Home » Population Control (Page 9)
Category Archives: Population Control
I’m on to Your Game, You Can’t Make Me Flip
Leaders are people who do the right thing. They have a significant role in creating wisdom, and the know how and skill to do it all. So truly inspirational leadership is that it makes a way for the dream to be obtained. Amazing as it may seem, fully half a century after the knowledge economy began, we know embarrassingly little about the “knowledge” that lies behind it. If, for example, knowledge is the oil of tomorrow’s economy, as many have suggested, then how much of this intangible “oil” exists? Petroleum companies, armies, Wall Street traders and Middle East sheikhs spend fortunes trying to estimate the real—as distinct from claimed—size of global oil reserves. However, does anyone know how much the World knows? Or how the World’s knowledge supply is changing? How much of it is worth knowing? And what is it worth? To answer questions like these, we will need to blaze some surprising pathways, exploring bizarre beliefs about everything from the Christian Bible and the Holy Koran to science, the behavior of beavers and toxic tomatoes. The more we use…? Our starting point is a single critical fact: Knowledge—another of the deep fundamentals of revolutionary wealth—has become one of the fastest changing components of our economic and social environment. This is why any comparisons of knowledge to oil is misleading. The ways in which we store and deliver petroleum have changed only modestly in the past century—we still rely on pipes, tanks and tankers. By contrast, with the spread of computers, satellites, mobile phones, the Internet and other digital technologies, we are drastically altering the ways in which we create and store knowledge, the speed at which it decays, how we judge its validity, the tools we use to make more of it, the languages in which it is expressed, the degree of specialization and abstraction in which it is organized, the analogies we rely on, the amount that is quantified and the media that disseminate it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Moreover, all these dimensions of knowledge are changing simultaneously, at speeds never before encountered—and opening up countless new ways to create wealth. Another basic difference between oil and knowledge is that the more oil we use, the less we have left. By contrast, as we have suggested, the more knowledge we use, the more we create. This difference alone makes of mainstream economics obsolete. Economics can no longer be defined—as it often was—as the science of the allocation of scarce resources. Knowledge is essentially inexhaustible. These changes in the way we relate to knowledge have powerful effects on real-World wealth—who gets it and how. They send lawyers, accountants and legislators scurrying to rewrite existing rules about taxes, accounting, privacy and intellectual property. They intensify competition and accelerate innovation. They make old regulatory rules obsolete. They create continuous turbulence and turnover in methods, markets, and management. They allow whole industries and sectors to move beyond mass production and mass consumption to higher-value-added, more personalized products, services and experiences. Above all, these changes in knowledge demand much faster, smarter decision-making under more and more complex, if not chaotic, conditions. Yet, for all the thousands of analyses and studies of emerging knowledge economies, the impact of knowledge on creating wealth has been, and remains, misleading undervalued. Though the United States of America is still a great manufacturing power, fewer than 20 percent of its labor force works in this sector. Fully 56 percent performs work that is managerial, financial, sales-related, clerical or professional. The category growing most rapidly of all is professional—the most knowledge-intensive. Such much-quoted numbers, however, underestimate the new reality. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Far more than 56 percent are engaged in knowledge work. That is because today many machine operators, whether in leading-edge American steel mills or, for that matter, South Korea consumer-product plants, spend at least part of their time monitoring computers, much like pilots in a 747 cockpit. Cars have computers in the windows, in the cockpit, on the grill and on the bumper. Truck drivers rely on computers in their cabs. They may not be categorized as knowledge workers, but they, too, are generating, processing and transmitting knowledge or the data and information that underlie it. They are, in effect, part-time knowledge workers, but are not counted as such. And that is not all that goes uncounted. The knowledge we all use to create wealth includes hard-to-measure tacit or implicit knowledge stored inside our heads. What makes us knowledgeable,” for example, is an everyday understanding of the people around us. It includes knowing whom to trust, how a boss will react to bad news, how teams work. It includes job skills and behavior we may have learned by simply watching others. It includes knowing about our own bodies and brains, how they perform and when they let us do our best work. Some of this tacit knowledge is trivial. However, some is vital to everyday life and to productive endeavors. It is that back-of-the-mind knowledge on which we all depend—knowledge we may not even know we have. And precisely because it is so varied, and so far in the background, it, too, is often ignored by economists. In short, for these and other reasons, knowledge has long been shortchanged by economists—and today more than ever. To peer into the heart of tomorrow’s economy, therefore, we need to compensate for this lack of knowledge about knowledge. Every one of us, at any given moment, has an individualized inventory of work- and wealth-related knowledge. Authors presumably know something about the craft of writing and about the book-publishing industry. Dentists know about teeth. Gas station attendants know about steering fluids. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
However, not all knowledge belongs to individuals. Work teams, companies, industries, institutions and whole economies each, at any given moment, develop their own collective knowledge supply. The same might be said of societies and nations. All this knowledge is stored in two fundamentally different ways. One part of the knowledge supply is found inside our skulls. In each of us there is a crowded, invisible warehouse full of knowledge and its precursor data and information. However, unlike a warehouse, it is also a workshop in which we—or, more accurately, the electrochemicals in our brains—continually shift, add, subtract, combine and rearrange numbers, symbols, words, images and memories, combining them with emotiosn to form new thoughts. As they by, these thoguts may include everything from Wall Street stats, ideas about our customers, a friend’s trip about our golf swing, images of our mother’s face, worries about a sick child or a technical formula for improving a product, all interspersed with flashes of last night’s baseball game on TV, fragments of an advertising jingle from a car commercial and a half-finished outline for an overdue memo. Individually, such disparate items may mean little. However rearranged, they take on shape and larger meaning. They often turn into action that alters important decisions about our personal life, work and wealth. Concern for the sick child may make it hard to concentrate on the memo, or to keep tomorrow’s golf date with a customer, while the drop in stock-market prices may lead us to defer buying that new BMW. Let us inspect that knowledge warehouse and workshop. If we could shrink ourselves down to nanosize and walk around this constantly changing mental space, we would find endless rows and piles of facts and supposed facts. We would find concepts jumbled together or neatly piled atop other concepts, and linked to still others. Somewhere we would find all of our assumptions, plausible or not, about people, love, pleasures of the flesh, nature, time, space, religion, politics, life, death and causation. Hidden in some dark, remote corner we would find grammar the very languages we use and the logic and rules we apply to arrive at and manage our collection of meanings. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
It is a busy, churning place, operating without stop, even when we sleep. Whole some knowledge is continually lost, forgotten, mutated or rendered pointless, new, wealth-relevant knowledge is continually added. We can call all of this put together our personal knowledge supply. We all have one. There are more than seven and a half billion of these personal knowledge supplies currently walking around the planet—more than at any time in human history. However, by far most of the World’s knowledge is stored outside the brains of living humans. It is the accumulated knowledge of the ages—and of the moment—stored externally on everything from ancient cave walls to the latest hard drives and DVDs. For millennia humans had extremely limited ways to pass knowledge from one generation to the next. Apart from oral narratives (told and retold with accumulating inaccuracy), most knowledge died with each dying person and each dying generation. The rate of social and technological change in these early human societies was so slow, therefore, that even accurate accounts mainly told the same stories over and over again. A giant breakthrough occurred thirty-five thousand years ago when some unremembered genius drew the first pictograph or ideograph on a stone or a cave wall to memorialize an event, person or thing—and, in so doing, began storing non-oral memories outside the human brain. Another great advance followed the invention of various forms of writing. Millennia later came additional huge leaps with the successive invention of libraries, indexing and printing, all of which increased the rate at which knowledge grew from generation to generation. It is sobering to think that without this one factor—growth in our ability to generate and accumulate knowledge—we might still be living little better than our ancestors did more than thirty-five thousand years ago. Today, with the arrival of every-more-powerful computers, ever-more Web sites and ever-more new media, we are generating—and accumulating—data, information and knowledge at unprecedented speeds. To accommodate them, we have in recent decades been building what is, in effect, an immense megabrain outside, and in addition to, our six and a half billion individual human brains. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
This global megabrain is still that of a baby, incomplete, with adult connections not yet in place. Yet at some unknow, crucial tipping point in human history, the amount of knowledge stored outside our brains became larger than the amount stored inside. If anything proves our ignorance about knowledge, it is the fact that this truly momentous change in the history of our species is either unknow or unnoticed by humanity. The “outside brain” is expanding at unbelievable speed. The amount of data, information and knowledge stored in print, film, magnetic or optical form in one year alone is equivalent to that which is contained in a million new libraries the size of the Library of Congress. It is equal to every word ever uttered by a human being since the dawn of time. Today, we can assume, the pace is even faster. It is only when we add this exploding external storage to what is inside our human brains that we arrive at our human species’ total supply of knowledge—what might be called the Aggregate Supply of Knowledge, or ASK. This becomes the immense wellspring on which revolutionary wealth can draw. We are not merely expanding the ASK, but altering the way it is organized, accessed and distributed. Internet search engines permit more and more relate contents. Moreover, systems that have until now been dominated by Western approaches to logic and thinking will soon be enriched by alternative epistemologies and more diverse ways to organize thought as we move toward a global knowledge meta-system. We are, therefore, transforming the entire relationship of wealth, in all forms, to the deep fundamental of knowledge—even as we similarly transform its links to time and space. Only by recognizing this can we appreciate, for the first time, why revolutionary wealth today is so qualitatively different from wealth in any previous era. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
When computer scientist Michael E. Lesk of the U.S. National Science Foundation cast light on the emerging global brain, he took a different track. Beginning with our seven and a half billion-plus brains, and based on the rates at which they absorb information and how fast we forget it, Mr. Lesk roughly calculated that the “total memory of all people now alive” is the equivalent of 1,200 petabytes of data. Since a petabyte is equal to 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes, 1,200 sounds like a lot. However, Mr. Lesk nonchalantly assures us, “We can store digitally everything that everyone remembers. For any single person, this isn’t even hard.” After all, he continues, “the average American spends 3,304 hours per year with one or another kind of media.” Some 1,578 hours are spent watching TV, another 12 in front of movie screens—which adds up to about 11 million words. Another 354 hours are devoted to newspapers, magazines, and books. The result, he suggested, is that “in 70 years of life you would be exposed to around six gigabytes of ASCII.” Today you can buy a 20-terabyte disk drive for your personal computer. The amount of data in the World was estimated to be 44 zettabytes at the dawn of 2020. By 2025, the amount of data generated each day is expected to reach 463 exabytes globally. Also, the World spends almost $1 million per minute on commodities on the Internet. By 2025, there will be 75 billion Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices in the World. By 2030, 90 percent of every person age six and above will be digitally active. There should be around 175 zettabytes of data by 2025. It is a number that is hard to envision! However, with the countless advanced technological devices available now, processing these massive amounts of data is not impossible. The day is not far off when pupils will need to memorize nothing—they will wear a gadget that stores everything for them. And that raises fascinating questions. Might that gadget also help Alzheimer’s patients? It seems with the advancement of technology and information, to keep up humans have to start turning themselves into partial androids. Yet, everything that has, can, or ever will exist, in this or any other World may be fully described by the complete collection of relevant facts and the corresponding set of logical interconnections. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
No attempt comes close to telling us how much meaningful knowledge there is in all this storage. Or what it is worth. However, all of them support our contention that revolutionary changes are taking place in the deep fundamental of knowledge—changes for which the term revolution is an understatement. We are, in fact, living through the deepest upheaval in the World knowledge system since our species started to think. Until we digest this point, our best-laid plans for the future will misfire. And that takes us to those toxic tomatoes and…the buried head of a child. The Hipster Generation, in our model, are those who have resigned from the organized system of production and sales and its culture, and yet who are too hip to be attracted to independent work. They are a phenomenon of the after of 911. Their number is swelled by youths whose careers, hesitant at best, have been interrupted by the pandemic. This group is socially important out of proportion to its numbers, and it has deservedly and undeservedly attracted attention and influenced many young people. The importance of the Hipster is twofold: first, they act out a critique of the organized system that everybody in some sense agrees with. However, second—and more important in the long run—they are a kind of major pilot study of the use of leisure in an economy of abundance. They are not, as such, underprivileged and disqualified for the system; nor are they, as such, emotionally disturbed or delinquent. Some young men might be driven to this position by personality disturbances, but the subculture they have formed has made sense and proved attractive to others without those disturbances, but who have the identical relation to the organized society. In many ways the Hipster subculture is not merely a reaction to the middle class or to the organized system. It is natural. Merging with the underprivileged, the Hipsters do not make a poor go of it. Their homes are often more livable than middle-class homes; they often eat better, have good vinyl records, etcetera. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Some of their habits, like being scheduled, sloppy, communitarian, easy-going with pleasures of the flesh, and careless of reputation, go against the traditional grain of the middle class, but they are motivated by good sense rather than resentment: if they got wise to themselves, they are probably natural ways that most people would choose—at least so artist and the less affluent have always urged. Their rejection of the popular culture, Broadway theater, status commodities, bespeaks robust mental health. (It is, oddly, just these reasonable and natural ways that have won underserved attention as outrageous. For Madison Avenue boys are miffed and fascinated that Hipster get away with it, and so they keep writing them up.) The Hipster culture share specific traits of the “outside” class to which they have appointed themselves. Some of these are accidental, belonging to the particular marginalized groups who from the present-day poor—just as in France, it is the North Africans who set the tone. Others are essential, pertaining to being “outside” of society, such as being outcast and objects of prejudice; defying convention rather than just disregarding it; in-group loyalty; fear of the police; job uselessness. Besides these natural traits and present-day poor traits, Hipster culture is strongly suffused with the hipsterism that belongs to the middle status of the organized system. This appears in some of the Hipster economic behavior that can be a defensive ignorance of the academic culture; and in a cynicism and neglect of ethical and political goals. Balked in their normal patriotism and religious tradition, the Hipsters seek pretty far afield for substitutes, in the Silicon Valley or on Wall Street. As a typical genesis for a Hipster Generation, we have suggested attachment to middle-class home but withdrawing from its values, without growing into other worthwhile values. They are on speaking terms with their families but dissent from all their ways. They experience the University, for instance, as part of the worthless organized system rather than as Newton and Musk. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Finally, we see that Hipsters regard themselves as in a metaphysical crisis: they have to choose between the system and eternal life; and therefore their more philosophic utterances are religious and strewn with references to the apocalypse and saints of yore as when President Trump calls the TV News media “Fake News,” and for that he was censored and forced out of office. This is not, on the whole, a strong position: to be resigned and still attached, and therefore to have recourse to apocalyptic means. However, let us see what can be made of it, and turn first to the jargon, a variant of urban culture jargon of English, jive. In this talk there is a phrase “make it,” meaning “to establish oneself in some accepted relation to something.” One can make it as a writer, as a counter boy, with girl. The word comes from the common English “make it against difficulties,” as, “They kept shooting at him but he made it across the field.” It is akin to “make good as a lawyer, a writer,” but it is not so strong and positive. (We should not say “Make good as a counter boy.”) The difficulties overcome are those that confront anyone who has dropped “out” of the ordinary social functions when he tries to establish himself as anything at all, to be a something, a something or other. The usage is an acceptance of withdrawal. The Hipster is an enfant terrible turned inside out. In character with his time, he is trying to get back at the conformist by lying low. One cannot interview a hipster because his main goal is to keep out of a society which, he thinks, is trying to use the fake news media and television programs to make everyone over into a preprogramed image. The hipster may be a jazz musician; rarely an artist, almost never a writer. He may earn his living as a petty criminal, a hobo, a carnival roustabout, a coffee shop employee, or a free-lance moving man in Greenwich, Connecticut, but some hipsters have found a safe refuge in the upper income brackets as engineers, computer programmers or movie actors. He is considered infantile, but his infantilism is a sign that he is not aggressive or a tyrant. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
As the only extreme nonconformist of his generation, he exercises a powerful if not underground appeal as a social media influencer. Establishing an acceptable social relation against obstacles, draws from the Role Playing that is the chief function of the middle status of the organized system. One can says, “He made it, I made it in the Silicon Valley,” indicating no specific job, for that is unimportant, but usually means you work at a tech company and can afford a $2 million house, at the least, and a brand-new luxury Hybrid. Now a more general withdrawal, from experiencing altogether, is expressed by the omnicapable word “like.” Exempli gratia, “Like I’m sleepy,” meaning “if I experienced anything, it would be feeling sleepy.” Like if I go to like New Yor, I’ll look for up,” indicating that in this definite and friendly promise, there is no felt purpose in that trip or any trip. Technically, “like” is here a particle expression a tonality or attitude of utterance, like the Greek verily, or now look. “Like” expresses adolescent embarrassment or difference. Thus, if I talk to a young fellow and give him the security of continued attention, the “like” at once vanishes and is replaced by “You know,” “I mean,” “you know what I mean,” similarly interposed in every sentence. The vocative expletive “Man,” however, has different nuances in different groups. Among the Hipster it is used differently and means, “We are not small children, man, and anyway like we are playing together as like grownups.” Among some others, it is often more aggressive and mean, “Man, now don’t you call me boy, buddy or inferior.” And still to others “Man” means, “That is ‘the Man,’ the government or a man of another race who cannot be trusted.” Among proper hipsters it means, “We are not impotent.” So far as I can hear, it never means acceptance of the speakers as adult males, nor does it have the ring of respect or admiration (Mensch), as a woman or hero-worshipping boys might use it. When the interlocutor is in fact respected or feared, he would not be called “man.” (Perhaps “boss”?) #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
“Cool,” being unruffled and alert, has the same nuances. In standard English a man “keeps cool in an emergency.” If there is always an emergency, it must imply that the danger is internal as well as external: the environment is dangerous and feeling is dangerous. As spoken and enacted by a young Hipster, maintain a mask-face and tapping his toe quietly to the jazz, it means, “I do not feel out of place, I am not abandoned and afraid, I am not going to burst into tears.” In the original gangster (O.G.) the nuance is rather, “I’ll stay unruffled and keep out of trouble around here; I won’t let on what I feel, these folk are dangerous.” With the hipster, the jaw is more set and the eyes more calculating, and it means, “I’m on to your game, you can’t make me flip.” In general, coolness and mask-face are remaining immobile in order to conceal embarrassment, temper, or uncontrollable anxiety. To make a remark about language as a whole as used by the Hipsters: Its O.G. base is, I think, culturally accidental; but the paucity of its vocabulary and syntax is for the Beats essentially expressive of withdrawal from the standard civilization and its learning. On the other hand this paucity gives, instead of opportunities for thought and problem solving, considerable satisfaction in the act and energy of speaking itself, as is true of any simple adopted language, such as pig Latin. However, this can have disadvantages. One learns to one’s frustrations that they regard talk as an end in itself, as a means of self-expression, without subject matter. In a Hipster group it is bad form to assert or deny a proposition as true or false, probable or improbable, or to want to explore its meaning. The aim of conversation is for each one to be able, by speech, to know that he is existing and belonging. So among perfectly intelligent and literate young men, some movie or movie star will be discussed for an hour, giving each one a chance to protect his own fantasies; but if someone, in despair, tries to asset something about the truth or worth of the movie, the others will at once sign off. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
(Among all American adolescents and even fellows in their late twenties, however, there is an embarrassment about “what to say”—“I never have anything to say to a girl,” or “They keep talking about painting and I have nothing to contribute.” Speaking, that is, is take as a role. If they are interested in the subject, they do not have confidence, they will say something, and if they are not interested, why bother? Here too the Hipsters have helped formalize and make tolerable a common difficulty; one contributes just by saying, “Like,” “Cool,” and “Man.”) Now, celibacy can creep up in myriad unexpected ways. Skewed gender ratios, a global fact of life, often produces unwilling celibates. The ratios are distorted by any number of phenomena. Wars are a major contributor, killing off enormous numbers of men in a narrow age range. Female infanticide, the consequence of the World’s preference for male children, warps populations so that women become much rarer—modern China, with 118.5 males for every hundred females, is now experiencing this disconcerting reality. Celibacy is one important response to these skewed rations, especially in light of predications by Chinses officials, who estimate that “the number of hopeless bachelors could mushroom to 80 million. (Polyandry would also be a solution, but globalization may help also as more females go to China for business.) Old age also creates celibates, usually women. Many are married to men who have become impotent, a common problem in older males. Unless these women turn to extramarital affairs, they are forced into celibacy. So are the millions of wives who outlive their husbands, another common phenomenon. Their situation garners little understanding or support. Society assumes these old women and the few men also in their category have become asexual and ridicule them as absence if they show interest in pursuing a relationship which involves pleasures of the flesh. North American nursing homes, for example, usually enforce celibacy. At the end of their lives, even women and some men who are interested in pleasures of the flesh are obliged to retire into a chaste existence they neither seek nor enjoy. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Their unwanted lifestyle is reinforced by adult children who are often deeply distressed or disgusted at any hint of activity involving pleasures of the flesh or even desire in their mothers. They find such eroticism inappropriate and threatening, even selfish—they believe good mothers live for others, whereas intimate passions satisfy deeply personal needs. In old age, women are expected to revert to the undefiled state of early childhood when they were genderless, virginal, and pure. As a result, many respond by stifling their sensuality. They are made to feel guilty and inadequate and accept the celibate role they are expected to play. In any case, the death of suitable partners effectively imposes celibacy on even the most amorous older women. On the beneficial side, they are forced into it relatively late in life, unlike other coerced celibates. Today, widowhood connotes sadness, seniority, whitened hair, and the fragility of aging bones. Young widows exist, but because they may remarry, they are not strikingly sadder than divorcees of the same age. To a great extent, our image corresponds to the reality. This was not always so. Until medical advances became widely available, at different times in different places, widows and widowers could be any age. Death respected neither youth nor maturity, carrying off its victims in childbirth, plagues, epidemics, drought, famine, and a host of other natural catastrophes. Widows, in those times, could be teenaged, middle-aged, or very old. From our perspective of celibacy, what really mattered was the future as either perpetual widows or remarried wives. (Widowers, of course, are much rarer and are much more likely to be encouraged to remarry.) All societies have policies about widow remarriage, with many permitting it, some to the extent of making specific provisions for them to marry brothers-in-law, who will be fully invested in parenting any children and in caring for the now single woman. Other societies are—or were—neutral or hostile to widow remarriage. Early Christianity falls into the latter category. Marrying another man, even after the first one was dead, sounded far too much like a license for pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
It was, therefore, severely frowned on to remarry after becoming a widow. The assumption was that widows would/should remain perpetually chaste. Once a woman had been married, society recognized her husband’s right to exclusive ownership in any intimate passions, which continued in force even after his death. The general view was that a widow’s remarriage violated that ownership by transferring it to a new man, which was widely regarded as a betrayal of her first husband. Hinduism’s take on widowhood incorporates elements of this fundamental revulsion for female pleasures of the flesh with reincarnation, producing a conclusion that is a merciless condemnation of widows. Basically, Hinduism understands the husband’s death—especially from an accident, disease, or chronic condition, as opposed to old age—as caused by his wife’s sinful behavior in a previous life. How to challenge such an interpretation, which is at the core of the religion’s Worldview? And so instead of sympathy for her bereavement, concern for her economic plight, anxiety about her fatherless children, Hinduism turns accusingly on the widow and consigns her to, at best, a living hell and, at worst, to an agonizing death. Until recently in the Hindu World, widows of any age were reviled and cursed. “Some day that child marriages cause early widowhood,” wrote a Brahmin. “I say that widowhood is not caused by child marriages, but by those child widows having acted against their husbands in previous births. Adultery, teasing, etcetera, might have been the cause…Child widowhood is horrible, no doubt, but it is the effect of the wrath of God upon man.” In other words, widows were criminals, virtual murderers. What sort of life does such an evil creature deserve? The most brutish possible, and the most chaste. Manu, the Hindu lawgiver, decreed a widow should starve herself by eating only herbs, roots, and fruits, and so a widow traditionally ate once a day, only the plainest foods, and was always hungry. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
To ensure her chastity and her family’s honor, she had to remain in her family’s home, was made ugly, and was condemned to emotional and physical torment. Her hair was shaved and she no longer wore the red dot of marriage—the tilaka—on her forehead. She was stripped of all her jewelry, her earrings, nose-ring, bangles, chains, and bracelets. She wore only a white sari without a blouse underneath and went barefoot. Expect to do chores everybody else rejected, she could no longer leave her home, but worked there as a drudge, reviled and cursed. At night she slept on the floor, sometimes on a hard mat. In ancient times, she had to cake her head with mud and sleep on a bed of stones. She could join in no family outings, ceremonies, or celebrations. Despite every privation, a widow’s chastity was always suspect. In a folk song, a widow moaned to her mother-in-law, “I shall be alone in my bed, O mother-in-law, and not just for a few days; immature before marriage, I was totally inexperienced; now, how will I spend my nights and days alone?” Of course, a widow was easy prey, and the predator was often a male relative. If a pregnancy occurred, because the double standard in India thrives as solidly as elsewhere, the widow was shunned and could expect no pity from any quarter. Her seducer, however, being a man, escaped all consequences of the affair. Even if he wanted to, he could not marry her. A widow was forever her husband’s and remarriage was absolutely forbidden. Millions of widows suffered grievously. Many were children who had never even lived with their husbands. Often they were toddlers. Not surprisingly, throughout Indian history the number of child widows has been enormous. The last census of the nineteenth century recorded that Calcutta alone had ten thousand widows under four years of age, and over fifty thousand between five and nine. Between 1921 and 1931, in all of India, the number of child wives rose from 8,565,357 to 12,271,595, creating the potential for millions of future child widows. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The Hindu religion taught that before marriage and childbearing, boys and girls should spend years as chaste brachinines. Gandhi, too, hated child marriage. “Where,” he demanded in 1926, “are the brave women who will work among the girl-wives and girl-widows, and who will take no rest and leave none for men until girl-marriage becomes an impossibility?” He lamented as well “the inhuman treatment often accorded to our widows.” Inhuman, indeed, and based solidly on traditional teachings about women. These do not make lovely reading. How, for instance, to digest this ancient wisdom: “even if he were to do nothing else throughout a long life of a hundred years, a man with a hundred tongues would die before finishing the task of lecturing upon the vices and defects of women.” And, continues this litany of condemnation, “women combine the wickedness of a razor’s edge, poison, snake and fire,” and their natural faults are “falsehood, thoughtless action, trickery, folly, great greed, impurity and cruelty.” They are “lascivious, fickle-minded and falsehood incarnate” and “have the hearts of Hyaenas.” Manu the lawgiver expressed it pithily: “Stealing grain or cattle, having pleasure of the flesh with a woman who drinks liquor, or laying a woman, are all minor offences.” Manu’s views are tremendously important because they influenced two thousand years of legislation and custom. Women had no rights and lived only to serve their husbands, who could abuse, discard, or sell them with impunity. Above all, woman had to be chaste. The greatest calamity that could befall a woman was to compromise her chastity. Widowhood was, therefore, doubly incriminating, as incontrovertible evidence of previous sin and as vulnerable states win which weak, lascivious, fickle women were more than ever tempted to stray. The merciless treatment of widows was therefore perfectly logical. It punished them for killing their husbands and, like the best military offenses, struck out and incapacitated them before they could so much as fantasize about resistance. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
That Nature put the hunger instinct into man and animal alike primarily to preserve the life of the physical body and not to satisfy the palate, nobody could rightly deny. The enjoyment of food is subordinate to, and intended to make more inescapable, the instinct required for this highly important necessity of sustenance. Nature is not interested in the human individual’s pleasure so much as in the continuance of his species. She has given him the one for the sake of the latter. Man has in thought, belief, and practice today reversed this order of importance. The result is a totally wrong view about the possibility and the value of continence. From this view stem a hot of moral, nervous, and physical maladies which are plunging one’s life into confusion and disaster. Nature has her rights, it is true, but before we can justly grant them we need to inquire as to what they really are. With you, O my people, my kin-folk, my mother, source of my life, with you I soar the wide spaces of the World; in your eternity I have life eternal. In your glory I am honored, in your sorrow I am grieved, in your affliction, I suffer anguish, in your knowledge and understanding, behold, I am filled with knowledge and understanding. Every footstep, wherever you have trod, is a treasure of life. Your land, the land of your hope, is sacred to me; its Heavens a source of beauty, of eternal splendor; its Carmel and Sharon are the spring of hope, the fountain of blessing, the source of life’s joy. Even its thorns and thistles are garbed in glory, in deathless beauty! These prayers, old and stained with tear, I take into my heart. And unto the God of my fathers, who from the ages past has been their Rock and Refuge, I call in my distress. In ancient words, seared with the pain of generations, I pour out my woe. May these words that know the Heavenly paths, ascend aloft unto God in high, to convey to Him that which my tongue cannot express—all that lies deep hidden within my heart. May these words, simple and true, speak for me before God, entreating His mercy. Perchance the Heavenly God who hearkened to my fathers’ prayers, who gave them courage and strength to bear all their sorrow and degradation, yet ever to hope for redemption—perchance He will also hear my prayer and hearken to my cry, and be to me a protecting shield, for there is none to help or sustain me, but God in Heaven. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Cresleigh Homes
Find serenity wherever you can. 🙏 Our home at #PlumasRanch Meadows Residence 1 never fails to give us that cozy feeling. It is an entertainer’s dream come true.
Look at that spacious, light-filled great room! It’s one of the best rooms in the house. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-1/
Enjoy this social friendly atmosphere with a fantastic indoor/outdoor living experience.
Learn to Have a Stainless Mind
Life is an adventure; it is one journey where one does not want to compromise one’s self. Enjoy laughter, beauty, and love. Success is finding and doing the best of your ability in each moment of your life. Our is the first civilization to plant human-made objects far beyond the surface of our home planet and use them to help us create wealth. That by itself would mark our time as a revolutionary moment in history. Yet little is known about the impact of this fact in our daily lives and our economy. Few are aware that every time they use an ATM or a telephone, they are relying on technology twelve thousand miles from Earth. Or that every patient receiving dialysis or wearing a peacemaker owes some thanks to technologies and, in some cases, people who have left the surface of the planet we call home. Communication satellites, the Global Positioning System (GPS)—developed by the U.S. Defense Department over six decades at a cost estimated at $14 billion—and commercial remote imaging are parts of an emerging space infrastructure that will be greatly elaborated over the decades and centuries to come, with increasing impact on how we create economic value. Nothing more clearly symbolizes today’s changes in the relationship of wealth to the deep fundamental. In its present, still-primitive form—often myopically derided as a wasteful luxury—the drive into space has already transformed many aspects of daily life. One result is a $100 billion Worldwide satellite industry composed of manufacturers such as Boeing, EADS/Astrium and Alcatel Space; launch firms like China Great Wall Industry Corporation; operators and coordinators such as Intersputnik in Russia; plus myriad service firms, space-image distributors and ground-equipment suppliers. And now a second space race is just getting underway. Commercial companies are being formed. These private commercial aerospace companies like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, are all building and testing their own reusable rockets and spacecrafts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
In fact, Virgin Orbit successfully sent 10 small satellites into orbit, utilizing its unique approach to the task. This mission saw LauncherOne, a heavily modified Boeing 747, fly up to an altitude of 35,000 feet (10,500 meters) before releasing a rocket mounted beneath the plane. The rocket then lit its own engines and lasted off to space, deploying the satellites into low Earth orbit. However, many are left wondering how far the government will allow private industries to go. They believe that private companies could outpace the government and actually established life on a new planet and then start colonizing on that planet, creating their own government, and constructing roads, houses, businesses, and parks in the next 25 years, and that many people, mostly the extremely wealth, will leave Earth in live in these tax havens where corporations have control. This is a vastly different picture than the one we had just a few decades ago. During the 1990s, business pages reported that investors had lost billions in space-industry stocks and that many space firms were in terminal trouble. However, a recent survey by the Satellite Industry Association tells a quite different story—a steady, year-after-year revenue growth rate of 15 percent from the mid-1990s on. What is more, despite temporary overcapacity, now more and more commercial start-ups, and countries are racing to join the space “club.” In addition to the companies we listed above, Brazil and Ukraine, for example, are partnering to launch Ukrainian Cyclone-4 rockets from Brazil’s Alcantara Launch Center—regarded as one of the World’s best launch sites. And, as of 2005, equity firms were buying up stakes in such satellite operators as Intelsat, PanAmSat and New Skies. Similarly, while $100 billion many seem trivial in a multi-trillion-dollar World economy, that number does not begin to tell the whole story. It does not include the hidden increases in value generated by the many industries that directly or indirectly reply on space—big television networks, medical technology, sports teams, advertising agencies, telephone and Internet companies and financial-data suppliers, to cite a few. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
People in the Arab World have also been gazing at the starts with genius and curiosity for a legion of years. In 2021, the Middle Eastern World built a Mars orbit of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Hope (al-Amal) probe. This ambition is their new space exploration adventure. The Arab governments today have developed a fully 21st century view of space, by using algebra and spherical trigonometry which are both essential mathematical tools for understanding the motions of Heavenly bodies, with intentions rooted in the quest for profit, saving lives, power, image, and control. The United Arab Emirates’ program is very auspicious. The country has established its national space agency in 2014 and has set amazingly ambitious goals for the future. The UAE space program has about $5.4 billion in public-private support, compared to NASA’s FY21 budget of $23.3 billion. The Mars mission itself was expensive at a cost of $200 million. However, it appears certain that given the success and acclaim accorded the Amal probe, more is on the way. This is why some many people are concerned about the fate of the United States of America and looking for other options as a future home for Rome did once fall, too. Afterall, the theory of convergence, states that poor or developing economies with a higher per capita income can gradually reach similar high levels of per capita income. Thus, all economies, over time, may converge in terms of income per head. However, these developing countries will not be using old infrastructure. Because high technology already exists, they do not have an initial investment to stake to build new roads, architecture, and electric or other technologies. They can use new methods to build high tech cities and homes and leave already developed nations with their antiquated systems, and replace them as a World Super Power. Therefore, the poorer nations grow much faster because of the higher possibilities of growth and over time catch up, and even surpass the richer countries in terms of per capita income such that the divide between the two gets minimized. This theory of convergence of incomes is based on the logic of better opportunities of growth available for developing economics like access to technological know how from the developed World and increasing returns to capital. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
However, empirical evidence suggests that while some developing economics have been able to effectively tap the available advantages to grow faster and catch up with robust economies, this has not always been true for a large part of the developing World. The limitations of the theory are based on grounds of social, institutional or political differences, which simultaneously influence growth. Yet developed nations have to keep in mind that they are sovereign entities and they need to help their people and businesses succeed to remain successful nations. Because any risk arising of chances of a government failing to make debt repayments or not honouring a loan agreement is a sovereign risk. Such practices can be resorted to by a government in times of economic or political uncertainty or even to portray an assertive stance misusing its independence. A government can restore to such practices by easily altering any of its laws, thereby causing adverse losses to investors. For example, countries like Argentina and Mexico had defaulted on their loan payments in 1970s to a big extent after the oil shock. A little-known consortium of commercial space firms called the Mapping Alliance Program now offers remote sensing, images from space and software for use in computer-aided design, surveying, automated mapping and other services. MAP customers include oil and gas companies, water, gas, and electric utilities, agriculture, mining, and transportation, as well as natural-resource managers. Knowledge derived from space operations is also helping companies anticipate, reduce and hedge their risks. Thus space data play a key role in financial markets in which “weather futures” are traded. Variations in weather can have a major impact on productivity, turnover and overall profitability in fields as diverse as insurance and agriculture as well as [for] the manufacturers and retailers of everything from soft drinks to cold remedies, not to mention the organizers of pop festivals and package holidays. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
In the United States of America, 3.2 percent ($768 billion) of the entire $24.01 trillion economy was spent on defense. This is example will show how much things change in just a few decades. Now back on subject, according to the Department of Commerce, one seventh of the entire $10 trillion economy in 2001 was subject to weather risk. (Look how much the economy grew in just 20 years and compare the amount spent on defense to what was put at risk by the weather.) Whether futures, traded on LIFFE and other exchanges, offer a way of hedging against that risk. The health industry is another largely unacknowledged beneficiary of space activity. The 750,000 U.S. victims of kidney failure who today survive because of dialysis owe their treatment, in some measure, to NASA and its astronauts. A chemical process developed by the space agency to remove toxic waste from dialysis fluids is not helping patients stay alive. Meanwhile, a company called StelSys, using technology or ideas licensed from the U.S. space agency, is working to develop the equivalent of a dialysis system for patients with liver failure. One of the specialized functions of the human liver is to break down drugs or toxins into less harmful and more water-soluble substances that are more easily excreted from the body. The StelSys experiment—a joint study by NASA and Baltimore-based biotechnology research company StelSys, LLC—will test this function of human liver cells in the microgravity environment aboard the International Space Station, comparing the results to the typical function of supplicate cells on Earth. The findings of this experiment will provide unprecedented information about the effects of microgravity on the proper function of human liver cells, offering new insight into maintaining the health of humans living and working in space. Cells are transported from Earth to the International Space Station using Commercial Refrigerator/Incubator Module (CRIM). One on orbit, the cells are nurtured and grown in the CBOSS Biotechnology Specimen Temperature Controller (BSTC), which has flown continuously abroad the International Space Station since Expedition Thee. Once the cells are gown, they are frozen and stored in the ARCTIC single-locker freezer, a Space Station facility capable of lowering temperatures to -20 degrees Celsius. The frozen cells are then transported back to Earth for study. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
These scientists are studying liver and kidney cell growth, disease and replacement, using ground-based bioreactor labs, as well as commercial NASA bioreactors. To date, the company has made great strides in developing long-term cell culture techniques, and has created a prototype of a proposed “bio-artificial” liver. StelSys research abroad the Space Station is conducted under agreement with NASA’s Office of Biological and Physical Research in Washington, D.C. Research in this are could lead to earlier and more reliable drug-candidate screening for patients in need of liver and kidney treatments prior to transplant. It could also accelerate development of new life-saving drugs by pharmaceutical companies. StelSys LLC, in cooperation with NASA, is exploring specific research areas that benefit from liver cell research abroad the Space Station. They are: Development of a liver-assist device: Research based on NASA biotechnology could help develop a machine to sustain the life of a patient with advanced liver disease—similar to dialysis machines for persons with kidney disease. National production of the vitamin D3: Individuals on kidney dialysis require D3, which has beneficial effects on the immune system, helps fight various forms of cancer, and appears to be tied closely to hormones that control cellular proliferation and differentiation. Vitamin D3 remains expensive and difficult to properly manufacture, however. Stelsys seeks an alternative method of producing D3 via cultured kidney cells. Natural production of metabolites: StelSys is researching metabolites, or chemical by-products formed by the breakdown of parent compounds, which accelerates development of new drugs. Additional space research holds promise for improving the treatment of brain tumors, blindness, osteoporosis and other diseases responsible for megabillions of dollars in the ever-swelling healthcare budget. Today Europeans are clinically testing a heart pump based on space shuttle fuel-pump technology. With the annual cost of heart disease and stroke in the United States of America alone exceeding $108 billion a year, how much might such a heart pump save? Americans suffer 1.5 million heart attacks and strokes each year. A conservative estimate of these costs for just one person is $121,200 over twenty years. For those needing surgery or procedures and ongoing care, the cost can be more than $4.8 million over a lifetime. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Therefore, how much economic value should be assigned to the “bioreactor” designed for growing cells in space—a tool now used by tissue engineering labs developing methods to grow human hearts? NASA’s rotating bioreactor allows cells to be grown in a microgravity environment that eliminates almost all shear forces placed upon a cell culture system while entering space. NASA’s bioreactor has allowed various labs to culture cells and even viruses previously impossible to grow using traditional methods. These successes are attributed to the bioreactor’s ability to provide a unique environment that closely resembles tissue differentiation during embryogenesis, and thus allowing cellular expression of surface epitopes similar to that of intact tissues. It also appears that cells grown in microgravity, low-shear environment allow for greater chemical signaling, probably as a result of more surface contact between cells. Realizing the bioreactor’s commercial potential, Santa Monica, California-based VivoRx Licensed exclusive rights from NASA for both therapeutic and diagnostic commercial applications. VivoRX has, in the past, successfully transplanted encapsulated islet cells from cadavers and porcine pancreas into insulin-dependent diabetics, perhaps a major breakthrough in the treatment of diabetes. However, pancreas from cadavers are in very short supply. The bioreactor may be the answer; VivoRx hopes the bioreactor will allow them to propagate enough human islet cells to use their cell-based approach to treat a large diabetic population. The company has already successfully grown islet cells generated from the bioreactors, and is beginning FDA-approved Phase I/II clinical trials. We could also ask parallel question about economic blindness, limb loss and kidney failure associated with diabetes—a disease that has risen to $350 billion in America. People with diagnosed diabetes incur average medical expenditures of $16,752 per year, of which about $,601 is attributed to diabetes. On average, people with diagnosed diabetes have medical expenditures approximately 2.3 times higher than what expenditures would be in the absence of diabetes. In direct costs also include increased absenteeism ($3.3 billion), reduced productivity while at work ($26.9 billion) for the employed, in ability to work as a result of disease-related disability ($37.5 billion), lost productive capacity due to early mortality ($19.9 billion). Costs are forecast to soar as the population ages. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Meanwhile, space plays a crucial role in environmental monitoring as well. France’s SPOT-4 spacecraft, for example, carries an American POAM III instrument for measuring polar ozone and aerosol. According to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Review, “Every year huge tracts of forest in Alaska, Northern Canada, Scandinavia Russia and China are racked by forest fires from may through October, and in California, fire season is generally from March to December. Enormous quantities of smoke billow into the atmosphere, where high-altitude winds sometimes carry the smoke thousands of kilometers from the original fires.” SPOT-4/POAM III tracks it. Similarly, a joint Brazil-NASA space project is studying the global effects of ecological changes in the Amazon region. A NASA “bird” measures the rate at which ice is melting at the North and South Poles. Other space-based environmental projects focus on everything from water utilization and fisheries to the ecology of estuaries and El Nino weather effects. Never before has the human race had as detailed and accurate an image of the Earth’s surface. Space shuttles such as Endeavor have produced massive data needed for making high-resolution images of desolate tundras and deserts, of jungles where endangered gorillas live and of ancient ruins such as Angkor Wat and Ubar. The same amazingly precise data can, among many other uses, help us locate cell-phone towers, identify flight hazards for aircraft and forecast floods. Twenty-four hours a day, at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado, a handful of U.S. Air Force men and women—some little more than eighteen or nineteen years old—sit at computer consoles and control satellites orbiting the Earth twelve thousand nautical miles away. They operate more than twenty satellites that together form the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS) that can tell anyone with a small, inexpensive receiver one’s precise location on Earth. Used by online services, hikers, drivers, truckers, boaters, ships and shippers, banks, and telecom companies, not to mention the military, GSP is one of the marvels of our era. So far-reaching are its implications for both security and business that Europe lunched its own Galileo. Galileo is a GPS system that went live in 2016. It was created by the European Union through the European Space Agency. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Galileo cost $13.2 billion and has 28 satellites. It provides Europe accurate and reliable positioning and timing information, used for example in your mobile phones, your cars (and in the future autonomous and connected cars), railways, aviation and other sectors. As many know, GPS helps us locate time as well as space. Thus, in addition to positioning us spatially, the system also operates as a key synchronizer. In the words of Glen Gibbons of Advanstar Communications, “Every time we get cash from an ATM or make a phone call (whether wireless or wire-line), the synchronization of the voice and data streams in those…communications networks is almost certainly based on GPS timing…it has made nanosecond-level timing readily available throughout the World, courtesy of the cesium and rubidium atomic clocks on board the GPS satellites.” The productive benefit of precision timing and synchronization in the economy has yet to be calculated. And more is on the way. Since the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, anti-terror experts have devoted increasing attention the 226 million container boxes that move by sea each year. Although losing one box seems like it is not a big deal, containers piled high on giant vessels carrying everything from car tries to smartphones are toppling over at an alarming rate, sending millions of dollars of cargo skinning to the bottom of the ocean as pressure to speed deliveries raises the risk of safety errors. This shipping industry saw the biggest increase in lost containers in 2020. More than 3,000 boxes dropped into the sea last year, and more than 1,000 fell overboard in 2021. The accidents are disrupting supply chains for hundreds of American retailers and giving pirates a new treasure to search for, but even more than that, it creates danger. Any one of these containers can contain a hidden biological weapon, a smuggled terrorist, illegal drugs or arms or other dangerous prophylactics, barbiturates, and contraband. Today only about 2 percent are inspected as they enter the United States of America. Add to that the additional containers that arrive by land and air are another reason people are demanding border security. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
GPS satellites, in principle, can track the coordinates of these containers as they move from place to place. In the future, not just the containers but every product in them will be continually followed as it moves through the supply chain from the plant to the wholesaler, the retailer, onto the shelves and into the customer’s home. Prototype tracking systems are already being studied or tested by such companies as Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, and Kmart. Furthermore, the day will come when many packages carrying food, for example, will have embedded chips that continuously report to the shipper the changing condition of the food as it moves. Other “smart” packages will actually process their contents en route. Linking these to GPS or similar satellite systems will transform large sectors of both the transportation and the food industry, ensure fresher and higher quality packed food and other products, change the economics of both production and distribution in these and many other fields—and improve security. In Japan, to prevent theft of packages, couriers are now given a key to a digital customers car so they can leave a package in the trunk to prevent theft. If the car is then left unlocked, a failsafe system will arm the car after one minute. Because they have low crime rates, this is a great idea for Japan. However, like all technologies, of course, GPS has both beneficial and negative potentials. It can make our lives far more secure. It can track a car full of Good Day and Al Qaeda terrorists. It can also make a visit to a bordello or a Swiss bank less private than it might once have been. However, then, so can “cookies” in a computer, rouge medical professionals, scandalous lawyers—or a gossipy neighbor who steals your mail, watches your house and car, and accepts packages for you. Benefits and sacrifices need to be weighed against one another. One of the biggest economic payoffs from GPS, will come when today’s ground-based World air traffic control system becomes essentially a backup to a space-based alternative. Today flight plans require most aircrafts to fly from one ground-based radio beacon to the next over heavily congested airways. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Capacity near many big cities is limited. A GPS control system can increase capacity along with precision. It can also permit landings under conditions now regarded as prohibitive, including at remote and small airports, and improve over-the-ocean navigation. All at far less cost than the ground-based system. Also, corporations may start to open warehouses in suburban locations with locked storage units and some refrigerated where consumers can have any courier drop off your package because we all know thieves think just because packages are insured they can steal them, and when you are getting orders from companies like Omaha Steaks, they start to watch your order habits so they can intercept your packages. However, even if they are not involved in it. theft is embarrassing to many people, because it speaks poorly of you and the people in your community. High-end stores often share their “theft and loss” information with other corporations and couriers so it may secretly make them think less of you and the community you live in. Also, there are applications track and report crimes such as loss and theft and vandalism and this can make your home less appealing to prospective buyers and lower the property value of your community, while making it less desirable. Even more remarkable about the future of technology, NASA’s Global Differential GPS, recently developed at its Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasadena, California, has been tested in Greenland and the United States of America. It is now capable of positioning aircraft to within 3.9 inches horizontally and 7.9 inches vertically anywhere in the World. JPL proudly boasts that this is a “factor of ten impowerment” over the accuracy of current systems. Across the board, then, space activity is paying off for the emergent economy—often in unseen ways—and promises even more in days to come. A Midwest Research Institute study has estimated that every dollar invested in NASA adds nine dollars to U.S. gross domestic product. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Another analysis, by Chase Econometrics, has suggested that space-related research yields productivity increases that translate into a 43 percent return on investment. All such numbers are relatively old, shaky, and incomplete. Nevertheless, even if we arbitrarily slash them, they would still strongly suggest that space activity already pays off handsomely for the economy. And we are still using only a tiny fraction of its potential. Looming on the horizon are thousands upon thousands more satellites in the Heavens. Algeria, Pakistan and Nigeria have already purchased microsatellites weighing little more than a hundred pounds, capable of carrying cameras and being propelled into orbit for a fraction of what it now costs for conventional satellites. Professors Martian Sweeting of the company supplying them, Surrey Satellite Technology in Britain, claims that within a decade we will launch satellites no bigger than a credit card. As size and cost plumet they will become less expensive, making it possible for medium-sized businesses, NGOs, private groups and even individuals—good and bad alike—to afford them. It is time, in short, to recognize that even in purely economic terms the drive into space is anything but trivial. Humanity’s baby steps into space are already creating significant value on Earth in ways about which earlier civilizations could only fantasize. And it is only the beginning. Today more than fifty nations claim to have space programs. However, governments are not alone in space, as we discussed earlier. Private companies are modifying planes to take hundreds of people into space at once, as well as smaller sized planes to carry two or three people. The purpose: To hasten the development of commercial space tourism and colonization of other planets. Even if we are making no other changes in the “where” of wealth—if we were not shifting it toward Asia and forming region-states, if there were no search for higher-value-added placed, if we were not re-globalizing and de-globalizing the World economy, the leap beyond our planet would, by itself, mark a revolutionary turning point in wealth creation. #RandolphHarrs 12 of 18
The combined evidence, therefore, is overwhelming. We are simultaneously transforming the relationship of wealth to both time and space—two of the deep fundamentals that have underpinned all economic activity since we were hunter-gathers. Wealth today is not merely revolutionary but is becoming more so. Nor is this just a matter of technology. It is, as we will next time make clear, a revolution of the mind as well. Balked, not taken seriously, deprived of great objects and available opportunities, and in an atmosphere that does not encourage service—it is had to have faith, to feel justified, to have a calling, or win honour. However, what then fills the places of these? for every experience that a human being has is a whole way-of-being-in-the-World. First, necessity gives justification. Having something that you must do, solves the problem of having something to do. Necessary behaviour may or may not be honoruable. To wrest subsistence is necessary and honourable. If a young man falls in love, a temporary psychosis, his entire day is under the iron rule of necessity, foolishly and honourably; if it is only to watch under a window, he has something to do. When the class struggle against exploitation was lively, it was something necessary and honourable to engage in. Indeed, it is a major defect of our present organized system and the economy of abundance that, without providing great goals, it has taken away some of the important real necessities, leaving people with nothing to do. The void is soon filled. Behaviour like going into debt on the installment plan, gives an artificial but then real necessity, something to do, paying up. This is the Rat Race, but if people did not need its justifying necessity, for the commodities themselves are not that attractive, I doubt that it would be a run. Young fellows drift into narcotics, and then find that they have something they must do all day, looking for a connection and a fix, and how to get the loot. Compulsive hunting for pleasures of the flesh is something to do. By dividing into rival gangs, as Clausewitz pointed out long ago, it is possible to create a sate of uncertainty of what the enemy is up to, that keeps you constantly on your toes. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
This is a condition, also, apt to raise the ante, for no matter how you have planned to stay within limits, you can never be sure that the others will not take advantage. Many of the apparently pointless repeated risks that juveniles take, where there cannot be any kick left in the exploit itself, make a little sense when we learn that there is a competition: Ty has stolen twenty-six cars, Steve has stolen twenty-three cars, and each is driven by necessity not to be worsted, especially since the others come along for the rides (However, TY has an unfair advantage because he had gone as a punishment to a “Vocational High School” where he took auto mechanics). And poor Pedro and Carlos who worked while in high school to pay for their cars were cheated by not only Ty and Steve, but also the insurance companies because of their names and the colour of their skin. The system is just not always fair for men of colour who are doing the right thing. When psychologist like Linder speak of the aimless, unconcentrated, unsequential behavior of “psychopathic personalities,” I wonder whether they enough take into account that it requires a real object and an interest in it to take a good actualized Christian of experience and growth. To structure the behaviour of long hours and weeks requires a goal that, from some point of view at least, is pretty worthwhile. Our society is not abounding in highly worth-whole goals available to average gifts and underprivileged attainments. Many goals that are busily and perseveringly pursued by some might reasonably seem not worth the trouble to others who have more animal spirits or plain sense. These really might have “nothing to do,” and their aimless and sensation-seeking killing time might indicate nothing but chronic boredom. Yet they will be judged psychopathic personalities. However, once they have hit on a necessitous and important activity like finding their dose of barbiturates and contraband or stealing twenty-six joy rides (in the teeth of two arrests), they become models of purposiveness and perseverance. Such are the justifications and callings. The honour is to protect one’s masculinity and normalcy, yet to prove by notoriety that one is superior. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
More interesting and likely is the religious effort of the Hipster Generation, to which we shall turn to focus on at a future time, they are older and are not willing to have given up one Rat Race to fall into another. Can they solve the problem of the nagging unanswerable questions of justification and vocation? Their principle is the traditional one of classical mysticism: by “experience” (= kicks) to transcend the nagged and nagging self altogether and get out of one’s skin, to where no questions are asked—nor is there any articulate speech to ask them in. Resigning from society, they form peaceful brotherhoods of pure experience, with voluntary poverty, devotional readings, and a good deal of hashish. In Communist China in 1974, seventeen-year-old schoolgirl Anchee Min was carted away to Red Fire Farm in a convoy of eleven trucks. She was excited because it was an honour to be chosen for such a prestigious assignment. However, during her time at the collective farm, Anchee Min’s emotional moral, and ideological Worlds were turned topsy-turvy when her friend Shao Ching’s young lover was executed after the couple have been caught in passionate intimacy. Shao Ching, also seventeen, was breathtakingly lovely, slender as a willow, and rebellious. She copied out forbidden literature and shared it with her special friend Anchee Min. Instead of tying her brains with brown rubber bands like the other girls, Shao Ching bound hers with coloured strings. She scrounged tiny remnants of cloth and designed elegant unmentionables that she embroidered with flowers, leaves, and lovebirds. In the stark dormitory, her drying laundry hung like artwork. Shao Ching also altered the standard-issue clothes so that her shirts tapered in, nipping her tiny waist, and her trousers emphasized her long legs. She enjoyed her full bosoms and sometimes, in warm weather, shucked off her undergarment. One admiring soldier reportedly wept when he heard she had fallen ill. During Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, a good female comrade was supposed to reserve all her energy and thoughts for the revolution. Until she was in her late twenties, she was not so much as to contemplate men or marriage. “Learn to have a stainless mind!” people recited. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The girls at Red Fire Farm tried to model themselves on the heroines in revolutionary operas, paragons of virtue who never had men, either husbands or intimate friends. No wonder, then, that Shao Ching expressed no interest in men, even to Anchee Min, her closets friend. She was already suspect enough for her fine unmentionables, which has been criticized at a Party meeting. One night, Anchee Min and her companion in a military training program were called out to a “midnight emergency search.” With loaded pistols they were led through the reeds and toward a wheat field, silent and watchful. The order came to drop to their bellies, and they began to crawl through the night. Mosquitoes buzzed and stung, but tht was the only sound. Suddenly, Anchee Min heard the murmur of two voices, a man’s and a woman’s. “I heard a soft, muted cry. And then my shock: I recognized the voice as Shao Ching’s.” Anchee Min’s first thought was to warn her friend—the consequences of being caught with a man were unthinkable. Shao Ching had never even hinted that she was romantically involved, but why would she? At Red Fire Farm, such an admission would be shameful. The brigade acted in unison, flashing thirty flashlights at once, exposing Shao Ching’s rear end and a skinny, spectacled, bookish young man. They took Shao Ching away, leaving a group of soldiers to beat her man. “Make him understand that today, lustful men can no longer force themselves on women,” Anchee Min heard Yan, their leader, instruct. Shao Ching’s studious young beloved displayed no sign that he felt guilty. As the soldiers began to beat and whip him, he made a visible effort not to cry out. Four day later, a public trial was held in the mess hall. Shao Ching had undergone “intensive mind rebushing” and testified in a quavering voice, reading from a paper she held in hands that shook so much, she twice dropped her statement. “He raped me,” she said. Her words convicted her lover and he was executed. (At least she could have just played hard to get since she knew it was wrong to have pleasures of the flesh.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The fastidious Shao Ching stopped bathing and cut up her pretty unmentionables. After months, other girls complained that she stank. She was sent to a hospital in Shanghai and treated for psychosis. She returned to the farm, fat as a bursting sausage from medication, hair matted, eyes vacant. Later she was found dead, drowned among a tangle of weeds. At a special memorial service, Shao Ching was honored as an “outstanding comrade” and was admitted posthumously into the Youth League of the Community Party. Her grandmother was given money in condolence. Celibacy at Red Fire Farm was so strictly enforced that violators were executed. Shao Ching had been saved only because Yan had insisted she recant and blame her lover. Shao Ching had done so, but the mental stress destroyed her mind and she never recovered—do doubt haunted by memories of how her teenage love affair had condemned a young mand to torture and death. “But concerning brotherly love [for all other Christians], you have n need to have anyone write you, for you yourselves have been [personally] taught by God to love one another,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.9. The second grade counsel is almost monastic in its disciplinary demand for it bids one refrain from the pleasures of the flesh altogether, save for the purpose of having children, whose number must be limited and proportioned strictly. In the case of the unmarried, there will then be a complete chastity. May we move beyond viewing this life only through a frame, but touch it and be touched by it. May our bodies, our minds, our spirits, learn a new rhythm paced by the rhythmic pulse of the whole created order. May spring come to us, be in us, and recreate life in us. May we forge a new friendship with the natural World and discover a new affinity with beauty, with life, and with the Cosmic Christ in whom all things were created in Heaven and on Earth, visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions pr principalities or authorities for all things were created through Him and for Him. In His name. Amen. Lord of springtime, Father of flower, field and fruit, smile on us in these earnest days when the work is heavy and the toil wearisome; lift up our hearts, O God, to the things worthwhile—sunshine and night, the dripping rain, the song of the birds, books and music, and the voice of our friends. Left up our hearts to these this night and grant us Thy peace. Amen. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
All things that live shall praise Thy name, the spirits of all flesh proclaim Thy sovereignty, O Lord our God. From everlasting Thou art God, to everlasting Thou shalt be; we have no other God but Thee. Thy goodness and Thy holiness support us in all times of stress, Redeemer, Lord, and King. Thou art the God of first and last, in every age Thy children raise their voices in eternal praise. With tender love Thy World dost guide, and for our needs dost Thou provide; Thou keepest watch eternally. Thou takest slumber from our eyes, and to the speechless givest voice; through Thy great mercy all rejoice. Thou raisest those whose heads are bent, sustaining all the weak and spent; to Thee alone we render thanks. If like the sea our mouths could sing, our tongues like murmuring waves implore, our lips like spacious skies adore; and were our eyes like moon or son, our hands like eagles’ wings upon the Heavens, to spread and reach to Thee; and if our feet were swift as hinds, yet would we still unable be to thank Thee, God, sufficiently; to thank Thee for one-thousandth share of all thy kind and loving care which Thou in every age hast shown. From Egypt didst Thou lead us forth, from bondage didst Thou set us free, redeeming us from slavery. In famine, food didst Thou provide, in plenty Thou wast at our side, to keep and guide us, Lord or God. From pestilence and sword didst save, and when we were by ills assailed, Thy love and mercy never failed. O Lord, Thy wondrous deeds we praise, forsake us not throughout our days; be Thou our help forevermore. Therefore, O Lord, our limbs, our breath, our soul, our tongue, shall all proclaim Thy praise, and glorify Thy name, and every month and every tongue declare allegiance without end; and every knee to Thee shall bend. The mighty ones shall humble be, yea, every heart revere but Thee, and sing the glory of Thy name. Hearken, O my people! From the very depths of my soul I speak unto you; from the core of life where lies the tie that binds us one to the other, with devotion, deep and profound, I declare unto you that you, each one of you, all of you, the whole of you, your very souls, our generations—only you are the essence of my life. I live in you, in each of you, in all of you; in your life, my life has deeper, truer meaning; without you I am as not. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
A single story home with this large of a kitchen? Yes, when you choose #Havenwood Model 1!
We love showcasing the incredible opportunities for entertaining; it’s one of our favorite parts about the home.
Enjoy the ease of main-level living but also the convenience of relaxing evenings on the patio in your private backyard.
Don’t Go Out Like Whitney Huston–Can I Leave A Million at Your House and You Won’t Touch it?
Great changes require administrative support and necessary and necessary resources. A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. The World changes faster than the people in it. We must now try to imagine what the nucleic acid molecules, in the late coacervate/early cellular era, could have done besides reproduce their own kind. For definiteness, let us consider a coacervate or cell containing large numbers of nucleic acid molecules of different compositions and lengths. Let us assume, moreover, that much of the nucleic acid is in its single-stranded form at the time we commence our observations. This could be because not enough time has yet elapsed for the growth of the Siamese-twin configurations since the cyclically changing chemistry of the cell last produced the conditions that split the double molecules into single ones. In any event, let us follow the adventures of a single nucleic acid molecule as it floats around in the cellular fluid. We know, of course, that the floating around of such a molecule would not be a completely passive performance. We have already dealt with the tendency, arising from the electric fields associated with atoms and molecules, for some of the small organic and inorganic molecular fragments that inhabit the cellular fluid to attach themselves to local regions of the nucleic acid molecules. In the past, we concentrated on one type of such attachment process—that which cases a single molecule of nucleic acid to grow into a double one by conjugation of its bases. At that time, we did not concern ourselves greatly with competition from other kinds of attaching molecular fragments, although we knew that such other attachments were bound to occur from time to time. Our lack of concern for such competition was based on our awareness that most of these other attachments would be tenuous and quickly broken, since the randomly encountered molecular fragments would usually not “mate” very well with the nearby parts of the nucleic acid. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Our discussion implied that, upon the approach of a free nucleotide to a suitable region of a molecule of nucleic acid, the strong binging forces that would come into play would result in the displacement of any lightly held “impurity” in favour of the attachment of the arriving nucleotide. Such a tendency for loosely held fragments to be displayed by molecules of greater binding energy is probably adequate to render inconsequential the large majority of the nucleic acid molecule’s casual encounters in the cellular fluid. Nevertheless, there would appear to be possibilities for attachments of kinds that would not necessarily yield to such displacement forces. For example, two different nucleic acid molecules would occasionally bump together. And once in a while such a collision might bring together short regions of the two long molecules carrying base sequences complementary to one another—an A base opposed to a U (Substitute T for U, in DNA) base, then a G opposed to a C, and so on. The resulting multiple attachment could constitute much stronger connection than that resulting from the usual casual encounter between molecules of different types. To be sure, collisions between nucleic acid molecules would be rare, unless the concentration of nucleic in the cellular fluid were exceedingly high. There is a related kind of encounter, however, that would occur much more frequently—the collision of one part of a long nucleic acid molecule with another part of the same molecule. For the nucleic acid backbone is supple; it can turn back upon itself like a rope. Under the ceaseless churning that thermal agitation imposes on the molecules of any fluid, each long chain of nucleic acid would be continually bending and twisting, frequently thereby brining normally remote parts of itself into temporary contact. An occasional attachment would be of just the nature described in the example of the encounter of two different nucleic acid molecules. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
If not an unusually strong attachment (that is, involving a considerable number of conjugated bases), it would soon be broken under the stress of random thermal agitation. However, if a special way of folding the long molecule back upon itself could result in a binding together of the two halves strong enough to survive, it would eventually be “found”; the random processes would ultimately make nearly the right kind of fold, the resulting attractive forces would do the rest, and the long molecule would lock together in a characteristic folded configuration. Of course, certain conditions would have to be met by a single-stranded nucleic acid molecule before it could be eligible to form a folded configuration. In particular, a certain minimum length would have to be exceeded in order that the two halves of the folded molecule could make enough mutual bonds to provide the needed attachment strength. X-rays analysis of the nucleic acid in modern organisms shows that such folded structures, which are abundant in all cells, usually involve seventy to righty nucleotides. A combination of speculation and evidence suggests that there may be nothing very critical about the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of a successfully folded molecule. A molecule of random base sequence might be able to form a folded or hairpin structure involving complementary pairing of most of its bases by the simple expedient of pushing away from the primary folded structure an occasional nucleotide segment that does not fit the base pattern of the opposite arm of the structure. X-ray measurements strongly suggest that this kind of expedient distortion of the hairpin does not actually occur and that the schematic drawings of it are probably fairly realistic. Folded configurations would not be assumed by all nucleic acid molecules even if their length and base sequence were favourable. For the reproduction process would sometimes prevent the formation of folded molecules; to the extent to which the projecting bases had already been mated with conjugate nucleotides from the surrounding fluid, there would be a decrease in the probability that the different parts of the flailing molecule would stick together. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
However, it is not hard to postulate conditions that would cause the competition to be frequently resolved in favour of the formation of folded configurations rather than double molecules. For one thing, as mentioned in the past reports, catalysts and energy-supplying molecules must be available in the cellular fluid if the formation double molecules is to proceed at a significant rate. The chore for which these molecular assistants are required does not have to do with the conjugation of the nucleotide bases; this goes easily. Rather, the additional energy and catalytic assist are needed to connect the sugar phosphate ends of the nucleotides. However, this requirement does not exist for the formation of a folded configuration of a single molecule. Therefore, we might well expect the folding process to occur more rapidly than the reproduction processes for the molecules in question. This would be particularly true if, as we can easily postulate, the supply of catalysts and energy-contributing molecules were low in the vicinity of some of the single-stranded nucleic acid. Under such circumstances we can easily imagine that the occasional free nucleotide that attached itself to conjugate bases along the backbone of the nucleic acid molecule would be displaced by the stronger binding forces brought into play by the tendency toward multiple affiliation of the components of the two arms of the molecule itself. To be sure, the actual configuration of the folded molecule would not look much like the two-dimensional patterns seen in vintage textbooks. The same electric forces that cause double-stranded nucleic acid molecules to form a double helix would operate to impose a twist on the folded molecule. The imperfections caused by the nonmatching bases would probably also distort the helix, and the final result would be a three-dimensional configuration with a patten of atomic arrangement and external electric fields that, in the last analysis, would be completely determined by the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of the original unfolded nucleic acid molecule. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Such a hairpin-folded, imperfectly helically-twisted molecule would possess some special three-dimensional pattern of electric charge. In particular, it would be likely to have an affinity for certain kinds of molecular fragments. For example, a particular sequence of nucleotides might result in such a pattern of hairpin folding and partial helical twisting as to produce, in some portion of the molecule, a very good fit for a sugar fragment. Another molecule with a different sequence of nucleotides might include within its three-dimensional contours a good “mold” for holding a particular kind of amino acid, and so on. Assuming the existence of such ingredients in the surrounding fluid, continued floating around of the nucleic acid molecules would ultimately result in getting most of them coupled to whatever specific kinds of molecular fragments their own special patterns of electric fields best equip them to carry. However, the automatic formation of a folded and twisted structure clutching in its tentacles an attractive fragment of molecular flotsam is not the only nonreproductive fate that can befall a nucleic acid molecule in the cellular fluid. Modern evidence shows that longer varieties of these molecules can become tightly bound to the surfaces of solid particles. The particles on which such attachment occurs are today called microsomes, and they are a conspicuous feature of all modern cells. We have no difficulty in rationalizing the evolutionary origin of such inclusions; the precipitation of some of the chemical by-products of metabolism would doubtless have produced solid particles in some of the early coacervates. The requirement of length in the surface-bound nucleic acid molecules (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides, although, of course, it is unlikely that the primitive forms were of this degree of complexity) is probably generally understandable in terms of the ever-present competition between combining and disrupting forces. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Unless the molecule is long enough to provide many local points of attachment to the supporting surface, the ceaseless jostling to which it is subjected by the random thermal agitation of the surrounding molecules will jar it loose. Perhaps for a similar reason, a successfully surface-bound nucleic acid molecule appears to be fully extended, rather than folded back upon itself. Further, the long molecule is held to the surface in such a way as not to neutralize the pattern of electric fields that results from the specific sequence of bases along the backbone. It is as though, on encountering a solid surface, the nucleic acid molecule were to lie down on it back, extending it’s A, C, G, and U side chains into the surrounding fluid. For the bound molecules are chemically reactive. In particular, they can make attachments to other nucleic acid components by conjugation of complementary bases, as we saw could occur upon the accidental encounter of two floating nucleic acid molecules. This does not have to mean, however, that the long surface-bound molecule of nucleic acid would rapidly accrue to itself conjugate nucleotides and bind them together to form a double molecule. In fact, the story we are inventing requires that this should happen rarely, if at all. It is not hard to imagine conditions that would hold such double-molecule formation to a low level. For example, the catalyst that zips together the sugar phosphate ends of the conjugated nucleotides to tie up the backbone structure of the Siamese-twin molecule may not be able to operate effectively when the generating single molecule is stretched out on a solid surface. Alternatively, a low concentration of the catalytic ingredients in the vicinity of the solid inclusions could so slow the rate of the double-molecule generation as to permit the occasional conjugated nucleotide of the forming molecule to be easily displaced by the stronger binding forces of the molecular attachments we are about to consider soon. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
To get others to do what you want them to do, you must see things through their eyes. It is notorious that the physical plant and social environment have grown out of human scale. To achieve simple goods, it is often necessary to set in motion immense masses. In scarcity, where the means are unavailable, we wistfully renounce the ends. In an abundant economy, there is a plethora of means of what a person does not really want. Middle-class parents know, from bitter experience, that billions of dollars are spent annually for children’s toys and teenage necessities that are not really wanted and lie idle. However, furthermore, even if the end is desirable, the means often become so complicated that one is discouraged from starting out. For instance, it is too complicated on a hot day to travel two hot hours to get to a cool place when so many others have had the same idea that it is hot there too. To adults, such complicated means are irritating and take the joy out of life. To children growing up, they are disastrous because they make it impossible to learn by doing. The sense of causality is lost. Initiative is lost. And one ends with the idea that nothing can be changed. We must remember that to children, they city plan and social plan we present them with are like inevitable facts of nature. Unless they have architects or builders in the family, they cannot realize that the buildings were drawn by somebody on a piece of paper and could have been different. Unless their parents teach them otherwise, they believe that compulsory school attendance is a divine creation and it is a sin to be absent. It is, of course, very difficult to judge the environment concretely from the child’s point of view. Thus, living in a big city does not as such make a child inept, though any city has very complicated means. The city is short on farm work, swimming holes, and animals to trap; but it has docks, freight-car yards, labyrinthine basements, pavements to chalk up, and subway trains to play tag on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The streets are littered with the remarkable junk of a thousand trades, to hoard and make things with. The ingenuity of California’s Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants, the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Raider’s ball games adapted to various improbable fields and obstacles is a model of rule making and rational debate that any senate might emulate: it sizes up the situation, argues, decides, and gets things done that work. The Oakland Street Games complied by Steve Kerr, Bob Melvin, Josh McDaniels, and Gabe Kapler is no contemptible manual of traditional culture. History teaches that cities have made people smart because of their mixed peoples, mixed manners, and mixed learning. On the whole, cities have probably trained more intelligent children than the country. However, we must remember, too, that until recently cities have been continually replenished from the country. City people had country cousins, and drew on both influences. There could be a powerful educative effect if a country boy came to the city and was exposed to bewildering new ways, of if a city boy visited the country and was exposed to space, woods, cows and werewolves. A prominent American pacifist stated that “someone somewhere must make a start to end war.” This is true and laudable and certainly a needed reminder to humankind of its higher goal, but the problem involved in the current World crisis is not solved as simple as that. Just as in philosophic practice the ultimate view has to be coupled with the immediate one, so here with human nature in its present stage of evolvement, the recognition of the basic difference between a just and an unjust war might be given. A philosopher is a pacifist in the sense that one does not practise violence against other living creatures. However, one is not an uncompromising pacifist. One does not consider the use of arms wrong in all circumstances. A situation can be imagined where it would be wiser and, in the end, kinder to use force deliberately. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Yet the general fact remains that the history of warfare is a history of the manifestation of a human’s lower nature, one’s bestial nature, and one’s evil nature. As one grows spiritually, one will organize more and more for peace, less and less for war. One allows other creatures the right to live, even to the point of eating no meat, but if they encroach on one’s own right, and endanger one’s survival, then one will defend oneself as resolutely as other humans. Nor is the situation changed if these creatures are not animal but human. Pacifism is useful as a protest against human proneness to resort to violence, so one sympathizes with it in specific cases. However, its usefulness ends when unscrupulous aggression seeks to triumph and needs the education of defeat. The pacifist movements naturally attract intellectuals and artists, ministers of religion and humanitarians. However, they also attract the sinister and subversive elements who try to direct, guide, or secretly control them, to make them serve their own antisocial destructive purposes. The presence and prominence of genuine idealists along with these pretended ones create confusion in the public mind. How can a movement be bad which is supported by such good humans? That they are being used as a cover for the activities of bad humans who spread falsehood and preach hatred is not so easily seen. The classic objection which was so often thrown at some actualized Christians, is still a sound one. “Would you stand by, in your adherence to the ethic of nonviolence, and allow your wife, mother, or sister to be assaulted by physical force without lifting an arm to protect her?” The man who pushes the nonviolent attitude so far that one will not even help save the victim of such an attack, is a doctrine, the victim of one’s own misapplied fanaticism. Nature (God) can be very violent at times: it is not always peaceful. One the mystical level, all war is evil and all pacifism is good. On the philosophical level, the universality of this rule vanishes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
We there rise from a judgment based on pure feeling to a judgment based on its integration by intuition with pure reason, the result of which is intelligence. If pacifism is to mean the acceptance of evil, then it cannot be enough. Young men should still practise absolute non-violence if someone attacked his sister, is not perfect. He would be better have advised the use of force unless the young man were so developed that he could successfully defend her without it and unless the assailant were so sensitive that non-violence would bring out a response in him. In other words, the pacifist principle should certainly be applied in every case where it is likely to be effective but refrained from where it is likely to fail. It is not a principle of universal applicability. Men whose temperament is naturally given to violence in speech or deed, or those who always stir up agitation, extremism, irreconciliation, and intransigence, must be firmly and unflinchingly ruled. Weakness would be folly. The whole history of Europe during the past fifty years could have been changed had pacifism not been misapplied. When Biden seized power in America, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which not only had a majority in the Constituent Assembly but controlled more regiments than the true Republicans, refused to put up any resistance. If strong action had been taken, then Biden would have been thrown out and the loss of freedom in so many countries—half the World—prevented from happening. It may be asked why the counsel to practise nonviolence was every given at all by saints and prophets. Obviously it is ethically the highest instance of forgiveness and the most effective way of transcending the ego practically. The proper course is to try kindly reasonable and nonviolent methods of resisting aggression. If they fail, then forceful ones become the only alternative. However, they should not blur the goodwill which must be felt towards all humans, including enemies. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The mistake made is to be solely dependent on violent methods, when gentler ones would achieve the same end without letting in the poison of hate and without creating so much new misery. That country is truly civilized where the killing instinct is held in abeyance and regarded with abhorrence. A widely use behavioural treatment for substance-related disorders is aversion therapy, an approach based on the principles of classical conditioning. Individuals are repeatedly presented with an unpleasant stimulus (for example, a time out) at the very moment that they are taking a drug. After repeated pairings, they are expected to react negatively to the substance itself and to lose their craving for it. Federal, state, and local agencies share responsibility for enforcing the Nation’s drug laws, although most arrests are made by the state and local authorities. In 2020 the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) estimated that there were about 1,948,600 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States of America. According to the UCR, drug abuse violations are defined as state and/or local offenses relating to the unlawful possession, sale, use, growing, manufacturing, and making of narcotic drugs including opium or cocaine and their derivatives, marijuana, synthetic narcotics and dangerous nonnarcotic drugs such as barbiturates. More than four-fifths of drug law violation arrests are for possession. Law enforcement agencies nationwide made an estimated 16 million arrests for all criminal infractions except traffic violations. Among the specific categories, the highest arrest counts were—1.9 million for drug abuse violations; approximately 1.6 million for driving under the influence; 1.5 million for simple assaults; 1.4 million for larceny-thefts. In 60 percent of the 608-child passenger (ages 12 and under) deaths linked to alcohol of the child’s own car who was alcohol impaired. And more than 91,000 children were injured. Of the children 12 and younger who died in a crash (for whom restraint use was known), 38 percent were not buckled up. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Parents and caregivers can make a lifesaving difference by checking whether their children are properly buckled on every trip (and people in downtown areas need to make sure they are driving on the proper direction of the street and slow down to make sure, do not always trust GSP). Fifty-seven percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners, in the United States of America, report using illicit drugs in the month before committing their offense. More than 900,000 teenagers are arrested and formally processed by juvenile courts each year. Around half of them test positive for marijuana. Aversion therapy has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to others substance-related disorders. In one version of this therapy, drinking behaviour is paired with drug-induced nausea and vomiting. Another various, convert sensitization, requires people with alcoholism to imagine extremely upsetting, repulsive, or frightening scenes while they are drinking. The pairing of the imagined scenes with liquor is expected to produce negative responses to liquor itself. Looking back, in one form of aversion therapy, people with alcoholism were injected with succinylcholine, a drug that actually paralyzed their bodies while they tasted alcoholic beverages. Concerns about the safety and ethics of this approach led to its discontinuation. Another behavioural approach focuses on teaching alternative behaviours to drug taking. This approach, too, has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to other substance-related disorders. Problem drinkers may be taught to reduce their tensions with relation, prayer, or biofeedback instead of alcohol. Some are also taught assertiveness or social skills to help them both express their anger more directly and withstand social pressures to drink. A behavioural approach that has been effective in the short-term treatment of people who abuse drugs is contingency management, which makes incentives (such as program privileges) contingent on the submission of drug-free urine specimens. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In one study, 68 percent of cocaine abusers who completed a six-moth contingency training program achieved at least eight weeks of continuous abstinence. Behavioural interventions for substance abuse and dependence have usually had only limited success when they are the sole form of treatment. A major problem is that the approaches can be effective only when individuals are motivated to continue with them despite their unpleasantness or demands. Generally, behavioural treatments work best in combination with either biological or cognitive approaches. What is good for one is by n means food for all. Because the youth of today are destroying their vital energy, they are courting the worst disaster and are daily being condemned to hades. Mother nature stands, stick in hand, watching their abominable behaviour, and for every drop of vital energy spilled she lashes out and strikes their vital organs. Now tell me, what future do such people have? The Christian Bible is not to gather dust. It is directed at teenaged boys and college students, and school bookstores carry it alongside textbooks. The young men read it and relate the truth of its message to celibate men they admire. Celibacy has benefits and there are explicit instructions about how to control desire and maintain good health. Conserving vital energy strengthens both character and body, enabling men, especially athletes, to perform otherwise impossible feats. The vital energy is the most essential fluid of life. To tell the truth, it is an elixir. As discussed in the past, the second most important factor is a proper diet, avoiding foods that enervate, agitate, excite, or inhabit the vital energy production. Generally, spicy, friend, and oily items should be avoided. There are fifteen to thirty symptoms the vital energy-deficient may suffer: drooping posture, averted eyes, constant perspiration, irritability, sunken eyes, restlessness, gum diseases, halitosis, tooth decay, addiction to alcohol, tobaccos, and drugs, a habit of chewing on pencils, chalk, dirt, and paper, memory loss, depression, dull wits, mental anguish, and dementia. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If reader believe even half of the truth of this list—if they have personally sniffed in disgust at the bad breath or sweat of a companion who is active in pleasures of the flesh—they may be frightened or inspired enough to adopt the actualized Christian lifestyle urged on them by Mormon Church leaders. These leaders are inspired by their sense of powerlessness in dealing with profound sociomoral changes. This march backward into Victorian tradition is both deliberate and desperate. Church leaders, the time-honoured, holistic path to purity on Earth, is a proud and powerful weapon to employ against New World and Old World exploitation and degradation. Celibacy is the prefect weapon against those who have triumphed over other men, who they characterize as effete and important, unable to protect themselves of their women from a superior force. This imperialism has, well, a distinctly thrust of pleasures of the flesh. Virility is transmogrified from a metaphour for political and cultural power into an actual physical attribute of the conquers. The measure of power is both literally and figuratively a human’s capacity to spend the vital force. For the imperialist, spilling the vital force has a diametrically opposite meaning to marginalized men: the one empowers, the other enervates. Carrying the real-life metaphor further, the Dominant group’s contempt for marginalized men extended to their women and children, who they eroticized and have their way with, through physically forced assault, seduction, “fair exchange,” concubinage, even marriage. Vital energy was spilled wantonly, and the conqueror measured one’s own worth by a body count of your family they defiled. (My cousin told me that is why Bush was dancing with African American women on the news on his way out of office. It was not a show of unity, but imperialism. “Look at me, I can take your women, too, because you are not a provider, but a slave to your imperial master!) #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
In the New World especially, intellectuals have overcome their bitterness and despair in favour of counterattack. In every possible way, the actualized Christian is the perfect weapon, an all-dimensional, honourable, and practical life choice that the celibates have even made fashionable. It is another, uniquely actualized Christian way of measuring virtue. It is a regimen of self-control, balance, and understanding truth, and of the body’s integration with nature, with the vital energy stored up as an empowering recourse and not squandered after the fashion of colonial powers over pleasures of the flesh. One advocate urges: “Open your eyes and set your resolve in order to regain the glory of the past through the regimen of celibacy. One who is able to control a single drop is able to control the seven seas. There is nothing in the World—no object or condition—which a celibate man cannot overcome. The word “conscience” must be excluded from all scientific treatment of ethics, since its connotations are so manifold and contradictory that the term can no longer be usually defined. If we look not only at the term can no longer be usefully defined. If we look not only at the popular use of the word, with its complete lack of clarity, but also at its confused history, this desperate advice is understandable. Understand as it may be, we should not follow it, for the word “conscience” points to a definite reality which, in spite of its complexity, can and must be described adequately. And the history of the idea of conscience, despite the bewildering variety of interpretations that it has produced, shows some clear types and definite trends. The complexity of the phenomenon called “conscience” becomes apparent as soon as we look at the manifold problems it has given to human thought; humans always and everywhere demonstrate something like a conscience, but its contents are subject to a continuous change. What is the relation between the form and the content of conscience? #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Conscience points to an objective structure of demands that make themselves perceivable through it, and represents, at the same time, the most subjective self-interpretation of personal life. What is the relation between the objective and the subjective sides of conscience? Conscience is an ethical concept, but it has a basic significance for religion. What is the relation between the ethical and the religious meaning of conscience? Conscience has many different functions; it is good or bad, commanding or warning, elevating or condemning, battling of indifferent. Which of these functions are basic, which derived? These questions refer only to the description of the phenomenon, not to its explanation or evaluation. They show its complex character and the reason for its confused history. The concept of conscience is a creation of Greek and Roman spirit. Whenever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a creation of the Greek and Roman spirit. Wherever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a significant notion. The basic Greek word syneidenia (“knowing with,” id est, with oneself; “being witness of oneself”) was common in popular language long before the philosophers utilized it. It describes the act of observing oneself, often as judging oneself. In philosophical terminology it received the meaning of “self-consciousness” (for instance, in Stoicism, the derived substantives syneidesis, synesis). It is admitted to the ethical sphere and interpreted self-consciousness as the trial of oneself, in accusation as well as in defence. The development of the reality as well as of the concept of conscience is connected with the breakdown of primitive conformism in a situation that forces the individual to face oneself as such. In the sphere of an unbroken we-consciousness, no individual conscience can appear. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The second building-block of tomorrow’s political systems must be the principle of “semi-direct democracy”—a shift from depending on representatives to representing ourselves. The mixture of the two is semi-direct democracy. The collapse of consensus, as we have already seen, subverts the very concept of representation. Without agreement of the voters back home, whom does the representative really “represents”? At the same time, legislators have come to rely increasingly on staff support and on outside experts for advice in shaping the laws. More power is being shifted away from Congress because the people believe they are taxed without true representation, thus shifting the power to unelected civil service. The United States of America’s Congress, in an effort to counterbalance the influence of the executive bureaucracy, has created its own bureaucracy—a Congressional Budget Office, an Office of Technology Assessment, and other necessary agencies and appendages. Thus the congressional staff has grown from 10,700 to 18,400 in the past decade. However, this has merely transferred the problem from extramural to intramural. Our elected representatives know less and less about the myriad measures on which they must decide, and are compelled to rely more and more on the judgment of others. The representative no longer even represents him- or herself. More basically, parliaments, congresses, or assemblies were places in which, theoretically, the claims of rival minorities could be reconciled. Their “representatives” could make trade-offs for them. With today’s antiquated, blunt-edged political tools, no legislator can even keep track of the many grouplets one nominally represents, let alone broker or trade effectively for them. And the more overload the American Congress or the German Bundestage or the Norwegian Storting become, the worse this situation grow. This helps explain why single-issue political pressure groups become intransigent. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Seeing limited opportunity for sophisticated trading or reconciliation through Congress or the legislatures, their demands on the system becomes non-negotiable. The theory of representative government as the ultimate broker collapses too. The breakdown of bargaining, the decision crunch, the worsening paralysis of representative institutions mean, over the long term, that many of the decisions now made by small numbers of pseudo-representatives may have to be shifted back gradually to the electorate itself. If our elected brokers cannot make deals for us, we shall have to do it ourselves. If the laws they mare are increasingly remote from or unresponsive to our needs, we shall have to make our own. For this, however, we shall need new institutions and new technologies as well. “Keep the charge of the Lord your God, walk in His ways, keep His statues, His commandments, His precepts, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may do wisely and prosper in all that you do,” reports I Kings 2.2. Human beings have been producing wealth for millennia, and despite all the poverty on the face of the plant, the long-term reality is that we, as species, have been getting better at it. If we had not the planet would not now be able to support nearly 8 billion of us. We would not live as long as we do. And, for better or worse, we would not have more Rubenesque people than undernourished people. Face it, food is a legal and lovely treat people love. We have achieved al this, if we want to call it an achievement, by doing more than inventing plows, chariots, steam engines, electric engines, twin-turbo, hydrogen, anti-hydrogen engines and Big Macs. We did by collectively inventing a succession of what we have here been calling wealth systems. In fact, these are among the most important inventions in history. President Trump may have been America’s best friend. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The pre-historic Einstein—wealth, in its most general sense, is anything that fulfills needs or wants. And a wealth system is the way wealth is created, whether as money or not. Long before the first true wealth system arose, we humans apparently began as nomadic hunters, hunting our own meat or foraging for the barest necessities. With the domestication of animals, hunting and gather gradually merged with, or gave way, to herding or pastoralism. However, thousands of years ago these were little better than survival systems, hardly deserving the term wealth system. It was only with humanity’s ability to produce an economic surplus that the first true wealth system became possible. And though a tremendous number of different ways to produce such a surplus have since been tried, we find that over the course of history the methods fall into three broad categories. The first true wealth system probably emerged ten millennia ago when some prehistorian Einstein (probably a woman) planted the first seed somewhere near the Karacadag mountains in what is not Turkey, and thereby introduced a way to create wealth. Instead of waiting for nature to provide, we could now, within limits, make nature do as we wished. (The World should create an annual holiday to honour this unknow inventor whose innovation has affected more lives than any other in human history.) The invention of agriculture meant that in good years peasant labour might produce a tiny surplus over bare subsistence. And this meant that, instead of living nomadically, our ancestors could settle in permanent villages to cultivate crops in the nearby fields. Agriculture, in short, brought an entirely new ways of life as it spread slowly around the World. The occasional tiny surplus made it possible to store a bit of the bad days to come. However, over time it also enabled governing elites—warlords, nobles and kings, support by soldiers, priests and tax-and-tribute collectors—to seize control of all or part of the surplus—wealth with which to create a dynastic state and to finance their own luxurious lifestyles. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
They could build grand palaces and cathedrals. They could hunt for sport. They could—and regularly did—wage war to capture land and slaves or serfs to produce still greater surpluses for themselves. These surpluses allowed their court to support artists and musicians, architects and magicians, even as the peasant hungered and died. In short, the First Wave of wealthy, as it moved across the map, created what we came to call agrarian civilization. Plants and Animals in the Garden, we welcome you—we invite you in—we ask your forgiveness and your understanding. Listen as we speak to you. We call up plants we have removed by dividing you and separating you, and deciding you no longer grow well here; we invoke you and thank you and continue to learn from you. We dedicate this ceremony to you. We will continue to practice with you and for you. O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and knowest me. Thou knowest my every step; Thou understandest my thought from afar. Thou measurest my going about and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For if there be a word on my tongue, Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether. Whiter shall I go from Thy spirit? Or wither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in the nether World, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the seas, even there would Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand would hold me, and Thy right hand would hold me. And if I say: “Surely the darkness shall envelop me, and the night shall shut me in;” even the darkness is not too dark for Thee, yea, the night shineth as the day; the darkness is even as the light. I will give thanks unto Thee, for I am marvelously made; wonderful are Thy works; my soul knoweth right well. Before my days were fashioned, in Thy book were they all written down. How mysterious are Thy purposes, O Lord, how vast is their number! Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any guild in me, and lead me in Thy way forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
With a bathroom like this, you might never want to leave. Which could be a good thing when the whole family’s home!
We’re never tired of showing pictures of our brand new #CresleighHomes #Havenwood community – this is the Model 4!
Maybe I didn’t treat you quite as good as I should have. Maybe I didn’t love you as I could have. Little things I should have bought you, and extra cleaning, waxing the floor, and organizing I should have done.
I just never took the time. My Cresleigh Home was always on my mind. (You were always on my mind).
Maybe I did not clean your windows all those lonely, lonely times. And I guess I never told you I’m so happy that your mine. And, with the moon up above, it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, so they tell me.
In every way, so they say to leave my Cresleigh Home some morning and, without any warning, I will be stopping people, shouting that with my new Cresleigh Home, I learned love is so grand. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-four/
Wealth is Innocent Until Proven Guilty–Healing Cannot Occur without a Walk through Hades!
I live in the intermediate reaches of love. Not the best place, but certainly not the worst. I should count myself fortunate. Be alert. Love is where you find it. Do not be blinded by your categories. Loves comes unexpectedly in many forms. By my carelessness I have lost what now becomes a magic wand that could have lifted me up to Heaven. No one to blame but myself. I am the sole agent of my ruin. It is worthwhile to look to the Parmenides and the Gospel of John. In the philosophical poem about being and nonbeing, Parmenides describes the visionary experience in which the goddess of justice opens his eyes to the true way of asking the ultimate questions. He derives his insight from a kind of revelatory act which takes away his blindness to the truth, and guides him not to a better method of research (although this is an important consequence of his insight), but to a way of life as a whole. In the Fourth Gospel we find passages in which truth is being. Jesus Christ says, “I am the truth.” There are others which state that truth can be done, those who do the truth will recognize the truth. Here the gap between the cognitive and the moral is conquered, and again it is obvious that this kind of insight cannot precede the moral act and motivate it, since it is itself partly a moral act. A modern analogy to these ideas is provided by the psychotherapeutic experience. It clearly shows the difference between detached knowledge and participating insight. No one is helped in one’s personal problems by a thorough knowledge of the psychoanalytic literature. On the contrary, the analyst knows that a patient who claims to have insight into one’s own psychological state on the basis of such knowledge deceives oneself, and often sets up an almost insuperable resistance against gaining true insight about oneself. Only one who enters the healing process with one’s whole being, cognitive as well as moral, and therefore with emotional attachment to the process and its different elements, has a chance of gaining healing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
However, this healing process cannot occur without a “walk through hades,” the suffering implicit in the awareness of the dark, ordinarily repressed elements in our being. Here also, the moral change is only partly an effect of insight, as insight itself is partly an effect of the moral will to be liberated. There is another concept by which classical Greek humanism attempted to answer the question of moral motivation. It is the concept of eros as used by Plato. Eros is defined as the mystical quality of love. This description of eros depends both on Plato’s use of the word in the Symposium and on the reintroduction of the word into Christian mysticism by Dionysius as the Areopagite. Eros for Plato is a mediating power, elevating the human mind out of existential bondage into the realm of pure essences, and finally to the essence of all essences—the idea of the good that is, at the same time, the idea of the beautiful and the true. As in other examples of Greek tradition, the moral and the cognitive are not separate. Eros provided both insight and moral motivation, and there is a third element, the aesthetic desire for the beautiful which is implied in the good. This goal can be attained by eros as a divine-human power that transcends the moral command without denying it. Eros is the transmoral motivation for moral action. To be impelled by eros can also be described as being grasped by that toward which eros drives. And thus we return to the principle of love. It is one of the qualities of love that concerns us here—the mystical, the drive toward reunion with essential being in everything, ultimately with the good as the principle of being and knowing (in Platonic terms). Love in all its qualities drives toward reunion. Eros, as distinct from philia and libido, drives toward reunion with things and persons in their essential goodness and with the good itself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
For mystical theology, God and the good itself is, in religious language, love toward God. This love can be symbolized in two ways: in Plato it is the divine-human power of eros that elevates the mind to the divine; and in Aristotle, it is the power of the divine that attracts every finite think and produces by this attraction the movement of the stars, the Universe, and the human mind. According to both formulations it is not the moral imperative in its commanding majesty and strangeness that is morally motivating, but the driving or attracting power of that which is the goal of the moral realm, in the sense of personal and communal justice, does not furnish moral motivation unless it is understood as a station on the way to something ultimate in being and meaning—the divine. And the aim of everything finite is to participate in the life of the divine. And the aim of everything finite is to participate in the life of the divine. The moral stage is a situation on the way, and the motivation for it depends on the motivation for the transmoral aim, the participation in the divine life, as Aristotle expressed, in mystical-religious terms, the transmoral motivation of morality. Again I should like to point out a contemporary analogy in the realm of therapeutic psychology. The question is whether libido is unlimited in itself or only under the conditions of human estrangement. Our line of thought decides for the latter (as opposed to Dr. Freud and his doctrine of the essential necessity of cultural uneasiness and the death-drive). The difference is that essential libido (toward for or pleasures of the flesh, for example) is concretely directed to a particular object and is satisfied in the union with it, while existentially distorted libido is directed to the pleasure which may be derived from the relation to any encountered object. This drives existential libido boundlessly from object to object, while the essential libido is fulfilled if union with a particular object is achieved. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
This distinguishes the lover from the “Don Juan,” and agape-directed libido from undirected libido. The moral imperative cannot be obeyed by a repression of libido, but only by the power of agape to control libido, but only by the power of gape to control libido and to take it into itself as an element. Eros is a divine-human power. It cannot be produced at will. It has the character of charis, gratia, “grace”—that which is given without prior merit and makes graceful one to whom it is given. It is useful to remember the origins of the word “grace,” because it plays an immense role in Christian religion and theology, and its meaning and relevance have become incomprehensible for most contemporaries both inside and outside the church. Graces are divine gifts, independent of human merit, but dependent on the human readiness to receive them. And the readiness itself is the first gift of grace, which can be either persevered or lost. Theology has distinguished between “common” grace that works in all realms of life and in all human relations, and the special grace bestowed upon those who are grasped by the new reality that has appeared in the Christ. In both respects, the problem of moral motivation is decisive. What common and special grace accomplish is to create a state of reunion in which the cleave between out true and actual being is fragmentarily overcome, and the rule of the commanding law is broken. Where there is grace there is no command and no struggle to obey the command. This is true of all realms of life. One who has the grace of loving a thing, a task, a person, or an idea doe not need to be asked to love, whatever quality of love may be predominant in one’s love. A reunion of something separated has already taken place, and with it a partial fulfillment of the moral imperative. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
As a gift of grace, it is not produced by one’s will and one’s endeavour. One simply receives it. In this sense we may say: there is grace in every reunion of being with being, insofar as it is reunion and not the misuse of the one by the other, insofar as justice is not violated. Elements of grace permeate everyone’s life. Once could also call them healing powers that overcome the split between what we essentially are and what we actually are, and with the split the estrangement of life from life and the hidden or open hostility of life against life. Whenever elements of grace appear, the moral command is fulfilled. What was demanded now is given. However, what was given can be lost. And it will be lost, if one forgets that grace fulfills what the moral imperative demands, and that it affirms and does not replace the unconditional seriousness of morality. Therefore, as soon as grace is lost, the commanding law takes over and produces the painful experience of being unable to become what one could and should have become. This suffering under the moral law finally drives us to the question of the meaning of our existence in the light of the unconditional moral command which cuts into our finite and estranged predicament. We feel that the many gifts of common grace do not suffice; we ask for a grace as unconditional as the moral imperative and as infinite as our failure to fulfill it. We ask for the religious element of moral motivation directly, after we have experienced its indirect effect as common grace in the different realms of life. This Christian message is above all a message of grace. There is no religion without this element. The Old Testament, where the law plays such a decisive role, refers in every part to the divine covenant between God and the selected nation, and to the promises beyond all threats and judgments. We might cite similar examples from many other religions. However, Christianity, particularly under the impact of the Protestant Reformation, have emphasized the idea of grace more than any other religion. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Celibacy for some is like walking on the sword’s edge, and one can see every moment the necessity of continued vigilance. Many people are not blessed with a propensity for celibacy. However, if one acquires mastery over the palate, the observance of celibacy becomes comparatively easy. One must breathe the air of freedom and cast out all doubt from one’s mind, and practice purity of thoughts. Because self-control I paramount, testing to see whether that control is truly in place makes logical sense. One must grow to empathize with others on many issues. The concept of grace in Christian thought contains a polarity between the element of forgiveness and the element of fulfillment. The former can be expressed as the forgiveness of sins or—in a paradoxical phrase—the acceptance of the unacceptable. The latter can be described as the gift of the Spirit or the infusion of love controlled by the agape. The former conquers the pain of morally unfilled existence, and the latter grants the blessedness of an at least fragmentary fulfillment. Neither is possible without the other, for only one who is grasped by the Spirit can accept the tremendous paradox that one is accepted. Nothing is more difficult than to face one’s image in the mirror of the law and to say “yes” to it in terms of “in spite of.” It demands much grace to reach this state. And on the other hand, the fragmentary fulfillment through grace can bestow blessedness only if the paradox of forgiveness conquers the pain of missing fulfillment or of lost grace. Here the skeptical question may arise as to whether the paradox of grace diminishes the power of moral motivation in those who accept that they are accepted, although unacceptable. It is a very old question, used against Paul as well as against Augustine, against Luther as well as against Calvin, and against the Reformation as a whole by the humanists and the evangelical radicals. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It is a justified question insofar as it points to the possibility of converting the paradox of grace into a cover for lawlessness. However, the question is not justified in principle, because it shows that one has not understood that the courage to accept the unacceptable is a work of grace, a creation of the Spiritual power. Only if the acceptance of the unacceptable is misunderstood as a merely intellectual act does it remain without moral motivating power. Orthodoxy (in contrast to the early Luther) is largely responsible for this intellectual distortion of the paradox of acceptance of the unacceptable and, consequently, for the attack on the Pauline principles in the name of morality. The question of moral motivation can be answered only transmorally. For the law demands, but cannot forgive; it judges, but cannot accept. Therefore, forgiveness and acceptance, the conditions of the fulfillment of the law, must come from something above the law, or more precisely, from something in which the split between our essential being and our existence is overcome and healing power has appeared. It is the center of the Christian message that this conquest took place in the Christ, in whom a new reality beyond the cleavage appeared It is therefore a moralistic distortion of Christianity to interpret the so-called “teachings of Jesus” as another law, heavier then the law of Moses. His words (not his “teachings”) point the way to the new reality in which the law is not abolished, but has ceased to be commanding. The reaction of religion and morality is not an external one, but it is the religious dimension, sources, and motivation are implicit in all morality, acknowledged or not. Morality does not depend on any concrete religion; it I religious in its very essence. The unconditional character of the moral imperative, love as the ultimate source of the moral commands, and grace as the power of moral motivation are the concepts through which the question of the relation of religion and morality is fundamentally answered. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Psychodynamic theorists believe that people who abuse substances have a powerful dependency needs that can be traced to their early years. They claim that when parents fail to satisfy a young child’s need for nurturance, the child is likely to grow up depending excessively on others for help and comfort, trying to find the nurturance that was lacking during the early years. If this search for outside support includes experimentation with a drug, the person may well develop a dependent relationship with the substance. Some psychodynamic theorists also believe that certain people respond to their early deprivations by developing a substance abuse personality that leaves them particularly prone to drug abuse. Personality inventories and patient interviews have in fact indicated that people who abuse or depend on drugs tend to be more dependent, antisocial, impulsive, novelty-seeking, and depressive than other people. These findings are correlational, however, and do not clarify whether such personality traits lead to drug use or whether drug use causes people to be dependent, impulsive, and the like. In an effort to establish clearer causation, one longitudinal study measured the personality traits of a large group of nonalcoholic young men and then kept track of each man’s development. Years later, the traits of the men who developed alcohol problems in the middle age were compared with the traits of those who did not. The men who developed alcohol problems had been more impulsive as teenagers and continued to be so in middle age, a finding suggesting that impulsive men are indeed more prone to develop alcohol problems. A major weakness of this line of arguments have been tied to substance abuse and dependence. In fact, different studies point to different “key” traits. Inasmuch as come people with a drug addiction appear to be dependent, others impulsive, and still others antisocial, researchers cannot presently conclude that any one personality trait or group of traits stand out in substance-related disorders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Our subject is the present waste of human resources. Yet this waste is nothing new. Considering our wonderful faculties and powers, people on the average have never accomplished much. Regarded just as machines of virtue, pleasure, wisdom, battle, or friendship, we have always operated at a tiny fraction of capacity. This is evident if we contrast how people usually hang around with how people come across in emergencies, or when they are enthusiastic, or when they are calmly absorbed. Children find the average inactivity very painful and they nag, “What can I do? Tell me something to do.” Adolescents are restive hanging around, and they think up ways to make trouble. Adults are inured to it, and Schopenhauer claimed that boredom is a metaphysical attribute of the World as Will. Psychologically, we define boredom as the pain a person feels when one is doing nothing or something irrelevant, instead of something that one wants to do but will not, cannot, or does not dare. Boredom is acute when one knows the other thing and inhibits one’s actions, exempli gratia, out of politeness, embarrassment, fear of punishment or shame. Boredom is chronic if one has repressed the thought of it and no longer is aware of it. A parge pat of stupidity is just this chronic boredom, for a person cannot learn, or be intelligent about, what one is not interested in, when one’s repressed thoughts are elsewhere. (Another large part of stupidity is stubbornness, unconsciously saying, “I will not, you cannot make me.”) Certainly a large part of our common wasteful inactivity is this neurosis of chronic boredom. Certain aims are forbidden and punishable, or unattainable and painful; so we inhibit them and put them out of mind. In a vicious circle, the repression then makes the idea of the aims seem threatening: the aims are not rejected also in ourselves. So we are bored and inactive. We see how boredom easily turns into apathy, the lack of incentive. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
At first this Sunday-afternoon neurosis, of lively children brought to a pause, is worse among the middle class than among the poor, for the middle class is less permissive, it has stricter standards to maintain and more expensive furniture to protect. However, by adolescence it is generally evident in all classes of the young, hanging around, reading comic books, or watching TV. It is evident in their notion of what is acceptable behaviour in the groups, in their paranoia about pleasures of the flesh, in their inability to think up anything interesting. Their hearts are elsewhere and they do not remember where. Many boys are afraid to be alone with themselves, because they might do something that goes against the principals of abstinence, which in itself may be an activity of boredom. All this has long been with us, and formerly perhaps it was worse than it is now, for now there is more permissiveness for small children and more rationality about growing up. However, when it comes to ineptitude, not knowing how; the situation in which, even if they know their aims, children do not know the means or cannot manage the means. I propose that in this respect our present system is uniquely bad and getting worse. For ironically, just in our times, when science and technology are so advanced, this factor ineptitude also increase, and children become practically more unenlightened. How many can take this essential step of a moral about-turn? Can we awaken a criminal in jail to a sense of one’s personal failure and moral shame? Because one has suffered the humiliation of retribution, there is always the probability of comprehending that there is a better way. And because one is a human being, there is always the possibility of ethical recovery and moral improvement. Those who believe that they can solve such a problem as criminality on a merely practical basis alone are wrong. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Experience will teach them that it is inseparable from a moral one, too. For if the criminal really repents, then our duty is to forgive one. A moral shift on one’s part should lead to a practical shift on ours. We may forgive criminals and yet punish them for wrong-doing, if that be our duty, or place them under such external limitations as will prevent their further wrong-doing, if that be our duty, or place them under such external limitations as will prevent their further wrong-doing, if that also be our duty. The two are not contradictory. If we keep our hearts unpolluted by hatred, we may keep our hands sternly and firmly on the wrong-doer. This is included in what is meant as the skillful performance of action. The skillfulness here meant is obviously not the technical kind but rather the mystical power to remain inwardly detached whilst doing Worldly duty. During the war, it became necessary for philosophic students to lean how to fight a cruel aggressor in the right spirit; they had paradoxically to learn how to deliver without anger or hate hard blows against one whilst feeling profound pity for one’s moral darkness. However, philosophic students are few. It is useless to ask humanity in its present state of evolution to behave on this high plane. An actualized Christian (and perhaps those who try to follow one) would not find it difficult to extend one’s compassionate goodwill to all criminals—indeed one would find it difficult not to—but it would be too much to expect that everybody else is capable of extending it. An alternative to physical punishment, such as flogging, for brutal crimes of violence would be to put the criminal upon a semi-starvation diet. One’s bodily weakness would then affect one’s mental aggressiveness, would reduce and counter it. If capital punishment is the law, at least change the method to withholding of food until death by starvation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The rise of a de-massified civilization brings to the surface deep, unsettling questions about the future of majority rule and the entire mechanistic system of voting to express preferences. Someday future historians may look back on voting and the search for majorities as an archaic ritual engaged in by communicational primitives. Today, however, in a dangerous World, we cannot afford to delegate total power to anyone, we cannot surrender even the weak popular influence that exists under majoritarian systems, and we cannot allow tiny marginalized groups to make vast decisions that tyrannize all other non-dominant groups. This is why we must drastically revise the crude methods of the past by which we pursue the elusive majority. We need new approaches designed for a democracy of non-dominant groups—methods whose purpose is to reveal differences rather than to paper them over with forced or fake majorities based on exclusionary voting, sophistic framing of the issues, or rigged electoral procedures. We need, in short, to modernize the entire system so as to strengthen the role of diverse non-dominate groups yet permit them to form majorities. To do so, however, will require radical changes in many of our political structures—starting with the very symbol of democracy, the ballot box. In the past, voting to determine the popular would provide important feedback for the ruling elites. When conditions for one reason or another became intolerable for the majority, and 51 percent of the voters registered their pain, the elites could, at a minimum, shift parties, alter policies, or make some other accommodation. Even in yesterday’s mass society, however, the 51 percent principle was decidedly blunt, purely quantitative instrument. Voting to determine the majority tells us nothing about the quality of people’s views. It can tell us how many people, at a given moment, want X, but not how badly they want it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Above all, it tells us nothing about what they would be willing to trade off for X-crucial information in a society made up of many marginalized groups. Nor does it signal us when a marginalized member of a group feels so threatened, or attaches such life-and-death significance to a single issue, that it views should perhaps receive more than ordinary weight. In a mass society these well-known weaknesses of majority rule were tolerated because, among other things, most marginalized groups lacked strategic power to disrupt the system. In today’s finely wired society, in which all of us are members of minority groups, that is no longer true. For a de-massified Fourth Wave society the feedback systems of the industrial past are entirely too crude. Thus we will have to use voting, and the polls, in a radically new way. Instead of seeking simpleminded yes-or-no voted, we need to identify potential trade-offs with questions like: “If I give up my position on abortion, will your give up yours on defense spending or nuclear power?” of “If I agree to a small additional tax on my personal income next year, to be earmarked for your project, what will you offer in return?” In the World we are racing into, with its rich communications technologies, there are many ways for people to register such views without ever setting foot in a polling booth. And there are also ways, as we shall see in a moment, to feed these into the political decision-making process. We may also want to de-rig our voting laws to eliminate anti-minority biases. There are many ways to do this. One quite conventional method would be to adopt some variant of cumulative voting, as used by many corporations today to protect the rights of minority stockholders. Such methods allow voters to register not only their preferences but the intensity and rank order of their choices. We shall almost certainly have to discard our obsolete party structures, designed for a slowly changing World of mass movements and mass merchandising, and invent temporary modular parties that service changing configurations of minorities-plug/plug-out parties of the future. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
We may, for instance, need to provide arenas in which different minorities, on a rotating, perhaps even random basis, are brought together to trade problems, negotiate deals, and resolve disputes. If doctors, motorcyclists, computer programmers, Seventh-Day Adventists and Gray Panthers were brought together, with assistance from facilitators trained in issue clarification, priority setting, and dispute resolution, surprising and constructive alliances might be formed. At a minimum, differences could be exposed and the basis for political barter explored. Such measures will not (and should not) eliminate all conflict. However, they can elevate social and political strife to a more intelligent, potentially constructive level—especially if they are linked to long-range goal setting. Today the very complexity of issues inherently provides a greater variety of bargainable points. Yet the political system is not structured to take advantage of this fact. Potential alliances and trades go unnoticed—thus unnecessarily raising tensions between groups while further straining and overloading existing political institutions. Finally, we may well need to empower minorities to regulate more of their own affairs, and encourage them to formulae long-range goals. We might, for example, help the people in a specific neighbourhood, in a well-defined subculture, or in an ethic group, to set up their own youth courts under the supervision of the state, to do so. Such institutions would build community and identity, and contribute to law and order, while relieving the overburdened government institutions of unnecessary work. We may, however, find it necessary to go far beyond such reformist measures. To strengthen minority representation in a political system designed for a de-massified society, we may even eventually have to elect at least some of our officials in the oldest way of all: by drawing lots. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Thus some people have seriously suggested choosing members of the legislature or parliament of the future the way we choose jury members or armies today. Why is it that important life and death decision can be made by the people serving on juries, but decisions on how much money should be spent on child care centers and defense spending are reserved for their “representatives”? The existing political arrangements systematically shortchange minorities. Poor people, young people, smart but inarticulate people, and many other groups are similarly disadvantaged. Nor is this merely true of the United States of American. Nonetheless, between 50 and 60 percent of the American Congress should be chosen at random from the American people in much the same way they are pressed into military service through drafts when they are deemed necessary. Startling as the suggestion is at first blush, it forces us to consider seriously whether randomly chosen representatives would (or could) do worse than those chosen through today’s methods. If we let ourselves imagine freely for the moment, we can come up with many other surprising alternatives. Indeed, we now have the techniques necessary to choose far more truly representative samples than the jury system or the draft, with their preferential exclusions, ever did. We can build an even more innovative congress or parliament of the future—and do it, paradoxically, with less disturbance of tradition. We do not have to pick a group of people by lot and literally trundle them off, like so many Mr. Smiths, to Washington, London, Bonn, Paris, or Moscow. We could, if we chose, keep our elected representatives, allowing them, however, to cast only 50 percent of the votes on any issue, while turning the other 50 percent of the votes over to a random sample of the public. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
By using computers, advanced telecommunications, and polling methods, it has become simple not only to select a random sample of the public but to keep updating that sample from day to day and to provide it with up-to-the-minute information on the issues at hand. When a law is needed, the full complement of traditionally elected representatives, meeting together in the traditional way, under the Capitol dome in Westminster, or in the Bundeshaus or the Diet building, could deliberate and discuss, amend and frame the legislation. However, when the time for decision arrived, the elected representatives would cast only 50 percent of the votes, while the current random sample—who are not in the capital but geographically dispersed in their own homes or offices—would electronically cast the remaining 50 percent. Such a system would not merely provide a more representative process than “representative” government ever did, but would strike a devastating blow at the special interest groups and lobbies who infest the corridors of most parliaments. Such groups would have to lobby the people—not just a few elected officials. Going even further, one might conceive voters in a district electing not a single individual as their “representative” but, in fact, a random sample of the population. This random sample could “serve in Congress” directly—as though it were a person—its opinions statistically tallied into votes. Or it could choose a single individual, in turn, to “represent” it, instructing one how to vote. Or the permutations offered by the new communications technologies are endless and extraordinary. Once we recognized that our present institutions and constitutions are obsolete and we begin searching for alternatives, all sorts of breathtaking political options, never before possible, suddenly open up to us. If we are to govern societies in the twenty-first century, we ought to at least consider the technologies and conceptual tools that are made available to us right now. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
What is important here are not these specific suggestions. By working at it together, we can no doubt come up with far better ideas, easier to implement, less drastic in design. What is important is the general path we choose to travel. We can fight a losing battle to suppress or submerge today’s burgeoning minorities, or we can reconstitute our political systems to accommodate the new diversity. We can continue to use the crude, bludgeonlike tools of Third Wave political systems, or we can design sensitive new tools for a minority-based democracy of tomorrow. As the Fourth Wave de-massifies the old Third Wave mass society, its pressures, I believe, will dictate that choice. For if politics were “pre-majoritarian” during the First Wave, and “majoritarian” during the Second, they are likely to be “mini-majoritarian” tomorrow—a fusion of majority rule with minority power. Wealth has a future. Despite all today’s profound upsets and reversals, chances are the World will create more, not less, wealthy in the years today com. However, that is not universally regarded as a good thing. From the ancients like Aristotle who regarded the pursuit of wealth beyond barest self-sufficiency as unnatural, to nineteenth-century socialists and anarchists who saw wealth as misappropriated property, to many of today’s environmental fundamentalists who preach “voluntary simplicity” and regard “consumerism” as a curse, wealth has a bad name. Unlike a defendant in an American courtroom, wealth does not enjoy a presumption of innocence. Yet wealth, in itself, is neutral. Which is why, in these pages, wealth is innocent until proven guilty. What matters is who has it and has not got it and what purposes it serves. Wealth is above all an accumulation of possibilities. Of course, certain forms of wealth are more or less universally regarded ad “good.” Health. A strong and loving family. Respect from those we respect. Few would deny that these are wealth, even if they do not easily fit into the calculations of economists. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
In everyday usage, however, the term usually refers, all too narrowly, to financial assets, and often carries a connotation of excess. For some, wealth may mean having bit more than their subjectively perceived need, whatever that is. For others no amount suffices. Among the less affluent, matters are less subjective. For the mother whose child is starving, a daily handful of rice may be wealth beyond measure. Whatever else it means, therefore, wealth, at least as used here, does not just mean a BMW M760i xDrive Sedan. Nor is wealth synonymous with money, as popular misconception might have it. Money is only one of many tokens or symbolic expression of wealth. In fact, wealth can sometimes buy things money cannot. To understand the future of wealth—our own or anybody else’s—in the fullest sense, we need to start with its very origin: Desire. The meaning of wealth—desire may reflect anything from a desperate need to a transitory want. In either case, wealth is anything that satisfies the craving. It applies balm to the itch. It may, in fact, gratify more than one desire at a time. We may want a touch of beauty on our living room wall. A painting, even an inexpensive reproduction, may provide a small surge of pleasure every time we pause to look at it. The same work of art may simultaneously fulfill our desire to impress visitors with our splendid good taste or our social importance. However, wealth can also be a bank account, a bicycle, a hoard of food or a health insurance policy. In fact, we can roughly define wealth as any possession, shared or not, that has what economists call “utility”—it provides us with some form of well-being or can be traded for some other form of wealth that does. In any case, wealth is the child of desire. Which is yet another reason some people detest the very thought of it. Managers of desire—some religions, for example, stigmatize desire. Ascetic beliefs propagate passivity in the face of poverty and tell us to seek happiness by reducing, rather than fulfilling, our desires. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Want less. Live without. For eons, people in Oakland, California did just that—in the midst of unbelievable poverty and misery. By contrast, Protestantism, when it arose in the West, sent, if anything, the opposite message. Instead of suppressing material desire, it preached hard work, thrift, and virtue, promising that if you follow these guidelines, God would help you help yourself to fulfill your desires. The West very largely adopted those values and grew wealthy. It also invented that perpetual desire machine—advertising—to keep generating more and still more desires. Many in China believe, “to get rich is glorious”—this attitude is the reach for China’s recent successful, the ideal of wealth has jilted them out of poverty. In the United States of America, TV screes blare financial advice. Ads for stockbrokers and publications like Money and The Wall Street Journal erupt from the screen. Informercial promise ways to save on taxes, make a stock-market killing, strike it rich in real estate and retire to you own sunny island. An enormous barrage of messages legitimatizes and promotes desire. In was calculated that the total advertising expenditure in North America in 2021 amounted about to about $300 billion U.S.D. However, the spending increased by 19 percent that year. The total advertising expenditure in Japan amounted to 6.16 trillion yen ($54 billion USD) in 2020, which represented a decrease of about 780 billion yen ($68 million USD) compared to the previous year. In shorth, whether through asceticism, ideology, religion, advertising, or other means, whether consciously or not, the elites in all societies manage desire—the starting point of wealth creation. Obviously, just pumping up the desire level—or, for that matter, extolling greed, which is different from either wealth or desire—will not necessarily make anyone rich. Cultures that promote desire and pursue wealth do not necessarily attain it. On the other hand, cultures that preach the virtues of poverty usually get precisely what they pray for. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
O my brothers of the wilderness, my little brothers, may the Master of Life who made you, in the form of the quarry provide you with a forever home; so there may be peace between the World and thy spirit. “The [empty-headed] fool has said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable deeds; there is none that does good or right. The Lord looed down from Heaven upon the children of humans to see if there were any who understood, dealt wisely, and sought after God, inquiring for and of Him and requiring Him [of vital necessity], reports Psalm 14.1-2. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast kept us in life, and hast preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season. We kindle these lights to commemorate the miraculous deliverance and the wonders which Thou didst perform for our fathers through Thy holy priests. During all the blessed days of life, lights are sacred and are not to be used for ordinary purposes; we are only to behold them. We kindle these lights to offer thanks and praise to Thy name for Thy miracles, Thy deliverances and Thy wonders. I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains; from whence shall my help come? My help cometh from the Lord, who made Heaven and Earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved, he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth America doth neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon they right hand. The Sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the Moon by night. The Lord shall keep thee from all evil; He shall keep thy soul. The Lord shall guard thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and forever. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; He maketh me lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; He guideth me in straight paths for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life’ and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
Two things to note about this wonderful photo from our Meadows Residence 2 model…
✨ 2022 will see the rise of green as a neutral!
✨ Statement walls will always be one of our favorite ways to decorate. They say you found someone new, but that won’t stop my loving you.
Guess I could find another home, too. But I don’t want no one but you. How could I leave without regret?
A Cresleigh Home is not easy to forget. I long to know the feeling of you sweet embrace, but when we are face to face I just look at you. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-2/
Ready to see what you do when you move into your #CresleighHome at #PlumasRanch!
One Would Think Happiness is Rare?
The trouble with some people is that when they get into trouble, they start acting like cannibals. With mood disorders so prevalent in all societies, it is no wonder that they have been the focus of so much research. Great quantities of data about these disorders have been gathered. Still, clinicians have yet to understand fully all that they know. Several factors have been closely tied to unipolar depression, including biological abnormalities, a reduction in positive reinforcements, negative ways of thinking, a perception of helplessness, and life stress and other sociocultural influences. Indeed, more contributing factors have been associated with unipolar depression than with most other psychological disorders. Precisely how all of these factors relate to unipolar depression, however, is unclear. Different factors may be capable of initiating unipolar depression in different persons. Some people may, for example, begin with low serotonin activity, which predisposes them to react helplessly and negatively, and enjoy fewer pleasures in life. Others may first suffer a severe loss, which triggers helplessness reactions, low serotonin activity, and reductions in positive rewards. Regardless of the initial cause, these factors may merge into a “final common pathway” of unipolar depression. However, culture influences many people’s health and belief system and has an effect on the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. Some cultures have specific expectations of each age group that differ greatly from those in mainstream American society. Because of this difference, all age groups are exposed to conflict or clashes that may increase the risk for development of mental illness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Judging from the evening news and the spread of self-help books, one would think that happiness was rare. Ever psychologists seem far more interested in stuffing heartache. However, there is good news. A growing body of research indicates that most people’s lives are more upbeat than we think. In fact, 55 percent of adults in the United States of America say they laugh once an hour. In addition, most people around the World say they are happy—including those who are poor, unemployed, elderly, and disabled. Some say money buys happiness, well maybe not that much more. Wealthy people appear only slightly happier than those of modest means. Overall, only 1 person in 10 reports being “not too happy.” Although people are not happy every day, most seem to bounce back well from disappointments. Happy people also seem to remain happy from decade to decade, regardless of job changes, moves, and family changes. When treating people with unipolar depression, one method that seems helpful is to reintroduce clients to pleasurable events and activities. While reintroducing pleasurable events into a client’s life, the therapist also makes sure that the person’s various behaviours are reinforced correctly. Behaviourists have argued that when people become depressed, their negative behaviours—crying, complaining, or self-depreciation—keep others at a distance, reducing changes for positive reinforcement. To change this pattern, the therapist may use a contingency management approach, systematically ignoring a client’s depressive behaviours while praising or otherwise rewarding constructive statements and behaviour, such as going to work. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Although formal treatment is typically needed for severe depression, personal efforts such as going on vacation or spending time with friends can often make a significant difference for people who are struggling with mild depression. Research shows, for example, that regular exercise help prevent or reduce feelings of depression as well as other psychological symptoms. Life does not always turn out the way people want it to, you may end up living around people you do not care for and feel isolated and have no friends. You may want to get back to a lifestyle that is more conducive to your well-being. However, one thing that I find that helps, besides exercise and music is to some times just shut down and stop talking to people. Take some time to be quiet and work through the negative emotions and pray about them. Also, happy movies help. I had the TV on, while I was using my station bike, and had sworn off Christmas movies this year because you know, sometimes situations are ongoing and every year some expect them to be resolved, and they are not yet. However, I got stuck watching 12 Pups for Christmas (2019) Starring Charlotte Sullivan and Donny Boaz. It was such a great movie and I highly recommend it. It is all about being in the prime of one’s life and then facing one unexpected situation after another, but one can see how God used Erin’s (Charlotte Sullivan’s) pain to put her in a better situation that she could not even imagine. The movie is so charming that I found myself smiling and laughing while watching it. I really enjoyed how the people all liked each other, and worked together and were open and optimistic and honest. The film reminded me of a passage in the Christian Bible, “Now therefore, do not be afraid. I will provide for and support you and your little ones. And he comforted them [imparting cheer, hope, strength] and spoke to their hearts [kindly],” reports Genesis 50.21. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
The film 12 Pups for Christmas shows one how devastating life events can be and how nothing is promised, and things are not perfect, but if you keep the right attitude and keep persevering and being kind, the Lord will make things work in your favour. Although most of the variance in adult dysfunctions involving pleasures of the flesh is explainable by concurrent relational problems, some childhood interpersonal experiences may be viewed as distal contributory causes. Two such issues that are clearly rooted in family socialization are negative attitudes toward sexuality and extreme religious orthodoxy. Both of these are more psychological than interpersonal constructs. However, each can be viewed as a result of socialization in the family of origin, and each is related to the other. Children who are reared with extremely orthodox beliefs and values may view pleasures of the flesh as generally inappropriate and improper behaviour, unless it is explicitly enacted with the goal of procreation. Armed with such attitudes, some individuals might experience adjustment problems when paired with partners of differing beliefs and values. Related to this are negative attitudes toward pleasures of the flesh. Certain child-rearing practices and family environments may leave a child with a tendency to associate pleasures of the flesh with feelings of guilt and shame. Other family experiences may lead the child to link pleasures of the flesh with disgrace, emotional pain, or betrayal. To the extent that these negative attitudes, often learned in childhood, are durable through the adult years, impairment in functioning during pleasures of the flesh is a likely consequence. Another early interpersonal experience that can impair adult pleasures of the flesh functioning is childhood sexual abuse, especially when this abuse is intrafamilial. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Multiple studies show that people who experienced such abuse as children are more likely than those who have not to experience dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh as adults. Two important caveats must be noted, however. First, these same studies show that childhood sexual abuse is situation in a matrix of aversive childhood and family-of-origin experiences (such as excessive conflict, low cohesion, poor boundary regulation, physical abuse, and parental neglect), and that it is associated with a similarly diverse matrix of adult psychosocial problems (such as separation, divorce, relational dissatisfaction, substance abuse, depression, somatization, and anxiety, to name just some). Each of these on its own may be sufficient to interfere with functioning in pleasures of the flesh. Disentangling and understanding the effects of sexual abuse in particular continues to be a challenge for mental health research. Second, there is no deterministic relationship between childhood sexual abuse and adult functioning. Some children who experienced sexual abuse go on to develop happy and healthy interpersonal relationships, and are indistinguishable from their nonabused peers. Undoubtedly, this resilience is an amalgamation of personal and socioenvironmental factors that allows them to minimize and overcome the ill effects of this trauma. These caveats notwithstanding, childhood sexual abuse is thought to disrupt attachment to caregivers, trust in others, the development of self-esteem, and a sense of mastery. When a survivour of such abuse is confronted with new developmental tasks, such as management and negotiation of adult pleasures of the flesh, these liabilities may be manifested in a variety of psychosocial problems—including pleasures of the flesh dysfunctions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions tend to coexist with other mental health problems that also have an obvious interpersonal basis. However, unlike problems such as depression or schizophrenia, for example, the comorbidity of sexual dysfunctions has not been as thoroughly researched. This is perhaps due in part to the difficulty of accurately assessing and diagnosing these problems and the fact that such assessment requires ruling out physiological origins. Studies of people identified as having a psychogenic sexual dysfunction reveal a 30 to 35 percent incidence of others psychological problems. One common problem that is concomitant to sexual dysfunction is depression. As an example, the odds ratio for erectile dysfunction has been estimated at 1.82 in the presence versus absence of depressive symptoms. A study of couples seeking therapy for sexual dysfunction indicated that rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders were all elevated in contrast to those in the generational population. Lifetimes rates of affective disorders (major depression, dysthymia, and bipolar disorder) among the participants in this study were 21.5 percent and 38.3 percent for men and women, respectively. Associated rates of anxiety disorders were 19.9 percent and 37.3 respectively. Thus, problems like depression and anxiety are evident in the background of about 33 percent of those seeking treatment for sexual dysfunction. Like personality disorders, sexual dysfunctions tend t be comorbid with other sexual dysfunctions. In a large-sample, multisite pharmaceutical study, 40 percent of those with hypoactive sexual desire disorder were also diagnosed with a second sexual dysfunction. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
In view of the ill effect of anxiety on performance and depression on sexual desire, the comorbidity of these problems with sexual dysfunction is easily understood. However, it is equally evident that these problems are interconnected in at least some cases by interpersonal problems and stressors. When close relationships become distressed and/or when people have a history of interpersonal maltreatment, both depression and sexual dysfunction are likely consequences. Similarly, people who experience a great deal of anxiety in interpersonal contexts, perhaps because of poor social skills, may experience sexual dysfunctions that are secondary to that excessive anxiety. Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions appear to be every bit as much problems with couple relationships and a psychological sense of intimacy, as problems with the psychophysiology of human sexuality. People with psychogenic sexual dysfunctions often have intimacy problems that extend far beyond just sexual intimacy and include poor social and recreational intimacy with their partners as well. Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions may serve as regulative devices for addressing unresolved conflict and a lack of intimacy. Like those of other mental health problems, the symptoms of psychogenic sexual dysfunction may draw attention away from more substantial underlying interpersonal problems that a couple is unable or unwilling to address openly. They may also serve as a means of communicating distress indirectly. In either case, sexual dysfunctions may be indices of more pervasive interpersonal/relational problems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
A number of relations themes are evident in studies of sexually dysfunctional couples. These include open conflict, as well as passivity, discouragement, a lack of agreement and understanding, and hostility that is often not expressed directly and openly. Some of these phenomena are even evident through observations of brief laboratory interactions between partners. Notwithstanding the associations between sexual dysfunctions and current relational problems, some interpersonal childhood experiences may be distal contributory causes of adult sexual dysfunctions. When children are socialized with strict orthodox religious beliefs and values, and/or when they learn negative attitudes toward sexuality, they are predisposed to experience psychogenic sexual dysfunctions as adults. A history of childhood sexual abuse is also more common among those with psychogenic sexual dysfunction, compared to their well-functioning counterparts. Such abuse may set the stage for views of sexuality as coercive, hostile, and motivated by malfeasance. Both somatoform disorders and psychogenic sexual dysfunctions involved the experience and expression of physical symptoms in the absence of any obvious medical or physiological cause. Each of these disorders is a sign of intrapersonal and interpersonal distress, and serves a communicative value. The interpersonal pathogenesis of somatoform disorders can be primarily located in family-of-origin experiences; although such experiences do play a role in psychogenic sexual dysfunctions, these dysfunctions more strongly signal troubles with family-of-orientation relationships. I remember the time when some brothers of the Lord were praying over me for a new release of the Holy Spirit. At a certain point they invited me to choose Jesus as the Lord of my life, freely and consciously. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
At that moment I happened to look up, and my eyes fell on the crucifix which was on the wall opposite above the altar. He seemed to have been there for some time, waiting for me. In an instant, this truth branded itself within me: “Make no mistake, this is the Jesus Christ you are choosing as your Lord, not a different rose-water version!” How often, since then, have I tried to admit the truth of those words! Being espoused to Christ means, here below, being “crucified with Christ,” but also in the hope of being glorified with Him. Joy is never absent, but it is a hope-filled joy (spe gaudentes). In other words, it is hoping to be happy, and happy to be hoping. “All who belong to Christ Jesus,” writes the Apostle—“have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires,” repots Galatians 5.24. It is a beautiful thing to die to the World for the Lord, so as to raise in Him. Earthly longings (eros) have been crucified; in the me there is left no spark of desire for mundane things. It is no joke to crucify one’s flesh with its passions and desires, especially pleasures of the flesh desires, which are among the most imperious of all. The desires of the flesh—self-indulgence—are always in opposition to the Spirit. Some have been brought to the edge of despair by temptations of the flesh. We are now living in a social context where it is no longer possible to rely on external safeguards for the defense of one’s chastity, as it was in the past—things like the separation of the genders, a rigorous filtering of contacts with the World, and all the countless other detailed precautions with which “Rules” usually surround the observance of this vow. Unconstrained communications and travel have created a new situation. The defence of one’s chastity is now for the most part in the hands of the individual, and it cannot rest on anything other than strong personal convictions, acquired precisely through contact with God in prayer and in His Word. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
It is this spirit and with this intention that we continue our reflections. Celibacy, then, is for the sake of the Kingdom. However, why does the Kingdom call for celibacy? Can it not be achieved and manifested completely through marriage? Some Fathers of the Church, such as John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, thought that is Adam had not sinned, there would have been no marriage, with the sexual procreation that is now its distinguishing feature, because in the way in which it is now exercised, human sexuality is the fruit of original sin. However, from a mere biblical and less Platonic perspective it must be said that rather the reverse is true: that, had there been no sin there would have been no virginity, because the would have been no need to question marriage and sexuality and subject them to judgment. Poverty, chastity and obedience are not a renunciation—or worse, a condemnation—of a created good, but a rejection of the evil that has come to overlay that good. Therefore they are, by definition, a proclamation of the original goodness of created things. They are a way of imitating the Word of God Who, by taking flesh, took on all that belongs to human nature, but did not take on sin. “For we do not have a great High Priest Who is unable to understand and sympathize and have a shared feeling with our weaknesses and infirmities and liability to the assaults of temptation, but One Who has been tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sinning,” reports Hebrews 4.15. The Gospel counsels, and the vows based upon them, proclaim the goodness and beauty of God’s creation precisely by the denouncing the ambiguity of human creation. The inability to understand the value of virginity, and likewise of obedience and voluntary poverty, is always a sign that the sense of sin has disappeared from the horizon of faith. It is typical of periods of acute secularization and naïve optimism concerning humanity and the World. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Seen in this light, poverty, chastity and obedience are the most eloquent proclamation there is of Christ’s redemption and of the Paschal Mystery, which does not cancel out the original creation, as the heretic Marcion thought, but it “recapitulates” it, as St. Irenaeus said, in other words, brings it out into the light from under the covering of sin. In this light it is also possible to understand the positive element, still valid today, in the Fathers’ insight that virginity was a return to the Heavenly state, but on condition that this return is not understood as bypassing marriage and human sexuality itself (male and female He created them), but only the sin with which they have been overlaid by human freedom. A virginal and chaste life if therefore in a very profound sense a paschal life. “I beg you, then, by God’s mercy, my brothers, to offer your bodies as a holy and living sacrifice which will be pleasing to God—this is your spiritual worship. Do not pattern yourselves after the ways of this World but transform yourselves by the renewal of your minds, so you will be able to discern what God’s will is—what is good, pleasing and perfect,” reports Romans 12.1-2. Their celibacy was the most delicious of all: transformative and liberating, and the instrument of its own success. However, the demons’ traps are evil thought. Become saved again, and commit your soul to God. We need to seek how to please God in our bodily members [as well as spiritually]. Everything we observe, and even more important, our way of observing it, is already culture and pattern of culture. If we cannot observe it, what is the sense of mentioning “human nature”? The wild Babes give up their individualistic mores and ideology, exempli gratia, selfishness or magic thinking or omnipotence, and join the tribe of Society; they are soicalised. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
You can teach people anything; if you use the right techniques of socializing or communicating, you can adapt them to anything. The essence of human nature is to be pretty indefinitely malleable. Humans are what suits a particular type of society in a particular historical age. This fateful idea, invented from time to time by philosophers, seems finally to be empirically evident in the most recent decades. For instance, in our highly organized system of machine production and its corresponding social relations, the practice is, by “vocational guidance,” to fit people wherever the products of the system need to be used up, the practice is, by advertising, to get people to consume them. This works. There is a human for every job and not many are left over, and the shelves are almost always cleared. Again, in the highly organized political industrial systems of Germany, Russia, and now China, it has been possible in a short time to condition great masses to perform as desired. Social scientists observer that these are the facts, and they also devise theories and techniques to produce more facts like them, for the social scientists too are part of the highly organized systems. Astonishingly different, however, is the opinion of experts who deal with human facts in a more raw, less highly processed, state. Those who have to cope with people in small groups rather than statistically, attending to them rather than to some systematic goal—parents and teachers, physicians and psychotherapists, police officers and wardens of jails, shop foremen and grievance committees—these experts are likely to hold stubbornly that there is a “human nature.” You cannot teach people some things or change them in some ways, if you persist, you are in for trouble. Contrariwise, if you do not provide them with certain things, they will fill the gaps with eccentric substitute. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
This is immediately evident when something goes wrong; for instance, when a child cannot learn to read because one has not yet developed the muscular accommodation of one’s eyes; if you persist, one withdraws or becomes tricky. Such a clear-cut cause (it is “physical”). However, the more important causes have the following form: the child does take on the culture habit, exempli gratia, early toilet training, and indeed the whole corresponding pattern of culture, but there is a minishing of force, grace, discrimination, intellect, feeling, in specific behaviours or even in one’s total behaviour. One may become too obedient and lacking in initiative, or impractically careful and squeamish; one may develop “psychosomatic” ailments like constipation. Let me give an instance even earlier in life: an infant nurtured in an institution without a particular nurse attending one during the first six months, does not seem to develop abnormally; but if during the end of the first year and for some time thereafter one is not given personal care, one will later be in some ways emotionally cold and unreachable—either some function has failed to develop, or one has already blocked it out as too frustrated and painful. In such examples, the loss of force, grace, and feeling seems to be evidence that somehow the acquired cultural habits do not draw on unimpeded outgoing energy, they are against the grain, they do not fit the child’s needs or appetites; therefore they have been ill adapted and not assimilated. That is, on this view we do not need to be able to say what “human nature” is in order to be able to day tht some training is “against human nature” and you persist in it at peril. Teachers and psychologists who deal practically with growing up and the blocks to growing up may never mention the word “human nature” (indeed, they are better off without too many priori ideas), but they cling stubbornly to the presumption that at every stage there is a developing potentiality not yet cultured, and not blank, and that makes possible the taking on of culture. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
We must draw “it” out, offer “it” opportunities, not violate “it” except for unavoidable reasons. What “it” is, is not definite. It is what, when appealed to in the right circumstances, gives behaviour that has force, grace, discrimination, feeling. This vagueness is of course quite sufficient for education, for education is an art. A good teacher feels one’s way, looking for response. The immediate horror humans perceive is one’s own death, but beyond that one begins to see the entire life process as carnage, as eating and being eaten. A terrible screaming pervades the Universe. Humans are the first to hear it. This is the vision we cannot accept. It drives towards madness or despair. What does Christianity do with this vision. It does not deny it; it makes it acceptable. What Christianity does for the true believer is give one strength to bear it. Redeems it. That is the word! The scheme of things redeems the way things are. However, what is redemption? It must be an interpretation. The scheme of things, therefore, is both a diagram of the something grand and an interpretation of the way things are as an essential step on the way to the something grand. The life process thereupon becomes less horrible and more bearable because it serves, however obscurely, a glorious end. When it is in the service of something grand, one’s individual life is redeemed. The beginning of the redemption of life is the beginning of culture. All culture is redemption. The history of culture is the history of changing forms by which a short and brutish life has been redeemed. The culture of people is the incarnation of its religion. Any religion, while it last, provides the framework for a culture, and protects the mass of humanity from boredom and despair. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Humans search for a scheme of things larger than their own life, with greater authority, to which one may belong. The hunger from which this search issues is profound and inalienable. If one can find such a scheme and makes one’s life “mean” something in it, that is, contribute to it, make a difference, one will have ferried something of one’s mortal self across the gulf of death to become a part of something that will live on. The doomed life must leave a residue of value. The carrier and guarantor of this value is human-made scheme of things perceived as reality and presumed to be eternal. What can one say of the way things are? The constructions of the mind are not coextensive with existence, that there is something “out there,” a universe independent of humans, there before we arrived and to be there after we have disappeared. It affects us and we it. IT and we are in continual contact and interaction, and we know it not. We cannot bear to know. An angel, detached and immortal, could know; we, mired in mortality, are at risk. Interest deflects our knowing. Our lives depend on its being other than it is. In the midst of the way things are we know only the scheme of things in which we live. If someone is not treating you right today, go out of your way to be kinder than usual to that person. If your husband is not serving God, do not go around beating him over the head with your Bible, proselytizing him, nagging him, coercing him to attend church with you. No, just start being extra kind to him. Start living him in a fresh way. The Holy Bibles teaches, “It is the goodness of God that leads people to repentance,” reports Romans 2.4. God’s goodness expressed through you will overcome evil. Friend, love never fails. Now turn not a df ear to that which I have spoken, for My Word shall rise withing you with great revelation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
For I am doing in this hour things that humans have not understood, just as was prophesied in the days of old. I said it by My prophets that you would not believe the reports of the things that I would do. Some will not believe, but the hour is coming that humans shall proclaim My Word boldly over their own bodies and it will cause sickness and disease to depart. Their words will cause the enemy to flee in terror. If anyone had a right to return evil instead of love, it was Joseph, the young man with the distinctive coat of many colours. His brothers hated him so much, they threw him into a deep pit and were going to kill him, but “out of the kindness of their hearts,” they decided instead to sell him into slavery. Years went by, and Joseph experienced all sorts of troubles and heartaches. However, Joseph kept a good attitude, and God continued to bless him. After thirteen years of being in prison for a crime he did not commit, God supernaturally promoted him to the second-highest position in Egypt. Joseph was in charge of the food supply when a famine struck the land, and his brothers traveled to Egypt, hoping to buy provisions for their families. At first they did not recognize their long-lost brother. Joseph finally said, “Do not you who I am? I am Joseph, your brother. I am the one you threw into the pit. I am the one you tried to kill, the brother you sold into slavery.” Can you imagine what was going through his brothers’ minds? Imagine the fear that must have griped their hearts! This was Joseph’s opportunity to pay back his brothers for the years of pain and suffering they had caused him. Now their lives were in his hands. Joseph could have ordered them killed or imprisoned for life. However, Joseph said, “Do not be afraid. I am not going to harm you. I am going to do good to you. I am going to give you all the food you need.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The Christian Bible says, “Love does not hold a grudge. Love does not harbour unforgiveness,” report 1 Corinthians 13.5. You may have people in your life who have done you great wrong, and you have a right to be angry and bitter, or foolish and ghoulish, full of doom and gloom. You may feel as though your whole life had been stolen away by someone who has mistreated you or deceived you. However, if you will choose to let go of your grudge and forgive them, you can overcome that evil with good. You can get to the point where you can look at the people who have hurt your and return good for evil. If you do that, God will pour out His favour in your life in a fresh way. He will honour you; He will reward you, and He will make those wrongs right. When you can bless your worst enemies and do good to those who have used and abused you, that is when God will take that evil and turn it around for good. No matter what you have gone through, no matter who hurt you or whose fault it was for causing all the trauma and drama, let it go. Do not try to get even. Do not hold a grudge. Do not try to pay them back. God says show mercy. Aim for kindness. Seek to do good. You may be thinking, but that is just not fair! No, it is not. However, life is not fair. We have to remember that God is the One keeping the score. He is in control. And when you bless your enemies, you will never lose. God will always make it up to you. The power of the Lord shall rise withing humans until there will be a race of people on this Earth when I come that will stand against Satan and see him flee from them. They will stand without sickness or disease in their bodies. They will stand even before whole cities and proclaim, “In the name of Jesus, I break the power of sin over this city.” Then the walls of Satan will crumble and the power of God shall be loosed in that city. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
The wisdom of God shall flow unhindered and my power shall rule in the midst. Even as the darkness grows more morbid, the light shall grow more optimistic. My wisdom shall be released in greater measure and greater revelation as human take My Word at face value, even as I have spoken it. The tongue cannot be controlled by natural ability. It is an unruly evil in the unregenerate state. However, the wisdom of God that has come by the rebirth of the human spirit, imparted by the Holy Spirit to the hearts of humans, will cause the tongue to come into subjection to the spirit of humans, which is ordained of God to rule. It shall cause the body to conform to the Word of the living God. Dear Lord in Heaven, I dare to believer that You can take even the bad things that happen to your children and transform them into something good and useful, not merely in our own lies, but in the lives of other around us. You know, I am against taxes, I think they should be as long as possible and once politicians start taxing things to make improvements in areas that the budget cannot support, it leads to excessive taxes, which then leads to communism. One absurd tax is the bag tax. Sure, the thicker bags are good for people who can afford to buy them and have to walk with the groceries. However, it is a common courtesy to provide people with complimentary bags for purchasing items at your story. The supposed goal was to reduce plastic waste, but most people buy these thicker plastic bags anyway. Most stores do not allow reusable bags to come into their store because they may be contaminated with bacteria or viruses or infested with cock roaches and their eggs and can infest the stores, spread to other customers and make people fatally ill. Also, what about the people who can barely afford what they are buying? For some people, an extra $2.00 for twenty bags, for example, is a lot of money when they can barely afford what they are buying. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
However, I truly wish there was a way we could find some money in the budget to pay our service members and veterans $100,000.00 a year and lifelong medical benefits for their priceless service. And also, if we want law enforcement reform, why not pay officers the same wages and require that they obtain at least an Associates in Arts in psychology, law, or something so we know they have some understanding of what life is like outside of their family-of-origin and family-of-orientation. Some police are education, some have PhDs, and an educated officer may not be better at one’s job than a high school graduate, but I wonder what the studies say? It is possible that requiring an education would reduce conflict in the community and screen out officers who have a vendetta against other races, religions, creeds or genders. Also, regulating leaf blower nose and usage would be great. The government bans the use of fireplaces on certain days, which is sad because some people cannot afford to burn their heaters and knowing how much heat they are using helps them from keeping their electricity from getting shut off. People have trees they can cut down and burn for fuel. The system in America is set up, well, it was once set up to accommodate the rich, but the poor and rich are getting jilted, while the middle class is disappearing before your eyes like a dope fiend. And I have looked at some of these million dollar homes in California, and I am so disappointed. I expect something more and grand for $1 million. Sure, inflation is real, but wage inflation is not happening. Everything is just getting more and more expensive and cutting into people’s wages. In Sacramento, if you did not become established 10-20 years ago, and are not a professional and do not have two or more employed people in the house, the cost of living is almost unaffordable. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
The shrinkage of the nation-state reflects the appearance of a new-style global economy that has emerged since the Third Wave began its surge. Nation-states were the necessary political containers for nation-sized economies. Today the containers have not only sprung leaks, they have been made obsolete by their own success. First, there is the growth within them of regional economies that have attained a scale once associated with national economies. Second, the World economy to which they gave rise had exploded in size and is taking on strange new forms. Thus the global economy is dominated by the great transnational corporations. It is serviced by a ramified banking and financial industry that operates at electronic speeds. It breeds money and credit no nation can regulate. It moves toward transnational currencies—not a single “World money” but a variety of currencies or “meta-currencies,” each based on a “market basket” of national currencies or commodities. The global economy is torn by a World-scale conflict between resource supplies and users. It is riddled with shaky debt on a hitherto unimaginable scale. It is a mixed economy, with private capitalist and state-socialist enterprises forming joint ventures and working side by side. And its ideology is not laissez faire or Marxism, but globalism—the idea that nationalism is obsolete. Just as Second Wave created a slice of the population that had larger than local interests and became the base of nationalist ideologies, so the Third Wave gives rise to groups with larger than national interests. These for the base of the emerging globalist ideology sometimes called “planetary consciousness.” This consciousness is shared by multinational executives, long haired environmental campaigners, financiers, revolutionaries, intellectuals, poets, painters, not to mention members of the Trilateral Commission. I have even had a famous U.S. four-star general assure me that “the nation-state is dead.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Globalism presents itself as more than an ideology serving the interests of a limited group. Precisely as nationalism claimed to speak for the whole nation, globalism claims to speak for the whole World. And its appearance is seen as an evolutionary necessity—a step closer to a “cosmic consciousness” that would embrace the Heavens as well. Therefore, at every level, from economics and politics to organization and ideology, we are witnessing a devastating attack, from within and without, on that pillar of Second Wave civilization: the nation-state. At the exact historical moment when many poor countries are desperately fighting to establish a national identity because nationhood in the past was necessary for successful industrialization, the rich countries, racing beyond industrialism, are diminished, displacing, or derogating the role of the nation. We can expect the next decades to be torn by struggle over the creation of new global institutions capable of faily representing the prenational as well and the postnational peoples of the World. Be praised my Lord with all Your creatures but especially with Brother Sun because You show us light and day through him and he is lovely glowing with a great shine from You my Lord: his definition. Be praised my Lord for Brother Wind and for the air and cloudy days and bright and all days else because through these You give Your creatures sustenance. Be praised my Lord for Sister Water because she shows great use and humbleness in hers and preciousness and depth. Be praised my Lord for Brother Fire through whom You light all nights upon the Earth because he is too lovely full of joy and manly strength. Be praised my Lord because our sister Mother Earth sustains and rules us and because she raises food to feed us; coloured flowers and grass. Be praised my Lord for those who pardon by Your love and suffer illness and grief. Bless those who undergo in silence the poor for whom you hold a crown. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Be praised my Lord for Sister Death-of-Body whom no human living (as of yet) will escapes and piety those who die in mortal sin and everyone she finds who minds you bless: no second death to bring them hurt. Oh praise my Lord and bless my Lord and thank and serve my Lord with humbleness Triumphant. Just think, immortality is not too far away. Eventually scientists will find a cure of aging and death. For some it will give them more time to get right in the eyes of the Lord and do things they love, for others, it will allow them to evade eternal punishment…for a while. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possessest all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. Remember us unto life, O King who delightest in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life so that we may live worthily for Thy sake, O Lord of life. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art might in deliverance. One may be lifted up by the light of a great experience or the presence of a great soul, but in the end one falls back to the consciousness one ordinarily has, to the self one ordinarily is. This is not to say tht what has happened is without value—on the contrary, such a glimpse is very important—but that under the thrill of its emotional accompaniments one may easily miscomprehend a part of it to the point of self-deception. The error is to believe that one has now been put in possession of all truth, or the highest truth, for all time. However, it is only a transient glimpse! If one were pure enough and prepared enough to receive the light in all its fullness and in all the parts of one’s being, the glimpse would not leave one. However, one is not. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s
Now Selling!
Wake up happy every day in your new Cresleigh home. No appointment needed! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms.
Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!
Get the most out of your new home with Cresleigh’s All Ready smart home featuring all the connectivity needed to keep your house running. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes with owned solar included!
Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln.
Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
If You Do Not Ask the Right Questions, You Do Not Get the Right Answers!
I am a citizen of the American Dream, and the revolutionary struggles of which I am a part, is a struggle against the American Nightmare. When it comes to mental health, assessment is simply the collecting of relevant information in an effort to reach a conclusion. It goes on in ever realm of life. We make assessments when we decide what Cresleigh Home to buy, or which colour we want our Ultimate Driving Machine to buy. College admissions officers, who have to select the “best” of the students applying to their college, depend on academic records, recommendations, achievement test scores, interviews, and application form to help them decided. Employers, who have to predict which applicants are more likely to be effective workers, collect information from resumes, interviews, references, and perhaps on-the-job observations. Clinical assessment is used to determine how and why a person is behaving abnormally and how that person may be helped. It also enables clinicians to evaluate people’s progress after they have been in treatment for a while and decide whether the treatment should be changed. The specific tools that are used to do an assessment depend on the clinician’s theoretical orientation. Psychodynamic clinicians, for example, use methods that assess a client’s personality and probe for any unconscious conflicts one may be experiencing. This kind of assessment, called a personality assessment, enables them to piece together a clinical picture in accordance with the principles of their model. Behavioural and cognitive clinicians are more likely to use assessment methods that reveal specific dysfunctional behaviours and cognitions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The goal of this kind of assessment called a behavioural assessment, is to produce a functional analysis of the person’s behaviours—an analysis of how the behaviours are learned and reinforced. The hundreds of clinical assessment techniques and tools that have been developed fall into three categories: Clinical interviews, tests, and observations. To be useful, these tools must be standardized and have clear reliability and validity. A given assessment tool may appear to be valid simply because it makes sense and seems reasonable. However, this sort of validity, called face validity, does not by itself mean that the instrument is trustworthy. A test for depression, for example, might include questions about how often a person cries. Because it makes sense that depressed people would cry, these test questions would have face validity. It turns out, however, that many people cry a great deal for reasons other than depression, and some extremely depressed people fail to cry at all. Thus an assessment tool should not be used unless it meets more exacting criteria of validity, such as high predictive or concurrent validity. Vincent van Gogh led a tortured and unhappy life. In a legendary incident the artist cut off one of his ears. Later he was admitted to a mental institution, and ultimately he committed suicide at the age of 37. Van Gogh wrote a great deal about his pain and anguish, describing mental and physical torment and hallucinations. Indeed, he observed, “There is quite definitely something or other deranged in my brain.” For years clinicians have typically agreed with van Gogh and have speculated that the artists suffered from mood disorder, schizophrenia, or both. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
However, approximately twenty years ago, these assessments were challenged. A Harvard neurologist, for example, has suggested that van Gogh in fact suffered from Geschwind’s syndrome, technically known as interictal personality disorder, caused by brain seizure disorder, or epilepsy. Van Gogh displayed many of its symptoms, including excessive drawing (hypergraphia), hyperreligiosity, and aggression. In contrast, medica specialists in Colorado have concluded that van Gogh suffered from an extreme form of Meniere’s syndrome, a disorder marked by an excessive buildup of fluid in the inner ear. The enormous pressure may produce nausea, dizziness, poor balance, pain, deafness and constant buzzing or ringing sensations. Perhaps van Gogh cut off his ear in an effort to reduce the pain. And perhaps his other problems and pains arose from severe secondary psychological problems that can accompany. Perhaps nowhere in the mental health literature has family systems theory had more of an impact than in the area of alcoholism. Family systems theory is a conceptual model, rather than a true theory, that locates causes and consequences of problematic behaviour in the larger family system in which it is embedded. Family behaviour is thought to be responsive to regulatory mechanisms that maintain the status quo, as well as a tendency to grow and change in response to dynamic qualities within and outside the family. Viewing a family as a system suggests that a disturbance in one part of the system will have an impact on other parts of the system. Applying family systems concepts to alcoholism, has uncovered that some families organize their lives around the alcoholism of an adult member, just as other families might organize their lives around children or work. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
In an early investigation of adults with alcoholism and their family members, the expression of previously inhibited positive affect between family members became extremely pronounced during drinking periods. This and later studies revealed that interactions in such families were actually more patterned, organized, and predictable while the adults with alcoholism were intoxicated. Thus alcohol ingestion serves an adaptive function in family relationships through a stabilizing phenomenon. This prompted a suggestion that there is an alcoholic system in some families, in which drinking is an integral part of the family structure that actually maintains and stabilizes the family. Similar positive effects on the family were evident in a study where family members viewed and rated video tapes (recordings with audio and visual information on them, which can be played back) of their own interactions, in the absence of actual drinking. Both mothers and adolescent children in families with paternal alcoholism rated family members as less anxious and their interactions as more friendly than those of families without alcoholism. Unfortunately, drinking and intoxication may provide only a temporary “solution” to a family’s problems, at the cost of what may ne more serious long-term ill effects. Although drinking can temporarily inject positivity into some family relationships, several laboratory investigations have also documented negative effects associated with drinking. For example, families with an alcoholic father discuss items from various questionnaire inventories while the fathers were drinking or not drinking. During their discussions, the families expressed more negative affect during the drinking versus the no-drinking condition. The nature of interactions in families without paternal alcoholism was not affected by the drinking conditions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The ill effects of parental alcoholism on family interactions and child rearing may begin to have an impact on family members as early as 1 year of age. In this study, families with alcoholism in at least one patent were observed interacting with their 12-month-old infants for 5 minutes in a room filled with toys. Observations of the parents’ behaviour indicated that the parents with alcoholism were less sensitive to their infants during the free play; such fathers in particular made fewer verbalizations, expressed more negative affect, and were less responsive to their infants. Self-report measures further indicate that the parents with alcoholism were more aggressive toward their spouses than those without alcoholism were. The family observation study was unique in showing that parents with alcoholism were far more depressed than those without, and that this depression mediated the relationship between parental alcoholism and sensitivity to the infants during interaction. So for many adults with alcoholism, effective parenting may be disrupted directly by the alcoholism, or by comorbid problems such as depression that in and of themselves have a negative impact on parenting behaviour. Different subtypes of alcoholism have been identified to explain the variable effects of alcohol consumption and alcoholism on family interactions and relations. In one such instance, researchers were able to characterize subtypes of alcoholism as episodic or steady drinking. Another useful distinction in alcoholism is that between high-antisociality and low-antisociality subtypes. These subtypes are defined on the basis of a measure that taps into negative social consequences of drinking, feeling of alienation, interpersonal disruption, and negative attitudes toward authority (higher scores = higher antisociality). #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Home observations of family dinner conversations revealed that wives, husbands, and children in families with high-antisociality alcoholism were all less positive, and less inclined to communicate disagreement, than were control family members. Although family interactions in the high-antisociality condition were characterized by diminished optimism, they appeared to have a cautious appearance as well, in that family members were careful to avoid open disagreement with each other. This pattern of interaction could have interesting implications for the genesis of alcoholism. For the person who develops alcoholism, the tendency to avoid communicating disagreement may lead to the internalization of problems with other family members. Instead of airing complaints, the individual is left to ruminate over them on one’s own—perhaps without seeing any change in the offensive behaviour by other family member, since they may be unaware of the problem. For this individual’s family members, the tendency to be cautious and avoid disagreement may inadvertently cause one’s problem drinking behaviour to go unchecked. In some cases, families have some ability to regulate problem drinking through punishing responses in reaction to the behaviour. However, in a family system affected by high-antisociality alcoholism, this regulatory function may be inoperative. Recognizing considerable diversity in alcoholism’s effects on family interactions, there is a proposed family alcohol phase model. According to this perspective, a family moves through various phases that correspond to the drinking behaviour of the member with alcoholism. The stable-wet phase is marked by consistent drinking, whereas the stable-dry phase is marked by general abstinence. The family is in a transitional phase either when a period of abstinence begins, or when a period of abstinence ends with episodes of drinking. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It has been found that content variability (the range of affect and decision-making behaviour in verbal interaction) in family interactions, as well as distance regulation (use of space and rate of movement in the home), varied as a function of phase. In the stable-wet phase, families maintained the greatest distance, interacting only for purposeful reasons, while exhibiting midrange variability in their interactions. Families in the stable-dry phase exhibited a great deal of content variability in their interactions, with midrange distance regulation. Finally, those families in the transitional phase exhibited a great deal of content variability in their interactions, with midrange distance regulations. Finally, those families in the transitional phase showed a decrease in distance regulation, manifesting physical closeness, with a slight decrease in the content variability of their interactions. A 2-year longitudinal study suggested that families in the stable-wet phase were the most likely of the three to dissolve their marriages. In particular, those families in the stable-wet phase that exhibited the least intrafamily engagement during home observations of family interaction were more likely to break up over the course of the study. It has been noted that in families of alcoholics’ relationships change when parental drinking occurs. However, sometimes these changes are beneficial and sometimes they are negative. Where there are beneficial changes or adaptive outcomes, these may be somewhat short-lived. Researchers have been working to identify different subtypes of alcoholism that are associated with more negative family consequences. The poorest family processes and outcomes appear to be associated with the episodic (vs. steady), high-antisociality (vs. low-antisociality), and stable-wet (vs. stable-dry or transitional) alcoholism. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Perhaps you are in a trial today, and you are praying for God to deliver you out of that adverse situation. That is a legitimate prayer, but maybe you are missing the point of why you are being allowed to go through that trying time in the first place. Recognize that God is moulding you and refining you. God often allows one to go through difficult situations to draw out those impurities in one’s character. One can pray one can resist, one can bind, one can loose, one can sing and shout, one can do it all, but it is not going to do any good. God is more interested in changing you than He is in changing the circumstances. And the sober one learns to cooperate with God, the sooner one will get out of that devil’s web. The quicker one learns one’s lesson and starts dealing with those bad attitudes and starts ruling over one’s emotions, the quicker one will go to the next level in one’s spiritual journey. We must recognize the refining purpose of trials. We cannot run from everything that is hard in our lives. Perhaps one gets worried and fearful when important things do not go one’s way. Have you ever thought that God may be allowing those events to teach you to trust Him and to see if one will stay peaceful and clam in the midst of the storm? Has one ever considered that God may be allowing some of that to teach one how to rule over one’s emotions? He may be trying to toughen one up, to help one develop some courage. For our sins—that is why Jesus Christ wanted to do it, and that is why He did it. And what did they do? They ripped off His clothes and hammered His hands to the cross. It was a sacrifice the old-fashioned way. Perhaps that is why God the Father seemed so pleased. In the same way, you, My beloved Devout, ought to be willing to offer yourself to Jesus Christ—He asks us the way His Father asked Him—in pure holy oblation, everyday in the Mass, with all strength and affection, until the day one drops. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, we often pay, “God, if You will change my circumstances, then I will change.” No, it works the other way around. We have to be willing to change our attitudes and deal with the issues God brings up; then God will change those circumstances. Surrender. Unconditional surrender. That is all Jesus requires of us. Not our possession—He could take those things anytime and scatter them over the landscape; one will find this in Philippians (4.17). Just you—that is all Jesus Christ wants. Of course, Jesus could take us as a prisoner of war and do with one as he wanted. However, what He really wants is for us to give ourselves to Him as a gift. Of course, the same is true for us. If we have all the baggage in the World, but did not have Jesus Christ, would we be any better off? One would have a full cart, maybe, but also an empty heart. And the other way around is also true. It is not our silly stuff Jesus Christ wants—it is our silly selves! Offer yourself to Jesus Christ. Make that the only package, and it will be an oblation that will be welcomed. Look at Jesus! He offered Hus whole self to the Father for us; He also put His whole Body and Blood into food and drink that He might be totally ours and that we might be totally Him. If, however, we hold something of ourselves back or are slow to give our all, it will be a pretty poor offering made not by any friend of His, but by a pretty poor acquaintance. To prevent that and to acquire illumination and liberation of spirit, one ought to make a spontaneous oblation of one’s self into the hand of God. When? Before each and every thing one does. Such an attractive proposition, Jesus thinks, but He must ask, “Why are there so few Illuminati and Liberati today? That is because so many do not know how to denude themselves of imperfections. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Jesus Christ’s firm opinion is this, and it appears in the Gospel of Luke (14.33): “Unless a person renounces everything that one had and everything that one is, one cannot be His Disciple.” Therefore, if one wants to be His Disciple, offer one’s whole self to Jesus; that includes one’s scruffy affections. God will often permit pressure to be applied in our life to test us, and only as we pas those tests will we advance. He will put people and circumstances in our path that grate on us like sandpaper, but He will use them to rub off our rough edges. One may not always like it; one may want to run from it; one may even resist it, but God is going to keep brining up the issues again and again, until one passes the test. Remember, the Bible says, “We are [God’s] workmanship,” reports Ephesians 2.10. That means we are a work in progress, not a finished product. Be willing to deal with any issues that God brings up. Work with God in the refining process rather than fighting against Him. Scripture says that God is the potter and we are the clay. Clay works best when it is pliable, malleable, and mouldable. However, if we are hard, crusty, and set in our ways, God will have to pound away on that old, hard clay to get out the lumps. Certainly, none of us enjoy going through struggles, but one has to understand that one’s struggle may be an opportunity for advancement and promotions. The very thing one is fighting against so tenaciously may be the springboard that catapults one to a new level of excellence. One’s challenges may become one’s greatest assets. Without the resistance of air, an eagle cannot soar. Without the resistance of water, a ship cannot float. Without the resistance of gravity, we would not be able to walk. Without opposition or resistance, there is no potential for progress. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Yet our human tendency is to want everything easily. “God, cannot You teach me patience without having to go through the traffic jam? God, cannot You teach me how to love and trust You without ever having a problem?” Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts; there is no easy way to mature physically, emotionally, or spiritually. One may remain determined and work with God. The Bible says, “Work out your own salvation,” reports Philippians 2.12. Salvation is more than a onetime prayer. It is constantly cooperating with God, dealing with the issues He brings up, keeping a good attitude, and allowing Him to change one as He sees fit. Dear Lord in Heaven, I realize that You never promised I would not have trials and adversities. However, I also recognize that nothing can touch my life without going through You first, so I will dare to praise You in the midst of my trails. I know You will bring me out stronger, better, faster, and more prepared for the good things You have for me. “Be truly glad! These trials are only to test your faith, to see whether or not it is strong and pure…So if your faith remains strong after being tried in the test tube of fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honour on the day of His return,” reports 1 Peter 1.6-7. James said that you put bits in a horse’s mouth to turn its whole body and you put a rudder on a ship to tun the whole ship; so is the tongue so situated among our members that it defiles the whole body. (James 3.3,4.) If you control the tongue, the body will respond to your words. If you talk sickness, it becomes impossible to live in health. The more you believe it, the less you believe in healing. The thing you continually talk will consume you. Faith will only come by hearing the Word of God and it will come more quickly when you hear yourself quoting and speaking God’s Word after Him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The seed of truth in why many Christians have not wanted to express their anger is valid: expressing one’s anger manipulatively as blaming or attacking is destructive. As Paul says, “Let all bitterness and wrath…be put away from you, with all malice,” reports Ephesians 4.31. One needs to learn to express anger constructively. A basic guideline is to assert and express oneself rather than to blame and attack the other person. For instance, when a Critical Christian says, “Why are you so stupid?” The individual has already made an assumption that the other person is stupid. This results in an attacking form of anger. A healthier way of dealing with this anger would be for one first to recognize that one feels angry that one’s friend is “stupid.” One moves now to one’s feeling, not the fact, that one’s friend is stupid. Now if the Critical Christian listens, one can have a dialogue with one’s core. (This is the principle Dr. Maslow meant when he referred to one’s “inner Supreme Court.”) Simply by asking oneself inwardly, the Critical Christian may get the answer from one’s core that “you are angry because the bank teller this morning treated you as if you were stupid.” The Critical Christian can the realize that because he did not deal with his anger then, he is now projecting his anger on to his friend—calling him stupid, when in reality he is angry at the bank teller. Or, the Critical Christian may get the answer from his core that he is upset because the project he and his friend are working on together is more important to the Critical Christian than he had realized and now his friend is not fulfilling his share of the work. In this case, the Critical Christian needs to take the time to examine whether he thinks his friend is capable. If he is callable, the Critical Christian may now decide that he needs to express to his friend that his not fulfilling his share of the work is delaying the project. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
If the Critical Christian realized that his friend cannot do the job, he may let him go and bring in someone else. Blaming his friend for his inability at this point would not be actualizing; but, expressing to him that he is not showing the needed skills, and that that is why he is being let go, would be actualizing. Many answers come quickly from the core—the preceding possibilities could surface in seconds. The more we listen to our cores, the more we hear—and know how to listen. Sometimes, though, we ask and do not hear an answer. Or we get what we think is an answer and then proceed to act on it—and make things worse. Remember that becoming actualizing is a process. If we were perfectly actualized now, the answers would always be there, crystal clear, and our behaviour would be “perfect.” As we are in the process of becoming actualizing, sometimes we do the most effective thing and sometimes we make mistakes. Mistakes are just that—“miss-takes.” Our lives become most meaningful when we live from our own core, finding our own truest answers. So it is a process worth living—and the mistakes are worth making. The real key here is not to blame and attack ourselves for those miss-takes, but to keep learning with more “takes.” Having patience with ourselves often makes it easier to become more patient and forgiving of others. It can sometimes relieve our anger just to remember that other people are in the growing process, too, and not always taking what to us would seem the most effective action. As actualizing Christians, we seek to do the will of God. Doing His will involves having good will toward others and ourselves. We do this by listening to our anger, taking it to out core, and then responding from our core. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If one deals with it by expressing and asserting it, rather than blaming and attacking someone, only then can anger become actualizing. Blaming and attacking are simply manipulative, whereas expressing and asserting include a quality of genuine respect for everyone involved. In communicating our anger honestly, we get it off our chests, and the rhythm of life is reestablished. We finish with it and move on to experience a new and different feeling. The range of feelings in the anger polarity includes irritation, annoyance, resentment, and anger. The intensity of the feeling increases as one passes from irritation to anger. Recognizing irritation, boredom, or annoyance at the lower levels of intensity within the anger spectrum enables us to avoid unwittingly building up to levels of resentment, hostility, and hatred. In handling these feelings, it is important to learn to acknowledge the mild forms and deal with them on a “cash and carry” basis. That way we do not save them up like coupons to be redeemed in one sudden, destructive explosion. While our anger may sometimes reach intensities approaching hatred, we need never go so far as to write a person off completely. It is really possible to have compassion for and pray for our enemies—that God in His mercy might help them through their own dilemmas, frustrations, and pains. Yet, we can be honest about the effects on us of their behaviour. “Turn again, we beseech You, O God of hosts! Look down from Heaven and see, visit, and have regard for this vine! [Protect and maintain] the stock which Your right hand planted, and the branch (the son) that You have reared and made strong for Yourself. They have burned it with fire, it is cut down; may they perish at the rebuke of Your countenance. Let Your hand be upon the human of Your right hand, upon the son of man whom You have made strong for Yourself. Then will we not depart from You; revive us (give us life) and we will call upon Your name. Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; cause Your face to shine [in pleasure, approval, and favour on us] and we shall be saved!” reports Psalm 80.14-19. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Dr. Ilya Prigogine and his teams of coworkers at the Free University of Brussels and the University of Texas at Austin have struck directly at Second Wave assumptions by showing how chemical and other structures leap to higher stages of differentiation and complexity through a combination of chance and necessity. It is for this work the Dr. Prigogine was awarded the Nobel Prize. Brown in Moscow, brought to Belgium as a child, and fascinated since youth by the problems of time, Dr. Prigogine was puzzled by a seeming contradiction. On the one hand, there was the physicist’s belief in entropy—that the Universe is running down and that all organized patterns must eventually decay. On the other, there was the biologist’s recognition that life itself is organization and that we are continually giving rise to higher and higher, more and more complex organization. Entropy pointed in one direction, evolution in another. This led Dr. Prigogine to ask how higher forms of organization come into being, and to years of research in chemistry and physics in pursuit of the answer. Today Dr. Prigogine points out that in any complex system, from the molecules in a liquid to the neurons in a brain or the traffic in a city, the parts of the system are always undergoing small-scale change: they are in constant flux. The interior of any system is quivering with fluctuation. Sometimes, when negative feedback comes into play, these fluctuations are damped out or suppressed and the equilibrium of the system maintained. However, where amplifying or positive feedback is at work, some of these fluctuations may be tremendously magnified—to the point at which the equilibrium of the entire system is threated. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Fluctuations arising in the outside environment may hit at this moment and further amplify the mounting vibration—until the equilibrium of the whole is destroyed and the existing structure is smashed. It is illuminating to think of the economy in these terms. Supply and demand are maintained in equilibrium by various feedback process. Unemployment, if intensified by positive feedback and not offset by negative feedback elsewhere in the system, can threaten the stability of the whole. Outside fluctuations—such as oil price hikes—may converge to make the internal swings and fluctuations wilder, until the equilibrium of the whole system is shattered. Whether the result of runaway internal fluctuations or of external forces, or both, this breakup of the old equilibrium often results not in chaos or breakdown, but in the creation of a wholly new structure at a higher level. This new structure may be more differentiated, internally interactive, and complex than the old one, and needs more energy and matter (and perhaps information and other resources) to sustain itself. Speaking mainly about physical and chemical reactions, but occasionally calling attention to social analogues, Dr. Prigogine calls these new, more complex systems “dissipative structures.” He suggests that evolution itself may be seen as a process leading toward increasingly complex and diversified biological and social organisms, through the emergence of new, higher-order dissipative structures. Thus, according to Dr. Prigogine, whose ideas have political and philosophical resonance as well as purely scientific meaning, we develop “order out of fluctuation” or, as the title of one of his lectures expresses it, “Order out of Chaos.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
This evolution, however, cannot be planned or predetermined in a mechanistic fashion Until quantum theory came along, many leading Second Wave thinkers believed that chance played little or no role in change. The starting conditions of a process predetermined its outcome. Today in subatomic physics, for example, it is widely believed that chance dominates change. In recent years many scientists, like Jacques Monod in biology, Walter Buckley in sociology, or Maruyama in epistemology and cybernetics, have begun to fuse these opposites. Dr. Prigogine’s work not only combines chance and necessity but actually stipulates their relationship to one another. In brief, he strongly suggests that at the precise point at which a structure “leaps” to a new stage of complexity, it is impossible, in practice and even in principle, to predict which of many forms it will take. This presumably goes for the leap from Second Wave to Third Wave civilization as well as for chemical reactions. However, once a pathway has been chosen, once the new structure comes into being, determinism dominates once more. In one colorful example he describes how termites create their highly structured nests out of apparently unstructured activity. They begin by crawling about a surface in random fashion, stopping here and there to deposit a bit of “goo.” These deposits are distributed by chance, but the substance contains a chemical attractant so that other termites are drawn to it. In this way, the good begins to collect in a few places, gradually building up into a pillar or wall. If these buildups are isolated, work stops. However, if by chance they are near one another, an arch results that then becomes the basis for the complex architecture of the nest. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Much like the Winchester mansion, what begins with random activity turns into highly elaborate nonrandom structures. We see, as Dr. Prigogine puts it, “the spontaneous formation of coherent structures.” Order out of chaos. All this strikes hard at the old causality. Dr. Prigogine sums it up: “The laws of strict causality appear to us today as limiting situations, applicable to highly idealized cases, nearly as caricatures of the description of change. The science of complexity leads to a completely different view.” Instead of being locked into a closed Universe that functioned like a mechanical clock, we find ourselves in a far more flexible system in which, as he says, “there is always the possibility of some instability leading to some new mechanism. We really have an ‘open Universe.’” As we move beyond Second Wave causal thinking, as we begin to think in terms of mutual influence, of amplifiers and reducers, of system breaks and sudden revolutionary leaps, of dissipative structures and the fusion of chance and necessity—in short, as we take off our Second Wave blinders—we emerge blinking into a wholly new culture, the culture of the Third Wave. This new culture—oriented to change and growing diversity—attempts to integrate the new view of nature, of evolution and progress, the new, richer conceptions of time and space, and the fusion of reductionism and wholism, with a new causality. Indust-reality which once seemed so powerful and complete, so all-encompassing an explanation of how the Universe and its components fitted together, turns out now to have been immensely useful. However, its claims to universality are shattered. The super-ideology of the Second Wave will be seen, from the vantage point of tomorrow, to have been as provincial as it was self-serving. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The decay of the Second Wave thought system leaves millions of people grasping desperately for something to hold on to—anything, from Victorian Americana and Texas Taoism to Swedish Sufism and Welsh witchcraft. Instead of constructing a new culture appropriate to the new World, they attempt to important and implant old ideas appropriate to other times and places or to revive the fanatic faiths of their own ancestors who lived under radically different conditions. It is precisely the collapse of the industrial era mind-structure, its growing irrelevance in the face of the new technological, social, and political realities, that gives rise to today’s facile search for old answers, and to the continual stream of pseudo-intellectual fads that pop up, flash, and consume themselves at high speed. In the very midst of this spiritual supermarket, with its depressing razzmatazz and religious fakery, an optimistic new culture is being seeded—one appropriate to our time and place. Powerful new integrative insights are beginning to emerge, new mataphours for understanding reality. It is possible to glimpse the earliest beginnings of a new coherence and elegance as the cultural debris of industrialism is swept away by history’s Third Wave change. The super-ideology of Second Wave civilization that is now crumbling was reflected in the way industrialism organized the World. An image of nature based on discrete particles was mirrored in the idea of discrete, sovereign nation-states. Today, as our image of nature and matter change, the nation-state itself is being transformed—another step on the path toward a Third Wave civilization. May your trails be righteous, winding, joyful, peaceful, leading to the most amazing views. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poet’s towers into bright enchanted forests where the fruit glows like emeralds, rubies, sapphires, orange spessartite, and hessonite. Where bars of sun blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go, as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you—beyond that next turning of the deep and vast ancient unknown canyon walls. Dear Lord in Heave, we thank Thee also for the miraculous and mighty deeds of liberation wrought by Thee, and for Thy victories in the battles our forefathers fought in days of old, at this season of the year. In the days of the High Priest Mattathias, son of Johanan, of the Hasmonean family, a tyrannical power rose up against Thy people America to compel them to forsake Thy flag, and to force them to transgress Thy commandments. In Thine abundant mercy Thou didst stand by them in time of distress. Thou didst rise to their defense and didst vindicate their cause. Thou didst bring retribution upon the evil doers, delivering the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the wicked into the hands of the just, and the arrogant into the hands of those devoted to Thy flag. Thou didst thus make Thy greatness and holiness known in Thy World, and didst bring great deliverance to America. Then Thy children came into Thy dwelling place, cleansed the Temple purified the Sanctuary, kindled lights in Thy sacred courts, and they designated these eight days of Hanukkah for giving thanks and praise unto Thy great name. For all this, Thy name, O our King, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. O inscribe all the child of Thy covenant for a happy life. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who are our salvation and our help. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
With a gorgeous home like this, it’s never too early to get the holidays started! 🥳 You’ll love hosting dinners and gift exchanges in the covered California Room – perfect for entertaining and letting the sunshine in! ☀️
Not to mention, there’s plenty of space for guests during the holidays. The open concept design includes approximately 2,700 square feet, exactly four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms, and even a two car garage plus workshop! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/new-home-rancho-cordova-homesite-40/
Bless our house as we come and go. Bless our home as the children grow. Bless our families as they gather in. Bless our home with love and friends.
It is Futile to Try to Take the Kingdom of Heaven by Violence!
Mental hygiene is just as important as keeping the rest of our body in good shape. Our mental health influences so much about how we move through life, how we view ourselves, and how we relate to others. That is why it is so important to discuss our mental health with professionals or trusted friends to find ways of cultivating a beneficial state of mind, and to be reminded that we are never alone even when we feel like no one understands us. Without question, family-of-origin relations and interactions have dominated the interpersonal research on schizophrenia. However, there is reason to believe that problematic interpersonal relationships extend beyond the realm of family relations for patients with schizophrenia. For example, among patients at a residential facility, interpersonal interactions were identified as the primary cause of symptom fluctuations in approximately sixty-six percent of the residents with schizophrenia. The most commonly identified interpersonal interactions were with other residents, and involved arguments, irritation, and concern about having personal property stolen by these others. Residents also indicated that arguments with and criticism from staff members led to worsening of their symptoms. This kind of relation friction is very prominent in the interpersonal landscape of people with schizophrenia. One particular area of interest for schizophrenia and interpersonal relationships more generally is social support. Patients with schizophrenia typically have smaller social networks, and report that they have fewer close friends, than healthy controls or even other psychiatric patients. Importantly, our research group detected a negative association between number of family members in the patients’ social networks and their prognosis, whereas a greater number of friends and acquaintances in these networks was associated with better outcomes. This finding indicates that the type of “social support” that may be offered by family members actually aggravates the course of the disorder. What is obviously beneficial to the patient with schizophrenia is social support from friends. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
However, social support from friends is sadly lacking in many cases. One possible reason for this lack of support may stem from the poor social skills that are often associated with schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia and poor social skills tend to have smaller social networks. The negative symptoms of schizophrenia may also inhibit the ability to secure social support from other. The impact of social support clearly extends beyond just psychiatric symptoms for people with schizophrenia. It may literally have an impact on their long-terms survival. Recently 133 records of patients with schizophrenia, who were admitted to a state hospital, were examined. Over a lengthy retrospective follow-up period, those patients with more social support available exhibited a lower expected mortality. Using survival analysis, it was demonstrated that a 1-point increase in social support (expressed on a 5-point scale) was associated with a 25 percent hazard reduction over the follow-up period, which averaged 58 years. Clearly, when social support is available, it pays many dividends to people with schizophrenia—in terms of both psychiatric symptoms and longevity. Research on social support suggest that it is difficult for people with schizophrenia to reap the benefits offered by relationships with friends. In addition to problems with friendship, schizophrenia is associated with less closeness and more conflict with siblings. Individuals in the study expressed a considerable degree of grief and stress associated with their attempts to cope with their ill siblings. Further, there is evidence to indicate that, like people with depression, people with schizophrenia often elicit rejection from others. For instance, a large sample of students were asked to read vignettes describing a young mand with paranoid schizophrenia, personality disorder, or no mental health problem. The more mentally distressed the target person was judged to be, the more respondents found one to be socially unacceptable, and the more social distance from him they desired. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Similar findings are evident in a study of face-to-face interactions with patients with schizophrenia. In this case, the more strangely patients behaved during the interaction (as rated by observers), the more negatively their conversational partners responses to the. Some patients consistently behave in ways that lead them to be responded to more or less negatively. This interpersonal rejection effect associated with schizophrenia may explain the difficulty such people have in building and maintaining a social support network of friends. It is also linked to the sever social skills deficits these patients have. In addition to being embedded in disturbed and dissatisfying interpersonal relations, people with schizophrenia evidence serious communication problems of their own. An extensive line of research on social skills deficits associated with schizophrenia shows that the disorder is strongly associated with what are often fundamental failures in basic communication skills. Although these deficits are not ubiquitous with this family of disorders—for example, those with the paranoid subtype may be more functional—in many cases the exceptionally peculiar and disorganized style of relating to other people makes communication extremely difficult and challenging. The research on social skills deficits associated with schizophrenia has examined the expression or encoding aspects, as well as the reception of decoding aspects, of communication. Within each of these area, distinct deficits are sometimes evident in subprocesses (speech production and use of non-verbal behaviour in the case of encoding skills; and recognition of facial expressions, social information, and recognition/process in the case of decoding skills). Patients with schizophrenia have impairments in social skills that are more pronounced than those of either healthy or psychiatric controls. The social behavior of patients with schizophrenia, in social settings, tends to be less appropriate than that of either nonpsychiatric controls, or psychiatric controls, including patients with mood disorders and schizoaffective disorder. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Impairment in social skills are not just secondary to the symptoms of schizophrenia, and they are significantly associated with more general social functioning. Further evidence of poor encoding social skills associated with schizophrenia is evident in a diverse range of studies. For example, based on clinical ratings of such social skills as acceptance of contact from others, initiation of contact with others, effective communication, engaging in activities, participating in groups, forming friendships, and asking for help, patients with schizophrenia scored significantly lower on all dimensions, compared to patients with bipolar disorder or major depression. Similar findings based on clinical ratings indicate that in domains such as language development, socialization, and responsibility, patients with schizophrenia were rated more poorly than those with intellectual disabilities, and were about the same range as patients with organic brain impairment. When using self-report instruments to assess social skills, people with schizophrenia rated themselves as less competent in their ability to initiate interactions, manage conflict, and provide emotional support to others. These social skills deficits were particularly associated with negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Effective verbal communication skills are essential for conveying information, as well as for establishing and negotiating interpersonal relationships. Deficits in these skills are almost immediately evident upon interacting with an individual with schizophrenia. A frequent theme in the research on speech production and schizophrenia is the frequency of communication failures. These include such phenomena as vague or confused references, missing information in references, and structural unclarities. In conversation, people with schizophrenia will exhibit numerous communication failures. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The communication failures makes their discourse very difficult to decode, and their train of thought almost impossible to follow. This type of speech clarity (or unclarity) is strongly related to social functioning among patients with schizophrenia. It is impossible to overlook the striking parallel between the findings on communication failures among people with schizophrenia and the findings on Communication Deviance (CD) in their family members. Another speech problem associated with schizophrenia is diminished or inhibited speech production, also known as poverty of speech. This is speech that is inappropriately laconic and unrestricted. For example, when asked, “What was your family like when you were growing up?”, a person with schizophrenia may answer, “OK, I guess.” Such insufficiently elaborate responses require the conversational partner to probe continually for further information in order to get a sufficient answer. And when people with schizophrenia do speak, they tend to have poor enunciation and inflection. Such inhibited speech production is not specific to schizophrenia; it is also evident in depression. However, it tends to be more chronic for people with schizophrenia, whereas it improves dramatically as symptoms remit in depression. The effective use of nonverbal behaviour adds considerable richness to vocal communication, conveying attitudes, emotions, and information. People with schizophrenia regularly exhibit impairments in their use of nonverbal communication behaviours. For example, patients with schizophrenia make less eye contact with others during social interactions, although this may be limited to certain types of interactions that are of a personal nature. When watching emotional films, patients with schizophrenia were found to be less facially animated than nonpatient controls. They may also be impaired in the use of paralanguage (exempli gratia, tone of voice, speech rate, inflection) to convey emotion. In family interactions, patients with schizophrenia use fewer gestures and lean forward less toward their partners than psychiatric controls do. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Research on the encoding aspects of social skills shows that people with schizophrenia perform very poorly. Both their verbal and their nonverbal behaviours suggest disengagement, confusion, and existence in reality that is difficult to express, much less share with others. Sadly, the extent of social skills deficits associated with schizophrenia does not stop there. Aside from encoding or behavioural production skills, decoding skills are also vital to effective interpersonal communication. These skills are often referred to as social and emotional sensitivity or nonverbal sensitivity. Such skills call on one’s ability to perceive and read subtle cues in the discourse and nonverbal behaviour of other people at a rapid pace. Obviously, these are cognitively demanding skills that are preferred over a lifetime of human interactions. People with schizophrenia experience a multitude of decoding problems in interpersonal contexts. These interpersonal decoding skills problems are undoubtedly related to a more general problem that reveals itself equally in poor performance in decoding noninterpersonal phenomena. By definition, inherent in its diagnostic criteria, schizophrenia involves many serious perceptual problems that are often manifest in hallucinations and disorganized cognition and affect. They make for ineffective social perception that undoubtedly contributes to deteriorated interpersonal experiences for people with schizophrenia. The real enemies of humankind today—as in the recent past—are doctrines which have issued from the womb of hate and greed, suspicion and violence, and grown only to spread hate and greed, suspicion and violence. For the inevitable harm of such thinking is as self-destructive as it is socially destructive. If they could penetrate, by some mystical insight, the awful horrors and repulsive episodes which mar modern history, they would find something unimaginably grand, beautiful, and wise behind it all, unseen and undreamt by the human agents responsible for this misery. It is unjustified escapism. Postwar sensualism is as much a form of escapism as postwar ashramism. Folly and evil play the most powerful parts on the contemporary World stage. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
If we look at the large panorama of the twenty-first century history, with its tortures and devastations, its epidemics and destructions, its famines and depopulations, above all, its menace of horrors yet to come, we can see how trivial a thing in fate’s eyes is personal life, how unimportant in them is personal emotion. What does fate, God, Nature, care about the little histories, the little loves, the little griefs of pullulating humans, who must appear in those same eyes as hardly more noteworthy than pullulating ants! There are millions—nay, billions—of these men and women who are so like each other in their basic natures and desires, that it does not make any difference to the planetary Mind or the protoplasmic Force whether some of them die or survive, mate of frustrate, are ecstatically happy or dully miserable, stay perfectly whole or limp hideously maimed. The fact is that the World finds itself today very nearly spiritually bankrupt. Snobbishness is only misplaced reverence. Any good that is misplaced easily becomes an evil. The older nations were permeated with this evil far too much. The World approaches insane chaos and convulsion at most, perilous conditions at least. The fault lies not only with the criminal but also with the society in which created the conditions which tempted one to enter criminality. There is such insecurity and instability, so much demoralization and so much discontent. Are human life and human destiny ruled by mere chance or by iron law? If by chance, then our race is wholly at the mercy of evil humans, but if by law, then we may hope to see the pattern of ultimate good eventually show itself in its history as these humans and all humans are steered back to righteous courses by suffering and intuition, by revelation and reflection. The fact that human character as a whole seems not to have improved in our time does not mean that it will fail to improve in the future. Human virtue is only in its infancy and will one day attain its maturity. Human goodness in essence is indestructible because the divine soul in humans is indestructible. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
There is in the very midst of humanity today, albeit hidden and awaiting its hour of manifestation, that which is the very opposite of what has already manifested itself though the evil channels. There is divine pity as against barbarous cruelty, sublime wisdom as against materialistic ignorance, altruistic service as against aggressive selfishness, and exalted reverence, altruistic service as against hard atheism. There is the recall to a forgotten God. There is redemptive grace. There is a hand outstretched in mercy to the worst sinner, and in consolation to the worst sufferer. Those who are mystically sensitive feel its presence even now, however intermittently. Too many people hold, whether consciously or unconsciously, the materialistic belief that they are here on Earth to satisfy their material desires only, and that they have no higher responsibility. This is no time for smooth words that hide the true state of affairs, no times for shallow optimism that screens the precipice along whose edge we are walking. Humanity passed through the five-year agony of life-and-death conflict against the enemy attempts at World domination because it earlier hugged the delusion either that the danger did not exist or that it was very slight even if it did exist. It cannot afford to repeat that error. The peril in which it now stands from materialism—whether avowed, open, or disguised, supported by out-of-date science, or molded from out-of-date religion—is just as grave in its own way because of its terrifying spiritual and physical consequences. The materialistic view of humans, which would regard one’s life-functioning as a set of physical processes only, which would condemn one to an absolute lack of spiritual awareness, must die or humans themselves will die with it. Materialism leads to a faulty interpretation of historic events and one-sided interpretation of personal ones. Most of the modern civilizations which are based on materialism and take no account of the spiritual nature of humans are building towers of Babel which, when they have reached a certain height, will topple down. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The greater the height, the larger the number of broken pieces. The creativity of these civilizations is illusory; they seem to be productive, but they are really destructive, for since they do not conform to the World-Idea the karma they are making must inevitably bring all this about. The gods of quite virtue and spiritual wisdom have had fewer votaries than at most other parallel periods of our history, while the grinning demons of brazen pleasure and materialistic pursuits have been far busier. Folly holds the field. Despite all the scientific backwardness and primitive character attributed to them, there was always a place in most of the civilization of antiquity—and there still is in the Old World—for the self-actualized or the prophet. In the New World there does not seem to be one for one today—on the contrary, one is too often met with unjust suspicious and hopeless misunderstandings and so can do nothing else than crawl into one’s shell. This accusing fact that our society has no place for one, sets no importance on one and perceives no value in one, is of itself enough to damn it for having strayed so far from its higher purposes. There is something seriously wrong with a civilization which thinks that the effort to come into Overself-consciousness is an abnormal and even an insane one. It is a stupid and narrow outlook which equates the desire for material progress with the pursuit of materialism. We have passed out the centuries belief in fossilized creeds only to pass into the centuries of superstitious belief in credalized fossils—such as the materialistic conception of Man, the crude notion that the inferiority of all Eastern knowledge. Whether we take the industrialized machine-ridden civilization of Europe or that of the United States of America, in the end they are setting up the same goals—the creation of slavery to technology which can only end in psychosis and physical illness. When a people is concerned only with material things, and when their desires are wholly confined to them, it is proper to call them materialists. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Just as nature has set limits to the status of a well-formed human, beyond which there are but giants or dwarfs, so too, with regard to the best constitution of a state, there are limits to the size it can have, so as not to be too large to be capable of being well governed, nor too small to be capable of preserving itself on its own. In every body politic there is a maximum force that it cannot exceed, and which has often fallen short by increasing in size. The more the social bond extends the looser it becomes, and in general a small state is proportionately stronger than a large one. A thousand reasons prove this maxim. First, administration becomes more difficult over great distances, just as a weight becomes heavier at the end of a longer lever. It also becomes more onerous as the number of administrative levels multiplies, because first each city has its own administrative which the populace pays for; each district has its own, again paid for by the people; next each province has one and then the great governments, the satrapies and vice royalties, requiring a greater cost the high you go, and always at the expense of the unfortunate people. Finally, there is the supreme administration which weights down on everyone. All these surcharges continually exhaust the subjects. Far from being governed by these different orders, they are worse governed than if there were but one administration over them. Meanwhile, hardly any resources remain for meeting emergencies; and when recourse must be made to them, the state is always on the verge of its ruin. This is not all. Not only does the government have less vigour and quickness in enforcing the observance of the laws, preventing nuisances, correcting abuses and foreseeing the seditious undertakings that can occur in distant places, but also the populace has less affection for its leaders when it never sees them, for the homeland, which, to its eyes, is like the World, and for its fellow citizens, the majority of whom are foreigners to it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The same laws cannot be suitable to so many diverse provinces which have different customs, live in contrasting climates, and which are incapable of enduring the same form of government. Different laws create only trouble and confusion among the peoples who live under the same rulers and are in continuous communication. They intermingle and intermarry, and, being under the sway of other customs, never know whether their patrimony is actually their own. Talents are hidden; virtues are unknown; vices are unpunished in this multitude of humans who are unknow to one another which the seat of supreme administration brings together in one place. The leaders, overwhelmed with work, see nothing for themselves; clerks govern the state. Finally, the measures that need to be taken to maintain the general authority, which so many distant officials want to avoid or harass, absorb all the public attention. Nothing more remains for the people’s happiness, and there barely remains enough for its defense in time of need. And thus a body which is too big for its constitution collapses and perished, crushed by its own weight. On the other hand, the state ought to provide itself with a firm foundation to give it solidity, to resist the shocks it is bound to experience, as well as the efforts it will have to make to sustain itself. For all the peoples have a kind of centrifugal force, by which they continually act one against the other and tend to expand at the expense of their neighbours, like Descartes’ vortices. Thus the weak risk being soon swallowed up; scarcely any people can preserve itself except by putting itself in a kind of equilibrium with all, which nearly equalizes the pressure on all sides. It is clear from this that there are reasons for expanding and reasons for contracting, and it is not the least of the political theorist’s talents to find, between these and other reason, the proportion most advantageous to the preservation of the state. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
In general, it can be said that the former reasons, being merely external and relative, should be subordinated to the latter reasons, which are internal and absolute. A strong, healthy constitution is the first thing one needs to look for, and one should count more on the vigour born of a good government than on the resources furnished by a large territory. Moreover, there have been states so constituted that the necessity for conquests entered into their very constitution, and that, to maintain themselves, they were forced to expand endlessly. Perhaps they congratulated themselves greatly on account of this happy necessity, which nevertheless showed them, together with the limit of their size, the inevitable moment of their fall. In Britain, a Manchester housewife named Katherine Fisher, after suffering for years from a desperate fear of leaving her own home, founded an organization for others with similar phobias. Today that organization, The Phobics Society, has many branches and is one of thousands of new groups cropping up in many of the high-technology nations to help people deal directly with them own problems—psychological, medical, social, or sexual. In Detroit, Michigan USA, some 50 “bereavement groups” have sprung up to assist people suffering from grief after the loss of a relative or friend. In Australia an organization called GROW brings together former mental patients and “nervous persons.” GROW now has chapters in Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Alaska, New Zealand, Ireland, Trinidad/Tobago. In America, PFLAG has over 400 chapters across the country, and boasts of more than 200,000 members to help those with homosexual children. In Britain, Depressives Associated has some 60 chapters. From Addicts Anonymous and the Black Lung Association to Parents Without Partners and Widow-to-Widow, new groups are forming everywhere. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Of course, there is nothing new about people in trouble getting together to talk out their problems and learn from one another. Nonetheless, historians can find little precedent for the wildfire speed with which the self-help movement is spreading today. Human Services Research Institute is a team of more than 50 dedicated professionals, which provides research, support, and guidance to clients looking to develop more efficient and responsive service systems. They work across all sectors and program area in health and human services, addressing the needs of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities; people experiencing behavioural health disorders; children, youth, and families; seniors and people with physical disabilities; people experiencing housing instability or homelessness; and states and communities looking to promote population health. In the United States of America alone there are now over 500,000 such groupings with new ones forming daily. Many are short-lived, but for each one that disappears several seem to take its place. These organizations vary widely. Some share the new suspicion of specialists and attempt to work without them. They rely entirely on what might be termed “cross-counseling”—people swapping advice based on their own life experience, as distinct from receiving traditional counseling from the professionals. Some see themselves as providing a support system for people in trouble. Other play a political role, lobbying for changes in legislation or tax regulations. Still others have a quasi-religious character. Some are international communities whose members not only meet but actually live together. Such groups are now forming regional, even transnational linkages. To the extent the professional psychologists, social workers, or doctors are involved at all, they increasingly undergo a role change, shifting from the role of impersonal expert who is assumed to know best to that of listener, teacher, and guide who works with the patient or client. Existing voluntary or nonprofit groups—originally struggling to see how they fit in with a movement based on the principle of helping oneself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The self-help movement is thus restructuring the socio-sphere. Smokers, stutterers, suicide-prone people, gambler, victims of throat disease, parents of twins, overeaters, and other such groupings now form a dense network of organization that mesh with the emerging Third Wave family and corporate structures. However, whatever their significance for social organization, they represent a basic shift from passive consumer to active prosumer, and they thus hold economic meaning as well. Though ultimately dependent on the market and still intertwined with it, they are transferring activity from Sector B of the economy to Sector A, from the exchange sector to the presumption sector. Nor is this burgeoning movement the only such force: Some of the richest and largest corporations in the World are also—for their own technological and economic reasons—accelerating the rise of the prosumer. Prayer is a legal right. Under this new covenant contract, sealed by the Lord Jesus Christ in His own blood, you have the legal right as a born-again believer to enter the throne room of God. You can stand in His presence without fear, without a sense of inferiority, without a sense of guilt, because of what Jesus did. It is your legal right to come boldly before the throne of grace to request Heavenly intervention in this Earth on your behalf. Prayer is your legal right, but you should come by the rules of spiritual law that govern prayer. Even though you do not, the law will still work—the law that says, one shall have whatsoever one saith. Or the law that says, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. These laws still work regardless of our ignorance of the Word. Prayer is the legal right to ask God to supernaturally intervene in your behalf. The power of binding and loosing is not in Heaven. It is on Earth. You are the one who has authority to bind the forces of evil. You are the one who has the power to loose the ability of God in this Earth through the prayer of faith. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
It is your legal right to use the prayer of faith to put you over in life. Wrong words in prayer will hold you in bondage. They will loose the ability of the enemy against you. Right words in prayer will release the ability of God. Prayer is to line ourselves up with the Word of God and set ourselves in a position to give God liberty to move on our behalf. Sometimes our prayers have bound God. If you rightly divide the Word of God in prayer, you will loose God’s ability. It will cause you to stand in a new realm of faith. You will come to the point that you will not have to pray all night. You can pray, knowing that God hears you. Then you will be silent to the Lord. Try to bring as much of your mind into your prayer as possible. When tired, rest. Repeat the rhythm of prayer five times. Such mental concentration is one of the secrets of champion professional strong humans. The faithful practice of these mind-concentrated mental exercises of prayer must lead in time to better bodily self-control. Prayer evokes the greatest power to resolve situations and to assist one in making one’s dreams com true, and it brings about the greatest results. However, one may practise prayer until Doomsday, mutter the hundred and eight different mystic spells, sit in all the sixty-four postures of yoga of body control, hold one’s breath for a whole hour or vary its rhythms in every conceivable manner, but the Overself will remain stubbornly remote unless one frankly faces and successfully fights out one’s struggle against one’s own ego in one’s own heart. No physical contortion, exercise, or manipulation can ever take its place. An isolated prayer is always nice. However, consider three minutes every day, or more. Prayer seems very effective when it is done regularly and is habit forming. Help teach your children, instead of complaining, try to pray to God and ask for the goodness that you want. It is futile to try to take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence. It cannot be successful. This desire to enter the Kingdom in a hurry is pardonable. Yet if it were fulfilled, the fulfillment would be a premature attainment and consequently lacking in fullness, falling short in wholeness, and uncertain of steadiness. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
All the different stages of development are needed in experience and can be missed only to our loss. Although timelessness is the quest’s end, the journey itself must take place in the measured pace of time to prepare us properly for its end. It may be that this is because we may not take hold of spiritual possessions which we have not rightfully earned by personal labours and to which we have no honest legal title. It may be that a spiritual treasure cannot become our own in advance of the requisite efforts to develop adequate fitness and understanding for such vast responsibility. “My son, give attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes; keep them in the midst of your heart; for they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh,” reports Proverbs 4.20-22. Some stories bear repeating over and over because they build our faith. For instance. God’s people often retold the Exodus story, partly because God instructed them to do so, but in my mind, I can also imagine them telling the story of Moses and the deliverance from Egyptian slavery for the sheer joy they experienced in passing on the event to the next generation. In some ways, I feel the same way when I tell about my father’s miraculous healing. The doctor said he had days to live. So he went home and pored over his Bible and found about one hundred favorite passages of Scriptures concerning healing. His circumstances began to change. Not overnight, but little by little, he began to feel better. He got his appetite back and started gaining weight. Slowly but surely, his strength returned. Maybe you are facing a “hopeless” situation. Do not give up. God is a miracle-working God. He knows what you are going through, and He will not let you down. Start speaking words of faith today, and watch how God causes your circumstances to change. Ecstasy is not a permanent mark of the mystical experience, but only a temporary mark which accompanies its first discovery. It is the beginners who are so excited by mystical ecstasies, not the proficient. The process of re-adjusting the personality to a future filled with wonderful promise and stamped with tremendous importance naturally moves the emotional nature towards an extreme delight. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to regard the mystic’s ecstasy as something that was merely emotional only. Behind it there is the all-important contribution of the Overself’s grace, love, and peace. When the emotional excitement of the discovery eventually subsided, these will then show themselves more plainly as being its really significant elements. Life can never again be just as ordinary, just as commonplace as before, nor just as if one had never passed through those vital moments of divine uplift. The white-hot point of their inspiration has faded, but it can never be forgotten. It will, nay it must, show itself powerfully in one’s directive purposes and in the quality of one’s living. One will want to keep this awakened consciousness at all times. This aspiration will instantaneously or eventually bring one to tread the Quest. In the intellectual deductions which one may make after the experience, and when one is viewing it analytically, one may find corroboration of one’s true beliefs or contradiction of one’s false ones. However, the ego having closed in upon one again, this may happen only partially, or only slightly, depending on its strength. Every glimpse of the Infinite helps one to let go of the finite, to detach oneself from one’s possessions and passions. Here is goodness and beauty which Worldly objects and Worldly creatures do not possess. The human who has once glimpsed them can never again become completely satisfied with the World’s offerings, for this reason, but will again and again be haunted by, and attracted to, the vision of this higher possibility for humans. Blaming and attacking are a more aggressive form of manipulation used in relationships by Critical Christians. Because of the many times such persons have been hurt, they fixate on being angry and punitive, believing that consistently blaming and attacking others will keep them from ever being hurt again. Being hurt is the Critical Christian’s greatest fear. So, paradoxically, one becomes the aggressor in hurting others first to keep from being hurt. This perpetuates a vicious cycle. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
While being in good contact with the polarities of anger and strength, the Critical Christian is out of touch with the complementary dimensions of love and weakness. In fact, one is stuck on the anger polarity and cannot allow into awareness feelings of tenderness or humility because they threaten the rigid pattern of always being in control and being right. When anything happens that the Critical Christian does not like, one compulsively seeks to find fault with others, God, or the World. Critical Christians enjoy bullying others into believing that their way is the only way. A closely associated strategy is judging others—constantly pointing out what they should be or say or do and where they have gone wrong. Because the Critical Christin is basically angry at the World, one usually communicates with others in a rather brusque way. However, the same dynamic of attacking and blaming may be carried on with a smile and an artificial appearance of being a nice person. Sometimes the Critical Christian just complains and whines constantly about not living this or that. As a child, the critical person could well have received the kind of harsh, judgmental treatment one now dishes out to others. Much psychological research shows that children learn many of their basic styles of relating by modeling themselves on the way that their parents or other authority figures relate to them. For instance, there is a high probability that children who have been physically or psychologically abused by parents will in turn abuse their own children, unless specific therapeutic intervention gives them new alternatives that they never had a chance to learn. Chances are the critical person experienced real fear, helplessness, and torment in childhood. This could have been inflicted by insecure parents, jealous brothers or sisters, exploitative relatives, or bullying peers. However, at some point, the pain reached such a crescendo that the person reversed roles—becoming the persecutor rather than the victim—and spent the rest of one’s life taking out the frustration, hostility, and pain on others. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
When people living out a punitive style of relating become Christians, there is a high probability that they will unconsciously contaminate their understanding of God and other people. The contamination is a result of the old hurts and the hostility that they generated within. The irony, then, is that Critical Christians rationalize such attitudes and behaviour by believing that God is the one who is angry, harsh, and judgmental of everyone. This supposedly excuses them for their own hostile behaviour. This type of individual might even believe that he or she is an emissary of God, sent to dispense God’s wrath on others. Once, therefore, feels quite smug in laying heavy demands upon others and becoming a hard taskmaster in telling others how to be holy and live up to God’s supposed expectations. A noticeable pattern for the Critical Christian is the preoccupation with ritual, rule, and regulation. In the zeal to serve God, one becomes guilty of destroying the spirit of love and gentleness that characterizes true Christian behaviour with a dogmatic and almost vicious concern with the letter of the law. Some Critical Christians can recognize that they are intolerant and impatient with anyone who sees things differently from them. They often feel that they have all the answers about God, life, and other people’s behaviour. When they become aware of how many people who have felt hurt, and misunderstood by their brash approach to life, the understand they have judged others too harshly. As these individuals grow, they develop a more gentle lifestyle that enables one to relate genuinely to people who are quite different from them. Father, it is Your Word that I rely upon to bring healing and health to my life and to those from whom I am praying. I am not interested in spiritual tricks or formulas; I only want Your will to be done. May my words reflect Your words and Your will in the situations I am facing. I will dare to speak faith-filled words. Faith comes from the Word, not prayer. I once head someone say, “I prayed all night about a certain situation, just stayed up and prayed all night.” Well if they had prayed in faith, they would have gone to sleep. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Pray in faith, then rest in the Lord. When you start praying in faith, your words will be few, but they will be effective. (However, keep in mind if your system is already perfected, do not change it.) Sometimes we pray just trying to muster up some faith. That is not scriptural. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God, not by praying. Go to the Word of God and hear the Word until faith comes; do not be too quick to pray. Sometimes we start talking before we know what to say. Hear the Word…hear the Word…hear the Word. It might take a week or a month, but faith will come. Then go to God with the prayer of faith and thank Him. You will not have to stay there long. You can get more from God in two minutes, believing Him, than you can praying all night in unbelief. However, keep in mind, long conversations with God can be like therapy. A little patience and humility in adversity will please God more than a lot of consolation and devotion in prosperity. Why do you become depressed when a small insult is sent your way? If it has been a bigger one, a real calumny, say, you still should not have let it bother you. Let it pass. It is not the first time or the last time, just the present time, an they will keep coming, no matter how long you live. Verily, you will do virilely most days, that is to say, until sometime prickly gets in your way. You are very good at giving advice on vice to others, how to battle the Enemy, that sort of thing. However, when tribulation suddenly comes a-knocking, you quickly lose your water. Pay some attention to how fragile you are, especially in the small things of life. They are for your salvation, all these dreadful little things that happen to you. Put the bad stuff out of your heart, as best as you know how. And if it goes get to you, do not let it depress you or entangle you for long. As for consolation, if you are not getting any, then at the least bear up patiently. Also, if you accidentally overhear an insulting remark and feel your gorge rise, reprimand yourself and do not let a wisecrack escape your mouth, lest the tots and tykes be scandalized. If commotion arises, quickly muffle your drums, and from that, the internal pain will be suitably and smoothly hummed with grace. Up to this point God has lived, prepared to help us, and he is prepared to help us more. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
However, we must first have faith in God, then invoke God directly, and address God nicely. Keep your heard on straight! Cinch up your cincture! There are worse battles ahead. However, do not fuss and fume if you have to skirmish with tribulation, or worse, come under heavy fire from temptation. Why? Well, God should have thought it obvious by now. You are homo sapiens, not Sapientia herself! You are fleshy, not feathery; human, not Angel. Just saying in the same old place as far as virtue’s concerned is not really a virtue in the spiritual life. The First Angel as well as the First Man found that out. And now they are out of Heaven, out of Paradise. God is the One who raises up those who are down and out about their own welfare. However, those who know their own infirmity, these God will carry to His divinity. May all I say and all I think be in harmony with thee, God within me, God beyond me, maker of the trees. In me be the windswept truth of shorepine, fragrance of balsam and spruce, the grace of hemlock. In me the truth of douglas fir, straight, tall, strong-trucked land hero of fireproof bark. Sheltering tree of life, cedar’s truth be mine, cypress truth, juniper aroma, strength of yew. May all I say and all I think be in harmony with thee, God within me, God beyond me, maker of the trees. In me be the truth of streamlover willow soil-giving alder hazel of sweet nuts, wisdom-branching oak. In me the joy of crabapple, greatmaple, vinemaple, cleansing cascara and lovely dogwood. And the gracious truth of the copper branches arbutus, bright with colour and fragrance, be with me on the Earth. May all I say and all I think be in harmony with thee, God within me, God beyond me, maker of the trees. This Feast of the Law all your gladness display, today all your homages render. What profit can lead one so pleasant a way, what jewels can vie with its splendour? Then exult in the Law on its festival day, the Law is our Light and Defender. My God I will praise in a jubilant lay, my hope in Him never surrender. His glory proclaim where His chosen sons pray, my Rock all my trust shall engender. Then exult in the Law on its festival day, the Law is our Light and Defender. My heart of Thy goodness shall carol alway, Thy praises I ever will render; while breath is, my lips all Thy wonders shall say, Thy truth and Thy kindness so tender. Then exult in the Law on its festival day, the Law is our Light and Defender. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
All we’re missing are the placecards! Since we moved to our home at Brighton Station (the residence 3 model) we’ve been anxious to host as many family gatherings as possible.
When you’ve got an open floorplan, large eat-in island, and a fab outdoor space, there are so many options! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/
A Cresleigh Home, a place on Earth supremely blest, a dearer, sweeter home than all the rest.
Yeah, You Sure Do Have a Problem!
Just because you do not understand it, does not mean It is not so. Contemporary investigations of family relationships and schizophrenia center more on explaining the course than the cause of the disorder. There are, however, some notable instances where researchers have employed family-of-origin variables to predict the onset of schizophrenia. Three family variables that have been, and continue to be, particularly influential in this area are communication deviance, expressed emotion, and family affective style. In the classic family approaches to schizophrenia, patients’ families often have odd and unfocused styles of interacting with each other, perhaps in the service of sustaining pseudomutuality. Members of these families have difficulty establishing and maintaining a shared focus of attention through their discourse. Out of this original set of studies and hypotheses about family interaction and schizophrenia emerged a very influential line of research on communication deviance. It has been theorized that people learn to focus their attention and derive meaning from external stimuli through their interactions, particularly with parents, during the early years of life. Odd and deviant styles of communication among the parents were presumed to interact with biological predispositions to contribute to thought and communication disturbances in children who are unable to relate to and understand their parents. A considerable body of evidence indicates that a family affected by a member’s schizophrenia will communicate in odd, idiosyncratic, illogical, and fragmented language, even when that member is not present. Topics of conversation will often drift or abruptly change direction, with a lack of closure. Such interactions are marked by a blurred focus of attention and meaning. This characteristic style of family communication has been labeled CD (communication deviance). #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Traditionally, CD has been assessed from transcripts of parents’ responses to projective tests such as the Rorschach or the Thematic Apperaption Test (TAT). These responses are generally made in the absence of the child. People with schizophrenia may have a contorted peculiar language and misinterpratations of social and verbal language. This is referred to as interactional communication deviance (ICD), and it classifies parents’ discourse into categories such as idea fragments (exempli gratia “But the thing is as I said, there’s got…you can’t drive in the alley), contradictions or reactions (exempli gratia, “No, that’s right, she does” and ambiguous reference (exempli gratia ‘Kids stuff that’s one thing but something else is different too). Abundant evidence indicates that CD is higher in parents of patients with schizophrenia than it is in parents of either patients without schizophrenia or healthy controls. It is particularly intriguing that this distorted form of communication is highly reminiscent of the communication style that typifies the person who actually has schizophrenia. It is therefore unclear whether parental CD reflects a genetic effect that is evident in both parent and child, or a parental behaviour that contributes to the child’s problem. The onset of schizophrenia can be predicted. In one study, parents from families with moderately disturbed teenagers each responded to TAT protocols, from which measures of CD were taken. Fifteen years later, the lifetime prevalence of schizophrenia in the children was assessed. High CD in the parents was strongly associated with the appearance of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders in some of the family of offspring at follow-up. In a similar study, disturbed high-risk adolescents were followed over a period of 5 years. By the end of the study, approximately 10 percent of those whose parents who were low or intermediate in CD went on to develop schizophrenia, whereas 56 percent of those whose parents were high in CD developed schizophrenia. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Other researchers on CD has examined its role in the course of schizophrenia. For example, one group of patients with schizophrenia and their parents were followed for over the course of 1 year. Within the 12-month period of the study, slightly over 50 percent of the patients has experienced a relapse. Parental CD at the time of the patients’ discharge was significantly higher among the parents of those who relapsed versus those who did not. However, in the assessment of parental CD at time 1, there were no differences among parents of those who did versus those who did not relapse. As it turns out, the parents of those patients who relapsed exhibited a dramatic increase in their CD over the course of the study. This investigation indicates that returning to a home with high CD will increase the likelihood of relapse. The results of an adoption study conducted in Finland illustrate the power of parental CD to influence schizophrenic outcomes in children. Children who were genetically at risk or predisposed to develop schizophrenia, were especially likely to develop the disorder when reared by an adoptive family that was high in CD. However, among the low-risk adoptees, there was no relationship between CD in the adoptive parents and thought disorders in children. These findings suggest that parental CD may be a family stressor that interacts with a preexisting diathesis to influence the development of schizophrenia. It is reasonable to wonder whether parental CD is a repose to schizophrenia in a child. Interaction with a person afflicted with schizophrenia may possibly bring about CD. However, the parental CD is not a consequence of living in a household with someone who has schizophrenia. In addition to distorted verbal behaviour, parental CD may be accompanied by problematic use of nonverbal behaviour. Parents who are high in CD also exhibit gaze aversion and rigidity in facial expression while interacting with their children. These are powerfully disconfirming behaviours. At the same time, they fit well with poor focus of attention that is the hallmark of CD. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
When a high-CD parent “interacts” with a child, both verbal and nonverbal behaviour suggest that the parent’s thoughts and emotions are elsewhere, and that there is some tension between the parent and the child. Consequently, the child may be met with fragmented and disconfirming behaviour in both the verbal and nonverbal channels when interacting with the high-CD parent. It appears that parental CD functions as a type of stressor that affects the course and outcome of schizophrenia. When parents’ communication is particularly amorphous and peculiar, children may become confused and uncertain about even basic and fundamental social realities. This confusion undoubtedly has functional significance in the course of the schizophrenia, as it is so central in the constellation of symptoms that make up the disorder. It is difficult to read the transcripts and hear the speech of a high-CD parents, and not wonder about the parent’s own mental health, aside from that of the child. It is therefore understandable that when patients are discharged into the care of such parents, they offspring remain at risk for future relapse. Early investigations of family expressed emotion (EE) identified a pattern of criticism, overinvolvement, overprotectiveness, excessive attention, and emotional reactivity that appeared to create a vulnerability to relapse and poor social adjustment among patients with schizophrenia. EE represents an attitude of criticism and emotional overinvolvement on the part of the parent, which is expressed during an interview with a researcher or clinician. Originally a special interview procedure, known as the Camerwell Family Interview, was employed to assess family EE. The construct is operationalized through the frequency of critical remarks, degree of hostility, and the degree of emotional overinvolvement expressed by a family member during the interview. Generally, parents who express more than six criticisms during the interview are characterized as high in EE. EE is a combination of four behavioural characteristics: intrusiveness; anger and/or acute distress and anxiety; overt blame and criticism of the patient; and an intolerance of the patient’s symptoms. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
One study revealed that patients who returned to a home with high-EE relatives exhibited a 9-month relapse rate of 51 percent, whereas only 13 percent of those who returned to a low-EE family relapsed. Family therapy programs that improve communication and problem solving, thus lowering EE, have been shown to lower relapse rates significantly. Recently discharged patients with schizophrenia who returned to either high-EE or low-EE families were examined. Patients from high-EE families exhibited more odd and disruptive behaviour during a family interaction approximately 6 weeks after hospital discharge than did patients from low-EE households. Relatives in the high EE households were more critical of the patients when they verbalized unusual thoughts than low-EE family members were. Studies such as these clearly paint a picture of a vicious circle in high-EE family relations: These parents respond to a patient with a lot of criticism, because patients from these households appear to exhibit more bizarre and disruptive behaviour than patients from low-EE homes. It is likely that the negative reactions they receive from their families contribute further to the potential for relapse among patients. A review of 25 studies on family EE indicated a 50 percent relapse rate, over a period of 9-12 months, among patients discharged to high-EE families, but only 21 percent among those with low-EE relatives. These findings indicate that the odds of relapse are increased by approximately 2.5:1 for patients discharged to high- versus low-EE relatives. Similar findings are evident in a recent meta-analysis of this literature, indicating an effect size of r =.30 for the association between family EE and relapse. Studies of family EE show that three factors are prominent in protecting a patient with schizophrenia from relapse. The first factor is low-EE in the relatives who live with the patient. For better or worse, most patients are discharged back to their families of origin. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
When family members harbour critical and hostile attitudes toward a patient, the likelihood of relapse is high. On the other hand, low-EE, which may be indicative of greater tranquility, support, acceptance, can greatly reduce the probability of relapse. A second protective factor is low (id est, less than 35 hours per week) face-to-face contact with high-EE parents. Again, avoiding the agitating effect of high-EE family members appears to pay some dividends. The final protective factor identified is whether a patient is maintained on medication. Obviously, those who comply with medication regiments are at reduced risk for relapse. These authors argue that of the three factors, low-EE in the family is most important in reducing relapse within a year from discharge, as it appears to have a prophylactic effect regardless of compliance with medication. Family EE may function as a stressor that precipitates relapse among recovering patients with schizophrenia. The experience of a psychological problem as profound as schizophrenia can leave a recovering patient in a very fragile psychological and social state. Even though symptoms may be under control and in remission, the interpersonal disruption that is associated with this disorder may still be evident, leaving the patient in a precarious state of interpersonal behaviours, the patient may have minimal opportunity for seeking social support and validation from other sources. The end result of this state of affairs may be relapse into an episode of schizophrenia upon being pressed by EE from family members. There is reason to believe that parents who are particularly high in EE may have psychological problems of their own. Studies found that lifetime rates of major psychiatric disorders were 100 percent in high-EE parents of patients with schizophrenia, and only 44 percent in parents who scored low on measures of EE. Although this 44 percent lifetime prevalence rate for the low-EE parents may seem high, it considered normal when contrasted with other studies, suggesting that these parents as a group are no different from those in the general population. The amazingly high rate of psychiatric disorder in the high-EE parents raises the possibility that EE may be a marker of genetic transmission of mental illness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Family EE is assumed to be a stressor that evokes psychiatric symptoms in a patient. Do patients find high-EE to be stressful? To explore the issue, patients with schizophrenia were asked to discuss happy and unhappy memories from their lives. Patients with high-EE parents recalled significantly fewer positive memories that involved their parents, compared to patients with low-EE parents. Overall, parents were featured in twice as many positive as negative memories. However, high-EE parents were featured in roughly equal proportions of positive and negative recollections. The study provides at least indirect evidence that high-EE parents are experienced as stressful by patients with schizophrenia. Research on family EE continues to flourish. In addition to being a useful and reliable predictor of relapse, EE may be fruitfully understood as a familial risk indicator for schizophrenia. High-EE parents are especially likely to have their own history of psychopathology. Thus parental EE may signal a possible genetic transmission of psychopathology. High-EE parents feel that their own psychological problems were overcome though internal efforts. Whether family EE is viewed as a predictor of relapse or a risk factor, one can interpret it within a diathesis-stress framework, in which this conflictual and hostile family attitude functions as a stressor on the patient. At the same time, however, it is important to bear in mind that EE may also reflect parents’ frustration and appraisal of the burden of dealing with their son or daughter with schizophrenia. Whereas EE reflects the content of communications, CD reflect the form of communication. As if to make a potentially disruptive family situation worse for patients with schizophrenia, families are that are high in CD also tend to be high in EE. Consequently, patients may be dealt a double dose of problematic interactional exchanges with their family members. It is little wonder that patients discharged to parents high in EE, who are also likely to express unclear, odd, and fragmented ideas, are at such a high risk for relapse. When the two variables were put side by side in the same investigation, family CD proved to be a more powerful predictor of schizophrenia outcomes (exempli gratia, number of relapses, time hospitalized, ratings of psychosocial functioning) then family EE. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Affective style (AS) is a measure of the verbal behaviour of family members during discussion of a conflict-laden issues with the patient present. Whereas EE is an attitude of hostility, criticism, and overinvolvement expressed by a family member during an interview in the absence of the patient, AS represent the family members’ actual verbal behaviours when interacting with the patient. It may be viewed as the behavioural manifestation of the attitude indexed by the expressed emotion construct, but this relationship has been difficult to establish empirically. Although AS and EE are close related and perhaps overlapping constructs, a distinct body of literature exists on AS, indicating that (like EE) it is often predictive of relapse among patients with schizophrenia. Measures of AS are typically taken from a series of brief family discussions about a current unresolved problem in the family. As might be expected, these conversations pull for substantial emotional expression. The conversations are then transcribed, and the family members’ speech content is coded for support, criticism, guilt induction, and intrusiveness. The unit of analysis for the coding is typically six lines of uninterrupted speech by a single speaker. The results of the coding are used to classify families into one of three profiles AS profiles: benign, intermediate, or poor. Benign-As families display a lack of negative behaviours (id est, personal criticism, guilt induction, and critical or neutral intrusiveness) during their interactions. Intermediate-As families are those who express some negative but some positive speech behaviours (id est, primary support) during the family discussion. Finally, poor-AS (also referred to as negative-AS) families are those in which one or both parents exhibit negative verbal behaviours, but no positive verbal behaviours. In one of the first AS studies, 65 families of high-risk, disturbed, but not psychotic adolescents participated in the family discussion. The adolescents were then assessed at a follow-up 5 years later. When a broad schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis (exempli gratia, including schizoid personality disorder) was used as the outcome criterion, only 8 percent of adolescents with a benign-AS family profile at time 1 received a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis at time 2. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Among those with an intermediate-AS family profile at time 1, 50 percent were diagnosed at time 2. This figure increased to 59 percent among those with a poor-AS family profile. Although it has been found that the best prediction of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders involved a combination of As and Cd, it is clear that family AS is a marker of risk for schizophrenia. In a longitudinal study of even longer duration, a group of moderately disturbed teens and their families were followed over a period of 15 years. The families participated in the typical conflict discussion. They were then classified as either negative- or benign-AS. Results for the study indicated that within those families classified as benign-AS, no cases of extended schizophrenia-spectrum disorder developed over the 15-year interval. However, almost all the schizophrenia-spectrum cases observed at time 2 occurred in the context of a family where one or both parents were high in EE and As. Like the studies on EE, the early studies on AS clearly supposed the hypothesis that family expression of criticism and hostility, in the absence of any supportiveness, indicates a risk for the development of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders among high-risk adolescents. These findings are consistent with early research showing that many psychiatric patients use mental hospitals as a refuge from stressful environments, in which they seek a carefree lifestyle. In addition to being a risk factor in the initial development of the disorder, AS may also predict relapse. In one investigation, patients with schizophrenia whose families had benign-AS profiles at the time of their discharge from the hospital evidenced a 40 percent rehospitalization rate over the next 12 months, whereas those who returned to negative-AS families had over twice the rate (83 percent) of rehospitalization. Even more striking are the findings for AS in concert with medication compliance: Patients with negative-AS families and noncompliance with medication exhibited a 100 percent rehospitalization rate, compared with only 17 percent among those with benign-As families and medication compliance. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Of further interest is the fact that researchers were tested for, and it was largely ruled out that the possibility that those patients from negative-As families were sicker in the first place and therefore more likely to relapse. This finding suggests that it is unlikely that family AS is merely a reaction to the severity of a child’s illness. Approximately 70 percent of those families characterized by excessive criticism and emotional overinvolvement at initial assessment remained that way over the course of the study, regardless of the patient’s clinical status. Furthermore, about 20 percent of the parents become more critical over the course of the study, despite the fact that the patients’ condition actually improved. For most families, AS reflects a relatively stable and enduring style of interaction, which is resistant to treatment and independent of the patients’ recovery status. The connection between family AS and rehospitalization could be the result of at least two different processes. The most straightforward hypothesis is that family AS is a stressor that pushes an already fragile individual “over the edge.” Experiencing a serious psychological problem can leave a recovering patient in a delicate psychological state, as noted earlier. The criticism and intrusiveness evident in a negative-AS household have the potential to strain the already sensitive patient to such an extent that the full disorder may redevelop. An alternative but related hypothesis is that family AS is a stressor that pushes the recovering patient out of the household and back into the hospital, in an effort to seek refuge from the family. Most people would find a negative-AS household to eb an aversive environment. It is understandable that almost anyone would want to get out of such an environment. For the patient with a learning history that involves being taken care of in a hospital, remission and readmission may be functional, in that it removes one from the stressful confines of the negative-As family origin. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Is negative AS specific to families of patients with schizophrenia? Several studies have been conducted to explore this issue, and these generally suggest that the problem is particularly exaggerated in such families. For example, when compared to parents of patients with bipolar disorder, the parents of patients with schizophrenia have been found to make more intrusive and critical statements toward the patients after discharge from the hospital. When compared to families of patients with anorexia nervosa, families of patients with schizophrenia were much more likely to have negative-As profiles. In this sample, only 1 of the 11 families of patients with anorexia nervosa had a negative-As profile. Family AS appears to have a relationship with both the onset and course of schizophrenia. At the same time, the variable has not been as widely embraces as CD or EE. This is due to problems with reliably rating AS. Consequently, the variable appears almost exclusively in research studies of the group at or from UCLA who originally developed the construct. Nevertheless, the available research findings indicate that it is a family interaction phenomenon with potential equal to CD or EE in explaining considerable variance in the course of schizophrenia. Modern conceptualizations of family interaction and schizophrenia fit well within a diathesis-stress framework. Some individuals may harbour a biological predisposition to develop schizophrenia. This predisposition is more formally known as the diathesis. It is unquestionably stressful to live with parents who communicate in odd and illogical ways, and who are unable to establish and maintain a shared focus of attention. It is equally stressful to live with parents who harbour as well as express attitudes of hostility, criticism, and overinvolvement. Sadly, many of these destructive and stressful family interaction patterns cooccur. The confusion and disorientation that parental CD produces, and the guilt, shame, and bewilderment about ego boundaries that parental EE and negative AS create, have the effect of combining flame and fuel among those with an existing predistortion toward schizophrenia and/or trigger relapse. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Current evidence indicates that one could question the mental health of any parent who exhibits excessive hostility, criticism, and emotional overinvolvement toward a child, along with an inability to establish and maintain a shared focus of attention in discussions that have a bizarre tone and structure. These family variables have an undeniable role in the course and in some cases onset of schizophrenia. It is not possible to fully understand and predict this disorder without at least some consideration of the family context in which a patient with schizophrenia was reared and into which one is discharged. The upsurge of interest in Eastern religion and Western cults is welcome, and may help a turn to the Good; but it has its negative side in a matching interest in Evil with a capital E. These evils, sufferings, and calamities exist for all, the good and the bad; such is the human lot. Whether in politics or in society, there is widespread double-talk, publicly upheld untruth, and differing views expressed. Many people have had their eyes opened to the depth and extent of the evil in humans, and they have become sad over it. Today nobody needs to become illumined in order to see the same thing. If some humans wish to withdraw from the World, disgusted with its repeated brutalities and malignances, need we wonder? Because the Universe is a manifestation of the Divine, it must be divinely guided. Therefore its history must be divinely controlled. What has happened in human World affairs so recently and so dramatically is not outside the divine will. What is happening today is just as much inside it. The degenerative process which replaces the universal-mindedness of Goethe by the fanatic narrowness of Goebbels, the calm wisdom of the earlier man by the obscene insanity of the later one, is a subject for reflection. The good and the evil in humans is such long-associated partners that cooperation of the good alone between humans is impossible. At some point of their contact, in some way, the reptilian evil will creep in and make its unpleasant discordant presence felt. Hence universal brotherhood is only a beautiful dream, to be shattered upon awakening to the ugly facts. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The lives of so many good humans in our time have moved inexorably to disaster, like the gloomy story of a Greek tragedy, that the helpless but friendly onlooker may well wonder where God is. A period so filled with confusion and so rife with evil, drives thoughtless people to more sensuality and materialism but thoughtful ones to more aspiration and higher values. O Lord Jesus, Your life was such a small stretch in human history, and even that was despised by Humankind. Despite what the history of the World has said and done, grant that I may imitate You in all respects. “The servant is not greater than the master, nor the student, the teacher.” That is how Your Matthew put it (10.24). We Devouts will be exercised in this life because there is where we will find our Salvation and True Sanctity. Outside of these applications of the spiritual life, whatever I read or hear about You will not give me the same pleasure as knowing You personally. “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in one’s heart, but believes that what one says is going to happen, it shall be granted to one. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they shall be granted you,” reports Mark 11.23-24. If you are in a touch situation today, now more than ever you need to guard what you say and now allow any negative, destructive words to come out of your mouth. Scripture says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue; and you will eat the fruit thereof,” reports Proverbs 18.21. In other word, you create an environment for either good or evil with your words, and you are going to have to live in that World you have created. If you are always murmuring, complaining, and talking about how bad life is treating you, you are going to live in a pretty miserable, depressing World. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
You will always be tempted to use words to describe negative situations, but God wants us to use our words to change our negative situations. Do not talk about the problem, talk about the solution. Receive the Cross from Jesus Christ’s very hand. Carry it as Jesus handed it over to you, carry it to the death. Truly the life of a good self-actualized is the Cross, and the Cross is the passage to Heaven. The Cross is an uphill trudge, and once begun, you cannot just stop and turn around and go downhill. Ah, my friends, let us make the trudge together—Jesus will be with us. It is because of Him we took up this cross, and it is because of Him we will preserve in the Way of the Cross. He will lead the way, and we will follow. If He falls, we will help. And the other way around. Look, there Jesus is. Our King enters before us. He will fight for us. Let us follow him virilely, and no one will fear the terrors. Let us be prepare to die bravely in war. “Let us not fear the terrors. Let us not bring disgrace on our glory,” as the First Maccabist would say (9.10), by fleeing from the Cross. “Let the weak say I am strong. Let the oppressed say I am free. Let the sick say I am healed. Let the poor say I am well off,” reports Joel 3.10. Started calling yourself healed, happy, whole, blessed, and prosperous. Stop talking to God about how big your mountains are, and start talking to your mountains about how extraordinary your God is. When you are facing obstacles in your path, you must boldly say, “Greater is He who is in me than one who is in the World,” reports 1 John 4.4. “No weapon formed against me is going to prosper,” reports Isaiah 54.17. God always causes His loved ones to triumph. Stop complaining about lack and limitation and start declaring, God supplies all of my needs in abundance. Stop complaining that nothing good ever happens to you and start declaring, “Everything I touch prospers and succeeds.” We must stop cursing the World. Let us start loving God’s creation. There is a miracle in your mouth. If you want to change your World, start today by changing your words. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Never pray your problem. If you pray the problem, it will get worse. If you pray the problem, you loose the ability of the enemy. Pray the problem and it will grow greater and your faith will flee away on the wings of doubt. Pray the thing you desire. Go to the Word of God and find out what God said about it. You will find that the Word says, “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them,” reports Mark 11.24. So you would pray the desire: “Father, I desire my husband to be saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. I ask You to send labourers across his path to witness to him. As I am praying right now, I believe that I receive it in the name of Jesus Christ. I cast all my cares over onto You; and when I get up in the morning, I will not pray about it again. I will continue to thank you. Father, I want to speak words that are consistent with Your Word; may my words be filled continually with faith and hope, and may they create an environment in which You can do great and mighty things in and through my life.” Now you have returned God’s Words to Him, He will perform it. Now that may not happen overnight. This is where the force of patience is exercised. Learn to be silent to the Lord as is mentioned in Psalm 37, verse 7. Do not use vain repetitions. Do not pray the same prayer over and over (but if you are just learning to pray, do what you can, God hears all prayers). Do not be held in bondage. I am a farmer by trade and let us say that I have just planted a field of cotton. Now, if I went out and said the next morning, “Man, something is wrong. This cotton is not coming up. Let us plow it up and plant it again,” would it not be foolish? The next day the same thing happened. If I kept doing that, I could plant 365 days and still not produce any cotton. We need to become as smart in the spiritual realms as we are in the natural. That kind of farming practice will cause one to go bankrupt quick! Our prayers many times have held us in bondage, causing spiritual bankruptcy. No one would dare plant a garden and next morning dig it up. Well, Sarah Winchester might. He plants and flowers and trees were known to grow years overnight. However, for most of us, it takes time for these things to happen. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
God has certain laws that He operates under. He had regulated Himself by His Word. God has the power to do anything. However, so many times He cannot use His power in our behalf because if He did, it would violate His Word. That is one thing God cannot do! He cannot violate His Word. If He did some of the things we ask, He would have to lie to do it. We have prayed beyond His ability to answer because of our violation of His rules concerning prayer. Jesus said, ‘What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them.” Some of you have been praying all the bad things, the problems. If God did what you really desire, then He would violate His Word. He said that you can have what you say when you pray, and you have said the problem in prayer over and over until all you are seeing and believing is the problem. Have you ever prayed, “Lord, it is not working out. It is not getting any better”? Well, I was praying that every prayer one morning and the Lord spoke something into my spirit. If I heard it in my ears, it would not have been any louder. He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Lord, I am praying.” He said, “No, you are not; you are complaining!” A lot of folks are complaining, thinking they are praying. They are telling God their problems. In Matthew, chapter 6, Jesus said that the Father already knows the problem. He already knows what you have need of before you ask Him. Then there is no need to pray the problem. What we need to do is zero in one the answer. Pray and speak the answer; cast the problem over on Him. The enemy has deceived the Christians into praying the problem. Did you know the more you pray the problem, the more you say the problem? The more you say the problem, the more you will believe in the problem. The problem will grow because you are keeping it always before you. It is just like fertilizing the problem. It will grow bigger and bigger. You tell others about it and they will say, “Yeah, you sure do have a problem.” They will agree with you, and then they will tell someone else. Finally, you will have fifty people agreeing that you have a problem. “Then you do have a problem! For Jesus said, ‘If two of you shall agree on Earth as touching anything, it shall be done,’” reports Matthew 18.19. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Now you can see the deception of the enemy. He has deceived us by twisting the Word of God around so we use it against ourselves. The adversary does not care how much you pray. One does not care how much you go to church. If one can distort the Word of God so that your prayers are ineffective, one has defeated you. Yes, you may make it to Heaven, but you may not do anything while you are here on Earth, except suffer, struggle along, and feel sorry for yourself. Many people get the idea that they are just suffering for Jesus; when, in fact, if they would just act on the Word of God and stand against the enemy, rebuking one in the name of Jesus, they could live in success. There is success in the name of Jesus Christ. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the enemy, and one will flee from you,” reports James 4.7. The Helpless Christian is in the same yacht with the ret of humanity in having weaknesses. The only difference is that even when a trusting relationship with God has been established, the Helpless Christian still feels the fear of being overwhelmed by life. This person feels that one hardly has the right to exist, much less grow. The Helpless Christian is stuck on the weakness polarity. Out of a sense of fear, the Helpless Christian distorts a religious commitment by reaming infantile and dependent. This person’s fear takes one of two forms. First, one may see God as the Great Rescuer and so stay helpless and continually wait for God’s help. Or, second, one may feel so overwhelmed by God because one is so big and by contrast one is so small that there is nothing else to do except sit shaking one’s boots in one’s presence. Either way, fear blocks growth. This person is unconsciously relating to God in the same manipulative ways that one has learned to relate to others. The helpless person has never learned to stand on one’s own feet. The body structure often reflects this in that the upper torso is often somewhat caved in, making the person appear fragile. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The Helpless Christian may experience a very nice payoff for infantile and dependent behaviour. There are many people who would like nothing better than to constantly rescue and take care of such a needy person. So the individual secretly enjoys the big fuss made over one’s difficulties, needs, and problems. If one dummies up, and does not learn to think for oneself, then others can be tricked into doing all the thinking. If one never has enough faith for anything, then other can be made to do the praying. If one is not willing to face life and learn to cope with it, the others can be hooked into giving advice, making decisions, and taking all the responsibility that should rightfully be one’s own. So the Helpless Christian says, “I cannot do it; I give up.” And the rescuers says, “That is all right; we will do it for you. Since getting in touch with one’s own strength and adequacy will mean accepting new responsibility, the Helpless Christian may prefer to continue seducing others into doing the thinking, feeling, and acting. Of course, one unknowingly pays the terrible price of remaining a psychological and spiritual infant throughout life. The other factor that may exert an unconscious influence on the attitudes and behaviour of the helpless person may be early traumatic experiences with family or peers. It is highly probable that the person has felt overwhelmed, humiliated, or severely taken advantage of while growing up. Therefore, one no longer trusts anyone. One does not even trust oneself, because there is a residual feeling of terror and helplessness about not being able to cope with life on one’s own. When people carry residual feelings of shame and embarrassment, as well as patterns of promiscuity into their adult Christian life, they may never experience an emotional reliable relationship, and it will be extremely difficult to understand others. That will make one an all too easy mark for predators. One must decide to face one’s life, and this will allow for the experience of new hope and lead to the discovery of a deep desire to amount to something. One will then take an active interest in determining how things will turn out for oneself, and be surprised that one’s choices can make such a big difference. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
This enlightenment will allow an individual to build friendships with humans that are genuine and supportive and allow one the dignity of being oneself. One will take an active interest in one’s careers, education, and hobbies and this disciplining time and energy will allow one to reach long term goals of vocational excellence. Then one day one will feel, “I am really loved. God loves me. And I can tell that some of my friends love me. And I am starting to love myself!” It may not be easy, but one can make real progress in climbing out of the rut of helplessness and apathy. At the manipulative level, the helpless Christian uses tactics of withdrawal and avoidance in order to escape the demands of responsible growth and self-direction. At the character level, some people may find themselves cold, aloof, and emotionally detached from others. In psychological terms, we souls say that the person is developing a schizoid character. In lay terms, we could say that the person is becoming lifeless and devoid of feeling. Having at some point felt a denial of the right to a fulfilling life, one is now determined never to again feel the pain of betrayal. Thus one psychologically locks oneself into solitary confinement and becomes numb to life, avoiding relationships and taking comfort in a hermit-like life where there is no emotional energy invested in another living thing except a dog or a cat. The passion, the interest or excitement with life, and the vision for fulfillment of one’s destiny are all gone. Encountering such an individual, one wonders if there is a person at all inside the stiff, fortified body. At the psychotic stage, helpless people melt silently into schizophrenia or an ultimate kind of “shut-offness” from the World. Not having learned how to live in the real World, they create a World of their own. Going further, they regress to an earlier, totally dependent form of infantile behaviour, relying on forces outside themselves for even the most simple bodily needs. This is both an alarming and depressing picture. Yet it is happening in people’s lives. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
If you find some of these tendencies unfolding in your own life, we urge you to begin reversing the pattern. The material throughout this report, coupled with your own desire and prayer, ought to provide you with many good options for growing out of the rut of being a Helpless Christian. If you feel that pressures in your own personality make it impossible to grow or change in healthy directions, then it would be wise for you to prayerfully seek a relationship with a competent professional counselor or therapist. Many people nowadays are benefiting from several weeks or months of individual group counseling or therapy with a qualified professional. Mother, Father, God, Universal Power, please remind us daily of the sanctity of all life. Please touch our hearts with the glorious oneness of all creation, as we strive to respect all the living beings on this planet. Please penetrate our souls with the beauty of this Earth, as we attune ourselves to the rhythm and flow of the seasons. Please awaken our minds with the knowledge to achieve a World in perfect harmony and please grants us the wisdom to realize that we can have Heaven on Earth. O Lord, open the Heavens and please pour down your rain. Yes, Lord, please refresh us, and pour down your spirit. Pour water on the thirsty land, and stream on the dry ground; pour your spirit upon our offspring, and your blessings on our descendants. Your Heavens above, rain down your righteousness; let the clouds show it down. Let the Earth open wide, let salvation spring up, let righteousness flourish with it; as You, the Lord, have created it. Please, loving God, bring us rain to renew the ground, to replenish our dams, to bring some chance of feed, to bring the possibility of some reward to those who have toiled so hard. We turn to you in faith and hope and love. With permission of Him who is exalted above all blessing and adoration, revered above all hymns of praise, wise in heart and might in strength and power, sovereign of the World and Lord of all creation, and with permission of all the righteous ones of this congregation, gathered here this day to rejoice in the Torah, and assembled to complete, then reverently to begin again in joy to read the Torah, stand forth, stand forth, stand forth, Hatan Bereshit. Inasmuch as you are chosen to be the first to perform so perfect a command, how great is your privilege, exceedingly great your reward! #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s
Now Selling!
Now selling! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms.
Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!
Get the most out of your new home with Cresleigh’s All Ready smart home featuring all the connectivity needed to keep your house running. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes with owned solar included!
Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
I believe that all of our lives we are looking for home. If we are really lucky, we find a loving Cresleigh Home. I think that is what life is-coming home to a loving Cresleigh Home.
Witches, Warlock, and Ghost in the Mansion of Mrs. Winchester!
Some people call themselves witches, and believe that they are able to contact and utilize powers from the invisible realm. However, there are many questions about witchcraft. Is it merely a game some people play? Is it beneficial to humanity? Or is it evil and dangerous? Universities all over the World are offering courses in occultism, and teams of scientists are investigating reports of mysterious magical phenomena all over the globe. They are baffled by some of the amazing incidents they encounter, and admit that present scientific knowledge cannot account for them. The Word of God may not provide a specific explanation for every problem one may encounter as one studies Satan, Satanism, and witchcraft, but it sheds much light on these subjects and offers practical guidelines by which God’s children can avoid dangers inherent in occultism. An unexpected and amazing development of this enlightened age is the resurgence of interest in Satan and an increase in occultic activity. A few years ago, most people assumed that the devil was dead, in the same manner that some theologians recently have affirmed the death of God. It is now becoming increasingly apparent that these reports were premature. Satan is very much alive, and is actively involved in today’s World. Though many scientists and philosophers still scoff at the idea of a personal devil, highly educated people all over the World meet regularly to worships Satan. Some groups, having dedicated themselves to the service of the devil, have committed brutal sacrificial slayings, while others engage in vile acts of immorality. Witchcraft, seances, and fortunetelling, for many years limited to areas of ignorance and superstition, are now discussed in highly respected magazines. Newspapers carry horoscopes, and multitudes consult them seriously every day. Prominent people have received a great deal of publicity by reporting the reception of personal messages from the spirits of the dead. The late Bishop Pike, for example, published a widely-read book telling of seances in which he purportedly talked with his dead son who had committed suicide. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Others, claiming the ability to foretell the future, also have become the objects of widespread interest, and have name Jeane Dixon comes to mind. She reportedly communicated with Mrs. Winchester who wanted to continue the restoration of her mansion. Mrs. Dixon is considered a prophetess by many people, and top leaders in government industry consult her for information about the future. In Europe today, more people are making a livelihood through the practice of occultism than the total number engaged in the Christian ministry. Belief in the existence of an unseen spiritual realm to be entered at death, and which has an influence upon human life, has captivated the minds of multitudes. The millions involved with occultism are unaware of the real nature of these mysterious and dangerous areas of investigation, and refuse to turn to the one source of truth regarding the kingdom of darkness. The Bible, the holy Word of God, reveals the true nature of the supernatural. It teaches that two real spiritual Worlds exist, one good and the other evil. It tells us that God is a Spirit (John 4.24), and that a great number of angels called “ministering spirits” (Hebrews 1.14) worship Him in Heaven and carry out His assignments upon Earth. The other invisible kingdom is evil, and is under the direction of Satan, who controls an organized host of wicked spirit beings. They are a formidable foe arrayed against God and His people, and the apostle Paul declared, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this World, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” reports Ephesians 6.12. All that can be known about the devil’s origin, fall, and present activity is to be found in the Bible. Although it does not specifically answer every question we may ask, it tells us the important facts about him and his kingdom. He was once a glorious, sinless creature, but he rebelled against God, was cast out of Heaven to Earth, and now leads his great army of spirit beings in a futile attempt to defeat God and destroy His people. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
The devil was created an angelic being of great beauty and splendor and at one time had great favour with God. Ezekiel describes him in his sinless state as follows, “Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyre, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold; the workmanship of thy timbrels and of thy flutes was prepared in thee in the day thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, and I have seen thee so; that wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee,” Ezekiel 28.12-15. Although the prophet was addressing these words primarily to an Earthly ruler, the king of Tyre, it is apparent that the full meaning of this prophecy is not exhausted by its reference to a flesh-and-blood monarch. The ultimate subject of Ezekiel’s words was Satan, the real instigator of the king’s pride and cruelty. Many Bible students reject this interpretation of Ezekiel’s dirge. They consider this viewpoint to be untenable and imaginative, and prefer to consider the prophet’s description to be a highly figurative portrayal of the king of Tyre. Some even say this lamentation incorporates a well-known Tyrian myth about a primeval being who lived in the “Garden of God” until he was expulsed for pride and rebellion. It is unlikely, however, that the inspired prophet would incorporate a myth into his message of judgment. Then, too, many prophetic pronouncements contained a double perspective. Isaiah, for example, after giving a stern warning of impending disaster, told Ahaz that the Lord would give a sign that the message he had spoken was true. “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken by both her kings,” reports Isaiah 7.14-16. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The fourteenth verse is a definite reference to Christ, the virgin-born Son of God, but verses fifteen and sixteen point to Maher-shalal-hash-baz, the infant son of Isaiah whose birth and early years are described in the following chapter. Before the lad was three years old, Pekah and Rezin, king of Israel and Syria, had been executed as the prophet had predicted. Since this type of double reference is common in the prophetic Scriptures, it should not be thought strange that Ezekiel, in pronouncing judgment upon the king of Tyre, should also be alluding to Satan, who motivated the Earthly monarch to his sinful pride and cruelty. The prophet declared that in his original state Satan was a creature of great wisdom and beauty. He portrays the devil as having been in Eden, the garden of God, and describes him as having been lavishly adorned with jewels at that time. The translation in our King James Version also speaks of the “timbrels” and “flutes” prepared by him on the day he was created, and some Bible students have inferred from this that he had great musical ability and was given charge of the Heavenly choirs which sang their praises to God. The Hebrew words, however, are difficult to translate, and most students are convinced that the words rendered “timbrels” and “flutes” more likely refer to the gold settings and engravings of his ornamental attire. “Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold; the workmanship of thy timbrels and of thy flutes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created,” reports Ezekiel 28.13. This exalted creature is also declared to be “the anointed cherub that covereth,” reports Ezekiel 28.14, which indicates that God appointed him to have a place of special prominence in connection with his throne. The remainder of the verse, “thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire,” indicates that before his sin, he was in the immediate presence of God’s glorious holiness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
In fact, Satan may have been the most exalted of all the angels, and the memory of this former glory could have been the reason Michael did not dare “bring against him a railing accusation,” (Jude 9). Dr. Eric Sauer suggests the possibility that even before God created man, He committed to Lucifer a position of authority in relation to the Earth and its surrounding planets. For this reason, Satan is called the “god of this World” in the New Testament. In England and Scotland during the mediaeval and later periods of its existence, witchcraft was an offence against the laws of God and man; in Celtic Ireland dealing with the unseen were not regarded with such abhorrence, and indeed had the sanction of custom and antiquity. Consequently, when the Anglo-Normans came over, they found that the native Celts had no predisposition towards accepting the view of the witch as an emissary of Satan and an enemy of the Church, though they fully believed in supernatural influences of both good and evil, and credited their Bards and Druids with the possession of powers beyond the ordinary. The persecution of witches did not cease in the countries where that the growth and spread of witchcraft made headway—far from it; on the contrary it was kept up with unabated vigour. Infallibility was transferred from the Church to the Bible; the Roman Catholic persecuted the witch because Supreme Pontiffs had stigmatized her as a heretic and an associate of Satan, while the Protestant acted similarly because Holy Writ contained the grim command, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The evil that was wrought by such amongst an unenlightened and superstitious people can be well imagined; unbelievers would be converted, while the credulous would be rendered more secure in their credulity. In the 16th century, during the rule of the Commonwealth Parliament thirty thousand witches were put to death in England. Even as late as 1690 torture was judicially applied to extract evidence, for in that year a Jacobite gentleman was questioned by the boots. However, Scotland, even at its worst, fades into insignificance before certain parts of the Continent, where torture was used to an extent and degree that can only be termed hellish; the appalling ingenuity displayed in the various methods of applying the “question extraordinary” seems the work of demons rather than of Christian, and makes one blush for humanity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Nonetheless, the punishment of death by fire for witchcraft or sorcery was not employed to any extend in Ireland. We have one undoubted instance, and a general hint of some others as a sequel to this. How the two witches were put to death in 1578 we are told, but probably it was by hanging. Subsequent to the passing of the Act of 1586, the method of execution would have been that for felony. On the Continent the stake was in continual request. In 1514, three hundred persons were burnt alive for this crime at Como. Between 1615 and 1635, more than six thousand sorcerers were burnt in the diocese of Strasburg, while, if we can credit the figures of Bartholomew de Spina, in Lombardy a thousand sorcerers a year were put to death for the space of twenty-five years. The total number of person executed in various ways for this crime has, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, been variously estimated at from one hundred thousand to several millions; if the latter figure be too high undoubtedly the former is too low. In the persecution of those who practised magical arts, no rank or class in society was spared; the noble equally with the peasant was liable to torture and death. This was especially true of the earlier stages of the movement when sorcery rather than witchcraft was the crime committed. For there is a general distinction between the two, though in many instances they are confounded. Sorcery was, so to speak, more of an aristocratic pursuit; the sorcerer was the master of the Devil (until his allotted time expired), and compelled him to do his bidding: the witch generally belonged to the lower classes, embodied in her art many practices which lay on the borderland between good and evil, and was rather the slave of Satan, who almost invariably proved to be a most faithless and unreliable employer. Anybody might become a victim of the witch epidemic; noblemen, scholars, monks, nuns, titled ladies, bishops, clergy—none were immune from accusation and condemnation. Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
According to alchemists, the souls of the dead can be pinned into homunculi. A homunculi is a very small human being or humanoid creature; a supposed microscopic but fully formed human being which a fetus was formerly believed to develop. Much that passed current in the west as White (id est permissible) Magic was only a disguised goeticism, and many of the resplendent angels invoked with divine rites reveal their cloven hoofs. It is not too much to say that a large majority of past psychological experiments were conducted to establish communication with demons, and that for unlawful purposes. The pentagram is a symbol of faith, a symbol of the five elements Spirit, Air, Earth, Water, and Fire (one for each point), and the circle (the Universe) contains and connects them all. The Golden Ratio is the number 1.61803399, represented by the Greek letter Phi, and considered truly unique in its mathematical properties, prevalence throughout nature, and its ability to achieve a perfect aesthetic composition. It is integral to the pentagram. Shorter and longer sections of each line exist in golden ratio. If you look at God’s fingers and the general position of the bodies in Michelangelo’s fresco, you will see pentagrams. After Mrs. Winchesters mysterious disappearance in 1922, the mansion of emptied of her belongings. It took six trucks working around the clock for six weeks to move all of her furniture out. Many people say not only was it a lot of stuff, but the movers would get lost in the mansion. Nonetheless, some things were left behind. From time to time the mansion was rented out. A young couple Oliver Hall and Ethel Taylor rented the place, but the story of what happened is very fascinating. No one ever thought that Ethel Taylor would marry Oliver Hall; but he thought differently, and things which Oliver Hall intended had a queer way of coming to pass. He asked her to marry him before he went Yale. She laughed and refused him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
The Next time Oliver came home, he asked her again. However, she laughed, tosses her luscious blonde locks, and refused again. A third time he asked her; she said it was becoming a confirmed bad habit, and laughed at him more then ever. Oliver was not the only man who wanted to marry her, but his attempts were like an elephant, at whose clumsy feats were considerably amusing. Ethel was the belle of the Santa Clara Valley, and every one was in love with her more or less; it was a sort of fashion, like masher collars or Inverness capes. Therefore everyone was very annoyed as surprised when Oliver Hall walked into the Bank of Italy Building and invited everyone to his wedding. “Your wedding?” “You do not mean it?” “Who is the happy fair? When is it to be?” Oliver Hall filled his pipe and lighted it before he replied. Then he said—“I am sorry to deprive you fellow of your only joke—but Miss Taylor and I just let the Winchester mansion and are to married at the estate in April. “You do not mean it?” “He has got the mitten again, and its turned his head.” “No,” he said, rising “I see it is true. Lend me a pistol someone—or a first class fare to other end of Nowhere. Hall has bewitched the only pretty girl in our twenty-mile radius. Was it a mesmerism, or a love-potion, Oliver?” “Neither, sir, but a gift you will never have—perseverance—and the best luck a man ever had in this World. It is so glorious to know of a surety that now we can think, feel, speak, act—above all, love one another—haunted by no counteracting spell, responsible to no living creature for our life and our love.” There was something in his voice that silenced everyone, and all chaff of the other fellows failed to draw him further. The queer thing about it was that when we congratulated Miss Taylor, she blushed and smiled, and dimpled, for all the World as though she were in love with him, and had been in love with him all the time. They had been laughing very heartily, cherishing the mirth, as it were like those who caress a lovely bird that had been frightened out of its natural home and grown wild and rare in its visits, only tapping at the lattice for a minute, and then gone. Women are strange creatures. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
In Santa Clara everyone who was anyone was asked to the wedding at Llanada Villa. Many people were truly more interested in the trousseau than the bride herself. The coming marriage was much canvasses at afternoon tea-tables, and at the Bank of Italy over the saddler’s, and the question was always asked: “Does she care for him?” The best man used to ask that question in the early days of their engagement, but after a certain evening in April, the pause between the acts, when the house was half-darkened, and the laughter died away made him never ask that question again. “How cold is it,” said John, the best man, shivering. Oliver shivered too; but not with cold, it was more like the involuntary sensation at which people say, “Someone is walking over my grave.” He said so, jestingly. “Hush, Oliver,” whispered John, and again the draught of cold air seemed to blow right between them. The next week, John was coming home from the Bank of Italy through the churchyard. Their church was on a thyme-grown hill, and the turf about it is so thick and soft that one’s footsteps are noiseless. He made no sound as he vaulted the low lichened wall, and threaded his way between the tombstones. It was at the same instant that he heard Oliver Hall’s voice, and saw his face. Ethel was siting on a low flat gravestone with the full splendour of the western sun upon her mignonne face. Its expression ended, at once and for ever, any question of her love of Oliver; it was transfigured to a beauty John should not have believed possible, even to that beautiful little face. Many people said she was like a reincarnation of Mrs. Winchester. Oliver lay at Ethel’s feet, and it was his voice that broke the stillness of the golden April evening. “This spring is cold for you, my love. I half wish we had taken courage, and sailed once more for Hispaniola. My dear, my dear, I believe I should come back from the if you wanted.” John coughed at once to indicate his presence, and passed on into the shadow fully enlightened. “Oh, no—oh, no! No mor of the sea. Llanada Villa is perfect for me,” she said, with another and stronger shoulder. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
“Ethel,” he said at last, rousing himself, with a half-smile, “I think I must have grown remarkably attractive. Look! half the glasses opposite are lifted to our box. It cannot be to gaze at me, you know. Do you remember telling me I was the ugliest fella you ever saw?” “Oh, Oliver!” Yet it was quite true—she had thought him so, in far back, strange, awful times, when she, a girl of sixteen, had her mind wholly filled with one idea!—one insane, exquisite dream; when she brought her innocent child’s garlands, and sat him down under one spreading magnificent tree, which trees of the Victorian garden at Llanada Villa, until she felt its dews dropping death upon her youth, and her whole soul withering under its venomous shade. “Oh, Oliver!” She cried once more, looking fondly on his beloved face, where no unearthly beauty dazzled, no unnatural calm repelled; where all was simple, noble, manly, true. “My dearly beloved, I thank Heaven for that dear ‘ugliness’ of yours. Above all, though blood runs strong, they say , I thank Heaven that I see you no likeness to—” Oliver knew what name she meant, though for a whole year past—since God’s mercy made it to them only a name—they had ceased to utter it, and let it die wholly out of the visible World. The wedding was to be early in April. Two days before, John had to run up town on business. The train was late, of course, for they were on the South-Eastern, and as he stood grumbling with his watch in his hand, who should he see but Oliver Hall and Ethel Taylor. They were walking up and down the unfrequent end of the platform, that he obtrusively passed the pair with his Gladstone, and took the corner in a first-class smoking-carriage. He did this with as good an air of not seeing them as he could assume. John prided himself on his discretion, but if Oliver were traveling alone he wanted his company. He had it. “Hullo, old man,” came his cheery voice as he swung his bad into John’s carriage; “here is luck; I was expecting a dull journey!” “Where are you off to?” John asked, discretion still bidding him turn his eyes away, though he saw, without looking, that hers were red-rimmed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
“To old San Francisco,” he answered, shutting the door and leaning out for a last word with his sweetheart. He stood—clasping her hand secretly and hard; then he grew quitter; until, as the drop-scene fell, the same cold air swept past them. It was as if someone fresh from the sharp sea-wind had entered the box. “Oh, I wish you would not go, Oliver,” she was saying in a low, earnest voice. “I feel certain something will happen.” “Do you think I should let anything happen to keep me, and the day after tomorrow our wedding-day?” “Do not go,” she answered, with a pleading intensity which would have sent anyone’s Gladstone on to the platform and one after it. However, Oliver Hall was made differently; he rarely changed his opinion, never his resolutions. He only stroked the little ungloved hands that lay on the carriage door. “I must go, Ethel, The old boy’s have been awfully good to me, and now he is dying I must go and see him, but I shall come home in time for—” the rest of the parting was lost in a whisper and in the rattling lurch of the starting rain. “You are sure to come?” she spoke as the train moved. “Nothing shall keep me,” he answered; and they steamed out. After he had seen the last of the little figure on the platform he leaned back in his corner and kept his silence for a minute. When he spoke it was to explain to John that his godfather, whose heir he was, lay dying in Le Petit Trianon, some fifty miles away, and had sent for Oliver, and Oliver felt bound to go. “I shall be surely back tomorrow,” he said, “or, if not, the day after, in heaps of time. Thank Heaven, one has not to get up in the middle of the night to get married nowdays!” “And supposed Mr. Koshland dies?” “Alive or dead I mean to get married on Thursday!” Oliver answered, as he unfolded Oakland Tribune. At the Third and Townsend Depot they said their “goodbye,” and he got out and John saw him ride off; John went to Berkeley, where he stayed the night. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
When John got home the next afternoon, a very wet one, by the way, his sister greeted him with—“Where is Oliver Hall?” “Goodness knows,” he answered testily. Every man, since Cain, has resented that kind of question. “I thought you might have heard from him,” she went on, “as you are to give him away tomorrow.” “Is he not back,” I asked, for I had confidently expected to find him at Llanada Villa. “No, John,”—his sister Alexis always had a way of jumping to conclusions, expecially such conclusion as were least favourable to her fellow-creatures—“he has not returned, and, what is more, you may depend upon it he will not. You mark my words, there will be no wedding tomorrow.” His sister Alexis has the power of annoying him which no other human being possess. “You mark my words,” John retorted with asperity, “you had better give up making such a thundering idiot of yourself. There will be more wedding tomorrow than ever, you will take first part in.” A prophecy which, by the way, came true. However, though, John could snarl confidently to his sister, he did not feel so comfortable when, late that night, standing on the door step of the Winchester mansion, heard the Oliver had not returned home. Filled with German superstitions, the young man grew almost pale, but kept a courteous calmness. There was nothing too ghastly or terrible for his own imagination to conjure up. John went home gloomily through the rain. Next morning brought a brilliant blue sky, gold sun, and all such softness of air and beauty of cloud as to make up a perfect day. However, he woke with a vague feeling of having gone to bed anxious, and of being rather averse to facing that anxiety in the light of full wakefulness. However, with his shaving-water came a note from Oliver which relieved his mind and sent him to the Winchester mansion with a light heart. Ethel was in the garden. He saw her blue gown through the hollyhocks as the mansion’s gates swung behind him. So he did not go up to the mansion, but turned aside down the turfed path. “He has written to you too,” she said, without preliminary greeting, when John reached her side. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
“Yes, I am to meet him at the station at three, and come straight back to the mansion.” Her face looked pale, but there was brightness in her eyes, and a tender quiver about the mouth that spoke of renewed happiness. “Mrs. Koshland begged him so to stay another night that he had not the heart to refuse,” she went. “He is so kind, but I wish he had not stayed.” John was at the station at half-past two. He felt rather annoyed with Oliver. It seemed a sort of slight to the beautiful young lady who loved him, that he should come as it were out of breath, and with the dust of travel upon him to take her hand, which some of them would have given the best years of their lives to take. However, when the three o’clock train glided in, and glided out again having brought no passengers to their little station, John was more than annoyed. There was no other train for thirty-five minutes; he calculated that, with much hurry, he might just get back to the mansion in time for the ceremony; but, oh, what a fool to miss that first train! What other man could have done it? That thirty-five minutes seemed like a year, as he wandered round the station reading the advertisements and the time-tables, and the company’s bye-laws, and getting more and more angry with Oliver Hall. This confidence in his own power of getting everything he wanted the minute he wanted it was leading him too far. John hated waiting. After no sight of Oliver, he flung himself into the carriage that he had brough for him. “Drive to the mansion!” he said, as someone shut the door. “Mr. Hall has not come by this train.” Anxiety now replaced anger. What had become of the man? Could he have been suddenly taken will? John had never known Oliver to have an illness in his life. And even so, he might have telegraphed. Some awful accident must have happened. Maybe his corpse was picked up off a wreck, and committed to the deep—in the Gulf of Mexico. The thought that he had played her false never—no, not for a moment, entered John’s head. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Yes, something terrible had happened to Oliver, and on John lay the task of telling his bride. John almost wished the carriage would upset and break his head so that someone else might tell her, not Joh, who—but that is nothing to do with the story. It was five minutes to four as they drew up to the gate of the Winchester mansion. A double row of eager onlooker lined the path of the palm avenue. John sprang from the carriage and passed up between them. The estate’s gardener had a good front place near the door. He stopped. “Are they waiting still, Thomas?” he asked, simply to gain time, for of course he knew they were by the waiting crowd’s attentive attitude. “Waiting, sir? No, sir, why it must be over by now.” “Over! Then Mr. Hall has come?” ‘To the minute, sir; must have missed you somehow, and I say, sir,” lowering his voice, “I never see Mr. Oliver the bit so afore, but my opinion is he has been drinking pretty free. His clothes was all dusty and his face a sheet. I tell you I did not like the looks of him, with never a look or a word for none of us; him that was always such a gentleman!” I had never heard Thomas make so long a speech. The crowd in at mansion wee talking in whispers and getting ready rice and slippers to throw at the bride and bridegroom. The ringers were ready with their hands on the ropes to rung out the merry peal as the bride and bridegroom should come out. A murmur from the Winchester mansion announced them; out they came, Thomas was right. Oliver Hall did not look himself. There was dust on his coat, his hair was disarranged. He seemed to have been in some row, for there was a black mark above his eyebrow. He was deathly pale. However, his pallor was not greater than that of the bride, who might have been carved in ivory—dress, veil, orange blossoms and all. As they passed out the ringers stooped—there were six of them—and then, on the ears expecting the gay wedding peal, came the slow tolling of the Winchester Bell. A thrill of horror at so foolish a jest from the ringers passed through all the guests. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
However, the ringers themselves dropped the ropes and fled like rabbits down the belfry stairs. The bride shuddered, and grey shadows came about her mouth, but the bridegroom led her on down the path where the people stood with the handfuls of rice; but the handfuls were never thrown, and the wedding-bells never rang. In vain the ringers were urged to remedy their mistake: the protested with many whispered expletives that they would see themselves further first. In a hush like the hush in the chamber of death the bridal pair passed into their carriage and its door slammed behind them. Then the tongues were loosed. A babel of anger, wonder, conjecture from the guests and spectators. “If I had seen his condition, sir,” said old Seymour to me as we drove off, “I would have stretched him on the floor of the mansion, sir, by Heaven I would, before I would have let him marry my daughter!” Then he put his head out of the window. “Drive like fury,” he cried to the coachman; “do not spare the horses.” He was obeyed. They passed the bride’s carriage. John forbore to look at it, and old Seymour turned his head away and swore. They reached reception hall before it. They stood in the hall doorway, in the blazing afternoon sun, and in about half a minute, they heard the wheels crunching the gravel. When the carriage stopped in the front of the steps old Seymour and John ran down. “Great Heaven, the carriage is empty! And yet—” he had the door open in a minute, and this is what he saw—No sign of Oliver Hall; and of Ethel, his wife only a huddled heap of white satin lying half on the floor of the carriage and half on the seat. “I drove straight here, sir,” said the coachman, as the bride’s father lifted her out; “and I will swear no one got out of the carriage.” We drove back to the Winchester mansion, and carried her back into the house in her bridal dress, and drew back her veil. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Her face. No one would ever forget. White, white and drawn with agony and horror, bearing such a look of terror as no one has never seen except in dreams. And her hair, her radiant blonde hair, it was white like snow. As John and her father stood, both half mad with horror and mystery of it, a body came up the avenue—a telegraph boy. They brought the orange envelop to John. He tore it open. “Mr. Hall was thrown from his horse on his way to the station at half-past one. Killed on the spot!” And he was married to Ethel Taylor in the Winchester Mansion at half-past three, in the presence of fifty guests. “I shall be married, dead or alive!” What had passed in that carriage on the drive to the reception hall? No one knows—no one will ever know. Oh, Ethel! Oh, my dear!” Before a week was over they laid her beside her husband in the Oak Hill Memorial Park on the northern most hill in the San Juan Bautista Hills of South San Jose. Thus was accomplished Oliver Hall’s wedding. Whether or not one believes in superstitions about spirits, it is hard to dismiss the unusual events that have taken place at this estate. Just like the original construction, restoration and maintenance work at Winchester Mystery House is never complete. The actual amount of materials requires is staggering. For example, it takes over 20,000 gallons of pain to cover the exterior—and by the time the workers have finished, they have to start all over again! Continuous work is being done on the massive structure, with carpenters, painters, and gardeners toiling away just like they did during Mrs. Winchester’s day. The sons, grandsons, and great grandson of Mrs. Winchester’s original employees have been some of these workmen! The restoration work is very demanding. Although you can still find spots where the cracked plaster has not been fixed after the 1906 Earthquake, almost everything will eventually be restored. This has been left like this on purpose, like a frozen moment in time, to show people how Mrs. Winchester lived there. An ongoing search continues for fine examples of the period furnishings, similar to what Mrs. Winchester herself would have used. Her original furnishings were auctioned off after her death and never have been recovered. The job of overseeing the restoration is a painstaking one. The historical accuracy of every project is researched and approved by the Restoration Board of Directors. Winchester Mystery House receives no funds from any government agency; the continuous restoration and maintenance programs are funded entirely from tour, café, and gift shop revenues. Since 1973, millions of dollars have been invested to ensure that this unique landmark will be preserved as the premier showcase of the Santa Clara Valley’s gracious past. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
The Witches Cap 🧙🏼♀️- named for it’s conical resemblance of a witches hat. Many famous mediums claim this room was “important” to Sarah Winchester, although we do not know what it was used for. How did you feel when you experienced the Witches Cap for the first time? winchestermysteryhouse.com
More Wonders of the Invisible World
Witchcraft is one of the most hidden works of darkness. And California had its full share of obscurity. People groping their way in the dark are unlikely to be either stable or judicious, and thus it is hardly surprising that much of the legends about witchcraft are violent and partisan. The Devil improves the darkness of this affair to push us into a blind man’s buffet, and we are even ready to be sinfully, yea, hotly and madly mauling one another in the dark. Some people want to contact the dead and consider seances, but they are dangerous because it is easy for a gate to be opened and something evil to come along with the spirit you want to contact. There is an old urban legend about “Bloody Mary.” If you chant “Bloody Marry” thirteen times into a mirror in a dark room, her spirit will appear. Some say she will prophesize for you, other versions say she will attack you. Historically, Bloody Mary was a nickname for Mary I of England, who suffered several miscarriages. She was also alleged to be a witch and was burned at the stake. Divination by mirror has been practiced in nearly all cultures for as long as mirrors have been around. Before that, any reflective surface, especially still water, was used to prophesy or catch a glimpse of the future. In many of these legends, the danger is that while you are trying to catch a glimpse of your future, you might also see some aspect of Death. Tradition also holds that at the moment of death, all the mirrors in the house should be covered so hey do not trap the departing spirit. Ancient Greeks and Native Americans believed that the reflection contained the soul, and could be capture by water. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
It is bad luck to break mirrors because they are reflections of the soul, and also because they hold the future. That is why the seven years of bad luck occurs, you have broken your future. Many of the persons confessing these myths are witches by their own confession and have therefore abjured God and Chris, and given themselves up to the Devil, the Father of Lies. And what credit is to be given to the testimony of such against the lives of others? Many historians believe these early American legends are important and endeavor that the complete history of secret California witchcrafts and possessions might not be lost. The preservation of that history might in a be a singular benefit unto the church and unto the World, which makes many solicitous about it. Mrs. Winchester, who has been strangely visited by some shining spirits during the construction of her mansion, believed they were good Angels in her opinion of them. She intimated several things unto her friends, whereof some were to be kept secret. She also said that a new storm of witchcraft would fall upon the country to chastise the iniquity that was used in the willful smothering and covering of the last, and that many fierce opposites to the discovery of witchcraft would be thereby convinced. Many people are looking to acquire authentic, single-family Victorian homes because they believe in the renaissance of witchcraft and these homes possess souls, spirit, ghost, hidden occult symbol, and are supposedly spiritual nexuses. They are a power source to contacting the other World. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
All spirits have something in common, but it matters who they are haunting. It matters what their traditions were when they were alive. In many Native American legends, they have thousands of Gods, and each of them had attendant monsters and demons. Pishachas are beings who haunt places where violent deaths have occurred. They eat human flesh and are supposed to be the sons of anger. They haunt cemeteries and places where cremations have taken place and can change their shape and become invisible. Sometimes they attack and eat their victims, in other instances they possess them and drive them insane. It is believed because there was some covenanting with the Devil they had committed and it was an unpardonable sin, that sin of which the scriptures said we must not pray for. Sometimes anyone who was not in a proper covenant with God was considered to be a witch. Witches are known to change into rabbits, cats, other familiar animals. Halloween costumes are a surviving remnant of the belief that transformed witches would be abroad before All Hallow’s Eve. Some of the Indian Powows [id est, pries-magicians] in this country during the 17th century, having received the Gospel and given good evidence of a true conversion to God in Christ, had with much sorrow of heart declared how they had, whilst in their Heathenism, by the hands of Evil Angels murdered their neighbours. A Nagual is a human being, a Shaman, who has acquired the power to shapeshift. Some Nagual have vampire qualities, changing into bats or owls to drain blood; in other cases the nagual is a respected and feared member of the community. In some places nagual are said to attack Indians who have too much contact with mestizo or Anglo populations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
There are myriad instances of witchcraft both in history and in the Bible, but some of the demonologists personal experiences are remarkable enough to make us wish they had given a more detailed account of the. In referring to Balaam, the biblical conjurer of familiar spirits, one of them said, “we have seen and know such wizards among the Heathen in our own land.” If I meant anything, it was that a ghost story would have a great pull over other ghost stories if one could see the person it happened to. One does get rather provoked at never coming across him or her. In April, nearly fifteen years after the Winchester Mansion opened for tour, it was a clear spring day, with no fog or half-lights about, and it was not yet four o’clock in the afternoon—not very ghost-like circumstances, you will admit. I had come home early from my club—it was a sort of holiday time with me just then for a few weeks—intending to get some letters written which had been on my mind for some days, and I had sauntered into the library of the mansion, a pleasant, fair-sized room lined with books, on the first floor. Before setting to work I sat down for a moment or two in an easy-chair by the fire, for it was still cool enough weather to make a fire desirable, and began thinking over my letters. No thought, no shadow of a thought of Mrs. Winchester was present with me, of that I am perfectly certain. The door was on the same side of the room as the fireplace; as I sat there, half facing the fire, I also half faced the door. I had not shut it properly on coming in, I had only closed it without turning the handle, and I did not feel surprised when it slowly and noiselessly swung open, till it stood right out into the room, concealing the actual doorway from my view. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
If you think of the door as just hen acting like a screen to the doorway, you will perhaps understand the position better. From where I say I could not have seen anyone entering the room ill he or she had got beyond the door itself. I glanced up, half expecting to see someone come in, but there was no one; the door had swung open of itself. For the moment I sat on, with only the vague thought passing through my mind, “I must shut I before I begin to write.” However, suddenly I found my eyes fixing themselves on the carpet; something had come within their range of vision, compelling their attention in a mechanical sort of way. What was it? I rubbed my eyes and the wavy something that kept gliding, rippling in, gradually assumed a more substantial appearance. It was—yes, I suddenly became convinced of it, it was rippled of soft silken stuff, creeping in as if in some mysterious way unfolded or unrolled, not jerkily or irregularly, but glidingly and smoothly, like little wavelets on the sea-shore. And I sat there and gazed. I sat there still, as if bewitched, or under some irresistible influence, I cannot tell, but so it was. And it—came always rippling in, till at last it began to rise as it sill came on, and I saw that a figure, a tall graceful woman’s figure, was slowly advancing, backwards of course, into the room, and that the waves of pale silk—a very delicate shade of pearly grey I think it must have been—were in fact the lower portion of a long court-train, the upper part of which hung in deep folds from the lady’s waist. She moved in—I cannot describe the motion, it was not like ordinary walking or stepping backwards—till the whole of her figure and the clear profile of her face and head were distinctly visible, and when at last she stopped and stood there full in my view just, but only just beyond the door, I saw—it came upon me like a flash, that she was no stranger o me, this mysterious visitant! #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
I recognized, unchanged I seemed to me since the day, twenty-five years ago, when I had last seen her, the beautiful features of Mrs. Winchester. I should not have said unchanged. There was one great change in the sweet face. You remember my telling you that one of Mrs. Winchester’s greatest charms was her bright sunny happiness—she never seemed gloomy or depressed or dissatisfied, seldom even pensive. However, in this respect the face I sat there gazing at was utterly unlike Mrs. Winchester’s. Its expression, as she—or “it”—stood there looking, not towards me, but out beyond, as if at someone or something outside the doorway, was of the profoundest sadness. Anything so sad I have never seen in a human face, and I trust I never may. However, I sat on, as motionless almost as she, gazing at her fixedly, with no desire, no power perhaps, to move or approach more nearly to the phantom. I was not in the least frightened. I knew it was a phantom, but I felt paralyzed and as if I myself had somehow got outside of ordinary conditions. And there I sat—staring at Mrs. Winchester, and there she stood, gazing before her with that terrible, unspeakable sadness in her face, which, even though I felt no fear, seemed to freeze me with a kind of unutterable pity. I do not know how long I had sat thus, or how long I might have continued to sit there, almost as if in a trance, when suddenly I heard the front-door bell ring. It seemed to awaken me. I started up and glanced round, half-expecting that I should find the vision dispelled. But no; she was still there, and I sank back into my seat just as I heard my brother coming quickly upstairs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
He came towards the library, and seeing the door wide open walked in, and I, still gazing, saw his figure pass through that of Mrs. Winchester in the doorway as you may walk through a wreath of mist—only, do not misunderstand me, the figure of Mrs. Winchester till that moment had had nothing unsubstantial about it. She had looked to me, as she stood there, literally and exactly like a living woman—the shade of her dress, the colour of her hair, the few ornaments she wore, all were as defined and clear as a real person, or perhaps became so again as soon as my brother was well within the room. He came forward, addressing me by name, but I answered him in a whisper, begging him to be silent and to sit down on the seat opposite me for a moment or two. He did so, though he was taken aback by my strange manner, for I still kept my eyes fixed on the door. I had a queer consciousness that if I looked away it would fade, and I waned to keep cool and see what would happen. I asked George in a low voice if he saw nothing, but though he mechanically followed the direction of my eyes, he shook his head in bewilderment. And for a moment or two he remained thus. Then I began to notice that the figure was growing less clear, as if it were receding, yet without growing smaller to the sight; it grew fainter and vaguer, the colours grew hazy. I rubbed my eyes once or twice with a half idea that my long watching was making them misty, but it was not so. My eyes were not at fault—slowly but surely Sarah Winchester, or her ghost, melted away, ill all trace of her was gone. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
I saw again the familiar pattern of the carpet where she had stood and the objects of the room that had been hidden by her draperies—all again in the most commonplace way: but she was gone, quite gone. Then George, seeing me relax my intense gaze, began to question me. I told him exactly what I have told you. He answered, as every common-sensible person of course would, that it was strange, but that such things did happen sometimes, and were classed by the wise under the head of “optical delusions.” I was not well, perhaps, he suggested. Been overworking? Had I not better see a doctor? However, I shook my head. I was quite well, and I said so. And perhaps he was right, it might be an optical delusion only. I had never had any experience of such things. “Poor” Mrs. Winchester I cannot help calling her. I heard of her indirectly, and probably, but for the sadness of her story, I should never have heard it at all. It was a friend of her husband’s family who had mentioned the circumstances in the hearing of a friend of mine, and one day something brought round the conversation to old times, and he startled me by suddenly enquiring if I remembered Sarah Winchester. I said, of course, I did. Did he know anything of her? And then he told me. She was dead—she had died some months after a long and trying illness, the result of a terrible accident. Something happened one evening when dressed for some grand entertainment or other, and though her injuries did not seem likely to be fatal at the time, she had never recovered the shock. “She was so pretty,” my friend said, “and one of the saddest parts of it is she could have not been any older than twenty when she passed away in 1922. She was such a sweet and bright lady.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
We all thought the she had finished construction of her mansion and moved up north to build another one. I did not tell him my story, for I did not want it chattered about, but a strange sort of shiver ran through me at his words. Not everyone was in agreement that the specters in the Winchester mansion had all been angry spirits or a delusion of the Devil. It having been represented to us that a most horrible witchcraft or possession of Devils hath invested several towns in Our Province of California under your government, and that divers persons have been convicted of witchcraft, like the Prison’s of the River, in Sacramento, California; some whereof have confessed their guilt, but others being of a known and good reputation these proceedings had caused a great dissatisfaction among our good subjects, for which reason you have put a stop thereunto until Our Pleasure should be known concerning the same, We therefore until Our Pleasure should be known concerning the same, We therefore approving of your care and circumspection herein have thought fit to signify Our Will and Pleasure, as We do hereby will and require you to give all necessary directions that in all proceedings against persons accused for witchcraft or being possessed by the Devil the greatest moderation and all due circumspection be used, so far as the same may be without impediment to the ordinary course of justice within Our said Province. And so We bid your very heartily farewell. Given at the Winchester Mansion the 15th day of April, 1947, in the fifth year of Our Reign. By Her Majesty’s Command. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
Although the topic of witchcraft was now explosively controversial in California, nobody was to deny that people practiced it, and there was still some interest in investigating it. There are therefore references to it in many of the sermons in the 19th century. However, after the Winchester mansion was opened for tour, the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Winchester was thought to be paranormal and a circular letter was sent by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company to investigate the collection of more instances of “remarkable providences” (these would include unusual natural phenomena as well as the preternatural). Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings in the Winchester mansion, on stones in the basement on the walls in the dressing room, in the monstrous or marvelous paintings in forbidden areas of the mansion which interpret to the mystical the inspired secrets of Mrs. Winchester, in the cryptic emblems of her old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practiced at reception by this secret society, there were found indications of a doctrine which was everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed. It is likewise to be understood, those who are desirous to raise any souls of the dead, ought to select those places wherein these kind of souls are most known to be conversant; or by some alliance alluring the souls into their forsaken bodies, or by some kind of affection in times impressed in them in their life, drawing the souls to certain places, things, or persons; or by the forcible nature of some place fitted and prepared to purge or punish these souls: which places for the most part are to be known by he appearance of visions, nightly incursions, and apparitions. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Mrs. Winchester lists convincing evidence that her experience of witchcraft extended well beyond what she had committed to writing: I know a young man who had gone so far as to get ready a Covenant with Satan, written all of it in his own blood. However, before the signing of it, the sinful, I was made the happy instrument of his deliverance. As soon was this man was left alone in the mansion, the devil, imagining that he had found the right moment for breaking his courage, incontinently roused up his own chosen vessel, who appeared to have reposed longer than usual. Having beheld this from afar, he grew stiff with terror by reason of his being alone; but soon recovering his courage, and no place of refuge being at hand, he valiantly withstood the onset of the fiend, who came rushing upon him with a terrible noise, and he struck the axe which he wielded in his hand deep into his body. On receiving this wound, the monster groaned aloud and turning his back, fled with a rapidity not at all inferior to that with which he had advanced, while the admirable man urged his flying foe from behind, and compelled him to seek his own tomb again; which opening of its own accord, and receiving its guest from the advance of the pursuer, immediately appeared closed again. Hence it is that the souls of the dead are not to be called up without blood or by the application of some part of their relict body. In the raising therefore of these shadows, we are to perfume with new blood the bones of the dead, and with flesh, eggs, milk, honey, and oil, which furnish the soul with a medium apt to receive its body. Gosh, it must be terrible to know you witnesses something, but that you will never be able to remember it or tell anyone about it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
I know a woman whose brother was tortured with a cruel, pricking, incurable pain in the crown of his head, which continued until there was found with her a puppet in wax, resembling him, with a pin pricked into the head of it, which being take out her recovered immediately. He goes on about demons. A demon killed his wife, he says, and just expects me to believe it. However, what he looks like to me is someone who let grief turn him into a monster. Whatever happened to his wife, it does not excuse what he had done. He attacks, kills, then springs away before anyone can react. Wicked sorceries have been practised in the land, and, in the late inexplicable storms from the invisible World thereby brought upon us, we were left by the just hand of Heaven unto those errors whereby great hardships were brough upon innocent persons, and (we fear) guilt incurred which we have all cause to bewail with much confusion of face before the Lord. We confess that we ourselves were not capable to understand nor able to withstand the mysterious delusions of the Powers of Darkness and Prince of the Air, but were, for want of knowledge in ourselves and better information from others, prevailed with to take up with such evidence against the accused as on further consideration and better information we justly fear was insufficient for the touching the lives of any, whereby we fear we have been instrumental with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon ourselves and this People of the Lord the guilt of innocent blood, which sin the Lord saith in scripture He would not pardon (2 Kings 24.4), that we suppose, in regard of His temporal judgments. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
I know a person who, missing anything, would use to sit down and muter a certain charm, and then immediately by an invisible hand ben directly led unto the place where the thing was to be found. turquoise carvings placed in Native American graves to attract good spirits and guard the grave. Also, turquoise tied onto a bow was supposed to make you shoot more accurately. The body of saints often times cannot be found when their graves are dug up because their bones were frequently interred in the cornerstones of cathedrals, so their spirits would guard the holy location. Unwilling sacrifices would be more likely to become angry spirits instead of guarding. Canaanites sacrificed infants and put them in the foundations of houses and temples. “At the cost of his first-born shall he se up its gates,” reports Joshua 6.26. Bones were discovered in the basement of the original farm house that was engulfed as part of this estate during the expansion. Sightings of Hell Hounds date back to 1888. Some reports say the creatures are threatening. The Victorian parklike grounds seem to breed sightings of big wolf creatures or beast at night. Since the legends have been uncovered, many people have reported seeing a big black wolf and two men walking around the Winchester mansion at night, even when it is closed. Four kids and a police officer allegedly disappeared after climbing the gate to get a closer look one night. Nearly 134 years of sightings. These people are probably sadly deluded and mistaken, their minds are more likely disquieted and distressed, and we do therefore humbly beg forgiveness, first of God for Christ’s sake for this error, and pray that God would not impute the guilt of it to ourselves nor others. And we also pray that we may be considered candidly and aright by the living suffers as being then under the power of a strong and general delusion, utterly unacquainted with and not experienced in matters of that nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
I know a woman who upon uttering some words over very painful hurts and sores did use instantly to cure them, unto the amazement of the spectators. Now, thought I, if this wretch can effectually employ Devils to cure hurts, why may not she to cause them also, which is the worst that the witches do? The matter being so dark and perplexed as that there is no present appearance that all God’s servants should be altogether of one mind in all circumstances touching the same and believing the Devil’s accusations. These practices and principles have been the beginner and procurer of the sores afflictions, not to Llanda Villa only, but to this whole country, that did ever befall them. It should be noted in passing that Llanda Villa’s attorneys have concluded that these peoples visions and afflictions are due to illness caused by demonic possession. No specters evidence may be hereafter accounted valid or sufficient to take away the life or good name of any person or persons within this province. God hath a controversy with us about what was done in the time of the witchcraft. I fear that innocent blood hath been shed, and that many have had their hands defiled therewith. Public acknowledgement of guilt, and humiliation for it, and the more particularly and personally it is done by all that have been actors, the more pleasing it will be to God and more effectual to turn away his judgments from the land, and to prevent his wrath from falling upon the persons and families of such as have been most concerned. Moreover, if it be true, as I have been often informed, that families of such as were condemned for supposed witchcraft have been ruined by taking away and making havoc of their estates and leaving them nothing for their relief, I believe the whole country of lies under a curse to this day, and will do till some effectual course be taken by our honored governor and Supreme Court to make them some amends and reparations. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Winchester Mystery House
Get in the Halloween spirit and celebrate the first weekend of October 2021 at the Winchester Mystery House! Our All Hallows’ Eve tickets are selling fast so be sure to grab them while you can 👻
🎟️link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
Randolph Harris II International 