Home » news (Page 11)
Category Archives: news
Bucket of Coal for a Bucket of Diamonds
The Stolen Property System (hereafter SPS) is that set of individuals and their interactions which locates, plans, facilitates, and its transfer to a new owner. Ideally this system will have six functioning modes: Research and planning mode—The determination of a demand for an item(s), its location, and how best it can be acquired. Extraction mode—The actual separation of property from its owner (the theft). Exchange mode—The transfer of the item from the extractor to the marketer (the person who will offer it for sale). Marketing mode—This includes transportation and storage, demand analysis (marketing information subsystem), packaging and advertising (any necessary modification in property prior to resale). Redistribution mode—The determination of where, when, and at what price the item will be resold. Evaluation model—The analysis of the feedback to the system as to its performance. In its simplest form, the SPS can consist of but a single individual as in the case of the thief peddling one’s own merchandise. In this situation, mode 3 would be combined with mode 2 into a single operation. At the uppermost level of complexity, the SPS can contain many individuals (the maximum number being indeterminate) as in the case of truck hijacking. In this situation, the planning mode (mode 1) alone will require either the accurate forecasting of the behaviors of shipper, dispatcher, and driver, or the enlistment of the assistance of one or all of these individuals. It is important to note that whether the SPS consists of one or a dozen individuals, all of its operations must be performed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
If this is not done by those within the system, then it will be undertaken by its clients or by others in the environment. An abridged version of the SPS, then, does not imply a functional curtailment, but rather a combining of functions into fewer operational steps. There is some evidence that the SPS in its simplest form does in fact occur. The low prices which fences were offering to addicts for stolen property were forcing addicts to sell the merchandise themselves. It is clear, however, that the nature of the SPS is such that it is most frequent manifestation consists of a division of labor between at least two individuals—the thief and the fence. A thief who steals merchandise is like bread without yeast, no good, just as essential elements in any accomplished act of thievery whenever merchandise is involved. This basic division of labor between the thief and fence occurs roughly at mode 3, with modes 1 and 2 generally allocated to the thief and modes 4 through 6 to the fence. The relationship between the thief and the fence in mode 3, though little studied, is essential. It is also precisely that interaction which the conventional view of thief fails to recognize and account for. The theoretical character of the relationship between thief and fence is best described by the mixed-motive bargaining situation. The thief is motivated to cooperate with the fence in order to divest oneself of the stolen property, yet at the same time, one is motivated to compete with the fence in achieving the best price for the merchandise. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
The fence is in a similar situation. By the very nature of one’s role, one is in the market for stolen property (hence one will want to cooperate with the thief) and yet one’s profit margin depends upon how well one can compete with the thief for a favorable price on the goods. The pressures to cooperate are perhaps greater for the thief, since the consequences of failing to reach an agreement are likely to be more significant for one; id est, the possibility of being caught with the goods in hand. If a deal is not consummated, the fence runs no risk, particularly in the short run. The consequences of protracted bargaining situations may, however, result in sharply deceasing one’s sources of supply as one gains the reputation of being an unfair bargainer. Dealing between thief and fence, as with all commercial dealings, are strengthened by consistency and reliability. Therefore, although fence and thief are motivated to compete with each other regarding the exchange value of stolen property, the clear bis for both is toward the establishment of cooperation. The thief-fence relationship is not unique in this respect. If mixed-motive bargainers are to reach agreement, cooperative interests must be strong enough to overcome competitive interests. The SPS is clearly able to foster the kind of cooperation necessary in the exchange mode (mode 3) to keep a continual supply of stolen goods flowing toward the fence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
However, were the exchange of goods the only dimension be of little analytical value. In effect it would make it difficult to sustain the concept of the SPS as a total, integrated system, for the SPS could be regarded instead as the face-ff of two stolen property mechanisms, one belonging to the thief and one to the fence. The relationship between thief and fence at mode 3, while essential, does not move us much beyond the individualistic tendencies of the conventional view of theft. If we are to appreciate instead the organizational quality of property theft crimes, it is necessary to explore further the interaction patterns of fences and thieves in other parts of the SPS. In confining our attention to the thief-fence interaction at mode 3 (exchange) in the SPS, we stipulated that the system’s division of labor allocated modes 1 and 2 to the thief and modes 4 through 6 to the fence. This is, of course, the most elementary form of that relationship, and while useful in elucidating some dimensions of the thief-fence interaction, it tends to shroud some of the more complex and more insightful relationships existing between these two individuals. In order to understand more complex thief-fence relationships and to achieve a greater appreciation for the role of the criminal receiver, two important axioms regarding the SPS must be introduced: The effectiveness of the SPS does not require a single and specific division of labor to obtain. That is, no particular allocation of the activities in the system is essential to its successful functioning. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
The functional integrity of the SPS is not distributed by a nonsequential performance of its mode. What this means is that although we have set down the logical progression of activities in the SPS in modes 1 through 6, this does not imply that they must be performed in that order. These axioms emphasize at least two origins of variety in the SPS, and it is this variety which makes the system both interesting and analytically complex. Division of Labor—We will begin our deeper analysis into the SPS by looking more closely at the questions raised by the first axiom. It should be noted here that although this axiom states that varying division-of-labor arrangements are possible in the SPS, it does not suggest that they are all equally likely. The division of labor between thief and fence in the planning of a theft. To begin, it should be noted that the fence, as the buyer of the thief’s produce, always has some implicit influence over the planning of a theft through one’s power to reward. Thus those items for which the fence is willing to pay more will be more often sought by the thief and this will, of course, affect one’s choice of target. The fence’s patterns of reward mediation therefore becomes the “Invisible Hand” guiding the thief toward the selection of what property he will steal. This “guidance” is felt not only by the person on drugs but also by the professional thief. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
ITEM 1: (interview with Greg, professional burglar) “I stole a beautiful pair of Imperial jade earrings one time and couldn’t get rid of them. This just isn’t a colored gem city (diamonds are biggest here) so a lot of fences won’t touch things like rubies and saffires [sic], et cetera. Only Mr. A handled that sort of stuff. Until I got connected with him, there was no percentage in taking colored gems.” ITEM 3: (from statement of Joe, a semi-skilled burglar, to district attorney) “We could only get scrap prices from fences for stuff like silverware and tea sets, et cetera, so D (other burglar) said we were better off to steal the metals themselves. That’s when we started working the warehouses and rail yards.” A thief’s selection of targets and items for theft is similarly influenced by the number of fences one knows and the degree of specialization in which they engage. Thus in item 1 Greg’s acquaintance with Mr. A accrued to him rewards for property that had previously been unsalable. A burglar who only knows fences who handle TVs and clothing is likely to limit his thefts to those items. The fence’s “Invisible Hand” in mode 1, however, is not nearly always so invisible. Witnesses the follow police activity report entries: ITEM 4: (from police activity report) “Info that M (who fences from his auction house) is now selling insurance. What he does is visit older people who have money and antiques around then fingers them for burglaries. Stuff all comes to him. ITEM 6: (police activity report) “Info that Greg’s gang (prof. burglars) is fencing stuff through X who work for a detective agency and gives the burglars floor plans and inform on security devices. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
In these items, we see the fence who, by virtue of his business or occupation, is in a position to know individual who possess valuable property, the nature of that property, or something about their movements. By sharing this information with thieves, he becomes the engineer, the prime mover, of the theft. Implied in most of these arrangements, of course, is the agreement that he will receive the property once it has been stolen. The increased role of the fence as “set-up man” in mode 1 also increases his power vis a vis the thief since his control over valuable theft information has an impact upon the thief’s livelihood and future. The thief who needs this information must be willing to accept completely the fence’s terms. If he does not come to terms, the fence with complete knowledge of who committed the theft, is in an excellent position to “set-up” the thief as well. This is why some professional thieves prefer to rely on their own research and planning rather than risking an indenture (however brief) to the receiver. The division of labor between fence and thief in the extraction mode. Labor sharing between fence and thief in the actual theft can take two forms. The fence can actually participate in the theft or one can offer technical advice on its commission. The former arrangement is extremely unlikely situation in the SPS. ITEM 8: (interview with Greg, a professional thief) “I know the fence’s job is a lot more lucrative and a lot safer (than that of the thief) because he never actually steals anything himself. But it just isn’t as exciting.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Even though, then, the fence’s participation in the theft’s commission is highly unlikely, there is some evidence that he can assist in the offense in ways other than setting it up. He can, for example, instruct the thief as to techniques to use in avoiding suspicion and apprehension. ITEM 10: (police activity report) “…words is that X tells burglars to sit on stuff till they call in and only to come to the store during regular hours.” Little evidence could be found of a more active role taken by the fence in the extraction mode. Instead his involvement here appears limited to giving of advice or admonition to the thief. It is probably fair to say, therefore, that a division of labor in the SPS which allocates mode 2 to the fence is a highly unlikely arrangement and for all intents and purposes can be eliminated from consideration. The division of labor between fence and thief in the marketing mode. It is probably necessary to restate the activities which occur in the marketing mode of the SPS since it covers three general areas: an analysis of demand in the stolen property economy (a marketing information subsystem); activities related to the transportation and storage of property; and finally, activities related to packaging and promotion (the modification necessary in the preparation of stolen property for resale). As can be imagined, mode 4 is an extremely complex and comprehensive component of the SPS. This is in general the fence’s milieu; and it is because of one’s skills in organizing and coordinating the various activities in this mode that one can command a lion’s share of the rewards which the SPS has to offer. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
The quality of the demand analysis conducted by the fence will depend upon one’s individual business acumen. If one distributes stolen property through one’s own retail outlet, one must anticipate the future demands of one’s customers and determine what one needs to buy from one’s “suppliers.” Similarly, one must decide what mix of stolen versus legitimate property one wants to maintain; this again will affect one’s buying habits. One will also need to analyze the market one serves to discover the different segments it contains and the varying tastes that one should satisfy in one’s product line. If the fence does not sell directly to the public but instead to other middlemen or to retail establishments, one’s demand analysis will follow the same general pattern as above but will depend as well upon the quality of the contracts one makes in the legitimate market place and the guidance they can provide. The fence, then, faces many of the same dilemmas as any legitimate marketer. There is no one formula for success, only the expertise which past success and failure teaches. (An accommodation to the difficulties in demand forecasting and analysis used in both legitimate and illegitimate market places will be discussed below when the nonsequential functions of the SPS is considered.) There is little question, however, that the demand analysis function is an all-fence activity. The other two activity areas in mode 4, though directed by the fence, can be shared with the thief. This is particularly true of the transportation and storage function where the evidence suggests that often an equal responsibility obtains. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Consider the case in which the fence employs a “drop” where property is to be abandoned by the thief. The former pays for the storage facility while the latter must be responsible for transportation. ITEM 11: (police activity report) “…what happens is that burglars are told to take the stolen property to a drop at _____ St. and stash it in the garage until X (fence) can be called. He comes to the drop and if property is worth buying he opens his store for burglars to deliver it that night. Most of the stolen property is kept in a back room of the store and guarded by the police dog (kept mostly for protection against the police). The “drop” is only one technique which the fence uses to facilitate the safe transportation and storage of stolen property while at the same time insuring against one’s being found in “possession” of it. The rental of warehouse facilities serves a similar purpose. It is clear that the storage function is the role responsibility of the fence since the thief has at this point relinquished control over the property to one. Similarly, any further transportation that may be required is also the fence’s concern. Some fences pursue occupations in the trucking and storage industries which are tremendous assets to their illegal business endeavors. Two individuals in the data base, for example, jointly own three moving and storage firms, with a dozen vans and numerous warehouses. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Two of their legitimate business did a gross in 1969 of $96,000 and police will not attempt to estimate their profits from criminal receiving. These individuals also appear to provide transportation facilities for other fences in the city. Witness the following note from police files: ITEM 15: (police activity report) “…suspicious activity at ______ Avenue re: building being used as a warehouse for storage of stolen TVs and hi fis (foreign mfg.)—Detectives observed male get out of car and use key to gain entrance—car registered to Mr. C. who is suspected of being a fence. To add to suspicions, when TVs were moved across state to the present location at above-mentioned warehouse, the mover was X owner of ____ Moving and Storage (fencing outlet). We all know that it is illegal to steal something that belongs to someone else, and doing so can expose a person to significant criminal penalties. However, it is equally illegal to take possession of, or deal in, property that has been stolen. The California Penal Code section that deals with the receipt of stolen property is section 496, which contains a fairly broad definition of the crime and encompasses more than simply receiving (id est, taking possession of) property that has been stolen. If one either receives or buys property that has been stolen, or has been obtained by means of extortion, a person violates Penal Code section 496. If a personal conceals (id est, hides) assists in concealing, sells, assists in selling, withholds or assists in withholding any property that has been stolen, the law is also violated. A violation of Penal Code section 496 can be either a misdemeanor or a felony. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
A second pillars in the cathedral of socialist theory was central planning. Instead of allowing the “chaos” of the marketplace to determine the economy, intelligent top-down planning would be able to concentrate resources on key sectors, and accelerate technological development. However, central planning depended on knowledge, and as early as the 1920s the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises identified its lack of knowledge or, as he termed it, its “calculation problem,” as the Achilles heel of socialism. How many shoes and what sizes should a factory in Irkutsk make? How many left-handed screws or grades of paper? What prince-relationships should be set between carburetors and cucumbers? How many rubles, zlotys, or yuan should be invested in each of tens of thousands of different lines and levels of production? To answer such questions, even in the simples smokestack economy, requires more knowledge than central planners can collect or analyze, especially when managers, afraid of trouble, routinely lie to them about actual production. Thus, warehouses filled up with unwanted shoes. Shortages and a vast, shadowy black market became chronic features of most socialist economies. Generations of earnest socialist planners wrestled desperately with this knowledge problem. They demanded ever more data and got ever more lies. They beefed up the bureaucracy. Lacking the supply-and-demand signals generated by a competitive market, they tried measuring the economy in terms of labor hours, or counting things in terms of kind, rather than money. Later they tried econometric modeling and input-output analysis. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Nothing worked. The more information they had, the more complex and disorganized the economy grew. Fully three quarters of a century after the Russian Revolution the real symbol of the U.S.S.R. was not the hammer and sickle, but the consumer queue. Today, all across the socialist and ex-socialist spectrum there is a race to introduce marker economies, either wholly, as in Poland, or timidly within a planned regimen, as in the Soviet Union. It is now almost universally recognized by socialist reformers that allowing supply and demand to determine prices (at least within certain ranges) provides what the central plan could not—price signals indicating what is or is not needed and wanted in the economy. However, overlooked in the discussion among economists over the need for these signals is the fundamental change in the communication pathways they imply, and the tremendous power shifts that changes in communication systems bring. The most important difference between centrally planned economies and market-driven economies is that, in the first, information flows vertically, whereas in the market, much more information flows horizontally and diagonally in the system, with buyers and sellers exchanging information at every level. This change does not merely threaten top bureaucrats in the planning ministries and in management, but millions upon millions of mini-bureaucrats whose sole source of power depends on their control of information fed up the reporting channel. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
The incapacity of the central planning system to cope with high levels of information thus set limits on the economic complexity necessary for growth. The new wealth-creation methods require so much knowledge, so much information and communication, that they are totally out of reach of centrally planned economies. The rise of the super-symbolic economy thus collies with a second foundation of socialist orthodoxy. The third crashing pillars of socialism was its overweening emphasis on hardware—its total concentration on smokestack industry and its derogation of both agriculture and mind-work. In the years after the 1917 revolution, the Soviets lacked capital to build all the steel mills, dams, and auto plants they needed. Soviet leaders seized on the theory “socialist primitive accumulation” formulated by the economist E.A. Preobrazhensky. This theory held that the necessary capital could be squeezed out of the peasants by forcing their standard of living down to an emaciating minimum and skimming off their surpluses. These would then be used to capitalize heavy industry and subsidize the workers. Nikolai Bukharin, a Bolshevik leader who paid for his prescience with his life, correctly predicted that this strategy would merely guarantee agricultural collapse. Worse yet, this policy led to the murderous oppression of the peasantry by Stalin, since it was only by means of extreme force that such a program could be imposed. Millions died of starvation or persecution. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
As a result of this “industry bias,” as the Chinese call it today, agriculture has been a disaster area for virtually all socialist economies and still is. Put differently, the socialist countries pursued a Second Wave strategy at the expense of their First Wave people. However, socialists also frequently denigrated the services and white-collar work. It was not pure coincidence that when the Soviets demanded “socialist realism” in the arts, the walls were soon covered with murals of beefy workers straining muscles in steel mills and factories. Because the goal of socialism everywhere was to industrialize as rapidly as possible, it was muscle-labor that was glorified. Mind-work was for nonproductive wimps. This widespread attitude went hand in hand with the tremendous concentration on production rather than consumption, on capital goods rather than consumer goods. While some Marxists, notably Antonio Gramsci, challenged this view, and Mao Tse-tung at times insisted that ideological purity could overcome material handicaps, the fundamental thrust of Marxist regimes was to overrate material production and undervalue products of the mind. Mainline Marxists typically held the materialist view that ideas, information, art, culture, law, theories, and the other intangible products of the mind were merely part of a “superstructure” which hovered, as it were, over the economic “base” of society. While there was, admittedly, a certain feedback between the two, it was the base the determined the superstructure, rather than the reverse. Those who argued otherwise were condemned as “idealists”—at times a decidedly dangerous label to wear. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
Mr. Marx, in arguing the primacy of the material base, stood Mr. Hegel on his head. The great irony of history today is that the new system of wealth creation, in turn, is standing Mr. Marx on his. Or more accurately, laying Mr. Marx and Mr. Hegel both on their sides. For Marxists, hardware was always more important than software; the computer revolution now teaches us that the opposite is true. If anything, it is knowledge that drives the economy, not the economy that drives knowledge. Societies, however, are not machines and they are not computers. They cannot be reduced so simply into hardware and software, base and superstructure. A more apt model would picture them as consisting of many more elements all connected in immensely complex and continually changing feedback loops. As their complexity raises, knowledge becomes more central to both their economic and ecological survival. The rise of a new economy whose primary raw materials is, in fact, soft and intangible found World socialism totally unprepared. Socialism’s collision with the future was fatal. If orthodox socialism is ready for what Mr. Lenin called the “dustbin of history,” however, this does not mean that the magnificent dream that bred it are also dead. The desire to create a World in which affluence, peace, and social justice prevail is at least as noble and widely share as ever. Such a World cannot rise, however, on old foundations. The most important revolution on the planet today is the rise of a new Third Wave civilization with its radical new system of wealth creation. Any movement that has not yet grasped this fact is condemned to relive its failures. Any state that makes knowledge a captive freezes its citizens in a nightmare past. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
China’s foreign exchange reserves rose in March of 2023, as the dollars fell against other major currencies. China’s foreign exchange reserves—the World’s largest—rose USD $51 billion to USD $3.184 trillion. This tremendous amount stems from the status of the country’s balance of payments. Maintaining a huge foreign trade surplus and, consequently, a current account surplus, it also has a comfortable and usually quite substantial surplus in the capital and financial account, as foreigners invest in China much more than the Chinese overseas (in most countries the current balance and the capital and financial account balance have opposite signs, which means that the current account surplus is somewhat offset by the capital account deficit or vice versa). Unprecedented growth of China’s foreign reserves has two major implications for the West and for the whole World. The most important one is Beijing’s position as the largest foreign creditor of the American government. China holds about 14 percent of all U.S.A. Treasury Bonds. Whether one likes it or not, it gives the Chinese government a strong leverage to push its interest on a wide range of economic, political, and security issues. Currently, China’s role as a creditor is becoming increasingly noticeable on the European continent as well, and will apparently increase further as public debt problems in a growing number of the EU countries are becoming critical. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
The second implication is China’s ability to pursue foreign acquisitions and other strategic overseas investment in a buy-whatever-the-price fashion. In other words, the Chinese buy foreign assets they consider important even when their prices reach the levels that would be prohibitive for a private Western investor. While Western governments can black transactions of this kind in their own countries, and they often do, they can do little to prevent China from using its foreign reserves as a tool to boost its political and economic clout in the Third World. On the other hand, soaring foreign reserves are posing challenges for China itself. The central bank governor Yi Gang is clearly saying that foreign reserves have exceeded the reasonable level and are becoming difficult to manage. The World’s largest sovereign wealth fund (SWF) as of December 2022 was China Investment Corporation (CIC), managing assets reaching around USD $1.35 trillion. In 2006, the CIC was established to manage a very small portion of the total: USD $200 billion. However, it is often noted that, overall, the reserves could be managed in a much more efficient manner and bring higher returns. The yields from U.S.A. Treasury bonds are very low. Some other investments, like the one into Merrill Lynch, ended in a substantial loss. Next, also on the negative aide, a dramatic increase of foreign reserves is accompanied by rising inflationary pressure. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
The reason is that, basically, the foreign currency accumulating in the People’s Bank of China is exchanged for the national currency, which is injected into the national economy. It amplifies inflationary trends and elevates the risk of an asset bubble. (Inflationary pressures are significantly increasing also due to soaring global prices for food, fuel, and mineral resources, and the legacy of China’s USD $5.3 trillion COVID stimulus, which is 29 percent of its USD $18.1trillion economy as of 2023). There is a risk of a chain reaction of the increase of foreign reserves, growing liquidity injections into the economy, rising inflation, monetary policy tightening, and the rising of economic growth rates. To sterilize dollars, the central bank makes the country’s major banks turn over their foreign exchange in return for its interest-bearing securities. The scale of such sterilization may exceed $15 billion a week. It helps to contain inflationary trends, but locks up capital, as this money cannot be lent or invested. To tackle the excessive liquidity injection problem, China needs much larger outflows of capital. The Chinese have to invest much more overseas. It could also open new business opportunities for domestic companies, financial institutions, and individual investors. The Chinese government has introduced some policy measures supporting outbound investment, but they are still too weak and fragmentary, while restrictions are still strong. Also, it is often argued tht it is not relevant for China, as a developing country, to export much capital. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
In our view, for China with its exceptionally large foreign exchange reserves this is not necessarily the case. However, it cannot be denied that the key issue is whether or not these reserves can be used more actively and efficiently for the country’s own development. Though some attempts in this direction have been made, the situation remains unclear. For instance, the Finance Ministry bought $106 billion of foreign currency from the central bank and used it for the recapitalization of the Big Four banks and the Development Bank of China. However, it turned out to be only an accounting detour, as, after all, the central bank repurchased the foreign exchange involved. In the new development, the CIC has announced plans to invest the foreign exchange it manages into the shares of Chinese companies listed overseas in order to boost technologically intensive industries. Nevertheless, it would be safe to say that the accumulation of such huge foreign reserves by a country where many regions are still underdeveloped and a lot of people live below poverty level loos somewhat unnatural. Basically, countries with large foreign reserves are in the best position to become major international donors. However, China is a developing country itself. Thus, logically, it looks relevant to utilize part of its reserves, which after all manifest the state’s wealth, for official development assistance to its own provinces, villages, and townships to build infrastructure and houses for the poor, protect environment, improve livelihood, and so on. The problem lies in the monetary field: You cannot use accumulated foreign currencies directly for investing in projects at home. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
However, if they came from overseas (and, actually, it still gets some development funding from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and so on) apparently, Beijing would not turndown proposals about development assistance for the purposes mentioned. Today there cannot be too many proposals of this kind because China itself has a lot of foreign reserves for “domestic official development assistance” for imports of the equipment, materials, services, and so on needed to launch development and livelihood improvement projects in the country’s less-developed regions. This could ease the financial burden of provincial administrations whose debts are beginning to cause concern, and also contribute to balancing the trade between China and its Western counterparts in a way that is beneficial for both sides. After all, it is quite simple: The West has a lot of things to sell to China that could make the life of the Chinese people, in China, especially the poor people, better, and the Chinese government has the money to buy them. Only political will and a bit of creativity and imagination are needed to make it a win-win game. When it comes to raising a family, parents often face a difficult problem punishing their children for bad behavior. Children have an uncanny sense that the parents’ threat to punish may not be credible. They recognize that the punishment may hurt the parents as much as the children (although for very different reasons). The standard parental dodge to this inconsistency is that the punishment is for the children’s own good. How can parents do a better job at making their threat to punish bad behavior credible? #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
With two parents and one child, we have a three-person game. Teamwork can help the parents make an honest threat to punish a misbehaving child. Say the son misbehaves, and the father is scheduled to carry out the punishment. If the son attempts to rescue himself by pointing out the “irrationality” of his father’s actions, the father can respond that he would, given the choice, prefer not to punish his son. However, were he to fail in carrying out the punishment, that would be breaking an agreement with his wife. Breaking tht agreement would be worse than the cost of punishing the child. Thus the threat to punish is made credible. Even single parents can play this game, but the argument gets much more convoluted, as the punishment agreement must be made with the child. Once again, say the son misbehaves, and his father is scheduled to carry out the punishment. If the son attempts to rescue himself by pointing out the “irrationality” of his father’s actions, the father can respond that he would, given the choice, prefer not to punish his son. However, were he to fail in carrying out the punishment, then this would be a misdeed on his part, a misdeed for which he should be punished. Thus, he is punishing his son only to prevent getting punished himself. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
However, who is there to punish the father? It is the son! The son replies that were his father to forgive him, he too would forgive his father and not punish his father for failing to punish him. The father responds that were his son to fail to punish him for being lenient, this would be the second punishable offense done by the son in the same day! And so on and so forth do they keep each other honest. This may seem a little farfetched, but no less convoluted than most arguments used to justify punishing kids who misbehave. People have to come to understand that they cannot be indifferent to human feeling, hour after hour, day by people. One must be made to understand the importance of commitment and involvement, otherwise they will not be able to define and describe responsibility when they are totally unaware of what it means to be within the guts and heart of oneself and within the organic life of others. What arouses the son to brace himself against his father was that father’s total response, his unequivocal stand, his full reaction to the absence of vivid life, his shocking display of an intensity of feeling. Nearly all the communications that they had were aimed at clarifying past conversations and promoting future understanding and agreements. However, what the father was missing was just what he had been wrestling to capture himself—a commitment to the unknow, a willingness to discover what must be from unknown sources of life within and without. What was lacking was immediacy, depth, intensity, and a willingness to let go of old biases and to enter uncertainly into a process of rebirth. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
What was required was an internalization of a value like Thoreau’s: “Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one life is the making room for another.” In essence, let go of old attitude, both father and son, learn to communicate and respect your elders to make for a more harmonious bond. These is a fundamental principle involved in the freeing power of truth from the deceptions of offenders. DELIEVERENCE FROM BELIEVING LIES MUST BE BY BELIEVING TRUTH. Nothing can remove a lie but truth. When you know the truth, the truth shall make you free. That is applicable to every aspect of truth, as well as the special truth referred to by the ultimate concern. In the very first stage of becoming self-actualized, the unenlightened must know the truth of the soul to be saved. If one needs freedom, one must seek the higher path. The three steps to elevate the mind in apprehending truth: perception of truth by the understand. Perception of truth for use, and personal application. Perception of truth for teaching, and passing on to others. Truth apparently not grasped may lie passive in the mind, and then in the hour of one’s need suddenly emerge into experience, and thus by experience become clear to the mind in which it has been lying formant. It is only by continual application and assimilation of truth into experience, however, that it becomes sufficiently clarified in one’s mind that it may be taught to others. All righteous people greatly need to eagerly seek truth for their progressive liberation from the offenders’ many lies; for knowledge of truth alone can give victory over the deceiver. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
If, however, a hearer of truth should resist, it or revel against it, that unattended-to truth can well be left to the care of the soul and heart’s truth. Even in the case of resistance to truth it has at least reached the mind, and at any time may fructify into experience. There are three attitudes of mind with regard any item of knowledge: Assuming you know the matter already. Being neutral toward it; admitting “I do not know.” Being certain of its accuracy. This is instanced in the life of the self-actualized. When we know and have true knowledge, we are self-actualized. This is the element in the experience of present actuality. Another element, mora demand, is best approached via the notion of the “clean-unclean.” It is only under criticism of corruption that the unclean is separated from the self-actualized and receives the meaning immoral. Before that, the unclean designated something fiendish, something which produced taboos and numinous awe. Self-actualized work on the expulsion of the unclean from the sacred and the identification of the sacredness with the morally clean, so that cleanliness become sacredness…the tremendum becomes fear of the law and of judgment; the fascinosum becomes pride of self-control and repression. The emphasis is upon the self-actualizes as the clean (the morally good). #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
READY TO BUILD?
If you are considering building a custom home with us, please fill out the information below and we will reach out to you to schedule an introductory meeting. https://millhavenhomes.com/get-started/
Dabbling in its Dark, Cruel Possibilities
It was one of the brisk winter mornings that begins in a fog, promising the cold to come. A mist was rising from the fruit orchards as I dropped down the hill into Llanada Villa in the valley below the mansion. It was a fair-tale mansion, all turrets and towers, stained glass and plush Victorian gardens, sitting majestical on the most valuable plot of land. As I entered my home, I heard the music playing softly from the morning room. I sat sipping coffee at nine thirty, glad it was Saturday. I knew that life was going to be vastly more complicated now. Well, it was going to be more dangerous, too. Overhead, the morning sky had turned a vivid blue, intersected by fading vapor trails. It was bright enough blue, the sky. However, it had a depth and stillness suggestive of the steady retreat of sunlight and a slight warmth. I have seen real ghouls in my home, and I knew that magic was something that could be harnessed and exploited and there were people in the World with hunger for power and influence enough to risk dabbling in its dark, cruel possibilities. The whisper of water dropping on to leaves as the rain began to fall could be heard. The lights flicked on and off. I looked around, half-waiting for the sound to stir again. The rain strength. I heard drops begin to fall on the roof. For many years the staff reported hearing a little girl crying. She has been seen on occasion, and is described as about seven years old. She has been seen in the house at the main stairwell, on the lawn, and on the third floor. I passed on through the passages of crystal and rooms of silver—spacious chambers, empty and silent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
This house felt older than the memory of man. It was an accursed mansion. There were strange noises in the mansion. Every night the wailing of a woman could be heard above the moaning of the wind. If ghost must walk the Earth, they could find no spot on the globe where their appearance would be more natural, or better understood. The staff tells tales of disembodies footsteps, lights that switch themselves off and on at will, and objects moving. The Daisy Bedroom has lights that switch themselves on and off after dark and phantom footsteps are often heard in the hallway near the room. One day a housemaid was speaking to a guest as she served dinner downstairs. To everyone’s surprise, the serving tray sitting on the table picked itself up and tipped itself upside down. The tray was filled with plates of hot foot that went everywhere. The sacrificial stones of the Druid priests, oriented after the fashion of the ruin of ruins of Stonehenge, the blood-vats, imperishable adjuncts to human sacrifice, have stood through the ages, grim guardians of the mysteries of the haunted fruit orchards. If someone were to tell me that the fruit orchards at Llanada Villa echoed nightly with the shrieks of sacrifice and that the ghost fires of forgotten priestcraft still glowed in the morning, I would find it hard to disbelieve. That ghastly curse remained on my family and fortune. The mansion has picked up a few permanent guests. One evening, from the observation tower, I saw a huge black figure gliding along the grounds. It could not be human because of the rate of speed it was going. I felt not just fear, but absolute dread. I experienced a bone-chilling could throughout my body. I ran down nine flights of stairs, while crying uncontrollable and my heart was pounding. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Only in the understanding of the stock from which the Victorian mansion’s ghosts are sprung can one appreciate the immortality with which long-accepted tradition has endowed them. Ghostly itself is the history of the Winchester Mansion. While the carpenters were painting on the fourth floor, one of them was startled to see the word MURDER appear in the freshly rolled paint, as if written with someone’s finger—only the words were backwards, as though being written from the other side of the wall. One of the painters explained: “We were quite surprised when a shadow started moving towards us.” As they realized that the “shadow” was approaching them, they also realized that area of the mansion was a very lonely place, especially at night. Not many people ventured up there. And although in their haste to leave, they could only give brief glances at the dark figure, they were sure of one thing: “The only outstanding feature was the outline of a wide brim hate.” Another evening while the carpenters were painting, they heard a quiet creaking emanating from the wood floors. They steeled their nerves before investigating. That is when they saw a young woman sitting in a chair directly behind them. The woman was there for just a moment before disappearing. Later the evening as the farmers were picking fruit in the fields, the dark figure “floated” diagonally across the field. It drifted rapidly to a clump of trees with two flat rocks near by and disappeared over a slight drop-off beyond. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
One of the farmers screwed up his courage and, in spite of the bizarre, dark figure’s mysterious and even menacing appearance, volunteered to walk down to the spot where the apparition disappeared. After five minutes of observation, he returned, like an efficient scout, with his report, unsettling as it might be. He said when he reached the far side of the hill there were two “soldiers-dressed” figures stilling on the two flat rocks near the clump of trees. Neither one spoke to the other; nor did they acknowledge the other’s presence. Instead they just sat, seemingly rigidly fixated, staring down into the field. Other ghost haunting the mansion include those of two little boys, who have been heard running on the second floor. One night, while I was preparing for company, I found two sets of muddy boot prints coming from the door to nowhere and crossing the room. When I told Daisy about the boot prints. She said they must be made by the same boys who keep coming in the door the opens to the wall, and we had locked them out. Looking toward the door she said, “It’s OK, if you prefer this door, go ahead and use it.” Immediately the door swung open. Needless to say cold chills ran through both of us. We never worried about the door that opens to the wall again. My idea for the mansion was not only to create a place for the spirits, but also to build an estate that would inspire awe. The gorgeous series of fields gardens, forests, and grassy acres are as fascinating as they are beautiful. However, when the sun goes down, the shadows creep and spread, giving the Victorian Mansion an entirely different look and feel. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
With grounds lit by a full moon hanging low in the sky, just to the side of the columns of the mansion, one begins to ponder the many mysteries surrounding the Winchester Mansion. One night I was putting out a candle when I heard the sound of a singing voice. At first I thought: “Oh, that sounds nice.” However, then I wondered what it was and where I could be hearing singing from. After all, the staff was asleep and there was no one around, and the sound definitely was not coming from outside. It was frightening, but it was not explainable. It was just a couple of phrases of singing and it took me by surprise. I could faintly see the hazy shape of a woman moving down what the hallway. One night, a group of farmers were packing up for the evening. A they looked around with a lantern for their tools, they were shocked to see what appeared to be the black form of a man moving toward them. The figure was larger than human and had no features—it was a black mass that seemed to sway toward them in the bright light. The man wielding the lantern quickly put it out and they all ran away. For weeks the men thought about what they had seen; they just could not forget it. They spoke to other servants about the vision or sighting. They were quite disturbed and unable to let the subject drop. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Take heed! Come, all Spirits! By the virtue and power of your king, and by the seven crowns and chain of your Kings, all Spirits of the Hells are forced to appear in my presence before this circle of Solomon, whensoever I shall call them. Come, then, all at my order, to fulfil that which is in your power, as commanded. Come, therefore, from the East, South, West, and North! I conjure and command you, by the virtue and power of Him who is three, eternal, equal, who is God invisible, consubstantial, in a word, who has created the Heavens, the sea, and al which is under Heaven. I conjure thee, Lucifer, by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, who spake and all was made, who commanded and all things were created and made! I conjure thee by the ineffable name of God, ON, ALPHA, and OMEGA, ELOYM, YA, SADAY, LUX, MUGENS, REX, SALUS, ADONAY, EMMANUEL, MESSIAS; and I adjure, conjure. I command you, O all ye demons dwelling in these parts, or in what part of the World soever ye may be, by whatsoever power may have been given you by God and our holy Angels over this place, and by the power Principality of the fernal abysses, as also by all your brethren, both general and special demons, whether dwelling in the East, West, South, or North, or in any side of the Earth, and, in like manner, by the power of God the Father, by the wisdom of God and the Son, by the virtue of the Holy Ghost, and by the authority I derive from our Savior Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The idea that we survive physical death, that some part of our being is immortal, profoundly affects the loves of those who harbor such a belief. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
All is Well that Ends Well?
The family is sacred to the ultimate concern and is the most important social unit in time and eternity. The ultimate cause established families to bring happiness to its creations, allowing them to learn correct principles in a loving atmosphere, and prepare them for eternal life. The home is the best place to teach, learn, and apply virtuous principles. It is where individual learn to provide love, food, clothing, respect, shelter, security and other necessities they require. The mother and father, as equal partners, should help each family member. However, sometimes things do not go as planned. Because we live in a World with many influences, people may become criminals. Men and women can both become involved in crime. When it comes to burglaries, for the females who worked as partners, this could involve a variety of tasks. Many of these tasks were indistinguishable from those traditionally associated with men, such as gaining entry, searching the house, carrying goods outside, and disposing of them. The following interview segment describes some of the tasks performed by a female acting as a partner. Although this was her first offense, she heled to find the transportation to reach the target (by stealing a truck) and took part in the actual break in: “Well, it wasn’t up on me, somebody else who was in there different, not state, in a different county. He just came up and told me he knew about it, a rich guy that was gonna be gone for the weekend. He knew this person, knew who it was, and he knew about it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
“When he left that night about two or three in the morning, we went down there. We had stolen a truck, we had stolen my ex-boyfriend’s father’s truck, went down there. We tried to get in, but we couldn’t get in. Everything was locked. Right…We couldn’t get in for nothing, so what we does was, we had some sh*t in back of the truck and we took some tape. Then we put it over the window real tight, then we busted it, and then we took the tape down and the window was shattered. It had no window in it. So—everybody used gloves of course—so we went in there, you know, and we knew when we went, we knew nobody was gonna be home. There wasn’t a house around for two blocks, each way you went. So…my first one was basically the easiest one.” The target often was located by a female partner, who also took the lead in planning the offense. In these cases the women had a substantial say in determining how the proceeds of the crime were divided: “…whatever you chose to give to the other person. We tried to split everything equally. We were all good friends, you know, so I got the best deal out of it because of the fact that I needed the money more than everybody else. Me and my sister needed the money more than everybody did and…we were the ones that said hey, we pointed it out, we found a way to get in, we knew where everything was, we told them how, we had everything planned out down to the TV. This is where this is at and this is where this is at.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
The roles played by female burglars are dynamic and can chance over time. Many of the women who currently participate in offenses as partners started out as accomplices. The woman quoted below clearly has an equal relationship with her co-offender, but this was not always the case: “The first burglary I ever committed, I was in the house and I was smoking weed at the time. A friend came in and said ‘I want to go in this house.’ I said ‘Okay, it was around the corner….what part am I going to play?’ He says ‘All you got to do is watch the doors for me. The bags I bring down, take them out, and you also drive the car for me.’” As should be obvious from above, women who work as accomplices in burglary play much more limited roles. They seldom participate in planning the crime, and often do not even enter the dwelling. Some claimed to prefer working with others because they lacked the skills needed to be a successful burglar: “I can’t do all by myself…I haven’t mastered that yet.” Others simply felt more comfortable when relying on a colleague’s expertise; they were uncertain about their ability to work alone. In the following case, a woman reports that she deferred to her boyfriend’s judgment in determining the suitability of a given target. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
“He can look at them and tell. He’s better at it than me. Sometimes I give him tips to go on, but he checks them out. I feel safer for him to check them out.” A common work assignment for accomplices was acting as a lookout or driver. Several of the women stated that driving was their primary job in burglaries: “Well, see, me and my boyfriend had been together for a year, and he done them all the time. Well, not all the time, but it was no big deal, and all I had to do, all I ever do, is drive. I just go like he’ll go, him and his friend. He don’t do ‘em every week or anything like that. Like it’s not really ‘cause we need the money or anything either. Like he’ll go during the day and he’ll look at a house and he’ll find one, and then he’ll tell me about where the house is…all I have to do is drive to the place and wait for them to start bringing out the stuff, and then drive off.” Other said that they typically kept a lookout for their colleagues: “They came and picked me up with a stolen automobile. I didn’t know that it was stolen. We went out there to this house and they got out. I just assumed—I didn’t know what was going on at first. We got out and they went in first, and then they came back out. One of the men came back out and told me to come in and to keep an eye out to see if anybody was there or anybody comes down the sidewalk or if anybody drives down the street or anything.” In both of these cases the women, as accomplices, did not choose to perform these secondary tasks. Instead the tasks were assigned to them by a dominant co-offender. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
What light does this quantitative and qualitative information shed on the nature of female criminality? Our sample was not generated randomly; with this fact in mind, the quantitative findings suggest that women involved in residential burglary do not differ significantly from their male counterparts on a number of relevant dimensions (exempli gratia, drug and alcohol use, degree of offense specialization). Nevertheless, the results show that some important differences may exist as well. Compared to the males, for example, the females more often committed burglaries with others, began offending at a later age, and had less contact with the criminal justice system. Further examination of these apparent differences is warranted. The qualitative data demonstrate that women’s involvement in residential burglary is marked by diversity and that the debate about whether women play a primary or a secondary role in the offense is probably a red herring. In fact, as among males, some assume primary roles exclusively, some adopt secondary roles exclusively, and others move from one type of role to another s they become more experienced. This observation has important implications for research into women’s involvement in crimes committed more often by males. To be sure, a much lower percentage of women than of men participate in residential burglary. Even so, our qualitative data reveal substantial similarities be tween males and females. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This fact suggests that the activities of women who do engage in such offenses may be explained by some of the same factors that explain men’s participation. When it comes to the stole property system (SPS), we must consider the law of supply and demand shape the SPS. This term refers to the loosely formed relationships that bring about the theft of property and the subsequent repackaging and resale of these goods via the “black market.” We use contacts with law enforcement authorities to formulate a revised view of property crime. Instead of viewing burglaries as isolated incidents of theft, we argue that we should conceive of the acts and actors involved as spanning a more broadly defined set of roles and behaviors. They identify the thief, fence, and person who buys the stolen goods as key players in the SPS. They also identify multiple stages in the process: research and planning, extraction, exchange (id est, conversion of the goods to money), marketing, residtribution/resale, and evaluation. Moreover, the roles and behaviors of the various players are said to be interchangeable and flexible. In the end, we reconsider the way that we think about property crime. We become more sensitive to the potential for business concepts such as division of labor, entrepreneurial spirit, supply and demand, and marketing to manifest themselves in the World of property theft. In doing so, we are able to drive home the complexity and fluidity tht can beset property crime events. Moreover, we illustrate how the criminal calculus can lead to mutually beneficial relationships and roles that allow the criminal subculture to expand and innovate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Perhaps no area of contemporary criminal activity holds more potential for improved understanding and successful intervention through analytical reorientation than does that of property theft. This area of crime is by no means new, a situation which may in fact constitute the greatest barrier to fresh thinking on the subject. Centuries of experience with thefts of property have give us a fairly strong conceptualization of this crime area, a conceptualization which centers almost exclusively on the thief. There is of course nothing illogical or erroneous about a concern for this individual; it is one after all who steals property. What is argued here, however, is that an exclusive concentration of the thief yields a myopic view of the process of theft, a view which draws the boundaries of the crime too tightly around that individual. It is a view which tends therefore to consider each incident of theft as a unique event, determined and constrained by the motivations, needs, and skills of the perpetrator. This “conventional view of theft” (if we can use this phrase) prescribes a response to this crime which largely consists of a fairly sophisticated sorting process, linking one individual (or one group of individuals) with each event as it occurs. Such an “individualistic” approach to crime and criminals is not, of course, confined to the property theft area. For example, we suggest that it is the most prevalent approach to crime in general. Consistently, both the popular and scientific tendency is to view the criminal’s behavior as a problem of individual maladjustment, not as a consequence of his participation in social systems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Perhaps it is for this reason that in criminology we have had thousands of studies that have sought some damaging trait in the personalities of individual criminals, but very few studies of the organizational arrangements among criminals who commit crimes in concert. The tendency toward an individualistic interpretation of criminal behavior cannot be laid to the idiosyncrasies of either the public or the scientist, but rather is undoubtedly influenced by the nature of the legal systems, with their concepts of individual responsibility an intent, upon which most democratic societies are based. However, while such an interpretation may conform well to the needs of a legal system, it may have the additional effect of causing us to ignore some important dimensions of contemporary criminal behavior. It is the perspective that property theft is one area of criminal behavior that has sorely suffered both conceptually and practically from a failure to probe the relationships among criminals (and)…the structure and operations of illicit organizations. Perhaps the mot glaring evidence of this failure concerns what the President’s Crime Commission called “little research…done on fencing,” id est, on the criminal receiver of stolen property. This crime figure, although tallying an impressive list of protestations to one’s importance over several centuries has remained little explored, while one’s relationship with the thief has been virtually ignored by the criminologist. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
However, if the popular and scientific tendency has been to overlook the fence, the police detective assigned the responsibility of dealing with property theft has not found it possible to do so. Instead, as the authors discovered in the course of an ongoing study of patterns of criminal receiving, police detectives possess a great deal of information about the fence. Other researchers have reported similar experiences. Because the police know about the fence does not imply that one’s activities are either successfully or efficiently interdicted, for the police agency is as influenced by an individualistic approach to crime as is the social scientist. Thus the bulk of enforcement resources and activity against theft is directed to the thief, and the situation in which police effort is devoted directly and exclusively to the fence appears to be rare indeed. The criminal receiver remains a curiosity to the criminal justice system, being infrequently arrested and even less often convicted. The model of property theft employed here—the Stolen Property System—is an operationally based one, derived from the author’s research into patterns of criminal receiving in a large urban area of the northeastern United States of America. As a part of this study, access to police intelligence reports on the activities of burglars and fences has been obtained, as well as records of these activities maintained in a special investigative unit in the office of the district attorney. Now, as burglaries are crimes of economics, this indicates that economics plays a kay factor in our lives. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
China is an economic power house, and it growing production and export power enhances its financial strength as well. This is natural. However, compared to its sensational emergence as a leading manufacturing and trading nation, the process of its ascending to the position of a major financial power is more fragmentary and complicated. China has by far the largest foreign exchange reserves in the World, about three times as large as Japan, which is number two. It is also rapidly emerging as the leading international lender. In contrast, China’s role as a foreign direct and portfolio investor is still considerably smaller than that of America, major European countries, and Japan. For the time being, the story of China’s growing financial clout is, first and foremost, the story of the unprecedented increase of the financial power of the Chinese state. As of the end of 2021, the gross financial assets of China increased 13.6 percent to USD $29,689 billion. That is an increase of USD $25,563 billion since 2010. In December 2022, the reserves of China stood at USD $3,120 billion. The exact composition of China’s foreign exchange reserves is classified information. Foreign direct investment into China totaled $42.5 billion between July and December 2022. That constituted a 73 percent decline on the year. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
China’s net international investment position reached USD $2,531.328 billion in December 2022. As of the year 2022, the United States of America’s net international investment position was USD -$16.12 trillion. The United States of America is currently the World’s largest debtor nation. Thinking about the pre-cybernetic machine—with minor exceptions, state socialism had led not to affluence, equality, and freedom, but to a one-party political system…a massive bureaucracy…heavy-handed secret police…government control of the media…secrecy…and the repression of intellectual and artistic freedom. Setting aside the oceans of spurting blood needed to prop it up, a close look at this system revealed that every one of these elements is not just a way of organizing people, but also—and more profoundly—a particular way of organizing, channeling, and controlling knowledge. A one-party political system is designed to control political communication. Since no other party exists, it restricts the diversity of political information flowing through the society, blocking feedback, and thus blinding those in power to the full complexity of their problems. With very narrowly defined information flowing upward through the approved channel, and commands flowing downward, it becomes very difficult for the system to detect errors and correct them. In fact, top-down control in the socialist countries was based increasingly on lies and misinformation, since reporting bad news up the line was often risky. The decision to run a one-party system is a decision, above all, about knowledge. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
The overpowering bureaucracy that socialism created in every sphere of life was also, a knowledge-restricting device, forcing knowledge into pre-defined compartments or cubbyholes and restricting communication to “official channels,” while de-legitimating informal communication and organization. The secret police apparatus, state control of the media, the intimidation of intellectuals, and the repression of artistic freedom all represent further attempts to limit and control information flows. In fact, behind each of these elements we find a single obsolete assumption about knowledge: the arrogant belief that those in command—whether of the party or of the state—know what others should know. These features of all the state socialist nations guaranteed economic stupidity and derived from the concept of the precybernetic machines as applied to society and life itself. Second Wave machines—the kind that surrounded Mr. Marx in the 19th century—for the most part operated without any feedback. Plug in the power, start the motor, and it runs irrespective of what is happening in the outside environment. Third Wave machines, by contrast, are intelligent. They have sensors that such in information from the environment, detect changes, and adapt the operation of the machine accordingly. They are self-regulating. The technological difference is revolutionary. While Mr. Marx, Mr. Engels, Mr. Lenin all bitterly assailed the philosophy of “mechanical materialism,” their own thinking, reflecting their era, remained steeped in certain analogies and assumptions based on pre-intelligent machinery. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Thus for Marxian socialists the class struggle was the “locomotive of history.” A key task was to capture the “state machine.” And society itself, being machine-like, could be pre-set to deliver abundance and freedom. Mr. Lenin, on capturing control of Russia in 1917, became the supreme mechanic. A brilliant intellectual, Mr. Lenin understood the importance of ideas. However, for him, symbolic production, too—the mind itself—could be programmed. Mr. Marx wrote of freedom, but Lenin, on taking power, undertook to engineer knowledge. Thus he insisted that all art, culture, science, journalism, and symbolic activity in general be placed at the service of a master plan for society. In time the various branches of learning would be neatly organized into an “academy” with fixed bureaucratic departments and ranks, all subject to party and state control. “Cultural workers” would be employed by institutions controlled by a Ministry of Culture. Published and broadcasting would be monopolies of the state. Knowledge, in effect, would be made part of the state machine. This constipated approach to knowledge blocked economic development even in low-level smokestack economies; it is diametrically opposed to the principles needed for economic advance in the age of the computer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The Third Wave wealth-creation system now spreading also challenges three pillars of the socialist faith. Take the question of property. From the beginning, socialists traced poverty, depression, unemployment, and the other evils of industrialism to private own-unemployment, and the other means of production. The way to solve these ills was for the workers to own the factories—through the state or through collectives. Once this was accomplished, things would be different. No more competitive waste. Completely rational planning. Production for use rather than profit. Intelligent investment to drive the economy forward. The dream of abundance for all would be realized for the first time in history. In the 19th century, when these ideas were formulated, they seemed to reflect the most advanced scientific knowledge of the time. Marxists, in fact, claimed to have gone beyond fuzzy-headed utopianism and arrived at truly “scientific socialism.” Utopians might dream of self-governing communal villages. Scientific socialists knew that in a developing smokestack society such notions were impractical. Utopians like Charles Fourier looked toward the agrarian past. Scientific socialists looked toward what was then the industrial future. Thus, later on, while socialists regimes experimented with cooperatives, worker-management, communes, and other schemes, state socialism—state ownership of everything from banks to breweries, rolling mills to restaurants—became the dominant form of property through the socialist World. (So complete was this obsession with state ownership that Nicaragua, an imitative latecomer to the socialist World, even created “Lobo Jack,” a state-owned disco). Everywhere, the state, not the workers, thus became the chief beneficiary of socialist revolution. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Socialism failed to meet its promise to improve radically the material conditions of life. When living standards fell in the Soviet Union after the revolution, the decline was blamed, with some justification, on the effects of World War I and counterrevolution. Later the shortfalls were blamed on capitalist encirclement. Still later, on World War II. Yet thirty years after the war, staples like coffee and oranges were still in short supply in Moscow. In the period preceding Mr. Gorbachev’s perestroika, the diet of a middle-class researcher at a state institute in Moscow was heavily based on cabbage and potatoes. In 1989, four years after the start of Mr. Gorbachev’s attempt at reforms, the U.S.S.R. had to import 600 million razor blades and 40 million tubes of shaving cream from abroad. Remarkably, though their number is declining, one still hears orthodox socialists around the World calling for the nationalization of industry and finance. From Brazil and Peru to South Africa and even in the industrialized nations of the West there remain true believers who, despite all historical evidence to the contrary, still regard “public ownership” as “progressive” and resist every effort to de-nationalize or privatize the economy. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
It is true that today’s increasingly liberalized global economy, uncritically hailed by the great multinational corporations, is itself unstable and could suffer a massive coronary. The distended debt balloon on which it rests cold be punctured. Wars, sudden interruptions of energy or resources, and any number of other calamities could cause its collapse in the decades ahead. Under catastrophic conditions, one might well imagine the need for temporary emergency nationalizations. Nevertheless, incontrovertible evidence proves that state-owned enterprises mistreat their employees, pollute the air, and abuse the public at least as efficiently as private enterprises. Many have become sink-holes of inefficiency, corruption, and greed. Their failures frequently encourage a vast, seething black market that undermines the very legitimacy of the state. However, worst and most ironic of all, instead of taking the lead in technological advance as promised, nationalized enterprises, as a rule, are almost uniformly reactionary—the most bureaucratic, the slowest to reorganize, the least willing to adapt to changing consumer needs, the most afraid to provide information to the citizens, the last to adopt advanced technology. For more than a century, socialists and defenders of capitalism waged bitter war over public versus private property. Large numbers of men and women literally laid down their lives over this issue. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
What neither side imagined was a new wealth-creation system that would make virtually all their arguments obsolete. Yet this is exactly what happened. It is super-symbolic. It is knowledge. The same knowledge can be used by many people simultaneously to create wealth and to produce still more knowledge. And unlike factories and fields, knowledge is, for all intents, inexhaustible. Neither socialist regimes nor socialists in general have yet come to terms with this truly revolutionary fact. An established firm in an industry stands to gain by keeping out new competition. Then it can raise prices to monopoly levels. Since monopoly is socially harmful, the antitrust authorities try to detect and prosecute firms that employ strategies to deter rivals from entering the business. In 1945, the Aluminum Corporation of America (Alcoa) was convicted of such a practice. An appellate panel of Circuit Court judges found tht Alcoa had consistently installed more refining capacity than was justified by demand. In his opinion, Judge Learned Hand said: “It was not inevitable that it [Alcoa] should always anticipate increases in the demand for ingot and be prepared to supply them. Nothing compelled it to keep doubling and redoubling its capacity before other entered the field. It insists that it never excluded competitors; but we can think of no more effective exclusion than progressively to embrace each new opportunity as it opened and to face every newcomer with new capacity already geared into a great organization. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
This case has been debated at length by scholars of antitrust law and economies. Here we ask you to consider the conceptual basis of the case. How could the construction of excess capacity deter new competitors? What distinguishes this strategy from others? Why might it fail? An established firm wants to convince potential new competitors that the business would not be profitable for them. This basically means that if they entered, the price would be too low to cover their costs. Of course the established firm could simply put out the word that it would fight an unrelenting price war against any newcomers. However, why would the newcomers believe such a verbal threat? After all, a price war is costly to the established firm too. Installing capacity in excess of the needs of current production gives credibility to the established firm’s threat. When such capacity is in place, output can be expanded more quickly and at less extra cost. It remains only to staff the equipment and get the materials; the capital costs have already been incurred and are bygones. A price war can be fought more easily, more inexpensively, and therefore more credibly. This makes sense in the logic of strategy, but will such a device work in practice? There are at least two qualifications that limit its success. First, if there are many firms already in the industry, then discouraging newcomers gives more profit to all of them. Will any one firm bear the costs of capacity when it gets only a part of the benefit? #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
This is a standard prisoners’ dilemma. If one firm is large enough, it may in its own interest provide such a service to the rest of the industry. Otherwise the firms must collude in building capacity; this may be hard to hide from the antitrust authorities. In the Alcoa case, only may not regard the dilemma of whom will install capacity as a serious problem, because Alcoa had a 90 percent share of the primary aluminum ingot market. However—and this is the second qualification—is that the relevant market? Even if there are no other producers of primary ingots, secondary production from scrap is a source of competition. So is Alcoa’s own future production. Many aluminum-based products are highly durable. If Alcoa puts more aluminum on the market in the future, then the values of these durable goods will decrease. If the company cannot credibly guarantee the users that it will restrict its own future, output, they are willing to pay for aluminum now. This is just like IBM’s problem of pricing mainframe computers. The solution of renting is much harder here: you cannot rent aluminum as such; Alcoa would have to extend its operations into all sorts of aluminum-based products. In accordance with the directions of the ultimate concern, and in view of the critical time through which the World is passing, every expression, “view,” or theory which we hold concerning things should now be examine carefully, and brought to the proof, with open and hones desire to know the pure truth of the ultimate concern—as well as every statement that comes to our knowledge from the experience of others, which may throw light upon our own pathway. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
Every criticism—just or unjust—should be humbly received and examined to discover its grounds, apparent or real; and facts concerning the verities from every self-actualized being should be analyzed, independent of their pleasure or pain to us personally—either for our own enlightenment or for our equipment in the service of the ultimate concern. For the knowledge of truth is the first essential for warfare with the lying offenders, and truth must be eagerly sought for and faced with earnest and sincere desire to know it and obey it in the light of God: truth concerning ourselves, discerned by unbiased discrimination; truth from the virtues, uncolored, unstrained, unmutilated, undiluted; truth in facing facts of experience in all members of the hierarchy of self-actualization. Sometimes we are we can be too engrossed in our own internal struggle to intervene and prevent someone else from being hurt, but gradually the fragments and splinters and hurts began to disturb us. We may experience internally the broken moments, shattered dialogues, and cruelty of neutral faces. Here were people committed to the rescuing of “dropouts” and “rejects” from the public school, blatantly ignoring the crucial feelings being expressed. In this room, in the many passing hours and in that moment were people who hungered for a vital, active, listening human presence. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
However, what they get are intellectual arguments and words with little or no feeling. What they get are dead faces and lifeless bodies. Within one is growing an indignation against these denials or elemental human values until at last one’s own existence, one’s own isolation, one’s own desire for a solitary state crumbles away and vanishes. For the first time in weeks, one may experience intense and vital feelings from within, a full response to others. One’s anger mounts at the surface way in which fundamental matters are handled, at the ignoring of potential for intensity and depth, and at people committed to serving abused and rejected children failing to reach out, recognize and affirm each other. It may take one back to another time and place. This may cause of to reflect on the coldness and indifference others have to the personal struggles and feelings, an avoidance of intensity and depth in interactions, an intellectualizing and professionalizing or values and concepts of the ultimate concern. Mystery, spirit, feeling, the human sense, the unspoken and ineffable, the sense of awe and wonder, aesthetic appreciation—all might be missing. What else is the ultimate concern but a willingness to submit to the unknown, to learn from the unseen and intangible what we must fulfil? Where else do powers of life, actions to living in the deepest and fullest sense, come but from felt presences that awaken us to a fuller realization of what it means to be unique and human. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
There will be pronouncements, lineal objectives and goals, definitions, rules, all carefully edited and articulated. We must be concerned with deviance and social injustice, and be aware of the importance of using political and economic powers to being about beneficial social changes. We have to speak about poverty and war, the end of killing and hunger. However, these are devotions to abstractions: for there before us are instances of human suffering, and individuals struggling to rise, and they are being met with indifference, with a refusal or inability to listen and respond. Some may speak glibly of the value of love in enlightenment, but these words do not strengthen and affirm, not support or encourage individuals in their search and struggle. The words are empty. The soul of life dies quickly in the presence of doctrines, rituals, and intellectual reactions. The central concern, the only immediate and intense here-and-now feeling, is a fear of the people who rate us, an incessant anxiety boarding on paranoia that they are being judged in every detail and nuance. Without exception, the fear of being tossed out, or of being put on probation, is paramount. The way to success is to be silent, to speak in abstractions, to avoid action in any living, breathing terms. They will be startled at one’s indignation, at one’s efforts to arouse genuine caring, interpersonal involvement, and decent human responses. When we examine the sacred of the “is” namely, actual purity, or the present reality of the revered it is the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
The mysterium tremendum et fascinosum is the experience of ‘the ultimate’ in the double sense of that which is the abyss and that which is the ground of man’s being. The mysterium tremendum et fascinosum is the beneficial side of sacredness; it attracts because, as the ground of being, it implies the fulfilment and the beatitude of the creature. The negative side is the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum which terrifies because, as the abyss of being, it implies an infinite, unbridgeable distance between the finite and the infinite. In the ecstatic experience of revelation one feels both the elevating power of the divine presence and its annihilating power. This is the experience of the actual sacredness of the ultimate concern. A man who has never tried to flee from the ultimate concern has never experienced the ultimate concern that is the ultimate concern. The ultimate concern of our own making, fashioned after the image of man, is easy to live with, but man cannot stand the ultimate concern that is really the ultimate concern. Man tries to evade the ultimate concern, and hates it, because one cannot escape it. The protest against the ultimate concern, the will that there be no ultimate concern, and the flight to nihilism are all genuine elements of profound philosophy. Such is the shaking power of the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum. The eyes of the Witness we cannot stand are also the eyes of One of infinite wisdom and supporting benevolence. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
The center of being, in which our own center is involved, is the source of the gracious beauty which we encounter again and again in the stars and mountains, in flowers and animals, in children and mature personalities. The scared can be viewed not only from a phenomenological point of view, but also from an ontological one. The sacred contains the meaning of individuals and of the whole, and is the ground of meaning. It is also the abyss of meaning because it transcends every individual meaning and cannot be fully grasped in any act of meaning. Unconditioned meaning is the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum, the abyss and the ground of the meaning of things, not only in so far as they are, but also in so far as they ought to be. Against this ontological background, the sacred is not unperceptible, but it is not objective. The sacred is contemplated not as an object; it I contemplated as transcendent meaning. To be sure, there exist also sacred objects to see them as purity is to grasp through them the meaning of the unconditioned. The sacred is being-itself or the power of being. What is required in the professional sense is the fullness and depth of a truly human commitment to self and others, and the love that connects one man with other men. This love must be allowed to develop because love is immediate and grows out of a willingness to enter into interpersonal dialogue and communication, out of the willingness to permit the unknown in one’ self to connect with the unknown in others. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
Ruin is the Destination Toward Which All Men Rush
With equality and gender-based studies becoming more important, it is a goo idea that we take a look at a gender-based analysis of residential burglary. The study is based on interviews with 105 active residential burglars, 87 of whom were males and 18 were females. The project employed a snowball sampling strategy in which an ex-offender recruited known burglars who were presently operating in a city. The gender-based compassion suggests that, in many way, female burglars resemble their male counterparts. For example, both group display long criminal histories that span a variety of property, violent, and public order offenses categories. Both groups accumulate long, diverse substance abuse histories that overlap with and contribute to their involvements in burglary. At the time, the gender-based comparison reveal several differences. Female burglars begin offending at a later age, are more likely to co-offend, and have less contact with authorities. The typology of female burglars describes offenders as either accomplices or partners. Factor of motivation, levels of target selection and planning, and patterned work roles serve to differentiate these two conceptual categories. Despite growing interest in female criminality, little is known about the nature of women’s participation in crimes statistically dominated by males. Certainly that is the case for residential burglary, an offense labeled as an overwhelmingly male enterprise. For example, we hardly know how female become involved in such offenses or what roles they play. Are they tempted into these crimes, for instance, by the influence of delinquent peers or by the use of drugs? #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Because we lack detailed knowledge, we cannot assess the extent to which the processes underly burglaries committed by females differ from those underlying burglaries by males. This lack also restricts our capacity to detect important differences among female burglars. An assessment of these difference, however, is crucial in formulating effective policy responses to female criminality and to developing theories of lawbreaking by women. Short of observing burglaries, perhaps the best way to acquire this information is to go to the offenders themselves. The most pressing need today, in researching the agenda for feminist criminology, is observation and interviewing so we can plunge more deeply into the social Worlds of girls and women. Such a strategy will allow researchers to comprehend women’s crime on its own terms. Often it is claimed that offenders are versatile and commit a wide range of offense. This observation, however, is derived largely from studies of males conducted in criminal justice settings rather than on the street. During our interviews we asked the subjects whether they ever had committed other sorts of crimes beside residential burglary. We did so because we were concerned primarily with prevalence—that is, whether the subject ever had engaged in other kinds of offenses. Stealing (which includes shoplifting and corresponds to the legal definition of this activity), auto theft, and assault were the offenses most commonly reported by males. Stealing and assault were mentioned most frequently by the females; these offenses were comparable in rank of frequency to those reported by the males. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Beyond these two offenses, however, little other criminality was reported by the females. The only meaningful differences between the men and the women for this measure was found in regard to auto theft. This crime was fairly common among the males, but unknown among the females. The explanation for this difference might reside in a strong cultural tradition linking masculinity to driving and car ownership. Alternatively, males may have “cornered the market” in auto theft; to be profitable, such a crime requires sophisiticated coneections with garage owners, automotive recycle yard employees, and car dealerships. One important aspect of offending style concerns the degree of crime specialization—that is, the extent to which offenders concentrate on one particular type of offense. When we asked offenders whether they had been involved in crimes other than residential burglary during their most recent period of offending, thirty-four percent of the males and 42 percent of the females claimed that they had committed only residential burglaries during this period (roughly the last six months). This finding is consistent with a substantial body of previous research showing that offenders display considerable diversity over the course of their criminal careers, but may specialize in a particular “line” for short periods. This phenomenon is labeled as “short-term specialization.” Another element of offending style concerns the inclinations to work with others in carrying out cries. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Previous research demonstrated that more often than not, [burglary] is committed by two or more persons acting in concert. The results of our study bear this out: 79 percent of the males and all of the females reported that they had worked with others in the past. The males showed considerable variation in frequency of working with others: 39 percent said they “seldom” worked with others, while another 39 percent reported that they “always” did so. For the women, however, the picture was much clearer: an overwhelming 83 percent reported that they “always” worked with others, and the remaining 17 percent states that they “usually” did so. The final aspect of offending style that we examined here relates to drug and alcohol use among our respondents, as well as to their perceptions of the role played by intoxicants in leading them to commit such crimes. Our research reveals that there is little difference between the males and the females in self-report drug use. When the drug users were asked whether addiction had anything to do with their burglaries, 71 percent of the males and 82 percent of the females answered affirmatively. A majority of those in both groups said they committed burglaries to obtain the money they needed to buy more drugs. In addition, slightly more than three-quarters of the users in each group—76 percent of the males and 79 percent of the females—claimed that they used drugs before committing their burglaries. A higher percentage of females than of males started that they “always” or “usually” used drugs beforehand. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
One explanation seems to be that many female burglaries arise from crack “runs.” This point, however, is difficult to determine conclusively because use of the drug is heavily stigmatized. We explore male-female differences on three dimensions designed to measure burglary offending histories: age at first burglary, total number of lifetime burglaries, and lambda, the mean number of annual burglaries. The ages at which males and females committed their first residential burglary differed significantly: the males generally started much earlier in life. None of the female burglars had committed their first offense before age 12, but 22 percent of the males had done so. The modal category for males was the 13-16 age bracket, which accounted for 53 percent of the cases. Sixty-one percent of the females, on the other hand, were over 16 years old when they carried out their first burglary. Given that the females started to commit burglaries later, on average, than their male counterparts, we are not surprised that a greater proportion of females had been involved in fewer than 20 residential burglaries in their lifetime. Perhaps more interesting, 39 percent of the females had committed more than 70 lifetime residential burglaries, a proportion roughly comparable to the males’ figure of 41 percent. The bimodal distribution of the females’ responses suggests that women are likely to engage in burglary at two very distinct levels, and perhaps to employ two different styles. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The males were more likely than the females to have had contact with the system for offenses of all types. This difference was most notable at the stage of the criminal justice process that resulted in incarceration. Over ninety percent of the respondents in each group had been arrested previously, but only one woman (6 percent) had been convicted and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. In contrast, 26 percent of the males had served time in the past. This difference may exist in part because the females began offending later and consequently had fewer “years at risk.” Other factors, however, are probably at work as well including an assumption by the police that most burglars are male, which allow females to remain above suspicion and a tendency for those females who are arrested to receive preferential treatment in the courtroom. Certainly the women in our sample believe that their gender conferred a degree of protection from the law. Several expressed the belief that authorities would not take action against them simply because they were female. Is it not becoming clear, in light of the existence of deceiving offenders and their methods of deception, that close examination is needed of modern theories, conceptions, and expressions regarding things in connection with the ultimate concern and its way of working in man? For only the certainty of ultimate concern, apart from “views” of truth, will avail for protection or for successful warfare in the conflict with wicked offenders in the self-actualized hierarchy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
When we reach self-actualization, we are at the highest hierarchy of the pyramid, and this is denoted by morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, and acceptance of facts. There are five levels in the pyramid. At the very bottom, people are interested in physiological functions only which include: breathing, food, water, pleasures of flesh, sleep, homeostasis, and excretion. At the second level of the pyramid, individuals are concerned with safety and this entails security of: body, employment, resources, mortality, the family, healthy and property. At the third hierarchy most are concerned with love and belonging. This includes friendship, family, sexual intimacy. At the fourth hierarchy, this realm focuses on esteem: self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by others. All that is in any degree the outcome of the mind of the “natural man” will prove to be but the weapons of straw in this great battle, and if we rely upon others’ “views of truth,” or upon our own human conceptions of truth, offenders will use these very things to deceive us—even building us up in these theories and views so that under cover of them he or she may accomplish one’s purpose. We cannot, therefore, at this time, overestimate the importance of believers having ready minds to “examine all things” they have thought, and perhaps taught, in connection with the things of ultimate concern and the self-actualized realm—all the “truths” they have held, all the phrases and expressions they have used in “virtue teachings,” and all the ideas they have absorbed through others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
For any wrong interpretations of truth, any theories and phrases which are man-conceived and which we may build upon wrongly, will have perilous consequences to ourselves and others in the conflict with truth and individual self-actualized people passing through. Because in the present offenders will comes to them with deceptions in DOCTRINAL form, self-actualized individual must examine carefully what they accept as “doctrine,” least it should be from the emissaries of the deceiver. Some people are tired of struggling and want only to know a quiet silence. This can be a shock to one’s own awareness of who he or she is. One may have always considered struggle essential in growth, and in many crises and conflicts it has provided the turning point in one’s life. Not wanting to be burdened and overwhelmed by heavy feelings and thoughts or by complicated searching and painful of what is wrong with oneself, people, and life, this can create the desire to turn away from the struggle. And this is what causes the requirement to be alone in simple and ordinary ways. Once one goes through this process of healing in solitude, and by only engaging in simple routine, gradually, with each day, an individua is able to listen a little more to what others are saying. (This is why during a break up, space, instead of forcing the issues is important. Of course, there are times when you need to know what the reason it so it may be a good idea to press for answers to start a dialogue and not necessarily to just focus on getting back together.) #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Slowly it becomes each to be interested in and comfortable with other people’s problems. Although there may be some drawbacks. Some individual may be able to be with others while you struggle to make decisions, but one may not be opened to questions or personal comments and responses directed to one. This may cause one to offer nothing of oneself and comment only on what one is hearing and understanding from others. During this period, some find work a truly rewarding activity; it is a place that feels like home. It does not matter whether the work takes the form of writing—reports, references, and letters—or reading. Or, if it involved physical activities, one may become totally absorbed in what one is doing, get lost in the activity and experience a full sense of relief. Active mental and physical involvement in solitary projects can be a sense of salvation. By surrendering to powers within to powers within and sources of light in the universe, in some mysterious way, a miracle happens. It is the loss of the old man and the discovery of the new man. When the light reveals itself, the individual is ready to accept it. This reduces the need to force or push or beseech. One simply waits with firm faith that one is meant to be whole again and that one will live more in a full and complete way. It becomes clear that people one loves and those who love one cannot reach the individual going through changes. And so, life has to come from another source, and that new direction will emerge in solitude. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The problem of the truth of faith presents itself from both the subjective and objective sides. Subjectively, faith is true if it adequately expresses an ultimate concern, that is, if the symbols of faith are alive and speak to the heart with an urgency of concern that impels to action and replay. This criterion is more a rule of thumb that works best for obviously dead symbols and is not so useful in judging contemporary ones. However, it is the objective truth of faith that interests us here. The content of faith is true if it is really and not just apparently ultimate. The great danger is demonization, elevation of the symbol to ultimacy, which results in idolatrous faith. Therefore, the criterion of faith is self-negation. The true symbol not only conveys the ultimate, but proclaims its own non-ultimacy. It pronounces a Yes and a No. For the Christian the Cross of the Christ is such a symbol. Name for this criterion—the No that follows immediately on the heels of the Yes—is the Protestant principle. The Protestant principle pervades in this whole theology, both systematically and chronologically. Chameleon-like, it changes its formula of expression against the background of diverse theological problems. Hence, a rapid rundown of its various formulations is useful for identifying it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In addition to being the objective criterion of faith, the Protestant principle expresses man’s infinite distance from God and his dependence upon the divine initiative. The Protestant principle is the prophetic protest against every form of self-absolutizing—for example, the demonic elevation of the churches, of the Christian Bile, and the priesthood to absolute validity. The Protestant principle is “resistance to idolatry,” that is, it stands for non-conformity in family, school, state, and church. The Protestant principle protests the objectifying of grace (die Vergegenstandlichung der Gnade) and so smashes the barriers between the holy and the secular. For, by the Protestant principle, God is as near to the lowest as he is to the highest, as close to the material as to the spiritual. These manifold expressions of the Protestant principle can be summarized in and derived from the basic doctrine that the Protestant principle is justification by grace through faith. We reject the traditional Protestant formula of “justification by faith” on the grounds that is has been misunderstood to mean that the human act of faith sets in motion God’s justifying act. Faith itself is a gift of grace, all justifying actions is entirely on the part of God, and, consequently, the more accurate formula is “justification by grace through faith.” The Protestant principle ultimately rests upon an experience of God’s majesty that attributes absoluteness and holiness to him alone and denies such dignity to all else. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Untrammeled choices of individuals could lead to disaster for society. Picture a paster open to all. It is to expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on this commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels one to increase one’s heard without limit, in a World that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing one’s own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Overpopulation, pollution, excessive fishing, and depletion of exhaustible resources are all part of the problem. People Worldwide must recognize the necessity of restricting individual freedom in these choices, and accept some mutual coercion mutually agreed upon. Depending upon the circumstances, the tragedy of the commons could be a many-person prisoner’s dilemma (each person grazes too many cows) or a spillover problem (too many people choose to become herdsmen). The economist’s favorite solution would be the establishment of property rights. This is what actually happened in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England: the common land was enclosed and claimed by the local aristocrats or landlords. When land is private property, the invisible hand will shut the gate to just the right extent. The owner will charge grazing fees to maximize one’s rental income; the grazing fees will make the owner richer, and the herdsmen poorer. This approach is not feasible in some instances. Property rights over the high seas are hard to define and enforce in the absence of an international government, as is control over air that move from one country to another carrying pollutants. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
For this reason, whaling and acid rain must be handled by more direct controls, but securing the necessary international agreements is no easy matter either. Population is an even harder problem. The right of decision about one’s family, including its size, is enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in many countries bills of rights. Countries like China and India that have at times used some coercion in their population-control efforts have evoked widespread disapproval. Sometimes, when the group is small enough, voluntary cooperation solves the problem. When two oil or gas producers have wells that tap into the same underground deposit, each has the incentive to speed up one’s uptake, to get more of the resource before the other does. When both of them follow this policy, the excessive speed of depletion can actually lower the total amount that can be recovered from the deposit. In practice, drillers recognize the problem and seem able to reach production-sharing arrangements that keep at the proper level that total flow from all wells tapping one deposit. All’s well that ends well? For the less developed countries (LDCs), as for the rest of the World, power stems from the holster, the wallet, and the book—or, nowadays, the computer. Unless we want an anarchic World, with billions of poverty-stricken people, unstable governments led by unstable leaders, each with a finger on the missile launcher or chemical or bacteriological trigger, we now need global strategies for preventing the de-coupling that looms before us. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
In the years immediately ahead the LDCs will acquire sophisticated new arms—enormous firepower will be added to their already formidable arsenals. Why? As LDC economic power diminishes, their rulers face political opposition and instability. Under the circumstances, they are likely to do what rulers have done since the origins of the state: They reach for the most primitive form of power—military force. However, the most acute shortage facing LDCs is that of economically relevant power is no longer through the exploitation of raw materials and human muscle but, as we have seen, through application of the human mind. Development strategies make no sense, therefore, unless they take full account of the new role of knowledge in wealth creation, and of the accelerative imperative that goes hand in hand with it. With knowledge (which in our definition includes such things as imagination, values, images, and motivation, along with formal technical skills) increasingly central to the economy, the Brazils and Nigerians, the Bangladeshes and Haitis must consider how they might best acquire or generate this resource. It is clear that every wretched child in Northeast Brazil or anywhere else in the World who remains ignorant or intellectually underdeveloped because of malnutrition represents a permanent drain on the future. Revolutionary new forms of education will be needed that are not based on the old factory model. Acquiring knowledge from elsewhere will also be necessary. This may take unconventional—and sometimes even illicit—forms. Stealing technological secrets is already a booming business around the World. We must expect shrewd LDCs to join the hunt. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Another way of obtaining wealth-making know-how is to organize a brain drain. This can be done on a small scale by bribing or attacking teams of researchers. However, some clever countries will figure out that, around the World, there are certain dynamic minorities—often persecuted groups—that can energize a host economy if given the chance. The overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, Indians in East Africa, Syrians in West Africa, Palestinians in parts of the Mideast, Jews in America, and Japanese in Brazil have played this role at one time or another. Transplanted into a different culture, each has brought not merely energy, drive, and commercial or technical acumen, but a pro-knowledge attitude—a ravenous hunger for the latest information, new ideas, skills. These groups have provided a kind of hybrid economic vigor. They work hard, they innovate, they educate their children, and even if they get rich in the process, they stimulate and accelerate the reflexes of the host economy. We will no doubt see various LDCs searching out such groups and inviting them to settle within their borders, in the hopes of injecting a needed adrenaline into the economy. During World War II the Japanese military actually drafted a plan to bring large numbers of persecuted European Jews to Manchuria, then called Manchukuo, for this purpose. However, the “Fugu Plan,” as it was known, was never implemented. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Smart governments will also encourage the spread of nongovernmental associations and organization, since such groups accelerate the spread of economically useful information through newsletters, meetings, conferences, and foreign travel. Associations of merchants, plastics engineers, employers, programmers, trade unions, bankers, journalists, etcetera, serve as channels for rapid exchange of information about what does and does not work in their respective fields. They are an important, often neglected communications medium. Governments serious about economic development will also have to recognize the new economic significance of free expression. Failure to permit the circulation of the new ideas—including economic and political ideas, even if unflattering to the state—is almost always prima facie proof that the state is weak at its core, and that those in power regard staying there as more important than economic improvement in the live of the people. Governments committed to becoming part of the new World will systematically open the valves of public discussion. Other governments will join knowledge consortia—partnerships with other countries or with global companies—to explore the far reaches of technology and science and, especially, the possibility of creating new materials. Instead of pandering to obsolete nationalist notions, they will purse the national interest passionately—but intelligently. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Rather than refusing to pay royalties to foreign pharmaceutical companies on the lofty ground that health is above such grubby concerns, as Brazil has done, they will gladly pay the royalties—provided these funds stay inside the country for a fixed number of years, and are used to finance research projects carried out jointly with a local pharmaceutical firm’s own experts. Profits from products that originate in this joint research can then be divided between the host country and the multinational. In this way the royalties pay for technology transfer—and for themselves. Effective nationalism thus replaces obsolete, self-destructive nationalism. Similarly, intelligent governments will welcome the latest computers, regardless of who built them, rather than trying to build a local computer industry behind tariff walls that keep out not merely products but advanced knowledge. The computer industry is changing so fast on a World scale that no nation, not even the United States of America or Japan, can keep up without help from the rest of the World. By barring certain outside computers and software, Brazil managed to build its own computer industry—but is products are backward compared with those available outside. This means that Brazilian banks, manufacturers, and other businesses have had to use technology that is inefficient compared with that of their foreign competitors. They compete with one hand tied behind them. Rather than gaining, the country loses. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Brazil violated the first rule of the new system of wealth creation. So what you will with the slowly changing industries, but get out of the way of a fast-advancing industry. Especially one that processes the most important resource of all—knowledge. Other LDCs will avoid these errors. Some, we may speculate, will actually invest modestly in existing venture capital funds in the United States of America, Europe, and Japan—on condition that their own technicians, scientists, and students accompany the capita and share in the know-how developed by the resulting start-up firms. In this way, Brazilians or Indonesians or Nigerians or Egyptians might find themselves at the front edge of tomorrow’s industries. Astutely managed, the program could well pay for itself—or even make a profit. Above all, the LDCs will take a completely fresh look at the role of agriculture, regarding it not necessarily as a “backward” sector but as a sector that potentially, with the help of computers, genetics, satellites, and other new technologies, could someday be more advanced, more progressive than all the smokestacks, steel mills, and mines in the World. Knowledge-based agriculture may be the cutting edge of economic advantage of tomorrow. Moreover, agriculture will not limit itself to growing food, but will increasingly grow energy crops and feed stocks for new materials. These are but a few of the ideas likely to be tested in the years to come. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
However, none of these efforts will bear fruit if the country is cut off from participation in the fast-moving global economy and the telecommunications and computer networks that support it. The maldistribution of telecommunications in today’s World is even more dramatic than the maldistribution of food. There are 7.33 billion unique mobile phones users in the World today, which makes 91.40 percent of people in the World cell phone owners. The lopsided distribution of computers, data bases, technical publications, research expenditures, tells us more about the future potential of nations than all the gross-national-product figures ground out by economists. To plug into the new World economy, countries like China, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, India, as well as the Soviet Union and the East European nations, must find the resources needed to install their own electronic infrastructures. These must go far beyond mere telephone services to include up-to-date, high-speed data systems capable of linking into the latest global networks. The good news is that today’s slow countries may be able to skip over an entire stage of infrastructure development, leapfrogging from First to Third Wave communications without investing the vast sums needed to build Second Wave networks and systems. The Iridium systems, for example, announced by Motorola, Inc., placed 77 tiny satellites into low orbit, which make it possible for millions in remote or sparsely populated regions like Soviet Arctic, the Chinese desert, or the interior of African to send and receive voice, data, and digitized images through handheld telephones. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
It is not necessary to lay cooper or even fiber optic cable across thousands of miles of jungle, ice or sand. The portable phones communicate directly with the nearest overhead satellite, which will pass the message along. Other advances also similarly slashing the huge costs of telecommunications, brining them within reach of today’s impoverished counties. Large scale production and hyper-competition among American, European and Japanese suppliers will also drive down costs. The new key to economic development is clear. The “gap” that must be closed is informational and electronic. It is a not gap between the North and the South, but between the slow and the fast. However, China’s inadequacy in services is of a structural character. It has it historical and cultural roots, especially the legacy of several decades long epoch of Soviet-style socialism. The mentality of many Chinese service companies and workers may have exceeded those in America. When I was in China, I was impressed by their customer service. They were extremely polite, spent time talking to me, even offered me candy and gave me a soccer ball for shopping at one of their malls. They did treat me like a king. I did not want to come back to America because I loved China so much. Maybe people have different experiences? #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
The overall picture of the service economy in China is not gloomy. Even on the airplane they were polite and told me to stop being so “Western.” The hotels were awesome, as well as the recreation facilities and restaurants. As local consumers’ demand for a variety of good services is increasing, American, European and Japanese service providers have a good chance to exploit their competitive advantage in this area, establishing a stronger position at the Chinese market. Here, however, comes a surprise. You may expect that, in the wake of what was written earlier, America and Europe are enjoying substantial surpluses in their services trade with China, not incomparable to their huge deficits in merchandise trade. But the thing with the people in China, one cannot tell when they are just being nice. Things are so different. They try so hard to like people and make them happy that it seems like they really like you. And they try really hard to keep a neat appearance, are very careful with their work, and take pride in what they do. Because their image and reputation depends a lot on word of mouth, they are very careful not to hurt your feelings and to conceal negative topics, ideas, thoughts and behavior. And their houses are really clean, many of them have never heard of “racism” and the student work very hard in school. It is amazing how many hours a day they spend studying. They really went out of their way to impress us, like hosting us in a restaurant, but making it a private event, of course it meant getting up at 3 A.M. in the morning, but I was happy to. They are so polite and taught me if something is meant to be, you will meet that person again. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Hallowed by the Life of Blood
The rain lashed with vindictive fury at the windows of my mansion. My skin was crawling with gooseflesh, listening to the mournful recording crackling with static under the needle of the gramophone as the song grew louder through the rain. There is an eerie undocumented history that simmers below the surface and appears periodically to frighten and confuse people. The last thing I wanted to do is see whatever sight might accompany it. The wind was strong up here on the fourth floor and I could hear rain spatter hard against the sitting-room window. I walked on into the room, past the beckoning Hall of Fires, looking out and down at the night. I could see the dome to the nine-story observation tower through the stir of trees surrounding it. A swath of rain bleared the glass in front of my face and made me blink and recoil slightly. “Hello, Aunt Sarah.” The voice of my niece Daisy. “What I have to say concerns this mansion.” A few items of lovely furniture occupied the room. Two of these were armchairs. Daisy sat in one of them. She had paused, perhaps for effect. “I’m sorry to intrude on you. But there really isn’t a choice. A visitor, strolling along the ground near the fruit orchard, heard wisps of strange tunes. Listening more closely through the dusky evening, he was lured inside of the mansion. And he is now dead.” I took my head into my hands. “Aunt Sarah, I need you. There is no time for prevarication on this.” “Daisy, I will meet you in the Venetian Dining Room this evening,” I replied. I rose from my chair thinking that God had very little to do with anything that ever occurred within the grounds of the walls of my mansion. From wars to executions, to suicides and untimely death from injury, plague, or disease, Victorian mansions are, for all their majesty and splendor, tragic places where death stalked the cold lonely corridors. These are the places of the bloodiest history, whether it be a place raided by the unlawful, or a battle for ownership. With such a history of violence and tragedy, it is little wonder that this mansion is regarded as haunted? #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
I walked back to the window. It was a quarter to six. Strange noises and an occasional sighting of the larger-than-average soldiers with the oddly pointed hats have been seen roaming the grounds. Any attempt to speak with them or approach them, they simply vanish into the mansion. Odd doors and gated entrances punctuated the length of the mansion. There was a Gothic, deliberate atmosphere about my home, a sepulchral character to the mass of its wooden buttresses andre treats. Geometrical shapes snatched inexplicably at the eyes. And often one could hear laughter, high-pitched with contempt or teasing mockery that made one hurry on, even though it may be rationalized as the cold wind gusting through the elaborate masonry. The wind whistles in the trees and leaves and wisps of thick mist blow across the farmland. With the trotting of horses and constant sounds of construction, the heart is suddenly racing, and one thinks they hear something behind them. After all, this is an ancient land, a house built by spirits, occupied by ghosts, pixies, goblins and all sort of mythical creatures of the night. Anything is likely to happen. Looking around the interior of the estate, one can discern a deep, foreboding blackness that seems to be following one, as if it is alive and in pursuit. Stepping out into the fruit orchard, the wind suddenly drops and one’s senses are heightened. Indeed, one can hear one’s very heart beating in their chest as they continue to canter forward into the night. The mist becomes thicker, darker, and as one glances furtively from side to side, the darkness of shadows of the orchards hides their secrets, but perhaps you are not alone. Sometimes I tell myself that the scraping sounds at the window is simply a branch being blown in the breeze and the footsteps heard in the hallway are old timbers creaking and groaning with a change in the air or weather. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
If there was something serious going on, the housekeeper and the butler would try to keep it quiet. They might talk together, but they would be tight-lipped in front of me. The clock struck seven. I met Daisy in the dining room. “Aunt Sarah, we all talked. We weren’t meant to,” Daisy said. “We were all talking about it. We didn’t know what to make of it. The body was found on a cold stone passage, that was said to lead directly into the opulent state rooms where you normally conducted meetings.” Not a moment too soon, five housemaid trooped into the dining room. Taking off their white starched aprons, they formed up in a line. The room, echoing with their footsteps and voices, as in a church. The mahogany floor, almost three thousand square feet of it had to be hand polished. It was an onerous task, one of the housemaids least like doing. Bending down, they placed their tins of wax of the floor. “Daisy, it looks like we will have to continue this conversation later,” I said. “Goodnight, Aunt Sarah,” she replied. The maids stooped on their hands and knees, their long black dresses spread out around them. Working in union, they dabbed their clothes in wax; then they rubbed the floor vigorously in quick tight circle. The observation tower staircase was the place the servants feared most. The observation tower sits ominously over the mansion, along with sever distinctive turrets jutting proudly into the skies. Sweeping down to the Guard Room eight floors below, it was the main thoroughfare in the tower. Family portraits adored its walls. The steps, of bare stone—framed by a wrought-iron balustrade, topped by a mahogany rail—were wide and shallow. “We were all scared of the tower’s stairs,” said Elsa. “I was coming down them one evening, halfway down, I felt somebody push me. They were behind me, trying to push me down the stairs. I turned round, and of course there was no one there.” The Winchester Mansion is a land of appealing features seemingly embedded in the sense of a deep-rooted and permanent history that emanates from almost every corner of the land. It has rustic grounds and quaint gardens, a hulking mansion with many towering features, having been fostered over decades to create a comfortable and pleasing landscape that guests recall like their favorite arm chair. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
A number of the male servants, skeptical of ghost as they were, had experienced a similar sensation. “I used to keep an eye on the mansion,” Edvin recalled. “I would walk around the dark with the dogs, no lights on, no torches, or anything. One night, I was coming across the first floor of the tower—and I got up to the stairs and felt hot breath on the back of my neck. I turned round. There was nobody there. But the dogs wouldn’t go any further, their hackles went right up. It was ages before I could get them to move.” I often examined the possibility of evil. I had a notion that evil was communicable. Something that can, as it were, contaminate. However, one must not confuse evil with manifestations. My secret rooms, by their very nature, held the servants in thrall. It was an area that they never entered, never saw or ever knew what went on. It was a place of mystery. The rooms were subjects of wild speculations, fueled by the servants’ fear of me, and their knowledge of my eccentric interests. My servants knew I was fascinated by the occult and this played to their fears. They knew the mansion was haunted and I often had the mediums in. However, they never whether any ghosts or sprits were actually summoned. It went on behind closed doors. Of course, they knew of the ancestral curse. It had been cast in the mid-19th century by a coven of witches. The curse had also been cast over future generations; aimed at Winchester heirs; it determined that the children would die before they reached the age of thirteen and those who survived would be haunted by ghosts and demons. For decades, it had seemed to me and my servants that this was a cruse from which the family could never escape. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
One night, it was shortly before three o’clock in the morning when a shadowy figure, dressed from head to foot in back, crossed the landing of the staircase. The night was cloudless, the moon almost full. There was a blackout and the mansion was shrouded in darkness. The light from the moon set tiny point of balance dancing in the darkened windows. I could hear footsteps moving stealthily across the floor and the occasional cry of an animal from the fields. A headless horseman was riding near the tower. I got out of bed, and turned the corner into a passage in one of the parlors. As the men worked in the hallways, they froze. Coming down the hallway was a pair of green eyes belonging to a child. The eyes were about two or three feet up from the floor, leading me to believe that child was three years old. They eyes simply floated up the hall, and then turned into one of the maid’s room where we lost sight of them. That night I also saw dark shapes. There was a dark shadowy thing flying from the Grand Ball Room to the and down the hallway. Then above the chandelier there were several dark shadowy things. They flew outside, barely illuminating the background of the trees and then were blocked out by an even darker shadow, moving slowly, methodically along the tree line. Meanwhile another shadow ran through the hallway, it was tall. The carpenters looked at each other in suspense. Closing the heavy steel door behind me, I had left the Grand Ball Rom to find my way long the labyrinth passages. A long passage reached into the distance. It was gloomy, lit by only the strip lighting in the display cases that ran along with wall. Ahead was a solid oak door, carved in the Gothic style. Another passage led off to my right, I could see that it branched in two. One end led into a small hall. It was in darkness. “No one goes in there,” a mysterious voice whispered. The spirit gave me a fright. Everyone, it seems, even hardened sceptics and disbelievers, has seen a ghost. For some reason, in the back of their minds, ghosts may be real. Everyone has known the feeling of their heart racing for a second when they see a shadow moving in the corner of their eye or they feel some sort of presence standing over them. Or worse still, a tortured face in a window that paralyses their body and retards their breathing to the point that they can hear the blood pumping around their own body. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
I took the left passage. I went on some distance ahead, there was a kink in the passage. A man emerged from it and started waling me. He was wearing knee breaches and a nineth-century coachman’s jacket. As we drew level, he stopped. “Mrs. Winchester, those rooms are forbidden,” he said, “What are you doing in this part of the house?” Once again, he repeated, “Those rooms are forbidden.” I did not want to stop and talk; I was anxious to get back to my room. I assumed that the servants were being proprietorial. Finally, I had made it to my destination sometime later. The bedroom was not dark, because the bright light of a full moon entered through the window. I had just lain down, ready to go to sleep, when I suddenly noticed that I was not on my own. I heard a rasping breath in the darkness only a few feet away. Right in front of the wardrobe and looking directly at me was a middle-aged man, dressed like a Catholic priest. I rubbed my eyes and pinched my arms to make sure I was fully awake Yes, I most certain was. Was I having hallucinations? The priest was still standing there, looking at me. He was a rather frail man with hollow cheeks. His face showed traces of a hard life and illness. If he had any hair at all, it was covered by his hat. He looked so real, not like a ghost. I was not a bit scared, because he radiated vibrations of utter peace and tranquility. There was nothing to be afraid of, so I decided to talk to him keeping my voice as low as possible. “Hello, Father,” I said. “God bless you.” “And God bless you, my child,” came the priest’s prompt reply. He was well-spoken, his voice was soft. His English accent was not hard to distinguish. After giving me a few personal messages and stressing the point that there is survival after death, he told me who he was. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
His name was John Ogilvie, and in had lived in Scotland from 1580 to 1615, he wanted hanged at Glasgow Cross for his faith. When I remarked that at the time of his hanging, he was only 36 years old, he confirmed this. After quietly talking about religious matters for a few moments, he bade me farewell and disappeared. It seems that he refused to pledge allegiance to King James, and it was for this crime that the was tried, found guilty and hanged. After his execution, his followed were apprehended and put in jail. If this was not a genuine case of a visit from beyond the grave, what is it? Most of the time, the mansion is benign. Unfortunately, sometimes people find exactly what they are looking for. I had been in bed half an hour when I heard the music playing softly from my sitting room next door. I listened to the same, faintly relentless song. Starting to sweat and grow cold in bed, I recognized the song. Or I thought I did. And it continued. It wavered through the wall and door frame in strained, distended chords, and choruses, swelling and facing, ragged and persistent. The door was to my right. I pulled back the duvet and got out of bed and walked through the door to the sitting room. Where the music was louder. The must persisted, repetitious, frighting me. As I turned the corner, I discovered that Gerhardt hanged himself from the cross beams. Badly wounded, Mr. Hansen carried to the attic to await medical attention, but he died there. Since that time people have claimed that he haunts the attic room. He has been seen and heard there from time to time. Servants have reported hearing the creaking of a rope and the soft thud of a body swaying against the wall. Though they often look for the source of the sound, they never find it. There is a disheveled, aged specter, bound at feet and hands and rattling chains haunting the basement. A journey through my mansion is a passage through history. A real history, one that you can live and breathe, one that you can feel and be part of. You can walk serenely miles through my mansion, it is a place that inspires contemplation and wonderment. It is a living history, of memories as far back as history recalls. It is a place of myth, legend, of ghosts and ghouls, of giants, and dwarves, mermaids, cupid, another other half-remembered, half-whispered-about creatures. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
If a sudden, horrifying death is what it takes to make the spirit linger, surely, this place—is a candidate. Certainly, where men grappled back and forth, engaged not only in the struggle for their own precious lives, but for the life of their respective countries, where in the balance was the future of the very world, and this place produce the mechanism of defense, if that does not qualify for the lingering-place of souls wondering for eternity the outcome of their struggles, then we cannot name a place. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Los Angeles Will be Two and a Half Hours from Tokyo
Given that burglars are disproportionately young, poor, city-dweller, they tend to have frequent contact with other habitual offenders. There are various structures and processes that go along with the “stolen property system”—the underground market through which in-demand goods are stolen, housed, marketed, and resold on the street of America. Burglary is a crime that is marked by varied levels of social organization. Only on rare occasions do we find burglars who work as loners or within formal organizations. More often, burglars will operate as colleagues—the offender commits the crime along but relies on other members of the criminal subculture to supply him or her with inside information or to assist in converting stolen property into cash. Burglars who take the situation to the next level and enlist help in the actual break-in follow a more peerlike existence. Here, loose partnerships are maintained and invoked when a burglary opportunity presents itself. A primitive example of the peer model would be two or three drug users who randomly stumble upon an unlocked home or unsupervised business and decide to work together to take it down. In some cases, burglary offenders will align themselves in a teamlike format. These offenders invoke a division of labor with each participant serving an owned predetermined role and duties. One person might be assigned to lookout/driver role. Another might serve as the entry specialist, defeating any lock and alarms that are confronted. Still another person can take on the “muscle” role, responsible for doing the heavy lifting. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Socialization scripts play an important part in how and why burglars commit their crimes. Interview-based research suggests that novice or occasional burglars often rely on the tutelage of more seasoned offenders as a way of learning the proverbial ropes of burglary. Novices receive advice and instructions on issues such as target selection, how to foster informants, how to defeat burglary countermeasures, and how to best convert stolen goods into cash. This socialization generally takes shape as informal street corner conversations or jailhouse bravado. On paper, burglary appears to receive serious treatment from the criminal justice system. The Model Penal Code classifies burglary as a felony in the third degree. In most jurisdictions, such as offense is subject to 1 to 5 years in prison. If the burglar is armed or threatens or inflicts bodily harm on another while unlawfully within a dwelling, that individual might see the charges elevated to second degree felony. In practice, however, burglary receives mixed levels of formal response from the various components of the criminal justice system. First, let us consider the response of law enforcement authorities. Police agencies were able to effect an arrest for only 13 percent of the nearly 2.1 million burglaries that were reported to them in 2022. No other form of index crime yields such a dismal clearance rate. Some of this slippage can be attributed to the covert nature of the crime—police often have no witnesses and minimal clues to guide the investigation. However, these low clearance rates are also impacted by the fact that many police officers and police agencies afford a low priority to burglary cases. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Court data reveal a different trend in terms of the veracity with which burglary cases are adjudicated. U.S.A. courts produced nearly 90,000 felony burglary cases in 2022. This figure represents 10 percent of all felony convictions that year. In fact, 68 percent of the burglary cases that were tried resulted in a conviction for the same offense and only 24 percent avoided some sort of conviction. The researchers found that burglary defendants do not receive a reprieve from the courts when it comes time for sentencing. A full 74 percent of the convicted burglars were sentenced to time behind bars. This rate was surpassed only by murder, robbery, drug trafficking, and driving-related offenses. While the median prison sentence for a convicted burglar was 41 months, nearly 10 percent received sentences in excess of 10 years. Our correctional system does not appear to be particularly forgiving to persons who are convicted of burglary. On average, burglary offenders can expect to serve almost half of their sentence—roughly two years. These time-served figures are on par with those of other property offenses (theft, fraud, and motor vehicle theft) but somewhat lower than that observed for violent (54 percent) and weapon-related offenses (60 percent). Accounts from known burglars clearly suggest that informal social control efforts go as long way to deter and/or displace burglary activity. A minimal amount of vigilance on the part of homeowners can go a long way. Measures designed to combat the relatively small population of high incidence “professional” burglars tends to overemphasize the skill and determination of most burglars. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Burglaries are expensive, complex, and require long term commitment at many levels. In fact, most burglars are young, unskilled, and opportunistic. This suggests that emphasis should be directed at such factors as surveillability, occupancy, and accessibility. More specifically, dogs, good locks, and alarm systems deter most burglars. Community-level informal social control can also play an important role in burglary prevention. When it comes to surveillability cues, burglars tend to avoid neighborhoods with a lot of foot traffic or active neighborhood watches. This implies that observant or even nosy neighbors can have a measurable impact on burglary. However, these types of collective efforts are difficult to enact and maintain in the areas that burglars most prefer—urban neighborhoods. If nothing else, tenants of “crime prevention through environmental design” should be considered at a neighborhood level. Simple environmental characteristics such as cul-de-sac street design, high levels of lightening, and well pruned landscaping that minimizes unobservable entry and exit points can have a significant impact on burglary victimization levels in a given community. The aforementioned informal social control efforts represent examples of target hardening strategies aimed at deterring would-be burglars from victimizing a given house or displacing offenders from a given community. Also, measures should be designed that aim to undermine offenders’ strong attachment to street culture. Expanded employment opportunities are one possible, but foreboding avenue to lure offenders out of street life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
There exist even more simple and realistic measures that might effect change in this area. For example, a coordinated burglary prevention program that was implemented in a midsize U.S.A. city during the early 1980s. Community activism and community involvement (id est, block meetings, neighborhood cleanups, and raised awareness of vulnerabilities and potential offenders) showed promise for reducing burglary. If community members care about the condition of their neighborhood and are willing to take steps to clean it up and exercise vigilance over problem people and places, there is hope for reducing burglary and other forms of street crime. Most crime occurs during the nighttime. A close examination of NCVS and UCR data suggests that 50 percent to 60 percent of all residential burglaries go unreported. The figure reported here was derived by adding the NCVS data on residential burglaries to an adjusted estimate of nonresidential burglaries that were reported in the UCR—one that factors a 60 percent nonreporting rate. These data must be viewed with caution because 50 to 60 percent of all burglaries go unreported to police and only 14 percent of these lead to arrest. Over time, the crime of burglary has slowly slipped down the list of crime fighting priorities. At present, less than half of all burglaries get reported to police, and only 13 percent of those result in an arrest. What kinds of social and legal factors have contributed to this present level of empathy when it comes to the formal and informal society control of burglary? #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Adjudication data suggest that accused burglars face a high certainty of being convicted and sentenced to prison. This should send a message to police that burglary is a high priority for our nation’s prosecutors and judges. Still, burglary investigation and arrest efforts remain lukewarm at best. What kinds of factors contribute to police officers’ attitudes and behaviors regarding burglary patrol and enforcement? Considerable evidence suggests that burglars refine strategies and cues that help them identify soft and potentially lucrative targets. Does this mean that burglars are more rational and planful than other types of criminals? The Lord has declared that “no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of Heaven,” reports Alma 11.37. Our sins make us unclean—unworthy to return and dwell in the presence of our Heavenly Father. They also bring anguish to our soul in this life. Repentance is sometimes a painful process, but it leads to forgiveness and lasting peace. The power of sin is great. To become free from it, we must turn to your Heavenly Father, pray in faith, and act as He asks us to. The Holy Spirit should never become the center and object of thought and worship, place which He Himself does not desire, and which it is not the purpose of the Father in Heaven that He should have or occupy. “He shall not speak from Himself,” reports John 16.13, said that Lod Jesus before Calvary, as He foretold the Spirit’s coming at Pentecost. He would act as Teacher (John 14.26), but teaching the words of Another, not to Himself (John 15.26); He would only glorify Another, not His own; He would bear witness to Another, not Himself (John 16.14); He would only speak what was given Him to spear by Another (John 16.13). #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
The Spirit’s entire work would be to lead souls into union with the Son and give proper knowledge of the Father in Heaven, while He Himself directed and worked in the background. If a man who is untaught in the scriptural statements about the work of the Triune God makes “obeying the Spirit” his supreme purpose, the deceiver will aim to counterfeit the guidance of the Spirit, and even the presence of the Spirit Himself. It is just here that the ignorance of the seeker about the spiritual Word now opened to one, the working of evil powers in that realm, and the conditions upon which God works in and through one, gives the enemy his opportunity. It becomes the time of greatest peril for anyone unless one is instructed and prepared by the Lord, as the disciples were for three whole years. The danger lies in the area of supernatural “guidance,” for one must know the conditions of cooperation with the Holy Spirit in order to discern the cooperation with the Holy Spirit in order to discern the will of God and be able to recognize counterfeit manifestations. The “discerning of spirits” is required to detect the workings of the false angel of light, for he is able to bring about counterfeit gifts of prophecy, tongues, healing, and other spiritual experiences connected with the work of the Holy Ghost. Those who have their eyes opened to the opposing forces of the metaphysical realm understand that very few believers can guarantee that they are obeying God and God only, in directly supernatural guidance, because there are so many factors liable to intervene, such as the believer’s own mind, spirit, or will and the deceptive intrusion of the powers of darkness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Knowledge is essential here. Scripture teaches that there is a God-given gift of “discerning of spirits” (1 Cor. 12.10) which enables one to detect that an unwelcome spirit is at work, but there is also a test of spirits which is doctrinal (1 John 4.1-6). In the former, a believer can discern in his spirit that lying spirits are at work in a meeting, or in a person, but one may not have the understanding needed for testing the doctrines being set forth by the teacher. One needs a level of knowledge in both cases: knowledge to read one’s spirit with assurance in the face of all contrary appearances, that the supernatural workings are not “of God,” and knowledge to detect the subtlety of “teachings” bearing certain infallible indications that they emanate from the pit, even while appearing to be from God. As to personal obedience to God, the believer can detect whether or not one is obeying God in some “command” by judging its fruits, and by being aware of the character of God—such as the truth that God has always a purpose in His commands, and He will give no command out of harmony with His character and Word. Often times people wait for something to happen, for some sure way to nurture oneself, to live from within. Music, art, poetry, hot baths, savory foods, wind, rain—nothing affects them. In the past, within days after a solitary retreat, many had found solace and strength in their loneliness. They had always found a way, at least a beginning that would lead to action and to life with others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
However, it is impossible to find what one is looking for, and one is still on a lonely journey, waiting from a spark from within. Because some people feel empty and eroded inside, they avoid all significant communication. More than anything else the interpersonal aspects of living exhaust some and move them to withdraw from real meetings with others. This leaves an individual certain that one does not want to struggle anymore. Doubt, risk and anxiety—inherent elements of faith—can be overcome only by another of its elements, courage. Courage is an ontological concept, the self-affirmation of being in spite of non-being. Faith is the experience of the holy; it is the state of being grasped by the power of being-itself. From this experience flows the power to assert oneself in the face of anxiety. Faith is participation in the object of faith, and yet is the separation from it. In spite of separation, courage expresses participation in the power of being and meaning. This in spite of element is the courage that takes all doubt, risk, and anxiety into itself and overcomes them without removing them. Faith, then, is the basis of courage, and courage is the manifestation of faith. In the extreme situation of a person seized by radical doubt and confronted with the specter of universal meaninglessness, the question arises: Is there such a thing as the courage of despair? Such a courage is entirely possible, for that act of accepting meaninglessness is in itself a meaningful act. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The courage of despair enables one, even while in the grip of meaninglessness, to declare one’s situation, and this declaration has meaning. In other words, there cannot be an infinite regression of negatives—in this case, negativity of meaning. At least, one has to admit, negation of meaning is meaningful, or meaninglessness will have lost all meaning. The faith which feeds the courage of despair is called “absolute faith,” for it can have no specific content. Its content is indefinable, since everything defined is dissolved by doubt and meaninglessness. However, certain elements that constitute absolute faith can be discerned. There is an experience of the power of being in the face of nonbeing, an awareness of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning. There is the dependence of nonbeing upon being, of meaninglessness upon meaning, of the negative upon the positive. And, lastly, there is the acceptance of the power to accept meaninglessness. Thus, absolute faith is faith which has been deprived by doubt of any concrete content, which nevertheless is faith and the source of the most paradoxical manifestation of the courage to be. Faith is without a special content, yet it is not without content. The content of absolute faith is the “God above God.” When people speak of God, they usually refer to the God of theism. Now theism can mean either a vague, unspecified affirmation of God, or a divine-human encounter of persons, or theological theism which makes God a being beside other beings. However, the God of absolute faith is above and beyond the God of any theism, for the God above God is the power of absolute faith as experience of the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The morning traffic from Oakland to San Francisco across the Bay Bridge gets backed up from 7.30 to 11.00 A.M. Until the jam clears at 11.00, each additional car that enters the traffic makes all those who come later wait just a little longer. The right way to measure this cost is to sum up the additional waiting-times across everyone who is delayed. What is the total waiting-time cost imposed by one additional car that crosses the bridge at 9.00 A.M.? You may be thinking you do not know enough information. A remarkable feature to this problem is that the externality can be calculated based on the little amount you have been told. You do not need to know how long it takes the cars to cross the toll plaza, nor the distribution of cars that arrive after 9.00. The answer is that same whether the length of the traffic jam stays constant or varies widely until it cleans. The trick is to see that all that matters is the sum of the waiting time. We are not concerned with who waits. (In other circumstances, we might want to weigh the waiting times by the monetary value of time for those caught in the jam.) The simplest way to figure out the total extra waiting time is to shuffle around who waits, putting all the burden on one person. Imagine that the extra driver, instead of crossing the bridge at 9.00 A.M., pulls his car over to the side and lets all the other drivers pass. If he passes up his turn in this way, the other drivers are no longer delayed by the extra car. Of course, he has to wait two hours before the traffic clears and the road is clear. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
However, these two hours exactly equal the total waiting time imposed on all the other drivers if he were to cross the bridge rather than wait on the sidelines. The reason is straightforward. The total waiting time is the time it takes for everyone to cross the bridge. Any solution that involves everyone crossing the bridge gives the same total waiting time, but distributed differently. Looking at the solution in which the extra car does all the extra waiting is the easiest way to add up the new total waiting time. Looming on the horizon is a dangerous de-coupling of the fast economies from the slow, an event that would spark enormous power shifts throughout the so-called South-with big impacts on the planet as a whole. The new wealth-creation system holds the possibility of a far better future for vast populations who are now among the planet’s poor. Unless the leaders of the less developed countries (LCDs) anticipate these changes, however, they will condemn their people to perpetuated misery—and themselves to impotence. For even as Chinese manufacturers wait for their steel, and traditional economies around the World to crawl slowly through their paces, the United States of America, Japan, Europe, and in this case the Soviets, too, are pressing forward with plans to build hypersonic jets capable of moving 250 tons of people and cargo at Mach 5, meaning that cities like New York, Sydney, London, and Los Angeles will be two and a half hours from Tokyo. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Jiro Tokuyama, former head of the prestigious Nomura Research Institute, and now a senior adviser to the Mitsui Research Institute, heads a fifteen-nation study of what are called the “three T’s:” telecommunications, transportation, and tourism. Sponsored by the Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference, the study focuses on three key factors likely to accelerate the pace of economic processes in the region still further. According to Tokuyama, Pacific air-passenger traffic is likely to reach 134 million…at the turn of the century. The Society of Japanese Aerospace Companies, Tokuyama adds, estimates that five hundred to one thousand hypersonic jets must be built. Many of these will ply Pacific routes, speeding further the economic development of the region, and promoting faster telecommunications as well. In a paper prepared for the Three T’s study, Tokuyama spells out the commercial, social, and political implications of this development. He also describes a proposal by Taisei, the Japanese construction firm, to build an artificial island five kilometers in length to serve as a “VAA,” or “value added airport,” capable of handling hypersonics and providing an interactional conference center, shops, and other facilities to be linked by high-speed linear trains to a densely populated area. In Texas, meanwhile, billionaire H. Ross Perot is building an airport to be surrounded by advanced manufacturing facilities. As conceived by him, planes could roar in a day and night bearing components for overnight processing or assembly in facilities at the airport. The next morning the jets would carry them to all parts of the World. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Simultaneously, on the telecommunications front, the advanced economies are investing billions in the electronic infrastructure essential to operations in the super-fast economy. The spread of extra-intelligence nets is moving swiftly, and there are now proposals afoot to create special higher-speed fiber optic networks linking supercomputer all across the United States of America with thousands of laboratories and research groups. (Existing networks are regarded as too slow. The proposed new nets would send 319 Terabits per second streaming across the country). The new network is needed because the existing slower nets are already choked and overloaded. They argue that the project merits government backing because it would help the United States of America keep ahead of Europe and Japan in a field it now leads. This, however, is only a special case of a more general clamor. In the words of Mitch Kapor, a founder of Lotus Development Corporation, the software giant, “We need to build a national infrastructure that will be the information equivalent of the national highway-building of the ‘50s and ‘60s.” An even more appropriate analogy would compare today’s computerized telecom infrastructures with the rail and road networks needed at the beginning of the industrial revolution. What is happening, therefore, is the emergence of an electronic neural system for the economy—without which any nation, no matter how many smokestacks it has, will be domed to backwardness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
In its commercial service trade, in 2021, India trade balance for 2021 USD$-79.19, a 665.96 percent increase from 2020. The United States of America is the largest services exporter in the World. In 2019, U.S.A. exports of service were USD $875.8 billion, up 1.6 percent (USD $13 billion) from 2018. U.S.A. exports of services account for 35 percent of over all U.S.A. exports in 2019. Germany World Development Indicators (WDI) 2020: trade balance in USD$221,534 million. Trade services as a percentage of GDP is 5.82 percent. Trade in services with the United Kingdom (exports and imports) totaled an estimated USD $140.7 billion in 2019. Services exports were USD $78.3 billion; services imports were USD $62.3 billion. The U.S.A. services trade surplus with United Kingdom was USD $16.0 billion in 2019. Trade in services with China (exports and imports) totaled an estimated $56.0 billion in 2020. Services exports were USD $40.4 billion; services imports were USD $15.6 billion. The U.S.A. service trade surplus with China was USD $24.8 billion in 2020. Trade in services with Japan (exports and imports) totaled an estimated USD $68.6 billion in 2020. Services exports were USD $38.0 billion; services imports were USD $30.6 billion. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
The U.S.A. services trade surplus with Japan was USD $7.4 billion in 2020. Japan was the United States of Americas’ 4th largest goods export market in 2020. As for the services, France exported around USD $303 billion worth of services in 2021, while it imported services for the total value of USD $258.3 billion. Service trade in Italy in 2020, Italy exported $73.1B worth of services. The outsized U.S.A.-Ireland commercial relationship, which exceeded USD $1 trillion in 2021 is significant by international standards and is particularly impressive relative to the country’s population of five million people. In 2021, U.S.A. good exported to Ireland exceeded USD $13.8 billion. The statistics for services from 2012 record the value of U.S.A. service exports to Ireland at $74.8 billion. In 2021, global services exports were valued at USD $6.1 trillion, representing 6.3 percent of total World trade in both goods and services. Overall, as far as the nations’ trade balances are concerned, the picture in the services sector is almost the opposite of the one in the merchandise trade. In services, the West has a significant competitive edge versus China and is in a good position to establish a much wider presence in the Chinese market. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
The Body is the Sheath of the Soul
Upon thinking things over, I was pretty sure that the parlor maid, Elsa, was far too sensible and hard-boiled a young woman to risk tampering with poisons. She has a hard head and would take care of herself. Ersula, on the other hand was made of more dangerous stuff—unbalanced, carried away by impulse and definitely neurotic. The only reason she was even employed on my staff was because of my friendship with her mother. I had coffee on the terrace. I wish I could remember better how Ersula looked and acted. She did not seem excited in any way. Quiet and rather sad was my impression. What a devil that woman was! For it was a devilish thing to do—to poison a man in cold blood. If there had been a revolver about and she had caught it up and shot him—well, that might have been understandable. However, this was cold, deliberate, vindictive poisoning…and so clam and collected. She got up and said, in the most natural way possible, that she would take his coffee to him. And yet she knew—she must have known—that by now she would find him dead. Calder had only been employed for three weeks as a carpenter. Ersula had her eyes on him and believed that she had fixed him, but when she found out that he had eyes for Elsa, this threw her into a rage so terrible. I was just making an excuse to go after him when he came running up the stairs. His face was blue. He gasped out, “We must get a doctor—quick—Mrs. Winchester.” I sprang up. “Is he ill—dying?” We had forgotten Elsa for a minute. But she let out a sudden cry. It was like the wail of a banshee. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
She cried, “Dead? Dead…” And then she ran. I did not know anyone could move like that—like a deer, like a stricken thing, and like an avenging fury too. Ersula wanted desperately to talk to me. To talk to someone. And then again, there was a hostility I perceived in her, a rather generalized hostility, as if the woman were superhuman and bristled with something instinctively alien to other human beings. Oh, I know that sound farfetched. Of course, she is not superhuman. However, if we think of these psychic powers we possess, then we can begin to think of the supernatural as not so unreal. I felt her differentness, so to speak. The dying of Calder also apparently left something precious behind as well. His soul. A few nights after his death, I was awakened by the familiar chime of a clock. It surprised me because, although I kept a clock in the Daisy Bedroom, I had never heard it chime before. A week went by. Then, once again, in the middle of the night, the clock chimed. Confused as to why the clock did not chime during the day on the hour, I resolved to investigate the next morning. However, with several businesses to run, and an estate to care for, by the time I awoke, the matter had slipped my mind. One even, I was having supper. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, through the hall and into the dining room echoed the rhythmic, melodious tones: dingdongdingdong…dingdongdingdong. Just below the mantlepiece in the Daisy Bedroom upon which the clock rested was a crawl space under the floor. It was a harmless relic of architectural expedience, and with the uneven, packed earther floors, it was also an excellent concealer of buried secrets. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Some areas of the house could be very scary, and the crawl spaces between the floor was a place I never entered. Mr. Hansen went down into the crawl space underneath the Daisy Bedroom. I had not said anything to him, and he came up and said, “Mrs. Winchester, it is very cold down there. It’s a strange feeling. Very cold, and it’s a hot day.” I proceeded to say, “well, I think that is the old section of the house and something may have been there decades about.” He came up quite alarmed at what was going on down there. I never go in there. Another curious addition to the crawl space is a series of large, ancient, wooden shelves. It looks as if there were bunks, as if servant lay there. The bunks are curved as if to hold human bodies. I had no idea how hold the shelves were in the crawl space, or if it was actually a concealed floor of the mansion. Mr. Hansen said it looked as if the wood had been dug into or clawed at. The clock that rested on the mantle was made in the state of New York, and the last time I visited New York, I stopped by the manufacturer of the clock. I spoke to the owner of the company. He said he remembered me well for I had requested such a clock of admirable beauty. I asked him why the clock was chiming at unusual hours. He explained to me that they have no mechanism to make chiming clocks. And there is not a chiming mechanism if you look at the clock. There is nothing there! I began to keep track of when the chimes were heard. The clock chimed on April 18, 1898. The next time it chimed again was on April 18, 1899. At least four other people beside me heard it. When I was away, they still recorded on the calendar for me when it chimed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
However, it was not all at the same time. In fact, my niece Ms. Daisy heard it. Actually, she would not say anymore. I asked her how loud was the clock? Is it lough enough to hear in the entire house? “Oh, yes, Aunt Sarah. You can her it upstairs on the fourth floor.” “Could there have been a mistake as to where the chiming was coming from? Perhaps through the wall from a clock somewhere else in the house?” I asked. Her answer, “Oh yes. You can even hear it in the observation tower.” That evening, a cloud-like vapor took on human shape, clapped its hands in joy, and passed upward through the ceiling in the company of an angel. I was always aware that my mansion was a conduit-a vortex, if you will. There are horrors beyond horrors, and this was one of those nuclei of all our deepest, most awful nightmare, a place where they would suddenly become nightmares. My fortune, a blessing, it was, but was also accursed and unhappy. Death, like the unbidden and unwanted relative, often times outstayed his welcome everywhere on this estate. At night, ghosts are not always seen, but heard. On many occasions, the servants have heard what sounds like a man whispering. The whisper is not loud enough to make out the words, but there is no doubt that someone is speaking. The whispers seem to be drifting down the chimney, of course, but there is no one there. A woman’s laugh can also be heard coming from the chimneys. I awoke one night and saw a woman standing there—only about two feet away from my bed—and I knew it was her. It was just a feeling, I knew I was her. She had long dark hair; she was really thin and has a shawl over her shoulders. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
And a bright margin of light revealed that she was accompanied by a tall, dark-haired man, with deep-set eyes peering out at me from a very white face. He wore a robe of brown patterned silk, with the customary yellow bade on it. His high cheekbones appeared to be polished, so tight with his skin. After I gestured to get out of bed. The man and the woman vanished. It took me a moment but I slowly began to understand that those were not real human beings that confronted me, but rather inhabitants of the World as yet unknown to us. I had seen spirits before, and, for better or worse, was familiar with their shape, their demeanor, their “being.” I was not frightened. As I got out of bed, and was leaving my room, and descending down a brightly lit stairway, I suddenly froze. Standing in the bright illumination stood my husband William. I ran hurriedly down the stairs, brushing past the apparition and out of a door into the garden where I had become unconscious. When I came to and glanced up, I saw a white form advancing, a robed form. I was not able to see the robed figure’s face because it was turned away from me, but I was clearly able to observe its form, as the figure remained for a moment by me. Then it passed swiftly past the boxwood hedges, and glided toward me, but always turning his face in the opposite direction. Just before the passed through the wall and back int the mansion, it paused and left a gold coin on the porch. Then it dawned on me, it was our anniversary. This assurance made me aware that my beloved was with every moment, even in his death. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Emperor Lucifer, Master of all the revolted Spirits, I entreat thee to favor me in the adjuration which I address to thy minister, LUCIFUGE ROFOCALE, being desirous to make a pack with him. Via temporis, iam clamo ad te via spatti te ubio, aperire..Aperi! Via consurssus, tempos spatium admi ut imperior! I Do invocate, conjure, and command thee, O thou Spirit Marchosian and you 30 Legion of Spirits, to appear and to please show thyself visibly unto me before this Winchester Mansion in fair and comely shape, without any deformity or toutuosity; by the name and in the name IAH and VAU, which Adam heard and spake; and by the name of God, AGLA, which Lot heard and was saved with his family; and by the name IOTH, which Jacob heard from the angel wrestling with him, and was delivered from the hand of Esau his brother; and by the name ANAPHAEXTON which Aaron heard and spake and was made wise. I also beg thee, O Prince Beelzebuth to protect us in our undertaking. O Count Astarto! Be propitious to us, and grant that tonight the great LUCIFUGE may appears to us under a human form, and fresh as the ocean breeze, and that he may accord us, in virtue of the pact which we propose to enter into, all the riches which we need, O grand LUCIFUGE, I pray three to quit they dwelling, wheresoever it may be, and come hither to please speak to me, otherwise will I compel thee by the power of the strong living God, His beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit. Please Obey promptly. By the powers of AGLON, TETRAGRAM, VAYCHEON, SIMULATION, EZPHARES, RETRAGRAMMATON, OLYARAM, IRION, ESYTION, EXISTION, ERYONA, ONERA, ORASYM, MOZM, MESSIAS, SOTER, EMMANUEL, SABOTH, ADONAY Via temporis, iam clamo ad te via spatti te ubio, aperire..Aperi! Via consurssus, tempos spatium admi ut imperior! I conjure thee, Evil and Accursed Serpent TETRAGRAMMATON to appear at my will and pleasure in this place and accomplish my will. Please bring ancient treasures and prosperity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
We all have odd feelings at times in certain circumstances; certainly no reason to move from a house after we have paid the rent or signed a contract. We are reasonable and logical human beings after all, even when confronted with the unknown, unseen and unexplainable…are we not? It must be simply a quirk that this one column of physical space that extends from the Heaven should remind us that each and every one of us will something ascend into our own oblivion. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Gravity’s Holding Me Back, I Want You to Hold Out the Palm of Your Hand
We must not pull away from our children. We must keep trying, keep reaching, keep praying, keep listening. Many of the offenders we spoke to indicated that their carjackings were guided by the power of immediate situational inducements. Such inducements could be internal (exempli gratia, money, drugs, the avoidance of drug withdrawal, need to display a certain status level, desire for revenge, jealousy)or external (objective or subjective strains, such as pressure from family members to put food on the table, the need to have a vehicle for use in a subsequent crime). Situational inducements could be intensely compelling, pressing offenders to engage in carjacking even under unfavorable circumstances, where the risk of arrest, injury, or death was high or the potential reward was low. Here, the individuals’ increased desperation caused them to target a vehicle or victim they would not otherwise consider (such as a substandard car, or one occupied by several passengers), initiate an offense at a time or location that was inherently more hazardous (exempli gratia, day-time, at a busy intersection), or attempt a carjacking with no planning whatsoever. Internal situational inducements usually were linked to the immediate need for cash. Most street offenders (including carjackers) are notoriously poor planners. They lead cash-intensive lifestyles in which money is spent as quickly as it is obtained (due to routine drug use, street gambling, acquisition of the latest fashions, heavy partying). As a result, they rapidly run out of money, creating pressing fiscal crises, which the produce other internal situational inducements such as the need to feed oneself or to avoid drug withdrawal. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
The sale of stolen vehicles and parts can be a lucrative endeavor. Experienced carjackers sometimes stripped the vehicles themselves (in an abandoned alley or remote lot) and sold the items on the street corner or delivered them to a chop shop owner with whom they had a working relationship. Of particular value were “portable” after-market items, such as gold or silver plated rims, hub caps, and expensive stereo components. Across our 28 respondents, profits from carjacking per offense ranged anywhere from $200 to $5,000, with the average running at $1,750. The cash obtained from carjacking served to alleviate ever emergent financial needs. Little Rag, a diminutive teen-aged gang-banger, indicated that without cash the prospect of heroin withdrawal loomed ahead. INT: So, why did you do that? Why did you jack that car? Little Rag: For real? ‘Cause it’s the high, it’s the way I live. I was broke. I was fiending [needed drugs]. I had to get off my scene real quick [wanted to get back on my feet]. I sold crack but I’d fallen off [ran out of money] and I had to go and get another lick [tempting crime target] or something to get back on the top. I blow it on weed, clothes, shoes, sh*t like that. Yeah, I truly f*ck money up.” The need for drugs was a frequent topic in our discussion with carjackers. Even the youngest offenders had built up such tolerances to drugs like heroin and crack that they required fixes on a daily basis. Many were involved in drug dealing and had fallen into a well known trap; using their own supply. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Whether they sold for themselves or in the service of someone else, the need for cash to replenish the supply or feed the habit was a powerful internal motivator. L-Dawg, a young drug dealer from the north side of Sacramento also had developed a strong addiction to heroin. Only two days before this interview with us, he had taken a car from a man leaving a local night club. L-Dawg: “I didn’t have no money and I was sick and due some heroin so I knew I had to do something I was at my auntie’s house [and] my stomach started cramping. I just had to kill this sickness, ‘cause I can’t stay sick. If I’d stayed sick I would [have to] do something worse. The worse I get sick, to me, the worse I’m going to do. That’s how I feel. If I’ve got to wait on it a long time, the worse the crime may be. If it hadn’t been him then I probably would have done a robbery. One way or another I was going to get some money to take me off this sickness. I just seen him and I got it.” External situational inducements could be just as compelling. Pressures from friends, family, other criminal acquaintances, or even the threat of injury or death were capable of pushing offenders to carjacking. For example, C-Low described an incident that occurred while he was with a friend in New Orleans. The two were waiting in the reception room of a neighborhood dentist when a group of men hostile to C-Low’s friend walked into the office. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
C-Low: “They knew him. I didn’t know them. It was something about some fake dope. I think it was some heroin. He got caught. We weren’t strapped [armed] at the time. We booked out. We left. We just left ‘cause he know this person’s gonna be strapped, and I didn’t know this. So my partner was like, “Man, just burn out man, just leave.” So we was leaving and they was coming up behind us [and started] popping [shooting] at us just like that, popping at my partner, just started shooting at him, so my partner he was wounded. We had no car or nothing so we were running through and the guy was popping at us. So, there was a lady getting out of her car, and he stole it. We had to take her car because we had no ride. She like a nurse of something. It was a nice little brand new car. Brand new, not kind you sort of sport off in like. She saw I was running. She heard the gun shots. I know she heard them, but she didn’t see the guy that was shooting at us though. She had the keys in her hand. She was getting out her car, locking her door, yeah. She had her purse and everything. [My partner] just came on her blind side, just grabbed her, hit her. She just looked like she was shocked, she was in a state of shock. She was really scared. And [we] took her car and we left. We could’ve got her purse and everything, but we were just trying to get away from the scene ‘cause we had no strap and they were all shooting at us. We just burnt on out of there. Got away. But then [later that day] he got caught though…somebody snitched on him and they told them [the police] that he had the car. He gave me the car but he for caught for it, they couldn’t find the car ‘casue I’d taken it to the chop shop. I sold the car for like twenty-seven hundred bucks and about 2 ounces of weed.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Similarly, Nicole, a seasoned car thief and sometimes carjacker described a harrowing spur-of-the-moment episode. She and a friend had been following a young couple from the drive-in, casually discussing the prospect of rubbering them, when her partner suddenly stopped their vehicle, jumped out and initiated a carjacking without warning. Nicole was instantly drawn into abetting her partner in the commission of the offense. Nicole: “My partner just jumped out of the car. He jumped out of the car and right then when I seen him with the gun I [realized] what was happening. I had to move. Once he got the guy out of the car he told me, ‘Come get the car.’ The girl was already out of the car screaming, ‘Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me!’ She was afraid because [she could see] I was high. You do things [when] you high. She’s running so I’m in the car waiting on him. He’s saying, ‘Run b*tch and don’t look back.’ She just started running…across the parking lot. [At] the same time he made the guy get up and run, ‘[Racial expletive] you don something, you look back, I’m gonna kill your mother*cking a**.’ As he got up and ran he shot him any ways.” It is increasingly clear that we must teach the gospel to our families personally, live those teaching in our homes, or run the risk of discovering too late that a Primary teacher or priesthood adviser or seminary instructor could not do for our children what we would do for them. Family councils have always been needed. They are, in fact, eternal. We belonged to a family council in the premortal existence, when we lived with our Heavenly parents as their spirit children. Everyone ought to be involved in helping to create proactive solutions and in setting their own goals. As families collaborate in making decisions, individuals will thrive, and the family will become more unified as a whole. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
People are hungry to be their own authorities in basic life matters, and, spurred by my own expression in these matters, they wanted it all the more, meaning they had to leave me to my own, too. If not filled with the substance of life-realized in depth, the vacuum of “being will gain so much power that our people will collapse inwardly in the clutter of their own psychic debris. How striking it is to contrast all this with the calm authority of Christ. He needed n rubric of adjuration, nor other formula of exorcism, and no prolonged preparation of Himself before dealing with a spirit-possessed individual. “He cast out the spirits by a word.” “With authority and power He commandeth…and they obey Him,” was the wondering testimony of the awestruck people. It was the testimony, also, of the seventy sent forth by Him to use the authority of His name. They found that the spirits were subject to them, even as they were to the Lord (Luke 10.17-20). “They obey Him,” said the people. “They”—the evil spirits whom the people knew to be real identities, governed by Beelzebub, their prince (Matt. 12.24-27). The complete mastery of Jesus over the demons compelled the religious leaders to find some way of explaining His authority over them. And so by that subtle influence of Satan with which all who have had insight into his devices are familiar, they cunningly accuse the Lord of having satanic power Himself, saying, “He casteth out demons through Beelzebub, the prince of the demons.” This reference to Satan and his position as a prince was left uncontradicted by the Lord. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
In the face of Satan’s lie, Jesus simply declared the truth that He cast out demons “by the finger of God,” and the fact that Satan’s kingdom would soon fall were he to act against himself and dislodge his emissaries from their place of retreat in human bodies. That Satan does apparently fight against himself is sometimes true; but when he does so, it is only for the purpose of covering up some scheme—for greater advantage to his kingdom. There is a difference between theology and philosophy. Several reasons force this issue to the foreground. The theological circle is drawn by ultimate concern about being, but the study of being has traditionally been the preserve of the philosopher. Moreover, the existential analysis performed by the theologian answers must be couched in ontological terms. Philosophy and theology cannot pass like ships in the night. After at least two thousand years of thought dedicated to the solution of this problem, it is not easy to offer a new solution. Nevertheless, it must be attempted in every generation as long as theology exists, for the question of the relation of philosophy and theology is the question of nature of theology itself. Theology was already been defined. Philosophy is defined as that cognitive endeavor in which the question of being is asked. Or, philosophy is the attempt to answer the most general questions about the nature of reality and human existence. Or again, philosophy is that cognitive approach to reality in which reality as such is the object. When we compare philosophy with theology, we find that they simultaneously diverge and converge. They diverge in many ways. Although both as the question be being, philosophy seeks to know the structure of being, while theology is concerned with being as it determines out being. The philosopher is detached in one’s research; the theologian is involved, committed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The philosophical source is the whole of reality, both subjective and objective logos, but the theological source is the logos contained in a particular event and received by the church. Although philosophy and theology both answer the question of being, the philosophy and theology both answer the question of being, the philosophical content is cosmological, descriptive of the Universe, while the theological content is soteriological, healing the disruption of the cosmos. The philosopher’s answer is abstract; the theologian’s is concrete. To sum up: religion deals existentially with the meaning of being; philosophy deals theoretically with the structure of being. The above divergencies, however, are balanced by a number of similarities which they share. Most important of all, thy both have being as their common object. They also converge in tht every creative philosopher is motived by a hidden ultimate concern and in that every theologian, in order to remain open to the ultimate, must be detached from the existential situation. The philosopher cannot avoid existential decisions, and the theologian cannot avoid ontological concepts. In a word, theology is basically existential and philosophy is basically theoretical, but each participates to a certain extent in the characteristics of the other. The distinction between philosophy and theology is not unambiguous. They are basically divergent, but partially convergent. They are not separated, and they are not identical, but they are correlated. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
There is no necessary conflict between them, and if philosophers and theologians clash, it is because one or the other has left one’s proper domain. Nor is there any possible synthesis between them in the sense of a Christian philosophy, for they simple do not share a common basis. Philosophy and theology in principle are essentially distinct, but in actual life they overlap. Their unity is emphasis by their mutual immanence as an actually, though fragmentarily, fulfilled eschatology. Their perfect, eschatological unity would be had when the philosophical analysis of the structure of being-in-itself would be untied with a theological expression of the meaning of being for us. However, even then there is a qualitative difference for unity does not exclude definitory distinction. However, leaving behind these abstruse formulations, there is an imaginary boundary. The boundary only divides philosophy and theology; it is also the point of contact. But the fact that metaphysics is directed towards being and its universal characteristics does not imply that it has no existential roots. It certainly has them, for the philosopher is human being, and in very philosophical school human interests and passions are a driving force. No philosophy is without an ultimate concern in its background, whether this is acknowledged or denied. This makes the philosopher a theologian, always implicitly and sometimes explicitly. From a winter of loneliness and solitude, friendlessness and suffering, a spring will arrive which promises the beginning of real meaning. One will begin search, and accept the meaning and price of growth and learning. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
In recent years, corporations have adopted many new and innovative ways, often called shark repellents, to prevent outside investors from taking over the company. Without commenting on the efficiency or even morality of these ploys, we present a new and as yet untested variety of poison pill and ask you to consider how to overcome it. The target company is Piper’s Pickled Peppers. Although now publicly held, the old family ties remains, as the five-member board of directors is completely controlled by five of the founder’s grandchildren. The founder recognized the possibility of conflict between his grandchildren as well as the threat of outsiders. To guard against both family squabbles and outsider attacks, he first required that the board of director election be staggered. This trick means that even someone who owns 100 percent of the shares cannot replace the entire board—rather, only the members had a staggered five-year term. An outsider could hope to get at most one seat a year. Taken at face value, it appeared that it would take someone three ears to get a majority and control the company. If a hostile party wrested control of the shares, the founder was worried that his idea of staggered terms would be subject to change. A second provision was therefore added. The procedure for board election could be changed only by the board itself. Any board member could make a proposal without the need for a seconder. However, there was a major catch. The proposer would be required to vote for one’s own proposal. The voting would then proceed in clockwise order around the boardroom table. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
To pass, a proposal needed at least 50 percent of the total board (absences were counted as votes against). Given that there were only five members, that meant at least 3 out of 5. Here is the rub. If one’s proposal failed, any person who made a proposal to change either the membership of the board or the rules by how that membership was determined would be deprived of one’s position on the board and one’s stock holdings. The holdings would be distributed evenly among the remaining members of the board. In addition, any board member who voted for a proposal that failed would also lose one’s seat on the board and one’s holdings. For a while this provision proved successful in fending off hostile bidders. However, then Sea Shells by the Sea Shore Ltd. Bought 51 percent of the shares in a hostile takeover attempt. Sea Shells voted herself one seat on the board at the annual election. However, it did not appear that loss of control was imminent, as she was one lone voice against four. At their first board meeting, Sea Shella proposed a radical restructuring on the board membership. This was the first such proposal that the board had ever voted on. Not only did the Sea Shells proposal pass, amazingly, it passed unanimously! As a result, Sea Shells got to immediately replace the entire board. The former directors were given a lead parachute (which is still better than nothing) and then were shown the door. How did she do it? Hint: It was pretty devious. Backward reasoning is the key. First, work on a scheme to get the resolution to pass, and then you can worry about unanimity. To ensure that the Sea Shells proposal passes, start at the end and make sure that the final two voters have an incentive to vote for the proposal. This will be enough to pass the resolution, since Sea Shella starts the process with a first yes vote. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Many proposals do the trick. Here is one of them. Sea Shells’ restructuring proposal has the following three cases: If the proposal passes unanimously, then Sea Shells chooses an entirely new board. Each board member replaced is given a small compensation. If the proposal passes 4 to 1, then the person voting against is removed from the board, and no compensation is made. If the proposal passes with a vote of 3 to 2, the Sea Shells transfers the entirety of its 51 percent share of Peter’s Pickled Peppers to the other two yes voters in equal proportion. The two no voters are removed from the board with no compensation. At this point, backward reasoning finishes the story. Imagine that the vote comes down to the wire: the last voter is faced with a 2-2 count. If he votes yes, it passes and he gets 25.5 percent of the company’s stock. If it fails, Sea Shells’ assets (and the other yes-voter’s shares) are distributed evenly among the three remaining members, so he gets (51 + 12.25)/3 = 21.1 percent of the company’s stock. He’ll say yes. Everyone can thereby use backward reasoning to predict that if it comes down to a 2-2 tie-breaking vote, Sea Shells will win when the final vote is cast. Now look at the fourth voter’s dilemma. When it is his turn to vote, there are either: 1 yes vote (by Sea Shells), 2 yes votes, or 3 yes votes. If there are three yes votes, the proposal has already passed. The fourth voter would prefer to get something over nothing, and therefore votes yes. If there are two yes votes, he can predict that the final voter will vote yes even if he votes no. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
The fourth voter cannot stop the proposal from passing. Hence again, if one sees only one yes vote, then one would be willing to bring the vote to a 2-2 tie. One can safely predict that the final voter will vote yes, and the two of them will make out very nicely indeed. The first two Piper’s board member are now in a true pickle. They can predict that even if they both vote no, the last two will go against them and the proposal will pass. Given that they cannot stop it from passing, it is better to go along and get something. This case demonstrates the power of backward reasoning. Of course it helps to be devious too. When it comes to businesses strategies, many Chinese companies are targeting the high-end products segment. The probability is high that by the end of this decade people around the World will come to know well a group of at least a dozen Chinese producers of nonelectrical and electrical machinery, electronic goods, apparel products, and so on, with internationally recognized brands, respected for high quality and originality of their sophisticated products. And even in the high-end sector the Chinese may also exploit their cost advantage. The emergence and expansion of such a cohort will be fostered by several driving forces. To begin with, China money is at work. Many Chinese firms have earned a great deal selling low-end goods, and are now heavily investing in products’ upgrading and technological innovation. Quite often they get significant financial support from the government. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
With a lot of cash at hand, they are beginning to attract the best talent from around the World: designers, researchers, engineers, and managers. The trend will gain strength. At the same time, the pool of high-skilled Chinese cadres, ready for high-end jobs, is widening too—both due to improvements in the educational system and the increase in the number of Chinese choosing to return home after studying and/or working in the West. To speed up production upgrading, Chinese firms are using their new financial strength to purchase parts, components, machinery, and equipment manufactured by the World’s best producers. The machine tools industry provides a valuable example of China’s drive toward the high end. In 2009, China became the largest producer of machine tools in the World. Until recently, however, it produced rather simple and inexpensive machines, while the high-end segment was dominated by German, Japanese, Italian, Swiss, and other makers from industrially developed countries. Having a sharp technological edge, the latter commanded high prices for their products. However, since mid-2000s thing have begun to change. In 2004, one of the leading Chinese makers, Shenyang Machine Tool Group (SMTCL), acquired Germany’s Schiess AG, which announced bankruptcy earlier that same year. Within a short time, European designers and engineers noticeably improved SMTCL’s products. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
The company rapidly increased the number of Japanese-made parts and components installed. It started to establish the image of a globally oriented producers of advanced precision machine tools, working hard to overcome users’ mistrust rooted in the concerns about made-in-China’s poor quality. Currently it supplies flat-bed CNC machining center and other products to customers in the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, India, South Africa, and so on. The most famous examples of Chinese companies knocking at the higher-end segment door are the 2Hs—Huawei and Haier. Huawei, with Worldwide revenues of $105.1 billion, is the World’s second-largest network and telecom equipment supplier in the World after Ericsson, serves 31 out of 50 of the largest telecom operators around the globe. Haier, with a value of $16.3 billion, has become a World-famous producer of a range of household appliances, from air-conditioners to TVs. It commands the World’s largest market share in white goods. In it ranked first in three categories: refrigeration appliances, home laundry, and electrical wine cooler/chiller appliances. Having developed an array of original products, it is successfully competing in the medium and high-end market segments in the United States of America, Europe, and many developing countries, emphasizing stylishness and modernity, functionality, reliability, and the use of the very latest technologies—all this in combination with affordable prices. The Haier advertisement catches your eye when you stroll through the famous Ginza-4 Crossing in Tokyo, in the very center of Japan’s most lush area. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Few peacetime power shifts have been as dramatic as those Soviet bloc. Suddenly, immense power, centralized in Moscow for nearly half a century, shifted back to Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, and Berlin. In a few brief spectacular months the “East” splintered. A second shift has accompanied the breakup of the so-called South. The LDCs, or “less developed countries,” have never been able to form a truly united front vis-à-vis the industrialized World, despite efforts beginning as long as the Bandung conference in Indonesia in1955. In the 1970s, the United Nations rang with rhetoric about the common needs of “the South.” Programs of “South-South” technological exchange and other forms of cooperation were launched. Campaigns were begun to shift the terms of trade between the North and the South. Power did shift. However, not in the way the spokesmen for a united South had hoped. What happened instead has been the division of the LDCs into distinct groupings with very different needs. One consists of desperately poor countries still mostly dependent on First Wave peasant labor. Another group includes countries—like Brazil, India, and China—that are actually important Second Wave or industrial powers, but saddled with vast populations still scrabbling for subsistence from preindustrial agriculture. Lastly, there are nations like Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, which have virtually completed industrialization and are moving swiftly into Third Wave high technology. If power in the East Block has splintered, so, too, has power in the so-called South. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
The third immense shift of power has been the emergence of Japan and Europe into rivals of the United States of America, leading to hyper-competition as each fights to dominate the 21st century. The so-called West, too, is now splitting apart. While politicians, diplomats, and the press still treat these powers shifts as distinctly separate phenomena, there is a deep connection among all three. The global structure that reflected the dominance of the Second Wave industrial powers has been shattered like a crystal sphere under the blow of a sledgehammer. Naturally, such vast historical developments spring from many roots, and no single explanation can completely account for them. To reduce history to any single force of factor is to ignore complexity, chance, the role of individuals, and many other variables. However, by the same token, to regard history as a succession of patternless or unrelated accidents is equally reductionist. The future patterns of global power can only be glimpsed if, instead of looking at each major shift of power as an isolate event, we identify the common forces running through them. And, in fact, we find that all three of these epochal power shifts are closely linked to the decline of industrialism and the rise of the new knowledge-driven economy. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
If you are considering building a custom home with us, please fill out the information below and we will reach out to you to schedule an introductory meeting. https://millhavenhomes.com/get-started/
You’ll find the best of both worlds in this idyllic new home community—an abundance of small-town charm with plenty of big-city conveniences. https://millhavenhomes.com/get-started/
Was She to Sleep in a Haunted House?
In the early hours. Three or four o’clock, the entire World of the undead was in my mansion or so it seemed, all the rooms were filled with spirits talking in whisper to one another. I thought it was so cold inside, it could snow. My confidence was swiftly eroding. I looked down at my thin, bare arms, and there appeared goose bumps. I hurried up the staircase to the Daisy Bedroom, trying to ignore the supernatural gathering. That afternoon, I found that the housemaid Brigitta had prepared a delicious roast with all the trimmings. Yes, it was wonderful to have help around the house. After supper, Brigitta made some coffee and we settled down in the parlor for the delightful business of catching up on each other’s lives. During the course of conversation, Brigitta commented on the attractive new sofa. Talk of the sofa reminded Brigitta of the shadow that she had seen the past two evenings. “Mrs. Winchester,” she said, “the past two nights when I stayed late, I became aware of something kind of wispy floating around me.” Then she laughed, affecting an expression of mock horror. “It’s inconceivable, what you are thinking,” I said. Suddenly Brigitta felt a strange chill shudder through her body. It was as if her disclosure seriously offended the unseen guest in the room. “Mrs. Winchester, what do you mean ‘inconceivable’?” said Brigitta. She experienced a fear of the unknown. I had seen demons in the sky, monsters ready to swoop down and snatch them all up and carry them back to that hideous dungeon cell, demons coming forth from the dark trees that encircled the house, demons hovering at the top of the stairs in the shadows, but I could not let her know that. “Oh, my dear Brigitta, surely you are mistaken. It must have just been a draft or dust. I can assure you of this.” I said. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
“Yes, for the moment, we can agree to this,” Brigitta said. “Of course, this is reasonable.” All at once she felt surrounded by ugly, malignant hatred. She was stiffened with fear as she realized that whatever it was, she had offend it, and it had decided it would get even with her somehow. Everywhere she walked, she felt surrounded by cold hatred. The next morning at breakfast, everything seemed as it should be. Only Brigitta seemed to be away of a subtle change in my home’s atmosphere. Brigitta left work warly that afternoon. Lights went out early in her home that evening. Sadly, they did not remain that way for very long. The family had been asleep for only a few hours when Brigitta heard her son screaming. As Brigitta enter the room, she was shocked by the chill in the air. Although she could see nothing, she was certain that the evil, shadowy force had been after her son. It took two hours for her to calm her son down. When her son was asleep again, Brigitta decided that she must tell her husband about the shadow being she had seen in the Winchester Mansion. She described something cold, unseen moving around and my home and suspected that it was following her. The next day when Brigitta retuned to my home to work, she could see the emotional turmoil that boiled within the mansion. She kept insisting that she had seen an ugly ghost, day in and day out. “There is something evil and awful in the house, and it has been following me home, Mrs. Winchester.” I replied coldly that neither she nor I saw any shadowy thing moving around the house. Brigitta was confused. She figured that it was really a shadow of guilt moving across her psyche, an attempt to get her to stay home and be a good mother. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Suddenly she felt the room’ temperature drop. Warning alarms went off in her brain, and she feared raising her eyes to look around the room. As the deathlike chill permeated the room, an atmosphere of hatred seems to solidify. She knew that something monstrous and evil was in the mansion. There, in front of her, was the shadow that she had first seen a week ago. Both the hands and face of the dark form now appeared lighter, and Brigitta was able to make out features on its face. The thing was grossly emaciated, and yellowish green skin stretched tautly across its high cheekbones. Long fingers that looked like claws. Dark, soulless eyes stared hollowly at her, and the ghastly image curled its lips into a vile sneer. Brigitta’s body began to tremble. At last she was certain she knew what the being intended to do with her. It intended to steal her soul and inhabit her body. Slowly the loathsome form dematerialized before her eyes. The chill lifted from the room. With a sudden jolt of fear, Brigitta ran from the kitchen. A sound from the hallway startled her. “My God, Brigitta, I saw that thing take shape. What was it?” I said. Tears of relief flooded Brigitta’s eyes. I had seen the thing. Now she knew she was not losing her mind. “It’s all so primitive and superstitious, Brigitta,” I said. “It…It wants me, doesn’t it?” Brigitta asked in a voice barely a whisper. “An evil spirit trying to possess you. How could this be?” I asked. “I feel they are looking at us right now,” Brigitta had said. All had fallen silent. The French windows everywhere made her anxious; the black night pressing on the glass made her anxious. The sound of wind moving in the black trees made her anxious. Brigitta wanted to walk outside, see the stars. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
She went out for a walk along the road, and came upon a stranger who changed her life. The stranger who approached Brigitta was a handsome man with thick dark hair and a mustache. Brigitta quickly saw that the man wore a bloody Confederate soldier’s uniform. The two stared at each other for a second and Brigitta saw the bullet wound just as the soldier grabbed her and dragged her into the shadowy orchard. The Confederate released Brigitta when she promised not to scream, and in sharp whispers he explained his predicament. Brigitta was instantly smitten and promised to not give him up. She made a decision that would change the course of her life—she would help the man. She hid the soldier in one of the rooms in my mansion and attended to him. For two weeks, she had abandoned her family to bring him food and water, and during that time they fell in love. When the soldier was well, and was getting ready to leave, Brigitta was furious. Anger and pain surged through her and she swung at him. Terrible words came from her mouth, she attacked him like a pained animal. The betrayal was devastating and for awhile Brigitta was blinded by her anger. The solider defended himself from her physical attacks. He ducked when she swung, caught her wrists when she tried to claw at him, and tried to stop her. She called him derogatory names. She vowed to destroy them both. In the heat of the moment, the solider gave Brigitta a shove and she fell down the stairs. Did he mean to murder her? We don’t know because what was in his heart. At the bottom of the stairs was Brigitta’s broken body. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
What was do know was that the war ended in 1866, so by 1898, there would have been no Confederate soldiers wandering in the orchard. During the renovations, we found her Bible in a small walled-up room. In the Bible were the pages from Brigitta’s journal chronicling her lost love and her lonely suffering. I discovered the facts about what happened to Brigitta during a séance. Within moments of asking the spirits, I felt the chill of a being approaching. The window panes began to vibrate with such violence that it seemed as if they would shatter at any moment. The draperies flapped noisily, as though they were flags on a pole, resisting a strong wind, and its ghastly form began to materialize before me. An eerie sepulchral haze surrounded the entity as it moved inexorably toward me. Its bony arms were outstretched, and an almost irresistible force seemed to flow from its yellow-green claws. I could not empty my mind of the thought that if those vicious hand should ever touch me, my very essence would be ripped from me. The being stepped closer, and for one terrible moment I felt myself faltering. My mind began to swirl, and I knew that I was losing my strength to the entity’s demonical power. From far away I could hear its soulless laughter. The sound of that pitiless cackle sent me into another dimension. A place where I could see what had happened to Brigitta. I tapped a source of primeval energy. When the entity was done, it grew smaller and fainter as it moved backward. Eventually its vaguely luminescent quality had vanished, and I was staring at the formless shadow that Brigitta had offended. It hovered in the Blue Séance Room before it evaporated. With only the pale light from the moon, I collapsed. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
One should be wary of an indiscriminate exploration of the occult or of “ghost hunting” in haunted houses or places. Without proper discipline, study, and discernment, the ill-prepared are liable to interact only with those entities who will seek to deceive and entrap them. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
You Know its Not the Same as It Was!
In mortality we have the certain of death and the burden of sin. As the cell door slams shut behind a person who faces the prospect of having to spend 5 to 25 years withing that same four walls, what thoughts and feelings go through their mind and heart? The overall picture that emerges from our research is that of offenders caught up in a cycle of expensive, self-indulgent habits (exempli gratia, gambling, drug use, and heavy drinking) that feed on themselves and constantly call for more of the same. It would be a mistake to conclude that these offenders are being driven to crime by genuine financial hardship; few of them are doing robberies to buy the proverbial loaf of bread to feed their children. Yet, most of their crimes are economically motivated. The offenders perceive themselves as needing money and robbery is a response to that perception. Though background risk factors, such as pressing financial need, predispose persons to criminality, they fail to provide comprehensive, precise, and deep explanations of the situational pushes, urges, and impulses that energize actual criminal conduct. Nor do such factors identify the “necessary and sufficient” conditions for criminal motivation to eventuate in criminal behavior. Focusing on the foreground attends to these problems. A foreground analytic approach identifies the immediate, situational factors that catalyze criminal motivation and transforms offenders from an indifferent state to one in which they are determined to commit crime. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Although the streets were a prime focus of much early criminological work, the strong influence of street culture on offender motivation has largely been overlooked since. Street culture subsumes a number of powerful conduct norms, including but not limited to, the hedonistic pursuit of sensory stimulation, disdain for conventional living, lack of future orientation, and persistent eschewal of responsibility. Street culture puts tremendous emphasis on virtues of spontaneity; it dismisses “rationality and long-range planning…in favor of enjoying the moment.” As if there is no tomorrow, offenders typically live like confident that tomorrow will somehow take care of itself. However, Matthew 6.34 says, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” This culture tends to accentuate the negative and can thwart a person’s attempts to find meaning and direction. On the streets, “every night is Saturday night,” and the self-indulgent pursuit of trendy consumerism and open-ended street action becomes a means to this end. The pursuit of fast living is more than symbolic or dramaturgical, it cuts to the very core of offenders’ perceptions of self-identity. To be cool, hip, and “in,” one must constantly prove it through conspicuous outlays of cash. The fetishized World of street-corner capitalism dictates that fiscal responsibility be jettisoned and money burned on material objects and illicit action that assert in no uncertain terms one’s place in the street hierarchy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Carefree spending creates the “impression of affluence” by which offenders are judged; it serves to demonstrate that they have indeed “made it”—at least for the time. On the streets, the image one projects is not everything, it is the only thing. To not buy into such an approach is to abandon a source of recognition offenders can get nowhere else or, worse, to state failure full in the face. It is not hard to fathom why many offenders in our sample regarded a lack of funds as an immediate threat to their social standing. The problem becomes one of sustenance; the reputational advantages of cash-intensive living can be appreciated and enjoyed to their fullest only if participants moderate their involvement in it. This requires intermittent and disciplined spending, an anomalous and untimely untenable proposition. Offenders effectively become ensnared by their own self-indulgent habit—habits that feed on themselves and constantly call for more of the same. These habits are expensive and create a pressing and pervasive need for cash—a need remedied through robbery but only temporarily, since the proceeds of any given robbery merely “enable” more action. The seductive attractions of street life appear to take on a power logic of their own; offenders burn money only to create (albeit inadvertently) the conditions that spark their next decision to rob. This self-enclosed cycle of reinforcing behavior starts with a predisposed background with risk factors such as: strain, broken homes, neglectful parent, social capital deficits, leading to participation in street culture. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Once an individual is involved in street culture, they enter a vicious cycle of: pursuit of illicit action/conspicuous consumption, financial desperation, robbery, disposable cash. As much as these offenders sought liberation through the hedonistic, opened pursuit of sensory stimulation, such a quest ultimately is both self-defeating and subordinating. Those hooked on street action may never see it this way, but objective assessments of reality are difficult to render when rationality is severely bounded as it is here. Suffice it to say that, for those in our sample, the “choice” to rob occurs in a context in which rationality not only is sharply bounded, it barely exists. If one takes the influence of context seriously, most offenders “decide” to commit robbery in a social and psychological terrain bereft of realistic alternatives. Street-culture participation effectively obliterates, or at least severely circumscribes, the range of objectively available options, so much so as to be almost deterministic. Offenders typically are overwhelmed by their own predicament—emotional, financial, pharmacological, and otherwise—and see robbery as the only way out. Chronic isolation from conventional others and lifestyles only reinforces their insularity, driving them deeper and deeper into a “downward life trajectory” of ever-increasing criminal embeddedness called “role engulfment.” Being a street robber is more than a series of offenses that allow one to meet some arbitrarily specified inclusion criteria: it is a way of behaving, a way of thinking, an approach to life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Stopping such criminals exogenously—in the absence of lengthy incapacitation—is not likely to be successful. Getting offenders to “go straight” is analogous to telling lawful citizens to relinquish one’s history, companions, thoughts, feelings, and fears, and replace them with something else. Self-directed going-straight talk on the part of offenders more often than not is insincere—akin to young children talking about what they are going to be when they grow up: Young storytellers…criminals…do not care about the [reality]; the pleasure comes in saying the words, the verbal ritual itself brings pleasure. Gifting offenders money, in the hopes they will reduce or stop their offending is similarly misguided. It is but twisted enabling and only likely to set off another round of illicit action that plunges offenders deeper into the abyss of desperation that drives them back to their next crime. The image of prison life might conjure up words like accountability, punishment, structure, and discipline. There is truth in all of those associations. However, just as relevant are words like repentance, Atonement, Spirit, and conversation. Church helps former inmates make better use of their time, association with others who are improving their lives, learn correct behavior through the modeling of ecclesiastical leaders, and learn gospel doctrines and principles. Other benefits are less visible but may be more enduring, such as when a former inmate’s soul is enlarged or expanded. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The Final Judgement is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts—what we have done. It is an acknowledgement of the final effects of our actions and thoughts—what we have become. This is good news: many within prisons, jails, and halfway houses are learning from their bad choices and are becoming what Heavenly Father would have them become. Many inmates wrestle with addictions. How they cope upon release is critical to their success. The manifestations of evil spirits through persons obtains footing and varies in character, according to the degree and kind of group they secure for possession. In one case in the Christian Bible, the only manifestation of the evil spirit’s presence was dumbness (Matt. 9.32), the spirit possibly locating in the vocal organs; in another, the person held by the spirit was “deaf and unintelligible” (Mark 9.25), and the symptoms included foaming at the mouth, grinding the teeth—all connected with the head—but the hold of the spirit was of such long standing (v.21) that he could throw his victim down and convulse the whole body (Mark 9.20-22). In other cases we find merely an “unclean spirit,” as with the man in a synagogue—probably so hidden that none would know the man was thus possessed, until, seeing Christ, the spirit cried out with fear, “Art Thou come to destroy us?” (Mark 1.24); or a “spirit of infirmity” (Luke 13.11) in a woman of whom it might be said tht she simply required a “healing” of some disease, or that she was always tired and only needed proper nutrition and rest—as some would say in the language of the twentieth century. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Again, we find a very advanced case in the man with the “legion,” showing that the evil spirits’ possession reached such a climax as to make the person appear insane; for his own personality was so mastered by the malignant spirits in possession as to cause him to lose all sense of decency and self-control in the presence of others (Luke 8.27). That there are different kinds of spirits is evident not only from their manifestations recorded in the Gospels but also in later instances: in the account of the girl at Philippi, possessed by a “spirit of divination”; and in Simon the Sorcerer, who was so energized by satanic power for the working of miracles that he was considered to be “the great power of God” by the deceived people (Acts 8.10). In these cases, trickery was the game. If they really believe they are communicating with the spirits of the dead, spiritists of today are also deceived. Surely it is easy for designing spirits to impersonate dead people, including even saintly Christians: they have watched them (Acts 19.15) all their lives, and can easily imitate their personality traits and counterfeit their voices. Therefore, it is very possible that some criminals and some of the mentally ill may be possessed by evil spirits because they have some of these same traits. Some people may me tired of studying and deep in the throes of a loneliness trip—different that they have ever experienced—terrifying yet somehow good in its simple realness. The Savior is our Advocate with the Father. He knows our weaknesses. He knows how to succor those who are tempted. It is because of the Savior that all of us can make real progress—experience true conversion—in becoming what Heavenly Father wants us to become. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The answers are contained in the revelatory events on which Christianity is based and are taken by systematic theology from the sources, through the medium, under the norm. The mutual dependence of question and answers can be explained in terms of form and content. Theological answers derive their content form from the existential questions. For example, if existential analysis reveals the threat of non-being, then God must be called the power of being that overcomes this threat. If history is an incomprehensible puzzle, then the Kingdom of God must be termed the unity, meaning, and fulfilment of history. Christian symbols must always be open to, and in correlation with, the questions of existence. Contrasting with other methods, the supranaturalistic method considers revelation as a strange bundle of truth that fell from Heaven. It has nothing but answers, and from them in manufactures the questions. The naturalistic or humanistic method never gets beyond human existence. It extracts the answers from the question themselves. Lastly, the dualistic method tries to construct a correlation, but fails. By such devices as natural revelation and the proofs for the existence of God, it seeks to correlate natural answers with Christian answers, instead of questions with answers. If the proofs for God are taken as a question—as they are in the method of correlation—and not as an answer, then their use is justified. The method of correlation is not foolproof. The answers may prejudice the questions, or the questions prejudice the answers. For theology, too, is ambiguous. Nor is the method of correlation new. As a method, it is as old as theology. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The U.S.A. government had a major problem trying to motivate several million teenagers to register for the military draft. Large-scale civil disobedience would make it impossible to punish everyone who violated the law. Still, the government had a big advantage: it set the rules. To see this advantage of moving first, imagine that the government is only allowed to punish one person who fails to register. How can they use this single threat to induce everyone to register? The government announces that it will go after evaders in alphabetical order. If he failed to register, the person with surname Aaron knows that he would be singled out for punishment. Then the Abrams conclude that since all of the Aarons will surely register, it is they who will be punished. And so on down the line right through to the Zhukovs and the Zweibels. A lawyer might argue that it is unconstitutional to single out people for punishment because of the alphabetical ordering of their names. However, nothing is special about the alphabet. The key point is that the order of punishment is pre-specified. A randomly chosen and announced order of birthdates, or social security numbers, does just as well. A few selective punishments go a long way in keeping everyone in line, and are much less expensive than offering market wages to attract an equal number and quality of recruits. For example, if Congress mistook appearances for reality, it might forbid that Draft Board to use alphabetical order as the means by which they choose who gets punished first, leaving open other equivalent methods. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
What is needed to stop the practice is to forbid the pre-announcement of any order. When the participants in a game are ranked in some order, it is often possible to predict what the person at one end will do. This knowledge influences the action of the next person, which in turn influences the third, and so on down the line. The story we have told is a bit extreme. By the time we get to the Zhukovs, someone will surely not register and then be punished. The Zhukovs do not really have to worry. With so many individuals, one expects a small amount of slippage. The point is that the number of punishments available need not be anywhere near the number of people to motivate. The capacity (and willingness) to jail a thousand protestors can deter several million would-be’s. From the World perspective, Chinese domestic companies have been strengthening their global position in several stages. During the 1970s to early 1980, Chinese markers established themselves as dominant players in the production and exports of a wide variety of low-tech-low-end mass product, defeating producers of similar items in the West. Myriads of Chinese-made affordable T-shirts, sneakers, lighters, toys, kitchenware, and so on and so forth conquered markets all around the World. In this segment, where price makes all the difference, Western producers were doomed to lose. Nowadays China’s dominance here is continuing, in spite of the fact that its rising labor and other costs have become a hot topic Worldwide. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
There is a lot of talk about the erosion of its cost advantage resulting in the shift of low-cost mass production to the countries of the next row like Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sir Lanka, Cambodia, or Laos. The only option for China, according to this school of thought, is to upgrade its industries and produce more high-value-added goods. This is wrong. China is unique. It will not be shifting from lower-value-added to higher-value-added products. It will handle both. In other words, China is and, for decades to come, will be moving up and up the value chain on the one hand while retaining its dominance in the low-tech-low-end segment on the other. In this regard, it is different from any other nations. Its growth pattern goes beyond the famous flying geese framework in its conventional sense. China’s ability to preserve dominance in the low-tech-low-end mass products segment can be easily explained. First, its labor and other costs are still quite low. They remain incomparable with those in the West and thus do not lose attractiveness for both western businesses and consumers. Second, no next-row country can compare with China in terms of size. Consequently, none of them is capable of replacing it as the major production platform for low-end simple products, even though their costs are lower. True, more and more often both Western and Asian businesspeople are complaining about the increase of China’s labor and other costs, and the mass media is willingly picking it up as a popular topic. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
However, read or listen to what they say attentively, word by word, and you will clearly see what it is all about. They are upset today Chinese costs are higher than in past years and higher than they initially expected them to be. Nevertheless, they continue to expand their direct investment to China on a much larger scale than to any next-row country. Actions, not talks, are serving as proof of China’s real cost competitiveness. In China, where the wages in the manufacturing have increase 75 percent in the last ten years, but it is 23 percent of USA manufacturing rates, which means that its cost advantages remain very significant. Though wage growth rates are high all across China (around 10 percent a year), labor (as well as other) costs are starting to bite, mainly in the economically advanced eastern coastal provinces. As of 2023, the average monthly wage in China’s manufacturing industry is US$1,000 a month, which is two and a half times more than it was in 2010. As of 2023, the manufacturing employees average wage in the United States of America is $2,583 a month. The average hourly wage in China’s manufacturing industry is about $6 an hour—versus $18.5 in the United States of America. Also, China does upgrade their industries and big cities in China are becoming service, logistics, education and R&D platforms, supporting industrial growth in the hinterland. No doubt, as time goes by, China will significantly enhance their international role as producers and exporters and attract a growing number of multinational companies to diversity the geography of their production activities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
In the second stage, which started in the 1990 and has been continuing into the 2000s and beyond, Chinese companies are moving fast to capture global markets of technologically advanced low-end mass products, leveraging their increasing technological capabilities and cost advantages at one and the same time. Representative examples include TVs, AV products, mobile phones, personal computers, or, in the latest development, solar batteries. Entering this sector, Chinese makers exert competitive pressure on the Western companies positioned in higher-end market niches, usually by offering simpler various of similar products at a lower price. China has emerged as the World’s number one producer of solar panels. Their manufacturing exceeds 80 percent of solar panels Worldwide. Using industry-validated figures, Chinese solar panels are 30 percent less expensive than USA solar panels. This enables China to play a leading role in the global energy revolution. In fact, China’s average share of the solar panel supply chain has gone from 55 percent to 84 percent over the past 13 years. China also continues to lead in terms of investment, making up almost 66 percent of global large-scale solar investment. In the first half od 2022, the country invested $41 billion, a 173 percent increase from the year before. With Joe Biden’s ambitious new car pollution rules that could require electric cars to make up 66 percent of new cars sold in the USA by 2032, many people are concerned. China made about 75 percent of the World’s lithium-ion batteries in 2021, compared with 7 percent for the USA. And China currently controls nearly 70 percent of all minded cobalt needed in the electric vehicle industry. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
China already has 80 to 90 percent of the global rare Earth market. By 2029 the United States of America is expected to have only 3 lithium-ion battery mega-factories compared to China’s 88—of a total 115 lithium-ion battery mega-factories planned. Net profit for Chinese manufacturer CATL jumped 93 percent in 2022 to US$4.41 billion, as the World’s largest supplier of electric vehicle batteries. With EV batteries costing approximately $4,000 to $20,000 many people fear a future with electric vehicles because the economy is unstable and most people simply cannot afford to come up with that amount of money all at once. Some may say there are financing options, but that would be like financing a car, on top of making a car payment. They also fear making China richer than it already is and the USA more dependent on China. Across the World, a green tide is gathering momentum too. This movement for ecological sanity is essential—a leading beneficial example of ordinary people around the World leading their people. Propelling ecology to the top of the World agenda have been a succession of sensational catastrophes, from Three Miles Island and Chernobyl to Bhopal and the Alaska oil spill. Clearly, more lie ahead. Industrial society has reached its outer limits, making it impossible to continue putting toxic wastes in our backyards, stripping the land of it forests, dumping Styrofoam debris in our oceans, creating plastic islands, and punching holes in the ozone. The Worldwide environmental movement is therefore a survival response to planetary crisis. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
However, this movement, too, has an antidemocratic fringe. It has its own advocates of return to darkness. Some of them are ready to hijack the environmental movement in pursuit of their private political or religious agendas. The issues are so complex and recalcitrant that the Green movement is likely to split into at least four parts. One part will continue to be the very model of legal, nonviolent democratic action. However, given a succession of ecological crises and tragedies, a second wing, which already exists in embryonic form, might well step up from eco-vandalism to full-scale eco-terrorism to enforce its demands. A further split will intensify the key ideological war already dividing the environmental movement. On one side: those who favor technological and economic advance within stringent environmental constraints. Unwilling to give up on imagination and intelligence, they believe in the power of the human mind—and therefore in our ability to design technologies that will use smaller amounts of resources, emit less pollution, and recycle wastes into reusable resources. They argue that today’s crisis calls for revolutionary changes in the way the economy and technology are organized. Oriented toward tomorrow, these are the mainstream environmentalists. Battling them for ideological control of the movement, however, are self-described “fundamentalists,” who wish to plunge society into pre-technological medievalism and asceticism. They are “eco-theologues,” and some of their views dovetail with the thinking of religious extremists. The eco-theologues insist that there can be no technological relief, and that we are therefore destined to slide back into preindustrial poverty, a prospect they regard as a blessing rather than a curse. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
For many of the reversionist thinkers, the issues are not primarily ecological but religious. They wish to restore a religion-drenched World that has not existed in the West since the Middle Ages. The environmental movement provides a convenient vehicle. This group reduces the history of our relations with nature to biblical allegory. First there was an ecological “Golden Age,” when humans lived in harmony with nature and worshipped it. The species fell from this “Eden” with the arrival of the industrial age, in which the “Devil”—technology—ruled human affairs. Now we must transit to a new “Paradise” of perfect sustainability and harmony. If not, we face “Armageddon.” This imposition of a Western, indeed Christian, parable on the far more complex history of our relations with nature is common to the “eco-theologues” who glamorize life in the medieval village. Rudolf Bahro, an influential Green theorist now living in West Germany, explicitly holds that what is needed is “theology, not ecology—the birth of a new Golden Age which cultivates…the nobility in man.” He reached back into the 13th century to quote Meister Eckhart, the founder of German mysticism, “who lived in the now despoiled Rhine River valley” and who told us that all creatures have God within them. Mr. Bahro finds the same idea in the poetic words of Mechtild of Magdeburg, another 13th-century Christian thinker, quoting her beautiful line to the effect that all creatures are “a flash of grace.” Ecological salvation thus, for him, is a matter of religion, something the secular World will never be able to offer. Mr. Bahro even approves of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s remark to Mr. Gorbachev that the Soviet leader should look to Allah rather than economic reforms to solve Soviet problems. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Another theorist, Wolfgang Sachs of the University of Pennsylvania, attack the Worldwatch Institute, a leading environmentalist research center, for its “specifically modern outlook” and dismisses Amory Lovins, the conservationist, for urging greater energy efficiency, whereas what is wanted by Mr. Sachs is “good housekeeping” in the tradition of “subsistence-oriented households.” Ivan Illich, one of our most imaginative social critics and author of several brilliant works bearing on ecological theory, is opposed to “managerial fascism” and simple-minded Ludditism. What he proposes, however, is “sustainability without development”—in short, stasis. For Mr. Illich, poverty is the human condition, and should be accepted as such; hence, who needs development? The new system of wealth creation, he says, has “injected new life into what would otherwise have been the exhausted logic of industrialism.” He fails to see that the new knowledge-based technological system actually contradicts the old logic of industrialism at many points. For Mr. Illich, too, the argument is ultimately theological. “God was the pattern that connected the cosmos” at a time when bare subsistence was accepted as normal and natural, a state we should return. So long as God ruled the medieval mind, humanity and nature remained in balance. “Man, the agent of disequilibrium,” upset the balance after the scientific revolution. Mr. Illich regards the concept of an “eco-system which, through multiple feedback mechanisms, can be regulated scientifically” as a snare and a delusion. Clearly, he implies, a return to a God-center ascetic World would be preferable. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Theo-ecological rhetoric contains within it more than a hint of the Christian notion of retribution. As the writers Linda Bilmes and Mark Byford have noted, the theological Greens insist “consumption is sinful,” while environmental blight is seen as “punishment for excessive consumerism, lack of spirituality, wastefulness.” As in a Sunday sermon, the implication is that we should “repent, and mend our ways.” Or, one might add, face fire and brimstone. This is hardly the place to try to resolve the profound issues raised by the ecology debate—as significant a philosophical debate as that raised by the Enlightenment thinkers at the dawn of the industrial age. What is important, however, is to note the congruence between the views of the eco-theologues and the fundamentalists revival, with its deep hostility to secular democracy. A shared emphasis on absolutes and the belief that sharp restrictions on individual choice may be required (to make people “moral,” or to “protect the environment”) point ultimately to a common attack on human rights. Indeed, many environmentalists themselves worry openly about the arrival of Green Ayotallahs or “eco-fascists” who impose their particular brand of salvation. Thus, Mr. Bahro cautions that “in the deep crises of humanity, charisma always plays a role. The deeper the crisis, the darker the charismatic figure who will emerge…Whether or not we will have a green Adolph depends…on how far cultural change advances before the next Chernobyl.” One may admire the integrity and creativity of a thinker like Mr. Illich, surely no fascist himself, while recognizing the deeply antidemocratic implications of his search for the absolute, the constant, the static, and the holy. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Criticizing the eco-theologues, the French sociologist Alain Touraine warns, “If we reject reason in the name of salvation from the ozone depletion, we will court a Green fundamentalism, an eco-theocracy of the Ayatollah Khomeini variety.” If such anxiety sounds too extreme, it may be worth recalling the Wandervogel youth movement of the 1920s in Germany, where the Green movement today is most militant. The Wandervogel were the hippie-Greens of the Weimar Republic, roaming the countryside with their rucksacks, carrying guitars, wearing flowers, holding Woodstock-life festivals, high on spirituality and preaching a return to nature. A decade later, Mr. Hitler was in control. Mr. Hitler also exalted preindustrial values, picturing the Nazi utopia as one in which “the blacksmith stands again at his anvil, the farmer walks behind his plough.” In the words of Professor J.P. Stern of University College, London, Mr. Hitler evoked “a pre-industrial rustic idyll.” Mr. Hitler’s ideologists constantly praised the “organic,” urged physical fitness, and used biological analogies to justify the vilest race hate. “Hundreds of thousands of youngsters passed through the Youth Movement,” writes George L. Mosse in The Crisis of German Ideology, “and many of them found it not very difficult to accommodate themselves to the ideological propositions of the Nazis.” Can one really imagine a Neo-Green Party, with armbands, Sam Browne belts, and jackboots, setting out to enforce its own view of nature on the rest of society? Of course not, under normal conditions. However, what if conditions are not “normal”? #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Consider the consequences of another Bhopal-like eco-catastrophe set in, say, Seattle, Stuttgart, or Sheffield…followed by back-to-back crises elsewhere…followed by confusion and monstrous corruption in the disaster relief effort…amid fundamentalists cries that the disaster was inflicted by God as punishment for “permissiveness” and immorality. Picture all this occurring in time of deep economic distress. Imagine an attractive, articulate “Eco-Adolph” who promises not just to solve the immediate crisis but to “purify” the society materially, morally, and politically—if only he is given extraconstitutional powers. Some of today’s eco-theological rhetoric has an absurdist flavor, as did that of the erstwhile Adolph and his ideologists. Nazi propagandists exalted the Middles Ages (especially the time when the Holy Roman Empire dominated Europe) as a period when Kultur reached its “highest peak.” Today, a British ecological “fundi,” or fundamentalist, writes in a letter to The Economist that “the goals of ‘fundi’ Greens like myself…[are to] return to Europe which existed in the distant past…between the fall of Rome and the rise of Charlemagne,” in which the basic unit of society “was the rural holding, scarcely larger than a hamlet…The only way for humans to live in harmony with nature is to live at a subsistence level.” What the eco-medievalists normally do not tell us is the political price. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
They seldom point out that democracy was conspicuously absent from those bucolic villages they hold up for emulation—villages ruled by the cruelest patriarchy, religious mind-control, feudal ignorance and force. This was the Kultur the Nazis glamorized. Not for nothing has the period between the fall of Rome and the rise of Charlemagne become known as the Dark Ages. By themselves the eco-theologues might be dismissed. They remain a small fringe on the far edge of the environmental movement. However, it is a mistake to view them as an isolated or trivial phenomenon. The religious revival and the Green movements alike breed ultras who would be happy to jettison democracy. At their extremes, these two movements may be converging to impose new restrictions on personal and political behavior in the name of both God and Greenness. Together they are pushing for a power shift toward the past. Society has gotten so advanced and expensive that many people feel nostalgia for the past. Nostalgia is a longing feeling for the past when things seemed better, easier, and more fun. It is the feeling behind countless number one hits. We all know the feeling. What psychological purpose does nostalgia serve? Well, for one, nostalgia serves as an emotional experience that unifies. One example of this is it helps to unite our sense of who we are, our self, our identity over time. Because over time we change constantly, we change in incredible ways. We are not anywhere near the same as we were when we were in high school. Nostalgia by motivating us to remember the past in our own life helps unite us to that authentic self and remind us who we have been and then compare that to who we feel we are today. And many people are nostalgic about the past when America was number one in manufacturing and Christianity was more accepted as the religion of America. Therefore to help America remain a superpower, please buy American cars, and appliance and other American-Made goods. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
With accents of elegance, spacious living areas, and convenient workspaces, Millhaven Homes offers beautiful features that will surely capture your interest and imagination.
If you are considering building a custom home with us, please fill out the information below and we will reach out to you to schedule an introductory meeting. https://millhavenhomes.com/get-started/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 