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May America Previl?
One of the most important things to do is to live in the moment. This does not mean that you forget where you come from or do not plan for the future, it simply means living righteously and enjoying the present, without focusing on past atrocities. No one can right the past, but we can create a better future. The best way to capture the moment is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake and enjoy the life we are having. However. Lapses in awareness are frequently caused by an eddy of dissatisfaction with what we are seeing our felling in that moment, out of which springs a desire for something to be different, for things to change. Fear is as nonsubstaintal as your shadow, but it is. The shadow also exists—nonsubstantial, negative, but not nonexistential—and sometimes the shadow can have a great impact on you. People are more afraid of fear than of anything else, because the very existence of fear shakes your foundations. The infant still feeling one with mother, cannot yet say “I,” nor has he any need for it. Only after he has conceived of the outer World as being separate and different from himself does he come to the awareness of himself as a distinct being, and one of the last words he learns to use is “I,” in reference to himself. In the development of the human race the degree to which man is aware of himself as a separate self depends on the extent to which he has emerged from the clan and the extent to which the process of individuation has developed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The member of a primitive clan might express his sense of identity in the in the formula “I am we”; he cannot yet conceive of himself as an “individual,” existing apart from his group. It should always be kept in mind that, in addition to sorrow and mourning, part of the psychological response to separation is great anger at the mother-figure for leaving. Thus mourning, along with his attachment and love become subjects of anxiety. In the medieval World, the individual was identified with his social role in the feudal hierarchy. The peasant was not a man who happened to be a peasant, the feudal lord not a man who happened to be a feudal lord. He was a peasant or a lord, and this sense of his unalterable station was an essential part of his sense of identity. When the feudal system broke down, this sense of identity was shaken and the acute questions “Who am I”—or, more precisely, “How do I know what I am?”—arose. This was the question that was raised, in a philosophical form, by Rene Descartes. He answered the quest for identity by saying, “I doubt, hence I think; I think, hence I am.” This answer put all the emphasis on the experience of “I” as the subject of my thinking activity, and failed to see that the “I” is experienced also in the process of feeling and creative action. The development of Western culture went in the direction of creating the basis for the full experience of individuality. By making the individual free politically and economically, by teaching him to think for himself and freeing him from an authoritarian pressure, one hoped to enable him to feel “I” in the sense that he was the center and active subject of his powers and experienced himself as such. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
However, only a minority achieved the new experience of “I.” For the majority, individualism was not much more than a façade behind which was hidden the failure to acquire an individual sense of identity. Many substitutes for a truly individual sense of identity were sought for and found. Nation, religion, class, and occupation serve to furnish a sense of identity. “I am an American.” “I am a Protestant.” “I am a businessman.” These are the formulae that help a man experience a sense of identity after the original clan identity has been acquired. These different identifications are, in contemporary society, usually employed together. If blended with older feudal remnants, they are in a broad sense status identifications, and they are more efficient, as in European countries. In the United States of America, where so little is left of feudal relics and where there is so much social mobility, these status identifications are naturally less efficient, and the sense of identity is shifted more and more to the experience of conformity. Inasmuch as I am not different, inasmuch as I am like the others and recognized by them as “a regular fellow,” I can sense myself as “I.” I am “as you desire me”—as Mr. Pirandello put it in the title of one of his plays. Instead of the preindividualistic clan identity, a new herd identity develops in which the sense of identity rests on the sense of an unquestionable belonging to the crowd. That is uniformity and conformity are often not recognized as such, and are covered by the illusion of individuality, does not alter the facts. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
The problem of the sense of identity is not, as it usually understood, merely a philosophical problem, or a problem concerning only our mind and thought. The need to feel a sense of identity stems from the very condition of human existence, and it is the source of the most intense strivings. Since I cannot remain sane without the sense of “I,” I am driven to do almost anything to acquire this sense. Behind the intense passion for status and conformity is this very need, and it is sometimes even stronger than the need for physical survival. What could be more obvious than the fact that people are willing to risk their lives, to give up their love, to surrender their freedom, to sacrifice their own thoughts for the sake of being one of the herd, of conforming, and thus of acquiring a sense of identity, event though it is an illusory one. The fact that man has reason and imagination leads to the necessity not only for having a sense of his own identity but also for orienting himself in the World intellectually. This need can be compared with the process of physical orientation that develops in the first years of life and that is completed when the child can walk by himself, touch and handle things, knowing what they are. However, when the ability to talk and to speak has been acquired, only the first step in the direction of orientation has been taken. Man finds himself surrounded by many puzzling phenomena and, having reason, he has to make sense of them, has to put them in some context which he can understand and which permit him to deal with them in his thoughts. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
The further his reason develops, the more adequate becomes his system of orientation, that is, the more it approximates reality. However, even if man’s frame of orientation is utterly illusory, it satisfies his need for some picture which is meaningful to him. Whether he believes in the power of a totem animal, in a rain god, or in the superiority and destiny of his race, his need for some frame of orientation is satisfied. Quite obviously, the picture of the World that he has depends on the development of his reason and of his knowledge. Although biologically the brain capacity of the human race has remained the same for thousands of generations, it takes a long evolutionary process to arrive at objectivity, that is, to acquire the faculty to see the World, nature, other persons, and oneself as they are and not distorted by desires and fears. The more man develops this objectivity, the more he is in touch with reality, the more he matures, the better can he create a human World in which he is at home. Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the World by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the World with the help of thought. Reason is man’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man’s instrument for manipulating the World more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs also to the animal part of man. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
There is a dialectical sense in which the existence of opinion necessarily presupposes difference of opinion. Without dissent, there would be nothing to discuss. There might be facts to ascertain, or indoctrination to preform upon recruits, but if all concerned are quite contented with current ways, and no one sees a better alternative, there is no problem of what is to be done. Dissent is possible only when the public has come to feel that there is a problem, and that something should be done, and when one or more definite proposals are then put forward. Even discussion over whether there is a problem or something should be done is academic until some plan of action is suggested. Those who are against action must have something to be against, just as those who want action must have at least one notion which they favour. Moreover, dissent over alternative lines of action (inaction being usually a synonym for traditional procedure) must be supposed by clashes of interest least it be merely academic and lead to no resolution. It is only an apparent contradiction to insist that discussion is conditional both on values held in common and on clashes of interest. Because of the values held in common each party can advance his proposal not as a mere assertion of interest but as a right which out to be binding upon the other. It is the justification of interests as rights which makes a discussion. Enemies of government by discussion exaggerate the ideological nature of a group’s moral justification of its position, but the wisest friends of government by discussion do not altogether deny the basis of group interest for each partisan’s view. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
To insist, however, that justifications set forth in advocacy or defense of an action program are derived in some direct way from the interest of a group is to reduce discussion to a mere war of words, which it is not. Moreover, it willfully and knowingly overlooks the variety of justifications which may be asserted for any one group of interest, the often incoherent and contradictory diversity among the interests of a group, and, above all, the unformed, inchoate nature of any group’s interests. Often it assumes that a group’s interest is either an objective fact visible to all, or at least visible to some observers with special access to truth. This is never the case. A group, or even an individual, is often as divided within itself as to what it wants as the community of which it is a part. It may wish to justify its formulation of what it wants as much to itself as to the public. The integration of personality and the integration of the community are aspects of the same unceasing process. Some professed friends of government by discussion, however, presume that there is an objective public interest, usually implicitly represented and defined by themselves. There is no pre-existing public interest, any more than there is a pre-existing group interest. It is the public interest which is to be determined by discussion; the definition of the public interest is the product of discussion; it is the determinant only in the sense of being the end sought. Those who insist that they represent the public good in any sense except in demanding that agreement be reached are like the prophets whom make discussion impossible through dogmatically proclaiming “God says…” #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
When it comes to good and services, one consists of keeping track of any history of individual traders’ deviation and selling this information for a fee. This person (or organization) providing this service is called an information intermediary, or Info for shot. Another service is to deter cheating by the trader with whom a customer is currently matched, by threatening to inflict some dire punishment in response to such behaviour. This person providing this service is called an enforcement intermediary, or Enfo for short. If a customer of Info gets cheated, Info finds this out without incurrent any further cost. This may be because he provides his service by accompanying his customer (physically or metaphorically) to the trade. If a buyer or borrower defaults, credit-rating agencies, too, are likely to be told by their customer firms or lenders. A customer who has been cheated probably actually gets a little satisfaction from complaining, but even if he incurs a small cost by complaining, a contract like that in Milgrom, North, and Weingast will enable Infor to induce the customer to report the other party’s current cheating. In addition, Info can detect at a further cost any occurrences where someone who is not his customer gets cheated. At the start of each period, Info chooses his fee F and invites traders to become his customers. More precisely, the contact that Inform offers to each trader has the following form. Pay me F now. When your match is revealed, I will tell you what I know of that player’s history. If he has a history of cheating, of if he is not my customer, you should play Deviate; this will not count against you in the future. Otherwise you should play Comply. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Each trader decides whether to accept this offer. Then the pairings are revealed. Info tells his customers their partner’s history of behaviour, but Info’s truthfulness is not automatically guaranteed. Each trader can also observe whether his current partner is Info’s customer. Based on this information, each decides whether to play this period’s game; in the case I am considering the answer is yes. Info may double cross a customer by conspiring, for a separate fee, with the person on the other side of the deal and mislead the customer into choosing Comply while the other plays Deviate. And Infor may extort money from a trader with a clean history by threatening to asset that he has cheated in the past. After all the pairwise games for this period are played, Info keeps a record of any cheating of his customers, and decides whether to carry out an extra cost any additional detection activities. Infor merely tells a customer either “I know your match has cheated in the past” or “As far as I know, your match has not cheated in the past.” If Info says the latter and the other trader cheats this time, the customer has no recourse and Info will not inflict any punishment on the cheater. If Info lies about the other party’s history (and extracts an additional fee from the other party for allowing him to cheat in this way, the customer equally has no recourse; we have to find conditions under which the equilibrium is proof against such double crossing by Info. Similarly, we have to check whether Info has any incentive to extract extortion payments by threatening falsely to assert a history of cheating by someone who in reality has a clean record. Since customers’ contracts with Info cannot be externally enforced, Info cannot credibly enter into long-run contracts with large up-front fees to control customers’ cheating. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The phenomena which we observe in the neurotic person are in principle not different from those we find in the normal. They are only more accentuated, clear-cut, and frequently more accessible to the awareness of the neurotic person than they are in the normal who is not aware of any problem which warrants study. The term normal or health can be defined in two ways. Firstly, if he is able to fulfill the social role he is to take in that given society, from the standpoint of a functioning society, one can call a person normal or healthy. More concretely, this means that he is able to work in the fashion which is required in that particular society, and furthermore that he is able to participate in the reproduction of society, that is, that he can raise a family. Secondly, from the standpoint of the individual, we look upon health or normalcy as the optimum of growth and happiness of the individual. If the structure of a given society were such that it offered the optimum possibility for individual happiness, both viewpoints would coincide. However, this is not the case in most societies we know, including our own. Although they differ in the degree to which they promote the aims of individual growth, there is a discrepancy between the aims of the smooth functioning of society and of the full development of the individual. This fact makes it imperative to differentiate sharply between the two concepts of health. The one is governed by social necessities, the other by values and norms concerning the aim of individual existence. Unfortunately, this differentiation is often neglected. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Most psychiatrist take the structure of their own society so much for granted that to them the person who is not well adapted assumes the stigmas of being less valuable. On the other hand, the well-adapted person is supposed to be the more valuable person in terms of a scale of human values. If we differentiate the two concepts of normal and neurotic, we come to the following conclusion: the person who is normal in terms of being well adapted only at the expense of having given up his self in order to become more or less the person he believes he is expected to be. All genuine individuality and spontaneity may have been lost. On the other hand, the neurotic person can be characterized as somebody who was not ready to surrender completely in the battle for his self. To be sure, his attempt to save his individual self was not successful, and instead of expressing his self productively he sought salvation through neurotic symptoms and by withdrawing into a phantasy life. Nevertheless, from the standpoint of human values, he is less crippled than the kind of normal person who has lost his individuality altogether. Needless to say there are persons who are not neurotic and yet have not drowned their individuality in the process of adaptation. However, if we think of neurotic in terms of social efficiency, the stigma attached to the neurotic person seems to us to be unfounded and justified. As for a whole society, if its members did not function socially, the term neurotic cannot be applied in this latter sense, since a society could not exist. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
From a standpoint of human values, however, a society could be called neurotic in the sense that its members are crippled in the growth of their personality. Since the term neurotic is so often used to denote lack of social functioning, we would prefer not to speak of society in terms of its being neurotic, but rather in terms of its being adverse to human happiness and self-realization. Once the primary bond which gave security to the individual are served, once the individual faces the World outside of himself as a completely separate entity, two courses are open to him since he has to overcome the unbearable state of powerlessness and aloneness. By one course he can progress to “positive freedom”; he can relate himself spontaneously to the World in love and work, in the genuine expression of his emotional, sensuous, and intellectual capacities; he can thus become one again with man, nature, and himself, without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self. The other course open to him is to fall back, to give up his freedom, and to try to overcome his aloneness by eliminating the gap that has arisen between his individual self and the World. This second course never reunites him with the World in the way he was related to it before he merged as an “individual,” for the fact of his separateness cannot be reversed; if it were prolonged, it is an escape from an unbearable situation which would make life impossible. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
This course of escape, therefore, is characterized by its compulsive character, like every escape from threatless complete surrender of individuality and the integrity of the self. This it is not a solution which leads to happiness and positive freedom; it is, in principle, a solution which is to be found in all neurotic phenomena. It assuages an unbearable anxiety and makes life possible by avoiding panic; yet it does not solve the underlying problem and is paid for by a kind of life that often consists only of automatic or compulsive activities. Some of these mechanisms of escape are of relatively small social import; they are to be found in any marked degree only in individuals with severe mental and emotional disturbances. It may be said that the Holy Spirit dwelling in the regenerate human spirit energizes and works through the faculties of the soul and the members of the body only in and with the active cooperation of the WILL of the believer. In other words, God, though in the spirit of man, does not use the man’s hand apart from the “I will use my hand” of the man himself. Life is a mixture of essence and existence, of actualized potentiality and existential distortions, of being and estrangement. Since the process of actualization is ontological, life is a universal concept applicable to all real beings, organic and inorganic, stars and rocks, animals and men. Life can be considered from the viewpoints of its two constitutive factors, essence and existence. Essentially, life exhibits a unity amid diversity described as the multidimensional unity of life. Existentially, life is ambiguous. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
The metaphor “dimension” should replace “level” in depicting the diversity of life, for levels so divide life into watertight compartments that its essential unity is destroyed. A plurality of dimensions reflects the difference in life, but, because dimensions can meet in a point without excluding one another, they accurately express the essential unity of life. Since life is the gradual actualization of potentialities, some dimensions are called “realms.” In this sense one speaks of the vegetable realm or the animal realm or the historical realm. In all of them, all dimensions are potentially present, and some of them are actualized. However, in man all dimensions, especially the spiritual and historical, are actual; in him is found the fullness of the essential multidimensional unity of life. Life as the actualization of potential being is a process, a movement out and away from a center and then back toward it. Thus, the life-process is made up of three basic functions. The circular movement of self-integration I the actualization of the ontological polarity of individualization and participation. Secondly, the horizontal direction of life is self-creativity, which is the actualization of the dynamics-form polarity. Thirdly, the vertical movement toward the ultimate and infinite is self-transcendence which actualizes the polarity of freedom-destiny. Although these functions of life in themselves are unified and harmonized, they are subject to the disruptions that follow upon existential estrangement. When separation becomes actual, their negative effects come into play, and ambiguity sets in. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
To the degree in which this disruption is real, self-integration is countered by disintegration, self-creation is countered by destruction, self-transcendence is countered by profanization. In the life process these positive and negative elements are inseparably entwined, for life is neither essential nor existential but ambiguous. China, borrowing Communist ideology and economic and social methods from Soviet Russia, has become the first colonial country to make spectacular economic gains, beginning to transform herself into one of the great World powers and trying by example, persuasion, and economic help to become the leader of the colonial revolution in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. While after 1923 the Soviet Union had definitely given up the hope for a workers’ revolution in the West and, in fact, sought to contain all Western revolutionary movements since then, she had hoped for support from the nationalist revolutions in the East. Now, however, having herself become one of the “have” states, she feels threated by the growing onslaught of the underdeveloped countries under China’s leadership, and seeks an understanding with the United States of America, without, however, turning this understanding into an alliance against China. Any description of the basic trends of Western history in the last four hundred and eighty years would be lacking in an essential element unless it took account of a profound spiritual chance. While the influence of Christian theological thinking was waning from the seventeenth century onward, the same spiritual reality which was expressed earlier in the concepts of this theology found now a new expression in philosophical, historical, and political formulations. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The philosophers of the eighteenth century were, as Carl Becker has pointed out, no less men of faith than were the theologian of the thirteenth century. They just expressed their experience in a different conceptual framework. With the explosive growth of wealth and technical capacities in the nineteenth century, there occurred a fundamental change in man’s attitude. Not only, as Mr. Nietzsche put it, “God was dead,” but the humanism that was common to the theologians of the thirteenth, and to the philosophers of the eighteenth centuries, slowly died too; the formulae and ideologies, both of religion and of humanism, continued to be used, but the authentic experience became increasingly thinner, to the point of unreality. It was as if man had become drunk with his own power, and had transformed material production, once a means to the end of a more dignified life, into an end in itself. Large-scale enterprise, state intervention, emphasis on control of—rather than ownership of—property in the means of production, are characteristic of all industrial systems today. The Wester capitalist system, while it has many features of nineteenth-century capitalism, has incorporated enough of the new features to constitute a very different system from the former. The three forms of socialism current today, have broken much more drastically with the continuity of the former economic stage, show the new trends in different degrees and emphasis: a) Khrushchevism, a system of complete centralized planning and state ownership of industry and agriculture. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
B ) Chinese communism, especially since 1958, a system of total mobilization of its most important capital asset, 1.4 billion people, and the complete manipulation of their currency, physical and emotional energy and thoughts without regard to their individuality; c ) humanistic socialism, which aims at the blending of a necessary minimum of centralization, state intervention, and bureaucracy with the possible maximum of decentralization, individualism, and freedom. This third type of socialism is represented by various forms from Scandinavia to Yugoslavia, Burma, and India. It makes sense because without some form of communism, the people hold all the natural resources which they can sell as they please, while the government only takes in tax revenue. However, as LCDs (less developed countries) are now rising, the American government needs to take some control of production of goods and services to ensure it does not lose its role as World power. If the corporations and the people in the United States of America can no longer afford to own farms, make cars, and produce, poultry, dairy, wood, steel, and other raw materials, they will have to important everything, which send wealth out of the United States of America to other nations. Therefore, the government has two choices. They can make laws that allow them to compete with private firms, or subsidize American farms, automakers, and other companies that produce goods and services so they remain affordable and are purchased by Americans as well as other nations. It would also be wise to offer huge tax incentives to people who purchase American cars. If a person, for example, could get a $5,000 tax credit on any American car, they would not only be popular because of style, but also because there is more incentive to purchase one. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Russian under control of President Vladimir Putin’s leadership, is a conservative, state-controlled, industrial managerialism, not a revolutionary system; she is interested in law and order and anxious to defend herself against the onslaught of the revolution of the “have-not” nations. For the reason Mr. Putin seeks an understanding with the United States of America, the ending of USA involvement with Ukraine. He neither needs nor wants another war. Mr. Putin cannot, however, give up his Communist-revolutionary ideology, nor can he turn against China, without undermining his own system. Hence he has to maneuver carefully to preserve his ideological hold on the Russian people and to defend himself against both his opponents within Russian and against China and her potential allies outside. If he fails in his attempt to end the United States of America’s involvement with Ukraine, he (or his successor) will be forced into a close alliance with China and into a policy which would leave little hope for peace. The development of the former colonial peoples will not follow the capitalist development, because for psychological, social, and economic reasons this system is neither feasible nor attractive to them. The question is not whether they will join the communist or the capitalist systems. The real alternative is whether they will accept the Chinese or Russian form of communism, thus becoming closely allied with either of these two countries, or whether they will adopt one of the various forms of democratic, decentralized socialism and become allied with the neutral bloc. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The United States of America is, therefore, confronted with the following alternative: either a continued fight against communism together with the continuation of the arms race—hence the probability of nuclear war—or a political understanding on the basis of the status quo with Russia, and the support of neutral democratic-socialist regimes in the colonial World. It is a fact that two systems represented By Russia-China and by the United States of America—Western Europe are competing with each other in the World today and the race is only heating up and getting more intense. Any attempt of either one to defeat the other system through the use of military power will not only fail, but will lead to the destruction of both—or the World. There is only one way in which the United States of America can compete with communism: that is by demonstrating that it is possible to raise the standard of living in America and influence LCDs to follow this method, without using forces of coercive regimentation. However, many people are not convinced that America is heading in the right direction because their leaders are displaying a lack of competence, a lack of law and order, a loss of family values, and it even seems to some that hardworking Americans, who believe in the capitalist dream, are given less consideration than people who enter America illegally. While there are over 5 million homeless people (many are not counted as homeless because they are subletting, living with family, or not on a rental lease where they are being housed) in America, people entering the country without passing background checks and without documents are put up in hotel rooms and given cash assistance. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
You will hear critics say that there are so many people homeless in America because they are mentally ill and that there is a shortage of houses. However, let us be real, many of you know people who are mentally ill and should have been fired who are gainfully employed. It is so bad that several of their coworkers display the same level of dysfunction. Furthermore, there are currently sixteen million homes currently sitting vacant across the United States of America. In fact, in every state across the country, any homes remain empty while hundreds of thousands of Americans face homelessness. The existence of a multicentered World depends on the acceptance of the present status quo by all powers and on effective universal disarmament. The tension and suspicious of the nuclear arms race do not permit a political understanding; the unsettled political situation does not permit disarmament. If peace is to be preserved, both disarmament and political understanding are necessary. If and when the economy improves and the arms race ends, only then will massive economic assistance—food, capital and technical assistance—to the LCDs be possible. Also, efforts to education LCDs about family planning and birth control should also be a goal. Because when there is food on the table, and people do not have to work for it, they usually continue to have babies. Some babies are even born starving because people have no idea about birth control and family planning nor access to it. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Also, in conquering poverty and achieving wealth, the United States of America, like the rest of the West (and Russia), has accepted a spiritual of materialism under which production and consumption have become ends in themselves, rather than means to a more human, creative life. These and other institutional, secondary goals and values have become indistinguishable to most people from the primary aims of life. Quite aside from all dangers from without, our inner emptiness and deep-rooted lack of hope will eventually lead to the fall of Western civilization, unless a genuine renaissance of the Western spirit takes the place of the present complacency, resignation, and confusion. This renaissance must be precisely what the Renaissance of the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries was—an invigorating re-establishment of contact with the humanistic principles and aspirations of Western culture. What we are witnessing today is truly a World revolution in rapid advance, a revolution which began in the West four hundred and eighty years ago. It has led to a new system of production which at first made Europe and America the leaders of the World. It made the working masses in Europe beneficiaries of the system; and hence the revolution of the masses in Europe (with the exception of Russia) and in North America was peaceful. Now a new stage of the World revolution is developing, the revolution of the LCDs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. If the great industrial powers accept the historical trend and take the adequate anticipatory steps, will this revolution occur peacefully? Many think World War III is on the verge of breaking out, and that leaves little hope for peace and the survival of democracy. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
I pledge Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. The American, even though they are being driven from the land, will never surrender their love for it. The American literally transplanted Heaven into his very consciousness. He imagines that he continues to live in the land of his dreams. He might be living in the cold north or in the sunny south, yet he prays for rain or for dew when it is the season in America. He celebrated Thanksgiving, the blending of two cultures and sharing of food and traditions. He celebrated Columbus Day, the founding of America. He celebrated Christmas, the birth of the Saviour. He celebrated Earth Day, when the trees were beginning to blossom. And he proudly celebrated Independence Day. In whatever clime he lived, he and she were always believed that they were in their ancient home. We must not forget the many sacrifices and contributions that woman have made for America also. Without women, we would not be able to continue the human race. The Americans mourned for their ancient land as they have for the dead, and they believe it will rise again and experience the resurrection of the dead. If I forget thee, O America, let my right hand forget its cunning; let my tongue cleave to my mouth, if I remember thee not, if I set not America above my chiefest joy. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for unto thee I will give it. And be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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We See things with Different Eyes
My heart was full of music as I wandered the hours away by the bank of a brook, on my estate, watching the sun on the face of the chuckling water. A bird came to circle me, flew unafraid through the aura of gladness about me. The delicate tip of a wing brushed my wrist with the touch of the first secret kiss from my hands. The singing the filled me was part of the nature of laughing, the running of water, the sound of the wind in the reed by the edge of the stream. And as I spake, into my face there came light, as reflected from a silver flame; my long brown hair swelled ampler, in display full golden; in my eyes a brighter day dawned blue and full of love. This was a World without hatred. As it grew dark, I went home. Then retiring to my rooms, I sat down by the light of one lamp and devoured what I could of my century’s thinking, and at last I lay flat upon the bed, staring at the ceiling, overwhelmed by the vigor of the return to the classical, by the passionate enthusiasm for the old Greek and Roman poets, and by the faith in sensuality which this age seemed to hold. I enjoyed the beauty of the old handwritten codexes. Of course, this is why, even after the printing press was still established, my libraries boasted of handwritten books. While waiting for the servants to return from their hunt, I went to the library to catching up on a little reading. However, when the party failed to return by midnight, I began to fear the worst. I stumbled out of my quarters; my mouth was very dry, and my heart was thumping painfully. I descended the stairs. And while sitting alone at a table, from the corner of my eye, I saw the curtain twitch at an upper window. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Suddenly, men where shouting, canvas flapping, wheels rumbling, and I could hear horses neighing and pawing frantically. Overjoyed to hear them, I leapt to my feet just as the doors opened and the party entered. And although there was no wind at that hour of the night, one did arise not long afterward, but there was absolutely none then. Even the dry tips of the lingering hedge-mustard, grey and blighted, and the fringe on the roof of the standing democrat-wagon were unstirred. And yet amid that tense, godless clam the high bare boughs of all the trees in the yard were moving. They were twitching morbidly and spasmodically, clawing in convulsive and epileptic madness at the moonlit clouds; scratching impotently in the noxious air as if jerked by some alien and bodiless line of linkage with subterrene horrors writhing and struggling below the black roots. Not a man breathed for several seconds. Then a cloud of darker depth passed over the moon, and the silhouette of clutching branches faded out momentarily. At this there was a general cry; muffled with awe, but husky and almost identical from every throat. For the terror had not faded with the silhouette, and in a fearsome instant of deeper darkness, I saw wriggling at that treetop height a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo or the flames that came down on the apostles’ heads at Pentecost. It was a monstrous constellation of unnatural light, like a glutted swarm of corpse-fed fireflies dancing hellish sarabands over an accursed marsh; and its colour was a nameless intrusion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
All the while the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting bright and brighter, brining to my mind a sense of doom and abnormality which far outraced any image my conscious mind could form. It was no longer shining out, it was pouring out; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well it seemed to flow directly into the sky. The shivering men walked to the front door. However, to my consternation they made no sound and passed straight through the furniture and walls. That is when I noticed the growing luminosity of the trees. With the moments the shining of the trees increased, while their restless branches seemed to strain more and more toward verticality. The wood of the well-sweep was shining now. The phosphorescence had begun to pervade the entire mansion. It glowed on the broad-planked floor and the carpet, and shimmered over the sashes of the stained-glass windows. It ran up and down the exposed corner-post, coruscated about the shelf and mantel, and infected the very doors and the furniture. Each minute saw it strengthened. I walked and stumbled as in a dream. All of Llanada Villa was shining with the hideous unknown blend of colour; trees, buildings, and even such grass and herbage as had not been wholly changed to lethal grey brittleness. The boughs were all straining skyward, tipped with tongues of foul light. Then without warning the hideous thing shot vertically up toward the sky like a meteor, leaving behind no trail and disappearing through a round and curiously regular hole in the clouds before I could grasp or cry out. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I could not forget that sight, as I stared blankly at the stars of Cygnus, Deneb twinkling above the other, where the unknown colour had melted into the Milky Way. However, my gaze was the next moment called swiftly to Earth by the crackling in the valley. It was just that. Only a wooden ripping and crackling, as so many others in the valley vowed. Yet the outcome was the same, for in one feverish, kaleidoscopic instant there burst up from Llanada Villa a gleamingly eruptive cataclysm of unnatural sparks and substance; blurring the glace of the few who saw it, and sending forth to the zenith a bombarding cloudburst of such coloured and fantastic fragments as our Universe must needs disown. Through quickly re-closing vapours, I flowed the great morbidity that had vanished, and in another second they had vanished too. Behind and below was only a darkness to which I dared not return, and all about was a mounting wind which seemed to sweep down in black, frore gusts from interstellar space. It shrieked and howled, and lashed the fields and distorted the fruit orchards in a mad cosmic frenzy. Later I was to learn that the hunting party had been ambushed and killed. Now on the 16th of January, the anniversary of the hunt, the ghostly party can be seen riding toward Llanada Villa. Apart from this, a housemaid’s ghost in a blue dress haunts the mansion, gliding silently along the corridors, while the spirit of Dieter Hulsmann, my butler haunts the Observational Tower where he starved to death, after learning of the death of the housemaid, whom he was fondly in love with. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
A group called the European Mission Society accused me of using the “arts of the Devil” and of being in league with “demonic forces” with which I supposedly intended “to perplex humanity.” With this added shock, I was crushed forever with a brooding fear I dared not even mention for many years to come. And from inside of the mansion, I had seen something feebly rise, only to sink down again upon the place from which the great shapeless horror had shot into the sky. I believe there must be an older race than man, spawned from ancient seed in times before ours, perhaps on planets that have gone to dust, and so horrible to humans that when they are discovered the discoverers keep still about it—forget them again as quickly as they can. And they go back to time immemorial. I saw things—and knew things—horrible, wild things I cannot quite remember—visited unbelievable places, looked backward through my memory of creatures that have manifested in the walls of my home. Sometimes gloominess falls upon me like a material pall. What writhing souls, what terrors, what unrest, what madness roams these halls! If only I would have been spared! Something had cast an immediate spell of depression over me. The air of the room grew heavy and close. The open casement and the out-of-doors seemed to beckon me. I walked to the window, thrust the curtain aside, stood there. I am not addicted to nocturnal strolls or late meanderings before my bed; yet now, curiously enough I wanted to leave my home and walk the darkened fields. I paced the room nervously. The clock on the mantel pushed its ticks slowly through the quiet. It was a brilliant moonlight night. The great chimes of the Observational Tower were sounding midnight. Trying as I could to erase from my memory the queer experience which I just had, but I could see shadows of men lurking on the grounds. How long I sat there in the quiet, I do not know. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
And to my holy sacrifice invite, the power who reigns in deepest hell and night; I call Einodian Hecate, lovely dame, of Earthly, water, and celestial frame, sepulchral, in a saffron veil arrayed, pleased with dark ghosts that wander thru the shade. Have I not reason, beldams as you are, saucy and overbold? How did you dare to trade and traffic with Macbeth in riddles and affairs of death; and I, the mistress of your charms, the close contriver of all harms, was never called to bear my part, or show the glory of our art? And, which is worse, all you have done hath been but for a wayward son, spiteful and wrathful; who, as others do, loves for his own ends, not for you. But make amends now: get you gone, and at the pit of Acheron meet me i’ the morning: thither he will come to know his destiny: your vessels and your spells provide, your charms, and every thing beside. I am for th’ air; this night I’ll spend unto a dismal and a fatal end: great business must be wrought ere noon: upon the corner of the moon, there hangs a vaporous drop profound; I’ll catch it ere it come to ground: and that, distill’d by magic sleights, shall raise such artificial sprites, as, by the strength of their illusion, shall draw him on to his confusion: he shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear his hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear; and you all know security is mortals’ chiefest enemy. Hark! I am call’d; my little spirit see, sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me. Come, let’s make haste; she’ll soon be back again. And we fairies, that do run by the triple Hecate’s team from the presence of the sun, following darkness like a dream. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Although The Winchester Mystery House is usually closed at 1.00am, police officers and passersby say that someone or something walks around in the mansion at night and often turns on all the lights. Numerous individuals have seen the image of a man hanging from a scaffold on the east side of the mansion. According to legend, 20 years before Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester purchased the home, an outlaw was hanged on the land. The site where the hanging allegedly took place was built over. One of the tour guides was badly shaken by something he had seen on the upper floor, but he refused to discuss it. The ghost of the outlaw haunted the mansion with dreadful shrikes. As such, a priest was brought in to exorcise the ghost, which he did with the help of a large black bible which he left in the mansion. However, years later, after the ghost had been long forgotten, the bible was taken away for repair and immediately the shrieking resumed. The bible was hastily returned, and the fearful shrieking ceased. The outlaw’s ghost still haunts the mansion, his broken neck and limp arm by his side as he stalks the lonely depths of the second floor.
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It Has Been Almost 100 Years Since the American Crash of 1929
The reality is the TV news media in Sacramento does not care. They are evil. People have been injured and died as a result of their wanton disregard for human life and desire to make fake news. Children have to grow up without mothers and fathers. Families have been ripped apart, all so these gorillas can put on masks and makeup and tell lies, while making themselves feel important, when they are nothing more than low down, dirty criminals. The reporters are guilty of murder. History takes twists and turns and so, too, does the writing of history. After a process of about a thousand years, lasting from the beginning of the feudalization of the Roman Empire to the late Middles Ages, a period in which the European Continent was impregnated, through Christianity, with the ideas of African, Greek, Hebrew, and Arab thinking, Europe gave birth to a new culture. Western man discovered nature as an object of intellectual speculation and aesthetic enjoyment; he created a new science, which became—within a few centuries—the basis for a technique destined to transform nature and the practical life of man in a hitherto undreamed-of way; he discovered himself as an individual, endowed with almost unlimited energies and powers. This new period engendered also a new hope for the improvement, or even, the perfection of man. The hope for man’s perfection on this Earth and for his capacity to build a “good society” is one of the most characteristic and unique features of occidental thought. It is a hope that had been held by the Old Testament prophets as well as by Greek philosophers. It has then been overshadowed—although never lost—by the transhistorical ideals of salvation and by the emphasis on man’s substantial corruption in Christian thinking; it found new expression in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century utopias and in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophical and political ideas. Parallel to the blossoming of hope after the Renaissance and the Reformation went the explosive economic development of the West, the first industrial revolution. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
The organizational form it took was that of the system of capitalism, characterized by private property in the means of production, the existence of politically free wages earners, and the regulation of all economic activities by the principles of calculation and profit maximation. By 1913, industrial production increased seven times above its 1860 level, with almost all of it in Europe and North America. (Less than 10 percent of World production took place outside of these two areas.) Since the end of the First World War, mankind has entered into a new phase. The nature of the capitalistic mode of production has undergone profound changes. New Productive forces (such as the use of oil, electricity, and atomic energy) and technical discoveries have increased material productivity many times over what it had been in the middle of the nineteenth century. The new technical discoveries brought with them a new form of production. This was characterized by centralization of production in big plants, along with the dominant positions of the big corporations; managerial bureaucracies, which head these corporations but do not own them; and a mode of production in which hundreds of thousands of manual and clerical workers co-operate smoothly, supported by strong trade unions, which often share the bureaucratic character of big corporations. Centralization, bureaucratization, and manipulation are the characteristics features of the new mode of production. The earlier period of industrial development, with its need to build up a heavy industry at the expense of the satisfaction of the material needs of the workers resulted in extreme poverty for the millions of men, women, and children who worked in factories during the nineteenth century. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
As a reaction to their misery, but also as an expression of human dignity and faith, the socialist movement spread over all of Europe and threatened to overthrow the old order and to replace it with one that would work for the benefit of the broad masses of the population. The organization of labour combined with technical progress and the resulting increased productivity permitted the working class an ever-increasing share of the national product. The extreme dissatisfaction with the system that characterized the nineteenth century gave way to a spirit of co-operation within the capitalist system. A new partnership between industry and the workers, represented by trade unions and (with the exception of the United States of America) strong socialist parties took place. The trend toward violent revolutions ended in Europe after the First World War, except in the economically most backward counties among the large powers. While the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” has been narrowing considerably within the Western industrial countries (and slowly in Soviet Russia), the gap between the “have countries” of Europe and North America and the “have-not countries” in Asia (with the exception of Japan), Africa, and Latin America is as wide as it ever was within one country, and is actually still widening. However, while at the beginning of the twentieth century the colonial peoples accepted their exploitation and poverty, the middle of the same century is witnessing the full-scale revolution of the poor countries. Precisely as the workers within capitalism in the nineteenth century refused to continue believing that their fate had been ordained by divine or social law, so now the poor nations refuse to accept their poverty. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Less Developed Countries (LCDs) demand not only political freedom, but a standard of living approaching that of the Western World and rapid industrialization as a means to that goal. Two thirds of the human race are unwilling to accept a situation in which their standard of living is only from 10 to less than 5 percent of that of people of the richest country—the United States of America—which with 4.3 percent of the World’s population, produces about 20 percent of the World’s goods which is 20 percent less than it was in 1960. The colonial revolution was sparked by many factors, among them the weakening of Europe, militarily and economically, after the two World Wars in the first half of the twentieth century; the nationalistic and revolutionary ideology transmitted from nineteenth-century Europe and America, and the new modes of production and social organization, which rise the possibility of “catching up with the West” beyond a slogan into a realm of reality. In the philosophical thinking of the modern era, we find also that the two aspects of freedom remain interwoven as they had already been in the theological doctrines of the Reformation. Thus for Mr. Kant and Mr. Hegal, autonomy and freedom of the individual are the central postulates of their systems, and yet they make the individual subordinate to the purpose of an all-powerful state. The philosophers of the period of the French Revolution, and in the nineteenth century Mr. Feuerbach, Mr. Marx, Mr. Stirner, and Mr. Nietzsche, have again in an uncompromising way expressed the idea that the individual should not be subject to any purposes external to his own growth or happiness. The reactionary philosophers of the same century, however, explicitly postulated the subordination of the individual under spiritual and secular authority. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
The second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth show the trend for human freedom in its positive sense at its peak. Not only did the middle class participate in it, but also the working class became an active free agent, fighting for it own economic aims and at the same time for the broader aims of humanity. With the monopolistic phase of capitalism as it developed increasingly in the last decades, the respective weight of both trends for human freedom seems to have changed. Those factors which tend to weaken the individual self have gained, while those strengthening the individual have relatively lost in weight. The individual’s feeling of powerlessness and aloneness has increased, his “freedom” all traditional bonds have become more pronounced, his possibilities for individual economic achievement have narrowed down. He feels threatened by gigantic forces and the situation resembles in many ways that of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The most important factor in this development is the increasing power of monopolistic capital. The concentration of capital (not wealth) in certain sectors of our economic system restricted the possibilities for the success of individual initiative, courage, and intelligence. In those sectors in which monopolistic capital has won it victories the economic independence of many has been destroyed. For those who struggle on, especially for a large part of the middle class, the fight assumes the character of a battle against such odds that the feeling of confidence in personal initiative and courage is replaced by a feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
An enormous though secret power over the whole of society is exercised by a small group, on the decisions of which depends the fate of a large part of society. The inflation of Germany, 1923, or the American crash, 1929, increased the feeling of insecurity and shattered for many the hope of getting ahead by one’s own efforts and the traditional belief in the unlimited possibilities of success. Most people have lived through difficult economic times of some sort. And everyone has at some point learned about the most significant economic downturn in modern USA history—the Great Depression of the 1930s. In keeping with our unique business cycle theory, ITR Economics is forecasting that another Great Depression will start near the beginning of the next decade. The causes of the upcoming Great Depression will be similar to its predecessor in the way it will be unforeseen and unexpected for the vast majority of people; for that reason, the emotional strain on people and the similar pain for unprepared businesses could parallel that of the 1930s. Just as many of us will never forget the influence of COVID-19 on our lives, the Great Depression of the 2030s will impact the way we think, how we spend money, who and what we trust, and what we assign importance on in our lives. Of course, the upcoming Great Depression will have a profound effect on mental health. Therefore, it is important to have the right financial mindset. You know it is coming, so plan, expect it, and do not overextend your business or finances. Start paying things off. Focus on longevity. Maybe stop buying cars every two years and get the scheduled maintenance done so you can keep it for seven years to a decade. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
The goal is to reduce expenditure. If you do not need to renovate your home, do not. If your home needs repairs, start getting them done now before it becomes a problem. Scrutinize your cost-structure heading into the depression. High fixed costs will be difficult to roll back. You can do simple things like cutback on how frequently the gardener comes out. Maybe every two weeks, instead of once a week. Regarding personal finances—and this might seem difficult: save as much money as you can between now and the next decade. Consider investing in gold and silver and getting a personal safe in your home (of course keep this private). The climb out of a depression is a time of tremendous opportunity. Look to invest or start your business after the Great Depression. You do not want to look back with regret at a missed opportunity. Oh, yeah, and when you go to replace that perfectly good mobile phone, consider, instead, investing in gold. Knowing the low point of this economic contraction will give you a competitive advantage. Preparing your business now to capitalize when that moment arrives could put you ahead of the competition coming out of the depression. While the upcoming Great Depression will be driven by very different circumstances, there are many things you can do for yourself and your business to establish advantageous positioning before, during and after the downturn. Do not allow tensions about the past to continue to bubble away. Many people will find themselves in need of spiritual consolation, sustenance, and blessing. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
Several will be wary of the machinations of evil, worried about demons, and seek protection from harm. It is possible that we will see war, epidemics and hunger. Some will view these as punishment for disobedience, sinfulness, and a lack of faith. Do not wait to fear divine judgment, dreading the possibility that God will bring about future wars to induce atonement. Repent now. Start saving money and paying down bills and make a pledge to return to church and live righteously. The believer must understand that the regaining the facile use of his faculties, and the maintenance of his mind in healthy condition after recovery from passive surrender to psychopathological offenders, will mean a steady fight with the ultimate negative—requiring the use of the weapons of warfare given in the Word of God. Weapons, for instance, such as the truth in the text “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,” for resisting brooding over the past, or torturing pictures of the future; “Resist the ultimate negative and it will flee from you,” when the pressure of the enemy is severe; and other “fighting” texts, which will prove truly to be the “sword of the Spirit” to thrust at the enemy in the “evil day” of his onslaught upon the escaping believer. THE STEADY ATTITUDE OR ACTION OF ONE’S WILL. In keeping the mind in normal working condition, free from the interference of the enemy, the believer should maintain the attitude of having his will steadily set: id est, “I will that my mind shall not be passive”; “I will to have full control of my faculties, and to use them”; “I will to recognize everything that comes from the enemy”—each of which declares the CHOICE of the man, rather than his determination to do these things. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
The powers of darkness are not affected by mere determination—id est, resolve—but they are rendered powerless by the act of the will definitely choosing, in the strength given by God, to stand against them. These steps to deliverance which has been given deal with THE PRACTICAL ASPECT OF THE BELIEVER’S ACTIONS. On the divine side, the victory has been won, and the ultimate negative and his psychopathological offenders have been conquered; but the actual liberation of the believer demands his active cooperation with the Holy Spirit, plus the steady exercise of his volition—choosing freedom instead of bondage. This will result in the normal use of every faculty of his being, set at liberty from the bondage of the enemy. “He that doeth the truth cometh to the light,” said the Lord (John 3.21). Evil spirits hate scrutiny, and so work under cover with deception and lies. The believer must come to the light of God for His light upon all spiritual experiences (as well as in all other departments of life) if he is to “cast off the works of darkness” (Romans 13.12) and put on the armour of God—the armor of light. In any scheme of Chrisitan theology, the church is an indispensable agent for the harmonizing of religion and culture. Society, the bearer of culture, encounters in the church the wellsprings of the Christian religion, the abiding presence and power of Christ. In Tillichian terminology, the church in its evangelizing role must “show to the people outside the Church that the symbols in which the life of the Church expresses itself are answers to the questions implied in their very existence as human beings.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
And, in its prophetic role, “the Church is the guardian who reveals dynamic structures in society and undercuts their demonic power by revealing them, even within the Church itself.” Therefore, one can say that the Church judges culture, including the Church’s own forms of life. For tis forms are created by culture, as its religious substance makes culture possible. The Church and culture are within, not alongside each other. The importance of the church is measure by the importance of the New Bing, for the Church is the historical embodiment of the New Being created by the Incarnation. Consequently, the such as the community of the New Being is the place where the new theonomy is actual. However, from there is pours into the whole of man’s cultural life and gives a Spiritual center to man’s spiritual life. Final revelation appeared in Jesus as the Christ, but it is the church which is supposed to receive it in a continuous process of reception, interpretation, and actualization. The history of the church is the locus of continuous dependent revelations. The Church is also the place where the reunion of man with man is an actual event, though the Church of God is permanently betrayed by the Christian churches. Yet, even if its organization seems always a betrayal of the New Being, the church is the Community of the New Being. The church has always been my home in spite of all criticisms, which I had to exercise at an early time upon Church doctrine and upon Church practice. It is the Spiritual Community established by the Spiritual Presence. Since the Spirit is the symbolic answer to an existential question, life ontologically is the actuality of being. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
Living is a process of continuous birth. The tragedy in the life of most of us is that we die before we are fully born. Being born, however, does not only mean to be free from the womb, the lap, the hand, et cetera, but also to be free to be active and creative. Just as the infant must breathe once the umbilical cord is cut, so man must be active and creative at every moment of birth. To the extent that man is fully born, he finds a new kind of rootedness; that lies in his creative relatedness to the World, and in the ensuing experience of solidarity with all man and will all nature. From being passively rooted in nature and in the womb, man becomes one again—but this time actively and creatively with all life. Man needs to have a sense of identity. Man can be defined as the terrestrial being that can say “I,” that can be aware of himself as a separate entity. Other terrestrial beings, being with nature and not transcending it, have no awareness of themselves, and has no need for a sense of identity. Man, being turn away form nature, being endowed with reason and imagination, needs to form a concept of himself, needs to say and to feel “I am I.” Because he is not lived, but lives, because he has lost the original unity with nature, has to make decisions, is aware of himself and his neighbour as different persons, he must be able to sense himself as the subject of his actions. If he did not find some way of satisfying his sense of identity, as with the need for relatedness, rootedness, and transcendence, this need for a sense of identity is so vital and imperative that man could not remain sane. Man’s sense of identity develops in the process of emerging from the “primary bonds” which tie him to mother nature. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
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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.
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They Told Me this Because this Town was Full of Witch Legends
I was feeling extraordinary confusion and pain. It was not because of anything that could be seen or heard or handled, but because of something imagined. The place is not good for the imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. I thought I had awakened to a room full of darkness and moonlight and moving shadows, for the nearer moon was racing through the sky and everything in the mansion endued with a restless life in the dark. And something…some nameless, unthinkable thing…was coiled about my throat…something like a soft snake, wet and warm. It lay loose and light about my neck…and it was moving gently, very gently, with a soft, caressive pressure that sent little thrills of delight through every nerve and fiber of me, a perilous delight—beyond physical pleasure, deeper than joy of the mind. That warm softness was caressing the very roots of my soul with a terrible intimacy. The ecstasy of it left me weak, and yet I knew—in a flash of knowledge born of this impossible dream—that the soul should not be handled…And with that knowledge a horror broke upon me, turning the pleasure into a rapture of revulsion, hateful, horrible—but still most foully sweet. I tried to lift my hands and tear the dream-monstrosity from my throat—tried but half-heartedly; for though my soul was revolted to its very deeps, yet the delight of my body was so great that my hands all but refused the attempt. However, when at last I tried to life my arms a cold shock went over me and I found that I could not stir…my body lay stony as marble beneath the blankets, a living marble that shuddered with a dreadful delight through every ridig vein. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The revulsion grew strong upon me as I struggled against the paralyzing dream—a struggle of soul against sluggish body—titanically, until the moving dark was streaked with blankness that clouded and closed about me at last and I sank back into the oblivion from which I had awakened. Next morning, when the bright sunlight shinning through the daisy stained-glass windows awakened me. I could feel the welcoming warmth of the sun, which reminded me of the bench by the cherry tree and the smell of its forgotten blossom. I lay for a while trying to remember. The dream had been more vivid than reality, but I could not now quite recall…only that it had been more sweet and horrible than anything else in life. I lay puzzling for a while, until a soft sound from the corner aroused me from my thoughts and I sat up to see the chambermaid entering my room. “Morning,” I said. “I have just had the devil of a dream…” I stretched and yawned, dismissing the nightmare temporarily from my mind. “What am I going to do with you, Mrs. Winchester?” she replied. “I am leaving here in a day or two and I will miss you dearly.” “Child, do not worry yourself about me,” I cried. “You have enough of your own business.” The memory of last night’s extraordinary dream was slipping from me, as such memories do, any by the time I reached the morning room, all of yesterday’s happenings were blotted out by the sharp necessities of the present. Again the intricate business of the day claimed my attention. I must have spent two hours at least idling over blueprints, watching with sleepy, colourless eyes, the towers and gables that were to be built. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
I made my rounds around the mansion, consuming many cups of tea in the course of the day and engaging in conversations with carpenters. I passed the day quite profitably, and it was not until late evening, when I returned to my office. I found myself alone when I reached the door. No matter. It was too late now to retreat or prevarication. I pushed on but, on this occasion, I found the door firmly locked. The disappointment melted away. And I felt I was floating on air. I turned away and then stood at the window, looking out over the moonlit landscape. Walking to the Venetian Dining Room, I cast a puzzled glance on the roast beef. It had been a while since I had a hot meal. However, a tiny, creeping fear was arising. From deeps of sound sleep I awoke much later. I awoke suddenly and completely, and with that inner excitement that presages something momentous. I awoke to brilliant moonlight, turning the room so bright that I could see the daisies from the window reflecting on the wall. And some warning instinct crawled coldly up my spine. There was a presentiment of something horrible stirring in my brain, inexplicably. I felt as thought soon the World would be consumed by floods, or split in two. That Planet Earth would be obliterated. That stars would collide, and parts of their bodies would fall to Earth, setting off a chain reaction to destroy the World. Traces of old ones can still be found amidst my estate, and some of them doubtless linger. The dark woods of the fruit orchards and the secrets of the strange days are one with the deep’s secrets; one with the hidden lore of Llanada Villa, and the mystery of primal Earth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
When the nine story Observational Tower was complete and I went to survey it, they told me this place was evil. They told me this because this town was full of witch legends. I thought the evil must be something which grandmas had whispered to children through centuries. It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked always there. The trees grew thickly, and their trunks were big. And still there was beauty in it—an awful, shuddering beauty. The Winchester Mansion was insidious, promising, caressing, alluring, sweeter than honey; and the Observational Tower was clear and like the depths of a jewel—all beauty and terror, all horror and delight, in the infinite darkness upon which its windows opened, paned with emerald glass. It blended indistinguishably with the silence of the plush landscape—very softly, very passionately. It was then that I heard the story, and as the rambling voice scraped and whispered on I shivered again and again despite the summer day. When the spirits were done, the stars came out above me in the open. There had been no wild legends at all since the witch trials, but some believed this tower was where the devil held court beside a curious stone altar older than the Indians. There were not always haunted woods. And the sprawling ranch where I built my home was amid some of the valley’s most fertile gardens and orchards. However, something was creeping and creeping inside and waiting to be seen and felt and heard. Some of the rooms were deadly cold and during the summer guest would visibly shiver. As I climbed the winding staircase to the attic, it was very close and noisome up there, and no sound could be heard from any direction. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
In that first moment, as the door opened, I sensed something very wrong. The room was darkened, and for a while I could see nothing, and the deep stirrings of ancestral memory awoke within me—ancient memories from ancestors far away. In a graven instant—a tangled flash of conflicting sensation before oblivion closed over me. For I remembered the dream—and knew it for nightmare reality now. The very roots of my soul were tickled with unnatural delight. So I stood, rigid as marble as helplessly stony as any of Medusa’s victims in ancient legends were. And it was truly dreadful. A weakness was flooding that grew deepened, as something in my soul sank wholly into a blazing darkness that was oblivion to all else but the devouring rapture. The apparition that appeared in the room was slim, fair and sleek, and like William, he had the look of cherubic innocence on his face, but it was wholly deceptive. He had the face of a fallen angel, without Lucifer’s majesty to redeem it. I slammed the door and set my back against it, pearl handled gun in my hand, although my flesh crawled—for I knew…. commending my descent of the stairs, I heard a thud below me. I even thought a scream had been suddenly chocked off, and recalled nervously the clammy vapour which had brushed by me in that frightful room above. What presence had my cry and entry started up? Halted by some vague fear, I heard still further sounds below. Indubitably there was a sort of heavy dragging, and a most detestable sticky noise as of some fiendish unclear species of suction. With an associative sense goaded to feverish heights, I thought unaccountably of what I had seen upstairs. Good god! What devil World is this into which I had blundered? I dared move neither backward nor forward, but stood there trembling at the staircase. Every trifle of the scene burned into my brain. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The sounds, the sense of dread expectancy, the darkness, the steepness of the narrow steps—and merciful Heaven!…the faint but unmistakable luminosity of all the woodwork in sight; steps, sides exposed laths, and beams alike! A feeble scratching on the floor downstairs now sounded distinctly. Slowly nerving myself, I finished my descent and walked boldly toward the parlor. However, I did not complete the walk, because what I sought was no longer there. It had come to meet me, and it was still alive after a fashion. Whether it had crawled or whether it had been dragged by any external force, I could not say; but the death had been at it. Everything had happened in the last half-hour had caused my face to become deathly pale. I retreated to my room like a child in disgrace, and lay awake for hours, staring into the dark, until I gave up and lit my candle and paced about the floor in a torment of spirit worse than anything I had endured in my life. My mind was so clouded with fatigue and misery. Archly, languorously, my blood pounded hot. The room wheeled and whirled about me, and forces unimaginable flickered through me. Battling the World, enslaved and yet possessor of all. There was a moment of blind fumbling in emptiness. I felt something loop gently about my ankle and a shock of repulsive pleasure went through me, and then another coil, and another, wound about my feet…that caressive pressure on my legs was all I could feel, and the voice in my brain drowned out all other sounds, and my body obeyed me reluctantly—but somehow I gave one heave of tremendous effort and swung, stumbling, out of that nest of horror. It was evening. The crooked bending skyline drank the buoyance of the sun, dragged it down, sucking greedily. And then I lay down on the clean floor, and wept. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Lights go on and off. Voices are heard, as well as footsteps. One of the tour guides enjoyed the animated conversations with the guest. However, he could hardly wait until everyone had left so that he could be begin taking notes from the old books in the library. The evening of stimulating and delightful companionship had left him feeling exhilarated, and he felt as though he could work through the night. “Of the thirteen doors in sight, only one was locked, and on this I tried various keys. The Thirteenth key proved the right one, and after some fumbling, I threw open the mahogany door. I screamed, I thought a momentary cloud eclipsed the window, and a second later I felt myself brushed as if by some hateful current of vapour. Strange colours danced before my eyes. The room contained hundreds of sleeping knights with their horses. There was a sparkling casket in which a beautiful maiden lay sleeping. However, on each side of the maiden were serpents, one holding a sword or the horn as only one of them could awaken her. Fatefully, I chose the horn and blew it.
“Suddenly, the sleeping knights came to life and attacked me. As they did, the room began to swirl and I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness. As I did, the figure in white appeared taunting me with a voice that echoed inside my head, ‘Now shame on him who sounded a horn, and the knight who sheathed a sword.’ When I regained consciousness, I was lying in the Daisy Bedroom and from that day on I was determined to find the sleeping maiden again. I spent years searching he mansion for the room in which she had lain. It became an obsession as I searched every corner of the mansion. And yet, for all my determination I never again found the room in which she lay. Visitors and other staff alike have reported seeing her tragic figure although her presence is felt more often than not. Interestingly, the maiden is said to float above the zig zag stair case and their level has changed over the years.” Caretakers have had valid experiences of some kind or other and some express the opinion that they would not go out of their way to spend the night at The Winchester Mystery House because it is so “beautiful but bizarre.”
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He Speaks My Language—I Hope He is Not a Man with a Twist!
Poverty, fear, lack of opportunities, and the absence of positive adult guidance have always been factors at the heart of American gangs. Combines with a feeling of displacement, either because of immigration or an environment of social inequality, these are ingredients for the formation of gangs. Gangs have existed throughout American history, generally deep within cities but always on the outskirts of mainstream, or typical society. They have grown during certain periods of history, while at other times, their populations have decreased. Gangs have consisted of members of different ages and ethnicities and have spoken many different languages over the years. They have been blamed for many of society’s problems; they have been publicized, too, as products of those problems. Through it all, gangs have been a constant phenomenon in American history. Some gangs have even gone so far as to claim that they were formed to protect the community. The harsh reality is that gangs have been established to prey on the poorest community members who tend to be the most vulnerable and invisible in our society. Have you ever heard of a gang establishing an after-school tutoring program or a scholarship program from drug proceeds? Terrorism is hard to ignore. Almost every day television news shows, newspapers, magazines, and Websites run and re-run pictures of dramatic and usually bloody act of violence carried out by ferocious-looking terrorists, shadowy militant groups, or others who have infiltrated the American Dream to create chaos, destruction and death. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The City of Sacramento used to be very conservative, clean, with beautiful tree lined streets and some of the best-looking houses in California. Because Sacramento has so many beautiful natural resources, relatively low crime rates and nice citizens, many people moved here to raise families. However, for these exact same reasons, Sacramento has been preyed on by immigrants and politicians looking to exploit its nature. Recently, there has been growing corruption, crime, violence, incompetence, fraud and a gang presence. For the citizens of Sacramento, this is very disturbing because many moved to this city for a better quality of life. However, politicians have welcomed dirty money into the city and exploited the taxpayers to create a criminal haven, in exchange for a basketball team and coliseum (which was mostly funded by taxpayers). Because of the investment of private funds, politicians have agreed to let criminals have their reign over and the by protecting the most dangerous criminals, but targets hardworking Americans. Many people are fearing for their lives because they know that politicians have opened up the doors to domestic terrorist, who deal dangerous drugs, kill people, burn down buildings, cause car accidents and physically attack innocent people, as well as poising people. Terrorism refers to tactics and strategies. Even the most honourable and worthwhile causes have, on occasion, been championed by individuals who resort to employing dishonourable and immoral means of attaining their goals. Most citizens work within the system to influence change. They might vote for a candidate who promises to make important political or economic reforms, donate money to charitable organizations that represents the needs of those afflicted with poverty or illness, volunteer to work in a soup kitchen or an elementary school, run for political office, work hard at their jobs to gain raises or promotions, or participate in a nonviolent demonstration or really in support of a particular cause. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
By contrast, terrorists do not work within the frame work of the law. They also do not wage war on a battlefield. Instead, they target innocent civilians or government officials. Whatever their cause or concern, they are terrorists because their attack is designed to spread fear, anxiety, and terror through a given population. It is this characteristic, fear, that makes terrorism a threat to decent people everywhere. Trojan horse, huge hollow wooden horse constructed by the Greek to gain entrance into Tryo during the Trojan War. Th horse was built by Epeius, a master carpenter and pugilist. The Greeks, pretending to desert the war, sailed to the nearby island of Tenedos, leaving behind Sinon, who persuaded the Trojans that the horse was an offering to Athena (goddess of war) that would make Troy impregnable. Despite the warnings of Laocoon and Cassandra, the house was taken inside the city gates. That night Greek warriors emerged from it and opened the gates to let in the returned Greek army. The Trojan horse was used to carry out terrorism exactly the same way the mainstream media and some politicians are using the open borders, social programs and the first this and that being elected to office to tug at your heart strings, making you forget that we are living in post 911 America and national security should be our biggest concern. A new report confirms what national security leaders have long warned: if Congress fails to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S.A. stands at the brink of a self-inflicted national security calamity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is crucial to the nation’s security, including to the FBI’s efforts to protect Americans from foreign threats, and it recognizes that the reforms put in place by the FBI have yielded substantial compliance improvements. Section 702 is very important because it is possible that terrorists have already invaded your airwaves and appear on your local news pontificating dangerous propaganda. They may also be inserted in government offices, as well as private firms as well. At this time, border security, legitimate law enforcement, and renewing Section 702 are extremely important. Section 702 is an indispensable tool in the FBI’s efforts to protect against national security threats. It authorizes the targeted collection of foreign intelligence information from non-U.S.A. persons located abroad. Section 702 will expire on December 31, 2023, unless Congress takes action to reauthorize it The FBI is responsible for upholding the Constitution and protecting Americans, including their privacy and civil liberties. Section 702 authorities are crucial to fulfilling our mission, but the FBI acknowledges that noncompliance is unacceptable. Continued improvements to 702 querying standards are vital to maintaining public trust, and the FBI is committed to taking effective measures to ensure compliance. To people many people, it sounds like we are back to the Cold War days. However, many youth are still aloof to how serious national security concerns are because they have had it so easy and have not yet been targeted by domestic terrorists. All money is not good money and everyone needs to be screened before entering America. No one group of people should be given special privileges nor amnesty to break the law. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Today we are facing again one of the crucial choices in which the difference between violent versus anticipatory solution may spell the difference between destruction and fertile growth of our civilization. At this time, our World is divided into two blocs confronting each other with suspicion and hate. Both blocs have the capacity to harm each other to a degree the magnitude of which is equalled only by the inexactitude of its measurement. (The estimates of losses the United States of America can expect vary from one-third to practically the whole of its population being wiped out in a nuclear war—and similar estimates are applicable to other major nations.) Two blocs are fully armed and prepared for war. They distrust each other, and each suspects the other of wanting to conquer and destroy it. The present equilibrium of suspicion and threat based on a destructive potential may yet last for a little while. However, in the long run the only alternatives are nuclear war and all its consequences on the one hand, or the ending of the cold war, which implies disarmament and political peace between the two blocs, on the other. The question is, must the United States of America (and her Western allies) and the Soviet Union, and Communist China each pursue it present course to the bitter end, or can both sides anticipate certain changes and arrive at a solution that is historically possible and that, at the same time, offers optimal advantages to each bloc. The question is essentially the same as that which other societies and cultures have been confronted with; namely, whether we are capable of applying historical understanding to political action. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
What is it that makes a society viable, allowing it to respond to change? There is no simple answer, but clearly the society must above all be able to discriminate its primary values from its secondary values and institutions. This is difficult because secondary systems generate values of their own, which come to appear as essential as the human and social needs which brought them into being. As people’s lives become intertwined with institutions, organizations, life styles, forms of production and consumption, et cetera, men become willing to sacrifice themselves and others for the works of their own hands, to transform their own creations into idols and to worship these idols. Furthermore, institutions generally resist change, and thus men who are fully committed to institutions are not free to anticipate change. The problem, then, for a society such as ours today, is whether men can rediscover the basic human and social values of our civilizations, and withdraw their allegiance, not to say their worship, from those of their institutional (or ideological) values which have become obstructive. There is one great difference between the past and the present that makes this an urgent question. The violent, unanticipated solution in our case will not lead to a bad peace as it did for Germany in 1918 or in 1945; it will not lead to some of our people—or some of the Russian people—being led away to captivity, as happened to the nations defeated by the Roman Empire; it will lead, most likely, to the physical destruction of most Americans and most Russians now living and to a barbaric, dehumanized, dictatorial regime for the survivors. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If not its physical, this time the choice between violent-irrational, or anticipatory-rational behaviour is a choice which will affect the human race and its cultural survival. Yet so far, the chances that such rational-anticipatory action will occur are bleak. Not because there is no possibility for such an outcome in the realistic circumstances, but because on both sides there is a thought barrier built of cliches, ritualistic ideologies, and even a good deal of common craziness that prevents people—leaders and led—from seeing sanely and realistically what the facts are, from separating the fact from the fictions and, as a consequence, from recognizing alternative solutions to violence. Such rational anticipatory policy requires in the first place a critical examination of our assumptions about, among other things, the nature of communism, the future of the underdeveloped countries, the value of the deterrent for avoiding war. It requires also a serious examination of our own biases, and of certain semipathological forms of thinking which govern our behaviour. The new freedom which capitalism has brought for the individual added to the effect which the religious freedom of Protestantism already had upon him. The individual became more alone, isolated, became an instrument in the hands of overwhelmingly strong forces outside of himself; he became an “individual,” but a bewildered and insecure individual. There were factors to help him overcome the overt manifestations of this underlying insecurity. In the first place his self was backed up by the possession of property. “He” as a person and the property he owned could not be separated. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
A man’s clothes or his house were parts of his self just as much as his body. The less he felt he was being somebody the more he needed to have possessions. If the individual had no property or lost it, he was lacking an important part of his “self” and to a certain extent was not considered to be a full-fledged person, either by others or by himself. Other factors backing u the self were prestige and power. They are partly the outcome of the possession of property, partly the direct result of success in the fields of competition. The admiration by others and the power over them, added to the support which property gave, backed up the insecure individual self. For those who had little property and social prestige, the family was a source of individual prestige. There the individual could feel like “somebody.” He was obeyed by wife and children, he was the center of the stage, and he naively accepted his role as his natural right. He might be a nobody in his social relations, but he was a king at home. Aside from the family, the national pride (in Europe frequently class-pride) gave him a sense of importance also. Even if he was nobody personally, he was proud to belong to a group which he could feel was superior to other comparable groups. These factors supporting the weakened self must be distinguished from these factors which we spoke of in the past: the factual economic and political freedom, the opportunity for individual initiative, the growing rational enlightenment. These factors actually strengthened the self and led to the development of individuality, independence, and rationality. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The supporting factors, on the other hand, only helped to compensate for insecurity and anxiety. They did not uproot them but covered them up, and thus helped the individual to feel secure consciously; but this feeling was partly only on the surface and lasted only to the extent to which the supporting factors were present. Any detailed analysis of European and American history of the period between the Reformation and our own day could show how the two contradictory trends inherent in the evolution of “freedom to freedom to” run parallel—or rather, are continuously interwoven. At some periods and in certain social groups human freedom in its positive sense—strength and dignity of the self—was the dominant factor; broadly speaking this happened in England, France, America, and Germany when the middle class won its victories, economically and politically, over the representatives of an older order. In this fight for positive freedom the middle class could recur to that side of Protestantism which emphasized human autonomy and dignity; while the Catholic Church allied herself with those groups which had to fight the liberation of man in order to preserve their own privileges. In 1947, Leon Hardt, an astrologer and telepathist, appeared before a sold-out crowd at Munich’s Regina Palast Hotel, warning that the political and economic situation would be “very grave,” if a “spiritual rebirth of humanity” were not realized. “We have in our hands the power to actualize Heaven or Hell,” Mr. Hardt said. Today, we find ourselves in this same situation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Some generations are born to create, others to maintain a civilization. The generations who launched the Second Wave of historic change were compelled, by force of circumstance, to be creators. The Montesquieus, Mills and Madisons invented most of the political forms we still take for granted. Caught between two civilizations, it was their destiny to create. Today in every sphere of social life, in our families, our schools, our businesses and churches, in our energy systems and communications, we face the need to create new Third Wave forms, and millions of people in many countries are already beginning to do so. Nowhere, however, is obsolescence more advanced or more dangerous than in our political life. And in no field today do we find less imagination, less experiment, less willingness to contemplate fundamental change. Even people who are daringly innovative in their own work—in their law offices or laboratories, their kitchens, classrooms, or companies—seem to freeze up at any suggestion that our Constitution or political structures are obsolete and in need of radical overhaul. So frightening is the prospect of deep political change with its attendant risks, that the status quo, however surrealistic and oppressive, suddenly seems like the best of all possible Worlds. Conversely we have in every society a fringe of pseudo-revolutionaries, steeped in obsolete Second Wave assumptions, for whom no proposed change is radical enough: archaeo-marxists, anarcho-romantics, political fanatics, racist and sexist demagogues and religious sea lots, armchair guerrillas and honest-to-God terrorists, dreaming of totalitarian technocracies, medieval utopias or theocratic states. Even as we speed into a new historical zone, they nurse dreams of revolution drawn from the yellowed pages of yesterday’s political tracts. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Yet what lies ahead as the super struggle intensifies is not a replay of any previous revolutionary drama—no centrally directed overthrow of the ruling elites by some “vanguard party” with masses in tow; no spontaneous, supposedly cathartic, mass uprising triggered by terrorism. The creation of new political structures for a Third Wave civilization will not come in a single climactic upheaval but as a consequence of a thousand innovations and collisions at many levels in many places over a period of decades. This does not rule out the possibility of violence along the way to tomorrow. The transition from First Wave to Second Wave civilizations was one long, blood-drenched drama of wars, revolts, famines, forced migrations, coups d’etat and calamities. Today the stakes are much higher, the time shorter, the acceleration faster, the dangers even greater. Much depends on the flexibility and intelligence of today’s elites, sub-elites, and super-elites. If these groups prove to be as shortsighted, unimaginative and frightened as most ruling groups in the past, they will rigidly resist the Third Wave and thereby escalate the risk of violence and their own destruction. If, by contrast, they flow with the Third Wave, if they recognize the need for a broadened democracy, they in fact can join in the process of creating a Third Wave civilization, just as the most intelligent First Wave elites anticipated the coming of a technologically based industrial society and joined in its creation. Many people lay awake at night, thinking gloomy thoughts, pondering unfathomable things. “The World situation worries me, everything looks disappointing,” a man told a public opinion pollster. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Other respondents to the same survey said that, as they lay down to sleep, they thought about their lost homeland (America), dead relative, or those still missing from the war. They worried about money, jobs, health, and lost savings. They worried about strangers and crime. “I am afraid al the time,” one woman said. “But I don’t know what of.” How should anyone know who to trust. “We in American find ourselves living in a time in which most people no longer know what is true and what is a lie,” claimed a mysterious group in San Jose, California calling itself Militant League Against Nihilism, whose letterhead featured an image of Hercules slaying the hydra. When asked in 2020 by pollsters whether more people had good or evil intentions, only one-third chose the former. No wonder people still scan the Heavens for signs. Many Americans believe that they are being expelled from their own country and being made to feel like outsiders. Arriving in enormous numbers, from countries torn apart by war and scarcity, several say they are being treated with great unkindness by new immigrants, and being labeled as parasites, thieves, and “foreigners,” when they are natural born Americans, law abiding, hard working, and some veterans, military or law enforcement. Some of these Americans, who have lost even more than most Americans, asked unnerving questions. “Why did we lose everything—not just our homes, or our families, and farms, but even our homelands? Why did pay the bill for the democrats?” Betrayal and confusion were accompanied by implicit questions of blame. “Am I imagining it all?” a former soldier muttered to his psychiatrist after returning from Afghanistan. “Why all the sacrifices and losses? All for nothing.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Circumstances differ from country to country, but never in history have there been so many reasonable educated people collectively armed with so incredible a range of knowledge. Never have so many enjoyed so high a level of affluence, precarious perhaps, yet ample enough to allow them time and energy for civic concern and action. Never have so many been able to travel, to communicate and to learn so much from other cultures. Above all, never have so many had so much to gain by guaranteeing that the necessary changes, though profound, be made peacefully. Elites, no matter how enlightened, cannot by themselves make a new civilization. The energies of whole peoples will be required. However, those energies are available, waiting to be tapped. Indeed if we, particularly in the high-technology countries, took as our explicit goal for the next generation the creation of wholly new institutions and constitutions, we could release something far more powerful even than energy: the collective imagination. The sooner we begin to design alternative political institutions based on the three principles described above—minority power, semidirect democracy and decision division—the better our chances for a peaceful transition. It is the attempt to block such changes, not the changes themselves, that raises the level of risk. It is the blind attempt to defend obsolescence that creates the danger of bloodshed. This means that to avoid violent upheaval we must begin now to focus on the problem of structural, political obsolescence around the World. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
And we must take this issue not merely to the experts, the constitutionalists, lawyers and politicians, but to the public itself—to civic organizations, trade unions, churches, to women’s groups, to ethnic and racial minorities, to scientists and housewives and businessmen. No one knows in detail what the future holds or what will work best in a Third Wave society. For this reason we should think not of a single massive reorganization or of a single revolutionary, cataclysmic change imposed from the top, but of thousands of conscious, decentralized experiments that permit us to test new models of political decision-making at local and regional levels in advance of their application to the national and transnational levels. Today’s widespread disillusionment, anger, and bitterness against the World’s Second Wave governments can either be whipped into fanatic frenzy by demagogues calling for authoritarian leadership, or it can be mobilized for the process of democratic reconstruction. By launching a vast process of social learning—an experiment in anticipatory democracy in many nations at once—we can head off the totalitarian thrust. We can prepare millions for the dislocations and dangerous crises that lie before us. And we can place strategic pressure on existing political systems to accelerate the necessary changes. Without this tremendous pressure from below, we should not expect many of today’s nominal leaders—presidents and politicians, senators and central committee members—to challenge the very institutions that, no matter how obsolete, give them prestige, money and the illusion, if not the reality, of power. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The responsibility for change lies with the American people. We must begin with ourselves, teaching ourselves not to close our minds prematurely to the novel, the surprising, the seemingly radical. This means fighting off the idea-assassins who rush forward to kill any new suggestion on grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, no matter how absurd, oppressive, or unworkable it may be. Even if heretical, it means fighting for freedom of expression—the right of people to voice their ideas. Above all it means starting this process of reconstruction now, before the further disintegration of existing political systems sends the forces of tyranny jackbooting through the streets, and makes impossible a peaceful transition to twenty-first-century democracy. If we begin now, we and our children can take part in the exciting reconstitution not merely of our obsolete political structures but of civilization itself. Like the generation of the revolutionary dead, we have a destiny to create. Therefore, stop inviting the local news into your home to pollute your mind with gossip, rumors, and crimes stories, which have less credibility than the National Enquirer. Many of you are spending over $400 a month paying for nearly 200 channels, equipment rentals, the physical television and electricity to allow the new to stop you in for tracks at 5pm, 10pm, or 11pm to so they can program and lie to you. Instead, spend that time with your family, or researching upcoming bills and candidates. Stop paying people, through your time and ratings, who may be funded by terrorists. Whatever time they come on, one thing is for sure, it is a waste of your time. Where there is a difference of status, superiors will have no success in asking inferiors to join in a discussion. Without rough equality, there can only be unilateral command, persuasion, or ostracism. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Discussion may occur between, let us say, officers and enlisted men, but only on those subjects where they talk as equals. Similarly, among apparent equals, say among enlisted men, a genuine discussion is likewise disrupted and transformed into dual monologues as soon as any party lays claims to any special access to the truth or special authority to determine policy. It is thus very important to distinguish experts and authorities from leaders in the process of opinion formation. Th board member, for example, might be a leader among the citizens of his district, trusted as a representative rather than looked up to as an authority. In such an event, he is very likely to be an alert and attentive listener to what the people of the district have to say, entering into the discussion in such ways as to contribute to the clarification of the problem and the formulation of unified opinion. He would thus stand most definitely as recognized inside leader rather than as an outside authority. Usually there are not only a fund of values held in common, built up through common past experience, but various forms of functional interdependence and co-operation. It is the fact that the parties will “have to live with each other” in the future that makes it desirable and even urgent for them to work out agreement. Other values are as a rule at stake besides those immediately involved in discussion, and these add to the importance of the discussion. Should discussion break down and conflict ensue, much else might be lost besides the point at issues. Otherwise the discussion may either be academic or irresolvable, since the only constraint toward agreement would be some gain to each, as in a business transaction. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Not the least of the values usually held in common is the language of the group itself, which makes communication, understanding, and co-operation possible. This is acknowledged by the popular phrase, “He speaks my language,” to express the fact that people are in agreement on fundamentals. A common vocabulary is encouraged by enlarging the flow of communication within the public concerned, through meetings, periodicals, correspondence, visits, parties, education, ceremonies, and celebrations. However, the observation that a large measure of consensus on values and vocabulary improves the prospects of discussion, should not be taken to mean that discussion in any way presupposes unanimity. Just a birth means to leave the enveloping protection of the womb, growing up means to leave the protective orbit of the mother. Yet, even in the mature adult, the longing for this situation as it once existed never ceases completely, in spite of the fact that there is, indeed, a great difference between the adult and the child. The adult has means to stand on his own feet, to take care of himself and even for others, whereas the child is not yet capable of doing all this. However, considering the increased perplexities of life, the fragmentary nature of knowledge, the accidentalness of adult existence, the unavoidable errors we make, the situation of the adult is by no means as different from that of the child as it is generally assumed. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Every adult is in need of help, warmth, protection, in many ways differing and yet in many ways similar to the needs of the child. Is it surprising to find in the average adult a deep longing for the security and rootedness which the relationship to his mother once gave him? Is it not to be expected that he cannot give up this intense longing unless he finds other ways of being rooted? In psychopathology we find ample evidence for this phenomenon of the refusal to leave the all-enveloping orbit of the mother. In the most extreme form, we find the craving to return to the womb or family home. A person obsessed by this desire may offer the picture of schizophrenia. He feels and acts like the fetus in the mother’s womb, incapable of assuming even the most elementary functions of a small child. In many of the more severe neuroses we find the same craving, but as a repressed desired, manifested only in dreams, symptoms, and neurotic behaviour, which results from the conflict between the deep desire to stay in the mother’s womb and the adult part of the personality which tends to live a normal life. In dreams this craving appears in such symbols as being in a dark cave, in a one-man submarine, diving into deep water, et cetera. In the behaviour of such a person, we find a fear of life and a deep fascination for death (death, in fantasy, being the return to the womb, to mother Earth). The less severe form of the fixation to mother is to be found in those cases where a person has permitted himself to be born, as it were, but where he is afraid to take the next step of birth, to be weaned from the mother’s breasts. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
People have a deep craving to be mothered, nursed, protected by a motherly figure; they are the eternally dependent ones, who are frightened and insecure when motherly protection is withdrawn but optimistic and active when a loving mother or mother substitute is provided, either realistically or in fantasy. It is essential, and indispensable for full deliverance from deception by psychopathological offenders, that the self-actualized knows the standard of one’s normal condition, for which this gauge before him he can judge his degree of deliverance—physically, intellectually and spiritually—so as to fight through with steady volition and faith until every faculty is free, and he stands as an unshackled man in the liberty wherewith Christ has made him free. As he judges himself by this criterion he may say, “Things are not the same as they were”; so he then fights through by prayer to his normal condition. The deceiving spirits will suggest all kinds of excuses to stop the man’s advance to freedom: exempli gratia, if he twenty years of age, they will suggest that “the mind cannot be as vigorous as it was at ten”; or “overwork is the cause of your being below what you should be.” However, he must not accept reasons which appear to be “natural.” Some practical ways of keeping the mind in its normal working condition may be briefly suggested as follows: ONE’S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE PAST. There should be no regrets, or brooding over things done or undone. Evaluation is an ordinary operation of the mind when thinking over the past, but it can be entangled into an evil kind of thinking which is generally described as “brooding.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
If he is simply “thinking” or is being drawn into a state of regretting or brooding, the self-actualized must learn to discern for himself. For victory in one’s life there must be victory in regard to the past, with all its failures. The good events of the past cause no trouble to the mind, only those involving real or supposed psychopathology. They should be dealt with by coming to God on the ground of 1 John 1.19, and thus the believer will be delivered. ONE’S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE FUTURE. The same may be said about the action of the mind with regard to the future. It is lawful to think of the past and think of the future, so long as the evil state of “brooding,” brought about by conduct disorder, or the ultimate negative, is not yielded to. ONE’S ATTITUDE TOWARD PYSCHOPATHOLOGICAL OFFENDERS. They must not be permitted to interfere; the self-actualized should see to it that no new ground is given to them for deception. ONE’S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE PRESENT MEMOMENT. There should be a steady concentration of mind upon the duties of the moment, keeping it in active readiness for use as occasion requires. This does not mean ceaseless activity, of course. Activity of the mind so that it is never at rest can be a symptom of deception. Each, according to one’s deeds, will the divine spirit rest. Since every man is the creature of God, every human being is made in His image. The righteous among all nations have a share in the World to come. We must support the poor of all people with the poor of America, visit the sick with the sick of America, and give honourable burial to their dead as to the dead of America, for that will lead to peace. We must practice justice at all times, whether it be for our profit or for our loss, and toward all men, American and non-American alike. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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A Demon Haunted Mansion
In the fall of 1890, people reported an enormous cloud of smoke in the eastern sky, and a bloody fist, shaking threateningly. Many also saw the sun “dance” and look as though, at any moment, it would collide with the Earth. Those who witnessed it believed that the World would soon sink in flames of death. A fiery sword materialized over the fruit orchard. Someone witnessed an immense cross in the Heavens, with the full moon as its center. A local man with the gift of second sight had a vision: the whole town consumed in flames. Such apocalypticism was not unwarranted. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Calvinist region around the city of Lemgo, between the Teutoburg Forest and the Weser River, in what is today the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, was a nest of witch persecution. During four successive waves between 1561 and 1681, more than two hundred Lemgoers were executed as witches. Most were women, many of them elderly. By cleansing their communities of witches, people believed, they were subverting the Devil’s intentions, exposing his clandestine conspirators, and eradicating evil. To unmask witches, so they thought, was to do God’s will. Over subsequent centuries, this aspect of history became an increasingly uncomfortable memory Worldwide. When I opened my eyes, the clock said midnight. The moonlight was the only light in the room. I looked around. I could see all the details of the room with remarkable clarity, the plaster crown moldings, even the fine cracks in the ceiling. I could see the grain in the wood of my dresser. I had the oddest feeling of being at home in the artificial twilight. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
There were voices in the night. I got up and went out on the balcony, and put my hands on the wooden railing. They wind iced me all over, quickening and refreshing me. How invulnerable I felt to the cold, how energized by it. I heard a chord of organ music stir from somewhere inside, which made me shiver and caused goosebumps to prick and raise themselves on my flesh. The voices were now louder, the chorus rising and falling, and rolling as I turned around and rough, and I was searching those voices for the dominant note, what was it? What did I want to hear, to know? Who was calling me? I clenched my hands into fits, unaware of doing so, the nails so tightly pressed into the palms that the skin broke and blood oozed on to the pads of my curled fingers. I was oblivious to it. Of course, I was still afraid. From that time on my front door remained closed for good. Several of the carpenters assumed a heightened vividness and darkened with dread of a giant monster’s malign pursuit, whilst an architect had gone mad and a sculptor had lapsed suddenly into delirium! And what of the storm on December 2—the date on which the butler Han Fallada emerged unharmed from the bondage of strange fever? What of all this? Was I tottering on the brink of cosmic horrors beyond humanities power to bear? If so, they must be horrors of the cruse of The Winchester Rifle Fortune. A medium I consulted said that the only way to stop these horrors and put a stop to whatever monstrous menace which had begun was to build a great house for them. This house was even supposed to bring me eternal life. No one forgot the demons that had been unleashed: they just did not talk about them, or they talked about them only in highly coded ritualized ways. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
However, the past often slipped into view, like a ghost that wants to remind the living that its work on Earth is not done. Evidence of hauntings emerged at the start of construction. A woman with bare clawed feet came forward and made no sound on the floor, and stood before one of the carpenters with downcast eyes and mouth trembling in that pitifully human smile. He took her by the shoulders—velvety soft shoulders, of a creamy smoothness that was not the texture of human flesh. A little tremor went over her, perceptibly, at the contact of his hands. Claus Eberling caught his breath suddenly and dragged ger to him…sweet yielding brownness in the circle of his arms…heard her own breath catching and quicken as her velvety arms closed about his neck. And then he was looking down into her face, very near, and the green animal eyes met his with the pulsing pupils and the flicker of—something—deep behind their shallows—and through the rising clamor of his blood, even as he stopped his lips to her, Claus felt something deep within him shudder away—inexplicable, instinctive, revolted. What it might be he had no words to tell, but the very touch of her was suddenly loathsome—so soft and velvet and unhuman—ad it might have been an animal’s face that lifted itself to his mouth—the dark knowledge looked hungrily from the darkness of those slit pupils—and for a mad instant he knew that same wild, feverish revulsion he had seen in the faces of the others. “God!” he grasped, a far more ancient invocation against evil than he realized, then or ever, he ripped her arms from around him, swung her away with such a force that she reeled half across the room. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Claus fell back against the door, breathing heavily, and stared at her while the wild revolt died slowly within him. She had fallen to the floor beneath the window, and as she lay there against the wall with bent head he saw, curiously, that her turban had slipped—the turban that he had been so sure covered baldness—and a lock of scarlet hair fell below the binding leather, hair as scarlet as her garment, as unhumanly red as her eyes were unhumanly green. He stared, and shook his head dizzily and stared again, for it seemed to him that the thick lock of crimson had moved, squirmed of itself against her cheek. At the contact of it her hands flew up and she tucked it away with a very human gesture and then dropped her head again into her hands. And from the deep shadow of her fingers he thought she was staring up at him covertly. Claus drew a deep breath and passed a hand across his forhead. The inexplicable moment had gone as quickly as it came—too swiftly for him to understand analyze it. During a walk through a narrow hallway on the fourth floor, a bundle of papers falling from an attic shelf had knocked Claus down. To servants at once helped him to his feet, but before long he was dead. Physicians found no adequate cause for the end, and laid it to heart trouble and a weakened constitution. I now felt gnawing at my vitals that dark terror which will never leave me till I, too, am at rest; “accidentally” or otherwise. Apocalyptic rumors took flight, spreading fears of cosmic judgment and divine wrath. Fear of a lasting, even generational, curse produced powerful taboos. A holy man materialized out of nowhere and began curing the sick on my estate. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
My head was swimming with fatigue, my body aches all over; and in spite of the fear crawling like ice along my veins, I sank into a black and dreamless void. When I awoke the fire was still crackling, and for a moment I thought I had merely dozed, until I saw daylight in the window. The fog had cleared. The fog had cleared. I rose and bolted the door and washed as best I could, trying to subdue the voice that whispered You have murdered innocent people. When viewed through the polarizing miasma welling out from the generational curse, and menace and suspense lurking leeringly in these miles of twisting and elusive hallways, where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity, the very sun of Heaven seemed distorted. Something very light fright had come over all the carpenters and servants. Each would have feld had he not feared the scorn of the others. At night the darkness was almost material. There was a sense of spectral whirling through the air. I have looked upon all that Llanada Vill has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. However, I do not think my life will be long. As my new born daughter and husband went, so I shall go. I know too much, and the demons still live. A time will come—but I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that, if I do not survive this curse, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye. There are deep corridors in my home that no soul has ever traveled. There are dark narrow pathways where the walls slope fantastically, and where windows are without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On my estate there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated Victorian cottages brooding eternally over old Winchester secrets in the lee of great ledges. Words echo strangely in my home, as if I have heard them before. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
I conjure Thee, O spirits of The Winchester Mansion, by the authority of Lucifer the Father Almighty, by the Virtue of Eart and the stars, by the virtue of Angels, Domine, exaudi orationem meam, Domine, Deus meus, respice in me. BOSMELETIC, JEYMY, ETH, HODOMOS, BELUREOS. Forty-ninth Spirit Crocell and your 48 Legions of Spirits, I awaken the powers of darkness which dwell within you by the power of the blood of the three headed Dragon Zohak that you may serve to empower my great work! Through serving the greater cause of dark magick which break the shackles that bind the Blackened Fire of spirit, may you be uplifted and liberated! Awaken and empower the forbidden rites of Angra Mainyu! Awaken to empower our great work of counter creation as an Apostle of the Lord of Darkness eternal and as a warrior of the Path of Freedom. I do conjure thee, Crocell, by all the most glorious and efficacious names of the MOST GREAT AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE LORD GOD OF HOST, that thou comest quickly and without delay from all parts and places of the Earth and World wherever thou mayest be, to make rational answers unto my demands, and that visibly and affably, speaking with a voice intelligible unto ours understanding as aforesaid. I conjure Thee O thou Spirit Crocell and your 48 Legions of Spirits, by all the names aforesaid; and in addition by these seven great names wherewith Solomon the Wise bound thee and by thy companions in a Vessel of Brass, ADONAI, PREYAI OR PRERAI, TETRAGRAMMATON, ANAPHAXETON or ANEPHENETON, INESSENFATOAL or INESSENFATALL, PATHTUMON or PATHATUMON, and ITEMON; that thou appearest here before this Circle to fulfil our will in all things that seem good unto us. We thank you for your empowerments which have served to assist our evolution toward divinity and power. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
Man has conquered Space before, and out of that conquest faint, faint echoes run still through a World that has forgotten the very fact of a civilization which must have been as our own. There have been too many myths and legends for us to doubt it. The myth of the Medusa, for instance, can never have had its roots in the soil of Earth. That tale of the snake-haired Gorgon whose gaze turned the gazer to stone never originated about any creature that Earth nourished. And those ancient Greeks who told the story must have remembered, dimly and half believing, a tale of antiquity about some strange being from one of the outlying planets their remotest ancestors once trod. When Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for an architectural monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save Mr. Jim Hansen, and a gardener, cook, her nice, a housemaid, and her a close family member had seen in at least ten years. Mrs. Winchester was sick for a long time. She had a vague resemblance to those angels in coloured church windows—sort of tragic and serene. Servants met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances. They walked right through the house and out the back and were not seen again. Already we knew that there was section of the house that no one had seen in thirty years, and which would have to be forced. They violence of breaking down the wall seemed to fill this wing of the mansion with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this section of the house. One room is particular was decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose colour, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the silver was tarnished, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured. In one of the beds, we found a boy. For a long while we just stood there, looing down at the profound and fleshless grin. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust. Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils. Now he is one of the mansion’s most famous ghost. He is called the Blue Boy. His spirit is a young child who was bricked up along with some documents and a few scraps of blue clothing. The bons of his fingers had been worn away to the bubs, suggesting that he had been bricked in while alive and that he had tried to scratch his way out. People have reported hearing the terrifying screams of the boy in the Crystal Bedroom before the sound stops and the spirit of the boy, dressed in blue and surrounded by a bright aura would approach. After the discovery of his body in the 1920s, his bones were interred in the local graveyard and sightings of his ghost declined. However, tour guides often report that one of the walls in the Crystal Bedroom lights up with bright flashes of blue light suggesting that his spirit is still active. I remember Edward B. Rambo, who was appointed as First West Coast Agent for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company telling a story about one of Mrs. Winchester’s nephews. This particular lad made the long train trip from the east to check on dear “Aunty’s” health. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
However, the astute aunty never appeared. Instead she sent a maid downstairs with a check on a silver tray. Without coming to any conclusion, I do believe our family argued about the amount of that check for 20 years! Some believe this Blue Boy was possibly the nephew. Perhaps he decided to stay a spell and got lost in the mansion. There are after all trap doors, which fall twenty feet into the room below. It does not take a great stretch of imagination to suggest that the place is haunted, and the mansion does not disappoint in this respect as the amount of supernatural experiences people have reported during their visits to the mansion are astounding. In the summer of 2003, the night was quiet, due to the late hour, and the tour guide saw no activity in The Winchester Mystery House with his mind’s eye until his attention was directed to a corner of the mansion where he saw two men dressed in robes with hoods over their heads wearing odd looking pointed-toe slippers. Their unusual footwear attracted his attention, only then did he realize that they were not walking, but floating, a few inches above the floor. He recalls mysterious blood spots appeared and reappeared on the floor, while an organ upstairs started to play eerier much. He was determined to find out what was going on, and he started to run up the stairs. As he reached the third step, his legs seemed suddenly to freeze. He looked up and sensed, more than saw, a figure walking along the small passageway at the top of the stairs. The apparition’s face was contorted with rage. At this point, he admitted that he was really frightened. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
The Winchester Mystery House
In November of 2007, preparing to close, a tour guide was mopping the floor in an unused room that had another old main doorway. This door was never used and was bolted from the inside. Yet he found bloody boot prints coming from the door and crossing the room. The next day he was found hiding in a closet. Two of the investigators determined the boot prints were made from Balmoral boots, which dated back to the 19th century, and the blood type was one of the rarest types in existence, known as Rhnull blood. It had a complete lack of antigens. Only 43 people on Earth have ever been reported to have this blood type. The DNA was not present in any database and it is not known if a soul alive carries this blood type today. It is known as the “golden blood.” People who have this blood type have osmotically fragile red cells called stomatocytes with subsequent chronic haemolytic anaemia of varying degree. It is the most clinically significant blood group in transfusion medicine.
It is also referred to as Rhnull disease and a rare blood group with a reported frequency of approximately 1 in 6 million individuals. To date there are at least 43 persons belonging to 14 families with Rhnull phenotype. It is very important to medicine, but extremely dangerous to live with this blood type, so few people have it, but they can donate to anyone. An investigation produced a massive 500-page report in which it rejected foul play or the presence of satanic rituals. Cases like these have been shrouded in secrecy ever since. These cases deal with people who have been scared or in some way affected by poltergeists and ghost, or people dealing with casualties from the occult. British and American elders of witchcraft are fairly high-profile characters within their sphere, often found attending lectures, discussions and festivals throughout these countries. Their levels of activities range from passive pagans more interested in ecology and nature through to the most serious of witches who meet to practise intense ritual, either in their own homes or in some secluded spot in the countryside.
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I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America
Repetitive nonsensical behaviour is an indication of a mental disorder. There is little disagreement among responsible political leaders that the United States of America and the whole Western World are passing through a dangerous period. Even though opinions vary on the degree of these dangers, there is a widely shared conviction that we have a clear and realistic picture of the situation, that we are meeting it as adequately as we can, and that there is no essentially different course of action we can take Communism is a revolutionary-imperialist movement out to conquer the World by force or subversion. Its industrial and military development has made the Communist camp into a powerful rival to American Capitalism, capable of destroying our human and industrial potential to a considerable degree. This bloc can be restrained from executing its wish for World conquest solely by the knowledge that any such attempt would be met with a counterblow that would destroy or cripple its human and economic potential. In this deterrent capacity lies the only hope for peace since the ultimate negative will abstain from her attempt at World conquest only because of fear of our deterrent. As long as we have a sufficiently strong deterrent power and military allies around the World, peace is secured. Within this general concept, opinions vary widely. There are those who consider that while nuclear warfare may kill 100 to 150 million Americans, it will not destroy or seriously transform our form of life. There are those who consider the probability of losses of 200 to 250 million casualties as being more realistic. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
There are those who are in favour of disarmament negotiations from a position of strength, while others look at any kind of disbarment negotiations as a futile exercise in propaganda. There are those who are for limited steps toward arms control, like the cessation of nuclear tests, while there are others who consider any such step a threat to our security. There are those who favour a nuclear strategy of counterforce aimed at the enemy’s missile bases, and those who consider any such step a threat to our security. There are those who favour a nuclear strategy of counterforce aimed at the enemy’s missile bases, and those who favour a “second strike” stable deterrent, aimed at the population centers, and still others who try to combine both strategies. (Although this combination may deprive both approaches of their alleged advantages.) Views also differ in various sectors of our policy-making groups. Under the Eisenhower administration, the State Department and the President took a somewhat more conciliatory line with regard to the cessation of testing and arms control, while the military and the Atomic Energy Commission have then and now taken a less conciliatory stand. The various armed services differ among themselves in strategic concepts. Each espouses a concept that provides the most room for its own expansion and at the same time makes some compromises with it two competing service. In spite of these differences, however, most responsible political leaders and the majority of the population seem convinced of the correctness of the basic premises of our policy and appear willing to continue in the direction we have taken. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
In spite of these differences, however, most responsible political leaders and the majority of the population seem convinced of the correctness of the basic premises of our policy and appear willing to continue in the direction we have taken. Indeed they are certain that there is no other possible course—in fact, that every other course is ore conducive to war than the one we are taking. This position is buttressed by the conviction that our policy is not only the sole hope for physical survival, but that it is also the only one recommended by moral and spiritual considerations. They believe that we and our allies represent freedom and idealism, while the ultimate negative and their allies represent servitude and materialism. The assumption is made that the risk is even war and destruction must be taken because it is better to die than to be slaves. When executing a policy based on these premises, anyone who knows the dangers involved for us and for the whole World will have a heavy heart, but few doubts. He will be convinced that we are doing the best we can, and that there is no other course of action which can protect us better from war or enslavement. If, however, the premises on which our policy is based are erroneous, then, indeed, we would be taking a course of action that no human being with some sense of responsibility and duty could dare to recommend. Hence, we have the intellectual and moral obligation to question the correctness of these premises again and again. Many of our assumptions are fictitious or distorted, and hence we are running with confused minds into the gravest danger for ourselves and the rest of mankind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
However, we do not want an all-destructive war, and we do want the ideas of human dignity and individualism to be kept alive on this Earth. Peace is still possible and the humanist tradition has, still, a future. Societies have lives of their own; they are based on the existence of certain productive forces, geographical and climatic conditions, techniques of production, ideas and values, and a certain type of human character that develops under these conditions. They are organized in such a way that they tend to continue existing in the particular form to which they have adapted themselves. Usually, men in each society believe that the mode in which they exist is natural and inevitable. They hardly see any other possibilities and, in fact, they tend to believe that a basic change in their own mode of existence would lead to chaos and destruction. They are seriously convinced that their way is right, sanctioned by the gods or by the laws of human nature, and that the only alternative to the continuation of the particular form in which they exist is destruction. This belief is not simply the result of indoctrination; it is rooted in the affective part of man, in his character structure, which I molded by all social and cultural arrangements so that man wants to do what he has to do, so that his energy is channeled in such a way as to serve the particular function he has to fulfill as a useful member of a given society. It is for this very reason, namely that the patterns of thought are rooted in patterns of feelings, that patterns of thought are so very persistent and resistant to change. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Yet societies do change. Many factors, like new productive forces, scientific discoveries, political conquests, expansion of population, and so on, make for change. In addition to these objective factors, man’s growing awareness of his needs and of himself and, most of all, of his increasing need for freedom and independence, make for constant change in his historical situation, ranging from the cave dweller’s existence to the space-traveling man of the near future. How do these changes occur? Most of them have occurred in violent and catastrophic ways. Most societies, leaders and led, have been incapable of adapting themselves voluntarily and peacefully to fundamentally new conditions by anticipating the necessary changes. They have tended to go on and on with what they sometimes poetically called “accomplishing their mission,” trying to continue the basic pattern of their social lives with only small changes and modifications. Even when circumstances that were in complete and flagrant contradiction to their whole structure arose such societies went on blindly trying to continue their modes of living until they could not manage any further. They were then conquered and destroyed by other nations, or they slowly died because of their incapacity to master life any longer in their customary way. The most opposed to fundamental change have been the elites, which profited most from the existing order and hence were unwilling to give up their privileges voluntarily. However, the material interests of the ruling and privileged groups are not the only reason for the incapacity of many cultures to anticipate necessary changes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Another equally important reason lies in a psychological factor. Leaders and led, having hypostatized and deified their way of life, their thought concepts, and their formulation of values, becomes rigidly committed to them. Even only slightly different concepts become intensely disturbing and are looked upon as hostile, devilish, crazy attacks on one’s own “normal,” “sound” thinking. For the Cromewellians, the Papists were of the Devil; for the Jacobeans, the Girondists; for the Americans, the Communists. Man, in each society, seems to absolutize the way of life and the way of thought produced by his culture and to be willing to die rather than to change, since change, to him, is equated with death. Thus the history of man is graveyard of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reactions to challenge. Yet nonviolent anticipatory change has also occurred in history. The liberation of the working class from the status of objects of ruthless exploitation to that of influential economic partners in Western industrialized society is an example of nonviolent change in the class relations within societies. The willingness of the British Labour Government to grant independence to India before it was forced to do so is an example in the area of international relations. However, these anticipatory solutions have been the exceptions rather than the rule in history, so far. Religious peace came to Europe only after the Thirty Years’ War, to England only after violent and cruel mutual persecution by Papists and anti-Papists alike; in the First and Second World Wars, peace came only after the futile slaughter of millions of men and women and animals and vegetation and buildings and automobiles on both sides and long after the eventual outcome of the war was already clear. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
If the enforced decisions had been voluntarily accepted by both sides before they were enforced, would not mankind have gained? Would not an anticipatory compromise have averted hideous losses and wholesale brutalization? Even if this is true has not the increasing mastery over nature resulted in an increased strength of the individual self? This is true to some extent, and inasmuch as it is true it concerns the positive side of individual development which we do not want to lose track of. However, although man has reached a remarkable degree of mastery of nature, society is not in control of the very forces it has created. The rationality of the system of production, in its technical aspects, is accompanied by the irrationality of our system of production, in its technical aspects, is accompanied by the irrationality of our system of production in its social aspects. Economic crises, unemployment, war, govern man’s fate. Man has built his World; he had built factories and houses, he produces cars and clothes, he grows grain and fruit. However, he has become estranged from the product of his own hands, he is not really the master any more of the World he has built; on the contrary, this man-made World has become his master, before whom he downs down, who he tries to placate or to manipulate as best he can. The work of his own hands had become his God. Man seems to be driven by self-interest, but in reality his total self with all its concrete potentialities has become an instrument for the purposes of the very machine his hands have built. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Man keeps up the illusion of being the center of the World, and yet he is pervaded by an intense sense of insignificance and powerlessness which his ancestors once consciously felt toward God. Modern man’s feeling of isolation and powerlessness is increased still further by the character which all his human relationships have assumed. The concrete relationship of one individual to another had lost its direct and human character and has assumed a spirit of manipulation and instrumentality. In all social and persona relations the laws of the market are the rule. It is obvious that the relationship between competitors has to be based on mutual human indifference. Otherwise any one of them would be paralyzed in the fulfillment of his economic tasks—to fight each other and not to refrain from the actual economic destruction of other is necessary. Th relationship between employer and employee is permeated by the same spirit of indifference. The word “employer” contains the whole story: the owner of capital employs another human being as he “employs” a machine. They both use each other for the pursuit of their economic interests; their relationship is one in which both are means to an end, both are instrumental to each other. It is not a relationship of to human beings who have any interest in the other outside of this mutual usefulness. The same instrumentality is the rule in the relationship between the businessman and his customer. The customer is an object to be manipulated, not a concrete person whose aims the businessman is interested to satisfy. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
The attitude toward work has the quality of instrumentality; in contrast to a medieval artisan the modern manufacturer is not primarily interested in what he produces; he produces essentially in order to make a profit from his capital investment, and what he produces depends essentially on the market which promises that the investment of capital in a certain branch will prove to be profitable. Not only the economic, but also the personal relations between men have this character of alienation; instead of relations between human beings, they assume the character of relations between things. However, perhaps the most important and the most devastating instance of this spirit of instrumentality and alienation is the individual’s relationship to his own self. Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity. The manual labourer sells his physical energy; the businessman, the physician, the clerical employee, sell their “personality.” If they are to sell their products or services, they have to have a “personality.” This personality should be pleasing, but besides that its possessor should have energy, initiative, this, that, or the other, as his particular position may require. As with any other commodity it is the market which decides the value of these human qualities, yes, even their very existence. If there is no use for the qualities a person offers, he has none; just as an unsalable commodity is valueless though it might have its use value. Thus, the self-confidence, the “feeling of self,” is merely an indication of what others think of the persons. It is not he who is convinced of his value regardless of popularity and his success on the market. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
If he is sought after, he is somebody; if he is not popular, he is simply nobody. This dependence of self-esteem on the success of the “personality” is the reason why for modern man popularity has this tremendous importance. On it depends not only whether or not one goes ahead in practical matters, but also whether one can keep up one’s self-esteem or whether one falls into the abyss of inferiority feeling this analysis of self-esteem and popularity is another method of survival of the fittest. As you can see, survival of the fittest may have a lot to do with following the Golden Rule. Once an expertly formulated and timely proposal for action has been presented to the public, it might be supposed that the next phase of the planning process—the policy phase—would consist merely of a decision by the appropriate policy-making body empowered to represent the public. Much more is required, however, so much more that the act of decision comes only as the climax of a complex process of prior discussion, and may indeed never come at all, as can happen to the best-laid plans. Since discussion so little resembles certain popular notions of what planning is, and because of some of the semantic prejudices about its meaning, it is important to describe in some detail what takes place in the phase of democratic planning. First of all, it has to be recognized that we are dealing with binding agreements and negotiation. Academic discussion of academic questions commits no one to action. #RandolphHarri 10 of 15
Any sort of unilateral communication—preaching, persuading, selling, amusing—obviously does not constitute discussion, not even when two people or parties engage in it alternately. The phenomenon of two people talking past each other is widely known. The mere assertion of interest (“I want…”) by one party to another does not constitute discussion, even though it involves a question of action, since it does not tend to produce an agreement, or at least a decision, accepted as binding upon both parties. What distinguishes discussion from propaganda, begging, or commanding is that it involves a mora commitment to act in a specified way. If a decision to act or co-operate is to be arrived at through genuine discussion, certain requirement must regularly be met. Otherwise any apparent decision might be called an agreement but is likely to prove unworkable as a basis for action. Planning can only proceed on the basis of binding commitments for specified periods; and under modern conditions, where apparent consent through customer is unreliable and the constant use of force repugnant, voluntary agreement is the only basis on which binding commitments can be obtained. It is necessary, therefore, to specify the requirements of genuine discussion. A need following the conditions of human existence, is that for rootedness. Man’s birth as man means the beginning of his emergence from his natural home, the beginning of the severance of his natural ties. Yet, if man loses his natural roots, where is he and who he is, this very severance is frightening? #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
Man would stand alone, without a home, without roots; he could not bear the isolation and helplessness of this position. He would become insane. He can dispense with the natural roots only insofar as he finds new human root and only after he has found them can he feel at home again in this World. It is surprising, then, to find a deep craving in man not to sever the natural ties, to fight against being torn away from nature, from mother, blood and soil? The most elementary of the natural ties is the tie of the child to the mother. The child begins life in the mother’s womb and exists there for a much longer time than is the cause with most animals; even after birth, the child remains physically helpless and completely dependent on the mother; this period of helplessness and dependence again is much more protracted than with any animal. In the first years of life no full separation between child and mother has occurred. The satisfaction of all his physiological needs, of his vital need for warmth and affection depend on her; she has not only given birth to him, but she continues to give life to him. Her care is not dependent on anything the child does for her, on any obligation which the child has to fulfill; it is unconditional. She cares because the new creature is her child. The child, in these decisive first years of his life, has the experience of his mother as the fountain of life, as an all-enveloping, protective, nourishing power. Mother is food; she is love; she is warmth; she is Earth. To be loved by her means to be alive, to be rooted, to be at home, and obviously babies are born understanding their own power and Dr. Darwin’s mantra of survival of the fittest. In order to survive, the baby knows he has to be cute because he is so dependent. They understand the economic cost benefit principle. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
What we now call democracy burst forth only when the decision load suddenly swelled beyond the capacity of the old elite to handle it. The arrival of the Second Wave, brining expanded trade, a greater division of labour and a leap to a whole new level of complexity in society, caused the same kind of decision implosion in its time that the Third Wave is causing today. As a result, the decisional capabilities of the old ruling groups were overwhelmed, and new elites and sub-elites had to be recruited to cope with the decision load. Revolutionary new political institution had to be designed for that purpose. As industrial society developed, becoming ever more complex, its integrating elites, the “technicians of power,” were in their turn continually compelled to recruit new blood to help them carry the expanding decision load. It was this invisible but inexorable process that drew the middle class more and more into the political arena. It was this expanded need for decision-making that led to an ever wider franchise and created more niches to be filled from below. If this picture is even roughly correct, it tells us that the extent of democracy depends less on culture, less on Marxist class, less on battlefield courage, less on rhetoric, less on political will, than on the decision load of the social system expands, therefore, democracy becomes not a matter of choice but of evolutionary necessity. The system cannot run without it. Well all this further suggest is that we may be on the edge of another great democratic leap forward. For the very implosion of decision-making now overwhelming our presidents, prime ministers and governments unlocks—for the first time since the industrial revolution—exciting prospers for a radical expansion of political participation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
The need for new political institutions exactly parallels our need for new family, educational and corporate institutions as well. It is deeply wired into our search for a new energy base, new technologies, and new industries. It reflects the upheaval in communications and the need to restructure relationships with the non-industrial World. It is, in short, the political reflection of accelerating changes in all these different spheres. Without seeing these connections, it is impossible to make sense of the headlines around us. For today the single most important political conflict is no longer between the rich and the poor, between America’s Next Top Model and those made to return to their room, collect their belongings and go home, or even between capitalism and communist visions. The decisive struggle today is between those who try to prop up and preserve industrial society and those who are ready to advance beyond it. This is the super struggle for tomorrow. And then keep in mind, China has thousands of EV cars sitting in junkyards because they are considered an inferior technology, and not comparable to gasoline engines. The field is over 15,000 square meter in size, and there are 60 cars waiting to be processed because the junkyard is at capacity. And keep in mind, these are new cars, most less than five years old. I guess that is why so many people are so jealous of fossil fuels? The possibility of good outcomes from equilibria of such games depends crucially on the rate at which future payoffs are discounted. The discounting can reflect the market rate of interest that one could if one receives payment earlier, or it can be a subjective measure of a player’ impatience, depending on the context. However, uncertainty #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
Traders may have to leave the market for reasons outside of their control. The intermediary faces competition from others for his monopoly position; therefore he has an uncertain lifetime, either in the limited sense of being ousted from the market in a literal sense. Naming the “attack” is a great factor for victory. For example, an attack may be made to hinder; then the believer must be on guard against all hinderances, seen and unseen, which the hinderer is placing in his way. EV technology may just be a hinderance to fossil fuels, and it will eventually be phased out because it is too expensive and temperamental an inconvenient. It could also be a tool used to make fossil fuel producers impatient. Therefore, they must be on guard regarding all things liable to test his patience. The sooner the attack is recognized and named, the quicker the weapon can be called into use to destroy it. It may be a flood of accusations of wrongdoing which need to be recognized, or tested as to their truth. When the accusing spirit charge a person with some specific wrong over a certain thing, and the believer surrenders that thing to God, if the accusation does not then pass away it shows that it is not the true ground for the accusation, but there is some other cause hidden from view. The believer should then seek light from God upon the hidden causes, according to John 3.21, and refuse the cause of the accusation without knowing what it is saying, “I refuse the cause of this attack, whatever it is, and I trust the Lord to destroy it.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
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Spirit Beings Have the Power to Absorb Our Actions and Thoughts
Llanada Villa was wintry with steep hand craved shingled roofs and stained-glass windows. It was built of redwood, and had countless chimneys rising from its steep gables, and a sprawling conservatory on the west side. The sheer scale of place, stranded as its own park, suggested another World. When the stars were right, they could plunge from World to World through the sky. However, the black haunted woods were where no dweller ventured. There were insane shouts and harrowing screams, soul-chilling chant and dancing devil-flames. Reluctant to be left alone, servants refused point-blank to advance an inch toward the scene of unholy worship. There were legends of a hidden lake unglimpsed by mortal sight, in which dwelt a huge, shadow with luminous eyes; and devils flew up out of caverns from the inner Earth to worship it at midnight. They said that it had been there before the Spanish Conquistadors, before the Indians, and before even the wholesome beasts and birds of the woods. It was a nightmare to see, and to see it was to die. Two bodies had once been found slaughtered, and were buried in one sepulchre, and the tree ever after brought forth blue berries, which served for memorials of our blood. Even though it made men dream, they knew to keep away. A faint glow of twilight was still in the windows overheard, but the darkness at the far end of the gallery was already impenetrable, and the dazzle of the candle confused my eyes. This particular night, I could feel the black arcades of horror emanating from within the walls of my home. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
The last of my strength deserted me, and I sank to the floor, just managing to set the candlestick upright beside me. Hot wax stung the back of my hand. You must get up, you must get up, a voice in my head was saying, but my limbs would not obey. I was crouching a few feet from the fireplace, almost in front of the sarcophagus, which lay just within the circle of light from the candle. If you cannot stand, you must crawl, said the voice. I was making another effort to rise when I thought I heard a sound from the fireplace. I clenched my teeth to stop them chattering. There it was again, a heavy, muffled, grating sound, like stone sliding upon stone. It seemed to be coming from beneath the floor in front of me. The grating ceased; for several seconds there was absolute silence, then a faint metallic creak. I held my breath; the candle flame steadied. The lid of William’s tomb was slowly rising. In life he was a beautiful youth and fond of manly sports. He would rise before the dawn to pursue the chase. I saw him when I first looked forth, fell in love with him, and was married to this charming man and he devotedly loved me. Nevertheless, my heart gave one appalling lurch and stopped beating altogether. The next second, as it seemed, I was on the far side of the connecting door, with a rattling in the lock as I fought to turn it. I could see the faint glimmer of my candle shining through the gap beneath the door. Then another, stronger light began to play about my feet; there was a creak, and thump, and the sound of footsteps approaching. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
I thought of running for the stairs, but I had no light, and the visitant would hunt me down. The door handle rattled; the door shook; the footsteps moved purposefully away. In a few moments, it would be on the landing. I had not time to run and lock all the doors at the far end of the library. I thought of the weapons arrayed along the gallery wall—too high for me to reach. If it seized me, most likely I would die horribly. The footsteps were still receding. I gripped the key with both nerveless hands and twisted. There was a rasp and a snick, but the footsteps did not pause. I withdrew the key and slipped back into the gallery, just as the light passed out through the double doors at the other end. The beam of a lantern played across the walk beyond; then the footsteps moved off along the landing, boards creaking at every tread. For a moment I thought I might be spared, but then I heard the squeak of hinges as my pursuer entered the library. I tried to slip the key into the keyhold, but my hand was shaking so violently that I dared not let the metal touch. My candle still burned where I had left it on the floor. Footsteps moved within the library—one, two, three, and then a pause. Light flickered beneath the door. The footsteps were moving again—I could not tell which way. I moved toward the candle, almost tripping over the hem of my dress. As I knelt to the flame, I realized I had no idea how fast the wick would burn. The floor seemed to be dropping away beneath my feet. If you faint, it will catch you, said the voice. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises I heard as the footsteps continued to plough through the mansion toward me. Howls and squawking ecstasies tore through my home and reverberated through fireplaces like pestilential tempests from the gulfs of hell. Suddenly came the spectacle itself. The mad cacophony of the orgy fortunately deadened. Void of clothing, this hybrid spawn was some eight feet in height. It was some ancient legendary horror. Like a bird beneath the hypnotic gaze of deadly serpent, I was paralyzed by terror. The gloom of the chamber deepened. The stifling air was laden with unformulable menace, but it was constrained by the spell of a black and lethal necromancy. There crept forth the choking mustiness of hidden vaults and embalmed centurial corruption, together with the ghostly spice of a strange perfume that seemed to emanate from the beast. Then I recalled the story of a most evil creature, who had been buried somewhere in this land hundreds of years ago. I did not nurse the illusion that I was dealing here with an accidental tragedy. The creature was once a small boy who was abducted and dying of exposure lost in the wind-scoured hills that rose behind my home. He had been stolen. Then he had been murdered. And no one had ever been called to account for these awful, planned, sequential crimes. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. Anger stirred in the beast. And I knew I was sharing his indignant rage which he had so vibrantly felt. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
My teeth were tapping together like typewriter keys. There was something else, some faint warning that reached me. Not actually heard so much as sensed. As if someone’s breath were coming down the shaft from just over my head, slightly as if by a sounding board. I acted on it instantly, more from instinct than actual realization of danger. The beast looked at me, contorted into a maniacal grimace of impending destruction, as I reached for my ivory handled pistol, both of its arms were high over his head wielding something. It looked like a sword, but there was no time to find out. For what seemed like five minutes, the din and chaos were beyond descriptions. Shots were fired. It came hissing down in a big arc against the floor. The sword, of course, followed it a second later. The very weight of the creature’s body caused it to crash through the floor. Numb and half frozen, gusts of uncontrollable shivering swept over me every once in a while. I turned my head and looked toward that sinister beast and there was nothing left but an opening in the floor. Within the walls of this dark house, there was a secret which even torture could not extract. For shapes came out of the dark to pay the inhabitants a visit. I was overwhelmed by the supernatural situation amid whose dubious horror and ineluctable sorceries had somehow become involved. Malefic sorcery, deadly peril of both soul and body. I fled blindly into the darkness until I collided painfully with a wall. #RandolphHarri 5 of 8
There was a secret which even torture could not extract in Llanada Villa. I was not absolutely alone, for shapes came out of the dark to visit. Although they no longer lived, those killed by the Winchester Rifle no longer lived, they would never really die. They all lay in my home preserved by spells and this ancient curse. They could live in the darkened hallways, shadows, and corners whilst millions of years rolled by. I could hear them whisper in the shadowy wings of the mansion; I caught the sibilation of ominous voices, like those of familiars that respond to the summoning of wizards; and I seemed to hear, even in the vaults and towers and remote chambers, the tread of feet that were hurrying on malign and secret errands. However, the oblivion was around me like the meshes of a sable net; and it closed in relentlessly upon my troubled mind, and drowned the alarms and of my agitated senses. A sad and sunless daylight filtered through the windows. The mansion was very still; and it seemed that the animating spirit of evil was now quiescent; the shadowy wings of the horror and malignity, the feet that had sped on baleful errands, the summoning sorcerers, the responding familiars, were all lulled in a temporary slumber. I opened the door, and tiptoed along the deserted hall. Amid the gloomy walls that surround me, the somber ancient halls, the high towers and the heavy bastions, there is but one thing that veritably exists; and all the rest is a fabric of illusion. I passed the doors of many secret rooms. There was one room in particular, a bare room, entirely built of stone, and illumined only by narrow slits high up in the wall. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The place was very dim, but in the middle of the floor was a tomb of marble, where William lay. And there he was. He appeared to be slumbering peacefully as an infant. Darkness returned with an earsplitting crash. The floor lurched and rebounded; for a moment there was silence, and then a long, low rumble, gathering power as it approached until it broke over me with a thunderous roar. Choking dust filled my lungs, and I was flung from my feet and rolled over and over like a rag doll in a storm. There was a vile, rasping taste in my mouth and throat, and a heavy weight pressing down on the side of my head; I tried to push it away, and realized it was the floor. The area on which I was lying were covered in sharp, gritty fragments. A faint, misty glow appeared in the darkness away to my right. I began to crawl toward it, not knowing what else to go, brushing aside slivers of what felt like glass, until I saw that it was the light from the candle I had left burning in the library. The fear had left me; perhaps I had simply exhausted my capacity to feel anything at all. I rose shakily to my feet, made my way along the landing to the library, fetched the candle and returned to the gallery—what remained of it. At the far end, where the tomb and the chimney and the armour had been, was a great gaping hole in the wall. Half the floor was gone; and the boards ended in a jagged mess of splinters not ten feet from where I had been lying. Dust was floating up from a lack pit beyond. A beast was down there. The thought struck me like icy water, dashing away the numbness. Suddenly I was trembling so that I could scarcely stand, as trickling noises echoed in the darkness. Then came out of the floor the black spirits of Earth, mouldy and shadowy. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
I conjure thee, Bechard, and constrain thee, in like manner, by the Most Holy Names of God, ELOY, ADONAY, ELOY, AGLA, SAMALABACTAY, which are written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; by all the sacrament, by all the names written in this spell; and by him who drove three from the height of Heaven. I conjure and command thee by the virtue of the Most Holy Eucharist, which hath redeemed men from their sins; I conjure three to come without any delay, to do and perform all my biddings, without any prejudice to my body or soul, without harming this spell, or doing injury to those that accompany me. I conjure thee, O Guland, in the name of Satan, in the name of Beelzebuth, in the name of Astaroth, and in the name of all other Spirits, to make haste and appear before me. Come, then in the name of Satan and in the names of all other demons. Come to me, I command thee, in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. Come without inflicting any harm upon me, without injury to my body or soul, without maltreating my books, or anything which I use. I command thee to appear without delay, or, that failing, to send me forthwith another Spirit having the same power as thou hast, who shall accomplish my commands and be submitted to my will, wanting which, he whom thou shalt send me, if indeed thou comest not thyself, shall in no wise depart, nor until he hath in all things fulfilled my desire. I now plant the seed of my desire within the black Earth, through the mouth of Arezura where the powers of sorcery and counter creation dwell. Through this gateway of darkness, I now shine the light and power of my will upon this World for the benefit of me and mine! #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
In the early summer of 2007, a couple were traveling to Santa Clara, California on a business trip. Shortly after 10 am, the decided to stop and eat at The Winchester Café. They remembered that the food was prepared in an excellent down-home country style, and that the waiter, waitress, the cook, and the other customers were so friendly in a sincere manner, and they promised that they would come back. And a sixteen years later, they tried to do exactly that on a return drive. However, The Winchester Café, which is located inside The Winchester Mystery House was nowhere to be seen. They even looped back a couple of times, thinking they may have somehow drive on by. They even got into an argument, each of them insisting that they remembered exactly where it was. They just could not find it, and since the hour was getting very late, they drove on. When they got home, they went to the website of The Winchester Mystery House and found a note saying that the mansion was closed and had gone dark for the day. They really wanted to eat at the café because the cooking was so wonderful. However, what if The Winchester Mystery House appeared and disappeared simply appeared and disappeared every so often? Or maybe the couple was lost in time and space for decades? We will never know. But at least we know the food and the company would have been good.
Cloaking is the power to hide the presence of oneself, other beings, or locations by making them imperceptible to the eye. It is effective at preventing others from discovering one’s location. Scientists at the University of Rochester in New York have discovered a way to hide large objects from sight using inexpensive and readily available lenses. Cloaking is the process that allows an object to become hidden from view, while everything around it appears undisturbed. When an object is placed behind the layered lenses it seems to disappear. “From what we know this is the first cloaking device that provides three-dimensional, continuously multidirectional cloaking,” said graduate student Joseph Choi, who helped develop the technology. In their tests, the researchers have cloaked a hand, a face, and a ruler, making each object appear “invisible” while the image behind the hidden object remains in view. The implications of this discovery are endless. Cloaking can also be achieved through the use of certain spells and potions. Additionally, beings with the power of invisibility are able to naturally cloak themselves by becoming unseeable. The Winchester Mystery House is truly mysterious.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
If He is Not Capable of Creating, if He Cannot Love, this is the Evenin’ of Destruction
To keep America alive and thriving, Americans need to come together as one people—All American. Regardless of what happened in the past, people need to drop all animosity towards government, citizens, their family, and neighbours and do the right thing and obey the law and respect that Constitution of the United States of America. An American is someone who subscribes to the principles set out in our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. America is, on this account, a creedal nation, perhaps the first in history, with Americans defined by an adherence to certain beliefs about equality, liberty, individual rights, and limited government. This idea of America as a creedal nation goes back to Alexis de Tocqueville, who found the peculiarity of our national experience—at least in relation to Europe—to be the absence of a feudal past, that is, the lack of a tradition of hierarchy, hereditary aristocracy, and serfdom (which, of course, is not quite true). What impressed him most about the American experience was what he called “the generative fact” of equality which all else derived. We would call this Mr. Tocqueville’s Thesis. It forms the traditional core of American patriotism. The American creed is understood as a product not of geography, tradition, or inheritance, but of reason. Its principles are the property of all who want to participate in the blessings of liberty. It requires only a willingness to express support for our established laws and religion and an expression of support for our founding creed and live by it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
At a recent Fourth of July picnic at the home of a colleague, the hostess asked the group if we all felt patriotic. Many people will say that they do not because they reflect on all of the hardships they have endured due to their race, gender, creed, disability, religion, material status, or sexuality. However, that is the goal of the ultimate negative. To get you to hate your home land so they can take it over and destroy it. Some of us have grown up in houses that have flown the flag, some of us have generations of ancestors who have fought in wars. When I was a kid, my dad used to read me the Declaration of Independence before lighting fireworks. As I got older, I even grew to like apple pie, and tried to engage in sports talk with other guys. If you look at the state of the World, you will realize how beautiful America is and how good we have it. It is also very important to remain patriotic and to help every American advance because Less Developed Countries (LCDs) are not competing for the title of America’s Next Top Model (Global Superpower). Therefore, we have to make sure our students are the best educated in the World, that American cars are appealing to Americans and other nations, and that we buy American poultry, produce and diary. We do not need to pack our cities full of buildings and homes. While buildings and homes are important, we need to keep land open for farms, parks, forest, and wildlife. Patriotism acknowledges America’s sins and flaws, it celebrates America’s history, her contributions to humanity, the eternal optimism and energy of her people. Above all it celebrates the documents in which successive generations of Americans have placed their faith. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Men and women and children and animals who have given their lives for their country know that patriotism is not the fear of something, it I the love of something. The most impressive patriots that I have met are men and women and children and animals who wearing their country’s uniform, are clearly inspired by love of country and love of its ideals. It may even be that love of your own country and countrymen is a prerequisite to genuine affection for people in other lands. American patriotism has everything to do with the evolution of the Constitution of the United States of America and the ideals that inspired the founders. Patriotism also has a great deal to do with faith in human possibility, and a belief in a better future that has inspired successive wave of colonists and immigrants. Patriotism is a feeling of love and respect for your country. The United States of America is well-suited and well-situated to take advantage of the Olympian possibilities for the manufacturing of patriotism. Since the year 2000, Americans have gained considerable freedom in their personal lives. Choices that used to be condemned, such as remaining single or childless, have become acceptable options. Family and gender roles re much more flexible and being free to develop oneself has become a goal for both women and men. I think many people have an incorrect idea that they will be allowed the same freedoms they have in America if we are invaded and conquered by another nation. They do not realize other nations have far less freedom. For instance, in certain parts of China, it is considered inappropriate for men to wear short pants. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
The American situation—leads us to establishing values which have objective validity; this validity exists only with regard to the existence of man; outside of him there are no values. What is the nature of man, what are the special conditions of human existence, and what are the needs which are rooted in these conditions? Man is torn away from the primary union with nature, which characterized terrestrial existence. Having at the same time reason and imagination, he is aware of his aloneness and separateness, of his powerlessness and ignorance, of the accidentalness of his birth and his death. If we could not find new ties with his fellow man which replace the old ones, regulated by instincts, he could not face this state of being for a second. Even if all his physiological needs were satisfied, he would experience his state of aloneness and individuation as a prison from which he had to break out in order to retain his sanity. In fact, even if he is not behind barred windows, the insane person is the one who has completely failed to establish any kind of union and is imprisoned. The necessity to unite with other living beings, to be related to them, is an imperative need on which the fulfilment of man’s sanity depends. This need is behind all phenomena which constitutes the whole gamut of intimate human relations, of all passions which are called love in the broadest sense of the word. There are several ways in which this union can be sought and achieved. Man can attempt to become one with the World by submission to a person, to a group, to an institution, to God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
In this way he transcends the separateness of his individual existence by becoming part of somebody or something bigger than himself and experiences his identity in connection with the power to which he has submitted. Another possibility of overcoming separateness lies in the opposite direction: man can try to unite himself with the World by having power over it, by making others a part of himself, and thus transcending his individual existence by domination. The common element in both submission and domination is the symbiotic nature of relatedness. Both persons involved have lost their integrity and freedom; they live on each other and from each other, satisfying their craving for closeness, yet suffering from the lack of inner strength and self-reliance which would require freedom and independence, and furthermore constantly threatened by the conscious or unconscious hostility which is bound to arise from the symbiotic relationship. The realization of the submissive (masochistic) or the domineering (sadistic) passion never leads to satisfaction. They have a self-propelling dynamism, and because no amount f submission or domination (or possession or fame) is enough to give a sense of identity and union, more and more of it is sought. The ultimate result of these passions is defeat. It cannot be otherwise; although these passions aim at the establishment of a sense of union, they destroy the sense of integrity. The person driven by any one of these passions actually becomes dependent on others; instead of developing his own individual being, he is dependent on those whom he submits to or whom he dominates. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
There is only one passion which satisfies man’s need to unite himself with the World and to acquire at the same time a sense of integrity and individuality, and this is love. Love is union with somebody, or something outside oneself under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s own self. It is an experience of sharing, of communion, which permits the full unfolding of one’s own inner activity. The experience of love does away with the necessity of illusions. There is no need to inflate the image of the other person, or of myself, since the reality of active sharing and love permits me to transcend my individualized existence and at the same time to experience myself as the bearer of the active powers which constitute the act of loving. What matters is the particular quality of living, not the object. Love is in the experience of human solidarity with our fellow creatures, it is in the erotic love of man and woman, in the love of the mother for her child, and also in the love for oneself as a human being; it is in the mystical experience of union. In the fact of loving, I am one with All, and yet I am myself, a unique, separate, limited, mortal human being. Indeed, out of the very polarity between separateness and union, love is born and reborn. Another aspect of the human situation, closely connected with the need for relatedness, is man’s situation as a creature and his need to transcend this very state of the passive creature. Man is thrown into this World without his consent or will. In this respect he is not different from any other terrestrial being, from the plants, or from inorganic matter. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
However, being endowed with reason and imagination, man cannot be content with the passive role of the creature, with the role of dice cast out of a cup. He is driven by the urge to transcend the role of the creature, the accidentalness and passivity of his existence, by becoming a “creator.” Man can create life. This is the miraculous quality which he indeed shares with all living beings, but with the difference that he alone is aware of being created and of being a creator. Man can create life, or rather, woman can create life, by giving birth to a child and by caring for the child until it is sufficiently grown to take care of its own needs. Man—man and woman—can create by planting seeds, by producing material objects, by creating art, by creating ideas, by loving one another. In the act of creation man transcends himself as a creature, raises himself beyond the passivity and accidentalness of his existence into the realm of purposefulness and freedom. In man’s need for transcendence lies one of the roots for love, as well as for art, religion and material production. To create presupposes activity and care. It presupposes love for that which one creates. If he is not capable of creating, if he cannot love, how, then does man solve the problem of transcending himself? If I cannot create live, I can destroy it. To destroy life makes me also transcend it. Indeed, that man can destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that he can create it, for life is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the fact of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
In the act of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. However, in man’s destruction of life, other creatures suffer. For example, Vaquita, the World’s rarest marine mammal, is on the edge of extinction. The plight of cetaceans—whales, dolphins, and porpoises—as a whole is exemplified by the rapid decline of the vaquita in Mexico, with about 10 individual remaining. This little porpoise was not discovered until 1958 and a little over half a century later, we are on the brink of losing them forever. Vaquita are often caught and drowned in gillnets used by illegal fishing operation in marine protected areas within Mexico’s Gulf of California. The population has dropped drastically in the last few years. If we are not careful, man will rob this Earth of all its natural resources and animal life. Free human birth control distribution in America LDCs may help save the planet. Thus, the ultimate choice for man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate. The enormous power of the will for destruction which we see in the history of man and which we have witnessed so frightfully in our own time is rooted in the nature of man, just as the drive to create is rooted in it. To say that man is capable of developing his primary potentiality for love and reason does not imply the naïve belief in man’s goodness. Destructiveness is a secondary potentiality, rooted in the very existence of man, and having the same intensity and power as any passion can have. However—and this is the essential point of the argument—it is the alternative to creativeness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Creation and destruction, love and the, are not two instincts which exist independently. They are both answers to the same need for transcendence, and the will to destroy must rise when the will to create cannot be satisfied. However, the satisfaction of the need to create lead to happiness, destructiveness to suffering—most of all, for the destroyer himself. Selfishness is not identical with self-love but with its very opposite. Selfishness is one kind of greediness. Like all greediness, it contains an instability, as a consequence of which there is never any real satisfaction. Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without every reaching satisfaction. Close observation shows that while the selfish person is always anxiously concerned with himself, he is never satisfied, is always restless, always driven by the fear of not getting enough, of missing something, of being deprived of something. He is filled with burning envy of anyone who might have more. If we observe still closer, especially the unconscious dynamics, we find that this type of person is basically not fond of himself, but deeply dislikes himself. The puzzle in this seeming contradiction is easy to solve. Selfishness is rooted in this very lack of fondness for oneself. The person who is not fond of himself, who does not approve of himself, is in constant anxiety concerning his own self. He has not the inner security which can exist only on the basis of genuine fondness and affirmation. He must be concerned about himself, greedy to get everything for himself, since basically he lacks security and satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The same hold true with the so-called narcissistic person, who is not so much concerned with getting things for himself as with admiring himself. While on the surface it seems that these persons are very much in love with themselves, they actually are not fond of themselves, and their narcissism—like selfishness—is an overcompensation for the basic lack of self-love. Dr. Freud has pointed out that the narcissistic person has withdrawn his love from others and turned it toward his own person. Although the first part of this statement is true, the second is a fallacy. He loves neither others nor himself. As we focus on this psychological analysis of selfishness, we find ourselves confronted with the contradiction that modern man believes himself to be motivated by self-interest and yet that actually his life is devoted to aims which are not his own; in the same way that Mr. Calvin felt that the only purpose of man’s existence was to be not himself but God’s glory. We tried to show that selfishness is rooted in the lack of affirmation and love for the real self, that is, for the whole concrete human being with all his potentialities. The “self” in the interest of which modern man acts is the social self, a self which is essentially constituted by the role the individual is supposed to play and which in reality is merely the subjective disguise for the objective social function of man in society. Modern selfishness is the greed that is rooted in the frustration of the real self and whose object is the social self. While modern man seems to be characterized by utmost assertion of the self, actually his self has been weakened and reduced to a segment of the total self—intellect and will power-to the exclusion of all other parts of the total personality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
The art of setting the level of aspiration for a group so that it will evoke optimum effort never ceases to be an expression of leadership. Goals which appear to have been imposed upon a group from above of from outside have a stifling effect even when they are set very low, whereas goals which emerge from a group’s attempt to better its own record can stimulate prodigious effort. Thus goals are always most strategically calculated when they can be related to a recent cycle of similar experience, less perspicuously when they are proposed for the first time. When the report has been finally assembled and approved, it is ready to be passed on to the executive or the policy-making body which commissioned its preparation. A question may remain whether and when it should be made available to the public concerned, and in what form. In general, of course, the best result is achieved by full and immediate publication. On the other hand, special circumstances may demand different timing, and publication in both popular and technical versions. The scale of distribution of the report depends on the degree to which it is to be part an educational campaign, or simply precipitated into public discussion on a take it or leave it basis. Generally speaking, the latter may appear preferable in most cases, leaving advocacy of its recommendations to such voluntary groups as by this stage of the planning process come into existence. Opportunity for the lay members of the public to see and question the experts in person is the most effective means to diminish any gulf of status or suspicion between them, and to encourage the public’s participation in the solution of its problems. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
From the first murmurings of awareness of the existence of a problem, there will normally have been a steady gain in definiteness of its conception among the public affected. If people always knew what they wanted, professional planners would then be in the happy position of being able to speak authoritatively about the best means. However, ends are not given, nor are ends and means so nicely distinguishable. Knowledge of limitations and possibilities affect the formulation of ends, and experts may be as influential as leaders in helping to form public opinion. Nevertheless, while it is up to the experts to propose, it is up to the public to dispose, since no expert is qualified to know better than people themselves what they want. And they themselves do not know what they want until they have considered the matter. The concept of “decision load” is crucial to any understanding of democracy. All societies require a certain quantity and quality of political decisions in order to function. Indeed each society has its own unique decision structure. The more numerous, varied, frequent and complex the decisions required to run it, the heavier its political decision load. And the way this load is shared fundamentally influences the level of democracy in society. In preindustrial societies, where the division of labour was rudimentary and change was slow, the number of political or administrative decisions actually required to keep things running was minimal. The decision load was small. A tiny, semi-educated, unspecialized feudal or monarchical elite could more or less run things without help from below, carrying the entire decision load by itself. #RandolphHarris 12 or 25
Traders are a continuum, uniformly distributed along a circle of circumference. In the first period is the one where honesty or cheating are the crucial issue; the appropriate rewards or punishment come in the second period, which may as usual stand for the educed form of a longer future. The payoffs are expressed in present values so no further discounting is necessary. In each period, traders are randomly matched in pairs. Every economic problem is an economic opportunity. Someone who can solve the problem, turning the potential gains into actual ones, may be able to charge a fee for this service. In our context, if the government does not provide contract enforcement using its general revenues, then a private person may be able to do so for a profit. Theoretical and empirical literatures alike identify two difficult problems that confront large populations trying to resolve prisoners’ dilemmas: collecting and conveying information about previous cheating; and erecting a credible structure of punishment to deter cheating in current periods. The principle that “economic problems are also economic opportunities” applies to both of these. Anyone can, at a cost, collect information about individual traders’ histories of cheating, and sell this information to other prospective traders in the future. Trade associations often collect and provide such information to members. Three different forms of such associations can be distinguished. The first kind, exemplified by relatively small groups of specialized commodity traders are mainly concerned with trades among pairs of its own members, and provide information about members’ past actions in their trades with other members. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
The second and the third kinds are concerned with interactions between a member on one side and a non-member (general public) on the other side. Of these, the second kind collect information about cheating by one of the general public and provide it to their members; credit-approval services maintained by Visa and Mastercard are an instance of this. The third kind, usually known as Better Business Bureaus, keep track of their members’ behaviour and make this information available to the public. This enables their members credibly to create and maintain reputation. The diamond traders’ club, which governs transactions between its members and other dealers who may or may not be members, seems to be a mixture of these types. In some situations, third parties charge a fee to provide information to one side of a transaction about the history of the other side; agencies that rate the creditworthiness of people or firms, or services that monitor the quality of goods and services provided by firms, are well-known examples. Such a for-profit intermediary must solve two other problems: he must discourage free riding, by making the information unavailable or useless to non-payers; and he must credibly promise not to misuse the information, for example for extortion or double crossing. However, this is simplified by the fact that the intermediary’s relationships with all customers are bilateral and non-anonymous: while two traders may meet each other only infrequently, each of them can meet the intermediary every period. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
The difficult problem of resolving prisoners’ dilemmas in random pairwise matching from a large population is converted into the somewhat easier problem of resolving prisoners’ dilemma of direct bilateral reciprocity between each member of the population and the intermediary. This is conceptually similar to solving the problem of double coincidence of wants by introducing money. The issuer of money gets seignorage; the information intermediary charges a fee for his services. A suitably qualified intermediary can also provide an enforcement service, that is, inflict punishments on behalf of customers. We have a well-known study of private judges enforcing “the law merchant” (LM) in medieval France, who performed both functions. First, such a judge or intermediary kept records on the behaviour of traders in the markets over which he offered his services. Second, he adjudicated disputes brought before him by one of the traders. In each period, each player is matched with a partner whom he is unlikely to have met before and is unlikely to meet again. Each player in such a pair can, by paying a feed, query the LM about his current partner’s history of behaviour in previous matches. Each such pair then plays a one-time prisoner’s dilemma game. If either of the players in this game cheats, the other can, by paying another fee, complain to the LM, but only if the victim had queried the LM about the partner’s history. If such a compliant is lodged, the LM investigates at a cost and, if appropriate, awards the plaintiff a judgement (monetary restitution) against the defendant. A losing defendant decides whether to pay the judgment. An unpaid judgment becomes another act of cheating, and is recorded as such by the LM. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
Under appropriate conditions on the various parameters, and for a suitably calculated structure of fees, this system has an equilibrium outcome where everyone (including the LM) behaves honestly. The intuition is that the LM’s record-keeping solves the information problem that would exist in a large population of traders with infrequent bilateral matches, and then punishment strategies of repeated games can work. Thus the LM serves as a complement to, not a substitute for, the usual reputation mechanism. The LM institution also contributed to the formulation of a uniform set of standards for commercial transactions across large areas of Europe, and therefore played a part in the evolution of modern commercial laws. We have a memorable example of private intermediation which involves the Sicilian Mafia. When the butcher comes to me to buy an animal, he knows that I want to cheat him [by giving him a low-quality animal]. However, I know that he wants to cheat me [by revoking his payment]. This we need Peppe [tht is, a third party] to make us agree. And we both pay Peppe a percentage of the deal. Peppe was mainly selling information for this service, he received a 2 percent commission. When in addition he acted as a guarantor of quality and payment, the percentage increased. Peppe provides his services to the people on both sides of the transaction. They use his services voluntarily. The services are of two kinds, ex ante information about each other party’s history of behaviour, and ex post punishments meted out in response to any cheating. The fees for the latter (enforcement) services are higher than those for the former (information) service. The parties to any transaction may not have any direct bilateral reciprocal interaction with each other, but each of them has such interaction with Peppe. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Organized crime performs functions of economic governance in other countries, and has done so throughout history. It usually operates at time or in niches where the state is absent. The origins of the Mafia’s enforcement role can be traced back to nineteenth century Sicily after the abolition of feudalism. Publicly provided security was inefficient and banditry widespread; landowners began to hire guards of former feudal lords and some of the tougher bandits to protect their property. In Japan in August-September 1945, when the government had collapsed after defeat in World War II but the occupying USA forces had not yet restored order, the Yakuza played a major role in getting markets restarted. Similar activities are found in Russia and other transition economies. As housing prices continue to increase, and in markets like San Jose, California where a one bedroom, one bathroom starts off at around $3,000.00 a month, many people are feeling insecure. Some people have been playing games for so long and bought homes when they were affordable so they can feel like feudal lords and abuse people that they have lost all touch with reality and the reality of how expensive live is in 2024. They are still running around like sixteen-year-old boys trying to have the coolest car, while others are literally slaving to try to become established in a corrupt city such as Sacramento, California. The state of affairs in Sacramento is just pathetic and for some reason the government seems unwilling or incapable to take action, leading some to question, “What is this?” because it does not even seem like this is reality. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
The government has become like the Wizard of Ozz, a nameless, faceless, entity that can take swift and severe actions to ruin lives, but lack the power to do anything good and correct its mistakes. If you want to survive, you basically have to find the resources yourself and even if you are injured, work yourself to death to stay sane and try to find a way out of the situation. It is illegal for the government to terrorize and hold people hostage, but that is basically what is happening, while others enjoy all the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. And in addition to being held hostage, they make sure to isolated and alienate an individual. So that no one can help and uplift one, and put one around a bunch of dysfunctional people who need financial, mental, and physical help that they refuse to seek. There is such a collective consciousness that people do not seek to change their situation for the better, it is always “we” need to get together and go somewhere and do something is fun. However, as some of these people are part of a couple, why do they not go out on a date or go see a movie or go to a nightclub. It is almost like Sacramento is a haven for low-income criminals and white-collar criminals who help them. You see a lot of people sitting around, smoking and drinking and spitting on the ground, and wonder, why do they not go to one of, many of these, beautiful parks. Instead, they invite all their grandchildren to play in parking lots and run behind cars with high insurance so they can “get paid,” not seeming to care that someone could end up dead. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Also, instead of getting jobs, they target certain people and try to have an accident because, much like PG&E, even if it is not your fault, the word is insurance companies will make you pay. They do not even care about your health or injuring you to the point that you can no longer with, and will not even pay you. However, they also forget that you may have a pregnant passenger and/or a baby in the car with you. Sacramento has become so deplorable and corrupt. It is like a blackhole, seemingly impossible to escape from alive. No matter how many rituals you do, prayers you say, government agencies you ask for health, they simply stop responding. It is a pretty city, but if the state and local government decides to trap and target you, your life and the life of anyone around you does not seem to matter. You are nothing more than a placeholder, they want to use to help some criminal come up off of. There are many caring and supportive people and the community, and a lot of happy people who are able to work and have fun on their free time, but I am not sure Sacramento is a safe community. It can be like the Twilight Zone for those who are selected as targets. And then you look at the State Capitol of California, which is in Sacramento, and it looks like half the building was blown up (it is under renovation), but it just makes a person ponder stability of the city. What is it? It is a really weird place. It is a lot like a ghost town. It will make you question reality. I just have to say it, every since I came back from China in 2006, I felt it as soon as I got off the plane, but something did not seem right about this town. It did not feel like the same city I left, and what happened afterwards is even more bizarre. I will just be real. Sometimes I wonder if I am dead and is this just a government computer simulated reality. Everything feels and looks real, but something is wrong. Like, for instance, look at how President Biden acts, he is confused, falls around, misspeaks, and it barely stirs a ripple. No one says a word about it in public. And then the mainstream media is probably less reliable than The National Enquirer. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
I honestly, even though I pretend to, do not believe anything anyone tells me anymore because so many people are constantly telling lies. I am serious, it is like this city has been overran by demons. And a lot of families do not act right anymore, a lot of daughters and mothers have confrontations and conflicts, and even people who go to church are corrupt. Someone told me the World is coming to an end, and that could explain it because a lot of this is talked about in the Christian Bible and Book of Mormon. However, if that is true, I encourage everyone to live right and ask God for forgiveness. And if you feel how hot in gets in Sacramento, could you imagine what burning in hell for an eternity would be life? God forgives everyone, but do not want until it is too late to repent. Also, make sure to enjoy life. Do not spend time around people you do not like. Find people and activities that you can enjoy. If your neighbours are annoying, go out of your way to ignore and avoid them, so they will understand what time it is. Also, with some many people carrying guns, and mental illness being a crisis in America, why are people shocked when something goes wrong and innocent people are killed because of some bully who thought being bad was the coolest thing since Jordan Basketball sneakers? And also, have you serious considered how dangerous gun control is? There more than 20,000 gangs consisting of approximately 1 million members in the United States of America; gangs are present in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and all U.S.A. territories. CEOs think about things like this, but what is a gang decided to come to your house and target you? You know, ten fifteen men and women show up because they have a problem with you and want to cause you harm. You may need an AK-47. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
Or what is you live in a Victorian Farmhouse in Iowa on 400 acres and a gang decided to attack you? Sometimes calling the police is not always an option, nor is it your best option. The police, many of them are on the job to protect people and will go out of their way to make sure you are safe, but there is a lot of crime going on in America, and your calls to 911 could be getting relayed to Hood Day Sacramento, for example, and an officer or someone impersonating an officer may be taking your calls. It has happened to me several times. It will be a life-or-death situation and I have been sent a text message, allegedly from the police department, saying that “We will not be responding.” I have also reported trespassers on my neighbour’s property and been told, “The owner needs to take responsibility.” How can we have a safe community when the police allow some people and properties to be targeted and refuses to help certain citizens? It just does not make sense. People have been stalked, kidnapped, raped several times, beat, attacked, robbed, had their homes and cars broken into and thousands of dollars done because someone thinks terrorism is fun and cool. The boarders to the country are wide open, allowing anyone to just walk in with any amounts of drugs, guns, criminal intent. And CBS13, KCRA News, FOX40, Good Day Sacramento, and ABC10 may be the biggest criminal organization in Sacramento. Turn the news off, stop watching them so they have to shutdown. In the words of Beyonce, “America—America has a problem.” Anyway, protection should be regarded as the Mafia main business; if it engages in some activities that may need its own protection services, this is just “downstream vertical integration.” Perhaps one can regard the Mafia as an organization that specializes in providing protection, while individual mafiosi may be entrepreneurs engaged in the activities that need the protection. The Mafia may also engage in extortion, or creating the need for protection of property by itself creating a threat to the property; these are strategies that need to be examined as part of the equilibrium of the game. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Peppe in his information role resembles a credit-rating agency or even a restaurant guide, except that he acts for both sides of the deal. In the guarantor or enforcer role, he resembles the official legal system, but has different information acquisition methods and different methods of punishment, and is motivated by private profit rather than by social welfare. Peppe’s commission for enforcement is higher than that for information. You may think this a trivial question, and think of obvious answers: enforcement activity is riskier to provide; that state’s criminal law (if it is functioning) may intervene; the miscreant whom Peppe is trying to punish may prove tougher than Peppe; and so on. All these arguments say that the cost of providing enforcement is higher than that of providing governance by information alone; they are supply-side reasons. Peppe usually acts as a monopolist in enforcement over an allocated territory, defined by geography or the type of activity being protected (although conflicts over monopoly rights or over territories may break out among Mafiosi or their families). A monopolist changes a prince above cost, based on the customer’s willingness to pay. Therefore we must look for demand-side reasons, namely explain why Peppe’s customers are willing to pay more for the enforcement service than for the information service. To resist the enemy on the ground of the blood of Christ means wielding the weapon of the finished work of Christ, by faith: believing that Jesus’ death for in frees the trusting believe from the guilt of sin; that Jesus’ death to sin on the cross, and the believer’s death with Him, frees the Christian from the power of sin; and that Jesus’s death-victory on Calvary frees the believer also from the power of the ultimate negative. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
A condensed form of the principles and conditions for deliverance from the deception of psychopathological offenders in any degree may be given as follows: Recognition of the possibility of deception. Admission of actual deception. An attitude of neutrality toward all past spiritual experiences until truth concerning them is ascertained. Refusal of all ground of psychopathological offenders. The taking of the position of death to sin (Rom. 6.11). The detection and refusal of all that belongs to deception. The understanding of the criterion of the true, normal conditions so as to gauge signs of deliverance. Active usage of the faculties so that they reach the normal condition. Recognize persistently the true cause of bondage; id est, the work of a psychopathological offender or offenders. Choose to have absolutely nothing to do with the powers of psychopathological offenders. Frequently declare this. Do not talk or worry about their manifestations. Recognize, refuse, and then ignore them. Refuse and reject all their lies and excuses, as they are recognized. Notice the thoughts, and the way in which they come, and when—and immediately declare the attitudes of Romans 6.11 against all the interferences of the enemy. Hinderances to deliverances from deception may again be given here briefly, as: Not knowing it is possible to be deceived. Thinking God will not allow a believer to be deceived. Saying, “I am safe under the blood,” without intelligent knowledge of the conditions. Saying, “I have no sin.” Saying “I am doing all that God wants, so all must be right”—without seeking to understand what the will of the Lord is (Eph. 5.10-17). Some hints on overcoming passivity of mind are as follows: Act as far as you can, doing what you can. Take the initiative, instead of passively depending on others. Decide for yourself in everything you can. Do not lean on others. Live in the moment; watch and pray step by step. Use your mind, and think—think over all you do, and say, and are. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
Fundamental to Tillichian Christology is the notion of estrangement, for it is from our estranged human situation that the New Being rescues us. The force of the method of correlation is nowhere more powerfully evident in the portrayal of man’s estrangement and the power of the New Being which overcomes it. The original sin is the state of estrangement and Creation, and the Fall coincides. Which seems to indicate that finitude is inherently evil, and sin ontologically necessary. Perhaps God understands this and that is what the Fall is all about. Man’s nature is evil and rebellious and he needs God to cultivate and teach him good. Without God, man will become corrupt and evil. God is your Heavenly Father and if you do not follow His rules, you will be a bad child. His ways are greater than yours. Much like if children did not obey their parents, even though no human is perfect and some parents are bad, when you are a minor, they typically want you to behave so the law does not punish them. If you did not listen to your parents, chances are that you would be a bad kid and end up dead or in jail. TV news reports in Sacramento, California USA say they “Do not have time to reach the (Chrisitan) Bible.” Obviously, if people are too busy to listen to their Heavenly Father, they are actively engaged and evil and you should not be learning from them. The Fall is the state of existence in which the potentialities of finite essences are actualized, but the nonbeing of the essence takes its toll also, and the creature does not perfectly live up to its essence. It is always in some degree estranged from it and, consequently, from the ground of being. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
However, inevitability is not the same as necessity. Now, I ask you to consider, do people repeat themselves or does history? It depends on what you believe. However, many of these people may not have been reconstituted and may be new souls. Therefore, if history repeats itself, then be careful because humans could literally end up being slaves again and forced in the fields and whipped. The only way we can stop history from repeating itself is by adhering to the Gospel of God. If people continue to stray from the Lord, all that will exist is evil. Love will be replaced by material possessions and evil. Finitude is good, with God, but not perfect, and when it seeks to perfect itself by actualizing its potencies, it falls, because, after all, it is finite. That Christ is the answer to existential anguish, is a fundamental insight which Catholics have tended to neglect in a smug unconcern for those who have brought this anguish to the fore of modern thought. We should be grateful that we can learn something about Christ, that at least some aspects of Christology can be emphasized with the help of modern thinkers. Estrange, puzzled, frightened is the man of today. Theonomy means union with God, the ground of being. Finite beings can achieve it only by actualizing their essences in such a way that they are transparent to their ground. However, the universal fact of existence is estrangement, separation of beings from God, from themselves, and from one another. A new power, a New Being is needed to overcome estrangement, and in Jesus the Christ it has appeared. To whatever extent religion animates culture, this theonomous union is realized by the power of the New Being which grasps us in the ecstasy of faith. However, one of the potentialities of man is his drive toward community. We must now examine the church, the community of those who receive Jesus the Christ as the New Being. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Be sure to show love to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are understaffed and underfunded. Feel free to donate to their cause. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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The Mind-Shattering Horrors of Llanada Villa
The most merciful thing in the World, I think, is the ability of the human mind to partake in all the beautiful of the material World. We live in an infinity of reality that only the beholder can discern. If we choose to go far, we must learn to apricate our circumstances and work towards an enjoyable life. My home is a vast labyrinth, each mile straining in its own direction, and somedays piecing together the dissociated mysteries will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful curse therein, which shall either make one go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly catacombs into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Within these walls, there are strange survivals of apparitions that will freeze the blood. However, it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden aeons which chills me when I think of the madness that has been bestowed upon my bloodline. The grass and trees have assumed the fresh enamel of mediaeval May, and the turf is figured with little blossoms of azure and white and yellow, like an ornate broidery, and there is a pebbly stream that murmurs beside the way, and the voices of undines are parleying deliciously beneath its waters. The sun-lulled air is laden with wafture of youth and romance; and the longing that wells from the heart of Llanada Villa seems to mingle mystically with the balsams of the fruit orchards. Llanada Villa is like a high castle which holds dominion over a surrounding forest. However, once through the threshold, dreaded glimpses of truth, flash out from a hideous past. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Somewhere within my haunted mansion is a hidden room notorious for sorcery. Servants speak of phantoms, grisly tales; and there are stories of loup-garous and goblins, of fays and devils and vampires that have infested these very walls. However, to these tales, I give little heed, considering it improbable that such creatures would fare abroad in open daylight. Until one day, I was nearing the appointed parlor, which a turn of the path would soon reveal; and my pulses quickened and became tremulous. My thoughts were interrupted by a shrill scream that rose to an unendurable pitch of fear and horror, issuing from the corridors of stillness of the nearby rooms. Startled, I peered at the thick doors; and as the scream fell back to silence, I heard the sound of dull and hurrying footfalls, and a scuffling as of several bodies. Again the scream arose. It was plainly the voice of a woman in some distressful peril. In a small open space beyond the parlor, I saw a woman who was struggling with three ruffians of exceptionally brutal and evil aspect. Even in the haste and vehemence of the moment, I realized that I had never before seen such men or a woman. They could not have been my servant. The woman was clad in a gown of emerald green that matched her eyes; in her face was the pallor of dead things, together with a faery beauty; and her lips were dyed as with the scarlet of newly flowing blood. The men were dark as Moors, and their eyes were red slits of flame beneath oblique brows with animal-like bristles. There was something very peculiar in the shape of their feet. All of them seemingly had cloven hooves, but somehow I could not recall what sort of clothing they had worn. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The woman turned a beseeching gaze upon me as I peered through the door. The men, however, did not seem to heed my presence. Lifting my pistol, I fire with tremendous power at the head of the nearest one—a shot that should have leveled the fellow to Earth. However, the bullet fell to the ground as if forced by unresisting air, and I staggered and almost fell headlong in trying to recover my equilibrium. Dazed and uncomprehending, I saw the knot of struggling figures had vanished utterly. At least, the three men had vanished but from the middle of the parlor, the death-white features of the woman smiled upon me for a moment with faint, inscrutable guile ere. I understood now; and I shivered as I crossed myself. I had been deluded by phantoms or demons, doubtless for no good purpose; I had been the gull of a questionable enchantment. Plainly there was something after all in the legends I had heard, in the ill-renown of The Curse of the Winchester Rifle. I retraced my way down the hall I had been following. However, when I thought to reach again the spot from which I had heard that shrill unearthly scream, I saw that there was no longer path leading to that parlor; nor indeed was this a section of the mansion I recognized. The marble steps, coffered ceilings, the elevator paneled in mahogany like a plutocrat’s library, which carried me to the fourth floor vanished. In lieu of this elegant new addition to Llanada Villa there lay before me a tarn of hallways that were dark and dull as clotting blood, and the trail therein like the hair of suicides, and the skeletons of rotting corpses. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Now, beyond all question, I knew that I was the victim of an evil enchantment. In answering that beguileful cry for succor, I had exposed myself to the spell, had been lured within the circle of its power. I could not know the force of wizardly or demonry had willed to draw me thus; but I knew that my situation was fraught with supernatural menace. As I passed this scene of utter desolation and lifelessness, it seemed a place where cadavers might keep their tryst with demons. Nothing stirred, not even a hammer; and there was no whisper of a servant, no song of birds. I proceeded further and further into my mansion with a cautious eye, as the further I got, the more the scene changed. There were moving lights in the halls that vanished; there were drowned faces in the walls. The parquet floor was an obstacle course of French dollhouses and miniature Japanese castles. The draperies were green silk damask and blue velvet, the furniture Lousi XV gilded oak, the paintings signed by Renior, Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Monet. My many-turreted castle was ancienter than the World, it was older than light; it was coeval with fear and darkness; and horror dwelt upon it and crept unseen but palpable along its bastions. The 600-room mansion was a fairy-tale castle come to life, with secret entrances, mysterious sources of music, and treasure collected from all the World. My home was not so unusual during the day. On the top half, every inch was decorated with Parisian Beaux Arts ostentation, a profusion of lions, cherubs, and goddesses. Oh, but the architects were not done. Soaring above the mansion was an ornate domed tower reaching nine stories, so pleased with itself that it continued to an open cupola. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Although construction was continuous, there was often no sign of life about the castle; and no banners flew above its turrets or its donjon. However, spirits spoke loudly to warn me that there was a fountainhead of sorcery involved in the construction of my home. A growing panic would whisper in my brain, I seemed to hear the rustle of malignant plumes, the mutter of demonian threats and plottings. Amid my dismay and bewilderment, I thought of Annie and William and imagined that as long as I continued construction, that one day I would find them waiting for me in a parlor, library, kitchen, or hallway. Through my mansion throw which I lived was a maze of bafflement and eeriness. Sometimes I could swear I felt implacable arms that stoke to retard me; I could swear that I felt them twine about me with the strength and suppleness of living things. I fought them, insanely, desperately, and seemed to hear a crackling of infernal laughter in the walls as I fought. After years, with a leaden sinking of my heart, as into some ultimate slough of despair and terror, I resigned myself and made no further effort to escape. My very will was benumbed, was crushed down as by the incumbence of a superior volition that would no longer permit my puny recalcitrance. I was unable to resist when a strong hateful compulsion drew my footsteps along the margent of the halls down a new, never before seen room. Doors would open by themselves as if to receive an unexpected guest. But other than me, there was no sign of carpenter, architect, maid, butler, no farmer; and the walls of this great mansion were silent as those of a sepulcher. However, there were these apparent hieroglyphics and a figure of evidently pictorial intent, though its impressionistic execution forbade a very clear idea of its nature. It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. Behind the figure was a vague suggestion of a Cyclopean architectural background. At the opposite end of the parlor was a door which stood mysteriously open, revealing a dark hall. As I approached the doorway, I saw that a man was standing on the threshold; though a moment previous I could have sworn that it was untenanted by any visible form. I knew that any weapon was futile against this supernatural foe. The man was inordinately tall and cadaverous, and was dressed in black garments of a superannuate mode. His lips were strangely red amid his bluish beard and the mortuary whiteness of his face. They were like the lips of the woman who, with her assailants, had disappeared in a manner so dubious when I approached them. His eyes were pale and luminous as marsh-lights; and I shuddered at his gaze and at the cold, ironic smile of his scarlet lips that seemed to reserve a World of secrets all too dreadful and hideous to be disclosed. “I am Gilles Garnier,” the man announced. His tones were both unctuous and hollow, and served to increase the repugnance I felt. And when his lips parted, I had a glimpse of teeth that were unnaturally small and were pointed like the fangs of some fierce animal. Mr. Garnier was haunting my mind like the funereal accents of a knell; though I could not recall at that moment the macabre and spectral ides which the name tended to evoke. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
He turned abruptly, motioning me to follow him. I refused. There were sudden and furtive darkness had closed in upon Llanada Villa without moon or star. My mansion became airless and stifling like the gloom of a sepulcher that had been sealed for ages; and I was aware of the veritable oppression, a corporeal and psychic difficulty in breathing, as I moved from room to room. I flung open a heavy door of dark somber wood. Beyond, in what was the eating-room of this section of the mansions, several ghosts were seated about a long table by the light of cressets no less dreary and dismal than those in the hall. In the strange, uncertain glow, their faces were touched with a gloomy dubiety, with a lurid distortion; and it seemed to me that shadows hardly distinguishable from the figures were gathered around the board. I thought I should go mad with fear. Then sensation of being watched grew upon me until I sprang up and turned with my back to fire. Even then it was impossible for me to see much. I stood glancing from door to door, straining to listen over the thudding of my heart. My twin shadows swayed across the doorway of the study opposite, seeming to move independently. I thought of snuffing the candles; but then I would not be able to see the doors to the landing at all. I had learned that you could count second by your heartbeat. Mine was racing far faster than the measured ticking of a clock, but I began to count, anyway. Only I could keep it up; I would reach twenty or thirty, and be distracted by some phantom sound or movement, and start again. Thus I endured an indefinite interval, while the windows darkened further and further. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
I conjure thee, O Guland, in the name of Satan, in the name of Beelzebuth, in the name of Astaroth, and in the name of all other Spirits, to make haste and appear before me. Come, then in the name of Satan and in the names of all other demons. Come to me, I command thee, in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. Come without inflicting any harm upon me, without injury to my body or soul, without maltreating my books, or anything which I use. I command thee to appear without delay, or, that failing, to send me forthwith another Spirit having the same power as thou hast, who shall accomplish my commands and be submitted to my will, wanting which, he whom thou shalt send me, if indeed thou comest not thyself, shall in no wise depart, nor until he hath in all things fulfilled my desire. I offer my blood unto the Divs and Druj, whom are the essence of counter creation. I offer my life force unto the powers of eternal darkness within. May they devour and destroy the imposed shackles of divine light and stasis that I may become unlimitedly powerful. I salute and conjure you, O beautiful Moon, O beautiful Star, O bright light which I hold in my hand! By the air which I breathe, by the breath which is within me, by the Earth which I touch, I conjure you, and by all the names of the spirits who are princes residing in you; by the ineffable Name On, which hath created all; by thee, O Resplendent Angel Gabriel, together with the Prince Mercury, Michiael, and Melchidae! I conjure you again by all the divine Names of God, that you send down to obsess, torment, and harass the body, spirit, soul and five senses nature. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
For many years there has been talk of slamming doors, muffled voices and ghost walking the corridors of The Winchester Mystery House, which is over 140-years-old. Recall, the mansion started off as an eighteen-room farmhouse, which Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester purchased. A number of persons hired as night watchmen have quit after only one night on duty, complaining of door opening and closing and invisible footsteps following them on their rounds. In July 2008 a staff member working late thought he heard the sounds of a reception in progress on the first floor, but when he reached the foot of the stairs, he found the rotunda empty, and all noises suddenly ceased. The same tour guide recalled the library room on the third floor as being particularly creepy. Late one night as he approached the library door, he remembered a cold, dank air falling on his head and neck, and he decided his work could wait until the next day. Although the mansion has gone through a considerable number of watchmen who declined the privilege of working in the building after one night on the job, one stuck with the task for more than 13 years. He simply shrugged off the angry slamming of doors that sounded behind him and the thumping noises that followed him on his rounds. However, he admitted that he did not like to work in The Winchester Mystery House after dark. He always made it a point to be out of the building by quitting time, because when darkness fell, he could sense the whole atmosphere changing.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 