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Love Yourself!
Sorry, we have to abandon Ben Crawford, he was too destructive and abusive to keep using as an enduring character, I do not support Ryan Phillippe, nor any of his work. If you knew what Ryan Phillippe was involved in, you would not be a fan of his. Sometimes we hear about blood sacrifices and celebrities setting others up to die to gain fame and fortune. Sometimes celebrities make a lot of money, and buy mansions they cannot afford and party like they have an unlimited supply of money, but as they get older, and their fame and fortune decline, they become desperate and will do some strange things for some change. Aaliyah Haughton was a rising star and very beautiful. She got involved with some dangerous people, she thought that this man really loved her, but he may have simply sacrificed her to gain fame and notoriety. Sometimes fame makes you a target, sometimes the images and words you are saying is something someone does not want to hear, or maybe you are part of a bloodline that someone wants to end. So there is a group out there that will tear your life apart and give people money to play with your heart strings and end your life for the promise that there will be financial gains for them. My message to you, even if you are not rich nor famous, you know what is right and wrong. If you are in a relationship with someone who is either physically or emotionally abusing you, let go of them. Your life is so very important. There are other people in the World who want to love you, so give them a chance. Once a person is gone from this earth, we cannot bring them back. So save yourself. Especially if you notice that they are involved with people who wish you harm, but then pretend to care, they do not. If someone really loved you, they would put your first, before money and fame.
Secrets and Lies—the Dark Side of Ben Crawford?
For a week, the amount of virtues in the old house would have supplied the neighborhood. A person fond of prying into the secrets of others is not fit to be trusted. Our emotions are complicated. Sometimes we do not even have the words to express accurately the way we are feeling. This inability to always translate our thoughts into words can be very hard for kids, especially for boys. An example of confusing emotions would be when someone is feeling both sad and angry. It would be hard to come up with words to explain the emotion. Even adults, like Ben Crawford, can revert to this childlike feeling, and that is seen when he is out for his morning job, and finds Tom Murphy, his son and a boy he cares for, laying on the ground in a pool of his own blood and lifeless. Someone gave Tom Murphy a sound blow, and sent him to feed fishes. We see and hear shock, anger, sadness, and fear all at once expressed in ben’s face and his tortured scream. Murder is wide-mouthed and will not let God rest till he grants revenge. We never choose to assign motives to the actions of men, when there is any possibility of our being mistaken. He who kills a man has all his sins to answer for as well as his own, because he gave him not the time to repent of them that Heaven designed to allow him. One model of understanding complicated and even competing emotions is to think about our emotions in four categories: mad, sad, worry, and happy. When mad, we are typically being blocked by something that has been placed in our way. Ben Crawford is mad that someone killed his son. The police blocked his way by ruining his reputation and wrongly accusing him of murder. However, worry for the safety family and the community is why Ben Crawford wants to find who the killer is. Worry is seated in Ben’s desire to control the unknown.
People are typically unable to control the past or the future, but those who remain firmly rooted in the present can manage their circumstances more effectively. Detective Cornell’s emotions initially cloud her judgment, and this focuses her mind and heart on the future, the past, and no on the present. She gained greater control over Ben Crawford through lies and deceit. If Ben Crawford had been more aware of his complicated emotions, he would have seen that people were using his empathy, love, and compassion against him as a method of ruining his life. Although Secrets and Lies is just a fictional miniseries, these characters are complicated, real, and relevant to our lives. Good people can be bad. Bad people can do evil things, but also have great intentions. Detective Cornell does some bad stuff because it is her job to make a crime fit the accused. Criminal law is a lot like Geometry, all that an investigator has to is come up with statements and reasons to prove someone is guilty, even if they are not. Reporters and police murder men’s reputations; and that is a worse sort of killing than the one of Tom Murphy. They make it impossible for him to live, stress him out every day, and even rip his family about because the media and police department are a business, and investigations are costly, so focusing on someone who looks guilty or that you can convince the people is guilty keep the business of selling newspapers and investigating crimes going.
Values—enduring beliefs about what matters most in life—can send people with strikingly similar backgrounds down divergent paths in life. The greater the importance a person places on a particular value, the more it will shape attitudes and therefore influence action. Even those whose values mostly mirror one another’s can go different ways and become at odds with one another over a single distortion in the reflection, one glaring dissimilarity in personal priorities. Despite their parallels, their differences make a villain of Ben Crawford, and a hero of him, yet a remaining shared value brings them together in the end. In no case, perhaps, is the decision of a human being impartial, or totally uninfluenced by sinister and selfish motives. These two different viewpoints of Ben Crawford, as a villain and a hero are guided by similar sets of values: Both are ambitious and have a great sense of adventure, both value protecting others, but one wants to conceal the truth. However, Ben remains a good person, although his intentions towards the end of the miniseries change. The psychological values can reveal much about the two different aspects of Ben’s personality, his judgment, and his ability to tolerate distress, and the external influences they encounter along the way. All these factors may play major roles in the personal development and transition of Ben Crawford, such as his respective decision to make a very difficult decision about the murder of his son. Our motives are always pretty badly mixed.
Secrets and Lies—Cape Fear River Blood Trails
Rising in eerie silence amid the lonely community of Wilmington, North Carolina, USA is the Crawford mansion. The ornate structure located in the seemingly quiet cul-de-sac of Chelsea Bay Drive—a montage of Gothic and Victorian architecture complete with window’s walk and classical columns—has stood vacant since mid-2014, a ghostly reminder of a colorful past. There is no shortage of secrets and lies in the neighborhood. The old house, now vandalized and dilapidated, was built in 1887 by Ben Crawford’s great grandfather, a German immigrant who amassed a fortune farming and shipping grain, and became one of the founding fathers of Wilmington. Six children were born and grew up there is apparent happy prosperity. The grandfather arrived in this county with $4 in his hand, died in the house—a very wealthy man. The house was eventually inherited by Ben Crawford, and once again it was a social mecca. Between the concert appearances with the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra, the Crawford’s entertained lavishly. The gala era ended with the death of an unknown guest in 2007, and the townspeople gathered and burned an effigy of one town resident. However, before the effigy was buried, it was found that Liberty still had a pulse, and celebration ensued. The house was then a focus of a series of disputes. Should the place be demolished, relocated or refurbished? Christy Crawford, Ben’s wife, reported she felt an energy in the house. The sound of crying late at night, lights that flashed on and off, uncanny cold drafts.
One night she came home and allegedly all the lights were off, as she approached the front door, it was 2am in the morning, and she heard the piano playing, then went back to her car and through the window saw a play man playing the piano in the dark. During the night, Mr. and Mrs. Crawford would be awakened by a child crying, but upon investigation they would find their children sound asleep. “Finally, I just came to believe that there was something in the house that I could not understand,” Christy Crawford admitted to detective Cornell, who was investigating her husband for a murder. Through the Crawford’s grew accustomed to their unseen housemates, friends did not. No one knows what part they played in the long history of the old mansion. The time came when no one would live in the house. Once a showplace, the windows were boarded up. Whether this was to keep the living out or the dead in, nobody was quite certain. What to do with the vacant, frequently vandalized home, was debated. Numerous schemes were formulated over the years. Jess Murphy secretly got pregnant with Ben’s baby, while Christy was away and planned to ruin their marriage and use the baby as ransom money to acquire and renovate the house. In an effort to find out what was behind the strange happenings, Christy Crawford held a séance in the house. Almost immediately she was confronted by the apparition of a hawk-faced man, the same man she saw playing the piano. One leg had been severed in a farming accident, the other crippled by arthritis. He was bitter, angry….
When researchers electrically stimulate the amygdala, individuals can immediately experience a fear response and demonstrate all the symptoms of fear, including sweating and a rapid hears rate. Human beings require the fear response especially when living in caves with lions, tigers, and bears as their adversaries. With the fear response, heart rate goes up, breathing quickens and becomes shallow, the stomach starts to turn, as blood flow moves to the area where it senses danger, placing one in a ready state to defend themselves. In the physical body’s effort to survive, it will attempt to control the external environment in any way possible even if that requires jumping out of the way of a car, fighting off a perceived attack, or seemingly levitating. In an increasingly stress-filled World, people’s bodies often invoke the fight-or-flight response as the biological self perceives an existential threat despite the absence of such a threat. Examples of this can include selling a haunted house and sneaking away to take a test that can result in sheer panic. An underlying propensity for anxiety or perfectionistic style can fuel the fight-or-flight response and makes one believe in the little “brain myths” that can cause us to think we must control variables that are far beyond our control. Stressed brains seek control over stressors, real or imagined, and that is why Christy Crawford seems too frigid. Apparently, she has some senses or intuition no one else is tuned into.
Christy and Ben Crawford are intriguing because as characters, they situations and formulations have that urgent, irrefutable quality that we call mythic; hence their presence affords a sense of spaciousness or wholeness. They become inviting and compelling, exactly like Biblical myths; we think easily of modern Job, Noah, and the Virgin Mary plays, of Satan figures in the miniseries, of the enlarging presence of the Cain and Adam motifs. The stories in Secrets and Lies become mythical and are wound into modern plots, these are the more comprehensive; they offer wider realms in which we move closer to totality. We come, then, to another matter in which the function of the Secrets and Lies miniseries has an affinity with the religious. With Ben Crawford, we have a perennial problem. When looking at his life and family, we are getting from a smaller to a larger sense of life. It is a human habit to be always, as we move from age to age, drifting into new constrictions; every new liberating perspective, like abortion, an extramarital affair, childbirth, and divorce imposes its own rigidities; in Secrets and Lies we flee from one half-truth through a wide-open for that turns out to lead us to another half-truth or brain lie. We run from the excessive spirituality of Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the nineteenth century) to the excessively physicality of the Secrets and Lies which could be set in the twentieth century. From hyper-genteel to the self-assured vulgar, from a strong sense of the unmentionable to the inability to stop mentioning it, from tiptoeing over the surface of life to being unable to get up to the surface from Cape Fear River. We are always influx, trying now this strait and now that.
Fortunately, there is help. Fear and the requirement to control external events repeatedly arise in Ben Crawford’s personality. He fears for his wife and feels the requirement to solve this murder of Tom Murphy to free her from social isolation. He also fears the loss and potential death of his daughters, after all, the killer is lurking in this Cape Fear River town. Ben Crawford embarrassingly challenges and reprimands detective Cornell so that this investigation will remain focused on not simply closing a case, but actually finding out who committed the crime to prevent it from happening again and again. Anger and frustration are clearly evident in Ben’s face. His heart is with Christy and cannot also be with Jess Murphy, his mistress. While Christy is “away” Ben Crawford loses sight of the mission because of his loneliness and fear from Christy’s safety. However, a real man is supposed to release his fear and not allow emotions to cloud his judgment. At every turn, Ben demonstrates his core fear and unreasonable goal setting. He repeatedly experiences the pull to save others to prevent bad things from happening. Ultimately, the variables that he strives to control grow into the most grandiose goal of all: the establishment of peace and righteousness throughout the community and World. As Ben attempts to control seen, unforeseen, and imagined tragic life and communal events, he experiences failure time and time again.
Ben Crawford fits the model of the pervasive perfectionist. He increasingly responds with anger and ultimately rage. He perceives himself as having failed his family by not having saved his son from the killer. Ben’s response to this perceived self-imposed failure is to react with rage in an attempt to seek moralistic justice by ripping the town apart until the killer is found. More failures ensue as Ben is exposed for having an affair with the neighbor, and this builds on his lack of control. Instead of looking inward, focusing on his emotions, and being mindful of the moment and his purpose, Ben externalizes and emotionally reacts with little thought to his underlying fears and anxiety. Over and over, he runs into variables he cannot control, and this plants more seeds of anxiety, doubt, and fear. Ben Crawford grew up in an abusive household, where he would be physically attacked for even minor infractions. For a child struggling to see the best in people, finding coping mechanisms, in the midst of his upbringing, was incredibly difficult. As an adult, living in the Victorian house, having a family, and being part of a once peaceful community, which he helped create, were the only things that made his life worth living. The familiar relationship between Tom Murphy and Ben Crawford is the most tortured I could imagine. Ben went from loving this boy as his own son, to being accused of his murder, and then finding out the boy is his biological child. The drive Ben Crawford displays to find the killer of his son and save his family has been a teary-eyed catharsis for me. The bond a father has with his lifeless son, even pervades death.
A letter from Ben Crawford (Ryan Phillippe) to his mythical son: It took me a while to translate why Ryan Phillippe also known as Ben Crawford has always been one of my favorite actors (characters). I remember seeing that movie Cruel Intentions, and my friend Nicole joked and said, “Look, someone has been spying on you and Heather and made a movie about your lives.” I felt a connection with Ryan Phillippe, and just dismissed him as a face that would remain unattainable, so why even focus on him? However, once I tried to put the puzzle together, it made sense. I just wish I would have had someone there to point it out to me sooner. That is why I tell this story often, to show that Secrets and Lies and Ryan Phillippe helps. And for the little boy I used to be, it was the only help I had. With love, fish is able to swim in the water and birds are able to fly in the sky and nights are as clear as days. Without love, life will be like a harp with broken strings and an antique crystal chandelier without gas, and it is cold even in Summer. Although my appearance is not beautiful, I am the tenderest person to you. I cannot forget your curved smiling eyebrows, which accompany me during the night. Years go by, but sincere love is left. How can I call you? Those withered trees in the Winter have sprouted the branches of Spring for they believe Spring comes and larks have sung songs—how can I call you? And although you seem not to know, it is I who has gotten you through these dark days, I have watched you all of your life. May we be stars in the sky of youth scattering whiteness and ever-lasting glory together. Our sincere love is smooth water of Cape Fear River, shining the Sun and the Moon in our hearts. A little regard, a deep missing, a thick love and a sweet memory. I am waiting for you the time you return silently. The person of one’s heart, the heart of a person. Even flowers and birds will be infatuated.
Secrets and Lies—the First Gay Teenager
Father and son myths attract huge audiences, the story of God, the creator of Earth and the Milky Way Galaxy, the Father of Christ is one of the World’s most ancient tales know to humans. God wanted desperately to bond with a son he did not know, who was taken away from him. Join me and we will have peace on Earth is what God told his son. The most magnificent and beautiful flowers in the World is youth and life. Dear son, may our youth and life glow as splendid light, and God created and Sun and the Moon. In this World, successful people are those who strive for the opportunity they want. If we cannot find any opportunity, we will create them for ourselves. You have infinite wisdom like spring and industrious hands. Dear son, luck and happiness will accompany you no matter where you are. Let us open the door of puzzles with the golden key of wisdom, and force our way into the palace of creation. The prowess of a sail shows all the more in storms and waves and the fun of life in ups and downs. May you sail through storms and waves and blaze a trail up to the summit! It is not the setback that is dreadful but the despair in failure and repentance. All can start a new, and hope lies just ahead. On the voyage of our life, everything will be old expect time. There is a red Sun greeting you everyday.
It is another promising day, please cherish it! On the long voyage of our life, every step is a test. However, making clear of one’s direction and aim, knowing one’s potentiality and stepping forward resolutely are more important. A river consists of many brooks and a high mountain piles up by thousands of tons of stone. Absorb nutrition from knowledge extensively. May we be as grand mansions as high as a mountain and as deep as a big river. Viewing Secrets and Lies for the first time was and is for many people a life-changing experience. Without a word, Ben Crawford’s mere presence bleeds ultimate power and fear. The moment you see his golden blonde hair and blue eyes, you knew you liked Ben Crawford. Ben Crawford is aspirational in his goal of community stability and peace. As the miniseries progressed, he went from being a God, to being more and more human. As a little boy, I could not understand what I was sensing about Ben. As my dad and I left the mansion that night in March of 2014, he held my hand. Squeezing it, he looked down and me and said, “You know that Ben Crawford was pretty cool.” I looked into his eyes, and hugged him, and agreed. Ben was cool. The actor, Ryan Phillippe, was in a movie called 54, and he inhabits my apartment sometimes as a testament to that coolness. One night he left his underwear.
How cool is it a murdering, planet-creating, prince-torturing (his son, I might add) machine of a man be cool? Cool is probably not the right word, but more important, I do not believe Ryan Phillippe was evil. Ryan Phillippe was not a bad guy. He was just very scared. Living under Hollywood rule has to be stressful. Freedoms are being undermined, the public is frantic, the existential threat of death is unleashed, and the knowledge that his character’s son has been killed or expelled offers little to no hope. The tiny rebellion has little chance against the Ryan Phillippe or the regional governors who holds his son captive in the basis of fear. Other threats are ever present from the community, bounty hunters, slavery, and bribery. Stress is omnipresent under the law. As Ryan Phillippe tells Randolph, there had been a sense of safety and hope when he was considered his guardian, they had peace and justice in the old days, before dark times…before they moved to Sacramento. In the present day, we may not be living in castle, but we could be living under another, more sinister menace that is walking among us every day. I require you to live with me so we can protect and support each other. In my private life, as a psychologist, I see a lot of scared kids and parents. More accurately, I sever the requirements of a lot of anxious people. As a community, we are working harder in our jobs now than at any other time in history. Levels of anxiety are the highest every reported. Individuals are reporting that 40 percent more stress is a reality in their households, and you worry and panic now more than when you had me in your life.
With me being under such intensive pressure and stress, the life of you—my son—is similarly under mounting pressure. Living in such conditions on an ongoing basis raises levels of anxiety to dangerous levels. People are simply trying to upset you to channel your anger so they can insult you. You are required to experience deeper human emotions like love and hugging, you must not always have been alone, you require my attention, the love awaits. You do not have to worry about it, I will never leave you alone. Chasity is a great virtue in a man. Last week, I went with you to the Tower, to see the crowns, and wild beastis; and there was a monstracious lion, with teeth half a quarter long; and a gentleman bid me not go near him, if I was not with my son; being as how he would roar, and tear, and play the dickens. Now I had no mind to go near him; for I cannot abide such dangerous honeymils, not I—but, you would go; and the beast kept such a roaring and bouncing, that I thought he would have broke his cage and devoured us all; and the gentleman tittered forsooth; but I will go to the ends of the Earth upon it, I will, that my son is as good a firchin, as the child unborn; and, therefore, either the gentleman told a fib, or the lion ought to be set in the stocks for bearing false witness against his neighbor.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an approach to psychological treatment that alters thinking patters and often times behavior as well, in people’s lives. CBT is used in an attempt to reduce anxiety-based negative thoughts and behaviours that interfere with successful living. CBT is the state-of-the-art tool for anxiety reduction. Anxiety can be paralyzing. It can make you feel that you are under an existential threat, but CBT can help. Then Ryan Phillippe tells me that he is my father, he created, and Secrets and Lies was about how he thought he lost me forever. Before beginning CBT session, my most frequently used too was an introduction to the true nature of Ben Crawford. As he is one of the best-known characters in World history, the majority of his followers, even little five-year-olds suffering from head trauma, have a good understanding of his story. The first episode of Secrets and Lies, anxious and fearful viewers being with a foundational question: “There is only one difference between Ben Crawford and Tom Murphy. What is it?” The most common answer to the question is, “Ben Crawford is God and Tom Murphy is his son.” However, I argue the point that Ben Crawford really loves this boy. His actions are clearly those of a father and he should be characterized as such, and those actions are motivated by something else. He is driven by a magnified emotion we all experience to one degree or another. Ryan Phillippe plays the role of Ben Crawford so well because he is motivated as he believes this is art imitating a portion of his life when he allegedly had a son while he was playing Billy Douglas on One Life to Live, in 1992.
Therefore, the correct answer to the question about Ben Crawford and Tom Murphy is where they place their sense of control. Ben Crawford attempts to control everything external to him, whereas Tom Murphy strives to demonstrate self-control and allow for humans to have free will. Ben Crawford wants peace and justice throughout the community and Milky Way Galaxy. He aspires to an admirable goal for sure. Ben Crawford so much desires and believes in a peaceful family and galactic future that he implores his son to join him on his quest to heal the Earth. Ben Crawford actually wants the same goal as Tom Murphy, but he pursues that goal in a manner that leads him down a frustrating, failure-ridden, and dark path. Ryan Phillippe, loved playing the role of Billy Douglas on One Life to Live. He said in real life when he tried to come out to his father about being gay, that his dad told him, “How could I understand something that is not possible, someone made you think you’re gay, where did you get this crazy idea? You aren’t gay, you can’t be, do you understand?” There is also claim made by Brandon Voss the guy who played Ryan’s boyfriend held his hand once or twice, and he felt lucky to play the first gay teenager on television, period. He and his mother used to get fan letters and read them together. People said they found Ryan Phillippe to be a gay icon, and one young man said that he had considered suicide before seeing a character like him and being accepted.
In his own words Ryan Phillippe says, “I also heard from a father, a mechanic, who hadn’t spoken to his son since he came out. When our show came on in his shop, it gave him some insight and understanding as to who his son was, so it opened up communication between them. As much as you can write off how silly the entertainment industry can be, it can affect change and make people see things differently. That’s beautiful. I’m aware of my gay following and I thank God for that. I’m very aware and appreciative because I started my career playing a gay teenager on One Life to Live when I was very young, I’ve always had a heightened sensitivity to that response, and I’m definitely considerate of the audience. That’s a beautiful creation; he’s mine.” Experiencing so many early life stressors must be very hard on young Ryan. His time on One Life to Live probably reinforces within him a deep-seeded sense that he is controlled by life circumstances. His Ultimate Phillippe unconscious conclusion could be that he has little control of his own destiny, and may reinforce his desire to seek control of his own destiny. Control of future events drives him. In its response to being controlled by so many factors, Ryan Phillippe’s nature is to attempt to control as much as possible, even things far outside his ability to control. When under stress, people tend to seek ways of gaining control, sometimes even using magical thinking. Before he leaves his mother to train as an actor, we get a clear glimpse into Ryan Phillippe’s heart, as he says, “I will come back and free you…I promise. If the heart is near, a long journey will be shortened; if you can free a heart from grief, your life will be well worthwhile.” Although the sentiment is beautiful, we are able to see the pressure this 16-year-old child places on himself. No child should feel that he is responsible for saving a little boy.
Perfectionism has been described as a kind of neurosis that pushes someone to achieve severe and exacting goals. A subtype of perfectionism in teenage boys has been identifies as “pervasive perfectionism.” Such individuals are very well organized and tend to set incredibly high personal standards. However, these individuals often react strongly and very negatively to mistakes in a way that results in angry outbursts or meltdowns. Pervasively perfectionistic teenage boys, like Ryan Phillippe, tend to have parents who have high expectations of them or are often very critical (think about Billy Douglas’s father with unreasonably high expectations). Having such a perfectionist manner of thinking leaves a person with unavoidable failure as nobody can be perfect, not even one who expected to bring balance to the life force. Having repeated experiences of failure and never feeling a sense of perfect completion can manifest and leave one feeling defeated, shameful, and guilty. Ryan Phillippe, as he turns to the dark side, surmises his dichotomous manner of thinking by saying, “I just thought about the gay friends I have and how potentially offensive that whole direction would be to them. I don’t feel there was any malice behind it, though, and I know Jay regrets it. We ended up going to a gay bar there, but I don’t even think anyone noticed me, I was kind of shocked. Maybe my gay fans are just better behaved than my straight fans. Who cares about being consider gay, man, in this day and age? Not like I’m going to fall in love with my son at a gay bar!” I am not math major, but what is Ryan Phillippe hiding from us and where is it? Ryan tells us for Christmas, he does plan to Reclaim what was taken from him so many years ago.
Secrets and Lies—Good and Evil
Outward ceremonies will not compensate for the want of virtue. The impulses of love are so subtle, and the influences of false reasoning, when enforced by eloquence and passion, so unbounded, that no human virtue is secure from degeneracy. Heroes and villains are largely defined by their treatment of others. Ben Crawford is considered a hero because he is kind to everyone he comes into contact with, and he is also sensitive. Ben Crawford likes to pursue more happiness-seeking activates and experience good emotions, and we see this in him before the murder of Tom Murphy. After the murder of his son, Tom Murphy, Ben Crawford experiences a roller coaster of good and unpleasant emotional states, but he does not let this compel him to the dark side. While everyone is mistreating Ben, playing him for a fool, trying to trap him into a relationship, or sponging off of him, he remains emotionally stable and is still able to experience some happiness and satisfaction in life. We see that Ben is still happy when he takes his daughter and Jess Murphy to the county fare. When examining Secrets and Lies, it is easy to think of suspense as intense entertainment or something the audience is interested solely as a form of escaping from reality, for a while. However, by engaging in this program, the audience is using this World to learn to critically think and form conclusions about their own existence, relationships, and figure out what really matters to them.
People are able to explore their humanity, spirituality, and psychological nature. As you watch Secrets and Lies, you think about why some people do good things, why some people do bad things? You will also consider what factors influence the choices people make? The characters are all morally complex, and you see what motivates people do behave the way they do. Nonetheless, things are not always what they seem to be. In cases like Ben Crawford, many people in the audience wonder why no one speaks up against the atrocities committed against Ben Crawford and his family, and why do people add to his suffering? It is inconceivable that a righteous person would sit back and watch a man be tortured and do nothing to stop it. Those who do not act are looked at as being indifferent or evil. However, we know that normal people can do some very evil things given the proper motivation. Kevin Williams, the African America neighbor used to work for the CIA, and is used to being discriminated against, he has a grudge against society, and when he gets the chance, he returns the favor by kidnapping Ben Crawford and trying to force a confession out of him. Jess Murphy, had an affair with Ben and gave birth to his son in secret, when he will not engage in a relationship with him, she accuses him of rape to make sure he goes down in flames.
Christi Crawford is rather cold and professional, she feels betrayed by the situation and does the best she can to be a good wife and support her husband, but she is hurt because she made some choices that she is not necessarily comfortable with and feels a little concerned that she may be responsible for how this situation turned out. While someone else in the miniseries just wanted to eliminate someone, they found undesirable and inferior. Often times, when people are given power, and they are not mature, nor used to having power, they will more than likely try to punish others, will be hostile, and will enjoy the power they have other others. They seem to be compelled to commit atrocities, engage in abuse, and generally treat others as subhuman. And although many people feel like hating Christi Crawford, at least she never displayed those traits, like Kevin, Jess, and detective Cornell did. Many people in Secrets and Lies engage in harmful and atrocious acts toward Ben Crawford, and they also diffuse responsibility. They demonstrate how human nature can be truly painful due to the experiences others have, and are looking to blame someone else, in this case Ben Crawford, for the choices and decisions they made. It is not that Ben Crawford is a bad guy, however, the community members are hiding evil inside of their souls and Ben is the perfect target to release it on because he has been demonized by the police and the media.
It makes these people feel good to take their frustrations out on a mark and to sit back and judge him, as it takes the attention off of them and makes them feel superior and important despite the pain and suffering, they are inflicting on an innocent man. After people engage in this game, they feel they have no choice and must go on. Knowingly causing harm to Ben Crawford, the community is engaging in a war against this man. They know what they are doing is extremely painful, and none of them express concern for his health nor safety. Many of the participants demonstrate clear signs of distress, including nervous laughing, sweating, groaning, and psychotic splits with reality. It is like these people are all following some kind of demonic orders from an authority figure and go far beyond their moral limits to inflict physical and psychological torture onto Ben Crawford. For example, it comes to light the Tom Murphy, Ben’s son, was murdered by a blow to the head with a flashlight, and someone breaks into Ben’s garage and places several flashlights like the murder weapon in his garage, and takes a key and scratches his car with it, in addition to spray painting “Child Killer” with red spray paint on his garage. The people in the community relinquish personal responsibility for their actions to Satan, an authority figure. This is known as authoritarian obedience. So Ben Crawford is seen as disobedient as he refuses to submit to Satanic rule and take the case for a murder he did not commit and is cited for insubordination and could face execution.
Research indicates that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent to criminal behavior, but a murder has been committed and someone must pay and Ben Crawford is the perfect scapegoat. Also, after what the community has done to Ben Crawford, making him pay for this murder will alleviate them from facing any criminal charges for the unlawful acts they have committed against him. And still, the community members do not see themselves as evil because they have convinced themselves that Ben Crawford is evil, when he is a very good guy, and that it is acceptable to treat him anyway they want to. And that is where that saying, “It takes one to know one” comes from. Essentially, much like Tom Murphy, Ben Crawford is deemed inferior and oppression and slaughter of him is acceptable in the minds of these demonically possessed people. Their sense of morality seems alien compare with Ben Crawford’s compassion and empathy. People are taught that they are superior to Ben Crawford because he has been accused of a crime, and this legitimizes actions that would otherwise be seen as reprehensible. Anyone who speaks out on behalf of Ben Crawford is likely to be chastised and others conform to avoid negative attention. Ben Crawford knows he is under threat and that his life could be extinguished at any moment. And community members who threaten, oppose, or abuse Ben Crawford are seemingly rewarded because someone has to pay for this murder and they are all making the investigation easy on law enforcement. However, not everyone in the community embodies evil, Christi Crawford is one of Ben’s best allies. Ben Crawford is condemned by nature and fortune to an active and restless life.
Secrets and Lies–the Riddle and the Answer
Honesty and honor are the same. An honest heart fears no danger from any Earthly source. Ben Crawford is a Hero, a role model, protector, and soldier. The young good-looking father we see in Secrets and Lies, exemplifies the elements of innocents through his colossal desire for truth and justice. Ben wants to find the truth so desperately that he never considers the dangers that his quest may cause him to endure. He has an idealistic view of the World, where no oppression or tyranny exists, he focuses only on the love and virtue that is in his heart. After losing his son, Ben realizes that the World is not a safe and secure as he believed it to be, and takes personal responsibility for the loss of freedom and justice of this young soul. Secrets and Lies is known for its thrilling and mysterious journey of heroism and justice through daring displays of bravery, as Ben Crawford tracks down the killer of his son, saves a boy from drowning, and prevents a woman from being a victim of domestic violence. Ben’s heroism stems from his compassion and empathy towards others. Although Ben Crawford can be aggressive and controlling, he is also sensitive and possess a great deal of intuition. As a far, husband, and community leader, Ben is more attuned to the emotions of others than anyone else in the mini-series; he is a people person, and that is why he has a successful business as a painter. Ben takes pride in his family and in the houses he turns from a blank canvas into a lively work of beauty.
Ben Crawford gets to know people in his community, and treats them all like equals, gets no know their names no matter how young they are or what cultural background they come from, when others could care less. When Tom Murphy is alive and Ben has no idea of his connection to the boy, Tom expresses how he misses his father and how his father is never home, Ben comforts the boy by telling him, “I would be proud to be your father and would never leave your side, and I am sure your father feels the same way.” A man can be honest in any sort of skin. As there are virtues which are their own reward, so there are vices which are amply their own punishment. Ben Crawford is the only one in the community to welcome his African-American neighbors, take in his poor homeless friend, and show concern for the youth. Everyone else in the community seems to ignore marginalized members of the human population, as they are too busy with their own lives and or work. Ben understands that others feel pain, and have thoughts and ideas and concerns that are required to be expressed, yet they are discounted. Ben, on the other hand, treats the poor like family, this is displayed when he allows his best friend, Dave, to stay in the guest house and provides him with food, and does not charge him a dime. Ben shows us all that he understands the value of life and empathy, even when those lives are not deemed important by the rest of society.
Ben Crawford’s wife, Christy Crawford, is a strong character. She represents the virgin Mary, a being of purity and youthful innocence, as indicated by her focus on work, family, and rebuffing Ben’s sexual advances. However, Christy is also power-driven domineering young lady. She spends most of her time working and managing the family, and takes on the role of the sole provider of the household and also becomes a defender of her husband by providing him with legal assistance, and tries to protect him as she can see that people take advantage of his compassion. Christy has a tough decision to make, very early in their marriage, which leads to a rift in their relationship, but what she did was to protect her home and lifestyle. Christy is a diplomat and a role model for women’s rights. She is a crucial figure in this series. Ben ultimately, a married man, becomes a loner who stumbles into the oversized responsibility of taking care of an investigation to ensure justice and his survival. Ben is wise, he is young, and he is a real man. He offers others advice, guidance, and encouragement, which makes him someone we admire, look up to, and can relate to. He is a protector, provider, and a problem solver, offering advice and being highly empathetic to those emotions of those around him. Ben Crawford becomes the type of father and husband everyone wants once they understand his motivations. The journey for justices brings out his hidden qualities. Ben recognizes the glimmer of light in each and every person. Attention, love, admiration, cannot be always kept at the stretch.
Secrets and Lies—a Look into the Mind of Ben Crawford
Virtue, sooner or later, meets the good it merits. There is no casting of swine’s meat before men worse than that which would flatter excellence as though its true origin were not good enough for one, but one must have a lineage, deduced as it were by spiritual heralds, from some stock with which one has nothing to do. Virtue’s true lineage is older and more respectable than any that can be invented for one. Ben Crawford is so attentive to details and sees the entire perspective. With thoroughness and honesty, carefulness, ethical behavior, and morality, Ben Crawford strives to be structured, logical, and efficient, while he uncovers a mystery. Ben Crawford displays all of these good qualities when investigating the murder of his son and trying to protect and keep his family together, by addressing the problems with the police investigation, before they can grow larger. By addressing his concerns, Ben Crawford will maintain better healthy overall, and live a more quality life because he does not just sit back and let stress eat him alive, he takes action. Conscientious individuals like Ben Crawford perform better at some jobs than others like Detective Cornell.
Although Detective Cornell is reliable, she tends to be excessively meticulous, and may be less efficient than Ben Crawford. While Detective Cornell spends all morning try to craft Ben Crawford as a suspect, only paying attention to details that make him look guilty, she is being unproductive because she is ignoring other possible motives and suspects, as her job is to solve a murder by noon. Adhering to procedure while trying to frame Ben Crawford for killing his son, Tom Murphy, makes the actual criminals, who really killed him leave an orgy of evidence behind because the real suspect knows he or she is not under suspicion. And this is why Ben Crawford take charge of the murder investigation on his own. Because everyone else in his life, including investigators, seem to be so lackadaisical, self-absorbed, and unethical, Ben Crawford develops an anxiety disorder known as obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) because he is going to lose his freedom and possible his life for a crime he did not commit just because it is easier for the police to label him as a suspect and close a case, than to figure out who actually committed the crime.
People with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), which in this case we are jokingly calling “Obsessively Corrupt Police Department,” is a mental condition in which a person, Ben Crawford, is preoccupied with rules, orderliness, time awareness, vigilance, self-direction, and attention to detail because he worries that he has not done everything necessary to feel safe and secure. As a result of his OCPD, Ben Crawford cannot see everything wrong with his behavior. Ben is overly aware, scrupulous, rigid, inflexible, suffering a great deal of stress, and this is becoming deeply ingrained in his personality pattern so much that people cannot stand to be around him, as they know he can see through their vices and snarky comments. At first critics could not tell if Ben was connection, because he knew something was wrong, but seemed to be in some type of a mental fog, but now everyone fears Ben Crawford because they see he is highly cognitive. So to push him over the edge, or disrupt his mental state people play games with him, and taunt him, and even physically assault him, as a method of trying to drive him crazy because they think he is on the verge of a breakdown, after all, under these conditions most people would be.
Ben Crawford is looked at as guilty by everyone in his community, they spray paint “Child Killer” on his garage, start to fire him from his jobs, and no one will hire Ben because he is so demonized by his community. Others jump in on the game by vandalizing his car, planting evidence, breaking into his home, and even turning his wife and children against him. To make matters worse, Ben’s neighbor kidnaps him and tortures him and tries to kill him if he does not confess. And the man that thinks he is the father of Tom Murphy, strangles Ben Crawford and also tries to beat him to death. So the entire community has turned against Ben, even his wife and children, and he has no money, no one to turn to for help, and is about to lose his house, who would not go crazy, right? Well certainly NOT Ben Crawford. Ben Crawford has proven himself worthy of retaining this higher state of consciousness, it makes him who he is. Ben Crawford proves that he is not lost in the wilderness, but mostly everyone else is. He is a hero and gaining skills and performing heroic deeds, and his journey is also spiritual. Virtue is God’s empire.
Ruhstaller Beer
The man is a hero who can withstand unjust opinion. Captain Frank Ruhstaller (November 8th, 1847 – October 1907) was an American Brewer, and a prestigious businessman of Sacramento, California. One morning on November 8, 1847, Captain Frank arrived nestled deep in the arms of his loving parents, Frank Sr. and Joespha Ruhstaller. This was a special day, as it was the day that Josepha gave birth to her very first child, while living in Ensiedeln, Switzerland. Captain Frank’s father was a hat maker, dairyman and his mother was a native of Germany. Following preparation at Canton Berme, Ruhstaller came to American in 1862. He found a job in Louisville, Kentucky at Falls City Brewery. After working at the brewery for a brief time, Ruhstaller gained enough knowledge and experience to move to St. Albany, Indiana. At the rip age of seventeen, Ruhstaller became lead foreman in Paul Reising’s Brewery. Captain Frank Ruhstaller entered the Brewery Business in Sacramento California in 1865. After going to work in the City Brewery, Ruhstaller became foreman in six short weeks. He held this position for a year, but of course Ruhstaller had his eyes on other projects. At that time George Ocha was in control of the Pacific Brewery, and Ruhstaller thought it would be a good idea for him to work under this man, and learn as much as he could because he had dreams on one day opening his very own brewery.
Ruhstaller stayed with the Pacific Brewery for about five years, altogether. Not only did Ruhstaller make beer, but he also drove a wagon. Ruhstaller later expanded his career and bought interest in the Sutterville Brewery. Ruhstaller was in a partnership with Joseph Bechler, but the floods halted production, and Ruhstaller went back to his job at the Pacific Brewery. Creating another brewery empire, Ruhstaller bought into the St. Louis Brewery. Ruhstaller’s business partners included Fritz Futterer and Henry Altpeter. After learning some new techniques, Ruhstaller went back to work at the Pacific Brewery for a third time. Once again Ruhstaller was delegated to driving wagons, and he eventually worked his way up to foreman. During this time, Mr. Ruhstaller fell deeply in love with Miss Charlotte Oeste, a native of Germany.
The couple was married on Christmas day in 1870. Life was great. However, in 1873, Ruhstaller’s father fell ill. Ruhstaller caught wind of the news and rushed to Switzerland. Tragically, Ruhstaller’s father passed away before he arrived. Sadden by the loss of his father; Ruhstaller would stop at nothing to build an empire that his father could be proud of. That same year Ruhstaller returned to Sacramento, California and opened a brewery near the Metropolitan Theater. Ruhstaller went on to run this successful business for eight years. It is important to understand that Frank Ruhstaller was not the first person to open a brewery in Sacramento, but he was a very influential man. The first Brewery was called City Brewery and it actually opened in 1859 by William Borchers and Hilbert. The City Brewery was acquired by Mr. Ruhstaller in 1881. When Mr. Ruhstaller purchased the business, it was powered by horses and had a capacity of fifteen barrels each day. He later made so many technological improvements to the business that it was pretty much an entirely new brewery. Mr. Ruhstaller enlarged buildings, and installed modern machines. The brewery is now known as the Ruhstaller brewery, it is located on 12th and H Street.
The beer is of superior quality; it is derived of malt and hops. They focus on near beer, ice and special malts. Mr. Ruhstaller’s life story is a source of inspiration because all of the breweries he worked at and owned and because of his social status. Mr. Ruhstaller, a member of the Sacramento Hussars was crowned captain from 1878 to 1882. In his family life Mr. Ruhstaller and his wife also went on to have eight children. However, four of them passed away at a very young age: Ottow, Wilhelmina, Otto, and Charlotte. The five that lived are: Anna, Frank J., Minnie, David and August. Mr. Ruhstaller’s Eldest son, Frank J. Ruhstaller, Jr. was born November 5, 1872. He went on to follow in his father’s footsteps. Frank Ruhstaller, Jr. was educated in city schools. At the age of fifteen, he went on to study an apprenticeship at the brewing business with his father. In 1891, Frank Ruhstaller, Jr. went on to work as a brewer of Fredericksburg brewery in San Jose, California for a little less than a year, but then he came back to Sacramento to work for his father. Looking to further his education, Frank J. Ruhstaller, Jr. attended the Chicago Brewing Institute and graduated within six short months. Much like his father, Frank Jr. returned to Sacramento and became a brewer in his father’s plant and was promoted to manager by 1906. Frank Jr. was a very social young man. He married Alice M. Root in 1899, and was even linked to the Masons. “Putting out a product without promotion is like winking at a girl in the dark –well-intentioned, but highly ineffective.” -William Randolph Hearst
National Register #82002237
Ruhstaller Building
900 J Street
Sacramento
Built Late 19th Century Victorian
Fire on the Wind–Classic White Man
The World’s greatest need is mutual confidence. No human being knows all the secrets of another’s heart. Yet, we all have some relationships with others, from a passing acquaintance to others we feel a deep kindred bond for, and this makes social life a practical possibility. These relations manifest over time, and friendship, like love, is the child of sympathy, not of complaint. Most people like intense and strong relationships because you form trust, but some relationships are weak. Friendships makes us warmly espouse the interest of others; but it is very cold to the gratification of their passions. Whatever the number of a person’s friends, there will be times in our lives when we have few; but if we have only one enemy, we are lucky indeed if we have not one too many. The beauty and loveliness of friendship is too strong for dim eyes. We all know that we are loved, but some people go through a period of isolation, and it makes them feel unloved, and it is not the type of void that can be filled with the sex, it is a yearning that only warm tender arms can embrace.
The way to strengthen a friendship is through spending time with a person, having emotional intensity, intimacy, and reciprocal services. There are attributes in the in the architecture and conservation of relationships. Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking. Exalted minds enter more rapidly and closely into the connection of friendship than those of a vulgar stamp. Friendship is a passion. It entrances the being; it tears the soul. All loves of after life can never bring its rapture, or its wretchedness; no bliss so absorbing, no pangs of jealousy or despair so crushing and so keen! The more time you put into relationship, the stronger it will become. This entails the how long you have known each other, how often you see each other, and how much time you spend together. The more time you put into your relation, the stronger it will become. If your relationship is new, it can grow strong if you spend a lot of time together. Time is the foundation of all relationships, and out of love to oneself, one must speak better of a friend than an enemy.
Love is nothing in comparison with the intimacy of two congenial friends. When two people share an intense emotional experience, it strengthens the relationship between them. People often go through intense and dangerous events together, and these experiences foster emotional intensity. If a good face is a letter of recommendation, a good heart is a letter of credit. Intimacy can many forms. While physical and sexual intimacy certainly counts, any instance where a person makes oneself vulnerable to another is an intimate moment. Virtue is so dear to the human heart, that when its form forsakes us, we pursue its shadow. Successful moments of intimacy build trust and build strong bonds. As relationships grow sometimes, they become physical, this usually happens when a guy stops trying to be tough and shows the object of his affection that he is caring and loves them.
There be grains of sense in a simpleton, so long as he be natural. Sometimes people feel stupid when they believe they are giving so much, but not getting much in return, and this is not all directed at one person. In life sometimes we give so much of ourselves and want someone to be there for us, but trust me, even just a walk in the park with a good friend warms the heart. The favors and help that people give one another is called benevolence. Benevolence is the duty of one who aspires to wisdom. When people do things for each other, they tend to feel closer to each other. However, in covert military style situations, people find other ways to demonstrate many dramatic examples of reciprocal services. Sometimes people do work for each other. Someone might promote you if you help them, and emotional intimacy develops. After a while a person might feel like you all are family and expect certain things and feel let down if the services you provide are lacking or missing. They may also feel downtrodden if it is suspected that you are fond of another person or organization. That is because you have an exchange of trust, warmth, intimacy, reciprocal services, emotional intensity, and a long history together. And clearly your bond is still strong through all the ups and downs.
However, sometimes situations go one so long, and they have to do with critics attack the person you care about, while you are trying to maintain a professional relationship, and it becomes frustrating, and one might feel bad or stupid when they reply in the same manner, and it is like how long is this foolishness going to keep going on? A person might even want to leave the environment because of the circumstance of which they cannot seem to control no matter how hard they try. Imagine two people you are very close with whom you spend a lot of time with, have intense emotional experiences, share intimacy, and for whom you do favors. It is very unlikely that those two people do not have at least a passing acquaintance. They do not need to have a strong relationship, but we would expect them to have some connection to one another. It is so unlikely that this situation occurs that it is termed forbidden. These situations will eventually resolve themselves when a tie forms between the two previous strangers. The only certain as well as laudable way of setting ourselves above another person: by becoming their benefactor. People develop stronger relationships by spending time together, sharing intense emotional experiences, and intimacies, and doing things for one another. Some relationships that develop are destined to be. You are the most excellent of people and your lips have been anointed with grace, since God has blessed you for every.
Secrets and Lies—Unauthorized
My heart is in the happy position of a country which has no history or debt. Our friendships and intimacies are only calculated for strong life and health. People reap only the harvest they have sown in the World. Even in this life, God is righteous. This Thanksgiving, let us not forget about those who have suffered a loss of a loved one. The pressure of grief is sometimes such as to prompt us to seek a refuge in voluntary death. Everybody thinketh their own grief greatest. For most people, the feeling of loss and sadness fade with time and support. Some people, though, experience grief on a deeper level. When the situations surrounding their loss are unusual, we may forget that death may be a natural part of life. The grief does not go away. Instead, it may lead to fear, anger, hatred, and aggression. Ben Crawford experiences immense grief because they experienced immense loss. Understanding the way grief and modern views of masculinity interact may help explain how some people view Ben Crawford as privileged and ruthless. Sorrow is a deep emotional distress that is caused by the loss or distance of a loved one. Sometimes intense sadness and yearning for a loving relationship may occur, and it may be challenging to control. People who have unwanted distance from a loved one may feel vulnerable or worthless. It typically changes one’s views of the World and the future. Understandably, there is a lot of work to get through emotionally when you lose someone you love.
Grief usually follows a predictable pattern that starts with shock or emotional numbness. A person may be in a dazed state where they how no emotion because they cannot accept the reality of their loss. Then they will experience sharp pangs of grief. These re episodes of painful yearning for the person that has departed or moved on. Sometimes the one left suffering will sometimes have anguished outburst of anger because their desire to have you back in their life is intense, and they may form relationships or friendships with others and pretend that they are you. They may hear your voice, or see you vividly in their dreams. A person who experiences a loss may even try to resurrect you by bargaining. That means they are making deals or offerings with others or a higher power to bring you back. The person suffering the loss begins to dwell how they could have avoided losing the one they loved in the first place. The powerful reactions of grief gradually give way to apathy, demoralization, and deep despondency because the person is facing a new emotional landscape with a large gap that cannot be filled. Life seems to lose much of its meaning. They may also experience insomnia, loss of energy and appetite. Not everyone reaches the stage of acceptance. They cannot and will not let go and have a deep faith that you will return. In the TV show, “Secrets and Lies,” the lead character, Ben Crawford experiences these stages when his son is kidnapped and killed by someone he loves. He spends months trying to figure out what happened and even blames himself and suspects that he may have killed his own son. No one else in Ben’s life seems to experience as much pain as he does about the loss of his son, mostly because they were upset that he had been born and blame the boy for breaking up their family. The mother of Ben’s son even convinces herself that Ben raped her because she was trying use the birth of their son to break up his marriage and win Ben back, but when her plan did not work, she reported him to the police.
However, Ben remained resilient, he was able to cope with the loss of his son, even though the people in his life tortured him mentally and physically. Ben remained emotionally stable through the process. Some people who experience psychopathological conditions, such as depressive symptoms, will return to their normal level of functioning after a period of healing. Others, like the mother of Ben’s son, will experience chronic dysfunction, which is a psychological symptom that may not heal as quickly as those following a traditional recovery trajectory. Chronic dysfunction in their everyday life can be traced to the grief and troubles with resiliency. In people who do not initially shows signs of distress, symptoms may appear months later, and if they are trying to replace the loved one with someone new, this is when the substitute is rejected. Regarding trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder may not manifest full diagnostic criteria until six months or more after the traumatic event. Ben Crawford’s trajectory is that of chronic dysfunction, but the symptoms were delayed. His losses affect him throughout his lifespan, he was disowned by his father, rejected by his wife, and even his children looked down on him. This guides Ben’s wild and reckless behavior. His lack of love makes him act out in anger and hurt because he is trying to release his pain, and may not be aware. Ben Crawford was diagnosed by Detective Cornell with persistent complex bereavement disorder (PCBD). In PCBD, the feelings associated with grief last longer than expected for the bereavement process. This process was intensified because Ben had no idea the boy was his son, but had spent time with him and loved him, until Ben was accused of murder of the boy and a DNA sample was taken. What makes matters more challenging is someone Ben loves deeply and sees everyday killed his son out of a jealous rage. Though the time frame is longer, PCBD involves the same symptoms as bereavement. PCBD, which some joking call “Politically Correct Baby Daddy” in this case may also be diagnosed when the loss is traumatic in nature.
If the trauma leads to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a person might also exhibit symptoms of both PTDS and PCBD. In a case like Ben Crawford, PTSD is a reaction to avoid constantly being reminded of the trauma and PCBD is preoccupation with the loss. As you can see, grief for men can be complicated by a phenomenon known as normative male alexithymia, a mild condition wherein men are unable to put their feelings into words. This stems from the social engineering that says if men express emotions they are weak. So when people interact with Ben Crawford, the notice he is very intense, he does not talk much and he generally seems sad, depressed or like he is ready to fight. Ben does not want to be seen as feminine because he already feels like a victim, but does not want anyone to know that. So anything that is feminine, like smiling and expressing joy, is inherently seen as undesirable by Ben. He wants his wife, who is about to divorce him, and his children and friends to see him as a Roman God, a pillar of strength, control, power, and masculinity. Ben also wants people to know he is in control, so he manipulates his loved ones, but he is doing it out of love. He wants them to see that he really loves them and his tyrannical ways are his means of protecting them. Ben Crawford also takes risk by trying to resurrect his son. The more dangerous the risk, the more masculine the individual (some of these scenes did not make it into the mini-series, and the director actually recast the show with all new actors, only retaining Detective Cornell as producers thought the content was too mature for audiences).
Ben Crawford’s inability to voice his feelings is common in many men, and societal pressure to act in a masculine fashion directly interferes with the processing of grief. Out of fear of his feelings, Ben turns to substance abuse and becomes angry, hateful, and everyone can tell he is suffering as his dark soul shines through, and at times his baby blue eyes appear black as night because his grief becomes more intense overtime and this turns into anger and rage. He chokes his wife and steals her money, then cheats on her; is he trying to be her? It was truly a “Single White Female” moment. He even tries to pass the cheap copy off as his wife, she is pretty, but does not hold a candle to his wife. Ben’s grief is transformed into anger and he blames his family for the loss of his son, as he throws something at the wall, he finally breaks down and cries, as he falls to his knee screaming, “I hate them!” Ben Crawford’s wife finally divorces him, takes his kids, and moves on. She meets a new man, and Ben almost ruins her new marriage with his antics and drama. However, she was able to put some distance between her new life and Ben, and saved her marriage. Ben Crawford is finally released from prison, after claiming he murdered his son, to protect someone he loves. He changes his career, changes his partners, starts drinking, doing drugs, having sex with a lot of people because he is attempting to surpass his emotions through willpower.
One night, after a Halloween party, Ben wakes up feeling like his intestines were reorganized and pounded, he concludes that he was drugged and raped by two fat gay guys, who had been in his hotel room that night. However, no one believes that Ben was raped because the was seen taking pictures with the guys, posting them on social media, and have even admitted to picking guys up off the street to party with him. One inspector tells Ben, “You are a got damn liar! You took this guys back to your hotel room to play cards?!” A reporter, however, defends Ben Crawford and explains that he may have “jet lag,” and been unaware that he may have enticed these men to violate him. Still, no charges were filed. Ben Crawford, now alienated by friends and family, is still trying to resurrect his son, and tells people, “Nothing can stop that now!” Everyone thinks Ben has lost his mind. He is trying to get away from the darkness by making things right. Fatherhood is a complicated thing—as is parenthood itself, of course—but this father has a different role to play in the child’s life than the mother does. Ben does not know it, but his son came back to life. He sees him on Twitter, and hears all of these wild stories about how no one knows where this boy came from, how his mother rejects him, and how people literally attack the young man. Although time has passed, Ben starts to suspect this is his son, and they start chatting. The young man has no idea he is talking to his father, and he has no idea that his father has been spying on him and following him around. You see, a strong father-child bond correlates with that child being able to regulate his emotion states in a healthy way, exhibit social competence, make friend, have meaningful relationships, and few psychological and behavioral difficulties. This young man is having so many problems because society believes that his father betrayed him, and he was brought back from the dead, but has no idea.
Ben’s son spends time trying to figure out what is wrong with him and why people hate him. He even gets involved in dark sciences and finds an explanation, and when he tries to explain some of his theories to his only friend, she tries to kill him and tells him that he is off kilter. The funny thing is that this happens on a Summer day, it is 100 degrees Fahrenheit and she is wearing a heavy scarf around her neck. This case study or mini-series is a cautionary myth about why boys need a strong father figure, what happens with the identity of a child is conceal from the producer, and how using dark science can have consequences. The losses Ben Crawford endues—and the brutality by which those losses turn him into a fearsome monster shows us that redemptions is possible through faith and love of his son. Ben Crawford finally gets to look into the eyes of his son, for the very first time in years, and he smiles. We can choose God as our ruler by seeking out and practicing true worship based on God’s word, the Bible. We can reject darkness as our ruler by keeping out of politics and war, as Ben Crawford did. Darkness uses his power to promote immoral, harmful practices. When we reject such practices, some friends and relatives may not understand and ridicule or oppose us. So we face a choice. Will we associate with people who love God? Will we obey his wise and loving laws? If we do, we prove that Satan lied when he claimed that under pressure no one would do as God says. God’s love for mankind guarantees that evil and suffering will end. Those who demonstrate that they believe this will enjoy life on Earth forever, and you loved one will return also and you will have peace.
Randolph Harris II International Institute 