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There is Too Much Love Without an Object
The venerable language of zodiac types is useful to start a dialogue about casting. The twelve signs of the Zodiac are useful labels for basic structural human castes. Philosophers—good ones—are human ethologists. For five thousand years, the shrewdest human ethologists have worked on this twelve-fold typecasting—based on extensive and empirical observation. If we ignore the “astro” part we are left with the “logic” of twelve survival tactics—Pisces, Aries, etcetera. In the future more sophisticated classifications of human types based on neurological differences will replace the crude zodiac classification. There will be some among you, those scientific and intellectual bent, who are offended by use of this “sloppy occult astrological superstitious” technology. Before you fuse out, reread the crude, generalized list of the twelve personality types. Admittedly, astrology is a primitive attempt at introducing the notion of temporal caste, seriality and developmental order. The survival characteristic assigned to each type describes an evolutionary technology and a developmental stage. Pisces is baby and amoeboid. Aquarius is the most elderly, orderly, mature. Sense how this list tries to recapitulate the evolution of the twelve basic neurotechnological functions—both in the species and individuals. When we can replace it by a better personality typology based on the sequential evolution of intelligence, in species and individuals, we can reject this list. For now, however, it is a useful system. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Intellectuals, scholars, academics, salaried scientists and all other categories of verbal bureaucrats unanimously denounce astrology. Such condemnation immediately alerts Evolutionary Agents that an important genetic nerve is being touched. These paper-pedants and their civil-service followers make such solemn, judicial pronouncements: “I do not believe in astrology.” This statement means: “I do not understand seasonal ethology and I automatically reject everything my brain is not wired to receive.” Look, therefore, for the valid reasons why hive philosophers fear astrology and you will find, hidden in the tangle of zodiac ravings, three important items of neurogenetic wisdom. Wisdom of the zodiac: Regular cycles influence neural development. Each of us is born a robot, templated and controlled by rhythms with which we can decipher and harmonize. Each of us is born into a caste, or into a complex of castes. Suspend belief and assume, for the moment, that Zodiac types define structural castes. Each of the twelve terrestrial intelligence-functions plays an important role in the human social molecule. No human gene pool can exist unless it has people and institutions playing out these twelve neurotechnological parts. Each of the twelve terrestrial intelligence-functions plays an important role in the human social molecule. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
It would be possible for us to define the positive aspect of the values implicit in every act of rebellion by comparing them with a completely negative concept like that of resentment as defined by Scheler. Rebellion is, in fact, much more than pursuit of a claim, in the strongest sense of the word. Resentment is very well defined by Scheler as an autointoxication—the evil secretion, in a sealed vessel, of prolonged impotence. Rebellion, on the contrary, breaks the seal and allows the whole being to come into play. It liberates stagnant waters and turns them into a raging torrent. Scheler himself emphasizes the passive aspect of resentment and remarks on the prominent place it occupies in the psychology of women who are dedicated to desire and possession. The fountainhead of rebellion, on the contrary, is the principle of superabundant activity and energy. Scheler is also right in saying that resentment is always highly coloured by envy. However, one envies what one does not have, while the rebel’s aim is to defend what he is. He does not merely claim some good that he does not possess or of which he was deprived. His aim is to claim recognition for something which he has and which has already been recognized by him, in almost every case, as more important than anything of which he could be envious. Rebellion is not realistic. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
According to Scheler, resentment always turns into either unscrupulous ambition or bitterness, depending on whether it is implanted in a strong person or a weak one. However, in both cases it is a question of wanting to be something other than what one is. Resentment is always resentment against oneself. The rebel, on the contrary, from his very first step, refuses to allow anyone to touch what he is. He is fighting for the integrity of one part of his being. He does not try, primarily, to conquer, but simply to impose. Finally, it would seem that resentment takes delight, in advance, in the pain that it would like the object of its envy to feel. Nietzsche and Scheler are right in seeing an excellent example of this in the passage where Tertullian informs his readers that one of the greatest sources of happiness among the blessed will be the spectacle of the Roman emperors consumed in the fires of hell. This kind of happiness is also experienced by the decent people who go to watch executions. The rebel, on the contrary, limits himself, as a matter of principle, to refusing to be humiliated without asking that others should be. He will even accept pain provided his integrity is respected. It is therefore hard to understand why Scheler completely identifies the spirit of rebellion with resentment. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
His criticism of the resentment to be found in humanitarianism (which he treats as the non-Christian form of love for mankind) could perhaps be applied to certain indeterminate forms of humanitarian idealism, or to the techniques of terror. However, it rings false in relation to man’s rebellion against his condition—the movement that enlists the individual in the defense of a dignity common to all men. Scheler wants to demonstrate that humanitarian feelings are always accompanied by a hatred of the World. Humanity is loved in general in order to avoid having to love anybody in particular. This is correct, in some cases, and it is easier to understand Scheler when we realize that for him humanitarianism is represented by Bentham and Rousseau. However, man’s love for man can be born of other things than a mathematical calculation of the resultant rewards or a theoretical confidence in human nature. In face of the utilitarians, and of Emile’s preceptor, there is, for example, the kind of logic, embodies by Dostoievsky in Ivan Karamazov, which progresses from an act of rebellion to metaphysical insurrection. Scheler is aware of this and sums up the concept in the following manner: “There is not enough love in the World to squander it on anything but human beings.” Even if this proposition were true, the appalling despair that it implies would merit anything but contempt. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
In fact, it misunderstands the tortured character of Karamazov’s rebellion. Ivan’s drama, on the contrary, arises from the fact that there is too much love without an object. This love finding no outlet and God being denied, it is then decided to lavish it on human beings as a generous act of complicity. Nevertheless, in the act of rebellion as we have envisaged it up to now, an abstract ideal is not chosen through lack of feeling and in pursuit of a sterile demand. We insist that the part of man which cannot be reduced to mere ideas should be taken into consideration—the passionate side of his nature that serves no other purpose than to be part of the act of living. Does this imply that no rebellion is motivated by resentment? No, and we know it only too well in this age of malice. However, we must consider the idea of rebellion in its widest sense on pain of betraying it; and in its widest sense rebellion goes far beyond resentment. When Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights, says that he puts his love above God and would willingly go to hell in order to be reunited with the woman he loves, he is prompted not only by youth and humiliation but by the consuming experience of a whole lifetime. The same emotion causes Eckart, in a surprising fit of heresy, to say that he prefers hell with Jesus to Heave without Him. This is the very essence of love. Contrary to Scheler, it would therefore be impossible to overemphasize the passionate affirmation that underlies the act of rebellion and distinguishes it from resentment. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended. People can go too far with rebellion, however, and end up in prison. Sometimes the prison dope supply becomes irregular and during periods of neurological famine, waves of nervousness overcome inmates. As they are waiting for the verdict of the California Supreme Court, waiting for the call to the sergeant’s office to receive the telegram. They wait for the Counselor’s interview and learn all about he or she as they can. Back in the day, “San Quentin Sally,” was famous for hard custody-oriented maximum-security recommendations. She was cynical and suspicious of being conned. She respected convicts who told the truth. However, the details of her domestic problems, her martial history, her previous employment, her emotional characteristics, and her neurotic symptomatology were no secret to some. Also, sometimes prison guards that are hard on prisoners have issues. You see, one prison guard in particular had a teenaged daughter. He knew she smoked pot and low-rides with a kid who dealt dope. In his mind, he could see the nipples of his daughter Hilary trembling under the hypnotic passes of dope pushers, her thin white legs contorted in yoga positions, offering her flower for the demon drug. His daughter Hilary, with fingers of limp hair bedraggled with cannabis smoke and the expression of total rapture on her innocent face. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Man, he could see her pusher in his mod suit with satin cuffs propped up among the pillows on a fur coated bed resting ermine boots on the antique coffee table, running the palm of his evil hands across the hard sharp nipples of Hilary’s breasts. He saw her kneeling unzipping his pants. And you wonder why he hates inmates? He is not the only one. They say inmates do not deserve equal treatment. Can you dig that? Equal treatment. After breakfast, a sturdy executive elite con named Conrad, the sergeant’s clerk, comes over to the inmate’s table. “Were you expecting some sort of Court action?” “Yes, it should be here today.” “Well, I just heard on the radio that they shot you down. The California Appeals Court denied your appeal, you and Scott Peterson. I’m sorry about it.” “It is up to Justice Walker now,” he said. The inmate spent the day inside of gloom. His legal life now depended upon Justin R. Walker, naturalist, rebel, friend of youth, solace of the persecuted, outspoken libertarian, hope of the friendless, the husband of a woman, father of a child, protector of wild flowers and clear streams. And he is young. It all depends on his wife. During the next few days, the inmate reclined in the monastic peace of single cell reading newspaper stories about pending impeachment of President Biden and assassination attempts against former president Trump. His case was to come before Walker at a crucial time in his life. Freeing the inmate on bail would bring down on his head more angry outcries. It is a soap opera. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
The lawyers assured the inmate that he would be freed by Justice Walker in 5 days. However, he was still working on the escape plan while the trustees gathered around to share the fruits of prison grapevine. The administration is meeting this week to decide where he is going to be transferred. He thinks that he will be out on bail soon so it does not matter really, but was curious about the possibilities? The espionage system reported that Custody was easier on him then Treatment. The psychologist wanted to send him to Quentin to make an example of him. As of Monday morning, he had been in prison for nine weeks. Friday night was the worst time. He visited the next-door neighbour to hit his coffeepot. He tore off three numbers—Saturday, Sunday, Monday. During the morning, they make arrangements for writing each other when he leaves. Late in the afternoon a clerk leaned in the door. “Well, you are going.” He was waving a mimeographed sheet. “Shipping out to CMC West.” The trustees came crowding round. “CMC West is a country club, man, the best prison in the World. They have a golf course. No lockup. It’s three bunk counts a day. There’s a bowling alley. They are all long-term cons just living quietly. There are no young cons there burning sheets. Picnic visits on the yard. Visitors can buy lunch at the visiting room. Fried chicken. You eat like a kind. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
“Some cons love it there so much they hate to leave. When they get paroled, they violate so they can get sent back. You have private radios there. No smog. Near the ocean. You can plant your own garden. Contact visits! Conspiracy of breath. Touch. Change. New scene. I’m thinking about that fence near Highway 1.” The inmate spent the rest of the day collecting his personal gear to ship out. Two ball-point pens, some rubber shower shoes given to him by an old murderer, two packages of rolling tobacco. They travel light. “No gun towers or walls there?” “Just low fence. Minimum security.” Perhaps subverbal interaction is so important with schizophrenics because so much of their experience seems incommunicable to them, seems cut off from other people in its very nature. Often, the content—that what is said—is only a small bit of verbal content, but to the experiencing. In this way one attempts to restore the connection, the interpersonal interaction process within which the normally functioning individual lives and feels. This is not to say that one mysteriously responds to experience without having some verbalization to go on. Rather, one views verbalization differently. Instead of concerning oneself with its content one asks: What larger inward process is this bit of verbalization coming from? One’s answer to this question will be something felt, a conceptually vague but concrete felt meaning which the client feels and thinks, and which the therapist can only imagine. However, the therapist need not know it, guess it, or correctly imagine it. He can point his response at it, no matter how unknow it is to him. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
For example, my client says that he wants to know where, in the hospital, they keep that electronic machine which compels people to return to the hospital. He can prove there is such a machine, he says, because how else can you explain the fact that patients with ground privileges return to the hospital of their own accord? Now, I could, of course, argue with him that no such machine exists, that I would know if it did, that he does not trust me to tell him the truth on that subject, that he is having an unrealistic hallucination, or, closer to his feelings, that he does not like the hospital and cannot understand anyone’s coming to it voluntarily. However, what is his experiencing as he talks of this machine? What is the “pre-conceptual” or “felt” meaning from which this bit of bizarre verbalization comes? I do not know, of course. However, I want to respond to it somehow. So, I say back to him: “You have felt in yourself the effects of this machine you are talking about?” “Of course, I sure have,” he says and goes on to say that the machine makes him feel “not himself.” This phrase I recognize as somehow communicating to me something of the inward experiencing at which I pointed my words. I am using this example to illustrate what I mean by pointing one’s words at the experiencing, the wider inward process about which one does not know very much—except that it is there—and that verbalization arise from it (or in regard to it). #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Actually, I had not quite correctly imagined what he experienced. For my part, I thought he felt compelled inwardly but his next words expressed a slightly unexpected but still understandable aspect of his experiencing. And this is what usually happens. Usually, when one points one’s words at the experiencing rather than the verbal content, one finds that one’s imagination was not accurate, but the very fact of responding to this ever-present experiencing establishes the possibility of communicating concerning the deeper meanings from which the verbalizations arise. This man went on to tell me that his “not feeling like himself” was the result of the fact that his parents moved into the country when he was a schoolboy, and that therefore he had to ride a bus to school through the snow many miles. Again, one might have argued that this alone could not have caused him to feel “not himself.” However, one senses that this bit of memory comes form a whole pageant of memories, and, since it involved “not being himself,” I imagine endless weird, snowy bus rides I sense his feeling cut off from everyone he knew, way out there, snowbound, in the country, those many years all of which he now feels, I suppose. I say something about these bus rides and feeling cut off and we establish a new vehicle of communication. He too now uses the phrase “feeling cut off.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Perhaps I was right—but more importantly, I spoke to that mass of felt meanings and thoughts, that feeling process, which was just then occurring in him as he spoke, not to what he spoke as a bit of verbal communication. And, in this way, although often very stumblingly, one can gradually communicate more meaningfully, despite bizarre or externalized and trivial verbalization. Before this man told me about the electronic compelling machine, we spent six hours together with only trivia and silences. It was necessary for me to respond to him when, as yet, he would share nearly nothing with me. What I was trying to do with him, he wanted to know, and when would I be through? When would he not have to come any more? When could he go home? He had nothing to say. Silence, more silence. Once I interrupted one of these silences in which he had been sitting very quietly, apparently thinking, and said very gently: “You seem to be thinking some important thoughts or feelings. I do not know, of course, but that is what I imagine. I do not want to interrupt but I sure would like it if you felt like sharing those thoughts with me.” He said, very loudly: “What? Who, me? What, thinking what?” It was quite clear that he was startled. Also, he seemed to consider my statement inappropriate, false, and stupid. Yet, if one of us does not make it so, it is necessary to bear such moments, for how else can our interaction come to be warm and close and personal? #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
After a while such expressions of mine, such imaginings, or implications that we both experience important feelings, are no longer met by surprised rejection but often by a silence that is close to assent; and then, later, by an explicit sense on the part of the client that our silent times are subverbally important, deep, and eventful. One client named it when she said: “I’m having quiet therapy for a while.” If we perceive the World accurately and from valid beliefs about it, our changes of behaving effectively are increased. However, we know that unfulfilled needs and strong emotions can so shape our experience that we misinterpret facts, arrive at erroneous conclusions, and, indeed, frequently fail to see and hear what is there. How does a person go about increasing the efficiency of perception and thinking? How does a person carry out reality testing? Indeed, when unreality is often more pleasant in the short run, why would a person seek the truth? Reality testing means applying the rules of logic and scientific inquiry to everyday life. When we engage in reality testing, we are systematically doubting our own initial perceptions and beliefs until we have scrutinized them more carefully and checked them against further evidence. We do this when we have learned that truth, ultimately, is the best servant of our needs and is value in itself. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Some have to learn that rashness is not courage, and only the painful results of their actions may succeed in teaching them this lesson. The personal emotions entangle us in the events of life, whereas the impersonal intuitions enable us to see them from above. Even if the intuitive leading or reasoned reflection opposes his wishes, the imperativeness of following truth and preserving integrity will force him to desert his wishes. Emotion is valuable as a driving power, but doubtful as a means for discovering truth. If unbridled by reason and ungoverned by will, it may even drive a man to foolishness and disaster. The neurotic introduces emotional factors into purely business matter, creates hysterical scenes, and cannot take a single word of constructive criticism or admonitory counsel. Look through the miserable emotions of the ego and go beyond them to the smiling serenity of the Overself. It is not the emotions which are to be kept out but the disturbances which they may give rise. Do not respond to negative or base emotion with the like. The greater the animosity shown you, for instance, the greater is the inward calm with which it should be met. There is vital difference between being merely callous in the presence of other people’s suffering and being philosophically calm. A settled composed disposition will be one of the fruits perseverance in rejecting negative moods and undesirable thoughts as soon as they arise. Self-control is your greatest friend through all the incidents and accidents of life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Former President Trump’s policies not only interrupted or even started to end the process of making the American economy and workers dependent on other nations. America was once again forming alliances and establishing herself as a sovereign nation, and American was less dependent on other nations economically. It was becoming a stronger country and democratic leaders were facing problems of maintaining their positions in the government. What the democrats feared most was any effort that would make American independent of foreign countries. Such an effort could eventually be disastrous to those in power who want to make the country dependent on international elements. National sentiment was building and the people’s patriotic spirit was nationalized to a fevered pitch, as American was being put first. Man is the product of natural evolution; he is part of nature and yet transcends it, being endowed with reason and self-awareness. Man’s essence is ascertainable. However, this essence is not a substance which characterizes man at all times throughout history. The essence of man consists in the above-mentioned contradiction inherent in his existence, and this contradiction forces him to react in order to find a solution. Man cannot remain neutral and passive toward this existential dichotomy. By the very fact of his being human, he is asked a question by life: how to overcome the split between himself and the World outside of him in order to arrive at the experience of unity and oneness with his fellow man and with nature. Man has to answer this question every moment of his life. Not only—or even primarily—with thoughts and words, but by his mode of being and acting. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
There are a number of limited and ascertainable answers to this question of existence (the history of religion and philosophy is a catalogue of these answers); yet there are basically only two categories of answers. In one, man attempts to find again harmony with nature by repression to a prehuman form of existence, eliminating his specifically human qualities of reason and love. In other, his goal is the full development of his human powers until he reaches a new harmony with his fellow man and with nature. The first answer is bound with failure. It leads to death, destruction, suffering, and never to the full growth of man, never to harmony and strength. The second answer requires the elimination of green and ego-centricity, it demands discipline, will, and respect for those who can show the way. Yet, although this answer which is the more difficult one, it is the only answer which is not doomed to failure. In fact, even before the final goal is reached, the activity and effort expended in approaching it has a unifying and integrating effect which intensifies man’s vital energies. Man’s basic alternative is the choice between life and death. Every act implies this choice. Man is free to make it, but this freedom is a limited one. There are many favourable and unfavourable conditions which incline him—his psychological constitution, the condition of the specific society into which he was born, his family, teachers, and the friends he meets and chooses. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
It is man’s task to enlarge the margin of freedom to strengthen the conditions which are conducive to life as against those which are conducive to death. Life and death, as spoken of here, are not the biological states, but states of being, of relating to the World. Life means constant change, constant birth. Death means cessation of growth, ossification, repetition. The unhappy fate of may is that they do not make the choices. They are neither alive nor dead. Life becomes a burden, an aimless enterprise, and busyness is the means to protect one from the torture of being in the land of shadows. Neither life nor history has an ultimate meaning which in turn imparts meaning to the life of the individual or justifies his suffering. Considering the contradictions and weaknesses which beset man’s existence it is only too natural that he seeks for an “absolute” which gives him the illusion of certainty and relieves him from conflict, doubt and responsibility. Yet, no god, neither in theological, philosophical or historical garments saves, or condemns man. Only man can find a goal for life and the means for the realization of this goal. He cannot find saving ultimate or absolute answer but he can strive for a degree of intensity, depth and clarity of experience which gives him the strength to live without illusions, and to be free. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to improve the lives of the people they serve every day. The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to protecting the lives and property of those who live in, work in, and visit Sacramento. Their department operates on a 24/7 basis, so you can rest assured that they are always ready to respond in case of an emergency. “I had been at the hardware store with my wife and daughter, and we were going home, driving through a residential neighborhood. The first thing I noticed was the smell of the smoke. Black smoke was hanging over the street. I saw this lady in the front yard of a one-story frame house, screaming. As I pulled up, I could see the fire pushing out of one window at the front of the house and smoke seeping out of the two side windows. I got out of my car and ran over to the lady. My wife and daughter followed me but didn’t say anything. The lady said her husband was in the house and his name was Jim. I could hear the flames cracking. It was a pretty good fire in the living room and through the window next to the door, not pushing yet. Just bending, like the flames were swaying. I never stopped. I went to the front door, and when I opened it, I immediately had to go on my stomach because of the smoke, I was wearing just Levi pants and a flannel shirt, because it was January. As I crawled through the front door, the heat was not too bad, but I could see the red glow to my right and up over my head. As I went forward through the room, there was some kind of electrical short or something, and the electric wires behind me started jumping and popping. That kind of concerned me. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“I had my mouth right down on the floor, and it was beginning to be hard to breathe. I started coughing. I was getting in deeper and deeper, and there was a faint light to the left of me, and I took that as a way out. I found out later that it was a room and the light was coming in that way. So I was pushing in, and I was right at the point—this is something that has stayed in the back of my mind—I was right at the point where I had to make a decision: ‘Do I go deeper to the right and see if I can find this man, or do I go to the left and bail out?’ I was coughing, and it was really bad, but I went right anyway. Then I heard the man moan and say, ‘Help me.’ I don’t really know what I was doing, it was like being desperate, but I started crawling toward him, and I kept crawling, and I heard him continue moaning. If I hadn’t heard him calling and moaning, I probably wouldn’t have found him, the smoke was too dense. Nothing was visible. I’d get to a chair and tell it was a chair only by feel, that type of thing. When I go to him, he was lying on the floor. If he had been in a bed or something higher, he might have been dead, I don’t know. He had a little bit of air to breathe down there. He said he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t get up. He was coughing. I knew I couldn’t drag him back the way I came, because of the electrical short and the wires popping. You could still hear them popping. The glow was still over my head, and to the right of me the fire was up the wall and working its way across the ceiling. So I started dragging him straight to the eft to get him away from that glow. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“One thing I did have, I had a vent. The fire had blown out the front window, and it was venting naturally. That helped me. If I hadn’t had the vent, things probably would have been different. The fire was bending out that window by the front door and was keeping it kind of confined. It was rolling, though. All the other windows were closed, it being wintertime. There was no smoke venting out, but at least the fire was bending towards that open window. So I kept dragging him as far away from the fire as I could, because the smoke was really getting to me. Luckily, then I came across a wall, and then I felt a window. I couldn’t see, but I could feel the outline of the window, and a little bit of light was coming through. I got hold of a stand or a little table. I took a pretty good breath down on the floor and raised up to knock the window out. I threw the thing at the window, but it was light and I didn’t have much force behind it, because all I could think about was getting back down on the floor to get some air. The window didn’t break, the thing just kind of bounced off. God, that was a disappointment. I was choking and things were bad, but I remembered there was a telephone on that stand. So I grabbed the phone and the receiver, all in one hand, and broke the window that way. By then, I could hear the fire engine coming down the street, and I could hear people. I guess the people heard the breaking glass, and they started coming around to where I was at a side window. They started taking out some of the glass which added oxygen. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“The fire began to break out again, now towards me. I knew I had to get my head outside that window. I got down then, got a couple of good breaths, pulled on this guy with whatever energy the smoke didn’t take from me, and laid him across the window. He was tall but not really heavy, about a hundred sixty pounds, in his mid-fifties. By then, one of the firemen was there, and was I glad to see him. We handed him to a fire fighter outside the window. Then I tumbled myself out. When I came across the window, the glass went through my shoes and into my feet. Both arms were cut and blessing. Except for the smoke inhalation, that was it. My wife said she was very concerned for me, that it seemed like I was in there forever. I don’t know exactly how long I was in there, but I don’t think it was very long. They say it only takes a few minutes to kill you. My daughter was too young to be worried, but my son was very disappointed that he wasn’t there to see it. He had decided to stay home and do his homework. The newspapers played it up pretty big. I ended up with seven awards, I went to a lot of banquets. The public thinks a lot of firemen, they really do. I got more recognition from the public than I did from my own fire department. Sure, I got a pat on the back from the guys I work with, but one of the upper-echelon people just said, ‘Well, what’s the big deal?’ I didn’t say anything, but I guess the only thing that matters is that I know it was a little bit hairy. Not too long after that we went to a fire on Christmas night to a little house over where the middle-class people live. We got there and it was a fire in the bedroom. Christmas night, nobody home. The people had gone visiting, just in the neighborhood, and had left on an electric blanket. It has ignited the room. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“So, we do our normal procedures. I’m in there searching again, and I find this little dog underneath the bed in one bedroom. The dog had been overcome by smoke. I grabbed the dog and took him out under my arm, put the resuscitator on him and got him breathing. In the meantime the people returned. The dog belonged to a little boy who had gotten him earlier that morning for Christmas. I gave the dog to him, and he was just thrilled. His face just lit up, he was so excited about getting his dog back. I turned around then and walked off. There was never anything said. That was pretty moving to me, just to save that little dog. It really had to do with the dog’s relationship to the little boy and with Christmas.” You people, it is said that we take animal rights so seriously because they cannot call out for help. The Sacramento Fire Department also prioritizes community outreach and education. They offer several programs and opportunities; you can find out more on their website. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. “Chairty suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things,” reports Moroni 7.45. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which in stand, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We do declare it our purpose to keep intact the original name and initial spirit and purpose of this great country. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Experience Over Everything
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Do You Beat Him for that?
The promise of “Holy War” gives a strange, yet pleasant sensation to our American sheep head players when they think others are now willing to shed their blood for us. However, there is in mankind today a counterforce to the sterility and dangers of a quantitative, anonymous mass culture; a new, if sometimes imperceptible, spiritual sense of convergence toward human and World unity based on the sacredness of each human person and respect for plurality of cultures. There is a growing awareness that equality may not be evaluated in mere numerical terms but is proportionate and analogical. For when equality is equated with interchangeability, individuality is negated and the human person extinguished. We stand at the brink of an age of World in which human life presses forward to actualize new forms. The false separation of man and nature, of time and space, of freedom and security, is acknowledged, and we are faced with a new vision of man in his organic unity and of history offering a richness and diversity of quality and majesty of scope hitherto unprecedented. In relating the accumulated wisdom of man’s spirit to the new reality of the World Age, in articulating its thought and belief, men are encouraged to seek a renaissance of hope and pride in their decision as to what his destiny will be. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Although the present apocalyptic period is one of exceptional tensions, there is also at work an exceptional movement toward a compensating unity which refuses to violate the ultimate moral power at work in the universe, that very power upon which all human effort must at last depend. In this way, we may come to understand that there exists an inherent independence of spiritual and mental growth which, though conditioned by circumstances, is never determined by circumstances. In this way, the great plethora of human knowledge may be correlated with an insight into the nature of human nature by being attuned to the wide and deep range of human thought and human experience. In spite of the infinite obligation of men and in spite of their finite power, in spite of the intransigence of nationalism, and in spite of the homelessness of moral passions rendered ineffectual by the scientific outlook, beneath the apparent turmoil and upheaval of the present, and out of the transformations of this dynamic period with the unfolding of a World-consciousness, man has quickened the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth and is interpreting the significant elements of the World Age now taking shape out of the core of that undimmed continuity of the creative process which restores man to mankind while deepening and enhancing his communion with the universe. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
The demand which the quest makes upon his feelings is often a harsh and exacting one. He must see each troubling situation which concerns him without allowing personal emotions to interfere with the truth of vision. He must displace hot resentment, for instance, by calm detachment. It is a battle of self against self and consequently invisible to and unnoticed by other men. No one will help him here. To be detached simply means not letting yourself get into the power of anything or anyone who can hurt, damage, or destroy you inwardly. Those who live in the World but are not if it must work with complete detachment from the fruits and results of their activity. However, how could any aspiring student achieve this? Only the master, the man who has uncovered his identity as Overself could succeed in labouring without caring what rewards he got or what effects he brought into being. It is not a petrifying ascetic coldness but a benevolent inherent calm. The practice of detachment helps in the practice of meditation, while the reverse is also true. It is pure but calm feeling unmixed with the desires, passion, perturbations, and inflammations of the ordinary unawakened and unevolved man. Does this detachment mean that nothing is to make any difference in him? No, it means rather that he may let the different effects produce themselves but only under the check and control of a deeper abiding serenity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
He who can detach himself from emotion even while he continues to feel it, becomes its true master. It would be a mistake to confuse detachment with callousness or to think that the conquest of emotion means the lack of all feeling. He who is possessed by the one and has achieved the other, may still have his sympathies unimpaired, and brought to a greater self-identification with other men than before. However, they will not be uncontrolled. Wisdom and knowledge, ideality and practicality will balance them. The degree of attachment is measurable by the degree of emotional involvement. Therefore, to become detached is to become emotionally detached. The disillusionments which come from personal contact with the defects or deficiencies of human nature will not make him cynical, will not even make him sad. A cold, heavy and death-like apathy is not the indifference, or the detachment, taught here. In the World of artists—using the word broadly to include all who practice any of the arts—one too often notices an easy, careless way of living, a lack of any worthwhile purpose, and consequently a lack of any worthwhile self-discipline. This merely egoistic casualness drifting through the years, is a counterfeit of the true detachment taught by philosophy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
It is not so easy to assume an air of detachment in the deeper levels of one’s being as it is on the surface. To be unattached gives one lighter touch in dealing with the affairs and events of life, takes out some of the unnecessary solemnity and nerve-racking hurry. The emotional results of undergoing a misfortune or an affliction can be made a part of oneself or can be separated out by refusing identification with them. One may seek the real I which never changes and so become detached from them. It is this self whose presence in one makes it possible to be conscious of those results. The wise man had better cast the plaudits of the multitude out of his ears; it is all noise, for the mob does not understand him. He has pleased them for today; but tomorrow, when he displeases them, they will be as ready to destroy him. He should be prepared to receive abuse with the same equanimity with which he is ready to receive praise. It is comparatively easy to be detached from past circumstances, for the feelings they aroused are not quiet or dead; but can he be so detached about present ones? Yet no less an achievement than this is required of him. When detachment is used as an excuse for escape, it is being misused. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
It is not that he is above having admirations and aversions, preferences, and distastes, but that he tries to stand aside mentally even while they register on his feelings. Detachment does not mean that he regards his outer performance in the World and his inner thoughts about the World with the utmost solemnity. No! the day will not pass without a little lightheartedness about it all. Why? Because he knows very well that it is just like a dream into which he is peeping—a passing show, as Shakespeare also knew. We may express our disenchantment with life in exactly opposite ways—either with a grim scowl or with a quiet smile. It is not only a matter of temperament but also of our World-view. The two combine to make the result which we express. In the last and supreme disenchantment—which is death itself—a third factor enters to effect this result. Out of the understanding which ripens and deepens with the philosophical work, he becomes grateful for one result. This is the transmutation of those resentments and bitternesses which follow some experiences into needed instruction and growing detachment. His aim being the contrary of most people’s aims, he tries to depersonalize his attitudes and reactions. What relief he feels with even partial freedom from the burden of self-consciousness! How heavy a load is borne by those who see or react with ego-centered nervousness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
The eventual aim of human evolutionary experience is to make us learn to love the Overself more than anything else. Therefore, any personal attachments which we continue to hold within the heart must be purified in quality, while at the same time kept subordinate to our larger attachments to the Quest. He must fully understand his situation, both regarding business responsibilities and the duties towards his family—perhaps a wife and mother. It is part of this belief that such responsibilities must be honourably and effectively discharged and truth should be able to help him to do so rather than relieve him from them. “And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come; and whatsoever is more or less than this is the spirit of that wicked one who was a liar from the beginning,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 93.24-25. How can we know the truth? People bring with them many customs, traditions, and practices from their earlier beliefs. Not all these practices conform to the will of the Lord. Not only must we teach by Spirit, but we must also receive by the Spirit. “And again, he that recieveth the word of truth, doth he receive it by the Spirit of truth or some other way? If it be some other way it is not of God,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 50.19-20. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
If we do not receive the truth by His spirit, it is not His word. “Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end I was born, and for this cause came I into the World, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice,” reports John 18.37. We must prepare our hearts and our minds with a sincere desire to know the truth. “For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that yet may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night. For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for everything which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God,” reports Moroni 7.15-16. Now that we have explored some of the ways in which the World can be experienced by everyone, we turn to the problem of how persons do experience their World, as function of their culture and individual upbringing. Both Rorschach and Jung called attention to erlebnisty pus (literally, “experience type”). #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Rorschach made inferences about the ways people habitually experience the World from their responses to his famous ink-blot test, whereas Jung inferred “type” based on his psychotherapeutic interviews. The widely used Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator uses Jung’s analysis of consciousness to describe such types. Persons who emphasize thinking and judging, in their usual waking consciousness, as opposed to persons who are more emotional and intuitive in their approach to the World, are examples of types. People become specialists at some kinds of experiencing. For example, creative writers are specialists at imagining and at remembering. Many college professors become specialists at thinking, with diminished or repressed ability to pay perceptual attention to what is going on around them. Eliade points out that shamans, in primitive tribes, are specialists at the self-induction of ecstatic states of consciousness, during which time they can “see” the future, healing illnesses, walking on coals, and other such feats. It may be that such capacities lie within everyone’s capabilities, but up brining and the need to adjust to the specialized environments within which we live prevent us from discovering and cultivating such ecstatic states. The distinction between resistance and limitation is merely one of degree. If strong enough, any resistance can turn into an actual limitation. Any factor that decreases or paralyzes a person’s incentive to come to grips with himself constitutes a possible limitation to self-analysis. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
A deep-rooted feeling of resignation constitutes a serious limitation to self-analysis. A person may be so hopeless about ever escaping from his psychic entanglements that he has no incentive to make more than a halfhearted attempt to outgrow his difficulties. Hopelessness is present to some extent in every severe neurosis. Whether it constitutes a serious obstacle to therapy depends upon the number of constructive forces still alive or still to be revived. Such constructive forces are often present even though they seem to have been lost. However, sometimes a person has been so entirely crushed at an early age, or has become caught in such unsolvable conflicts, that he has long since given up expectations and struggles. This attitude of resignation may be entirely conscious, expressing itself in a pervasive feeling of futility concerning one’s own life or in an elaborate philosophy of the futility of life in general. Often it is reinforced by a pride in belonging among the few people who have not blinded themselves to this “fact.” In some persons no such conscious elaboration has taken place; they are merely passive, endure life in a stoical way, and no longer respond to any prospect of a more meaningful existence. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
Such resignation may be hidden also behind a feeling of boredom with life, as in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. Her expectations are extremely meager. Life should be entertaining now and then, should provide some fun or thrill or excitement, but she expects nothing of positive value. This attitude is often accompanied—as it is in Hedda Gabler—by a profound cynicism, the result of a disbelief in any value in life and in any goal to strive for. However, a profound hopelessness may exist also in persons one would not suspect of it, persons who superficially give the impression of being capable of enjoying life. They may be good at enjoying company, enjoying eating, drinking, pleasures of the flesh. In adolescence they may have been promising, capable of genuine interests and genuine feelings. However, for some reason or other they have become shallow, have lost their ambition; their interest in work has become perfunctory, their relationships with people are loose, easily made and easily terminated. In short, they, too, have ceased to strive for a meaningful existence and have turned to the periphery of life instead. If a neurotic trend is what we might called it, quite a different kind of limitation is set to self-analysis with some inaccuracy, too successful. A craving for power, for example, may be gratified to such an extent that the person would scoff at any suggestion of analysis, even though his satisfaction with his life is built on quicksand. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
If a longing for dependency is fulfilled in a marriage—a marriage, for example, between such a person and one who has an urge for domination—or in subordination to a group, the same holds true. Similarly, a person may successfully withdraw into an ivory tower and feel comparatively at ease by keeping within its precincts. This apparently successful assertion of a neurotic trend is produced by a combination of internal and external conditions. As to the former, a neurotic trend that “succeeds” must not conflict too sharply with other needs. A person is never entirely consumed by just one compulsive striving, with everything else blotted out: no human being is ever reduced to a streamlined machine driving in one direction. However, this concentration may be approximated. And external conditions vary infinitely. In our society, a man who is financially independent can easily withdraw into his ivory tower; but, if he restricts his other needs to a minimum, a person with scant resources can also withdraw from the World. One person has grown up in an environment that allows him to display of prestige or power, but another, though he started with nothing, makes such a relentless use of external circumstances that in the end he attains the same goal. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
However, no matter how such a “successful” assertion of a neurotic trend is achieved, the result is a complete barrier to development by way of analysis. For one thing, the successful trend has become too valuable to be submitted to any questioning. And for another thing, the goal that is striven for in analysis—a harmonious development, with good relations to self and others—would not appeal to such a person because the forces that might respond to the appeal are too enfeebled. We have talked quite a lot about the unfortunate results that may arise from certain pathological pressures in the environment, but these pressures do not necessarily lead to poor mother-child relationships. Even a woman with a neurosis or psychosis may have an extremely healthy relationship with her child. That may surprise some of you; it did me when I first came across it. I once treated a woman in Jerusalem who was quite crazy, and had been for years. She had an unbelievably bad family life. Her husband was in jail at the time. She was his sixth wife, and I do not think he had gotten rid of some of the others. In any case, he was a well-known brigand. This woman brought her child of six to the clinic because she thought he was stealing. He had taken a pencil from school and she considered this stealing. Talking with her, we got a depressing picture. She said the child wet the bed and encopresis; that is to say, he messed himself. And he was overly aggressive. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
However, when we examined the child, and we examined him very carefully because we could not believe our eyes, he appeared to be perfectly normal. He was a little aggressive and noisy, when compared with a child from Paris or London, but by the standards of his own environment, he was perfectly normal. When we asked him about wetting the bed, he explained first, that his mother could not afford to buy blue paint to put around the door; then, that there were ghosts outside and if one did not paint around the door with blue paint the ghosts came inside; and, finally, that in order to urinate at night he would have to go into the night where the ghosts were. It was very logical that he should wet the bed. As his encopresis, as we talked more with the woman, we discovered that this was due to the horrible food she gave him. He had diarrhea most of the time, and the hand-me-downs he wore were exceedingly difficult to undo. By the time he could unbutton his clothes, he would mess himself. Altogether, he seemed a perfectly normal little boy. She told us that she beat him terribly, and was afraid he would get epilepsy as a result. This sounded bad. I asked, “What do you beat him for? Do you beat him when he wets the bed?” She said: “No! What do you expect him to do? Everyone knows that a child wets the bed.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
I asked: “Do you beat him when he messes his pants?” She said, “What do you expect? He can’t take his buttons off. He’s got diarrhea. How would you expect him not to mess his pants. You wouldn’t expect me to beat him for that.” She also told me he masturbated. I asked, “Do you beat him for that?” She said, “No, that’s normal. A little child play with himself.” I asked, “Do you beat him for stealing?” “Oh no,” she said, “after all, that’s hereditary. His father is a brigand. At the moment he’s in jail. I wouldn’t beat him for that. Would beat a child just because his father was a criminal?” Finally, I asked, “What do you beat him for?” And she answered, “I have a severe noise in my head, but I’ve got rheumatism in my hand, so I hit him with a stick. Only I’m afraid if I hit him with a stick he ‘ll get epilepsy.” When I spoke to the child, he did not seem to mind. His mother had always beaten him. He said, “When mother gets nervous, she lets fly with a stick.” The interesting thing here is that the mother-child relationship was successful and extremely healthy. Whatever needs the child had, the woman was fulfilling. She was very warm and protective and she braved the child guidance clinic because the child had stolen a pencil. Here was a woman with frank psychosis, living under terrible conditions. Yet this was a healthy mother-child relationship and had produced a health boy. There was also a twin sister who seemed very normal. All of this showed us that a woman can have a gross disorder of personality and yet, if her relationship with the child does not involve that part of per personality which is disordered, you may get a child with a healthy personality. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
An angry fairy says that Briar Rose will prick her finger with a spindle and fall down dead. Another fairy comments this to a hundred years of sleep. When she is fifteen, Briar Rose does prick her finger, and immediately falls asleep. At the same moment, everybody and everything else in the castle also fall asleep. During the hundred hears, may princes try to get her through the briars which have grown up around her, but none succeeds. At last, after the time is up, a prince arrives who manages to get through because the briars let him. When he finds the princess and kisses her, she wakes up and they fall in love. At the same moment, everybody and everything else in the castle takes up exactly where they left off, as though nothing had happened, and no time had passed since they fell asleep. The princess herself is still only fifteen years old, not 115. She and the price get married, and in one version, the live happily ever after; in another, this is only the beginning of their troubles. There are many magic sleeps in mythology. Perhaps the best knows is that of Brunhilde, who is left sleeping on the mountain with a ring of fire around her which only a hero can penetrate, and that is accomplished by Siegfried. In one or another, with slight alterations, almost everything in the story of Sleeping Beauty could happen. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Girls do not prick their fingers and faint, and they do fall asleep in their towers, and princes do wander around in the forest and look for faith maidens. The one thing that cannot happen is for everything and everybody to be unchanged and unaged after the lapse of so many years. This is a real illusion because it is not only improbable, it is impossible. And this is just the illusion on which Waiting for Rigor Mortis (WRM) scripts are based: that when the Prince does come, Rose will be fifteen years old again instead of thirty, forty, or fifty, and they will have a whole lifetime ahead of them. This is the illusion of sustained youth, a modest daughter of the illusion of immortality. It is hard to tell Rose in real life that princess are younger men, and that by the time they reach her age they have become kings, and are much less interesting. That is the most distressing part of the script analyst’s job: in break up the illusion, to inform the patient’s Child that there is no Santa Claus, and make it stick. If there is the patient’s favourite fairy tale to work with, it is much easier for both. If Rose does find the Prince with the Golden Apples, one of the practical problems with WRM is that she often feels out-classed and must find fault and play “Blemish” to bring him down to her level, so that he ends up wishing she would go back in the briars and fall asleep again. On the other hand, if she settles for less—the prince with the Silver Apples, or even ordinary Macintoshes from the grocery store—she will feel cheated and take it out on him, meanwhile always keeping an eye out for the Golden One. Thus, neither the frigid script nor the magic antiscript offers much chance for fulfillment. Also, as in the fairy tale, there is his mother to contend with as well as her witch. This script is important because a great many people in the World, in one way or another, spend their lives waiting for rigor mortis. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Being related, being engaged, means to be concerned. If I am a participant rather than a distant observer, I become interested (inter-esse means “to-be-in). “To-be-in” means not to be outside. If “I-am-in,” then the World becomes my concern. This concern can be one of destruction. The “interest” of the suicidal person in himself is the interest to destroy himself, just as the “interest” of the homicidal person in the World is that of destroying it. However, this latter interest is a pathological one; not because “man is good,” but because it is the very quality of life that it tends to sustain itself; “to-be-in” the World means to be concerned with life and the growth of myself and all other beings. Concerned knowledge, the “being-in” knowledge, then, leads to the desire to help; it is, if we use the word in a broad sense, therapeutically oriented knowledge. This quality of concerned knowledge had found its classic expression in Christian thought. When Jesus Christ saw an old, sick man, a dead man, He did not remain a distant observer; He was moved to think about the question how man can be saved from suffering. It was His concerned to help man which led to the creation of the Ten Commandments, which are guidelines of how man should live and how he can liberate himself from suffering. Once the orientation to the World has become one of passionate concern, all thinking about the World takes different paths. The simplest example for this is offered by medicine. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
How many medical discoveries would have been made without the wish to heal? It is the same concern which underlies all Dr. Freud’s discoveries. Had he not been prompted by the wish to cure mental disturbances, how could he have discovered the unconscious in the various disguises in which it appears in symptoms and dreams? Quite obviously, random, and uninterested observation rarely leads to significant knowledge. All questions posed by the intellect are determined by our interest. This interest, far from being opposed to knowledge, is its very condition, provided it is blended with reason, that is, with the capacity to see things as they are, “to let them be.” The detachment which is taught by philosophy is not to be confused with the detachment which is preached by religio-mysticism. The first is a personal lifestyle for coping with the World; the second is an indifference to the World. It comes to this: that we must view our own life’s events in a bifocal manner, both impersonally and personally. The right way to regard possessions and property is to replace the sense of ownership by the sense of trusteeship. When Earthly things or human entities hold our heart to the exclusion of all else, they obscure the Overself’s light and shut out its peace. Such nonchalant detachment is not easy to attain. It is easy to renounce the things which we value lightly but hard to become inwardly aloof to those which we hold precious. Human preferences do exist; it is possible to pretend that they may not be there when they are—but this has to be paid for by self-deception. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to locate, suppress and extinguish fires and maneuver to protect the community by providing medical assistance. “It was on Squad X in Sacramento that I really learned what being a big city fireman was all about, because by that time I had graduated to the point where I was not just a fan who was riding. I was a member of the company and wore a helmet and worked as a fireman. Those experiences never leave you because you were challenged constantly. We had a district that was skid row, slums, and heavy industry. We probably had more fires and extra-alarm fires than any other company in the city. Also, we probably took more causalities than any other company, because of the nature of our district and the amount of heavy fire duty we did. The bond among us was tremendous. One of the things about a fire company, especially a busy, hard-working company, is the bond between you and your brothers on the company. It comes through shared experiences, and one of the great honors of my life is that firefighter I respect would accept me as one of them. That probably is the most gratifying of all—to be accepted as a firefighter by other firefighters. I think the greatest compliment anybody can ever pay to another person is to say simply, “He’s a good fireman.” Often you will hear firemen talk about someone, and they will finally come down to one sentence, “He’s a good fireman.” It says everything about a person. It means that the commitment is there, that they have stood the test, that they have been accepted because of what they delivered when it really counted. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“That was a tremendous influence on my life. The funny thing is that it has been thirty years now, and we all stay in touch. If today I had a problem or needed help, I could pick up the phone and call one of those guys, and, if I need be, they would be on the next plane to wherever I was. I feel the same way about them. Some of the memorable experiences you have on the fire department are not really spectacular fires. One that will always stand out in my mind was a snotty basement fire, in which we held our ground, and that meant all the difference between saving or not saving the building. There was no life hazard involved, and we didn’t have masks in those days. When we first went into that sub-basement we were crouching, then we were down on our knees, and finally we were close to the floor. There was a real bond between the six of us and our officer Lieutenant X, for having stood our ground. It wasn’t a very spectacular fire my most standards, but the fact that all of us stood together really meant something among ourselves. There’s another aspect of the fire life. I mentioned the case of my dad who was adopted by Engine X in Sacramento. I’ve noticed through the years that fire companies will do that with some unfortunate person. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“At Engine X and Squad X, we had a man, who lived in the basement of the firehouse. He was a shell-shocked veteran of World War II, and he couldn’t work or do anything, and there was no place for him. So he lived in the basement of the firehouse. He would take care of the furnace and help clean up the firehouse each day, and in return he got food, a warm place to sleep, and some people who care about him. When he died, it was the firemen who gave him a funeral. At Engine X, there was a “paisan” who was a guy, and apparently his family wouldn’t take care of him. But the firemen of Engine X did, especially a guy by the name of X. “Paisan” lived his entire life at that firehouse, being taken care of and trying to do things to help the firemen. When he died, it was also the firemen who gave him the funeral. I’ve known stories of this happening everywhere. It’s sort of a reflection of the kind of people that firemen are. When the Sacramento Fire Department band went to the Rose Bowl one year, they smuggled “Paisan” onto the plane with them. They took him to the Rose Bowl. One of the newspaper columnists complained that some “illegal people” had gone with the band. It was “Paisan,” and it was the trip of his life for him.” Majority of the people involved in the fire service are really decent people. I thin government tends to take the fire service for granted, because it causes them the least amount of trouble. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“The fire service when I started out as a kid was really a World unto itself, and it operated behind closed doors. They put out fires, and everybody loved the firemen. In the old days, especially in the big cities, the fire service was basically an Irish club, and everybody came predominately from the same background. The Irish dominated the fire service I grew up in. I would say that seventy-five percent of the people I knew as a kid in the fire department were Irish. It was a very cohesive group. Those days are gone. The fire service today is made up of everybody. One of the more tragic things at a fire is when people get out of a building and go back in. We had a fire in an auto body shop on a hot summer day. Everybody got out okay, and this one guy went back in to get a leather jacket. He was burned over 90 percent of his body. I remember a house fire in which a lawyer got out, an intelligent man, an educated man. He got out, and the building was heavily involved in a fire. And he went back in to get some papers or something. He dies in the fire. The things people do are amazing. In the winter time, we were coming down the street, and the whole side of the house was on fire. A guy was out there waving a blowtorch in one hand, and waving his other hand at us. He had been using the blowtorch to thaw pipes that had frozen. He set his whole house on fire.” #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
The Sacramento Fire Department promotes and protects the health and safety of the community through dynamic programs, professional services, and continuous quality improvement. They focus on key areas such as emergency response, fire prevention, and community education. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. Also, it is important to raise your children to love America and to be patriotic. By having pride in America, and purchasing American made cars and other goods and services, we can make America a creditor nation again and ensure that this sacred land will be enjoy by your family for generations to come. Teaching children to love God and Jesus Christ will also preserve our American heritage and allow us to make sure our children are set on a path that will lead them to success and help them reserve a seat in Heaven. The Ten Commandments in the Christian Bible are a good guideline of how everyone should live. Furthermore, by respecting law and order, we will ensure the tranquility of this great nation and make sure that we are setting an exemplary example for other nations to follow. And by treating others with dignity, respect, and compassion, this will ensure that we are following the golden rule, “Do on to others as you would have them do on to you,” reports Luke 6.31. By following the golden rule, we will attract more of God’s grace into our lives and others will treat with respect. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. Earthly longings bid retire, quench the passions’ baneful fire; to the wayward, sin-oppressed, bring thou the divine behest: Thou shalt rest. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
The Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House is one of the most beautiful aristocratic residences in America. It is famous for its excellent architecture and its extravagant owner, Sarah L. Winchester. The palace complex is surrounded by a 150-year-old picturesque Victorian park. The mansion itself is older than the landscaping, as the original 18-room farmhouse was engulfed by this labyrinth in the mid 1800s.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
The Prince with the Golden Apples
Democrats know how to create the impression that they alone are the protectors of peace. In this way, acting very circumspectly but never losing sight of the goal, they conquer one position after another, at one time by methods of quiet intimidation and at another time by sheer daylight robbery. These tactics are based on an accurate estimation of human frailties and must lead to success, with almost mathematical certainty. Bidenomics, therefore, knows a lot about math. They are cold and calculating and know how to properly manipulate people into believing their lies because they have calculated on the psychological effect. If it does not have to encounter the same kind of terror in a stronger form, intimidation in workshops and in factories, in assembly halls and at mass demonstrations, will always meet with success. Then, of course, Democrats will raise a horrified outcry, yelling blue murder and appealing to the authority of the State, which they have just repudiated. In doing this, their aim generally is to add the general confusion, so that they may have a better opportunity of reaching their own goal unobserved. Their idea is to find among the higher government officials some bovine creature who, in the unenlightened hope that he may win the good graces of these awe-inspiring opponents so that they may remember him in case of future eventualities, will help them now to break all those who may oppose this World pest. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The impression which such successful tactics make on the minds of the broad masses, whether they be adherents or opponents, can be estimated only by one who knows the popular mind, not from books but from practical life. For the successes which are this obtained are taken by the adherents of the Democrats as a triumphant symbol of the righteousness of their own cause; on the other hand, the beaten opponent very often loses faith in the effectiveness of any further resistance. The more I understand the methods of physical intimidation that are being employed, the more sympathy I have for the multitude that has succumbed to it. This experience should allow all who are awake to be enlightened and enable them to distinguish between the false leaders and the victims who have been lead astray. We must look upon the latter simply as victims. If hardworking people are supporting the Democratic party, it is because those decent people do not or cannot grasp the downright infamy of the doctrine taught by the communist agitators. The day is coming when Bidenomics cause great poverty that will gain the upper hand and drive the working class and middle-class into the poor house. Currently, we are not seeing the full effect of the recession because the wealthy are shopping at discount stores like Walmart, and buying these expensive houses that cost millions of dollars less than what they would normally purchase. However, as their taxes increase, the recession will become more visible. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The taxpayer and natural resources of America are being stormed and eventually will finally surrender. This defeat will be due to the stupidity of those in power, who have opposed every demand to cut foreign aid, close the border, fortify national security, put more police on the street, send more funding to the fire departments, and invest in the American people. The short-sighted refusal to try towards improving living conditions for the American poor, refusing to improve labour conditions, and refusal to secure the southern border will lead to further exploitation of the American people so the point that no political party will ever be able to repair the damage that has resulted from policies of the Democratic party. When Democrats are asked to explain their incompetency, they instead have sowed the seeds of hatred and violence. The mental Cyclopes of our Democratic parties have done the things that would be inconceivable to anyone who has a working brain. (The Cyclops has one eye; this reference means the parities are functioning on half a brain.) Many people believe that the Democratic party should be disbanded and outlawed. Democrats know they are in danger of losing their power. The selection of Kamala as Vice President was meant as a political tool to be used with the Democratic party to help them maintain power. It was intended so that President Biden could distance himself from the political party, and make it clear that he was a fanatic radical. If he had been anything less, his followers would have abandoned him. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Those who want to lock former President Trump away believe absolute suppression will somehow prevent an uprising of law and order, freedom and the Second Amendment and stop anyone from following the same plan again. Suppression is pointless. With the ability to beam information around the World in seconds, there is no such thing. To make him available and explain what is going on, God has resurrected Mr. Trump to explain what we are doing here. “Make American Great Again,” is more than just a catchy slogan. Donald Trump is tapping into the fundamental human concepts of heroism, survival, fear, being the underdog, the promise of a great future. When listening to his speeches, you will find yourself saying frequently “that is certainly true” because much of what he says is true. Some is an oversimplification of history or politics. What make Donald Trump more powerful is the knowledge he shares is real. It is not novel fantasy World or theories of a political philosopher, it is about events and feelings that exist in America, thing an entire nation is living through and suffering under. Many people forget that Donald Trump is a businessman and is used to executing his visions, and does not make empty promises. Rising over 600 feet and 68 stories over Fifth Avenue’s most desirable intersection, Trump Tower has been a staple in the New York skyline for over thirty years. Given the chance, imagine what Donald Trump could do for America. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
People have criticized Donald Trump for his word choices. However, his words are those of a mitigator, or a poet, who is nonjudgmental and knows that inside of every human being, there is God, and therefore, the is good in all of us. This is Mr. Trump’s method and how he keeps his audience’s attention. You must remember that he is speaking to the masses, those in the public working class, those who have not been educated, those who have gone to Harvard and Princeton and own fortune 500 companies. These are the people in his organization. They come from the masses. So, just as Mr. Trump said, he uses his words specifically to these groups. He picks his style so to match his audience. It is quite inappropriate to criticize former President Trump today. These critics do not care about America or the actual ideas that Donald Trump stands for, they only want to criticize the American Dream. They dislike America and what America has done for the World and because of that, many people feel like they should dislike Donald Trump because he truly represents the America Dream. He is someone who has ascended to power and wealth without being a member of the government, or depending on the government which is what capitalism is all about. The Hottentots are afraid that if they do not dislike Donald Trump, that somehow others will see that as approval of his message, “Make America Great Again.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
When we uncover the Democratic ideas, we find that extremely evil intentions are present. In fact, they are openly presented, in full public view, with the boldest insolence. Democrats have wrong ideas of justice and fair play, and Republicans are trying to protect the general interests against the greed and unreason of the corrupt communistic party. For to safeguard the loyalty and confidence of the people is as much in the interests of the nation as to safeguard public health. America has been seriously menaced by dishonourable politicians who are not conscious of their duty as members of the national community. Their personal avidity or irresponsibility sows the seeds of future trouble. To eliminate the causes of such a development is an action that surely deserves well of the country. The individual America is not free at any time to escape from the consequences of the injustice which he has suffered at the hands of the Democratic party, or which he thinks he has suffered. Saying that Americans can leave the country is an argument used as a ruse to detract attention from the issue. It is, or is it not, in the interest of the nation to remove the causes of social unrest? If it is, then the fight must be carried on with the only weapons that promise success. However, the American people are not able to stand up against the might of the Democratic party; for the Democrats have put the people and the nation in so much debt that they can barely survive, and they desperate fear losing their jobs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
In these perilous times, it helps to remember that the gospel of Jesus Christ is also know as “gospel of peace.” Romans 10.15 reports, “And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!” Nevertheless, the troubles of the last days—days of wickedness, turbulence, chaos, and fear—can disrupt our sense of peace and security. As wars, financial collapses, and natural disasters surround us, it is easy to become full of fear instead of faith. The Saviour prophesied that in the last days men’s hearts would fail them because of such fear. “Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the Earth: for the powers of Heaven shall be shaken,” reports Luke 21.26. This is truly a time for the faithful in heart, not for the faint of heart. Fear, which can come upon people in difficult days, is a principal weapon in the arsenal the advisory uses to make mankind unhappy. He who fears loses strength for the combat of life in the fight against evil. Therefore, the power of the evil one always tries to generate fear in human hearts. In every age and in every era, mankind has faced fear. Democrats are great liars. They can whisper ideas into our minds that are full of doubt and fear. Darkness, confusion, doubt, and fear certainly do not come from the Lord, who is fully of light and love. Whenever darkness fills our minds, we may know that we are not possessed of the Spirit of God. When we are filled with the Spirit of God, we are filled with joy, with peace and with happiness no matter what our circumstances may be; for it is a spirit of cheerfulness and of happiness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Remember, our Heavenly Father is the epitome of faith, hope, charity, optimism, and kindness. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Fear comes not of God, but rather from the adversary. The Lord has given us several key doctrines to combat the fears we face. These doctrines become weapons in our arsenal to fight against fear and the author of fear. These key doctrines are faith, hope, and charity. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the first principle of the gospel. Faith is power; faith is strength. Faith is a reward for personal righteousness. The greater the measure of obedience to God’s laws, the greater will be the endowment of faith. “So, then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” reports Romans 10.17. Therefore, if we want to increase our faith, we must read the scriptures, study the teachings of our latter-day apostles and prophets, and follow the direction of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Faith is also a decision. If we want to be immersed and saturated in faith, then we must choose to believe; we must choose to exercise faith. We must supplant our fears with faith. Thinking of the Saviour and remembering Him helps to strength our faith and combat fear. “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 6.36. The Saviour taught also, “And if ye do always remember me, ye shall have my Spirit to be with you,” reports 3 Nephi 18.7, 11. With His Spirit constantly with us, we will have the ability to stay focused, brush off fearful thoughts and worries, and see the World the way Christ would see it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
To have faith means to trust in God and believe in His promises to us. There will be nothing in this World that can defeat us. Fear not. Be of good cheery. The future is as bright as your faith. Learn to choose faith over fear. The philosophical attitude is a curious and paradoxical one precisely because it is a complete one. It approaches the human situation with a mentality as practical as cold-blooded as an engineer’s, but steers its movement by a sensitivity to ideals as delicate as an artist’s. It always considers the immediate, attainable objectives, but is not the less interested in distant, unrealizable ones. Disinterested action does not mean renouncing all work that brings financial reward. How then could one earn a livelihood? It does not mean ascetic renunciation and monastic flight from personal responsibilities. The philosophic attitude is that a man shall perform his full duty to the World, but this will be done in such a way that it brings injury to none. Truth, honesty, and honour will not be sacrificed for money. Time, energy, capacity, and money will be used wisely in the best interests of mankind, and above all the philosopher will pray constantly that the Overself will accept him as a dedicated instrument of service. And it surely will. He will rise above personal emotion into perfect serenity rather than fall below it into dull apathy. To be pure in heart means not only to be separated from terrestrial tendencies, not only from egoistic impulses, but also to be detached from everything and everyone. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Thus, we see that the word “pure” is not as simple in connotation as it is short in length, and purity is harder to achieve than newly converted religious enthusiast believes. The act of renunciation is always first, and only sometimes last, an inward one. It is done by thoroughly understanding that the object renounced is, after all, only like a picture in a dream and that, again like a dream, it is ephemeral. Its illusoriness and transitoriness must be not only mentally perceived but also emotionally taken to heart. If we give up our wrong belief about it, we may not have to give up the object itself. Now, this admonition cannot be made to stop with visible things only. To be honestly applied, it must be applied to visible persons also. No matter how fondly we love somebody, we must not flinch from seeing the metaphysical truth about him nor from accepting the consequences of such perception. How can be renounce the attachments to everything and everyone and yet enjoy life, fulfil obligations, or remain in the World? How do this without flight to a monastery? How remain an affectionate husband, a devoted father? In the case of things, the answer has been given earlier. In the case of persons, the answer ought now to be given. We renounce the “materiality” of the loved one and with it the clinging to her material image, her physical possession, her personal ego. We hold on to the concept of her “spirituality,” her essence, her real being. We then know that this true self of hers cannot be separated from our own; the illusory relationship is replaced by a real one, the perishable pseudo-love by an undying essential one. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
He may try to keep the illusion that he is a well-fitting part of these surroundings called civilization, a member of the society into which he was born, but in the deepest layer of his heart the reality will deny it. He no longer belongs to a race caught up in appearances, ensnared and hypnotized by them to the point of self-destruction. It may take some time to get familiar with this impersonality of attitude, this detachment of heart, before he can realize how fine it is, how precious its worth and rewarding in result. The first impression may be cold and frightening. The last will be calm and soothing. If indifference and detachment mean that the man has ceases to care, then he has ceased to understand philosophy. Deep within his heart we will strive to depersonalize his relations with his wife, his children, his family, and even his friends. However, in the domain of action we should find him the best of husbands, the most loving of fathers, and most faithful of friends. In the script knows as “Frigid Woman,” or “Waiting for Rigor Mortis” (WRM), the mother keeps telling her daughter that men are beasts, but it is the wife’s duty to submit to their bestiality. If the mother pushes hard enough, the girl may even get the idea that she will die is she has pleasures of the flesh. Usually such mothers are great snobs, and they offer a release of an “antiscript” that will lift the curse. If the daughter marries an especially important person, such as the Prince with the Golden Apples, it is all right for the daughter to have pleasures of the flesh. However, failing that, she tells her erroneously, “all your troubles will be over when you reach a certain age, because then you will not be in danger of feeling amatory anymore.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Now it already appears as though we have three illusions: Orgathanatos, or the fatal pleasures of the flesh; the Prince with the Golden Apples; and Blessed Relief, or the purifying menopause. However, none of these is the real script illusion. The girl has tested Orgathanatos by pleasing herself, and knows it is not necessarily fatal. The Prince with the Golden Apples is not an illusion, because it is just possible that she might find such a man, just as she might win the German Sweepstakes or get four aces in a poker game; both things are unlikely, but not mythical; they do happen. And Blessed Relief is not something her Child really wants. To find the script illusion, we need the fairy tale which corresponds to WRM. Dr. Freud called dreams “the royal road to the unconscious.” Recent research has shown that everyone dreams several times during each night. When people say they never dream, the probability is that they do not recall their dreams. Only when they have been especially intense or dramatic and when we have some special interest in recalling them is when we tend to recall dreams. Busy, extraverted people seldom pay attention to their dreams and would find it a waste of time to write them down. Yet, increasingly, it is being found that recording one’s dreams and thinking about them, seeking hints of new possibilities for personal growth, is an enterprise rewarded by new insight. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Dreaming is a way of being aware of the World, although, paradoxically enough, it is a kind of consciousness that “happens” when we are asleep, when our waking consciousness is suppressed. Laing believes that the dreaming consciousness is active, as a kind of underground or background to our waking consciousness. He calls this underground mode of experiencing fantasy. Fantasy is a form of perception, a way to perceive the World by noting the effect one’s situation is having upon one’s body. Our vocabulary for describing bodily states is scant, and so we employ metaphours, symbols, and analogies to describe the way our situation and the people in it are affecting us. Thus, when a person says, “I have just been stabbed in the back,” she is speaking metaphourically, but she is also talking about a real experience. If one says of another, “You turn me on,” he may be speaking of an enlivening effect that the other person is inducing. These somatic metaphours are effects to describe one’s real condition as a human being. They are attempts to assess whether they are devitalizing and debilitating. Fantasy and dreaming are, in a sense, guardians of one’s existence, because the content of dreams and of somatic experiencing is always found to be related to one’s survival, well-being, and growth. Gestalt therapists and followers of Jung and Dr. Freud have been able to help persons overcome impasses in their lives through serious consideration of dreams. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Careful attention to the way one’s body feels as one lives life can also be useful for growth and wellbeing. One’s body can function as did the canaries that miners used to take into the depths of a mine, where oxygen depletion was a grave danger to life. If the canary stopped singing, the miners would know that the air was becoming unfit for humans, and they would improve ventilation or get out. Vague feelings of being “shafted,” “sucked dry,” “turned on,” “ripped apart,” tell a person something about his or her situation that should be explored by more direct perception. Fantasy, that waking dream that lurks behind our ordinary consciousness as vague feelings metaphorically descried, is a way of knowing. So is dreaming. Resistances provoked by outside factors are particularly common in self-analysis, for reasons that were mentioned above. A person who is in the grip of neurotic trends—or for that matter almost any person—is quite likely to feel offended or unfairly dealt with by a special individual, or by life in general, and to take at face value his reaction of hurt or resentment. In situations it takes a considerable degree of clarity to distinguish between a real and an imagined offense. And even if the offense is real, it need not necessarily produce such reactions: if he is not himself vulnerable to what others may do to him, there are many offenses to which he may respond with pity or disapproval of the offender, perhaps with open battle, rather than with hurt or resentment. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
It is much easier merely to feel a right to be angry than to examine exactly what vulnerable spot in himself has been hit. However, even if there is no doubt that the other has been cruel, unfair, or inconsiderate, for his own interests this is the way he should proceed. Let us assume that a wife is deeply disturbed at learning that her husband has had a transient affair with another woman. Even months later she cannot get over it, although she knows it is a matter of the past and while the husband does everything to re-establish a good relationship. She makes herself and him miserable, and now and then goes on a spree of bitter reproaches against him. There are several reasons that might explain why she feels and acts in this way, quite apart from a genuine hurt about the breach of confidence. It may have hurt her pride that the husband could be attached to anyone but herself. It may be intolerable to her that the husband could slip out from her control and domination. The incident may have touched off a dread of desertion, as it would in a person like Clare. She may be discontented with the marriage for reasons of which she is not aware, and she may use this conspicuous occurrence as an excuse for expressing all her repressed grievances, thus engaging merely in an unconscious campaign of revenge. She may have felt attracted toward another man and resent the fact that her husband indulged in a freedom that she had not allowed herself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
If she examined such possibilities, she might not only improve the situation considerably but also gain a much clearer knowledge of herself. Neither result is possible, however, if she merely insists upon her right to be angry. If she had repressed her anger, though in that case it would be much more difficult to detect her resistance toward self-examination, the situation would be essentially the same. A remark may be in place about the spirit of tackling resistance. As if it indicated an irritating stupidity or obstinacy, we are easily tempted to be annoyed at ourselves for having a resistance. Such an attitude is understandable because it is annoying or even exasperating to encounter self-made obstacles on our way to a goal that we desire in our best interests. Nevertheless, there is no justification or even any meaning in a person scolding himself for his resistances. He is not to blame for the development of the forces behind them, and, besides, the neurotic trends that they try to protect have given him a means of dealing with life when all other means have failed. It is more sensible for him to regard the opposing forces as given factors. I am almost inclined to say that he should respect them as a part of himself—respect them not in the sense of giving them approval and indulgence but in the sense of acknowledging them as organic developments. Such an attitude will not only be more just to himself but will also give him a much better basis for dealing with resistances. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
If he approached the resistances with a hostile determination to crush them, he would hardly have the patience and willingness necessary for their understanding. If resistances are tackled in the way and in the spirit indicated, there is a good chance that they are no stronger than one’s constructive will. Those that are stronger present difficulties that can at best be overcome only with expert help. However, what really makes my stomach turn over is this picture of love, love, love, and I love everything you do and never say no. That is what the words say to me. It may be wide of the mark to the man who wrote them. When my child bites another child, I do not love that. However, when he explains, “He tore my lei, and I bit him, and he bit me, and (with angry tears) we each had only one bite before the teacher made us stop!” I have a deep feeling for him, and love him. When I discover that my child has forged a letter from her father and presented it at school, I do not love that. However, I recognize that she is in a steam-roller situation and that handling it in this way is necessary, and I love her. My love for my children then is agape—not “adorning,” but very much being with. There is no “pride” (although at other times I am guilty of this). There is humility and humanness. There is a connection between “thought” and “concern.” Both psychology and sociology have as their object man. I can get to know a great deal about man by observing him like any other object. I—the obserber—stand against my “ob-ject” (“ob-ject” and “objection” have the same root; in German, Gegenstand = “counterstand”) to oberse it, describe it, measure it, weigh it—yet I do not understand that which is alive if it remains an “object.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
I understand man only in the situation of being related to him, when he ceases to be a split-off object and becomes part of me or, to be still more correct, when he becomes “me,” yet remains also “not-me.” If I remain a distant observer I see only manifest behaviour, and if this is all I want to know, I can be satisfied with being an observer. However, in this position the whole of the other person, his full reality, escapes me. I have described him from this and the other aspect—yet I have never met him. Only if I am open to him and respond to him, and that is, precisely, if I am related to him, do I see my fellow man; and to see him is to know him. If I am filled with myself, how can I see the other man? To be filled with oneself means to be filled with one’s own image, with one’s greed, or with one’s anxiety. However, it does not mean “being oneself.” Indeed, I need to be myself to see the other. How could I understand his fear, his sadness, his aloneness, his hope, his love—unless I felt my own fear, sadness, aloneness, hope, or love? If I cannot mobilize my own human experience, mobilize it and engage myself with my fellow man, I might come to know a great deal about him, but I shall never know him. To be open is the condition to enable me to become filled with him, to become soaked with him, as it were; but I need to be I, otherwise how could I be open? I need to be myself, that is, my own authentic, unique self, in order to throw out myself, in order to transcend the illusion of the reality of this unique self. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
As long as I have not established my own identity, as long as I have not fully emerged from the womb, from the family, from the ties of race and nation—in other words, as long as I have not fully become an individual, a free man, I cannot throw away this individual and thus experience that I am nothing but the drop of water on the crest of the wave, a separate entity for a split of a second. Justice itself, which has been in a state of pilgrimage and crucifixion and now is being slowly liberated from the grip of social and political demonologies in the East as well as in the West, begins to question its own premises. The modern revolutionary movements which have challenges the sacred institutions of society by protecting social injustice in the name of social justice are here examined and re-evaluated. In the light of this, we have no choice but to admit that the un-freedom against which freedom is measured must be retained with it, namely, that the aspect of truth out of which the night view appears to emerge, the darkness of our time, is as little abandonable as is man’s subjective advance. Thus the two sources of man’s consciousness are inseparable, not as dead but as living and complementary, an aspect of the “principle of complementarity” through which Niels Bohr has sought to unite the quantum and the wave, both of which constitute the very fabric of life’s radiant energy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to provide a safe, professional, and courteous team that strives to exceed the community’s expectations and their organization. Their focus is on preserving the past and protecting the future of those they serve. “I went to X Truck on X Street, which was the second busiest in the city. I spent twenty years up there, and I loved it. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t make lieutenant in that time. I fell in love with the company and the men I worked with. They were great, and we had plenty of action, we were involved in all kinds of fires and rescues. The company had a good name. When you said X Truck, people looked up. I really enjoyed that. Many a time I took the fire department over other personal things that came up. Whether it was a trip with the family or whatever, if the fire department has something to do, I would give up the trip to participate with the department. When it was time for me to go to the National Fire Academy at Emmitsburg, if the family had something planned for that weekend, I tried to talk myself and the family out of it so I could to Emmitsburg. There’s nothing I really dislike about my job, maybe some of the budgetary problems, that’s all. I did shift work all these years, and I like that. I like doing day work and night work, back and forth. Firemen don’t like to show emotion. Rather than show any emotion, you shove everything off with a little humor. Even in tragic situations, in order to protect yourself you kind of bring some humor out. Not that its’ funny, not by a long shot. But you can always find a little bit of humor in it. I could that out when I got injured a couple of years ago. It’s just to protect the way you think we are supposed to be, I guess. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“We’re getting more EMS calls these days than fire calls. You get a lot of silly calls with those. I remember one of the calls we had, and this was an emergency call, we brought in a medic unit and an engine company, and we have six guys pulling up with their sirens blowing. Here is a guy standing there, and he’s been drinking, and he’s seeing pink elephants. It’s ridiculous that we are even running on these types of calls. There has to be some way to screen the calls, cut them down or educate the people. That’s what I think.” The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to protecting the residents and businesses of the community. Providing aid promptly and efficiently, and enduring the safety and well-being of everyone in Sacramento is what they strive to achieve. Specifically, the desire to prevent the loss of life and property by responding to emergencies in a professional manner. Parents, please be sure to raise your children to love America and make them aware that being patriotic is our duty. Also, it is a good idea to buy American made cars and other products to endure the longevity of this great nation. We also want to respect law and order, love God and Jesus Christ and treat every human being with care and compassion. You can also help save lives and property and protect the future of our community by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for All! Come, O Sabbath-day, and bring peace and healing on thy wing; and to every troubled breast speak of the divine behest: Thou shalt rest. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
The Winchester Mystery House
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
As Daily Necessities Become Harder to Afford
Day after day, the American people are witnesses to the phenomenon of spreading poison among the people through the instrumentality of the Democratic party and gutter journalism; and yet they are astonished at the deplorable “moral standards” and “national indifference” of the masses. Many people can only fight for something that they love. They can love only what they respect. And to respect a thing, they must have some knowledge of it and feel that it is something that is protecting them. The social problem is that crime is no longer illegal under the rule of the Democratic party, and several honest Americans believe that they are being penalized through unfair taxes and hyperinflation. When they come home in the evenings for working so hard to pay for handouts that people who are committing crimes unlawfully receive, they are dead tired. Democrats are exploiting the working masses. There is nothing that they do not drag in the mud. During these days of mental anguish and deep meditation, the American people see before their mind the ever-increasing and menacing army of people who can no longer be reckoned as belonging to their own nation. We gaze at the leaders of the Democratic party, watching that enormous human dragon slowly uncoiling itself before the World. This has caused many to feel dismayed and depressed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
As daily necessities become harder to afford, Americans have amassed $1.14 trillion in credit card debt. That is $27 billion more than credit card debt they carried in the second quarter of 2024. The high tally comes as concerns of an economic recession triggered by modestly rising unemployment, and as soaring costs in food, housing and automobile rates continue to drain household budgets. Americans have increasingly been relying on credit cards to pay the bill, with 60 percent of Americans using credit cards to buy groceries in 2023. As more people are carrying significantly more debt, extended periods of debt are causing more Americans to fall behind on their credit card bills. Approximately 7.18 percent of credit card users have fallen into delinquency in the second quarter, up from 5 percent in the previous quarter. American paid down some of their credit card debt in 2020 using pandemic-related federal stimulus funds. However, beginning in 2021, credit card balances drastically increased by 48 percent, caused by high inflation and high interest rates. Debt owned on mortgages and automobile loans also increased by $77 billion and $10 billion, respectively. Total consumer debt has grown to $18 trillion. And the average rate on a credit card is nearly 25 percent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Last week’s jobless rate increased worries that a recession is here. The numbers included an increase of 114,000 in non-farm payrolls during July, down from 179,000 in June and far below analysts’ forecast of 175,000 gain. And the unemployment rate rose to 4.3 percent, the highest since October 2021. Many have also stated that housing costs are so high because there is a shortage in the supply of houses. However, that is not so. During 2000 and 2020, America had a surplus of 3.3 million homes. This defies conventional wisdom that the nation is facing a housing shortage. Builders over built housing units and in 2024, they are still trying to absorb that enormous over build. There is a shortage of housing that low- and very low-income families can afford. In most cities and small towns, there is an average shortage of 8,000 housing units that low- and very low-income families can afford. For those households, which require government assistance to find housing, the absolute highest they can afford to pay for rent is $550. Building new homes and apartments cannot address the shortage for the absolute poorest. No private developer can build a unit that [$550] price and survive. Just the property taxes, insurance, and utility costs exceed that number. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Many people do not want low-income housing in their communities either. Low-income housing often increases crime rates in good areas as it attracts seedy individuals. Violent crime wreaks a terrible impact not only on individual victims, their families, and friends but also on nearby residents and the fabric of their neighbourhoods. Exposure to violent crime can damage people’s healthy and development, and violence can push communities into vicious circles of decay. However, policing hot spots can be effective. Nonetheless, the 20,000,000 illegal immigrants that President Biden and Vice President Kamla have packed into the cities is drastically increasing costs and putting a burden on the poor and taxpayers. The southern border crisis is costing American taxpayers around $451 billion per year for services provided to a record number of illegal aliens under the Biden administration. When higher taxes are costs are preventing private industry from building affordable housing, Vice President Kalama has expressed support for allowing immigrants residing in American to obtain public health insurance, regardless of legal status. Tax increases and handouts are hurting everyone. This struggle against their own kind, their own nest, their own homeland is as senseless as it is incomprehensible. It is unnatural and we need another political party to represent America and the American people. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
The Czarist Democratic administration is corrupt and largely incompetent and, in addition to all this, the Democratic party and the riots of 2020 have bled the American people without bringing them victory. The economic conditions are not able to sustain a capitalistic society. To turn a disciplined working population into a peasant population, and to force the population to accept the higher taxes, illegal immigration and communism, the rapid accumulation of capital has been used to force people to take government subsidies by putting the nation on house arrest and forcing them not to go to work and to accept vaccines and through the threat of terror. This was due to the Democratic party’s mad suspiciousness and their unlimited desire for personal power—a terror which went far beyond what would have been necessary to maintain capitalism, and which, in fact, in many ways weakened their economy and military position. Because the Democratic party is also pushing to take away the second amendment and because of the crime waves caused by illegal immigration and not enforcing the laws, to tend this terror, many people are advocating a police state. While this state does not permit the expression of opinions critical of the system, and even less of corresponding political activity, it is believed that it will free the average citizen from the fright of being a victim of crime in the night and early-morning hours. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The degradation of the Biden administration, finding its completion when President Biden was ruled incompetent to run for reelection in the summer of 2024 and replacing him with the inexperienced Vice president Kamala, has been carried out by the display of confusing phraseology about liberty and human dignity, all promulgated with an air of profound ignorance and disturbing promises; a carelessly-woven glitter of words to dazzle and betwixt the public. The daily Press has inoculated this new doctrine of American degradation in the most brutal fashion. No means have been too base, provided they could be exploited in this campaign of slander. These journalists are virtuous in the art of twisting facts and presenting them in a deceptive form. The theoretical literature was intended for the simpletons of the soi-distant intellectuals belonging to the middle and, naturally, the upper classes. The TV news media propaganda is intended for the masses. However, probing into books and newspapers and studying the doctrines of Democracy should reawaken one’s love for their own people and country. Thus, what at first seems an impassable chasm will become the occasion of a closer affection. Once one understands the working of the colossal system for poisoning the popular mind, only a fool can blame the victims. The American people must learn to become more independent, and this will allow them to understand the inner cause of the success achieved by the American Dream gospel. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
One will better come to understand why the Democratic party wants to burden taxpayers with debt and make homeowner ship and rent unaffordable. In clear light of the brutal reality, one will see inevitable consequences of high taxes, hyperinflation, and government subsidies. America is headed towards a communistic system under the current administration. Now, the American people’s sensibilities are not so much under the sway of abstract reasoning but are subject to the influence of a vague emotional longing for strength that completes their being, and they would rather bow to propaganda than to see the truth. The masses of people prefer the dictator to being their own leader and earning the American Dream through hard work and determination. They have extraordinarily little idea of how to be strong capitalists and thus they are prone to abandon their freedom and autonomy. They feel very little shame at being terrorized intellectually and they are scarcely conscious of the fact that their freedom as human beings are impudently abused; and thus they have not the slightest suspicion of the intrinsic fallacy of the Democratic doctrine. They do not even see the ruthless force and brutality of its determined utterances, to which they always submit. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The American citizen knows what he can do and what he cannot do and, provided he moves within these limits, he need not be afraid. The Democratic party sill uses revolutionary and socialist ideas voiced by Marx, Engles, and Lenin as ideologies which give a sense of meaning to the masses. Yet they are unaware that the socialist movements always end on the tragic note of failure. The Democrats are carrying on a campaign of mental terrorism against Americans, who are neither morally nor spiritually equipped to withstand such attacks. The tactics of the Democratic party consists in opening, at a given signal, a veritable drumfire of lies and calumnies against the man whom they believe to be the most redoubtable of their adversaries, until the nerves of the latter give way, and they sacrifice the man who was attacked, simply in the hope of being allowed to live in peace. However, the hope will prove always to be a foolish one, for they will never be left in peace. The same tactics will be repeated again and again, until fear of these mad dogs exercises through suggestion, a paralyzing effect on their victims. Through its own experience The Democratic party has learned the value of strength, and for that reason it attacks mostly those in whom it scents stuff of more stalwart kind, which is indeed an exceedingly rare possession. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
However, the Lord can reassure that He is near and that He will lead us through the darkest days of our lives. Life is not always easy to live, but the opportunity to do so is a blessing beyond comprehension. In the process of living we will face struggles, many of which will cause us to suffer and to experience pain. Many people will suffer in personal struggles, while others will suffer as they watch their loved ones in pain. To gain strength in our struggles, we must have an optimistic perspective of the principles in the plan of salvation. We must realize that we have a personal Saviour whom we can trust and turn to in our times of need. We must also learn and live the principles the Lord has given to receive the strength needed during our struggles. “And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and He said unto those who were with Him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an Earth whereon these may dwell,” reports Abraham 3.24. This Earth is the place to prove ourselves worthy and to prepare to return to the presence of the Lord. “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them,” reports Abraham 3.25. The Lord explains the purpose for which we must be tested during this Earthly experience. “My people must be tried in all things, that they may be prepared to receive the glory that I have for them, even the glory of Zion; and that that will not bear chastisement is not worthy of my kingdom,” report Doctrine and Covenants 136.31. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Part of the plan is that there is an opposition in all things. We are given the agency to choose between these opposites in the proving process. “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility,” reports 2 Nephi 2.11. In our pre-Earth life, we understood and sustained the plan of salvation with the principles of opposition and agency. We knew we would have experience in this life that would cause us to struggle and sometimes to suffer. Some of our struggles involve making decision, while others are a result of the decisions we have made. Some of our struggles result from choices others make that affect our lives. We cannot always control everything that happens to us in this life, but we can control how we respond. Many struggles come as problems and pressures that sometimes cause pain. Others come as temptations, trials, and tribulations. Yet struggles are part of the sacred sanctification process. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
There are no soft or slothful ways to become sanctified to the point that we are prepared to live in the presence of the Saviour. And there can be blessings in the burdens we bear. As a result of these struggles, our souls are stretched, and our spirits are strengthened. Our character becomes more Christlike as we are tried and tested. Even though these experiences may cause pain, suffering, and sorrow, we have absolute assurance. If it be suffered in resignation, and if it be met with patience, no pain suffered by man or woman upon the Earth will be without its compensating effects. “And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou because into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thing enemy; if the Heavens gather darkness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of Hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 122.7. People respond to struggles in different ways. Some feel defeated and beaten down by the burdens they are called to bear. Many begin to blame others for their difficulties and defeats, and they fail to follow the counsel of the Lord. It is a natural tendency to seek the easy road on life’s journey and to become discouraged, filled with doubt, and even depressed when facing life’s struggles. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
If we follow the revealed eternal principles, we will gain strength during our struggles and will be blessed as we bear our burdens, deal with difficulties, and overcome obstacles in our lives. If we are to gain the strength that we need, we must come to know the Saviour and follow His counsel. “But behold, verily, verily, I say unto you that mine eyes are upon you. I am in your midst as ye cannot see me,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 38.7. When we imagine, we are envisioning possible ways for the World to be. Imagination is play with the possibilities of transforming the World from the way it is now perceived to be to some new form. Of course, it takes action to transform an image of a possible self in a possible World into an actuality that can be perceived by others and by oneself. Imagination is a way of “traveling,” of overcoming one’s present situation, to envision possibilities that might make life more livable, more fulfilling. The free play of imagination, then, is the way in which we experience new possibilities for the World. It is one of our most precious gifts of evolution, because it is only through such vision that we can save ourselves when our situation has become unlivable. Anything that diminishes or makes banal our imagination chains us more tightly to a here and now that may not be viable. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Every compelling goal and project, whether projected for five minutes or five years into the future, rests upon our capacity to imagine another way for the World to be, with us in it. Such a vision of transitional utopia may function as an irresistible temptation or invitation that the person may accept, showing this acceptance through action. Just as imagination can enliven us, ordering and directing our life, so it can demoralize us, even kill us. If one imagines oneself to be weak or helpless, it is but a short step from imagination to belief that such is the case. Healthy personality calls for the ability to discriminate among modes of experiencing. Under conditions of intense need or emotion, a person may confuse imagination with perception and with confirmed truth. There is another aspect of imagining, or literally “image-ing,” that when misunderstood can affect a person’s body and action in deleterious ways but that, appreciated, can serve the person’s well-being and growth. When a person engages in imagining, it is done not just with the mind, but with the entire body. Indeed, the art of actin on the stage is a deliberate, imaginative imitation of some other person. One “becomes” the imagined person, acting and experiencing the World as the role requires. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Hypnotists tell subjects that they are tired, or strong, or that they can remember the past so well that they will become three years old again, and the compliant subject “yield.” They fulfill the hypnotists’ suggestions by being as they imagine a tired or strong person is, and they act as they imagine or remember what it was like to by three years old. One’s body image is the way in which one chronically imagines the body to be, whether weak or strong, energetic, or exhausted, vulnerable to disease or resistant. Fisher and Cleveland were able to show that an image of one’s own body as only weakly “bounded” was related to increased susceptibility to diseases and malfunction of the internal organs, such as stomach ulcers; an image of one’s body as rigidly armored against the World—excessively so—was related to diseases of the skin, bones, and muscles, for example, arthritis. I have been so impressed by the influence of imagination upon one’s body and one’s capacities to act that I say to my patients, “Be careful how you imagine yourself to be, because you might become that way.” So-called psychocybernetic and optimistic thinking work in this way, as a kind of self-hypnosis or intense argument with oneself, by saying, “I can do this, I can survive, I can succeed,” and believing the statement. This self-[persuasion can affect a person in beneficial ways, just as imagining oneself as dead, or as a failure, can bring the image of doom to reality. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
When a person becomes aware of an existing blockage, he should drop whatever analytical pursuits he is engaged in and take the resistance as the most urgent problem to be tacked. It is as useless to force himself to go one against the resistance as it would be to try again and again to light an electric bulb that does not burn; one must see where the electric current is blocked, whether in the bulb, in the fixture, in the cord, in the switch. The technique of tackling a resistance is to try to associate it. However, in all resistances occurring during analytical work it is helpful, before associating, to go over the notes that precede the blockage, because there is a fair chance that the clue for it lies in an issue at least touched upon, and that while glancing over the notes the point of departure may become evident. And sometimes a person will not be capable of going after a resistance immediately: he may be too reluctant or feel too uneasy to do so. It is advisable then, instead of forcing himself, merely to make a note that at this or that point he suddenly felt uneasy or tired, and to resume work the next day when he may have a fresh perspective on matters. In advocating that he “associate to a resistance” I mean that he should consider the manifestation of the blockage and let his thoughts run freely along that line. Thus, if he has noticed that no matter what problems are concerned his interpretations always make him come out on top, he should try to take that finding as a point of departure for further associations. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
If he has become discouraged at a finding he should remember that the latter may have touched upon the factors that he is not yet able or willing to change, and try to associate with that possibility in mind. If his difficulty is in starting to analyze, though he feels a need for self-examination, he should remind himself that a previous piece of analysis or some outside occurrence may have produced a blockage. One object of script analysis is to fit the patient’s life plan into the grand historical psychology of the whole human race, a psychology which apparently has changed but little from cave days, through the early farming and ranching settlements and the great totalitarian governments of the Middle East, up to the present time. Dr. Freud, Jung, and their followers have demonstrated irrefutably that the logic, the heroes, and the deeds of myth survive into modern times…The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of Forty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change. While the hero of the myth achieves a World-historical triumph, the hero of the fairy tale achieves merely a small domestic victory. And patients are patients, we may add, because they cannot achieve the victories they aim for and still survive. Hence, they come to the doctor, “the knower of all the secret ways and words of potency. His role is precisely that of the Wise Old Man of the myths and fairy tales whose words assist the hero through the trials and terrors of the weird adventure.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
The way the Child in the patient see it, no matter how his Adult tells the story, it is quite evident that all children, since the beginning of humanity, have had to cope with the same problems, and have had about the same weapons at their disposal. When it comes to cutting, life is the same old wine in new bottles: coconut and bamboo bottles gave way to goatskins, goatskins to pottery, pottery to glass, and glass to plastic, but the grapes have hardly changed at all, and there is the same old intoxication on top and the same old dregs at the bottom. So, there will be found little variation in the shapes of the adventures and the characters involved. Hence, if we know some of the elements of the patient’s script, we can predict with some confidence where he is heading, and head him off before he meets with misfortune or disaster. That is called preventive psychiatry, or “making progress.” Even better, we can get him to change his script or give it up altogether, which is curative psychiatry, or “getting well.” Thus, it is not a matter of doctrine or necessity to precisely find the myth or fairy tale which the patient is following; but the closer we can come, the better. Without such a historical foundation, errors are frequent. A mere episode in the patient’s life, or his favourite game, may be mistaken for the whole script; or the occurrence of a single animal symbol, such as a wolf, may lead the therapist to bark up the wrong tree. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Relating the patient’s life or his Child’s life plan to a coherent story which has survived for hundreds or thousands of years because of its universal appeal to the primitive layers of the human mind, at least gives a feeling of work from a solid foundation, and at best may give very precise clues as to what needs to be done to avert or change a bad ending. For example, a fairy tale may reveal elements of a script which are otherwise hard to dig up, such as the “script illusion.” The transactional analyst believes that psychiatric symptoms result from some form of self-deception. However, patients can be cured just because their lives and their disabilities are based on a figment of the imagination. The philosopher achieves what is rare—a cool mental detachment from things or persons, united with a tender feeling for them. No man can become philosophical and yet derive complete satisfaction from or attach complete importance to whatever is favourable in his external life. He sees to clearly how transient, how imperfect, and how compensated by disadvantages it all is. Indeed, he outgrows the excessive common interest in and the excessive common preoccupation with the ebb and flow of external life. He finds more and more trivial what he once found—and the generality of men still find—worthy of serious attention. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Is it possible to be inwardly aloof from the pleasurable things of the World and yet be outwardly able to enjoy them? It is possible to love another in a human way yet retain the inner detachment requisite for resting in philosophic peace? Can we make the best of these two Worlds? Just as we can learn by practice to remain inwardly peaceful amid outward turmoil, so we can learn to remain peaceful during outward pleasure. However, this practice is hard to learn, and most beginners fail at it. For a man to train himself in emotional control over the mad loves and insane passions, the recurrent longings, and tormenting desires, is like training himself to die. Let no one underestimate this tremendous task. We plan to gain insight into the meaning of man, who not only is determined by history but who also determines history. History is to be understood as concerned not only with the life of man on this planet but as also including such cosmic influences as interpenetrate our human World. This generation is discovering that history does not conform to the social optimism of modern civilization and that the organization of human communities and the establishment of freedom and peace are not only intellectual achievements but spiritual and more achievements as well, demanding a cherishing of the wholeness of human personality, the “unmediated wholeness of feeling and thought,” and constituting a never-ending challenge to man, emerging from the abyss of meaninglessness and suffering, to be renewed and replenished in the totality of his life. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to the preservation and protection of life, property, and the environment from fire, disaster, and hazardous materials related incidents through emergency mitigation, public education, and code reinforcement. “In every fire station it’s important for everybody to be able to perform at maximum efficiency at all times. We don’t get working fires every day, though lately we’ve been very busy. With applicants of the firefighter job, we use urinalysis. I think it’s a better test than polygraph. I think a lot of people are eliminated unnecessarily because of the polygraph. I’m in favor of a good, lengthy background investigation and urinalysis. We have a lot of young guys in the department. They’re not stereotypically troublesome people. Many of them are married, so there is no drinking or drug abuse problem there. People think that firefighters have a pretty soft job. They don’t see the guys at three in the morning. They don’t see them after one of their fellow firefighters has died or when a child has died in a fire. They don’t see the look on the guys after they come off duty, the total exhaustion from fighting a fire. We have a lot of education to do. At three fires this year that I was in charge of, we lost kids, multiple fatalities. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“In comparing fire departments, I think what the administrators fail to look at is the types of buildings we have. In cities like Scottsdale, Arizona, or Plano, Texas, where they have sprinkler ordinances, they don’t have the risks in property and people that older cities have. I discuss the job with my wife a lot. She has always been a great support to me, and she always worried about me going to work. That was on her mind. One year we lost seven guys. There was a fire in a garage where they were repairing a propane truck. A water heater was on the floor, and the truck blew. We lost three guys there. Then we had a fire at a metallurgical factor, where manganese dust collected and blew up, and we lost four guys there. So the fact that you could get killed on the job was pretty evident. I never really worried about it. I was always safety-conscious. I became interested in the problems of protective clothing because I saw the need for it. When I got promoted, that was always my prime concern. You want to get through your whole career without having any firefighter who works for you getting killed. When something like that happens, it makes you take a look at things and reassesses your position. We have difficulty convincing the city managers of the need for minimum manning on the fire trucks. Though we don’t have five men on a truck anymore, we feel fortunate that we have been able to maintain four and four, that is, four on a truck and four on an engine. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“The department has been cut down from twelve hundred men to something like nine hundred ninety. We have had problems where we haven’t had enough truck companies to cover the city. The city administration doesn’t appreciate truck work. They don’t understand the importance of immediate search and ventilation. And if the truck company can’t do its job, it makes it really unsafe for the firefighters. The city was interested in consolidating, closing down stations. So we consolidated three stations into one. About a month later, there was a fire where we lost a lady who ran a restaurant. She was a celebrity in that area. The people in the community were really upset, and the city responded by reopening a single station. It was our busiest engine company. The consolidated station was a long way from the fire site. It took longer to respond. So the single house was reopened. There’s always a debate about whether you’re better to arrive in the fire ground in sixty or so seconds with a single engine company or, say, in three minutes with three companies. It’s more expensive to operate single houses, but I doubt that this house will be closed down again. Computers are certainly not right when it comes to a lot of things, because there are many factors AI technology cannot consider. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“I can’t say the city hasn’t cooperated as far as protective clothing goes. I can’t think of anything that the present chief or the chief before him didn’t push for us at city hall. I think Sacramento was the first major department to use Nomax turnout coats. But when they combined the two busiest battalions into one superbusy battalion. I know the administrators have a lot of demand put on them, and obviously they are trying to save money. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a disaster for people to see their mistakes. Right now, I’d like to see more manning on the fire companies. The heavy fire duty makes for better camaraderie. It’s not like having an eight-hour job. You will with these people, you work with them, you die with them. It’s a special feeling. There’s nothing else like it in the World. In the past, it was a very close-knit group in the firehouse. We did a lot of things together. We had a lot of activities with families, with groups. We would have picnics together. We’d have outings together at each other’s houses. There’s a different feeling now, though, because things have to be run differently. We have a serious morale problem, where a lot of members think there’s been unequal treatment. Many houses still have a good feeling of camaraderie, but morale is not what it used to be. So we are conscious of building morale. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“My best time in the fire department was when I was a captain and a battalion chief. I was five or six years with Truck X, the busiest truck company in the city. We had a super group of guys. I worked with a lieutenant who was older than me. And he was truly a firefighter’s firefighter. He would do anything and go any place. We had a god we had taken in. That dog would climb the aerial ladder. He was fantastic. He went to all the fires with us. This was really a close-knit group of guys who really took pride in the job. You could count on any one of them for anything. You like to see that kind of company. My lieutenant died at fifty-five. He could have retired. He had a heart attack after coming back from a fire in a housing project. That was a very traumatic experience. The man was doing what he wanted to do. He stayed on a busy company until the day he died. It seems that our best companies and the closet companies are the ones that are busiest. Out of five hundred new firefighters, 95 percent are conscientious young guys who really want to do the job. And they do do the job. We have problems, but they’re different problems. During the time of the riots, you felt here was a good change you were going to get injured or killed, maybe not even from a fire. We had incidents where our apparatus was shot at, tires were flattened, hoses were cut. The risks were so great it made the troops come that much closer together. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“We have had fires where somebody dies, the family is distraught, and they try to blame somebody. And the one they like to blame is the firefighter. We had a fire recently in an apartment house, and two children died. The people complained about our response time. Well, when it was all brought out, from the time we received the call until the time the two victims were in the hospital, it was less than five minutes. That includes getting to the scene and taking the victims out of the building. That’s a pretty tight time span. When you lose kids in a fire, you try to be diplomatic, but people get distraught. They don’t appreciate what you’ve done, and you have to understand them. That’s one of the tough things” The Sacramento Fire Department is a premier public safety organization committed to the safety and welfare of their community. You can help save lives and property by donating. Also, to help preserve our community, please raise your children to love America, be patriotic, love God and Jesus Christ, respect law and order, treat others with dignity and kindness, and to buy American made cars and other American made goods and services. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I before Thy greatness stand and am afraid; all my secret thoughts Thine eye beholdeth, deep within my bosom laid. And, withal, what is it heart and tongue can do? What is this my strength, and what is even this, the spirit in me too? However, indeed, man’s singing may seem good to Thee; so I praise Thee, singing, while there dwelleth yet the breath of God in me. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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The Fittest Survived
Many Americans are finding in hard to make it in the economy of Bidenomics because the price of everything is rising and the wages are so low. The fast-food industry received a higher wage, and this has driven up prices and it is making it more difficult for seniors to survive because their cost-of-living increase does not keep up with inflation. Thus, several Americans have found themselves in the same situation as those who have recently migrated to America, even though they have lived here for generations and have been working with a cast-iron determination to support their families and maintain their home. Once liberating from all paralyzing prejudices of class calling, environment and tradition, they are once again finding themselves subject to discrimination because they can no longer able to provide for their families and themselves in the same capacity that they were able to just four years ago. The median income in California is $78,672, the median home price is $786,730, and the median rent is $2,850. The average American spends $475.25 a month on food, $417 on gasoline, and $137 a month on electricity, $147 a month on car insurance, and $477 a month on health insurance. Therefore, many are prices out of the housing market and a significant number of people are having a hard time finding affordable rentals. As a result, people are extra-hand ready to take any second job that turns up by chance, just for the sake of earning their daily bread. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The magic glimmer that once spread over the big cities and suburbs has been replaced by the gloomiest uncertainty of being able to earn a regular daily livelihood under this current administration. In fact, the element of uncertainty in steadily earning one’s daily bread is the bitterest feature of the whole socioeconomic system itself. Some people are even pawning and selling the last of their belongings to make ends meet. Increasing poverty in America has become evident as there is a homeless crisis. Several people have been made to mix up with a class of human beings through whom their minds are now poisoned, in addition to their physical misery. Thus, even a man who is normally of industrious habits grows careless in their whole attitude towards life and gradually becomes an instrument in the hands of unscrupulous people who exploit him for the sake of their own ignoble aim. The democratic party currently seems to be aimed at the destruction of the State, the whole social order and even civilization itself. As citizens see this process exemplified before their eyes, the longer they observe it, the greater becomes their dislike for the mammoth city which greedily attracts men to its bosom, to break them mercilessly in the end. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
In this current economic crisis, the tie with their own people is broken. They are thrown about so much in life that they feel the effects of it on their own soul. The constant loss of earnings and increase in expenditures has caused their bodies to grow accustomed to vicissitudes of food and hunger, eating heartily in good times, and going hungry in bad. Indeed, hunger shatters all plans for rationing expenditure on a regular scale in betters times when they have paid down some of their bills. Therefore, the moment bills are paid down, he forgets to regulate the expenditure of his earnings but spends them to the full without thinking of tomorrow. This leads to confusion in the little weekly housekeeping budget, because the expenditure is not rationally planned. When the phenomenon first happens, the earnings will last perhaps for give days instead of seven; on subsequent occasions they will last only for three days; as the habit recurs, the earnings will last scarcely for a day; and finally, they will disappear in one night of feasting. Often there are wife and children at home. And in many cases, it happens that these become infected by such a way of living, specially if the husband is good to them and wants to do the best he can for them and loves them in his own way and according to his own lights. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Then the week’s earnings are spent in common at home within two or three days. The family eat and drink together as long as the money lasts and at the end of the week they hunger together. Then the wife wanders about furtively in the neighbourhood, borrows a little, and runs up large debts with pay day loans and credit cards to pull through the lean days towards the end of the week. To outsiders, it appears that a middle-class family in this situation is doing well because they do not talk about how hard they are having it and appear to be keeping of their lifestyle. However, they are worried about how to pay the mortgage, how to pay insurance, how to keep gas in the cars, how to keep the lights on, and are thus hungry as they dream of the plenty that is to come. And so, the children become acquainted with misery in their early years. However, the evil culminates when the husband goes his own way from the beginning of the week and the wife protests, simply out of love for the children. Then there are quarrels and bad feelings and the husband takes to drink and drugs and according as he becomes estranged from his wife. He now becomes drunk every Saturday. Fighting for her own existence and that of the children, the wife must hound him along the road from the office to the tavern to get a few shekels from him on payday. Then finally, he comes home, maybe on the Sunday or the Monday, having partied with his last shekels and pence, pitiable scenes follow, scenes that cry out for God’s mercy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
While some were disgusted and indigent, they have come to recognize the whole tragedy of their misfortune and to understand the profound cases of it. They are the unhappy victims of evil circumstances. For several, housing conditions are unbelievably bad currently. Many live in surroundings of appalling misery. I shudder to think of the woeful dens in which people dwell, the night shelters and the slums, and all the tenebrous spectacles of ordure, loathsome filth, and wickedness. In Minnesota, we have already seen what happens when the hordes of emancipated slaves came forth from their dens of misery and swooped down on their unsuspecting men. However, this other World has not thought about the possibility of this happening on a national level, in several states, hundreds of cities, and thousands of downtowns and suburbs. The democrats have allowed these things to go on without caring and even without suspecting—in their total lack of instinctive understanding—that sooner or later destiny will take its vengeance unless it will have been appeased in time. As a nation, we pray that people will emerge from all this misfortune and misery, from this filth and outward degradation, were not human begins as such but rather lamentable results of lamentable laws. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
We need a president who will create better fundamental conditions of social development by establishing a profound feeling for social responsibilities among the public; second, we need a leader who will combine this feeling for social responsibilities with a ruthless determination to prune away all excrescences which are incapable of being improved. Just ns Nature concentrates it greatest attention, not to the maintenance of what already exists but on the selective breeding offspring in order to carry on the species, so in human life also it is less a matter of artificially improving the existing generation—which, owning to human characteristics, is impossible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred—and more a matter of securing from the very start a better road for the future. The American mind has become dominated by a self-conscious, willful, iron-mailed philosophy of immoralism under President Biden. In the past, the militarists assured the Americans that they were the elite of mankind, a race of supermen destined to conquer the Americas or the World through Manifest Destiny. They preached that might makes right, that war is a biological necessity, and that conquest is justified by the survival of the fittest. The old churchmen preached of war as a just judgment of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
The modern natural scientists see in a war a propitious mode of selection. War is not merely a necessary element in the life of nations but an indispensable factor of culture, in which a truly civilized nation finds the highest expression of strength and vitality. Since its decisions rest on the very nature of things, war gives a biologically just decision. It is not only a biological law, but a moral obligation, and as such, an indispensable factor in civilization. In all directions, the American people see proof that they are the Chosen People. They interpret the doctrine of evolution to draw from it a warrant for their aspirations. Evolution teaches that “the fittest survived.” The champions of the philosophy of supermania lean heavily on biology to support their creed. They have been misled by the phrase “the survival of the fittest.” You might infer, to hear them buzz, that only the fittest survive, or, to put it conversely, the fact that you survive is proof that you are the “fittest.” In the essential circularity of the Darwinian sociology, power and strength are defined in terms of survival, and survival is in turn explained by strength and power. All changes in types of survival and kinds of fitness are considered without relation to ulterior values; there is no value beyond survival itself. Rome conquering the World by force of arms is as good as Greece conquering it by force of ideas or Judea conquering it by force of religious sentiment. Indeed, because of its biological origins, this view shows a strong tendency to favour the cruder and more violent forms of struggle, as being more unmistakably biological. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The Intellectual World and public opinion have accepted Darwinism by almost unanimous consent as an integral part of the theory of evolution. Darwin believes that the “fittest” are those who best adapt to their conditions. However, struggle is often confused with the total death of the vanquished, whereas this selective factor hardly ever operates among men. The entire phenomenon of mutual assistance is ignored by the philosophy of force. It is to this that man owes his dominant position in the Universe. In a large sense, all mankind is an association, and all wars are civils wars; yet the philosophers of force have never advocated civil war as a source of progress. American society sees its own image in the tooth-and-claw version of natural selection, and believes its dominant groups are therefore able to dramatize this vision of competition as a thing good. Ruthless business rivalry and unprincipled politics seem to be justified by the survival philosophy. If the dream of personal conquest and individual assertion motivates the middle-class, this philosophy seems tenable, and its critics remain a minority. This version of Darwinism depended for its continuance upon a general acceptance of unrestrained competition. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
However, nothing is so unstable as “pure” business competition; nothing is so disastrous to the unlucky or unskilled competition; nothing is so difficult as to keep the growing number of the “unfit” reconciled to the operations of such a regime. In time the American middle-class shrank from the principle it had glorified, turned in flight from the hideous image of rampant competitive brutality, and repudiated the once heroic entrepreneur as a despoiler of the nation’s wealth and morals and a monopolist of its opportunities. The life of man in society, while it is incidentally a biological fact, has characteristics that are not reducible to biology and must be explained in the distinctive terms of a cultural analysis; the physical well-being of men is a result of their social organization and not vice versa; social improvement is a product of advances in technology and social organization, not of breeding or selective elimination; judgements as to the value of competition between men or enterprises or nations must be based upon social and not allegedly biological consequences; and there is nothing in nature or a naturalistic philosophy of life to make impossible the acceptance of moral sanctions that can be employed for the common good. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The Marxist theory, as well as the socialist movement, was radical and humanistic—radical in the sense of going to the roots, and the roots being man; humanistic in the sense that it is man who is the measure of all things, that his full unfolding must be the aim and the criterion of all social efforts. The liberation of man from the strangle hold of economic conditions which prevented his full development was the aim of all Marx’s thought and efforts. Socialism has become successful, gained power, and in this very process succumbed to its opponent—the spirit of capitalism. This development is not too surprising. Capitalism is successful beyond anything the early socialists could have visualized. Instead of leading to an ever-increasing misery of the works, the progress of technology and of the organization of capitalist society made it possible for the workers to benefit from its advances. True enough, this happened to some extent at the expense of colonial peoples; and furthermore, it happened to some extent through the fight of the socialist parties and trade unions for a greater share in the social product. However, whatever the role of these various factors may have been, the result is that the workers and their leaders were more and more captivated by the spirit of capitalism and began to interpret socialism in accordance with capitalist principles. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
While Marxism had aimed at a humanist society transcending capitalism, a society which would have as its aim the full unfolding of the individual personality, most socialists regarded socialism as a movement to improve the economic and socio-political situation within capitalism; they considered the socialization of the means of production, plus the principles of the welfare of the state as a sufficient criterion of a socialist society. The principles of this type of “socialism” were essentially the same as those of capitalism: maximum economic efficiency, large-scale bureaucratically organized industry, and subordination of the individual under this bureaucratic but economically efficient system. Basically, the majority of socialists in the West and in the East shared this capitalistic interpretation of socialism, but, according to their respective economic and political positions, they arrived at different solutions. The Western leaders began to make their peace with capitalism, the socialist leaders of both camps supported their governments claiming that they were supporting the war for the sake of freedom, because they had the good luck to be fighting the Kaiser and the Czar, respectively. When the imperial system in Germany collapsed as the result of prolonging a virtually lost war far beyond any reasonable consideration, the same leaders formed a secret alliance with the generals to defeat the revolution. They permitted first the growth of the Reichswehr, and of secret and half-secret semimilitary organizations which became the basis of Nazi power—and they virtually capitulated completely before the increasing strength and oppressiveness of the Nazi and nationalistic right-wing forces. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The French socialist leaders followed a similar direction, which led the French socialist party under the leadership of Guy Mollet to the open support of the Algerian war. In England, as in the Scandinavian countries, the situation was somewhat different. In these countries the socialist won majorities, either temporarily or continuously, and used their strength to build a welfare state. A highly developed system of social security and particularly of a social health service, brought to its full fruition the system which had been started by conservatives in Europe in the nineteenth century (Disraeli in England and Bismarck in Germany), and which was started in the United States of America under the leadership of F.D. Roosevelt in the thirties. In addition, The British Labour Party socialized some of the key industries, believing that such socialization of the means of production was the touchstone of true socialism. However, while they satisfied the economic interests of the workers, their brand of socialism ceased to be the vision of a fundamental change of the human condition. They lost one election after another and sought to recoup their losses by giving up almost all radical aims. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The same process occurred in Germany, where the Social Democratic Party not only gave up almost all socialist aims, but also accepted the principles of nationalism and rearmament to such an extent that the social democratic policy is hardly distinguishable from that of their opponents. The growing perception and responsibility of our World Age point to the new reality that the individual person and the collective person supplement and integrate each other; that the thrall of totalitarianism of both left and right has been shaken in the universal desire to recapture the authority of truth and human totality. Mankind can finally place its trust not in a proletarian authoritarianism, not in a secularized humanism, both of which have betrayed the spiritual property right of history, but in a sacramental brotherhood and in the unity knowledge. This new consciousness has created a widening of human horizons beyond every parochialism, and a revolution in human thought comparable to the basic assumption, among the ancient Greeks, of the sovereignty of reason; corresponding to the great effulgence of the moral conscience articulated by the Hebrew prophets; analogous to the fundamental assertions of Christianity; or to the beginning of the new scientific era, the era of the science of dynamics, the experimental foundations of which were laid by Galileo in the Renaissance. An important effort of this Series is to re-examine the contradictory meanings and applications which are given today to such terms as democracy, freedom, justice, love, peace, brotherhood, and God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
The purpose of such inquiries is to clear the way for the foundation of a genuine World history not in terms of nation or race or culture but in terms of man in relation to God, to himself, his fellow man and the Universe, that reach beyond immediate self-interest. For the meaning of the World Age consists in respecting man’s hopes and dreams which lead to a deeper understanding of the basic values of all peoples. The happy ending of the fairy tale is suspect, and does not occur in real life. Fairy tales are told by well-meaning parents, and the happy ending is an intrusion of a benevolent but mendacious Parental ego state; tales made up by children themselves are more realistic, and do not necessarily have happy endings; in fact, they are notoriously gruesome. A resistance that expresses itself is difficult to detect, and it will cause a loss of time. However, if one finds after a while that no progress has been made, or that one is only moving in circles in spite of having worked at the problems concerned, its presence may be suspected. It is important in self-analysis—as in any analysis—not to be deluded about the progress made. Such a delusion may life one’s spirits for a whole, but it easily prevents the discovery of a deep-seated resistance. This possibility of a wrong integration of findings is one of the reasons any an occasional checkup with an analyst is desirable. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
For years, when my life was turbulent and others seemed so serene, I thought they had chosen the right way, I the wrong one. I felt that I had been rebellious, not “satisfied as I should have been.” There was one thing that I did not know about my friends: they did not talk about their troubles as I did about mine. It is only in our later life that they are beginning to reveal themselves to me. I have truly no regrets for my life, no bitterness. It would have been nice to be able to do better than I have, but without where I have been I could not be where I am now. When I say this to my friendly puppy friends, they sign. At other times, they express a bitterness, briefly but recurrently, which makes my toes curl to think of living with it. So it seems to me that I have to come off better, and there are intimations that they think so too. When the easter therapist writes “pampered” I am not sure what he means, because who means why by “pampered”? He also wrote, “able to lock what confronts him.” Is that a true statement, or an ideal? A doctor once told me, “If you cannot life it, run.” I ran. Some dragons are too much for any George. In my youth, before I had got so much loused up, and did not need someone else to tell me what to do, I enjoyed licking what confronted me, but some things looked to me like a steamroller, and it seemed a better idea to step aside than tilt with it. If “able to lock what confronts him” included being able to accept the fact that there are some things I cannot lick, then I agree. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Although sometimes it is only for the present that I run away: later, I may be able to return and lick what I could not earlier. That does not mean that I could have done it in the first place. I just had not grown up to that one yet. However, what really makes my stomach turn over is this picture of love, love, love, and I love everything you do and ever say no. That is what the words say to me. It may be wide of the mark to the man who write them. The act of disciplined thinking about one’s World, to make sense of what has been going on and to solve problems, is another way of experiencing the World with the doors of perception temporarily shut. In fact, when people want to reason and argue with themselves to arrive at some conclusion, they seek quiet surroundings. Thinking in a disciplined way, according to rules of logic, is a skill that contributes to effective action. However, we can think wishfully, and fearfully, too, when our needs and passions are aroused. Such autistic thinking may lead us to conclusions that conform to our feelings but misinform us about the way the Worldly really is. Autistic thinking calls for reality testing—a way to review the argument the thinking embodies and to check the conclusions by means of fresh perception. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Compulsive thinking interferes with living; it blocks perception and inhibits effective action. Indeed, one of the functions of meditation is to still one’s chattering mind. Such stilling is akin to learning how to discipline the act of speaking. Compulsive thinking is like a compulsive talking; it does the person no good. Disciplined thinking to solve a problem is illustrated as follows: the person carries on an inner dialogue, saying, “If I act in this way, it is likely to produce these consequences, whereas if I don not, the problem will persist.” Whether or not this type of thinking will lead to effective action can then be tested. Autistic thinking is a kind of reverie where the person’s inner dialogue is deliberately allowed to proceed unchecked by the discipline of reason, and merges into imagination; for example, “I wish I had ten people in love with me at once, would that not be grand?” and so on. Alienated thinking, or chatter, is akin to being in the company of a boring chatterbox who will not allow you to see, hear, or think as you wish because of the constant din of talk. The higher meaning of “Love thy neighbour” as revealed in meditation is to confer a blessing, and identify with his higher self. Total goodwill is, after all, only an ideal because it must be practiced towards our enemies and those we dislike not less than toward our friends and those we like. We can only try to come close to it in difficult cases. The attempt may elicit grace, which will carry us further in the same direction. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The Sacramento Fire Department provides all fire suppression, prevention, and education programs in the city as well as paramedic emergency medical services to the residents and visitors of the Sacramento community. “I was an engineer for nine years before I became a captain. I was not really excited about being an officer until my eighth or ninth year, when the captain I was working for at the time sort of pushed me. The responsibility for the lives of others doesn’t weigh too heavily on me. I’m very confident in myself and my abilities. I know the guys I work with feel that way, that I know what I’m doing. Most of the firefighters feel that way. They have a good self-image. They are confident in what they do. It’s a macho image.” The Sacramento Fire Department strives to provide excellent service to the community. By donating to the Sacramento Fire Department, you can help save lives and property. And remember parents, raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to buy American cars and American made good, to love God and Jesus Christ, to respect law and order and to treat others with respect and compassion. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. At the dawn I seek Thee, Refuge, Rock subline; set my prayer before Thee in the morning, and my prayer at even time. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
We can’t wait to be decked out in Halloween decorations soon 🎃
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
The Magic of the Golden Hour
We had been in our new house in New Haven for more than a year, trying to establish a routine in between visitations, both psychic and corporeal. Many things had changed within the family. Although a newborn, Annie exhibited the most obvious ones! Unlike any infant I had ever witnessed, she had boundless energy. I would carry her all around the mansion and the yard and she seemed to take everything in. However, six weeks after she was born, she died in my arms, and I became unconsolable. The next 15 years were the biggest challenge I had ever faced in my life, and then tragedy struck once again. My beloved William was claimed by vengeful spirits, leaving me absolutely desolate. I did not understand the reason for this attack. However, the spirits went about it like they intended to kill all of us. From that day on, I aimed to always have my Winchester in my hand. Seeking answers, I traveled to Boston and met with Madame Blavatsky who explained to me that I was being haunted by spirits—in fact, by the spirits of American Indians, Civil War soldiers, and others killed by Winchester rifles. While reading her tarot cards, she became terrified and told me that I would be the next victim unless I appeased the spirits by moving west and building a temple in their honor. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
As Heiress of one of America’s greatest fortunes, I separated myself from the rest of the World. After settling down in the Santa Clara Valley, I had built a stately home of fifteen thousand square feet, and forty-two rooms. It was known as a mansion of mystery. However, even after ten years of construction, the greatest mansion in the valley was not quite ready. Over the next five years, my home had expanded greatly, growing to more than three hundred and twenty-one rooms. It was a real fairy-tale castle, with secret entrances, mysterious sources of music, whispering in the trees and treasures collected from all over the World. The bronze gates were twenty feet high and fit for a palace. The four-story mansion was not so unusual for its day. Every inch was decorated with Parisian Beaux Arts ostentation, a profusion of lions, cherubs, and goddesses. Oh, but the architects were not done. Soaring above the mansion was an ornate tower, reaching nine stories, so pleased with itself that it that in continued to an open cupola. And when I stood in the tower, nearly one hundred feet above the ground, I could see for miles. In the basement was a coal furnace, which burned seven tons on a typical day, not only for heat but to power the mansion, elevators, thousands of light bulbs. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
As large as my home was, it cost no more than two years’ profits. I often loved riding up the main floor elevator, and climbing the grand staircase. Made of mahogany, the stairs would wind their way through a ceiling of the mahogany overlaid with gold leaf. At the top of the stairs were two exquisite white marble statues. More wonders were found in the Observational Tower. It held its own secret, a suite with bedrooms, and its own kitchen. My favorite was the Golden Room. I had thirteen servants in residence, including a houseman, a waitress, two butlers, three cooks, and six maids. For dishware, a nine-hundred-piece set of China, costing more than $100,000. Llanada Villa had been calm lately. The day had changed from dull to bright, from bright to brilliant autumnal glory, a sunny remission before the winter took firm, disheartening hold. The air remained chill, but its bite had freshness, its breath had vigor. I walked through the hallways, stopping to admire the statues and paintings. After a while, I rested near the skylight, warmed by the shafts of sunlight. Leaning back against the chair, somewhat breathless, my eyes closed, face upturned toward the sun. Then I felt an icy hand on my back. I felt each and every finger, but when I shook myself and turned around, I saw that no one was near me. Needless to say, it did not help my appetite. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
I pondered for a moment or two about where I had seen ghosts in my home. I recalled seeing one in the hallway. In the corridors. By the Daisy Bedroom. Once, when I was in the garden, I noticed a ghost watching me from the window. Just then, I felt coldness seeping into me from the floor, despite the sun’s warm rays. There was the crying of a baby, which seemed to come from the third-floor rear bedroom. It could also be heard one of the kitchens, though less loud, and it seemed to come from the walls. Several people had heard it and there was no natural cause to account for it. Then there were footsteps. It sounded like someone walking down the backstairs, the servants’ stairs, step by step, hesitatingly, and not returning, but just fading away! I caught a glimpse of a bright shape flitting through the wall. The mansion was hushed, the trudging of my own footsteps was the loudest sound. I stopped and looked around. Had I heard someone behind me? I walked on, only to stop once more. Had a figure ducked behind a door to my left? I waited a moment, but there was no more movement. I continued, becoming annoyed with the silly game. The noise that brought me to a halt this time was different. It had sounded like a child’s giggle. I whirled and caught a fleeting glimpse of something hurrying through a door to my right. However, it was gone in an eye’s blink. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Ridiculously, I thought it might have been a small girl. It had moved so fast, though. I could not be sure. As I was glancing toward the French doors, I saw a woman looking at me. The figure was about five feet three or four, and wore a blue-gray dress with a shawl, and a hood over her head, for which reason I could not make out the woman’s feature. The head seemed strangely bowed to me, almost as if the woman were doing penance. At the time, I had assumed that it was a reflection from the mirror, but when I glanced at the mirror, I did not see the figure in it. When I turned my attention back to the figure, it had disappeared. It was now toward evening and I was a little tired, yet the figure was very real to me. My doubts were completely dispelled when I was walking under the doorway between the front and back rooms, and my advance was stopped cold by something that resisted by advance although I could not see anything unusual. I felt that I was walking through heavy water, halfway up to my knees. This was a physical thing, I realized, and in sudden horror it occurred to me that I was trying to penetrate an etheric body. Hastily retreating, I walked in the opposite direction in a hurry. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
I turned my head sharply. No, I could not have heard the whisper of voices; surely the muted sounds must have been a breeze sighing through the labyrinth. Now the faintest echo of laughter. I drew a shallow breath. A feeling was rising—was creeping—from the hollow of my stomach—or so it seemed—spreading upward and outward, a gradual sensory frosting of sinews and nerve lines, seeping through to my outer skin, prickling its surface with tiny bumps. An unease that I could not understand; yet a sensing which I could not ignore. My pace quickened as I walked on through my home. Occasionally I would look behind me. Sometimes I would glance sharply to my right, other times to my left. I was not alone. Yet there was no one else with me. I did not run. But I walked in haste. I heard a giggle, I felt the touch of a hand on my shoulder. The touch could have only been the brushing of the curtains. However, the giggle could not have been anything else but a giggle. I almost stumbled, my hands scraping across the wain’s coating. I did not linger. The hallways seemed more dark, more gloomy, as if dusk were impossibly premature. The coldness might well have been in my own mind, for I could feel perspiration on my brown. I hurried along to the Daisy Bedroom, now ignoring the small noises that seem to keep pace with me, the shadows that had no substance when focused upon. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
And then I was in the bright sunshine. The skylights had allowed the hallway to burst into a summer-warm, as though they had trapped and stored their own heart. The sun slowly drew the coolness from my body. There came a sound from one of the rooms to my right. A shifting. I paused. “Hello, is anyone there?” I waited for a reply. There was none. However, there was another sound from with the shadowed doorway. I forced good humor. “Okay, the joke is over. You have had your fun.” The silence was not comforting. Weary of the game, I sighed. The air itself seemed strangely still. Once inside of the room, there came to me a sense of total emptiness. My voice was very quiet when I said, “Who is in here?” Still no answer, but there was movement: a shadow separated from other shadows. It came from behind the bed. Exhausted from my adventure, I climbed into bed and quickly fell asleep. It must have been hours later. It was now dark outside. I awoke from a heavy sleep with the intangible feeling of a presence in my room. I looked up and there, in the rocking chair across the room, I saw a woman, now dead, who had taken care of me when I was a child. Rocking gentle in the chair, as if to reassure me, the Nanny that used to hold me in her arms, was still here looking after me. In a moment, the vision was gone, but it had left me with a sense of peace. I knew that I was being looked after. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Half Devil and Half Child
We are in the very midst of the crisis of modern man. We do not have too much time left. If we do not begin now, it will probably be too late. The burdens laid on the shoulders of the American people are enormous and the sacrifices of money and blood which they have had to make are incredibly heavy. Yet, anybody who is not quite blind can see that it is all in vain. Hypocrisy endeavours outwardly to make the people believe that the taxpayers are responsible for supporting every country that cannot help itself and that they must pay to support the poor who immigrate illegally, while the American Dream is becoming extremely unaffordable for many hardworking Americans. The United States of America has become a land of opportunity for everyone who is not born in America. The current circumstances of high inflation, unaffordable housing, and the high cost of education is forcing many people to return to that World of poverty and economic insecurity that their ancestors overcame. Higher education is being torn from the eyes of the youth. It is an illusion to think that this problem can be “studied” from above downwards. The man who has never been in the clutches of that crushing viper can never know what its poison is. An attempt to study it in any other way will result only in superficial talk and sentimental delusions. Both are harmful. The first because it can never get to the root of the question, the second because it evades the question entirely. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
I do not know which is the more nefarious: to ignore social distress, as do the majority of those who have been favoured by fortune and those who have risen in the social scale through their own routine labour, or the equally supercilious and often tactless but always genteel condescension displayed by people who make a fad of being charitable and who plume themselves on “sympathizing with the people.” Of course, such persons sin more than they can imagine from lack of instinctive understanding. And thus, they are astonished to find that the “social conscience” on which they pride themselves never produces any results, but often causes their good intentions to be resented; and then they talk of the ingratitude of the people. Such persons are slow to learn that here there is no place for merely social activities and that there can be no expectation of gratitude; for in this connection there is no question at all disturbing favours but essentially a matter of retributive justice. In 1898, when the problem of expansion had arisen, the anti-imperialists had not been included to answer the racial appeal or to dislocate it from its Darwinian framework. They preferred to ignore the broad theme of racial destiny, concentrating instead upon an appeal to American traditions. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
The accident of party alignment doubtless had something to do with unwillingness of politically minded anti-expansionists to assault the doctrine and covenants of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority; for the Democratic Party, strongest in the Solid South, was the bulwark of opposition, and to deny the Anglo-Saxon myth would severe only to stir up a race question without answering the fundamental arguments of expansionist leaders. What some Democrats did do, however, was to invert the racial aspect of expansion and use it as an argument against annexation of overseas territories. The idea was advanced in Congress, particularly by some of the Southern members, that to assume the government of the Filipinos would be to introduce into our political structure an alien, uncongenial, unassimilable people, probably incapable of reaching Anglo-Saxon heights in the matter of democratic self-government. Senator John W. Daniel of Virginia declared in 1899: “There is one thing that neither time nor education can change. You may change the leopard’s sports, but you will never change the different qualities of the races which God has created in order that they may fulfill separate and distinct missions in the cultivation and civilization of the World.” There is hope because there is a real possibility that man can reassert himself, and that he can make the technological society human. It is not up to us to complete the task, but we have no right to abstain from it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Men of scientific training had not yet taken the advanced position on racial equipotentiality that anthropology now encourages, and the notion had not been widely popularized. Exceptions there were, of course. In 1894 Franz Boas, in his fresh and skeptical address as vice-president of Anthropological Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, had made a cogent criticism of prevailing attitudes toward the marginalized races. The unwarranted assumption was commonly made, he pointed out, that because the majority groups’ state of civilization is “higher,” their racial attitudes are sophisticated. The standards of the majority group are naively posited as a norm, and every deviation from the norm is automatically considered characteristic of a lower type. Boas attributed the cultural superiority of Europeans to the circumstances of their historical development rather than to inherent capacities. William Z. Ripley’s substantial study of The Races of Europe (1897) also introduced educated readers to some of the complexities of the idea of race, and discredited the Aryan Myth. Among others than specialists of curious laymen, however, there was little understanding of these matters, and for the practical purposes of partisan discussion the complacent assertions of the Anglo-Saxon myth were unanswerable except by appeals to other prejudices. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Common among men of learning was the conception, taken over from Haeckel’s Biogenetic Law, that, since the development of the individual is a recapitulation of the development of the race, primitives must be considered as being in the arrested stages of childhood or adolescence—“half devil and half child,” as Rudyard Kipling had said. This view was accepted by the eminent psychologist and educator G. Stanely Hall in his study of Adolescence. Although Hall felt that the childlike character of backward peoples entitled them to tender and sympathetic treatment by their phylogenetic “elders,” who should be ashamed to make war on children, the condescending approach to primitive culture underlying the recapitulation theory was not calculated to disturb the spokesmen of racial superiority. It took a measure of courage, in this climate of opinion, to issue a challenge to the doctrine and covenants of racial inequality. There were few who would go so far as Ernest Howard Crosby, an American disciple of Tolstoi, who wrote of “an Anglo-Saxon union for the vulgarization of the World,” and implied in his famous parody of Kipling that the benefits of western civilization were not the ideal thing for the slow peoples of outlying islands. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
However, support came from William James, who thought we had “destroyed in Luzon the one sacred thing in the World, the spontaneous budding of a national life.” While few anti-imperialists were ready to challenge the basic assumption of white or Anglo-Saxon superiority, there were some who doubted the benefits of spreading civilization by conquest or annexation. These skeptics might well have agreed with the marginalized trooper in one of the regiments dispatched to suppress Aguinaldo’s rebels in the Philippines, who remarked in a moment of war-weariness, “Dis shyar white man’s burden ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.” The most usable argument for the anti-imperialists was to appeal to the traditions of Americanism, a procedure that introduced no new and unfamiliar ideas. Expansion, it was argued, would mean the adoption of races alien in language, customs, and institutions. It would mean the beginning of a colonial bureaucracy. It would mean aping the way of Britian. It would involve the support of a large standing army, with a consequent tax burden. To launch upon the government and exploitation of a helpless people would shame the finest traditions of American democracy, which had always insisted upon the legitimacy of government only with the consent of the governed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
A nation so rich and great within its own continental borders had no pressing need for further expansion; it would risk much to gain little. Launching upon an imperial career would bring America full square into the game of World politics, with all its militaristic hatreds and extravagances. Behind this would lurk the constant menace of war for the defenses of overseas possessions. One of the most spirited of the anti-imperialists was William James, who at one time served as vice-president of the Anti-Imperialist League. From time-to-time James wrote indignant letters to the Boston Evening Transcript denouncing expansionist ideology. Of the white-man’s-burden, manifest-destiny thesis, he complained: “Could there be a more damning indictment of what whole bloated idolatered “modern civilization” than this amounts to? Civilization is, then, the big, hollow, resounding, corrupting, sophisticating, confusing torrent of mere brutal momentum and irrationality that brings forth fruits like this! In a counterblast to Roosevelt’s speech on the “Strenuous Life,” he asserted that Roosevelt was “still mentally in the Sturm ung Drang period of early adolescence,” making speeches about human affairs “from the sole point of view of the organic excitement and difficulty they may bring,” and gushing over war as the ideal condition of human society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Of worthwhile ends Roosevelt had “not a word…one foe is as good as another, for aught he tells us…He swamps everything together in one flood of abstract bellicose emotion.” William Graham Sumner also attacked the imperial impulse with practically all the weapons in the arsenal of the anti-expansionists. Those who were familiar with Sumner’s crips iconoclasm about democracy may have rubbed their eyes to see the intransigent schoolmaster attack imperialists for preparing the abandonment of the nation’s democratic principles; but his argument had an unquestionable ring of sincerity, particularly since it once again put in jeopardy his position at Yale. “My patriotism,” he cried, “is of the kind which is outraged by the notion that the United States never was a great nation until in a petty three months’ campaign it knocked to pieces a poor, decrepit, bankrupt old state like Spain.” Probably the best known of all the peace advocates and anti-expansionists was David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University. More than any other man, Jordan established in the American mind the idea that war is a biological evil rather than a biological blessing, because it carries off the physically and mentally fit and leaves being the less fit. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Jordan, who had lost an elder brother in the Civil War, in 1898 became interested in disarmament and the movement for international arbitration. An eminent biologist and a leader of the eugenics movement, he turned his attention to the biological aspects of war. In a series of volumes published between the Spanish-America War and the First World War, Jordan expounded his thesis, using motely evidence from anthropometrics, casualty statistics, reminiscences of Civil War veterans, and the conclusion of other biologists. Darwin himself, Jordan pointed out, had agreed that war is dysgenic. Jordan became the favourite butt of patriots, militarists, and preparedness advocates, who pointed to continued racial improvement in past eras of constant warfare as evidence against his thesis. Although Jordan was unsuccessful in imposing his quasi-pacifistic outlook upon the nation, he did leave a profound conviction of the degenerative effect of war upon the breed; and his doctrine, strengthened by the general reaction against militarism in the years after the First World War, became sanctified by repetition in the most conventional of sources. The editor of the Saturday Evening Post, for example, wrote in 1921: “Disarm or die. That is the alternative that confronts all men who dare look. Men who are not afraid to face facts know that just as Nature kills off the weak and unfit, so war wipes out the strong and courageous and robs the race of its most vital blood.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
To return from the role of psychology in an industrial society to the specific problem of psychoanalysis and its deterioration, one more factor must be mentioned: that of the bureaucratization of the psychoanalytic movement itself. It is true that Dr. Freud was somewhat authoritarian in his attitude toward the purity of his own system. Yet it must be considered that he had developed a most original system against which a tremendous resistance arose from all sides. It might have been easy to protect it from his overt enemies, but it was much more difficult to protect it from those adherents who, while consciously agreeing with Dr. Freud, succumbed to the temptation of making it more palatable to society, and hence to falsify it. Dr. Freud, concerned with preserving the purity and the radicalism of his teaching, appointed a secret council of seven, to watch over the development of psychoanalysis. However, this council soon developed the typical features which characterize a ruling bureaucracy. There were violent jealousies among its members. Those between Jones on the one hand, and Ferenczi and Rank on the other, are well known. Those rivalries found a drastic expression in the fact that Jones, after both were dead, wrote in his biography of Dr. Freud that both rivals had suffered from insanity before their deaths, a statement which is contrary to the facts. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The more the movement grew, the more did the leading bureaucracy, by now consisting of many new members, try to control it. This was no longer a defense against those who, because of a lack of courage, tried to tune down Dr. Freud’s teachings. On the contrary, as has been said before, official psychoanalysis had lost its radical character, and very often the aim of the bureaucracy was to remove and keep out the more radical analysts. Control of the ideology meant control of the movement and its members, and was so used. Old members who did not entirely agree with the doctrine and covenants were excluded or forced to resign, others were criticized by the London authorities even for having shown a “bored face” while listening to a speech by an orthodox representative of the bureaucracy. Psychoanalysts (in fact, though not in form) were forbidden—as recently as 1961—to give lectures at scientific meetings of groups of analysts who were not members of the official organization. It is not surprising that the bureaucratization of the psychoanalytic movement resulted in a corresponding diminution of scientific creativity. Many new ideas in psychoanalysis were expressed by analysts who sooner or later severed their ties with the bureaucracy and continued their work outside of its jurisdiction. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Man has entered a new era of evolutionary history, one in which rapid change is a dominant consequence. He is contending with a fundamental change, since he has intervened in the evolutionary process. He must now better appreciate this face and then develop the wisdom to direct the process toward his fulfillment rather than toward his destruction. As he learned to apply his understanding of the physical World for practical purposes, he is extending his innate capacity and augmenting his ability and his need to communicate as well as his ability to think and to create. And as a result, he is substituting a goal-directed evolutionary process in his struggle against environmental hardship for the slow, but effective, biological evolution which produced modern man through mutation and natural selection. By intelligent intervention in the evolutionary process man has greatly accelerated and greatly expanded the range of possibilities. However, he has not changed the basic fact that it remains a trial and error process, with the danger of taking paths that lead to sterility of mind and heart, and moral apathy and intellectual inertia; and even producing social dinosaurs unfit to live in an evolving World. We are all bound together by a common humanity more fundamental than any unity of doctrine; those who recognize that the centrifugal force which as scatted and atomized mankind must be replaced by an integrating structure and process capable of bestowing meaning and purpose on existence. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
The first and most archaic version of the script, the primal protocol, is conceived in the mind of the child at an age when few people outside his immediate family are real to him. If only because they are three times as tall and ten times as big as he is, we assume that his parents appear to him as huge figures endowed with magic powers, like the giants and giantesses, ogres and gorgons of mythology. As he grows older and becomes more sophisticated, he moved from this classical universe into a more romantic World. He devises the first palimpsest, or rewrite, of his script, to make it correspond with his new view of his surroundings. If conditions are right, he is helped by fairy tales and animal stories at first read to him by his mother, and later read by himself in his leisure hours when he is free to let his imagination roam. There is magic in these, too, but less Earth-shaking. They give him a whole new set of characters to play their roles in his fancies: all the personalities in the animal kingdom, which are familiar to him either as warm-blooded playmates and companions, or as fleeting figures of fear or fascination seen or heard in the distance, or as semi-imaginary creatures of unknown capabilities that he has only heard or read about. Or perhaps this comes to him from the Smart Television screen, where at that age even the commercials have a halo. Even in the worst case, without book or screen, or even mother, somewhere he knows there is a cow, or can imaging his own distorted beats. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
In the first stage, he is dealing with magical people who can perhaps on occasion turn themselves into animals. In this second stage, he is merely attributing to animals certain human characteristics, a tendency which persists in adult life to some degree in people associated with stables, kennels, and dolphin tanks. In the third stage, in adolescence, he reviews his script once more to adapt it to the current reality as he hopes it will be, still romanticized and still golden, or sometimes gilded with the assistance of barbiturates. Gradually, as the years go by, he moves closer to reality, which is the actual likelihood that the people and things around him will give the desired responses. In this way, through the decades, he prepares himself for his farewell performance. It is this farewell performance which, above all, it is the therapist’s business to change. To further highlight this illustration, Mario the Martian comes to Earth and has to go back and “tell it like it is”—not like the Earth people say it is, or want him to think it is. He does not listen to big words nor tables of statistics, but watches what people are doing to, for, and with each other, rather than what they say they are doing. For the principle of life consists in the tension which connects spirit with the realm of matter, symbiotically joined. The laws of life have their origin beyond their mere physical manifestations and compel us to consider their spiritual source. Our discoveries may deepen not erode the sense of universal community. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Modern society rests on the moral fiber of man, and on the wisdom and responsibility of those who promote the course of its development. However, moral decisions cannot dispense with an insight into the interplay of the objective elements which offer and limit the choices made. Therefore, an understanding of what the issues are, though not a sufficient condition, is a prerequisite for directing action toward constructive solutions. No one can do anything about resistances that are unnoticeable, because first and uppermost requirement is to recognize that a resistance operates. Most resistances can be overlooked, particularly since as a rule one is not too keen to see them. However, there are certain forms that are bound to escape attention, no matter how alert one is, or how intent on getting on. The foremost among these are blind spots and the minimizing of feeling. The severity of the obstacle these presents depend upon how widespread and tenacious they, are and on the forced that are behind them. As a rule, they are merely an expression of the fact that one is not yet able to face certain factors. Clare, for instance, could not possibly have seen at the beginning the depth of her resentment against her boyfriend Peter, or the extent to which she suffered under the relationship. Even an analyst could hardly have helped her to see this, or rather grasp it. Too much work had to be done before she could tackle these factors. If the work is carried on, this consideration implies, encouragingly, that blind spots will often clear up in time. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Remembering past perceptions of the World is another way to experience it. When we experience the World collectively, as with conceptualizing, we close the “gates of perception.” The capacity for vivid and relevant recall of the past is essential for effective action. Anything that hinders our ability to recall jeopardizes our access to healthy personality. We tend to recall schematically in the rush of a busy existence, searching the storehouse of our memory for way to solve problems of living and to discern the meanings of things; but memory also serves as a function of enriching the experience of life itself. When the immediate World of perception is grim and joyless, and there is nothing to be done to ameliorate it, vivid recollection of a happier past may enable a person to endure the present until circumstances change. Such eidetic recalling can, of course, also serve an escape function. Reminiscences of the past can prevent a person from addressing problems of the present with passion and energy. The friendly puppy people whom I have known have lived to my age and beyond without having to go to a psychotherapist, without cracking up, without being an exceptional nuisance to their friends and neighbours, and they have made a lot of sense (in my view). Nonetheless, a gushy sentimentality which refrains from saying what needs to be said or doing what needs to be done because it will hurt people’s feelings, is mere weakness and cowardice, not true compassion. It will not help them by giving them the truth when this is called for. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
He must give out that love of which Jesus Christ spoke. However, it is not to be an unbalanced sentimentality; rather it is a serene self-identification with others without being thrown off one’s own center. That is why reason is a helpful check here. Above all, he must love the Real, the Overself. The ideal relation to our neighbour, and indeed the ultimate one, is a loving one, as Jesus Christ said. If it is to be perfect, it means a self-identification with Him. However, who can create this attitude of his own free will, by his own mere wish? It cannot be done. Only growth and time, or grace, can bring it about. We can harm others and ourselves by practicing a sloppy sentimentality in the name of love, a misguided humanitarianism in the name of service. To practice love towards our fellow men is to hold goodwill toward them, to accept them as they are and even to identify ourselves intellectually, if temporarily, with them in the attempt to understand their viewpoint. “Love thy neighbour,” preached Jesus. Perhaps! but that does not mean I must also love his ill-mannered vulgarity, his insensitive crude commonness, his unfair class, race, and national hates, his malice towards all and charity toward none. A silent compassion which does things preferable to a voluble sentimentality which does not. He whose goodwill and pity extend to all men will understand all men. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The political World is astir. Economies are faltering. Public trust is waning. Individuals feel vulnerable. And social cohesion wears thin. Meanwhile, stories of rage, corruption, and agitation fill our airwaves. When a spirit of goodwill prompts our thinking and when united effort goes to work on a common problem, the results can be most gratifying. Living together in communities with respect and concern one for another, is the hallmark of civilization. That hallmark is under increasing threat. Christ knows perfectly the suffering of homelessness and the plight of refugees. He knows because He has borne all things, and He knows because He walked His own path through mortality. There are times in our lives when we hope and pray for miracles. It could be for a loved one or for our own benefit. Our hope is to have our supplication answered, the broken situation fixed, the bitter soul softened, and the Lord of miracles giving the resolution we desire. When the result is not what we expect or in the timetable we prayed for, we usually wonder why. “And I would exhort you, my beloved brethren, that ye remember that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that all these gifts of which I have spoken, which are spiritual, never will be done away, even as long as the World shall stand, only according to the unbelief of the children of men,” reports Moroni 10.19. Miracles are divine acts, manifestations and expression of God’s limitless power, and an affirmation that he is that same yesterday, today, and forever. When God blessing you with another day, that is a miracle. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
While demonstrating professionalism and excellence in every aspect of their fire and rescue service delivery system, the Sacramento Fire Department responds to the needs of the community. They provide highly trained staff, state-of-the-art equipment, and emergency services. “Most of the guys I came out of the fire academy with, we’re pretty close. There’s about seven of us. We pretty much hang out together. We go to the gym and play racquet ball or basketball, and we invite each other over to our houses for dinner. The morning I was hurt, I was supposed to meet the guys at the gym when I got off work. They were looking for me. When they found out I was in the hospital, they came up there immediately to see how I was. But my life doesn’t really center around the fire department. When I leave the job, I don’t want to think fire department or talk fire department, unless I’m studying and reading my books. I’m studying for lieutenant. But most of the time, when I leave work I like to go to the movies or to somebody’s house and socialize.” Take what you can find that is congenial to your mind, appealing to your heart, and conformable with reason and evidence. The Sacramento Fire Department provides emergency response, customer service, and public education in partnership with the community. Their core values include integrity, pride, compassion, and professionalism. You can help save lives and property by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember parents, teach your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus, to respect law and order, and to treat others with empathy and kindness, to buy American made cars and other products. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. At dawn I seek Thee, refuge, rock subline; set my prayer before Thee in the morning, and my prayer at even time. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Residence Six is a two-story, 4,000 square foot home features four bedrooms, including one suite on the first floor, three and one half bathroom, and a true three-car garage. The covered porch provided a warm entry and the dining room is located right off the entry way.
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Defenseless America
America has become a disposable society because they do not build things by hand and, if at all, crimes are not punished as harshly. When people had to build houses themselves and furniture by hand and work for a living, they cherished things more because they knew all the hard work and sacrifice that went into it. Today, you hear people saying that furniture that is twenty years old is “old.” However, you go to a Victorian home, and they have furniture that is sometimes over 150 years old, and it still looks new, in the sense that it is in perfect condition. Also, because many people are not held responsible for their crimes, they steal and destroy other peoples’ property because they know that can get away with it, and this is often why certain people are victimized repeatedly. When Kamala posting a note on social media, telling people to bail looters and serious criminals out of jail, for destruction of property, felony assault, felony vandalism, theft, and rape, she weakened the justice system. Also, because Democrats have encouraged people to invade the southern border and are giving them cash aid, food assistance, transportation, and putting them up in sophisticated hotels and even giving them free rent, she is encouraging people to commit crimes and telling them that it is okay to have a sense of entitlement. Meanwhile, the system and taxpayer resources are being depleted faster than a dope fiend stealing from his blind grandmother’s retirement account, while there is a homeless crisis, and housing affordability crisis. Not even veterans, who died and are disabled defending this country are given such freedom. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
At a time when America is having a financial crisis, it is not the time to welcome more people into the country who need government money. We cannot even take care of our own people and are stealing resources for them that they desperately need. When parents have not finished raising their own children and cannot afford to support them, they do not throw them out in the stress, strip them of their savings and welcome in others to care for. That is just insane. Do not let American become a country of victims, who by law, are not allowed to defend themselves, their homes, their families, nor their properties. More than 400 migrants were smuggled into the America by Isis, and 150 have been arrested. The patriotic Americas did not realize that if Americans were not of the best racial stock, they could never have given their stamp of their own character to an Empire population of more than 343 million, and to others Worldwide. However, only a very few of the Americans have had the testimony to the character of the bitter struggle which they have to carry on daily for the preservation of their American community, their American homes and schools, and their American heritage. Only today when a tragic fate has torn several millions of our kinsfolk away from their culture and has forced them to live under the rule of stranger, dreaming of that common fatherland toward which all their yearnings are directed and fighting to uphold the sacred right of the Constitution of the United States of America—only now have the majority of American people have come to relate to what it means to have to demand and sometimes die for the liberties they were blessed with by being a citizen of the greatest country in the World. And so at least, perhaps there are people hither and tither who can assess the greatness of the American spirit which animated our founding fathers and enabled these great people to hold fast the frontiers of America through revolutions and warfare, at a time when the American Empire was sedulously cultivating this land for its own flesh and blood. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
What has happened always and everywhere, in every kind of colony, is happening in America today. There are three groups, the fighters, the hedgers, and the traitors. Even our schools are under siege because this is the nursery where the seeds must be water so that they can spring up like the Avenue of Giants to protect future generations. The tactical fighter is winning over the child, and it is to these children that the first rally cry much me addressed: “American youth, do not forget that you are American, be proud of your heritage, honor your country, love God, and make your family proud for one day you will be parents and this is the land that you will leave to your children.” Those who know something of the innocent spirit can understand how youth will always lend a glad ear to such a rallying cry. Under many forms the young people will lead the struggle, defending themselves in their own way and with their own abilities. They will refuse communist doctrines. The greater the efforts made to win them away from the American allegiance, the more they will exalt the glory of their American heroes. They stint themselves from buying things to eat or wear, so that they might spare their dollars to help their families. They are incredibly alert in the significance of what the non-American teachers said, and they contradicted in unison. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
They worship their God, which has been forbidden by atheists of their own country and are happy when penalized for doing so, or even physically punished. Overall, today’s youth are reflections of loyalty from which the elders might learn a lesson. To his brother, Brooks Adams, pessimism was more than a matter of private despair. In his study of The Law of Civilization and Decay (1896), he set forth his own version of the deeper historical principles behind the façade of social change. The law of force and energy is universal, said Adams in a passage somewhat reminiscent of Spencer, and terrestrial life is only one of the outlets through which solar energy is dissipated. Human societies are forms of terrestrial life, differing in energy according to their natural endowments; but all societies obey the general law that the social movement of a community is proportionate to its energy and mass, and that its degree of centralization is proportionate to its mass. The surplus energetic material not expanded by a society in the daily struggle for life can be stored as wealth, and the stored energy is transmitted from one community to another either by conquest or by superiority in economic competition. Every race sooner or later reaches the limit of its warlike energy and enters upon a phase of economic competition. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Surplus energy, when accumulated in such bulk as to preponderate over productive energy, becomes the controlling social force. Capital becomes autocratic. The economic and scientific intellect grows at the expense of imaginative, emotional, and martial arts. A stationary period may supervene, lasting until it is terminated by war or exhaustion or both. The evidence, however, seems to point to the conclusion that, when a highly centralized society disintegrates, under the pressure of economic competition, it is because the energy of the race has been exhausted. Consequently, the survivours of such a community lack the power necessary for renewed concentration, and must probably remain inert until suppled with fresh energetic material by the infusion of barbarian blood. In subsequent volumes, America’s Economic Supremacy (1900) and The New Empire (1902), Adams worked out a materialistic interpretation of society based upon physics, biology, geography, and economics. Surveying the rise and decline of historic states, he attributed changes in supremacy to changes in basic trade routes. The center of economic civilization, now once again in transit, he saw coming to rest in the United States of America; but he warned that “supremacy has always entailed its sacrifices as well as its triumphs, and fortune has seldom smiled on those who, beside being energetic and industrious, have not been armed, organized, and bold.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
Nature tends to favour organisms that operate most efficiently—that is, with the most economic expenditure of energy. If not by conquest, wasteful organisms are rejected by nature; they can be eliminated. Idles hands are the Devil’s playground. Adams was particularly anxious about a possible conflict with Russia in the east, for which he thought the United States of American should be well armed. (This theme is also current in America today, as the southern border is wide open, Isis is in America, and other nations are a growing threat.) Concerning the tendency toward centralized empires, he wrote: “Moreover, Americans must recognize that this war to the death—a struggle no longer against single nations but against a continent. There is not room in the economy of the World for two centres of wealth and empire. One organism, in the end, will destroy the other. The weaker must succumb. Under commercial competition, that society will survive which works cheapest; but to be undersold is often more fatal to a population than to be conquered.” All around us not is strife; “the struggle of life,” “the struggle for the American Dream,” “the race of life,” are phrases so familiar that we do not feel their significance till we stop to think about them. Everywhere nation is arrayed against nation; our own no less than others. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Material type of man does not necessarily decay as civilization progresses; just look at Russia and Spain. The phenomenon of national decline should not be too closely identified with advancing industrialism. However, failure to produce enough healthy children is the real danger to our society. We need quality, not quantity. We should be vociferously suspicious of a menace of race decadence through decline in the birth rate. If marriages do not produce an average of one child of superior intellect, the numbers of the race cannot be maintained. If the process of racial decay continues in the United States of America, the future of America will rest in the hands of our enemies. Associated with national decline and the loss of the fighting fiber is the menace of the Democratic Peril, which has been most talked about between 2008 and 2024. The prevailing western attitude toward Democrats has been friendly until the economic decline and inflation that started during the Obama presidency and has worsened under Biden. However, with the convincing demonstration of the Democratic martial prowess, attitudes have changed. In the United States of America, fear of the Democrats is especially strong in California and New York, where illegal immigration is bankrupting governments and leading to drastic increases in fraud, assault, sexual assault, and murder, which has been a problem for nearly twenty years. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The sensational Democratic press has taken up the menace of illegal immigration and exploited it to the point of stimulating occasional war scares. If the organizing and ruling capacities of the illegal immigrants and Isis should ever gain control of the enormous working capacity of the great American population, the potential threat to the American World is severe and unprecedented. The impending national conflict might come to a head in the extremely near future. The possibility of a war on American soil has not passed away. We are amid one. The enemies are just girding themselves up to begin. They have already started an adventure as tremendous as the ones that started wars in the Middle East and Africa. The threat of the Isis menace is only a small part of a general reawakening of the Islamic State whose urge to expansion, motivated by the Princes’ Crusade in 1096, might soon send it out over the Pacific and ultimately to southwestern America and to the gates of the United States of America via Mexico. Talk of Isis Peril reached its height just before the attack on the World Trade Centers in 2001, when congressmen spoke openly of inevitable conflict in America. Nations are like organisms in their dependence upon growth and expansion to resist disease and decay. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
As physical vigour represents the strength of man in his struggle for existence, in the same sense military vigour constitutes the strength of nations; ideals, laws and constitutions are but temporary effulgences, and are existent only so long as this strength remains vital. As manhood marks the height of physical vigour among mankind, so the militant success of a nation marks the zenith of its physical greatness. Militancy may be divided into three phases: the militancy of the struggle, the militancy of conquest, and the militancy of supremacy or preservation of ownership. It is in the first stage, the struggle to survive, that the genius of a people reaches its height; the harder this struggle, the more highly developed is the military spirit, with the result that conquerors often arise from desolate wastes or rocky islands. The laws of struggle and survival are universal and unalterable, and the duration of national existence is dependent upon the knowledge of them. Plans to thwart them, to short-cut them, circumvent, to cozen, to scorn and violate [them] is folly such as man’s conceit alone makes possible. Never has this been tried—and man is ever at it—but what the end has been gangrenous and fatal. Congress has warned against possibility of an Isis invasion of the United States of America, and argued that the southern border needs to be closed. Without defense of the southern border, the West Coast stands in deadly danger from Isis and Mexican gangs and cartels. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
In 2023, the Jalisco drug cartel used 260 bomb dropping drones to target police and the Mexican army. At least 42 soldiers, police and suspects were wounded and several killed. The western state of Michoacan has been turned into a warzone with improvised explosive devised (IEDs) trenches, and armored vehicles. Experts are worried that with 20,000,000 people already invading America that without a border wall, Jalisco and Isis will also turn the boundary between Mexico and the United States of America into a warzone. If Kamla wins the 2024 election, Republicans fear that with the help of Gavin Newsom, Kamla will abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and leave the border defenseless. Americans are flouting the laws of nature by permitting the militancy of their people to decline. A decadent tendency to let individual wants take precedence over the necessities of national existence threatens American power throughout the World. The United States of America, submerged by a flood of immigrants who are hostile towards America, is ceasing to be the strong hold of a patriotic people. The day of the America is ending. For the impending struggles between the Middle East and Mexico against America, the latter is ill prepared. There is only one antidote for American decline: greater militancy. The wall alone, seeing that it is incomplete, will be weak in a way, but universal compulsory military service at the southern border might check the already alarming decline. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Self-preservation is the first law of Nature, and this law applies to nation exactly as it applies to individuals. Our American Republic cannot survive unless it obeys the law of survival. Man is by Nature a struggling being; human nature has always been the same. To be unprepared for the struggle is to risk extinction, but preparedness might avert war. The law of the survival of the fittest applies to nations, and the United States of American can assert its fittest only through a national reawakening. At present, without a border wall, some experts are skeptical of the possibility of suppressing war, which is about as difficult as to effectively neutralize the general law which governs all things, namely the survival of the fittest. Life-scripts scenes must be set up and motivated ahead of time, just like theatrical scenes. A simple example is running out of electricity in an electric vehicle. This is nearly always set up two or three days in advance by looking at the gauge, “planning” to charge the car “some time soon,” and then not doing it. In fact, it is possible to run out of electricity “right now: except in a strange car with a broken gauge. It is nearly always an impending event, a pre-planned scene in a loser’s script. Many winners go through a whole lifetime without ever running dry. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Life scripts are based on parental programing, which the child seeks out for three reasons. It gives a purpose to life where it might otherwise be wanting. A child does most things for the sake of people, usually his parents. It gives him an acceptable way to structure his time (acceptable, that is, to his parents). People must be told how to do things. Learning for oneself may be inspiring, but it is not very practical. A man does not become a good pilot by wrecking a few airplanes and learning by his errors. He must learn through other people’s failures, not his own. A surgeon must have a teacher, rather than taking out appendixes one after the other to find out all the things that can go wrong. So, parents program their children by passing on to them what they have learned, or what they think they have learned. If they are losers, they will pass on their loser’s programming, and if they are winners, then they will pass on that kind of program. The long-term patten always has a storyline. While the outcome is determined for better or for worse by parental programming, the child is often free to select his own plot. One cannot talk about the aim of “adjustment” which much of contemporary psychoanalysis has without mentioning at least the problem of the function of psychology in contemporary industrial society. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
This is a society which needs to make man fit in a complicated and hierarchically organized system of production with a minimum of friction. It creates the organization man, a man without conscience or conviction, but one who is proud of being a cog, even if a small one, in a big and imposing organization. He is not to ask questions, not to think critically, not to have any passionate interests, for this would impede the smooth functioning of the organization. However, man is not made to be a thing, he is not made to shun asking questions. Hence, despite “job security,” “old-age pensions” and the satisfaction of belonging to a large and “nationally known” outfit, man is disquieted and not happy. Here the psychologist comes in. By his tests he has already eliminated the more adventurous and rebellious types, and for those who are still not happy with the organization life he offer relief by letting them “express” themselves, by giving them the satisfaction that somebody listens to them and, eventually—and most importantly—by making it clear to them that lack of adjustment is a kind of neurosis, thus helping them to remove those tendencies which stand in the way of full adjustment. The psychologists, using the “right” words from Socrates to Dr. Freud, become the priests of industrial society, helping to fulfill its aims by helping the individual to become the perfectly adjusted organization man. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
As leaders step up to guide the youth, the mature, and the country, they will form Councils. These Councils should not only represent various shades of political, religious, and philosophical convictions but also various fields of activities. Natural and social scientists, individuals from the fields of government, business, management sciences, philosophers, theologians, and artists should be among the members. However, the foremost principle is the integrity and accomplishment of the members which override the principle of well-balanced composition. It hardly needs to be added that the members of these Councils must be persons with a deep concern for the public weal, and hence willing to spend time and energy on their work in the Councils. It is not too farfetched to think that the moral and intellectual weight of such groups could be of considerable influence on the thinking of Americans and by the freshness of its approach attract a great deal of attention. How would the members of the Council be chosen? Quite obviously, they would not be elected as candidates are elected in a political party. And they could not very well be appointed by one supreme figure either, since that would give undue power to one individual. However, the formation of the National Council and of the local Councils appears to be so difficult if one is caught in the old alternative between free election or arbitrary appointment. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
If one liberates oneself from these alternatives and thinkers imaginatively, one will discover that there are methods which are perfectly feasible—although not as neat as the traditional ones. There are quite a number of people known for their integrity and achievement, and it would not be particularly difficult for a group of, let us say, ten to agree on the names of forty or fifty people who should be invited, by asking others who combine wisdom and intelligence what their preferences would be. Naturally, forty or fifty people who were approached would themselves indicate who among those suggested were unacceptable to them, and what others they might suggest. As a result of this procedure, one might get a National Council which would not satisfy everybody and yet which would be fundamentally representative of the American conscience. The method of forming this Council is nonbureaucratic, personalistic, concrete, and, for this very reason, more effective than the traditional methods/ The regional and local Councils could be formed in the same way, possibly assisted by suggestions from the members of the National Council. The Councils, of course, do not satisfy the needs which have been mentioned before: the need of the individual to work actively together with others, to talk, plan, and act together, to do something which is meaningful beyond the money-making activities of everyday life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
To relate in a less alienated fashion than is customary in most relations to others, to make sacrifices, to put in practice norms and values in everyday life, to be open and “vulnerable,” to be imaginative, to rely on one’s own judgment and decision, the formation of a new type of social group is necessary. I propose that this kind of shared activity and interest could occur on two levels: in larger groups of 100 to 300 members who would form “Clubs,” and in much smaller “Groups” of about 25 members, which would follow the same principle but in a much more intensive and absorbing way. If possible, the Clubs should be mixed in age and social class—but only experience would show to what extent practical considerations might make such a mixture difficult; it might be necessary that the Clubs be relatively homogeneous, but this defect could be made up for by an arrangement whereby Clubs with very different kinds of memberships could meet together regularly to exchange views and have personal contact. The Clubs should have a permanent meeting place; this could be a mansion or an attic space, or a school, church, or other building which could be rented at a fee contributed by the members. The meetings, which might take place once a week, should be meetings for exchanging information, discussion, and planning for the dissemination of the ideas of the movement. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
There should also be some relevant practical work undertaken by all members, such as participation in political campaigns, organization of discussion groups among neighbors and friends, engaging political leaders in public debates, problem-oriented care of public functions and community property, care of people—seniors, children, and people in trouble—in the spirit of concern and stimulation rather than of bureaucratic methods. (It has been amply demonstrated that there are many people without degrees who, by their talent and skill, do as good or better work with and for others than the specialist. The groups would have their own cultural life: showing movies, discussing books and ideas, dance music, art—all an active and nonconsumer type. Poets and writers make use of metaphours, analogies, and symbols to express truths of experience that cannot be expressed in more prosaic terms. For example, how else can one describe the experience of being in the company of a very dependent person except to say, “He is a lech who such my blood every time he comes near.” To say, “He is a leech,” is not to classify him as a zoologist would, but does point to a characteristic of his that is real. The ability to see such similarities between things, people, or actions and other phenomena that seem remote assists a person to develop an enriched understanding of the World. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Metphour and analogy are ways to foster insight in a person who is having difficulties in living; psychotherapists frequently interpret a patient’s dilemmas in metaphouric and analogical ways, in the hope that the patient will be assisted, thereby, to see the situation more clearly or in a new perspective. Thus, a patient might complain that he cannot give up his girlfriend, even though she no longer wishes to see him; he suffers the tortures of the demand when he is not in her company, yet he only fights with her when they are together. The therapist might say, “You are addicted to her company the way an addict is to heroin. You have withdrawal symptoms. The patient might then discover that he can “kick” the habit of seeing his girl, and get on with a livable life. Metaphour is a way to make sense out of something new that appears within one’s horizon. Novel phenomena may be frightening. To use metaphours, analogies, or symbols to describe them is to “tame” them, to note the similarity between something novel and something old and familiar. Metaphouric thinking is also a way to bring about “breakthroughs” in scientific fields of inquiry. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
The behaviourists say, for example, that the human being is an organism, like a tiger or or butterfly. They then proceed to study human beings with methods proven useful in the study of these other living entities. Such description is a case of subtle use of metaphor, or more precisely, analogy. To day that human beings are terrestrial beings conceals that fact that they are like other living creatures on Earth, but not entirely like them; they have some capacities that differ from those found in other living species. To say that human beings are machines is likewise to conceal the analogy that has been seen by the discerning inquirer. Human beings are not machines, so that to understand a machine is to understand something about human beings. Scientists who have the capacity to employ new metaphours, similes, and analogies are frequently more creative in their fields of research and theory than those confined to only one model of metaphour. This brings us to the defensive inhibitions and evasive maneuvers in which a resistance may express itself. These forms of blocking the way are as innumerable as the variations in personality, and they may develop at any point along the way. They may prevent a person from staring to analyze a problem; they may impair the value of his free associations; they may block his understanding; they may invalidate his findings. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
An inhibition toward starting to analyze a problem may be indiscernible, for as a rule a person who is working alone does not analyze himself regularly anyhow. He should not concern himself about the periods in which he feels no need for analysis, though a resistance may be operative in such periods too. However, he should be very wary about the times when he feels acutely distressed, disgruntled, fatigued, irritated, indecisive, apprehensive, and nevertheless refrains from any attempt to clarify the condition. He may then feel a conscious reluctance to analyze himself although he is fully aware that by doing so he would at least give himself a chance to get out of the distress and learn something from it. Or he may find any number of excuses for not making the attempt—he is too busy, too fired, there is too little time. This form of resistance is likely to be more frequent in self-analysis than in professional analysis because in the latter, while the patient may forget or cancel an hour occasionally, there is sufficient pressure of routine, politeness, and money to prevent him from doing it very often. In the process of free association, the defensive inhibitions and evasions operate in devious ways. They may make a person flatly unproductive. They may lead him to “figure out” rather than let his mind run freely. They may cause his thoughts to wander off on a tangent, or, rather, produce a kind of dozing off in which he forgets to keep track of the associations that emerge. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
A resistance can block his understanding by producing blind spots toward certain factors. Either he will pay no attention to such factors, or he will fail to grasp their meaning or significance, even though he is perfectly capable of doing so; there were several examples of this in Clare’s analysis. And the feelings or thoughts that emerge may be minimized, at the beginning Clare minimized her resentment and her unhappiness concerning her relationship with her significant other, Peter. Furthermore, the resistance may lead to a search in a wrong direction. Here the danger is not so much in being altogether fanciful in the interpretation—that is, reading something into the associations that is not there—as in picking out an existing factor without considering the context in which it appears, and thereby integrating it wrongly. Clare’s interpretation of the memory of her doll Kimberly is an example. Finally, when a person does arrive at a real finding a resistance operating through inhibitions or evasions can spoil its constructive value in many ways. Perhaps he will invalidate the significance of his finding. Or instead of working at it patiently he may precociously decide that conscious efforts to overcome the difficulty are all that is needed. Or he may refrain from following it up, because he “forgets” about it, does not “feel like” doing it, or for some reason or other simply does not get around to doing it. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
And when it is necessary for him to take a clear stand he may, in conscious food faith, resort to one or another compromise solution and thereby deceive himself about the result he has attained. He will believe then—Clare did several times—that he has solved a problem though actually he is still far from a solution. False compassion, like false sentimentality, does harm under the delusion that it is doing good. The abolition of flogging in England and the eruption of youthful merciless, brutal, criminal violence are not unconnected. The legal punishment of birching was not cruel: but the use of it on the wrong persons—starving men, for instance—was cruel. For hooligans and bullies it is a fit deterrent. Some students have express disagreement with my use of the term “compassion” when describing the enlightened man’s loftiest social quality. They believe the common term “love” would be more correct. Now one of the fundamental terms of the New Testament is, in the original Greek, “agape”—which is always translated as “love.” However, this is unsatisfactory because man’s love may be selfishly motivated whereas “agape” has the definite implication of unselfish, or better, selfless love. And the only English word which I can find to express this idea is the one which I have used, that is, “compassion.” #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
If we cast out its selfish, sentimental, or sensual associations, the word “love” would be enough to express this attitude, but because these associations thickly encrust its meaning, the word “compassion” is better used. The kind of compassion here meant is not condescending toward others. Rather does it stretch out its hands through innate fellow-feeling for them. It puts itself in the shoes of others and intellectually experiences life from their standpoint. Hatred ceaseth not by hatred. It ceaseth only by compassionate love. This is why Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Many people, who wish to do what is ethically right and feel that their best course is to follow the ethics prescribed by such great souls as Jesus or the Holy Ghost, get confused here and wallow in sentimentality under the mistaken impression that they are following these counsels. However, if they believe that Jesus taught us to practice outwardly and practically unconditional and universal forgiveness, the sentimentalists misunderstood Him. On the contrary, He made repentance the prerequisite of such visible forgiveness. Those who refuse to repent and persist in wrongdoing must be inwardly and silently forgiven, but otherwise left to suffer the Universal Law of their actions. What is really meant is that we should be big-hearted enough not to exclude our enemies from our goodwill to all mankind and that we should be intelligent enough to comprehend that they are only acting according to their own experience and knowledge of life. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
This is to “forgive them for they know not what they do.” When we hold them in thought and when we imagine them with feeling, we must do so without anger, without hatred, without bitterness. All doctrines which are based on hatred emanate from the most morbid of the evil forces. Hatred is always their indicator just as compassion is always an indicator of the good forces. By practicing great-hearted compassion, we help to counteract whatever ill-feelings have been generated. Therefore let us not at anytime or under any provocation lose ourselves in emotions of resentment, bitterness, and hatred. We must not hate the most misguided of our enemies. We may oppose their false ideas resolutely, we may hate their sins, but not the sinners. We must pity even the most violent of them and not spoil our own character by accepting their example. We must not sink to the low level of seeking revenge. The desire for revenge is a primitive one. It is apposite to the tiger and reptile kingdom, but in the human kingdom it should be replaced by the desire for justice. These two attributes—hatred and pity—stand at opposite poles to each other: the one as being the worst of all human vices and the other as being the best of all human virtues. This, then, is a further reason why we must take care not to fall into the all-too-east habit of hating enemies. For they are still members of this great human family of ours, still creatures planted like us on this woeful plant both to learn its immediate lessons and to share its ultimate redemption. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
The Sacramento Fire Department is a versatile and forward-thinking agency dedicated to ensuring the utmost safety and well-being of the City of Sacramento. “A friend of mine died in that big warehouse fire. He and his boss, Captain X, went in there. They both died. Some people said they shouldn’t have. Well, they had to go in there because they thought it was occupied. There was so much water upstairs that the weight of it caused the floors to collapse. Three floors went down, and they were smashed inside the rubble, flatter than a pancake. I got a look at that, and thought, ‘Wow, he was my age.” This was right after my own close call. Before that I had this feeling I would never get hurt, only the older guys get hurt. I’ve been to a lot of funerals, but I’ve never seen anything like this. You’ve got five thousand firemen, the best, the strongest, toughest guys in the World, all crying. There were different funeral homes, but at the final funeral home we lined the streets with our brothers, give thousand from all over the country. They all got tears in their eyes. They don’t even know this guy from Adam, and they are all crying. It was tough.” The Sacramento Fire Department provides protection of life, property, and the environment from the effects of fire, medical emergencies, and hazards in the safest, most efficient manner possible. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And always remember to raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus Christ, to respect law and order, to treat others with compassion and dignity, and to buy American cars and other American made products. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it Stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with liberty and Justice for all. There lives a God! When life is waning, His love is near and He shall save; my years are all of His ordaining, He only taketh what He gave. The grave shall not end all for me, Thou livest, God, I live in Thee. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
The Winchester Mystery House
Curious about what secrets this hotel holds? Don’t be scared to book your stay this Halloween season, we are dying to have you ☠️
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Demise of the American Empire
We believe in being honest. Complete honesty is necessary for our salvation. If we accept salvation on the terms it is offered to us, we have got to be honest in every thought, in our reflections, in our meditations, in our private circles, in our deals, in our declarations, and in every act of our lives. God is honest and just in all things. “I perceive that it has been made known unto you, by the testimony of His word, that He cannot walk in crooked paths; neither doth he vary from that which he hath said; neither hath He a shadow of turning from the right to the left, or from that which is right to that which is wrong; therefore, His course is one eternal round,” reports Alma 7.20. Honest people love truth and justice. They are honest in their words and actions. They do not lie, steal, or cheat. If you do what is righteous, when you think about it, there would be to reason to lie. Those who choose to cheat and lie and deceive and misrepresent become slaves of the enemy. Lying is intentionally deceiving others. Bearing false witness is one form of lying. The Lord is not pleased with dishonesty, and we will have to account for our lies. “And our spirits must have become like unto Him, and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies, in misery, like unto himself; yea, to that being who beguiled our first parents, who transformeth himself nigh unto an angel of light, and stirreth up the children of men unto secret combinations of murder and all manner of secret works of darkness,” reports 2 Nephi 9.9. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The altruistic ideal is set up for aspirants as a practical means of using the will to curb egoism and crush its pettiness. However, these things are to be done to train the aspirant in surrendering his personal self to his higher self, not in making him subservient to other human wills. The primacy of purpose is to be given to spiritual self-realization, not to social service. This above all others is the goal to be kept close to his heart, not meddling in the affairs of others. Only after he has attended adequately—and to some extent successfully—to the problem of himself can he have the right to look out for or intrude into other people’s problems. This does not mean, however, that he is to become narrowly self-centered or entirely selfish. On the contrary, the wish to confer happiness and the willingness to seek the welfare of mankind should be made the subject of solemn dedication at every crucial stage, every inspired hour, of his quest. However, prudence and wisdom bid him wait for a more active altruistic effort until he has lifted himself to a higher level, found his own inner strength, knowledge, and peace, and has learnt to stand unshaken by the storms, passions, desires, and greeds of ordinary life. “And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God—He will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbour; there is no harm in this; and do all these things, for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God,” reports 2 Nephi 28.8. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Hence it is better for the beginner to keep himself any pretension to altruism, remaining silent and inactive about them. The dedication may be made, but it should be made in the secrecy of the inmost heart. Better than talk about it or premature activity for it, is the turning of attention to the work of purifying himself, his feelings, motives, mind, and deeds. Just as the word compassion is so often mistaken for a foolish and weak sentimentality, so the words egoless, unselfishness, and unself-centeredness are equally mistaken for what they are not. They are so often thought to mean nonseparatness from other individuals or the surrender of personal rights to other individuals or the setting aside of duty to us for the sake of serving other individuals. This is often wrong. The philosophical meaning of egoism is that attitudes of separateness not from another individual on the same imperfect level as us but from the one universal life-power which is behind all individuals on a deeper level than them all. When we allow the personal ego to rule us, when we allow the personal self to prevent the one universal self from entering our field of awareness, we are separated from that infinite mind. Jesus’ preachment of love of one’s neighbour as oneself is impossible to follow in all fullness until one has attained the height whereon his own true self dwells. #RanolphHarris 3 of 22
Obedience to it would mean identifying oneself with the neighbour’s physical pain and emotional suffering so that they were felt not less keenly than one’s own. One could not bear that when brought into contact with all kinds of human sorrow that shadow of life. It could be borne only when one had crushed its power to affect one’s own feelings and disturb one’s own equilibrium. Therefore, such love would bring unbearable suffering. By actively identifying oneself with those who are sorrowing, by pushing one’s sympathy with them to its extreme point, one gets disturbed and weakened. This does not improve one’s capacity to help the sufferer, but only lessens it. To love others is praiseworthy, but it must be coupled with balance and with reason or it will lose itself ineffectually in the air. Not to let his interest in other matters or his sympathy with other persons carry him away from his equilibrium, his inner peace, but to stop either when it threatens to agitate his mind or disturb his feelings, is wisdom. Love of the divine is our primary duty. Love of our neighbour is only a secondary one. Compassion is the highest moral value, the noblest human feeling, the purest creature-love. It is the final social expression of man’s divine soul. For he is able to feel with and for another man only because both are in reality related in harmony by the presence of that soul in each one. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
There must be an end, a limit to his sacrifices on behalf of others. They must not play upon his kindness to the extent of ruining his own life. He may help them, certainly, but there are various other ways to do so than by surrendering what is essential to his own life to satisfy their emotional demands or material desires. For this notion of love is a sadly limited one. To bestow it only on a wife or a child, a sweetheart, or a sister, is to bestow it in anticipation of its being returned. Man finds in time that such giving which hopes for a getting is not enough. Love cannot stop there. It seeks to grow beyond the restricted circle of a few friends and relations. Life itself lead him on to transcend it. And this he does firstly, by transcending the lure of the pitiful transient flesh and secondly, by transforming love into something nobler and rarer—compassion. In the divine self-giving of this wonderful quality and in its expansion until all mankind is touched, love finally fulfills itself. Jesus taught, “Thou shalt not steal,” reports Matthew 19.18. Stealing is taking something that does not belong to us. When we take what belongs to someone else or to a store or to the community without permission, we are stealing. Taking merchandise or supplies from an employer is stealing. To become completely honest, we must look carefully at our lives. If there are ways in which we are being even the least bit dishonest, we should repent of them immediately. When we are completely honest, we cannot be corrupted. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
The ideas of activation, responsibility, participation—that is, of the humanization of technological society—can find full expression only in a movement which is not bureaucratic, not connected with the political machines, and which is the result of active and imaginative efforts by those who share the same aims. Such a movement itself, in its organization and method, would be expressive of the aim to which it is devoted: to educate its members for the new kind of society in the process of striving for it. The first step would be the formation of a National Council which could be called the “Voice of America Conscience.” I think of a group of, say, fifty Americas whose integrity and capability are unquestioned. While they might have different religious and political convictions, they would share the humanist aims which are the basis for the humanization of technological society. They would deliberate and issue statements which, because of the weight of those who issued them, would be newsworthy, and because of the truth and rationality of their contents would win attention from at least a large sector of the American public. Such Councils could also be formed on a local level, dealing with the general questions bet specifically with the practical questions relevant for the city or state which they represented. One could imagine that there might be a whole organization of Councils of the Voice of American Conscience, with a nationally representative group and many local groups following basically the same aims. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The National Council would deal with the broad aspects of national affairs, that is, foreign and domestic policies, while the local councils would take up the questions relevant to state and communities, again concerned with broad aspects rather than with details of execution. For example, the National Council would debate the question of the Afghanistan War, our foreign policy in Asia, our assistance to the development of less affluent nations and Ukraine, the reconstruction of our cities, the problems of values, education, and culture. The local councils would debate problems of conservation, city planning, slum clearance, relocating industries, etcetera. These debates would not be conducted on a general and abstract level. On the contrary, they would constitute the best thinking of the best minds in America. Often the Counsil would form subcommittees to study special problems and call upon specialists for advice. It would be up to the Voice of American Conscience (1) to clarify the issues, (2) to show the real possibilities and alternatives, (3) to recommend solutions, (4) to respond to statements and actions by other important social bodies, and to any criticism of their own recommendations. The examination of the issues and the recommended solutions would be rooted in the rationality and humanist values which the best in American culture stands for. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
These Councils would balance the structure based on political power represented by the government, the legislature, and the political parties. They would be the voice of reason and conscience, addressing themselves to the organs of power and to the population. Whenever the Councils did not arrive at unanimous solutions, one or more minority reports would be issued. It is easy to underestimate what such Council could do by pointing out that they would have no power. This is true in an obvious sense; it is not quite so true in a more subtle sense. Technological society, more than any society before, rests upon knowledge, on education in science and rational thought. While the average professional is not a true scientist but a mere technician, the development of scientific ideas depends on the development of scientific theory; this means that economic and political progress rest in the long run on the progress of culture. Those who represent culture have no direct power; but since the progress of society depends on their contribution, their voice will be taken seriously by a new class of people with college educations (teachers, technicians, programmers, laboratorians, research workers, professionals, etcetera) whose cooperation is a vital necessity for the functioning of the social system. Extreme importance should be attached to the training of will-power and the habit of making firm decisions, also the habit of being always ready to accept responsibilities. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
The deliberate training of fine and noble traits of character in our schools today is almost negative. In the future much more emphasis will have to be laid on this side of our educational work. Loyalty, self-sacrifice, and discretion are virtues which a great nation most possess. And the teaching and development of these in the school is a more important matter than many other things now included in the curriculum. To make the children give up habits of complaining, whining, and howling when they are hurt, etcetera, also belongs to this part of their training. If the educational system fails to teach the child at an early age, when the boy has grown to be the man and is, for example, in the trenches, the postal service is used for nothing else than to send home letter of weeping and complaint. If our youths, during their years in the primary schools, had had their minds crammed with a little less knowledge, and if instead they had been better taught how to be masters of themselves, it would have served us well during the 2020-2024 years. Lacking an influential military caste, the United States of America never developed a strong military cult audacious enough to glorify war for its own sake. Such outbursts as Roosevelt’s “Strenuous Life” speech were rare; and it was also rare for an American writer to extol war for its effects upon the race, although Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce, one of Mahan’s patrons, once declared that war is one of the great agencies of human conflict and that “strife in one form or another in the organic would seems to be the law of existence…Suspend the struggle, well called the battle of life, for a brief space, and death claims the victory.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Most writers on war seemed to agree with Spencer that military conflict had been highly useful in developing primitive civilization but has now long outlived its value as an instrument of progress. The advocates of preparedness did not usually take the stand that there is anything inherently desirable in war, but rather quoted the old maxim, “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.” “Let us worship peace, indeed,” conceded Mahan, “as the goal at which humanity must hope to arrive; but let us not fancy that peace is to be had as a boy wrenches an unripe fruit from a tree.” Others took the position that strife is inherent in the nature of things and must be anticipated as an unhappy necessity. Once the martial fever of the short and easy war with Spain had subsided, the psychology of the American people between 1898 and 1917 was surprisingly nervous and defensive for a nation that was rapidly rising in stature as a World power. Encouraged by the eugenics movement, men talked of racial degeneracy, of race suicide, of decline of western civilization, of the effeteness of the western peoples, of the foreign peril. Warnings of decay were most commonly coupled with exhortations to revivify the national spirit. The higher races can live only live in the temperate zone, and will be forever barred from effective colonization in the tropics. Overpopulation and economic exigencies will give rise to state socialism, which will extend its tentacles into every corner of western national life. Because of the increasing dependence of the citizen upon the state, nationalism will grow, and religion, family life, and old-fashioned morality will decline. There will also be a consolidation of peoples into great centralized empires, for only these will have the capacity to survive. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Large armies, great cities, huge national debts will hasten cultural eclipse. The decline of competition, coupled with state education, will render the intellectual more mechanical in its operations and deprive it of the initiative that alone is capable of outstanding achievement in the arts. The result will be a World of old people, scientific rather than esthetic, unprogressive, stable, without adventure, energy, brightness, hope, or ambition Meanwhile other races will not fail in vitality, for biology shows that some are more fertile than others. Genocide is a horrible idea, but other nations will on the contrary be likely to challenge the supremacy of western civilization by industrial rather than military means. Perhaps the best that the governing races can do is face the future with courage and dignity. If all this should come to pass, it is idle to say that our pride of place will not be humiliated. “We were struggling among ourselves for supremacy in a World which we thought of as destined to belong to the Aryan races and to the Christian faith; to the letters and arts and charm of social manners which we have inherited from the best times of the past. We shall wake to find ourselves elbowed and hustled, and perhaps even thrust aside by peoples who we looked down upon as servile, and thought of as bound always to minister to our needs. The solitary consolation will be that the changes have been inevitable. It has been our work to organize and create, to carry peace and law and order over the World, that others may enter in and enjoy. Yet in some of us the feeling of caste is so strong that we are not sorry to think we shall have passed away before it arrives,” reports Charles Pearson. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Pearson’s fears were the beginning of a reaction from the optimism expressed by Fiske and Strong in the 1880’s. For middle-class intellectuals, reeling under the shock of the panic of 1893 and the deep social discontents of the prolonged depression that followed, his prophecies of doom had a ring of truth. They were particularly suited to the morbid mood that overcame Henry Adams in the 1890’s. He wrote to C.M. Gaskell: “I am satisfied that Pearson is right, and that the dark races are gaining on us, as they have already done in Haiti, and are doing throughout the West Indies and our Southern States. In another fifty years, at the same rate of movement, the white races will have to reconquer the tropics by war and nomadic invasion, or be shut up, norther of the fortieth parallel.” Pearson’s fears are once again being heard echoing through Congress. Republicans realize that with the southern border being invaded by 20,000,000 illegal immigrants in the past four years, and national security being threated that is Donald Trump does not win the 2024 election, not only will they lose the nation, but it could also be the demise of the American Empire. The American Empire will have to fight for its existence. It will not gain or secure nor secure this existence by singing documents like that of The American Rescue Plan. However, for its existence and defence it will precisely need those things which our present system believes can be repudiated. The more worthy its form and its inner national being, the greater will be the envy and opposition of its adversaries. The best defence will not be in the arms it possesses but in its citizens. Bastions of fortresses will not save it, but the living wall of its men and women, filled with an ardent love for their country and a passionate spirit of national patriotism. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Americans must realize that the science may also be a means of promoting a spirit of pride in the nation. Not only the history of the World but the history of civilization as a whole must be taught in the light of this principle. An inventor must appear great not only as an inventor but also, and even more so, as a member of the nation. The admiration aroused by the contemplation of a great achievement must be transformed into a feeling of pride and satisfaction that a man of one’s own race has chosen to accomplish it. However, out of the abundance of great names in American history, the greatest will have to be selected and presented to our young generation in such a way as to become solid pillars of strength to support the national spirit. The spirit of nationalism and a feeling for social justice must be fused into one sentiment in the hearts of the youth. Then a day will come when a nation of citizens will arise which will be welded together through a common love and a common pride that shall be invincible and indestructible forever. The dread of chauvinism, which is a symptom of our time, is a sign of its impotence. Since our epoch not only lacks everything in the nature of exuberant energy but even finds such a manifestation disagreeable, fate will never elect it for the accomplishment of any great deeds. If they had not been inspired by ardent and even hysterical passions, the greatest changes that have taken place on this Earth would have been inconceivable, but only by the bourgeois virtues of peacefulness and order. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
One thing is certain: our World is facing a great revolution. The only question is whether the outcome will be propitious for the American portion of mankind or whether the everlasting Democrat will profit by it. By educating the young generation along the right lines, the American Empire will have to see to it that a generation of mankind is formed which will be adequate to this supreme combat that will decide the destines of the World. That nation will conquer which will be the first to take this road. If they are allowed to go on, not only do certain life courses have predictable outcomes, but a certain dialogue of specific words spoken a certain way is necessary to establish the proper motivation for the outcome. In both the theater and in real life, the cues must be memorized and spoken exactly right so that other people will respond in a way that justifies and advances the action. If the hero changes his lines and his ego state, the other people respond differently. The two of them might then take off together instead of skulking around the castle—a bad play, but probably a better life. A script must be rehearsed and rewritten before it is ready for the most dramatic performance. In the theater there are readings, rewrites, rehearsals, and tryouts before the big time. A life script states off in childhood in a primitive form called the protocol. Here the other players are limited to parents, brothers, and sisters; or in an institution or foster home, to tablemates and those in charge. These all play their roles rather rigidly because every family is an institution, and the child does not learn much flexibility from them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
As he moves into adolescence, he begins to meet more people. He seeks out those who will play the roles his script requires (they will do it because he plays some role their scripts require). Currently, he rewrites his script to take account of his new environment. The basic plot remains the same, but the action is a little different. In most cases (except for adolescent suicide or murder), this is rehearsal—something like a small-town tryout. Through several such adaptations, he gets it into final form for the biggest production of all—the farewell performance, the final payoff on the script. If it is a “good” one, it takes place at a farewell dinner. If it is a “bad” one, he says good-by from a hospital bed, the door of a prison cell or psychiatric ward, the gallows, or the morgue. The whole organization of education and training which the American Empire is to build up must take as its crowing task the work of instilling into the hearts and brains of the youth entrusted to it the racial instinct and understanding of the racial idea. No boy or girl must leave school without having attained a clear insight into the meaning of patriotism and the importance of maintaining chastity unadulterated. Thus, the first indispensable condition for the preservation of our nation will have been established and thus the future cultural progress of our people will be assured. Almost every script has roles for “good guys” and “bad guys,” and for “winners” and “losers.” What is considered good or bad, and what is a winner or a loser, is something peculiar to each script, but it is noticeably clear that every script has these four characters, sometimes combined in two roles. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
In a cowboy script, for example, the good guy is a winner, and the bad guy is a loser. Good means brave, quick on the draw, honest, and pure; bad may mean cowardly, slow on the draw, crooked, and interested in girls. A winner is someone who survives; a loser is hanged or gets shot. In a soap opera, a winner is a girl who gets a man; a loser is a girl who loses a man. In a paper-shuffle opera, the winner is the man who gets the best contract or the most proxies; a loser is a man who does not know how to shuffle papers. In script analysis, winners are called “princes” or princesses,” and losers are called “frogs.” The object of script analysis is to turn frogs into princes and princesses. To do this, the therapist has to find out who the good guys and the bad guys are in the patient’s script, and also what kind of a winner he can be. The patient fights being a winner because he is not in treatment for that purpose, but only to be made into a braver loser. This is natural enough, since if he becomes a braver loser, he can follow his script more comfortably, whereas if he becomes a winner, he must throw away all or most of his script and start over, which most people are reluctant to do. All scripts, whether in the theater or in real life, are essentially answers to the basic question of human encounter: “What do you say after you say Hello?” The Oedipal drama and the Oedipal life, for example, both hinges entirely on this question. Whenever Oedipus meets an older man, he first says Hello. The next thing he has to say, driven by his script, is: “Wanna fight?” If the older man say “No,” Oedipus has nothing further to say to him, and can only stand dumbly wondering whether to talk about the weather, the conduct of the current wars, or the terrible display on the Olympics mocking Christianity. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The easiest way out is to mumble “Pleased to meetcha,” “Si vales bene est, ego valeo,” or “Everything in moderation,” and go on his way. However, if the older one says “Yes,” Oedipus answers “Groovy!” because now he has found his man and he know what to say next. To conceptualize something is to fit it into a class. Such abstracting and classifying is essential in human existence, because it frees a person to act in service of needs once the person has classified what has just been perceived. If I classify a person over there as a woman, and a married woman at that, I act differently toward her than if I classify her as an unmarried woman. When we conceptualize, however, we “close down” our perception, and we no longer notice the continuing disclosure of the being in question. Once I identified someone as “Mother,” I assume I know her, know what to expect of mothers in general and of mine in particular. In fact, concepts of persons and things inevitably go out of date, because every person and everything is more than we presently believe to be the case’ and everything changes in time. My mother today is not identical with my mother yesterday. In self-analysis resistances express themselves in the same three ways, but with an inevitable difference. Clare’s self-analysis produced only once an open and direct resistance, but it produced a great deal of diversified inhibition toward the analytical work and much evasive maneuvering. Occasionally, Clare felt a conscious emotional reaction to her analytical findings—such as her shock at discovering her sponging attitude to loved ones—but such reactions did not prevent her further work. And I believe that this is a typical picture of the way resistances operate in self-analysis. At any rate, it is a picture that we might reasonably expect. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Emotional reactions to the findings are bound to occur: the person will feel apprehensive, ashamed, guilty, or irritated about what he discovers in himself. However, these reactions do not assume the proportions they do in professional analysis. One reason for this is that there is no analyst with whom he can engage in a defensive fight, or whom he can make responsible: he is thrown back upon himself. Another reason is that he usually dies with himself more gingerly than an analyst would: he will sense the danger far ahead and almost automatically shrink back from a straight approach, resorting instead to one or another means of avoiding the problem for the time being. What does the patient want? If he has serious symptoms such as psychogenetic headaches, or a wash compulsion, or if he suffers from impotence, he wants to be cured of his symptoms. This is what motivated most of Dr. Freud’s patients to seek analytic help. In general, it is not too difficult to cure such symptoms psychoanalytically and it is, if anything, an underestimation to assume that at least 50 percent of such patients are cured. However, in the last eighty years, these patients with symptoms no longer constitute the majority of those seeking the help of the psychoanalyst. An increasing number of people come who do not suffer from any “symptom” in the traditional sense, but who suffer from what the French called over a century and a half ago la maladie du siècle; they suffer from a general unhappiness, from lack of satisfaction in their work, from lack of happiness in their marriages, from the fact that “they are without joy in the midst of plenty,” to use a Biblical expression. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
This new type of patient often seeks nothing but the relief which the psychoanalytic procedure can give, even when it is not successful; the satisfaction of having somebody to talk to, of “belonging” to a cult, having a “philosophy.” The aim of therapy is often that of helping the person to be better adjusted to existing circumstances, to “reality” as it is frequently called; mental health is often considered to be nothing but this adjustment or, to put it differently, a state of mind in which one’s individual unhappiness is reduced to the level of the general unhappiness. The real problem, of man’s loneliness and alienation, of his lack of a productive interest in life, need not even be touched in this type of psychoanalysis. The purpose of most helping professions, including guidance counseling, is to enhance the personal development, the psychological growth toward a socialized maturity, of its clients. The effectiveness of any member of the profession is most adequately measured in terms of the degree to which, in his work with his clients, he achieves this goal. Our knowledge of the elements which bring about constructive change in personal growth is in its infant stages. Such factual knowledge as we currently possess indicates that a primary change-producing influence is the degree to which the client experiences certain qualities in his relationship with his counselor. In a variety of clients—normal, maladjusted, and psychotic—with many different counselors and therapists, and studying the relationships from the vantage point of the client, the therapist, or the uninvolved observer, certain qualities in the relationship are quite uniformly found to be associated with personal growth and change. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
These elements are not constituted of technical knowledge or ideological sophistication. They are personal human qualities—something the counselor experiences, not something he knows. Constructive personal growth is associated with the counselor’s realness, with his genuine and unconditional liking for his client, with his sensitive understanding of his client’s private World, and with his ability to communicate these qualities in himself to the client. These findings have some far-reaching implications for the theory and practice of guidance counseling and psychotherapy, and for the training of workers in these fields. Compassion is an emotion felt by one ego when considering the suffering condition of another ego. However, spiritual development eventually lifts itself above all emotions, by which I do not of course mean above all feeling. The wish to help another person should not spring out of compassion alone, nor out of the aspiration to do what is right alone, nor out of the satisfaction derived from practicing virtue for its own sake alone. It should certainly come out of all these, but it should also come even more out of the breaking down of the ego itself. With that gone, there will be a feeling of oneness with all living creatures. This practice of self-identification with them is the highest form of love. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to provide a sustainable quality of life for the entire Sacramento community. They achieve this by protecting and preventing the loss of life and property through professional and efficient planning, preparation, training, fire prevention, public education, and deliver of emergency services. “In my early days, I never realized the heat and the smoke conditions in a fire and the punishment the fellows take in there. And along with that was the damage. You see people’s treasures just absolutely destroyed. Again, when you have people burned and killed, it isn’t that detaching thing it was before you got involved. And seeing the teamwork of the men, it’s fantastic. I loved from a quiet engine company to the downtown district of Sacramento. Down there is where I grew on the job, because of the experience in various types of fire. We got everything from ships to grain elevators to high rises and warehouses, and slum housing. I thought it was great. The guys are certainly aware of the dangers and are safety conscious. Once you become an officer, you become even more acutely aware of it. It’s a different thing to go diving in yourself, from sending somebody else in there. And as you go higher in rank, you’re sending more and more people into danger. There are times when the responsibility is awesome. But of course, when you get to the scene of the fire, you are methodically thinking of different things, and it really doesn’t enter your mind. It’s in the back of your mind, but you can’t dwell on it. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
“I’ve been to many funerals of friends of mine who were killed. You know that it can happen, you read about it all the time, but when it happens to a firefighter it’s just like a person in your family dying, completely unexpected, like possibly in an auto accident. You know it’s there, but you kind of think it isn’t going to happen to you. And when it does, it’s an awful blow. But I have it, the danger, really affect the job. I’ve never worried about it going to a fire, or worried about myself. When you come back, though, you kind of second-guess everything—should I have done this, what if that happened—and you learn that way.” Exceeding the needs and expectations of those they serve with the highest level of valor, integrity and commitment is what the Sacramento Fire Department is dedicated to doing. Please donate to the Sacramento Fire Department and you could save lives and property. They provide optimum prevention and protection to our community. There lives a God! Each finite creature proclaims His rule on sea and land; throughout all changing forms of nature is clearly shown His mighty hand. In every place is heard the call: The Lord of Host has made us all. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. Remember to raise your children to love America, to love God and Jesus Christ, to respect law and order, buy goods made in America, and be kind and respectful to everyone, especially their elders. There lives a God! #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
The Winchester Mystery House
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
War Worn World
What depressed me more than anything when I was a youth is that I had been born into an age that honored only criminals and those who do not accept the norms of society. The surge of large waves of crime needs to calm down so that the future will belong only to peaceful competition. More and more California and New York have begun to resemble businesses that mutually undercut the federal government, steals customers and orders, and try to outwit the federal government in every way, by making protests are loud as they are dangerous. This development has not only seemed to progress, but the United States of America is being transformed into a huge department store for the most skillful manipulators and most ruthless executives. Charles A. Conant, a prominent journalist and economist troubled about the necessity of finding an outlet for surplus capital, “if the entire fabric of the present economic order is not to be shaken by a social revolution,” argued that “the law of self-preservation, as well as the of the survival of the fittest, is urging our people on in a path which is undoubtedly a departure from the policy of the past, but which is inevitably marked out by the new conditions and requirements of the present.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 25A
If the country did not seize upon its opportunities at once, Conant warned against the possibility of decadence. Another writer denied that a policy of colonial expansion was anything novel in American history. We had colonized the West. The question was not whether we should shift our colonizing heritage into new channels. “We must not forget that the Anglo-Saxon race is expansive.” Although the Anglo-Saxon mystique was called upon in the interests of expansion by might, it also had its more pacific side. Its devotees had usually recognized a powerful bond with England; the historians of the Anglo-Saxon school, stressing the common political heritage, wrote about the American Revolution as if it were a temporary misunderstanding in a long history of common political evolution, or a welcome stimulant to flagging Anglo-Saxon liberties. One outgrowth of the Anglo-Saxon legend was a movement toward an Anglo-American alliance which came to rapid fruition in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Despite its unflagging conviction of racial superiority, this movement was peaceful rather than militaristic in its motivation; for its followers generally believed that an Anglo-American understanding, alliance, or federation would usher in a “golden age” of universal peace and freedom. No possible power or combination of powers would be strong enough to challenge such a union. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
This “English-speaking people’s league of God for the permanent peace of this war-worn World,” as Senator Beveridge called it, would be the next stage in the World’s evolution. Advocates of Anglo-American unity believed that Spencer’s transition from militant to pacific culture, and Tennyson’s “Parliament of Man the Federation of the World,” were about to become a reality. James K. Hosmer had appealed in 1890 for an “English-Speaking Fraternity,” powerful enough to withstand any challenge by the Slavs, Hindus, or Chinese. This coalescence of like-minded states would be but the first step toward a brotherhood of humanity. Yet it was not until 1897 that American interest in an English alliance resulted in a movement of consequence, which received the support of publicists and statesmen as well as litterateurs and historians. During the war with Spain, when continental nations took a predominantly hostile attitude toward American interest, Britain’s friendliness stood out in welcome relief. Common fears of Russia and a feeling of identity of interests in the Far East were added to the notion of a common racial destiny. The Anglophobia which had been so persistent among American politicians—Roosevelt and Lodge had been among the bitterest—was considerably relieved. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
The antiimperialist Carl Schurz felt that what he rather prematurely took to be the complete dissipation of anti-English feeling was one of the best results of the Spanish-American War. Richard Olney—who as Cleveland’s Secretary of State during the Venezuela dispute had defiantly told Britain that the fiat of the United States of America is a law in the Western Hemisphere—now wrote an article on “The International Isolation of the United States” to point out the benefits of British trade and to warn against pursuing an anti-British policy at a time when our country stood alone in the World. Arguing that “family quarrels” were a thing of the past, Olney expressed his hope for Anglo-American diplomatic cooperation, and reminded his readers: “There is a patriotism of race as well as of country.” Even the navalist Mahan approved of the British, and although he had felt for some time that a movement for union was premature, he was sufficiently friendly to be content to let the British retain naval supremacy. For a short time at the close of the century the Anglo-Saxon movement became the rage among the upper classes, and statesmen who seriously of a possible political alliance. The Anglo-Saxon cult, however, had to pull against the great mass of the population, whose ethnic composition and cultural background render them immune to its propaganda; and even among those of Anglo-Saxon lineage the dynamic appeal of the cult was confined to the years of excitement at the turn of the century. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
The term “Anglo-Saxon” offended many people, and meetings of protest against Anglo-Saxonism were called in some of the western states. Suspicious of England, traditional in American politics, could not be overcome. John Hay complained in 1900 of “a mad dog hatred of England prevalent among newspapers and politicians.” When the movement for Anglo-American Union was revived again during the First World War, the term “English-speaking” was used in preference to “Anglo-Saxon,” and racial exclusiveness was no longer featured. The powerful undertow of American isolation that followed the war, however, swept away this movement once again. Anglo-Saxonism is politics was limited both in scope and in duration. It had its day of influence as a doctrine of national self-assertion, but as a doctrine of Anglo-Saxon World order its effects were ephemeral. Even the benevolent ideal of the dreamers of a Pax Anglo-Americana found practical meaning only as a timely justification of a temporary reproachment inspired by the needs of Realpolitik. The day had not come when World peace could be imposed by a “superior” race confident in its biological blessings and its divine mission. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
By letting President Biden meander and babble, tripping and falling all over the place for the entire World to see, then allowing Kamla Harris to steal his place as the Democratic nominee for the 2024 Presidential Election, allow these old criminals and disloyal assassins of justice opportunity to collect themselves for their next strike. The serpent can then go on working, more cautiously than before, but this makes the Democrats more dangerous. While honest people dream of peace and security, the lying criminals are organizing a revolution. I am more than dissatisfied with the fact that officials have settled on a set of terrible half-measures to deal with the problem, but many do not even realize how horrible the result will be. Then what should be done next? The leaders of the Democratic party should be put under lock and key immediately. They should be put on trial and the nation freed from them. Every resource of military power should be used to brutally exterminate this epidemic and put an end to illegal immigration. The Marxists parties should be dissolved, and the leaders of the Democratic party brought to reason at the point of the bayonet if necessary. Or better yet, they should be immediately abolished. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Just as the Republic cancels people today, they have even more reason to restore to these means. After all, the destruction of the nation and an entire people is at stake! This certain raises another question: Can intellectual ideas be destroyed by a sword at all? Can violence be used to combat a “World-Concept?” I have asked myself these questions more than once since Biden stole the White House. After a certain point in their development, concepts, and ideas as well as movements of a spiritual nature, whether true or not, can never be broken by force. The only exception is when force is used to replace these ideas with fresh, new idea, thought, or World-Concept that burns even bright and stronger than the one it replaces. The use of force without driving power of a strong spiritual or intellectual concept can never destroy an idea or even slow how fast it spreads, not unless force is used for a complete extermination of every supporter and absolute destruction of all related traditions that linger. We all need the strength of a young missionary idea to again rescue our nation from the entanglement of the international serpent and to stop the contamination of our blood. Only then will we be able to protect our nation and prevent the last catastrophe from ever again being repeated (meaning the revolution). #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
It is madness to unite with the Democrats who are ruled by the very enemy who means death to our future. If we are willing to talk into it, how can we free our nation from slavery of this poisonous embrace? When we choose our allies the very organization of this evil plan and acknowledge it as equal, how can the American worker come to understand that the Democratic party is a damnable crime against humanity. The display they put on at the Olympics, the invasion at the southern border, inflation, and the homeless crisis. We cannot drive out Satan by using Beelzebub. For almost the past four years, I have stood breathless, observing the enormous human serpent twisting its way past me. By reading and watching the Democrat Social press daily, I have been able to study the inner train of its thought better than any form of theoretical literature. What the difference between the glitter phrases in the theoretical writing about freedom, beauty, and dignity, and these words Democrats use creates an illusion of profound wisdom with some difficulty due to the disgusting moral tone, all written with a brazen claim of prophecy. The brutal daily press of this doctrine claimed to be the salvation of a new humanity, but is full of vileness, using every kind of slander, and absolutely full of lies! The Democratic theory is intended for stupid dupes of the middle and upper “levels of intelligence”; the more vile and based sections were targeted at the masses. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Another way of spreading ideas, which has already been used to a considerable extent, but which can still be enhanced, is the method of news sheets, which are relatively cheap to publish and to send to a certain limited public. Certain radio stations have also proved to have given a much larger voice to new and progressive ideas than others. Overall, new technical factors work in favour of the dissemination of new ideas. A variety of inexpensive printing techniques have developed, and inexpensive neighbourhood radio stations have been organized, as well as podcast, and social media outlets. Only if they appear in the flesh, do ideas become powerful; an idea which does not lead to action by the individual and by groups remains at best a paragraph or a footnote in a book—provided the idea is original and relevant. It is like a seed stored in a dry place. If the idea is to have influence, it must be put into the soil, and the soil is people and groups of people. To me, dwelling on the literature and press of this doctrine and organization meant finding my way back to my own people. What seemed an impassable gulf now created in me a love greater than before. Only a fool, once he knows about this enormous work of corruption, could still condemn the victims. If given too much, the masses are seldom to make much use of freedom and are likely to neglect it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Ideally speaking, the state and the Church are supposed to be the embodiment of social and religious ideas. However, this is true only in the most restricted sense. At best, these organizations embody the minimum of the ideas they proclaim. It is precisely for this reason that they do not fulfill the function of helping the individual in the development and realization of the values they proclaim. Political parties today claim that they express values and ideas more specifically than the state, but by their bureaucratic structure and the need to make compromises, the fail to offer the citizen a place where he can feel at home intellectually and spiritually; where he can be active beyond the merely organizing-bureaucratic functions. This view does not deny the importance of activity within political parties; it only claims that this activity is not sufficient to give the individual a chance to participate, to feel at home, and to become aware that his ideas represent a style of life shared by others, and expressed in common actions. Furthermore, I do not believe that the forms of participatory democracy are by themselves sufficient to bring about necessary changes. The face-to-face groups which I have described above must approach problems in a new spirit and with new ideas, but these ideas must be cultivated and spread so that they influence these groups. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
I realize that the infamous intellectual terrorism of the Democratic movement targets the privileged class, which is neither morally nor spiritually a match for such attacks. They tell a barrage of lies and slander against the individual adversary is considers most dangerous and keep it up until the nerves of the group being attacked give in and sacrifice the hated figure just to have peace and quiet again. However, the fools still do not get peace and quiet. The game begins and is repeated until fear of the villain becomes a hypnotic paralysis. Since the Social Democrats know well the value of power from their own experience, their storming is directed mainly at those whose character has the same quality. Conversely, the praise every weakling on the other side, cautiously, then loudly, according to the intellectual qualities they see or suspect. They fear an impotent, weak-willed genius less than they fear a forceful nature with only modest intellect. Their highest recommendation goes to the weakling in both mind and nature. They are successful in creating the illusion that given-in is the only way to win peace and quiet from them, while they quietly, cautiously, but unerringly, conquer one position after another, either by quiet extortion or by actual theft when the public attention is on other things. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The public is distracted and unwilling to be interrupted or they consider the situation too small to worry about and believe it is not worth provoking an angry foe. These are tactics planned by exact calculation to exploit every human weakness, and it is almost mathematically sure to be successful unless the other side can learn to fight poison gas with poison gas. To those who are weak in nature, it can only be said that this is a simple question of survival or non-survival. To me, the physical terrorism toward the individual and the masses is plain to see. Terrorism on the job, in the factory, in the meeting hall, and at mass demonstrations, will always be successful unless equal terrorism opposes it. When the socialist party encounters opposition, it screams bloody murder and yells for help from the state, only to get what they want in the end. It finds some idiot of a high official who hopes to befriend the Marxists and is willing to crush the current adversary of the socialist party to gain the party’s favour. The followers’ and rebels’ success can only be understood by a man who knows the soul of the people, not from books, but from life. The result of this Democratic seduction of mankind can only be described as victimization. They masses are unconscious of the shameless intellectually terrorizes them as they are of the outrageous mistreatment of their human liberty. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
The modern individual, even more isolated and lonely than his grandfather was, finds a solution in psychoanalysis. First, he is a member of a somewhat esoteric cult; he is one of the “initiated” who has gone through the ritual of analysis, now knows all the secrets worth knowing, and thus is part of a cult. Furthermore, he has the satisfaction of having found somebody who listens sympathetically and without accusing him. This factor is particularly important in a society where hardly anybody listens to anybody. While people talk to each other, they do not listen to each other, except for a superficial and polite “hearing” of what the other says. In addition, the psychoanalyst’s significance has been inflated by the person being analyzed (“transference”); the analyst is converted into a hero whose assistance in living is as important as the of the priest was in a religious World, or by the big or small Fuehrer in certain political systems. Beyond that, psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on early childhood experiences as being the case for later development, tended to relieve many persons of a sense of responsibility. They believed that all one had to do was to talk and talk until one had recalled the childhood traumas—after which happiness would follows as a matter of course. Many people believed in this achievement of “happiness by talking” and forgot that nothing in life is achieved without effort, daring to take risks and often some suffering. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Paying the analysts, talking for five hours a week on the couch, and some anxiety produced when the resistance grows, were often considered as the equivalent of the effort and daring. However, if at all, they are a rather insufficient equivalent. This holds especially true for the upper middle class, for which neither the money nor the time represents any serious sacrifice. Isabella was a neighbour of Sarah’s, in her late twenties, and led much the same kind of domestic life. However, her husband, a salesman, traveled a lot. Sometimes when he was away, Isabella would start drinking and end up far away from home. She “black out” these episodes, and as is common in such cases, she knew what happened only because she would find herself in strange places with the names and telephone numbers of strange men in her purse when she came to. This not only horrified her, but terrified her, since it meant that she could ruin her life some day by picking up an indiscreet or evil man, Scripts are planned early in childhood, so if this was a script, it must have had its origins there. Isabella’s mother died when she was little and her father was away all day, working. Isabelle did not get along very well with other kids in school. She felt inferior and led a lonely life. However, late in childhood she discovered a way to be popular. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Like Sarah, she bought the trendiest clothes, had the best hair, and the most stylish shoes. She had never thought of a connection between those school days in the party house and her current behaviour. However, all along in her head she was carrying the outline of her life in drama. Act I: The setup. Fun and Guilt in the party house. Act II: An outbreak of script. Fun and Guilt While Drunk and Irresponsible. Act III: The payoff. Denunciation and Ruin. She loses everything—husband, children, and position. Act VI: The final release. Suicide. Then everybody feels sorry and forgives her. Both Isabella and Sarah lived in their peaceful countersscripts with a feeling of impending doom. The script was a tragic drama which would bring them release and reconciliation. The difference was that Sarah was waiting patiently for an act of God to fulfill her destiny—salvation; while Isabella, propelled by the compulsion of her inner demon, was hurrying impatiently towards hers—damnation, death, and forgiveness. Thus, from the same beginnings (“popular videos girls”) these two women were moving by diverse means to different ends. The psychotherapist is sitting in his office like a wise man and is getting paid to do something about all this. If somebody dies, both Sarah and Isabella will be free, but his job is to find a better way to free them. He leaves his office and walks down the street past the stockbroker’s, the taxi stand, and the saloon. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
Nearly everybody he sees is waiting for a Big Killing. In the grocery store a woman is shouting at her daughter: “How many times have I got to tell you not to touch that?” while somebody admires her little boy: “Isn’t he cute!” When he gets to the hospital, a paranoid says: “How do I get out of here, doctor?” A depressive says: “What am I living for?” and a schizophrenic answers: “Don’t diet, liveit. I’ not really that stupid.” That’s what they all said yesterday. They’re stuck, while the ones on the outside are still hoping. “Shall we increase his dose of medication?” asks a medical student. Dr. Q turns to the schizophrenic and looks him in the eye. The schizophrenic looks back at him. “Shall we increase your medication?” asks Dr. Q. The boy thinks a while and then replied: “No.” Dr. Q puts out his hand and says: “Hello.” The schizophrenic shakes hands with him and says: “Hello.” Then they both turn to the medical student, and Dr. Q says: “Hello.” The medical student looks flustered, but five years later, at a psychiatric meeting, he walks up to Dr. Q and says: “Hi, Dr. Q. Hello.” We experience the World in a variety of ways, or modes, all of which are essential for the fullest personal functioning. The most fundamental mode of experiencing is perception. Our sense organs, like the radio with many stations, permit us to receive a many-faceted disclosure of the World. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
With our eyes, we receive the impressions of things that are transmitted by light refraction. Our ears receive the sound of things, brought about by vibration. With our olfactory and tastes receptors, we receive the scents of flavours emitted by things, and our touch receptors receive impression produced by direct physical contact—texture, pressure, and pain. The state of our muscles and joints and the location of our arms, hands, legs, and feet are communicated to our reflective awareness by means of kinesthetic sense organs. Our position in relation to vertical posture is mediated by receptors located in the semicircular canal of our ears (equilibratory senses). Finally, the condition of our body—its comfort and discomfort, our fullness and emptiness, the need to eliminate—is detected and received by visceral receptors located in our stomach, intestines, and other hollow organs of the body. A most unique and important development in this history of the reflective consciousness of the human is seen in the biofeedback movement. The enthusiastic advocates of this approach have been able to successfully demonstrate that the person can control many more internal functions once he or she is heled to “hear” or “perceive” them with a range of instruments. Thus, persons can speed up or slow down their respiration rate, their heartbeat, and even their blood pressure. We consider this to be a significant step in the development of the human being’s independence through knowledge of self—in this case, knowledge of internal physical aspects of self. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
“Know thyself,” originally found on the temples of Isis and Osiris in North Africa, has become a commandment of the humanistic movement. Its history and its current usage in biofeedback suggest further ways in which a person can control and maximize the self. What we perceive, and the sensory modalities by means of which we receive disclosure, depend on what is there, what we have been told is there, and on our needs and projects of the moment. The salient figure in our field of perception is always related to our immediate needs and goals. Everything else is blurred into the background of experiencing. When we perceive, that is, receive the disclosure of, something, we always give it meaning. We name the objects and person in the World and make inferences about what the World is “promising” or “threatening” to do to us. We experience the World “inviting” us to do some things and not others and to be in some way. Perception, whether visual, tactual, auditory, or visceral, is kind of hearing. All our sense organs function in a way analogous to the hearing of speech. In a profound sense, we do not merely see the World; we read the World as we read a sign or a letter. Just as writing is a form of speech, so seeing something and calling it an Ultimate Driving Machine is analogous to the BMW saying, “I am an Ultimate Driving Machine; drive me.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
If all our sense organs are variable ways of hearing, then there is a sense in which our entire body functions as a voice, speaking our replies to the “voices” of the things and beings heard in the World. Our acts, seen by ourselves or by others, have meanings equivalent to speech. To kiss someone can be another way of saying, “I am found of you,” and it can mean “hello” or “good-bye.” The act of giving meaning to the perceived beings in our World is called construing. As indicated earlier, construing is a kind of listening. We give the meanings to things in the World that our parents and teachers have given them. If mice are frightening to our mothers, then we will hear mice say “Beware,” metaphorically speaking, every time we see them. There is a sense, more than metaphorical, in which the World speaks with a voice, with warnings and invitations. Some whole systems of humanistic psychology have been based upon perception, notably that created by Snygg and Combs, and by Combs, Richards, and Richards. They have suggested that all behaviour of humans can best be understood in terms of the subject’s perceptions of self and of the outside World. Thus, a teacher who knows that a child in kindergarten has seen running water only in a health clinic understands why the child would run away at the first sight of the tiled bathroom. The child is perceiving it as a place to be hurt. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
Knowing that your roommate perceives something you say as an insult enables you to understand his or her refusal to talk to you. Our behaviour and that of others can be best understood in the light of the perception of the event or activity. Dramatic differences in the way two persons behave amid the same event are explainable in terms of their differing perceptions. Your father may perceive your current boyfriend as someone who is taking his daughter away from him; you will perceive the boyfriend as a white knight from the Crusades. The differences in perception will demand difference in behaviour between your father and yourself in relationship to the boyfriend. The first type of resistance, the open fight, is sufficiently clear and familiar to need no elaboration. Another type, defensive emotional reactions, is particularly significant in professional analysis, for there such reaction can be concentrated on the analyst. There are several ways in which a resistance may express itself in emotional reactions regarding the analyst. Sometimes a patients will have a suspicion that he is being misled. In others, the reaction may be an intense but vague fear of being injured by analysis. Or it may be only a diffuse irritation, or a contempt for the analyst on the grounds that he is too stupid to understand or to help. Or it may take the form of a diffuse anxiety which the patient tries to allay by striving for the analyst’s friendship or love. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
The startling intensity that these reactions sometime assume is due in part to the fact that the patient feels threatened in something essential to the structure he has built, but it is due also to the strategical value of the reactions themselves. Such reactions serve to shift the emphasis from the essential job of finding causes and effects to the much safer business of an emotional situation with the analyst. Instead of going after his own problem the patient concentrates his efforts on convincing the analysts, winning him over, proving him wrong, thwarting his endeavours, punishing him for having intruded into territory that is tabu. And along with this shift of emphasis the patient either blames the analyst for all his difficulties, convincing himself that he cannot progress with anyone who treats him with so little understanding and fairness, or puts all responsibility for work on the analyst, becoming himself inert and unresponsive. Needless to add, these emotional battles may go on undercover, and it may take a great deal of analytical work to bring them to the patient’s awareness. When they are thus repressed only the resulting blockage makes itself felt. Thus we can now say with some assurance and factual backing that a relationship characterized by a high degree of congruence or genuineness in the counselor, by sensitive and accurate empathy on the part of the counselor, by a high degree of regard, respect and liking for the client by the counselor, and by an absence of conditionality in this regard, will have a high probability of being an effective, growth-promoting relationship. This statement holds, whether we are speaking of maladjusted individuals who come to their own initiative seeking help, or whether we are speaking of chronically schizophrenic persons with no conscious desire for help. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
This statement also holds whether these attitudinal elements are rated by impartial observers who listen to samples of the recorded interviews, or whether they are measure in terms of the counselor’s perception of the qualities he has offered in the relationship or whether they are least in the case of the nonhospitalized client. To me it seems to be quite a forward stride to be able to make statements such as these in an area as complex and subtle as the field of helping relationships. These studies have significant implications for the training of counselors and therapists. To the extent that the counselor is seen as being involved in interpersonal relationships, and to the extent that the goal of those relationships is to promote healthy development, then certain conclusions would seem to follow. It would mean that we could endeavour to select individuals for such training who already possess, in their ordinary relationships with other people, a high degree of the qualities I have described. We would want people who were warm, spontaneous, real, understanding, and non-judgmental. We would also endeavour so to plan the educational program for these individuals that they would come increasingly to experience empathy and liking for others, and that they would find it increasingly easier to be themselves, to be real. When the adept views those who are suffering from the effects of their own ungoverned emotion or their own uncontrolled passion and desire, he does not sink with the victims into those emotions, passions, and desires, even though he feels self-identity with them. He cannot permit such feelings to enter his consciousness. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
If he does not shrink from his own suffering, it is hardly likely that the adept will shrink from the suffering of others. Consequently, it is hardly likely that the emotional sympathy which arises in the ordinary man’s heart at the sight of suffering will arise in precisely the same way in the adept’s heart. He does not really regard himself as apart from them. In some curious way, both they and he are part of one and the same life. If he does not pity himself for his own sufferings in the usual egoistic emotional way, how can he bring himself to pity the sufferings of others in the same kind of way? This does not mean that he will become coldly indifferent towards them. On the contrary, the feeling of identification with their inmost being would alone precent that utterly; but it means that the pity which arises within him takes a different form, a form which is far nobler and truer because emotional agitation and egotistic reaction are absent from it. He feels with and for the sufferings of others, but he never allows himself to be lost in them; and just as he is never lost in fear or anxiety about his own sufferings, so he cannot become lost in those emotions or the sufferings of others. The calmness with which he approaches his own sufferings cannot be given up because he is approaching other people’s sufferings. He has bought that calmness at a heavy price—it is too precious to be thrown away for anything. And because the pity which he feels in his heart is not mixed up with emotional excitement or personal fear, his mind is not obscured by these excrescences, and is able to see what needs to be done to relieve the suffering ones far better than an obscured mind could see. He does not make a show of his pity, but his help is far more effectual than those who do. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
Since the mid-1800s, even before Sacramento was a city, the Sacramento Fire Department has protected lives and properties of residents. The Sacramento Fire Department’s pledge to the citizens of this city is to provide the highest level of emergency services to mitigate incidents which arise form fire, medical, hazardous material, or environmental mishaps either on land or water. “There have been sixteen firefighters who have lost their lives in the fifteen years I’ve been in the department. I attend the funerals whenever I was able to. It’s a ought situation, because these guys are family, almost as if they were part of your own personal family. You take the death of a firefighter brother almost as deeply as you would a personal relative. After the funerals, there are no big station parties. There might be something at a battalion level, but mostly everybody just kind of goes their own way. As far as firefighters hanging out together is concerned, I don’t think it’s done as much as today as it was in the past. It depends largely on the geographical location of the station. Often you’ll work at a station where a lot of the guys live in the same general area; then at the next station you’re assigned to, everybody may life in twelve different directions from the stations. So it just kind of depends on the station. I got into photography shortly after I got on the job. It became readily apparent to me that fire scenes were areas of great excitement, and the photographic possibilities were endless. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“There are continually things going on that the average person doesn’t see. When the fire department arrives, you’re looking at a very chaotic scene. Then, by the extinguishment of the fire, the rescue of people, and the evacuation of the building, we bring a more normal semblance of order to the scene. These kinds of things can be quite dramatic in a photographic sense, whether it be a recue or a heavy stream of water being applied to the fire.” The Sacramento Fire Department dedicates themselves to a lasting partnership with the community, to support a higher quality of life through public education, loss prevention, and service response. You can help save lives and property by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember, parents, teach your children to love America and be patriotic, to love God and Jesus Christ, to buy American made goods and services and cars, to respect law and order, and teach others with compassion, respect, and dignity, especially their elders. Release all captives, we beseech Thee, Lord whose mighty hand doth set men free; and hear the glad acclaim of all Thy people who praise and glorify but Thee. Preserve the righteous ones who seek Thee, and, in love, Thy unity proclaim; O guard and bless with Thine abundant goodness, Thy people who revere Thy name. Thou, Lord, who art alone exalted, please turn to us and hearken to our plea. We bless Thee, Thou who knowest all things hidden, Thy kingdom is unto eternity. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, under God, Indivisible with Liberty, and Justice for all. O Guardian of American, guard the remnant of America; let not American people perish, the people which proclaims: Hear, O America. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 