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A Thousand things May Happen to Bring Your Marriage to Mr. Winchester to an End!
Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven. He went wining through the darkness of the cosmos. He flew fast and hard, not stopping to fool around with the stars and planets scattered in his path like grains of diamond dust. He passed the Milk Way without even going in for a dip, passing it up for the sake of his mission. Satan had come to persuade poor creatures to give their souls to the Devil, but he will bewitch many people to death, and their faces will turn towards God as their blood cries for vengeance against him, begging to be clothed in white robes in Heaven when Satan is cast into Hell. The time of the old cults is returning. There are people who can repeat conversation to others and make them believe that they know it not from eavesdropping but from occult powers. Reverend George Burroughs, who had been minister of Salem Village from 1680 to 1682 bewitched many people to death, including his own first two wives. The fist he smothered and the second he strangled, and nobody seemed to notice that their specters differed about the means by which the supposed murders were done. Reverend Burroughs often would tell people, “My God makes known your thoughts unto me,” both he and his hearers understood his god to be the Devil; the Christian God does not deal in the occult, particularly at the level of family gossip, but the Devil does. When people are in the clutch of malignant demons, they are bound to die. Dr. Harold M. Johnson, a Hawaiian physician, reported both severe skin lesion and death among victims of Kahuna sorcerers. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
However, he had succeeded in curing bewitched patients by giving them methylene blue tablets, which turned their urine blue and persuades them that a powerful countercharm has been worked on their behalf. Witchcraft deaths have been reported for a very long time, yet it is only recently that they have received serious medical attention. Most of the physical effects of witchcraft are attributable to hysteria, but not death. However, people do not die from hysteria, but death. Like the hysterical symptoms of bewitchment, begins with the victim’s fear of the witch’s power. Dr. Walter B. Cannon of Harvard Medical School published an article entitled “Voodoo Death,” in which he began by acknowledging that “the phenomenon is so extraordinary and so foreign to the experience of civilized people that it seems incredible.” In all cases, death comes inexorably and in a relatively short time. As one observer put it, “the victims die…as though their strength ran out as water.” The only know cure was a countercharm, and when this was successfully employed, recovery was so rapid and complete that Western observers found it remarkable. Dr. Cannon suggested that witchcraft death might well be a genuine phenomenon, and also put forward a hypothetical explanation. “It may be explained,” he thought, “as due to shocking emotional stress—to obvious or repressed terror.” It would occur, he felt, chiefly in primitive cultures, “among human beings to primitive, so superstitious, so ignorant that they are bewildered strangers in a hostile World. Instead of knowledge they have a fertile and unrestricted imagination which fills their environment with all manner of evil spirits capable of affecting their lives disastrously.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
It was believed that these humans may be dying of psychogenic deaths as were the victims of witchcraft. However, Dr. Cannon had suggested that fear might be the emotional cause, with consequent overstimulation of the sympathicoadrenal system, accelerated of the heartbeat, and death with the heart contracted in in systole. However, Dr. Curt P. Richter found that while acceleration of the heartbeat was the initial reaction, it was shortly followed by a steady, gradual decrease in rate, with the heart eventually stopping in diastole, like a run-down clock. This meant that the emotional cause of death was not fear but hopelessness, produced by one’s conviction that there was no possible means of escape, with consequent overstimulation of the parasympathetic rather than the sympathic-coadrenal system. However, when people are removed from fearful situation in hasty fashion, they know their situation is not hopeless. So, they will not die psychogenic deaths. If individuals about to die a psychogenic death were removed from the situation they recovered rapidly, like human victims who have been reprieved by a countercharm. In short, Dr. Richter found that the first response in such cases was fear but that the emotional cause of death was hopelessness that succeeded fear, and that death could be prevented either by restoring hope or by training the subject to be hopeful in a particular situation. Therefore, prayer may very well save countless lives by removing fear and giving people who. This is probably also why stress has been noted to kill people and cause disease, it stresses the body and causes it to attack itself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Stress and fear may prolong and make medical conditions worse and could very well facilitate in killing a person if it is ongoing and not resolved, and a person cannot find help. Dr. R. S. Fisher, corner of the City of Baltimore, who had found that “a number of individuals die each year after taking small, definitely sublethal doses of poison, or after inflicting small, nonlethal wounds on themselves; apparently they die as a result of the belief in their doom.” Dr. Richter’s findings throw much new light on the history of Massachusetts witchcraft. They should enable us at long last to take as seriously as it deserves Cotton Mather’s detailed account of his treatment of the Goodwin girl. When he gave her religious sustenance by spelling the crucial words she was unable to hear spoken, he may have been saving his patient from much more than convulsive fits. By giving her continued hope he may literally have been keeping her alive. Dr. Richter’s findings also explain the frequent reports of death in both European and American witchcraft cases. There are about a dozen such reports in the documents of Salem witchcraft, but in most instances one cannot be at all certain of the actual cause of death. Even when death does appear to be psychogenic it is usually impossible to say whether the victim’s hopelessness was simply a result of private fears or whether those fears had their origin in a specific magical act. And if the testimony concerning Roger Toothaker and his daughter may be taken at face value—and there is reason to believe it may—we have one case of murder by witchcraft—one case in which occult means were used to take a human life away. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
Some people have become blasé to strange manifestations. When you consort with the occult, out-of-body experiences are like your daily bread and butter. We have special preparation for those who want their loved one’s memories restored. However, many do not use it, because they often find their beloved more charming without memories, and therefore without a clue as to what to scold about, at least for a while. Though Mrs. Sarah Winchester had a comfortable home, a home of a god as vast and resounding as the sea, and loving hearts around her, she wore a grave, melancholy look on her face. A disappointment! Yes, the old story of a lost love and new born baby is the reason for Mrs. Winchester’s looks. She had good offers often; but since she lost the love of her heart, she had never indulged in the happy dream of loving and being loved. The grave look, which was habitual with her, was a rare thing in her young and happy days, and passed over her face sometimes when she thought no one was looking. Before his death, Mr. Winchester had been persuaded to sit for his portrait. It was a fair likeness, but a very modern work of art. The background was so very dark, and Mr. Winchester’s naval costume was so deep in colour, that the face came out too white and staring. It was a three-quarter picture; but only one hand showed in it, gripping indisputably one of the most spectacular and historic of all Winchesters, number 14327. As George said, he looked much more like the commander of a Venetian galley than a modern mate. However, the picture pleased Mrs. Winchester. So the picture was duly framed—in a tremendously heavy frame, of Mr. Winchester’s ordering—and hung up in the dining-room. Mr. Winchester’s Father, Oliver, was a gunmaker, politician, clothing maker, and sailor by profession. He sailed the great and mysterious sea, and had been especially known as a good Arctic sailor, having share more than one expedition in search of the North Pole and the North-West Passage. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
It was no surprise when William Winchester wanted to go out for a voyage in search of his cousin Robert and his missing expedition. And now the time for William’s departure was growing nearer. The USS Jeannette was nearly ready to sail, and her crew only waited orders. The officers grew acquainted with each other before sailing, which was an advantage. Mr. Winchester took up very warmly with the commander, George W. De Long, and, with permission, brough him to dinner once or twice. Poor chap, he had no friends nearer than New York, and it is precious lonely work. So George came to dinner at the Winchester Estate in New Haven, Connecticut. However, Mrs. Winchester was not favourably impressed by him, and almost wished she had no consented to his invite. He was a tall, pale, fair young man, with a hard New York face and a cold, grey eye. There was something in his expression, too, that was unpleasant—something cruel or crafty, or both. It was in very bad taste for him to pay such marked attention to Mrs. Winchester, coming, as he did, as a friend of her husband. George kept by her constantly and anticipated Mr. Winchester in all the little attentions which a husband delights to pay. Mr. Winchester was a little put out about it, though he said nothing, attributing his friend’s offence to lack of breeding. Mrs. Winchester did not like it at all. She knew that she was not to have Mr. Winchester with her much longer, and she was anxious to have him to herself as much as possible. But as George was her husband’s friend, she bore the infliction with the best possible patience. The commander did not seem to perceive in the least that he was interfering where he had no business. He was quite self-possessed and happy, with one exception. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
The portrait of Mr. Winchester seemed to annoy George. He had uttered a little impatient exclamation when he first saw it which drew Mrs. Winchester’s attention to hi; and she noticed that he tried to avoid looking at it. At last, when dinner came, he was told to sit exactly facing the picture. He hesitated for an instant and then sat down, but almost immediately rose again. “It’s very childish and that sort of thing,” he stammered, “but I cannot sit opposite that picture. I know nothing about art, but it is one of those unpleasant pictures whose eyes follow you about the room. I have inherited horror of such pictures. My mother married against her father’s will, and when I was born she was so ill she was hardly expected to live. When she was sufficiently recovered to speak without delirious rambling she implored them to remove a picture of my grandfather that hung in the room, and which she vowed made threatening faces at her. It’s superstitious, but constitutional—I have a horror of such paintings!” I believe Mr. Winchester thought this a ruse of his friend’s to get a seat next to Mrs. Winchester; but it sure was not, for that was a real alarmed expression of his face. Before the ship departed, George has started visiting the Winchester’s more and more each day. He even went as far as to tell Mrs. Winchester that he loved her. He told her that a man could no more help falling in love than he could help taking a fever. Mrs. Winchester stood upon her dignity and rebuked him as if he was Satan; but he told her he could see no harm in telling her of his passion, though he knew it was a hopeless one. “A thousand things may happen,” he said at last, “to bring your marriage to Mr. Winchester to an end. Then perhaps you will not forget that another love you!” The butler was very angry, and was forthwith going to give him his opinion on his conduct, when Mrs. Winchester told him he was gone, that she had bade him go and had forbidden him the house. She had only told the butler in order to protect herself, for she did not intend to say anything to Mr. Winchester, for fear it should lead to a duel or some other violence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
That was the last Mrs. Winchester saw of George De Long before the Jeannette expedition. Mr. Winchester came the same evening, and was home until daybreak, when he had to tear himself away and join his ship. After shaking hugging Mrs. Winchester at the door, in the cold, grey, drizzly dawn, Mrs. Winchester went inside and started sobbing on the sofa. She could not help starting when she looked at Mr. Winchester’s portrait. The strange light of daybreak could hardly account for the extraordinary pallor of the face. The picture was covered with moisture, and he looked so pale. The Jeannette sailed. Mrs. Winchester received two letters from Mr. Winchester, which he had taken the opportunity of sending by homeward-bound whalers. In the second he said it was hardly likely he should have an opportunity of sending another, as they were sailing into high latitudes—into the solitary sea, to which none but expedition ships ever penetrated. They were all in high spirits, he said, for they had encountered very little ice and hoped to find clear water further north than usual. Moreover, he added, George had held a sinecure so far, for there had not been a single case of illness on board. Then came a long silence, and a year crept away very slowly for poor Mrs. Winchester. Once she heard of the expedition from the papers. They were reported as pushing on and progressing favourably by a wandering tribe of Esquimaux with whom the captain of a Russian vessel fell in. They had laid the ship up for the winter, and were taking the boats on sledges, and believed they had met with traces of the lost crews that seemed to show they were on the right track. The winter passed again, and spring came. It was a balmy, bright spring such as they got occasionally, even in the changeable and uncertain climate of theirs. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
One evening Mrs. Winchester was sitting in the dining-room with the window open, for, although she had long given up fires, the room was so oppressively warm that she was glad of the breath of the cool evening breeze. Mrs. Winchester was working. Though she never murmured, she was evidently pining at Mr. Winchester’s long absence. The butler was leaning out of the window, studying the evening effect on the fruit blossom, which was wonderfully early and plentiful, the season was so mild. Mrs. Winchester was sitting at the table, near the lamp, reading the paper. Suddenly there swept into the room a chill. It was not a gust of cold wind, for the curtain by the window did not swerve in the least. However, the deathly cold pervaded the room—came, and was gone in an instant. Mrs. Winchester shuddered with an intense icy feeling. She looked up, “How curiously cold it has got all in a minute,” she said. “We are having a taste of poor William’s Polar weather,” she said with a smile. At that moment, she instinctively glanced towards his portrait. When she saw struck her dumb. A rush of blood, at fever heart, dispelled the numbing influence of the chill breath that she seemed to freeze her. The lamp was lighted; but it was only that she might read with comfort, for the violet twilight was still so full of sunset that the room was not dark. However, as she looked at the picture, she saw it had undergone a strange change. She saw it as plainly as possible. It was no delusion, coined for the eye by the brain. In the place of Mr. Winchester’s head, a grinning skull! She started at it hard; but it was no tick of fancy. She could see the hollow orbits, the gleaming teeth, the fleshless cheekbones—it was the head of death! Without saying a word, she rose from her chair and walked straight up to the painting. As she drew nearer a sort of mist seemed to pass before it; and as she stood close to it, she saw only the face of Mr. Winchester. The spectral skull had vanished. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
“Poor William!” she said unconsciously. The butler Robert looked up. The tone of her voice had alarmed him, the expression on her face did not reassure him. “What do you mean? Have you heard anything, Mrs. Winchester? She came over to him, laying her hands on his arm, and looked into his face sadly. “No, my dear; how should I hear? Only I could not help thinking of the privation and discomfort he must have gone through. I was remaindered of it by the cold. “Cold!” said Robert, who had left the window by this time. “Cold! what on Earth are you talking about? Cold, such an evening as this! You must have had a touch of ague, I should think.” Mrs. Winchester felt it bitterly cold for a minute or two. “Did you not feel it, Robert?” “Not for a bit; and I was three parts out of the window I ought to have felt it if anyone did.” It was curious, but that strange chill ad been felt only in the room. It was not the night wind, but some supernatural breath connected with the dread apparition she has seen. It was, indeed, the chill of polar winter—the icy shadow of the frozen North. It was a hot evening and Mrs. Winchester seemed to have caught a violent cold, for she was shivering very much. Mrs. Winchester, felling unwell, had gone to bed. The next day Mrs. Winchester was well again, and did not mentioned the events of the preceding night. However, from that day on she was ever inwardly dreading the arrival of bad news. And at last, it came as expected. The newspaper said there had been a “Fatal Accident to one of the Officers of the USS Jeannette.” It stated that news had been received at Admiralty stating that the expedition had failed to find the missing crew, but had come upon some traces of them. Want of stores and necessaries had compelled them to turn back without following those traces up; but the commander was anxious, as soon as the ship could be refitted, to go out and take up the trail where he left it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
An unfortunate accident had deprived him of one of his most promising officers, Lieutenant Winchester, who was precipitated from an iceberg and killed while out shooting with the commander. He was beloved by all, and his death had flung a gloom over the gallant little troop of explorers. There stood Mrs. Winchester, with her face as pale as death, with her lips apart, and with a blind look about her eyes. The doctor was sent for, and restorative were promptly administered. Mrs. Winchester came to herself again, but lay dangerously ill for some weeks from the shock. It was about a month after she was well enough to come downstairs again. One afternoon shortly after, there came a loud knock at the front door. As Mrs. Winchester looked up at Mr. Winchester’s portrait, puzzling who could it be at the door, she would not figure out if she was dreaming or awake? One hand on the picture used to be resting on a shotgun, but now the forefinger was raised, as if in warning. She looked hard at the picture, to assure herself it was no fancy, and then she perceived, standing out bright and distinct on the pale face, two large drops, as if of blood. She walked up to it, expecting the appearance to vanish, as the skull had done. It did not vanish. It was surely blood. When the butler opened the door, George came in. He was greatly altered. He was thinner and paler than ever; hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked. He had acquired a strange stoop, too, and his eyes had lost the crafty look for a look of terror, like that of a haunted beast. He kept glancing sideways every instant, as if unconsciously. It looked as if he heard someone behind him. Mrs. Winchester never had liked that man. She told him of course she was glad to see him back, but that she could not ask him to continue to visit her. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Mrs. Winchester was glad to hear the particulars of poor William’s death. He related with reluctance, how they had gone out to shoot a white bear which they had seen on an iceberg stranded along the shore. The top of the berg was ridged like the roof of a house, sloping down on one side to the edge of a tremendous overhanging precipice. They had scrambled along the ridge in order to get nearer the game when Mr. Winchester incautiously ventured on the sloping side. The surface was as smooth and slippery as glass with oil on it. He tried to turn back, but slipped and fell. And then began a horrible scene. But his fate was sealed; and he could only tell George to bring his last farewell to his wife! He clung to the edge of the precipice instinctively for one second, and was gone. However, there was something always at George’s side, which none could see, but which cast a shadow. As they were talking, Mr. Winchesters portrait had fallen, and the corner of the heavy frame had struck him on the head, cutting it open, and rendering him insensible. The staff had carried him upstairs, by the direction of the doctor. He was laid down in the guest room. George was delirious. The doctor said it was a queer case; for, though the blow was a sever one, it was hardly enough to account for the symptoms of brain-fever. When he learnt that George had just retuned in the Jeannette from the North, he said it was possible that the privation and hardship had told on his constitution and sown the seeds of the malady. They sent for a nurse, who was to sit up with him, by the doctor’s directions. In the middle of the night, Mrs. Winchester was roused by a loud scream. She slipped on her slippers and bed coat, and rushed out to find the nurse, who explained the mystery to her. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
It appears that about midnight, George sat up in bed, and began to talk. And he said such terrible things that the nurse became alarmed. Nor was she much reassured when she became aware that the light of her single candle flung what seemed to be two shadows of the sick man on the wall. Terrified beyond measure, she saw George siting up in bed, gazing at the unseen figure to which the shadow belonged. Mrs. Winchester was now in the nurse’s company. In a voice that trembled with emotion, George begged the haunting spirit to leave him, and prayed for its forgiveness. “You know the crime was no premeditated. It was a sudden temptation of the devil that make me shoot you twice. It was the devil tempting me with the recollection of her exquisite face—of the tender love that might have been mine, but for you. Bu she will not listen to me. See, she turned away from me, as if she knew I was your murderer, William Winchester!” Mrs. Winchester was horrified to hear this awful confession. However, George had risen in his delirious terror, opened the window, and leaped out. Two days later his body was found in the river. In 1884, Mrs. Winchester left New Haven, Connecticut, and the graves of her husband and only child, moved to San Jose, California, and began the obsession that was to las for the rest of her life. She purchased an eighteen-room farmhouse outside the small agricultural town, and for the next 38 years, the sound of construction on Mrs. Winchester’s house never stopped. Mrs. Winchester hired carpenters to work around the clock building and rebuilding room after room, as the spirits—or her mood—directed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Some say the construction had actually started much earlier and went on for centuries, in fact. It is the cobwebs that finally tip some off; and the ancient dust on the cobwebs. Stretched out in this mansion is an entity—it is impossible to tell at a glance whether it is a man or a god, or perhaps something else. The entity seems to be of the masculine persuasion, is of medium height and has medium brown hair flecked with gray. The being sometimes sits on the couch in the parlor, opens his eyes, blinks rapidly several times, then vanishes. The Winchester house was furnished with the finest materials and was a showcase of Victorian elegance and taste. The homes of the gods are bigger, more beautiful, more awe-inspiring. However, no one can say with this is so, since any god can build a house of any size and get any interior decorator one wants. Some says the real architect was William Writ Winchester, reaching out from beyond the grave and building a wedding present for his wife. It just seems to be a quality of the major gods to have an air that is godlier than the less godly air of the minor gods. The house represents the spirit of something entirely new, a new principle, a new life, a new set of values. It gave Mrs. Winchester a feeling of gratitude for the unbending nature of things, which does not demand that we obsess constantly over what is to happen next, but merely put one foot in front of the other until something numinous takes place. Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor: Lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor. Atte ye induynge of ye holy vestures. In the mystery of these vestures of the Holy Ones, I gird up my power in the girdles of righteousness and truth in the power of the Most High: Ancor: Amacor: Amides: Theodonias: Anitor: let be mighty power my power: let it endure for ever: in the power of Adonai, to whom the praise and the glory shall be; whose end cannot be. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Winchester Mystery House
Winchester Mystery House presents 30 Nights of All Hallows’ Eve – our all new Halloween event for Fall 2021! Tickets for All Hallows’ Eve offer multiple estate wide activities including the Lost in the House Tour – a paranormal investigation adventure and the family-friendly Jack O’ Lantern Trail. All Hallows’ Eve offers something for everyone on select nights starting September 10th.
👻 Frightening Lost in the House Tour
🎃 Family Friendly Lighted Displays on the Jack O’ Lantern Trail
🍿 Fall themed food & drinks
🏠 Lost in the House Projection Show using the front of the mansion as a canvas!
and more! https://www.instagram.com/p/CR6y_fFN78M/
For more information and for tickets:
A 160-room mansion built to appease the spirits who died at the hands of the Winchester Rifle 👻
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
Labour More that By Good Works You May Make Sure Your Calling and Election!
Man creates law to maintain his World. But what happens when the laws of man define the laws of nature? High Society may be for you or against you, Paul to the Romans (8.31)—but do not hand your life on such a supercilious judgment. Just take care that the Supernatural is with you in everything you do; in other words, keep a good conscience. In return, God will defend you well, and He will steer you clear of oncoming perversities. However, just in case you swerve unawares, know that there is no trick to extricating you from the ditch. God is faithful and quick; He knows the when and the how; at least according to the Acts of the Apostles (1.7) His modus operandi? He rescues, and He sweeps up after. You know you are in good hands. However, what if other discover your defects and throw them in your face? Well, that is humility. And if you suffer that exquisite pain in silence, it will lead to, of all things, greater humility. Yes, there are rascals who spend their days standing on the corner watching all the World go by. And yes, they are waiting for just such an oaf as yourself to trip up on your own defects. One moment you are humble, and the next? Well, you have given the ruffians a good laugh. Anyone humbled in this way God shields from further harm, dusts one off, patches one up. This is the sort of person He takes a liking to, according to Second Corinthians (7.6), and enriches with spiritual generosity according to First Peter (5.5) and James (4.6). He raises one from the street and lifts one up to Glory. In to one’s ear, or so the Gospel of Matthew intimates (11.25), He whispers the most extraordinary things, even asking one if one would like to be friends. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
What is the result of this sudden humility? Whenever the person trips, one falls, but the bloodied nose no longer shakes one’s peace of mind. That is because one’s standing is not with the rowdies on the next corner, but with the Angles in the next World. Now that is how God looks at it, but the view from your promontory–if needed there is one—is entirely different. Supposedly, you have made all this spiritual progress, but that is no reason to puff yourself up. Know that, compared with the rest of Humankind, none of whose spiritual condition you have any true knowledge of, you are still a very flat and uninspired person. Some, regarding the certainty of divine predestination, said that prayers were superfluous, as also anything else done to attain salvation; because whether these things were done or not, the predestined would attain, and the reprobate would not attain, eternal salvation. However, against this opinion are all the warnings of Holy Scripture, exhorting us to prayer and other good works. Others declared that the divine predestination was altered through prayer. This is stated to have the opinion of the Egyptians, who thought that the divine ordination, which they called fate, could be frustrated by certain sacrifices and prayer. Against this also is the authority of Scripture. For it is said: “But the triumpher in Israel will not spare and will not be moved to repentance,” reports 1 Kings 15.29; and that “the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance,” reports Romans 11.29. Wherefore we must say otherwise that in predestination two things are to be considered—namely, the divine ordination; and its effect. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
As regards the former, in no possible way can predestination be furthered by the prayers of the saints. For it is not due to their prayers that anyone is predestined by God. As regards for the latter, predestination is said to be helped by the prayers that anyone is predestined by other good works; because providence, of which predestination is a part, does not do away with secondary causes but so provides effects, that the order of secondary causes falls also under providence. So, as natural effects are provided by God in such a way that natural causes are directed to bring about those natural effects, without which those effects would not happen; so the salvation falls under the order of predestination; whether it be one’s own prayers or those of another; or other good works, and such like, without which one would not attain to salvation. Whence, the predestined must strive after good works and prayer; because through these means predestination is most certainly fulfilled. For this reason it is said: “Labour more that by good works you may make sure your calling and election,” reports 2 Peter 1.10. This argument shows that predestination is not furthered by the prayers of the saints, as regards the preordination. One is said to be helped by another in two ways: in one way, inasmuch as one receives power from one: and to be helped thus belongs to the weak; but this cannot be said of God, and thus we are to understand, “Who hath helped the Spirit of the Lord?” In another way one is said to be helped by a person through whom one carries out one’s work, as a master through a servant. In this way God is helped by us; inasmuch as we execute His orders, according to 1 Corinthians 3.9: “We are God’s coadjutors.” Nor is this on account of any defect in the power of God, but because He employs intermediary causes, in order that the beauty of order may be preserved in the Universe; and also that He may communicate to creatures the dignity of causality. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Secondary causes cannot escape the order of the first universal cause, as has been said above, indeed, they execute that order. And therefore predestination can be further by creatures, but it cannot be impeded by them. After the work of translation was completed and the eleven men had seen the plates, an Angel came for the golden plates and Urim and Thummim, and Joseph returned the precious things he had carefully watched over for so many months. The work of translating was over, but there still remained the work of printing the book that all might know the wonderful story. Oliver Cowdery made a copy of all the writings. One copy was for the printers to use, and one was to be kept in case the other was lost. In August, 1829, Oliver Cowdery began taking the writings to the printers in Palmyra, New York. He took a few pages at a time and stayed right with the work, proofreading the printed pages to see that the printing was correct. By March, 1830, the Book of Mormon was printed. Five thousand copies cost $3,000 (2021 inflation adjusted: $88,596.52). Martin Harris advanced the money, and as the books were sold the money was returned to him. The Book of Mormon tells the story of people who lived long ago in the Americas, having been led by God from Jerusalem across the sea to the promised land in America. It tells about God’s dealings with them. These ancient people knew about Jesus. The Lord gave them a sign of His birth and after His resurrection Jesus visited them and taught them His gospel. These ancient people kept records of their history. They wrote them on plates of gold because gold was durable and plentiful. God told his prophet Mormon to prepare the golden plates so they might be preserved and brought forth by the power of God at such time as the Lord desired. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The records were hidden in a stone box in a hill and there they remained hidden in the care of the Lord until God chose to bring them forth by His wonderful power. God wanted the people who were to live hundreds of years later to know the story of the people Columbus called “Indians” when he arrived at the New World in his search for a new route to India. It is their story which was written upon the golden plates and was translated into the Book of Mormon. Now that the book was printed people could read for themselves the strange story told on the golden plates. The men went among the people, showing them the Book of Mormon, telling the wonderful story, and preaching the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. The World did not then know anything about those who had lived hundreds of years ago in the land of America. When some read the book, they believed it. Others, however, would not listen and in a cruel and wicked manner persecuted those who believed. One complete copy of the manuscript of the Book of Mormon has been carefully preserved for all the years since 1829. It is now in the custody of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It is kept in a bank vault, and for very special occasions it is brought from the vault and displayed, always under special police guard. The other copy was put in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House in Nauvoo, Illinois. When his building was rebuilt any years later, it was found that water had seeped into the cornerstone and little of it was legible. Most of this manuscript was completely ruined, but some pages of it are still in existence. When the sacred moment comes, let one not hesitate to let oneself go, to adore the Overself ecstatically, and to let one’s heart be ravished. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The rapt return to mental indrawnness may come to the practising meditator quite unexpectedly and suddenly. It may find one engaged in some ordinary daily activity or caught speaking in the middle of a sentence, but whatever it be, one should instantly surrender oneself and one’s time to it. In the result, the meditation will gradually deepen into a mild ecstasy. The Overself throws out a clue to its existence and presence. This comes in various ways to different persons. One form is a delicate feeling drawing one inward either to deeper thought or to no thought at all. If one goes along with it even through hardly aware and half-involuntarily, one will be led by this clue to a glimpse. One could learn to recognize that these moments, which comes so suddenly and so delightfully, have a special value. As soon as they come one ought to suspend all activities, put aside whatever it is that one is doing, even stop what one is speaking, and concentrate all one’s attention in a passive submissive way upon the delicate feelings and deep understanding that come with them. When confronted with a compelling anecdote, people are often strangely insensitive to statistical information indicating that the anecdote is but an exception rather than the rule. Before buying his new car, Ken consults the Consumer Reports surveyof car owners and Bimmertips on the social media page of Instagram.com, and finds high ratings given to the 2022 BMW M760Li xDrive he is considering purchasing. Hearing of his intention, Jillian says, “Oh! Those are great cars. Justin and I were considering buying one on Father’s Day.” The research (and our own experience) suggests that Ken will go ahead and buy the car because his friends liked it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Vivid testimony often makes it hard to forget an object and discount it. Likewise, vivid terrorist acts in early 1986, although harming fewer than one in a million persons in Europe, caused fearful Americans to shun travel to Europe in favour of more dangerous vacations on American highways. The September 11, 2001, terrorist assaults motivated millions more people to drive where they would have flown, despite the much lower risk of flying (even after allowing for September 11). Indeed, had terrorist crashed fifty more similarly loaded plans in 2001, Americans (if they kept on flying) would still have ended the year safer in planes than cares. The human understanding is most excited by that which strikes and enters the mind at once and suddenly, and by which the imagination is immediately filled and inflated. It then begins almost imperceptibly to conceive and suppose that everything is similar to the few objects which have taken possession of the mind, whilst it is very slow and unfit for the transition to the remote and heterogenous instances by which axions are tried as by fire. This way of thinking has several implications. For psychologists, knowing our vulnerability to error beckons us not to disparage psychological science, but to restrain our unchecked speculations. Aware that we can conceive and defend almost any theory, we must be candid about our presuppositions and check our theories against the data of God’s created World. To appreciate the unreliability of unchecked intuition (that sixth sense that tells us we are right, whether we are or not) is to admit that we need to do science—to wed creative intuition with systematic observation. Our method and that of the skeptics agree in some respects at first setting out, but differ most widely, and are completely opposed to each conclusions: for they roundly assert that nothing can be known; we, that but a small part of nature can be known, by the present method; their next step, however, is to destroy the authority of the sense and understanding, whilst we invent and supply them with assistance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The accumulating research on human error also beckons us to a personal humility. It helps us understand why Jesus admonished us not to judge. We can easily wrong people by our overconfident judgements—that John’s depression stems from his demanding parents, or that the quiet woman next door harbours suppressed hostility. Nor need we feel intimidated by other people’s cockiness, least of all by strict and rigid doctrines of heresy hunters who are so absolutely sure they are right that they dare to practice spiritual ventriloquism—by putting their words into the mouth of God and believing the voice they throw to be the word of the Lord. When we make our own words our absolute truth, then, said the theologian Karl Barth, we have made an idol out of our religion. We have forgotten that we are not gods, but finite humans who peer at reality in a mirror dimly. Oliver Cromwell’s 1650 plea to the Church of Scotland is worth hearing over and again: “I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken.” The one belief of which we cannot be overconfident is the conviction that some of our beliefs contain error. Although that may sound threatening, it should actually be reassuring. For it means that it is okay to have doubts. Doubt reveals a mind that asks questions, a humble mind, one that does not presume its own ideas to be certainties, one that checks it presumptions against the data of God’s creation. Indeed, the intellectually honest words, belief, faith, and hope acknowledge uncertainty. We do not believe that three times three equals nine or have faith that what we throw upward will come down, or hope that day will follow night; we know these things with psychological if not logical certainty. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
To take the leap of faith is to bet one’s life on a presumed truth that makes sense of the Universe, that gives meaning to life, that provides hope in the face of adversity and death. One need not await 100 percent certainty before risking a thoughtful leap across the chasm of uncertainty. One can choose to marry in the hope of a happy life. One can elect a career, believing it will prove satisfying. One can fly across the ocean, having faith in the pilot and plane. To know that we are prone to error does not negate our capacity to glimpse truth, nor does it rationalize living as a fence straddler. Sometimes, said the novelist Albert Camus, life calls us to make a 100 percent commitment to something about which we are 51 percent sure. When we consider the structure of the personality, it is important to keep in mind the withdrawn “regressed” ego. There are three stages in the process called the withdrawal of the regressed ego. At stage one, there is a deepening of the split between the (already existing) Central Ego (more in touch with the World of other people and things) an the (also already existing) Libidinal Ego (where a person’s more bodily feelings originate). This is a true “vertical” split. At stage two, an Anti-Libidinal structure interposes between the Central Ego and the Libidinal Ego. This makes it additionally difficult for people to be in touch with their libidinal feelings, and for their libidinal needs to find expression in the World of other people and things. People then experience (rejecting) anger, because of the (frustrated) existence of these (excited) feelings, but they are not conscious of the source of their anger. The structure here under consideration is a repressive one, more a horizontal “lid” than a vertical split. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
At stage three, a further vertical split occurs, this time within the Libidinal Ego, that is within the structures which involve libidinal feeling. This split ensures that, while some libidinal needs eventually find expression, however painfully they may be hampered by their connection with anti-libidinal anger and rejection, others are withdrawn from communication with any source of pain. These latter are then out of touch with the realities mediated by the Central Ego, and out of touch with the moralities of Anti-Libidinal Ego, and out of touch with other (libidinal) feelings, needs, hopes, wishes. They exist, but they are unknown to the person. The result is a (vertically) split-off personality of which the person is no usually conscious. This is the passive repressed ego which seeks to return to the ante-natal state of absolute passive dependent security. Here, in quietude, repose, and immobility, it may find the opportunity to recuperate and grow to a rebirth. The phenomenon of the regressed ego is a very important one. However, one of the first misconceptions about regression we must clear up is the ambiguity in the term “regression.” Regression is a reversion to an earlier state of mode of functioning. However, what kind of a reversion? To an earlier state of feeling? Or to an earlier mode of personality organization? The answer is that there are two kinds of regression at least. One involves reversion to earlier feelings, and more generally regression to an earlier way of experiencing self and others. The other involves a relaxation of integrating process and hence a reversion to an earlier and less integrated organization of structures, with more splits, more isolated regions, more “islands.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Even in normal states of mind, some people have to make efforts to hold themselves together. When they relax in a therapeutic situation, they relax those efforts. This is the aspect of what is usually called regression which I shall call relaxation. Sometimes when it is believed that people are retreating to some earlier state of being, I believe them to be relaxing the connections which hold them together. Secondly, we must that sometimes what people are describing as regression, is a sequence of events in a child’s life. We must not be misled by this; it is in fact a sequence of stages which some people go through in some kinds of psychotherapy. People do regress in an appropriately holding therapeutic environment. As they feel more and more secure with their therapist, they give up their self-protective devices more and more. This allows them to revive and express (and even act upon) more and more strongly protected thoughts, feelings, wishes, memories, phantasies. Many of these do indeed have their roots in childhood and infancy, and were part of our young minds, but they indicate more about how we felt than and feel now, than about the stages by which we got those feelings. Thirdly, our troubles are aggravated by the assumption that we start with a unified self which is destroyed by subsequent misfortunes. As for instance, in this complex pattern of ego-splitting or loss of primary psychic unity, with all the weakness and internal conflict it involves, is the root cause of personality disorders in later life: and the most vulnerable part of the self is the most hidden part, cut off from all human relationships. This is an accurate description of how it is with some people. However, it also contains the misleading assumption that the self has a primary unity and then splits. Sometimes what psychologists lead in the consulting room can be misleading. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
In a relationship of trust, as self-protective devices are abandoned, some people relax and show themselves to be less integrated than they at first appear to be. In my view, they are then as they have always been, at heat. Many, many people have a hidden, tender, vulnerable side, and it would be good if this were more in touch with the rest of the personality. However, this hidden “regressed” withdrawn ego is not necessarily the result of splits in a region or a structure which was once whole. Although it is true that sometimes a more developed part of the self withdraws from involvement in everyday sensory life, it seems to me equally true that many people have parts which have never developed or which have never been allowed to come to the fore. These parts are hidden, but they have always been hidden—they have not retreated from a more visible position. There is a vulnerable, tender part of the personality, something that is very sensitive, like a flower that shrinks at the slightest touch. Often this part has been split off or repressed, because it has been hurt. Shrinking, wincing, wounded, skinless, are the adjectives which best describe those regions then. Many psychologists are familiar with these tender, vulnerable states of mind, none more so than maybe yours, but they are often misled by what their adult patients say and do. Not having a background in pediatrics can be detrimental because a medical professional may be led to an over-reliance on the evidence one gets from one’s adult patients. However, if we disregard one’s developmental assumptions, what the medical professional may be saying on the structure of the personality, particularly as regards the vulnerable feelings, is absolutely valid, and can be used to understand uniquely important aspects of the schizoid state of mind. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
With information on genetics doubling every two years, with the gene mechanics working overtime New Scientist magazine reports that “genetic engineering has been going through an essential tooling up phase; it is not ready to go into business.” The distinguished science commentator, Lord Ritchie-Calder, explains that “Just as we have manipulated plastics and metals, we are now manufacturing living materials.” Major companies are already in hot pursuit of commercial applications of the new biology. They dream of placing enzymes in the automobile to monitor exhaust and send data on pollution to microprocessors that will then adjust the engine. They speak of what is called metal-hungry microbes that might be used to mine valuable trace metals from ocean water. They have already demanded and won the right to patent new life forms. General Electric, Asklepois BioPharmaceutical , CRISPR Therapeutics, Editas Medicine, Pfizer and many others are all in the race. Nervous critics including many scientists, justifiably worry that there is a race at all. They conjure up images not of oil spills, but of “microbe spills” that could spread disease and decimate entire population. The creation and accidental release of virulent microbes, however, is only one cause for alarm. Completely sober and respectable scientists are talking about possibilities that stagger the imagination. Should we breed people with cowlike stomachs so they can digest grass and hay—thereby alleviating the food problem by modifying us to eat lower down on the food chain? Should we biologically alter to fit workers to fit job requirements—for example, creating pilots with faster reaction times or assembly-line workers neurologically designed to do our monotonous work for us? #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Should we attempt to eliminate “inferior” people and breed a “super-race”? (Some have tried this, but without the genetic weaponry that may son issue from our laboratories.) Should we clone soldiers to our fighting? Should we use genetic forecasting to pre-eliminate “unfit” babies? Should we grow reserve organs for ourselves—each of us having, as it were, a “saving bank” full of spare kidneys, livers, or lungs? Wild as these notions may sound, every one has its advocates (and adversaries) in the scientific community as well as its striking commercial applications. As two critics of genetic engineering, Jeremy Rifkin and Ted Howard, state in their book Who Should Play God?, “Broad scale genetic engineering will probably be introduced to America much the same way as assembly lines, automobiles, vaccines, computers and all the other technologies. As each new genetic advance becomes commercially practical, a new consumer need…will be exploited and a market for the new technology will be created.” The potential applications are myriad. The new biology, for example, could potentially help solve the energy problem. Scientists are now studying the idea of utilizing bacteria capable of converting sunlight into electrochemical energy. They speak of “biological solar cells.” Could we breed life forms to replace nuclear power plants? And if so, might we substitute the danger of a bioactive release for the danger of radioactive release? In the field of health, many diseases now untreatable will no doubt be cured or prevented—and new ones, perhaps worse, introduced through inadvertence or even malice. (If it developed and secretly spread some new disease for which it alone had the cure, think what a profit-hungry company could do. Even a mild, coldlike ailment could create a massive market for the appropriate, monopolistically controlled cure.) #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
According to the president of Cetus, a California company to which many World-famous geneticists are commercially linked, “biology will replace chemistry in importance” in the next thirty years. And in Moscow an official policy statement urges “the wider use of micro-organisms in the national economy.” Biology will reduce or eliminate the need for oil in the production of plastics, fertilizer, cloths, paint, pesticides, and thousands of other products. It will sharply alter the production of wood, wool, and other “natural” goods. Companies like United States Steel, Fiat, Hitachi, ASEA, or IBM will undoubtedly have their own biology divisions as we begin to shift, over time, from manufacture to “bio-facture,” giving rise to a range of products unimaginable until now. Says Theodore J. Gordon, the head of The Futures Group, “In biology, once we get stated, we’ll have to think about things like…can you make a “tissue-compatible shirt” or a “mammary mattress”—created out of the same stuff as the human” organ of milk secretion. Long before then, in agriculture, genetic engineering will be employed to increase the World food supply. The much-publicized Green Revolution of the 1960’s proved, in large measures, a colossal trap for farmers in the First Wave World because I required enormous inputs of petroleum-based fertilizer that had to be brought abroad. The next bio-agricultural revolution aims at reducing that dependence on artificial fertilizer. Genetic engineering points toward high-yielding crops, crops that grow well in sandy or salty soil, crops that fight off pests. It also seeks to create entirely new foods and fibers, along with simpler, cheaper, energy-conserving methods for storing and processing foods. As though to balance off some of its awesome peril, genetic engineering once more holds out for us the possibility of ending widespread famine. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
One must remain skeptical of these glowing promises. Yet if some of these advocates of genetic farming are half right, the impact on agriculture could be tremendous, ultimately altering, among other things relations between the poor countries and the rich. The Green Revolution made the poor more, not less, dependent on the rich. The bio-agricultural revolution could do the reverse. It is too early to say with confidence how biotechnology will develop. However, it is too late to turn back to zero. We cannot undiscover what we know. We can only fight to control its application, to prevent hasty exploitation, to transnationalize it, and to minimize corporate, national, and interscientific rivalry in the entire field before it is too late. One thing is immutably clear: we are no longer locked into the four-hundred-year-old electromechanical frame of traditional Second Wave technology, and can only begin to glimpse the full significance of this historic fact. Just as the Second Wave combined coal, steel, electricity, and rail transport to produce automobiles and a thousand other life-transforming products, the real impact of the new changes will not be felt until we reach the stage of combing the new technologies—linking together computers, electronics, new materials from outer space and the oceans, with genetics, and all of these, in turn with the new energy base. Bringing these elements together will release a flood of innovation unlike any seen before in human history. We are constructing a dramatically new techno-sphere for a Third Wave civilization. The power of human emotion can neither be control by the laws we create nor by the will we impose. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Prior to the mass suburbanization following the second World War, working-class suburbs were almost certain to be older industrial or factory suburbs. An example would be Cudahy, south of Milwaukee, which was established when the Milwaukee city government refused to allow Patrick Cudahy to build a stockyard and slaughterhouse within the city. As a consequence, the meat packer established a new suburb outside the city limits, which he named after himself. Another example would be the working-class suburb of Cicero, west of Chicago. Cicero achieved national notoriety during the 1920s as the headquarters of Al Capone’s operations when a short-lived reform administration in Chicago temporarily forced the organization to move to the suburbs. Most prewar working-class suburbs, however, were simply factory towns. They were in no way distinctive. Plain but generally well-kept houses with small yards were the norm. Following World War II, the GI Bill allowed blue-collar workers as well as the traditional middle class to successfully apply for long-term mortgages. Growing prosperity also made it possible for working-class workers to purchase a family automobile. At the same time new interstate and other road networks made new suburban locations a reasonable alternative for aging inner-city factories. Industries could relocate beyond streetcar lines without fearing they would be unable to recruit a work force. As a result, factories and labour forces decentralized. It is sometimes forgotten that the new postwar working-class suburbanites that followed the factories to the suburbs were not fleeing decaying city neighbourhoods. More often than not, they were somewhat reluctantly leaving tight ethnic neighbourhoods with high levels of social interaction. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
In the 1960s, when they were forced to move from Richmond, California, to the suburb of Milpitas, California, in order to work at the new automobile plant, the lifestyle of one hundred blue-collar Ford assembly workers and their families changed. What was found was that suburbanization had little or no effect on the workers’ style of life. They did not see the move in terms of social mobility; they had no great hopes of getting ahead in their jobs. They had no illusions of wealth; their wage level was dependent on the union contract. At a consequence of becoming suburbanites, they did not change their political affiliations (81 percent Democrat), go to church more, or join community organizations. They participated only minimally in formal groups. What they did do is continue their traditional working-class pattern of tight, informal socialization, with long-term friends and neighbours. While they enjoyed the creature comforts of suburban living, they remained peer-group- and ethnic-group-centered. In brief, they lived life patterns quite similar to those workers living in blue-collar central-city neighbourhoods. Their new suburban homes were not seen as way stations on the road to social mobility, but rather as permanent places of residence. Now many of the postwar blue-collar suburbs are experiencing the same downward economic pressures suffered by central cities. Declines in nearby heavy-industry and manufacturing jobs mean that those living in older inner-ring suburbs have long commutes to service jobs in outlying edge suburbs. Commercial tax bases are also eroding in working-class suburbs. Additionally, older working-class suburbs, with their more affordable housing, have been most likely to attract a diverse group of people escaping the city. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
The deterioration of job prospects for blue-collar workers in a postindustrial economy suggest that such workers may now find themselves trapped in declining work-class suburbs. These suburbs lack the affluence of other suburbs, and even the basic amenities of the central city. Hey! Lean to hear my feeble voice. At the center of the sacred hoop. You have said that I should make the tree bloom. With tears running, O Great Spirit, my Grandfather, with running eyes I must say the tree has never bloomed. Here I stand, and the tree is withered. Again, I recall the great vision you gave me. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then that it may leaf and blood and fill with singing birds! Hear me, that the people may once again find the good road and the shielding tree. When I call upon the Lord, ascribe greatness unto our God. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possessest all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. Remember us unto life, O King who delightest in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life so that we may live worthily for Thy sake, O Lord of life. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. It is needful to look into the self in depth, to a level where psychoanalysts are seldom able to reach. For the real aim is to penetrate through thoughts to Thought itself, through the personal being to the impersonal one. Further, according to the ancient tradition, not only must meditation penetrate deeply, it must also be continuous. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Of Course, We All Need Friends, or there is No Way We Can Survive!
From the time our earliest ancestors looked to the stars, they have wondered what secrets the Heavens held. But, will we be ready when these secrets are disclosed? The Celestial Kingdom is the highest of the three degrees of Kingdoms of glory in Heaven. Those who inherit this Kingdom dwell in the presence of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. In the scriptures, the glory of the Celestial Kingdom is compared to the glory of the Sun. “And many of them that sleep in the dust of Earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever,” report Daniel 12.2-3. “The Kingdom of God is within,” said the Lord,” reports Luke 17.21. Therefore, turn your back on the wretched ways some people in this World. Grab hold of your heart and stand facing the Lord. Do that, wrote Evangelist Matthew 11.29, and your soul will find peace. The outside World? You know where that is at already. However, as to the whereabouts of the inside World, do you have a clue? No matter. The Kingdom of God will find you. How? The “Peace and Joy in the Holy Spirit,” as Paul wrote to the Romans (14.17), comes only to the pious; that is to say, only to those who invite Him. Clear out the rubbish within, then, and prepare a cool, bare place. Christ will come and take up residence. He will furnish it with “all of His glory,” as the Psalmist has song in the Latin Bible (45.14), and make it a warm, chatsworthy spot. Visit Him whenever you like. Feel at home there. It is your own True Home at last. Who would have believed it? #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
O Faithful Soul, prepare your heart for this committed Friend of yours. Make it a worthwhile retreat so that He will come visit and visit again. How? By keeping His word, as the Evangelist John put it (14.23). Do that, and He will establish quite a respectable presence under your very roof. Give Christ some space, therefore, and bar the door to the rest of your crowd. Why? When you have Christ, you have everything, as Paul phrased it in First Corinthians (1.5). He will take care of your needs; you will never want for a thing. The rest of Humankind? Forget about that reckless rabble! They are deflatable, defatigable. Christ, however, speaking in John (12.35), remains a friend, firm and fast forever. Even if you need people to do for your or jus to be friends with, do not put any great confidence in them; they try, of course, but eventually they trip up. Which is another way of saying, if they behave badly in public, do not shed a tear. One day they are slapping you on the back, and the next, they are stabbing you in the back. Rudderless, their skiffs are battered to smithereens on the gusty Nordsee. Of course, we all need friends, or there is no way we can survive. However, invest your friendship in God, as the Proverb has it (3.5). Let Him be your friend in good times and bad. He will respond in your behalf when the going gets rough; when things smooth out, He will look to your best interests. Why is this so? Because He knows, and He will teach you to know, that on this Earth you do not have “a city that lasts,” as the Letter to the Hebrews described it (13.14). Yet trudge you must. The beds are hard; the pillows, rocks; so Paul warned the Hebrews (11.13). No rest for the weary. No, no comfort until you have made room for Christ in your life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Why do you look for a comfortable rendezvous on this Earth when your heart’s True Home is not really here? “Heaven ought to be your home,” read Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians (5.2). Earth, therefore, ought to be viewed as a hostile hostelry, as the Wisdom of Solomon had it (5.9). What I mean to say is, all things pass away, and you with them. See, then, that you do not hand around too long. Why? The danger is that you will be sucked under and die. Let your rumination to rise to the Most High, as Paul wrote to the First Thessalonians (5.17). Let your meditation seek Christ. However, if your gaze rises too high for your nose and it begins to bleed, then lower your gaze and let your eyes rest on the Passion of Christ and His Holy Wounds. Flee to Jesus and let your eyes tend to His welts and wounds. When the World is falling apart, you will feel great comfort there; there you will recover the reputation your rivals stole from you; you will bear up under the blizzard of verbal abuse. When Christ walked among us, He suffered because of us. The neglect reached its climax at the time of the Great Necessity. The friends and acquaintances with whom He enjoyed euphoria left Him behind alone to suffer opprobria. Which raises some reasonable questions. Christ was willing to be assaulted and despised, and yet you have the nerve to moan and to wail just because something untoward happened to you? Christ had accusers and detractors, and yet you want to have only friends and benefactors? If it has never been crushed by adversity, how can your patience be crowned with prosperity? #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
If you are going to cry out every time you stub your toe, how will you ever be a friend of Christ’s. What is the answer? Face up to it. If you want to rule with Christ, then, as Paul put it to Timothy (2.12), you are going to have to suck it in and wade through the same muck as Christ. If you ever have the chance to visit the heart of Jesus, you will feel the love glowing in His hearth. No longer would you care about such petty things as conveniences or inconvenience. Instead, you would rejoice over the woeful opprobria that were laid on Him. Truth to tell, Jesus could and does get mad, but oftentimes He does not. He just allows Humankind to make a fool of itself. What is the moral? Whoever loves Jesus and Truth—that is to say, the truly internal soul who has disciplined one’s rumbustious affections—can turn to God whenever one wants, rise above oneself in spirit, and refresh oneself at one’s leisure. The person who trusts one’s own taste at the banquet of life, and not the finicky palates of the theological gourmets—one is the individual who is truly wise; that is how the prophet Isaiah would describe one (54.13). One’s knowledge comes more from God than humans. The Devout who knows from within how to walk and from without how to think does not require much space. Now does one expect scheduled times to do one’s devotions. The internal human can recollect oneself as quickly as need be. That is because one has not filled one’s shelves with baubles and bibelots. External labour does not maim a self-actualized, nor does an occupation that is deemed necessary for one’s community. No, one does an occupation that is deemed necessary for one’s community. No, one does not hesitate to make adjustments from time to time when survival is the issue. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Whoever is well disposed and well ordered within does not cause the wonderful or horrible things that Humankind does. As the details of the transaction tend to absorb one’s attention, one must be on guard lest they appear in prayer as impediments and distractions. If you would have disciplined yourself right from the start, as Paul wrote to the Romans (8.28), everything would have turned out all right, at least with regard to your own spiritual progress. However, apparently you did not. How do I know? So many things still displease you, drive you to distraction, sadden, even madden you. Why? You are not completely dead to yourself; that is to say, you have not really drawn the line between yourself and all the trinkets and trifles of this World. After all, nothing so soils or embroils the human heart as a reckless love of created things. What is the moral? Stand up to it! Put your foot down! Refuse all Worldly consolations! Only then can you get a clear vision of Heaven. Only then can you celebrate what little spiritual progress you have made to date. The push into the depths of the sea provides us with a mirror image of the drive into outer space, and lays the basis for the third cluster of industries likely to form a major part of the new Technosphere. The first historic wave of social change on Earth came when our ancestors ceased to rely on foraging and hunting, and began instead to domesticate animals and cultivate the soil. We are now at precisely this stage in our relationship to the seas. In a hungry World, the ocean can help break the back of the food problem. Properly farmed and ranched, it offers us a virtually endless supply of desperately needed protein. Present-day commercial fishing, which is highly industrialized—factory-ships sweeping the seas—results in ruthless overkill and threatens the total extinction of many forms of marine life. Already 93 percent of mega fish have been wiped out. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
By contrast, intelligent “aquaculture”—fish farming and herding, along with plant harvesting—could make a major dent in the global food crisis without damaging the fragile biosphere upon which all our lives depend. The rush to offshore oil drilling, meanwhile, has obscured the possibility of “growing oi” in the sea. Dr. Lawrence Raymond at the Battelle Memorial Institute has demonstrated that it is possible to produce algae with a high oil content, and efforts are under way to make the process economically effective. Th oceans also offer an overwhelming array of minerals, from copper, zinc, and tin, to sliver, gold, platinum and, even more important, phosphate ores from which to produce fertilizer for land-based agriculture. Mining companies are eyeing the hot waters of the Red Sea which hold an estimated $3.4 billion worth of zinc, silver, copper, lead, and gold. About 100 companies, including some of the World’s largest, are now preparing to mine potato-shaped manganese nodules from the sea bed. (These nodules are a renewable resource, forming at the rate of six to ten million tons per year in a single well-identified belt just south of Hawaii.) Today four truly international consortia are gearing up to start ocean mining on a multibillion scale, and this is expected to revolutionize World mining activities for selected minerals. In addition, Hoffmann-La Roche, the pharmaceutical company, has been quietly sourcing the seas for new drugs, such as anti-fungal agents and pain-killers or diagnostic assistant drugs that stop bleeding. As these technologies develop, we are likely to witness the construction of semi- or even wholly submerged “aquavillages” and floating factories. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The combination of zero real estate costs (at east at present) plus cheap energy produced on the spot from ocean sources (wind, thermal currents, or tides) can make this kind of construction competitive with that on the land. The technical journal Marine Policy concludes that “Ocean floating platform technology appears to be inexpensive enough and simple enough to be within the reach of most nations of the World, as well as numerous companies and private groups. At present, it seems likely that the first floating cities will be built by crowded industrial societies for the purpose of offshore housing…Multinational corporations may see them as mobile terminals for trade activities, or as factory ships. Food companies may build floating cities to carry out mariculture operations. Corporations seeking tax havens and adventurers seeking new lifestyles may build floating cities and declare them to be new states. Floating cities may achieve formal diplomatic recognition or become a vehicle for marginalized populations to achieve their independence.” Technological progress associated with the construction of thousands of offshore oil rigs, some anchored to the bottom but many positioned dynamically with propellers, ballast, and buoyancy controls, are developing very rapidly and laying the basis for floating city and enormous new supporting industries. Overall, the commercial reasons for moving into the sea are multiplying so swiftly that, according to economist D. M. Leipziger, many large corporations today, “like homesteaders in the Old West, are queuing up waiting for the starter’s pistol to stake out large areas on the ocean floor.” This also explains why the non-industrial countries are fighting to guarantee that the resources of the oceans become the common heritage of the human race rather than of the rich nations alone. However, even these examples are small in comparison with the techno-quake now rumbling in our molecular biology laboratories. Biological industry will form the fourth cluster of industries in tomorrow’s economy, and may have the heaviest impact of all. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
We will eventually be able to “pre-design” the human body, “grow machines,” chemically program the brain, make identical carbon copies of ourselves through cloning, and create wholly new and dangerous life-forms. Who shall control research into these field? How shall new findings be applied? Might we not unleash horrors for which humans are totally unprepared? Some people thought the forecast is farfetched. That, however, was before 1973 and the discovery of the recombinant DNA process. Today the same anguished questions are being asked by citizen protestors, congressional committees, and by scientists themselves as the biological revolution gains runway speed. Furthermore, there are a few types of residential suburbs that deserve special notation. A new of these variations follow. High-income suburbs are not new to the urban scene. As noted on romantic suburbs, the nineteenth century saw many examples of exclusive suburbs designed as refuges for the wealth. Then as now upper-status suburbs usually feature large, imposing homes built on extensive properties that are screened off from casual external observation by shrubbery and trees. Generally, such suburbs have been located at the outer suburban edges, but there are some clear exceptions, such as centrally located Grosse Points, bordered by Detroit, and Beverly Hills, surrounded by Los Angeles. Beverly Hills is now undergoing a real estate boom which, since the community has no open land, means that older mansions are being torn down so newer mansions can be constructed on the same sites. However, what gives most upper-status suburbs their character is not so much their housing style as the style of life and patterns of social interaction among the residents. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Demographically, high-income suburbs tend to have an older median age population and a low proportion of women employed in the labour force. Population turnover, except by death, is low. Particularly in the east and Midwest, the older elite suburbs were, and in many cases still are, socially closed WASP communities. Social life in earlier decades traditionally centered heavily around a few mainline churches. In more recent decades it has been more likely to focus on membership in an exclusive country club. Older elite suburbs have never been believers in multiculturalism. Wealth is required for entry, but nouveau riche outsiders are not considered suitable for membership either in the clubs or the community. Many ethnic groups are sparsely welcomed, as are some Whites from non-traditional backgrounds and certain religious groups. When the Kennedy family bought a large home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, several neighbours moved out on the ground that they felt the community was going downhill. Opposition remained even after John Kennedy became President of the United States of America. Similarly, the richest suburb in the country, Kenilworth, on Chicago’s North Shore, had, until fairly recently, a reputation for discouraging certain religions. Homes simply would not be sold to those who did no have the proper Anglo Saxon Protestant heritage. Those religions that were excluded found their own exclusive suburbs and country clubs. For example, some Jewish people responded by no being welcomed in North Shore suburbs, by developing Glencoe and Highland Park as wealthy suburbs. Yet, there is a tendency to equate the high costs of housing in an area with the affluence of the residents. This generally is the case, but it can be misleading insofar as it might suggest that counties with high housing costs, such as those in southern California, necessarily also have the highest percentages of affluent householders. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
In fact, recent census indicates that the East Coast dominates the list of counties where residents have the highest median household incomes. There are 38 counties with median household incomes above $100,000. Of the top 15 counties, six were located in Virginia or Maryland, just outside the nation’s capital, while four were located not far from New York City and three were in the San Francisco Bay Area. The top five riches counties in America are Loudon County, Virginia with a median household income of $142,299; Fall Church city, Virginia with a median household income of $127,610; Fairfax County, Virginia with a median household income of $124,831; Santa Clara County, California with a median household income of $124,055; San Mateo County, California with a median household income of $122,641. Before representative signs of wealth had been invented, it could hardly have consisted of anything but lands and livestock, the only real goods humans can possess. Now when inheritances had grown in number and size to the point of covering the entire landscape and of all bordering on one another, some could no longer be enlarged except at the expense of others; and the supernumeraries, whom weakness or indolence had prevented from acquiring an inheritance in their turn, became poor without having lost anything, because while everything changed around them, they alone had not changed at all. Thus they were forced to receive or steal their subsistence from the hands of the rich. And from that there began to arise, according to the diverse character of the rich and the poor, domination and servitude, or violence and theft. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
For their part, the wealthy had no sooner known the pleasure of domination, than before long they disdained all others, and using their old slaves to subdue new ones, they thought of nothing but the subjugation and enslavement of their neighbors, like those ravenous wolves which, on having once tasted human flesh, reject all other food and desire to devour only humans. Thus, when both the most powerful or the most miserable made their strength of their needs a sort of right to another’s goods, equivalent, according to them, to the right of property, the destruction of equality was followed by the most frightful disorder. Thus the usurpations of the rich, the acts of brigandage by the poor, the unbridled passions of all, stifling natural pity and the still weak voice of justice, made humans greedy, ambitious and wicked. There arose between the right of the strongest and the right of the first occupant a perpetual conflict that ended only in fights and murders. Emerging society gave way to the most horrible state of war; since the human race, vilified and desolated, was no longer able to retrace its steps or give up the unfortunate acquisitions it had made, and since it laboured only toward its shame by abusing the faculties that honour it, it brough itself to the brink of ruin. Horrified by the newness of the ill, both the poor human and the rich human hope o flee from wealth, hating what they once had prayed for. In is not possible that humans should not have eventually reflected upon so miserable a situation and upon the calamities that overwhelm them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
The rich in particular must have soon felt how disadvantageous to them it was to have a perpetual war in which they alone paid all the costs, and in which the risk of losing one’s life was common to all and the risk of losing one’s goods was personal. Moreover, regardless of the light in which they tried to place their usurpations, they knew fully well that they were established on nothing but a precarious and abusive right, and that having been acquired merely by force, force might take them away from them without their having any reason to complain. Even those enriched exclusively by industry could hardly base their property on better claims. They could very well say: “I am the one who built that wall; I have earned this land with my labour.” In response to them it could be said: “Who gave you the boundary lines? By what right do you claim to exact payment at our expense for labour we did not impose upon you? Are you unaware that multitude of your brothers perish or suffer from need of what you have in excess, and that you needed explicit and unanimous consent from the human race for you to help yourself to anything from the common subsistence that went beyond your own?” Bereft of valid reasons to justify oneself and sufficient forces to defend oneself; easily crushing a private individua, but oneself crushed by troops of bandits; alone against all and unable on account of mutual jealousies to unite with his equals against enemies united by the common hope of plunder, the rich, pressed by necessity, finally conceived the most thought-out project that ever entered the human mind. It was to use in his favour the very strength of those who attacked one, to turn one’s adversaries into one’s defenders, to instill in them other maxims, and to give them other institutions which were as favourable to one as natural right was unfavourable to one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
With this end in mind, after having shown one’s neighbours the horror of a situation which armed them all against each other and made their possessions as burdensome as their needs, and in which no one could find safety in either poverty or wealth, one easily invented specious reasons to lead them to one’s goal. “Let us unite,” one says to them, “in order to protect the weak from oppression, restrain the ambitions, and assure everyone of possessing what belongs to one. Let us institute rules of justice and peace to which all will be obliged to conform, which will make special exceptions for no one, and which will in some way compensate for the caprices of fortune by subjecting the strong and the weak to mutual obligations. In short, instead of turning our forces against ourselves, let us gather them into one supreme power that governs us according to wise laws, that protects and defends all the members of the association, repulses common enemies, and maintains us in an eternal concord.” Considerably less than the equivalent of this discourse was needed to convince crude, easily seduced humans who also had too many disputes to settle among themselves to be able to get along without arbiters, and too much greed and ambition to be able to get along without masters for long. They all ran to chain themselves, in the belief that they secured their liberty, for although they had enough sense to realize the advantages of a political establishment, they did not have enough experience to foresee its dangers. Those most capable of anticipating the abuses were precisely those who counted on profiting from them; and even the wise saw the need to be resolved to sacrifice one part of their liberty to preserve the other, just as a wounded human has one’s arm amputated to save the rest of one’s body. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Such was, or should have been, the origin of society and laws, which gave new fetters to the weak and new forces to the rich, irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, established forever the law of property and of inequality, changed adroit usurpation into an irrevocable right, and for the profit of a few ambitious humans henceforth subjected the entire human race to labour, servitude and misery. It is readily apparent how the establishment of a single society rendered indispensable that of all the others, and how, to stand head-to-head against the united forces, it was necessary to unite in turn. Societies, multiplying or spreading rapidly, soon covered the entire surface of the Earth; and it was no longer possible to find a single corner in the Universe where someone could free oneself from the yoke and withdraw one’s head from the often ill-guided sword which everyone saw perpetually hanging over one’s own head. With civil right thus having become the common rule of citizens, the law of nature no longer was operative except between the various societies, when, under the name of the law of nations, it was tempered by some tacit conventions in order to make intercourse possible and to serve as a substitute for natural compassion which, losing between one society and another nearly all the force it had between one human and another, no longer resides anywhere but in a few great cosmopolitan souls, who overcome the example of the sovereign being who has created them, embrace the entire human race in their benevolence. Gandhi denounced surgical techniques as unnatural and urged his followers to have nothing to do with them. Yet he lived to modify his view, for when he was stricken by appendicitis, he accepted the help of those very techniques. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The operation was successful. The medieval Church placed a ban upon those who performed any operation upon the human body that was accompanied by the shedding of blood. The modern Church has removed the ban and, in its hospitals, permits the extensive practice of surgery. Thus the erroneous theory of Gandhi and the erroneous superstition of the Church were corrected by time which brought the facts of experience into play. I have always associated hospitals with gloom, with drabness, with ugliness, and with despondency. The association was once falsified in California and again in Denmark. However, not till I was taken through the hospital founded by Padre Pio at San Giovanni Rotondo did I associate such intensively beneficial values as cheerfulness, beauty, hopefulness, and the last word in modernity with such an institution. Iconoclastic science came into the World and in a few short centuries turned most of us into sceptic. It may therefore surprise the scientists to be told that within two or three decades their own further experiments and their own new instruments will enable them to penetrate into, and prove the existence of, a superphysical World. However, the best worth of these eventual discoveries will be in their beneficial demonstration the reality of a moral law pervading human’s life—the law that we shall reap after death what we have sown before it, and the law that our own diseased thoughts have created many of our own bodily diseases. There are diseases of the mind quite apart from those of the body, yet too often neither the sufferer nor those in one’s surroundings will recognize the morbid symptoms. One considered oneself, and they consider one, normal. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The moderns refuse to split up Mind into Consciousness and its Consciousness and Contents and they will not believe that Consciousness per se has its pure, unalloyed existence. Hence the utter confusion of modern psychology. Ye it is the light of this Consciousness which enables their own busy intellects to function and their bodies to believe themselves to be conscious entities. Everything in Nature works by Its reflected light. The inner nature that is rent by unresolved conflicts and unhappy divisions needs healing just as much as the outer body that is afflicted by pain-bringing disease. If they are to fulfil their own best possibilities, psychoanalysis and psychiatry have to deepen themselves. If the existence of the higher Self is denied or ignored, the emotional vacillations and mental perturbations of the lower self must be studied and understood. The psychoanalysts, who are so body pointing out the complexes of other people, have themselves one supreme complex that dominates and obsesses. It is psychoanalysis itself! The mistake of the analysts is to treat lightly what ought to be taken seriously, to regard as parental fixation or repression of pleasures of the flesh what is really deep spiritual malady of our times—emptiness of soul. “A Spirit and a Vision,” said Blake, “are not, as the modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour, or a nothing. They are organized and minutely articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing nature can produce.” He is speaking only of how to draw pictures of apparitions which may well have been illusory, but his words suggest a truth on the metaphysical level also. God is basic Fact or Actuality, the source of all other facthood. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
At all costs therefore God must not be thought of as a featureless generality. If He exists at all, He is the most concrete thing there is, the most individual, “organized and minutely articulated.” God is unspeakable not by being indefinite but by being too definite for the unavoidable vagueness of language. The words incorporeal and impersonal are misleading, because they suggest that God lacks some reality which we possess. It would be safer to call His trans–corporeal, trans–personal. Body and personality as we know them are the real negatives—they are what is left of positive being when it is sufficiently diluted to appear in temporal of finite forms. Even our intimate desires should be regarded as the transposition into a minor key of that creative joy which in Him is unceasing and irresistible. Grammatically the things we say are of Him are “”metaphorical”: but in a deeper sense it is our physical and psychic energies that are mere “metaphours” of the real Life which is God. Divine Sonship is, so to speak, the solid of which biological sonship is merely a diagrammatic representation on the flat. And here the subject of imagery, which crossed our path can be seen in a new light. For it is just the recognition of God’s positive and concrete reality which the religious imagery preserves. The crudest Old Testament picture of Jahweh thundering and lightening out of dense smoke, making mountains ship like rams, threatening, promising, pleading, even changing His mind, transmits that sense of living Deity which evaporates in abstract thought. Even sub-Christian images gets in something which mere “religion” in our own days has left out. We rightly reject it, for by itself it would encourage the most blackguardly of superstitions, the adoration of mere power. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Perhaps we may rightly reject much of the Old Testament imagery. However, we must be clear why we are doing so: not because the images are too strong but because they are too weak. The ultimate spiritual reality is not vaguer, more inert, ore transparent than the images, but more positive, more dynamic, more opaque. Confusion between spirit and soul (or “ghost”) has here done much harm. Ghost must be pictured, if we are to picture them at all, as shadowy and tenuous, for ghosts are half-men, one element abstracted from a creature that ought to have flesh. However, Spirit, if pictured at all, must be pictured in the very opposite way. Neither God nor even the gods are “shadowy” in traditional imagination: even the human dead, when glorified in Christ, cease to be “ghosts” and become “saints.” The differences of atmosphere which even now surrounds the words “I saw a ghost” and the words “I saw a saint”—all the pallor and insubstantiality of the one, all the gold and blue of the other—contains more wisdom than whole libraries of “religion.” If we must have a mental picture to symbolize Spirit, we should represent it as something heavier than matter. There will be a precise moment when one knows with a certitude totally and unequivocally unwavering, but until then it will more likely be unplanned, uncertain explorations. This may surprise some persons but it is still true hat the wind bloweth where it listeth. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Or the Spirit enlightens who it chooseth. Of course the human element of seeking and trying must be there, but in the end it is the divine element which wins out. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Out of visible light which rapidly increases in intensity and drew nearer, the face and form of Jesus appeared in this twentieth century of ours to two mystics, Sundar Singh in India and Martinus in Denmark. They saw him plainly, heard him speak clearly. In both cases they were already familiar with his name and story. Out of a not very dissimilar light, Jesus appeared to Saul on the Damascus Road. He too was familiar with them. A part of the source of these visions is to be traced back to the suggestive power of the thought-form already implanted in the mind; but the other part, the sudden and dramatic and total change of heart and shift of outlook, has still to be accounted for. What is the secret? It is contact with the Overself, Grace. The divine moment happens. It is the gift of grace. Its arrival is unbidden. Yet the previous longing and working for it have not been futile. The significant flash of night may come at any moment, the sacred presence of the Overself may be felt when it is not being sought, and the noble peace of reality may even visit one who has never practised any technique at all. For as the New Testament has warned one, “The wind bloweth where is listeth,” and as the Katha Upanishad has informed him, “Whomsoever the Divine chooses, by one alone is It reached.” The Glimpse is sometimes given to one and sometimes created by one. Sometimes the connection between one’s effort and its appearance may not be visible. Only by the Divine lovingly possessing three can this transcendental knowledge be got. The glimpses are not directly caused by one’s own endeavours. They are experiences of the working of Grace, gifts from the Overelf, echoes from former lives on Earth, or belated responses to one’s knocking on the door. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
It is essentially a grace-given experience. One day there will be a response to the search of one’s mind for its creative inspirational source. One’s “I,” hemmed in by its ignorance and limitations, is a small affair compared with the “I” which is drawing one onward and upward through the quest and which one must one day become. One’s personal self, controlled and purified, kept in its place, humbly prostrating itself before the Overself, can gratefully receive even now glimpses of that day, momentary revelations that bless the mind and put intense peace in the heart. Whoever does not feel that these affirmations apply to one but who is yet able to believe in their truth, will be befriended by grace at the time of death. The good karma or God allows one this glimpse of a loftier World in which one could live and thus put one’s personal turmoil to flight. If with the purpose of seeking to disidentify oneself with the ego a human practices the necessary self-denial, makes the requisite sacrifices, and trains one’s thoughts and feelings, after a certain time and at a certain point of one’s path the forces of Heaven will come to one to complete the work which one has started. One should be profoundly grateful for even a single glimpse. It is a grant of grace. Many beings on this Earth which have lived in the society of humans can sense their intent enough to fear death when one is taken to the slaughterhouse. It is are nature to fear a darkness in what we do not understand, but true evil may lie more in ignorance that what we do not understand. Is the peaceable human to reduce or stop violent aggression against one fellow beings but to continue it against other fellow creatures? We are not entitled to destroy life without an adequately necessary and morally justifiable purpose. Therefore it is well to enquire from the wise and good into the character of such purposes, be guided by their counsel rather than by environmental customs. For the latter has led us, through its utter ignorance and total unawareness of the higher laws, into a situation where blow after blow falls heavily upon the human race. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Why should we be so astonished that peace is so hard to obtain, that all too often flaming violence of war and death and mutilation is carried across the land despite our prayers to God and our plans to the contrary? So long as millions of innocent people are bred only to be sent to the slaughterhouses, so long will Life pay us in like coin. The lower characteristics are taken into the body, the blood, the nerves, and the brain. They become part of us. The mind’s response to higher ideals is dulled. The passions which make for strife and thence for war meet with less opposition from conscience and reason. The fear, suspicion, fright, and desire for self-protection which contribute toward war, being impregnated into the blood of our body during the moments we watch doom and gloom and violence and hopelessness on the TV screen news media. It is not helping anyone. No one is learning how to stay alive nor anything educational. They are feeding you fear, and little by little this fear is brought into us through the glands, the nervous system, and the brain, as our own blood feeds them in turn. It would be desirable, although admittedly difficult, gradually to adopt a diet without news as a help to secure both the individual’s development and the World’s peace. Everything is polarized, whether in the visible Universe, or in the invisible forces of life itself. This is what the Hindus called the pairs of opposites and the Chinese call the Yin and Yang. All things are complementary and compensatory, yet at the same time antagonistic. If Yang gives us energy, Yin gives us calm. Both are necessary. Likewise, we should seek balance in diet as study. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Lord, please make this World to last as long as possible. Who took the dream of the land, who staked down “private property” through the soul of the deer? Who diverted streams, cleared forests, burned fields? I seek to know my own name. I seek to know why after all that I have done to hurt her, does the Mother Earth continue to embrace me. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for His nae alone is exalted. His glory is above the Earth and Heaven. He hath given glory unto His people, praise to all His faithful ones, to all the children of America, a people near unto Him. Hallelujah. When the Ark rested, Moses said: Mayest Thou, O Lord, dwell among the myriads of the families of America. Arise, O Lord, unto Thy sanctuary, Thou and they Ark of Thy strength. Let Thy priests be clothed with salvation, and Thy faithful ones exult. For the sake of David, Thy servant, reject not Thine anointed. I have given you good teachings; forsake not My Scripture. It is a Tree of Life to them that hold fast to it, and everyone that upholds it is happy. Its ways were ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace. Turn us unto Thee, O Lord, and we shall return; renew our days as of old. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His Kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed forever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Cresleigh Homes
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The open floor plan includes three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, Home Hub, Loft and more! Walk into the great room and feel the height of the ceilings and all the light brought in from the high windows. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-2/
Know that Through that Very Same Peephole the Eyes of the World are Ogling You!
Our survival as a species depends more upon our trust of one another than upon the machines that we increasingly rely. Perhaps we can never fully escape the animals we once were. But with our mind and our hearts, we can always fight to remain human. We did not actually evolve from animals, but our behavior, through evolution has become less savage or animalistic. When we say or hear the “Kingdom of God,” that literally mean the rulership of God; which is the extension of God in the Earth. Satan is not God’s adversary, but yours! The battle lines are drawn! Become built for the battle. Onward, Christian Soldier! Marching as to war. Paul said, “For if the trumpet give an uncertain sounds, who shall prepare oneself to the battle,” reports 1 Corinthians 14.8. In the book of Revelation, we are told of a war in Heaven. “And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his Angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his Angels fought back,” report Revelation 12.7. What kind of battle? What kind of war? He war is for the souls of men. The battle lines have been drawn since Adam: evil versus righteousness. In this the final dispensation and in preparation for the Millennium, the forces of evil have intensified and united under the powerful influences of Satan. On the opposite side of the line, the Kingdom of God is clearly sounding the trumpet of righteousness, as perhaps never before. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint is on the offensive in the declaration of good to be good and evil to be evil. Isaiah prophesied of our time on this very subject when he said, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” reports Isaiah 5.20. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Satan offers a stranger mixture of just enough good to disguise the evil along his downward path to destruction, as described by Nephi, an ancient prophet, when he said: “For behold, a that day shall he rage in the hears of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good. And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell,” reports 2 Nephi 28.20-21. Satan does rage in the hearts of some. Many he will lull away into carnal security; others he flattereth, or he says there is no hell. He has lured and enlisted many followers with enticements of fame, riches, and power. He forges a Rembrandt-quality representation by calling evil good and good evil. He has confused many people, even nations and leaders, to the point of an immoral approach to moral issues. For example, one of the voices that are ungodly and powerful among Satan’s proclamations is the idea that the individual agency is justification for the destruction of a human life through murder; also that chastity and fidelity are old-fashioned and narrow-minded—to freely engage in pleasures of the flesh actively with free expression is acceptable. At this very moment, many role models are living immoral lives around the World through the powerful influence of the media. They are idolized and accepted by millions Worldwide. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The World in general seems to have lapsed into a coma of unrighteousness, leaving God-given and time-honored moral values and principles behind. However, we must hold fast to forceful proclamations from God regarding the sanctity of life, His eternal and never-ending instruction to be chaste and pure. His loving counsel that families are ordained of God with a father, mother, and children to live together forever was not intended to be the exception, but the rule. A return to Christ by an individual will bring peace of mind in place of turmoil, tranquility to replace strife, courage and optimism in place of fear. Who makes progress in the virtues? The one who takes the Godly way out; that is to say, isolates the things that are wrong with oneself and methodically destroys them one by one. People often say, “It is not fair that I have to suffer and work so hard to be good! I did not ask to be born!” Yes you did in premortality. Premortality refers to our life before we were born on this Earth. In our pre-Earth life, we lived in the presence of our Heavenly Father as His spirit children. We did not have a physical body. In this premortal existence, we attended a council with Heavenly Father’s other spirit children. At that council, Heavenly Father presented His great plan of happiness. “Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the World was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones; and God saw these souls that they were good, and He stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for He stood among those that were spirits, and He saw that hey were good; and He said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou was born. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
“And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an Earth whereon these may dwell; and we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them; and they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; and they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom with those who keep their first estate; and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever. And the Lord said: Whom shall I send? And one answered like uno the Son of Man: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first. And the second was angry, and kept not his first estate; and at that day, many followed after him,” reports Abraham 3.22-27. In harmony with the plan of happiness, the premortal Jesus Christ, the Firstborn Son of the Father in the spirit, covenanted to be the Saviour. “But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father Thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever,” reports Moses 4.2. Those who followed Heavenly Father Jesus Christ were permitted to come to the Earth to experience mortality and progress toward eternal life. Lucifer, another spirit son of God, rebelled against the plan and “sought to destroy the agency of man,” reports Moses 4.3. He became Satan, and he and his followers were cast out of Heaven and denied the privileges of receiving a physical body and experiencing mortality. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Throughout our premortal life, we developed our identity and increased our spiritual capabilities. Blessed with the gift of agency, we made important decisions, such as the decision to follow Heavenly Father’s plan. These decisions affected our life then and now. We grew in intelligence and learned to love the truth, and we prepared to come to the Earth, where we could continue to progress. When one conquers the Enemy and mortifies one’s spirit, one makes progress down the spiritual path and deposits more grace in one’s Heavenly Account. Each of us has to general one’s own spiritual battles, right down to dealing death to one’s own vices. Who will win the spiritual race? The wild, unbridled human, with a bundle of prickly passions under one’s saddle, but with a good nature overall? Or the well-bridled fellow who strives for virtue but at one’s own well-modulated gait? If you wan to accelerate your spiritual progress, two things will help. First, spot what human nature draws you to and haul yourself with all deliberate speed in the opposite direction. Second, inventory your virtues and concentrate your efforts in filling in the gaps. One clue. If self-analysis has never been one of your strong suits, do not despair. Note down the nil admirari’s in others and avoid the same sort of things. Let that be your own personal agenda for the future. Make spiritual hay wherever you go. If and when you see or hear examples of good behaviour, make haste to imitate them. On the other hand, if you run into something immovable, pick up your feet and fly. If you make a wrong turn, do make up the ground you lost with all deliberate haste. As you see the faults of the World, know that through that very same peephole the eyes of the World are ogling you. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
What a pleasure it is to happen upon a community of fervent and devout brothers, sand the Psalmist (133.1), well-seasoned fellows who have grown easy over the years with the disciplined life! What a troubling and demoralizing experience it is to bump into brothers in another religious house who are walking about aimlessly, not the daily experiences that are so much part of their vocation! How devastating it is to neglect the monastic vocation for an occupation that has no true home in the monastery! Recall your shaggy life as self-actualized and compare it to the image of the Crucified. You would do well to be ashamed. You have been in the monastery long enough to know the life of Jesus Christ inside out, and yet you have striven so little to conform your life to His. Why is that? How can that be? Whoever pours over the Most Holy Life and Passion of the Lord with intensity and devotion will find in it everything one needs to get ahead. At last one can discontinue one’s perennial search; one has found the person of Jesus Christ, the subject of all holy quests. If only the Crucified Jesus would come into our hearts! He would teach us all we need to know. The fervent Religious does tolerably well in the monastery, and that makes one’s superior’s life an easier one. The negligent and tepid Religion, though, undergoes one tribulation after another and ends up claustrophobic to boot! Consolation is the reason. One cannot find it inside the walls, and one’s prohibited from seeking it outside the walls. The Religious who has left discipline behind leave oneself wide open to gravest ruin. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The Religious who plays fast and loose with the monastic life will always find oneself in a bind. That is because laxness and looseness, lateness and loutishness, no matter how attractive they may seem or feel at the time, are never benign. How come there are so many self-actualized who have lived fairly satisfied lives under the discipline of the cloister? They rarely leave the monastery grounds, they live without much external event to speak of, eat like paupers, dress uncomfortably, labour much, speak little, watch long hours, arise early, prolong their prayer time, read frequently, and keep a guard on themselves with every discipline. Carthusians, Cistercians, and a rainbow of other religious orders—they rise every night to psalm the Lord. So it is matins and lauds, and the whole of monasticism has already begun to sing “Joy to the Lord!” Why, then, are you always the last one to straggle into the chapel and take your place in choir? Sham bells in excelsis! Just one thing I wish for monasticism. To praise the Lord without interruption and devote ourselves to spiritual studies without fainting or complaining. We would be a happier lot, you and I, doing any one of these than having to stop every now and then to attend to our corporal needs. Would that there no such things as baths or using the toilet! Just supposes there were only sweetmeats of the spirit, a platter of them on the sideboard at the Heavenly Banquet. The taste? Out of this World! Though offered to us more frequently than we think, these nibblings often go unnibbled. Why is that? #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
When you stop seeking consolation from created things below, you start receiving Godly wisdom from above. However, how will you know the transformation is taking place? You will no longer rejoice in greatness or weep about insignificance. Instead, you will place yourself wholly and confidently in God. God is all in all, as Paul wrote to the Colossians (3.11). He loses nothing, He lets nothing perish. For Him every created things lives and obeys His every wink without His ever having to miss a wink. Some thumbnails and nutshells. Everything comes to an end, and time lost is gone forever. Without Solicitude and Diligence you will never acquire Virtue. Grow tepid, and you will begin to behave badly. Give yourself to fervor, and you will feel the great weight lift, all due to the grace of God and the love of virtue. The fervent and diligent self-actualized is ready for any and everything, whatever, to rip. The rigors of the soul vastly outsweat the labors of the body. Whoever stub one’s toe on small vices will take a header on large defects. Only if you spent the day making progress, will you enjoy the evening. Vigilate. Actuate. Remonstrate. Whatever bothers you about others, do not neglect in yourself. You get out of it only what you put into it. Amen to that! One explanation for our persistent overconfidence is our tendency to search for and to recall instances that confirm our ideas. We are eager to verify our beliefs, less eager to seek evidence that might refute them. All superstition is much the same whether it be that of astrology, dreams, omens, retributive judgment, or the like, in all of which the deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect and pass over their failure, though it be much more common. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
When considering the biasing power of perception, keep in mind the human mind resembles those uneven mirrors which impart their own properties of different objects. The human understanding, when any proposition has once been laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords), forces everything else to add fresh support and conformation. One of the most significant facts about our minds is the extent to which our preconceived notions bias how we view, interpret, and remember information. To believe is often to see and remember what we believe. The implications of this principle extend to our understanding of Scripture. The Bible always comes interpreted. Oppressors and the oppressed, people in power, and people out of power, Baptists of more sorts than one—all these read the book differently. Fanatic followers of naturopathy as well as of Christian Science reject the service of surgery. Yet do the humans among them ever stop to think that the acts of shaving, which they preform daily, is itself the performance of a minor surgical operation? For the hair is as much a tangible part of their anatomy as the bony skeleton. This also applies to finger nails, toe nails, calluses, and corns. Such opposition to surgery on the part of those who are unorthodox in their views of healing is based partly on blind fanaticism and partly on blind ignorance. The excessive attachment to their own particular system prevents them from seeing its true place and surgery’s true relation to it. If there is time, natural methods should be tried first, surgical methods only last. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
If natural methods are too late or tried without result, then it is quite proper to resort to surgery if any hope lies there. They should be given their chance in the earlier stages of a disease but if they are not, if the disease has advanced to a serious or chronic degree, surgery may fitly be considered, either alone or in conjunction with them. Even in divine healing, the spiritual force may still use a surgeon through which to express itself. It does not necessarily have to use only a saint to do so. Spiritual healing completes and does not displace the conventional allopathic or the unorthodox physical healing systems. It does not supplant but supplements them. Opposition to the new and powerful drugs is not because of their ineffectiveness. That they produce swift and curative results is admitted. The opposition is instigated by the harmful effects upon other organs or parts of the body subsequent to the cure, and sometimes accompanying it. To reject the valuable contribution of surgical art is to neglect human knowledge of anatomy and human capacity to co-operate with Nature. Thousands of years ago, a gifted Hindu writer and medico even acclaimed it in these words: “Surgery is the first and highest division of the healing art, least liable to fallacy.” Exaggerated, perhaps, but it is certain that the ancient Hindus knew and practiced a well-developed form of this art—even including plastic surgery—but it mysteriously disappeared in the course of time. The successive foreign invasion and their massacres of intellectuals may have something to do with it. Our leap beyond the classic technologies of the Second Wave are very striking in modern times. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The space industry forms a second cluster in the emerging techno-sphere. Despite delays, five space shuttles may soon be moving cargo and people back and forth between the Earth and outer space on a weekly schedule. The impact of this is as yet underestimated by the public, but many companies in the United States of America and Europe regard the “high frontier” as the source of the next revolution in high technology and are acting accordingly. Grumman and Boeing are working on satellites and space platforms for energy generation. According to Business Week, “Another group of industries only now is beginning to understand what the orbiter may mean to them—manufacturers and processors whose products range from semi-conductors to medicines. Many high technology materials require delicate, controlled handling, and the force of gravity can be a nuisance. In space, there is no gravity to worry about, no need for containers, and no problems with handling poisons or highly reactive substances. And there is a limitless supply of vacuum, as well as super-high and super-low temperatures.” As a result, “space manufacturing” has become a hot topic among scientist, engineers, and high-technology executives. McDonell Douglas offers to pharmaceutical companies a space shuttle device that will space. Space-produced single-crystal semiconductors make Earth-made models primitive. Urokinase, a blood clot dissolver needed for patients suffering from certain forms of blood disease, now cost $1,205.00 for 1 milligram. According to Jesco von Puttkamer, chief of space industrialization studies of NASA, it could be manufactured in space for less than one fifth that amount. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
More important are the totally new products that simply cannot be made on Earth at virtually any price. TRW, an aerospace and electronics company, has identified four hundred different alloys that we cannot manufacture on Earth because of the pull of gravity. General Electric, meanwhile, has begun the design of a space furnace. Daimler-Benz and M.A.N. in West Germany are interested in the space manufacture of ball bearings, and the European Space Agency and individual companies like British Aircraft Corporation are also designing equipment and products aimed at making space useful commercially. Business Week tells its readers that “such prospects are not science fiction and a growing number of companies are deadly serious in pursuing them.” Equally serious, and even more zealous, are the supporters of Dr. Gerard O’Neill’s plan for creation of space cities. Dr. O’Neill, a Princeton physicist, has been indefatigably educating the public about the possibilities of building very large scale communities in space-platforms or islands with populations in the thousands—and has won enthusiastic support from NASA, and former President Trump (whose knows California’s economy is heavily space dependent), and more surprisingly, from a band of former hippies lead by Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog. Dr. O’Neill’s idea is to build a city in space, bit by bit, out of materials mined on the Moon or elsewhere. A colleague, Dr. Brain O’Leary, has been studying the possibilities of mining the Apollo and Amor asteroids. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Regular conferences a Princeton bring together experts from NASA, General Electric, U.S. energy agencies, and other interested parties to swap technical papers on the chemical processing of lunar and other extraterrestrial minerals and on the design and construction of space habitats and closed ecological systems. The combination of advanced electronics and a space program that moves beyond terrestrial production possibilities carries the techno-sphere to a new stage, no longer limited by Second Wave considerations. Here on Earth, we take it for granted that city neighborhoods will change in socioeconomic statues over time. One-time prosperous neighborhoods are expected to decline and possibly be rebuilt or gentrified. For example, a neighborhood may have been built as upper-middle class at the turn of the century, drifted down to middle class by the 1930s, becomes rooming-house area by the 1950s, and been gentrified in the 1980s. This model of local community status change is basically a life-cycle model and is consistent with the earlier Burgess concentric zonal theory, which posited neighborhood change due to competition for land and the outgoing movement of affluent populations. However, when our focus shifts to suburbs, the assumption of status change is supplanted by the assumption of status consistency. Suburbs are seen as changing less than cities. There is a greater tendency to view suburban areas as locked in time. It is as if suburbs are not subject to the same laws of aging and change. For example, Chevy Chase, outside of Washington, and Berwyn, west of Chicago, remain, respectively, upper-middle-class and ethnic-working-class just as they were ninety-five years ago. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The community of Chevy Chase includes many “Sears Catalog Homes,” a popular housing option in the early twentieth century that allowed individuals to order by mail the materials and instructions for a home and build them themselves. This status-persistence suggests that this assumption of less economic and social change over time in suburbs has a base in reality. Research done by Reynolds Farley and replicated by Avery Guest suggests that there is suburban persistence, with suburbs holding their position over time. Farley examined 137 suburbs of twenty-four cities and found that at least for the older established suburbs there was considerable consistency. In fact, one could accurately predict the educational level of a suburb by looking at the school attendance records of the high-school-age population forty year earlier. Guest further found that in the postwar period, growth of high-status populations enhanced rather than changed the status of suburb through advantages such as superior schools and facilities, and thus they protected their own investment. This political-power model is usually associated with scholars taking a conflict perspective, while the status-persistence model is usually associated with those holding an ecological model. However, in this instance both approaches seem to reinforce rather than contradict each other. Older and more affluent suburbs have had the greatest success in maintaining their favored position. There also appears to be regional variation. Specifically, in the north and Midwest, involuntary annexation of suburbs had ceased by the beginning of the twentieth century, while in some of the south, and especially in Texas, annexation is still possible. Thus, one would expect to find the greatest number of affluent suburbs practicing exclusionary zoning in the north and Midwest. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Exclusionary zoning is not a recent development. Zoning has been used by suburbs since the 1920s as a means of keeping out undesirable activities, housing, and people. An excellent example of a contemporary system is affluent Hoffman Estates, northwest of Chicago. To upgrade its image, it hired an additional fifteen building inspectors to clamp down on owners of low rent apartments. A strict adherence to the letter of the housing code makes it difficult to make a profit renting to lower-income populations. This was the intent. However, even more important than keeping undesirables out is attracting new high-status residents. Here a self-fulfilling prophesy seems to occur for affluent suburbs. A suburb having an established reputation as a high-status area employs its social prestige to attract new high-income newcomers toward what are perceived and being the more prestigious areas. Reputation creates a reality, which in turn reinforces reputation. In this fashion a suburb such as Lake Forest on Chicago’s North Shore has maintained its upper-states position for well over a century. When Burges posited his concentric zonal pattern of metropolitan growth, he suggested that socioeconomic status was directly related to distance from the center of the city. Centrally located space goes to those functions that can use space intensively and are willing to pay the costs. Costs include not only purchase price, but also taxes and factors such as congestion, pollution, noise, and so forth. As a consequence, central land was most expensive and peripheral space less so. This means that those affluent families living further out can afford more space. Thus, there is a tendency for an inverse relationship between the value of land and the status of those who occupy it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
In the inner ring adjacent to the city, the oldest suburbs often had the bulk of their housing completed prior to World War II. Many of these inner-ring suburbs are composed of substantial homes built originally for upper- and upper-middle-class occupancy. Some of these older suburbs still maintain their elite status. Outer-ringer suburbs have almost all been built in the postwar era of mass suburbanization, and they differ substantially in socioeconomic status. They tend to vary based on type of housing, characteristics of the residents, and direction from the city. Within the metropolitan area different ethnic, religious, and racial groups often suburbanized in specific directions. In Atlanta, for instance, African Americans went south and European Americans went north. Ethnic groups also followed specific patterns. In Chicago over the past century, Polish-heritage populations have moved near-north side to the northwest side and into northwest suburbs such as Niles. The Jewish housing pattern was roughly similar, with upper-middle-class Jewish people moving into the northwest suburbs such as Skokie and wealthy Jewish people moving north to Glencoe and Highland Park. Italian-heritage populations, on the other hand, moved progressively west, and in time into western suburbs such as Melrose Park. WASPs, by contrast, moved up the North Shore to Evanston, Wilmette, and Winnetka. Thus, the pattern of ethnic inner-city neighborhoods was in modified form carried to the suburbs. People whose experiences are dominated by phantasy relations with Frustrating Exciting and/or Rejecting Object will come to feel more and more that it is no use wanting good things. They will eventually cease to each out for what they cannot get. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Eventually the phantasy of something good simply raises anxiety or anger rather than a wish to get it: an Anti-Libidinal Ego has developed which protects the individual from the pain of frustration, though it in turn may be painfully experienced. The Anti-Libidinal Ego is a set of reactions to the Libidinal Ego which ensure that the individual’s needs remain hidden; it remains unconscious of them. Thus the Anti-Libidinal Ego keeps the libidinal part of the personality out of touch with the World of potentially satisfying as well as frustrating people and things—there is a basic fault between Libidinal and Anti-Libidinal Ego. A third personality-structure called the Central Ego, rather like Dr. Freud’s Ego, comprises the set of calculating reactions through which currently incoming information is registered and evaluated and retained for future planning—a useful structure for survival purposes. There may not be much connection between this structure and the other two—another basic fault. As we coon ourselves in the comforts technology affords, are we shielding ourselves from the very things that make us human? People need to look harder into themselves and persevere longer at the practices. They also need to get God’s grace. Furthermore, they need to get Jesus’s grace. Additionally, their destiny may have been unfavorable in this matter or, if favorable, was possible due to maturate at a later time. All these explanations seem to have some truth in them, but which the aspirant knows with any certainty which one of them—or which two in combination—apply to one’s own particular case? #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
It seems to me that as with other major events in human life obeying some law of nature, some process operated by infinite intelligence, there must be an invisible pattern behind these mystical happenings too. And when the truths of the higher philosophy were unveiled to me, I found that this was indeed so. These revealings of inner life, which put its truths before the mind so vividly, seem to come by chance to some, by working for them for others. Faith in a divinely-ordered Universe tells us, and philosophy confirms, that we may be sure that they follow certain laws even when we know nothing about those laws. The glimpse is as much subject to grace as the Enlightenment which endures forever. It happens outside the human’s own will, although inside one’s consciousness. Such a glimpse represents a bestowal of Grace. This is why it comes unsought and unworked for, and why some who inwardly work hard fail to experience the Glimpse. One can no more make the Glimpse come by personal endeavours than one can make oneself fall in love. The gifted—rather than the achieved—nature of the glimpse is much more frequent and may be seen from is unexpected manifestation at unforeseen times. The glimpse does not necessarily have to come to you during meditation, even though the work in meditation helps to bring about its occurrence. It may come at any time. Many self-actualized are made but some are also born. Destiny transcends all training and often it needs but a mere touch of illuminate’s finger to release the pent-up stores of secret power within a soul. These glimpses come on rare occasions, for the mind’s tumult is hard to still—only the Overself’s Grace can do so. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The glimpse is a blessing which is given to those who have earned it, or those who have sought it in the right spirit. These illuminative glimpses do no come at will or at once. They do not come once for all or when it pleases us. They come and go like the wind and when it pleases them. For they come by Grace. The belief that mystical illumination is solely luck or accident or destiny must be refuted. That a human must work one’s way into this experience is one view. That a higher power must induce it in one is another. Such a mystical experience is not an after-effect of illness but the latter is used by the Overself to open the way for its reception in the conscious mentality. It is an uncommon experience, a visitation of the Overself, and a manifestation of its grace. Why it occurs could only be explained in terms of theory of reincarnation. One must find out by personal experience what one’s stomach can easily digest, and strictly take nothing else. This is one rule. One must each of such foods no more than one’s body really needs, which is always less than what custom and society have suggested one needs. Whatever we eat beyond that which the body really needs, gives no strength and yields no benefit. Instead, it actually harms us. Instead of strengthening, it weakens us. Instead of benefiting, it poisons us. How can the human race avoid the fate of being slaughtered in war when it itself slaughters so many innocent creatures in peace? The exploitation of other living beings to gain unnecessary resources, must be protested against. Forcing their enslavement to human service and slowly distorting their bodies into having unnatural exaggerated functions is a crime against them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Here we are, God—a planet at prayer. Attune our spirits that we may hear your harmonies and bow before your creative power that we may face our violent discords and join with your Energy to make heard in every heart your hymn of peace. Here we are, God—a militarized planet. Transforms our fears that we may transform our war fields into cow pasters and wheatfields, arms into beautiful Winchester Repeating Arms with inlaying gold, silver, or platinum, gold or silverplating, engravings, carving or fancy checking by Tiffany & Co., done with the most artistic manner by the company’s own employees and used as display models. May our missiles be turned into brilliant light shows of Independence Day. May our Flag be a symbol of honor and highly respected. Here we are, God—a polluted planet. Please purify our vision that we may perceive ways to purify our beloved lands, cleanse our precious waters, de-smog our life-giving air, remove contaminants from our soil, abolish traffic jams, and produce cars that run on an abundant form of gasoline that produces no emissions and will never be depleted. Here we are, God—an exploited planet. Please heal our heart, that we may respect our sources, hold priceless our people, and provide for our starving child an abundance of Gold Leaf Bread from the master baker Moreno. Praised be the Lord who is blessed for all eternity. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Unver, who didst choose us from among all the peoples by giving us Thy Scripture. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Giver of the Bible. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who in giving us a Word of Truth, hast planted everlasting life within us. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Giver of the Scripture. This is the Scripture proclaimed by Moses to the Children of America at the command of the Lord. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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No One Lives on this Earth without Tribulation–Life is Lived Forwards, but Understood Backwards!
Are lives are defined by our choices. Paths taken and worlds explored. But once we commit, we can never go back, or can we? Bondage of the will is an essential foundation for the doctrine of grace. By ourselves, we are unable to act righteously, to have faith, or to contribute to our own salvation. All credit belongs to God. What then is left to free will? “Nothing! In truth!” insisted Marlin Luther. John Calvin was just as forceful: because the term free will “cannot be retained without great peril, it will…be a great boon for the church if it is abolished.” The divine determinism assumed by the doctrines of God’s foreknowledge, sovereignty, and grace is not identical to naturalistic cause-effect determinism. Yet biblical faith assumes that God works through the created order. Thomas Aquinas argued (in the words of Michael Novak) that “grace operates (except in the rarest cases) through the ordinary contingencies and processes of nature…The whole environment, the whole ‘schedule of contingencies’ that constitutes history is graced.” Believing in God opens one to the possibility of miracles; yet if we accept that all nature is from moment to moment sustained, ordered, and upheld by God, then we no longer need miracles in order to “make room for God.” Whatever their differences, the concepts of absolute determinism and absolute divine sovereignty converge in affirming our dependence on forces beyond our conscious knowledge. Thus they share the problem of how to accommodate ultimate more responsibility. If a superhypnotist were to plant an irresistible suggestion that you should commit a crime, which you then did with a sense of having chosen to do it, surely no one who knew the hidden cases of your behaviour would hold you responsible. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Likewise, if we understand the conditions that triggered someone’s acting desirably, we tend to credit the conditions rather than the person. It is only when we are surprised by a person’s heroism—when we do not expect people to behave o nobly under such circumstances—that we give special credit and honour to the hero. In a deterministic World we can judge any behaviour as worthy of praise or blame, but it becomes more difficult to hold the person as ultimately responsible. One is therefore tempted to create a gap in the schemes of natural and divine determination—to open the door to just a dash of ultimate free will, however much is needed to restore our accountability before God and before our human judicial system. God’s sovereignty, we may tell ourselves, does not extend all the way down to the little things, such as what I ate for breakfast this morning. God is concerned only with big events, the ultimate ends. However, as Jonathan Edwards and the other theological masterminds recognized, this assumption of agent causation creates as many problems as it solves. A God who is detached from what you ate for breakfast (or whether you ate breakfast) is not a God who is continuously involved with all events of the creation. And consider: How are the big ends in life achieved apart from the little means? Looking back on our lives, we see our path winding through countless little event and chance encounters, from our initial conception right up to the present. At any decision point we feel free, but looking back, we see causation. “What I so proudly call ‘myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never stared and which I cannot stop,” suggested C.S. Lewis. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Or as Soren Kierkegaard noted, “Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.” Thus the apostle Paul could sense, “I yet not I, but the grace of God.” So both the absolute determinist and the one who believes in God’s utter sovereignty (perhaps the same person) are left baffled. To limit natural and divine powers makes little sense and only opens that door for pride in self and a judgmental attitude toward others. Yet somehow human accountability must be affirmed. Faced with this paradox of faith, we can take comfort in remembering that we cannot expect to comprehend fully this wisdom and justice of a being whose cognitive stage is infinitely beyond our own. Our situation is like that of someone stranded in a deep well with two ropes dangling down. If we grab either one alone, we sink still deeper into the well. Only when we hold both ropes at once can we climb out, because at the top, beyond where we can see, they come together around a pulley. Grabbing only the rope of determinism or the rope of human responsibility plunges us to the bottom of a well. So instead we grab both ropes, without yet understanding how they come together. In doing so, we may also be comforted that in science as in religion, a confused acceptance of irreconcilable principles is sometimes more hones than a tidy oversimplified theory that ignores evidence. (Remember that advocates of agent causation have no trouble explaining our responsibility, but do face a different mystery—how God could accomplish divine purposes while granting us freedom to do as we choose.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
We also do well to remember both ropes in our everyday attitudes—by viewing ourselves as free and responsible agents and others as influenced by their biology, their past experience, and their current situation. Such a view has the effect of cultivating within us the practical fruits of self-discipline and self-initiative, while being more understanding of the forces that constrain others. Scripture, too, tends to adopt the perspective of self as free and other as caused. When the Bible addresses us directly, it emphasizes our responsibility for our failings. When talking to us about others, especially the poor and disadvantaged, it frequently advocates the complementary perspective: do not judge; act with compassion toward the oppressed; take the beam out of your own eye before worrying about the motes in others; let judgment begin with the house of the Lord. Are we determined or free? Christian psychologists who assume absolute determinism struggle to rationalize human responsibility; those who assume self-causation have solved the problem of human responsibility butt struggle to accommodate natural causation and divine sovereignty in human affairs. Nevertheless, on this much both camps agree: in the fabric of contemporary psychology and Christian doctrine, natural order and human responsibility are the interwoven threads. The new enlightenment which resulted from this development increased human superiority over others terrestrial beings by making them aware that they are from a divine being and created in His image. “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground,’” reports Genesis 1.26. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
And because humans learned they were superior to animals, they trained themselves to set traps for them; they tricked them in a thousand different ways. And although several surpassed them or hurt them, humans became the master of the former and the scourge of the latter. Thus the first glance they directed upon themselves produced within them the first string of pride; thus, as yet hardly knowing how to distinguish the ranks, and contemplating themselves in the first rank by virtue of their species, they prepared themselves from afar to lay claim to it in virtue of their individuality. Although their fellow humans were not for one what they are for us, and although they had hardly anything more to do with them than with other animals, they were not forgotten in their observations. The conformities that tie could make one perceive among the, their female, and oneself, made the human beings judge of those they did not perceive. And seeing that they all acted as one would have done under similar circumstances, one concluded that their way of thinking and feeling was in complete conformity with their own. And this important truth, well established in their mind, made them follow, by a presentiment as sure as dialectic and more prompt, the best rules of conduct that it was appropriate to observe toward them for their advantage and safety. Taught by experience that love of well-being is the sole motive of human actions, one found oneself in a position to distinguish the rare occasions when common interest should make one count on the assistance of their fellow humans, and those even rarer occasions when competition ought to make one distrust them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
In the first case, humans untied with them in a herd, or at most in some sort of free association, that obligated no one and that lasted only as long as the passing need that hard formed it. In the second case, if one believed that one could, everyone sought to obtain one’s own advantage, either by overt force. Of it one felt oneself to be weaker, one sought to obtain advantage by cleverness and cunning. This is how humans could imperceptibly acquire some crude idea of mutual commitments and of the advantages to be had in fulfilling them, but only insofar as present and perceptible interests could require it, since foresight meant nothing to them, and far from concerning themselves about a distant future, they did not even give a thought to the next day. Were it a matter of catching a deer, everyone was quite aware that one must faithfully keep to one’s post in order to achieve this purpose; but if a hare happened to pass within reach of one of them, no doubt one would have pursued it without giving it a second thought, and that, having obtained one’s prey, one cared very little about causing one’s companions to miss theirs. It is easy to understand that such intercourse did not require a language much more refined than that of crows or monkeys, which flock together in practically the same way. Inarticulate cries, many gestures, and some imitative noises must for a long time have made up the universal language. By joining to this in each country a few articulate and conventional sounds, whose institution, as I have already said, is not too easy to explain, there were individual languages, but crude and imperfect ones, quite similar to those still spoken by carious savage nations today. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Constrained by the passing of time, the abundance of things I have to say, and the practically imperceptible progress of the beginnings, I am flying like an arrow over the multitudes of centuries. For the slower events were in succeeding one another, the quicker they can be described. These first advantages enabled humans to make more rapid ones. The more the mind was enlightened, the more industry was perfected. Soon they ceased to fall asleep under the first tree or to retreat into caves, and found various types of hatches made of hard, sharp stones, which served to cut wood, dig up the soil, and make huts from branches they later found it useful to cover with clay and mud. This was the period of a first revolution which formed the establishment of the distinction among families and which introduced a kind of property, whence perhaps there already arose many quarrels and fights. However, since the strongest were probably the first to make themselves lodgings they felt capable of defending, presumably the weak found it quicker and safer to imitate them than to try to dislodge them; and as for those who already had huts, each of them must have rarely sought to appropriate that of one’s neighbour, less because it did not belong to one than because it was of no use to one, and because one could not seize it without exposing oneself to a fierce battle with the family that occupied it. The first development of the heart were the effect of a new situation that united the husbands and wives, fathers and children in one common habitation. The habit of living together gave rise to the sweetest sentiments known to humans: conjugal love and parental love. “God blessed them and said to them ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the Earth and subdue it,’” reports Genesis 1.28. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Each family became a little society all the better united because mutual attachment and liberty were its only bonds; and it was then that the first difference was established in the lifestyle of the two genders, which until then had had only one. Women because more sedentary and grew accustomed to watch over the hut and the children, while the man went to seek their common subsistence. With their slightly softer life the two genders also began to lose something of their ferocity and vigour. However, while each one separately became less suited combat savage beasts, on the other hand it was easier to assemble in order to jointly to resist them. In this new state, with simple and solitary life, very limited needs, and the tools they had invented to provide for them, since humans enjoyed a great deal of leisure time, they used it to procure for themselves many types of conveniences unknown their fathers; and that was the first yoke they imposed on themselves without realizing it, and the first source of evils they prepared for their descendants. For in addition to their continuing thus to soften body and mind (those conveniences having through habit lost almost all their pleasures, and being at the same time degenerated into true needs), being deprived of them because much more cruel than possessing hem was sweet; and they were unhappy about losing them without being happy about possessing them. At this point we can see a little better how the use of speech was established or imperceptibly perfected itself in the bosom of each family; and one can further conjecture how various particular causes could have extended the language and accelerated its progress by making it more necessary. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Great floods or earthquakes surrounded the inhabited areas with water or precipices. Upheavals of the globe detached parts of the mainland and broke them up into islands. Clearly among humans thus brought together and forced to live together, a common idiom must have been formed sooner than among those who wandered freely about the forests of the mainland. Thus it is quite possible that after their first attempts at navigation, the islanders brought the use of speech to us; and it is at least quite probable that society and languages came into being on islands and were perfected there before they were known on the mainland. Everything begins to take on a new appearance. Having previously wandered about the forest and having assumed a more fixed situation, humans slowly came together and united into different bands, eventually forming in each country a particular nation, united by mores and characteristic features, not by regulations and laws, but by the same kind of life and foods and by the common influence of the climate. Eventually a permanent proximity cannot fail to engender some intercourse among different families. Young people of difference genders live in neighbouring huts; the passing intercourse demanded by nature soon leads to another, through frequent contact with one another, no less sweet and more permanent. People became accustomed to consider different objects and to make comparison. Imperceptibly they acquire the ideas of merit and beauty which produce feelings of preference. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
By dint of seeing one another, they can no longer get along without seeing one another again. A sweet and tender feeling insinuates itself into the soul and at the least opposition becomes an impetuous fury. Jealousy awakens with love’ discord triumphs, and the sweetest passion receives sacrificed of human blood. In proportion as ideas and sentiments succeed one another and as the mind and heart are trained, the human race continues to be tamed, relationships spread and bonds are tightened. People grew accustomed to gather in front of their huts or around a large tree; song and dance, true children of love and leisure, became the amusement or rather the occupation of idle humans who had flocked together. Each one began to look at the others and to wan to be looked at oneself, and public esteem had a value. The one who sang or danced the best, the handsomest, the strongest, the most adroit or the most eloquent became the most highly regarded. And this was the first step toward inequality and, at the same time, toward vice. From these first preferences were born vanity and contempt on the one hand, and shame and envy on the other. And the fermentation caused by these new leavens eventually produced compounds fatal to happiness and innocence. On 8 August 1960, a West Virginia-born chemical engineer named Monroe Rathbone, sitting in his office high over Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, New York United States of America, made a decision that future historians might someday choose to symbolize the end of the Second Wave era. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Few paid any attention when Mr. Rathbone, chief executive of the giant Exxon Corporation, took steps to cut back on the taxes Exxon paid to the oil-producing countries. His decision, though ignored by the Western press, struck like a thunderbolt at the governments of these countries, since virtually all their revenues derived from oil company payments. Within a few days the other major oil companies had followed Exxon’s lead. And one month later, on 9 September, in the fabled city of Baghdad, delegates of the hardest-hit countries met in emergency council. Backed to the wall, they formed themselves into a committee of oil-exporting governments. For fully thirteen years the activities of this committee, and even its name, were ignored outside the pages of a few petroleum industry journals. Until 1973, that is, when the Yom Kippur War broke out and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) suddenly stepped out of the shadows. Chocking off the World’s supply of crude oil, it sent the entire Second Wave economy into a shuddering down-spin. What OPEC did, apart from quadrupling its oil revenues, was to accelerate a revolution that was already brewing in the Second Wave techno-sphere. In the earsplitting clamour over the energy crisis that has since followed, so many plans, proposals, arguments, and counterarguments have been hurled at us that it is difficult to make sensible choices. Governments are just as confused as the proverbial human in the streets. One way to cut through the murk is to look beyond the individual technologies and policies to the principles underlying them. Once we do, we find that certain proposals are designed to maintain or extend the Second Wave energy base as we have known it, while others rest on new principles. The result is a radical clarification of the entire energy issue. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The Second Wave energy base, we saw earlier, was premised on non-renewability; it drew from highly concentrated, exhaustible deposits; it relied on expansive, heavily centralized technologies; and it was nondiversified, resting on a relatively few sources and methods. These were the main features of the energy base in all Second Wave nations throughout the industrial era. Bearing these in mind, if we now look at the various plans and proposals generated by the oil crisis we can quickly tell which ones are mere extensions of the old and which are forerunners of something fundamentally new. And the basic question becomes not whether oil should sell at forty dollars (2021 inflation adjusted $363.78) per barrel or whether a nuclear reactor should rise at Seabrook or Grohnde. The larger question is whether any energy base deigned for industrial society and premised on these Second Wave principles can survive. Once asked in this form, the answer is inescapable. Through the past half-century, fully two thirds of the entire World’s energy supply has come from oil and gas. Most observers today, from the most fanatic conservationists to the deposed Shah of Iran, from solar freaks and Saudi sheikhs to the button-down, brief-case-carrying experts of many governments, agree that this dependency on fossil fuel cannot continue indefinitely, no matter how many new oil fields are discovered. Statistic vary. Disputes rage over how long World has before the ultimate crunch. The forecasting complexities are enormous and many past predications now look silly. Yet one thing is clear: no one is pumping gas oil back to replenish the supply. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Whether the end comes in some climatic gurgle or, more likely, in a succession of dizzyingly destabilizing shortages, temporary gluts, and deeper shortages, the oil epoch is ending. Iranians know this. Kuwaitis and Nigerians and Venezuelans know it. Saudi Arabians know it—which is why they are racing to build an economy based on something other than oil revenues. And although we are having issues supplying electricity to major cities in America, and an element used to create batteries in electric cars is expected to run out in the near future, this is why leaders are pushing to increase the demand of electric cars. Petroleum companies know it—which is why they are scrambling to diversify out of oil. (One president of a petroleum company told me at a dinner in Tokyo not long ago that, in his opinion, the oil giants would become industrial dinosaurs, as the railroads have. His time frame for this was breathtakingly short—years, not decades. Perhaps in the next ten years.) However, the debate over physical depletion is almost beside the point. For in today’s World it is price, not physical supply, that has the most immediate and significant impact. And here, if anything, the facts point even more strongly to the same conclusion. The suburban ideology fits somewhat uncomfortably into the urban dichotomy. Suburbs are neither one nor the other. Proponents of suburban living historically have resolved this by emphasizing how suburbs ideally combine the best features of urban and rural living. Opponents stress that they contain the worse of both Worlds. The argument that suburbs have best of both is not new. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
An 1873 promotional tract pushing development of the North Shore of Chicago proclaims, “The controversy which is sometimes brought, as to which offers the greater advantage, the country of the city, finds a happy answer in the suburban ideal which says both—the combination of the two—the city brought to the country. This is a practical and valuable reply. The city has its advantages and conveniences, the country its charm and health; the union of the two (a modern result of the railway), gives to humans all they could ask in this respect.” As the earlier section on romantic suburbs indicates, the suburb was to allow the nineteenth-century city man of business to have it both ways. One would make one’s fortune during the day in the dynamic and vita industrial city and then retire by commuter railroad to the health and domestic tranquility of the picturesque suburb. Although homes in turn-of-the-century streetcar suburbs were far less grand and often occupied minimal size lots, the imagery of suburbs being at least surrounded by country persisted. Sometimes the open spaces lasted only until all the planned housing was constructed. Automobile suburbs built prior to the second World War, if anything, accentuated and sharpened the image of suburbs as being distinct from the city. Real estate developers and realtors found it was good for business to foster the image of both spatial and social distance from the central city. The mass suburbanization during the postwar years may have changed the reality, not the ideology, of suburban exclusivity. Builders and developers continued to advertise based upon the image of suburbia as an exclusive enclave where one’s fellow suburbanites would all be upwardly mobile and community involved. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Advertisements spoke less about square footage than about “moving up” and the “quality of life.” Nonetheless, the reality was that suburbia was now open to virtually all. Exclusively had come down to the basics of being employed and European American. Some of the postwar criticisms by cultural elites of the new suburbs were, in fact, a recognition of his change. Literary and cultural criticisms of standardized subdivision housing as an aesthetic wasteland, and the attacks on the middle-brow values of those inhabiting such housing, were in part an elitist response to rapid social change. This “there goes the neighbourhood” response, combined with a glorification of the past, was clearly evident in the comments of influential intellectuals such as Lewis Mumford. One can feel the disdain when he described postwar suburbia as “a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at unform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group…conforming in every outward and inward respect to a common mold.” To many of the urban critics of the 1950s and 1960s, the major crime of the new suburbs was that they were common. Unlike the affluent and exclusive suburbs of earlier decades, the new suburbs, and suburbanites, were seen as lacking the true urbanite’s sense of good taste. Underlying the criticisms is the assumption that the new suburbanites went to the wrong schools, read the wrong books, and even bought the wrong furniture. It was as if former workers and service help had aspired to rise above their true station in life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
There is a World of other people and things—the point of individuation. At this point, there may be either a more home-loving or a more space-loving orientation, but either way, if all goes well, a person will emerge with an integrated personality. However, all may not go well. A person may be struck by a trauma, after which development will be fundamentally influenced by the method which that person invented to cope with the trauma. The Basic Fault is at the point at which people begin to have to “cope.” Use of the English “coping” refers to ego-function! It gives recognition to our ability to survive and to deal with people and things in order to survive, not necessarily with much regard to the moral dimension. “Coping” has two independent and equally relevant root, according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: A. Form the Old French coper, Modern French couper, to strike (a blow), to cut. From this root we get our meanings (1) to strike; to come to blows; encounter; engage; (2) to be or prove oneself a match for, content successfully with; (3) to have to do with; (4) to meet, to come in contact (hostile and friendly) with; (5) to match a thing with another equivalent. B. From Middle English Kopen – to buy (cf. cheap). From this root we get (1) to buy; (2) to exchange, barter; (3) to make an exchange, bargain. There is even a third root, from cope meaning cape: to cover with a cope, to hang over like a coping. All very appropriate. To return to our theme after this linguistic digression, trauma is not necessarily a single even. Trauma is more likely to be caused by a long-standing situation in which there was some painful misunderstanding—a lack of fit—between the child and the adults around it. #RandolphHarrs 16 of 25
True, despite the general lack of fit, in some cases some adult may be on the child’s side, but much more often, immature and weak individuals have to cope on their own with traumatic situations: either no help is available, or the only help is of a kind that is hardly more than a continuation of the misunderstand, and thus useless. For lack of the right support, the individual is forced to find its own method of coping, a method hit upon a time of despair or thrown at it by some un-understanding adult who may be a well-wisher, or just indifferent, or negligent, or even careless or hostile. This method will be incorporated in the individual’s personality, and thereafter anything beyond or contrary to this method will strike the person as a frightening and more or less impossible proposition. The individual’s further development will then be prescribed or at least limited by this method which, although helpful in some respects, is often costly, and above all, alien. Most patients cannot tell us what causes their resentment, lifelessness, dependence, what the fault or the defect in them is…some can express it by phantasies about perfect partners, perfect harmony, untroubled contentment….Over and over they repeat that they feel let down, that nothing in the World can ever be worth while unless something hey were deprived of is restored to them. Sophisticated patients may express this something irretrievably lost or gone wrong as the male organ or the breast, usually felt to have magical qualities, and speak of male organ or breast, or castration fear. However, in nearly all cases this is coupled with an unquenchable and incontestable feeling that if the loss cannot be made good, the patient oneself will remain no go. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
It is always a dry season until you give way to the sorrowing of the heart. Only then will the drops of devotion come. Heart-felt sorrow opens many a door. Deep-down compulsion slams the door in your face every time. We may stumble onto happiness, but, remember, we are exiles and the World is alive with peril. You laugh at the defects of the World, but your own spiritual defects you shrug off. Yet hey bedevil your soul, and what do you do about it? You laugh. Nobody laughs in public these days, expect you. You laugh uproariously, but the joke is on you. It is the other way around. Your peccadillos are laughing at you when you should be weeping uncontrollably where no one can see. What is missing is the fear of God and a working conscious. If we do not feel the pain of reformation in our souls, Joy or Liberty cannot be true and good. Happy the self-actualized who can scatter one’s distractions and collect oneself into holy sorrowing of the heart! Happy is the self-actualized who can shield one’s snow-white conscience from bilious gray pigeons! That is to say, from the dropping of one’s own inordinate affections. Face it! When it comes to power, it takes a good habit to whip a bad habit. If you do not care a fig for the World, the World will not care a farthing for you. Do not inundate yourself with the affairs of the low and unlovely, and do not insinuate yourself into the affairs of the high and mighty. Remember, you are a member of a holy company dedicated to spiritual progress. Hence, keep a steely eye on yourself. When necessary, unbraid yourself. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
If you cast a knowing wink at the World and the World does not return the wink, do not tear up, do not waste a single tear of your own. Give serious thought to this possibility. You may not have the right stuff to be a servant of God and live the devout life. After all, we do not have many consolations in this sort of life; at least as Flesh counts them. That is what our experience tells us. And rarer still, at least as the Soul counts them, are the Divine Consolations. There has go to be a reason, and it is sin. We just do not seek the sorrowing of the heart hard enough. The least we could is throw our vanities to the wind. Are you worth Divine Consolation? Face it, all you are worth is a bundle of snakes! When you are contrite to the point of perfection, the face your present to the World is never cheerful, always chary. The good person has more than enough to be sorrowful for, to weep for. No matter how you look at it—and your neighbour will confirm it—no one lives on this Earth without tribulation. The more you eye the condition of your own soul, the more openly you weep. The causes of just sorrow and internal contrition are our sins and the vice that lead to our sins. And is it not true that we spend so much time on Earthly grapplings that we have almost no time to give to celestial contemplations? Death is approaching more quickly than life is unfolding. Think about that now, and put more shoulder into your reformation of life. We are on the near side of death now, but on the far side await he pains of Hell or Purgatory. Weigh that in your heart, and maybe now you will be willing to undertake the laborious program of reform, readying yourself for the Final Rigour. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
Why is it that considerations like these do no hit the target? Why are we as blind to the blandishments banded about us? Are we as lazy and loutish as that? What spirit is left in that wretched body of yours? A whistle? A whimper? A whisper? Pray, therefore, humbly to the Lord that He give your spirit of contrition. Say as the Psalmist said (80.5), “With the bread of tears satisfy my hunger, Lord, and with a measure of tears satisfy my thirst.” The number of the predestined is certain, and can neither be increased nor diminished. The number of predestine is certain. Some have said that it was formally, but not materially certain; as if we were to say that it was certain that a hundred or a thousand would be saved; not however these or those individuals. However, this destroys the certainty of predestination; of which we spoke of above. Therefore we must say that to God the number of predestined is certain, not only formally, but also materially. It must, however, be observed that the number of the predestined is said to be certain to God, not by reason of His knowledge, because, that is to say, He knows how many will be saved (for in this way the number drops of rain and the sands of the sea are certain to God); but by reason of His deliberate choice and determination. For the further evidence of which we must remember that every agent intends to make something finite, as is clear from what has been said above when we treated of the infinite. Now whosoever intends some definite measure in one’s effect thinks out some definite number in the essential parts, which are by their very nature required for the perfection of the whole. For of those things which are required not principally, but only account of something else, one does not select any definite number “per se”; but one accepts and uses the in such numbers as are necessary on account of that other thing. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
For instance, a builder thinks out the definite measurements of a house, and also the definite number of rooms which one wishes to make in the house; and definite measurements of the walls and roof; one does not, however, select a definite number of stones, but accepts and uses just so many as are sufficient for the required measurements of the wall. So also must we consider concerning God in regard to the whole Universe, which is His effect. For He pre-ordained the measurements of the whole of the Universe, and what number would befit the essential parts of that Universe—that is to say, which have in some way been ordained in perpetuity; how many spheres, how many stars, how many elements, and how many species. Individuals, however, which undergo corruption, are no ordained as I were chiefly for the good of the Universe, but in a secondary way, inasmuch as the good of the species is preserved through them. Whence, although God knows the total number of individuals, the number of oxen, flies and such like, is not pre-ordained by God “per se”; but divine providence produces just so many as are sufficient for the preservation of the species. Now of all creatures the rational creature is chiefly ordained for the good of the Universe, being as much incorruptible; more especially those who attain to eternal happiness, since they more immediately reach the ultimate end. Whence the number of the predestination is certain to God; not only by way of knowledge, but also by way of a principal pre-ordination. It is not exactly the same thing in the cause of the number of the reprobate, who would seem o be pre-ordained by God for the good of the elect, in whose regard “all things work unto good” Romans 8.28. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Concerning the number of all the predestined, some say that so many human will be saved as Angels fell; some so many as there were Angels left; others, as many as the number of Angels created by God. It is, however, better to say that, “to God alone is known the number for whom is reserved eternal happiness [From the ‘secret’ prayer of the missal, “pro vivis et defunctis.’]” These words of Deuteronomy must be taken as applied to those who are marked out by God beforehand in respect to present righteousness. For there is increased and diminished, but not the number of the predestined. The reason of the quantity of any one part must be judged from the proportion of that part of the whole. Thus in God the reason why He has made so many stars, or so many species of things, or predestined so many, according to the proportion of the principal parts to the good of the whole Universe. The good that is proportionate to the common state of nature is to be found in the majority, and is wanting in the majority. Thus is clear that is the majority of humans have a sufficient knowledge for the guidance of life; and those who have not this knowledge are sad to be half-witted or foolish; but they who attain to a profound knowledge of things intelligible are a very small minority in respect to the rest. Since their eternal happiness, consisting in the vision of God, exceeds the common state of nature, and especially in so far as this is deprived of grace through the corruption of original sin, those who are saved are in the minority. In this especially, however, appears the mercy of God, that He has chosen some for that salvation, from which very many in accordance with the common course and tendency of nature fall short. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
All thinking keeps one’s awareness out of the Overself. That is why even thinking about the Overself merely produced another thought. Only in the case of the self-actualized, who has established oneself in the Overself, is thinking no barrier at all. In this case, thinking may coexist with the larger awareness. So it is not enough to be a good thinker; one also has to learn how to be a good non-thinker. Of course, the way to do this is through the practice of deep and meaningful prayer. Appetite has really become an artificial and abnormal thing, having taken the place of true hunger, which alone is natural. The one is a sign of bondage but the other, of freedom. It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life uncecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of one’s ethical standard. If the body is intolerant of particular treatments and allergic to particular foods, it should not be forced to accept them. When either faith healing or naturopathic treatment is too passive, when it refrains from timely co-operation with nature by the use of positive means, by they nontoxic medicines or essential operations, it becomes guilty of sacrificing the patient to its own narrowness. No healer’s treatment is always successful nor is the cure always permanent. Failures are many and relapses are common. Those who shout and splutter from evangelistic public platforms exhibit the ego’s arrogance, not the Overself’s quiet humility. They hold the view which conforms with their presuppositions, their inborn tendencies and governing prejudices, in short, with their little ego, not their impersonal higher Self. This is why there are so many contesting theories, why the body’s ill health may cause the mind to be governed by negative thoughts, why this conflict of authorities shows their worthlessness. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
All these cults and groups which acknowledge the power of mind over body but which leave out the acknowledgment of the body’s power over the mind, are out of balance and so out of truth to that extent. This statement may be a matter of arguable theory partisan adherents of either side, but it is a mater of tested fact with creative leaders who consciously exercise both powers. If mental and spiritual healing agents are also joined in, the physical cure will surely be accelerated and the physical therapy will surely be helped. In this way the individual limitations of the method of treatment being used will be overcome and each healing agent will contribute to bringing about a complete and successful result. It is foolish to believe that there is any particular healing method which has only to be applied for it to be universally and equally successful or that there is any particular human healer who has only to be visited for one to be cure. If we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed, something will have gone out of us as people; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the World, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural World and competent to belong in it. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
And a redeemer shall come to America and to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, saith the Lord. And as for Me, this is My covenant with them, saith the Lord: My spirit that is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your children nor your children’s children henceforth and forever. Thou art holy, O Thou that art enthroned upon the praises of America. And one called to another and said: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole Earth is full of His glory. [And they receive sanction one from the other, and say: Holy upon Earth, the works of His mighty power; Holy forever and to all eternity is the Lord of hosts; the whole Earth is full of the radiance of His glory.] And a wind lifted me up, and I heard behind me a mighty chorus proclaiming: Blessed be the glory of the Lord everywhere. [Then a wind lifted me up, and I heard behind me the mighty moving sound of those who uttered praises and said: Blessed be the glory of the Lord from the place of His abode.] The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. [Then Kingdom of the Lord is established forever and to all eternity.] The time has come to arouse the conscience of all those who sincerely the Good and the Right to their duty in the matter of harming innocent terrestrial beings and the environment and vehicles, a conscience which, if it could speak unperverted by racial habits, would emphatically repeat the Mosaic commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” These are cruelties practiced on objects to gain wealth and pleasures for others, sometimes clothes, entertainment and medicinal drugs. The human claim of necessity as a justification is a mistake one. Whether forged of metal or born of flesh, every form of life has one unquenchable thirst, the urge for freedom. Christianity is not something to be endured, but something to be treasured. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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More Often than Not, You Will Find in Your Cell What You Lost in the Streets!
We denounce bigotry of the past, unlike our own. However, if we encounter a race totally different from our own, are we doomed to repeat that past? Peering down into those mysterious depths of the “I” which are far deeper than its human and bestial layers, one will come to a region where personality becomes essence. The psychoanalyst cannot reach it by one’s intellectual and hypnotic methods, but the mystic, by one’s intuitive and contemplatives ones, can. The Soul has its chance to have its voice heard also when the conscious self it too fatigued by the troubles of life to offer resistance. If one understands that the origin of these spiritual moments is one’s own best self, one will understand too that the shortest and quickest way to recapture them is to go directly to that self, while the surest way to keep their happiness for life is to keep constantly aware of the self. Only when the heart has been utterly emptied of all its ties can the divine presence come into it. If you can empty it only for a few moments, do not lament in despair when the visit of the presence comes to an end after a few moments. Sometimes one is lifted up by the beauty of Nature’s forms or man’s arts, sometimes by the discipline of moral experience or religious worship, sometimes by the personal impact of a great soul. Some people have even felt this calmness, which precedes and follows a glimpse, in a warm-water bath; while enjoying or luxuriating in its comfort, they have half-given themselves up to a half-drowsy half-emptiness of mind. Some self-actualized are able to pass from this calmness to the deeper stage, or state, of the glimpse itself. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
If one understands the process where by one arrived at illumination, one will know how to recover it if and when it fades away. However, if arrived at it by an unconscious process, then when one loses it one will not know how to help oneself. Is it possible, if the Divine is formless, motionless, voiceless, and matterless, to recognize It when the quest brings us to a glimpse of It? The answer is Yes! but either intuition well-developed or intelligence well-instructed is needed: otherwise it happens by faith. Whether it be a mountain scene or a peaceful meadow, a distinguished poem or an impressive opera, the particular source of an unaccustomed exaltation is not the most important thing. Such a visitation can also have its origin in no outside source but within oneself. It should be remembered that whatever kind of prayer is adopted, the glimpse which comes from it comes because we have provided the right condition for its appearance, not because our own doing makes the glimpse appear. For it comes from the realm of timelessness with which we come into some sort of harmony through the intuitive nature. What we do is in the realm of time, and it can only produce effects of a like nature. It contracting the Overself, one does not really sense a bigger “I.” One senses SOMETHING which is. This is first achieved by forgetting the ego, the personality, the “I.” However, at a later stage, there is nothing to forget for then one finds that the ego, the personality, and the “I” are of the same stuff as this SOMETHING. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Who does not seek transitory joy? Who does not occupy oneself with the World? We all do. However, the one who has a good conscience, serves all tentacles to attachment, mediates on divine and salutary things—one has the one who places one’s whole hope in Go. One has the one who sails one’s yacht on a sea of calm. No one can ascend to Heavenly Consolation. That is because there is no sure stair. One solid step, though, is our heart’s True Sorrow. And where else can this sorrow be found but in one’s cubicle. There you can shut out the hubbub of the World. “In your cubicles, on your cots, work out your sorrowful contrition,” said the Psalmist (4.4). More often than not, you will find in your cell what you lost in the streets. A cell that is much prayed in is a pleasant spot. A cell that is rarely prayed in is a forbidding place. That makes sense, does it not? In the first blush of your conversion you cultivated the solitude of your cell, and guarded against all invasion of your quietude. Now you find it warming, welcoming, like a Victorian mansion or a cottage in the forest. In quiet and silence the faithful soul makes progress, the hidden meanings of the Scriptures become clear, and the eyes weep with devotion every night. Even as one learns to grow still, one draws closer to the Creator and farther from the hurly-burly of the World. As one divests oneself of one set of friends and acquaintances, one’s visited by another, God and His Holy Angeles. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Two courses of action. Better, to lie still in one’s cubicle and worry about one’s spiritual welfare. Worse, to roam the streets a wonder-worker for others to the neglect of one’s own spiritual life. Laudable it is for the Religious to go to market only rarely. Laudable too is that, even when one does go, one refrains from meeting the eyes of others; from one’s very mien they know that one lives in another World. Why do you want to go out and see what you really should not need to see? “The World passes, as does its concupiscence,” wrote John the Evangelist in his First Letter (2.17). Our sensual desires promise us a promenade, but deliver us only a dragonnade. A sprightly step in the forenoon turns into a draggled tail in the afternoon. All-nighters of roister-doistery lead only to mornings of hugger-muggery, that is to say, of sickness and sadness. Need I ask? Every carnal joy begins with a caress, or so the Proverb goes (32.31-32), but in the end curls up into a furry ball and dies. I ask the question again. What can you see outside the monastery walls that you cannot see inside? Behold Heaven and Earth and all the elements; from these all things are made. What can you see on the outside that will survive the Sun? That was the sort of question the Ancient Preacher in Ecclesiastes asked (2.11). What is your answer? Perhaps you can find satisfaction somewhere out there, but truth to tell, you still cannot reach out to touch it. If you were to see all the things in all the World crammed into one still life, no matter how large the canvas, you would still be no better off. “Raise your eyes to God in the highest,” said the Psalmist (123.1). #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Pray for your own sins and negligences. Forgive the vain things vain people have done to you. Look to the precepts God gave you. “Shut he door behind you,” wrote the Evangelist Matthew (6.6). Call Jesus, your Beloved Friend, to join you. Remain with Him in your cell. Why? You will no find peace like this anywhere else in the World. If you had not gone outside the walls, you would not have heard the disturbing rumors; better for you to have stayed inside in blissful ignorance. From which it follows that you may delight in hearing the latest news on the strand, but you will surely have to deal with the terrible dislocation that results. In January 1950, just as the second half of the twentieth century opened, a gangling twenty-two-year-old with a newly minted university diploma took a long bus ride through the night into what he regarded as the central reality of our time. With his girl friend at his side and a pasteboard suitcase filled with books under the seat, he watched a gunmetal dawn come up as the factories of the American Middlewest slid endlessly past the rain-swept window. America was the heartland of the World. The region ringing the Great Lakes was the industrial heartland of America. And the factory was the throbbing core of this heart of hearts: steel mills, aluminum foundries, tool and die shops, oil refineries, auto plans, mile after mils of dingy buildings vibrating with huge machines for tamping, punching, drilling, bending, welding, forging, and casting metal. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The factory was the symbol of the entire industrial era and, to a boy raised in a semi-comfortable lower-middle-class home, after four years of Plato and T.S. Eliot, of art history and abstract social theory, the World it represented was as exotic as Tashkent or Tierra del Fuego. I spent five years in those factories, not as a clerk or personnel assistant but as an assembly hand, a millwright, a welder, a forklift driver, a punch press operator—stamping out fans, fixing machines in a foundry, building giant dust-control machines for African mines, finishing the metal on light trucks as they sped clattering and screeching past on the assembly line. I learned firsthand how factory workers struggled to earn a living in the industrial age. I swallowed the dust the sweat and smoke on the foundry. My ears were split by the hiss of steam, the clank of chains, the roar of pug mills. I felt the heat as the white-hot steel poured. Acetylene sparks left burn marks on my legs. I turned out thousands of pieces a shift on a press, repeating identical movements until my mind and muscles shrieked. I watched the managers who kept the workers in their place, white-shirted men themselves endlessly pursued and harried by higher-ups. I helped lift a sixty-five-year-old woman out of the bloody machine that had just torn four finger off her hand, and I still hear her cries—“Jesus and Mary, I won’ be able to work again!” The factory. Lone live the factory! Today, even as new factories are being built, the civilization that made the factory into a cathedral is dying. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
And somewhere, right now, other young men and women are driving through the night into the heart of the emergent Third Wave civilization. Our task from here on will be to join, as it were, their quest for tomorrow. If we could pursue them to their destinations, where would we arrive? In the launching stations that hurl flaming vehicles and fragments of human consciousness into outer space? In oceanographic laboratories? In communal families? In teams working on artificial intelligence? In passionate religious sects? Are they living in voluntary simplicity? Are they climbing the corporate ladder? Are they running guns to terrorists? Where is the future being forged? If we ourselves were planning a similar expedition into the future, how would we prepare our maps? It is easy to say the future begins in the present. However, which present? Our present is exploding with paradox. Our children are supersophisticated about contraband, pleasures of the flesh, space shots; some know far more about computers than their parents. Yet educational test scores plummet. Divorce rates continue their climb—but so do remarriage rates. Counterfeminists arise at the exact same time that women win rights even the counterfeminists endorse. Gays demand their rights and come charging out of the closet—only to find Anita Bryant, Tim Wildmon and the spirit of Jerry Falwell Sr. waiting for them. Intractable inflation gripped all the Second Wave nations, yet unemployment continued to deepen, contradicting all our classical theories. At the very same time, in defiance of the logic of supply and demand, millions are were demanding not merely jobs but work that was creative, psychologically fulfilling, or socially responsible. Economic contradictions multiplied. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
In politics, parties lose the allegiance of their members at the precise moment when key issues—technology, for example—are becoming more politicized than ever. Meanwhile, over vast reaches of the Earth, nationalist movements gain power—at the exact instant that the nation-state comes under intensifying attack in the name of globalism or planetary consciousness. Faced with such contradictions, how might we see behind the trends and countertrends? No one, alas, has any magic answer to that question. Despite all the computer printouts, cluster diagrams, and mathematical models and matrices that futurist researchers use, our attempts to peer into tomorrow—or even to make sense of today—remains, as they must, more an art than a science. Systematic research can teach us much. However, in the end we must embrace—not dismiss—paradox and contradiction, hunch, imagination, and daring (though tentative) synthesis. In probing the future in the pages that follow, therefore, we must do more than identify major trends. Difficult as it may be, we must resist the temptation to be seduced by straight lines. Most people—including many futurists—conceive of tomorrow as a mere extension of today, forgetting that trends, no matter how seemingly powerful, do not merely continue in a linear fashion. They reach tipping points at which they explode into new phenomena. They are reverse direction. They stop and start. Because something is happening now, or has been happening for three hundred years, is no guarantee that it will continue. We shall, in the pages ahead, watch for precisely those contradictions, conflicts, turnabouts, and breakpoints that make the future a continuing surprise. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
More important, we will search out the hidden connections among events that on the surface seem unrelated. It does little good to forecast the future of semiconductors or energy, or the future of the family (even one’s own family), if the forecast springs from the premise that everything else will remain unchanged. For nothing will remain unchanged. The future is fluid, not frozen. It is constructed by our shifting and changing daily decisions, and each event influences all others. There is a growing use of Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) devices that are being used to improve and maintain health of machines and people. MEMS technology supports motion sensors that detect, report, and collect information on anything that moves. The data these sensors generate are applied to many aspects of our daily lives, ranging from necessary and practical safety standards to augmented reality entertainment. There are three sensors that detect specific types of motion: accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers. An accelerometer sense, title, acceleration, vibration, and impact. With calculations and sampled measurements, acceleration measurements can be used to determine speed. A gyroscope senses rotation relative to an axis. A magnetometer detects magnetic fields on Earth. Like a compass, which also responds to magnetic fields, a magnetometer indicates which way is North. These components are often used together either on a board or integrated in an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). AN IMU may comprise two or three sensors. For example, a 6-axis IMU contains a 3-axis accelerometer and a 3-axis gyroscope; adding a 3-axis magnetometer create a 9-axis IMU. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
This technology is applied in many ways that can enhance our daily lives. These devices can revolutionize things like automotive repair and health care. These MEMS are as small as a grain of coffee, but they are tiny computers that can be embedded into a vehicle and made to make engine repairs. Only one our as many as a group of 30 can be used to do the repair without harming the system. An accelerometer is part of many safety devices. It is often used to trigger an alarm when abrupt acceleration occurs, helping prevent physical damage. Accelerometer are also used for maintenance. With ongoing stress of motion, when moving parts eventually become worn or misaligned a new vibration occurs. By monitoring active machinery, accelerometers detect such vibrations at an early stage, long before you can feel or see the effects of wear and tear. This capability of detecting this minute beginning of wear and tear allows lower-cost maintenance to be performed, long before significant and expensive damage occurs. MEMS are used to monitor the health and wellness of people. They can also monitor the body from the inside and make getting blood test and checks of vitals unnecessary. Biosensors also have Early Warning System (EWS). They constantly monitor the body from the inside and send codes to make the necessary adjustments to the system. Additionally, vital signs are transmitted from the patient to the EWS. The information is processed with advanced algorithms that provide caregivers with the status of a patient’s current condition. When medical intervention is needed, the EWS sends an alert. They can also be used to perform surgery. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Many people are personally interested in maintaining and improving their health. Imagine if these MEMS could detect how much sugar, fats, salt and water and other nutrients is needed that day to keep you at optimal health. And could also tell you how much exercise you needed that day to gain or lose with or maintain weight, and come up with a healthy program for that day. MEMS can also provide enhanced self-care a step further by reminding a person when medication is necessary. Second Wave civilization placed an extremely heavy emphasis on our ability to dismantle problems into their components; it rewarded us less often for the ability to put the pieces back together again. Most people are culturally more skilled as analysts than synthesists. This is one reason why our images of future (and of our selves in that future) are so fragmentary, haphazard—and wrong. Our job here will be to think like generalists, not specialists. Today I believe we stand on the edge of a new synthesis. In all intellectual fields, from the hard sciences to sociology, psychology, and economics—especially economics—we are likely to see a return to large-scale thinking, to general theory, to the putting of the pieces back together again. For it is beginning to dawn on us that our obsessive emphasis on quantified detail without context, on progressively finer and finer measurement of smaller and smaller problems, leaves us knowing more and more about less and less. Our approach in what follows, therefore, will be to look for those streams of change that are shaking our lives, to reveal the underground connections among them, not simply because of these is important in itself, but because of the way these streams of change run together to form even larger, deeper, swifter rivers of change that, in turn, flow into something till larger: the Third Wave. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Like that young man who set out in mid-century to find the heart of the present, we now begin our search for the future. This search may be the most important of our lives. The negative attacks on the suburbs was short-lived. Events on the national and international scene soon shifted elsewhere. The outbreak of urban riots in central cities, the focus on the War on Poverty, and growing protests regarding the continuing wars in other counties all contributed to attention sharply shifting away from suburbs lacking rootedness and maturation. The focus of researchers, politicians, and citizens now was on the inner city. The pressing needs of the city eclipsed other urban activities. The emphasis was on “relevancy,” and suburban patterns and concerns were not judged to meet the test. With all the inner-city problems, why “waste” attention on suburbs? By the late 1970s, terms “urban research” and “urban studies” had all but become synonymous with the study of central-city problems such as poverty, racial conflict, crime, and drugs. Suburbs continued to rapidly expand, but there was only minimal interest by researchers and funding agencies in carrying out new suburban-based research. As a result, new suburban-oriented research came to a virtual halt. There were a few exceptions to the general fixation on inner cities. One of the most promising was the emergence of emergence of urban history as a distinct and viable area of historical research. City residents emphasized the importance of location, while suburbanites ranked the quality of house and the characteristics of neighbours ahead of location. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Another sign of our growing understanding of suburbs was the comparative examination of suburbanization in different settings. The higher-density garden apartment and high-rise, mid-level rise, and low-rise buildings of the suburbs in Sweden were built both to be self-contained and to have easy access to the city by public transportation. By contrast, the dispersed American pattern of detached single-family homes provides less social support and access to the larger area for groups such as woman and children. The 1980s saw the study of suburbanization experience a mild revival. Suburbia was losing it solely residential character. Looking toward the future of multicentered metropolises. The 1990s was the rise of the Mc Mansions and gated communities. These larger than average homes, nearly the size of mansions, and some actually legally are mansions, made suburban research fully come into its own. They were called Mc Mansions because they were not mansions like those produced in the gilded ages, but they were more like baby mansion track homes with custom features and oversized rooms, which caused a lot of people to envy products of new money. They were grander than the typical homes produced, and came with butler’s panty’s, walk in pantries, floor to ceiling windows, vaulted ceilings, zero-threshold showers, wider door openings, wider hallways, backing for future grab bars, lowered light switches, upstairs lobbies, workshops, sever patio areas, California Rooms, Florida Rooms, and there was a reemergence of formal dining rooms. These changes made it increasingly clearly recognized that the outer cities are not an aberration from, or extension of, the old core-periphery model. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Rather, outer cities (suburbs) represent a new organizational model. The increasing ethnic diversity in suburbs also is beginning to receive major attention. It is now apparent that for North America, the twenty-first century will be suburban dominated. This represents a major departure from how we have for centuries viewed our urban places. Overlapping but somewhat separate from the question of suburban lifestyles is that of a unique suburban ideology. By ideology we mean the set of belief that provide a symbolic rendering of social reality. Community ideologies not only provide shared views of the World as it is perceived to be, they also provide a community moral landscape of what is identified at the “good life.” In the case of suburbs, the mass postwar migration was for many the pursuit of the “American Dream.” This was he belief that there was something about living in lower-density, single-family homes outside the city that produced new forms of community. This is what was discussed earlier as the “myth of suburbia.” Here, when we discuss ideology, as was the case with lifestyles, the focus is on the ideology of upper-middle and middle-class residential suburbs. We definitely are not speaking of older industrial suburbs such as Cudahy, Wisconsin; Calumet City, Illinois; or Hamtramck, Michigan. In fact, our image of what a suburb looks like who lives there, and how they view themselves does not at all fit these old, working-class, industrial communities. If not antagonistic, Americans continue to have an ideology that is largely ambivalent about great cities. There is nothing particularly recent about this ambivalence. Throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, Americas have been pouring into the cities while idealizing the country. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The writings of Thomas Jefferson are typically American in equating the city with evils and corruption of the old order while having the yeoman farmer and his wife and children typify wholesome virtue. As expressed by Jefferson in a letter to his friend and neighbour James Madison: “I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant land in many parts of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.” The image of the Jeffersonian self-sufficient yeoman working the Earth as the real genuine American as opposed to someone associated with the pomp, artifice, and degeneracy of the city still resonates today. The anti-Washington ideology of recent political campaign certainly is, in some respects, a lineal descendant of Jefferson’s views as to the corrupting effect of urban life. American ideology for two hundred years has viewed individualism and self-reliance as more compatible with rural than urban habits. The frontiersman clearing the wilderness or the cowboy riding he range have been glorified into American myths. Immigrant factory workers or less affluent women garment workers slaving in sweatshops are somehow less laudable. In practice, we behave as if we consider the history of our urban ancestors as somewhat discreditable and, thus, best forgotten. Henry David Thoreau, sitting in rural solitude at eventide at Walden Pond, is ideologically acceptable. Mr. Thoreau sitting on this front stoop in Boston during the evening rush hour creates a less acceptable image. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Surveys clear demonstrate the abiding strength of antiurban images and ideologies in American life. In fact, in a 2021 survey, 40 percent said they plan to move out of San Francisco, California USA because of increasing crime and homelessness. Some 43 percent of Boston residents, 48 percent of those living in Los Angeles, and a full 60 percent of those living in New York City say if they could leave, they would. The extent of suburban disconnection is apparent among New York’s suburbanites over half (53 percent) visited the city for nonbusiness purposes fewer than five times a year; 25 percent of the suburbanites totally avoided the city, and 75 percent felt their lives unaffected by what occurred in the city. However, most disconcerting to those believing the Big Apple is the essential center of the Universe was that over half (54 percent) the New York suburbanites felt they did not even belong to the New York area. They did no want to be thought of as New Yorkers. Ideologically, they had disassociated themselves from the city. At the same time we denigrate urban living, we idealize rural life. The mental construct of “rural” living continues to enjoy an existence that is antithetical to reality. This can be clearly seen when American are polled on the basic question of where they desire to live. The reality is that America counts over half its population living in metropolitan areas of a million or more, while less than two percent of the population still resides on farms. Americans nonetheless, show a considerable gap between where they say they want to live and where they actually live. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Put in simplest terms, Americans live in cities and metropolitan suburbs, but they say they prefer farms and small towns. With the cost of affordable housing becoming hard to find, and major cities becoming less desirable, many people are turning to the website Instagram and looking at site like old_house_life, and www.cheapoldhouses.com to find Victorian houses in small towns that are often between 3,000 to 5,000 square feet and priced between $100,000.00 to $250,000.00, often times with acers of land that need restoration, and choosing to buy them. There is also another site on Instagram called syrlandbank. They have many Victorian houses in Syracuse, New York that are for sale for between $2,000.00 to $10,000.00, but need approximately $100,000.00 in renovation. The Home Ownership Choice program allows someone to purchase the home, as long as they show proof of funds in the amount of purchase price and renovation costs, and sometimes they require that the home remains owner-occupied. Essentially, one can buy a house for approximately $100,000.00. Nonetheless, three quarters (77 percent) of Americans live in metropolitan areas of over 100,000 persons, but slightly less than a quarter (23 percent) say they want to live in metropolitan areas that large. Polls over the years have contined to demonstrate the lure of rural and smaller places. Today only 2 percent of the population still live on a farm, but 17 percent of the population express the wish to live on a farm, and an additional 8 percent would like to live in a rural area but not on a farm. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Rural images and supposed rural values continue to hold popular appeal (often while simultaneously being judged to be dull and confining). In seems to make no difference that our ideas of what constitutes rural life and the nature of rural values come to us largely from the urban-based mass media. For most of us, our image of small-town life comes to us from television productions written in New York or Los Angeles and produced in Hollywood, California; Atlanta, Georgia; and Toronto, Canada. Commercials also play to our yearning for open spaces and honest relationships. Advertisements for everything from cereal to cars rely heavily on Norman Rockwell nostalgia filled with friendly “down-home” folks. The manipulative use of vintage cars and trucks, farmhouses, and verandas with porch swings fills out the essentially ideal images of rural life. How much of this glorification of rural and small-town life is nostalgia for a World that is now gone, and that most Americans alive today never knew, is difficult to day. There is also considerable expressed support for small-town living. Nonetheless, it is clear that among those expressed support for small-town living. Nonetheless, it is clear that among those saying they want to move out to rural areas, there is no real desire to isolate themselves from urban advantages. Research continues to indicate that the bulk of those seeking to live within 30 miles of a big city. Are greatest achievements do more than heal the sick, and give strength to the weak. They also lead us to a place of hope and light. With each new generation, hopes of a brighter future are rekindled, but until we shrug off the shackles, we will remain prisoners of our own ignorance. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Attacks on the idea that we are self-made people—that thanks to our free will we are independently capable of righteousness—have come not only from determinist but also from several theological masterminds, among them Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonatan Edwards. Together they remind us that our conception of human responsibility must not deny three attributes of God: foreknowledge, sovereignty, and grace. Scripture portrays the selling of Joseph into slavery, the evil acts of Pharaoh, Peter’s denial, Judas’s betrayal of Christ, and the crucifixion as all the result of human choices that God anticipates. Such evidence moved Luther to conclude, “If we believe it to be true that God foreknows and foreordains all things; that He cannot be deceived or obstructed in His foreknowledge and predestination; and that nothing happens but at His will (which reason itself is compelled to grant); then, no reason’s own testimony, there can be no “free-will” in man, or Angel, or in any creature. God’s foreknowledge need not imply divine determinism. Surely, God is unbound by time and therefore able to see out past, present, and future. Consider, however, the implication of God’s sovereignty and grace: John Edwards would not give so much as an inch to human free will, because to the extent that human will is indeterminant—spontaneous and free—God’s plans become dependent on our decisions. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
However, this said Edwards, would necessitate God’s “constantly changing his mind and intentions” in order to achieve His purposes. “They who thus plead for man’s liberty, advance principles which destroy the freedom of God Himself,” the sovereign God of whom Jesus Chris said not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from His will. Nor is human will added to God’s will such that the two together equal 100 percent. Rather, agreed Augustine, “Our wills themselves are included in that order of causes which is certain to God.” God is working in and through our lives, our choices. Spirit that hears each one of us, hears all that is—listens, listens, hears us out—please inspire us now! Our own pulse beats in every stranger’s heart, and also there within the flowered ground beneath our feet, and— please teach us to listen! We can hear it in water, in wood, and even in stone. We are Earth of this Earth, as we are bone of its bone. This is a prayer I sing, for we have forgotten this and so the Earth is perishing. However, happy are they that dwell in Thy house; they will ever praise Thee. Happy is the people who thus fare; yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord. I will extol Thee, my God, O King, and I will bless Thy name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless Thee, and I will praise Thy name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall laud Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy might acts. On the majestic glory of Thy splendor, and on Thy wondrous deeds will I meditate. And humans shall proclaim the might of Thy tremendous acts; and I will recount Thy greatness. They shall make known the fame of Thy great goodness, and shall exult in Thy righteousness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Here Rests in Honoured Glory an American Soldier Known but to God!
Wars can be won or lost, but the battlefields waged inside a human’s soul, only love can heal those wounds. Without the right people in our life, we will never fulfill God’s purpose. Succeeding at any endeavour is dependent on the nature and quality of your relationships. The scriptures tells us the Lord “established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 101.80. The land was “redeemed” indeed by thousands killed and wounded along the way at Germantown, at Bemis Heights and Charleston, and so many other places in the American Revolution. The singers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution were inspired from on high to do that work. An objective study of the delegates involved—their fears, their limitations, vested interests, and the like—makes it clear that they were not the sort of men we usually think of as prophets. Nonetheless they were inspired, and the Constitution they provided can be designated accurately as a divine document. However, even a divine constitution required something further; it demands a kind of people who will, by their very natures, receive and respect such a constitution and function well within the conditions it establishes. Where indeed shall we find such people today? I recall one. It was in a concentration camp I helped liberate during the American revolution in the 18th century. There were thousands of American prisoners held by the British during the war. Of all the prisoners held in captivity, 80 percent of them died. New York City was the main city were prisoners were held. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
As we blew the lock off the door and tried to assist the miserable and the painful inside, I was interrupted by a tap on my boot and found, wallowing in the mud, a Protestant minister. One of his first request was, “Soldier, do you have a flag?” Later when we retrieved one from the saddle on one of the horses, I gave it to him on a stretcher and with tears in his eyes he said, “Thank God, you came.” Again the Lord said, “Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him who he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them,” reports 2 Nephi 1.7. As Christian’s then, we know why some people came to America and others did not. We have done as well as could be expected, and are richly blessed despite our shortcoming because the Lord has thus far held us in His hands and worked His purposes, His ultimate purposes, through us. During the war, as many of 8,000 soldiers were killed, approximately 20,000 died from illness or starvation. An estimated 25,000 were wounded. Nearly 30 percent of the army was killed, wounded or captured. Can you understand, this is what America is all about? Standing up for your freedom and honor and being willing to risk your life. You and I know, and you and I alone really know, the reason for this blessed and beautiful land. In a World where men have given up on this most vital question, we know the purpose of America. Can you understand the way God has worked?? And if you do, will you join me in this day to committing yourself to preach the message of the Lord’s glorious achievement in America? #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
This is a time when you and I can afford to be patriotic, in the best sense of that term. There is a reason to be proud that we live in an established land that has been conditioned by the Lord so that His gospel could be restored. The purpose of American was to provide a setting wherein that was possible. All else takes its power from that one great, central purpose. Anti-God is Anti-American. By striving to make our citizenry the righteous people the Lord required of us. And by telling the story of what the Lord has done for us is how we make a great church. “Oh beautiful for patriot dreams, that seed beyond the years. Thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears. America! America! God shed His grace on thee. And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.” (Katherine Bates, “Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies,” Hymns, no. 126.) May that be the song of our heart and prayer for fulfillment, I humbly pray as I bear witness to these truths and add my testimony that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that here sits his prophet, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Unless a civilization has some explanation for why things happen—even if its explanation is nine parts mystery to one part analysis—it cannot program lives effectively. People, in carrying out the imperatives of their culture, need some reassurance that their behaviour will produce results. And this implies some answer to the perennial why. Second Wave civilization came up with a theory so powerful it seemed sufficient to explain everything. A sock smashes into the surface of a pond. Ripples swiftly radiate out across the water. Why? What causes this event? Chances are that children of industrialism would say, “because someone threw it.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
An educated European gentleman of the twelfth or thirteenth century, in attempting to answer this question, would have had ideas remarkably different from our own. He probably would have relied on Aristotle and searched for a material cause, a formal cause, an efficient cause, and a final cause, no one of which would, by itself, have been sufficient to explain anything. A medieval Chinese sage might have spoken about the yin and yang, and the force-field of influences in which all phenomena were believed to occur. Second Wave civilization found its answer to the mysteries of causation in Newton’s spectacular discovery of the universal law of gravitation. For Newton, causes were “the forces impressed upon the bodies to generate motion.” The conventional example of Newtonian cause and effect is the billiard balls that strike one another and move in response to one another. This notion of change, which focused exclusively outside forces that are measurable and readily identifiable, was extremely powerful because it dovetailed perfectly with the new indust-real notions of linear space and time. Indeed, Newtonian or mechanistic causation, which came to be adopted as the industrial revolution spread over Europe, pulled indust-reality together into a hermetically sealed package. If the World consisted of separate particles—miniature billiard balls—then all causes arose from the interaction of these balls. One particle or atom struck another. The first was the cause of the movement of the next. That movement was the effect of the movement of the first. There was no action without motion in space, and no atom could be in more than one place at one time. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Suddenly a Universe that had seemed complex, cluttered, unpredictable, richly crowded, mysterious, and messy, began to look neat and tidy. Every phenomenon from the atom inside a human cell to the coldest star in the distant night sky could be understood as matter in motion, each particle activating the next, forcing it to move in an endless dance of existence. For the atheist this view provided an explanation of life in which, as Pierre-Simon Laplace later put it, the hypothesis of God was unnecessary. For the religious, however, it still left room for God, since He could be regarded as the Prime mover who used the cue stick to set the billiard balls in motion, then perhaps retired from the game. This metaphor for reality came like a shot of intellectual adrenalin into the emerging indust-real culture. Of the French Revolution, the Baron d’Holbach, exulted, “The Universe, that vast assemblage of everything that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation nothing but in immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and effects.” It is all there—all implied in that one short, triumphant statement: the Universe is an assembled reality, made of discrete parts put together into an “assemblage.” Matter can only be understood in terms of motion—id est, movement through space. Events occur in a [linear] succession, a parade of event moving down the line of time. Human passions like hatred, selfishness, or love, d’Holbach went on, could be compared to physical forces like repulsion, inertia, or traction, and a wise political state could manipulate them for the public good just as science could manipulate the physical World for the common good. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
It is precisely from this indust-real image of the Universe, from the assumptions buried within it, that some of the most potent of our personal, social, and political behaviour patterns have come. Buried within them was the implication that not only the cosmos and nature but society and people behaved according to certain fixed and predictable laws. Indeed, the greatest thinkers of the Second Wave were precisely those who most logically and forcefully argued the lawfulness of the Universe. Newton seemed to have discovered the laws that programmed the Heavens. Darwin had identified the laws that programmed social evolution. And Freud supposedly laid bare the laws that programmed the psyche. Others—scientists, engineers, social scientists, psychologist—pressed the search for still more, of different, laws. Second Wave civilization now has at its command a theory of causality that seemed miraculous in is power and wide applicability. Much that hitherto had seemed complex could be reduced to simple explanatory formulae. Nor were these laws or rules to be accepted simply because Newton or Marx or someone laid them down. They were subject to experiment and empirical test. They could be validated. Using them, we could build bridges, send radio waves into the sky, predict and retrodict biological change; we could manipulate the economy, organize political movements or machines, and even—so they claimed—foresee and shape the behaviour of the ultimate individual. All that was needed was to find the critical variable to explain any phenomenon. If and only if we could find the appropriate “billiard ball” and hit it from the best angle, we could accomplish anything. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
This new causality, combined with the new images of time, space, and matter, liberated much of the human race from the tyranny of ancient mumbo jumbo. It made possible triumphant achievements in science and technology, miracles of conceptualization and practical accomplishment. It challenged authoritarianism and liberated the mind from millennia of imprisonment. However, indust-reality also created its own new prison, an industrial mentality that derogated or ignored what it could not quantify, that frequently praised critical rigor and punished imagination, that reduced people to oversimplified protoplasmic units, that ultimately sought an engineering solution for any problem. Nor was indust-reality as morally neutral as it pretended to be. It was, as we have seen, the militant super-ideology of Second Wave civilization, the self-justifying source from which all the characteristic left-wing and right-wing ideologies of the industrial age sprang. Like any culture, Second Wave civilization produced distorting filters through which its people came to see themselves and the Universe. This package of ideas, images, assumptions—and the analogies that flowed from them—formed the most powerful cultural system in history. Indust-reality, the cultural face of industrialism, fitted the society it helped to construct. It helped create the society of big organizations, big cities, centralized bureaucracies, and the all-pervasive marketplace, whether capitalist or socialist. It dovetailed perfectly with new energy systems, family systems, technological systems, economic systems, political and value systems that together formed the civilization of the Second Wave. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
It is that entire civilization taken together, along with its institutions, technologies, and its culture, that is now disintegrating under an avalanche of change as the Third Wave, in its turn, surges across the planet. We live in the final, irretrievable crisis of industrialism. And as the industrial age passes into history, a new age is born. The myth of suburbia, like all myths, contained elements of fact. That the new suburbs were architecturally similar was beyond dispute. However, the claim commonly made that this conformity also included all cultural tastes, child-rearing practices, levels of social activity, and patterns of neighbouring carried the argument to caricature. While the image of compulsive conformity and socialization was caricature, it is true that people in the suburbs were more socially homogeneous and more likely to engage in social interaction. There was general agreement that there were some differences, but their consequences were minimal. Nor was there any consensus on why, in suburbs, there was greater involvement with neighbours. Part of the difference, doubtlessly, can be explained by the presence of young children and higher family incomes, but even with these variables taken into account, differences remain. The more localized in nature of suburban friendship networks might simply reflect the relative isolation of the suburb and the greater difficulty of maintaining ties with those more distant. It also was suggested that suburbanites self-select for personality traits favouring sociability. In this view those who opt for the suburbs have chosen a lifestyle emphasizes “familism” over alternatives such as “careerism” and “consumership.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, the data do not appear to support this explanation. Research does suggest that the suburban neighbourhood does foster somewhat greater political participation. Suburbanites as a group tend to be somewhat more affluent than city dwellers and desire a more familistic lifestyle. It appears that those living in suburbs have some minor differences in tastes from city dwellers, for example, preferring gardening and rating cultural affairs lower. However, there is no evidence that suburban living changes tastes. Rather, those who value nature tend to gravitate toward suburbs, just as those who prefer easy access to a full cultural life tend to prefer the city. There is no evidence that suburbanites make less use of museums, concert, and art galleries than do otherwise equivalent city dwellers. Expressways allow suburbanites to get to many events as fast as those living in outer-city neighbourhoods. In recent years popular culture, such as first-run movies or sports events, have occurred outside the central city. For example, the Detroit Pistons’ basketball stadium is outside Detroit, and the New York Giants play their football in New Jersey. Needless to say, postwar suburbanites did not view themselves as living lives devoid of culture or as being excessively conforming, hyperactive joiners. They already knew what researcher such as Bennett Berger and Herbert Gans would confirm. That is, the new suburbanites had not given up their individuality, political affiliation, ethnic identity, or religious heritage as they moved houses. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
For good or ill, studies from the era of the 1950s achieved widespread popular as well as professional attention. The Organization Man was a widely read and discussed best-seller. It and its ilk helped set out contemporary view of suburbia suffered from sone serious limitations. One of the most obvious problems was rooted in the authors having preset expectations. Additionally, questions can be asked about how and why the various study sites were chosen. Rather than being “typical” suburbs, it is clear today that the sites were chosen precisely because hey were “interesting.” That is, they were selected because they were in some respects atypical, not because they were just like everyplace else. This approach to selection of a community may lead to more interesting reading, but it by definition limits generalization. The suburbs written about, for example, were almost invariably new, large-scale developments sprouting at the urban periphery. Little or no attention was paid to other types of suburbs, such as industrial suburbs, working-class suburbs, or even old established WASP suburbs. The focus of the studies was on the new middle-class subdivisions built to house young ex-GIs, their wives, and their children. Although it was not scientifically, or even logically, valid to generalize from these new suburbs to all suburbs, this was commonly done. Additionally, many of the studies fell into the so-called ecological fallacy of trying to generalize from the characteristics of an area to the characteristics of all individuals who live in that area. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Furthermore, their observations of supposedly typical suburban lifestyles were based on a single look at a new suburb immediately following the first wave of settlement. We know that a mature community viewed ten or twenty years later shows a different pattern. For example, the supposed social ability of postwar suburbia can be attributed in good part to that fact that because of the limited housing type in each subdevelopment, most of the new inmovers were approximately the same age, had the same aged children, and had the common experience of all moving into similar new houses at the same time. Most of the men also shared common experience of military service. If there was not a high degree of social interaction under such circumstances, it would be unusual. However, when most of life is frightening, and I usually feel inadequate, I may decide that being an onlooker is safer than being a doer: it is less obtrusive and hence less likely to attract hostile notice in my direction. When watching “I” is out of touch with emotions, feelings, and impulses, I develop something like Fairbairn’s Central Ego, one of whose functions is to keep me out of situations so painful that I cannot cope. Being wounded and terrified, people may withdraw into themselves in order to avoid further hurt. The danger is that they will withdraw so far that they will be left totally bereft, and get so far out of touch with their needs and feelings that they get no signals from them: it appears to such people that they have no needs—they do not feel anything. Paradoxically that may be a terrible feeling! #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The memory of having had feelings once, the capacity for which seems now lost, can fill a person with distress and longing. And in the present, I may want to keep in touch with the signals which come to me, yet be afraid of being overwhelmed by them if I do not attend to them. I may oscillate in and out of my feelings because I do not have the energy or strength to contain them at a practical level. There are other examples of the kind of people, people to whom messages from the World of others come only in very shadowy form, people not much in touch with what happens in the World of living-rooms, streets, or media. At first sight, this may not be obvious. However, slowly we realize that we are listening to someone who is not talking about people as we know them, in the round, but about “them.” We are listening to someone who can perceive only a few highly selected aspects of the World of people and things. “They,” the others, are not realistically perceived, but are experienced only in terms of their imagined capacity to assist, threaten, or frustrate. Sometimes, “they” are selectively perceived in such a way that the speaker can be both in touch with feelings, and yet able to keep them remote. “Do not be silly” or “Do not be so depressing” are examples of people speaking repressively to another person, while perhaps at the same time also disowning their own unacceptable notions. “He is out for what he can get” or “She sets her sights too high” may be said principally to enable the speaker to keep his or her own ideas isolated and disowned. Such people sometimes give us the impression that we and others are no experienced as independent people who existed before they walked into the room and who will continue to exist after they are out of sight; we are known only as experiences which must be controlled and kept away from contact with the self-image. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“Patient: I am very depressed. I had just been sitting and could not get out of the chair. There seems no purpose anywhere: the future is blank. I am very bored and want to change but I feel stuck…
Therapist: Your solution is to damp everything down, do not feel anything, give up all real relationships to people at an emotional level and just ‘do things’ in a meaningless way, like a robot.
Patient: Yes, I felt I did not care, did not register anything. Then I felt alarmed, this was dangerous. If I had not made myself do something, I would just have sat, not bothered, not interested.
Therapist: That is your reaction in analysis to me. Do not be influenced, do not be moved, do not be lured into reacting to me.
Patient: If I were moved at all, I would feel very annoyed with you. I hate and detest you for making me feel like this. The more I am inclined to be drawn to you, the more I feel a fool, undermined.”
Keep in mind that God is restoring to you the years the enemy devoured. And it may not be good to act like a robot, to not have feeling. It could cause you to have an accident. I was doing that one day, while ironing a pillow case and burned it because I was not in touch with what I was doing. It is always import to feel. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
How long with humankind have to go before they realize the only solution to self-annihilation is trust? Cut off from the external World and living in my own phantasy, I cannot feel others, for they are not real to me. My therapist and the other people around me are more than stick figures or balloons which enable me to act according to the phantasies in my head which do seem real to me, regardless of if they open their doors. I can imagine some of them to be so powerful that I must keep an eye on them and manipulate the to keep things smooth for myself, even if they are not knocking on my doors. Or I may act compliant and behave nicely to them because I imagine that is what they want, and I imagine that I must do what they say because they are always right and may feel threatened otherwise. Or I may imagine them as needing my consideration and concern so they will not take their insecurities out of my vehicle, causing me pain and costing me thousands upon thousands of dollars. What I fear to do is to know them as they are, to “discover” them so they do not try to poison me. So I am left with the choice of either feeling well but unreal, or feeling real but terrible and wondering if they are trying to set me up in a clandestine manner. I may veer between these two in an attempt to get some relief from each in turn. Bad relationships may be better than none. Even though they may wish you harm and frustrate, and have no regard for your life, it is hard to do without other people altogether, but it may be a way to say alive. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Yet, I may cling compulsively (and to others eyes tiresomely) to a loved person or valued idea, in order to keep unconscious my feelings about some of their more hateful aspects. Worse, I may cling to a relationship with an unloving or hating or unloved person, in order to keep at bay the sense of hopelessness, meaninglessness, and futility which would result from giving them up and being without anyone at all. Some people may be able to keep anxieties at bay by relating mainly to causes and ideas, and interacting with other people mainly through these. “If I stop believing in what holds me together and gives meaning to my life, only constant and unremitting self-monitoring will keep me from falling apart. I shall believe in psycho-analysis or monetarism or Adam and the Ants—they make life work living.” Somewhat better off are those people who can relate to others more directly, provided everyone’s duties and roles are carefully and minutely defined. They relate to others mainly in the meticulous execution of tasks, not risking more unpredictable and spontaneous contacts. Then there are people who prefer some kind of in/out compromise. However weakened they may be by the continual advance and retreat, it is better than nothing. Yet others may be able to make relationships, albeit tainted by fear and suspicion because they cannot help feeling that people are dangerous and easily cruel or mean. It is hard to do without people and relationships. When I fear and avoid them, something happens to myself, the self which needs to be attached to and in touch with others. Void and emptiness threaten me. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
My very identity feels as though it is disintegrating—it lacks boundaries where I should be in touch with others. I mobilize a host of defences. I look depressed, I feel depressed. However, this depression may be what I hold on to as a defence against feeling overwhelmingly anxious. And indeed, the anxieties which a person is willing to know about may be a cover to conceal anxieties about falling apart or ceasing to be a person at all. The defences against falling apart may be strong enough to be called False Selves; they may be the only parts of the personality that a terrified person dare show. One of the attractive things about this insistence on a person’s defences, is we do not speak of the False Self in condemnatory terms; we see it as a necessary defensive organization, a survival kit, a caretake self, the means by which a threatened person has managed to survive. It is worth reminding oneself, when exasperated by someone who acts flighty, irresponsible, dishonest, evasive, or snooty, that these are all defensive plays. A frightened person may make a show of anger as a way of hiding weak, scared feelings. It is easy for others to see such a person as an angry person (and to attempt a therapy on the basis of the hidden anger and the guilt which goes with it—after all, hidden anger and guilt form par of the psychoneurotic personality which was the first to be analysed and restored to relative well-being by Dr. Freud nearly a hundred years ago). However, anger and hidden guilt are not at the root of all distress, and it is possible to use the appearance of hidden anger as a defence against even ore unacceptable feelings. Our culture has a preference for these “strong” feelings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
In a word, the core of psychological distress is not guilt but fear. Guilt is itself a form of fear, but it arises at he stage when the child is becoming socialized and capable of realizing the effect of actions on other person, and the nature of their reactions of anger and condemnation. The individual feels ashamed, sad and frightened to find that one has hurt those one loves and needs. There are much more primitive fears than that, fears not the effect of our strong and dangerous needs and impulses, but of our infantile weakness, littleness, and helplessness in the face of an environment which either fails to give the support we needed as infants or else was positively threatening. Human beings all prefer to be bad and strong rather than weak. The diagnosis of guilt allows us to feel that the course of our troubles with ourselves and others is possession of mighty and powerful instinctive forces in our make-up, which take a great deal of controlling and civilizing. The philosophies of Nietzsche and Machiavelli, and the “power politics” of the present age, all make it plain that human beings feel at least a secret and often openly admitted admiration for the ruthless strong human, however bad one’s ideas and actions may be. In our competitive New World culture (including communism which is every bit as competitive as capitalism) contempt is felt for weakness. We have always known that sympathetic care for the weak and suffering, fostered by Christianity, had to fight its way forwards, and survive on the basis of much compromise; s in the often cited cases of Victorian capitalist who made fortunes by the most ruthless business methods on the one hand, and endowed churched, charities and hospitals on the other. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The main stream of the World’s active life has been carried on in the tradition of the struggle for power in which the weakest go to the wall. The superman is the criminal who has the courage to fight and does not mind hurting other people. The Christian with one’s slave-morality of self-sacrifice to save others is weak and gets crucified. A diagnosis which traced psychological troubles to our innate strength supports our self-respect and is what is called today an ego-booster. A diagnosis which traces our troubles to deep-seated fears and feelings of weakness in the face of life has always been unacceptable. To protect against occurrences like these, we have to take some positive steps. If we do not, they will continue to trip us up. Scrutinize our Externals and Internals, that is what we have to do, and make whatever realignments are necessary. Why? Because properly pave, both speed the journey toward perfection. You cannot keep yourself in a continuous state of recollection in the monastic life. You know that already, but know also that recollect you must. When? Not les than once a day. Morning or evening? In the morning make a plan; in the evening, check how you did, that is to say, what and how you did in word, deed, and thought. Why? More often than you would like to thin, you have offended God and neighbour in one manner or another. No droopy drawers here! Cinch up that cinture! Be a self-actualized being and face the diabolical onslaught head on! That is what St. Paul exhorted the Ephesians to d (6.11-17). Rein in your gluttony, and you will find it easier to bridle every others inclination of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Never drop your guard. Read or write or pray or meditate, but whatever you do, busy yourself at all time with some form of labour for the community. When it comes to corporal austerities, forget what everybody else does. Use your head. Sting, do not wound. No more. No less. Personal prayers inside the walls should not be paraded around outside the walls. The reason for that is simple. When you pray by yourself, you can hurt only yourself; that is to say, no damage is done to others. As for your own spiritual life, do not become a pig about it, too lazy to come to chapel, yet strong enough to wallow through your own peculiosities. The community’s regular spiritual exercise, participate in them wholeheartedly and single-mindedly. Beyond that—and God forbid there is any time left over!—you can pray yourselves silly. Let devotion be your guide. All spiritual exercise are suitable for all self-actualized. Sadly, not all these exercises are equally profitable to each self-actualized. Happily, no two self-actualized have the same taste. As the year passes, the many varietals of spiritual exercise are always welcomed by a monastic community. Some are good on feasts; others, no ferials. Temptation requires one sort; peace and quiet, quite another. And so on, from the times of spiritual sadness, when the dry tears sting, to the sweet weepiness of True Spiritual Joy. Any say is a hard day to renew our spiritual exercises, but when the principal feast days roll around, it all seems so easy. And, only if the are asked, the Saints, they are waiting to help; they only pretend to be hard of hearing. From one feast day to the next, we ought o make resolutions as if they will be our last. However, how can we do this? We could imagine we are about to take wing from this World to a perch in the next. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
And so we should make these times devout times, preparing ourselves carefully, passing our time prayerfully, and guarding our every observance of the Holy Rule more strictly. What is the rush? In no time we will be brough before the Final Bar, attempting to cash in on our life of spiritual labour. If we mistook the time of departure, let us put the blame on ourselves. From our point of view, we were not all that well enough prepared; from God’s point of view, we are not yet ready for glory. St. Paul described that state in his Letter to the Romans (8.18). As for the next date of departure, who knows? Whenever it is, let us strive to prepare better for the trip out there. “Blessed is the servant,” wrote the Evangelist Luke (12.37, 42), “who, when his Lord came, was found awake. Amen I say to you, all God’s goods will be put under his servant’s watchful eye.” Llanda Villa, Beautiful Victorian. Perfect Grand Queen Anne Victorian Manion by the last Bay in the World. None more beautiful. Today we kneel at Thy feet and cruse the humans who have misused you. Dear Lord in the Shining Heaven, please bless us with insight in this hour of grief, that from the depths of suffering may come a deepened sympathy for all who are bereaved, that we may feel the heart-break of our fellow humans and spirits and find our strength in helping them. Heartened by this hymn of praise to Thee, we bear our sorrow with trustful hearts, and knowing Thou art near, shall not despair. With faith in Thine eternal wisdom, we who mourn, rise to sanctify Thy name. A wise system of healing would coordinate physical and psychological, artificial and natural, dietary and spiritual treatments, using some or all of them as a means to the end—cure. However, as the spiritual is the supreme therapeutic agent—if it can be touched—it will always be the one last resort for the desperate and chronic sufferers when all other agents have had to accept defeat. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The Earth Dries Up and Withers, the World Languishes and Withers!
They say what you send around, comes around. Perhaps that is true, even if it takes a thousand years. Everyone is born. Everyone will die. This is the short summary of life. Although it is accurate, the story certainly leaves out a lot, does it not? How might we develop a fuller picture of what happens during a lifetime? Perhaps we can begin by studying interesting lives. We are all affected by the same universal principles that guide human development. Each of us will face problems on the path to healthy development. Some obstacles, such as learning to walk of finding a personal identity, are universal. Others are unusual or specialized. The challenges of development extend far beyond childhood and into old age. There really is no such thing as a “typical person” or a “typical life.” Nevertheless, broad similarities can be found in the life stages of infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, and old age. Each stage confronts a person with new developmental tasks that must be mastered for optimal development. The spread of industrialism was dependent upon the synchronization of human behaviour with the rhythms of the machines. Synchronization was one of the guiding principles of Second Wave civilization, and everywhere the people of industrialism appeared to outsiders to be time-obsessed, always glancing nervously as their watches. To bring about this time-consciousness and achieve synchronization, however, people’s basic assumptions about time—their mental images of time—had to be transformed. A new “software of time” was needed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Agricultural populations, needing to know when to plant and when to harvest, developed remarkable precision in the measurement of long spans of time. However, because they did not require close synchronization of human labour, peasant peoples seldom developed precise units for measuring short spans. They typically divided time not into fixed units, like hours or minutes, but into loose, imprecise chunks representing the length of time needed to perform some homely task. A farmer might refer to an interval as “a cow milking time.” In Madagascar, an accepted unit of time was called “a rice cooking”; a moment was known as “the frying of a locust.” Englishmen spoke of a “pater noster wyle”—the time needed for a prayer—or, more earthily, of a “pissing while.” Similarly, because there was little exchange between one community or village and the next, and because work did not require it, the units in which time was mentally packaged varied from place to place and season to season. In medieval northern Europe, for example, daylight was divided into equal hours. However, since the interval between dawn and sunset varied from day to day, an “hour” in December was shorter than an “hour” in March or June. Instead of vague intervals like a pater noster wyle, industrial societies needed extremely precise units like hour, minute, or second. And these units had to be standardized, interchangeable from one season or community to the next. Today the entire World is neatly divided into time zones. We speak of “standard” time. Pilots all over the globe refer back to “Zulu” time—id est, Greenwich Mean Time. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
By international convention Greenwich, England, became the point from which all time differences would be measured. Periodically, in unison, as though motivated by a single will, millions of people set their clocks back or forward an hour, and whatever our inner, subjective sense of things may tell us when time is dragging, or conversely when it seems to be whizzing by, and hour is now a single interchangeable, standardized hour. Second Wave civilization did more than cut time up into more precise and standard chunks. It also placed these chunks in a straight line that extended indefinitely back into the past and forward into the future. It made time linear. Indeed, the assumption that time is linelike is so deeply embedded in our thoughts that it is hard for those of us raised in Second Wave societies to conceive of any alternative. Yet many preindustrial societies, and some First Wave societies even today, see time as a circle, not a straight line. From the Mayas to the Buddhists and the Hindus, time was circular and repetitive, history repeating itself endlessly, lives perhaps reliving themselves through reincarnation. The idea that time was like a great circle is fond in the Hindu concept of recurrent kalpas, each one four thousand million years long, each representing but a single Brahma day beginning with re-creation, ending in dissolution, and beginning again. The notion of circular time is found in Plato and Aristotle, one of whose students, Eudemus, pictured himself living through the same moment again and again as the cycle repeated itself. It was taught by Pythagoras. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
In Time and Eastern Man, Joseph Needham tells us that “For the Indo-Hellenic…time is cyclical and eternal.” Moreover, while in China the idea of linear time dominated, according to Needham, “Cyclical time was certainly prominent among the early Taoist speculative philosophers.” In Europe, too, in the centuries preceding industrialization, these alternative views of time coexisted. “Throughout the whole medieval period,” writes mathematician G. J. Whitrow, “the cyclic and linear concepts of time were in conflict. The linear concept was fostered by the mercantile class and the rise of a money economy. For as long as power was concentrated in the ownership of land, time was felt to be plentiful and was associated with the unchanging cycle of soil.” As the Second Wave gathered force this ago-old conflict was settled: liner time triumphed. Linear time became the dominant view in every industrial society, East or West. Time came to be seen as a highway unrolling from a distant past through the present toward the future, and this conception of time, alien to billions of humans who lived before industrial civilization, became the basis of all economic suit of IBM, the Japanese Economic Planning Agency, or the Soviet Academy. It is worth noting, however, that linear time was a precondition for indust-real views of evolution and progress. Liner time made evolution and progress plausible. For if time were circular instead of linelike, if events doubled back on themselves instead of moving in a single direction, it would mean that history repeated itself and the evolution and progress were no more than illusions—shadows on the wall of time. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Synchronization Standardization. Linearization. They affected the root assumption of civilization and they brought massive changes in the way ordinary people handled time in their loves. However, if time itself was transformed, space, too, had to be repackaged to fit into the new indust-reality. Then suddenly in the 1950s, urban-based intellectual discovered the suburbs. And what they discovered, to their horror, was an aesthetic and social dreamland filled with beautiful, new tract housing with big emerald green lawns, trees, bushes, and flowers, station wagons, sports cars and sedans, and organization men, housewives, and children. However, attention was riveted almost exclusively on the supposed negative consequences of city-oriented intellectuals, particularly those living in New York City, was that the postwar suburbs were an unmitigated aesthetic and social disaster. Suburbia was equated with the emergence of a popular mass culture dominated by the mass media. The neatness and repetitiveness of popular taste was blamed on the suburbs. They became a scapegoat for all that the cosmopolitan critics disliked about modern life. Often, this was accompanied with glorification of the past. In The City History Lewis Mumford bemoaned the growth of middle-class suburbs: “While the suburbs served only a favored minority, it neither spoiled the countryside nor threatened the city. But now that the drift to the outer ring has become a mass movement, it tends to destroy both environments without producing anything but a dreary substitute, devoid of form and even more devoid of the original suburban values.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
Further this mass exodus to suburbia was resulting in: “a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, in uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same tasteless prefabricated food, from the same freezers, conforming in every outward and inward respect to a common mold manufacture in the central metropolis (Mumford, 1961, p. 486). Mr. Mumford, like other cosmopolitan critics, seemed particularly offended that suburbia was developing not as planned communities for those of taste, but as mass suburbanization for the common man. Often, as in the above quotation, the characteristics of the housing and the characteristics of the suburban residents were directly linked. And both were clearly found wanting. The critics embraced an extreme form of environmental determinism in which the characteristics of the area determined the character of the inhabitants. According to a 1964 New York Times Magazine article by elitist Ada Louise Huxtable, the long-time New York Times architecture critic, “It is a shocking fact that more than 90 percent of builders’ homes are not designed by architects…and the consequent damage “is social, cultural, psychological, and emotional, as well as aesthetic” (Ada Louise Huxtable, “Clusters Instead of Slurbs,” New York Times Magazine, February 9, 1964, pp. 37-44). #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Suburbia was thought by some to be a dismal place where mediocrity ruled and about which no intellectual could say anything favourable—even if they lived in one. The same biased criticism of popular tastes and cultural uniformity was delivered with far more humour in Malvina Reynolds’s folksong “Little Boxes.” Sung for decades by Pete Seeger to the point where it has become an American classic, the opening lines to the lyrics are: “Little Boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky, little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same. There’s a green one and pink one and a blue one and a yellow one and they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.” This point that the little boxes and the people who lived in them are all the same was a core belief of the city-based intellectual critics of suburbs. It was a given that suburbs bred conformity. Ironically, the children born in the little boxes would spawn the cultural revolution of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. It was the children of the suburbs who celebrated at Woodstock and Coachella. It should also be noted that this pattern of urban cities detailing the ills of suburbia is not a phenomenon common only to earlier decades. Even in 1993, in The New York Times, one could find a feature article bemoaning the isolation and lack of intellectual and cultural activities in suburbia, As stated in the article, “escapees from Manhattan have found that along with the gains have come unexpected nuisances, even deep feelings of loss. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
“And what is more, the unpleasant surprises are often the flip side of precisely the attractions that drew them to the suburbs in the first place. The emigres discover they can walk virtually anywhere at night without fear. But where to walk? So few places worth walking are open after dark…Some discover that at times their snug home on its separate lot, without a doorman downstairs or neighbor above and below, makes them feel lonely and more vulnerable, not more secure. And when pipes leak and the heat shuts off, they learn that the joys of the suburbs do not include supers” (Joseph Berger, “Emigres in Suburbs Find Life’s Flip Side,” New York Times, January 24, 1993, Metro p.30). Sounds a lot like satire. Nonetheless, there are significant differences between contemporary articles, such as that quoted above, and the typical piece written during earlier decades. While both might decry the absences of all-night take-out, current articles acknowledge that in addition to the opera, the city also has serious problems, such as old buildings with pest, noise, foul smells, a high density of unfriendly people packed into one place, lack of privacy and family values, political tensions are more visible, there are issues with parking and traffic, poor air quality, the menace of muggers and aggressive panhandlers. Contemporary laments are also less likely to be angry diatribes and more likely to be done tongue-in-cheek, with humour. Finally, the authors of contemporary suburban criticisms are more likely to be themselves suburbanites. They miss the city, but they, like most Americans having the choice, have chosen to live elsewhere. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
The writer of the New York Times piece, for example, had moved to Westchester from the West Side of Manhattan some twenty months earlier. Envy impedes our spiritual growth and harms our relationship with others. Yet with hard work and the Lord’s help, it can be overcome. Most of us will experience envy at one time or another. The danger comes when we remain unaware of our envy or do not handle it appropriately; then it has the potential to harm us and may cause us to think or act badly toward others. “For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work,” reports James 3.16. However, by eliminating envy, we can improve our relationships with others and our view of ourselves. When we realize we are not competing with others, we can then rejoice in their accomplishments. The practice of comparing ourselves to others is usually at the root of envy. It causes us to feel that we are not good enough and that in order to be acceptable we have to achieve more, acquire more, or in other ways appear to be “better” than others. It occurs when we do not value ourselves sufficiently as children of God and consequently feel we have to prove our worth by “doing” or “having.” Envy is a form of pride. Pride can create enmity, or hatred, which separates us from our fellow humans. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. Part of the reason envy can be so difficult to recognize in ourselves is that it often disguises itself in other feelings and behaviours. One disguise envy wears is the tendency to criticize. Another is the desire to act in a way that will provoke envy in others. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The good news is, once we unmask envy and begin to eliminate it, we can begin to feel much better about ourselves and others around us. Like layers of accumulated paint, envy covers our true worth, making it difficult to see ourselves accurately and change our beliefs so that we can feel better about ourselves. There are at least five reason why we need to be concerned about envy in ourselves: it blocks us from growing spiritually, it keeps us from having pure motives, it creates an “us against them” mentality, it can make us feel negative toward others, and a desire to be envied can cause others to feel negative toward us. When we grow up feeling that we are not loved for who we are and instead are criticized or are valued for how we compare to others, we can develop the habit of looking outside ourselves to feel good. People who try to pump up their self-worth by gaining the admiration of others for their thought or knowledge in reality may be suffering from a lack of understanding of their worth, and their true relation to God. However, as children of our Heavenly Father, each of us has inherent worth and has been endowed with divine potential. “We are the children of God,” the Apostle Paul declared, “and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ,” reports Romans 8.16-17. Many of us have inner standards of excellence and perfection that are hard or even impossible to meet, often causing emotional pain. We may have a hard time admitting mistake and living with imperfections. If not careful, we can end up envious of those who seem to achieve more or seem more comfortable being imperfect. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
It was once written “To oneself be true.” But who do we know who we are? One must learn to focus one’s assertive aggressive and hostile feelings, so that these do no suffuse too many inappropriate parts of oneself or one’s World. Learn to become less hostile and become more approachable so that better contact can be obtained from those you know and work with. This will allow anxiety to diminish. Self-acceptance is also useful in attacking the inner voices which persecuted oneself at times, denying one right to life and happiness. Having established the right to live, and a channel through which love and care can reach one, one will began to take an interest in the wide and varied World of other people and things. Having established the rudiment of self, mental illness can come to an end and one can be engaged in intellectual activity, accomplishing good work with success and ease. One may not only remain cured, without any recurrences of pathology, but one’s personality may continue to develop and may gain in strength. The basic anxiety-producing conflicts in human beings are no over the “gratification of desires” but over the frightening struggle to maintain themselves in existence at all as genuine individual persons. Of course guilt is a real experience and must be accepted, and there is no therapeutic result unless feelings of guilt are cleared up, but guilt is no at the core of psychological distress. Pathological guilt is a struggle to maintain object-relations, a defence against disintegration, and is a state of mind that is preferred to being undermined by irresistible fears. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The core of psychological distress is simply elementary fear, however much it gets transformed into guilt: fear carrying with it the feeling of weakness and inability to cope with life, fear possessing the psyche to such an extent that “ego-experience” cannot get started. People are dependent on the opportunities which the environment offers; one’s potentialities flourish best in an environment that understands, supports, and encourages individual growth. If the environment is unsatisfactory, development may be distorted or arrested. The True Self is as yet only potential; it will not be realized in unfavourable circumstances. Vulnerability to separation-anxiety exists when the human being is not ego-related. Ego-relatedness allows the individual to be protected by the presence of others without being impinged on by them. Given this, the vulnerable individual is able to develop in one’s individual way, without fear either of devastating loneliness or of devastating damage. People can begin to experience separateness from others, without losing one’s sense of security. The sense of belonging, of being securely in touch, as it grows in an individual by virtue of having relationships that are reliable, becomes an established property of one’s own psyche. When people feel totally secure and invulnerable, they gain proof that their trust is justified by finding they have experienced stable relationships in life. People who have not had enough of this good experience are excessively vulnerable to even the slightest loss of support. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Their chronic overdependence is a genuine compulsion which they cannot evade by effort, will-power, or intellectual understanding. Their only hope is to find someone who can understand them and help them grow out of it. That is what psychotherapy is. The need is for a relationship in which people can experience being securely held while they venture to be in touch with thoughts, feelings, or parts of the self from which fear has long kept them estranged. “Love made angry” is what happens when you want love from a person who is not giving it—you become angry with them in an attempt to force the to give what you want. This is called “coercive anger.” Obviously, at some point this anger must lead to worry hat your anger will drive away the very person you need, and for some this will lead on to guilt at having hurt the feelings of someone they care about. Not getting what you want, worrying about losing a loved person, having to live without love and mutual concern, makes you depressed as well as angry. One the bright side, however, you may in your anger turn to another person in the hope that they will love you better and so you have another chance. “Love made hungry” describes the view of the schizoid position. When you cannot get what you want from the person you love and need, it may be that instead of getting angry you simply feel more and more needy, with an ever stronger craving to get total possession of the loved person, to ensure that you will never be left wanting. However, then you may be visited by the terrible fear that your love has become so overwhelming and devouring that it will destroy your loved one, and that then there will be nothing left of them. And indeed, this can happen. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
The depression which comes from this craving brings aloofness with it: you withdraw from loving because loving destroys those you love. In this case, there is no second chance, because if that is what you believe to be the nature of love and this is what you do, you dare not love anyone for fear that it will lead to the destruction either of them or of you. The love-made-angry depressed person looks on one’s loved one as a hateful denier (a Rejecting Object), while the love-made-hungry schizoid person sees one’s beloved as a desirable deserter (an Exciting Frustrating Object) never to be fully possessed. When people reaching out and finding nothing there, the individual’s excitement about life meets with no response in the World of other people and things, so that one must turn back on oneself and be satisfied with one’s phantasies of what one wants, ceasing to look for satisfaction in a World devoid of interest. (In psycho-analytic language, cathexis is withdrawn from the object-World.) This sense of emptiness and void may be experienced where there would normally be connection with people and things, so that the individual feels one has nothing to hang on to and lacks any sense of secure attachment. In this case, one experiences their loved one’s as void and emptiness. At other times, void and emptiness may be experienced as coming from the self, as a frequent experience of hunger, for instance—the individual experiencing oneself as hungry-empty-needy-urgent-demanding-greedy-tearing-emptying in relation to their loved ones. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Every human must confront the monster within oneself, if one is ever to find peace without. There is always a two-endednes of relationships. This is not the case when one end of the relationship is experienced as not there: the experience that “the World is empty and des not hold anything for me” may be equivalent to “I am empty and cannot hold anything or anyone securely. Similarly “I am empty and will destroy, swallow, overwhelm the World” may be experienced as indistinguishable from “The World is empty and will overwhelm, destroy, swallow me.” People may experience all these possibilities, either simultaneously or in mood-swings up and down consecutively, however mutually contradictory they may seem to common sense (or rather to the “Central Ego”). Some people dread entering personal relationships which demand deep and genuine feeling on both sides. Such people may have felt compelled to withdraw heir consciousness into a relatively small area because, although their need for love is as great as anyone’s, it operates at the emotional level of absolute infantile dependence filled with need and greed and the terror of abandonment. At that level, dimly aware of their enormous need, they feel faced with risk of total loss and destruction, both of themselves and of those they love. It is the form their own love has taken and they have little knowledge of any other. Loving, therefore, seems to present them with a terrifying choice, in which both alternatives lead to loss and destruction for someone. If they let themselves be loved, that means they must let themselves be swallowed up and taken over: they must be totally compliant and cease to be an individual. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
If they let themselves love other people, this means that they themselves will inevitably take them over, insisting on their total compliance and swallowing them whole. Then the loved ones will disappear as real people. In this plight, some people try to comprise. This is called the in/out programme. Driven by their need to love and be with others, they go into a relationship but at once feel driven out again by their fear of exhausting the person they love with the demands they want to make on them, or by their fear of losing themselves through overdependence and compliance. Others escape this painful oscillation by withdrawing from feelings and relationships altogether. They then feel a dreadful meaningless emptiness. Their consciousness is confirmed to the unfeeling Central Ego, which relates only to idealized perfectly good and perfectly bad “inner objects.” Such uncomplicated phantasy-figures are all that they (selectively) perceive of all that the varied World of people and things has to offer. Libidinal relationships are quite disowned, though anti-libidinal ones may be used to keep libidinal strivings down. We can imagine spouses who feel like this being emotionless and unresponsive when their loved one’s tries to relate to them. We can imagine the dependent loved one’ greed for love and their fear of needing it. We can imagine the dependent loved one summoning up all their strength, in turn, to avoid evidence of feeling, and maturing, and becoming independent or single or having to be more of a provider in life. Out of experience in the World, from infancy onward, we form schema—ways of organizing and interpreting reality. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Lacking a schema to interpret ambiguous aspects of life, one probably does not form rational ideas about things they do not understand. As one continues to focus on reality, their mind struggles to make sense out of the apparent chaos. With patience one eventually imposes order, by seeing a reality that makes sense to them. Note, that once your mind forms a social construction of reality it controls your perception—so much so that it becomes virtually impossible not to perceive the many things that we take for granted and believe are objective reality are actually socially constructed, and thus, can change as society changes. The theory of social constructionism states that meaning and knowledge are socially created, and our assumptions and expectations may give us a perceptual set—a predisposition to interpret an ambiguous stimulus one way rather than another. Social constructionist believe that things are generally viewed as natural or normal in society, such as understandings of gender, race, class, and disability, are socially constructed, and consequently are not an accurate reflection of reality. Once preliminary hunches are formed based on a certain construction of reality, even if it is badly distorted, they interfere with accurate perceptions. Having formed a wrong idea about reality, people have more difficulty seeing the truth. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we being to the experience. Social constructs are often created within specific institutions and cultures and come to prominence in certain historical periods. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Our expectations influence how we see things. To see is to believe, but social constructs’ dependence of historical, political, and economic conditions can lead them to evolve and change. For all these reasons, religious perceptions depend on the state of the perceiver as well as on external reality. Depending on one’s perceptual set, a thought that pops into the mind while meditating may be perceived as a random cognition or as the still small voice of God. Moses perceived his burning bush and mountaintop experiences through the eyes of faith and thus assigned them a profound religious significance that would have been meaningless to someone lacking one’s perceptual sets. Imagine yourself looking with a friend at a clear night sky. Your friend points overhead and says, “Do you see the Little Bear?” Looking at the very same stars, you cannot perceive what your friend so clearly sees. Why? Because your friend, having taken the trouble to study star patterns, has eyes to see what you are not ready to notice. Similarly, people may see the Heavens, which declare the glory of God, yet not see that the Heavens, which declare the glory of God, yet not see that the Heavens are declaring God’s glory. Only the heart that already has faith will see the Heavens in the way. The point has been recognized even by religious skeptics, such as the philosopher Paul Kurtz: “I have wondered at times: Is it I who lacks religious sense, and is this due to a defeat of character? The tone-deaf are unable to fully appreciate the intensity of music, and the color-blind live in the World denuded of brightness and hue.” #RandolphHarrs 18 of 25
To have a religious experience is thus to assign sensory experience spiritual significance. It is to interpret phenomena with an awareness of the presence of God. Those who have a schema for interpreting life through the eyes of faith are like those who have a schema for perceiving the dalmatian: they have difficulty viewing things another way, yet sometimes find I hard to get others to see reality as they do. To refer simply to “religious experiences” as if we all knew exactly what we meant by them and had an agreed-upon definition would be naïve. In different religious traditions and in different historical epochs religious experience has referred to many different things. In the last few decades there has been, within the Christian tradition, a wide resurgence of interest in unusual religious experience. What are we to make of them? In the 1950s, Aldous Huxley invited his readers to take advantage of mind-altering drugs to give them new spiritual experiences. In the 1970s, Timothy Leary was a great advocate of altering consciousness with hallucinogenic drugs. Sadly, today, we are living with the tragic consequences to many of those who followed Leary’s advice and who now suffer. Even so, many of the drug takers longed for better spiritual awareness. However, if religious experience can be induced through drugs, what are we to make of what we believe are normal religious experiences? How can we properly understand them and derive the greatest benefit from them? Furthermore, how do we answer those who set aside all religious experiences on the grounds that we can give them an explanation in terms of psychology or physiology? The great philosopher Bertrand Russell, for example, asked, “What is the difference between a person who drinks alcohol and sees green snakes, and a person who half starves himself to death and sees God?” #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
We know from the use of hallucinogenic drugs, as well as from the agonizing experiences of some mentally ill people, that religious experiences can be a sign of psychopathology. The hardheaded and previously skeptical philosopher Simone Weil did not regard her spontaneous mystical experiences as proof of reality of God or of the truth of Christian doctrines. Rather, she saw the as drawing attention to, or helping to focus upon, a spiritual understanding of the things of this World: “If I light an electric torch at night, I don’t judge its power by looking at the bulb, but by seeing how many objects it lights up. The brightness of a source of light is appreciated by the illumination it projects upon non-luminous. The value of a religious or, more generally, a spiritual way of life is appreciated by the amount of illumination thrown up the things of this World.” It is not the experience that matters but the effects of that experience. The evidences for the reality of a spiritual experience should be seen in the subsequent life of the experiencer. The changed life of apostle Paul is the classic example of this. Spiritual experiences matter, but feelings are not the ultimate criterion for judging spirituality. Rather, “you will know them by their fruits.” With the schema of faith, a whole set of perceptions forcefully takes hold of one’s consciousness. Jesus Christ is perceived not as a psychotic but an incarnation of God. The Universe is seen not as a meaningless material reality, but as God’s creative handiwork—the ultimate miracle that makes little sense without a Creator. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
Life itself takes on purpose in a World where humans are viewed as called to recognize their limits and their value to their Creator, to assume their responsibility for the Earth and for each other’s welfare, and to serve and enjoy God forever. Lord, please open our eyes that we may see. Keep vivid in your memory the many splendid exploits of the Holy Fathers of the desert. In their lives true religious perfection has shone out like a flaming beacon on a hill. Sad to say, what we have been able to accomplish in our own modest lives adds up to a guttering candle. As Saints and friends of Christ, they served the Lord in famine and drought, coldness and nakedness, labour and fatigue, vigils and fasts, holy prayers and meditations, persecutions and derisions. Oh, how they suffered, the Apostles, the Martyrs, the Confessors, the Virgins, and all the rest who followed close upon the footsteps of Christ! They did the evangelical thing, at least as described by John (12.25), dispossessing their souls in this World that they might possess them in the next. Oh, how isolated and dedicated was the life of the Holy Fathers led in the desert! Their temptations were long and lurid, but they managed to endure. The Enemy harassed them suddenly and frequently. Just as sudden and frequent were the prayers they shot to Heaven. Their abstinences were rugged, but they managed to swallow their hunger. Crazed was their desire for spiritual progress! Feverish was their battle against what seemed the overwhelming supremacy of their vices! #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Through it all they held fast to God. Through the day they worked hard and prayed quietly to survive their harsh life; through the night they prayed, even in their sleep, their snores rising like incense to the Lord. Every hour of work seemed too long; every hour of prayer, too short. Making time to eat was impossible. The sweetness of contemplation was irresistible. All wealth, title, and honour, every friend and relative, they renounced. Nothing that smacked of all the World did they want to have. The necessities of life they scarcely touched. The pangs in their stomachs they begrudgingly satisfied. And so poor were they in the things of this World, but rich, so very rich, in graces and virtues! They were ravaged on the outside, but on the inside they were refreshed with Grace and Divine Consolation. The Fathers of the desert were aliens in their own World, but close family friends with God. In their own eyes self-esteem had no value, and hence they dressed like castaways. However, in the eyes of God they were precious, chosen ones, and further haberdashery was far from their minds. They stood in True Humility; they lived in Simple Obedience; they walked in Charity and Patience. And so daily they progressed in spirit and obtained great grace in God’s presence. They have been given as examples to all Religious and ought to rouse us to more spiritual progress. Standing in opposition to them are the Tepids, milling around every which way, affirming and denying, mummering and murmuring, whispering the rest of the World to a spiritual standstill. Religious orders, when they were founded, were quite remarkable gardens. Hotbeds of fervour they were. Their prayers were awash with devotion. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Their virtue was pruned and precise. Discipline, sometimes harsh and heavy-handed, took root. Under the rule of their Founder, and indeed under the inspiration of the Founder of Founders, Reverence and Obedience walked hand-in-hand down the garden path. These truly holy and perfect men poured out their lives in the strenuous fight against the World. The footprints they left behind are visible to this day. Odd thing, though. Today’s self-actualized, who is anything but exceptional when compared to the self-actualized of old, seems to be the exception to the rule; that is to say, one is thought to be observant and does no rock the boat, but there is not a great deal else that one does. Ah, the laziness and sloppiness of the religious life today! What Worldly winds could have cooled he fervour of our white-hot forge! Whatever happened to Motivation and Enthusiasm? They are nowhere to be seen! Is it any wonder, then, that the desire to live the religious life has decreased? Once so awake during the nocturnal watch, now you are found snoring on the battlement. Is this any way to live the religious life? And you of all people! You have had the privilege of meeting many of the devout Religious in your own community in the generation just passed. In Earth Prayers, the pain of the Earth is expressed. Knowing that the World is an intricate balance of parts we see that if one of the parts is sick or wounded, its plight and suffering affects us all. Here we humble ourselves before all creation and allow the outcries of despair from around the globe to touch our hearts, opened by the realization of an ecological self. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
Today the ability of the Earth to support life is being deeply eroded. The evidence is everywhere. We are mindlessly destroying the very web of life; millions of people are dying each year as a result of direct ecological collapse. Within the animal and plant kingdoms we are witnessing the greatest holocaust in history. Millions of species are on the verge of extinction. The old forests are being felled, the top soil washed away, and the groundwater contaminated. The air is polluted and the ran is acid. So the litany goes on, as every aspect of life on the planet is profoundly altered by the way our culture has organized the business of its existence. They have lost it, lost it, and their children will never even wish for it—and I am afraid…because the sun keeps rising and these days nobody sings. While many of us are aware of the destruction taking place on our planet, it is difficult to integrate this knowledge into our daily life. What do we do when it is not war that is killing us, but progress? When the problem is not the actions of an evil “other,” but ourselves? We fear the despair such information provokes. We do not want to feel the grief over all that is lost, nor our own complicity in the damage. This denial of feeling takes a heavy toll on us, impoverishing our sensory and emotional life. Ultimately, it puts us out of touch with reality. There is a historical tradition of prayer that foresees the ruination of the World because of human transgression. We find in the Old Testament, we find it again in the prayers of Native Americas as they witness the destruction of their way of life by conquerors. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
We are hearing it again now, as citizens from around the World express their fears and their grief at what is happening to the Earth. We have forgotten who are are. We have sought only our own security, we have exploited simply for our own ends, we have distorted our knowledge, we have abused our power. “The Earth dries up and withers, the World languishes and withers, the Heavens languish together with the Earth. The Earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statues, broken the everlasting covenant,” reports Isaiah 24.4-5. We therefore hope in Thee, O Lord our God, that we may soon behold the glory of Thy might, when Thou wilt remove the abominations from the Earth and when all idolatry will be abolished. We hope for the day when the World will be perfected under the Kingdom of the Almighty, and all humankind will call upon Thy name; when Thou wilt turn unto Thyself all the wicked of the Earth. May all the inhabitants of the World perceive and know that unto Thee every knee must bend, every tongue vow loyalty. Before Thee, O Lord our God, may they bow in worship, giving honour unto Thy glorious name. May they all accept the yoke of Thy Kingdom and do Thou rule over them speedily and forevermore. For the Kingdom is Thine and to tall eternity Thou wilt reign in glory; as it is written in Thy Holy Bible: The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. And it has been foretold: The Lord shall be King over all the Earth; on that day the Lord shall be One, and His name One. After some weeks on a healthy diet, the intellectual type of person will find, as I found, that there is greater mental clarity and greater mental drive. In fact, there may even be a tendency to overwork intellectually in reading and writing. A century ago, John Linton, of England, reported the result of a long period on a healthy diet in these words: “I was able to write with an ease and perspicacity and satisfaction which I had never before known, or had any idea of.” #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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O Wicked Wit and Gifts that Have the Power So to Seduce!
I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange story. Almost all humans are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no parallel or response in a lister’s internal life, and might be suspected or laughed at. A truthful traveller who should have seen some extraordinary creature in the likeness of a devil, would have no fear mentioning it; but the same traveller having had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental impression, would hesitate considerably before one would own to it. To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in which subjects are involved. We do not habitually communicate our experiences of these subjective things, as we do our experiences of objective creation. The consequences is, that the general stock of experiences in this regard appears exceptional, and really is so, in respect of being miserably imperfect. The Devil had been raised among us, and his rage was vehement and terrible; and, when he shall be silenced, the Lord only knows. It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain Murder was committed in Boston in 1688, which attracted great attention. We hear more than enough of Murders as they rise in succession to their atrocious eminence, and if I could, I would bury the memory this this atrocious eminence, as hi body was buried, in the Witch House’s basement. When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion fell—or I ought rather to say, for I cannot be too precise in my facts, it was nowhere publicly hinted that any suspicious fell—on the man who was afterwards brought to trial. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
As no reference was at the time made to him in the newspapers, it is obviously impossible that any description of him at that time have been given in the newspapers. It is essential that this fact be remembered. Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account of that first discovery, I found it to be deeply interesting, and I read it with close attention. I read it twice, if not three times. The discovery had been made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a flash—rush—flow—I do not know what to call it—no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive—in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river. Though almost instantaneous in its passing, it was perfectly clear; so clear that I distinctly, and with a sense of relief observed the absence of the dead body from the bed. As the circumstances of the Murder, gradually unravelling, took stronger and stronger posses of the public mind, I kept them away from mine, by knowing as little about them as was possible in the midst of the universal excitement. John Hathorne asked most of the questions and established the judicial attitude that was to prevail throughout most of the examinations and the trials. Many people suspected that the devil killed this man and he had been summoned by Sarah Good because she had also been accused of bewitching a few girls in the town. Mr. Hathorne asked the children to look at Sarah God and say whether she was one who afflicted them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
They accused her to her face, “upon which they were all dreadfully tortured and tormented for a short space of time.” When they recovered from their fits, they charged her with causing them, saying that her specter had come and tormented them although her body remained “at a considerable distance from them.” This was spectral evidence, that is, evidence concerning a specter or apparition of the accused, rather than her bodily person. It was eventually to become the central legal issue of the trials, but at the moment we need only see why it seemed initially so convincing to the examining magistrates. Here were girls afflicted with violent physical symptoms which had no known physical cause, but which a physician had attributed to witchcraft. There was a malicious old woman accused of causing them. When the sufferers accused her they were immediately thrown into convulsions. What could be more plausible than that the convulsions were inflicted as revenge for the accusation? Yet such behaviour was still unfamiliar enough in Salem so that one of the recorders noted that “none here see the [specters of the] witches but the afflicted and themselves.” However, the change was so startling that I fully believed the girls derived their impression in some occult manner. For instance, we knew there was something occult going on because the throat of the murdered man had been cut straight across. In the opening speech for the defense, it was suggested that the deceased might have cut his own throat in the dreadful condition referred to. Yet, it would have been impossible for such a wound to be self-inflicted by either hand. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Certainly, Mr. Hathorne was convinced; when the children had recovered and repeated their accusation he turned to the accused woman. “Sarah Good, do you not see now what you have done? Why do you not tell us the truth? Why do you this torment these people children?” Certainly many of her neighbours though her malicious, since they attributed to her a number of inexplicable events, including the death of a cow which perished in a “sudden, terrible and strange unusual manner.” Such testimony was common in witchcraft cases, and it has caused much unseemly hilarity among the modern historians. It is likely, they have asked, that His Satanic Majesty the Devil or any of his minions would stop to concern themselves with the fate of a New England cow? The answer is that nothing is more likely. What else would a fertility god concern himself with but the health or sickness of crops, of animals, and of humans? From the standpoint of a society that still remembered who the Devil was, no testimony could be more relevant. As a matter of fact, the village witches who still exist in rural England are often expert in folk medicines, human and animal, as well as charms, and until recently many of them were midwives. Sarah Osburn also denied that she had hurt anyone, but the girls feel again into fits. Mr. Hathorne asked her how this happened. Perhaps, she said, the Devil went about in her likeness doing harm, but she knew nothing about it. Sarah Osburn was the first at Salem to assert the principle that the Devil can impersonate an innocent person. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Whether the devil could or not was a matter of debate in the seventeenth century, but most Protestant authorities agreed with Goodwife Obsurn that, as Hamlet put it, “The Devil hath power/ to assume a pleasing shape.” However, the principle was not discussed at this hearing, since Sarah Osburn was a likely a suspect as Sarah Good, if for no other reason than her lying. Lying was still considered a serious sin in the seventeenth century, and a crime as well, legally punishable by the courts. Nine of us had not the smallest doubt about those passages, neither, I believed, had any one in Court. When Mr. Hathorne tried to find out how well Sarah Osburn knew Sarah Good she said she did not know her by name. Mr. Hathorne asked if Sarah Osburn had been tempted by the devil, and she said no. Why then, he asked, had not she been at church? She had been sick, she said, and unable to go. However, her husband and others contradicted her. “She had not been at meeting,” they said, “this year and two months.” To understand why the matter of church attendance was considered so significant one must remember that the seventeenth century saw witchcraft as literal Devil worship, and therefore as a rival religion to Christianity. This is why the magistrates sometimes asked accused persons, as they asked Sarah Good, what God they served. And if the accused person avoided speaking the name of God (as Sarah Good did), they had reason to think it a suspicious circumstance. The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the judge, on the other side of the court. He slowly shook a great grey veil, which he carried on his arm for the first time, over his head and whole form. Then he collapsed, all was gone, and his place was empty. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The examinations of Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn afford grounds for suspicion and for further examination. However, the major event of that first day of March was the examination of Tituba. It began like the others, but it changed very quickly: “Tituba, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?” “None.” “Why do you hurt these children?” “I do not hurt them.” “Who is it then?” “The Devil, for aught I know.” “Did you never see the Devil?” “The Devil,” said Tituba, “came to me and bid me serve him.” She went on, with a minimum of judicia prodding, to provide a detailed confession of witchcraft, the first of approximately fifty that were made during the Salem trials. On March first and second, in her examination, Tituba said that the Devil had come to her in the shape of a man—a tall man in black, with white hair. Other times he had come in the shape of an animal. He had told her he was God, that she must believe him and serve him six years, and he would give her many fine things. He had shown her a book and she had made a mark in it, a mark that was “red like blood.” Many people thought this to be a revelation. “Then I saw another beast, coming out of the Earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. He exercised all authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to comedown from Heaven to Earth in full view of men. Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the Earth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“He ordered them to set up an image in honour of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless one had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name,” reports Revelation 13.11-17. Sarah Osburn was to die there on the tenth of May. Tituba, like later confessors, was never brought to trial. She lay in jail until she was sold to pay the jailer’s fees, her master refusing to pay them. Sarah Good was brought to trial. Another reaction to Tituba’s confession was to confirm the community in its fear of witchcraft, and particularly its fear of the three accused women. The night of March First William Allen and John Hughes heard a strange noise; it continued frightening them, but the approached and “saw a strange and unusual beast lying on the ground. Going up to it, the said beast vanished away and in the said place started up two or three women fled, not after the manner of other women but swiftly vanished out of sight, which women we took to be Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and Tituba.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The next night William Allen again had hallucinations: “Sarah Good visibly appeared to him in his chamber, said Allen being in bed, and brought an unusual light with her. The said Sarah came and sat upon his foot. The said Allen went to kick at her, upon which she vanished and the light with her.” Notice that in this hallucination as in many others the hallucination stops as soon as the subject is able to move or speak. A curse is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particular, “curse” may refer to such a wish or pronouncement made effective by a supernatural or spiritual power, such as a god, or gods, a spirit, or natural force, or else as a kind of spell by magic or witchcraft. The Winchester rifle is a handsome gun that legend has it was forged in Hell. Whoever possesses the cursed rife either suffers disaster or fortune. Oliver Fisher Winchester was an American businessman and politician, best known as being the founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Oliver Winchester was born November 30, 1810 and dead December 10, 1880. Oliver Winchester was known for manufacturing and marketing the Winchester repeating rifle, which was a much re-designed descendant of the Volcanic rifle of some years earlier. Mr. Winchester was more learned than his kind in the mysteries of a deep and thrilling lore of peculiar fascination. He was a man highly honoured for his natural gifts and knowledge of learned books which nobody else could read, that was when he took his second orders the bishop gave him a mantle of scarlet silk to wear upon his shoulders in which, and his lordship had put such power into it that, when the parson has it rightly on, he could govern any ghost or evil spirit, and even stop an Earthquake. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Such a powerful man, in combat with supernatural visitations discovered that a division of Smith & Wesson firearms was failing financially with one of their newly patented arms. Having an eye for opportunity, Mr. Winchester assembled venture capital together with other stockholders and acquired the Smith & Wesson division, better known as the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, in 1855. By 1857, Mr. Winchester had positioned himself as the principle stockholder in the company and relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, and changed the name to New Haven Arms Company. After experiencing a slow start, and then a booming success with the Henry rifle, the company reorganized once again and the first Winchester rifle was the Model 1866, which had been nicknamed the Yellow Boy. The gun was called Yellow Boy because it should be remembered that, howsoever strange and singular it may sound to us that a mere lad should formally solicit such a performance at his own hands. Gradually Mr. Winchester amassed a considerable fortune. When Mr. Oliver Winchester died on December 10, 1880, his ownership in the company passed to his son, William Wirt Winchester (who married Sarah Lockwood Pardee in 1862), and died March 7 1881 at the young age of 43. The couple has also had a child, Annie Pardee Winchester, born June 15, 1866, and died 6 weeks later on July 25, 1866. Mrs. Winchester was deeply troubled by the loss of her daughter. In the course of her daily walk, she had to pass a certain heath or down where the road wound along through tall blocks of granite with open spaces of grassy sward between them. #RandpolphHarris 9 of 13
There in a certain spot, and always in the same place, she declared that she encountered, every day, a baby with a pale and troubled face, clothed in a little dress of white pique, made with two skirts. The pique was cut slightly Gabriele, and rounded off in the front with scallops, bound with white braid, with a button in each scallop, and ribbon-sash, tied at the left side, with one hand always stretched forth, and the other pressed against her side. “She is my baby,” Mrs. Winchester would say, and she often used to come to her parents house in New Haven; but that which troubled her was, that she had now been dead three years, and she had seen her body laid in the grave at her burial, this that she saw every day must needs be her soul or ghost. The hair of the appearance, sayth Mrs. Winchester, is not like anything alive, but it is so soft and light that it seemth to melt away while you look; but her eyes are set, and never blink—no, not when the sun shineth full upon her face. She maketh no steps, but seemth to swim along the top of the grass; and her hand, which is stretched out alway, seemth to point to something far away, out of sight. It is her continual coming; for she never failth to meet Mrs. Winchester, and to pass on, that hath quenched her spirits; and although she never seeth her by night, yet cannot she get her natural rest. Mrs. Winchester went to see a doctor who told her, “The case is strange but by no means impossible. It is one that I will study, and fear not to handle, if you will be free with me, and fulfill all that I desire.” Mrs. Winchester was overjoyed, but she perceived that the doctor turned pale, and was downcast with some thought which, however, he did not express. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
The doctor knew that this might be a doemonium meridianum, the most stubborn spirit to govern and guide that any human can meet, and the most perilous withal. He made an appointment to go with Mrs. Winchester to the spot where she had these encounters. They had hardly reached the accustomed spot, when they both saw her at once gliding towards them; punctually as the ancient writers describe their “lemures, which swoon along the ground, neither marking the sand nor bending the herbage.” The aspect of the baby girl was exactly that which had been related by Mrs. Winchester. There was a pale and stony face, the strange misty hair, the eyes firm and fixed, that gazed, yet not on them, but on something that they saw far, far away; one hand and arm stretched out, and the other grasping the girdle of her waist. She floated along the field like upon a stream, and glided past the spot where they stood, pausingly. But so deep was the awe that came over the doctor, as he stood there in the light of day, face to face with a human soul separate from her bones and flesh, that his heart and purpose both failed him. He had resolved to speak to the spectre in the appointed form of words, but he did not. He stood like one amazed and speechless, until she had passed clean of out sight. When they returned to the house, and after he had said all he could to pacify Mrs. Winchester, he took leave for that time, with a promise that when he had fulfilled certain business elsewhere, when then he alleged, he would return and take orders to assuage these disturbances and their cause. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
The doctor later told Mrs. Winchester that he thought it was best that they try an exorcism, but his Church, as is well known, hath abjured certain branches of her ancient powers, on grounds of perversion and abuse. So he referred her to a medium. The medium told Mrs. Winchesters, “There is a danger from the demons, but so there is in the surrounding air every day.” There was a kind of trouble in the air, a soft rippling sound, and all at once the shape appeared, and came towards the medium gradually. She opened her parchment scroll, and read aloud the command. The spirit paused, and seemed to waver and doubt; stood still; then she rehearsed the sentence again, sounding out every syllable like a chant. The spirit then swam into the midst of the circle, and there stood still, suddenly. Her knees shook under her, and the drops of sweat ran down her flesh like rain. But, although face to face with the spirit, the medium’s heart grew calm, and her mind was composed. The spirit then commanded Mrs. Winchester to move West and build a mansion in honour of the spirit killed by the Winchester rifle and “as long as the hammer keep pounding, her heart would continue to beat.” The medium dismissed the troubled ghost, until she peacefully withdrew, gliding towards the west. Mrs. Winchester moved to San Jose, which was near her family Member, Enoch Pardee, an occultist, prominent physician, free mason, and Mayor of Oakland, California USA, had built his family’s mansion in 1868, which is now known as the Pardee House Museum. Masonry has influenced more the modern witchcraft; it has influenced dozens of occult orders. Mrs. Winchester bought a farm house and built a massive mansion. There was something very painful and peculiar in the position of the Winchester mansion through the nineteenth century. The estate in those days was in a transitory state, and Mrs. Winchester, like her formularies, embodied a strange mixture of the old belief with the new interpretation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
However, the mansion is now flanked by a pleasantness, a beautiful garden and lawn, and it is surrounded by a sole grove of palm trees. It has also the aspect of age and of solitude, and looks the very scene of harmony and supernatural events. A legend might well belong to every beautiful glade of grass around, and there must surely be a haunted room somewhere within its walls. The incredible mansion, scenery of the legend still survives, and, like the field of the forty footsteps in another history, the place is still visited by those who take interests in the supernatural tales of old and new. Freemasons supposedly conducted a séance in the mansion in August of 2019. A phantom made an answer willingly. It stated, “before the next Yule-tide, a fearful pestilence will lay waste the land, and myriads of souls will be loosened from the flesh, until our valleys will be full.” The general facts stated in this diary are to these matters of belief accounted a strong proof of the veracity of the Ghost that the plague, fatal to so many millions, did break out in the global village at the close of the year. How sorely must the infidels and heretics of this generation be dismayed when they know that this Black Death, which is now swallowing its thousands in the streets of the great city, was foretold several months before the outbreak, under the séance of a freemason, by a visible and suppliant ghost! And what pleasure and improvements do such deny themselves who scorn and avoid all opportunity of intercourse with souls separate, and the spirits, glad and sorrowful, which inhabit the unseen World! May they who observe the Sabbath and call it a delight, rejoice in Thy Kingdom. May the people who sanctify the seventh day be sated and delighted with Thy bounty. For Thou didst find pleasure in the seventh day, and didst sanctify it, calling it the most desirable of the days, in remembrance of creation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Today is the return of our guided Mansion Tour! The tour guide-led experience allows guests to access areas of the mansion that have been closed since March 2020. Click the link in our bio for more information. winchestermysteryhouse.com/recent-links
Specialization Can Get Jobs Done with Less Loss of Time and Labour!
This happy breed of humans, this little World, this precious stone set in the silver sea, which serves it in the office of a wall, or as a moat defensive to a house, against the envy of less happier lands. This blessed plot, this Earth, this realm, this America. O! beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on. One of the second great principles that ran through all Second Wave societies: specialization. For the more the Second wave eliminated diversity in language, leisure, and life-style, the more it needed diversity in the sphere of work. Accelerating the division of labour, the Second Wave replaced the casual jack-of-all-work peasant with the narrow, purse-lipped specialist and the worker who did only one task, Taylor-fashion, over and over again. As early as 1720 a British report on The Advantages of the East India Trade made the point that specialization could get jobs done with “less loss of time and labour.” In 1776 Adam Smith opened The Wealth of Nations with the ringing assertion that “the greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour seems to have been the effects of the division of labour.” Dr. Smith, in a classic passage, described the manufacture of a pin. A single old-style workman, performing all the necessary operations by himself, he wrote, could turn out not only a handful of pins each day—no more than twenty and perhaps not even one. By contrast, Dr. Smith described a “manufactory” he had visited in which the eighteen different operations required to make a pin were carried out by ten specialized workers, each performing only one or a few steps. Together they were able to produce more than forty-eight thousand pins per day—over forty-eight hundred per workers. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
By the nineteenth century, as more and more work shifted into the factory, the pin story was repeated again and again on an ever-larger scale. And the human costs of specialization escalated accordingly. Critics of industrialism charged that highly specialized repetitive labour progressively dehumanized the worker. By the time Henry Ford started manufacturing Model T’s in 1908 it took not eighteen different operations to complete a unit but 7,882. In his autobiography, Ford noted that of these 7,882 specialized jobs, 949 required “strong , able-bodied, and practically physically perfect men,” 3,338 needed men of merely “ordinary” physical strength, most of the rest could be performed by “women or older children,” and, he continued coolly, “we found that 670 could be filled by legless men, 2,637 by one-legged men, two by armless men, 715 by one-armed men and 10 by blind men.” Basically, the specialized job required not a whole person, but only a part. No more vivid evidence that overspecialization can be brutalizing has ever been adduced. A practice which critics attributed to capitalism, however, became an inbuilt feature of socialism as well. For the extreme specialization of labour that was common to all Second Wave societies had its roots in the divorce of production from consumption. Russian, Poland, Germany, or Hungary can no more run their factories today without elaborate specialization than can Japan or the United States of America—whose Department of Labour in 1977 published a list of twenty thousand identifiably different occupations. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
In both capitalist and socialist industrial states, moreover, specialization was accompanied by a rising tide of professionalizing. Whenever the opportunity arose for some group of specialists to monopolize esoteric knowledge and keep newcomers out of their field, profession emerged. As the Second Wave advanced, the market intervened between a knowledge-holder and a client dividing them sharply into producer and consumer. Thus, health in Second Wave societies came to be seen as a product provided by a doctor and a health-delivery bureaucracy, rather than a result of intelligent self-care (production for use) by the patient. Education was supposedly “produced” by the teacher in the school and “consumed” by the student. All sorts of occupational groups from librarians to salemen began clamouring for the right to call themselves professionals—and for the power to set standards, prices, and conditions of entry into their specialties. By now, according to Michael Pertschuck, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, “Our culture is dominated by professionals who call us ‘clients’ and tell us of our ‘needs.’” In Second Wave societies even political agitation was conceived of as a profession. Thus Dr. Lenin argued that the masses could not bring about revolution without professional help. What was needed, he asserted, was an “organization or revolutionaries” limited in membership to “people” whose profession is that of a revolutionary.” Among communist, capitalists, executives, educators, priests, and politicians, the Second Wave produced a common mentality and a drive toward an ever more refined division of Labour. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Like Prince Albert at the great Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, they believed that specialization was “the moving power of civilization.” The Great Standardizers and The Great Specializers marched hand in hand. The widening split between production and consumption also forced a change in the way Second Wave people dealt with time. In a market-dependent system, whether the market is planned or free, time equals money. Expensive machines cannot be allowed to sit idly, and they operate at rhythms of their own. This produced the third principle of industrial civilization: synchronization. Even in the earliest societies work had to be carefully organized in time. Warriors often had to work in unison to trap their prey. Fishermen had to coordinate their efforts in rowing or hauling in the nets. George Thomson, many years ago, showed how various work songs reflected the requirements of labour. For the oarsmen, time was marked by a simple two-syllable sound like O-op! The second syllable indicated the moment of maximum exertion while the first was the time for preparation. Hauling a boat, he noted, was heavier work than rowing, “so the moments of exertion are spaced at longer intervals,” and we see, as in the Irish hauling cry Ho–li–ho–hup!, a longer preparation for the final effort. Until the Second Wave brought in machinery and silenced the songs of the worker, most such synchronization of effort was organic or natural. It flowed from the rhythm of the seasons and from biological processes, from the Earth’s rotation and the beat of the heart. Second Wave societies, by contrast, moved to the beat of a machine. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
As factory production spread, the high cost of machinery and the close interdependence of labour required a much more refined synchronization. If one group of workers in a plan was late in completing a task, others down the line would be further delayed. Thus punctuality, never very important in agricultural communities, became a social necessity, and clocks and watches began to proliferate. By the 1790’s they were already becoming commonplace in Britain. Their diffusion came, in the words of British historian E. P. Thompson, “at the exact moment when the industrial revolution demanded a greater synchronization of labour.” Not by coincidence, children in industrial cultures were taught to tell time at an early age. Pupils were condition to arrive at school when the bell rang so that later on they would arrive reliably at the factory or office when the whistle blew. Jobs were timed and split into sequences measure in fractions of a second. “Nine-to-five” formed the temporal frame for millions of workers. Nor was it only working life that was synchronized. In all Second Wave societies, regardless of profit or political considerations, social life, too, became clock-driven and adapted to machine requirements. Certain hours were set aside for leisure. Standard-length vacations, holidays, or coffee breaks were interspersed with the work schedules. Children began and ended the school year at uniform times. Hospitals woke all their patients for breakfast simultaneously. Transport systems staggered under rush hours. Broadcasters fitted entertainment into special time slots—“prime time,” for example. Every business had its own peak hour or seasons, synchronization arose—from factory expediters and schedulers to traffic police and time-study men. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
By contrast, some people resisted the new industrial time system. And here again gender differences arose. Those who participated in Second Wave work-chiefly men—became the most conditioned to clock-time. Second Wave husbands continually complained h their wives kept them waiting, that they had no regard for time, that it took them forever to dress, that they were always late for appointments. Women, primarily engaged in noninterdepedent housework, worked to less mechanical rhythms. For similar reasons urban populations tended to look down upon rural folk as slow and unreliable. “They do not show up on time! You never know whether they will keep an appointment.” Such complaints could be traced directly to the difference between Second Wave work based on heightened interdependence and the First Wave work centered in the field and the home. Once the Second Wave became dominant even the intimate routines of life were locked into the industrial pacing system. In the United States of America and Russian, in Singapore and Sweden, in France and Denmark, Germany and Japan, families arose as one, ate at the same time, commuted, worked, returned home, went to bed, slept, and even participated in pleasures of the flesh more or less in unison as the entire civilization, in addition to standardization and specialization, applied the principle of synchronization. The rise of the market gave birth to yet another rule of Second Wave civilization—the principle of concentration. First Wave societies lived off widely dispersed sources of energy. Second Wave societies became almost totally dependent on highly concentrated deposits of fossil fuel. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
However, the Second Wave concentrated more than energy. It also concentrated population, stripping the countryside of people and relocating them in giant urban centers. It even concentrated work. While work in First Wave societies took place everywhere—in the home, in the village, in the fields—much of the work in Second Wave societies was done in factories where thousands of labourers were drawn together under a single roof. Nor was it only energy and work that were concentrated. Writing in the British social science journal New Society, Stan Cohen has pointed out that, with minor exceptions, prior to industrialism “the poor were kept at home or with relatives; criminals were fined, whipped or banished from one settlement to another; if they were poor, the insane were kept in their families, or supported by the community.” All these groups were, in short, dispersed throughout the community, instead of segregating them to one location, so they could go unnoticed and the community would remain functional and peaceful. Industrialism revolutionized the situation. The early nineteenth century, in fact, has been called the time of Great Incarcerations—when criminals were rounded up and concentrated in prisons, the mentally ill rounded up and concentrated in “lunatic asylums,” and children rounded up and concentrated in schools, exactly as workers were concentrated in factories. Concentration occurred also in capital flows, so that Second Wave civilization gave birth to the giant corporation and, beyond that, the trust or monopoly. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
By the mid-1960s, the average cars costs about $2,752 $(23,518.24 in 2021 dollars), and a gallon of gas was around 31 cents ($2.65 in 2021 dollars). During this same time frame, the Big Three auto companies in the United States of America produced ninety-four percent of all American cars. In Germany five companies—Volkswagen, Daimler-Benz, Opel (GM), Ford-Werke, and Bayerische Motor Werke AG accounted for 91 percent of production. In France, Renault, Citroen, Simca, and Peugeot turned out virtually 100 percent. In Italy, Fiat alone built 90 percent of all autos. Similarly, in the United States of America 80 percent or more aluminum, beer, a tobacco cigarette, and breakfast foods were produced by four of five companies in each field. In Germany 92 percent of all the plasterboard and dyes, 98 percent of photo film, 91 percent of industrial sewing machines, were produced by four or fewer companies in each respective category. The list of highly concentrated industries goes on and on. Socialist managers were also convinced that concentration of production was “efficient.” Indeed, many Marxist ideologues in the capitalist countries welcomed the growing concentration of industry in capitalist countries as a necessary step along the way to the ultimate total concentration of industry under state auspices. Dr. Lenin spoke of the “conversion of all citizens into workers and employees of one’s huge “conversion of all citizens into workers and employees of one huge ‘syndicate’—the whole state. Half a century later the Russian economist Dr. N. Lelyukhina, writing in Voprosy Ekonomiki could report that “the USSR possesses the most concentrated industry in the World.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Whether in energy, population, work, education, or economic organization, the concentrative principle of Second Wave civilization ran deep—deeper, indeed, than any ideological differences between Moscow and the New World. With all this new commerce and the use of the automobile, the idea that government is somehow responsible for providing good roads is not a long-standing historical American belief. Prior to the Civil War, state governments and even localities sometimes became engaged in the building of turnpikes. However, this was most often done not so much as a statement of public policy but as a means of making money. Public corporations offered stock to investors on assumption that the roads would turn a handsome profit. In practice this hope was rarely realized. Even within the city itself the improvement of a street commonly would be done by the city, but at private expense. Property owners facing the street generally paid special tax assessments for street improvements. The assumption was that the owners would benefit from the paving both in conveniences and increased property values, and thus they should be assessed for the improvement. Only in the latter-nineteenth century did business leaders and middle-class city residents become increasingly vocal over the need for municipalities to assume the responsibility for the paving and maintenance of streets in the city. However, what finally tipped the scales in favour of paving in many communities was not the coming of the automobiles, but rather the widespread bicycle craze of the 1890s. Bicycle clubs and enthusiasts provided the extra pressure for well-paved municipal roads. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
By the turn of the century, most large municipalities were well along in replacing gravel, cobblestone, and brick streets with asphalt. Heavily traveled streets and new roads were often constructed with concrete. Beyond the city lines was another matter. Auto travel outside of the city was a major adventure. Roads varied from improved gravel to unimproved cowpath. No national road system existed, and prior to World War I, coast-to-coast auto trips received national newspaper coverage. Completion of such difficult coast-to-coast ordeals, which commonly took months, were used by automobile manufactures to advertise the reliability of their products. Following the first World War, the U.S. Army even sent a convoy of trucks coast to coast across the United States of America to highlight the need for a national road. One of the officers leading the convoy was the then-Captain Dwight Eisenhower, who viewed the publicity stunt as a chance to see the country. The 1919 trip from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco took the army convoy sixty-wo days. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower would sign into law the bill creating our present interstate highway system. In the 1920s, responding to increasing pressure from the motoring public and an effective political lobby of auto dealers, road builders, tire manufactures, and the like, the federal government gradually accepted major responsibility for maintaining roads between major cities. In 1916 the Federal Road Act had provided funds for state to organize higher departments. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The 1921 Federal Road Act got the federal government directly into the highway-building business. A Bureau of Public Roads was established to plan highways to all cities of 50,000 or more, and the federal government agreed to pay half the cost of highways designated as “primary roads.” This was the effective beginning of the national highway system. Some states, particularly the more prosperous ones outside the south, also established major road-building programs of their own. The best-known and most enduring of these state plans was that of New York. The regional planner Robert Moses built a series of landscaped, limited-access parkways radiating from New York City. The regional planner Robert Moses built a series of landscaped, limited-access parkways radiating from New York City north to Westchester Country and Connecticut and east into Long Island. The first of these parkways, designed t allow New Yorkers a pleasant means to escape the city, was the Bronx River Parkway. The parkways were deigned for pleasure driving rather than businesses, so trucks and busses were banned. To prevent anyone from later changing this purpose, Mr. Moses deliberately designed the parkways to have many overpasses too low for trucks to pass under. Although today the various parkways carry several times the traffic for which they were designed, these 1920s parkways are still the most attractive routes into or out of New York City. The period between World Wars also witnessed the construction of many new bridges and tunnels. For example, virtually all of Chicago’s current bridges linking its Loop and downtown with the north and west of the city were constructed during the 1920s. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
New York City dramatically improved its automobile access when the Holland Tunnel opened in 1927 and the George Washington Bridge opened four years later. Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Bridge, opened in 1926, greatly simplified access to that city, while on the west coast a decade later the San Francisco Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge assured San Francisco’s continued development. The Golden Gate Bridge is today an internationally recognized symbol for San Francisco. The importance of the Bay Bridge to the economic activity of the city was dramatically emphasized in 1990 when the bridge had to be closed for months because of Earthquake damage. It is easy to forget just how dependent contemporary life is upon truck transport. Trucks in many ways did for goods what the automobile did for people. Unlike railroads, trucks were free of fixed routes and fixed schedules. Their use eliminated the necessity of being on a railway right-of-way. Trucks were far more flexible; they could make door-to-door pickups and deliveries. Motor truck deliveries were also much faster than rail for short hauls. Moreover, motor trucks had no need of elaborate terminal facilities on valuable inner-city land. Truck registrations more than tripled during the 1920s, from one to three and a half million. Although it was not recognized at the time, the breakaway from reliance on central-city rail-accessible factories had begun. As truck transport grew, a central-city rail-accessible factories had begun. As truck transport grew, a central-city plant location next to the railroad line became less of a necessity. Increasingly, the more important factor was easy access to an interstate highway. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
During the nineteenth and early-twentieth century period of industrialization, factories had located in an inner-city industrial belt surrounding the central business district. This had occurred largely out of necessity since raw materials and goods could not be transported without rail access. Steam-driven industrial plants also relied on the trains to being the coal that powered he factories. The cost of inner-city land and congestion of an inner-city location were seen as inevitable prices of doing business. However, while moving goods by horse drawn wagon was difficult and expensive in the city, it was impossible for intercity cartage. Prior to the 1920s, there was no alternative to the railroad. The technology of the truck changed this. Trucks could easily haul five to six times the weight a wagon could, and they could do it at ten times the speed. This mean an inner-city factory or warehouse location might no longer be a necessity. This widespread use of electric motors to replace steam generators also meant that the factory no longer needed to be dependent on coal delivered by rail for its power. Electric power lines could cleanly and efficiently accomplish what previously required large coal-fed steam generators. The 1920s and 1930s, however, did not see trucks replace rail as the major form of interurban transport. That would occur after the building of the publicly funded interstate highway system following World War II. The truck’s initial advantage was in the short haul. The 1937 report of the National Resources Committee showed that motor trucks had a lower costs per mile within the first 250 miles of the city. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Lower equipment and maintenance costs indicated that motor cartage was superior in cost and speed for the short haul. Rail transport, however, retained a major advantage in both cost and efficiency for longer-distance travel. The longer trip, the lower cost per mile for rail transport. Also, the motor trucks of the interwar years were not able to carry the largest or heaviest loads. Nor were the highways suitable for carrying large loads at high speeds. Finally, the railroads continued to benefit from the fact that existing industrial plants were located along rail lines and from the history of shipping goods by rail. The continuation of old patterns was not seriously challenged during the Depression of the 1930s, since few new plants were built either in the cities’ industrial zones or on more peripheral locations. Only the second World War, with its demand for huge war plants that could be located on open suburban land, would demonstrate the feasibility of locating new commercial plants in peripheral locations. Our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have shown us by Their examples and teachings that work is important in Heaven and on Earth, and that is why transportation and home life are important to so many people. God created the Heavens and the Earth. He caused the seas to gather in one place and the dry land to appear. He caused grass, herbs, and trees to grow on the land. He created the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars. God created every living thing in the sea or on the land. Then He placed Adam and Eve on the Earth to take care of it and to have dominion over all living things. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The child’s mind is not simply that of a miniature adult. First, as parents, teachers, or Christian educators we may wish to be sensitive to children’s limitations. Hard as it is for the adult to appreciate, preschoolers may be forming mostly misconceptions—which must later be reversed—of the meaning of Bible stories that adults love to teach them. Young primary school children may be incapable of grasping the analogy on which the object lesson of the children’s sermon is based. When we try to pour gallon-sized concepts into pint-sized minds, we should not be surprised when our children come home and tell us about “Gladly, the cross eyed bear.” As children’s minds develop, so do their conceptions of God. They put away childish things such as their conceptions of Santa Clauslike deity—which may not be exactly what they were taught but rather what they thought they were taught. Some revert to alternative simplistic images of God and the World. “We try to domesticate God,” observes Madeleine L’Engle, “to make his might actions comprehensible to our finite minds.” Others will struggle—with the competing claims of various religions, with the problem of evil and the suffering of the innocent, with the clash between scientific findings and literal interpretations of biblical texts—and will reject their childish faith. If God’s thoughts and ways are higher than our own (as a jet flies higher than a bird), then God is to us as we are to the preschooler, only more so. Just as the preschooler cannot fathom adult logic, indeed is baffled by mysteries and paradoxes that are, perhaps, were simplicities to God. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Our position before God is rather like that of the occupant of a two-dimensional flatland trying to understand our three-dimensional World, or like our trying to conceptualize a World with four dimensions. Try as we might, we can no more think our way through things that are to us ultimate riddles than a four-year-old can do calculus. If God is all-powerful and all-good, then why does evil exist? (It is the classic dilemma. Either God cannot abolish evil or He will not. If He cannot, He is not all-powerful; if He will not, He s not all-good.) However, we have to live peaceably with the mysteries of faith “For My thoughts are not your thoughts neither are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the Heavens are higher than the Earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts,” reports Isaiah 55.8-9. Also, try this one: If God is the sovereign Creator and sustainer of all history, what room is there for human freedom? If there is even an ounce of human freedom, enabling history to be deflected this way or that at different forks in the road, how can God be its sovereign Lord? If, on the other hand, God is ultimately in control of everything, even of our choices, how can we humans be deemed responsible? Such issues—called contradictions by nonbelievers and paradoxes by persons of faith—are indeed troubling, but less so once we realize that if God’s thoughts and ways were like our own, God would not be God, or else we would be gods, too. Imagine a dog caught in a trap or a child with a thorn in a finger. To assist either we must ask them to trust what their limited intelligence cannot comprehend: that moving the law father back into the trap is the way to get it out, that hurting the finger more may be the way to stop it hurting. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
We can only hope that, based on noting besides their confidence in us, the dog and the child will have faith. Sometimes, because of their unbelief, we can do no mighty works. Nevertheless, if human life is in fact ordered by a beneficent being whose knowledge of our real needs and of the way in which they can be satisfied infinitely exceeds our own, we must expect a priori that His operations will often appear to us far from beneficent and far from wise, and that it will be our highest prudence to give Him our confidence in spite of this. Make no mistake about what we are suggesting. We are not saying, “Give up the struggle, do not doubt, stop trying to turn childish beliefs into more mature ones.” The Old Testament heroes of faith were people who dared admit their bafflement, who even dared argue with God. To immediately shrug off every difficult question by saying that we cannot know God’s thoughts is not so much intellectual humility as it is a cop-out. Some baffling issues may be neither inherent contradictions nor paradoxes, but simple unresolved puzzles that will eventually yield to careful, patient analysis. However, if having pondered, searched, and struggled, we remain baffled, we can relax. To our finite minds some philosophical puzzles seem impenetrable. At such points, science may actually be an assistance to faith, both by reminding us of the immaturity of our cognition (on a divine scale) and by suggesting that irreconcbale concepts may, from our perspective, be an essential characteristic of nature. Light is a wave and light is a particle, the physicists tell us. “There are trivial truths and great truths,” said the physicist Niels Bohr. “The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
After grappling with the paradoxes and contradictions of faith we are left a frightful decision. The choice is between unbelief, which sees sheer madness the divine wisdom. To love with the mysteries of faith requires that we do not demand of God that we be able to comprehend His being. We must in the last analysis accept that as the Heavens are higher than the Earth or as a mature adult’s understanding is higher than a toddler’s, so God’s ways are higher than our own. It is good to be dumped on. How often? Occasionally. Why? It is a reminder. Of what? That this is not our World; that we are exiles somewhere between this World and the next. It is all right to hope, but not to put hope in this World. It is not so bad to be lied about. How often? Every now and then. Why? It is an experience. It draws us toward humility and shields us against vainglory. By and large we Devouts are virtuous gents. However, to be vilified in the marketplace, crucified in the monastery! That is what often happens, but who knows the real story? God knows. He is our witness. He will vouch for us when the Final Times comes. What happens when a person plants oneself firmly in Go? One learns one does not have to stay far for nourishment. What happens when that same person is tried and tested or besieged with bad thoughts? One comes to understand there is nothing without God, as John has written (15.5), and that one needs more. What happens when that person cries, groans, and puts to prayer all the miseries one suffers? It wears one down to the point that one desires death to come, that “one can be dissolved and be with Christ,” as Saint Paul wrote to the Philippians (1.23). #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
One or all these calamities will help the person of goodwill to take note. Perfect Security and Plentiful Peace—these commodities cannot be had, at least in this World. However, when we feel the great power of God, there will be a transformation rather than a loss. If humans live only wholly in beneficial harmonious feelings, if one consistently rejects all negative and destructive ones, the result must certainly be that one will enjoy better health in the body as one already enjoys the best in mind des have at the very leas a limited influence upon the body. This is proven by mental shock hastening the heartbeat; by worry acting on the nervous system and affecting the flow of secretions, thus contributing towards indigestion; by violent anger raising the blood pressure. Because fear liberates toxic poisons, the expression “died of fright” may be literally true. If one emotion brings a blush of blood to the face, another takes the blood away and leaves pallor. In the first case, it has led the minute arteries of the skin to expand; in the second case, it has led them to contract. If this is what a momentary state of mind can do to the body, imagine what a persistent state can do! Intense happiness felt on hearing some important good news will start a smile on the face. Intense anxiety wrinkles the forehead and depressed the mouth; if it becomes habitual and chronic, the bowels become constipated. These two facts about wholly opposite moods are known to nearly everyone, because the line of causality is straight, obvious, and universally witnessed. What is less known because harder to discern is the third fact that selfish inconsiderate stubbornness and constant hatred create the poison of uric acid in the bloodstream and his indirectly lead to rheumatism. What is first felt mentally is also most immediately reflected physically. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The Old World system lists the following inner causes of functional sickness: fear and untruthfulness weaken the kidneys; anger affects the liver; depression and worry affect the lungs; excessive joy affects the heart; overactive mentality affect the stomach; timidity, indecision, and cowardice affect the liver by producing insufficient bile. Consider the life of trees. Aside from the axe, what trees acquire from humans is inconsiderable. What humans may acquire from trees is immeasurable. From their mute forms there flow a poise, in silence; a lovely sound and motion in response to wind. What peace comes to those aware of the voice and bearing of trees! Trees do not scream for attention. A tree, a rock, has no pretence, only a real growth out of itself, in close communion with the universal spirit. A tree retains a deep serenity. It establishes in the Earth not only its root system but also those roots of its beauty and is unknown consciousness. Sometimes one may sense a glisten of that consciousness, and with such perspective, feel that humans are not necessarily the highest form of life. Thou didst choose us for Thy service from among all peoples, loving us and taking delight in us. Thou didst exalt us above all tongues by making us holy though Thy commandments. Thou hast drawn us near, O our King, unto Thy service and hast called us by Thy great and holy name. And Thou hast given us in love, O Lord our God, [Sabbaths for rest,] holidays for gladness, festivals and seasons for rejoicing. Thou hast granted us [this Sabbath day, and] this Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Season of our Freedom, this Feast of Weeks, the Season of the Giving of our Blessings, this Feast of Tabernacles, the Season of our Gladness, this Eighth Day Feast of Assembly, the Season of our Gladness, as a holy convocation, commemorating our liberation from shackles. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Randolph Harris II International 