Home » Love (Page 73)
Category Archives: Love
We are Like Ships that Clash in the Night
It is suspense, it is hope, that make the food of misery; certainty is always endured, because known to be past amendment, and felt to give defiance to struggling. There was advice, much of it of course from New York. The advice that rankled most came from Samuel Ward McAllister, the self-appointed arbiter of New York society. Appalled by the vision conjured by Sacramento’s King’s arena, of crème and rabble mixing in such volume and with such indecorous propinquity, Ward McAllister in a column in the New York World advised: it is not quantity but quality that the society people here want. Hospitality which includes the whole human race is not desirable. I urge Sacramento hostesses to hire some French chefs to improve their culinary diction. In these modern days, society cannot get along without French chefs. The person who have been accustomed to delicate fillets of beef, terrapin pate de foie gras, truffled turkey and things of that sort would not care to sit down to a boiled leg of mutton dinner with turnips. I should also advise that they do not frappe their wine too much. Let them put the bottle in the tub and be careful to keep the neck free from ice. For, the quantity of wine in the neck of the bottle being small, it will be acted upon by the ice first. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
In twenty-five minutes from the time of being places in the tub the wine will be in a perfect condition to be served immediately. What I mean by a perfect condition is that when the wine is poured from the bottle it should contain little flakes of ice. That is a real frappe. The thing is Ward McAllister was serious. Ward McAllister was one classy voice, and it was clear to everyone that he spoke with the sanction of New York’s blue bloods. Among Sacramento’s leading citizens there was also a deep fear of being second class. No one topped Sacramento in historical architecture, Mc Mansions, and plush landscapes, but the city’s upper echelons there was a veiled anxiety that the city in its commercial advance may indeed have failed to cultivate the finer traits of man and woman. Mrs. Caroline Astor, undisputed queen of New York society, created a social aristocracy of unparalleled extravagance and exclusivity. Mrs. Astor’s list of “Four Hundred” were the bread and butter of this era’s high society. She was an arbiter of social acceptability while also working to keep the undesirables in their place. The King’s arena was a giant white banner waved in Mrs. Astor’s face. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
I remember how it seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away into the World of dreams. With its gorgeous classical buildings packed with art, its clean water and electric lights, and understaffed police department, the King’s arena was Sacramento’s conscience, the city wanted to become. Days too often destroys an air-built castle at the moment of its completion, without the least ceremony or remorse. As we let go and allow God to work out our issues in life, happiness becomes self-proclaimed and effortless. There is less required from the outside World to be experiences. We let go of the illusions of others as the source of our happiness. Instead of looking to get from others, we now look to give. People seek to be with us. We kiss the stars, we rise, we are your main desire. Your flesh, we are. Cold, we are so cold. Your mouth, these words, silence. It turns humming, we laugh, my head falls back. Moon hangs around my head, a blade over my head, reminds me to do before I am dead. Night consumes light and all I dread reminds me what to do before I a dead. Sun relines, heats my mind, reminds me what to leave behind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Light eats night and all I never said reminds me what to do before…I am to see you, to touch you, to feel you, to tell you; reminds me. Now, Lord, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your children. For your sake, Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. Give ear, God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name. Besides accounting for our knowledge of right and wrong, the moral sense closes the gap between moral knowledge and moral behavior by providing a motive for moral behavior. Since moral knowledge consists of feelings of pleasure and uneasiness, the prospect of enjoying or avoiding these feelings is a sufficient motive for pursuing virtue and avoiding vice. If moral knowledge were not ultimately a matter of feelings, it would be possible for someone to know a certain kind of action is virtuous but still have no motive for doing it. The moral sense also enables us to account for our approval and condemnation of actions and character as following from our being pleased or pained by them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
God determined us to be pleased by benevolent actions; and when nothing interferes with the moral sense, we count benevolence a virtue and malevolence a vice. Consciousness advances itself when it is provided with essential information which then becomes activated by intention. This in turn prompts inspiration, humility, and surrender, and these tendencies become progressively more operative. When dominant, they lead to dedicated and perseverance. In addition to these aspects of consciousness, progress is greatly assisted by expert guidance and the usefulness of spirituality. Father, God, you said that you would supply all of my needs according to your riches. You are God, the Lord my provider. What is impossible is possible with you. And you promised my end would be better than my beginning because all things are going to work together for my good. Thank you that you are faithful to your word and will work mightily in my behalf. I know that by believing in your power, God, that surpassing greatness is released. I am not discouraged by the size of the task, for the Lord God is with me. He will see to it that it is finished completely. God’s power is at work in my life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Bedroom Scale
Our minds shine not through the body. She managed his correspondence and kept his books, while he concentrated on getting his building ready for the World’s fair. They dined together in his office, on meals brought in from the across the street. He touched her and caressed her and let his eyes fill with tears of adoration. Then they sat down to pray: Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us today, our daily nourishment. Forgive our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but delivers us from the evil one. Can the mind forget the history of its own life? For if you forgive people when they sin against you, your Heavenly father will also forgive you. However, if you do not forgive people their sins, your father will not forgive you. As deep cries unto deep, so my thoughts cries unto thee and you do answer. I am renewed and refreshed; my whole being responds to your love, and I am complete in thee. All my ways are guarded and guided, and I shall live with thee eternally. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
The road to misery is often through the most pleasing paths. When God breathed his life into you, he put something in you to give you an advantage. There is something about you that makes you stand out, something that draws friendly people and opportunity, something that causes you to overcome obstacle, to accomplish dream. Sometime I wonder how did I get to where I am? This is not just my own ability. All of our knowledge is based on our experience. I have good fortune to meet with success, I shall proceed to the examination of morals, politics, and criticism. All of our simple ideas in their first appearance are derived from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent. I first make myself certain, by a new review, of what I have already asserted, that every simple impression is attended with a correspondent impression. The application of ideas beyond their nature proceeds from our collecting all their possible degrees of quantity and quality in such an imperfection manner as may serve the purpose of life, which is the proposition I proposed to explain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The skeptic who maintains that we cannot know there are other persons is already contradicting oneself by supposing in referring to the plural, we. If such-and-such is not instance knowing, then no one has ever known anything and there cannot be such a thing as knowing. When these norms are arranged I order of their indefeasibility, it would seem that where observation unequivocally reveals just that when we look at an inkwell we directly perceive a sense datum and that is claim is indefeasible in that observation unequivocally presents us with a sense datum. The image in the mind is only that of a particular object, though the application of it in our reasoning be the same, as if it were universal. The postulation of God and immortality can by no means insure that the ultimate moral goals will, in fact, be reached, even though it was precisely to insure their attainment that the postulates were made. The moral order is an objectively valid order, that moral values belong to the nature of reality, and the history of the World process is fitted to realize this order. If we were to assume that the goal of World-process is the realizing of happiness, there would be the weightiest empirical evidence against us. #RandolpHarris 3 of 5
With moral worth and goodness, it is different. Conditions that work against happiness may work for, not against the developing, trying, and testing of moral fiber. The very imperfection of the World is an argument pointing to the theistic conclusion. There remains yet a gap between the claim that the Universe works toward a moral purpose and the full claim that God exists. Belief in God is presupposed by belief in an objective and eternally valid morality. If the moral law is eternally valid, and valid whether we recognize it or not, how could this eternal validity stand alone, not embodied in matter and neither seen nor realized by finite minds, unless there were an eternal mind whose thought and will were therein expressed? One can readily agree that the World as we experience it is better adapted to be a vale of soul-making than a hedonistic holiday camp. Yet, there are difficulties about even the soul-making view. Some human suffering (the unmerited suffering of young children, for instance) cannot always be treated plausibly as developing moral fiber, or as realizing any other moral value. #Randolphharris 4 of 5
The natural environment can figure as the destroyer of moral personality as well as its preserver and nourisher. The validity of the law to an eternal mind, surely contains a confusion of the logical and psychological. Christianity provides a uniquely helpful way in which we can see the unlovable neighbor, admit one and about our neighbor, we bring our view of one into relation with God’s action—his action in creating our neighbor and his constant and costly redemptive action on our neighbor’s behalf. Good and evil are relative to the person who uses these words; and when people are joined together in a commonwealth, then good and evil are subject to the determinations of the commonwealth. As for our motives for pursuing good and avoiding evil, they may be summed up as self-interest. Were it to our own interest to purse what others, or the commonwealth, have designated as evil, we certainly would. Our observation of an instance of virtuous action is the occasion for a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction, which enables us to distinguish that action as virtuous. The rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Heaven Below and the Heaven Above—I speculate No More
We may summarily reject all miracles, prophecies, narratives of angels and demons, and the like, as simply impossible and irreconcilable with the known and universal laws which govern the course of events. There is a sympathetic power in all states of mind, and they who have reached the deep secret of eternal rest have a strong power of imparting calm to others. His absence broke her heart. She had fallen in love. His visits thrilled her, his departures destroyed her. She was perplexed—had seemed to be conducting a courtship and even urged her to abandon her studies and run with him to Shanghai, China, but now he was gone and his letters came only rarely. She gladly would have left London under the flag of marriage, but not under the reckless terms he proposed. He would have made an excellent husband. He was affectionate in ways she rarely encountered in men, and he was adept at business. She missed his warmth and touch. As she gazed out of her window and the sparkling stars, she said to herself, “Let me not mar that perfect dream by an auroral stain, but so adjust my daily night that it will come again.” #RamdolphHarris 1 of 7
He was credulous inasmuch as the miracles, as they are narrated, cannot, in the light of our modern knowledge of the uniformity of nature, be accepted as historical facts. Protagonists of the supernatural, and opponents too, take it for granted that well all possess some natural (as oppose to revealed) way of knowing that and where the unassisted potentialities of nature (as opposed to a postulated supernature) are more restricted than the potentialities which, in fact, we find to be realized or realizable in the Universe around us. We must be careful not to overpsychologize our poltergeist agents. As many critics of psychoanalysis have complained, it is easy to find psychopathology and stress conditions anywhere one looks for them. Now that parapsychologist expect to find psychopathology, it is not surprising that they do find it in these cases. If poltergeist outbreaks are simply due to young people with repressed hostility who are under psychological stress, we should expect to see whole school buildings come crashing down by the dozens each year around finals time. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
At any given time, there are probably hundreds of thousands of young people who have more severe psychological disturbances or who are enduring far greater stress than any of the poltergeist agents who have been studied. The real question is, what are the catalysts that set off so very few individuals, turning them into poltergeist agents? What is it in their psychological (or physical) makeup that can cause such gross violations of the laws of physics? It must be work effected in a manner different from the common and regular mode of providence, by the interposition either of God himself, or some intelligent agent superior to human beings. The occurrence of poltergeist is to serve for the proof or evidence of some particular doctrine, or in attestation of the authority of some particular person, then surely poltergeist agents must be conceived in this way. It is only and precisely insofar as it is something really transcendent—something, so to speak, which nature by itself could not contrive—that such an occurrence could force us to conclude that some supernatural power is being revealed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Poltergeist activities are not essentially overridings, but signs. If a sign is to signify to the unbeliever, then there must by some means independent of the doctrinal system itself by which the signs may be identified and read. It is necessary to insist on two fact that seem to be often overlooked—namely, that part of the price which must be paid for this method of interpretation is the sacrifice of the use of these incidents as independent evidence of the genuinely revelatory character of the doctrines; and that such a sacrifice presumably entails the rejection of sensible operations, which, being above the comprehension of the spectator, and contrary to the established course of nature, is taken to be the divine. Nature is the will of God, and hence that a portent is not contrary to nature, but contrary to our knowledge of nature (Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura). Neuroelectric discharges become blocked in the body and are instead reflected in the surrounding environment. When the agents cannot deal with disturbances in the traditional way, such as headaches, vomiting, and seizures, then the poltergeist are activated within the agent and the energy is transferred to something in the environment that reflects the disturbance that the body is trying to resolve. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
People who are basically possessed or haunted by a poltergeist indicate signs of abnormality in their brainstem, and it may be associated with alterations in brain structure and function. There is no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life than that derived from the testimony of people and the reports of eye-witnesses and spectators. Yet all testimony must ultimately be subject to assessment by the supreme court of experience. Certainly, there are a number of circumstances to be taken into consideration in all judgments of this kind. Yet the ultimate standard by which we determine all disputes is always derived from the experience and observation. The weight of the testimony required must depend on the apparent credibility of the events reported. If the events are in some way marvelous and rare, then the testimony for them has to be treated with more circumspection than the witness to everyday occurrences. A poltergeist agent is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a poltergeist, from the very nature of the fact, is as an entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
However, if there is sufficient historical evidence to establish that a poltergeist agent exists or there is real paranormal activity, like the universal eight-day eclipse that had occurred in January 1600, then our present philosophers [scientists], instead of doubting the fact, ought to receive it as certain; and ought to search for the causes whence it might be derived. Therefore, it seems more likely that the poltergeist are not of a violation of the laws of nature, but rather, and more weakly, of violation of the usual course of nature. Divine companionship—I have an inner friend who walks and talks with me daily. He is not afar off, but is within me, a constant companion. I shall never become lonely, for my friend is always near. I have but to speak and he answers. Before ever my lips spoke, he told me of his love. Oh, my kind friend, how dear to me is your presence. The spirit within me is my friend. Eternal peace, undisturbed and quiet, I feel you calm. I would enter your gates with joy and live in peace in your house. Eternal and blessed presence, illumine my mind and command my will that my soul may be refreshed and that my life may be renewed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
One blessing had I, than the rest so larger to my eyes that I stopped gauging, satisfied, for this enchanted size. It is the limit of my dream, the focus of my prayer—a percent sustaining bliss contended as despair. I knew no more of want or cold, phantasms both become, for this new value in the soul, supremest Earthly sum. The Heaven below the Heaven above obscured with ruddier hue. Life’s latitude leant over-full; the judgment perished, too. Why joys so scantily disburse, why paradise defer, why flood are served to us in bowls—I speculate no more. Lover of my soul, and keeper of my spirit, none can separate us, for we are one. So shall your wisdom guide me, your presence dwell within me, your love keep me and your life envelop me now and forever for. It is forever calm and peaceful. It is, therefore, a principle of complete satisfaction which knows no unsatisfied desire. The only appetite or desire of Infinite Mind is for the complete manifestation of its own constructive contemplation. My life is a part of the Universal Life; its peace, calm and satisfaction are manifesting in and through me now in absolute perfection. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
I love that Draper James Hydrangea Row Peplum Knit Dress
There is no place I would rather be in this World, although I have been looking at mansion in France, you would be surprised what $6 million can get you. Anyway, in your eyes I am lost. I stand in awe of your beauty. A thing of beauty will be a treasure forever. As my head hits the pillow, I will dream of you. So, baby let us just turn down the lights and close the door. Oh, I love that Draper James Hydrangea Row Peplum knit dress. I unzip the back to watch it fall, while I kiss your neck and shoulders. No, do not be afraid to show it off, I will be right here to hold you. I have been in love with you baby. Oh, my darling, I was so lonely searching for you and for you only. My darling I love you so. My love is true, longing for you, no one else will do. When I first saw you dear I know you were alone. I said to myself that I had better make you my own. Your brother caught us kissing. I thought he would surely tell, until he started playing those wedding bells. Now my darling, I am yours forever. Do not ever leave me, leave me never. My darling I love you so. www.draperjames.com
That Wretched, Rash, Intruding Fool, Farewell! I Took Him for Better!
In human nature, the Scriptures center on the fact that so many different interpretations are possible and are accepted by so many different sincere believers. Traditional religion, therefore, is not infallible but only probable, as is all history. Reason and tolerance are the only cures for vindication of human nature. In all behavior there occurs an unrestricted concomitance of physical and physical events. Hence, each behavior episode is susceptible of interpretation in both physiological and psychological terms. There are two stories to be told, each throwing light on the other, but neither story as such makes the other what it is. The twofold story is really about one natural order of events. Moreover, that one order of events has a progressive natural history designated by the word evolution. An adequate description of this process requires us to recognize that evolution has not been uniformly continuous, as Darwin believed, but has involved from time to time major discontinuities or critical turning point. These turning points are marked by the abrupt appearance of certain phenomena called emergents. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
An emergent supervenes upon what already exists, arises out of what already exists, is something genuinely new in the history of the Universe, occurs in a manner that is unpredictable in principle since it conforms to no general laws, and cannot be naturalistically explained but must be accepted with natural piety. The successive emergent in the panorama of evolution mark stages of progress from lower to higher. In picturing the totality of nature, we have a pyramidal scheme. The full significance of emergent evolution cannot be grasped, however, as long as one remains at the level of a philosophy based on the procedure sanctioned by the progress of scientific thought. A basic presupposition of the system is one in which the existence of a physical World is nowise dependent on being perceived or thought of by any human or sub-human mind. Physical events exert an advenient influence on the sense receptors of organisms. By virtue of their physical power, the organism respond by respond by referring the signs arising within the psychophysical system to regions of physical space in the process called proficient reference. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The result is an emergent object correlated with the externa event in such a way as to be biologically useful to the organism. The pyramid of emergent evolution is a hierarchy of kinds of relatedness. Four basic concepts are needed to unfold it consequences—stuff, substance, quality, and property. The ultimate stuff consists of psychophysical events, and the mode of their relatedness in a given system is that system’s substance. Each system has intrinsic qualities grounded in its substance and extrinsic properties grounded in its relation to other systems. Besides the emergent there are resultants, or phenomena that are repetitive, predictable, and the source of quantitative continuity. Emergence generates progress in continuity, but through resultants there is continuity in progress. The universal correlation of physical and physical events. The mind is a quality emergent at a high level of evolutionary advance. The directing activity, otherwise called spirit or God is manifest. Thus, the whole course of events subsumed under evolution is the expression of God’s purpose, which embraces all that has been and all that will be brought about in the course of evolutionary advance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
The view of evolution, a mystery, unexplained, and inexplicable except, perhaps, to God. However, doing this research, it has been revealed that the spirit and soul are two different essences. The spirit is God in us, the soul is also from God, but it is the essence of human that causes the body to live. Is it possible, however, for one to live without a soul? It seems probable. It has been thought that babies who are born through invitro federalization do not have souls. More than 26,000 children are born from invitro fertilization treatment in the United Kingdom, and as they reach adulthood, many will discover they are too unable to have babies naturally. There are genetic causes of infertility that you can pass on. It means that the next generation may be infertile as well. If there is a genetic origin this genetic origin of infertility may be transmitted to the next generation. It is also believed that invitro fertilization removes conception from the marital act and because it treats babies as a product to be manipulated, violating the child’s integrity as a human being with an immortal soul from the moment of conception. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
With embryotic stem cell research, genetic engineering, and cloning are things that have arisen with invitro fertilization. However, nothing can move a body that God wills to be at rest or impede or alter the movement of a body that he wills to be in motion, bodies in themselves are inefficacious; and since there is a necessary connection between the volition, God is the true cause of the motion in bodies, and the action of his will is their moving force. Accordingly, when one ball strikes a second ball and the second ball moves, God is the real or true cause (cause reelle, veritable) of the second ball moving. Since God acts not at random, but in accordance with general laws of motion that he has enacted, the impact of the first ball may be called occasional, or particular, cause (cause occasionnelle, particuliere) of the second ball moving. Granted that bodies are inefficacious, it is true fortiori that they cannot necessarily produce changes in the mid. And God being the true cause of movements in bodies, it follows that the mind cannot produce changes in the body. We may, for instance, exert ourselves to do something without success, and it is possible that God might have conjoined to our volitions effects contrary to them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
As it is, God acts according to laws connecting mental events and cerebral events in such a way that, if the body is suitably disposed, our volitions are executed. Evils exists in the World not to create despair, but to create activity. It is perfectly impossible to conceive that any creatures of God’s hands can be condemned to eternal suffering. Could we once admit such an idea, all our natural conceptions of goodness and justice would be completely overthrown, and we could no longer look on God as a merciful and righteous Being. The doctrine of life and immortality is brought to light by the gospel is the doctrine that the end of righteousness is everlasting life, and the wages of willful and wanton sin are death. It is wrong to cause a decedent to suffer serious and fatal injuries, as well as fear and terror of impending death. Along with the loss of support, loss of net earnings of the descendent, loss of services, loss of inheritance of prospective accumulations, mental anguish, emotional pain and suffering, loss of society, care, love, affection, solace, protection, companionship, comfort; to endure conscious physical pain and mental suffering. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
These acts and omissions were outrageous and gross in that they knew or, in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have known that these people were unqualified, inexperienced, and ill-prepared to have positions of authority. These individuals acted oppressively, and in such a manner that was despicable and subjected others to cruel and unjust hardship in conscious disregard for the safety of Randolph Harris and others. As a direct and proximate result of the negligence, recklessness and carelessness, plaintiffs have suffered foreseeable damages in an amount to be proven at trial. The aforementioned conduct of each of the defendants was despicable and oppressive and subjected Randolph Harris to cruel and unjust hardship in conscious disregard of his health, safety, and welfare. Each of the defendants willfully, wantonly, recklessly, maliciously, and despicably chose not to properly act. Some people may come off as gentlemen of the situation, for his own master’s purpose, manipulates human beings, including his own children, and who does not even do it very well. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
These types of individuals are plausible, not monsters, but they appear to have grown morally blind—a verdict which, in due course, evidently applies also to the more immature manipulators, whose loyalty to their master’s seems to know no reservations. It is never good to become deeply involved in a situation of increasing ugliness, some people might see these types of individuals and their associates as incarnations evil, they are corrupted enough from any balanced point of view, a condition that is also intimated by the heavy-headed revel. In a World where people are forced to act, there appears to be no room for passive and obedient innocence. It is crushed, and perishes. That wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took him for better. Take your fortune; you will find to be too busy is some danger. The death of my father has shaken me so profoundly that I refuse to accept it as natural, and look at the events that occurred shortly after, which were caused by negligence, recklessness and carelessness of defendants. They negligently failed to warn me as to the risks inherent in this situation. Their acts and omissions were outrageous and gross in that they knew. In a World where people are forced to act, there appears to be no room for passive and obedient innocence. It is crushed, and perishes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Please Help Save the Life of this Mother
No child should have to go through life without loving parents. Every being and specifically their life belongs to God. Therefore, life is something of great importance and has meaning and significance because we are attached to some goals which we do not consider trivial and in that sense these goals are obtainable for us. In declaring that one’s life is worthwhile in the objective sense, one is saying that he or she is attached to certain goals which are both attainable and of optimistic value. To let things advance is enlightenment. Humans are outstanding because they are astonishing and extraordinary beings with amazing physical and extraordinary talents. Cognition of the magnitude of a human being allows us to enjoy wisdom, discernment, insight, discretion, knowledge, will power, conscience, love, perfectionism and management. Human life is so important that it has always attracted the attention of scholars and philosophers. The most important principle of human rights is the right to life. There are no other rights for humankind without the right to life. According to Article III of the Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person, and this right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his or her life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
One institution that is found in any society is the family. Family is an integral part of everyone’s house. In some societies, the common units are the small groups made up of parents and children (called nuclear or primary families) and larger groups (called the extended or secondary family), which also includes aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins. Before the turn of the century, most Americans and Canadians lives in extended families—either several generations within the same house, or several sub-units, each living in a nearby house. However, today, the households of most people in North American include only the nuclear family. Urbanization and the Industrial Revolution have been responsible for the change. The number of farmer decreased and the number of those in factory and office jobs grew enormously. As individual’s job became more important to them, people were more willing to move away from home town and family ties and establish an independent life. This trend has had an important effect in reducing the socializing influences of the extended family, which often continued strongly throughout the whole life of a rural adult. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Originally, the family served as almost a self-contained society. Perhaps one of the reasons for the immense popularity of the film “The Godfather.” That sort of solidarity and support is strangely attractive to modern people in America, Canada, Europe, Africa, Russia, and Mexico, who are largely cut loose from their own extended families. What are the traditional functions of the family? They provide long-term personal intimacy and companionship, regulate sexual relations, ensure the continuance of society through birth and socialization of children, and provide economic support for dependents, and later, for the parents, through their children. The family of any person starts with parents itself. Parents understand the child’s strengths and weaknesses and guide the child to the right path. If the parent models thrift, the child will be thrifty. This is one reason why some children get lifted out of poverty—because their parents model good traits even if they are of meager means or could not attend the best university. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Parents play the biggest role in our development. Mother and Fathers are essential for our mental, physical, social, spiritual, financial, educational, and career development. Parents help us in every step of our lives. They comfort us when we are babies who come into the World crying and fussing. They provide us with love, nourishment, values, security, pleasure, culture and are the most precious gift of God for humans. A person can expect unconditional love from their mother and father and parents take great care of our upbringing. They help us overcome our negative attributes and insufficiencies. Parents are there to change our pampers when we wake up in the middle of the night wet and soiled. They take time off work to nurse us back to health when we are sick and take us to the doctor. Parents go out of their way to make us feel special on our birthday by showering us with gifts, balloons, cake, ice cream, hugs and kisses. A child with good parenting rarely fails in life. In many people’s success, the role of the parents is the foundation. Many World leaders and philosophers describe the role of their parents in their life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Love and care are essential elements to human beings. Parents gift many blessings to their children and are directly involved in their development. They share in our happiness and sorrow equally. When a kid is sad, the parent is sad, and when you are happy, your parents are happy. They love you more than you can imagine and share a psychic bond that allows them to detect your emotions when you are unwilling to express them. Without parents, it would be very difficult for anyone to have a great life. Without parents, people have an unfulfilled life. They become isolated and face more hardships in life. The financial support of parents is a virtue of parents that helps children receive an education, develop hobbies, make long life friends, without worrying or having to work while they are still developing and forming their own personality and ideas about the World. Also, parents are your best friends, when the World seems to turn against you and harasses you, parents are there offer you moral support. Having parents at your side is a great bonding experience, as they provide immediate moral support and the strength to handle any situation. If you want your child to succeed, model the behavior you want them to embrace. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Every life is of equal value. There is a mother in Canada, with two young children who has cancer and needs a lifesaving treatment in America. The cost of the procedure is $650,000.00. Birch Hill Studio Inc located at 3208 30th Avenue, in Vernon, British Columbia V1T2C5 and Lbvlifestyle at 107-2900 Pandosy St. Kelown www.Lbvlifestyle.com are selling items and donating the proceeds to help save the life of this young lady. And there is also a “Go Fund Me” charity donation page setup at https://www.gofundme.com/23txyjck . As a person who had a father who suffered from cancer and ended up passing away from complications when I was young, I wanted to share this story for you and pray that if you can, you will help save the life of this mother so she can be there to support her child(ren). The most devastating thing for a child is to lose a parent or a sibling. I do not want to see these kids going through life looking at other people and wishing that was their parent still living. Or wondering if their parent is in Heaven with a new family and forgot all about them. Or walking around praying that their parent will give them a sign to show that they still around and still care, even if they are in spiritual form. If you can give and save a life, please do so. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
With More Knowledge We can Create Better Work and a Feeling of Knowledge
The fields of air are open to knowledge. The person who can join ideas with the most propriety will separate them with the greatest nicety. Human well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues are the requisite skills and dispositions needed to attain it. If the code of ethics are taught to people for several successive generations, the code will become congenital. Every individual inherits some predisposition from one’s predispositions from their predecessors, and later generations are therefore supposed to be more advanced intellectually than earlier ones. Good is what gives people pleasure in the long run. Ethics is the science of conduct, and conduct deals with the adjustment of acts to ends. The lower animals find their satisfaction in using the environment to their best advantage; human beings find their satisfaction, or happiness, in a similar way. Appropriate adjustments result in pleasure; inappropriate adjustments result in pain. We ought to look to our own pleasures, but we ought to do this by using intelligence, which gives us some insight, no matter how small, into what the future may bring; present pleasures may be outweighed by possible future pains. #RandolpHarris 1 of 5
Unlike primitive people, we have the ability to form ideas about remote ends, and disaster befalls us easily when we refuse to entertain such ideas or to construct them in accordance with the scientific data available to us. In fact, the whole conception of a moral consciousness is no more than a rule emphasizing the need to consider the consequences of its actions, to examine whether more or fewer possible benefits to itself and to society would result. The notion of duty is also a rule emphasizing the need to consider future benefits in contrast with present temptations. Without the feeling of duty we would simply act for ourselves alone and, in this way, in the long run act against our own best interests. Much earlier in history, an analysis of utilitarianism and biological behavior leads us to concrete educational proposals. Since people are in constant struggles with environmental forces, they ought, first and foremost, to be subjects that will help them most in this struggle. A knowledge of science, therefore, is crucial because it is the primary means by which people may be able to avert possible natural disasters. After the sciences, one ought to study psychology, education, and the social sciences because these will give insight into ways of resolving family and social problems. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The antiquated Roman literature survives, and creates for us an intimacy with the classic ages, which we have no means of forming with the subsequent ones. Light literature is the garden and the orchard, the fountain, the rainbow, the far view; the view within us as well as without. The choice public will have good writing for light readings. All art is convention of one kind or another, and each demands its own interpretation. People should also study art because it produced the kind of satisfaction that needs no justification nor analysis in terms of future satisfactions. It is an immediate good in itself, producing an immediate feeling of mental well-being. Learning should begin by introducing the child to actual experimental situations from which one should deduce the law involved. The child should be taught to regard the World as a place in which one must makes one’s own decision in accordance with the best scientific data. Therefore, teachers should encourage initiative and free expression of ideas, and they can best do this by being actively engaged in inquiry and study. A teacher who is interested in one’s work, will be more apt to produce research oriented students. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Ardent souls, ready to construct their coming lives, are apt to commit themselves to the fulfillment of their own vision. Life never seems so clear and easy as when the heart is beating faster at the sight of some generous self-risking deed. We feel no doubt then what is the highest prize the soul can win; we almost believe in our power to attain it. There is nothing that human imagination can figure brilliant and enviable that human genius and skill do not aspire to realize. What we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the future estate for which people drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love. The people who have many gratifications are apt to wander in imagination from daily and familiar joys, and confidently to reach after things yet untried. No human being springs forth from the womb as a fully-grown, sophisticated, wise, ready-for-anything adult. Nor does one possess all the necessary skills for effectively interrelating when one comes into the World. We have to learn the techniques of relating to other humans. However, we do bring some characteristics into the World with us. Exactly what is inherited and what do we learn? #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
The newborn child is new in a lot of ways. One’s new at being out in the open. One is new to one’s parents, and they are certainly new to the child, even though the baby has been pretty close to one of them for nearly a year. The baby is doing new things to meet some familiar needs, too. When the baby was a resident inside of the mother, the baby had a nice thing going—the most comfortable, most protected environment it is possible to imagine. Until birth, the infant is pretty much a product of their heredity. Heredity refers to the genetic traits and characteristics that are inherited—that come with the child when one is born, passed down from the parents. It is as possible for a baby to know something without having been at school, as it is to have been at school and to know nothing. Almighty God, kindle, we pray, in every heart the true love of peace, and guide with your wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of Earth, that in tranquility your dominion may increase until the Earth is filled with knowledge of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God and forever. The rest of your life will be the very best of your life. Happy Canada Day. Amen. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Memories of a Lifetime–I Stumbled on this Photograph
The heart is initially no more than an enlarged blood vessel, and eventually becomes the four-chambered structure found in human beings. Every great discovery is just like perception, an operation of the understanding, an immediate intuition, and as such the work of an instant, a flash of insight. They are not the result of a process of abstract reasoning, which only serves to make the immediate knowledge of the understanding permanent for thought by bringing it under abstract concepts, i.e, it makes knowledge distinct, it puts us in a position to impart it and explain it to others. The experience we undergo is the result of the interaction between reality and the particular human organism, but even though we are required to acknowledge the existence of the external stimulant, we can never know exactly what it is like it our own right. This is a unique case in that, although we can investigate the effects of the stimulant, the cause is inherently unknowable. The keenness of the understanding in apprehending the casual relations of objects which are known indirectly, does not find its only application in the sphere of natural sciences (though all the discoveries in that sphere are due to it), but it also appears in practical life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Since we cannot know the nature of reality apart from its effects, we are led to a belief in some Unknowable; this does not mean, however, that we are committed to a belief in the existence of God. First of all, our complete dependence on sensory data for knowledge makes it impossible for us to tell whether this Unknowable is at all comparable to any kind of divine substance. We are never in the position to test whether our idea of what the Absolute is, corresponds to what it actually is. Second, reasoning, which is no more than an advanced physical ability by which an organism can meet environmental problems, cannot cope with data that are not reducible to observables. When such an endeavor is made, reasoning, like any machine whose function is abused, breaks down. Consider what occurs when we attempt to analyze a concept whose reference is take to be necessarily outside of the domain of experience—the concept of God. All questions are either unanswerable or productive paradoxes. If there is a God, then how did he come into existence? If he created himself out of nothing, then how can something come out of nothing? #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
The fact that God is treated as an immanent, existing or operating within; inherent, permanently pervading and sustaining the Universe, rather than an external power, does not eliminate the questions that are raised with theism. It is still impossible to imagine the Universe arising uncaused out of nothing. This is why I believe that the Universe is like a sea-walnut, which produces its own light to sustain life and ward off predators, but is contained in the ocean. It is only logical that we would think of the Universe as existent in some potential form prior to its becoming actual; and even if it were meaningful to speak of the potential Universe, the question would still remain how a potential Universe could have been created. Are we then necessarily led to atheism? No. The fact that we do not know whether a God exists does not mean that therefore no God exists. The rejection of theism and pantheism entails only that we can have no knowledge about the Unknowable, not that the Unknowable does not exists. At most we can simply say that we do not know whether there is a God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Many religions still cling to beliefs that arose because primitive people could not account for natural phenomena. Thus, the notion of a soul, or of a ghost, arose because primitive people could not account for dreams, shadows, and reflections. All such phenomena led to the belief that people were dual personalities, one of which remains unchanged regardless of changes in the visible human. From this conception there gradually developed the theory that there were eternal, unchanging, omnipotent personalities. In this way, people came to believe in gods; and, for similar reason, the Judaeo-Christin God has many strictly human traits. This religious anthropomorphism which depicted God as filled with hatreds and desires that were appropriate only to human beings. Nevertheless, religion can serve as a means of fostering friendships and cooperation among human beings and also of guaranteeing the retention of the most worthwhile values of the past. Furthermore, religion can be useful as a way of developing interest in the various enigmas that are found in the Universe, a means of motivating people to initiate scientific inquiries. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
The fact that we can never know what the Unknowable is in itself does not imply that we cannot have any genuine knowledge. Good sense or prudence signifies exclusively understanding at the command of the will. However, the limits of these conceptions must not be too sharply defined, for it is always that one function of the understanding by means of which all animals perceive objects in space, which, in its keenest form, appears now in the phenomena of nature, correctly inferring the unknown causes from the given effects, and providing the material from which the reason frames general rules as laws of natural now inventing complicated and ingenious machines by adapting known causes to desired effects; now in the sphere of motives, seeing though and frustrating intrigues and machinations, or fitly disposing the motives and the people who are susceptible to them, setting them in motion, as machines are moved by levers and wheels, and directing them at will to the accomplishment of the ends. Deficiency of understanding is called an intellectual disability. It is dullness in applying the law of causality, incapacity for the immediate apprehension of the concatenations of causes and effect, motives and actions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
A stupid person has no insight into the connection of natural phenomena, either when they follow their own course, or when they are intentionally combined, i.e., are applied to machinery. A stupid person does not observe that persons, who apparently act independently of each other, are really in collusion; that person is therefore easily mystified; and outwitted; one does not discern the hidden motives of proffered advice or expressions of opinion. But it is always just one thing that the individual lacks—keenness, rapidity, ease in applying the law of causality, i.e., the power of understanding. The domain of phenomena of the Unknowable is characterized by features which are not controllable by our desires or even by our manipulations. Certain relationship consistently appear in spite of our objections or antagonistic attitudes. Also, in all objectsions, including ourselves, there are many varying degrees of energy—or force. These aspects of reality are manifestations of the Unknowable, and information about them is the only kind of knowledge human beings can obtain or ought to see. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
It is clear that knowledge, for human beings, is not a study of the Unknowable but rather of the manifestations of the Unknowable among phenomena. There are beginnings, middles (or periods of equilibrium), and ends; but all these processes take place in a finite space and a finite time. A person is born; one matures; one passes on, generally. Similarly, a society begins, reaches a stage of equilibrium, and is destroyed by something internal or external. All around us we can see the workings of the law of evolution and dissolution, but we can never know whether the Universe as a whole is undergoing this process. Feelings, too, arise through evolution. Life seeks to survive, and feelings of pleasure are necessary to sustain this urge. If the organism experiences no rewards for maintaining its own life and reproducing its kind, if there were no sense of accomplishment, then the urge to survive might easily be extinguished. Therefore, behavior that contributes to survival is accompanied by the feeling of pleasure, and behavior that endangers survival is accompanied by the feeling of pain. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
Similarly, feelings of sociality and sympathy developed in human beings because in the struggle for survival people came to recognize that human cooperation is necessary, and the pleasures that accrue to the feeling of sociality were the rewards that guaranteed the continuation of such cooperation. The development of the feelings of sociality and sympathy led to the emergence of a new kind of entity, society, which is the subject of sociology and ethics. Here, too, the principle of evolution holds. Society, like other organisms, has its period of infancy, of maturity, and death. Therefore, strive to possess yourself of what you have inherited from your ancestors. The problem would appear more difficult if we could admit that they leave no traces whatsoever behind them. However, our memories are colored by emotions, judgments, and quirks of personality. What we remember depends on what we pay attention to, what we regard as meaningful or important, and what we feel strongly about. Memory structure is that pattern of associations among items of information stored in the memory. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
I stumbled on this photograph, it kind of made me laugh, it took me way back, back down memory lane. I see the happiness, I see the pain where I am. I see us standing there, such a happy pair. Love beyond compare. The way you held me. No one could tell me that love would die. Why, oh why did I have to find this photograph? Gaps in memory, which are common, may be filled in by logic, guessing, or new information. Indeed, it is possible to have memories for things that never happened (such as remembering broken glass at an accident when there was none). People with pseudo memories (false memories) are often quite upset to learn they have given false testimony. A filmed automobile accident was showed to people. Afterwards, some participants were asked to estimate how fast the cars were going when they smashed into each other. For others the words bumped, contacted, or hit replaces smashed. One week later, each person was asked, “Did you see any broken glass?” Those asked earlier about the cars that smashed into each other were more likely to say yes. (No broken glass was shown in the film.) The new information (smashed) was included in memories and altered them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
The updating of long-term memories is a common problem in police work. For example, a witness may select a photo of a suspect from police files or see a photo in the news. Later, the witness identifies the suspect in person (in a lineup or in court). Did the witness really remember the suspect from the scene of the crime? Or was it from the more recently seen photograph? Even an innocent person may be remembered as the criminal. It is quite possible for a photo to update or blend with the original memory. Many tragic cases of mistaken identity occur this way. Indeed, the fading of memories and the weak affect of impressions which are no longer recent, which we are apt to take as self-evident, and to explain as a primary effect of time on our psychic memory-residues, are in reality secondary changes brought about by laborious work. It is the preconscious that accomplishes this work. Networks of associated memories may help explain a common experience: Imagine finding a picture taken on your sixth birthday or tenth Christmas. As you look at the photo, one memory leads to another, which leads to another, and another. Soon you have unleashed a flood of seemingly forgotten details. This process is called redintegration. Redintegrative memories seem to spread through the branches of memory networks. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Many people find that such memories are also touched off by distinctive events from past—like a visit to Grandma’s kitchen, pleasant scents, going to the farm, the seashore, a doctor’s office, the perfume or after-shave of a former lover, and so on. The key idea in redintegration is that one memory serves as a cue to trigger another. As a result, an entire past experience may be reconstructed from one small recollection. Personally, I have had no real anxiety-dreams for a few months, but I do recall one. The dream was very vivid, and showed me my beloved mother, with a peculiarly calm, sleeping countenance, carried into the room and laid on the bed by two (or three) persons with birds’ beaks. I awoke crying and screaming, and disturbed my parents’ sleep. The peculiarly draped, excessively tall figures with beaks I had taken from the illustrations of the Philippson’s Bible. I believe they represented deities with the heads of sparrowhawks from an Egyptian tomb-relief. The analysis yielded, however, also the recollection of a house-porter’s boy, who used to play with us children on a meadow in front of the house; I might add that his name was Philip. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
It seemed to me then that I first heard from this boy the vulgar word signifying sexual intercourse, which is replaced among educated persons by the Latin word coitus, but which the dream plainly enough indicates by the choice of the birds’ heads. I must have guessed the sexual significance of the word from the look of my Worldly-wise teacher. My mother’s expression in the dream was copied from the countenance of my grandfather, whom I had seen a few days before his death snoring in a state of coma. The interpretation of the secondary elaboration in the dream must therefore have been that my mother was dying; the tomb-relief, too, agrees with this. I awoke with this anxiety, and could not calm myself until I had waked my parents. I remember that I suddenly became calm when I saw my mother; it was as though I had needed the assurance: then she is not dead. However, this secondary interpretation of the dream had only taken place when the influence of the developed anxiety was ready at work. I was not in a state of anxiety because I had dreamt that my mother was dying; I interpreted the dream in this manner in the preconscious elaboration because I was already under the domination of anxiety. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
The latter, however, could be traced back, through the repression to a dark, plainly disturbing period I had in my life, which had found appropriate expression in the visual content of the dream. It was a time when I felt like savage humans were trying to break up my family, and take the only people who cared about me in the World away, and then do away with me. As I grow up, and I think most adults are the same, they fear losing their parents and siblings because you have known them all of your life and that is all you have in this World. And while after you lose a parent, you can still feel their presence and sense them looking over you, but that sense of communication in the physical World is gone and that means so much. People spend so much time on social media, but think about it this way. What if someone took away everyone you care about in your life and replaced them with social media profiles and pictures and videos was your new community and social circle, but never actually see them in person. You would feel isloated, incomplete, and alone. Do not let social media rob you of reality and life. We are only here on this planet for so long and once you lose someone you care about chances are you can never talk to them again. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Make more time for your family and spend time with the people you love. Ask your grandparents to recall vivid and important autobiographical memories and what do you get out of it? Up to a point, the results are like the memories of people at any age: Most recollections come from the 2 or 3 most recent years. Fewer and fewer autobiographical memories come from earlier years, tapering off back to childhood. However, something interesting occurs for older adults as they scan over a lifetime. If you tally their memories, you will find a bulge or bump in the curve between the ages of 10 and 30. In other words, many more memories come from this period than would be expected. Why do memories from this period of life stand out for older adults? Because memories formed during this time are encoded in ways that make them easier to retrieve later in life. Just why these years are so memorable is not known. However, if you are between the ages of 10 and 30, take note: These are the days, my friend. You know me. Every time you try to forget who I am, I will be right there to remind you again, you know me. Answer me when I call, God, defender of my cause; you set me free when I am hard-pressed; have mercy on me and hear my prayer. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
A Charm against Yielding to Temptation
Things perceived as real are real in their effects. As from the direct light of the Sun to the borrowed light of the moon, we pass from the immediate idea of perception, which stands by itself and is its own warrant, to reflection, to the abstract, discursive concepts of the reason, which obtain their whole content from knowledge of perception, and in relation to it. As long as we continue simply to perceive, all is clear, firm, and certain. There are neither questions nor doubts nor errors; we desire to go no further, can go no further; we find rest in perceiving, and satisfaction in the present. Perception suffices for itself, and therefore what springs purely from it, and remains true to it, for example, a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through a lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself. However, with abstract knowledge, with reason, doubt and error appearing in the theoretical, care and sorrow in the practical, illusion may at moments take the place of the real. Chance actions differ from erroneously carried-out actions only in that they disdain the support of a conscious intention and really need no pretext. They appear independently and are accepted because one does not credit them with any aim or purpose. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
In the sphere of abstract thought, error may reign for a thousand years, impose its yoke upon whole nations, extend to the noblest impulses of humanity, and, by the help of its slaves and its dupes, may chain and fetter those whom it cannot deceive. We execute them without thinking anything of them, by mere chance, just to keep the hands busy, and we feel confident that such information will be quite sufficient should one inquire as to their significance. In order to enjoy the advantage of this exception position, these actions which no longer claim awkwardness as an excuse must fulfill certain conditions: they must not be striking, and their effects must be insignificant. It is the enemy against which the wisest people of all times have waged unequal war, and only what they have won from it has become the possession of humankind. Culture is constantly threatened by a relapse into barbarism and disorder that would make history sheer meaningless succession. Against perpetual decadence people struggles heroically to establish limited zones of law, order, and cultural significance. To succeed is this for a time, they must do violence to their own natures by imposing on themselves a hard discipline and accepting moral isolation amid their mediocre fellows. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
This means living in conformity to the ethic of the producers and seeing the good life to be a cooperative creative enterprise carried on in a self-reliant spirit. Against the good things to be obtained rather than a way of acting. In the consumers’ view typical goods are welfare, prosperity, distributive justice, and the classless society, things to be aimed at for the future and enjoyed if secured. Enterprises undertaken in that spirit were based on envy and inevitably fell under the control of adventure (usually intellectuals) who duped the masses. Such instances are citizens revolting, peasant wars, anti-Semitism, and contemporary welfare-state socialism. It has often been said that we ought to follow the truth even although no utility can be seen in it, because it may have indirect utility which may appear when it is least expected; and I would add to this, that we ought to be just as anxious to discover and to root out all error even when no harm is anticipated from it, because its mischief may be very indirect, and may suddenly appear when we do not expect it, for all error has poison at its heart. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
The symbolism in the infantile life of the normal plays a greater role than was expected psychoanalytic experiences. A doctor, on rearranging his furniture in a new house, came across a straight, wooden stethoscope, and, after pausing to decide where he should put it, was impelled to place it on the side of his writing-desk in such a position that it stood exactly between his chair and the one reserved for his patients. This act in itself was certainly odd, for in the place, the straight stethoscope served no purpose as he invariably used a binaural one; and in the second place, all his medical apparatus and instruments were always kept in drawers, with the sole exception of this one. However, he gave no thought to the matter until one day, it was brought to his notice by a patient who had never seen a wooden stethoscope, asking him what it was. On being told, she asked him why he kept it there. He answered in an offhand way that that place was good as any other. This, however, started him thinking, and he wondered whether there had been an unconscious motive in this action. Being interested in the psychanalytic method, he asked me to investigate the matter. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
The first memory that occurred to him was the fact when a medical student, he has been struck by the habit his hospital interne had of always carrying a wooden stethoscope in his hand on his ward visits, although he never used it. He greatly admired this interne, and was much attached to him. Later on, when he himself became an interne, he contracted the same habit, and would feel very uncomfortable if by mistake he left the room without having the instrument to swing in his hand. The aimless of the habit was shown, not only by the fact that the only stethoscope he every used was a binaural one, which he carried in his pocket, but also in that it was continued when he was a surgical interne and never needed the stethoscope at all. From this, it was evident that the idea of the instrument in question had in some way or other become invested with a greater psychic significance than normally belonged to it—in other words, that to the subject it stood for more than it does for other people. The idea must have become unconsciously associated with some other one which it symbolized, and from which it derived its additional fullness of meaning. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
I will forestall the rest of the analysis by saying what this secondary idea was—namely, a phallic one; the way in which this curious association had been formed will presently be related. The discomfort he experienced in hospital on missing the instrument, and the relief and assurance the presence of it gave him, was related to what is known as a castration complex—namely, a childhood fear, often continued in a disguise form into adult life, lest a private part of his body should be taken away from him, just as playthings so often were. The fear was due to paternal threats that it would be cut off if he were not a good boy, particularly in a certain direction. This is a very common complex, and accounts for a great deal of general nervousness ad lack of confidence in later years. The stethoscope association was formed through many connections. In the first place, the physical appearance of the instrument—a straight, rigid, hollow tube, having a small bulbous summit at one extremity and a broad base at the other—and the fact of its being the essential part of the medical paraphernalia, the instrument with which the doctor performed his magical and interesting feats, were matters that attached his boyish attention. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
He had had his chest repeatedly examined by the doctor at the age of six, and distinctly recollected the voluptuous sensation of feeling the latter’s head near him pressing the wooden stethoscope into his hat; he found it interesting that the doctor should carry his chief instrument concealed about his person, always handy when he went to see patients, and that he only had to take off his hat (i.e., a part of his clothing) and pull it out. At the age of eight, he was impressed by being told by an older boy that it was the doctor, who was young and handsome, was extremely popular among the women of the neighborhood, including the subject’s own mother. The doctor and his instrument were therefore the objects of great interest throughout his boyhood. Probably because the boy also wanted to be popular as an adult. It is probable that, as in many other cases, unconscious identification with the family doctor had been a main motive in determining the subject’s choice of profession. It was here doubly conditioned by the superiority on certain interesting occasions of the doctor to the father, of whom the subject was very jealous, and by the doctor’s knowledge of forbidden topics and his opportunity for illicit indulgence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
The subject admitted that he had on several occasions experienced erotic temptations in regard to his women patients; he had twice fallen in love with one, and finally had married one. This shows that the way a lot of adults act and the things they do, are behaviors they learned in their childhood, which appear to be enjoyable or pleasurable to them and they want to do these things to others when adults. For me as a boy, when I would visit my doctor, Dr. Ezekiel, would have Gold Dial soap in his office and when I would wash my hands I remembered how good it smelled, and if a doctor used it, it must be good stuff. So, that Gold Dial is the only hand and bath soap I used because I want to smell good like Dr. Ezekiel. Also, as a child growing up, we lived in a nice suburban community where everything was new and clean and nice and quiet, and everyone had jobs, and so that is what kind of life style I want for my adult life. When people ask me about what I like most about being a son, I always reply, “Everything.” And even when talking to my parents now I try to conceal my true feelings at times and say something pleasant. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Like, if I do not like someone and do not want to go to their party and my parents ask me about it, I will say something like, “I am very excited about the party, but I am busy that day. I am sure they will have good company and food as always.” Sometimes, however, I feel like I try too hard to be nice and pleasant and it really takes a lot of energy. I am more of a person who likes to be quiet, mind my own business and keep to myself, but when living in a city and not the suburbs, it requires one to be more social. Now back to the subject, the next memory he has was of a dream, plainly of a homosexual-masochistic nature; in it a man, who proved to be a replacement figure of the family doctor, attacked the subject with a sword. The idea of a sword, as is so frequently the case in dreams, represented the same idea as mentioned above to be associated with that of a wooden stethoscope. The thought of a sword reminded the subject of the passage in the Nibelung Saga, where Sigurd sleeps with his naked sword (Gram) between him and Brunilda, an incident that had always greatly struck his imagination. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
The meaning of the symptomatic act now at last become clear. The subject had placed his wooden stethoscope between him and his patients, just as Sigurd had placed his sword (an equivalent symbol) between him and the maiden he was not to touch. The great act was a compromise-formation; it served both to gratify in his imagination the repressed wish to enter into nearer relations with an attractive patient (interposition of phallus), and at the same time, to remind him that this wish was not to become a reality (interposition of sword). It was, so to speak, a charm against yielding to temptation. I might add that the following passage from Lord Lytton’s Richelieu made a great impression on the boy: “Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword. I wear my pen as others do their sword,” and that he became a prolific writer and uses an unusually large fountain pen. When I asked him what need he had of this pen, he replied in a characteristic manner, “I have so much to express.” We all live in different psychological Worlds, there is no correct view of a life situation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
A person who feels that his or her view of a life situation has been understood feels freer to examine it objectively and to question it. (Accepting and understanding the perspective of another person can be especially difficult when cultural differences exist.) Heavenly Father, you have filled the World with beauty: Open our eyes to behold your gracious hands in all your works; that rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for the sake of the one through whom all things were made. May we commend to your fatherly goodness all those who are in any ways afflicted or distressed, in mind, body, or estate; [especially those whom our prayers are desired]; that it may please you to comfort and relieve them according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of their afflictions. God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus Christ, your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the ignorance and arrogance and hatred which infects our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purpose on Earth. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
In Every Heart May there be True Love of Peace and Wisdom
When I was younger and my father would send me to my room, I would make believe the glass door knobs were diamonds and would day I would sell them and become as rich as William Randolph Hearst. Long ago, a friend of mine told me that suicide is a crime because it reflects badly on the community. If such rage against one’s own integrity and one’s own life can be hidden being apparently accidental awkwardness and motor insufficient, then it is not a big step forward to grasp the possibility of transferring the same conception to mistakes which seriously endanger the life and health of others. Think of the impression that would be made upon you by the news that someone you know had committed the crimes, say, of murder or theft, or been guilty of some act of cruelty or deception; and compare it with your feelings when you hear that he or she has met a voluntary death. While in the one case a lively sense of indignation and extreme resentment will be aroused, and you will call loudly for punishment or revenge, in the other you will be moved to grief and sympathy, rather than the moral disapproval which follows upon a wicked action. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
The terrors of life for some reach a point at which they outweigh the terrors of death, and an individual will put an end to their life. Who has not had acquaintances, friends, relations, who of their own free will have left this World; and of these to be thought with horror as criminals? There was once a man, who was very intelligent, but he was not tenderly attached to his young wife. He continually occupied himself with the thought of a separation, which he repeatedly rejected because he dearly loved his two small children. In spite of this, he always returned to that resolution and sought no means to make the situation bearable to himself. Such an unsettlement of a conflict served to prove to me that there was unconscious and repressed motives which enforced the conflicting conscious thoughts. One day, the man related to me a slight occurrence which had extremely frightened him. He was sporting with the older child, by far his favorite. He tossed it high in the air and repeated this tossing till finally he thrust it so high that its head almost struck the massive gas chandelier. Almost, but not quite, or say just about! Nothing happened to the child except that it became dizzy from fright. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
The father stood transfixed with the child in his arms, while the mother merged into an hysterical attack. The particular facility of this careless movement, with the violent reaction in the parents, suggested to me to look upon this accident as a symbolic action which gave expression to an evil intention toward the beloved child. Speech, as an object of outer experience, is obviously nothing more than a very complete telegraph, which communicates arbitrary signs with the greatest rapidity and the finest distinctions of difference. However, what do these signs mean? How are they interpreted? I could remove the contradiction to the actual tenderness of this father for his child by referring the impulse to injure it to the time when it was the only one, and so small, that as yet, the father had no occasion for the tender interest in it. Then it was easy to assume that this man, so little pleased with his wife at that time, might have thought: “If this small being for whom I have no regard whatever should die, I would be free and could separate from my wife.” What penalty can frighten a person who is not afraid of death itself? #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
When someone speaks, do we at once translate his or her words into pictures of the fancy, which instantaneously flash upon us, arrange and link themselves together, and assume form and colour according to the words that are poured forth, and their grammatical inflections? What a tumult there would be in our brains while we listened to a speech, or to the reading of a book? But what actually happens is not this at all. The meaning of a speech is, as a rule, immediately grasped, and accurately and distinctly taken in, without the imagination being brought into play. It is reason which speaks to reason, keeping within its own province. The wish for the death of this much loved being must therefore have continued unconsciously. From here, it was easy to find the way to the unconscious fixation with the wish. There was indeed a powerful determinant in a memory from the patient’s childhood: it referred to the death of a little brother, which the mother laid to his father’s negligence, and which led to serious quarrels with threats of separation between the parents. The continued course of my patient’s life, as well as the therapeutic success, confirmed my analysis. And so, that is why suicide is thought of as an offence against the State, although not against the person, because depending on the state of mind of the individual, one may transfer the rage. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
The thought is that if one is willing to take their own life they may not value the lives of others. The actions described so far, in which we recognize the execution of an unconscious intention, appeared as disturbances of other unintended actions, and hid themselves under the pretext of awkwardness. If a good person should flee life when one’s misfortunes become too great; should the bad person, also, when that individual is too prosperous? When a person destroys their existence as an individual, sometimes that individual is not trying to destroy their will to live. On the contrary, some would like to live if they could do so with satisfaction to oneself; if that individual could assert his or her will against the power of circumstance; but the circumstance is too strong for that individual to bear. The problem arises when more so when someone sees taking the life of an innocent as a means to avoid their own self murder or as a way to escape an unbearable situation. However, suicide for some people is easy because they are in great pain and if the pain lasts a long time, and they think of it as a pause to the pain, for those who are tortured, it might seem like an escape. However, think about what change will death produce in one’s existence and insights into the nature of things? You never know what awaits you. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
If people are completely unconscious, they take no account of time. So, when you are dead, it is all the same to your whether three months pass in the World of consciousness, or ten thousand years. In the one case as in the other, it is simply a matter of believing what is told to you when you awake. So far, then, you can afford to be indifferent whether it is three months or ten thousand years that pass before you recover your individuality? And if by chance, after those ten thousand years have gone by, no one ever thinks of awakening you, would it be no great misfortune? You will have become quite accustomed to non-existence after so long a spell of it—following upon such a very few years of life. At any rate you may be sure you would be perfectly ignorant of the whole thing. Further, if you knew that the mysterious power which keeps you in your present state of life had never once ceased in those ten thousand years to bring forth other phenomena like yourself, and to endow them with life, it would fully console you. Think what you are doing. It is the Will to Live which is the real and direct aspirant. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
The effect of this is to make the individual careful to maintain one’s own existence. What will you be after your death? When death comes, you are annihilated as an individual and no one knows, for a fact, what happens next. We would like to believe we go to Heaven, and maybe it is true, but I think everyone should try and make the best of this life. We are finite, but filled with a desire for the infinite. The World in which we find ourselves is fragmented. Grasping splinters of reality, common understanding operates in terms of polarities—concrete and universal, appearance and concept, body and soul, individual and nature. We must escape from its rule if we are to recognize the infinite Idea. God made a sacrifice himself and the phenomenal to return to the infinite. In this annihilation the Godhead reveals itself. The reconciliation of the finite and the infinite is the goal of the philosopher when one tries to capture truth in this one’s systems; it is the duty of the moral being who confronts it as a task; it is achieved by the artist who, in creating the beautiful, reveals the Ideal in the phenomenal. Push away the veil that is hiding the Ideal life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Philosophy is fundamentally conversation. It is a joint struggle for something that is dimly apprehended and yet escapes adequate articulation. Truth is never a possession; it only reveals itself in the process of striving for it. Thus, the most adequate vehicle for the expression of philosophical thought is dialogue. In pure consciousness, there is no distinction between the seeming and the real. However, when the reflection that accompanies consciousness takes this absolute self-validating character of subjective immediacy as an indication of an external reality, then there arise those errors of judgement which since ancient times have given cause for skepticism. If truth were a fact of immediate consciousness it need not and could not be sought, and hence there could be no philosophy. However, to the distress of some and the delight of others, there is philosophy. There is consciousness of fact and there is an aspiration for cognition of truth. Father, your truth is made known in your word. Guide us to seek the truth of the human person. Teach us the way to love because you are love. God, you embody love and truth. Help us to recognize your face. Enable us to live out our vocation to bring love and justice to your people. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Holy spirit, you inspire us to transform our World. Empower us to seek the common good for all persons. Give us a spirit of solidarity and make us one human family. We long only to speak out and to hear the truth. Dear God, give us strength to live another day; let none of us turn coward before its difficulties or prove recreant to its duties. Let us not lose faith in other people; keep us sweet and sound of heart, in spite of ingratitude, treachery, or meanness. Help us keep our hearts clean, and to live so honestly and fearlessly that no outward failure can dishearten us or take away the joy of conscious integrity; open wide the eyes of our souls that we may see good in all things; grant us this day some new vision of thy truth; inspire us with the spirit of joy and gladness; and make us the cup of strength to suffering souls. Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace, as children of one Father; to whom be dominion and glory, now and forever, in the name of the strong deliverer, our only Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Randolph Harris II International Institute 