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Faith Laughs at the Impossible
He fumbles at your spirit as players at the keys before they drop full music on; God loves with a great love the person whose heart is bursting with a passion for the impossible. Faith laughs at the impossible. Life with nothing, but material things and money is lonely, if no one really loves you and you have no real friends. People sit around smiling and talking and pretending to be good people, pretending to be worthy, and others play into the delusion because they temporarily are desirable due to success or money. However, when one uses people and takes all they can get from them and then forgets the individuals who helped them gain success, the same thing will happen to you. The friends that your money and newly found popularity has allowed you to rent will drain you faster than Jerry Brown’s Delta Twin tunnel project will drain the Sacramento River. And then when you are desolate and in need, your reputation will make people want nothing to do with you. While you smile and make people feel sorry for you, you can only work the system for so long. I am happy that I have learned to forgive people who have done me wrong because I do not want bitterness to poison my soul. However, even though I have forgiven some, I will never forget what these individuals did, and just because I have forgiven you, it does not mean that I like you—I simply let go of the pain I was holding on to. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
Successful propagandists have succeeded because the doctrine they bring into form is that which their listeners have for some time felt without being able to shape. In my silence, I would love to forget, but restitution has not come quite yet and with one accord I keep pushing forth. I stretch my heat to heal some more. The soul changes and develops through time as it gains further self-determination and self-awareness. Forgiveness means to restore or give back, it is a restoration of oneself, which reinstates the originating bond and allows us to become present with love. Our belief that we are inherently sinful, a state of separation and alienation that seems beyond correction from Heaven or Earth, causes us to experience guilt over what we believe we have done and even more basically, who we believe we are. As a result of this sense of basic wrongness and wrongdoing, we will fear the punishment we are sure is forthcoming because that is deserved. We are seemingly helpless in the face of the basic anxiety and terror that inevitably accompany the belief in our own guilt. When we are mad, we are typically being blocked by something that has been placed in our way. People are unable to control the past or the future, but who remain firmly based in the present can manage their circumstances more effectively. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
Forgiveness is a great gift. It releases the captive; the guilty sinner is set free from the penalty that was due. Understanding restores broken relationships and welcomes a fresh start, and extends a hand and a promise for some kind of future relationship. Conflicts do not mend themselves. People always want to give a situation time and see if the issue will clear up on its own. Yet, the offense will stay, until forgiveness is extended, processed and worked through in a healthy way. If one never goes through the process of forgiveness and release, the offense and pain will reoccur. However, there may be some situations where unconditional love is not the answer. Some offenses committed may dissolve a relationship forever. There are some shattering sins like abuse that can be so tragic and demoralizing that one may be wise to set boundaries around one’s life to stay away from the offender. God does ask us to forgive other people, but he does not want us putting ourselves in danger because one could suffer a life-threatening attack upon one’s life. Therefore, it is important to use great discernment and wisdom. Do not allow yourself to face situations that are so tragic and horrific that they could change one’s life forever. Loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Lies is lies. However they come, they did not ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to the same. Sin is fun to some for a season and if they do not see negative consequences quickly, they will continue in their poor choices. Making others suffer with fresh pain and gaping wounds from being assaulted with sinful acts can alter the offender’s life also. Forgiveness may be granted, but the law of attraction still operates, often inflicting the ones involved with the assault great pain and loss. Some reaping goes dormant for a while, and then the consequences are revealed at a later time. By forgiving the offender, it releases us from the bondage to the dark side and pain. It enables us to let go of resentment, anger, anxiety, and stress. We are alive and we know it. Although self-awareness gives rise to unbridled awe and joy, it can also lead to the potentially overwhelming dread engendered by the realization that death is inevitable, that it can occur for reasons that can never be anticipated or controlled. Humanly constructed beliefs about reality shared by individuals in a group serve to manage the potentially paralyzing terror resulting from the awareness of death. Therefore, to provide meaning and value we bestow psychological equanimity in the face of death. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
For a moment, think about dying. All the sentiments of Worldly grandeur vanish at that unavoidable moment which decides the destiny of humans. This should intensify one’s striving to protect and increase aspects of Worldviews and self-esteem that are conducive to one’s longevity. This reflecting on the conclusion of life also projects negative reactions towards those who violate cherished cultural values. Write down what you specifically think will happen to you when you die and once you are physically dead. Terror management theory serves a couple of psychological functions, it is a way of trying to increase an individual’s faith and supply a sense of personal worth that is attained by believing that one is living up to the cultural system’s standards and values. Many people are worried about the outcomes of their lives because they are not in a place where they feel secure, but when they see that they are doing all that they can and have increased their faith in God, it removes some anxiety because God made promises to provide for those who believe in him and are living righteous lives. Terror management theory is supposed to be a way to protect against fear of death and allowing, at the same time, creative expansion and development. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Love is faith, and faith, like a gathered flower, will ruthlessly live on. Let your life decision be governed by your own beliefs and values and feelings, your sense of who you really are and who you want to be, and not social engineering designed to scare or shame one out of one’s single status. Loneliness should not be equated with a fear of being loved. Everyone has times when they are alone. Being alone and lonely, and the fear of being isolate for the rest of one’s life can make an individual feel insecure, anxious, and depressed. However, some people accept being alone and realizes that they are unloved and will probably spend their life alone until someone goes out of their way to show compassion and altruism towards this individual, and that action awakens the persons heart and makes the individual value humanity and people more. It also restores their faith and makes them want to get to know people because they see that there are kind people in the World. Also, a person can enjoy their own company. Loneliness can be a response to a specific situation or event, such as the death or extended absence of a loved one. Or it can occur when there is a relationship where there is anger and resentment or a lack of loving communication. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
One of the commonest of daily experiences is that of our recognizing our friends. A less common, though still fairly familiar, experience is the decision that a certain person is or is not the person he claims to be. The problem of personal identity is that of clarifying the principles beings these indispensable processes of reidentification. To reidentify someone is to say or imply that in spite of a lapse of time and the changes it may have wrought, the person before us now is the same person we knew before. When are we justified in saying such a thing? We are never justified because sameness and change are, in themselves, incompatible. It is almost paradoxical to say that something has changes and yet is still the same. There is nothing special about the case of person in this connection, except, of course, that we might, as persons ourselves, be expected to be more concerned about this case or might be expected to have access to some of the facts needed to deal with it. One set of such facts is the private set of thoughts, feelings, and images that each of us has, and rapid are the changes in them which our identity has contend. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
All thinking is merely detour from the memory of gratification (taken as a purposive idea) to the identical cathexis (concentration of emotional energy on an object or idea) of the same memory, which is to be reached once more by the path of motor experiences. Thought must concern itself with the connecting-paths between ideas without allowing itself to be misled by their intensities. However, it is obvious that condensations of ideas and intermediate or compromise-formations are obstacles to the attainment of the identity which is aimed at; by substituting one idea for another they swerve away from the path which would have led onward from the first idea. Such procedures are, therefore, carefully avoided in our secondary thinking. It will readily be seen, moreover, that the pain-principle, although at other times it provides the thought-process with its most important clues, may also put difficulties in its way in the pursuit of indentity (memory) of thought. The pain-principle is this: If you can understand why and how pain works to keep your from organizing your life, then you can address it head-on and create a plan for overcoming it. True faiths rests upon the character of God and asks no further proof than the moral perfections of the one who cannot lie. It is enough that God has said it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Hence, the tendency of the thinking process must always be to free itself more and more from the exclusive regulation by the pain-principle, and to restrict the development of affect through the work of thought to the very minimum which remains effective as a signal. This refinement in functioning is to be achieved by a fresh hyper-cathexis, effected with the help of consciousness. However, we are aware that this refinement is seldom completely successful, even in normal psychic life, and that our thinking always remains liable to falsification by the intervention of the pain-principle. Those of us who are avoiding organizing because it is painful will never make lasting changes in our environment or life. We will continue to peck away at the problem, only to find ourselves stuck in the same self-defeating cycle of disorder. The fulfillment of these wishes will no longer produce an affect of pleasure, but one of pain; and it is just this conversion of affect that constitutes the essence of what we call repression. The memories from which the unconscious wish evokes a liberation of affect have never been accessible to the preconscious (Pcs), and for that reason this liberation cannot be inhibited. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
It is precisely on account of this generation of affect that these ideas are now accessible even by the way of the preconscious thoughts to which they have transferred the energy of wishes connected with them. True and lasting order does not come without going through the struggle against self that leads to change. Without learning about ourselves, becoming aware of our habits, and facing the costs of our disorganization, we cannot emerge from our state of disorder. As we struggle through our process we gain skills and make new commitments to establish and protect our quality of life. Once we have gone through the pain, we do not particularly want to repeat it, so we become more committed to maintenance. The blessing of the pain principle is that you will emerge from your process with greater self-awareness and newfound skills to create and maintain order. We have developed our psychology on our own responsibility. Perception then transforms into spiritual vision. This evolution evokes a supportive response from the highest levels of consciousness for it takes great power to overcome the gravity of the Earthly life and its habits of perception. The act of worship is an entreaty and invitation to these higher energies for assistance in one’s spiritual endeavor. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
Faith is living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that an individual could stake one’s future on it a thousand times. Take the limits off of God and release your faith in uncommon ways. God is extraordinary, and believe that he will increase your health, prosperity, and happiness, taking you forward into the fullness of your destiny. There is an inner light that shines through the mist of human beliefs and frees individuals from the bondage of fear and limitation. Walk with God, and learn all the ways of life and freedom. Travel with God from this day, and be united in the perfect bonds of everlasting unity. And the manifestation of the spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the spirit of message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge of the same spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, at another gifts of healing by that one spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another interpretation of tongues. All these are the one of one and the same spirit, and God gives them to each one as he determines. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
We are Like Ships that Clash in the Night
It is suspense, it is hope, that make the food of misery; certainty is always endured, because known to be past amendment, and felt to give defiance to struggling. There was advice, much of it of course from New York. The advice that rankled most came from Samuel Ward McAllister, the self-appointed arbiter of New York society. Appalled by the vision conjured by Sacramento’s King’s arena, of crème and rabble mixing in such volume and with such indecorous propinquity, Ward McAllister in a column in the New York World advised: it is not quantity but quality that the society people here want. Hospitality which includes the whole human race is not desirable. I urge Sacramento hostesses to hire some French chefs to improve their culinary diction. In these modern days, society cannot get along without French chefs. The person who have been accustomed to delicate fillets of beef, terrapin pate de foie gras, truffled turkey and things of that sort would not care to sit down to a boiled leg of mutton dinner with turnips. I should also advise that they do not frappe their wine too much. Let them put the bottle in the tub and be careful to keep the neck free from ice. For, the quantity of wine in the neck of the bottle being small, it will be acted upon by the ice first. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
In twenty-five minutes from the time of being places in the tub the wine will be in a perfect condition to be served immediately. What I mean by a perfect condition is that when the wine is poured from the bottle it should contain little flakes of ice. That is a real frappe. The thing is Ward McAllister was serious. Ward McAllister was one classy voice, and it was clear to everyone that he spoke with the sanction of New York’s blue bloods. Among Sacramento’s leading citizens there was also a deep fear of being second class. No one topped Sacramento in historical architecture, Mc Mansions, and plush landscapes, but the city’s upper echelons there was a veiled anxiety that the city in its commercial advance may indeed have failed to cultivate the finer traits of man and woman. Mrs. Caroline Astor, undisputed queen of New York society, created a social aristocracy of unparalleled extravagance and exclusivity. Mrs. Astor’s list of “Four Hundred” were the bread and butter of this era’s high society. She was an arbiter of social acceptability while also working to keep the undesirables in their place. The King’s arena was a giant white banner waved in Mrs. Astor’s face. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
I remember how it seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away into the World of dreams. With its gorgeous classical buildings packed with art, its clean water and electric lights, and understaffed police department, the King’s arena was Sacramento’s conscience, the city wanted to become. Days too often destroys an air-built castle at the moment of its completion, without the least ceremony or remorse. As we let go and allow God to work out our issues in life, happiness becomes self-proclaimed and effortless. There is less required from the outside World to be experiences. We let go of the illusions of others as the source of our happiness. Instead of looking to get from others, we now look to give. People seek to be with us. We kiss the stars, we rise, we are your main desire. Your flesh, we are. Cold, we are so cold. Your mouth, these words, silence. It turns humming, we laugh, my head falls back. Moon hangs around my head, a blade over my head, reminds me to do before I am dead. Night consumes light and all I dread reminds me what to do before I a dead. Sun relines, heats my mind, reminds me what to leave behind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Light eats night and all I never said reminds me what to do before…I am to see you, to touch you, to feel you, to tell you; reminds me. Now, Lord, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your children. For your sake, Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. Give ear, God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name. Besides accounting for our knowledge of right and wrong, the moral sense closes the gap between moral knowledge and moral behavior by providing a motive for moral behavior. Since moral knowledge consists of feelings of pleasure and uneasiness, the prospect of enjoying or avoiding these feelings is a sufficient motive for pursuing virtue and avoiding vice. If moral knowledge were not ultimately a matter of feelings, it would be possible for someone to know a certain kind of action is virtuous but still have no motive for doing it. The moral sense also enables us to account for our approval and condemnation of actions and character as following from our being pleased or pained by them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
God determined us to be pleased by benevolent actions; and when nothing interferes with the moral sense, we count benevolence a virtue and malevolence a vice. Consciousness advances itself when it is provided with essential information which then becomes activated by intention. This in turn prompts inspiration, humility, and surrender, and these tendencies become progressively more operative. When dominant, they lead to dedicated and perseverance. In addition to these aspects of consciousness, progress is greatly assisted by expert guidance and the usefulness of spirituality. Father, God, you said that you would supply all of my needs according to your riches. You are God, the Lord my provider. What is impossible is possible with you. And you promised my end would be better than my beginning because all things are going to work together for my good. Thank you that you are faithful to your word and will work mightily in my behalf. I know that by believing in your power, God, that surpassing greatness is released. I am not discouraged by the size of the task, for the Lord God is with me. He will see to it that it is finished completely. God’s power is at work in my life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
With More Knowledge We can Create Better Work and a Feeling of Knowledge
The fields of air are open to knowledge. The person who can join ideas with the most propriety will separate them with the greatest nicety. Human well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues are the requisite skills and dispositions needed to attain it. If the code of ethics are taught to people for several successive generations, the code will become congenital. Every individual inherits some predisposition from one’s predispositions from their predecessors, and later generations are therefore supposed to be more advanced intellectually than earlier ones. Good is what gives people pleasure in the long run. Ethics is the science of conduct, and conduct deals with the adjustment of acts to ends. The lower animals find their satisfaction in using the environment to their best advantage; human beings find their satisfaction, or happiness, in a similar way. Appropriate adjustments result in pleasure; inappropriate adjustments result in pain. We ought to look to our own pleasures, but we ought to do this by using intelligence, which gives us some insight, no matter how small, into what the future may bring; present pleasures may be outweighed by possible future pains. #RandolpHarris 1 of 5
Unlike primitive people, we have the ability to form ideas about remote ends, and disaster befalls us easily when we refuse to entertain such ideas or to construct them in accordance with the scientific data available to us. In fact, the whole conception of a moral consciousness is no more than a rule emphasizing the need to consider the consequences of its actions, to examine whether more or fewer possible benefits to itself and to society would result. The notion of duty is also a rule emphasizing the need to consider future benefits in contrast with present temptations. Without the feeling of duty we would simply act for ourselves alone and, in this way, in the long run act against our own best interests. Much earlier in history, an analysis of utilitarianism and biological behavior leads us to concrete educational proposals. Since people are in constant struggles with environmental forces, they ought, first and foremost, to be subjects that will help them most in this struggle. A knowledge of science, therefore, is crucial because it is the primary means by which people may be able to avert possible natural disasters. After the sciences, one ought to study psychology, education, and the social sciences because these will give insight into ways of resolving family and social problems. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The antiquated Roman literature survives, and creates for us an intimacy with the classic ages, which we have no means of forming with the subsequent ones. Light literature is the garden and the orchard, the fountain, the rainbow, the far view; the view within us as well as without. The choice public will have good writing for light readings. All art is convention of one kind or another, and each demands its own interpretation. People should also study art because it produced the kind of satisfaction that needs no justification nor analysis in terms of future satisfactions. It is an immediate good in itself, producing an immediate feeling of mental well-being. Learning should begin by introducing the child to actual experimental situations from which one should deduce the law involved. The child should be taught to regard the World as a place in which one must makes one’s own decision in accordance with the best scientific data. Therefore, teachers should encourage initiative and free expression of ideas, and they can best do this by being actively engaged in inquiry and study. A teacher who is interested in one’s work, will be more apt to produce research oriented students. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Ardent souls, ready to construct their coming lives, are apt to commit themselves to the fulfillment of their own vision. Life never seems so clear and easy as when the heart is beating faster at the sight of some generous self-risking deed. We feel no doubt then what is the highest prize the soul can win; we almost believe in our power to attain it. There is nothing that human imagination can figure brilliant and enviable that human genius and skill do not aspire to realize. What we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the future estate for which people drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love. The people who have many gratifications are apt to wander in imagination from daily and familiar joys, and confidently to reach after things yet untried. No human being springs forth from the womb as a fully-grown, sophisticated, wise, ready-for-anything adult. Nor does one possess all the necessary skills for effectively interrelating when one comes into the World. We have to learn the techniques of relating to other humans. However, we do bring some characteristics into the World with us. Exactly what is inherited and what do we learn? #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
The newborn child is new in a lot of ways. One’s new at being out in the open. One is new to one’s parents, and they are certainly new to the child, even though the baby has been pretty close to one of them for nearly a year. The baby is doing new things to meet some familiar needs, too. When the baby was a resident inside of the mother, the baby had a nice thing going—the most comfortable, most protected environment it is possible to imagine. Until birth, the infant is pretty much a product of their heredity. Heredity refers to the genetic traits and characteristics that are inherited—that come with the child when one is born, passed down from the parents. It is as possible for a baby to know something without having been at school, as it is to have been at school and to know nothing. Almighty God, kindle, we pray, in every heart the true love of peace, and guide with your wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of Earth, that in tranquility your dominion may increase until the Earth is filled with knowledge of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God and forever. The rest of your life will be the very best of your life. Happy Canada Day. Amen. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Memories of a Lifetime–I Stumbled on this Photograph
The heart is initially no more than an enlarged blood vessel, and eventually becomes the four-chambered structure found in human beings. Every great discovery is just like perception, an operation of the understanding, an immediate intuition, and as such the work of an instant, a flash of insight. They are not the result of a process of abstract reasoning, which only serves to make the immediate knowledge of the understanding permanent for thought by bringing it under abstract concepts, i.e, it makes knowledge distinct, it puts us in a position to impart it and explain it to others. The experience we undergo is the result of the interaction between reality and the particular human organism, but even though we are required to acknowledge the existence of the external stimulant, we can never know exactly what it is like it our own right. This is a unique case in that, although we can investigate the effects of the stimulant, the cause is inherently unknowable. The keenness of the understanding in apprehending the casual relations of objects which are known indirectly, does not find its only application in the sphere of natural sciences (though all the discoveries in that sphere are due to it), but it also appears in practical life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Since we cannot know the nature of reality apart from its effects, we are led to a belief in some Unknowable; this does not mean, however, that we are committed to a belief in the existence of God. First of all, our complete dependence on sensory data for knowledge makes it impossible for us to tell whether this Unknowable is at all comparable to any kind of divine substance. We are never in the position to test whether our idea of what the Absolute is, corresponds to what it actually is. Second, reasoning, which is no more than an advanced physical ability by which an organism can meet environmental problems, cannot cope with data that are not reducible to observables. When such an endeavor is made, reasoning, like any machine whose function is abused, breaks down. Consider what occurs when we attempt to analyze a concept whose reference is take to be necessarily outside of the domain of experience—the concept of God. All questions are either unanswerable or productive paradoxes. If there is a God, then how did he come into existence? If he created himself out of nothing, then how can something come out of nothing? #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
The fact that God is treated as an immanent, existing or operating within; inherent, permanently pervading and sustaining the Universe, rather than an external power, does not eliminate the questions that are raised with theism. It is still impossible to imagine the Universe arising uncaused out of nothing. This is why I believe that the Universe is like a sea-walnut, which produces its own light to sustain life and ward off predators, but is contained in the ocean. It is only logical that we would think of the Universe as existent in some potential form prior to its becoming actual; and even if it were meaningful to speak of the potential Universe, the question would still remain how a potential Universe could have been created. Are we then necessarily led to atheism? No. The fact that we do not know whether a God exists does not mean that therefore no God exists. The rejection of theism and pantheism entails only that we can have no knowledge about the Unknowable, not that the Unknowable does not exists. At most we can simply say that we do not know whether there is a God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Many religions still cling to beliefs that arose because primitive people could not account for natural phenomena. Thus, the notion of a soul, or of a ghost, arose because primitive people could not account for dreams, shadows, and reflections. All such phenomena led to the belief that people were dual personalities, one of which remains unchanged regardless of changes in the visible human. From this conception there gradually developed the theory that there were eternal, unchanging, omnipotent personalities. In this way, people came to believe in gods; and, for similar reason, the Judaeo-Christin God has many strictly human traits. This religious anthropomorphism which depicted God as filled with hatreds and desires that were appropriate only to human beings. Nevertheless, religion can serve as a means of fostering friendships and cooperation among human beings and also of guaranteeing the retention of the most worthwhile values of the past. Furthermore, religion can be useful as a way of developing interest in the various enigmas that are found in the Universe, a means of motivating people to initiate scientific inquiries. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
The fact that we can never know what the Unknowable is in itself does not imply that we cannot have any genuine knowledge. Good sense or prudence signifies exclusively understanding at the command of the will. However, the limits of these conceptions must not be too sharply defined, for it is always that one function of the understanding by means of which all animals perceive objects in space, which, in its keenest form, appears now in the phenomena of nature, correctly inferring the unknown causes from the given effects, and providing the material from which the reason frames general rules as laws of natural now inventing complicated and ingenious machines by adapting known causes to desired effects; now in the sphere of motives, seeing though and frustrating intrigues and machinations, or fitly disposing the motives and the people who are susceptible to them, setting them in motion, as machines are moved by levers and wheels, and directing them at will to the accomplishment of the ends. Deficiency of understanding is called an intellectual disability. It is dullness in applying the law of causality, incapacity for the immediate apprehension of the concatenations of causes and effect, motives and actions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
A stupid person has no insight into the connection of natural phenomena, either when they follow their own course, or when they are intentionally combined, i.e., are applied to machinery. A stupid person does not observe that persons, who apparently act independently of each other, are really in collusion; that person is therefore easily mystified; and outwitted; one does not discern the hidden motives of proffered advice or expressions of opinion. But it is always just one thing that the individual lacks—keenness, rapidity, ease in applying the law of causality, i.e., the power of understanding. The domain of phenomena of the Unknowable is characterized by features which are not controllable by our desires or even by our manipulations. Certain relationship consistently appear in spite of our objections or antagonistic attitudes. Also, in all objectsions, including ourselves, there are many varying degrees of energy—or force. These aspects of reality are manifestations of the Unknowable, and information about them is the only kind of knowledge human beings can obtain or ought to see. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
It is clear that knowledge, for human beings, is not a study of the Unknowable but rather of the manifestations of the Unknowable among phenomena. There are beginnings, middles (or periods of equilibrium), and ends; but all these processes take place in a finite space and a finite time. A person is born; one matures; one passes on, generally. Similarly, a society begins, reaches a stage of equilibrium, and is destroyed by something internal or external. All around us we can see the workings of the law of evolution and dissolution, but we can never know whether the Universe as a whole is undergoing this process. Feelings, too, arise through evolution. Life seeks to survive, and feelings of pleasure are necessary to sustain this urge. If the organism experiences no rewards for maintaining its own life and reproducing its kind, if there were no sense of accomplishment, then the urge to survive might easily be extinguished. Therefore, behavior that contributes to survival is accompanied by the feeling of pleasure, and behavior that endangers survival is accompanied by the feeling of pain. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
Similarly, feelings of sociality and sympathy developed in human beings because in the struggle for survival people came to recognize that human cooperation is necessary, and the pleasures that accrue to the feeling of sociality were the rewards that guaranteed the continuation of such cooperation. The development of the feelings of sociality and sympathy led to the emergence of a new kind of entity, society, which is the subject of sociology and ethics. Here, too, the principle of evolution holds. Society, like other organisms, has its period of infancy, of maturity, and death. Therefore, strive to possess yourself of what you have inherited from your ancestors. The problem would appear more difficult if we could admit that they leave no traces whatsoever behind them. However, our memories are colored by emotions, judgments, and quirks of personality. What we remember depends on what we pay attention to, what we regard as meaningful or important, and what we feel strongly about. Memory structure is that pattern of associations among items of information stored in the memory. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
I stumbled on this photograph, it kind of made me laugh, it took me way back, back down memory lane. I see the happiness, I see the pain where I am. I see us standing there, such a happy pair. Love beyond compare. The way you held me. No one could tell me that love would die. Why, oh why did I have to find this photograph? Gaps in memory, which are common, may be filled in by logic, guessing, or new information. Indeed, it is possible to have memories for things that never happened (such as remembering broken glass at an accident when there was none). People with pseudo memories (false memories) are often quite upset to learn they have given false testimony. A filmed automobile accident was showed to people. Afterwards, some participants were asked to estimate how fast the cars were going when they smashed into each other. For others the words bumped, contacted, or hit replaces smashed. One week later, each person was asked, “Did you see any broken glass?” Those asked earlier about the cars that smashed into each other were more likely to say yes. (No broken glass was shown in the film.) The new information (smashed) was included in memories and altered them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
The updating of long-term memories is a common problem in police work. For example, a witness may select a photo of a suspect from police files or see a photo in the news. Later, the witness identifies the suspect in person (in a lineup or in court). Did the witness really remember the suspect from the scene of the crime? Or was it from the more recently seen photograph? Even an innocent person may be remembered as the criminal. It is quite possible for a photo to update or blend with the original memory. Many tragic cases of mistaken identity occur this way. Indeed, the fading of memories and the weak affect of impressions which are no longer recent, which we are apt to take as self-evident, and to explain as a primary effect of time on our psychic memory-residues, are in reality secondary changes brought about by laborious work. It is the preconscious that accomplishes this work. Networks of associated memories may help explain a common experience: Imagine finding a picture taken on your sixth birthday or tenth Christmas. As you look at the photo, one memory leads to another, which leads to another, and another. Soon you have unleashed a flood of seemingly forgotten details. This process is called redintegration. Redintegrative memories seem to spread through the branches of memory networks. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Many people find that such memories are also touched off by distinctive events from past—like a visit to Grandma’s kitchen, pleasant scents, going to the farm, the seashore, a doctor’s office, the perfume or after-shave of a former lover, and so on. The key idea in redintegration is that one memory serves as a cue to trigger another. As a result, an entire past experience may be reconstructed from one small recollection. Personally, I have had no real anxiety-dreams for a few months, but I do recall one. The dream was very vivid, and showed me my beloved mother, with a peculiarly calm, sleeping countenance, carried into the room and laid on the bed by two (or three) persons with birds’ beaks. I awoke crying and screaming, and disturbed my parents’ sleep. The peculiarly draped, excessively tall figures with beaks I had taken from the illustrations of the Philippson’s Bible. I believe they represented deities with the heads of sparrowhawks from an Egyptian tomb-relief. The analysis yielded, however, also the recollection of a house-porter’s boy, who used to play with us children on a meadow in front of the house; I might add that his name was Philip. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
It seemed to me then that I first heard from this boy the vulgar word signifying sexual intercourse, which is replaced among educated persons by the Latin word coitus, but which the dream plainly enough indicates by the choice of the birds’ heads. I must have guessed the sexual significance of the word from the look of my Worldly-wise teacher. My mother’s expression in the dream was copied from the countenance of my grandfather, whom I had seen a few days before his death snoring in a state of coma. The interpretation of the secondary elaboration in the dream must therefore have been that my mother was dying; the tomb-relief, too, agrees with this. I awoke with this anxiety, and could not calm myself until I had waked my parents. I remember that I suddenly became calm when I saw my mother; it was as though I had needed the assurance: then she is not dead. However, this secondary interpretation of the dream had only taken place when the influence of the developed anxiety was ready at work. I was not in a state of anxiety because I had dreamt that my mother was dying; I interpreted the dream in this manner in the preconscious elaboration because I was already under the domination of anxiety. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
The latter, however, could be traced back, through the repression to a dark, plainly disturbing period I had in my life, which had found appropriate expression in the visual content of the dream. It was a time when I felt like savage humans were trying to break up my family, and take the only people who cared about me in the World away, and then do away with me. As I grow up, and I think most adults are the same, they fear losing their parents and siblings because you have known them all of your life and that is all you have in this World. And while after you lose a parent, you can still feel their presence and sense them looking over you, but that sense of communication in the physical World is gone and that means so much. People spend so much time on social media, but think about it this way. What if someone took away everyone you care about in your life and replaced them with social media profiles and pictures and videos was your new community and social circle, but never actually see them in person. You would feel isloated, incomplete, and alone. Do not let social media rob you of reality and life. We are only here on this planet for so long and once you lose someone you care about chances are you can never talk to them again. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Make more time for your family and spend time with the people you love. Ask your grandparents to recall vivid and important autobiographical memories and what do you get out of it? Up to a point, the results are like the memories of people at any age: Most recollections come from the 2 or 3 most recent years. Fewer and fewer autobiographical memories come from earlier years, tapering off back to childhood. However, something interesting occurs for older adults as they scan over a lifetime. If you tally their memories, you will find a bulge or bump in the curve between the ages of 10 and 30. In other words, many more memories come from this period than would be expected. Why do memories from this period of life stand out for older adults? Because memories formed during this time are encoded in ways that make them easier to retrieve later in life. Just why these years are so memorable is not known. However, if you are between the ages of 10 and 30, take note: These are the days, my friend. You know me. Every time you try to forget who I am, I will be right there to remind you again, you know me. Answer me when I call, God, defender of my cause; you set me free when I am hard-pressed; have mercy on me and hear my prayer. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
The World is My Idea—I Gave My Heart to Thee
The World is my idea—this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though human beings alone can bring into reflective and abstract consciousness. A useful approach is to let the love for God replace the willfulness that is driving the seeking. One can release all desire to seek and realize that the thought that there is anything else but God is a baseless vanity. It can be seen that both the body and the mind are the result of the innumerable conditions of the Universe and that one is at best the witness of this concordance. Out of an unrestricted love for God arises the willingness to surrender all motives, and expect to serve God completely. If one really does this, he or she has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to that individual that what one knows is not a Sun and an Earth, but only eyes that sees a Sun, hands that feels an Earth; that the World which surrounds us is there only as an idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is oneself. If any truth can be asserted a priori, it is this: for it is the expression of the most general form of all possible and thinkable experience: a form which is more general than time, or space, or causality, for they all presuppose it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Time, space, and causality, which we have seen to be just so many modes of the principle of sufficient reason, is valid only for a particular class of ideas; whereas the antithesis of object and subject is the common form of all these classes, is that form under which alone any idea of whatever kind it may be, abstract or intuitive, pure or empirical, is possible and thinkable. No truth therefore is more certain, more independent of all others, and less in need of proof than this, that all that exists for knowledge, and therefore this World, is only object in relation to subject, perception of a perceiver, in a word, idea. This is obviously true of the past and the future, as well as of the present, of what is farthest off, as of what is near; for it is true of time and space themselves, in which alone these distinctions arise. All that in any way belongs or can belong to the World is inevitably thus conditioned through the subject. The World is idea. I have noticed in the course of our psychoanalytical work that the psychological state of an individual in attitude of reflection is entirely different from that of a person who is observing the psychic processes. Light is a great enemy to mystery, and mystery is a great friend to enthusiasm. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
It is curious to imagine people of the World, busy in thought, turning their eyes towards the countless sphere that shine above us, and making them reflect only images their minds contain. In reflection, there is a greater play of psychic activity than in the most attentive self-observation; this is shown even by the tense attitude and the wrinkled brow of the individual in a state of reflection, as opposed to the mimic tranquility of the person observing. In both cases, there must be concentrated attention, but the reflective person makes use of their critical faculties, with the result that one rejects some of the thoughts which rise into consciousness after one has become aware of them, and abruptly interrupts others, so that one does not follow the lines of thought which they would have otherwise open up for the individual; while in respect of yet other thoughts one is able to behave in such a manner that they do not become conscious at all—that is to say, they are suppressed before they are perceived. In self-observation, on the other hand, one has but one task—that of suppressing criticism; if one succeeds in doing this, an unlimited number of thoughts enter one’s consciousness which would otherwise have eluded one’s grasp. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
We cannot deny the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that is has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms. These words adequately express the compatibility of empirical reality and transcendental ideality. With the assistance of the material thus obtained—material which is new to the self-observer—it is possible to achieve the interpretation of pathological ideas, and also that of dream-formations. As will be seen, the point is to induce a psychic state which is in some degree analogous, as regards the distribution of psychic energy (mobile attention), to the state of the mind before falling asleep—and also, of course, to the hypnotic state. On falling asleep, the undesired ideas emerge, owing to the slackening of certain arbitrary (and, of course, also critical) action, which is allowed to influence the trend of our ideas; we are accustomed to speak of fatigue as the reason of this slackening; the emerging undesired ideas are changed into visual and auditory images. The inward reluctance with which any one accepts the World as merely one’s idea, warns one that this view of it, however true it may be, is nevertheless one-sided, adopted in consequence of some arbitrary abstractions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
In the condition which it utilized for the analysis of dreams and pathological ideas, this activity is purposely and deliberately renounced, and the psychic energy thus saved (or some part of it) is employed in attentively tracking the undesired thoughts which now come to the surface—thoughts which retain their identity as ideas (in which the condition differs from the state of falling asleep). Undesired ideas are thus changed into desired ones. And yet, it is a conception from which one cannot free oneself. There are many people who do not seem to find it easy to adopt the required attitude toward the apparently freely rising ideas, and to renounce the criticism which is otherwise applied to them. The undesired ideas habitually evoke the most violent resistance, which seems to prevent them from coming to the surface. However, the essential condition of poetical creation includes a very similar attitude. If you complain of a lack of creative power, the reason for your complaint lies, it seems to me in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination. Apparently, it is not good—and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind—if the intellect examines too closely the ideas already pouring in, as it were, at the gates. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
Regarded in isolation, an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea which follows it; perhaps, in a certain collocation with other ideas, which may seem equally absurd, it may be capable of furnishing a very serviceable link. The intellect cannot judge all these ideas unless it can retain them until it has considered them in connection with these other ideas. In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude. You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creators, the longer or shorter duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints are of unacomplished aspirations, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely. And yet, such a withdrawal of the watchers from the gates of the intellect, such a translation into the condition of uncritical self-observation is by no means difficult. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
Most of my patients accomplish it after my first instruction. I myself can do so very completely, if I assist the process by writing down the ideas that can flash through my mind. The quantum of psychic energy by which the critical activity is thus reduced, and by which the intensity of self-observation may be increased, varies considerably according to the subject-matter upon which the attention is to be fixed. The theme to which these point is, of course, always the history of the malady that is responsible for the neurosis. Pay attention to what occurs to you in connection to your dream, and interpret the details, not the mass; like this, it conceives the dream, for the outset, as something built up, as a conglomerate of psychic formations. While overcrowding and pollution rank high on the list of environmental stresses, they are only two of the many challenges that press for attention. Let us sample some of the solutions that psychologist have provided for environmental problems. Many problems that we are seeing arise is urban fears. The way people think about the environment greatly affect their behavior. Mental maps of various areas, for instance, often guide actions and alter decisions. A case in point is a study done in Sacramento, California USA. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
In Sacramento, California USA, researchers found that an existing school bus route contributed to truancy. The problem was that many of its stops were where children where afraid of being attacked and beaten. The solution was that by doing an environmental assessment, psychologist developed a picture of environments as they are perceived by the people using them. An assessment often includes such things as charting areas of highest use in buildings, using attitude scales to measure reactions to various settings (such as school, businesses, and parks) and even having people draw a version of their cognitive map of a building, campus, or city. In the case of the school children, residents of the neighborhood were asked to rate how much stress they felt when walking in various areas. The result was a contour map (somewhat like a high- and low-pressure weather map) that showed the areas of highest perceived stress. This stress map was then used to reroute school buses to low-pressure areas. Cause and effect thus constitute the whole nature of matter; its true being is this action. This relation is no conclusion in abstract conceptions; it does not arise from reflection, nor is it arbitrary, but immediate, necessary, and certain. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
When the children had been tested, prior to rerouting the school buses, the test showed that the noise they were facing was quite damaging. Children from the noisy schools were compared with similar students attending schools farther from the disturbances. These comparison students were from families of comparable social and economic makeup. Testing showed that children attending noisy schools had higher blood pressure than those from quieter schools. They were more likely to give up attempts to solve a difficult puzzles. And they were poorer at proofreading a printed paragraph—a task that requires close attention and concentration. A recent study of children living near a fairly new airport in Munich, Germany, found similar damaging effects. The greater tendency of the noisy-school children to give up or become distracted creates a serious and unnatural intellectual disability, which can be corrected by a reduction of external threats and noise pollution. This situation may even reveal a state of learned helplessness caused by daily, uncontrollable blasts of sound. Even if such damage proves to be temporary, it is clear that noise pollution (annoying and intrusive noise) is a major source of environmental stress for children, adults, nature, and pets. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
Researchers have linked noise with impaired learning ability, less tolerance for frustration, and a reduced willingness to help others. A major finding of environmental research is that much of our behavior is controlled, in part, by specific types of environments. Society is an aggregate of interacting individuals whose relations are governed by role-confronting rules and practices which give their actions their characteristic significance. Moreover, communities seem to have a lifespan greater than that of any generation of individual members, which cannot be explained, as might that of a corporation, by the continuities of constitutional procedures. It is, rather, that from generation to generation there passes an attachment to a common set of symbols and a common history, a participation in a collective representation in a collective consciousness—a common culture, in short—which enables members to identify one another where other criteria are uncertain, which gives the society its cohesion, and which provides the standards by which its members’ actions are regulated and assessed. Boundary maintenance is a necessity for every society. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
To possess an identity, a society must furnish criteria whereby its members can identity one another, since their actions and attitudes toward one another will be different from those toward outsiders. Society’s existences depend so crucially on commitment to common values and collective components that the political boundary tends to settle automatically the limits of the society. People have talked of the society to which they belong, they have thought primarily of the social order contained within the boundaries of a state and sustained by its organized power. Our notion of a society as the most inclusive framework of social interaction depends on the political not only for its boundary maintenance but also for its very identity. There may be a danger that pressing the antitotalitarian, pluralistic account so far that it dissolves the state, it will lose thereby its capacity to define the society. We cannot tax our way out of problems either. So many people are worried about their retirements because the rents are going up so high, cities becoming overpopulated and democrats spent all the Social Security money, so we had to sell the post office to pay the rent on the White House. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
The California bag ban, which requires stores to stop including the price of bags with the food, but to charge the consumers an extra fee per bag, was a tax disguised as an environmental protection project, and has killed more than 2,000 manufacturing jobs, slowed down lines at grocery stories, which reduced productivity, and it has also eliminated the jobs of the people who bag your food and help you push your cart out to your car. Not only that, but the bags are thicker, and more harmful to the environment and wildlife. And many people get back to the house and find they have squashed their bread, broken their eggs, or spilled shampoo all over the meat by trying to force more than they should into into a bag. People who are trained to package your food know how to properly distribute the amount and types of food per bag, and have it down to a science, where consumers do not. Also because bags are an option, people are now going into stores a wheeling out carts loaded with goods and not being immediately detected, which is causing store to reduce hours, services, and cut back on jobs to offset cost, and charging consumers more for items to make up for lost revenue. In addition, people who buy food on credit cards, at the end of the year, end up possibly spending hundreds of dollars on plastic bags for their food. Then the cigarette tax in California, comes at a time when the state makes the cultivation, sale and distribution of marijuana legal, in hopes that people will not spend $10.00 on a pack of cigarettes, but instead buy some weed, get high, and forget that they are going broke. Just puff on a joint all day long. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
We do not want people smoking marijuana, and I cannot even believe the state of California would make it legal for recreational use. People walk down the streets getting high and you and your kids are stuck behind them and getting contact high. Marijuana alters your state of mind and is a dangerous controlled substance, which the federal government still deems as illegal. Then, it was pretty much a law that all liquor had to be carried out the stores in bags, so that kids would not see it and be influenced to drink. However, with the bag ban, people are now walking around sucking on cans of Colt 45, pints of vodka, and jugs of Carlos Rossi. The concept of community in California is getting lost, and being replaced by a model of conflicting pressure groups operating within a very nebulously defined area. A civil society has social organization including the market economy and the forces of civil order, and realizes the ethical ideas and ethical spirit. Under leadership of Governor Jerry Brown, the rifts developed in the social fabric are an effort to keep people in ignorance. Idols and sources of delusions set forth in California, and as rationalists, we need to unmask these ideologies. The reality would offer a different face in society. Under Jerry Brown, no one has stopped to see how these circumstances have influenced social forces on the human mind. We need a superstructure, which is the starting point in the development of the modern society of knowledge. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
It is not our consciousness which determines our existence, but on the contrary our social existence which determines our consciousness. Be wary of false preachers who smile a lot, dripping with practiced sincerity. Chances are they out to rip you off some way or another. Do not be impressed with charisma; look for character. Who preachers are is the main thing, not what they say. A genuine leader will never exploit your emotions or finances. People who are insincere are not good and will be punished by God. Infinitely merciful God, most tender Father of souls, and in a particular way, you carry with special tenderness between your divine arms, I come to you and ask you, through love and merits of your sacred heart the grace to comprehend and to do always your holy will, the grace to confide in you, the grace to rest securely through time and eternity in your loving divine arms. If life be harder, love makes it also stronger, and only this love can be blessed a thousand times. I believe in you Lord, and strengthen my faith. I give my heart to thee and I so enclose it in thee that it may never be separated from thee. I am all thine, and take care of my promise. It is time to restore sanity, justice, and to do your fair share, obey the laws and practice righteousness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
But Why do You Want an Ornament for the Nursery?—You Who had Your Child Killed!
Concerning self-inflicted injuries of my own experience, I cannot report anything in clam times, but under extraordinary conditions, I do not believe myself incapable of such acts. When a member of my family complains that he or she has bitten his tongue, bruised her finger, and so on, instead of the expected sympathy, I put the question, “Why did you do that?” However, I have most painfully squeezed my thumb, after a youthful patient acquainted me during the treatment with his intention (naturally not to be taken seriously) of marrying my eldest daughter, while I knew that she was then in a private hospital in extreme danger of losing her life. One of my boys, whose vivacious temperament was wont to put difficulties in the management of nursing him in his illness, had a fit of anger and threatened to kill himself: a way out suggested to him by the newspapers. In the evening, he showed me a swelling on the side of his chest which was supposedly the result of bumping against the doorknob. To my ironical question why he did it, and what he meant by it, the twelve-year-old child explained, “That was my attempt at suicide which I threatened this morning.” However, I do not believe that my views on self-inflicted wounds were accessible to my children at that time. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
My son had been behaving different, ever since he went to the mall with one of his friends from work, and would not tell me why. He had also recently fallen out with the love of his life and they ended their relationship. He locked himself up in his room and was sad, and I could feel his pain. Whoever believes in the occurrence of semi-intentional self-inflicted suicide, there also exists semi-intentional annihilation—with unconscious intention—which is capable of aptly utilizing a threat against life and masking it as a casual mishap. Such mechanisms are by no means rare. For the tendency to self-destruction exists to a certain degree in many more persons than in those who bring it to completion. Self-inflicted injuries are, as a rule, a compromise between this impulse and the forces working against it, and even where it really comes to suicide, the inclination has existed for a long time with less strength or as an unconscious and repressed tendency. Even suicide consciously committed chooses its time, means, and opportunity; it is quite natural that unconscious suicide should wait for a motive to take upon itself one part of the causation and thus free it from its oppression by taking up the defensive forces of the person. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Some argue that the only rationally acceptable philosophy is that there is no ethical value in living just any sort of life; the only life that is worth living is the good life. We may define the good differently, but no matter what or conception of the good life is, it presupposes a physical basis—a certain indispensable minimum of physical and social well-being—necessary for even a limited realization of that good life. Where that minimum is failing together with all rational probability of attaining it, to avoid a life that at its best can be only vegetative and at its worst run the entire gamut of degradation and obloquy, what high-minded person would refuse the call of the poet mourir entre les bras du sommeil? We must recognize no categorical imperative to live, but to live well. A common thought is that is life ceases to be a pleasure, the remedy for a free person is to end it because it is regarded as part of human freedom that an individual should only continue to live by one’s own consent. Some philosophers believe that the most excusable incitements to suicide are pain, and the fear of suffering a worse death. In 1644, it was expressed that the prohibition of suicide was merely a part of the economic enslavement of laborers, who could not be allowed to escape from the tasks expected of them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The most excusable cause seems to be an emaciated body, when a person labours under the torture of an incurable disorder, and seems to live only to be a burden to oneself and one’s friends. And in contrast to the view expressed above, some see death as a necessity for the economy. For instance, in China, the population has been aging rapidly, increasing the stress on an already troubled health care system. There is currently 1.4 billion people living in China, the population is expected to grow 1.45 billion by 2050, and the number of elderly people is expected to reach over 330 million by 2050. The problem is many of the elderly are cared for by family and only 2 percent are institutionalized. China also does not have a system that can accommodate the elderly, and many of their children are investing their money into the care of their own children, leaving the elderly to fend for themselves. To afford medication, some of the elderly are cutting back on the amount of food they eat. If the aged and the sick did not die within no long span after they have ceased to be self-supporting, the burden on society will be disastrous. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
So, therefore, death plays a wholly favourable, indeed, essential part in human economy because the by 2050, China’s dependency ratio for retirees-those aged 65 or older divided by the total working population is expected to be 44 percent. Still, humanitarians, like myself do not believe death is the best option. Euthanasia of humans is indirectly evil, and it leads to the danger of abuse. In America, in 2014, it was ruled that terminally ill patients have the right to have assistance in self-killing, making it legal for a doctor to prescribe a lethal dose of medication to a terminally ill patient. The problem is with the elderly, disabled, and ill to be looked at as a burden on society is dangers because it can lead to abuse; the risk of an incorrect diagnosis, so someone can conduct research, kill their enemy, harvest organs, or steal someone’s material and non-material assets. Also, the risk of administering euthanasia to a person who could have later been cured by new medical developments; and the wedge argument (condoning euthanasia would lead to general disrespect for the sanctity of human life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
No great mistake, whether acted or endured, in our mortal sphere, is every really set right. Time, the continual vicissitude of circumstances, and the invariable inopportunity of death, render it impossible. Another problem with euthanasia is that the physician, whether or not he or she may rightfully help to shorten life, may rightfully desist from attempting to prolong the life of a patient in great pain and may rightfully supply or administer pain-killing drugs even though one realizes that their effect may be not only to kill the pain, but also to shorten life. Of all the events which constitute a person’s biography, there is scarcely one to which the World so easily reconciles itself, as to one’s death. In addition, some people are also trying to kill American citizens, so they can steal their identities and sell them to illegal immigrants, then swap identities and no one would know. God alone, it is never lawful for one on one’s own authority to kill the innocent directly. When dealing with suicide, the sixth commandment can be invoked, which is regarded as applicable to self-murder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
The mental agony of approaching death is part of the sacrifice that God demands for the sins and faults of life. Suicide is an error on the ground that it affords an apparent and not a real release from the sufferings of life. Such a release is only apparent because the will as a thing-in-itself is outside of space and time, and the person committing suicide cannot destroy the will itself, but only its manifestation at this place and time. At the same time, some do not believe that suicide should be considered a sin nor a crime. It could be considered preposterous to view suicide as a crime when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the World to which every person has a more unassailable title than to one’s own life and person. Although it is now universally conceded to be useless and harmful to punish those who attempt suicide for any reason, because the punishment of one who attempts suicide can only increase one’s depression and render a renewed attempt more likely, prevailing opinion still holds that it is right and efficacious to punish those who knowingly and willfully assist in suicides (or kill with consent), even though they act from the strongest humanitarian motives. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
There are also cases of apparently accidental misfortune which are now known to me whose surrounding circumstances justified the suspicion of suicide. For example, during an officers’ horse-race one of the riders fell from his horse and was so seriously injured that a few days later he succumbed to his injuries. His behavior after regaining consciousness was remarkable in more than one way, and his conduct previous to the accident was still more remarkable. He had been greatly depressed by the death of his beloved father, had crying spells in the society of his comrades, and to his trusted friend has spoken of the taedium vitae. He had wished to quit the service in order to take part in a war in Africa which had no interest for him. Formerly a keen rider, he had later evaded a riding whenever possible. Finally, before the horse-race, from which he could not withdraw, he expressed a sad foreboding; in the light of our conception that it is quite comprehensible without any further cause that a person in such a state of nervous depression cannot manage a horse as well as on normal days. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
I was quite agreeable that depression could affect the way ability to handle a horse, only I should like to look for the mechanism of this motor inhibition through nervousness in the intention of self-destruction here emphasized. It is evident that the situation of a battlefield is such as to meet the requirement of conscious suicidal intent with, nevertheless, shuns the direct way. “They said he wished to die.” Suicide is probably a problem of psychiatry or social engineering rather than of abstract morals. The rejection of suicide is implicit in the belief that life is worth living. Another analysis of an apparently accidental self-inflicted wound, detailed to me by an observer, recalls the saying, “He who digs a pit for others falls in himself.” Mrs. X, belonging to a good middle-class family, is married and has three children. She is somewhat nervous, but never needed any strenuous treatment, as she could sufficiently adapt herself to life. One day, she sustained a rather striking through transitory disfigurement of her face in the following manner: She stumbled in a street that was in the process of repair and struck her face against the house wall. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The whole face was bruised, the eyelids blue and oedematous, and as she feared that something might happen to her eyes, she sent for the doctor. After she was calmed, I asked her, “But why did you fall in such a manner?” She answered that just before the accident she warned her husband, who had been suffering for some months from a joint affection, to be very careful in the street, and she often had the experience that is some remarkable way those things occurred to her against which she warned others. I was not satisfied with this as the determination of her accident, and asked her whether she had not something else to tell me. Yes, just before the accident, she noticed a picture in a shop on the other side of the street, which she suddenly desired as an ornament for her nursery, and wished to buy it at once. She thereupon walked across to the shop without looking at the street, stumbled over a heap of stones, and fell with her face against the wall without making the slightest effort to shield herself with her hands. The intention to buy the picture was immediately forgotten, and she walked back to the house in haste. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
I asked her why was she not more careful. She told me it was perhaps only a punishment for that episode which she had confided to me. I could not believe that episode was still bothering her. However, she said that she regretted it very much; and considered herself wicked, criminal, and immoral, but at the time, she was almost crazy with nervousness. She was talking about an abortion which was started by a quack and had to with the consent of her husband, as both wished on account of their pecuniary circumstances to be spared from being additionally blessed with children. She said that she often reproached herself with the words, “You really had your child killed,” and she feared that such a crime could not remain unpunished. After I assured her there was nothing seriously wrong with her eyes, she was quite assured that she had already been sufficiently punished. This accident, therefore, was on the one hand a retribution for her sin, but on the other hand it may have served as an escape from a more dire punishment which she had feared for many months. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16In the moment that she ran to the shop to buy the picture, the memory of this whole history, with its fears (already quite active in her unconscious at the time she warned her husband), became overwhelming and could perhaps find expression in words like these: “But why do you want an ornament for the nursery?—you who had your child killed! You are a murderer! The great punishment is surely approaching!” This thought did not become conscious, but instead of it she made sue of the situation—I might say of the psychological moment—to utilize in a commonplace manner the heap of stone to inflict upon herself this punishment. It was for this reason that she did not even attempt to put probably lesser, determinant of her accident was obviously the self-punishment for her unconscious wish to be rid of her husband, who was an accessory to the crime in this affair. This was betrayed by her absolutely superfluous warning to be very careful in the street on account of the stones. For, just because her husband had a weak leg, he was very careful in walking. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
If such a rage against one’s own integrity and one’s own life can be hidden behind apparently accidental awkwardness and motor insufficiency, then it is not a big step forward to grasp the possibility of transferring the same conception to mistakes which seriously endanger the life and health of others. Human life is of no more importance to the Universe than that of an oyster. If the disposal of human life were reserved to the Almighty, almost any action would become an encroachment of his privilege. “If I was attacked by a gang and robbed and suffered a fatal blow to the head, I disturb the course of nature and I invade the peculiar providence of the Almighty by lengthening out my life beyond the period, which, by the general laws of matter and motion, he has assigned it to. However, are we not all guilty of extending our lives beyond their natural capacity with medical care, vaccines, and the like? In considering the true nature of God, one must first consider the nature of human beings and the Universe, for without understanding oneself or the Universe in which one lives, how can we approach an understanding of God? #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Each human possesses a consciousness independent of any other creature. One is aware of a separation between oneself and the World around one. One experiences images, sounds, scents, tastes, and physical forms through what one perceives as one’s physical body. Each one of us also experience thoughts, emotions, and other phenomena which do not manifest either visibly or audibly but which influence us nonetheless and which we perceive as coming from within or consciousness. From the earliest time, human beings have attempted to reconcile this condition of separation from the Universe. Early humans, in terror of the images and sounds which bombarded them from all directions and of the Earth which seemed ready to swallow these beings once more as if the Universe itself realized that is had made a terrible mistake, scared of this thing called life and yet equally scared of death, began to imagine hideous gods and demons all about them. These monsters appeased or else death could be imminent. As human beings survived fire and flood, disease and famine, the anxiety they felt concerning their condition lessened. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Humans learned to live and even thrive in a hostile and evil World. Civilizations rose to power and raised animistic deities as gods who now demand worship and sacrifice in return for their beneficence and bleeding. The threat was no longer against an individual human, but against an entire society. To gain the favor of the gods, these deities had to be appeased or else famine, pestilence, or war might come upon a nation and destroy it. Ultimately, the priests of many of these gods decided that their particular deity was the true God, that all other gods were Devils, and that the followers of other gods had to be converted or destroyed. Satan has certainly been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years. On Saturday night, I see men and women at the club lusting after half-naked guys and ladies dancing on the dance floor, talking about “Booty me down.” On Sunday morning, these same people are sitting in the pews with their wives, husbands, lovers, and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday, they are back at the club turning tricks. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
The battle with these demons will either be won or lost. Find out what all of their legal rights are with that person, then get all of them properly taken care of and broken with the Lord, and then the demons will have absolutely nothing else left to be able to hold onto. If those heavier types of sins are being done on some kind of regular basis for quite a long period of time with no intent by the person to try and pull out of it, that means you are committing direct and willful sins against the Lord, and that is a major door opener for demons. Many people believe that God will turn a blind eye to the sin of fornication. However, if by chance you are fornicating with a partner who has demons attached to them, then you will give full legal rights for the demons to be able to come directly after you if God will allow a hole to occur in the protective armor that he has set up on you and your life. Dear Lord in Heaven, you are all our riches, and you suffice for us. God, you are justice and moderation, peace, joy, and gladness. You are our protector and defender, courage, faith, and our great consolation. God, you are our eternal life, Great and Wonderful Lord. God Almighty, Merciful Savior please protect us all, and let people know, young and antiquated that their lives are valuable. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
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How do I Love Thee?
Soul food taste better when listening to soul music like Stevie Wonder, BB King, Eartha Kit, Sade, Anita Baker, and Earth, Wind, and Fire. Correspondingly, life is better with love. Millions of people go by, but they all disappear from view—because I only have eyes for you. I can spend more time gazing into your eyes since you are the only person I see. Those who are married know that when their relationship with their spouse is healthy, everything else seems a little better, a little lighter, and sounds a little better. When the relationship goes bad, dark clouds or doom and gloom seem to hover over other aspects of life, making us more anxious, fearful, angry, and defensive. Primary emotions can be reduced to just two categories: optimistic and pessimistic emotions. Ordinarily, we might think that good emotions and negative emotions are opposite. However, this is not the case. Emotional feelings are a person’s private emotional feelings. People sometimes have mixed emotions. For example, ten-month-old Leo feels both joy and fear as he eats a cookie he took without permission, when he was supposed to have vegetables. The result? Guilt—as you may recall from your own childhood. Likewise, jealousy could be a mixture of love, anger, and fear. Emotional health comes from knowing what you want to do, not dwelling on what you should do, ought to do, or should want to do. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Another way of stating this idea is that emotional health comes from taking full responsibility for one’s feelings and actions. People are urged to stop intellectualizing and talking about feelings. Instead, one must learn to: live now; live here; stop imagining; experience the real; stop unnecessary thinking; taste and see; express rather than explain, justify, or judge; give in to unpleasantness and pain just to pleasure; surrender to being as you are. As in the case of Leo’s cookie guilt, it implies that people can experience good and negative emotions at the same time. How is that possible? Recordings of brain activity show that good emotions are processed mainly in the left hemisphere of the brain. In contrast, negative emotions are processed in the right hemisphere. The fact that optimistic emotions and pessimistic emotions are based on different brain areas helps explain why we can feel happy and sad at the same time. Soul-love replicates the longing and loneliness associated with real-love. When was the last time you felt lonely for God? Not simply making intellectual statements of need, but really longing for him? #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Falling in love is a lot like learning how to spell, it takes a long time. We know that we are supposed to love God with all of our heart and everything that we have, we must have a high-quality relationship with God that is based on secure, companionate love. Psyche, the Greek word for soul, denotes the point of contact between the material and immaterial, the connection between the outside and inside, the link between the inner and outer person. Soul stands for the whole person in all one’s faculties and facilities. When you fall in love with another person, no one is sure what happens, but it has something to do with how you smell. That is why showers, perfume, and deodorant are so popular. Friendship love makes time, speaks truth, corrects errors, forgives faults, and goes on loving in common acts of friendship. Love is unselfish, unconditional, unattached. It seeks one’s highest good on the basis of a decision of the will and an inclination of the heart. Real love is not accidental, haphazard sensation. Love cannot be coerced, because a lover must decide to love the loved one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Do you freely and really choose me as your first and real love, because by choosing me, you will create and acknowledge my increasing importance in your life until I really pull into first and foundational place among your allegiances? The soul not only grounds one’s actions, it is the source of emotions and desires. Soul love must also be filled with that emotional aspect. Obviously, we must be able to love with our soul for Jesus tells us that doing so is the most important thing in life. The human soul is the very essence of a person. It is your life, given to you by your creator. And while your soul has something to do with your body, your feelings, your mind, your will, and your relationships, it is also beyond all those things, not limited to any of those things, and perhaps even greater than the sum total of these elements. When know you it is real, love is all you feel. Love until the stars are dancing in the sky lighting up your life, showing you a true love. In critical ways, your enthusiasm for a particular object reveals what you feel about it. And vice versa. Sometimes you need more than you can say, taking it all inside. Longing just to hear the words he or she will say. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Your emotions reveal what your heart and soul have selected as value to you. Love until it hurts to walk away. In all loves, the value of the beloved is an importance in itself to me. And keep in mind, that being in love should make you feel good or happy, and secure and desirable. The purpose of loving is satisfaction, but there is danger in expecting to live forever on a romantic cloud of milk and cookies. When you love, elevate the values that are good in themselves, like honesty, trust, kindness, understanding and compassion, and love them because they make us feel better. However, numerous dangers lurk within a subjective reading of truth and reality. To follow your heart, to discover your soul, to obey your intuition can cause you to follow hazardous paths. Recently, Conrad Roy III loved someone so much, that by her advice, he tried to die, and when he wanted to back out of this dying, she convinced him it was the right thing to do and he ended up passing away. Others have moved to overseas for love and they have found themselves sad and wanting to die because you need more in your life than love. Love is important, but it cannot be your main focus or reason to live. Couples sometimes reach a point where there is little passion or intimacy left in their relationship. If they stay together merely out of commitment or habit, they experience empty love. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
No matter how close a relationship may be, it is probably impossible to completely know another person. You see, your soul, is the deepest part of who you are, and it was created for being connected. We are built to have foundations and be in places that are deeply satisfying. Break away from all conventions that do not lead to your Earthly success and happiness. God, you already see the ways I fall short and mess up. However, right now, I consciously switch your whisper of absolute love for me into the deepest part of my heart. I recognize your love for me is not based on my performance. God, give me strength in my weakness. Give me faith in my fear. Give me peace in my powerlessness. I am trusting you. Grant me tenacious winsome courage as I go through life. When I am tempted to give up, help me to keep going. Grant me a cheerful spirit when things do not go my way. And give me courage to do whatever needs to be done. When a person commits a wrong, one realizes that it is natural to make a mistake—and if one is truly sorry about what one has done, one will learn from it and take care not to do it again. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
If an individual is not honestly sorry about what one has done, and knows one will do the same thing over and over, that individual has no business confessing and asking forgiveness in the first place. When demons enter in on the inside of a person’s body, they need something specific to feed on. In order for a person to be able to be set free from the demons who are attached to them, they have to be willing to go before the Lord in sincere and heartfelt prayer, and confess out their drug usage, dabbling in the occult, or whatever it may be. When dealing with the occult, the Devil is in the details and often the buyer pays the price. Demons can also attach themselves to buildings. A sinner has to be willing to repent and renounce this sin, telling God that they will never go back to it again. Once that person has fully confessed and repented of their sins, then the demons will no longer have any more legal rights to be able to stay attached to that person, and they will leave once this person starts commanding them to leave. However, it is right to be involved with loving God, preoccupied with loving Jesus, simply because God is God, our creator. Have we become a nation of people who would sell the Sunset if someone would put a price on it? Money degrades all the gods of humans and converts them into commodities. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
In Loving Memory of Conrad Roy III
On Predicting Our Future—I Do Not Want to Have a Beer with Him
I came in the World cryin’ and fussin’. We had nothin’. Every ghetto I know is the same. Once I am on top, I am never going to stop. It is impossible to gaze always upon a lovely countenance with equal admiration, for the sense becoming saturated, the heart requires something more—something to interest, to delight, to fix beyond the moment. Take a moment to make a list of your closet friends. What do they have in common (other than the joy of knowing you)? It is likely that most are similar to you in age and the same gender and race as you. There will be exceptions, of course. However, similarity on these three dimensions is the general rule for friendships. Nevertheless, sometimes things are so little different one from another, that there is no making pleasure out of anything, so sometimes people expand their circle of friends to include people from other cultures and genders. The most important thing about friendship is that it is an idle title of a thing, which cannot be where virtue is not established. People have a need to affiliate (a desire to associate with other people) and it is a basic human trait. This is probably because affiliation helps us meet needs for approval, support, friendship, and information. We also seek company to alleviate fear or anxiety. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
What is the secret mesmerism which friendship possess, and under the operation of which a person ordinarily sluggish, or cold, or timid, become wise, active, and resolute, in another’s behalf? Beautiful people tend to be rated as more appealing than those of average age appearance. This is due, in part, to the halo effect (a tendency to generalize a favorable impression to unrelated personal characteristics). Because of it, we assume that attractive people are also likeable, intelligent, warm, witty, mentally healthy, and socially skilled. Basically, we act as if what is beautiful is good. Physical beauty can be socially advantageous. However, physical beauty is generally unrelated to actual personal traits and talents, and in reality, physical attractiveness has almost no connection to intelligence, talents, or abilities. Overall, good-looking people are less lonely, less socially anxious, more popular, more socially skilled than unattractive people. Does that seem shallow? If so, it may be reassuring to know that beauty mainly affects initial acquaintance. Later, more substantial personal qualities become important. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
Still, in the Ricki Lake culture of the 1990s, when gushing out one’s insecurities and body shaming became popular as a tool to use against people who are naturally thin, people who were uncomfortable with their size began to lash out against others who were considered traditionally beautiful and privileged, and because these instigators had been demonized for so long, if the traditionally beautiful person responded, people would gang up on them and call them names and make that individual feel bad about being thin and beautiful, like the image that is so accepted by the fashion industry. So basically, people who felt undesirable inside, might be overweight, or have thinning hair, or did not like themselves for whatever reason, had a license for revenge, they got to go out and take out all their frustrations on people they were jealous of without any retaliation. And because some people who are considered traditionally beautiful are really nice and find all types of people attractive and valuable, they could not respond because in hurting that person for attacking them, they knew that they would be also hurting themselves and their friends, so it made these traditionally beautiful people feel shamed for being thin, pretty or handsome, and they started feeling like rejects. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
As a result, more people started turning to suicide because they felt bad for being who they were and could not respond. People would shout things at them like, “Go eat a burger, b*tch,” and think it was funny, and because Americans tend to be more heavy set than most of the World, that culture became acceptable. To make thicker people feel more socially acceptable, people started to shame the thin and beautiful. Art may disguise complexions, but never improve them. Similarity refers to the extent to which two people are alike in background, age, interest, attitudes, beliefs, and so forth. Social psychologists have repeatedly found that similar people are attracted to each other. And why not? It is reinforcing to see our beliefs and attitudes shared by others. It shows we are “right” and reveals that they are clever people as well. So eventually, hordes of people who felt like social rejects, even after plastic surgery, buying wigs, or wearing makeup, felt good about teaming up and harassing people who seemed to have it all. And when the witch hunters got into positions of power, they collectively, and systematically started harassing and terrorizing these individuals they did not like, to try and make them believe that they were cursed and would be better off dead and that even God was against them and that is why they had so much bad luck. One professor even told a student that suicide was probably his best option. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
God, send me a friend that may tell me of my faults: if not, any enemy, and he will. There are friendships which are only bottle-deep. How do people who are not yet friends learn if they are similar? Through self-disclosure. Our friendships and intimacies are only calculated for strong life and health. Forming a group to terrorize someone is really not a great option to being accepted. However, getting to know others requires a willingness to talk about more than just the weather, sports, or nuclear physics. At some point, you must begin to share private thoughts and feelings and reveal yourself to others. Such self-disclosure is essential for developing close relationships. A lack of self-disclosure, as noted above, is associated with anxiety, unhappiness, and loneliness. We more often reveal ourselves to persons we like than to those we find unattractive (physically or mentally). Disclosure also requires a degree of trust. Many people play it safe or “close to the vest,” with people they do not know well. Indeed, self-disclosure is governed by definite norms about what is acceptable. For instance, if you sit next to a boy you think it cute in math, you might start off by saying, “I hope this class is not too difficult.” Moderate self-disclosure leads to reciprocity (a return in kind). #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Young men of open, generous dispositions are naturally inclined to gallantry, which, if they have good understandings, exerts itself in an obliging complacent behavior to all women in general. Overdisclosure is self-disclosure that exceeds what is appropriate for a relationship or social situation. For example, imagine standing in a line at a supermarket and having a stranger in front of you say, “Lately, I do not know how I feel about Black people. I think I am pretty well adjusted, but occasionally I have some questions about them advancing in society and wonder if they are sharing their wealth with their family?” When self-disclosure proceeds at a moderate pace, it is accompanied by growing trust and intimacy. When it is too rapid or inappropriate, we are likely to back off and wonder about the person’s motives. Thus, as friends talk, they influence each other in ways that gradually deepen the level of likening, trust, and self-disclosure. Gambling requires as much coolness as the most austere school of philosophy. Women and men display an interesting difference in patterns of self-disclosure. To carry on two controversies at the same time is favorable to neither. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
Two male friends share lunch at a restaurant. In the next hour they talk about sports, cars, sport cars, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, sports, cars, and basketball. (Did I mention sports and cars?) Jill, who sat at a nearby table overheard the entire conversation. Here is her summary of what the men said to each other: “All they talked about was cars and sports and beautiful women.” In North American culture, most male friendships are activity based. That is, men tend to do things together—a pattern that provides companionship without closeness. You know, going to the mall means going to the mall, not drive me to some dark, secluded location and start feeling on me. Having a drink and shooting pool, means playing sports and not getting me plastered or pressuring me into drinking so I am unaware of what is going on. Increasingly, homosexual men are not attracted to other homosexual men, they want a guy who seems like a traditional father, fraternity guy, or a nerd. And so these guys are often preyed on by men, who they think genuinely want a friendship, but actually have ulterior motives. I was watching a documentary, and the author says that guys who are negative and not into drugs have to be very careful. Because sometimes party boys will pick up on them and take them to a club and turn them out. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
It is especially dangerous to take an unsuspecting man, or boy out of his element because they are used to having a drink meaning having a drink, not let me spike your drink and have my way with you while you are unconscious and unable to consent because you will not report it. And sometimes people will get them hooked on drugs and some of these people have terminal illnesses and in their manic party phase, they lose their inhibition, may forget and get you sick in the process. So, in modern times, you have to be very careful with gendered friendship, the day next door type, may secretly be a homosexual male trying to turn you out. People usually want what they cannot have and that is why they come at you sideways or use ulterior motives. I think more men, especially in World Class Cities are catching on to what coming over for a beer means to some guys. I was talking to a guy and he told me to be careful about drinking with guys around here. And I heard another guy recently defending, to his girlfriend, why he did not want to go out with his guy friend, without going into details. When his lady asked him, “Why not?” He replied, “It is not that I do not like him, I just do not want to have a drink with him,” and I knew exactly what he meant. (I do not trust him and I am not about that party and pleasure lifestyle.) #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
The face of gay men is changing and their modus operandi (distinct pattern or method of operation that indicates or suggests the work of a single criminal in more than one crime) is changing. Not all gay men are open about their sexuality, and you might think some guys are just nice and want to be your friend, but they may be trying to get over on you. So, you have to be cautious when it comes to drinking with the guys and make sure you really know these guys. A lot of people grew up in good communities with family values, but times are changing. This is not the days of Archie Bunker, where having a beer meant having a beer and people openly discussed their feelings about culture. True bigots often hide in places where you least expect them, and will pretend to be neutral. When it comes to women, in many cases, the friendships of women are more often based on shared feelings and confidences. If two female friends spent an afternoon together and did not reveal problems, private thoughts, and feelings to one another, they would assume that something was wrong. For women, friendship is a matter of talking about shared concerns and intimate matters. Actually, the differences between male and female friendships are smaller than implied here. Men do know something about the private thoughts and feelings of their friends. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
Often times, people assume they know you and have ideas about who you are and could be wrong. A lot of people think because men are nice and smile and do not speak up about things that they are slow, but they actually may not really like you and just be trying to avoid you and any conflict. Nevertheless, most contemporary men do not form close friendships with other men. Many could probably learn something from female friendships: Men live their friendships side by side; women live them face to face. Decision does not give one knowledge of anything that will occur in the future because the mere fact that a person has decided does not ensure that he or she will not falter, change one’s mind, or die tomorrow. Hence, it appears to be mistake to assume that because decision entails ignorance prior to decision, this ignorance is of something which one will know later as a result of decision; what one comes to know when one decides is nothing in addition to the decision itself appears to be that decision is an intentional concept. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
“I really wanted it. I really wanted it. I was being the Wander Slut in those days. I kept a list on my computer of all the people I seduced. I seduced Randall. He nearly shot himself on account of it. It was perfectly disgusting.” I already got some designer to hold up my pants, I just want some ice on my wrist so I look better when I dance, have you lookin’ at it put you in a trance. Lord, may nothing separate me from you. Teach me how to choose only your way so each step will lead me closer to you. Help me to keep my heart pure and undivided. Protect me from my own careless thoughts, words, and actions and the Devil and his red hot pitch forks so they do not try and stick them in my hiney. And help me rest in the truth. And keep me from being distracted by my thoughts, desires and ideas how things should be. Help me to embrace what comes my way as opportunity. God, you are my rock and my fortress. You are my shield and my strong tower. Teach me how to stand strong and choose only your way. Thank you that you love me and nothing can every take that away from me! Thank you Father in Heaven. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
Do you Believe you have a Soul?
Humans are beings of love through and through. Why? Because human beings are Earth beings. The Earth is the cosmos of love, meaning that wisdom, and the soul of the World, is destined to become consciousness and this takes place through wisdom transformed into love. While the constant flux of human relationships creates enormous variance that is problematical and troublesome from a scientific point of view, it also provides us with the best hope of understanding what it is about human companionship that prevents premature death. Who are we? Are we parasites living on Earth? Imagine someone incapable of developing the force of love. Without love we would actually perish, physically die. There are literally thousands of exceptions to the general statistical rule that unmarried men and women die prematurely. One cannot be blind to the fact that there are many happy and healthy 80- and 90-year-old unmarried individuals, and many people who live active, productive, and happy lives for decades after they have lost a husband or wife. Their physical and psychological adjustment must be carefully studied, for their lives clearly point out that being unmarried need not be a physical state itself that leads to disease and death, but rather one’s social adjustment to it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
The future of love concerns the full development of individuality, which is responsible for the creation of a new, conscious unity of the World, brought forth out of the freedom of love. It is amazing that some people love one so much that even though they see an individual trying to build a career, when they see that person is being used as a slave, they will remove them from that situation, which totally makes sense. If you want animals to stop attacking your house, you remove their food source. The forms of love from the past have been severely damaged as a result of the kind of consciousness responsible for nuclear weapons. None of these forms has the strength to hold together relationships without being renewed through the development of individual love. Individual love, on the other hand, cannot develop in isolation from the World because individual love is at the same time World oriented. One of the best things you can do when you are hurting is go out and help someone else who is in pain. Get your mind off your problems and pain by helping someone else in need. When you help others in your time of need, you are creating a separate, but equal reactions (Newton’s III Law of Physics) and God can use this to change your situation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
There is much talk these days about the living Earth. When you walk on the Earth, imagine that this is the skin of a living being. Imagine the flow of the waters in the streams, ocean, and rivers as the blood of this being, and the air you breathe is the breath of the Earth. This simple act of caring will bring an uncanny experience that will help you love other living beings. What is it about human contact that makes it so important to our health? Why should marriage be statically so beneficial to the health of the heart? Why is loneliness so physically destructive? Why do people die of broken hearts? Human beings are a manifestation of consciousness. They are the quality of warmth, of feeling. The quality of warmth of consciousness, the feeling of this warm creates a dream like state and gives beings the motivation to keep on living. Money can only buy so much happiness and if you are poor it is the love of your family that gives you the drive to keep striving, the love of God the forces you to open your eyes and breath. When the source of love is not there, it is as if the dream is over, and one has difficulty in trying to consciously make the dream reappear or stay clear. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
When the attraction of love between people exists, the quality of love tends to be more permanent. We know that we cannot buy love, we cannot force people to love us, and even when we do kind things for others out of love, they may use us and expect our help and give nothing back in return, but pain. All human beings are bound by identical obligations, although these are performed in different ways according to particular circumstances. No human being, whoever he or she may be, under whatever circumstances, can escape them without being guilty of crime. It is eternal and unconditional, the World has an elementary sense of justice, the ability to see things as others do, a sense of transcendental responsibility, archetypical wisdom, good taste, courage, compassion, and faith in the importance of particular measures that do not aspire to be a universal key to salvation. Soul, individual spirituality, firsthand personal insight into things; the courage to be oneself and go the way of one’s conscience points, humility in the face of the mysterious order of being, confidence in its natural direction and, above all, trust in one’s own subjectivity as one’s principal link with the subjectivity of the World—these are qualities that people of the future should have? #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
All of the living makes the mistake of drawing too sharp distinctions. Angels (it is said) would be often unable to tell whether they moved among the living or dead. Our impoverished state is marked by our awareness that we are not very reliably at home in the interpreted World. Hence, in order to regain for ourselves something that would equal spiritual and existential fervor that characterized the ages of faith, we must take upon ourselves the task of endowing the World (the World of things of the intimate personal relations) with the inwardness of feeling that other ages directed toward a divinity. Joy, love, and above all suffering and pain should not diffuse sensations accompanying an unending series of vague hopes and regrets; they must become the objects of a total commitment. Thus, since we are not yet strong enough to give ourselves totally in love, we have better follow the example of the lover and draw our strength from an unrequited, uninterrupted feeling, or indeed of Narcissus, who used the natural World as a magnifying mirror of his feelings. In a World in which all actions are liable to remain uncompleted, I know my redeemer lives. God will pay you back double what you have loss and the rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
God will always have another plan in store for you. The truth is you need prayer more than a friend. Arise from the depression in which the circumstances have kept you. Rise to a new life. Notice, if you want a new life, there is something you have to do. You cannot sit back and focus on negativity. You have a full life ahead of you. God will bind up your broken heart, and help you proclaim freedom as you are released from darkness. We must pray for the grace to endure problems as our spiritual will is perfected. This is not a social phenomenon, but a pageant of situations and persons in whom the ideal of completion and strength of feeling is realized, just as the contemporary World is a series of images that portray our deprivations and stunted responses. To make something of one’s fate, of one’s experiences, is to give them the permanence (essentially poetic) of a moment of intensity. Similarly, the supreme task, set by the imminence of death, is to repair the adventitiousness of death by drawing into my life, by making of it my own death. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
The immensity of the task of creating a new spirituality is betrayed by the complex, and quite conscious, ambiguities of transcendence, chief of which is the image of the Angel. He is a messenger (angelos) from another sphere; hence, there must be one who spent him. However, the Angel comes upon us with a terrible majesty and strength which, to us who are weak, is all his own. The Angel is pure and necessary contradiction and he sees the foundation of our being: only living in total commitment to the Earth, the here and now, can we transform it into the heart’s inner space, and thus wrest some eventual transition into a soundless Beyond. This is the creative act, stills all strife by transforming it into a song, eternalizes the moment by making of it a monument of inwardness, and transfixes suffering into the eternally valid image of God. In a World of yearning for the security of faith and finding it in ideology, there is a new purpose for living, as all concerted action is an escape from defective selfhood. God has a specific plan by which great blessing will come out of difficulty. Arise and wipe away your tears and press on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Morning Star is the Evening Star
Life and the World around us is a painted veil, an illusion though which we penetrate to the reality behind. Religion and virtue seem in many respect to be so nearly related that they are generally presumed to be inseparable companions. We are so willing to think well of their union that we hardly allow it to be permissible to speak or even think of them separately. However, it may by questioned whether this attitude can be theoretically justified. We certainly do sometimes encounter cases that seem to go against this general supposition. We have known people who have the appearance of great zeal in religion, but have lacked even the common affections of humanity, and shown themselves extremely degenerate and corrupt. Others who have paid little regard to religion and been considered as mere atheists have been seen to practice the rules of morality and in many cases to act with such good meaning and affection towards humankind that one seems forced to admit that they are virtuous. In our everyday lives, our wiliness to have dealings with someone may depend on one’s answer to “What are his or her morals?” A person who is aware of the superior pleasures to be found in virtuous action will naturally prefer virtue to mere self-interest. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Our notions of God are projections of our own humor, as we are, so shall we think God to be. God must necessarily be good humored. However, we can never understand this quality unless we possess it ourselves. Hence, the necessity for permitting good humor in the discussion of religion. I give a lot of credence to the grace of God because much of what we do, in fact, more of what we do than we do not do has to do with our fortune and misfortune. And I think there are people who the miseducation has taken a greater toll on than me. And you know, but for the grace of God, I would have been confused about my identity. We cannot understand qualities of mind and character which we do not possess ourselves. The best foundation for rendering a just account of human nature is thorough knowledge of oneself. No one who knows oneself can possibly believe that all human action stem from selfish motives. God is a good-tempered, benevolent being who orders the World. Sincere the affection for virtue is natural, religion is unnecessary to its presence in us. However, theistic opinions about a benevolent God may reinforce the affection. Yet, so many the good example of others and rewards and punishment. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
When religion and morality are separated, a selfish interest in one’s own welfare is not all that is left to provide a foundation for morality. There is more than accounting for the possibility of morality than a simple choice of religion. It is the function of both poetry and religion to provide people with a coherent view of the World that will help them understand both themselves and their fellow human beings, and to provide it in a form that will kindle the imagination as well as the intellect. The ultimate solution is a community small enough for each member to know the other members as individuals. Such intimate person knowledge will bring understanding and sympathy, so that people will be prepared to cooperate for the common good, without the coercion of law. People will indeed value their neighbors’ opinions, but they will not take their neighbors’ opinion on trust. To do so would be useless, because even a true opinion is of little value unless one understands the grounds for holding it. It is only when people see things as they are, in all their intricate interconnections, that they will feel the right emotions and thus lead happy and virtuous lives. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
People see life as if through a veil—the veil of their own prejudices, which are imposed by social institutions. We must transcend their prejudices in order to understand and love our fellow humans. If we are to fear the wrath of God, then there must be some principle by which we regulate our fears. If we are to fear God’s blame, we must already know what is blame worthy. Nothing is blameworthy simply because it displeases God. God and human beings must share a sense of deformity which enables them to identify the morally odious. There is no divine monopoly here. Morality may arise independently of religion. Virtue is natural because human nature provides a foundation for virtue. Why should selfishness or self-interest be the only natural passion? Social feeling or sense of partnership with humankind may be natural. The social feeling must be natural, for how could there be society if this feeling did not exist first? If society is a set of conventional arrangements, then the existence of society implies the pre-existence of a disposition among people to make conventions. Thus, the selfish picture of human nature cannot be the whole story, for if selfishness were the only natural feeling, there would be no society. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
What is more, since the existence of a social feeling is sufficient to account for the origin of society, appeals to the religious sanctions for society are necessarily subsequent to the actual foundation of society and therefore of secondary importance. Virtue is the pursuit of the public interest. There is no real love of virtue without the knowledge of public good. We are disposed to act virtuously by our affection for virtue. This affection for virtue is called the moral sense. This sense is like a harmony in music and a sense of proportion in architecture and art. In a creature capable of forming general notions of things, not only the outward beings which offer themselves to the sense are objects of the affection, but the very actions themselves and the affections of pity, kindness, gratitude, and their contraries, being brought into the minds by reflection become objects. So that by means of this reflected sense, there arise another kind of affection towards those very affections themselves, which have been already felt, and are now become the subject of a new liking or dislike. One way we evaluate ourselves is to compare ourselves to others and to our own ideal self-image. If an ideal image cannot be met, it may have to be discarded or revised, but this is not easy to do. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Once we remove the veil of unreality, the World will be seen as a unity—both in the sense in which science may be said to be a unity (the truth about one field of study cohering with and illuminating the truth about another), and in the sense that a true understanding of our fellow humans will give rise to virtuous behavior. This is the indestructible order that it is the business of poetry to reveal. We live surrounded by an infinite multitude of mysteries. For God, all things are possible, even what one may considered a logical absurdity, that is, causing what has in fact happened not to have happened. The fundamental property of life is daring; all life is creative daring and this an eternal mystery, irreducible to anything finished or intelligible. In human’s very existence, thought has discovered something improper, a defect, a sickness, or sin, and has demanded that this be overcome at its foundation by a renunciation of existence. Disclosure by talking seriously and honestly together on an equal level is the necessary condition for reducing the mystery that one person is for another. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
We need to take better care of ourselves mentally, physically, and spiritually. Because the times that are coming up are going to be challenging times. Progress come both in the realization of the need for re-education and further in the re-education process itself. A good beginning to understanding and appreciating life fully is knowing that at some point it will end. Games prevent honest, intimate, and open relationships between the players. Yet people play them because they fill up time, provoke attention, reinforce early opinions about self and others, and fulfill a sense of destiny. We have to learn to make the time period between life’s only two certainties, birth and death meaningful and significant. Human beings place far too much stress upon defining the purpose in and of our lives. Our only purpose in life if purpose is needed, is to be what we are fully, vitally and in context of other people having the same right. We each need to find a purpose or goal in our existence but we should not dwell on it. People are known and respected for their commitment and dedication to the uplift of people. Each of us must know that others may try to push us down or disqualify us, but we will be able to fulfill our destinies. The rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Randolph Harris II International Institute 