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The Prince with the Golden Apples
Democrats know how to create the impression that they alone are the protectors of peace. In this way, acting very circumspectly but never losing sight of the goal, they conquer one position after another, at one time by methods of quiet intimidation and at another time by sheer daylight robbery. These tactics are based on an accurate estimation of human frailties and must lead to success, with almost mathematical certainty. Bidenomics, therefore, knows a lot about math. They are cold and calculating and know how to properly manipulate people into believing their lies because they have calculated on the psychological effect. If it does not have to encounter the same kind of terror in a stronger form, intimidation in workshops and in factories, in assembly halls and at mass demonstrations, will always meet with success. Then, of course, Democrats will raise a horrified outcry, yelling blue murder and appealing to the authority of the State, which they have just repudiated. In doing this, their aim generally is to add the general confusion, so that they may have a better opportunity of reaching their own goal unobserved. Their idea is to find among the higher government officials some bovine creature who, in the unenlightened hope that he may win the good graces of these awe-inspiring opponents so that they may remember him in case of future eventualities, will help them now to break all those who may oppose this World pest. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The impression which such successful tactics make on the minds of the broad masses, whether they be adherents or opponents, can be estimated only by one who knows the popular mind, not from books but from practical life. For the successes which are this obtained are taken by the adherents of the Democrats as a triumphant symbol of the righteousness of their own cause; on the other hand, the beaten opponent very often loses faith in the effectiveness of any further resistance. The more I understand the methods of physical intimidation that are being employed, the more sympathy I have for the multitude that has succumbed to it. This experience should allow all who are awake to be enlightened and enable them to distinguish between the false leaders and the victims who have been lead astray. We must look upon the latter simply as victims. If hardworking people are supporting the Democratic party, it is because those decent people do not or cannot grasp the downright infamy of the doctrine taught by the communist agitators. The day is coming when Bidenomics cause great poverty that will gain the upper hand and drive the working class and middle-class into the poor house. Currently, we are not seeing the full effect of the recession because the wealthy are shopping at discount stores like Walmart, and buying these expensive houses that cost millions of dollars less than what they would normally purchase. However, as their taxes increase, the recession will become more visible. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The taxpayer and natural resources of America are being stormed and eventually will finally surrender. This defeat will be due to the stupidity of those in power, who have opposed every demand to cut foreign aid, close the border, fortify national security, put more police on the street, send more funding to the fire departments, and invest in the American people. The short-sighted refusal to try towards improving living conditions for the American poor, refusing to improve labour conditions, and refusal to secure the southern border will lead to further exploitation of the American people so the point that no political party will ever be able to repair the damage that has resulted from policies of the Democratic party. When Democrats are asked to explain their incompetency, they instead have sowed the seeds of hatred and violence. The mental Cyclopes of our Democratic parties have done the things that would be inconceivable to anyone who has a working brain. (The Cyclops has one eye; this reference means the parities are functioning on half a brain.) Many people believe that the Democratic party should be disbanded and outlawed. Democrats know they are in danger of losing their power. The selection of Kamala as Vice President was meant as a political tool to be used with the Democratic party to help them maintain power. It was intended so that President Biden could distance himself from the political party, and make it clear that he was a fanatic radical. If he had been anything less, his followers would have abandoned him. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Those who want to lock former President Trump away believe absolute suppression will somehow prevent an uprising of law and order, freedom and the Second Amendment and stop anyone from following the same plan again. Suppression is pointless. With the ability to beam information around the World in seconds, there is no such thing. To make him available and explain what is going on, God has resurrected Mr. Trump to explain what we are doing here. “Make American Great Again,” is more than just a catchy slogan. Donald Trump is tapping into the fundamental human concepts of heroism, survival, fear, being the underdog, the promise of a great future. When listening to his speeches, you will find yourself saying frequently “that is certainly true” because much of what he says is true. Some is an oversimplification of history or politics. What make Donald Trump more powerful is the knowledge he shares is real. It is not novel fantasy World or theories of a political philosopher, it is about events and feelings that exist in America, thing an entire nation is living through and suffering under. Many people forget that Donald Trump is a businessman and is used to executing his visions, and does not make empty promises. Rising over 600 feet and 68 stories over Fifth Avenue’s most desirable intersection, Trump Tower has been a staple in the New York skyline for over thirty years. Given the chance, imagine what Donald Trump could do for America. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
People have criticized Donald Trump for his word choices. However, his words are those of a mitigator, or a poet, who is nonjudgmental and knows that inside of every human being, there is God, and therefore, the is good in all of us. This is Mr. Trump’s method and how he keeps his audience’s attention. You must remember that he is speaking to the masses, those in the public working class, those who have not been educated, those who have gone to Harvard and Princeton and own fortune 500 companies. These are the people in his organization. They come from the masses. So, just as Mr. Trump said, he uses his words specifically to these groups. He picks his style so to match his audience. It is quite inappropriate to criticize former President Trump today. These critics do not care about America or the actual ideas that Donald Trump stands for, they only want to criticize the American Dream. They dislike America and what America has done for the World and because of that, many people feel like they should dislike Donald Trump because he truly represents the America Dream. He is someone who has ascended to power and wealth without being a member of the government, or depending on the government which is what capitalism is all about. The Hottentots are afraid that if they do not dislike Donald Trump, that somehow others will see that as approval of his message, “Make America Great Again.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
When we uncover the Democratic ideas, we find that extremely evil intentions are present. In fact, they are openly presented, in full public view, with the boldest insolence. Democrats have wrong ideas of justice and fair play, and Republicans are trying to protect the general interests against the greed and unreason of the corrupt communistic party. For to safeguard the loyalty and confidence of the people is as much in the interests of the nation as to safeguard public health. America has been seriously menaced by dishonourable politicians who are not conscious of their duty as members of the national community. Their personal avidity or irresponsibility sows the seeds of future trouble. To eliminate the causes of such a development is an action that surely deserves well of the country. The individual America is not free at any time to escape from the consequences of the injustice which he has suffered at the hands of the Democratic party, or which he thinks he has suffered. Saying that Americans can leave the country is an argument used as a ruse to detract attention from the issue. It is, or is it not, in the interest of the nation to remove the causes of social unrest? If it is, then the fight must be carried on with the only weapons that promise success. However, the American people are not able to stand up against the might of the Democratic party; for the Democrats have put the people and the nation in so much debt that they can barely survive, and they desperate fear losing their jobs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
In these perilous times, it helps to remember that the gospel of Jesus Christ is also know as “gospel of peace.” Romans 10.15 reports, “And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!” Nevertheless, the troubles of the last days—days of wickedness, turbulence, chaos, and fear—can disrupt our sense of peace and security. As wars, financial collapses, and natural disasters surround us, it is easy to become full of fear instead of faith. The Saviour prophesied that in the last days men’s hearts would fail them because of such fear. “Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the Earth: for the powers of Heaven shall be shaken,” reports Luke 21.26. This is truly a time for the faithful in heart, not for the faint of heart. Fear, which can come upon people in difficult days, is a principal weapon in the arsenal the advisory uses to make mankind unhappy. He who fears loses strength for the combat of life in the fight against evil. Therefore, the power of the evil one always tries to generate fear in human hearts. In every age and in every era, mankind has faced fear. Democrats are great liars. They can whisper ideas into our minds that are full of doubt and fear. Darkness, confusion, doubt, and fear certainly do not come from the Lord, who is fully of light and love. Whenever darkness fills our minds, we may know that we are not possessed of the Spirit of God. When we are filled with the Spirit of God, we are filled with joy, with peace and with happiness no matter what our circumstances may be; for it is a spirit of cheerfulness and of happiness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Remember, our Heavenly Father is the epitome of faith, hope, charity, optimism, and kindness. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Fear comes not of God, but rather from the adversary. The Lord has given us several key doctrines to combat the fears we face. These doctrines become weapons in our arsenal to fight against fear and the author of fear. These key doctrines are faith, hope, and charity. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the first principle of the gospel. Faith is power; faith is strength. Faith is a reward for personal righteousness. The greater the measure of obedience to God’s laws, the greater will be the endowment of faith. “So, then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” reports Romans 10.17. Therefore, if we want to increase our faith, we must read the scriptures, study the teachings of our latter-day apostles and prophets, and follow the direction of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Faith is also a decision. If we want to be immersed and saturated in faith, then we must choose to believe; we must choose to exercise faith. We must supplant our fears with faith. Thinking of the Saviour and remembering Him helps to strength our faith and combat fear. “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 6.36. The Saviour taught also, “And if ye do always remember me, ye shall have my Spirit to be with you,” reports 3 Nephi 18.7, 11. With His Spirit constantly with us, we will have the ability to stay focused, brush off fearful thoughts and worries, and see the World the way Christ would see it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
To have faith means to trust in God and believe in His promises to us. There will be nothing in this World that can defeat us. Fear not. Be of good cheery. The future is as bright as your faith. Learn to choose faith over fear. The philosophical attitude is a curious and paradoxical one precisely because it is a complete one. It approaches the human situation with a mentality as practical as cold-blooded as an engineer’s, but steers its movement by a sensitivity to ideals as delicate as an artist’s. It always considers the immediate, attainable objectives, but is not the less interested in distant, unrealizable ones. Disinterested action does not mean renouncing all work that brings financial reward. How then could one earn a livelihood? It does not mean ascetic renunciation and monastic flight from personal responsibilities. The philosophic attitude is that a man shall perform his full duty to the World, but this will be done in such a way that it brings injury to none. Truth, honesty, and honour will not be sacrificed for money. Time, energy, capacity, and money will be used wisely in the best interests of mankind, and above all the philosopher will pray constantly that the Overself will accept him as a dedicated instrument of service. And it surely will. He will rise above personal emotion into perfect serenity rather than fall below it into dull apathy. To be pure in heart means not only to be separated from terrestrial tendencies, not only from egoistic impulses, but also to be detached from everything and everyone. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Thus, we see that the word “pure” is not as simple in connotation as it is short in length, and purity is harder to achieve than newly converted religious enthusiast believes. The act of renunciation is always first, and only sometimes last, an inward one. It is done by thoroughly understanding that the object renounced is, after all, only like a picture in a dream and that, again like a dream, it is ephemeral. Its illusoriness and transitoriness must be not only mentally perceived but also emotionally taken to heart. If we give up our wrong belief about it, we may not have to give up the object itself. Now, this admonition cannot be made to stop with visible things only. To be honestly applied, it must be applied to visible persons also. No matter how fondly we love somebody, we must not flinch from seeing the metaphysical truth about him nor from accepting the consequences of such perception. How can be renounce the attachments to everything and everyone and yet enjoy life, fulfil obligations, or remain in the World? How do this without flight to a monastery? How remain an affectionate husband, a devoted father? In the case of things, the answer has been given earlier. In the case of persons, the answer ought now to be given. We renounce the “materiality” of the loved one and with it the clinging to her material image, her physical possession, her personal ego. We hold on to the concept of her “spirituality,” her essence, her real being. We then know that this true self of hers cannot be separated from our own; the illusory relationship is replaced by a real one, the perishable pseudo-love by an undying essential one. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
He may try to keep the illusion that he is a well-fitting part of these surroundings called civilization, a member of the society into which he was born, but in the deepest layer of his heart the reality will deny it. He no longer belongs to a race caught up in appearances, ensnared and hypnotized by them to the point of self-destruction. It may take some time to get familiar with this impersonality of attitude, this detachment of heart, before he can realize how fine it is, how precious its worth and rewarding in result. The first impression may be cold and frightening. The last will be calm and soothing. If indifference and detachment mean that the man has ceases to care, then he has ceased to understand philosophy. Deep within his heart we will strive to depersonalize his relations with his wife, his children, his family, and even his friends. However, in the domain of action we should find him the best of husbands, the most loving of fathers, and most faithful of friends. In the script knows as “Frigid Woman,” or “Waiting for Rigor Mortis” (WRM), the mother keeps telling her daughter that men are beasts, but it is the wife’s duty to submit to their bestiality. If the mother pushes hard enough, the girl may even get the idea that she will die is she has pleasures of the flesh. Usually such mothers are great snobs, and they offer a release of an “antiscript” that will lift the curse. If the daughter marries an especially important person, such as the Prince with the Golden Apples, it is all right for the daughter to have pleasures of the flesh. However, failing that, she tells her erroneously, “all your troubles will be over when you reach a certain age, because then you will not be in danger of feeling amatory anymore.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Now it already appears as though we have three illusions: Orgathanatos, or the fatal pleasures of the flesh; the Prince with the Golden Apples; and Blessed Relief, or the purifying menopause. However, none of these is the real script illusion. The girl has tested Orgathanatos by pleasing herself, and knows it is not necessarily fatal. The Prince with the Golden Apples is not an illusion, because it is just possible that she might find such a man, just as she might win the German Sweepstakes or get four aces in a poker game; both things are unlikely, but not mythical; they do happen. And Blessed Relief is not something her Child really wants. To find the script illusion, we need the fairy tale which corresponds to WRM. Dr. Freud called dreams “the royal road to the unconscious.” Recent research has shown that everyone dreams several times during each night. When people say they never dream, the probability is that they do not recall their dreams. Only when they have been especially intense or dramatic and when we have some special interest in recalling them is when we tend to recall dreams. Busy, extraverted people seldom pay attention to their dreams and would find it a waste of time to write them down. Yet, increasingly, it is being found that recording one’s dreams and thinking about them, seeking hints of new possibilities for personal growth, is an enterprise rewarded by new insight. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Dreaming is a way of being aware of the World, although, paradoxically enough, it is a kind of consciousness that “happens” when we are asleep, when our waking consciousness is suppressed. Laing believes that the dreaming consciousness is active, as a kind of underground or background to our waking consciousness. He calls this underground mode of experiencing fantasy. Fantasy is a form of perception, a way to perceive the World by noting the effect one’s situation is having upon one’s body. Our vocabulary for describing bodily states is scant, and so we employ metaphours, symbols, and analogies to describe the way our situation and the people in it are affecting us. Thus, when a person says, “I have just been stabbed in the back,” she is speaking metaphourically, but she is also talking about a real experience. If one says of another, “You turn me on,” he may be speaking of an enlivening effect that the other person is inducing. These somatic metaphours are effects to describe one’s real condition as a human being. They are attempts to assess whether they are devitalizing and debilitating. Fantasy and dreaming are, in a sense, guardians of one’s existence, because the content of dreams and of somatic experiencing is always found to be related to one’s survival, well-being, and growth. Gestalt therapists and followers of Jung and Dr. Freud have been able to help persons overcome impasses in their lives through serious consideration of dreams. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Careful attention to the way one’s body feels as one lives life can also be useful for growth and wellbeing. One’s body can function as did the canaries that miners used to take into the depths of a mine, where oxygen depletion was a grave danger to life. If the canary stopped singing, the miners would know that the air was becoming unfit for humans, and they would improve ventilation or get out. Vague feelings of being “shafted,” “sucked dry,” “turned on,” “ripped apart,” tell a person something about his or her situation that should be explored by more direct perception. Fantasy, that waking dream that lurks behind our ordinary consciousness as vague feelings metaphorically descried, is a way of knowing. So is dreaming. Resistances provoked by outside factors are particularly common in self-analysis, for reasons that were mentioned above. A person who is in the grip of neurotic trends—or for that matter almost any person—is quite likely to feel offended or unfairly dealt with by a special individual, or by life in general, and to take at face value his reaction of hurt or resentment. In situations it takes a considerable degree of clarity to distinguish between a real and an imagined offense. And even if the offense is real, it need not necessarily produce such reactions: if he is not himself vulnerable to what others may do to him, there are many offenses to which he may respond with pity or disapproval of the offender, perhaps with open battle, rather than with hurt or resentment. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
It is much easier merely to feel a right to be angry than to examine exactly what vulnerable spot in himself has been hit. However, even if there is no doubt that the other has been cruel, unfair, or inconsiderate, for his own interests this is the way he should proceed. Let us assume that a wife is deeply disturbed at learning that her husband has had a transient affair with another woman. Even months later she cannot get over it, although she knows it is a matter of the past and while the husband does everything to re-establish a good relationship. She makes herself and him miserable, and now and then goes on a spree of bitter reproaches against him. There are several reasons that might explain why she feels and acts in this way, quite apart from a genuine hurt about the breach of confidence. It may have hurt her pride that the husband could be attached to anyone but herself. It may be intolerable to her that the husband could slip out from her control and domination. The incident may have touched off a dread of desertion, as it would in a person like Clare. She may be discontented with the marriage for reasons of which she is not aware, and she may use this conspicuous occurrence as an excuse for expressing all her repressed grievances, thus engaging merely in an unconscious campaign of revenge. She may have felt attracted toward another man and resent the fact that her husband indulged in a freedom that she had not allowed herself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
If she examined such possibilities, she might not only improve the situation considerably but also gain a much clearer knowledge of herself. Neither result is possible, however, if she merely insists upon her right to be angry. If she had repressed her anger, though in that case it would be much more difficult to detect her resistance toward self-examination, the situation would be essentially the same. A remark may be in place about the spirit of tackling resistance. As if it indicated an irritating stupidity or obstinacy, we are easily tempted to be annoyed at ourselves for having a resistance. Such an attitude is understandable because it is annoying or even exasperating to encounter self-made obstacles on our way to a goal that we desire in our best interests. Nevertheless, there is no justification or even any meaning in a person scolding himself for his resistances. He is not to blame for the development of the forces behind them, and, besides, the neurotic trends that they try to protect have given him a means of dealing with life when all other means have failed. It is more sensible for him to regard the opposing forces as given factors. I am almost inclined to say that he should respect them as a part of himself—respect them not in the sense of giving them approval and indulgence but in the sense of acknowledging them as organic developments. Such an attitude will not only be more just to himself but will also give him a much better basis for dealing with resistances. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
If he approached the resistances with a hostile determination to crush them, he would hardly have the patience and willingness necessary for their understanding. If resistances are tackled in the way and in the spirit indicated, there is a good chance that they are no stronger than one’s constructive will. Those that are stronger present difficulties that can at best be overcome only with expert help. However, what really makes my stomach turn over is this picture of love, love, love, and I love everything you do and never say no. That is what the words say to me. It may be wide of the mark to the man who wrote them. When my child bites another child, I do not love that. However, when he explains, “He tore my lei, and I bit him, and he bit me, and (with angry tears) we each had only one bite before the teacher made us stop!” I have a deep feeling for him, and love him. When I discover that my child has forged a letter from her father and presented it at school, I do not love that. However, I recognize that she is in a steam-roller situation and that handling it in this way is necessary, and I love her. My love for my children then is agape—not “adorning,” but very much being with. There is no “pride” (although at other times I am guilty of this). There is humility and humanness. There is a connection between “thought” and “concern.” Both psychology and sociology have as their object man. I can get to know a great deal about man by observing him like any other object. I—the obserber—stand against my “ob-ject” (“ob-ject” and “objection” have the same root; in German, Gegenstand = “counterstand”) to oberse it, describe it, measure it, weigh it—yet I do not understand that which is alive if it remains an “object.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
I understand man only in the situation of being related to him, when he ceases to be a split-off object and becomes part of me or, to be still more correct, when he becomes “me,” yet remains also “not-me.” If I remain a distant observer I see only manifest behaviour, and if this is all I want to know, I can be satisfied with being an observer. However, in this position the whole of the other person, his full reality, escapes me. I have described him from this and the other aspect—yet I have never met him. Only if I am open to him and respond to him, and that is, precisely, if I am related to him, do I see my fellow man; and to see him is to know him. If I am filled with myself, how can I see the other man? To be filled with oneself means to be filled with one’s own image, with one’s greed, or with one’s anxiety. However, it does not mean “being oneself.” Indeed, I need to be myself to see the other. How could I understand his fear, his sadness, his aloneness, his hope, his love—unless I felt my own fear, sadness, aloneness, hope, or love? If I cannot mobilize my own human experience, mobilize it and engage myself with my fellow man, I might come to know a great deal about him, but I shall never know him. To be open is the condition to enable me to become filled with him, to become soaked with him, as it were; but I need to be I, otherwise how could I be open? I need to be myself, that is, my own authentic, unique self, in order to throw out myself, in order to transcend the illusion of the reality of this unique self. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
As long as I have not established my own identity, as long as I have not fully emerged from the womb, from the family, from the ties of race and nation—in other words, as long as I have not fully become an individual, a free man, I cannot throw away this individual and thus experience that I am nothing but the drop of water on the crest of the wave, a separate entity for a split of a second. Justice itself, which has been in a state of pilgrimage and crucifixion and now is being slowly liberated from the grip of social and political demonologies in the East as well as in the West, begins to question its own premises. The modern revolutionary movements which have challenges the sacred institutions of society by protecting social injustice in the name of social justice are here examined and re-evaluated. In the light of this, we have no choice but to admit that the un-freedom against which freedom is measured must be retained with it, namely, that the aspect of truth out of which the night view appears to emerge, the darkness of our time, is as little abandonable as is man’s subjective advance. Thus the two sources of man’s consciousness are inseparable, not as dead but as living and complementary, an aspect of the “principle of complementarity” through which Niels Bohr has sought to unite the quantum and the wave, both of which constitute the very fabric of life’s radiant energy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to provide a safe, professional, and courteous team that strives to exceed the community’s expectations and their organization. Their focus is on preserving the past and protecting the future of those they serve. “I went to X Truck on X Street, which was the second busiest in the city. I spent twenty years up there, and I loved it. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t make lieutenant in that time. I fell in love with the company and the men I worked with. They were great, and we had plenty of action, we were involved in all kinds of fires and rescues. The company had a good name. When you said X Truck, people looked up. I really enjoyed that. Many a time I took the fire department over other personal things that came up. Whether it was a trip with the family or whatever, if the fire department has something to do, I would give up the trip to participate with the department. When it was time for me to go to the National Fire Academy at Emmitsburg, if the family had something planned for that weekend, I tried to talk myself and the family out of it so I could to Emmitsburg. There’s nothing I really dislike about my job, maybe some of the budgetary problems, that’s all. I did shift work all these years, and I like that. I like doing day work and night work, back and forth. Firemen don’t like to show emotion. Rather than show any emotion, you shove everything off with a little humor. Even in tragic situations, in order to protect yourself you kind of bring some humor out. Not that its’ funny, not by a long shot. But you can always find a little bit of humor in it. I could that out when I got injured a couple of years ago. It’s just to protect the way you think we are supposed to be, I guess. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“We’re getting more EMS calls these days than fire calls. You get a lot of silly calls with those. I remember one of the calls we had, and this was an emergency call, we brought in a medic unit and an engine company, and we have six guys pulling up with their sirens blowing. Here is a guy standing there, and he’s been drinking, and he’s seeing pink elephants. It’s ridiculous that we are even running on these types of calls. There has to be some way to screen the calls, cut them down or educate the people. That’s what I think.” The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to protecting the residents and businesses of the community. Providing aid promptly and efficiently, and enduring the safety and well-being of everyone in Sacramento is what they strive to achieve. Specifically, the desire to prevent the loss of life and property by responding to emergencies in a professional manner. Parents, please be sure to raise your children to love America and make them aware that being patriotic is our duty. Also, it is a good idea to buy American made cars and other products to endure the longevity of this great nation. We also want to respect law and order, love God and Jesus Christ and treat every human being with care and compassion. You can also help save lives and property and protect the future of our community by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for All! Come, O Sabbath-day, and bring peace and healing on thy wing; and to every troubled breast speak of the divine behest: Thou shalt rest. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
The Winchester Mystery House
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
As Daily Necessities Become Harder to Afford
Day after day, the American people are witnesses to the phenomenon of spreading poison among the people through the instrumentality of the Democratic party and gutter journalism; and yet they are astonished at the deplorable “moral standards” and “national indifference” of the masses. Many people can only fight for something that they love. They can love only what they respect. And to respect a thing, they must have some knowledge of it and feel that it is something that is protecting them. The social problem is that crime is no longer illegal under the rule of the Democratic party, and several honest Americans believe that they are being penalized through unfair taxes and hyperinflation. When they come home in the evenings for working so hard to pay for handouts that people who are committing crimes unlawfully receive, they are dead tired. Democrats are exploiting the working masses. There is nothing that they do not drag in the mud. During these days of mental anguish and deep meditation, the American people see before their mind the ever-increasing and menacing army of people who can no longer be reckoned as belonging to their own nation. We gaze at the leaders of the Democratic party, watching that enormous human dragon slowly uncoiling itself before the World. This has caused many to feel dismayed and depressed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
As daily necessities become harder to afford, Americans have amassed $1.14 trillion in credit card debt. That is $27 billion more than credit card debt they carried in the second quarter of 2024. The high tally comes as concerns of an economic recession triggered by modestly rising unemployment, and as soaring costs in food, housing and automobile rates continue to drain household budgets. Americans have increasingly been relying on credit cards to pay the bill, with 60 percent of Americans using credit cards to buy groceries in 2023. As more people are carrying significantly more debt, extended periods of debt are causing more Americans to fall behind on their credit card bills. Approximately 7.18 percent of credit card users have fallen into delinquency in the second quarter, up from 5 percent in the previous quarter. American paid down some of their credit card debt in 2020 using pandemic-related federal stimulus funds. However, beginning in 2021, credit card balances drastically increased by 48 percent, caused by high inflation and high interest rates. Debt owned on mortgages and automobile loans also increased by $77 billion and $10 billion, respectively. Total consumer debt has grown to $18 trillion. And the average rate on a credit card is nearly 25 percent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Last week’s jobless rate increased worries that a recession is here. The numbers included an increase of 114,000 in non-farm payrolls during July, down from 179,000 in June and far below analysts’ forecast of 175,000 gain. And the unemployment rate rose to 4.3 percent, the highest since October 2021. Many have also stated that housing costs are so high because there is a shortage in the supply of houses. However, that is not so. During 2000 and 2020, America had a surplus of 3.3 million homes. This defies conventional wisdom that the nation is facing a housing shortage. Builders over built housing units and in 2024, they are still trying to absorb that enormous over build. There is a shortage of housing that low- and very low-income families can afford. In most cities and small towns, there is an average shortage of 8,000 housing units that low- and very low-income families can afford. For those households, which require government assistance to find housing, the absolute highest they can afford to pay for rent is $550. Building new homes and apartments cannot address the shortage for the absolute poorest. No private developer can build a unit that [$550] price and survive. Just the property taxes, insurance, and utility costs exceed that number. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Many people do not want low-income housing in their communities either. Low-income housing often increases crime rates in good areas as it attracts seedy individuals. Violent crime wreaks a terrible impact not only on individual victims, their families, and friends but also on nearby residents and the fabric of their neighbourhoods. Exposure to violent crime can damage people’s healthy and development, and violence can push communities into vicious circles of decay. However, policing hot spots can be effective. Nonetheless, the 20,000,000 illegal immigrants that President Biden and Vice President Kamla have packed into the cities is drastically increasing costs and putting a burden on the poor and taxpayers. The southern border crisis is costing American taxpayers around $451 billion per year for services provided to a record number of illegal aliens under the Biden administration. When higher taxes are costs are preventing private industry from building affordable housing, Vice President Kalama has expressed support for allowing immigrants residing in American to obtain public health insurance, regardless of legal status. Tax increases and handouts are hurting everyone. This struggle against their own kind, their own nest, their own homeland is as senseless as it is incomprehensible. It is unnatural and we need another political party to represent America and the American people. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
The Czarist Democratic administration is corrupt and largely incompetent and, in addition to all this, the Democratic party and the riots of 2020 have bled the American people without bringing them victory. The economic conditions are not able to sustain a capitalistic society. To turn a disciplined working population into a peasant population, and to force the population to accept the higher taxes, illegal immigration and communism, the rapid accumulation of capital has been used to force people to take government subsidies by putting the nation on house arrest and forcing them not to go to work and to accept vaccines and through the threat of terror. This was due to the Democratic party’s mad suspiciousness and their unlimited desire for personal power—a terror which went far beyond what would have been necessary to maintain capitalism, and which, in fact, in many ways weakened their economy and military position. Because the Democratic party is also pushing to take away the second amendment and because of the crime waves caused by illegal immigration and not enforcing the laws, to tend this terror, many people are advocating a police state. While this state does not permit the expression of opinions critical of the system, and even less of corresponding political activity, it is believed that it will free the average citizen from the fright of being a victim of crime in the night and early-morning hours. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The degradation of the Biden administration, finding its completion when President Biden was ruled incompetent to run for reelection in the summer of 2024 and replacing him with the inexperienced Vice president Kamala, has been carried out by the display of confusing phraseology about liberty and human dignity, all promulgated with an air of profound ignorance and disturbing promises; a carelessly-woven glitter of words to dazzle and betwixt the public. The daily Press has inoculated this new doctrine of American degradation in the most brutal fashion. No means have been too base, provided they could be exploited in this campaign of slander. These journalists are virtuous in the art of twisting facts and presenting them in a deceptive form. The theoretical literature was intended for the simpletons of the soi-distant intellectuals belonging to the middle and, naturally, the upper classes. The TV news media propaganda is intended for the masses. However, probing into books and newspapers and studying the doctrines of Democracy should reawaken one’s love for their own people and country. Thus, what at first seems an impassable chasm will become the occasion of a closer affection. Once one understands the working of the colossal system for poisoning the popular mind, only a fool can blame the victims. The American people must learn to become more independent, and this will allow them to understand the inner cause of the success achieved by the American Dream gospel. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
One will better come to understand why the Democratic party wants to burden taxpayers with debt and make homeowner ship and rent unaffordable. In clear light of the brutal reality, one will see inevitable consequences of high taxes, hyperinflation, and government subsidies. America is headed towards a communistic system under the current administration. Now, the American people’s sensibilities are not so much under the sway of abstract reasoning but are subject to the influence of a vague emotional longing for strength that completes their being, and they would rather bow to propaganda than to see the truth. The masses of people prefer the dictator to being their own leader and earning the American Dream through hard work and determination. They have extraordinarily little idea of how to be strong capitalists and thus they are prone to abandon their freedom and autonomy. They feel very little shame at being terrorized intellectually and they are scarcely conscious of the fact that their freedom as human beings are impudently abused; and thus they have not the slightest suspicion of the intrinsic fallacy of the Democratic doctrine. They do not even see the ruthless force and brutality of its determined utterances, to which they always submit. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The American citizen knows what he can do and what he cannot do and, provided he moves within these limits, he need not be afraid. The Democratic party sill uses revolutionary and socialist ideas voiced by Marx, Engles, and Lenin as ideologies which give a sense of meaning to the masses. Yet they are unaware that the socialist movements always end on the tragic note of failure. The Democrats are carrying on a campaign of mental terrorism against Americans, who are neither morally nor spiritually equipped to withstand such attacks. The tactics of the Democratic party consists in opening, at a given signal, a veritable drumfire of lies and calumnies against the man whom they believe to be the most redoubtable of their adversaries, until the nerves of the latter give way, and they sacrifice the man who was attacked, simply in the hope of being allowed to live in peace. However, the hope will prove always to be a foolish one, for they will never be left in peace. The same tactics will be repeated again and again, until fear of these mad dogs exercises through suggestion, a paralyzing effect on their victims. Through its own experience The Democratic party has learned the value of strength, and for that reason it attacks mostly those in whom it scents stuff of more stalwart kind, which is indeed an exceedingly rare possession. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
However, the Lord can reassure that He is near and that He will lead us through the darkest days of our lives. Life is not always easy to live, but the opportunity to do so is a blessing beyond comprehension. In the process of living we will face struggles, many of which will cause us to suffer and to experience pain. Many people will suffer in personal struggles, while others will suffer as they watch their loved ones in pain. To gain strength in our struggles, we must have an optimistic perspective of the principles in the plan of salvation. We must realize that we have a personal Saviour whom we can trust and turn to in our times of need. We must also learn and live the principles the Lord has given to receive the strength needed during our struggles. “And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and He said unto those who were with Him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an Earth whereon these may dwell,” reports Abraham 3.24. This Earth is the place to prove ourselves worthy and to prepare to return to the presence of the Lord. “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them,” reports Abraham 3.25. The Lord explains the purpose for which we must be tested during this Earthly experience. “My people must be tried in all things, that they may be prepared to receive the glory that I have for them, even the glory of Zion; and that that will not bear chastisement is not worthy of my kingdom,” report Doctrine and Covenants 136.31. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Part of the plan is that there is an opposition in all things. We are given the agency to choose between these opposites in the proving process. “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility,” reports 2 Nephi 2.11. In our pre-Earth life, we understood and sustained the plan of salvation with the principles of opposition and agency. We knew we would have experience in this life that would cause us to struggle and sometimes to suffer. Some of our struggles involve making decision, while others are a result of the decisions we have made. Some of our struggles result from choices others make that affect our lives. We cannot always control everything that happens to us in this life, but we can control how we respond. Many struggles come as problems and pressures that sometimes cause pain. Others come as temptations, trials, and tribulations. Yet struggles are part of the sacred sanctification process. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
There are no soft or slothful ways to become sanctified to the point that we are prepared to live in the presence of the Saviour. And there can be blessings in the burdens we bear. As a result of these struggles, our souls are stretched, and our spirits are strengthened. Our character becomes more Christlike as we are tried and tested. Even though these experiences may cause pain, suffering, and sorrow, we have absolute assurance. If it be suffered in resignation, and if it be met with patience, no pain suffered by man or woman upon the Earth will be without its compensating effects. “And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou because into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thing enemy; if the Heavens gather darkness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of Hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 122.7. People respond to struggles in different ways. Some feel defeated and beaten down by the burdens they are called to bear. Many begin to blame others for their difficulties and defeats, and they fail to follow the counsel of the Lord. It is a natural tendency to seek the easy road on life’s journey and to become discouraged, filled with doubt, and even depressed when facing life’s struggles. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
If we follow the revealed eternal principles, we will gain strength during our struggles and will be blessed as we bear our burdens, deal with difficulties, and overcome obstacles in our lives. If we are to gain the strength that we need, we must come to know the Saviour and follow His counsel. “But behold, verily, verily, I say unto you that mine eyes are upon you. I am in your midst as ye cannot see me,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 38.7. When we imagine, we are envisioning possible ways for the World to be. Imagination is play with the possibilities of transforming the World from the way it is now perceived to be to some new form. Of course, it takes action to transform an image of a possible self in a possible World into an actuality that can be perceived by others and by oneself. Imagination is a way of “traveling,” of overcoming one’s present situation, to envision possibilities that might make life more livable, more fulfilling. The free play of imagination, then, is the way in which we experience new possibilities for the World. It is one of our most precious gifts of evolution, because it is only through such vision that we can save ourselves when our situation has become unlivable. Anything that diminishes or makes banal our imagination chains us more tightly to a here and now that may not be viable. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Every compelling goal and project, whether projected for five minutes or five years into the future, rests upon our capacity to imagine another way for the World to be, with us in it. Such a vision of transitional utopia may function as an irresistible temptation or invitation that the person may accept, showing this acceptance through action. Just as imagination can enliven us, ordering and directing our life, so it can demoralize us, even kill us. If one imagines oneself to be weak or helpless, it is but a short step from imagination to belief that such is the case. Healthy personality calls for the ability to discriminate among modes of experiencing. Under conditions of intense need or emotion, a person may confuse imagination with perception and with confirmed truth. There is another aspect of imagining, or literally “image-ing,” that when misunderstood can affect a person’s body and action in deleterious ways but that, appreciated, can serve the person’s well-being and growth. When a person engages in imagining, it is done not just with the mind, but with the entire body. Indeed, the art of actin on the stage is a deliberate, imaginative imitation of some other person. One “becomes” the imagined person, acting and experiencing the World as the role requires. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Hypnotists tell subjects that they are tired, or strong, or that they can remember the past so well that they will become three years old again, and the compliant subject “yield.” They fulfill the hypnotists’ suggestions by being as they imagine a tired or strong person is, and they act as they imagine or remember what it was like to by three years old. One’s body image is the way in which one chronically imagines the body to be, whether weak or strong, energetic, or exhausted, vulnerable to disease or resistant. Fisher and Cleveland were able to show that an image of one’s own body as only weakly “bounded” was related to increased susceptibility to diseases and malfunction of the internal organs, such as stomach ulcers; an image of one’s body as rigidly armored against the World—excessively so—was related to diseases of the skin, bones, and muscles, for example, arthritis. I have been so impressed by the influence of imagination upon one’s body and one’s capacities to act that I say to my patients, “Be careful how you imagine yourself to be, because you might become that way.” So-called psychocybernetic and optimistic thinking work in this way, as a kind of self-hypnosis or intense argument with oneself, by saying, “I can do this, I can survive, I can succeed,” and believing the statement. This self-[persuasion can affect a person in beneficial ways, just as imagining oneself as dead, or as a failure, can bring the image of doom to reality. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
When a person becomes aware of an existing blockage, he should drop whatever analytical pursuits he is engaged in and take the resistance as the most urgent problem to be tacked. It is as useless to force himself to go one against the resistance as it would be to try again and again to light an electric bulb that does not burn; one must see where the electric current is blocked, whether in the bulb, in the fixture, in the cord, in the switch. The technique of tackling a resistance is to try to associate it. However, in all resistances occurring during analytical work it is helpful, before associating, to go over the notes that precede the blockage, because there is a fair chance that the clue for it lies in an issue at least touched upon, and that while glancing over the notes the point of departure may become evident. And sometimes a person will not be capable of going after a resistance immediately: he may be too reluctant or feel too uneasy to do so. It is advisable then, instead of forcing himself, merely to make a note that at this or that point he suddenly felt uneasy or tired, and to resume work the next day when he may have a fresh perspective on matters. In advocating that he “associate to a resistance” I mean that he should consider the manifestation of the blockage and let his thoughts run freely along that line. Thus, if he has noticed that no matter what problems are concerned his interpretations always make him come out on top, he should try to take that finding as a point of departure for further associations. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
If he has become discouraged at a finding he should remember that the latter may have touched upon the factors that he is not yet able or willing to change, and try to associate with that possibility in mind. If his difficulty is in starting to analyze, though he feels a need for self-examination, he should remind himself that a previous piece of analysis or some outside occurrence may have produced a blockage. One object of script analysis is to fit the patient’s life plan into the grand historical psychology of the whole human race, a psychology which apparently has changed but little from cave days, through the early farming and ranching settlements and the great totalitarian governments of the Middle East, up to the present time. Dr. Freud, Jung, and their followers have demonstrated irrefutably that the logic, the heroes, and the deeds of myth survive into modern times…The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of Forty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change. While the hero of the myth achieves a World-historical triumph, the hero of the fairy tale achieves merely a small domestic victory. And patients are patients, we may add, because they cannot achieve the victories they aim for and still survive. Hence, they come to the doctor, “the knower of all the secret ways and words of potency. His role is precisely that of the Wise Old Man of the myths and fairy tales whose words assist the hero through the trials and terrors of the weird adventure.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
The way the Child in the patient see it, no matter how his Adult tells the story, it is quite evident that all children, since the beginning of humanity, have had to cope with the same problems, and have had about the same weapons at their disposal. When it comes to cutting, life is the same old wine in new bottles: coconut and bamboo bottles gave way to goatskins, goatskins to pottery, pottery to glass, and glass to plastic, but the grapes have hardly changed at all, and there is the same old intoxication on top and the same old dregs at the bottom. So, there will be found little variation in the shapes of the adventures and the characters involved. Hence, if we know some of the elements of the patient’s script, we can predict with some confidence where he is heading, and head him off before he meets with misfortune or disaster. That is called preventive psychiatry, or “making progress.” Even better, we can get him to change his script or give it up altogether, which is curative psychiatry, or “getting well.” Thus, it is not a matter of doctrine or necessity to precisely find the myth or fairy tale which the patient is following; but the closer we can come, the better. Without such a historical foundation, errors are frequent. A mere episode in the patient’s life, or his favourite game, may be mistaken for the whole script; or the occurrence of a single animal symbol, such as a wolf, may lead the therapist to bark up the wrong tree. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Relating the patient’s life or his Child’s life plan to a coherent story which has survived for hundreds or thousands of years because of its universal appeal to the primitive layers of the human mind, at least gives a feeling of work from a solid foundation, and at best may give very precise clues as to what needs to be done to avert or change a bad ending. For example, a fairy tale may reveal elements of a script which are otherwise hard to dig up, such as the “script illusion.” The transactional analyst believes that psychiatric symptoms result from some form of self-deception. However, patients can be cured just because their lives and their disabilities are based on a figment of the imagination. The philosopher achieves what is rare—a cool mental detachment from things or persons, united with a tender feeling for them. No man can become philosophical and yet derive complete satisfaction from or attach complete importance to whatever is favourable in his external life. He sees to clearly how transient, how imperfect, and how compensated by disadvantages it all is. Indeed, he outgrows the excessive common interest in and the excessive common preoccupation with the ebb and flow of external life. He finds more and more trivial what he once found—and the generality of men still find—worthy of serious attention. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Is it possible to be inwardly aloof from the pleasurable things of the World and yet be outwardly able to enjoy them? It is possible to love another in a human way yet retain the inner detachment requisite for resting in philosophic peace? Can we make the best of these two Worlds? Just as we can learn by practice to remain inwardly peaceful amid outward turmoil, so we can learn to remain peaceful during outward pleasure. However, this practice is hard to learn, and most beginners fail at it. For a man to train himself in emotional control over the mad loves and insane passions, the recurrent longings, and tormenting desires, is like training himself to die. Let no one underestimate this tremendous task. We plan to gain insight into the meaning of man, who not only is determined by history but who also determines history. History is to be understood as concerned not only with the life of man on this planet but as also including such cosmic influences as interpenetrate our human World. This generation is discovering that history does not conform to the social optimism of modern civilization and that the organization of human communities and the establishment of freedom and peace are not only intellectual achievements but spiritual and more achievements as well, demanding a cherishing of the wholeness of human personality, the “unmediated wholeness of feeling and thought,” and constituting a never-ending challenge to man, emerging from the abyss of meaninglessness and suffering, to be renewed and replenished in the totality of his life. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to the preservation and protection of life, property, and the environment from fire, disaster, and hazardous materials related incidents through emergency mitigation, public education, and code reinforcement. “In every fire station it’s important for everybody to be able to perform at maximum efficiency at all times. We don’t get working fires every day, though lately we’ve been very busy. With applicants of the firefighter job, we use urinalysis. I think it’s a better test than polygraph. I think a lot of people are eliminated unnecessarily because of the polygraph. I’m in favor of a good, lengthy background investigation and urinalysis. We have a lot of young guys in the department. They’re not stereotypically troublesome people. Many of them are married, so there is no drinking or drug abuse problem there. People think that firefighters have a pretty soft job. They don’t see the guys at three in the morning. They don’t see them after one of their fellow firefighters has died or when a child has died in a fire. They don’t see the look on the guys after they come off duty, the total exhaustion from fighting a fire. We have a lot of education to do. At three fires this year that I was in charge of, we lost kids, multiple fatalities. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“In comparing fire departments, I think what the administrators fail to look at is the types of buildings we have. In cities like Scottsdale, Arizona, or Plano, Texas, where they have sprinkler ordinances, they don’t have the risks in property and people that older cities have. I discuss the job with my wife a lot. She has always been a great support to me, and she always worried about me going to work. That was on her mind. One year we lost seven guys. There was a fire in a garage where they were repairing a propane truck. A water heater was on the floor, and the truck blew. We lost three guys there. Then we had a fire at a metallurgical factor, where manganese dust collected and blew up, and we lost four guys there. So the fact that you could get killed on the job was pretty evident. I never really worried about it. I was always safety-conscious. I became interested in the problems of protective clothing because I saw the need for it. When I got promoted, that was always my prime concern. You want to get through your whole career without having any firefighter who works for you getting killed. When something like that happens, it makes you take a look at things and reassesses your position. We have difficulty convincing the city managers of the need for minimum manning on the fire trucks. Though we don’t have five men on a truck anymore, we feel fortunate that we have been able to maintain four and four, that is, four on a truck and four on an engine. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“The department has been cut down from twelve hundred men to something like nine hundred ninety. We have had problems where we haven’t had enough truck companies to cover the city. The city administration doesn’t appreciate truck work. They don’t understand the importance of immediate search and ventilation. And if the truck company can’t do its job, it makes it really unsafe for the firefighters. The city was interested in consolidating, closing down stations. So we consolidated three stations into one. About a month later, there was a fire where we lost a lady who ran a restaurant. She was a celebrity in that area. The people in the community were really upset, and the city responded by reopening a single station. It was our busiest engine company. The consolidated station was a long way from the fire site. It took longer to respond. So the single house was reopened. There’s always a debate about whether you’re better to arrive in the fire ground in sixty or so seconds with a single engine company or, say, in three minutes with three companies. It’s more expensive to operate single houses, but I doubt that this house will be closed down again. Computers are certainly not right when it comes to a lot of things, because there are many factors AI technology cannot consider. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“I can’t say the city hasn’t cooperated as far as protective clothing goes. I can’t think of anything that the present chief or the chief before him didn’t push for us at city hall. I think Sacramento was the first major department to use Nomax turnout coats. But when they combined the two busiest battalions into one superbusy battalion. I know the administrators have a lot of demand put on them, and obviously they are trying to save money. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a disaster for people to see their mistakes. Right now, I’d like to see more manning on the fire companies. The heavy fire duty makes for better camaraderie. It’s not like having an eight-hour job. You will with these people, you work with them, you die with them. It’s a special feeling. There’s nothing else like it in the World. In the past, it was a very close-knit group in the firehouse. We did a lot of things together. We had a lot of activities with families, with groups. We would have picnics together. We’d have outings together at each other’s houses. There’s a different feeling now, though, because things have to be run differently. We have a serious morale problem, where a lot of members think there’s been unequal treatment. Many houses still have a good feeling of camaraderie, but morale is not what it used to be. So we are conscious of building morale. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“My best time in the fire department was when I was a captain and a battalion chief. I was five or six years with Truck X, the busiest truck company in the city. We had a super group of guys. I worked with a lieutenant who was older than me. And he was truly a firefighter’s firefighter. He would do anything and go any place. We had a god we had taken in. That dog would climb the aerial ladder. He was fantastic. He went to all the fires with us. This was really a close-knit group of guys who really took pride in the job. You could count on any one of them for anything. You like to see that kind of company. My lieutenant died at fifty-five. He could have retired. He had a heart attack after coming back from a fire in a housing project. That was a very traumatic experience. The man was doing what he wanted to do. He stayed on a busy company until the day he died. It seems that our best companies and the closet companies are the ones that are busiest. Out of five hundred new firefighters, 95 percent are conscientious young guys who really want to do the job. And they do do the job. We have problems, but they’re different problems. During the time of the riots, you felt here was a good change you were going to get injured or killed, maybe not even from a fire. We had incidents where our apparatus was shot at, tires were flattened, hoses were cut. The risks were so great it made the troops come that much closer together. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“We have had fires where somebody dies, the family is distraught, and they try to blame somebody. And the one they like to blame is the firefighter. We had a fire recently in an apartment house, and two children died. The people complained about our response time. Well, when it was all brought out, from the time we received the call until the time the two victims were in the hospital, it was less than five minutes. That includes getting to the scene and taking the victims out of the building. That’s a pretty tight time span. When you lose kids in a fire, you try to be diplomatic, but people get distraught. They don’t appreciate what you’ve done, and you have to understand them. That’s one of the tough things” The Sacramento Fire Department is a premier public safety organization committed to the safety and welfare of their community. You can help save lives and property by donating. Also, to help preserve our community, please raise your children to love America, be patriotic, love God and Jesus Christ, respect law and order, treat others with dignity and kindness, and to buy American made cars and other American made goods and services. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I before Thy greatness stand and am afraid; all my secret thoughts Thine eye beholdeth, deep within my bosom laid. And, withal, what is it heart and tongue can do? What is this my strength, and what is even this, the spirit in me too? However, indeed, man’s singing may seem good to Thee; so I praise Thee, singing, while there dwelleth yet the breath of God in me. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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The Fittest Survived
Many Americans are finding in hard to make it in the economy of Bidenomics because the price of everything is rising and the wages are so low. The fast-food industry received a higher wage, and this has driven up prices and it is making it more difficult for seniors to survive because their cost-of-living increase does not keep up with inflation. Thus, several Americans have found themselves in the same situation as those who have recently migrated to America, even though they have lived here for generations and have been working with a cast-iron determination to support their families and maintain their home. Once liberating from all paralyzing prejudices of class calling, environment and tradition, they are once again finding themselves subject to discrimination because they can no longer able to provide for their families and themselves in the same capacity that they were able to just four years ago. The median income in California is $78,672, the median home price is $786,730, and the median rent is $2,850. The average American spends $475.25 a month on food, $417 on gasoline, and $137 a month on electricity, $147 a month on car insurance, and $477 a month on health insurance. Therefore, many are prices out of the housing market and a significant number of people are having a hard time finding affordable rentals. As a result, people are extra-hand ready to take any second job that turns up by chance, just for the sake of earning their daily bread. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The magic glimmer that once spread over the big cities and suburbs has been replaced by the gloomiest uncertainty of being able to earn a regular daily livelihood under this current administration. In fact, the element of uncertainty in steadily earning one’s daily bread is the bitterest feature of the whole socioeconomic system itself. Some people are even pawning and selling the last of their belongings to make ends meet. Increasing poverty in America has become evident as there is a homeless crisis. Several people have been made to mix up with a class of human beings through whom their minds are now poisoned, in addition to their physical misery. Thus, even a man who is normally of industrious habits grows careless in their whole attitude towards life and gradually becomes an instrument in the hands of unscrupulous people who exploit him for the sake of their own ignoble aim. The democratic party currently seems to be aimed at the destruction of the State, the whole social order and even civilization itself. As citizens see this process exemplified before their eyes, the longer they observe it, the greater becomes their dislike for the mammoth city which greedily attracts men to its bosom, to break them mercilessly in the end. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
In this current economic crisis, the tie with their own people is broken. They are thrown about so much in life that they feel the effects of it on their own soul. The constant loss of earnings and increase in expenditures has caused their bodies to grow accustomed to vicissitudes of food and hunger, eating heartily in good times, and going hungry in bad. Indeed, hunger shatters all plans for rationing expenditure on a regular scale in betters times when they have paid down some of their bills. Therefore, the moment bills are paid down, he forgets to regulate the expenditure of his earnings but spends them to the full without thinking of tomorrow. This leads to confusion in the little weekly housekeeping budget, because the expenditure is not rationally planned. When the phenomenon first happens, the earnings will last perhaps for give days instead of seven; on subsequent occasions they will last only for three days; as the habit recurs, the earnings will last scarcely for a day; and finally, they will disappear in one night of feasting. Often there are wife and children at home. And in many cases, it happens that these become infected by such a way of living, specially if the husband is good to them and wants to do the best he can for them and loves them in his own way and according to his own lights. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Then the week’s earnings are spent in common at home within two or three days. The family eat and drink together as long as the money lasts and at the end of the week they hunger together. Then the wife wanders about furtively in the neighbourhood, borrows a little, and runs up large debts with pay day loans and credit cards to pull through the lean days towards the end of the week. To outsiders, it appears that a middle-class family in this situation is doing well because they do not talk about how hard they are having it and appear to be keeping of their lifestyle. However, they are worried about how to pay the mortgage, how to pay insurance, how to keep gas in the cars, how to keep the lights on, and are thus hungry as they dream of the plenty that is to come. And so, the children become acquainted with misery in their early years. However, the evil culminates when the husband goes his own way from the beginning of the week and the wife protests, simply out of love for the children. Then there are quarrels and bad feelings and the husband takes to drink and drugs and according as he becomes estranged from his wife. He now becomes drunk every Saturday. Fighting for her own existence and that of the children, the wife must hound him along the road from the office to the tavern to get a few shekels from him on payday. Then finally, he comes home, maybe on the Sunday or the Monday, having partied with his last shekels and pence, pitiable scenes follow, scenes that cry out for God’s mercy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
While some were disgusted and indigent, they have come to recognize the whole tragedy of their misfortune and to understand the profound cases of it. They are the unhappy victims of evil circumstances. For several, housing conditions are unbelievably bad currently. Many live in surroundings of appalling misery. I shudder to think of the woeful dens in which people dwell, the night shelters and the slums, and all the tenebrous spectacles of ordure, loathsome filth, and wickedness. In Minnesota, we have already seen what happens when the hordes of emancipated slaves came forth from their dens of misery and swooped down on their unsuspecting men. However, this other World has not thought about the possibility of this happening on a national level, in several states, hundreds of cities, and thousands of downtowns and suburbs. The democrats have allowed these things to go on without caring and even without suspecting—in their total lack of instinctive understanding—that sooner or later destiny will take its vengeance unless it will have been appeased in time. As a nation, we pray that people will emerge from all this misfortune and misery, from this filth and outward degradation, were not human begins as such but rather lamentable results of lamentable laws. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
We need a president who will create better fundamental conditions of social development by establishing a profound feeling for social responsibilities among the public; second, we need a leader who will combine this feeling for social responsibilities with a ruthless determination to prune away all excrescences which are incapable of being improved. Just ns Nature concentrates it greatest attention, not to the maintenance of what already exists but on the selective breeding offspring in order to carry on the species, so in human life also it is less a matter of artificially improving the existing generation—which, owning to human characteristics, is impossible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred—and more a matter of securing from the very start a better road for the future. The American mind has become dominated by a self-conscious, willful, iron-mailed philosophy of immoralism under President Biden. In the past, the militarists assured the Americans that they were the elite of mankind, a race of supermen destined to conquer the Americas or the World through Manifest Destiny. They preached that might makes right, that war is a biological necessity, and that conquest is justified by the survival of the fittest. The old churchmen preached of war as a just judgment of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
The modern natural scientists see in a war a propitious mode of selection. War is not merely a necessary element in the life of nations but an indispensable factor of culture, in which a truly civilized nation finds the highest expression of strength and vitality. Since its decisions rest on the very nature of things, war gives a biologically just decision. It is not only a biological law, but a moral obligation, and as such, an indispensable factor in civilization. In all directions, the American people see proof that they are the Chosen People. They interpret the doctrine of evolution to draw from it a warrant for their aspirations. Evolution teaches that “the fittest survived.” The champions of the philosophy of supermania lean heavily on biology to support their creed. They have been misled by the phrase “the survival of the fittest.” You might infer, to hear them buzz, that only the fittest survive, or, to put it conversely, the fact that you survive is proof that you are the “fittest.” In the essential circularity of the Darwinian sociology, power and strength are defined in terms of survival, and survival is in turn explained by strength and power. All changes in types of survival and kinds of fitness are considered without relation to ulterior values; there is no value beyond survival itself. Rome conquering the World by force of arms is as good as Greece conquering it by force of ideas or Judea conquering it by force of religious sentiment. Indeed, because of its biological origins, this view shows a strong tendency to favour the cruder and more violent forms of struggle, as being more unmistakably biological. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The Intellectual World and public opinion have accepted Darwinism by almost unanimous consent as an integral part of the theory of evolution. Darwin believes that the “fittest” are those who best adapt to their conditions. However, struggle is often confused with the total death of the vanquished, whereas this selective factor hardly ever operates among men. The entire phenomenon of mutual assistance is ignored by the philosophy of force. It is to this that man owes his dominant position in the Universe. In a large sense, all mankind is an association, and all wars are civils wars; yet the philosophers of force have never advocated civil war as a source of progress. American society sees its own image in the tooth-and-claw version of natural selection, and believes its dominant groups are therefore able to dramatize this vision of competition as a thing good. Ruthless business rivalry and unprincipled politics seem to be justified by the survival philosophy. If the dream of personal conquest and individual assertion motivates the middle-class, this philosophy seems tenable, and its critics remain a minority. This version of Darwinism depended for its continuance upon a general acceptance of unrestrained competition. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
However, nothing is so unstable as “pure” business competition; nothing is so disastrous to the unlucky or unskilled competition; nothing is so difficult as to keep the growing number of the “unfit” reconciled to the operations of such a regime. In time the American middle-class shrank from the principle it had glorified, turned in flight from the hideous image of rampant competitive brutality, and repudiated the once heroic entrepreneur as a despoiler of the nation’s wealth and morals and a monopolist of its opportunities. The life of man in society, while it is incidentally a biological fact, has characteristics that are not reducible to biology and must be explained in the distinctive terms of a cultural analysis; the physical well-being of men is a result of their social organization and not vice versa; social improvement is a product of advances in technology and social organization, not of breeding or selective elimination; judgements as to the value of competition between men or enterprises or nations must be based upon social and not allegedly biological consequences; and there is nothing in nature or a naturalistic philosophy of life to make impossible the acceptance of moral sanctions that can be employed for the common good. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The Marxist theory, as well as the socialist movement, was radical and humanistic—radical in the sense of going to the roots, and the roots being man; humanistic in the sense that it is man who is the measure of all things, that his full unfolding must be the aim and the criterion of all social efforts. The liberation of man from the strangle hold of economic conditions which prevented his full development was the aim of all Marx’s thought and efforts. Socialism has become successful, gained power, and in this very process succumbed to its opponent—the spirit of capitalism. This development is not too surprising. Capitalism is successful beyond anything the early socialists could have visualized. Instead of leading to an ever-increasing misery of the works, the progress of technology and of the organization of capitalist society made it possible for the workers to benefit from its advances. True enough, this happened to some extent at the expense of colonial peoples; and furthermore, it happened to some extent through the fight of the socialist parties and trade unions for a greater share in the social product. However, whatever the role of these various factors may have been, the result is that the workers and their leaders were more and more captivated by the spirit of capitalism and began to interpret socialism in accordance with capitalist principles. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
While Marxism had aimed at a humanist society transcending capitalism, a society which would have as its aim the full unfolding of the individual personality, most socialists regarded socialism as a movement to improve the economic and socio-political situation within capitalism; they considered the socialization of the means of production, plus the principles of the welfare of the state as a sufficient criterion of a socialist society. The principles of this type of “socialism” were essentially the same as those of capitalism: maximum economic efficiency, large-scale bureaucratically organized industry, and subordination of the individual under this bureaucratic but economically efficient system. Basically, the majority of socialists in the West and in the East shared this capitalistic interpretation of socialism, but, according to their respective economic and political positions, they arrived at different solutions. The Western leaders began to make their peace with capitalism, the socialist leaders of both camps supported their governments claiming that they were supporting the war for the sake of freedom, because they had the good luck to be fighting the Kaiser and the Czar, respectively. When the imperial system in Germany collapsed as the result of prolonging a virtually lost war far beyond any reasonable consideration, the same leaders formed a secret alliance with the generals to defeat the revolution. They permitted first the growth of the Reichswehr, and of secret and half-secret semimilitary organizations which became the basis of Nazi power—and they virtually capitulated completely before the increasing strength and oppressiveness of the Nazi and nationalistic right-wing forces. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The French socialist leaders followed a similar direction, which led the French socialist party under the leadership of Guy Mollet to the open support of the Algerian war. In England, as in the Scandinavian countries, the situation was somewhat different. In these countries the socialist won majorities, either temporarily or continuously, and used their strength to build a welfare state. A highly developed system of social security and particularly of a social health service, brought to its full fruition the system which had been started by conservatives in Europe in the nineteenth century (Disraeli in England and Bismarck in Germany), and which was started in the United States of America under the leadership of F.D. Roosevelt in the thirties. In addition, The British Labour Party socialized some of the key industries, believing that such socialization of the means of production was the touchstone of true socialism. However, while they satisfied the economic interests of the workers, their brand of socialism ceased to be the vision of a fundamental change of the human condition. They lost one election after another and sought to recoup their losses by giving up almost all radical aims. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The same process occurred in Germany, where the Social Democratic Party not only gave up almost all socialist aims, but also accepted the principles of nationalism and rearmament to such an extent that the social democratic policy is hardly distinguishable from that of their opponents. The growing perception and responsibility of our World Age point to the new reality that the individual person and the collective person supplement and integrate each other; that the thrall of totalitarianism of both left and right has been shaken in the universal desire to recapture the authority of truth and human totality. Mankind can finally place its trust not in a proletarian authoritarianism, not in a secularized humanism, both of which have betrayed the spiritual property right of history, but in a sacramental brotherhood and in the unity knowledge. This new consciousness has created a widening of human horizons beyond every parochialism, and a revolution in human thought comparable to the basic assumption, among the ancient Greeks, of the sovereignty of reason; corresponding to the great effulgence of the moral conscience articulated by the Hebrew prophets; analogous to the fundamental assertions of Christianity; or to the beginning of the new scientific era, the era of the science of dynamics, the experimental foundations of which were laid by Galileo in the Renaissance. An important effort of this Series is to re-examine the contradictory meanings and applications which are given today to such terms as democracy, freedom, justice, love, peace, brotherhood, and God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
The purpose of such inquiries is to clear the way for the foundation of a genuine World history not in terms of nation or race or culture but in terms of man in relation to God, to himself, his fellow man and the Universe, that reach beyond immediate self-interest. For the meaning of the World Age consists in respecting man’s hopes and dreams which lead to a deeper understanding of the basic values of all peoples. The happy ending of the fairy tale is suspect, and does not occur in real life. Fairy tales are told by well-meaning parents, and the happy ending is an intrusion of a benevolent but mendacious Parental ego state; tales made up by children themselves are more realistic, and do not necessarily have happy endings; in fact, they are notoriously gruesome. A resistance that expresses itself is difficult to detect, and it will cause a loss of time. However, if one finds after a while that no progress has been made, or that one is only moving in circles in spite of having worked at the problems concerned, its presence may be suspected. It is important in self-analysis—as in any analysis—not to be deluded about the progress made. Such a delusion may life one’s spirits for a whole, but it easily prevents the discovery of a deep-seated resistance. This possibility of a wrong integration of findings is one of the reasons any an occasional checkup with an analyst is desirable. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
For years, when my life was turbulent and others seemed so serene, I thought they had chosen the right way, I the wrong one. I felt that I had been rebellious, not “satisfied as I should have been.” There was one thing that I did not know about my friends: they did not talk about their troubles as I did about mine. It is only in our later life that they are beginning to reveal themselves to me. I have truly no regrets for my life, no bitterness. It would have been nice to be able to do better than I have, but without where I have been I could not be where I am now. When I say this to my friendly puppy friends, they sign. At other times, they express a bitterness, briefly but recurrently, which makes my toes curl to think of living with it. So it seems to me that I have to come off better, and there are intimations that they think so too. When the easter therapist writes “pampered” I am not sure what he means, because who means why by “pampered”? He also wrote, “able to lock what confronts him.” Is that a true statement, or an ideal? A doctor once told me, “If you cannot life it, run.” I ran. Some dragons are too much for any George. In my youth, before I had got so much loused up, and did not need someone else to tell me what to do, I enjoyed licking what confronted me, but some things looked to me like a steamroller, and it seemed a better idea to step aside than tilt with it. If “able to lock what confronts him” included being able to accept the fact that there are some things I cannot lick, then I agree. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Although sometimes it is only for the present that I run away: later, I may be able to return and lick what I could not earlier. That does not mean that I could have done it in the first place. I just had not grown up to that one yet. However, what really makes my stomach turn over is this picture of love, love, love, and I love everything you do and ever say no. That is what the words say to me. It may be wide of the mark to the man who write them. The act of disciplined thinking about one’s World, to make sense of what has been going on and to solve problems, is another way of experiencing the World with the doors of perception temporarily shut. In fact, when people want to reason and argue with themselves to arrive at some conclusion, they seek quiet surroundings. Thinking in a disciplined way, according to rules of logic, is a skill that contributes to effective action. However, we can think wishfully, and fearfully, too, when our needs and passions are aroused. Such autistic thinking may lead us to conclusions that conform to our feelings but misinform us about the way the Worldly really is. Autistic thinking calls for reality testing—a way to review the argument the thinking embodies and to check the conclusions by means of fresh perception. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Compulsive thinking interferes with living; it blocks perception and inhibits effective action. Indeed, one of the functions of meditation is to still one’s chattering mind. Such stilling is akin to learning how to discipline the act of speaking. Compulsive thinking is like a compulsive talking; it does the person no good. Disciplined thinking to solve a problem is illustrated as follows: the person carries on an inner dialogue, saying, “If I act in this way, it is likely to produce these consequences, whereas if I don not, the problem will persist.” Whether or not this type of thinking will lead to effective action can then be tested. Autistic thinking is a kind of reverie where the person’s inner dialogue is deliberately allowed to proceed unchecked by the discipline of reason, and merges into imagination; for example, “I wish I had ten people in love with me at once, would that not be grand?” and so on. Alienated thinking, or chatter, is akin to being in the company of a boring chatterbox who will not allow you to see, hear, or think as you wish because of the constant din of talk. The higher meaning of “Love thy neighbour” as revealed in meditation is to confer a blessing, and identify with his higher self. Total goodwill is, after all, only an ideal because it must be practiced towards our enemies and those we dislike not less than toward our friends and those we like. We can only try to come close to it in difficult cases. The attempt may elicit grace, which will carry us further in the same direction. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The Sacramento Fire Department provides all fire suppression, prevention, and education programs in the city as well as paramedic emergency medical services to the residents and visitors of the Sacramento community. “I was an engineer for nine years before I became a captain. I was not really excited about being an officer until my eighth or ninth year, when the captain I was working for at the time sort of pushed me. The responsibility for the lives of others doesn’t weigh too heavily on me. I’m very confident in myself and my abilities. I know the guys I work with feel that way, that I know what I’m doing. Most of the firefighters feel that way. They have a good self-image. They are confident in what they do. It’s a macho image.” The Sacramento Fire Department strives to provide excellent service to the community. By donating to the Sacramento Fire Department, you can help save lives and property. And remember parents, raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to buy American cars and American made good, to love God and Jesus Christ, to respect law and order and to treat others with respect and compassion. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. At the dawn I seek Thee, Refuge, Rock subline; set my prayer before Thee in the morning, and my prayer at even time. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
We can’t wait to be decked out in Halloween decorations soon 🎃
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
What I Have is Good and Still I am Unhappy
Our Heavenly Father wants us to love ourselves, to see ourselves as He see us: we are His cherished children. When this truth sinks deep into our hearts, our love for God grows. Berating others does not help them progress; it only discourages them. Along with correction, they also need encouragement. The goal with self-love is never to justify omission, rationalize sin, or slip into complacency. I recognize that certain negative feelings can help me, such as godly sorrow—but I should not wallow in it, because that is not progression. Guilt has an important role as it awakens us to changes we need to make, but there are limits to how far guilt will help us. Guilt is like a battery in a gasoline-powered BMW. It can light up the Ultimate Driving Machines, start the engine, and power the headlights, but it will not provide the fuel for the long journey ahead. The battery, by itself, is not sufficient. Ans neither is guilt. I must be intentional not to slip into negative thinking patterns and should instead focus on loving Jesus as the Christ. I once had an image of myself as a fish. My fish image was that I was a fish, struggling to swim against the stream. I was not able to do that yet. I was held where I was, which gave a chance to learn how to swim against the stream (go the way that I wanted to go) by two shadowy figures on a bridge, each of them holding a line which I was hooked like a fish. This kept me from being swept away by the swiftly moving stream. I know that the two figures were the doctor and Aldous Huxley. Neither of them understood everything, but each of them understood enough to be helpful. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
When I got worse physically, the doctor got me back to some degree of steadiness. When, through experimenting with my mind, I got into something that neither the doctor nor I understood, so I was afraid to go on with it, I wrote to Huxley and he explained it. These two men kept me from being swept away while I thrashed around, learning how to swim against the stream. This was a persistent image that I lived with for about a year. These men were also people to whom I could tell anything and they would not “call the cops.” This meant to me that they would not call men to lock me up. I thought of being “locked up” as being in a madhouse, but it was not a mental hospital that I was afraid of, although I did not know what the “madhouse” was. It meant being pushed back into what I was struggling to get out of. Other people tended very much to do this to me, so I lived more and more alone and when, at last, I was just barely able to travel I went to a place where I knew no one, and kept myself alone, so that I could get together with myself. I wanted desperately to be with someone who understood more than I did about what I was trying to understand, but since I could not do that, I could at least remove myself from people who were confusing me. After all that, some of my present knowings seem small and perhaps ridiculous, but I know now that they are not “unimportant.” I am living near the beach in an apartment which has an outside deck with a railing. When my son was here, he started to throw his damp swimming trucks and towel over the railing, then said, “The management probably wouldn’t like that—I can see why.” I agreed, and his statement was accurate, but whose seeing was the seeing why? When I agreed, in my mind there was an image of the uncluttered railing as described, something that I like. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
However, a few days later when I walked past a building with a railing draped with swimsuits and towels, I knew that I liked this, that to me it looked gay and human, alive with an activity of people. Then I knew how much I missed seeing clothes on lines blowing in the wind, people working untidily in gardens, sweeping sidewalks, dashing out of houses half-dressed to do something that should be done right now, or a woman drying her hair in the sun. When I looked out on the tidy street with no sign that anyone lives behind the curtains in the windows of the houses, it seems so lifeless. The alwaysness of this tidiness tires me the way that hunger does; something is missing from my intake. If no one else feels as I do, this still is the way that I feel, and when I think that I do not, I am not together with myself. If I could deceive myself completely by accepting other people’s values, then there might be an argument for giving up and letting other people tell me what to do. However, my inner valuing does not cease: it just gets buried to my knowing and is forever in conflict with the values that I have accepted from outside. When I had not noticed my own valuing of the street on which I live, there was nothing that I could do about it but be irked without knowing why, and feel that I must be ungrateful because “what I have is good” and still I am unhappy. Now that I have noticed, I feel happy. The conflict in me has been removed. Having accepted myself, I can accept other things too, in a way that is very different from “making the best of it.” It is the way I lived from age 12 to 16, when I wanted to quit school but the law would not let me. So, I lived with what was around me, including school, until the time when I could leave. The circumstances are different now, but the feeling is the same. I do not feel trapped. I do not feel that something has been done to me (victimized). And I do not feel guilty. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Currently in the United States of America there has been a lot of resentment to people who have immigrated illegally. Because of that, anyone who looks like they could be of Hispanic background have been facing a lot of discrimination. However, even if someone has illegally immigrated, it is not right to treat them less than human. If you do not like people being allowed to immigrate illegally, then that that up with your government, stop voting democrat. It is not your place to judge them. All individuals are children of God and part of His divine family. As His children, we all have divine potential and are precious in His eyes/ The scriptures teach that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men,” and “all are alike” unto Him. He does not love one race or culture more than any other. The gospel of Jesus as the Christ is for all of God’s children. The Book of Mormon teaches that the Lord invites “all to come unto Him and partake of His goodness; and He denieth none that come unto Him, black and white, bond and free, male and female.” Our standing with God depends on our devotion to Him and His commandments, not on the colour of our skin, our ethnicity, our citizenship status, or other attributes. Because we are children of God, we are all brothers and sisters. God has commanded us to “love one another.” In the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus Christ taught that the commandment to love our neighbour transcends ethic, cultural, and religious differences. The Saviour exemplified this teaching. He “went about doing good,” teaching and healing people of all backgrounds. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Manifest Destiny; the belief that it is our duty, as Americans, to settle the continent, conquer the World and prosper. The idealized settlers who reached the promised land of the West were ordained by God to expand the boarders of America from sea to shining sea. The settlers overcame death to reach the American West, bathed in a welcoming golden light. There was a price to be paid, however. Frontiersmen had to be willing to face the risks inherent in migration—but had their parents not faced similar risks in coming to America? They had to be willing to do the backbreaking work required to turn a wilderness into prosperous farms and towns—but had their ancestors not done that as well? They had to be willing to break with the familiar and comfortable, and even face hardship—perhaps even death. They created the blueprint to expand America’s dominion over the entire planet, and perhaps one day there will no longer be any boarder and people can travel freely to whatever part of the World they wish. So many people want to come to America because it does have a lot of freedom and law and order. With Manifest Destiny, this freedom and law and order will spread to other parts of the World. I am grateful that the heart of the gospel revolves around love. The love of God, love of others, and love for myself. It would be a grave error to believe that philosophy is merely the practice of reflection over lofty or lovely thoughts. It is also the shedding of tears over low or unlovely ones, the remorseful weeping over past and present frailty, the poignant remembrance of errors and incapacities. We who practice it must examine ourselves periodically. This means that we should not, at any time, be satisfied with ourselves but should always recognize the need of improvement. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Hence, we should constantly strive to detect and remedy the moral, temperamental, and mental defects which disclose themselves. We will need to look into our hearts more deeply than ever before, and search their darker labyrinths for the motives and desires hiding away from our conscious aspiration. We are called upon to make the most searching criticism of ourselves, and to make it with emotional urgency and even profound remorse. If it meant only looking at our human frailty and mortal foolishness, this advice to look within would be idiotic. A morbid self-obsession, a continuously gloomy introspection and unending analysis of personal thoughts and experience is to be avoided as unhealthy. Such ugly egocentricity does not make us more “spiritual.” However, the advice really means looking further and deeper. It means an introspective examining operation much longer in time, much more exigent in patience, much more sustained in character, than a mere first glance. It means intensity of the first order, concentration of the strongest kind, spiritual longing of the most fervent sort. Although philosophy bids us avoid morbid thoughts of depression, doubt, fear, worry, and anxiety because they are weakening and because they represent only one side—the dark side—of a two-sided situation, this counsel must not be misunderstood. It does not bid us ignore the causes which give rise to such thoughts. On the contrary, it bids us take full note of them, face up to them, frankly, examine them carefully, and understand the defects in our own character which led to them. Finally, we are to adopt the practical measures needed to deal with them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
However, this once done, and thoroughly done, we are to turn our back upon them and let them go altogether to keep our serenity and contain our spiritual detachment. In every painful problem which is ultimately traceable to our own wrong-doing, the best way to rid ourself of the worry and anxiety it brings is first, to do what is humanly possible to mend matters in a practical way; second, if others are concerned, to make such reparation to them as we can; third, to unmask our sin pitilessly and resolutely for what it is; fourth, to bring clearly into the foreground of consciousness what are the weaknesses and defects in our own character which have led us into this sin; fifth, to picture constantly in imagination during meditation or pre-sleep, our liberation from these faults through acquiring the opposite virtues; sixth, and last, when all this has been done and not until then, to stop brooding about the miserable past or depressing future and to hand the whole problem with its attendant worries into the keeping of the Overself and thus attain peace concerning it. If this is successfully done, every memory of sin will dissolve and every error of judgment will cease to torment us. Here, in its mysterious presence and grace, whatever mistakes we have made in practical life and whatever sins we have committed in moral life, we need not let these shadows of the past haunt us perpetually like wraiths. We may analyse them thoroughly and criticize ourselves mercilessly but only to lay the foundation in better self-knowledge for sound reform. We must not forget them too soon, but we ought not hug them too long. After the work of self-analysis is well done, we can turn for relief and solace to the Overself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
We have been discussing Clare and her journey through self-analysis. During her period of inner turmoil, she obtained a new lease on life and a renewed incentive to work at the problems she was having in her interpersonal relationships. However, several questions arose. If the loss of her intimate partner, Peter, could still upset her as deeply as it did, what about the value of the foregoing analytical work? Two considerations have a bearing on this question. One is the insufficiency of the previous work. Clare had recognized the fact that she was compulsively dependent, and had seen certain implications of this condition. However, she was far from reaching a real grasp on the problem. If one doubts the value of the work accomplished one makes the same mistake that Clare herself made during the whole period before the climax, underrating the import of the neurotic trend and therefore expecting too quick and easy results. The other consideration is that overall, the final upheaval was itself of a constructive nature. It presented the culminating point of a line of development that runs from a compete ignorance of the problem involved, and the most vigorous unconscious attempts to deny its existence, to a final full realization of its severity. The climax brought it home to her that her dependency was like a cancerous growth which cannot be kept within safe boundaries (compromises) but must be eradicated lest one’s life be gravely jeopardized. Under the pressure of acute distress Clare succeeded, too, in bringing into sharp conscious focus a conflict which had hitherto been unconscious. She had been entirely unaware of being torn between wanting to relinquish her dependency on another person and wanting to continue it. This conflict had been camouflaged by her compromise solutions with Peter. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Now Clare had faced it, and was able to take a clear stand as to the direction in which she wanted to go. In this regard the phase she was now going through illustrates a fact mentioned in the past, that at certain periods in analysis it is necessary to take a stand, to decide. And if through the analytical work a conflict has sufficiently crystallized for the patient to be able to do this, it must be reckoned as an achievement. In Clare’s case the issue, of course, was whether she would immediately try to replace the lost pillar with a new one. Naturally it is upsetting to face a problem in that uncompromising way. And here a second question comes in. Did Clare’s experience produce a greater danger of suicide than it would have without analysis? For consideration of this question, it is relevant that she had indulged in suicidal notations at previous times. She had never, however, been able to terminate them so decisively as she did this time. Formerly they had simply faded out of the picture because something “nice” happened. Now she refunded them actively, consciously, and with a constructive spirit. Also, as mentioned above, her first reaction of gratefulness that Peter had not withdrawn earlier was in part a genuine feeling that she was now more capable of coping with his desertion. It seems safe to assume, therefore, that the suicidal tendencies would have been stronger and more persistent without the analytical work that was done. Human nature is universally frail; Clare’s is no exception. Nevertheless, if she is appalled at her mistakes, of this anguish is doubled because what she has done wrongly is irreparable, is there nothing else left to do than to give herself up to helpless despair? The true answer is more hopeful than that. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
I know that if one keeps patient while cultivating humility and silencing the ego’s pride, one shall grow away from old weaknesses and overcome former mistakes. This should be the first stage of her new attitude. For the next one, Clare can at least go over the events of the past and amend them in thought. She can put right mentally those wrong decisions and correct those rash impulsive actions. She can collect the profits of lessons expensively learnt. The first value of self-confession of sin is not so much getting rid of an uncomfortable sense of guilt over a particular episode or series of episodes as getting at the weakness in character responsible for them, and then seeking to correct it. Merely to remove the sense of discomfort and to leave its moral source untouched is not enough. Any priestly rite of forgiveness is ineffective until it is done. If it is to be real, if it is to be successful in purifying her character, it must produce repentance and that in its turn must produce penance. The second value of the confession is to induce the sinner to make amends or restitution to those one has hurt and thus balance one’s karmic account with them. Humans commit many sins and fall into many errors before the failure of their own conduct finally dawns upon them. By raising one’s point of view regarding any grievous situation, whether it involves oneself alone or other persons, one attracts the entry of a higher power into it which will work for one’s benefit and in one’s favour. One will learn to endure the blows of misfortune with a bravery heretofore unknown and a serenity heretofore unexperienced. It is better for one’s real progress that one’s eyes should fill with tears of repentance than with tears of ecstasy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
A healthy personality comes from the optimal self, which refers to a person who is functioning at the highest level. There are modes of human fulfillment, or characteristics of the optimal person. Efficiency: functional competence (being able to do things well), effective work autonomy (being able to work independently), and commitment to projects of concern outside of oneself. Creativity: experiences familiar things in fresh ways; openness to the novel, strange, and socially unacceptable; creates new style of life. Inner harmony: likes self; need for some amount of privacy or solitude. Relatedness: compassion, to be genuinely transparent, making self available to receive what others seek to communicate. Transcendence: mystical unity with a larger whole, relationship to some all-encompassing totality, to nature or God. Psychologists have been too timid and guarded in identifying the high-level functioning or healthy personality. We have disguised the true, human image of this person behind language that is so stiff that the person in the description is lost. The healthy personality is a “beautiful and noble person” (BNP). The beauty described here does not refer to physical beauty, although that may sometimes be found in the healthy personality. It more specifically describes someone whose behaviour and work is such that the effect upon self and other is one of producing an essentially aesthetic feeling. Nobility also, of course, does not refer to parentage but to the kinds of behaviour and acts performed by such a person. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
While some have argued that even psychotic people may sometimes be thought of as healthy, Ted Landsman insists that the BNP must first be normal—perceive reality essentially as it is and to be free of bizarre symptoms (such as hallucinations, grimaces, and so on). The first stage in the evolution of the BNP is described as the passionate self. The passionate self is seen as someone who truly likes, even loves himself or herself, someone who enjoys being alone, and who respects and accepts self. This is not the same as selfishness, but rather is an awareness of self as a worthwhile person. Bragging and possessiveness are avoided. The second stage involves a concept not dealt with in detail by most other writers: the environment-loving person. A passionate caring for the physical environment is seen in the person at this stage. The human relates to mountains, flowers, music, buildings—the entire physical environment—with appreciation and with joy, preserves it, nurtures it, and delights in it. The final stage in the evolution of the BNP is described as the compassionate self. This is a person who deeply loves others, who cares about people who hurt or are in need, and who acts, often at a great personal risk, to help others. The compassionate person does not only feel for others, but acts to alleviate or remedy their pains or injustices. There are major positive experiences that lead to the development of the beautiful and noble personality. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
There are experiences that lead to the development of the beautiful and noble personality: Positive experiences in childhood. Experiences of joy, delight, ecstasy at all levels, not just peak. High levels of intense positive feeling. Negative experiences that have been made positive in effect. These are important painful experiences, such as disgrace, failure, death of loved ones, automobile accidents, being fired from a job, which the person has been able to “turn around” and make into significant learning or growth experiences. The following, collected by Smith, is written by a female prisoner: “Coming to prison. Never thought it would happen to me. Anyone else but not me. It happened. I’m glad I’ve stopped and reviewed my life up to age 17. Complete destruction for me. I was destroying myself and going at it at top speed. I’ve met beautiful people here. I’ve learned a lot about me. This experience I would not change if I could. I need this. Now maybe I can be a better person. I can stop and think and reason with myself….Had I not served time I would still be going at top speed I’m sure. Only what would I be into now?” The solitude experience. Instances in which an individual can escape from the immediate pressures—social, job, interpersonal—and explore the self, one’s own feelings, one’s relationship to others, to the World. Opportunities to think freely and clearly are usually accomplished in solitude, in intentional isolation, such as a short walk in the woods, or a year’s living in the desert alone. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
The authentic dialogue. This, in a sense, is the obverse or “flip side” of the previous experience. You seek the opportunity to converse, deeply, freely, without guile or pretense, with someone you trust totally. Both persons in the dialogue must be committed to authenticity and openness, which differs somewhat from most counseling or psychotherapeutic approaches, where only the silent is the communicator about self. The transcendent experience is one in which you achieve far beyond what you would normally expect of yourself: writing an unusually beautiful open, being far more sensitive than one would expect, performing a physical feat such as lifting a beam from an injured person or winning an athletic contest. These experiences are difficult to predict or create, but when they do occur, they give you the sure confidence that you have possibilities and potential of which you never dreamed. The approach to beautiful and noble personhood stresses openness, relationship to self and to others. It builds up Maslow’s system of peak experiences to suggest the importance of a whole range of experiences, especially the positive, and inserts the importance of the relationship, a passionate one, with the physical environment, music, mountains, flowers, lakes, and so on. When a mane lets go of his ego, all the virtues come submissively to his feet. If he can let it go only for a little while, they too will stay only a little while; but if her can make the parting permanent, then the virtues are his forever. However, this is a high and uncommon state, for it is a kind of death few will accept. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The social character which makes people act and think as they must act and think from the standpoint of the proper functioning of their society is only one link between the social structure and ideas. The other link lies in the fact that each society determines which thoughts and feelings shall be permitted to arrive at the level of awareness and which must remain unconscious. Just as there is a social character, there is also a “social unconscious.” By “social unconscious” I refer to those areas of repression which are common to most members of a society; if the society with its specific contradictions is to operate successful, these commonly repressed elements are those contents which a given society cannot permit its members to be aware of. The “individual unconscious” with which Dr. Freud deals refers to those contents which an individual represses for reasons of individual circumstances peculiar to his personal life situation. Dr. Freud deals to some extent with the “social unconscious” when he talks about the repression of incestuous strivings as being characteristic of all civilizations; but in his clinical work, he mainly deals with the individual unconscious, and little attention is paid by most analysts to the “social unconscious.” The conflict between the unconscious reality within ourselves and the denial of that reality in our consciousness often leads to neurosis, by making the unconscious conscious, the neurotic symptom or character trait can be cured. Dr. Freud believed that this uncovering of the unconscious was the most important tool for the therapy of neurosis, his vision went far beyond this therapeutic interest. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Dr. Freud saw how unreal most of what we think about ourselves is, how we deceive ourselves continuously about ourselves and about others; he was prompted by the passionate interest in touching the reality which is behind our conscious thought. Dr. Freud recognized that most of what is real within us is not conscious, and that most of what is conscious is not real. This devotion to the search for inner reality opened a new dimension of truth. If he says what he knows, the person who does not know the phenomenon of the unconscious is convinced he says the truth. Dr. Freud showed that we all deceive ourselves to a larger or smaller degree about the truth. Even if we are sincere regarding what we are aware of we are probably still lying because our consciousness is “false,” it does not represent the underlying real experience within ourselves. Dr. Freud started out with observation on an individual scale. Here are some random examples: a man may have a secret pleasure in looking at pornographic pictures. He does not admit any such interest to himself but is convinced, consciously, that he considers such pictures to be harmful and that it is his duty to see to it that they are not exhibited anywhere. In this way he is constantly concerned with pornography, looks at such pictures as part of his campaign against them, and this satisfies his desire. However, he has a very good conscience. His real desires are unconscious, and what is conscious is a rationalization which hides completely what he does not want to know. Thus, he is enabled to satisfy his desire without sensing the conflict with his moral judgment. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Success in the 21st century will require new ways of doing things. Innovation requires the Sacramento Fire Department to systematically identify changes that have already occurred—in business, in demographics, in values, in technology or science—and then to look at them as opportunities. It also requires them to abandon rather than defend yesterday—something that is most difficult for existing companies to do so. “I worked with the Sacramento Fire Department for seven years. We had an eight-week basic firefighter course. We also attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and earned fire science degrees. They have a rather good fire science program. I was fortunate to have started at a very young age in a quite active fire department and had experience in just about every aspect of the fire service. I remember one of those biggest fires that I had ever seen. I was on the first ladder, second alarm. Two spectators and a fire policeman died. The scene was utter chaos. Conditions were deteriorating rapidly. The building was just being taken. It was beyond anything we could ever control. There was a downwind, the fire created more wind, all the characteristics of a conflagration. The thing was made completely out of wood. Our truck company did a lot of repositioning. We set up our aerial ladder and the ladder pipe at the end of the building, then the fire got hotter and hotter and we had to back out. It was amazing, the progress the fire made. It was self-propagating, and we repositioned three times. Rescues were made from ladders, a lot of people were rescued. Our company was at the scene at least thirty-six hours, but others were there a good three or four days. It taught me that firefighting would never be an easy job. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
“Before becoming a firefighter, I was already an emergency medical technician. On a typical day, we start by running several miles and then do a series of, let’s say, eight exercises, moving from one to the other. Then it would be classroom session. Then, in the afternoon, drill tower training, more classroom sessions, or actual fire simulation. What was nice about it is that this was Monday through Friday. On weekends I could ride on one of the busier engines or trucks in town. I had to retake emergency medical service training here as part of the program. We have to maintain our EMT status by taking a new test every two years. We put in hours, do a full day of practical work, and then we take the test. It’s an ongoing process.” Not only does the fire department save lives and reduces property loss, but they also prevent harm. Preventing harm covers many areas, including specialized rescue, health and wellness of citizens, and injury prevention. Protecting property includes protecting community resources—people, property, natural resources, the environment, and the community infrastructure—from harm and loss. Also, protecting property includes mitigation of natural and technological disasters. Simply put, preventing fires, injuries, and disease is the most effective means of “preventing harm.” Public education and prevention is of equal importance to fire suppression in the role of the fire service in the community. You can help the Sacramento Fire Department’s mission by making a contribution. Americans love to see America prosper. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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If Life is Not to be Trivial, it Must be Hard
Several people say they turn to the TV news to figure out what is going on in the World. However, only 20 percent of Americans regularly attend church, but 57 percent of Americans tune in to TV news. The Christian Bible is the account of God’s action in the World, and His purpose for creation. Therefore, it is more logical to attend church and learn more about the World, yourself and God. Psychology is a nice supplement to religion. Maslow continuously pondered what humans might become, in the hope of learning how more of us might grow toward those seemingly Utopian levels of being. Maslow’s work remains as one of the most helpful sets of principles governing the development of the healthy personality. He suggested the existence of two kinds of motivation: B, or being motivation, and D, or deficiency motivation. D-motivations are those that grab us when we are deeply deprived or have a loss of some basic need, such as the burglar who may be driven by hunger or the coward who may be driven by fear for personal safety. In contrast, the self-actualizing person is seen as motivated by the being needs, to be the fullest possible self, to be able to sing, create, work at highest capacity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
The peak experience concept has met with a great deal of interest. Maslow suggests the existence of these marvelous experiences that overwhelm the person and are great heights of delight and joy or meaningfulness, awesome experiences that may occur to a self-actualizing person but are not exclusively confined to that kind of person. Here are two contrasting examples of the more moderate peak or positive experiences collected from tenth-grade students: “Mine happened just last night. I love the summer and hate the winter. So last night when I stepped outside and found how warm it was I just couldn’t go back into the house. I walked around the house and then looked around. You can see all the houses around from our house and just looking around at them and hearing the sounds of the night relaxed me and I felt like I was watching over the whole World. It was a gentle feeling and gave me a little bit of a thrill.” “Yes, in the winter I love to walk out in the snow and let it fall lightly on my face. When this happens it seems to make a strange sort of happiness fall on me also.” Deep philosophic courage is a power not easily gained. A man must overcome much within himself, must hold his spine unbending and his effort undeviating. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
All those negative qualities which act as encumbrances to true understanding of situations, occasions, events, and persons must be guarded against in attitude and action. Amid his gross brutalization and maniacal exaggerations, Nietzsche’s evil mysticism expressed some truth. He affirmed rightly that if life is not to be trivial, it must be hard. His quest of the Overself must be an untiring one. It is to be his way of looking at the World, his attitude toward life. It is far more important to develop the strength within himself needful to break the spell than to be for preventative protection against it. In the first case, he progresses enormously and rapidly; in the second, he is static. Each difficulty surmounted, each weakness resisted will fortify his will and increase his perseverance. It will evoke the better part of his nature and discipline the baser, and thus fit him more adequately to cope with the next ones. He must be equally steadfast in adhering to this attitude whether other people utter complaints against him or make compliments to him. We must retain our determination and our loyalty to the quest in all circumstances. Physical pains, climatic extremes must not deter us. We must console ourselves with the thought that these things are certain to pass away. They are mental figments, ideas which will be negated, whereas the truth and reality we seek belong to the immutable, and can never be negated. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Few of us can withdraw from the World and most of us must engage in its activity. However, that is no reason for accepting the evils which are mixed in with this activity. Tenacity of purpose is a characteristic of all who accomplish great things. Drawbacks cannot disgust him, labour cannot weary him, hardships cannot discourage him in whom the quality of persistence is always present. However, to the man without persistence every defeat is a Waterloo. Indecision of purpose and infirmity of will must yield to the resolute mind and the determined act. The person who sways uncertainly between one side and the other misses opportunity. The student’s inner reactions to outer events provide him with the opportunity to use his free will in the right direction. His attitude towards his lower nature, that is, how far he encourages or discourages it, is another. And his recognition of what are good opportunities and what should be avoided, together with his acceptance or rejection of them, is still another. Mental indolence and moral lethargy are hardly likely to waft us into the high haven of spiritual peace. We must learn to think fearlessly and courageously about every problem that faces us; we must try to elevate our hearts above the level of the moral lepers and spiritually disabled of our time. He will learn to endure the blows of misfortune with a bravery heretofore unknown and a serenity heretofore unexperienced. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
If he is to achieve a full self-mastery, the strength of will which can lead a man to command of his desires for pleasure of the flesh cannot stop there. It must also go on to his diet and feelings, his speech and habits. However, many people, including the less affluent not only practice age discrimination, but they also advocate a lower-class bias. Class-stereotype is ambivalent, describing lower class people both negatively (less competent, less human, more objectified), and sometimes positively, perhaps warmer than upper class people. At a variety of levels and life stages, social-class stereotypes reinforce inequality. Sometimes, people who have benefited from Affirmative Actions like to uplift people of their culture, but discriminate against others as an act of revenge for bias that have faced. Social class matters, as a social construction, can be described in terms of what persons do; their jobs, habits, hobbies, lifestyles, but also in terms of what other people expect from them, their personality traits, life choices, aspirations, motivations. These oversimplified characterizations (id est, stereotypes) entail descriptions and prescriptions that impact individuals’ achievements, self-evaluations, and well-being. However, some of the elite feel a certain personal alienation from the dominant characters and opinions of American intellectual life, which doubtlessly quickens their championship of those who are thought to have little chance of succeeding in life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Some think that free silver is a poor social remedy, and it will only lead to monetary inflation like what many are experiencing since the COVID pandemic. There are also those who think the proper way to deal with poverty and inequality is by advocating careful elimination of the unfit and dependent, chiefly by eugenic methods. While others believe that education is a great way to end inequality. Proponents of equality want a field that shall be broad enough to embrace the whole human race. However, as it stands, we are assimilating a mass crude material from the bottom and they are just exacerbating conditions of racism, agism, discrimination, harassment, and facilitating the expansion of criminal activity. This is leading many to believe that society is doomed to hopeless degeneracy. Yet, it is possible to take another view. The only consolation, the only hope, lies in the truth that so far as the native capacity, the potential quality, the promise and potency of a higher life are concerned, those swarming, spawning millions, the bottom layer of society, the proletariat, the working class, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, nay even the denizens of the slums—that all these are by nature the peers of the boasted aristocracy of brains that now dominates society and looks down upon them, and the equals in all but privilege of the most enlightened teachers of eugenics. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
In the past, sociocracy, or the planned control of society by society was considered a solution. Under sociocracy, purposeful social activity, or collective telesis, could be harmonized with individual self-interest by means of attractive legislation designed to release the springs of human action for socially beneficial deeds by positive rather than negative and compulsory devices. Where individualism has created artificial inequalities, sociocracy would abolish them; and while socialism seeks to create artificial equalities, sociocracy would recognize inequalities that are natural. A sociocratic World would distribute its favours according to merit, as individualist demand, but by equalizing opportunity for all it would eliminate advantages now possessed by those with underserved power, accidental position or wealth, or antisocial cunning. We need to arrive at a better understanding of the importance of feeling in human motivation. The unique and artificial character of social organization and social processes are an odd inconsistency to deck out sociology with physics, chemistry, and biology, and to set it in the framework of a cosmological system. Some are not only ahead of the masses in point of time, but they are head, shoulders and hips above the general population in many respects scientifically. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
All the efforts which are made to develop and maintain the mental hygiene practices of our citizens help to restrain what would otherwise be an ever-growing demand for psychiatric services. The role of the family in contributing to emotional stability is a most crucial one and the programs in parent education which are offered under a variety of auspices play a vital role in contributing to sound psychological environments in the home. We would do well to give all possible support to programs in parent education and to resources for parent consultation; we should be particularly concerned to provide programs for parental guidance in those areas and communities in which they are presently lacking. The psychiatrist and psychologist can find especially effective avenues for their services as consultants in clinics or other programs for parent education. Next to home, the school provides a universal setting with potential for teaching and demonstrating sound mental hygiene principles. If the schools have been less than optimally effective in this responsibility in the past it is partly because they have been uncertain of the relative priorities of the provision of subject-matter instruction versus the stimulation of the pupil’s total personal growth. While the contribution of the individual teacher can occur in a variety of way, ranging from early detection of emotional distress and referral to provision of “emergency” tension relief and even relationship therapy, the optimal participation of teachers in mental hygiene activities is greatly enhanced in those schools that have provided for formal integration of mental health services, with the consultative assistance of professional workers. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Better preparation of teachers for their opportunities, responsibilities, and limitations as mental hygienists can help much to reduce the demand for specifically psychiatric or psychological treatment. Such resources for expert treatment of childhood problems are even more severely restricted than are those for adult patients, and there must be increasing attention to the development of consultative skills—on the part both of teachers and experts. The potential of the church and the clergy in helping to promote mental health and to render assistance in cases of milder personal maladjustments is presently only partially realized. Based on a questionnaire survey, it was found that the average clergyman devotes only about two hours per week to personal counseling. Fewer than one out ten spend as much as ten hours a week on this activity. There is, considering the readiness of the distressed person to turn to his clergyman, a clear need to augment the preparation of the minister for this activity and to support him in his endeavours to render assistance, especially by giving him access to consultation. Increasing the effectiveness of our public education toward positive mental health and working toward more effective utilization of the front-line troops in early recognition and treatment of emotional upset constitute two ways of holding down the always excessive demand for psychiatric help. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
A third avenue deserving careful consideration would consist of efforts to educate the public more specifically as to the precise nature of psychiatric treatment, specifically of psychotherapy, to try to lower the public’s presently naïve and immodest expectations of what occurs in and what can happen because of psychotherapy, and to encourage a proper appreciation for therapeutic conversation. As an important part of this effort, both psychotherapists and potential patients should be helped to recognize that there is neither magical cure nor specific expert treatment for the philosophical neuroses. If all of these methods of reducing the demand for the psychotherapeutic services of psychiatrist, psychologist, and social worker are vigorously pursued, the problem of manpower shortage will be alleviated but not solved. There will still be a fully “legitimate” call for individual psychotherapy exceeding the supply available through the present and future supply of the acknowledged specialist. Is there a rational and socially conscionable answer to this problem? The man who seeks to release himself from moral responsibility for his actions or his fortunes can in no way make any real progress on the spiritual path. He may improve his capacity to mediate, he may become more sensitive physically, but his real battle—against the ego—remains unfought and therefore unwon. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
We have looked at social character as the structure through which human energy is molded in such specific ways, that it is usable for the purposes of any given society. It is also the basis from which certain ideas and ideals draw their strength and attractiveness. This relation between character and ideas is easy to recognize in the case of the individual character structure. A person with a hoarding (anal, according to Dr. Freud) character orientation, will be attracted to the ideal of saving, he will be repelled by ideas of what he would call “reckless spending.” On the other hand, the person with a productive character will find a philosophy centered around saving “dirty,” and will embrace idea which emphasize creative efforts and the use of material goods is concerned, the relationship between character and ideas is the same. Some examples ought to show this relation clearly. With the end of the feudal age, private property became the central factor in the economic and social system. There had been, of course, private property before. However, in feudalism private property consisted largely of land, and it was connected to the social situation of the landowner in the hierarchic system. Since it was part of the social sole of the owner, it was not salable on the market. Modern capitalism destroyed the feudal system. Private property is not only property in land, it is also property in the means of production. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
All property is alienable; it can be bought and sold on the market, and its value is expressed in an abstract form—that of money. Land, machines, gold, diamonds—they all have in common the abstract money form in which their value can be expressed. Anybody can acquire private property, regardless of his position in the social system. It may be through industriousness, creativeness, luck, ruthlessness, or inheritance—the ownership of private property is not affected by the means of its acquisition. The security, power, sense of strength of a person does not, as in the feudal system, depend any longer on a person’s status, which was relatively unalterable, but on the possession of private property. If the man of the modern era loses his private property he is nobody—socially speaking; the feudal lord could not lose it as long as the feudal system remained intact. As a result, the respective ideals are different. For the feudal lord, and even for the artisan belonging to a guild, the main concern was the stability of the traditional order, the harmonious relation to his superiors, the concept of a God who was the final guarantor of the stability of the feudal system. If any of those ideas were attacked, a member of feudal society would even risk his life to defend what he considered to be his deepest convictions. For modern man the ideals are different. His fate, security, and power rest on private property; hence for bourgeois society, private property is sacred, and the ideal of the invulnerability of private property is a cornerstone in its ideological edifice. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Although the majority of people in any of the capitalist societies do not own private property in the sense used here (property in the means of production), but only “personal” property such as a BMW, television set, etcetera—that is, consumer goods—the great bourgeois revolution against the feudal order has nevertheless formulated the principle of the invulnerability of private property so that even those who do not belong to the economic elite have the same feeling, in this respect, as those who belong. Just as the member of the feudal society considered an attack against the feudal system immoral, and even inhuman, so the average person in a capitalist society considers an attack against private property a sign of barbarism and inhumanity. He will often not say so directly but rationalize his hate against the violators of private property in terms of their godlessness, injustice, and so on; yet and often unconsciously, they appear to him as inhuman because they have violated the sanctity of private property. The point is not that they have hurt him economically, or that they even threaten his economic interests realistically; the point is that they threaten a vital ideal. It seems, for instance, that the repugnance and hate which so many people in capitalistic countries have against communist countries is largely based on the very repugnance they feel against the outright violators of private property. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
There are so many other examples of ideas which are rooted in the socio-economic structure of a society that it is hard to select the most representative ones. Thus, liberty became the paramount idea for a middle class fighting against the restrictions that the feudal class imposed upon them. “Individual initiative” become an ideal in the highly competitive capitalism of the nineteenth century. Teamwork and “human relations” became the ideals of the capitalism of the twentieth century. Since “fairness” is the basic law of the free market in which commodities and labour are exchanged without force or fraud, fairness became the most popular norm in capitalist society. At the same time, the idea of fairness became identified with an older norm, “love thy neighbour,” via the popularized version of this norm in the form of the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The theory that ideas are determined by the forms of economic and social life does not imply that they have no validity of their own, or that they are mere “reflexes” of economic needs. The ideal of freedom, for instance, is deeply rooted in man, and it is precisely for this reason that it was ideal for the Hebrews in Egypt, the slaves in Rome, the German peasants in the sixteenth century, the German workers who fought the dictators of East Germany. On the other hand, the idea of authority and order is also deeply implanted in human existence. It is precisely because any given social order can appeal to ideas which transcend the necessities of this order that they can become so potent and so appealing to the human heart. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Yet why a certain idea gains ascendance and popularity is to be understood in historical terms, that is, in terms of the social character produced in each culture. One more qualification must be made. It is not only the “economic basis” which creates a certain social character which, in turn, creates certain ideas. The ideas, once created, also influence the social character and, indirectly, the social economic structure. Social character is the intermediary between the socioeconomic structure and the ideas and ideals prevalent in a society. It is the intermediary in both directions, from the economic basis to the ideas and from the ideas to the economic basis. Many people are confronted by a confusing false dichotomy. They believe that the choice is between an anarchic system without any organization and control and, on the other hand, the kind of bureaucracy which is typical both for contemporary industrialism. However, this alternative is by no means the only one, and we have other options. One option is between the “humanistic bureaucratic” or “humanistic management” method and the “alienated bureaucratic” method by which we conduct our affairs. This alienated bureaucratic procedure can be characterized in several ways. First, it is a one-way system; orders, suggestions, planning emanate from the top and are directed to the bottom of the pyramid. There is no room for the individual’s initiative. Persons are “cases,” whether welfare cases of medical cases, or, whatever the frame of reference is, cases which can all be put down on a computer card without those individual features which designate the difference between a “person” and a “case.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Our bureaucratic method is irresponsible, in the sense that it does not “respond” to the needs, views, requirements of an individual. This irresponsibility is closely related to the case-character of the person who becomes an “object” of the bureaucracy. One cannot respond to a case, but one can respond to a person. This irresponsibility of the bureaucrat, feeling himself part of the bureaucratic machine, most of all wishes not to take responsibility to make decisions for which he could be criticized. He tries to avoid making any decisions which are not clearly formulated by his case rules and, if in doubt, he sends the person to another bureaucrat who, in turn, does the same. Anyone who has dealt with a bureaucratic organization knows this process of being sent around from one bureaucrat to the other and, sometimes after much effort, coming out at the same door which he had entered without ever having been listened to except in the peculiar way in which bureaucrats listen, sometimes pleasantly, sometimes impatiently, but also always with an attitude which is a mixture of their own helplessness, irresponsibility, sense of superiority toward the “petitioning” subject. Our bureaucratic method gives the individual the feeling that there is nothing which he can initiate and organize without the help of the bureaucratic machine. As a result, it paralyzes initiative and creates a deep sense of impotence. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Firefighters are important because they save lives. The Sacramento Fire Department is a highly skilled organization which makes huge contributions to the community. “I was lucky enough to make a rescue after eight or nine months in the volunteers. Luck is a factor because, you have to be at a fire where somebody needs to be rescued. Then you have to be at the right place at that fire. You have to have enough knowledge to know how to do it and then be lucky enough to successfully pull it off. You can’t plan it. I don’t believe in fate per se, but I think there are certain things in the cards. I was fairly young. I was on a pumper, and we were the third or fourth pumper there. The truck company was pretty heavily engaged, and there were a number of people on the fire escapes. Sacramento is basically a bedroom community. You know, little private dwellings. All of a sudden, we had an -apartment house fire, which was taxing. It was a nine-story building, and the fire was in the cellar, so the whole building was at risk. My pumper pulled up, and another fellow and I reported to the chief. “What do you want us to do?” He said, “I’ve got a report that there’s a baby in that apartment.” A baby, right. It happens so often it seems to be a cliché. So we went up the hallway, it was pretty smoky, and we came to two doors. I had a feeling that the baby was to the right. The other guy said, “I’ll go straight.” I went into the room at the right, it wasn’t extremely hot, but it was smoky. On my first search I didn’t find anybody, but I figured I better do it again. The second time around, I found the baby lying on the floor between a night table and a bed, I guess he rolled off the bed or something, I’m not sure. He had on a little green-and-white-striped shirt and Pampers. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
“Right then, when I took him out, I knew that the rewarding feeling was similar to putting a fire out, only more so. Shortly after probie school, I was assigned to Engine Company 2 in Midtown Sacramento. There I was fortunate enough to be involved in my first City of Sacramento rescue. You make your own luck in many instances. It was very unusual for a probie in an engine company to be put into a search with an officer. We were at a false alarm when the dispatcher asked us if we were available. The battalion chief gave us the go-ahead, and we were first at the fire by a good fire minutes. It was a high-rise apartment building. Being a gung-ho probie, I had gotten completely geared up for the false alarm. I had a mask on and everything. The other guys, because it was a hot summer night and although this was a known false alarm box, hurried to the scene. People at the apartment were screaming that there was a baby trapped. Another baby, right. People leave them behind like old bathrobes. The lieutenant, seeing I was a new guy said, “Let’s go.” We went up the elevator part of the way, then ran up the stairs to the hallways leading to the fire apartment. The door was open, and the smoke was nearly to the floor. It was hot. We went in the direct of the heat. Again it was another one of those, he went to the left, and I went to the right, and I found this little boy on the floor. He was conscious, and I removed him to the street and took him to the hospital. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“The sad part was that there was another child in the apartment, the lady’s nephew. A guy, I think he was from another truck, went in off the aerial ladder, got in the window, cut himself on the glass, and made a real spectacular rescue of the child. The kid was badly burned, and he didn’t make it. It was just one of those things again. You just go along doing your job, and there you are. It was unusual for me to be there, because the truck company is in charge of forcible entry, going in and searching for victims, and they work more or less independently. Whereas in an engine company the people work together in one group to fight the fire. It was not so much aggressiveness on my part, it was my ‘gung-ho-ness.’ I was serious about every aspect of the job, even cleaning the brass, and every time we went out the door, I wanted to be fully prepared. And it paid off. Sure, putting out a fire is satisfying, there’s nothing like it except making a grab, rescuing somebody. But even in a busy area, some companies don’t make one grab a year. While a nozzle man in a busy area is going to put out three, four fire a night. There’s a lot to be said for that. That’s an enjoyable part of it, too.” Life safety is the primary job of the Sacramento Fire Department. You can help save lives by making a contribution. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Stolen Fruits are the Sweetest
Human sin derives from human ignorance of the Presence which is always within man. Who that is aware of It could possibly transgress, could oppose Its benignity or forget Its teaching of reciprocal Universal Laws. It is true that a face may proclaim the possessor’s character, but it is also true that often only a part of this character is revealed and that the hidden part is, schizophrenically, of an opposite kind. The fact must be admitted, as every saint has admitted it, that there are two poles in human nature, a lower and a higher, an animal and an angelic, an outward-turned and an inward-turned one. It is more just to say that each man’s nature is composed of both good and bad qualities. This must be so because the animal, the human, and the angel are all there in him. The need today is not for compromise or patchwork. It is for one, outright, generous gesture. When the teacher establishes an attitudinal climate, when he makes available resources which are relevant to problems which confront the student, then a typical process ensures. Not caring if he harms others, the selfish person thinks only of satisfying his own wants first. The next higher type thinks also of his immediate circle of family and friends. However, the highest type of all gives equal regard to himself, to his family, to whoever crosses his path, and to all others. He feels for everyone, never satisfying his desires by wrongfully taking away from, or harming, another. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
For students who have been taught by more conventional means, there is a period of tension, frustration, disappointment, disbelief. Students turn in such statements as “I felt completely frustrated by the class procedure.” “I felt totally inadequate to take part in this kind of thing.” “The class seems to be lacking in planning and direction.” “I keep wishing the course would start.” After an initial session in which opportunities and resources were described, one mature participant observer described the way one group struggled with the prospect of freedom. “Thereafter followed four hard, frustrating sessions. During this period, the class didn’t seem to get anywhere. Students spoke at random, saying whatever came into their heads. It all seemed chaotic, aimless, a waste of time. A student would bring up some aspect of the subject; and the next student, completely disregarding the first, would take the group away in another direction; and a third, completely disregarding the first two, would start fresh on something else altogether. At times there were faint efforts at a cohesive discussion, but for the most part the classroom proceedings seemed to lack continuity and direction. The instructor received every contribution with attention and regard. He did not find any student’s contribution in order or out of order. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
“The class was not prepared for such a totally unstructured approach. They did not know how to proceed. In their perplexity and frustration, they demanded that the teacher play the role assigned to him by custom and tradition; that he set forth for us in authoritative language what was right and wrong, what was good and bad.” This is a good description of the bafflement and chaos which is an almost inevitable initial phase of learning to be free. One fruit of the change will be that just as the old idea was to watch out selfishly for his own interests, so the new idea will be not to separate them from the interests of others. If he asked, “How can anyone who is attuned to such impersonality be also benevolent?” Well, because he is so attuned to the real Giver of all things, he need not struggle against anyone nor possess anything. Hence, he can afford to be generous as the selfish cannot. And because the Overself’s very nature is harmony and love, he seeks the welfare of others alongside of his own. He is entitled to seek his own profit and advantage, but only in equity with and considerateness for those of the other person concerned. Gradually students come to various realizations. It dawns on them that this is not a gimmick, but that they are really unfettered; that there is little point in impressing the professor, since the student will evaluate his own work; that they can learn what they please; that they can express, in class, the way they really feel; that issues discussed in class which are real to them, not simply the issues set forth in a text. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
When these elements are recognized, there is a vital an almost awe-inspiring release of energy. One student reads as she has never read before—two books a week in the subject and hopes this “will never end.” Others undertake projects of writing, experimentation, work in a clinic or laboratory with a new zest. The report of one student is typical of many and is worth quoting at some length. “I feel that I want to share my joy with you in relation to the paper that I gave you earlier today—it is what I call ‘my first real learning experience’…I took a few minutes after I finished typing my paper to think what had made this learning experience so different from the many others which I have had. These are my reactions, sketched briefly: Based on real need—not superficial topic…reading was done to satisfy my need, not merely to collect material to fit topic and sound good…I found that I had to scrap my original approach toward writing a paper when I realized that it did not have to sound good or conform to a prescribed pattern. I jotted down my usual idea of a good outline for a paper only to find that it was not geared to my need at all, and I turned to writing about things of significance to me and then made an outline of what I had written. One of the most ‘shocking’ parts of this experience, as I have related to you one day, was the fact that I did not have to do this and yet I wanted to be working on it all the time and rushed through assigned requirements in other courses to devote time to this. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
“I wrote an annotated bibliography for the first time in my life because I wanted to have information regarding this material I had read, for future reference….there was no feeling of drudgery about this paper—I found myself saying, ‘I’m going over to the library to work on my paper for a while’ instead of, ‘Oh, I suppose I’ve got to plow through some more books tonight or I’ll never het that paper done on time.’ The lack of external pressure made this experience one of the most enjoyable things I have ever done. Basically, through experience, it has changed my whole approach to teaching…” This student is discovering what it means to be autonomous, what it means to be creative, what it means to put forth disciplined effort to reach one’s own goals, what it means to be a responsible free person, and most important, is appreciating the satisfactions which come from these experiences. Another element which is a common part of the process is that the group develops a respect and liking for each other as individuals, as they emerge in the group discussion. A teacher trying this approach writes, “In this second group, also, I found that the students had developed a personal closeness, so that at the end of the semester they talked of having annual reunions. They said that somehow or other they wanted to keep this experience alive and not lose one another.” Those who regard altruism as the sacrifice of all egoistic interests are wrong. It means doing well by all, including ourselves. For we too are part of the all. We do not honour altruistic duty by dishonouring personal responsibility. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Up to a certain point in development, man does right in seeking self-gain. However, beyond that point, he must stop the process and seek self-loss. The attitude of non-interference in other people’s lives is a benign and justifiable one at certain times but an egotistic one at other times. The best charity in the end is to show a man the higher life that is possible for him. By selfishness it is meant seeking advantage to self in all transactions with complete indifference to others’ welfare. When the essential motive imposed on us by Nature is self-interest, it is useless to prate and prattle of altruistic motives. Every man has a right to be selfish. Trouble arises only when he hurts others to fulfil this aim. Then the same Nature which prompted him to concentrate on his own existence will punish him. For the law of compensation cannot be evaded: that which we have given to others, of woe or good, will someday be reflected to us. By human standards, nature itself is uneconomical. Its process proves the least economic of all conceivable process is concealed only by the vastness of the scale on which nature operates and the absolute magnitude of its results. Some of the lower organisms give off as many as a billion ova: only a few develop into maturity, while the rest succumb in the resulting struggle for survival. The waste of reproductive powers is fantastic. Haphazard human strife, particularly in the form of industrial competition, is similarly wasteful. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
Telic phenomena—those governed by human will and purpose—and genetic phenomena, the results of blind natural forces are fascinating concepts. In the face of the immense superiority of the telic over the genetic, the artificial over the natural, the persistent natural-law enthusiasm of laissez-faire theorists is like the nature-worship of Rousseauian romanticism, or, worse still, of primitive religion. The evolutionary view of nature as being in some way inherently beneficent is sheer mysticism. Man’s task is not to imitate the laws of nature, but to observe them, appropriate them, direct them. Just as there are two kinds of dynamic processes, so are there two distinct kinds of economics—the animal economics of life and the human economics of mind. Animal economics, the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, results from the multiplication or organisms beyond the means of subsistence. Nature produces organisms in superabundance and relies upon the wind, water, birds, and animals to sow her seed. A rational being, on the other hand, prepares the ground, eliminates weeds, drills holes, and plants at proper intervals; this is the way of human economics. While environment transforms the animal, man transforms the environment. Competition actually prevents the most fit from surviving. Rational economics not only saves resources but produces superior organisms. The best evidence for this is that whenever competition is wholly removed, as it is when man artificially cultivates a particular form of life, that form immediately makes great strides and soon outstrips those depending upon competition for their progress. Hence, the superior quality of fruit trees, cereals, domestic cattle. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Even in its most rational form, competition is prodigiously wasteful. Witness the social waste involved in advertising, a good example of the modified form of animal cunning which is the hallmark of business shrewdness. Furthermore, Laissez faire destroys whatever value competition might have in human affairs; for since complete laissez faire allows combination and finally monopoly, free competition can be secure only through some measure of regulation. Validity of norms is based on the conditions of human existence. Human personality constitutes a system with one minimal requirement: avoidance of madness. However, once this requirement is fulfilled, man has choices: He can devote his life to hoarding or to producing, to loving or to hating, to being or having, etcetera. Whatever he chooses, he builds a structure (his character) in which certain orientations are dominant and others necessarily follow. The laws of human existence by no means lead to the postulation of one set of values as the only possible one. They lead to alternatives, and we must decide which of the alternatives are superior to others. However, are we not begging the issue by speaking of “superior” norms? Who decides what is superior? If man is deprived of his freedom, he will become either resigned and lose vitality, or furious and aggressive. If he is bored, he will become passive or indifferent to life. If he cuts down to an IBM-card equivalent, he will lose his originality, creativeness, and interests. If I maximize certain factors, I minimize others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
The question then arises, which of these possibilities seems preferable: the alive, joyful, interested, active, peaceful structure or the unalive, dull, uninterested, passive, aggressive structure. What matters is to recognize that we deal with structures and cannot pick out preferred parts from one structure and combine them with preferred parts of the other structure. The fact of structurization in social as well as in individual life narrows down our choice to that between structures, rather than that between single traits, alone or combined. Indeed, what most people would like is to be aggressive, competitive, maximally successfully in the market, liked by everybody and at the same time tender, loving, and a person of integrity. Or, on the social level, people would like society which maximizes material production and consumption, military and political power and at the same time furthers peace, culture, and spiritual values. Such ideas are unrealistic, and usually the “nice” human features in the mixture serve to dress up or hide the ugly features. Once one recognizes that the choice is between various structures and sees clearly which structures are “real possibilities,” the difficulty in choosing becomes greatly reduced and little doubt remains which value structure one prefers. Persons with different character structures will be in favour of the respective value system which appeals to their character. Thus, the biophilous, life-loving person will decide for biophilous values, and the necrophilous persons for necrophilous ones. Those who are in between will try to avoid a clear choice, or eventually make a choice according to the dominant forces in their character structure. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
If one could prove on objective grounds that one value structure is superior to all others, nothing much would be gained; for those who do not agree with the “superior” value structure because it contradicts the demands rooted in their character structure, objective proof would not be compelling. Nevertheless, a desirable living system should grow and produce the maximum of vitality and intrinsic harmony, that is, subjectively, of well-being. An examination of the system of Man can show that the biophilous norms are more conducive to the growth and strength of the system while the necrophilous norms are conducive to dysfunction and pathology. The validity of the norms would follow from their function in promoting the optimum of growth and well-being and the minimum of ill-being. Empirically, most people waver between various systems of values, and hence never fully develop in one or the other direction. They have neither great virtues nor great vices. They are like a coin whose stamp has been worn away; the person has no self and no identity, but is afraid to make this discovery. When our protagonist Clare had recovered some degree of poise, she worked through certain implications of her findings of pain in intimate relationships. She grasped more deeply the meaning of her fear of desertion: it was because her ties were essential to her that she had such a deep fear of their dissolution, and this fear was bound to persist as long as the dependency persisted. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Clare saw that she not only hero-worshiped her mother, Bruce, and her husband, but had been dependent upon them, just as she was upon Peter. She realized that she could never hope to achieve any decent self-esteem if injuries to her dignity meant nothing compared with the fear of losing Peter. Finally, Clare understood that this dependency of her must be a threat and a burden to Peter, too; this latter insight made for a sharp drop in her hostility toward him. Her recognition of the extent to which this dependency had spoiled her relations with people made her take a definite stand against it. This time she dd not even resolve to cut the knot of separation. She knew that she could not do it, but also she felt that having seen the problem she could work it out within the relationship with Peter. She convinced herself that after all there were values in the relationship which should be preserved and cultivated. She felt quite capable of putting it on a sounder basis. Thus in the following months she made real efforts to respect Peter’s need for distance and to cope with her own affairs in a more independent fashion. Clare had discovered a neurotic trend—the first being her compulsive modesty—and a trend that she did not in the least suspect of existing. She recognized its compulsive character and the harm it did to her love life. She did not yet see, however, how it cramped her life in general, and she was far from recognizing its formidable strength. Thus she overrated the freedom she had gained. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
In fact, Clare succumbed to the common self-deception that to recognize a problem was to solve it. The solution of carrying on with Peter was only a compromise. She was willing to modify the trend to some extent but not yet willing to relinquish it. This was also the reason why, despite her clearer picture of Peter, she still underrated his limitations, which were much greater and much more rigid than she believed. She also underrated his striving away from her. She saw it, but hoped that by a change in her attitude toward him she could win him back. You are not always who you think you are. Not so much when you are young and growing, but once one has matured, we have a pretty good idea of who we are and what we stand for. Again, not everyone will stay around someone who says bad things to them—but some will. The brainwasher will say all sorts of things to make their victim believe they are not as smart as they thought they were. They will make one think twice about everything that comes out of their mouth. They will have a good reason to do those things as the brainwasher constantly corrects them, even when they thought the other individual was correct. Some people like to break others down entirely so they can trap them. The goal is to be able to control another individual and they do not like to move on. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
7The exploitative orientation, like the receptive, has as its basic premise the feeling that the source of all good is outside, that whatever one wants to get must be sought there, and that one cannot produce anything oneself. The difference between the two, however, is that the exploitative type does not expect to receive things from others as a gift, but to take them by force or cunning. This orientation extends to all spheres of activity. In the realm of love and affection, these people tend to grab and steal; they tend to fall in love with a person attached to someone else. We find the same attitude regarding thinking and intellectual pursuits. Such people will tend not to produce ideas but to steal them. It is a striking fact that frequently people with great intelligence proceed in this way, although if they relied on their own gifts, they might well be able to have ideas of their own. The lack of original ideas or independent production in otherwise gifted people often has its explanation in this character orientation, rather than in any innate lack of originality. The same statement holds true regarding their orientation in material things. Things which they can take from others always seem better to them than anything they can produce themselves. They use and exploit anybody and anything from whom or from which they can squeeze something. Their motto is “Stolen fruits are sweetest.” Because they want to use and exploit people, the “love” those who, explicitly or implicitly, are promising objects of exploitation, and get “fed up” with persons whom they have squeezed dry. An extreme example is the kleptomanic who enjoys things if he can steal them, although he has the money to buy them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
The most visible and acute part of the mental health problem resides in those patients with major psychiatric disorders who require hospitalization. These are the patients who must have the intensive and coordinated services of the most highly trained members of the mental health team—especially of the psychiatrist. If there were no limitations of money or personnel for the treatment of the major forms of psychiatric illness, the effectiveness of the treatment of the psychotic patient would still be sorely restricted by our lack of knowledge about etiology, pathology, and specific avenues of therapeutic action. There is an urgent need for a greatly expanded research endeavour. The design and execution of research into the causes and treatment of major mental illness requires the full-time effort of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric social workers and other mental health personnel. However, these highly trained experts are in critically short supply and their potential contribution to research is seriously reduced and, in many instances, totally blocked by the demand that they provide those clinical services presently thought to be therapeutic. To the extent that circumstances force them into purely service roles they are prevented from generating investigations that could lead to significant changes in the quality or effectiveness of their services. At the present level of our specific technical knowledge it is will to make explicit distinctions between programs of custodial management and programs of active treatment. It is totally unjustifiable and a serious social waste of critically restricted resources for the most highly trained of our mental health experts to be encouraged to assign higher priority to their clinical services and a lower priority to their responsibilities as investigators. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Be careful not to limit elements of the quest—action—to altruism or service. It is rather the reeducation of character through deeds. Thus this includes moral discipline, altruistic service, overcoming animal tendencies, temporary physical asceticism, self-training and improvement, and so forth. It is the path of remaking the personality in the external life both through thought-control and acts so as to become sensitive towards and obedient to the Overself. Altruism will then become a mere part of, a subordinate section in, this character training. Whoever labours worthily at a worthy task which does not afflict his conscience is rendering service to humanity. It does not matter whether he is affluent or less affluent. The isolationist individual who stands unmoved by a crime being committed on his doorstep, is tempted by selfishness not to burden himself with another person’s troubles. Ambition can be transformed into service. It takes a lot of altruism and ambition to be a firefighter. “I’ll never forget, it was the third day of fire school, and you know how little things stick in your mind. About four of us were raising up a fifty-foot ladder. It was a windy day, and we were getting the ladder up when it started to fall. There were some guys standing around, and everybody instinctively ran to the ladder and grabbed it to keep it from falling. There was a lieutenant there who said, ‘You know what, there was one guy who ran away. And he should have kept going right out that gate, because firemen don’t run away.’ Firemen don’t run away. All my life I’ve been that way. A good fireman instinctively knows what to do, and one of the things is this: a fireman doesn’t run away. That is some kind of pride I have, and I get it from being a fireman.” We must learn not only to develop right qualities of character, but also not to direct them wrongly. Misplaced charity, for instance, is not a virtue. Please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources required. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
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Hard Times on Economic Thinking
It is fashionable in certain circles to fix the blame for a man’s erring proclivities on his faculty upbringing—or lack of it—by parents, or on his companions, temptations, and surroundings. However, are they so much to blame as the man himself? And is he not the victim, the resultant, of his own prenatal past? And even this is not the ultimate cause of his sinning. He is misled by ignorance—without understanding of his deepest self and without knowledge of life’s higher laws. There is some kind of correspondence between the outward situations of his life as they develop and the subconscious tendencies of his mind, between the nature of his environment and the conscious characteristics of his personality, between the effects as they happen to him and the causes that he previously started. When he realizes how long he has been unconsciously building it up for the worse, he can begin to change his life for the better. The same energy which has been directed into thoughts can then be directed into optimistic ones. Were it not for the stubbornness of habit, it would not be harder to do this than to do the opposite. The emotions felt inside the heart, the thoughts evoked inside the head, affect the environment and atmosphere outside us. Without dropping into the artificial attitude which pretends to give small value to outward circumstances, one can yet try to set himself free from his own mental dominion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Until one has attained that inner strength which can concentrate thoughts and dominate emotions, it would be foolish to say that environment does not count and that he can mingle with society as freely as he can desert it. Without this attainment, he will be weakened by most of them or strengthened by a few of them. Birth into a prosperous elegant and gracious circle is valued highly in this World: it gives a man dignity and assurance. Education, which nurtures intellect and bestows culture, is likewise well appraised. However, both measure as trivial things in the other World of spiritual attainment. Although not to the extent to which it is affected by thoughts and feelings, inner life is affected by physical conditions. The foundation of human society, said Sumner, is the man-land ratio. Ultimately men draw their living from the soil, and the kind of existence they achieve, their mode of getting it, and their mutual relations in the process are all determined by the proportion of population to the available soil. Where men are few and soil is abundant, the struggle for existence is less savage, and democratic institutions are likely to prevail. When population presses upon the land supply, Earth hunger arises, races of men move across the face of the World, militarism and imperialism flourish, conflict rages—and in government aristocracy dominates. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
As men struggle to adjust themselves to the land, they enter rivalry for leadership in the conquest of nature. In Sumner’s popular essays he stressed the idea that the hardships of life are incidents of the struggle against nature, that “we cannot blame our fellow-men for our share of these. My neighbor and I are both struggling to free ourselves from these ills. The fact that my neighbor has succeeded in this struggle better than I constitutes no grievance for me. Undoubtedly the man who possesses capital has a great advantage over the man who has no capital at all in the struggle for existence…This does not mean that one man has an advantage against the other, but that, when they are rivals in the effort to get the means of subsistence from Nature, the one who has capital has immeasurable advantages over the other. If it were not so capital would not be formed. Capital is only formed by self-denial, and if the possession of it did not secure advantages and superiorities of a high order men would never submit to what is necessary to get it.” Thus, the struggle is like a whippet race; the fact that one hound chases the mechanical hare of pecuniary success does not prevent the others from doing the same. Sumner was perhaps inspired to minimize the human conflicts in the struggle for existence by a desire to dull the resentment of the less affluent towards the affluent. He did not always, however, shrink from a direct analogy between animal struggle and human competition. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
In the Spencerian intellectual atmosphere of the 1870s and 1880’s, it was natural for conservatives to see the economic contest in competitive society as a reflection of the struggle in the animal World. It was easy to argue by analogy from natural selection of fitter organisms to social selection of fitter men, from organic forms with superior adaptability to citizens with a greater sore of economic virtues. The competitive order was now supplied with a cosmic rationale. The competition was glorious. Just as survival was the result of strength, success was the reward of virtue. Sumner had no patience with those who would lavish compensations upon the virtueless. Many economists, he declared (in a lecture given in 1879 on the effect of hard time on economic thinking), “seem to be terrified that distress and misery still remain on Earth and promise to remain as long as the vices of human nature remain. Many of them are frightened at liberty, especially under the form of competition, which they elevate into a bugbear. They think it bears harshly on the weak. They do not perceive that here ‘the strong” and “the weak’ are terms which admit of no definition unless they are made equivalent to the industrious and the idle, the frugal and the extravagant. They do not perceive, furthermore, that if we do not like the survival of the fittest, we have only one possible alternative, and this is the survival of the unfitted. The former is the law of anti-civilization. We have our choice between the two, or we can go on, as in the past, vacillating between the two, but a third plan—the socialist desideratum—a plan for nourishing the unfitted and yet advancing in civilization, no man will ever find.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The progress of civilization, according to Sumner, depends upon the selection process; and that in turn depends upon the workings of unrestricted competition. Competition is a law of nature which “can no more be done away with than gravitation,” and which men can ignore only to their sorrow. You may well ask, “But why does a person who is seeking help find himself changing in a relationship which contains these elements? Why does this initiate a process of learning to be free, or becoming what he is, of choice and inner development?” The reactions of the client who experiences for a time the kind of therapeutic relationship which we have discussed are a reciprocal of the therapist’s attitudes. As he finds someone else listening acceptingly to his feelings, he little by little becomes able to listen to himself. He begins to receive communications from within himself—to realize that he is angry, to recognize when he is frightened, even to realize when he is feeling courageous. As he becomes more open to what is going on within him, he becomes able to listen to feelings which have seemed to him so terrible, or so disorganizing, or so unique, or so personal, that he has never been able to recognize their existence in himself. While he is learning to listen to himself, he also becomes more acceptant of himself. As he expressed increasingly hidden aspects of himself, he finds the therapist showing a consistent and unconditional beneficial regard for him and his feelings. Slowly he moves toward taking the same attitude toward himself, accepting himself as he is, respecting and caring for himself as a person, being responsible for himself as he is, and therefore ready to move forward in the process of being free. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
And finally, as he listens more accurately to the feelings within, and becomes less evaluative and more acceptant toward himself, he also moves toward being more real. He finds it possible to move out from behind the facade he had used, to drop his defensive behaviours, and more openly to be what he truly is. As these changes occur, as he becomes more self-aware, more self-acceptant, more self-expressive, less defensive, and more open, he finds that he is at last free to change and grow and move in directions natural to the human organism. He can make imperfect choices—and then correct them. He recognizes that he can choose to be hurtful or constructive, self-aggrandizing, or committed to the welfare of the group, and when these choices can be freely made, he tends to move in the socially constructive direction. It is such experiences in individual and group psychotherapy which lead us to believe that we have here an important dynamic for modern education. We may have here the essential core of a process by which we might facilitate this production, through our educational system, of persons who will be adaptative and creative, able to make responsible decisions, open to the kaleidoscopic changes in their World, worthy citizens of a fantastically expanding Universe. It seems at least a possibility that in our schools and colleges, in our professional schools and universities, individuals could learn to be free. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
When considering our case study of Clare, she had a self-observation and became concerned about her inability to be alone. She had not been aware of this inhibition before, because she had arranged her life in such a way as to avoid any periods of solitude. When she was by herself, she observed that she became restless or fatigued. When she tried to enjoy them alone, things she could relish otherwise lost their meaning. When others were around, she could work much better in the office than at home, though the work was of the same kind. During this time, she neither tried to understand these observations nor made any effort to follow up her latest finding. In view of the incisive importance of that finding, her failure to pursue it any further is certainly striking. If we consider it in connection with the reluctance, she had previously shown to scrutinize her relationship with Peter, we are justified in assuming that with her latest discovery Clare came closer to realizing her dependency than she could stand at the time and therefore stopped her analytical endeavours. The provocation to resume her work was a sudden sharp swing mood that occurred one evening with Peter. He had given her an unexpected present, a pretty scarf, and she was overjoyed. However, later she felt suddenly tired and became frigid. The depressed feeling occurred after she had embarked on the question of summer plans. She was enthusiastic about the plans, but Peter was listless. He explained his reaction by saying that he did not like to make plans anyhow. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The next morning, she remembered a dream fragment. She saw a large bird flying away, a bird of the most glorious colours and most beautiful movements. It became smaller and smaller until it vanished. The she awoke with anxiety and a sensation of falling. While she was still waking up a phrase occurred to her–“the bird has flown”–which she knew at once expressed a fear of losing Peter. Certain later associations confirmed this intuitive interpretation: someone had once called Peter a bird that never settled down; Peter was good-looking and a good dancer; the beauty of the bird had something unreal; a memory of Bruce, whom she had endowed with qualities he did not possess; a wonder whether she glorified Peter, too; a song from Sunday school, in which Jesus as the Christ asked to take His children under His wing. Thus, the fear of losing Peter was expressed in two ways: by the bird flying away, and by the idea of a bird that had taken her under its wings and dropped her. The latter thought was suggested not only by the song but also by the sensation of falling that she had on awakening. In the symbol of Jesus taking His children under His wing the theme of the need for protection is resumed. In view of later developments, it appears by no means accidental that the symbol is a religious one. Clare did not delve into the suggestion that she glorified Peter. However, the very fact that she saw this possibility is noteworthy. It may have paved the way for her daring to take a good look at him some time later. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
The main theme of her interpretations, however—the fear of losing Peter—not only was recognized as an inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the dream but was deeply felt as true and important. That it was an emotional experience as well as an intellectual recognition of a crucial factor was evident in the fact that several reactions hitherto not understood became suddenly transparent. First, she saw that on the previous night, she had not merely been disappointed in Peter’s reluctance to talk about a common vacation. His lack of zest had aroused a dread that he would desert her, and this dread had caused her fatigue and frigidity and had been the provocation for the dream. And many other comparable situations became similarly illuminated. All kinds of instances emerged in which she had felt hurt, disappointed, irritated, or in which, as on the preceding day, she had become tired or depressed for no good reason. She realized that all these reactions sprang from the same source, regardless of what other factors might have been involved. If Peter was late, if he did not telephone, if he was preoccupied with other matters than herself, if he was withdrawn, if he was tense or irritated, if he was not interested in having pleasures of the flesh with her—always the dread of desertion was touched off. Furthermore, when she was with Peter, she understood that the explosions of irritation that sometimes occurred not from trivial dissensions or, as he usually accused her, from her desire to have her own way, but from this same dread. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The anger was attached to such trivial matters as different opinions about a movie, irritation at having to wait for him, and the like, but it was produced by her fear of losing him. And, conversely, when she received an unexpected present from him, she was overjoyed because it meant a sudden relief from this fear. Finally, she linked up the fear of desertion with the empty feeling that she when she was alone, but without arriving at any conclusive understanding of the connection. Was the fear of desertion so great because she dreaded to be alone? Or did solitude, for her, implicitly mean desertion? A person can be entirely unaware of a fear that is all consuming. That Clare now recognized her fear, and saw the disturbances it created in her relationship with Peter, meant a definite step ahead. There are two connections between this insight and her preceding one concerning her need for protection. Both findings show to what extent the whole relationship was pervaded with fears. And, more specifically, the fear of desertion was in part a consequence of the need for protection: if Peter were expected to protect her from life and its dangers, she could not afford to lose him. Clare was still far from understanding the nature of the fear of desertion. If anything, she was still unaware that what she regarded as deep love was nothing more than a neurotic dependency and therefore, she could not recognize that the fear was based on this dependency. Regarding her inability to be alone, the questions that occurred to her were more pertinent than she realized. However, since this whole problem was hazy because there were still too many unknown factors involved, she was not even capable of making accurate observations on this score. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Clare’s analysis of her elation at receiving the scarf was accurate as far as it went. Undoubtedly one essential element in her feeling overjoyed was that the act of friendliness allayed her fear for the time being. That she did not consider the other elements involved can scarcely be attributed to a resistance. She saw only the aspect that was related to the problem on which she was then working, her fear of destruction. Related to nongreedy desire for pleasures of the flesh but different from it is tenderness. Dr. Freud, whose whole psychology deals exclusively with “drives,” necessarily had to explain tenderness as an outcome of the drive for pleasures of the flesh, as a goal-inhibited desire for pleasures of the flesh. It is an experience sui generis. Its first characteristic is that it is free from greed. In the experience of tenderness, one does not want anything from the other person, not even reciprocity. It has no aim and purpose, not even that which is present in the ungreedy form of sexuality, namely, of the final physical culmination. It is not restricted to any pleasures of the flesh or age. It is least of all expressible in words, except in a poem. It is most exquisitely expressed in the way in which a person may touch another, look at him or her, or in the tone of voice. One can say that it has roots in the tenderness which a mother feels toward her child, but even if this is so, human tenderness far transcends the mother’s tenderness to the child because it is free from the biological tie to the child and from the narcissistic element in motherly love. It is free not only from greed but from hurry and purpose. Among all the feelings which man has created in himself during his history, there is none which surpasses tenderness in the pure quality of simply being human. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Compassion and empathy are two other feelings clearly related to tenderness but not entirely identical to it. The essence of compassion is that one “suffers with” or, in a broader sense, “feels with” another person. This means that one does not look at the person from the outside—the person being the “object” (never forget that “object” and “objection” have the same root) of my interest or concern—but that one puts himself into the other person. This means I experience within myself what he experiences. This is a relatedness which is not from the “I” to the “thou” but one which is characterized by the phase: I am thou (Tat Twan Asi). Compassion or empathy implies that I experience in myself that which is experienced by the other person and hence that in this experience he and I are one. Only if it is based on my experiencing in myself that which he experiences, then all knowledge of another remains an object, I may know a lot about him, but I do not know him. In psychoanalysis or similar forms of depth psychotherapy, a knowledge of the patient rests upon the capacity of the analyst to know him and not on his ability to gather enough data to know much about him. The data of the development and experiences of the patient are often helpful for knowing him, but they are nothing but adjuncts to that knowledge which requires no “data,” but rather, complete openness to the other and openness within oneself. It might occur in the first second after seeing a person, it might occur a long time later, but the act of this knowledge is a sudden, intuitive one and not the result of ever-increasing information about the life history of the person. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Goethe has expressed this kind of knowledge very succinctly: “Man knows himself only within himself, and he is aware of himself within the World. Each new object truly recognized opens a new organ within us.” The possiblity of this kind of knowledge based on overcoming the split between the observing subject and the observed object requires, of course, the humanistic promise that every person carries within himself all of humanity; although in varying degrees, within us we are saints and criminals, and hence there is nothing in another person which we cannot feel as part of ourselves. This experience requires that we free ourselves from the narrowness of being related only to those familiar to us, either by the fact that they are blood relations or, in a larger sense, that we eat the same food, speak the same language, and have the same “common sense.” Knowing men in the sense of compassionate and empathetic knowledge requires that we get rid of the narrowing ties of a given society, race, or culture and penetrate to the depth of that human reality in which we are all nothing but human. True compassion and knowledge of man has been underrated as a revolutionary factor in the development of man, just as art has been. Tenderness, love, and compassion are exquisite feelings and experiences and recognized as such. For Dr. Freud, only primitive man could be called “healthy.” He satisfies all his instinctual demands without need for repression, frustration, or sublimation. (That Dr. Freud’s picture of the primitive as having an unrestricted life filled with instinctual satisfaction is a romantic fiction has been made abundantly clear by contemporary anthropologists.) #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
However, when Dr. Freud turns from historical speculation to the clinical examination of contemporary man, this picture of primitive mental health hardly matters. Even if we could keep in mind that civilized man cannot be completely healthy (or happy, for that matter), Dr. Freud has nevertheless definite criteria for what constitutes mental health. These criteria are to be understood within the frame of reference of his evolutionary theory. This theory has two main aspects: the evolution of libido, and the evolution of man’s relations to others. In the theory of libido evolution Dr. Freud assumes that the libido, that is, energy of the drive for pleasures of the flesh, undergoes a development. It is at first centered around the oral activities of the child—sucking and biting—and later around the anal activities—elimination. Around the age of five or six, the libido has for the first time centered around the private organs. However, this age of “adult behaviour” is not fully developed, and between the first “phallic phase” near the age of six and the beginning of puberty there is a “latency period,” during which development of pleasures of the flesh is at a standstill, as it were, and only at the beginning of puberty does the process of libido development come to fruition. This process of libido development, however, is by no means an uncomplicated one. Many events, especially oversatisfaction and overfrustration, can result in a child becoming “fixated” on the earlier level, and thus never arriving at a fully developed genital level, or regressing to an earlier one even after having arrived at the genital level. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
As a result, the adult may exhibit neurotic symptoms (like impotence), or neurotic character traits (as in the overdepednent, passive person). For Dr. Freud the “healthy” person is the one who has reached the “gential level” without regressing, and who lives an adult existence, that is, an existence in which he can work and have adequate satisfactions involving pleasures of the flesh or, in which he can produce things and reproduce the race. The other aspect of the “healthy” person lies in the sphere of his object relations. The newborn baby has not yet any object relations. It is in a state of “primary narcissism” in which the only realities are its own bodily and mental experiences, and the World outside does not yet exist conceptually, and even less, emotionally. The child then develops his strong attachment to mother. However, as the child ages, he shifts from the fixation to mother to the allegiance to father. At the same time, however, he also identifies with father by incorporating his commands and prohibitions. Through this process he achieves independence from father and from mother. The healthy person, for Dr. Freud, then, is the one who has reached the genital level, and who has become his own master, independent of father and mother, relying on his own reason and his own strength. However, even the key features of Dr. Freud’s concept remain vague and certainly lacks the precision and penetration is his concept of mental illness. It is the concept of a well-functioning member of the middle class at the beginning of the twentieth century, who is sexually and economically potent. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
In the modern, technology-filled World, we are bombarded with options: watch this, read that, listen to this. Our society is saturated with media and entertainment, and the influence they have on our beliefs, thoughts, and actions is subtle but powerful. The things we allow to fill our minds end up shaping our being—we become what we think about. If we all just believed what anyone said, what would happen? It was once taken for granted that whatever was written in school textbooks was true. And whatever you read in the trade papers or saw on the TV news was also true. With the vast amount of information available to all of us now, we have found that not to be true. So, if we must second guess the news media now, should we not do the same for any other information we are given? Technology is neither inherently good nor bad. Rather, the purposes accomplished with and through technology are the ultimate indicators of goodness or badness. Our responsibility is not to avoid media altogether or to merely reject negative media but to choose wholesome and uplifting media. We can use the power of media to our advantage, to better our thoughts and behaviours by acknowledging our susceptibility to media influence and recognizing how it influences us. Identifying educational and high-quality media options, and recognizing no one is immune to media’s influence. We cannot expect to indulge in media designed to affect us mentally and emotionally without its influence being sustained in our subconscious long after the source of media is over. Those who believe media does not affect them are often the people who are most affected because they deny the influence and are therefore not guarded against it. Just as water will continue to seep through a leak in a boat, whether we acknowledge the leak, so will the media continue to influence our thoughts whether we address its impact. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Many firefighters have many ways of learning to fight fires. “In the U.S.A. Forest Service, when I first started, the training was all done at the station level. The old-time captains and engineers teach you as you go along. Then, as you advance in the ranks, they begin to send you to specialized schools on fire behavior and safety and all kinds of things. It’s an ongoing process. Then, when I switched to the California Department of Forestry, it was pretty much the same program, although as part of the probationary term you have to go to six-week academy for engineers. Driving, pumping, hydraulics, ladder, hose, fire behavior tactics, everything compacted into a six-week school. Then the same thing when you come back to your unit, it’s an ongoing training thing at the local level. Plus schools, they send guys to the more sophisticated schools with other agencies. And now, of course, like everyone else, we’re sending people to the National Fire Academy too. I was fortunate when I first came to work, we went to several rather small fires, and I was able to kind of gradually build up to the tough ones. That doesn’t always happen. I’ve seen some guys come on the job, and right off the bat they’re put on some monsters, some hairy deals. That tends to scare some of them off. They decide this is not what they really want, and they go back to being a bookkeeper or something. But in my case I was able to kind of wade into it and go from the little easy stuff into the big bad stuff. That way I gradually became aware of what was going on and conscious of the difficulties of the job and the safety problems. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
“When I came back from the Army, the first thing they sent me to was a fire weather class. All I knew was that on a hot, dry day, things burn better, and when the wind blows they burn still better. I had never been taught the effect of weather on fire behavior. In the class, this guy’s going on about wind and dry weather, and humidity, and the causes and effects of all those things, and methods I had never heard of before. It was almost funny, because every once in a while all of us in the class would go, ‘Oh, no wonder. Not I understand why the fire did that.’ Earlier there had been a lightning-caused forest fire that kind of startled me. It was a small fire—that fire would up taking 5,000 acres. We were there for over an hour before anybody else showed up. We didn’t realize that there were a lot of other fires going on, and that was why backup troops weren’t available. Anyway, we attacked the head end of the fire, the direction it was moving, and we made pretty good progress, only to realize that we were suddenly on the back side of the fire—the front end of the fire was on the other side now, going the other way. It dashed around us, and finally it blew out at the canyon, and we couldn’t stop it. I never did understand totally what had happened, until I went to this weather class and the guy explained it.” Please remember to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department so they have all the resources they need. The relativity of good and evil is no justification for the tolerance of wrong and evil. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Four Seasons Fill the Measure of the Year
Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society downwards and favours all its worst members. The most vigorous and influential social Darwinist in America was William Graham Sumner of Yale. Sumner not only made a striking adaptation of evolution to conservative thought, but also effectively propagated his philosophy through widely read books and articles, and converted his strategic teaching post in New Haven into a kind of social-Darwinian pulpit. He provided his age with a synthesis which, though not quite so grand as Mr. Spencer’s, was bolder in its stark and candid pessimism. Mr. Sumner’s synthesis brought together three great traditions of western capitalist culture: the Protestant ethic, the doctrines of classical economics, and Darwinian natural selection. Correspondingly, in the development of American thought Mr. Summer played three roles: he was a great Puritan preacher, an exponent of the classical pessimism of Ricardo and Malthus, and an assimilator and popularizer of evolution. His sociology bridged the gap between the economic ethic set in motion by the Reformation and the thought of the nineteenth century, for it assumed that the industrious, temperate, and frugal man of the Protestant ideal was the equivalent of the “strong” of the “fittest” in the struggle for existence; and it supported the Ricardian principles of inevitability and laissez faire with a hard-bitten determinism that seemed to be at once Calvinistic and scientific. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Sumner was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on October 30, 1840. His father, Thomas Sumner, was a hard-working, self-educated English labourer who had come to America because his family’s industry was disrupted by the growth of the factory system. He brought up his children to respect the traditional Protestant economic virtues, and his frugality left a deep impress upon his son William, who came in time to acclaim the savings-bank depositor as “a hero of civilization.” The sociologist later wrote of this father: His principles and habits of life were the best possible. His knowledge was wide and his judgment excellent. He belonged to the class of men whom Caleb Garth in Middlemarch is the type. In early life I accepted, from books and other people, some views and opinions which differed from his. At the present time, in regard to these matters, I hold with him and not with others.” The economic doctrines of the classical tradition which were current in his early years strengthened Sumner’s paternal heritage. He came to think of pecuniary success as the inevitable product of diligence and thrift, and to see the lively capitalist society in which he lived as the fulfillment of the classical ideal of an automatically benevolent, free competitive order. At fourteen he had read Harriet Martineau’s popular little volumes, Illustrations of Political Economy, whose purpose was to acquaint the multitude with the merits of lassie faire through a series of parables illustrating Ricardian principles. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
There he became acquainted with the wage-fund doctrine, and its corllaries: “Nothing can permanently affect the rate of wages which does not affect the proportion of population to capital”; and “combinations of labourers against capitalists…cannot secure a permanent rise of wages unless the supply of labour falls short of demand—in which case, strikes are usually unnecessary.” There also he found fictional proof that “a self-balancing power being…inherent in the entire system of commercial exchange, all apprehensions about the result of its unimpeded operations are absurd,” and that “a sin is committed when Capital is diverted from its normal course to be employed in producing at home that which is expensive and inferior, instead of preparing that which will purchase the same article cheaper and superior abroad.” Charities, whether public or private, Miss Martineau held, would never reduce the number of the indigent, but would only encourage improvidence and nourish “peculation, tyranny, and fraud.” Later Sumner declared that his conceptions of “capital, labour, money and trade were all formed by those books which I read in my boyhood.” Francis Wayland’s standard text in political economy, which he recited in college, seems to have impressed him but little, perhaps because it only confirmed well-fixed beliefs. In 1859, when he matriculated at Yale, young Sumner devoted himself to theology. During undergraduate years Yale was still a pillar of orthodoxy, dominated by its versatile president, Theodore Dwight Woolsey, who had just turned from classical scholarship to write his Introduction to the Study of International Law, and by the Rev. Noah Porter, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics, who as Woolsey’s successor would one day cross swords with Sumner over the proper place of the new science in education. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Sumner, a somewhat frigid youth (who could seriously ask, “Is the reading of fiction justifiable?”) repelled many of his schoolmates; but his friends made up in munificence what they lacked in number. One of them, William C. Whitney, persuaded his elder brother Henry to supply funds for Sumner’s further education abroad; and the Whitneys secured a substitute to fill his place in the Union Army while Sumner pursued theological studies at Geneva, Gottingen, and Oxford. In 1868 Sumner was elected to a tutorship at Yale, beginning a lifelong association with its faculty that would be broken only by a few years spent as editor of religious newspaper and reactor of the Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey. In 1872 he was elevated to the post of Professor of Political and Social Science in Yale College. Despite personal coldness and a crisp, dogmatic classroom manner, Sumner had a wider following than any other teacher in Yale’s history. Upperclassmen found unique satisfaction in his course; lowerclassmen looked forward to promotion chiefly as a means of becoming eligible to enroll in them. William Lyon Phelps, who took every one of Sumner’s courses as a matter of principle without regard for his interest in the subject matter, as left a memorable picture of Sumner’s dealings with a student dissenter: “Professor, don’t you believe in any government aid to industries?” “No! It’s root, hog, or die.” “Yes, but hasn’t the hog got a right to root?” “There are no rights. The World owes nobody a living.” “Yo believe then, Professor, in only one system, the contract-competitive system?” “That’s the only sound economic system. All others are fallacies.” “Well, suppose some professor of political economy came along and took your job away from you. Wouldn’t you be sore?” “Any other professor is welcome to try. If he gets my job, it is my fault. My business is to teach the subject so well that no one can take the job away from me.” The stamp of his early religious upbringing and interests marked all Sumner’s writings. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Although clerical phraseology soon disappeared from his style, his temper remained that of a proselytizer, a moralist, an espouser of causes with little interest in distinguishing between error and iniquity in his opponents. “The type of mind which he exhibited,” writes his biographer, “was the Hebraic rather than the Greek. He was intuitive, rugged, emphatic, fervently and relentlessly ethical, denunciatory, prophetic.” He might insist that political economy was a descriptive science divorced from ethics, but his strictures on protectionist and socialists resounded with moral overtones. His popular articles are read like sermons. Sumer’s life was not entirely given to crusading. His intellectual activity passed through two overlapping phases, marked by a change less in his thought than in the direction of his work. During the 1870’s, 1880’s and early 1890’s, in the columns of popular journals and from the lecture platform, he waged a holy war against reformism, protectionism, socialism, and government interventionism. In this period, he published What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883), “The Forgotten Man” (1883), and “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over” (1894). In the early 1890’s, however, Sumner turned his attention more to academic sociology. It was during this period that the manuscript of “Earth Hunger” was written, and the monumental Science of Society projected. When Sumner, always a prodigious worker, found that his chapter on human customs had grown to 200,000 words, he decided to publish it as a separate volume. Thus, almost as an afterthought, Folkways was brought out in 1906. Although the deep ethical feeling of Sumner’s youth gave way to the sophisticated moral relativism of his social-science period, his underlying philosophy remained the same. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The Christian scriptures name obstacles the aspirant may have to deal with. They are frivolity, changeableness, unruly desires, dissatisfaction, gratification of the senses, and craving for the ego’s existence. Even if he finds himself in a moral solitude, as he may in earlier years, it is still worthwhile to be loyal to ideals. He must cast off the long mantle of arrogance and put on the short coat of humility. A lapse in artistry may be pardoned but a lapse in sincerity may not. Be sincere! That is the message from soul to self, from God to man. It is not man’s own voice, which is to acclaim him as a master, but his life. His willingness to acknowledge he has faults and lots of them is admirable—so few ever like to confess such a thing—but they are not so deep or so numerous as he imagines. He should not forget that he has some merits too and they are able to balance the others and keep them where they belong. As for perfection, alas, the self-actualized Christian too is still striving for it. Pride can take a dozen different disguises, even the disguise of its very opposite, humility. The quicker he grows and the father he goes on this quest, the more an aspirant must examine his character for its traces and watch his actions to detect it. He is indeed a prudent man who refuses to be blinded by passions or deluded by appearances. He does not know in advance what he will do in every new situation that arises—who does?–but only what he will try to do, what principles he will try to follow. He who trims his sails to the winds of expediency reveals his insincerity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
It is true that environment contributes to the molding of character but not true that it creates or even dominates character. Thought and will are linked with our own rebirth in Jesus as the Christ. Character can be improved by effort and Grace. If we will only attend to the first and persistently carry out the inner work required on ourselves, destiny will attend to the second and not seldom remove the outer obstacles or improve the outer environment in the process. Each person who enters our life for a time, or becomes involved with it at some point, is an unwitting channel bringing good or evil, wisdom or foolishness, fortune or calamity to us. This happens because it was preordained to happen—under the law of recompense. However, the extent to which he affects our outer affairs is partly determined by the extent to which we let him do so, by the acceptance or rejection of suggestions made by his conduct, speech, or presence. It is we who are finally responsible. The victim of exterior suggestion is never quite an innocent victim, for his own quota of consent must also be present. When a therapist is experiencing a warm, beneficial and acceptant attitude toward what is in the client, this facilitates change. It involves the therapist’s genuine willingness for the client to be whatever feeling is going on in him at that moment—fear, confusion, pain, pride, anger, hatred, love, courage, or awe. It means that the therapist cares for the client, in a non-possessive way. It means that he prizes the client in a non-possessive way. The is accepted in a total rather than conditional way. He does not simply accept the client when he is behaving in certain ways and disapproves of him when he behaves in other ways. It means an outgoing optimistic feeling without reservations, without evaluation. This is known as an unconditional beneficial regard. Again, research studies show that the more this attitude is experienced by the therapist, the more likelihood there is that therapy will be successful. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Empathic understanding is when the therapist is sensing the feelings and personal meanings which the client is experiencing in each moment, when he can perceive these from “inside,” as they seem to the client, and when he can successfully communicate something of that understanding to his client, then this condition is fulfilled. Each of us has discovered that this kind of understanding is extremely rare. We neither receive it nor offer it with any great frequency. Instead, we offer another type of understanding which is very different. “I understand what is wrong with you”; “I understand what makes you act that way”; or “I too have experienced your trouble and I reacted very differently”; these are the types of understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding from the outside. However, when someone understands how it feels and seems to be me, without wanting to analyze me or judge me, then I can blossom and grow in that climate. And research bears out this common observation. When the therapist can grasp the moment-to-moment experiencing occurring in the inner World losing the separateness of his own identity in this emphatic process, then change is likely to occur. Studies with a variety of clients show that when these conditions occur in the therapist, and when they are to some degree perceived by the client, therapeutic movement ensures, the client finds himself painfully but learning and growing, and both he and the therapist regard the outcome as successful. From our perspective, it seems that it is attitudes such as these rather than the therapist’s technical knowledge and skill, which are primarily responsible for therapeutic change. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Not later than high school every student should receive a solid course of instruction in general psychology. Such a course should enable the student to see that the behaviour of people is proper, indeed a crucial, area for the application of scientific method. He should be introduced to the general principles that have been uncovered through careful study of how people learn, how they perceive their World, how they acquire attitudes and how those attitudes influence their modes of adjustment. The aim of such a general psychology course taught at the secondary level would be not simply to provide the student with an awareness of the substantive content of psychology as a field of human inquiry but, more importantly, to instill in him attitudes toward behaviour, his own and that of other persons, likely to encourage and maintain hygienic personal relationships. The study of psychology encouraged an attitude of objectivity and persisting examination of reasons for behaviour; it provides a foundation and stimulus for the student to seek to understand himself and others. With a scientifically psychological orientation toward the understanding both of self and others the individual is less likely to be victimized either by his own emotions or by the irrationalities of others. An adequate general psychology would introduce the student to the “psychology of everyday life,” would sensitize him to the meaning of errors, oversights, and momentary distortions in his perceptions and thought. With this instruction he would have at least the equipment, if not the motivation, for the life-long exploration of his own developing personality—for the continual challenge to self-realization and self-understanding. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
As the frontiers of geograpy have been progressively pushed back and exhausted, it becomes increasingly difficult for the average man to be an explorer, to make discoveries. For the average man, the last frontier challenging his urge to search and to uncover new lands if provided by the complex vastness of his own mind, by the boundaries of his own spirit. It is a sorry epiphenomenon of the mental health movement that many persons who are admirably equipped to embark on this voyage and who long for insight for the sheer sake of discovery and not out of any pressing need, have been persuaded that they require the services of an expert guide. While it is true that the psychotherapist may shorten the trip to the island of insight it is not certain that the seeker cannot find it on his own, or that he will be significantly discommoded by the longer journey. Sound courses in psychology and inspired instruction can afford possibly a reduction in the susceptibility to neurosis. Certainly, it can reduce the number of sentient persons who relinquish the responsibility and privilege (and the exquisite rewards) of a personal, life-long exploration of their existence, and who in so doing waste the time and energies of the therapists whose skills are required by those voyagers who are truly lost. Until recently courses in psychology have been almost totally restricted to colleges and universities, and in these settings, they have frequently been unavailable before the sophomore year. While the proportion of the college-age population attending institutions of higher learning is steadily rising, it is still very small. Consequently, it is good to find increasing signs of thoughtful planning for the introduction of psychology as a basic subject in high school, and experience with such instruction is being carefully recorded. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The study of psychology is not provided by courses in how to be successful, how to be proper, and the like. There is a need for research to determine at what minimal age levels a formal course in psychology can be effectively introduced. Considering the central role of psychological phenomena in the enitre life of the individual it seems incredible that we have been so slow to find a place for the study of psychology in our secondary school curricula. The mental health movement should lend its resources and energies to supporting those teachers and educational leaders who are seeking to find a stable and adequate place for the study of psychology in our secondary schools. In our ongoing case study of Clare, it struck her that there was a contrast between the two men she was focused on. One man rescued her from drowning; in connection with the man in the novel she was reading, a similarity occurred because he offered the girl a refuge from abuse and brutality. Bruce and the great man of her daydream, while not saving her from any danger, also played a protective role. As she observed this repetitious motif of saving, shielding, sheltering, she realized that she craved not only “love” but also protection. She also saw that one of the values Peter had for her was his willingness and ability to give advice and to console her when she was in distress. A fact occurred to her in this context that she had known for quite a while—her defenselessness when under attack or pressure. She saw now that it produced, in turn, a need for somebody to protect her. Finally, she realized that her longing for love or marriage had always increased rather acutely whenever life became difficult. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
In recognizing that a need for protection was an essential element in her love life Clare took a great step ahead. The range of demans that this apparently harmless need embraced, and the role it played, became clear only much later. It may be interesting to compare this insight into a problem with the last one reported regarding the same problem, the insight concerning her “private religion.” The comparison reveals a frequent happening in psychoanalytical work. A problem is first seen in its barest outline. One does not recognize much beyond the fact that it exists. Later one returns to the same problem with a much deeper understanding of its meaning. The feeling would be unwarranted in such a case that the alter finding is not new, that one has known it all along. One has not known it, at least not consciously, but the way for its emergence has been prepared. Despite a certain superficiality this first insight struck the initial blow at Clare’s dependency. However, she glimpsed her need for protection, she did not yet realize its nature, and she could not draw the conclusion that this was one of the essential factors in her problem. She also ignored all the material in the daydream of the great man, material indicating that the man she loved was expected to fulfill many more functions than mere protection. Experiences with pleasures of the flesh can be simply sensuously pleasurable without the depth of love but also without a marked degree of greed. The arousal involving pleasures of the flesh is physiologically stimulated, and it may or may not lead to human intimacy. The opposite of this kind of desire involving pleasures of the flesh is characterized by an opposite sequence, namely, that love creates the desire for pleasures of the flesh. This means that a man and a woman may feel a deep sense of love for each other in terms of concern, knowledge, intimacy, and responsibility, and that this deep human experience arouses the wish for physical wisdom. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
It is obvious that this second type of desire for pleasures of the flesh will occur more frequently, although by no means exclusively so, among people beyond their mid-twenties and that it is the basis for the continuation of desires of pleasures of the flesh in monogamous human relationships of long duration. Where this type of arousal with pleasures of the flesh does not take place, it is natural that—aside from sexual perversions which might bind two people together for a lifetime because of the individual nature of their perversion—the merely physiological arousal will tend to require change and new experiences with pleasures of the flesh. Both these kinds of arousals of pleasures of the flesh are fundamentally different from the greedy one that is essentially motivated by anxiety or narcissism. Despite the complexity of the distinction between greedy and “free” sexuality, the distinction exists. Everyone who becomes aware of and sensitive to the difference can observe in himself and herself the various types of arousal, and those with more experimentation in pleasures of the flesh than was the case in middle class of the Victorian age may be supposed to have rich material for such observation. They may be supposed to have, because, unfortunately, increased experimentation with pleasures of the flesh has not been combined sufficiently with greater discernment of the qualitative differences in experience with pleasures of the flesh—although I am sure that a considerable number of people exist who, when they reflect upon these matters, can verify the validity of the distinction. If you are one of those people with what some call an overactive imagination, you had better watch out for those people who will see it and exploit it. It is relatively easy to get people with vivid imaginations to fall for things. After all, they can picture what the speaker is saying. Their emotions get all caught up in stuff without them even meaning to. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Modern man, in industrial society, has changed the form and intensity of idolatry. He has become the object of blind economic forces which rule his life. He worships the work of his hands; he transforms himself into a thing. Not the working class alone is alienated (in fact, if anything, the skilled worker seems to be less alienated than those who manipulate men and symbols) but everybody is. This process of alienation which exists in the European-American industrialized countries, regardless of their political structure, has given rise to new protest movements. The renaissance of socialist humanism is one symptom of this protest. Precisely because alienation has reached a point where it borders on insanity in the whole industrialized World, undermining and destroying its religious, spiritual, and political traditions and threatening general destruction through nuclear war, many are better able to see that Marx had recognized the central issue of modern man’s sickness; that he had not only seen, as Feuerbach and Kierkegaard had, this “sickness” but that he had shown that contemporary idolatry is rooted in the contemporary mode of production and can be changed only by the complete change of the socioeconomical constellation together with the spiritual liberation of man. Surveying the discussion of Dr. Freud and Marx’s respective views on mental illness, it is obvious that Dr. Freud is primarily concerned with individual pathology, and Marx is concerned with the pathology common to a society and resulting from the system of that society. It is also clear that the content of psychopathology is quite different for Marx and for Dr. Freud. Dr. Freud sees pathology essentially in the failure to find a proper balance between the Id and Ego, between instinctual demands and the demands of reality; Marx sees the essential illness, as what the nineteenth century called la maladie du siecle, the estrangement of man from his own humanity and hence from his fellow man. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Yet it is often overlooked that Dr. Freud by no means thought exclusively in terms of individual pathology. He speaks also of a “social neurosis.” “If the evolution of civilization,” he writes “had such a far-reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization—or epochs of it—possibly even the whole of humanity—have become “neurotic” under the pressure of civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which would claim a great practical interest. However, it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual, we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be “normal.” No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And regarding any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses the power to compel the community to adopt the therapy? Despite all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities. However, in Dr. Freud’s interest in the “social neuroses,” one fundamental difference between Dr. Freud’s and Marx’s thinking remains: Marx sees man as formed by his society, and hence sees the root of pathology in specific qualities of the social organization. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Dr. Freud sees man as primarily formed by his experience in the family group; he appreciates little that the family is only the representative and agent of society, and he looks at various societies mainly in terms of the quantity of repression they demand, rather than the quality of their organization and of the impact of this social quality on the quality of the thinking and feeling of the members of a given society. This discussion of the difference between Marx’ and Dr. Freud’s views on psychopathology, brief as it is, must mention one more aspect in which their thinking follows the same method. For Dr. Freud the state of primary narcissism of the infant is not a sick infant. Yet the dependent, greedy adult, who had been “fixated” on, or who has “regressed” to, the oral level of the child is a sick adult. The main needs and strivings are the same in the infant and in the adult; why then is the one healthy and the other sick? The answer obviously lies in the concept of evolution. What is normal at a certain stage is pathological at another stage. Or, to put it differently: what is necessary at one stage is also normal or rational. What is unnecessary, seen from the standpoint of evolution, is irrational and pathological. The adult who “repeats” an infantile stage at the same time does not and cannot repeat it, precisely because he is no longer a child. Marx following Hegel, employs the same method in viewing the evolution of man in society. Primitive man, medieval man, and the alienated man of industrial society are sick and yet not sick, because their stage of development is a necessary one. Just as the infant must mature physiologically to become an adult, so humans must mature sociologically in the process of gaining mastery of nature and of society to become fully human. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
All irrationality of the past, while regrettable, is rational because it was necessary. However, when the human race stops at a stage of development which it should have passed, when it finds itself in contradiction with the possibilities which the historical situation offers, then its state of existence is irrational or, if Marx had used the term, pathological. Both Marx’s and Dr. Freud’s concepts of pathology can be understood fully only in terms of their evolutionary concept of individual and human history. The victim of exterior suggestion is never quite an innocent victim, for his own quota of consent must also be present. It is perfectly true that environment does count, and often heavily, in the sum of life. However, if one’s faith is strong enough or if one’s understanding is deep enough, it is also true that the quest can be pursued effectively anywhere, be it a slum tenement or a stockbroker’s office. It is easier to pursue it in some places, harder in others, but the law of compensation always operates to even matters out. If there is a total giving-up of oneself to this higher aim, sooner or later there will be a total result, whatever the external circumstances may be. What is in a man, in his character, his mind, and his heart is, in the end, much more important than what is in his surroundings; but his surroundings have their own importance, for they either limit or they promote what he can do. With most people the reaction to their environment and to events is mainly impulsive and mostly uncontrolled. So the first step for them is to become conscious of what they are doing, the second being to refuse to do it when reflection and wisdom dictate a better course. All this implies a taking hold of the self and a disciplining of its mechanism—body, feelings, and thoughts. It leads to using the self with awareness and functioning it with efficiency. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Being a firefighter is very rewarding, but it also comes with risks, and even recovery can have unforseen risks. A firefighter we will call Brunno Groning shares his story with us. “Four months out of the fire academy, I had had a lot of garbage runs, you know, smoke scares and pots of food. Then one day we had a fire in an attic, and we had the old service masks, just a canister and a face piece. I was climbing through the attic, and the flap of my coat kept coming down over the intake hole of my mask. It was cutting my air off, and the only air I was getting was the air that I was breathing out. I was hyperventilating. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my side, and I thought, “What the (expletive) is going on here?” I was laying on a rafter, and I just rolled over and fell through the plasterboard into a closet. There were no injuries or anything. Looking back on it, I thought, ‘Hey, I could have died up there.’ I could have been pinned or whatever and never come out. After that, three of us were on top of a house extension, it was a summer kitchen, and we were pulling some boards down when the whole thing collapsed. Fire and the rot of the old timbers brought it down. I didn’t know I was injured until I took about four steps, and my leg went out that way. Bot the led and the ankle were broken. They sent me to Mercy Hospital, that’s where they used to send us, and the hospiutal sent me home. To let the swelling go down, they said. The doctor told me to come in on Saturday and he would put it in a cast. The guy was a boozer, and I looked at him that morning, and he had half a jacket on. I looked down, and he had two different shoes on, a brown wingtip and a black one. And I said, ‘Oh, (expletive).’ When he was wrapping the foot, I kept telling him he was wrapping it too tight. He said he had to go play golf. He said, ‘If your toes turn blue, come back in.’ Well, I got home, and they turned black on me. So I went to the hospital, and they took that cast off and put another one on. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“I was out of work seven months that time. I had to go for whirlpool treatments, and one day the leg was in the whirlpool and the technician came in and said he had to take the hospital rig to a fire, so he left. That temperature gauge on the side climbed up in the red, and I was like, ‘What’s going on here?’ I wound up with blisters on my leg from that. If it had been too hot to start with, I couldn’t have put my leg in it. But it was like, you know, if you’re sitting in a warm tub you can stand the water getting hotter and hotter. The guy, being in a rush to get to the fire, didn’t adjust the temperature right. So you could day I was in a job that was dangerous, and I was surrounded by people who were dangerous, too.” It is perfectly true that environment does count, and often heavily, in the sum of life. However, it is also true that is one’s faith is strong enough or if one’s understanding is deep enough, the quest can be pursued effectively anywhere, be it a slum tenement or a stockbroker’s office. It is easier to pursue it in some places, harder in other, but the law of compensation always operates to even matter out. If there is a total giving-up of oneself to this higher aim, sooner or later there will be a total result, whatever the circumstances may be. What is a man, in his character, his mind, and his heart is, in the end, much more important than what is in his surroundings; but his surroundings have their own importance, for they either limit or they promote what he can do. Please show support for the Sacramento Fire Department by making a contribution. Wisdom is the greatest good, for it does not depart for man. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
And can I ever bid these joys farewell? Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life, where I may find the agonies, the strife of human hearts: for lo! I see afar, o’ersailing the blue cragginess, a car and steeds with streamy manes–the charioteer looks out upon the winds with glorious fear: and now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly along a huge cloud’s ridge; and now with sprightly wheel downward come they into fresher skies, tipt round with silver from the sun’s bright eyes.
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The Next One Will be Better
Whoever does a wrong to another man is not doing it to him alone. He does it also to himself. The nature of the means used will help to predetermine the nature of the end reached. Even though mixed with some good, an evil means cannot lead to a good end, but only to one of its own kind. When it is sought, the truth comes, but is found only when we are ready. This is why the aspirant must take himself in hand, must improve his character and discipline his emotions. There is to be nothing in himself to impede the intuitive power. Moral nobility is not the sole possession of either the rich or the poor, the education or the ignorant. Spencer deplored not only poor laws, but also state-supported education, sanitary supervision other than the suppression of nuisances, regulation of housing conditions, and even state protection of the ignorant medical quacks. He likewise opposed tariffs, state banking, and governmental postal systems. Accused of brutality in his application of biological concepts to social principles, Spenser was compelled to insist repeatedly that he was not opposed to voluntary private charity to the unfit, since it had an elevating effect on the character of the donors and hastened the development of altruism; he opposed only compulsory poor laws and other state measures. Spencer traces the parallels between the growth, differentiation, and integration of society and of animal bodies. Although the purpose of a social organism is different from those of an animal organism, he maintained that there is no difference in their laws of organization. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Among socities as among organisms, there is a struggle for existence. Since it made possible successive consolidation of small groups into large ones and stimulated the earliest forms of social cooperation, this struggle was one indispensable to social evolution. It was assumed that in the future these intersocial struggles would lose their utility and die out. The conflict between lower and higher values, between the false and the true interpretation of life, goes on all the time within all men. However, he who brings it into the open and looks it in the face is the man who had gained more than a little wisdom from the impact of experience. The very process of social consolidation brought about by struggles and conquest eliminates the necessity for continued conflict. Society then passes from its barbarous or militant phase into an industrial phase. In the militant phase, society is organized chiefly for survival. It bristles with military weapons, trains its people for warfare, relies upon a despotic state, submerges the individual, and imposes a vast amount of compulsory cooperation. In contest among such societies those best exemplifying these militant traits will survive; and individuals best adapted to the militant community will be the dominating types. The creation of larger and larger social units through conquests by militant states widens the areas in which internal peace and application to the industrial arts become habitual. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The militant type now reaches the evolutionary stage of equilibration. There emerges the industrial type of society, a regime of contract rather than status, which unlike the older form is pacific, respectful of the individual, more heterogeneous and plastic, more inclined to abandon economic autonomy in favour of industrial cooperation with other states. Natural selection now works to produce a completely different individual character. Unless there is honest effort to apply practically the knowledge got and the understanding gained from this teaching, unless there is real striving after personal betterment and individual discipline, the interest shown is mere dabbling, not study. Industrial society requires security for life, liberty, and property; the character type most consonant with this society is accordingly peaceful, independent, kindly, and honestly. The emergence of a new human nature hastens the trend from egoism to altruism which will solve all ethical problems. The first moral slip is also the worst one. For the effort to cover it up involves further lapses. Then the road runs downhill from slip to slip. Small mentalities cannot comprehend big truths. Greedy mentalities cannot comprehend generous truths. Bigotry keeps vital facts outside the door of knowledge. This is why philosophic discipline is needed. In the interest of survival, cooperation in industrial society must be voluntary, not compulsory. State regulation of production and distribution, as proposed by socialist, is more akin to the organization of militant society, and would be fatal to the survival of the industrial community; it would penalize superior citizens and their offspring in favour of the inferior, and a society adopting such practices would be outstripped by others. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Spencer was animated by the desire to foster a science of society that would puncture the illusions of legislative reformers who, he believed, generally operated on the assumption that social causes and effects are simple and easily calculable, and that project to relieve distress and remedy ills will always have the anticipated effect. A science of sociology, by teaching men to think of social causation scientifically, would awaken them to the enormous complexity of the social organism, and put an end to hasty legislative panaceas. Fortified by the Darwinian conception of gradual modification over long stretches of time, Spencer ridiculed schemes for quick social transformation. The great task of sociology is to chart the normal course of social evolution, to show how it will be affected by any given policy, and to condemn all types of behaviour that interfere with it. Social science is a practical instrument in a negative sense. Its purpose is not to guide the conscious control of societal evolution, but rather to show that such control is an absolute impossibility, and that the best that organized knowledge can do is to teach men to submit more readily to the dynamic factors in progress. This is the function of a true theory of society as a lubricant but not a motive power in progress: it can grease the wheels and prevent friction but cannot keep the engine moving. There cannot be better done than that of letting social progress go on unhindered; yet an immensity of mischief may be done in the way of disturbing, and distorting and repressing, by policies carried out in pursuit of erroneous conceptions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Man is called upon to reconcile spiritual aspirations with life’s demands. Too many people are willing to make an assault upon the outward effects of evil while leaving untouched the inward causes of evil. Those who want only to gratify bodily appetites and have no use for spiritual satisfactions may regard ideals as quite futile. They may find the only rational purpose in human action is to cast out all aims except selfish ones, subordinating all moral restraints to the realization of those aims in the process. However stubborn and intransigent his character may seem, let him never despair of himself. Even if he keeps making mistakes, let him pick himself up and try again. However slow and laborious such a procedure seems, it will still be effectual in the end. He must purify the will by abandoning error. What he does in his personal relations with others or in the way he meets events is no less a part of his spiritual life than his formal exercises in meditation. If the goals of life are not redefined on a higher plane, the status of life remains—hovers—between that of the animal and the human and does not become fully human. He needs to be war of his own animal self and its interfusion with his human self and its hostility to angelic self. A justly balanced picture would show every man to be good in some points, bad in other points. There is no exception to this. Therefore, there is necessity for the false pride of anyone who ignores his bad points. However, in the spiritual aspirant, such pride is not only unnecessary but also deathly to his progress. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The tyranny of negative thoughts and negative feelings can and must be broken. For this he can look for help from the best in him and the best in others. It is said that necessity shapes its own morality. This is often true. However, the exceptional man listens to a higher command. As if one were no longer identified with them, if repeated regularly, standing aside from one’s thoughts, observing their nature and results quite critically, becomes a means of self-betterment. It is tremendously important to safeguard the fruits of one’s studies by purification of character. On this Quest, the aspirant’s motives must necessarily be of the highest quality. Each should do what he or she can to prepare himself by learning how to recognize and eliminate weaknesses. It is equally essential to keep the thoughts, emotions, and actions on as high a level as possible. The discipline of self is a prerequisite to the enlightenment of self. It is true that most people realize that they do not yet come anywhere near such an ideal as philosophy proposes to them regarding their personal development. At least if they are aware of the ideal and if they accept it, they will find that practice can make quite a difference. When these first appear, the simple practice of holding back their own negative thoughts, holding back their own negative feelings and nipping them in the bud is the beginning of becoming their own master. If a man regrets his own conduct, be it a single action or a whole course of actions, he will feel some self-contempt and get depressed. This is a valuable moment, this turning of the ego against itself. If he takes advantage of it to ferret out the cause in his own character, in his own person as it got built up through its reincarnations in Jesus as the Christ, he may remold it in a more satisfactory way. This inner work is accomplished by a series of creative and optimistic prayers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The experience I have had with my clients causes me profoundly to disagree with the notion that the individual is no more than a link between a series of complex causes and their inevitable and predetermined effects. When I think of the explanation in which Skinner concurs as to his presence at the conference, I cannot make it apply to human events as I know them. When I try to tell myself, for example, that a Freedom Rider did not choose to expose himself to danger, did not voluntarily risk his life for a right which he valued, and had, as a person, no part in his behaviour, my judgment rebels. When I try to tell myself that behaved in this way, went into a dangerous situation, accepted a brutal beating, served a jail sentence, simply because his genetic constitution and his individual and cultural conditioning caused him to move in certain geographical directions, emit certain sounds when beaten, and further vocalizations when arrested, and that all those behaviours were emitted because he had been conditioned to find them rewarding—this seems to me a most inadequate and degrading view of man. He becomes a meaningless phenomenon in a World which has no sense. If I object to the concept of man as a meaningless molecule in an equation which he had no part in writing, I must be willing to define what I mean when I speak of freedom, when I say that I have observed in others, and have experienced in myself, the process of learning to be free. This may seem especially difficult since, as a behavioural scientist, I agree as much in the psychological as in the physical World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Freedom is essentially an inner thing, something which exists in the living person, quite aside from any of the outward choices of alternatives which we so often think of as constituting freedom. Freedom is a quality where everything—possessions, identity, choice—is taken away from one. However, even months and years in a hostile environment will prove that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. It is this inner, subjective, existential freedom which I have observed. It is the realization that “I can live myself, here and now by my own choice. It is the quality of courage which enables a person to step into the uncertainty of the unknown as he chooses himself. It is the discovery of meaning from within oneself, meaning which comes from listening sensitively and openly to the complexities of what one is experiencing. It is the burden of being responsible for the self one chooses to be. It is the recognition by the person that he is an emerging process not a static product. The individual who is thus deeply and courageously thinking his own thoughts, becoming his own thoughts, becoming his own uniqueness, responsibly choosing himself, may be fortunate in having hundreds of objective outer alternatives from which to choose, or he may be unfortunate in having none, but his freedom exists regardless. So, we are speaking of something which exists within the individual, of something phenomenological rather than objective, but to be prized. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
In defining this experience of freedom is that it exists not as contradiction to the picture of the psychological universe as a sequence of cause and effect, but as a complement to such a universe. Freedom, rightly understood, is a fulfillment, by the person, of the ordered sequence of his life. The free man…believes in destiny, and believes that it stands in need of him. He moves out voluntarily, freely, repsonsibly, to play his significant part in the World whose determined events move through his spontaneous choice and will. He who forgets all that is caused and makes decisions out of the depths…is a free man, and destiny confronts him as the counterpart of his freedom. It is not his boundary but his fulfillment. This is the answer of the modern philosopher to the prevailing view that man is no more than the sum of his condition. Even more is no more than the sum of his conditioning. Even more convincing than the intellectual answer is the experience of one client after another, as he moves in therapy toward an acceptance of the realities of the World outside and inside himself, and moves toward becoming a responsible agent in this real World. We are speaking then, of a freedom which exist in the subjective person, a freedom which he courageously uses to live his potentialities. We are speaking of a freedom in which the individual chooses to fulfill herself by playing a responsible and voluntary part in brining about the destined events of his World. This experience of freedom is for my clinets a most meaningful development, one which assists them in becoming human, in relating to others, in being a person. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Contemporary industrial man has undergone an intellectual development to which we do not yet see any limits. Simultaneously he tends to emphasize those sensations and feeling experiences which he shares with the animal: desires for pleasures of the flesh, aggression, fright, hunger, and thirst. The decisive question is, Are there any emotional experiences which are specifically human and which do not correspond to what we know as being rooted in the lower brain? The view is often voiced that the tremendous development of the neocortex has made it possible for man to arrive at an ever-increasing intellectual capacity but that his lower brain is hardly different from that of his primate ancestors and hence that, emotionally speaking, he has not developed and can at best deal with his “drives” only by repression or control. There are specifically human experiences which are neither of an intellectual character nor identical with those feeling experiences which by and large are like those of the animal. Not being competent in the field of neurophysiology, I can only guess that relations between the large neocortex and the old brain are the basis for these specifically human feelings. There are reasons to speculate that the specifically human affective experiences like love, tenderness, compassion, and all affects which do not serve the function of survival are based on the interaction between the new and the old brain; hence, that man is not distinguished from the animal only by his intellect, but by new affective qualities which result from the interaction between the neocortex and the base of animal emotionality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The student of human nature can observe these specifically human affects empirically and he cannot be deterred by the fact that neurophysiology has not yet demonstrated the demonstrated the neurophysiological basis for this sector of experiences. As with many other fundamental problems of human nature, the student of the science of man cannot be placed in the position of neglecting his observations because neurophysiology has not yet given the green light. Each science, neurophysiology as well as psychology, has its own method and necessarily will deal with such problems as it can handle at a given point in its scientific development. It is the task of the psychologist to challenge the neurophysiologist, urging him to confirm or deny his findings, just as it is his task to be aware of neurophysiological conclusions and to be stimulated and challenged by them. Both sciences, psychology and neurophysiology, are young and very much at their inception. They must develop relatively independently and yet remain in close touch with each other, mutually challenging and stimulating. As far as the “drives” which function for the sake of survival are concerned, it does not sound implausible that a computer could be developed which would parallel this whole aspect of feeling sensations, but as far as the specifically human feeling aspect, which does not serve survival purposes, is concerned it seems difficult to imagine that a computer could be constructed with nonsurvivial functions. One might even say that the “humane experience” could be negatively defined as one which cannot completely duplicated by a machine. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Seeing alienation as a pathological phenomenon must not obscure the fact that Hegel and Marx considered it a necessary phenomenon, on which is inherent in human evolution. This is true regarding the alienation of reason as well as of love. Only when I can distinguish between the World outside becomes an object, can I grasp it and make it my World, become one with it again. The infant, from whom the World is not yet conceived as “object,” can also not grasp it with his reason and reunite himself with it. Man must become alienated to overcome this split in the activity of his reason. The same holds true for love. If the infant has not separated himself from the World outside, he is still part of it, and hence cannot love. To love, the “other” must become a stranger, and in the act of love, the stranger ceases to be a stranger and becomes me. Love presupposes alienation—and at the same time overcomes it. The same idea is to be found in the prophetic concept of the Messianic Time and Marx’s concept of socialism. In Paradise man still is one with nature, but not yet aware of himself as separate from nature and his fellowman. By his act of disobedience man acquires self-awarteness, the World becomes estranged from him. In the process of history, according to the prophetic concept, man develops his human powers so fully that eventually he will acquire a new harmony with men and nature. Socialism, in Marx’s sense, can only come, once man has become completely alienated and thus is able to reunite himself with men and nature without sacrificing his integrity and individuality. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Returning to our case study of Clare, while she was going over her association of a memory, it occurred to her in connection with the “foreign city” of the dream she had. Once when she was in a foreign city, she had lost her way to the station; since she did not know the language, she could not ask directions and thus she missed her train. As she thought of this incident it occurred to her that she had behaved in a silly manner. She might have bought a dictionary, or she might have gone into any great hotel and asked the porter. However, apparently, she had been too timid and too helpless to ask. Then it suddenly struck her that this very timidity had played a part also in the disappointment with Peter. Instead of expressing her wish to have him back for the weekend she had encouraged him to see a friend in the country so that he could have some rest. An early memory emerged of her doll Emily, whom she loved most tenderly. Emily had only one flaw: she had only a cheap wig. Clare deeply wanted for her a wig of real hair, which could ne combed and braided. She often stood before a toy shop and looked at dollars with real hair. One day she was with her mother in the toy shop, and the mother, who was generous in giving presents, asked her whether she would like to have a wig with real hair. However, Clare declined. The wig was expensive, and she knew that the mother was short of money. And she never got it, a memory which even now moved her almost to tears. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
She was disappointed to realize that she had still not overcome her reluctance in expressing her wishes, despite the work on this problem during her analytical treatment, but at the same time she felt tremendously relieved. This remaining timidity appeared to be the solution to her distress of the previous days. She merely had to be franker with Peter and let him know her wishes. Clare’s interpretation illustrates how an only partially accurate analysis can miss the essential point and blur the issue involved. It also demonstrates that a feeling of relief does not in itself prove that the solution found is the real one. The relief resulted from the fact that by hitting upon a pseudo solution Clare succeeded, temporarily, in circumventing the crucial problem. If she had not been unconsciously determined to find an easy way out of her disturbance, she would probably have paid more attention to the association. The memory was not just one more example of her lack of assertiveness. It clearly indicated a compulsion to give first importance to her mother’s needs to avoid becoming the object of even vague resentment. The same tendency applied to the present situation. She had been too timid in expressing her wish, but this inhibition arose less from timidity than from unconscious design. Peter was an aloof person, hypersensitive to any demands upon him. At that time Clare was not fully aware, but she sensed it sufficiently to hold back any direct wishes concerning his time, just as she refrained from ever mentioning the possibility of marriage, though she often thought of it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
If she had asked him to be back for the weekend, he would have complied, but with resentment. Clare could not have recognized this fact, however, without a dawning realization of the limitations within Peter, and this was still impossible for her. She preferred to see primarily her own share in the matter, and to see that part of it which she felt confident of overcoming. It should be remembered, too, that it was an old pattern of Clare’s to preserve a difficult relationship by taking all the blame on herself. This was essentially the way in which she had dealt with her mother. The result of Clare’s attributing the whole distress to her own timidity was that she lost—at least consciously—her resentment toward Peter, and looked forward to seeing him again. This happened the next evening. However, a new disappointment was in store for her. Peter not only was late for the appointment but looked tired and did not express any spontaneous joy at seeing her. As a result, she became self-conscious. He was quick to notice her freezing up and, was apparently his habit, he took the offensive, asking her whether she had been angry at his not coming home for the weekend. She answered with a weak denial but on further pressure admitted that she had resented it. She could not tell him of the pathetic effort she had made not to resent it. He scolded her for being childish and for considering only her own wishes. Clare was miserable. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
While a person must be aware of the usual type of hypnosis, covert hypnosis is a thing done to you, and you are unaware of what is happening. If you have been covertly hypnotized or not, you may never know. Chances are though that you have experienced things then later wondered why in the World you participated in that thing or acted the way you did. Those who seek to use covert hypnosis on you to get you to do what they want, generally will not want to let you in on what they did to you. It is not like they must use a pocket watch to put you under their spell. Often, the reasons to hypnotize you are to get you to darker things than you normally would. Other times, it may be used to distract you from something so they can get away with what they have done. Whatever the reason is, you can bet it is never a good one. If it was, then the hypnotist would be happy to let you in on what they are doing to you. We live in the Age of Anxiety. Certainly, we have much to be anxious about and worried. Uncertainty is perhaps the greatest stimulus to anxiety, and at the present time we are confronted by a universal uncertainty as to the future of our World that has an urgency and immediacy surpassing that of any previous period of history. We are faced with the imminent possibility of cataclysmic destruction of the World through nuclear war. Insofar as all peoples of the World know this uncertainty, they share for the first time in a universal anxiety. However, the fact of a common and heavy anxiety does not mean obviously that ours is a more anxious World than ever before. Uncertainty is a condition of life; anxiety has been experienced by all men in all periods. Civilization is the process whereby men change what it is they fear. However, ultimate uncertainties have always been coupled with immediate dangers to make men anxious. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
If this is the Age of Anxiety, it is not so simply as a function of absolute increase in the things about which man is fearful. Rather it is so because we have taught man to be anxious about his anxiety. We have attributed to anxiety and to the efforts of escape anxiety all of man’s neurotic ills. We have sensitized ourselves to recognize the signs of anxiety, and we have been taught that the signs of anxiety are symptoms. We have been encouraged to the fallacious values of a total avoidance of anxiety as a goal of life; we have been led to believe that complete freedom from anxiety would be the distinguishing characteristic of an adjusted life. Many people are unaware that the psychopathology of a significant portion of psychiatric patients (the so-called psychopaths and character disorders) is attributed by some authorities to a pathological incapacity to experience anxiety. Much of what we have learned about psychopathology, and especially about the etiology of neuroses, has come through an understanding of the effects of severe anxiety and of the mechanisms by which the individual copes with anxiety. It is essential to the aims of mental health education that the importance and role of anxiety be understood by everyone. However, in this endeavour, there has been a failure to distinguish between normal and pathological anxiety. If a person were totally incapable of experiencing pain, his life would be seriously jeopardized. The experiencing of continual pain is abnormal and signals the need for efforts to correct that cause of the pain. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
However, it would be inimical to the welfare of a normal person to drug him so that this pain sensitivity was continuously reduced or absence. Medical literature contains fascinating accounts of injuries and illnesses (and abnormal complications thereof) of persons apparently suffering a congenital defect in their neurological system for the sensation of pain. The capacity to experience pain is normal, and the sensation of pain is normal under certain conditions. Likewise, anxiety is a normal experience when present to certain degrees in appropriate situations. When taking an examination, when applying for a job, when getting married, when being prepared for surgery, when making a speech, it is normal to be anxious. When facing any new situation or demand for which there is an uncertain outcome, it is normal to experience much anxiety. The signs of anxiety (such as increased heart rate, dry throat, perspiring hands) are indications that one’s physiological apparatus is in a state of readiness for special effort. One could interpret these experiences as signs that one is keyed up and “ready to go.” Or one can interpret these as symptoms of anxiety, and become anxious about them—and this may have a disrupting effect on performance. It is an unfortunate result of the massive attention which has been given to anxiety that people have been led to view all experiences of the signs of “nervousness” as symptoms of pathological anxiety. Once the arrive at this orientation they are potential candidates for psychotherapy, and in presenting their complaints of incapacitating anxiety, it may not be immediately clear to the therapist that their symptoms represent the circular, autocatalytic effects of being “anxious about anxiety.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The limited resources for expert psychotherapy should not be dissipated upon individuals who have inappropriate attitudes and expectations. Mental health educators must make a concerted effort to teach the public about normal anxiety and its necessary role in adjustment. They must teach that physiological changes under stress are signs of normal functioning, not symptoms of pathology. The adult public must be helped to correct its currently predominant and unhealthy tendency to overinterpret and be fearful of normal anxiety. In the instruction and rearing of children we have the opportunity both to teach them the biological utility of anxiety and to assist them in the progressive development of tolerance for it. Being a firefighter is a job where one must deal with a lot of anxiety. “I can still remember the day the Sacramento Fire Department called me. I was so happy. That was the place I wanted to work. I had just taken the fire exam in San Francisco, where I had gone to high school and where my parents still lived. I really didn’t want to go back there. I was back in San Francsico about a week, when somebody from the city personnel department called, saying, ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days. Where have you been? We want you to come in and talk to us.’ The exam process consisted of an initial interview with a personnel staff member, covering general stuff like, ‘Why do you want to be a firefighter? Why do you think you’re qualified for this work? Do you get along well with people?’ Then there was an interview with one of the department’s chief officers that was a lot more specific. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
‘If you passed the interview, you were given a physical agility examination, where you ran a dash of, I’m not sure how many hundred yards, you had to walk a balance beam and climb a fifty-foot ladder up to the department’s drill tower. Once on top of the tower, you had to lift a hose bundle. That was 150 feet of inch-and-a-half hose tied into a bundle, with a rope tied to it that went up over a hose roll at the top of the grill tower. You had to pull that up, hand over hand, to the top, and then set it back down again. You wore a doughnut roll like a backpack for a couple of sessions and had to climb a ladder to the third floor and back down. You had to take a twenty-four-foot ladder off the side of a pumper, set it down, then put it back on. All this was timed. Then there was a mechanical aptitude test, where you had a series of nuts and bolts you had to assemble. That was the exam at the time. It was funny because the hose bundle pull was the thing I was most concerned about. I had been running for a long time and felt good about my heart, lungs, and legs, but having been a student, I wasn’t pumping iron, and my arms weren’t real strong. I had a summer job managing a gymnasium for San Francisco parks department. We had a rope that went up to the ceiling, and the test for the fire department then was a rope climb, so I spent the whole summer climbing the rope and did it with no problem. Then I returned to Sacramento, and my friends in the fire department said, ‘They changed the test. There’s no longer a rope climb. Now you’ve got to pull a bundle up, hand over hand.’ Anyway, I wound up passing the test without any trouble, and came to work a few weeks after that. Please keep the Sacramento Fire Department in your heart and donate to ensure they receive all the resources they need. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Human Perfection is Not Only Possible but Inevitable
There is all the difference between a sturdy independence and an inflated self-esteem. An experience which is a blow to his ego ought to be received with humility and analysed with impartiality. However, too often the man receives it with resentment and analyses it with distortion. In the result he is doubly harmed: there is the suffering itself and there is the deterioration of character. We sin by wandering away from our true inner selves, by letting ourselves become immersed in the thoughts and desires which surround us, by losing our innermost identity and taking up an alien one. This is the psychology of sin as philosophy sees it. However, if it had not succeeded overcoming the bondage of flesh, feeling, and thought and penetrating by means of its flawless technique into the World of the divine spirit, which is the real man, it could not have gained the knowledge for such a view of man. He is to live for the praise and blame, not of other people, but of his own higher self. The distance from lip to heart is sometimes immense. Who has not known men who had God prominent in their heard speech but evil prominent in their silent desires? The philosophic way of living asks for more than most men possess, more command of the passions, more discipline of the thoughts, and more submissiveness to intuition. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The moral injunctions which he finds in this teaching and must follow out in his life, are based on understanding the relation between his higher self and his lower self. They are not arbitrary commands but inevitable consequences of applying the adage, “Man, know thyself.” When anyone takes advantage of it to bloster his own ego at the expense of those under him, there is an abuse of authority. He will be virtuous not merely because so many others are–it is safer, it stops the prodding of conscience, etcetera—but much more because it is essential to put up no obstructions to the light flowing from the Overself. When applying evolution and social Darwinism to society, we are doing poetic justice to its origins. The “survival of the fittest” was a biological generalization of the cruel processes which reflective observers saw at work in early nineteenth century society, and Darwinism was a derivative of political economy. The miserable social conditions of the early industrial revolution had provided the data for Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population, and Malthus’ observations had been the matrix of natural-selection theory. The stamp of its social origin was evident in Darwinian theory. “Over the whole of English Darwinism,” Nietzsche once observed, “there hovers something of the odor of humble people in need and in straits.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Darwin acknowledged his great indebtedness to Malthus: “In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement ‘Malthus on Population,’ and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.” Spener’s theory of social selection, also written under the stimulus of Malthus, arose out of his concern with population problems. In two famous articles that appeared in 1852, six years before Darwin and Wallace jointly published sketches of their theory, Spencer had set forth the view that the pressure of subsistence upon population must have a beneficent effect upon the human race. This pressure had been the immediate cause of progress from the earliest human times. By placing a premium upon skill, intelligence, self-control, and the power to adapt through technological innovation, it has stimulated human advancement and selected the best of each generation for survival. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Because he did not extend his generalization to the whole animal World, as Darwin did, Spencer failed to reap the full harvest of his insight, although he coined the expression “survival of the fittest.” He was more concerned with mental than physical evolution, and accepted Lamarck’s theory that the inheritance of acquired characteristics is a means by which species can originate. This doctrine confirmed his evolutionary optimism. For if mental as well as physical charactersitics could be inherited, the intellectual powers of the race would become cumulatively greater, and over several generations the ideal man would finally be developed. Spencer never discarded his Lamarckism, even when scientific opinion turned overwhelmingly against it. Spencer called for a return to natural rights, setting up as an ethical standard the right of every man to do as he pleases, subject only to the condition that he does not infringe upon the equal rights of others. In such a scheme, the sole function of the state is negative—to insure that such freedom is not curbed. Fundamental to all ethical progress, Spence believed, is the adaptation of human character to the conditions of life. The root of all evil is the “non-adaptation of constitution to conditions.” Because the process of adaptation, founded in the very nature of the organism, is constantly at work, evil tends to disappear. While the moral constitution of the human race is still ridden with vestiges of man’s original predatory life which demanded brutal self-assertion, adaptation assures that he will ultimately develop a new moral constitution fitted to the needs of civilized life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Human perfection is not only possible but inevitable: “The ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain—as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for instance that all men will die…Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower.” Some young much, such as actor Ian Nelson, who is wise beyond his years, also believes in the idea of human perfection. He has helped other people gain more success in their careers by sharing with them opportunities that were meant for him. And he has a very optimistic attitude about helping others become successful and sharing in their joy, but I guess that is why he is so successful. However, Spencer was ultra-conservative. His categorical repudiation of the state interference with the “natural,” unimpeded growth of society led him to oppose all state aid to the poor. They were unfit, he said, and should be eliminated. “The whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the World of them, and to make room for better.” Nature is as insistent upon fitness of mental character as she is upon physical character, “and radical defects are as much causes of death in the one case as in the other.” He who loses his life because of his stupidity, vice, or idleness is in the same class as the victims of weak viscera or malformed limbs. Under nature’s laws alike are put on trial. “If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
To some, it must seem strangely out of tune with the modern World to speak of learning to be free. The growing opinion today is that man is essentially unfree. He is unfree in a cultural sense. He is all too obviously a pawn of government. He is molded by mass propaganda into being a creature with certain opinions and beliefs, desired and pre-planned by the powers that be. He is the product of his class—lower, middle, or upper—and his values and his behaviour are shaped by the class to which he belongs. So, it seems increasingly clear from the study of social institutions and influences, that man is simply the creature of his culture and his circumstances, and most decidedly is not free. At a still deeper level the behavioural sciences have added to this conception of man as unfree. Man is determined in part by his heredity—in his intelligence, his personality type, perhaps even his tendency toward mental aberration. He is above all the product of his conditioning—the inevitable result of the fortuitous events which have “shaped up” his behaviour. Many of our most astute behavioural scientists agree that this process of conditioning, of “shaping up” the individual’s behaviour, will no longer be left to chance, but will be planned. Certainly, the behavioural sciences are developing a technology which will enable us to control the individual’s behaviour to a degree which now would seem fantastic. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Along with the developlement of this technology has gone an underlying philosophy of rigid determinism in the psychological sciences which can perhaps best be illustrated by a brief exchange which I had with Professor B.F. Skinner of Harvard at a recent conference. A paper given by Dr. Skinner led me to direct these remarks to him. “From what I understood Dr. Skinner to say, it is his understanding that though he might have thought he chose to come to that meeting, might have thought he had a purpose in giving that speech, such thoughts are illusory. He made certain marks on paper and emitted certain sounds here simply because his genetic makeup and his past environment had operantly conditioned his behaviour in such a way that it was rewarding to make these sounds, and that he as a person does not enter this. In fact, if I get his thinking correctly, from his strictly scientific point of view, he, as a person, does not exist.” In his reply, Dr. Skinner said that he would not go into the question of whether he had any choice in the matter (presumably because the whole issue is illusory) but stated, “I do accept your characterization of my own presence here.” I do not need to labour the point that for Dr. Skinner the concept of “learning to be free” would be quite meaningless. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Thus, though there are opposing voices, the general thrust of the cultural trend throughout both the West and Communist World is to say that man is not free, that there is no such thing as a free man. We are formed and moved by forces—cultural forces without, and unconscious forces within—which we do not comprehend, and which are beyond our control. We will soon be formed more knowingly and more precisely by scientific technology which will replace the crude way in which we have been molded by practically fortuitous natural events. The age of information of our time prides itself on the fact that millions of people have a chance and, in fact, use the chance to listen to excellent live, recorded, or streamed music, to see art in the many museums in the country, and to read the masterworks of human literature from Plato to Anne Rice in easily available, inexpensive editions. No doubt for a small minority this encounters with art and literature is a genuine experience. For the vast majority, “culture” is another article of consumption and a status symbol since having seen the “right” pictures, knowing the “right” music, and having read the good books indicates college education and hence is useful for climbing the social ladder. The best of art has been transformed into an article of consumption, and it is reacted to an alienated fashion. The proof of this is that many of the very same people who go to concerts, listen to classical music, and buy a paperback Plato view tasteless and vulgar offerings on television without disgust. If their experience with art were genuine, they would turn off their television sets when they are offered artless, banal “drama.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Yet man’s longing for the dramatic, that which touches upon the fundamental of human experience, is not dead. While most of the drama offered in theaters or on the screen is either a nonartistic commodity or is consumed in an alienated fashion, the modern “drama” is primitive and barbaric when it is genuine. In our day the longing for drama is manifested most genuinely in the attraction which real or fictionalized accidents, crimes, and violence have for most people. An automobile accident or fire will attract crowds of people who watch with great intensity. Why do they do so? Simply because the elemental confrontation with life and death breaks into the surface of conventional experience and fascinates people hungry for drama. For the same reason, nothing sells a newspaper better than reports of crime and violence. The fact is that whole on the surface the Greek drama or Rembrandt’s paintings are held in the highest esteem, their real substitutes are crime, murder, and violence, either directly visible on the television screen or reported in the newspapers. Some people suffer from an alienation of hope. One characteristic of the alienation of hope is the future becoming transformed into an idol. This idolatry of history can be clearly seen from Robespierre’s point of view. “O posterity, sweet and tender hope of humanity, thou art not a stranger to us; it is for thee that we brave all the blows of tyranny; it is thy happiness which is the price of our painful struggles: often discouraged by the obstacles that surround us, we feel the need of thy consolations; it is to thee that we confide the task of completing our labours, and the destiny of all the urban generations of me!… Make haste, O posterity, to bring to pass the hour of equality, of justice, of happiness!” #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Similarly, a distorted version of Marx’ philosophy of history has often been used in the same sense by Communists. The logic of this argument is: whatever is in accord with the historical trend is necessary, hence good and vice versa. In this view, whether in the form of Robespierre’s or the communist argument, it is not man who makes history but history that makes man. It is not man who hopes and has faith in the future but the future that judges him and decides whether he had the right faith. Marx expressed very succinctly the opposite view of history to the alienated one I just quoted. “History,” he wrote in The Holy Family, “does nothing, it possesses no colossal riches, it fights no battles! It is rather man, actual and living man, who does all this; ‘history’ does not use man as a means for its purposes as though it were a person apart; it is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his ends.” Not only are all forms of depression, dependence and idol worship (including the “fanatic”) direct expressions of, or compensations for, alienation; the phenomenon of the failure to experience one’s identity which is a central phenomenon at the root of psychopathological phenomena is also a result of alienation. Precisely because the alienated person has transformed his own functions of feeling and thought to an object outside, he is not himself, he has no sense of “I,” of identity. This lack of a sense of identity has many consequences. The most fundamental and general one is that it prevents integration of the total personality, hence it leaves the person disunited within himself, lacking either capacity “to will one thing” or if he seems to will one thing his will lack authenticity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
In the widest sense, every neurosis can be considered an outcome of alienation; this is so because neurosis is characterized by the fact that one passion (for instance, for money, power, women, etcetera) becomes dominant and separated from the total personality, thus becoming the ruler of the person. This passion is his idol to which he submits even though he may rationalize the nature of his idol and give it many different and often well-sounding names. He is ruled by a partial desire, he transfers all he has left to this desire, he is weaker the stronger “it” becomes. He has become alienated from himself precisely because “he” has become the slave of a part of himself. Now, in our case study, Clare was unable to let go of a man, for whatever reasons. The repression of her resentment is striking as she was fully aware of her disappointment at Peter, the man she was involved with, staying away. Moreover, on such an occasion resentment would certainly have been a natural reaction, and it was not in her character never to allow herself to be angry at anyone; she often was angry at people, though it was characteristic of her to shift anger from its real source to trivial matters. However, raising this question, while apparently only a routine matter, would have meant broaching the subject of why the relationship with Peter was so precarious that any disturbance of it had to be shut out of awareness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
After Clare had thus managed to shake off the whole problem from her conscious mind, she fell asleep again and had a dream. She was in a foreign city; the people spoke a language that she did not understand; she lost her way, this feeling of being lost emerging very distinctly; she had left all her money and luggage deposited at the station. Then she was at a fair; there was something unreal about it, but she recognized gambling stands and a freak show; she was riding on a merry-go-round which turned around more and more quickly so she was drifting on waves, and she woke up with a mixed feeling of abandon and anxiety. The first part of the dream reminded her of an experience she had had in adolescence. She had been in a strange city; had forgotten the name of her hotel and had felt lost, as in the dream. Also, it came back to her that the night before, when returning home from the movie, she had felt similarly lost. The gambling stands and the freak show she associated with her earlier thoughts about Peter making promises and not keeping them. Such places, too, make fantastic promises and there, too, one is usually cheated. In addition, she regarded the freak show as an expression of her anger at Peter: he was a freak. What really startled her in the dream was the depth of the feeling of being lost. She immediately explained away her impressions, however, by telling herself that these expressions of anger and of feeling lost were but exaggerated reactions to her disappointment, and that dreams express feelings in a grotesque way anyhow. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
It is true that the dream translated Clare’s problems into grotesque terms, but it did not exaggerate the intensity of her feeling. And even if it had constituted an exaggeration, it would not have been sufficient merely to dismiss it on that score. If there is an exaggeration it must be examined. What is the tendency that prompts it? Is it not an exaggeration but an adequate response to an emotional experience, the meaning and intensity of which are beyond awareness? Did the experience mean something quite different on the conscious and unconscious level? Clare felt just as miserable, as lost, as resentful as the dream and the earlier associations indicated. However, since she still clung to the idea of a close love relationship this realization was unacceptable to her. For the same reason she ignored that part of the dream about having left all her money in the luggage at the station. This was probably a condensed expression of her feeling that she had invested all she had in Peter, the station symbolizing Peter and connoting something transitory and indifferent as opposed to the permanence and security of home. And Clare disregarded another striking emotional factor in the dream when she did not bother to account for its ending with anxiety. Nor did she make any attempts to understand the dream. She contended with the superficial explanation of this and that element, and thus learned from it no more than she knew anyhow. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If Clare had probed more deeply, she might have seen the main theme of the dream as this: I feel helpless and lost; Peter is a great disappointment; my life is like a merry-go-round, and I cannot jump off; there is no solution but drifting; but drifting is dangerous. We cannot discard emotional experiences, however, as easily as we can discard thoughts unconnected with our feelings. And it is quite possible that Clare’s emotion experience of anger and particularly of feeling lost, despite her blatant failure to understand them, lingered on in her mind and were instrumental in her pursuing the path of analysis she subsequently embarked upon. While the public has been effectively educated to recognize symptoms of personality disorder and has been encouraged to seek professional consultation for emotional problems, the mental health movement has inevitably created problems as it has offered solutions. The nature of neurosis as presently defined is such as to encourage overinterpretation of the significance of a host of idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. The mental health educator has understandably, in the first phase of the moment, operated within the pathological framework afforded by essentially gross medical definitions of emotional illness. Emphasis has been upon detection and prevention of illness, rather than upon modes of achieving and maintaining beneficial mental health. The meaning of neurosis, ambiguous to begin with, has been subtly extended to cover a variety of cultural delusions, perhaps the most prominent which is the Western myth that a state of happpiness is both a primary and achievable goal of life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
One effect of the mental health movement has been to encourage many people to see their unhappiness. Psychotherapist, both visible and “invisible,” are increasingly confronted by would-be patients who do not manifest any of the more objective hallmarks of a neurotic problem, who do not complain of failures of productivity or achievement, who do not suffer from serious interpersonal conflicts, who are free of functional somatic complaints, who are not incapacitated by anxiety, or tormented by obsessions, whose objective life circumstances they confess are close to optimal. These seekers of help suffer freedom from complaint. The absence of conflicts, frustrations, and symptoms brings a painful awareness: of absence—the absence of faith, of commitment, of meaning, of the need to search out personal, ultimate values, or of the need to live comfortably and meaningfully each day in the face of final uncertainty. For increasing numbers of rational, educated, and thoughtful men the central struggle becomes one of finding and keeping an emotional and psychological balance between the pain of doubt and the luxury of faith. A distaste for this struggle, or an insistence on its resolution as a necessary condition for continued existence is at the heart of the philosophical neuroses. In contrast to the psychoneuroses, we have no established knowledge or technique to bring to bear this form of dis-ease. We do not have a scientifically confirmable matrix of ideas concerning how or what to teach those who suffer philosophical neuroses. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The philosophical neurotic suffers in his struggle to be both reasonable and hopeful, and he can be helped in his skirmish by access to human wisdom and by encouragement to expose himself to it. However, in this seeking for counsel and for opportunity to test doubt against faith or faith against doubt, he must not be misled to think that any group of experts has a corner on some specialized wisdom about the meaning of life or how to live it. It is an unfortunate side-effect of the mental health movement that a large portion of the limited psychotherapeutic resources afforded by psychiatrists and psychologists is being consumed by persons who suffer a philosophical anomie for which neither psychiatrist nor psychologist can offer specific therapy. The person with a philosophical neurosis deserves care and can be helped; it would be in his own interests and in the interest of social economy for him to be encouraged to seek guidance from those who are most practiced and equipped to think with him in the domain of values, meaning, ethics, and eschatology. Recognition of the philosophical neurosis and the special problems its presents have been delayed on the part of psychotherapists because the well-bred, well-fed, well-read qualities typical of this patient appeal to the intellectual and social prejudices of the therapist and make for spontaneous rapport and empathy. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
In combating the general ignorance and superstition of the public about mental illness, the mental health movement has necessarily attacked the idea that emotional and mental problems should be a source of shame. The public has been taught that everyone has a basic susceptibility to psychological maladjustment and, furthermore, that a very large number of people in fact suffer from some degree of “nervousness.” All of this teaching is true and was most necessary in ending the shameful connotations that formerly prevailed. However, as an unfortunate consequence of these beneficial changes, neurosis has achieved respectability. In some sophisticated segments of our society it has become expected and accepted for the individual to acknowledge his “neurosis”–and to have all manner of immature, selfish, irresponsible behaviours explained by him (and accepted by his companions) as “symptoms” of his “sickness.” Among persons whose work demands some degree of creative imagination there is a popular stereotype which equates genius with neurosis. It becomes a tempting apology to substitute symptoms for effort; to manifest the temperament of an artist may be an easier road to achieving an artistic identity than to be truly creative. When individuals are volubly proud that they are “in therapy,” although they remain silent on the content and course of that self-discovering endeavour, with discussion of the causes and treatment reserved by socially sanctioned conspiracy of silence between therapist and client (or with normal social respect for the individual’s privacy), it may be wondered if the continuation of therapy is required at least in part because the patient is reluctant to lose the dramatic appeal of his status. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
And when the patient does speak freely of the content of his therapeutic conversations to all willing listeners, it may be wondered if he suffers from lack of any other mental content with which he would hope to hold an audience. To be proud of an illness or a defect is a separate illness, and perhaps needs to be treated first. Man’s capacity to feel shame is not pathological in itself; pathology arises from what he does or fails to do about shame. Shame can be hidden by repression and denial, but the massive effort required to hide one’s shame results in symptoms. Or, shame can yield a sense of responsibility, and this can power a search for self-understanding, for self-acceptance, and for better behaviour. The mental health movement has lifted the pathological shame previously associated with emotional illness. Now it must be attentive to combat the tendency for the unashamed to have pathological pride in their maladjustment. Liars have a dangerous maladjustment, which is why they often answer a question with one of their own. The tactic of answering a question with a question buys the liar time to come up with something plausible. They are not the type to let the silence go by, so they fill it with something that cannot be used against them. And the old, I swear on a stack of Bibles tactic is an oath to beware of. What people will say to try to get themselves off the hook is insane. When you are sure they are lying, how important is it to you that you get to the bottom of things and make someone tell you the truth? #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
All that is best in the Christian virtues you will find in philosophic ones. Few are those who are psychologically ready for philosophy’s disciplines, which call, not merely for a reluctant control of the animal nature, but for an eager aspiration to rise above it altogether. Few are ready for its ethics, which all not merely for a willingness to abide by society’s protective laws, but for a generous disposition contently putting itself in someone else’s place. Firefighters with the Sacramento Fire Department certainly display the Christian virtues. One firefighter said, “I think just being around firefighters got me. It’s like being a sports fan, being there and watching you get to know more about it, and you have more admiration for the good ones. The firefighting process is like a well-oiled machine going to work. I for fascinated watching it and wanted to be a part of it. I was just so happy to go in there, and I always wanted to do the very best job I could, to keep it that way. When I was a kid, I thought the World of the Sacramento Fire Department. I want to hold up my end of it.” Today, I think the best way to get to know someone is by listening to their first-hand accounts about themselves. Many people are cowards and like to tear down people who shine, and do not get to know them personally. Instead, they choose to gossip about them, become jealous and form hate groups. I personally like talking to people and getting to know their story and about them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Not everyone has a tragic story, nor is it unhappy. Recently, I found out a 29-year-old had been listening to classical music all week. And that really impressed me because it shows a rare level of maturity, and it gave me insight into his personality. It tells me that he is intelligent, cultured and probably very interesting. To make friends with someone, you have to know something about them and have something in common, and it is rare for people to disclose things about themselves to others. The Sacramento Fire Department has developed prestige in the community. People think, “boy, if you belong to that fire department, you’re really ‘in.’” People may say that they are a bunch of prima donnas, but they must be. If you belong to their fire department, you earn it. It is not easy to get in, but once you are in, you must produce, or you are out. Because you must get along with thirty other people or more, and if you do not pull your share, you will have a hard time. There is always a waiting list, people waiting to get in. And that is good. It may take two or three years before your number comes up. And there are sometimes some limiting factors. Sometimes residents are shown a preference. They pay attention to how long you have lived in the community and are you going to continue going to continue to live here. Once a team member is taken in, they want to keep them for at least twenty years. Please be sure to donate to the Sacrament Fire to ensure they are receiving all their resources. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 