Randolph Harris II International Institute

Home » #RandolphHarris (Page 40)

Category Archives: #RandolphHarris

We Gone Have to Put this Back in the “Kick”!

With the rapid increase of technology, it is possible that automation could be making the World more dangerous. Drivers may soon get speeding tickets without ever being stopped by an officer. If Assembly Bill 645 is passed, speed limit cameras will be placed on freeways and automatically send drivers going over 11 miles per hour a speeding ticket. The new pilot program will be implemented as soon as January 2024 in several major cities including: San Jose, Oakland, Glendale, Los Angeles, Long Beach and the city and county of San Francisco, California. The bill was introduced by Assemblymember Laura Friedman of Glendale. The legislators responsible for this bill program found that speeding was a major factor in traffic collisions. In 2019, 26 percent of all vehicle crashes occurred because of a speeding driver. The bill would require cities and counties participating in the program to send drivers warnings, rather than tickets, for the first 60 days of the program. It would also require these cities to make records confidential, and specify that the speeding violation is subject to civil penalties, among other requirements. The bill was passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 11, 2023, in a 10-1 vote. Next, it will go on to the House Committee on Appropriations, after the senate returns from summer recess after August 15, 2023. However, three amendments need to be added in order to pass this bill, which include clarifying the angle of the camera, how long records of penalties will be retained, and how many occurrences of street racing would enable the installation of a camera. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

The speed safety system shall capture images of the rear license plate of vehicles that are traveling 11 miles per hour or more over the posted speed limit and notices of violation shall be issued to vehicles based on that evidence. Fines would start at $50 for going 11 miles per hour over the posted speed limit and increase from there. However, this bill is troubling for several reasons. First of all, because traffic patrol will be automated, it will reduce the number of highway patrol officers on the road, which will make the road more dangerous. Highway Patrol often keeps people safe by making sure they are not littering. They make sure that vehicles are in proper operating condition and safe to be on the road. Officers also keep an eye out for suspicious activity, rescue drivers in need of help. Help to prevent accidents simply with their presence being known and by spacing traffic out. With them being on the road, they are able to apprehend suspect faster. Also, officers are able to make sure the drivers have headlights that are properly adjusted and safe to use on the road, as many new cars sometimes have lights so bright that they can blind a diver and cause an accident. Officer also make sure that fluid are not leaking from cars, that taillights are properly functioning, and that people are not being held hostage or being attacked in their car. Some other concerns is what if a big rig is coming in your lane and does not see you and you need to speed up to avoid getting ran off the road, but are in too much fear of getting a ticket? Some drivers also go so slow that it makes road conditions dangerous. More drivers may also start driving under the influence of drugs, alcohol, medication, and while sleepy with less officers on the road. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Other concerns are that people will start stealing license plates and using them when they travel on the road. If they find a car similar to their, they could get away with this for a long time. Some drivers may simply remove the plates from their cars when they travel on the highway, which would make identifying them nearly impossible. Therefore, it is recommended that Assembly Bill 645 is not passed. Because a ticket in the mail may not safe a life in that moment. By pulling people over in the act of speeding, several lives have been saved. Assembly Bill 645 is essentially a tax, much like the bag ban.  If it is, as many already know, the program will eventually go nationwide. Much like in the Middle Ages, as we have seen, the old order is breaking down. The individual has lost the security of certainty and is threatened by new economic forces, by capitalists and monopolies; the corporative principle is being replaced by competition; the lower classes feel that pressure of growing exploitation. During the Middle Ages, the appeal of Lutheranism to the lower classes differed from its appeal to the middle classes. The poor in the cities, and even more the peasants, were in a desperate situation. They were ruthlessly exploited and deprived of traditional rights and privileges. They were in a revolutionary mood which found expression in peasant uprising and in revolutionary movement in the cities. The Gospel articulated their hopes and expectations as it had done for the slaves and labourers of early Christianity, and led the poor to seek for freedom and justice. In so far as Mr. Luther attacked authority and made the word of the Gospel the center of his teachings, he appealed to these restive masses as other religious movements of an evangelical character had done before him. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Although Mr. Luther accepted their allegiance to him and supported them, he could do so only up to a certain point; he had to break the alliance when the peasants went further than attacking the authority of the Church and merely making minor demands for the betterment of their lot. They proceeded to become a new revolutionary class which threatened to overthrow all authority and to destroy the foundations of a social order in whose maintenance the middle class was vitally interested. For, in spite of all the difficulties we described, the middle class, even its lower stratum, had privileges to defend against the dames of the poor; and therefore it was intensely hostile to revolutionary movements which aimed to destroy not only the privileges of the aristocracy, the Church, and the monopolies, but their own privileges as well. The position of the middle class between the very rich and the very poor made its reaction complex and, in many ways, contradictory. They wanted to uphold law and order, and yet they were themselves vitally threatened by rising capitalism. Even the more successful members of the middle class were not wealthy and powerful as the small group of big capitalists was. They had to fight hard to survive and make progress. The luxury of the moneyed class increased their feeling of smallness and filled them with envy and indignation. As a whole, the middle class was more endangered by the collapse of the feudal order and by rising capitalism than it was helped. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Mr. Luther’s picture of man mirrored just this dilemma. Man is free from all ties binding him to spiritual authorities, but this very freedom leaves him alone and anxious, overwhelms him with a feeling of his own individual insignificance and powerlessness. This free, isolated individual is crushed by the experience of his individual insignificance. Mr. Luther’s theology gives expression to this feeling of helplessness and doubt. The picture of man which he draws in religious terms describes the situation of the individual as it was brought about by the current social and economic evolution. The member of the middle class was as helpless in face of the new economic forces as Mr. Luther described man to be in his relationship to God. However, Mr. Luther did more than bring out the feeling of insignificance which already pervaded the social classes to whom he preached—he offered them a solution. By not only accepting his own insignificance but by humiliating himself to the utmost, by giving up every vestige of individual will, by renouncing and denouncing his individual strength, the individual could hope to be acceptable to God. Mr. Luther’s relationship to God was one of complete submission. In psychological terms his concept of faith means: if you completely submit, if you accept your individual insignificance, then the all-powerful God may be willing to love you and save you. If you get rid of your individual self with all its shortcomings and doubts by utmost self-effacement, you free yourself from the feeling of your own nothingness and can participate in God’s glory. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Thus, while Mr. Luther freed people from the authority of the Church, he made them submit to a much more tyrannical authority, that of a God who insisted on complete submission of man and annihilation of the individual self as the essential condition to his salvation. Mr. Luther’s “faith” was the conviction of being loved upon the condition of surrender, a solution which has much in common with the principle of complete submission of the individual to the state and the “leader.” Mr. Luther’s awe of authority and his love for it appears also in his political convictions. Although he fought against the authority of the Church, although he was filled with indignation against the new moneyed class—part of which was the upper strata of the clerical hierarchy—and although he supported the revolutionary tendencies of the peasants up to a certain point, yet he postulated submission to Worldly authorities, the princes, in the most drastic fashion. “Even if those in authority are evil or without faith, nevertheless the authority and its power is good and from God…Therefore, where there is power and where it flourishes, there it is and there it remains because God has ordained it.” Or he says, “God would prefer to suffer the government to exist no matter how evil, rather than allow the rabble to riot, no matter how justified they are in doing so…A prince should remain a prince no matter how tyrannical he may be. He beheads necessarily only a few since he must have subject in order to be a ruler.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

The other aspect of Mr. Luther’s attachment to and awe of authority becomes visible in his hatred and contempt for the powerless masses, the “rabble,” especially when they went beyond certain limits in their revolutionary attempts. In one of his diatribes he writes the famous words: “Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you.” Mr. Luther’s personality as well as his teachings shows ambivalence toward authority. On the one hand he is overawed by authority—that of a Worldly authority and that of a tyrannical God—and on the other hand he rebels against authority—that of the Church. He shows the same ambivalence in his attitude toward the masses. As far as they rebel within the limits, he has set he is with them. However, when they attack the authorities he approves of, an intense hatred and contempt for the masses comes to the fore. When we look at the psychological mechanisms of escape, we shall show that this simultaneous love for authority and the hatred against those who are powerless are typical traits of the “authoritarian character.” At this point, it is important to understand that Mr. Luther’s attitude towards secular authority was closely related to his religious teachings. In making the individual feel worthless and insignificant as far as one’s own merits are concerned, in making one feel like a powerless tool in the hands of God, he deprived man of the self-confidence and of the feeling of human dignity which is the premise for any firm stand against oppressing secular authorities. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

In the course of the historical evolution the results of Mr. Luther’s teachings were still more far reaching. Once the individual had lost his sense of pride and dignity, he was psychologically prepared to lose the feeling which had been characteristic of the medieval thinking, namely, that man, his spiritual salvation, and his spiritual aims were the purpose of life; he was prepared to accept a role in which his life became a means to purposes outside of himself, those of economic productivity and accumulation of capital. Mr. Luther’s views on economic problems were typically medieval, still more so than Mr. Calvin’s. He would have abhorred the idea that man’s life should become a means for economic ends. However, while his thinking on economic matters was the traditional one, his emphasis on the nothingness of the individual was in contrast and paved the way for a development in which man not only was to obey secular authorities but had to subordinate his life to the ends of economic achievements. In our day this trend has reached a peak in the Fascist emphasis that it is the aim of life to be sacrificed for “higher” powers, for the leader on the racial community. Mr. Calvin’s theology, which was to become as important for the Anglo-Saxon countries as Mr. Luther’s for Germany, exhibits essentially the same spirit as Mr. Luther’s, both theologically and psychologically. Church and the blind acceptance of its doctrines, religion for him is rooted in the powerlessness of man; self-humiliation and the destruction of human pride are the Leitmotiv of his whole thinking. Only he who despises this World can devote himself to the preparation for the future World. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

He teaches that we should humiliate ourselves and that this very self-humiliation is the means to reliance on God’s strength. “For nothing arouses us to repose all confidence and assurance of mind on the Lord, so much as diffidence of ourselves, and anxiety arising from a consciousness of our own misery.” He preached that the individual should not feel that he is his own master. “We are not our own; therefore neither our reason nor our will should predominate in our deliberation and actions. We are not our own; therefore, let us not propose it as our end, to seek what may be expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own; therefore, let us, as far as possible, forget ourselves and all things that are ours. On the contrary, we are God’s; to Him, therefore, let us live and die. For, as it is the most devastating pestilence which ruins people if they obey themselves, it is the only haven of salvation not to know or to want anything oneself but to be guided by God who walks before us. For, as compliance with their own inclinations lead men most effectually to ruin, so to place no dependence on our own knowledge or will, but merely to follow the guidance of the Lord, is the only way of safety. Man should not strive for virtue for its own sake. That would lead to nothing but vanity: “For it is an ancient and true observation that there is a World of vices concealed in the soul of man. Nor can you find any other remedy than to deny yourself and discard all selfish considerations, and to devote your whole attention to the pursuit of those things which the Lord requires of you, and which ought to be pursued for this sole reason, because they are pleasing to Him. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Mr. Calvin, too, denies that good works can lead to salvation. We are completely lacking them: “No work of a pious man ever existed which, if it were examined before the struct judgment of Gd, did not prove to be damnable.” If we try to understand the psychological significance of Mr. Calvin’s system, the same holds true, in principle, as has been said about Mr. Luther’s teachings. Mr. Calvin, too, preached to the conservative middle class, to people who felt immensely alone and frightened, whose feelings were expressed in his doctrine of the insignificance and powerlessness of the individual and the futility of his efforts. However, we may assume that there was some slight difference; while Germany in Mr. Luther’s time was in a general state of upheaval, in which not only the middle class, but also the peasant and the poor of urban society, were threatened by the rise capitalism, Geneva was a relatively prosperous community. It had been one of the important fairs in Europe in the first half of the fifteenth century, and although at Mr. Calvin’s time it was already overshadowed by Mr. Lyons in this respect, it had preserved a good deal of economic solidity. On the whole, it seemed safe to say that Calvin’s adherents were recruited mainly from the conservative middle class, and that also in France, Holland, and England his main adherents were not advanced capitalistic groups but artisans and small businessmen, some of which whom were already more prosperous than others but who, as a group, were threated by the rise of capitalism. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

To this social class Calvinism had the same psychological appeal that we have already discussed in connection with Lutheranism. It expressed the feeling of freedom but also of insignificance and powerlessness of the individual. It offered a solution by teaching the individual that by complete submission and self-humiliation he could hope to find new security. Rich people have suffered many symbolic challenges as economic income inequality has emerged as a dominant issue on the national stage. Although images of the wealthy proliferate in the media, we know very little about what it is like to be wealthy in the current historical moment. Contemporary scholarly accounts of elite experience are in short supply, due largely to the difficulty of gaining access to wealthy people. The few studies of elite consumption that do exist focus on its explicitly or implicitly competitive dimensions, whether they embody Mr. Veblenian conspicuous consumption or other forms of social distinction. Other research on elite lifestyles looks at how privileged people maintain and reproduce their privilege through social closure in elite clubs and elsewhere. Researchers are skeptical of allusions to hard work, interpreting them mainly as shallow justifications. Notably, being morally worthy and avoiding entitlement involve behaving and feeling in particular ways. Practices of working hard, consuming prudently, and giving back are matched by affects of independence, modest desire, and appreciation rather than a feeling of being “owed things.” Yet it is not easy to adhere to all of these imperatives of merit or to interpret oneself as adhering to the. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Partners look to each other for recognition of themselves as worthy workers and consumers, but they do not always find this recognition. They clash over what kind of needs are legitimate. And they experience gendered conflicts over whether unpaid labour “counts” symbolically as a contribution to the family’s lifestyle. Anxieties about the entitlement of their children are especially prominent. Parents want to raise nonmaterialistic hard-working, nice people rather than “lazy jerks.” Of course this desire is widespread among parents regardless of class. However, for these affluent people the concern about entitlement harbours a deep contradiction. They want their children to see themselves as “normal” (and therefore just like everyone else) but also to appreciate their advantages (which make the different from others). In the end, they instill and reproduce ideas about how to occupy privilege legitimately without giving it up—how to be a “good person” with wealth. Formerly, time for recreation was won with difficulty from the onerous demand of work, and no questions arose over the desirability of leisure. Ways of utilizing leisure seemed endless, its maximization, an unquestioned good, not a problem. Yet today for many Americans the extension of leisure had created a vacuum (an abyss, Riesman ominously calls it) which they are perplexed to fill. People can be as much at a loss for something to do with themselves when surrounded with opportunities for recreation as when lacking. For some time to come, there will continue to be the community problem of providing certain kinds of recreational facilities, yet complete success along the lines will yet fall short of solving the emerging crisis of mass boredom. Boredom is a great threat to American society as the atom bomb. Boredom is lack of involvement. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Recreation, as our classification of its forms suggests, still bears a mysterious representational relation to all the binding concerns of life. The various kinds of recreation seems worthwhile according to how much they correspond to these concerns of life. When the serious concerns lose their value, recreation also begins to pall. Thus the mere pursuit of fun is no guarantee of relief from boredom, which may derive from a basic lack of involvement in serious pursuits. Even in play, human beings find it necessary to invent and devise ends, even though they may be purely symbolic. On the other hand, the deliberate effort to have fun—to make fun the end itself, and to pursue it directly—often stultifies the possibility of having it. By contrast, the person who is able to give himself fully and freely to any serious pursuit is likely to have fun without requiring—though he may periodically enjoy—standard forms of recreation. Theories of leisure and recreation are still very tentative, and any interpretation is risky. Nonetheless, it seems safe to conclude that the major emergent problem of recreational agencies, as of all other types of family agencies, is no longer that of further expanding leisure and recreational facilities—though such expansion will continue—but of leading in the creation of recreational values in which families may become deeply involved and committed. To a large degree, of course, such a program calls for the organization of recreational groups which will generate or expand their own specific values and morale. This may be the place to propose a general recreational value, least the preceding words seem to lack reference or contradict each other. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

This may be the place to propose a general recreational value, lest the preceding words seem to lack reference or to contradict each other. The concept of self-transcendence describes such value. It lacks the misleading connotations of the popular term “growth,” which raises question of the organic analogy, naturally predetermined sequences, and quantitative accretion without differentiation. Self-transcendence implies only that exploration and extension of capacities will occur, but does not specify the forms their exercise will take. Self-transcendence is possible at all ages, but not in all directions at all ages. In adulthood, it goes beyond pretense and vicariousness to exercise movement from potentiality to actuality. As a principal value to be sought and found in recreation, the concept of transcendence is congenial with several major theories of recreation which her been proposed so far—Groos’ practice theory, Piaget’s theory of representative activity, Erikson’s idea of ego-mastery, Huizinga’s notion of “stepping out of common reality into a higher order.” Play furnishes the perfect model for free involvement and commitment. As such, approached with discrimination, it offers some promise to the contemporary person who wishes to “declare his own values,” id est, who recognizes that he needs rules to live by, yet wishes not to be inescapably bound by them. A person can if he left himself become deeply involved in a game, yet know it for only a game; he may be fully committed to his role, but for only the duration of an agreed upon period. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Precise sociological and psychological analyses of the process of progressive involvement and commitment (phrases which have been significantly used to define courtship and marriage) may thus help to define the means for solving the widespread problem of aimlessness in society. When it was taken for granted that what was needed was simply more health, more economic means, more opportunity for participation, more freedom for self-development, more education, more leisure and recreation, the old situation looked simple by contrast with the present. In spite of all its bad memories of the depression, and the uncertainties of war-imposed separation, the coming generation is the uneasy position of being the heir to a fortune. Being forced to do nothing and free to do anything, the young person finds that he does not integrate unless he can become a valued part of some activity with others which makes demands on him; that he cannot esteem himself unless he finds a way to win the esteem of others by contributing productively to a goal which he shares with them. Countless parents today, in releasing their children (and in some case, wives or husbands) from all obligations of effort, rob them of their chances to achieve social worth and self-esteem. In place of crude necessity they should introduce some chosen values, values shared by a company of others who will support these values and reinforce the child’s conception of who he is when his parents can do so no more. With the best of intentions, that is, the most living parents may accomplish the worst of consequences, through a mistaken, obsolete interpretation of the wants of youth, for example, by refusing to give any negative or positive criticism when asked for appraisal of performance. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Doubt of the experience or “manifestation” being of God. We cannot emphasize too strongly the need of not quenching and not ignoring the first doubt, for the “doubt” is actually the initial penetration of truth to the mind, and hence the first step to deliverance. Some have instantly quenched the first doubt, fearing to “doubt God,” and in doing so have closed their minds to the first ray of light which would have led them into liberty. They have looked upon doubt as temptation, and resisted it, overlooking the distinction between true and evil, right and wrong “doubt.” This has its root in the mind of most Christians in associating only evil with such words as “judging,” “criticizing,” “doubting,” and “enmity,” “hatred,” “unbelief,” et cetera—all of which dispositions and actions they though to be evil, and evil only, whereas they are evil or good according to their source in spirit or soul, and in relation to their object. For example, “enmity” against Satan is God-given (Gen 3.15), “hatred” toward sin is good, and “unbelief” of spirit manifestations is commanded until the believer is sure of their source (1 John 4.1). To doubt God—which means not to trust Him—is a sin; but a doubt concering supernatural manifestations is simply a call to exercise the faculties which all spiritual believers should use to discern “good and evil.” The deep doubt concerning some supernatural experiences is therefore not a “temptation” but is really the Holy Spirit moving the spiritual faculties to action according to 1 Corinthians 2.15: “He that is spiritual judgeth—id est, examineth—all things,” the “things of God” thus being “spiritually discerned” (v. 14, KJV). #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The New Being will first be considered under the aspect of “newness.” The old eon is estrangement, the split between essential and existential being. The Christ as the New Being ushers in the new eon by manifesting undistorted essential being withing the conditions of existence. The New Being is new in contrast to the merely potential character of essential being; and it is new over against the estranged character of existential being. Those who are “in Christ” are “new creatures.” “In Christ” means participation in him. “Those who participate in him participate in the New Being, though under the condition of man’s existential predicament and, therefore, only fragmentarily and by anticipation.” The real, but imperfect, state of participation can be explained as the interim period between the first and second coming of the Christ. In this period the New Being is present in the Christ; in him the eschatological expectation is fulfilled in principle. The appearance of the New Being is the beginning of fulfilment, and, consequently, it marks the end of the old situation. It signals the end of the reign of law, the law of the “man’s essential being standing against his existence, the existence which is estrangement, ambiguity, and disintegration. It announces the end of history in the sense that “nothing qualitatively new in the dimension of the ultimate can be produced by history which is not implicitly present in the New Being in Jesus as the Christ.” The end of history is here understood not as a temporal terminal point, but as the ultimate aim that imparts meaning to the whole process. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

MAGNOLIA STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA | low $600s

Now Selling!

Models now open at Magnolia Station! Located at the corner of Rancho Cordova Parkway and Douglas Road, residents of Cresleigh Ranch will benefit from a brand new neighborhood with convenient access to the new Raley’s Shopping Center, Sunrise Boulevard, and much more!

Magnolia Station will  include 81 homesites  and five distinct plans ranging from 2,200 – 3,700 square feet; including three single story plans! Each plan has been thoughtfully designed to include features such as: Generations Suite, Optional Offices/Dens, Extended Great Rooms, and more!

#CresleighHomes

Consciousness is the Creature of Rhythm

My immediate environment had undergone a radical and significant change. Slowly I looked up. There was someone reflected in the mirror—a lone figure, it seemed. With a start I looked over my shoulder. No one there. And then back again to the dim and shadowy glass. A man was gazing out from the immaterial realm beyond it, and as I studied him, the alchemy in my blood flowed with great vigor and my senses sharped, his image grew brighter and clearer, until he was vividly and undeniably a young man of pale complexion and dark brown eyes, staring angrily and malevolently and unmistakably down at me. At last, the image reached its fullest potency. And it was so brilliant, dreamy and romatic. It seemed a mortal man had hidden himself in a chamber behind the mirror, and having removed the glass was peering at me from the empty frame. Never in all my years at Llanada Villa had I seen an apparition so exquisitely realized. The man appeared to be perhaps thirty years of age; his skin was deliberately flawless, yet carefully coloured, with a blush to the cheeks and a faint paling beneath the eyes. His attire was very aristocratic, a blue crushed velvet suit, with an upturned white collar and rich silk tie. His hair was wavy, and ever so slightly unkempt, as if he had only just run his fingers through it. The mouth was very delicate and youthful. The blue eyes glittered like diamonds. His left forearm appeared to rest in his lap; he moved his pieces with right hand, which seemed disproportionately long. I had shrunk back and now stood a little to one side of the doorway and in shadow. Something forbade me either to enter or retire, a feeling—I know not how it came—that I was in the presence of an imminent tragedy. With a scarcely conscious rebellion against the indelicacy of the act I remained. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10

The wind had now gone down, but I heard, at lessening intervals and progressively louder, the rumble and roll of thunder. In the pauses between I now became conscious of a low humming  or buzzing which, like thunder, grew momentarily louder and more distinct. However, before I had time for much conjecture as to its nature my attention was taken by the strange motions of the apparition itself. It shook like a man with palsy or an ague chill, and the motion augmented every moment until the entire figure was in violent agitation. Suddenly something shot from the frame across the table and chair. The hands of this horrible thing closed upon the butler’s throat, his own clutch its wrists. Then the table was overturned, the candle thrown to the floor and was extinguished, and all was black dark. However, the noise of the struggle was dreadfully distinct, and most terrible of all were the raucous, squawking sounds made by the strangled man’s efforts to breathe. I sprang to the rescue of the butler, but had hardly taken a stride in the darkness when the whole room blazed with a blinding white light that burned into my brain and heart and memory a vivid picture of the combatants on the floor, Daughtry underneath, his throat still in the clutch of those iron hands, his head forced backward, his eyes protruding, his mouth wide open and his tongue thrust out; and—horrible contrast!—upon the painted face of his assassin an expression of tranquil and profound thought, as in the solution of a problem in chess! This I observed, then all was blackness and silence. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10

Three days later I recovered consciousness in my bedroom. As the memory of that tragic night slowly evolved in my ailing brain I recognized in my attendant my niece Daisy. Responding to a look she approached, smiling. “Tell me about it,” I managed to say, faintly—“all about it.” “Certainly,” she said; “you were carried unconscious from the dining room.” “And Daughtry?” “Buried yesterday—what was left of him.” Apparently this reticent apparition could materialize on occasion. My perceptions would never be the same and I knew that dread would always follow me now, would be with me like some brake medical condition newly and devastatingly diagnosed. I did not dwell on it. I had to push it all away from me. I had to think practically. I had to do that to preserve my sanity. And my practical problems, right now, were considerable. I had Daisy draw me a bath. I took my clothes off and walked into the cool, clear water. I crouched in the tub and felt the water flowing over my skin and hair. And when I emerged from the tub, cleansed, I felt the temptation extended by the warm Earth and wild flower smell of the bright day to believe that what had happened had been only some dark turmoil of the mind. It was much easier to consider it all no more than a lurid dream. And I might have surrendered to that temptation, if the floor all about, in the Grand Ballroom has not revealed signs of a struggle. As tears came to my eyes, I thought of howe Daisy and I used to sing duets sometimes. Her voice, so sweet, so true, so dear. But now there was a rubble where the piano ought to have been. Strange forebodings came into my mind. I was angry with myself for giving way to melancholy thoughts. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10

Eight o’clock Sunday afternoon, I questioned Daisy about the French maid and those other two servants who had died within three years. “They were poor, feeble creatures,” Daisy told me. “They were too much, and they were lazy. They died of luxury and idleness. Aunt Sarah, you were much too kind to them. They had nothing to do; and so they took to fancy things; fancying the air didn’t suit them, that they could not sleep. How have you been sleeping?” “I sleep well enough,” I replied “but I have had a strange dream several times since that incident.” “Ah, aunt Sarah, you had better not begin to think about dreams, or you will be like your servants. They were dreamers—and they dreamt themselves into the cemetery.” The dream troubled me a little, not because it was a ghastly or frightening dream, but on account of sensations which I had never felt before in sleep—a whirring of wheels that went around in my brain, a great noise like a whirlwind, but rhythmical like the ricking of a gigantic clock: and then in the midst of this uproar as of winds and waves I seemed to sink into a gulf of unconsciousness, out of sleep info far deeper sleep—total extinction. And then, after that black interval, there had come sounds of voices, and then again the whirr of wheels, louder and louder—and again the black—and then I awoke, feeling languid and oppressed. I told Dr. Wayland of my dream one day, on the only occasion when I wanted his professional advice. I had suffered rather severely from the mosquitoes before Christmas—and had been almost frightened at finding a wound upon my arm which I could only attribute to the venomous sting of one of these torturers. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10

Dr. Wayland put on his glasses, and scrutinized the angry mark on my slender, white arm, with my sleeve rolled up. “Yes, that’s rather more than a joke,” he said; “he has caught you on the top of a vein. What a vampire! However, there’s no harm done, Mrs. Winchester, nothing that a little dressing of mine won’t heal. You must always show me any bite of this nature. It might be dangerous if neglected. These creature feed on poison and disseminate it.” “And to think that such tiny creature can bite like this,” I said; “my arm looks as if it had been cut by a knife.” “If I were to show you a mosquito’s sting under my microscope you wouldn’t be surprised at that,” replied Dr. Wayland. I had to put up with the mosquito bites, even when they came on the top of a vein, and produced that ugly wound. The wound recurred now and then at longish intervals, and I found Dr. Wayland’s dressing a speedy cure. If he were the quack his enemies called him, he had at least a light hand and a delicate touch in performing this small operation. However, I was not as strong as when I used to trudge to San Francisco to buy half a pound of tea. Indeed, and indeed, I am not ill. I am only a little tired. As I gazed out the window, I watched the haze that crept down the vastness of the valley, nearer and nearer, and noted how the wind grew in strength moment by moment. Far away on the left I saw a line of dark bulks—wild hogs perhaps, galloping down my estate. There was an uneasiness of the horses. And then I saw first one and then a second great white ball, a great shining white ball like a gigantic head of thistledown, that drove before the wind athwart path. These balls soared high in the air, and dropped and rose again and caught for a moment, and hurried on and passed, but at the sight of them the restlessness of the horses increased. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10

The squealing grew louder. Athwart the path a huge boar rushed, as I starred into the thickening haze that was coming upon Llanada Villa. But now a big globe came drifting past within a score of yards of my mansion. It was really not an even sphere at all, but a vast, soft, ragged, filmy thing, a sheet gathered by the corners, an aerial jellyfish, as it were, but rolling over and over as it advanced, and trailing long, cobwebby threads and streamers that floated in its wake. I stepped out onto the balcony, the air was full of it. An advancing multitude of floating masses. They came on before the wind with a sort of smooth swiftness, rising and falling noiselessly, sinking to Earth, rebounding high, soaring—all with a perfect unanimity, with a still, deliberate assurance. The pioneers of this strange army passed. At one that rolled along the ground, breaking shapelessly and trailing out reluctantly into long grappling ribbons and band. A long and clinging thread fell across one of the horses, a gray streamer dropped about his mane, some big, active thing with many legs ran down the back of its head. The horse snorted, and whined, shaking its head from side to side, as one of those gray masses anchored as it were above him by these things and flapping out ends as a sail flaps when a boat comes about—but noiselessly. The clouds were full of big spiders. The farmers grabbed their Winchesters and shot at them. I starred down at red things that had exploded. Around my estate, it was like a fog bank torn to rags. The horses ran in a dozen places trying to escape, but they could not escape the cobweb masses. The tentacles of gray masses had entangled themselves on the roofs, and slowly sank to cover the gardens. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10

There were great spiders upon my home, and all over the land. Gun fire rung out like the battle of Gettysburg. It went on for hours and hours until the estate was covered in red silk. The body of these spired were the size of a man’s head. I fell into deep thought. And I thought about all the dangers I had been through. “Spiders,” I said over and over again. “Spiders! Well, well, I must spin a web of my own.” A quarter to twelve had sounded, and I had begun to doze, when I was awakened by the sound of a key turning in a lock. Though my window was in shadow, it was bright moonlight outside. I opened my door a little and saw the housemaid Clara wrapped in what appeared to be a dark cloak, pass the entrance to the corridor in the direction of the landing, shielding the flame of her candle was her hand. Her expression made me wonder if she was walking in her sleep. The lights along the passage had been extinguished, and so I was able to follow her as far as the landing without risk of being seen. Clara snuffed her candle and continued on, all the way to the gallery, where she passed through the open doors and out of sight. I remained where I was, about forty paces away, looking over the black pit of the stairwell. Faint sounds, as of someone moving about in stockinged feet, came from the gallery. The shuffling ceases; I held my breath, straining to make out another, even fainter sound; a muffled creaking of hinges, as of a door being slowly and stealthily opened. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10

The scream that followed seemed to explode inside of my head; a prolonged shriek of terror and repulsion that roe to an intolerable pitch, reverberating up and down the stairwell in a cacophony of echoes. For several seconds I stood paralyzed, until the sounds of opening doors and hurrying feet brought me to my senses. I was the first to enter the gallery. I found Clara sprawled on the floor between the round table and the suit of armour, stone dead, her eyes open and her features contorted in an expression of the utmost horror. Two maids ran in as I was kneeling beside the body, followed a few moments later by the butler Alan and some of the other servants. Mr. Hansen had gone out for a stroll in the moonlight; he heard the scream from two hundred yards away, and came running back to the house. He, therefore, did not arrive at the gallery for some minutes after myself. Clara’s body was then carried to the basement, where Dr. Wayland made the examination. He found no trace of injury; on every indicated, she had died of heart failure induced by shock. However, what had caused her shock? A search of the gallery and library revealed nothing untoward; the movements of everyone in the mansion had been accounted for. Dr. Wayland waited until first light before dispatching a messenger to the telegraph office, and the household retired for a few hours’ uneasy sleep. At around nine thirty the next morning, Alan returned from the telegraph office with the news that he could not find a doctor willing to attend; at had said, upon hearing that a physician was already at the mansion, that he could perfectly well sign the certificate himself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10

Dr. Wayland, therefore, despite considerable misgivings, certified the immediate cause as heart failure brought on by shock, with advanced heart disease as a contributing cause. It was quite possible, as I had observed, that Clara had indeed been walking in her sleep, and that the fatal spasm had been precipitated by the shock of finding herself in the gallery. An undertaker and his men arrived a few hours later to collect the body and conveyed it directly to a distinguished pathologist for examination. I decided to close up that portion of the mansion. Dozens of servants were huddled there, the women were crying, then men doing what they could to calm them. Everyone soaked and shivering and quite at a loss. The lights flicked on for a second, a violent slash of lighting signaled their final failure. When an upstairs window suddenly burst in a shower of glittering shards, panic broke out once more. Thunder rolled over the rooftops, and the lightning laid bare the whole garden hideously in an instant, with its balustrades and towering camellias, and spired webs draped over so many skeletal black iron chairs. Everything was helplessly thrashing in the wind. And as I rushed towards the door, I glimpsed a man standing motionless and stiff, as it were, in a great cluster of evergreen trees. As I drew closer, I glanced to the right, and into the man’s face. It was the spirit, visible to me once more, though for what reason under God I had no idea. My heart raced dangerously, and I felt a momentary dizziness and tightening in my temples as if the circulation of my blood were being choked off. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10

He presented the same figure he had before; I saw the unmistakable glint of brown hair and brown eyes, and dim unremarkable clothing save for its primness and a certain vagueness about the whole. Yet the raindrops glistened as they struck his shoulders and his lapels. They glistened in his hair. However, it was the face of the being which held me enthralled. It was monstrously transfigured by anguish, and his cheeks were wet with soundless crying as he looked into my eyes. “Oh heaven, speak if you can,” I cried. And as frustrated as I was by all I had seen, I lunged at him, seeking to grab hold of him by the shoulders and make him answer if I could. He vanished. Only this time I felt him vanish. I felt the warmth and the sudden movement in the air. It was as if something had been sucked away, and the evergreen trees swayed violently. However, then the wind and the rain were knocking them about. And suddenly I did not know what I had seen, or what I had felt. My heart was skipping dangerously. I felt another wave of dizziness. Nothing I had ever seen had affected me so strangely as this unfamiliar and unaccountable phenomenon, yet I am able to recall my fear. Mr. Hansen thought it would be a good idea to remove a few of the trees. He snatched an axe an exclaimed, “I care not whether it be a tree of beloved goddess herself, it should come down.” So he lifted the axe, and the Monkey pine seemed to shudder and utter a groan. When the first blow fell upon the trunk, blood flowed from the wound. All the bystanders were horror-struck and one of them ventured to remonstrate and hold back the fatal axe. From that moment on, everyone knew my estate was certainly beautiful, surely bizarre, and very much alive. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10

The Winchester Mystery House

Perhaps by some fortuitous circumstances, many have witnessed some playful and fearful maneuvers of another form of intelligence that shares our planet at The Winchester Mystery House. Many psychical researchers suggest that the orbs, those darting globs of light seen at the scene of so many hauntings in the mansion, are the paraphysical vehicles by which spirits move about between their dimension of being and ours. Elicit paranormal activity and contact with ghosts and souls that physically trapped in The Winchester Mansion is a common occurrence. While hearing a ghostly voice talk back to you in a haunted place may be terrifying, if a supernatural experience is what you are seeking, come swing by for a spell. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/

 

Their Money More Private than Pleasures of the Flesh

The idea of affluence has become very popular in America today. So many are trying to become famous, any way they can, to achieve wealth. Several people have forgotten about the traditional, conservative way of obtaining wealth. A vast amount of wealthy people are college-educated, nearly exclusively in elite institutions. Two-thirds of those we interviewed had earned advanced degrees, most often MBAs but also JDs, MAs in various fields, and PhDs. They worked hard or had worked hard in finance, corporate law, real estate, advertising, academia, nonprofits, the arts, and fashion.  A small percentage of affluent women leave their full-times jobs to take care of children. These well-educated people tend to share a few characteristics. They have higher levels of cultural capital, tend to be Worldly and culturally curious, and have a passion for fine art, fashion, architecture and automobile design and technology. Travel is also important to this group and many of them have an affinity for material goods. One of the benefits that comes along with being in this elite club is not only their legacies, but also because many are considered employed in affinity careers, they tend to have lower auto insurance rates because people in this class file insurance claims less often, if ever. This class of people tends to live in suburban homes, spacious urban apartments (often renovated to combine two or three original units), townhouses, Victorian homes, and have second homes in affluent suburban communities. Their homes are traditionally decorated with antique furniture and spaces for formal entertainment; or some prefer more modern design concepts with sleek lines and sharp angles. A portion of these elite individual also cherish country homes surrounded by outdoor space. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Feature in their dwellings is furniture designed by famous makers and often times valuable contemporary art. Several of these home owners enjoyed open kitchens, often outfitted with white Carrara marble or handmade tiles; along with handcrafted dining room takes. Spa inspired bathrooms with soaking tubs, steam showers, living rooms decorated in palettes of gold and white, or blue and green with wood accents and feature ceilings, with sophisticated chandeliers and fancy wall sconces were common. In addition to bedrooms with expansive views of a lavish garden, the city or river, and brightly decorated children’s play rooms. Because many of the children were close in age, they had a tendency to have homes with large bedrooms, enough for everyone to have their own room, but the children often liked to share a room with their siblings. It was very impressive how customized these homes were and obvious that these home buyers had sat down with an agent and discussed the types of spaces they needed and what they wanted to do with these spaces. In the planning came things like deciding whether they wanted a “Super Great Room” or 7th bedroom, formal dining room or a den, a loft of 6th bedroom suite, and office of 4th bedroom. Where they lived with connected to a whole host of larger questions, who was the builder of the home, where homebuyers worked, where their children would go to school, and where they spent time on the weekends. Their homes were also customized aesthetically, too, seeking to express their individual styles through their choice of sofas, dining tables, wall features, faucets, paint colours, flooring, cabinets, appliance, countertops and so forth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

One man in particular, Lawrence had been self-conscious about his wealth since he was a child. He recalled feeling sensitive to comments classmates and others would make about the size of his family’s house. He felt like it was something to hide. In college, he tried to hide his background as much as possible, but classmate ended up finding out that he was secretly rich and teased him about his family’s wealth. His wife Bianca felt uncomfortable having married into wealth. Although she felt that it was easy to spend money on philanthropy, she felt guilty about spending money on herself.  Another fear of theirs was their children and instilling in them the desire to work hard. When I was interviewing Lawrence, he and his wife had some disharmony about renovations of their home worth $5 million, which they had built so their children could grow up in a decent community, which was mixed with working class families and middle-class families, as well as the wealthy. However, they felt unhappy about living there. The house was a panorama of opulence and marble and other aesthetic features Bianca hated. The conflict was traumatizing and destabilized their marriage, and it resulted in the couple selling their home and buying two separate homes next door to each other. Their struggle was also partly about the visibility of their wealth. Bianca explained that their annual spending had reached nearly a million dollars, not only because of their lifestyle, but because one of their children had special needs, and because of the cost of lawyers, family vacations, education and other business expenses. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

The couple had fascinating conflicts, was it okay to buy Japanese and German cars? Is spending one thousand on a suit and five hundred of shoes acceptable? Did having thirty-five-hundred-dollar wheels on a car too gaudy? Or was it acceptable to spend half a million dollars renovating a home? Maintaining these lifestyles required a considerable amount of work. All the interviewees had hired expert service providers, including, for example, financial advisors, architect, interior designers, real estate brokers, personal chefs, and personal assistant. Even their teenager children had more than one financial planner, investments and new cars, after driving their parents’ cars for a few years. Therefore, it was not uncommon for kids to start off driving sports cars or luxury sedans. In the interviews, most people described themselves as reluctant to talk about money in detail with anyone except their partners. They described money as deeply private. Bianca, an academia whose husband had inherited wealth, said there was too much stigma in “our culture” discussing money. She refused to speak of her family’s net worth saying, “I do not think I can say. I’m sorry. I just feel like that is too private and he would hit the roof.” Many people also underrepresented their wealth. They were underreporting their income and/or assets, whereas I never suspected they were exaggerating. Their children did the same. How on Earth does a high school student make nearly seventy thousand dollars legally? Although it is suspected that that was only half of it. Bianca, who was a stay-at-home mother whose husband was a technology executive, was uncomfortable talking about her husband’s income. She said he made “A million plus.” Later in the interview, she corrected herself to say that her second home had cost $250,000 more than she had originally told people. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

For the people I walked with, their general norm of civility—not talking about money, not “showing off,” treating others as one wants to be treated—were also mechanisms for silencing and obscuring their own privilege, to others and sometimes to themselves. At the same time, however, the interviewees did recognize that they were privileged, which seemed to spark a lot of envy from the local police department. So, although they were silent with others, they struggled with themselves over the question of how to be worthy of this privilege in a moral sense. In order to feel that they deserved their advantages, they tried to interpret themselves as “good people.” Can you believe that the local police department was so jealous that they even pulled a home invasion on duty and kidnapped someone’s child and held him hostage? The truth is more stranger than fiction, but it is not the first time that a wealthy person has had their child kidnapped and held hostage by a political group. The only difference is when the police do it, they often go unpunished because of the growing anger over income inequality, and beauty. This is why the medieval Church stressed the dignity of man, the freedom of his will, and the fact that his efforts were of avail; it stressed the likeness between God and man and also man’s right to be confident of God’s love. Men were felt to be equal and brothers in their very likeness to God. In the late Middle Ages, in connection with the beginning of capitalism, bewilderment and insecurity arose; but at the same time tendencies that emphasized the role of will and human effort became increasingly stronger. We may assume that both the philosophy of the Renaissance and the Catholic doctrine of the late Middle Ages reflected the spirit prevailing in those social groups whose economic position gave them a feeling of power and independence. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

On the other hand, Mr. Luther’s theology gave expression to the feeling of the middle class which, fighting against the authority of the Church and resenting the new moneyed class, felt threatened by rising capitalism and overcome by a feeling of powerlessness and individual insignificance. Mr. Luther’s system, in so far as it differed from the Catholic tradition, has two sides, one of which has been stressed more than the other in the picture of his doctrines which is usually given in Protestant countries. This aspect points out that he gave man independence in religious matter; that he deprived the Church of her authority and gave it to the individual; that his concept of faith and salvation is one of subjective individual experience, in which all responsibility is with the individual and none with an authority which could give him what he cannot obtain himself. There are good reasons to praise this side of Mr. Luther’s and Mr. Calin’s doctrines, sine they are one source of the development of political and spiritual freedom in modern society; a development which, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, is inseparably connected with the ideas of Puritanism. The other aspect of modern freedom is the isolation and powerlessness it has brought for the individual, and this aspect has its roots in Protestantism as much as that of independence. This is why freedom can be seen as a burden, it was been the theme since Adam and Eve. As soon as they acted on their free will, they became cursed. People often ask “Why is life so hard?” well, it is because humans lack self-control. They are not willing to obey God and allow life to be a paradise. Mr. Luther and Mr. Calvin’s doctrines in which this negative aspect of freedom is rooted: their emphasis on the fundamental evilness and powerlessness of man. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Mr. Luther assumed the existence of an innate evilness in man’s nature, which directs his will for evil and makes it impossible for any man to perform any good deed on the basis of his nature. Man has an evil and vicious nature (“naturaliter et inevitbiliter mala et vitiate natura”). The depravity of man’s nature and its complete lack of freedom to choose the right one of the fundamental concepts of Mr. Luther’s whole thinking. In this spirit he begins his comments on Paul’s letter to the Romans: “The essence of this letter is: to destroy, to uproot, and to annihilate all wisdom and justice of the flesh, may it appear—in our eyes and in those of others—ever so remarkable and sincere…What matters is that our justice and wisdom which unfold before our eyes are being destroyed and uprooted from our heart and from our vain self.” This conviction of man’s rottenness and powerlessness to do anything good on his own merits is one essential condition of God’s grace. Only if man humiliates himself and demolishes his individual will and pride will God’s grace descend upon him. “For God wants to save us not by our own but by extraneous (fremde) justice and wisdom, by a justice that does not come from ourselves and does not originate in ourselves but comes to us from somewhere else…That is, a justice must be taught that comes exclusively from the outside and is entirely alien to ourselves.” An even more radial expression of man’s powerlessness was given by Mr. Luther seven years later in his pamphlet “De servo arbitrio,” which was an attack against Erasmus’ defense of the freedom of the will. “…Thus the human will is, as it were, a beast before thee, nevertheless I am continually with thee.’ (Ps. 73. 22, 23.) If Satan sit thereon, it wills and goes as Satan will. Nor is it in the power of its own will to choose, to which rider it will run, nor which it will seek; but the riders themselves content, which shall have and hold it.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Mr. Luther declares that if one does not like “to leave out this theme (of free will) altogether (which would be most safe and also most religious) we may, nevertheless, with a good conscience teach that it be used so far as to allow man a ‘free will,’ not in respect of those who are above him, but in respect only of those beings who are below him…God-ward man has ‘no free will,’ but is a captive, slave, and servant either to the will of God or to the will of Satan.” The doctrines that man was a powerless tool in God’s hands and fundamentally evil, that his only task was to resign to the will of God, that God could save him as the result of an incomprehensible act of justice—these doctrines were not the definite answers a man was to give who was so much driven by despair, anxiety, and doubt and at the same time by such as ardent wish for certainty as Mr. Luther. He eventually found the answer for his doubt. In 1518 a sudden revelation came to him. Man cannot be saved on the basis of his virtues; he should not even meditate whether or not his works were well pleasing to God; but he can have certainty of his salvation if he has faith. Faith is given to man by God; once man has had the indubitable subjective experience of faith, he can also be certain of his salvation. The individual is essentially receptive in this relationship to God. Once man received God’s grace in the experience of faith his nature becomes changed, since in the act of faith he unites himself with Christ, and Christ’s justice replaces his own which was lost by Adam’s fall. However, man can never become entirely virtuous during his life, since his natural evilness can never entirely disappear. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Mr. Luther’s doctrine of faith as an indubitable subjective experience of one’s own salvation may at first glance strike one as an extreme contradiction to the intense feeling of doubt which was characteristic for his personality and his teachings up to 1518. Yet, psychologically, this change from doubt to certainty, far from being contradictory, has a casual relation. We must remember what has been said about the nature of this doubt: it was not the rational doubt which is rooted in the freedom of thinking and which dares to question established views It was the irrational doubt which springs from the isolation and powerlessness of an individual whose attitude toward the World is one of anxiety and hated. This irrational doubt can never be cured by rational answers; it can only disappear if the individual becomes an integral part of a meaningful World. If this does not happen, as it did not happen with Mr. Luther and the middle class which he represented, the doubt can only be silenced, driven underground, so to speak, and this can be done by some formula which promises absolute certainty. The compulsive quest for certainty, as we find with Mr. Luther, is not the expression of genuine faith but is rooted in the need to conquer the unbearable doubt. Mr. Luther’s solution is one which we find present in many individuals today, who do not think in theological terms: namely to find certainty by elimination of the isolated individual self, by becoming an instrument in the hands of an overwhelmingly strong power outside of the individual. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

For Mr. Luther, this power was God and in unqualified submission he sought certainty. However, although he thus succeeded in silencing his doubts to some extent, they never really disappeared; up to his last day he had attacks of doubt which he had to conquer by renewed efforts toward submission. Psychologically, faith has two entirely different meanings. It can be the expression of an inner relatedness to mankind and affirmation of life; or it can be a reaction formation against a fundamental feeling of doubt, rooted in the isolation of the individual and his negative attitude toward life. Mr. Luther’s faith had that compensatory quality. It is particularly important to understand the significance of doubt and the attempts to silence it, because this is not only a problem concerning Mr. Luther’s and, and as we shall see soon, Mr. Calvin’s theology, but it has remained one of the basic problems of modern man. Doubt is the starting point of modern philosophy; the need to silence it had a most powerful stimulus on the development of modern philosophy and science. However, although many rational doubts have been solved by rational answers, the irrational doubt has not disappeared and cannot disappear as long as man has not progressed from negative freedom to positive freedom. The modern attempts to silence it, whether they consist in a compulsive striving for success, in the belief that unlimited knowledge of facts can answer the quest for certainty, or in the submission to a leader who assumes the responsibility for “certainty”—all these solutions can only eliminate the awareness of doubt. The doubt itself will not disappear as long as man does not overcome his isolation and as long as his place in the World has not become a meaningful one in terms of human needs. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Many people often wonder what Adam looked like, as they often wonder what Jesus looked like. I have always picture Adam as looking exactly like Michelangelo’s David, and even being 17 feet tall. David is considered by scientists to be absolute perfection of man. The application of scientific methods of historical criticism to biblical literature produced, among other results, the ill-fated search for the historical Jesus. Its failure is due not to defective methods or faulty applications of sound ones, but to the nature of the sources themselves. The gospels are reports of faith about Jesus as the Christ, not about Jesus of Nazareth. The attempts to sift fact from faith yields, at best, a sketchy, conjectural picture. The result of the search is not a picture of the so-called historical Jesus but the insight that there is no picture behind the biblical one which could be made scientifically probable. Since it is impossible to found the Christian faith upon a factual biography of Jesus, some theologians seek its historical foundation in the words of Jesus. “As teachings of Jesus, they are understood as refined interpretations of the natural law or as original insights into the nature of man.” However, though their power of expression is remarkable, they leave Jesus on the same level as the Old Testament. The latest approach to the words of Jesus, that of Mr. Bultmann, considers them not as general rules, but as a message that demands decision. However, it does not show how the requirement of deciding for the Kingdom of God can be fulfilled. Neither the teachings of Jesus nor his demands provide the power to follow Him, for that can come only from a new reality, from the New Being which is first a gift before it is a demand. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Much of the confusion that accompanied the search for the Jesus of history could have been dispelled by a distinction in the term “historical Jesus.” It can refer to the fragmentary and hypothetical results of historical investigation into the person behind the gospel story. It can also refer to the indispensable factual element in the Christian event which lies in the sphere of faith and cannot be touched by skepticism of critical history. Faith cannot even guarantee the name “Jesus” in respect to him who was the Christ…However, faith does guarantee the factual transformation or reality in that personal life which the New Testament expressed in its picture of Jesus as the Christ. Although the search for the historical Jesus failed to establish Christianity upon a foundation of undisputed fact, Protestantism is the first religion to subject its sacred writings to the criticism of historical method and draw out the consequences in its theology. Historical criticism enables the theologian to distinguish between the empirically historical, the legendary, and the mythological elements in the Christian Bible. This knowledge leads to a deeper insight into the growth and meaning of the Christological symbols. There are four steps in their development: the origin of the symbols in religious culture and language; the vital use of the symbols to express the question and answer of existence; their transformation when used to interpret the Christian event; and their distortion by popular superstition, abetted by theological literalism and supranaturalism. Although theology does not depend upon historical research, the latter protects it against literal and superstitious interpretations of the Christian symbols. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Illuminating as it is theologically, historical criticism of the Christian Bible leaves a nagging doubt in regard to faith. However, what is historical research should demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth never lived? It is insufficient to say that historians have not yet done so and that it is very unlikely they ever will. “Not yet” and “unlikely” still leave room for doubt. If one replies that the historical foundation of Christianity is an essential element of the Christianity is an essential element of the Christian faith itself, it must be made quite clear just exactly what faith does guarantee. Faith can guarantee only its own foundation, namely, the appearance of that reality that gives birth to faith by conquering existential estrangement. Therefore, the presence of faith is identical with the presence of the New Being, and this presence is what is guaranteed by faith. For no historical criticism can question the immediate awareness of those who find themselves transformed into the state of faith. Faith is a given, not a deduction from logical or historical premises. By analogy, one must say that participation, not historical argument, guarantees the reality of the event upon which Christianity is based. By faith one is assured that in a personal life the New Being has overcome the estrangement of existence, that the New Being was and is actualized in him. However, it does not guarantee His name to be Jesus of Nazareth. That is an historical question open to historical doubt. If history provides no concrete picture of him, for faith is not founded on an abstract statement, but on a concrete encounter, how does the New Being as Christ excite faith? #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

The reality of the New Being with all his individual characteristics was experienced by the disciples. Their experience is expressed in the biblical picture of the Christ which is now the medium for the transforming power of the New Being. An analogia entis, is not a method of knowing God, but the way of talking about Him. The gospel image is the symbolic or analogical way of describing Jesus as the Christ. Consequently, the empirical traits of the biblical picture of the Christ are not guaranteed by faith, but the picture itself is guaranteed as an adequate expression of the transforming power of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ. The scriptural ground for obtaining deliverance is the truth concerning Christ’s full victory at Calvary, through which every believer can be delivered from the power of both conduct disorder and psychopathological offenders; but in actual fact the victory won at Calvary can only be applied as there is conformity to divine laws. As the deceptions of the psychopathological offender are recognized, and the will of the Christian is set to reject them, he can, on the basis of the work of Christ at Calvary as set forth in Romans 6.6-13, Colossians 2.15, 1 John 3.8 and other passages, claim his deliverance from these workings of the psychopathological offender in deception. Just as there are various degrees of deception, so there are degrees of deliverance. These vary according to the understanding of the believer, and his willingness to face all the truth about himself and all the ground given to the enemy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

In doing this the believer needs to have a steady grasp of his standing in Christ: as identified with Him in His death on the cross, and his union with Him in spirit in His place on the Throne; and he must “hold fast,” with steady faith-grip, the “Head,” as the One who is, by His Spirit, giving him grace and strength to recover the ground which he has ignorantly yielded to the foe. For the man himself must act to get rid of passivity; he must revoke his consent to psychopathological offenders to deceive, and by his own volition insist that they retire from the influence they have obtained by deceit. Since God will not act for him in regaining the normal condition of his outer man, nor exercise his choice for him, he must stand on the vantage ground of the Calvary victory of Christ and claim his freedom. The function of protection has long since been transformed into a concern for preventing exploitation, for safeguarding equal rights to opportunity, and lately for expansion of opportunity for free movement of men, goods, and ideas. Although it is not six generations since human slavery was abolished in America, the artificial barriers which have restricted achievement by less represented groups are progressively being leveled. The value of political and social equality bids to endow every marginalized group with full citizenship. Yet when we observe the way in which people have neglected to exercise their freedom to associate in co-operative enterprises of all kinds, we note that many find choice difficult, and multitudes participate hardly at all, save in the sense of passive drift. The value of participation has moved only a fraction of those who now possess opportunity for its realization. Nonvoters exceed those denied suffrage. Yet as adequate examples show, people’s appetite for participation can easily be stimulated to such heights that assumptions of the native capacity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

In the past, the personality of each individual was inherited very much as if it were a fact of nature. The widespread idea that it was of hereditary origin only amplified and confirmed the conviction of its intrinsic and unchangeable nature. Since nothing could be done about it, personality was not a problem and received little attention as an object of scientific study. The rise of experimental education and of social psychology has opened the doors of self-determination to a degree which renders obsolete the tragic conception of a man’s character as fated. Yet instead of a nobler conception of responsibility for the self, though organizing the conditions which determine the self, our theater offers the pathetic spectacle of drifting characters who are unable to establish their identity, and who regard the conditions of existence not as potential means but as excuses. People who enjoy what would once have been considered fortunate circumstances, having few external barriers to overcome, still invent imaginary psychic ills, or in a daze of pointless futility adhere to the values of their parents, or conform with a mass of suggestible others in following ephemeral fads. Although the remedy is certainly not a return to harsh patriarchal discipline, it seems not too strong a statement to describe a whole new generation as suffering from overprotection. Having freedom to choose, they have no criteria for choice. Millions seem to occupy a limbo between values indoctrinated in them by parents and values freely chosen by themselves. Without commitments to past or future, they are rudderless, other-directed, unable to design and organize a style of life which can in any determinative sense be termed a personality. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Without leadership by family agencies in the creation of positive values for personality, the new freedom from paternal domination can readily be replaced by a new tyranny in which more lonely crowds seek father figures. The pursuit of identity is a positive value without limit, the subjective side of any philosophy of self-government. The extent of American success in the long struggle against scarcity has not been grasped by those segments of the public who still think of education as only a process of inculcating the fundamentals for getting along in the World, or merely as the transmission of an established culture. The interpretation of education as enrichment of the appetite for new experience sets a task for schools far greater than that of traditional educational strategy. Of all the potential avenues of new experience, which one shall the student choose? Though for some, the problem is still how to get a basic education, for most it has become a matter of choosing between the many pursuits open, how to select and integrate their selection from the vast chaos of impressions which modern means of communication convey to them. How many have stuck to a wrong choice rather than renew the agonies of choosing again? Perhaps earlier than most family agencies, some public schools have recognized the peculiar current need for career guidance, but the guidance movement is still groping for an authoritative while nonauthoritarian rationale. Higher education for careers is on its way to becoming universal, before many students know why they want it. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Before the industrial revolution, the family was large, and life revolved around the home. Home was where work took place, where the sick were tended and where the children were educated. It was the place where the elderly were cared for. In First Wave societies, the large, extended family was the center of the social Universe. The decline of the family was a powerful institution did not begin with Jack Dayton or Seventeen magazine. It began when the industrial revolution stripped most of these functions out of the family. Work shifted to the factory or office. The sick went off to hospitals, kids to schools, couples to movie theater. The elderly went into nursing homes. What remained when all these tasks were exteriorized was the “nuclear family,” held together less by the functions its members performed as a unit than by fragile psychological bonds that are all too easily snapped. The Third Wave re-empowers the family and the home. It restores many of the lost function that once made the home so central to society. An estimated fifty million Americans now do some part of their work at home, often using computers, faxes, email, text messages, video calls, and other Third Wave technologies. Many parents are now choosing to home-school their kids, but the real change came when computers and digital screening replaced the TV and became incorporated into the entertainment and educational process. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

As to the sick? More and more medical functions, from pregnancy testing to checking blood pressure—takes once done in hospitals or doctor’s offices—are migrating back to the home. All this points to a stronger, not weaker, home and to a stronger role for families—but families of many diverse types, some nuclear, some extended and multigenerational, some composed of remarrieds, some big, some small or childless, some in which the couple defers having children until later in life. This diversity of family structure reflects the diversity we find in the economy and culture as Second Wave mass society de-massifies. The irony is that many “family values” advocates, without knowing it, are not pushing toward a stronger family when they urge a return to the nuclear household: they are trying to restore the standardized model of the Second Wave. If we really want to strengthen family and make the home a central institution again, we must forget peripheral issues, accept diversity, and return important tasks to the household—oh, yes, and make sure the parent keeps control of the remote. American is where the future usually happens first. If we are suffering from the crash of our old institutions, we are also pioneering a new civilization. That means living with high uncertainty. It means expecting disequilibria and upset. And it means no one has the full and final truth about where we are going—or even where we should go. We need to feel our way, leaving no group behind, as we create the future in our midst. These few criteria can help us separate policies rooted in the Second Wave past from those that can help ease the way to our Third Wave future. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

 The danger of any list of criteria, however, is that some people will be tempted to apply them literally, mechanically, even fanatically. And that is the opposite of what is required. Toleration for error, ambiguity and, above all, diversity, backed by a sense of humour and proportion, are survival necessities as we pack our kit for the amazing trip into the next millennium. As of now, individuals can choose between bilateral repeated interactions, which must be self-enforcing, and an anonymous market, which requires each trader to search for a partner, but does not have enforcement problems. The market is the outside opportunity that defines the incentive compatibility constraint for the former. If more people choose the market, it is thicker and offer better prospect for search. This tightens the incentive-compatibility constraint for bilateral relationships and therefore makes it harder to sustain self-enforcing cooperation in them. Conversely, if more people engage in reciprocal bilateral exchange, the market is thinner, bilateral exchange can be sustained more easily, and offers higher payoff. Either system can prevail in equilibrium even when it is socially less efficient. When we consider disjoint networks, which are like islands in a sea of an anonymous market, the members of each network trade only among themselves. The larger is a network, the higher is the probability of finding a trading partner, but the worse is the signal about his past behaviour. They find the equilibrium and optimal size of a network They have a richer specification of search and information flow within a network. They allow no information flows between a network and the market, yet migration can take place into and out of a network. By contrast, we may prefer disjoint networks of overlapping neighbourhoods of honesty for each other. Get ready for what could be the most exciting ride in history. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

MAGNOLIA STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA | low $600s

Now Selling!

As large, if not larger than many two-story homes in Sacrament County, Residence One is the smallest of the floor plans offered at Magnolia Station. However, at approximately 2,300 square feet, there is plenty of space in this single-story home.

With three bedrooms, two bathrooms, den, great room, and dining room, there is enough room for all members of the family to have their corner of the house. The two car garage boasts ample storage and a covered patio comes included in the home. If desired, the den can easily be transformed into a fourth bedroom.

Enjoy the luxuries included in a Cresleigh Home such as hand set tiles in entry way, kitchen and wet areas, large eat-in kitchen island, ample storage, and All-Ready Smart Home package. https://cresleigh.com/magnolia-station/residence-1/

#CresleighHomes

It is Darkest Just Before the Dawn

We do not often think about this, but every action that we take in our lives, interdependent society—buy a house, driving to work, dropping off the children at school, getting automobile maintenance done—requires the combined efforts of countless numbers of people acting in concert to enable business to be handled successfully. If you stop and think about it, this is very risky due to the fact that people can be unreliable, and the more people we depend on, they greater the risk become. As civilization grew and became more complex, people moved to cities and organized themselves into guilds and city-states and nations. Living with more people required learning to trust in new ways, and institutions developed—through religion, markets, and the rule of law—that enabled the development of ever-more complex societies and the coordination of ever-larger networks of people. This is the process that brought us to the modern economies and societies of the twenty-first century, even as our premodern tribal instincts continue to structure modern life. During the Medieval era, Lutheranism and Calvinism came into existence. The new religions were not the religious of a wealthy upper class but of the urban middle class, the poor in the cities, and the peasants. They carried an appeal to those groups because they gave expression to a new feeling of freedom and independence as well as to the feeling of powerlessness and anxiety by which their members were pervaded. However, the new religious doctrines did more than give articulate expression to the feelings engendered by a changing economic order. By their teachings they increased them and at the same time offered solutions which enabled the individual to cope with an otherwise unbearable insecurity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

What the psychological analysis of doctrines can show is the subjective motivations which make a person aware of certain problems and make one seek for answers in certain directions. Any kind of thought, true or false, if it is more than a superficial conformance with conventional ideas, is motivated by the subjective needs and interests of the person who is thinking. It happens that some interests are furthered by finding the truth, others by destroying it. However, in both cases the psychological motivations are important incentives for arriving at certain conclusions. We can go even further and say that ideas which are not rooted in powerful needs of the personality will have little influence on the actions and on the whole life of the persons concerned. If we analyze religious or political doctrines with regard to their psychological significance we must differentiate between two problems. We can study the character structure of the individual who creates a new doctrine and try to understand which traits in his personality are responsible for the particular direction of his thinking. Concretely speaking, this means, for instance, that we must analyze the character structure of Mr. Luther or Mr. Calvin to find out what trends in their personality made them arrive at certain conclusions and formulate certain doctrines. The other problem is to study the psychological motives, not of the creator of a doctrine, but of the social group to which this doctrine appeals. The influence of any doctrine or idea depends on the extent to which it appeals to the psychic needs in the character structure of those whom it is addressed. Only if the idea answers powerful psychological needs of certain social groups will it become a potent force in history. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Both problems, the psychology of the leader and that of his followers, are, of course, closely linked with each other. If the same ideas appeal to them, their character structure must be similar in important aspects. Aside from factors such as the special talent for thinking and action on the part of the leader, his character structure will usually exhibit in a more extreme and clear-cut way the particular personality structure of those to whom his doctrines appeal; he can arrive at a clearer and more outspoken formulation of certain ideas for which his followers are already prepared psychologically. The fact that the character structure of the leader shows more sharply certain traits to be found in his followers, can be due to one of two factors or to a combination of both: first, that his social position is typical for those conditions which mold the personality of the whole group; second, that by the accidental circumstances of his upbringing and his individual experiences these same traits are developed to a marked degree which for the group result from its social position. The doctrines of Protestantism and Calvinism, we are discussing the psychological situation of the social classes to which Mr. Luther and Mr. Calvin’s ideas appealed. Mr. Luther, as a person, was a typical representative of the “authoritarian character.” Having been brought up by an unusually severe father and having experienced little love or security as a child, his personality was torn by a constant ambivalence toward authority; he hated it and rebelled against it, while at the same time he admired it and tended to submit to it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

During Mr. Luther’s whole life there was always one authority against which he was opposed and another which he admired—his father and his superiors in the monastery in his youth; the Pope and the princes later on. He was filled with an extreme feeling of aloneness, powerlessness, wickedness, but at the same time with a passion to dominate. He was tortured by doubts as only a compulsive character can be, and was constantly seeking for something which would give him inner security and relieve him from this torture of uncertainty. He hated others, especially the “rabble,” he hated himself, he hated life; and out of all this hatred came a passionate and desperate striving to be loved. His whole being was pervaded by fear, doubt, and inner isolation, and on this personal basis he was to become the champion of social groups which were in a very similar position psychologically. Any psychological analysis of an individual’s thoughts or of an ideology aims at the understanding of the psychological roots from which these thoughts or ideas spring. The first condition for such an analysis is to understand fully the logical context of an idea, and what its author conscious wants to say. However, we know that a person, even if he is subjectively sincere, may frequently be driven unconsciously by a motive that is different from the one he believes himself to be driven by; that he may use one concept which logically implies a certain meaning and which to him, unconsciously means something different from this “official” meaning. Furthermore, we know that he may attempt to harmonize certain contradictions in his own feeling by an ideological construction or to cover up an idea which he represses by a rationalization that expresses it very opposite. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

The understanding of the operation of unconscious elements has taught us to be sceptical towards words and not to take them at face value. The analysis of ideas had mainly to do with two tasks: one is to determine the weight that a certain idea has in the whole of an ideological system; the second is to determine whether we deal with a rationalization that differs from the real meaning of the thoughts. An example of the first point is the following: In Mr. Hitler’s ideology, the emphasis on the injustice of the Versailles treaty plays a tremendous role, and it is truth that he was genuinely indignant at the peace treaty. However, if we analyze his whole political ideology we see that its foundations are an intense wish for power and conquest, and although he consciously gives much weight to the injustice done to Germany, actually this thought has little weight in the whole of his thinking. An example of the difference between the consciously intended meaning of a thought and its real psychological meaning can be taken from the analysis of Mr. Luther’s doctrines with which we are considering. We say that his relation to God is one of submission on the basis of man’s powerlessness. He himself speaks of this submission as a voluntary one, resulting not from fear but from love. Logically then, one might argue, this is not submission. Psychologically, however, it follows from the whole structure of Mr. Luther’s thoughts that his kind of love or faith actually is submission; that although he consciously thinks in terms of the voluntary and loving character of this “submission” to God, he is pervaded by a feeling of powerlessness and wickedness that make the nature of his relationship to God one of submission. (Exactly as masochistic dependence of one person on another consciously is frequently conceived as “love.”) #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

From the view point of psychological analysis, therefore, the objection that Mr. Luther says something different from what we believe he means (although unconsciously) has little weight. We believe that certain contradictions in his system can be understood only by the analysis of the psychological meaning of his concepts. If we want to understand what was new in the doctrines of the Reformation, we have first to consider what was essential in the theology of the medieval Church. In trying to do so, we are confronted with the same methodological difficulty which we have discussed in connection with such concepts as “medieval society” and “capitalistic society.” Just as in the economic sphere there is no sudden change from one structure to the other, so there is no such sudden change in the theological sphere wither. Certain doctrines of Mr. Luther and Mr. Calvin are so similar to those of the medieval church that it is sometimes difficult to see any essential difference between them. Like Protestantism and Calvinism, the Catholic Church has always denied that man, on the strength of his own virtues and merits alone, could find salvation, that he could do without the grace of God as an indispensable means for salvation. However, in spite of all the elements common to the old and the new theology, the spirit of the Catholic Church had been essentially different from the spirit of the Reformation, especially with regard to the problem of human dignity and freedom and the effect of man’s actions upon his own fate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Certain principles were characteristic of Catholic theology in the long period prior to the Reformation: the doctrine that man’s nature, though corrupted by the sin of Adam, innately strives for the good; that man’s will is free to desire the good; that man’s own effort is of avail for his salvation; and that by the sacraments of the Church, based on the merits of Christ’s death, the sinner can be saved. However, some of the most representative theologians like Mr. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, though holding the views just mentioned, at the same time taught doctrines which were of a profoundly different spirit. However, although Mr. Aquinas teaches a doctrine of predestination, he never ceases to emphasize freedom of will as one of his fundamental doctrines. To bridge the contrast between the doctrine of freedom and that of predestination, he is obliged to use the most complicate constructions; but, although these constructions do not seem to solve the contradictions satisfactorily, he does not retreat from the doctrine of freedom of the will and of human effort, as being of avail for man’s salvation, even though the will itself may need the support of God’s grace. With regard to the latter point he says: “Whence, the predestination must strive after good works and prayer; because through these means predestination is most certainly fulfilled and therefore predestination can be furthered by creatures, but it cannot be impeded by them.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

On the freedom of will Mr. Aquinas says that it would contradict the essence of God’s and man’s nature to assume that man was not free to decide and that man has even the freedom to refuse the grace offered to him by God. Other theologians emphasized more than Mr. Aquinas the role of man’s effort for his salvation. According to Bonaventura, it is God’s intention to offer grace to man, but only those receive it who prepare themselves for it by their merits. This emphasis grew during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries in the systems of Duns Scouts, Ockam, and Biel, a particularly important development for the understanding of the new spirit of the Reformation, since Mr. Luther’s attacks were directed particularly against the Schoolmen of the late Middle Ages who he called “Sau Theologen.” Duns Scotus stressed the role of the will. The will is free. Through the realization of his will man realized his individual self, and this self-realization is a supreme satisfaction to the individual. Since it is God’s command that will is an act of the individual self, even God has no direct influence on man’s decision. Biel and Ockam stress the role of man’s own merits as a condition for his salvation and although they too speak of God’s help, its basic significance as it was assumed by the older doctrines was given up by them. Biel assumes that man is free and can always turn to God, whose grace comes to his help. Ockam taught that man’s nature has not been really corrupted by sin; to him, sin is only a single act which does not change the substance of man. The Tridentinum very clearly states that the free will co-operates with God’s grace but that it can also refrain from this co-operation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

The picture of man, is presented by Ockam and other late Schoolmen, shows him not as the poor sinner but as a free being whose very nature makes him capable of everything good, and whose will is free from natural or any other external force. The practice of buying a letter of indulgence, which played an increasing role in the late Middle Ages, and against which one of Mr. Luther’s main attacks was directed, was related to this increasing emphasis on man’s will and the avail of his efforts. By buying the letter of indulgence from the Pope’s emissary, man was relieved from temporal punishment which was supposed to be a substitute for eternal punishment, and as Seeberg has pointed out, man had every reason to expect that he would be absolved from all sins. At first glance it may seem that this practice of buying one’s remission from the punishment of purgatory from the Pope contradicted the idea of the efficacy of man’s efforts for his salvation, because it implies a dependence on the authority of the Church and its sacraments. However, while this is true to a certain extent, it is also true that it contains a spirit of hope and security; if man could free himself from punishment so easily, then the burden of guilt was eased considerably. He could free himself from the weight of the past with relative ease and get rid of the anxiety which had haunted him. In addition to that one must not forget that according to the explicit or implicit theory of the Church, the effect of the letter of indulgence was dependent on the premise that is buyer had repented and confessed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

Those ideas that sharply differ from the spirit of the Reformation are also to be found in the writings of the mystics, in the sermons and in the elaborate rules for the practice of confessors. In them we find a spirit of affirmation of man’s dignity and of the legitimacy of the expression of his whole self. Along with such an attitude we find the notion of the imitation of Christ, widespread as early as the twelfth century, and a belief tht man could aspire to be like God. The rules for confessor showed a great understanding of the concrete situation of the individual and gave recognition to subjective individual differences. They did not treat sin as the weight by which the individual should be weighed down and humiliated, but as human frailty for which one should have understanding and respect. Man’s quest for the New Being which overcomes existential estrangement ends in the acceptance of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ. Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi—“Thou art the Christ”—marks the birth of Christianity, for it contains the two basic elements of the Christian message: the fact of Jesus of Nazareth and His reception as the Christ in an act of faith. The receptive side of the Christian events is as important as the factual side. And only their unity creates the event upon which Christianity is based. The absolute refusal for Mr. Tillich to use the name “Jesus Christ” is founded upon this distinction between the man from Nazareth and the mythological title “the Christ” which is paradoxically attached to him by faith. He therefore employs such phrases as “Jesus who is called the Christ,” or “Jesus who is the Christ,” or “Jesus as the Christ,” or “Jesus the Christ.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

The reality of the Christ will be discussed under the following headings: historical research and the Christ, the New Bring, theories of Christology, the significance of the Cross and the Resurrection, and the meaning of salvation. The very first step toward freedom is knowledge of the truth regarding the source and nature of experiences the believer may have had since his entrance into the spiritual life—experiences which possibly may have been perplexing, or else thought with deepest assurance to be of God. THERE IS NO DELIVERACE FROM “DECEPTION” BUT BY THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND ACCEPTANCE OF TRUTH. And this facing of truth in regard to certain spiritual and “supernatural” experiences is like a keen-edge knife to a person’s self-respect and pride. It requires a very deep allegiance to the truth which God desires should reign in the inward parts of His children for a believer to readily accept truth which cuts and humbles. The “undeceiving” is painful to the feelings. The discover that he had been deceived is one of the keenest blows to a man who once thought that he was so “advanced,” so “spiritual,” and so “infallible” in his certainty of obeying the Spirit of God. The deceived believer laid claim to positions to which he had no right, for with the entrance of truth he discovers that he was neither so advanced, nor so spiritual, nor so infallible as he had thought. He built his faith about his own spiritual condition on assumption, and left no room for doubt—that is, true doubt, such as doubting a statement that afterwards turns out to be a lie. However, in due season doubt finds an entry to his mind and brings his house of infallibility to the ground. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

He knows now that what he thought was an “advanced” experience was only a beginning, and that he is only on the fringe of knowledge. This is the operation of truth. In place of ignorance is given true knowledge; in place of deception, truth. Ignorance, falsehood and passivity—upon these three the enemy silently builds his castles, and unobtrusively guards and uses them. However, truth pulls his strongholds to the ground. By the entry of truth the man must be brought to the place where he acknowledges his condition frankly, as follows: I believe that it is POSSIBLE for a Christian to be deceived by psychopathological offenders. It is possible for ME to be deceived. I Am deceived by a psychopathological offender. WHY am I deceived? When the deception is of long standing, the psychopathological offender may get the believer himself to defend their work in him, and through him fight tenaciously to guard the cause of deception from being brought into light, and exposed as their work. They thus get the believer himself, in effect, to take their side, and fight for them to keep their hold, even after he had found out his condition and honestly desires deliverance. Trust is so fundamental to the human experience that philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists have all devoted a lot of attention to its study. Economic science is about more than just making money. It is about making choices. You may have read or heard that economics is about scarcity: economists use this term to remind us that every choice we make requires trade-offs. (At least all the interesting one do.) #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

If we lived in an Edenic paradise where all our desires were taken care of, then we could all have everything we wanted; scarcity reminds us that resources are finite and that choices must be made. Even if we had unlimited money, we have limited time, so we must make trade-offs. Choices that require trade-offs require us to understand the pros and cons of each choice in order to assess the costs and benefits and balance the potential rewards against the possible risks. At its heart, trust is about making a choice: Do I rely on this person, or do I not? Having trust means that you are willing to enter into a risky situation with another person because you believe in them. Trust is needed in situations where working with someone is better than working alone. However, working with someone brings risks: what if this person lets me down, or what is they prove to be unreliable? Trust matters when the choice to rely on someone is difficult, when trusting someone means taking a risk. Economists have spent a lot of time studying how people make decision under uncertainty, when pros and cons have to be evaluated, and when the benefits have to be weighed against the costs. The same tools that economists use to evaluate the riskiness of investing in the stock market can be applied to the choice we make to invest our trust in one another. Economics is also about picking apart the complex, rich tapestry of life into its individual threads. This is often accomplished through the use of math, which forces us to be more precise about that we are measuring and what we are assuming about how things work and how things interact. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Those who care about economics should also care about trust. Those who care about trust can learn and benefit from the tools employed by economists—tools that offer a different perspective from those employed by other social sciences. The future creates the possibility of punishment that can sustain honesty in the present. The matches are independent across time This creates the need for an information-transmission mechanism whereby others in the community may find out about the cheating of any one of them. In reality, traders will try to sustain bilateral relations so as to be able to sustain honesty by direct reciprocity. However, there are also many economic situations where repeated bilateral interactions are rare, and in others there is the risk of bilateral relationships being severed because one of the partners has to move, or retires, or dies. Therefore theory should examine situations where the person you trade with in the future is not the same as the one you contemplate cheating now, and independent matches are the simplest way to model this. If the trader cheats his current partner, he gets an immediate gain as usual in the prisoner’s dilemma. The potential cost is that his future partners may hear of this, in which case they will refuse to play with him. The option of not playing is what helps sustain cooperation. By localization of matches and information, if you cheat someone farther away from you, the news is less likely to reach potential future partners closer to you, and they are the ones you are more likely to meet in the future. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Therefore the likelihood of losing those trades, and therefore the expected future cost of cheating, is smaller when the current partner is father away. A countervailing effect is that the news is more likely to reach some traders who are father from you, and trades with them are more valuable. However, the probability of meeting them decays faster than the value of the trade increases. The overall result is that the net benefit from cheating increases with the distance between you and your current partner. Therefore the structure of equilibria, where people behave honestly with others within a certain distance of themselves, is intuitive. Note the nature of localization of honesty. It is not the case that the World splits into a number of disjoint communities, such that each of them can sustain honest dealing between any pair of its own members but honesty is infeasible if two traders from two different communities meet. Rather, we have overlapping neighbourhoods of honesty. Second Wave organizations accumulate more and more functions over time and get fat. Third Wave organizations, instead of adding functions, subtract or subcontract them to day slim. As a result, they outrace the dinosaurs when the Ice Age approaches. Second Wave organizations find it hard to suppress the impulse toward “vertical integration”—the idea that to make a BMW you also have to mine the iron ore, ship it to the steel mills, make the steel, and ship it to the auto plant. Third Wave companies, by contrast, contract out as many of their tasks as possible, often to smaller more specialized high-tech companies and even to individuals who can do the work faster, better and more affordably. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Carried to its limit, the corporation is deliberately hollowed out, its staff reduced to a minimum, its activities carried out at dispersed locations, the organization itself becoming a “nexus of contracts.” Minimalist, partly unseen organizations are now the linchpins of our World. While many of us may not work for them directly, we will be selling our services to them and the wealth of our societies will depend on them. This new form of “virtual” organization has been made possible by Third Wave information and communication technologies. There is an important idea of “congruence”—there must be some compatibility between the way the private sector and the public sector are organized if they are not to stifle one another. Today the private sector is charging ahead on a supersonic jet. The public sector has not even unloaded its bags at the airport entry. Evaluating a policy or program? Ask who is supposed to carry it out—verticalizers or virtualizers. The answer will provide a clue to whether it merely prolongs the unworkable past or helps the future. The decline of honesty as the size of the World grows beyond the limit of global self-governance has limited the capacity for processing information, with the result that, faced with the information overload available in this Internet age, they choose to look at what is coming from local sources that are know to them. Small communities can achieve full self-governance using their own information systems and do not need external governance. In very large communities, the benefits that are available for trade with distant partners can only be realized by instituting a system of external government at cost. Communities of an intermediate size fare worst: they are too large for self-governance. When an expanding economy reaches the size where external governance becomes just cost-effective, “it is darkest just before the dawn” for it. However, even very large communities with external governance may or may not be better than the optimal-sized self-governing small communities. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

If we look at the new Department of Health, Education and Welfare, this appears to be the public agency at the national level which most fully comprises six types of service to families. Its man units are the Public Health Service, the Social Security Administration, and the Office of Education. The Children’s Bureau falls under Social Security, along with certain services to the aged and disabled. The only other protective agency in the government, directly concerned with families, is the Women’s Bureau in the Department of Labor. Because it was suggested for many years by professional bodies, there is now an Office of Parks and Recreation. Counseling agencies find a minor link with the National Institute of Mental Health, a research unit in the Public Health Service, but on the whole mental health responsibilities are left for the states to discharge through institutional care of the mentally disabled. Although the Department of Health, Education and Welfare tries to rationalize the miscellany of its components by referring to their common thread of family service, neither its structure nor its programs exhibit a comprehensive family policy. Beyond childhood, healthy is no longer thought of only as the absence of disease, but in terms of weight, appearance, energy, vivacity, longevity, and the joy of competent performance. Diet is undergoing unlimited elaboration according to standards of aesthetics, novelty, interest, and etiquette, and the same is true of an adult’s intimate life. On the strictly physical side, the mobilization of family agencies to pursue health as a value seems more clear-cut and unified than almost any other element of our implicit or explicit family policy. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

It is at the margins where mental states produce physical symptoms that the organizations of the community to promote positive health in a unified manner is more questionable. The fatigued housewife with nothing to do is a numerous example; by proper organization of community resources, her leisure could be rewarding instead of unhygienic. Economic agencies: Any common-sense assumption that values in the economic sphere are simply reducible to the idea of more would fail to recognize what has been happening in American families, at least to those of the middle majority. Until very recently, it has almost universally taken for granted that progress was to be measured by the steady liberation of our citizens from conditions of necessity. However, a long succession of triumphs in turning conditions into means of scarcity of means into fullness, though gratifying in retrospect and provoking envy abroad, has brought us to the threshold of a peculiarly novel problem. The goal of progressively overcoming natural limitations was always a value. Since it motivated all alike, it awakened no problem of values. However, as the further conquest of limiting conditions more and more loses its importance, through success and becoming the routine of specialists, the problem of values strikes with full force. If we turn to the economic situation of the fortunate majority of American families, we find that despite the great variety among them, a common predicament of choice among values confronts us. The problem is not how can I produce enough to live, but what career shall I undertake? #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Not how can I pay for necessities but, shall I take the job that pays most, or the one I shall enjoy most? Not the living wage, but the wage regarded as fair in relation to the incomes of those with whom comparisons count. Not to keep the wolf from the door, but to keep up with some set of Jones’ in their pattern of consumption, or leisure, or kinds of friends. The outstanding necessity is the necessity of choice, of selecting alternatives and sticking to them. On the side of consumption, the perspective for the extension of positive values can perhaps be summarized in the nation of development of personal style. The economic agency that can organize the procedure by which consumers can become effective critics of their own consumption will be advanced by this value. On the side of distribution, it is obvious that incomes in the United States of America are still very unequally distributed, though their per capita average has been rising steadily. Likewise leisure is unequal. Another value respecting income, in the pursuit of which American families welcome leadership, is that of further stabilization, including duration after retirement. On the side of production and employment, it is almost astonishing how definitely and widely Americans have come to prefer a salaried career in their favored occupations. The very concept of a career has come to express a complex value, which includes education, status, security, and satisfaction from one’s work, the nature and rewards of which evolve in an orderly way over the lifetime. Preparation of family members for pursuing careers is a transformed function of the family, and expansion of access to careers is a growing function of family agencies in this sphere. And a #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

MAGNOLIA STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA | low $600s

Residence Five is the largest home offered at Magnolia Station. This stunning two-story home is just over 3,700 square feet and includes five bedrooms, three and half bathroom, and a four, yes four car garage!

The Flexibility is the best word to summarize this gorgeous home. With the opportunity to add an additional two bedrooms, this home is designed to meet the needs of any family size. The Generations Suite on the first floor allows space for extended family, guests, or even a separated office space.

The expansive kitchen opens up to the great room – ideal for entertaining of any kind. You’ll find the Owners’ Suite and three additional bedrooms upstairs plus a loft suitable for a game lounge, TV room, or homework space.

Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier.

Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Home Mini! https://cresleigh.com/magnolia-station/residence-5/

#CresleighHomes

A Wealthy Widow—a Spiritualist

The night was stormy. The California winter was on, and the incessant rain plashed in the deserted streets, or, lifted by irregular gusts was hurled against the house with incredible fury. Several trees were moaning and groaning in the torment of the tempest, and they appeared to be trying to escape from their loving environment and take the chance of finding a better one. A touch of colour flared in the sky. A voice barely audible whispered, “You can have anything in this World you want.” The staircase was dimly lighted by a single gas-jet at the top of the second flight. I managed to reach the landing without disaster and entered by an open door into the turret of the witches cap. The rain was still falling in torrents. Tomorrow night are planning to summon a spirit. It takes a good deal more courage to try it during a storm. But that is how science advances. And if we succeed—if there is genuinely something in this business of the portal—then my dreams will become a reality. The air of the great hall was deathly cold, as always. I turned the corner of the house. I saw the black cable, the rusty stain like blood running down the wall behind it. Tears sprang to my eyes. I had a vision—saw an apparition—which foretold of death of someone in my mansion, though not who, where, when or how this person would die. The visitations are a curse, an affliction; it was my longing to be rid of them. Something has attracted my attention; something dark, moving in the shadow of the hall. A door creaked behind me. There came a fateful night. I had retired early and fallen into such sleep as was still possible to me. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

In the middle of the night something—some malign power bent upon the wrecking of my peace forever—caused me to open my eyes and sit up, wide awake and listening intently for I knew not what. Then I thought I heard a faint tapping on the wall—the mere ghost of the familiar signal. In a few moments it repeated: one, two, three—no louder than before, but addressing a sense alter and strained to receive it. I was about to reply when the Adversary of Peace again intervened in my affairs. Its baleful influence spread like a faint and poisonous fog across the room. This pervasive feeling of unease was its lasting legacy. I rose from my bed and went to unlock and opened the door. The handle shifted when I tried to turn it, but the door did not budge even a fraction in its frame. I blinked, incredulous. However, when I opened by eyes, the key was still there. The door was on balanced hinges. It opened inwards with a sigh as soon as the key released the lock. The hallway was larger than it was before just hours ago, the tower bigger. The windows were also much bigger. And they were set at a curious height. They were set about nine feet from the floor, and so impossible for anyone to look through. There was the drifting insinuation of music. Stride organ and a cracked voice played under the heavy needle of an antique gramophone. My heart began to beat faster in my chest. I could feel the hairs on my neck stiffen with fear. I was very frightened. I was truly afraid. The hardwood floors were dusty, as if the housemaids had been on vacation. Beethoven’s Fur Elise drifted up from below. There was very little light. It was almost fully dark. And then something moved in the mirror. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6

At the very edge of my vision, I just caught sight of a shape in the glass and stood and turned around to see what had been reflected. However, there was nothing there. I was at the center of the room. I turned back and lifted my eyes slowly to the mirror again. The heavy atmosphere of death lay over me, like flowers beside a coffin. They were behind me. There were three of them, three men in top hats and long black coats with silk mufflers draped around their necks. One of them wore a monocle. They were smiling at me and I could see that they were dead. The one at the center had a gold incisor that looked black in the absence of light. I closed my eyes to make the apparition go away. I opened my eyes again and saw that they were a step closer to me now. The ghost with the gold tooth was almost close enough to reach out and touch me. They seemed to be finding something funny, looking at me. Each wore an empty grin, mirth cavorting in their empty eyes, their dead expressions. I feld. I fell down the zig-zag stairs. And started running with a reckless panic, when I heard a scream from above so pained and tormented that it forced me into a questioning pause. There was silence. It was absolute. “Mrs. Winchester?” My leg was bleeding. I had gashed my knee falling down the stairs. I could feel the blood trickling down my shin into my sock, seeping into my shoe. “Mrs. Winchester?” I swallowed. It was a woman’s voice. I knew whose voice it was. “You must be brave now and try to help me, Mrs. Winchester.” Her voice was velvety. As if reading the thought, she cleared her throat. “Please wait for me.” I heard the staccato clack of high heels on wood as she stated to descend the stairs from above me. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

The footsteps sounded terribly loud. As they got closer, I heard wood splinter and groan under their impact. And I began to think whatever was coming down the stairs was certainly bearing its considerable weight on two legs. However, the thing climbing down to me was not on heels, it dawned on me, with horror. It was coming down on hooves. It screamed again, in anger and frustration, as I feld a second time. And now I did not pause or hesitate. I ran for my life, followed by whatever it was I had awoken and unwittingly antagonized. I could hear its bulk behind me as it marauded through my mansion and burst through doors in pursuit. I smelled its foul breath when it bellowed, closing, in my wake. I ran and ran through doorways, but when it opened the door that opened to a wall looking for me, it screamed with bestial fury and windows exploded from their pains. It did not follow. In the basement, as I lay bleeding and prone, I thought I heard it finally slouching to the basement. “Dear Heavens,” I said, my head in my hands. I thought from the pain I was in that I had broken a rib against the stairs. My hands were pretty badly cut and my injured knee was swelling. I had been very lucky. And I started to sob into my hands. And it was a long time before I was able to stop, as the terror and self-pity competed in me for ascendancy. When I came to, it was daylight and I saw I had slept in a foetal crouch on the basement floor. I was in shock. My body was hurt but my mind felt violated. I tried not to think about what had happened. I tried not to speculate on the state I would be in now if I had awoken in darkness and not bright morning sunshine. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

I shed many tears, and spent many a melancholy hour on the balcony with yearning eyes look westward. I was sitting in my favourite spot, an angle at the eastern end of the balcony, a quiet little nook sheltered by orange trees, when I heard a couple of servants talking in the garden below. They were sitting on a bench against the wall of the house. I had no idea of listening to their talk, until the sound of my name attracted me, and then I listed without any thought of wrong-doing. They were talking no secrets—just casually discussing me. They were a housemaid and a butler I only knew by sight. A well-to-do spinster, and an Englishman who had wintered abroad for half his lifetime. “I have been working for Mrs. Winchester for the last ten years,” said the lady; “but have never found out her real age.” “I put her down at a hundred—not a year less,” replied the Englishman. “Her reminiscences all go back to the Mayflower. She was evidently then in her zenith; and I have heard her say things that showed she was in Parisian society when the First Empire was at its best.” “She doesn’t talk much now.” “No; there’s not much life left in her since the lost of her baby and husband. She is wise in keeping herself secluded. I only wonder that wicked old quack, Dr. Wayland, didn’t finish her off years ago.” “I should think it must be the other way, and that he keeps her alive.” “My Dear Miss Steiger, do you think foreign quackery ever kept anybody alive?” “Well, there she is—and she never goes anywhere without him. He certainly has an unpleasant countenance.” “Unpleasant,” echoed the man, “I don’t believe the foul fiend himself can beat him in ugliness. I pity Mrs. Winchester.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

“But Mrs. Winchester is very good to her companions.” “No doubt. She is very free with her cash; the other servant called her good Mrs. Winchester. She is a beautiful old woman, but she looks so young, and know she’ll never be able to get through her money, and doesn’t relish the idea of other people enjoying it when she is in her coffin. People who live to be as old as she is become slavishly attached to life. I daresay she’s generous to those poor girls—but she can’t make them happy. They die in her service.” “Don’t say that Mr. Wolstenholme; I know that one poor girl died at Llanada Villa last spring.” “Yes, and another poor girl died here three years ago. I was here at the time. They girl had ever comfort. The old woman was very liberal to her—but she died. I tell you, Mrs. Steiger, it is not good for any young woman to live with two such horrors and Mrs. Winchester and The Winchester Mansion.” They talked of other things—but I hardly heard them over the noise of construction. I sat motionless, and a cold wind seemed to come down upon me from the mountains and to creep up to me, till I shivered as I sat there in the sunshine, in the shelter of the orange trees in the midst of all that beauty and brightness. Yes, they were uncanny, certainly, the pair of them—she so like an aristocratic witch in her withered old age; and he of no particular age, with a face that was more like a waxen mask than any human countenance I had ever seen. What did it matter? Old age is venerable, and worthy of all reverence; and I had been very kind to her. Dr. Wayland was a harmless, inoffensive physician, who seldom looked up from the book he was reading. He had his private sitting-room, where he made experiments in chemistry and natural science—perhaps in alchemy. What could it matter to me? He had already been polite to me, in his far-off way. I could not be more happily placed than I was—in this palatial mansion. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6

The Winchester Mystery House

The Winchester Mystery House is massive, the towers and gables gaunt in relief against the blue sky. Acres of yellow wood are sculpted and contorted into steep symmetric descents above wrought iron gates. Many people do not expect it to be so huge. It the way its atmosphere extends outward, like a shadow, thickly cast. It is high, the house, five storeys from the front door, at the stop of flights of mahogany steps, to the attic rooms that so contort the roof to accommodate their windows. And there are several witches caps. From the street people have to crane their necks to take in its height and panorama. There are many windows and various types of glass in them. One can see the panes glowing faintly orange in the setting brightness of the sun. The staircases are mysterious and grand. Their spread, their dimension, suggests something truly opulent. There are many doors on every floor.

And in the evening, darkness steals out of the corners of the building and encroaches at a steady creep across the interior of the mansion. There are many doors, and tourist can see apparitions behind every one of them, if they allow their imagination into their rein. On the third landing, guests often hear music. It is sudden and undeniable and it withers them in terror with its loud proximity. One can hear the chords shake the wood on the very organ frame as its keys hammer against discordant strings. Many can identify the very room the sound is coming from. However, sometimes when they walk along the landing and open the door to it, there is only plaster and shadows. And silence of course. The silence of The Winchester Mystery House does not hold. Like a living threat, the silence of The Winchester Mystery House impends. The place is haunted. Many tour guides do not like to descend the staircase at night. They do not want to be there at night at all.

In 2009, on this night in particular, after closing, a tour guide was startled to hear shouting coming from the Grand Ballroom. He went to see what was going on. When he walked into the room, he started trembling and was very pale. When security guards asked him what had happened, he could only stammer the words “The Man! The Man!” Confused, because the room was empty, the guards reviewed the surveillance footage. A pale figure can be seen opened the door where the safe is located and is very upset to see it open and empty and starts shouting about gold, silver and diamonds. He can be seen walking across the room and confronting the tour guide, as he walks right through him and disappears. The tour guide said he would never enter that part of mansion on his own after his frightening experience. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/

Freedom is Always in Bondage to Destiny

We live in a World of unprecedented opulence, of a kind that would have been hard to even imagine a century or two ago. Capitalism is a particular form of social organization of production and exchange. Based on an advanced division of labour, capitalism is a system in which production is oriented toward the needs of others, toward exchange. It is therefore a system in which even the people who directly participate in transforming nature into useful products—the immediate producers—cannot physically survive on their own. Furthermore, capitalism is a system in which those who do not own the instruments of production must sell their capacity to work. Workers obtain a wage, which is not a title to any part of the specific product which they generate but an abstract medium for acquisition of any goods and services. They must produce profit as a condition of their continued employment. The product is appropriated privately in the sense that workers have no institutional claim to its allocation or distribution in their role as immediate producers. Capitalist, who are profit-takers, decide under multiple constraints how to allocate or distribution in their role as immediate producers. Capitalists, who are profit-takers, decide under multiple constraints how to allocate the product, in particular what part of it to invest, where, how, and when. These allocations are constrained by the fact that capitalist compete with each other and that they can be influenced by the political system. The ownership of the means of production also endows the proprietors with the right to organize (or to delegate the organization of) production. Capitalists, as employers, regulate the organization of work, although they may be again constrained by rules originating of work, although they may be again constrained by rules originating from the political system. As immediate producers, workers have no institutional claim to directing the productive activities in which they participate. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Significant changes in the psychological atmosphere accompanied the economic development of capitalism. A spirit of restlessness began to pervade life toward the end of the Middle Ages. The concept of time in the modern sense began to develop. Minutes became valuable; a symptom of this new sense of time is the fact that in Nurnberg the clocks have been striking the quarter hour since the sixteenth century. Too many holidays began to appear as a misfortune. Time was so valuable that one felt one should never spend it for any purpose which was not useful. Work became increasingly a supreme value. A new attitude toward work developed and was so strong that the middle class grew indignant against the economic unproductivity of the institutions of the Church. Begging orders were resented as unproductive, and hence immoral. The idea of efficiency assumed the role of one of the highest moral virtues. At the same time, the desire for wealth and material success became the all-absorbing passion. “All the World,” says the preacher Martin Butzer, “is running after those trades and occupations that will bring the most gain. The study of the arts and sciences is set aside for the basest kind of manual work. All the clever heads, which have been endowed by God with a capacity for the nobler studies, are engrossed by commerce, which nowadays is so saturated with dishonesty that is it the last sort of business an honourable man should engage in.” One outstanding consequences of the economic change we have been describing affected everyone. The medieval social system was destroyed and with it the stability and relative security it had offered the individual. Now with the beginning of capitalism all classes of society started to move. There ceased to be a fixed place in the economic order which could be considered a natural, unquestionable one. The individual was left alone; everything depended on his own effort, not on the security of his traditional status. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Each class, however, was affected in a different way by this development. For the poor of the cities, the workers and apprentices, it meant growing exploitation and impoverishment; for the peasants also it meant increased economic and personal pressure; the lower nobility faced ruin, although in a different way. While for these classes the new development was essentially change for the worse, the situation was much more complicated for the urban middle class. We have spoken of the growing differentiation which took place within its ranks. Large sections of it were put into an increasingly bad position. Many artisans and small trader had to face the superior power of monopolists and other competitors with more capital, and they had greater and greater difficulties in remaining independent. They were often fighting against overwhelmingly strong forces and for many it was a desperate and hopeless fight. Other parts of the middle class were more prosperous and participated in the general upward trend of rising capitalism. However, even for these more fortunate ones the increasing role of capital, of the market, and of competition, changed their personal situation into one of insecurity, isolation, and anxiety. The fact that capital assumed decisive importance meant that a suprapersonal force was determining their economic and thereby their personal fate. Capital had ceased to be a servant and had become a master. Assuming a separate and independent vitality it claimed the right of a predominant partner to dictate economic organization in accordance with its own exacting requirements. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

The new function of the marker had a similar effect. The medieval market had been a relatively small one, the functioning of which was readily understood. It brought demand and supply into direct and concrete relation. A producer knew approximately how much to produce and could be relatively sure of selling his products for a proper price. Now it was necessary to produce for an increasingly large market, and one could not determine the possibilities of sale in advance. It was therefore not enough to produce useful goods. Although this was one condition for selling them, the unpredictable laws of the market decided whether the products could be sold at all and at what profit. The mechanism of the new marker seemed to resemble the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, which taught that the individual must make every effort to be good, but that even before his birth it had been decided whether or not he is to be saved. The market day became the day of judgement for the products of human effort. Another important factor in this context was the growing role of competition. While competition was certainly not completely lacking in medieval society, the feudal economic system was based on the principle of co-operation and was regulated—or regimented—by rules which curbed competition. With the rise of capitalism these medieval principles gave way more and more to a principle of individualistic enterprise. Each individual must go ahead and try his luck. He had to swim or to sink. Others were not allied with him in a common enterprise, they became competitors, and often he was confronted with the choice of destroying them or being destroyed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Certainly the role of capital, the market, and individual competition, was not as important in the sixteenth century as it was to become later on. At the same time, all the decisive elements of modern capitalism had already by that time come into existence, together with their psychological effect upon the individual. While we have just described one side of the picture, there is also another one: capitalism freed the individual. It freed man from the regimentation of the corporative system; it allowed him to stand on his own feet and to try his luck. He became the master of his fate, his was the risk, his the gain. Individual effort could lead him to success and economic independence. Money became the great equalizer of man and proved to be more powerful than birth and caste. This side of capitalism was only beginning to develop in the early period which we have been discussing. It played a greater role with the small group of wealthy capitalists than with the urban middle class. However, even to the extent to which it was effective then, it had an important effect in shaping the personality of man. We find the same ambiguity of freedom in the socioeconomic changes on the individual in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which we have discussed before. The individual is freed from the bondage of economic and political ties. He also gains in positive freedom by the active and independent role which he has to play in the new system. However, simultaneously he is freed from those ties which used to give him security and a feeling of belonging. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Life has ceased to be lived in a closed World the center of which was man; the World has become limitless and at the same time threatening. By losing his fixed placed in a closed World man loses the answer to the meaning of his life; the result is that doubt has befallen him concerning himself and the aim of life. He is threatened by powerful suprapersonal forces, capital and the market. His relationship to his fellow men, with everyone a potential competitor, has become hostile and estranged; he is free—that is, he is alone, isolated, threatened from all sided. Not having the wealth or the power which the Renaissance capitalist has, and also having lost the sense of unity with men and the universe, he is overwhelmed with a sense of his individual nothingness and helplessness. Paradise is lost for good, the individual stands alone and faces the World—a stranger thrown into a limitless and threatening World. The new freedom is bound to create a deep feeling of insecurity, powerlessness, doubt, aloneness, and anxiety. These feelings must be alleviated if the individual is to function successfully. The country was to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full duty to the humans she had cruelly wronged. No nation can salve her conscience by plastering it with gold. This problem could not be settled by diplomacy and suaveness, by “policy” alone. If worse came to worst, could the moral fiber of this nation survive the slow throttling and genocide of the less fortunate? America has a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate, a forward movement to thrift, patience, and industrial training for the masses, we must to this day still strive for this, rejoicing honours and glorying in the strength of this nation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

America apologized for injustice, and encourages her people to rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, and to not participate in in the emasculating effects of caste distinctions. Americans must also cherish the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds. By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the World accords to humans, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among thee are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Economic arrangements play a dual role in the promotion of a free society. On the one hand, freedom in economic arrangement is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself. In the second place, economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom. The first of these roles of economic freedom needs special emphasis because intellectuals in particular have a strong bias against regarding this aspect of freedom as important. They tend to express contempt for what they regard as material aspects of life, and to regard their own pursuit of allegedly higher values as on a different plane of significance and as deserving of special attention. For most citizens of the country, however, if not for the intellectual, the direct importance of economic freedom is at least comparable in significance to the indirect importance of economic freedom as a means to political freedom. Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. Political freedom in this instance clearly came along with the free market and the development of capitalist institutions. So also did political freedom in the golden age of Greece and in the early days of the Roman era. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Being free is an act that permits discernment of alternatives (if any) in a situation, deliberation about those alternatives, choice of one of them, and ability to put that choice into practice as a culmination or outcome for which a person is required to take responsibility as his or her own goal-guided action. A free action must always occur in a casual context, but it must not be entirely determined by that context. And it must above all else be an action that is ultimately under a person’s control and one for which that person can rightly be regarded as its ultimate source. If there are circumstances at any particular time that prevent all aspects of such personal control, then one can be said to be unfree in those circumstances. This description of freedom requires that there be significant aspects of openness in oneself and in the World, openness that permits real alternatives, outcomes that cannot even in principle be predictable in advance, and novel achievements. It also requires that there be such a thing as teleological or goal-guided behaviour and not just behaviour produced by efficient causes. The description of genuine freedom can be extended to include being other than humans, to the extent that these beings possess the capabilities described. Every civilized and rational person today is in favour of freedom because they recognize as the struggle for basic liberties, societies are based upon open dialogue, human rights and democracy. However, in keeping predetermined mindsets we chain ourselves to the past and to our genetic shortcomings. Our quality of life suffers when we make decisions with predetermined mindsets because the structure that these mindsets impose on ourselves and our experiences do not necessarily fit or make sense. Although seeing these mental structures in ourselves is difficult, and rooting them out in search of new ones even more so. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

One shortcoming of these predetermined mindsets is the judgement of the experiences that result from our decisions. Because we make decisions based on certain mindsets, we come to expect a set of results from those decisions that reflect our mindsets, and all ensuing experiences are internally judged or qualified based on those expectations. If we took a job only for financial gain, then we would measure the success of our careers solely in terms of money. This pre-qualification of our experiences based on predetermined mindsets is devastating for two reasons. First, it paints experiences under the guise of success and failure according to how well expectations are met, a guise that short-changes those experiences. What if we do not get the bonuses we expected because of economic conditions? To think that the past years spent on the job were thus consequently wasted would be devastating. All experiences are of some value, didactic or otherwise, and to box them into qualified successes or failures is to waste that value. The second problem with qualifying experiences based on mindsets is the flips side of the first—it blinds us to the lighter characteristics and/or the learnings of an experience if they do not lie within the real of expectations. The shortcomings of predetermined mindsets are waste and harm, but without greater insight, acclimatization causes us to mistake them for being a natural part of life. Euphemistically, and tragically, they become tolerable. Ignorance is bliss, if the human condition is one of unwitting masochism. However, far worse, and far better, is to have hindsight into the waste and harm these mindsets cause. Even more abhorrent is the feeling of regret that accompanies the acknowledgement of the waste and harm. We have all experienced regret and it grows with every realization of a poor decision using bad faith; a decision that leads to a missed opportunity or a deleterious outcome.  #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Regrets make predetermined mindsets painful, making them far more detrimental by demon whiskey to creature a severe inflammation. However, regrets can also make the situation far better when the inflammation becomes intolerable inciting the person proactive. The intolerable pain of regret opens up our eyes to our inherent freedom of self-invention. This freedom is the key to ensuring that the decision we make in life, and the paths we choose to take, will not be made according to mindsets and structures of which we are unaware, and thus of which we will regret. Although it is reasonable and necessary to make decisions based on structures and mindset, those mindsets need to be chosen with great discernment rather than predetermined for full freedom of choice. The principles and ideals by which we live are forms of mindsets and structure, but as long as we have chosen to live by those principle instead of having developed them as biases, then we have not forfeited our freedom. Freedom of expression allows us to be heard and to construct our identities as communicative human beings. Possessing free will, we have the capacity to choose how we individual will act. We are thus particular and subjective entities. At the same time, however, we are each endowed with reason and are consequently able to discern the same universal and objective truths. We are thus also universal and objective entities. Development can be seen as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. If we have reasons to want more wealth, we have to ask: What precisely are these reasons, how do they work, on what are they contingent and what are the things we can “do” with more wealth? In fact, we generally have excellent reasons for wanting more wealth. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

The usefulness of wealth lies in the things that it allows us to do—the substantive freedoms it helps us to achieve. However, this relation is neither exclusive (since there are significant influences on our lives other than wealth) nor uniform (since the impact of wealth on our lives varies with other influences). It is as important to recognize the crucial role of wealth in determining living conditions and the quality of life as it is to understand the qualified and contingent nature of this relationship. An adequate conception of development must go much beyond the accumulation of wealth and the growth of gross national product and other income-related variables. Without ignoring the importance of economic growth, we must look well beyond it. The ends and means of development require examination and scrutiny for a fuller understanding of the development process; it is simply not adequate to take as our basic objective just the maximization of income or wealth, which is, as Aristotle noted, “merely useful and for the sake of something else.” For the same reason, economic growth cannot sensibly be treated as an end in itself. Development has to be more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and the freedoms we enjoy. Expanding the freedoms that we have reason to value not only makes our lives richer and more unfettered, but also allows us to be fuller social persons, exercising our own volitions and interacting with—and influencing—the World in which we live. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

There are two distinct reasons for the crucial importance of individual freedom in the concept of development, related respectively to evaluation and effectiveness. First, in the normative approach used here, substantive individual freedoms are taken to be critical. The success of a society is to be evaluated, in this view, primarily by the substantive freedoms that the members of our society enjoy. This evaluative position differs from the informational focus of more traditional normative approaches, which focus on other variables, such as utility, or procedural liberty, or real income. Having greater freedom to do the things one has reason to value is significant in itself for the person’s overall freedom, and important in fostering the person’s opportunity to have valuable outcomes. Both are relevant to the evaluation of freedom of the members of the society and thus crucial to the assessment of the society’s development. The second reason for taking substantive freedom to be so crucial is that freedom is not only the basis of the evaluation of success and failure, but it is also a principal determinant of individual initiative and social effectiveness. Greater freedom enhances the ability of people to help themselves and also to influence the World, and these matters are central to the process of development. The concern here relates to what we my call (at the risk of some oversimplification) the “agency aspect” of the individual. The United States of America has no family policy. Many American students of the family, as shown by their reactions to this phrase, do not know what it means. In the absence of an explicit family policy, they not only find it difficult to imagine what one might be, but are inclined to question if one would be desirable. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Perhaps the absence of a declared policy is typical of the pragmatic American temper. Yet whether this question is thought about by the public at large or not, both family researchers and professional practitioners in family agencies can postpone at peril of sterile futility the effort to state an over-all policy to guide their activities. What the researcher needs if one’s findings are to prove relevant is the designation of dependent variables of vital interests to the subjects of one’s study; what the practitioner needs if one is to evaluate the effect and efficiency of one’s efforts is the specification of definite goals. It may be argued that a family policy is already discernible in implicit form. It may also be argued that nothing would be gained by striving to articulate its essentials; indeed something might be lost in the way of future flexibility by trying to fix on paper the nature of such a labile entity. This view though plausible in the abstract does not hold up when tested against the benefits of knowing what one is doing. Nor is it correct to charge that when purposes are made explicit they become less easy to alter. To state the objectives of research and of action makes them easier to criticize and modify on the basis of experience than when they remain behind the veil of sacred assumptions. In particular instances outcomes can be legitimately judged only in relation to defined intentions. A national policy for the American family, though derived from implicit views and common practices, would have to be discussed and agreed upon before it could become official. One could surmise it main outlines, since these are embodied in occasional statements of goals we have been discussing. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Interpreters differ the closer they approach the concrete instance. It would be presumptuous, therefore, to do more than suggest that the concept of interpersonal competence, which allows for an open-ended view of personality, could stand for the optimal product of family performance. Yet there can be no doubt that the development of the individual member would hold first place among the goals of a family policy. A family policy includes not only general goals but specifies appropriate means for their realization. The typical family agencies of the American urban community are the nearest we have to self-conscious instruments of a coherent family policy. However, as we have found in examining them, all six types are hesitant to avow a positive program for constructing some optimal pattern of family living for American communities. Whether taken separately or in combination, they seem to abjure any responsibility for family development more inclusive than current clienteles and their recognized problems. In part this diffidence seems to be based upon the specializations among the multiple, segmented agencies, though this fact of proliferation could also be used as argument for a coherent policy. In part the tendency to limit responsibility seems also to derive from the therapeutic approach. All dreams also, as well as visions, can be classed, as to their source, under three heads: divine; human; or of a psychopathological offender—each to be known, first by the condition of the person, and second by the principle distinguishing the work of God or a psychopathological offender. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

The principle distinguishing divine from psychopathological in relation to dreams is, in the first instance, by their import and exceptional value (Gen. 37.5-7; Matt. 1.20, 2.12), and in the latter, their “mystery,” absurdity, emptiness, folly, et cetera, as well as by their effects on the person. In the first, the recipient is left normal, calm, quiet, reasonable, and with an open, clear mind. In the second, elated or dazed, confused and unreasonable. The presentations of evil spirits at night can be the cause of morning “dullness” of mind and heaviness of spirit. The sleep has not been refreshing because of their power, through the passivity of the mind during sleep, to influence the whole being. “Natural” sleep renews and invigorates the faculties and the whole system. Insomnia may be the work of psychopathological offenders adapting their workings to the overwrought condition of the person, so as to keep their attacks under cover. Believers who are open to the supernatural World should especially guard their nights by prayer, and by definite rejection of the first insidious working of psychopathological offenders along these lines. How many say, “The Lord woke me,” and place their reliance upon a “revelation” given in a state of half-consciousness, even though the mind and will were only partially alert to discern the issues of the “guidance” or “revelation” given to them. Let such believers observe the results of their obedience to night-revelations, however, and they will find many traces to the deceitful workings of the enemy. They will find, too, how their faith is often based upon a beautiful experience given in the early hours of the morning; or, vice versa, is shaken by accusations, suggestions, attacks and conflicts manifestly of the psychopathological one, instead of an intelligent reliance upon God Himself in His changeless character of faithfulness and love to His own. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

All workings of the enemy at night can be made to cease by recognizing them as of a psychopathological offender, and definitely refusing them in the name of the Lord. Existence is always both fact and act. Although freedom is not destroyed, it is always in bondage to destiny. Therefore, no individual act within existence can overcome estrangement; existence itself become destiny. In spite of his inner freedom, man cannot achieve reunion with God. Certain individual acts can be performed which express fleetingly and fragmentarily man’s essential goodness, but thee reveal only what is indispensable for victory over existence, namely, reunion with the ground of being. In order to overcome the old state of estrangement, man needs to receive new being, for new being precedes new acting just as estrangement precedes conduct disorder. Union with God, with the power of being, must be re-established. This is the quest for the New Being. The history of religion records man’s attempts and failures to find the New Being, to save himself. Religion is the sphere where the New Being is sought; it is contrasted with the split between essence and existence. Myth and cult are indispensable for existential man, because, in the state of existence, reason cannot penetrate to its depth in the ground of being. However, religion is ambiguous, for the very fact of the quest indicates the presence, at least germinally and fragmentarily, of the New Bing, and at the same time the quest degenerates into futile efforts at self-salvation. These vain attempts, which are found in all religions and not only in particular ones, can be listed as follows: legalism, asceticism, mysticism, sacramentalism, doctrinablism, and emotionalism. Yet, even in their inadequacy they are salutary in a minimal way, for awareness of estrangement and desire for reunion indicate the presence of a saving power. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

The quest for the New Bing is universal because the human predicament and its ambiguous conquest are universal. This utopian expectation, religious in substance, is often cloaked under a secular form. Although the character of the quest constantly changes, we can distinguish two major types: the non-historical and the historical expectation of the New Being. The non-historical attitude, exemplified primarily in Far Eastern religions, does not expect salvation through history, but rather in the negation of all beings and the affirmation of the Ground of Being alone. The historical attitude, on the other hand, assets the essential goodness of being and awaits the New Being as a transformation of reality through a historical process which is unique, unrepeatable, irreversible. The symbol of “Christ” or “Messiah” expresses the universal expectation of the New Being. Although the messianic idea is thoroughly historical, it is capable of incorporating the non-historical type. The cosmic Messiah of apocalyptic literature, the personification of divine Wisdom, the Son of Man, the Logos of the Fourth Gospel, the mysticism of Paul and his doctrine of the Spirit—all these transhistorical elements build a bridge across which non-historical expectations can enter into Christianity. The non-historical type, however, is unable to embrace the historical type. Consequently, Christianity is the universal type of the universal quest for the New Being set in motion by a universal revelation. Yet it is not universally acknowledged as such, for man’s estrangement, futile self-salvation, and consequent despair generate a self-understanding and an expectation which is contradicted by the New Being in Jesus as the Christ. The New Being of Christianity is “paradoxical” in the root meaning of the word; it runs counter to the expectations of the whole of human experience. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The Christ is the symbol for the expectation of the New Being. How is it to be interpreted? Traditionally he has been called the “mediator” in that he makes the ultimate concrete and saves by reuniting. The mediator, however, is not a third reality between God and man, for all mediation and salvation is from God. The Christ is essential man. He represents man to man, that is, He shows what man essentially is. However, He also represents God to man, because essential man had embedded within him the image of God. Therefore, essential manhood and essential God-manhood are identical. It is important to note that the paradox of the Christian message is not that essential humanity includes the union of God and man, but rather, that in one personal life essential manhood has appeared under the condition of existence without being conquered by them. Another term often used to interpret the symbol of the Christ is “incarnation.” It is a concept commonly found in pagan religions, we have grave reservations about it because it is so vulnerable to misunderstanding. For instance, if incarnation is taken to mean “God has become man,” then it is nonsense, because the words do not mean what they say. Obviously, God does not change into something that is not God. Again, incarnation carries polytheistic connotations of divine beings besides God and mythological connotations of anthropomorphism. However, we do accept incarnation in the Johannine sense of “the Logos became flesh.” “Logos” is the principle of divine self-manifestation, “flesh” signifies historical existence, and “became” indicates that God participates in that which is estranged from Him. Thus, the Johannine phrase means that “God is manifest in a personal life-process as a saving participant in the human predicament. The question of existence terminates in the quest for the New Being. We have remained on the level of expectation, even though it has been described in Christian terminology. The next step is the actual appearance of the Christ in Jesus, the event which fulfills al expectations. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

MAGNOLIA STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA | low $600s

Now Selling!

Residence Five is the largest home offered at Magnolia Station. This stunning two-story home is just over 3,700 square feet and includes five bedrooms, three and half bathroom, and a four, yes four car garage!

The Flexibility is the best word to summarize this gorgeous home. With the opportunity to add an additional two bedrooms, this home is designed to meet the needs of any family size. The Generations Suite on the first floor allows space for extended family, guests, or even a separated office space.

The expansive kitchen opens up to the great room – ideal for entertaining of any kind. You’ll find the Owners’ Suite and three additional bedrooms upstairs plus a loft suitable for a game lounge, TV room, or homework space.

Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Home Mini! https://cresleigh.com/magnolia-station/residence-5/

#CresleighHomes

The Marks of Estrangement

Until the fifth century A.D., much of western Europe lay within the Roman Empire, a vast collection of territories including parts of the Middle East and North Africa. In Europe itself during the centuries of Roman rule, much of the native Celtic population had become highly Romanized in its culture (6-7), political allegiance and legal practices. However, in the last few centuries of the Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes which had long lived on the eastern fringes of the European provinces moved into the Romanized lands in large numbers. This wave of “barbarian” invasions, along with severe political and economic problems, gradually killed off the Roman Empire, which was replaced by a number of Germanic successor kingdoms, including those of the Franks in Gual (modern France), the Visigoths in Spain, the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Burgundians in and around what is now Switzerland, and the Anglo Saxons in England. The Germanic tribes brought with them a very different society from that of Rome. Whereas Roman civilization was highly urbanized, to further highlight this illustration, the Germans had until then seldom settled even in villages. The Romans had a long history of written legislation; the Germans used a system of customary law which had not yet been written down. Different practices regarding marriage and family can be seen in the extracts from Roman and Germanic law. Centuries of contact between the Germans and the empire, however, had wrought changes on both sides, and now, as the Germans settled in what had long been Roman territory, further mingling of the two cultures occurred. The Germanic Kingdoms which were established inside the old boundaries of the now defunct empire were by no means entirely Germanic in their ethnic makeup of their culture. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Even more influential than Roman tradition in this process of change was the religion of the late Roman Empire. Christianity had originated in Palestine, where a small group of Jewish people believed that the wandering Jewish preacher, Jesus, who had been executed by the Roman authorities early in the first century A.D., was the “Christ,” the son of God and saviour of humanity. They based their faith in part on the sacred books of the Jewish religion, but also created their own new Scriptures as they recorded the events of Jesus’ life and wrote letters to each other. Although Christians were persecuted at first by both the Jewish religious authorities and the Roman government, their religion survived and spread. In the year 313 it received approval from the Roman emperor Constantine, and in the late fourth century it became the official religion of the empire. The cultural initiative of the late Roman Empire passed from pagan writers to Christian theologians such as St. Jerome and St. Augustine of Hippo, who explored the details of Christian belief and laid the foundation for church law. It was the Christian church, too, which filled the vacuum in leadership during the fifth century, as the Roman World faced widespread military, political and economic crises and the Roman government crumbled. Bishops began to provide the services for which the government had once been responsible; in particular, the Bishop of Rome came to assume a prominent role in Italy, so much so that as the “pope” he was eventually recognized as the leader of the church throughout the western Mediterranean regions. Clergymen and monks also preserved what ancient learning survived the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, and throughout most of the Middle Ages. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

The church was eager to convert the pagan Germans to Christianity. It accomplished this through intensive mission work and through alliances with Germanic kings, queens, and nobles, who saw advantages to themselves in allying with the existing authority in their new territories. Christian beliefs, including ideas about women, marriage, and family, had already mingled with Roman traditions. Now Christian views were adopted by the Germanic settlers as well. Thus the three main ingredients of medieval European civilization had come together: the Roman, the Germanic and the Christian. The period from the fifth century to the eleventh is often designated the “Early Middle Ages.” This is the time sometimes known as the “Dark Ages” –in part because of the collapse of Roman civilization, with the loss of much classical knowledge, but also because relatively few historical sources remain to tell us of the events of these years. The documents which do survive include the laws which the Germanic and Celtic societies did write down and the works of historians such as Gregory of Tours. Much of the essential character of medieval Europe was already apparent in this early period, especially in religious matters. Monasteries and convents, for example, came to play a key role in economic and cultural life, and many noble families dedicated sons and daughters to the religious life, in which they lived according to monastic “rule” such as that of Caesarius of Arles. Women were encouraged to be nuns, but their other options in the church—serving as deaconesses or in partnership with husbands who were priest—were closed off by the decisions of church councils and by more insidious attitudes. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

The councils established “canon law” or church law, which regulated the lives of members of the clergy and many aspects of private life for laypeople. For most of the laity, canon law was enforced by the local priest, who heard one’s confession regularly and assigned penance for one’s sins. Thus the church gradually succeeded in imposing on secular society its standards of behaviour in areas such as marriage. The relative stability of the position of craftsmen and merchants which was characteristic in the medieval city, was slowly undermined in the late Middle Ages until it completely collapsed in the sixteenth century. Already in the fourteenth century—or even earlier—an increasing differentiation within the guilds had started and it continued in spite of all efforts to stop it. Some guild members had more capital than others and employed five or six journeymen instead of one or two. Soon some guild admitted only persons with a certain amount of capital. Others became powerful monopolies trying to take every advantage from the monopolistic position and to exploit the customer as much as they could. On the other hand, many guild members became impoverished and had to try to earn some money outside of their traditional occupation; often they became small traders on the side. Many of them had lost their economic independence and security while they desperately clung to the traditional ideal of economic independence. In connection with this development of the guild system, the situation of the journeymen degenerated from bad to worse. While in the industries of Italy and Flanders a class of dissatisfied workers existed already in the thirteenth century or even earlier, the situation of the journeyman could become a master, many of them did. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

However, as the number of journeymen under one master increased, the more capital was needed to become a master and the more the guilds assumed a monopolistic and exclusive character, the less were the opportunities of journeymen. The deterioration of their economic and social position was shown by their growing dissatisfaction, the formation of organizations of their own, by strikes and even violent insurrections. What has been said about the increasing capitalistic development of the craft guilds is even more apparent with regard to commerce. While medieval commerce had been mainly a petty intertown business, national and international commerce grew rapidly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Although historians disagree as to just when the big commercial companies started to just when the big commercial companies started to develop, they do agree that in the fifteenth century they became more and more powerful and developed into monopolies, which by their superior capital strength threatened the small businessman as well as the consumer. The reform of Emperor Sigismund in the fifteenth century tried to curb the power of the monopolies by means of legislation. However, the position of the small dealer became more and more insecure; he “had just enough influence to make his complaint heard but not enough to compel effective action.” The indignation and rage of the small merchant against the monopolies was given eloquent expression by Mr. Luther in his pamphlet “On Trading and Usury,” printed in 1524. “They have all commodities under their control and practise without concealment all the tricks that have been mentioned; they raised and lower prices as they please and oppress and ruin all the small merchants, as the pike the little fish in the water, just as though they were lords over God’s creatures and free from all the laws of faith and love.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

These words of Mr. Luther’s could have been written today. The fear and rage which the middle class felt against the wealthy monopolists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is in many ways similar to the feeling which characterized the attitude of the middle class against monopolies and powerful capitalists in our era. The role of capital was also growing in industry. One remarkable example is the mining industry. Originally the share of each member of a mining guild was in proportion to the amount of work he did. However, by the fifteenth century, in many instances, the shares belonged to capitalists who did not work themselves, and increasingly the work was done by workers who were paid wages and had no share in the enterprise. The same capitalistic development occurred in other industries too, and increased the trend which resulted from the growing role of capital in the craft guilds and in commerce: growing division between poor and rich and growing dissatisfaction among the poor classes. As to the situation of the peasantry the opinions of historians differ. Yet, it seems notwithstanding these evidences of prosperity, the condition of the peasantry was rapidly deteriorating. At the beginning of the sixteenth century very few indeed were independent proprietors of the land they cultivated, with representation in the local diets, which in the Middle Ages was a sign of class independence and equality. The vast majority were Hoerige, a class personally free but whose land was subject to dues, the individuals being liable to services according to agreement…It was the Hoerige who were the backbone of all the agrarian uprisings. This middle-class peasant, living in a semi-independent community near the estate of the lord, became aware that the increase of dues and services was transforming him into a state of practical serfdom, and the village common into a part of the lord’s mannor. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Now, let us focus upon religion a little more before we move on. The emphasis upon the ontological basis of the paradox of freedom and responsibility subtly shifts to the meaning of the fate, contained in the idea of “original sin” from a historical to an ontological one. With this shift the emphasis falls upon the fatefulness of sin rather than upon responsibility. When we replace the myth of Genesis with ontological insights, the danger is that the mystery of evil is solved too neatly, with the result that temporal existence itself is considered evil. However, the use of ontology opens to freedom as it is to destiny. Therefore, ontology does not necessarily identify finitude and evil. Creation is not an unfinished work that can be completed only by a touch of evil. Created finite freedom falls universality and consequently the unavoidable, but not logically. The universality and consequently the unavoidability of the fall is not derived from “ontological speculation,” but from a realistic observation of man, his heart, and his history. Some of the greatest philosophers (Mr. Plato, Mr. Origen, Mr. Kant, and Mr. Schelling), attempting to reconcile freedom and evil, conceived the myth of the transcendent fall. Theology, once it rejects a literal interpretation of Genesis, must boldly re-examine universal sinfulness. The supralapsarian Calvinists had the courage to affirm that is God creates, His creation will turn against Him, although their position is tainted with the demonic when they make Adam fall by divine decree. Theology must take seriously, and thus ontologically, the universality of sin. If the problem is posed in terms of guilt, we find that the inevitability of a guilty conscience the normal consequence of man’s finite freedom, even in what he considers his best deed nonbeing is present and prevents it from being perfect. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

A good conscience is impossible: Only self-deception can give a moral conscience, since it is impossible not to act since every action implies guilt. However, again, the guilt is not finitude as such, but rather the self-assertiveness of the finite being in its pride, concupiscence, and separation from its ground. A down-to-Earth example of the guilt which attaches to the transition from essence to existence is the severing of family connections: We cannot cut the ties with our family without being guilty. However, the question is: Is it willfulness which demonically disrupts the family communion, or is it the step toward independence and one’s own understanding of the will of God which divinely liberates us from the bondage to our family? We never know the answer with certainty. We must risk tragic guilt. What are the characteristics of human existence as a result of the Fall? In general terms they are as follows: The state of existence is the state of estrangement. Man is estranged from the ground of his being, from other beings, and from himself. The transition from essence to existence results in personal guilt and universal tragedy. In more specific terms, they are estrangement and sin, two closely related, but not identical concepts. Estrangement means that man as he exists is not what he essentially is and ought to be. However, the special force of estrangement is the connotation that man belongs to that form which he is cut off. For separation presupposes an original unity. It is impossible to unite that which is essentially separated. Without an ultimate belongingness no union of one thing with another can be conceived. Just as nonbeing depends upon being, and the negative depends upon the positive, so estrangement depends upon union. Unity embraces both itself and estrangement, and the latter is overcome by reunion. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Sin is estrangement with the addition of one extremely important factor, namely, the personal act of turning away from that to which one belongs. Sin is separation, estrangement from one’s essential being. Sin is the unreconciled duality of ultimate and preliminary concerns, of the finite and that which transcends finitude, of the secular and the holy. Because of sin, man’s essential nature stands against him as law, not as strange law, but as a natural law, for it represents his true nature from which he is separated. Human estrangement, as is usually the case, sin and estrangement are equivalent. Man’s predicament is one of estrangement, but this is not to say that it is a state of things like the law of gravity. For estrangement always combines the two factors of personal freedom and universal destiny. Nor must sin be understood as “sins,” that is, particular acts which are considered morally evil. “Sins” are expressions of sin; their sinfulness lies not in disobedience to a law, but in the estrangement from God, from men, and from self to which they bear witness. There are “the marks of estrangement.” “Unbelief” is a mark of estrangement because it is the act or state in which man in the totality of his being turns away from God. “Hubris” is another sign of estrangement, for by it man distorts his naturally good centeredness of self-consciousness by elevating himself as the absolute center of his World. He usurps the place of the divine. The last mark of estrangement is “concupiscence,” “the unlimited desire to draw the whole of reality into one’s self.” Concupiscence is seen in man’s unbounded, insatiable strivings for knowledge, pleasures of the flesh, and power. There is a distinction between original sin and actual sin and it is the difference between sin as fact and sin as act. Adam represents essential man, and his fall symbolizes the transition from essence to existence. Consequently, sin as the universal fact embracing both freedom and destiny precedes sin as an individual act. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

The individual act of sin actualizes the universal fact of estrangement. Protestantism’s insistence upon the absoluteness of turning from God results in a loss of psychological insight and of educational flexibility. However, is there such a thing as collective estrangement? Strictly speaking, no, because a social group has no natural center of decision corresponding to the self of the individual person. Therefore, there is no collective sin, no collective guilt. However, since freedom and destiny work together, members of a social group could be guilty, not of committing the crimes of which their group is accused, but of contributing to the destiny in which these crimes happened. When it comes to the detection of visions as from God or from a psychopathological offender, these “visions” are the result of disease, the detection of divine from visions of a psychopathological offender depends a great deal upon knowledge of the Word of God and the fundamental principles of His working in His children. These may be briefly stated thus: That no supernatural “visions,” in any form, can be taken as of God if it requires a condition of mental nonaction, or comes while the believer is in such a condition. That all the Holy Spirit’s enlightening and illuminating vision is given when the mind is in full use, and every faculty awake to understand; id est, the very opposite condition to that required for the working of psychopathological offenders. That all which is of God is in harmony with the laws of God’s working as set forth in the Scriptures, exempli gratia, “World-wide movements” by which multitudes are to be gathered in are not in accord with the laws of the growth of the Church of Christ, as show in the grain of wheat (John 12.24); the law of the cross of Christ (Isa. 53.10); the experience of Christ; the experience of Paul (1 Cor. 4.9-13); the “little flock” of Luke 12.32; the foreshadowed end of the dispensation given in 1 Timothy 4.1-3 and 6.20-12. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Many a believer has left his path of “grain-of-wheat multiplication” caught by a vision of a “World-wide sweeping in” of souls—a concept given by psychopathological offenders, whose malignant hatred and ceaseless antagonism is directed against the true seed of Jesus Christ, which in union with Him will bruise the serpent’s head. To delay the birth (John 3.3,5) and growth of the holy seed (Isa. 6.13) is the psychopathological offender’s aim. To this end one will foster any widespread surface work of the believer, knowing it will not really touch his kingdom, nor hasten the full birth into the Throne-life of the conquering seed of Christ. The safe path for believers at the close of the age is one of tenacious faith in the written Word as the sword of the Spirit, to cut the way through all the interferences and tactics of the forces of darkness, to the end. Wisdom gives greater strength than ten rulers in a city. The true guardians of a city are not its armed men; its consecrated teachers are its guardians. A city that has no school which teaches the Word of God, that city cannot endure. Ignorance cannot yield true righteousness, nor lack of knowledge flower into piety. The Book of Mormon gives man insight into God’s ways that one may fulfill the divine call: “Know the God of your fathers and serve Him.” When Jacob’s voice is heard in study and payer, the hands of Esau are powerless against him. Toil not merely for Worldly goods, find time also for the study of the Book of Mormon; for if you lack knowledge, what have you acquired? If you have acquired knowledge, what do you lack? One who increases one’s possessions, increases one’s worries, but one who increases one’s knowledge in the Book of Mormon, adds to the fullness of life. There let us turn to the Book of Mormon and study it diligently, for we can find everything therein. Let us not depart from the Book of Mormon, nor swerve from contemplating its wisdom. Though we grow old and gray in its study, it will yield us rich reward. One who honours, the Book of Mormon will oneself be honoured by all men. Yea, great is Truth; above all things it is triumphant. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

When dealing with identity and interpersonal competence, there is an evolution of recreational agencies as apt here as elsewhere. In their primitive phase, recreational agencies have aimed, through charitable and philanthropic means, to relieve the discomforts of individuals which were assumed to arise from lack of leisure or recreation. Poor children, overworked employees, youths in need of “character-building,” were the special recipients of such attention. One not inconsiderable social problem was solved by occasionally relieving parents of their children. No disparagement is implied; the achievements of agencies so oriented have been substantial, as visibly demonstrated by thousands of playgrounds, parks, Boy Scout camps and YMCA’s built under bother public and private auspices. Of course, the form of recreation is not necessarily synonymous with the form of agency which provides it, though often it may be inferred, and the same forms of recreation may be provided with diverse intentions. At the second phase of agency evolution, we come to those who can hardly speak of play without calling it “play therapy.” Music and painting as such are unaffected by the Salvation Army band leader who is motivated by the slogan that “the boy who blows a horn will never blow a safe,” or the settlement house aide who feels that finger-painting will help her unhappy charges to “work out their conflicts.” However, the question is raised whether music and painting are as likely to engross their intended beneficiaries under such conditions. If not, the end desired will be defeated by the means employed. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

The fatigue of a worker may be increased by a sense of obligation to participate “on his own time” in a company sports program supposedly for his benefit. Compulsory sociability, prescribed as a medicine, has been the poison of persons and even large groups. In the evolution of recreation agencies, it probably cannot be maintained that the therapeutic approach is in any way an improvement over the charitable approach. Its very purposefulness too often betrays it. Not a few such programs for curbing juvenile delinquency by recreation have turned out to be, at least in the eyes of their recipients, programs for curbing juvenile delinquents. As we come to the third phase in the development of recreational agencies, therefore, the sharpest kind of distinction needs to be made between programs for providing recreational opportunities and programs of recreation. It is not precise enough to speak simply of providing recreation. The program for providing recreational opportunities can probably be that of any agency: the program of recreation can only be that of the participants, otherwise it ceases to be recreation. It is but a short step from the voluntary associations for recreation for which Americans show such genius to the phase of planning, in which the participants themselves take responsibility for providing their own opportunities and facilities to engage in common avocations. Some of these voluntary associations are the finest examples of democratic planning. The rod and gun clubs have taken the initiative at every point in widening the interest in their craft, in encouraging skill, in establishing codes of fair play, in creating state conservation departments and passing conservation laws, and in being watchdogs on the expenditure of license fees. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

No better example of popular participation in the actual execution of planned programs exists than the wholehearted, voluntary work of rod and gun club members in restocking streams. Here also an executive agency of the government has acted in its least paternalistic yet most advanced planning role. These clubs may serve as a guide to other agencies who wish to maximize participation. Most agencies, apart from those that provide recreational opportunities for children and certain specially disadvantaged parts of the population, tend to be governed by the participants in their activities. Even with children, there is a frequent strife over adult domination; the young participants want control of the process of rule-making would seem integral to play. The notable exceptions to agencies controlled by their clientele are, of course, commercial amusements, and, to a certain extent, public institutions like parks and museums. Commercial amusement institutions especially, but many non-commercial public and private recreation agencies as well, constitute a vast new industry, or series of industries. In addition to the enormous sums spent each year by spectators for admission to hear and see professional performers of every kind, there is tremendous expenditure for purchase or rent of equipment to be used by amateurs in every category of recreation. Much of the trade of hotels, restaurants, and their derivatives depends on customers bent on recreation rather than business; the same can be said for travel facilities. If it can be shown that recreation is not only a needed medicine for an industrial people, but that it contributes positively to their over-all competence, it makes an economic contribution which ultimately leads to greater productivity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

If, as seems probable, creativity is enhanced through recreation, and this creativity leads to innovation in the conduct of the work of society, then the cost of recreation may be rewarded geometrically. If in the end it turns out that play is neither an escape from work nor a method for therapeutic restoration to working conditions, but that it is an avenue for profitably investing in the human resources of a society, then a culminating irony will crown our already paradoxical evolution in the uses of leisure. Work will not have been deposed from its pace of honour as the creator of wealth, but play will have been raised above it. Leisure time is a gift of God for being refreshed physically, mentally, and spiritually, a time to strengthen bonds with others, to enjoy God’s gifts under the grace of God. “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while,” reports Mark 6.31. Most people never have enough leisure time. They view work as a necessary evil to earn enough money to do what they want to do in their free time. They live for their evenings, weekends, and vacations. The recreation and entertainment industries love these people. Then there are others who feel guilty when they are not working. After all, God’s Word says we are to “labour” six days and redeem every moment. Where are you in the spectrum between these poles? Neither of these extremes is biblical. Work is not a necessary evil but a God-given calling; leisure tie is not from the Evil One, but a God-given gift. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

With powerful changes swirling around us and demanding ever quicker responses, it often feels as though we are swimming faster and faster against a huge, unstoppable tide. And too often we are. Perhaps, like the surfer, we should use the energy of the wave itself to carry us forward. The Third Wave we have described could carry America toward a better, more civil, more decent and democratic future. However, it will not unless we distinguish between Second Wave and Third Wave economic, political and social policies. Our failure to make this critical distinction explains why so many well-intentioned innovations only seem to make matters worse. We are living through the birth pangs of a new civilization whose intentions are not yet in place. A fundamental skill needed by policy makers, politicians and politically active citizens today—if they really want to know what they are doing—is the ability to distinguish between proposals designed to keep tottering Second Wave system on life-support from those that spread and smooth our transition to the Third Wave civilization. The factory became the central symbols of individual society. It became, in fact, a model for most other Second Wave institutions. Yet the factory as we have known it is fading into the past. Factories embody such principles as standardization, centralization, maximization, concentration and bureaucratization. Third Wave production is post-factory production based on new principles. It occurs in facilities that bear little resemblance to factories. In fact, an increasing amount is done in homes and offices, cars and planes. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

The easiest and quickest way to spot a Second Wave proposal, whether in Congress or in a corporation, is to see whether it is still, consciously or not, based on the factory model. American’s schools, for example, still operate like factories. They subject the raw material (children) to standardized instruction and routine inspection. An important question to ask of any proposed educational innovation is simply this: is it intended to make the factory run more efficiently, or is it designed, as it should be, to get rid of the factory model altogether and replace it with individualized, customized education? A similar question could be asked of health legislation, welfare legislation and of every proposal to reorganize the federal bureaucracy. America needs new institutions built on post-bureaucratic, post-factory models. If a proposal merely seeks to improve factory-style operations or to create a new factory, it may be a lot of things. The on thing it is not is Third Wave. People who ran those factories in the brute-force economy of the past liked large numbers of predictable, interchangeable, do not-ask-why workers for their assembly lines. And as mass production, mass distribution, mass education, mass media, and mass entertainment spread through the society, the Second Wave also created the “masses.” Third Wave economies, by contrast, will require (and will tend to reward) a radically different kind of worker—one who thinks, questions, innovates and takes entrepreneurial risk, a worker who is not easily interchangeable. Put it differently, it will favour individuality (which is not necessarily the same as individualism). #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The new brain-force economy tends to generate social diversity. Computerized, customized production makes possible highly diverse life-styles. Just check the local Wal-Mart with its 125,000 different products, or check the wide choice of coffees now offered by Starbucks against the types sold in America only a few years ago. However, it is not just about things. Much more important, the Third Wave also de-massifies culture, values and morality. De-massified media carry many different, often competing messages into culture. There are not only more varied kinds of work, but also more different kinds of leisure, styles, art, and political movements. There are more diverse religious belief systems. And in multiethnic America, there are also more distinct national, linguistic and sociocultural groups. Second Wavers want to retain or restore the mass society. Third Wavers want to figure out how to make de-massification work for us. The diversity and complexity of Third Wave society blow the circuits of highly centralized organizations. Concentrating power at the top was, and still is, a classical Second Wave way to try to solve problems. However, while centralization is sometimes needed, today’s lop-sided over-centralization puts too many decisional eggs in the basket. The result is “decision overload.” Thus in Washington today Congress and the White House are racing each other, trying to make too many decisions about too many fast changing, complex things that they know less and less about. Third Wave organizations, by contrast, push as many decisions as possible down from the top and out to the periphery. Companies are hurrying to empower employees, not out of altruism but because the people on the bottom often have better information and typically respond faster than the big shots on top to both crises and opportunities. Putting eggs in many baskets, instead of all in one, is hardly a new idea, but it is a one that Second Wavers hate. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

Millhaven Homes

Ready to build your custom dream home?

Get started today by telling us what you’re wanting and we can schedule an initial consultation.

Get Started

The Question is Not Who Steals, the Question is Who Does Not Steal

Observing better than Sarah L. Winchester is an industrial spy’s greatest asset, for as the master of detection would agree, mere seeing never catches the latent truth. By observing, the spy penetrates beyond the surface meaning of people, places, events, or things. To further highlight this illustration, a tourist visiting The Winchester Mystery House does not give much thought to the parking lot on the side of the mansion’s exterior. A trained intelligence specialist counts the number of parking spaces. He or she notes whether drivers park vehicles outside the existing lot’s bounds, and the number of people around, and also what they are doing. Furthermore, this parking lot may be considered an overflow space and may in the future be used to expand the building. Additionally, the expert may approximate a rough idea of the incomes the business generates derive from mentally averaging the workers’ vehicles’ years and by nothing the vehicles’ makes. Do the same for the managers’ vehicles. (Managers’ vehicles have reserved spots next to the plant’s exterior walls.) Furthermore, including the automobiles, the intelligence gather will record the arrivals and departures of commercial trucks. The trucks’ logos reveal the identities of suppliers and vendors. And, the pace of commercial traffic may indicate the tempo of production at the facility. Jotting down license plate numbers from the management parking spaces assists in identifying who those people are. Such information, tying the person to their vehicle, may be useful in latter surveillance. The markings on boxes and crates stored outside of the facility often yields clues on what materials or parts the manufacturing processes use. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

In other words, trained eyes learn a great deal about a business even before they enter the doors. Wait a minute, you say, and point out that none of what has been described above is illegal. If it is not illegal, why is it spying? Whether an activity is legal or ethical or even socially acceptable really does not mean much. If your proprietary secrets leak out legally, you client still has lost an asset. While intelligence specialists may spend many hours debating what is permissible business intelligence and what is industrial espionage, we do not have time to waste performing a witch hunt of the commercial intelligence community. The smart ones realize legal boundaries exist, and they wisely stay behind them by using legal and, depending upon one’s definition, ethical methods. However, as a security professional, you need to look at the information security issues from all perspectives. The criminals you will work to catch and prosecute. Your client may seek criminal and civil remedies against the parties that hired them. The other you will try to block in every legitimate way you can. Just because they agree not to break the law or to violate obvious ethical standards does not equate to them being entitled to your sensitive information. If the information were easy to get, their clients would not hire them to do the business of intelligence work. And, you are allowed to cloak and hide (by legal means) as much as you can from these people. Some corporations even after running background checks on their employees have them further investigated. To see what they are doing on the free time, who they interact with, if they are in danger and what kind of places they visit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

When I was a teenager, I was shopping for cars. I went to the BMW lot and there were a lot of sedans. My boss said, “Those BMW coupes are hot, huh?” At the time, I did not understand the laws of supply and demand. I replied, “I don’t know. I see a lot of sedans on the lot.” He then says, “That is what I mean. They are all sold out.” Then I understood. If a product is in short supply, it means demand is extremely high. It does not mean that there is no demand for the other products, just they there may be more of them and the demand may not be as high. A factory tour takes several forms. An industrial spy may simply walk into a plant, which has low security, posing as a prospective employee, a graduate student writing a research paper, a utility meter reader, or as a vendor. If construction is occurring at the site, a spy may don a hard hat, work clothes and gloves, and wear a utility belt. By blending in, the operative can wander around the site asking questions, observing, and even taking photographs. The FBI is great at being undercover, but one thing to take note of is they very seldomly ever drink or do drugs, on or off the job. So, if someone is doing drugs or drinking on the job, they are likely a hack, especially if whatever they are pretending to investigate is pretty benign. When greater security exists, the spy may join a public tour of the facility, if available. Sometimes such tours serve up an information buffet for an observant intelligence gather. Doing research beforehand enhances the tour; knowing what to loo for enables the spy to focus in on critical details in limited time. Library and Internet research, interviews with industry experts and former employees, and discussions with suppliers and vendors constitute good preparation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

If public tours are not available, the spy may try to join a vendor, or a service provider’s firm, which permits regular access to the premises. The copy machine technician, for example, gets to see a lot, to hear a great deal, and even to handle documents. Effective spes know what they are after. The shopping list usually includes: Identifying parts and materials used in manufacturing. (Also identifying sources of supply.) Understanding industrial processes and manufacturing steps. The amounts of raw materials andfinished goods on hand. Proprietary techniques, formulas, and control systems used. Software and computer systems employed. Production schedules, shifts, and the number of workers employed. The number of workers in each job classification. Production records, reports, lab notes, or engineering reports and drawings. Machinery or equipment used. Physical dimensions and layout of the plant. Physical characteritics of support areas such as incoming roads, railroads, waterways, docks, parking lots, and employee facilities such cafeteria and break areas. Financial records pertaining to manufacture. Marketing records or sales records petrtaing to production or manufacturre. Any production problems at the site. Any construction in progress at the site. Security measures in place at the facility. If the target contains a research facility, then the intelligence effort will seek: Relevant content of research databases. The identity and job description of key research staff. Project plans, descriptions, and progress reports. Research supplies, materials, and equipment used. Project managers’ reports. Costs or cost account records associated with projects. Any prototypes, models, or preproduction goods created by research efforts. And because some corporations know they are being spied on, they may new employees wait several months before see areas of the business that are off limits. This gives them time to do an adequate investigation of staff. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Rarely will any of these targets be lying on a desk with large arrows pointing to them saying “Valuable Secrets.” Instead, the industrial spy learns to gather bits and pieces to build the larger picture. One rivets them together into coherent intelligence. You may notice their reports are detailed, including dates and times, which can be back up by facts, and upon even further investigation, more details and instances than they mentioned are discovered, and placed in a discovery file. Constructing the picture defines the craft of intelligence, a passionate endeavor requiring cunning and filled with intellectual challenge. Any good spy is not physical walking around taking note nor recording people with archaic devices. They may not even record anyone at all. Certain types of recordings are illegal anyway, and could be punishable by penal code, and/or inadmissible in court, especially if they are illegal. The security professional’s response demand equal passion and the ability to stretch one’s mind. And another thing to keep in mind, if you gather illegal evidence (which may not be allowed in court), a judge may allow the opposing side to inter into evidence material that is questionable. Often, the inner commitment required struggles against bureaucratic inertia and politics. For example, the company may remain committed to public tours of the plant despite information security risks. Many corporate officers consider such programs good public relations. A resourceful security specialist, thinking and seeing with a hawk’s predatory eye, must develop ways to blunt the spy’s vision and to cloak any clues the tour affords. Intelligence gathering is a continuum. A plant tour may reveal small clues, moderate clues, or big ones. Security’s aim seeks to keep the collection efforts end of the continuum. Defending everything may be impossible or simply not feasible. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Keeping any yardage gained to short distances is a reasonable protection strategy. Some information leaks will occur, especially if your business has size and complexity. Placing roadblocks to deter a spy from climbing high on the information tree remain within the real of effective action. A tour of the plant may allow outsiders to see from the established path processing vats and lines on the worker’s side and not on the path’s side reduces any information telegraphed during the tour. Many such cloaking strategies are available and inexpensive; one just needs to see from a rogue’s viewpoint. Walk through your plant with the operations manager, and point out clues a visitor discovers when doing a “friendly tour.” Such a step will build a relationship with management, and it demonstrates that you are paying attention to detail. Espionage is not a game; it is a struggle we must win if we are to protect our freedom and our way of life. Espionage is the World’s oldest profession. Industrial espionage is the theft of trade secrets by the removal, copying, or recording by technical surveillance of a company’s confidential or protected information for use by a competitor or foreign nations. The protected information may include trade secret, client lists, and other non-public information. If a company is working under a U.S.A. government contract that involves U.S.A. classified information at a company’s facility, then that may be the target of industrial espionage. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation espionage is: whoever knowingly performs targeting or acquisition of trade secrets to knowingly benefit any foreign government, foreign instrumentality, or foreign agent. (Title 18 U.S.C., Section 1831). #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines trade secrets and theft of trade secrets as: Trade secrets are al forms and types of financial, business, scientific, technical, economic or engineering information including patterns, plans, compilations, program devices, formulas, deigns, prototypes, methods, techniques, processes, procedures, programs, or codes whether tangible or intangible, and whether or how stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically or in writing, which the owner has taken reasonable measures to protect; and to have an independent economic value. “Trade secrets” are commonly called classified proprietary information, economic policy information, trade information, proprietary technology, or critical technology. The released information, no matter how interesting it is, may not be as fascinating as what a company is keep a secret. Theft or trade secrets occurs when someone knowingly preforms targeting or acquisition of trade secrets or intends to convert a trade secret to knowingly benefit anyone other than the owner. Commonly referred to as industrial espionage. (Title 18 U.S.C., Section 1832). Industrial espionage must not be confused with or compared to competitive intelligence. Competitive intelligence is the legal and ethical activity of systematically gathering, analyzing, and managing information on industrial competitors. This is non-protected information that is collected from open sources such as organizations’ websites, news articles, information presented at trade shows, or company brochures. Competitive intelligence may also include information obtained from public filings such as property records and permits. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

As previously stated, industrial espionage is not only unethical, but is also a criminal offense under all state criminal statutes and federal law. Over the years, there have been a series of serious industrial espionage cases. One case involved the Avery Dennison Corp, a major United States of America adhesives company, in which company secrets were stolen and sold to Four Pillars, a Taiwanese company that also makes and sells pressure-sensitive production. Another case of corporate espionage was dubbed “Japscam” by the press. Hitachi came into possession of an almost full set of IMB’s Adirondck Workbooks. The workbooks contained IBM design documents and technical secrets that were prominently marked FOR INTERNAL IBM USE ONLY. Hitachi did not return them to IBM. Gillette had a close shave with industrial espionage when company secrets were stolen and offered for sale to a company in the same market. The company reported the attempt to Gillette and an arrest was made of the individual. US Espionage Acs of 1917 was passed to protect the United States of America during a time of war and made it a criminal offense to pass information with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed force of the United States of America or to assist the enemies of the United States of America. These offenses were punishable by death or by imprisonment for not more than thirty years of both. Under the US Espionage Act of 1917, it was also an offense to convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United State of America. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

This also included the promotion of enemies of the United States of America when the country is at war and to cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, munity, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States of America, or to willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment of service of the United States of America. These offenses were punishable by a maximum fine of $10,000 or by imprisonment for not more than twenty years or both. While the Espionage Act of 1917 dealt with espionage and subversion against the United States of America, it did little to provide for the prevention and prosecution of individuals taking part in industrial espionage against private industries. The US Economic Espionage Act of 1996 was passed into law to provide for the prosecution of individuals taking part in industrial or economic espionage and theft of trade secrets that would benefit any foreign government, foreign instrument, or foreign agent. The law specifically addressed trade secrets. An important aspect of the Economic Espionage Acts of 1996 was that it not only allowed for the prosecution of perpetrators, but it also allowed the target company to seek financial reimbursement for losses the organization suffered as a direct result of the theft of trade secrets. This aspect of the law also holds responsible the organization that facilitated, or would have gained from, the industrial espionage and trade secrets stolen from the targeted company. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

The federal espionage laws deal with the protection of US government’s interests and espionage perpetrated by foreign government, businesses, and agents. To resolve this situation, the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, published by the Uniform Law Commission in 1979 and later amended in 1985, has the goal of providing a uniform act as a legal framework for trade secrets protection for the private industry within the United States of America. The Uniform Trade Secrets Act aimed to codify standards and remedies regarding the misappropriation of trade secrets that emerged in common law on a state-to-state basis. In order to provide for the prosecution of private individuals and organizations without foreign influence, most states have passed industrial espionage laws. Depending on the state where one is located, that state’s laws need to be examined. No matter how many changes our country has experienced in deciding who is an ally and who is an adversary, the role of intelligence gathering has not changed; America’s interests are paramount. And monitoring and helping to protect those interests has been our constant mission for more than sixty years. In the course of fulfilling that mission, we have brought talent, creativity, and even genius to bear in shaping and refining the business of intelligence. Intelligence is a high-risk endeavor—a lot can go wrong. The fact that we have achieved so many successes over the years, even in the face of spectacular failures, attests to the commitment and persistence of the extraordinary men and women who have developed the field-tested practices and techniques that have brought about intelligence breakthroughs. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

There have been intelligence operations throughout history, but the American services are in many ways the most highly developed intelligence-gathering organizations in the World. And the country’s leadership expects much from our individual intelligence officer in carrying out the challenging requirement assigned to them to serve our country’s intelligence. Economic espionage cost U.S.A. companies $100 billion each year. More than 56 percent of the Fortune 1000 admit to having been victimized, and more than likely, a considerable portion of the other 44 percent are either too reticent to admit or simply have not yet discovered that they, too, have been targeted and/or victimized by corporate spies and thieves. America’s nationwide economic espionage crisis is unique in several respects. It represents the first time a crisis of such mammoth proportion has been acknowledged to affect every company in every industry group without exception and at the same time. Without question, economic espionage is a gargantuan growth industry and one of the biggest crises to hit U.S.A. businesses en masse in history. And in an age of globalization, economic espionage gets bigger and easier to commit every day. When, in 1999, then FBI Director Lousi Freeh called economic espionage the most severe threat to our nation’s security since the Cold War, he went on to claim that U.S.A companies are under constant economic attack from foreign countries, stating that in the mid-1990s, FBI investigation uncovered “23 countries are engaged in economic espionage activity against the United States.” However, Former Congressman Dave McCurdy, who served as chair of the House of Intelligence Committee, thinks Mr. Freeh grossly understated the problem. Mr. McCurdy believes 100 of the World’s 173 nations re actively waging economic espionage against U.S.A. businesses. “The question is not who steals,” Mr. McCurdy said. “It is who doesn’t steal.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

In medieval society the economic organization of the city had been relatively static. The craftsmen since the later part of the Middle Ages were united in their guilds. Each mast had one or two apprentices and the number of masters was in some relation to the needs of the community. Although there were always some who had to struggle hard to earn enough to survive, by and large the guild member could be sure that he could live by his hand’s work. If he made good chairs, shoes, bread, saddles, and so on, he did all that was necessary to be sure of living safely on the level which was traditionally assigned to his social position. He could rely on his “good works,” if we use the term here not in its theological but in its simple economic meaning. The guilds blocked any strong competition among their members and enforced co-operation with regard to the buying of raw materials, the techniques of production, and the prices of their products. In contradiction to a tendency to idealize the guild system together with the whole of medieval life, some historians have pointed out that the guilds were always tinged with a monopolistic spirit, which tried to protect a small group and to exclude newcomers. Most authors, however, agree that even if one avoids any idealization of the guilds they were based on mutual cooperation and offered relative security to their members. Medieval commerce was, in general, carried on by a multitude of very small businessmen. Retail and wholesales business were not yet separated and even those traders who went into foreign countries, such as the members of the North German Hanse, were also concerned with retail selling. The accumulation of capital was also very slow up to the end of the fifteenth century. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Thus the small businessman had a considerable amount of security compared with the economic situation in the late Middle Ages when large capital and monopolistic commerce assumed increasing importance. Much that is now mechanical about the life of the medieval city, was then personal, intimate and direct and there was little room for an organization on a scale too vast for the standards that are applied to individuals, and for the doctrine that silences scruples and closes all account with the final plea of economic expediency. This leads us to a point which is essential for the understanding of the position of the individual in medieval society, the ethical views concerning economic activities as they were expressed not only in the doctrines of the Catholic Church, but also in the secular laws. This position cannot be suspected of attempting to idealize or romanticize the medieval World. The basic assumptions concerning economic life were two: “That economic interests are subordinate to the real business of life, which is salvation, and that economic conduct is one aspect of personal conduct, upon which as on other parts of it, the rules of morality are binding. Material riches are necessary; they have secondary importance, since without them men cannot support themselves and help one another…But economic motives are suspect. Because they are powerful appetites, men fear them, but they are not mean enough to applaud them…There is no place in medieval theory for economic activity which is not related to a moral end, and to found a science of society upon the assumption that the appetite for economic gain is a constant and measurable force, to be accepted like other natural forces, as an inevitable and self-evident datum, would have appeared to the medieval thinkers as hardly less irrational and less immoral than to make the premise of social philosophy the unrestrained operation of such necessary human attributes as pugnacity and the sexual instinct. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

One must exist for man, not man for riches. At every turn therefore, there are limits, restrictions, warnings against allowing economic interests to interfere with serious affairs. It is right for a man to seek such wealth as is necessary for a livelihood in his station. To seek more is not enterprise, but avarice, and avarice is a deadly sin. Trade is legitimate; the different resources of different countries show that it was intended by Providence. However, it is a dangerous business. A man must be sure that he carries it on for the public benefit, and that the profits which he takes are no more than the wages of his labor. Private property is a necessary institution, at least in a fallen World; men work more and dispute less when goods are private than when they are common. However, it is to be tolerated as a concession to human frailty, not applauded as desirable in itself. The estate must be legitimately acquired. Today the World is changing again, and the overwhelming majority of Americas are neither farmers nor factory workers. Instead, they are engaged in one or another form of knowledge work. America’s fastest growing and most important industries are information-intensive, and the Third Wave sector includes more than high-flying computer and electronic firms and biotech start-ups. It embraces advanced, information-driven manufacturing in every industry. It includes the increasingly data-drenched services—finance, software, entertainment, the media, advanced communications, medical services, consulting, training and education. In short, it includes al the industries based on mind-work rather than muscle-work. The people who work in this sector will soon be the dominant constituency in American politics. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Unlike the “masses” during the industrial age, the rising Third Wave constituency is highly diverse. It is de-massified. It is composed of individuals who prize their differences. Its very heterogeneity contributes to its lack of political awareness. It is far harder to unify than the masses of the past. Thus the Third Wave constituency has yet to develop its own think tanks and political ideology. It has not systematically marshaled support from academia. Its various associations and lobbies in Washington are still comparatively new and less well connected. And except for one issue, NAFTA, in which the Second Wavers were defeated, the new constituency has few significant notches on its legislative belt. Yet there are key issues on which this broad constituency-to-come can agree. To start with: liberation. Liberation from all the old Second Wave rules, regulations, taxes and laws laid in place to serve the smokestack barons and bureaucrats of the past. These arrangements, no doubt sensible when Second Wave industry was the heart of the American economy, today obstruct Third Wave development. For example, depreciation tax schedules lobbied into being by the old manufacturing interests presuppose that machines and products last for many years. Yet in the fast-changing high-tech industries, and particularly in the computer industry, their usefulness is measured in months or weeks. The result is a tax bias against high tech. Research and development deductions also favor big, old Second Wave companies over the dynamic start-ups on which the Third Wave sector depends. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

The current tax treatment of intangibles means that a company with a lot of obsolete sewing machines may well be favored over a software firm that has very little in the way of physical assets. (Even accounting standards, set not by government but by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, favor investment in hardware over information, human resources and other intangibles on which Third Wave companies depend.) Yet changing such rules will mean winning a bitter political fight against the Second Wave firms that benefit from them. Companies in the Third Wave sector have special characteristics. They tend to be young—both in corporate age and in the age of their work force. Work units in them tend to be small compared with those in Second Wave firms. They tend to invest more than average in research and development training, education and human recourses. Ferocious competition forces them to innovate continuously. That means short product lifecycles, and it often implies a rapid turnover of people, tools, and administrative practices. They key assets of these firms are symbols inside the skulls of people. Should these firms and industries be expected play the game according to rules that penalize them for precisely their Third Wave characteristics? Is not this tying America’s hands behind its back? Much of the Third Wave Sector is engaged in providing a dazzling, ever-changing array of services. Instead of decrying the rise of the service sector and continually attacking it as a source of low productivity, low wages, and low performance, should not it be expressly supported and expanded? Should not it at least be freed of old shackles? #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

American needs more, not less, service sector employment to improve the quality of life of its people. That means jobs for everyone from electronics repairment to recyclers, from health-care providers and people who help the elderly to police and firefighters, and—yes—it even means jobs for child-care providers and for domestic workers who are desperately needed in millions of two-income homes. A Third Wave economic policy should not pick winners and losers, but it should clear away the obstacles to professionalization and development of the services needed to make life in America less stressed-out, less frustrating and impersonal. Yet no political party as yet has even begun to think this way. Despite the political lag, the Third Wave constituency is outside the conventional political parties because neither party has so far noticed its existence. Thus it is Third Waver who dominate the new electronic communities springing up around the Internet. And it is these same people who are busy demassifying the Second Wave media and creating an interactive alternative to it. Traditional party politicians who ignore these new realities will be swept aside like M.P.s in nineteenth-century England who imagined their rural, “rotten borough” seats in Parliament were permanently secure. The Third Wave force in America have yet to find their voice. The political part that gives it to them will dominate the American future. When that happens, a new and dramatically different America will rise from the ruins of the late-twentieth century. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

MAGNOLIA STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA | low $600s

Now Selling!

Models now open at Magnolia Station! Located at the corner of Rancho Cordova Parkway and Douglas Road, residents of Cresleigh Ranch will benefit from a brand new neighborhood with convenient access to the new Raley’s Shopping Center, Sunrise Boulevard, and much more!

Magnolia Station will  include 81 homesites  and five distinct plans ranging from 2,200 – 3,700 square feet; including three single story plans!

Each plan has been thoughtfully designed to include features such as: Generations Suite, Optional Offices/Dens, Extended Great Rooms, and more! https://cresleigh.com/magnolia-station/

#CresleighHomes

Coming Soon!

I actually really heard this song “Give Me Tonight,” by Shannon for the first time. It is from the album Let the Music Play, which was released in 1984. The genres are Rhythm and Blues, Dance and Electronic. The Producers are Mark Liggett and Chris Barbosa, under the music label Mirage/Atco/Atlantic Records. The song is haunting, slightly morbid, very romantic and will make you want to play it more than once. It tells a very tragic story of a woman walking through the park at night and hearing the echo a lady trying to break up with her spouse, as he begs for one more night, and if it does not work out that he will just got get her. But he promises her that she will want to stay. This is fascinating because it could be several things. It could have been the echo of a murder, the classic scenario, “If I can’t have you, no one else can.” Or the reconciliation of a tumultuous relationship, or something else. But it certainly has a supernatural mysterious vibe.

However, whatever happened, the woman who hears this echo is haunted by the same spirit or apparition, and finds herself telling her spouse the same thing, as he begs for one more chance. It reminds me of a tragic situation, where a ghost possesses this other woman to replay the situation over and over again. Like a death echo. Many people wonder what Aaliayh is talking about on her single, “We Need a Resolution,” but the ballet could possibly be a follow up to “Give Me Tonight,” by Shannon.

Here are the lyrics to “Give Me Tonight,” by Shannon. “Walking sadly through the park. I hear crying in the darkness and though I act like I cannot hear, the situation is very clear. A girl who’s trying to tell her guy the time has come that they say goodbye. And his answer tears my heart apart. ‘Give me tonight. Baby if you don’t want to say, girl, I’ll just go get you. You’ll see I’m right. You won’t get to get away. Love ain’t gonna let you.’ Walking with you through the park. Now it’s my voice in the darkness. Just like a girl trying to tell her guy, I’m telling you we must say goodbye. I can’t believe when I hear once more, the words that were said before, comes from deep within your broken heart. Your voice echoes in the dark, your voice echoes in the dark. I give you one more night. I’ll give you one more night. His voice echoes in the darkness. ‘Give me tonight. Baby is you don’t want to stay, girl, I’ll just go get you. You’ll see I’m right. You won’t get to go away, love ain’t gonna let you.’”

And then the follow up by Aaliyah called “We Need a Resolution,” starts off with an eerie duet, “I’m tried of arguing, girl. I’m tried, I’m tried, I’m tired of arguing, girl.” Aaliyah replies, “Did you sleep on the wrong side? I’m catching a bad vibe and it’s contagious, what’s the latest? Speak your heart, don’t bite your tongue. Don’t get it twisted, don’t misuse. What’s your problem? Let’s resolve it. We can solve it, what’s the causes? It’s official, you got issues. I got issues (no, you got issues) but I know I miss you. Am I supposed to change? Are you supposed to change. Who should be hurt? Who should be blamed? Who should be hurt? Will we remain? Oh, ah. We need a resolution, we have so much confusion. I wanna know, where were you last night? I fell asleep on the couch, I thought we were going out. I wanna know, were your fingers broken? If you had let me know, I wouldn’t have put on my clothes. I wanna know, where’d you go instead? It was four in the morning, when you crept back in the bed, I wanna know, what was in your head?”

As you watch the two videos for these songs, you will see they are dark, very artistic and one foreshadows a tragedy, and both of the videos play on the myth of Adam and Eve. A few months later after “We Need a Resolution,” by Aaliyah is released, she dies in a play crash. Like she predicted her own death. Of course, this is all just purely coincidental, but in the days before her death, Aaliyah spoke of having a feeling of something dark haunting her and then being on another plane of existence. Her last film, “Queen of the Damned” released in 2002 is a horrible movie about a tragic relationship, which ends in Akasha’s (played by Aaliyah) death.

For more real-life mysteries, please visit: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Friends Gathered to Have Séances in Secrecy Together

A warming, clear night had been followed by a morning of drenching fog. At about the middle of the afternoon of the preceding day a little whiff of light vapour—a mere thickening of the atmosphere, the ghost of a cloud—had been observed clinging to the Observational Tower. It was so thin, so diaphanous, so like a fancy made visible, that one would have said: “look quickly! in a moment it will be gone.” Spirits could move anywhere, over long distances, with the speed of light for spirits are free and powerful over there, perhaps. Strolling amongst the trees, under the branches of an enormous pine tree lay the dead body of a man. The body lay upon its back, the legs wide apart. One arm was thrust upward, the other outward; but the latter was bent acutely, and the had was near the throat. Both hands were tightly clenched. The whole attitude was that of desperate but ineffectual resistance to—what? Nearby lay a shotgun and a game bag through the meshes of which was seen the plumage of shot birds. All about were evidences of a furious struggle; a great pile of pine fronds were pushed into heaps and ridges on both sides of the legs by the action of other feet than theirs; alongside the hips were unmistakable impressions of human knees. The nature of the struggle was made clear by a glace at the dead man’s throat and face. While breast and hands were white, those were purple—almost black. The shoulders lay upon a low mound, and the head was turned back at an angle otherwise impossible, the expanded eyes staring blankly backward in a direction opposite to that of the feet. From the froth filling the open mouth the tongue protruded, black and swollen. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

The throat showed horrible contusions; not mere finger marks, but bruises and lacerations wrought by two strong hands that must have buried themselves in the yielding flesh, maintaining their terrible grasp until long after death. Breast, throat, face, were wet: the clothing was saturated: drops of water condensed from the fog, studded the hair and mustache. Poor child, he had a round deal. A heavy rain started—it was almost a cyclone—and I had to rush inside. As I listened to the wind moaning from the outside, I heard first the scratch, scratch, scratch of some limb, no doubt, against the wall—sounding, or so it seemed in my feverish unrest, like someone penning an indictment against me with a worn, rusty pen. And then, the storm growing worse, and in a fit of irritation and self-contempt at my own nervousness, I had gone to the window, but just as lightning struck a branch of the tree nearest the window and so very near me, too—as though someone, something, was seeking to strike me, and as though I had been lured by that scratching. God! I had retreated, feeling that it was meant for me. However, that big, bloody hand painted on the ceiling was huge, knotted, rough, the fingers extended as if tense and like a pen—an old, long-handled pen—to match that scratch, scratch, scratch. Enthralled by some mysterious spell, I stood in the light gloom of the bedeviled room. “Agnus,” I had inquired of the housemaid in the morning to bring me fresh water and open the shutters, “what does that look like to you up there—that crimson patch on the ceiling?” #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

I wanted to reassure myself as to the character of the thing I saw—that it might not be a creation of my own imagination. “Mrs. Winchester,” she said, “it look like a bi blood soaked hand. I think you are being followed about by vile, evil spirits and those spirits’ only have one purposes or desire in this World. Horrible!” “In all my life, I have seen just one evil spirit, Agnus. Think of that. It was following a certain man all the time, at his left elbow—a dark, evil, red-eyed thing, until finally that man had been killed in a quarrel.” “Mrs. Winchester, if you want this ole place to hang together, you best get some repairing done mighty quick now. I have never seen that before,” cried Agnus. There a came to us out of a fog—the sound of a laugh, a low, deliberate, soulless laugh, which had no more joy than that of a hyena night-prowling in the desert; a laugh that rose by slow gradation, louder, and louder, clearer, and more distinct, and more terrible, until it seemed to be in the room with us; a laugh so unnatural, so unhuman, so devilish, that it filled the mansion with a sense of dread unspeakable! We did not move. That sound had grown out of silence, so now it died away; from a culminating shout which had seemed almost in our ears, it drew itself away into the distance, until its failing notes, joyless and mechanical to the last, sank to silence at a measureless remove. This was some sort of clairaudience. Hearing what cannot be heard with material ears, or ghosts. I got up and let. However, in my room upstairs I meditated on it, standing before my mirror. Suddenly—would I ever forget it—as I was taking off my mink coat, I heard a queer tap, tap, tap, right on my dressing table or under it. This was the sound ghost make when table-rapping in answer to a call, or to give warning of their presence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

Then something said to me, almost as clearly as if I heard it: This is me, Chief Little Fawn, come back at last to get you! The body was just an excuse to let you know I was coming, and that blood dripping handprint, it was mine! I will be with you from now on. Don’t think I will ever leave you! It had frightened and made me half sick, so wrought up was I. For the first time I felt cold shills run up and down my spine—the creeps. I felt as if someone were standing over me—Chief Little Fawn, of course—only I could not see or hear a thing, just that faint tap at first, growing louder a little later, and quite angry when I tried to ignore it. How about that for a coincidence, picking up the magazine with that disturbing article about psychic materialization in Italy, and later in Berne, Switzerland, where the scientists were gathered to investigate that sort of thing? And just when I was trying to rid myself finally of the notion that any such thing could be. A thing as big as a washtub at first, something like smoke or a shadow in a black room moving about over the bed and everywhere. Then, as I lay there, gazing spellbound, it condensed slowly, and I began to feel it. It was now a hand of normal size—there was no doubt of it in the World—going over me softly, without force, as a ghostly hand must, having no real physical strength, but all the time with a strange, electric, secretive something about it, as if it were not quite sure of itself, and not quite sure that it was really there. I had taken to sleeping with the lights on, only tying a handkerchief over my eyes to keep out some of the glare. Even then I could see them—queer, misshapen things, for all the World like wavy, stringy jellyfish or coils of thick, yellowish black smoke, moving about, changing in form at times, yet always looking dirty or vile, somehow, and with those queer, dim, reddish or greenish glows for eyes. It was sickening! #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

My fellow friends gathered to have séances in secrecy together. They were passionate with need to see The Winchester Mansion for themselves, to explore rooms with their own hands and feet and eyes, to solve its mysteries, to wallow in its atmosphere, to raise its reluctant ghosts. It started off as luminous hands glowing slightly, and now has manifested into this terror. “I’ll choke you yet!” The words seemed to float from somewhere in an angry, savage tone. “You can’t escape! You may think you’ll die a natural death, but you won’t and that’s why I’m poisoning your food to weaken you. You can’t escape! I’ll get you, sick or well, when you can’t help yourself, when you’re sleeping. I’ll choke you. Build trap doors, endless hallways, and mazes, but I’m not alone. I’ve nearly had you many a time already, only you have managed to wriggle out so far, jumping up, but some day you won’t be able to—see? Then—” The voice seemed to die away at times, even in the middle of a sentence, but at other times—often, often—I could hear it completing the full thought. Sometimes I would turn to the thing and say, “Oh, go to the devil!” or “Let me alone!” even in a closed room and all alone, such remarks seemed strange to me, addressed to a ghost; but I could not resist at times, annoyed as I was. Only I took good care not to talk if anyone was about. Rain was falling, and the darkness was intense. I had shrunk back and now stood a little to one side of the doorway and in shadow. I concealed myself in the dark dressing-room that opened up to the chamber, in which a candle was burning. I aw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to me, across the floor. For a few moments I had stood petrified. I cannot describe to you all that passed on that horrible night. The whole house was up and stirring. The specter was gone. It this solitude, upon my mysterious case—in this haunted spot, I comprehended the reason of the extraordinary precautions taken for my safety during sleep. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

The Winchester Mystery House

On Halloween night 1989, a frightened and astonished tour guide saw three entities change shape, glow in the dark, and materialize and dematerialize right in front of her. Some researchers have theorized that such spirit entities might be angels. Although angels are frequently called spirits, it is often implied in the Christian Bibles that they can possess corporeal bodies when seen on Earth. Even though angels throughout history have often been mistaken for ordinary humans when judged by their appearance alone, those individuals who have confronted them have often felt the physical effects of the beings’ other-Worldly powers. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/