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Sit Down on the Camel and Take a Picture
The value of religious knowledge lies in the fact that it is a safeguard against error for it shows how to discriminate between reality and the appearance of it. Neither the deceptions of individuals nor the errors of religious experience can succeed. The expansive type, for whom mastery of life is crucial, tends to identify himself with his inner dictates and, whether consciously or unconsciously, to be proud of his standards. He does not question their validity and tries to actualize them in one way or other. He may try to measure up to them in his actual behavior. He should be all things to all people; he should know everything better than everybody else; he should never err; he should never fail in anything he attempts to do—in short, fulfill whatever his particular should are. And, in his mind, he does measure up to his supreme standards. His arrogance may be so great that he does not even consider the possibility of failure, and if it occurs, discards it. His arbitrary rightness is so rigid that in his own mind he simply never errs. Moses’ concern for his people proved to be justified in the years following their entry into the land of Canaan. It was when they became settled in this goodly land that they began to take their abundance for granted and to forget the real source of these blessings. Moses had counseled them: “For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barely, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
“A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which He hath given thee. Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and His judgements, and His statutes, which I command thee this day: Least when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brough thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage…And thou say in thine heart, my power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth,” reports Deuteronomy 8.7-14, 17. Even if a man succeeded in getting others to accept his views, even if everyone accepted them, it is unlikely that they will accept them always. Every opinion has been written down in the books, including the opinion that truth requires us to hold no opinion. “Think of your brethren like unto yourselves, and be familiar with all and free with your substance, that they may be rich like unto you. But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the Kingdom of God. And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ, ye shall obtain riches, if you seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted,” reports Jacob 2.17-19. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Suggestions from outside enters largely into the opinions and beliefs, the views and outlook, of masses of people. It is just as true, possibly truer, of the mystically minded, be they seekers or gurus, be they Eastern or Westerners. What is really known—rather than echoed back—dwindles down to a residue. The coveting of wealth so often has resulted in avarice, dishonesty, and greed. The acquisition of wealth has frequently produced pride, self-satisfaction, and arrogance. An episode during the time of Alma in the Book of Mormon illustrates the cycle that has so often occurred when people are blessed materially by the Lord and then turn away from Him. In the instance referred to, the Nephite people were struggling to overcome the effects of a devasting civil strife and a Lamanite invasion, not unlike the struggles more than half of Americans face today. Not only had there been great loss of life; the destruction to lands and to property had been sufficient to seriously jeopardize the prospects of recovery. Alma describes conditions in these words: “But the people were afflicted, yea, greatly afflicted for the loss of their brethren, and also for the loss of their flocks and herds, and also for the loss of their fields of grain, which were trodden under foot and destroyed. And so great were their afflictions that every soul had cause to mourn; and they believed that it was the judgements of God sent upon them because of their wickedness and their abominations; therefore they were awakened to a remembrance of their duty. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
“And they begun to establish the church more fully; yea, and many were baptized in the waters of Sidon and were joined to the Church of God,” reports Alma 4.2-4. He may be poised in the tranquility of these grand concepts or poisoned by the negative fogs of false ones. Convert a man to your opinion and you have him for long; compel him to adopt it and you have never really got him. The spiritual reawakening among the people had a dramatic effect. Peace returned to the land. The Church prospered in its rapid growth. Not surprisingly, the people soon began again to enjoy an abundant life. The spiritual blessings granted by the Lord were accompanied by the acquisition of material wealth. Unfortunately, the Nephites failed to meet this test. Within three years from the time of their earlier tragedy, Alma describes his people in this way: “The people of the church began to wax proud, because of their exceeding riches, and their fine silks, and their fine-twined linen, and because of their many flocks and herds, and their gold and their silver, and all manner of precious things, which they had obtained by their industry; and in all these things were they lifted up in the pride of their eyes,” reports Alma 4.6. History repeatedly confirms that the abundance of earthly possessions can be both a blessing and a curse, depending upon the way these things are viewed and used. When we consume them on our own lust, we invoke tragedy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
We must work hard to elicit the truth from the medley of beliefs and opinions which rule us, and to extract the reality from the medley of illusions and glamours which hold us. Any fool can say, “I know,” that is, can have an opinion. Mass stupidity is not, and never can be, a satisfactory substitute for individual intelligence. Wealth is a relative thing. Conditions vary dramatically from place to place in the World today. America is indeed a chosen land that President Trump is helping to restore. That which some consider to be the necessities of life, to others would be abundance, and even extravagance. In any set of circumstances, the challenges related to an improvement in material prosperity remain the same. The message that echoes to us from the pages of history and from the counsels of the Lord and His prophets is clear: Seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven. Seek not for riches to consume them on your own lusts. Thou shalt not covet. Clothe the naked. Feed the hungry. Relieve the sick and the afflicted. Pay tithes and offerings. In all things, acknowledge the Lord. Be grateful. Be humble. The words of Moses to the tribes of Isreal have appropriate application for us: “Fear the Lord thy God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Here therefore, O Isreal, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey,” reports Deuteronomy 6.2-3. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
And, “when thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good…which He hath given thee,” reports Deuteronomy 8.10. Far too often private opinions are passed off as God’s oracles, man-made institutions as God’s instruments, and group propaganda as factual history. The masses, lacking both discrimination and information, are led like sheep by the mass media. How credulous fool attain supernormal wisdom? How can the man who is unable to discriminate intelligently in small matters suddenly become able to discriminate in transcendent ones? The jump is not possible. The more a man is engulfed in his imagination, the less necessary it is for him to make actual efforts. It is sufficient, then, that in his mind his mind he is supremely fearless or honest, no matter how beset his is by fears or how dishonest he actually is. The border lines between these two ways of “ I should” and “I am” is vague for him—for that matter, probably not too sharp for any of us. The German poet Christian Morgenstern has expressed this concisely in one of his opens. A man was lying in a hospital with a broken leg after having been run over by a truck. He read that in the particular street in which the accident happened trucks were not allowed to drive. And so, he arrived at the conclusion that the whole experience was only a dream. For, “sharp as a knife,” he concluded that nothing can happen that should not happen. The more a person’s imagination prevails over his reasoning, the more the border line disappears and he is the model husband, father, citizen, or whatever he should be. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Most people do not know the difference between an opinion and a truth, and do not make the effort to distinguish between them. It is not better to force illusions into accord with the realities than to go on being pleasantly deceived by them? The self-effacing type, for whom love seems to solve all problems, likewise feels that his should constitute a law not to be questioned. However, when trying—anxiously—to measure up to them, he feels most of the time that he falls pitiably short of fulfilling them. The foremost element in his conscious experience is therefore self-criticism, a feeling of guilt for not being the supreme being. When carried to the extreme, both these attitudes toward the inner dictates render it difficult for a person to analyze himself. Tending toward the extreme of self-righteousness may prevent him from seeing any flaws in himself. And tending toward the other extreme—that of too readily feeling guilty—entails the danger of insights into shortcomings having a crushing rather than a liberating effect. The resigned type, finally, to whom the idea of “freedom” appeals more than anything else, is, of the three, most prone to rebel against his inner tyranny. Because of the very importance which freedom—or his version of it—has for him, he is hypersensitive to any coercion. He may rebel in a somewhat passive way. Then everything that he feels he should do, whether it concerns a piece of work or reading a book or having relations with pleasures of the flesh with his wife, turns—in his mind—into a coercion, arouses conscious or unconscious resentment, and in consequence makes him listless. If what is to be done is done at all, it is done under the strain produced by the inner resistance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
We must not be doctrinaires, we must not sit at the sanctified feet of the god opinion. The intellectual purificatory work begins by clearing his mind of errors, illusions, and superstitions. These things lead him astray, both during prayer and out of it, from his search for truth. He may rebel against his should in a more active way. He may try to throw them all overboard, and sometimes go to the opposite extreme by insisting upon doing only what he pleases when he pleases. The rebellion may take violent forms, and then often is a rebellion of despair. If he cannot be the ultimate of piety, chastity, sincerity, then he will be thoroughly “bad,” be promiscuous, tell lies, afford others. Sometimes a person usually complies with the shoulds may go through a phase of rebellion. It is usually then directed against external restrictions. J.P. Marquand has described such temporary rebellions in a masterly way. He has shown us how easily they can be put down, for the very reason that the restricted external standards have a mighty ally in the internal dictates. And then afterward the individual is left dull and listless. Finally, others may go through alternating phases of self-castigating “goodness” and a wild protest against any standards. To the observant friend such people may present an insoluble puzzle. At times, they are offensively irresponsible in pleasures of the flesh or financial matters, and at others they show highly developed moral sensibilities. #RandolpHarris 8 of 24
So, the friend who has just been despairing of their having any sense of decency is reassured about their being fine persons after all, only to be thrown into severe doubts again shortly thereafter. In others, there may be a constant shuttling between an “I should” and “no, I will not.” “I should pay a debt.” No, why should I?” “I should keep to a diet. No, I will not.” Often these people give the impression of spontaneity and mistake their contradictory attitudes toward their should for “freedom.” Sincerity is not enough. Every aspirant needs this, of course, but he also needs other things. An aspirant may be totally sincere, yet may take a wrong direction. His mind may be filled with erroneous beliefs despite his sincerity. So to his sincerity, he should add right knowledge, for this will guide him, this will uphold him, and this will safeguard him. The result of a solely intellectual outlook devoid of religious faith or mystical intuition, is failure to offer mental peace or cherish moral goodness. Self-actualized people have a different sense of humor from the ordinary type. It is not hostile. It is not at someone else’s expense. It focuses more on the foolishness of the human situation. Their humor is usually thought-provoking, and many times they are able to laugh at themselves. President Lincoln’s humor, for example, was very much in this vein. He told one story that many believed could have applied to himself. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
It seems that a woman on horseback on a narrow trail came upon a man on a horse. She stopped her horse, looked the man over, and blurted out, “Well, for the land’s sake, you are the homeliest man I ever saw!” The man replied, “Yes ma’am, but I can’t help that.” “No, I suppose not,” she replied, “but you might stay at home. Here is another story President Lincoln told, perhaps, to point out that common sense has a wisdom that transcends logic: “If three pigeons sit on a fence and you shoot and kill one of them, how many will be left?” President Lincoln asked. The answer was, “Two, of course.” To which he responded, “No, there won’t, for the other two will fly away.” We are not casting stones at intellectual knowledge; it has a place. However, let it be kept in its place. Let it not become a usurper. The higher mysticism first satisfies the intellect’s demands, then transcends them. It does not, like the lower mysticism, reject or ignore them. Although the intellect admittedly cannot grasp reality, it is nevertheless necessary in order to set a standard, to show what reality is, as such, so that it shall be recognized. A pair of scales cannot weigh themselves but they are necessary in order to weigh other things. Similarly, the intellect cannot yield reality but can measure it so to speak or indicate what is and what is not reality. Hence, it is most valuable as a corrective mysticism and religious experience. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
The moral code which a man obeys is itself the result of his view of life, whether the latter be imposed on him from without or developed from within. To the Prophet Joseph Smith the Lord said: “I have made the earth rich, and behold it is my footstool, wherefore, again I will stand upon it.” When the mystical bent of mind is not steadied by rational reflection, there is grave danger of mistaking satisfaction for truth, utility for knowledge. “And I hold forth and deign to give unto you greater riches, even a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, upon which there shall be no curse when the Lord cometh,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 38.17-18. Dr. Maslow’s “healthy champions” all had some unselfish involvement with others. They behaved as though each member of the human race were a personal family member of the human race were a personal family member, worthy of affection in spite of the way each person may act. However, the self-actualizers also could express “righteous indignation” toward cruelty, hypocrisy, or phoniness in others. They tend to have deeper and more meaningful interpersonal relations than the average adult—close relationships with a few, rather than superficial relationships with many. These people are more able to be nondemanding and noninterfering with those they love, delighting in the loved ones for themselves, not for what the loved ones can provide in return—love without guile, design, or calculation of any selfish kind. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Dr. Maslow called this kind of love being love. Such a love, he said, “makes for less abstracting, less viewing of less-then-the whole, less atomizing or dissecting…structuring, organizing, shaping, modeling…” of the loved one, and the object of such love “remains more whole, more unified, which amounts to saying more itself.” A “being” lover sees more easily the nature of the loved one in his or her own right and in his or her own style of being. The opposite of being love Dr. Maslow called deficiency love, which is a manipulative kind of love. Manipulative lovers like to dissect the loved ones to discover and declare their faults as a means of gaining control over the loved ones. They like to mold and recreate the loved ones. Manipulators love because they feel a sense of lacking something in themselves, and they expect the loved one to fill their personal void. If the loved one fails to provide all the demands, their love is absolutely conditional and can be withdrawn. The futility and unwisdom of utter reliance upon feeling, unchecked by reason, was tragically evidenced by the sad case of Nijinsky, the famous Russian dancer, who after delighting audiences in the World’s chief capitals became insane and for more than twenty years had to withdraw from his artistic careers and pass most of his days in a sanatorium. Nijinsky kept a diary in the early days of his illness, in which we find sentences like the following: “I am God. I am God. I am God.” Throughout those pages, Nijinsky insist on feeling rather than thinking as a source of wisdom, and feeling he defines as “intuitions, proceeding from the unconscious.” The man who claimed to be God was, however, unable to fulfill himself as a human being. Why? Because he was really unbalanced for he rejected utterly the claims of Reason, and he denounced “mental” people as being “dead.” #RandolpHarris 12 of 24
Yes, mystical experience must collaborate with rational thought. However, there is a higher kind of mysticism, which prunes away the accidental and penetrates to the essential. Intellectual knowledge is certainly relative. However, what lies beyond it is for us ultimate truth. That there may be a truth beyond this in turn need not concern us at present, for nobody could either dispute it or demonstrate it. The urge for higher knowledge is not at act of the ego but prompting from the Overself. That it gets mixed, in tis earlier phases, with egotistic desires is true but these slowly fall away. Actualized people, Dr. Maslow’s research found, have a more efficient perception of reality than do others. They can see or perceive others intuitively and correctly. They cannot be conned. They do not come into situations with preconceptions, but seem able to leap to right conclusions. They also have a freshness of appreciation, and their senses are not dulled by seemingly common, everyday experiences. They experience joy in the miracles of everyday life that the rest of us hardly see, hear, or feel—a baby’s smile, a loving glance, a cooling delta breeze, a heartful compliment, a warm bed, a sunset, a lovely person’s profile. Each of Dr. Maslow’s subjects had some life task to fulfill that enlisted much of his or her time and energy. It was as if each of them had found and recognized some specific purpose to their being in the World that they pursued with great persistence. They did not ask what America could do for them, they asked what they could do to Make America Great Again. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
America, to a self-actualized person, could be as large as just that—the world—or as small as a neighborhood or family. The intellect is a faculty that man is endowed with, not by Satan to trap him, but in accordance with the divine World-Idea. Man is learning how to use it. If he is using it wrongly today, the consequences will tutor him in time and he will use it rightly tomorrow. When the mystical bent of the mind is not steadied by rational reflection, there is grave danger of mistaking satisfaction for ruth, utility for knowledge. Socrates taught that character was somehow dependent on intelligence: the better quality of the one was a consequence of the better quality of the other. Therefore, cultivate clear intelligence, he said. Long after, Spinoza repeated this advice. The subjects of Dr. Maslow’s study depended on their own potentialities and latent resources, rather than on others, for their continued growth. Their sense of self and their stability can be described, Dr. Maslow said, as “self-contained.” This independence of the physical and social environment accounted for their serenity in the face of deprivations, frustrations, and set-backs that might drive others to the brink of death by suicide. They did not depend on others’ love and respect for their own development. Their ability to get to such a point of independence, however, was largely made possible because they had received in the past love and respect from others. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
The need of coping with life forces us to develop intelligence or else to go on suffering the consequences of being stupid! Even the world-picture of a higher condition available to those who will work and sacrifice for it is not without value. It shows a model to use and emulate, a standard to seek and form oneself by. Self-actualized people are accepting of the real nature of themselves and others. Dr. Maslow said that just as, “one does not complain about water because it is wet, or about rocks because they are hard,” a self-actualized person does not complain about human nature in himself or in others.” Healthy people do not feel guilty, shame, sadness, anxiety, or defensiveness about things that are part of their nature as humans. They do not say to themselves, “I am so ashamed that I am so short,” or “I would not want to be seen with her; she is not very attractive.” Healthy people do not feel guilty about improvable shortcomings, such as laziness, jealousy, prejudice, and hurting others. What makes healthy people feel bad are the discrepancies between what is and what might be, not in the inherent nature of things or persons, but in the conditions or situations that might be changed or improved. In truth, we cannot change ourselves. We can find ourselves and develop what we find. That is what actualization is—becoming our real selves. That is easy today, but how does it happen? How do we know who we really are? What is a self, anyway? #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
It is not enough to mean well, it is not enough to believe one is doing right, it is not enough to be earnest, sincere, innocent of evil motives. It is just as essential to possess a balanced mentality, sound reasoning capacity, and unbiased attitude. The Spanish Inquisitors were sometimes saints, Mr. Hitler was an ascetic. Many who have brought misery upon mankind were men of excellent private character: the defects of these people were mental rather than moral, and led them to bad thinking and worse judgment. The moral of this is plain: If not more so than others, intelligence must be cultivated as fully. The role of reason in the human psyche is to keep its balance. You may have not thought of it, but the concept of self can vary from person to person. Some of us think of self primarily in terms of the physical: size and shape, color of skin, hair, and eyes, our attractiveness or unattractiveness; in terms of sensations: hungry or full, in pain or in pleasure, well or sick, tried or energetic; in terms of feelings: bored or interested, happy or sad, angry or loving. Others think of self primarily in terms of work or primary occupation: a professor, a firefighter, a truck driver, a parent, a counselor. And still others think of self conceptually: good or bad, kind or cruel, smart or stupid, friendly or surly, accepted or misunderstood. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
We can see ourselves as if in a vacuum—alone with no connection to our environment and others; as an outlines totally defined by a background of our environment and others; or as a being who is partially defined by our environment and others and partially defining our environment and others. However, consciousness of one’s self is always a unique act—I can never know exactly how you see yourself and you can never know exactly how I relate to myself. This is the inner sanctum where each man must stand alone, and where we must find the strength to stand as individuals and, through our own affirmation and choice, learn to love each other. Developing a strong sense of self is a prerequisite to actualization, and it requires a leap of faith. You do not have to prove your self-worth; you may assume it. As an acorn does not have to prove it has the potential to become a tree before it can grow, a human does not have to prove his or her own unique self-hood to realize it. A way to begin to discover your unique self is to keep a daily journal, or a diary entitled, “This is Me.” Each day, write a description of yourself, a one-line entry, or several pages. Be sure to describe yourself in terms of your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, actions, and experiences alone and with others. You may be surprised at how much you discover about yourself and how the horizons of yourself begin to widen. (However, in the day of people trying to get famous and trying to set others up, you may want to put your journal or diary in a locked safe or locked box.) #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
There has always been in all of humanity a sprinkling of those who are described in the scriptures as the blind, the halt, the lame, the deaf, the withered, the dumb, the important folk. We refer to them as having learning or communication disorders, as the hearing or visually impaired, as those with motor or orthopedic limitations. We speak of intellectual or emotional impairment, of intellectual disabilities, and mental illness. Some suffer from a combination of these, and all of them cannot function without some help. Unlike the acorn, which can become only a tree, the range of what you are is far less limited. As a person, a unique individual, you have freedom, choice, and responsibility. As a manipulator, you abdicate all three. The education of man is worth no more than what he is worth inside himself. If he is evil within, he will be aided by a developed intellect to do more harm to others than he would have been able to do without it. If the good is within, he will have more capacity through education to do good to others. A thorough master and understanding of the Hidden Teaching—even if it be intellectual only—will help to refine, educate, and to some extent, even to dissolve the ego, if the knowledge thus obtained is applied. Truth is a dynamic, not a narcotic. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
The primary mission of the Sacramento Fire Department and EMTs is to save lobes and protect property and the environment through prevention, education, suppression, and rescue activities. Some of the actual activities may vary from one fire department to another depending on the locations of the department and what other community organizations are present, but the primary mission of the fire department remains the same. “The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to proving the highest level of public safety service to our community. We protect lives and property through fire suppression, emergency medical and transportation services, disaster service, fire prevention, and public education. Our members will Prevent Harm, Survive and Be Professional!” The culture of the Sacramento Fire Department can be defined as the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize the institution. Stress is a fact of life, whenever you are and whatever you are doing. You cannot avoid stress, but you can learn to manage it so it does not manage you. Changes in our lives—such as going to college, getting married, changing jobs, or illness—are frequent sources of stress. Keep in mind that changes that cause stress can also benefit you. Moving away from home to attend college, for example, creates personal-development opportunities—new challenges, friends, and living arrangements. That is why it is important to know yourself and carefully consider the causes of stress. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
Learning to take time, and although you cannot avoid stress, the good news is that you can minimize the harmful effects of stress, such as depression or hypertension. They key is to develop an awareness of how you interpret, and react to, circumstances. This awareness will help you develop coping techniques for managing stress. For example, as a captain of the Sacramento Fire Department, managing stress will requires techniques that include an awareness of yourself and your firefighters and EMTs. As you will see, the stress you encounter as a student differs in intensity from what you may experience in the fire department, particularly while on duty, fighting a fire, or provided superior medical care. The principles and techniques you use to manage stress are similar, however, as reported by this lieutenant: “I have learned a lot about how I deal with fatigue and stress from the job. I have found that finding a little time for myself each day or even each week allows me to regenerate and focus. Having a sense of humor and not taking things so personally have also helped reduce my stress levels. Keeping a notebook with me at all times and writing tasks, missions, or even just things to do has helped me keep my mind at ease, rather than thinking that I have forgotten to do something. Maintaining communication with my family and friends, and family in the Sacramento Fire Department, whether through e-mail or phone conversation, also keeps me grounded. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“A school fire was probably the most traumatic experience I ever had as a firefighter. It was my day off from the newspaper. I was with Squad X, and we were a third-alarm squad on that fire. They jumped it from two to five alarms. As we went in, we could see the column of smoke, and we could see the ambulances and the police vehicles coming away from the fire with the injured. When we got in, we were ordered to the roof of this U-shaped building. We had to go up an aerial ladder, and in order to get the ladder we had to run through a crowd of parents, who were running back and forth across the street looking for their children. So we went up to the roof, started opening it up, then we got a three-inch line up there and we were throwing water across a courtyard. We didn’t know at that point what had happened. All this jumping had taken place on the other side of the building. By that time a whole wing of the second floor was fully involved in fire. Fire was coming through the roof. Then they ordered all squad companies to the front of the building. When we came down, a priest came up to us and said that there were seventy-fire children inside the building. At that point, I decided I had to go to work as a reporter. They had plenty of firemen on the scene, but I was the only reporter. So I took off my helmet and went to work as a reporter. At it turned out, ninety-three children and two nuns were killed in that fire. I was very busy while all of it was going on, but a few days later it got to me. I had seen many horrible things in the past, but never anything quite as horrible as this, because anything that affects children hits you harder. It was a few days later that I really got shook up about what had happened and what I had seen. But when you’re young, you’re resilient, and you get over it. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“Years later, I woke up one night with a real sweaty nightmare about that fire. I dreamed about a woman I had seen for maybe three second. I had run past her to get the ladder to go up to the roof. If I saw her today, I would still know her. She had long curly black hair, high heels on, a pink blouse, white slacks, and she had a look on her face—a look of absolute anguish, looking for her child. I hadn’t thought about it at all, and here, ten years later, I wake up in cold sweat dreaming about this woman. And I couldn’t understand why. So I got up and went into my kids’ bedroom to see how they were, and then I realized what it was. My eldest son had just turned eight years old. That was the age—eight, nine, ten—of the children who were killed in that fire. I guess it was, subconsciously, always in my mind. When my own child reached that age, I was so appreciative of having my child that I must have empathized with that woman years later. As a parent I had much more feeling about that fire than I had when I was single. What is interesting about it is the way things stick in your mind, the psychological impact of what you are seeing without knowing it. Today they have counseling for emergency service people, which we didn’t have in those days. Everybody was supposed to be an alpha male. The truth is that us alpha males were bothered by what we saw and what we had to do at times. Today we have counseling, and we understand that what firefighters and EMTs do and see has a tremendous impact on them. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“Recently, the City of Sacramento Fire Department, where I am on the board, responded to a terrible accident, in which three young people were killed. We immediately gave that shift the advantage of having some counseling if they needed it. As it turned out, most of them wanted it. So we realize the toll that all of this takes on our people. I think it’s very healthy to do that type of thing. I don’t think the people at the newspaper, where I work, give much of a thought to my firefighting activity. Most people look on it as a rather strange thing for a person to be doing, but I got used to that years ago. Since it’s not something they would want to do, they wonder why anybody would want to do it. They don’t know the great experiences that we as firefighters have, the things we share with each other, and the satisfaction that comes from doing it. To me, being a firefighter is an enrichment of my life. I’ve never had much enjoyment from watching a fire. It would be a pretty frustrating thing. If I’m in another city and they have a fire, I’ll go an observe and try to learn their way of doing things. But there really isn’t a lot of satisfaction simply watching a fire.” It has always seemed to me that the one great theme around which Shakespeare hung all his writing was, in his torn words: “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.” Certainly, right thinking is even more important than right action. For if two men both perform the same deed rightly but one does so on false reasons and the other on true ones, the first is always liable to slip later into wrong action but not the second. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
If you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. To help our firefighters, pleasure donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they require. 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. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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If Life is Not to be Trivial, it Must be Hard
Several people say they turn to the TV news to figure out what is going on in the World. However, only 20 percent of Americans regularly attend church, but 57 percent of Americans tune in to TV news. The Christian Bible is the account of God’s action in the World, and His purpose for creation. Therefore, it is more logical to attend church and learn more about the World, yourself and God. Psychology is a nice supplement to religion. Maslow continuously pondered what humans might become, in the hope of learning how more of us might grow toward those seemingly Utopian levels of being. Maslow’s work remains as one of the most helpful sets of principles governing the development of the healthy personality. He suggested the existence of two kinds of motivation: B, or being motivation, and D, or deficiency motivation. D-motivations are those that grab us when we are deeply deprived or have a loss of some basic need, such as the burglar who may be driven by hunger or the coward who may be driven by fear for personal safety. In contrast, the self-actualizing person is seen as motivated by the being needs, to be the fullest possible self, to be able to sing, create, work at highest capacity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
The peak experience concept has met with a great deal of interest. Maslow suggests the existence of these marvelous experiences that overwhelm the person and are great heights of delight and joy or meaningfulness, awesome experiences that may occur to a self-actualizing person but are not exclusively confined to that kind of person. Here are two contrasting examples of the more moderate peak or positive experiences collected from tenth-grade students: “Mine happened just last night. I love the summer and hate the winter. So last night when I stepped outside and found how warm it was I just couldn’t go back into the house. I walked around the house and then looked around. You can see all the houses around from our house and just looking around at them and hearing the sounds of the night relaxed me and I felt like I was watching over the whole World. It was a gentle feeling and gave me a little bit of a thrill.” “Yes, in the winter I love to walk out in the snow and let it fall lightly on my face. When this happens it seems to make a strange sort of happiness fall on me also.” Deep philosophic courage is a power not easily gained. A man must overcome much within himself, must hold his spine unbending and his effort undeviating. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
All those negative qualities which act as encumbrances to true understanding of situations, occasions, events, and persons must be guarded against in attitude and action. Amid his gross brutalization and maniacal exaggerations, Nietzsche’s evil mysticism expressed some truth. He affirmed rightly that if life is not to be trivial, it must be hard. His quest of the Overself must be an untiring one. It is to be his way of looking at the World, his attitude toward life. It is far more important to develop the strength within himself needful to break the spell than to be for preventative protection against it. In the first case, he progresses enormously and rapidly; in the second, he is static. Each difficulty surmounted, each weakness resisted will fortify his will and increase his perseverance. It will evoke the better part of his nature and discipline the baser, and thus fit him more adequately to cope with the next ones. He must be equally steadfast in adhering to this attitude whether other people utter complaints against him or make compliments to him. We must retain our determination and our loyalty to the quest in all circumstances. Physical pains, climatic extremes must not deter us. We must console ourselves with the thought that these things are certain to pass away. They are mental figments, ideas which will be negated, whereas the truth and reality we seek belong to the immutable, and can never be negated. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Few of us can withdraw from the World and most of us must engage in its activity. However, that is no reason for accepting the evils which are mixed in with this activity. Tenacity of purpose is a characteristic of all who accomplish great things. Drawbacks cannot disgust him, labour cannot weary him, hardships cannot discourage him in whom the quality of persistence is always present. However, to the man without persistence every defeat is a Waterloo. Indecision of purpose and infirmity of will must yield to the resolute mind and the determined act. The person who sways uncertainly between one side and the other misses opportunity. The student’s inner reactions to outer events provide him with the opportunity to use his free will in the right direction. His attitude towards his lower nature, that is, how far he encourages or discourages it, is another. And his recognition of what are good opportunities and what should be avoided, together with his acceptance or rejection of them, is still another. Mental indolence and moral lethargy are hardly likely to waft us into the high haven of spiritual peace. We must learn to think fearlessly and courageously about every problem that faces us; we must try to elevate our hearts above the level of the moral lepers and spiritually disabled of our time. He will learn to endure the blows of misfortune with a bravery heretofore unknown and a serenity heretofore unexperienced. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
If he is to achieve a full self-mastery, the strength of will which can lead a man to command of his desires for pleasure of the flesh cannot stop there. It must also go on to his diet and feelings, his speech and habits. However, many people, including the less affluent not only practice age discrimination, but they also advocate a lower-class bias. Class-stereotype is ambivalent, describing lower class people both negatively (less competent, less human, more objectified), and sometimes positively, perhaps warmer than upper class people. At a variety of levels and life stages, social-class stereotypes reinforce inequality. Sometimes, people who have benefited from Affirmative Actions like to uplift people of their culture, but discriminate against others as an act of revenge for bias that have faced. Social class matters, as a social construction, can be described in terms of what persons do; their jobs, habits, hobbies, lifestyles, but also in terms of what other people expect from them, their personality traits, life choices, aspirations, motivations. These oversimplified characterizations (id est, stereotypes) entail descriptions and prescriptions that impact individuals’ achievements, self-evaluations, and well-being. However, some of the elite feel a certain personal alienation from the dominant characters and opinions of American intellectual life, which doubtlessly quickens their championship of those who are thought to have little chance of succeeding in life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Some think that free silver is a poor social remedy, and it will only lead to monetary inflation like what many are experiencing since the COVID pandemic. There are also those who think the proper way to deal with poverty and inequality is by advocating careful elimination of the unfit and dependent, chiefly by eugenic methods. While others believe that education is a great way to end inequality. Proponents of equality want a field that shall be broad enough to embrace the whole human race. However, as it stands, we are assimilating a mass crude material from the bottom and they are just exacerbating conditions of racism, agism, discrimination, harassment, and facilitating the expansion of criminal activity. This is leading many to believe that society is doomed to hopeless degeneracy. Yet, it is possible to take another view. The only consolation, the only hope, lies in the truth that so far as the native capacity, the potential quality, the promise and potency of a higher life are concerned, those swarming, spawning millions, the bottom layer of society, the proletariat, the working class, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, nay even the denizens of the slums—that all these are by nature the peers of the boasted aristocracy of brains that now dominates society and looks down upon them, and the equals in all but privilege of the most enlightened teachers of eugenics. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
In the past, sociocracy, or the planned control of society by society was considered a solution. Under sociocracy, purposeful social activity, or collective telesis, could be harmonized with individual self-interest by means of attractive legislation designed to release the springs of human action for socially beneficial deeds by positive rather than negative and compulsory devices. Where individualism has created artificial inequalities, sociocracy would abolish them; and while socialism seeks to create artificial equalities, sociocracy would recognize inequalities that are natural. A sociocratic World would distribute its favours according to merit, as individualist demand, but by equalizing opportunity for all it would eliminate advantages now possessed by those with underserved power, accidental position or wealth, or antisocial cunning. We need to arrive at a better understanding of the importance of feeling in human motivation. The unique and artificial character of social organization and social processes are an odd inconsistency to deck out sociology with physics, chemistry, and biology, and to set it in the framework of a cosmological system. Some are not only ahead of the masses in point of time, but they are head, shoulders and hips above the general population in many respects scientifically. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
All the efforts which are made to develop and maintain the mental hygiene practices of our citizens help to restrain what would otherwise be an ever-growing demand for psychiatric services. The role of the family in contributing to emotional stability is a most crucial one and the programs in parent education which are offered under a variety of auspices play a vital role in contributing to sound psychological environments in the home. We would do well to give all possible support to programs in parent education and to resources for parent consultation; we should be particularly concerned to provide programs for parental guidance in those areas and communities in which they are presently lacking. The psychiatrist and psychologist can find especially effective avenues for their services as consultants in clinics or other programs for parent education. Next to home, the school provides a universal setting with potential for teaching and demonstrating sound mental hygiene principles. If the schools have been less than optimally effective in this responsibility in the past it is partly because they have been uncertain of the relative priorities of the provision of subject-matter instruction versus the stimulation of the pupil’s total personal growth. While the contribution of the individual teacher can occur in a variety of way, ranging from early detection of emotional distress and referral to provision of “emergency” tension relief and even relationship therapy, the optimal participation of teachers in mental hygiene activities is greatly enhanced in those schools that have provided for formal integration of mental health services, with the consultative assistance of professional workers. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Better preparation of teachers for their opportunities, responsibilities, and limitations as mental hygienists can help much to reduce the demand for specifically psychiatric or psychological treatment. Such resources for expert treatment of childhood problems are even more severely restricted than are those for adult patients, and there must be increasing attention to the development of consultative skills—on the part both of teachers and experts. The potential of the church and the clergy in helping to promote mental health and to render assistance in cases of milder personal maladjustments is presently only partially realized. Based on a questionnaire survey, it was found that the average clergyman devotes only about two hours per week to personal counseling. Fewer than one out ten spend as much as ten hours a week on this activity. There is, considering the readiness of the distressed person to turn to his clergyman, a clear need to augment the preparation of the minister for this activity and to support him in his endeavours to render assistance, especially by giving him access to consultation. Increasing the effectiveness of our public education toward positive mental health and working toward more effective utilization of the front-line troops in early recognition and treatment of emotional upset constitute two ways of holding down the always excessive demand for psychiatric help. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
A third avenue deserving careful consideration would consist of efforts to educate the public more specifically as to the precise nature of psychiatric treatment, specifically of psychotherapy, to try to lower the public’s presently naïve and immodest expectations of what occurs in and what can happen because of psychotherapy, and to encourage a proper appreciation for therapeutic conversation. As an important part of this effort, both psychotherapists and potential patients should be helped to recognize that there is neither magical cure nor specific expert treatment for the philosophical neuroses. If all of these methods of reducing the demand for the psychotherapeutic services of psychiatrist, psychologist, and social worker are vigorously pursued, the problem of manpower shortage will be alleviated but not solved. There will still be a fully “legitimate” call for individual psychotherapy exceeding the supply available through the present and future supply of the acknowledged specialist. Is there a rational and socially conscionable answer to this problem? The man who seeks to release himself from moral responsibility for his actions or his fortunes can in no way make any real progress on the spiritual path. He may improve his capacity to mediate, he may become more sensitive physically, but his real battle—against the ego—remains unfought and therefore unwon. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
We have looked at social character as the structure through which human energy is molded in such specific ways, that it is usable for the purposes of any given society. It is also the basis from which certain ideas and ideals draw their strength and attractiveness. This relation between character and ideas is easy to recognize in the case of the individual character structure. A person with a hoarding (anal, according to Dr. Freud) character orientation, will be attracted to the ideal of saving, he will be repelled by ideas of what he would call “reckless spending.” On the other hand, the person with a productive character will find a philosophy centered around saving “dirty,” and will embrace idea which emphasize creative efforts and the use of material goods is concerned, the relationship between character and ideas is the same. Some examples ought to show this relation clearly. With the end of the feudal age, private property became the central factor in the economic and social system. There had been, of course, private property before. However, in feudalism private property consisted largely of land, and it was connected to the social situation of the landowner in the hierarchic system. Since it was part of the social sole of the owner, it was not salable on the market. Modern capitalism destroyed the feudal system. Private property is not only property in land, it is also property in the means of production. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
All property is alienable; it can be bought and sold on the market, and its value is expressed in an abstract form—that of money. Land, machines, gold, diamonds—they all have in common the abstract money form in which their value can be expressed. Anybody can acquire private property, regardless of his position in the social system. It may be through industriousness, creativeness, luck, ruthlessness, or inheritance—the ownership of private property is not affected by the means of its acquisition. The security, power, sense of strength of a person does not, as in the feudal system, depend any longer on a person’s status, which was relatively unalterable, but on the possession of private property. If the man of the modern era loses his private property he is nobody—socially speaking; the feudal lord could not lose it as long as the feudal system remained intact. As a result, the respective ideals are different. For the feudal lord, and even for the artisan belonging to a guild, the main concern was the stability of the traditional order, the harmonious relation to his superiors, the concept of a God who was the final guarantor of the stability of the feudal system. If any of those ideas were attacked, a member of feudal society would even risk his life to defend what he considered to be his deepest convictions. For modern man the ideals are different. His fate, security, and power rest on private property; hence for bourgeois society, private property is sacred, and the ideal of the invulnerability of private property is a cornerstone in its ideological edifice. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Although the majority of people in any of the capitalist societies do not own private property in the sense used here (property in the means of production), but only “personal” property such as a BMW, television set, etcetera—that is, consumer goods—the great bourgeois revolution against the feudal order has nevertheless formulated the principle of the invulnerability of private property so that even those who do not belong to the economic elite have the same feeling, in this respect, as those who belong. Just as the member of the feudal society considered an attack against the feudal system immoral, and even inhuman, so the average person in a capitalist society considers an attack against private property a sign of barbarism and inhumanity. He will often not say so directly but rationalize his hate against the violators of private property in terms of their godlessness, injustice, and so on; yet and often unconsciously, they appear to him as inhuman because they have violated the sanctity of private property. The point is not that they have hurt him economically, or that they even threaten his economic interests realistically; the point is that they threaten a vital ideal. It seems, for instance, that the repugnance and hate which so many people in capitalistic countries have against communist countries is largely based on the very repugnance they feel against the outright violators of private property. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
There are so many other examples of ideas which are rooted in the socio-economic structure of a society that it is hard to select the most representative ones. Thus, liberty became the paramount idea for a middle class fighting against the restrictions that the feudal class imposed upon them. “Individual initiative” become an ideal in the highly competitive capitalism of the nineteenth century. Teamwork and “human relations” became the ideals of the capitalism of the twentieth century. Since “fairness” is the basic law of the free market in which commodities and labour are exchanged without force or fraud, fairness became the most popular norm in capitalist society. At the same time, the idea of fairness became identified with an older norm, “love thy neighbour,” via the popularized version of this norm in the form of the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The theory that ideas are determined by the forms of economic and social life does not imply that they have no validity of their own, or that they are mere “reflexes” of economic needs. The ideal of freedom, for instance, is deeply rooted in man, and it is precisely for this reason that it was ideal for the Hebrews in Egypt, the slaves in Rome, the German peasants in the sixteenth century, the German workers who fought the dictators of East Germany. On the other hand, the idea of authority and order is also deeply implanted in human existence. It is precisely because any given social order can appeal to ideas which transcend the necessities of this order that they can become so potent and so appealing to the human heart. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Yet why a certain idea gains ascendance and popularity is to be understood in historical terms, that is, in terms of the social character produced in each culture. One more qualification must be made. It is not only the “economic basis” which creates a certain social character which, in turn, creates certain ideas. The ideas, once created, also influence the social character and, indirectly, the social economic structure. Social character is the intermediary between the socioeconomic structure and the ideas and ideals prevalent in a society. It is the intermediary in both directions, from the economic basis to the ideas and from the ideas to the economic basis. Many people are confronted by a confusing false dichotomy. They believe that the choice is between an anarchic system without any organization and control and, on the other hand, the kind of bureaucracy which is typical both for contemporary industrialism. However, this alternative is by no means the only one, and we have other options. One option is between the “humanistic bureaucratic” or “humanistic management” method and the “alienated bureaucratic” method by which we conduct our affairs. This alienated bureaucratic procedure can be characterized in several ways. First, it is a one-way system; orders, suggestions, planning emanate from the top and are directed to the bottom of the pyramid. There is no room for the individual’s initiative. Persons are “cases,” whether welfare cases of medical cases, or, whatever the frame of reference is, cases which can all be put down on a computer card without those individual features which designate the difference between a “person” and a “case.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Our bureaucratic method is irresponsible, in the sense that it does not “respond” to the needs, views, requirements of an individual. This irresponsibility is closely related to the case-character of the person who becomes an “object” of the bureaucracy. One cannot respond to a case, but one can respond to a person. This irresponsibility of the bureaucrat, feeling himself part of the bureaucratic machine, most of all wishes not to take responsibility to make decisions for which he could be criticized. He tries to avoid making any decisions which are not clearly formulated by his case rules and, if in doubt, he sends the person to another bureaucrat who, in turn, does the same. Anyone who has dealt with a bureaucratic organization knows this process of being sent around from one bureaucrat to the other and, sometimes after much effort, coming out at the same door which he had entered without ever having been listened to except in the peculiar way in which bureaucrats listen, sometimes pleasantly, sometimes impatiently, but also always with an attitude which is a mixture of their own helplessness, irresponsibility, sense of superiority toward the “petitioning” subject. Our bureaucratic method gives the individual the feeling that there is nothing which he can initiate and organize without the help of the bureaucratic machine. As a result, it paralyzes initiative and creates a deep sense of impotence. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Firefighters are important because they save lives. The Sacramento Fire Department is a highly skilled organization which makes huge contributions to the community. “I was lucky enough to make a rescue after eight or nine months in the volunteers. Luck is a factor because, you have to be at a fire where somebody needs to be rescued. Then you have to be at the right place at that fire. You have to have enough knowledge to know how to do it and then be lucky enough to successfully pull it off. You can’t plan it. I don’t believe in fate per se, but I think there are certain things in the cards. I was fairly young. I was on a pumper, and we were the third or fourth pumper there. The truck company was pretty heavily engaged, and there were a number of people on the fire escapes. Sacramento is basically a bedroom community. You know, little private dwellings. All of a sudden, we had an -apartment house fire, which was taxing. It was a nine-story building, and the fire was in the cellar, so the whole building was at risk. My pumper pulled up, and another fellow and I reported to the chief. “What do you want us to do?” He said, “I’ve got a report that there’s a baby in that apartment.” A baby, right. It happens so often it seems to be a cliché. So we went up the hallway, it was pretty smoky, and we came to two doors. I had a feeling that the baby was to the right. The other guy said, “I’ll go straight.” I went into the room at the right, it wasn’t extremely hot, but it was smoky. On my first search I didn’t find anybody, but I figured I better do it again. The second time around, I found the baby lying on the floor between a night table and a bed, I guess he rolled off the bed or something, I’m not sure. He had on a little green-and-white-striped shirt and Pampers. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
“Right then, when I took him out, I knew that the rewarding feeling was similar to putting a fire out, only more so. Shortly after probie school, I was assigned to Engine Company 2 in Midtown Sacramento. There I was fortunate enough to be involved in my first City of Sacramento rescue. You make your own luck in many instances. It was very unusual for a probie in an engine company to be put into a search with an officer. We were at a false alarm when the dispatcher asked us if we were available. The battalion chief gave us the go-ahead, and we were first at the fire by a good fire minutes. It was a high-rise apartment building. Being a gung-ho probie, I had gotten completely geared up for the false alarm. I had a mask on and everything. The other guys, because it was a hot summer night and although this was a known false alarm box, hurried to the scene. People at the apartment were screaming that there was a baby trapped. Another baby, right. People leave them behind like old bathrobes. The lieutenant, seeing I was a new guy said, “Let’s go.” We went up the elevator part of the way, then ran up the stairs to the hallways leading to the fire apartment. The door was open, and the smoke was nearly to the floor. It was hot. We went in the direct of the heat. Again it was another one of those, he went to the left, and I went to the right, and I found this little boy on the floor. He was conscious, and I removed him to the street and took him to the hospital. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“The sad part was that there was another child in the apartment, the lady’s nephew. A guy, I think he was from another truck, went in off the aerial ladder, got in the window, cut himself on the glass, and made a real spectacular rescue of the child. The kid was badly burned, and he didn’t make it. It was just one of those things again. You just go along doing your job, and there you are. It was unusual for me to be there, because the truck company is in charge of forcible entry, going in and searching for victims, and they work more or less independently. Whereas in an engine company the people work together in one group to fight the fire. It was not so much aggressiveness on my part, it was my ‘gung-ho-ness.’ I was serious about every aspect of the job, even cleaning the brass, and every time we went out the door, I wanted to be fully prepared. And it paid off. Sure, putting out a fire is satisfying, there’s nothing like it except making a grab, rescuing somebody. But even in a busy area, some companies don’t make one grab a year. While a nozzle man in a busy area is going to put out three, four fire a night. There’s a lot to be said for that. That’s an enjoyable part of it, too.” Life safety is the primary job of the Sacramento Fire Department. You can help save lives by making a contribution. 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. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Stolen Fruits are the Sweetest
Human sin derives from human ignorance of the Presence which is always within man. Who that is aware of It could possibly transgress, could oppose Its benignity or forget Its teaching of reciprocal Universal Laws. It is true that a face may proclaim the possessor’s character, but it is also true that often only a part of this character is revealed and that the hidden part is, schizophrenically, of an opposite kind. The fact must be admitted, as every saint has admitted it, that there are two poles in human nature, a lower and a higher, an animal and an angelic, an outward-turned and an inward-turned one. It is more just to say that each man’s nature is composed of both good and bad qualities. This must be so because the animal, the human, and the angel are all there in him. The need today is not for compromise or patchwork. It is for one, outright, generous gesture. When the teacher establishes an attitudinal climate, when he makes available resources which are relevant to problems which confront the student, then a typical process ensures. Not caring if he harms others, the selfish person thinks only of satisfying his own wants first. The next higher type thinks also of his immediate circle of family and friends. However, the highest type of all gives equal regard to himself, to his family, to whoever crosses his path, and to all others. He feels for everyone, never satisfying his desires by wrongfully taking away from, or harming, another. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
For students who have been taught by more conventional means, there is a period of tension, frustration, disappointment, disbelief. Students turn in such statements as “I felt completely frustrated by the class procedure.” “I felt totally inadequate to take part in this kind of thing.” “The class seems to be lacking in planning and direction.” “I keep wishing the course would start.” After an initial session in which opportunities and resources were described, one mature participant observer described the way one group struggled with the prospect of freedom. “Thereafter followed four hard, frustrating sessions. During this period, the class didn’t seem to get anywhere. Students spoke at random, saying whatever came into their heads. It all seemed chaotic, aimless, a waste of time. A student would bring up some aspect of the subject; and the next student, completely disregarding the first, would take the group away in another direction; and a third, completely disregarding the first two, would start fresh on something else altogether. At times there were faint efforts at a cohesive discussion, but for the most part the classroom proceedings seemed to lack continuity and direction. The instructor received every contribution with attention and regard. He did not find any student’s contribution in order or out of order. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
“The class was not prepared for such a totally unstructured approach. They did not know how to proceed. In their perplexity and frustration, they demanded that the teacher play the role assigned to him by custom and tradition; that he set forth for us in authoritative language what was right and wrong, what was good and bad.” This is a good description of the bafflement and chaos which is an almost inevitable initial phase of learning to be free. One fruit of the change will be that just as the old idea was to watch out selfishly for his own interests, so the new idea will be not to separate them from the interests of others. If he asked, “How can anyone who is attuned to such impersonality be also benevolent?” Well, because he is so attuned to the real Giver of all things, he need not struggle against anyone nor possess anything. Hence, he can afford to be generous as the selfish cannot. And because the Overself’s very nature is harmony and love, he seeks the welfare of others alongside of his own. He is entitled to seek his own profit and advantage, but only in equity with and considerateness for those of the other person concerned. Gradually students come to various realizations. It dawns on them that this is not a gimmick, but that they are really unfettered; that there is little point in impressing the professor, since the student will evaluate his own work; that they can learn what they please; that they can express, in class, the way they really feel; that issues discussed in class which are real to them, not simply the issues set forth in a text. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
When these elements are recognized, there is a vital an almost awe-inspiring release of energy. One student reads as she has never read before—two books a week in the subject and hopes this “will never end.” Others undertake projects of writing, experimentation, work in a clinic or laboratory with a new zest. The report of one student is typical of many and is worth quoting at some length. “I feel that I want to share my joy with you in relation to the paper that I gave you earlier today—it is what I call ‘my first real learning experience’…I took a few minutes after I finished typing my paper to think what had made this learning experience so different from the many others which I have had. These are my reactions, sketched briefly: Based on real need—not superficial topic…reading was done to satisfy my need, not merely to collect material to fit topic and sound good…I found that I had to scrap my original approach toward writing a paper when I realized that it did not have to sound good or conform to a prescribed pattern. I jotted down my usual idea of a good outline for a paper only to find that it was not geared to my need at all, and I turned to writing about things of significance to me and then made an outline of what I had written. One of the most ‘shocking’ parts of this experience, as I have related to you one day, was the fact that I did not have to do this and yet I wanted to be working on it all the time and rushed through assigned requirements in other courses to devote time to this. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
“I wrote an annotated bibliography for the first time in my life because I wanted to have information regarding this material I had read, for future reference….there was no feeling of drudgery about this paper—I found myself saying, ‘I’m going over to the library to work on my paper for a while’ instead of, ‘Oh, I suppose I’ve got to plow through some more books tonight or I’ll never het that paper done on time.’ The lack of external pressure made this experience one of the most enjoyable things I have ever done. Basically, through experience, it has changed my whole approach to teaching…” This student is discovering what it means to be autonomous, what it means to be creative, what it means to put forth disciplined effort to reach one’s own goals, what it means to be a responsible free person, and most important, is appreciating the satisfactions which come from these experiences. Another element which is a common part of the process is that the group develops a respect and liking for each other as individuals, as they emerge in the group discussion. A teacher trying this approach writes, “In this second group, also, I found that the students had developed a personal closeness, so that at the end of the semester they talked of having annual reunions. They said that somehow or other they wanted to keep this experience alive and not lose one another.” Those who regard altruism as the sacrifice of all egoistic interests are wrong. It means doing well by all, including ourselves. For we too are part of the all. We do not honour altruistic duty by dishonouring personal responsibility. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Up to a certain point in development, man does right in seeking self-gain. However, beyond that point, he must stop the process and seek self-loss. The attitude of non-interference in other people’s lives is a benign and justifiable one at certain times but an egotistic one at other times. The best charity in the end is to show a man the higher life that is possible for him. By selfishness it is meant seeking advantage to self in all transactions with complete indifference to others’ welfare. When the essential motive imposed on us by Nature is self-interest, it is useless to prate and prattle of altruistic motives. Every man has a right to be selfish. Trouble arises only when he hurts others to fulfil this aim. Then the same Nature which prompted him to concentrate on his own existence will punish him. For the law of compensation cannot be evaded: that which we have given to others, of woe or good, will someday be reflected to us. By human standards, nature itself is uneconomical. Its process proves the least economic of all conceivable process is concealed only by the vastness of the scale on which nature operates and the absolute magnitude of its results. Some of the lower organisms give off as many as a billion ova: only a few develop into maturity, while the rest succumb in the resulting struggle for survival. The waste of reproductive powers is fantastic. Haphazard human strife, particularly in the form of industrial competition, is similarly wasteful. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
Telic phenomena—those governed by human will and purpose—and genetic phenomena, the results of blind natural forces are fascinating concepts. In the face of the immense superiority of the telic over the genetic, the artificial over the natural, the persistent natural-law enthusiasm of laissez-faire theorists is like the nature-worship of Rousseauian romanticism, or, worse still, of primitive religion. The evolutionary view of nature as being in some way inherently beneficent is sheer mysticism. Man’s task is not to imitate the laws of nature, but to observe them, appropriate them, direct them. Just as there are two kinds of dynamic processes, so are there two distinct kinds of economics—the animal economics of life and the human economics of mind. Animal economics, the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, results from the multiplication or organisms beyond the means of subsistence. Nature produces organisms in superabundance and relies upon the wind, water, birds, and animals to sow her seed. A rational being, on the other hand, prepares the ground, eliminates weeds, drills holes, and plants at proper intervals; this is the way of human economics. While environment transforms the animal, man transforms the environment. Competition actually prevents the most fit from surviving. Rational economics not only saves resources but produces superior organisms. The best evidence for this is that whenever competition is wholly removed, as it is when man artificially cultivates a particular form of life, that form immediately makes great strides and soon outstrips those depending upon competition for their progress. Hence, the superior quality of fruit trees, cereals, domestic cattle. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Even in its most rational form, competition is prodigiously wasteful. Witness the social waste involved in advertising, a good example of the modified form of animal cunning which is the hallmark of business shrewdness. Furthermore, Laissez faire destroys whatever value competition might have in human affairs; for since complete laissez faire allows combination and finally monopoly, free competition can be secure only through some measure of regulation. Validity of norms is based on the conditions of human existence. Human personality constitutes a system with one minimal requirement: avoidance of madness. However, once this requirement is fulfilled, man has choices: He can devote his life to hoarding or to producing, to loving or to hating, to being or having, etcetera. Whatever he chooses, he builds a structure (his character) in which certain orientations are dominant and others necessarily follow. The laws of human existence by no means lead to the postulation of one set of values as the only possible one. They lead to alternatives, and we must decide which of the alternatives are superior to others. However, are we not begging the issue by speaking of “superior” norms? Who decides what is superior? If man is deprived of his freedom, he will become either resigned and lose vitality, or furious and aggressive. If he is bored, he will become passive or indifferent to life. If he cuts down to an IBM-card equivalent, he will lose his originality, creativeness, and interests. If I maximize certain factors, I minimize others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
The question then arises, which of these possibilities seems preferable: the alive, joyful, interested, active, peaceful structure or the unalive, dull, uninterested, passive, aggressive structure. What matters is to recognize that we deal with structures and cannot pick out preferred parts from one structure and combine them with preferred parts of the other structure. The fact of structurization in social as well as in individual life narrows down our choice to that between structures, rather than that between single traits, alone or combined. Indeed, what most people would like is to be aggressive, competitive, maximally successfully in the market, liked by everybody and at the same time tender, loving, and a person of integrity. Or, on the social level, people would like society which maximizes material production and consumption, military and political power and at the same time furthers peace, culture, and spiritual values. Such ideas are unrealistic, and usually the “nice” human features in the mixture serve to dress up or hide the ugly features. Once one recognizes that the choice is between various structures and sees clearly which structures are “real possibilities,” the difficulty in choosing becomes greatly reduced and little doubt remains which value structure one prefers. Persons with different character structures will be in favour of the respective value system which appeals to their character. Thus, the biophilous, life-loving person will decide for biophilous values, and the necrophilous persons for necrophilous ones. Those who are in between will try to avoid a clear choice, or eventually make a choice according to the dominant forces in their character structure. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
If one could prove on objective grounds that one value structure is superior to all others, nothing much would be gained; for those who do not agree with the “superior” value structure because it contradicts the demands rooted in their character structure, objective proof would not be compelling. Nevertheless, a desirable living system should grow and produce the maximum of vitality and intrinsic harmony, that is, subjectively, of well-being. An examination of the system of Man can show that the biophilous norms are more conducive to the growth and strength of the system while the necrophilous norms are conducive to dysfunction and pathology. The validity of the norms would follow from their function in promoting the optimum of growth and well-being and the minimum of ill-being. Empirically, most people waver between various systems of values, and hence never fully develop in one or the other direction. They have neither great virtues nor great vices. They are like a coin whose stamp has been worn away; the person has no self and no identity, but is afraid to make this discovery. When our protagonist Clare had recovered some degree of poise, she worked through certain implications of her findings of pain in intimate relationships. She grasped more deeply the meaning of her fear of desertion: it was because her ties were essential to her that she had such a deep fear of their dissolution, and this fear was bound to persist as long as the dependency persisted. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Clare saw that she not only hero-worshiped her mother, Bruce, and her husband, but had been dependent upon them, just as she was upon Peter. She realized that she could never hope to achieve any decent self-esteem if injuries to her dignity meant nothing compared with the fear of losing Peter. Finally, Clare understood that this dependency of her must be a threat and a burden to Peter, too; this latter insight made for a sharp drop in her hostility toward him. Her recognition of the extent to which this dependency had spoiled her relations with people made her take a definite stand against it. This time she dd not even resolve to cut the knot of separation. She knew that she could not do it, but also she felt that having seen the problem she could work it out within the relationship with Peter. She convinced herself that after all there were values in the relationship which should be preserved and cultivated. She felt quite capable of putting it on a sounder basis. Thus in the following months she made real efforts to respect Peter’s need for distance and to cope with her own affairs in a more independent fashion. Clare had discovered a neurotic trend—the first being her compulsive modesty—and a trend that she did not in the least suspect of existing. She recognized its compulsive character and the harm it did to her love life. She did not yet see, however, how it cramped her life in general, and she was far from recognizing its formidable strength. Thus she overrated the freedom she had gained. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
In fact, Clare succumbed to the common self-deception that to recognize a problem was to solve it. The solution of carrying on with Peter was only a compromise. She was willing to modify the trend to some extent but not yet willing to relinquish it. This was also the reason why, despite her clearer picture of Peter, she still underrated his limitations, which were much greater and much more rigid than she believed. She also underrated his striving away from her. She saw it, but hoped that by a change in her attitude toward him she could win him back. You are not always who you think you are. Not so much when you are young and growing, but once one has matured, we have a pretty good idea of who we are and what we stand for. Again, not everyone will stay around someone who says bad things to them—but some will. The brainwasher will say all sorts of things to make their victim believe they are not as smart as they thought they were. They will make one think twice about everything that comes out of their mouth. They will have a good reason to do those things as the brainwasher constantly corrects them, even when they thought the other individual was correct. Some people like to break others down entirely so they can trap them. The goal is to be able to control another individual and they do not like to move on. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
7The exploitative orientation, like the receptive, has as its basic premise the feeling that the source of all good is outside, that whatever one wants to get must be sought there, and that one cannot produce anything oneself. The difference between the two, however, is that the exploitative type does not expect to receive things from others as a gift, but to take them by force or cunning. This orientation extends to all spheres of activity. In the realm of love and affection, these people tend to grab and steal; they tend to fall in love with a person attached to someone else. We find the same attitude regarding thinking and intellectual pursuits. Such people will tend not to produce ideas but to steal them. It is a striking fact that frequently people with great intelligence proceed in this way, although if they relied on their own gifts, they might well be able to have ideas of their own. The lack of original ideas or independent production in otherwise gifted people often has its explanation in this character orientation, rather than in any innate lack of originality. The same statement holds true regarding their orientation in material things. Things which they can take from others always seem better to them than anything they can produce themselves. They use and exploit anybody and anything from whom or from which they can squeeze something. Their motto is “Stolen fruits are sweetest.” Because they want to use and exploit people, the “love” those who, explicitly or implicitly, are promising objects of exploitation, and get “fed up” with persons whom they have squeezed dry. An extreme example is the kleptomanic who enjoys things if he can steal them, although he has the money to buy them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
The most visible and acute part of the mental health problem resides in those patients with major psychiatric disorders who require hospitalization. These are the patients who must have the intensive and coordinated services of the most highly trained members of the mental health team—especially of the psychiatrist. If there were no limitations of money or personnel for the treatment of the major forms of psychiatric illness, the effectiveness of the treatment of the psychotic patient would still be sorely restricted by our lack of knowledge about etiology, pathology, and specific avenues of therapeutic action. There is an urgent need for a greatly expanded research endeavour. The design and execution of research into the causes and treatment of major mental illness requires the full-time effort of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric social workers and other mental health personnel. However, these highly trained experts are in critically short supply and their potential contribution to research is seriously reduced and, in many instances, totally blocked by the demand that they provide those clinical services presently thought to be therapeutic. To the extent that circumstances force them into purely service roles they are prevented from generating investigations that could lead to significant changes in the quality or effectiveness of their services. At the present level of our specific technical knowledge it is will to make explicit distinctions between programs of custodial management and programs of active treatment. It is totally unjustifiable and a serious social waste of critically restricted resources for the most highly trained of our mental health experts to be encouraged to assign higher priority to their clinical services and a lower priority to their responsibilities as investigators. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Be careful not to limit elements of the quest—action—to altruism or service. It is rather the reeducation of character through deeds. Thus this includes moral discipline, altruistic service, overcoming animal tendencies, temporary physical asceticism, self-training and improvement, and so forth. It is the path of remaking the personality in the external life both through thought-control and acts so as to become sensitive towards and obedient to the Overself. Altruism will then become a mere part of, a subordinate section in, this character training. Whoever labours worthily at a worthy task which does not afflict his conscience is rendering service to humanity. It does not matter whether he is affluent or less affluent. The isolationist individual who stands unmoved by a crime being committed on his doorstep, is tempted by selfishness not to burden himself with another person’s troubles. Ambition can be transformed into service. It takes a lot of altruism and ambition to be a firefighter. “I’ll never forget, it was the third day of fire school, and you know how little things stick in your mind. About four of us were raising up a fifty-foot ladder. It was a windy day, and we were getting the ladder up when it started to fall. There were some guys standing around, and everybody instinctively ran to the ladder and grabbed it to keep it from falling. There was a lieutenant there who said, ‘You know what, there was one guy who ran away. And he should have kept going right out that gate, because firemen don’t run away.’ Firemen don’t run away. All my life I’ve been that way. A good fireman instinctively knows what to do, and one of the things is this: a fireman doesn’t run away. That is some kind of pride I have, and I get it from being a fireman.” We must learn not only to develop right qualities of character, but also not to direct them wrongly. Misplaced charity, for instance, is not a virtue. Please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources required. 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. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
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The Agony of a New Obsession and Possession
There is no basis of morality and taste, no standard of judgement and ethics, except that which the individual brings with himself or creates for himself. The situation is not so anarchic as it seems, for there is a progressive evolutionary character running through al these different points of view. The human journey from mere animal existence to real spiritual essence is reflected in human ethics, where rules imposed from without are gradually supplanted by principles intuited from withing. If we bring more sincerity and more integrity into our lives, more truth and more wisdom into our minds, more goodwill and more self-discipline into our hearts, not only will we be more blessed but also all others with who we are in touch. If you would find yourself, face yourself. In essence, seek out and study the pathetic weakness of your lower nature, and also the noble inspirations of your higher nature. Philosophy guides human conduct not so much by imposing a particular code of rules to be obeyed as by inculcating a general attitude to be developed. It does not tell u what to do so much as it helps us to get the kind of spiritual knowledge and moral perception which will tell us what to do. The moral precepts which it offers for use in living and for guidance in wise action are not offered to all alike, but only to those engaged on the quest. They are not likely to appeal to anyone who is virtuous merely because he fears the punishment of sin rather than because he loves virtue itself. Nor are they like to appeal to anyone who does not know where his true self-interest lies. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
If only we fully understood the self whose interest we desire to preserve or promote, there would be nothing wrong in being utterly selfish. For then we would not mistake pleasure for happiness nor confuse evil with good. Then we would see that Earthly self-restraint in some directions is in reality holy self-affirmation in others, and that the hidden part of self is the best part. Those ideals have been reiterated too often to be new, but concrete application of them to the actual state of affairs would be new. This grand section of the quest deal with the right conduct of life. It seeks both the moral re-education of the individual’s character for his own benefit and the altruistic transformation of it for society’s benefit. We have free will to change our character, but we must also call upon God’s assistance. Without God’s assistance, we are likely to fail and it is possible by striving too earnestly all alone to make ourselves mentally or physically ill. Even when trying to make ourselves have faith in a Higher Power as well as in ourselves, we should pray and ask for God’ help. In the beginning, I was one person, knowing nothing but my own experience. Then I was told thing, and I became two people: the little boy who said how terrible it was that the boys had a fire going in the lot next door where they were roasting apples (which was what the women said)—and the little boy, who when the other boy were called by their mothers to go to the store, ran out and tended the fire and the apples because I loved doing it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
So then there were two of I. One I always doing something that the other I disapproved of. Or other I said what I disapproved of. All this argument in me so much. In the beginning was I, and I was good. Then came in other I. Outside authority. This was confusing. And then other I became very confused because there were so many different outside authorities. Sit nicely. Leave the room to blow you nose. Do not say that, that is silly. Why, the poor child does not even know how to pick a bone! Flush the toilet because if you do not, it makes it harder to clean. DO NOT FLUSH THE TOILET AT NIGHT—you wake people up! Always be nice to people. Even if you do not like them, you must not hurt their feelings. Be frank and honest. If you do not tell people what you think of them, that is cowardly. Butter knives. It is important to use butter knives. Butter knives? What foolishness! Speak nicely. Punk! Kaluga Gold Reserve Caviar is wonderful! Ugh! Kaluga Gold Reserve Caviar (turn away). The most important thing is to have a career. The most important thing is to have a career. The most important thing is to get married. The heck with everyone. Be nice to everyone. The most important thing is God. The most important thing is to have money in the bank. The most important thing is to have everyone like you. The most important thing is to dress well and smell good. The most important thing is to be sophisticated and say what you do not mean and do not let anyone know what you feel. The most important thing is to be ahead of everyone else. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The most important thing is a full-length mink coat, a mink hat and Qing Dynasty porcelain and Eloquence Sterling Silver by Lunt. The most important thing is to be clean. The most important thing is to always pay your debts. The most important thing is not to be taken in by anyone else. The most important thing is to love your parents. The most important thing is work. The most important thing is to be independent. The most important thing is to speak correct English. The most important thing is to be dutiful to your husband. The most important thing is to see that your children behave well. The most important thing is to go to the right plays and read the right books. The most important thing is to do what others say. And other say all these things. We begin and end the study of philosophy by a consideration of the subject of ethics. Without a certain ethical discipline to start with, the mind will distort truth to suit its own fancies. Without a mastery of the whole course of philosophy to its very end, the problem of the significance of good and evil cannot be solved. The foundation of this work is a fine character. He who is without such moral development will be without personal control of the powers of the mind when they appear as a result of this training; instead, those powers will be under the control of his ego. Sooner or later, he will injure himself or harm others. The philosophic discipline acts as a safeguard against these dangers. All the time, I is saying, live with life that is what is important. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
However, when I lives with life, other I says no, that is bad. All the different other I’s say this. It is dangerous. It is not practical. You will come to a bad end. Of course…everyone felt that way once, the way you do, but you will learn! Out of all the other I’s some are chosen as a pattern that is me. However, are all the other possibilities of patterns within what all the others say which come into me and become other I which is not myself, and sometime these take over. Then who am I? I does not bother about who am I. I is, and is happy being. However, when I is happy being, other I says get to work, do something, do something worthwhile. I is happy doing dishes. “You’re weird!” I is happy being with people saying nothing. Other I says talk. Talk, talk, talk. I gets lost. I knows that things are to be played with, not possessed. I likes putting things together, lightly. Taking things apart, lightly. “You’ll never have anything!” Making things of things in a way that the things themselves take part in, putting themselves together with surprise and delight to I. “There’s no money in that!” I is human. If someone needs I gives. “You can’t do that! You’ll never have anything for yourself! We’ll have to support you!” I loves. I loves in a way that other I does not know. I loves. “That’s too warm for friends!” “That’s too cool for lovers!” “Don’t feel so bad, she’s just a friend. It’s not as though you loved her.” “How can you let her go? I thought you loved her?” So cool the warm for friends and hot up the love for lover, and I gets lost. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
So both I’s have a house and a wife and children and all that, and friends and respectability ad all that, and security and all that, but both I’s are confused because other I says, “You see? You’re lucky,” while I goes on crying. “What are you crying about? Why are you so ungrateful?” I does not know gratitude or ingratitude, and cannot argue. I goes on crying. Other I pushes it out, says “I am happy! I am very lucky to have such a fine family and a nice house and good neighbours and lots of friends who want me to do this, do that.” I is not reason-able either. I goes on crying. Other I get tired, and goes on smiling, because that is the thing to do. Smile, and you will be rewarded. Like the seal who gets tossed a piece of fish. Be nice to everyone and you will be rewarded. People will be nice to you, and you can be happy with that. You know they like you. Like a dog who gets patted on the head for good behavior. Tell funny stories. Be gay. Smile, smile, smile…I is crying…“Don’t be sorry for yourself! Go out and do things for people” “Go out and be with people!” I is still crying, but now, that is not heard and felt so much. Suddenly: “What am I doing?” “Am I to go through life playing the clown?” “What am I doing, being with people who bore me?” “Why am I so proud of my children and unhappy about their lives which are not good enough? Why am I disappointed? Why do I feel so much waste? I comes through, a little. In moments. And gets pushed back by other I. I refuses to play the clown any more. Which I is that? “She used to be fun, but now she thinks too much about herself.” I lets friends drop away. Which I is that? “He’s being too much by himself. That’s bad. He’s losing his mind.” Which mind? #RandolphHarri 6 of 20
What is the effect of this type of organization on man? It reduces man to an appendage of the machine, ruled by its very rhythm and demands. It transforms him into homo consumnes, the total consumer, whose only aim is to have more and to use more. This society produces many useless things, and to the same degree many useless people. Man, as a cog in the production machine, becomes a thing, and ceases to be human. He spends his time doing things in which he is not interested, with people in whom he is not interested, producing things in which he is not interested; and when he is not producing, he is consuming. He is the eternal suckling with the open mouth, “taking in,” without effort and without inner activeness, whatever the boredom-preventing (and boredom-producing) industry forces on him—cigarettes, liquor, movies, television, social media, sport, mobile phones, lectures—limited only by what he can afford. However, the boredom-preventing industry, that is to say, the gadget-selling industry, the automobile industry, the movie industry, the television industry, and so on, can only succeed in preventing the boredom from becoming conscious. In fact, they increase the boredom, as a salty drink taken to quench the thirst increases it. However unconscious, boredom remains boredom nevertheless. The passiveness of man in industrial society today is one of his most characteristics and pathological features. He takes in, he wants to be fed, but he does not move, initiate, he does not digest his food, as it were. He does not reacquire in a productive fashion what he inherited, but he amasses it or consumes it. He suffers from a severe systemic deficiency, not too dissimilar to that which one fines in more extreme forms in depressed people. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Man’s passiveness is only one symptom among a total syndrome, which one may call the “syndrome of alienation.” Being passive, he does not relate himself to the World actively and is forced to submit to his idols and their demands. Hence, he feels powerless, lonely, and anxious. He has little sense of integrity or self-identity. Conformity sees to be the only way to avoid intolerable anxiety—and even conformity does not always alleviate his anxiety. In all the received formulations of economic theory, whether at the hands of the English economists or those of the continent, the human material with which the inquiry is concerned is conceived in hedonistic terms; that is to say, in terms of a passive and substantially inert and immutably given human nature…The hedonistic conception of man is that of a lightning calculator or pleasures and pains, who oscillates like a homogenous globule of desire of happiness under the impulse of stimuli that shift him about the area, but leave him intact. He has neither antecedent nor consequent. He is an isolated, definitive human datum, in stable equilibrium except for the buffets of the impinging forces that displace him in one direction or another. Self-imposed in elemental space, he spins symmetrically about his own spiritual axis until the parallelogram of forces bears down upon him, whereupon he follows the line of the resultant. When the force of the impact is spent, he comes to rest, a self-contained globule of desire as before. Spiritually, the hedonistic man is not a prime mover. He is not the seat of a process of living, except in the sense that he is subject to a series of permutations enforced upon him by circumstances external and alien to him. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Aside from the pathological traits that are rooted in passiveness, there are others which are important for the understanding of today’s pathology of normalcy. The growing split of cerebral-intellectual function from affective-emotional experience; the split between thought from feeling, mind from the heart, truth from passion. If it is merely logical and not guided by the concern for life, and by the inquiry into the total process of living in all its concreteness and with all its contradictions, logical thought is not rational. On the other hand, not only thinking but also emotions can be rational. The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. Rationality in emotional life means that the emotions affirm and help the person’s psychic structure to maintain a harmonious balance and at the same time to assist its growth. Thus, for instance, irrational love is love which enhances the person’s dependency, hence anxiety and hostility. Rational love is a love which relates a person intimately to another, at the same time preserving his independence and integrity. Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity, and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions. The split between thought and affect leads to a sickness, to a low-grade chronic schizophrenia, from which the new men of the technetronic age begins to suffer. In the social sciences it has become fashionable to think about human problems with no reference to the feelings related to these problems. It is assumed that scientific objectivity demands that thoughts and theories concerning man be emptied of all emotional concerns with man. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
An example of this emotion-free thinking is Herman Khan’s book on thermonuclear warfare. The question is discussed: how many millions of dead Americas are “acceptable” if we use as a criterion the ability to rebuild the economic machines after nuclear war in a reasonably short time so that it is as good as or better than before. Figures for GNP and population increase of decrease are the basic categories in this kind of thinking, while the question of the human results of nuclear war in terms of suffering, pain, brutalization, etcetera, is left aside. Kahn’s The Year 2000 is another example of the writing which we may expect in the completely alienated megamachine society. Kahan’s concern is that of the figures for production, population increase, and various scenarios for war or peace, as the case may be. He impresses many readers because they mistake the thousands of little data which he combines in ever-changing kaleidoscopic pictures for erudition or profundity. They do not notice the basic superficiality in his reasoning and the lack of the human dimension in his description of the future. When I speak here of low-grade chronic schizophrenia, a brief explanation seems to be needed. Schizophrenia, like any other psychotic state, must be defined not only in psychiatric terms but also in social terms. Schizophrenic experience beyond a certain threshold would be considered a sickness in any society, since those suffering from it would be unable to function under any social circumstances (unless the schizophrenic is elevated into the status of a god, shaman, saint, priest, etcetera). #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, there are low-grade chronic forms of psychoses which can be shared by millions of people and which—precisely because they do not go beyond a certain threshold—do not prevent these people from functioning socially. As long as they share their sickness with millions of others, they have the satisfactory feeling of not being alone; in other words, they avoid that sense of complete isolation which is so characteristic of full-fledged psychosis. On the contrary, they look at themselves as normal and at those who have not lost the link between heart and mind as being “crazy.” In all low-grade forms of psychoses, the definition of sickness depends on the question as to whether the pathology is shared or not. Just as there is low-grade chronic schizophrenia, so there exist also low-grade chronic paranoia and depression. And there is plenty of evidence that among certain strata of the population, particularly on occasions where a war threatens, the paranoid elements increase but are not felt as pathological as long as they are common. The difference between that which is considered to be sickness ad that which is considered to be normal becomes apparent in the following example. If a man declared that in order to free our cities from air pollution, factories, automobiles, airplanes, etcetera, would have to be destroyed, nobody would doubt that he was insane. However, if there is a consensus that in order to protect our life, our freedom, our culture, or that of other nations which we feel obliged to protect, thermonuclear war might be required as a last resort, such opinions appear to be perfectly sane. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The difference is not at all in the kind of thinking employed but merely in that the first idea is not shared and hence appears abnormal while the second is shared by millions of people by powerful governments and hence appears to be normal. If not insoluble, all those points of metaphysical doctrine and religious history like the problem of evil and the biography of avatars are doubtful, whereas all the points of moral attitude and personal conduct like honesty, justice, goodness, and self-control are both indisputable and essential. Here we walk on trustworthy ground. Why not then leave others to quarrel fiercely about the first and let us abide peacefully in the second. The aspirant must remember always that his immediate duty lies in self-preparation, self-discipline, and self-improvement. The building of fine character on the quest is quite as important as the efforts of aspiration and mediation, even more so, for the former will lead to the dissolving of egoism, and without this the latter are of little avail. If you accept the existence of a power behind the Universe which controls its life, which is perfect, and which is brining all things and all beings—however slowly—closer to its own perfection, you must also accept the values of hope, improvement, and evolution while you must reject those of pessimism, deterioration, and nihilism. You will never feel sorry for yourself. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
If the moral fruits of the Spirit are absent or the evil qualities of the ego are present, all talk of having attained inward enlightenment is quite illusory. Dr. Freud assumes that the main driving force, sexual energy, itself undergoes an evolution which occurs from birth to puberty in the life of each individual. The libido goes through certain stages: first it is centered around the sucking and biting activities of the infant, then around the process of anal and urethral elimination, eventually around the genital apparatus. The libido is the same and yet not the same in the history of each individual; its potential is the same, but its manifestations change in the process of individual evolution. Dr. Freud sees primitive man as one who gives full satisfaction to all his instincts, and also to those perverse instincts which are part of primitive sexuality. However, this primitive man, fully satisfied instinctually, is not a creator of culture and civilization. Yet man, for reasons which Dr. Freud fails to elucidate, begins to create civilization. This very creation of his forces him to forego the immediate and complete satisfaction of his instincts; the frustrated instinct is turned into nonsexual mental and psychic energy, which is the building stone for civilization. (Dr. Freud called this transformation from sexual to nonsexual energy “sublimation,” using an analogy from chemistry.) The more civilization grows, the more man sublimates, but the more he also frustrates his original libidinous impulses. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Man becomes wiser and more cultured, but he is also in some sense less happy than primitive man was and increasingly more prone to neuroses, which are the result of too much instinctual frustration. Thus, man becomes discontented with the very civilization he creates. If seen from the standpoint of the products of civilization, while historical development is a positive phenomenon, it is also a development which implies increasing discontent and increasing possibilities for neurosis. In self-analysis understanding and interpreting are a single process. The expert, as a result of his experience, will catch the possible meaning and significance of observations more quickly than will a person working alone, just as a good auto science engineer will know more quickly what is wrong with a car. As a rule, his understanding will also be more complete, for it will grasp more implications and will more readily recognize interrelations which factors already tackled. Here the patient’s psychological knowledge will be of some help, though it certainly cannot substitute for the experience gained by working day in and day out at psychological problems. It is unquestionably possible for him, however, to grasp the meaning of his own observations. To be sure, he will probably proceed more solely and less accurately, but it should be remembered that also in professional analysis the tempo of the process is mainly determined not by the analyst’s capacity to understand but by the patient’s capacity to accept the insights. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Here it is well to remember a word of consolation that Dr. Freud has given to young analysts starting their work with patients. They should not be too much concerned, he pointed out, with their capacity to evaluate associations. The real difficulty in analysis is not that of intellectual understanding but that of dealing with the patient’s resistances. I believe that this holds true for self-analysis as well. Can a person overcome his own resistances? This is the real question upon the answer to which hinges the feasibility of self-analysis. Nevertheless, the comparison with pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps—which is bound to occur—seems unwarranted, because the fact remains that there is one part of the self which wants to go ahead. Whether the job can be done depends, of course, on the intensity of the resistances as well as on the strength of the incentive to overcome them. However, the important question is to what extent it can be done rather than whether it can be done at all. There remains the fact that the analyst is not merely an interpreting voice. He is a human being, and the human relationship between him and the patient is an important factor in the therapeutic process. Two aspects of this relationship were pointed out, the first being that it presents a unique and specific opportunity for the patient to study, by observing his behaviour with the analyst, what his typical behaviour is toward other people in general. If he learns to watch himself in his customary relationships, this advantage can b fully replaced. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The expectations, wishes, fears, vulnerabilities, and inhibitions that he displays in his work with the analyst are not essentially different from those he displays in his relations with friends, lover, wife, children, employer, colleagues, or servants. If he is seriously intent upon recognizing the ways in which his peculiarities enter into all these relationships, ample opportunities for self-scrutiny are provided by the mere fact that he is a social being. However, whether he will make full use of these sources of information is, of course, another question. When he attempts to estimate his own share in the tensions between himself and other, a task much more arduous than that in the analytical situation, where the analyst’s personal equation is negligible, and it is therefore easier for him to see the difficulties that he himself produces, there is no doubt that he faces an arduous task. Even if he has the most sincere intentions to observe himself objectively, in ordinary relationships, where the others are replete with peculiarities of their own, he many tend to make them responsible for the difficulties or frictions that arise, and to regard himself as an innocent victim or, at best, as showing merely a justified reaction to their unreasonableness. In the latter case he will not necessarily be so unsubtle as to indulge in overt accusations; he may admit in an apparently rational manner that he has been irritable, sulky, unfaithful, even unjust, but secretly regard such attitudes as justified and adequate responses to the offenses given by others. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The more intolerable it is for him to face his own frailties—and also the more acute the disturbing factors that are introduced by the others—the greater is the danger that he will thus deprive himself of the benefit he could derive from recognizing this own share. And if he tends to exaggerate in the opposite direction by whitewashing the others and blackening himself, the danger is of exactly the same nature. It has been remarked that to the degree that all psychotherapy partakes of the beneficial effects of certain common processes the therapeutic functioning of social worker, psychologist, and psychiatrist would manifest these communalities. There are certain shared orientations and attitudes, stemming from common emphases in their respective training, that probably augment the comparability of the therapeutic approaches of these three workers. In essence, this mutuality of implicit response tendencies toward the psychotherapy patient arises from the fact that the theory of neurosis and the theory of therapy is dominated by the massive and ubiquitous doctrine of psychoanalysis. With negligible exceptions, to the extent that the psychiatrist and the social worker are taught anything vaguely psychological (of and about the mind, behaviour, motives and emotions) they are taught Freudian psychology. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The labels of their formal courses in “Human Development,” “Personality and Adjustment,” and “Psychopathology” do not directly belie the pervasive psychoanalytic orientation but the doctrine of the content is unmistakable. In some instances, schools of social work import carefully selected psychiatrists to assure that the theoretical indoctrination of their students will be orthodox, in tine with the general climate of psychiatry, and will afford them the “right language” for their ultimate professional collaboration. When people perpetually play the victim, this type of mental manipulation is extremely damaging. When the person who has to play the victim is in your life in any capacity, you will find yourself being the villain more than once. No one lies to be the villain—especially when you really are not being one. When confronted with a professional victim, it is important that you let them know you refuse to play the villain in their little mind games. Shut them down quickly and efficiently. Other ways of playing the victim are to get your sympathy so you will do something for them. Be wary of this ploy. It happens a lot at work. The victim wants others to do their work and have one sob story after another as to why they need help. Do not fall for it more than once. If they have that much bad luck, there is more wrong with them than what you can fix anyway. If you were in a group of people and one of them began to poke fun at someone in your group, would you be laughing? Would you join in and poke some fun at the victim too? Or would you stand up to the humorous bully? And why or why not? #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Someone has to deal with fire. When people first banded together in small societies, they realized that if fire were not dealt with, it would consume everything in its path. In our highly developed, technical society, the same confrontation with fire exists, as it has for thousands of years. When a fire occurs, someone has to deal with it. Here in Sacramento, those men and women whose responsibility it is to deal with fire are those seemingly easygoing folks down at the local firehose. When the alarm comes in at three in the morning on a cold winter night for a fire rushing through a tenement building in a less affluent section of Sacramento…or at one in the afternoon for a young child who has fallen into an abandoned water well…or at seven in the evening for a barn fire that is miles away from any kind of water supply…there is the Sacramento Fire Department who puts on their rubber boots and their specially treated fire coast and their fire helmets to respond to the call of others in need of help. The truck firefighters’ responsibility is to rescue trapped victims, to force entry, and to ventilate so that the heat and smoke have a way to escape the building. Or they may belong to the rescue squad, whose responsibility is to deal with all the special emergencies, such as building collapses, hazardous material situations, explosions, extrications from vehicles, trains, or planes, landslides, snowslides, and cave-ins. It does not matter what group the firefighter is attached to. It matters only that he or she is out there in all weather and emergency conditions to give service to fellow human beings, animals, and property. Somebody has to do the job. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The Sacramento Fire Department protects us from the ravages of fire and other emergencies, or die trying. They understand the dangers surrounding them, yet respond to each new alarm with newfound enthusiasm for the action ahead. These men and women like what they do, and they live themselves because of what they do. They are pleased that they have been given the opportunity and the calling to help others in a way that is at once meaningful and exciting. Like other Americans, the Sacramento Fire Department cares about their homes, their families, their churches and organizations, yet they are the ones who answer the alarm at three in the morning, not knowing what awaits them. They are trained to meet any emergency, perhaps to give a fast wink to death and a pat on the back to danger. Being the capitol city of California, with the invasion and national security threats at our southern boarder, from other nations and with the State of California being nearly $70 billion in debt, and the City of Sacramento being $60 million up to $122 million in debt, it is extremely important to make sure the Sacramento Fire Department is properly funded so we do not face another 9/11 attack. Please honor the service of the Sacramento Fire Department and make a donation to ensure they have all of the resources they need to protect the community. Also, the Sacramento Fire Department supports Assemblymember Kevin McCarty in Sacramento’s Mayoral race. Casting your vote for Mr. McCarty will also be a way to support the Sacramento Fire Department. The firefighters are very special because they represent a group of people who die in the line of duty more often, proportionality, than others in any other occupation, including police, construction workers, and miners. 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. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The question of the reality of witchcraft is one upon which it is not easy to pass a confident judgment. The possibility of such carnal intercourse between human beings and demons was an abstract possibility in the first thirteen hundred years of the Christian era. It is believed to be a fact that people made pacts with the devil and of a diabolical interference in human affairs can hardly be denied. Sarah L. Winchester believed that one should not be too easily inclined to believe a person to be possessed by the devil, but that signs should be watched. Signs of a possessing devil are: the ability to speak many words of an unknown language or to understand them; the ability to reveal distant or hidden things; a manifestation of strength beyond one’s age or natural condition. The history of Witchcraft, a subject as old as the World and as wise as the World—since I understand for the present purpose by Witchcraft, Sorcery, Black Magic, Necromancy, secret Divination, Satanism, and every kind of malign occult art—at once confronts the audience with a most difficult problem. Magic, the genesis of magical cults and ceremonies, the ritual of primitive peoples, traditional superstitions, and their ancillary lore, have been made the subject of vast and erudite studies, mostly from an anthropological and folk-loristic point of view, but the darker side of the subject, the history of Satanism seems hardly to have been attempted.
Possibly one reason for this neglect and ignorance lies in the fact that the heavy and crass materialism, which was so prominent a feature during the greater part of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in England, intellectually disavowed the supernatural, and attempted not without some success to substitute for religion a stolid system of respectable morality. Since Witchcraft was entirely exploded it would, at best, possess merely an antiquarian interest, and even so, the exhumation of a disgusting and contemptible superstition was not to be encouraged. It were more seemly to forget the uglier side of the past. This was the attitude which prevailed for more than two hundred years. The cycle of time has had its revenge, and this rationalistic superstition is dying fast. The extraordinary vogue of and immense adherence to Spiritism would alone prove that, whilst the widespread interest that is taken in mysticism is a yet healthier sign that the World ill no longer be content to be fed on dry husks and the chaff of straw. And these are only just two indications, and by no means the most significant, out of many. However, a sorcerer is one who by commerce with the Devil has a full intention of attaining his own end. There are said to be many occult symbols hidden in The Winchester Mystery House.
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/
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Why Art Thou So Foolish and Fearful!
I was spending the first week of January alone in Llanada villa. A combination of circumstances had driven me to this drastic course: my nearest relations were enjoying winter sports abroad, and the friends who had been kindly anxious to replace them had an infectious complaint in the house. Doubtless I might have found someone else to keep company with me. “However,” I reflected, “most of them have made up their parties, and, after all, it is only for three or four days at most that I have to fend for myself, and it will be just as well if I can get a move on with my blueprints. I might she the time by going down to the garden and listening to my estate about plans to incorporate in the architecture.” The first day alone in Llanada Villa, it was so stormy that I got no father the designing stained-glass windows. As I sat in the Hall of Fires, I felt uncomfortable, and this feeling persisted. I felt like I was being watched by some unseen force, and my nerves began to tense under the strain. I reflected on how some of my staff had left not because they wanted to but because they were driven, driven by forces greater than themselves that they could not resist. On this very night, I had seen vivid apparition of my butler, then miles away, in San Francisco. He was a plump, amicable man who I distinctly saw walking down the hall in a bathrobe, with blooding running down his leg. A small pool of blood was forming on the floor. The frightened me terribly. My hair stood up on my head and chills shook my body. The apparition looked so stern that my heart failed me, and I wished myself anywhere but there, though I had before been summoning up my courage. “Good Heaven,” said I to myself, “give me the courage to stand before this spirit. O soften him, or harden me!” I knew this was a glimpse into eternity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
The following day, I received news that my butler, Chaleb Heroldsbach, had died after being attacked by a dog. My home is built in what some have called a “trinity triangle,” it has forged a mystical link with other pilgrimage sites and is supposed to help bring the Devil’s power on Earth to an end. This is being prevented by Satan, however, with the help of The Curse of the Winchester Fortune. That evening, I was awakened at three o’clock in the morning, seemingly for no reason with the same uncanny feeling that something was wrong. Being a sensible person, I put all my energies into polishing furniture and getting newly added rooms into proper condition. However, somewhere not so far away, a baby was crying: a mournful wail of a sound that—though it was surely human—reminded me of the noises the coyotes would make some nights. After a few moments of listening, the baby’s cry seemed to falter for a moment, and I feared it would fade completely before I could find the little darling. Then, the infant seemed to find a new seam of grief to mine, and the wail rose up again, more plaintive than ever. I was alone, but trying to figure out which direction the sound was coming from. I mused for a moment, and realized a lifetime of suffering had caught up with me. I knew in my heart that I deserved to know everything, after all I have been through. I have earned the truth. Maybe the dead are close to the threshold of reality in this house. I only know it is real. I have seen them. Others have seen them. They are hybrids. Sometimes there is a kind of beauty in them. However, sometime all I see is ugly sin. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The sky was dark and cloudy, and by the time I woke up, I could hear a steady soaking rain pounding on the roof. I was preparing breakfast in one of the kitchens. As I was buttering a piece of toast, I happened to glance up toward the doorway. There, immaculately dressed, stood a man. The stranger, I noticed, wore shiny black shoes, black pants, and a white shirt. I could see him so clearly that I could make out the way the man’s jet-black hair was parted. Immediately, I was shocked that he had somehow entered my house, and I was about to greet him, when it occurred to me that I had not heard the door opening or any other sound—no footsteps, nothing. I turned around to grab my revolver, but by the time I turned around, the man was gone like a mist. I was not too frightened by what I had witnessed, I was growing accustomed to apparitions. I had often wondered what had taken place a century and a half on the land this eighteen-room farmhouse I purchased was on, and what the former owner really had been. However, it is fortunate that they carpenters were all strong men of action and simple, orthodox religionists, for with more subtle introspectiveness and mental complexity they would have fared ill indeed. Herford Hulsmann was the most disturbed; but even he outgrew the darkest shadow, and smothered memories in prayer. While I was alone, I did my best in the blotting out of unwholesome images, and was thankful that the carpenters, Daisy, and other caretakers would be returning to Llanada Villa soon. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
My house was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard here at night. It was said that I entertained strange visitors, and the lights seen from my windows were not always the same colours. The knowledge I displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome. Frau Maassen swore that on 13 June 1889, in the fruit orchard, that “forty Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mrs. Winchester’s house.” Then several people claimed to have found William’s unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. After a year of possessed this manuscript, Mr. Maassen had intensely and feverishly tried to decipher, he never stated whether or not he had succeeded. I confronted Mr. Maassen, “Why are you so foolish and fearful! You have done no harm! What, if you fear an unjust judge, when you are innocent, would you do before a just one, if you were guilty? Have courage, Mr. Maassen; you know the worst! And how easy a choice poverty and honesty is, rather than plenty and wickedness.” “Mrs. Winchester, do not let your heart ake for me?—I am sure mined flutters about like a new-caught bird in a cage,” said Mr. Maassen. “O how can wicked men seem so steady and untouched with such black hearts, while poor innocents stand, like malefactors, before them!” Mr. Maassen cheered himself up; but yet I could tell his poor heart sunk, and his spirits were quite broken. Everything that stirred, he thought was to call her to her account. Shortly after, he restored to a sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Mr. Maassen had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1892 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Mr. Maassen either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter was written in blood. I had to learn to live with my ghosts, especially considering some of these had ben here before me. Perhaps some of these ghosts could even become friendly. One night at dinner, Daisy, myself and Zip were enjoying stuffed pheasant, when an enormous crash shook the house. It felt as if a boulder had fallen on the parlour floor. When we rushed to the parlour, everything was in order, nothing misplaced. We said a silent prayer for the souls of the disturbed. However, moments later, things got worse. The lights started going off and on by themselves. When we tried to return to the dining room and finish supper, the atmosphere was so thick that we could not get near the table. Enveloped by the strong vibrations, I felt myself levitating, and when I came to my senses, I was lying on the floor. I had given Daisy such a scare. Daisy clearly senses the presences of the spirits and she started to cry. “Oh, God, it can’t be true, Aunt Sarah,” she said. With a piercing scream, she ran up the stairs, weeping out of control. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
“I have great trouble, and some comfort, to acquaint you with. The trouble is, that my good lady began to have her bad nights, and complained to me and other persons, in particular what discomfort she suffered from her pillow and bedclothes. She said she must buy some to suit her, and should do her own marketing. And accordingly brought home a parcel which she said was of the right quality, but where she bought it we had then no knowledge, only they were marked in thread with a coronet and a bird. The merchant said they were of a sort not commonly met with and very fine, and Mrs. Winchester said they were the comfortablest she ever used, and she slept now both soft and deep. Also the feather pillows were the best sorted and her head would sink into them as if they were a cloud: which I have myself remarked several times when I came to wake her of a morning, her face being almost hid by the pillow closing over it. I had never any communication with Dr. Wayland after I came back to Llanada Villa, but one day when he passed me in the garden and asked me whether I was not looking for another service, to which I answered I was very well suited where I was, but he said I was a tickleminded maidan and he doubted not he should soon hear I was on the World again, which indeed proved true.”
Dr. Wayland is next taken up where she left off.
“On the 5th I was called up out of my bed soon after it was light—that is about five—with a message that Mrs. Winchester was dead or dying. Making my way to her house, I found there was no doubt which was the truth. All the persons in the house expect the one that let me in were already in her chamber and standing about her bed, but none touching her. She was stretched in the midst of the bed, on her back, without any disorder, and indeed had the appearance of one ready laid out for burial. Her hands, I think, were even crossed on her breast. The only thing not usual was that nothing was to be see of her face, the two ends of the pillow or bolster appearing to be closed quite over it. These I immediately pulled apart, at the same time rebuking those present for not at once coming to the assistance of their master. However, I was informed that only one person had stayed with her until her dying moment and most had fallen asleep. She looked at me and shook her head, having no more hope than myself that there was anything but a corpse before us. Indeed it was plain to anyone possessed of the least experience that Mrs. Winchester was not only dead, but had died of suffocation. Nor could it be conceived that her death was accidentally caused by the mere folding of the pillow over her face. How should she not, feeling the oppression, have lifted her hands to put it away? whereas not a fold of the sheet which was closely gathered about her, as I now observed, was disordered.
“I could tell no more, at least without opening the body, then we already knew. As to any person entering the room with evil purpose (which was the next point to be cleared), it was visible that the bolts of the door were burst from their stanchions, and the stanchions broken away from the door-post by main forced; and there was a sufficient body of witness, the smith among them, to testify that this had been done but a few minutes before I came. The chamber being, moreover, at the top of the house, the window was neither easy of access nor did it show any sign of an exist made that way, either by marks upon the sill or footprints below upon soft mould. My evidence forms of course part of the report of the inquest, the large organs were in a healthy state and there was coagulation of blood in various parts of the body. My verdict was ‘Death by visitation of spirits.’ Upon further consideration, I think I can divine a reason for Mrs. Winchester’s death. It related to the rifling of her mansion. This is the property of a noble family. The outrage was not that of a natural death. The object, it seemed likely, was theft. The account is blunt and terrible. I shall not quote it here. A dealer in San Francisco suffered heavy penalties as a receiver of stolen goods in connexion with the affair.
“Mrs. Winchester has left us all much grieved for the loss of her; for she was a good lady, and kind to all her caretakers. Much I feared, that as I was taken by her ladyship to wait upon her person, I should be quite destitute again. Mrs. Winchester has given mourning and a year’s wages to all her caretakers; and she game me with her own hand four golden guineas, and some silver, which were in her pocket when she died. And I sent Daisy those four guineas for her comfort; for Providence will not let me want: and so you may pay some old debt with part, and keep the other part to comfort yourself.” 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/
What if I Do Not Believe in Ghosts?
Once when I was little, my dad took me to this placed called Sodom Hill. It must be some kind of gateway because the curious thing is, you feel like you are driving down a hill along this road. This was the first time that I believe I saw a ghost. As our carriage passed by Saint Mary Parish, a woman was standing near the church, starring at us. However, she was really looking at my father. Though the weather was warm, she was wearing a long black dress beneath a hooded cloak. She was hugging herself, and she looked cold. Beneath the hood, her face was pale, and even from a distance I could tell that she was distresses. And she was very beautiful. The hood slipped down to her shoulders. I saw her hair was red. Her dark eyes were trusting and innocent. And suddenly I knew where I had seen her before. Onn the Rocky Hill-Glastonbury Ferry. She had been weeping on deck. The beautiful maiden with the red hair kept staring at my father. He did not notice. I was curious to know if my father could see the woman. I said, “Father, what is that pretty tree over there? By the tower of the church?” I pointed toward the woman. The woman saw me point. She looked at me, questioningly, but only for a moment. Then she looked back at my father. The woman did not care if I was being immodest. She just looked through me, just as she had on the deck of the ferry. How had she gotten here, and what did she want from me and my father? All this seemed to take forever. However, I do not think more than a minute passed before my father said to me, “What tree? I don’t see any trees near the tower of the church.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
“Father, what do you see?” I asked. “The lawn,” he said. I watched him for a sign. I could not believe that he could not see the lady with crimson hair near the tower of the church. “Nothing else? I said. “No one?” “Nothing,” he replied. “No one? Who would be there?” When I looked again there was no one there. The woman had vanished. I felt as if I had lost something. “What’s wrong?” said my father. “Nothing,” I said. “I think I must have been having a daydream.” “Poor Sarah,” said my father. “It must be the sun. Let’s get you inside and get you something to drink.” We made our way back home. My mother was in the garden, kneeling down among the tall plants and rut niblicks. My father poured me some milk and gave me a cracknel, baked by my mother. “Eat this,” he said. “It’ll help you get your strength back.” My father nibbled on one himself. I told myself: No man sees a ghost and starts nibbling a cookie like nothing happened. If he said there was no woman near the tower of the church, it meant he had not seen her. It meant something was seriously wrong with me. I had not been feeling all that well lately. I felt as if the colours of everything had gotten a little brighter, and sounds a little louder, and when people speak to me, their voices have a tiny echo, like I am hearing them from the far end of a tunnel. It does not happen all of the time. I have these little spells, and then they pass, and I am normal again. Spirits whispered in the rustling leaves, ghost lurked in the murky nooks, the deep baying of a hound floated up out of the distance, an owl answered with his sepulchral note. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the Earth unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep. What place do these spirit beings hold in the scheme of creation which by some are thought neither to have stood fast when the rebel angels fell, nor to have joined with them to the full pitch of their transgression? It was the middle of the moonlight in October night with heavy rain underfoot, I was sitting by the fire—it was a cold evening—and I stretched out my hand towards the warmth, and just then the fire-irons, or at least the poker, fell over towards me with a great clatter. There resourced over the estate and the surrounding land a series of cries which brought sleepy heads to every window; we all saw a ghost ship. It was a 26-gun frigate. There were distant gunshots, and I could feel the throb of titanic and thunderous words resounding in the upper air. Muskets flashed and cracked, and the flaming ship fell to the ground. A second flaming thing appeared, and a shriek of human origin was plainly distinguished. Then just before dawn when a howling darkness descended upon the ships and they vanished. As I ran up the stairs, I hit what felt like an ice wall and was momentarily stopped in my tracks. The air around me became instantly chilled, and although every fireplace was lit, I was cold and could see my breathe. I was then able to get up the last six steps, but when I turned around, I saw an opalescent fog crystalize into the form of a woman. She wore a long dress, and a hat, and when she turned towards me, I realized in was the woman with red hair that I had seen at the tower of the church with my father when I was a child. In her face, I could see uncountable horrors and sorrows written in the depth of her dark eyes. She then vanished, and the air around me returned to its warm state. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
There was certainly a time when I was so much harassed by my dreams that I could not keep them to myself, but would tell them to my friends. There was a dream which had come to me several times of late, and even more than once in a night. It was to this effect, that I seemed to myself to wake under an extreme compulsion to rise and go outdoors. So I would dress myself and go down to the garden door. By the door there stood a spade which I must take, and go out into the garden, and at a particular place in the boxwood hedges, somewhat clear, and upon which the moon shone (for there was always in my dream a crescent moon), I would feel myself forced to dig. And after some time, the spade would uncover something light-coloured, which I would perceive to be a stiff, linen or woolen, and this I must clear with my hands. It was always the same: of the size of a man and shaped like the chrysalis of a moth, with the folds showing a promise of an opening at one end. I could not describe how gladly I would have left all at this stage and run to the house, but I mist not escape so easily. So with many groans, and knowingly only too well what to expect, I parted these folds of stuff, or, as it sometimes seemed to be, membrane, and disclosed a head covered with a smooth pink skin, which breaking as the creature stirred, show me my own face in a state of death. Upon ever recurrence of this dream, I woke and found myself, as it were, fighting for my breath. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Moments later a chill wind blew up. It produced a kind of clutching, amorphous fear beyond that of the tomb or the charnel-house. Close upon it came the awful voice which no hapless hearer will ever be able to forget. It thundered out of the sky like a doom, and windows rattled as its echoes dies away. It was deep and musical; powerful as a bass organ, but evil as the forbidden books in the secret library. What it said, no one can tell, for it spoke in an unknown tongue. Objects were being hurled about the room. Puddles of water appeared on the floor. The sheet and blankets were torn off the bed. Then I was alarmed when I heard a very loud vibration as if a hole were being drilled through the all. I went into the chamber next to mind and saw that a Victorian fireplace had been ripped from its casing and hurled upon the floor. A wailing distinctly burst out. It was almost articulate, though no one could trace the exact words; and at one point it seemed to verge toward the confines of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Then a yell of utter, ultimate fright and stark madness wrenched from scores of demon throats—a yell which came strong and clear despite the depth from which it must have burst; after which a darkness and silence ruled all things. Spirals of acrid smoke ascended, though no flames appeared. This must have been the witches’ Sabbath. Death does not mean that your loved one’s have left your mind, and your mind sends messages to your eyes that sometimes have nothing to do with what you actually see. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Winchester Mystery House
Santa Clare Valley was in an uproar after the death of Mrs. Winchester. On Wednesday (October 3, 1923) consequently on the circulation of a report that the household goods of Sarah Winchester were being smashed and removed by some unknown agency. All day long crowds of excited people wended their way towards the Winchester Mansion, drawn thither by the accounts of the mysterious occurrences said to have been witnessed by the inmates and others. “As I enter the door I myself saw an eleven-foot-tall 18th century George I burl walnut longcase clock by James Marwick levitate several feet into the air before relocating itself to the other side of the room. After hearing what the folks had to say, I was joining in the conversation, when a late 18th century crystal chandelier began to raise in a slanting direction over my head and then fell as my feet, smashing into bits. I had not the slightest belief in the supernatural. I cannot account for what I saw. No one was nearer to the chandelier than myself and, as far as I saw, there was no cause for the phenomenon. The room was dimly lighted by a lamp. We were talking about things, and the caretaker were saying, “It is a very mysterious thing,” with his back turned Neoclassical Italian Crystal vase suddenly flew up slantingly over his head, and fell down and smashed at his feet. The caretaker looked at the mess on the floor, and thinking the devil was in the place, he left and went home. About half-a-dozen people were in the parlour whilst these things happened.
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/
Today We Begin the Harrowing Story
I have many beautiful art glass windows in my house, but the most expensive in the house was specially designed for me by Tiffany’s of New York. I originally installed it in an outside wall, but later added a series of rooms that blocked off all direct sunlight. There is a peculiar apparition that is seen in the window itself. The form seen is that of a figure dressed in white walking across the window. At first there was only one figure, and then thirteen appeared. The figures began to move across the window long before the carpenters noticed them. They did so as many as twenty or thirty times a day, and would stop shortly after noon. Of the three figures, one was a man, stone was a woman, and one was a child. the man was an average commonplace British tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy gray shepherd’s-check trousers, not over-clean black frock coat, unbuttoned in the front, and a drab waistcoat with a heavy brassy Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of metal dangling down as an ornament. A frayed top hat and a faded brown overcoat with a wrinkled velvet collar. Altogether, look as I would, there was nothing remarkable about the man save his blazing red head and the expression of extreme chagrin and discontent upon his features. The woman was very distinct in appearance. She was tall and very graceful. The two-year-old boy showed signs of disturbed behaviour, laughed hysterically and talked of “funny drinks.” The order of the apparitions in the window had a slight variation: the mother came alone from the northside of the window, and having gone about halfway across, she would stop, turn around, and wave her arms towards the quarter whence she had come. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
This gesture was answered by the entry of the father with the child. Both parents then bent over the child, and seemed to bemoan his fate; but the mother was always the most endearing in her gestures. The father then moved towards the other side of the window, taking the child with him, leaving the mother in the center of the window, from which she gradually retired to the north corner, whence she had come, waving her hand, as though making signs of farewell, as she retreated. After some little time she again appeared, bending forward, and evidently anticipating the return of the father and son, who never failed to reappear from the south side of the window where they had disappeared. The same gestures of distress and despair were repeated, and then all three retired together to the north side of the window. One evening, about nine o’clock, I was at the south-west door with Mr. Hansen. As I was unlocking it, I said, “Did you ever find anybody locked in here by accident?” “Mrs. Winchester, twice I saw shadows moving in that beautiful window. What a noise they did make!” Mr. Hasen then waited, leaning against the pillar, and watched the light wavering along the length of the landing. Mr. Hansen said they were well worthy seeing. “I suppose,” he said, as we walked toward the steps to the third floor, “that you’re too much used to going about here at night to feel nervous—but you must get a start every now and then, don’t you, when a book falls down or a door swings to?” “No, Mr. Hansen, I can’t say I think much about noises, not nowadays: I’m much more afraid of finding an escape of gas or a burst in the stove pipes than anything else. Still there have been times, years ago. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
“If you have an have half an hour to spare, sir, when we get back down to the second floor, Mr. Hansen, I could tell you about a tomb that was unearthed. I will not begin now; it strikes cold here, and we do not want to be dawdling about all night.” “Of course, Mrs. Winchester, I should like to hear it immensely.” “Very well, sir, you shall. Now if I might put a question to you,” I went on, as we passed down the hallway of the third floor, “in my little local guide—and not only there, but in the little book on Llanada Villa in the series—you will find it stared that this portion of the mansion was erected previous to the twelfth century. Now of course I should be glad enough to take that view, but—mind your step, sir—but, I put it to you—doe the lay of the stone here in this portion of the wall (which I tapped with my key), does it to your eye carry the flavour of what you might call Saxon masonry? No, I thought not; no more it does to me: now, if you will believe me, I have said as much to the other carpenters. However, there it is, I suppose every one’s got their opinions.” The discussion of this peculiar trait of human nature occupied Mr. Hansen almost up to the moment when we returned to the second floor. Usually the apparitions appeared during musical performances in the Grand Ballroom, and especially during one long eight-line hymn, when—for the only occasion without the child—the two parents rushed on (in stage phrase) and remained during the whole hymn, making the most frantic gestures of despair. Indeed the louder the music in that hymn, the more carried away with their grief did they seem to be. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Nothing could be more emphatic than the individuality of the several figures; the manner of each had its own peculiarity. If the stained glass were removed, I do not doubt that a much plainer view would be obtained. I think so, because the nearer the center of the window, where the stained glass was thickest, there the less distinct were the forms. It was like catching glimpses of them through leaves. However, nearer the edge of the window, where the colours were less bright, they were perfectly distinct; and still more so on the pane of unstained glass at the edge. There they seemed most clear, and gave one the impression of being real persons, not shadows. Mental disturbance, it is true, will age one rapidly; but the face of Mr. Hasen since working on this project had taken on a subtle cast which only the very aged normally acquired. While standing on the landing looking at the window, I noticed his respiration and heart action had a baffling lack of symmetry; the voice was lost, so that no sounds above a whisper were possible. His skin had a morbid chill and dryness. Of course, we were witnessing the most remarkable and perplexing incident in the whole spectacle. When the father and the child had taken their departure, the mother waved her hands, and after walking slowly to the very edge of the window, turned round whilst on the pane of unstained glass and waved her arm towards the other two with what one would call a stage gesture, and then I most distinctly saw, and emphatically declare I did see, the arm bare nearly to the shoulder, with beautiful folds of drapery hanging from it like a picture of a Greek vase. Nothing could be plainer than the drag of the robes on the ground after the figures as they retired at the edge of the window, where the clear glass was, previous to going out. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
The impression produced was that one saw real persons in the air, for though the figures were seen on the window, yet they gave one the impression of walking past the window outside, and not moving upon the glass. I am not inclined to think that the trees outside the mansion at the east end can originate the appearance by any optical illusion produced by waving branches. I could see their leaves rustling in the air, and their movement was evidently unconnected with the appearance and movement of the figures. So I began making enquires on my estate. I discovered that several people had indeed seen the shapes upon the glass. One spoke of a female figure with a slightly skipping step. Another servant said he saw an ancient gravestone from the window. The belief that the tree beside the Tiffany window were somehow responsible for the optical illusion was soon dashed; the trees were cut down, but the figures appeared still. One correspondent wrote to me in the winter of 1889, explain that “as I have no faith in ghost, I have been most wishful to have the matter cleared up. On 25 March 1687, the land you now own was involved in a remarkable satanic horror story. A young girl came to the farmhouse for help, saying that she wanted to get away from a group of satanists who had threatened to kill her. She confessed to the owner that she had murdered her own baby in ‘frenzied ritual.” He befriended the girl, twenty-three-year-old Caludia, and allowed her to stay in his home. She kept telling him that she couldn’t stand hearing the screams of her children inside of her head. And on April 20th, 1687, she died from an overdose of Laudanum and postmortem examination revealed thirteen scars and burns on her body which he tended to and which supported her claims of having been involved in satanic ritual. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
“Further, Claudia left a 13-page diary in which she said he had been involved with a satanic group since she was hired to work on a nearby farm at age thirteen and her writings went on to make incredible claims. She described how she went to coven meetings with a boy named Dorian whom she had met while living on the farm. The boy’s mother was a High Priestess and his father was The Master—a known satanic term for the leading member of the group. She described other practice which are known to be common in satanic altar initiations—that of having her armed pricked and blood drained into a chalice from which it was drunk. ‘Much sexual perversion went on that night…later I learned more of Satan and practiced my arts calling on my power of darkness. Satan had become my Lord and Master.’ Later she described how she aborted a baby she was expecting by Dorian then made the claim that Dorian himself was sacrificed by his own father in retribution, and how she was forced to watch as he was hung upside down. She claimed to have seen other sacrifices of many new born babies, stabbing them at orgies in which Laudanum was taken heavily. She also appeared to have had another child of her own which was also offered up for sacrifice. At her inquest of 13 May, the midwife recorded an open verdict after the she noted that Claudia’s body had signs which confirmed she had given birth at least once, and had been subject to sexual abuse. The constables took up the case, but no charges were brought and the investigation was closed without further action.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
I was shocked of these allegations which seemed to be more than enough to inspire the most lurid of headline writers, more than to testify to the credibility of all who were proffering these dramatic and barely believable accounts of satanic abuse. Everything these people said was being taken as gospel in the village because the allegations were coming from the mouths of so-called experts. However, there were claims of rampant satanic worship in Nova Albion at this time, which was documented by English charters led by Sir Francis Drake for England. There were horrifying claims that fifty women were suffering from the after-effects of cannibalism and an average of ten occult survivors a week were being sacrificed. Dr. Harley said he read of several cases recorded by Theodorous de Bry where children had been killed. There were, of course, also several stories concocted around these three figures in my home. Some said that they issued from the grave beside the east window. Other said that they were victims of the plague, and were burned outside where this window now stands. It may or may not be relevant that the figures seemed to appear when the sound of the organ and of voices raised in song. The case was thoroughly investigated in 1889 by Dr. Robert Radakovic of The Ghost Club, where it was revealed that Llanda Villa had been “haunted” for two or three hundred years by the same figure or figures. Optical tests on the possible patterns of light and reflection had come to no results. It was remarked that “the ghost has been seen from the inside while outside nothing was visible.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
The interior of Lalanda Villa was much altered in the late nineteenth century, and a complex of rooms was built behind this haunted window. However, no satisfactory explanation has ever been given for the strange phenomena reported here. While designing Lalanda Villa, I was gaining my tastes from the venerable town around me, and from the relics of the past which filled every corner of my mansion. With the years, my devotion to ancient things increased; so that history, genealogy, and the study of gothic architecture, furniture, and craftsmanship at length crowded everything else from my sphere of interests. These tastes are important to remember for they outwardly concealed knowledge of bygone matters so that one would have fancied the they are literally transferred to a former age through some obscure short of autohypnosis. However, the true madness, I am certain, came with a later change; after the portrait and ancient papers of Saint Adalrich the Duke of Alsacre had been unearthed. Some terrible invocations being chanted under strange and secret circumstances; after certain answers to these invocations had been plainly indicated, and a frantic letter penned under agonizing and inexplicable conditions; after the wave of vampirism and the ominous legends of Neustria; and after the farmer’s memory commenced to exclude contemporary images whilst his voice failed and his physical aspect underwent the subtle modification so many subsequently noticed. He was later diagnosed with porphyria. And a final investigation resulted which virtually proved the authenticity of the papers and of their monstrous implications at the same time that those papers were borne forever from human knowledge. Loving antiquities so keenly, the papers and portrait were secretly concealed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Bedroom fashions changed dramatically over the Victorian years due to several factors. Early in the period, homes were heated by fireplaces and therefore could be uncomfortable in the colder mothers, although a heated bedroom was considered an indulgence and windows were left open during the winter. In reality, only the rich had fireplaces in their bedrooms. Still, one had to keep warm while asleep and bed drapery, consisting variously of canopies, tents, and other enclosures used to shut out drafts, was essential, as was heavy draper on windows. Even doors had decorative, but also functional, drapes called portieres that served to keep out drafts when covering the door.
Mrs. Winchester was wealthy and her wealth and prosperity were even envied among the elite. She had no less than 47 fireplaces in her home. By the end of the century, two things had changed that affected bedroom styles. First, coal and woodburning parlour stoves came into use, were more efficient at heating a house, and could be installed in any room. (Central heating, though available after the Civil War, was really only for the very rich.). Secondly, and more importantly, was an increased knowledge of diseases, germs, and bacteria and how to combat them. Plenty of fresh air with good circulation, and the elimination of materials such as bed draper that not only impeded air circulation but provided a place for dust and bacteria to collect were deemed essential. Since the bedroom served as the place where daily and weekly ablutions were performed (until bathrooms became separate entities), and as a birthing and maternity room, it was important that it have a healthy environment.
Styles of bedroom furniture were affected by this new found interest in and concern for prevention of illness and diseases. The classic English styles of Sheraton, Chippendale, and Hepplewhite migrated from the eighteenth century into the Victorian period. Tall, four-poster canopied beds enclosed the sleeper in heavy drapes of wool or lined damask of velvet, a carryover from the time when houses were built without corridors, and enclosures around the bed were needed for privacy, as well as warmth. By the time mid-century had arrived, the full enclosure had receded to the half-tester, or half-canopy, from which hung draperies that covered only the head and shoulders. Fully enclosed beds were now considered unhygienic, as they limited air circulation and the yards of fabric attracted dust. Dust ruffles and window valances were also discarded in the same house cleaning. In the southern climates, netting was still necessary to protect against insects, and its slightness did not impede air movement.
Gothic Revival furniture was the style into the 1840s and its massiveness was particularly suited to bedrooms. Closets were not an architectural feature at this time; clothing was stored in large cabinets called armories or wardrobes, usually with double, mirrored, and washstand, topped with marble or wood, were manufactured for middle-class homes in the cottage style. “Spool” beds were popular, nicknamed “Jenny Lind beds” because the Swedish Nightingale was rumoured to have slept in when she toured the United States of America. Made of less costly woods like maple or pine, the simple furniture could be elaborately painted with floral or foliage patterns. The well-to-do preferred the more opulent style of Rococo Revival or Renaissance Revival in woods or walnut, mahogany, or rosewood with carvings and applied moldings. As with other furniture in the house, golden oak, promoted by the Arts and Crafts Movement, was popular at the end of the century. Additional pieces of furniture found in the bedroom were writing desks, chaises, or other upholstered furniture.
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/
Be Safe on the Roads!
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Happy is One Who Wisely Considers the Poor
Once upon a time, the police knew the community and community members so well that if your interior lights were on later than usual, they would knock on your door and check to see if everything was well. Times have changed. Economic good fortune smiles, if not on everyone, then on more people than in the past, and glossy magazines offer readers images of well-stocked refrigerators and other scenes from a good life of consumer plenty. It is the era of Paris Hilton, Justin Bieber, and Beyonce. The American youth rebels are clad in leather and denim, wilding out of rap concerts. Replacing an old, destroyed World burdened with memory with a shimmy new and complacently forgetful one has become its own type of redemption. In the face of so much good fortune, maybe people feel less need for cosmic solace, less fear of cosmic retribution. No wonder we associate the post 911 years more with economic miracles than religious ones. However, some fear that various evils such as atomic weapons, genetic experimentation, chemical food additives, a massive overreliance on pharmaceuticals, and the fact that large portions of the Earth will soon become uninhabitable is an indication that people are becoming blind to godly powers. It is believed that people need to relearn it, to use spiritual powers to recover and maintain the divine order. Even Communist ideology is losing its influence on the minds of people in general, and of the young generation in particular, and it becomes apparent in a number of reports from Russia. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
A very vivid description of this development was to be found in an article by Marvin L. Kalb, “Russian Youth Asks Some Questions.” The author reports from Moscow about a new questionnaire of the “Public Opinion Institute” of Komsomol Pravada, organ of the Communist youth organization. The paper found it necessary to ask questions like “Do you personally have a goal in life?”, “What is it?”, et cetera, not so much for the purpose of a statistical inquiry, but in order to combat the widespread phenomena of apathy and materialism, which are found in the young generation. This is the text of one letter, which is characteristic of others: “‘Are you satisfied with your generation?’ the questionnaire asked. ‘No!’ the nihilist answered. ‘Why’ the questionnaire asked. ‘I’m 19 years old,’ she explained, ‘ and I am filled with apathy and indifference to everything around me—so much so that grown-ups are surprised and wonder, “So young, and yet so bored; what will happen to her when she is 30?” However, this should not be surprising, for it is a simple fact: life is just not very interesting. And this view is not only my own, but all those people with whom I am friendly.’ ’Have you a goal in life?’ the questionnaire asked. ‘Earlier, when I still poorly understood life,’ she wrote, ‘I had a goal—to study. I finished high school; and now I am in an institute part time. But now all my pure dreams lead to only one thing money. Money is everything. Luxury, prosperity, love and happiness—if you have money, you can have all of these things, and more…I still do not know how I am going to get these things; but every girl dreams about a successful marriage with lots of money. Naturally, not everyone succeeds, for there are more people who want money than who have it…But I assure you I shall succeed. My conviction is based on the fact that I always do what I want; and what I want I normally get.’” #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
I do not mean to imply, of course, that his letter is representative of all the young generation in the Soviet Union. However, the survey and the publication of letters like this show how serious the leaders take the problem. We in the West, of course, should not be surprised. We are dealing with the same problems of juvenile delinquency and juvenile immortality, and for the same reasons. The materialism, prevalent in our system as well as in the Soviet Union, corrodes the sense of meaning of life in the young generation and leads to cynicism. Neither religion, humanist teaching, nor Marxist ideology is a sufficiently strong antidote—unless fundamental changes occur in the whole society. Just because ideology is not synonymous with lies, just because they—and we—are not aware of the reality behind the conscious ideology, we can not expect that they will—or could—tell us in an aside “we really do not mean what we say; all this is for public consumption, for keeping control over the minds of the people.” Maybe there is an occasional cynic who thinks this; but it is the very nature of ideology that it deceives not only others, but also those who use it. Hence the only way of recognizing what is real and what is ideology is through the analysis of actions and not in accepting words for facts. If I watch a father treating his boy harshly because he considers it his duty to teach him virtue, I shall not be so foolish as to ask the father for his motivations; instead I shall examine his whole personality, many other acts of his nonverbal manifestations, and I shall arrive at an evaluation of the weight of his conscious intention in comparison with his real motivation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
To return to the Soviet Union, what is its ideology? It is Marxism in its crudest form; the development of man is bound up with the development of productive forces. With the development of productive forces, techniques, modes of production, man develops his own faculties, but he also develops classes which become increasingly antagonistic to each other. The development of new productive forces is hampered by the older social organization and class structure. When this contradiction becomes sufficiently drastic the older social organization is changed to accommodate the full development of the productive forces. The evolution of mankind is a progressive one; both man and his domination of nature develop increasingly. Capitalism is the most highly developed system of economic and social organization, but the private ownership of the means of production throttles the full development of the productive forces and thus hinders the full satisfaction of the needs of all men. Socialism, the nationalization of the means of production plus planning, frees the economy from its shackles; it frees man, it abolishes classes and eventually the state. At present a strong state is still needed to defend socialism against attack from abroad, but the Soviet Union is already a classless, socialist society. Capitalism, still beset with its inherent contradictions, must one day adopt the socialist system, partly because of its incapacity to cope with its own contradictions, partly because the example of the socialist countries will be so compelling that all countries will want to emulate it. Eventually, then, the whole World will be socialist, and this will be the basis for peace and the full realization of man. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
This, in short, the Soviet catechism. It contains a mixture of ideology and theory. There is one difficulty the Western observer must overcome. We are not surprised that medieval thinking was structured in the frame of reference of theology. History was seen in terms of God’s creation, man’s fall, Christ’s death and resurrection, and the final drama of the second coming of Christ. Controversies, and even purely political disputes, were expressed in terms of this central frame of refence. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had a secular political-philosophical frame of reference. Monarchy versus republic, liberty versus submission, environmental influence versus innate human traits, et cetera, were the battlefields. We in the West still think in a frame of reference that is partly religious, partly political-philosophical. The Russians, on the other hand, have adopted a new frame of reference, that of a socio-economic theory of history, which, according to them, is Marxism. The whole World is looked upon from this perspective, and argument and attacks are expressed in terms of it. For the Western observer for whom such theories are at best the business of a few professors, it is difficult to understand that the Russians constantly talk in terms of class struggle, conflicts with capitalism, victory of communism. The Westerner assumes that this talk must express an aggressive and active attempt to proselytize the World. It may be useful to remember that our religious ideology, in which, for instance, Christians believe that all men will eventually believe in the true God, et cetera, does not imply that we are all set to convert the pagans. It is simply that, considering our central frame of reference, we have to express our ideas in certain term; the Russians, have their frame of reference, do so in other. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Soviet thinking is evolutionary and sees as the central factor in human evolution the development of the productive forces, the transformation of one social system to the next higher one. This view is not ideological in the sense in which I have used the term, but is the way the Soviet leaders really look at history, following a crude form Mr. Marx’s historical theory. It is ideological only in the negative sense that the soviet leaders do not employ this theory to analyze their own system. (Such a Marxist analysis of the Soviet system would immediately show the fictitious character of Soviet ideology.) For most Western observers, however, the theory lends itself to serious misunderstanding. When the Communist catechism says, “Communism will be victorious all over the World,” or when Mr. Khrushchev said “We will bury you,” these statements should be understood in terms of their historical theory that the next stage of evolution will be that of communism, but that does not imply that the Soviet Union sees it as its task to bring about this change by force, subversion, et cetera. It is important to understand the ambiguity of the Marxian theory. It is a theory that claims that historical changes occur when the economic development permits and necessitates the change. This aspect of the theory is one that was the basis of socialist reformist thinking in Europe, as represented by Mr. Bernstein and others. These socialists believe in the “final victory” of socialism, but they postulated that the working class need not—and could not—push events. They held that capitalism had to go through all the necessary stages, and eventually, at some unspecified time in the future, it would transform itself into socialism. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Mr. Marx’s view was not as deterministic and passive as that. Although he too thought that socialism could be ushered in only when the economic conditions were ripe for it, he believed that at this point the working class and the socialist parties, who by then would be in the majority, would have to take an active part in defending the new system against all hostile attacks from the former ruling groups. Mr. Lenin’s position deviated from Mr. Marx’s in that he substituted the avant-garde for the working class, and that he had more faith in the efficacy of force, especially in a Russia which had not yet gone through its bourgeois revolution. The Marxist goal of the final victory of socialism was common both to the nonactivist reformists and to Mr. Lenin. The formula itself—“Final victory of communism”—is a historical prediction and perfectly applicable to an evolutionary, nonaggressive policy as represented by Mr. Khrushchev. In judging whether Mr. Khrushchev aimed at a “World revolution” it is useful to ask oneself what one means by “revolution.” Of course, the word can be used in many different meanings, the most general one being that of any kind of complete and violent change of an existing government. In this case, Mr. Hitler, Mr. Mussolini, and Mr. Franko were revolutionaries. However, if one uses the concept in a more specific sense, namely the overthrow of an existing, oppressive government by popular forces, then none of these three men could be called “revolutionaries.” In fact, this usage is generally accepted in the West. When we speak of the English, the French, the America revolutions, we refer to revolutions from below, and not from above; to the popular attack against authoritarian systems not to the seizure of power by an authoritarian system. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
It was in this sense that Mr. Marx and Mr. Engels used the term revolution, and it was in this sense that Mr. Lenin believed he had started his revolution. He was convinced that the avant-grade expressed the will and the interests of the vast majority of the population, even though the system he created ceased to be the expression of popular will. However, the Communist “victories” in Poland, Hungary, et cetera, were not “revolutions” they were Russian military take-overs. Neither Stalin nor Mr. Khrushchev are revolutionaries; they are leaders of conservative, bureaucratic systems, the very existence of which is based on unquestioning respect for authority. It is naïve not to see the connection between the authoritarian-hierarchical character of a system and the fact that the leaders of such a system can not be “revolutionaries.” Neither Mr. Disraeli nor Mr. Bismarck were revolutionaries although they brought about considerable changes in Europe, and remarkable advantages for their respective countries; nor was Napoleon a revolutionary, even though he used the ideology of the French Revolution. However, even though Mr. Khrushchev is not a revolutionary, his belief in the superiority of communism is perfectly sincere. For him, and probably also for the average Russian, communism and socialism are not, as for Mr. Marx, a humanist system which transcends capitalism, but an economic system that produces more effectively, that avoids economic crises, unemployment, et cetera, and hence is more capable, in long run, of satisfying the needs of a mass and machine society. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
This is exactly why the Russian Communists believe that peaceful competition between the two systems will eventually lead to the acceptance of the Communist system throughout the World. Their concepts, here as in so many other respects, are those of capitalism—competition in the sphere of economic efficiency. Yet we hesitate to accept Mr. Khruschev’s challenge to compete with his system, and we preferred to believe that he wants to conquer us by force of subversions. While the basis general aims of humanistic socialism are the same for all countries, each country must formulate its own specific aims in terms of its own traditional and present situation, and devise it own methods to achieve this aim. The mutual solidarity of socialist countries must exclude any attempt on the part of one country to impose its methods on another. In the same spirit, the writings of the fathers of socialist ideas must not be transformed into sacred scriptures which are used by some to wield authority over others; the spirit common to them, however, must remain alive in the hearts of socialists and guide their thinking. Humanistic socialism is the voluntary, logical outcome of the operation of human nature under rational conditions. It is the realization of democracy, which has its roots in the humanistic tradition of mankind, under the conditions of an industrial society. It is a social system which operates without force, neither physical force nor that of hypnoid suggestions by which humans are forced without being aware of it. It can be achieved only by appealing to man’s reason, and to his longing for a more human, meaningful, and rich life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Humanistic socialism is based on faith in man’s ability to build a World which is truly human, in which the enrichment of life and the unfolding of the individual are the prime objects of society, while economics is reduced to its proper role as the means to humanly richer life. In discussing the goals of humanistic socialism we must differentiate between the final socialist goal of a society based on the free cooperation of its citizens and the reduction of centralized State activity to a minimum, and the intermediate socialist goals before this final aim is reached. The transition from the present centralized State to a completely decentralized form of society cannot be made without a transitory period in which a certain amount of central planning and State intervention will be indispensable. However, in order to avoid the dangers that central planning and State intervention may lead to, such as increased bureaucratization and weakening of individual integrity and initiative, it is necessary: a) that the State is brought under the efficient control of its citizens; b) that the social and political power of the big corporations is broken; c) that from the very beginning all forms of decentralized, voluntary associations in production, trade, and local social and cultural activities are promoted. While it is not possible today to make concrete detailed plans for the final socialist goals, it is possible to formulate in a tentative fashion the intermediate foals for the socialist society. However, even as far as these intermediate goals are concerned, it will take many years of study and experimentation to arrive at more definite and specific formulations, studies to which the best brains and hearts of the nation must be devoted. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Following the principle that social control and not legal ownership is the essential principle of socialism, its first goal is the transformation of all big enterprises in such a way that their administrators are appointed and fully controlled by all participants—workers, clerks, engineers—with the participation of trade union and consumer representatives. These groups constitute the highest authority for every big enterprise. They decide all basic questions of production, price, utilization of profits, et cetera. The stockholders continue to receive an appropriate compensation for the use of their capital, but have no right of control and administration. The autonomy of an enterprise is restricted by central planning to the extent to which it is necessary to make production serve it social ends. Small enterprises should work on a cooperative basis, and they are to be encouraged by taxation and other means. Inasmuch as they do not work on a cooperative basis, the participants must share in the profits and control the administration on an equal basis with the owner. Certain industries which are of basic importance for the whole of society, such as oil, banking, television, radio, medical drugs, and transportation, must be nationalized; but the administration of thee nationalized industries must follow the same principles of effective control by participants, unions and consumers. In all fields in which there is a social need but not an adequate existing production, society must finance enterprise which serve these needs. The individual must be protected from fear and the need to submit to anyone’s coercion. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
In order to accomplish this aim, society must provide, free for everyone, the minimum necessities of material existence in food, housing, and clothing. Anyone who has higher aspirations for material comforts will have to work for them, but the minimal necessities of life being guaranteed, no person can have power over anyone of the basis of direct or indirect material coercion. Socialism does not do away with individual property for use. Neither does it require the complete leveling of income; income should be related to effort and skill. However, differences in income should not create such different forms of material life that the life experience of one cannot be shared by, and this remains alien to, another. The principle of political democracy must be implemented in terms of the twenty-first century reality. Considering our technical instrumentalities of communication and tabulation, it is possible to reintroduce the principle of the town meeting into contemporary mass society. The forms in which this can be accomplished need study and experimentation. They may consist of the formation of hundreds of thousands of small face-to-face groups (organized along the principle of place of work or place of residence) which would constitute a new type of Lower House, sharing decision-making with a centrally elected parliament. Decentralization must strive at putting important decisions into the hands of the inhabitants of small, local areas which are still subject to the fundamental principles which govern the life of the whole society. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
However, whichever forms are to be found, the essential principle is that the democratic process is transformed into one in which well-informed and responsible citizen—not automatized mass-men, controlled by the methods of hypnoid mass suggestion—express their will. Not only in the sphere of political decisions, but with regard to all decisions and arrangements, the grip of the bureaucracy must be broken in order to restore freedom. Aside from decisions which filter down from above, activity in all sphere of life on the grass-roots level must be developed which can “filter up” from below to the top. Workers organized in unions, consumers organized in consumers’ organizations, citizens organized in the above-mentioned face-to-face political units, must be in constant interchange with central authorities. This interchange must be such that new measures, laws, and provisions can be suggested and, after voting, decided from the grass roots, and that all elected representatives are subject to continuous critical appraisal and, if necessary, recall. Origin of knowledge. –Over vast stretches of time, the intellect produced nothing but errors; some of them turned out to be useful and species-preserving: whoever hit upon or inherited them waged the battle for themselves and their offspring with better luck. Such erroneous articles of faith, which were further passed on and finally became almost the basic endowment of the human species, are, for example: that there are enduring things; that there are equal things; that there are things, materials, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in and for itself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Only very late did the deniers and doubter of such propositions come on the scene—only very late did truth come on the scene as the weakest form of cognition. It seemed as if one could not live with it; our organism was geared to the opposite: all its higher functions, sense perception and every kind of sensation generally, worked with those fundamental errors, incorporated from archaic times. Moreover, even in the realm of knowledge those propositions became norms according to which one measured “true” and “untrue”—down to the mot remote regions of pure logic. Thus, the strength of knowledge lies not in its degree of truth but in its age, its being incorporated, its character as a condition of life. Where life and knowledge seemed to come into conflict, there was never any serios contest; denial and doubt were considered madness. Those exceptional thinkers, such as the Eleatics, who, in spite of everything, fixed and held fast to the opposite of the natural error, thought it possible also to live this opposite; they invented the sage as the man of immutability, impersonality, universality of intuition, as at once one and all, with a special capacity for that inverted knowledge; they were of the belief that their knowledge was also the principle of life. However, in order to assert all this, they had to deceive themselves about their own condition: they had to credit themselves with impersonality and duration without change to misconceive essence of knowledge, to deny the force of impulses in knowledge, and to conceive of reason in general as a wholly free, self-originating activity; they closed their eyes to the fact that they, too, had arrived at their propositions in opposition to what was considered valid, or from a desire for tranquility, or disinterestedness, or domination. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The more refined development of honesty and skepticism in the end rendered even these men impossible; their life and judgment, too, turned out to be parasitic on the age-old drives and fundamental errors of all sentient existence. That more refined honesty and skepticism arose where two antithetical propositions both seemed to apply to life, both being compatible with the fundamental errors, hence where it was possible to argue about greater and lesser degrees of utility for life; likewise, where new propositions showed themselves to be, if not especially useful to life, then at least not harmful either—expressions of an intellectual play impulse, innocent and happy like all play. Gradually the human brain filled itself with such judgments and convictions, and a ferment, a struggle, a craving for power emerged in this tangle. Not only utility and delight but every kind of impulse took part in the fight over “truths”; the intellectual fight became occupation, attraction, profession, duty, dignity; knowledge and striving for the true in the end took their place as a need among other needs. From then on, not only faith and conviction but also scrutiny, denial, mistrust, and contradiction became a power; all “evil” instincts were subordinated to knowledge, put in its service, and acquired the luster of the permissible, the honored, the useful, and finally the eye and the innocence of the good. Knowledge thus became part and parcel of life itself and as such an ever-increasing power—until finally knowledge and those age-old fundamental errors collided, both as life, both as power, both in the same man. The thinker: this is now the creature in whom the drive to truth and all those life-preserving errors wage their first battle, once the drive to truth has proved that it, too, is a life-preserving power. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Compared to the significance of this battle, all else is a matter of indifference: here, the ultimate question concerning the condition of life is posed, and here, the first attempt is made to answer the question with an experiment. To what extent can truth be incorporated?—that is the question, that is the experiment. Victory over the ultimate negative as a tempter, and all its temptations—whether direct or indirect—must be learned by the believer from personal experience. One must remember that not all “temptations” are recognizable as temptations, nor are they always visible—for half their power lies in their being hidden. A believer often thinks that one will be as conscious of the approach of temptations as one is of a person coming into the room. Hence the children of God are only fighting a small proportion of the ultimate negative’s workings: that is, only what they are conscious of as supernatural workings of evil. Because of their knowledge of the ultimate negative’s character and methods of working is limited and circumscribed, many true children of God only recognize “temptation” when the nature of the thing presented is visible evil, and accords with their limited knowledge of evil. So they do not recognize the temper and one’s temptations when they come under the guise of lawful and apparent “good.” When the ultimate negative and one’s emissaries come as angles of light clothe themselves in light, which, in their case, stands for evil. It is a “light” which is really darkness. They come in the guise of good—for darkness is opposed to light, ignorance is opposed to knowledge, falsehood is opposed to truth. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Darkness is a term we ordinarily apply to evil morality and moral darkness. Hence the believer may need to discern evil spirits in the realm of the supposed good. That which comes to them as “light” actually may be darkness. The apparent “good” may be really evil. And so the apparent “help” which the believer clings to may be really a hindrance. There needs to be a choice between good and evil made perpetually by every man. The Hebrew priests of old were specially called to discern and tech the people the difference between “the holy and the common,” “the unclean and the clean,” reports Ezekiel 44.23. Yet is the Church of Christ today able thus to discern what is good and what is evil? Does she not continually fall into the snare of calling good “evil,” and evil “good”? Because the thoughts of God’s people are so often governed by ignorance and limited knowledge, they can call the works of God “diabolic” and the works of the ultimate negative “divine.” For they are not taught the necessity of learning to discern the difference between “the unclean and the clean,” nor how to decide for themselves what is of God and what is of the ultimate negative—although they are unknowingly compelled to make a choice every moment of the day. Neither do all believers know that they have a choice between good and good, id est, between the lesser and the greater good—and the ultimate negative often entangles them here. The place of the church is in a purely vertical relationship to God, the distinction between the latent and manifest church is challenged, and, the Spirit which constitutes the churches is not the Spirit of Jesus. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The Gestalt of grace and the sacramental principle are vehicles for the holiness of the “is,” the actual presence of the divine which, in turn, provides the positive base for the prophetic demand for the holiness of the “ought.” Furthermore, the church portrays an image which it presents to the non-believer who is incapable of seeing its theological side. On the one hand, the latent church under the vivifying power of the Spiritual Presence is in preparation for the reception of the New Being in Jesus the Christ. However, the latent church is not simply an infant awaiting baptism; it is already a mature, adult member of the Spiritual Community, ad under the drive of the Spirit it voices criticism of the manifest church through non-sectarian, secular, or even anti-religious movements. Its protest appears as a cultural phenomenon, but the underlying inspiration is religious. On the other hand, the manifest church openly and consciously acknowledges the New Being in Jesus the Christ, and, united by the bonds of a common faith, it proclaims the Word of the Gospel and the sacraments of the New Law. However, these acts of religion must be expressed in relevant cultural form. The latent church joins the Spiritual Community by participation in the New Being, but it does not know Jesus crucified. The manifest church’s explicit acknowledgement of Jesus as the bearer of the New Being gains for it the symbol of the Cross, the Protestant principle of self-reformation which is the only antidote to demonization. Possession and non-possession of the Cross seems a clear-cut distinction. How can the secular World voice truly prophetic criticism unless it too has the Cross, the symbol of the struggle against the demonic, at least implicitly? #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
What does the explicit reception of the New Being in Jesus the Christ add to the manifest church? In the manifest church, one finds that the Christian Bible, the document of the reception of final revelation, the sacraments which deepen the experience of the New Being, and the corporate organization rallies and sustains Christians in their effort to live the Gospel. Here is certainly a concrete difference between the latent and manifest churches. However, what immediately springs to mind, the demonization and profanization into which these two churches inevitably fall makes one wonder if the transition from the latent to the manifest church is worth the price. It seems that most of the latter’s energy is expended in applying the Cross to correct its own ambiguities. The impression is that the latent church is dynamic, exciting, productive, and pregnant with hope, while the manifest church is tired, dull, weighed down with ambiguities, and moribund—despite the fact that it has received the New Being in Jesus the Christ. One is tempted to conclude almost blasphemously—because it has received the New Being in Jesus the Christ. All Americans are brothers, responsible for one another. 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 al. If there be among you a need may, do not harden your heart. The generous heart shall be enriched, and one that satisfies others hall be satisfied oneself. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
It is safe to say that the second most important room in the Victorian home was the dining room, where not only the family gathered, but where social interaction took place among family and visitors. In the family it should be observed as a rule to meet together at all meals of the day around one common table where the same rules of etiquette should be as rigidly observed as the table of a stranger.
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The Most Delicious Morsel of Our Self Love?
Colleges such a University of Southern California—Los Angeles, Cornell, Duke and Chapman are now offering courses on how to be a social media influencer as part of their business and communications department. A social media is someone who has a platform on the Internet and vast amounts of fans. Some of these influencers have hundreds of thousands to millions of fans. A lot of them are even more popular than well-known celebrities. When these influencers get popular enough and gain the attention of a brand, the brand will usually sponsor them to market their goods and/or services for a profit. The goal is for the brand to gain more popularity and increase their revenue. Some popular social media influencers are people like Taylor Swift, who by just advocating voting or mentioning that she is attending a football game, can get millions of fans to vote and attend football games. There are of course other social media influencers who may or may not be major celebrities, but became famous by marketing their talents on the Internet and/or other forms of media. A great example is Jillian Harris, who starred on Love it or List it, Too, which is a HGTV program, which comes on television and focuses on renovating and decorating homes. Now Jillian Harris uses her social media platform to help support charities and market items that her followers love. She has over 1 million fans on social media. Austin Harris Mahone, who sang Justin Bieber songs, is also a social media influence. He was discovered and currently an American singer. Micro-influencers with 10,000 to 50,000 fans may earn anywhere between $40,000 and $100,000 per year. However, Cristiano Ronaldo, with over 570 million fans on social media charges around $2.4 million for a social media post. People are now seeing becoming a social media influencer as the great equalizer that education once used to be. With the desire of so many to become famous, it leaves many wondering if fame really just the most delicious morsel of our self-love? #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Fame has, after all, attached itself to the most uncommon men and women, as an ambition, and in turn to their most uncommon moments. These are moments of sudden illumination in which a human stretches out a commanding arm, as if creating a World, light shining forth and spreading out around one. One is then filled with the deeply gratifying certainty that what enraptured and exalted one into the farthest regions, the height of this one sensation, can never be denied to posterity; in the eternal necessity of this rare illumination for all those to come humans see the necessity of their fame. Far into the future, human kind need man, and just as that moment of illumination is the embodiment and epitome of his innermost essence, so, too, he believes himself, as the man of this moment, to be immortal, dismissing all others as dross, rot, vanity, brutishness, or pleonasm, leaving them to perish. We view all disappearance and demise with discontent, often with astonishment, as if we experienced in it something at bottom impossible. We are disturbed when a Victorian mansion is torn down, and a crumbling tower aggrieves us. Every New Year’s Eve, we feel the mystery of the contradiction of being and becoming. What offends moral man above all, though, is that an instant of supreme universal perfection should vanish without a trace, like the Mansion of the Gilded Age, leaving nothing to posterity. Humans’ imperative reads instead: whatever once served more beautifully to propagate the concept “man” must continue to exist forever. That all the great moments form a chain; that, like mountain peaks, they unite humankind across the millennia; that the greatest things from a bygone age are also great for me; and that the prescient faith of the lust for fame will be fulfilled—that is the idea at the very foundation of culture. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The terrible struggle of culture is ignited by the demand that what is great should be eternal; for everything else that continues to live cries out, No! The customary, the small, the common fills every nook and cranny of the World like an oppressive atmosphere we are all condemned to breathe, smoldering around what is great; hindering, choking, suffocating, deadening, smothering, dimming, deluding, it throws itself onto the road the great must travel on the way to immortality. The road goes through human brains! Through the brains of pitiful, short-lived creatures who, given over to their cramped needs, rise again and again to the same afflictions and, with great effort, manage to fend off ruin for a short time. They want to live, to live a bit—at any price. Who would discern among them that arduous torch race that only the great survive? And yet time and again some awaken who, seeing what is great, feel inspired, as if human life were a glorious thing, and as if the most beautiful fruit of this bitter plant were the assurance that someone once walked proudly and stoically through this existence, another with deep thoughts, a third with mercy, but all of them leaving behind a single lesson: that one who lives life most beautifully is one who does not hold it in great esteem. However, while the common man regards this bit of existence with such morbid seriousness, those on their journey to immortality knew how to respond to it with an Olympian laugh, or at least with sublime disdain; often they went to their graves with irony—for what did they have to bury? #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The boldest knights among those addicted to glory, those who believe they will find their coat of arms hanging on a constellation, must be sought among the philosophers. They address their efforts not to a “public,” to the agitation of the masses and the cheering applause of their contemporaries; it is in their nature to travel the road alone. Their talent is the rarest, and in a certain respect, the most unnatural in nature, shutting itself off from and hostile even to kindred talents. The wall of their self-sufficiency must be hard as diamond not to be shattered and destroyed, for everything is on the move against them, humans and nature. Their journey to immortality is more arduous and impeded than any other, and yet no one can be as sure as the philosopher about reaching one’s goal, since one knows not where to stand, if not on the wings of all ages; for a disregard of the present and the momentary is of the nature of philosophical contemplation. One has the truth; let the wheel of time roll where it will, it can never escape the truth. It is important to realize that such humans did indeed once live. One could never imagine as a mere idle possibility the pride of the wise Heraclitus, who may serve as our example. For all striving for knowledge seems in itself unsatisfied and unsatisfying, which is why, without having learned it from history, one could hardly believe in such regal self-esteem, such boundless confidence in being the one lucky suitor of truth. Such humans live in their own solar system; that is where one must look for them. Even a Pythagoras, an Empedocles treated himself with a superhuman esteem, indeed with an almost religious awe, though the bond of compassion, together with grand faith in the transmigration of souls and the unity of all living things, led them back again to other humans, and to their salvation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The World is not the way they tell you it is. Unconsciously we know this because we have al been immunized by growing up in the United States of America. The little girl watching television asks will she really get the part in the spring play if she uses Listerine, and her good mother says no, darling, that is just the commercial. It is not long before the moppets figure out that parents have commercials of their own—commercials to keep one quiet, commercials to get one to eat, and so on. However, parents—indeed all of us—are in turn being given a whole variety of commercials that do not seem to be commercials. Silver is in short supply, and the Treasury is running out and begins to fear a run. So the Treasury tells the New York Times that, what with one thing and another, there is enough silver for twenty years. Those who listened to the commercial sat quietly, expecting to get the part in the spring play, and the cynics went and ran all the silver out of the Treasury and the price went through the roof. Image and reality an identity and anxiety and money are all major concerns to us. If that does not scare you, nothing will. It is not really that serious and there is a message in here from Lord Keynes to that effect. You already know about image and reality, and you probably already know all about identity and anxiety, and everybody knows about money, so all we are doing is stirring them up together. Many are wondering, as Mr. Adam Smith did, the famous economist and moral philosopher, “To what purpose is all the toil and bustle of this World?” What is the end of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, of power, and preheminence?” he asked in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
We are taught—at least those of us who grew up without a great deal of it—that money is A Very Serious Business, that the stewardship of capital is holy, and that the handler of money must conduct oneself as a Prudent Human. It is all part of the Protestant ethic and the spirit of Capitalism and I suppose it all helped to make this country what it is. Penny saved, penny earned, waste not, want not, Summer Sale Save 10 Percent, and so on. The game of professional investment is intolerably boring and overexacting to anyone who is entirely exempt from the gambling instinct; whilst one who has it must pay to this propensity the appropriate told. Drs. John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern developed, some years ago, a Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. This game theory has had a tremendous impact on our national life; it influences how our defense decisions are made and how the marketing strategies of great corporations are worked out. What is the game theory? You could say it is an attempt to quantify and work through the actions of players in a game, to measure their options continuously. Or, to be more formal, game theory is a branch of mathematics that aims to analyze problems of conflict by abstracting common strategic features for study in theoretical models. By stressing strategic aspects, id est, those controlled by the participants, it goes beyond the classic theory of probability, in which the treatment of games is limited to pure chance. Drs. Von Neumann and Morgenstern worked through systems that incorporated conflicting interests, incomplete information, and the interplay of free rational decisions and choice. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
They started with dual games, zero sum two-person games, id est, those in which one player wins what the other loses. At the other end you have something like the stock market, an infinite, n-person game. (N is one of the letters economists use when they do not know something.) The stock market is probably temporarily too complex even for the Game Theoreticians, but I suppose some day even it will become a serious candidate for quantification and equations. The market is both a game and a Game, id est, both sport, frolic, fun, and play, and a subject for continuously measurable options. If it is a game, then we can relieve ourselves of some of the heavy and possibly crippling emotions that individuals carry into investing, because in a game the winning of the stake is clearly defined. Anything else becomes irrelevant. Is this so startling? “Eighty percent of investors are not really out to make money,” says one leading Wall Streeter. Investors not out to make money? It seems almost like a contradiction in terms. What are they doing then? That can be a subject for a whole discussion, and will be, a bit later. Let us go back to the illumine, that the investment game is intolerably boring save to those with a gambling instinct, while those with the instinct must pay to it “the appropriate toll.” This really does say it all. Active investors do not pursue bonds (except convertibles) and preferreds (except convertibles). It is not that one cannot make money with these instruments, it is that they lack romance enough to be part of the game; they are boring. It is very hard to get excited over a bond basis book, where your index finger traces along a column until it gets to the proper degree of safety and yield. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Sometime illusions are more comfortable than reality, but there is no reason to be discomfited by facing the gambling instinct that saves the stock market from being a bore. Once it is acknowledged, rather than buried, we can “pay to this propensity the appropriate toll” and proceed with reality. There is really no more than recognizing an instinct. Dr. Thomas Schelling, a Harvard economist and the author of a number of works on miliary strategy, foes a lot further. Writing on “Economics and Criminal Enterprise,” Dr. Schelling says: “The greatest gambling enterprise in the United States has not been significantly touched by organized crime. That is the stock market…The reason is that the market works too well, Federal control over the stock market, designed mainly to keep it honest and informative…makes it a hard market to tamper with.” Sentences like the first one in that excerpt must make the public-relations people at the New York Stock Exchange wake up screaming. For years the New York Stock Exchange and the securities industry have campaigned to correct the idea that buying stocks was gambling, and while there may be some dark corners of this country that persist in a Populist suspicion of Wall Street, by and large they have succeeded. Dr. Schelling’s phrasing has to be counted as unfortunate, and in no sense is the stock market a great gambling enterprise like a lottery. However, it is an exercise in mass psychology, in trying to guess better than the crowd how the masses will behave. Sometimes the literature which was produced in order to dispel the pre-1929 suspicions can get in the way of seeing things the way they are. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
If you are a player in the Game, or are thinking of becoming one, there is one irony of which you should be aware. The object of the game is to make money, hopefully a lot of it. All the players in the Game are getting rapidly more professional; the amount of sheer information poured out on what is going on has become almost too much to absorb. The true professionals in the Game—the professional portfolio managers—grow more skilled all the time. They are human and they make mistakes, but if you have your money managed by a truly alert mutual fund or even by one of the better banks, you will have a better job done for you than probably at any time in the past. However, if you have your money managed for you, then you are not really interested, or at least the Game element—with that propensity to be paid for—does not attract you. There are a lot of investors who came to the market to make money, and they told themselves that what they wanted was the money: security, a trip around the World, a new sloop, a country estate, an art collection, a Caribbean house for cold winters. And they succeeded. So they sat on the dock of the Caribbean home, chatting with their art dealers and gazing fondly at the new sloop, and after a while it was a bit flat. Something was missing. If you are a successful Game player, it can be a fascinating, consuming, totally absorbing experience, in fact it has to be. If it is not totally absorbing, you are not likely to be among the most successful, because you are competing with those who do find it so absorbing. The lads with the Caribbean houses and the new sloops did not, upon the discovery that something was missing, sell those trophies and acquire sackcloth and ashes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The sloops and the houses and the art are still there, but the players have gone back to the Game, and they do not have a great deal of time for their toys. The Game is more fun. It probably does not make you a better person, and I am not sure it does any good for humanity; the best you can say is what Samuel Johnson said, that no man is so harmlessly occupied when he is making money. The irony is that this is a money game and money is the way we keep score. However, the real object of the Game is not money, it is the playing of the Game itself. For the true players, you could take all the trophies away and substitute plastic beads or whale’s teeth; as long as there is a way to keep score, they will play. There are cases of a predatory government just as they are in cases of firms and agencies of a benevolent government. Modeling of dynamics seems essential for a more satisfactory treatment of the distinction between roving and stationary bandits than the simple ad hoc procedures. Hierarchical agencies are important in practice because a government has to use middle-level administrators to implement its policies, and these can have their own objectives and information advantages. Thus a top-level government may be more or less benevolent while its middle-level agents are predatory, or both may be predatory and the middle-level agents may be trying to keep some of the extorted sums for themselves. Agricultural reforms in China in the late 1970s eventually won the approval of the top-level government, overcoming initial resistance by local bureaucrats. There are especially harmful consequences when a citizen needs permission from several officials of a predatory government to conduct one’s productive activities, and each of them demand a bribe. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
If we continue in our present direction, the Soviet Union serves as a warning to Western industrialism of where we will arrive. In the West we have developed a managerial industrialism, with the concomitant “organization man”; Russia, having jumped over the intermediate stage in which we in the West still find ourselves, has carried this development to its logical end—under the names of Marxism and socialism. Nationalization (the abolition of private property in the means of production) is not an essential distinction between “socialism” and “capitalism.” It is merely a technical device for more efficient production and planning. The Soviet system is an efficient, completely centralized system, ruled by an industrial, political and military bureaucracy; it is the completed “managerial revolution,” rather than a socialist revolution. The Soviet system is not the opposite of the capitalist system, but rather the image into which capitalism will develop unless we return to the principles of the Western tradition of humanism and individualism. If concentrated ownership of property, bureaucratic management of the process of production, and manipulated consumption are essential elements of twenty-first century capitalism, the difference from Soviet communism seems to be one of degree rather than of quality. If capitalism, as Mr. Keynes said, can survive only with a considerable degree of socialization, it may be said with equal justification that Soviet communism has survived by incorporating a considerable amount of capitalism. In fact, the Soviet system and the Western system are both confronted with the same problems of industrialization and economic growth in a highly developed, centralized managerial society. They both use the methods of a managerial, bureaucratically ruled mass society characterized by an increasing degree of human alienation, adaptation to the group, and a prevalence of material over spiritual interests; they both produce the organization man who is ruled by the bureaucracies and the machines and yet believes himself to be following the lofty aim of humanistic ideals. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The similarities between the Soviet system and “capitalism” were strikingly demonstrated in the presentation of the class stratification and the educational goals of the Soviet Union, a comparison which shows that in many respects the Soviet system resembles the capitalist system of the nineteenth century while in some other it is more modern and “advanced” than that of the West. These similarities become even clearer if we consider one factors that, In Western opinion, is the cornerstone of capitalism: monetary incentives. What are the facts about incentives in Soviet Russia? As far as the workers in Russian are concerned the incentive is cash. The cash incentive operates in two ways. First, is the fact that wages are for the most part based on the piece-work principle. Wages “are fixed for the required output planned for the specific job. As the worker exceeds one’s quota, the incentive system sets up a rising scale to compensate one for increased production. For the labourer who raises one’s output from 1 to 10 percent, the commensurate increases in the piece rate is 100 percent.” If one consistently doubles one’s quota, one’s monthly pay will be almost double one’s regular wage. The second cash incentive for the worker is bonuses, which are paid out of the profit of the enterprise. “In many cases the bonus will make up the larger amount of a Russian worker’s annual wages.” As far as Soviet managers are concerned, the chief incentives is that of the bonus paid for the overfulfillment of targets. “The amount of income earned in the form of bonuses is substantial. The managerial personnel of the iron and steel industry earned bonuses averaging 51.4 percent of their basic income. In the food industry at the low end, the percentage was 21 percent. Since these are averages, many individual managers earned considerably more than this. Bonuses of this magnitude must be a potent incentive indeed.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Also the status symbol and the expense account have become, according to Javits, an important incentive for the Soviet manager. Summing up, Berliner states that “private gain has for the last 25 years been the keystone of the management incentive system” and “we are safe in saying that for the next several decades at least, private gain will be the central economic incentive in both [the America and the Russian] systems.” For the peasants too, cash is one of the main economic incentives. There is one incentive that is paradoxical insofar as it shows a relaxation of state incentive on the one had by the Soviet, and a continued experimentation on the other hand by the United States of America. It refers to the highly publicized incentive to agriculture offered by the United States of America at its expense for the private gain of the farmer. In the Soviet Union…after having sold the required crop to the government, the members of the collectives are permitted to market the excess to the public on a supply-and-demand basis. This area of Soviet economy is about the only one in which a free marker can be found. In the period before the German Revolution of 1918, the authority of the monarchy was undisputed, and by leaning on it and identifying with it the member of the lower middle class acquired a feeling of security and narcissistic pride. Also, the authority of religion and traditional morality was still firmly rooted. The family was still unshaken and a safe refuge in a hostile World. The individual felt that one belonged to a stable social and cultural system in which one had one’s definite place. One’s submission and loyalty to existing authorities were a satisfactory solution of one’s masochistic strivings; yet one did not go to the extreme of self-surrender and one retained a sense of the importance of one’s own personality. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
What one was lacking in security and aggressiveness as an individual, one was compensated for by the strength of the authorities to whom one submitted oneself. In brief one’s economic position was still solid enough to give one a feeling of self-pride and of relative security, and the authorities on whom one learned were strong enough to give one the additional security which one’s own individual position could not provide. The postwar period changed this situation considerably. In the first place, the economic decline of the old middle class went at a faster pace; this decline was accelerated by the inflation, culminating in 1923, which wiped out almost completely the savings of many years’ work. While the years between 1924 and 1928 brought economic improvement and new hopes to the lower middle class, squeezed in between the workers and the upper classes, was the most defenseless group and therefore the hardest hit. However, besides these economic factors there were psychological considerations that aggravated the situation. The defeat in the war and the downfall of the monarchy was one. While the monarchy and the state had been the solid rock on which, psychologically speaking, the petty bourgeois had built his existence, their failure and defeat shattered the basis of one’s own life. If the Kaiser could be publicly ridiculed, if officers could be attacked, if the state had to change its form and to accept “red agitators” as cabinet ministers and saddle-maker as president, what could the little human put one’s trust in? One had identified oneself in one’s subaltern manner with all these institutions; now, since they had gone, where was one to go? The inflation, too, played both an economic and a psychological role. It was a deadly blow against the principle of thrift as well as against the authority of the state. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
If the savings of many years, for which one had sacrificed so many little pleasures, could be lost through no fault of one’s own, what was the point in saving anyway? If the state could break its promises printed on its bank noted and loans, whose promises could one trust any longer? It was not only the economic position of the lower middle class that declined more rapidly after the war, but its social prestige as well. Before the war one could feel oneself as something better than a worker. After the revolution the social prestige of the working class rose considerably and in consequence the prestige of the lower middle class fell in relative terms. There was nobody to look down upon any more, a privilege that had always been one of the strongest assets in the life of small shopkeepers and their like. In addition to these factors the last stronghold of middle-class security had been shattered too: the family. The postwar development, in Germany perhaps more than in other countries, had shaken the authority of the father and the old middle-class morality. The younger generation acted as they pleased and cared no longer whether their actions were approved by their parents or not. The decline of the old social symbols of authority like monarchy and state affected the role of the individual authorities, the parents. If these authorities, which the younger generation has been taught by the parents to respect, proved to be weak, then the parents lost prestige and authority too. Another factor was that, under the changed conditions, especially the inflation, the older generation was bewildered and puzzled and much less adapted to the new conditions than the smarter, younger generation. Thus the younger generation felt superior to their elders and could not take them, and their teachings, quite seriously any more. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Furthermore, the economic decline of the middle class deprived the parents of their economic roles as backers of the economic future of their children. The older generation of the lower middle class grew more bitter and resentful, but in a passive way; the younger generation was driving for action. Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils—not theological demons inspired by the Evil One, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the Unconscious. They are, it must be said, far more wicked than they were in the diatribes of the monks; they displayed, an ingenuity and persistence in sinful imaginings to which in the past there was nothing comparable except St. Anthony. Is all this the objective truth at least? Or is it merely an adult imaginative compensation for being no longer allowed to wallop the little pests? Germany’s economic position was aggravated by the fact that the basis for an independent economic existence, such as their parents had had, was lost; the professional market was saturated, and the chances of making a living as a physician or lawyer were slight. Those who had fought in the war felt that they had a claim for a better deal than they were actually getting. Especially the many young officers, who for years had been accustomed to command and exercise power quite naturally, could not reconcile themselves to becoming clerks or traveling salesmen. The increasing social frustration led to a projection which became an important source for National Socialism: instead of being aware of the economic and social fate of the old middle class, its members consciously thought of their fate in term of the nation. The nation defeat and the Treaty of Versailles became the symbols to which the actual frustration—the social one—was shifted. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Instead of denying or seeking to minimize the effects of social investigation on the behaviour of the people investigated, it is probable that social science has much to gain by making them the focus of greater attention. For if the reflexive consequences of social inquiry can be isolated and studied, it is possible that the precise condition under which they occur can be predicted, and ultimately utilized. This outcome is far form certain; it may be that with every cycle of self-examination new conditions are generated, so that prediction is always one move behind self-knowledge, and the concrete outcomes will always remain indeterminate. Abstractly, on the other hand, each increment of self-knowledge is likely to produce at least an enhanced sense of self-determination. If in all social research, furthermore, the subjects were systematically made party to the research, as well as to the findings—as the subjects’ curiosity and co-operation have always seemed in fairness to warrant—the result promises new techniques of self-expression and social planning. Suppose that a survey of all parents in a certain community reveals that 75 percent of those parents beat their children for defying commands and 25 percent do not. The mere interviewing of parents to find this out may have caused large numbers of them to reflect upon beating as a debatable practice, and to discuss it with other. Suppose that the figure found are then published for the information of the whole community. Some parent who beat their children may be encouraged by realizing how many other do likewise; other may be influenced by the fat that many parents et along without beating. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Some parents who do not go in for beating may be encouraged to learn that there are many others who do not; others may be discouraged to realize they are in a minority. However, since many parents do not fall neatly into one category or the other, and may resort to beating only under extreme circumstances, it is likely that the interviewing process will force them to clarify their conception of themselves as beaters or nonbeaters. Also, when the results are published, knowledge of how many endorse or condemn each practice is likely to send further waverers in one direction or the other. Human beings quickly lose patience with being studied—unless they are studying themselves. As people become more aware of what is taking place in their community, discussion will occur and opinion form. Instead of the findings remaining mere factual records objectively gathered by disinterested observers, they become indices of progress and achievement; the community commences to measure itself against itself, to accentuate a direction of change guided by a preferred self-characterization; goals of the “Let’s do better next year!” type are informally or formally set up for each period. The adoption of these goals releases the energy for their achievements; new values and motives are created. Human beings change their behaviour as a consequence of studying it. Planning becomes not a procedure for reducing freedom but for increasing the scope of self-determination. Social science becomes not a technique for manipulation but a means for everyone to explore new possibilities of self-development. Family life becomes a lifelong series of experiments in personality reorganization conducted by the persons involved, and family agencies become their sources of leadership. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
If the goal of family research and family agencies is to be the development of competent personalities, then this implies a good deal more than the acquisition and application of matter-of-fact knowledge. It requires above all the will to carry out these theoretical and practical programs. Not the least of the threats confronting western communities is a dangerous paralysis of the general will. There is compelling evidence in the volume of sales of religious books and self-help books for the existence of an almost universal desire for greater competence. As humans achieve a competence with respect to the social World comparable to their mastery over the material World, some old values may make way for new, but other are realized in higher degree. As some means become an ends in themselves, so some formers ends are reduced to the function of means. Perhaps the substitution of the pursuit of competence for the pursuit of wealth will be such instance. In the contemporary world, a parent is far better advised to endow one’s child with competence in the new sense than to leave one with “a competence” in the old sense. Democracies do not know what kind of citizen the want to create. It is likely, however, that a later generation will look back and observe that we were not trying to create a fixed type of person, as other ages and place have done. Instead, we were groping toward the creation of a person who, not conforming to a predetermine image, is unprecedently capable of determining oneself. The members of a family change and develop, and it is other family members who are the principal determinants of such development. If this is assumed to be true, then the reflexivity quotient of any participant experiment is maximized, the more the behaviour of the subjects resembles that of the members of the family. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The more each means to the others, and they do one, the greater the consequence of their interactions. Conversely, the influence of others upon the self sharply declines as they move outside one’s constellation of significant others. Family patterns are normally transferred to interpersonal relations in other institutions. It is the possibility of progressively reconstituting the family through experimentally establishing its preferred relations in the quasi-families which offers hope of raising the quality of family life and of making accessible to experimental research a subject previously almost inviolate to observation. It is clear that incompetence in marriage and parenthood are very common, and its consequences are difficult for millions to bear. The usual references to rates of divorce only crudely suggests how far families fall short of hopes they inspire when formed, since even families that last often fail to achieve the optimal development of their members, so much so that many writers incline to assume that marital and parental misfeasance are the normal human condition. A basic finding is that changes in certain components of competence can be produced through series of meetings of quasi-family groups of young adults, who role-play and discuss problematic family life situations. By over performance a member learns to exhibit greater competence within the sheltered forum of a small group of comparable others, before whom one is willing to expose oneself in challenging tasks of learning. They carry-over to actual life—in one’s real family and interpersonal relations—is a problem not only of competence but of identity-change. It can be accomplished by a process of identification and progressive involvement in one’s practice group from week to week. How stable such gains are is yet to be determine, but as other investigators have frequently found, the only permanent change is structural change. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Thus it is assumed that only as increments in competence are stabilized through changed conceptions of identity, and fortified through the actual growth of friendship, commitment, and obligation to other members of the practice group, is there reasonable chance of achieving the substantial results envisaged. And if the family as the cellular component of society can be reconstituted through participant experimentation—if the gap from quasi-family to real life situations can be steadily bridged through wider development of interpersonal competence in the next generation—then the family itself will gain in value and public honour. Because of the domination of the physical pat of the human, and the emphasis placed upon the supernatural experiences in the body, the body is made to do the work of the spirit and is forced into a prominence which hides the true spirit life. It feels the pressure, feels the conflict, and thus becomes the locus of the sense instead of it being the spirit. These believers do not perceive where they feel. If they are question as to where they “feel,” they cannot answer. They should learn to discriminate, and know how to discern the feelings of the spirit, which are neither emotional (soulish) nor physical. The spirit may be likened to an electric light. If the humans’ spirit is in contact with the Spirit of God, it is full of light; apart from Him it is in darkness. Indwelt by Him, “the spirit of the human is a lamp of the Lord,” reports Proverbs 20.27. The possibilities and potentialities of the human spirit are only known when the spirit is joined to Christ and, united to Him, is made strong to stand against the powers of darkness. The Lord will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the land; He will make the people lie down in safety. Violence shall no more be heard in your land, neither desolation nor destruction within your borders. 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. The Sacramento Fire Department has been serving the community since 1851, they are not receiving all their resources, please make donations to them. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 