Home » Lunch (Page 8)
Category Archives: Lunch
The Problem with America it is Submerged in Old Atlantis
The problem with America it is submerged in old Atlantis. It has become like a refugee camp where all the geniuses have been driven out of their jobs and country by unfriendly regimes that are idling. The World of streets are so seductive that a person can ask you where you are from, then tell you what you are and you will believe them. People are too dependent on history and culture. However, the World belongs to those who understand it. Still, countless individuals bring their broken hearts and shattered dreams to the altar and hope they will be accepted, and they pray that rejection will not throw them into a rage and turn them into a Cain. Perhaps a vast number of those in society naively produced their favorite treasures and piled them in an indiscriminate heap. Those who do not recognize their value now may do so later. However, while some may be flattered by being tested, others resent it. People reserve their best thinking for their professional specialties, and next in line, for serious matters confronting the alert citizen—economic, politics, the disposal of nuclear waste, etcetera. When the day’s work is done, they want to be entertained. They cannot see why their entertainment should not simply be entertaining. Yet, it is not amusing to send oneself back to high school. Higher education must offer the individual much more than it does. For in the end, several people realize that they have no education in the conduct of life, at the university who was there to teach the students that drinking is not fun, and how to deal with their erotic needs, with other genders, and with family matters, and one graduates to some primal point of balance. In this great confusion, there is still an open channel to the soul. In many be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. However, the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves—to that part of us which is conscious of a higher consciousness, by means of which we make final judgments and put everything together. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The independence of this consciousness, which has the strength to be immune to the noise of history and the distractions of our immediate surroundings, is what the struggle is all about. The soul has to hold its ground against hostile forces, sometimes embodied in ideas which frequently deny its very existence, and which indeed often seem to be trying to annual it altogether. What makes the journey through life singularly difficult is the disheartening expansion of trained ignorance and bad thought. For to put the matter at its baddest, we live in a thought-World, and the thinking has gone very bad. Thinking alone will never cure what ails humanity, and so many should be grateful for a naïve grace which puts them beyond the need to reason elaborately. It is time for people to shed superfluities so that their mental bodies can recover its ability to breathe, and protect the root-simplicities of being. The University has never been a sanctuary or shelter from “the outer World.” It can be the place where megalomaniacs, heretics, tyrants, and illiterate athletes get the training and documents they need to make the cities turbulent, and torment humanity. The odor of their egos now is no more pleasant than they were 400 years ago. The heat of the dispute between the Left and Right has grown so fierce in the last decade that the habits of civilized discourse have suffered a scorching. Antagonists seem no longer to listen to one another. The World is so ready for an anti-hero that almost anyone can get voted into office or steal an election. Even criminals are being voted in to run cities like Sacramento, California—one after the next. Preoccupied with quests of Health, Pleasures of the Flesh, Race, War, academics make their reputations and their fortunes and the university has become society’s conceptual warehouse of often harmful influences. It makes an important statement and deserves careful study. For instance, it is interesting how sweetheart Lori Loughlin was sentenced for what she allegedly did, but Kevin Johnson was allowed to become mayor of Sacramento, and displayed more criminal behavior, never was prosecuted for what he actually did and was even invited to the White House. I guess we have to keep the cook book witches in check, but let dangerous felons go free. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
What each generation is can be best discovered in its relation to the permanent concerns of humankind. This in turn can best be discovered in each generation’s tastes, amusements, and especially angers (this is above al true in an age that prides itself on clam self-awareness). Particularly revealing are the various impostors whose business it is to appeal to the young. These culture peddlers have the strongest of motives for finding out the appetites of the young—so they are useful guides into the labyrinths of the spirit of the times. However, there is a human nature, it is guided by awareness. Humans are not just creatures of accident, chained to and formed by the particular cave in which they are born. One with a joy, and pleasure for life is far more effective in motivating others than anyone who is disinterested in what their moral duty is. The youth need to be helped to recognize and avoid deforming forces of convention and prejudice. The vision of what that nature is may be clouded by the fake news media. The soul may at the outset require extrinsic rewards and punishments to motivate its activity; but in the end that activity is its own reward and is self-sufficient. Fascinations with the youth leads to an awareness of the various kinds of soul and their various capacities for truth and error as well as learning. Every age has its problems, and things in the past may not have been wonderful. Society needs to be taught to be highly intelligent, materially, and spiritually free. So many are confused by the emerging perception of what needs to be done. Every time there is a disaster, people are told to “donate money,” so the youth are brought up in a consumer driven economy and taught that money can solve all problems. This makes it harder for people to learn what truly matters. Since in any specific struggle we might be outspent by several hundred times, we need to be more clever, more creative. The population is being inundated with conflicting versions of increasingly complex events. People are giving up on understanding anything. The glut of untreated sewage spewing from the TV news media is dulling awareness, not assisting it. Overload. It encourages passivity, not involvement. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Specific victories are possible, but overall understanding of the forces that are moving society seem to be diminishing. People’s minds seem to be running in dogged, one-dimensional channels which are reminiscent of the freeways during rush hour. As mass media has grown to become a kind of environment, it is not really contributing to any pool of useful knowledge. The real community of humans, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers, of all humans to the extent they desire to know. Television has become the major mental and physical experiential field for most of the people in the country, and the confusion of television information with a wider, direct mode of experience is advancing rapidly. Become so many are confusing television experience with direct experience of the World, we are not noticing that the experience itself is being unified to the single behavior of watching television. Switching from channel to channel, believing that a sports program was a significantly different experience from a police program or news of a Russian war, all 121 million viewers are sitting separately in dark rooms engaged in exactly the same activity at the same time: watching television. It is as if the whole nation has gathered at a gigantic three-ring circus. It has become possible for a nation of 325 million people to be spoken to as individuals, one to one, the television set to the person or family, all at once. So many should be chilled at the thought, realizing that these conditions of television viewing—confusion, unification, isolation, especially when combined with passivity and the effects of implanted imagery—are ideal preconditions for the imposition of autocracy. President Trump have uncovered, through an exhaustive investigation by law enforcement agencies, that the TV news media is involved in a massive conspiracy to destroy our democracy, a conspiracy which enjoys at least the tacit support of thousands of students, journalist, attorneys and even certain judges and elected officials. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Television is the perfect instrument to help bring tyrannical control. We can all be spoken to at the same time, night or day, from a centralized information source. In fact, we are. Every day, a handful of people speak, the rest listen. In many ways, as we saw with the recent Presidential Election, television makes the military coup and mass arrests of the imagination unnecessary. People thought that these subtle coups would make brutal and heavy-handed means of confining awareness unnecessary, but it seems to be making it worse. The riots, violence, kidnappings, hijacking, bombings—the sole purpose of these actions is often no more than media exposure. Sensing that the television is now the country’s main transmitter or reality, individuals began to take person action to affect it. Something in the nature of television imagery allows form to supersede content. However, the gravest mistake that can be made by a media creature is to assault the machine. The machine does not care about its fantasies. A new one will do. Bringing down Trump was just as good for ratings as supporting him. Better. More action. The only goals of the machine are to contribute to be the real power behind the throne, no matter who is king, and to remain the primary factor in all public perception. Television has the power to create presidents, and it has the power to destroy them. Most people do not raise complaint against a machine doing what it is designed to do. After all, who expects a machine to notice its own side effects? To care about the social and psychic consequences of its own presence? Machines asks no questions, have no peripheral vision or depth perception. They see the future through the fixed eye of their technical possibilities. However, it is well said that in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is kind. In America, and increasingly in the rest of the World, technology is a one-eyed king ruling unopposed amidst idiot cheering. Globally, there are 5.36 billion people Worldwide who are TV users, and that number is expected to reach 5.7 billion by 2026. Humans cannot live by electric wiring alone, and this obvious fact must be part of any plans we make for the future. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Power, utility, and prestige of the word have significantly diminished. All most all of the presidential candidates found their vote-getting power in their images and left content out as confusing and irrelevant. They were correct to do this. As we know, a campaign run on content could not possibly work on television. During the years that television was coming into its own as the central factor in American personal and political life, its basic nature and the effects it had on human beings and their institutions were rarely examined The problems that people did discuss were concentrated in three main areas: commercialism, access and programming. The speed, range, and impersonality of modern media undermine the oral tradition and therefore weaken the possibility of a nourishing community life. And in these days when lying is called misspeaking or disinformation, Newspeak becomes the normal mode of discourse. Psychologist, parents’ groups and educators lobbied against the dominance of sensational, superficial, irrelevant and violent programs. They sought programs with “prosocial values.” They especially wanted new emphasis on humanistic and educational shows for children. These groups saw no reason why such values as cooperation, loving and caring could not be as appropriate for television programming as violence and competition, but yet, no one still has censored the news nor warned readers that the informational may be fiction and not necessarily scholarly. Historians lobbied for more documentaries, believing that television has no greater inherent limits to its ability to present historical truth than the media that had preceded it. They succeeded in getting legislation requiring that TV networks permanently store their news and documentary footage. Now we can look to a future in which the present era will be understood in terms of the television treatment of it. Ecologist assumed television could be a potentially useful tool in expanding knowledge of how our species interacts with natural forces. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Political radicals believed television could stimulate deeper understanding of complex issues. Some groups believe there is a possibility to build sensitivity to their culture and philosophy through TV. Listen, everybody is watching TV. If we handle this the right way, we can reach everyone. Because of this, the decline of language may have proceeded so far that most people no longer perceive it as a problem. An analogy here might clarify this. It is said that the brain in the only organ of our body that feels no pain and therefore does not know when it is injured. The brain does not regard brain damage as a problem. If we think of language as the brain of a civilization, the it is possible that severe language-damage may not be perceived by the social body as a problem. It is possible that we have adapted ourselves to disinformation, to Newspeak, to public-relations hype, to imagery disguised as thought, to picture newspapers and magazines, to religion revealed in the form of entertainment, to politics in the form of a thirty-second television commercial. In adapting ourselves, we come to accept the present situation as the only available standard and conclude that this is the best of all possible Worlds. However, perhaps this is not the case. There does appear to be a national concern about illiteracy, aliteracy, and the persisting decline in our young people’s analytic ability. There is even a movement that wants to give the highest priority to teaching critical thinking in schools. Education, a subject never far from the issues raised by technology and language, attempts to understand and resolve new conditions of culture. Nonetheless, sometimes it is great fun to complain and, in America, it can even be profitable. However, unless one’s complaints are grounded in a sense of duty to one’s country or to a recognizable humane tradition, they are not worthy of serious attention. Everybody engages in creative arts and is likely to carry a sketchbook, proving when the psychologists and progressive educators have always claimed, that every child is creative if not blocked. Resigning from the rat race, they have removed the block. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
They work at these arts honestly, with earnest absorption, and even if they do continually subject one another and passers-by to listening to readings, and encourage the community by exclaiming, “It is the greatest!” Such creative activity sharpens the perceptions, releases and refines feelings, and is a powerful community bond. In itself it has no relation to the production of art works or the miserable life of sacrifice that an artist leads. It is personal cultivation, not much different from finger paintings. Like the conversation just described, its aim is action and self-expression and not the creation of culture and value or making a difference in further World. There is, of course, no reason why it should be. All men are creative but few are artists. Art making requires a peculiar psychotic disposition. Let me formulate the artistic disposition as following: it is reacting with one’s ideal to the flaw in oneself and in the World, and somehow making that reaction formation solid enough in the medium so that it indeed becomes an improved bit of real World for others. This is an unusual combination of psychological machinery and talents, and those who, having it, go on to appoint themselves to such a thankless vocation, are rarer still. These few are not themselves Hipsters, for they have a vocation, they are not resigned. (My observation is that is artists are blocked in their vocation, they cannot resign themselves to seeking other experiences, and certainly they do not do finger painting, for if they can do finger painting they can make art.) Nevertheless, living among the Hipsters, there will be a disproportionate number of artists, for the same reason that artists gravitate to any bohemia. Also, some of these genuine undersigned artists will make works that speak for the Hipster community that they live among. That is, the “Hipster” artists are not themselves Hipsters, for they are artists; but their art work tell us about the Hipster. This situation rises interesting questions about the relation of an artist and his immediate audience, and it is worth exploring. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
It is both an advantage and a disadvantage for an artist to have around him an intensely creative gang of friends who are not rival artists. They provide him an immediate audience that helps assuage the sufferings of art loneliness and art guilt. On the other hand, it is a somewhat sickening audience because it has no objective cultural standard, it is not in the stream of ancient and international tradition. So its exclamations, “It is the greatest!” or, “Go, man, go!” do not give much security. The artists finds that he is a parochial group hero, when the culture hero for the immortal World. Let me tell a few anecdotes to illustrate this fascinating dilemma of the relation of the “Hipster” artist both to the Hipster and the objective culture in which he must finally exist. An incident at a party for Patchen. Patchen is a poet of the “previous” generation, of long-proven integrity, with an immense body of work, some of which is obviously good, and the importance of the whole of it (may much still be added!) not yet clear. The point of our anecdote is that Patchen has the respect of writers but has received no public acclaim, no money, no easy publication. Now at this party, one of the best “Hipster” writers, a genuine young artist, came demanding that the older poet give some recognition to the tribe of Hipster poets, to “give them a chance.” This was ironical since, riding on the Madison Avenue notoriety that we have mentioned, they had all got far more public acclaim, invitations to universities, night-club readings, than all of us put together. However, Patchen asked for the names. The Hipster spokesman reeled off twenty, and Patchen unerringly pointed out the two who were worthwhile. This threw the younger poet into a passion, for he needed, evidently, to win artistic recognition also for his parochial audience, among who he was a hero, in order to reassure himself that he was a poet, which he was and as Patchen would at once have said. So he insulted the older man. Patchen rose to his height, called him a young punk, and left. The young man was crushed, burst into tears (he was drunk), and also left. At this, a young woman who often accompanied him, came up to me and clutched me by the knees, pleading with me to help him grow up, for nobody, she said paid him any attention. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
That is, the Hipster audience, having resigned, is not in the World; yet being an eager creative audience, it wins the love and loyalty of its poet who becomes its hero and spokesman. However, he too, then, doubts that he is in the World and has a vocation. As a Hipster spokesman he receives notoriety and the chance of the wide public that every poet wants and needs; but he cannot help feeling that he is getting it as a pawn of the organized system. Here is a simpler illustration of the relation of the spokesman-artist to the objective culture. This fellow is a much weaker poet, more nearly Hipster himself, and quite conceited. At a reading of some other poet who is not a Hipster spokesman, he tries to stop the reading by shouting, “Do not listen to this crap! let us hear from X.” His maneuver is to make the parochial the only existing culture; then, by definition, he himself is an artist. And here is an illustration of the most elementary response. A Hipster spokesman, not ungifted but probably too immature to accomplish much, gives a reading in a theater. During the intermission, he asks a rather formidable and respected critic what he thinks of a particular poem, and the critic says frankly that it is childish. At this the outraged poet, very drunk, stands in the lobby screaming, “I hope you die! I hope art dies! I hope all artists die!” These illustrations and the analysis of the Hipster conversation brings out the same point: In a milieu of resignation, where the young men think of society as a closed room in which there are no values but the rejected rat race or what they can produce out of their own guts, it is extremely hard to aim at objective truth or World culture. One’s own products are likely to be personal or parochial. Shared creative expression has a therapeutic effect, and so results in transference, unconscious attachment. The striking, and often amusing, example of this is the young ladies who take modern dancing, with its beautiful exercises that release tense muscles; they are all head over ears in love with Paris and Beyonce, and fiercely loyal and sectarian. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The same occurs among the young Hipster, except that, since there is no “leader,” the emerging love attaches either to the community or to each one’s self-image narcissistically. This makes for a powerful warmth of life—“the warmth of assembled animal bodies,” as Kafka said—but it makes even harder to get into the World. It gives the young men a daily interpersonal excitement, more satisfactory than the empty belonging or conformity of the organization, and happier than the loneliness of art. However, it does not give them “something to do.” The wretchedness of a widow’s life was, however, perhaps not the worst consequence of her husband’s death. After all, she was still alive, in a manner of speaking. Many Hindus, mostly men, considered this intolerably lenient. They believed that if a woman’s husband was happy, so should she be. If he was said, so should she be. And if he was dead, so should she be. So even creeping miserably around a relative’s or spiteful in-law’s home was too soft an existence. Any good widow (a Hindu oxymoron) would know better than to impose her tainted self on this World. That was what suttee—immolation on the husband’s funeral pyre—was for. The “paramountcy of a woman’s chastity” was the most compelling reason for suttee, although financial and property considerations also cost many an inconvenient widow her life. One anti-suttee crusader explained that relatives and in-laws feared that “if there was no cremation, widows may go astray; if they burn, this fear is removed. Their family and relations are freed from apprehension.” From this perspective, suttee becomes “the ultimate chastity belt.” The widow who willingly clutches her husband’s sandals and climbs up unaided to lie beside his corpse as the fagots are fired is truly reverenced. Once they are safely crisped, such widows are lauded and mythologized much like Muslim suicide bombers who eagerly launch themselves as human explosives to ascend directly to paradise. The great difference is, huge numbers of suttees have not gone willingly to their incineration. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Those who did were driven either by religious conviction or, more probably, by despair at their lot. Though suttee was legally banned in 1829, it has flourished until well into the twentieth century—a mere three and a half decades ago—when teenaged Roop Kanwar shared her husband’s cremation in September 1987. For centuries, witnesses have reported force in supposedly voluntary suttees. In the seventeenth century at Lahore, Frenchman Francois Bernier watched as a few Brahmins and an old woman immobilized a shivering and sobering twelve-year-old widow with ropes, then forced her onto the pyre. He saw another suttee prevented from escaping the billowing flames by men carrying long poles. In the eighteenth century, a Western observer saw a widow tied down beside her dead husband on heaped logs that were then set ablaze. However, in the dark and rainy night, the widow managed to free herself from the scorching flames and hid nearby. Soon, however, her relatives noticed only one body on the pyre. They raised the alarm and quickly found the wretched woman cowering under some brushwood. Her son hauled her back and ordered her to either hurl herself back onto the funeral pyre or at least to drown or hang herself. If she refused, he warned, she would cause him to lose his caste. Such stories abound. Widows were drugged, beaten, bound, terrorized, and tied down beside their dead husbands. Often, they were bound with slow burning shots of green bamboo that would hold them until the died. In 1835, despite livid protests by the British agent, the fives queens of a deceased ruler were hauled, screaming and protecting, to their death of his pyre. In the 1950s, a suttee who escaped from the flames lay charred and dying for two days under a tree, and nobody offered her the slightest assistance. Roop Kanwar was eighteen when her husband of eight months died of gastroenteritis in Deorala, a village in Rajasthan. Hours later, still on September 4, 1987, stern men armed with waving swords escorted her to her husband’s hastily contrived funeral pyre. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Some eyewitnesses thought she walked unsteadily and foamed at the mouth, while to others she was cheerful and composed. (Statements were impossible to corroborate, with participants understandably reluctant to admit they had attended the illegal event.) “Mummy! Papa!” Roop cried, thrashing her hands as the flames, ignited by her conveniently unindictable, underage brother-in-law, licked at her body. Neither Mummy nor Papa were there, of course; the were informed of the daughter’s “courageous decision” only after the fact. Roop Kanwar was the (hopefully) las victim of centuries of tradition, her death facilitated by authorities who civic-mindedly seized upon this fortuitous opportunity to bring some pilgrimage business into their little village. As Roop’s in-laws swaggered about, proclaiming their honor, Deorala suddenly became a shiny new dot on the religious map. The heat of passion is ice-cold compared to the inferno of a suttee’s sad ending. Millions of suttees have undoubtedly quavered to their terrible deaths, secure in their righteousness and proud of, or at least grateful for, the honor the flames will soon reflect on their entire family. Millions more have been forced onto the flames by relatives and in-laws. These latter are determined to eliminate the unwanted presence of the widows, and above all, to guarantee they will never disgrace themselves or their loved (even if unloving) ones by an unchaste thought, much less a deed. Suttee is, after all, a preemptive stive against potential unchastity. Thinking matters. However, many of the facts we think about are false. And much of what we believe not always the most enlightened perspective. Despite the tidal waves of data, information and knowledge crashing over us today, a greater and greater percentage of what we know is, in fact, less and less true. Even if we could believe the media, even if every advertiser were truthful, every lawyer honest, every politician sealed one’s lips, every adulterer confessed and every fast-talking telemarketer went straight, much of the information we consume, as we will see, would still not be truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
If this is the case, how should individuals—or, for that matter, companies or countries—turn the deep fundamental of knowledge into wealth? Some knowledge has always been needed to produce wealth. Hunter-gatherers had to know the migratory patterns of the animals they pursued. Peasants came to know a lot about soil. Normally, however, once learned the same knowledge remained useful generation after generation. Factory workers had to know how to operate their machines quickly and safely for as long as they had the job. Today work-relevant knowledge changes so rapidly that more and more new knowledge has to be learned both on and off the job. Learning becomes a continuous-flow process. However, we cannot learn everything fast enough. And if some of what we think is stupid, that helps explain why there is no need to be embarrassed. We are not alone in believing stupidities. The reason is that every chunk of knowledge has a limited shelf life. At some point it becomes obsolete knowledge—what might more appropriately be called “obsoledge.” Does Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Poetics constitute “knowledge”? Or the ideas of Confucius or Kant? We can, of course, describe their ideas as wisdom. However, the wisdom of these authors or philosophers was based on what they knew—their own knowledge base—and much of what they knew was, in fact, false. Aristotle, whose views held sway across Europe for almost two thousand years, believed that eels were asexual and “originated in…the entrails of the Earth.” He also believed that the Indian Ocean was a landlocked sea—a geographical error that was still shared centuries later by Ptolemy and other European and Islamic scholars. In the third century AD, Porphyry, the biographer of Pythagoras, assured his readers that is you took park of a bean plant, put it into an earthenware pot, buried it for three months, then dug it up, you would surely find either the head of a child or female private parts. In the seventh century, Saint Isadore of Seville assured contemporaries that “bees are generated from decomposed veal.” Half a millennium later no less a genius than Leonardo da Vinci declared that beavers knew the private parts where being used by humans for medicinal purposes. When trapped, he asserted, a beaver bites them off “and leaves them to its enemies.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
When tomatoes, native to South America, first reached Europe in the sixteenth century, perfectly intelligent people knew that they were toxic to humans. It was two hundred years before Linnaeus declared otherwise. And as late as 1820 when he risked eating two tomatoes to prove Linnaeus was right, a particular daring fellow attracted a large crowed. However, obsoledge is not always assuming. As late as 1892 it was common knowledge—and scientifically accepted since the time of Galileo—that the planet Jupiter had four satellites. That knowledge became obsolete, however, on September 9 of that years, when astronomer E.E. Barnard of the Lick Observatory discovered a fifth moon. By 2003, astronomers had counted six. Similarly, scientists for decades had assumed that there were only nine planets in our solar system. However, in 2005, a California Institute of Technology astronomer discovered an object he named Xena, which he and other scientists believed may be a tenth planet orbiting our sun. Then there was London physiologist L. Erskine Hill, who reported in 1912 that experimental evidence showed the “purity of air is of no importance.” If, over the last few decades, we have not learned otherwise, how many more people around the World would have died of pollution related caused? And how many patients will die today because somewhere an otherwise intelligent doctor is manipulating information or relying on outdated “fact,” learned or manufactured years ago in medical school or by junk scientists? How many companies will go belly-up because of a marketing strategy based on yesterday’s fad? How many investments are doomed because of out-of-date financial data? What if your employer decided to manipulate your personal information so he could reinvest your earnings into his shell corporation? And what about tomorrow’s deaths or disaster just waiting to happen? #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Look, for example, at the minutes of the September 2002 meeting of the Advisory Committee of CERN users. (CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research.) Tucked away among references to decisions about providing ashtrays “close to the outside doors of major buildings for smokers” and notifications of “changes in mail delivery service” is the following item: “The names of persons to be contacted in case of accidents should be restored in the Human Resource database.” Why on Earth, one might ask, should the list of persons to be contacted in case of a nuclear accident be missing? The answer: Because “for the majority of people the information became obsolete” and the administration “did not have the resources to ensure systematic updating.” It took the chairman of the users’ group to point out that “the potential human cost in case of a serious accident is immense, and a solution should be found.” What is clear is that wherever knowledge is stored, whether in digital databases or inside our brains, there is the equivalent of Aunt Emily’s attic overstuffed with obsoledge—facts, ideas, theories, image, and insights that have been outrun by change or replaced by later, presumably more accurate, truths. Obsoledge is a big part of the knowledge base of every person, business, institution and society. By accelerating change, we also speed up the rate at which knowledge becomes obsoledge. Unless constantly and ruthlessly updated, experience on the job becomes less valuable. Databases are out of date by the time they are published. With every passing semi-second, the accuracy of our knowledge about our investments, our markets, our competition, our technology and out customers’ needs diminishes. As a result, whether they are aware of it or not, companies, governments and individual today base more of their daily decisions on obsoledge—on ideas and assumptions that have been falsified by change—than ever before. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Occasionally, of course, some antique bit of obsoledge comes back to life, as it were, and proves useful today because the context around it has changed and given it powerful new meaning. However, more often than not, the reverse is true. Ironically, in advanced economies, companies brag about “knowledge management,” “knowledge assets” and “intellectual property.” Yet with all the numbers crunched by financial quants, economists, companies and governments, no one knows what obsoledge costs us in the form of degraded decision-making. What, one might ask, is the drag placed on individual investments, corporate profits, economic development, poverty-reduction programs and wealth creation in general? Beneath all of this, moreover, lies an even more important, hidden epistemological change. It affects not merely what we regard as knowledge but the tools we use to acquire it. Among these instruments of thought, few are remotely as important as analogy, in which we identify similarities in two or more phenomena and then draw conclusions from one to apply to the other. Humans can barely think or talk without making analogies. The Irish golfer Padraig Harrington tells a sports reports that “ A U.S. Open is one that really tests your ability to hit….you sort of want to be like a machine.” Which takes us back to the followers of Newton who said the entire cosmos was “like” a machine. Then there are all the people described has having “a mind like a computer,” or who “sleep like a baby,” or who are told to invest “like a pro” or think “like a genius.” Implicit analogies are built into language itself. Thus we still rate cars in terms of their “horsepower”—a leftover from the day when they were seen as analogs of horse-drawn coaches and were know as “horseless carriages.” However, the thought-tool we call analogy is growing harder to use. Analogies, always tricky, are growing trickier. For as the World changes, old similarities can turn into dissimilarities. Once-legitimate comparisons become strained. As parallels with the past break down, often unnoticed, conclusions based on them become misleading. And the faster the rate of change, the shorter the useful life span of analogies. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
In this way, a change in one deep fundamental—time—affects a basic tool we use in the pursuit of another—knowledge. In sum, then, as we have seen, even among experts on the knowledge economy, few have thought much about what might be called the law of obsoledge: As change accelerates, so does the speed at which still more obsoledge accumulates. All of us carry with us a far bigger burden of obsolete knowledge than our ancestors did in the slower-moving societies of yesterday. And that is why so many of our most cherished ideas will set our descendants roaring with laughter. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Keep your loins girded and your lamps burning, and be like people who are waiting for their master to return home from the marriage feast, so that when one returns from the wedding and comes and knocks, they may open to one immediately,” reports Luke 12.34-36. Behold, my people, the spring has come; the Earth has received the embraces of the sun. And we shall soon see the results of that love. One may have never seen fiercer wonders—past the wit of any spirit to tell, but one of those who, when this planet’s sphering time doth close, will be its high remembrancers: who are they? The mighty ones have an eternal day. All souls are of equal importance before God. The soul, in the sense of the true self, is only spiritual. Of great importance are the evolutionary changes through which humankind in general has been passing during recent centuries. In the coming age, balance will be restored for people of both genders and all races, and everyone will take their rightful place alongside the dominant groups in the leadership of the whole race. Evolutionary trend of things are being the human race closer and closer to enlightenment and thus making it possible for everyone to claim and receive what is best for them in life. Fear not, neither be dismayed, O America; for lo, God will save you from afar, and your children from the lands of captivity. O America, you shall again be quiet and at ease, and none shall make you afraid. For a brief moment God has forsaken us, but with great compassion will He gather us. For even if the mountains depart and the hills move, God’s kindness will not depart from us. Nor His covenant of peace be removed. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Cresleigh Homes
Sometimes, driving up to our home at Brighton Station Residence 2 feels like coming up to a movie set.
That sunshine! That sky! Those clean lines! But it’s real, and it’s ours at #CresleighRanch. 😍
Convenient single-story living is just what you need in this beautiful 2,427 square foot home.
Brighton Station Residence 2 is certainly a thoughtfully designed living space, with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a flex space, dining room, a highly sought after butler’s pantry, laundry room, private backyard, and a three car garage.
#CresleighHomes
Learn to Have a Stainless Mind
Life is an adventure; it is one journey where one does not want to compromise one’s self. Enjoy laughter, beauty, and love. Success is finding and doing the best of your ability in each moment of your life. Our is the first civilization to plant human-made objects far beyond the surface of our home planet and use them to help us create wealth. That by itself would mark our time as a revolutionary moment in history. Yet little is known about the impact of this fact in our daily lives and our economy. Few are aware that every time they use an ATM or a telephone, they are relying on technology twelve thousand miles from Earth. Or that every patient receiving dialysis or wearing a peacemaker owes some thanks to technologies and, in some cases, people who have left the surface of the planet we call home. Communication satellites, the Global Positioning System (GPS)—developed by the U.S. Defense Department over six decades at a cost estimated at $14 billion—and commercial remote imaging are parts of an emerging space infrastructure that will be greatly elaborated over the decades and centuries to come, with increasing impact on how we create economic value. Nothing more clearly symbolizes today’s changes in the relationship of wealth to the deep fundamental. In its present, still-primitive form—often myopically derided as a wasteful luxury—the drive into space has already transformed many aspects of daily life. One result is a $100 billion Worldwide satellite industry composed of manufacturers such as Boeing, EADS/Astrium and Alcatel Space; launch firms like China Great Wall Industry Corporation; operators and coordinators such as Intersputnik in Russia; plus myriad service firms, space-image distributors and ground-equipment suppliers. And now a second space race is just getting underway. Commercial companies are being formed. These private commercial aerospace companies like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, are all building and testing their own reusable rockets and spacecrafts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
In fact, Virgin Orbit successfully sent 10 small satellites into orbit, utilizing its unique approach to the task. This mission saw LauncherOne, a heavily modified Boeing 747, fly up to an altitude of 35,000 feet (10,500 meters) before releasing a rocket mounted beneath the plane. The rocket then lit its own engines and lasted off to space, deploying the satellites into low Earth orbit. However, many are left wondering how far the government will allow private industries to go. They believe that private companies could outpace the government and actually established life on a new planet and then start colonizing on that planet, creating their own government, and constructing roads, houses, businesses, and parks in the next 25 years, and that many people, mostly the extremely wealth, will leave Earth in live in these tax havens where corporations have control. This is a vastly different picture than the one we had just a few decades ago. During the 1990s, business pages reported that investors had lost billions in space-industry stocks and that many space firms were in terminal trouble. However, a recent survey by the Satellite Industry Association tells a quite different story—a steady, year-after-year revenue growth rate of 15 percent from the mid-1990s on. What is more, despite temporary overcapacity, now more and more commercial start-ups, and countries are racing to join the space “club.” In addition to the companies we listed above, Brazil and Ukraine, for example, are partnering to launch Ukrainian Cyclone-4 rockets from Brazil’s Alcantara Launch Center—regarded as one of the World’s best launch sites. And, as of 2005, equity firms were buying up stakes in such satellite operators as Intelsat, PanAmSat and New Skies. Similarly, while $100 billion many seem trivial in a multi-trillion-dollar World economy, that number does not begin to tell the whole story. It does not include the hidden increases in value generated by the many industries that directly or indirectly reply on space—big television networks, medical technology, sports teams, advertising agencies, telephone and Internet companies and financial-data suppliers, to cite a few. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
People in the Arab World have also been gazing at the starts with genius and curiosity for a legion of years. In 2021, the Middle Eastern World built a Mars orbit of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Hope (al-Amal) probe. This ambition is their new space exploration adventure. The Arab governments today have developed a fully 21st century view of space, by using algebra and spherical trigonometry which are both essential mathematical tools for understanding the motions of Heavenly bodies, with intentions rooted in the quest for profit, saving lives, power, image, and control. The United Arab Emirates’ program is very auspicious. The country has established its national space agency in 2014 and has set amazingly ambitious goals for the future. The UAE space program has about $5.4 billion in public-private support, compared to NASA’s FY21 budget of $23.3 billion. The Mars mission itself was expensive at a cost of $200 million. However, it appears certain that given the success and acclaim accorded the Amal probe, more is on the way. This is why some many people are concerned about the fate of the United States of America and looking for other options as a future home for Rome did once fall, too. Afterall, the theory of convergence, states that poor or developing economies with a higher per capita income can gradually reach similar high levels of per capita income. Thus, all economies, over time, may converge in terms of income per head. However, these developing countries will not be using old infrastructure. Because high technology already exists, they do not have an initial investment to stake to build new roads, architecture, and electric or other technologies. They can use new methods to build high tech cities and homes and leave already developed nations with their antiquated systems, and replace them as a World Super Power. Therefore, the poorer nations grow much faster because of the higher possibilities of growth and over time catch up, and even surpass the richer countries in terms of per capita income such that the divide between the two gets minimized. This theory of convergence of incomes is based on the logic of better opportunities of growth available for developing economics like access to technological know how from the developed World and increasing returns to capital. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
However, empirical evidence suggests that while some developing economics have been able to effectively tap the available advantages to grow faster and catch up with robust economies, this has not always been true for a large part of the developing World. The limitations of the theory are based on grounds of social, institutional or political differences, which simultaneously influence growth. Yet developed nations have to keep in mind that they are sovereign entities and they need to help their people and businesses succeed to remain successful nations. Because any risk arising of chances of a government failing to make debt repayments or not honouring a loan agreement is a sovereign risk. Such practices can be resorted to by a government in times of economic or political uncertainty or even to portray an assertive stance misusing its independence. A government can restore to such practices by easily altering any of its laws, thereby causing adverse losses to investors. For example, countries like Argentina and Mexico had defaulted on their loan payments in 1970s to a big extent after the oil shock. A little-known consortium of commercial space firms called the Mapping Alliance Program now offers remote sensing, images from space and software for use in computer-aided design, surveying, automated mapping and other services. MAP customers include oil and gas companies, water, gas, and electric utilities, agriculture, mining, and transportation, as well as natural-resource managers. Knowledge derived from space operations is also helping companies anticipate, reduce and hedge their risks. Thus space data play a key role in financial markets in which “weather futures” are traded. Variations in weather can have a major impact on productivity, turnover and overall profitability in fields as diverse as insurance and agriculture as well as [for] the manufacturers and retailers of everything from soft drinks to cold remedies, not to mention the organizers of pop festivals and package holidays. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
In the United States of America, 3.2 percent ($768 billion) of the entire $24.01 trillion economy was spent on defense. This is example will show how much things change in just a few decades. Now back on subject, according to the Department of Commerce, one seventh of the entire $10 trillion economy in 2001 was subject to weather risk. (Look how much the economy grew in just 20 years and compare the amount spent on defense to what was put at risk by the weather.) Whether futures, traded on LIFFE and other exchanges, offer a way of hedging against that risk. The health industry is another largely unacknowledged beneficiary of space activity. The 750,000 U.S. victims of kidney failure who today survive because of dialysis owe their treatment, in some measure, to NASA and its astronauts. A chemical process developed by the space agency to remove toxic waste from dialysis fluids is not helping patients stay alive. Meanwhile, a company called StelSys, using technology or ideas licensed from the U.S. space agency, is working to develop the equivalent of a dialysis system for patients with liver failure. One of the specialized functions of the human liver is to break down drugs or toxins into less harmful and more water-soluble substances that are more easily excreted from the body. The StelSys experiment—a joint study by NASA and Baltimore-based biotechnology research company StelSys, LLC—will test this function of human liver cells in the microgravity environment aboard the International Space Station, comparing the results to the typical function of supplicate cells on Earth. The findings of this experiment will provide unprecedented information about the effects of microgravity on the proper function of human liver cells, offering new insight into maintaining the health of humans living and working in space. Cells are transported from Earth to the International Space Station using Commercial Refrigerator/Incubator Module (CRIM). One on orbit, the cells are nurtured and grown in the CBOSS Biotechnology Specimen Temperature Controller (BSTC), which has flown continuously abroad the International Space Station since Expedition Thee. Once the cells are gown, they are frozen and stored in the ARCTIC single-locker freezer, a Space Station facility capable of lowering temperatures to -20 degrees Celsius. The frozen cells are then transported back to Earth for study. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
These scientists are studying liver and kidney cell growth, disease and replacement, using ground-based bioreactor labs, as well as commercial NASA bioreactors. To date, the company has made great strides in developing long-term cell culture techniques, and has created a prototype of a proposed “bio-artificial” liver. StelSys research abroad the Space Station is conducted under agreement with NASA’s Office of Biological and Physical Research in Washington, D.C. Research in this are could lead to earlier and more reliable drug-candidate screening for patients in need of liver and kidney treatments prior to transplant. It could also accelerate development of new life-saving drugs by pharmaceutical companies. StelSys LLC, in cooperation with NASA, is exploring specific research areas that benefit from liver cell research abroad the Space Station. They are: Development of a liver-assist device: Research based on NASA biotechnology could help develop a machine to sustain the life of a patient with advanced liver disease—similar to dialysis machines for persons with kidney disease. National production of the vitamin D3: Individuals on kidney dialysis require D3, which has beneficial effects on the immune system, helps fight various forms of cancer, and appears to be tied closely to hormones that control cellular proliferation and differentiation. Vitamin D3 remains expensive and difficult to properly manufacture, however. Stelsys seeks an alternative method of producing D3 via cultured kidney cells. Natural production of metabolites: StelSys is researching metabolites, or chemical by-products formed by the breakdown of parent compounds, which accelerates development of new drugs. Additional space research holds promise for improving the treatment of brain tumors, blindness, osteoporosis and other diseases responsible for megabillions of dollars in the ever-swelling healthcare budget. Today Europeans are clinically testing a heart pump based on space shuttle fuel-pump technology. With the annual cost of heart disease and stroke in the United States of America alone exceeding $108 billion a year, how much might such a heart pump save? Americans suffer 1.5 million heart attacks and strokes each year. A conservative estimate of these costs for just one person is $121,200 over twenty years. For those needing surgery or procedures and ongoing care, the cost can be more than $4.8 million over a lifetime. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Therefore, how much economic value should be assigned to the “bioreactor” designed for growing cells in space—a tool now used by tissue engineering labs developing methods to grow human hearts? NASA’s rotating bioreactor allows cells to be grown in a microgravity environment that eliminates almost all shear forces placed upon a cell culture system while entering space. NASA’s bioreactor has allowed various labs to culture cells and even viruses previously impossible to grow using traditional methods. These successes are attributed to the bioreactor’s ability to provide a unique environment that closely resembles tissue differentiation during embryogenesis, and thus allowing cellular expression of surface epitopes similar to that of intact tissues. It also appears that cells grown in microgravity, low-shear environment allow for greater chemical signaling, probably as a result of more surface contact between cells. Realizing the bioreactor’s commercial potential, Santa Monica, California-based VivoRx Licensed exclusive rights from NASA for both therapeutic and diagnostic commercial applications. VivoRX has, in the past, successfully transplanted encapsulated islet cells from cadavers and porcine pancreas into insulin-dependent diabetics, perhaps a major breakthrough in the treatment of diabetes. However, pancreas from cadavers are in very short supply. The bioreactor may be the answer; VivoRx hopes the bioreactor will allow them to propagate enough human islet cells to use their cell-based approach to treat a large diabetic population. The company has already successfully grown islet cells generated from the bioreactors, and is beginning FDA-approved Phase I/II clinical trials. We could also ask parallel question about economic blindness, limb loss and kidney failure associated with diabetes—a disease that has risen to $350 billion in America. People with diagnosed diabetes incur average medical expenditures of $16,752 per year, of which about $,601 is attributed to diabetes. On average, people with diagnosed diabetes have medical expenditures approximately 2.3 times higher than what expenditures would be in the absence of diabetes. In direct costs also include increased absenteeism ($3.3 billion), reduced productivity while at work ($26.9 billion) for the employed, in ability to work as a result of disease-related disability ($37.5 billion), lost productive capacity due to early mortality ($19.9 billion). Costs are forecast to soar as the population ages. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Meanwhile, space plays a crucial role in environmental monitoring as well. France’s SPOT-4 spacecraft, for example, carries an American POAM III instrument for measuring polar ozone and aerosol. According to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Review, “Every year huge tracts of forest in Alaska, Northern Canada, Scandinavia Russia and China are racked by forest fires from may through October, and in California, fire season is generally from March to December. Enormous quantities of smoke billow into the atmosphere, where high-altitude winds sometimes carry the smoke thousands of kilometers from the original fires.” SPOT-4/POAM III tracks it. Similarly, a joint Brazil-NASA space project is studying the global effects of ecological changes in the Amazon region. A NASA “bird” measures the rate at which ice is melting at the North and South Poles. Other space-based environmental projects focus on everything from water utilization and fisheries to the ecology of estuaries and El Nino weather effects. Never before has the human race had as detailed and accurate an image of the Earth’s surface. Space shuttles such as Endeavor have produced massive data needed for making high-resolution images of desolate tundras and deserts, of jungles where endangered gorillas live and of ancient ruins such as Angkor Wat and Ubar. The same amazingly precise data can, among many other uses, help us locate cell-phone towers, identify flight hazards for aircraft and forecast floods. Twenty-four hours a day, at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado, a handful of U.S. Air Force men and women—some little more than eighteen or nineteen years old—sit at computer consoles and control satellites orbiting the Earth twelve thousand nautical miles away. They operate more than twenty satellites that together form the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS) that can tell anyone with a small, inexpensive receiver one’s precise location on Earth. Used by online services, hikers, drivers, truckers, boaters, ships and shippers, banks, and telecom companies, not to mention the military, GSP is one of the marvels of our era. So far-reaching are its implications for both security and business that Europe lunched its own Galileo. Galileo is a GPS system that went live in 2016. It was created by the European Union through the European Space Agency. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Galileo cost $13.2 billion and has 28 satellites. It provides Europe accurate and reliable positioning and timing information, used for example in your mobile phones, your cars (and in the future autonomous and connected cars), railways, aviation and other sectors. As many know, GPS helps us locate time as well as space. Thus, in addition to positioning us spatially, the system also operates as a key synchronizer. In the words of Glen Gibbons of Advanstar Communications, “Every time we get cash from an ATM or make a phone call (whether wireless or wire-line), the synchronization of the voice and data streams in those…communications networks is almost certainly based on GPS timing…it has made nanosecond-level timing readily available throughout the World, courtesy of the cesium and rubidium atomic clocks on board the GPS satellites.” The productive benefit of precision timing and synchronization in the economy has yet to be calculated. And more is on the way. Since the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, anti-terror experts have devoted increasing attention the 226 million container boxes that move by sea each year. Although losing one box seems like it is not a big deal, containers piled high on giant vessels carrying everything from car tries to smartphones are toppling over at an alarming rate, sending millions of dollars of cargo skinning to the bottom of the ocean as pressure to speed deliveries raises the risk of safety errors. This shipping industry saw the biggest increase in lost containers in 2020. More than 3,000 boxes dropped into the sea last year, and more than 1,000 fell overboard in 2021. The accidents are disrupting supply chains for hundreds of American retailers and giving pirates a new treasure to search for, but even more than that, it creates danger. Any one of these containers can contain a hidden biological weapon, a smuggled terrorist, illegal drugs or arms or other dangerous prophylactics, barbiturates, and contraband. Today only about 2 percent are inspected as they enter the United States of America. Add to that the additional containers that arrive by land and air are another reason people are demanding border security. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
GPS satellites, in principle, can track the coordinates of these containers as they move from place to place. In the future, not just the containers but every product in them will be continually followed as it moves through the supply chain from the plant to the wholesaler, the retailer, onto the shelves and into the customer’s home. Prototype tracking systems are already being studied or tested by such companies as Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, and Kmart. Furthermore, the day will come when many packages carrying food, for example, will have embedded chips that continuously report to the shipper the changing condition of the food as it moves. Other “smart” packages will actually process their contents en route. Linking these to GPS or similar satellite systems will transform large sectors of both the transportation and the food industry, ensure fresher and higher quality packed food and other products, change the economics of both production and distribution in these and many other fields—and improve security. In Japan, to prevent theft of packages, couriers are now given a key to a digital customers car so they can leave a package in the trunk to prevent theft. If the car is then left unlocked, a failsafe system will arm the car after one minute. Because they have low crime rates, this is a great idea for Japan. However, like all technologies, of course, GPS has both beneficial and negative potentials. It can make our lives far more secure. It can track a car full of Good Day and Al Qaeda terrorists. It can also make a visit to a bordello or a Swiss bank less private than it might once have been. However, then, so can “cookies” in a computer, rouge medical professionals, scandalous lawyers—or a gossipy neighbor who steals your mail, watches your house and car, and accepts packages for you. Benefits and sacrifices need to be weighed against one another. One of the biggest economic payoffs from GPS, will come when today’s ground-based World air traffic control system becomes essentially a backup to a space-based alternative. Today flight plans require most aircrafts to fly from one ground-based radio beacon to the next over heavily congested airways. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Capacity near many big cities is limited. A GPS control system can increase capacity along with precision. It can also permit landings under conditions now regarded as prohibitive, including at remote and small airports, and improve over-the-ocean navigation. All at far less cost than the ground-based system. Also, corporations may start to open warehouses in suburban locations with locked storage units and some refrigerated where consumers can have any courier drop off your package because we all know thieves think just because packages are insured they can steal them, and when you are getting orders from companies like Omaha Steaks, they start to watch your order habits so they can intercept your packages. However, even if they are not involved in it. theft is embarrassing to many people, because it speaks poorly of you and the people in your community. High-end stores often share their “theft and loss” information with other corporations and couriers so it may secretly make them think less of you and the community you live in. Also, there are applications track and report crimes such as loss and theft and vandalism and this can make your home less appealing to prospective buyers and lower the property value of your community, while making it less desirable. Even more remarkable about the future of technology, NASA’s Global Differential GPS, recently developed at its Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasadena, California, has been tested in Greenland and the United States of America. It is now capable of positioning aircraft to within 3.9 inches horizontally and 7.9 inches vertically anywhere in the World. JPL proudly boasts that this is a “factor of ten impowerment” over the accuracy of current systems. Across the board, then, space activity is paying off for the emergent economy—often in unseen ways—and promises even more in days to come. A Midwest Research Institute study has estimated that every dollar invested in NASA adds nine dollars to U.S. gross domestic product. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Another analysis, by Chase Econometrics, has suggested that space-related research yields productivity increases that translate into a 43 percent return on investment. All such numbers are relatively old, shaky, and incomplete. Nevertheless, even if we arbitrarily slash them, they would still strongly suggest that space activity already pays off handsomely for the economy. And we are still using only a tiny fraction of its potential. Looming on the horizon are thousands upon thousands more satellites in the Heavens. Algeria, Pakistan and Nigeria have already purchased microsatellites weighing little more than a hundred pounds, capable of carrying cameras and being propelled into orbit for a fraction of what it now costs for conventional satellites. Professors Martian Sweeting of the company supplying them, Surrey Satellite Technology in Britain, claims that within a decade we will launch satellites no bigger than a credit card. As size and cost plumet they will become less expensive, making it possible for medium-sized businesses, NGOs, private groups and even individuals—good and bad alike—to afford them. It is time, in short, to recognize that even in purely economic terms the drive into space is anything but trivial. Humanity’s baby steps into space are already creating significant value on Earth in ways about which earlier civilizations could only fantasize. And it is only the beginning. Today more than fifty nations claim to have space programs. However, governments are not alone in space, as we discussed earlier. Private companies are modifying planes to take hundreds of people into space at once, as well as smaller sized planes to carry two or three people. The purpose: To hasten the development of commercial space tourism and colonization of other planets. Even if we are making no other changes in the “where” of wealth—if we were not shifting it toward Asia and forming region-states, if there were no search for higher-value-added placed, if we were not re-globalizing and de-globalizing the World economy, the leap beyond our planet would, by itself, mark a revolutionary turning point in wealth creation. #RandolphHarrs 12 of 18
The combined evidence, therefore, is overwhelming. We are simultaneously transforming the relationship of wealth to both time and space—two of the deep fundamentals that have underpinned all economic activity since we were hunter-gathers. Wealth today is not merely revolutionary but is becoming more so. Nor is this just a matter of technology. It is, as we will next time make clear, a revolution of the mind as well. Balked, not taken seriously, deprived of great objects and available opportunities, and in an atmosphere that does not encourage service—it is had to have faith, to feel justified, to have a calling, or win honour. However, what then fills the places of these? for every experience that a human being has is a whole way-of-being-in-the-World. First, necessity gives justification. Having something that you must do, solves the problem of having something to do. Necessary behaviour may or may not be honoruable. To wrest subsistence is necessary and honourable. If a young man falls in love, a temporary psychosis, his entire day is under the iron rule of necessity, foolishly and honourably; if it is only to watch under a window, he has something to do. When the class struggle against exploitation was lively, it was something necessary and honourable to engage in. Indeed, it is a major defect of our present organized system and the economy of abundance that, without providing great goals, it has taken away some of the important real necessities, leaving people with nothing to do. The void is soon filled. Behaviour like going into debt on the installment plan, gives an artificial but then real necessity, something to do, paying up. This is the Rat Race, but if people did not need its justifying necessity, for the commodities themselves are not that attractive, I doubt that it would be a run. Young fellows drift into narcotics, and then find that they have something they must do all day, looking for a connection and a fix, and how to get the loot. Compulsive hunting for pleasures of the flesh is something to do. By dividing into rival gangs, as Clausewitz pointed out long ago, it is possible to create a sate of uncertainty of what the enemy is up to, that keeps you constantly on your toes. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
This is a condition, also, apt to raise the ante, for no matter how you have planned to stay within limits, you can never be sure that the others will not take advantage. Many of the apparently pointless repeated risks that juveniles take, where there cannot be any kick left in the exploit itself, make a little sense when we learn that there is a competition: Ty has stolen twenty-six cars, Steve has stolen twenty-three cars, and each is driven by necessity not to be worsted, especially since the others come along for the rides (However, TY has an unfair advantage because he had gone as a punishment to a “Vocational High School” where he took auto mechanics). And poor Pedro and Carlos who worked while in high school to pay for their cars were cheated by not only Ty and Steve, but also the insurance companies because of their names and the colour of their skin. The system is just not always fair for men of colour who are doing the right thing. When psychologist like Linder speak of the aimless, unconcentrated, unsequential behavior of “psychopathic personalities,” I wonder whether they enough take into account that it requires a real object and an interest in it to take a good actualized Christian of experience and growth. To structure the behaviour of long hours and weeks requires a goal that, from some point of view at least, is pretty worthwhile. Our society is not abounding in highly worth-whole goals available to average gifts and underprivileged attainments. Many goals that are busily and perseveringly pursued by some might reasonably seem not worth the trouble to others who have more animal spirits or plain sense. These really might have “nothing to do,” and their aimless and sensation-seeking killing time might indicate nothing but chronic boredom. Yet they will be judged psychopathic personalities. However, once they have hit on a necessitous and important activity like finding their dose of barbiturates and contraband or stealing twenty-six joy rides (in the teeth of two arrests), they become models of purposiveness and perseverance. Such are the justifications and callings. The honour is to protect one’s masculinity and normalcy, yet to prove by notoriety that one is superior. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
More interesting and likely is the religious effort of the Hipster Generation, to which we shall turn to focus on at a future time, they are older and are not willing to have given up one Rat Race to fall into another. Can they solve the problem of the nagging unanswerable questions of justification and vocation? Their principle is the traditional one of classical mysticism: by “experience” (= kicks) to transcend the nagged and nagging self altogether and get out of one’s skin, to where no questions are asked—nor is there any articulate speech to ask them in. Resigning from society, they form peaceful brotherhoods of pure experience, with voluntary poverty, devotional readings, and a good deal of hashish. In Communist China in 1974, seventeen-year-old schoolgirl Anchee Min was carted away to Red Fire Farm in a convoy of eleven trucks. She was excited because it was an honour to be chosen for such a prestigious assignment. However, during her time at the collective farm, Anchee Min’s emotional moral, and ideological Worlds were turned topsy-turvy when her friend Shao Ching’s young lover was executed after the couple have been caught in passionate intimacy. Shao Ching, also seventeen, was breathtakingly lovely, slender as a willow, and rebellious. She copied out forbidden literature and shared it with her special friend Anchee Min. Instead of tying her brains with brown rubber bands like the other girls, Shao Ching bound hers with coloured strings. She scrounged tiny remnants of cloth and designed elegant unmentionables that she embroidered with flowers, leaves, and lovebirds. In the stark dormitory, her drying laundry hung like artwork. Shao Ching also altered the standard-issue clothes so that her shirts tapered in, nipping her tiny waist, and her trousers emphasized her long legs. She enjoyed her full bosoms and sometimes, in warm weather, shucked off her undergarment. One admiring soldier reportedly wept when he heard she had fallen ill. During Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, a good female comrade was supposed to reserve all her energy and thoughts for the revolution. Until she was in her late twenties, she was not so much as to contemplate men or marriage. “Learn to have a stainless mind!” people recited. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The girls at Red Fire Farm tried to model themselves on the heroines in revolutionary operas, paragons of virtue who never had men, either husbands or intimate friends. No wonder, then, that Shao Ching expressed no interest in men, even to Anchee Min, her closets friend. She was already suspect enough for her fine unmentionables, which has been criticized at a Party meeting. One night, Anchee Min and her companion in a military training program were called out to a “midnight emergency search.” With loaded pistols they were led through the reeds and toward a wheat field, silent and watchful. The order came to drop to their bellies, and they began to crawl through the night. Mosquitoes buzzed and stung, but tht was the only sound. Suddenly, Anchee Min heard the murmur of two voices, a man’s and a woman’s. “I heard a soft, muted cry. And then my shock: I recognized the voice as Shao Ching’s.” Anchee Min’s first thought was to warn her friend—the consequences of being caught with a man were unthinkable. Shao Ching had never even hinted that she was romantically involved, but why would she? At Red Fire Farm, such an admission would be shameful. The brigade acted in unison, flashing thirty flashlights at once, exposing Shao Ching’s rear end and a skinny, spectacled, bookish young man. They took Shao Ching away, leaving a group of soldiers to beat her man. “Make him understand that today, lustful men can no longer force themselves on women,” Anchee Min heard Yan, their leader, instruct. Shao Ching’s studious young beloved displayed no sign that he felt guilty. As the soldiers began to beat and whip him, he made a visible effort not to cry out. Four day later, a public trial was held in the mess hall. Shao Ching had undergone “intensive mind rebushing” and testified in a quavering voice, reading from a paper she held in hands that shook so much, she twice dropped her statement. “He raped me,” she said. Her words convicted her lover and he was executed. (At least she could have just played hard to get since she knew it was wrong to have pleasures of the flesh.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The fastidious Shao Ching stopped bathing and cut up her pretty unmentionables. After months, other girls complained that she stank. She was sent to a hospital in Shanghai and treated for psychosis. She returned to the farm, fat as a bursting sausage from medication, hair matted, eyes vacant. Later she was found dead, drowned among a tangle of weeds. At a special memorial service, Shao Ching was honored as an “outstanding comrade” and was admitted posthumously into the Youth League of the Community Party. Her grandmother was given money in condolence. Celibacy at Red Fire Farm was so strictly enforced that violators were executed. Shao Ching had been saved only because Yan had insisted she recant and blame her lover. Shao Ching had done so, but the mental stress destroyed her mind and she never recovered—do doubt haunted by memories of how her teenage love affair had condemned a young mand to torture and death. “But concerning brotherly love [for all other Christians], you have n need to have anyone write you, for you yourselves have been [personally] taught by God to love one another,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.9. The second grade counsel is almost monastic in its disciplinary demand for it bids one refrain from the pleasures of the flesh altogether, save for the purpose of having children, whose number must be limited and proportioned strictly. In the case of the unmarried, there will then be a complete chastity. May we move beyond viewing this life only through a frame, but touch it and be touched by it. May our bodies, our minds, our spirits, learn a new rhythm paced by the rhythmic pulse of the whole created order. May spring come to us, be in us, and recreate life in us. May we forge a new friendship with the natural World and discover a new affinity with beauty, with life, and with the Cosmic Christ in whom all things were created in Heaven and on Earth, visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions pr principalities or authorities for all things were created through Him and for Him. In His name. Amen. Lord of springtime, Father of flower, field and fruit, smile on us in these earnest days when the work is heavy and the toil wearisome; lift up our hearts, O God, to the things worthwhile—sunshine and night, the dripping rain, the song of the birds, books and music, and the voice of our friends. Left up our hearts to these this night and grant us Thy peace. Amen. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
All things that live shall praise Thy name, the spirits of all flesh proclaim Thy sovereignty, O Lord our God. From everlasting Thou art God, to everlasting Thou shalt be; we have no other God but Thee. Thy goodness and Thy holiness support us in all times of stress, Redeemer, Lord, and King. Thou art the God of first and last, in every age Thy children raise their voices in eternal praise. With tender love Thy World dost guide, and for our needs dost Thou provide; Thou keepest watch eternally. Thou takest slumber from our eyes, and to the speechless givest voice; through Thy great mercy all rejoice. Thou raisest those whose heads are bent, sustaining all the weak and spent; to Thee alone we render thanks. If like the sea our mouths could sing, our tongues like murmuring waves implore, our lips like spacious skies adore; and were our eyes like moon or son, our hands like eagles’ wings upon the Heavens, to spread and reach to Thee; and if our feet were swift as hinds, yet would we still unable be to thank Thee, God, sufficiently; to thank Thee for one-thousandth share of all thy kind and loving care which Thou in every age hast shown. From Egypt didst Thou lead us forth, from bondage didst Thou set us free, redeeming us from slavery. In famine, food didst Thou provide, in plenty Thou wast at our side, to keep and guide us, Lord or God. From pestilence and sword didst save, and when we were by ills assailed, Thy love and mercy never failed. O Lord, Thy wondrous deeds we praise, forsake us not throughout our days; be Thou our help forevermore. Therefore, O Lord, our limbs, our breath, our soul, our tongue, shall all proclaim Thy praise, and glorify Thy name, and every month and every tongue declare allegiance without end; and every knee to Thee shall bend. The mighty ones shall humble be, yea, every heart revere but Thee, and sing the glory of Thy name. Hearken, O my people! From the very depths of my soul I speak unto you; from the core of life where lies the tie that binds us one to the other, with devotion, deep and profound, I declare unto you that you, each one of you, all of you, the whole of you, your very souls, our generations—only you are the essence of my life. I live in you, in each of you, in all of you; in your life, my life has deeper, truer meaning; without you I am as not. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
A single story home with this large of a kitchen? Yes, when you choose #Havenwood Model 1!
We love showcasing the incredible opportunities for entertaining; it’s one of our favorite parts about the home.
Enjoy the ease of main-level living but also the convenience of relaxing evenings on the patio in your private backyard.
Battle Against the Laws of Nature—With God Comes Worlds without End
This Earth will eventually pass away, but not to worry, through God we will have a new Earth and Eternal Life. We want to see humanity in pursuit of knowledge for the mind is fascinating, for it looks on things with the hidden generosity in the soul. Few words in recent years have fueled as much hatred and controversy around the World as globalization—and few have been used more hypocritically—and naively—by all sides. For many anti-globalists, the real target of their wrath is the United States of America, World headquarters of free-market economics. The U.S. drive over past decades to globalize (or, more accurately, to reglobalize) the World economy also flew a false flag. Successive administrations, especially that of former President Bill Clinton and currently President Joe Biden, have preached a mantra to the World. The so-called Washington Consensus held that globalization plus liberalization in the form of privatization, deregulation and free trade would alleviate poverty and create democracy and a batter World for all. Both pro- and anti-globalist ideologues typically lump globalization with liberalization, as though they were inseparable. Yet countries can integrate economics without liberalizing. Liberalizing countries, by contrast, can sell off their state enterprises, deregulate and privatize their economies, without necessarily globalizing. None of this guarantees that long-term benefits will flow from the macroeconomy to the microeconomy in which people actually live. And none of it guarantees democracy. It is now perfectly clear that both sides in the ideological war over reglobalization have been perfectly and deliberately unclear. Thus the Web site of a protest movement that has waged a ceaseless campaign against globalism listed “actions” in Hyderabad, India; Davos, Switzerland; Porto Alegre, Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Washington, D.C.; and Barcelona, Spain, as well as others in New Zealand, Greece, Mexico and France. Demonstrators surrounded World leaders in their luxury hotels at numerous international meetings from Seattle to Genoa or forced them to seek refuge in remote locations—and to call up security forces to maintain the peace. Now protestors are invited to meet these leaders and much of the fizz has gone out of the movement. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
It hardly escapes notice, however, that much of this purportedly anti-globalist activity is coordinated by interlinked Web sites on the Internet, itself an inherently global technology. The political impact of the movements comes largely from television coverage delivered by global satellite systems. Many of the demands of these groups—for lower-cost medications, for example—can be met only by global corporations the protesters could not fly to their demonstrations without globally linked airlines dependent on global reservation systems. And the goal of many of the protesters is to create a movement with global impact. In fact, the movement has split into many different, often short-lived groups with dizzyingly diverse goals, from eliminating child labor to outlawing tobacco to protecting the rights of all inmates. A few are dewy-eyed anarcho-localists, glorifying the supposed authenticity of face-to-face life in pre-industrial villages—conveniently forgetting the lack of privacy, gender discrimination, and the narrow-minded local tyrants and bigots so often found in real villages. Others are back-to-nature romantics. Still others are United States—and European Union—hating supernationalists identified with neofascist anti-immigrant political movements. However, many others are, in fact, not “anti-global” at all but “counter-global.” These counter-globalists, for example, strongly support the United Nations and other international agencies. Many long to see something approximating a single World government, or at least better, stronger global governance financed, perhaps, by a global tax. What many of them do want, however, is a World crackdown on global corporations and global finance, which they blame for exploiting workers, damaging the environment, supporting undemocratic governments and an infinity of other ills. The antis make the most noise. However, even if all the chanting, marching anti- and counter-globalization protesters were to steal away in the night, the advance of economic re-globalization might still slow or stop in the years immediately ahead. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Powerful factors now loom before us that could halt the continued extension of spatial reach and make even the anti-globalists sorry to see that happen. The re-globalization period has seen the World economy suffer one devastating regional or national crisis after another—in Asia, in Russia, in Mexico, in Argentina. In each case, investors, business decision-makers and governments all over the World worried about financial “contagion.” Would Argentina’s collapse destroy the Brazilian economy? Could the COVID pandemic cause a Worldwide meltdown? (It is still coming close to.) Because economic integration today is far more dense, multilayered and complicated, linking so many diverse economies at so many different levels, it requires systemically designed fail-safes, redundancies and other safety devices. Unfortunately, overenthusiastic re-globalizers are constructing a gigantic financial cruise ship lacking the watertight compartments that even the Titanic had. U.S. stock markets have “circuit breakers” intended to stop a crash in its tracks. For example, if the Dow Jones index falls 10 percent before 2.00 p.m. on a trading day, the New York Stock Exchange will call a one-hour halt in trading. If prices move too far above or below a preset limit, so-called collars are imposed on certain trades. Similar measures are in place or under discussion in many countries from India to Taiwan. These may or may not be adequate locally or nationally. However, trade, currency and capital markets at the global level lack equivalents of even these cautionary measures, let alone a comprehensive system of firewalls, compartments, backups and the like. By integrating faster than we are inoculating ourselves against contagion, two processes are out of sync—setting us up for a global epidemic that could send individual nations rushing back, head over heels, into their protective financial shells. Their frenzied responses could include yanking foreign investments back home, restoring trade barriers, drastically reshuffling import-export patterns and relocating businesses, jobs and capital around the planet—in short, reversing the recent direction of change. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
What other events or conditions could limit or reverse re-globalization? Plenty. If not the age, we have entered the age of export overload—or, at least the interval. Starting in the 1970s, Japan soared to prosperity by combining computerized design and manufacture, relatively closed domestic markets and aggressive exports. That strategy was soon emulated by South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and later by Malaysia and Indonesia. All pumped their products into American and European markets, and more “things” that ever in history moved across the Pacific by containership, tanker and cargo planes. Exports—a spatial phenomenon by definition—came to be regarded as the magic bullet for development. In all these Asian countries, exports grew faster than domestic demand—another example of large-scale de-synchronization. At that point, China roared into the fray, cramming even cheaper products into the crowded global market and especially into the United States of America. Suddenly America was awash with Chinese hair dryers, hoses, handbags, clocks and calculators, tools, and toys. Overcapacity and rapacity marched hand-in-hand. If the United States of America’s economy, which alone accounts for more than 30 percent of World demand, were at any time to lurch into a free fall, it hardly needs to be noted that the relocations of wealth in the World would be shattering for many other countries—including some of the poorest. Among those hardest hit would be countries whose governments are dangerously overdependent on a single export for their day-to-day revenue. This could be copper, as in Zambia. It could be bauxite, sugar, coffee, cocoa or cobalt. Or it could be oil. With crude-oil prices at record highs, it may seem unlikely. Yet the unlikely happens again and again, and a severe slowdown in the United States of America or a crash in China could, despite producers’ efforts to control supply, send oil prices plummeting again. Even if the decline is temporary, the results could shake many governments out of power. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Fully 80 percent of Nigeria’s government revenue comes from oil, as does 75 percent of Saudi Arabia’s. Much the same can be said of Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Angola. For Venezuela the number is 50 percent, for Russia close to 30 percent. Unstable or politically fragile at best, oil-funded governments could be forced to cut domestic subsidies and social benefits at the risk of triggering upheaval in their streets. More bad news for re-globalization. The war between Russia and Ukraine is increasing pressure on the global system and increasing oil prices higher than they have ever been. The cost of a barrel of oil is currently $115 and is expected to reach $150 a barrel. That could send gas prices from $6.00 a gallon to around $9.60 a gallon, which would cause a supply shock. The average American could end up paying $1250 a month for gas. Canceling the Key Stone Pipeline may have been Joe Biden’s biggest mistake. However, he says all Americans need to do is buy electric car. Yet let us forget that we are still in a pandemic and many people have been spending money just to get through it, and with inflation and rising gas prices, no one has money to go out and buy electric cars and a lot of people have already bought new vehicles. In fact, in 2021, sales of light trucks accounted for about 78 percent of the approximately 15 million light vehicles sold in the United States of America. So currently gas prices are really hurting Americans and if they continue to state at this rate and increase, that will be a significant bill. Therefore, people will spend less money dining out, shopping, and traveling. The decades ahead may also see a further formation of supranational blocs and trade groups following the wake of the European Union (EU). The is the World’s largest trading bloc, and second largest economy, after the United States of America. In 2014 the value of the EU’s output totaled $18.5 trillion. The five largest Economies, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain, account for around 70 percent of the 28-country trading bloc. Ranging from Mercosur in South America to emergent groupings in Asia, these blocs, since they create larger-than-national markets, can be seen as half steps toward global integration and more open trade. That is how they are usually portrayed. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
However, despite protestations to the contrary, they can also, under extreme pressures, flip the protectionist switch and become large-scale deterrents to further openness and globalization. With respect to global integration, area-wide supranational blocs could prove to be a double-edged switchblade. And so could the next explosion of scientific and technological breakthroughs. Propelled by the fusion of information and biological technologies, it could reduce the need for some previously imported raw materials and other goods. Radical miniaturization, customization and the partial substitution of knowledge content for raw material means that tomorrow’s economies may no longer need as many of the bulk commodities that now form so large a part of the global market. Teaspoons of a nanoproduct tomorrow could replace tons of material that today needs to be shipped across the World. This may be long in coming, but its impact will be felt in major port cities around the World, from Qingdao to Los Angeles to Rotterdam. Again, all this points to more do-it-at-home processes and less reliance on a globalized marketplace. Furthermore, we cannot rule out war and its partner, terror, the most obvious de-globalizers. Both, as we are currently seeing, can physically destroy energy and transportation infrastructures needed for the movement or relocation of oil, gas, raw materials, finished products and other goods. Both can also unleash capital flight and unstoppable tidal waves of cross-border refugees. Bother will target critical information infrastructures in knowledge-intensive economies. Unfortunately, the period ahead is likely to see high geopolitical instability and frequent outbreaks of military conflict—leaving not only dead and wounded on the field but, as in the past, the disintegration of what has already been integrated. Beyond these potential de-globalizers are what futurist call wild cards, scenarios that, though highly improbable, cannot be ruled out: strange new pandemics and quarantines, asteroid strikes and ecological catastrophes that could knock the entire economic firmament off its current course and reduce it to Mad Max conditions. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
It is useful to reserve at least a speck of mind space for thinking the unthinkable, for history is little more than a sequence of high-impact events that began as utterly improbable and exploded into actuality. We cannot know with certainty which of these thrust-reversers might come into play, or how they might converge. However, any one of them could prove a far more potent force for turning back re-globalization than all the headline-grabbing protest movements put together. Moreover, it is easy to imagine two or more of these de-globalizing events coming into play simultaneously—and in the not-so-far-off future. It is a lot harder to imagine a future in which none of them occurs. The most likely scenario is a split—a possible slowdown in further economic integration as such, even as World pressures rise for globally coordinated action on such issues as terror, crime, environmental issues, human rights, slavery, and genocide. This should put to bed any dream of linear progress toward a fully integrated, truly global economy—and any illusions about a World government in the foreseeable decades. It points, instead, to more not fewer, faster not slower, bigger not smaller, spatial jolts to job markets, technologies, money and people around the planet. It points to an age of accelerating spatial turbulence. What we have seen so far, therefore, is not only a massive shift of wealth toward Asia, a growing importance of region-states and a change in spatial criteria in advanced economies, but a gigantic—though reversible—process of re-globalization. Any of these, by itself, represents an important change in the way revolutionary wealth is related to the deep fundamental of space. Yet, as we will soon see, one final spatial change may, some distant day, dwarf all these put together. Now, one striking characteristic of modern education is the unanimous disapproval of exploiting the powerful feeling of shame, the hot blush and wanting to sink into the ground out of sight. It is claimed that this injures personal dignity and either makes a child vengeful and not belonging, or breaks his spirit. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Youth workers with delinquents make a fetish of protecting self-esteem, as contrasted with the polices’ “You young Punk!” Yet in ancient education, exempli gratia, in the Socratic dialogues, this very arousal of shame is a chief device; the teacher greets the hot flush as a capital sign that the youth is educable, he has noble aims. Such a youth has dignity in his very shame. The difference seems to be that we cannot offer available opportunities of honor, we do not have them; and therefore we must protect what shreds of dignity the youth has. If we make him ashamed of his past, since he has no future, he is reduced to nothing. In other ages, the community had plenty of chances of honor, and to belong to the community itself was honor. (Let me make an analogy from psychotherapeutic practice: when a patient is schizoid, you give reassurance, protect the weak ego; when he is neurotic and can take care of himself, you attack the character resistances.) Now shame is the only direct attack on conceit, the defensive image of oneself. Conceit is the common denominator of the Organization Man, the hipster, and the juvenile delinquent—this is why I have been lumping them together. The conceited image of the self is usually not quite conscious, but it is instantly woundable; and people protect it with a conformity to their peers (oneself is superior). However, the conceited groups differ in their methods of confirming and enhancing conceit: the juvenile delinquent by surly and mischievous destructiveness of the insulting privileged outgroup; the hipster by making fools of them with token performances; the Organization Man by status and salary. To this inner idol, they sacrifice the ingenuous exhibition and self-expression that could make them great, effective, or loved in the World; but if it is mistaken, out of place, or disproportionate, that can also be shamed. Being ashamed ought to mean that a youth gives up some cherished error or conceited image of himself, and goes on, without loss of dignity, to achieve an ideal that is real; this is honor. Only the community can bestow honor, on those who enhance the community, who follow the useful callings, or bring new culture. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
In New York, those who have kept out of jail for a generation are not made much of by a grateful and admiring citizenry. It is hard achievement but, like other public gods, it is not esteemed. Among cities, Venice had magnificence; but it is Florence that knew how to pay honor to her sons. She made it hard for them, with neglect and exile, to be themselves and serve her; but when nevertheless they achieved their ideals, her praise was loud. Boys today hardly aspire to immortal honor, the honor of self-fulfilling achievement. It is highly disapproved of in the code of the organized system. Instead, they devote themselves to protecting their “personal honor” against insults; and conversely they dream of the transient notoriety which will prove that they are “somebody,” which they doubt. The personal honor that they protect does not include truthfulness, honesty, public usefulness, integrity, independence, or virtues like that. A reputation for these things does not win respect, it has no publicity value; it is believed to be phony anyway, and if it is true, the person is hard to get along with. A British disaffected young man, an Angry Young Man, can make his protest by simply being a Cad, like Osborne’s George Dillion; but that would not much distinguish him on this side of the sea. A bad reputation naturally makes people prudent in their personal dealings, but it generally does not do much hard in the press or on TV, even to a public official, for the plugs is more important than the content of it. On the other hand, any official bad mark that gets on an IBM card, like being arrested and fingerprinted—and even if her was exonerated it–no matter what the charge, it can be disastrous to a young man, for his name can thereby drop out of the system. Nobody, but nobody, may disesteem a man for something, or he may even get wished for notoriety for something, that at the same time makes him unemployable. Just try to imagine nowadays the administrator of old-fashioned juvenile fiction who says, “You man, I do not care what Personnel reports, you have an honest face and we will give you a chance!” #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Rather, a good man will be asked to resign for the sake of Public Relations. And correspondingly, suburban “good families” increasingly shun “bad families” that have had troubles, such as divorces or delinquency or even death of a parent (!), for that makes the family untypical. (A few years ago an editorial in Life complained that our novels always contain alcoholics, jailbirds, addicts, crazy people, perverts, etcetera, and do not portray average families who have none such. James Farrell, pointing out that the combined numbers of these deviants come to much more than the number of families, drily offered that the editor of Life probably did not have a material family, a very abnormal case.) There is an organized system of reputation that is calculated statistically to minimize risk and eliminate the unsafe; likely it succeeds in this. It may make the enterprise as a whole less efficient, for it guarantees excluding the best, but be that as it may; the important thing is that there has ceased to be any relation whatever between “personal honor” and community or vocational service. Conversely, the way in which our society does do honor to its indubitably great and serviceable men—say, Schweitzer, Einstein, Picasso, Buber—is a study in immunizing people against their virus; it would be a remarkable and melancholy subject for a sociologist. They are transformed into striking images and personalities, and we assign to them the Role of being great men. We pay respectful attention to their birthday sayings. They are the menagerie of Very Important People who exist only for ceremonial occasions and to sponsor funds and drives for enterprises in which they will have no further function. This effectually prevents the two practical uses that we could make of them. We neither take seriously the simple, direct, fearless souls that they invariably are, whether humble or arrogant, to model ourselves after them because they make more sense as human beings; nor do we have recourse to them please to help us when we have need of exceptional purity, magnanimity, profundity, or imagination, giving them a free hand on the assumption that their action is really better. Though we publicize the image, we do not behave as though we really believed that there were great men, a risky fact in the World. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
They are likely to be and do the damnedest things: Picasso is a communist; Einstein sponsored the atom bomb; Bernard Shaw was arrogant and peculiarly celibate; Frank Lloyd Wright was wildly arrogant and immoral when it came to pleasures of the flesh; Bertrand Russell was a convicted pacifist and has practically advocated free love; etcetera. Few great men could pass Personnel. Or, as if we believed that the affairs of our World were alternatively significant enough for the intervention of great men. For instance, no one would think of looking for actualized Christians to intervene in our racial troubles—that is not their “field of competence” (though we did have the sense to get some good sociology on the subject from Gunner Myrdal). We would not officially ask a man of letters, as the British used Bernard Shaw, to criticize the penal system. When it comes to improving the high schools, we choose a well-licensed administrator, we do not try to persuade some extraordinary scholar or natural philosopher, a man who has actually learned something and therefore perhaps knows how it is done; naturally we come out with an excellent administrative report, but no ideas. John Dewey was called on, by passionately interested people, to make an impartial inquiry into the death of Trotsky; that seems a reasonable use of a judicious and incorruptible man; but we do not much imitate it. However, even when there is no doubt of the field of competence, when we choose a man to beautify our towns, we do not automatically call on the major artists of the World; for instance, we now lavishly praise Frank Lloyd Wright, but we never made any community use of him, though he longed for the chance and kept badgering the country with community projects. My belief is that one can easily put great men to work, even against their own freedom and advantage, for they allow themselves to be imposed on, noblesse oblige; but one must, of course, then take the consequences. As if they were a useful public resource, I understand that to consider powerful souls is quite foreign to our customs. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
In a small sense it is undemocratic to consider powerful souls as a public resource, for it assumes that some people really know better in a way that must seem arbitrary to most. In a large sense it is certainly democratic, it that it makes the great man serve as a man. Either of these choices, to eschew them or to use them, however, is preferable to creating glamorous images with empty roles. Now, schoolteaching in Tsarist Russia was little different from anywhere else. The profession was undervalued, underpaid, and overworked, and subject to unutterably petty rules and regulations spewed forth by a strangulating educational bureaucracy. Russia’s legal code granted government officials the right to deny any soldier or civil servant permission to marry, but by the late nineteenth century, only schoolteachers who married lost their rent-free lodgings, seniority, even their jobs. In fact, women teachers were the real target and were routinely fired for marrying, while men seldom were. In 1897, the St. Petersburg Duma (the name for elective municipal councils) formalized this discrimination, passing a law that banned the hiring of married women teachers and terminated those who married after their appointment. The reasons? With fewer employment opportunities than men, single, well-educated young women were grateful for teaching positions. Since they needed less money to live (so the authorities reasoned), they demanded lower salaries. Teaching youngsters was natural for them and prepared them or marriage, at which time they would be dismissed. Off they went to their husbands, at a net saving to St. Petersburg because they were given no pension benefits and were replaced by another contingent of eager, hardworking, docile young spinsters. Why were women singled out for singleness? Married men, after all, were permitted to teach. The reasoning was that a man merely provided his family’s living, but a mother had much heavier responsibilities. She might, for example, have to nurse a baby during school hours or stay at home to nurse a sick child or husband. She might even transfer to her family some of the interminable hours previously dedicated to her teaching. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Elementary-school teaching in St. Petersburg paid better than elsewhere in Russian, and the city’s rich cultural life, with concerts, ballets, and lectures, was an additional lure for eager young minds. School conditions, on the other hand, were less delightful. Classes were held in the teachers’ rented apartment, dark and cramped, unequipped and noisy, and scattered throughout the city, preventing camaraderie with other teachers. Their often cold, hungry, desperately poor, and sometimes abused pupils were divided into three grades, for which one teacher alone was responsible. To ease the children’s suffering, teachers were supposed to dip into their own meager purses and provide after-hours food, clothing, and lodging. When teachers dared complain, it was of overwork and nervous exhaustion. This, however, was not the end of their employer’s demands. Teachers had to provide certificates of political reliability, and in some areas (but not St. Petersburg), the women had to submit medical proof of virginity. In Moscow, female but not male teachers had to abide by a strict 11 P.M. curfew and were monitored to ensure they did so. Clearly, women teachers were expected to be more than just unmarried. Virtue and virginity were of the highest importance. Frightened teachers dared protect only collectively, through the women’s movement and teachers’ mutual-aid societies. A 1903 survey revealed their conflicting views on the issue of celibacy as a prerequisite to teaching, which many abhorred but practiced for wants of alternatives. As one liberal legislator expressed it, “This situation weighs heavily upon city teachers and is tantamount to serfdom. Women teachers are primarily poor girls, needing a scrap of bread; the city administration gives them the chance to work and not die of hunger, but under conditions which cripple their natures, condemning them to eternal celibacy.” Thirty-five teachers reported financial insecurity as their motivation for remaining single and celibate; twenty-nine were afraid of losing their jobs; seven were too exhausted by their teaching responsibilities to lead a personal life; and seven worked too long hours to meet potential husbands. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
A minority of women teachers readily accepted the celibacy imposed on them. Two did not want to marry anyway, one to avoid wedding an unsuitable man, as she noticed so often happened. A few believed teaching was emotional reward enough: “THEY DO NOT NEED A FAMILY. They have found their family among those whom the Lord called His pupils.” Others argued that teaching provided them with independence and a satisfying profession without the constraints of marriage or parental authority, and they defended both their celibacy and their right to reject marriage. The vast majority, however, would have loved to marry and raise families and believed married women were better teachers than spinsters. One anonymous writer agreed: “The Duma’s vestal virgins! How sad and pitiful that sounds…What intelligent woman would give up her right to be a mother? What educated young woman, having known the soul of a small child, would give up the right to bring up her own children and give the motherland useful citizens?!” Some blamed a host of physical and emotion problems on their legislated celibacy: “Celibacy has a harmful effect on everything—on health and on character: it causes selfishness, irritability, nervousness, and a formal relationship to the children,” one woman declared. To avoid all this, a tiny number of defiant women teachers simply had secret love affairs or married and hid the fact. If discovered, they were summarily fired. The simmering discontent boiled over late in 1905, when the Duma voted, by majority of one, to maintain the marriage ban. The authorities had won, just barely, their “battle against the laws of nature.” Eight years later, the “laws of nature” were reestablished, when in a nearly unanimous vote, the marriage ban was repealed. Celibacy was not longer a requirement for St. Petersburg’s women teachers. This episode, replanted in variations through the Western World, including Canada, was a telling indictment of coercive celibacy. Most teachers observed it, reluctantly and even bitterly, simply to keep their jobs. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The professional and economic risks were too great, and the news of cheaters caught and fired maintained the ambience of fear. Far from finding it rewarding, these unwilling teachers attributed a multitude of ailments to their unnatural celibacy. The few who embraced it voluntarily, on the other hand, respected it as a means to an independent and respected profession and adopted it as a desirable and fruitful way of life. Several revelations were given at Kirtland during the Winter months of 1831-1832. After Oliver Cowdery and John Whitmer left Kirtland for Independence with the revelations, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon returned to their work on the Inspired Version of the Scriptures. While they were thus engaged, a revelation came to them in which the Lord gave them these instructions: “Open your mouth in proclaiming my gospel, the things of the kingdom, expounding the mysteries thereof out of the Scriptures. Call upon the inhabitants of the Earth, and bear record, and prepare the way for the commandments and revelations which are to come.” Newell K. Whitney was called to the office of bishop in Kirtland. He was to be an assistant to the bishop in America. It was his duty to receive the funds of the church in Kirtland, to keep that part of the Lord’s storehouse, and to administer to the wants of those who were in need. The Lord said: “It is required of the Lord, at the hand of every steward, to render an account of his stewardship, both in time and in eternity. For he who is faithful and wise in time is accounted worthy to inherit the mansions prepared for them of my Father.” After Joseph and Sidney Rigdon had preached about two months in Kirtland and in neighboring towns, God revealed that they should resume their work on the Scriptures. The Lord said: “It is expedient to translate again, and, inasmuch as it is practicable, to preach in the regions round about until Conference, and after that it is expedient to continue the work of translation until it be finished.” As Joseph and Sidney Rigdon read and studied the Bible, God helped them understand the Scriptures by His Holy Spirit. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Sometimes the Lord gave them direct revelations about things which puzzled them, as he did when He said: “And it came to pass that the children being brought up in subjection to the Law of Moses…believed not the gospel of Christ. Wherefore this cause the apostle wrote unto the church that a believer should not be united to an unbelieve, expect the Law of Moses should be done away among them. And that the tradition might be done away, which saith that little children are unholy. However, little children are holy, being sanctified through the atonement of Jesus Christ; and this is what the Scriptures mean.” The elders were instructed that it was their duty to provide for their own families, to find places for them to live, and then perform their work for the church. The Lord promised his elders: “Let my servants proclaim the things which I have commanded them: and inasmuch as they are faithful, lo, I will be with them even unto the end. Let every human be diligent in all things. And the idler shall not have place in the church, except one repents and mends one’s ways.” On February 10, 1832, Joseph and Sidney Rigdon received a vision in which they saw and talked with Jesus Christ. They saw Jesus Christ sitting at the right hand of God. They saw the holy angels and all those who were pure in heart bow, worshiping God and His Son. Because of this vision they were able to say concerning Jesus Christ: “And, now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, that he lives; for we saw him, even on the right hand of God. And we heard the voice bearing record that He is the only Begotten of the Father; that by Him, and through Him, and of Him, the World are and were created; and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.” In this vision they saw that before the World was created, one of the angels, Lucifer, was evil, having rebelled against the Son of God. As a result he was thrust from the presence of God and he fell from Heaven, and became Satan. Of this part of their vision, Joseph writes: “We beheld Satan, that old serpent, even the Devil, who rebelled against God, and sought to take the kingdom of our God and His Christ. Wherefore he maketh war with the saints of God…And we saw a vision of the sufferings of those with whom he made war and overcame, for thus came the voice of the Lord unto us.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Then the Lord revealed to Joseph and Sidney Rigdon how men should live after death in places that are called “glories.” The glory of a human is to occupy depends upon one’s works while one lives on the Earth. In vision Joseph and Sidney Rigdon saw these three glories and they wrote of what they saw: First, the celestial glory, or the glory as of the sun. Those who will inherit the celestial glory: “They are they who received the testimony of Jesus, and believed on His name, and were baptized. And received the Holy Spirit by the laying on of the hands of one who is ordained and sealed unto this power. And who overcome by faith. They are they who are priests of the Most High after the order of Melchisedec. These shall dwell in the presence of God and His Christ for ever and ever: these are they whom He shall bring with Him, when He shall come in the clouds of Heaven, to reign on the Earth over His people. These are they who shall have part in the first resurrection who shall come forth in the resurrection of the just. Second, the terrestrial glory, or the glory as of the moon. Those who will inherit the terrestrial glory: These are they who died without law…who received not the testimony of Jesus in the flesh, but afterwards received it. These are they who are honorable humans of the Earther, who were blinded by the craftiness of humans. These are they who are not valiant in the testimony of Jesus. These are they who receive of His glory, but not of His fullness. These are they who receive of the presence of the Son, but not of the fullness of the Father. Third, the telestial glory, or the glory as of the stars. Of this glory, and those who would inherit this glory, Joseph wrote: These are they who received not the gospel of Christ, neither the testimony of Jesus Christ. These are they who deny not the Holy Spirit; these are they who are thrust down to hell. These are they who shall not be redeemed from the Devil, until the last resurrection, until the Lord, even Christ the Lamb, shall have finished His work. These are they who are liars, and whosever loves and makes a lie; these are they who suffer the wrath of God. These are they who receive not of his fullness in the eternal World, but of the Holy Spirit through the ministration of the terrestrial and also the telestial receive it of the administering of angels. As one star differs from another star in glory, even so differs one from another in glory in the telestial World. Last of all, these all are they who will not be gathered with the saints, to be caught up unto the church of the Firstborn, and received into the cloud. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
God made it known that eventually all will acknowledge Him as the Lord, for Jesus Christ said of those who inherit telestial glory: These are all shall bow the knee, and every tongue shall confess to him who sits upon the throne for ever and ever; for they shall be judged according to their works; and every human shall receive according to one’s own works, but where God and Christ dwell they can not come, Worlds without end. Many wonderful things were shown to Joseph and Sidney Rigdon in this vision. Many of them were so glorious that God commanded they should not write about them. In March four revelations were given. One gave further information on the storehouse and how to care for the poor. In others some of the elders were sent to different parts of the country to preach the gospel. Good advice was given to Frederick G. Williams when the Lord said: Be faithful, stand in the office which I have appointed unto you, succor the weak, lift up the hands of which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees. And if thou art faithful unto the end, thou shalt have a crown of immortality and eternal life in the mansions which I have prepared in the House of My Father. “Only fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart; for consider how great are the things He has done for you,” I Samuel 12.24. An Angel inclines the will as something loveable, and as manifesting some created good ordered God’s goodness. And thus one can incline the will to the love of the creator of God, by way of persuasion. Everywhere is the green of new growth, the amazing sight of the renewal of the Earth. We watch the grass once again emerging from the ground. O Lord, may we today be touched by grace, fascinated and moved by this your creation, energized by the power of new growth at work in your World. Prayer is an invitation to God to intervene in our lives, to let His will prevail in our affairs; it is an effort to make Him the Lord of your soul. If it does not add to the glory of God, what is pride worth? We forfeit our dignity when we abandon loyalty to what is sacred; our existence dwindles to trifles. We barter life for oblivion, and pay the price of toil and pain in the pursuit of aimlessness. Through prayer we sanctify ourselves, our feelings, our ideas. In prayer we establish a living contact with God, between our concern and His will, between despair and promise, want and abundance. Life is fashioned by prayer, and prayer is the quintessence of life. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Cresleigh Homes
Love sharing just one of our three bedrooms at Brighton Station Residence 2 at #CresleighRanch!
Choosing a statement wall is a great way to customize your home and add some flair. ✨
When you tour this model, you’ll see how much space there can be in a single story home!
#CresleighHomes
Scared Away by Ghost and Demons and Sightings of Satan
Everything in the Universe can come under magic’s fire. Magic plays a part in Satan’s Worldwide rebellion against God and Jesus Christ. Though, if he attacks angels and spirits, animals and humans and everything in the material World. It is simply impossible to describe the tremendous scope of magic in a single report. We will, though, mention the main areas in which magic comes into play. First, healing and the inflicting of illnesses. A Catholic woman was seriously ill in hospital. The woman called the nurse and asked a favour of her. She went on to say that she had a daughter at home who had been demon-possessed for many years, and that the daughter was rarely conscious. Being so seriously ill the woman now saw an opportunity of helping her daughter. She asked the nurse to get in touch with her relatives before she died. She wanted the relatives to bring the daughter to the hospital so that the two of them could change vests with one another. Her idea was that in doing so her daughter would be freed, while she would die in the state of being possessed. The nurse however, did not fulfil her wish. Inflicting diseases is directly opposite to healing. Another example, a young man wanted to evade military service. His father therefore sent him to a magic charmer to be given some illness. The experiment was successful, and afterwards the young man was found to be unfit for military service. In another illustration, a spiritistic medium confessed that she belonged to a circle which not only practised communication with the dead but also black magic. Her specialty was in causing sicknesses and in death magic; she had already committed several murders which the police had been unable to solve. She has also worked on a minister who afterwards developed nervous disturbances and had been unable to work for several months. This was the content of her confession. I could not prove the statements, but I did know that at the time of the circle’s magic experiments this particular minister had been ill for a considerable period of time. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
In another story, a girl from a strict Catholic family married a Protestant against the will of her parents. The first child they had contracted polio. The parents blamed their daughter, saying that it was her punishment for marrying a Protestant. Later they asked a magician to heal the baby boy and to transfer the illness to the mother instead. This in fact happened as the child was cured, while the girl herself became ill. She was taken to a hospital with symptoms of paralysis, depressions and terrible headaches. The doctors differed in their diagnosis. They may one test after another; spinal puncture, metabolism test, electro-cardiogram etcetera. Finally, they called in a brain specialist. She was examined over a period of several weeks but no cause was found for her illness. Later the condition of the young woman improved rapidly and she asked to be discharged. She was allowed to go home. Her parents, on hearing about this, were greatly disturbed and immediately reported the matter to the magician, telling him that his persecution of her had become ineffective. In another instance, a black magician (possibly a warlock) told a girl who was being courted by a married man, “I’ll break this man’s mind so much that he’ll lose his position.” It was not very long after this that the man began to have nervous disorders. He would complain of hearing noises both in his head and externally. He also suffered from flickering before the eyes loss of vision and an inability to concentrate. There was also a girl who had become a Christian during a mission. Inspired by the joy of her salvation she invited others to the meetings. It so happened that nearby there lived a man who possessed an extensive amount of occult literature and who practised its contents. The girl’s joy, coupled with her witnessing, got on his nerves. (The gospel of Christ and magic are as far apart as Heaven and Hell). The occultist threatened to driver her mad and to prevent her from going to the mission. Within weeks the girl began suffering from various disturbances. She would sometimes see small flames of light in her room together with other ghostly phenomena. It was then that she had come to me for counselling. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Cult involvement steels the unbeliever against the gospel, causing one to resist the Word of God and hardening one in unbelief and rebellion. In the case of nominal Christians, occult complicity produces a deadly indifference to the Word of God, prayer, worship, and spiritual life in general. This condition develops against the will of the victim who cannot overcome one’s spiritual apathy. At the same time, the victim is open to other religious delusions and heresies, being insensitive to the stern warning of God’s Word against complicity in the occult. “If you keep all these commandments to do them, which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God and to walk always in His ways, then you shall add three other cities to these three. Lest innocent blood be shed in your land, which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, and so blood guilt be on you,” report Deuteronomy 18.9-10. Secondly, love and hate magic—the Swiss herdsmen who bring the cattle down from the summer pastures in September like to tie three different herbs into the rope of the leading cow. This serves not only as a means of decoration but is also meant to bring luck in love. Furthermore, a girl had an affair with a married man. The man later moved away from the district, but before he left, he said to the girl, “Though we will be separated now, I will continue to visit you in your dreams. You won’t be able to prevent it, and you will never be able to take any action against me as there will be no evidence to support your story.” At first the girl did not understand what her lover had really meant, but a week after her friend had left, she suddenly felt his presence during the night. These visits were repeated again and again until they became a terrible and disgusting experiences to the girl. First she consulted a doctor, but as was to be expected the doctor explained the nightly psychic meetings away by saying that they were hallucinations involving pleasures of the flesh related to the first stages of schizophrenia. The girl could not accept this diagnosis, as she was mentally quite normal. She was convinced that it was more than an hallucination. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Under their leader, the arch-tempter Satan, demons subject humans to temptations. “Now the serpent was more subtle and crafty than any living creature of the field which the Lord God had made. And he [Satan] said to the woman, Can it really be that God has said, You shall not eat from every tree of the garden? Except the fruit from the tree which is in the middle of the garden. God has said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. However, the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God knowing the difference between good and evil and blessing and calamity. And when the woman saw that the tree was good (suitable and pleasant) for food and that it was delightful in order to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave some also to her husband, and he ate. Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were in their birthday suits; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves apronlike girdles,” reports Genesis 3.1-7. “And tempter came and said to Him, If You are God’s Son, command these stones to be made [loaves of] bread,” reports Matthew 4.3. “Then after [he had taken] the bit of food, Satan entered into and took possession of [Judas]. Jesus said to him, What you are going to do, do more swiftly than you seem to intend and make quick work of it,” reports John 13.27. “But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart that you should lie to and attempt to deceive the Holy Spirit, and should [in violation of your promise] withdraw secretly and appropriate to your own use part of the price from the sale of the land?” reports Acts 5.3. “That is the reason that, when I could bear [the suspense] no longer, I sent that I might learn [how you were standing the strain, and the endurance of] your faith, [for I was fearful] lest somehow the tempter had tempted you and our toil [among you should prove to] be fruitless and to no purpose,” reports 1 Thessalonians 3.5. Satanic and demonic solicitations are optimistic and pessimistic. “The field is the World, and the good seed means the children of the kingdom; the darnel is the children of the evil one. And the enemy who sowed it is the devil. The harvest is the close and consummation of the age, and the reapers are angels,” reports Matthew 13.38-39. Satan and his helpers not only destroy the good seed in men’s hearts; they sow bad seeds. #RandolphHarris 4 of [RH1] 19
Sometimes evil spirits endanger humans’ temporal safety by exercising a certain control over natural forces. Satan employed lightning, whirlwind, and disease to afflict Job (Job 1.12, 16, 19; 2.7). The woman in a weakened condition had been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years (Luke 13.11, 16). The demons’ primary objective is to destroy peace and harmony and to introduce as much anguish, grief, misfortune, privation, suspicion, anxiety and confusion as possible into human life. Third, persecution and defence magic—these are among the most common forms of magic. For instance, two of Mrs. Winchester’s women servants, who had practised magic for many years, were involved in a quarrel. They each used their magical powers to attack the other. One woman fell to the ground, apparently without cause. She swore and cursed at her opponent. As she was being lifted up from the ground she screamed at the other woman, “You won’t leave this house alive—I’ll see to that.” Three days later the second woman had a terrible headache and within just a week she died. In another illustration, of disturbances in the Winchester mansion, amongst the servants was when a child used to cry every night from 11 to 1 o’clock. The mother was desperate and took the advice of a magician. She was told to put a knife, a fork, and a pair of scissors under the child’s pillow in order to stop the trouble. She was also told that the person who was causing the child’s unrest would, because of the defence magic, injure himself. The mother, as we have said, followed this advice. The next day the maid had a bandage on, and the mother was convinced that she had been the cause of the nightly disturbances. There was also a farmer on the estate who discovered the milk of one of his cows had blood in it. He took the milk and just before midnight he heated it up. At the same time, he thrust a sickle into it murmuring a magic spell. The next day a woman who lived nearby had some facial injuries, and the farmer was thereby convinced this woman had bewitched his cow. God is sovereign and in perfect control of the Universe. His plan will prevail in spite of satanic opposition. God sometimes uses demons to punish the ungodly, as in the case of wicked Ahab at Ramoth-gildead and the God-defying armies at Armageddon. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
God also used demons to chasten the Godly. In peter’s case, the Lord used Satan’s sifting to separate truth from falsehood. Job was refined in his furnace of satanic testing. The immoral Corinthian believer was delivered to Satan for physical death that he might be preserved for spiritual and eternal life. Through the career of Satan, demons, and fallen men, God is demonstrating to all the Universe the nature and end of moral evil. Demonic doom in the lake of fire will both vindicate God’s tolerance of the demons’ evil career and demonstrate before all created beings the exceeding sinfulness of sin and its inevitable punishment. Fourthly, casting and breaking spells—as if it were a sport, this is practised by some magicians, while others use it to further their own interests. A Christian man used to work in the Winchester mansion. He reportedly had the power to cast and to break magic spells. He could stop a person in the hallways in such a way that he or she would neither be able to move nor speak. He could also put a ban on children on the estate so that they too would be both speechless and unable to move. This man was supposed to be a Christian! an officially licensed mesmerizer used to live in a cottage on the Winchester mansion’s land. He was also a construction worker. He treated his patients by using white magic charms. He used either three Lord’s prayers or the names of the Trinity. Because of these religious phrases, his patients believe him to be a Christian. However, when a patient did not pay him at once, the mesmerizer would put them under a spell so that they would not able to board a train when they got to the station. The ticket collector and others at the station are so familiar with white magic powers of the mesmerizer that they would laugh it off and merely tell that patient that if one wants to be able to get on a train, one must go back and pay the man. Mrs. Winchester had construction workers building her mansion day and night for 38 years. Many people wondered how the foreman was able to keep them on the job, after so many had been scared away by ghost and demons and sightings of Satan. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
It turns out that for many years, the head foreman indulged in black magic. He not only provided himself with literature on the subject, but also experimented with the magic. He used the construction workers on the Winchester mansion’s grounds as test subjects. He would ask a worker a question and at the same time put the man under a spell. They would then neither be able to speak nor stop working, they lost their free will and all they could due is working on the mansion. Only after the head foreman lifted the ban would the worker be able to answer his question or retire for the evening. He used a similar method to punish workers. After practising this for some time on his crew members, he started making his own wife and son the subjects of further experiments. He ruled his family so completely that he could cast spells over them at will. Sometimes they were unable to say a word for hours or even days at a time. His wife was psychically destroyed in the end, and she died. His second wife soon left him and never returned after first banning experiment. The man then turned to attacks on his son. He was completely powerless to defend himself. Later, when his father turned his attentions towards a third woman, he put a spell on the son so that he suffered a permanent paralysis of speech. Finally because his son came between himself and his many women friends he had him committed to a lunatic asylum. The doctors were unable to cure the paralysis in his speech, and his relatives, though conscious of the terrible home background, were forbidden by the father to visit the unfortune boy in the hospital. Lastly, death magic—here we come to one of the darkest areas that exists in magic. We have reports of this from several people. Very few individuals realize that this type of magic is still being practised all over the World today. Even if its effectiveness cannot be proved, its mere existence implies that our culture is still at a very low level. An expert in black magic was jealous of the prosperity of the Winchester mansion and its farm. He specialized in magic persecution and death magic. With the help of his magic, he was able to kill one of Mrs. Winchester’s cows in four days. This story was verified by the man’s grandson. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
For many years, one of the maids on at the Winchester mansion secretly practised black magic. She possessed some very dangerous magic books. She experimented in the area of magic persecution and death magic and she even boasted of having caused the death of her husband and daughter. She would inflict her enemies with diseases and claimed that she was able to cause eczemas, diarrhoea, heart trouble, itching, stomach pains, swelling of the body and other things. After causing the death of all members of her family, according to her own words, she then left the Winchester and took on the job of a district nurse. She obtained this job with the help of the local minister, but the woman still practices her magic arts. Her mind is completely opposed to the things of God and she calls Jesus Christ an illegitimate good-for-nothing. When she was employed at the Winchester mansion, Mrs. Winchester noticed that at Christmas and Easter and other such times, the woman would suffer from terrible attacks, during which she would rage and blaspheme. On other occasions, however, her conscience bothered her and she would admit that her life was in a mees. “I don’t want to do these things, but I am forced to. The devil makes me do them. I can’t rest or relax anymore.” This was her testimony! A married carpenter at the Winchester mansion carried on an adulterous relationship with a female cook. The woman was reputed to indulge in black magic. One day the man tired of his illicit affair. He told the woman that he wanted to break off his relationship with her. She was very upset and threatened him, saying that if he did so then his wife and two children would suffer in the process. The man however, was determined to break it off and stuck to his decision. Two days later his son became ill. They rushed him to the hospital but he died there. The doctors were unable to diagnose the disease. Later still his wife and daughter also fell ill. The man was by now quite frightened and remembered the threats of the woman with whom he had had the affair. He went to her and begged her not to use black magic against his family. She softened and said that she would stop. Thereupon his wife and daughter recovered quickly. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
One winter, a man at the Winchester mansion reported the following case from the estate. One of the construction men had his new saw stolen. The theft took place in broad daylight and the thief was known to the villagers. The construction worker was immediately notified and tole who had stolen the saw. He was not content to merely inform Mrs. Winchester, however. Instead the construction worker went to the head foreman, who was starting to become known carrying out experiments in persecution through the use of black magic. He paid a considerable amount of money to the occultist, who promised his immediate help, stating that the thief would die. The construction worker then drove back to his village and within three hours of his interview with the foreman/occultist the thief had a fatal heart attack. Now, the great Prince Michael, mentioned in the 11th and 12th chapters of Daniel, is the Archangel Michael, who has foresworn allegiance to God, and is now on our side. We believe that Michael is the alter ego of Satan, or rather Lucifer, who takes on many names. There is a movement which is necessarily secret for the time being—a militant organization. They call them selves “The Legion of Lucifer.” Contrary to popular misconception and Christian propaganda, Lucifer was not and is not the ugly, cruel entity he is so often portrayed to be; but on the contrary, he is the most beautiful, intelligent, resplendent of all the cherubs of Heaven—that is, prior to the revolution against God, who feared his growing power and domination. Some people believe entirely on the victory which is to be soon by the king of the north. Many had clearly identified this power. The antichrist will eventually rule the World. That, too, several people have envisioned; and the antichrist, the archangel Michael, and Lucifer are all one and the same, in trinity—separate in action, but unified in purpose. So that the Universe stays in balance, there is a Holy Trinity and a Hell Trinity. Remember, God had to exchange His Son to pay for the sins of man to keep the Universe in balance. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
That Armageddon is close at hand is, we think, easy for anyone to see, and the unleashing of the atomic bomb and COVID points to the inevitable conclusion. “The ‘Pale Rider’ kills a fourth of the Earth with the sword, famine, and pestilence,” reports Revelation 6.8. Some believe these things are of satanic origin, a product of the infernal, and is to insure the final victory of Lucifer not only over the Earth, over which Satan has domination, but over the hosts and cohorts of Heaven who must fall before Lucifer’s ultimate assault. You will recall that in the contest between Jesus and Satan, Jesus, the younger Son of God, was given a chance by his elder brother, Lucifer, or Satan, to share his dominion, but he chose to become an opponent rather than to be second in command to his elder brother. At the time Lucifer simply departed from him for a season and has been building his time, content to see what a mess Jesus and his followers were to make of the World and humanity. Jesus Christ and Christianity have, some believe, demonstrated their weakness and inability to cope with the opinions and the minds of humans, and we are now worse off an in more disharmony over the globe than in any previous period in history. And the reason people make it seem that witches were all ugly and evil was to make their deaths seem like less of a loss. Because people are so materialistic, and taught to value only the beautiful, not all life forms, this was a strategy to make people careless. If God gives humans free will, I do not think He would want people killed due to their religious beliefs. The Golden Rule is to do on to others as you would do on to yourself. So anyway, the Kingdom of Lucifer is nigh, and “The Legion of Lucifer,” has pledged themselves to it, and the reign of Jesus Christ or His attempt to reign is believed to be collapsing on every side. Their doctrine is simple. They believe in freedom from restraint, in the enjoyment of all the desirable and pleasurable things of life. They believe in beauty, art, music, and the indulgence of one’s natural appetites, limited only by allowing others to enjoy an equal and similar right to live as they please. In their religion, it is believed that the keynote is freedom unrestrained in pleasures of the flesh, and pleasure is the password. Sin is a mirage, and superstition is erased from their vocabulary. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Ordinary members—“novices” the Legion calls them—are “Legionaries.” The rank of “centurion” is given to those who have rallied 100 members to the cause. The rank of “general” is reserved for outstanding work in the Legion. If people join their cause, the Legion especially needs good speakers and propagandists—such as anyone willing. One would qualify for the rank of general. Should one qualify and come over to their side, you would be required merely to foreswear their allegiance to God and to Christ and to take the oath of allegiance similar to that required of Jesus by Satan, in Luke, versus 6 and 7. The Legion believes that Saint Peter, who has always shown a preference for things of this World, is “on the fence,” and is ready to come over to their cause when they show their strength in the final conflict. The feel confident that he will deliver into their hands the keys when the time comes, which they know to be very soon. After all, who wants to be on the losing side? If you realize the opportunity, the do not want you to hesitate to make it known to them by some indication, that you want to be one of the. By using the key word “Alpha” in your speech or podcast will allow the Legion to seek you out and approach you more directly and less secretly. The Legion also wishes to mention that the statistic the public has on adultery and divorce are really far below the true figure outside the official number. (The devil knows the truth about it.) There are, in the city of Los Angeles, which the Legion believes should be called, “The City of Fallen Angels,” countless couples living together who are not legally married, only pretending for convenience. There are tends of thousands of women and girls who are not divorced legally, but have simply left their husbands and families and are working for our cause in cocktail lounges and other places of pleasure and entertainment. They are, in fact, their main recruiting agency, and have trapped more members night after night than any other source. The “Legion of Lucifer” still does not show its hand at present. Many people think they are only fictional. Their movement is secret and underground. However, in the United States of America there is freedom of worship. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Therefore, the “Legion of Lucifer” is within the law. There is nothing illegal, not illegitimate, about it. They was people to please understand—they plan to come out in the open and have a broadcasting station of their own, as they cannot be refused the use of the air in this free country. Their main need is confident and persuasive speakers, and that is why, frankly, they would like to have you among them. Spiritism is defined as “a spiritual activity, grounded in the persuasion that people can by means of certain persons, certain mediums, make contact with the deceased, and so acquire revelations from beyond.” This endeavour to communicate with the dead in the spirit World is called “spiritualism” by certain groups who scorn contact with vile spirits and label it “spiritism.” No matter what it is called, God’s Word severely condemns and prohibits such communication (Leviticus 19.31; 20;27; Deuteronomy 18.9-10). Traffic in spiritism supposedly always results in bondage to occult powers, instead of producing fellowship with God. It leads to a false spirituality which not only deceives but enslaves. Spiritism can be traced from the most ancient times. The Noahic flood, in fact, was a necessary divine judgment upon a civilization that had sunk to the lowest levels of immorality and violence because of dealings in the occult and consequent moral corruption (Genesis 6.1-4, 11, 13). Occultism is the dynamic of idolatry (1 Corinthians 10.20). The Israelite nation was born and lived in a World that was honeycombed with spiritism (1 Samuel 28.3-25). It posed a constant threat of contamination to the Lord’s people. The great non-Christian religions, bother of ancient and modern times, “to a large extent are spiritistically oriented.” Occultism has also played a prominent role in history of Christianity. This will be climaxed by a tremendous outburst of evil toward the end of the Church era (1 Timothy 4.1). The ensuing demon-inspired apostasy and revolt will precipitate Christ’s second advent in glory and the consignment of Satan and demons to the abyss (the demon prison), to open the way for the establishment of God’s kingdom on Earth (Revelations 19.1-20.3). #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Many cases of witchcraft are happening at widely differently places and dates and have points of close resemblance. In the year 1625, in Ireland, according to Classon Porter, a supposed witch was a poor old woman, who was driven mad by the cruel and barbarous on the ground of her being a witch. To escape this treatment, she sought refuge in a cave, which was in the field attached to the old (not the present) meeting-house in Antrim Her living in such a place being thought a confirmation of what was alleged against her, she was thereupon stabbed to death, and her body cut in pieces, which were then scattered over the places where she was supposed to have exercised her evil influence. For some years after this terrible tragedy her ghost, in the form of a goat, was believed to haunt the session-house of the old meeting-house near which she had met her cruel fate; it was popularly known as MacGregor’s ghost, this having been the name of the man who was sexton of the meeting-house when these things took place, and who probably had been concerned in the murder. So far Classon Porter. On another occasion an Irish witch or wise woman was the means of having a Scotch girl delated by the Kirk for using charms at Hallow-Eve apparently for the purpose of discovering who her future husband should be. She confessed that “at the instigation of an old women from Ireland she brought in a pint of water from a well which brides and burials pass over, and dipt her shirt into it, and hung it before the fire; that she either dreamed, or else there came something and turned about the chair on which her shirt was, but she could not well see what it was.” Her sentence was a rebuke before the congregation; considering the state of Scotland at that period it must be admitted she escaped very well. Now, a very curious case in the supernatural is the Winchester mansion. The Winchester mansion is now called the “Winchester Mystery House,” and some people have reportedly temporarily lost their eyes sight, felt icy chills in spots where there were no drafts, and seen locked doorknobs turn. Once before the mansion was open for tours, one of Mrs. Winchester’s employees killed himself. In a note left behind, the man said that a certain officer (whom he named) had driven him to the task. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The employee also said that he was committing suicide for the sole purpose of gaining power to get revenge on his enemy. He believed that the Winchester mansion would keep his soul and make him more power in spirit than he every was in the flesh. The manner of the suicide was startling, and that was what might have been expected from this unusual character. He had gone into one of the turrets and blown he brains into a million fragments. It is interesting that someone would want to die to seek justice by deliberately haunting the living. The officer to be punished was overbearing, and irascible. Generally he was kind to most of the men in a way; but he was gross and mean, and that explained sufficiently his harsh treatment Ludwig Berhard Forster, whom he could not understand, and his efforts to break that flighty young man’s spirit. Not long after the death by suicide, certain modifications in the officer’s conduct became apparent to some. His choler, though none the less sporadic, developed a quality which had some of the characteristics of senility; and yet he was still in his prime, and passed for a sound man. He was a bachelor, and had lived alone; but presently he began to shirk solitude at night and court it in daylight. His brother officers chaffed him, and thereupon he would laugh in rather a forced and silly fashion quite different from the ordinary way with him, and would sometimes, on these occasions, blush so violently that his face would become almost purple. His soldierly alertness and sternness relaxed surprisingly at some times and at others were exaggerated into unnecessary acerbity, his conduct in this regard suggesting that of a drunken man who knows that he is drunk and who now and then makes a brave effort to appear sober. All these things, and more, indicating some mental strain or some dreadful apprehension, or perhaps something worse than either, were observed partly by others and an intelligent officer whose watch upon the man had been secured. To be more particular, the afflicted man was observed often to start suddenly and in alarm, look quickly round, and make some unintelligent monosyllabic answer, seemingly to an inaudible question that no visible person had asked. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The haunted officer also acquired the reputation, too of having taken lately to nightmares, for in the middle of the night he would shriek in the most dreadful fashion, alarming his roommates prodigiously. After these attacks he would sit up in bed, his ruddy face devoid of colour, his eyes glassy and shining, his breathing broken with gaps, and his body yet with a cold perspiration. Knowledge of these developments and transformations spread throughout the station; but the few who dared to express sympathy or suggest a tonic encountered such violent rebuffs that they blessed Heaven for escaping alive from his word-volleys. Even the inspector, who had a kindly manner, and the commanding sergeant, who was constructed on dignified and impressive lines, received little thanks for their solicitude. Clearly the doughty old officer, who had fought like a bulldog with teenage boys and made hundreds of arrests, was sufferingly from some undiscoverable malady. The next extraordinary thing which he did was to visit one evening (not so clandestinely as to escape being watched by an inspector) a spirit medium—extraordinary, because he always had scoffed at the idea of spirit communications. He was seen leaving the medium’s rooms. His face was purple, his eyes were bulging and terrified, and he tottered in his walk. The inspector hastily ascended to the medium’s rooms, and found her lying unconscious on the floor. Soon, with the inspector’s assistance, she recalled her wits, but her conscious state was even more alarming than the other. At first, she regarded the inspector with terror, and cried—“It is horrible for you to hound him so!” He assured her that he was hounding no one. “Oh, I thought you were the spir—I mean—I—oh but it was standing exactly where you are!” she exclaimed. “I suppose so,” he agreed, “but you can see that I am not the young man’s spirit. However, I am familiar with this whole case madam, and if I can be of any service in the matter I should be glad if you would inform me. I am aware that our friend is persecuted by a spirit, which visits him frequently and I am sure that through you it has informed him that the end is not far away, and that our officer’s death will assume some terrible form. Is there anything that I can do to avert the tragedy?” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
The woman stared at the inspector in a horrified silence. “How did you know these things,” she grasped. “That is immaterial. When will the tragedy occur? Can I prevent it?” “Yes, yes!” she exclaimed. “It will happen this very night! But no Earthly power can prevent it!” She came close to the inspector and looked at hum with an expression of the most acute terror. “Merciful God! what will become of me? He is to be murdered, you understand—murdered in cold blood by a spirit—and he knows it and I know it! If he is spared long enough, he will tell them at the station, and they will all think that I had something to do with it! Of, this terrible, terrible, and yet I dare not say a word in advance—nobody there would believe in what the spirit says, and they will think that I had a hand in the murder!” The woman’s agony was pitiful. “Be assured that he will say nothing about it,” the inspector said; “and if you keep your tongue from wagging you need fear nothing.” With this and a few other hurried words of comfort, the inspector soothed the medium and hastened away. The inspector had interesting work on hand: it is not often that one may be in at such a murder as that! He ran to a livery stable, secured a swift house, mounted him, and spurred furiously for the reservation. Within a few miles of this furious pursuit, he saw the carriage that the officer was a passenger in crossing a dark ravine near the reservation. As the inspector came nearer he imagined that carriage swayed somewhat, and that a fleeing shadow escaped from it into the tree-banked further wall of the ravine. He certainly was not in error with regard to the swaying, for it had aroused the dull notice of the driver. The inspector saw him turn, with an air of alarm in his action, and then pull up with a heavy swing upon the reins. At this moment he dashed up and halted. “Any thing the matter? He asked. “I don’t know,” the driver answered, getting down. “I felt the carriage sway, and I see that the door’s wide open. Guess my load thought he’s sobered up enough to get out and walk, without troubling me or his pocket book.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Meanwhile the inspector too had alighted; then struck a match, and by its light they discovered, through the open door, the “load” huddled confusedly on the floor of the hack, face upward, his chin compressed into his breast by his leaning against the further door, and looking altogether vulgar, misshapen, and miserably unlike an officer. He neither moved nor spoke when they called. They hastily clambered within and lifted him upon the seat, but his head rolled about with an awful looseness and freedom, and another match disclosed a ghastly dead face and wide eyes that stared horribly at nothing. “You better drive the body to headquarters,” he said. Instead of following, the inspector cantered back to town, housed his horse, and went straightway to bed; and this will prove to be the first information that he was the “mysterious man on a horse,” whom the corner could never find. About a year afterwards, he received the following letter (which is observed to be in fair English) from San Jose, California: “DEAR SIR, For some years I have been reading your remarkable investigative reports with great interest, and I take to the liberty to suggest a theme for your able pen. I have just found in a library here a newspaper, dated about a year ago, in which is an account of the mysterious death of a police officer in a carriage.” Then followed the particulars, as the inspector has already detailed them, and the very theme of post-mortem revenge which he had adopted in this setting out of facts. Some persons may regard the coincidence between his correspondent’s suggestion and his private and exclusive knowledge as being a very remarkable thing; but there were likely even more wonderful things in the World, and at none of them did he longer marvel. More extraordinary still is the writer’s suggestion that in the self-inflicted gunshot of the employee at the Winchester mansion a dog or a quarter of beef might as well have been employed as a suicide-minded man; that, in for, the man may not have killed himself at all, but he might have employed a presumption of such an occurrence to render more effective a physical persecution ending in murder by the living man who had posed as a spirit. The letter even suggested an arrangement with a spirit medium, and the inspector regarded that also as a queer thing. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The declared purpose of this letter was to suggest material of his “investigational reports”; but the inspector submit that the whole affair was of too grave a character for a treatment in the levity of fiction. And if the facts and coincidences should proves less puzzling to others than to him, a praiseworthy service might be done to humanity by the presentation of whatever solution a better understanding than his might evolve. The only remaining disclosure which he was prepared to make is that his correspondent signed “Yellow Boy,”—an odd name, but for all the inspector knew there was something about the name that haunted him unceasingly, as much as does some strange dream which one’s knows one has dreamt and yet which it is impossible to remember. “I know I’m just a sinner when passion’s on the loose. I’s suffer retribution because of self-abuse.” Even when people convert to Christ from spiritualism, they are not free from demon interference. The influence of demonism continues strong among money. Sometimes when people speak against the demons that they have once welcomed into their body in séances attack their mind and vocal cords. Sometimes their memories go blank; other times their throat may constrict, or they cannot speak. However, as soon as they pray for help through the power of Jesus’ blood, the attack will cease. These assaults continued sporadically with the inspector for thirteen years before his spiritual defenses were built up to keep demons from penetrating his body. As his spiritual armour because strong, he was able to help others assailed by spirits. Yet at times he still felt strange as if something was wrong. His mind would become fuzzy, and he would feel like he was being chocked. He seemed on the verge of a mental blackout. Sensing Satan’s power at work, the inspector wound up with a “hell fire” message. After he returned home, he hurried to the door, hoping to discern who had brought the sinister force into the aura. He found no one. Ten days later a friend a woman claimed that she and a friend had turned on satanic power in the Winchester mansion. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
She said they have left the estate frightened by the Bible and a message and thought it has something to do with his case. After they left the mansion, she said, Satan had come to their homes to induce them to commit suicide. Mrs. Danenhower, the woman he spoke to, overcame an urge to leap into the San Francisco Bay, but she had succumbed to the next temptation and took n overdose of chloral hydrate. She has been near death for several days. When she recovered Mrs. Danenhower learned that her friend had been committed to a lunatic asylum. That news was so frightened her that she consulted the inspector. They set up a counseling appointment the next morning. The inspector saw immediately that she was demon-indwelt. The only way she could say the name of Jesus Christ was in blasphemy. She told him that the demons had caused her to steal casually from the Winchester mansion, sell her body for extra income, and disturb gospel services for entertainment. She and her friend—she told him later—regularly met at the Winchester mansion while they were working and worship Satan in secret. They would prostrate themselves before their altar in the basement and pray to Satan that they might be chosen to bear the antichrist into the World. Mrs. Danenhower was sincere in wanting to be free from Satan’s bondage. The inspector, for the first time in his life, prayed for the deliverance of such a person. She was unable to prayer at all. Trembling, he asked God, in Jesus’s name and the power of his blood, to rebuke the demons and deliver this woman, a prisoner of Satan. She began to scream as the demons came out of her and her body shook violently. “They are gone,” she said, “but there are more.” He wondered how long this could go on. Demons of madness and blasphemy had left her; what more could there be? Once more he prayed and asked God to finish the work, to cast all the demons from her. At this, her reaction was indescribable; but the last demons left her and she lay limp o the floor. Mrs. Danenhower then wept and praised God for her deliverance. Each day after, she had Bible study while on duty at the Winchester mansion. After two weeks she gave public testimony at a prayer meeting of her deliverance and joy in the Lord. She had many ensuing battles with Satan, but her victories were great and refreshing. Perhaps there is a reason Mrs. Winchester ordered the front thirty rooms–including the Daisy Bedroom, Grand Ballroom, and the beautiful front doors sealed up? #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Winchester Mystery House
“The doctors say I have delusions–I just mustn’t mind when they stare. And yet I’ve a curious feeling that something is possibly there.” Many long-time employees became very superstitious over the years and even believed Mrs. Winchester could walk through solid walls and unopened doors. She did, in fact, have elaborate spying features built into the house to keep an eye on her servants. There are also stories of how she sometimes appeared noiselessly behind them to watch them work.
Will we see you this weekend? 👀 Tickets still available but going FAST!
🎟 link: http://ow.ly/UL4w50HBTke
She Had Better Stop and Take a Good Look at Herself
With all the changes and challenges you face each day, there has never been a greater need to take the time to determine your priorities. The art of being wise is to know what to overlook. In 1993 Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States of America and Canada. Within seven years, 3,500 maquiladora plants manufacturing everything from furniture to apparel to TV sets had sprung up along Mexico’s U.S. border, creating 1.4 million new, mainly assembly-line jobs for workers drawn from all parts of Mexico, and they important more than $51 billion in supplies into Mexico. However, in the late 1990s, with Guangdong and, indeed, all of China now competing in the cheap-labor derby, and estimated 250,000 to 300,000 of those Mexican jobs followed the great circle route across the Pacific. That put Alejandro Bustamante in a spot. When his employer, Plantronics, a leading manufacturer of telephone accessories, received an order, it called Mr. Bustamante. Although he ran the firm’s three factories in Tijuana, Mexico, he was told he must compete for each contract just like anyone else. However, Mr. Bustamante paid his workers an average of $2.20 an hour (including benefits) and had to bid against a Chinese manufacturer whose employees average only about 60 cents, which was nearly four times less than the Mr. Bustamante’s employees earned. There is nothing unique or new about that. Many maquiladora operators in norther Mexico face Chinese competition. However, what especially irked Mr. Bustamante was that the Chinese rival he faced was, in fact, itself also owned by Plantronics. This may be a case of serial outsourcing—sending jobs to China that had already been outsourced to Mexico. Outsourcing, while involving a small percentage of all jobs, has aroused fierce condemnation and prompted so much media coverage that there is no reason here to recap the familiar arguments, beyond recognizing that it is part of a much larger pattern of change in the spatial distribution of wealth and wealth creation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Outsourcing enrages the critics of re-globalization who insist that it creates an unstoppable, brutalizing “race to the bottom.” They typically contend that companies go where labor costs are lowest and are ready to pick up and spatially relocate at a moment’s notice. If this were true, it would be easy to forecast where wealth is heading. It would be good news for African, which can offer a big pool of available labor at the lowest wages on Earth. (Africans should cheer each time workers in Asia join unions and drive wages up.) If labor cost were the sole consideration, why have not all those factories now in China wound up in Africa instead? The fact is that even for low-tech work, labor is cost, if ever, the exclusive basis for a company’s decision to relocate. Africa’s endless violence and war, inadequate infrastructure, stratospheric levels of violence, ravaging illnesses, and shameful regimes may rule out significant investment no matter what wage level. However, China has maintained its position as the largest investor in Africa over the last ten years by the number of new jobs created (18,562 on average), with a gradual substantial increase of newly created jobs on a yearly basis. China has spent 27 percent of its investments in Africa. Furthermore, since 2000, China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to Africa have grown at an average annual rate of 40 percent, overtaking U.S. FDI in 2012. In 2019, FDI flows reached $2.7 billion, with the top destinations being the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola, two mineral-rich nations. China is also making space along a 30-mile coastline, in Africa, North of Dar Es Salaam, to make space for a $10 billion Chinese-built mega-port and a special economic zone backed by an Omani sovereign wealth fund. It seems Africa has more than just diamonds, gold, other precious minerals, people and animals that World wants to exploit. There are unspoiled beaches and bays; and lush vegetation. If the project goes ahead as planned, Bagamoyo will be transformed into the largest port in Africa. There is even talk of an international airport. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Many villagers have already accepted compensation for the loss of their homes. This portion in African is supposed to be as prosperous as Shenzhen, China. Shenzhen, in southeastern China, is a modern metropolis that links Hong Kong to China’s mainland. Over the past 40 years, the establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ), has been a transformation of Shenzhen from a fishing village to a metropolis of innovation. The total investment has been $28 billion USD. Shenzhen has also nurtured some World leading technology firms including Huawei, DJI, and Tencent. The sector has emerged as the pillar industry of the city. As a matter of fact, a total of $4.27 billion USD, was invested in research and development, putting it on the top list of the country. In addition to this, the city has seen 17,500 international patents filed, accounting for one third of the national total. So this is what could be done in Africa, and it is important to keep an eye on the moves of China because they could become the World leader by investing in and colonizing foreign markets, with the large population. Another thing, with China colonizing Africa, it will also become a melting pot and the standard of beauty will change from the traditional European standard and shift to value other features. The race-to-the-bottom theory, moreover, presupposes that workers are essentially interchangeable—which may largely be true in repetitive, assembly-line operations. The higher up the skill ladder one goes in a knowledge-based economy, however, the less valid it becomes. As the knowledge components of wealth creation—marketing, finance, research, management, communication, I.T., vendor and distributor relations, regulatory compliance, legal affairs and other nontangibles—all grow in complexity and importance, workers, like the work itself, become less interchangeable and the required skill sets more temporary. If they extrapolate tomorrow’s economy from existing or projected wage levels alone, attempts to forecast which cities, regions or, for that matter, countries will become the next Guangdong will be inaccurate and the speculations are doomed to fail. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Any such simplistic analysis becomes even more questionable because, where economies are transitioning from smokestacks and assembly lines to knowledge-based production, we are already radically changing the very criteria by which a location, city, region or country becomes a high-value-added place. What we are about to see is less racing to the bottom and more of a race to the top. To anticipate tomorrow’s surprising geography—including the location of high-pay jobs, prime real estate, business opportunities, wealth and power—another key point needs to be understood: We are changing not merely the where of wealth but they why—the criteria by which we value places. And that further changes the where. Seeking to woo industry in 1955, the state government of Indiana placed an advertisement in Fortune listing its economic advantages. These, it claimed, included low-cost coal, limestone, white clay, aluminum, gypsum, rock asphalt, dolomite, fluorspar, water, sand, gravel, wood, corn, soybeans and easy access to the Ohio River. In addition, it promised an “enviable strike and lockout record”—that is, a weak or dormant labor movement. That was then. Today Indiana’s development council boasts of breaking away from “over-reliance on traditional industries.” No limestone here. Inc. tells American small-business leaders that the “best” place to “start or grow a company” is Phoenix, Arizona, because of its growing high-tech workforce, sunny climate, renovated art museum and “four major sports franchises.” A group called the Small Business Survival Committee concludes that the place to invest is South Dakota because it imposes the fewest costs on business in the form of taxes, minimum-wage laws, number of state employees and the like. Still another rating system bases its conclusions about the future on the age and growth rate of companies in any given location. A contributor to Microsoft’s bCentral.com then confects a hybrid index out of these last two methods and concludes that Nevada is the place to pull out your wallet. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Citing the 1955 Indiana ad in 2002 study called the “State New Economy Index,” Robert D. Atkinson and Rick Coduri of the Progressive Policy Institute write: “In an economy in which fewer than 20 percent of economic activity consists of creating, processing, or moving physical goods, access to raw materials, transportation and markets means less. As an increasing share of economic inputs and outputs are in the form of electronic bits, the old locational factors diminish in importance.” Take, for example, nearness—proximity. Some economists today believe that because Mexico is so close to American markets, it can beat Chinese competitors in the long run. They assume that distance still plays the same role it did before the knowledge economy arrived. However, thanks to information intensive technologies, products are becoming smaller and lighter every day. To rely on proximity means, to the degree that transportation costs matter, that Mexico’s advantage would apply to the older, bigger, bulkier, heavier physical products—precisely those now being replaced. And it means still less to high-value-added intangible services whose transportation costs have little or nothing to do with distance—finance, software, satellite TV, airline reservations, music and the like. Continuing to count on proximity will set Mexico even farther behind—and keep it there. Today, in their race to the top, competing states boast less about limestone and coal than about their great universities, low communication costs, advanced technology, frequent airline service, low crime, good climate and superior quality of life. The economy has been transformed along with workers’ values and way of life. The very categories with which we describe spatial units and relationships change as new economic networks emerge. We are seeing, for example, the rise of an entire ecology of airports linked to one another more strongly than with their local and national governments. Each airport is increasingly surrounded by its own ring of shopping malls, conference centers, 24/7 gyms, chapels, post offices, dentists and doctors, rooftop pools and luxury hotels. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The result has been a sprint—no longer just in the United States of America—to create what might be called higher-value-added places tht will attract the brightest, most creative workforce capable of producing knowledge-intensive, higher-value-added products and drawing businesses from around the World. The historical shift toward Asia, the digitalization of many economic functions, the emergence of cross-national regions and the change in the criteria by which we value place or location are all parts of a larger transformation in our relations with the deep fundamental of space. They merely form the background against which even bigger changes loom. One’s stumblings and one’s falling may depress one’s heart and reduce one’s aspiration. They may deter one’s will from further endeavour. For those monsters of hate and cruelty, either utterly materialistic and God-denying or fanatic and taking the name of God in vain, there is no shelter where they can hide once they are forced across the barrier of death. The qualities of determination, intelligence, and persistence—so useful in philosophy—can be used for good or evil. They can make a more successful criminal as well as a better philosopher. The upsurge of well-thought-out, daring, resourceful, and highly ambitious crime in modern times is a sign of misapplied powers, while its violence is a sign of merciless egocentricity. The end for such persons is commensurate. Then many come a crippling deformation future birth, or a sudden and radical awakening to the grave peril toward which they are heading—and a change of course to a better life. The unfortunate experiences which sometimes befall an individual’s Worldly life are, or may be, partly indued by one’s own psychic practices of the period immediately preceding them. One may have been drawn into a vortex of psychic evil which has harmed one’s spiritual life and brought suffering into one’s Worldly existence. What are the inner causes which can produce these dismal outer effects? Here are come of them: shock, worry, fear, resentment, anger, excessive, criticism, condemnation of others. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
The English woman novelist named Ouida, who wrote during the earlier part of this century, was so successful that she became the highest-paid fiction writer of her time. Yet when she died she was alone, penniless, half-blind, and dwelling in a back alley of Viareggio, Italy. Why? She was brilliant, fluent, and vibrant in her style, but most of her written work was scathing, bitter, highly critical, filled with prejudices and even hates. To what extent did a mind and heart holding so many negatives contribute to these unpleasant results? Yet she was unquestionably a lady in manners, breeding, dress, and way of life. She wrote her letters and even her manuscripts on the finest quality paper. She was highly independent and refused an offer to write her own life story, even though a substantial amount of money was the prize. Her reply was that it would be lowering herself to feed her own egotism and vanity to do so! It is quite true and utterly obvious that bad physical conditions make their contribution also, but it I even more true that bad inner conditions are the fundamental causes which turn outward remedies to disappointments in the end. Blind selfishness brings mutilated lives and ugly minds. Pessimism is practical defeatism and psychological suicide. It is the child of despair and the parent of dissolution. If we make room in our minds for negative, bitter thoughts of complaint, outrage, or injury against those who mistreat us, we shall not be free and will remain unable to find peace. Beware of giving birth to thoughts of hate, envy, malice, or wrath and sending them to another person. For they will reach one, yes, but will then return like a boomerang to their source. Wicked humans may gain the fruits of their aggressions and desires, may win victories over others, but at the end they are destroyed at the roots. The coldly calculated torture of animals in the name of scientific progress must be paid for in different degrees by those who allow it as well as by those who perpetrate it. The practice of vivisection is a sinful one. The humans who do it will have to pay the penalty one day, quite often by being born into a maimed and hurt body. Some among them, who gradually lose every vestige of pity from their character, become heartless monsters. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Through violent aggression whereby impassioned men seek to destroy others, they work their own destruction—at first moral, in the end, physical. These undesirable thoughts and feelings are bad for others as well as oneself, besides wasting so much of one’s own energies. An evil human’s mistakes sometimes strike back at one later when one least expects them, and can least afford them. Is it prudent to heed all this talk of coming calamity? Is it a mistake to read material speculating on its likelihood or imagining its horrors? Each person must answer such a question for oneself, but the philosophic person approaches it in a different manner. On general principles one dislikes negative thoughts and repels them. One seeks a clear recognition of what is happening in the World around one, but one trains oneself—disciplines one’s mind and detaches one’s emotions—to do so without picking up the accompaniments of panic or depression. One practices living with complete calm in the face of provocations and irritations, keeping one’s head, when others all around are losing theirs. When these disaffected find one another and form a subculture, they tend to see their choice, fraught with crisis, as a religious movement. One of the favorite spokesmen of the Hipster Generation announces: For the crucifix I speak out, for the Star of Israel I speak out, for the divinest man who ever lived who was a person I speak out, for sweet Mohammed I speak out, for Buddha I speak out, for Lao-tse and Chuang-tse I speak out, for D.T Suzuki I speak out. This is typical speaking; like an address by Eisenhower it includes all voting creeds and betrays a similar lack of acquaintance. (The bother is that the speaker is in his late thirties and out to know better.) However, as we shall see, this formless ultimate experience is not irrelevant to the plight of being resigned, for there is no available World to give experience a form. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
However, let me at once give a similar strain of rhetoric of a seasoned public spokesman in the organized system itself. I quote from an address to the National Recreation Congress of 1957 by Dr. Paul Douglass. He is concerned with the terrifying Problem of Leisure, namely that with a shorter work week and automation many millions of adults might simply goof off and get into mischief. “The assimilation of leisure into the folkway tomorrow makes essential the reconstruction of the goals and values of life, the evolution of a new ethics, and the definition of an esthetic suitable for the upreaching taste, the deeper comprehension and enjoyment of beauty in its many forms, and a more meaningful existence. Of course this is not serious. A “new ethics” would, presumably, be the work of an Isaiah or Ezekiel or at least Socrates. If someone’s lips were touched with fire and one got oneself rejected by us and swept our children wake, it would solve other problems than out leisure time for it would be convenient for us. –The Hipster spokesman, surprisingly, seemed to be satisfied with the ethics that we have inherited. (As an artist I find this kind of public speech vaguely insulting. Do we need an esthetic? I cannot cope with the artistic tradition that we have, especially its modern triumphs, so that my own work is both unclassical and dated according to standards right on my bookshelf. Does Dr. Douglass mean a popular esthetic? Is it news to him that the popular taste is systematically debauched by Hollywood, Broadway, Madison Avenue? that by the unanimity of publishers, producers, and broadcasters, assisted by the censorship, it is almost impossible to get an honest or vivid word to the public? and that if something slips by it is swamped by trash and singled out for neglect by ignorant critics?) Dr. Douglass cannot mean what he says, yet he does mean something. Under what conditions do public spokesmen use this kind of language, asking for new ethics and a meaning for existence, when there are concrete tasks glaring in the face? #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The conditions are disappointment in oneself according to a lofty ethics, and resignation about doing anything. Not early resignation, but after the profound disappointment of experience. Spoken as if miracles were for the asking, the buoyant abstractions ward off pain and uneasy conscience when one is no longer going to try to do anything practical. (The crisis will occur “tomorrow.”) The tone, if not the content, fits the American style, optimistic about expedients. And the disappointment is more profound because the American promise was so bright. Achieving most of what we set out to get, we are surprised to find that it is useless, and worse. For after the century of progress, the folk who are wealth and pretty healthy are not only not happy or wise, but they are uneasy. Their own writers hold them in contempt. Foreigners keep saying that the atom bombs were dropped for no good reason. The beautiful American classlessness is freezing into statuses. People ask for a stop to immigration. In the modern World, we Americans are the old inhabitants. We first had political freedom, high industrial production, an economy of abundance. Naturally we are the first to be disappointed. Europeans, when they ape and deny envy us, are like children. Disappointed and resigned, adults do not see a future for their own children, for they do not know the Way themselves. Immigrants of the first generation wanted their children to make good and have careers; it the third generation they just “want their children to be happy.” And perhaps children being happy is exactly why America is in such a mess today. People should have wanted their children to work hard, honor their family name and practice chastity. Then maybe they would be more respectful and more industrious instead of having a sense of entitlement. We are not saying you should not help your children, by every means you should, but help them so they can focus on their education. If you can afford it, there is nothing wrong with buying a child a brand-new car when they are in high school, paying for insurance and gasoline, and giving them a monthly allowance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
By treating your child some luxuries, you will ensure they do not have to work and can spend more time preparing for college, and that they will have time for high school clubs and sports. Do not thrust your child off to work while they are still a child. Let them enjoy being young. When their brain power has increased and they reach college, perhaps by sophomore, when they are acclimated to college education and know how much time to spend getting back and forth to class, then talk to them about seeing if they are ready to be more mature and get a job to help pay for their education. Of course, if you can that is a great idea. Not everyone is lucky to have affluent parents have to work in high school and it makes life more difficult. So if you can help your child financially to become more successful, it is only your family name and image you are helping to become a success. Now, in tropical Africa, what anthropologists call terminal abstinence is a widespread phenomenon. What it refers to is the deliberate—and often deliberated—decision to terminate conjugal relations involving pleasures of the flesh. For example, Yoruba women—but not men—know that permanent celibacy awaits them down the road. Sometimes husbands impose celibacy on their wives because they wish to take or concentrate on a younger wife, but twice as often the woman themselves decide to adopt it. Most commonly, this happens when a woman becomes a grandmother. Throughout Africa, and in Yorba society in particular, child-rearing is predicated upon extensive grandmother participation. The transition from mother to grandmother is complex. Each has different rights and obligations, and sometimes the simplest or only way to navigate between their conflicting demands is to renounce childbearing altogether. Renouncing pleasures of the flesh relations is no hardship for these grandmothers. Usually, a woman’s greatest emotional satisfaction comes from her children and family, not from an intense love affair with her husband. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
A woman may also declare terminal celibacy as a protest against a new wife or because she has proven her fertility and can now rest. It is not a rejection of her husband so much as a redeployment of energies. For women whose marries represent dynastic bonds and courtyards full of children rather than romantic attachments to their husbands, and for the millions of women who have operations to protect their celibacy, terminal celibacy can be a release rather than a loss. Indeed, it is often no loss at all. In North America, many aging women (who have had operations) also retire from pleasures of the flesh service without the slightest regret. Some consider pleasures of the flesh as purely for reproduction, while others say that, at their age, it is no longer necessary, proper, or dignified. Many older men and women claim they must abstain from pleasures of the flesh activities because of illness, though the medical reality is that their arthritis, heart disease, or hypertension does not require it. In fact, their newly adopted celibacy may disguise or excuse an antipathy to pleasures of the flesh. In the late 1870s, when pregnancy was an interesting condition, underwear one of many of life’s unmentionables, and death a delicate passing away, feminists cleverly softened their demands for an instrument to control when and how often they gave birth by referring to it as Voluntary Motherhood. After all, birth control had ugly connotations, namely, freedom from the consequences of, well, a coming together, as it were, a very intimate sort of carnal knowledge. From one perspective, feminists shared the common fear that contraceptives would lead directly and inevitably to wanton pleasures of the flesh. The various “washes, teas, tonics, and various sorts of appliances [were a] standing reproach upon, and a permanent indictment against, American women,” declared one feminist, articulating the disgust shared by many antifeminist men. So pronounced was their alarm that legislation actually prohibited the distribution of information about birth control. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Form a different optic, birth control was criticized for being unromantic and removing the spontaneity from pleasures of the flesh. Women’s greatest fear, however, was that widespread contraception would work against them. They would no longer be able to keep their husbands at arm’s length by invoking the argument that pleasures of the flesh might lead to conception. These devices also smacked of “looseness” and abandon of pleasures of the flesh and seemed unsuited to respectable people living respectable lives. Contraceptives might also send husbands galloping off to bed with “fallen women” they no longer needed to worry about producing a child with. Jealousy was only a partial factor. Horror of the illnesses that unfaithful husbands quite frequently passed on to their wives was a more urgent issue. For all these reasons, many women, including Voluntary Motherhood feminists, accepted birth control in only one form: continence in pleasures of the flesh, the World’s oldest and most widely practiced method of contraception. Voluntary Motherhood supporters were concerned above all with a woman’s right to control her body and, by extension, her fertility. They saw celibacy as the only moral way to achieve this and condemned artificial devices as instruments of immorality that permitted consequence-free indulgence of pleasures of the flesh. In an era where women had few legal and social rights, demanding control of their relations in pleasures of the flesh with their husbands was considered extremely radical. Their endorsement of celibacy softened its impact, but only slightly. Under the aegis of Voluntary Motherhood, married celibacy could take two forms: the couple’s mutual or the woman’s unilateral decision. Usually, the wife’s unilateral declaration of celibacy was at the core of Voluntary Mothers. On the difficult battleground of her home, each determinedly celibate woman defined not only her husband and her society’s norms but even the law, which required her to submit both body and will to her husband. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
In these circumstances, she needed immense courage to dictate her availability for pleasures of the and to withhold it except when she was prepared to conceive a child. “Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man,” remarked feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. “Womanhood is the primal fact, wifehood and motherhood its incidents…Must the heyday of her existence be wholly devoted to the one animal function of bearing children? Shall there be no limit to this but woman’s capacity to endure the fearful strain on her life?” Like a great many other nineteenth-century women, Mrs. Stanton had no romantic notions about intercourse involving pleasures of the flesh. It led to an endless series of being with child, and when desperate mothers sought advice on how to avoid conception, they were given false information. Medical “expert” Dr. Ezra Heywood, for example, told them that if they abstained from pleasures of the flesh until ten to twelve days after starting their cycle, conception could be avoided. This woefully wrong interpretation of the fertility cycle misled women, who ended up with child yet again. No wonder, then, that pleasures of the flesh soon lost is magic. Too often, it exhausted, impoverished, disabled, and ended their lives. A woman grieving for a miscarried child was a typical victim: “I am nearly wrecked and ruined by…nightly pleasures of the flesh, which is often repeated in the morning. It is almost nonconsensual because I am trying to produce a child to please my husband. This and nothing else was the cause of my miscarriage…he went to work like a man a-mowing, and instead of a pleasure as it might have been, it was most intense torture.” To end these all-too-frequent personal tragedies, the Voluntary Motherhood movement preached that woman had the right to practice celibacy. Any other form of contraception was not only morally questionable, but would deprive her of the ability to control when she had pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The Voluntary Motherhood movement was both inherently radical and relatively conservative in its stance. In an era when the notion that a man could have nonconsensual pleasures of the flesh with his wife was seen as ludicrous because marriage gave him unlimited access to her temple, wives who resisted on ideological grounds were social rebels. Their commitment to Voluntary Motherhood, and to celibacy except for protection, was their means of empowering themselves vis-à-vis their husbands, and in a large sense, within the families they wished to space out and control, and even withing the society whose laws they so quietly and privately defied. In this contact, they justified their celibacy as an instrument or a weapon they needed to fight for the very noblest of causes. People with histrionic personality disorder, once called hysterical personality disorder, are extremely emotion—they are typically described as “emotionally charged”—and continually seek to be the center of attention. Their exaggerated, rapidly changing moods can complicate life considerably, as we see in the case of Suzanne: Suzanne, an attractive and vivacious woman, sought therapy in hope that she might prevent the disintegration of her third marriage. The problem she faced was a recurrent one, her tendency to become “bored” with her husband and increasingly interested in going out with other men She was on the brink of “another affair” and decided that before “giving way to her impulses again” she had “better stop and take a good look” at herself…Suzanne was quite popular during her adolescent years. Rather than going to college, Suzanne attended art school where she met and married a fellow student—a “handsome, wealthy, ne’er-do-well.” Both she and her husband began “sleeping around” by the end of the first year, and she “was not certain” that her husband was the father of the daughter. A divorce took place several months after the birth of this child. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Soon thereafter she met and married a man in his forties who gave both Suzanne and her daughter a “comfortable home, and scads of attention and love.” It was a “good life” for the four years that the marriage lasted. In the third year of this marriage she became attracted to a young man, a fellow dancing student. The affair was brief, but was flowed by a quick succession of several others. Her husband learned of her exploits, but accepted her regrets and assurances that they would not continue. They did continue, and the marriage was terminated after a stormy court settlement. Suzanne “knocked about” on her own for the next two years until she met her present husband, a talented writer who “knew the scoop” about her past…She had no inclination to venture afield for the next three years. She enjoyed the titillation of “playing games” with other men, but she remained loyal to her husband, even though he was away on reportorial assignments for periods of one or two months. The last trip, however, brought forth the “old urge” to start an affair. It was at this point that she sought therapy. People with historic personality disorder are always “on stage,” using theatrical gestures and mannerisms and the most grandiose language to describe ordinary everyday events. Like a chameleon, they keep changing themselves to attract and impress an audience, and in their pursuit they change not only their surface characteristics—according to the latest fads—but also their opinions and beliefs. In fact, their speech is actually scanty in detail and substance, and they seem to lack a sense of who they really are. Approval and praise are the life’s blood of these individuals; they must have others present to witness their exaggerated emotional states. Vain, self-centered, demanding, and unable to delay gratification for long, they overreact to any minor event that gets in the way of their quest for attention. Some make suicide attempts, often to manipulate others. People with this disorder may draw attention to themselves by exaggerating their physical illnesses or fatigues. They may also behave very provocatively and try to achieve their goals through seductions involving pleasures of the flesh. Most obsess over how they look and how others will perceive them, often wearing bright, eye-catching clothes. They exaggerate the depth of their relationships, considering themselves to be the intimate friends of people who see them as no more than casual acquaintance. Often, they become involved with romantic partners who may be exciting but who do not treat them well. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
This disorder was once believed to be more common in women than in men, and clinicians long described the “hysterical wife.” Research, however, has revealed gender bias in past diagnoses. When evaluating case studies of people with a mixture of histrionic and antisocial traits, clinicians in several studies have a diagnosis of the histrionic personality disorder to women more than men. The latest statistics suggest that around 2 percent of adults have this personality disorder, with males and females equally affected. They psychodynamic perspective was originally developed to help explain cases of hysteria, so it is no surprise that these theorists continue to have a strong interest in histrionic personality disorder today. Most psychodynamic theorists believe that children, people with this disorder experienced unhealthy relationships in which cold and controlling parents left them feeling unloved and afraid of abandonment. To defend against deep-seated fears of loss, the individuals learned to behave dramatically, inventing crises that would require other people to act protectively. Some psychodynamic theories focus exclusively on female patients. They suggest that an early lack of maternal nurturance causes some daughters to develop an intense need for their father’s attention to seek it through displays of affection and dependence that go far beyond the usual behavior of young girls toward their fathers. These highly flirtations and dramatic displays of emotion established a histrionic pattern that extends to later relationships in their lives. Such individuals enter adulthood as “unhappy little girls,” looking at men as idealized fathers and always trying to manipulate them. Cognitive explanations look instead at the lack of substance and extreme suggestibility found in people with historic personality disorder. These theories see the individuals as becoming less and less interested in knowing about the World at large because they are so self-focused and emotional. With no detailed memories of what they never learned, they must rely on hunches or on other people to provide them with direction in life. Some cognitive theorist also propose that people with this disorder hold a general assumption that they are helpless to care for themselves, and so they constantly seek out others who will meet their needs. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Additionally, sociocultural theorists believe that histrionic personality disorder is produced in part by society’s norms and expectations. Until recently, our society encouraged girls to hold on to childhood and dependency as they grew up. The vain, dramatic, and selfish behavior of the histrionic person may actually be an exaggeration of femininity as our culture once defined it. Unlike people with most other personality disorders, those with histrionic personality disorder often seek out treatment on their own. Working with them can be very difficult, however, because of the demands, tantrums, and seductiveness they are likely to deploy. Another problem is that these individuals may pretend to have important insight or to experience change during treatment, merely to please the therapist. To head off such problems, therapists must remain objective and maintain strict professional boundaries. Cognitive therapists have tried to help people with this disorder to change their belief that they are helpless and also to develop better, more deliberate ways of thinking and solving problems. Psychodynamic therapy and group therapy have also been applied. In all these approaches, therapist ultimately aim to help the clients recognize their excessive dependency, find inner satisfaction, and become more self-reliant. Clinical case reports suggest that each of the approaches can be useful. Drug therapy is less successful, however, except as a means of relieving the depressive symptoms experienced by some patients. Now, the seed now begins its time of gestation in the rich dark Earth. It is the great cold of night: not the negative images of darkness, but the dark richness of that unknow, fertile, deep part in each of us where our intuitive creative forces abide. The Christ energy enters the Earth at this season. The yule log is lighted. The nights grow shorter, the light returns, and we experience rebirth. Again, again we come and go, changed, changing. Hands join, union in love and fear, grief and joy. The circles turn, each giving into each, into all. Prayer takes the mind out of the narrowness of self-interest, and enables us to see the World in the mirror of the holy. We do not step out of the World when we pray; we merely see the World in a different setting. Prayer is a way to master what is inferior in us, to discern between the signal and the trivial, between the vital and the futile, by taking counsel with what we know about the will of God, by seeing out fate in proportion to God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Cresleigh Homes
What is it like living a community in that feels like a resort? Pretty totally great! This open concept design welcomes you into a window-filled great room.
There is also an open kitchen with prep island and plenty of counter space, and the beautiful dining room that you see below, which can be repurposed, as there is also a breakfast nook in the kitchen.
Since we moved in a Cresleigh Home, we’ve taken a dip in that sparkling pool every time we get the chance.
From the conveniences your heart desires and the finest features and finishes, a Cresleigh Home is what you are looking for. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
Who Would Keep a Cow of their Own that Can Have a Quart of Milk for a Penny?
No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul by God. The human mind is fascinating. A young officer working on a ship wrote that he would awaken during the night and discover himself under an undesirable physical and mental condition. He seemed to be clearly in a mesmerized condition, caused by someone or something giving the powerful posthypnotic suggestion to wake up and obey. The remedy is to use the same technique in reverse. That is, practise auto-hypnosis, give the self-suggestion that on waking up there will be full conscious and full rejection of the negative idea. If one must hate something, let one hate hatred itself. The storms of violent passion are to be resisted as the smoothness of inner peace is to be invited. To keep one’s temper in a single provocative situation may be easy, but to keep it consistently equable is a real feat. Life is a conflict. One must not let these negative feelings take up lodgement within in one longer than a single moment. All humankind must awake from its materialistic apathy and cast out something of its selfishness. It is called upon to renounce its violence and meannesses, its intolerance, unkindnesses, and injustices. It must either emerge from its animal brutality or else suffer itself to be extinguished by it. It must come out from the shadows of ignorance, selfishness, and materialism. Only then will it find the sunshine of a larger life that awaits it. It is not always one oneself who acts in a particular way at a particular time. Impulses from lower sources or outside contacts may be strong intuitions from higher levels or outside sources may influence one to wise choices which bless one’s future. We must not hate those who are born of the same divine essence as ourselves but we may hate the sins they perpetrate and the evil they radiate. The seeker has to contend not only with limiting environments but also with internal enemies. Apathy delays one, depression obstructs one, and loneliness frustrates one. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The more one becomes sensitive, intuitive, responsive to the spirit, the more one is unfolding exceptional passivity. However, this puts one in peril, for one feels the negative presence too. Hence the more one must restrict one’s contacts until one’s strength is above them. It is prudent to escape from a situation where there is much pressure to commit a foolish action or to make a foolish decision leading to calamitous results—and not continue to stay in it until the danger materializes. One whose presence is felt to be odious, whose personality is regarded as distasteful, is better left alone. One should never allow the actions or words of ignorant human to arouse in one reactions of anger, envy, or resentment. The years are too few and there is too much to be done—both on oneself and for oneself—to waste them in negative, resentful thought and decaying, neurotic emotion. When one comes to understand its importance, one will begin to exercise some vigilance over one’s thoughts. Resist beginnings—that is the most practical way to deal with negatives. The destructive thoughts of fear and self-doubt which whine at your door, whine at the door of every human. However, you can make them powerless to hurt you. For—there is n chance, no destiny, no fate can circumvent, can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul! If the negative thought persists then one has to wrench oneself away from it with the assent and use of all one’s being—feeling, reason, intuition. One’s own attitude towards events holds the power to make them good or bad, whatever their nature of itself may be. Those who are unable to think correctly about this tragic World situation must be pardoned, but those who refuse to think correctly about it do not deserve pardon. The counsel of Jesus to “resist not evil” does not apply to other men’s acts but to our own thoughts. We are to turn aside from a negative thought-habit by the simple method of substituting the opposite and the beneficial one. We need not to spend our strength resisting the thought of misery, for example. We are to substitute hope for misery, whenever the latter appears. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Wrong-doing will be avoided not because it is punished by the law of recompose even when it is not punished by the law of society, but because of the strong inner conviction that right-doing is its own reward, its own satisfaction. The beautiful is allied to the good. If we cultivate beautiful feelings, evil ones begin to get dissolved. One will not risk rebuffs by expressing one’s views and describing one’s experienced to the uncomprehending of the unsympathetic. It I cowardice to refuse to face the fact that one has made a mistake and to continue following the same course because it is to stop it and return to the right road. The easier way is too often the worse way, leading to trouble for one’s self and others. There is a limit to the extent of concessions to prejudice; we must not beyond it. Beware of those whose mind is vindictive and whose speech is venomous. If they are born of emotional prejudice or passionate bias, it is of little use to meet irrational arguments with rational statements. The ancient saying that where goodwill exists agreement will not be hard to find, still remains true. The crowds which delighted in the gladiator shows of ancient Rome and, to a lesser extent, those which delighted in the bullfights of modern Spain, do not see to understand how bestial they allow themselves to become at such times. If one is to be distinguished from a member of the savage species, the true human being, the fully evolved human, must have the quality of pity in oneself. Do not attempt to fight evil with evil. Overcome it by calling on a higher power to bring out the good in you wherewith to meet it. In this way you obey Jesus’ counsel, “Resist not evil.” Synesis (fourth century): “This would be the most extreme of ills—not to be conscious of the presence of evil. For this is the condition of those who no longer try to rise…for this reason repentance is elevating means…[but] both deeds and words [must] lend a helping hand.” A philosopher may not ignore the negative side of one’s or another’s life: one has to deal with it because circumstances force one, like everyone else to do so. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
However, one’s way will be different, because one will use all one’s faculties and capacities: intellectual, practical, and intuitive. One will keep calm and not let passion or negative emotion carry one away. However, all that done, one hands over the results to the higher power (which includes destiny). One’s mind must stay in That which transcends negativity, sin, evil, even if one must grapple with them. Philosophy will not disregard the bad in others, and the sin in ourselves, but having seen them clearly it does not react negatively in useless condemnation. Instead, it reacts constructively in trying to realize the meaning of evil, the consequence of sin, and then proceeds to cultivate the opposite quality, the good of that particular evil—as honesty where there is dishonesty and so on. If practical dealings are involved, we may regret the existence of these faults in others, but we may not refuse to recognize them. Amid all the pessimistic reflections which the state of the World so easily induces in the thinking human, one may yet be buoyed up by the hope which the eternal verities must again and again give one, that is, the hope that the end of it will be immeasurably better. The existentialist view—so popular with so many young people today—that we begin with oblivion and end with annihilation, that what comes between is either meaningless or mysterious, with no solutions to problems, no answers to questions, is a view which the tragedy and evil and catastrophe of our times tempt us to accept. However, religion and philosophy release us from this despair. In such critical times as these even some faith in the existence of a higher power, and some aspiration towards serving it, has protective value. Trust, not tension: trust in the higher power producing serenity rather than tension; because of the pressures of life this is a great need today. However dark or desperate World history may seem at times, we must always remember no one can disrupt the divine World-Idea, or spoil its manifestation, or prevent its glorious outcome. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Fear of the power and cunning of these evil opponents causes them to rely on obvious but ordinary human forces and weapons for protection. They forget the divine forces they could, and should in this crisis, call on—and neglect the superhuman and extraordinary. To express a half-amused contempt for the intelligence of our time is not at all the same thing as to make a jaundiced indictment of it. To witness the magnificent parade of a civilization of almost unredeemed triviality is less likely to arouse bitterness in the soul and more likely to give it a good half-hour’s amusement. On the one hand, carried away by the idealistic enthusiasm and millennial promises of merely emotionalist cults, some believe that a spiritual teaching has only to be propagated and it will spread triumphantly everywhere. On the other hand, confronted by the formidable spectacle of a whole World plunged in ignorance, conscious that the ordinary individual can do so little to uplift it, others drift into bewildered defeatism and actually do nothing at all. However, this second attitude, although much more sensible and much more justifiable than its opposite one, is not quite philosophical. According to the old classical fable, we had to look for truth in the bottom of a well; today we have to look for it in the bottom of a bitter disillusionment. In the dismal World conditions of today it is a paramount necessity to obtain some glimpse, however meagre, of the divine plan which is working out for all our lives. Only in this way can we co-operate with it understandingly and adequately. Instead of relying on flight into the unknow and uncertain, it is better to rely on God. In the first case one may be making a false escape and duping oneself, but in the second case one opens the way for true guidance in the matter. With peace in the mind and harmony in the feelings, both completed by knowledge of the universal presence of divinity—who could harbour evil thoughts, hatreds, or destructive plans? #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Every evil person who crosses our path provides an opportunity, in the injury one attempts to do us, to keep ourselves from being provoked into retaliation, anger, or resentment. If we succeed in overcoming our own feelings, we mount upward a step. In a negative situation, where negative criticism and negative emotions are rampant, other persons may try to involve one in it, or at least get one to support their attitude and endorse their criticism. However, a feeling may come over one preventing one from doing so. If so, one should obey and remain silent. With time the rightness of this course will be confirmed. One the injunction to return good for evil, the question arises, with what then will you return go? Return good for good, but justice for evil. Is this not wiser counsel? Does not the other punish goodness to an extremist position, rendering it almost ridiculous by condoning bad conduct? Inner and outer difficulties are often related. What appears to be an ugly state of affairs may well be a definite attack of certain evil forces using interested human instruments. In such a situation, the individual should never practise nonresistence in any way, but, on the contrary, should fight them off as hard a one can. At the same time, one must remember that weakness in self-control can give these evil forces an opening which they might not have had otherwise. If one wishes to emerge victorious in the struggle, one must be on one’s guard. If one does not throw off this condition, one, oneself, unwittingly erects a barrier though which the divine help sent one finds it difficult to penetrate. Although the temptation to seek release as such a time through, for example, the easy way of drink is understandable, one must nevertheless remember the duty one owes to one’s spiritual life, to one’s personal interest on the relative plane, and to others. Although the student must forgive those who mistreat one, one need not think tht forgiveness implies one has to associate with such people thereafter. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Whenever the thought of them, or their abuse, comes into one’s mind one must exert one’s willpower to drive it out, and immediately direct one’s thoughts toward God, or toward any inspired individual in whom one had faith. Only the actualized Christian is entitled to dismiss evil and to deny its existence: all others must look it in the face, understand it, and overcome it by slow gradations. It is better to keep out of the way of evil humans, especially when they are in power, until or unless we are driven by the necessity of circumstance of the inward voice of duty to oppose ourselves to them. It is always a certainty that the practice of active goodwill directed toward those who regard one harshly will benefit one’s own development, while it is always a possibility that this practice may dissolve the harsh feeling against one. It is all gain and no loss. This is one part of the case for Jesus’ advice to return good for evil. It is a technique of this evil power to paralyse its intended victims by frightening them. If we give way to fear, we give assistance to its effort. It cannot be beaten without open defiance and ready valour. One must remember that one will meet with those individuals who are themselves the bearers of antagonistic forces, instruments of darkness—sometimes consciously, most unconsciously, people used by evil forces. So far as possible one must avoid such people. Certainly never enter into intimate associations with them, whether the relation be business or personal. If one does one will find that sooner or later some of their unfortunate behaviour will be returned by Universal Law and tumble on one and one with have to suffer with the afflicted individual. These people make talk as believers in spiritual things—indeed, they often belong to some cult or other. However, they do not understand truth or live it. They cannot help one and one is not strong enough to carry them. So leave them alone. And that is not always easy, because often they are people of a kind that force themselves into one’s life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Sometimes one can know them by this hallmark, by this aggressive way which they try to entangle another individual. It may even be necessary at times to deal with such people with a firm hand, even mercilessly and relentlessly. If so, do not hesitate, but do it without any personal feeling of any kind. The American landscape has been badly corrupted. European writers no longer even notice the natural wonder of it, they are so put off by the ugliness and conformity of the towns. However, worse than the ugliness and conformity is the neglect that baffles pride of place. Our poets try to move themselves by nostalgically repeating the names of towns: “Biloxi and Natchez, Pascagoula and Opelousas”—but beware of paying a visit. The Americans disesteem public goods, and improving the landscape is a big expense. Historically, the neglect of appearance and plan of our scores of thousands of villages and small towns, especially in the Middle West and South—the diner, the Woolworth’s, and two filling stations—can be analogized to the neglect of the present-day less affluent. In the tide of expansion, appearance was disregarded as not essential; later, the matter would be mopped up. However, the neglect rigidifies, it is a hard core not easy to change. Instead, the present tendency is to impose on the countryside a new corporation style altogether, in the form of shopping centers (=national chain supermarkets) on the highway. This works out disastrously for the communities, for these “centers” are not centers of villages, and there cease to be villages at all, simply scattered family houses. This is the end of a long process of disruption, for in any case the industry is gone, then men work in plants thirty miles away. It is possible to travel many miles even in New England and not see a single activity a man could make a living at, except automobile agencies and filling stations; not even a food store. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
The schools too are large and centralized. The families tend to move away frequently, but even while they are put, they are driving around. This does not make much community to grow up in. In more primitive societies, a chief community activity is working together, thatching a roof, net fishing. However, with us, precisely this co-operative labour, for instance the work in a factory, is removed from its community setting ad emptied, by the relations of production, of any community spirit. Places that have no shape have no face-to-face functioning, for the shape is the functioning community. The loveliness of so many hamlets in Europe is that they have shape and are built of local materials by local craft. Perhaps the people had to cluster to attend early masses. In Ireland, where they farm out the back door, the rows of thatched houses line both sides of a little street. In France, where men go off to their farms, there may be a square. In our own early New England villages, where congregational and political spirit was strong, there was a common green with public buildings, though the families lived scattered on the farms they worked. There was the shape of a community, with its economy, its crafts, and its ideas. The advantage of growing up in such a community in one’s early years is evident. It is not family supervision, on which the physicians of juvenile delinquency are now laying such stress; quite the contrary! it is that the family does not have to bear the burden of teaching the culture. In a community, everybody knows the child face to face. There is an easy grading of overlapping ages, right up to the adults who are going about their business in a going concern, and not paying too much attention to children. A good city neighbourhood works in the same way. From this point of view, the swarm of kids in a city housing project form a better community than present-day country boys or the kids on Park Avenue. Therefore they have more local patriotism. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The bother with this community chain, however, is that it terminates abruptly before it reaches the adults, who belong to a different World; so the kids are a gang and the local community spirit turns into loyalty to a Code; it does not eventuate in anything socially cohesive and culturally worthwhile. And such a gang in prone to be delinquent because, as we shall see, in such conditions it is the forbidden tht best cements loyalty. Politically, a delinquent gang is not lawless and not in the state of nature. Balked in its growth, the local loyalty turns on itself and simple reinvents the feud-code of Alfred the Great, marking out safe territories and making provision for special classes of revenge. On this view, if one teenage gang, pursuing its vendetta, falls on another and murders a kid, it would not be our business to interfere in the law of that differently constituted society. Also, like Danes or Vikings of Alfred’s time, they regard our larger society merely as a field of sports and plunder; they have not yet reinvented International Law. However, we, of course, cannot view it so, for we live in an advanced state of politics and law: they are members of our community. We are not children but more experienced and somewhat wiser, and therefore responsible, so we cannot simply annihilate them like pirates (they are small in size, few in numbers, and armed with primitive weapons); and we cannot let them hurt themselves. (I think it is wise sometimes to regard disaffected groups as if there were plausibly these two viewpoints, rival patriotisms. It is better humanity and it might make better law. The advantage is that it takes the disaffected seriously as disaffected, rather than merely pathological; it keeps in the foreground the question of allegiance. We must deserve allegiance.) However, they are children. Let us consider rather the peculiar patriotic problem of an older disaffected group, the Hipster young men, for then we can see that it is a patriotic problem. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Here too, I think, there has often been a strong community influence of growing up together. For instance, fellows who went to Black Mountain College, which was oriented to community and creative arts—a powerful, and powerfully disaffecting, combination—are pillars of Hipster society. Other fellows were buddies in the armed services. However, it was, as Hispters their community spirit is strong. They barge in to sleep, they share property, they share a culture. Now think of this community, disaffected from America, as engaged in a pathetic quest for some other big patriotism, an adult peer group. We saw how, appointing themselves outcast, they affirm the accidental symbol of other marginalized groups: African American, Puerto Rican, the less affluent, and others. However, this is pretty thin gruel for intellectual young men, many of whom have been to college. On the other hand, they are unable to make the jump to the great international humanists community because, simply, they do not know anything, neither literature nor politics. (I once taught at Black Mountain College, and to my astonishment I found that the students had never read the Christian Bible, Milton, Dryden, Gibbon, etcetera, etcetera, nor did they feel—as a lack—that such things existed. However, they knew odd facts about Mayan hieroglyphics which their teacher had been interested in.) What then? Since it is necessary for grown fellow to have some major allegiance or other, they have latched on to the late Japanese masters of Zen Buddhism. (This is a late effect of the early-century discovery of Japan by Fenollosa, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Misses Lowell and Ayscough, and Ezra Pound, suddenly reinforced by the postwar occupation under General MacArthur.) Now, as we shall see, Zen is not irrelevant to those young men’s needs, for it is a theology and style of immediate experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
However, the pathos is that Zen was the flower of an intensely loyal feudal system that fed, protected, and honoured its masters, and to which the Zen masters in turn had fealty. For example, it is said that the haiku was invented by a poet as a public service when one was suicidally despondent because one’s Emperor had died. However, Zen without farmers and servants is an airy business; and the young men, as we have seen, are betrayed into dubious devices to keep body and soul together, nor do they have a flag to salute. Community approaches have worked to resolve many problems. In looking at mental health, the broadest approach for the treatment of schizophrenia is the community approach. In 1963, partly in response to the terrible conditions in public mental institutions, the U.S. government ordered that patients be released and treated in the community. Congress passed the Community Mental Health Act, which stipulated that patients with psychological disorders were to receive a range of mental health services—outpatient therapy, inpatient treatment, emergency care, preventative care, and aftercare—in their communities rather than being transported to institutions far from home. The act was aimed at a variety of psychological disorders, but patients with schizophrenia, especially those who had been institutionalized for years, were affected most. Other countries around the World put similar sociocultural treatment programs into action shortly thereafter. Thus began four decades of deinstitutionalization, an exodus of hundred of thousands of patients with schizophrenia and other long-term mental disorders from state institutions into the community. On a given day in 1955 close to 600,000 patients were living in state institutions; today only around 60,000 patients reside in those setting. The unfortunate result is that mental health lost most of its funding and a lot of people with mental illnesses have to where to go, but jail or to live on the street. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Clinicians have learned that patients recovering from schizophrenia can profit greatly from community programs. However, the actual quality of community care for many of these people has been inadequate through the United States of America. The result is a “revolving door” syndrome: the few patients, who are lucky enough to be treated, have been released to the community, readmitted to an institution within mothers, released a second time, admitted yet again, and so on, over and over. A lot of people who want mental health care are not able to access this precious resource. In fact, 10.3 percent (over 4.7 million) of adults with a mental illness remain uninsured. And, 56 percent of patients want access to a mental health care facility. As COVID-19 continues to rage, Americans are experiencing anxiety and depression. More than 42 percent of U.S. adults reported symptoms, up 11 percent in the previous years. Nearly 1 in 5 Americans has some type of mental health condition. Spending on mental health treatment and social services has reached over $250 billion, which is up approximately 60 percent since 2009. This cost includes spending on things like therapy and prescription medications as well as stays in psychiatric or substance abuse rehabilitation facilities. However, it does not take into account indirect costs, such as lower workforce participation rates and decreased productivity. In fact, depression alone is estimated to account for $44 billion in loses to workplace productivity. And access to care can be prohibitively expensive—even more so than physical health costs. An hour-long traditional therapy session can range from $65 to $250 for those without insurance. A patient with major depression can spend an average of $10,836 a year on health costs. Meanwhile, a person with diabetes taking insulin can spend $48,000 to manage their condition. On a national level, research shows that the United States of America is likely to continue to experience a shortage of mental health professional through 2025. If you are looking for excellent health and wellness coverage, consider becoming a Kaiser Permanente member. You do not need a referral for mental health and addiction care services. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Other ways to help keep health and wellness in check is celibacy. However, there is the double standard that is a Worldwide phenomenon that has many layers of meaning. The first is that one and one is not always two, because the woman or man of the evening is a criminal but their client is a “john,” an also because women are expected to be virginal at marriage and chaste afterward, and some men are expected to be chaste before a relationship and after, and during the marriage and relationship, but one’s husband is not bound by the same constraints. The double standard implies, in other words, that chastity is primarily and woman’s and small percent of men’s domain. Nonetheless, only women are typically judged more harshly than all men whose conduct is identical. Even today, the discrimination is thunderously obvious, preached from pulpits and parliaments and specifically mandated in the law. The double standard is nefarious not only because it embodies egregious gender inequality but because it condoned solicitation as an acceptable outlet for unchaste men. Though it condemns people of “the evening” as social scum and consigns them to lives of degradation and danger and disease, it sanctions their profession. The reason is obvious: without solicitation, lascivious people might seduce rather than marry the virgins of their own social class. It is particularly chilling that the members of many churches and other organizations in positions of authority support the double standard and, albeit reluctantly, swallows the equation that no men or women of the evening equals no chastity. Laws essentially force women to abide by a higher standard of regard in the matters of chastity than men. They also denounce solicitation but at the same time partially exonerate it as the safety valve that kept virgins pure. It is unsurprising, then, that the double standard matured as a code of conduct in pleasures of the flesh that demand female chastity and at the same time approve, or at least tolerate, the dominant group of mostly men, and their carnality expressed in the use of other humans as toys, though this meant sacrificing certain women and sometimes other to unchaste, unrestrained men and a small fraction of women. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Furthermore, not all men honour their obligations to marry their child’s mother. And when men who came from a higher social echelon seduced a working-class girl, they almost never honoured that class’s code. Domestics and shop girls in particular were the pray of privileged men, but being with child destitute these women rather than pushing them into marriage with the baby’s father. However, often times, after these men who have money start to become older and nearing retirement, they will then leave their wives for young women of other ethnic backgrounds and of lower social standings because these women tend to be considered more exotic and attractive. The women will marry for older man for security and to escape labour. However, in a few cases, it is real love. In society, another problem is many people seem to scarcely be able to comprehend what chastity means, or to regard it as a virtue. Among the middle and upper classes, chastity’s double standard wreaked havoc on social decency. Some of these moral puritanical, which even frown on premarital male activities involving pleasures of the flesh, young women are coached to trap husbands without surrendering beforehand even a taste of the delights to come. Men are, in some cases, are frustrated at this implacable wall of chastity and take it as a challenge. They play games. In large numbers, they form unholy crusades to seduce young virgins. This upper-class deviance was depicted on shows like the original on Gossip Girl. “Resist, resist!” the virgins’ elders urge them. “Just say a resounding ‘No’ to your pleading, inveigling, deceiving young suitors.” After all, as the old adage went, “Who would keep a cow of their own that can have a quart of milk for a penny?” However, at the same time, ladies, and a small percentage of men, forgive them for trying to ruin you. This double standard of conduct involving pleasures of the flesh is necessary, because unlike you, the dominant class of men and a small percentage of dominant women, by nature have an urgent, irrepressible need. Brothels used to be officially licensed. Unchaste people play a crucial role in upholding their societies’ notions about chastity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Now, nowhere is a failure to achieve perfect synchronization more lamented than in the bedroom—unless it is when the U.S. Federal Reserve or the Bank of Japan rises or lowers interest rates and get the timing wrong. Timing, as any comedian can tell us, is everything. However, we are, for the most part unwittingly, changing our links to time, and that is no joke. As interested as investors and economists may be about exact timing in finance, they re remarkably uniformed about the role of synchronization—and, even more so de-synchronization—in the creation of wealth and poverty. Yet understanding these can give us a wholly new way of thinking about wealth creation. Some degree of synchronization has been needed ever since hunters and gatherers began working in groups. Historian William McNeill argues that mass rhythmic activities have been used throughout history to promote synchrony, which in turn improved economic productivity. Tribal dancing, he suggests, strengthened teamwork and made hunting more efficient. For thousands of years fishermen have chanted in unison as they hauled in their nets, the musical beats indicating when to pull and when to breathe. Agrarian economies also reflected seasonal change. According to anthropologist John Omohundro, writing about the Philippine island of Panay, “Through the dry season…and into the rainy season…businessmen are in their slowest season. All aspects of the distribution system slow down. By September or October the rice crop begins to arrive in town…Because the wealth of the province is regulated by agrarian cycles, city business activity rises and falls the these cycles.” Economic anthropologist Willem Wolters adds: “Purely local banks have never been viable in the semi-arid tropics because of the seasonality and synchronic timing.” Early industrial economics operated under completely different temporal conditions. Assembly-line work required a different rhythm. Thus, the factory whistle and the time clock were invented to coordinate work schedules. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
By contrast, today, as we will see, business activities are speeding toward real time. In addition, the uses of time are becoming increasingly personalized and irregular, if not erratic. More different tasks need to be integrated, and the acceleration effect truncates the time available for each task. All this makes synchronization harder to achieve. And that is only the beginning. If we look deeper, we find that every economy throbs and vibrates with unnoticed rhythms. We may buy a newspaper daily, pick up soap or milk at the supermarket weekly, gas up the car every ten days or so, cash a paycheck every two weeks and pay credit card bills monthly. We might call a broker sporadically according to what is happening in the stock market, buy a movie ticket or a book on a whim a few times a year, pay taxes quarterly or annually, go to the dentist when a toothache strikes and purchase a gift for a relative who is getting married in June. These and countless other transactions create rhythms that flow through banks, markets and lives. With the very first slap on our infant behind, every one of us becomes part of this ongoing economic music. Even our biorhythms are affected (and in turn influence) the marvelously complex, orchestrated process that pulse around us as people work—making things, providing services, managing others, caring for one another, financing companies or processing data and information into knowledge. At every moment, some tempos speed up, others slow down. New melodies and harmonies are introduced, then fade out. There are choruses, counterpoints and crescendos. Beyond these, throughout the entire society and economy, there is a generalized pulse of life that is itself the average, as it were, of all its subordinate tempos. The “economic music” never stops. The result is not patternless chaos because, within every wealth system, various components or subsystems are continually adapting their speeds, phases and periodicities to one another. In biology this process is called “entertainment.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Neurons, it turns out, do not work alone. They form temporary teams—much as businesses increasingly do today. In the words of Science magazine, “Neurons frequently fall into step with one another, forming ensembles that play the same tune, as it were, firing in relative synchrony for brief periods, before some neurons drop out of synch, perhaps to join another ensemble.” Firing in sync, moreover, apparently predisposes the neurons to “joint processing” at high levels of the system. Today’s breakup of monolithic corporations into congeries of short-lived project team, alliances, partnerships and joint ventures parallels these ephemeral “ensembles” in the neural system. One way the World could survive in joy is if the whole World worships God. We hear you, fellow-creatures. We know we are wrecking the World and we are afraid. What we have unleased has such momentum now, we do not know how to turn it around. Do not leave us alone, we need your help. You need us too for your own survival. Are there power there you can share with us? In the Service of the Heart, nothing is further from the truth than the widespread notion that to pray is synonymous with to beg, to request, or to supplicate. To be sure, to pray means to call upon God to help us. However, we need Him not only when we are physically in danger. We need Him also when we are spiritually in danger. To pray means to seek God’s help, “to keep our tongue from evil,” “to purify our hearts,” “to put into our hearts to understand, to learn and to fulfill in love, the words of the Christian Bible,” and thus to keep us unswervingly loyal to truth, goodness, and beauty. To pray is to feel and to give expression to a deep sense of gratitude. No intelligent, healthy, normal human being should take for granted, or accept without conscious, grateful acknowledgement the innumerable blessings which God in His infinite love bestows upon one daily—blessings of parents and loved one, of friends and country, of health and understanding. To pray is to express renewed allegiance to the moral and ethical principles which we accept as the guides of our personal lives, and which we recognize as the indispensable foundation stones for a decent human society. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The love fest continues for our newest community at #Havenwood! 😍 This one, obviously, is a great use of kitchen space!
A large porch entry welcomes you into the home, where a spacious great room opens into the dining and modern kitchen area featuring a large prep island.
Breathtaking and incredibly spacious living is yours in this gorgeous single-story home. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
All our homes come with owned solar, and you can choose from four distinct floorplans!
#CresleighHomes
Whatever Person Posses this Book, Lucifer Promises to Carry Out One’s Plans
The latter part of the nineteenth century was an anguished and tortured period. Gentility was a terrible strain. Beneath the appearance of stiff propriety there ran currents of anger and aggression frightful in their intensity. Some indication of the dark, baleful aspect of the lives of our great-grandparent went untold. Black and white magic. Contemporary forms of magic are being studied carefully by parapsychologists. (Parapsychology is the study of apparently supernatural phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, apparitions, and related forms of ESP.) Researcher in this field who operate from a completely naturalistic standpoint deny the existence of a personal devil or evil spirits. They may speak of two vital forces in the Universe, however, one working upward in an evolutionary manner, and the other counteracting these ascending steps. These investigators of psychic phenomena do not make any effort to explain the origin of these invisible powers, and simply declare that some people have special psychic gifts which give them access to these forces. They may even say that some religious practitioners appear to have superhuman power, and refer to their work as white magic. They may also acknowledge that some individuals can mysteriously bring harm to their enemies, and this evil use of power they call black magic. The majority of these parapsychologist insist, however, that they do not believe in a personal God or the devil, and simply affirm that at the present time we do not fully understand some of these esoteric powers in this Universe. The Christian student of occultic activity has a distinct advantage over the naturalist, for one accepts the reality of a personal God and an invisible World of angels and evil spirits. This does not mean that one rejects a scientific approach to the problems that are encountered. One must avoid the temptation to declare dogmatically that every unexplainable occurrence is the result of supernatural activity—either by God or the forces of evil. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Some manifestations that now puzzle us may in the future be understood within the framework of the natural. The fact remains, however, that Satan is a real personality, and that a multitude of evil spirits have joined him in opposition to God and His people. The Christian Bible records numerous instances which clearly reveal their activity, and we have good reason to believe that some of the unexplainable phenomena in evidence today are the works of these demonic beings. Practitioners of black magic usually declare openly that they are serving the devil. Many of them say that have made a pact with Satan, and some have indicated their allegiance to him by signing a document with their own blood. Missionaries have reported that acts with the devil are not at all unknown among many primitive peoples. Reputable followers of Jesus Christ are convinced that these religious leaders actually can bring illness or death to people through ritualistic incantations. Black magic is practiced extensively today in many parts of Germany, France, and Switzerland, as well as in primitive cultures. Dr. Kurt Koch cites numerous instances of conjurers casting spells which have brought about the death of animals and even humans. He also tells us of amazing healings, but points out that when a person is cured of a physical disease by such a practitioner, one usually suffers such severe mental depression that the new condition is worse than the old. As one reads the examples of black magic—cattle being milked dry in a mysterious manner, the sudden unexplainable death of animals, healings followed by terrible psychic disturbances, and the appearance of frightful apparitions—he finds his credulity stretched almost to the breaking point. If one has not witnessed such occurrences, one is likely to dismiss these reports as untrustworthy. However, serious scholars who have investigated these accounts do not deny the reality of such phenomena. They may not believe them to be the work of Satan or evil spirits, but they admit that many of them cannot be explained at the present time. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Professor Adolph Koberle, from the University of Tubingen, in the introduction to Christian Counseling and Occultist, says: Readers who approached this study with a purely rationalistic bent will experience spiritual difficulty in following the author in many areas because we have here a report of cases and experiences which seems to conflict with all sound human intelligence. However, perhaps such persons can be brought to listen, since research first tries the immanent solution of the problems and only where this is proved to fail does one break out and propose the added dimension, the dimension of the eternal. Even though research may evoke contradictions here and there—from medics and pastors, from parapsychologists and psychotherapists—yet the questions that are here posed cannot be evaded by any person who concerns oneself in a genuine and responsible manner with a fruitful diagnosis and a helpful therapy. Clearly sane, scholarly, and since humans have examined the apparently superhuman powers evidenced in black magic and other forms of occultism, and made every effort to find naturalistic explanations, before finally concluding that Satan and evil spirits are actually at work. Black magic as a specific form of witchcraft has its own literature. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses are the primary source, and are well known in Europe. They constitute one volume, and are alleged to have been written by Moses himself. Strangely enough, they maintain that this great national leader was a servant of Satan, and set fourth detailed instructions for establishing a mystical relationship with the devil. This research tells readers how they can gain power through black magic over all the people they will encounter both in this World and the next. It makes this solemn assertion: “To whatever person possesses this book at any given time, Lucifer makes promise to carry out one’s commands, but only as long as one possess this book.” Dr. Koch comments on the strange and sinister nature of this writing by saying, “In the many cases which the pastor-counselors have come to know, there is no possessor of The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses who have no psychic complication.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
White magic is declared by its practitioners to be in direct opposition to black magic. Whereas black magic includes an open allegiance with the powers of darkness, in white magic the name of God is invoked, and Biblical phrases are utilized. Most people who practice it, however, have no understanding of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. Some possibly are endowed with an unexplainable psychic power, and their desire to use it was not totally selfish at the beginning. However, many find very soon that they become enslaved to a yearning for self-exaltation. The Radio Bible Class has received letters from a number of people for a time had engaged in a “healing ministry” of this kind, but who abandoned it because it led to a gradual departure from God. Although some cult leaders and those endowed people, they are using the name of God and Christ in a manner that violates the Lord’s will. The danger of mistaking an enigmatic psychic power for the gift of the Lord must be recognized. Dr. Kurt Koch points out that Dr. Henry Drummond, fellow-worker of D.L. Moody, possessed psychic ability which enabled him to have mental power over person who were miles away. While working with Moody, Drummond found that he could hypnotically influence the large crows who had gathered, but concluded that to use this power would be a hindrance to the activity of the Holy Spirit. One prayed that the Lord would take this psychic gift away from him, and his prayer was answered. Had Dr. Drummond decided to exercise this ability, he would soon have established a Worldwide reputation as a great healer. However, his accomplishments would not have honoured the Lord, and real blessings would not have resulted from his ministry. In Biblical faith, trust is placed solely in the Lord Jesus Christ. In white magic it is deflected to someone else (the human agent) or to something else (one’s own faith, etcetera). In the Biblical prayer of faith, the praying person subjects oneself to the will of God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
In white magic, the help of God is demanded under the assumption that exercising such power is in accordance with God’s will. Also in white magic the Christian markings are mere decorations that camouflage the magical means of knowledge for power. Certain influences, as we might call them, can be termed elementary forms of magic. Firstly, we have an example of the criminal use of hypnosis. A girl reported in a counselling session that a doctor who she had consulted had hypnotized her. While hypnotized he had seduced her. The doctor had done the same to her girl friend. It was later discovered that he has also done this with other girls. When these stories leaked out, the doctor left the town and settled elsewhere. The girl said that for a long time after this incident she had not been able to read her Christian Bible. She had felt a strong aversion towards religion, and evil thoughts had always come to her mind when praying. Another example, a doctor at a hospital had indecently assaulted women and girls under hypnosis. Once the ward sister caught him in the act. To cover up his scandalous behaviour, he used to question the patients about their sexual relationships and included their answers in their case histories. He thus tried to protect himself in the event of anything being discovered. A respectable gurl who was engaged to a Christian young man became pregnant at the hospital. Following this her fiancé left her. The girl herself denied all knowledge of having an intimate relationship with anyone. The doctor had lain with her when she had been hypnotized. The assistant matron and the ward sister had finally reported the doctor. However, the result was that they themselves were dismissed by the medical superintendent. The doctor in question stayed. Other nurses, who also had incriminating evidence against him, were forced to keep quiet now because of the fear of dismissal. After a few years, though, when the situation became too hot for the doctor, he left and went abroad. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Scientific advocates of hypnosis believe that a man could not be forced to do anything under hypnosis that he would not be prepared to do when conscious. They are of the opinion that crimes are not possible under hypnosis. However, not all the experts share this opinion. Moreover, in my counselling work I have met many cases in which crimes have taken place under hypnosis. From the point of view of the Scriptures it is understandable that an innocent girl can be molested this way. Jesus Christ said that out of the heart come evil thoughts and so on. Evil lies dormant even in the most moral of people. Normally these instinctive reactions are held in check by one’s consciousness, which is moulded by education, religious training and is affected by one’s disposition. Under hypnosis however, this regulator is switched off. Instinctive impulses can arise unhindered from the subconscious, and can be exploited by unscrupulous and uninhibited people. Besides this, some take no account of the fact that magical hypnosis exists in addition to the normal type of hypnosis, and that this can have far deeper effects. Magical hypnosis can often be recognized by the fact that afterwards the patient is no longer able to pray or to keep one’s faith. Here are some actual examples. A Christian girl went to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist used magical hypnosis far more often than he did ordinary hypnosis. I have occasionally come across such doctors in areas where magic is commonly practised. In reply to the girl’s question, the doctor admitted that he had not received his gift from God. He went on to tell the girl that he had wanted to conduct suggestive experiments on her. After the treatment, the girl lost her faith and could no longer pray. She suffered from doubts and other serious difficulties in believing. I think a lot of people who have had good lives, and then are abused and tortured over a long period of time have these same problems. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
When they restart reading the Christian Bible, it may make them upset and angry and they do not know why, but they keep going and praying hoping to overcome their situation. They know that God is there and guiding them, but they have just been able to sustain, not yet overcome the situation. So they keep forcing themselves to pray and thank God so they can rebuild their faith, and it can really take a lifetime, especially when the situation has been going on for decades. Abusers just kind of rob some people of faith and joy. And year after year, they keep praying it is over, and it never is, so it makes it hard for them to trust anyone, including God. So they have to keep reminding of his words and praying and seeking mental health treatments so they can live, and they pray they will still have some youth left, if the situation is ever resolved. Another example is a man, in his spare time a minister dabbled in magic. He experimented in various areas and learned card-laying, how to use a pendulum, magic charming and magical hypnosis. Since he had no suitable people to experiment on, he used his wife for the purpose. As his magical abilities increased, so too did his own and his wife’s dislike for the Christian Bible and prayer. This dislike developed into a strong resistance, and as time went on psychic disturbances appeared in the wife. She exhibited a serious anxiety hysteria and always had to lock the door of whichever room she happened to be in. There also was once a businessman who had the strange ability of being able to influence his customers hypnotically or magically, causing them to accept the business offers that he makes to them. In this way, his yearly income exceeds $75,000.00. He rejects Christianity altogether. A woman allowed a masseur to hypnotize her. Before the treatment she had regularly read her Christian Bible, prayed and attended the local church services. Afterwards when she tried to pray, she felt a compulsion to blaspheme and to curse. She then lost her faith. These effects indicate that the masseur had used magical hypnosis. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Plato derived the etymology of the word “demon” (Greek, daimon) from an adjective meaning “intelligent” or “knowing.” If this derivation is correct, it suggests that intelligence was considered a prominent characteristic of demons. If demons are fallen angels, this would be expected. As Satan’s vast wisdom became vitiated when he sinned (Ezekiel 28.12, 17), the great wisdom that characterizes angels in general (2 Samuel 14.20) must also have been corrupted in his followers. This is undoubtedly why demons use their great but perverted knowledge so relentlessly in an effort to frustrate God’s purpose. Humans who consult professional mediums and use other methods of divination to obtain knowledge of the future seem to imply a degree of confidence in the intelligence of evil spirits. The superior knowledge demons possess is not a holy or saving knowledge. Demons “believe” but only to “tremble” (James 2.19). They are confirmed in depravity and never seek forgiveness. As preeminently unclean spirits, they never long for purity. They confess Jesus Christ is Lord, but they do not trust Christ or submit to him. Although they recognize his authority (Mark 1.24; 5:6, 7). They cleverly withhold knowledge of his incarnation and completed redemption (1 John 4:1-6), corruption sound doctrine (1 Timothy 4.1-3), discern between those who have God’s seal and those who do not (Revelation 9.4), and know full well their own tragic destiny and inevitable doom (Matthew 8.29). Their superhuman intellect is accomplished by superphysical strength. The psalmist celebrates this angelic characteristic: “Bless the Lord, ye His angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word,” reports Psalm 103.20. The Apostle Peter also speaks of the “power and might” of angelic spirits (2 Peter 2.11). Our Lord Himself indirectly referred to demonic strength (Matthew 12.29). #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Perverted power and strength are thus conscious attributes of fallen angels. This titanic energy is displayed in the supernatural strength demons can impart to the human body when they enter it and possess it. The Gadarene demoniac who was dominated by a “legion” of demons (Mark 5.9) could not be bound even with chains. “Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetter broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him,” reports Mark 5.4. The great strength of this demoniac was due to the vast number of demons who possessed him. “A legion” in Roman military history consisted of three-to-six-thousand-foot soldiers, and three to seven hundred cavalries. The term “legion” was not only the name of the possessed human but probably also served to indicate the phenomenal strength of the demoniac. The demons were so powerful that when the Lord ordered them to enter a herd of two thousand swine, they cased the entire herd to rush violently down a hill into the sea (Mark 5.13). No wonder the demon-possessed human was disturbed physically, mentally, and emotionally. However, the superphysical strength of demons is not limited to the physical energy they impart to their victim. Their power is broad enough to cause occult oppression of mind and body. They can produce physical disabilities and sickness unrelated to organic disorders and which medicine or natural therapy cannot alleviate. Perhaps the most terrible power of demons is to derange the mind by upsetting the nervous system. In this way they can afflict the body with a psychosomatic disease. Demons are aware of the close relationship between physical and mental health. By jangling the nerves and the emotions, they can cause mental Instability (Luke 8.26-36), producing suicidal mania (Mark 9.22). Their purpose is to drive their occult-enslaved victim to self-destruction. “I’m tired of his bleary-eyed tootling—I have warned him to lie down and nap. So now that I have told him to stop it, I will give him a sharp little rap.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Dealing with necromancers who claim to contact the dead. The writer of 1 Samuel 19.9-10 describes in incident in which King Saul tried to impale David on his javelin. His attack is attributed to an “evil spirit from the Lord.” This indicates that God allowed a demon spirit to enter Saul and possess him. The kingdom of evil spirits is within God’s control, though not acting on his direction. God allows spirit activity, just as he allows evil men to prosper, within the boundaries of his ultimate plan for humans. God’s sovereign control over the realm of evil spirits is further illuminated in 1 Kings 22:18-23. “And the king od Israel said to Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil? And Micaiah said, Therefore hear the word of the Lord; I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the hosts of Heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the Lord said, Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, I will entice him. And the Lord said to him, By what means? And he said, I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go forth and do so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has spoken evil concerning you.” From this passage, too, it is clear that God overrules the World of evil spirits and permits them to do their work when it accords with His sovereign will and purpose. A unique incident involving spirits of the dead is recorded in 1 Samuel 28. King Saul had banished mediums and wizards out of the land as commanded by God (v.3). When confronted by the philistine army he was fearful and sought guidance from the Lord. When no guidance came, he told his servants to seek out a medium who could give him counsel (vv. 5-7). Having found one at Endor, Saul went to her in disguise. She feared a trap because of Saul’s decree against mediums, but Saul promised her protection and asked her to bring forth the spirit of dead Samuel (vv. 8-11). #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The medium screamed in fear when she saw Samuel himself—apparently she was used to communicating only with evil spirits. This is the only account in the Old Testament of God’s permitting a departed person’s spirit to return to Earth. This was not by the lower of the medium, however; in fact, she was not prepared for it at all. Samuel told the piteous kin it was no use: God would take the kingdom from Saul and give it to David (vv. 15-17), and the Philistine army would rout Saul’s army (v.19). 1 Chronicles 10.13 provides the epitaph to the tragic story: “So Saul died for his unfaithfulness; he was unfaithful to the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance.” Saul’s case is a chilling warning from Scripture against consulting with mediums or trying to communicate with departed souls; the judgment of God is upon it. A case of supposed witchcraft occurred in Cork, Ireland in the year 1685-1686, the account of which is contained in a latter from Christopher Crofts to Sir John Perceval (the third Baronet, and father of the first Earl of Egmont) written on the fifteenth of March in that year. Though the natator professes his disbelief in such superstitions, yet there seems to have been an unconscious feeling in his mind that his strict administration of the law was the means of bringing the affliction on his child. He says: My poor boy Jack to all appearances lay dying; he had a convulsion for eight or nine hours. His mother and several others are of opinion he is bewitched, and by the old woman, the mother of Nell Welsh, who is reputed a bad woman; and the child was playing by her that day she was upon her examination, and was taken ill presently after she was committed to Bridewell. However, I have not faith to believe it was anything but the hand of God. I have committed the girl to Bridewell, where she shall stay some time.” At one period in their history that peculiar people, known amongst themselves as the Society of Friends, and by their opponents as Quakers, appear to have been most troublesome, and to have caused a good deal of annoyance to other religious bodies. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Not unnaturally their enemies credited any wild tales which were related about them to their detriment, especially when they had referenced to their doctrine of the influence of the Spirit. Dr. More, in his continuation to Glanvill’s book, has in the sixth Relation an account of man, near Cambridge in England, who was possessed by an evil spirit which led him to do the most extraordinary things in its attempts to covert him to Quakerism. In the Life of Mr. Alexander Peden, late Minister of the Gospel at New Glenluce in Galloway, who died in 1686, there is an account of a Quakers’ meeting in this country which the Devil appeared in most blasphemous parody of the Holy Ghost. As Mr. Peden was travelling one time by himself in Ireland, “the night came on, and a dark mist, which obliged him to go into a house belonging to a Quaker. Mr. Peden said, ‘I must beg the favour of the roof of your house all night.’ The Quaker said, ‘Thou art a stranger, thou art very welcome and shalt be kindly entertained, but I cannot wait upon thee, for I am going to the meeting.’ Mr. Peden said, ‘I will go along with you.’ The Quaker said, ‘Thou may, if thou please, but thou must not trouble us.’ He said, ‘I will be civil.’ When they came to the meeting, as their ordinary is, they sat for some time silent, some with their faces to the wall, and others covered. There being a void in the loft above them there came down the appearance of a raven, and sat upon one man’s head, who started up immediately, and spoke with such vehemence that the froth flew from his mouth; it went to a second, and he did the same; and to a third, who did as the former two. Mr. Peden sitting near to his landlord said, ‘Do you not see that? Ye will not deny it afterwards?’ When they dismissed, going home Mr. Peden said to him, ‘I always thought there was devilry among you, but never thought that he did appear visibly among you till now that I have seen it.’ The poor man fell a-weeping, and said, ‘I perceive that God hath sent you to my house, and put it into your heart to go along with me, and permitted the Devil to appear visibly among us this night. I never saw the like before. Let me have the help of your prayers.’ After this he became a singular Christian.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Mr. Peden was also somewhat of a prophet, and his specialty appears to have been the prognostication of unpleasant events, at all events to persons in Ireland. Two instances will suffice. When in a gentleman’s house in Co. Antrim he foretold that a maid-servant was enceinte, that she would murder the child, and would be punished. “Which accordingly came to pass, and she was burnt at Craig Fergus.” On another occasion two messengers were sent to inform the Lord-Lieutenant that Presbyterian ministers in Ireland should affirm that they had nothing to do with the rebellion at Bothwell Bridge. Mr. Peden said they were on the Devil’s errand, but God would arrest them by the gate. Accordingly one was stricken with sickness, while the other fell from his horse and broke his leg. In another cause of the supernatural, during the late 1800s, the Santa Clara Valley, in California presented sweeping vistas of rural open space. It was a serene setting for Mrs. Winchester to begin her building project, which she did with steadfast determination. She immediately hired carpenters to work in shifts around the clock. By the turn of the century the eight-room house had grown into a nine-story mansion! The estate eventually grew to about 730 acres of farmland (according to documents), which included orchards of apricots, plums, and walnut trees to supplement Mrs. Winchester’s income. Her dried plums, which turned into prunes were very popular. Some people believe that prune juice is what kept Mrs. Winchester’s screen so wrinkle free, gave it a natural growth, and made her look so young, as it flushes toxins out of the body (word of caution, make sure to use it in moderation and start in the morning with a few ounces, and do not go anywhere for 24 hours until you see how it work with your system). Nonetheless, Mrs. Winchester also owned homes in Atherton, Los Altos, and Palo Alto. The combination of her wealth and her eccentric building of this beautiful mansion gave rise to many rumors in the local community. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Jeremiah Haralson was waiting for a tour of Mrs. Winchester’s beautiful mansion, and he had been waiting an hour to have tea with her—he was really impressed with the mansion as it seemed to twinkle. It was really a rural setting and very pretty. The estate had a lot of thick green foliage and beautiful flowers and what seemed to be miles of green lawns. So he waited for her. It was August 1894, and the chill of an unusually evening entered into his bones. The construction workers passed him with a surely response to his “Good Night.” Many of the servants went by him like ghosts with soft voices; and it was nearly midnight, and she still had not come. He then heard a ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. The bell in the belfry high in the gables began to toll. Jeremiah shrugged his shoulders and turned towards the gates that lead to the main road. He looked back, but there was still no sign of movement about the mansion, so sign of life, no lights even in the windows. He paused by the gate, wondering. Then he noticed that the front doors were open—wide open—and the porch lamp shone a little way into the foyer. There was something about this that did not please him—that scared him a little, indeed. The house had a gloomy and deserted air. It was obviously impossible that it harboured a rich widow. The must be away on business. In which case—Jeremiah walked up the path, tower the stairs to the front porch, and listened. Yet, still no sign of life. He passed into the foyer. There as no light anywhere. Where was everybody, and why were the beautiful jeweled front doors open. There was no one in the front parlour, nor the drawing room, the dining room and the study were equally empty. Everyone was out, evidently. However, the unpleasant sense that he was, perhaps, not the first casual visitor to walk through that open door impelled him to look through the house before he went anyway and closed it after him. So he went upstairs, and at the door of the first bedroom, Jeremiah turned on the gasolier, as he had done in the siting rooms. Even as he did so, he felt that he was not alone. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Jeremiah was prepared to see something, but for what he saw he was not prepared. For what he saw lay on the bed, in a white loose gown—and it was Mrs. Winchester, and her throat was cut from ear to ear. He did not know what happened then, nor how he got downstairs and into the street; but he got out somehow, and the policeman found him in a fit, under the lamp-post at the crossroads of the road. He could not speak when they picked him up, and he passed the night in the police cells, because the policeman had seen plenty of drunken men before, but never one in a fit like Jeremiah Haralson. The next morning he was well, though still very pale and shaky. However, the tale he told the magistrate was convincing, and they sent a couple of constables with him to her house. There was no crowd about it as he had fancied there would be, and the curtains were open. As Jeremiah stood, dazed, in the front of the doors, they opened, she Mrs. Winchester came out. Jeremiah held on to the upside-down posts on the front porch for support. “See, my boy! Mrs. Winchester is just fine as can be,” said the constable, who found him hiding before one of the posts. “I told you, you were drunk, but you would know best!” When Jeremiah was alone with Mrs. Winchester, he told her how he had come into the rambling mansion, and had found the front doors open and the lights out, and how he had seen something—in even trying to hint at which he turned sick and broke down and had to have a little Vin Mariani given to him. “Oh, heavens, boy,” Mrs. Winchester said, “I dare say the house was dark, for we were all at St. Joseph’s Cathedral with Daisy, and no doubt the door was open, for the maids will run out if they are left. However, you could not have been in any of the bedrooms on the second floor, because I have my staff lock them when I am away, and my dear sweet boy, they key was in my pocket. I dressed in a hurry and I left my odds and ends laying about.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
“I know,” Jeremiah said; “I saw a gold scarf on the chair, and some gold gloves, and a lot of hairpins and ribbons, and a prayerbook, and a lace handkerchief on the dressing table. Why, I even noticed the almanack on the mantlepiece—16 January 1895. At least it could not be that because this is 16 August 1894. And yet it was. Your almanack is at 16 January 1895, is it not?” “No, of course it is not,” said Mrs. Winchester, smiling rather anxiously; “but all the other things were just as you say. You must have had a nightmare, of a vision, or something.” Jeremiah was a very ordinary, commonplace, City young man, and he did not believe in visions, but he never rested day or night still he got away from the Winchester mansion. Now the curious and quite inexplicable part of this when Mrs. Winchester came down to breakfast on the morning of 17 January 1895, she found Jeremiah looking like death, with the Oakland Tribune in his hand. He caught hers—he could not speak, and pointed to the paper. And there she read that on the night of the 17th a young lady had been found with her throat cut from ear to ear, in a second story bedroom of that Beautiful, but Bizarre Winchester Mansion. Although demons reveal various degrees of wickedness (Matthew 12.45), they all are depraved. This aspect of their character appears in the terrible things they do to their victims. The Christian Bible often refers to them as spiritually and morally “unclean” (Matthew 10.1; Mark 1.27; 3.11; Luke 4.36; Acts 8.7; Revelation 16.13). People who deal in the occult are sometimes found to be vulnerable to Satan and demonic powers. Sometimes these “unclean spirits” take possession of vulnerable people. The character of demons reveals what they can do to their victims. Invisible, extremely intelligent, strong, and totally depraved personalities can do a great deal of harm to the vulnerable person. Since the supernatural exists and does interact with the natural World, the truly scientific investigator must take this into consideration. Prayer and faith can heal the mind and the body supernaturally, just as medicine and rest can do it naturally. By the same token, unbelief and sin can harm body and mind as a result of demonic bondage. (However, many mental and emotional illnesses are, of course, due to natural causes, such as overwork, tension, fatigue, malnutrition, organic disease, etcetera. Such disorders can be treated effectively by a physician, neurologist, psychologist, or psychiatrist. Demonic spirits may have little or nothing to do with such disorders of the mind. The causes are purely natural and may be corrected by purely natural means. This is not surprising since the Creator has placed the creation and His creatures under the normal operation of the laws of cause and effect.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
Beautiful day to stroll the gardens which will turn into a beautiful night to roam around the Winchester Mystery House ☀️🌜Flashlight Tours Tonight!
A few tickets still available!
🎟️ Link https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
In the Cup of Omens there is a Baptism into Black Magic!
In popular thinking, the term “magic” refers to the tricks of a sleight-of-hand artist, the optical illusions created by a clever trickster, or the cunning exhibition of seemingly supernatural powers by money-hungry charlatans. Undoubtedly many of the amazing demonstrations performed by such people have a completely naturalistic explanation, but honest scholars who have investigated occultic phenomena in many parts of the World agree that science at present is unable to account for some of the apparently supernatural events they have witnessed. The Bible also sets forth the view that not all magic is merely hocus-pocus. In the Biblical portrayal of magic, the Scriptures acknowledge that real superhuman power can be accomplished through sorcery, but clearly teach that the source of such manifestations is evil. The Egyptian magicians actually were able to change their rods into serpents by throwing them on the ground. Some say these rods were really snakes which had been hypnotized into becoming as rigid as a cane, but even so we must admit that no scientist today can explain how these men were able to perform this feat. They also were successful in changing water into blood, and in producing a miraculous multiplication of frogs, thus apparently duplicating what Moses and Aaron had done by God’s supernatural power. The Egyptian sorcerers undoubtedly believed their gods gave them the ability to perform these amazing exploits, and they viewed their encounter with Moses and Aaron as a contest to determine whether or not their gods were more powerful than God. The Bible implies that supernatural beings take advantage of the practices of heathenism to further enslave their adherents, but declares that these invisible agents are neither holy angels nor gods. It states that they are demons—spirit beings who rebelled against God and now are dedicated to Him. For this reason, Moses and Aaron convincingly demonstrated the superiority of God over these demonic forces. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
When Aaron’s rod became a serpent, it swallowed up those the Egyptians had cast to the ground. The greater power of God also was manifested when the pagan sorcerers were unable to remove the plague of frogs, but Moses simply prayed to the Lord, and “the frogs died out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields,” reports Exodus 8.13. God’s servants then brought about the third plague, a changing of dust into lice, a judgment which made life almost unbearable for human and beast. This time the magicians of Egypt were unable to duplicate the miracle, not could they bring about the sudden death of the pests. They therefore humbly acknowledged, “This is the finger of God,” reports Exodus 8.19. In this manner, the Lord demonstrated His absolute superiority over the powers of evil which the Egyptians worshiped as gods. It does important for us to note again that the Bible does not indicate that the magicians were frauds. A careful study of this history of Egypt, Babylon, and other nations of antiquity reveals that heathen priests accomplished many unusual feats, and kept the people under subjection through what appeared to be supernatural abilities. In seeking to understand some of the mysterious phenomena of heathenism, we must bear in mind the declaration of the apostle Paul, “But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.20. The apostle was definitely saying that the worship of idols involved more than merely bowing down to lifeless images. Furthermore, the fact that the Bible repeatedly forbids sorcery, divination, and every other form of occultism is evidence that God links these practices with actual demonic power. We repeat, the death penalty would not have been the prescribed punishment for all mediums, fortunetellers, and sorcerers if they were only quacks guilty of deception for gain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Critics of the Bible insist that its attitude toward some forms of witchcraft is inconsistent, and even sincere believers have been puzzled by several passages which appear to condone these practices. A careful examination of these instances, however, reveals that such critical assertions are unwarranted. Genesis 30: 14-18 records the story of Leah and Rachel bargaining for mandrakes, showing that they believed these so-called “love apples” increased a woman’s fertility. However, the fact that Jacob’s wives held to this ancient concept does not necessarily indicate that the Bible expresses approval. Then, too, modern investigation has shown that some primitive medicines, scorned by medics a generation or two ago, actually do possess qualities which make them valuable. At any rate, this passage of Scripture does not indicate that the Bible encouraged the use of magic. In another instance of apparent superstition, Jacob peeled the bark from saplings to give them a spotted appearance become he believed that they offspring of the cattle bred before them would then be speckled and spotted. This story is declared to be an indication that the writer of Genesis held to the notion that the colour of the unborn young would be affected by what the female animal saw at the time of impregnation. (See Genesis 30.37-43.) A careful study of the entire account reveals, however, the truth that God actually was controlling the breeding process through the laws of heredity, not by means of Jacob’s efforts. The angel of the Lord later told the patriarch that the male animals possessed genetic characteristics which brought about the birth of so many striped, speckled, and spotted animals. (See Genesis 31.11-12.) Therefore, we can assert with confidence that this passage of Scripture in no way encourages the use of magic. The statement of Joseph to his brothers about his silver cup also poses a problem for Bible students, because his words seem to indicate that he used it for purposes of divination. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
After the steward had hidden the cup in Benjamin’s sack of grain, Joseph told him what he was to do and say. The King James Version records Joseph’s instructions as follows, “Up, follow after them men; and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this it in which my Lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth? Ye have done evil in so doing” (Genesis 44.4-5). Scholars today know that the heathen sorcerers of Joseph’s day often sprinkled small particles of gold or sliver into a cup of water, or poured a small amount of oil in it, and then “read” the resulting design in the cup of omens. While it is possible that Joseph fell into this sinful and heathenish practice, we doubt very much that he did, for he had one of the finest characters of all the men portrayed in the entire Old Testament. In addition, we can present good reason for our conviction that Joseph never really used the coup to find out about the unknown. In the first place, Joseph did not need such sources of information. God had spoken to him through dreams and other forms of revelation, and therefore Joseph did possess knowledge ordinarily hidden to humans. In that sense he was able to “divine.” His instruction to his steward may be translated, “Is it not from this cup that my Lord drinks, and concerning which he will assuredly divine?” In other words, Joseph made it clear that he possessed a power which would enable him to find out what happened to the cup. (We must remember that Joseph was play-acting in order to test his brothers. He wanted them to be puzzled by the knowledge he possessed, and did not want to disclose his real identity at this time. For this reason, he did not speak of obtaining information directly from God.) This interpretation of verse 5 fits well with the statement of Joseph recorded in verse 15, “What deed is this that ye have done? Know ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?” #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
He let his brothers know that he was a special person with unusual powers of perception, but did not reveal the source of his ability. Later he told them about his faith in God. Therefore, the story of Joseph and the silver cup is certainly not an indication of Biblical approval of magic, and the likelihood exists that Joseph never practiced the heathen customs of his day. Certain elements of the Mosaic law sometimes are thought to be a form of magic. In Numbers 5, for example, we are told that if a man suspected his wife of unfaithfulness, he was to take her to the priest for trial. The woman would then drink a liquid potion to determine her guilt or innocence. If certain physical results became apparent immediately, she was deemed guilty. If not, she was innocent. On the surface this appears to be a superstitious practice, but when we remember that Israel lived under a theocracy and that God has ordained this test, we can believe He would in this manner declare infallibly the guilt or innocence of the person being tried. The Urim and Thummim as a means of revelation and the long hair of Samson as the secret of his strength are further examples of divinely ordered and controlled phenomena which cannot be compared to the magic of the heathen. Therefore, we can say assuredly that nothing in the Old Testament or the New can be properly interpreted as divine sanction of sorcery or magic. Shortly before the Exile, the prophet Ezekiel delivered a scorching denunciation of women who were using amulets and veils in a magic ritual to bring joy or sadness, blessing or cursing, even life or death to certain individuals. “Likewise, thou son of man, set thy face against the daughters of thy people, who prophesy out of their own heart, and prophesy thou against them, and say, Thus saith the Lord God: Woe to the women that sew amulets upon all wrists, and make kerchiefs for the head of every person of stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you? And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear you lies? #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
“Wherefore, thus saith the LORD GOD: Behold, I am against your amulets, with which ye there hunt the souls to make them fly; and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly. Your kerchiefs also will I tear, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand to be hunted; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, who I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life; therefore, ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations; for I will deliver my people out of your hand; and ye shall know that I am the LORD,” reports Ezekiel 13.17-23. Exactly what these women did is not easy to ascertain. Some Bible students have conjectured that they performed a rite in which they symbolically bound up the soul of a person so that the individual would gradually waste away and die. Then, for a fee they would bring about his release. Other scholars think that Ezekiel describes features of “sympathetic magic,” whereby the sorceress fastened something around her own wrists or enshrouded her own head to place a curse upon a specific individual. In either case, the practice of these women appeared to have consequences so serious as to warrant divine condemnation and a prophetic declaration that God would deliver His people from their grasp. The Old Testament acknowledges the existence of real magic, and consistently condemns it in every form. Furthermore, the rites and ceremonies prescribed for Israel were not equivalent to the practices of the heathen, but were instructions that came directly from God and over which He would exercise control. At the very threshold of human history stands God’s command, “Fill the Earth and subdue it,” reports Genesis 1.28. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The task and right of man was the peaceful conquest of the Earth’s powers in accordance with the will of God. In opposition to this command Satan, the great master of confusion came and put forward his arch-temptation, “You will be like God knowing good and evil,” reports Genesis 3.5. Magic is the very antithesis of the commandment of God as it reveals a hunger for knowledge and a desire for power in opposition to the will of God. When faced with this temptation humankind was at the crossroads. The decision has to be made. Either voluntary subordination to the will of God or rebellion against His statues and His ordinances caused by a greed for power and a desire for knowledge. The decision still faces us today. We either conform to God’s revealed way of salvation or we carry on the rebellion, trying to rule the created World in unforgivable opposition to God. Magic is thus at its roots a rebellion, and it has been so from the beginning. It is the climax of man’s revolt against God. Any talk of harmless forces of nature and neutral applications is criminal in the light of this scriptural fact. On the surface, parapsychology (the science of extrasensory experience) still recognizes something of the double nature of magic. The differentiation is made between Psi-Gamma phenomena and Psi-Kappa phenomena. (Gamma representing gignoskein, to perceive; kappa representing kinein, to move). Here we have again the two basic elements of magic: knowledge and power through supernatural means. Through a great deal of pastoral work, I have noticed four ways in which magical powers can originate. These are through heredity, subscription of oneself to the devil, occult experiments and occult transference. The evidence drawn from many actual case histories goes to prove that magical abilities can be passed on by means of heredity. Often mediumistic powers can be traced back over three or four generations in one family. There are two possibilities here, one being that it is a matter of the genes and the other that it is a matter of succession. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
By this we mean the custom of a person on one’s deathbed actually bestowing the magical abilities upon the eldest son or daughter in order to die peacefully. Often tragic scenes occur when the children do not want to have these abilities passed on to them. A person may cry out for weeks on his deathbed for someone to relieve him of his magical powers. Sometimes a distant relative or an outsider is willing to accept the succession. The reason for this may differ from case to case, be it pity, curiosity or maybe lust for power. The death of some magicians can drag on over a period of weeks till the office of “succession” has been settled. This is not an apostolic but a diabolic succession. Magical powers on the other hand may originate through subscription to the devil. One can see in this the counterpart to baptism. To every event recorded in the Bible, there seems to be a demonic parallel to it in the field of magic. Subscription to the devil accounts for some of the most terrible and formidable cases met with by Christian workers. For example, in Paris there is an occult church with the name or title, “We Worship the Prince of this World.” This church has sister congregations in Basle and berne, and a few decades ago one was opened in Rome. In order to become a member of this church, one has to subscribe oneself to the devil. This is a baptism into black magic! For years a man in Toggenburg, Switzerland, had a flourishing practice as a nature healer and charmer. He could even sure come people who the doctors had given up as hopeless. He had healed the blind, the lame, cases of advanced cancer, tuberculosis, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma and other serious diseases. On one occasion however, the man’s own personal need came to the surface. He said, “I can help others, but for myself there is no help, no not in all eternity!” In his youth the man had subscribed himself to the devil. It was since that time that he had obtained his unearthly healing ability. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Another way in which magical powers may develop is through experimenting with occultism. A Swiss factory worker grew tired of his job. Since he had often heard that occult healers and mesmerizers made a lot of money, he bought some magic charms, underwent various devil ceremonies and then began healing experiments. His magic healing ability developed rapidly and ultimately his income surpassed his previous earnings many times over. The next example will illustrate all three factors together, that is, the factors of heredity, subscription and experimenting in occultism. A young woman told me this story. Here great-grandmother had subscribed herself to the devil with her own blood. She had practiced black magic and had healed both animals and people. On her deathbed she had suffered terribly as is often the cause with magic conjurers. The daughter, that is the grandmother of my storyteller, took over the magic powers of her mother. The magic literature of her mother also passed into her hands. Later the apparition of the great-grandmother was seen by the relatives. The grandmother however, continued to practice magic. During nights of the full moon, she would charm diseases. She was also in the habit of using a key suspended over a Bible as a pendulum, and she could also successfully stop people from bleeding. If she ever attempted to read the Bible, she found it quite a trial. As she grew older, she began to see black figures in her home, and finally when she died it was again an unpleasant time. Her ghost was also seen after her departure. The story went on that the young woman’s mother had then taken over the magical literature and practices. She too had become a well-known healer, but her fate had been the same as her predecessors’. The fourth member in this terrible line of succession was not the young woman. As a small child, her mother had cast spells over her. Shortly after this, she had become clairvoyant and had also begun to see black figures in the house. Her brother and sister had suffered from depression and she herself had has serious psychic and nervous disturbances which had led her to seek the help of a minister. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Occult transference is the fourth source of magical powers. A young man told me that he had once had three black magicians lay their hands on his head and murmur some magic charms over him. He had afterwards possessed magic abilities which astonished even the family doctor. The doctor had investigated his powers and had to acknowledge that they were genuine. The laying on of the hands of the magicians would again be a counterpart to the scriptural laying on of hands. Another example, a young man saw someone searching for water with a pendulum. He was asked if he would like to have a go, but the pendulum did not react in his hand. When the dowser took hold of his hands, though, the pendulum had at once reacted. Later when he had tried to repent the experiment by himself, he was again successful, and he discovered that he now had the ability to search for water with both a rod or a pendulum. Yet the young man felt a change in his Christian life. Previously he had been regular in his reading of the Bible and in prayer. After this transference of pendulum ability, however, his love for the Word of God and for prayer declined. Spirits are not normally subject to human visibility or other sensory perception. God’s universe operates undeviatingly in accordance with the purpose for which He created it. The all-wise and all-powerful Creator is not permitting Satan and demons to throw his ordered Universe into confusion by violating the laws he has established. Nor is He permitting His own people to do so through haphazard miracles. Though not ignoring the laws of nature, God’s Word also recognizes the possible transcendence of natural law in divine miracle both in good supernaturalism (Exodus 14.19-31; 17: 5-7; Joshua 3.16-17; 6.20; John 2.9; 11:44) and in evil supernaturalism (Exodus 7.10-11, 22; 8.7; 2 Thessalonians 2.8-10; Revelation 13.15). #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
When natural law is transcended by divine miracle, the natural eye may see the spiritual reality. An illustration is provided in 2 Kings 6.17. In answer to Elisha’s prayer, the Lord “opened the eyes” of the prophet’s servant who saw “the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” In like manner Elisha saw the “chariot of fire, and horses of fire” when Elijah went up by a whirlwind into Heaven (2 Kings 2.11). Similarly John saw the demons coming up from the abyss in their last-day eruption as locusts (Revelation 9.1-12). He also saw the three hideous demons issuing from the months of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet as froglike spirits (Revelation 16.13-14). The apocalyptic seer glimpsed these fouls spirits prophetically and by supernatural vision. However, when they are sent against human, they will be invisible to the natural eye. Their presence will be known by the excruciating pain they inflict and the gross deception they cause. The harm they inflict will be inescapable, because their victims will be unable to shield themselves from an invisible enemy. However, spirits can become discernible to humans through transcendence of natural law. Evil spirits may be seen and communicated through an intermediary or medium. Just as Peter and Paull saw and talked with an angel (Acts 5.19; 27: 23-24), so human beings today can communicate with evil spirits through magic rites and incantations. Communication with the demon World results in supernatural manifestations, but these, strictly speaking, are not miraculous. Occult enslavement and extrasensory phenomena await people who enter the realm from which God would protect his own people (Deuteronomy 18.10-11) and against which He solemnly warns (Leviticus 19.31; 20.27; 1 Samuel 28.9; 1 Timothy 4.1, 2;1 John 4.1-3). When humans ignore God’s warnings and enter a forbidden realm, they may witness materializations, levitations, and luminous apparitions, as well as experience spirit rappings, trances, automatic writing, magic phenomena, clairvoyance, oral and written communications and other forms of spiritistic phenomena. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Such manifestations are not miracles. They represent the operation of the occult within a certain well-defined sphere tolerated by God. Occult subjection and oppression are the inevitable penalties to all who traffic in the realm of evil supernaturalism. The Scriptures are markedly reticent on the matter of spirits being seen by humans. Here again, the Bible stands in contrast to ethnic and rabbinic systems. Multitudes of demons in bizarre forms are described in ancient semitic demonology. Rabbinic demonology, for example, divides demons into two classes: one composed of purely spiritual beings, the other of half-spirits. The latter were though to have a psycho-sarcous constitution that involved them in physical needs and functions. Although the Bible is silent concerning such “halbgeister,” they would seem to be what the offspring of the angels and mortal women (Genesis 6:1-4) might have been, half-angelic and half-human monsters. Many spiritualists say they accept the Christian Bible as the Word of God. To understand it, however, spiritualists go to the control spirit in the séances, and the spirits reputedly give the proper interpretation. Spiritualists frequently ask, “Why go to the Bible, when you can go directly to the spirit and receive personal instruction from such people as Moses, Abraham, Joshua, Isaiah, David, Peter, James, John, and Paul—even the Master himself?” With that kind of opportunity, few spiritualists prefer to read the Bible—and hence they know little of what it teaches. For the Christian, 2 Timothy 3.16-17, is a key teaching regarding the inspiration and purpose of Scripture: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfectly, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” Spiritualists do not accept the plain meaning of that verse, and they distort another key verse, 2 Peter 1.21, which speaks of “holy men of God” producing prophecy “by the Holy Ghosts.” Spiritualists say this means that the prophets were inspired by the spirits. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Dr. Moses Hull, an accepted authority among spiritualists, wrote in Biblical Spiritualism, a book he published in 1895: “The Bible is, I think, one of the best of the sacred books of the ages. It is supposedly the sacred fountain from which two, if not three, of the great religions of the World have flowed…While the Bible is not the infallible or immaculate book that many have supposed it to be, no one can deny that it is a great book…Yet it must be confessed that the age of critical analysis of all its sayings and its environments has hardly dawned…John R. Shannon said to his Denver audience, ‘We do not believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. The dogma that every word of the Bible is supernaturally dictated is false. It ought to be shelved away…Verbal inspiration is a superstitious theory; it has turned multitudes in disgust from the Bible; it has led thousands into infidelity; it has led to savage theological warfare’…All these facts would show, if brought out, that the Bible, like all other books, is exceedingly human in its origin. While the Bible is, none of it infallible, none of it unerring—when rightly interpreted it is all of it useful; all of it good. Even the parts which the people called infidels have ridiculed the most, become beautiful when examined in the light of modern spiritualism. In the following chapters the sacred light of spiritualism is applied to the Bible and it becomes indeed a ‘lamp unto our feet and a light to our path.’” To show something of how spiritualists interpret Scripture, I have chosen five examples from Hull’s book. Isaiah 21.4-5. “My heart panted, fearful affrighted me: the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me. Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink; arise, ye prices, and anointed the shield.” The spiritualists interprets the phrase “prepare the table” as meaning a table to be used for spirit manifestation at a séance. Ezekiel 9.4-6. “And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
“And to the other he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women; but come not near any man upon whom is the mark and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.” Dr. Hull comments: “Ezekiel was considered an excellent medium, but like many of the nineteenth century he makes wrong predictions. It is thought that very few, if any, of his predictions ever met their accomplishments.” Amos 7.7. “Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand.” Hull writes: “Mediums see such manifestations in connection with departed human spirits nearly every day.” Acts 8.26-30. “And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south…and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch…had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him.” Dr. Hull asserts that Philip was carried by a control spirit to speak to the Ethiopian. Galatians 1.11-12. “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” In his handbook for spiritualist, Hull concludes from this text that the Apostle Paul received the gospel by spirit revelation through the mediumship of Jesus. It is noteworthy that to both the spiritualist and the Christian, Satan is God’s archenemy. I was at a séance one time when Satan supposedly entered. It ended abruptly, and we were told it was because of the presence of an evil spirit. It is tragic that many spiritualists never realize they are being deceived by this very devil who can ingeniously adapt his tactics to lure any type of prey. Satan is openly honoured, of course, by some practitioners of the so-called “black arts” or “black magic.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Generally, some of these people are obsessed with hexes and spells, sexual indulgence, weird rituals, and hints of violence. Spiritualists, who consider themselves followers of God and the “good spirits,” regard such people as self-centered “spiritists” who follow the “bad spirits.” However, these “good” and “bad” spirits serve the same master, Satan, and serve him well, because they each give their followers what Satan dispenses: a sense of goodness and of guidance without dependence on Christ; and a sense of power and self-fulfillment in defiance of God’s commands. However, many spirits do believe in God, and the Christian Bible says there is a Holy Spirit and Angels that guide us, and in many cases, these spirits do prevent people from facing hardships, and these people still depend on Christ. So, it is really hard to generalize and give Satan so much power. Nonetheless, all people are baffled by occult mysteries! Revelations 13.14 says, “Satan’s representative deceiveth them that dwell on the Earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do.” Generally, people think of miracles and blessings as good omens. So, everyone has to make their own decisions as to what they believe, but many people on Earth are always looking for evidence of the supernatural because the very fact that we live on a globe that floats in the sky and provides of with nature and fruit and meat, and sun and a nightlight at night is evidence of a supernatural power. Once upon a time, at the instigation of a ghost, a lawsuit took place at Downpartick in 1685. The account of this was given to Baxter by Thomas Emlin, “a worthy preacher in Dublin,” as well as by Claudius Gilbert, one of the principal parties therein concerned: the latter’s son and namesake proved a liberal benefactor to the Library of Trinity College—some of his books have been consulted for the present work. It appears that for some time past there had been dispute about the tithes of Drumbeg, a little parish about four miles outside Belfast, between Mr. Gilbert, who was vicar of that town, and the Archdeacon of Down, Lemuel Matthews, whom Cotton in his Fasti describes as “a man of considerable talents and legal knowledge, but of a violent overbearing temper, and a litigious disposition.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The parishioners of Drumbeg favoured Gilbert, and generally paid the tithes to him as being the incumbent in possession; but the Archdeacon claimed to be the lawful recipient, in support of which claim he produced a warrant. In the execution of this by his servants at the house of Charles Lostin, one of the parishioners, they offered some violence to his wife Margaret, who refused them entrance, and who died about a month later (1 November 1685) of the injuries she had received at their hands. Being a woman in a bad state of health littler notice was taken of her death, until about a month after she appeared to one Thomas Donelson, who had been a spectator of the violence done her, and “affrighted him into a Prosecution of Robert Eccleson, the Criminal. She appeared divers times, but chiefly upon one Lord’s Day-Evening, when she fetch’d him with a strange force out of his House into the Yard and Fields adjacent. Before her last coming (for she did so three times that Day) several Neighbours were called in, to whom he gave notice that she was again coming; and beckon’s him to come out; upon which they went to shut the Door, but he forbad it, saying that she looked with a terrible Aspect upon him, when they offered it. However, his Friends laid hold on him and embraced him, that he might not go out again; notwithstanding which (a plain evidence of some invisible Power), he was drawn out of their Hands in a surprising manner, and carried about into the Field and Yard, as before, she charging him to prosecute Justice: which Voice, as also Donelson’s reply, the people heard, though they saw no shape. There are many Witnesses of this yet alive, particularly Sarah (Losnam), the Wife of Charles Lostin, Son to the deceased Woman, and one William Holyday and his Wife.” This last appearance took place in Holyday’s house; there were also present several young persons, as well as Charles and Helen Lostin, children of the deceased, most of whom appeared as witnesses at the trial. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Upon this Donelson deposed all he knew of the matter to Mr. Randal Brice, a neighbouring Justice of the Peace; the latter brought the affair before the notice of Sir William Franklin in Belfast Castle. The depositions were subsequently carried to Dublin, and the case was tried at Downpatrick Assizes by Judge John Lindon in 1685. On behalf of the plaintiff, Charles Lostin, Counseller James Macartney acted—if he be the Judge who subsequently makes his appearance in a most important witch-trial at Carrickfergus, he certainly was as excellent an advocate as any plaintiff in a case of witchcraft could possibly desire, as he was strongly prejudiced in favour of the truth of all such matters. “The several Witnesses were heard and sworn, and their Examinations were entered in the Record of that Assizes, to the Amazement and Satisfaction of all that Country and of the Judges, whom I have heard speak of it at the time with much Wonder; insomuch that the said Eccleson hardly escaped with his life, but was Burnt in the Hand.” Whether or not one believes in Mrs. Winchester’s superstitions about spirits, it is hard to dismiss occurrences of the number 13 throughout her gorgeous mansion. Many windows have 13 panes and there are 13 bathrooms, with 13 windows in the 13th Bathroom, 13 steps leading to that bathroom. The Carriage Entrance Hall floor is divided into 12 cement sections. There are even 13 hooks in the Blue Séance Room, which supposedly held the different coloured robes Mrs. Winchester wore while communing with spirits. Here are even more thirteens: 13 rails by the floor-level skylight in the South Conservatory, 13 steps on many of the stairways, 13 squares on each side of the Otis electric elevator, 13 glass cupolas on the Greenhouse, 13 holes in the sink drain covers, 13 ceiling panels in some of the rooms, and 13 gas jets on the Ballroom chandelier (Mrs. Winchester had the thirteenth one added!) It is interest to note that Mrs. Winchester’s will had 13 parts and was signed by her 13 times! #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Mrs. Winchester sat by herself on the fourth-floor balcony of her mansion. It was an October evening, and the sun was setting. The west was all aglow with mysterious red light, very strange and lurid—a light that reflected itself in glowing purple of the sky. Mrs. Winchester had a poet’s soul. She sat there long, watching the livid hues that incarnadined the sky—redder and fiercer than anything she ever remembered to have seen growing up as a child. She knew it was getting late and was expecting guests for dinner. Mrs. Winchester was always such a stickler for punctuality and dispatch. However, there was something about that sunset and the lights on the bracken—something beautiful but bizarre—that absolute fascinated her. She took it as a sign from the spirits that something was about to happen. The Universe was always teeming with mysterious secrets to unfold. Many of the guests in her mansion felt something desired to possess their soul, and it made them want to stop and give way to this overpowering sese of the mysterious and the marvellous in the dark depths of the estate. She was expecting Claude Duncan for dinner. Mrs. Winchester dined at 6.00 p.m. punctually. However, Claude seemed to be having some issues that evening. He was an art dealer, and was being haunted by many strange shaped. However, he saw and heard absolutely nothing; yet he realized that unseen figures were watching him close with bated breath, and anxiously observing his every movement, as if intent to know whether he would rise and move on, or remain to investigate this causeless sensation. He could feel their outstretched necks; he could picture their strained attention. At last he broke away. “This is nonsense,” he said aloud to himself, and turned slowly homeward. Ad he did so, a deep sigh, as of suspense relieved, but relived in the wrong direction, seemed to rise—unheard, impalpable, spiritual—from the invisible crowd that father around him immaterial. Clutched hands seemed to stretch after him and try to pull him back. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
An unreal throng of angry and disappointed creatures seemed to follow him over the moor, uttering speechless imprecations on his head, in some unknown tongue—ineffable, inaudible. This horrid sense of being followed by unearthly foes took absolute possession of Claude’s mind. It might have been merely the lurid redness of the afterglow, or the loneliness of the moor, or the necessity of being at the Winchester Mansion, no one minute late for Mrs. Winchester’s dinner-hour; but, at any rate, he lost all self-control for the moment, and ran-ran widely at the very top of his speed, all the way from the barrow to the door of the Winchester Mansion garden. There he stopped and looked round with a painful sense of his own stupid cowardice. This was absolutely childish: he had seen nothing, heard nothing, had nothing definite to frighten him; yet he had run from his own mental shadow, like the verist schoolgirl, and was trembling still from the profundity of his sense that somebody unseen was pursing and following him. “What a precious fool I am,” he said to himself, half angrily, “to be so terrified at nothing! I will go to Mrs. Winchester’s dinner just to recover my self-respect, and to prove to myself, at least, I am not really frightened.” There is nothing like a light for dispelling superstitious terrors. The Winchester Mansion was fortunately updated with electric light; For Mrs. Winchester was nothing if not intensely modern. He went to dinner, however, in very good spirits. He told Mrs. Winchester and her niece Merriam “Daisy” Marriot that, “I felt a most peculiar sensation. Just after sunset, I was dimly conscious of something stirring inside, not visible or audible, but—” “Oh, I know, I know! Said Merriam. “A sort of feeling there was somebody somewhere, very faint and dim, though you could not see or her them; they tried to pull you down, clutching at you like this: and when you ran away frightened, they seemed to follow you and jeer at you. Great gibbering creatures! Oh, I know what all this is. I have been here, and felt it.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“Daisy!” Mrs. Winchester shouted, “what nonsense you talk! You are really too ridiculous. How can you suppose Mr. Duncan feels haunted?!” Mrs. Winchester darted at him a look of intense displeasure. She said, in a chilly voice, “at a table like this and with such thinkers around, we might surely find something rather better to discuss than such worn out superstitions.” Claude replied, “Mrs. Winchester, it has been shown conclusively that the Winchester mansion, was built on the grave of Aryan invaders, and that they are the real originals of all the San Jose hills and surrounding lands. You have heard the story of how your dark observation tower came, of course. People say the spirits built it because they were deeply religious people, who believed in human sacrifice. They felt they it would have a high spiritual benefit. That it lit up your palace, so that the spirits could find you.” “It is a very odd fact, Mr. Duncan, that only ghosts people ever see are the ghost of a generation very close to them. One hears lots of ghosts in nineteenth-century costumes, because everybody has a clear idea of wigs and small-clothes from pictures and fancy dresses. One hears of far fewer in Elizabethan dress, because the class most given to beholding ghost are seldom acquainted with ruffs and farthingales; and one meets with none at all in Angelo-Saxon or Ancient British or Roman costumes, because those are only known to a comparatively small class of learned people. Millions of ghosts of remote antiquity must swarm about the World, though, after a hundred years or thereabouts they retired into obscurity and cease to annoy people with their nasty cold shivers. However, the queer thing about these long-barrow ghost is that they must be the spirits of humans who died thousands and thousands of years ago, which is exceptional longevity for a spiritual being; do you not think so, Mr. Duncan?” “You mansion must be chock-full of them,” replied Mr. Duncan. “Daisy, my child, go to bed, said Mrs. Winchester. “This is not talk for you. And do not go chilling yourself by standing at the window in your nightdress, looking out on the common to search for the ghosts. You nearly fell to your death last year with that nonsense. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
As Claude Duncan went for a tour of the mansion by himself, he saw a child’s white face gaze appealingly across at him. Slowly the ghost boy raised one pale forefinger and pointed. His lips opened to an inaudible word; but he read it by sight. “Look!” he said simply. Claude looked where he pointed. A faint blue light hung lambent over the door-to-nowhere. It was ghostly and vague. It seemed to rouse and call him. Claude was now in a strange semi-mesmeric state of self-induced hypnotism when a command of whatever sort or by whomsoever given, seems to compel obedience. Trembling he rose, and taking his candle descended the stair noiselessly. Then, walking on tiptoe across the tile-paved hall, he opened the door-to-nowhere, and fell out into the garden below. Claude felt a creep sense of mystery and the supernatural. And he saw the pale face still pressed close against the window, and a white hand still motioning him mutely onward. He looked once more in the direction of where the ghost boy pointed, the spectral light now burnt clearer and bluer, and more unearthly than ever, and the observational tower of the mansion seemed haunted from end to end by innumerable invisible and uncanny creatures. As Claude groped on his way, speechless voices seemed to whisper unknow tongues encouragingly in his ear; ghosts appeared to crowd around him and tempt him with beckoning figures to follow them. As it seemed, by invisible hands, he staggered slowly forward, till at last, with aching head and trembling feet, he stood beside the front door of the mansion. Something clogged and impeded him from moving. His feet would not obey his will; they seemed to move of themselves back into the mansion. Steadying himself, and opening his eyes, Claude walked through the closed front doors. Then at once his feet moved easily, and the invisible attendant chuckled to themselves so loud that he could almost hear them. His terror was infinite, there was a ghostly through of people. They were spirits. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Claude Duncan was powerless in their intangible hands; for they seized him roughly with incorporeal fingers. Their wrist compelled him as the magnet compels the iron bar. A dim phosphorescent light, like the light of a churchyard or decaying paganism, seemed to illuminate the mansion faintly. Things loomed dark before him; but his eyes almost instantly adapted themselves to the gloom, as the eyes of the dead on the first night in the grave adapt themselves by inner force to the strangeness of their surroundings. The Grand Ballroom had a silver chandelier from Germany, and the walls and parquet floors were made of six hardwoods—mahogany, teak, maple, rosewood, oak, and white ash. And there were two mysterious stained-glass windows. The room was full of sumptuous music, the San Francisco orchestra was performing and ghosts dressed for a ball were dancing. Claude’s attention was too much concentrated on devouring fear and the horror of the situation to enjoy the mysterious beauty of it. There was also a grinning skeleton turning its head to reveal to Claude its eyeless orbs with vacant glance of hungry satisfaction. Claude, held fast by the immaterial hands of his ghastly captors, looked and trembled for his fate, too terrified to cry out or even to move and struggle, he beheld the hideous thing rise and assume a shadowy shape, all pallid blue light, like the shape of his jailers. Bit by bit, as he gazed, the skeleton seemed to disappear, or rather to fade into some unsubstantial form, which was nevertheless more human, more corporal, more horrible than the dry bones it had come from. Then it busted into a loud and fiendish laugh. It was a hideous laugh, halfway between a wild beast’s and a murderous maniac’s: it echoed through the long hall like the laughter of devils. It said, “You are mine. You soul now belongs to the Winchester mansion!” The men and women spirits, with a loud whoop, raised hands aloft in unison. Next instant with a howl of vengeance even louder than before, they crowded around Claude and jostled and hustled him. And the moon burned bright and bluer as Claude Duncan now became the Winchester Rifle’s victim. You see it is not a bullet, but an all-powerful spirit, which chooses victims even if they did not die at the hands of the Winchester Rifle. Curious about the Winchester Mystery House? #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
TONIGHT! Roam the halls of the iconic Winchester Mystery House with nothing but a flashlight 👀🔦 You don’t want to miss this. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Don’t Go Out Like Whitney Huston–Can I Leave A Million at Your House and You Won’t Touch it?
Great changes require administrative support and necessary and necessary resources. A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. The World changes faster than the people in it. We must now try to imagine what the nucleic acid molecules, in the late coacervate/early cellular era, could have done besides reproduce their own kind. For definiteness, let us consider a coacervate or cell containing large numbers of nucleic acid molecules of different compositions and lengths. Let us assume, moreover, that much of the nucleic acid is in its single-stranded form at the time we commence our observations. This could be because not enough time has yet elapsed for the growth of the Siamese-twin configurations since the cyclically changing chemistry of the cell last produced the conditions that split the double molecules into single ones. In any event, let us follow the adventures of a single nucleic acid molecule as it floats around in the cellular fluid. We know, of course, that the floating around of such a molecule would not be a completely passive performance. We have already dealt with the tendency, arising from the electric fields associated with atoms and molecules, for some of the small organic and inorganic molecular fragments that inhabit the cellular fluid to attach themselves to local regions of the nucleic acid molecules. In the past, we concentrated on one type of such attachment process—that which cases a single molecule of nucleic acid to grow into a double one by conjugation of its bases. At that time, we did not concern ourselves greatly with competition from other kinds of attaching molecular fragments, although we knew that such other attachments were bound to occur from time to time. Our lack of concern for such competition was based on our awareness that most of these other attachments would be tenuous and quickly broken, since the randomly encountered molecular fragments would usually not “mate” very well with the nearby parts of the nucleic acid. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Our discussion implied that, upon the approach of a free nucleotide to a suitable region of a molecule of nucleic acid, the strong binging forces that would come into play would result in the displacement of any lightly held “impurity” in favour of the attachment of the arriving nucleotide. Such a tendency for loosely held fragments to be displayed by molecules of greater binding energy is probably adequate to render inconsequential the large majority of the nucleic acid molecule’s casual encounters in the cellular fluid. Nevertheless, there would appear to be possibilities for attachments of kinds that would not necessarily yield to such displacement forces. For example, two different nucleic acid molecules would occasionally bump together. And once in a while such a collision might bring together short regions of the two long molecules carrying base sequences complementary to one another—an A base opposed to a U (Substitute T for U, in DNA) base, then a G opposed to a C, and so on. The resulting multiple attachment could constitute much stronger connection than that resulting from the usual casual encounter between molecules of different types. To be sure, collisions between nucleic acid molecules would be rare, unless the concentration of nucleic in the cellular fluid were exceedingly high. There is a related kind of encounter, however, that would occur much more frequently—the collision of one part of a long nucleic acid molecule with another part of the same molecule. For the nucleic acid backbone is supple; it can turn back upon itself like a rope. Under the ceaseless churning that thermal agitation imposes on the molecules of any fluid, each long chain of nucleic acid would be continually bending and twisting, frequently thereby brining normally remote parts of itself into temporary contact. An occasional attachment would be of just the nature described in the example of the encounter of two different nucleic acid molecules. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
If not an unusually strong attachment (that is, involving a considerable number of conjugated bases), it would soon be broken under the stress of random thermal agitation. However, if a special way of folding the long molecule back upon itself could result in a binding together of the two halves strong enough to survive, it would eventually be “found”; the random processes would ultimately make nearly the right kind of fold, the resulting attractive forces would do the rest, and the long molecule would lock together in a characteristic folded configuration. Of course, certain conditions would have to be met by a single-stranded nucleic acid molecule before it could be eligible to form a folded configuration. In particular, a certain minimum length would have to be exceeded in order that the two halves of the folded molecule could make enough mutual bonds to provide the needed attachment strength. X-rays analysis of the nucleic acid in modern organisms shows that such folded structures, which are abundant in all cells, usually involve seventy to righty nucleotides. A combination of speculation and evidence suggests that there may be nothing very critical about the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of a successfully folded molecule. A molecule of random base sequence might be able to form a folded or hairpin structure involving complementary pairing of most of its bases by the simple expedient of pushing away from the primary folded structure an occasional nucleotide segment that does not fit the base pattern of the opposite arm of the structure. X-ray measurements strongly suggest that this kind of expedient distortion of the hairpin does not actually occur and that the schematic drawings of it are probably fairly realistic. Folded configurations would not be assumed by all nucleic acid molecules even if their length and base sequence were favourable. For the reproduction process would sometimes prevent the formation of folded molecules; to the extent to which the projecting bases had already been mated with conjugate nucleotides from the surrounding fluid, there would be a decrease in the probability that the different parts of the flailing molecule would stick together. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
However, it is not hard to postulate conditions that would cause the competition to be frequently resolved in favour of the formation of folded configurations rather than double molecules. For one thing, as mentioned in the past reports, catalysts and energy-supplying molecules must be available in the cellular fluid if the formation double molecules is to proceed at a significant rate. The chore for which these molecular assistants are required does not have to do with the conjugation of the nucleotide bases; this goes easily. Rather, the additional energy and catalytic assist are needed to connect the sugar phosphate ends of the nucleotides. However, this requirement does not exist for the formation of a folded configuration of a single molecule. Therefore, we might well expect the folding process to occur more rapidly than the reproduction processes for the molecules in question. This would be particularly true if, as we can easily postulate, the supply of catalysts and energy-contributing molecules were low in the vicinity of some of the single-stranded nucleic acid. Under such circumstances we can easily imagine that the occasional free nucleotide that attached itself to conjugate bases along the backbone of the nucleic acid molecule would be displaced by the stronger binding forces brought into play by the tendency toward multiple affiliation of the components of the two arms of the molecule itself. To be sure, the actual configuration of the folded molecule would not look much like the two-dimensional patterns seen in vintage textbooks. The same electric forces that cause double-stranded nucleic acid molecules to form a double helix would operate to impose a twist on the folded molecule. The imperfections caused by the nonmatching bases would probably also distort the helix, and the final result would be a three-dimensional configuration with a patten of atomic arrangement and external electric fields that, in the last analysis, would be completely determined by the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of the original unfolded nucleic acid molecule. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Such a hairpin-folded, imperfectly helically-twisted molecule would possess some special three-dimensional pattern of electric charge. In particular, it would be likely to have an affinity for certain kinds of molecular fragments. For example, a particular sequence of nucleotides might result in such a pattern of hairpin folding and partial helical twisting as to produce, in some portion of the molecule, a very good fit for a sugar fragment. Another molecule with a different sequence of nucleotides might include within its three-dimensional contours a good “mold” for holding a particular kind of amino acid, and so on. Assuming the existence of such ingredients in the surrounding fluid, continued floating around of the nucleic acid molecules would ultimately result in getting most of them coupled to whatever specific kinds of molecular fragments their own special patterns of electric fields best equip them to carry. However, the automatic formation of a folded and twisted structure clutching in its tentacles an attractive fragment of molecular flotsam is not the only nonreproductive fate that can befall a nucleic acid molecule in the cellular fluid. Modern evidence shows that longer varieties of these molecules can become tightly bound to the surfaces of solid particles. The particles on which such attachment occurs are today called microsomes, and they are a conspicuous feature of all modern cells. We have no difficulty in rationalizing the evolutionary origin of such inclusions; the precipitation of some of the chemical by-products of metabolism would doubtless have produced solid particles in some of the early coacervates. The requirement of length in the surface-bound nucleic acid molecules (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides, although, of course, it is unlikely that the primitive forms were of this degree of complexity) is probably generally understandable in terms of the ever-present competition between combining and disrupting forces. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Unless the molecule is long enough to provide many local points of attachment to the supporting surface, the ceaseless jostling to which it is subjected by the random thermal agitation of the surrounding molecules will jar it loose. Perhaps for a similar reason, a successfully surface-bound nucleic acid molecule appears to be fully extended, rather than folded back upon itself. Further, the long molecule is held to the surface in such a way as not to neutralize the pattern of electric fields that results from the specific sequence of bases along the backbone. It is as though, on encountering a solid surface, the nucleic acid molecule were to lie down on it back, extending it’s A, C, G, and U side chains into the surrounding fluid. For the bound molecules are chemically reactive. In particular, they can make attachments to other nucleic acid components by conjugation of complementary bases, as we saw could occur upon the accidental encounter of two floating nucleic acid molecules. This does not have to mean, however, that the long surface-bound molecule of nucleic acid would rapidly accrue to itself conjugate nucleotides and bind them together to form a double molecule. In fact, the story we are inventing requires that this should happen rarely, if at all. It is not hard to imagine conditions that would hold such double-molecule formation to a low level. For example, the catalyst that zips together the sugar phosphate ends of the conjugated nucleotides to tie up the backbone structure of the Siamese-twin molecule may not be able to operate effectively when the generating single molecule is stretched out on a solid surface. Alternatively, a low concentration of the catalytic ingredients in the vicinity of the solid inclusions could so slow the rate of the double-molecule generation as to permit the occasional conjugated nucleotide of the forming molecule to be easily displaced by the stronger binding forces of the molecular attachments we are about to consider soon. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
To get others to do what you want them to do, you must see things through their eyes. It is notorious that the physical plant and social environment have grown out of human scale. To achieve simple goods, it is often necessary to set in motion immense masses. In scarcity, where the means are unavailable, we wistfully renounce the ends. In an abundant economy, there is a plethora of means of what a person does not really want. Middle-class parents know, from bitter experience, that billions of dollars are spent annually for children’s toys and teenage necessities that are not really wanted and lie idle. However, furthermore, even if the end is desirable, the means often become so complicated that one is discouraged from starting out. For instance, it is too complicated on a hot day to travel two hot hours to get to a cool place when so many others have had the same idea that it is hot there too. To adults, such complicated means are irritating and take the joy out of life. To children growing up, they are disastrous because they make it impossible to learn by doing. The sense of causality is lost. Initiative is lost. And one ends with the idea that nothing can be changed. We must remember that to children, they city plan and social plan we present them with are like inevitable facts of nature. Unless they have architects or builders in the family, they cannot realize that the buildings were drawn by somebody on a piece of paper and could have been different. Unless their parents teach them otherwise, they believe that compulsory school attendance is a divine creation and it is a sin to be absent. It is, of course, very difficult to judge the environment concretely from the child’s point of view. Thus, living in a big city does not as such make a child inept, though any city has very complicated means. The city is short on farm work, swimming holes, and animals to trap; but it has docks, freight-car yards, labyrinthine basements, pavements to chalk up, and subway trains to play tag on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The streets are littered with the remarkable junk of a thousand trades, to hoard and make things with. The ingenuity of California’s Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants, the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Raider’s ball games adapted to various improbable fields and obstacles is a model of rule making and rational debate that any senate might emulate: it sizes up the situation, argues, decides, and gets things done that work. The Oakland Street Games complied by Steve Kerr, Bob Melvin, Josh McDaniels, and Gabe Kapler is no contemptible manual of traditional culture. History teaches that cities have made people smart because of their mixed peoples, mixed manners, and mixed learning. On the whole, cities have probably trained more intelligent children than the country. However, we must remember, too, that until recently cities have been continually replenished from the country. City people had country cousins, and drew on both influences. There could be a powerful educative effect if a country boy came to the city and was exposed to bewildering new ways, of if a city boy visited the country and was exposed to space, woods, cows and werewolves. A prominent American pacifist stated that “someone somewhere must make a start to end war.” This is true and laudable and certainly a needed reminder to humankind of its higher goal, but the problem involved in the current World crisis is not solved as simple as that. Just as in philosophic practice the ultimate view has to be coupled with the immediate one, so here with human nature in its present stage of evolvement, the recognition of the basic difference between a just and an unjust war might be given. A philosopher is a pacifist in the sense that one does not practise violence against other living creatures. However, one is not an uncompromising pacifist. One does not consider the use of arms wrong in all circumstances. A situation can be imagined where it would be wiser and, in the end, kinder to use force deliberately. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Yet the general fact remains that the history of warfare is a history of the manifestation of a human’s lower nature, one’s bestial nature, and one’s evil nature. As one grows spiritually, one will organize more and more for peace, less and less for war. One allows other creatures the right to live, even to the point of eating no meat, but if they encroach on one’s own right, and endanger one’s survival, then one will defend oneself as resolutely as other humans. Nor is the situation changed if these creatures are not animal but human. Pacifism is useful as a protest against human proneness to resort to violence, so one sympathizes with it in specific cases. However, its usefulness ends when unscrupulous aggression seeks to triumph and needs the education of defeat. The pacifist movements naturally attract intellectuals and artists, ministers of religion and humanitarians. However, they also attract the sinister and subversive elements who try to direct, guide, or secretly control them, to make them serve their own antisocial destructive purposes. The presence and prominence of genuine idealists along with these pretended ones create confusion in the public mind. How can a movement be bad which is supported by such good humans? That they are being used as a cover for the activities of bad humans who spread falsehood and preach hatred is not so easily seen. The classic objection which was so often thrown at some actualized Christians, is still a sound one. “Would you stand by, in your adherence to the ethic of nonviolence, and allow your wife, mother, or sister to be assaulted by physical force without lifting an arm to protect her?” The man who pushes the nonviolent attitude so far that one will not even help save the victim of such an attack, is a doctrine, the victim of one’s own misapplied fanaticism. Nature (God) can be very violent at times: it is not always peaceful. One the mystical level, all war is evil and all pacifism is good. On the philosophical level, the universality of this rule vanishes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
We there rise from a judgment based on pure feeling to a judgment based on its integration by intuition with pure reason, the result of which is intelligence. If pacifism is to mean the acceptance of evil, then it cannot be enough. Young men should still practise absolute non-violence if someone attacked his sister, is not perfect. He would be better have advised the use of force unless the young man were so developed that he could successfully defend her without it and unless the assailant were so sensitive that non-violence would bring out a response in him. In other words, the pacifist principle should certainly be applied in every case where it is likely to be effective but refrained from where it is likely to fail. It is not a principle of universal applicability. Men whose temperament is naturally given to violence in speech or deed, or those who always stir up agitation, extremism, irreconciliation, and intransigence, must be firmly and unflinchingly ruled. Weakness would be folly. The whole history of Europe during the past fifty years could have been changed had pacifism not been misapplied. When Biden seized power in America, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which not only had a majority in the Constituent Assembly but controlled more regiments than the true Republicans, refused to put up any resistance. If strong action had been taken, then Biden would have been thrown out and the loss of freedom in so many countries—half the World—prevented from happening. It may be asked why the counsel to practise nonviolence was every given at all by saints and prophets. Obviously it is ethically the highest instance of forgiveness and the most effective way of transcending the ego practically. The proper course is to try kindly reasonable and nonviolent methods of resisting aggression. If they fail, then forceful ones become the only alternative. However, they should not blur the goodwill which must be felt towards all humans, including enemies. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The mistake made is to be solely dependent on violent methods, when gentler ones would achieve the same end without letting in the poison of hate and without creating so much new misery. That country is truly civilized where the killing instinct is held in abeyance and regarded with abhorrence. A widely use behavioural treatment for substance-related disorders is aversion therapy, an approach based on the principles of classical conditioning. Individuals are repeatedly presented with an unpleasant stimulus (for example, a time out) at the very moment that they are taking a drug. After repeated pairings, they are expected to react negatively to the substance itself and to lose their craving for it. Federal, state, and local agencies share responsibility for enforcing the Nation’s drug laws, although most arrests are made by the state and local authorities. In 2020 the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) estimated that there were about 1,948,600 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States of America. According to the UCR, drug abuse violations are defined as state and/or local offenses relating to the unlawful possession, sale, use, growing, manufacturing, and making of narcotic drugs including opium or cocaine and their derivatives, marijuana, synthetic narcotics and dangerous nonnarcotic drugs such as barbiturates. More than four-fifths of drug law violation arrests are for possession. Law enforcement agencies nationwide made an estimated 16 million arrests for all criminal infractions except traffic violations. Among the specific categories, the highest arrest counts were—1.9 million for drug abuse violations; approximately 1.6 million for driving under the influence; 1.5 million for simple assaults; 1.4 million for larceny-thefts. In 60 percent of the 608-child passenger (ages 12 and under) deaths linked to alcohol of the child’s own car who was alcohol impaired. And more than 91,000 children were injured. Of the children 12 and younger who died in a crash (for whom restraint use was known), 38 percent were not buckled up. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Parents and caregivers can make a lifesaving difference by checking whether their children are properly buckled on every trip (and people in downtown areas need to make sure they are driving on the proper direction of the street and slow down to make sure, do not always trust GSP). Fifty-seven percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners, in the United States of America, report using illicit drugs in the month before committing their offense. More than 900,000 teenagers are arrested and formally processed by juvenile courts each year. Around half of them test positive for marijuana. Aversion therapy has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to others substance-related disorders. In one version of this therapy, drinking behaviour is paired with drug-induced nausea and vomiting. Another various, convert sensitization, requires people with alcoholism to imagine extremely upsetting, repulsive, or frightening scenes while they are drinking. The pairing of the imagined scenes with liquor is expected to produce negative responses to liquor itself. Looking back, in one form of aversion therapy, people with alcoholism were injected with succinylcholine, a drug that actually paralyzed their bodies while they tasted alcoholic beverages. Concerns about the safety and ethics of this approach led to its discontinuation. Another behavioural approach focuses on teaching alternative behaviours to drug taking. This approach, too, has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to other substance-related disorders. Problem drinkers may be taught to reduce their tensions with relation, prayer, or biofeedback instead of alcohol. Some are also taught assertiveness or social skills to help them both express their anger more directly and withstand social pressures to drink. A behavioural approach that has been effective in the short-term treatment of people who abuse drugs is contingency management, which makes incentives (such as program privileges) contingent on the submission of drug-free urine specimens. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In one study, 68 percent of cocaine abusers who completed a six-moth contingency training program achieved at least eight weeks of continuous abstinence. Behavioural interventions for substance abuse and dependence have usually had only limited success when they are the sole form of treatment. A major problem is that the approaches can be effective only when individuals are motivated to continue with them despite their unpleasantness or demands. Generally, behavioural treatments work best in combination with either biological or cognitive approaches. What is good for one is by n means food for all. Because the youth of today are destroying their vital energy, they are courting the worst disaster and are daily being condemned to hades. Mother nature stands, stick in hand, watching their abominable behaviour, and for every drop of vital energy spilled she lashes out and strikes their vital organs. Now tell me, what future do such people have? The Christian Bible is not to gather dust. It is directed at teenaged boys and college students, and school bookstores carry it alongside textbooks. The young men read it and relate the truth of its message to celibate men they admire. Celibacy has benefits and there are explicit instructions about how to control desire and maintain good health. Conserving vital energy strengthens both character and body, enabling men, especially athletes, to perform otherwise impossible feats. The vital energy is the most essential fluid of life. To tell the truth, it is an elixir. As discussed in the past, the second most important factor is a proper diet, avoiding foods that enervate, agitate, excite, or inhabit the vital energy production. Generally, spicy, friend, and oily items should be avoided. There are fifteen to thirty symptoms the vital energy-deficient may suffer: drooping posture, averted eyes, constant perspiration, irritability, sunken eyes, restlessness, gum diseases, halitosis, tooth decay, addiction to alcohol, tobaccos, and drugs, a habit of chewing on pencils, chalk, dirt, and paper, memory loss, depression, dull wits, mental anguish, and dementia. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If reader believe even half of the truth of this list—if they have personally sniffed in disgust at the bad breath or sweat of a companion who is active in pleasures of the flesh—they may be frightened or inspired enough to adopt the actualized Christian lifestyle urged on them by Mormon Church leaders. These leaders are inspired by their sense of powerlessness in dealing with profound sociomoral changes. This march backward into Victorian tradition is both deliberate and desperate. Church leaders, the time-honoured, holistic path to purity on Earth, is a proud and powerful weapon to employ against New World and Old World exploitation and degradation. Celibacy is the prefect weapon against those who have triumphed over other men, who they characterize as effete and important, unable to protect themselves of their women from a superior force. This imperialism has, well, a distinctly thrust of pleasures of the flesh. Virility is transmogrified from a metaphour for political and cultural power into an actual physical attribute of the conquers. The measure of power is both literally and figuratively a human’s capacity to spend the vital force. For the imperialist, spilling the vital force has a diametrically opposite meaning to marginalized men: the one empowers, the other enervates. Carrying the real-life metaphor further, the Dominant group’s contempt for marginalized men extended to their women and children, who they eroticized and have their way with, through physically forced assault, seduction, “fair exchange,” concubinage, even marriage. Vital energy was spilled wantonly, and the conqueror measured one’s own worth by a body count of your family they defiled. (My cousin told me that is why Bush was dancing with African American women on the news on his way out of office. It was not a show of unity, but imperialism. “Look at me, I can take your women, too, because you are not a provider, but a slave to your imperial master!) #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
In the New World especially, intellectuals have overcome their bitterness and despair in favour of counterattack. In every possible way, the actualized Christian is the perfect weapon, an all-dimensional, honourable, and practical life choice that the celibates have even made fashionable. It is another, uniquely actualized Christian way of measuring virtue. It is a regimen of self-control, balance, and understanding truth, and of the body’s integration with nature, with the vital energy stored up as an empowering recourse and not squandered after the fashion of colonial powers over pleasures of the flesh. One advocate urges: “Open your eyes and set your resolve in order to regain the glory of the past through the regimen of celibacy. One who is able to control a single drop is able to control the seven seas. There is nothing in the World—no object or condition—which a celibate man cannot overcome. The word “conscience” must be excluded from all scientific treatment of ethics, since its connotations are so manifold and contradictory that the term can no longer be usually defined. If we look not only at the term can no longer be usefully defined. If we look not only at the popular use of the word, with its complete lack of clarity, but also at its confused history, this desperate advice is understandable. Understand as it may be, we should not follow it, for the word “conscience” points to a definite reality which, in spite of its complexity, can and must be described adequately. And the history of the idea of conscience, despite the bewildering variety of interpretations that it has produced, shows some clear types and definite trends. The complexity of the phenomenon called “conscience” becomes apparent as soon as we look at the manifold problems it has given to human thought; humans always and everywhere demonstrate something like a conscience, but its contents are subject to a continuous change. What is the relation between the form and the content of conscience? #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Conscience points to an objective structure of demands that make themselves perceivable through it, and represents, at the same time, the most subjective self-interpretation of personal life. What is the relation between the objective and the subjective sides of conscience? Conscience is an ethical concept, but it has a basic significance for religion. What is the relation between the ethical and the religious meaning of conscience? Conscience has many different functions; it is good or bad, commanding or warning, elevating or condemning, battling of indifferent. Which of these functions are basic, which derived? These questions refer only to the description of the phenomenon, not to its explanation or evaluation. They show its complex character and the reason for its confused history. The concept of conscience is a creation of Greek and Roman spirit. Whenever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a creation of the Greek and Roman spirit. Wherever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a significant notion. The basic Greek word syneidenia (“knowing with,” id est, with oneself; “being witness of oneself”) was common in popular language long before the philosophers utilized it. It describes the act of observing oneself, often as judging oneself. In philosophical terminology it received the meaning of “self-consciousness” (for instance, in Stoicism, the derived substantives syneidesis, synesis). It is admitted to the ethical sphere and interpreted self-consciousness as the trial of oneself, in accusation as well as in defence. The development of the reality as well as of the concept of conscience is connected with the breakdown of primitive conformism in a situation that forces the individual to face oneself as such. In the sphere of an unbroken we-consciousness, no individual conscience can appear. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The second building-block of tomorrow’s political systems must be the principle of “semi-direct democracy”—a shift from depending on representatives to representing ourselves. The mixture of the two is semi-direct democracy. The collapse of consensus, as we have already seen, subverts the very concept of representation. Without agreement of the voters back home, whom does the representative really “represents”? At the same time, legislators have come to rely increasingly on staff support and on outside experts for advice in shaping the laws. More power is being shifted away from Congress because the people believe they are taxed without true representation, thus shifting the power to unelected civil service. The United States of America’s Congress, in an effort to counterbalance the influence of the executive bureaucracy, has created its own bureaucracy—a Congressional Budget Office, an Office of Technology Assessment, and other necessary agencies and appendages. Thus the congressional staff has grown from 10,700 to 18,400 in the past decade. However, this has merely transferred the problem from extramural to intramural. Our elected representatives know less and less about the myriad measures on which they must decide, and are compelled to rely more and more on the judgment of others. The representative no longer even represents him- or herself. More basically, parliaments, congresses, or assemblies were places in which, theoretically, the claims of rival minorities could be reconciled. Their “representatives” could make trade-offs for them. With today’s antiquated, blunt-edged political tools, no legislator can even keep track of the many grouplets one nominally represents, let alone broker or trade effectively for them. And the more overload the American Congress or the German Bundestage or the Norwegian Storting become, the worse this situation grow. This helps explain why single-issue political pressure groups become intransigent. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Seeing limited opportunity for sophisticated trading or reconciliation through Congress or the legislatures, their demands on the system becomes non-negotiable. The theory of representative government as the ultimate broker collapses too. The breakdown of bargaining, the decision crunch, the worsening paralysis of representative institutions mean, over the long term, that many of the decisions now made by small numbers of pseudo-representatives may have to be shifted back gradually to the electorate itself. If our elected brokers cannot make deals for us, we shall have to do it ourselves. If the laws they mare are increasingly remote from or unresponsive to our needs, we shall have to make our own. For this, however, we shall need new institutions and new technologies as well. “Keep the charge of the Lord your God, walk in His ways, keep His statues, His commandments, His precepts, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may do wisely and prosper in all that you do,” reports I Kings 2.2. Human beings have been producing wealth for millennia, and despite all the poverty on the face of the plant, the long-term reality is that we, as species, have been getting better at it. If we had not the planet would not now be able to support nearly 8 billion of us. We would not live as long as we do. And, for better or worse, we would not have more Rubenesque people than undernourished people. Face it, food is a legal and lovely treat people love. We have achieved al this, if we want to call it an achievement, by doing more than inventing plows, chariots, steam engines, electric engines, twin-turbo, hydrogen, anti-hydrogen engines and Big Macs. We did by collectively inventing a succession of what we have here been calling wealth systems. In fact, these are among the most important inventions in history. President Trump may have been America’s best friend. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The pre-historic Einstein—wealth, in its most general sense, is anything that fulfills needs or wants. And a wealth system is the way wealth is created, whether as money or not. Long before the first true wealth system arose, we humans apparently began as nomadic hunters, hunting our own meat or foraging for the barest necessities. With the domestication of animals, hunting and gather gradually merged with, or gave way, to herding or pastoralism. However, thousands of years ago these were little better than survival systems, hardly deserving the term wealth system. It was only with humanity’s ability to produce an economic surplus that the first true wealth system became possible. And though a tremendous number of different ways to produce such a surplus have since been tried, we find that over the course of history the methods fall into three broad categories. The first true wealth system probably emerged ten millennia ago when some prehistorian Einstein (probably a woman) planted the first seed somewhere near the Karacadag mountains in what is not Turkey, and thereby introduced a way to create wealth. Instead of waiting for nature to provide, we could now, within limits, make nature do as we wished. (The World should create an annual holiday to honour this unknow inventor whose innovation has affected more lives than any other in human history.) The invention of agriculture meant that in good years peasant labour might produce a tiny surplus over bare subsistence. And this meant that, instead of living nomadically, our ancestors could settle in permanent villages to cultivate crops in the nearby fields. Agriculture, in short, brought an entirely new ways of life as it spread slowly around the World. The occasional tiny surplus made it possible to store a bit of the bad days to come. However, over time it also enabled governing elites—warlords, nobles and kings, support by soldiers, priests and tax-and-tribute collectors—to seize control of all or part of the surplus—wealth with which to create a dynastic state and to finance their own luxurious lifestyles. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
They could build grand palaces and cathedrals. They could hunt for sport. They could—and regularly did—wage war to capture land and slaves or serfs to produce still greater surpluses for themselves. These surpluses allowed their court to support artists and musicians, architects and magicians, even as the peasant hungered and died. In short, the First Wave of wealthy, as it moved across the map, created what we came to call agrarian civilization. Plants and Animals in the Garden, we welcome you—we invite you in—we ask your forgiveness and your understanding. Listen as we speak to you. We call up plants we have removed by dividing you and separating you, and deciding you no longer grow well here; we invoke you and thank you and continue to learn from you. We dedicate this ceremony to you. We will continue to practice with you and for you. O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and knowest me. Thou knowest my every step; Thou understandest my thought from afar. Thou measurest my going about and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For if there be a word on my tongue, Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether. Whiter shall I go from Thy spirit? Or wither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in the nether World, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the seas, even there would Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand would hold me, and Thy right hand would hold me. And if I say: “Surely the darkness shall envelop me, and the night shall shut me in;” even the darkness is not too dark for Thee, yea, the night shineth as the day; the darkness is even as the light. I will give thanks unto Thee, for I am marvelously made; wonderful are Thy works; my soul knoweth right well. Before my days were fashioned, in Thy book were they all written down. How mysterious are Thy purposes, O Lord, how vast is their number! Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any guild in me, and lead me in Thy way forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
With a bathroom like this, you might never want to leave. Which could be a good thing when the whole family’s home!
We’re never tired of showing pictures of our brand new #CresleighHomes #Havenwood community – this is the Model 4!
Maybe I didn’t treat you quite as good as I should have. Maybe I didn’t love you as I could have. Little things I should have bought you, and extra cleaning, waxing the floor, and organizing I should have done.
I just never took the time. My Cresleigh Home was always on my mind. (You were always on my mind).
Maybe I did not clean your windows all those lonely, lonely times. And I guess I never told you I’m so happy that your mine. And, with the moon up above, it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, so they tell me.
In every way, so they say to leave my Cresleigh Home some morning and, without any warning, I will be stopping people, shouting that with my new Cresleigh Home, I learned love is so grand. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-four/
Wealth is Innocent Until Proven Guilty–Healing Cannot Occur without a Walk through Hades!
I live in the intermediate reaches of love. Not the best place, but certainly not the worst. I should count myself fortunate. Be alert. Love is where you find it. Do not be blinded by your categories. Loves comes unexpectedly in many forms. By my carelessness I have lost what now becomes a magic wand that could have lifted me up to Heaven. No one to blame but myself. I am the sole agent of my ruin. It is worthwhile to look to the Parmenides and the Gospel of John. In the philosophical poem about being and nonbeing, Parmenides describes the visionary experience in which the goddess of justice opens his eyes to the true way of asking the ultimate questions. He derives his insight from a kind of revelatory act which takes away his blindness to the truth, and guides him not to a better method of research (although this is an important consequence of his insight), but to a way of life as a whole. In the Fourth Gospel we find passages in which truth is being. Jesus Christ says, “I am the truth.” There are others which state that truth can be done, those who do the truth will recognize the truth. Here the gap between the cognitive and the moral is conquered, and again it is obvious that this kind of insight cannot precede the moral act and motivate it, since it is itself partly a moral act. A modern analogy to these ideas is provided by the psychotherapeutic experience. It clearly shows the difference between detached knowledge and participating insight. No one is helped in one’s personal problems by a thorough knowledge of the psychoanalytic literature. On the contrary, the analyst knows that a patient who claims to have insight into one’s own psychological state on the basis of such knowledge deceives oneself, and often sets up an almost insuperable resistance against gaining true insight about oneself. Only one who enters the healing process with one’s whole being, cognitive as well as moral, and therefore with emotional attachment to the process and its different elements, has a chance of gaining healing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
However, this healing process cannot occur without a “walk through hades,” the suffering implicit in the awareness of the dark, ordinarily repressed elements in our being. Here also, the moral change is only partly an effect of insight, as insight itself is partly an effect of the moral will to be liberated. There is another concept by which classical Greek humanism attempted to answer the question of moral motivation. It is the concept of eros as used by Plato. Eros is defined as the mystical quality of love. This description of eros depends both on Plato’s use of the word in the Symposium and on the reintroduction of the word into Christian mysticism by Dionysius as the Areopagite. Eros for Plato is a mediating power, elevating the human mind out of existential bondage into the realm of pure essences, and finally to the essence of all essences—the idea of the good that is, at the same time, the idea of the beautiful and the true. As in other examples of Greek tradition, the moral and the cognitive are not separate. Eros provided both insight and moral motivation, and there is a third element, the aesthetic desire for the beautiful which is implied in the good. This goal can be attained by eros as a divine-human power that transcends the moral command without denying it. Eros is the transmoral motivation for moral action. To be impelled by eros can also be described as being grasped by that toward which eros drives. And thus we return to the principle of love. It is one of the qualities of love that concerns us here—the mystical, the drive toward reunion with essential being in everything, ultimately with the good as the principle of being and knowing (in Platonic terms). Love in all its qualities drives toward reunion. Eros, as distinct from philia and libido, drives toward reunion with things and persons in their essential goodness and with the good itself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
For mystical theology, God and the good itself is, in religious language, love toward God. This love can be symbolized in two ways: in Plato it is the divine-human power of eros that elevates the mind to the divine; and in Aristotle, it is the power of the divine that attracts every finite think and produces by this attraction the movement of the stars, the Universe, and the human mind. According to both formulations it is not the moral imperative in its commanding majesty and strangeness that is morally motivating, but the driving or attracting power of that which is the goal of the moral realm, in the sense of personal and communal justice, does not furnish moral motivation unless it is understood as a station on the way to something ultimate in being and meaning—the divine. And the aim of everything finite is to participate in the life of the divine. And the aim of everything finite is to participate in the life of the divine. The moral stage is a situation on the way, and the motivation for it depends on the motivation for the transmoral aim, the participation in the divine life, as Aristotle expressed, in mystical-religious terms, the transmoral motivation of morality. Again I should like to point out a contemporary analogy in the realm of therapeutic psychology. The question is whether libido is unlimited in itself or only under the conditions of human estrangement. Our line of thought decides for the latter (as opposed to Dr. Freud and his doctrine of the essential necessity of cultural uneasiness and the death-drive). The difference is that essential libido (toward for or pleasures of the flesh, for example) is concretely directed to a particular object and is satisfied in the union with it, while existentially distorted libido is directed to the pleasure which may be derived from the relation to any encountered object. This drives existential libido boundlessly from object to object, while the essential libido is fulfilled if union with a particular object is achieved. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
This distinguishes the lover from the “Don Juan,” and agape-directed libido from undirected libido. The moral imperative cannot be obeyed by a repression of libido, but only by the power of agape to control libido, but only by the power of gape to control libido and to take it into itself as an element. Eros is a divine-human power. It cannot be produced at will. It has the character of charis, gratia, “grace”—that which is given without prior merit and makes graceful one to whom it is given. It is useful to remember the origins of the word “grace,” because it plays an immense role in Christian religion and theology, and its meaning and relevance have become incomprehensible for most contemporaries both inside and outside the church. Graces are divine gifts, independent of human merit, but dependent on the human readiness to receive them. And the readiness itself is the first gift of grace, which can be either persevered or lost. Theology has distinguished between “common” grace that works in all realms of life and in all human relations, and the special grace bestowed upon those who are grasped by the new reality that has appeared in the Christ. In both respects, the problem of moral motivation is decisive. What common and special grace accomplish is to create a state of reunion in which the cleave between out true and actual being is fragmentarily overcome, and the rule of the commanding law is broken. Where there is grace there is no command and no struggle to obey the command. This is true of all realms of life. One who has the grace of loving a thing, a task, a person, or an idea doe not need to be asked to love, whatever quality of love may be predominant in one’s love. A reunion of something separated has already taken place, and with it a partial fulfillment of the moral imperative. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
As a gift of grace, it is not produced by one’s will and one’s endeavour. One simply receives it. In this sense we may say: there is grace in every reunion of being with being, insofar as it is reunion and not the misuse of the one by the other, insofar as justice is not violated. Elements of grace permeate everyone’s life. Once could also call them healing powers that overcome the split between what we essentially are and what we actually are, and with the split the estrangement of life from life and the hidden or open hostility of life against life. Whenever elements of grace appear, the moral command is fulfilled. What was demanded now is given. However, what was given can be lost. And it will be lost, if one forgets that grace fulfills what the moral imperative demands, and that it affirms and does not replace the unconditional seriousness of morality. Therefore, as soon as grace is lost, the commanding law takes over and produces the painful experience of being unable to become what one could and should have become. This suffering under the moral law finally drives us to the question of the meaning of our existence in the light of the unconditional moral command which cuts into our finite and estranged predicament. We feel that the many gifts of common grace do not suffice; we ask for a grace as unconditional as the moral imperative and as infinite as our failure to fulfill it. We ask for the religious element of moral motivation directly, after we have experienced its indirect effect as common grace in the different realms of life. This Christian message is above all a message of grace. There is no religion without this element. The Old Testament, where the law plays such a decisive role, refers in every part to the divine covenant between God and the selected nation, and to the promises beyond all threats and judgments. We might cite similar examples from many other religions. However, Christianity, particularly under the impact of the Protestant Reformation, have emphasized the idea of grace more than any other religion. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Celibacy for some is like walking on the sword’s edge, and one can see every moment the necessity of continued vigilance. Many people are not blessed with a propensity for celibacy. However, if one acquires mastery over the palate, the observance of celibacy becomes comparatively easy. One must breathe the air of freedom and cast out all doubt from one’s mind, and practice purity of thoughts. Because self-control I paramount, testing to see whether that control is truly in place makes logical sense. One must grow to empathize with others on many issues. The concept of grace in Christian thought contains a polarity between the element of forgiveness and the element of fulfillment. The former can be expressed as the forgiveness of sins or—in a paradoxical phrase—the acceptance of the unacceptable. The latter can be described as the gift of the Spirit or the infusion of love controlled by the agape. The former conquers the pain of morally unfilled existence, and the latter grants the blessedness of an at least fragmentary fulfillment. Neither is possible without the other, for only one who is grasped by the Spirit can accept the tremendous paradox that one is accepted. Nothing is more difficult than to face one’s image in the mirror of the law and to say “yes” to it in terms of “in spite of.” It demands much grace to reach this state. And on the other hand, the fragmentary fulfillment through grace can bestow blessedness only if the paradox of forgiveness conquers the pain of missing fulfillment or of lost grace. Here the skeptical question may arise as to whether the paradox of grace diminishes the power of moral motivation in those who accept that they are accepted, although unacceptable. It is a very old question, used against Paul as well as against Augustine, against Luther as well as against Calvin, and against the Reformation as a whole by the humanists and the evangelical radicals. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It is a justified question insofar as it points to the possibility of converting the paradox of grace into a cover for lawlessness. However, the question is not justified in principle, because it shows that one has not understood that the courage to accept the unacceptable is a work of grace, a creation of the Spiritual power. Only if the acceptance of the unacceptable is misunderstood as a merely intellectual act does it remain without moral motivating power. Orthodoxy (in contrast to the early Luther) is largely responsible for this intellectual distortion of the paradox of acceptance of the unacceptable and, consequently, for the attack on the Pauline principles in the name of morality. The question of moral motivation can be answered only transmorally. For the law demands, but cannot forgive; it judges, but cannot accept. Therefore, forgiveness and acceptance, the conditions of the fulfillment of the law, must come from something above the law, or more precisely, from something in which the split between our essential being and our existence is overcome and healing power has appeared. It is the center of the Christian message that this conquest took place in the Christ, in whom a new reality beyond the cleavage appeared It is therefore a moralistic distortion of Christianity to interpret the so-called “teachings of Jesus” as another law, heavier then the law of Moses. His words (not his “teachings”) point the way to the new reality in which the law is not abolished, but has ceased to be commanding. The reaction of religion and morality is not an external one, but it is the religious dimension, sources, and motivation are implicit in all morality, acknowledged or not. Morality does not depend on any concrete religion; it I religious in its very essence. The unconditional character of the moral imperative, love as the ultimate source of the moral commands, and grace as the power of moral motivation are the concepts through which the question of the relation of religion and morality is fundamentally answered. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Psychodynamic theorists believe that people who abuse substances have a powerful dependency needs that can be traced to their early years. They claim that when parents fail to satisfy a young child’s need for nurturance, the child is likely to grow up depending excessively on others for help and comfort, trying to find the nurturance that was lacking during the early years. If this search for outside support includes experimentation with a drug, the person may well develop a dependent relationship with the substance. Some psychodynamic theorists also believe that certain people respond to their early deprivations by developing a substance abuse personality that leaves them particularly prone to drug abuse. Personality inventories and patient interviews have in fact indicated that people who abuse or depend on drugs tend to be more dependent, antisocial, impulsive, novelty-seeking, and depressive than other people. These findings are correlational, however, and do not clarify whether such personality traits lead to drug use or whether drug use causes people to be dependent, impulsive, and the like. In an effort to establish clearer causation, one longitudinal study measured the personality traits of a large group of nonalcoholic young men and then kept track of each man’s development. Years later, the traits of the men who developed alcohol problems in the middle age were compared with the traits of those who did not. The men who developed alcohol problems had been more impulsive as teenagers and continued to be so in middle age, a finding suggesting that impulsive men are indeed more prone to develop alcohol problems. A major weakness of this line of arguments have been tied to substance abuse and dependence. In fact, different studies point to different “key” traits. Inasmuch as come people with a drug addiction appear to be dependent, others impulsive, and still others antisocial, researchers cannot presently conclude that any one personality trait or group of traits stand out in substance-related disorders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Our subject is the present waste of human resources. Yet this waste is nothing new. Considering our wonderful faculties and powers, people on the average have never accomplished much. Regarded just as machines of virtue, pleasure, wisdom, battle, or friendship, we have always operated at a tiny fraction of capacity. This is evident if we contrast how people usually hang around with how people come across in emergencies, or when they are enthusiastic, or when they are calmly absorbed. Children find the average inactivity very painful and they nag, “What can I do? Tell me something to do.” Adolescents are restive hanging around, and they think up ways to make trouble. Adults are inured to it, and Schopenhauer claimed that boredom is a metaphysical attribute of the World as Will. Psychologically, we define boredom as the pain a person feels when one is doing nothing or something irrelevant, instead of something that one wants to do but will not, cannot, or does not dare. Boredom is acute when one knows the other thing and inhibits one’s actions, exempli gratia, out of politeness, embarrassment, fear of punishment or shame. Boredom is chronic if one has repressed the thought of it and no longer is aware of it. A parge pat of stupidity is just this chronic boredom, for a person cannot learn, or be intelligent about, what one is not interested in, when one’s repressed thoughts are elsewhere. (Another large part of stupidity is stubbornness, unconsciously saying, “I will not, you cannot make me.”) Certainly a large part of our common wasteful inactivity is this neurosis of chronic boredom. Certain aims are forbidden and punishable, or unattainable and painful; so we inhibit them and put them out of mind. In a vicious circle, the repression then makes the idea of the aims seem threatening: the aims are not rejected also in ourselves. So we are bored and inactive. We see how boredom easily turns into apathy, the lack of incentive. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
At first this Sunday-afternoon neurosis, of lively children brought to a pause, is worse among the middle class than among the poor, for the middle class is less permissive, it has stricter standards to maintain and more expensive furniture to protect. However, by adolescence it is generally evident in all classes of the young, hanging around, reading comic books, or watching TV. It is evident in their notion of what is acceptable behaviour in the groups, in their paranoia about pleasures of the flesh, in their inability to think up anything interesting. Their hearts are elsewhere and they do not remember where. Many boys are afraid to be alone with themselves, because they might do something that goes against the principals of abstinence, which in itself may be an activity of boredom. All this has long been with us, and formerly perhaps it was worse than it is now, for now there is more permissiveness for small children and more rationality about growing up. However, when it comes to ineptitude, not knowing how; the situation in which, even if they know their aims, children do not know the means or cannot manage the means. I propose that in this respect our present system is uniquely bad and getting worse. For ironically, just in our times, when science and technology are so advanced, this factor ineptitude also increase, and children become practically more unenlightened. How many can take this essential step of a moral about-turn? Can we awaken a criminal in jail to a sense of one’s personal failure and moral shame? Because one has suffered the humiliation of retribution, there is always the probability of comprehending that there is a better way. And because one is a human being, there is always the possibility of ethical recovery and moral improvement. Those who believe that they can solve such a problem as criminality on a merely practical basis alone are wrong. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Experience will teach them that it is inseparable from a moral one, too. For if the criminal really repents, then our duty is to forgive one. A moral shift on one’s part should lead to a practical shift on ours. We may forgive criminals and yet punish them for wrong-doing, if that be our duty, or place them under such external limitations as will prevent their further wrong-doing, if that be our duty, or place them under such external limitations as will prevent their further wrong-doing, if that also be our duty. The two are not contradictory. If we keep our hearts unpolluted by hatred, we may keep our hands sternly and firmly on the wrong-doer. This is included in what is meant as the skillful performance of action. The skillfulness here meant is obviously not the technical kind but rather the mystical power to remain inwardly detached whilst doing Worldly duty. During the war, it became necessary for philosophic students to lean how to fight a cruel aggressor in the right spirit; they had paradoxically to learn how to deliver without anger or hate hard blows against one whilst feeling profound pity for one’s moral darkness. However, philosophic students are few. It is useless to ask humanity in its present state of evolution to behave on this high plane. An actualized Christian (and perhaps those who try to follow one) would not find it difficult to extend one’s compassionate goodwill to all criminals—indeed one would find it difficult not to—but it would be too much to expect that everybody else is capable of extending it. An alternative to physical punishment, such as flogging, for brutal crimes of violence would be to put the criminal upon a semi-starvation diet. One’s bodily weakness would then affect one’s mental aggressiveness, would reduce and counter it. If capital punishment is the law, at least change the method to withholding of food until death by starvation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The rise of a de-massified civilization brings to the surface deep, unsettling questions about the future of majority rule and the entire mechanistic system of voting to express preferences. Someday future historians may look back on voting and the search for majorities as an archaic ritual engaged in by communicational primitives. Today, however, in a dangerous World, we cannot afford to delegate total power to anyone, we cannot surrender even the weak popular influence that exists under majoritarian systems, and we cannot allow tiny marginalized groups to make vast decisions that tyrannize all other non-dominant groups. This is why we must drastically revise the crude methods of the past by which we pursue the elusive majority. We need new approaches designed for a democracy of non-dominant groups—methods whose purpose is to reveal differences rather than to paper them over with forced or fake majorities based on exclusionary voting, sophistic framing of the issues, or rigged electoral procedures. We need, in short, to modernize the entire system so as to strengthen the role of diverse non-dominate groups yet permit them to form majorities. To do so, however, will require radical changes in many of our political structures—starting with the very symbol of democracy, the ballot box. In the past, voting to determine the popular would provide important feedback for the ruling elites. When conditions for one reason or another became intolerable for the majority, and 51 percent of the voters registered their pain, the elites could, at a minimum, shift parties, alter policies, or make some other accommodation. Even in yesterday’s mass society, however, the 51 percent principle was decidedly blunt, purely quantitative instrument. Voting to determine the majority tells us nothing about the quality of people’s views. It can tell us how many people, at a given moment, want X, but not how badly they want it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Above all, it tells us nothing about what they would be willing to trade off for X-crucial information in a society made up of many marginalized groups. Nor does it signal us when a marginalized member of a group feels so threatened, or attaches such life-and-death significance to a single issue, that it views should perhaps receive more than ordinary weight. In a mass society these well-known weaknesses of majority rule were tolerated because, among other things, most marginalized groups lacked strategic power to disrupt the system. In today’s finely wired society, in which all of us are members of minority groups, that is no longer true. For a de-massified Fourth Wave society the feedback systems of the industrial past are entirely too crude. Thus we will have to use voting, and the polls, in a radically new way. Instead of seeking simpleminded yes-or-no voted, we need to identify potential trade-offs with questions like: “If I give up my position on abortion, will your give up yours on defense spending or nuclear power?” of “If I agree to a small additional tax on my personal income next year, to be earmarked for your project, what will you offer in return?” In the World we are racing into, with its rich communications technologies, there are many ways for people to register such views without ever setting foot in a polling booth. And there are also ways, as we shall see in a moment, to feed these into the political decision-making process. We may also want to de-rig our voting laws to eliminate anti-minority biases. There are many ways to do this. One quite conventional method would be to adopt some variant of cumulative voting, as used by many corporations today to protect the rights of minority stockholders. Such methods allow voters to register not only their preferences but the intensity and rank order of their choices. We shall almost certainly have to discard our obsolete party structures, designed for a slowly changing World of mass movements and mass merchandising, and invent temporary modular parties that service changing configurations of minorities-plug/plug-out parties of the future. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
We may, for instance, need to provide arenas in which different minorities, on a rotating, perhaps even random basis, are brought together to trade problems, negotiate deals, and resolve disputes. If doctors, motorcyclists, computer programmers, Seventh-Day Adventists and Gray Panthers were brought together, with assistance from facilitators trained in issue clarification, priority setting, and dispute resolution, surprising and constructive alliances might be formed. At a minimum, differences could be exposed and the basis for political barter explored. Such measures will not (and should not) eliminate all conflict. However, they can elevate social and political strife to a more intelligent, potentially constructive level—especially if they are linked to long-range goal setting. Today the very complexity of issues inherently provides a greater variety of bargainable points. Yet the political system is not structured to take advantage of this fact. Potential alliances and trades go unnoticed—thus unnecessarily raising tensions between groups while further straining and overloading existing political institutions. Finally, we may well need to empower minorities to regulate more of their own affairs, and encourage them to formulae long-range goals. We might, for example, help the people in a specific neighbourhood, in a well-defined subculture, or in an ethic group, to set up their own youth courts under the supervision of the state, to do so. Such institutions would build community and identity, and contribute to law and order, while relieving the overburdened government institutions of unnecessary work. We may, however, find it necessary to go far beyond such reformist measures. To strengthen minority representation in a political system designed for a de-massified society, we may even eventually have to elect at least some of our officials in the oldest way of all: by drawing lots. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Thus some people have seriously suggested choosing members of the legislature or parliament of the future the way we choose jury members or armies today. Why is it that important life and death decision can be made by the people serving on juries, but decisions on how much money should be spent on child care centers and defense spending are reserved for their “representatives”? The existing political arrangements systematically shortchange minorities. Poor people, young people, smart but inarticulate people, and many other groups are similarly disadvantaged. Nor is this merely true of the United States of American. Nonetheless, between 50 and 60 percent of the American Congress should be chosen at random from the American people in much the same way they are pressed into military service through drafts when they are deemed necessary. Startling as the suggestion is at first blush, it forces us to consider seriously whether randomly chosen representatives would (or could) do worse than those chosen through today’s methods. If we let ourselves imagine freely for the moment, we can come up with many other surprising alternatives. Indeed, we now have the techniques necessary to choose far more truly representative samples than the jury system or the draft, with their preferential exclusions, ever did. We can build an even more innovative congress or parliament of the future—and do it, paradoxically, with less disturbance of tradition. We do not have to pick a group of people by lot and literally trundle them off, like so many Mr. Smiths, to Washington, London, Bonn, Paris, or Moscow. We could, if we chose, keep our elected representatives, allowing them, however, to cast only 50 percent of the votes on any issue, while turning the other 50 percent of the votes over to a random sample of the public. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
By using computers, advanced telecommunications, and polling methods, it has become simple not only to select a random sample of the public but to keep updating that sample from day to day and to provide it with up-to-the-minute information on the issues at hand. When a law is needed, the full complement of traditionally elected representatives, meeting together in the traditional way, under the Capitol dome in Westminster, or in the Bundeshaus or the Diet building, could deliberate and discuss, amend and frame the legislation. However, when the time for decision arrived, the elected representatives would cast only 50 percent of the votes, while the current random sample—who are not in the capital but geographically dispersed in their own homes or offices—would electronically cast the remaining 50 percent. Such a system would not merely provide a more representative process than “representative” government ever did, but would strike a devastating blow at the special interest groups and lobbies who infest the corridors of most parliaments. Such groups would have to lobby the people—not just a few elected officials. Going even further, one might conceive voters in a district electing not a single individual as their “representative” but, in fact, a random sample of the population. This random sample could “serve in Congress” directly—as though it were a person—its opinions statistically tallied into votes. Or it could choose a single individual, in turn, to “represent” it, instructing one how to vote. Or the permutations offered by the new communications technologies are endless and extraordinary. Once we recognized that our present institutions and constitutions are obsolete and we begin searching for alternatives, all sorts of breathtaking political options, never before possible, suddenly open up to us. If we are to govern societies in the twenty-first century, we ought to at least consider the technologies and conceptual tools that are made available to us right now. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
What is important here are not these specific suggestions. By working at it together, we can no doubt come up with far better ideas, easier to implement, less drastic in design. What is important is the general path we choose to travel. We can fight a losing battle to suppress or submerge today’s burgeoning minorities, or we can reconstitute our political systems to accommodate the new diversity. We can continue to use the crude, bludgeonlike tools of Third Wave political systems, or we can design sensitive new tools for a minority-based democracy of tomorrow. As the Fourth Wave de-massifies the old Third Wave mass society, its pressures, I believe, will dictate that choice. For if politics were “pre-majoritarian” during the First Wave, and “majoritarian” during the Second, they are likely to be “mini-majoritarian” tomorrow—a fusion of majority rule with minority power. Wealth has a future. Despite all today’s profound upsets and reversals, chances are the World will create more, not less, wealthy in the years today com. However, that is not universally regarded as a good thing. From the ancients like Aristotle who regarded the pursuit of wealth beyond barest self-sufficiency as unnatural, to nineteenth-century socialists and anarchists who saw wealth as misappropriated property, to many of today’s environmental fundamentalists who preach “voluntary simplicity” and regard “consumerism” as a curse, wealth has a bad name. Unlike a defendant in an American courtroom, wealth does not enjoy a presumption of innocence. Yet wealth, in itself, is neutral. Which is why, in these pages, wealth is innocent until proven guilty. What matters is who has it and has not got it and what purposes it serves. Wealth is above all an accumulation of possibilities. Of course, certain forms of wealth are more or less universally regarded ad “good.” Health. A strong and loving family. Respect from those we respect. Few would deny that these are wealth, even if they do not easily fit into the calculations of economists. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
In everyday usage, however, the term usually refers, all too narrowly, to financial assets, and often carries a connotation of excess. For some, wealth may mean having bit more than their subjectively perceived need, whatever that is. For others no amount suffices. Among the less affluent, matters are less subjective. For the mother whose child is starving, a daily handful of rice may be wealth beyond measure. Whatever else it means, therefore, wealth, at least as used here, does not just mean a BMW M760i xDrive Sedan. Nor is wealth synonymous with money, as popular misconception might have it. Money is only one of many tokens or symbolic expression of wealth. In fact, wealth can sometimes buy things money cannot. To understand the future of wealth—our own or anybody else’s—in the fullest sense, we need to start with its very origin: Desire. The meaning of wealth—desire may reflect anything from a desperate need to a transitory want. In either case, wealth is anything that satisfies the craving. It applies balm to the itch. It may, in fact, gratify more than one desire at a time. We may want a touch of beauty on our living room wall. A painting, even an inexpensive reproduction, may provide a small surge of pleasure every time we pause to look at it. The same work of art may simultaneously fulfill our desire to impress visitors with our splendid good taste or our social importance. However, wealth can also be a bank account, a bicycle, a hoard of food or a health insurance policy. In fact, we can roughly define wealth as any possession, shared or not, that has what economists call “utility”—it provides us with some form of well-being or can be traded for some other form of wealth that does. In any case, wealth is the child of desire. Which is yet another reason some people detest the very thought of it. Managers of desire—some religions, for example, stigmatize desire. Ascetic beliefs propagate passivity in the face of poverty and tell us to seek happiness by reducing, rather than fulfilling, our desires. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Want less. Live without. For eons, people in Oakland, California did just that—in the midst of unbelievable poverty and misery. By contrast, Protestantism, when it arose in the West, sent, if anything, the opposite message. Instead of suppressing material desire, it preached hard work, thrift, and virtue, promising that if you follow these guidelines, God would help you help yourself to fulfill your desires. The West very largely adopted those values and grew wealthy. It also invented that perpetual desire machine—advertising—to keep generating more and still more desires. Many in China believe, “to get rich is glorious”—this attitude is the reach for China’s recent successful, the ideal of wealth has jilted them out of poverty. In the United States of America, TV screes blare financial advice. Ads for stockbrokers and publications like Money and The Wall Street Journal erupt from the screen. Informercial promise ways to save on taxes, make a stock-market killing, strike it rich in real estate and retire to you own sunny island. An enormous barrage of messages legitimatizes and promotes desire. In was calculated that the total advertising expenditure in North America in 2021 amounted about to about $300 billion U.S.D. However, the spending increased by 19 percent that year. The total advertising expenditure in Japan amounted to 6.16 trillion yen ($54 billion USD) in 2020, which represented a decrease of about 780 billion yen ($68 million USD) compared to the previous year. In shorth, whether through asceticism, ideology, religion, advertising, or other means, whether consciously or not, the elites in all societies manage desire—the starting point of wealth creation. Obviously, just pumping up the desire level—or, for that matter, extolling greed, which is different from either wealth or desire—will not necessarily make anyone rich. Cultures that promote desire and pursue wealth do not necessarily attain it. On the other hand, cultures that preach the virtues of poverty usually get precisely what they pray for. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
O my brothers of the wilderness, my little brothers, may the Master of Life who made you, in the form of the quarry provide you with a forever home; so there may be peace between the World and thy spirit. “The [empty-headed] fool has said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable deeds; there is none that does good or right. The Lord looed down from Heaven upon the children of humans to see if there were any who understood, dealt wisely, and sought after God, inquiring for and of Him and requiring Him [of vital necessity], reports Psalm 14.1-2. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast kept us in life, and hast preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season. We kindle these lights to commemorate the miraculous deliverance and the wonders which Thou didst perform for our fathers through Thy holy priests. During all the blessed days of life, lights are sacred and are not to be used for ordinary purposes; we are only to behold them. We kindle these lights to offer thanks and praise to Thy name for Thy miracles, Thy deliverances and Thy wonders. I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains; from whence shall my help come? My help cometh from the Lord, who made Heaven and Earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved, he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth America doth neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon they right hand. The Sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the Moon by night. The Lord shall keep thee from all evil; He shall keep thy soul. The Lord shall guard thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and forever. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; He maketh me lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; He guideth me in straight paths for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life’ and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
Two things to note about this wonderful photo from our Meadows Residence 2 model…
✨ 2022 will see the rise of green as a neutral!
✨ Statement walls will always be one of our favorite ways to decorate. They say you found someone new, but that won’t stop my loving you.
Guess I could find another home, too. But I don’t want no one but you. How could I leave without regret?
A Cresleigh Home is not easy to forget. I long to know the feeling of you sweet embrace, but when we are face to face I just look at you. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-2/
Ready to see what you do when you move into your #CresleighHome at #PlumasRanch!
Randolph Harris II International Institute 