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The Who-Done-It Mystery is Solved!
Regardless of education, geography, faith, calling, or family, mental health challenges can impact anyone; they are nothing to be ashamed of and should be met with love. As for “schizophrenic person”—there is no such thing. A person scared out of his wits is not a person at all. I was with some people labeled “schizophrenic” in a mental hospital recently. One of them was a woman in her middle years, of outward composure and grace. She was wearing a gingham dress—blue and white checks—with some sort of kerchief around her shoulders, but she sat as though wearing velvet and a cashmere shawl—as though these things belonged to her as a matter of course. She answered all questions, conveying complete confidence in her answers. However, they went like this: “Do you know the date?” “Yes, I’ve studied that. It’s November 19th.” “Do you hear voices?” “Yes, don’t you?” “No, I do not hear them. Are the voices male or female?” “That depends on the wiring in the building.” Her face was delicate, her eyes tender, with a hint of pain. When she was asked, “Where do you live?” she did not say “here” or “in a hospital,” or even “California” where she was, but referred to a farm in Illinois where she was “so lonely.” That loneliness is where she lives. This woman’s tenderness was very clear—but she never showed any response to any of us around her. She was caught in egocentricity, selfishness, and uselessness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Another woman, thirty-one, came in and walked to the window, looked out, then back, and there was something haunting or haunted in her eyes. She seemed to have no awareness of any of us, either then or when she suddenly became quick and like a child rushed to the light switch near the door and flicked it on and off. From there she went skippingly to another door and opened it, and flipped the light switch inside it on and off. Then to another door, where she did the same. Back and forth, from one to another, without end. When the psychiatrist called to her to “come and sit down” she obediently did—but in just a few seconds she hopped up and went from light switch to light switch again, always flipping them twice. When she did it only once, in a moment she turned and did it again. When the psychiatrist called to her to leave, she came, and as she went through the door, she said to him, making it a statement with a question in it, “I’m not a bad girl.?” When I remember that thought in myself as a child, I know her terrible unhappiness. She was caught in egocentricity, selfishness, and uselessness. These people are painfully trapped. I no longer know what the technical definition of schizophrenia is. Certainly it includes a wide variety of conditions of varying severity. Some could be genetic and/or metabolic. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The key for me is that schizophrenic has found some of his subjective inner World in the outer World—colouring it—distorting it—concealing some aspects of reality from his vision. This may or may not lead to social difficulty. It can extend from mild degrees on up to the whole of the outer World becoming diseased and disturbed, flooded with the unrecognized inner. A touch of this inner is recognized by a young woman when she writes: “The main indication to me of how and where I’m goofed up is how and where I try to goof up others. One thing I’ve learned. I have very little self-confidence and so operate on the defensive and resent suggestions and even help, seeing it as criticism and/or competition. I think I’ve had this brilliant insight before—I’ll probably keep having it until I can learn it in myself as well as in my head. Essentially, the word schizophrenic means that here is a person who is highly sensitive to his own inner experience and also to interpersonal relationships with others, who has been so defeated and traumatized in endeavouring to make use of his sensitivities that he has retreated both from his own experiencing and from any real contact with others. In addition to this fairly basic understand, the word schizophrenic also means to me that anyone whose behaviour is deviant and who cannot easily be understood is tossed in this all-encompassing basket. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
I try to remain open-minded to the possibility that there may be specific genetic, chemical, nutritional, or environmental factors which may bear some causative relationships to the behaviour that is called schizophrenic. A more comprehensive definition of schizophrenia is the absence of (or great narrowing of) that felt experiential interaction process which we are as people and which we feel as our concrete selves. When an individual is stuck in a hurtful relationship situation so that he can neither leave it nor feel and relate himself sufficiently to it, then he becomes deadened and empty inside, reports that he is “not himself.” The ongoing feeling process on which we all rely inside becomes muddy, swampy, unreliable, or stopped, and feeling contents become stuck, frozen, unowned, seemingly alien, static places, rather than fluidly functioning feeling. I deny that psychosis is psychotic content that are in all of us and can “erupt.” I believe instead that such “psychotic contents” are really a certain manner of being alive. Past LSD and other drug experiments have strongly confirmed this view. It seems that whether an individual under the influence of drugs comes up with horrible experiences or with wonderful experiences depends not on him (as a self-enclosed piece of well or poorly working machinery) but on the relationship situation in which he is (and feels himself to be) when he takes the drug. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
If he takes it in a friendly situation close to someone he trusts, he has a wonderful experience. Early psychological experiments which attempted to test LSD under carefully pure circumstances (the subject alone in an otherwise empty room!) produced something very like schizophrenia. The flap over recombinant DNA research, life extension and cloning is a wonderful sign that neurogenetic consciousness is emerging. Nothing can happen in evolution until the dom-species gets upset and worried. When the misguided politicians and the liberal agitators moralize about “monster escaping from the laboratory and being unleashed on the unsuspecting public,” the out-caste intelligence operative perks up interest. The “monsters,” of course, are us in the future. Evolutionary Agents reassure the dom-species about future-phobias and point out that allowing the next mutation to occur is the best way to avoid past terrors, because past-terrors are wors than future fears. Thus domesticated adult capitalists realized that some social-welfarism is the only way to avoid a return to barbarian-dictatorships. The communist stage ten dictators realized that some individual consumerism is the only way to avoid a return to tribal anarchy. It is the Evolutionary Agents’ role to demonstrate that civilian voluntary space migration is the only way to deal with the tensions of nationalism, tribalism and self-actualization. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Similarly, homophobes come to see that the only way to keep homosexuals away from their children is to allow gay societies in post-terrestrial plan-its. Racists of all colours realize that the only way to preserve discrimination and racial pride is in High Orbital Mini Earths-HOMEs. It is becoming obvious that the only solution to hive terrors, both past and future, is migration to space plan-its. The past always migrates behind the future. Today’s future taboo is tomorrow strict and rigid doctrine. Liberals are alarmed that nuclear energy, brain-changing drugs, radiation-control of brains, genetic engineering might fall into the hands of barbarian territorial dictators. Cloning, the key migratory technique for a post-terrestrial species, was first discussed in fearful terms of Hitler-like revivals. The hive custodians frighten people with mad scientist Nazi-devil rumors and thus concealed the possibility that you can clone yourself and friends. The same taboo-terror is projected on post terrestrial intelligence. We are warned that Martians were coming to harm us—not to enlighten or entertain us. Such natural hive fears can be assuaged by the realization that nuclear energy, brain-changing drugs such as LSD, cloning, and genetic research can only be safely employed in frontier, experimental communities—which can be found only in HOMEs. The first signs of neurogenetic consciousness are communities that are into self-actualization and states where the governors are space plan-it enthusiasts. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The human brain is programmed by RNA-DNA to fabricate technological realities and to build environments and new plan-its. External technology produces the pollution that activates the next brain-circuit. DNA is not concerned with evolving new anatomical-physiological forms adapted to a heavy 1-G planet. Terrestrial evolution is over-irrelevant. Now that high orbital migration is beginning, now that the futique species are moving into their designated ecological niche-high orbit-the goal of DNA is to create technologies adapted to multiple-G living. DNA is an evolutionary acceleration tool. The current survival problems on planet Earth are due to overpopulation swarming and cannot be solved by anatomical mutations. The next stages are neurological—neurotechnological. Encourage the appropriate castes of the human species to decode DNA and increase altitude and mobility. Life is no longer a disaster movie. The Who-Done-It mystery is solved! You are responsible. You are the hip-robots who are going to take over the Master-Designer role. It is your job to fabricate improved mini-Worlds. Who are you? You are those who recognize this signal and self-select yourselves as Future Builders. Continued feeling of freedom from obsessing desires, inordinate urges, and undue craving is generally a suitable indication that the character is sufficiently purified to enter a further stage. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
It is men who condemn themselves to this abject, undisciplined servitude of the passions and senses; so it is men themselves who must seek and win freedom from it. It is hard to do so, but it is also hard to suffer the consequences of not doing so. If you recognize that the feeling, the desire or body-sensation is pulling you away from the ideals set up for the Quest, hoist yourself out of it at once. Let others look for the second-rate and third-rate: let him be more discriminating, more fastidious, and seek the best alone. If he lets them go beyond his control, the senses will stupefy a man into foolish desires. Wisdom and security alone dictate that he shall become self-mastered. For this it is necessary to call up the will and to practise using it until it is developed into something strong. If before performing an impulsive, undisciplined, and irresponsible deed he would remember what the consequences are and that he will have to bear them, then he will have taken the first step towards self-mastery. The rising generations have legitimate complaints against their ancestors. However, in the matter of winning full freedom to follow their desires and upset the old Christian moral codes, the Mosaic decalogues, Confucian precepts, and the Indian taboos, they need to pause. Puritanic ideals are denounced but are not entirely inhuman: they have to be sifted and the good in them taken out. Stoic, simple living and self-discipline can be softened, its harshness also taken out, and the residue will be what the moderns need of they are to travel up higher and not sink lower. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
In what manner are men free who, in some way, to some extent, are enslaved by pleasures of the flesh, society, ambition, swelling desires, possessions, neighbours, associates, and family? Only by releasing ourselves from our desires can we hope to find lasting peace. If this seems like a heavy price to pay, we have only ourselves to blame. When terrestrial desires rage in a man, each satisfaction of them seems to be an asset, something gained; but when he is more awakened and freer from them, he begins to see how much of a liability these desires are, how wise and prudent it is to check them and finally transmute them. If he is no longer a victim of passions or at the mercy of emotions, it will not be because his blood temperature is too low, but because his control of himself is high. The animal gives way to its desires and feelings more quickly than the human because it acts by instinct. The animal gives way to its desires and feelings more quickly than the human because it acts by instinct. The human, so far as he is an animal, also acts by instinct. However, to the extent that he has developed reason and will he has developed a counter to that instinct which moderates or controls his desires and his feelings. Those humans who are nearer on the scale of evolution to the animal kingdom give way to passion and anger more readily because they have less self-control. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
A silent but self-declaring presence comes into knowledge whenever he puts a brake on that downward and Earthward movement of daily life which is the common lot—not to stop it altogether but to halt it for short periods or to slow it down so that he is not wholly carried away. The control of the lower nature which society may demand and religion may encourage, which makes a good man by conventional standards, is not enough for philosophy. It is only a stage of the mountain’s ascent: the summit has yet to be conquered. The transformation of this nature, making it utterly responsive to the Overself, is the philosophic goal. Self-effort can lead to its control but only Grace can lead to this transformation. All this does not imply that he is to become perfect and faultless before he can see the Overself, but that he has to become much more developed before he can stay in the awareness of it. Sometimes men get caught in traps. He might be faced with a situation which he can do absolutely nothing about. Yet his whole life, he had done something about every situation he found himself in. This constant doing, constant effort, makes his life one long struggle with the World and with other aspects of his own self. Man sometimes denies the underdog side of his nature—choosing, as a top-dog, to manipulate rather than to lose, to dominate rather than surrender. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, in so doing, he denies a simple fact of life, which, as trite as it may sound, is still true. And the truth is, “You cannot win them all.” His refusal to lose or be wrong leads him eventually to a position in which he has to lose and no amount of effort can help him win. The top-dog is useless in this situation. Abraham Maslow points out that our Western culture is built generally on Judeo-Christian theology which places great emphasis on what one does rather than who one is. The United States of America in particular is dominated by a Puritan ethic of doing, of applying effort, and working hard. We come to believe that in any given situation, there is always something we can do about it. There is a paradoxical nature of being and impossibility of striving for such qualities as wisdom, dignity, courage and humility. Understanding this concept is extremely important in your journey toward mastery, because it means that the most profound qualities of mastery cannot be striven for. They are qualities of being. You cannot do courageous, you can only be it. You can do a courageous act, but only after you have become courageous. The way to do is to be. In the summer of 1776, when the representatives of the American colonies were at the point of total frustration as to what to do about their differences with the British, they issues a declaration, which read, in part: “We…solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES…” #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Note that this is a state of condition, of being. The signers of the Declaration did nothing more than state who they were and what they were all about. It is significant that only after these words did they say: “…and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.” First they made a statement of being, then they said what they were going to do about it. The doing followed out of the statement of being. And indeed it can be no other way. Had the colonies simply started making war, lining up allies, printing money, and doing all the things a free country can do, there would have been mass confusion among the colonists and among the people of the other countries. The first question would have been, “What are you, a British colony, a state, a country? What are you all about?” The statement of being, the Declaration of Independence, made clear what the colonies were all about and provided a firm foundation upon which the new nation could carry out its activities. Being, then, is not as un-America as it once looked. We can be vigorous, we can be dynamic and active, but our activity must flow out of our being, out of what we are and what we are all about. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
However, there are some people who rebel against their scripts, apparently doing the opposite of what they are “supposed” to. Common examples are the “rebellious” adolescent and the woman who says, “The last thing I want to do is be like my mother.” Such cases have to be evaluated very carefully, as there are several possibilities. They may have been living on their counterscripts, and the apparent rebellion is merely “an outbreak of script.” Conversely, they may have been living on their scripts, and shifted to their counterscripts. They may have found the spellbreaker, and be released from the scripts. They may have different script directives from each parent, or from two different sets of parents, and are shifting from one set to another. They may be merely following a special script directive that tells them to rebel. The person may be a “script failure” who has despaired of carrying out his script directives and has simply given up. This is the cause of many depressions and schizophrenic breakdowns. On the other hand, he may have freed himself and “got out of his script” through his own efforts or with the help of psychotherapy. However, this must be carefully distinguished from “going into an antiscript.” These many alternatives emphasize how thorough the script analyst must be if he (and his patient) are to understand correctly the origin of certain changes in behaviour. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
An antiscript resembles closely what Erikson calls “identity diffusion.” If the script is compared to a computer punch card, then an antiscript is attained by turning the card around. This is a very rough analogy, but it makes the point. Where a mother says, “Do not drink,” the man drinks. Where she says, “Take a shower every day,” he does not wash. Where she says, “Do not think,” he thinks, and where she says, “Study hard,” he drops out. In short, some men are meticulously defiant. However, since he has to control his programing to know precisely how and where to be defiant, he is just as surely programed by disobeying each instruction as if he obeyed them all. Thus, where “freedom” is really defiance, it is only an illusion. Inverting his programing still leaves him programed. Such an inversion, turning the card around rather than tearing it up, is called an antiscript, and antiscripts offer a fertile field for further study. The war is against the machine. To the American middle-class, destruction of property is violence. Every American is protected by arms. There is no piece of land in the World not under the protective surveillance of someone’s guns. The writer, of course, has no need to refuse himself anything. For him, at least, boundaries disappear and desire can be allowed free rein. In this respect Sade is the perfect man of letters. He created a fable in order to give himself the illusion of existing. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Sade put “the moral crime that one commits by writing” above everything else. His merit, which is incontestable, lies in having immediately demonstrated, with the unhappy perspicacity of accumulated rage, the extreme consequences of rebellious logic—at least when it forgets the truth to be found in its origins. These consequences are a complete totalitarianism, universal crime, an aristocracy of cynicism, and the desire for an apocalypse. They will be found again many years after his death. However, having tasted them, he was caught, it seems, on the horns of his own dilemma and could only escape the dilemma in literature. Strangely enough, it is Sade who sets rebellion on the path of literature down which it will be led still farther by the romantics. He himself is one of those writers of whom he says: “their corruption is so dangerous, so active, that they have no other aim in printing their monstrous works than to extend beyond their own lives the sum total of their crimes; they can commit no more, but their accursed writings will lead others to do so, and this comforting thought which they carry with them to the tomb consoles them for the obligation that death imposes on them of renouncing this life.” Thus his rebellion writings bear witness to his desire for survival. Even if the immortality he longs for is the immortality of Cain, at least he longs for it, and despite himself bears witness to what is most true in metaphysical rebellion. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Forgetting of Intensions, Names. I once forgot to write a letter of recommendation for a graduate student whom I disliked for personal reasons that had nothing to do with his ability. Fortunately, the student received the position without the benefit of my letter. Accidents. Accidents may result in disadvantage either to the person having the accident or to others, depending upon the unconscious motivation—guilt in the former case, hostility in the latter. A colleague’s wife spilled ink on a manuscript her husband was working on (neglecting her as he did the work) as she cleaned his study. A student broke his hand shortly before he had to taken an examination for which he felt unqualified. Examples from Projective Test (those in which the person projects hidden aspects of self into pictured situations). A twenty-two-year-old undergraduate student once consulted me for help with vague guilt feelings, inability to study, and fierce headaches that occurred whenever he went home or was obliged to spend any time with the dean, one of his professors, or his boss at a part-time job. He appeared to be extremely polite. (He used the word sir in almost every sentence when talking to me.) In the test, many of his stories included some expression of violence and hatred toward authority figures. The student told this story about a pictured situation that show an old man stretching his hand toward the reclining figure of a younger man: #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
“This boy is having a nap. The old man, his father, is coming in to get him out of bed so he’ll get back to his studies. His father has been nagging him for ages about how lazy he is. The boy has been putting up with this for a long time. This is the last straw. When he wakes up, he’ll be so mad he’ll start beating up on his father. He’ll grab a chair and start mashing in his head. When he finishes, his old man will be a bloody pulp. The body will get the electric chair, but he won’t care, it was worth it.” It is not too farfetched to infer at least some unconscious hostility toward authority figures in this young man. There is no discovered way, as yet, to prove that an inference of unconscious motivation is warranted. Nevertheless, it can be shown that the motives a person will consider as possible influences upon his action will change under special circumstances. A patient entering psychotherapy may act in ways that humiliate his wife; yet at the outset he may vigorously deny having hostile feelings toward her. Finally he can admit having hostile feelings, without guilt or anxiety. In addition, his hostility, if rational and warranted, may come to be expressed much more openly than it was before. It often happens that recognition and understanding of irrational hostility will reduce or eliminate it. Repression, obviously, is not an effective way to deal with problems of existence. People sometimes repress experience because they have a strict conscience; it is often healthier to attempt to change the conscience or to accept the fact that one is not as “good” as one would like to believe. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Repression is a way to ward off anxiety, but there are more effective healthier ways. Repression may ward off painful frustration, but there are healthier ways to avoid frustration, such as learning skills. Only where repression is temporary and permits important action to be completed, or where it forestalls psychosis, can it be regarded as good for healthy personality. The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department and Emergency Medical Service Department is to preserve life and property and promote health and safety through excellent pre-hospital treatment and transportation, fire prevention, fire suppression rescue activities, and homeland security awareness. The department is responsible for providing fire suppression, ambulance service, and hazardous materials containment for Sacramento City. “So I became an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician). I was worried about it. Blood and stuffy really bothered me if it was somebody else’s, but not when it was mine. At the hospital, as long as I has a full stomach, I could watch everything except the initial cutting open of a person, even at an autopsy. I would have had to look away. Once they’re open, it doesn’t bother me. After I found out I could handle blood, I went ahead and became a paramedic. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
“We had two nurses teaching the EMT class. The first night they gave us a whole list of medical terms. One was “blood pressure.” Until that day, I never knew what blood pressure was. So I asked, and a lot of the guys in the class laughed at me, but I found out what I wanted to know. The fire department gave me a direction that I was really enjoying. I was headstrong, real hyper. I tried to do everything. Every time I had a chore to do, or a fire to do, I tried to do everything as fast as I could. The worst one before I really got into paramedic was a two-year-old baby. The mother was fixing to take an older child in a station wagon to some kind of meeting. She was also close to nine months pregnant. The father, who was a preacher, was in the house, and the two-year-old was supposed to stay there. The mother got in the car and didn’t notice that the baby had gotten out of the house and was standing behind the car. She backed down the drive, hit the baby, and a wheel went right over the little girl’s head. The father ran out and did CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and mouth-to-mouth on the baby, and got her going again. We got there just before the ambulance crew, and we helped them. You couldn’t really tell if the baby’s head was deformed, but she was bleeding from her nose, mouth, and ears. It was just real sad. One paramedic was pretty freaked. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“During transport to neurosurgery the baby died. That affected me for a long time. That was before I had any children. It really gave me doubts as to whether I wanted to be a paramedic or not. They took the mother with them in the front of the ambulance. They were worried about her as well as the baby, because she was freaking. She totally lost everything, which I would, too. Any normal parent would have, after running over her own child. The father kept his composure. At first, the accident was called in as a 1050, a car wreck. And the father had blood around his mouth and on his nose when we arrived, and I thought there had been some type of care wreck. I didn’t know until later that he had done CPR on the child. He also did his best with his wife. At the hospital, of course, she had to be sedated and all that. I really care a lot about people—whether it’s putting out their fires, trying to save their lives, or getting a baby out of a well.” The Sacramento Fire Department is led by an extraordinary team of individuals who are dedicated to providing Sacramento City with World-Class safety services. Remember parents, please raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus Christ, to honour law and order, and treat all people, property and living beings with dignity. It is also important to buy American made goods and services, such as American made cars, clothes, meat, produce, dairy, and more. Our goal is to leave things better than we received them. 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 Justic for all. Father of Peace, please grant us Thy peace, please Grant us Thy blessing, Thy blessing of peace. Wherever they be, please great America peace; Merciful One, Thou art He who grantest Thy people peace. O may we see our children, our children, and their children Devoted to the Lord, to the scripture—yea, please grant America peace. Thou wondrous Counsellor, mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace! #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The World is full of people that will try to take advantage of the less fortunate and thin it is cool but it is not and should instead be looking for ways to help each other so we all can live in peace. More than 70 percent of Americans are on medication, 30 percent of Americans are overweight, and 50 percent of American eat unhealthily, while only 19 percent of Americans exercise regularly. Meanwhile, former President Biden has set an unrealistic goal for the transition to electric vehicles. In just 5 years, 50 percent of all new vehicles sold in the United States of America are mandated to be electric. The reason being that “accelerated adoption of electric vehicles can improve air quality, reduce emissions, and position U.S. industries to lead global efforts.” However, should the United States of America not be more concerned about the health of their cities and be encouraging them to adopt lifestyles that include fitness and healthy food? Should the United States of America not be leading global efforts to have the healthiest population in the World? Many benefits of physical activity for brain health happen right after a session of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Benefits include improved thinking or cognition for children 6 to 13 and reduced short-terms feelings for adults. Regular physical activity can help keep your thinking, learning, and judgment skills sharp as you age. It can also reduce your risk of depression and anxiety and help you sleep better. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Physical activity is beneficial to health and well-being and conversely, physical inactivity increases risk for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and other poor health outcomes. NCDs describes a wide range of conditions, diseases, and disorders. These have genetic, lifestyle, or environmental causes rather than viral or bacterial, and they are characterized as health conditions that: Are not caused by acute infections or illness, result in long-term health issues, and require long-term treatment and care, such as lifestyle changes or medication. Health conditions that are consider NCDs are: Cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic lung illness, injuries that cause permanent damage, and mental illness. NCDs are the number 1 cause of death and disease around the World, killing more then 42 million people Worldwide on an annual basis. This accounts for 74 percent of all deaths globally. Each year, 15 million people around the World die prematurely, between, the ages of 30 and 69 years old, from an NCD. Cardiovascular diseases make up most NDC deaths, followed by cancer, respiratory diseases, and then diabetes. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that members should obey the Word of Wisdom, eat nutritious food, exercise regularly, control their weight, and get adequate sleep. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Members are taught to eat a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and meat. They are also taught to shun substances or practices that abuse their bodies or minds and that could lead to addiction. Members should also practice good sanitation and hygiene, bathe every day, and obtain adequate medical and dental care. Not all NCDs are preventable, but you can lower your risk by maintaining healthy habits. Stop smoking and drinking liquor. Get more physical activity. Regular physical activity offers a multitude of health benefits. If exercise is not part of your day, set a goal to get moving for 20 minutes a day. You can walk, jog, bike, hike, row, or anything else. Set up an exercise plan that does not require a gym at all. Do 20-30 minutes of strength training two days a week. Strat with bodyweight exercises. Use free weights and weight machines only when an expert can help you. The global recommendation is of at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week. Together, physical inactivity and sedentary behaviours are contributing to the rise in NCDs and placing a burden on healthcare systems. So why is it that former President Biden has placed such huge importance on mandating electrical vehicles, instead of working to produce a healthier population? Because electrical vehicles are profitable and he likely benefits for the sale of them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
Also, mandating the people eat healthier and get more exercise may reduce consumer demands on medication and vehicles and producers can only charge so much for food because everyone has to eat. So, it is important to keep people on medication and keep them focused on electrical cars to generate profits. Maintaining the best possible physical health has been a gospel ideal throughout the ages—from the strict dietary laws of ancient Israel, with the example of Daniel and his associates, to the Word of Wisdom. The physical body is a gift from God and should be properly cared for and respected. Mental health is also important and should not be overlooked, as it can affect us both physically and spiritually. We must do all we can to take care of both our bodies and minds. The Lord sets a high standard for us in telling us to consider our bodies a temple. He has established some basic standards for the governance of our physical bodies and mental health so that we may become more self-reliant and better prepared to progress personally, strengthen the family, and serve in the Church and community. Throughout the Christian Bible, God asked His people to abstain from certain foods. Today is no different. God has given wise counsel to help all His children be healthy. Those who follow God’s counsel in the Word of Wisdom are promised that they will receive health, find wisdom, and “run and not be weary, and walk and not faint,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 89.18-20. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Winners are programed, too. Instead of a curse, there is a blessing: “Long life!” or “Be a great man.” The injunction is adaptive instead of constricting: “Do not be selfish!” and the come-on is “Well done!” With such benevolent controls, and all his permissions, there is still his demon to contend with, lurking in the murky caverns of his primal mind. If his demon is a friend instead of, then he will have it made. Does everyone have a script? At the present, there is no way to answer this question with any degree of certainty, but it is certain that everyone is programed to some extent from early years. As previously mentioned, some people can become autonomous through drastic external circumstances, others by internal reorganization, and still others by applying the antiscript. The key lies in permissions. The more permissions a man has, the less he is bound by his script. On the other side, the more severely the script controls were reinforced, the more script-bound he is. It is likely that the human race as a whole forms a curve. At one end are those who become autonomous by one means or another, and at the other end are those who are script-bound, with most people in between, subject to changes in circumstances or outlook. Among the script-bound, there are two types. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Script-driven people are those who have lots of permissions, but must fulfill the demands of their scripts before they can enjoy them. A good example is the hard worker who can have fun in his spare time. Script-ridden people are those who have few permissions, but must spend as much time as possible fulfilling their scripts at any cost. A typical example is the heavy drinker or drug addict who must speed toward his doom as quickly as he can. The script-ridden are the victims of tragic or “hamartic” scripts. On the other hand, it is a rare person who has not at one time or another heard the voice of the demon in his head, telling him to buy when he should sell, or stay when he should go, or speak when he should remain silent. The predom taboo against genetic consumerism surfaced when citizens became morally outraged by genetic engineering and cloning. The emergence of a new taboo is always a sign for evolutionary rejoicing. Today’s new taboo is tomorrow’s advance. Agents who create new crimes are automatically promoted to the Gut-Caste Hall of Fame. Examples of relatively new crimes include bootleg radio broadcasting, psychedelic drug manufacturing, nuclear research, computer larceny, leaving a country without an exit visa, DNA research and cloning. The passions of men are so resistant to control that in no single method is there sure hope of overcoming them. Only in a combination of methods does this. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
The high moments of Heavenly inspirations are laid low in the dust of obscenity or lust. The effect of passional indulgences spreads out on physical and mental levels. If we learn by bitter experience to drop the burden of one particular desire, we do so only to pick up another soon after. We are not content to be at peace. The desires of human beings are never satiated, nor can they ever be since human beings must go on searching for final satisfaction. It is in their nature to do so. However, what cannot be satiated by outer things can turn in one itself and find rest at last within. How morally helpless many persons allow themselves to become is shown by the compulsive nature of their deeds and the obsessive nature of their thoughts. It is the strength or feebleness of his attachments and desires which largely govern his first and earlier paces in the relinquishment of ego. When insight arises, the passions become subdued and the problems which beset man become solved of their own accord. We may quarrel and kill whilst we remain in ignorance, but we must needs feel for and with each other when we comprehend at long last that in the Overself we are one. All too easily do luxurious habits become insatiable habits, ever demanding more and more and meanwhile creating tension of discontent. Whereas the conventional good man seeks to leave behind only the gross flagrant forms of sin, the philosophic disciple is much more scrupulous. Whereas the one is content to moderate the strength of his lower nature, the other tries to subjugate it altogether. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
There is one side of a person that always has to come out on top. That is the person who is always successful or dominant in the field. Your top-dog self is critical, judgmental and always has to be right. It gets the best of people, rather than trying to help or support them. Most people have been playing that side so long, they believe that it is all of them there is. However, that is not it. There is another side, the underdog, the one who has little chance of winning. This is the side that comes out in some when dealing with someone they care about. The soft, supportive side. That side that does not have to win every battle. Every man has to accept that he may be a loser and that sometimes it is good to lose. It feels good to let down the defenses and just give in to someone else. However, sure it feels good to always be successful at everything, but what does it get a person? A man who gets everything done, who makes all the money. He is sometimes seen by others as worthless. Yet, what is so worthless about feeling good? Does having all that success and money ever make a man feel really good? Is not being able to feel love worth something, too? People who are used to coming out on top need someone to humanize them. They need someone to take care of them and keep them in line. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
It is nice to come home to someone who goes to an import place and spends $1,500 on beautiful things for your homecoming. Blue Tiffany lamps that look great in your bedroom. Blue bed sheets from India. Colour of the sky, two blue pillows, incense, candles, Danish cheeses, Holland cheeses, smoked oysters, artichoke hearts. Carrot juice and more food. Soft Kleenex to wipe your nose. Fruit from the fruit stand. Coming home from a business trip to a nice ranch house where everything is sunny. Fresh baked bread, freshly picked apples, berries, plumbs. Then seeing the lake. How beautiful and fresh it is, and then taking a nice steam bath. Imagine a loving home near a mossy meadow, falling down in the sun and breathing deeply. This is much better than being a prisoner of success alone. A prisoner whose unbounded imagination gave birth to him, and they became one. Being alone, imprisoned in a bloodstained Bastille, entirely constructed around a still unsatisfied, and henceforth undirected, desire for please. Some men have only triumphed in a dream and those ten volumes crammed with philosophy and atrocities recapitulate an unhappy form of asceticism, an illusory advance from the total no to the absolute yes, an acquiescence in death at least, which transfigures the assassination of everything and everyone into a collective suicide. When a man only has success and no love, he is killed in his imagination. Others end up on an improvised stage with other lunatics. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Success without love is nothing more than a derisory equivalent of the satisfaction that the order of the World failed to give a man. We are to discipline, and when necessary, abstain from satisfying the lower impulses of our nature because we are to cultivate its higher intuitions. The clamant voice of the one drowns the soft whisper of the other. Ww must try to turn the flow of our passions into a sublimer channel than the sense alone. Variations in the muscle tonus of parts of a person’s body may reflect repressed emotions and the need tensions. A flaccid handshake may disclose a lack of sincerity. A soft, suckling mouth may reveal unconscious wishes to be passive and dependent. A female college student complained that men were forever “making passes” at her, yet she denied any erotic interest in males. Observation revealed her bodily movements were very provocative. She wiggled her hips when walking and pushed her chest high. When talking with a man, she glued her eyes, alternately opened and narrowed, to his. Men and women who have reached or passed the age of the late forties are more ready for, and better suited to, disciplining the animal nature and human passions than younger folk. It is more difficult to conquer lust than to walk on the edge of a sword. However, it can be done. No matter how much you feed your desires, they will never be satisfied. Therefore, direct them gradually towards the Infinite, in which they may ultimately merge, and from which there is no return. Repressed hostility may be manifested by excessive muscular tension in the forehead, neck, or shoulders, often resulting in headaches, a “pain in the neck,” and back pain. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
The traditional mission of the Sacramento Fire Department was saving lives and protecting property from fire. However, today, the Sacramento Fire Department also prevents harm. Preventing fire, injuries, and disease by understanding what causes harm to firefighters, their systems, their members, and community is the most effective form of preventing harm. The ability to manage risks is essential for success and survival. “We were working night shift on Engine X. I sometimes work on my model fire engines, but that night I had gone over to have dinner with the captain of Engine Y, who was going to retire. I had just returned to the firehouse when the alarm came in. All of a sudden Engine X’s crew came running out of the kitchen like a football team, and the second alarm came in. With that, I knew that my older brother, Z, who was a battalion chief, was there. We had quite a bit of rain on the street, and driving there was slow going. On the way over, I heard Z, I knew it was his voice, asking for a third alarm and all the ambulances that were available. I now knew there was an explosion, but I didn’t know the extent. When I pulled in there, the scene was one of utter desolation, it was like a sea of bricks and fire of low intensity. The nearby buildings were just starting to catch. People were hobbling all over the place. All the firemen there were on rescue. Knowing that help was coming, I told the battalion to make sure the engine company stretched lines. I didn’t want them all going on rescue work, which there was a natural tendency for them to do. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
“I looked and saw our rigs completely smashed. It was a sickening sight. The aerial ladder of Truck A had been blown across the street about thirty feet. It was crushed. The whole middle of the truck was flat down on the street, the tiller sticking up in the air like a sinking ship. Bricks were all over Engine B, one engine caved in, and there were men lying all over the place. It was just mind-boggling. We have the fire spreading in four different directions, so I called for more help. Two members of Rescue C brought Z over, just so I could see him. He was all bandaged and bloody. All he kept saying to me was, ‘I’m all right. I’m all right.’ I said, ‘You’re going to the hospital.’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah.’ They said, ‘We’ll see he goes right away.’ So now I was the chief in charge. Z had a broken collarbone and a dislocated shoulder, and I didn’t know it at the time, but he had a five-inch wooden stake drive into the side of his throat and resting against the carotid artery. I didn’t know it, because they had bandaged right over it, deciding rightly that they shouldn’t try to remove it at the scene. They have bandaged his whole face and neck, and he looked like a mummy, all bloody. Of course, it was a shock to me to see my older brother like that, but I had the idea in my head that he was going to be all right. The fellows had control of the situation, and they were taking him to the hospital, so I didn’t really dwell on it. There was so much going on that I had to turn to the fire. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
“I knew some of our men had died, they were laying all over the place, and there had to be people under the sea of bricks and rubble. And there were people in the nearby house fires who were hollering. I went to a fifth alarm and then got an additional two engines and two trucks, because I knew the first alarm was wiped out. I didn’t know how badly, but they were gone. By the time I put one company to work there was another one there looking for assignment. The rubble was starting to burn near Ladder B, and all I could think of was, if there was anyone underneath it and still alive, I didn’t want them to burn to death. I thought that would be a horrible thing. So I had the first lines keep the fire away from the rigs. It ended up that they weren’t under the truck, they were under Engine B. It was like looking for someone under water, you had no idea where to start in the tremendous confusion. Some of the victims had already been taken to various hospitals in police cars and private cars, and it took us quite a while to get an accurate head count, to find out who was missing. We finally broke it down that the entire crew of Ladder B were dead, all five of them. It was several hours before I found out what had happened. The building was a four-story warehouse, and they had a huge propane tank on the fourth floor, a five-hundred-gallon tank, I believe. It was completely illegal to have it in the building at all. One of the workers was moving the tank with a lift truck near the elevator shaft. It fell off the truck, the valve broke, and the liquid propane poured down the elevator shaft. The entire building got to the explosive stage at once. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
“The workers ran out of the place and were out in front when Z arrived. They told him they had a propane tank that had burst. He assumed it was a twenty-gallon job or something like that. He asked them how big is it, and they said, ‘About as big as your car.’ He said that was the last thing that he remembers. That’s when the propane hit the wood stove on the first floor and blew the whole warehouse to pieces, totally destroyed it. It’s too bad that it didn’t blow sooner, we wouldn’t have had any problems. On the other hand, if it had blown later, we would have had more men killed. There wasn’t much left of the building, there was so much open fire, we kind of dismissed the possibility of more explosions in a warehouse. But some of the nearby houses had shifted and broken some of the natural gas lines into the houses. That got ignited. We also had a large frame church burning being the warehouse, which probably in itself would have been a third alarm, and for quite a while we had just one engine company working a turret on it. There were about nine or ten houses that were heavily damaged, and there were innumerable houses that got damage and window breakage for miles around the area. It was a tremendous sight. Once we got enough help in there to work on all the perimeter of the fire and hold it, then it was several more hours, I would say after midnight, when Commissioner C said they had the final count of casualties. It was the five members of Ladder B and two civilians. Then I got his permission to replace every company at the scene, because the weather was bitterly cold and the men were physically shot and emotionally shocked. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
“I stayed until all the companies were replaced, then I went back to quarters and had a bowl of hot soup. Then I went to the hospital for the second time that night. By this time Z had been operated on and they said he was all right, so I didn’t even go in to see him. The first time I had gone, he was still in the emergency room along with some of our fellows who were burned, so I had a chance to talk to them. I also had the very unpleasant task of identifying one of the bodies. The chaplains and the commissioner and his deputy went to each individual’s house to notify the family of the deaths. They did the same thing with the injured. They brought their wives in and met them at the hospital. It was complete chaos there. The families were very cooperative. They realized that nothing could have been done to avert the tragedy. The companies had pulled up, just as you do on every box you go on, to find out what was going on. The five men of the ladder company had gotten off the truck and were standing together across the street from the building, waiting for orders. And Engine Y had pulled in, and they were on the back of their rig getting masks on in case they were needed. We’ve had people say that shouldn’t have been that close. Well, nobody had any idea what was going on. The members of Engine Y were just blown back, except for one who, along with my brother, was blown into the chief’s car. The member of Engine E was also blown back and, other than burns, were not hurt badly at all. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
“But Ladder B’s crew just ended up being buried by all the debris. They were not blown away like the other fellows. In fact, one of the men from Engine E was talking to one of the men from Ladder B, and he was blown about sixty feet, and the man beside him was buried under the bricks and killed. Tw two who were blown into the chief’s car were badly injured. X was one of them. The other, named F, is not out on disability pension, at age thirty-two. He was very badly smashed up, a lot of broken bones. It was the second to last night on the job for the captain of Engine E, and he was going to get out, and the driver said to him, ‘Why don’t you stay in the rig, Cap, there’s nothing going to be doing here.’ Well, the bricks caved in the roof of the cab and they both received some bad lacerations, but it came out okay in the end. I always knew it could happen at any time. I felt that after all the fires I have been on, all the years I have put in, I had never had a man killed in a fire, whether I was in charge or just working at it. And it just caught up with me. Fate caught up with me. I went to all the wakes. They varied from some of the wives sobbing uncontrollably to others more or less accepting it. The younger wives seemed to take it harder. The families themselves were good to us. They even helped to console us. We’re all family. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
“X was in the hospital for about three weeks and out of the job for above five months. He most his hearing. He had to get hearing aids. He’s getting there. He says he has no real bad afteraffects from it. We had the funerals for the five men on New Year’s Eve, and it was bitter cold. Oh, God, it was a cold day. And we had thousands of men who came from all over the country. It hit every one of us in the department emotionally, to think that on New Year’s Eve, on a butter cold day, all those guys would come up It was just amazing, and it really helped. The case of the illegal usage of the propane tank is still in litigation. It’s been kicked around. The grand jury indicted them, but then they played a little game. The one guy got immunity to testify against the others, then he claimed he was the one who put the tank in there. One of those things.” The Sacramento Fire Department has to be equally committed to reducing civilian deaths as they are to reducing firefighter deaths, and aggressively managing risks will help them do this. The Sacramento Fire Department’s mission is fire protection and to respond to emergency situations, and they make a point to do this with compassion. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember, even if things are not going well, and you are a bit tired and sad, raise your children to love America and be patriotic citizens. Also, let them know how important it is to love God and Jesus Christ and to be ethical and moral, and to obey the laws. It is also important to buy American made goods and services, such as cars, clothes, meat, produce, poultry, dairy and fish. We must keep America farms and the automobile industry thriving. We can help stop corruption and evil one person at a time. It only takes five good people to facilitate a change in a small group. To show support for America, remember to buy American cars and American made products. Respect law and order and treat others with dignity and kindness. 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. God is in His holy Temple, Earthly thoughts be silent now, while reverence we assemble, and before His presence bow. He is with us, now and ever, when we call upon His name, aiding every good endeavour, guiding every upward aim. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
The Winchester Mystery House
Only one more week until the mansion is fully decked out in its holiday finest 🎄✨It is estimated that is you were to try to recreate The Winchester Mystery House, because it is so large, has extremely unique architecture, and many of the materials used are very expensive, rare, and even impossible to find, it would cost well over $500,000,000.00 USD, so preservation, restoration and diligent care is very important to preserve this 8th Wonder of the World and an important piece of American history. Although they do not accept donations, you can contribute by taking tours, buying items in the gift shop, and at the online store.
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. Chester the Elf is looking forward to seeing you! https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Morally Outraged Citizens
You have more choices and more opportunities than ever before. Like so many things in life, this is both a blessing and a curse. Too many choices and the fear of making bad decisions often lead to decision paralysis, which is one of the challenges of your generation. Only when the gathering of Earthly gains seems futile, and the gains themselves mere dross, will he stop bartering his precious years for them. When a desire lurks hidden in the heart, it may sway actions or influence thoughts without resistance. However, when it rises to the surface and is seen for what it is, then it can be fought and conquered. As his desires quieten, he finds to his surprise that many things hitherto thought indispensable to existence, he can do well without. He who submits his emotions and passions to reason, and his reason to intuition, will save himself from many regrets. So long as he is buffeted between his passionate desire and his self-hating guilt, so long will a distressing tension be sustained. So far they distract the mind and disturb its peace, the struggle against the passions must go on. If he is willing to be instructed–when passion, uncontrollable and blind, irrational and violent, is behind action, the consequences may be harmful to its owner but they may also be instructive. For life is an educational process, which everybody has to undergo whether the pupils like it or not. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
We are not always the same person. At one period of life, a desire may almost enslave us which has no power over us at a later period. The World can be overcome only to the extent that we overcome ourselves, our endless desires and snaring ambitions, our passions and habits. He has not only to deal with his tendencies but also with his compulsions. However, passion is an insurgent, a rebel against reason whose counterbalance it fears and avoids. Even such normal factors as curiosity and ambition become disturbing when they become excessive, unbalanced, and drive the enslaved mind. As the heart opens to this call of the inner self, the demand comes to the will for a more austere habit of living. It is the difference between gentle austerity and harsh asceticism. We continuously try to “read” our own and others’ motives. The most common bases employed for inferring the intentions, feelings, and need of the other people are observation of facial expression, tone of voice, and gestures, which generally disclose what the person is feeling; and observation of the person’s actions and its consequences, from which we try to infer what he or she is up to. Ordinarily, we can check our inferences about the other person’s motives by asking a direct question. When are we justified in assuming that our own or another person’s motives are unconscious? #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
We can never be absolutely certain, but we can entertain the hypothesis of unconscious motivation when the person acts in ways that produce consequences he or she denies intending to produce; when the person shows many signs of emotion without admitting he or she is experiencing strong feeling; and when there are obvious inconsistencies in action at different times, for example, kindness and brutality, intelligent and stupid behaviour. In addition to these general signs of unconscious motivation, there are other more subtle indicators that a person is not conscious of real influences upon his or her behaviour. These include: Dream content that seems bizarre and incomprehensible to the dreamer. Daydreams that surprise the daydreamer. Errors and “slips” in speech and writing. Body postures and evidence of bodily tensions. The forgetting of intentions, and of the names of people and places. Accidents of all kinds. Performance on certain projective tests of personality. When I am surrounded by pretending people, I sometimes feel so swamped by meaningless two-dimensional cardboard characters that I feel I may be on my way to the madness that is recognized in madness. I think that this may be the way that some of it comes about. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Nothing has to come about in one way only, and the discovery of one way eliminates others because then they are not explored. That does not put them out of existence—just out of mind, like all the other possible approached to bodily illness which the American Medical Association will not admit. I think that when we have found one way, we should use it tentatively, as the best that we have latched onto at this time, and at the same time should go on exploring other ways—with the same tentativeness. It sometimes seems to me that madness that is called insanity may sometimes be a reaction produced by the madness (as I see it) that is called sanity, or “realism.” A patent in a mental hospital told a therapist, “You want me to come into your World, but I lived there for twenty-three years and I don’t like it.” The patient was a very mixed up person, but I don’t think that he was mixed up about that. The more mentally ill a person is, the more they are caught in egocentricity, selfishness and uselessness. As for a “schizophrenic person”—there is no such thing. A person scared out of his wits is not person at all. The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information in personnel matters relating to the fire service; provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information; to advocate for the fire service in public matters; promote a modern fire; develop general improvement in fire services throughout that state and encourage a fraternal friendship among firefighters and their families. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
“When the alarm came in at nine-thirty that Wednesday morning, we were in class about the enhanced 911 system. All we knew was it was a baby trapped down a well. We were all told to go back to our stations and wait. Only our captain, X, was taken out there, possibly because he’s a small-boned man, yet real aggressive at whatever he does. We just got bits and pieces of what was going on out there during the rest of the day and through the night. We kept calling the dispatcher and asking is they needed relief people, and they never would let us go over there. I got to bed at the station at about two A.M. and got up at seven, so I had five hours’ sleep. Thursday was supposed to be my day off, when I was going to take care of our youngest child. But my wife, Y, got him ready and took him to the sitter’s. The more I thought about the baby in the well, the more I though I should be out there: I’m skinny, and they’re going down holes, and I can fit down holes. So I loaded up and told the dispatcher they probably needed a paramedic, and he agreed. I just went over there on my own. You could say I volunteered myself. This was about eight-thirty Thursday morning. I had to park two blocks away because all the cars and trucks. There were a could of hundred people there, trying to help. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
“The news people were starting to come in. The well was in the backyard of a house in the middle of the block. Z was already there, standing by the air cascade system they were using to send oxygen down to the trapped baby. The battalion chief and the EMS chief and everybody else were listening to the microphone they had lowered down the well. I saw the hole they had drilled down the day before, about five and a half feet from the well, and they were sending guys down there to drill horizontally across to the well. The well itself was just a metal casing sticking up about two or three inches above ground. It was about eight inches in diameter. They had a yellow tent over it like workers use over manholes in the streets. A fire captain was guarding the air house, a real Mr. By-the-book type guy, who just broke out and started jumping all over anyone who came close to it. Actually, he did a good job. Police officers A and Officer B did all the monitoring of the hole. The baby in the well” (will remained unknow and be called “C” for privacy). “Her parents lived out in the country, and this well was in the backyard of her sister’s house, where she was operating an unlicensed day care center. There were five or six kids in the backyard when C went down the well. The older kids were playing by themselves, and the younger kids were playing by themselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
“There was supposed to be a rock over the hole, and I saw some big rocks near there. Then we heard that there was a potted plant sitting on it, and I observed a bucker with what looked like a cactus plant in it that had been turned over and pushed out of the way. They couldn’t tell exactly how far down the well the baby had fallen, because the other small children threw stuff in after her, foliage from the yard. So we could only seen down eighteen feet and lower the mike that far. They were afraid to disturb the plant material, for fear they would make more stuff fall on C. They had lowered flashlights, and when I looked down I saw the lights shining on the green foliage stuff. I listened at the mike and could hear her moaning. That was the last time I looked down the well, but I kept going and checking with the officers on what they were hearing. Supposedly the night before she had slept for about three hours because they didn’t hear noises from her in that time. I don’t know why the kids threw the stuff down the well after her. They were so young they didn’t know the gravity of the situation. Perhaps they were just being playful. There was a story that two older kids put the baby in there, or she might have been pushed. But from the position in which I found her, I feel that she stepped in with one foot, lost her balance, and went down, because one foot was down and one was up. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
“My captain, X, had twice been down digging and hard worked for a day and a night, and he had been ordered to go home because he looked exhausted. He could have kept going, he’s in excellent condition, but they felt they had to order him to leave. Chief K of the fire department and Chief D of the police department were pretty much in control of the whole operation. The drilling engineer, Mr. L, was in charge of the digging. And Captain E was a coordinator. There was talk that the first person to reach the baby should take her out. But because there might have been serious injuries to the baby’s neck and back, we thought it should be a paramedic. We talked to the doctors there, and Dr. F and Dr. H, and Dr. I talked to the chiefs for us, and it was agreed it would be a paramedic who would bring the baby out. The only exception would be if, when they broke through to her, she just kind of grabbed somebody and she looked good and healthy, then they could bring her out. We had the smallest backboard all ready, cut down still further in size. The hole they drilled straight down was about thirty inches wide, a pretty good-sized shaft, big enough for two small, skinny guys like Z and myself to stand in it side by side. The tunnel they were digging across to the well was much narrower, but some pretty big guys were doing the drilling. One guy had a forty-six-inch chest, so we figured we shouldn’t have any trouble at all. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
“They were digging through hard rock to a point in the well below where the baby was wedged, then coming up vertically beside her, and a window between the two was being chopped out to get to her. They put a sort of bubble or inflated air bag below her to protect her from the drilling. It wasn’t until one o’clock on Friday that the drillers told us they were ready for us to go down. We went over to the hole. Any time we moved toward it, the media went crazy, thinking the rescue was coming up. But the chiefs made us go back to the ambulance. We were brought over to Chief D’s motor home for a last conference, Z and myself and this other guy, J, who was a rapeller, a rope man. Then we went down. I went in first. I was real apprehensive. I don’t go into caves a lot. I’ve been in tight places, but usually by choice, not by need. I’m real cautious, aggressive but cautious. I try to evaluate everything before I do it. Mr. L was still in the hole. He took the bubble out and talked to me for a minute. Then I went into the tunnel. I had no room at all. I had to decide whether to go on my stomach or my back. My shoulders were pressed on both sides. I had to position the light so it would shine up into the well. I got my first look at her. But I couldn’t touch her. To get my arm in there, I had to crawl back out and start back in with my arm ahead of me. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
“The width of the tunnel was probably fifteen to sixteen inches, and its height was no more than twelve to fourteen inches. I had no headroom. When my head was at the back of the tunnel was the only time I could see up into the well. I got scratched all over my forearm and elbow forcing my arm up into the well. I though, ‘Oh, God, how am I going to do this?’ All I saw dangling down was her left foot. So first off, I started an evaluation of her physically. How is she doing? What can she move? What can’t she move? People had told us they thought she was horizontal in some kind of widening of the shaft. So I couldn’t just start pulling because I was afraid I would snap her back or her neck. They had said I could reach her. But reaching up with my right arm, I could feel her left leg and her buttocks, and that was it. I couldn’t reach any higher or find her right leg or anything else. She was conscious. Not crying, but moaning. I got her to move her left foot for me. She did that. I told her to move her upper body, and I could feel her move somewhat. It looked like she was trying. I told her to push as hard as she could with her right foot, and it seemed that she went up a little bit. I communicated all this to the doctor by the phone line they had down there. They gave me a wedge made of a two-by-four and a round piece of plywood on top, supposedly to push her up and feel around her. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
“I was able to push her no more than three inches. It sounded like she was throwing up. I told her to turn her head to the side and spit it up. I didn’t want her strangling on her own throw-up. I determined that we couldn’t get her out right then. I didn’t know what position she was in, and I didn’t have enough room. So I told her we’d be back. To me, on God’s green Earth, that’s the hardest thing I ever did in my life, leave that little girl in the well that first time. I came back out. We went into conference, and all the chiefs and doctors were there. And every time I would get close to talking about having to leave her there, I would get teary-eyed, and my voice would crack. The doctors took this as a sign of emotional instability or whatever. It was the first time I had been in a situation like that, and with me, the first time I go into something, as a paramedic or firefighter, I always get real emotional. When we got out of the hole, Z was first, and his face was so solemn that people thought it meant that the baby was dead. This big water drill had been there since early in the morning, but they hadn’t put it in use because Mr. L thought it was too dangerous. They had flown it from Memphis to Huston on a United Parcel 747. It took a place that size to carry it. So Chief A and Chief D insisted that Mr. L use the water drill. So they took it down there, and they really did a good job with it. Meanwhile, the doctors were talking to the chief, expressing their concern about whether I was emotionally and physically able to go back down in. #RadolphHarris 10 of 17
“He took me aside. He said, ‘We don’t need any macho trips. There’s no shame. If you can’t go down in, just tell me, just be honest with me.’ I told him, ‘Chief, I can go down one more time. If we don’t get her out this time, there is no way I can go down again. I would be mentally, emotionally, and physically wiped out.’ So he understood that, and he backed me. Assistant Chief M backed me. Evidently Chief D did, too. And N, the EMS chief, really backed me. He said I was the one to do it. They had confidence in me. We had plenty of guys in the department who were willing to go down, so they really had to feel good about me or they wouldn’t have let me. We went down a second time. I’m not really sure of the time, I know it was still daylight, six-thirty or seven. We had done a lot of sitting around, waiting. Everybody was saying, this is our last chance. Nobody said it to me personally, but the word was, if we had to break bones, break bones. Whatever we had to do to get her out. J, the rope man, came up with a device I could lift her with, a tripod pole maybe an inch wide, with the tape on the top. He was the guy who did all the rigging in the hole. He helped us a lot. Down in the tunnel, Mr. L said, “This is it, O. This is the best it’s going to get.” They had chipped away with the water drill and give me some headroom and more shoulder room. So he went to the surface, and Z came down with the stuff we thought we were going to need. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
“I had the tripod pole with me. I went into the hole and talked to baby C. I tried to lift her with the tripod pole, and it was too short. So Z got J on the phone, and he found me a longer tripod pole. This one had a rubber stopper on the tip of it. I tried to push the baby with it, and I couldn’t move her at all. I was lying there trying to figure out what to do. Looking at the tripod pole, I saw that the other end of it had a rubberized point that couldn’t hurt anybody. So I used it as a probe to see if I could figure out the position of her body. I poked it up the wall of the well shaft along her spine. I knew if I encountered anything solid, that would give me some indication of what body part was where. I ran it up along her spine past her head, and air rushed down at me from the well above her. That meant she was in a vertical position. Her back was straight up and down. I did the same thing with the pole at the side of the shaft where the right leg should be. It went all the way up, and air rushed through again. So I knew her right foot was up by her head somewhere. I went all the way around her body with the pole. Then I knew that she wasn’t in any crevice or bubble-shaped position. The metal casing I had seen at the top of the well didn’t go very far down, and the rest of the well was lined with a sticky petroleum-type substance. It was like glue or tar. I had it all over my hands. If you got into the stuff, you just stuck to it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
So then I knew she wasn’t lying down and I could pull on her without breaking her back or injuring anything. I talked to Dr. P and the female pediatrician, Dr. Q, and I called for the K-Y jelly. They sent down some baby forceps that they use at childbirth, but they were useless in this tunnel. Earlier I had tried to use goggles to keep stuff from falling in my eyes, but they fogged up immediately. It was real warm and humid down there. I was down there close to an hour and a half. All activity above the hole had totally ceased. Z opened the K-Y jelly and gave it to me, but there was a seal that had to be broken, so I had to throw it back to him to break that. This whole time he was doing great. He was having to deal with those at the top on the phone, and he was having to deal with me, because when I wanted something I wanted it two seconds ago, not later. And his legs were cramping real bad at the same time, and I didn’t know it. I smeared the K-Y jelly over the walls of the well all the way up to the baby’s bottom. Now I needed paper towels because I’ve got this stuff all over the place. I told Z that is the paper towels hit him on the head and knocked him out, I was going to kill him. My attempted at a joke. Now came the pulling time. I was totally confident. I felt we were going to get her out, no matter what it took. And I wasn’t going to some out of that hole without her, unless they came and dragged me out. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
“She had on snap-on pants. They had come undone from the left leg, and I was using them to pull on. She was stuck to the walls, and she was crying and whining. I would pull as hard as I could, and she would tense up; then as soon as she would relax, I would pull again. The first couple of inches were the hardest to get her to move. They were really pressuring us from the top. I had Z tell them we had moved her a quarter of an inch, to get them to leave us alone for a while. I was pulling as hard as I could, and she kept tensing up. Both of my arms were exhausted. My right arm went numb two or three times. Once I got her started in the K-Y jelly, I was able to move her a half inch at a time, and she would tense up again. I knew she was coming down. Z got the backboard ready. When I got her all the way into the K-Y jelly, I had no more problems. I got her out of the hole and turned over on my stomach. I reached for the backboard, but there wasn’t room for it, because her right leg was beside the right side of her head. All the time I was telling her to stay calm, that we were going to get her out, we weren’t going to leave her again. When I got her in the K-Y jelly, she was quieter, because it wasn’t hurting her anymore. She didn’t say a word. Of course, she was only eighteen months old. She made different sounds, but nothing I could understand. She knew someone was there trying to help her. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
“I couldn’t get her out on the board, so I pulled her onto my right arm, supporting her back and neck. The light hit her left pupil and she reacted, which was great. It was a good sign. I pulled her right leg in far enough so I could get her on the backboard. Z was getting stuffy out of the way, and while I was waiting, I said something like ‘Great’ or ‘Fantastic.’ I said it too loud, and she jumped a little bit. To me that was a good sign, too. But all she was doing was lying on the board, just looking around, real relaxed. I slipped her out, supporting her with my legs, and Z wrapped her waist to her chest. We used a Velcro strap across her chest to make sure she stayed on the board. Z put a towel on her neck, because the cervical collar was too small. I took white surgical tape and went all around the board and around the towel. Her hands were welded to her temples by the sticky substance. We left her right hand where it was. We didn’t try to straighten out any limbs. We finished getting her strapped. Then Z stood in the shaft holding her. I secured her to him with seat belt straps. I secured them both to the tether line of the back board, and I attached him to the main cable of the rig. So he went up with her. The only thing that fell down from her was a pair of toy binoculars and a few twigs. When I first got her, there was a big twig between her right arm and her chest. I thought it was embedded, but when I moved her arm I saw that it wasn’t, so I threw it out of the way. Nothing else, none of the green stuff. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
“I heard them yell and scream up top, everybody was just ecstatic. I was yelling, too. Nobody could hear me, but I didn’t care. I was totally calm. As a matter of fact, I was totally exhausted, mentally and emotionally. I was light-headed, I was having a hard time focusing. I just felt I needed oxygen. So I was trying to get stuff together, and the chief said, ‘Come out now.’ He meant now, and he said it a couple of times. So I said, ‘The heck with this stuff.’ They brought me out, and I shook the chief’s hand. He’s a big man, and I just laid my head on his shoulder for a minute. I did see little C and her parents at the hospital. She looked a lot different, a lot better. She looked somewhat swollen, and I hadn’t realized that mark on her forehead was such a bad scrape. They planted a tree in that backyard that will live as long as she does. And we’re going to put a plaque on that backboard and put it in our museum. It was great to be part of it. The next time I might not be so lucky. I know that the job I do is well worth all the time and all the nonsense we go through, and the good times and the bad times. If I end up dying of cancer because of the smoke, or if I end up dying in a fire, I never think about that. I know it can happen, but that’s my job, and I love doing it. I’ve thought in the past about switching, but this guy’s going to be there until they run me off. Until I can’t do it anymore.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
The Sacramento Fire Department provides the citizens of Sacramento with the ability to create safer communities; they assist and support the fire service community and the protection of life and property; and they promote and enhance firefighter safety; the Sacramento Fire Department also provides a fire service leadership presence in the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security in order to direct policy and legislation on all fire related matters. Their core values are innovation, inclusivity, dedication, courageousness, excellence, ethicality, professionalism, and transparency. You can help save lives by making a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. In an effort to keep the country cohesive, please raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus Christ and buy American cars and other American goods and services. As along, respect law and order, and treat others with kindness and respect. And to ensure you have a bright future, please take your education seriously. 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. O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains majesties above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on three, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea! O beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern, impassioned stress, a thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flow, confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years, Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea! God never gave us express allowance, only He gave us reason, charity, nature and good example to bear us out. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
The Winchester Mystery House
Our exclusive Flashlight Tour is back for one night only this December, Friday the 13th! 🔦🌙
Venture through the dark, winding halls of the mansion at night—armed only with a flashlight and your courage. And when the lights go out… there’s no turning back! (link in bio)
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/
You are Already Dead to the World
Always make those senior to you feel comfortable in their superiority. Never take your position for granted and never let any favours you receive go to your head. For Sade, the law of power implies barred gated, castles with seven circumvallations from which it is impossible to escape, and where a society founded on desire and crime functions unimpeded, according to the rules of an implacable system. The most unbridled rebellion, insistence on complete freedom, lead to the total subjection of the majority. For Sade, man’s emancipation is consummated in these strongholds of debauchery where a kind of bureaucracy of vice rules over the life and death of the men and women who have committed themselves forever to the hell of their desires. His works abound with descriptions of these privileged places where feudal libertines, to demonstrate to their assembled victims their absolute impotence and servitude, always repeat the Duc de Blangis’s speech to the common people of the One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom: “You are already dead to the World.” Sade himself also inhabited the tower of Freedom, but in the Bastille. Absolute rebellion took refuge with him in a sordid fortress from which no one, either persecuted or persecutors, could ever escape. To establish his freedom, he had to create absolute necessity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Unlimited freedom of desire implies the negation of others and the suppression of pity. The heart, that “weak spot of the intellect,” must be exterminated; the locked room and the system will see to that. The system, which plays a role of capital importance in Sade’s fabulous castles, perpetuates a Universe of mistrust. It helps to anticipate everything so that no unexpected tenderness of pity occurs to upset the plans for complete enjoyment. It is a curious kind of pleasure, no doubt, which obeys the commandment: “We shall rise every morning at ten o’clock”! However, enjoyment must be prevented from degenerating into attachment, it must be put in parentheses and toughened. Objects of enjoyment must also never be allowed to appear as persons. If man is “an absolutely material species of plant,” he can only be treated as an object, and as an object for experiment. In Sade’s fortress republic, there are only machines and mechanics. The system, which dictates the method of employing the machines, puts everything in its right place. Hos infamous convents have their rule—significantly copied from that of religious communities. Thus, the libertine indulges in public confession. However, the process is changed: “If his conduct is pure, he is censured.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Sade, as was the custom of his period, constructed ideal societies. But, contrary to the custom of his period, he codifies the natural wickedness of mankind. He meticulously constructs a citadel of force and hatred, pioneer that he is, even to the point of calculating mathematically the amount of the freedom he succeeded in destroying. He sums up his philosophy with an unemotional accounting of crimes: “Massacred before the first of March: 10 After the first of March: 20. To come: 16. Total: 46.” A pioneer, no doubt, but a limited one, as we can see. If that were all, Sade would be worthy only of the interest that attaches to all misunderstood pioneers. However, once the drawbridge is up, life in the castle must go on. No matter how meticulous the system, it cannot foresee every eventuality. It can destroy, but it cannot create. The masters of these tortured communities do not find the satisfaction they so desperately desire. Sade often evokes the “pleasant habit of crime.” Nothing here, however, seems very pleasant—more like the fury of a man in chains. The point, in fact, is to enjoy oneself, and the maximum of enjoyment coincides with the maximum of destruction. To possess what one is going to kill, to copulate with suffering—those are the moments of freedom toward which the entire organization of Sade’s castles is directed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
However, from the moment when sexual crime destroys the object of desire, it also destroys desire, which exists only at the precise moment of destruction. Then another object must be brought under subjection and killed again, and then another, and so on to an infinity of all possible objects. This leads to that dreary accumulation of erotic and criminal scenes in Sade’s novels, which paradoxically, leaves the reader with the impression of a hideous chastity. To some people, being “right” is not just important—it is necessary for survival. The chief advantage of being a tyrant in your every day life is that you get what you want. For some people, from the time they are born, nothing comes easy. Some families use their life savings to open a business so that they can be their own employer and they work as hard as they can to make sure their business is a success. Their children start working as soon as they are able to, often by the age of six or seven. When a child starts work at an early age, they certain do learn the value of a dollar. A youth learns from observation and dealing with customers that people who have money get whatever they want and they get money by taking it from others. Being young and working and coming from a family that is frugal, some boys learn that it is important to save the money they make. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
By saving money, some boys are able to lend money to their friends. If the friends are not able to pay it back, then they can work it off. As a boy learns that the harder he works, the more money he will make, as soon as he becomes efficient, he takes on more work so he can earn more money. However, by being one of the only children with money and having the ability to lend it to others, to ensure that they do work it off, some boys essentially become loan sharks. They gather information about their peers that their parents do not know and threat to expose their secrets to their parents with the information. One may think that such a manipulative youngster is unloved and comes from an impoverished household and has poor grades, but sometimes their children are babied by their mothers, have hard working father and are reprimanded from having anything lower than an “A” on his report card. This boy in particular, who we will call Max, went to a Catholic school, where he found that the nuns, with their strict rules and stiff paddles, had the power. Max never challenged this power openly, preferring to work his mischief at times and in places the nuns could not detect. His idols were the priests, who drove long black cars, had a cook, a maid—and the final word on everything. Their power was greater than that of the nuns and the lure of it led him to study for the priesthood. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Yet from the day he entered the seminary, Jason knew he would not last. What bothered him was the vow of obedience, the Church’s stubborn insistence that he obey every whim of his superiors. This was the brick wall against which his stubbornness eventually crashed. Passion conquers the young man in the end and forces him into an affair, a relationship, or a marriage. However, he who withstands it drive, conquers passion itself, is a hero. A blind obedience to the urges of physical sense-satisfaction, indifferent to the restraints of ideals, reason, knowledge, or intuitive feeling, weakens concentration and meditation, but strengthens the lower nature. The unruled passions are responsible for a substantial part of the difficulty in summoning up enough aspiration to make men do what they ought, and enough penetration to clear the mind of its illusions. Those with some mental development wisely add tomorrow to today, consequences to causes, and thus finish the picture. Others are ruled by the moment’s impulses or the day’s trend or by passion rather than reason. It is supposed to go so far that even such a lofty desire as one for desirableness itself can no longer remain acceptable. He may feel the temptation but he need not submit to it. It is the emotion, sill more the passion, which anyone pours into an attachment which may make it an obstacle on his quest. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Men who are driven by strong ambitions will have little energy left for strong aspirations. In the Sphinx sits the symbol of that enterprise which offers the candidate for initiation his greatest reward but which paradoxically brings his greatest suffering. This is the conquest of passion by reason and will and the overcoming of personal emotion by impersonal intuition. The Sphinx is a perfect image of the adept in whom the man controls the animal. The attainment is a rare one—too many are satisfied to remain hardly more than animal, with a few human traits. If he cannot put the objects of his desires completely outside his heart, then he must do the next best thing and put them on its borders. Thought creates attachment, and this in turn leads to desire. When a man, with his impulses and passion, meets life with its paradoxes and illusions, he soon falls victim to the deceit of appearances. If the passions dry up, is there any real loss? Are anger, hate, and lust worthy expressions of a being whose spiritual possibilities are so wonderful as man’s? The man who has learnt in some way—whether by personal experience or by a wise old man’s instructions or through an inspired book—that excessive ambition may be folly, excessive luxury has no end to the labour of collecting it, knows that the self-actualized Christians who are content to live barely and simply may not be fools after all. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
However, it is also possible for another man who has cultivated an inner detachment to have the same feelings and nevertheless seek to enjoy life. To feel free at last of nagging desires and frustrating attachments brings a large measure of contentment. What is the use of studying philosophy unless we are to become wiser in the future and unless we use its lessons to discipline the impulses and dominate the senses? The white lotus lives in the black mud. It is both an example and an inspiration to man. There is danger in a view of life which makes men unable to be satisfied with a similar life and which stimulates their desires endlessly. Even if it is beyond his power to kill these passions without Grace, it is within his power to curb them. We get muddled and worried by problems which have been manufactured for us by our own desires, instincts, and passions. The need of disciplining them is evident. If the energy used in the pursuit of ambitions or pleasures could be diverted to the following aspirations, if he had the strength to remove everything else from his life except the quest, how could he fail? He may discovery that the battle is not really over, that atavisms of the old animalistic life, rooted either in the present or in former births may come pouring over the threshold of the conscious ego. When the intellect is enslaved by desires, by greeds, by ignorance, it readily finds several defenses against the call of the Quest. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
When the ego has become a little freer and listened to the call, it just as readily finds defenses against making any practical application of what it has learnt. If your passion is transferred from a passing object or human body to the more durable and beautiful soul, you will be progressing from a lower to a higher plane. People may sicken in consequence of excessive life stress or from infection ensuing from lowered resistance. An inability to gratify needs by effective action contributes to physical sickness in direct ways. If a person is obligated to persist in ways of acting that are required by familial, occupational, or age roles, when these ways fail to produce basic need gratification, the person will gradually become dispirited. Dispiritation refers to a state of lowered morale, diminished zest in living, and a sense of hopelessness that lowers one’s resistance to infection by germs, bacteria, and viruses. A student may develop the flu after being rejected by his girlfriend. A woman may be deprived of feeling love in pleasures of the flesh, affection, and appreciation and yet persist in living the joyless life because she can envision no other; her chances of contracting various illnesses are increased. Any prolonged need deprivation dispirits a person and reduces that person’s commitment to life. This reduced commitment to living appears to be responsible (in ways not fully understood) for alterations in the efficiency of the immunity mechanisms of the body. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Everyday life itself is stressing, and persons rest in order to regain strength to cope with the challenges of existence. If a person is living a joyless existence, and cannot alter it, it is necessary for that person to force himself to fight the impulse to flee the scene. This unremitting struggle to remain in a thwarting situation imposes even more stress and can contribute to cardiovascular diseases and respiratory and eliminative disorders. However, perhaps more importantly, the dispirited person finds less and less joy or fun in work, family, or in life itself. Thus, in the same fashion that one needs to see a physician or change some part of one’s life in the face of continuous physical illness, one also needs to attend to the self in the condition of dispiriation. How does one defeat dispiritedness? First, recognition of the state and of the need for change is helpful or a professional counselor, psychologist, social worker, or psychiatrist. On most college campuses such help is provided by a counseling center or student mental health service. One should not look upon this as an embarrassment but rather as indicative of your knowing yourself and knowing when it is time to seek help. There are also other roads to escape from being dispirited—changing one’s job; changing one’s life objectives; getting out and seeking new, successful, yet exciting alternatives. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
It also may help to seek good friends who will not try to talk you into their solutions, but who will, rather, help you to talk out your own ideas and seek your own solutions—this is also a successful approach to coping with the very normal occurrence of being dispiritied. Normal though it might be, it demands attention in order for one to maintain a healthy personality. The script equipment is the nuts and bolts from which the script apparatus is built, a do-it-yourself kit partly supplied by the parents and partly by the child himself. Antonia was depressed by an unhappy love affair. She was afraid to be frank with her lover because she might lose him. On the other hand, if she were not frank, she was afraid she might lose him. There was nothing sinister in it, actually. It was just that she did not want him to know how passionate she really was. The conflict sometimes made her frigid and sometimes panicky. When she talked about it, she felt so mixed up that she clutched her head. What would her parents say about it? Well, her father would say: “Take it easy. Do not lose your head.” And her mother? “He is taking advantage of you. Do not get too attached to him. He will leave sooner or later. You are not good enough for him. He is not good enough for you.” She went on to tell an adventure. When she was about five, an adolescent uncle had got sexy with her, and made her feel sexy, too. She never told her parents. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
One day when Antonia was taking a bath, her father told her how cute she was. There were some visitors in the house and he had held her up naked for them to see. They sexy uncle was one of them. What were he reactions? “I want to hide. I want to hide.” “My God, they will find out what I have been doing.” How did you feel toward your father doing that? “I wanted to kick him in the privates. I knew what a man’s private parts looked like, too, from my uncle’s ‘excitments.’” Was there any ha ha? “Yes deep down, there was. I had a secret. And worst of all, I knew I liked it under all the other feelings.” From these reactions Antonia had constructed a script, which was to have passionate love affair and then get left. Along with that, however, she also wanted to get married, stay married, and have children. There were two counterscript slogans from her father: “Take it easy,” and “Do not lose your head.” These fitted in with her aspirations of getting married and raising a family. There were dive injunctions from mother, all telescoped into, “Do not get attached to anyone.” There was a strong seduction to be passionate and sexy from her uncle, reinforced by the nude provocation from her father. These seductions and provocations from Parental demons had reinforced her own demon throughout her life. There was a strong implication of a built-in release: the familiar Prince with the Golden Apples—not like father; if she could only find one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
The interesting thing is that his whole bit came out in one session. As someone remarked, she was quite happy to hold it up for everyone to see. Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Let us use the old term “madness” for awhile. There are two kinds of madnesses, only one of which is generally recognized. That is the one that we call “abormal” or “out of touch with reality.” The other one seems to me to be out of touch with reality too, although it is called “normal” because a majority of people are that way in our society. In this sense, it is a reality—like the reality in many parts of the World that most people go to bed hungry every night. This is not a reality which most of us would recommend adjusting to although where it exists it is “normal.” Ther are two normal too, only one of which we usually recognize. That is the statistical normal which is nobody, like the average Harvard man who has 3.5 children. The other normal is unknown because it is me if I had not been interfered with, what I might have become, my own norm—a constantly changing potentiality becoming actuality. This happens to nobody too—but it could happen. Why should not we increasingly make it possible for this to happen. When people hold themselves to any pattern it cripples them. It robs one of the confidence in their ability to grow as a person and to become independent. The recognized “abnormal” is a very lonely one, because no matter how many other people are in it, the individual lives in so much isolation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Abnormal people are cut off from other people because they reject people who are different, and the individual’s response to them may also be chopped off too—perhaps in the way it happens when one is overtired and cannot even enjoy doing what he likes to do. It evokes no response in the individual. The other madness, which is called “normal,” is not lonely—or rather one’s loneliness has got buried so that one does not notice it so much. One can “forget it.” They may remember the vision they have had, but they cease to regret it, maintain themselves by the common routine, learn to avoid excessive expectations, become tolerant of themselves and others, giving and taking, in the usual actions what there is to give and take, They do not repine; are contented with the morning that separates and with the evening that brings together for casual talk before the fire two people who know they do not understand each other, breeding children whom they do not understand and who will never understand them…and the other life will be only like a book you have read once and lost. However, the loneliness is still there. When one has substituted a superficial togetherness for the basic being-together, one has built a superstructure with no structure underneath it. That is fantasy, even though the fantasy may become a second-order reality by many people engaging in the same fantasy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
A man can be linked with many other people through his surface, or mask, or disguise—by approved actions. This is phoney, or veneer, because it is put on, but as long as he keeps his mind focused on it, he has the illusion of being in touch with other people and himself by interacting with their phoney surfaces. Even if he has done this for so long that the surface seems real to him, it is more like apples bobbing in a tub of water, skin touching skin, with no awareness of the flesh or core. We are all apples and that is enough, is it not? What more do you want? Not satisfied with being an apple? Just do what the other apples are doing and you will be already. Not to do this is “bad.” (A threat to my veneer, which might crack and split if exposed to the weather of humanness?) The Self-Actualization Movement originated—where all individual freedoms start—on the Western Frontier. On nursery planets the military warrior-caste is responsible for developing new technologies for faster mobility and communication. Soon afterwards, the citizens in the Western Frontier coopt the technology for their own action. Genetic causes exist for human problems. Discovering this is a big breakthrough—resisted, of course, by stage twelve retiring socialist demo-poll cultures. Genetic determination focuses on gene pool statistics and caste-differentiation, thus minimizing the importance of hive managers. Socialist-welfare cultures insist that the collective super-hive—also known as “The State”—assume responsibility for everything. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
When we human begin to face the fact that genes determine the varied destiny of our different children, then we are ready to see that genes determine our own caste. Next comes the catastrophic discovery that each gene pool is a time-hive, a genetic molecule, made up of many elements called “castes” and that the whole game is genetic robotry. After genetic counseling courses began studying genetic potentials and self-selected breeding soon emerged on the Western Frontier. Neither China or Russia offered courses on genetic elites. As our intelligence evolves the definition of genetic counseling will evolve from an emphasis on pathology to one of excellence and growth. The definition of genetic counseling might read like this: “A communication process which deals with the human potentials associated with the occurrence, or the possibility of occurrence, of genetic advance in the gene pool.” The dom-species on the Sunset Strip move from twelve social-sacrifice to stage thirteen self0consumerism. PreDom ideas emerging on the western frontier: Stage 14: Self-Actualized Adults: Bodily intelligence self-actualization “My Body is my Time Ship.” Stage 15: Hedonic Networkers: Voluntary civilian space migration “We Are Not Terrestrials.” Stage 16: Brain-Reality Consumer: Brain Reality Consumerism “I Can Select My Own Reality.” Stage 17: Brain-Reality Self-Actualized: Brain Reality Self-Actualism “I Can Create My Own Reality.” Stage 18: Brain Reality Fusion: Brain Reality Fusion “We Can Fabricate an External Reality.” Stage 19: Genetic Consumer: Genetic Consumerism “I Can Select My Own Genetic Reality.” Stage 20: Genetic Engineer: Genetic Engineering “I Can Fabricate My Own Genetic Reality.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Terrestrial dom-species place all notions of the future under hive-taboo. The ideas of bodily-sensory-hedonic consumerism—fiercely taboo in domesticated adults and retiring elder societies—crumbled by the late 20th Century on the Western Frontier. The predom self-actualized adult stage taboo against bodily self-actualization similarly crumbled—as exemplified by the legalization of marijuana, the classical tool of one who wishes to control one’s own hedonic reality. The predom hedonic networker taboo of the late 20th Century condemned civilian space migration was a “preadolescent” idea and he was precisely correct. If preadolescence is defined as age eleven, then a preadolescent idea will become a young-voter idea in seven years and will be legalized in California ten years later. How few of the images which fill his mind come from his higher self, how many from his animal self! It is not enough to refrain from sensual acts. It is no less needful to refrain from sensual thoughts. As this diviner self displaces the Earthly one in his will, heart, and mind, it is natural that what he hitherto felt as temptation will be felt as such less and less. On the philosophic path he will attain to this without immuring himself in any cloister, but rather in the very midst of Worldly activity. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to providing excellent service to their customers in a professional and humanitarian way. They protect lives, property and the environment through safe and timely response. They are innovative in fire prevention, suppression, rescue, emergency medical services, training, community outreach, public education, and other services. “It was nine o’clock in the morning, and the alert came in that there was a fire in an occupied dwelling. We pulled up to the place, and Captain X and Lieutenant Y yelled for a ladder. It sounded like there was somebody trapped on the second floor, because there was a lot of screaming going on. One woman, who looked like she was burned, was screaming the most. I grabbed the twenty-foot free beam and ran to the side of the house. However, the woman was screaming that her baby was in there on the first floor. “In the crib,” she said. It’s in the crib.” So Lieutenant Y got on his knees under the first-floor window, and I jumped on his back. I tried to get in the window sideways, but I could not. So I had to go in straight, diving head first. There was a bunch of junk in there. The people had just moved in the day before. It was a small room, maybe ten by ten. I could feel my ears burning. I remember kneeling at the crib, looking over my shoulder at the window. Then it got terribly hot. That’s the last thing I remember. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“Captain X, senior man at Engine Z, dove in after me, lugged me to the window, and they pulled me out. I must have gone into respiratory arrest because Captain X was beating on me. Then the squad came, scooped me up, and took me to the hospital. I was in that room only about a minute all told. What was weird about that fire, was that my dad, who had been in the department for twenty-five years, was driving to the union office when he saw the smoke, and he figured that his kid was at that fire. Then he said, ‘nah, I’ve seen him work,’ so he passed up the exit to go there. But something made him turn back at the next exit to go there. He pulled up in front of the house, and he saw a guy lying there, and they were working on him. Chief A said to day, “That’s your boy.” So Dade rode in the squad with me. I remember waking up in the squad, and Dad was straddling me. They were trying to give me oxygen, and I didn’t want it. I didn’t know what was going on. I was burned up bad, but I didn’t know that. I felt like there was a ton of ice on my face. I remember trying to kick my boots off, and it was all pain. I knew then I was hurt. Then I blacked out again. They were wheeling me in, I remember that. They cut my clothes off. B, a guy I went to Hawaii with, was there. I said, “I loused up, I loused up, I loused up.” Then I asked him what I looked like. B’s eyes were bulging, they were bigger than I’ve ever seen, bigger than plates. He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, C. You just lost your suntan.’ He didn’t want to tell me. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“I don’t really remember much of being in the hospital. I remember a bunch of firemen coming to see me. I was only in for two days because of the danger of infection; you get more infection in the hospital than you would at home. I had second- and third-degree burns on my entire face, ears, and left hand. They did an experiment on me because I was so young, only nineteen. They did this biobrane. It’s like a skin that they put on a leg burn, a thigh burn, or an arm burn. They put that on my face, and it saved years of reconstructive surgery. Aside from that, all I’ve had to do was get eyelid surgery, because the fire burned through my eyelids. So they took skin from my neck over my left clavicle and redid my eyelids for me. I still need a little bit more nose work and then some eye surgery, and that’s it. They did laser surgery on my eyeballs. I had burned corneas, stuff like that, and I had a lot of edema. My biggest problem, though, is photophobia, sensitivity to light. But the best thing they did was let me go home and let my family take care of me. My sister did. My mom was so busted up she couldn’t even be in the room with me. And my dad, who’s not a big drinker, took it really hard and started drinking a lot. I stayed at my mom’s for a month while they took care of me. The smartest thing I did was, I never looked in the mirror. I didn’t have the slightest idea how badly I was burned up. And all my running mates, they’d bring the rigs by, and they’d spend time with me—that really meant a lot to me—to see me, the monster man. I mean, I was horrible-looking. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“My captain took it hard, because he’d never had a son on the job, and I was young enough to be his son. Lieutenant Y took it hard, too. What happened at the fire was, there was a mother, she had about five kids with different fathers, and she was in bed with some live-in boyfriend. The baby was in bed with them. The other kids were playing with matches under the dining room table, and the house took off. She and the guy jumped through the window and left the baby in the bed. Then they told us the baby was in the crib. The baby was obviously dead. They ended up suing our arson squad, because Arson reported it as kids playing with matched. They weren’t worried about their baby. If I had a tragedy like that and my child died like that, I’d definitely not want to dwell on it, I’d want to get it behind me and end it. D got some minor burns on his neck and brined the tops of his ears, because that room was going when he pulled me out. It flashed over, and flames burst out the window. And he went in there. He’s a little black guy, real shy, doesn’t talk loud at all. He won the Medal of Valor, the highest award you can win in the Sacramento Fire Department, for pulling me out of that fire. If anyone ever says anything bad about him, I’ll fight to the death for that man. He saved my life. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“That biobrane, to me, is the greatest thing since sliced bread, because I would be Mr. Scar. I would just be totally scarred. It’s evident from where it didn’t take, at the corners of my mouth and my lips. My lips always peel now, they’re always dry. I’ve got scars at the corners of my mouth, over my upper lip, right on my nose, on the ends of my nostrils, and under my chin, where the biobrane didn’t take. But biobrane is the best thing that ever happened to me. Lieutenant Y wants to get in touch with the doctor who did it, a young aggressive plastic surgeon, but he went down to New Orleans, and it’s hard to get in touch with him. When to the burn center for the eyelid surgery, they sewed my eyes shut for six days, and that was the worst part of it. I was super depressed then. The nurses understood. The firefighters were pretty serious about the whole thing, but the first day I came home the doctor put this net over my head to hold the biobrane mask on so it wouldn’t fall off. Captain X laughed and said I looked like a ham. That kind of broke the ide for the other guys. They took pictures of me every day, and they wanted to use one of them for the Burn Tournament poster for the burn center, but it was too hideous. The caption was going to say, “They never ask what happened to the firefighter who tried to save the baby.” It was just too horrible. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“It takes a year for you skin to heal up. But I was going stir crazy. I was bored, lethargic, gaining weight. I just wanted to get back to work. I told the doctor I would wear my Nomex hood all the time, so I went back to work after less than nine months. I would have gone back sooner if I didn’t have such trouble with my eyesight. I still wear sunglasses outside. It’s going to be a long time before that clears up. The skin is really sensitive. I wear my Nomex hood, and I still get the tops of my ears a little bit friend, and my face blisters up. I had a good one last night and got burned a little. But I’ve stayed on duty because it’s not that burned, just a little blistered. I’ve got to work for a guy tomorrow, and I don’t want to screw up his work release. That dive I took into that room wasn’t so good. For one thing, my mask was knocked off, and I kind of busted my nose, and my left cheek was swollen up pretty bad, so I must have hit something. My helmet must have come off, too, because I had burns on top of my head. But the helmet is still living. It looks like a good squad helmet. It’s all black. “The Sacramento Fire Department provides their customers safer and healthier neighbourhoods through an engaged, educated, and diverse workforce dedicated to life safety and improved quality of life. You can help save lives and property by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember, parents, teach your children to love America and be patriotic, to love God and Jesus Christ, to buy American made goods and services and cars, to respect law and order, and teach others with compassion, respect, and dignity, especially their elders. Release all captives, we beseech Thee, Lord whose mighty hand doth set men free; and hear the glad acclaim of all Thy people who praise and glorify but Thee. Preserve the righteous ones who seek Thee, and, in love, Thy unity proclaim; O guard and bless with Thine abundant goodness, Thy people who revere Thy name. Thou, Lord, who art alone exalted, please turn to us and hearken to our plea. We bless Thee, Thou who knowest all things hidden, Thy kingdom is unto eternity. 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. O Guardian of American, guard the remnant of America; let not American people perish, the people which proclaims: Hear, O America. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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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/
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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Randolph Harris II International 