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Take Pride in Your Work and You Will be Successful
Sometimes individuals have jobs that lack challenge and variety, but everyone likes a career that satisfies our requirement for novelty and achievement. In situations like these, one is required to expend additional psychic energy to reap the desired benefits. Without some effort, a dull job will stay dull. The basic solution is quite simple, it involved paying close attention to each step involved in the job, and then asking: Is this step necessary? Who needs it? If it is really necessary, can it be done better, faster, more efficiently? What additional steps could make my contribution more valuable? #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
Our attitude to work usually involves spending a lot of effort trying to cut corners and do as little as possible. However, that is a short-sighted strategy. If one spent the same amount of attention trying to find ways to accomplish more on the job, one would enjoy working more—and probably be more successful at it, too. The pressure to perform can easily generate shame, and the presence of shame makes it harder to adequately perform which just catalyzes more shame. Part of what is required here is to know the particular origins of the pressure to perform. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Even some of the most important discoveries come about when scientist, paying attention to a routine process, notices something new and unusual that is required to be explained. Wilhelm C. Roentgen discovered radiation when he noticed that some photographic negatives showed signs of being exposed even in the absence of light; Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin when he noticed that bacterial cultures were less dense on dishes that had not been cleaned and were moldy; Rosalyn Yalow discovered the radioimmunoassay technique after she noticed that diabetics absorbed insulin slower than normal patients, instead of faster, as it had been assumed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
In all these cases—and the records of science are full of similar one—a humdrum event is transformed into a major discovery that changes the way we live because someone paid more attention to it than the situation seemed to require. If Archimedes, lowering himself into the bath, had only thought, “Darn, I got the floor wet again, what will the missus say?” humankind might have had to wait another few hundred years to understand the principle of fluid displacement. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
As Rosalyn Yalow describes her own experience: “Something comes up, and you recognize that it has happened.” Sounds simple, but most of us are usually too distracted to recognize when something happens. As minute changes can result in great discoveries, so small adjustments can turn a routine job, one dreads, into a professional performance one can look forward to with anticipation each morning. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
First, one must pay attention so as to understand thoroughly what is ha ppening is the only way to do the job; then one is required to entertain alternatives and to experiment with them until a better way is found. When employees are promoted to more challenging positions, it usually is because they followed these steps in their previous jobs. However, even if no one else notices, the worker who uses psychic energy this way will have a more satisfying job. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
One of the clearest examples I have ever seen was when I did research in a factory where audiovisual equipment was being assembled on a production line. Most of the workers on the line were bored and looked down on their job as something beneath them. Then I met Matthew, who had a completely different take on what he was doing. He actually thought his job was difficult, and that it took a great skill to do it. It turned out he was right. Although he had to do the same job as everyone else, he had trained himself to do it with the economy and the elegance of a master. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
About four hundred times a day, a movie camera would stop at his station, and Matthew had forty-three seconds to check out whether the sound system met specifications. Over a period of years, experimenting with tools and patterns of motion, he had been able to reduce the average time it took him to check each camera to twenty-eight seconds. He was as proud of this accomplishment as an Olympic athlete would be if, after the same number of years spent preparing, he could break the forty-four second mark in the 400-meter sprint. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Matthew did not get a medal for his achievement, and reducing the time to go his job did not improve production, because the line still kept moving at the same old speed. However, he loved the exhilaration of using his skills fully: “It is better than anything else—a whole lot better than watching TV.” And because he sensed that he was getting close to his limit in the present job, he was taking evening courses for a diploma that would open up new options for him in electronic engineering. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
It will come as no surprise that the same type of approach is required for solving the problem of stress at work, since stress is detrimental to achieving flow. In common usage, the work stress applies both to the tensions we feel, and to its external causes. This ambiguity leads to the erroneous assumption that external stress must be inevitably result in psychic discomfort. However, here again, there is no one-to-one relations between the objective and the subjective; external stress (which to avoid confusion we might call strain) need not lead to negative experiences. It is true that people feel anxious when they perceive the challenges and skills rests on a subjective evaluation that is amenable to change. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
God’s Design– Benei Ha’Elohim
Through the Middles Ages (5th to 15th Century), one predominant feature of the European World view was that all aspects of nature, including all forms of life and their relationships to one another, never changed. This view was partly shaped by a feudal society. Feudal society is one that was popular during Medieval Europe, and society was shaped around relationships derived from holding of land, in exchange for service or labour. Feudal society was itself a hierarchical, rigid class system that had not changed much for centuries. It was also influenced by an extremely powerful religious system where the teachings of Christianity were taken literally. Because everyone believed in God, it was generally accepted that all life on Earth had been created by God exactly as it existed in the present, and the belief that life forms could not change came to be known as fixity of species. The plan of the entire Universe was viewed as God’s design. In what is called the argument from design, anatomical structures were planned to meet the purpose for which they were required. Wings, arms, eyes, and so on, fit the function they performed, and nature was a deliberate plan of the Grand Designer. Also, pretty much everybody believed that the Grand Designer had completed his works fairly recently.
Matthew Harris analyzed the begat chapter of Genesis, in the Holy Bible, which is God’s Constitution, and determined that the Earth was created 4004 Before Christ. That means the Earth is only 6,020 years old. For Europeans, the discovery of the New World and circumnavigation of the globe in the fifteenth century overturned some very basic idea about the planet. As Europeans began to explore the New World, their awareness of biological diversity was greatly expanded as they saw plants and animals previously unknown to them. It was also discovered that the Sun is the center of the Universe, and without the Sun, there could be no life, not just on Earth, but the entire Universe would go pitch black and freeze. I see life as a gorgeously ironical, beautifully indifferent, splendidly suffering bit of chaos, the tragedy of which gives Man a significance, while without his losing fight with fate he would be a tepid, silly animal. The Nephilim are the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men in Genesis 6:4, or giants who inhabit Canaan in Numbers 13:33. Nephilim were a race that came to dominate the antediluvian (pre-flood) World, and they were a hybrid race between two distinct beings. They were a cross between fallen Angels (Sons of God or Benei Ha’Elohim) of The Watchers and human women. They were the Sons of God, rather than of men, because they had been created, not born.
Such a description, of course, would apply only to Adam (Luke 3:38) and to the Angels, whom God had directly crated. European scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries developed methods and theories that revolutionized scientific thought. Their technological advances permitted investigations of natural phenomena and opened up entire new Worlds for discoveries such as never before had been imagined. However, even with these advances, the idea that, over time, living forms could change simply did not occur to people. Forces as wind water, erosion, local flooding, frost, the decomposition of vegetable mater, volcanoes, earthquakes, and glacial movements had all contributed in the past to produce the geological landscape that exists in the present. Moreover, the fact that these processes could still be seen in operation indicated that geological change continued to occur and that the forces that drove such changes were consistent, or uniform, over time. In other words, while various aspects of the Earth’s surface (e.g., climate, plants, animals, and land surfaces) are variable through time, the underlying process that influences they are constant. For the Earth to rapidly change, it would have to be extremely old, but because the changes happen as a relatively slow pace, it is more than likely the Earth is very young.
Rape and Acquaintance Rape
The crime of rape is committed if a person has sexual intercourse or oral sex with an individual without their consent. A person can be considered the victim of rape even if one does not resist their assailant, especially is resisting could put one in danger of physical harm or death. Conversely, a person can be found guilty of rape even if the individual did not use physical force; the mere threat of physical violence or intimidation is enough to support a rape conviction. A person is considered a rape victim is one was not able to give consent to intercourse or oral sex because one was inebriated, drugged, mentally incompetent, or a minor.Sexual intercourse is recognized by law as an essential part of marriage, and couples may divorce or have their marriages annulled when sexual relations are denied without good cause. However, a husband or wife’s right to force their spouse to have sex with them is no longer recognized, as it once was. In most states, even if you are married and you have intercourse with your spouse without their consent you can be charged with rape. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Crystal Harris, age 43, and her now former husband Shawn Harris, age 44, had been college sweet hearts. They were married in 1996, and the marriage started off pleasant, they had two beautiful boys, with golden hair, the color of the Sun, and dreamy blue eyes, which are the color of the Sky. However, then Shawn became violent, and started abusing his wife Crystal. In 2008, Shawn Harris sexually attacked his then wife Crystal Harris, while their two sons were upstairs. Shawn had been acting strange that night and Crystal felt that something was going to happen so she placed a tape recorder it in the draw, when he started attacking her, she reached over and pressed record. As Shawn was raping her, you could hear Crystal on the audio recording saying “I don’t want to be raped, you’re hurting my neck.” #RyanPhillippe 2 of 6
Despite Shawn Harris’ record of domestic violence and the fact that he was awaiting a separate trial for rape charges during their divorce proceedings, family court judge Gregory Pollack ordered Crystal Harris to pay her husband $1,000.00 a month, in part because she was the household manager, earning $120,000.00 a year as a financial advisor, while Shawn was a househusband, who stayed him with the kids. Before the birth of the boys Shawn was a used car salesman. Shawn Harris was convicted of forced oral sex, the other two charges he faced were spousal rape by force, and sodomy. The tape recording was key in getting this conviction. Crystal Harris was also forced to pay Shawn’s legal fees of $47,000.00. However, she believes it was worth it because she thinks he might have eventually killed her. Critics say that it was traumatizing to have Crystal Harris finically support her abuser and flat-out-wrong. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Most rape victims are shielded from the public spotlight, but Crystal Harris is trying to get a law passed that protects rape victims from having to pay alimony to s spouse who rapes them. “It takes a real person, a real victim to show her case, show her face and lobby and get the law passed one step at a time,” reports Crystal Harris. In every state, rape is a felony punishable by imprisonment. A rapist who causes severe physical injuries to the victim or who rapes a child can be charged with aggravated rape and receive more severe sentence for the crime. Men are also victims of rape, but often they do not report the crimes. If you are raped, report the crime to the police as soon as possible. If possible, do not shower or bathe until after you have been examined by a doctor, a physical examination can provide crucial evidence to support your contention that you have been raped and may help identify your assailant. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 6
Give the police the clothing you were wearing at the time of the rape and the bed sheets. Answer the questions from the police truthfully and carefully. However, if an officer should suggest to you that you instigated the attack, ask for a victim’s advocate or ask that the officer’s supervisor be present. Then answer no more questions until your request is granted. Call a rape victim hotline or community health center for counseling and emotional support. It is common for rape victims to experience periods of trauma that can last for months or even years. Early counseling can help you to resume a normal life. Date rape, or acquaintance rape is the term used for rape committed by a person the victim knows socially. It also covers nondating situation, such as rape by a coworker, neighbor, or classmate. Estimates are that date rape accounts for 80 percent of all rapes–, that is only 20 percent are committed by strangers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
For victims of date rape, prosecutions of such rapes present a distinctive set of problems. Because the rapist knows the victim, he or she may try to coerce one into not reporting the crime. It the rapist is an intimate partner, the victim may feel guilty about subjecting him to prosecution. In addition, the victim may be afraid of the attacker and be sacred of being accused of having seduced the rapist with the allegation being that the victim consented to sexual relations and later claimed that they were raped, or bringing rape charges as a retaliation because one was jilted. Because people realize that if they are raped, their behavior will be scrutinized and their character may be questioned, many victims decide not to report the crime or do not report it right away. Because a delay in reporting the crime may also be due to psychological trauma, some courts allow the prosecution to present expert evidence to that effect in order to give the victim the opportunity to explain the delay. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Haircare by Heir
Hair is so important to so many individuals, it adds personality to a person, and so many people take pride in their hair. However, some people like to wear weaves or braids to extend, thicken, protect, and add length to their hair. That is fine. Nonetheless, one has to be careful about who does their hair and what techniques are used to add hair. Many people glue tracks into their hair as a method of making it thicker, and it looks nice, but the glue can adhere to your natural hair and when you remove the extensions, they could pull your own hair out. Not only that, but when you glue hair in, it could also clog the pores in your scalp and cause baldness. If you want to make your hair thicker, longer, or add braids, it is best to go to a professional shop. The best method for weaving your hair is to actually braid the hair the is growing out of your scalp and sew tracks of weave into the braid. If you do not know how to do the process, then go to a shop because you could injure yourself. Also, when adding braids to your hair, it is best to see a professional because someone could braid your hair too tight and cause you hairline to recede. Because hair takes so long to grow and you want to keep it as long and healthy as you can, treat it right.
Talk to a professional and find a style and products that work for you. Also, it matters what you put inside of your body, too. Drink plenty of water and eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Starving yourself, eating junk food, and unnecessary stress can cause your hair to fall out. Also, some people like myself can wash their hair every day, but not everyone can. Washing your hair daily may strip it of natural oils and dry it out and cause it to fall out. Also, the hair dryer and curling iron could damage your hair. Personally, I do wash my hair every day, but I also deep condition it all day, every day. I wash my hair with Tresemme expert selection platinum strength with renewing complex, it is a strengthening shampoo. And I follow a wash up with Tresemme 24 hour body, with volume control complex conditioner. I do not use oil in my hair at all, just conditioner, and that works for me. You have to figure how what works best for your type of hair. Best wishes. A Harris is supposed to have nice hair, and never let anyone make you ashamed of your hair or how you do it. What I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest person.
Into the Wild
The imprudence of our thoughts recoils upon our heads. Egoistic individualism is the most prominent characteristic of polyandric people; they tend to act on their own, making no attempt to win the support of their fellows, with whom they are often in conflict; they have no genuine talent for organizations. However, at the same time wish to assert themselves, overestimating their own abilities (which do not carry them beyond the average in the own professions, though they may be highly accomplished), and are apt to show morbid susceptibility when they fail to secure recognition. They tend, indeed, to be restlessly nervous, and frequently pass on the nervosity to their offspring. At the same time, they are often attractive, and they pay much attention to their appearance. The monandric individual shows totally different traits. This individual is sincere, faithful, not externally formal, but devoted to their professional duties. (And Dr. M.R. Phillippe remarks incidentally that you are making a mistake to suppose that the monandric individual is unfitted for public life, or that for such life the polyandric individual is better suited.) One possesses energetic organizing capacity and is usually able to deal effectively with both their private and public life, assisted in this by the stability and balance of the monandric individual’s character.
One is guided less by vanity than by honour and the sense of one’s own inner worth. Dr. M.R. Phillippe concludes that the moral characteristics of the monogamous individual are mostly beneficial, while those of the polygamous individual are mostly negative. As we are, he affirms, so we love; our way of love is not a thing in itself, but related in the most intimate manner to the whole of our character. This analysis is instructive. It is interesting, that is, to find even under the revolutionized social conditions of Soviet Russia not only that the people of what some would consider antiquated fashioned type is still predominant, but that they are regarded with as much admiration as we might expect to find in a conservative country like Germany. It would almost seem indeed that the polyandric individual whom, in the opinion of some Western persons, Sacramento, California USA favour, is there unduly depreciated. It is generally admitted on all sides that the younger generation in Russia, under Soviet conditions, has been passing through a transitional phase in pleasures of the flesh, which has admitted extravagancies, even of opposing nature: Some enthusiasts, revolting against the easy sex morality of the antiquated Czarist regime, have sought to subordinate sex and uphold Puritanical ideals.
Conversely, others regarding the old morality as bourgeois, consider libertinage a duty and question the sound political opinions of individuals who resist them. Such extravagancies mark every time of transition. There is really more to be said then Dr. Harris is inclined to admit. That may in part be due to the fact of who the investigators were. Dr. Harris points out, however, that the depreciation of the polyandric individual is share by men and women, even the ones who form temporary relationships with them, for people who form relationships with the harlotry individuals are simply looking as them as convenient means of satisfying sexual needs, merely as substitutes for prostitution, and feel for them no high regard. That, Dr. Harris considers, is an influence making for the degradation of polyandric individuals, whose life-courses are not usually happy. It is unnecessary to add that the monandric individual, who is peculiarly adapted for parenthood and family life, will not easily be deprived of that career. So we still have, notwithstanding all the modifications that we can regard as within the limits of probability, the family persisting, essentially, in its primitive form: father, mother, and offspring. The impulses that make these three units a trinity are all primordial: the desire of parents for each other, the desire of each for the child, and the dependence of the child on its parents, rightly considered on both its parents, for even where there is no material required of a father there is yet a spiritual requirement. Prudence can only direct us to take more cautious measures for the future, and so, if possible, frustrate the bad effects which our imprudence has occasioned. Prudence is always readiest to go on duty where there is the least danger.
The Journal of Social Hygiene
The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again. Eclipsed as they may be in the gross appreciation of the World by other people, who excel in this and that accomplishment, individuals that nourish Nice Feelings and are intimate with the Fine Shames carry their own test of intrinsic value. Whatever may be the evils resulting from a too susceptible heart, nothing can be hoped from an insensible one. Though the scripture obliges me to remain contented, it does not enjoin me to shut my eyes to my own merit, nor restrain me from seeing when I am injured by an unjust comparison. When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window. Our proverbs want rewriting. They were made in Winter, and it is Summer now, or at least it feels like it is. Young people of both genders are not in a position to view a larger proportion of the facts, about marriage and extra-marital affairs manifestations, than were open to the generations preceding them, and they are acquiring the courage to act in accordance with the facts. That means many mistakes are being made, for the deepest facts of the sensual life can only be learnt by experience, and experience can only come slow. However, it is perhaps better to make the mistakes of facing life than to make the mistakes of running away from life. For those mistakes may enrich and enlighten, while these are apt to prove futile. The paths of the sensual life are beset by difficulties; but so is the whole life. If we are to live in any true sense at all we are compelled to live precariously.
A large proportion of the men and women of to-day form extra-marital affairs—whether or not they ultimately lead to marriage—which they conceal, or seek to conceal, from the World, this has always been so; what is new is the attitude taken towards such relationships, leading to the conception of the companionate marriage, that is, an openly acknowledged and recognizable relationship less binding than ordinary marriage, through liable to become ordinary marriage should children be born. This conception has not been put forward as a method of relaxing morals, but rather of supporting them, since the open recognition of a kind of relationship which already exists secretly on a large scale cannot but be a steadying and ennobling influence. The preceding considerations represent conditions which are modifying marriages in our Western civilization. However, they are far from overthrowing marriage or threatening the life of the family. On the contrary, they help to strengthen them. It is the rigid institution that is broken; the institution that cannot change is dying. By its flexibility and its adaptation to changing conditions, the family reveals its power of growth. However, marriage, it may once more be repeated, rests fundamentally on biological instincts and the facts of constitutional organization; it is not strictly an institution. When I wanted to go upstairs, there was my spouse coming down; or when my spouse wanted to go down, there I was coming up. That is married life, according to my experience of it.
Study your spouse closely for the next four-and-twenty hours. If your good mate does not exhibit something in the shape of a contradiction in that time, Heaven help you, –you have married a monster. The flexibility and the adaptation are limited, and if they sometime seem extreme, that is simply because we happen to be dealing with individual cases of constitutional variation, such as we can statistically estimate. Even in Soviet Russia, where the legal flexibility of intimate unions has been carried to an extent unusual in the European World, the fundamental facts of human nature remain the same as well as the ordinary human valuations of those facts. Do you know many spouses who respect and admire their mate? And yet they are their husbands get on very well. How many individuals go to the altar with hearts that would bear inspection by the men who take them there? And yet it does not end unhappily—somehow or other the nuptial establishes jogs on. There are two types of spouses: The monandric individual, who is only drawn into serious relationships with one person, and the polyandric individual, who tends to form numerous relationships with others, either successively or simultaneously. It is found that people who abstain from extra-marital affairs are nearly twice as numerous as the polyandric spouse. You have been inoculated for marriage, and have recovered. If the course of true love never runs smooth, the course of true matchmaking sometimes does so.
The Winchester Mystery House
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A Heart at Ease Files into No Extremes—‘its Ever on its Center
No one knows till the time comes, what depths are within him. Few people have learned to structure their psychic energy autonomously, from the inside. In those successful stories where adults had time on their hands, elaborate cultural practices evolved to keep the mind busy. These included complex cycles of ceremonial rituals, dancing, and competitive tournaments that occasionally lasted for days and weeks on end—such as the Olympic games that started toward the dawn of European history. There are so many who forget to think seriously until it is almost too late. The darkest and most contemptible ignorance is that of not knowing oneself. Even if lacking religious or aesthetic activities, at each village provided endless opportunities for exchanging sleazy gossip and elaborate scholarly discussions; under the largest tree of the square, men not otherwise occupied sat smoking their pipes or chewing mildly hallucinogenic leaves and nuts, and kept their minds ordered through redundant conversation. This is still the pattern followed by men at leisure in the koffee shops of the Mediterranean, or the beer halls of northern Europe.
A man can never be respectable in the eyes of the World or in his own, except so far as he stands by himself and is truly independent. Such methods of avoidance chaos in consciousness work to a certain extent, but they rarely contribute to a beneficial quality of experience. As we have seen earlier, human beings feel best in flow, when they are fully involved in meeting a challenge, solving a problem, and discovering something new. Most activities that produce flow also have clear goals, clear rules, immediate feedback—a set of external demands that focuses our attention and makes the demands on our skills. People may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves. Now these are exactly the conditions that are most often lacking in free time. Of course, if one uses leisure to engage in a sport, an art form, or a hobby, then the requirements for flow will be present. However, just free time with nothing specific to engage one’s attention provides the opposite of flow: psychic entropy, where one feels listless and apathetic. From the last ills no being can save another; therein each man must be his own savior. The father, son, and holy ghost are one.
The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable, but beware the little knowledge of one’s self! Not all free-time activities are the same. One major distinction is between active and passive leisure, which have quite different psychological effects. For example, U.S. teenagers experience flow (defined as high-challenge, high-skill moments) about 13 percent of the time that they spend watching television, 34 percent of the time they do hobbies, and 44 percent of the time they are involved in sports and games. When nature biddeth thee to be good and gentle to others, she commands thee not to be cruel and ungentle to thyself. This suggest that hobbies are about two and a half times more likely to produce a state of heightened enjoyment than TV does, and active games and sports about three times more. Yet these same teenagers spend at least four times more of their free hours watching TV than doing hobbies or sports. Similar ratios are also true for adults. Why would we spend four times more time doing something that has less than half the chance of making us feel good? I cannot conceive anything better calculated to excite sympathy than the spectacle of a man devoting his life to self-worship.
When we asked participants of our studies the question, a consistent explanation begins to appear. The typical teenager admits that biking, or playing basketball, or playing the piano are more enjoyable than roaming though the mall or watching TV. However, they say, to get organized for a basketball game takes time—one has to change their clothes, make arrangements. It takes at least half an hour of dull practice each time one sits down at the piano before it begins to be enjoyable. You may cut off my existence, but you cannot disturb my serenity. In other words, each of the flow-producing activities requires an initial investment of attention before it begins to be fun. One requires such disposable activation energy to enjoy complex activities. If a person is too tired, anxious, or lacks the discipline to overcome that initial obstacle, he or she will have to settle for something that, although less enjoyable, is more accessible. Self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
This is where passive leisure activities come in. To just hang out with friends, read an unchallenging book, or turn on the TV set does not require much in the way of an upfront energy outlay. It does not demand skills or concentration. Thus the consumption of passive leisure becomes all too often the option of choice, not only for adolescents, but for adults as well. No son of Adam ever reads his own heart at all expect by the habit acquired, and the light gained, for some years’ perusal of other hearts; and even then, with his acquired sagacity and reflected light, he can but spell and decipher his own heart, not read it fluently. Of all human dealings, satire is the very lowest, and most mean and common. It is the equivalent in words for what bullying is in deeds; and no more bespeaks a clever man, than the other does a brave one. We are not judges of our own ailments: physicians do not often prescribe for themselves. Every man may, by examining his own mind, guess what passes in the minds of others. When you feel that your own gaiety is counterfeit, it may justly lead you to suspect that of your companions not to be sincere.
Morals and Marriage
The frequency of divorce has much increased since the Great War, but it was steadily if more slowly increasing long before, though in France the incident of divorce increased up to 1921 and since then has somewhat decreased. The post-war so-called “epidemic of marriage” was naturally followed by an “epidemic of divorce,” which is now subsiding, although we may still expect the rate to rise slowly as the impediments are removed. In Japan, it may be remarked, which comes next to the United States in frequency of divorce, there was no post-war rise. The United States holds the record; in 1923 there were 360 divorces to 100,000 of married population (or 149 to 100,000 of the whole population). And in some States, this means one or more divorces to every five marries, though, according to the later American results of Grove and Ogburn, there is one divorce to every seven marriages, actors and musicians constituting the most divorcing professional class. In Europe, Austria, and Switzerland stand high, and England very low with only 6.8 divorces to 100,000 of population. In Russia divorce may be obtained at the wish of either party (and at the wish of both it may be arranged before the Registrar, without recourse to the Courts), yet divorce is far less frequent than in the United States, and the younger generation cultivate the ideals of self-discipline and self-control. Such differences represent differences of social opinion and of religion, as well as discrepant facilities for obtaining divorce. The general advance of divorce corresponds to the normal condition of advanced civilization and represents a necessary and healthy adjustment to the complex social conditions. Divorce by mutual consent (and even on demand of either party) is the goal towards which we are moving, and it has already been reached in some countries.
It is reasonable that a contract formed by mutual consent should be dissolvable by mutual consent, and so far from divorce being destructive to the family, we may agree that it is a necessary means of preserving the dignity of marriage by ending such marriages as have ceased to be worthy of the name. Still, it causes great hardship on the family. Often when couple divorce, it rips their hearts to shreds and scrambles their brains, making them unable to respond to life properly or sometimes they are so damaged that they cannot even work. Divorce may also poison a parent’s relationship with their children to the point children are indifferent to one or both of the parents and in some cases, they may not like one or both of the parents. Then another person caused the parent divorce, or the parent starts dating right after a divorce, the child(ren) may strongly dislike the object of their parents’ affection and may be embarrassed to be seen in public or be associated with the person their parent is dating. The tendency to diminish the rigidity of marriage ties is being carried further, it may be added, than an increased legal facility for divorce can carry it. Many couples marry because they plan to spend their lives together, they work, build bank accounts, homes, and retirement accounts, and when the couple divorces, these assets have to split up and often times one or both parties may not be able to sustain their lifestyle and could end up going broke and losing their homes after paying for a divorce.
Also, their retirement accounts may get drained, and they have to start all over. There is also the issue of child support, parents still are responsible for supporting them kids and may have to pay for them until they turn eighteen and that sometimes can include the cost of a college education, which something cost $100,000.00. There is undouble a tendency in our Western civilization to recognize the existence of sexual relationships outside of marriage altogether, always provided that such relationships are not for the procreation of children. It may be aid that such extra-marital manifestations of the sexual life are no novelty. Prostitution has flourished in secret and even been defended in public, while what is called seduction has everywhere been taking place. However, the novelty often lies in the fact that both prostitution and seduction are diminishing. Prostitution is becoming less attractive and seduction less possible. The palmy days of prostitution (which seems to have begun as a religious rite) were before syphilis entered civilization, and its prestige has been gradually falling ever since. Seduction in the legitimate sense of the word (as seduced is often merely the expression used by women of low social class to describe their first act of sexual intercourse) is only possible when the woman is unduly ignorant of the nature of sexual relations, and the state of affairs is coming to an end. However, when prostitution and seduction are, so far as possible, eliminated, the objections to the formation of sexual relationships—in the absence of higher ethical or religious considerations and provided offspring are not contemplated—largely fall away. There can be no doubt that this new condition is becoming appreciated by younger generations.
The Winchester Mystery House
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The World is a University
The weakness of age is the penalty paid by the folly of youth. The attitudes set in the early years continue to color how we experience work during the rest of our lives. On the job, people tend to use their mind and body to its fullest, and consequently feel that what they do is important, and feel good about themselves while doing it. Yet their motivation is worse than when they are at home, and so is the quality of their moods. Despite huge differences in salary, prestige, and freedom, managers tend to feel only somewhat more creative and active on the job, while clerical and assembly-line workers are no unhappier and dissatisfied. Everyone tends to experience work in the same way. A purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Traditionally, identity and self-respect have been based on the ability to obtain energy from the environment for ourselves and our families’ use. Whether the satisfaction an individual gets from doing a necessary job is partly genetically programmed, or is entirely learned from the culture, the fact is that more or less everywhere both men and women are now providers for their household. Civil rights have made it perfectly normal for both genders to be police officers, firefighters, lawyers, doctors, and engineers.
And it is also becoming more common for men to share in the responsibility of taking care of the child, and we are actually seeing more fathers choose to become househusbands. In fact, 21 percent of men now stay at home to manage the house and child(ren), which is up from just 5 percent in 1989. Both men and women’s self-esteem is strongly attached to what happens to their families. Having a destitute parent or a child who has trouble in school is much greater load on their minds than whatever can happen at work. The double jeopardy that a family and a career impose can be a heavy burden on the self-esteem of people. However, most people still enjoy working for pay than they do staying at home because when a person is earning money, they feel like they are accomplishing more and expect more from themselves, and have the ability to support the house and money to buy what they want without depending on anyone else. When you have to stay at home and have a budget to live on, and are not paid for the work you do in the house, no matter how many hours you put in, you still have to complete your job and still have the same budget to maintain. These issues bring into focus why cleaning the house, cleaning the kitchen, doing laundry, fixing things around the house and balancing the checkbook might sometimes produce negative experiences in a person’s day. However, work can also be challenging. Although you are working for pay, you have to spend a certain number of hours in the office, take breaks at certain times, and are made to interact with people you may not like and hear things you may not want to hear, and you also get performance reviews.
So, no matter how you feel about your job or how tired you are, one must always produce excellent work and be in a relatively good mood. You cannot ditch the guy at the water cooler, who is always waiting around to gossip, instead you have to find a friendly way of telling him that you are busy and hope he catches on. You may not like the overly enthusiastic guy, who works on the same floor as you, seems to take breaks at the same time of you and goes to the bathroom when you do, but you have to still be pleasant. And if you are tired, you cannot just fall asleep at your desk and recklessly complete a project. There are many high expectations to earning a paycheck. In a recent survey, 83 percent of executives, 77 percent of middle level employees, and 61 percent of the unemployed reported that they were satisfied with their lives. So it seems that people who are employed and tend to earn more money are more satisfied with their lives. Perhaps that is because they more than likely are doing jobs they were highly trained for. Nonetheless, without the goal and the challenges usually provided by a job, only a rare self-discipline can keep the mind focused intensely enough to insure a meaningful life.
When we look at flow in the lives of adults, one finds more occasions of it on the job than in free time. Now, remember, flow does not mean you are happy in the moment, it just means you are doing something you find important and that adds to your self-esteem. Them moments when a person is in a high-challenge, high-skill situation, accompanied by feelings of concentration, creativity, and satisfaction, were reported more often at work than at home. Work is like a game that we do during the day, it usually has clean goals and rules of performance. It provides feedback either in the form of knowing that one has finished a job well done, in terms of measurable sales, or through evaluation by one’s supervisor. A job usually encourages concentration and prevents distractions; it also allows a variable amount of control, and—at least ideally—its difficulties match the worker’s skills. Thus work tends to have the structure of other intrinsically rewarding activities that provide flow, such as games, sports, music, and art. In comparison, much of the rest of life lacks these elements. When spending time at home with the family or alone, people often lack clear purpose, do not know how well they are doing, are distracted, feel that their skills are underutilized, and as a result feel bored, worthless, sad, or anxious. So it is no wonder that the quality of experience at work is generally better than one would expect.
Controlling Appearance of the Children
It often happens that if the daughter is right, the mother is wrong, and the mother is not going to have this if she can help it. The desirability of controlling the appearance of the child(ren) in the family brings us to the question of contraception. That is a question around which in the immediate past much controversy raged. It cannot even be said that it has ceased to rage. And since in some countries of the West there are still legal disabilities to be remedied in order to bring the law into harmony with customs and opinion, propaganda is artificially stimulated. There is, however, no longer the shadow of doubt that both the principle and the practice of birth control are now firmly established in all civilized lands, and gradually becoming accepted by every class of the community, so that before long the only matter of dispute will be concerning the best method by which it can be carried out. It is estimated that at the present rate birth control will become practically Universal in our civilization within from twenty-five to fifty years, and it may be that with better conditions of sexual initiation, increased medical study of the difficult problems involved, and the cultivation of self-control, mechanical methods of control will become less necessary. There are three main lines along which this development has proceeded.
In the first place there has been the insistence of women that they will no longer be breeding machines, destroying alike themselves and their excessive progeny. In Russia, where the birth-rate rises and the infantile death rate is falling, the requirement of contraception is recognized, but not yet fully established. Abortion is legalized and conducted with due precaution, but on a large scale this is a poor substitute for contraception. In the second place the economic conditions of life for all social classes in the modern World tend to render caution and foresight necessary in family life, and there are now but few parents who can afford to disregard so completely these conditions, and the responsibilities of bringing up children in the World of to-day, as to have an unlimited family. In the third place, scientific demographers and statisticians are now, with ever increase in the Earth’s population, which up to about two centuries ago was practically stationary, cannot be much longer continued, since even another few decades may suffice to reach the limit of possible expansion. Each of these lines of debate are legitimate. When combined, they are of irresistible force.
Some people practice celibacy as a form of birth control and to preserve their virtue and chastity. Another modern condition which has an important bearing on the family in our Western civilization is constituted by the increase of divorce and the ever-greater legal facilities for securing it. Speaking generally (there are always exceptions) it may be said that in savage societies, as probably in the primitive World, mating, provided they are formed with members of the group with which mating is permitted, are easily formed and rather easily ended. In more advanced barbarous societies, in which property becomes a chief factor in society, masculine influence is more predominant than before over feminine influence, the marriage bond grows more rigid and especially rigid in favour of the husband. In the later civilized social states this rigidity is relaxed, divorce becomes easier and more frequent, and the rights of the genders tend to be equalized. We may see that process in classic Rome. Beginning, it may well be, in a social state of more or less matriarchal constitution, when the Roman social order became patriarchal, marriage in some of its forms was almost indissoluble, and divorce, so far as it existed, was usually a privilege confined to the husband, except in a free marriage, where the wife did not fall under the manus of her husband. However, in the later development the privileges of free marriage were extended to manus marriages, and Roman law became equally liberal to husbands and wives in the matter of divorce. That represents approximately the stage that we have to-day reached in Western civilization.
The Winchester Mystery House
For anyone who loves the number 13, a tour through The Winchester Mystery House is a journey through loss and grief, but ultimately a story of hope and self-reliance. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 