hell, of all contained therein, by their powers and virtues, and by the Name PRIMEMATUM, which commands the whole host of Heaven. Do thou force and compel the Spirit ADONAI, king of Kings here before this circle, in a fair and comely shape, without injury to myself or to any creature, that he may tide and time receive our wish, and grant us new beginnings so that we may accomplish our desires, whatsoever the be, provided that it is proper to his office, by the power of God, EL, who hath created and doth dispose of all things, celestial, aerial, terrestrial, and infernal. ASTRACHIOS, ASACH, ASARCA, ABEDUMABAL, SLLAT, ANABOTAS, JESUBLIN, SCIOIN, DOMOL, Lord God, who dwellest above the Heavens, whose glance searchest the abyss; grant us, we pray Thee, the power to conceieve in our minds and to execute that which we desire to do, the end of which we would attain by Thy help, O God Almighty, who livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
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Many False Opinion May be Exchanged for True Ones
I have learned from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the result. The American public, for example, are quite as raw and undiscerning on subjects of political economy since the nation has been converted to free-trade, as they were before; and are still further from having acquired better habits of thought or feeling, or being in any way better fortified against error, on subjects of a more elevated character. For, though they have thrown off certain errors, the general discipline of their minds, intellectually and morally, is not alerted. I am now convinced, that no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought. Unfortunately, our country’s ardent commitment to capitalism and the accumulation of wealth comes with a downside: Faced with the pressing need to obtain and expend monetary resources, untold scores of people simple take from their fellow citizens as a means of getting what they want. It is widely accepted that crimes against property account for the vast majority of criminal victimizations that occur annually in this country. However, these offenses tend to remain in the background of our discussions of crime, as society is much more concerned with the documentation and prevention of violent crime. This means that one must traverse a fragmented empirical and conceptual landscape when trying to piece together the nature and dynamics of what constitutes common property crime. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
When it comes to shear incidence and law enforcement workload allocation, common property crimes collectively constitute a most menacing foe. Turning to the limited list of eight Part I index crimes, we see that property offenses (burglary, arson, larceny/theft, and motor vehicle theft) accounted for 88 percent of all offenses known to the police in 2022. That translated to an official property crimes rate of 3,656 per 100,000 persons. These four offenses generated 1.6 million arrests in 2022, but this is only part of the picture. Several noteworthy forms of property crime are included on the supplemental list of Part II index offenses, namely, fraud, forgery and counterfeiting, embezzlement, receiving stolen property, and vandalism. When these offenses are added to the mix, we see that more than 2.5 million arrests for crimes against property occur each year in this country. One could legitimately include, a long list of offense when trying to frame a discussion of what constitutes “common” property crime. The list might include such offenses as burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, fraud, forgery and counterfeiting, embezzlement, receiving stolen property, and vandalism. Given its unique status as a “crime of intrusion,” burglary had been allocated its own separate discussion. Even with this significant paring, a full treatment of the remaining laundry list of property crimes is far beyond the scope of this report. Luckily, this sort of comprehensive discussion is not necessary because the similarities between these crimes far outweigh the differences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
In the tradition of the typologies approach, we will use the single conceptual category that is termed common property crime. These two offenses were chosen for several reasons. First, they are among the most recognizable and pure forms of crimes against property. Second, their status as Part I index crimes means that comprehensive data are readily available on each. These two offenses comprise roughly 80 percent of known Part I property crimes each year and more than 50 percent of all Part I and II property crime arrests that are effected each year. The crime of larceny is steeped in a rich legal history. In common law times, the larceny statue was comprised of five essential parts: (1) an act of wrongful taking; (2) an act of carrying away; (3) a piece of property; (4) a rightful owner; and (5) the intent to permanently deprive the owner of possession. As the nature of property and property relationships grew more complicates, so too did the larceny statue. In particular, the courts had to grapple with such complex issues as ownership versus possession, misappropriations that occur while a property owner has voluntarily relinquished possession to another for shipping or safekeeping, and what exactly constitutes “property.” The result was the gradual emergence of a flexible and more amorphous legal definition of larceny that incorporates all acts of wrongful property misappropriation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Today, most jurisdictions follow the direct of the Model Penal Code and rely upon a consolidated larceny-theft statue. For example, the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) defines larceny-theft as any “unlawful taking, carrying, leading, or riding away of property from the possession or constructive possession of another.” Note that this definition effectively incorporates all forms of property theft under a single heading, regardless of the means or motivations that lay behind the act. There are two important caveats that accompany the UCR’s consolidated definition of larceny-theft. First, it does not apply to the theft of a motor vehicle. In particular, the theft or attempted theft of a self-propelled vehicle (id est, any nonmanual, nonrailrunning vehicle including cars, trucks, motorboats, construction equipment, airplane, or farming equipment) is in its own category named motor vehicle theft. Second, the UCR’s consolidated definition does not apply to acts of theft or conversion that are accomplished by “false pretenses” (id est, fraud), those thefts committed during the course of a contractual or work relationship (id est, embezzlement), or other legal contexts that would allow for the act to be categorized under the heading of specialized form of property crime. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) collapses all form of theft by taking, regardless of their manifestations (id est, by stealth or deceit) into one generic category—theft. Motor vehicle theft is afforded a separate offense designation. The NCVS classifies all nonviolent thefts from the body of a person under the heading of purse snatching or pocket picking. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Approximately 14,135,090 thefts, 1,008,720 motor vehicle thefts, and 188,370 purse snatchings/pocket pickings occurred in 2022. Combined, generic thefts, motor vehicle thefts, and purse snatchings/pocket pickings accounted from almost two-thirds of the overall victimization tall from 2022. Because crimes rates are so high and homeowners want more security than stationary cameras, within the next decade, it is predicted that homeowners will be able to purchase a noninvasive form of a satellite, probably smaller than a golf ball, which will blend in with the environment, that will hover over their homes and give them an aerial view of their property, and will detect body temperature and have infrared sensors that will allow homeowners to detect if there is an intruder hiding on their property, as thieves are becoming more and more stealth due to all of the modern technology. Nonetheless, the raw property crime numbers produce some lofty victimization rates. For example, the 2022 theft rate was reported at 129 per 1,000 persons or households. This is more than 4 times higher than the rate of any other type of crime that is tracked by the NCVS (burglary is second with a rate of 28.7 per 1,000). The rate of 9.2 motor vehicle thefts per 1,000 persons or households was also among the highest crime-specific victimization rates that year. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The public is hesitant to report most property crimes to the police. This trend is illustrated by the reporting rates of 30.1 percent and 35.2 percent that are observed for the larceny-theft and purse snatchings/pocket pickings offenses in the 2022 NCVS. Debriefings indicate that victims see little benefit from reporting property crimes, as police are thought to be too busy to attend to such minor crimes, thus making the recovery of their lost property unlikely. Motor vehicle theft stands as a glaring exception to the rule. In 2022, 82 percent of all automotive vehicle theft victims reported the incident to the police. No other form of crime surpasses the 66 percent reporting level. This inordinately high reporting rate is drive primarily by insurance regulations that require victims to file police reports prior to having their automobiles replaced or repaired. In the aggregate, common property crimes generate a sizable price tag. Conventional victimization reports set the property losses due to larceny-thefts round $5.5 billion annually, with an average loss per incident of roughly $500. However, it is important to note that crimes against institutional or corporate entities are beyond the scope of the NCVS. This results in the exclusion of sizeable numbers of shoplifting, employee theft, and embezzlement offenses that are perpetrated against business. Shoplifting alone costs retailers an estimated $15 billion each year. In light of this oversight, it seems reasonable to conclude that the actual dollar loss from larceny-theft offenses is far larger than what is reported by the NCVS. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Equally disturbing dollar losses are attributed to motor vehicle theft. Victimization data suggest that the average auto theft victim experiences approximately $8,886 loss. There were an estimated 721,885 thefts of motor vehicles nationwide in 2019. The estimated rate of motor vehicle thefts was 219.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. More than $6.4 billion was lost nationwide to motor vehicle thefts. There appear to be no clear-cut regional disparities for common property crimes. Data from the Uniform Crime Reports shows that theft-larceny rates were highest in Texas, Florida, Arizona, New Mexico and Louisiana. West Virginia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and North Dakota were found to have the lowest theft-larceny rates that year. Shifting our attention to state-level rates of motor vehicle theft offending, we see that Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Washington, and Michigan were top of the 50-state list. Officials in New Hampshire, South Dakota, Wyoming, Maine, and Idaho reported the lowest rates of motor vehicle theft in 2022. Residents in densely populated, inner-city areas clearly experiences a higher risk of property crime victimization than do their counterparts who live in more sparsely populated outlying areas. The 2022 NCVS data reveal an inverse relationship in theft rates across urban, suburban, and rural locales (rates of 160.4, 123.9, and 101.6, respectively). A similar trend is observed in the 2022 motor vehicle theft victimization, where the rates in urban areas exceed those of suburban and rural areas. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Critics observe that motor vehicle theft rates appear to be more a function of automobile density (measured either in terms of cars per square mile or per capita automobile registrations) than population density. A city-level analysis of UCR data reveals tht New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Huston consistently rank among the top five most problematic locales in terms of larceny and motor vehicle theft rates. The larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft rates in the United States of America compare favorably to those reported by other developed countries. The United States of America experienced a larceny rate of 2,728.1 per 100,000 persons and an auto theft rate of 459.0 per 100,000. The official larceny and motor vehicle theft rates of our peer nations were as follows: England and Wales (3,460.2 and 753.0), Australia (3,033.7 and 706.2), France (2,527.5 and 546.1), Canada (2,431.0 and 547.10, Germany (2,406.3 and 137.4), Israel (2,149.0 and 694.1), Japan (1,198.1 and 28.4), and Spain (650.8 and 343.1). A guessing game of more than playful significance can be played among persons who have spent a few days sociably together, as in a series of parties or at a resort: one person attempts to describe the kinds of families from which the group members came, with no prior knowledge of their personal histories. The same is most successfully played when the group includes mainly young adults but some other and younger people. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Still, if the attitudes of the group members toward waiters or clerks can be observed, more clues can be secured. Hits or misses are determined by checking guesses against the facts, and score is kept by noting the correct guesses and comparing them with the record of other guessers, or with the results that might be obtained by chance alone. A practiced observer of normal sensitivity and adult experience can usually make a surprisingly large number of correct guesses. The kind of questions to which one can most frequently give accurate answers are these: Did the person have any brothers or sisters? Were these brothers or sisters older or young? Ho much was one loved by one’s mother? Father? (Another adult?) With which did one tend to identify more? Was one’s family close and demonstrative, or cold and distant? Were one’s parents young or old when one was born? Was one’s mother or father dominant, or were they equal in authority? Was either parent repeatedly cruel or arbitrary in disciplining one? Which parent was more influential in the person’s career choices? Were one’s parents, or one’s siblings, approving or critical of one’s achievements? Which parent was the more intellectual? Action-oriented? Sociable? Sometimes, though less frequently, even such characteristics as the presence and importance of grandparents, adoptive status, father’s occupation, mother’s education, the family’s social status, and some quite idiosyncratic circumstances can be guessed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
As the guesser goes from the common relations of authority and affection among parents and children into these more peculiar features of another person’s upbringing, one’s chances of being right go down; one’s chances of being right by luck alone, however, decrease still faster. Yet the validity of some of one’s faintest premonitions can be quite astounding to one’s audience. Indeed, the more accurate in detail the guesser become, the more likely it is that the game will encounter two specific hazards. The person whose family origins are so closely described may suspect and charge that one ha been previously investigated and resent the implied invasion of one’s privacy, or one may be embarrassed by the disclosure of such intimate and perhaps ungratifying facts to the remainder of the group. Yet, if this game is played correctly, the guesser has depended for clues entirely upon what each particular subject has already disclosed about oneself through the characteristic patterns of one’s interactions with others. Whether consciously or not, each person tells one’s history publicly in one’s behavior, and could only conceal it by withdrawing from society, an act that in itself is diagnostic and occasionally observed. There is nothing mysterious or occult about the inferences employed. They are all derived from the theorem that one reproduces one’s earlier family relations in one’s interpersonal relations beyond the family. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Father-figure, mother-figures, brother-figures, sister-figures, rivals, servants, authorities, as first experienced in the family, furnish the prototypes for apprehending and responding to all later intimates. Especially in the rapid development of intimate association with strangers, the prototypical family constellation is most recognizably reproduced, and the characteristic actions which it guides from the “person” that becomes known to others. When a person is most spontaneously free, these same expressive acts are usually subjectively taken by one to be one’s natural self. A person’s identity in such a group is thus—or can be—simultaneously one’s self as privately conceived. Yet even one’s reactions to constraints upon one’s self-expression tell something of the figures one fears; in this sense, all one’s acts are representative. And it is precisely upon the evidence of many small but representative encounters witnessed between each subject of this game and the others that successful guesses and generalizations can be made. In later discussion, the basis for errors through insufficient evidence or mistaken inference may be brought out, but no evidence used is found invalid. (Such checking back is useful for improving the skill of the guesser.) To be sure, no single episode leads directly back to a specific family pattern. Rather, by recurrence of similar episodes in orderly relationship to episodes of other kinds, the generic constellation is pieced together. As more information is added, the more the pattern hangs together and even indicates missing evidence to be sought for by reviewing a wider range of incidents. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
For instance, a girl bumps a boy and blushes; he speaks to her cordially and thereafter her eyes follow him about the room; a younger boy tries to gain her attention, but is ignored; she appears respectful toward a male teacher and defends him against gibes by other girls; after a downpour, she organizes the drying out of clothes by other girls; her female teacher speaks equivocally of her as independent. Is it possible that her father was a widower, and let her play the role of a “little mother” to her small sister—which she did out of a desire to please him, who she admires? Even with these many observed details, much of the complex is missing from which a successful guess might be made; but at least the principle employed is evident. If it is remembered that boys who have dated her found her somewhat repressed and inclined toward intellectual conversation, further confirmation may be added, but also complications may emerge which reduce the plausibility of the previous guess. From experience in playing this game, several limitations become evident. The older the person—the further one had left one’s parental family behind, in time or in any other sense—the less does one’s present behavior tell about one’s past. And if one’s succeeding experience has been markedly heterogeneous, with strong emotional attachments intervening between one’s original family and one’s present circle of intimates, the less does the present constellation tell us about the original. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
If the person’s cultural or sub-cultural background is markedly foreign to the guesser’s, of course the latter has more difficulty in interpreting the biographical significance of behavior. Patterns of sociability among teenagers still living at home, by contrast, almost transparently reveal the structure of their families. Although there is thus no mystery as to why successful guessing is not really guessing or intuition, but complex inference from objective evidence, explanation of the procedure does not dimmish the uncanny feeling of some of the subjects that they are being laid bare. Even when the bits of evidence are painstakingly pointed out and are admitted to be public knowledge, the sense of exposure may persist and give rise to mild dismay on the part of the beholders as well. If the procedure were explored systematically and no longer used mainly as a game, what might develop is a matter for speculation. However, questions are raised by the demonstration of the underlying theorem which are far more important than the mild shock of the shyer players. If postdiction is this easy, why is prediction so hard? And if prediction from pervious to future behavior is hard, does not this fact qualify the determinisitic assumption which underlies an characterizes much research and writing in social science? And finally, what might this game of revelation disclose about the role of the social scientists and one’s ultimate audience? #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
There is a mistake about forgiveness by the ultimate concern that many people make. First, a mistake conception about the “shelter of the blood,” claimed upon an assembly as a guarantee of absolute protection from the working of the powers of darkness. However, if we walk in light, if we confess our transgression, then the blood of Jesus cleanses from sin. The blood of Jesus gives us access to the Holiest of all, because of the cleansing power from sin. The blood of Jesus is the ground victory over the Offender, because of its cleansing from every confessed sin, and because at Calvary the Offender was conquered. (However, remember, you can confess your sins silently in prayer. Not all religious figures uphold their oath and keep the things you say confident, much like therapists or their employers.) However, nowhere do we read that any person can be put “under the blood” apart from one’s own volition and individual condition before God. Therefore, if the “shelter of the blood” is claimed over an assembly of people and someone present is giving ground to the Offender, the “claiming of the blood” does not avail to prevent Offender from working on the ground to which one has a right in that person. This misconception about the protecting power of the blood is serious; for those who are present at a meeting where the Offender as well as God is working many believe they are personally safe from the Offender’s workings apart from their individual condition and dealing with God. However, through the ground they have given—even unknowingly—to the Adversary, they are open to one’s power. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Faith, religion, and revelation, are readily intelligible. If one simply stated that religion is ultimate concern, a turning toward the unconditional, and that it is not a special function of man’s spirit but a centered act of his personality, that would be an adequate summation of the broad sense of religion. Here faith and religion are identical. The narrow sense of religion is the “churchy” sense—doctrine, rites, and all the appurtenances of an institution. While the above paragraph sufficiently describes religion, a somewhat deeper examination is called for. The ultimate concern is what we rely on chronologically as an evolved insight of religion more than faith. Doctrine is developed under the heading of religion. Religion cannot be identified with any of the functions of spirit and it cannot be placed beside them as a special function animated by one’s thinking at a very early date, and this insight is decisive. Religion is an attitude of spirit which participates in all these spheres. Spirit depends on two other concepts, thought and being, which are in constant dynamic tension. Spirit is neither pure thought nor pure being, but involves both. Being and Spirit are the essential components of the act of knowledge. The act or intention is thought, and the object or thing intended is being. For Spirit is the form of thought-in-being. Every being has something of thought in it, but the more thought it contains the more reality is possesses. The most real of beings is the one in which thought as thought is realized, that is, a spirit-bearing totality—man. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
In the economy, there are power triads, and wealth is one, which is experiencing deep transformation as the new system for wealth creations spreads across the planet. As corporations integrate their production and distribution across national boundaries, acquire foreign firms, and draw on brainpower from around the entire World, they inevitably need fresh sources of capital in many countries. They also need it fast. Thus we see a race to “liberalize” capital markets so that investments can flow more or less freely across national frontiers. The result is a surging ocean of capital free of restraining walls. This, however, shifts power away from central banks and individual nations, undermining sovereignty and introducing new dangers of financial fibrillation on a Worldwide scale. After the 1987 Wall Street crash, it was understood that building a single completely open financial system, subject to minimal regulation, is like building a supertanker without airtight compartments. With adequate dividers or safety cells, a big system can survive the breakdown of certain parts. Without them, a single hole in the hull can sink a tanker. There was also a warning that the creation of multinational securities firms that buy, sell, underwrite and invest in many nations increases the risk of large-scale breakdown. A loss by one or more of these firms, could result in transmitting a disturbance from one country to another. As finance is globalized, nations risk losing control over one of the keys to their power. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The proposed all-European currency, for example, would reduce the flexibility of individual nations to cope with their own unique economic problems. Another proposal would arm the EC commissioners with far greater control over the budgets of Europe’s supposedly sovereign nations than the federal government of the United States of America exerts over its fifty states—a centralizing power shift of massive proportions. While this power redistribution is going on, the entire wealth system becomes, as we have seen, super-symbolic. Like violence, wealth, too, is shifting and being transformed at the same time. Until recently, China was not on the list of the World’s major foreign direct investor nations. An important breakthrough came in 2008. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, outbound FDI increased dramatically to $55,907 million from $26,506 million in previous years (flow; FDI by financial institutions is not included). In 2009, it rose further to $56,529 million, in 2010 it hit $59 billion. In recent years, China has been the second largest recipient of foreign direct investments (FDI) Worldwide, attracting approximately USD $181 billion in 2021. That is extremely significant. Compared to the U.S.A FDI of USD $367.38 billion. According to preliminary figures, monthly foreign direct investments (FDI) inflows to China amounted to approximately USD $20.69 billion dollars in February 2023. For the whole year of 2022, FDI flows to China reached around $189.1 billion, an increase of 12 percent compared to the year before. Western companies have become a hot topic around the World. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Acquisitions account for 40 percent of China’s total FDI. The major targets are mining industry, high-tech manufacturing firms, and well-known but usually ailing companies possessing famous brands. Such acquisitions are usually carried out with the backing of the government, mostly by state-owned companies. On the other hand, Chinese companies, especially the private ones, are gradually increasing FDI of quite a conventional Character. They are investing in India, Africa, North Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, and elsewhere in the developing World seeking lower production costs or better access to local markets. Also, more and more often, they are coming to the West entirely on their own initiative (without the government’s backing), attracted by markets, technologies, and high-skilled human resources. In these cases, Chinese investors act basically the same way and pursue the same goals as investors from any other country, whether America, a European state, or Japen. China’s foreign portfolio investment reached an all-time higher of USD $99.45 billion in December 2020. United States of America’s foreign portfolio investment accounted a record deficit of USD $206.805 billion in December 2022. American leaders should be scrambling to invest in improving technology and infrastructure in American cities, investing more in education and recruitment of students for medical, engineering, and computer science careers. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Dabbling in its Dark, Cruel Possibilities
It was one of the brisk winter mornings that begins in a fog, promising the cold to come. A mist was rising from the fruit orchards as I dropped down the hill into Llanada Villa in the valley below the mansion. It was a fair-tale mansion, all turrets and towers, stained glass and plush Victorian gardens, sitting majestical on the most valuable plot of land. As I entered my home, I heard the music playing softly from the morning room. I sat sipping coffee at nine thirty, glad it was Saturday. I knew that life was going to be vastly more complicated now. Well, it was going to be more dangerous, too. Overhead, the morning sky had turned a vivid blue, intersected by fading vapor trails. It was bright enough blue, the sky. However, it had a depth and stillness suggestive of the steady retreat of sunlight and a slight warmth. I have seen real ghouls in my home, and I knew that magic was something that could be harnessed and exploited and there were people in the World with hunger for power and influence enough to risk dabbling in its dark, cruel possibilities. The whisper of water dropping on to leaves as the rain began to fall could be heard. The lights flicked on and off. I looked around, half-waiting for the sound to stir again. The rain strength. I heard drops begin to fall on the roof. For many years the staff reported hearing a little girl crying. She has been seen on occasion, and is described as about seven years old. She has been seen in the house at the main stairwell, on the lawn, and on the third floor. I passed on through the passages of crystal and rooms of silver—spacious chambers, empty and silent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
This house felt older than the memory of man. It was an accursed mansion. There were strange noises in the mansion. Every night the wailing of a woman could be heard above the moaning of the wind. If ghost must walk the Earth, they could find no spot on the globe where their appearance would be more natural, or better understood. The staff tells tales of disembodies footsteps, lights that switch themselves off and on at will, and objects moving. The Daisy Bedroom has lights that switch themselves on and off after dark and phantom footsteps are often heard in the hallway near the room. One day a housemaid was speaking to a guest as she served dinner downstairs. To everyone’s surprise, the serving tray sitting on the table picked itself up and tipped itself upside down. The tray was filled with plates of hot foot that went everywhere. The sacrificial stones of the Druid priests, oriented after the fashion of the ruin of ruins of Stonehenge, the blood-vats, imperishable adjuncts to human sacrifice, have stood through the ages, grim guardians of the mysteries of the haunted fruit orchards. If someone were to tell me that the fruit orchards at Llanada Villa echoed nightly with the shrieks of sacrifice and that the ghost fires of forgotten priestcraft still glowed in the morning, I would find it hard to disbelieve. That ghastly curse remained on my family and fortune. The mansion has picked up a few permanent guests. One evening, from the observation tower, I saw a huge black figure gliding along the grounds. It could not be human because of the rate of speed it was going. I felt not just fear, but absolute dread. I experienced a bone-chilling could throughout my body. I ran down nine flights of stairs, while crying uncontrollable and my heart was pounding. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Only in the understanding of the stock from which the Victorian mansion’s ghosts are sprung can one appreciate the immortality with which long-accepted tradition has endowed them. Ghostly itself is the history of the Winchester Mansion. While the carpenters were painting on the fourth floor, one of them was startled to see the word MURDER appear in the freshly rolled paint, as if written with someone’s finger—only the words were backwards, as though being written from the other side of the wall. One of the painters explained: “We were quite surprised when a shadow started moving towards us.” As they realized that the “shadow” was approaching them, they also realized that area of the mansion was a very lonely place, especially at night. Not many people ventured up there. And although in their haste to leave, they could only give brief glances at the dark figure, they were sure of one thing: “The only outstanding feature was the outline of a wide brim hate.” Another evening while the carpenters were painting, they heard a quiet creaking emanating from the wood floors. They steeled their nerves before investigating. That is when they saw a young woman sitting in a chair directly behind them. The woman was there for just a moment before disappearing. Later the evening as the farmers were picking fruit in the fields, the dark figure “floated” diagonally across the field. It drifted rapidly to a clump of trees with two flat rocks near by and disappeared over a slight drop-off beyond. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
One of the farmers screwed up his courage and, in spite of the bizarre, dark figure’s mysterious and even menacing appearance, volunteered to walk down to the spot where the apparition disappeared. After five minutes of observation, he returned, like an efficient scout, with his report, unsettling as it might be. He said when he reached the far side of the hill there were two “soldiers-dressed” figures stilling on the two flat rocks near the clump of trees. Neither one spoke to the other; nor did they acknowledge the other’s presence. Instead they just sat, seemingly rigidly fixated, staring down into the field. Other ghost haunting the mansion include those of two little boys, who have been heard running on the second floor. One night, while I was preparing for company, I found two sets of muddy boot prints coming from the door to nowhere and crossing the room. When I told Daisy about the boot prints. She said they must be made by the same boys who keep coming in the door the opens to the wall, and we had locked them out. Looking toward the door she said, “It’s OK, if you prefer this door, go ahead and use it.” Immediately the door swung open. Needless to say cold chills ran through both of us. We never worried about the door that opens to the wall again. My idea for the mansion was not only to create a place for the spirits, but also to build an estate that would inspire awe. The gorgeous series of fields gardens, forests, and grassy acres are as fascinating as they are beautiful. However, when the sun goes down, the shadows creep and spread, giving the Victorian Mansion an entirely different look and feel. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
With grounds lit by a full moon hanging low in the sky, just to the side of the columns of the mansion, one begins to ponder the many mysteries surrounding the Winchester Mansion. One night I was putting out a candle when I heard the sound of a singing voice. At first I thought: “Oh, that sounds nice.” However, then I wondered what it was and where I could be hearing singing from. After all, the staff was asleep and there was no one around, and the sound definitely was not coming from outside. It was frightening, but it was not explainable. It was just a couple of phrases of singing and it took me by surprise. I could faintly see the hazy shape of a woman moving down what the hallway. One night, a group of farmers were packing up for the evening. A they looked around with a lantern for their tools, they were shocked to see what appeared to be the black form of a man moving toward them. The figure was larger than human and had no features—it was a black mass that seemed to sway toward them in the bright light. The man wielding the lantern quickly put it out and they all ran away. For weeks the men thought about what they had seen; they just could not forget it. They spoke to other servants about the vision or sighting. They were quite disturbed and unable to let the subject drop. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Take heed! Come, all Spirits! By the virtue and power of your king, and by the seven crowns and chain of your Kings, all Spirits of the Hells are forced to appear in my presence before this circle of Solomon, whensoever I shall call them. Come, then, all at my order, to fulfil that which is in your power, as commanded. Come, therefore, from the East, South, West, and North! I conjure and command you, by the virtue and power of Him who is three, eternal, equal, who is God invisible, consubstantial, in a word, who has created the Heavens, the sea, and al which is under Heaven. I conjure thee, Lucifer, by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, who spake and all was made, who commanded and all things were created and made! I conjure thee by the ineffable name of God, ON, ALPHA, and OMEGA, ELOYM, YA, SADAY, LUX, MUGENS, REX, SALUS, ADONAY, EMMANUEL, MESSIAS; and I adjure, conjure. I command you, O all ye demons dwelling in these parts, or in what part of the World soever ye may be, by whatsoever power may have been given you by God and our holy Angels over this place, and by the power Principality of the fernal abysses, as also by all your brethren, both general and special demons, whether dwelling in the East, West, South, or North, or in any side of the Earth, and, in like manner, by the power of God the Father, by the wisdom of God and the Son, by the virtue of the Holy Ghost, and by the authority I derive from our Savior Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
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All is Well that Ends Well?
The family is sacred to the ultimate concern and is the most important social unit in time and eternity. The ultimate cause established families to bring happiness to its creations, allowing them to learn correct principles in a loving atmosphere, and prepare them for eternal life. The home is the best place to teach, learn, and apply virtuous principles. It is where individual learn to provide love, food, clothing, respect, shelter, security and other necessities they require. The mother and father, as equal partners, should help each family member. However, sometimes things do not go as planned. Because we live in a World with many influences, people may become criminals. Men and women can both become involved in crime. When it comes to burglaries, for the females who worked as partners, this could involve a variety of tasks. Many of these tasks were indistinguishable from those traditionally associated with men, such as gaining entry, searching the house, carrying goods outside, and disposing of them. The following interview segment describes some of the tasks performed by a female acting as a partner. Although this was her first offense, she heled to find the transportation to reach the target (by stealing a truck) and took part in the actual break in: “Well, it wasn’t up on me, somebody else who was in there different, not state, in a different county. He just came up and told me he knew about it, a rich guy that was gonna be gone for the weekend. He knew this person, knew who it was, and he knew about it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
“When he left that night about two or three in the morning, we went down there. We had stolen a truck, we had stolen my ex-boyfriend’s father’s truck, went down there. We tried to get in, but we couldn’t get in. Everything was locked. Right…We couldn’t get in for nothing, so what we does was, we had some sh*t in back of the truck and we took some tape. Then we put it over the window real tight, then we busted it, and then we took the tape down and the window was shattered. It had no window in it. So—everybody used gloves of course—so we went in there, you know, and we knew when we went, we knew nobody was gonna be home. There wasn’t a house around for two blocks, each way you went. So…my first one was basically the easiest one.” The target often was located by a female partner, who also took the lead in planning the offense. In these cases the women had a substantial say in determining how the proceeds of the crime were divided: “…whatever you chose to give to the other person. We tried to split everything equally. We were all good friends, you know, so I got the best deal out of it because of the fact that I needed the money more than everybody else. Me and my sister needed the money more than everybody did and…we were the ones that said hey, we pointed it out, we found a way to get in, we knew where everything was, we told them how, we had everything planned out down to the TV. This is where this is at and this is where this is at.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
The roles played by female burglars are dynamic and can chance over time. Many of the women who currently participate in offenses as partners started out as accomplices. The woman quoted below clearly has an equal relationship with her co-offender, but this was not always the case: “The first burglary I ever committed, I was in the house and I was smoking weed at the time. A friend came in and said ‘I want to go in this house.’ I said ‘Okay, it was around the corner….what part am I going to play?’ He says ‘All you got to do is watch the doors for me. The bags I bring down, take them out, and you also drive the car for me.’” As should be obvious from above, women who work as accomplices in burglary play much more limited roles. They seldom participate in planning the crime, and often do not even enter the dwelling. Some claimed to prefer working with others because they lacked the skills needed to be a successful burglar: “I can’t do all by myself…I haven’t mastered that yet.” Others simply felt more comfortable when relying on a colleague’s expertise; they were uncertain about their ability to work alone. In the following case, a woman reports that she deferred to her boyfriend’s judgment in determining the suitability of a given target. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
“He can look at them and tell. He’s better at it than me. Sometimes I give him tips to go on, but he checks them out. I feel safer for him to check them out.” A common work assignment for accomplices was acting as a lookout or driver. Several of the women stated that driving was their primary job in burglaries: “Well, see, me and my boyfriend had been together for a year, and he done them all the time. Well, not all the time, but it was no big deal, and all I had to do, all I ever do, is drive. I just go like he’ll go, him and his friend. He don’t do ‘em every week or anything like that. Like it’s not really ‘cause we need the money or anything either. Like he’ll go during the day and he’ll look at a house and he’ll find one, and then he’ll tell me about where the house is…all I have to do is drive to the place and wait for them to start bringing out the stuff, and then drive off.” Other said that they typically kept a lookout for their colleagues: “They came and picked me up with a stolen automobile. I didn’t know that it was stolen. We went out there to this house and they got out. I just assumed—I didn’t know what was going on at first. We got out and they went in first, and then they came back out. One of the men came back out and told me to come in and to keep an eye out to see if anybody was there or anybody comes down the sidewalk or if anybody drives down the street or anything.” In both of these cases the women, as accomplices, did not choose to perform these secondary tasks. Instead the tasks were assigned to them by a dominant co-offender. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
What light does this quantitative and qualitative information shed on the nature of female criminality? Our sample was not generated randomly; with this fact in mind, the quantitative findings suggest that women involved in residential burglary do not differ significantly from their male counterparts on a number of relevant dimensions (exempli gratia, drug and alcohol use, degree of offense specialization). Nevertheless, the results show that some important differences may exist as well. Compared to the males, for example, the females more often committed burglaries with others, began offending at a later age, and had less contact with the criminal justice system. Further examination of these apparent differences is warranted. The qualitative data demonstrate that women’s involvement in residential burglary is marked by diversity and that the debate about whether women play a primary or a secondary role in the offense is probably a red herring. In fact, as among males, some assume primary roles exclusively, some adopt secondary roles exclusively, and others move from one type of role to another s they become more experienced. This observation has important implications for research into women’s involvement in crimes committed more often by males. To be sure, a much lower percentage of women than of men participate in residential burglary. Even so, our qualitative data reveal substantial similarities be tween males and females. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This fact suggests that the activities of women who do engage in such offenses may be explained by some of the same factors that explain men’s participation. When it comes to the stole property system (SPS), we must consider the law of supply and demand shape the SPS. This term refers to the loosely formed relationships that bring about the theft of property and the subsequent repackaging and resale of these goods via the “black market.” We use contacts with law enforcement authorities to formulate a revised view of property crime. Instead of viewing burglaries as isolated incidents of theft, we argue that we should conceive of the acts and actors involved as spanning a more broadly defined set of roles and behaviors. They identify the thief, fence, and person who buys the stolen goods as key players in the SPS. They also identify multiple stages in the process: research and planning, extraction, exchange (id est, conversion of the goods to money), marketing, residtribution/resale, and evaluation. Moreover, the roles and behaviors of the various players are said to be interchangeable and flexible. In the end, we reconsider the way that we think about property crime. We become more sensitive to the potential for business concepts such as division of labor, entrepreneurial spirit, supply and demand, and marketing to manifest themselves in the World of property theft. In doing so, we are able to drive home the complexity and fluidity tht can beset property crime events. Moreover, we illustrate how the criminal calculus can lead to mutually beneficial relationships and roles that allow the criminal subculture to expand and innovate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Perhaps no area of contemporary criminal activity holds more potential for improved understanding and successful intervention through analytical reorientation than does that of property theft. This area of crime is by no means new, a situation which may in fact constitute the greatest barrier to fresh thinking on the subject. Centuries of experience with thefts of property have give us a fairly strong conceptualization of this crime area, a conceptualization which centers almost exclusively on the thief. There is of course nothing illogical or erroneous about a concern for this individual; it is one after all who steals property. What is argued here, however, is that an exclusive concentration of the thief yields a myopic view of the process of theft, a view which draws the boundaries of the crime too tightly around that individual. It is a view which tends therefore to consider each incident of theft as a unique event, determined and constrained by the motivations, needs, and skills of the perpetrator. This “conventional view of theft” (if we can use this phrase) prescribes a response to this crime which largely consists of a fairly sophisticated sorting process, linking one individual (or one group of individuals) with each event as it occurs. Such an “individualistic” approach to crime and criminals is not, of course, confined to the property theft area. For example, we suggest that it is the most prevalent approach to crime in general. Consistently, both the popular and scientific tendency is to view the criminal’s behavior as a problem of individual maladjustment, not as a consequence of his participation in social systems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Perhaps it is for this reason that in criminology we have had thousands of studies that have sought some damaging trait in the personalities of individual criminals, but very few studies of the organizational arrangements among criminals who commit crimes in concert. The tendency toward an individualistic interpretation of criminal behavior cannot be laid to the idiosyncrasies of either the public or the scientist, but rather is undoubtedly influenced by the nature of the legal systems, with their concepts of individual responsibility an intent, upon which most democratic societies are based. However, while such an interpretation may conform well to the needs of a legal system, it may have the additional effect of causing us to ignore some important dimensions of contemporary criminal behavior. It is the perspective that property theft is one area of criminal behavior that has sorely suffered both conceptually and practically from a failure to probe the relationships among criminals (and)…the structure and operations of illicit organizations. Perhaps the mot glaring evidence of this failure concerns what the President’s Crime Commission called “little research…done on fencing,” id est, on the criminal receiver of stolen property. This crime figure, although tallying an impressive list of protestations to one’s importance over several centuries has remained little explored, while one’s relationship with the thief has been virtually ignored by the criminologist. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
However, if the popular and scientific tendency has been to overlook the fence, the police detective assigned the responsibility of dealing with property theft has not found it possible to do so. Instead, as the authors discovered in the course of an ongoing study of patterns of criminal receiving, police detectives possess a great deal of information about the fence. Other researchers have reported similar experiences. Because the police know about the fence does not imply that one’s activities are either successfully or efficiently interdicted, for the police agency is as influenced by an individualistic approach to crime as is the social scientist. Thus the bulk of enforcement resources and activity against theft is directed to the thief, and the situation in which police effort is devoted directly and exclusively to the fence appears to be rare indeed. The criminal receiver remains a curiosity to the criminal justice system, being infrequently arrested and even less often convicted. The model of property theft employed here—the Stolen Property System—is an operationally based one, derived from the author’s research into patterns of criminal receiving in a large urban area of the northeastern United States of America. As a part of this study, access to police intelligence reports on the activities of burglars and fences has been obtained, as well as records of these activities maintained in a special investigative unit in the office of the district attorney. Now, as burglaries are crimes of economics, this indicates that economics plays a kay factor in our lives. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
China is an economic power house, and it growing production and export power enhances its financial strength as well. This is natural. However, compared to its sensational emergence as a leading manufacturing and trading nation, the process of its ascending to the position of a major financial power is more fragmentary and complicated. China has by far the largest foreign exchange reserves in the World, about three times as large as Japan, which is number two. It is also rapidly emerging as the leading international lender. In contrast, China’s role as a foreign direct and portfolio investor is still considerably smaller than that of America, major European countries, and Japan. For the time being, the story of China’s growing financial clout is, first and foremost, the story of the unprecedented increase of the financial power of the Chinese state. As of the end of 2021, the gross financial assets of China increased 13.6 percent to USD $29,689 billion. That is an increase of USD $25,563 billion since 2010. In December 2022, the reserves of China stood at USD $3,120 billion. The exact composition of China’s foreign exchange reserves is classified information. Foreign direct investment into China totaled $42.5 billion between July and December 2022. That constituted a 73 percent decline on the year. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
China’s net international investment position reached USD $2,531.328 billion in December 2022. As of the year 2022, the United States of America’s net international investment position was USD -$16.12 trillion. The United States of America is currently the World’s largest debtor nation. Thinking about the pre-cybernetic machine—with minor exceptions, state socialism had led not to affluence, equality, and freedom, but to a one-party political system…a massive bureaucracy…heavy-handed secret police…government control of the media…secrecy…and the repression of intellectual and artistic freedom. Setting aside the oceans of spurting blood needed to prop it up, a close look at this system revealed that every one of these elements is not just a way of organizing people, but also—and more profoundly—a particular way of organizing, channeling, and controlling knowledge. A one-party political system is designed to control political communication. Since no other party exists, it restricts the diversity of political information flowing through the society, blocking feedback, and thus blinding those in power to the full complexity of their problems. With very narrowly defined information flowing upward through the approved channel, and commands flowing downward, it becomes very difficult for the system to detect errors and correct them. In fact, top-down control in the socialist countries was based increasingly on lies and misinformation, since reporting bad news up the line was often risky. The decision to run a one-party system is a decision, above all, about knowledge. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
The overpowering bureaucracy that socialism created in every sphere of life was also, a knowledge-restricting device, forcing knowledge into pre-defined compartments or cubbyholes and restricting communication to “official channels,” while de-legitimating informal communication and organization. The secret police apparatus, state control of the media, the intimidation of intellectuals, and the repression of artistic freedom all represent further attempts to limit and control information flows. In fact, behind each of these elements we find a single obsolete assumption about knowledge: the arrogant belief that those in command—whether of the party or of the state—know what others should know. These features of all the state socialist nations guaranteed economic stupidity and derived from the concept of the precybernetic machines as applied to society and life itself. Second Wave machines—the kind that surrounded Mr. Marx in the 19th century—for the most part operated without any feedback. Plug in the power, start the motor, and it runs irrespective of what is happening in the outside environment. Third Wave machines, by contrast, are intelligent. They have sensors that such in information from the environment, detect changes, and adapt the operation of the machine accordingly. They are self-regulating. The technological difference is revolutionary. While Mr. Marx, Mr. Engels, Mr. Lenin all bitterly assailed the philosophy of “mechanical materialism,” their own thinking, reflecting their era, remained steeped in certain analogies and assumptions based on pre-intelligent machinery. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Thus for Marxian socialists the class struggle was the “locomotive of history.” A key task was to capture the “state machine.” And society itself, being machine-like, could be pre-set to deliver abundance and freedom. Mr. Lenin, on capturing control of Russia in 1917, became the supreme mechanic. A brilliant intellectual, Mr. Lenin understood the importance of ideas. However, for him, symbolic production, too—the mind itself—could be programmed. Mr. Marx wrote of freedom, but Lenin, on taking power, undertook to engineer knowledge. Thus he insisted that all art, culture, science, journalism, and symbolic activity in general be placed at the service of a master plan for society. In time the various branches of learning would be neatly organized into an “academy” with fixed bureaucratic departments and ranks, all subject to party and state control. “Cultural workers” would be employed by institutions controlled by a Ministry of Culture. Published and broadcasting would be monopolies of the state. Knowledge, in effect, would be made part of the state machine. This constipated approach to knowledge blocked economic development even in low-level smokestack economies; it is diametrically opposed to the principles needed for economic advance in the age of the computer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The Third Wave wealth-creation system now spreading also challenges three pillars of the socialist faith. Take the question of property. From the beginning, socialists traced poverty, depression, unemployment, and the other evils of industrialism to private own-unemployment, and the other means of production. The way to solve these ills was for the workers to own the factories—through the state or through collectives. Once this was accomplished, things would be different. No more competitive waste. Completely rational planning. Production for use rather than profit. Intelligent investment to drive the economy forward. The dream of abundance for all would be realized for the first time in history. In the 19th century, when these ideas were formulated, they seemed to reflect the most advanced scientific knowledge of the time. Marxists, in fact, claimed to have gone beyond fuzzy-headed utopianism and arrived at truly “scientific socialism.” Utopians might dream of self-governing communal villages. Scientific socialists knew that in a developing smokestack society such notions were impractical. Utopians like Charles Fourier looked toward the agrarian past. Scientific socialists looked toward what was then the industrial future. Thus, later on, while socialists regimes experimented with cooperatives, worker-management, communes, and other schemes, state socialism—state ownership of everything from banks to breweries, rolling mills to restaurants—became the dominant form of property through the socialist World. (So complete was this obsession with state ownership that Nicaragua, an imitative latecomer to the socialist World, even created “Lobo Jack,” a state-owned disco). Everywhere, the state, not the workers, thus became the chief beneficiary of socialist revolution. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Socialism failed to meet its promise to improve radically the material conditions of life. When living standards fell in the Soviet Union after the revolution, the decline was blamed, with some justification, on the effects of World War I and counterrevolution. Later the shortfalls were blamed on capitalist encirclement. Still later, on World War II. Yet thirty years after the war, staples like coffee and oranges were still in short supply in Moscow. In the period preceding Mr. Gorbachev’s perestroika, the diet of a middle-class researcher at a state institute in Moscow was heavily based on cabbage and potatoes. In 1989, four years after the start of Mr. Gorbachev’s attempt at reforms, the U.S.S.R. had to import 600 million razor blades and 40 million tubes of shaving cream from abroad. Remarkably, though their number is declining, one still hears orthodox socialists around the World calling for the nationalization of industry and finance. From Brazil and Peru to South Africa and even in the industrialized nations of the West there remain true believers who, despite all historical evidence to the contrary, still regard “public ownership” as “progressive” and resist every effort to de-nationalize or privatize the economy. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
It is true that today’s increasingly liberalized global economy, uncritically hailed by the great multinational corporations, is itself unstable and could suffer a massive coronary. The distended debt balloon on which it rests cold be punctured. Wars, sudden interruptions of energy or resources, and any number of other calamities could cause its collapse in the decades ahead. Under catastrophic conditions, one might well imagine the need for temporary emergency nationalizations. Nevertheless, incontrovertible evidence proves that state-owned enterprises mistreat their employees, pollute the air, and abuse the public at least as efficiently as private enterprises. Many have become sink-holes of inefficiency, corruption, and greed. Their failures frequently encourage a vast, seething black market that undermines the very legitimacy of the state. However, worst and most ironic of all, instead of taking the lead in technological advance as promised, nationalized enterprises, as a rule, are almost uniformly reactionary—the most bureaucratic, the slowest to reorganize, the least willing to adapt to changing consumer needs, the most afraid to provide information to the citizens, the last to adopt advanced technology. For more than a century, socialists and defenders of capitalism waged bitter war over public versus private property. Large numbers of men and women literally laid down their lives over this issue. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
What neither side imagined was a new wealth-creation system that would make virtually all their arguments obsolete. Yet this is exactly what happened. It is super-symbolic. It is knowledge. The same knowledge can be used by many people simultaneously to create wealth and to produce still more knowledge. And unlike factories and fields, knowledge is, for all intents, inexhaustible. Neither socialist regimes nor socialists in general have yet come to terms with this truly revolutionary fact. An established firm in an industry stands to gain by keeping out new competition. Then it can raise prices to monopoly levels. Since monopoly is socially harmful, the antitrust authorities try to detect and prosecute firms that employ strategies to deter rivals from entering the business. In 1945, the Aluminum Corporation of America (Alcoa) was convicted of such a practice. An appellate panel of Circuit Court judges found tht Alcoa had consistently installed more refining capacity than was justified by demand. In his opinion, Judge Learned Hand said: “It was not inevitable that it [Alcoa] should always anticipate increases in the demand for ingot and be prepared to supply them. Nothing compelled it to keep doubling and redoubling its capacity before other entered the field. It insists that it never excluded competitors; but we can think of no more effective exclusion than progressively to embrace each new opportunity as it opened and to face every newcomer with new capacity already geared into a great organization. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
This case has been debated at length by scholars of antitrust law and economies. Here we ask you to consider the conceptual basis of the case. How could the construction of excess capacity deter new competitors? What distinguishes this strategy from others? Why might it fail? An established firm wants to convince potential new competitors that the business would not be profitable for them. This basically means that if they entered, the price would be too low to cover their costs. Of course the established firm could simply put out the word that it would fight an unrelenting price war against any newcomers. However, why would the newcomers believe such a verbal threat? After all, a price war is costly to the established firm too. Installing capacity in excess of the needs of current production gives credibility to the established firm’s threat. When such capacity is in place, output can be expanded more quickly and at less extra cost. It remains only to staff the equipment and get the materials; the capital costs have already been incurred and are bygones. A price war can be fought more easily, more inexpensively, and therefore more credibly. This makes sense in the logic of strategy, but will such a device work in practice? There are at least two qualifications that limit its success. First, if there are many firms already in the industry, then discouraging newcomers gives more profit to all of them. Will any one firm bear the costs of capacity when it gets only a part of the benefit? #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
This is a standard prisoners’ dilemma. If one firm is large enough, it may in its own interest provide such a service to the rest of the industry. Otherwise the firms must collude in building capacity; this may be hard to hide from the antitrust authorities. In the Alcoa case, only may not regard the dilemma of whom will install capacity as a serious problem, because Alcoa had a 90 percent share of the primary aluminum ingot market. However—and this is the second qualification—is that the relevant market? Even if there are no other producers of primary ingots, secondary production from scrap is a source of competition. So is Alcoa’s own future production. Many aluminum-based products are highly durable. If Alcoa puts more aluminum on the market in the future, then the values of these durable goods will decrease. If the company cannot credibly guarantee the users that it will restrict its own future, output, they are willing to pay for aluminum now. This is just like IBM’s problem of pricing mainframe computers. The solution of renting is much harder here: you cannot rent aluminum as such; Alcoa would have to extend its operations into all sorts of aluminum-based products. In accordance with the directions of the ultimate concern, and in view of the critical time through which the World is passing, every expression, “view,” or theory which we hold concerning things should now be examine carefully, and brought to the proof, with open and hones desire to know the pure truth of the ultimate concern—as well as every statement that comes to our knowledge from the experience of others, which may throw light upon our own pathway. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
Every criticism—just or unjust—should be humbly received and examined to discover its grounds, apparent or real; and facts concerning the verities from every self-actualized being should be analyzed, independent of their pleasure or pain to us personally—either for our own enlightenment or for our equipment in the service of the ultimate concern. For the knowledge of truth is the first essential for warfare with the lying offenders, and truth must be eagerly sought for and faced with earnest and sincere desire to know it and obey it in the light of God: truth concerning ourselves, discerned by unbiased discrimination; truth from the virtues, uncolored, unstrained, unmutilated, undiluted; truth in facing facts of experience in all members of the hierarchy of self-actualization. Sometimes we are we can be too engrossed in our own internal struggle to intervene and prevent someone else from being hurt, but gradually the fragments and splinters and hurts began to disturb us. We may experience internally the broken moments, shattered dialogues, and cruelty of neutral faces. Here were people committed to the rescuing of “dropouts” and “rejects” from the public school, blatantly ignoring the crucial feelings being expressed. In this room, in the many passing hours and in that moment were people who hungered for a vital, active, listening human presence. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
However, what they get are intellectual arguments and words with little or no feeling. What they get are dead faces and lifeless bodies. Within one is growing an indignation against these denials or elemental human values until at last one’s own existence, one’s own isolation, one’s own desire for a solitary state crumbles away and vanishes. For the first time in weeks, one may experience intense and vital feelings from within, a full response to others. One’s anger mounts at the surface way in which fundamental matters are handled, at the ignoring of potential for intensity and depth, and at people committed to serving abused and rejected children failing to reach out, recognize and affirm each other. It may take one back to another time and place. This may cause of to reflect on the coldness and indifference others have to the personal struggles and feelings, an avoidance of intensity and depth in interactions, an intellectualizing and professionalizing or values and concepts of the ultimate concern. Mystery, spirit, feeling, the human sense, the unspoken and ineffable, the sense of awe and wonder, aesthetic appreciation—all might be missing. What else is the ultimate concern but a willingness to submit to the unknown, to learn from the unseen and intangible what we must fulfil? Where else do powers of life, actions to living in the deepest and fullest sense, come but from felt presences that awaken us to a fuller realization of what it means to be unique and human. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
There will be pronouncements, lineal objectives and goals, definitions, rules, all carefully edited and articulated. We must be concerned with deviance and social injustice, and be aware of the importance of using political and economic powers to being about beneficial social changes. We have to speak about poverty and war, the end of killing and hunger. However, these are devotions to abstractions: for there before us are instances of human suffering, and individuals struggling to rise, and they are being met with indifference, with a refusal or inability to listen and respond. Some may speak glibly of the value of love in enlightenment, but these words do not strengthen and affirm, not support or encourage individuals in their search and struggle. The words are empty. The soul of life dies quickly in the presence of doctrines, rituals, and intellectual reactions. The central concern, the only immediate and intense here-and-now feeling, is a fear of the people who rate us, an incessant anxiety boarding on paranoia that they are being judged in every detail and nuance. Without exception, the fear of being tossed out, or of being put on probation, is paramount. The way to success is to be silent, to speak in abstractions, to avoid action in any living, breathing terms. They will be startled at one’s indignation, at one’s efforts to arouse genuine caring, interpersonal involvement, and decent human responses. When we examine the sacred of the “is” namely, actual purity, or the present reality of the revered it is the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
The mysterium tremendum et fascinosum is the experience of ‘the ultimate’ in the double sense of that which is the abyss and that which is the ground of man’s being. The mysterium tremendum et fascinosum is the beneficial side of sacredness; it attracts because, as the ground of being, it implies the fulfilment and the beatitude of the creature. The negative side is the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum which terrifies because, as the abyss of being, it implies an infinite, unbridgeable distance between the finite and the infinite. In the ecstatic experience of revelation one feels both the elevating power of the divine presence and its annihilating power. This is the experience of the actual sacredness of the ultimate concern. A man who has never tried to flee from the ultimate concern has never experienced the ultimate concern that is the ultimate concern. The ultimate concern of our own making, fashioned after the image of man, is easy to live with, but man cannot stand the ultimate concern that is really the ultimate concern. Man tries to evade the ultimate concern, and hates it, because one cannot escape it. The protest against the ultimate concern, the will that there be no ultimate concern, and the flight to nihilism are all genuine elements of profound philosophy. Such is the shaking power of the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. The eyes of the Witness we cannot stand are also the eyes of One of infinite wisdom and supporting benevolence. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
The center of being, in which our own center is involved, is the source of the gracious beauty which we encounter again and again in the stars and mountains, in flowers and animals, in children and mature personalities. The scared can be viewed not only from a phenomenological point of view, but also from an ontological one. The sacred contains the meaning of individuals and of the whole, and is the ground of meaning. It is also the abyss of meaning because it transcends every individual meaning and cannot be fully grasped in any act of meaning. Unconditioned meaning is the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum, the abyss and the ground of the meaning of things, not only in so far as they are, but also in so far as they ought to be. Against this ontological background, the sacred is not unperceptible, but it is not objective. The sacred is contemplated not as an object; it I contemplated as transcendent meaning. To be sure, there exist also sacred objects to see them as purity is to grasp through them the meaning of the unconditioned. The sacred is being-itself or the power of being. What is required in the professional sense is the fullness and depth of a truly human commitment to self and others, and the love that connects one man with other men. This love must be allowed to develop because love is immediate and grows out of a willingness to enter into interpersonal dialogue and communication, out of the willingness to permit the unknown in one’ self to connect with the unknown in others. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
Ruin is the Destination Toward Which All Men Rush
With equality and gender-based studies becoming more important, it is a goo idea that we take a look at a gender-based analysis of residential burglary. The study is based on interviews with 105 active residential burglars, 87 of whom were males and 18 were females. The project employed a snowball sampling strategy in which an ex-offender recruited known burglars who were presently operating in a city. The gender-based compassion suggests that, in many way, female burglars resemble their male counterparts. For example, both group display long criminal histories that span a variety of property, violent, and public order offenses categories. Both groups accumulate long, diverse substance abuse histories that overlap with and contribute to their involvements in burglary. At the time, the gender-based comparison reveal several differences. Female burglars begin offending at a later age, are more likely to co-offend, and have less contact with authorities. The typology of female burglars describes offenders as either accomplices or partners. Factor of motivation, levels of target selection and planning, and patterned work roles serve to differentiate these two conceptual categories. Despite growing interest in female criminality, little is known about the nature of women’s participation in crimes statistically dominated by males. Certainly that is the case for residential burglary, an offense labeled as an overwhelmingly male enterprise. For example, we hardly know how female become involved in such offenses or what roles they play. Are they tempted into these crimes, for instance, by the influence of delinquent peers or by the use of drugs? #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Because we lack detailed knowledge, we cannot assess the extent to which the processes underly burglaries committed by females differ from those underlying burglaries by males. This lack also restricts our capacity to detect important differences among female burglars. An assessment of these difference, however, is crucial in formulating effective policy responses to female criminality and to developing theories of lawbreaking by women. Short of observing burglaries, perhaps the best way to acquire this information is to go to the offenders themselves. The most pressing need today, in researching the agenda for feminist criminology, is observation and interviewing so we can plunge more deeply into the social Worlds of girls and women. Such a strategy will allow researchers to comprehend women’s crime on its own terms. Often it is claimed that offenders are versatile and commit a wide range of offense. This observation, however, is derived largely from studies of males conducted in criminal justice settings rather than on the street. During our interviews we asked the subjects whether they ever had committed other sorts of crimes beside residential burglary. We did so because we were concerned primarily with prevalence—that is, whether the subject ever had engaged in other kinds of offenses. Stealing (which includes shoplifting and corresponds to the legal definition of this activity), auto theft, and assault were the offenses most commonly reported by males. Stealing and assault were mentioned most frequently by the females; these offenses were comparable in rank of frequency to those reported by the males. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Beyond these two offenses, however, little other criminality was reported by the females. The only meaningful differences between the men and the women for this measure was found in regard to auto theft. This crime was fairly common among the males, but unknown among the females. The explanation for this difference might reside in a strong cultural tradition linking masculinity to driving and car ownership. Alternatively, males may have “cornered the market” in auto theft; to be profitable, such a crime requires sophisiticated coneections with garage owners, automotive recycle yard employees, and car dealerships. One important aspect of offending style concerns the degree of crime specialization—that is, the extent to which offenders concentrate on one particular type of offense. When we asked offenders whether they had been involved in crimes other than residential burglary during their most recent period of offending, thirty-four percent of the males and 42 percent of the females claimed that they had committed only residential burglaries during this period (roughly the last six months). This finding is consistent with a substantial body of previous research showing that offenders display considerable diversity over the course of their criminal careers, but may specialize in a particular “line” for short periods. This phenomenon is labeled as “short-term specialization.” Another element of offending style concerns the inclinations to work with others in carrying out cries. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Previous research demonstrated that more often than not, [burglary] is committed by two or more persons acting in concert. The results of our study bear this out: 79 percent of the males and all of the females reported that they had worked with others in the past. The males showed considerable variation in frequency of working with others: 39 percent said they “seldom” worked with others, while another 39 percent reported that they “always” did so. For the women, however, the picture was much clearer: an overwhelming 83 percent reported that they “always” worked with others, and the remaining 17 percent states that they “usually” did so. The final aspect of offending style that we examined here relates to drug and alcohol use among our respondents, as well as to their perceptions of the role played by intoxicants in leading them to commit such crimes. Our research reveals that there is little difference between the males and the females in self-report drug use. When the drug users were asked whether addiction had anything to do with their burglaries, 71 percent of the males and 82 percent of the females answered affirmatively. A majority of those in both groups said they committed burglaries to obtain the money they needed to buy more drugs. In addition, slightly more than three-quarters of the users in each group—76 percent of the males and 79 percent of the females—claimed that they used drugs before committing their burglaries. A higher percentage of females than of males started that they “always” or “usually” used drugs beforehand. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
One explanation seems to be that many female burglaries arise from crack “runs.” This point, however, is difficult to determine conclusively because use of the drug is heavily stigmatized. We explore male-female differences on three dimensions designed to measure burglary offending histories: age at first burglary, total number of lifetime burglaries, and lambda, the mean number of annual burglaries. The ages at which males and females committed their first residential burglary differed significantly: the males generally started much earlier in life. None of the female burglars had committed their first offense before age 12, but 22 percent of the males had done so. The modal category for males was the 13-16 age bracket, which accounted for 53 percent of the cases. Sixty-one percent of the females, on the other hand, were over 16 years old when they carried out their first burglary. Given that the females started to commit burglaries later, on average, than their male counterparts, we are not surprised that a greater proportion of females had been involved in fewer than 20 residential burglaries in their lifetime. Perhaps more interesting, 39 percent of the females had committed more than 70 lifetime residential burglaries, a proportion roughly comparable to the males’ figure of 41 percent. The bimodal distribution of the females’ responses suggests that women are likely to engage in burglary at two very distinct levels, and perhaps to employ two different styles. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The males were more likely than the females to have had contact with the system for offenses of all types. This difference was most notable at the stage of the criminal justice process that resulted in incarceration. Over ninety percent of the respondents in each group had been arrested previously, but only one woman (6 percent) had been convicted and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. In contrast, 26 percent of the males had served time in the past. This difference may exist in part because the females began offending later and consequently had fewer “years at risk.” Other factors, however, are probably at work as well including an assumption by the police that most burglars are male, which allow females to remain above suspicion and a tendency for those females who are arrested to receive preferential treatment in the courtroom. Certainly the women in our sample believe that their gender conferred a degree of protection from the law. Several expressed the belief that authorities would not take action against them simply because they were female. Is it not becoming clear, in light of the existence of deceiving offenders and their methods of deception, that close examination is needed of modern theories, conceptions, and expressions regarding things in connection with the ultimate concern and its way of working in man? For only the certainty of ultimate concern, apart from “views” of truth, will avail for protection or for successful warfare in the conflict with wicked offenders in the self-actualized hierarchy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
When we reach self-actualization, we are at the highest hierarchy of the pyramid, and this is denoted by morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, and acceptance of facts. There are five levels in the pyramid. At the very bottom, people are interested in physiological functions only which include: breathing, food, water, pleasures of flesh, sleep, homeostasis, and excretion. At the second level of the pyramid, individuals are concerned with safety and this entails security of: body, employment, resources, mortality, the family, healthy and property. At the third hierarchy most are concerned with love and belonging. This includes friendship, family, sexual intimacy. At the fourth hierarchy, this realm focuses on esteem: self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by others. All that is in any degree the outcome of the mind of the “natural man” will prove to be but the weapons of straw in this great battle, and if we rely upon others’ “views of truth,” or upon our own human conceptions of truth, offenders will use these very things to deceive us—even building us up in these theories and views so that under cover of them he or she may accomplish one’s purpose. We cannot, therefore, at this time, overestimate the importance of believers having ready minds to “examine all things” they have thought, and perhaps taught, in connection with the things of ultimate concern and the self-actualized realm—all the “truths” they have held, all the phrases and expressions they have used in “virtue teachings,” and all the ideas they have absorbed through others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
For any wrong interpretations of truth, any theories and phrases which are man-conceived and which we may build upon wrongly, will have perilous consequences to ourselves and others in the conflict with truth and individual self-actualized people passing through. Because in the present offenders will comes to them with deceptions in DOCTRINAL form, self-actualized individual must examine carefully what they accept as “doctrine,” least it should be from the emissaries of the deceiver. Some people are tired of struggling and want only to know a quiet silence. This can be a shock to one’s own awareness of who he or she is. One may have always considered struggle essential in growth, and in many crises and conflicts it has provided the turning point in one’s life. Not wanting to be burdened and overwhelmed by heavy feelings and thoughts or by complicated searching and painful of what is wrong with oneself, people, and life, this can create the desire to turn away from the struggle. And this is what causes the requirement to be alone in simple and ordinary ways. Once one goes through this process of healing in solitude, and by only engaging in simple routine, gradually, with each day, an individua is able to listen a little more to what others are saying. (This is why during a break up, space, instead of forcing the issues is important. Of course, there are times when you need to know what the reason it so it may be a good idea to press for answers to start a dialogue and not necessarily to just focus on getting back together.) #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Slowly it becomes each to be interested in and comfortable with other people’s problems. Although there may be some drawbacks. Some individual may be able to be with others while you struggle to make decisions, but one may not be opened to questions or personal comments and responses directed to one. This may cause one to offer nothing of oneself and comment only on what one is hearing and understanding from others. During this period, some find work a truly rewarding activity; it is a place that feels like home. It does not matter whether the work takes the form of writing—reports, references, and letters—or reading. Or, if it involved physical activities, one may become totally absorbed in what one is doing, get lost in the activity and experience a full sense of relief. Active mental and physical involvement in solitary projects can be a sense of salvation. By surrendering to powers within to powers within and sources of light in the universe, in some mysterious way, a miracle happens. It is the loss of the old man and the discovery of the new man. When the light reveals itself, the individual is ready to accept it. This reduces the need to force or push or beseech. One simply waits with firm faith that one is meant to be whole again and that one will live more in a full and complete way. It becomes clear that people one loves and those who love one cannot reach the individual going through changes. And so, life has to come from another source, and that new direction will emerge in solitude. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The problem of the truth of faith presents itself from both the subjective and objective sides. Subjectively, faith is true if it adequately expresses an ultimate concern, that is, if the symbols of faith are alive and speak to the heart with an urgency of concern that impels to action and replay. This criterion is more a rule of thumb that works best for obviously dead symbols and is not so useful in judging contemporary ones. However, it is the objective truth of faith that interests us here. The content of faith is true if it is really and not just apparently ultimate. The great danger is demonization, elevation of the symbol to ultimacy, which results in idolatrous faith. Therefore, the criterion of faith is self-negation. The true symbol not only conveys the ultimate, but proclaims its own non-ultimacy. It pronounces a Yes and a No. For the Christian the Cross of the Christ is such a symbol. Name for this criterion—the No that follows immediately on the heels of the Yes—is the Protestant principle. The Protestant principle pervades in this whole theology, both systematically and chronologically. Chameleon-like, it changes its formula of expression against the background of diverse theological problems. Hence, a rapid rundown of its various formulations is useful for identifying it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In addition to being the objective criterion of faith, the Protestant principle expresses man’s infinite distance from God and his dependence upon the divine initiative. The Protestant principle is the prophetic protest against every form of self-absolutizing—for example, the demonic elevation of the churches, of the Christian Bile, and the priesthood to absolute validity. The Protestant principle is “resistance to idolatry,” that is, it stands for non-conformity in family, school, state, and church. The Protestant principle protests the objectifying of grace (die Vergegenstandlichung der Gnade) and so smashes the barriers between the holy and the secular. For, by the Protestant principle, God is as near to the lowest as he is to the highest, as close to the material as to the spiritual. These manifold expressions of the Protestant principle can be summarized in and derived from the basic doctrine that the Protestant principle is justification by grace through faith. We reject the traditional Protestant formula of “justification by faith” on the grounds that is has been misunderstood to mean that the human act of faith sets in motion God’s justifying act. Faith itself is a gift of grace, all justifying actions is entirely on the part of God, and, consequently, the more accurate formula is “justification by grace through faith.” The Protestant principle ultimately rests upon an experience of God’s majesty that attributes absoluteness and holiness to him alone and denies such dignity to all else. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Untrammeled choices of individuals could lead to disaster for society. Picture a paster open to all. It is to expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on this commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels one to increase one’s heard without limit, in a World that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing one’s own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Overpopulation, pollution, excessive fishing, and depletion of exhaustible resources are all part of the problem. People Worldwide must recognize the necessity of restricting individual freedom in these choices, and accept some mutual coercion mutually agreed upon. Depending upon the circumstances, the tragedy of the commons could be a many-person prisoner’s dilemma (each person grazes too many cows) or a spillover problem (too many people choose to become herdsmen). The economist’s favorite solution would be the establishment of property rights. This is what actually happened in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England: the common land was enclosed and claimed by the local aristocrats or landlords. When land is private property, the invisible hand will shut the gate to just the right extent. The owner will charge grazing fees to maximize one’s rental income; the grazing fees will make the owner richer, and the herdsmen poorer. This approach is not feasible in some instances. Property rights over the high seas are hard to define and enforce in the absence of an international government, as is control over air that move from one country to another carrying pollutants. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
For this reason, whaling and acid rain must be handled by more direct controls, but securing the necessary international agreements is no easy matter either. Population is an even harder problem. The right of decision about one’s family, including its size, is enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in many countries bills of rights. Countries like China and India that have at times used some coercion in their population-control efforts have evoked widespread disapproval. Sometimes, when the group is small enough, voluntary cooperation solves the problem. When two oil or gas producers have wells that tap into the same underground deposit, each has the incentive to speed up one’s uptake, to get more of the resource before the other does. When both of them follow this policy, the excessive speed of depletion can actually lower the total amount that can be recovered from the deposit. In practice, drillers recognize the problem and seem able to reach production-sharing arrangements that keep at the proper level that total flow from all wells tapping one deposit. All’s well that ends well? For the less developed countries (LDCs), as for the rest of the World, power stems from the holster, the wallet, and the book—or, nowadays, the computer. Unless we want an anarchic World, with billions of poverty-stricken people, unstable governments led by unstable leaders, each with a finger on the missile launcher or chemical or bacteriological trigger, we now need global strategies for preventing the de-coupling that looms before us. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
In the years immediately ahead the LDCs will acquire sophisticated new arms—enormous firepower will be added to their already formidable arsenals. Why? As LDC economic power diminishes, their rulers face political opposition and instability. Under the circumstances, they are likely to do what rulers have done since the origins of the state: They reach for the most primitive form of power—military force. However, the most acute shortage facing LDCs is that of economically relevant power is no longer through the exploitation of raw materials and human muscle but, as we have seen, through application of the human mind. Development strategies make no sense, therefore, unless they take full account of the new role of knowledge in wealth creation, and of the accelerative imperative that goes hand in hand with it. With knowledge (which in our definition includes such things as imagination, values, images, and motivation, along with formal technical skills) increasingly central to the economy, the Brazils and Nigerians, the Bangladeshes and Haitis must consider how they might best acquire or generate this resource. It is clear that every wretched child in Northeast Brazil or anywhere else in the World who remains ignorant or intellectually underdeveloped because of malnutrition represents a permanent drain on the future. Revolutionary new forms of education will be needed that are not based on the old factory model. Acquiring knowledge from elsewhere will also be necessary. This may take unconventional—and sometimes even illicit—forms. Stealing technological secrets is already a booming business around the World. We must expect shrewd LDCs to join the hunt. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Another way of obtaining wealth-making know-how is to organize a brain drain. This can be done on a small scale by bribing or attacking teams of researchers. However, some clever countries will figure out that, around the World, there are certain dynamic minorities—often persecuted groups—that can energize a host economy if given the chance. The overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, Indians in East Africa, Syrians in West Africa, Palestinians in parts of the Mideast, Jews in America, and Japanese in Brazil have played this role at one time or another. Transplanted into a different culture, each has brought not merely energy, drive, and commercial or technical acumen, but a pro-knowledge attitude—a ravenous hunger for the latest information, new ideas, skills. These groups have provided a kind of hybrid economic vigor. They work hard, they innovate, they educate their children, and even if they get rich in the process, they stimulate and accelerate the reflexes of the host economy. We will no doubt see various LDCs searching out such groups and inviting them to settle within their borders, in the hopes of injecting a needed adrenaline into the economy. During World War II the Japanese military actually drafted a plan to bring large numbers of persecuted European Jews to Manchuria, then called Manchukuo, for this purpose. However, the “Fugu Plan,” as it was known, was never implemented. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Smart governments will also encourage the spread of nongovernmental associations and organization, since such groups accelerate the spread of economically useful information through newsletters, meetings, conferences, and foreign travel. Associations of merchants, plastics engineers, employers, programmers, trade unions, bankers, journalists, etcetera, serve as channels for rapid exchange of information about what does and does not work in their respective fields. They are an important, often neglected communications medium. Governments serious about economic development will also have to recognize the new economic significance of free expression. Failure to permit the circulation of the new ideas—including economic and political ideas, even if unflattering to the state—is almost always prima facie proof that the state is weak at its core, and that those in power regard staying there as more important than economic improvement in the live of the people. Governments committed to becoming part of the new World will systematically open the valves of public discussion. Other governments will join knowledge consortia—partnerships with other countries or with global companies—to explore the far reaches of technology and science and, especially, the possibility of creating new materials. Instead of pandering to obsolete nationalist notions, they will purse the national interest passionately—but intelligently. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Rather than refusing to pay royalties to foreign pharmaceutical companies on the lofty ground that health is above such grubby concerns, as Brazil has done, they will gladly pay the royalties—provided these funds stay inside the country for a fixed number of years, and are used to finance research projects carried out jointly with a local pharmaceutical firm’s own experts. Profits from products that originate in this joint research can then be divided between the host country and the multinational. In this way the royalties pay for technology transfer—and for themselves. Effective nationalism thus replaces obsolete, self-destructive nationalism. Similarly, intelligent governments will welcome the latest computers, regardless of who built them, rather than trying to build a local computer industry behind tariff walls that keep out not merely products but advanced knowledge. The computer industry is changing so fast on a World scale that no nation, not even the United States of America or Japan, can keep up without help from the rest of the World. By barring certain outside computers and software, Brazil managed to build its own computer industry—but is products are backward compared with those available outside. This means that Brazilian banks, manufacturers, and other businesses have had to use technology that is inefficient compared with that of their foreign competitors. They compete with one hand tied behind them. Rather than gaining, the country loses. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Brazil violated the first rule of the new system of wealth creation. So what you will with the slowly changing industries, but get out of the way of a fast-advancing industry. Especially one that processes the most important resource of all—knowledge. Other LDCs will avoid these errors. Some, we may speculate, will actually invest modestly in existing venture capital funds in the United States of America, Europe, and Japan—on condition that their own technicians, scientists, and students accompany the capita and share in the know-how developed by the resulting start-up firms. In this way, Brazilians or Indonesians or Nigerians or Egyptians might find themselves at the front edge of tomorrow’s industries. Astutely managed, the program could well pay for itself—or even make a profit. Above all, the LDCs will take a completely fresh look at the role of agriculture, regarding it not necessarily as a “backward” sector but as a sector that potentially, with the help of computers, genetics, satellites, and other new technologies, could someday be more advanced, more progressive than all the smokestacks, steel mills, and mines in the World. Knowledge-based agriculture may be the cutting edge of economic advantage of tomorrow. Moreover, agriculture will not limit itself to growing food, but will increasingly grow energy crops and feed stocks for new materials. These are but a few of the ideas likely to be tested in the years to come. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
However, none of these efforts will bear fruit if the country is cut off from participation in the fast-moving global economy and the telecommunications and computer networks that support it. The maldistribution of telecommunications in today’s World is even more dramatic than the maldistribution of food. There are 7.33 billion unique mobile phones users in the World today, which makes 91.40 percent of people in the World cell phone owners. The lopsided distribution of computers, data bases, technical publications, research expenditures, tells us more about the future potential of nations than all the gross-national-product figures ground out by economists. To plug into the new World economy, countries like China, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, India, as well as the Soviet Union and the East European nations, must find the resources needed to install their own electronic infrastructures. These must go far beyond mere telephone services to include up-to-date, high-speed data systems capable of linking into the latest global networks. The good news is that today’s slow countries may be able to skip over an entire stage of infrastructure development, leapfrogging from First to Third Wave communications without investing the vast sums needed to build Second Wave networks and systems. The Iridium systems, for example, announced by Motorola, Inc., placed 77 tiny satellites into low orbit, which make it possible for millions in remote or sparsely populated regions like Soviet Arctic, the Chinese desert, or the interior of African to send and receive voice, data, and digitized images through handheld telephones. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
It is not necessary to lay cooper or even fiber optic cable across thousands of miles of jungle, ice or sand. The portable phones communicate directly with the nearest overhead satellite, which will pass the message along. Other advances also similarly slashing the huge costs of telecommunications, brining them within reach of today’s impoverished counties. Large scale production and hyper-competition among American, European and Japanese suppliers will also drive down costs. The new key to economic development is clear. The “gap” that must be closed is informational and electronic. It is a not gap between the North and the South, but between the slow and the fast. However, China’s inadequacy in services is of a structural character. It has it historical and cultural roots, especially the legacy of several decades long epoch of Soviet-style socialism. The mentality of many Chinese service companies and workers may have exceeded those in America. When I was in China, I was impressed by their customer service. They were extremely polite, spent time talking to me, even offered me candy and gave me a soccer ball for shopping at one of their malls. They did treat me like a king. I did not want to come back to America because I loved China so much. Maybe people have different experiences? #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
The overall picture of the service economy in China is not gloomy. Even on the airplane they were polite and told me to stop being so “Western.” The hotels were awesome, as well as the recreation facilities and restaurants. As local consumers’ demand for a variety of good services is increasing, American, European and Japanese service providers have a good chance to exploit their competitive advantage in this area, establishing a stronger position at the Chinese market. Here, however, comes a surprise. You may expect that, in the wake of what was written earlier, America and Europe are enjoying substantial surpluses in their services trade with China, not incomparable to their huge deficits in merchandise trade. But the thing with the people in China, one cannot tell when they are just being nice. Things are so different. They try so hard to like people and make them happy that it seems like they really like you. And they try really hard to keep a neat appearance, are very careful with their work, and take pride in what they do. Because their image and reputation depends a lot on word of mouth, they are very careful not to hurt your feelings and to conceal negative topics, ideas, thoughts and behavior. And their houses are really clean, many of them have never heard of “racism” and the student work very hard in school. It is amazing how many hours a day they spend studying. They really went out of their way to impress us, like hosting us in a restaurant, but making it a private event, of course it meant getting up at 3 A.M. in the morning, but I was happy to. They are so polite and taught me if something is meant to be, you will meet that person again. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Hallowed by the Life of Blood
The rain lashed with vindictive fury at the windows of my mansion. My skin was crawling with gooseflesh, listening to the mournful recording crackling with static under the needle of the gramophone as the song grew louder through the rain. There is an eerie undocumented history that simmers below the surface and appears periodically to frighten and confuse people. The last thing I wanted to do is see whatever sight might accompany it. The wind was strong up here on the fourth floor and I could hear rain spatter hard against the sitting-room window. I walked on into the room, past the beckoning Hall of Fires, looking out and down at the night. I could see the dome to the nine-story observation tower through the stir of trees surrounding it. A swath of rain bleared the glass in front of my face and made me blink and recoil slightly. “Hello, Aunt Sarah.” The voice of my niece Daisy. “What I have to say concerns this mansion.” A few items of lovely furniture occupied the room. Two of these were armchairs. Daisy sat in one of them. She had paused, perhaps for effect. “I’m sorry to intrude on you. But there really isn’t a choice. A visitor, strolling along the ground near the fruit orchard, heard wisps of strange tunes. Listening more closely through the dusky evening, he was lured inside of the mansion. And he is now dead.” I took my head into my hands. “Aunt Sarah, I need you. There is no time for prevarication on this.” “Daisy, I will meet you in the Venetian Dining Room this evening,” I replied. I rose from my chair thinking that God had very little to do with anything that ever occurred within the grounds of the walls of my mansion. From wars to executions, to suicides and untimely death from injury, plague, or disease, Victorian mansions are, for all their majesty and splendor, tragic places where death stalked the cold lonely corridors. These are the places of the bloodiest history, whether it be a place raided by the unlawful, or a battle for ownership. With such a history of violence and tragedy, it is little wonder that this mansion is regarded as haunted? #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
I walked back to the window. It was a quarter to six. Strange noises and an occasional sighting of the larger-than-average soldiers with the oddly pointed hats have been seen roaming the grounds. Any attempt to speak with them or approach them, they simply vanish into the mansion. Odd doors and gated entrances punctuated the length of the mansion. There was a Gothic, deliberate atmosphere about my home, a sepulchral character to the mass of its wooden buttresses andre treats. Geometrical shapes snatched inexplicably at the eyes. And often one could hear laughter, high-pitched with contempt or teasing mockery that made one hurry on, even though it may be rationalized as the cold wind gusting through the elaborate masonry. The wind whistles in the trees and leaves and wisps of thick mist blow across the farmland. With the trotting of horses and constant sounds of construction, the heart is suddenly racing, and one thinks they hear something behind them. After all, this is an ancient land, a house built by spirits, occupied by ghosts, pixies, goblins and all sort of mythical creatures of the night. Anything is likely to happen. Looking around the interior of the estate, one can discern a deep, foreboding blackness that seems to be following one, as if it is alive and in pursuit. Stepping out into the fruit orchard, the wind suddenly drops and one’s senses are heightened. Indeed, one can hear one’s very heart beating in their chest as they continue to canter forward into the night. The mist becomes thicker, darker, and as one glances furtively from side to side, the darkness of shadows of the orchards hides their secrets, but perhaps you are not alone. Sometimes I tell myself that the scraping sounds at the window is simply a branch being blown in the breeze and the footsteps heard in the hallway are old timbers creaking and groaning with a change in the air or weather. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
If there was something serious going on, the housekeeper and the butler would try to keep it quiet. They might talk together, but they would be tight-lipped in front of me. The clock struck seven. I met Daisy in the dining room. “Aunt Sarah, we all talked. We weren’t meant to,” Daisy said. “We were all talking about it. We didn’t know what to make of it. The body was found on a cold stone passage, that was said to lead directly into the opulent state rooms where you normally conducted meetings.” Not a moment too soon, five housemaid trooped into the dining room. Taking off their white starched aprons, they formed up in a line. The room, echoing with their footsteps and voices, as in a church. The mahogany floor, almost three thousand square feet of it had to be hand polished. It was an onerous task, one of the housemaids least like doing. Bending down, they placed their tins of wax of the floor. “Daisy, it looks like we will have to continue this conversation later,” I said. “Goodnight, Aunt Sarah,” she replied. The maids stooped on their hands and knees, their long black dresses spread out around them. Working in union, they dabbed their clothes in wax; then they rubbed the floor vigorously in quick tight circle. The observation tower staircase was the place the servants feared most. The observation tower sits ominously over the mansion, along with sever distinctive turrets jutting proudly into the skies. Sweeping down to the Guard Room eight floors below, it was the main thoroughfare in the tower. Family portraits adored its walls. The steps, of bare stone—framed by a wrought-iron balustrade, topped by a mahogany rail—were wide and shallow. “We were all scared of the tower’s stairs,” said Elsa. “I was coming down them one evening, halfway down, I felt somebody push me. They were behind me, trying to push me down the stairs. I turned round, and of course there was no one there.” The Winchester Mansion is a land of appealing features seemingly embedded in the sense of a deep-rooted and permanent history that emanates from almost every corner of the land. It has rustic grounds and quaint gardens, a hulking mansion with many towering features, having been fostered over decades to create a comfortable and pleasing landscape that guests recall like their favorite arm chair. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
A number of the male servants, skeptical of ghost as they were, had experienced a similar sensation. “I used to keep an eye on the mansion,” Edvin recalled. “I would walk around the dark with the dogs, no lights on, no torches, or anything. One night, I was coming across the first floor of the tower—and I got up to the stairs and felt hot breath on the back of my neck. I turned round. There was nobody there. But the dogs wouldn’t go any further, their hackles went right up. It was ages before I could get them to move.” I often examined the possibility of evil. I had a notion that evil was communicable. Something that can, as it were, contaminate. However, one must not confuse evil with manifestations. My secret rooms, by their very nature, held the servants in thrall. It was an area that they never entered, never saw or ever knew what went on. It was a place of mystery. The rooms were subjects of wild speculations, fueled by the servants’ fear of me, and their knowledge of my eccentric interests. My servants knew I was fascinated by the occult and this played to their fears. They knew the mansion was haunted and I often had the mediums in. However, they never whether any ghosts or sprits were actually summoned. It went on behind closed doors. Of course, they knew of the ancestral curse. It had been cast in the mid-19th century by a coven of witches. The curse had also been cast over future generations; aimed at Winchester heirs; it determined that the children would die before they reached the age of thirteen and those who survived would be haunted by ghosts and demons. For decades, it had seemed to me and my servants that this was a cruse from which the family could never escape. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
One night, it was shortly before three o’clock in the morning when a shadowy figure, dressed from head to foot in back, crossed the landing of the staircase. The night was cloudless, the moon almost full. There was a blackout and the mansion was shrouded in darkness. The light from the moon set tiny point of balance dancing in the darkened windows. I could hear footsteps moving stealthily across the floor and the occasional cry of an animal from the fields. A headless horseman was riding near the tower. I got out of bed, and turned the corner into a passage in one of the parlors. As the men worked in the hallways, they froze. Coming down the hallway was a pair of green eyes belonging to a child. The eyes were about two or three feet up from the floor, leading me to believe that child was three years old. They eyes simply floated up the hall, and then turned into one of the maid’s room where we lost sight of them. That night I also saw dark shapes. There was a dark shadowy thing flying from the Grand Ball Room to the and down the hallway. Then above the chandelier there were several dark shadowy things. They flew outside, barely illuminating the background of the trees and then were blocked out by an even darker shadow, moving slowly, methodically along the tree line. Meanwhile another shadow ran through the hallway, it was tall. The carpenters looked at each other in suspense. Closing the heavy steel door behind me, I had left the Grand Ball Rom to find my way long the labyrinth passages. A long passage reached into the distance. It was gloomy, lit by only the strip lighting in the display cases that ran along with wall. Ahead was a solid oak door, carved in the Gothic style. Another passage led off to my right, I could see that it branched in two. One end led into a small hall. It was in darkness. “No one goes in there,” a mysterious voice whispered. The spirit gave me a fright. Everyone, it seems, even hardened sceptics and disbelievers, has seen a ghost. For some reason, in the back of their minds, ghosts may be real. Everyone has known the feeling of their heart racing for a second when they see a shadow moving in the corner of their eye or they feel some sort of presence standing over them. Or worse still, a tortured face in a window that paralyses their body and retards their breathing to the point that they can hear the blood pumping around their own body. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
I took the left passage. I went on some distance ahead, there was a kink in the passage. A man emerged from it and started waling me. He was wearing knee breaches and a nineth-century coachman’s jacket. As we drew level, he stopped. “Mrs. Winchester, those rooms are forbidden,” he said, “What are you doing in this part of the house?” Once again, he repeated, “Those rooms are forbidden.” I did not want to stop and talk; I was anxious to get back to my room. I assumed that the servants were being proprietorial. Finally, I had made it to my destination sometime later. The bedroom was not dark, because the bright light of a full moon entered through the window. I had just lain down, ready to go to sleep, when I suddenly noticed that I was not on my own. I heard a rasping breath in the darkness only a few feet away. Right in front of the wardrobe and looking directly at me was a middle-aged man, dressed like a Catholic priest. I rubbed my eyes and pinched my arms to make sure I was fully awake Yes, I most certain was. Was I having hallucinations? The priest was still standing there, looking at me. He was a rather frail man with hollow cheeks. His face showed traces of a hard life and illness. If he had any hair at all, it was covered by his hat. He looked so real, not like a ghost. I was not a bit scared, because he radiated vibrations of utter peace and tranquility. There was nothing to be afraid of, so I decided to talk to him keeping my voice as low as possible. “Hello, Father,” I said. “God bless you.” “And God bless you, my child,” came the priest’s prompt reply. He was well-spoken, his voice was soft. His English accent was not hard to distinguish. After giving me a few personal messages and stressing the point that there is survival after death, he told me who he was. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
His name was John Ogilvie, and in had lived in Scotland from 1580 to 1615, he wanted hanged at Glasgow Cross for his faith. When I remarked that at the time of his hanging, he was only 36 years old, he confirmed this. After quietly talking about religious matters for a few moments, he bade me farewell and disappeared. It seems that he refused to pledge allegiance to King James, and it was for this crime that the was tried, found guilty and hanged. After his execution, his followed were apprehended and put in jail. If this was not a genuine case of a visit from beyond the grave, what is it? Most of the time, the mansion is benign. Unfortunately, sometimes people find exactly what they are looking for. I had been in bed half an hour when I heard the music playing softly from my sitting room next door. I listened to the same, faintly relentless song. Starting to sweat and grow cold in bed, I recognized the song. Or I thought I did. And it continued. It wavered through the wall and door frame in strained, distended chords, and choruses, swelling and facing, ragged and persistent. The door was to my right. I pulled back the duvet and got out of bed and walked through the door to the sitting room. Where the music was louder. The must persisted, repetitious, frighting me. As I turned the corner, I discovered that Gerhardt hanged himself from the cross beams. Badly wounded, Mr. Hansen carried to the attic to await medical attention, but he died there. Since that time people have claimed that he haunts the attic room. He has been seen and heard there from time to time. Servants have reported hearing the creaking of a rope and the soft thud of a body swaying against the wall. Though they often look for the source of the sound, they never find it. There is a disheveled, aged specter, bound at feet and hands and rattling chains haunting the basement. A journey through my mansion is a passage through history. A real history, one that you can live and breathe, one that you can feel and be part of. You can walk serenely miles through my mansion, it is a place that inspires contemplation and wonderment. It is a living history, of memories as far back as history recalls. It is a place of myth, legend, of ghosts and ghouls, of giants, and dwarves, mermaids, cupid, another other half-remembered, half-whispered-about creatures. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
If a sudden, horrifying death is what it takes to make the spirit linger, surely, this place—is a candidate. Certainly, where men grappled back and forth, engaged not only in the struggle for their own precious lives, but for the life of their respective countries, where in the balance was the future of the very world, and this place produce the mechanism of defense, if that does not qualify for the lingering-place of souls wondering for eternity the outcome of their struggles, then we cannot name a place. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Los Angeles Will be Two and a Half Hours from Tokyo
Given that burglars are disproportionately young, poor, city-dweller, they tend to have frequent contact with other habitual offenders. There are various structures and processes that go along with the “stolen property system”—the underground market through which in-demand goods are stolen, housed, marketed, and resold on the street of America. Burglary is a crime that is marked by varied levels of social organization. Only on rare occasions do we find burglars who work as loners or within formal organizations. More often, burglars will operate as colleagues—the offender commits the crime along but relies on other members of the criminal subculture to supply him or her with inside information or to assist in converting stolen property into cash. Burglars who take the situation to the next level and enlist help in the actual break-in follow a more peerlike existence. Here, loose partnerships are maintained and invoked when a burglary opportunity presents itself. A primitive example of the peer model would be two or three drug users who randomly stumble upon an unlocked home or unsupervised business and decide to work together to take it down. In some cases, burglary offenders will align themselves in a teamlike format. These offenders invoke a division of labor with each participant serving an owned predetermined role and duties. One person might be assigned to lookout/driver role. Another might serve as the entry specialist, defeating any lock and alarms that are confronted. Still another person can take on the “muscle” role, responsible for doing the heavy lifting. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Socialization scripts play an important part in how and why burglars commit their crimes. Interview-based research suggests that novice or occasional burglars often rely on the tutelage of more seasoned offenders as a way of learning the proverbial ropes of burglary. Novices receive advice and instructions on issues such as target selection, how to foster informants, how to defeat burglary countermeasures, and how to best convert stolen goods into cash. This socialization generally takes shape as informal street corner conversations or jailhouse bravado. On paper, burglary appears to receive serious treatment from the criminal justice system. The Model Penal Code classifies burglary as a felony in the third degree. In most jurisdictions, such as offense is subject to 1 to 5 years in prison. If the burglar is armed or threatens or inflicts bodily harm on another while unlawfully within a dwelling, that individual might see the charges elevated to second degree felony. In practice, however, burglary receives mixed levels of formal response from the various components of the criminal justice system. First, let us consider the response of law enforcement authorities. Police agencies were able to effect an arrest for only 13 percent of the nearly 2.1 million burglaries that were reported to them in 2022. No other form of index crime yields such a dismal clearance rate. Some of this slippage can be attributed to the covert nature of the crime—police often have no witnesses and minimal clues to guide the investigation. However, these low clearance rates are also impacted by the fact that many police officers and police agencies afford a low priority to burglary cases. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Court data reveal a different trend in terms of the veracity with which burglary cases are adjudicated. U.S.A. courts produced nearly 90,000 felony burglary cases in 2022. This figure represents 10 percent of all felony convictions that year. In fact, 68 percent of the burglary cases that were tried resulted in a conviction for the same offense and only 24 percent avoided some sort of conviction. The researchers found that burglary defendants do not receive a reprieve from the courts when it comes time for sentencing. A full 74 percent of the convicted burglars were sentenced to time behind bars. This rate was surpassed only by murder, robbery, drug trafficking, and driving-related offenses. While the median prison sentence for a convicted burglar was 41 months, nearly 10 percent received sentences in excess of 10 years. Our correctional system does not appear to be particularly forgiving to persons who are convicted of burglary. On average, burglary offenders can expect to serve almost half of their sentence—roughly two years. These time-served figures are on par with those of other property offenses (theft, fraud, and motor vehicle theft) but somewhat lower than that observed for violent (54 percent) and weapon-related offenses (60 percent). Accounts from known burglars clearly suggest that informal social control efforts go as long way to deter and/or displace burglary activity. A minimal amount of vigilance on the part of homeowners can go a long way. Measures designed to combat the relatively small population of high incidence “professional” burglars tends to overemphasize the skill and determination of most burglars. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Burglaries are expensive, complex, and require long term commitment at many levels. In fact, most burglars are young, unskilled, and opportunistic. This suggests that emphasis should be directed at such factors as surveillability, occupancy, and accessibility. More specifically, dogs, good locks, and alarm systems deter most burglars. Community-level informal social control can also play an important role in burglary prevention. When it comes to surveillability cues, burglars tend to avoid neighborhoods with a lot of foot traffic or active neighborhood watches. This implies that observant or even nosy neighbors can have a measurable impact on burglary. However, these types of collective efforts are difficult to enact and maintain in the areas that burglars most prefer—urban neighborhoods. If nothing else, tenants of “crime prevention through environmental design” should be considered at a neighborhood level. Simple environmental characteristics such as cul-de-sac street design, high levels of lightening, and well pruned landscaping that minimizes unobservable entry and exit points can have a significant impact on burglary victimization levels in a given community. The aforementioned informal social control efforts represent examples of target hardening strategies aimed at deterring would-be burglars from victimizing a given house or displacing offenders from a given community. Also, measures should be designed that aim to undermine offenders’ strong attachment to street culture. Expanded employment opportunities are one possible, but foreboding avenue to lure offenders out of street life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
There exist even more simple and realistic measures that might effect change in this area. For example, a coordinated burglary prevention program that was implemented in a midsize U.S.A. city during the early 1980s. Community activism and community involvement (id est, block meetings, neighborhood cleanups, and raised awareness of vulnerabilities and potential offenders) showed promise for reducing burglary. If community members care about the condition of their neighborhood and are willing to take steps to clean it up and exercise vigilance over problem people and places, there is hope for reducing burglary and other forms of street crime. Most crime occurs during the nighttime. A close examination of NCVS and UCR data suggests that 50 percent to 60 percent of all residential burglaries go unreported. The figure reported here was derived by adding the NCVS data on residential burglaries to an adjusted estimate of nonresidential burglaries that were reported in the UCR—one that factors a 60 percent nonreporting rate. These data must be viewed with caution because 50 to 60 percent of all burglaries go unreported to police and only 14 percent of these lead to arrest. Over time, the crime of burglary has slowly slipped down the list of crime fighting priorities. At present, less than half of all burglaries get reported to police, and only 13 percent of those result in an arrest. What kinds of social and legal factors have contributed to this present level of empathy when it comes to the formal and informal society control of burglary? #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Adjudication data suggest that accused burglars face a high certainty of being convicted and sentenced to prison. This should send a message to police that burglary is a high priority for our nation’s prosecutors and judges. Still, burglary investigation and arrest efforts remain lukewarm at best. What kinds of factors contribute to police officers’ attitudes and behaviors regarding burglary patrol and enforcement? Considerable evidence suggests that burglars refine strategies and cues that help them identify soft and potentially lucrative targets. Does this mean that burglars are more rational and planful than other types of criminals? The Lord has declared that “no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of Heaven,” reports Alma 11.37. Our sins make us unclean—unworthy to return and dwell in the presence of our Heavenly Father. They also bring anguish to our soul in this life. Repentance is sometimes a painful process, but it leads to forgiveness and lasting peace. The power of sin is great. To become free from it, we must turn to your Heavenly Father, pray in faith, and act as He asks us to. The Holy Spirit should never become the center and object of thought and worship, place which He Himself does not desire, and which it is not the purpose of the Father in Heaven that He should have or occupy. “He shall not speak from Himself,” reports John 16.13, said that Lod Jesus before Calvary, as He foretold the Spirit’s coming at Pentecost. He would act as Teacher (John 14.26), but teaching the words of Another, not to Himself (John 15.26); He would only glorify Another, not His own; He would bear witness to Another, not Himself (John 16.14); He would only speak what was given Him to spear by Another (John 16.13). #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
The Spirit’s entire work would be to lead souls into union with the Son and give proper knowledge of the Father in Heaven, while He Himself directed and worked in the background. If a man who is untaught in the scriptural statements about the work of the Triune God makes “obeying the Spirit” his supreme purpose, the deceiver will aim to counterfeit the guidance of the Spirit, and even the presence of the Spirit Himself. It is just here that the ignorance of the seeker about the spiritual Word now opened to one, the working of evil powers in that realm, and the conditions upon which God works in and through one, gives the enemy his opportunity. It becomes the time of greatest peril for anyone unless one is instructed and prepared by the Lord, as the disciples were for three whole years. The danger lies in the area of supernatural “guidance,” for one must know the conditions of cooperation with the Holy Spirit in order to discern the cooperation with the Holy Spirit in order to discern the will of God and be able to recognize counterfeit manifestations. The “discerning of spirits” is required to detect the workings of the false angel of light, for he is able to bring about counterfeit gifts of prophecy, tongues, healing, and other spiritual experiences connected with the work of the Holy Ghost. Those who have their eyes opened to the opposing forces of the metaphysical realm understand that very few believers can guarantee that they are obeying God and God only, in directly supernatural guidance, because there are so many factors liable to intervene, such as the believer’s own mind, spirit, or will and the deceptive intrusion of the powers of darkness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Knowledge is essential here. Scripture teaches that there is a God-given gift of “discerning of spirits” (1 Cor. 12.10) which enables one to detect that an unwelcome spirit is at work, but there is also a test of spirits which is doctrinal (1 John 4.1-6). In the former, a believer can discern in his spirit that lying spirits are at work in a meeting, or in a person, but one may not have the understanding needed for testing the doctrines being set forth by the teacher. One needs a level of knowledge in both cases: knowledge to read one’s spirit with assurance in the face of all contrary appearances, that the supernatural workings are not “of God,” and knowledge to detect the subtlety of “teachings” bearing certain infallible indications that they emanate from the pit, even while appearing to be from God. As to personal obedience to God, the believer can detect whether or not one is obeying God in some “command” by judging its fruits, and by being aware of the character of God—such as the truth that God has always a purpose in His commands, and He will give no command out of harmony with His character and Word. Often times people wait for something to happen, for some sure way to nurture oneself, to live from within. Music, art, poetry, hot baths, savory foods, wind, rain—nothing affects them. In the past, within days after a solitary retreat, many had found solace and strength in their loneliness. They had always found a way, at least a beginning that would lead to action and to life with others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
However, it is impossible to find what one is looking for, and one is still on a lonely journey, waiting from a spark from within. Because some people feel empty and eroded inside, they avoid all significant communication. More than anything else the interpersonal aspects of living exhaust some and move them to withdraw from real meetings with others. This leaves an individual certain that one does not want to struggle anymore. Doubt, risk and anxiety—inherent elements of faith—can be overcome only by another of its elements, courage. Courage is an ontological concept, the self-affirmation of being in spite of non-being. Faith is the experience of the holy; it is the state of being grasped by the power of being-itself. From this experience flows the power to assert oneself in the face of anxiety. Faith is participation in the object of faith, and yet is the separation from it. In spite of separation, courage expresses participation in the power of being and meaning. This in spite of element is the courage that takes all doubt, risk, and anxiety into itself and overcomes them without removing them. Faith, then, is the basis of courage, and courage is the manifestation of faith. In the extreme situation of a person seized by radical doubt and confronted with the specter of universal meaninglessness, the question arises: Is there such a thing as the courage of despair? Such a courage is entirely possible, for that act of accepting meaninglessness is in itself a meaningful act. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The courage of despair enables one, even while in the grip of meaninglessness, to declare one’s situation, and this declaration has meaning. In other words, there cannot be an infinite regression of negatives—in this case, negativity of meaning. At least, one has to admit, negation of meaning is meaningful, or meaninglessness will have lost all meaning. The faith which feeds the courage of despair is called “absolute faith,” for it can have no specific content. Its content is indefinable, since everything defined is dissolved by doubt and meaninglessness. However, certain elements that constitute absolute faith can be discerned. There is an experience of the power of being in the face of nonbeing, an awareness of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning. There is the dependence of nonbeing upon being, of meaninglessness upon meaning, of the negative upon the positive. And, lastly, there is the acceptance of the power to accept meaninglessness. Thus, absolute faith is faith which has been deprived by doubt of any concrete content, which nevertheless is faith and the source of the most paradoxical manifestation of the courage to be. Faith is without a special content, yet it is not without content. The content of absolute faith is the “God above God.” When people speak of God, they usually refer to the God of theism. Now theism can mean either a vague, unspecified affirmation of God, or a divine-human encounter of persons, or theological theism which makes God a being beside other beings. However, the God of absolute faith is above and beyond the God of any theism, for the God above God is the power of absolute faith as experience of the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The morning traffic from Oakland to San Francisco across the Bay Bridge gets backed up from 7.30 to 11.00 A.M. Until the jam clears at 11.00, each additional car that enters the traffic makes all those who come later wait just a little longer. The right way to measure this cost is to sum up the additional waiting-times across everyone who is delayed. What is the total waiting-time cost imposed by one additional car that crosses the bridge at 9.00 A.M.? You may be thinking you do not know enough information. A remarkable feature to this problem is that the externality can be calculated based on the little amount you have been told. You do not need to know how long it takes the cars to cross the toll plaza, nor the distribution of cars that arrive after 9.00. The answer is that same whether the length of the traffic jam stays constant or varies widely until it cleans. The trick is to see that all that matters is the sum of the waiting time. We are not concerned with who waits. (In other circumstances, we might want to weigh the waiting times by the monetary value of time for those caught in the jam.) The simplest way to figure out the total extra waiting time is to shuffle around who waits, putting all the burden on one person. Imagine that the extra driver, instead of crossing the bridge at 9.00 A.M., pulls his car over to the side and lets all the other drivers pass. If he passes up his turn in this way, the other drivers are no longer delayed by the extra car. Of course, he has to wait two hours before the traffic clears and the road is clear. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
However, these two hours exactly equal the total waiting time imposed on all the other drivers if he were to cross the bridge rather than wait on the sidelines. The reason is straightforward. The total waiting time is the time it takes for everyone to cross the bridge. Any solution that involves everyone crossing the bridge gives the same total waiting time, but distributed differently. Looking at the solution in which the extra car does all the extra waiting is the easiest way to add up the new total waiting time. Looming on the horizon is a dangerous de-coupling of the fast economies from the slow, an event that would spark enormous power shifts throughout the so-called South-with big impacts on the planet as a whole. The new wealth-creation system holds the possibility of a far better future for vast populations who are now among the planet’s poor. Unless the leaders of the less developed countries (LCDs) anticipate these changes, however, they will condemn their people to perpetuated misery—and themselves to impotence. For even as Chinese manufacturers wait for their steel, and traditional economies around the World to crawl slowly through their paces, the United States of America, Japan, Europe, and in this case the Soviets, too, are pressing forward with plans to build hypersonic jets capable of moving 250 tons of people and cargo at Mach 5, meaning that cities like New York, Sydney, London, and Los Angeles will be two and a half hours from Tokyo. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Jiro Tokuyama, former head of the prestigious Nomura Research Institute, and now a senior adviser to the Mitsui Research Institute, heads a fifteen-nation study of what are called the “three T’s:” telecommunications, transportation, and tourism. Sponsored by the Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference, the study focuses on three key factors likely to accelerate the pace of economic processes in the region still further. According to Tokuyama, Pacific air-passenger traffic is likely to reach 134 million…at the turn of the century. The Society of Japanese Aerospace Companies, Tokuyama adds, estimates that five hundred to one thousand hypersonic jets must be built. Many of these will ply Pacific routes, speeding further the economic development of the region, and promoting faster telecommunications as well. In a paper prepared for the Three T’s study, Tokuyama spells out the commercial, social, and political implications of this development. He also describes a proposal by Taisei, the Japanese construction firm, to build an artificial island five kilometers in length to serve as a “VAA,” or “value added airport,” capable of handling hypersonics and providing an interactional conference center, shops, and other facilities to be linked by high-speed linear trains to a densely populated area. In Texas, meanwhile, billionaire H. Ross Perot is building an airport to be surrounded by advanced manufacturing facilities. As conceived by him, planes could roar in a day and night bearing components for overnight processing or assembly in facilities at the airport. The next morning the jets would carry them to all parts of the World. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Simultaneously, on the telecommunications front, the advanced economies are investing billions in the electronic infrastructure essential to operations in the super-fast economy. The spread of extra-intelligence nets is moving swiftly, and there are now proposals afoot to create special higher-speed fiber optic networks linking supercomputer all across the United States of America with thousands of laboratories and research groups. (Existing networks are regarded as too slow. The proposed new nets would send 319 Terabits per second streaming across the country). The new network is needed because the existing slower nets are already choked and overloaded. They argue that the project merits government backing because it would help the United States of America keep ahead of Europe and Japan in a field it now leads. This, however, is only a special case of a more general clamor. In the words of Mitch Kapor, a founder of Lotus Development Corporation, the software giant, “We need to build a national infrastructure that will be the information equivalent of the national highway-building of the ‘50s and ‘60s.” An even more appropriate analogy would compare today’s computerized telecom infrastructures with the rail and road networks needed at the beginning of the industrial revolution. What is happening, therefore, is the emergence of an electronic neural system for the economy—without which any nation, no matter how many smokestacks it has, will be domed to backwardness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
In its commercial service trade, in 2021, India trade balance for 2021 USD$-79.19, a 665.96 percent increase from 2020. The United States of America is the largest services exporter in the World. In 2019, U.S.A. exports of service were USD $875.8 billion, up 1.6 percent (USD $13 billion) from 2018. U.S.A. exports of services account for 35 percent of over all U.S.A. exports in 2019. Germany World Development Indicators (WDI) 2020: trade balance in USD$221,534 million. Trade services as a percentage of GDP is 5.82 percent. Trade in services with the United Kingdom (exports and imports) totaled an estimated USD $140.7 billion in 2019. Services exports were USD $78.3 billion; services imports were USD $62.3 billion. The U.S.A. services trade surplus with United Kingdom was USD $16.0 billion in 2019. Trade in services with China (exports and imports) totaled an estimated $56.0 billion in 2020. Services exports were USD $40.4 billion; services imports were USD $15.6 billion. The U.S.A. service trade surplus with China was USD $24.8 billion in 2020. Trade in services with Japan (exports and imports) totaled an estimated USD $68.6 billion in 2020. Services exports were USD $38.0 billion; services imports were USD $30.6 billion. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
The U.S.A. services trade surplus with Japan was USD $7.4 billion in 2020. Japan was the United States of Americas’ 4th largest goods export market in 2020. As for the services, France exported around USD $303 billion worth of services in 2021, while it imported services for the total value of USD $258.3 billion. Service trade in Italy in 2020, Italy exported $73.1B worth of services. The outsized U.S.A.-Ireland commercial relationship, which exceeded USD $1 trillion in 2021 is significant by international standards and is particularly impressive relative to the country’s population of five million people. In 2021, U.S.A. good exported to Ireland exceeded USD $13.8 billion. The statistics for services from 2012 record the value of U.S.A. service exports to Ireland at $74.8 billion. In 2021, global services exports were valued at USD $6.1 trillion, representing 6.3 percent of total World trade in both goods and services. Overall, as far as the nations’ trade balances are concerned, the picture in the services sector is almost the opposite of the one in the merchandise trade. In services, the West has a significant competitive edge versus China and is in a good position to establish a much wider presence in the Chinese market. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Mrs. Winchester Might be the Next Victim
In reliving those years of despair, I weep for my beautiful angel as she was experiencing a most unfortunate horror. My heart filled with anguish as I remember the horrible ending to her life. Her lungs had filled beyond further help; her stomach could no longer function properly and she could not be fed orally any longer. She was only six weeks old. My husband and I consulted with her doctors about her condition and were advised that no further feedings be given. However, the final decision was ours. Our final decision to discontinue all further feedings took all our strength. Although we were aware it was the only human thing to do, we also knew that while we watched her take her last breaths, we too would be dying within ourselves. We loaded the carriage and drove her to the hospital for the last time. As I held Annie in my I arms, I knew that this memory would remain within my heart eternally. The memory of that trip and the finality that is possessed still feel so real to me. When we arrived at the hospital, I laid my baby girl gently in her bed, never to hold her in my arms again. Later, I tried to hold her again but she became extremely rigid in the process of lifting her. The doctor said she was dying from malnutrition. She has a curious disease known as Marasmus. My baby could not digest her food. She was so tiny. She did not have round waxen arms and legs like other babies, now puffy pink cheeks. My dear Annie was reduced to a skeleton. Her beautiful eyes were vacant. She barely had the energy to muster up a cry. #RandolphHarris 1 of 3
I knew then that she could no longer endure living with great pain she had known. She was ready to leave us. There was nothing more we could do for her but allow her to leave. Two days later, Annie died, along, unaware of another human being. She had been under heavy sedation and was unable to further communicate. Her days of torment and agony were over. It broke my heart that I brought a baby in the World who was slowly, agonizingly dying as we pondered the imponderable eternity for days, hours, until her life force abandoned us. But her precious memories will always remain alive and real in our hearts. She left the deepest feeling of compassion and love with Mr. Winchester and myself. Her tragic memories are embedded within our hearts. I shall find a way to dedicate meaning to her life so she will not have suffered in vain. In 1862, Sarah L. Winchester married William Wirt Winchester, son of Oliver Fisher Winchester, Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut and manufacturer of the famous Winchester repeating rifle. The couple’s life together was happy, and they moved in the best of New England society. However, in 1866, disaster struck when their infant daughter, Annie Winchester, died of the then curious childhood disease marasmus. Mrs. Winchester fell into a deep depression from which she never fully recovered. Fifteen years later, in March 1881, her husband’s premature death from tuberculosis added to Mrs. Winchester’s distress. A medium explained to Mrs. Winchester her family and her fortune were cursed and being haunted by spirits and that she would be the next victim. #RandolphHarris 2 of 3
However, the medium also claimed that there was an alternative. Mrs. Winchester was instructed to move West and appease the spirits by building a great house for them. As long as construction never ceased, Mrs. Winchester could rest assured that her life was not in danger. Building such a house was even supposed to being her eternal life. Innumerable spirits shuffled off their mortal coils embrace the Winchester Mansion as their home. They have surrendered their spirits to the miles of winding and twisting hallways in the Winchester Mansion. Humans beings that were mowed down in sheaves, bowled over by bounding shot, decapitated, disemboweled, dismembered, exterminated instantly all call this place home. Although bullets dropped many of them, they all did not die right away. They gagged their last words, hoping that God would hear them. They paid with their heart’s blood for defending this great nation. Countless others as well, unready, perhaps unwilling, have left their shadows behind to haunt this estate. It cannot be surprising then, that Mrs. Winchester and the caretakers, reluctantly admit they saw apparitions. Particularly on sultry moonlit summers nights, when the mists hang low in the garden, there can be seen, slowly trotting across the lawn, a long horseman, in the finery of a Civil War officer. Where medical doctors were scarce in the Civil War, witches provided cures for a variety of common ailment. They were said to worship Satan Himself during their infamous sabbats, gatherings at which the Devil was sometimes present in person, and can almost be seen lurking about the estate. #RandolphHarris 3 of 3
It is difficult to see in hindsight what Mrs. Winchester had to do with all this, but as time went on and the estate grew, wild accusations came to be leveled, chief among which was that of Mrs. Winchester having made a pact with Satan. How else but through diabolic abetment could a mere woman exercise such power? https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Many People are Prepared to Dismiss the Occult World
There was no one downstairs, though the oil lamps were burning. A tall antique-case clock with a mahogany surround stood in the alcove beneath the sweep of the stairs. I looked up at the mottled ivory-colored face, at the slim Roman numerals and delicate black hands. There was a whirring of the mechanism inside the case, then a high-pitched carillon started to chime. I know I had taken my time, but even so, I was surprised that it was eight o’clock already. There was a deep nocturnal silence in the house, in which five caretakers were presumably coming and going about their work. It was certainly strange. I looked out the window, hoping to see someone crossing the court or coming alone the drive. However, no one was in sight, and the rain was still falling, with a business-like regularity, muffling the outer World in layers on layers of thick white liquid velvet, and intensifying the silence within. A noiseless World—were people so sure tht absence of noise was what they wanted? Let them first try a lonely December in a mansion this size! My heart began to hammer. Luckily there was a chair near the fireplace. I sat down to recover my strength—or was it my courage? Astrid the caretaker slept in the nearest wind. It occurred to me that by looking from the window of a neighbouring bathroom I could see the kitchen chimney. There ought to be smoke coming from it at this hour; and if there were, I would be less afraid to go on. I got as far as the front parlor and looking through the window I could see there was no smoke coming from the chimney. My sense of loneliness grew more acute. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
Whatever had happened below stairs must have happened before the morning’s work had begun. The cook had not time to light the fire, the other caretakers had not yet begun their rounds. I was struggling against my fears. If I carried on my investigations, what next would I discover? I walked along the passage, and rested my hand on a radiator. It was stone-cold. Yet in my well-ordered house during the winter, the central heating was never allowed to go out, and by eight in the morning mellow warmth typically pervaded the rooms. The icy chill of the pipes startled me. No matter, I will just have the carpenters remove this fancy new technology and go back to using the 47 fireplaces. It was Mr. Hansen who looked after the heating—he was too involved in the mystery, whatever it was, as well as the house caretakers. At Astrid’s door, I paused and knocked. I expected no answer, and there was none. I opened the door and went in. The room was very dark and cold. But what frightened me was no so much its emptiness as its air of scrupulous and undisturbed order. There was no sign of anyone having lately dressed in it—or undressed the night before. And the bed had not been slept in. The woman was out, then; had gone out, no doubt, the night before, since the bed was unslept in, the dressing and washing appliances untouched. Astrid never set foot out of the house after dark. I could not believe she had deserted the house on a cold rainy night, while her mistress lay upstairs, suffering and helpless! #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Why had she gone, and where had she gone? When she was undressing me the night before, taking my orders, trying to make me comfortable, was she already planning this mysterious and dreadful occurred? I took a few deep breaths to steady my nerves. Held in a spell, filling my head with images, with emotions, that had long been absent my eyes filled with tears. My home had suddenly become the scene of virtually indescribable horrors and life-altering (and life-ending) event. Sadly, as I walked into the hallway, I saw wounded bodies laying desperately wounded. Wounded, shattered men and boys by the hundreds were strung about the mansion. The sounds of soft lead being driven into bone made a shattering sound, there were tiny bone fragments. Hundreds of torn bodies pouring into every in of my home. Blood covered doctors were sweating over several hundred filthy bodies with their guts torn open. Sticky gore flung in my sinks, and my morning room transformed into a mourning room, roped-offed for those who had been hit in the head. My former happy, joyous home had morphed into a hospital and cemetery. Suddenly, a choir singing. The reverberation of the plainsong in the upper echelons of the cathedral ceilings of the Grand Ball Room. As I made my way though the hall, time stopped many times. I noticed a lady who looked like Astrid and was on the point of waving when she vanished right before my eyes. A ghost of a man with a bright lantern appeared. He felt neighbourly and hovered in the hallway. He suddenly darted at me. I was absolutely frozen stiff until the light sailed out of sight. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
As I looked out the window, I could see human tibia, fibula, femur and radius, rings and cuff buttons were scattered on the emerald green lawns. My mansion was filled with groans and sighs and tremors. It was possibly more fearful than the 1906 Earthquake which woke me from my slumber. That was also a strange morning. In the cupola, figures of men—sentinels, paced back in forth, and hovered above the estate and the observational tower shortly after midnight. I always thought the Earthquake was caused by these sentry-spirits, now haunting my mansion, acting out the horrors of the war. In fact, for several night in a row, prior to the Earthquake, I saw a man on the cupola, frantically waving his arms. He was there three nights in a row. He stood, dressed in a blue coat and white pants, looking very pale, within the cupola, waving his hoary arms, back and forth. I called out to him, but he would not answer—just waving motion, back and forth, back and forth. Was he, rapped in more important duties, too busy to answer? Or what he trying to warn me? The thin veil between this life and the next one was sending me messages. And, one evening, there was witnessed an even more bizarre and unexplainable devotion to my estate. Astrid and I had just finished having tea on the 3rd floor. We entered the elevator to take us to the first floor. The lighted numerals in the elevator displayed their descent: “3…2…1…” and continued past the first floor. Absent-mindedly, I pushed the button for the first floor again, wondering why the elevator had not stopped, or perhaps, who in the basement had summoned the elevator. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
The elevator stopped at the basement level. The doors opened to reveal not the area once cleaned up for storage, but a scene out of time and reason, the blood-stained doctors and orderlies of nearly half a century before, again performing their abhorrent and hideous tasks of slicing sinew and sawing bone and suturing artery and vein and tying ligaments; of carrying armloads of severed limbs to grisly, blood-dampened corners and dumping them there unceremoniously. We have fallen into a ghastly frozen moment, being held captive witness to the scene. One of the harried doctors turned toward us and began to look beseechingly into our eyes for help with the never-ending work, or perhaps for help to find some way out of the subterranean scene where he himself would not be heled in forced incarceration for eternity. As he took a step towards us, finally, slowly, the doors began to close. This latest encounter was a continuation. My mansion echoed with the cries and moans of torn men and boys. All of this tension and blood shed because many leaders were heavily involved in companies that raced to establish claims to millions of acres of western land. The Emancipation Proclamation was but another example of the war’s surprising consequences. On July 3, General Lee sent three divisions, about 15,000 men in all, against the Union center. The assault, known as Pickett’s Charge, was as futile as it was gallant. At 700 yards, the Union artillery opened fire. Pickett’s division just seemed to melt away in the blue musketry smoke which now covered my estate. Ghosts of soldiers straggling to my home, all these years later. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
Tracing its origins back to 1849, Winchester was the World’s oldest maker of lever-action repeating firearms in the World. I believe Winchester Rifles had been in the Civil War. Thousands of men and horses, dying, stripped and saddle and bridle were killed during the battle of Antietam. That is a reason this estate is also haunted by demonic horses. The Civil War put more men in the field than any previous engagement. On the morning of April 12, 1906, at 5.13 a.m., trapped in the Daisy Bedroom, I gazed out my window and could see a steady stream of men covered with mud, soaked through with rain…pouring irregularly, without any semblance of order, up 13 Palm Drive toward my home. I perceived they belonged to different regiments…mingled pell-mell together…a pale young man who looked exhausted to death and who had lost his sword appeared in my room and rescued me. Then he said, “I know I’m going home. I’ve had enough of fighting to last my lifetime.” More and more the cold unanswering silence of the house weighed me down. I had never thought of it as a big house, even though it had 600 rooms and expanded more than 250,000 square feet, but now, in this devastating moment, it seemed immense, and full of ominous corners around which I dared not look. Every step that I took was increasingly painful; but after being freed from my room, I walked slowly the whole length of the passage, and went down the front stair. I did not know why I did this; but at the moment I was past reasoning, and had to obey my instinct. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
More than once I explored the ground floor alone in the small hours, in search of unwonted midnight noises; but now it was not the idea of the noises that frightened me, but that inexorable and hostile silence, the sense that my mansion had retained in full daylight its nocturnal mystery, and was watching me as I was watching it; in entering those empty orderly rooms, I might be disturbing some unseen confabulation on which beings of flesh-and-blood had better not intrude. The broad mahogany stairs were beautifully polished, and so slippery that I had to cling to the rail and let myself down tread by tread. And as I descended, the silence descended with me—heavier, denser, more absolute. I felt its just behind me, softly keeping time with mine. It has a quality that I had never been aware of in any other silence, as though it were not merely an absence of sound, a thin barrier between the ear and the surging murmur of life just beyond, but an impenetrable substance made out of the World-wide cessation of all life and all movement. Yest, that is what laid a chill on me: the feeling that there was no limit to the silence. I was lost in time. There was no outer margin, nothing beyond this day. I had reached the foot of the stairs and was limping across the hall to the drawing room. What I found there, I was sure, would be mute and lifeless; but what would it be? The bodies of my dead caretakers, mown down by some attack that shook my mansion for day and days? And, was it my turn next—what if it were waiting for me behind the heavy drapes of the room I was about to enter? #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Well, I must find out—I must face whatever lay in wait. Not impelled by bravery—the last drop of courage had oozed out of me—but because anything, anything was better than to remain shut up in this house amongst debris, though most of the room were undamaged. “I must find out, I must find out,” I repeated to myself in a sort of meaningless singsong. The cold outer light flooded the drawing room. The shutters had not been closed, nor the curtain drawn. I looked about me. The room was empty, and every chair in its usual place. My armchair was pushed up by the chimney, and the cold hearth was piled with the ashes of the fire at which I had warmed myself before start on my ill-fated walk. Even my empty tea cup stood on the table near the armchair. It was evident that the caretakers had not been in the room since the explosion. And suddenly, an orb materialized, moved about, split into twin spheres, and re-formed in front of me. I was astounded. Then, candlesticks roe in midair and fell to the floor. A lead ball struck me on the chest but it did not harm me. The sound of footsteps began to pad about the room, and my tea cup jumped off the table and shattered against the floor. A hat was floating teasingly in front of me. The hat led me on a merry chase before it finally dropped at my feet. I was so exhausted from what seemed like months of sleep deprivation. I found a bed to lay in and gets some rest. As I drifted into a deep sleep, I was rudely awakened by a large quantity of water being dumped in my face. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
May people are prepared to dismiss the occult World as insignificant and ignore the possibility that there could well be an element of truth in certain of the allegations. This “otherworld” has never been far beneath the surface in the Winchester Mansion. The gods are everywhere, not only in the garden, where they might take the forms of living creatures, but in the mansion as well. Communication with the otherworld was therefore relatively for Mrs. Winchester and her warps through time and space. The human mind has consciousness that occupies a position between two Worlds: the material and the spiritual. At any time, the spiritual might intrude; it could also be summoned at will, demons and all. The Winchester Mansion operated with many skirmishes with the estate’s sorcerers. The pagan demons were not prepared to go quietly. Some of them were heroes. In Mrs. Winchester’s day, surviving manuscripts suggest that she received extraordinary visions. Mrs. Winchester saw angels who battled demons for possession of her soul. Good triumphed, but not before the saint, Mrs. Winchester, had a vision of the fires of hell. On her return to consciousness, her caretakers observed that she had developed actual burn marks over much of her body—scars that shortly after disappeared. On her death 5 September 1923, her body lay unburied for thirty-eight days and was visited by thousands of pilgrims. Many of whom claimed that Mrs. Winchester showed no decay. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
A werewolf is typically seen as a noble and honorable warrior. They are of a royal class in their species. Legend had it that Mrs. Winchester had a pack of vicious werewolf guarding her estate. After the death of Mrs. Winchester, a Bloodline Blade with a birch handle and silver blade. The knife had been passed down for a millennium in her family, and was sold at auction. Too bad. It was a priceless artifact and carried withing it the soul of a divine wolf.
I conjure thee, Spirits of the Winchester Mansion, by the great living God, the Sovereign Creator of all things, to please appear under comely human forms, without noise and without terror, to answer truly all questions we shall ask three. Hereunto I conjure thee by the virtue of these Holy and Sacred Names, O SURMY, DELMUSAN, ATALSLOYM, CHURUSIHOA, MELANY, OMOT, and VERMIAS. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
I Woke Up and Called this Morning, the Tone of Your Voice Was a Warning
Half our mistakes in life arise from feeling when we ought to think, and thinking when we ought to feel. Many people are content to allow authority figures to call the shots. If someone with an impressive array of credentials or degrees or a well-known name speaks out on a matter, of if a social institution or a book makes a statement on a matter, or if a social institution or a book makes a statement, the matter is “settled.” However, authority figures are subject to error, just as any of us are. If I do not keep my mind open to this possibility, then I may ignore my own feelings on a subject. Rationalization is a way of coping with a situation in which, for either practical or emotional reasons, or both, a battered woman is stuck. For some women, the situation and the beliefs that rationalize it, may continue for a lifetime. For others, changes may occur within the relationship, within individuals, or in available resources which serve as catalysts for redefining the violence. When battered women reject prior rationalizations and begin to view themselves as true victims of abuse, the victimization process begins. There are a variety of catalysts for redefining abuse; we discuss six: (1) a change in the level of violence; (2) a change in the resources; (3) a change in the relationship; (4) despair; (5) a change in the visibility of violence; and (6) external definitions of the relationship. The traditional ideal of many societies is to hold back strong or unpleasant emotions for the sake of others. However, feelings held in are likely to come out in some way—often an inappropriate one. So we are really not doing the other person much of a favor by trying to cover up feelings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
A change in the level of violence: the severity of abuse is an important factor in women’s decisions to leave violent situations. There is no significant correlation between the number of years spent cohabiting with an abuser and the severity of abuse. On the contrary: the longer women lived with an abuser, the more severe the violence they endured, since violence increased in severity over time. What doe seem to serve as a catalyst is a sudden change in the relative level of violence. Women who suddenly realize that battering may be fatal may reject rationalizations in order to save their lives. One woman who had been severely beaten by an alcoholic husband for many years explained her decision to leave on the basis of a direct threat to her life: “It was like a pendulum. He’s swing to the extremes both ways. He’d get drunk and beat me up, then he’d get sober and treat me like a queen. One day he put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. It wasn’t loaded. But that’s when I decided I’d had it. I sued for separation of property. I knew what was coming again, so I got out. I didn’t want to. I still loved the guy, but I knew I had to for my own sanity.” A change in resources: Although some women rationalize cohabiting with an abuser by claiming they have no options, others begin reinterpreting violence when the resources necessary for escape become available. The emergence of safe homes or shelters since 1970 has produced a new resource for battered women, but they are not always safe places. While not completely adequate or satisfactory, the mere existence of a place to go alters the situation in which battering is experienced. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Public support of shelters is a statement to battered women that abuse need not be tolerated. Conversely, political trends which limit resources available to women, such as cutbacks in government funding to social programs, increase fears that life outside a violent marriage is economically impossible. One 25-year-old woman discussed this catalyst: “I stayed with him because I didn’t want my kids to have the same life I did. My parents were divorced, and I was always so ashamed of that. Yes, they’re all on their own now, so there’s no reason left to stay.” A change in the relationship: In the stages of a battering relationship, violent incidents are usually followed by periods of remorse and solicitude. Such phases deepen the emotional bonds, and make rejection of an abuser more difficult. However, as battering progresses, periods of remorse may shorten, or disappear, eliminating the basis for maintaining a positive outlook on the marriage. After a number of episodes of violence, a man may realize that this victim will not retaliate or escape, and thus feel no need to express remorse. Extended periods devoid of kindness or love may alter a woman’s feelings toward her partner so much so that she eventually begins to define herself as a victim of abuse. One woman recalled: “At first, you know, we used to have so much fun together. He was kind’ve, you know, a magnetic personality; he can be really charming. But it isn’t fun anymore. Since the baby came, it’s changed completely. He just wants me to stay home, while he goes out with his friends. He doesn’t even talk to me, most of the time….No, I don’t really love him anymore, not like I did. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Despair: Changes in the relationship may result in a loss of hope that “things will get better.” When hope is destroyed and replaced by despair, rationalizations of violence may give way to the recognition of victimization. Feelings of hopelessness or despair are the basis for some efforts to assist battered women, such as Al-Anon. The director of an Al-Anon organized shelter explained the concept of “hitting bottom”: Before the Al-Anon program can really be of benefit, a woman has to hit bottom. When you hit bottom, you realize that all of your own efforts to control the situation have failed; you feel helpless and lost and worthless and completely disenchanted with the World. Women cannot really be helped unless they are ready for it and want it. Some women come here when things get bad, but they are not really ready to be committed to Al-Anon. Things have not gotten bad enough for them, and they go right back. We see this all the time. A change in the visibility of violence: Creating a web of rationalizations to overlook violence is accomplished more easily if no intruders are present to question their validity. Since most violence between couples occurs in private, there are seldom conflicting interpretations of the event from outsiders. Only 7 percent of the respondents in our study who discussed spatial location of violence indicted events which took place outside the home, but all reported incidents within the home. Other report similar findings. If violence does occur in the presence of others, it may trigger a reinterpretation process. Battering in private is degrading, but battering in public is humiliating, for it is a statement of subordination and powerlessness. Having others witness abuse may create intolerable feeling of shame which undermine prior rationalizations. (And the thing about self-defense, the person who throws the first blow is usually the offender, but how do you prove it?) #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
“He never hit me in public before—it was always at home. But the Saturday I got back [returned to husband from shelter], we went Christmas shopping and he slapped me in the store because of some stupid joke I made. People saw it, I know, I felt so stupid, like, they must all think what a jerk I am, what a sick couple, and I thought, ‘God, I must be crazy to let him do this.’ Then one time at a party on a yacht, he jumped on me and my dad just watched and let him beat me. Then another time, he beat me and dragged me down the hallway by my hair, saying he was going to pull my wig off, but it was my real hair in a ponytail. I was screaming for help, but no one came. I thought he was going to pull all of my hair out.” External definitions of the relationship: A change in visibility is usually accomplished by the interjection of external definitions of abuse. External definitions vary depending on their source and the situation; they either reinforce or undermine rationalizations. Battered women who request help frequently find others—and especially officials—do not believe their story or are unsympathetic. Experimental research supports these reports. Observers usually fail to respond when a woman is attacked by a man, and justify nonintervention on the grounds that they assume the victim and offender were married. One young woman discussed how lack of support from her family left her without hope: “It wouldn’t be so bad if my own family gave a damn about me…Yeah, they know I’m here, and they don’t care. They didn’t care about me when I was a kid, so why should they care now? I got raped and beat as a kid, and now I get beat as an adult. Life is a big joke.” Clearly, such responses from family members contribute to the belief among battered women that there are no alternatives and that they just tolerate the abuse. However, when outsiders respond with unqualified support of the victim and condemnation of violent men, their definitions can be potent catalyst toward victimization. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Friends and relatives who show genuine concern for a woman’s well-being may initiate an awareness of danger which contradicts previous rationalizations. “My mother-in-law knew what was going on, but she wouldn’t it…I said, ‘Mom, what do you think these bruises are?’ and she said ‘Well, some people just bruise easy. I do it al the time, bumping into things.’ …And he just denied it, pretended like nothing happened, and if I’d said I wanted to talk about it, he’d say, ‘life goes on, you can’t just dwell on things.’…But this time, my neighbor knew what happened, she saw it, and when he denied it, she said, ‘I can’t believe it! You know that’s not true!’ …and I was so happy that finally, somebody else saw what was goin’ on, and I just told him then tht this time I wasn’t gonna’ come home! You can call the police, file police reports and go to the doctor with obvious signs of abuse, and sometimes the abuser never leaves. Even when the police say that they have handled the situation, he would just be quietly waiting in another room to beat me again for reporting him. One time him and one of the girls he was cheating with jumped me and he slammed my head into the wall and busted my lip. They bragged about. One night, he was hanging out with my dad and I would not come pick him up because he was drunk and I did not want him to beat me, and he my dad let him drive his car to my mother’s house, and when I opened the door, he started beating me and ripped my new silk blouse. My baby brother and his friend had to pull him off of me and he left. Victim’s f domestic violence should qualify as disabled because we truly are. ” The song Never No More by Aaliyah was meant to be a theme song for women not to put up with domestic violence anymore. Unfortunately, she was killed in a plane crash before they got a chance to launch the campaign. Shelters for battered women serve not only as material resources, but as source of external definitions which contribute to the victimization process. They offer refuge from a violent situation in which a woman may contemplate her circumstances and what she wants to do bout them. Within a shelter, women meet counselors and other battered women who are familiar with rationalizations of violence and the reluctance to give up commitment to a spouse. In counseling sessions, and informal conversations with other residents, women hear horror stories from others who have already defined themselves as victims. They are supported for expressing anger and rejecting responsibility for the abuse. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The goal of many shelters is to overcome feelings of guilt and inadequacy so that women can make choices in their best interest. In this atmosphere, violent incidents are reexamined and redefined as assaults in which the woman was victimized. The relevance of these catalysts to a woman’ interpretation of violence vary with her own situation and personality. The process of rejecting rationalizations and becoming a victim is ambiguous, confusing, and emotional. Prison is not a mere physical horror. It is using a pickaxe to no purpose that makes a prison; the horror resides in the failure to enlist all those who swing the pick in the community of mankind. True love is not blind. A person who loves you wants to see you doing well, not be blind to the abuse he or she is inflicting. This special form of deception is pointedly said to be in connection with spiritual rather than Worldly things. This surely shows that people of God, at the time of the end, will be expecting the coming of the Lord, and we can infer that they will be keenly awake to all movements from the supernatural World, in such a measure that deceiving spirits will be able to take advantage of it and anticipate the Lord’s appearing by “false Christs” and false signs and wonders. They mix their counterfeits with the true manifestations of the Spirit of God. The Lord says that men will be deceived (1) concerning Christ and His Parousia (appearing); (2) concerning prophecy—teachings regarding the future, from the spiritual World through inspired messengers: and (3) concerning the giving of proofs that the “teachings” are truly of God, by “signs” and “wonders” so Godlike as to be indistinguishable from the true even by those described as “the elect”—who will need to possess some other test than the judging by appearances of a “sign” being from God if they are to be able to discern the false from the true. The Apostles Paul’ words to Timothy, containing the special prophecy given to him by the Holy Spirit for the Church of Christ in the last days of the dispensation, exactly coincide with the words of the Lord recorded by Matthew. These two letters of Paul to Timothy are the last epistles that he wrote before his departure to be with Christ. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Both were written in prison, and Paul’s prison was to him what Patmos was to John—a time when he was “in the Spirit” (Rev. 1.10) and shown things to come. Paul was giving his last directions to Timothy for the ordering of the Church of God right on to the end of her time on Earth—giving rules to guide not only Timothy but all God’s servants “in dealing with God’s household.” In the midst of all these detailed instructions, his keen seer’s vision looks on to the “later times”; and by express command of the Spirit of God he depict in a few brief sentences the peril of the Church in those times, in the same way that the Spirit of God gave the prophets of the Old Testament some pregnant prophecy only to be fully understood after the events had come to pass. The apostle said: “The Spirit saith expressly, that in later times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies, seared in their own conscience as with a hot iron…” (1 Tim. 4;1-2). I have wondered whether anyone has considered or indeed is already involved in making the experience of loneliness, especially for prisoners in solitary confinement for long periods, a meaningful experience of personal inner growth, enlargement of mental and spiritual horizons, and the discovery that limitations such as cement wall, iron bars, hostile “keepers,” and isolation can indeed be the challenge to discover the richness of the World within? If no one in your knowledge has as yet considered this kind of contribution may I suggest it as a most terribly needed one? It is necessary for you to understand that the stopping of the expression of negative emotions and the struggle with negative emotions themselves are two quite different practices. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Trying to stop the expression comes first. You can do nothing about negative emotions and the struggle with negative emotions are two quite different practices. Trying to stop the expression comes first. You can do nothing about negative emotions themselves until you have learned to stop the expression of them. When you have acquired a certain control over the expression of negative emotions, you can begin to study negative emotions in themselves. You can make an effort to classify your negative emotions. You can find which negative emotions you have chiefly; why they come, what brings them, and so on. You must understand that your only control over emotions is through your mind, but the control does not come immediately. If you think rightly for six months, then negative emotions will be affected because they are based on wrong thinking. If you begin to think rightly today, negative emotions will not be changed tomorrow; but negative emotions may be changed in six months’ time, if you start to think rightly now. The ground has to be prepared beforehand. If you can learn to create a right attitude toward your irritability, bad temper, suspicion or whatever unpleasant emotion you experience most frequently, then—after some time—that attitude will help you to stop the negative emotion at the beginning. Once it has been allowed to start you cannot stop it. Once you begin to express it, you are in its power. The struggle must begin in your mind, and you must find your way of thinking on a definite subject. You cannot control your temper when it has already begun to appear. It is already too late; it has already jumped out. You can control such things as manifestations of temper, for instance only in one way. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Suppose you have to meet a certain man, and suppose he irritates you. Whenever you meet him your temper is liable to show itself. You do not like that but how can you stop it? You must begin with the study of your thinking. What you think about this man—not what do you feel when you are irritated, but what do you think about him at quiet moments? You may find that in your mind you argue with him; you prove to him that he is wrong; you tell him all his mistakes; you find that, generally, he behaves wrongly towards you. This is where you are wrong. You must learn to think rightly; you must find the way to think rightly. Then, if you do, it will happen like this: although emotion I much quicker than thought, emotion is a temporary thing, but thought can be made continuous; so whenever emotion jumps out, it hits against this continuous thought and cannot go on and manifest itself. So you can struggle with the expression of negative emotions, as in this example, only by creating continuous right thinking. Contrary to an assumption that some sociologist make, there seems to be little doubt that improper behavior in one situation can sometimes tell us a great deal about the offender’s reception in other situations. In any given society, different situations will be the scene of many of the same normative assumptions regarding conduct and of the same situational rulings. An individual who is remiss in one way in one situation, then, can be remiss in this same way whenever one shows one’s face to man. Thus, a person with senile deterioration who drools spoil his participation in all his situations in the same way and for the same reason. A person who is hard of hearing or who is near-blind will not be able to maintain the communication niceties that have here been considered at length; one will be forced to be all thumbs in all one’s situations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Thus, improper conduct in one situation can bespeak a general disenfranchisement in face-to-face interaction. Such conduct need not arise from a psychopathological condition; presumably it can, however, give rise to one through the response the individual may make to his excommunication. Some offenses, then, tell us about the price the offender must pay for one’s offensiveness, and the price one may pay for one’s price. Granting the occurrence of widely relevant offensiveness, the general procedure in this study has been to try to learn what this offensiveness costs the gathering in which it occurs, rather than what it means to and about the offender in the first place. When an individual intentionally or unintentionally conducts oneself in a way that others consider situationally improper, and shows thereby that one is either alienated from, or an alien to, the gathering, what other information can this provide them about one’s current conditions—apart from what one’s impropriety tells them about one’s likely fate? The meaning that offended personas impute to an offensive act is partly determined by whether they feel the act was intentional or unintentional. However, the complexity and ambiguity of this dichotomy, and the shifting but intimate relevance of its bearing, prevent any simple discussion of the actual or imputed meaning of situational offenses. In actual use, the dichotomy does not so much refer to a physiological factor of volition or control accountable by reference to the distinction between stripped and smooth muscles, the cerebrospinal and the autonomic nervous systems, but rather to the kind of responsibility of the act. The undesired acts in themselves need not be characteristically voluntary or involuntary from the physiological point of view. For example, to fail to appear at a social party because of one’s disapproval of the host is considered to be an intentional act; the same failure due to the sudden death of a kinsman may be considered aa fully warranted, excusable reason for staying away. In the first case we speak of the individual staying away voluntarily, in the second case, involuntarily. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Of any situationally offensive act and of any offender the following questions can be asked, taking the point of view of the others present: Does the actor have the capacity and training to appreciate the meaning of one’s offense, and if so, does he in fact appreciate its meaning? Is the act within the physical control of the actor, and if so, would one be willing to change one’s conduct if one were apprised of its meaning and given the opportunity to do so? Does the actor have extenuating reasons, external to the participants in the situation, for committing the offense? These factors, in various, combinations, provide so many concrete possibilities that little implication can be drawn from the mere presence or absence of one sense or another of intentionality. Living in the city or in the countryside are considered equally attractive. The choice is based solely on financial considerations—they will go where they will earn the most money. Like the commuters between Berkeley and San Francisco, the decision is made selfishly. For instance, dentists want to maximize their individual payoffs. Since there are many rural areas without enough dentists, this suggests that there is room for an increased number of dentists to practice in rural areas without causing any congestion. Thus rural dentistry is not quite as lucrative as having a large city practice, but it is a more certain route to an above-average income. Both the incomes and the value to society of rural dentists stays roughly constant as their numbers grow. Being a city practitioner is more kin to driving over the Oakland Bay Bridge—it is wonderful when you are alone and not so great when the city gets too crowded. The first dentist in an area can be extremely valuable, and maintain a very large practice. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
However, with too many dentists around, there is the potential for congestion and price competition. If the number increases too far, city dentists will be competing for the same patient pool, and their talents will be underutilized. If the population of city dentists grows even further, they may end up earning less than their rural counterparts. In short, as the number of city practices increase, the value of the marginal service that they perform falls, as does their income. As in the case of the commuters, the equilibrium does not maximize the combined income of dentists. But society cares about the consumers of dentistry as well as the practitioners. The reason is that there are two side effect created when one more person decided to be a city dentist. The additional city dentist lowers all other dentists’ incomes, imposing a cost on the existing city dentists. However, this reduction in price is a benefit to consumers. The two sides effects exactly cancel each other out. The difference between this story and our commuting example from the past is that no one benefited from the extra commuting time when the Oakland Bay Bridge became congested. When the side effect is a change in price (or income), then the purchasers benefit at the producers’ cost. There is zero net effect. From society’s viewpoint, a dentist should not worry about lowering colleagues’ incomes. Each dentist should pursue the highest-paying practice. As each person makes a selfish choice, we are invisibly led to the right distribution of dentist between city and rural areas. And, the two careers will have equal incomes. Or, to the extent that living in a city is worth more than living in a rural area, this differential will be reflected in income differences. Of course, the American Dental Association may look at this differently. It may place more weight on the loss to city dentists’ incomes than on the saving consumer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
From the dental profession’s perspective there is indeed a misallocation, with too many dentists practicing in the city. If more dentist took rural practices, then the potential advantages of a city practice would not be “wasted” by competition and congestion. Taken as a whole, the income of dentists would rise if it were possible to keep the number of city dentists below the free market level. Although dentist cannot place a toll on those who want to practice in the city, it is in the profession’s self-interest to create a fund that subsidizes dental students who commit to establish a rural practice. The human race is approaching the great historical transition to thorough, inexpensive control of the structure of matter, with all that implies for medicine, the environment, and our way of life. What happens before and during that transition will shape its direction, and with it the future. Is worth getting excited about? Look at some of the concerns that bring people together for action: Poverty, weapons systems, deforestation, toxic waste, social security, housing, global warming, deadly viruses, Alzheimers disease, heart disease, lung disease, cancer, endangered species, freedom, jobs, nuclear power, life extension, space development, acid rain. Each of these issues mobilizes great effort. Each will be utterly transformed by nanotechnology and its applications. For many of these issues, nanotechnology offers tools that can be used to achieve what people have been striving to accomplish. For many of these same issues, the abuse of nanotechnology could obliterate everything that has been achieved. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
A good companion to the precept “Think globally, act locally” is “Think of the future, act in the present.” If everyone were to abandon short-term problems and today’s popular causes, the results would be disastrous. However, there is no danger of that. The more likely danger is the opposite. The World is heading straight for a disruptive transition with everything at stake, yet 99.9 percent of human effort and attention is going into either short-term concerns or long-term strategies based on a fantasy future of lumbering twenty first-century technology. What is to be done? For people more concerned with feeling good than with doing good, the answer is simple: Go for the warm feeling that comes from adding one more bit of support to an already-popular cause. The gratification is immediate, even if the contribution is small. For people more concerned with doing good—who can feel good only if they live up to their potential—the answer is less simple: To do the most good, find an important cause that is not already buoyed up by a cheering multitude, a project where one person’s contribution almost automatically makes a big difference. There is, today, an obvious choice for where to look. The potential benefits and drawbacks of nanotechnology generate a thousand areas for research, discussion, education, entrepreneuring, lobbying, development, regulation, and the rest—for preparation and for action. A person’s contributions can range from career commitment to verbal support. Both can make a difference in where the World ends up. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Benjamin Day was a twenty-three-year-old printer with wild ideas when he changed the history of what we now call the media. This was 1833 and New York had grown to a population of 218,000. However, the largest daily newspaper in the city claimed only 4,500 subscribers. At a time when the average urban worker in American earned 75 cents a day, a New York newspaper cost 6 cents, and not many people could afford them. The papers were printed on handpresses capable of turning out no more than a few hundred copies an hour. Day took a crazy chance. On September 3, 1833, he launched the New York Sun and sold it for only one penny a copy. Mr. Day unleashed a horde of newsboys into the streets to sell his paper—an innovation at the time. For $4 a week he hired another printer to go to the courthouse and cover police cases. It was one of the earliest uses of a “reporter.” Within four months the Sun had the biggest readership in the city. In 1835 he bought the latest technology—a steam driven press—and the Sun reached the unheard-of circulation of 20,000 daily. Day had invented the popular press, crime stories and all. His innovations were paralleled at about the same time by other “wild men”—Henry Hetherington with his Twopenny Dispatch in England and Emile de Girardin with La Presse in France. The down-scale “penny paper”—called the “pauper press” in England—was more than just a commercial affair. It had lasting political effects. Along with the early trade unions and the beginnings of mass education, it helped bring the less affluent classes into the political life of nations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
By the 1870s something called “opinion” had to be take into account by politicians of every stripe. “There is, now,” wrote one French thinker, “no European government which does not reckon with opinion, which does not feel obliged to give account of its acts and to show how closely they conform to the national interest, or to put forward the interest of the people as the justification for any increase in its prerogatives.” A century and a half after Benjamin Day, another wild, feral man, feeling as guilty as a criminal, came up with an idea sure to bankrupt him. Tall, gusty, impatient, and brilliant Ted Turner had inherited a billboard company when his father died from death by suicide. Mr. Turner built it, acquired radio and television stations, as was wondering what to do next when he noticed something odd. Cable television stations were springing up around the United States of America, but they were starving for programs and advertising. Meanwhile, up in the Heavens were things called “satellites.” Mr. Turner put two and two together and turned it into five. He beamed the programming from his Atlanta station up to a satellite and down to the program-hungry cable stations. At the same time, he offered a “one-buy” national market for advertisers who wouldn’t trouble to purchase time on scores of small individual cable systems. His Atlanta “superstation” because the cornerstone of a growing empire. On June 1, 1980, Mr. Turner took the next, even loonier step. He formed what critics labeled the “Chicken Noodle Network”—for CNN, or Cable News Network. CNN became the laughingstock of every media pundit from the canyons of Manhattan to the studies in Los Angeles. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Wall Street was sure CNN would collapse, probably taking Mr. Turner’s other businesses down with it. No one had ever even tried to create a twenty-four-hour news network. CNN today is the opiate of the mass. Perhaps, the most influential broadcast news source in the United States of America. TV monitors are constantly tuned to CNN in the White House, in the Pentagon, in foreign embassies, as well as in millions of homes all over America. However, Mr. Turner’s wild dreams went far beyond the United States of America, and today CNN operates in over 100 countries, making it the most global of all television networks, mesmerizing the Middle East skeiks, European journalists, and Latin America politicians with its extended firsthand coverage of such events as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the antics of President Biden as he seems dazed and confused, or the conflict in Ukraine. CNN is carried over the air, or over cable, into hotel rooms, offices, homes, even staterooms on the Queen Elizabeth II. Although many people believe FOXNews is more balanced and convers the invasion at the southern border, which America tries to suppress. One of Mr. Turner’s little-known prize possessions is a videotape of his private meeting with Cuba’ Fidel Castro. In the course of the visit, Mr. Castro mentions that he, too, routinely watches CNN for the big news. Mr. Turner, never shy about promoting his companies, asks Mr. Castro if he would be willing to say as much on camera for a commercial. Mr. Castro puffs on his cigar and says, in effect, why not? The commercial has never run on air, but Mr. Turner hauls it out to show his visiting friends now and then. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Mr. Turner is one of a kind. Handsome, raucous, funny, erratic, he owns a buffalo ranch, the Atlanta Braves baseball team, and MGM’s library of old movies. A fierce exemplar of free enterprise, he was also a peace activist long before he and actress Jane Fonda began a highly-publicized romance. He launched the “Goodwill Games” in Moscow at a time when it took political, as well as financial, courage to do so. His networks also run a heavy schedule of pro-ecology programming. Today, Mr. Turner is by far the most visionary of a dozen or so hard-driving media barons who are revolutionizing the media even more deeply than Benjamin Day—and whose collective efforts will, over the long run, shift power in many countries. What people do depends on what they believe. The path to a World prepared to handle nanotechnology begins with the recognition that nanotechnology is a real prospect. What would be the response to a new idea as broad as nanotechnology, if it were true? Since it does not fall into any existing technical specialty, it would not be anyone’s job to provide an official, authoritative evaluation. Advanced molecular manufacturing cannot be worked on in the lab today, so it would not matter to scientists playing the standard careers-and-funding game. Still, some scientists and engineers would become interested, thinking about it, and lend support. Science News, covering the first major conference on the subject, would announce that “Sooner or later, the Age of Nanotechnology will arrive.” This is, in fact, what happened. However, what is the idea were false? Some curious scientists or engineer would soon point out a fatal error in the idea. Since the sweeping implications of nanotechnology make many people uncomfortable, a good counterargument would spread fast, and would soon be on the lips of everyone who would prefer to dismiss the whole thing. No such counterargument has been heard. The most likely reason is that nanotechnology is a sound idea. Reactions has been changing from “That’s ridiculous” to “That’s obvious.” The basic recognition of the issue is almost in place. When nanotechnology emerges from the World of ideas to the World of physical reality, we will need to be prepared. However, what does this require? To understand what needs to be done today, it is best to begin with the long term and then work back to the present. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Randolph Harris II International 