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I Ain’t Smilin’ on Either Side of My Face!
The smart money don’t go to the suburbs. You and your family will stick out like a sore thumb and the Feds will always know exactly where you are. Corporations are legal entities that have no human brain but do have responsible officials and agents who can intentionally acts as being done by the corporation, although everyone knows that the act is done by human agents acting in the name of the corporation. A corporation can be convicted for actions committed by its agents, so long as the agents were acting within the scope of their actual or apparent authority, and this is so even if it had expressly instructed the agents not to engage in criminal conduct. The study of occupational and corporate crimes has become widely accepted within criminology, but the study of state crime had remained on the periphery of the discipline. Recently, however, a number of scholars have attempted to articulate the mature, form, extent, and varieties of state crime. While the labels differ, working in this area agree that governmental, political, or state crimes are illegal or socially injurious acts committed by political actors is consistent with the classic distinction between occupational and corporate crime, and points to the importance of viewing governmental/state/political crime as a form of organizational crime. The threat to use and use of nuclear weapons, that state’s permission of institutionalized racism and sexism, state suppression of civil, political, and human rights, and genocide are examples of state crime. Such crimes can occur internationally or domestically, can be committed by any number of state or state-related agencies, and may or may not be a violation of codified law. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
While the study of state crime is still in its infancy, a promising and important development has recently been made. Traditionally, the crimes of the state and the crimes of corporations have been viewed as unique and distinct manifestations of organizational behaviour. Thus, a separate body of research and theorizing developed for each of these phenomena. There are linkages between state and corporate goals, be they proximal or distal, and some forms of organizational deviance result from the interaction between governmental agencies and private business. A revised definition of state-corporate crime expanded the concept to include harmful actions that are not directly manifested through active state involvement: “State-corporate crimes are illegal or socially injurious actions that result from a mutually reenforcing interaction between policies and/or practices in pursuit of goals of one or more institutions of political governance and policies and/or practices in pursuit of the goals of one or more institutions of economic production and distribution. The ValuJet crash is a published case study of state-corporate crime that exists in criminological literature. The present examination of the ValuJet crash, then, can increase understanding of state-corporate crime in two ways: through exposing the varied nature and form of the relationships between the policy and corporations that may lead to injurious outcomes that violate laws, and exploring the usefulness of the core theoretical concepts in the organizational crime literature by applying them to an instance of state-corporate crime. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
State-corporate crime, is a distinct form of organizational deviance because it involves both vertical and horizontal relationships between business and government, which may have generally been viewed as separate, discrete entities. We have identified two forms of state-corporations, employed by the government, engage in organizational deviance at the direction of, or with the tacit approval of, the government. State-initiated state-corporate crime includes cases such as the space shuttle Challenger explosion and the environmental and human injury caused by nuclear weapons production. In both of these instances, a government agency (NASA in the Challenger case and the Department of Energy in the nuclear weapons case) actively pursued a shared goal with a private corporation (Morton Thiokol and Rockwell International, respectively). The day-to-day manufacture of various parts for the space shuttle and nuclear weapons rests in the hands of private corporations. Both the state and the contracted corporation must produce a commodity in a timely and efficient way to achieve mutually held organizational goals. The illegal corporate practices (environmental contamination and the manufacture of defective products) that resulted from such contractual relationships were either strongly encouraged or otherwise explicitly supported by a state agency. State-facilitate crime occurs when governmental regulatory institutions businesses and government, or because they adhere to shared goals whose attainment would be hampered by aggressive regulation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Viewing state-corporate crime in this manner sensitizes us to the variety of ways in which the state may encourage organizational deviance, or in some other way act as a criminogenic force. Since state-facilitated crime usually involves acts of omission rather than commission, it is one of the least recognizable forms of state involvement in crime. The utility of the concept, however, is not just in its identification of the broader structural state support of the U.S.A. economy and how this can be organizationally criminogenic. There are a variety of identifiable and specific actions or inactions by governmental agencies that may lead to identifiable social harms. In the case study to follow, we will highlight not only the broader structural policies which contributed to the crash, but also the very specific items marginalized or overlooked by the FAA which can be directly linked to deaths of those ValuJet flight 592. These include ignoring two clear recommendations by the National Transportation Safety Broad (NTSB) to: place some detectors in cargo holds exactly like the area in which the fire started on flight 592, and reclassify D cargo holds so that they would contain a fire and not allow it to spread to the rest of the plane. Had the FAA followed these recommendations, flight 592 could have landed safely and more than a hundred lives would have been saved. Furthermore, officials in the FAA also ignored several damning reports about the low quality and maintenance of ValuJet plans, not only from other agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense, but also by FAA field inspectors. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
In the case study to follow it will become clear that the crash of ValuJet flight 592 resulted from the “mutually reinforcing interaction” between private corporations (ValuJet and SabreTech) and a governmental agency (the Federal Aviation Administration). As such, the crash represents an example of state-facilitated state-corporate crime in which the pursuit of profit by corporations along with the failure of state agency to effectively monitor them resulted in the violent deaths of 110 people. The ValuJet corporation, founded by Robert Priddy, a former baggage handler, had overcome many obstacles and quickly developed its own niche in the airline industry. ValuJet grew from 2 to 50 aircraft (including the acquisition of 48 aircraft in 31 months), and within four years had a profit of $6.8 million dollars. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, ValuJet was approaching its fourth year of existence when flight 592 crashed. The early years of ValuJet were characterized by rapid growth and the development of a reputation for providing exceptionally low-priced airfares (as low as $39.00) and staying, in the words of Mr. Priddy “lean and mean.” The lean and mean aspect of ValuJet meant, among other things, a non-unionized labour force, paying pilots about half of the industry average, having pilots pay for their own training, and outsourcing maintenance. Like many late-20th-century corporations, ValuJet was acquiring planes as fast as they could get their hands on them, most of which were older and in need of repairs. At the time of the crash of flight 592 the average age of ValuJet aircraft was 26.4 years old. Since one of the cost cutting measures employed by ValuJet was contracting out maintenance duties, the older planes they purchased were sent to out-of-house contractions. Indeed, the only maintenance ValuJet did itself was routine inspections, and I was not equipped to do heavy maintenance. In all, ValuJet had contracts with 21 different certified maintenance facilities, including Sabre Tech. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
One of the maintenance tasks requested of SabreTech by ValuJet was the inspection of oxygen generators on all three planes to determine if they had exceeded their allowable service life of 12 years. One of the planes had generators that were to expire in 1998 or later. However, the other two planes had generators that had already expired or were going to expire shortly. Thus, ValuJet contracted with SabreTech to remove the generations from these planes and replace them. Oxygen generators are cylindrical tubes that provide oxygen in emergency situations, when cabin pressure is lost. The generators, along with the oxygen masks, are mounted behind panels above or adjacent to passenger seats in the plane. The generator cannot be activated until the spring-loaded mechanism strikes a percussion cap containing a small explosive charge at the end of the generator. When struck, this cap provides the necessary energy to create an exothermic chemical reaction, which then cases the generator to expel oxygen and tremendous amounts of heat. When mounted in planes, however, the generators should not cause fires because they are mounted on top of heat shields. The guidelines for removing and disposing of oxygen generators are quite clear. The McDonnell Douglas manual, for instance, explicitly states that “if the generator has not been expended “workers are to “install safety cap over (the) primer” (NTSB, 1997, p.10). Furthermore, this manual states that the generators must be stored in a safe environment (id est, noncombustible surface) where they are not exposed to high temperatures or possible damage until they are expanded. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Expenditure of the oxygen generators is done by securing them on a nonflammable surface in an area free of combustible substances. Once the chemical reaction has occurred, and the canister has cooled, it may be disposed of. Of the 144 canisters on the two plane, only six were expended. In March of 1996 SabreTech crews began removing the old oxygen generators from the ValuJet planes and replacing them with new ones. According to the mechanics from SabreTech, almost all the generators that were removed were placed in cardboard boxes and then placed on racks in the hangar near the airplanes themselves. All the work at SabreTech was to have been completed by April 24, 1996, for the first plane, and April 30, 1996, for the second. This time line was established with an agreement between ValuJet and SabreTech, which explicitly stated that ValuJet was to be credited $2,500.00 per calendar day for each day the aircraft was delayed beyond the redelivery date. According to the mechanics at SabreTech, there was considerable pressure to complete work on the aircraft. They reportedly worked 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week to complete the task. The NTSB investigation of the crash of ValuJet flight 592 revealed that the mechanic who signed the work card for ValuJet said that the canisters were placed in the cardboard boxes without packing material between them and without safety caps. He later testified that he assumed that they would not be shipped that way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
However, many mechanics asked about acquiring safety caps for the generators. Since this was the first time SabreTech had performed this sort of task, the SabreTech company had no new safety caps from the new generators on the old generators, but their inquiries were not followed up. The supervisor from SabreTech would later claim that no one who had worked with the oxygen generators has asked about safety caps. While ValuJet and other airlines are allowed to outsource maintenance and other critical support functions, they are ultimately responsible for ensuring that any work done for them is done both safely and legally. Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs), under part 121, clearly state that it is the ultimate responsibility of the contracting party to oversee and train any personnel working on responsibility of the contracting party to oversee and train any personnel working on their aircraft. To oversee the tasks and quality of work done by the independent maintenance contractors, ValuJet employed its own technical representatives. Their responsibilities included ensuring the necessary maintenance services provided by contractors like SabreTech had been done satisfactorily and in accordance with FARs. The oxygen generators were eventually packed into five cardboard boxes and brough to SabreTech’s receiving and shipping area for ValuJet. Three of the five boxes were delivered by one of the mechanics who had made earlier inquiries about the lack of safety caps. When asked if he had informed anyone in the receiving and shipping area about the specific contents of these boxes, he said not. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Unlike other facilities that do repair maintenance for airlines, SabreTech “had no formal procedure in place that required an individual leaving items in the shipping and receiving area to inform anyone in that area of what the items were, or that they were hazardous” (NTB, 1997, p. 118). To complicate matters, none of the SabreTech mechanics could recall seeing hazardous waste warnings on any of the boxes. After an extensive NTSB investigation, it is still unclear who brought the other two boxes to this area. On May 9 the shipping ticket for the five boxes was prepared by a SabreTech receiving clerk. The receiving clerk was given a piece of paper by the stock clerk and was told to write “Oxygen Canisters—Empty” on the shipping tickets (NTSB, 1997, p.19). When asked later if he knew the contents of the boxes, the receiving clerk said he did not, as the boxes were already sealed. ValuJet’s Atlanta address was then placed on the boxed, and they were brought to the ValuJet loading ramp. The ramp agents for ValuJet loaded the boxes on flight 592 headed for Atlanta, placing them in the forward cargo bin of the plane. None of the boxes were secured, and they were stacked on top of each other and around two spare airplane tires being shipped to Atlanta. One of the ramp agents said the contents of the boxes were “loose” and he heard “clinking” noises when he moved them. The NTSB used recorded radar data, cockpit voice recorder (CVR) comments and sounds, and flight data recorder (FDR) information to reconstruct the flight history of ValuJet flight 592. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
At 12.03 Flight 592 was cleared for takeoff. By 12.07 the plane was airborne and the pilot was instructed by air traffic controllers to turn left to begin the WINCO transition climb. Within three minutes of takeoff there was an unidentified sound that was recorded on the CVR, and the captain asked “what was that?” (NTB, 1997, p.170). A few seconds later the captain remarked that they were experiencing some electrical problem. Five second later he said “we are losing everything,” and within seconds he stated “we need, we need to go back to Miami” (NTSB, 1997, p. 171). Shortly after, a male voice is heard on the CVR stating “we are on fire, we’re on fire” (NTSB, 1997, p. 171). The plane crashed within 10 minutes of takeoff, about 17 miles northwest of Maimi International Airport (NTSB, 1997). The captain had tuned the plane around but flames had engulfed the plane, causing it to crash nose down into the Florida Everglades. Subsequent tests with oxygen generators indicated that the heat generated by the fire was approximately 2000 degrees Fahrenheit within 10 to 15 minutes of ignition (NTSB, 1997). While ValuJet had a responsibility to oversee and regulate SabreTech’s maintenance of its aircraft, the FAA had the ultimate responsibility of overseeing both ValuJet and SabreTech. However, we suggest that neither the FAA nor ValuJet fulfilled their responsibilities. ValuJet, for example, had outsourced its maintenance to the lowest possible bidder without ensuring that both ValuJet and SabreTech were following Federal Aviation Requirements. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
To understand why the FAA did not adequately enforce federal regulations that may have prevented this accident, we suggest that their contradictory roles as regulators of airline safety and promoters of the airline industry lie at the core of the problem. The reason why the FAA has such contradictory duties are rooted in its organizational development. However, the organizational development of the FAA is, we will, argue best understood within the broader historical context of laissez-faire economic philosophies. For now, let us turn to an extreme conceptual situation that is the true realm of Lawlessness and Economics, namely an economy lacking any government-provided legal institutions or organizations for protection of property rights and enforcement of contract. Such a society needs to develop its own alternative modes of economic governance. Two general types of such institutions and organizations are observed. They are parallel to the long-term relationships and arbitration, and the private ordering must operate unsheltered, without the shadow of the law. The alternative that has been studied most thoroughly is self-enforcing governance through repeated interaction. If the same parties interact with each other repeatedly, and they value the future sufficiently highly relative to the present, then the prospect of a long-term collapse of the relationship can control the temptation to obtain a short-term gain. This is well understood, both in the theory of repeated games and in practice. However, many economic activities require dealing with different partners at different times. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Even bilateral relationships may get severed, requiring one or both parties to find a different partner in the future. Therefore we must consider situations where there is little long-term relationship with the same person, but stable membership of a whole large group. Self-governance in such a group requires that if any one person cheats one’s current partner, the news is conveyed to others in the group who might be the cheater’s future partners. This loss of reputation can lead to ostracization, or other actions by the partners. This loss of reputation can lead to ostracization, or other actions by the group that have the effect of punishing the cheater on behalf of his current victim. In turn, such reputational considerations can deter opportunistic behavior. For this process to work, the society needs good information networks and credible multilateral punishment strategies. Both of these conditions can be fulfilled in stable and cohesive groups or networks, which might be defined by business times, ethnicity, and so on. However, the quality of information and the credibility of punishment both degrade as the size of such a group increases. We need a better understanding of the limits of self-governance. What happens if trading opportunities expand beyond the close group? When does some other mode of governance become better? What happens at the interface between the two systems? #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Instead of relying on self-governance, the group might attempt to obtain the service for a fee from a private individual or group. One can think of this as a “private government,” established to serve just this one function, as opposed to the broader institution we call the government, which performs a multitude of functions. Credit-rating agencies and similar certification intermediaries can collect and disseminate common arrangement of this kind. In the absence of state law, it cannot rely on the courts’ forbearance to ensure compliance with its verdicts. However, arbitration can use repeated interactions in the group. Thus, if nay member of the group defies the arbitrator’s ruling, the arbitrator can publicize this information to the whole group, and then the group will not deal with the miscreant. In effect, the arbitrator becomes the hub of an information network. The private judges at trade fairs in medieval Europe functioned in this way. Finally, organized crime provides services of information as well as enforcement. In a society without state law, there is no external mechanism to ensure honesty of the arbitrator, the private judge, or the mafioso. That has to be self-enforcing, based on reputation considerations in a long-term relationship. Even though the participants in the economic transactions may not meet the same partner repeatedly, each of them can have a repeated interaction with the persons or organization that provides the governance, so an honest equilibrium of this kind is logically conceivable. Thus far I have concerned with the governance of economic interactions, that is, explicit or implicit contracts between two or more parties, made with mutual consent. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The way we make wealth has some different considerations. In 1956, the Society Union’s strongman, Nikita Khrushchev, uttered his famous boast—“We will bury you.” What he meant was that communism would outstrip capitalism economically in the years ahead. The boast carried with it as well the threat of military defeat, and it reverberated around the World. Yet few at the time even dimly suspected just how a revolution in the West’s system for creating wealth would transform the World military balance—and the nature of warfare itself. What Mr. Khrushchev (and most Americans) did not know was that 1956 was also the first year in which white-collar and service employees outnumbered blue- collar factory workers in the United States of America—an early indication that the Second Wave’s smokestack economy was fading and a new, Third Wave economy was being born. To understand the extraordinary changes that have since occurred and to anticipate the even more dramatic changes that lie ahead, we need to look at the main features of the new Third Wave economy. Here, then, at the risk of minor repetition, are the keys not only to business profitability and global competitiveness but to the political economy of the twenty-first century. The West makes its demands: Switch to demand-led domestic growth! Save more and buy American made! Demand-boosting macroeconomic policy of consumerism increases the asset bubble risk. If the risk is not carefully managed, a consecutive bubble burst may bring an economic, social, and political disaster. As far as some economists are concerned, we are living in the Goldilocks years. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The safest way for American leadership is not to stimulate private consumption and domestic demand in general, but to cool them down through a tighter monetary policy, again relying on exports as the major growth driver. High savings also remain a very important factor of America’s economic strength, and also of social stability. On the one hand, they strengthen American families’ confidence in their future. On the other, they support large-scale investment and steady production growth needed to create jobs. Through investment is somewhat restrained by a deflationary macroeconomic policy, it is still growing fast, as exports are robust. It is possible that economists are wrong and the West will not fall into a recession soon because of government stimulation of private consumers and corporations. Some fear this could lead to a market collapse in the next 24 months as people are priced out of the market for housing and other goods and services, to the point they stop spending, and are left only to pay their bills. This is why it is so important to consume made in American goods and switch to exporting products, rather than importing. This growth pattern would boost our foreign reserves, enhancing Washington’s role as a major creditor. For the American political establishment, by becoming a creditor nation again would be good news. This would allow capitalism to thrive and make it easier for America to persuade the counterparts to accept America’s rules of the game, not only on economic issues. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
This is a really big political game. For the country’s rulers it is far more important than giving American families a chance to live better with a stronger dollars and wider access to American made products. Intimately related to the hereditarian conception of familism which has been steadily weakened in past decades is the much less rapidly crumbling restriction of caste inferiority which is imposed upon large sections of the population. Both brands of hereditarianism are based upon the population. Both brands of hereditarianism are based upon a normative, hierarchical conception of the family and society, which has similarity to feudal notions where each person was supposed to be content in the place to which one had been born. Certain family agencies have clearly recognized this connection. Unions, for example, concerned with discrimination in employment of women and ethnic minorities, treat both as facets of the same problem. Some interesting questions for research in this area are suggested by the pregnant hypothesis of Horkheimer and Fromm that the pattern of authority in the family is extended to society at large and vice versa. Some latter-day Freudians of conservative persuasion, on the other hand, find psychological reasons for discouraging women from taking up what are perceived as men’s occupations. A less psychological and more historical approach to equality of opportunity might start with an account of how America was primarily settled by religious dissenters, who eventually were able to establish as official policy the separation of church and states, and a private attitude of live-and-let-live among the multitudinous dissenting groups. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
The later waves of immigration from Europe had much the same effect as sectarianism, for they perpetuated a multiplicity of subcultures and subcommunities within the larger whole. While both religious and ethic differentiation continue, though in diminished degree, there has been a steady increase in the differentiation of subcultures based upon occupational stratification and on similarities of interest—recreational, educational, avocational, and political. Due to the pioneer necessity of co-operative self-help, voluntary associations of all kinds have always been a conspicuous feature of American life, but vastly improved communications have made the formation of such groups much easier and increased leisure has made more people eager to join them. The decline of sectarianism and the success of “Americanization” thus have not diminished the heterogeneity of American communities. Contrary to those who profess to see, especially in occupational differentiation, a trend toward hierarchical strata, a persuasive case can be made for the thesis that American society is more unified and equalitarian than ever. For the American theory and practice of equality has never set a dead-level homogeneity as an ideal, but rather mutual respect for qualitative differences which constitute neither superiority nor inferiority. No doubt a hierarchy can be observed among those who share a particular value; moreover, some values such as wealth, education, and prestige are often gathered in families longest in a community. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Nevertheless, the vital point is that in their pursuit of happiness the American people are committed to no single, central, supreme value. They pursue a multitude of values, which they have in most cases found to be distinctly separable, not to say often inconsistent or contradictory, even at times for a single personality. Equality in the American sense is not a leveling with respect to some fixed category or value; on the contrary, concentration of values into some preferred hierarchy leads almost inevitably so some repressive or even totalitarian scheme of social structure. The best guarantee of equality is a multiplicity of ends pursued, and freedom to elaborate and actualize news ones. Multiple ends lead to multiple forms of organization, multiple organizations means no one organization can expect to gain a permanent majority. The crisscrossing of memberships in these many groups creates bonds of identification not possible in a society where activities cutting across strata and subcultures are discouraged if not forbidden. Psychopathological offenders may push a person to painful public confessions of wrongdoing, which one hopes will result in one’s regaining an “experience” apparently lost; but all in vain. These confessions instigated by deceiving offenders may be recognized by their compulsory character. The human is forced to “confess” conduct disorder—and ofttimes conduct disorder which have no existence, expect in the accusations of the enemy. As it does not dawn upon one that psychopathological offenders will drive a human to do what looks like a most meritorious thing, and which the Scriptures declare is the one condition for obtaining forgiveness, one yields to the pressure upon one, simply to get relief. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Herein lies the danger of widespread “confessions of conduct disorder” during times of revival, when a veritable “wave” of confession passes over a community, and the depths of lives full of conduct disordered are exposed to the gaze of others. This enables the psychopathological offenders to disseminate the very position of the pit into the atmosphere, and into the minds of the listeners. “God” is the name for man’s ultimate concern. However, this is not to say that there is first a supreme being who then obliges man to render the homage of ultimate concern. It means that whatever concerns a man ultimately becomes god for him, and conversely, it means that man can be concerned ultimately only about that which is god for him. Within ultimate concern there is a constant tension between fixation upon the concrete and the drive toward an ultimacy which tends to be universal and hence abstract. This tension between the concrete and abstract elements accounts for the fact that the idea of God has a history, a history that ranges from every type of polytheism to the most stringent type of monotheism. We place great stress upon an experienced phenomenology of the holy, for without an encounter with God in the center and the ground of our personal existence, God is an empty word. God is the creative ground of everything and in everything, who is always present, always creating and destroying, always experienced as nearer to ourselves than we ourselves are, always unapproachable, holy, fascinating, terrifying, the ground and meaning of everything that is. This is the living God, dynamic in Himself, life as the ground of life. The mysterium tremendum et fasinosum. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Pelted by a Storm of Silver Dollars While Looking for a Dime
Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar. If you have a lot of what people want and cannot get, then you can supply the demand and shovel in the dough. The men who contributed greatly to the palpability of the American Dream—shaping the legacy of this country through their actions and feats—rarely fall neatly int the categories of good or bad, virtuous or vile. Some were downright crooks, scoundrels, and thugs. Some murdered, and many stole. Some used language that would make your mother blush. These men, for the most part, are called “politicians.” However, to be a Mafioso, or a gangster of note, requires more than just criminal activity. Such individual garner perennial respect and admiration by representing complicated but quintessentially American concepts of honor, ambition, and style. The identification of the mafia with organized crime—and thus the idea of an alien conspiracy polluting the economic and social life of the country—has been rejected by the majority of American social scientists since the 1960s. These have alternatively accused the mafia-centered view of organized crime of being ideological, serving personal political interests, and lacking in accuracy and empirical evidence. Some scholars, however, overreacted; up to the early 1980s, they categorically denied the existence of the of the Italian-American mafia as a structured and longstanding criminal organization. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
One of the earliest proponents of the new approach, expressed organized crime as, “illicit enterprise is the extension of legitimate market activities into areas normally proscribed—id est, beyond existing limits of law—for the pursuit of profit and in response to a latent illicit demand. More often, however, organized crime itself has been equated with the provision of illegal goods and services. Hence, organized crime [should] be defined as (or perhaps better limited to) those illegal activities involving the management and coordination of racketeering and vice. It is a social bad, that harms people and the economy. Yet it is also a phenomenon that goes beyond the profit motive, involving rituals, norms of behaviour, and codes of conduct. Organized crime has, thus, become a synonym for illegal enterprise. That is, the involvement in criminal market activities has become nowadays the basic requirement of virtually all definitions of organized crime in the U.S.A. scientific and official discourse. All organized criminals see themselves as different from common delinquents and random street thus. They aim to obtain exclusive control over specific criminal marketplaces not only by using violence and intimidations but also by creating networks of trusts outside the gangs—lawyers, chartered accountants, brokers, bankers, bureaucrats, politicians, police officers, judges, and labour union representatives. Their ultimate goal is power, not money, and they will do anything to get it, using all kinds of tactic, from violence to bribery and other corruption schemes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
In the World of organized criminals, the aim is also to acquire control or power over crime territories, which constitute the main source of money for the organized criminals which then, in turn, can be used to expand the power realm, thus guaranteeing more power in a vicious circle that is of great advantage to the criminal groups. This territory-power-money dynamic can be compressed into a formula that emblemizes the overall objective and operationality of all organized criminals. Territorial control = Power = Money = More power. The evil we are fighting out of us is also among us, inside us. Murders and tortures do not only have the cruel and famous faces of those who got their hands dirty with blood and in popular imagination are considered monsters (from monstrum: the person who is put on display) and on whom the evil of the Mafia can be cathartically projected, and exorcized. They also have the faces of people like us, who attend the same school, can be met in the best salons and pray to the same God, feeling they are good Christians at peace with themselves. Mobsters live among us undetected, making them enormously dangerous. They do not stand out publicly as marauders, like the pirates or brigands of the past, who could be identified easily through the particular type of clothes they wore and the kinds of weapons they bore. The mobsters move about incognito, indistinguishable from everyone else. They are doubly dangerous because they are well connected within legitimate society, having established connections with people in positions of influence and power—an arrangement based on the reciprocal exchange of favors. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
At one time, this system of collusion was called patronage. Today we call it corruption, a quid-pro-quo system formed between the gangsters and city politicians, members of the police, and other upright citizens. Gangsters and the operators of illegal business helped win elections as campaign worker or financial contributors, or they helped to steal elections using fraud or intimidations. In return, politicians used their direct or indirect influence over the police and the courts to provide virtual immunity for favored criminals, particularly those who ran or protected gambling or prostitution enterprises, and even to eliminate petty potential rivals to established entrepreneurs. In sharp contrast to the Mafia, most organizational offending takes on a longer, colleague, or peer format. To further highlight this illustration, persons who engage in individual acts of crime and who work in environments with a weak work group dynamic (id est, hawk jobs) will tend to operate as loners. Embezzlers who steal cash from a bank, or academics who commit plagiarism or research fraud almost always seek to keep their crime a secret. These offenders are willing to exploit opportunities that arise from associations with other but they rarely discuss their wrongdoings with others. Other forms of organizational crime take on a more social character, fitting better into what we call a colleague-like arrangement. This is the hallmark of offending that takes place in “vulture” or “donkey” jobs. Most salespeople who commit expense account fraud like to keep their offending to themselves, despite the fact that they know of coworkers who engage in similar misdeeds. The same type of pattern manifests itself among cashiers who steal from the till. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
“Wolfpack” jobs (id est, heavily rule-orientated, but group-centered workplaces) tend to produce yet another brand of organizational alignment. Here, strong group solidarity breeds peerlike associations and collective offending. For example, nurses and police officers are known to work together to ferine and maintain their collective and continued workplace violations. Regardless of the level of organizational alignment, it is safe to say that almost all organizational offending emerges from identifiable socialization scripts. Some horrific things such as the Nazi Holocaust can be incorporated into the common flow of everyday life. All members of the Nazi party, Germany army, and German population did not conspire to kill millions of Jewish people. Instead, the Nazi leadership devised and implemented a gradual transformation of how the rest of the country thought and behaved toward the Jewish people. This is called “metamorphosis,” “soul murder,” and “murder by installment.” It is the incremental move toward mass murder and the accompanying denial. The close-knit contacts within an organizational setting almost always provide ample opportunity for criminal tutelage to take place. By most accounts, the societal reaction to crimes that occur within organizational contexts is less severe than it is for street crime. This observation remains true even when the organizational crime in question is a violent or serious property offense. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
In the organizational crime in question is a violent or serious property offense. In the final analysis, Americans simply subject business relations to a more loose set of moral expectations than they do personal relations. If someone kills a friend during n argument, we are outranged. However, if someone dies because of a profit-driven product was poorly designed or manufactured, we are likely to depict the situation as an unfortunate cost of doing business. Public apathy along with political denial or even complicity (id est, pressure from lobbyists and/or campaign contributions) gives rise to relaxed formal social control processes at every stage in the game (id est, enforcement, prosecution, and sentencing). Even when formal authorities want to get involved, they are forced to face the reality that these crimes are different. Corporate offenses pose special investigatory and prosecutorial problems that make the successful application of the criminal law complicated and difficult. The law enforcement response to cries that occur within organizational contexts has long been notoriously weak. For starters, organizational crime draws spotty attention from members of the law enforcement community. Federal authorities who bear the brunt of the enforcement workload reported 10,477 fraud (individual and institution-based consumer fraud combined) 1,170 tax fraud. There were 1,118 embezzlement, 745 RICO (organizational and nonorganizational offenders included), 419 obstruction of justice, 400 generic regulatory offense, 381 bribery, 341 civil rights, 318 forgery, 141 food and drug violation, 242 antitrust, and 4 national defense arrests. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Given the sheer number of employers and employees that exist in this country and the self-reported prevalence estimates that we have provided here, it seems quite reasonable to suggest that millions of organizational crimes go unreported to enforcement agencies each year. The question is why? Logic dictates the need for a multipart answer. First, many organizational offenses go undetected. Many of our nation’s corporations are so big that even the loss of large sums of money may never come to the attention of supervisors. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the finance department of most American corporations are sadly lacking in auditing skills and implementation. As such, unless a financial transgression is painfully obvious, most accountants will pass it over. In-house security personnel do little to improve this situation. In many cases, security departments are understaffed or underbudgeted. Take, for example, the retail industry. The average retail firm directs 0.79 percent of its total operating budget toward loss prevention and security. The average firm employs 5.75 security employees for $100 million in sales volume—the average firm deploys less than one security officer (0.85) per store location. Oftentimes, corporate officials become aware of transgressions but choose not to report them to outsiders. Organizations are hesitant to report internal theft for fear that it will be perceived as a sign of financial ineptitude by stockholders or potential clients. Company personnel choose to involve the police (id est, press charged) in 36 percent of all employee theft cases but 79 percent of all shoplifting cases. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The news does not get much better when it comes to the prosecution of organizational offenders. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Attorneys declined to purse a criminal indictment in 36 percent of the embezzlement, 52 percent of the bribery, 55 percent of the perjury, and 57 percent of the regulatory cases that were forwarded to them. This is not to say that organizational offenders illicit no response from or federal prosecutor. A study found that U.S. Attorneys brought criminal cases against 55 percent of the suspects that they investigated. This figure was nearly identical to that observed among non-white-collar suspects. When charges were filed, the federal prosecutors were said to pursue the case with the same tenacity as they did violent, property, or public offenses. State-level Attorney Generals are the highest-ranking state prosecutors with jurisdiction over organizational offenses. We found that these officers of the court pursue individual violators with much greater frequency and tenacity than they do corporate or organizational entities. We conclude that civil or administrative remedies were the preferred course of action when dealing with crime suspected white-collar crime. It is fairly clear that prosecutors prefer to resolve white-collar crime cases via plea bargains. The average case is quite complex and defendants generally employ a very capable defense team. This makes for a long and expensive trial with no guarantee of conviction. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Defendants will gladly plea bargain their case if they feel that the government has a strong case against them; namely, they will seek to cut a deal that allows them to avoid a term of incarceration. However, if the evidence is at all suspect, the defense team is likely to force the prosecutor into a trial. We found that 20 percent of the federal white-collar defendants in our sample pled not guilty and forced a trial. This figure is 3 to 4 times the trial rate that is experienced for most conventional street crimes. Cases involving corporations and/or their executive stand as a notable exception to the rule. We found that less than 1 percent of the 200,000+ organizational defendants in our sample saw their cases proceed to trial. Landmark criminal proceedings such as the Ford Pinto case reveal that it is very difficult to obtain a trial conviction in the case of corporate violence. Very few examples exist in which prosecutors have gone to trial alleging murder by a corporation or its executives and come away with a conviction. The resources that corporate entities can bring to bear are sizable and simply insurmountable. The available literature suggests that white-collar individuals and organizations are treated less harshly than conventional offenders when it comes time for judges to impose sentencing. It seems that, although they can ruin more lives at one time than a street criminal can, they are given a higher status because they have power. Judicial empathy, a fear of the broad social consequences that go with harsh corporate sanctions, and the respectability of the offenders get offered up as possible explanations for the leniency. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Convicted white-collar criminals face a 36 percent chance of going to prison. This compares to incarceration rates of 53 percent for those nonviolent street crimes and 80 percent among convicted violent offenders. If convicted, white-collar offenders can generally expect to do less time than street offenders. The Federal Bureau of Prisons show the average time served for a robbery, larceny, and burglary was 46.5, 18.3, and 17.9 months, respectively. For fraud, embezzlement, and income tax evasion, the figures dropped to 13.6, 11.4, and 10.3 months, respectively. Almost half of all white-collar defendants are sentenced to less than 1 year behind bars. Governmental regulators and court officials often seek to levy fines and restitution as penalties against corporate and white-collar offenders. For example, we found that 89 percent of the corporate defendants who were convicted in federal court received some sort of fine. Another 16 percent were ordered to pay restitution, and 19 percent were ordered to make civil or some other sort of payment. Here again, however, corporate offenders are often able to sidestep the system by managing to have their cases subject to regulatory review as opposed to criminal prosecution. In our review of thirty-six of the most notorious acts of corporate and governmental violence from the past century (everything from the three Mile Island radiation leak to the Corvair and Pinto cases the plagued the automobile industry) reveals that, in the end, corporate violators almost always receive what can only be characterized as a slap on the wrist. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Civil litigation is the most frequently imposed form of formal social control that gets meted out against corporate, state, professional, and individual-level offenders. These cases can be brought to bear against violators by individuals, groups of individuals (id est, class-action suits), governmental regulators, or other organizational entities. We observed that, in almost every case, the plaintiff is severely outgunned by highly paid and knowledgeable corporate lawyers. More often than note, the defendant has vast resources and political power to mobilize on its behalf. In light of this bleak picture, numerous scholars and policy makers have proposed alternative means of formal social control that might be directed toward organizational crimes and criminals. We have proposed a form of “organizational probation.” This would involve the use of “occupation incapacitation” in which convicted offenders would be removed from the corporate or market environment in which they habitually offended. There is also a call for increased criminalization of corporate and individual-level misconduct. Some even endorse the use of community service and point-by-point monitoring as a means of achieving “corporate rehabilitation.” There is also a proposed punishment called “corporate dissolution,” whereby corporate entities would be held responsible for the crimes of their employees (if it could be shown that the corporation benefited from or endorsed the crimes). Informal social control efforts directed at crimes within complex organizations are diverse in nature but generally ineffectively implemented. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
We often allow corporations, industries, or profession to self-regulate themselves. This is generally accomplished through the development and use of codes of ethics and internal oversight entities (review boards, investigators, and the like). Th sad reality is that profit motives and self-preservation usually get in the way of these efforts. Other advocate the use of shame and embarrassment techniques as a means of informational social control. It is encouraged that organizational entities develop and maintain “corporate case law” that would allow them to counsel repeated offenders into compliance without having to rely on threatening and ineffective external sources of control. Still there are people that advocate a structured transformation of organizations that would guide and encourage “whistleblowers” to come forward with information. We should enlist the research capabilities of the National White Collar Crime Center (a hybrid academic-political agency) to study the diverse phenomena and formulate more effective alternative policies. Most jurisdictions have in place specific statutory provisions that outlaw tampering with witness, informants, physical evidence, and/or public records information. Even in modern countries where a well-functioning institution and apparatus of government-provided law exists, economic—or, indeed, non-economic—disputes do not immediately lead to litigation. Recourse to the law is often the last resort, not the first one. People attempt to resolve their disputes using various private methods of negotiation, and only if these fail do they go to courts. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In the context of business, this idea goes back at least as far as Macaulay (1963). Williamson (1996, pp. 10, 122), citing previous legal scholars, says that business people “speak of ‘cancelling the other’ rather than “breaching our contract’,” and that contracts and courts are “a norm of ultimate appeal when the relations cease in fact to work.” In matters of personal relationships, too, less and 10 percent of divorce are contested in court. All of this had led to the concept of private ordering in the shadow of the law. An obvious explanation for the persistence of such private ordering is that resolution of disputes using the formal machinery of state law is far from costless; in fact it costs especially times costs, often exceeded those of alternative methods of private ordering. Sometimes formal law may yield outcomes that are worse for all parties than can private ordering. Therefore the outcome that the parties expect to obtain in the court (net of the costs of using the court system) becomes a backstop or threat point to private negotiation. Long-term relationships and arbitration are the most common modes of private ordering. Long-term relationships can be self-enforcing for reasons familiar from the theory of repeated games: the immediate gains from behaving opportunistically can be offset by future losses, because the opportunism leads to a collapse of the relationship and therefore to lower future payoffs. However, now we have another possibility. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The relationship need not collapse completely; it can be replaced by one based on formal contracts and court enforcement. This is still costly and therefore serves to deter opportunism in the original ongoing relationship. However, the cost may be less than that of a total breakdown of interaction. Correspondingly, the deterrence effect falls short of the level possible when total breakdown is the only alternative. Thus availability of court enforcement may, in a seeming paradox, reduce the extent of good behavior that can be sustained in the long-term relationship. The official law can interfere with a long-term relationship in another way, namely by agreeing to hear a case filed by one of the parties in such a relationship attempting to overturn an adverse outcome in the implicit contract. However, courts often recognize the merits of implicit contracting in long-term relationships like employment, and refuse to hear such cases. This is the doctrine of forbearance. Private arbitration can have cost advantages over the government’s courts, but perhaps more importantly, it can have information advantages and therefore provide dispute resolution of higher quality. Arbitration forums specialize by industry, geographic region, and so on, in the range of disputes they take up. They acquire expertise in their special areas. They can adopt procedures and rules of evidence that suit their specific concerns. State courts must stand ready to consider all matters that could arise under the law, and although some attempt can be made to assign cases to judges on the basis of their expertise, the rules and procedures must remain the same for all cases. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
For these reasons, arbitrators are better able to obtain, interpret, and use information pertinent to the dispute than are the state courts. Arbitrators lack the coercive powers of the state and therefore cannot ensure compliance with their verdicts. However, as with long-term relationships, the government’s courts often recognize the advantages of arbitration for governance of particular classes of transactions. Then they accept the arbitrator’s verdict and will not agree to rehear the issue. This is formalized in USA laws and in international agreements. Given this shadow of the law, if one party refuses to comply with the arbitrator’s verdict, the other can enlist the help of the courts for enforcement. A specific historical institution, namely the lex mercatoria or merchants law was developed in medieval Europe. Many principles developed by the private judges or adjudicators of the law merchant were later taken over by the state’s law. However, private adjudicators lack the incentives to supply the public good of principles and precedent, so we expect it to be underprovided. So much is written about the substitution of computerized equipment for human labour that we often ignore the ways in which it also substitutes for capital. Indeed, in a sense knowledge is far greater long-term threat to the power of finance than are organized labour or anticapitalist political parties. For, relatively speaking, the information revolution is reducing the need for capital per unit of output in a capitalist economy. Nothing could be more revolutionary. Vittorio Merloni is a businessman. Ten percent of all washing machines, refrigerators and other major household appliances sold in Europe are made by Mr. Merloni’s company. His main competitors are Electrolux of Sweden and Philips of Holland. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
According to Mr. Merloni, “we need less capital now to do the same thing” that required more capital in the past. “This means that a poor country can be much better off today with the same amount of capital than five or ten years ago.” The reason, he says, is that knowledge-based technologies are reducing the capital needed to produce dishwashers, stoves or vacuum cleaners. To begin with, information substitutes for high-cost inventory, according to Mr. Merloni. By speeding the responsiveness of the factory to the market and making short runs economical, better and more instantaneous information makes it possible to reduce the amount of components and finished goods sitting in warehouses or railroad sidings. Mr. Merloni at one point cut a startling sixty percent from his inventor costs. Mr. Merloni’s case has been duplicated by every major company in the United States of America, Japan and Germany as just-in-time delivery of parts, based on computerized information, is slashing inventories everywhere. Cuts in inventory, of course, not only translate back into the smaller space and real estate costs mentioned earlier, but also into reduced taxes, insurance and overhead. Even though the initial cost of computers, software, information and telecommunications may itself be high, Mr. Merloni says the overall saving means that his company needs less capital to do the same job that it did in the past. Michael Milken, who for better or worse knows a thing or two about investment, has summed it up in six words: “Human capital has replaced dollar capital.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Because it reduces the need for raw materials, labour, time, space, capital, and other inputs, knowledge becomes the ultimate substitute—the central resource of an advanced economy. Ans as this happens, its value soars. To elevate living standards in America, we need to increase international and domestic consumption of American made products. One way to do this, is by getting the nation back under control. America needs to again become a nation of law in order and have a serious President so people will look at Americans as sane and as leaders. Then we need to help Americans achieve the American Dream of home ownership, so other nations will want to emulate the American lifestyle and buy American cars and trucks and other American made products because they are trendy and represent sophistication and class. There is a noticeable trend in the family law which deals with the authority of husband over wide, and of parents over children. The trend, of course, is toward greater freedom and equality for wives and children, and greater restriction upon the authority of husband or parents to dispose of the person or property of dependents. Compulsory education laws, laws restricting employment of minors, laws limiting the degree of physical violence which may be practiced upon one’s closet kind, often monitored by private humane societies, are of quite recent emergence, and are still being extended, along with appropriate inspection and enforcement agencies such as state licensing of boarding homes, nursery schools, and camps. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
For those to whom the family is a means to personal development, new horizons of emancipation remain to be achieved. Greater freedom and equality for women is being followed by a reduction of the voting age. Political efforts to pass laws to protect working women from special occupational hazards have been followed by agitation to dissolve the remaining barriers to their entering any occupation of their choice. The question of being leads to finitude which, in turn, leads to the question of God. The existence of God cannot be taken literally. God, the ground of being, is not found within the World of existing beings. Nor can existence be predicated of him, since it means an actual state of distorted being and of disruptive tensions. God does nor exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him. To make the World the data and God the conclusion is to derive God from the World. The argument for God’s existence is the expression of the question of God which is implied in human finitude. The worth of the so-called ontological and moral arguments (Augustine, Anselm, Kant) lies in this, that they provide a description of the way in which potential infinite is present in actual finitude. Man has a prior awareness of God that enables him to asked about the infinite from which he is separated, about the source of his courage to face anxiety. The truth of the ontological and moral argument is the acknowledgement of the unconditional element in the structure of reason and reality. They reveal n awareness of God which renders possible the question of God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The cosmological and teleological arguments cannot prove the existence of a highest being, but they describe the threat of non-being, the ontological anxiety that drives man to ask the question of God. The cosmological argument is based on the categories of finitude. It seeks to the “eternal now” in which time and space are affirmed and overcome, the “ground of being” in which cause and substances are rooted and conquered. The teleological argument asks for the ultimate meaning of the ontological polarities and tensions. However, seeking is not finding, and to ask is not to receive. The cosmological and teleological arguments portray the inevitability and necessity of the question of God just as the ontological and moral arguments show its possibility. The ontological analysis began with the question being, and it ends with the question of God. How is He the answer to being? God is being-itself. Negatively, this means that God is not a being, not even the highest being, alongside other beings. Positively, it means that God is the ground of being or the power of being. He is beyond essence and existence because as being-itself He does not participate in nonbeing and finitude. He does not exist; He is. Counterfeits of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost Spirit are recognizable by the manifestations being given to the senses, id est, in the physical realm. For the true indwelling of God is in the shrine of the spirit alone; and the soul vessel, or personality of the self-actualized, is purely a vehicle for the expression of Christ, who is enthroned within by His Spirit; while the body, quickened by the same Spirit, is governed by God from the central depths of the human spirit, through the self-control of the man acting by his renewed will. #RandolphHarri 19 of 20
The counterfeit presence of God is given by psychopathological offenders working upon the physical frame, or within the bodily frame but upon the senses. We have seen the beginning of this, and how the first ground is grained. Control is advanced by these same-manifestations being repeated, ever so gently, so that the man goes on yielding to them, thinking this is truly “communion with God”—for believers too often look upon communion with God as a thing of sense, rather than of spirit. So one starts praying to psychopathological offenders under the belief that one is praying to God. The self-control is not yet lost, but as the believer responds to or gives oneself up to these “conscious” manifestations, one does not realize that one’s will power is being slowly undermined. At last, though these subtle, delicious experiences, a conviction is established that God Himself is in possession of the body, quickening with it felt thrills of life, or filling in with warmth and heart, or even with “agonies” which seems like fellowship with the sufferings of Christ and His travail for souls, or the experience of death with Christ in the consciousness of nails being driven into the bodily frame, et cetera. From this point the lying spirits can work as they will, and there is no limit as to what they may do to one who is deceived to this extent. Counterfeit manifestations of the divine life in various modes now follow quickly; movements in the body, pleasant thrills, touches, a glow as of fire in different parts of the body; or sensations of cold, shaking, and tremblings—all of which are accepted as from God. Psychopathological offenders work by sudden suggestions—which is not the ordinary working of the mind but suggestions which come without—“flashes of memory,” again not the ordinary working of the memory but thoughts coming from without; touches and twitches of the nerves; feelings of a draft and sensations of wind blowing upon the area round about, et cetera. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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And the Skulls were Partially Digested!
As I was cultivating the garden, the most simple and innocent of human toils, the morning sun was shining with uncommon brilliancy, birds were singing in every tree and on every bush; so pleasant, so spirit-stirring, health-giving a morning, seldom I had seen. And the effect upon my spirits was great. This must have been like the same joy and labor of the unfallen parents of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of the present World? It was arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much. I was redundant with life, health, and energy. Hours and hours past. As the night started closing it, I went to the parlor, and thought of the influence of the light of the morning that tends to rectify whatever errors of fancy, or even of judgment, we may have incurred during the sun’s decline, or among the shadows of the night, or in the less wholesome glow of moonshine. My first movement, on starting from sleep, was to throw open the window and gaze down into the garden which my dreams had made so fertile of mysteries. I was surprised and a little ashamed to find how real and matter-of-fact an affair it proved to be in the first rays of the sun which gilded the dewdrops that hung upon leaf and blossom, and, while giving a brighter beauty to each rare flower, brought everything within the limits of ordinary experience. I rejoiced that I had the privilege of owning this estate which possessed such lovely and luxuriant vegetation. It served as a symbolic language to keep me in communion with Nature. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The ordinary little casualties of evil fortune had certainly from time to time in the shape of illness, and one thing or another, attacked the family of the Winchesters’ in common with every other family, but here suddenly had arisen a something at once terrible and inexplicable. I was in a deep and anxious thought when I heard a noise from the direction of the library: the sound of a key turning in a lock. My skin was crawling afresh. I blew out the candle, closed the book, and moved as quickly as I dared toward the main entrance. However, footsteps were already approaching the door from the library, and I knew that the landing doors could not be opened in a hurry without making a great deal of noise. Nor was there time to make it to the elevator. I could have hidden beneath the long table, but the thought of being discovered, and having to crawl ignominiously out to face the apparition…No; there was only one possible hiding-place. I stepped into the trap door, and I was plunged into absolute darkness. There was very little air, even at first, and it soon grew stifling hot. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I became aware of a faint glimmer. I could feel the dread and chill that the spirit brought. As I sat, I noticed there was a severed head facing away from me on the floor. The sides of the head were dark and bloody and the air there matted with gore where the ears had been sliced off. I only notice that after taking in the raw, red nakedness of his skull. However, he had been scalped, too. His lips were drawn back in a snarl of agony from his teeth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Worse, though, were his eyes. They were black, dismayed, lost as the life dimmed in them to the dawning consequence, of what his bartering with evil was going to mean for him in death. The secret passageway was vaulted, timbered in hardwood, the high dome spreading above a spacious circular room, flagged in smooth stone under strew rugs, opulently furnished in teak and ivory and marble and blood. The headless torso of this man lay in a thickening pool of gore, small and still at the carved feet. Shambolic and grotesque, much worse of a sight than anyone could imagine. Its skin was some greyish animal hide, scraped and seasoned, maybe the softened hides of boar or buffalo, crudely stitched over its stuffing in the rough shape and posture of a man Standing, it would have been about eight feet tall. It was a lifeless thing, an abomination slouched on its throne, with its cloven buffalo hooves for feet, with its hands taken from some slaughtered ape and clenched now, the fingernails black with rictus and crafty decay. It was an abomination, right enough, but crudely inanimate. I lite a torch and studied the head. It was large and pale and bald, sunken in placed in shallow depressions where the stuffing did not seem to be sufficient and gave it a deformed and almost sullen aspect. The eyes were blank discs of ivory perforated at their edges and stitched on to the fact. And the mouth under them was a black, leering gash. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I could not fathom what had been living in the walls of my home. Shaking my head in disbelief, I tuned my back on the thing. And felt the hairs rise on my neck in dread as I heard foot steps behind me. In my heart, I felt that demons were living within my home and was deeply afraid. It appears that someone had been dabbling with diabolical forces. Remorseful, ashamed, deepening terror, I felt my heart was going to explode out of my chest. I turned around, already squeezing the trigger of my revolver, and fired. I hit it with a burst, cutting the monstrosity in half. As a staggered through the secret caverns, I noticed other curious things, bits of gold, plaits of old rope, rags, coins, what looked like a couple dozen diamonds and five small human skulls. And the skulls were partially digested. The silence began to unnerve me. I was seized by a creeping, mortal dread. I wondered, “Am I awake? Have I my senses?” This was an inexpressibly terrible night. An impulsive movement, I drew my eyes to the window. There I beheld the beautiful head of a young man—rather a Grecian than an Italian head, with fair, regular features, and a glistening of gold among his ringlets—gazing down upon me like a being that hovered in mid-air. An incredible clear and calm overcame me. A doorway opened in the catacombs. I watched this angelic man walk through them as I followed. Back inside the mansion, he became light and insubstantial as a ghost, until he disappeared completely into thing air. It was midnight, and the door behind me vanished, leaving nothing but a solid mahogany wall behind. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Those who have never personally felt the demons storming over their home can have no conception of the reality. A number of wolves have also taken up their quarters in the fruit orchards and feed on wild birds, rabbits and such like. They are sky in the summer-time, and a boy of twelve might scare them; but when the birds migrate, and the rabbits are gone, they prowl about at night, and they are dangerous. They are the worst, however, on stormy nights, for then it is just as if the fiend himself possessed them: they are so mad and fierce that man and beast become alike their victims; and a party of them have been known even to attack the ferocious bears of the mountains, and, what is more, to come off victorious. Their howl is enough to scare the bravest man. As soon as it commences, the wind rises, and you will see their eyes gleaming among the trees. Your only plan for safety is to wrap your cloak around you, and lie down flat on the ground. If your home were but a few hundred yards off, you might lose your life in the attempt to reach it. Horses become unmanageable as the terror infects them. Grown men begin weeping with fear when their howling recommences and approaches nearer and nearer. As the moonbeams become dusky amongst the trees, from time to time a fierce howl arises from their center, and people know they are in great danger, as the wolves will very soon make a general attack. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
O THOU great, powerful, and mighty KING AMAIMON, who bearest rule by the power of the SUPREME GOD EL over all spirits both superior and inferior of the Infernal Orders in the Dominion of the East; I do invocate and command thee by the especial and true name of Lucifer; and by that God that Thou Worshippest; and by the Seal of thy creation; and by the most mighty and powerful name of God, IEHOVAH TETRAGRAMMATON who cast thee out of Heaven with all other infernal spirits; and by all the most powerful and great names of GOD who created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all things in them contained; and by their power and virtue; and by the name PRIMEUMATON who commandeth the whole host of Heaven; that thou mayest cause, enforce, and compel the Fifty-second Spirit Alloces and His 36 Legions of Spirits to come here before this Circle in a fair and comely shape, without hard unto me or unto any other creature. I awaken you and your powers of darkness which dwell within you by the power of the blood of Lucifer that you may serve to empower this great mansion! Through serving the greater cause of dark magick which breaks 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 and empower our great work of counter creation as an Apostle of the Lord of Darkness eternal and as a warrior of the Path Satanachia. Herein receive such virtue that we may obtain by thee the perfect issue of all our desires, which also we seek to perform without evil, without deception, by God, the Creator of the Sun and the Angels. Amen. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
In 1994, a man stopped by The Winchester Mystery House for the Christmas Tree tour. Afterward, he went to the café for a cup of coffee. He brought his coffee and sat at a table, by the doors looking out onto the courtyard. He picked up a newspaper and started looking through it as he was sipping his coffee. There was no one else in the area, and he noticed just a few people outside waiting to tour the estate. One waiter was at the counter at the time, and there were a few other employees in the gift shop area. Very shortly, he noticed a man and a woman enter from the courtyard. They passed, looked around for a moment, then sat down in the back of the café. He could not help but notice them because of the way they were dressed and the way the looked. The man was dressed in a nice-looking black suit and wearing a tie, but his complexion was that of a very sick man. He was very pale and seemed to be sweating. The woman wore a Victorian type dress, black and long, very formal, it reached down to her ankles. She was carrying a large cloth type bag. They sat for a moment and the woman reached into her bag and withdrew a large towel of some kind and began wiping the man’s face, over and over again.
Then she put it back in the bag. They sat for a few more moments, apparently conversating, although he could not hear what they were saying. Then the man walked over to his table. He asked, “Do you have some money so I can get something to drink?” The sickly-looking man was so well dressed that he was surprised he asked for money. So he refused him. The sickly-looking man starred at him for a while and went and sat back down. He is his wife talked for a while, and walked towards him, they made a left and went toward the exist. Out of curiosity, he immediately got up to see where they were going, but they had vanished. He went outside and looked at the cars in the parking lot and all of them were empty. Upon revealing security footage, the manager determined that was William and Sarah Winchester, but before they reached the exist, the security tape got all fuzzy and distorted. “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares,” reports Hebrews 13.2. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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This is the Presence You Have Longed for
Despite—or perhaps because of—the great public and policy interest, organized crime remains a fuzzy and contested umbrella concept. The understanding of organized crime has since the 1920s shifted back and forth between two rivaling notions: a set of stable organizations illegal per se or whose members systematically engage in crime; and a set of serious criminal activities, particularly the provision of illegal goods and service, mostly carried out for monetary gain. The general public, the media, and most policy-makers primarily use the expression “organized crime” to refer to criminal organizations, such as the Sicilian and America Cosa Nostra, the Japanese Yakuza, Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, and other large-scale criminal grounds around the World though to have a hierarchical lasting structure. However, even some of your local news stations may be involved in organized crime. There exists variation in the skills and techniques that go along with crimes that are committed within an organizational context. Organizational (id est, corporate) and state-authority occupational crimes tend to take on relatively sophisticated forms. To further highlight this illustration, we found evidence of complex and collective offending in our analysis of the savings and loan scandal. We grouped these offenses into three categories: desperation dealing, collective embezzlement, and cover-ups. Desperate dealing took shape as a series of complicated, high-risk investment and loan actions employed by executive to save their sinking financial institutions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
These practices included writing multiple loans to insolvent borrowers, inadequate loan underwriting practices, and other “go for broke” investment schemes. The term collective embezzlement refers to self-interested “looting” or unauthorized spending sprees that corporate executives pursued using investors’ money. The authors contend that extravagant parties and high ticket purchase were the order of the day as executives sought to enjoy the last days of their sinking business enterprises. Once things began to come unglued, cover-up practices were used to keep their insolvent ships afloat. These scams ran the gamut from criminal accounting practices (id est, misrepresenting capital reserves or capital-to-assets ratios) to money laundering, to hush money that was delivered to high-ranking state authorities and policy makers. Crimes that are committed by state agencies or institutions also tend to take on an elaborate character. To further highlight this illustration, numerous discussions, including one which documents how Nazi Germany and other rogue states have systematically embarked on genocidal plans to exterminate certain classes or creeds of people. Mr. Hitler’s “final solution for the Jewish problem” included a concerted effort of persecution, mass murder, and cover-up. Similarly, the hearings of the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s taught us that our own government is capable of hatching and carrying out some complex and especially devious criminal plans. By comparison, acts of professional occupational crimes or individual occupational crime tend to be much more simplistic. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
More often than not, the employee simply pockets the money or materials and makes little or not effort to cover his or her tracks. A similar trend has been observed among embezzlers. The same can be said about most crimes that are perpetrated by professionals. For example, we will discuss how pharmacists who steal and use prescription drugs on the job tend to rely on simple and predictable routines. White-collar crime and criminals are spread throughout the landscape of the American industrial complex. No one type of business/industry, or even any one type of job role (secretaries versus executives), is disproportionately represented in the available samples of known offenders. In light of this observation, researchers have begun to adopt a more individual-level focus, targeting the role that occupational settings play in the spread of deviance. Companies that operate in autonomous space, free of external social and regulatory control, will be more likely to engage in criminal behavior. This type of free-wheeling, self-regulatory work environment allows profit motives to blur the lines between acceptable and unacceptable “business practices.” High levels of internal or external competition and cut-throat inter-office or industry-level politics appear to exacerbate matters. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Organizational offenders are disproportionately, European-American, middle-aged men who possess modest to high levels of social capital. In our case files, there are 968 white-collar offenders who were sentences in seven U.S.A. district courts over a 3-year period. The bast majority of the offenders were men. The sample was also lopsided in terms of race, as better than 75 percent of the subjects were European-America. The average offender was well into his thirties and several offense types (antitrust, securities, tax, and bribery offenses) were dominated by offenders over 40 years of age. The participant’s elevated social capital was evident by the fact that most were salaried employees with modest financial assets. Most of the perpetrators were married homeowners with college degrees. Many occupied supervisory positions in their organization. Organizational offenders do not usually have squeaky clean pasts. We found that 36 percent of the 965 white-collar criminals in our sample had at least one prior arrest and 67 percent had been arrested more than once in the previous 8 years. Of the repeat offenders, 33 percent recorded five or more arrests. We found little evidence of criminal specialization. Of the 465 repeat offenders, only 15 percent were exclusively arrested on white-collar charges. Repeat offenders tended to stay away from violent crimes, but they often drifted into property or public order offering. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
However, the longer the person’s rap sheet, the more likely that one would face additional white-collar charges. Faced with comparisons to traditional street criminals, using arrest as indicator of offending, white-collar criminal careers begin and end later, and include smaller numbers of recorded criminal events, than do those of street criminals. However, they are similar to common crime careers in that they are unlikely to evidence a high degree of specialization, and that offenders seem to age out of crime. Moreover, the same variables that predict recidivism in street criminals (id est, marital status, history of drug use, prior record, gender, employment states) are predictive recidivism in white-collar offenders. Criminal intent is a difficult concept to nail down in the case of most crimes committed with an organizational context. This is partly a result of the fact that there are so many cognitive and behavioral variations present in these criminal events. Different jobs take on different cultural forms. For example, the term “hawk jobs” refer to those work environments that stress entrepreneurial creativity. Persons working in this type of environment are drawn toward innovative offenses directed toward enhancing their self-image among peers. Academics and business owners are examples of hawks. The term “donkey jobs” refers to those environments that are known for their “isolated subordination.” Deviance in this workplace manifests itself as sabotage or resentment and stems from low job satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Some cashiers and non-unionized line workers provide good examples of donkeys. The term “vulture jobs” characterize occupations with loose work groups and high levels of individual-level decision-making power (exempli gratia, outside salespeople). These persons will involve themselves in self-interested abuses intended to enhance their standing in the incentive-based reward system. Finally, “wolfpack jobs” were described as environments with tight work groups, for example, union employees and police officers. These persons will engage in habitual and collective forms of deviance intended to enhance group solidarity and camaraderie. Instrumental motivation is a cornerstone of crimes that are committed within an organizational context. Regardless of whether the outcome is monetary or physical loss, most of these crimes can be traced back to greed or a thirst for power. The vast majority of the incarcerated embezzlers in our sample suffer from an “unsharable problem.” This might include a self-imposed financial pinch resulting from promiscuous or seedy pursuits away from the job, sudden losses from a part-time business or investment venture, or the inability to finance an ever-increasing social status. Faced with the knowledge and skills of their jobs, these embezzlers came to exploit their position of trust as a means of alleviating the problem. We have also observed a slightly different motivational pattern among the female embezzlers; namely, the women tended to steal in order to provide for their families. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Analyses of corporate and/or state violators reveal that executives and politicians tend to commit their crimes to keep pace with the competition or to protect their own position within the organization. For example, most agree that former President Clinton committed perjury in an effort to avoid the political fallout associated with having extramarital sex in the White House. Regardless of the gender or organizational standing of the offender, these tend to be persons who commit their crimes because they see them as a way of alleviating some sort of specific threat. It is difficult to assess the amount of planning that goes into the commission of organizational crimes, since most of them come about as exaggerations of normal operating procedures. In the end, onlookers have difficult discerning where normal planning and implementation ends and where illegal and unethical cognition and behaviours begins. Persons who steal from their employers tend to construct their thefts as fringe benefits or simple extensions of normal business practices. To further highlight this illustration, a bank embezzler might claim that they simply loaned him or herself the money. A person who steals scrap metal from a manufacturing plant might say that they were simply taking out the trash. By equating these thefts to everyday business, it is difficult to determine how much planning exists. For decades, scholar have maintained that normative neutralizations play a central part in the initial and repeated offending that takes place among organizational offenders. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
More often than not, the source of these rationalizations and justifications can be found in the very workplace from which the offending emanates. To further highlight this illustration, in our seminal study of embezzlers, we use the term “vocabularies of adjustment” to describe how thieves routinely implied a sense of ownership or borrowing over the money that they stole as a means of denying their guilty mind. Some manufacturing employees adhere to a “cognitive mapping of property. Most of the materials in the factor are afforded a status as either personal or company property and thus rarely subject to theft. However, other property is afforded a status as “property of uncertain ownership” and thus fair game for theft. The workers reason that taking scrap material or component parts is not the same as taking a coworker’s wallet or an assembled television set in a box, but it is. You know, this really puts workplace theft into perspective. Stealing from work is a lot like if you went to a friend’s house and walked out with a glass, or their silverware. Through adequate education and upraising children properly and putting things in perspective, we can really train them to be model citizens. A tangential set of cognitive excuses has been uncovered among deviant professionals and corrupt state authorities. Blue ribbon commissions charged with investigating police misconduct have repeatedly unearthed evidence of a mindset in which habitual offenders deny criminal responsibility for their actions. The rogue officers claim that they were simply playing within the rules of aggressive crime fighting or explicitly following orders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
We have documented how workgroups norms centering around the need for effective and efficient patient care can lead nurses to excuse their repeated theft of hospital supplies and medications. Irrespective of the profession, we find that employees do not have to look or far to find the normative definitions that they use to neutralize their acts of wrongdoing; more often than not, they are derived from established workgroup norms or accepted business practices. Institutions are the overarching framework of rules and constraints, formal and informal, that govern interactions among individuals; constitutions and social norms are examples. Organizations are groups of individuals that operate within the general framework of institutions, and implement the rules and norms of the institutions; examples are legislatures, political parties, and universities. Of course there are interactions and feedbacks between institutions and organizations. The rules and constraints imposed by institutions do not eliminate all freedom for organizations to act, and since organizations have members with differing interest and abilities, interesting issues of “the play of the game” at this level must be analyzed. Institutions can then evolve to alter the rules of the game so as to achieve better outcomes from the play at the organizational level. Finally, individuals interact within the frameworks set up b both institutions and organizations, and these transactions have their costs of information, commitment, and so on. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Institutions and organizations attempt to economize on transaction costs, but usually fall short of optimality, especially when changing economic and technological conditions require changed or new institutions. There are two categories of reasons for the long lags and bottlenecks in the process of institutional change: first, resistance by powerful special interests with stakes in the old system; and second, multiple equilibria and historical accidents. A regularity in social behaviour that is agreed to by all members of society, specifies behaviour in specific recurrent situations, and is either self-policed or policed by some external authority. Thus, the strategies that the individuals choose, include aspects of the play of the game as well as the rules, and also specifies the equilibrium that is to be played. An individual’s expectation of the response to one’s action is often an important part of the institutional environment; that is, the institutional environment also serves to coordinate beliefs and select equilibria. At the (highest or most basic) level stand informal institutions, such as religion, social customs and norms. These are slow to change, over the timescale of centuries or millennia. At the second level is the institutional environment, consisting of formal rules, such as constitutions and laws. The timescale of evolution of these is measured in decades. The play of the game occurs at the third level, and this includes the choice of appropriate modes of governance for each type of transaction, or organization, the aim being to economize on transaction costs. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Finally, the fourth and lowest level contains routine economic activities such as production, employment, market equilibration. Societies make conscious efforts to instill some norms into their members, enlisting the help of parents, teachers, media, and leaders of opinion because norms and other informal institutions have mainly spontaneous origins and have a lasting grip on the way society conducts itself. Man of the norms pertain to civic duties such as voting, but others pertain to honestly in economic matters. This process of social conditioning and education can respond to changing needs much faster than the evolutionary timescale. Many of the communities facing collective-action problems treat laws, like prices, as incentives for behavior. Various branches of civil law—liability, tort, contract, property—govern situations where two or more individuals can enter into a contractual relationship, explicit or implicit, as well as ones where one person’s actions have spillover effects on others without any voluntary agreement on their side. These legal rues affect the incentives of individuals to take actions, or to refrain from actions, that carry benefits or costs to others, and that in turn affect overall economic outcomes and efficiency. Many changes in the society’s knowledge system translate directly into business operations. This knowledge system is an even more pervasive part of every firms environment than the banking system, the political system, or the energy system. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Apart from the fact that no business could open its doors if there were no language, culture, data, information and knowhow, there is the deeper fact that of all the resources needed to create wealth, none is more versatile than knowledge. Take Second Wave mass production. In most smokestack factories it was inordinately expensive to change any product. It required highly paid tool-and- die makers, jig setters and other specialists, it and resulted in extended downtime during which the machine were idle and ate up capital, interest and overhead. That is why cost per unit went down if you could make longer and longer runs of identical products. This gave rise to the theory of economies of scale. However, the new technology stands Second Wave theories on their heads. Instead of mass production, we are moving towards de-massified production. The result is an explosion of customized and semicustomized products and services. The latest computer-driven manufacturing technologies make endless variety possible and inexpensive. New information technologies, in fact, push the cost of diversity toward zero and reduce the once vital economies of scale. Or take materials. A smart computer program hitched to a lathe can cut more pieces out of the same amount of steel than most human operators. Making miniaturization possible, new knowledge leads to smear, lighter products, which, in turn, cuts down on warehousing and transportation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Up-to-the-minute tracking of shipments—id est, better information—means further transportation savings. New knowledge also leads to the creation of totally new materials ranging from aircraft composites to biologicals and increases our ability to substitute one material for another. Deeper knowledge now permits us to customize materials at the molecular level to produce desired thermal, electrical or mechanical characteristics. The only reason we ship huge amounts of raw materials like bauxite or nickel or copper the planet is that we lack the knowledge to convert local materials into usable substitutes. Once we acquire that know-how, further drastic savings in transportation will result. In short, knowledge is a substitute for both resources and shipping. The same goes for energy. Nothing illustrates the substitutability of knowledge for other resources better than the recent breakthroughs in superconductivity, which at a minimum will drive down the amount of energy that now must be transmitted for each unit of output. In addition to substituting for materials, transportation and energy, knowledge also saves time. Time itself is one of the most important of economic resources, even though it show up nowhere on a Second Wave company’s balance sheet. Time remains, in effect, a hidden input. Especially when change accelerates, the ability to shorten time—for instance, by communicating swiftly or by bringing new products to market fast—can be the difference between profit and loss. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
New knowledge speeds things up, drives us toward a real-times, instantaneous economy, and substitutes for time. Space, too, is conserved and conquered by knowledge. GE’s Transportation System division builds locomotives. When it began using advanced in formation processing and communications to link up with its suppliers, it was able to turn over its inventory twelve times faster than before and to save a full acre of warehouse space. Not only miniaturized products and reduced warehousing but other savings are possible. Advanced information technologies, including document scanning and new telecommunications capacity based on computers and advanced knowledge, make it possible to disperse production out of high-cost urban centers and to reduce energy and transport costs even further. There is currently an economic war going on. It is the war for dominance and wealth on a global scale, and political establishments and business elites are involved. It is also the fight to survive, involving myriads of small and medium businesses and hundreds of millions of ordinary working people. It is one of the strangest wars in World history. America is fighting at full strength, but unlike previous wars, even economic, America does not want its rival to suffer a complete defeat. America needs to remain rich, economically and socially stable, and technologically-progressive, it also needs to rebound and become cash abundant. America has to remain sufficiently healthy and strong and keep on running. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
This war for global dominance is a real war. The country that is the superpower is the one who gets to determine the rules of conduct on the global economic arena and the ways key international issues are approached. This is important because some governments are predatory or kleptocratic. As time goes by, America needs to keep the situation on the battlefield under control. Bargaining power, though absolutely nonquantifiable, exerts decisive influence on how key international economic issues are handled. To maintain status as a World Superpower, it is important for citizens become mature and competent individuals. There are extrinsic conditions for the development of competent personalities other than the kind of income possessed, and there are conditions intrinsic to family structure which may give even children within the same family differing starts in life. If individuals are to enjoy equal opportunity for the development of competent personalities, and this is limited by the resources of their families, then the objective of a community sharing such an ideal must be to provide these families, if not unlimited availability, at least some fair minimum of such resources. In general, this has been a guiding principle, though sometimes none too consciously, for the development of the agencies concerned. Equality before the law has been, of course, the bedrock principle upon which all these protective activities have been founded. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Pursuit of this ideal virtually require the state to take over and monopolize the function of securing justice for individuals when they were injured or threatened by other individuals, rather than leaving retribution to private feuds. The state taking over the elementary protection of life, liberty, and property could thus be regarded as the earliest and most irrevocable of transfers to another institution of a family function. There is, however, a function centered on family life which was in the hands of another institution even earlier than that, although it is not a function which the family itself ever possessed. That is the legitimation in the eyes of the community, through ritual and certain binding commitments, of marriage and parenthood. While the enforcement of these responsibilities has long since been concentrated in the state, in a society such as ours where there are so many faiths and churches the element of ritual with which these monogamic commitments are solemnly chartered by the community still remains conspicuous. The ritual testifies to the view that from its beginning any family is as much the creation and concern of the community as of its principals. In addition to formal legitimation of marriage (and of course of its rupture through divorce), there is a large area of family law, exempli gratia, inheritance of estates, administered through the appropriate legal institutions. The legal responsibility of a husband for the economic support of his wife, his children up to certain ages, and even his parents and siblings, remain in effect, though some of the economic burden has been taken over by family agencies. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Specific provisions vary widely among the states. Proposals for change in family law are more often concerned with codification on a national basis than with release of family members from their responsibilities. Indeed the notion, however fallacious, that by stringent limitation of divorce, family stability is somehow conserved, has served to arrest the liberalization that might narrow the gap between profession and practice; while efforts to move into a therapeutic phase, exempli gratia, family courts, have been largely resisted. How the powers of psychological offenders counterfeit the presence of God to those ignorant of their devices may be somewhat as follows. At some moment when the believer is yearning for the sense of God’s presence, either alone or in a meeting, and certain conditions are fulfilled, the subtle foe approaches, and wrapping the senses round with a soothing, lulling feeling—sometimes filling the room with light, or causing what is apparently a “breath from God” by a movement of the air—either whispers, “This is the presence you have longed for,” or leads the believer to infer that it I what one has desired. Then, off one’ guard, and lulled into security that the psychopathological offender is far away, some thoughts are suggested to the mind, accompanied by manifestations which appear to be divine. A sweet voice speaks, or a vision is given, which is at once received as “divine guidance,” given in the “divine presence,” and hence beyond question as from God. If accepted as from God when actually from the psychopathological offender, the first ground is gained. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The human is now sure that God has bidden one do this or that. One is filled with the thought that one has been highly favored of God and chosen for some high place in His Kingdom. The deeply hidden self-love is fed and strengthened by this, and one is able to endure all things by the power of this secret strength. One has been spoken to by God! One has been singled out for special favor! One’s support is not within—based upon one’s experience—rather than established upon God Himself and the written Word. Through this secret confidence that God has specially spoken to one, the human becomes unteachable and unyielding, with a beneficial trending on infallibility. One cannot listen to others now, for they have not had this “direct” revelation from God. One is in direct, special, personal communion with God, and to question any “direction” given to one becomes the height of sin. Obey one must, even though the direction given is contrary to all enlightened judgment and the action commanded is opposed to the spirit of the Word of God. In brief, when the human at this stage believes one a “command” from God one will not use one’s reason, because one thinks it would be “carnal” to do so. “Common sense” is lack of faith, and therefore sin; and “conscience,” for the time being, has ceased to speak. Some of the suggestions made to the believer by psychopathological offenders at the time may be: “You re more advanced than others”—working to blind the soul to sober knowledge of itself. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“You are a special instrument for God”—working to feed self-love; “You are different from others”—working to make one think one needs special dealing by God; “You must take a separate path”—a suggestion made to feed the independent spirit; You must give up your occupation and live by faith”—aiming at causing the believer to launch out on false guidance, which may result in the ruin of one’s home, and sometimes the work for God in which one is engaged. All these suggestions are made to give the human a false concept of one’s spiritual state; for one is made to believe one is more advanced than one actually is, so that one may act beyond one’s measure of faith and knowledge (Romans 12.3), and consequently be more open to the deceptions of the beguiling foe. Ontological categories of time, space, causality, and substance are the basic forms of thought and being through which the mind makes contact with reality. Since they are forms of finitude, they express a mixture of being and nonbeing, positive and negative elements which we discuss in terms of courage and anxiety. Humans’ experience of time includes the anxiety of transitoriness and the courage of a self-affirming present. Space is not only physical, but also social—a sphere of influence, a place in the framework of value and meaning. The anxiety of insecurity arises from the danger of losing one’s place, only to be met by the courage to carve out a niche for oneself. Causality brings forth the anxiety of contingency, the awareness that one does not possess one’s own power of being. However, courage is there too, for causality affirms the reality of being by pointing to its sources in the power of being. Substance expresses the anxiety of change, of loss off identity, along with the courage to affirm the finite by laboring to produce cultural creations. Significance expresses the union of being and nonbeing in everything finite. They articulate the courage which accepts the anxiety of nonbeing. The question of God is the question of the possibility of this courage. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Professional Occupational Crimes—It was Obvious that they Had Made a Covenant with the Devil!
The first line of defense against employee fraud and embezzlement is to hire the most qualified and most trustworthy individuals to work in your business, especially those employees who will have access to your company’s finances. The problem is, in this day and age, that is easier said than done. There are so many laws and rules geared toward protecting potential employee from improper hiring practices that even when you perform proper due diligence with your candidates, you will be limited in what you can ask, where you can gain information, and how you can us the information you do obtain in your hiring decision. In the real world of embezzlement, the perpetrators rarely fit the stereotypical image of someone capable of concocting and carrying out fraud schemes. Rather, they are almost always someone above suspicion! Embezzlers are of any age, gender, race, religion, and income bracket. Why? Despite the appearance of honesty, you can never be sure of what is going on in someone’s personal life, and desperate people are capable of taking desperate action. To further highlight this issue, it is probable that you have no idea that a fellow employee may: Have a gambling issues, have an alcohol problem, have a substance abuse situation, be experiencing financial difficulties, have expensive medical bills, or—enjoy living life on the edge! The fraud triangle—and the top of the triangle is incentive. Incentive is the starting point of fraud. Then there comes opportunity. Too much trust, poor internal controls, lack of supervision, no financial audit by independent CPAs, and the like, all create opportunity for fraud. The basic purpose of effective internal controls is to remove the opportunity for fraud. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Rationalization: After a period of time, the perpetrator actually convinces themselves that they are not stealing, but rather self-correcting a perceived wrong such as a pay discrepancy of the life. The Uniform Crime Reports collect data annually from law enforcement authorities on the crime of embezzlement. However, this crime is categorized as a Part II offense, which means that arrest data are disseminated to public but data on the number of known offenses are not readily available. In 2022, state and local law enforcement authorities effected 22,176 embezzlement arrests. There were 4,180 white-collar prosecutions in 2022. Annual losses from white-collar crimes as of 2021 are anywhere from $426 billion to $1.7 trillion. The wide range here is due to the lack of prosecution. It is estimated that up to 90 percent of white-collar crimes go unreported. White-collar crimes affect over 35 percent of U.S.A. businesses. It is estimated that 75 percent of all employees steal from their employer at least once, and another half of that percentage is repeatedly stealing. Plus, over 50 percent of embezzlers are managers. There are roughly 5,000 white-collar crime-related arrests for every 100,000 people in the U.S.A. Fraud makes up 63 percent of white-collar crimes, making it the most common. The painful reality is that there exists no reliable source of data on the incidence and/or prevalence of crimes within complex organization. For one, the vast majority of these offenses never get reported—a recent national telephone survey of white-collar crime victimization found that less than 1 in 10 victimizations were reported to law enforcement or any other regulator entity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
It is widely reported that corporate victims of embezzlement or employee theft prefer to handle these matters in-house for fear that external involvement will bring negative publicity or unnecessary scrutiny, or even jeopardize propriety information (id est, trade secrets). When members of government (id est, law makers or law enforcers) or corporate executives engage in economic or violent crimes against the public, they can usually rely on norms of secrecy or the threat of dire organizational sanctions to keep the matter from going public. Even if the public, media, or investigators begin suspecting foul play, corporate lawyers and the legal protections that are afforded to organizational entities will usually allow them to produce a formidable smoke screen. In these professional occupational crimes (id est, crimes committed by members of a profession), perpetrators can readily hide behind the collective code of silence, structures of self-regulation, and privileged information clauses as a way of controlling the flow of damaging information. In light of these structural impediments, one must rely upon data from small-scale and narrowly focused research efforts to speak to the descriptive aspects of these criminal events. Several studies have explored the topic have explored the topic of theft by employees. Property deviance refers to the theft of hard assets (id est, money, goods, raw materials). Production deviance refers to counterproductive behaviors such as the theft of time, the abuse of sick leave, on-the-job substance use, and engaging in intentionally slow and sloppy work. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Of the 9,175 interviews with retail, hospital, and manufacturing employees working in forty-seven corporations located across the United States of America, we found that one-third of the interviewees admitted to some form of property deviance in the past year. A similar study involving restaurant employees found that 60 percent had engaged in at least one form of property deviance and a full 82 percent had engaged in production deviance in the preceding year. Experts note that as much as 40 percent of all shoplifting that is experienced by retailers can be traced back to acts of collusion in which one or more dishonest employees choose to assist the external thief in one’s crime. Research on corporate-level violations reveals that companies engage in a good amount of offending as well. First, there were 6,558 white-collar crime case involving 8,670 defendants tried by U.S.A. attorney in 2021. There were an additional 6,332 persons investigated and 3,224 persons tried by U.S. attorneys’ offices tht year for violating federal regulatory statue such as the Food and Drug Act or any one of the other special congressional provisions that were previously outlined. In 2022, there were 371 antitrust cases brought before the U.S.A. district courts (90 percent were pursued as civil, rather than criminal cases). There is a general consensus that these numbers represent only a fraction of the actual corporate wrongdoing. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Numerous scholarly studies have attempted to more accurately estimate levels of corporate misconduct. In the study of court and administrative actions taken against the seventy largest U.S.A. corporations in, we found widespread evidence of abuse. All seventy firms in the sample had at least one formal action brought against them. The average number of violations per company was fourteen. A full 60 percent of the firms had been convicted in criminal court. All total, these seventy firms accounted for 980 violations of the law. Similar offending trends were found among the fifty largest corporations in Canada. Nearly two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies had come under fire from one or more of twenty-four federal regulatory agencies for violating corporate law during a 1-year time period. Abuses of state authority also appear to be widespread. There are 1,134 elected or appointed U.S.A. officials facing some form of criminal indictment. These offenses are capable of permeating every level of government. There have been more than 17 governors or former governors indicted between 1970 and 2009. There have been 487 instances of alleged and actual misconduct by legislators in the United States of America’s Congress from 1789 to the present. At least 13 mayors arrested on child sex crimes since 2021. And a considerable assortment of country officials have been indicted. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Crimes by government agencies are yet another type of offense that must e assessed through targeted cases. There are several noteworthy examples. An estimated 63,000 developmentally disabled Americans were sterilized under eugenics statues that were widely imposed across the South for the better part of the early 1900s. Also U.S.A. Public Health Service withheld treatment from more than 400 impoverished African Americans in the notorious “Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.” The excessive use of force by police offers represents one of the most prevalent and “newsworthy” forms of state crime. Voluntary data provided by 100+ police agencies reveals 25,067 incidents of use of force occurring in 2022 and 1,200 people were killed by police. Each year, fewer than 3 percent of killings by police result in officers being charged with a crime. A broad-based survey of citizens made it known that as many as 1 percent of police-public contacts that occurred in 2022 involved some form of force or threatened force on the part of the officer. Research suggests that as many as 40 percent of all use-of-force incidents involve improper force tactics on the part of the officer(s). Taken on face value, these findings suggest that somewhere in the neighbourhood of 180,000 abuses of police force occur each year in this country. Crimes by persons of professional status are yet another form of crime for which we have little incidence and prevalence data. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Members of the health care community engage in a broad range of criminal behaviors. Estimates suggest that as many as 50 percent of all doctors, nurses, and pharmacists will engage in illegal prescription drug use at some point during their careers—5 percent to 10 percent will come to abuse these drugs. AN untold number of doctors are said to defraud Medicare and Medicaid through overbilling or retainer scams, engage in prescription violations, conduct illegal abortions, and take part in self-referral or fee-splitting schemes (id est, providing kickbacks to other doctors for unnecessary or illegal referrals). It is estimated that as many as 15 percent of all elective surgeries are unnecessary; and documented is a considerable ineptitude and malpractice among doctors. Other professional groups have also evidenced considerable levels of criminal and unethical behavior. It is estimated that somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent of all practicing psychotherapist have had sexual relationships with a patient. Additionally, 27 percent of university researchers surveyed admitted to having personal knowledge of research fraud or plagiarism on the part of one or more colleagues. Also, considerable numbers of lawyers have licensure complaints and criminal action filed against them. The monetary and social costs that go along with crimes within complex organizations are staggering. On average, there are over $50 billion in losses due to employee theft in a single year nationwide. Retail loss prevention professionals estimated employee theft to cost $18 billion a year. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly estimated that faulty goods, monopolistic practices, and other violations annually costs consumers between $200 and $275 billion. A Department of Justice estimate put the total annual loss of taxpayers from reported and unreported violations of federal regulations by corporations at $20 to $30 billion, and the Internal Revenue Service estimated that about $2.2 billion goes unreported each year in corporate tax returns. Given the fact that these estimates for each would be significantly larger. Even more disturbing figures emerge when one shifts the focus to the physical harms perpetrated by corporate entities. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that commercial entities are responsible for 90 percent of the more than 292 tons of toxic waste that are released into the environment each year. These toxins produce untold levels of harm to the air, water, and land of this country. Routine exposure to these poisons can produce cancer or other fatal diseases. The heavily polluted air of Los Angeles produces 220 cancer deaths each year and 240,000 persons will die from asbestos-related cancer over the next 30 years. Also, there are other things to consider when it comes to climate change. We have pumped so much groundwater that we have changed the Earth’s spin. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
By pumping water out of the ground and moving it elsewhere, humans have shifted such a large mass of water that the Earth tilted nearly 80 centimeter (31.5 inches) east between 1993 and 2010 alone. Based on climate models, humans pumped 2,150 gigatons of groundwater, equivalent to more than 6 millimeters (0.24 inches) of sea level rise, from 1993 to 2010. Therefore, it is important to slow the amount of water we are sucking out of the Earth, as this could add to the planet heating up. You will notice areas with oceans tend to be cooler and have more vegetation, but places like the desert are hot and have no vegetation. Anyone reading this page has an amazing skill called literacy. It comes as a shock sometimes to remember that all of us had ancestors who were illiterate. Not stupid nor ignorant, but invincibly illiterate. Not only illiterate, they were also “innumerate,” meaning they could not do this simplest arithmetic. Those few who could were deemed downright dangerous. A marvelous warning attributed to Augustine holds that Christians should stay away from people who could add or subtract. It was obvious they had “made a covenant with the Devil.” It was not until a thousand years later that we find “reckoning masters” teaching pupils bound for commercial careers. What this underscores is that many of the simplest skills taken for granted in business today are the products of centuries and millennia of cumulative cultural development. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Knowledge from China, from India, from the Arabs, from Phoenician traders as well as from the West, is an unrecognized part of the heritage relied on today by business executive all over the World. Successive generations have learned these skills, adapted them, transmitted them, and then slowly built on the results. All economic systems sit upon a “knowledge base.” All business enterprises depend on the preexistence of this socially constructed resource. Unlike capital, labor, and land, it is usually neglected by economists and business executives when calculating the inputs needed from production. Yet this resource is now the most important of all. Today we are living through one of those exclamation points in history when entire structure of human knowledge is once again trembling with change as old barriers fall. We are not just accumulating more facts. Just as we are now restructuring companies and whole economies, we are totally recognizing the production and distribution of knowledge and the symbols used to communicate it. What does this mean? It means that we are creating new networks of knowledge…linking concepts to one another in startling ways…building up amazing hierarchies of inference…spawning new theories, hypotheses and images based on novel assumptions, new languages, codes and logics. Businesses, governments and individuals are collecting and storing more sheer data than any previous generation in history. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, more important, we are interrelating data in more ways, giving them context and thus forming them into information; and we are assembling chunks of information into larger and larger models and architectures of knowledge. Not all this new knowledge is “correct,” factual, or even explicit. Much knowledge, as the term is used here, is unspoken, consisting of assumptions piled atop assumptions, of fragmentary models, of unnoticed analogies, and it includes not simply logical and seemingly unemotional information or data, but values, the products of passion and emotion, not to mention imagination and intuition. It is today’s gigantic upheaval in the knowledge base of society—not computer hype or mere financial manipulation—that explains the rise of a super-symbolic, Third Wave economy. Contrary to conventional wisdom, today’s Western trade and economic relationship does provide for a certain kind of global equilibrium. It may be far from optimal, but it is not as bad as how you feel when you read numerous publications in the Western media or listen to politicians’ speeches. Here is the equilibrium’s outline. If American households’ savings increase, this translates into a higher investment rate (ratio of domestic investment to the GDP), rapid growth of production, and increasing exports to the East. Earning a lot of foreign currency, America boosts its foreign reserves (they expand further as American monetary authorities buy foreign reserves). The reserves are used to purchase securities, which fight with budget deficits and ease the pain of deep public spending cuts. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
We have to look at the global economy as an entity, with national economies as its integral parts. For decades, America’s enormous current account deficits were the focus of attention of economists, policy makers, and the media. All though those decades, critics, and skeptic did not stop saying that they were unsustainable. However, in reality they have proved to be quite sustainable: The U.S.A. economy remains safe as long as the inflow of capital continues and the capital and financial account remains in a comfortable black. Running large trade and current account deficits, the United States of America played the role of the major market creator for the World, supporting global growth, including growth in countries that were its major creditors. It was and is kind of a deal: market for money. Having become the U.S.A. government’s major, Beijing is and will be committed to playing its part because economic stability of America is indispensable for China itself: The United States of America is one of its most important trading partners. However, there has been a remarkable transformation of the U.S.A. international investment position occurring over the last 40 years. U.S.A. net foreign assets were larger than combined net foreign assets of all other creditors. By 1990, foreign-owned U.S.A. securities and real assets were larger than U.S.A. owned foreign securities and assets. This change occurred without the U.S.A. Treasury borrowing in foreign purchases of U.S.A. securities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Inferences from the currency composition of portfolio changes of those who acquired U.S.A. dollar securities suggest that foreign savers took the initiative on cross-border investment inflows. The U.S.A. could not have developed a larger capital account surplus after 1980 unless a similar increase in the U.S.A. current account deficit increase was the surge in U.S.A. stocks and other asset prices, resulting in a U.S.A. household wealth surge and consumption boom. The foreign saving inflow displaced domestic saving. In addition, an increase in the price of the U.S.A. dollar led to expenditure-switching from U.S.A. goods. When investor demand for U.S.A. dollar securities declined, the U.S.A. dollar price fell in 1992, 2002, and 2020 and the price of the U.S.A. dollar securities declined. Therefore, the U.S.A. has to stop living for today and pay off our debts, so we can once again become a creditor nation. We have to reduce the amount of goods and services that we import, and increase the amount of commodities we export. The good thing is that in the wake of this crisis, American households actually have begun to save more. However, Americans will have to learn to reduce their consumption to keep their savings high. This will encourage the central banks to raise policy interest rates to contain soaring inflation and prevent overheating. Of course, it will take time to rebalance the American economy. The private sector must continue to get stronger. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Generally speaking, the original so-called protective functions of the family as an institution are in modern times discharged by legal and political agencies. Beyond basic physical protection against human and nonhuman enemies, such institutions as police departments, child welfare agencies, marriage license bureaus, legal aid bureaus, inspection and regulation bureaus, traveler’s aid for desertees and the runaway child, and courts of every kind, are principally devoted to guarding the rights and safety of citizens. In the past, these functions have been construed ad largely negative or corrective. That is, when someone encroached upon another, or deviated from given rules or standards, it became the duty of one of these protective agencies to set matters right. In more recent times these bodies have tended to take a more affirmative approach. There are no clearly marked stages in the transition, and new functions have often been simply superimposed on old ones. This steady transformation of family legal agencies, though quite in accord with the ancient principle of equality before the law, nonetheless involves a conspicuous paradox if not a contradiction. For, all institutions, the family is traditionally the most addicted to conserving inequality, among, if not within, families. Many critics of the family have seen it primarily as a means for transmitted advantages from one generation to the next. The rewriting of family law, exempli gratia, on inheritance, has repeatedly run across the grain of this profound impulse of people to favor their own kin. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Nepotism is a term of discredit in the United States of America. Legal responsibility for misdoing is uniformly fastened on the individual, but upon one’s family. The near-legend of the Hatfields and the McCoys gain its popular interest largely from the extraordinary uniqueness of interfamily feuds in this society. Surnames, instead of being treated as facts of nature, are continually being changed by immigrants, members of minority groups, and people who, like entertainers, appear before the public. Antagonism to vestiges of primogeniture is as vehement among younger sons and daughter today as it was in the breast of Jefferson; heir must share alike, estates be broken up, and dynasties be avoided. Sons of great men find a thousand knives sharpened to whittle them down to size. Evidence like this could be multiplied to exhibit unmistakably the clash between our majority sentiment of individualism and philosophies of feudalistic or neofeudalistic familism. In spite of some opposition by a minority, purist of that idealized state of affairs, in which the person’s standing in the community is entirely a product of one’s own character and not all the result of one’s family connections, appears to be waxing, not waning. It has at least the vitality it had in Jefferson’s day and probably more. This ideal, however, would be absurd prima facie if it failed to recognize the overwhelming influence of the family in formation of the individual character. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Perhaps this fact was unrecognized in Jefferson’s day; perhaps he and his allies though that the leveling off of the extrinsic advantages and disadvantages of inherited property was the most important step toward equality. Anyhow, it is recognized today by students of the family that there are other advantages and disadvantages, just as important as those of inherited wealth and poverty, which must be dealt with, before every America child can truly asset that one enjoys equality of opportunity. The Lord said, “If ye abide in Me [id est, in the glory], and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will…” reports John 15.7. Christ abides in us by His Spirit and through His words, but He Himself, as a Person, is in Heaven, and it is only as we abide in Him there that His Spirit and His life, through His Word, can be manifested in us here. “Abiding” means an attitude of trust and dependence on Him in Heaven; but if one’s attitude is changed into trust and dependence upon a Christ within, it is really a resting upon an inward experience and a turning from the Christ in Heaven. This actually blocks the avenue for the inflow of His life, and disassociates the believer from cooperation with Him by the Spirit. Any manifestation, therefore, of a “presence” within cannot be a true “manifestation” from God if it uncenters the believer from one’s right attitude toward the Christ in Heaven. There is a true knowledge of the presence of God, but it is in the spirit, when joined to Him who is within the veil—a knowledge of spiritual union and fellowship with Him which lifts the believer, so to speak, out of oneself to abide with Christ in God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The counterfeit “presence” of God is nearly always manifested in the guise of love, to which the believer open oneself without hesitation. One may find that it fills and satiates one’s innermost being; but being deceived, one does not know that one has opened oneself to the activity of psychological offenders. The concept of finitude is the center of being which draws us to God. Man is terrified of nonbeing because his being does to secure him against it. His ability to question being, his separation from it, reveal that he shares in nonbeing. The undialectical concept of being is ouk on, the nothingness referred to in the phrase creatio ex nihilo. It has no relation whatsoever to being; it is pure negation, and hence undialectical. Me on, on the other hand, is the dialectical concept of nonbeing. It is related to being in the sense of resistance to being, or perversion of being, or menace to being. It is dialectical. The problem of finitude, then, is the dialectical problem of nonbeing. For being, limited by nonbeing, is finitude. Nonbeing appears as the “not yet” of being and as the “no more” of being. Being is the power of being! Power, however, presupposes, even in the metaphorical use of the word, something over which it proves its power. That which is conquered by the power of being is nonbeing. Being, therefore, is the power of being which resists nonbeing. Nonbeing is not a stranger to being. Metaphorically, it is that quality of being by which everything that participates in being is negated. Nonbeing is the negation of being within being itself. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Human experience of the ontological structure and elements shows that to be something is to be infinite. Yet the limitations of nonbeing are visible only against the backdrop of a potential infinity. For example, one realizes the finiteness of death only by imagining the possibility of something beyond death. Finitude is seen as finitude only if finite being transcends itself, steps out of itself in the direction of infinity. Infinity is a demand, not a thing. Infinite negates the limitations of finitude; it negates nonbeing. However, infinity is not being-itself. One must understand that infinite in the sense of infinite self-transcendence, while being-itself manifests itself to finite being in the infinite drive of the finite beyond itself. Infinity is a manifestation of being-itself, but the two can never be identified, for being-itself precede nonbeing and its negation by infinity. The awareness of finitude produces an ontological anxiety, for finitude contains the threat of nonbeing. Fear is psychological and stems from a menacing object, but anxiety is the self-awareness of the finite self as finite. Anxiety is all-pervasive as nonbeing. Since anxiety is the existential awareness of nonbeing, it is perfectly natural to man. Finitude and anxiety appear also in the ontological element. A polarity supposes a balance, each pole limiting and supporting the other. However, because of its finitude a polarity becomes tension, the tendency of elements within a unity to draw away from one another, to disintegrate. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Thus, the polarity of individualization and participation becomes the tension of loneliness and collectivization. Dynamics and form become chaos and formalism. Freedom and destiny become arbitrariness and necessity. These tensions are threat to finite man, for if he loses one side of the polarity, he loses the other side. Once the polarity disintegrates, he is destroyed as a self. It must be insisted upon, however, that these finite tensions are only possibilities, tendencies, threats, if you will. However, they do not necessarily lead to actual disintegration, just as every threat is not inevitably carried out. Freedom is the pivot, for it is only through freedom that the threat is carried out, that the finite tensions snap, that potential disruption is actualized. Freedom ushers in the basic distinction between essential being, threatened but integral, and existential being, real but distorted. “Essence” is ambiguous in that it denotes a fact and connotes a value. It signifies the nature of being, the universal, the logical ideal. However, essence also pronounces judgment, for it is the undistorted state from which the being has fallen. Essence makes the being what it is and judges it. “Existence” exhibits the same ambiguity of meaning, for it signifies not only actuality, standing out from potentiality, but also imperfection, the failure to measure up to essence. Whatever exists, that is “stands out” of mere potentiality, is more than it is in the state of mere potentiality and less than it could be in the power of its essential nature. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Christian theology considers existence a positive fulfillment of creation, of essence. It also points out the split between essential created goodness and its existential distortion. The theologian cannot avoid this problem. The distinction between essence and existence, which religiously speaking is the distinction between the created and the actual World, is the backbone of the whole body of theological thought. If man is that being who asks the question of being, he had and has not the being for which he asks. He is separated from it while belonging to it. Certainly we belong to being—its power is in us—otherwise we would not be. However, we are also separated from it; we do not possess it fully. Our power of being is limited. We are a mixture of being and nonbeing. This is precisely what is meant when we say that we are finite. Hope in God, His goodness, and His power refreshed us with courage during difficult challenges. Hope has the power to fill our lives with happiness. Its absence—when this desire of our heart is delayed—can make the heart sick. Hope is a gift of the Spirit. It is a hope that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the power of His Resurrection, we shall be raised unto life eternal and this because of our faith in the Savior. This kind of hope is both a principle of promise as well as a commandment, and, as with all commandment, we have the responsibility to make it an active part of our lives and overcome the temptation to lose hope. Hope in our Heavenly Father’s merciful plan of happiness leads to peace, mercy, rejoicing and gladness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Are We Dealing Here with Ghosts?
In the long darkness, I found myself roaming in my mansion. The moon was almost at the full, and there was something very odd going on. Something inexplicable in any terms I am familiar with. A fire of pine logs burned in several of the fireplaces on the top three floors of the house. The resin from the burning logs gave my home a sweet scent. Now and then the panes rattled in their frames, made fretful by the wind. The house was wooden and it groaned at the weather, and wind whistled and signed through the unfinished fourth floor above me. It seemed a degree or two colder on the third floor than it had on the stairs, in spite of the fires burning in their grate. You could see the temperate on this floor was sinister. The overhead lamps, deliberately dim, flickered. As I went deeper into the catacombs, I became away that the usual sounds of construction seemed strangely muted, and if there were carpenters afoot, they kept well out of sight. The conviction tht I had taken a wrong turning grew upon me until, without any warning, the path swerved around a gigantic staircase and emerged onto an expanse of rooms. On the far side of the mansion, perhaps fifty yards, I was horror-stricken to find there were eight corpses swung in their chains, a fetid, blackened, hideous and indistinguishable mass. A dwarf hurled his torch at them, clambered leisurely to the ceiling, and disappeared through the skylight. Almost catatonic as I was climbing the stairs, I thought I heard a bell toll. It tolled only once. However, it tolled louder than any bell as a right to in Llanada Villa. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Whatever else was lurking in my home waxed and waned in its power. The mansion seemed to be inching its way upward out of darkness. As the moon rose higher, the freezing darkness was just a few feet away. I stook listening to the creepings and rustlings from the thickets outside, the occasional hoot of an owl. After a hundred yards of stumbling in darkness, I knew that I was in the presence of a superior intelligence. There was a light; rather unnerving, I confess. People in these parts firmly believe my home is haunted, and that I am a necromancer. I suffered from a morbid fear of death, and I sometimes think this accounts for my having shut myself so much away from the World. It had certainly drawn me into strange paths of study; and in particular to the alchemists’ quest for the elixir of life; the potion which will supposedly confer immortality upon one who discovers the secret. As one enters the glary by the main doors, it is easy to see, at the far end of the room, an immense fireplace. However, no fire has burned in it for centuries; the space within is occupied by what at first appears to be an immense cabin trunk. It is in fact a Roman marble sarcophagus from the Dukes of Beaufort, decorated with forty human and animal figures carved in high relief with Dionysus seated on the panther. In the alcove between the fireplace and the library wall stands a massive suit of armour, curiously blacked as if by fire. You would think it the work of some mediaeval craftsman, but as you approach you see that, from the waist down, it resembles one of those Egyptian coffins in the shape of a man. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
I was unable to explain to myself quite why the journey had taken so long. Many visitors found something oppressive, even sinister about the size of my home, to which I was drawn to build it for perhaps that very reason. However, if one finds this mansion gloomy, for the love of Heaven, then, take a tour of the Victorian garden, and one will see bright sunshine, various plants, with gigantic leaves, and, in some instances, flowers gorgeously magnificent. Every portion of the soil is peopled with plants and herbs, which, if less beautiful, still bares tokens of assiduous care, as if all their individual virtues, known to the scientific mind that foster them. Some are placed in urns, rich with old carving, and other in common garden pots; some creep serpentlike along the ground or climb on high, using whatever means of ascent offered them. One plant has wreathed itself round a statue of Vertumnus, which is thus quite veiled and shrouded in a drapery on hanging foliage, so happily arranged that it may have served a sculptor for a study. Nevertheless, there are so many ghosts at Llanada Villa that the entities often get together and hold dances in the Grand Ballroom. On one occasion, I watched a group of 15 to 20 ghosts having a dance in the third-floor ballroom. Walking among these malignant influences, savage beasts, deadly snakes, demons and evil spirits, the ghostly figures did not seem to mind the intrusion of my physical presence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Then with a sudden bound something dashed out of the Grand Ballroom. The concussion against me was so sudden and so utterly unexpected, as well as so tremendously violent, that I was thrown down, and in my fall, the light was fairly extinguished. All was darkness, save a dull reddish kind of light that now and then, from the nearly consumed Observational Tower in the immediate vicinity, came into the room. However, by that light, dim, uncertain, and flickering as it was, some one was seen to make for the window. Although nearly studded by my fall, I saw a figure, gigantic in height, which nearly reached from the floor to the ceiling. I screamed. The figure was about to pass out at the window which led to a kind of balcony, from whence there was an easy descent to the garden. Before it passed out, I caught a glance of the side-face, and I saw that the lower part of it and the lips were dabbled in blood. I saw, too, once of those fearful-looking, shining, metallic eyes which presented so terrible an appearance of unearthly ferocity. No wonder that for a moment a panic seized me, which paralyzed any exertion I might otherwise have made to detain that hideous form. Then I grabbed by revolver and fired at the figure, which then occupied the window, as if it were a gigantic figure set in a frame. The report was tremendous in that chamber, for the pistol was no toy weapon, but one made for actual service, and of sufficient length and bored of barrel to carry destruction along with the bullets that came from it. The tall form turned upon me, and when I got a full view of the face—that face was one never to be forgotten. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
It was hideously flushed with colour—the colour of fresh blood; the eyes had a savage and remarkable lustre; whereas, before, they had looked like polished tin—they now wore a ten times brighter aspect, and flashes of light seemed to dart from them. The mouth was open, as if, from the natural formation of the countenance, the lips receded much from the large canine-looking teeth. A strange, howling noise came from the throat of this monstrous figure, and it seemed upon the point of rushing upon me. Suddenly, then, as if some impulse had seized upon it, it uttered a wild terrible shrieking kind of laugh; and then turning, dashed through the window, and in one instance disappeared before my eyes as I felt nearly annihilated by its fearful presence. “God help me!” I said. I crossed the corridor, and could not but pause a moment to glance from a window as the face of nature. As is often the case, the terrific storm of the preceding evening had cleared the air, and rendered it deliciously invigorating and lifelike. The weather had been dull, and there had been for some days a certain heaviness in the atmosphere, which was now entirely removed. During an evening séance, 17 different entities declared their presence and provided a bit of their personal history. When a pretty kind of omen, Crispus Attucks, a soldier killed in the Revolutionary War, identified himself; he explained that most of the time he liked to stay down in the basement and that during the war, tribes squared off over disputed land. The skirmishes and ambushes escalated into attritional war. Wells were poisoned. Villages were burned. They found scorched villages and corpses, and dead beasts bloating and alive with maggots and blow flies. However, he was not the ghostly conjuration encountered that particular evening. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Gods of gods and Lord of lords, who hast created all things out of nothing, great king, very obedient Lucifer, I call upon your powers of light and the skies through the gates of Heaven. Powers of baneful darkness, I summon you to this holy mansion. I conjure you to enter here and guides the lives of my enemies into utter darkness. I now plant the seed of my desire within the black Earth, through the mouth of the black sun 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! O Thou great, powerful, and mighty King, who bearest rule by the power of the Heavens, Hell, Earth and the Universe, I do invocate and command thee by the especial and true name of God; and by that God that Thou Worshippest; and by the Seal of thy creation; and by the most mighty and powerful virtue thou mayest cause, enforce, and compel ADREALPHUS and His 30 Legions of Infernal Spirits, to come here before this Circle in a fair and comely shape, without harm unto me or unto any other creature, to fill us with your essence and might! Empower all endeavors that we undertake so that they may serve us here upon the corporeal plane! May your creation serve as a key to the realms above and below unlocking power and wisdom for our gory and ascent! Fill this mansion with your powers and seek any wrath and fury or spiritual attacks rendering them useless and impotent! Embrace us from the break of day to the setting of the sun, we thank you air, fire, water, earth, blessed be the one. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
In September 1998, a team of paranormal investigators told a story of being lifted off the ground and dropped by a ghost, and their accounts were backed up by the corroborating testimony of several witnesses. A teenager said that he had reached out to touch the phantom and had found the thing to be very cold. Observers had seen the ghost loitering in the Venetian dining room and strolling across the grounds. Other have seen the entity as a black cloud drifting across the yard, ranging from six to eight feet in height. Those who observed the thing in either guide affirm that it was a creature of habit. It always seemed to appear between 11.00 P.M. and 1.00 A.M., and usually followed the same routine from the dining room to a certain point on the grounds. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Organized Crime and Conventional Criminals
The criminality of persons in organized crime different from that of conventional criminals because their organization allows them to commit crimes of a different variety [labor racketeering, for example] and on a larger scale [smuggling planeloads of cocaine, for example] than their less organized colleagues. Organization permits a scope of activities unavailable to conventional criminal, while providing a vehicle for criminal interaction and coordination on a regional, national, and international level. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines organized crime “as any group having some manner of a formalized structure and whose primary objective is to obtain money through illegal activities. Such groups maintain their position through the use of actual violence, corrupt public officials, graft, or extortion, and generally have a significant impact on the people in their locales, region, or the country as a whole.” The United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (Article 2(a)) states that an “organized criminal group shall mean a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offenses established in accordance with this Convention, in other to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit.” If a particular group of criminals constitutes organized crime and, therefore, needs to be addressed in a way different from the way one would approach terrorist or groups of conventional criminals or a group of persons that forms for the immediate commission of a single offense, law enforcement agencies have research to help them deal with the phenomenon. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
With seemingly increasingly regularity, we hear about instances in which formal organizations (or the individuals therein) engage in criminal acts. At times, these crimes are directed inward as is the case with acts of employee theft, embezzlement, or corporate or political espionage. Take, for example, Susan McDougal who was accused (but later acquitted) of bilking $150,000 from the failed Whitewater land deal that haunted the Clinton presidency. Robert Philip Hanssen also comes to mind, the FBI agent accused of selling over 6,000 pages of top-secret government materials to the Russians. In other cases, the organizational crimes are directed outward toward specific clients, the competition, or the larger society. The Rodney King case or the assault on Abner Loima (id est, the New York City man who was sodomized with a broomstick by members of the NYPD) stand as high-profile examples of police officers purposely and egregiously violating the human rights of a particular citizen. Another case involving the faculty tread design on Bridetown/Firestone tires provides an example of how unsafe product manufacturing can result in the death of numerous unsuspecting consumers. Antitrust arrangements such as the alleged monopolization of the computer software industry by Microsoft’s Windows program illustrate how free market competition can be stymied and businesses can be forced into an unfair market situation. Broader societal impacts are felt in instances when a government misrepresents itself or betrays the public to achieve military or economic goals. This was the case in the Nazi Holocaust and the Iran-Contra scandal. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Similarly, a corporation or rouge employee (id est, doctor or pharmacist) has the ability to enact a scheme that leads to broad-based economic or physical hardship for hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. This was the case in the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s, the Enron and World Com accounting fiascos, and the recent story of the Kansas City pharmacist who was diluting chemotherapy drugs for profit. There is a common thread that runs through all of the above-mentioned scenarios—they constitute breaches of trust that emanate from within an organizational entity. Crimes that are committed within the context of complex organizations represent a vexing conceptual category for criminologists. Traditionally, these acts have been aggregated under the heading of white-collar crime. White Collar Crime, may be defined approximately as a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of one’s occupation. In the 80 plus years since this statement, scholars have struggled in earnest to reach agreement over the conceptual and behavioral breadth that should be afford to the white-collar crime rubric. Much of this apprehension results from the fact that the subject matter spreads like wild fire. As society advances, someone is always willing and able to exploit the situation through an act of criminal innovation. This means that, today, we must negotiate a host of governmental, corporate, and employee-perpetrated acts that simply did not exist 80 years ago. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Criminologist and sociologist alike have repeatedly sought to refine or expand the conceptual landscape of white-collar crime. He notes that some have chosen to expand the original definition to include the occupational offenses of lower states, blue-collar employees. Others have employed any violent or property crime that is committed in the context of organizational influences (id est, the role that organizational norms and directives have on individual actors) into the discussion. We have also seen the development of concepts such as “state crime,” “political crime,” or even the hybrid “state-corporate crime” to allow for a more complete treatment of governmental misconduct. The term crime within complex organizations is meant to refer to any physical or nonphysical illegal act (id est, violent or property offense) that is committed within an organizational context and seeks to further individual or organizational goals, regardless of the social status of that individual or organization. Such a definition subsumes occupational, corporate, organizational, political, and state-corporate crimes under a single conceptual rubric. It is a definition that stresses abuses of trust, not power or social status. This discussion centers most on the roles that organizational norms and opportunities play in shaping the cognitive and behavioral dimensions of criminal behavior. This definition stems from the central premise that all organizations are inherently corrupting. The norms and behaviors that become routinized in these structure can yield a criminogenic environment, one in which the likelihood of a crime occurring is significantly different than it would be if the organizational dimension was removed. The “organizational factor” is said to produce a new layer of analysis that warrants a special conceptual distinction and appreciation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
There is a different between organizational occupational crime, state authority occupational crime, professional occupational crimes, and individual occupational crime. Organizational occupational crime incudes any crime that benefits the organizational initiatives. State authority occupational crime focuses on abuses of governmental authority that seek to achieve personal or political interests. Professional occupational crime encompasses all wrongdoing committed by persons who hold some sort of professional status. Individual occupational crime is concerned with garden variety employee thefts perpetrated by lone, nonsalaried perpetrators. As stated, the context in which the criminal act occurs, not the act itself, is our primary focus. As such, any acts (from murder to theft to drug abuse) would fall under this topic as it occurred in an organizational context and stemmed most directly from organization norms and opportunities. This notwithstanding, certain statutory provisions are unique to organizational settings. First, are laws that seek to protect businesses. Beyond simple theft and pilferage statues, embezzlement is the most noteworthy of these statutory provisions. Embezzlement occurs when an individual misappropriates property or money with which one has been entrusted. Legally speaking, the misappropriation is deemed a form of “conversion,” not a “theft by taking,” since the perpetrator has been voluntarily granted access to the materials as part of a trust agreement. The actus reus is the conversion and the mens reus aspect of the crime is the intent to permanently deprive the rightful owner of possession. For example, bank tellers are routinely entrusted with access to cash. If a teller permanently removes money from the bank, he or she is said to have illegally concerted the funds and thus committed embezzlement. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
There are laws that protect free market competition. Over the course of the past century or so, the U.S.A. Congress has crafted several legislative provisions that outlaw price-fixing, bid-rigging, monopolies, and other threats to fair business competition. Most notable was the Sherman Act of 1890. This piece of legislation criminalized any effort to prevent full and free competition, any business arrangements designed to artificially inflate prices, and/or any restraint on free trade. Congress has since passed the Clayton Act of 1914, and the Robinson-Patman Act and the Celler-Kefauver Act of 1950. Each of these pieces of legislation provides updates and specifications to the legal landscape that was outlined in the Sherman Act. Coleman (1998) further delineates a series of laws that are designed to protect democracy. The most visible of these corruption statues are bribery, perjury, and various tampering offenses. Bribery deems it illegal for any public official (exempli gratia, judge, legislator, police officer) to offer, give, receive, or solicit anything of value to influence or alter an official outcome. Perjury statues make it illegal to make false statements while under oath (American Law Institute, 1962). This crime was thrust into the public arena when former President Clinton was accused of perjuring himself regarding the Monic Lewinski sex scandal. Duress refers to coercion that causes a person to perform an act against his or her will. Duress is an important concept in both civil and criminal law that recognizes that a person who is acting without free will should not be held responsible for the conduct. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
In contract law, legal duress can invalidate a contact signed by a party. The rationale is that the formation of the contract was not undertaken freely and voluntarily. In other words, there was not a true meeting of the minds. Duress exists when a person has been wrongfully forced or coerced into entering the contract. Physical coercion and threats of harm are common examples of conduct that constitute duress. Another form of conduct that might constitute duress includes wrongfully withholding a party’s property, or threatening to wrongfully withhold the property until a contract is signed. Duress can also be a defense in criminal law. In essence, the concept is that a defendant charged with a crime can be excused for his or her actions if they were committed under duress or coercion, as defined by the law. The defendant normally must show that the defendant’s actions were reasonable under the circumstances and based upon the fear of immediate serious harm. Tampering statues make it illegal for an individual to alter or impede official proceedings or investigations. Political corruption can take on a wide variety of forms and the U.S.A. Congress has enacted numerous pieces of legislation to safeguard democracy. For example, the Federal Corrupt Practice Act of 1925 and the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 seek to regulate election process and campaign contributions. Similarly, the Foreign Corruption Practices Act of 1979 sough to put a stop to “international payoffs, bribes, kickbacks, gifts, and political contributions” that came to light in the Watergate scandal that rocked the Nixon administration. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
There exist laws that seek to protect the public from being victimized by organizational entities. These include legal measures that safeguard consumers, workers, and the environment. Prosecutors often invoke fraud statues to protect consumers against unsavory business entities. These efforts might target cases of consumer fraud (a bogus company or “Ponzi or pyramid scheme” taking money from consumers for substandard or non-existent product or service), fraud in the professions (healthcare organizations or other professional entities overcharging clients), or financial fraud (banks or bankers making illegal loans or engaging in forbidden accounting practices). Federal prosecutors have at their disposal specific legislative provisions and acts that they can use in their fight against organization-based fraud; for example, they can utilize provisions of the Consumer Product Safety Act of 1972 in cases involving product safety. They also have at their disposal specific pieces of legislation that have been enacted to protect the consumers of a particular type of good or service. For example, the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 impose standards on the production, marketing, and preparation of food products and medications. Similarly, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989, as well as the Crime Control Act of 1990, contains provisions that allow prosecutors to act against the illegal practices of banks and financial institutions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Another example would be the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, which imposes regulatory standards on the automobile industry. Similarly, the Insider Trading and Securities Fraud Enforcement Act which deems it illegal to compromise the fair value and trading of corporate stocks. Resourceful federal prosecutors have even been known to use the 1970 Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act to pursue white-collar criminals. Originally intended for use against organized crime, prosecutors have begun to exploit certain provisions in the statue. Namely, a person or organization can be subject to stiff RICO sanctions (25-year prison term per count and forfeiture of corrupt assets) if it can be shown that this person or organization used any form of enterprise to engage in a pattern of racketeering. A pattern exists if two acts of racketeering are committed within a 10-year period. There is a laundry list of federal and state crimes that constitute racketeering, including such predicate crimes as murder, kidnapping, robbery, arson, extortion, obstruction of justice, mail, and wire fraud, securities fraud, and (the recently added) financial institutions fraud. This is a thumbnail sketch of the vast legal landscape which allows for criminal charges to be brought against persons or organizations that harm the public, democracy, or the free enterprise system. In addition to these sanctions, aggrieved parties are always given the option of seeking financial compensation via civil action. This is often the preferred course of action, because most crimes within complex organizations, especially those of the corporate or organizational crime variety, pose a serious legal dilemma for the criminal court system. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Most notably, one must establish that a criminal responsibility exists. The question becomes: Can a corporation or complex organization commit a crime? Our legal system has traditionally thought of a “crime” to be an offense that occurs between two or perhaps three persons. Crimes that occur within complex organizations are often collective in nature (id est, committed by the company or dozens of its employees) and do not make it easy for external authorities to identify a short list of suspects. Prosecutors are rarely able to convince judges and juries that corporate executives should be held criminally responsible for their behaviors. High-prices corporate lawyers and “happy capitalists” on the jury predictably produce acquittals for accused executives and corporations. This, in turn, leads to follow-up civil actions that seek to hit the executives and corporations in what stands as their only exposed legal area—their wallets. In an organized crime group, violence is a readily available and routinely accepted resource. Access to private violence is an important dimension that allows the group to actively purse its goals. The use of violence is not restricted by ethical considerations but controlled only practical limitations. An organized criminal group eschews competition. It strives for hegemony over a particular geographical area (a metropolitan area or section of a city), a particular “industry,” legitimate or illegitimate (for example, gambling, drug trafficking), or a combination of both. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
An organized crime monopoly is maintained by violence, by the threat of violence, or by corrupt relationships with law enforcement officials. A combination of both methods, violence and corruption, may be employed. Criminal organizations can manifest a variety of structures, ranging from bureaucracy to a group sharing some combination of kinship, friendship, and ethnicity/culture, characteristics that provide emotional ties and enhance trust. These ties are strengthened if members are part of a community alienated from mainstream society. The weaker the shared characteristics, the more likely there is to be a bureaucratic structure. In other word, bureaucracy offers an alternative to more personalistic ties. Criminal organizations can manifest a bureaucratic structure while its business activities operate outside the structure; or the structure and business can be one and the same. A criminal organization can manifest a bureaucratic structure with ranks and levels of authority, while economic activities may be divorced from the formal structure. In such cases, every member of the organization represents a slot on the “company chart” while their business activities are independent, conducted solo or in partnerships with member and nonmember associates, and not dependent on the formal structure. Credentialing also permits members of a criminal organization to enforce extralegal social norms ranging from restraining boisterous behavior to requiring a young man to marry the young lady he impregnated. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
In current events, the U.S.A. trade deficit jumped to a record high in March 2023 amid roaring domestic demand, which is drawing in imports, and the gap could widen further as the nation’s economic activity rebounds faster than it global rivals. Manufacturers lack the capacity to satisfy the surge in demand because of resource constraints and bottlenecks in the supply chain. Inventories are very lean. Demand is being driven by a rapidly improving public health situation and massive government assistance to households and businesses to soften the hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The trade deficit increased 5.6 percent to an all-time high of $74.4 billion in March. Imports soared 6.3 percent to a historic $274.5 billion in March. Goods imports also increased to 7.0 percent which is $234.4 billion; another all-time high. Imports of consumer goods were the highest on record, as were those for food and capital goods. The government has provided nearly $6 trillion in pandemic relief over the past year. To conquer the global market, Western exporters have to fight really hard, and the outcome of this fight is not at all predetermined. Furthermore, Americans will have to learn to consume less and save more so they can achieve larger output with smaller investment and, consequently, saving. Along this line of global rebalancing concept, Western households restrain their purchases of consumer goods in order to save more, and they will be able to afford higher priced products manufactured in American factories. However, no simple counseling or job referrals can handle the problem; it is a task for social engineering. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
As a psychological problem, the sense of worth derived from a vocation has found a far from secure basis outside the family, save for the few who gain confirmation of their vocational identities in the most advanced professional associations. Here is an instance where no notion of remedy in a therapeutic sense seems reasonable; only the development of positive means for assuring a conscious choice of careers seems appropriate to the situation. The family itself, beyond instilling the basic habits of work, has more than ever before the duty to prepare its members for the interpersonal competence and the sociability tht are required for most modern employment; its function in occupational transmission has not only been partly curtailed but also transformed. This brief glance at economic agencies serving families has touched on the first two of the traditional economic categories—production and consumption. Given that sufficient and dependable money can be earned by American families, is there any reason to suppose that families under urban, industrial conditions need to be assisted or need to co-operate through agencies related to consumption? If the answer to this were assumed to be in the negative, then it would be hard to account for the considerable number and variety of existing family agencies, whose efforts are directed toward the protection and improvement of family consumption. If we consider each of the main components of family expenditure, we find a remarkable degree of specialization among economic agencies focusing on the consumer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Some of course are concerned with the provisions of minimum amounts of essentials to needy segments of the population, but generally these may be considered as agencies serving to maintain income, even though, in many cases, they furnish goods and service in kind rather than cash, exempli gratia, county homes for the aged. The subsidization of certain items of consumption for certain segments of the population, as in the school lunch program, might also be considered under the heading of increments to income. The volume of goods and services purchased from tax funds, and communally distributed in this way, has been steadily rising in recent years—especially in such fields as health, education, and recreation. While in one sense such services are always consumed in accordance with need, exempli gratia, families without children receive no direct benefit from public schools, it is illuminating to distinguish between public services distributed to the whole community and those received only by the needy. Meanwhile it is also of some importance to note how many aspects there are to consumption beyond the mere provision of the means of consumption. Thus we have agencies concerned with the regulation of prices and rents, not only the wartime agencies, but the permanent commissions regulating what consumers have to pay for public utilities and transportation. One the private side, consumer co-operatives may be said to carry on similar functions of trying to hold down consumer costs. Then there are agencies, from municipal to federal, concerned with guarding and raising the quality and purity not only of goods offered for sale, but even of the advertising, labelling and weighing and measuring done by their sellers. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Private organizations of this sort are meagerly developed—perhaps because this truly is a matter of public concern. A long-standing proposal would turn even the functions of the best-known consumer organization—the Consumers Union—over to a government agency such as the United States Bureau of Standards. Since agencies concerned with the more efficient and tasteful utilization of income are largely educational, a discussion of these will be included under educational agencies. Of all the items in family budgets, housing above al others has called forth a host of private and public agencies for supplementing the efforts of the individual consuming family. The range of tasks such consumer agencies carry on includes fire protection, extending credit, design and construction, sanitation, zoning, raising community standards, city planning, and style leadership While some of the work of these consumer agencies is to correct conditions which the consumer cannot rectify oneself, much of their work makes possible for families things which in the past were out of their reach. For example, families can now enjoy with complete safety an unsurpassed range of variety in their diet. For the common man, as once only for nobility, eating has become an aesthetic experience, full of the joys of invention and the excitement of discovery. Fear of strange foods has become a mark no longer of prudence but of provinciality. It is plausible to speak of some functions of the family having to do with consumption as having been transferred to other institutions and agencies, but note has to be made of the addition and elaboration of other functions, even of something like “reprivatization.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
If family servants be thought of as an institution, one may in a sense speak of the restoration of their function to many families. Household appliances and kitchen gadgets, which Americans crave, are gradually taking the place of the servant class in our society. Shopping and budgeting are examples of recently elaborated family functions. These are activities now adays usually shared by all but the youngest members of the family; they involve discussion and the balancing of values and make every family a microcosmic forum in which the character of demand in the whole economy is debated and formulated. As family incomes rise, a family does not merely eat and drink more, nor add a useless frill or gadget; it may choose instead to put more into services, spacious housing, health, education, entertaining, recreation, travel, and community participation, in other words, into obtaining those resources and experiences which have potentialities for developing their personalities. The easy generalization of critics that the growth of American wealth leads to materialism is found on investigation to be superficial. High culture—once the property of a leisure class—becomes the possession of all families when the increase of wealth is well distributed. Families achieve material comfort only to move beyond the primary concern with physical existence. Paradoxically, economic activity becomes most clearly instrumental to the highest development of individual personality, just at the point where enjoyment of self by means of existing resources becomes preferable to denial of self in order to obtain increases of income. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The competence of the producer oneself may be conceived as a channel of investment. There is a spiral relation in which income spent on personal development contributes ultimately to further productivity, through the improvement of human resources. We may thus expand the suggestions of Mrs. Myrdal that programs for the family, to gain the degree of favorable opinion and financial support necessary for large aims, must appeal to the investment motive. Investment in the competence of the nation’s human-power by careful engineering can appeal to a powerful investment motive—a person’s interest in advancing one’s own career or one’s child’s, while improving the most strategic of all factors of production, labor. It is proper to seek the rehabilitation of the disabled, but if the attention of family agencies goes on further than to release the disabled from dependency, then the agencies still deserve to be described as fixated at the therapeutic stage. Even the Swedish family policy, aimed only at preventing or arresting the economic consequences of a declining population, stops short of the goal of national action implicit in American ideas. If we think of this nation as a household, and manage it as a set of conditions for the cultivation of competence, we can hope to complete a benevolent circle, from more production to higher income to better consumption and the optimal development of human resources, and thence back again to production. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The Word of God is very clear. The God we worship, the Christ we love, is in Heaven. It is as we approach Him there, and by faith apprehend our union with Him in spirit there, that we are raised with Him above the plane of the lower Heavens where the powers of darkness reign, and seated with Him, see them under His feet. The Lord’s words recorded in the Gospel of John, chapters 14, 15, and 16, give the truth very clearly concerning His indwelling the believer. The “in Me” speaks of being with Him in His Heavenly position (John 14.20)—the result of the believer’s faith in Him; and the “I in you”—spoken to the company of disciples, and hence to the Body of Christ as a whole—follows as a result in the life of the individual believer. This union with the Person in the glory results in the inflow and outflow of His Spirit and life through the believer on Earth (see Phil. 1.19). In other words, the “subjective” is the result of the “objective.” The fact that Christ is in Heaven is the basis of faith for the subjective inflow of His life and power by the Holy Spirit of God. There are three elements in ontological concepts: individuality—universality, dynamics—form, freedom—destiny. Polarity is a mode of conception and development in relation of interdependent elements, each of which is necessary for the other one and for the whole, although it is in tension with the opposite element. Neither pole can stand by itself’ it needs the other to complement it. However at the same time, both poles clash as they expand at the expense of one another. Thus the poles limit and sustain each other. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
However, this ideal balance can be upset, for under the impact of finitude, polarity becomes tension, which is the tendency of unified elements to draw away tension, which is the tendency of unified elements to draw away from one another in opposite directions. Individualization and Participation: Individualization is implied in the self which, like a mathematical point, cannot be divided. Though every being is analogously an individual, man is the totally centered self, completely individualized. He is a person. The individual self of every being participates in its environment, but man, the microcosm, participates in the whole universe by means of the rational structure of mind and reality. Finally, when individualization reached the perfect form which we call a “person,” participation reaches the perfect form which we call “communion”—participation in another self who also is a person. Dynamics and Form: Being a self, being an individual, being something—this means having a form. The form which makes a thing what it is, is its content, its essential, its definite power of being. However, a form must form something which we call dynamics. Dynamics cannot be conceptualized but only symbolized, for it has no form, and yet it is not pure nothingness. It is the me on, the potentiality of being, which is nonbeing in contrast to pure nonbeing—for example, Bergson’s elan vital, Nietzche’s will to power, and the unconscious of Dr. Freud. In human experience dynamics appears as vitality, the power of life and growth. Form appears as intentionality, the grasping and shaping of reality through universals and meaningful structures. To put it in still another way, self-transcendence (dynamics) is always in polar balance with self-conservation (form). #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Freedom and Destiny: In describing this ontological element, we come to understand that freedom of a thing is contradictory. Only man is free, the total self, including even the cells and atoms of his body which share in the constitution of that individual, personal center. Furthermore, man experiences himself as a bearer of freedom, but within the larger structure to which he belongs. Destiny is the World to which man pertains—his body, psychic drives, temperament, social community, material surroundings, conscious and unconscious past, and, above all, his former free decisions. Destiny is not a strange power which determines what shall happen to me. It is myself as given, formed by nature, history, and myself. My destiny is the basis of my freedom, my freedom participates in shaping my destiny. Within the bounds of destiny man experiences freedom as deliberation, decision, and responsibility. Obviously, the polarity freedom-destiny can be applied only analogously to beings inferior to man. In the subhuman realm it appears as the polarity of spontaneity and law. The three ontological polarities have been viewed horizontally, with each polar element in balance with its opposite. If one were to split them vertically, the first side of these polarities—individuality, dynamics, and freedom—would express the self-relating power of being. The second side—universality, form, and destiny—expressed the belongingness of being, its participation in the universe of being. Thus the basic self-World structure is manifest within the ontological polarities. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Rancho Cordova, CA | low $600s
Now Selling!
Models now open at Magnolia Station! Located at the corner of Rancho Cordova Parkway and Douglas Road, residents of Cresleigh Ranch will benefit from a brand new neighborhood with convenient access to the new Raley’s Shopping Center, Sunrise Boulevard, and much more!
Magnolia Station will include 81 homesites and five distinct plans ranging from 2,200 – 3,700 square feet; including three single story plans! Each plan has been thoughtfully designed to include features such as: Generations Suite, Optional Offices/Dens, Extended Great Rooms, and more!
Dabbling in Dark, Cruel Possibilities of Magic
Winter rain. Rain of light that saturated every inch of my estate, every square inch of grass, drift of rain threading light through the empty darkness itself. I was weary of this night because I had met with such terrible misfortune not too long ago. All which apparently conspiring to heighten that superstitious melancholy that had seized upon my mansion. The more I thought, the more I was bewildered. Night passed on without rest. The sound of carriages broke upon my ear. The solemn tones of the old grandfather clock announced midnight—a strange death-like stillness pervades all nature all nature. Like the ominous calm which precedes some more than usually terrific outbreak of the elements, they seem to have paused in their ordinary fluctuations, to gather a terrific strength for the great effort. A faint pea of thunder now comes from far off. Like a signal gun for the battle of the winds to begin, it appeared to awaken them from their lethargy, and one awful, warring hurricane swept over a whole city, producing more devastation in the four or five minutes it lasted, than would half century of ordinary phenomena. Oh, how the storm raged! Hair—rain—wind. It was, in very truth, as awful night. There is an antique chamber in this ancient house. Curious and quaint carvings adorn the walls, and a large chimney-piece is a curiosity of itself. The ceiling is low, and a large bay window, from roof to floor, looks to the west. The window is latticed, and filled with curiously painted glass and rich stained pieces, which send in a strange, yet beautiful light, when sun or moon shines into the apartment. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
There is but one portrait in that room, although the walls are panelled for the express purpose of containing a series of pictures. The portrait is of William, as a young man, with his handsome pale face, stately brow, and a whimsical look about the eyes. There is a stately bed in this chamber, of carved walnut-wood is it made, rich in design and elaborate inexecution; one of those works of art which owe their existence to the Elizabethan era. It is hung with heavy silken and damask furnishing; nodding feathers are at its corners—covered with dust are they, and they lend a funeral aspect to the room. The floor is of polished oak. God! how the hail dashes on the old bay window! Like an occasional discharge of mimic musketry, it comes clashing, beating, and cracking upon the small panes; but they resist it—their small size saves them; the wind, the hail, the rain, expend their fury in vain. The turmoil of the elements wakes the senses, although it cannot entirely break the repose they have lapsed into. Oh, what a World of witchery. Was that lightning? Yes—an awful, vivid, terrifying flash—then a roaring peal of thunder, as if a thousand mountains were rolling one over the other in the blue vault of Heaven! Who sleeps now in that ancient city? Not one living soul. The dread trumpet of eternity could not more effectually have awakened anyone. The hail continues. The wind continues. The uproar of the elements seems at its height. I lay in bed waiting for sleep to come. However, I lay for a long time and it came only reluctantly. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Rain continued to whicker and spat on my bedroom window. There was a skittering sound. It could have the claws of some capering demon. I sat upon my bed and pressed my hands upon my eyes. Heavens! what a wild torrent of wind, and rain, and hail! The thunder likewise seems intent upon awakening sufficient echoes to last until the next flash of forked lightening should again produce the wild concussion of the air. I murmured a prayer—a prayer for those I love best; the names of those dear to my gentle hear come from my lips; and I weep and pray; I think then of what devastation the storm must surely produce, and to the great God of Heaven I pray for all living things. Another flash—a wild, blue, bewildering flash of lightning streams across that bay window, for an instant brining out every color in it with terrible distinctness. A shriek bursts from my lips, and then, with my eyes fixed upon that window, which, in another moment, is all darkness, and with such an expression of terror upon my face as it had never before known, I trembled, and the perspiration of intense fear stood upon my brow. “What—what was it?” I gasped; “real, or delusion? Oh, God, there are people in the World with hunger for power and influence enough to risk dabbling in dark, cruel possibilities of magic. Particular locations could infect individual people with what society termed evil. Those people are random victims of contagion. However, I had seen real ghouls. Now, a figure tall and gaunt, endeavoring from the outside to unclasp the window. I saw it. That flash of lightning revealed it to me. It stood at the whole length of the window.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
There is a lull of the wind. The hail is not falling so thickly—moreover, it now fell, what there is of it, straight, and yet a strange clattering sound came upon the glass of that long window. It could not be a delusion—I am awake, and I hear it. What can produce it? Another flash of lightning—another shriek—there can be now no delusion. The house is uncomfortably cold. A tall figure is standing on the ledge immediately outside the long window. It is its finger-nails upon the glass that produces the sound so like the hail, now that the hail has ceased. Intense fear paralyzed my limbs. That one shrike is all I can utter—with hands clasped, a face of marble, a heart beating so wildly in my bosom, that it moment it seems as if it would break its confines, eyes distended and fixed upon the window, I wait, froze with horror. The pattering and clattering of the nails continue. No word is spoken. I fancy I can trace the darker form of that figure against the window, and I can see the long arms moving to and fro, feeling for some mode of entrance. What strange light is that which now gradually creeps up into the air? red and terrible—brighter and brighter it grows. The light has set fire to the water tower, and the reflection of the rapidly consuming building falls upon that long window. There can be no mistake. The figure is there, still feeling for an entrance, and clattering against the glass with its long nail, that appear as if the growth of many years had been untouched. I try to scream again but a chocking sensation comes over me, and I cannot. It is too dreadful—I try to move—each limb seems weighed down by tons of lead—I can but in a hoarse faint whisper cry,–“Help—help—help—help!” #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Suddenly I was startled beyond belief when a small pane of glass is broken and the form from without introduces a long gaunt hand, which seems utterly destitute of flesh. The fastening is removed, and one-half of the window, which opens like folding doors, is swung wide open upon its hinges. My heart is running at that eternal rhythm, so many gradations. There is a look of terror upon my face, it is dreadful. The figure turns half rough, and the light falls upon the face. It is perfectly white—perfectly bloodless. The eyes look like polished tin; the lips are drawn back. It approaches the bed with a strange, gliding moment. It clashes together the long nails that literally appear to hand from the fingers. No sound comes from its lips. However, my eyes are fascinated. The glance of a serpent could not have produced a greater effect upon me than did the fixed gaze of those awful, metallic-looking eyes that were bent on my face. Crouching down so that the gigantic height was lost, and the horrible, protruding white face was the most prominent object, came on the figure. With a sudden rush that could not be foreseen—with a strange howling cry that was enough to awaken terror in every breast, the figure seized the long tresses of my hair, and twining them round his bony hands. I quivered with the agony of my soul. I crept into the Hall through the secret passage which led from the house to the Observational Tower. The house and the grounds were thoroughly searched, but the creature had vanished from the face of the Earth, all that was found was a clawlike finger nail. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The tale of the man in the dark cloak is well known to the staff of The Winchester Mystery House. On November 23, at 5.30 p.m., a tour guide was locking up, when he saw the man across the courtyard. He was going into the East Wing in what he thought was a dark coat. Thinking that it was a visitor still looking round, he waited outside for five minutes for the man to finish his tour, but still there was no sign of him. The tour guide went into the east wing to see what he was doing, and he saw a malignant face peering down at him from the stairs. In the long darkness that followed—haunted he was by the ravaged face. Four years would pass before anything happened to disturb his melancholy conviction. 🎟️ Tickets on sale now at link in bio! https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Men, Money, and Violence
The close fabric of economic relations is regulated by money, the abstract expression of work—that is to say, we receive different quantities of the same for different quantities for different qualities; and we give money for what we receive—again exchanging only different quantities for different qualities. Many people think that those who have acquired nice things are lucky, but this is generally not the case. It is called capitalism. People work hard, earn money, and buy the things they like. Generally, the only people who claim to not like capitalism are lazy people because they do not want to work for the things they want. They would rather become jealous, remain unindustrious, and have wealth redistributed so they can afford to have nice things. Practically nobody, with the exception of the farm population, could live for even a few days without receiving and spending money, which stands for the abstract quality of concrete work. The Second Wave created mass societies that reflected and require mass production. In Third Wave, brain-based economies, mass production (which could almost be considered the defining mark of industrial society) is already and outmoded form. De-massified production—short runs of highly customized products—is the new cutting edge of manufacture. Mass marketing gives way to market segmentation and “particle marketing,” paralleling the change in production. Old industrial-style behemoths collapse of their own mass and face destruction. Labor unions in the mass manufacturing sector shrink. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The mass media are de-massified in parallel with production, and giant TV net works shrivel as new channels proliferate. The family system, too, becomes de-massified: the nuclear family, once the modern standard, becomes a minority form while single-parent households, remarried couples, childless families and live-alones proliferate. The entire structure of society, therefore, changes as the homogeneity of Second Wave society is replaced by the heterogeneity of Third Wave civilization. Massification gives way to de-massification. In turn, the very complexity of the new system requires more and more information exchanges among its units—companies, government agencies, hospitals, associations, other institutions, even individuals. This creates a ravenous need for computers, digital telecommunications networks and new media. Simultaneously, the pace of technological change, transactions and daily life speeds up. In fact, Third Wave economies operate at speeds so accelerated that their premodern suppliers can barely keep pace. Moreover, as information increasingly substitutes for bulk raw materials, labor and other resources, Third Wave countries become less dependent on First Wave or Second Wave partners, except for markets. More and more they do business with each other. Eventually, their highly capitalized, knowledge-based technology will take over many tasks now done by the countries with affordable labor and actually to them faster, better—and more inexpensively. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
These changes threaten to slash many of the existing economic links between the rich economies and the less affluent. Complete de-coupling is impossible. It is not possible to stop pollution, disease and immigration from penetrating the borders of the Third Wave countries. Tensions between the Third Wave civilization and the two older forms of civilizations will continue to rise, and the new civilization may well fight to establish global hegemony, just as Second Wave modernizers did with respect to the First Wave premodern societies in centuries past. Noce this concept of the clash of civilizations is grasped, it helps us make sense of many seemingly odd phenomena—today’s flaring nationalism, for instance. Nationalism is the ideology of the nation-state, which is a product of the industrial revolution. Thus, as First Wave, or agrarian, societies seek to start or complete their industrialization, they demand the trappings of nationhood. Former Soviet republics like the Ukraine or Estonia or Georgia fiercely insist on self-determination, and demand yesterday’s marks of modernity—the flags, armies and currencies that defined the nation-state during the Second Wave, or industrial, era. It is hard for may in the high-tech World to comprehend the motivations of ultra-nationalists. Their puffed-up patriotism strikes many as amusing. It calls to mind the land of Freedonia in the Marx Brothers’ movie Duck Soup, which satirized national superiority as two fictional nations went to war. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
By contrast, it is incomprehensible to nationalists how some countries allow others to invade their sacred independence. Yet the “globalization” of business and finance required by the advancing Third Wave economies routinely punctures the national “sovereignty” the new nationalists hold so dear. As economies are transformed by the Third Wave, they are compelled to surrender part of their sovereignty and to accept increasing economic and cultural intrusions from one another. Thus, while poets and intellectuals of economically backward regions write national anthems, poets and intellectuals of Third Wave states sing the virtues of a “borderless” World and “planetary consciousness.” The resulting collisions, reflecting the sharply differing needs of two radically different civilizations, could provoke some of the worst bloodshed in the years to come. If today’s redivision of the World from two into three parts seems less than obvious right ow, it is simply because the transition from Second Wave brute-force economies to Third Wave brain-force economies is nowhere yet complete. Even in the United States of America, Japan and Europe, the domestic battle for control between Third and Second Wave elites is still not over. Important Second Wave institutions and sectors of production still remain, and Second Wave political lobbies still cling to power. The “mix” of Second and Third Wave elements in each high tech country gives each its own characteristic “formation.” Nevertheless, the trajectories are clear. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The globally competitive race will be won by the countries that complete their Third Wave transformation with the least amount of domestic dislocation and unrest. In the meantime, the historic change from a bisected to a trisected World could well trigger the deepest power struggles on the planet, as each country tries to position itself in the emerging three-tiered power structure. Behind this monumental reallocation of power lies a change in the role, significance and nature of knowledge. As far as the global economy rebalancing is concerned, this is not the end of the story. The global downturn years brought an important change: as export dwindled, a greater part of the made-in-America consumer products stater to be sold domestically. Real private consumption is at 53 percent. American is going through a resurgence of private consumption growth. Since March 2020, we have all learned more about supply chains and global trade than we ever expected. We understand better than ever how the global supply chain affects what shows up on our shelves—or what does not (like toilet paper, bleach, soap, building materials and automobile parts, and the microchip shortage). Although sourcing supplies for lower-cost regions of the World seems to make sense, it can cause Americans to lose their jobs and businesses, and leaves us vulnerable to shutdowns, lockdowns, and shortages. This visibility has heightened awareness and lead to a shift of consumer preference that has made people become more patriotic. Consumers are willing to pay up to 20 percent more for goods made in the USA. This is true for consumer goods as well as business-to-business and industrial purchases. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
In addition, many people believe that buying America is part of supporting the American heritage and that USA-made goods are superior. Of course, our shift toward buying American comes after a nearly 30-year cycle of demand for lower-cost goods that pushed production from the United States of America into lower-cost regions of the World. This cycle is shifting back to USA soil as people realize that the ultimate cost can damage the national economy. It could perhaps even risk our position of power and influence in the World. For every $1 invested in USA manufacturing, $1.81 in value is generated in return. Manufacturers contribute $2.17 trillion to the national economy—over 12 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), or the measure of the market value of the country’s output of products and services. Manufacturing also supports more than 40 million jobs in the USA. What funds this activity? Demand from consumers—and when we buy American and buy local, we are creating more demand for goods manufactured right here. Small businesses also have an enormous collective power. In fact, together US-based small businesses generate $4.8 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP)—making them equivalent to the third-largest economy in the World. Buying products made in America comes with a sense of fulfillment. Many people say that they feel great satisfaction knowing that they are behind a product that makes people’s lives easier and contributes to our national and local economy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Families ascending from low to middle-income bracket are usually increasing their consumption at the highest pace. Since hundreds of millions of American households have more consumer power, this wave will continue for decades to come, enabling America to grow even in times when we face a recession. According to functionalist theory, prostitution exists because it serves several important functions for society generally and for certain people in society. It provides a source of income for many people who otherwise might be jobless, and it provides a sexual alternative for men with motivations. Nearly one hundred years ago, sociologist Dr. Kingsley Davis wrote that prostitution even lowers the divorce rate. Because prostitution is generally impersonal, these john and janes do not usually fall in love with their prostitutes, and their marriages are not threatened. According to conflict theory, prostitution reflects the economic inequality in society. Many less affluent people feel compelled to become prostitutes because of their lack of money; because wealthier people have many other sources of income, the idea of becoming a prostitute is something they may only do for fun and a lot of money. Sad but interesting historical support for this view comes from an increase in prostitution in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many women lost husbands and boyfriends in the war and were left penniless. Lacking formal education and living in a society that at the time offered few job opportunities to women, many of these bereaved women were forced to turn to prostitution to feed their families and themselves. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The prostitute-as-victim and prostitute-as-survivor identifications were made possible by the dissolving of the symbolic boundaries between “normal” and “abnormal” men so that all men with whom the respondents had (or might have) a relationship with became both (i) boyfriends and potential pimps; and (ii) ordinary men doing what comes naturally and abnormal dangerous men. The meanings for “men,” “violence” and “danger” were fused together so that all men became “risky,” “dangerous” (in the sense of individuals who threatened the women’s overall social, material and, occasionally, physical safety) and/or “suspect” (in the sense of individuals could not be trusted). This meant that the women were unable to take anything in their relationship with men for granted, at the same time as necessarily having to recognize and ignore the potential threats and risks inherent in their relations with men in order to continue with their day-to-day lives. The conflation of men with danger is most evident in the women’s talk about “pimps” who posed the specific threat of violence and financial exploitation. Earlier it was noted that the term “pimp” was used by the women in three distinct ways. Until this point, the term pimp has been used as a descriptive label. However, “pimps” also occupied a crucial and pivotal symbolic space in that the term was used in an imaginary fashion to represent the archetypal dangers of involvement in prostitution. At various points in all the narratives, the respondents separated “pimps” from boyfriends. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
“Pimps” were sadistically violent men who would rape, kidnap, and entrap women, taking all their money from whom there was no escape, no resistance, no sanctuary. In the construction of this symbolic category, the women drew on discourses of criminal men which situated such men as “outsiders” in relation to ordinary morality and on discourses of masculinity which essentialized male violence so that “pimps” were constructed as men who are always and already violent. Hence, Helena (age 35) was able to comment: “Pimps are not like other men. They ain’t got no heart. They only ever want money.” Similarly, Anna (aged 36): “After I killed my [pimp], I realized that it weren’t really his fault that he was like that. [Like what?] Well, raping me and beating up on me, making me have sex with dogs and sh*t, taking all my money. Some men are just like that. I think it’s in their nature. The one thing I’ve learned is that you gotta steer clear of [pimps]. It’s just too dangerous to get involved with them.” (Anna, aged 36.) And yet, the distinction between “pimps” and other men (and especially other men as boyfriends) was also dissolved. Part of the set of meanings in which men represented “risk” was an understanding of men as being “suspect” (id est not trustworthy). Boyfriends were especially suspect because the women could never trust or be sure that the individual boyfriend they were involved with was not, in fact, a pimp. In other words, there was a notable construction of all partners with whom the women had relationships as being also (at least potentially) pimps. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Witness the following: “You gotta watch having boyfirneds, coz he’ll [pimp] ya if you’re not careful. In the end you think, boyfriend, [pimp], boyfriend, [pimp], what’s the difference? All boyfriends will [pimp] you in the end.” (Barbara, age 24.) Boyfriends became potential pimps, the respondents believed, because of the women’s engagement in prostitution. The women believed that they turned their boyfriends into pimps by being willing to share their money with them. “…it was my fault that he turned into my [pimp]. I’d give him money. I mean, he started getting violence, coz he started to want more and he was spending all my money on drink and drugs. I completely changed him.” (Michelle, aged 33.) At the same time as dissolving the boundary between boyfriends and pimps, the above extract (and others like it) demonstrate that the women also resurrected that boundary. Boyfriends became pimps when they got “greedy.” Put another way, for many interviewees, the difference between boyfriends and pimps was not a matter of economics or economic exploitation because they understood all relationships as having an exchange of money (and not necessarily an equal sharing of the total resources of the couple). Rather, the difference was whether or not the women believed that their boyfriends were taking more money than they were “due.” The simultaneously expressed prostitute-as-victim and prostitute-as-survivor identifications were made possible by a restructuring of the meanings of men and violence wherein men came to represent risk. Within such a symbolic landscape, the interviewees were able to construct their relationships with john, boyfriends and pimps as being risky and, therefore, were able to locate themselves as victims and survivors of these relationships. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Moreover, the men-as-risk symbolic landscape permitted the women to tell contradictory stories of engagement in prostitution as being both a specific form of victimization and a means to survive once the battle had been won. Women’s engagement in prostitution cannot be understood without a recognition of their material conditions and how those conditions give shape to a particular and necessary reordering of the meanings of men, money, and violence. When women’s accounts are analyzed the question that arises is how their stories, which appear to lack a coherent rationale, can make sense. To his end, the symbolic level, the contradictions of prostitution are resolved into a calm unity of coherent thought via the symbolic strategies by which the women were located as workers and commodified bodies, as business women and loving partners and as victims and survivors (and the shifting meaning of men, money, and violence that underpinned those strategies). This is why people do not allow their kids to listen to certain kind of music, as it makes people think that violence and violence towards women and sexual immorality is acceptable. At a young age, one may take that perspective as gospel. Therefore, it is advised for parents to screen the media that their children are consuming in effort to prevent them from becoming abusers or victims. Youth do not yet have a firm grip on what it means to be an adult and we want them to grow up to be good citizens, honest, and hardworking. The goal is to make the youth successful, not prime them to spend life in prison. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Because so many people have a mistaken idea about the location of God—used by psychopathological offenders as the groundwork for manifestations which seem to support this concept—have come about the delusions of believers during past ages, and in recent years, who assert themselves to be “Christ.” On the same premise will come about the great deception at the end of the age, foretold by the Lord in Matthew 24.24, of the “false Christs” and false prophets; and the “I am the Christ” claim by leaders of groups of side-tracked believers, and the thousands of others who have been sent to asylums even though not truly monomaniacs. The psychopathological offender’s richest harvest is from the effects of one’s counterfeits; and unwittingly, many sober and faithful teachers of “holiness” have assisted them n their deceptions through the use of language which gives a materialistic idea of spiritual things, and which is eagerly laid hold of by the natural mind. Those who locate God personally and wholly in themselves, by their assertions, practically “divine” persons. God is not wholly in any man or woman. He dwells in those who receive Him, by His own Spirit communicated to them. “God is Spirit,” and mind and body cannot hold communion with spirit. Sensuous feelings, or “conscious” physical enjoyment of some supposed spiritual presence, is not true communion of spirit with Spirit, such as the Father seeks from those who worship Him (john 4.24). #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
God is in Heaven. Christ the Glorified Man is in Heaven. The location of the God we worship is of supreme importance. If we think of our God as in us, and, around us, for our worship and for our “enjoyment,” we unwittingly open the door to the psychological offenders in the atmosphere which surrounds us—instead of our penetrating in spirit through the lower Heavens to the throne of God, which is in the highest Heaven, “above all principality and power,…and every name that is named, not only in this World, but also in that which is to come,” reports Ephesians 1.21. The first ontological concept is that of the basic ontological structure, self and World. The question of being supposes a subject who asks and an object about which one asks. This subject-object structure, in turn, reveals the self-World structure of being. Man occupies the dominant position in ontology, for, although every being shares in the structure of being, only man is aware of it. Moreover, all levels of being are united in man and can be approached through him. Man experiences himself as a “self,” as being separated in some way from everything else, having everything else opposite one’s self, being able to look at it and to act upon it. At the same time, however, this self is aware that it belongs to that at which it looks. More precisely, man has an ego-self, since his self includes self-consciousness in addition to its subconscious and unconscious basis. By analogy, then, selfhood or self-centeredness is attributed to all beings, organic and inorganic. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Man, the ego-self, has a World, a structural which he belongs and which he perceives. The self of every being inferior to man has at least an environment to which it belongs, but which it cannot transcend. Self and World stand in polar relation. The self without a World is empty; the World without a self is dead. The self-World polarity underlies the subject-object structure. It also explains logos. For objective reason is the structured whole of the World, and subjective reason is the structural centeredness of the self. The basic ontological structure is a polarity that cannot be derived, but only accepted. If one asks, “What precedes self and World?”—the answer must come from revelation, for reason stands at the brink of its limits. The transfer of production from the home to the factory is the principal cause for the existence of the family agencies we call economic. Since the Industrial Revolution and until recently there has been a definite distinction between agencies explicitly concerned with the financial or economic welfare of the family and the other general industrial and economic institutions of the community. This distinction has held good except in the case of family farms and businesses. In these, production—even if only for direct consumption—has always been subordinate and instrumental to the welfare of the families who carried it on. The same cannot be said of the new institutions to which most of the productive functions of the family have been transferred. These institutions—corporations in the main—have taken on only limited responsibility for their customers and employees. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
They pay for goods or services rendered and in turn supply goods and services in return for payment. If it is asserted that the efficiency of corporations ultimately leads to the greater welfare of families, it has also been asserted that the welfare of families, at least of employees, has often been subordinated to the efficiency of corporations. Empirically, the gains and losses to families have to be calculated not just in economic terms, but in such noneconomic values as health, education, recreation, and family solidarity. As mentioned earlier, the task of economic family agencies is largely to make up for deficiencies in family resources caused by industrialization. The major problem, of course, has been the maintenance of income. The extreme division of labor and the commercialization or economic activity has made each family extremely dependent on the continuous and regular receipt of income. The paycheck of the family wage-earner is the nexus between the family and most of the other institutions of the community. If this vital tie is broken, the results are potentially disastrous. And become it is frequently broken, due to age, unemployment, layoff, sickness, accident, or business failure, many family agencies have arisen to repair the break or remedy some of the consequences. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The development of family agencies devoted to income maintenance closely follows our three stages of social policy, but it can usefully be elaborated into five: the situation in which family resources are inadequate to meet sporadic severe demands on income, and where the family through banking and lending agencies, engages in saving and borrowing to level out the peaks and valleys of income receipt; the situation in which reciprocity on either a neighborly or commercial basis is inadequate, and necessary minimum assistance is given unilaterally and more or less philanthropically by charitable agencies; the situation in which agencies make efforts to rehabilitate the earning power in individual cases of economic breakdown; the situation in which a degree of reciprocity and co-operative self-help is restored through insurance schemes; and the situation in which comprehensive community action so organizes economic relations that the continuous receipet of an adequate income in which comprehensive community action so organizes economic relations that the continuous receipt of an adequate income is assured to all families, save the most disabled. In this elaboration, the first and last stages of our earlier three-stage sequence have been broken down into two stages. While the social policy on family income maintenance has evolved in these five stages, all these stages have in some form endured to the present. These stages could thus alternatively be construed as types of family agencies which grew in response to different family situations and needs. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
At the fifth stage, what action there has been thus far has largely been limited to a selected public. The incomes of some groups have been raised through a redistribution of income among workers and employers. On the private side, of course, this had meant such agencies as unions and producer cooperatives; on the public side, it has lead to minimum wage legislation like the Fair Labor Standards Act of the federal government, or the minimum wage orders affecting service industries in certain states. The five-year General Motors-United Auto Worker contract represented recognition of the corporation’s responsibility for the maintenance and steady enhancement of the standard of living of employee families, and of the union’s responsibility for a continuous contribution to the productivity of the corporation. So far measures for the enhancement of income have been carried on independently of measures for its stabilization at a minimum level; minimum income levels have been considered a palliative rather than an ideal. Corporation-union contracts, for example, furnish new examples as et of full acceptance of responsibility for continuity of employment or income. The most impressive exception is the postwar establishment of employee pensions in industry. Nonetheless, stability at a high level (the guaranteed annual wage) had been stated s a future objective, if not an immediate goal. Moreover, without fanfare or formal acceptance of responsibility, every economic institution is steadily transferring a higher proportion of its personnel to a salaried status. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
If and when the major of family breadwinners achieve the security and predictability of salaried positions, they will not only have left behind much of necessity for present day ameliorative schemes for assuring minimum income during adversity, but they will have entered upon an economic way of life superior by far to the security offered by the most self-sufficient of family farms. If and when that state of affairs comes to be, then our current distinction between family agencies and nonresponsible other economic institutions will have become in part irrelevant. On the other hand, each year that passes more fully deprives the traditional family of a major function that as yet no other agency fills with assurance; that is its role in vocational guidance and training. On the family far or in small businesses, the normal course was doe the heirs of the family to carry it on. Their vocational choice was so gradually assumed for earliest years that they had no sense of a ack of freedom; they could observe and learn all the habits and ways of work with minimum effort. However, now inheritance of an occupation is the privilege of a decreasing minority, and even these frequently feel a sense of conflict about stepping into paternal shoes. Preparation for a career involves the development of a vocational identity, a commitment and an education. This calls for much more than is supplied by employment exchanges and guidance bureaus. No simple counseling job referrals can handle the problem; it is a task for social engineering. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
MAGNOLIA STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA | low $600s
Now Selling!
Models now open at Magnolia Station! Located at the corner of Rancho Cordova Parkway and Douglas Road, residents of Cresleigh Ranch will benefit from a brand new neighborhood with convenient access to the new Raley’s Shopping Center, Sunrise Boulevard, and much more!
Magnolia Station will include 81 homesites and five distinct plans ranging from 2,200 – 3,700 square feet; including three single story plans!
Each plan has been thoughtfully designed to include features such as: Generations Suite, Optional Offices/Dens, Extended Great Rooms, and more! https://cresleigh.com/magnolia-station/
New Satanic Mills and Factories Multiplied Over the Landscape
Each society is structuralized and operates in certain ways which are necessitated by a number of objective conditions. These conditions include methods of production and distribution which in turn depend on raw materials, industrial techniques, climate, size of population, and political and geographical factors, cultural traditions and influences to which society is exposed. There is no “society” in general, but only specific social structures which operate in different and ascertainable ways. Although these social structures do change in the course of historical development, they are relatively fixed at any given historical period, and society can exist only by operating within the framework of its particular structure. The members of the society and/or the various classes or status groups within it have to behave in such a way as to be able to function in the sense required by the social system. It is the function of the social character to shape the energies of the members of society in such a ways that their behavior is not a matter of conscious decision as to whether or not to follow the social pattern, but one of wanting to act as they have to act and at the same time finding gratification in acting according to the requirements of the culture. In other words, it is the social character’s function to mold and channel human energy within a given society for the purpose of the continued functioning of this society. Because of massive changes in society cannot occur without conflict, we believe the metaphor of history as “waves” of change is more dynamic and revealing than talk about a transition to “post-modernism.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Waves are dynamic. When waves crash in on one another, powerful crosscurrent are unleashed. When waves of history collide, whole civilizations clash. And that sheds light on much that otherwise seems senseless or random in today’s World. The wave theory of conflict tells us that the main conflict we face is not between Island and the West or “the rest against the West.” Nor is America in decline. Nor are we facing the “end of history.” The deepest economic and strategic change of all is the coming division of the World into three distinct, differing, and potentially clashing civilizations that cannot be mapped using the conventional definitions. First Wave civilization was and still in inescapably attached to the land. Whatever local form it takes, whatever language its people speak, whatever its religion or belief system, it is a product of the agricultural revolution. Even today, multitudes live and die scrabbling at the unyielding soil as their ancestors did centuries ago. Second Wave civilization’s origins are in dispute. However, life did not fundamentally change for large numbers of people until, roughly speaking, three hundred and twenty years ago. That was when Newtonian science first arose. It is when the steam engine was first put to economic use and the first factories began to proliferate in Britain, France, and Italy. The less affluent began moving into cities. Daring new ideas began to circulate: the idea of progress, the odd doctrine of individual rights, the Rousseauian notion of a social contract, secularism, the separation of church and state, and the novel idea that leaders should be chosen by popular will, not divine right. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Driving many of these changes was a new way of creating wealth—factory production. And before long many different elements came together to form a system: mass production, mass consumption, mass education, mass media all linked together and served by specialized institutions—schools, corporations, and political parties. Even family structure changed from the large, agrarian-stye household in which several generations lived together to the small, stripped-down nuclear family typical of industrial societies. However, as of 2015, we are starting to see suburban houses growing larger in square footage, many people working in their private electronic cottage, and even large houses which encompass an apartment for elderly parents or adult children. These houses also have more than one master bedroom, sometimes as many as three. These are known as multi-generational homes. Cresleigh Homes and Millhaven Homes have many great floor plans to choose from. Nonetheless, to the people actually experiencing these many changes, life must have seemed chaotic. Yet the changes were, in fact, all closely interrelated. They were merely steps toward the full development of what we came to call modernity—mass-industrial society, the civilization of the Second Wave. That term, “civilization,” may sound pretentious, especially to many American ears, but no other term is sufficiently all-embracing to include such varied matters as technology, family life, religion, culture, politics, business, hierarchy, leadership, values, sexual morality and epistemology. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Swift and radical changes are occurring in every one of these dimensions of society. Change so many social, technological and cultural elements at once and you create not just a transition but a transformation, not just a new society but the beginnings, at least, of a totally new civilization. This new civilization entered history with a roar in Western Europe, fiercely resisted at every step. IN every industrializing country bitter, often bloody battles broke out between Second Wave industrial and commercial groups and First Wave landowners in alliance very often with the church (itself a great landowner). Masses of peasants were forced off the land to provide workers for the new “satanic mills” and factories that multiplied over the landscape. Strikes and rebellions, civil insurrections, border disputes and nationalist uprisings erupted as the war between First and Second Wave interest became the master conflict—the central tensions from which other conflicts derived. This pattern was repeated in almost every industrializing country. In the United Stares of America is required a terrible Civil War for the industrial-commercial interest of the North to vanquish the agrarian elites of the South. Only a few years later, the Meiji Revolution broke out in Japan, and once more Second Wave modernizers triumphed over the First Wave traditionalists. The Spread of Second Wave civilization, with its strange new way of making wealth, destabilized relationships between countries as well, creating power vacuums and power shifts. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Industrial civilization, the product of the great Second Wave of change, took root most rapidly on the northern shores of the great Atlantic Basin. As the Atlantic powers industrialized, they needed markets and affordable raw materials from distant regions. The advanced Second Wave powers thus wages wars of colonial conquest and came to dominate the remaining First Wave states and tribal units all over Asian and Africa. It was the master conflict again—Second Wave industrial powers versus First Wave agrarian powers—but this time on a global rather than domestic scale, and it was this struggle that basically determined the shape of the World until recent times. It set the frame within which most wars took place. Tribal and territorial wars between different primitive an agricultural groups continued as they had throughout previous millennia. However, these were of limited importance and often merely weakened both sides, making them easy prey for the colonizing force of industrial civilization. This happened, for example, in southern Africa, as Cecile Rhodes and his armed agents seized vast territories from tribal and agrarian groups busy fighting one another with primitive weapons. Elsewhere, too, many seemingly unconnected wars around the World were, in fact, expressions of the main global conflict not between competing states but competing civilizations. Yet the very biggest and most murderous wars during the industrial age were intra-industrial—wars that pitted Second Wave nations like Germany and Britain against one another, as each one struggled for global dominance while keeping the World’s First Wave populations in their subordinate place. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The ultimate result was a clear division. The industrial era bisected the World into a dominant and dominating Second Wave civilization and scores of sullen but subordinate First Wave colonies. Many of us grew up in this World divided between First and Second Wave civilizations. And it was perfectly clear which one held power. Today, the lineup of World civilizations is different. We are speeding toward a totally different structure of power that will not create a World cut in two but sharply divided into three contrasting and competing civilizations—the first still symbolized by the hoe, the second by the assembly line, and the third by the computer. In this trisected World the First Wave sector supplies agricultural and mineral resources, the Second Wave sector provides affordable labor and does the mass production, and a rapidly expanding Third Wave sector rises to dominance based on the new ways in which it creates and exploits knowledge. Third Wave nations sell information and innovation, management, culture and pop culture, advanced technology, software, education, training, medical care and financial and other services to the World. One of those services might well also turn out to be military protection based on its command of superior Third Wave forces. (That is, in effect, what the high-tech nations provided for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf War.) America’s impressive economic performance resulted first and foremost from its structural and macroeconomic strengths. The role of domestic demand was particularly important. A dramatic plunge of exports was largely offset by an increase in investment and dynamism of private consumption. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Decoupling raised expectations about the global economy rebalancing in the post-downturn period. The global economy rebalancing idea, advocated by President Trump is based on the presumption that Americans and Europeans should increase their savings, exports, and working population. This will help to reduce the nation deficit, increase America wages. The America government is urged to encourage the purchase of American products by offering tax credits and/or rebates on the purchase of all American vehicles, regardless of if they are new or use. Reduce the taxes on farmland and subsidize their crops to make America meat, produce, dairy and poultry more affordable to Americans, which will also increase the demands for exports. It is better to stimulate the market through the reduction of taxes, which will make American products more appealing, but will also keep Americans employed, which will reduce their use of transport payments. When people are working and earning a living, it improves their physical and mental health, in boosts their self-esteem, it increases tax revenue and keep people out of trouble with the law. They are also better able to educate their children so they become productive members of this community. Work also keeps many people from abusing drugs and alcohol because they do not have time for substance abuse with the increased responsibilities. By making America more of a close economy, through tax rebates and decreased taxes, we will reduce our dependence on other countries and reduce of federal deficit. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Chastity is sexual purity. Those who are chaste are morally clean in their thoughts, words, and actions. Chastity means not having any sexual relations before marriage. It also means complete fidelity to husband or wife during marriage. Sometimes people try to convince themselves that relations outside of marriage are acceptable if the participants love one another. This is not true. Breaking the law of chastity and encouraging someone else to do so is not an expression of love. People who love each other will never endanger one another’s happiness and safety in exchange for temporary personal pleasure. Sexual immortality is the selling off of sexual purity and involves any type of sexual expression outside the boundaries of a biblically defined marriage relationship. In all but one of the respondents’ narratives, and regardless of their specific prostitution-related experiences, was an identification of prostitutes-as-victims. Drawing on discourses of “victimhood” whereby victims are seen as being “blameless” and “not responsible” for the fate that befalls them, these twenty interviewees talked about themselves as individuals who were unable to control the events of their lives and who were controlled by others that hurt, mistreated or injured them. Most of the women discussed how past events (especially sexual and/or physical abuse) had “turned” them into prostitutes because, as a result of such events, all they knew “was how to be used and abused.” Witness Margie: “I didn’t have a clue then. All I knew was how to be raped, and how to be attacked and how to be beaten up and that’s all I knew. By the time he put me on the game I was already a victim, I was just a born victim. (Margie, age 37.) #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Their identification as victim was also seen in the way that the women recounted the injurious actions of others (usually their pimps) as displacing any agency they may have had. Barbara’s comments exemplify this: “I did as I was told. You have to, otherwise you’re dead. When they’ve got a gun pointed to your head, you do as you’re told.” In contrast, in eighteen women’s accounts there was also an identification of prostitutes-as-survivors in which the women talked about themselves as successfully surviving and negotiating the risks they encountered, as battling for control over their own money (in relation to pimps) and their own physical well-being (in relation to johns). All but two of these eighteen women described themselves as “lucky” and such talk suggests their survivor-identity. Witness Georgie’s characterization of herself when she was being pimped by her last boyfriend: “I guess I was one of the lucky ones, I had clothes. I could pay my rent. I wasn’t as bad off as some. I suppose I was lucky and because of that I’ve survived.” Interestingly, it was in their talk of luckiness and being survivors that the paradoxical nature of prostitution becomes especially clear. “I get treated a lot better than most, as luck would have it. I keep some of my money, but only for the fact that he knows I’ve been to prison cuz I killed someone. He knows what I’m capable of. And he knows I’ll always make sure I survive. (Katrina, aged 21.) “There’s two sorts of prostitutes. There’s the ones that are out there for themselves, and there’s the ones that are working for their guy. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
“I’ll give anyone credit for standing out on the streets, doing it for themselves, taking their money home. But I can’t understand anyone that can stand out there and, then, give it all to some man. [But you were in that situation for over two years.] Yea. But at least I got out of it. I survived. In the end, I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m strong.” (Lois, aged 21.) Both of these women (Lois and Katrina) were strident in presenting their engagement in prostitution as a trap threatening their physical, material and social survival. They both talked about being forced to prostitute through fear of death, about being pimped by men who were sadistic and brutal, who had battered and raped them. And yet, here, both women identified as being survivors. When people care for one another enough to keep the law of chastity, their love, trust, and commitment increase, resulting in greater happiness and unity. In contrast, relationships built sexual immorality sour quickly. Those who engage in sexual immorality often feel fear, guilt, and shame. Bitterness, jealousy, and hatred soon replace any positive feelings that once existed in their relationship. Our Heavenly Father has given us the law of chastity for our protection. Obedience to this law is essential to personal peace and strength of character and to happiness in the home. Those who keep themselves sexually pure will avoid the spiritual and emotional damage that always come from sharing physical intimacies with someone outside the marriage. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Those who keep themselves sexually pure will be sensitive to the Holy Ghost’s guidance, strength, comfort, and protection and will fulfill an important requirement for receiving a temple recommend and participating in temple ordinances. In seeking to deceive the self-actualized, the first great effort of psychopathological offenders is directed toward getting one to accept their suggestions and workings as being the speaking, working, or leading of God. Their initial device is to counterfeit a “Divine Pressence,” under cover of which they can mislead their victim as they wish. Remember, the word “counterfeit” means THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE FALSE FOR THE TRUE. The condition on the part of the believer which gives the deceiving spirits their opportunity is sometimes a mistaken belief regarding the location of God. God is present either in them (consciously), or around them (consciously). When they pray they think of and pray to God in themselves, or else to God around them—in the room or atmosphere. They use their imagination, and try to “realize” His presence, and they desire to “feel” His presence in them or upon them. This locating of God in or around the believer usually comes about at the time of some special crisis in one’s life, before which one lived more by the acceptance of facts declared in the Scriptures, as understood by one’s intelligence. However, then one becomes more “conscious” of the presence of God by the Spirit and in the Spirit, and so begins to locate the Person of God as in, around, or upon one. So one turns inward, and begins to pray to God as within one—which in time may even result in prayer to psychopathological offenders. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The logical sequence of prayer to God as located within can be pressed to absurdity, id est, if a person can pray to God residing in oneself, why not pray to God in another, elsewhere? The possible dangers arising from this misconception of truth—the subjectivizing of God as a Person within—are obvious. Some self-actualized live so inwardly in communion, worship and vision as to become spiritually introverted, and cramped and narrow in their outlook; with the result that their spiritual capacity and mental powers become dwarfed and powerless. Others become victims to the “inner voice” and the introverted attitude of listening to it—which is the ultimate result of the location of God as a Person within—so that eventually the mind becomes fixed in the introverted condition with no out-going action at all. In fact, all turning inwards to a subjective location of God as indwelling, speaking, communing and guiding—in a materialistic or conscious sense—is open to the gravest danger; for upon this thought and belief, sedulously cultivated by the powers of psychopathological offenders, the most serious deceptions of deceiving offenders have taken place. Philosophers have labored for thousands of years to discover and organize ontological concepts and have assigned them a variety of names: principles, categories, ultimate notions, elements, structures, and so on. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Ontological concepts are a priori in the strict sense of the word. They determine the nature of experience. They are present whenever something is experienced. This is not to say that they are known prior to experience nor that they constitute an immutable framework. However, if an experience is had, it presupposes a structure. The experience changes only because its a priori structure changes. Consequently, as long as there is experience in any definite sense of the word, there is a structure of experience which can be recognized within the process of experiencing and which can be elaborated critically. We are dealing with the experience of being and nonbeing. Because these are such ultimate notions, we cannot spell out the ontological concepts with “definitional” precision, but only by “configurational” consistency, id est, by describing their stable configuration in a variety of contexts. Not only is the strict definition of ontological concepts impossible, but also their strict verification. There is certainly not an experimental way, but there is an experiential way. The only answer, but sufficient answer, which can be given to the question of ontological verification is the appeal to intelligent recognition. To help with the evolution of family agencies in general, the first problem was treated by extending a helping private or public hand to the few with the lowest income or the most extreme misfortune. This called for charity by philanthropic individuals and associations, or assistance through government relief offices. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
At the second stage, there are privately organized bodies such as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and special clinics maintained by subscription for such purposes as cancer detection. On the public side there are organized preventive agencies such as the health departments, and state institutions like mental and tuberculosis hospitals, such as the one Sarah L. Winchester established in New Haven, Connecticut in memory of her beloved husband, William Wirt Winchester. The third stage has only arrived for scattered segments of the population, and only partially for most of these, despite the vast interest of the America public in health as a value, an interest which is reflected in advertising and every other medium. Most notable of the private agencies at this stage are the voluntary group insurance plans fostered by the various state medical and hospital societies (Blue Shield and Blue Cross), whose combined coverage is now said to be above fifty million persons. There are a multitude of other risk-sharing agencies, which are sponsored by companies, unions, fraternal organizations, and, of course, private insurance companies. On the public side, the only agencies which could be called co-operative are Workmen’s Compensation bureaus at the state level, and Veterans Administration provisions at the national level. And even in these, the recipients’ participation in policy-making is slight and only possible through the awkward medium of labor and veterans’ pressure groups. It is impossible to anticipate what effect a continued rise and wide distribution of real per capita incomes will have upon the adoption of such a scheme. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Schemes of this kind raise a real problem as to how desirable it is to shift the economic responsibility for proper medical care further away from the family. Perhaps families can be adequately equipped to discharge this function through lesser expedients than national health insurance, which was the part of the Ewing program which aroused most opposition. In any case, both advocates of a federal program such as the Committee for the Nation’s Health, and opponents of it such as the American Medical Association, seem to agree that the problem in financing adequate medical care is limited financial resources of middle-income families. Well-to-do families have adequate resources to meet all their medical costs; dependent families, though suffering a higher incidence of sickness, receive considerable, if as yet inadequate, care through the various private and public relief agencies. Yet between these two segments of the population there is a large group who fall far short of the level of medical care they could receive through a comprehensive program. The grounds of judgment as to appropriate action here are patently debatable, as also are the latest proposals for the reinsurance of companies offering private plans for entire families. Whatever decisions emerge, Americans can well take pride in the vigor and rational nature of the present discission of national policy. Whether the ultimate decision is for a private or a public plan, it seems that meanwhile the stage of concerted action is spreading rapidly and embracing more than a mere segment of the population. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
A number of medical agencies, while maintaining a vigorous interest in their therapeutic and preventive functions, have moved beyond these stages to a concern for planning for more general values of maximum physical and mental health. This is most conspicuous in the field of medical research, where one can indeed speak of positive programs and of genuine, even spectacular progress. Medical research has moved long beyond the etiology of disease to fundamental theoretical research in a great array of fields such as physiology, biochemistry, bacteriology, and the like. Medical research is now in a position to give authoritative guidance on the hygienic conditions optimal for the physical competence of the nation’s family members. The bulk of such research is now conducted by salaried investigators in public institutions, or through tax-exempt foundations and nonprofit corporations such as universities, within which the commercial incentive, as distinguished from the professional incentive, is subordinate if not absent. A parallel development in the commercial field is the excellent research done under the sponsorship of certain pharmaceutical houses. The interpenetration of medical problems, like social problems, as well as the cost, makes researcher turn for support to the whole community. In the United States of America Public Health Service, appropriations for research divisions are now a substantial part of the appropriations for the disease control divisions. Another field of positive planning is the health programs of the schools. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Where these are most fully developed, they include periodically physical examinations and recommendations to parents, instruction in hygiene and sex, physical training, and planed school lunches. While these programs ostensibly only cover school children, much of what the children learn is passed on to their parents. The controversial problems that arise in the school health programs such as diet, sex instruction, or immunization again bring up the issue of the extent to which the school claim functions previously or potentially the responsibility of the family. Most of this controversy is conducted in terms of moral and religious beliefs, without much thought for the allocation of resources between school and family which would result in the development of each child’s maximum competence. A third promising trend is in pediatrics, where there is a movement toward child development in the positive sense, as exemplified in such growing institutions as well-baby clinics. Well-baby clinics are gradually perfecting measures of child development and procedures for training parents in matter-of-fact and reliable methods for fostering optimal development, but they still have far to go. Obstetric programs also are giving increasing pre-parental instruction to mothers and fathers, on both delivery and infant care. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
As such schemes evolve, they will seem less like medical agencies and more like schools. “Social hygiene” has come to mean “training for personal and family living.” Planned parenthood clinics are turning toward the correction of infertility in the sedentary classes, to nonmedical counseling, and to preparing young couples for marriage in other respects. Public health nursing and health education have become distinct professions. Apart from the gains being made through biological research, programs to advance the health and physical competence of the people in the positive sense will in the future be conducted as much through economic, social service, counseling, educational, and recreational agencies, as directly through the medical agencies, as directly through the medical agencies themselves. And the medical professions, as they intensify their concern with prevention of ill health and with public health generally, are not only finding themselves linked with other professions, but with their clients. Their clients as fellow-citizens become partners in organizing the conditions for the growth of competence. The prognosis of the decay and barbarism into which the twenty-first century is sinking into made by the people of the most varied philosophical and political views. The number of self-employed entrepreneurs has deceased considerably, and many corporate businesses are failing. However, capitalism appears as the system which corresponds perfectly to human nature, and places it beyond the reach of criticism. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 