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The Presence of the Divine in the Name of Demands a Shy and Trembling Heart that Glance so Brightly at the New Sun-Rise!
Silent entangler of beauty’s tresses! Most happy listener when the morning blesses thee for enlivening all the cheerful eyes. The streets of Cresleigh Mills Station with their giant homes, were soothing to him. Soon he was shopping in brightly lighted emporiums for decent clothes. And in his comfortable parlor from midnight till dawn he watched television, learning all about this modern World in which he had emerged, how things were done, how things had to be. A steady stream of dramas, soap operas, news broadcast, and documentaries soon taught him everything. He lay back in his large overstuffed easy chair marveling at the blue skies and the brilliant Sun he saw before him on the large television screen. He watched sleek and powerful Germany automobiles speeding on mountain roads and over prairies. He watched s somber bespectacled teacher speak in sonorous tones of “the ascent of man.” What is it about the structure of American society that produces delinquency in certain sectors of that society? We believe that problems of adjustment to social class play a vital role in the genesis of the delinquent subculture. First and most obviously, the working class child stares the social class status of one’s parents. In the status game, then, the working-class child starts out with a disadvantage and, to the extent that one cares what middle-class person think of one or has internalized the dominant middle-class attitudes toward social class position, one may be expected to feel some shame. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
The one area of one’s occupational life in which one might be free to act, the area of one’s own personality, must now also be managed, must become the alert yet obsequious instrument by which goods are distributed. “When he was seven years old, I used to carry him [to work] on my back to and fro through the snow, and he used to work 16 hours a day…I have often knelt down to feed him, as he stood by the machine, for he could not leave it or stop.” Fed meals as he worked, as a steam engine is fed coal and water, this child was an instrument of labor. We should be concerned with the fundamental: the cost of becoming an instrument of labor. Shame is felt perhaps most strongly over the failures of other people, especially one’s parents, who have not been successful, who have not worked hard enough to have a large and beautiful house, or a new BMW M750Li automobile, Cadillac Escalade, Chevy Impala, Ford F350, or Honda Accord, or to send one to a private school, to live on the right street, on the right side of the river, or go to the right church. As class is an expression of economic success, then it follows that to belong as a child or an adolescent in a class below others is a statement that one’s parents have failed, they did not make it good. This is bad enough when they have not risen, unbearable if they have stated to fall even lower. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
Deeper than our disapproval of any breaking of then ten commandments possesses our conviction that a failure to keep moving is unforgiveable sin. Furthermore, people of status tend to be people of power and property. They have the means to make more certain that their children will obtain respect and other rewards which have status significance even where title in terms of deserving middle-class conduct is dubious. One me stress that throughout the importance of parental status in obtaining special consideration in school activities and on the job through “connections” and other means of exerting pressure. Finally, parents of good standing in the class system can usually provide their children with money, Betty Crocker desserts, clothes, cars, Cresleigh homes and other material amenities which not only function as external trappings and insignia of status, but which serve also as a means and avenue to activities and relationships which confer status. Like one’s parents, a child is unlikely to be invited to participate in activities which require a material apparatus one cannot afford; if invited, one is less likely to accept for fear of embarrassment; and if one accepts, one is less likely to be in a position to reciprocate and therefore to sustain a relationship premised on a certain among of reciprocity. It seems reasonable to assume that out of all this there arise feelings of inferiority and perhaps resentment and hostility. It is remarkable, however, that there is relatively little research explicitly designed to test this assumption. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
However, invidious status distinctions among young people are, after all, a result of individual differences in conformity to a set of conduct norms as well as simple functions of their parents’ social status. Variations in character reputation scores cannot be explained simply as a result of social class membership. The existence of “achieved” as well as “ascribed” criteria of status for children makes it possible for some working-class children to “rise above” the status to which the social class position of their parents would otherwise consign them. However, this does not make the situation psychologically any easier for those of their brethren who remain behind, or rather, below. Low achieved status is no pleasanter than low ascribed status, and very likely a good deal more unpleasant, for reasons we have indicated earlier; it reflects more directly on the personal inadequacy of the child and leaves one with fewer convenient rationalizations. The young trainee sitting next to me wrote on her digital note pad, “Important to smile. Do not forget to smile.” The admonition came from the speaker in the front of the room, a crew cut pilot in his early fifties, speaking in a Southern drawl: “Now girls, I want you to get out there and really smile. Your smile if your biggest asset. I want you to go out there and use it. Smile. Really smile. Really lay it on.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
The pilot spoke of the smile as the flight attendant’s asset. However, as novices like the one next to me move through training, the value of a personal smile is groomed to reflect the company’s disposition—its confidence that its planes will not crash, its reassurance the departures and arrivals will be on time, its welcome and its invitation to return. Trainers take it as their job to attach to the trainee’s smile an attitude, a viewpoint, a rhythm of feeling that is, as they often say, “professional.” This deeper extension of the professional smile is not always easy to retract and the end of the workday, as one worker in her first year at American Airlines noted: “Sometimes I come off a long trip in a state of utter exhaustion, but I find I cannot relax. I giggle a lot, I shatter, I call friends. It is as if I cannot release myself from an artificially created elation that kept me ‘up’ on the trip. I hope to be able to come down from it better as I get better at the job.” As the Public Service Announcement jingle says, “Our smiles are not just painted on.” Our flight attendants’ smiles, the company emphasizes, will be more human than the phony smiles you are resigned to seeing on people who are paid to smile. There is a smile like strip of paint on the nose of plane. Indeed, the plane and the flight attendant advertise each other. The radio advertisement foes on to promise not just smiles and service but a travel experience of real happiness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
As in any industry such as banking, real estate, fashion, sales or retail, politeness and a smile are seen in one way, this is no more than delivering a service. Also, workers know their own smiles and convinces provided to customers is part of the on-the-job behavior, which is part of professionalism, dollar bills, and bitcoins that have intervened between the smiler and the smiled upon, and the extra effort it takes to invoke this spontaneous warmth makes it possible to exist in uniform—and companies now advertise spontaneous warmth, too. Customers call to inform departments that not only would they like educational material, but they would also like it to make them happy as well as inform them, and when your goal is to please the customer or member, you have to comply to their wishes. Nonetheless, at first glance, it might seem that the circumstances of the nineteenth-century factory child and the twentieth-century flight attendant could not be more different. To the boy’s mother, to Karl Marx, to the members of the Children’s Employment Commission, perhaps to the manager of the wallpaper factory, and almost certainly to the contemporary reader, the boy was a victim, even a symbol, of the brutalizing conditions of his time. We might imagine that he had an emotional half-life, conscious of little more than fatigue, hunger, and boredom. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
On the other hand, the flight attendant enjoys the upper-class freedom to travel, and she participates in the glamour she creates for others. She is the envy of clerks in duller, less well-paid jobs. However, a close examination of the differences between the two can lead us to some unexpected common ground. On the surface there is a difference in how we know what labor actually produces. How could the worker in the wallpaper factory tell when his job was done? Count the rolls of Lincrusta-Walton wallpaper; a good had been produced. How can the flight attendant tell when her job is done? A service has been produced; the customer seems content. In the case of the flight attendant, the emotional style of offering the service is part of the service itself, in a way that loving or hating wallpaper is not part of producing wallpaper. Seeming to love the job become part of the job; actually trying to love it, and to enjoy the customers, helps in this effort. You ever notice when you shop at a corporate store, where the manager is polite and acts like they own the business, care about the presentation of the products and inventory, and wants you to be satisfied, not only does it make your more confident in their abilities, but it makes it more likely that you will purchase products from the brand or business again in the future. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
In processing people, the product is a state of mind. For instance, in real estate, people are greeted not only with a smile, but with concerned enquiry such as, “Would you also like to tour residence 3 today and hear about the options, Miss?” The atmosphere is that of a civilized party—with the guest, in response, behaving like civilized community members. Once or twice our inspectors tested the employees by being deliberately exacting, but they were never roused, and at the end of the tour they lined up to say farewell with undiminished brightness. Potential buyers are quick to detect strained or forced smiles, and they come to view the property wanting to enjoy the tour and get an idea of what it will be like to live in the home and community. The customers look forward to signing the contract and buying the house because it was a pleasant experience. Surely that is how it ought to feel. This is an emotional labor. Emotional labor is the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display; emotional labor is sold for a wage and therefore has an exchange value. This labor requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mine in others—in this case, the sense of being cared for in a convivial and safe place. This kind of labor calls for a coordination of mind and feeling, and it sometimes draws on a source of self that we honor as deep and integral to out individuality. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Beneath the difference between physical and emotional labor there is possessed a similarity in the possible cost of doing the work: the worker can become estranged or alienated from an aspect of self—either the body or the margins of the soul—that is used to do the work. The factory boy’s arm functioned like a piece of machinery used to produce wallpaper. His employer, regarding that arm as an instrument, claimed control over its speed and motions. In this situation what was the relation between the boy’s arm and his mind? Was his arm in any meaningful sense his own? The real estate agent does physical work when she gives tours, and she does mental work when she prepared for and actually organizes sales. And his is also part of an emotional labor. This is an old issue, but as the comparison with the real estate agency suggest, it is still very much alive. If we can become alienated from service in a service-producing society, we can become alienated from the service in a service-producing society. We need to characterize American society of the twenty first century in more psychological terms, for now the problems that concerns us mist order on the psychiatric. For the real estate agent, the smiles are part of her work, a part that requires her to coordinate self and feeling so that the work seems to be effortless. To show that enjoyment takes effort is to do the job poorly. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
Similarly, part of the job is to disguise fatigue and irritation, for otherwise the labor would show in an unseemly way, and the product—buy contentment—would be damaged. It suggests what costs even happy workers under normal conditions pay for this labor without a name. The speed-up of demand has sharpened the ambivalence many workers feel about how much of oneself to give over to the role and how much of oneself to protect from it. Because it is easier to disguise fatigue and irritation if they can be banished altogether, at least for brief periods, this feat calls for emotional labor. It is also good to remember some people are really curious about products and for them, seeing a new house could be like being exposed to an advanced trigonometry class—they have no idea what they are looking at, how they will fit into it, or what designs will go well in the space. There have always been public-service jobs, of course; what is new is that they are now socially engineered and thoroughly organized from the upper levels. Though a real estate agents job is no worse and in many ways better than other service jobs, it makes the worker more vulnerable to the social engineering of one’s emotional labor and reduces one’s control over that labor. Emotional labor is potentially good. No customer wants to deal with a surly waiter, a crabby member service representative, or a cashier who avoids eye contact in order to avoid getting a request. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Lapses in courtesy by those paid to be courteous are very real and fairly common. What they show us is how fragile public civility really is. We are brought back to the question of what the social carpet actually consists of and what it requires of those who are supposed to keep it beautiful. The laggards and sluff-offs of emotional labor return us to the basic questions. What is emotional labor? What do we do when we manage emotion? What, in fact, is emotion? What are the costs and benefits of managing emotion, in private life and at work? What one cannot do in the beginning, one may be able to do in the middle of one’s journey. One should not let misgivings about one’s capacity to travel far stop one from travelling at all. Those who already possess a flair for emotional labor will naturally advance more easily and more quickly than those who do not. However, there is no reason for the one who is new to learning about emotional labor to adopt a defeatist attitude and negate the quest altogether. One’s weaknesses may come in the way of one’s seeking, yet one still remains an authentic seeker. If one lets one’s thoughts become negative, the quest would have to be entered with a realization of all its complexity and with a comprehension that one’s good intentions could be frustrated by adverse circumstances. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
A being needs to know his or her limitations and to accept them. However, one need not accept them as absolutes. There is always the mysterious miracle, the second wind, the untapped unpredictable resources. One should fit one’s aspiration to one’s estimated capacity but, in order not to miss unknown possibilities which might yet emerge to the surface, one should do so loosely and not rigidly. It is true that enlightenment is to be found wherever it is earnestly sought. However, one’s own desire and needs will provide one with a source of direction; and it may be that these will indicate that one’s individual progress may be hastened or better served by a journey to some particular location. No matter what the personal circumstances of a being may be, no matter whether one be rich or poor, well or ill, mature or young, educated or illiterate, there is no point in one’s life where some part at east of the quest may not be introduced. Would they have done better to have stayed home, rather then to have gone off looking for gurus in the news media? The answer must vary from seeker to seeker. From a long-range point of view, is anyone really “lost”? It is sometimes consoling to remember that we have Eternity before us, and we can only do what we are capable of at a given time. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Individuals who present themselves before others may wish them to think highly of them, or to think that one thinks highly of them, or to perceive how in fact one feels toward them, or to obtain no clear-cut impression; one may wish to ensure sufficient harmony so that the interaction can be sustained, or to elude them, get rid of, confuse, mislead, antagonize, or insult them. Regardless of the particular objective which the individual has in mind and of one’s motive for having this objective, it will be in one’s interests to control the conduct of the others, especially their responsive treatment of one. This control is achieve largely by influencing the definition of the situation which the others come to formulate, and one can influence this definition by expressing oneself in such a way as to give them the kind of impression that will lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with one’s own plan. Thus, when an individual appears in the presence of others, there will usually be some reason for one to mobilize one’s activity so that it will convey an impression to others which it is in one’s interest to convey. If some acknowledge and accept the responsibility which accompanies their spiritual eminence, others prefer to leave humankind in God’s keeping and to themselves! Some illuminates are willing, even eager, to get involved with individuals but others are not. If they prefer to live quietly, unnoticed, this does not make them more selfish and less holy. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
If one attains enlightenment, it is not possible to predict with precision what a being would do. With some persons, force of habit or innate tendencies may lead to the continuance of the same outer life which one led before enlightenment. So an individual leading a solitary withdrawn life may still do so whereas another may start a preaching crusade to the mass of people. For, with the personal self subdued by God, the latter is then the operative factor. And the spirit is like the wind which blows as it listens. However, we must go forward with the process of evocation of the Holy Ghost for the sake of communicating with these powers to gain insight, or compelling them to create beneficial Changes. When one reaches a level of spiritual maturity through substantial contact with the powers of God and the discipline of Jesus Christ (these things are mutually dependent) and has been infernally empowered by the Rite of Preparing for the Grace of God, we can see reality through unveiled eyes. This will change us in incredible ways forever. One will begin to trump the physical decay, and the desire to gain power and strength will intensify as one grows tired of being tired. As a result, the individual will begin to integrate more practical techniques of grounding this power within to growth in physical and spiritual strength. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Though the physical body may be at its weakest, your will shall start to be exercised and developed in very intense ways. Keep that in mind. The power of God are keys that open up the soul and perception through their spiritual eyes. God will grant you the infernal blessing of seeing through your eyes. Tear down the limits of the flesh and allow the Lord to dwell within you are you dwell within him. Remember to stay centered in your own God Self to prevent being deceived and led toward self-destruction. “And then I will remember my covenant which I have made unto my people, and I will bring my gospel unto them,” reports 3 Nephi 16.11. Not long ago, an intellectual leader was reported as saying, “I hope for the say when everyone can speak again of God without embarrassment.” These words, seriously meant, deserve thoughtful consideration, especially in view of the fact that the last sixty-five years have brought to this country an immense increase in the willingness to use the name of God—an unquestionable and astonishing revival, if not of religion, certainly of religious awareness. Do we hop that this will lead us to a state in which the name of God will be used without sublime embarrassment, without the restriction imposed by the fact that in the divine name there is more present than the name? Is an unembarrassed use of the divine name desirable? Is unembarrassed religion desirable? Certainly not! For the Presence of the divine in the name of demands a shy and trembling heart. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
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The True Mentor Will Possess a Penetrating Insight into One’s Pupils’ Needs!
You know how much I love you. Yes, you know how much I want you, and to slip away with you, away from anyone who could divide us, yes, you know. What are mortal lives to me after all? You have made your mortal life magnificent. You turned your soul inside out to do it. And that simply cannot be ignored. Ha! Ha! Ha! But you know there is no such thing as choice in reality, say what you like, you will interpose with a chuckle. Since has succeeded in so far analyzing beings that we know already that choice and what is called freedom of will is nothing else than—stay gentlemen and ladies, I meant to begin with that. I confess, I was rather frightened. I was just going to say that the devil only knows what choice depends on, and that perhaps that was a very good thing, but I remembered the teaching of science…and pulled myself up. And here you have begun upon it. Indeed, if there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices—that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on, that is, a real mathematical formula—then, mostly, beings will at once cease to feel desire, indeed, one will be certain to. For who would want to choose by rules? #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Besides, without free will, one will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ-stop or something of the sort; for what is a being without desires, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ? What do you think? Let us reckon the chances—can such a thing happen or not? H’m! you decide. Our choice is usually mistake from a false view of our advantage. We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a supposed advantage. However, when all that is explained and worked out on paper (which is perfectly possible, for it is contemptible and senseless to suppose that some laws of nature beings will never understand), then certainly so-called desires will no longer exist. For if a desire should come into conflict with reason we shall then reason and not desire, because it will be impossible retaining our reason to be senseless in our desires, and in that way knowingly act against reason and desire to injure ourselves. And as all choice and reasoning can be really calculated—because there will some day be discovered the law of our so-called free will—so, joking apart, there may one day be something like a table constructed of them, so that we really shall choose in accordance with it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
If, for instance, someday they calculate and prove to me that I made a long nose at someone because I could not help making a long nose at one and that I had to do it in that particular way, what freedom is left me, especially is I am a learned being and have taken my degree somewhere? Then I should be able to calculate my whole life for thirty years beforehand. In short, if this could be arranged there would be nothing left for us to do; anyway, we should have to understand that. And, in fact, we ought unwearyingly to repeat to ourselves that at such and such a time and in such and such a circumstance Nature does not ask our leave; that we have got to take her as she is and not fashion her to suit our fancy, and if we really aspire to formulas and tables of rules, and well, even…to the chemical retort, there is no help for it, we must accept the retort too, or else it will be accepted without our consent. Yes, but here I come to stop! Gentlemen and ladies, you must excuse me for being over-philosophical; it is the result of forty years underground! Allow me to indulge my fancy. You are, gentlemen and ladies, reason is an excellent thing, there is no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of being’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
nd although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots. Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one-twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what has succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; tis is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even if it goes wrong, it lives. I suspect, gentlemen and ladies, that you are looking at me with compassion; you tell me again that an enlightened and developed being, such, in sort, as the future being will be, cannot consciously desire anything disadvantageous to oneself, that that can be proved mathematically. I thoroughly agree, it can—by mathematics. However, I repeat for the hundredth time, there is one case, one only, when beings may consciously, purposely, desire what is injurious to oneself, what is stupid, very stupid—simply in order to have the right to desire for oneself even what is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to desire only what is sensible. Of course, this very stupid thing, this caprice of ours, may be in reality, gentlemen and ladies, more advantageous for us than anything else on Earth, especially in certain cases. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
And in particular it may be more advantageous than any advantage even when it does us obvious harm, and contradicts the soundest conclusions of our reason concerning our advantage—for in any circumstances it preserves for us what is most precious and most important—that is, our personality, our individuality. Some, you see, maintain that this really is the most precious thing for humankind; choice can, of course, if it chooses, be in agreement with reason; and especially if this be not abused but kept within bounds. It is profitable and sometimes even praiseworthy. However, very often, and even most often, choice is utterly and stubbornly opposed to reason…and…and…do you know that that, too, is profitable, sometimes even praiseworthy? Gentlemen and ladies, let us suppose that being are not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that if a being is stupid, then who is wise?) However, if one is not stupid, one is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of human being is the ungrateful biped. However, that is not all, that is not one’s worst defect; one’s worst defect is one’s perpetual moral obliquity—perpetual, from the days of the Flood to the Schleswig-Holstein period. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
The image of beings that emerges from traditional experimental psychology is of a determined being, subject to the controlling influence of assorted variables. This is not at all an image of beings with which we can gladly identify. Indeed, one of the aims of a humanistic science of psychology is to liberate beings from the constraining or inciting pressures of determiners. A humanistic psychologist, like one’s less humanistic colleague, is concerned to identify factors that affect being’s experience and action; but one’s aim is not to render the being predictable to, and controllable by, somebody else. Rather, one’s aim is to understand how determining variables function in order that a being might be liberated from their impact as on pursues one’s own free projects. Ultimately, we come to know something of somebody if that being shows itself to us. If we are dealing with stones, animals, stars, or scientific experiments, the problem of knowing calls first for making contact with the object of study, then devising means of getting it to disclose its mysteries. Natural scientists have shown incredible ingenuity at this task. They have devised gadgets that reveal previously inaccessible accepts of the being of all kinds of phenomena: X-rays, telescopes and microscopes, transducers, and recorders of light, sound, and movement. Technological equipment has enabled scientists to find answers to questions they pose about being of things, objects, and processes in the World. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
To know the being of human is a different problem. Existentialists have said that humans are the beings whose being is in question, not fixed. Human choose their projects and thereby produce their own being. One chooses one’s way in the World, and upon how one has chosen to be will depend the aspects of one’s being that one will show to anyone who happens to be looking. One choice open to the individual is whether one will show oneself at all or whether one will choose to hide in a cave. Another option is whether one will aim to reveal one’s experience, one’s “being-for-oneself” to another person, or whether one will seek to conceal and misrepresent it. If a being chooses to be fully known, one will show oneself freely to another being, in all possible ways. One’s behavior, which is the “outside” of one’s being-for-oneself (one’s experience), is unintelligible, however, unless one provides the observer with the key. Behavior is actually a code, or better, a cipher, analogous to Etruscan writing or Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is the embodiment of a meaning assigned to it by the one who behaves. The observer can guess at this meaning, but the key rests with the behaver oneself. For one, the behavior carries out one’s intentions, one’s goals, one’s projects. It is the goal of the action that gives meaning to the action. Yet it is precisely aims and goals that people tend most strongly to conceal from others, fearing that if the intentions were known, the other person might interfere. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
Machiavelli knew intentions could be manipulated when he advised his Prince to conceal his ultimate aims from his subjects. They were to be kept mystified. People will disclose their aims and the ways they construe the World only to those whom they have reason to trust. Without trust and goodwill, a person will conceal or misrepresent one’s experience, hoping thus to mystify the other and to get one to misconstrue the action that is visible. Suppose a young man is attracted to a pretty young lady. At first, she is indifferent to his display of manly charms. He then tries to change her experience of him, in the hope that she will ultimately change her behavior toward him. What one does before her is the expression of his intent: “I want her to tumble for me.” However, he does not directly say this to her. If he did, it might frighten her away. Instead, he pretends he has no such wishes. He tries to appear as the kind of young man in whose physical presence she will want to stay. Once he wins her attention, he may start the next stage of his secret project. He will speak of jazz and Bach, philosophy and baseball. Then, he may remark about her lovely complexion and hair. His hand, apparently by accident, brushes against her shoulder; and she does not pull away. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
Next, the young man will suggest they go somewhere for a drink. There, he invites her to tell about herself; and he seems to listen to every word with rapt attention. If a third person watched this relationship develop, one would infer that the young man is “on the make.” This might be a possible meaning one could make of the sequence of one’s acts. Suppose the third person asks the young man point-blank, “Are you trying to seduce this young lady?” The young man would probably deny such crass motivation. If he denies it, then his behavior, no matter how accurately it has been observed and recorded, is at odds with his words. It only becomes intelligible when he reveals his intention. Without this disclosure, we have only a string of responses that could mean anything. If we wish to understand the action, we must know what it means to him. Viewed from an abstract perspective, this encounter between the boy and the girls is a mystifying one. He tries to mislead her as to his intentions. He is “one the make,” and he tries to manipulate her experience and action so that she will behave in the service of his goals, not her own. When a person is thus “on the make,” one will show aspects of oneself that aim at persuading or influencing the other. The other person has been reduced from the status of a person to the status of an object, a manipulandum, something to be used if it is useful and neutralized or changed if it is not. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
History in itself is nothing but applied psychology. Hence we must look to theoretical psychology to give us the clew to its true interpretation. Humans want what all organisms want: continuing experience, self—perpetuation as a living being. However, humans have a conscious that their lives come to an end here on Earth; and so they have to devise another way to continue their self-perpetuation, a way of transcending the World of flesh and blood, which is a perishable one. This they did by fixing on a World which was not perishable, by devising an invisible-project that would assure their immortality in a spiritual rather than physical way. This way of looking at things gives beings a direct key to the unlocking of history. We can see that what people want in any epoch is a way of transcending their physical fate, they want to guarantee some kind of indefinite duration, and culture provides them with the necessary immortality symbols or ideologies; societies can be seen as structure of immortality power. Life all boils down to the principle of immortality striving. It is a universal principle firmly anchored in each individual person, no matter who one is; it is present in each culture, no matter how varied its beliefs might seem, or how much humankind itself seems to change from epoch to epoch. Beliefs are not fixed and final realities; they vary from period to period, from one social form to another. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
What is fixed is the principle of a dominant immortality-ideology. In each historical period or social group, beings thought that they lived absolute truth because one’s social life gave expression to one’s deepest innate hunger. Every conflict over truth is in the last analysis just the same old struggle over immortality. If anyone doubts this, let one try to explain in any other way the life-and-death viciousness of all ideological disputes. Each person nourishes one’s immortality in the ideology of self-perpetuation to which one gives one’s allegiance; this gives one’s life the only abiding significance it can have. No wonder beings go into a rage over fine points of belief: if your adversay wins the argument about truth, you die. Your immortality system has been shown to be fallible, your life becomes fallible. History, then, can be understood as the succession of ideologies that console for death. Or, more momentously, all cultural forms are in essence sacred because they seek the perpetuation and redemption of the individual life. Culture means that which is supernatural; all culture has the basic mandate to transcend the physical, to permanently transcend it. All human ideologies, then, are affairs that deal directly with the sacredness of the individual or the group life, whether it seems that way or not, whether they admit it or not, whether the person knows it oneself or not. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
What does history look like viewed from this angle? We already have seen what the primitive World looked like. It was characterized by archaic beings and they attained immortality by assimilation into the fund of ancestral souls, out of which comes each generation and into which they return. This eternal cycle of rebirth was self-renewing if helped with the proper communal rituals. The group, then, guaranteed its own self-perpetuation. Its duty was to strengthen the life force by fulfilling ritual obligations. The group alone conferred immortality—which is why the individual immersed oneself so completely it its ideology, and why duty took precedence over everything else. Only in this way can we understand the willing self-denials of beings in society; one accepts the social limitations on one’s appetite of all, the hunger for the continuation of life. Why would human being put infants through the torture of lip plug, subject themselves to circumcisions and repeated subincisions, perforated nasal septums, neck rings, holes in the tongue, torn flesh, joint, muscles—why would they even willingly die—if not for the ultimate stake: immortality, the triumph over the extinction of the body and its insignificance. Humans were willing to barter their bodies for higher spiritual values, for more life, and it was abandoned, not because of fear of the fathers, but ironically because of love of life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
Besides, if the individual is willing to renounce life, to shrink back from it in order to preserve, then one would also need society to map out safe pleasures of the flesh for them. Primitive social organization did not so much restrict the individual pleasures of the flesh as actually make it possible for one to have pleasure of the flesh in that that one had already been neurotically ready to sacrifice for the same of one’s personal immortality. The primitive beings embraced the institution of kingship because it was equated with prosperity; from the beginning beings renounced some dimensions of life in order to open up others, and this is what made it easy for monolithic historical structures of power to take shape and to choke out life still more. All that these new structures had t do was to promise the same immortality, only now in different forms. The challenges you face in your own life experience will be trying to say the least. You may suffer through circumstances that make it seems as if the structure of your life has been hit with a freight train. All hope, and light will be restored as your faith grows. It is a great work that must become the focus. Do not be distracted by the torment. Do the work you know you need to do. This is to seek the face of God within. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Realize that all you view as you is nothing but an imposed definition of what society thinks you should be. It has nothing to do with your eternal self. What is being destroyed are merely the attachments and social predispositions that act as anchors for your personal weaknesses and limitations. Utilize the power gained through the exploration of your soul to hardness your will. This will ignite the divine light within. This will empower you beyond your imagination. You have made it this far. Do not stop a block before the finish line. It may seem impossible, but it is not. The wise do not make invidious comparisons between the great Prophets of God. Only the unenlightened attempt to show that one ranks higher than another in ethical reach. Such do not know that the teachers who give out religion to a people or race always consider the circumstances and mentality of the people before preaching their new doctrine. What is not releveled or taught is kept back because it is not needed at the time, never because it is unknown. If some enlightened souls are given a mission to stir the World to higher ideals, others feel no such duty and remain quiescent or even saturninely. “God presides in the great assembly; he gives judgment among the gods,” reports Psalm 81.1. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
The Challenges You Face in Your Own Life Experience Will be Trying, to Say the Least, for it Has a Glory and Naught Else Can Share it!
I have guest here! Where exactly did you come from? It is once in a blue Moon a boat ties up at my dock. However, you are most welcome. We are very private here, you understand, I cannot invite you to stay. But these are all golden dreams. On, tell me, who was it first announced, who was it first proclaimed, that beings only do nasty things because one does not know one’s own interests; and that if one were enlightened, if one’s eyes were opened to one’s real normal interests, beings would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding one’s real advantage, one would see one’s own advantage in the good and nothing else, and we all know that not one being can, consciously, act against one’s own interests, consequently, so to say, through necessity, one would begin doing good? Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child! Why, in the first place, when in all these thousands of years has there been a time when beings have acted only from their own interest? What is to be done with the millions of facts that bear witness that beings, consciously, that is, fully understanding their real interest, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were, simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, willfully, struck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it almost in the darkness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
So, I suppose, this obstinacy and perversity were pleasanter to them than any advantage…Advantage! What is advantage? And will you take it upon yourself to define with perfect accuracy in what the advantage of beings consists? And what, if it so happens that a being’s advantage, sometimes, not only may, but even must, consist in one’s desiring in certain cases what is harmful to oneself and not advantageous. And if so, there can be such a case, the whole principle falls into dust. What do you think—are there such cases? You laugh; laugh away gentlemen, but only answer me: have being’s advantages been reckoned up with perfect certainty? Are there not some which not only have been included but cannot possibly be included under any classification? You see, you gentlemen and ladies have, to the best of my knowledge, taken your whole register of human advantages from the averages of statistical figures and political-economical formulas. Your advantages are prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace—and so on, and so on. So that the being who should, for instance, go openly and knowingly in opposition to all that list would, to your thinking, and indeed mine too, of course, be an obscurantist or an absolute mad person: would not one be? However, you know, this is what is surprising: when they reckon up human advantages, why does it so happen that all these statisticians, sages, and lovers of humanity invariably leave out one? #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
They do not even take it into their reckoning in the form in which it should be taken and the whole reckoning depends upon that. It would be no great matter, they would simply have to take it, this advantage, and add it to the list. However, the trouble is, that this strange advantage does not fall under any classification and is not in place in any list. I have a friend for instance…Ech! Gentlemen and ladies, but of course he is your friend, too; and indeed there is no one, no one, to whom he is not a friend! When he prepares for any undertaking this gentleman immediately explains to you, elegantly and clearly, exactly how he must act in accordance with the laws of reason and truth. What is more, he will talk to you with excitement and passion of the true normal interest of humans; with irony he will upbraid the short-sighted fools who do not understand their own interests, nor the true significance of virtue; and, within a quarter of an hour, without any sudden outside provocation, but simply through something inside one which is stronger than all one’s interests, one will go off on quite a different track—that is, act in direct opposition to what one just been saying about oneself, in opposition to the laws of reason, in opposition to one’s own advantage—in fact, in opposition to everything…I warn you that my friend is a compound personality, and therefore it is difficult to blame him as an individual. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The fact is, gentlemen and ladies, it seems there must really exist something that is dearer to almost every being than one’s greatest advantages, or (not to be illogical) there is a most advantageous advantage (the very one omitted of which we spoke just now) which is more important and more advantageous than all other advantages, for the sake of which a being if necessary is ready to act in opposition to all laws; that is, in opposition to reason, honour, peace, prosperity—in fact, in opposition to all those excellent and useful things if only one can attain that fundamental, most advantageous advantage which is dearer to him than all. “Yes, but it is advantage all the same” you will retort. However, excuse me, I will make the point clear, and it is not a case of playing upon words. What matters is, that this advantage is remarkable from the very fact that it breaks down all our classifications, and continually shatters every system constructed by lovers of humankind for the benefit of humankind. In fact, it upsets everything. However, before I mention this advantage to you, I want to compromise myself personally, and therefore I boldly declare that all these fine systems—all these theories for explaining to humankind their real normal interests, in order that inevitably striving to pursue these interests they may at once become good and noble—are, in my opinion, so far, mere logical exercises! Yes, logical exercises. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Why, to maintain this theory of the regeneration of humankind by means of the pursuit of one’s own advantage is to my mind almost the same thing as…as to affirm, for instance, following Buckle, that through civilization humankind becomes softer, and consequently less bloodthirsty, and less fitted for warfare. Logically it does not seem to follow from one’s arguments. However, beings have such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that one is ready to distort the truth intentionally, one is ready to deny the evidence of one’s senses only to justify one’s logic. I take this example because it is the most glaring instance of it. Only look about you: blood is being spilt in streams, and in the merriest ways, as though it were champagne. Take the whole of the nineteenth century in which Buckle lived. Take Napoleon—the Great and also the present one. Take North America—the eternal union. Take the farce of Schleswig-Holstein…And what is it that civilization softens in us? The only gain of civilization for humankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations—and absolutely noting more. And through the development of this many-sidedness beings may come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed. In fact, this has already happened to them. Have you noticed that it is the most civilized gentlemen who have been the subtlest slaughterers, to whom the Attilas and Stenka Razins could not hold a candle, and if they are not so conspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka Razins it is simply because they are so often met with, are so ordinary and have become so familiar to us. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
In any case civilization has made humankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely blood-thirsty. In old days one saw justice in bloodshed and with one’s conscience at peace exterminated those one thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves. They say that Cleopatra (excuse an instance from Roman history) was fond of sticking gold pins into her slave-girls breasts and derived gratification from their screams and writhings. You will say that that was in the comparatively barbarous times; that these barbarous times too, because also, comparatively speaking, pins are stuck in even now; that though beings have now learned to see more clearly than in barbarous ages, one is still far from having learnt to act as reason and science would dictate. However, yet you are fully convinced that one will be sure to learn when one gets rid of certain old bad habits, and when common sense and science have completely re-educated human nature and turned it in a normal direction. You are confident that then beings will cease from intentional error and will, so to say, be compelled not to want to set one’s will against one’s normal interests. That is not all; then, you say, science itself will teach beings (through to my mind it is a superfluous luxury) that one never has really had any caprice or will of one’s own, and that one is something of nature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ, an that there are, besides, things called the laws of nature; so that everything one doe is not done by one’s willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of nature. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and beings will no longer have to answer for their actions and life will become exceedingly easy for one. All human actions will then, of course, be tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of logarithms up to 108,000, and entered in an index; or, better still, there would be published certain edifying works of the nature of encyclopedic lexicons, in which everything will be so clearly calculated and explained that there will be no more incidents or adventures in the World. Then—this is all what you say—new economic relations will be established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the “Palace of Crystal” will be built. Then…In fact, those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then (for what will one have to do when everything will be calculated and tabulated?), but on the other hand everything will be extraordinarily rational. Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then. Beings are stupid, but one is so ungrateful that you could not find another like one in all creation. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
I, for instance, if all of a sudden, apropos of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and putting his arms akimbo, say to us all: “I say, gentlemen, had not we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to sent these logarithms to the devil and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!”, I would not be in the least surprised. That again would not matter; but what is annoying is that one would be sure to find followers—such is the nature of beings. And all that for the most foolish reason, which, one would think, was hardly worth mentioning: that is, that beings everywhere and at all times, whoever one may be, has preferred to act as one chose and not in the least as one’s reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests, and sometimes one absolutely ought (that is my idea). One’s own free unfettered choice, one’s own caprice—however wild it may be, one’s own fancy worked up at times to frenzy—is that very “most advantageous advantage” which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that beings want a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that beings must want a rationally advantageous choice? #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
What beings want is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice. For some time now I have been talking to people who have served as subjects (Ss) in psychologists’ experiments. They have told me of their experience, and it has troubled me. I want to share my concern with my colleagues. The letter that follows is my effort to consolidate the attitudes and feelings of the people to whom I talked. Dear E (Experimenter): My name is S. You do not know me. I have another name my friends call me by, but I drop it, and become S number 27 as soon as I take part in your research. I serve in your surveys and experiments. I answer your questions, fill out questionnaires, let you wire me up to various machines that record my physiological reactions. I pull levers, flip switches, track moving targets, trace mazes, learn nonsense syllables, tell you what I see in inkblots—do the whole barrage of things you ask me to do. I have started to wonder why I do these things for you. What is in it for me? Sometimes you pay me to serve. More often I have to serve, because I am a student in a beginning psychology course, and I am told that I will not receive a grade unless I take part in at least two studies; and if I take part in more, I will get extra points on the final exam. I am part of the Department’s “subject-pool.” When I have asked you what I will get out of your studies, you tell me that, “It is for Science.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
When you are running someone particular study, you often lie to me about your purpose. You mislead me. It is getting so I find it difficult to trust you. I am beginning to see you as a trickster, a manipulator. I do not like it. In fact, I lie to you a lot of the time, even on anonymous questionnaires. When I do not lie, I will sometimes just answer at random, anything to get through with the hour, and back to my own affairs. Then, too, I can often figure out just what it is you are trying to do, what you would like me to day or do; at those times, I decide to go along with your wishes if I like you, or foul you up if I do not. You do not actually say what your hopes or hypotheses are; but the very setup in your laboratory, the alternatives you give me, the instruction you offer, all work together to pressure me to day or do something in particular. It is as if you are whispering in my ear, “When the light comes on, pull the left switch,” and then you forget to deny that you have whispered. However, I get the message. And I pull the right or the left one, depending on how I feel toward you. You know, even when you are not in the room—wen you are just the printed instructions on the questionnaire or the voice on the tape recorder that tells me what I am supposed to do—I wonder about you. I wonder who you are, what you are really up to. I wonder what you are going to do with the “behavior” I give you. Who are you going to show my answers to? Who is going to see the marks I leave on your response-recorders? #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
Do you have any interest at all in what I think, feel, and imagine as I make the marks you are so eager to study and analyze? Certainly, you never ask me what I mean by them. If you asked, I would be glad to tell you. As a matter of fact, I do tell my roommate or my girl friend what I thought your experiment was about and what I meant when I did what I did. If my roommate could trust you, he could probably give you a better idea of what your data (my answers and responses) mean than the idea you presently have. God knows how much good psychology has gone down the drain, when my roommate and I discuss your experiment and my part in it, at the beer-joint. As a matter of fact, I am getting pretty tried of being S. It is too much like being a punched IBM card in the University registrar’s office. I feel myself being pressured, bulldozed, tricked, manipulated every where I turn. Advertisements in magazines and commercials on TV, political speeches, salesmen, and con men of all kinds put pressure on me to get me to buy, say, or do things that I suspect are not for my good at all. Just for their good, the good of their pocketbooks. Do you sell your “expert knowledge” about me to these people? Is this why you keep reviewing my case every month for four years and then sending the packets all over the Untied States of America? Is this why you are asking third parties to fill out forms my condition that my health information privacy rights, and then what I tell you is leaked all over the World? If that is true, then you are really not in good faith with me. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
You have told me that when I show myself to you and let you study me, that in the long run it will be for my good. I am not convinced. You really seem to be studying me in order to learn how to influence my attitudes and my actions without realizing it. I resent this more than you realize. It is not fair for you to get me to show how I can be influenced and then for you to pass this information along to people who pay your salary or pay your bribes, or give you money to equip your laboratory, and then not acknowledge there is a data breach of my information, which you are responsible and can be held civically and legally responsible for. I do not like that you put my life in danger. I do not like that you are a threat to my health and safety. I feel used, like a science experiment, and I do not like it. However, I protect myself by not showing you my whole self or by lying. Did you ever stop to think that your articles, and the textbooks you write, the theories you spin—all based on your data (my disclosures to you)—may actually be a tissue of lies and half-truths (my lies and half-truths) or a joke I have played on you because I do not like you or trust you? That should give you cause for some concern. Now look, Mr. E, I am not “paranoid,” as you might say. Nor an I stupid. And I do believe some good can come out of my serving in your research. Even some good for me. I am not entirely selfish, and I would be glad to offer myself up for study, to help others. However, somethings have to change first. Will you listen to me? Here is what I would like from your researchers: #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
I would like you to help me gain a better understanding of what has made me the way I am today. I would like to know this because I want to be more free than I feel. I would like to discover more of my own potentialities. I would like to be more whole, more courageous, more enlightened. I would like to be able to experience more, learn better, remember better, and express myself more fully. I would like to learn how to recognize and overcome the pressures of other people’s influences, of my background, that interfere with my going in the paths I choose. Now, if you would promise to help me in these ways, I would gladly come into your lab and virtually strip my body and soul naked. I would be there meaning to show you everything I could that was relevant to your particular interest of the moment. And I can assure you, that is different from what I have been showing you thus far, which is as little as I can. In fact, I cross my fingers when I am in your lab, and say to myself, “What I have just said or done here is not me.” Would not you like to change? Can you handle my truth, the full truth? Do you even really know what you are investigating? If you will trust me, I will trust you, if you are trustworthy. I would like you to take the time and trouble to get acquainted with me as a person, before we go through your experimental procedures. And I would like to get to know you and what you are up to, to see if I would like to expose myself to you. Can you imagine your body being violated by strangers you never met without your consent? #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Sometime, you remind me of physicians. They look at me as the unimportant envelope that conceals the information they are really interested in. You have looked at me as the unimportant package that contains “responses,” and this is all I am for you. Let me tell you that when I feel this, I get back at you. I give your responses, all right; but you will never know what I meant by them. You know, I can speak, not just with words, but with my action. And when you have thought I was rending to a “stimulus” in your lab, my response was really directed at you; and what I meant by it was, “Take this, you unpleasant so-and-so.” Does that surprise you? It should not. Another ting. Those tests of yours that have built-in gimmicks to see if I am being consistent, or deliberately lying, or just answering at random—they do not feel me. Actually, if you would get on level with me, they would not be necessary. There are enough con men and women in the World, without your joining their number. I would hope that psychologist would be more trustworthy than politicians or salesmen. I will make a bargain with you. You show me that you are doing your research for me—to help me become freer, more self-understanding, better able to control myself—and I will make myself available to you in any way you ask. And I will not play jokes and tricks on you. I do not want to be controlled, not by your or anyone else. And I do not want to control other people. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
I do not want you to help other people to understand how I am or can be “controlled,” so that they can then control me. Show me that you are for me, and I will show myself to you. You work for me, Mr. E, and I will truly work for you. Between us, we may produce a psychology that is more authentic and more liberating. Some lead an austere life and emaciate themselves; some give clear instructions to their disciples; some rule kingdoms quite justly and rightly; some openly hold disputations with other schools of thought; some write down their teachings and experiences; others simulate ignorance; a few do even responsible actions; but all these are famous as wise beings in the World. Some of the enlightened ones sit as recluses in prayer, others travel and preach, still others create centers where they teach, a fourth class heal the sick, and a fifth write. Each does what one’s tendency or mission dictates. The sage may sit under a village tree, head an ashram, or live as a sequestered hermit. One may also live in a luxurious palace, head a business organization, or farm land. These things are not the point, which is one’s consciousness of divine presence. The World, its pleasures and treasures, does not deceive one: one sees through its values even if one is active in the midst of it. These powers will seep into the physical plane by drawing upon the power of the ley lines as well as the power hidden within nature. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Turning the cord inside our represents backward knowledge and the passage of the consciousness from the limited confines of the body into the other Worlds unseen by the masses. This is to gain the power to move though Worlds to create change within this realm of illusory limits, to make things easy. To help fuel and facilitate the process of soul introspection and open up psychic vision while also providing a more internal endurance needed to face this World. Understand that you are in control. Negative energy that attacks you in this realm are gnats to be swatted, despite how others may be tormented by them. They are reflections of their fear, not yours and you do not have to have anything to do with such folly. The infernal forces will gain momentum in the direction of becoming your allies in creation. Oppressive circumstance that may be experienced here becomes tension to be harnessed and mastered for your own liberation. It becomes a tool within your toolbox of becoming. Like all of these realms it is your will and personal power which can liberate you. Ground this power by investing time in the corporeal plane toward consciously applying effort toward ascent and personal evolution. Look for obstacles to overcome for the sake of overcoming them alone. Do hard thing. Become superior. Work harder, exercise harder, pray longer. Run until you sweat and keep running. Push yourself to the Heavenly extremes until it hurts. Then keep moving through the torment to further connect to the powers of Heaven so you can access them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
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Is Life Only a Stream of Random Events Following One Another Haphazardly? Or is there an Order, a Meaning, a Purpose Behind it All?
You do not know the meaning of philosophical insight, or spiritual engagement, or true growth. People struggle to instill in their children some private sense of honor or dignity which will help the child survive. This means, of course, that they must struggle, stolidly, incessantly, to keep this sense alive in themselves, in spite of the insults, the indifferences, and the cruelty they are certain to encounter in their working day. They patiently browbeat the landlord into fixing the heat, the plaster, the plumbing; this demands prodigious patients; nor is patience usually enough. In trying to make their hovels habitable, they are perpetually throwing good money after bad. Such frustration, so long endured, is driving many strong, admirable men and woman whose only crimes is their culture or lack of affluence to the very gate of paranoia. One remembers them from another time—playing handball in the playground, going to church, wondering if they were going to be promoted at school. One remembers their wedding day. And one sees where the girl is now—vainly looking for salvation from some other embittered, trussed, and struggling boy—and sees the all-but-abandoned children in the streets. A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Ignoring the less fortunate or making fun of them is no one to justify one’s own crimes. This perpetual justification empties the heart of all human feeling. The emptier our hearts become, the greater will be our crimes. The country will not change until it re-examines itself and discovers what it really means by freedom. In the meantime, generations keep being born, bitterness is increased by incompetence, pride, and folly, and the World shrinks around us. It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own: in the face of one’s victim, one sees oneself. Walk through the streets of America and see what we, this nation, have becomes. You can see that the whole force of social sanction would fall behind the king to protect one’s definitions of social custom and his ritual prerogatives; otherwise the tribe would lose well-being and life. We might say that the safeguarding of custom imposes tyranny because of the need for the king or queen’s power. The more successful a king or queen, the more prerogatives one could enjoy: one was judged by results. If the harvest (or economy) were good the people were prepared to put up with a moderate amount of tyranny. Protection of custom and criminal jurisdiction go together so naturally, then, that we should not wonder that ritual centralization also came to mean control of the power to punish. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Another large step in the evolution of inequality seems to me to be summed up here. To us a police force is part of life, as inevitable, it seems, as death and taxes; we rely on the police to punish those who hurt us. However, it has not always been so. In simple egalitarian societies there is no police force, no way to settle a wrong except to do so yourself, family against family. However, if there is no police force to enforce the law, there is also none to coerce you for any reason. You have to stay alert, but you are also freer. A police force is usually drawn up temporarily for special occasions and then disbanded. However, the result, alas, is not as innocent as it must have seemed to people living during these transitions. What they were doing was bartering away social equality and a measure of personal independence for prosperity and order. There was now noting to stop the state from taking more and more functions and prerogatives into itself, from developing a class of special begins at the center and inferior ones around it, or from beginning to give these special beings a larger share of the good things of the Earth. What we see is that private interests became more and more separated from public interests—until today we hardly know what is public interest. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
Students who look for the point at which economic activity and social morality begin to pull apart usually focus on the potlatch: it was evidently around the process of redistribution that gift giving gradually changed into grabbing and keeping. As the power figures got more and more ascendancy vis-à-vis the group, y could take a fixed portion of the surplus with the involvement of the people. And this is what we are seeing in California, a state that boasts about have a $21 billion budget surplus, but also has the highest taxes, an affordable housing crisis, and a huge homeless population. The classic potlatch was a redistribution ceremonial pure and simple. The object was to humiliate rivals, to stand out as tall as possible as a big person, a hero. At the same time, the grander was the expiation before the community and the gods to whom the goods were offered. Both the individual urge to maximum self-feeling and the community well-being were served. The chiefs became the principal takers and destroyers of goods. In this was a feudal structure could naturally develop. Another suggestive way of looking at this development is to see it as a shift of the balance of power, away from a dependence on the invisible World of the gods to a flaunting of the visible World of things. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Again, it is only natural that once the god became visible in the person of the king or queen, one’s powers became those of this World—visible, temporal powers in the place of invisible, eternal ones. One would come to measure one’s power by the piles of things one actually possessed, by the glory of one’s person, and not, as before, by the efficiency of the ritual technics for the renewal of nature. Keep in mind that it is entirely for the seeker to set one’s own rate of progress. Even the being who is interested only in theoretical discussion thereby, and to that extent, promotes one’s own good. If through inclination or circumstances one prefers to let one’s aspirations remain only at the level of reading and discussion, that at lest is better than being entirely uninterested in them. It will be for one to decide whether to endeavour to obtain the fullest realization of one’s aspirations in practical life. There is room for both classes on this Quest. One should not be discouraged because others have gone ahead on the path more quickly than one, any more than one should be gratified because some have gone ahead more slowly than one, for the fact is that the goal one seeks is already within one’s grasp. One is the Overself that one seeks to unite with, and the time it seems to take to realize this is itself an illusion of the mind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Let one, therefore, go forward at one’s own rate and within the limits of one’s own strength, leaving the result in the hands of God. If one imposes on themselves an impossible ideal, an unattainable standard, they must expect the sense of frustration that will overtake them later. It is better an aspirant should know one’s limitations now than that, filing to do so, one should know tragic disappointments and unutterable despair later. It is better in such a case that one should realize that one is engaged on a long search whose end one cannot reach in this incarnation. How can the naïve inexperienced beginner fail to commit errors and neglect precautions; how can one not be deceived by one’s own imaginations or puzzled by the contradictions and paradoxes which best this path? The newly awakened aspirant should search for clues without losing one’s balance or overreaching new enthusiasm. Of what use is it to reproach oneself again and again for being what one is? How could one have been otherwise, given one’s heredity, environment and history? If I complain I have no will of my own, that people are influencing me in subtle and mysterious ways, you will accuse me of being paranoid and direct me to a psychotherapist. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
If I put on a white laboratory coat, and assert that you have no will f your own, that your action and experience can be manipulated, predicted, and controlled, then I am recognized as a scientific psychologist, and honored. This is most peculiar. A revolution is going on in psychology. A different image of humans is being tried as a guide to research, theory, and application. Over years, theorists have conceptualized humans as machines; as an organism comparable to rates, pigeons, and monkeys; as a communication system; as an hydraulic system; as a servo-mechanism; as a computer—in short, one has been viewed by psychologist as an analogue of everything but what one is: a person. Humans are, indeed, like all those things; but first of all they are a free, intentional subject. The consumers of psychological writing tended to take our models too seriously and actually started to treat people as if they were the modes that theorists used only as tentative guides to inquiry. However, no, psychologist are using their experience of themselves as persons as a guide to exploring and understanding the experience of others. This is not the death of “objective,” scientific psychology. Rather, it may prove to be the birth of a scientifically informed psychology of human persons—a humanistic psychology. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
Humanistic psychology is a goal, not a doctrine. It owns its renaissance to the growing conviction that current and past approaches to the study of humans have reached their limits in elucidating human’s behavior and their “essence.” It is a growing corpus of knowledge relating to the questions, “What is a human being, and what might humans become?” Thus, humanistic psychology can be regarded in analogy with industrial psychology or the psychology of mental health or of advertising. These specialties are systems of knowledge bearing on particular families of questions: for instance, what variables affect morale, or the output of the workers, or the maintenance of wellness, or the purchasing behavior of potential customers. Humanistic psychology asks, “What are the possibilities of humans? And from among these possibilities, what is optimum human, and what conditions most probably account for one’s attainment and maintenance of these optima? If psychologist aim to predict and control human behavior and experience, as in their textbooks they claim, they are assigning humans to the same ontological status as weather, stars, minerals, or lower forms of animal life. We do not question anyone’s right to seek understanding in order to better control one’s physical environment and adapt it to one’s purposes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
We properly challenge any human’s right to control the behavior and experience of one’s fellows. To the extent that psychologist illumine human existence to bring it under the deliberate control of someone other than the person one’s self, to that extent they are helping to undermine some person’s freedom in order to enlarge the freedom of someone else. If psychologist reveal knowledge of “determiners” of human conduct to people other than the ones from who they obtained this understanding, and if they conceal this knowledge from its source, the volunteer subjects (who have offered themselves up to the scientist’s “Look”), they put the recipients of the knowledge in a privileged position. They grant them an opportunity to manipulate beings without their knowledge or consent. Thus, advertisers, business people, military leaders, politicians, the new media al seek to learn more about the determiners of human conduct, in order to gain power and advantage. If they can sway human behavior by manipulating the conditions which mediate it, they can get large numbers of people to forfeit their own interests and serve the interests of the manipulator. Only if the ones being manipulated are kept mystified as to what is going on, and if their experience of their own freedom is blunted, such secret manipulation of the masses or of an individual by some other person is possible. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Psychologist face a choice. We may elect to continue to treat our people as objects of a study for the benefit of some elite; or we may choose to learn about determiners of the human conditions in order to discover ways to overcome or subvert them, so as to enlarge the person—that is, everyone’s—freedom. If we opt for the latter, our path is clear. Our ways of conducting psychological research will have to be altered. Our definition of the purpose of psychology will have to change. And our ways of reporting our findings, as well as the audiences to whom the reports are directed, will have to change. We shall have to state openly whether we are psychologists-for-institutions or psychologists-for-person. The trouble with scientific psychologists is that many have, in a sense, been “bought” by the court, the media, and businesses to represent their agenda. We have in our hands the incredible power to discover conditions for behavior or for ways of being in the World. We have catalogued of the factors which have a determining effect on human behavior and on our condition. We know that, in every experiment that we analyze, there is always an error term, “residual variance”; and we seek to exhaust this residual variance to the best of our ability. We get better at it as we learn how to identify and measure more and more relevant variables. The trouble is, as I see it, that if we exhaust all the variance, the subjects of our study will be not a being, a human person, but rather a robot. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Scientific psychology has actually sought means of artificially reducing variance—humanness—among beings, so that they will be more manipulable. Our commendable efforts (from technical viewpoint) in the fields of human engineering, teaching methods, motivation research (in advertising), and salesmanship have permitted practitioners in those realms to develop stereotyped methods that work at controlling outcomes—outcomes that are good for business or political, but necessarily good for the victim. We have taught people how to shape humans into a way of being that makes them useful. We have forgotten that an image of humans as useful grows out of a more fundamental image of humans as the being who can assume many modes of being, when it is of importance to one to do so. I think that a scientific psychologist committed to the aims of humanistic psychology would utilize one’s talents for a different purpose. For example, if individuality and full flowering growth as a person were values, one would seek means of maximizing or increasing the odds for maximization of these ways of being. An example of the biased use of scientific know-how is brainwashing. The brainwasher, through scientific means, seeks to insure that the prisoner will behave and believe as one’s captors wish. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
The same psychologist who invented the means of brainwashing know how to prevent it from happening. The latter class of knowledge is more in keeping with the aims of humanistic psychology and should be more avidly sought and then applied in more realms than presently is the case, if the humanistic psychology is to be furthered. Learning about human nature is to create change in our lives. Since the beginnings of recorded history, we have been enslaved over gold and other resources. Psychology is supposed to defile the intentions of this desire to enslave. We must learn to gain the power to move through Worlds to create change within this realm of illusory limits. To make things simple and easy. The mental stress of this plane of existence can cause madness as one observes the chaos within the collective consciousness and the effects that it has upon the collective corporeal life experience. This realm can be an accumulation of negative and useless mental garbage which is an abomination to the potential of human mental faculties and the inherent potential of the mind. How odd it seems that psychology has learned more about humans at their worst than at their best. How sad it seems that psychology has employed its powers of truth-finding to serve ignoble masters. I would like to propose that we do not wait until the scarcity of “full-functioning beings” becomes a national emergency. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Rather, I would propose that we psychologist reconcile our aims and commitment to truth and our adherence to the canons of scientific inquiry with our human concerns that beings be free, that they grow. I propose that we commence an all-out program of investigation on many fronts to seek answers to the questions humanistic psychology is posing. For example, we need psychologist with the most informed imaginations and talent for ingenious experimentation to wrestle with such questions as, “What are the outer limits of human potential for transcending biological pressures, social pressures, and the impact on a person of one’s past conditioning?”; “What developmental and interpersonal and situational conditions conduce to courage, creativity, transcendent behavior, love, laughter, commitment to truth, beauty, justice, and virtue?” These questions themselves, and even my proposal that we address them, once struck me as less than manly, as tender-hearted and sentimental. I would never have dared pose them to mist of my mentors during my undergraduate and graduate-student says. We are supposed to be tough and disciplined, which meant that we were only to study questions about some very limited class of behavior, not questions about the larger human concerns. “Leave those to the philosophers, minister, and politicians,” we are told. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Questions about the image of humans smacked too much of philosophy and were not our proper concern. Actually, our teacher intended only that we learn the tools of our trade, not that we stifle our humanistic concerns; but they produced that outcome anyway. I am making a plea for the powers of rigorous inquiry to be devoted to questions, answers to which will inform a growing, more viable image of beings as human being with potentiality, not solely biological or socially determined being. Through being exposed to the mental chaos over time, one will begin to adjust to the torment of one’s experiences through personal evolution. One will develop severe empathy and will begin to perceive all of the mental weakness of those around them and all the emotional turmoil that comes alone with it. This will enable one to perceive it within one’s self in order to begin ridding oneself of it. If one can remain centered in self, one can transmute this weakness into power. It is at this point that one can utilize strength of mind and will to begin to harness and control this infernal landscape and all infernal powers which dwell within it by becoming one with it. This is the only way to be liberated from it. To ground this power within one should apply methods of personal mental control. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
When researchers are transparently pledged to further the freedom and self-actualizing of their subjects, rather than be unwitting servants of the leaders of institutions, then they will deserve to be and to be seen as recipients of the secrets of human being and possibility. I can envision a time when psychologist will be the guardians of the most intimate secrets of human possibilities and experience and possessors of knowledge as to how beings can create one’s destiny because beings have showed one; and I hope that if we “sell” these secrete to advertisers, business people, politicians, mass educators, and the military, we shall not do so until after we have informed our subjects, after we have tried to “turn them on,” to enlarge their awareness of being misled and manipulate. I hope, in short, that we turn out to be servants and guardians of individual freedom, growth, and fulfillment, and not spies for the institutions that pay our salaries and research costs in order to get a privileged peep at human grist. Indeed, we may have to function for a time as counterspies, or double spies—giving reports about our subjects to our colleagues and to institutions, and giving reports back to our subjects as to the ways in which institutions seek to control and predict their behavior for their (the institutions’) ends. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
You will begin to notice how the power of speech is indeed abused and taken for granted. You will start to perceive the vibrations of words mold the very reality which surrounds others. Our words have power and are an expression of true will and divine potential. However, words today are wasted and the power of them is therefore minimized. This minimizes our collective power as a race. Newspapers are written at a sixth grade level so that the subtle nuances and intricacies of communication cannot be learned. Slang and useless words with no meaning are prevalent. This negative energy is accumulated and manifestation of the energy of those unless words happens very fast. One must strive to become peaceful and expand beyond the voice of chaos through silence. You will adjust to the burden. At this point you can generate internal power through silence and attempt to speak order into this World and compel the infernal power which dwell here. With practice, one will become successful. As a result, your words within the physical plane will gain much more power. To ground this power, listen your conscience as it guides you in methods of harnessing the vibrations of the words of others to fuel your own power of creation. Work toward respecting the power of speech. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Respect speech as your power and speak with purpose. Invest your energy with word instead of spending it on find solace in silence. Much energy is wasted every day by the masses by investing energy into things that do not serve them. Adults spend hours a day playing video games and watching television. We get into useless power struggles for the sake of meaningless dominative purpose with powerless people. Do not become programmed to harm others, nor lie, cheat and steal through consumerism, jealousy and imposed attachments to things. That is the way to the realm of torment and slavery which seeps into the physical plane drip by drip by drip grounding us as a whole to a lower consciousness, which results in the stifling of our evolution and ascent and limits our awareness. “And they did humble themselves even in the depths of humility; and they did cry mightily to God; yea, even all the day long did they cry unto their God that he would deliver them out of their affliction,” reports Mosiah 21.13. The originality and individuality which are proofs of the prophet’s creativity will define themselves by one’s differences from other seers, even though some have drawn from one and the same MIND. These differences are inevitable and must appear. No two humans are completely alike. And having a beautiful home makes life much more enjoyable, it also helps children perform better at school and makes adults perform better at work. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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The first time Rose saw Uncle Lestan, he carried her up into the stars. That is who she remembered it and nothing ever weakened the conviction that he has scooped her up from the terrace by the seawall and carried her straight through the clouds and towards the Heavens. Rose remembered always the chill of the wind and those stars above her, millions of stars fixed in the black sky like myriad burning lights. She remembered Uncle Lestan’s arms around her, and the way he whispered to her not to be afraid, the way he brought his coat close to protect her. Mrs. Marvel was 80 and she lived alone in a new council flat. Her husband had been dead for 30 years. None of her six surviving children lived in Bethnal Green although five of her six visited her regularly once or twice a week. A married daughter lived with her until she obtained a council house outside London five years previously. Mrs. Marvel wanted to stay in the district where she had lived nearly all her life. Speaking of her former home, which was recently demolished, she said, “We went in ten and came out one.” Later she said, “I am sometimes lonely, especially as my children are away. Still, I count my blessings. They are all good children.” Mrs. Foreman had been a widow for over 30 years. She had no daughters and until twelve months previously had been living with her married son. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
Mrs. Foreman’s son has now moved to a new housing estate. Although she stayed with him every weekend she was lonely at home. “I do not like coming back here. I get the hump.” There remained 11 whose loneliness seemed to be due to other causes. All had recently experienced a marked change in their social circumstances. The husband of one and the daughter of another were in hospital, and had been there for some months. A third complained bitterly about the new council flat to which she had been moved a year previously; she was among neighbors she did not know or like and she was further from two of her relatives. Two married men were infirm and could not leave the house; both had been moved a year previously; she was further from two of her relatives. Two married men were infirm and could not leave the house; both had retired within the past three years. A married woman had experienced several drastic changes in the past few years and was ne of the most lonely of all those interviewed. As an extreme example, she is worth noting. Mrs. Austin, in her late sixties, lived in a council flat with her husband. She said she missed not having her seven children around her and that she was “very lonely. I cannot account for it all. I get so depressed.” Five of the seven had married within a space of three years and had left home one after another. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
All but two of Mrs. Austin’s children had moved to housing estates outside London or in other East London boroughs. These two lived about a mile away. One son, to whom she was particularly attached, had been killed in an accident several years previously. Soon after the children had married Mr. and Mrs. Austin had to leave their home, because it was to be demolished. “I cannot settle here. I had been over 40 years in one house. Since it is been pulled down and we have come here I have hardly spoken to my next-door neighbors. All the old neighbors have gone. You cannot go in and out like you used to.” She saw much less of her children than formerly, although her two youngest visited her twice a week and three of the others once a fortnight. Her only sister had died three years ago. Because of headaches she could no longer read and because of a fall which damaged her hand she could no longer knit. Her husband had been in ill-health for several years and was on bad terms with some of the children. Mrs. Austin had made two attempts at suicide and had recently spent six months in a mental hospital. In this example nearly all the disturbing social changes that can occur in the life of a senior had occurred. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Close relatives had died, the children had migrated, the old home and neighborhood had given up and many activities had to be abandoned because of increasing infirmity. This was desolation with a vengeance. Now to be desolate, as defined earlier, is to have been deprived recently of the companionship of someone who is loved. And the main conclusion of this analysis is that people saying they were lonely were nearly all people who had been deprived recently of the companionship of someone they loved. They were desolates and not necessarily isolates. They were isolated only in the sense that they had become isolated, relative to their previous situation. Many were not short of company. Several widowed people, in particular, lived with children and grandchildren and had many social activities. We have seen that desolation, or the loss of someone who is loved, is more important than social isolation in explaining the loneliness of seniors. Such a change may explain much more than loneliness, for it affects a person’s health and whole state of mind. The problems of the physical and mental health of senior people need to be studied against their known social condition and the sudden changes in that condition. In Bethnal Green many people talked of the drastic effects of retirement n men and of bereavement on both men and women. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Remarks about people who had just retired or who had been recently widowed suggested they had less will to live and deteriorated quickly. “He did not want to live any more.” “Men break up when they give up work. They soon go.” “He just went to pieces when she died.” “She was left all alone in the World and did not want to go on living.” “I have got nothing left to live for.” “We will not be long in following her.” These remarks deserve careful attention. They imply the possibility of sudden physical degeneration, after retirement, for men, and after bereavement, for men and women. While this is a very complex matter which cannot be discussed in detail here, three separate points seem to be worth making. The first concerns widows and widowers. The difficulties of seniors in adapting themselves to new situations are well known. It may be particularly difficult for them to adjust their lives to the fact of bereavement. This is strongly supported by what they say about loneliness. The suggestion is that the mortality rates for people widowed in old age are likely to be higher than the rates for single and married people, and even than for people, of the same age, widowed when young. Precise statistical data are not available to test this supposition. What evidence there is does not distinguish between those widowed late in life and other widowed people. However, it is certainly not in conflict with the supposition. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Mortality rates, by age and marital status, are available. These show higher death rates among seniors who are widowed people than others. There may be a number of reasons why the death rates for senior widowed people tend to be higher than those for single and married people. Some may catch the illnesses from which their husbands or wives died. On the face of it, however, the influence of recent bereavement upon the rates may be worth a careful study. The second point concerns the higher death rates for older men than for older women. The differences between men and women may not be explained entirely by biological and physiological differences. Social factors may play a significant part here too. For example, the man in Bethnal Green, on retirement, had to change virtually his whole style of living; deserted by workmates and friends and thrown back on his family, he could rarely do other than play second fiddle to his wife. On the other hand his wife, to whom the affairs of household and family had always been dominant, could usually go on to a ripe old age doing most of the thing she had always done. Sheldon observed that fewer women than men were in extreme good- or ill health and while more of them had subnormal health their hold on life was tenacious. The present limited findings, so far as they go, confirm his observation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
It is possible that the effect of retirement on men and that the security of women in job and family may contribute to the woman’s greater expectation of life. The third point in this matter of the effect of social factors upon health concerns social isolation. The trials and tribulations of senior years may be harder for isolated people to bear, because they are not sustained by family and friends. A crude hypothesis may be put forward. Those who are socially isolated in old age, particularly those with the fewest contact with relatives, tend to make greater claims on hospital and other health and social services and to die earlier than others. In old age the death rates for bachelors are higher than those for married men but lower than those for widowers. The differences between single and married women seem to be very slight, expect at the oldest ages. The subject is, however, very complex because of the influence of physical selection for married and of diseases associated with child-bearing, to say nothing of the changes in patterns of marriage. There has been a rise in marriage rates since 1939. As those who marry are lively, on average, to be in better health than the unmarried it seems that as the number of spinsters becomes progressively smaller, a higher proportion will have inferior vitality. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Recent evidence has shown that death rates of single women, relatively to married women, have increased in the last 80 years. Safer child-bearing has also contributed to the relative improvement in the death rates of married women. Even so, in a long analysis comparing the mortality of single and married women before the war the Registrar General states, “It is difficult to escape the conclusion that in the present state of society the married condition per se for women is more favorable to vitality than the single conditions at ages up to 85.” Other state concern the once-married but childless. Information has been obtained, at the registration of deaths of women who were or had at any time been married, as to whether they had had children. The number of children, and whether they were live or still-born, is not recorded. Infertility rates, derived from such information, are published from time to time. The infertility rates for older deceased widows are lower than those for older deceased married women This “unexpected” relationship, as it is described in the Statistical Review, may be due to a number of factors. One is that women with children may live longer, or may more often outlive their husbands, than childless women because the company of children helps them to keep a hold on life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
All the available information about death-rates is, however, rather scanty. None of it—so far as the writer is aware—allows any exact test of an association between death and social isolation or, more generally, any systematic study of the relation between longevity and social circumstances. Some of these speculations may deserve further inquiry. Comfort has stated that senescence is a change in the behavior of an organism with age, which leads to a decreased power of survival and adjustment. Here it is suggested that the social and especially the family circumstances of the individuals are a major determinant of the rate of decline in the power of self-adjustment and self-defense in later life. Broadly speaking there may be a marked association between each of three social factors, these being social isolation, social desolation, and retirement, and the expectation of life of seniors. Biological, physiological and health factors aside, one would expect, on the rather limited evidence from the present study, that senior women and, to a lesser extent, senior men who are at the center of a secure family live longer than those who are socially isolated or desolated, particularly the latter. Is the Quest nothing but an endless adventure and never to become a final achievement? Are its goals too high for frail humans, its exercises too difficult for feeble ones? #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
The historic fact that beings have lived who have turned life’s adventure into its achievement puts an end to pessimism. If, knowing and accepting our limitations, we object that this cannot possible be done in a single lifetime, and there will be that much less to be done in the next lifetime. When a being has the right stuff in one, all one needs is just opportunity, and nothing else. If one possesses a sufficient degree of talent plus the determination to succeed, there is no stage so humble that it cannot be made a jumping-off ground to better things. The disciple’s quest must begin with one’s own simple specific needs, not with complicated generalities. One must begin with what one is and where one is: that is the starting point. After looking at the goal, and the direction leading to it, one looks for the next step. Do not let the past hold you down. Do not let dust-laden memories keep you down. Make today a fresh day, a new beginning. One can begin this inner work with whatever capacities one has now, from wherever one is now on life’s road. There is no time that is not the right time, no place that is not the right place, no circumstances which cannot be put to use in some way. For there are lessons to be learnt everywhere, meanings to be gleaned in all experiences; spiritual tests and opportunities of the most varied kinds can be found in the most unlikely situations, the most unspiritual environments. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Time is needed to being maturity to one’s development; the years must pass before one’s understanding is complete enough to stand on its own supports. What is the task which philosophers set themselves to perform; and why do they philosophize at all? Almost every one will immediately reply: They desire to attain a conception of the frame of things which shall on the whole be more rational than that somewhat chaotic view which every one by nature carries about with one under one’s hate. However, suppose this rational conception attained, how is the philosopher to recognize it for what it is, and not let it slip through ignorance? The only answer can be that one will recognize its rationality as one recognizes everything else, by certain subjective marks with which it affects one. When one gets the marks, one may know that one has got the rationality. What, then, are the marks? A strong feeling of ease, peace, rest is one of them. The transition from a state of puzzle and perplexity to rational comprehension is fully of lively relief and pleasures. However, this relief seems to be a negative rather than a beneficial character. Shall we then say that the feeling of rationality is constituted merely by the absence of any feeling of irrationality? I think there are very good grounds for upholding such a view. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
All feeling whatever, in the light of certain recent psychological speculations, seems to depend for its physical condition not on simple discharge of nerve-currents, but on their discharge under arrest, impediment, or resistance. Just as we feel no particular pleasure when we breathe freely, but a very intense feeling of distress when the respiratory motions are prevented—so any unobstructed tendency to action discharges itself without the production of much cogitative accompaniment, and any perfectly fluent course of thought awakens but little feeling; but when the movement is inhibited, or when the thought meets with difficulties, we experience distress. It is only when the distress is upon us that we can be said to strive, to crave, or to aspire. When enjoying plenary freedom either in the way of motion or of thought, we are in a sort of anaesthetic state in which we might say with Walt Whitman, if we cared to say anything about ourselves at such times, “I am sufficient as I am.” This feeling of the sufficiency of the present moment, or its absoluteness—this absence of all need to explain it, account for it, or justify it—is what I call the Sentiment of Rationality. As soon, in short, as we are enabled from may cause whatever to think with perfect fluency, the thing we think of seems to us pro tanto rational. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Whatever modes of conceiving the cosmos facilitate this fluency, produce the sentiment of rationality. Conceived in such modes, being vouchers for itself and needs no further philosophic formulations. However, this fluency may be obtained in various ways; and first I will take up the theoretic ways. The facts of the World in their sensible diversity are always before us, but our theoretic need is that they should be conceived in a way that reduces their manifoldness to simplicity. Our pleasure at finding that a chaos of facts is the expression of a single underlying fact is like the relief of the musician at resolving a confused mass of sound into melodic or harmonic order. The simplified result is handled with far less mental effort than the original data; and a philosophic conception of nature is thus in no metaphorical sense of a labor-saving contrivance. The passion for parsimony, for economy of means in thought, is the philosophic passion par excellence; and any character or aspect of the World’s phenomena which gathers up their diversity into monotony will gratify that passion, and in the philosopher’s mind stand for that essence of things compared with which all their other determinations may by one be overlooked. More universality or extensiveness is, then, one mark which the philosopher’s conceptions must possess. Unless they apply to an enormous number of cases they will not bring one relief. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

The knowledge of things by their causes, which is often given as a definition of rational knowledge, is useless to one unless the causes converge to a minimum number, while still producing the maximum number of effects. The more multiple then are the instances, the more flowingly does one’s mind rove from fact to fact. The phenomenal transitions are no real transitions; each item is the same old friend with a slightly altered dress. Who does not feel the charm of thinking that the Moon and the apple are, as far as their relation to the Earth does, identical; of knowing respiration and combustion to be one; of understanding that the balloon rises by the same law whereby the stone sinks; of feeling that the warmth in one’s palm when one rubs one’s sleeve is identical with the motion which the friction checks; of recognizing the differences between human father and son; of believing our strength when we climb the mountain or fell the tree to be no other than the strength of the Sun’s rays which made the corn grow out of which we got our morning meal? But alone of this passion for simplification there exists a sister passion, which in some minds—though they perhaps form the minority—it its rival. This is the passion for distinguishing; it is the impulse to be acquainted with the parts rather than to comprehend the whole. Loyalty to clearness and integrity of perception, dislike of blurred outlines, of vague identifications, are its characteristics. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
It loves to recognize particulars in their full completeness, and the more of these it can carry the happier it is. It prefers any amount of incoherence, abruptness, and fragmentariness (so long as the literal details of the separate facts are saved) to an abstract way of conceiving things that, while it simplifies them, dissolves away at the same time their concrete fulness. Clearness and simplicity thus set up rival claims, and make a real dilemma for the thinker. Even more importantly while praying about life, the consciousness will begin to directly open up to the perception of the spirit in more intense ways. The more one observes something the more real it becomes. You are the fire and your movement, your thoughts; words, and deeds wield the power of counter creation which the very results of sorcery we call God. The results of our blessings is our divine will imposed on the external manifestation of our God self. All of our reality is a mirror upon which you can view true essence of self and divinity. The flesh and all of the attachment that comes along with the five sense is the veil between World. Maintain the knowledge that you are in complete control of all of creation and how destiny within this World unfolds. Maintain the awareness that you are an emanation of unlimited possibility and power. “Let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yea, let affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever,” reports Alma 37.36. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
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Closer to the Hearts Desire–Be Still My Soul, Be Still; the Arms You Bear are Strong!
They brought me into the house. It was bright and magnificent. They showed me the sunny double parlor with its craved archway and shining floors and they took me through the handsome dining room with its murals of the Winchester Mansion. People in Graystone Hills, in general, are inconsistent in the way they talk and act with reference to the idea of classes. If they are asked bluntly, “Do you believe there are ‘classes’ in the community?” they are very likely to say, “No.” Yet, they will tell you the Hiltons are “a leading family here,” or the “Hearsts are like the Hiltons, and Rothschild, and Winchesters. These families are different from the rest of us; they are exclusive. I guess you would call them our aristocracy.” During the course of the conversation, the same speaker will say that there are several different “types of families” in the community and, justifying one’s judgment by describing the “way they live,” place them in different categories. The democratic tradition that there are no classes in American society is the reason for this type of behavior. Therefore, the people in Graystone Hills deny the existence of class directly but act as if classes exist. However, many beings in Graystone Hills openly say that there are three classes in the community—“upper,” “middle,” and “less affluent”—but when they are requested to name persons in, let us say the “less affluent class” they generally divide the class into the “good” lower class people and the “worthless, ne’er-do-wells.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
The same kind of break appears in the “middle class.” Separation of the “middle class” into “upper middle” and “lower middle” is quite conventional. Even though people in Graystone Hills are inconsistent in their designations of a particular class, the systematic analysis of selected cultural traits associated with each of the five classes, based upon data collected from the 535 families of the adolescents, supplemented by interviews and observations, reveal that the possession of a constellation of differentially evaluated social symbols—functional, pecuniary, religious, educational, reputational, power, lineage, proper associates, memberships in associations—are relied up by Graystone Hills to “hang people on the peg they belong on,” to determine “their place in the community” or “their standing in life.” Class V occupies the lowest-ranking stations in the prestige structure. It is looked upon as the scum of the city by the higher classes. It is believed generally that nothing beyond charity can be done for these people, and only a minimum of that is justified since they show little or no inclination to help themselves. It is the opinion of the upper classes that: “They have no respect for themselves. They enjoy their shacks and huts along the river or across the tracks and love their dirty, smoky, low-class dives and taverns. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
“Whole families—children, in-laws, mistresses, and all—live in one shack. This is the crime class that produces the delinquency and sexual promiscuity that fills the paper. Their interests lie in pleasures of the flesh and its perversion. The girls are always with child; the families are huge; incestual relations occur frequently. They are not inspired by education, and only a few are able to make any attainments along this line. They are loud in their speech, vulgar in their actions, sloppy in their dress, and indifferent toward their plight. Their vocabulary develops as profanity is learned. If they work, the work at very menial jobs. Their life experiences are purely physical, and even these are on a low plane. They have no interests in health and medical care. Then men are too lazy to work or do odd jobs around town. They support the Democratic party because of the relief obtained during the depression. This groups lives for a Saturday of drinking or fighting. They are of low character and breed and have a criminal record for a pedigree.” Class V persons, passive and fatalistic, realize that they are “on the bottom” and believe that they can do nothing to improve their position. They desire money, possessions, education, and favorable prestige, but they do not know how these are achieved. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
When a class V persons attempts to improve one’s position, one is discriminated against by the higher classes, and by many members of one’s own class who think one is trying to “put on airs.” One woman with considerable insight into her class position summarized it thus: “Survival for us depends on staying on good terms with the rich people and the law. Whenever I think about myself and the kids, I am reminded what my father used to say, ‘We are the ones who are told what to do, when and how’ around here. This town takes us for granted. Most people think the people down here [the tannery flats] are too ignorant to do anything and do not care; I guess they are right.” To generalize a little more, class V persons give the impression of being resigned to a life of frustration and defeat in a community that despises them for their disregard of morals, lack of “success” goals, and dire poverty. Family support comes from many sources. The father is the chief breadwinner in three families out of five, but his earnings are meager. Ninety-two percent are unskilled and semi-skilled laborers or machine operators. Not one is a farm owner, and only 8 are farm tenants; 2 are notions salesmen; and 8 operate very small businesses, such as hauling coal from local mines, ash and trash hauling, repair and sales of old cars. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Fifty-five percent of the mothers in class V “work out” part time or full time as waitresses, dishwashers, cooks, washwomen, janitresses, cleaning women, and unskilled domestic workers. Many younger women and girls work on the production line of a local manufacturer who is reputed to give them preference in his shops because they can be hired for lower wages than class IV workers. Income from wages provides them with enough money to obtain the most meager necessities of life; however, in many cases it is inadequate even for his, and they rely upon private charity and public relief. Annual family income ranges from $15,365 to high of $24,934. The modal income fell in the $18,572 to $18,958 bracket. (Whereas the median income in Rocklin, California is $84,121 and the median income in Oak Park, California is $121,721). Income varies from year to year, depending upon your work conditions and wages. Between 2017 and 2019, the private earnings of 53 percent of these families were supplemented by township relief during at least one-fourth of each year. This figure does not take into consideration federal subsidies, such as Works Progress Administration (WPA) and National Youth Administration (NYA), which prevailed in that period; neither does it include private charity in the form of “outfitting the children” with clothes. Gifts of partially worn-out clothing, linens, bedding, old furniture, dishes, and food are a regular part of the private relief and indirect wage system supported by the two highest classes and to some extent by class III. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
These gifts are given informally to persons who preform domestic service for donors. Begging by class V’s is frowned upon strongly; consequently, needy families do not solicit things in an overt manner, but any class V persons knows how to make his or her wants known to an employer in a humble, discreet manner that generally brings the desired results. Semipublic charity is dispensed through sewing circles, guilds, and clubs that make clothing for infants. The ever-popular rummage sale, one of which is held almost every Saturday by some “middle-class” organization, may be viewed as another form of charity to the lower classes. Many class V women regularly buy their family’s best clothes from these sales. As one class II woman said, “This year, Mrs. Gordon Sweitzer [class I] will have a striking dress, next year you will see it on Mrs. Luke Jenkins [class IV] in the Baptist choir, and three years from now Pearl Soper [class V] will be trying to catch some loafer’s eye with it.” Bank credit is non-existent, and even the small-loan broker has learned through experience to be careful with class V: “Before I loan one of them a cent, I investigate carefully and make sure they own what they put up for security. There is not a person in that class who has not been in here one time of another for a loan. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
“If they have a job and can give me good evidence they can pay back a loan, I will give them from $100 to $250 at first. If they pay it back, just as they agree to, I will let them have a little more next time. Eighty percent of the loans I have written off were made to the class represented by the names you have there. [A group of class V’s we were checking for loans.] Exactly one-half of the class V families studied have procured small personal loans, none over $500; this is the limit the broker will loan to persons he or she does not believe to be “good risks.” Repeated loans to the class V’s are discouraged; the mean is eight loans per family for those who manage to obtain them. On the other hand, the broker encourages class IV’s to borrow time after time, since one considers them “good risks.” The uncertain nature of their employment results in long periods of idleness, you often see them sitting on the front porch or on a bench as if they are waiting for a ride or a bus that never comes; also illness, real or imagined, may result in a voluntary layoff for a few days that, to persons in the higher classes, appears to be laziness. Whatever conditioning factors, these people are far more irregular in their employment than the class IV’s. They will leave a job casually, often without notice, and for flimsy reasons. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
Even then the class V’s are placed in the simplest menial jobs. The work history of a father or mother is generally known to employers, and one acts in the light of it when a son or daughter of one of these families asks one for employment. Therefore, prepare your journey and its integration with your soul. Know that the only comfort you will find is that which you have the strength to create and perceive yourself. This work will pour outward from within. Take record of the journey and examine it closely for it is the mirror reflecting the knowledge of your true self, along with all of its power and glory. It is very easy to cause self-destruction along the journey for there are many noses which seek to hang you. Even if you are in a place of eternal darkness, understand that you have a light within which cannot be dimmed. A light which is unlike any light perceived by those of lower consciousness. This light is the power of your own spirit, developed by your own intellect, spoken words, and chosen deeds within the realm of limitation. What we see as finite never is. Nothing is finite for the same exact reason nothing is infinite. Infinite existence would mean stasis and lack of consciousness, never moving forward in thought or maturity and never growing to expand in influence and in the responsibility of action. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The only difference between us and those of the more mundane nature is that we choose to consciously guide the process and flux of the chaos of darkness eternal. At this point we see the inadequacy of the concept commonly used in psychoanalytic circles to explain creativity—regression in the service of the ego. In my own endeavors to understand creative people in psychoanalysis and to understand the creative act in general, I find this theory unsatisfactory. This is not only because of its negative character, but chiefly because it proposes a partial solution that diverts us from the center of the creative act and therefore away from any full understanding of creativity. In supporting the theory of regression in the service of ego, creativity often seems to be a regressive phenomenon, and does bring out archaic, infantile, unconscious psychic contents in the artist. The rest—or regression—only serves to release the person from his or her intense efforts and the accompanying inhibitions, so that the creative impulse can have free rein to express itself. When the archaic elements in a poem or a picture or a film have genuine power to move others, and when they have a universality of meaning—that is, when they are genuine symbols—it is because some encounter is occurring on a more basic comprehensive level. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Eventually the Lord of Darkness will perish because this is the will of the Lord of Darkness. They are as weapons to be put away after the turmoil of war. When the greater work is complete and humanity, they will perish and he like human vessels will be liberated, and humanity will then be able to come to terms with their own power by taking responsibility for the nature of their existence. Civil disobedience does not serve our potential to thrive. Therefore, you will find yourself viewing news reports and the lies being told to you by the media, but instead of consuming it without question, you will directly perceive the agenda that hides behind them. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the World. What tremendous power this is. It is a new revelation, with beauty and how we will learn to resolve this terrible situation in which we modern human beings find ourselves. The reason some people have such power is that they come from a place of intensity of consciousness that includes archaic elements because they are part of them, as they are of every person, and will emerge in any intensely ware moment. However, the symbol has its power precisely from the fact that it is an encounter that also includes the most dedicated and passionate intellectual effort. It is important for us to be receptive, but by no stretch of the imagination passive. We cannot wait until the cry gathers of itself in one’s own throat. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Obviously, creative insights of all sorts come to us in moments of relaxation. They come not haphazardly, however, but come only in those areas in which we are intensively committed and on which we concentrate in our waking, conscious experience. It may be, as we have said, that the insights can break through only in moments of relaxation; but to say this is to describe how they come rather than to explain their genesis. Choose the moments in which you are capable of your highest, most intense consciousness. Bless be the Lord God of our father, which hath put such a thing as this in the king’s heart, to beautify the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem. What must be understood here is that the principle of the dual nature of good and evil cease to exist altogether when the forces are applied in their proper context. All possible actions serve a great purpose under the right circumstances and within the proper context and so there are no absolutes such as good and evil. The nature of symbols and myths do bring into awareness infantile, archaic dreads, unconscious longings, and similar primitive psychic content. This is their regressive aspect. However, they also bring out new meaning, new forms, and disclose a reality that was literally not present before, a reality that is not merely subjective but has a second pole which is outside. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
In other words it is the occult. It is human power and potential that is the crux of that which is hidden. This is the progressive side of symbol and myth. This aspect points ahead. It is integrative. It is progressive revealing of structure in our relation to nature and our own existence. Most will say that language was designed for the sole purpose of expressing the religious doctrine. The power of sound is what created the Universe according to the basis of most religions, and the priests knew the secrets of this power—power that syncs accumulated vibrational intentions of good speech. Language was used to worship energy accumulated (which is why people make “high energy” music like), controlled, and manipulated to shift the vibrational frequency of the environment. Languages are simply an ancient method of brain entertainment. This might seem outright foolish, however, this is a stone age application of the concepts used within the science of binaural beats and isochoric tones that are used today. We know that by the manipulation of sound frequencies, through measuring brainwaves our state of mind, including how receptive we are to ideas. Ideas can be planted directly into the mind as displayed through the craft of science of hypnotism which also depends upon the manipulation of brainswaves and this is why sirens like Aaliyah, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Emma Hewitt and Beyonce are so popular, their soft and seductive voices can put the audience in a state of trance. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Humankind is an emanation of raw, unadulterated and primal divine power that has been reduced to impotence because we are programmed to believe we must search for this power outside of self. This makes the power impotent because it is analogous to taking the fuel out of a care before starting the engine. We are programmed to believe in, and therefore sustain and fuel the limitation of our power to evolve and become something great. We are sovereign entities with unimaginable power and potential who have been enslaved by spiritual shackles. Seemingly casual words are vibrational emanations of our own dormant divine power. They vibrate according to our own individual level of personal will. Today our words lack power because they are used so frivolously without purpose or intent other than to take part in rather random conversations. It is not that conversation is bad. In fact, effectively relating to others is an important part of our life experience if the goal is to reunite with our eternal soul. This heightened consciousness, which we have identified as a characteristic of the encounter, the state in which the dichotomy between subjective experience and objective reality is overcome and symbols which reveal new meaning are born, is historically termed ecstasy. Like passion, ecstasy is a quality of emotion (or, more accurately, a quality of relationship one side of which is emotional) rather than a quantity. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Ecstasy is a temporary transcending of the subject-object dichotomy. It is interesting that is psychology we dodge that problem, Maslow’s work on the peak experience being a notable exception. Or, when we do speak of ecstasy we are implicitly pejorative or assume that it is neurotic. The experience of the encounter also brings with it anxiety. I need not remind you of the fear and trembling of artists and creative people in their moments of creative encounter. If not approached in the correct way, prayers, hymns, and devotions will create a very spiritually destructive atmosphere, and chance one’s vibration in a very destructive way if the chaos is not harnessed according to will with proper understanding of the principle of evil speech. Do not hide the agenda to simple mask the intent and power to enslave humankind behind the guise of an imposed definition of what is to be considered good by the herd. The subconscious mind can cause chaos within one’s reality by inverting these concepts due to predispositions and symbolic mental associations. I am impressed by Frank Barron’s studies of creative persons in art and science, for he shows them directly confronting their anxiety. Barron designated his “creative persons” as those who were recognized by their peers as having made distinguished contributions to their field. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Frank Barron showed them as well as a control group of “normal” people a series of Rorschachlike cards, some of which had orderly, systematic designs on them and others disorderly, unsymmetrical, and chaotic designs. The “normal” people selected the orderly, symmetrical cards as the designs they liked the most—they liked their Universe to be “in shape.” However, the creative persons selected the chaotic, disorderly cards—they found these more challenging and interesting. They could be like God in the Book of Genesis, creating order out of chaos. They chose the “broken” Universe; they got joy out of encountering it and forming it into order. They could accept the anxiety and use it in molding their disorderly Universe “closer to the heart’s desire.” According to the theory proposed here, anxiety is understandably a concomitant of the shaking of the self-World relationship that occurs in the encounter. Our sense of identity is threatened; the World is not as we experienced it before, and since self and World are always correlated, we no longer are what we were before. The anxiety we feel is temporary rootlessness, disorientation; it is the anxiety of nothingness. When these sonic spells are inverted you must keep in mind that it does not have to usher in sickness or anything of that sort, though it can be used that way to wield powers of baneful intent toward enemies. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Instead, understand that it is rather your right as a human being to seek out and develop good healthy through your actions and choices within the World. This is simple cause and effect which is at the root of the Universe. The obtainment of this logic then leads to empowerment to manifest change within your reality. Creative people, as I seem them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of the “divine madness,” to borrow the terms used by the classical Greeks. They do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean. I am impelled by chaos to seek order, to struggle with it until I can find a deeper, underlying form. I am then struggling wit the meaninglessness and silence of the World until I can force it to mean, until I can make the silence answer and the non-being be. I can these use this peace for its authentic purpose—namely a deep relaxation of mind and body. Take your time with it, put forth effort to master it. You will find your own individual rhythm and hook into deep currents of power running through the deepest depths of self. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Channel your mental faculties to recite or memorize the words of power—such as love, joy, friendship, success, accomplish, blessing, advanced, balanced, beneficial, developed efficient, enhanced, innovated, excelled, promoted, refined, recovered, sustained, skilled, secured, saved, taught, trained. valued, validated, and so forth. It will eventually produce great power in the atmosphere of the temple area. These harmonic vibrations will break up the supposed natural order and so you must focus your intent to rebuild the reality you wish. Once your field of energy has been erased you may impose beauty upon the slate. The average human has an estimated 70,000 thoughts per day. Do you know how many of those thoughts are swayed by external forces? What if you were in control of each one of those thoughts? What would your reality be like at that point? To seek control of those thoughts is the premise and purpose of enlightenment. Learn to observe, question, and deconstruct your reality to come to your own personal conclusions. In the way you will start to engage higher spiritual consciousness. “Yea, we have reason to praise him forever, for his is the Most High God, and has loosed our brethren from the chains of hell. Yes, they were encircled about with everlasting darkness and destruction; but behold, he has brought them into his everlasting light, yea, into everlasting salvation; and they are encircled about with the matchless bounty of his love; yea, and we have been instruments in his hands of doing this great and marvelous work,” reports Alma 26.14-15. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
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These Enemies Inevitably Leave in their Destructive Wake Tears of Sorrow, the Pain of Conflict, and the Shattered Hopes of what Could Have Been!
That is wrong. The man who hurt me was angry. Did you see the bad things he did to me? It does not matter what the think. I love you. I am loyal to you. They cannot part us. It is impossible. However, you cannot be angry. You cannot be violent. If you are angry and violent, I cannot love you. I do want you to protect me. Protect the house. Protect all those I love. Never once in my brawl with the stranger had I felt this kind of fear. You want me to be afraid? I cannot love you and be afraid of you. If I am afraid, I will come to hate you. Did you see how I hated the stranger? Make a choice. Shocking as this may sound, the murder of an individual is a relatively human action—not because the effect of an individual murder is quantitatively smaller than that of a mass murder or a total extermination (for the deaths cannot really be added; the very plural form of the noun “death” is absurd, for each individual murderer still can react to one’s crime in a human way. It is possible to mourn one victim of murder, not a million victims. One can repent one murder, not a million murdered. In other words, imaginative, and moral capacity are congruent or at least commensurable with one’s capacity for action. And this congruence, this condition in which the being is more or less equal to oneself, is no doubt the basic prerequisite of that which is called humanity. It is the congruence that is absent today. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Consequently, modern unmorality does not primarily consist in being’s failure to conform to a specific more-than-human image of beings; perhaps not even in one’s failure to meet the requirements of a just society; but rather in one’s half-guilty and half-innocent failure to conform to oneself, that is to say, in the fact that one’s capacity for action has outgrown one’s emotional, imaginative, and moral capacities. We have good reason to think that our fear is by far too small: it should paralyze us or keep us in a continual state of alarm. It does not because we are physically unequal to the danger confronting us, because we are incapable of producing a fear commensurate with it, let alone of constantly maintaining it in the midst of our still seemingly normal everyday life. Just like our reason, our psyche is limited in the Kantian sense: our emotions have only a limited capacity and elasticity. We have scruples about murdering one being; and no scruples at all about bombing a city out of existence. A city full of dead people remains a mere word to us. All this should be investigated by a Critique of Pure Feeling, not for the purpose of reaching a moral verdict, but in order to determine the boundaries of our emotional capacity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
What disturbs us today is not the fact that we are not omnipotent and omniscient, but the reverse, namely, the fact that our imaginative and emotional capacities are too small as measured against our knowledge and power, that imaginatively and emotionally we are so to speak smaller than ourselves. Each of us moderns is an inverted Lestat: whereas Lestat had infinite anticipations and boundless feelings, and suffered because his knowledge and feelings were unequal to these feelings, we know more and produce greater things than we can imagine or feel. As a rule, then, we are incapable of producing fear; only occasionally does it happen that we attempt to produce it, or that we are overwhelmed and stunned by a tidal wave of anguish. However, what stuns or panics us at such moments is the realization not of the danger threatening us, but of the futility of our attempts to produce an adequate response to it. Having experiences this failure we usually relax and return shamefaced, irritated, or perhaps even relieved, to the human dimensions of our psychic life commensurable with our everyday surroundings. Such a return, however pleasant it may be subjectively, is of course sheer suicide from the objective point of view. For there is nothing and there can be nothing that increases the danger more than our failure to realize it intellectually and emotionally, and our resigned acceptance of this failure. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
In fact, the helplessness with which contemporary humankind reacts—or rather fails to react—to the existence of the superbomb bespeaks a lack of freedom the like of which has never before existed in history—and surely history cannot be said to have been poor in varieties of unfreedom. We have indeed reached the freezing point of human freedom. The Stoic, robbed of the autonomy of action, was certainly unfree; but how free the Stoic still was, since one could think and feel as one pleased! Later there was the even more impoverished type of being, who could think only wat others had thought of one, who indeed could not feel anything expect what one was supposed to feel; but how free even this type of being was, since one still could speak, think, and feel what one was supposed to speak, think, and feel! Truly unfree, divested of all dignity, definitively the most deprived of beings are those confronted with situations and things which they cannot cope by definition, to which they are unequal linguistically, intellectually, and emotionally—ourselves. If all is not to be lost we must first and foremost develop our moral imagination: this is the crucial task facing us. We must strive to increase the capacity and elasticity of our intellectual and emotional faculties, to match the incalculable increase of our productive and destructive power. Only where these two aspects of being’s nature are properly balanced can there be responsibility, and moral action and counter-action. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Whether we can achieve such a balance, is an open question. Our emotional capacity may turn out to be limited a priori; perhaps it cannot be extended at will and ad infinitum. If this were so, and if we were to resign ourselves to such a state of affairs, we would have to give up all hope. However, the moralist cannot do so in any case; even if one believed in the theoretical impossibility of transcending those limits, one would still have to demand that they be transcended in practice. Academic discussions are pointless here: the question can be decided only by an actual attempt, or, more accurately, by repeated attempts, for instance, spiritual exercises. It is immaterial whether such exercises aim at a merely quantitative extension of our ordinary imagination and emotional performance, or at a sensational, “impossible” transcending of our proportio humana, whose boundaries are supposedly fixed one and for all. The philosophical significance of such exercises can be worried about later. What matters at present is only that an attempt at violent self-transformation be made, and that it be successful. For we cannot continue as we are. In our emotional responses we remain at the rudimentary stage of small artisans: we are barely able to repent an individual murder; where as in our capacity for killing, for producing corpses, we have already entered the proud stage of industrial mass production. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Indeed, the performances of our heart—our inhibitions, fears, worries, regrets—are in inverse ratio to the dimensions of our deeds, for instance, the former grow smaller as the latter increase. This gulf between our emotional capacity and our destructive powers, aside from representing a physical threat to our lives, makes us the most divided, the most disproportionate, the most inhuman beings that ever existed. As against this modern cleavage, all older spiritual conflicts, for instance, the conflict between mind and body or duty and inclination, were relatively harmless. However, violently the struggle may have raged within us, it remained human; the contending principles were attuned to each other, they were in actual contact, neither of them lost sight of the other, and each of them was essentially human. At least on the battlefield of the contending principles beings preserved their existence unchallenged: beings were still there. Not so today. Even this minimum of being’s identity with oneself is gone. For the horror of being’s present condition consists precisely in this, that the conflicting forces within one are no longer inter-related: they are so far removed from each other, each has become so completely independent, that they no longer even come to grips. They can no longer confront each other in battle, the conflict can no longer be fought out. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
In short, beings as producers, and beings as a being capable of emotions, have lost sight of each other. Reality now seems attributable only to each of the specialized fragments designated by an “as.” What made us shudder ten years ago—the fact that one and the same being could be guard in an extermination camp and good father or mother and husband or wife, that as the former one could be so radically different from oneself as the latter, and that the two parts one played or the two fragments one was did not in the least stand in each other’s way because they no longer knew each other—this horrifying example of guilelessness in horror has not remained an isolated phenomenon. Each of us, like this schizophrenic in the trust sense of the term, is split into two separate beings; each of us is like a worm artificially or spontaneously divided into two halves, which are unconcerned with each other and move in different directions. True, the split has not been entirely consummated; despite everything the two halves of our being are still connected by the thinnest of threads, and the producer half, by far the stronger, drags the emotional half behind it. The unity is not organic, it is that of two different beings meaninglessly grown together. However, the existence of this minimal connection is no comfort. On the contrary, the fact that we are split in two, and that there is no internal principle integrating these halves, defines the misery and disgrace of our condition. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Violence is a uniting of the self in actions. Violence is creating the self. It is an organizing of one’s powers to prove one’s power, to establish the worth of the self. It is a risking all, a committing all, an asserting all. However, it united the different elements in the self, omitting rationality. This is why I have said above that the uniting of the self is done on a level that bypasses reason. Whatever its motive or its consequences may be within the violent person, its result is generally destructive to the others in the situation. The physical element which bulks so large in violence is a symbol of the totality of one’s involvement. When violence erupts I can no longer sit idly on the sidelines. Movement seizes my body, which I am called upon to risk as an expression of my total commitment. No desire or time to think is left once the violence breaks out; we are in a nonrational World. This can be subrational, as it generally is in the riots in the transient communities; or it can be superrational, as it assumedly was with Joan of Arc. Reason no longer has even a pretense of command. In the movie If, the conventional dullness of life at a British boys’ boarding school is portrayed with stark realism. The burden of routine, the loneliness, the artificial moralistic rules soon developed int sadism and homosexuality. In the face of the severe beatings they receive, the boys begin to form a bond of camaraderie. Then the leading boys discover a cache of machine guns and ammunition under the cathedral. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The movie ends with a surrealistic scene in which the boys take their guns to a position on top of the church and mow down guests, dressed in all their British pomp, who have come to commencement exercises. The movie is a presentation of the steps of violence from separation to loneliness to camaraderie to sadism to violence. The availability of guns has a curious and macabre relation to violence. This form of technology not only vastly increases the range and effectiveness of violence but also has a strong effect—generally dulling—on the conscious of those who use them. One day when I was on a farm in a fairly remote section of New Hampshire, I noticed under an apple tree a stray dog which seemed to be diseased. Having been alone for some time, during which time one’s imagination often comes up with weird ideas, I decided the dog had rabies. Although I could not get to it in the tangle of branches, our own dog, to which our whole family was deeply attached, could and did. She went sniffing around the “rabid” one, and, being a show, she would not come back to me no matter how much I called. I went in the house and got the Luger pistol that my son used on the farm for target practice, inserted a clip in it, and came out to shoot the rabid dog. Now the point of this story is that my having in my hand a pistol with which to shoot some living thing changed me into an entirely differ person psychologically. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
I could deal out death to anyone since I was possessed by this instrument of death; I had become an irrational man of hostility. The gun had me rather than my having it: I had become its instrument. Seized with dislike for this person I had become, I took the gun back to the house and put it away; and the incident was resolved in a quite different way. We understand only vaguely the effect that technology can have on the conscious of a person, but it is clear that the possession of guns can radically change personality. Glenn Gray remarks that, as an officer in the army, he did not feel dressed when he went out without his pistil strapped to his belt; not being in the army, I felt myself to be a misdirected robot, without conscious control over my actions, when I had my finger on the trigger with the intent to kill. An extreme form of such an effect on personality can be seen in the career of Charles Fairweather, the teenager who went on a rampage in Nebraska and murdered eleven people before he was caught. “I love guns,” he had said as a boy. “They give me a feeling of power like nothing else.” His story follows along common lines: as a queer-looking child with bowlegs and thick glasses he was mocked regularly when he first went to school. He developed early in life the symbolic interpretation of the World as a place of mockery, and his cry for recognition became that much the stronger for never having any answer. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Charles Fairweather then discovered that he could get recognition by letting loose his temper and flailing away at the school bullies in fights, which he managed to win by the sheer vehemence of his violence. His father described him as “always one of the quiet ones,” illustrative again that the docile appearing person may be precisely the violent-prone one. Despite his poor eyesight, he became a remarkable marksman with a gun. Upon getting out of high school Charles managed to find a girl friend and a job as assistant on a garbage truck. When the scant recognition that these afforded him was wiped away—he lost his job and his girl friend’s mother threw him out—he got three guns and shot his girl friend’s mother and stepfather, living for several says in their house with their bodies wrapped up in paper and stowed in the chicken yard. Forcing the girl to go with him, he then went on the path of violence made familiar by Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde. The important element in this bloody store is his early symbolic interpretation that the World is a place of derision. His ultimate violence achieved a double response: it answered his cry for recognition and it also mocked the World in revenge. (Again, we see the macabre logic in such outburst of violence.) #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
From his complete lack of feeling when he was later questioned about the persons he had murdered, we cannot conclude that Charles was always so unfeeling, so typically schizoid. It is obvious that the person on a binge of violence must become unfeeling and detached, like a soldier mowing down the enemy with a machine gun, or else he could never do what he feels he has to do. We are haunted above all by his childhood obligato: “I love guns. They give me a feeling of power.” The symbol of the gun as a phallus and its relation to pleasures of the flesh is well known. Both are long and slim, both eject a substance that can radically change the person into whom it is directed. Hence the gun has become, especially with simple people, a symbol par excellence of masculine power. The line delivered by Mae West on greeting her boy friend remains the classic expression of this: “Is that gun in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” However, the cultural aspects of guns is also convincing, as Stanley Kunitz remarks. We hunted with guns to eat; we hunted with guns to live in our pioneer period, from which we in America are removed only by a little over a century and a half. In all these ways the gun was valuable, a laudable symbol of power; and handling it well was also laudable. Many a person feels when he or she possesses a gun that one has a power that was unfairly taken away from one. And what a power it is! #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
With a gun, people who have had their power taken away feel they can now make this big explosion and hurl that projectile to kill things much larger than themselves. Consciousness is surrendered willingly. In the film Patton, the general’s running out and emptying his pistol into the air at German airplanes bombing his Algerian base is childish gesture, an anachronistic hang-over from a boy playing with guns; but it is nevertheless a convincing expression of violence. In a World where peace is such a universal quest, we sometimes wonder why violence walks our streets, accounts of murder and senseless killings fill the columns of our newspapers, and family quarrels and disputes mar the sanctity of the home and smother the tranquility of so many lives. Perhaps we stray from the path which leads to peace and find it necessary to pause, to ponder, and to reflect on the teachings of the Prince of Peace and determine to incorporate them in our thoughts and actions and to live a higher law, walk a more elevated road, and be a better disciple of Christ. The ravages of hunger in Somalia, the brutality of hate in Bosnia, and the ethnic struggles especially in the United States of America and across the globe remind us that the peace we seek will not come without effort and determination. Anger, hatred, and contention are foes not easily subdued. These enemies inevitably leave in their destructive wake tears of sorrow, the pain of conflict, and the shattered hopes of what could have been. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Their sphere of influence is not restricted to the battlefields of war but can be observed altogether too frequently in the home, around the hearth, and within the heart. So soon do many forget and so late do they remember the counsel of the Lord: “There shall be no disputations among you, for verily, verily I say unto you, he hath the spirit of content is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another. Behold, this is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of beings with anger, one against another; but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away.” We look forward to the time when the power of love will replace the love of power. Then will our World know the blessing of peace. World peace, though a lofty goal, is but an outgrowth of the personal peace each individual seeks. I speak not of the peace promoted by beings, but peace as promised by God. I speak of peace in our homes, peace in our hearts, even peace in our lives. Peace after the way of beings is perishable. Peace after the manner of God will prevail. We are reminded that anger does not solve anything. It builds nothing, but it can destroy everything. The consequences of conflict are so devastating that we years for guidance—even a way to insure our success as we seek the path to peace. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
When we now hear the word “Spirit,” we are somehow prepared for it: the power in us, but not of us, qualifying us for the service of a new state of things is what Spirit means. This may sound strange to many both inside and outside the churches for whom they term Holy Spirit is the strangest of the strange terms that appear among Christian symbols. Rarely a subject of preaching, it is also neglected in religious teachings. Its festival, Pentecost, has almost disappeared in the popular consciousness of this country. Some groups that claim spiritual experiences of a particular character are considered unhealthy, and often rightly so. Liturgically, the use of the term “Holy Ghost” produces an impression of great remoteness from our way of speaking and thinking. However, spiritual experience is a reality for everyone, as actual as the experience of being loved or the breathing of air. Therefore, we should not shy away from the word “Spirit.” We should become fully aware of the Spiritual Presence, around us and in us, even though we realize how limited our experience of “god present to our spirit” may be. For this is what Divine Spirit means: God present to our spirit. Spirit is not a mysterious substance; it is not a part of God. It is God Himself; but not God as the creative Ground of all things and not God directing history and manifesting Himself in its central event, but God as present in communities and personalities, grasping them, inspiring them, and transforming them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
For Spirit its first all power, the power that drives the human spirit above itself towards what it cannot attain by itself, the love that is greater than all other gifts, the truth in which the depth of being opens itself to us, the holy that is the manifestation of the presence of the ultimate. You may say again—“I do not know this power. I have never had such an experience. I am not religious or, at least, not Christian and certainly not a bearer of the Spirit. What I hear from you sounds like ecstasy; and I want to stay sober. It sounds like mystery, and I try to illuminate what is dark. It sounds like self-sacrifice and I want to fulfill my human possibilities.” To this I answer—Certainly, the Spiritual power can thrust some people into an ecstasy that most of us have never experienced. It can drive some toward a kind of self-sacrifice of which most of us are not capable. It can inspire some to insights into the depth of being that remain unapproachable to most of us. However, this does not justify our denial that the Spirit is also working in us. Without doubt, wherever it works, there is an element, possibly very small, of self-surrender, and an element, however weak, of ecstasy, and an element, perhaps fleeting, of awareness of the mystery of existence. Yet these small effects of the Spiritual power are enough to prove its presence. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
However, there are other conscious and noticeable manifestations of the Spiritual Presence. Let me enumerate some of them, while you ask yourselves whether and to what degree they are of your own experience. The Spirit can work in you with a soft but insistent voice, telling you that your life is empty and meaningless, but that there are changes of a new life waiting before the door of your inner self to fill its void and to conquer its dullness. The Spirit can work in you, awakening the desire to strive towards the sublime against the profanity of the average day. The Spirit can give you the courage that says “yes” to life in spite of the destructiveness you have experiences around you and within you. The Spirit can reveal to you that you have hurt somebody deeply, but it also can give you the right word that reunites one with you. The Spirit can make you love, with the divine love, someone you profoundly dislike or in whom you have no interest. The Spirit can conquer your sloth towards what you know is the aim of your life, and it can transform your moods of aggression and depression into stability and serenity. The Spirit can liberate you from hidden enmity against those whom you love and from open vengefulness against those why whom you feel violated. The Spirit can give you the strength to throw off false anxieties and to take upon yourself the anxiety which belongs to life itself. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The Spirit can awaken you to sudden insight into the way you must take your World, and it can open your eyes to a view of it that makes everything new. The Spirit can give you joy in the midst of ordinary routine as well as in the depth of sorrow. The Spirit can create warmth in the coldness you feel within you and round you, and it can give you wisdom and strength where your human love towards a loved one has failed. Just when you felt totally rejected, and when you rejected yourself totally, the Spirit can throw you into a hell of despair about yourself and then give you the certainty that life has accepted you. The Spirit can give you the power of prayer, that nobody has except through the Spiritual Presence. For every prayer—with or without words—that reaches its aim, namely the reunion with the divine Ground of our being, is a work of the Spirit speaking in us and through us. Prayer is the Spiritual longing of a finite being to return to its origin. These are works of the Spirit, signs of the Spiritual Presence with us and in us. In view of these manifestations, who can asset that one is without Spirit? Who can say that one is in no way a bearer of the Spirit? One may be in a small way. However, is there anybody among us who could say more than that about oneself? One can compare the Spiritual Presence with the air we breathe, surrounding us, nearest to us, and working life within us. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
This comparison has a deep justification: in most languages, the word “spirit” means breath or wind. Sometimes the wind becomes storm, grand and devastating. Mostly it is moving air, always present, not always noticed. “Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then I profess unto them: I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity,” reports 3 Nephi 14.22-23. Jesus opened up the Mysteries to the mass of the Western continent and gave to the many what had hitherto been given only to the chosen few. The presence of God, the journey from anticipation to realization is a long one. One this Quest the curiosity to know what lies ahead can never be satisfied with perfect correctness because it must necessarily differ with different individuals. Changes of circumstances which bring uncertainty of the future will not frighten one. They will interest one. One will seek to discover if they point the way to an incoming of new forces of experience necessary for one’s further development. “I try to put it in the past, hold on to myself and don’t look back. I don’t wanna dream about all the things that never were. Maybe I can live without when I’m out from under. I don’t wanna feel the pain, what good will it do me now, I’ll get it all figure out when I’m out from under,” (Out from Under By Britney Spears). #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
A Relationship Must Have a Solid Foundation on which it Can be Built—It Must Have Love, Affinity, and Trust!
It seemed at times that the men singing the Christmas carols made me cry. I expected the women to sing, it seemed natural, but for the men to join in, men of all ages, and to do it with such stout hearts, that seemed especially reassuring and wonderful. I cried every year. It was that and the purity of the soprano who sang ‘O Holy Night,’ and ‘What is This?’ Of course I joined in the singing myself. Nonetheless, it made me ponder on a third dimension which science has added to modern war. It has created war nerves and the war of nerves. I am not thinking about the technical conditions for a war of nerves: the camera person and the radio and the massed display strength. I am thinking of the climate in which this stage lightening flickers and is made to seem real. The last eighty years have given us a frightening show of these mental states. There is a division in the mind of each of us, that has become plain, between the being and the brute; and the rift can be opened, the being submerged, with a cynical simplicity, with the meanest tools of envy and frustration, which in my boyhood would have been thought inconceivable in a civilized society. I shall come back to this cleavage in our minds, for it is much more than an item in a list of war crimes. However, it is an item. It helps create the conditions for disaster. And I think that science has contributed to it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Science; the fact that most people are impressed by it but ignorant and helpless—all this seems to me to have contributed to the division in our minds. And scientists cannot escape the responsibility for this. They have enjoyed acting the mysterious stranger, the powerful voice without emotion, the expert and the god. They have failed to make themselves comfortable in the talk of people in the street; no one taught them the knack, of course, but they were not keen to learn. And now they find the distance which they enjoyed has turned to distrust, and the awe has turned to fear; and people who are by no means fools really believe that we should be better off without science. These are the indictments which scientists cannot escape. Of course, they are often badly phrased, so that scientists can side-step them with generalities about the common responsibility, and who voted the credits for atomic research anyway; which are perfectly just, but not at all relevant. That is not the heart of the matter; and the people in queues and pubs are humbly groping for the heart. They are not good at saying things and they do not give model answers to interviewers. However, when we say “We have forgotten what is right,” what is in their minds is perfectly true. Science and society are out of joint. Science has given to no one in particular a power which no one in particular knows how to use. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Why do not scientists invent something sensible? Wives say it every time they stub their toe on the waste bin, and husbands say it whenever a fuse blows. Why is it the business of no one in particular to stop fitting science for death and to begin fitting it into our lives? We will agree that warlike science is no more than a by-product of a warlike society. Science has merely provided the means, for good or for bad; and society has seized it for bad. However, what are we going to do about it? The first thing to do, it seems to me, is to treat this as a scientific question: by which I mean as a practical and sensible questions, which deserves a factual approach and a reasoned answer. Now that I have apologized on behalf of scientists, and this on a scale which some of them will certainly think too ample, let us cut out what usually happens to the argument at this point, the rush of recriminations. The scientists are conscious of their mistakes; and I do not want to discuss the mistakes of non-scientists—although they have made a great many—except those which we all must begin to make good. I have said that a scientific answer must be practical as well as sensible. This really rules out at once the panaceas which also tend to run the argument into a blind alley at this stage; the panaceas which say summarily “Get rid of them.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Naturally, it does not seem to me to be sensible to get rid of scientists; but in any case, it plainly is not practical. And whatever we do with our own scientists, it very plainly is not practical to get rid of the scientists of rival nations; because if there existed the conditions for agreement among nations on this far-reaching scheme, then the conditions for war would already have disappeared. If there existed the conditions for international agreement, say to suspend all scientific research, or to abandon warlike research, or in any other way to forgo science as an instrument of nationalism—if such agreement could be reached, then they would already have disappeared. So, however we might sigh for Samuel Butler’s panacea in Erewhon, simply to give up al machines, there is no point in talking about it. I believe it would be a disaster for humankind the coming of the Dark Ages. However, there is no point in arguing this. It just is not practical, nationally or internationally. There are no panaceas at all; and we had better face that. There is nothing that we can do overnight, in a week or a month, which can straighten by a laying on of hands the ancient distortion of society. Do not let us fancy that any one of us out of the blue will concoct that stirring letter to The Times which will change the black mood of history—and the instruction to diplomats. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Putting scientist in the Cabinet will not do that, and women in the War Office (Department of Defense) will not, now will bishops in the Privy Council. There are no panaceas. We are the heirs to a tradition which has left science and society out of step. The being in the street is right: we have never learned to handle such things. Nothing will do but that we learn. However, learning is not done in a year. Our ultimate survival is in our own hands. Our survival while we are learning is a much chancier thing. We had better be realistic about that. Meanwhile we had better settle down to work for our ultimate survival; and we had better start now. We have seen that the diagnosis has turned out to be not very difficult. Science and our social habits are out of step. And the cure is no deeper either. We must learn to match them. And there is no way of learning this unless we learn to understand both. Of the two, of course, the one which is strange is science. I have already blamed the scientists for that. One has been the preacher of our age, timid, thwarted, anxious to be asked to help; and with a secret ambition to play the Grey Eminence. Through years of childhood poverty one dreamed of this. Scientific skill was a blue door beckoning to one, which would open into the society of dignitaries of the state. However, the private motives of scientists are not the trend of science. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The trend of science is made by the needs of society: navigation before the eighteenth century, manufacture thereafter; and in our age I believe the liberation of personality. Whatever the part which scientists like to act, or for that matter which painters like to dress, science shares the aims of our society just as art does. The difficulties only of language. To grow familiar with the large ideas of science calls for patience and an effort of attention; and I hope I have shown that it repays them. For nearly three hundred years, these ideas have been applied to technical needs; and they have made our World anew, triumphantly, from top to toe. Our shoes are tanned and stitched, our clothes are spun and dyed and woven, we are lighted and carried and doctored by means which were unknow to neat Mr. Pope at Twickenham in 1740. We may not think that is much to put against the eighty thousand dead in Hiroshima, Japan, or we may. We may not think it recompenses us for the absence of any Mr. Pope from Twickenham today; we may even hold it responsible. It is certainly not a spiritual achievement. However, it has not yet tried to be. It has applied its ideas monotonously to shoe-leather and bicycle bells. And it has made a superb job of them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Compare its record in its own field with that of any other ideas of the same age: Burke’s ideas of the imagination, or Bentham’s on government, or Adam Smith on political economy. If any ideas have a claim to be called creative, because they have created something, then certainly it is the ideas of science. We may think that all that science has created is comfort; and it certainly has done that—the very word “comfortable” in the modern sense dates from the Industrial Revolution. However, we always stopped to think what science has done not to our mode of living but to our life? We talk about research for death, the treat of war and the number of civilians who get killed. However, have we always weighed this against the increase in out own life span? Let us do a small sum. The number of people killed in Great Britain in six years of war by German bomb, flying bombs, and V2’s was sixty thousand. They were an average lot of people, which means that on an average they lost half their expectation of life. Quite an easy long division shows that the effect of this in our population of fifty million people shorten the average span of life by less than one tenth of one percent. This is considerably less than a fortnight. Put this on the side. And on the credit side, we know that in the last hundred and sixty years the average span of life in California has increased by forty years. That is this the price of science, take it or leave it—a fortnight for forty years. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
And these forty years have been created by applying to daily life, to clothing and bedding, to hygiene and infection, to birth and death, the simple ideas of science—the fundamental ideas I have been talking about: order, cause, and chance. If any ideas have a claim to be called creative, because they have created life, it is the ideas of science. We have not neglected these ideas altogether in our social organization. However, it is a point I have made several times, we have got hopelessly behind with them. The idea of order is now old enough to have reached at least our filing cabinets. The idea of cause and effect has entered our habits, until it has become the new a priori in the making of administrative plans. The difficulty is to dislodge it, now that it is hardening into a scholastic formula. For the idea which has given a new vigor to science in our generation is larger than the machinery of cause and effect. It stipulates no special mechanism between the present and the future. It is content to predict the future, without insisting that the computation must follow the steps of causal law. I have called this idea of chance, because its method is statistical, and because it recognizes that every prediction carries with its own measurable uncertainty. A good prediction is one which defines its area of uncertainty; a bad prediction ignores it. And at the bottom this is no more than the return to the essentially empirical, the experimental nature of science. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Science is a great many things, and I have called them a great many names; but in the end they all return to this: science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we think. When we have faced our Worldly problems, it needs more courage than we have ever found. This is how society has lost touch with science: because it has hesitated to judge itself by the same impersonal code of what works and what does not. We have clung to Adam Smith and Burke, or have agitated for Plato or Aquinas, through wars and famine, through rising and falling birth-rates, and through libraries of learned argument. And in the end, our eyes have always wandered from the birth-rate to the argument: from the birth-rate to what we have wanted to believe. Here is the crux of what I have been saying. Here is our ultimate hope of saving ourselves from extinction. We must learn to understand that the content of all knowledge is empirical; that its test is whether it works; and we must learn to act on that understanding in the World as well as in the laboratory. This message of science: our ideas must be realistic, flexible, unbigoted—they must be human, they must create their own authority. If any idea have a claim to be called creative, because they have liberated that creative impulse, it is the ideas of science. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
This is not only a material code. On the contrary, my hope is that it may heal the spiritual cleft which two wars have uncovered. I have seen in my lifetime an abyss open in the human mind: a gulf between the endeavor to be human, and the relish in being brute. The scientist has indeed had a hand in this, and every other specialist too, with one’s prim detachment and one’s oracular airs. However, of course, the large strain which has opened this fault is social. We have made beings live in two halves, a Sunday half and a workday half. We have ordered them to love their neighbor and to turn the other cheek, in a society which has constantly compelled them to shoulder their neighbor aside and to turn their backs. So we have created a savage sense of failure which, as we know now to our cost, can be tapped with an ease which is frightening; and which can thrust up, with explosive force, a symbol to repeat to an unhappy people its most degrading dream. Can science heal that neurotic flaw in us? If science cannot, then nothing can. Let us stop pretending. There is no cure in high moral precepts. We have preached them too long to beings who are forced to live how they can: that makes the strain which they have not been able to bear. We need an ethic which is moral and which works. It is often said that science has destroyed our values and put nothing in their place. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
What has really happened of course is that science has sown in harsh relief the division between our values and our World. We have not begun to let science get into our heads; where then was it supposed to create these values? We have used it as a machine without will, the conjured spirit to the chores. I believe that science can create values: and will create them precisely as literature does, by looking into the human personality; by discovering what divides it and what cements it. That is how great writer have explored human beings, and this whether they themselves as being have been driven by the anguish of Akasha in Anne Rice’s The Queen of the Damned or by the sympathy of Marius in Anne Rice’s Blood and Gold. The insight of science is not different from that of the arts. Science will create values, I believe, and discover virtues, when it looks into being; when it explores what makes one human and not an animal, and what makes one’s societies human and not animal packs. I believe that we can reach this unity in our culture. The nations in their great ages have not been great in art or science, but in art and science. Rembrandt was the contemporary of Huygens and Spinoza. At that very time, Isaac Newton walked with Dryden and Christopher Wren. We know that our is a remarkable age of science with the new 5 G internet. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Science is for us to use to broaden and liberate culture. These are the marks of science: that it is open for all to hear, and all are free to speak their minds in it. They are marks of the World at its best, and the human spirit at its most challenging. One distinguishing characteristic of the encounter is the degree of intensity, or what I would call passion. I am not referring here to the quantity of emotion. I mean a quality of commitment, which may be present in little experiences—such as a brief glance out the window at a tree—that do not necessarily involve any great quantity of emotion. However, these temporally brief experiences may have a considerable significance for the sensitive person, here viewed as the person with the capacity for passion. Students these days have a great deal of talent, but they lack passion and commitment. Interestingly enough, my men students get married early for reasons of security and become dependent on their wives, and often it is only through their wives that I, as their teacher, can draw out their talent. The fact that talent is plentiful but passion is lacking seems to me to be a fundamental facet of the problem of creativity in many fields today, and our ways of approaching creativity by evading the encounter have played directly into this trend. We worship technique—talent—as a way of evading the anxiety of the direct encounter. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
When passion has been obliterated in favor of learning, the present writer can easily foresee one’s fate in an age, in an age when an author who wants to have readers must take care to write in such a way that the boon can easily be perused during an afternoon nap. Agnostic positivism—this doctrine tells us, we have no right to dream dreams, or suppose anything about the unseen part of the Universe, merely because to do so may be for what we are pleased to call our highest interest. We must always wait for sensible evidence for our beliefs; and where such evidence is in accessible we must frame no hypotheses whatever. Of course this is a safe enough position in abstracto. If a thinker had no stake in the unknown, no vital needs, to live or languish according to what the unseen World contained, a philosophic neutrality and refusal to believe either one way or the other would be one’s wisest cue. However, unfortunately, neutrality is not only inwardly difficult, it is also outwardly unrealizable, where our relations to an alternative are practical and vital. This is because, as the psychologist tell us, belief and doubt are living attitudes, and involved conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubting, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing is, is continuing to act as if it were not. #RandolpHarris 13 of 19
If, for instance, I refuse to believe that the room is getting cold, I leave the windows open and light no fire as if it were still warm. If I doubt that you are worthy of my confidence, I keep you uninformed of all my secrets just as if you were unworthy of the same. If I doubt the need of insuring my house, I leave it uninsured as much as I believed there were no deed. And so if I must not believe that the World is divine, I can only express that refusal by declining ever to act distinctively as if it were so, which can only mean acting on certain critical occasions as if it were not so, or in an irreligious way. There are, you see, inevitable occasions in life when inaction is a kind of action, and must count as action, and when not to be for is to be practically against; and in all such cases strict and consistent neutrality is an unattainable thing. And, after all, is not this duty of neutrality where only our inner interests would lead us to believe, that most ridiculous of commands? Is it not sheer folly of strict and rigid doctrines to say that our inner interest can have no real connection with the forces that the hidden World may contain? In other cases divinations based on inner interest have proved prophetic enough. Take science itself! Without an imperious inner demand on our part for ideal logical and mathematic harmonies, we should never have attained to proving that such harmonies are possessed hidden between all the cogs, sprockets, and interstices of the crude natural World. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Hardly a law has been established in science, hardly a fact ascertained, which was not first sought after, often with sweat and blood, to gratify an inner need. Whence such needs come from we do not know: we find them in us, and biological psychology so far only classes the with Dr. Darwin’s accidental variations. However, the inner need of believing that this World of nature is a sign of something more spiritual and eternal than itself is just as strong and authoritative in those who feel it, as the inner need of uniform laws of causation ever can be in a professionally scientific head. The toil of may generations has proved the latter need prophetic. Why may not the former one be prophetic, too? And if needs of ours outrun the visible Universe, why may not that be a sign that an invisible Universe is there? What, in short, has authority to debar us from trusting our religious demands? Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not; and the agnostic “thou shalt not believe without coercive sensible evidence” is simply an expression (free to any one to make) of private personal appetite for evidence of a certain peculiar kind. If the study of the uniqueness of the individual does not fit into what we know of science, then so much the worse for that conception of science. It, too, will have to endure re-creation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Phenomenology has a history in American psychological thinking, but on the whole I think it has languished. The European phenomenologists with their excruciatingly careful and laborious demonstrations, can reteach us that the best way of understanding another human being, or at least a way necessary for some purposes, is to get into one’s Weltanschauung and to be able to see one’s World through another’s eyes. Of course such conclusion is rough on any positivistic philosophy of science. The existentialist stress on the ultimate aloneness of the individual is a useful reminder for us, not only to work out further the concepts of decisions, or responsibility, of choice, of self-creation, or autonomy, or identity itself. It also makes more problematic and more fascinating the mystery of communication between alone-ness via, for example, intuition and empathy, love and altruism, identification with others, and homonymy in general. We take these for granted. If we regarded them as miracles to be explained, it would be better. Another preoccupation of existentialist writers can be phrased very simply, I think. It is the dimension of seriousness and profundity of living (or perhaps the tragic sense of life) contrasted with the shallow and superficial life, which is a kind of diminished living, a defense against the ultimate problem of life. This is not just a literary concept. It has a real operational meaning, for instance, in psychotherapy. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
I (and others) have been increasingly impressed with the fact that tragedy can sometimes be therapeutic, and that therapy often seems to work best when people are driven into it by pain. It is when the shallow life does not work that it is questioned and that there occurs a call to fundamentals. Shallowness in psychology does not work either as the existentialists are demonstrating very clearly. He existentialists along with many other groups are helping to teach us about the limits of verbal, analytic, conceptual rationality. They are part of the current call back to raw experience as prior to any concepts or abstractions. This amounts to what I believe to be justified critique of the whole way of thinking in the Western World in the 21st century, including orthodox positivistic science and philosophy, both of which badly need re-examination. Possibly most important of all the changes to be wrought by the phenomenologists and existentialists is an overdue revolution in the theory of science. I should not say “wrought by” but rather “helped along by,” because there are many other forces helping to destroy official philosophy of science or scientism. It is not only the Cartesian split between subject and object that needs to be overcome. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
There are other radical changes made necessary by the inclusion of the psyche and of raw experience in reality, and such a change will affect not only the science of psychology but all other sciences as well, for example, parsimony, simplicity, precision, orderliness, logic, elegance, definition, and so forth, are all the realm of abstraction rather than of experience. I close with the stimulus that has most powerfully affected me in the existentialist literature, namely, the problem of future time in psychology. Not that this, like all the other problems or pushes I have mentioned up to this point, was totally unfamiliar to me nor, I imagine, to any serious student of the theory of personality. We should be sensitized to the necessity of grappling with and systematizing the dynamic role of the future in the presently existing personality, for example, growth and becoming and possibly necessarily point toward the future; so do the concepts of potentiality and hoping, and of wishing and imagining; reduction to the concrete is a loss of future; threat and apprehension point to the future (no future = no neurosis); self-actualization is meaningless without reference to a currently active future; life can be a gestalt in time, and so forth and so on. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
And yet the basic and central importance of this problem of the existentialists has something to teach us. I think it fair to say that no theory of psychology will ever be complete which does not centrally incorporate the concept that beings have a future within one, dynamically active at this present moment. In this sense the future can be treated as a-historical sense. Also we must realize that only the future is in principle unknown and unknowable, which means that all habits, defenses and coping mechanisms are doubtful and ambiguous since they are based on past experience. Only the flexibly creative person can really manage the future, only the one who can face novelty with confidence without fear. I am convinced that much of what we now call psychology is the study of tricks we used to avoid the anxiety of absolute novelty by making believe the future will be like the past. “Remember to learn wisdom in thy youth; yea, learn in thy youth to keep the commandments of God. Yea, and cry unto God for all thy support; yea, let all thy doings be unto the Lord, and whithersoever thou goes let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yea, let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever,” reports Alma 37.35-36. Sometimes the literal form of expressions tends to be taken as the whole of the truth and the inner reality is missed. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
