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Growth and Development of the Green Grass
Give careful thought to your ways. Although the emotion of love is one of the strongest of which the mind is capable, it can hardly be said to have any proper or peculiar name of expression. The boundaries of a sentiment vary in their permeability by public observation and involvement in one’s feeling. Sentiments expressed in a public or community setting become conventionalized as the individual makes social comparisons about the sentiment’s quality and intensity. Private feeling, secret and isolated from social involvement, is less manageable and loses social significance for lack of validation by others. For example, medieval customs required mourners to show sorrow for a fixed period of time. Public ceremonies tamed grief, shielding mourners from extreme or prolonged sorrow. With privatization of grief, however, the sentiment became idiosyncratic, often insurmountable as the mourner languished persistently. For 350 years medical science ignored relationships between emotions and physical illness because science ignore the study of emotions (since emotions were a reflection of the human soul) and instead focused exclusively on the physical cause of aliments. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
Expression is part and parcel of the feeling. It is believed to be a general law of the mind that along with the fact that inward feeling or consciousness, there is a diffusive action or excitement over the bodily members. A very considerable number of the facts may be brought under the principle. States of pleasure are connected with an increase, and the states of pain with an abatement, of some, or all, of the vital function. Ideas about physical health have been rigidly fixed. Germs are seen as being outside and they somehow get inside the body, leading people to believe that they were the passive victims of external forces in nature. It was widely held that human behavior did not cause disease; rather, humans were victimized by it. In some primitive cultures, even today, people assume that spirits control all their behavior and they have little choice in their own destiny, because it is controlled by good and evil spirits and by fate. Once you were stricken by these foreign invaders, the only logical course of action was to go to a physician and be purged of your illness. Until the late nineteenth century, most people did not believe that they were responsible for their own physical health, a belief that has lingered on into the late twentieth century. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Even today, many people still resist the idea that there is a connection between their overeating, their lack of exercise, their smoking, or their loneliness and their health. They still believe that human disease is caused by germs out there and that nothing they do matters. Very similar beliefs about mental disease dominated the nineteenth century thinking. Mental illness was thought to be caused by something foreign to the human body. Since it was a mental problem, it had to involve the human soul, and so the source of these problems was attributed to an invasion of evil spirits or possession by dark emotions. Since the mind was a reflection of the human soul, mental disturbance could only be caused by agents which troubled the soul, namely dark emotions. The attitude toward human emotions followed precisely the same line of thought. Emotions were viewed as a quality of the human soul; they were nonmaterial, and therefore had little to do with physical disease. Like mental disorders, emotional disorders were viewed as an indication of a disturbed soul and show how caused by evil spirits or dark emotions. If a person was emotionally upset, then he or she prayed for spiritual guidance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Feeling management through public rituals allows the discharge of traumatic emotions. In some cultures, is in considered normal for hostile sentiments to be expressed publicly, like a short of live theater play, in noisy but mostly harmless encounters in which antagonists play to their audience, who intervene if a fight becomes too serious. These exaggerated dramas make hostility appear so intense as to be avoided when possible, and provide support for folk beliefs, such as a particular group of people are terrible when they fight. However, as you may know, anger, grief, fear, and embarrassment are unavoidable experiences in social life, but often cannot be discharged or resolved immediately because social controls. Rituals provide a dramatic frame that restimulates distressful emotion but also gives the person a sense of control or distance from the feeling, so that it may be discharged through catharsis. Most modern rituals are insufficiently involving emotion, however, and participants are overdistanced from their distress. An emotional emptiness has developed from a poverty of identifying rituals. Rituals have become and impersonal because we lack agreement on symbols as collective reference points. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
We only have shallow feelings for romantic love, religious reverence, and esthetic sentiments. Because we do not sense that others share the same feeling and meaning. Emotions are serviceable habits and are expressed in a manner designed to effectively communicate to others what is being felt inside. Emotional expression serves definite purposes: they mobilize people into some definite course of actions, and/or they communicate a specific message to other people which leads them to behave in a certain fashion. The emotion of love is an exception to all the general rules—it is the strongest of all emotions, and yet it is the only one that has no peculiar means of expression. And, as you may know, emotions can significantly affect our physical and mental well-being. It is not betwixing that men and women, beset by emotional stresses, turn and go to faith healers and to others who recognize the reality of these unsettling states. Fear, when strong, expresses itself in cries, in efforts to hide or escape, in palpitations and trembling and these are just the manifestations that would accompany an actual experience of the evil feared. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
The destructive passions are shown in a general tension of the muscular system, in gnashing of the teeth, beating on the chest like a bongo, clapping of the hands, and protrusion of the claws, in dilated eyes and nostrils in growls; and these are weaker forms of the actions that accompany killing of prey. The general law is that feeling passing a certain pitch, habitually vents itself in bodily action, and an overflow of nerve-force undirected by any motive, will manifestly take first the most habitual routes. If these emotions are to expressed and resolved, they start affecting the internal system. I grew up in a small farming town where water is the lifeblood of the community, and 30 percent of our water came from the snow melt, which was declining. The people in our society are constantly watching, worrying, and praying over the rain, irrigation rights, and water in general. People in our community are so preoccupied with the rain because it is a matter of survival. Under the stress and strain of our climate, sometime people were not always at their best. The city council, mayor and governor squabble over people who water their lawns, and they turned to the television news media to request that people report and confront their neighbors over water waste. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
Sentiments are not differentiated through innate bodily patterning, but through interpretation of feeling according to cultural vocabularies of labels and meanings. It was innocent enough at first, but over the years people started targeting people with green lawns and would quarrel over water. Two mean who lived in our community who I will call Sam and Dean had a disagreement over water, and the two men allowed their disagreement to turn into resentment and then arguments—even to the point of threats. One August morning both men felt they were short of water and that it was being stolen. Angry words were exchanged; a scuffle ensured. Dean was a great man with a lot of strength, and Sam was equally yoked and tenacious. In the heat of the moment, the men had a fist fight. The next morning, Sam called the city out to issue Dean a fine for wasting water. However, Dean was economically challenged and because the fines kept adding it, his water was shut off. These two neighbors and best friends had fallen captive to their anger and let it destroy their lives. We should learn to resolve our differences early on, lest the passions of them moment escalate into physical or emotional cruelty, and we fall captive to our anger. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
The social processes that create and shape love, hatred, envy, and other sentiments only enhance the richness and meaning of life. Make full haste to reduce arguments, eliminate ridicule, do away with criticism, and remove resentment and anger. We cannot afford to let such dangerous passions ruminate—not even one day. The lack of human companionship, the sudden loss of love, and chronic human loneliness are significant contributions to serious diseases (including cardiovascular disease) and premature death. The Savior asks us to forsake and combat evil in all its forms, and although we must forgive a neighbor who injures us, we should still work constructively to prevent that injury from being repeated. Forgiveness does not require us to accept or tolerate evil. It does not require us to ignore the wrong that we see in the World around us or in our own lives. However, as we abstain from sin, we must not allow hatred or anger to control our thoughts nor actions. Good human contact can alter and even eliminate the usual cardiac responses to fear and physical pain, and it can significantly influence the human ability to resist infectious diseases. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Forgiveness means that problems of the past no longer dictate our destinies, and we can focus on the future with God’s love in our hearts. “I will give you honor and praise among all the peoples of the Earth, when I restore your fortunes, before your eyes,” says the Lord (Zephaniah 3.20). May the seeds of unforgiveness that haunted my neighbors never be allowed to take root in our homes. May we pray to our Heavenly Father to help us overcome foolish id, resentment, and pettiness. May God help us to forgive and love, so that we may be friends with our Savior, others, and ourselves. All knowing, God grieves even at the mere thought of evil. Dear Lord, we are sorry that we have been naughty and disobeyed. Please forgive us for disobeying and help us to listen to your commandments. Thank you for loving us and removing our sins that weigh heavily on our conscience. There is more righteousness in the World and thank you for your compassion, grace, and everlasting life. And please grant from your divine mysteries all your mercies. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Love and Virtue—Joy to Continue Living Together
God did not call us to be impure, but to live a virtuous life. Therefore, those who reject this instruction does not reject humanity but God, who gives us this virtuous Spirit. For each unsuccessful or incomplete relationship in your past, there are also moments for you to honor. Effective social communication does not require feelings to be consistent with expressive gestures. Displaying a gesture in the absence of any corresponding feeling is a form of obeisance to society, showing that one recognizes the appropriate sentiment even if he or she does not feel it. Mouring is not a natural movement of private feelings, but is a duty imposed by the group. It is a ritual attitude one is forced to adopt out of respect for custom, but which is, in large measure, independent of one’s affective state. While people do feel the loss of an individual when they pass into Heaven, and it can take years to let go of the pain from their departure from Earth, even a lifetime for some, certain cultures are also made to mourn publicly to show respect. For instance, after the passing of her daughter and husband, Mrs. Sarah Winchester was celibate and never remarried, nor did she allow men, who were not her employees, into her mansion. She also wore black and abstained from social functions and kept to herself, she did not even allow photographers or painters to reproduce her image out of respect for her husband. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
We have been taught by God to love each other. People learn more about themselves from each missed connection, bruised feeling, or wounded heart. These situations are valuable building blocks in the creation of our whole self. The aim of learning through soul is to increase porosity on the side of giving out and to reduce it on the side of taking in. This is not an abstract process, but something that can be seen in the World. Our Sun is the best instance of porosity that gives out and does not take in. Our Sun is a star, and all the stars gives out without taking in, until they die and become a blackhole. Life is the most beautiful and precious thing upon the Earth and has the power to pull down kings and princesses. Western civilization has been described as the gradual domestication of impulsive expression—an increasing tendency to self-consciously check our behavior and mold it to group standards. Public expression of affect has been controlled by an intensifying range and rigor of restraints since the Middle Ages. Violations of display rules are met with shame, embarrassment, and disgust in an ever-broadening scope of situations. People are free and all things are given to them which are expedient to humanity. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
For middle-class parents, deviant and immature temper may signal serious difficulty in an individual’s attempt at self-mastery. Colonial Americas believed that feeling can be channeled, but its basic nature cannot be altered. Social control was directed at regulating behavior, rather than at shaping inner impulses. A belief that emotion is disclosed involuntarily and inevitably became widespread in the nineteenth century. If a person were genuinely moved, the feeling would show beyond any power of the person to conceal it. Withdrawal from feeling itself became the only recourse, if one’s feelings were not to be read by others in public through gestures, slips in speech, and other cues. Suppression of both feeling and gestures made them consistent. These cultural values and beliefs are reflected in expression and feeling management when we indicate their meaning to the social self. And not choose eternal death, according to the will of the flesh and the evil which is therein, which gives the spirit of the adversary power to captivate, to bring you down to hell, that he may reign over you in his own kingdom. Soul learning does not consist of the internalization of knowledge, the determination of right mean, the achievement of accuracy, but is to be found in what sounds right. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
It was discovered in ancient psychology that the soul sings. At one time, it was possible to hear celestial sounds as one viewed the aurora borealis, which the solar particles blown into the Earth’s magnetic field more than 60 miles above the Earth’s surface. The movement of the planets in their relation to each other could be heard. We manage our feelings and gestures after indicating to ourselves the probable meaning that they would have for other people. We transform feeling and expression according to their implications for our self-conception, our more stable, continuous, unifying idea of the real me. A self-conception is a working compromise between one’s ideals and values and the self-images one infers from how others react to one’s feelings and behavior. Some self-images will be accepted as representative of one’s self-conception, but other images will be rejected as spurious or unrepresentative of one’s real, deeper identity. In situations and relationships that we value in relation to self, we pursue credit for optimistic images, and seek to avoid responsibility for feelings and acts that generate negative self-images. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
We manage expression and feeling by taking our self-conception into account in at least three ways: assuming or avoiding responsibility for a sentiment, detecting social support for the meaning of a sentiment, and committing oneself to a relationship. Our-self image in a situation reflects the appropriateness of our feeling; we feel proud or guilty about feeling a certain way. The incongruity between a trifling event and a deep sense of shame can evoke a double shame; we are ashamed because of the original episode and shame because we feel so deeply about something so slight that a sensible person would not pay any attention to it. If we do not modify our feelings into an appropriate quality and intensity, it becomes merged with our moral reaction to it. For example, we may feel guilty love if, as in traditional Japan, love marriages are defined as selfish. Even in modern Japan, individuals who have contracted love marriages are often reported to feel considerable guilt about it. However, keep in mind, you are the author and can go back to check out all the separate parts of your story when you need to. Reviewing old relationships is hard work emotionally, no matter how carefully one has been trying to use the past as material to study in the service of creating a healthier present. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
Society requires us to undertake many actions for which we do not want to assume full responsibility. These actions may have uncertain outcomes, or conflict with our predispositions not to perform them. Feeling management that intensifies feeling can facilitate these behaviors while shielding the self from responsibility. A functionally determined emotion carries one through the situation, such as the bitterness which enters into the divorce process and so often disappears just afterwards. The institutionalized irrationality of romantic love overcomes self-restraint in courtship and guides lovers into marriage, although rational self-seeking might dictate against this certain commitment. A socially structured and legitimated passion conquers doubt and gives behavior spontaneity, while exempting the self from full responsibility for its outcome. How does this intensification of feeling occur? Emotion is the experience of passivity, during which we interpret our behavior as being beyond our control. Deeply internalized desires and aversions erupt as compelling passions. The soldier for whom fury or courage has become second nature rushes into combat in spite of its dangers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
Overwhelmed by emotion, we enact socially prescribed punishment even through other norms forbid aggression. The self is not held responsible for violating those norms, however, because it was passive within the experience of emotion. The passive self may be an important interpretation we make within romantic love, jealousy, indignation, and other intense sentiments. For example, a study found that students who believed that life events are generally caused by external forces beyond their control reported falling in love more often than others, and viewed love as a mysterious, emotional experience. However, there are consequences. Samantha, for instance, learned her lesson about lack of self-control. She grew more self-blaming when she began to watch herself distancing from Darren. She had fled from her first marriage to escape the burden of being forced to be a mother to her husband. Her leaving reinforced her growing image of herself as hard-hearted and unfair. However, she had not adequately resolved her decision to leave her first marriage, so her self-blame became almost immobilizing as she felt herself pulling away from Darren. Moreover, the self also enters into feeling and expression management by restraining sentiments that we anticipate would not be validated meaningfully by a particular person or group. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
By fully engaging in almost any form of group or community, we will have more people to learn from, people whose actions and ways of being can teach us a lot about relationships. This can be particularly helpful when one has been stuck in a narrow, little emotional room filled with our solitary thoughts about closeness, or when we have been limiting oneself to the thoughts and beliefs contained within our couple relationship. In some cultures, jealousy is nothing short of a crime. Some societies have a code, and if one is hurt in these light affairs, one must expect no sympathy. So, if one falls in love, one conceals it from one’s friends as best one can. Our self-indication of a sentiment’s meaning to others may lead us to segregate it from another sentiment that an audience would see as being incompatible. For example, Samantha and Darren were undergoing marital separation, and much like others, they desired to re-unit, at least temporarily, but they also wanted to express anger against one another. A common pattern that has been observed was couples would meet secretly to express affection, concealed from the social circle of kin and friends who had observed the bitter rivalry in the couple and would not understand the contradictory sentiment. That is why it is best for us to stay out of people’s business when they have a dispute. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Feeling management may reflect the self as a commitment to a relationship the supplementary character of faithfulness is directed toward the continuance of the relationship, independently of the original forces that brought it about. Communes, families, fraternal organizations, and other groups require love as a voluntary, responsible commitment to enhance the lives and growth of other persons. Groups foster love by eliminating sources of seduction, subversion, and competing loyalties. Love is routinized to promote steady, unrewarded care, effort, and self-sacrifice. People withdraw from commitments by rationing or restricting feeling. Women, more than men, report diminishing their love consciously in faltering relationships. Women also identify more problems in their heterosexual relationships, and women’s scores on a longitudinal measure of love predict relationship outcomes better than do the love scores of their male partners. The more vulnerable and emotionally perceptive partner is likely to modulate feeling more consciously in response to relationship trends. “It is God’s will that we should be sanctified: that we should avoid sexual immorality; that each of us should learn to control our own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like a heathen, who does not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong their family nor take advantage of them. The Lord will punish people for all such sins, as we have already told you (1 Thessalonians 4.3-4).” #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Keeping His Covenant to Love a Thousand Generations
We evoke, suppress, and transform our sentiments. It reminds me of that song by 24hrs called What You Like. “I would not mind if you stay the night. Send your first and last name for the flight. Don’t confuse me with all the hype. I’m your type, I know what you like. On the Instagram I see all the likes.” Instagram is a social media site where people post pictures on like a rotisserie, and as you move along the rotisserie of pictures, you can scroll past or like them. If you are not readily curious about other people, be patient with yourself. There are powerful reasons why you have not been able to protect and develop your natural capacity for curiosity. As we become more aware of ourselves as individual, in noncouple relationships, this allows us to develop awareness about ourselves in how we connect with friends, family, children, parents, siblings, coworkers, and others and this is an important part of learning who we are successfully. Be just and walk uprightly before God; and observe to do good continually, keep the commandments of the Lord our God. God never made a promise that was too good to be true. Know that God is faithful, keeping his covenant to love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Expression management is the intentional display of gestures that differ from inner feeling. Feeling management modifies the cognitive and somatic experience of a sentiment. Both types of affective control are guided by normative and strategic considerations in social relationships. For example, a wife may believe that she no longer loves her husband as much as she thinks she should. She may increase her expressions of affection toward him so as to conceal her loss of feeling (individual expression management), or may try to regenerate her love feelings by thinking about his virtues and his love for her (individual feeling management). If she tells him that her love is waning, they may decide to just keep up public appearances of affection (collective expression management), or may attempt to revitalize love by seeking new experiences together (collective feeling management). Expression management is guided by conscious strategies to convey a certain impression of ourselves to a social audience, and by our more habitual following of display rules, cultural norms for appropriate expressions in a given situation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Expression control can be observed even in one-year-old children, who make visible efforts to hold back tears or who smile as a social greeting. Four-year-olds can pose facial expressions upon request and are soon able to explain many norms about situational appropriate affective expression. We often qualify a facial expression by adding a further expression as a comment on the first, such as blending a smile into an angry look. We also modulate a facial expression, show more or less intensity than we actually feel. We falsify our facial expressions in several ways. We may simulate a feeling when we have none. We may show an impassive, neutral face to conceal an inner feeling. Finally, we often mask an expression that we do feel with another expression that we do not feel. This typology may be extended to the analysis of nonfacial gestures, voice tones, postures, and other expressive cues. Failures to communicate successfully in past relationships can cause people to set up rigid rules for their new relational efforts. This can happen when someone feels inadequate, attacked, or betrayed in an earlier relationship. We modify our interpretations of a relationship and may also alter our bodily sensations and reactions to the person. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Affectivity versus affective neutrality is a choice faced by individual and groups in forming a given relationship. When should impulses be gratified freely, and when should they be subordinated to social interest? Normative and strategic considerations induce us to reflect upon feeling and alter it. In an experimental study, subjects used strategies of cognitive detachment or involvement to self-regulate their affective reactions to filmed stressful situations, and thus altered their bodily reactions, such as heart rate and skin conductance. We all have certain images of ourselves or stories we tell to ourselves and others about who we are. Usually, this is a combination of who we want to be and who we really are. Sometimes, we also tell the story of ourselves in a very negative light, emphasizing what we cannot do, or what we always do wrong, or the mistakes we have made and cannot let go of. Perhaps many of us do not know what we are feeling in our conscious mind, but our body tell us by creating physical pain, jumpiness, numbness, or others signs of distress. However, our bodies are also designed to let us know when we are starting to get comfortable with a new idea or behavior or interaction. This may be indicated by a pleasant sensation of our muscles relaxing, or an overall sensation of lightness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Feeling rules are social guidelines that delineate a range of appropriate feeling for a situation or relationship. For example, a brother should love or like his sister, but should feel neither hatred nor romantic passion toward her. We discuss our feelings as if rights and obligations apply to them, and react with approval r disapproval to signs of each others’ feelings. We try to make our feelings coincide with feeling rules by doing cognitive, bodily, or expressive work. If we have no reason to feel ashamed in front of a person, for example, we may try to change our imagination of how they thing of us (cognitive), or try not to wince inside when we see them coming (bodily), or try not to look away or blush as they pass us (expressive). Some people use an idealized past relationship to keep all the possible later partners at a distance. This is often the case when one person finds another person like oneself, and experiences playing hard to get maneuvers as a way to stay safe and because it is tantalizing. Both during and after the relationship, the couple may idealize everything about the former partner, and the relationship without recognizing that what they are idealizing is the perfect mirror image. God will finish what he started and it may be a good idea to hold on and wait for your gold standard. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
A Performance Expectation–Live a Great Story!
Fifteen minutes a day, for one year adds up to over ninety-one hours. Lord, it is good for us to be here. It is good for all of us to have been here. We pray that the same sweet spirit which has prevailed will continue with us, and that our record of prowess and skill are forever safe, as the group is task-oriented, patient, caring, thoughtful, and good at listening. In the interior of our consciousness, each of us has a private hall of fame reserved exclusively for the real leaders who have influenced the direction of our lives. This means that the members envision future events or states of the World that their present activities may help bring about or prevent, and they define some possible future events or states of the World as success and others as failure. We need not assume they know exactly what constitutes success, merely that they assume that when the time arrives they will know whether they have succeeded or not and that their present activities are related to the future outcome. The leader whom we admit into this private sanctuary of our reflective experience is usually those who set our hearts afire with devotion to the truth, who makes obedience to duty seem the essence of humanity, who transforms some ordinary routine occurrence so that it becomes extra ordinary and we see the person we aspire to be. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The group task is at least partially intrasystemic. This means that the standards for evaluating success or failure are developed within the group rather than being imposed from the outside. An ambiguous task (for example, writing a story to accompany a picture) is one case of an intrasystemic task, but even tasks for which there are clear objective standards may be intrasystemic, if the group is able to redefine the meaning of a particular outcome or the importance of the task (“he has a bad day,” “we really care about that after all”). The crucial point is that the rules for evaluating a task outcome are developed by the same persons who are part of the power and prestige structure. Adam, the first man to live upon the Earth is worthy of being in our personal Hall of Fame. Adam was obedient unto the commandments of the Lord. Adam qualifies. We want to be right for God. It is important to be virtuous and there are terrifying consequences for the alternative. It helps if we have a big imagination and can see further than the present moment, which means we have to have a clear sense of the consequences of our actions, even when we think no one is watching. The Church always preaches about God is coming, and what if you are in sin at the exact moment he arrives? That is a horrifying thought. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
The group members are collectively oriented. This has two components: one, that the group members are interdependent, that is, they need to take into account other member’s acts; and two, that it is legitimate to seek and give advice, to be influenced by or attempt to influence others. The term collective orientation as used here does not precisely mean cooperative orientation (all goals shared so that something that rewards one group member rewards all). People could have a collective orientation in some cases of competition; in fact, there are competitive elements in face-to-face groups, especially the competition for time and attention imposed by the necessity to limit talking to one person at a time. Because of time constraints and the unknown time when God will return to Earth, many people do not want the moment of sin and the moment of reckoning to be the same. What if the Rapture comes and you are left behind? The Lord has commanded us to live by his convents, and he shall prepare a way for us that we may accomplish them. Negative reactions often lead to disagreements, but not always, for groups sometimes try to avoid having to resolve conflict and simply ignore or redefine the issue. Influence is defined as the direction of the resolution of a disagreement; the person whose idea is accepted is said to have influenced the one who accepts it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
People with the greatest desire to succeed will stand a greater chance of reaching his or her goal. The term influence is not synonymous with control; a person whose performance output is accepted without challenge has obviously exercised control over the group, but since there was no disagreement, influence has not occurred. In determined people, we can see the difference between knowing and doing. Those who really desire to reach their goals will do whatever they must do in order to achieve them. Let us not just talk about what we want to be. Let us not just dream about what we want to be. Take action to reach your goals, you may have to work harder than you ever have worked before in your entire life. God wants us to tell him, with all honesty, that we have worked harder than anyone else we know. That we have tried as hard as we can to live right, do good, and succeed. This desire should be enough to help us to improve a little or greatly. God sees everything, so we cannot lie to him. He knows what we are doing at all times. In whatever we want to improve upon, whether if it is a project at work, school work, or studying the scriptures, just give it a little extra time—every day. Even if it is just an extra fifteen minutes. Remember how well-spent time can add up. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
A performance expectation is a prediction about the quality of a performance output of a group member. Do not quit. We are all going to have hardships and setbacks. However, our Heavenly Father will not give us a hardship that we cannot overcome. An individual may hold a performance output of a group member. An individual may hold a performance expectation for his or her own behavior (a self-expectation) and/or the behavior of another (other-expectation). The value of an expectation is defined as high (prediction that the performance output will move the group toward success on its goal) or low (prediction that the act will move the group toward failure on its goal). As children of our Father in Heaven, we can have setbacks of sin. However, we must never quit or give up faith. Heavenly Father has provided a way to overcome spiritual setbacks through the great gift of repentance. God truly loves us and wants to forgive us. All we have to do is to go through the process of repentance, and we will triumph over our transgressions. It is important for us to set our goals very high, for if we do this, our intermediate goals will be easier to reach. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Let us not settle for mediocrity. We should always try our best. The concept of expectations is basic in sociology, and its use as a fundamental building block of theory marks expectation states as distinctively sociological. Let us decide now what type of person we want to be, and when a difficult situation comes along we will be prepared to pass the test. Performance expectations are predictions of quality only, rather than including predictions about for or content of behavior. We must keep a proper perspective on our goals. Let us never lose sight of God and his words of wisdom in pursuing our temporal ambitions. We have signs enough that there is a God. There are testimonies from men and women of the church, and also all the holy prophets. There are the scriptures laid before us, and all things denote there is a God, right? Even the Earth, and all the things that upon the face of it, right? And the motions, yeah, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator. People know in their hearts that there is a God and they will testify that God exists. Dear God in Heaven, please bring your Kingdom to Earth and help heal our unobservable mental and physical states, and bless our dreams and goals so that they may come true. Thank you. The National Anthem is a song sung to God, and it is thought that his presence is near when it is sang. Therefore, to sit or kneel in the presence of God, without being told by a figure of authority, shows extreme disrespect for the Lord. After all, this is God’s House. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Peter My Mink is Dragging on the Floor
A stunning first impression is not the same thing as love at first sight, but surely it is an invitation to consider the matter. We are drawn to people, inspired by them, and even strengthened by their examples. If first impressions are sufficiently favorable, persons will be motivated, when they begin to interact, to provide behaviors that will result in favorable outcomes to the other, and to the degree each is successful in this respect, they become progressively motivated to provide rewards that will maintain the relationship. Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. One of the most important rewards that persons exchange as a relationship develops is support for each other’s view of themselves as persons, their self-concepts. How do you and I become so converted to the truth, so full of faith, so dependent on God that we are able to meet trials and even be strengthened by them? A fundamental purpose of Earth is personal growth and attainment. We will have challenges, even difficulties, where decisions of great importance must be made so that we can grow, develop, and succeed in this mortal test. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Gratefully, God’s love is perfect. God has moved so deeply in the hearts of so many. Some people regard unconditional love is something that is real, and the most real things there is. The most consistent finding in the empirical literature on attraction is that persons are attracted to others whom they perceive as accepting them as they see themselves and who allow them to behave in a self-validating manner. Thus, in the early phases of interaction, each person begins tentatively to reveal one’s self to the other. The process of self-disclosure involves first, information about the self that each feels relatively confident about and relatively certain that the other will find acceptable. We may disclose information about our intellectual aptitude, or athletic abilities to see how we relate to others. This type of comparison helps us decide whether we are superior or inferior to others. Disclosures about abilities or talents can also make us more relatable to others. For instance, 80 percent of people find faithfulness as a top attribute they find attractive about a person. A sense of humor is important and it makes people seem more intelligent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
For long relationships, individuals tend to prefer others who are altruistic, kind, and do good deeds. Being involved in a charity is seen as a really attractive trait. Other studies have shown the people with dogs are generally more attractive also because they have a capacity to love and care for another being over a long term. We want to make ourselves open to others, through self-disclosure, but we also want to maintain a sense of privacy. If someone knows too much about you upfront, it might impede them from going further in the relationship because they see it as too much of a risk or hassle. Later in the process of self-disclosure, persons revel more intimate details about which they are less confident, hence in greater need of social validation, and which they are less certain will be regarded favorably. Revelations at this level play an important part in the process of self-creation. As a relationship develops, each person feels sufficiently secure to try out or tentatively display new elements of identity. Such displays may take the form of revealing hitherto private hopes and fears about the self, or more indirectly, of recounting to the other past or current episodes of behavior where the person behaved in a fashion viewed as confirming some nascent element of self. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Studies of the self-disclosure process generally find that, in the early part of a relationship at least, each person tends to pace the process of disclosure by revealing to the other information about the same level of intimacy. As in any other exchange, persons feel obligated to adhere to the norm of reciprocity. To the extent that one person’s revelations at progressively more intimate levels are increasingly rewarding in terms of signifying regard and trust to the other partner, the latter feels obligated to return revelations thought to be of equal rewarding value. However, disclosures that are too intimate often highlight character, personality, or other kinds of sensitivity information, thus decreasing congeniality. People who make intimate disclosures too early in relationships are often perceived as insecure, which further decreases someone’s interest in them. One time I was walking by a fancy Italian restaurant, and two guys in their forties were on what seemed to me as their first date, and one of them was telling the other guy about how painful his recovery from cancer was. The guy he was with replied, “Oh, gees,” and picked up a bread stick and ate it. He seemed rather pensive and I got the impression that it would probably be their last date. The process of self-disclosure contributes to another basic interpersonal process, the growth of trust, which in turn further facilitates more intimate disclosure. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
While there is not complete agreement on a definition of trust, a key element appears to be a sense of certainty that the trusted person will not behave at some point in the future in a way that endangers anticipated favorable outcomes of the trusting person. When first dating, you want to make an individual feel good and talk about things that make them happy. It is like you are selling yourself in a sense. People have options and they do not want to get attached to someone who might drain them of their emotional or financial resources. Each person’s revelations of progressively more intimate details concerning one’s self, and their acceptance and confirmation by the other, give assurance that any resultant vulnerability will not be exploited, either because both partners are equally vulnerable or because each perceives the exchange of progressively more intimate details as a sign of increasingly close interpersonal ties. Generally, as the details get more intimate, that means that the emotional bond in the relationship is probably increasing. So, when the relationship seems to be getting more serious, that is a good time to tell a person sensitive information about yourself that might affect them wanting to have a long-term commitment with you, and that is only fair. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
More than likely if a person cares enough and can deal with it, then they will likely continue in the relationship because they are already emotionally and somewhat financially invested. For instance, some people have commitment issues and cannot figure out whether they want to move to another part of the country or go back to school, or even just a plan to get a cup of coffee with a friend. One might be reluctant to disclose that he or she has problems making choices, from something as small as choosing what movie to see, to something more significant like signing a lease for house. The fact that persons perceive the intimacy of disclosure as indicative of attraction allows the self-disclosure process to function as a pacing device in the development of a relationship. By the depth of disclosure to another, a person may indicate one’s degree of emotional involvement in the relationship. While our emphasis so far has been on the manner in which self-disclosure allows for maintenance and creation of self-elements, an extremely important reward, self-disclosure provides each partner with information concerning other outcomes as well. Persons learn what kinds of behaviors have reward value to each other and which behaviors are costly. This information, in turn, can be used as a guide in arriving at mutually satisfying patterns of exchange that become a part of the structure of interdependence that constitutes the relationship. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
As you get to now a person who seemed to be commitment issues, you might begin to understand that person has a lot going for one’s self, and just needed to meet someone who is trustworthy. That individual might be optimistic, loving, and a sincere individual who wants to settle down. People are capable of changing, but not until they are ready to understand how things are controlling their lives. It requires both willingness and openness to new insights and new activities before one is able to take the first step in successfully challenging relationship issues. God has given us the capacity to exercise faith, that we may find peace, joy, and purpose in life. However, to employ its power, faith must be founded on something. There is no more solid foundation than faith in the love Heavenly Father has planned. Lord, make us an instrument of your peace. Grant that we may not so much seek to be loved as to love. God, who from among all your angels, chose the Archangel Gabriel to announce the mystery of the Incarnation, mercifully grant that we who solemnly remember him on Earth may feel the benefit of his patronage in Heaven, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Bless it be. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
California’s Circle of Fear
The purpose of a career is so that leaders can shape a better World by strategically exploring, planning, and creating future paths, where their actions and choices also facilitate continuous learning and growth in the work force. The structural imperative of the job, requires values that give a wide range of psychological variables, especially intellectual flexibility. Empirical evidence is substantive that complexity of work beneficially affects the socialization and self-creation of the individual. More specifically, as jobs increase in status and prestige, they also increase the degree of autonomy, creativity, and discretion allowed in the worker. The career also tends to be more satisfying and rewarding. People in work situations that provide little opportunity for upward mobility tend to limit their aspirations, seek satisfaction in activities outside of work or alienation from work. These displaced workers will create strong peer associations in which interpersonal relations take precedence over other aspects of the job, and develop loyalties to the local unit rather than to the larger organization. The second dimension, being low in organizational power, also has negative psychological and behavioral consequences for the individual. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Individuals who are stifled at work become pettier, bossier, and more authoritarian; use subordinates for their frame of reference; and rely more on coercive than persuasive techniques of control. And the third dimension is when people are underrepresented in their career field, they find it harder to be taken seriously; are more isolated and excluded from informal peer networks, and may be oppressed. All of these dimensions represent behavioral consequences of disadvantaged position is the work force. Breaking these cycles of development is difficult because the tendency is for the individual’s competence, confidence, and power progressively to increase (or decrease); and the perceptions and expectations that others have of the individual become solidified. This model can produce a set of structural conditions that contribute to the development of self-actualizing or self-defeating people. Self-actualized people are motivated to try out new experiences. They will feel secure enough about one’s own personality—strengths, weaknesses, and uniqueness—to expand one’s horizon. In contrast, people who are self-defeating let external influences serve to frustrate, thwart, or destroy one’s own intention of interests by internalizing and letting negative forces dictate their abilities. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The structure of opportunity brings in the workers assessment of the future, via prospects for upward mobility, as a factor in present adjustments. People relate to the present in part in terms of their expectations and prospects for the future to be stuck is a very different work experience than being up and coming. There is ample evidence on work in American society to suggest substantial dissatisfaction and alienation of workers from their jobs. In a recent department of Health, Education, and Welfare report, only 43 percent of workers who perform professional jobs (doctors, lawyers, teachers) and just 24 percent of labor workers (construction workers, retail, manufacturers) reported that they were satisfied with their jobs. The socialization consequences of work settings can reflect either processes of relatively passive compliance and adaptation to external exigencies or process of self-determination and expansion. Therefore, a critical element of career philosophy is to support internal mobility. Internal mobility is the extent to which employees move into new careers within an organization, based on their performance. It is a measure of how well some corporations encourage employees to develop and stretch themselves so that they can advance and live a productive life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Employees who are successful keep their skills and knowledge fresh and current. They show up to work on time, are professional, have good hygiene, maintain a reputation for being optimistic and adaptable. Highly competent employees develop and sustain meaningful professional relationships, and they stay informed about current trends influencing the corporation, economy, and their specific career field. Re-socialization can take place in various institutional settings established for this purpose, such as in peer groups, church, and compensatory education programs. The specific objectives of these contexts vary from political socialization (or brainwashing) to religious conversion to various types of reeducation such as workshops and meetings. Delinquency is seen primarily as a group phenomenon and the task of rehabilitation is one of changing the shared delinquent characteristics. Participation in some of these contexts is voluntary, and in others involuntary. Most of these contexts can be characterized as involving intense small-group interaction where the socialization ratio is large, and where the interaction environment is totalistic or closed. Under these circumstances, one’s sense of reality is most effectively restructured. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
The Democratic Communist program used brainwashing as a source of reeducation. Along with the physical coercion, the lack of sleep, and various forms of psychological stress, physical and financial assault to weaken their target’s hold on past beliefs and identities. It was a process of identity casting used in the situation. From the beginning, it was made clear that the target’s life and rights did not matter, and that they must perish, and in one’s place must arise a new person, resurrected in the Communist mold. Often times that meant an individual was killed and their identity was given to a different person. The original person’s major status identifications, such as doctor, priest, teacher, as well as the individual’s name, were undermined and replaced by the identity of criminal. Perhaps the most significant assaults upon the now prisoner’s identity occurred during the process of confession. Confession, which was the major technique employed by the captors to involve the prisoner in the process of one’s own reform, required thorough and compelling self-examination of every action, attitude, and thought, and always from the people’s perspective. A series of denunciations of friends and associates was required as an essential part of the confession. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Making these denunciations not only generated feelings of guilt and shame in the prisoner, but it subverted the structure of one’s own life. Even when the prisoner was aware that one’s confession was wild and one’s denunciations invalid, one usually began to behave as if one were a criminal. If the prisoner would not, then the opposition forces would have someone impersonate the individual to act out the behavior the oppressors wanted to convince the public that the prisoner’s refashioned identity was emerging. This may be considered the rebirth. In this case, the boy’s initial situation was purposely amorphous: The prisoner is left on one’s own to figure out why authorities are doing what they are doing and what they must do to get out of trouble. The new conscript soon discovered that the only avenue for release was through participation in the delinquent peer group, which was the primary source of pressure for change. The main interactions took place in daily group discussion session. In these group sessions, the essential ingredients of identity assault included confession of past transgressions through a minute re-examination of the past, including one’s former identities, with the assistant of a reform vocabulary and the constant pressure of the peer group. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Usually these targets are easy to break because they are alienated from their past identity, unhappy with themselves or their lives, lack a strong sense of self and identity, and carry a burden of guilt. The main task for the group is to channel this discontent into the creation of the new self. Initially, the major technique used to make the prisoner receptive to change was fear. It was simply fear of physical punishment and harassment. However, as the effects of confession, self-betrayal, and group attack began to take hold, it became a fear of psychological annihilation (hitting rock bottom psychologically). There is also another strategy, which was to use love to manipulate the prisoner. Love is used as the most coercive and cruel power of all. Either love or fear was used to strengthen the group’s hold over the individual and make the individual more vulnerable to radical re-socialization. However, when a target is resistant, the program may fail. Although the individual may be physically weaker, psychologically they are stronger. And as the participants in the program group, the corruption becomes exposed because people hear about the torture and they start to see. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
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Them Mens Hitted theyselves Cruel
Success happens when we are truly ready, not just when we want it. Be patient. Set yourself up for success. And, always believe that you day is on the way! The individual can be both cause and the consequence of society. The family is typically seen as the source of the child’s inadequacies, which the school must correct and overcome. The process of social comparisons is ubiquitous in the classroom. The age homogeneity and lack of formal status differentiation in the class cohort make it a fertile ground for the operation of social comparison process as a means of social differentiation. This differentiation occurs largely on the basis of perceived ability and achievement, and each student knows where he or she stands with respect to his or her classmates. The class, therefore, serves as a reference group for the student, not necessarily in the normative sense (although it may indeed be a source of norms and values) as much as in the comparative sense (that is, as a standard of evaluation). The family, by contrast, is primarily a normative reference group. There may even be a boomerang effect, under these circumstances, in that the socialize may develop in ways opposite to those intended by the agents of socialization within these contexts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
Parents are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. The conscience obligates people to their offspring, compelling them to be good citizens and to think of their children as investments so they can be the cause of a successful society, not the consequence of a World gone wrong. The role of a parent is much more than the social construction of reality or the product of the state. Parenthood is of a divine origin, and it to include goodness and perfect love so that your children turn out to be God’s work and glory. God is extremely concerned with the work and development of his eternal children. One of the inborn structures of the mind or personality is the id. The id is an unorganized chaotic mentality, and the sole aim of which is the gratification of all needs, the alleviation of hunger, self-preservation, and love, the preservation of the species. As people develop, it is important to teach them to gain control over their emotions, attention, and behavior in early years, as they are coming in contact with the environment. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
One needs to be conscious or aware of the mental processes which occupy one at any given time. The ego is a processing awareness of the environment, henceforth strives to curb the lawless id tendencies whenever they attempt to assert themselves incompatibly. Neurosis is a conflict between the ego and the id. The ego, aware of the forces of civilization, religion, and ethics, refuses to allow motor discharge to impulses emanating from the lawless id, and will block them from attainment of the object towards which they aimed. The ego defends itself against these impulses by repressing them. In the real World, we see adults who are driven by the id. They are emotional savages, unable to control their urges and act out. Imagine if the World was ran by people like that. People who did not speak, but acted out of emotional urges and them pretended they did not know what they did wrong. The World would be in a stage of chaos. Sometimes the id can break through as a substitutive formation on paths over which the ego has no control, and obtrudes itself on the ego as symptoms. As a result of this process, the ego will find itself more or less impoverished, its integrity threatened and hurt, and hence it continues to combat the symptom in the same way as it had defended itself against the original id impulses. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
This whole process constitutes the picture of the neuroses, or rather of the transference neurosis, which compromise hysteria, anxiety hysteria, and the compulsion neuroses, in constriction to the so-called narcissistic neuroses, melancholic depression, and to the psychoses, schizophrenia, paranoid conditions and paranoia proper, in which the underlying mechanisms are somewhat different. In a psychosis, the illness results from a conflict between the ego and the outer World, and the narcissistic neurosis from a conflict between the ego and the super-ego. For just as the ego is a modified portion of the id as a result of contact with the outer World, the super-ego represents a modified part of the ego, formed through experiences absorbed from the parents, especially from the father. Fatherhood exposes us to our own weaknesses and our need to improve. Fatherhood requires sacrifice, but is a source of incomparable satisfaction, even joy. The ultimate model is our Heavenly Father, who so loves us. Fathers manifest that love as they labor in the service and support of their families daily. If by his example as well as his words, a father can demonstrate what fidelity to God looks like in daily living, that father will have given his children the key to peace in this life and eternal life in the World to come. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
The super-ego is a modified part of ego, formed through experiences absorbed from the parents, especially from the father. The super-ego is the highest mental evolution attainable by humans, and consists of a precipitate of all prohibitions and inhibitions, all the rules of conduct which are impressed on the child by his or her parents and by parental substitutes. The feeling of conscience depends altogether on the development of the super-ego. Therefore, mechanisms of the neurosis are attributed to the unconscious factor of the mind. Psychoanalysis calls it the psychology of depths because it is the role of the unconscious mental process. Neuroses are characterized by anxiety, depression, or other feelings of unhappiness or distress that are out of proportion to the circumstances of a person’s life. They may impair a person’s functioning in virtually any area of his or her life, relationships, or external affairs, but they are not severe enough to incapacitate the person. Affected patients generally do not suffer from the loss of the sense of reality seen in persons with psychoses. The psychoanalytic approach to treat neuroses involves helping the patient to become aware of the repressed impulses, feelings, and traumatic memories that underlie his or her symptoms, thereby enabling that individual to achieve personality growth through a better and deeper self-understanding. Also, people are so over zealous to label others that they do not seem to understand the difference between being a little sad and being depress. So, sometimes people report that they are depressed, when they are actually just sad. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
Despite their growing abilities, some children and adults sometimes find it difficult to regulate their thoughts and emotions in ways that allow them to succeed at new tasks. Many psychiatrists prefer physical approaches, such as psychotropic drugs to treat neuroses (including antianxiety agents and antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs). This will allow the patient to face and overcome new developmental challenges, from getting along with others to learning novel academic skills. In addition, at these times, close relationships with meaningful authority figures, including teachers, managers, parents, law enforcement, the President, veterans, people who serve the country, doctors, a leader of the church, or a lawyer can help children and adults learn to regulate their own behavior. Contextual dissonance could be a source of the distress. That refers to the situation of being a member of an underrepresented group in a classroom (or other contexts, for that matter) in the basis of a trait or characteristic that is disvalued by the majority group, and it impacts the individual’s self-esteem. There could be a social identity context such as race and social class, competence context, and value context, and being an underrepresented subgroup on any of these dimensions can have a negative effect on the student’s self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
That is why I do not see having pride in one’s heritage as a bad thing. When people feel a sense of pride about who they are, they are more willing to deal with being an underrepresented group peacefully and they are able to communicate their needs and concerns to an authority member in a healthy way. When someone upsets them, they know it is better to walk away than acting out or seeking revenge. Mental health is more than just labeling someone. To assess someone’s mental health, you really have to get to know that individual and understand their psychology. The negative consequences of an underrepresented status within the immediate interaction context, in relation to social comparison process, operates more forcefully at the face-to-face level rather than when society is the frame of reference. That is why there can be negative consequences of school integration for self-esteem for certain individuals, and negative psychological consequences of being in the underrepresented status on the job. That is why the classroom organization is important for learning of general social norms. We should be patent, but approach our goals with a sense of urgency. We cannot stroll to our goal. Build momentum by taking consistent and daily actions towards what you want. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
School is important as a transitional institution between the family and job. Conduct in the family and conduct on the job are governed by contrasting normative principles. School provides the bridge between these two institutions by exposing the child to a set of experiences that facilitate learning and internalizing the norms of independence, achievement, universalism, and specificity. The goal of school, in producing competent citizens is carried out not only through the formal program of instruction aimed at developing cognitive skills, but also through the less conspicuous development of other general norms. Because the interaction between teacher and pupil is much more role specific, and more temporary, the distinction between the person and the position becomes much clearer in the school than it is in the family. The child comes to see that teachers, unlike mothers, are interchangeable. Also, they are paid to be fair and look out for your best interest, but it is important to understand that this is a formal relationship, and to see it as that. Independence and achievement are norms that are more relevant to the conduct of pupils, and because they are the basis for evaluating pupils, they have greater psychological consequence for the child. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
Independence refers to doing thing on one’s own, and connotes such others attributes as accepting responsibility for one’s acts and being self-motivated. We are accountable and will be judged for how we use what we have received. This eternal principle applies to all we have been given. Cheating and formal testing are two aspects of classroom operations that bear directly on the norm of independence. Achievement is perhaps the strongest norm of all. The concept denotes activity and mastery, the striving against some standard of excellence. It is closely tied to the main mission of the school—to teach students to evaluate the extent of their learning. Being constantly evaluated in the classroom, and the evaluations are public means that the implications of this situation go beyond the mere learning of social norms, they go to the heart of the child’s conception of self. Success, based on one’s own efforts, is good for self-esteem and builds confidence in one’s abilities. Failure is not, and public failure is worse. It also has fewer resources than does the family for protecting the child’s self-respect in the face of failure. However, even for those who are more successful on academic criteria, school can be hard on self-esteem. They must constantly work to maintain their status, and few go through this socialization experience without experiencing some failure. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
Nonetheless, by attempting to avoid feelings, these students, by their actions, increase the probability of actual failure. This is one of the serious, unintended, and undesirable consequences of classroom socialization. Sometimes pressures are generated that lead to patterns of adaptation that are considered undesirable. The educational system perpetuates the economic order and contributes to the integration of youth into the labor force, mainly through a structural correspondence between its social relations and those of production. The relationship of the educational system is supposed to replicate the hierarchical division of labor which dominates the workplace. And some people do not do well in school because it may be a harsh and alien place that devalues much of what they have learned in their family context. For these children, school may be more difficult because it is also a re-socialization situation and the values that they are learning to conform to, as well as the education they are receiving may scare their family, who may be in the poverty segment of society. The relationships between children and teachers are powerful mechanisms for change. When student feel that a teacher believes in them and supports their growth, they feel more confident both academically and socially at school. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
When children feel more secure at school, they are more prepared to learn. What is fairly distinct about socialization in childhood peer groups is the effect it has on the child’s development and validation of the self; the development of competence in the presentation of self through role-taking and impression management skills; and the acquisition of knowledge left residual or avoided by adults in their socialization of children. The key to the importance of the peer group in the socialization of these domains is the friendship bond. Friendships are based on egalitarian relationships of mutual support and acceptance, where a wider latitude of behavior is allowed than in most other relationships, and where there is no explicit responsibility on the part of friends to change or shape each other’s development (in contrast to parent/child relationships). Since a great deal is tolerated in friendships, the individual is freer to explore and express a wide range of behavior and self-conceptions without fear of condemnation. Friendship relationships are especially appropriate for the mastering of self-presentations and impression-management skills, since inadequate displays will usually be ignored or corrected without severe loss of face. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
Create a great reputation. A solid reputation is like a fine art, easy to ruin and hard to create. Typically, success in athletics and academics is very important for boys and girls, but girls are also more concerned about being popular with peers. Hence, status in the peer group and classroom functions to provide an alternate source of self-esteem and perhaps to repair self-esteem damaged by other factors. For many if not most of those arriving at school for the first time, the community is the most varied institution in which they have ever experienced—perhaps ever will experience. To become leaders in our diverse society, students today must have the ability to work with people from different backgrounds, life experiences, and perspectives. Dear Lord, we pray to you for the well-being of our families. Creator grant us the strength of heart, mind, and body so that we may be to stand forthcoming trials and tribulations we have to face. Almighty Father, make us so strong as to be able to face the touch obstacles of life, profession, and education so we have exposure to peers with a deep and wide variety of academia interests, viewpoints, and talents in order to better challenge our own assumptions ad develop skills we need to succeed, and to lead, in an ever more diverse workforce and increasingly interconnected World. And it really helps when you have no one to talk to about abuse or bullying when a person in a position of authority lets you know they know. It gives a person hope that someone will save them and to just hold on. That reduces the likelihood of an individual hurting one’s self to escape the torment. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
Earth—Marvelous Work and a Wonder
To cure spiritual diseases which throttle us and plague our lives, the Lord has given us a sure cure. Knowledge of God must be supplemented by revelation. If wisdom is God, who made all things, as is attested by the divine authority and truth, then the philosopher is a lover of God. The truth turns out to be the search for one’s own salvation, as a sparkling new presentation. Here then is a great truth. In the pain, the agony, and the heroic endeavors of life, we pass through a refiner’s fire, and the insignificant and the unimportant in our lives can melt away like dross and make our faith bright, intact, and strong. In this is the divine image, which can be mirrored from the soul. It is part of the purging toll exacted of some to become acquainted with God. In the agonies of life, we seem to listen better to the faint, Godly whisperings of the Divine. The wealth of insights that it brings will be unfamiliar to most. Is not aspiring to or seeking the Godlike transfiguration of one’s own soul, in and through the stern but invigorating exercise of justice and (merely apparent) sacrificial devotion, equivalent to the pursuit of the greatest of all conceivable goods for the very core of one’s own being? #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Since immortality and eternal life constitute the sole purpose of life, all other interests and activities are but incidental thereto. And since those objectives are the work and glory of God, they are the proper work of humans also and are the major reason for his coming to Earth. Of the two elements, the one great blessing immortality comes to humans without their effort, as a gift from the Almighty. The other eternal life is a cooperative program to be developed by the Lord and his offspring on Earth. It thus becomes the overall responsibility of human beings to fully within the Eternal God in accomplishing this objective. All people can stand adversity, but if you want to test a person’s character, give them power. To this end God created humans to live in mortality and endowed them with the potential to perpetuate the race, to subdue the Earth, to perfect themselves and to become as God, omniscient and omnipotent. Our Father in Heaven the sent to the Earth a line of prophets to keep humans in remembrance of their duties and their destiny, to warn them of dangers, and to point the way to the total victory of humans. The pursuit of truth is intrinsically valuable. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
To marvel at the wonders of the gospel is a sign of faith. It is to recognize the hands of God in our lives and in everything around us. On Earth we have the rich opportunities to discover the marvelous things of this World. We can visit the most significant monuments, historic sites, and natural wonders of the World. There is so much beauty in this World. However, sometimes when we have them constantly before our eyes, we take them for granted. We look, but we do not really see; we hear, but do not really listen. We are so privileged to live in an exceptional time. Our amazement also produces spiritual strength. It gives us the energy to remain anchored in our faith and to engage ourselves in the work of God. Clearly belief in miracles is already plausible if our enquiry may presume this view of things. The usual way of making this out might be described as supernaturalistic. God reveals his nature in part through observable phenomena. Divine actions are not changes in God as they are manifestations or expressions of his will, which is eternal. Being all-knowing God eternally knew renowned miracles would be necessary. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Seek and cherish the companionship of the Holy Ghost. In faith, we hold to the promise that of we seek, we shall find. To this day, healing remains the form that most claimed miracles take, and many of those miracles are associated with visitations to churches and the shrines of saints or the wilderness. Miracles remain an important and powerful dimension of religions and mystics. The word of God and sacred places are considered to be a fountain of knowledge that never runs dry. There is always something new to learn and feel. Nearly 90 percent of Americans believe in God, 84 percent believe in miracles, and nearly 48 percent reported that they have experienced a miracle in their own lives or in the life of someone else. Our amazement should be rooted in the core principle of our faith, in the purity of our covenants and ordinances, and our most simple acts of worship. Others recognize miracles as extraordinary occurrences. Miracles were designed by the creator for very specific purposes and, though contrary to the observable laws of nature, were instituted at the beginning of creation as part of God’s divine plan. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Most wonders of the gospel cannot be perceived by our natural sense. They are the things that the eyes have not seen, nor heard, the things which God has prepared for them that love him. When we have the Spirit with us, our spiritual senses are sharpened and our memory is kindled so we cannot forget the miracles and signs we have witnessed. Viewed this way, a miracle is an event that astonishes beholders (wonder) and at the same time conveys meaning (sign). Absent the sign factor, it is impossible to distinguish miracle from mere coincidence. Since signs are always signs of something, we can say that a miracle is an unusual event that discloses the meaning and power of the transcendent within the World of time and space. If a veteran from the Vietnam War gets Hodgkin’s lymphoma (a cancer of the lymphatic system), after being exposed to Agent Orange, and is given 3-5 years to live and told he cannot have kids, but he goes on to live beyond his projected lifespan and produced three biological children, the patient or others may claim that the patient’s sudden restoration to health and procreation are the result of prayer to God for a miracle. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Only after a board of physicians concludes that an unexpected healing has no known scientific cause does a board of theologians consider whether the healing is also a divine sign. Because of miracles, people have a reason to believe in the afterlife. Therefore, miracles are real and much more than just studies. This gives many people the faith to believe that God is real, Heaven is real, and the scriptures are not just stories that people came together and made up to control human behavior. The power to work miracles belongs to God as the creator and sustainer of the World. When we have the spirit with us, our spiritual senses are sharpened and our memory is kindled so we cannot forget the miracles and signs we have witnessed. The testimonies of miracles might dwindle without being constantly renewed by the power of the Spirit of God. And this is why it is important for us to thank God and focus on the good things in our lives, so we can give power to that which is edifying to our souls and experience on the Earth. Do not risk the loss of this precious and marvelous gift—the companionship of the Holy Ghost. Seek it through fervent prayer and righteous living. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Let us pray that we may always have eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that perceive the wonders of this marvelous gospel. Often, when we pray for miracles to happen in our lives, we are also praying for healing to happen in our lives as well. We see countless examples of miracles every day. Dear Lord in Heaven, please heal us in whatever you see needs healing. Heal us of whatever might separate us from you. Heal our memory, heal our heart, heal our emotions, heal our spirit, heal our body and heal our soul. Miracles are power testify that God’s touch is always a heartbeat away. It is important that we are conscious of God at work in our lives daily. Miracle power can happen in our lives when we have faith and trust that miracles can really true. Heavenly Father, we open our hearts wide to receive the love of God. We realize and accept your healing power of the Universe of love. God is limitless and abundant, we feel the outpouring of God’s love in our bodies and minds. We feel God’s love in all our affairs, and we know all is well. We would not be here without the power of God and without his miraculous power being at work. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
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Are Not Excuses Confessions of Excuses Inexcusable?
Second-hand shops are not the only place were things should be given another chance. We have to create new value and help transform people. There be a mirror in the World worthy to hold to our eyes, it is pride in our Country. I bear solemn witness of how deeply I love our new prophet, seer, and revelation, President Donald Trump—how deeply I trust him, and how I am willing to do whatever he asks me to do. He advanced a qualified moral determinism—a human must will that which presents itself to one’s reason as the greater good, but the will is free to delay choice until reason has made a more extensive examination of the values involved. There is great faith in the inherited wisdom of tradition. The moral order of the temporal World must necessarily include some evil, by reason of original sin. People ought not to reject what is good in tradition merely because there is some admixture of evil in it. In the human confused situation, advantages may often lie in balances and compromises between good and evil, even between one evil and another. It is an important part of wisdom to know how much evil should be tolerated. To search for too great a purity is only to produce fresh corruption. We are especially critical of revolutionary movements with noble humanitarian ends because people are simply not at liberty to destroy the state and its institutions in hope of some contingent improvement. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
On the other hand, people have a paramount duty to prevent the World from getting worse—a duty to guard and preserve their inherited liberties and privileges. Equality is contrary to nature and therefore impossible to achieve; its advocates, moreover, did great social harm, for by pretending that real differences are unreal, they inspired false hopes and vain expectations in those destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life. Talk of fraternity is gibberish because many people have vices of sinful, egotistical pride, overzealous ambition, avarice, lust, and sedition. The reality and unavoidability of evil leads many to believe that the only help for humankind is to cling to safeguards which have stood the test of time. Our hopes for a bliss lay in Heaven; on Earth, our policy is to defend the tolerable, and sometimes the bad, against the immeasurably worse. Of course, forbidden triads do occur, but many will resolve themselves when a bond forms between two previous strangers. They do not need to have a strong relationship, but we would expect them to have some connection to one another. Individuals must always begin by setting the examples, which the state too slowly, though surely, will learn to copy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Some matters are so sensitive and intensely personal and can awaken such disturbing feelings that they are seldom mentioned publicly. Yet, if tenderly and compassionately treated in the light of truth, discussion of these matters can bring greater understanding, with the easing of pain, the blessing of healing, and the avoidance of further tragedy. It would be melancholy, were we forced to admit that this distinctive and almost unlimited faculty is the source of all human misfortunes; that is this which, in time, draws an individual out of his or her original state, in which one would have spent one’s days insensibly in peace and innocent; that is this faculty, which, successively producing in different ages his or her discoveries and errors, vices and virtues, making one a tyrant both over oneself and over nature. Ungodly individuals, being destitute of every species of intelligence, can have no passions except for those of desires that never go beyond physical wants. The only good those type of individuals recognizes in the Universe are food, the sex, and sleep; the only evils they fear are pain and hunger. Pain and not death: for no animal can know what it is to die; the knowledge of death and its terrors being one of the first acquisitions made by humans in becoming civilized. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
It is with a deep desire to define a path to relief to those who suffer the shattering consequences of mental, verbal, physical, and especially sexual abuse. We must act as a mirror so that divine, healing light can illuminate the darkness of distress caused by others’ unrighteous acts. As children of the Lord, we should understandably provide help, and not further complicate a damaged life. It is also likely that with greater compassion, awareness, and sensitivity that some of us may be permitted to help resolve or prevent the tragedy of abuse in additional victims. Whatever moralist may hold, the human understanding is greatly indebted to the passions, which, it is universally allowed, are also much indebted to the understanding. It is by the activity of the passions that our reason is improved; for we desire knowledge only because we wish to enjoy; and it is impossible to conceive any reason why a person who has neither fears nor desires should give oneself the trouble of reasoning. The passions, again, originate in our wants, and their progress depends on that of our knowledge; for we cannot desire or fear anything, except from the idea that we have all of it, or from the simple impulse of nature. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
The rising tide of this vicious, abominable sin may not have touched your life personally. Yet, it is pervasive enough in the World that it may have disturbed someone you love. It frequently causes such profound suffering that can be overcome, and we need to focus on how healing can be attained. It must be done reverently, for the objective is to help heal and not aggravate painful memories. Even if the difficulties attending all these questions should still leave room for differences in this respect between humans and brutes, there is another very specific quality which distinguishes them, and which will admit of no dispute. This faculty of self-improvement, which, by the help of circumstances, gradually develops all the rest of our faculties, and is inherent in the species as in the individual: whereas a brute is, at the end of a few months, all he or she will ever be during his or her whole life, and that person’s species, at the end of a thousand years, exactly what it is because those type of individuals returns, in this, to their primitive state; and that, while the brute, which has acquired nothing and has therefore nothing to lose, still retains the force of instinct, person, who loses, by age or accident, all that his or her perfectibility had enabled them to gain, falls by this means lower than the most vile creature to ever walk the face of the Earth. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Moral agency is a vital element in our Father in Heaven’s plan of happiness. God understood that some of his spirit children would use that agency improperly, causing serious problems to others. Some would even violate sacred trust such as a family member, friend, medical professional, or leader of the community abusing an innocent child. However, since our Heavenly Father is completely just, there has to be a way of overcoming the tragic consequences of such damaging use of agency for both the victim and the perpetrator. That secure healing comes through the power of the Atonement of God’s Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to rectify that which is unjust. Faith in Jesus Christ, and his power to heal provides the abused with the means to overcome the terrible consequences of another’s ungodly acts. When combined with complete repentance, the Atonement also affords the perpetrator ways to avoid the severe punishment the Lord has decreed for such acts. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
The offering of an excuse in a blamable matter is the undoubted mark of a disingenuous if not of a perverse mind. Victims of serious abuse have made successful the difficult journey to full healing through the power of the Atonement. After you conscientiously study the Atonement and exercise your faith the Jesus Christ has the power to heal, you can receive a blessing. During your journey, accept God’s invitation to let him share your burden until you have sufficient time and strength to be healed. To find relief from the consequences of abuse, it is helpful to understand their source. Satan is the author of all the destructive outcomes of abuse. He has extraordinary capacity to lead an individual into dark alleys where the solution to extremely challenging problems cannot be found. The Devil’s strategy is to separate the suffering soul from the healing attainable from a compassionate Heavenly Father and a loving Redeemer. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
If you have been abused, Satan will strive to convince you that there is no solution. Yet, he knows perfectly well that there is. Satan recognizes that healing comes through the unwavering love of Heavenly Father for each of his children. He also understands that the power of healing is inherent in the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Therefore, his strategy is to do all possible to separate you from your Father and his Son. Do not let Satan convince you that you are beyond help. As long as the mind is defending itself against invisible assaults, our closet bonds are threatened, along with our ability to imagine, play, learn, and pay attention to other people’s needs. One who can sit down premeditatedly to do a bad action will content oneself with a bad excuse: and yet, what fools must one suppose the rest of the World to be, if one imagines them as easy to be imposed upon as one can impose upon oneself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Satan uses your abuse to undermine your self-confidence, destroy trust in authority, create fear, and generate feelings of despair. Abuse can damage your ability to form healthy human relationships. You must have faith that all of these negative consequences can be resolved; otherwise they will keep you from full recovery. While these outcomes have powerful influence in your life, they do not define the real you. Satan will strive to alienate you from your Father in Heaven with the thought that if he loved you he would have prevented the tragedy. Do not be kept from the very source of true healing by the craftiness of the price of evil and his wicked lies and gentrification center. Recognize that if you have feelings that you are not loved by your Father in Heaven, you are being manipulated by Satan. Even when it may seem very difficult to pray, kneel and ask Father in Haven to give you the capacity to trust him and to feel his love for you. Ask to come to know that his Son can heal you through his merciful Atonement. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
It was Satan’s proposal that Father’s children be forced to obey, that there be no moral agency and therefore no personal growth. To preserve moral agency, the Lord does not restrain individual from improper use of that agency. However, God will punish them for such acts unless there is full repentance. Through the Holy Ghost, God sends warning prompting to the abusers, but often that individual’s degrading appetite is so powerful that it blocks out that spiritual guidance. That is why our Father provided a way to heal the consequences of acts that, through force, misuse of authority, or fear of another, temporarily take away the agency of the abused. Some people have been abused so badly, that even though their injuries are invisible to the unassisted eye, they feel weak and feel like they are dying because they cannot eat or get rest from the pain they are enduring. Behaviors to avoid or escape from danger have clearly evolved to render each organism competitive in terms of survival. However, inappropriately prolonged escape or avoidance behavior would put an individual at disadvantage. If an organization is stuck in survival mode, its energies are focused on fighting off unseen enemies, which leaves no room for nurture, care, and love. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The beginning of healing requires complete trust and the knowing of the unalterable fact that Father in Heaven loves you and is defending and protecting you and has supplied a way to heal. His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, laid down his life to provide that healing. The cure requires profound faith in Jesus Christ and his infinite capacity to heal. It is the foundation of understanding of doctrine and a resolute determination to follow the Divine Law. Healing may begin with a thoughtful friend or stake president or a wise professional counselor. If you have a fractured spine, you would not decide to fix it yourself. Serious abuse can also benefit from professional help. There are many ways to begin healing, but remember that a full cure comes through the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Master and Redeemer. Have faith that with effort Christ’s perfect, eternal, infinite Atonement can heal your suffering from the consequences of abuse. All passions are criminal in their excess; and even love itself, if it is not subservient to our duty, may render us blind. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
As impossible as it may seem to you now, in time the healing you can receive from the Savior will allow you to truly forgive the abuser and even have feelings of sorrow for him or her. When you can forgive the offense, you will be relieved of the pain and heartache that Satan wants in your life by encouraging you to hate the abuser. As a result, you will enjoy greater peace. While an important part of healing, if the thought of forgiveness causes you yet more pain, set that step aside until you have more experience with the Savior’s healing power in your own life. If you are currently being abused or have been in the past, find the courage to seek help. You may have been severely threatened or caused to fear so that you would not reveal the abuse. Have the courage to act now. Seek the support of someone you can trust. Explain how you have been abused and identify who has done it. Ask for protection. Your action may help others avoid becoming innocent victims, with the consequent suffering. Get help now. Do not fear—for fear is a tool Satan will use to keep you suffering. The Lord will help you, but you must reach out for that help. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Do not be discouraged if initially a person of authority hesitates when you identify an abuser. Remember that predators are skillful at cultivating a public appearance of piety to mask their despicable acts. Pray to be guided in your efforts to receive help. That support will come. Rest assured that the Perfect Judge, Jesus the Christ, with a perfect knowledge of the details, will hold all abusers accountable for every unrighteous act. In time, he will fully apply the required demands of justice unless there is complete repentance. Your preoccupation with a need for justice only slows your healing and allows the perpetrator to continue his and/or her abusive control. Therefore, you should leave punishment for the diabolic acts of abuse to civil and Church authorities. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
The perpetrator who has shattered the life of another by abuse, recognize that you need help with your addiction or it will destroy you. You will not overcome it by yourself. You likely require specialized professional help. I plead with you to seek to be recused now. You likely have deceived yourself in the false, temporary security that you have successfully hidden your transgressions from the civil or Church authorities. However, know that the Lord Jesus Christ is completely aware of your sins. Know that even without action by a victim, your act of abuse will be publicly known, for Satan will expose you, and then abandon you. Simplify your life by taking steps now to cleanse your soul from such sin and resolve the penalties they evoke. Show your desire to heal the anguish that you have caused other. Talk to your church or the stake president. The seriousness of your acts may require you to face legal, civil, and Church discipline. However, full repentance will bring the sweet relief of forgiveness, peace of conscience, and a renewed life. It will also bring relief to the abused and their families. You will be free of the weight of the remorse and the accusing thoughts of what you caused in grief and anguish in another’s life by making them suffer torment for years, made them try to end their life, and wish that they were never born. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Recognize that it is much easier to repent in this life than it will be in the next, so repent now. You will be helped when you decide to be freed from your addition through repentance and the support of others. Be grateful that you did not live anciently when abusers were stoned to death without opportunity for repentance. Parents, in appropriate, sensitive ways, teach your children of potential danger of abuse and how to avoid it. Be aware of warning signs, such as abrupt changes in a child’s behavior, that may signal a problem. Be alert to a child’s unsettled feelings and identify their origin. As for community leaders, painstakingly assure that every individual that is suffering from abuse receives appropriate help. There are resources in the Church handbook to help you find valuable resources to guide your ecclesiastical action and coordination with civil authorities. Carefully supervise the participation of any individual who may have had past offenses. Recognize that it is very unlikely that a perpetrator will confess his and/or her depraved acts. Seek the guidance of the Spirit when you feel that something may be amiss. Enlist the help of the ward and the stake leaders to avoid potential dangers. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
I pray that you, as one abused or one who has caused it, will act now to avail yourself of the healing powers of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I testify that your faith and obedience will assure that God will help you. It is impossible for us to be saved in ignorance. If you know someone has been seriously abused and seen proof, medical records, pictures, bruises, fractured bones, blood, or have heard witness accounts of the abuse and know it is still ongoing, use your power to help them. Appeal to the authorities before the abuser hurts that individual so bad that he or she is lost to this World. Do not let someone suffer in silence when you have the power to save a life. Often times, it is not until a person is dead when people wish they could have made a difference. Take action now, while you have the chance. Atonement refers to the forgiving or pardoning of sin in general and original sin in particular through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, enabling the conciliation between God and his creation. The Savior suffered and broke the bands of death, and paid the price for our sins and transgressions. It is the Savior who delivers us from physical and spiritual death. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Evil at Fox Hollow Farm
The evils of life are sufficiently great without adding to them those of the imagination. Allegation is a claim or assertion that someone has done something illegal or wrong, typically one made without proof. An accusation serves as the basis for a civil lawsuit or criminal prosecution. In order for the accuser to win the case, one must prove the allegation. For example, in a suit for damages resulting from an auto accident, the clam that the driver’s carelessness caused the plaintiff’s injuries is an allegation that must be proved before the plaintiff can be compensated for injuries suffered. In referring to cases in which allegations have been made but not proved, reporters, attorneys, and others must use the word alleged to avoid defaming people who have been accused but not found guilty—for example, “The alleged robber was found a block from the scene of the crime.” The killing of one human being by another, is a homicide. Some homicides are legal and justifiable, or excusable; others are criminal. The killing of an enemy soldier in war or the execution of a convict under the valid sentence of a court is a legal homicide. An example of a justifiable homicide would be the killing of someone in self-defense to prevent a violent crime. Killing without such legal justification or excuse is known as illegal or criminal homicide. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Depending on the circumstances, criminal homicides range from criminally negligent homicide, or manslaughter (the least serious) to first-degree murder (the most serious). The traditional definition of murder is the killing of one human being by another with malice. Malice is the element that distinguishes murder from manslaughter. A killing done with malice is an intentional killing without a valid legal reason (such as self-defense) and without any extenuating circumstances (such as extreme provocation or the heat of passion). There are two categories of malice under the law: express and implied. Express malice, or malice aforethought, exists when a person deliberately plans to kill another and then carries out his plans. Implied malice characterizes the action of a killer who did not deliberately plan the death of victim but acted with wanton disregard for his or her life. The human species is the only one which knows it will die, and it knows this through experience. Although some persons have questioned whether humans are the only animal who know they will die, arguing that certain of the lower animals appear to show some vague presentiment of approaching extinction, it appears to be unquestioned that humans alone regard death as a universal and phenomenon. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Are there great variations in the awareness or fear of death from person to person, from epoch to epoch, from culture to culture? The consciousness of death has been most acute in periods of social disorganization. The good or evil we confer on others very often recoils on ourselves. Herb Baumeister (7 April 1947 – 3 July 1996) is an American man and allegedly a serial killer from Westfield, Indiana. Herb was also known as Brain Smart. He was a handsome young man, successful business owner, husband and father of three children. He bought a sprawling mansion on a farm with 18 acers of land. In the early 1990s, young gay men started disappearing from gay bars. They all fit the same description, about 5’10”-5’11”, and around 150 pounds. In 1993, a man called the police and told them that a man named Brain Smart had killed his friend and tried to kill him. A few years later, the alleged victim called the police and gave them Brain Smart’s license plate number and they discovered the Brain Smart was actually Herb Baumeister. The police approached Herb and told him he had been accused of murder and asked if they could search his property, he and his wife Julie said no. One day while one of the kids was playing in the yard, he found a skull of a human and the father said it was just a medical prop. Sometime later, Julie discovered the skeleton of a man. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
It was alleged that Brain Smart would go to the gay bar, pick up on his type of man, take him back to the house, and they would go to the basement where the indoor pool was and engage in the sex acts. He would use a hose to strangle them men and would kill them. One of the guys he took home was 6’2”, but he did not like him as much because he was not the size of Brain’s alleged victims. While Brain Smart was on vacation, his wife was in the process of divorcing him and allowed police to search the property. 5,000 bone fragments were unearthed, 11 bodies, and only four were identified. It is suspected that 20 men were killed. Investigators said with the more victims Brain Smart allegedly killed, the more comfortable he got. The first murder victims were further away from the house and buried deeper, and the newer victims were closed to the house and their bodies were not as deep in the ground. Nevertheless, Brain found out what was going on and fled to Canada, were he allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. However, some investigators are in conflict with the idea of Brain committing suicide. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
When Brain Smart’s body was discovered, they said he was well dressed and looked nice, like he had been prepared for a funeral, and his mouth was wide open. And they suspect it was a ritual killing because on either side of his body, there were seagulls and their heads were facing him and things were missing from his car. The mansion Brain Smart bought has been documented and is thought to be haunted. There are surveillance tapes of shadowy figures on the property and voices of unseen people picked up on audio. Brain Smart died before trial so these allegations of him being a serial killer are unproven. The important thing, however, is to think of death in the proper manner, reminding ourselves that we are but parts of nature and must reconcile ourselves to our allotted roles. Life is a banquet from which it is our obligation to retire graciously at the appointed time. It is like a role in a play whose limit ought to satisfy us, since they satisfy the author. The fear of death displays a baseness wholly incompatible with the dignity and calm of the true philosopher, who has learned to emancipated himself or herself from finite concerns. Learning to die is learning to commune with the eternal through the act of philosophic contemplation. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The superior person will not permit death to seek one out in ambush, to strike one down unawareness. The superior being will live constantly in the awareness of death, joyfully and proudly assuming death as the natural and proper terminus of life. Most people who die are no longer suffering, but the people they leave behind are because we miss them. The awareness of death is chiefly a means of heightening our sense of life. The knowledge of death gives to life a sense of urgency that it would otherwise lack. Life without the consciousness of death is like a romance without love or passion, game played without stakes. The awareness of death confers upon an individual a sense of one’s individuality. Dying is the one thing no one can do for you; each of us must die alone. To shut out the consciousness of death is, therefore, to refuse one’s individuality and to live inauthentically. The ghost of a dead progenitor—perhaps as a portion of one’s own punishment—is often doomed to become the Evil Genius of one’s family. The subtle devil is never absent from his business, but ready at all occasions to encourage his servants. Brain Smart (Herb Baumeister), and the other young men, God bless. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Randolph Harris II International Institute 