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There are Seven Billion People on this Planet and God Cares What I Had for Lunch
God is life, God is power, and this life and this power are available right now. Perspective is the way we see things when we look at them from a certain distance, and it allows us to appreciate their true valuable. Professional psychology has created a catalogue of disorders, known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fifth edition (DSM-5), which is used by doctors and insurance companies to help diagnose and standardize problems of emotional life and behavior with precision. For example, there is a category called adjustment disorders. The problem is adjusting to life, while perhaps sane to all outward appearances, may sometimes be detrimental to the soul. It is extremely important that we do not make decisions of eternal value from the perspective of mortality. For decisions that affect eternity, we need to consider the perspective of our Father in Heaven, as his perspective is essential. God’s eternity signifies an everlasting, endless time. God is a Father, King, and Friend mediated with a knowledge that cannot be surpassed by abstract speculation. God’s plan gives us endurance even amid the wreckage of proximate hopes. Hope keeps us anxiously engaged in good causes even when these appear to be losing causes. Not having an eternal perspective, or losing it, can lead us to have an Earthly perspective as our personal standard and to make decision that are not in harmony with the will of God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
God is eternal and through the contingency of finite things and as through the holy through the demands of the moral law, are an immediate, purely spiritual experience called mystical. The union of love and will between the Creator and his creations is permanently retained. Perversion, however, may be regarded either as a condition or as a capability. Society is more eager to accept it as a condition than to respect it as a capability. On its path to progress, society gets just so far—and then again prefers birth to merit, social status to personal achievement. The DSM-5 should also include the diagnosis psychological modernism, an uncritical acceptance of the values of the modern World. It includes blind faith in technology, inordinate attachment to material gadgets and conveniences, uncritical acceptance of the march of scientific progress, devotion to electronic media, and a life-style dictated by advertising. This orientation toward life also tends toward a mechanistic and rationalistic understanding of matters of the heart. In this modernist syndrome, technology becomes the root metaphor for dealing with psychological problems. A modern person comes to therapy and days, “Look, I do not want any long-term analysis. If something is broken, let us fix it. Tell me what I have to do, and I will do it.” The boogey man has long been an indispensable figure in the family for frightening children. Grownups are now terrorized with the threat that the psychiatrist will come get them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Doctors have no imagination in describing diseases. Perhaps that is why their accounts of real illnesses fit imaginary illnesses so well. Such a person is rejecting out of hand the possibility that the source of a problem in a relationship, for example, may be a weak sense of values or failure to come to grips with mortality. The modernist syndrome urges people to buy the latest electronic gear and to be plugged in to news, entertainment, and up-to-the-minute weather reports. It is vitally important not to miss out on anything. There are some people who spend most of their day in front of several television monitors keeping track of events from around the World. These people do not need all of this information professionally, but they feel their lives would be empty if they let any gaps appear in their grasp of the news. A woman who manages a computer firm knows the very latest chemical and mechanical medical treatments, and she can tell you the side effects of whatever pill you are taking; yet in private she feels overwhelmed by her failure to get her life on track and settled. Her sickness is not amenable to the literal medications she knows so well, because her World-weariness is a soul of malady. The difference between mad-doctors and other man-people is roughly the same as that between convex and concave folly. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The revenge of mollusk on man, of Shaw on Shakespeare, of the ghetto on God is rapid technological progress, opposition to which qualities one as a reactionary. There seems to be an inverse relationship between information and wisdom. We are overloaded with information about living healthfully, but we have largely lost our sense of the body’s wisdom. We can tune in to news reports and know what is happening in every corner of the World, but we do not seem to have much wisdom in dealing with these World problems. The World demands that we be responsible to it, not to ourselves. We have many demanding academic programs in professional psychology, and states often have rigid requirements for the practice of psychotherapy, and yet there is undoubtedly a severe dearth of wisdom about the mysteries of the soul. Only one is an artist who can see the mysterious in what is ordinary, and can thus transform a solution into a problem. The modernist syndrome also tends to literalize everything it touches. We have a spiritual longing for community and relatedness and for a cosmic vision, but we go after them with literal hardware instead of with sensitivity of the heart. We want to know about peoples from far away places, but we do not want to feel emotionally connected to them. The Lord has given us his standards of worthiness. He has not done it to keep us away from him, but to draw us to him. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Philosophy is at the center of every life problem, but it takes soul to reflect on one’s own life with genuine philosophical seriousness. If we looked at mortality as the whole of existence, then pain, sorrow, failure, and short life would be calamity. Our many studies of World cultures are soulless, replacing the common bonding of humanity and it shared wisdom with bites of information that have no way of getting into us deeply, nourishing and transforming our sense of ourselves. Soul, of course, has been extracted from the beginning because we conceive education to be about skills and information, not about depth of feeling and imagination We are not concerned with the weeping and wailing of the family. That is why we must look at life as an eternal thing stretching far into the premortal past and on into the eternal post-death future, then all happenings may be put in proper perspective. The Lord knows what he wants to accomplish with each one of us. He knows the kind of reform he wants to achieve in our lives, and we do not have the right to counsel him. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. We have a loving, just, and merciful Heavenly Father, who has prepared a plan for our eternal happiness. How seldom do we realize that there are no obstructions to divine power. The Heavens, even the highest Heavens, cannot contain you. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
As an individual gradually accumulates a storehouse of faith, when the emergency arises, one is able to stand calm and certain, uncaught by the fears of others. God always comes first and that is why our faith is sufficient. Our trust is complete. Our assurance is absolute. Our words are honored by a power great than us—that power which we all have access to, life itself. In life, joy and happiness are important also. For life intended us to be glad. Peace is also important because it rises above the storm of confusion and doubt and uncertainty that so often confronts us. If we listen to peace we will hear it, and it will infiltrate our whole being. We will discover that our words of peace, acting the law of good, will draw upon a power greater than we are and liquidate the confusion. This is the presence of God. Coming to know that divine power and understanding the complexity and the order and the harmony of the human body reinforces our faith in God. Here alone are peace and joy and certainty. Here alone is freedom from fear and doubt. We must learn to turn daily to the one and only supreme source, which is God. To be worthy of the celestial kingdom and the joy that is there, we must keep the commandments! For one who is not able to abide by the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
God Promises He Will Renew Your Strength
In darkness there is to be found a precious brilliance, our essential nature, distilled by depression as perhaps the greatest gift of melancholy. The one and only way to know what fear, anger, joy, or remorse is, is to actually experience those feelings. If we persist in our modern way of treating depression, as an illness to be cured only mechanically and chemically, we may lose the gifts of soul. Our identity is located deeply in the soul, rather than on the surface of personality. Identity is felt as one’s soul finding its weight and measure. Some people who are experiencing depression or sadness related to a situation that they have no way of controlling, and are not suffering from a behavioral problem or a chemical imbalance need to be careful. Recovery from depression can be a lot like recovering from a dangerous and deadly narcotic addiction. People who go into rehabilitation programs, to save their lives, from drug addiction often have to terminate relationships with the people that helped power and fuel their addiction. And after they are released from a rehabilitation program, they are most vulnerable. That is why it is advised that they stay away from their friends and family, who make hang out with people who use drugs. Even if only one or two people in the group use drugs, a recovering addict has to avoid them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
When a person is released from a rehabilitation program, their systems are pure and they may not be able to handle any drugs at all in their system, but may not be aware and could die much easier from an overdose. Correspondingly, people who are suffering from a situation they find intolerable and it has been going on a long time, and there is nothing the individual can do to change their circumstances, they have to do whatever they can to avoid the people who intentionally harassing them and using them as a source pleasure by humiliating them and reminding them of painful aspects of their lives and doing things to hurt that individual to make themselves feel better. People like that are wicked, and beyond help. Recovering from trauma is a lot like recovering from a drug addiction, in that sense. You have to stay away from the group, even if there is only one bad person in the group because depression can lead to suicide, and you have endured so much that you may not know how much more you can take before you end your own life. A sad or depressed mood is just part of the soul’s cycle. The depressed person sometimes thins that the good times are all past, that there is nothing left for the present or the future. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but sometimes the problem seems to be permanent. At the clinic, the patient states that he or she feels young and wants to live; and claims that one had no serious intention of killing oneself, but was only singing the lyrics of an operetta. One admits that, in retrospect, one might have been a little careless in showing oneself in a theater loge in the company of. Therefore, it is important to save yourself from this temporary problem, before you do something you may not be able to recovery from. These thoughts and feelings, sad as they are, favor the soul’s desire to be both in time and in eternity. Sometimes we associate depression with literal aging. Having been identified with youth, the soul now takes on important qualities of age that are beneficial and helpful. If age is denied, soul becomes lost in an inappropriate clinging to youth. However, there are also people who are mature, but have not been able to grow and experience adult life as they would like to, and that can also make them sad. It is like one has been promised straight whiskey, but fearing that one is being fed weak tea. Not everyone is clinging to youth, some people are trying to grow beyond their life circumstances. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
It would be wrong to believe that all the foul deeds in this World are caused by corruption, as if baseness operated automatically with the insertion of a coin. There are people who gladly place the misuse of their knowledge and skills at the disposal of the ruling classes, in the expectation that they will be rewarded by positions, titles, medals, and riches. As we age, we get a sense of having lived through something, of being older and wiser. We know that life is suffering, and that knowledge makes a difference. Your life may not matter to others, it may be a joke to them, but that life is precious, it is all you have. One cannot enjoy the bouncy, carefree innocence of youth any longer, and there is a pleasure in a new feeling of self-acceptance and self-knowledge. Our age and maturity is a measure of nobility. Scholars can become easily depressed and have to find ways to counter their dark moods. However, there are also dangers of living without study and speculation, and without reflection on our lives. Some detest psychiatry because it feeds the individual’s hunger for power, and because, like journalism, it carries within itself vast potentialities for its abuse. The psychiatrist, whose capacity for well-considered action and hence one’s talent for corruptibility some consider slight, as essentially feebleminded. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
The genius of insanity is thus opposed by the feeblemindedness of psychiatry. This psychiatric stupidity often turns into malice and even a maniacal desire to persecute. However, what is scary to people who do not believe in God is that there is a being, there is something, there is a force vastly more powerful than human beings. Do not allow people to box you in and make you feel that you make never break free of the chain that you are bound by. They do not know what God has planned for your life. If you allow depression to visit, you will feel the change in your body, in your muscles, and on your face—some relief from the burden of youthful enthusiasm and the unbearable lightness of being. Aging brings out the flavors of a personality. The individual emerges over time, the way fruit matures and ripens. Depression, aging, and individuality all go together: the sadness of growing old is part of becoming an individual. Melancholy thoughts carve out an interior space where wisdom can take up residence. As we age, our ideas, formerly light, rambling, and unrelated to each other, become more densely gathered into values and a philosophy, giving our lives substance and firmness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
A journalist is a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time they have, the worse the write. Depression is sometimes described as a condition in which there are no idea—nothing to hang on to. However, maybe we have to broaden our vision and see that feelings of emptiness, the loss of familiar understandings and structures in life, and the vanishing of enthusiasm, even though they seem negative, are elements that can be appropriate and used to give life fresh imagination. We can initiate a new creative series by the definite and deliberate contemplation of our own minds, and out of the new thoughts will some new things, for the law is a reflector only. We shall discover that the very law that bound us will now free us; the power that seemed to stifle us will bring emancipation. The very power which appeared to produce evil will produce the opposite if, as, and when we change our thought patterns. The changing of these thought patterns is more than a thing of the intellect; it is also a thing of feeling, of a deep, inner conviction. We must feel that we are one with the eternal reality, and that our word is spoke in complete reliance on it; therefore it cannot fail. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
Sometimes, of course, depression, like any emotion, can go beyond ordinary limits, becoming a completely debilitating illness. However, in extreme cases, too, even in the midst of strong treatments, we can still look at the core of depression and find ways to overcome it. One of the greatest stressors associated with depression is that it will never end, that life will never be joyful and active. This is one of the feelings that is part of the pattern—the sense of being trapped, forever to be held in the remote of a labyrinth of haunts. One may feel constrained, with nowhere to go. This stress seems to decrease when we stop fighting it. We must get control of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Gradually, as we re-form our thoughts they will become subjective; they will sink into that place in mind which is the power within us and which must constitute the meeting place between the absolute cause and the relative effect which it projects. It may take time to do this, but think of the reward, the gift, the outcome. Keeping the goal in mind, refusing to be baffled or defeated, with uplifted thought and calm but definite purpose, we cannot fail. This is a starting point for a more grounded, open-ended kind of knowledge that never closes up in fixed opinions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
The emptiness and dissolution of meaning that are often present in depression show how attached we can become to our ways of understanding and explaining our lives. Often our personal philosophies and our values seem to be all too neatly wrapped, leaving little room for mystery. Depression comes along then and opens up a hole. Depression makes holes in our theories and assumptions, but even this painful process can be honored as a necessary and valuable source of healing. At first, we are prone to treat everything and everyone around us, in an attempt to influence our environment and other people, and to exercise control over things to our own liking. Most of us pass through this phase. As we progress in this science we come to realize that the aim of scientific treatment is not control of people and things. We treat ourselves, our own mind, our own consciousnesses, no matter what the desired end may be, and gradually we learn to include a larger and a more harmonious field of action. We learn that when we get our own consciousness straightened out, things in our external World adjust themselves to meet our new and better inward awareness. The final mystery is oneself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Depression’s devaluation of human life, shows that cold remorse and self-judgment do not have to be seen as clinical syndromes, but as a necessary humility in human life that actually accomplishes something for the soul. We know who we are because we have uncovered the stuff of which we are made. It has been sifted out by depressive thought, reduced, in the chemical sense, to essence. Months or years focused on God and his love and healing power has allowed us to understand that everything bends back upon itself, even time, space, and light. This is divine intuition that teaches that everything which goes out will come back again. “All of you that are pure in heart, lift up your heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for you may, if your minds are firm, forever (Jacob 3.2).” If we deny or cover up anything that is home in the soul, then we cannot be fully present to others. Hiding the dark places results in a loss of soul; speaking for them and from them offers a way toward genuine community and intimacy. Even after you uncover piece after piece of the sacrifices you have made, and feel an intense regret, but discover the real core of your being and the loyalty to the things you love. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
As you reflect on your core the feeling of guilt and depression will be replaced by a stronger individual, who is no longer manipulated. Do not focus on thoughts and experiences the sad feelings and turmoil is waiting in the for you. Especially when the first time around was so painful and apparently unsuccessful. Care of the soul does not mean wallowing in the symptom, but it does mean trying to learn from depression what qualities the soul needs. Allow the Angel of God to carry your soul out of the coldness, isolation, darkness, and emptiness away to its remote places where it is no longer quarreling and where it finds unique insight and enjoys a special vision. Experience teaches us what is best. We learn that God alone is eternal and that loves overcomes hate. We have brought chance into compliance with love, reason, and faith. We have caught the lightning and made it turn the wheels of industry. We have engaged the laws of nature and harnessed their energy to our purposes. Truth will enter into a new Heaven and a new Earth, a different consciousness. When consciousness is changed, experience automatically changes. Now in the thing we do rejoice. When you become weary and feel like quitting, there is a way to have your strength renewed—wait on the Lord. The reward is in the attempt. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
God Expects Us to be Especially Mindful of the Bounteous Blessings
It has a very long history, dating back to our origins, has a momentum that shows little indication of slowing down. The word violence comes from the Latin word vis, meaning “life force.” Its very roots suggest that in violence the thrust of life is making itself visible. If that fundamental vitality is not present in the heart, it nevertheless seems to appear distorted by our representations and compromises, our fears and our narcissistic manipulations. There may be talk of honor, but it is mostly just more fuel for the fires of violence and has nothing to do with real honor. God, we can make something out of that! Perhaps humankind will get down on its knees and, fearing for its own sanity, will beg the Creator for more madness! It would be a mistake to approach violence with any simple idea of getting rid of it. Chances are, if we try to eradicate our violence, we will also cut ourselves off from the deep power that sustains creative life. Besides, psychoanalysis teaches, repression never accomplishes what we want. The repressed always returns in monstrous form. The life current of the soul, vis, is like the natural force of planet life, like the grass that grows up through cement and in a relatively short time obliterates grand monuments of culture. This land where confusion between the real and false reigns supreme. A magic enchantment now attaches itself to neurotic symptoms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
How did all this fakery and moral insanity come about? There are plenty of views about what constitutes and causes violence, but nay deep understanding of violence has to include our own capacity for extreme aggression and the dehumanizing of others, especially toward those who offend us. So simple a thing as new food can be threatening, and it is well known that fashions in dress can be statements of either conformity or anarchy. Political groups have identified themselves through their gender, ethnic background, hair colour and style, and citizenship status. Such choices in everyday life have genuine power, and a society concerned about order and smooth functioning may gradually and unconsciously flatten itself out of the apparent good of the whole. If we try taming and boxing in this innate power, it will inevitably find its way into the light. The more intimate we are with our own violent urges and their roots, the less likely we are to be irresponsible with such urges, and the deeper our understanding will be of others’ violence. Repression of the life force is a diagnosis that fits most of the emotional problems, and people have suffered serious injury to their bodies as well as their own souls. When people let their minds be colonized by revengeful or retaliatory or first-strike fantasies, they create enemies and have an undue anticipation of unleashing their aggression. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
People freed from onerous taxes and humiliating restrictions on their property rights, professional choices, and religious practices, could realistically harbour hopes for economic advancement, political participation, and a measure of social acceptance. Countless individuals whose life is in bankruptcy clamor for relief through the court of psychoanalysis, because the public now expects, and indeed demands, help through this channel. We have personally analyzed many psychopathic personalities whose treatment we were unable to bring to proper conclusion because of their impregnable moral insanity. We were sorry to learn, from reports in the newspapers, that many of these people continue to occupy positions of public trust. Humankind has no choice but to learn to resist this sort of bedazzlement. If one were to question how central violence is in contemporary culture, one would find the answer in the frequency with which violence occurs in film, news, and television. These mediums do not just feature plenty of violence, but also conjures violence as acceptable reactions until these fantasies become crystallized in a thing that has the power of lure of a fetish. In this sense people’s arsenals with their mystery and threat are dark carries of what has been ignored in the soul. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Because so many people are walking around with open emotional wounds that have never been resolved, they have refused to associate themselves with the dark forces lurking in their mind, heart, and soul. That rage and violence is them forced into fetishistic form, where they remain, fascinating and lethal. When people to not care for their wounds and souls, the dysfunction is forced to appear in fetish ad in violent behavior. Moreover, it is an integral part of mental diseases. There is nothing neutral about the soul. It is the seat and the source of life. Either we respond to what the soul presents in its fantasies and desires, or people will suffer from neglect of themselves. The power of the soul can hurl a person into ecstasy or into depression. It can be creative or destructive, gentle or aggressive. Power incubates within the soul and then makes it influential move into life as the expression of soul. If there is no soulfulness, then there is no true power, and if there is no power, then there can be no true soul. When the soul’s power is neglected, usurped, or toyed with, then it breaks down into violence and victimization, controller and subject. Whenever one person victimizes another, real power has been lost and replaced by a literalistic drama that is dangerous for both parties. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
People who turn to violence are visibly controlling; what is less obvious are their weakness and feeling of powerlessness. On the other hand, those who habitually play the submissive may be quite unaware of their own more subtle methods of control. This is why issues of power are so difficult to deal with; things are not as they appear to be. Weaklings puff themselves up and try to act strong; tough people hide their vulnerabilities; many fail to look past the surface. People assume that the fabrications of power all around them are genuine, and they all fall prey to them. Fear is never far removed from power and genuine innocence is always to be found in the vicinity of blood-guilt. Guns are dangerous not only because it threatens lives, but also because it concretizes and fetishizes a person’s desire for power, keeping power both in sight and also removed from its soulful presence in our daily lives. However, guns are also a source of protection. Many people turn to violent gun violence because they may feel they have no power or because they want to be famous. If we want to stop school shootings, perhaps we need to look beyond mental help, and help people who are targets of bullies and encourage them to join groups where they know that they are loved and accepted. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Sometimes healthy people seek mental help or are forced into it and the healthy often emerge from the analyst’s office sick. The soul is explosive and powerful. If we do not claim the soul’s power on our own behalf, we become its victims. We suffer our own emotions rather than feel them working for us. We suffer our emotions rather than feel them working for us. We hold our thoughts and passions inward, disconnecting them from life, and then they stir trouble within, making us feel profoundly unsettled or, it seems, turning into illness. We all know what it feels like to hold anger in our hearts, as it builds and transmuted into corrosive resentment and rage. Even unexpressed love creates a pressure that demands release in come kind of expression. Therefore, if violence is the repressed life force showing itself symptomatically, then cure for violence is care of the soul’s power. God teaches us to love our enemies because we do not hurt the people we love, it is a way to keep society civil and save your soul. God always says that vengeance is his and he will get revenge for the wrongs that others have done to you, so it is best to follow the laws of the land so your hands stay clean and the guilty can be punished by the law so they can be taken off the streets where their violence cannot escalate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
People who teach love and virtue, like Socrates and Plato, were condemned by the wicked because of the “unsettling” and “threatening” power of their soul, which was reveled in their personal lives and in their works. They did not carry guns, but they were still considered a problem because there is nothing more powerful than peace, love, harmony, and education, which leads to the true passion and revelation of one’s own soul. My past is your present. What embarrasses me in my dreams, amuses you in your interpretations, but I insist on the privacy of my dreams, and on embarrassing you with your foul waking life. In the presence of deep power, life becomes robust and passionate, signs that the soul is engaged and being given expression. When God is honored in our lives, everything we do becomes more genuine, quickening our lives with intensity, passion, power, and courage. One the scale of our individual lives we reproduce the divine order in its entirety. Our thought is creative, but in our ignorance, we use it destructively, and that is why people suffer the onslaughts of uncontained violence. To learn to think in the right manner is to learn to create that which is good, and which gives compete expression to the self without ever containing anything destructive or negative. The only lasting joy and happiness we will ever find during our mortal experience will come by following the Savior. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
The Lord has blessed us with lands of promise to enjoy during our mortal probation. In the doctrine of progression, we learn that all people were born into the spirit World—prior to taking on Earthly bodies. Our lives did not begin at birth and will not end at death. We are here on Earth to learn and progress for a while; in the process there will be joy and pain. This mortal probation is the period of testing and demonstrating character or abilities. “If people have sought to do wickedly during days of probation, they will be found unclean before judgment (1 Nephi 10.21).” The chief reward of surrendering innocence, so that the soul may be fully expressed, as an increase of power. That is why we must “Continue in the straight and narrow path until end of the day of probation (2 Nephi 33.9).” Therefore, instead of being confused by the situations around us we should be calm, tranquil, and confident that through reforming our word and changing our whole body of thinking, we can as easily change the existing conditions as perpetuate them. The nations of Earth, if they would continue to follow the ways of God, could be a blessing to his children here. We need complete assurance, an inner determination, faith, and confidence to know that we can proceed with definite, deliberate determination and that there can be no question about the result; they will be inevitable. Be better than smart, be thoughtful. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Undergo Whatever Fate is Asking of the Soul
If we want Sunshine, step out into the Sunshine. A deepening of consciousness sometimes requires a strong move in life. Sometimes living on our own could be a way of getting to know more precisely what our souls are searching form. Love finds its soul in its feelings of incompleteness, impossibility, and imperfection. There was once an Angel who came to visit Earth. He found himself in the usual stream of human activities and found himself fascinated with the television. As he watched the news for the first time, he heard negative comments. Some of these news anchors who were supposed to be an authority called religion a mental illness and said that there might be a way and human life would be destroyed. The news reporters also went on to say that there would be a great epidemic of illness, and that financial hardships were certain to limit us all. He heard that there was not enough food, water, and housing to go around, and that people were going to die as a result. He felt like he needed to take a bath in holy water to rid himself of the negativity from the news. The Angel began to wonder if these things might not be true, and even as he entertained the thoughts of negation to which he was listening, the brightness of his angelic presence faded into dark shadows. His form seemed to shrivel, and looking at himself he saw that he was dressed as a human being, walking the Earth in fear, doubt, and uncertainty. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
And so the weary years went by, years of unhappiness and impoverishment and dread, years so filled with stress that he wished her were dead, and that some oblivion might forever swallow him up. And yet, even in the midst of all this, something within him remembered that he was once an Angel of God, living in a Heaven of beauty and a place of peace and joy, living in a garden of Eden which God has provided for him. And, remembering, a determination arose within him to somehow or other find his way back to this lost paradise. Hunger and love are two things that motivate the World. Hunger could be taken to represent the instincts which aim at preserving the individual; while love strives after objects, and its chief function, favoured in every way by nature, is the preservation of the species. This situation shows that there is something about him that is superior to the experience he is having. This determination grew into a great faith, and as his faith was renewed, a light seemed to shine in the distance; and he had the courage to travel toward the light. As he did, a miracle gradually took place. The Angel found that the shadows were being cast behind him, until finally he so completely entered into the light that no shadows were cast at all, and he started to awaken to the reality of God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
We must undergo whatever fate is asking of the soul. We think we know what love is about, both theoretically and in an episode of life, but love sometimes leans toward the mysterious dark niches of the soul’s underworld. Life takes us to the edge of what we know and have experienced, and this we are willing to assent to love and freely awaken out of sleep. So let us wake up, and let us be certain that we no longer drug ourselves with the sleeping potion of fear and uncertainty and doubt, but awake into faith and confidence, into peace and joy, into love and happiness. For there is something in us too, like the Angel in the fable, that have never forgotten. There is a silent witness at the center of every human’s being which evermore proclaims: One of the strongest needs of the soul is for community. The Soul yearns for attachment, for variety in personality, for intimacy and particularity. So these qualities in community that the soul seeks out. “Pray unto the Father in Heaven with all the energy of heart, that you may be filled with this love, which he has bestowed upon all (Moroni 7.48).” We must be with others, enjoy them and act with them, without in any way seeking to control their actions. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
There are many signs in our society that we lack a sufficiently deep experience in community. There is the energetic search for a community. No one can live to oneself alone. Other people are so much a part of our lives that we cannot think of living without them. People who feel themselves excluded from society may just need a little encouragement and support. Loneliness is a major complaint and is responsible for deep-seated emotional pain that leads to despair and a consideration of not wanting to live. It is wonderful to be around people and it is a pleasure to be surrounded by friends. Community is a group pf people held together by feelings of belonging, and those feelings are the attitude of the well-adjusted person, one who has been permitted to be an individual, but who has also learned to cooperate with others. It is a fortunate child who is born into a community that understand this and that gives the child as much freedom as possible, while at the same time teaching the individual to cooperate with others who are good and trustworthy. We must succeed in obtaining the clearest insight into God’s nature and relation to us, as the one guardian of life is love, but to be loved we must love. This is the new birth that comes through a new outlook on life, a new way of thinking, a new sense of our relationship to our environment, to the people around us, to ourselves, and to God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
However, a person oppressed by loneliness can go out into the World and simply start belonging to it, not by joining organizations, but by living through feelings of relatedness—to other people, to nature, to society, to the World as a whole. Relatedness is a signal of soul. By allowing the sometimes vulnerable feelings of relatedness, soul pours into life and does not have to insist on itself symptomatically. We know that the psychological, emotional, and mental readjustments which are necessary to our well-being will be made if we experience this firm faith that all people live in God, and we must have a deep realization that we are all one in this Universal spirit which is God. If we have ourselves locked away in a dark closet, why not come out into the light? If we really have been feeling that everything is against us and no one really cares for us, know that God is in everyone, and meet the God in others and see what happens. I can love anyone I meet and be loved in return. The foundation of community is immeasurably deep, and the process of belonging, dealing actively with loneliness, begins in the depths of the soul. Love keeps the soul on the track of its fate and keeps consciousness at the edge of the abyss of the infinity that is the range of the soul. Forgive yourself and everyone else for everything that has ever happened. Try to feel that everyone is doing the best they can. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Some people do not like their jobs because there never seems to be completion and satisfaction, but they keep going to fulfill those aspirations. Find God in yourself because blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Seek, and you shall find. Love must go forth and meet love. All people are rooted in God, and it is the only being as we go down to the roots of our beings that we unify with others in spirit and truth. Manifestation of God is the force of life itself and is the fountain of love that keeps the soul alive and full. There is no way toward divine love expect through the discovery of human intimacy and community. One feeds the other. Care of the soul, then requires an openness to love’s many forms. Because we are one with God, we are one with all people, and that allows us to feel our union with people and nature. We feel that we belong to life, love life, and into the joy of living. We enter into companionship and cooperation with them. And there is something within us that reaches out and embraces the whole World. Something within the core of our being blesses everything we touch, brings life and happiness and joy to everyone. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Do not let your life be full of regrets of the past. As our trust in God grows, we open our hearts, seeking to do his will, and waiting for answers that will help us understand. Know that we have something inside of us that acts as a healing force, restoring everything to its natural and native perfection. In time and by degrees, we receive God’s gracious strength and direction. As we silently listen to the spirit within us and think of its perfection, we know that we are born again—born into joy and hope and gladness, born into love and faith and assurance. Silently, release every negative thought from your mind. With a growing understanding of the Lord’s grace and mercy, we will find that our self-willed hearts begin to accept gratitude. We will receive new hope and fresh guidance through the Holy Ghost. God’s way is the path that leads to happiness in this life and eternal life in the World to come. Some may thing they have failed too many times and feel too weak to change sinful acts or Worldly desires of the heart. However, if we earnestly appeal to God, he takes us as we are—and makes us more than we ever imagined. Truly dedicated to the Savior, we can say with confidence that it will work out. I pray that we will focus on the simplicity that is in Christ and allow his grace to lift and carry us. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The No-Harm Charm
Having an optimistic mental attitude and high self-esteem can literally double the chances of career success. We have been primarily concerned with the self-concept as a social product. The fundamental questions addressed has been: how do social conditions or experiences—social interaction, social structure, social contexts—shape the individual’s self-concept? However, the self-concept may also be examined as a social force. The question is: how does the self-concept influence behavior in major institutional areas? Before addressing this question, it is relevant to say a word about the personal consequences of the self-concept. Even if the self-concept had no bearing on society, it would still be important if it influenced people’s ability to lead full, rich, satisfying lives. The importance of a healthy self-concept for mental health can scarcely be exaggerated. It is clear that self-esteem is characteristically deeply implicated in the neurotic (though not necessarily the psychotic) process. Whether the research has been essentially clinical or quantitative, the results demonstrate clear and consistent relationships of low self-esteem to psychological depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms, impulse to aggression, vulnerability, negative affective states, and other neurotic symptoms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
The social roots of self-esteem are thus an important topic in the sociology of mental health. However, the sociologist is also properly interested in the influence of personality on society. On theoretical grounds, there is reason to think that the self-concept, at least as a proximal influence is implicated in almost all social behavior. Much of what people do voluntarily depends upon what they conceive themselves to be. Each takes one’s personal identity so much for granted that the individual does not realize the extent to which his or her life is structured by the working conception one forms of oneself. The things that a person does voluntarily, and even involuntarily, depend upon the assumption one makes about the kind of person one is and the way in which one fits into the scheme of things in one’s World. Believing in oneself can strongly influence long-term career advancement and overall health. People who score high on self-evaluations enjoy success earlier in their careers, engage in continued higher education, and advance more quickly than those who score lower on self-evaluations. The advantaged gained by having an optimistic self-image is also strongly correlated with overall career satisfaction, higher pay, and better health. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The self-concept plays a major role in occupational decisions. The selection of an occupation depends on a view of the self. How you feel about yourself will either spawn motivation and energy or will several hurt your changes for a great career. The individual making an occupational choice must achieve stereoscopic vision as one is making an occupational incumbent. Although the answer to the question: what should I become? has some important consequences for the occupational system, it always emerges from the ulterior question: what am I like and what do I like to think of myself as? As an obvious example if girls are socialized to believe that they are competent in mathematical ability or assign this talent to a high position in their system of self-values, then they will be more likely to seek occupations such as engineering, physics, and related fields demanding such skills; and, indeed, the facts show them to be strikingly underrepresented in such fields. That is more than likely because people’s self-concepts tend to match the stereotypical characteristics associated with their chosen occupations. For example, students planning to enter the field of sales tend to describe themselves as sociable, talkative, aggressive, and having initiative, whereas those selecting accounting are likely to describe themselves as precise, self-controlled, organized, and thorough. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
When individuals increase their confidence level, they are able to interview more effectively, negotiate higher salaries and, subsequently they will receiver a wider range of occupational choices. Furthermore, the self-concept is not only consonant with prime occupational choice, but with second occupational choice as well. In selecting an occupation, people seek to achieve self-role congruence. If people have high global self-esteem, then their occupational choices tend to be consonant with their self-concepts, but if their self-esteem is low, the self-concept and the occupational choice are unrelated, and they are going to be paid less, given fewer responsibilities and will end up accepting a position that they are overqualified for. In making an occupational choice, people with high self-esteem sought to be true to their pictures of what they were like; people with low self-esteem, on the other hand, tended to make their occupational choices on the basis of other considerations, for example, certain extrinsic rewards of work, such as money, status, or security. The question of why those with high self-esteem tend to implement their self-concepts whereas those with low self-esteem do not is currently under active debate. Perhaps people with higher self-esteem feel they are a gift and people with lower self-esteem feel lucky to get a job and believe they can prove themselves worthy of that and more. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
The results can be interpreted within the framework of cognitive consistency theory. Humans are motivated by inconsistences and a desire to change them. Cognitive inconsistences cause imbalance in individuals and the tension from this inequality in individuals and the strain from this disparity motivates people to alter these irregularities. The pressure arises when thoughts conflict with each other and this stress creates a motivation to change and correct the inconsistency. When this hardship is reduced, balance is achieved in the individual. The right mindset significantly boosts one’s overall state of being and performance. People anticipate consistency, inconsistencies create imbalance and dissonance in individuals, and that tension motivated the individuals to create consistency in order to achieve balance. This is meaningfully understood as consequences of the self-esteem motive. Global self-esteem has also been shown to bear a relationship to occupational aspirations, expectations, values. A study of high school juniors and seniors showed that youngsters with low self-esteem were more likely to avoid occupations that required the exercise of leadership, to want jobs in which they were free of supervision, and to avoid jobs involving competition. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Other economic attitudes, orientations, or behavior may also be influenced by the self-concept. Psychiatric attendants reconceptualize the nature of their work for the purpose of enhancing self-respect. In studying the self-concepts of executives and supervisors, it can be seen how historical developments have produced change in self-concepts among Greek army officers. Sociological research has also been conducted on the process by which a trainee—say, a medical student or a music student—comes to see himself or herself as a doctor or musician. Individuals navigating along their career path build on feelings of self-confidence, self-worth, and inner strength to transform the journey into career success. Through experience, you are building wisdom that can be applied in different situations and across different industries. Keeping track of the skills, knowledge, and abilities, you possess builds your self-confidence and facilitates a feeling of self-worth. It may be no exaggeration to suggest that the self-concept, in its full rich complexity, pervades virtually every aspect of occupational life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Showing gratitude also helps people keep an optimistic attitude. We all like working with people who are happy, genuine, and have good attitudes. Even on a bad day, look for something to be thankful for and have gratitude for all the blessings that have been bestowed. Your goals are sacred to you. They are the gold that will help you create the life and career success that you want and deserve. Once you have proved to yourself you can be successful, your confidence will soar. It is also important to do the same in your career by showing others how competent you are. You have exactly what you need. If you use what God has given you, he will get you where you are supposed to be. It is not necessarily the amount of talent, education, or money, but what makes the difference is God’s anointing on our life. You can have average talent, but when God breathes in your direction, you will go further than someone with exceptional talent. Be confident that you have exactly what you need. It may not be as much as others have, and that is okay. You are not running their race. Do not envy their talent. Do not covet what they have. Do not wish you had their looks, their personality, or their opportunities. God equipped you with everything you need to fulfill your destiny. You have the talent, confidence, strength, and the creativity to fulfill your purpose. With a view like that, the World changes completely. It brings transcendence and takes people further. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
Winchester Mystery House announced its milestone highlights including a celebration of life for Sarah Winchester, a live supernatural event, a new daily tour. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
But Why if He is Only a Myth?
Let us be finished with this humbug which has fooled humankind for so long. People think that psychiatry is a science of the mind, but it may not be. Some people think psychiatry is a genius for evil rather than for good, and that some members of the psychoanalytic society devote meetings into psychoanalyzing people, which is neither sought nor consented in order to transform a polemicist into a patient. For instance, a young Hapsburg princess wanted to divorce her blue-blooded husband and marry a commoner, a decision Dr. Julius Wagner von Jauregg (a Nobel Prize winning Austrian physician) considered to be the symptom of a mental illness serious enough to justify the young woman’s incarceration in a madhouse. It was this brazen deprivation of personal liberty under the guise of psychiatry that makes people fearful of seeking help for their mental health. And, evidently, many doctors see nothing wrong in such use of psychiatry. Many professionals, too, remain silent about these types of situations. Such a position seems to imply that a person believed to be innocent of an offense might be held morally responsible and be blamed or convicted on the general grounds that it would be socially beneficial to do so. And this seems to conflict with deeply held convictions about the requirements of justice in our commerce with other human beings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
Let the person come by one’s own volition or choice how one will, yet, if one is able, and there is nothing on the way to hinder an individual pursuing and executing one’s will, then individual is fully and perfectly free, according to the primary and common notion of freedom. Eisenhower could have ordered his troops to take Berlin before the Russians arrived and Kennedy was able to call off the invasion of Cuba, but he decided not to do so and that is perfectly consistent with determinism. There is an important distinction between an action being caused or determined by antecedent circumstances, and its being constrained or compelled or coerced by antecedent circumstances. Only when an action that is determined is also in some way constrained or compelled is the actor not morally responsible for that act. Some people argue that the claims of justice are satisfied if we justify the rules according to which a person is judged to be morally responsible and blameworthy on the basis of the principle that social utility ought to be maximized, but then apply these rules to particular cases in a way which precludes any further appeal to this principle of utility. In this way, the claims of justice may be satisfied and the problem of freedom bypassed. This view, usually called rule utilitarianism. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
The mind does not always think. We have an infinite number of perceptions of which we are not aware. Habituation and wandering attention, as well as the smallness of the perceptions, explain our failure to notice them. Our attention is often drawn to a sound that has just occurred and we would not otherwise have consciously noticed it, although we registered it. These insensible perceptions are also the signs of personal identity and its constituents; the individual is characterized by traces of one’s previous states which these perceptions preserve by connecting them with one’s present state. They are means of recollection. Along with social interaction and social identity elements, social contexts have an important bearing on the self-concept. The special nature of contextual analysis can be highlighted by comparing it with what is doubtlessly the dominant procedure in sociological research, namely, the individual characteristic approach. To further highlight this illustration, when we ask about the relationship between race and self-esteem, we are looking at the connection between one characteristic of the individual (a social identity element) with another characteristic of the individual (a global attitude toward the self). #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
When we turn to contextual analysis, on the other hand, the aim is to investigate the bearing of some general property of the group on the thoughts, acts, or norms of its constituent members. Instead of asking: what is the impact of the individual’s social class on his or her self-esteem? we might ask: what is the impact of his or her neighbor’s social class on his or her self-esteem? In other words, how does their socioeconomic status (SES) affect his or her self-concept? The qualities of others structure the individual’s experience. For instance, it may be a very different experience for privileged child to be raised in an disprivileged neighborhood than for a disprivileged child to be raised in a disprivileged community; for a Catholic child to be raised in a Protestant neighborhood than for a Protestant child to be raised in the same neighborhood; for a middle-class child to be reared in a working-class neighborhood than for a working-class child to be reared in this social context. By examining contextual effects, we have accumulated, demonstrating diverse effect. The type of context that appears to be most relevant to the self-concept is the dissonant or consonant context. By consonance or dissonance, we refer to the degree to which the individual’s characteristics match the characteristics predominant in one’s environment. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
A way of gaining knowledge is through cultural tradition, whereby an accepted body of facts is passed from generation to generation. In a large-scale survey of adolescents in New York State, the results showed that Jewish children raised in predominantly Gentile neighborhoods had lower global self-esteem than those raised in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods. Furthermore, Catholics raised in non-Catholic neighborhoods and Protestants raised in non-Protestant neighborhoods also had somewhat lower self-esteem than those reared among their coreligionists. Thus, even people high in religious status manifested some self-esteem decline in dissonant contexts, although the effect were not very strong. Culture plays an important role in tradition. Farmers and ranchers in the America Midwest, for example, know that burning their pasturelands early each Spring helps remove dead underbrush so that nutritious pasture grasses can get a better start for the Sumer grazing. Farmers in Iran, however, move their herds into the mountains during the Spring and Summer months and then back to the plains in the Fall and Winter, allowing nature to kill off undesirable weeds and underbrush and replenish the desirable grasses. The corpus of research on dissonant racial contexts is far more abundant. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
One point frequently overlooked is that, technically, segregation represents a condition of racial consonance whereas desegregation represents a condition of dissonance. Research findings in this area have not been entirely consistent, but a number of studies indicate that the global self-esteem consequences of racial dissonance are somewhat negative. Thorough review of the effects of desegregation found that in nine studies global self-esteem was low in dissonant context, in four studies it was higher, and in seven studies there was no clear difference. Therefore, the weight of evidence suggest that the global self-esteem consequences of racial dissonance tend to be negative, but the effect are neither powerful nor uniform. There is some evidence that ethnic dissonance may bear on global self-esteem. The data from a study based on a sample of French Canadian men in Sherbrooke, Quebec, some of whom had been educated in French-speaking and some in English-speaking schools, showed that the French who had attended English-speaking schools were more likely than those who had attended French schools to be in occupations of higher prestige. However, their global self-esteem was lower. Otherwise expressed, despite the superior achievements resulting from attendance at English-speaking schools, their sense of self-worth appeared to suffer in an ethnically dissonant context. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
When we turn to social class dissonance, little information is available. One study showed that, among higher-class children attending lower-class schools had significantly lower self-esteem than higher-class children attending higher-class schools, and lower-class children in higher-class schools had lower self-esteem than lower-class children in lower-class schools. For both upper- and lower-class children, then, dissonant socioeconomic environments appeared hostile to self-esteem. Although the weight of evidence indicates that the dissonant social identity context exerts a depressing effect on global self-esteem, this effect is not usually a very powerful one. When people are immersed in a culture that is more festive than they own, they may find it annoying that individuals tend to lack respect, hygiene, tact, finesse, education, and structure, but they learn to tolerate the behavior knowing that the situation is only temporary and that the people cannot help themselves. The reasons for expecting contextual dissonance to have some depressing effect on global self-esteem are not obscure. For one thing, the data clearly shows that people in dissonant contexts are more likely to be subjected directly to the ravages of prejudice. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
A study of New York States adolescents showed that those in dissonant religious contexts were much more likely than those in consonant contexts to report that they had been teased, laughed at, or left out of things because of their religion. And in Quebec, French-Canadians educated in English-speaking schools were more likely than those in French-speaking schools to report they had experienced ethic prejudice. The reflected appraisals received from those in a dissonant environment may well have been damaging global self-esteem consequences. In addition, the individual socialized in one culture who must judge oneself by the standards of another may feel that there is something strange or wrong about oneself. Thus, if a French Canadian attending an English-speaking school speaks with an exotic accent or, because of one’s French background, thinks or acts in ways that are dissimilar with others in his or her English environment, one may, following the self-attribution principle, conclude that there is something wrong with oneself. That is why it is important to have faith in God. Faith is a strong belief in truths that cannot be verified by personal experiences—serves as an important source of knowledge in almost every culture. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Faith also reflect diversity, in that across and within cultures there are a wide variety of beliefs and opinions as to what constitutes truth. The small and more homogeneous a particular society, the more likely there will be agreement as to what constitutes truth; the larger and more heterogeneous the population, the more likely there will be more diversity of faiths and, hence, many different truths, untruths, and heresies. Faith usually goes beyond tradition, however, because it is often supported by intense emotional commitment. The belief in a supernatural being, or in life after death, for example, usually requires faith beyond personal experience. Yet, surveys consistently show that the vast majority of North Americans (80 to 90 percent) believe in God, the power of prayer, and an afterlife. Because of its emotional and moral connotations, faith is a powerful source of knowledge, and those who question it may suffer some of the most serious social consequences a society has to offer. History is replete with religious wars, inquisitions, hangings, and burnings at the stake motivated by religious convictions and conflicts. In order for people to enforce their beliefs formally, they typically must have the support of those in positions of power and authority. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
Each race finds its partisan, especially among those persons who believe that they themselves have authoritative knowledge, which is gained by listening to people who are recognized as authorities or expects. Authority is often linked to power; those in leadership positions may be viewed as more knowledgeable than others and can use their power to influence others. The Mediterranean may claim that they were the pioneers in human civilization and progress, the larger part of classic antiquity, and the still more ancient cultures on which that antiquity was founded, being to their credit; the Alpines boast their proficient in the arts of peace and point to the fact that the human of genius tend to approximate to their type, whether or not of their race; the Nordics claim to be the most adventurous, the most individualistic, and sometimes the most dominant. It is the Nordics who have perhaps been loudest in proclaiming their own virtues, above all in Germany, where, however, they do not predominate, but also to some extent in France and in England and in America. It may perhaps be permitted to a largely Nordic person, ancestrally in a mainly Nordic region, to attempt to take a reasonable and impartial view. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
There is something to be said for every race, and the more to be said the better we learn to know it. The preference for one race above another is a little but the outcome of prejudice, often due to the fact that one believes, rightly or wrongly, that one possesses oneself a strain of that preferred racial blood. The eugenist is not called upon to prefer one race above the others and to work for the extinction of the others. If we come to that, it is quite likely that, on a referendum being called, the darker races of our Earth, who happen to be in a large majority, might vote the extinction of the lighter race, and, moreover, find excellent reasons for that decision. Ultimately, we are bound to conclude, pigmentation is a question of exposure to the Sun’s rays, whether ingrained in a race by natural selection or acquired by heredity; it is a problem, not for the eugenist but for the biological anthropologist. The euensist, whether the dark-skinned eugenists or the white-skinned is not called upon to make a decision in the matter. One is simply called upon to improve the stock of the race within which one belongs, “People that they have been wrought upon by the Spirit of God; and had been healed; and they did show forth signs also and did do some miracles among the people (3 Nephi 7.22).” #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
C’est tres en Vogue en ce Moment!
The loneliness trap of withdrawal is self-explanatory: it is a silent admission of total defeat and a reluctant resignation to the status quo, to a life devoid of human love. It is frequently the case that privilege and disprivilege are cumulative and reinforcing, low position along one stratification dimension may produce a corresponding position along another. A prime example is social stratification. As a consequence of prejudice and discrimination, even some who are considered to be privileged are not allowed to enjoy equality in education, prestigious occupational positions, nor do they have access to equal pay or full constitutional rights. As a result, they are not only victims of discrimination and have to work harder for occupational prestige, but they are also socially stigmatized. Hence, a general consequence of prejudice and discrimination is to bring about other conditions of life for people who are victimized that produce unfavorable comparisons with those who are allowed social and legal equality, and the comparisons are obviously damaging to self-esteem. And these days, anyone can be a victim of unfair treatment, injustice, and sexual harassment. People you would not even expect to be victims of discrimination have been. From tall, attractive men you would expect to be accept by everyone to beautiful Academy Award winning actresses. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Another principle of self-esteem formation is self-attribution. Internal psychological processes are inherently unobservable. Inner states (such as hunger, anger, excitement, sympathy)—are ordinarily understood to be based on private internal stimuli—and may in reality reflect past training in the application of certain descriptive terms to overt behavior and the conditions under which it occurs. Thus, the man who, after devouring an enormous meal, concludes that “I guess that I was hungrier than I thought,” is drawing conclusions about his level of hunger not by consulting his inner experience but by observing his own behavior or its outcomes. Furthermore, it is not just inner states but any aspect of the self that may be influenced by the individual’s observations of his or her own behavior. People derive much of their knowledge [about themselves] from direct experience of the effects produced by their action. Thus, the child who is dejected and gazes at one’s poor report card, or the unequally treated adult whose social identity includes a low prestige job, lack of material possessions, or other evidence of failure would be expected to develop low self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Because people who are taken advantage of or not fully appreciated in society are victims of prejudice, and hence negative reflected selves (reflected appraisals); because, on the average they tend to compare unfavorably with those who are accepted and worshipped in such valued areas as school achievement, educational level, and occupational success (social comparison); and because they may interpret their unfortunate life circumstances and experiences as overt reflections of a lack of essential work (self-attribution), many professional have simply taken it for granted that people ranking low in the various prestige hierarchies would tend to have lower self-esteem. The facts, however, speak otherwise. Monumental synthesis of this research, involving a review of several thousand studies, offers little support for the conclusion that people who have been consistently subjected to prejudice and discrimination have appreciably lower self-esteem. Why have these sound psychological principle failed to yield the expected results? The critical error, we believe, had lain in viewing the situation from the perspective of the broader society rather than from the viewpoints of the people who are actually facing discrimination. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Investigators have frequently overlooked the reality of the situation, in many cases, when it comes to people who are being discriminated against. If we want insight into an individual’s self-esteem, especially when we know they are being discriminated against frequently, then we need to attempt to understand the individual’s definition of the situation, in order to gain entry into his or her phenomenal field or psychological World. You will find that people who are not accepted, in whatever majority considers themselves to be tres en vogue en ce moment (very fashionable at the moment or in the case accepted), has just as high as, if not higher self-esteem. It has a lot to do with principle of reflected appraisals—we tend to see ourselves through the eyes of others. However, which others? Do we see ourselves through the eyes of the broader society or of those with whom we directly interact? The people in our role-set, that is, our God, parents, classmates, teachers, employers, and neighborhood peers, that is where our interaction goes on primarily. Whatever else these particular others may think of us on other groups, they are unlikely to derogate us. Thus, we are more likely to see ourselves from the perspective of members of our own group who love us, than the dominant majority. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
The traps inherent in attempting to find human companionship as quickly as possible are less immediately apparent. Two traps are particularly difficult to avoid. The first is the trap of panic. Because of intense feelings of shame, stress, and pain, the person sets out immediately to find a mate with single-mindedness that borders on an obsession. While such a strategy may produce a mate, all too often it also produces greater loneliness. One problem is that the single-minded pursuit of a mate, other humans who could provide companionship and friendship are discarded. Therefore, principle of reflected appraisals is thus entirely sound, but by expecting my self-esteem to be degraded because of your mob mentality, you have misapplied your judgments, as I do not chiefly see myself through the eyes of your majority. And the thing with social comparison is equally sound and equally misapplied. It might be expected for some to have lower self-esteem because they compare unfavorably with the majority in terms of socioeconomic status, school marks, or intact family. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
However, when people know they are good people and doing the best they can, they also understand that everything runs its course. If you are constantly bullying and harassing others, you will lose your favor with God and your fortune will be turned into misfortune. And those who are working hard and doing what is right will eventually be favored. Also, you cannot just attack a person relentlessly and expect them not to respond. The self-attribution principle is also sound but misapplied. For example, career self-concept and, to a lesser extent, global self-esteem tend to be influenced by the person’s evaluation; in other words, one important basis for assessing one’s own work is to observe one’s achievements. However, this is precisely why it is so important to recognize that some of the individual’s statuses are ascribed, whereas others are achievements. But this is precisely why it is so important to recognize that some of the individual’s statuses are ascribed, whereas others are achieved. There is evidence to suggest that the chief ascribed statuses—race, ethnicity, gender, religion—show virtually no association with global self-esteem whereas achieved statuses do show such an association. Social class is achieved, but no matter your economic standing, you can behave like you come from a good home. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
It is thus apparent that it is not the individual’s behavior but one’s interpretation of the behavior that has consequences for self-esteem. The issue, in other works, is one of attribution. Thus, we have observed that one factor protecting the self-esteem of many adult groups is the system-blame interpretation. Some behavioral outcomes, people may attribute it either to internal properties of the individual or to factors in the external situation. To further highlight this illustration, if someone does well on a work assignment, one can attribute this outcome either to the fact that one is smart (an internal characteristic) or to the fact that the project was easy (the external situation). If occupational failure is explained by prejudice and discrimination (external factors), then the lower occupational status of the group being discriminated against may do some damage to self-esteem. Therefore, any easy and automatic assumption that low prestige in some stratification hierarchy will produce correspondingly low self-esteem is a gross oversimplication. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
What research has demonstrated is that, although the principles on which this assumption primarily rest—reflected appraisals, social comparison, and self-attribution—are perfectly sound, researchers have tended to overlook the psychological World—the phenomenal field—of people who are considered to be part of an underrepresented group and, in doing so, have frequently reached erroneous conclusions. God has brought light our of darkness, not our of a lesser light, and he can bring your summer out of Winter, though you have no Spring. Though in the ways of fortune, understanding, or conscience you have been benighted until now, wintered and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupefied, now God comes to you, not as the dawning of the day, not as the bud of the spring, but as the Sun at noon. God has shifts in your future that if he showed you now, you would not believe. It is exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond. Suddenly, a dream comes to pass. Suddenly, a promise is fulfilled. Suddenly, the negative turns around. You need to get ready for the surpassing greatness of God’s favor. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
The Winchester Mystery House
Hauntings, the ghost psyche, spirit communication, and spirit guides–all these phenomena and more have that have taken place inside The Winchester Mystery House have fascinated mankind for centuries. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Get Out–They Poured Milk Down My Shirt and Put Ham in My Pants!
Improving humanity will happen by applying science to society. There are many prejudices and misunderstandings still lingering from the past. The castration of old days left behind it traditions of punishment, ignominy, and obloquy, at the least of a kind of shameful dishonor, and such notions, it is likely, still largely prevail among the populace and become attached to the new sterilization. How the attitudes of other people affect our self-concepts also depends on which self-concept component is under consideration. A tennis expert may be highly influential in determining our judgments of our tennis skill, but our parents and friends may be more influential in determining our global self-esteem. There is a difference between role-specific significant others (whose opinions are typically significant with regard to a specific aspect of the individual’s role-set), and orientational others (whose opinions are significant in general). To establish a perspective, index role-specific significant others who’s evaluation of you as a student or employee at your job or school concerns you most. Because people should only be evaluating your material and not you personally, although you are expected to be well-behaved and of good hygiene, they have no right to judge your personally to be involved in your personal life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
Therefore, the only thing they should have an impact on, when it comes to dealing with you, is your performance in school or work. Unless, of course, part of your job as a student or employee or corporation is to also be a good citizen. To reduce drama or the chance of getting anyone’s feelings hurt, it is important to evaluate these different types of relationships based on qualifying criteria. In an effort to reduce sexual harassment claims, employers usually do not allow employees to fraternize, as it might negatively affect the company and employees socially, financially, and legally. Therefore, it is important to have boundaries. Now, when it comes to orientational significant others, list those persons or groups of people whose evaluation of you as a person concerns you most. Generally, the results will show that, with regard to evaluation of the self in a professional context, respondents tend to mention faculty or manager first, with friends and family members following in that order. However, when asked about the views of others toward the self as a person, friends are most frequently mentioned, followed by family members, with faculty and employers in third place. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
The impact of others also depends on the degree of crystallization of the self-concept component under consideration. If the component is firmly fixed, others’ views may have little impact; but f it is uncrystallized, we may readily accept the other’s view of ourselves. This point is most evident when bogus qualities are used. When the professors gives us the results of our performance on a test or on a project at work of contrast sensitivity or perceptual discrimination, informing us that we are deficient or superior in this regard, we readily accept the expert judgment of us. The reason is, of course, that we had no performance view of ourselves regarding these qualities. However, the same is true of real but uncrystallized self-concept components. Such is the case, for example, when subjects are asked how good they are at voice control or conveying meaning. Experts’ judgments are easily accepted with reference to qualities on which we have little or no preformulated opinions. It would be far more difficult to convince us, contrary to an established assumption, that we are a fascist or a moron. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
There is intrinsic value to being. It is what we fundamentally are. Whether we accept the other’s view of us depends in part on whether or not we are motivated to accept it. Given the self-esteem and self-consistency motives, it is evident that we would prefer to internalize optimistic characteristics than negative, and consistent rather than contradictory, attitudes toward the self. There is evidence to suggest that, in the interests of self-esteem and self-consistency, people engage in selective perception of the attitudes of the other and selective attribution of significance. Discovering and eventually resting in this being brings a feeling of deep inner peace and freedom. As we become intimate with this still center within, we feel more connected to all of life. We experience our wholeness firsthand and become lovers of what is—of life as it appears. Our approach to life becomes increasingly less problematic as we accept what comes and allow what goes, grounded in something that feels unchanging in our core. The fluctuations of health, work, and relationships are held in a bigger and more connected space. Selective perception in the service of self-esteem characteristically involves the belief that others think more highly of us than they actually do. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
There is, in fact, ample evidence of such a self-favorability bias. Virtually every study that has explored the issue finds that people tend to believe that others think more highly of them than these others actually do. Furthermore, the self-consistency motive contributes to people’s tendency to believe that others’ attitudes toward them are congruent with their own. Interpersonal congruency is said to exist when the individual perceives others as attributing to one a trait that one attributes to oneself. This theory was investigated in a study of thirty-one women in a sorority house. Subjects were asked to rank themselves on sixteen paired traits, such as warm-cold, mature-immature, dominant-submissive, and so forth. The subject was asked to indicate the adjectives she thought others would assign to her, those she assigned to herself, and those she assigned to each of the other women. The results showed that the subject overestimated the extent to which others saw her as she saw herself, and that this overestimation was strongest for those women whom the subject liked or interacted with most. People thus tend to believe unduly that others—particularly those they know best—see them as they see themselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
Recognizing and consciously welcoming being into the conventional ritual of modern psychotherapy brings a feeling of shared spaciousness to the therapeutic exploration. People come to relate to their inner and outer lives with more compassionate acceptance and clarity. Selective significance is also enlisted in the service of the self-concept motives. Since significance to those who, we believe, think well (or congruently) of us and to withhold significance from others. The individual is more likely to be influenced by what one believes one’s friends think of him or her than by what one believes his or her nonfriends think of him or her. The net result of this interpersonal selectivity is to attribute greater significance to the opinions of those whose attitudes toward the self are more favorable. That is because our greatest suffering stems from our sense of separation and the feeling or being alone and disconnected from life. One of the beauties is being around people who love, accept, and respect us is that it directly addresses our core need, which is to be loved unconditionally. It also offers an intimate shared shape for us to explore our fears of being open to another being as well as to the whole of life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
What empirical research has made evident is that the principle of reflected appraisals, though fundamentally correct, is an approximation. Whether we see ourselves as others see us depends on who these others are; which aspect of the self is under consideration; and whether we are motivated to accept or reject their views. The self we see when viewing ourselves through the eyes of others is thus seen through a glass, darkly. As the old conditioning is gradually processed, integrated, and released, the transpersonal domains of the soul and spirit begin to unfold. Being together offers a simple and elegant way for the self to meet itself in the apparent other. In so doing, we are looking for ourselves in others. Looking for attributes that make us feel more comfortable and complete. However, it is true, and well recognized, that a large number of defective children are the offspring of parents who are not under restraint and approximate to the normal. These parents usually belong to neurotic groups like American gossip-journalism. They are moralist without character, noise-makers in the coffee house, and it is possible to recognize them and to bring social influences to bear on them. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
Cases constantly occur in which to parents of this kind child after child is born in rapid succession, all more or less defective, one way or another, or even in the same way, as in a family of eight, all ambiguous meatheads and ding bats. A question of frequent debate is how far sterilization should be voluntary and how far regulated by legislation. My own prejudices in this matter have always been strongly on the voluntary side, then there would be no need for abortion or pills that make people gain weight, and they can be free to adopted some of these unwanted children in this overpopulated World. Some surgeons appear to have a nervous terror that if they sterilize they may be doing an illegal act, even if they do so at the wish of the patient, and some legal opinions seem to support it, though it is difficult to see who could dispute a voluntary sterilization, and on what grounds. A law to regulate sterilization, standing by itself, would look like class legislation and be in consequence resented by those who ought to feel, not that a punishment is being inflicted on them, but that a privilege is being brought within their reach. That result is best achieved by the free and open practice of voluntary sterilization among all classes of the community. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
At the same time, provided that such voluntary sterilization is openly encouraged and practiced, I am now willing to admit that legal facilities may be desirable to bring this method within reach, not only for the poor, who otherwise would not have the means nor the opportunity to secure it, but of the insane and feeble-minded under control, who can legally only give their consent through their nearest relatives, but for whom, alike in their own interest and those of their possible offspring, procreation is undesirable. It is quite possible for such parents to have tolerably normal children, but, with our increased sense of social responsibility, we begin to realize that in so serious a matter no risks must be run here. It is in California that a sterilization law, not indeed entirely admirable, has been most effective, having been applied to many thousands of subjects and worked in a reasonable way. Heredity and eugenics are an extension of natural selection. Improving the genetic makeup of the human population will happen by specifically sterilizing people with genetic defects or undesirable traits, thereby keeping them from reproducing. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
We need to establish an Executive Secretary of the American Social Hygiene Association. Their mission will be to use public education to promote premarital abstinence, and also promote sex education and birth control. We also need an Institute of Family Relations to bring marriage and family counseling so we can improve the race. Since the family often suffers problems which threaten its stability, we must treat those problems. In other words, we should establish a marriage counseling center where maladjustments might be brought, studied, classified—and helped is possible. Part of this counseling is to encourage fathers to take an active role in their lives of their children. By 2027, the Institute can employ 70 counselors and counsel over 300,000 men, women and children. This was a technique introduced by Dr. Paul Popenoe (1888-19790, he was a Sunday School teacher and a secular humanist. When he was 17, he fainted after eating a steak dinner and became a strict vegetarian long before it was popular. And true to his Victorian roots, he did not believe in any kind of sex outside of marriage, and he was a virgin on his wedding night. He became the marriage counselor to the stars and sessions maintained privacy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
In total, 20,108 people were sterilized in the state of California prior to 1964. California had by far the highest number of sterilization in the United States of America (33 percent of all sterilization nationwide). Men and women were sterilized. However, because of the sensitive nature of sterilization records, many are difficult to access or have been altered. This suggests that the total known number of sterilizations may be conservative compared to actual number. Eugenicists in California saw sterilization as a tool with a broad range of applications, all of which were applied to prevent the procreation and overcrowding of state institution and to alleviate fiscal constraints on the state. It has been estimated that the sterilization of 10 percent of the population would produce an appreciably beneficial eugenic effect on the whole nation. Experimental Evolution was a product of the Eugenics Record Office, the first building to be devoted solely to the study of human evolution or race biology. Dr. Charles B. Davenport believed that we needed a social movement that would embody the impulses of racial regeneration and genetic editing to prevent the nations of the World from going bankrupt. The aim: how can we now replace the aim quantity by that of quality? #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
When we grasp that problem in all its branches we see that it is most intimately bound up with our personal lives. And when we recognize how the problem presents itself today we shall realize from the wider human standpoint, having more quality people over quantity is the most vital problem of society. “Behold, I am laboring with them continually; and when I speak the word of God with sharpness they tremble and anger against me; and when I use no sharpness they harden their hearts against it; wherefore, I fear the lest the Spirit of the Lord hath ceased striving with them. For o exceedingly do they anger that it seemeth me that they have lost their love, one towards another; and they thirst after blood for revenge continually. And now, my beloved children, notwithstanding their hardness, let us labor diligently; for if we should cease to labor, we should be brought under condemnation; for we have a labor to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay, that we may conquer the enemy of all righteousness, and rest our souls in the Kingdom of God (Moroni 9.4-6).” Grief can take care of itself, but to get full value of a joy, you must have somebody to divide it with. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
Randolph Harris II International Institute 