Home » retirment (Page 3)
Category Archives: retirment
Provide them with a Decent Childhood Only to Rob them of their Adult Life
The United States of America is an individualist country. American think of life as an effort to realize their own goals and vales out in the World. This is part of The American Dream. However Worldwide, it turns out, individualism is quite unusual. That temperament was the chief reason why first Ancient Egypt, Europe, then Britian, and then America came to lead the World. (And as we see, World power does shift, so unless American can become a creditor nation and stay on the cutting edge of innovation, we could lose our status as World Superpower.) Today, our chief challenges come from groups within our society, and nations abroad, who are not individualist, who think of life in more cautious and collective terms. To continue to lead, America must come to terms with that World yet remain an individualist nation. The structure of modern society affects man in two ways simultaneously: he becomes more independent, self-reliant, and critical, and becomes more isolated, alone, and afraid. The understanding of the whole problem of freedom depends on the very ability to see both sides of the process and not lose track of the one side while following the other. This is difficult because conventionally we think in nondialectical terms and are prone to doubt whether two contradictory trends can result simultaneously from one cause. Furthermore, the negative side of freedom, the burden which it puts upon man, is difficult to realize, especially for those whose heart is with the cause of freedom. Because in the flight for freedom in modern history the attention was focused upon combating old forms of authority and restraint, it was natural that one should feel that the more these traditional restraints were eliminated, the more freedom one had gained. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Poverty in the United States of America is a major issue. Many people think that discrimination and racism is cool and witty. However, how can a sizeable minority of Americans remain jobless and deeply impoverished in the World’s richest state and richest county—even when jobs are available? The more people we have gainfully employed means the more tax revenue we will have and the less dependence individuals will have on the government, which will lessen the burden on taxpayers. While I was doing research, I looked at rent in the United States of America, and the most affordable rent $850 a month, in a city with the median home prices being $250,000.00. In most cities, nationwide, however, the lowest rent for a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment was $1,800.00 a month, and this excludes major cities like Manhattan, San Jose, New York, San Francsico. So in order to comfortable afford a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment in most cities, which tend to be semi-rural cities in America, a person need to earn between $43,200 to $64,800 a year. This means that people on fixed incomes are priced out of the rental market, and that is why there is such a huge homeless problem in America. Not only that, but studies indicate that over the last twenty years, Social Security checks are 78 percent lower than they should be and have not kept up with inflation at all. Another problem America is having is troubled assimilation of many minorities. Since the 1960, on average, these marginalized groups have had much more difficulty getting ahead and avoiding social problems than dominant groups. It is not only because of discrimination from the dominant group and law enforcement, but also from their own ethnic groups. It makes some minorities feel superior to see their own family members, perhaps even their kids struggling to become established. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
This is part of the slave/master mindset. People like to see others with less and it makes the feel good to see someone else struggling and having a hard time, while they are living a comfortable life. The great fact about today’s World is cultural difference. Americans have long thought that they are no different from other people, only freer and more fortunate. They pride themselves on living independent lives in which they work out their personal destiny. They wish that everyone had these opportunities. However, individualist style of life is far less universal than most people think, and today have come into question both at home and abroad. To recognize and address that huge reality is the leading challenge of our time. All of America’s toughest test today involve groups or nations that, on average, are not individualist, but more cautious and collective-minded. At home, individualism is fading among low-income Americans, who are less able than they once were to take responsibility for themselves. We fail sufficiently to recognize that although man has rid himself from old enemies of freedom, new enemies of a different nature have arisen; enemies which are not essentially external restraints, but internal factors blocking the full realization of the freedom of personality. We believe, for instance, that freedom of worship constitutes one of the final victories for freedom. We do not sufficiently recognize that while it is a victory against those powers of Church and State which did not allow man to worship according to his own conscience, the modern individual has lost to a great extent the inner capacity to have faith in anything which is not probable by the methods of the natural sciences. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Or, to choose another example, we feel that freedom of speech is the last step in the march of victory of freedom. We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what “he” thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally—that is, for himself—which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts. Again, we are proud that in his conduct of life man has become free from external authorities, which tell him what to do and what not to do. We neglect the role of the anonymous authorities like public opinion and “common sense,” which are so powerful because of our profound readiness to conform to the expectations everybody has about ourselves and our equally profound fear of being different. In other words, we are fascinated by the growth of freedom from powers outside of ourselves and are blinded to the fact of inner restraints, compulsions, and fears, which tend to undermine the meaning of the victories freedom has won against its traditional enemies. We therefore are prone to think that the problem of freedom is exclusively that of gaining still more freedom of the kind we have gained in the course of modern history, and to believe that the defense of freedom against such powers that deny such freedom is all that is necessary. We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigor, the problem of freedom is not only a quantitative one, but a qualitative one; that we not only have to preserve and increase the traditional freedom, but that we have to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual self, to have faith in this self and in life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Any critical evaluation of the effect which the industrial system had on this kind of inner freedom must start with the full understanding of the enormous progress which capitalism has meant for the development of human personality. As a matter of fact, any critical appraisal of modern society which neglects this side of the picture must prove to be rooted in an irrational romanticism and is suspect of criticizing capitalism, not for the sake of progress, but for the sake of the destruction of the most important achievements of man in modern history. What Protestantism had started to do in freeing man spiritually, capitalism continued to do mentally, socially, and politically. Economic freedom was the basis of this development, the middle class was it champion. The individual was no longer bound by a fixed social system, based on tradition and with a comparatively small margin for personal advancement beyond the traditional limit. He was allowed and expected to succeed in personal economic gains as far as his diligence, intelligence, courage, thrift, or luck would lead him. His was the chance of success, his was the risk to lose and to be one of those killed or wounded in the fierce economic battle in which each one fought against everybody ese. Under the feudal system the limits of his life expansion had been laid out before he was born; but under the capitalistic system the individual, particularly the member of the middle class, had a chance—in spite of many limitations—to succeed on the basis of his own merits and actions. He saw a goal before his eyes toward which he could strive and which he often had a good chance to attain. He learned to rely on himself, to make responsible decisions, to give up both soothing and terrifying superstitions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Man became increasingly free from the bondage of nature; he mastered natural forces to a degree unheard and undreamed of in previous history. Men became equal; differences of caste and religion, which once had been natural boundaries blocking the unification of the human race, disappeared, and men learned to recognize each other as human beings. The World became increasingly free from mystifying elements; man began to see himself objectively and with fewer and fewer illusions. Politically freedom grew too. On the strength of its economic position the rising middle class could conquer political power and the newly won political power created increased possibilities for economic progress. The great revolutions in England and France and the fight for American independence are the milestones marking this development. The peak in the evolution of freedom in the political sphere was the modern democratic state based on the principle of equality of all men and the equal right of everybody to share in the government by representatives of his own choosing. Each one was supposed to be able to act according to his own interest and at the same time with a view to the common welfare of the nation. Capitalism not only freed man from traditional bonds, but it also contributed tremendously to the increasing positive freedom, to the growth of an active, critical, responsible self. However, while this was one effect capitalism had on the process of growing freedom, at the same time it made the individual more alone and isolated and imbued him with a feeling of insignificance and powerlessness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Culture connotes what people think life is about, what we strive to do or be. Differences in culture are too important to ignore, but neither are they racial in any physical sense. Rather, the arise from differences in attitudes and ways of life. As it happens, most of those who believe that one can coherently talk about freedom of action without touching upon the issue of free will are compatibilists, who reject the idea of free will in any strong, non-determinist sense and who embrace instead a certain conception of free choice which they deem to be perfectly compatible with the determinism of natural causality. The central assumption of common human thought and speech seems to be that freedom is the principal characteristic that distinguishes man from all that is non-human. Moderns associate individual freedom with the absence of constraints, including the constraints of law, to pursue one’s own interests—especially those of a commercial kind. Constant contrasts this with the ancient Greco-Roman understanding of liberty in terms of being a freeman as opposed to a slave of being entitled, indeed obliged, to take an active role in government. Relation-based governance and rule-based governance represent a theoretical dichotomy. In reality, most governance systems contain elements of those two extreme forms. Even in the United States of America today, which is as close to having a rule-based governance as any country at any time, we see continued use of relation-based governance at many points. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
In fact external legal enforcement of a contract when a breach occurs is often the last resort rather than the first. Its more important role is as a backstop or a threat point tht underlies the renegotiation of the deal between the parties. And international trade and capital flows require interaction of different governance systems—a rule-based and a relation-based system, or two relation-based systems with different preexisting relationship. What can we expect to see at such interfaces? Most important are the frictions and instabilities that arise when people or firms or banks coming from different expectations about behavior, transact with each other. The clash of expectations can lead to speculative booms and busts; in the financial bubbles through history, economies in the process of liberalization appear to be especially susceptible to outbreaks of speculation. Next come asymmetries, some of which favor the relation-based system. People used to dealing in such a system will find it easier to initiate some transaction in a rule-based system than vice versa. This may be one reason—in addition to any formal trade barriers—why Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have been more successful in exporting to the United States of America and the United Kingdom than vice versa. Anyone can come and tap into USA distribution channels, get trade credit, or engage in advertising and other promotional activities. In relation-based economies these activities are mostly carried out by firms that have long-standing relationships with others in the country, and who will not easily deal with outsiders for fear of spoiling these relationships #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
To penetrate these markets, an outsider must work patiently to build up his own relationships, or invest in building up his own network of distribution, et cetera, before he can expect success. Outsiders who come from other relation-based systems do not have ready access to existing networks of relations either, but they better understand the importance of such relation-building investments. Therefore they are likely to have more success; for example, European exporters to East Asia have generally enjoyed modest success, better than the Americans. This also helps explain why the USA government and lobbyists for exporting industries in the United States of America are so keen to get the East Asian countries to adopt a more open system or rules. The asymmetry may be even more pronounced for capital flows. Savers from a relation-based system can buy assets in a rule-based system with more confidence than vice versa. This had implications for capital flows in both directions. An investor from a rule-based system can invest in a rule-based system who lends to someone in a relation-based system without developing the necessary relationship in advance is asking to be robbed. A saver from a relation-based system can invest in a rule-based system without such fear. Paradoxically, this may undermine the rule-based system by giving its participants a good outside opportunity. Another asymmetry favors the rule-based system. Compare two systems that initially operate separately from each other. If a new technology of a given technical superiority becomes available, a relation-based system will be slower to adopt it than a rule-based system. This reason is as follows. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
An incumbent, given his sunk stake in the old technology, has less to gain from switching to the new. However, if competitor can enter easily, then they are going to destroy the value of the incumbent’s stake anyway, so he might as well do it himself and at least exploit some first-mover advantage to get the quasi-rent on the new technology. However, as was argued above, a relation-based system is likely to have smaller scale and larger sunk investments in relationships; therefore it is likely to have higher natural entry barriers than a rule-based system. Therefore the incumbents in a relation-based system are less threatened by competitors’ entry, and more likely to indulge in their desire to delay switching. Now bringing together in trade two such systems, one rule based and the other relation based. The former, being used to the mode of slow adoption of new technologies, will be at an impediment unless it can reform quickly. Incumbents in the relation-based system will of course realize this, and will exert political influence to delay or limit the opening up, or at least to secure protection for themselves. Tomorrow’s political system must be the principle of “semidirect democracy”—a shift from depending on representatives to representing ourselves. The mixture of the two is semidirect democracy. The collapse of consensus, as we have already seen, subverts the very concept of representation. Without agreement among the voters back home, whom does a representative really “represent”? #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
At the same time, legislators have come to rely increasingly on staff support and on outside experts for advice in shaping the laws. British M.P.s are notoriously weak vis-à-vis the Whitehall bureaucracy because they lack adequate staff support, thus shifting more power away from Parliament to the unelected civil service. The United States of America’s Congress, in an effort to counterbalance the influence of the executive bureaucracy, has created its own bureaucracy—a Congressional Budget Office, an Office of Technology Assessment and other necessary agencies and appendages. However, this had merely transferred the problem from extramural to intramural. Our elected representatives know less and less about the myriad measures on which they must decide and are compelled to rely more and more on the judgment of others. The representative no longer even represents him or herself. More basically, parliaments, congresses or assemblies were places in which, theoretically, the claims or rival minorities could be reconciled. Their representatives could make trade-offs for them. With today’s blunt-edged Second Wave political tools, no legislator can even keep track of the many grouplets he or she nominally represents, let alone broker or trade effectively for them. And the more overloaded the American Congress or the German Bundestag or the Norwegian Storting becomes, the worse this situation grows. This helps explain why single-issue political pressure groups become intransigent. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Seeing limited opportunity for sophisticated trading or reconciliation through Congress or the legislatures, their demands on the system become non-negotiable. The theory of representative government as the ultimate broker collapses too. The breakdown of bargaining, the decision crunch, the worsening paralysis of representative institutions mean, over the long term, that many of the decisions now made by small numbers of pseudo representative institutions mean, over the long term, the many decisions now made by small numbers of pseudo representatives may have to be shifted back gradually to the electorate itself. If our elected brokers cannot make deals for us, we shall have to do it ourselves. If the laws they make are increasingly remote from our unresponsive to our needs, we shall have to make our own. For this, however we shall need new institutions and new technologies as well. The Second Wave revolutionaries who invented today’s basic institutions were well aware of the possibilities of direct as against representative democracy. American revolutionists knew all about New England town halls and small-scale organic consensus formation. However, the shortcomings and limitations of direct democracy were also well-known and, at that time, more persuasive. There are some objections to such an innovation. First, direct democracy allowed for no check or delay on temporary and emotional public reactions. And second, the communications of that day could not handle the mechanics. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
These are legitimate problems. How would a frustrated and inflamed America public in the mid-1960, for example, have voted on whether or not to drop a nuclear bomb on Hanoi? Or a West German public, furious at the Baader-Meinhof terrorists, on a proposal to set up camps for “sympathizers”? What if Canadians had held a plebiscite over Quebec the week after Rene Levesque took power? Elected representatives are presumed to be less emotional and more deliberative than the public. The problem of overly motional public response, however, can be overcome in various ways, such as requiring a cooling-off period or second vote before implementation of major decisions taken via referendum or other forms of direct democracy. The other objection can also be met. For the old communication limitations no longer stand in the way of expanded direct democracy. Today’s spectacular advances in communications technology open for the first time in a mind-boggling array of possibilities for direct citizen participation in political decision-making. Year ago we had the pleasure of keynoting an historic event—the World’s first “electronic town hall”—over the Qube cable TV system in Columbus, Ohio. Using this interactive communications system, residents of a small Columbus suburb actually took part via electronics in a political meeting of their local planning commission. By pushing a button in their living rooms, they were able to vote instantly on proposals relating to such practical issues as local zoning, housing codes, and proposed highway construction. They were able not only to vote yes or no, but to participate in the discussion and speak up on the air. They were even able by push button to tell the chairperson when to move on to the next point on the agenda. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
This was only a first, most primitive indication of tomorrow’s potential for direct democracy. Using today’s far more advanced computers, satellites, telephones, cable, polling techniques and other tools, not to mention the Internet and other communications networks, an educated citizenry can for the first time in history begin making many of its own political decisions. This is not an either/or issue. It is not a question of “electronic town halls” in the crude form referred to by Ross Perot. Far more sensitive and sophisticated democratic processes are possible, And it is certainly not a question of direct democracy versus indirect, representation by self versus representation by others. Many imaginative arrangements can be invented to combine direct and indirect democracy. Right now members of Congress and most other parliaments or legislatures set up their own committees. There is no ways for citizens to force lawmakers to create a committee to deal with some neglected or highly controversial issues. However, why could not voters be empowered indirectly through petition to compel a legislative body to set up committees on topics the public—not the lawmakers—deems important? #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
We hammer away at such “blue-sky” proposals not because we unhesitatingly favor them but merely to underscore the more general point: there are powerful ways to open and democratize a system that is now near breakdown and in which few, if any, feel adequately represented. However, we must begin thinking outside the worn grooves of the past three hundred years. We can no longer solve our problems with the ideologies, the models, or the leftover structures of the Second Wave past. Fraught with uncertain implications, such novel proposals warrant careful local experimentation before we apply them on a broad scale. But however we may feel about this or that suggestion, the old objections to direct democracy are growing weaker at precisely the time that the objections to representative democracy are growing stronger. Dangerous or even bizarre as it may seem to some, semidirect democracy is a moderate principle that can help us design workable new institutions for the future. When the offender of the ultimate negative see their hold coming to an end, they never let go until the cause is fully removed. If the thing they have attacked about still exists in any degree, they continue their attack. When the self-actualized is “fighting through,” the enemy has various tactics to hinder one’s deliverance. One may dangle a thing before the mind which is not the true cause of the deception, so as to get the self-actualized occupied with it, while one is gaining all the time—pouring in accusations upon one’s victim until one is bewildered and confused: charges, accusations, blame, guilt—direct from the enemy, or indirectly through others. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Accusing offender can say you are wrong, and right when you are right—but it is essential that the self-actualized does not accept blame until one is absolutely sure that it is deserved, and then not from the ultimate negative’s lying offenders; they have not been appointed by the ultimate cause to do the convicting work of honor and justice. When once the truth has dawned upon the victim of the powers of the ultimate negative, and they no longer hope to gain by deception, their one primary attack all through—from the moment of undeceiving to final deliverance—is the perpetual charge “You are wrong,” so as to keep the man in ceaseless condemnation. The poor persecuted believe then is likely to go to ultimate concern and try to get victory over “conduct disorder,” but in vain. The more one prays, the more one appears to sink into a hopeless bog. One seems to oneself to be one mass of “conduct disorder,” without hope of freedom. However, it is victory over the power of the ultimate negative—not conduct disorder—that one needs, and one will quickly prove this when one recognizes the true cause of one’s trouble and lay hold of the Calvary victory over the ultimate negative. If we recall, God is the ground and the power of being. The more fully a creature actualizes it essence, the more closely it is united to the divine ground and the more profoundly it participates in the power of being. However, the very process profoundly it participates in the power of being. However, the very process of actualization inevitably results in estrangement from essential being, for potentialities are not realized and essence is distorted in existence. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The most electrifying and the most paradoxical event that could possibly occur would be the perfect realized in a personal life, despite the conditions of existence, then the universe itself would, in a sense, be fulfilled. This actualization of essential humanity is the New Being, for in contrast to it everything else is old, unfinished, distorted, and without promise. In Jesus of Nazareth the New Being is manifest, thus consulting him the Christ. The astounding paradox of Christology is the appearance of essential manhood under the conditions of existence, but without being eroded by them. How are God and man united in Jesus the Christ? It is essential man who represents not only man to man but God to man; for essential man, by his very nature, represents God. He represents the original image of God embodied in man, but he does so under the conditions of estrangement between God and man. This belongs to the dialectics of the infinite and the finite. The paradox of the Christian message is that in one personal life essential manhood has appeared under the conditions of existence without being conquered by them. One could also speak of essential God-manhood in order to indicate the divine presence in essential manhood; but this is redundant, and the clarity of thought is served best in speaking simply of essential man. Man is united in God simply because he is man, that is, the freedom-bearing image of God. Jesus as the Christ is united to God by something more than His perfect manhood. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Centuries of theologians have missed the point of the paradox of their faith. At least they must know where the central mystery lies. Christianity is distinctive for its theory of education. The Book of Mormon and the Christian Holy Bible deems desirable and necessary the factual information and the cultivation of skills of the body and mind, and the scholarly exploration of the multi-roomed mansion of Worldly wisdom. All these are deemed desirable and necessary only insofar as they expand the soul, stimulate the more sensitivity of man, and are channeled in the direction of the promotion of human welfare. Thus Jeremiah declares, “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord who exercises mercy, justice and righteousness on Earth; for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.” Universal literacy is not moral intelligence. The three R’s do not spell righteousness. Popular education in our day teaches young people how to make a living, but it largely ignores the necessity of teaching them how to live, and what to live for. Mormonism and Christianity can, in our time, make significant contributions through its unrivaled traditions of the pre-eminence of The Book of Mormon and the Christian Holy Bible, the character-building, soul-cultivating emphasis in learning, calling on man to develop ethical alertness, to master himself rather than to rule over others. Our religion goes beyond the formulation of universal postulates and idealistic ends. It translates the poetry of moral aspiration into the prose of every day life. It is religion of behavior as well as of beliefs. It brings down the holy tablets from the heights of Sinai to the valley of decision and the plain of realization. It translates the Word of God into life. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Often voluntary community action is stultified because initiative in planning has been sequestered within a small, self-appointed elite. These considerations emphasize the social context within which recommending bodies should be constructed. Such considerations are often neglected in favor of the personal qualities of potential members—interest, ability, free time, resources, prestige. These often matter, but they are also frequently sterile in terms of results. It takes much more than a coterie of enthusiast or a list of prominent names adorning a letterhead to assure that a study committee will act and cause others to act. As a sign of some degree of impartiality, the members of such a commission or board are customarily unpaid, though they may get their expenses or pay from the groups they represent. Thus they can rarely be expected to expend more than limited amounts of time in the business of the committee. Unless the whole operation is too small and rudimentary, this is the point at which a staff of full-time, paid professional experts may have to be engaged. The professional staff usually consists of a number of specially qualified experts drawn from several fields or professions, their work being assigned and brought into a coherent pattern by a “generalist” with some facility in transcending special vocabularies and in promoting co-operation. He is often known as executive secretary or staff director. On the other hand, the staff may consist of a single person who is at best an able amateur. Ad hoc commercial consultants are often useful in supplementing or providing an independent check of permanent staffs. Where expertness is required, the gains through specialization are obvious. Specialization may occur not only among various professions—as engineers, accountants, doctors, and attorneys—but with regard to various functions, such as researchers, idea-men, publicists, and patent drudges. The man of a creative turn may wilt before the task of tracing property titles, as the meticulous investigator may balk at championing a new idea. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The creation of high standards of ethical and technical performance falls to a considerable degree to the professional societies to which the specialists belong; creation of co-operation and morale within the staff falls especially upon the generalist in charge. The specialists can normally be selected by various fairly objective measures of competence, while the role of the generalist has to be filled primarily through trial and error. Instead of trying to bring the greatest total amount of good, perhaps the thing to do would be to work toward the greatest average amount of happiness. It would seem preferable to have far fewer people having far better lives. (For whom, though, would it not be better?) However, the principle that we should maximize the average level of happiness also has unpalatable implications. (It might even raise questions about whether we should eliminate those with unhappy lives, or even those happy people whose happiness was below average. However, let us set aside considerations of homicide. Remember that episode of Charmed?) To maximize the average amount of happiness, we might elect to utilize our environment at an unsustainable rate while lowering our numbers by natural attrition and low birth rates. Thereby, if we practiced sustainable life-styles, we might have very enjoyable lives. In the end, we might elect not to reproduce at all, allowing the human race to extinct (presumably the last happy few would be tended by robots). It makes sense that to save the planet, the human race would stop producing and go extinct. What are these things you seek, since you leave the entire World to find them? God said, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the Earth,” Genesis 1.28. He did not say ravage and destroy the Earth. Obviously the planet is overpopulated and that is why things are so expensive and so many people are having difficulty surviving. So, instead of just feeding other nations, and giving them money, we need to teach them birth control methods. Afterall, is it not rich people who say they want their children to work hard and learn the value of the dollar? So then, why do we give taxpayer money away, essentially enslaving the taxpayer and making life harder on them. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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/
What the F–Business Must be Conducted with Glass Pockets!
Although you make think “What the F!” has a negative connotation, it is not a curse word. It means “What the Ferry!” It is what Ferry calls his live resonation radio show. Ferry Coresten is one of the most talented disc jockeys in the World. Mr. Coresten is Dutch disc jockey, record producer and remixer. Defining, understanding, and discovering the conditions that lead to peace is an intellectual challenge with a long and rich traditional with the social sciences. Nevertheless, it remains central today, not simply for academics but to the broader populations as well. The notion that peace is at hand as soon as there is no ongoing, large-scale organized violence is not only the most common idea today but also a way of viewing peace that goes back at least to antiquity. We sometimes achieve peace through military preparations and deterrence, or the military defeat of adversaries. The quantitative research on conflict, violence, and peace is an already large subject area within the social sciences, and it is undergoing yet another growth spurt in the aftermath of 9/11, with increasing discussion of terrorism, restriction of civil liberties, torture, invasion, insurgency, counterinsurgency, revolution, counterrevolution, mass protest, and protest policing. Many people think we already live in a police state, but they have not seen anything yet. In 2007, alarm companies did not want to install security cameras on homes because they warned home owners that footage could be obtained by anyone and put on the Internet without their consent, but now people are going as far as having cameras places in their home that security companies monitor. Before long, the streets and highways in the United States of American will be full of license plate readers, which automatically issues tickets for speeding, which will make the road less safe as less officers will be out to stop illegal vehicles and vehicle violating law. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
We will also have police drones patrolling neighbourhoods, roads, and highways recording information and acting as law enforcement agents, so there will be virtually no privacy and anything that is done can be pulled up and reviewed for later enforcement of the law. Therefore, it is critical to study peace as something more than merely the absence of overt violence. Peace is defined only as the absence of some violent actions. This form of peace, as “no violence,” can range from brutal dictatorships to democracies that fully respect human rights, from states that remain at peace only for brief periods of time between recurring bought of violence to societies that have not experienced overt hostilities for hundreds of years, and from states that consistently remain prepared for “hot” conflict to those that do not consider preparing for it. If peace is an inherent dichotomy, then war and genocide are the opposite. Personal relationship, closeness and warmth, Christian community—these are just what I have experienced in East Germany when I have visited. Over the years the society has always come through with insightful and perceptive judgments. The new paradigm of just peacemaking is grounded in the historical experience of people who have lived in the face of oppression, violation of their basic rights, and the nuclear threat, and who, together with political scientist, Christian ethicists, and activists, fashioned realistic steps of peacemaking that enabled them to begin living in the time after the Cold War even before the Wall came down. Though oppressed and constricted, they began to live our future. Because the paradigm is grounded in realistic but persistent hope-creating experience, attention must be paid to critical perspectives external to Christian faith; and since the heart of the story is consent to all God’s creating and the practice of forgiveness and love, an ethic is to be tested by its ability to be inclusive rather than to repress important standards of human life, or other members of the human community. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
We have all known we needed to develop new methods for achieving change without violence. Now we have seen nonviolent revolutions in Iran (where the revolution was nonviolent but not the subsequent regime) in Philippines, in Argentina, throughout Eastern Europe, and in the peoples’ defeat of the coup in the Soviet Union, and there is hope for them in South Africa and perhaps Palestine (where parts of the movement are nonviolent, and other parts are not). Human rights movements must refrain from violence. They must take the beneficial action of clearly articulating the human rights that need to be established. The breakdown of the medieval system of feudal society had one main significance for all classes of society: the individual was left alone and isolated. He was free. This freedom had a twofold result. Man was deprived of the security he had enjoyed, of the unquestionable feeling of belonging, and he was torn loose from the World which had satisfied his quest for security both economically and spiritually. He felt alone and anxious. However, he was also free to act and to think independently, to become his own master and do with his life as he could—not as he was told to do. However, according to the real life situation of the members of different social classes, these two kind of freedom were of unequal weight. Only the most successful class of society profited from rising capitalism to an extent which gave them real wealth and power. They could expand, conquer, rule and amass fortunes as a result of their own activity and rational calculations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
This new aristocracy of money, combined with that of birth, was in a position where they could enjoy the fruits of the new freedom and acquire a new feeling of mastery and individual initiative. On the other hand, they had to dominate the masses and to fight against each other, and thus their position, too, was not free from a fundamental insecurity and anxiety. But, on the whole, the positive meaning of freedom was dominant for the new capitalist. It was expressed in the culture which grew on the social of the new aristocracy, the culture of the Renaissance. In its art and in its philosophy it expressed the new spirit of human dignity, will, and mastery, although often enough despair and skepticism also. The same emphasis on the strength of individual activity and will is to be found in the theological teachings of the Catholic Church in the late Middle Ages. The Schoolmen of that period did not rebel against authority, they accepted its guidance; but they stressed the positive meaning of freedom, man’s share in the determination of his fate, his strength, his dignity, and the freedom of his will. On the other hand, the lower classes, the poor population of the cities, and especially the peasants, were impelled by a new quest for freedom and an ardent hope to end the growing economic and personal oppression. They had little to lose and much to gain. They were not interested in dogmatic subtleties, but rather in the fundamental principles of the Christian Bible: brotherliness and justice. Their hopes took active form in a number of political revolts and in religious movements which were characterized by the uncompromising spirit typical of the very beginning of Christianity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Rising capitalism, although it made also for their increased independence and initiative, was greatly a threat. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the individual of the middle class could not yet grain much power and security from the new freedom. Freedom brought isolation and personal insignificance more than strength and confidence. Besides that, he was filled with burning resentment against the luxury and power of the wealthy classes, including the hierarchy of the Roman Church. Protestantism gave expression to the feelings of insignificance and resentment; it destroyed the confidence of man in God’s unconditional love; it taught man to despise and distrust himself and others; it made him a tool instead of an end; it capitulated before secular power and relinquished the principle that secular power is not justified because of its mere existence if it contradicts moral principles; ad in doing all this it relinquished elements that had been the foundations of Judaeo-Christian tradition. Its doctrines presented a picture of the individual, God, and the World, in which these feelings were justified by the belief that the insignificance and powerlessness which an individual felt came from the qualities of man as such and that he ought to feel as he felt. Thereby the new religious doctrines not only gave expression to what the average member of the middle class felt, but, by rationalizing and systematizing this attitude, they also increased and strengthened it. However, they did more than that; they also showed the individual a way to cope with his anxiety. They taught him that by fully accepting his powerlessness and the evilness of his nature, by considering his whole life an atonement for his sins, by the utmost self-humiliation, and also by unceasing effort, he could overcome his doubt and his anxiety; that by complete submission he could be loved by God and could at least hope to belong to those whom God has decided to save. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Protestantism was the answer to the human needs of the frightened, uprooted, and isolated individual who had to orient and to relate himself to a new World. The new character structure, resulting from economic and social changes and intensified by religious doctrines, became in its turn an important factor in shaping the further social and economic development. Those very qualities which were rooted in this character structure—compulsion to work, passion for thrift, the readiness to make one’s life a tool for the purposes of an extra personal power, asceticism, and a compulsive sense of duty—were character trait which became productive forces in capitalistic society and without which modern economic and social development are unthinkable; they were the specific forms into which human energy was shaped and in which it became one of the productive forces within the social process. To act in accord with the newly formed character traits was advantageous from the standpoint of economic necessities; it was also satisfying psychologically, since such action answered the needs and anxieties of this new kind of personality. To put the same principle in more general terms: the social process, by determining the mode of life of the individual, that is, his relation to others and to work, molds his character structure; new ideologies—religious, philosophical, or political—result from and appeal to this changed character structure and thus intensify, satisfy, and stabilize it; the newly formed character traits in their turn become important factors in further economic development and influence the social process; while originally they have developed as a reaction to the threat of new economic forces, they slowly become productive force, furthering and intensifying the new economic development. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The system of rules and their enforcement itself must first establish a reputation for integrity and efficacy. This takes a long time and strict supervision even given much good will. In many countries, the great difficulties experienced by the governments of most transition economies in their attempts at such reputation-building require attempts of the top levels of the government at making and enforcing reliable governance systems. However, they can be ruined by some middle-level officials who attempt to make quick profit from their newfound power. There are evident problems of this in most transition economies. Also, in the phase when the system of rules in imperfect but improving, it can offer better outside payoffs to the participants in the prevailing relation-based system. By thus increasing their incentives to cheat their current partners, it can worsen the outcomes of the relation-based system. The policies required to initiate a transition from low-income equilibrium to a state of rapid growth may be qualitatively different from those required to reignite growth for a middle-income country. At low levels of income, with reasonable institutions and reasonable policies, it may be easy to achieve high growth up to semi-industrialization. However, the institutional requirements of reigniting growth in a middle-income country can be significantly more demanding. Growth starting from a low level can be achieved using relation-based governance in small communities of traders with good relationships and information networks, so long as the state does not actually inhibit such developments with its policies. However, to go beyond the middle-income level requires greater integration into a large economy, where relation-based governance is inadequate. The necessary shift toward rule-based governance is more demanding because it must overcome the additional problems of collective action, vested interest and so on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
How might such investment in the framework of rules get made? In 1898, when Elbert Gary and J. Pierpont Morgan started Federal Steel, they took the then unusual step of issuing quarterly reports because both men believed that corporations issuing publicly traded securities had to account for their financial performance. At first there was no public process such as external audits to guarantee the truthfulness of these accounts; presumably Mr. Morgan’s own reputation and integrity, acquired in the prevailing relation-based system of finance, gave them credibility. However, the public gradually found that inadequate, perhaps because others entering the arena of raising finance from the general public did not have the same reputation. A few years later, then president Theodore Roosevelt said that he would not “accept the publication of what some particular company chooses to publish as a favor, instead of demanding what we think ought to be published from all companies as a right” (Strouse 2000, p. 439). And still later, Mr. Morgan said that “business in the twentieth century would have to be conducted with glass pockets” (Strouse 2000, p. 600). This episode serves to emphasize the endogeneity of verifiability, and the value of making more information publicly verifiable. Forces operate on the other side to undermine a relation-based system when it comes into contact with other rule-based systems. If capital-owners in the relation-based system become able to invest abroad under a rule-based system and earn the going return there, that will raise the outside opportunities of the participants in each ongoing repeated game of relation-based finance, and thereby unravel its tacit cooperation equilibrium. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Similarly, as improvements in transportation technology or lowering of trade barrier with other countries, or liberalization of regulation within or across countries, bring a relation-based production system into contact with other economies and other markets, its firms will discover better opportunities outside their previous relationships; this can undermine the previous repeated game equilibrium. If or when a relation-based economy needs to import capital, whether financial or direct investment, it will find it difficult to do so. Unless foreigners are misinformed or gradually develop relationships with host-country businesses, they will be reluctant to lend. Conversely, firms in a relation-based system may be reluctant to borrow from lenders who are not part of their relation network, for fear that the strangers may withdraw their capital suddenly. So, if it needs foreign capital, a relation-based economy may fail to grow unless it changes over successfully to a rule-based system where anyone can invest with the confidence that the only uncertainties will be those arising from natural economic shocks, not those of borrowers’ strategic default or fraud or lenders’ capital flight. Of course the difficulties of brining together two such different systems of financial transactions are not insurmountable. Intermediaries can develop relations on both sides, and profit by providing these services for a fee. The Rothschilds did this in Europe with great success for over a century, literally be having relations on both or all sides. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the United States of America was a major capital importer. This was facilitated by the Morgans—Junius S. operating in London and J. Pierpont in New York—who established a relation-based chain of trust between borrowers in the United States of America and lenders in the United Kingdom and Europe. In modern times, Hong Kong served a similar role, dealing with lenders—Western ones on a basis of rules and overseas Chinese ones on the basis of relations—and with borrowers—investing firms in mainland China on a basis of relations. In countries shaken by the Third Wave, the truly poor no longer necessarily have numbers on their side. In a good many countries they—like everyone ese—have become a minority. Not only is majority rule therefore no longer adequate as a legitimating principle, it is no longer necessarily humanizing or democratic in societies moving into the Third Wave. Second Wave ideologues routinely lament the breakup of mass society. Rather than seeing in this enriched diversity an opportunity for human development, they attack it as “fragmentation” and “Balkanization” and attribute it to the aroused “selfishness” of minorities. This trivial explanation substitutes effect for cause. For the rising activism of minorities is not the result of a sudden onset of selfishness; it is, among other things, a reflection of the needs of a new system of production which requires for its very existence a far more varied, colourful, open and diverse society than any we have ever known. We can either resist the thrust toward diversity, in a futile last-ditch effort to save our Second Wave political institutions, or we can acknowledge diversity and change those institutions accordingly. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The former strategy can only be implemented by totalitarian means and must result in economic and cultural stagnation; the latter leads toward social evolution and a minority-based twenty-first-century democracy. To reconstitute democracy in Third Wave terms, we need to jettison the frightening but false assumption that increased diversity automatically brings increased tension and conflict in society. Indeed, the exact reverse can be true. Conflict in society is not only necessary, it is, within limits, desirable. If one hundred men all desperately want the same brass ring, they may be forced to fight for it. On the other hand, if each of the hundred has a different objective, it is far more rewarding for them to trade, cooperate and form symbiotic relationships. Given appropriate social arrangements, diversity can make for a secure and stable civilization. It is the lack of appropriate political institutions today that unnecessarily sharpens conflict between minorities to the knife-edge violence. It is the lack of such institutions that makes the majority harder and harder to find. The answer to these problems is not to stifle dissent or to charge minorities with selfishness (as though the elites and their experts are not similarly self-interested). The answer lies in imaginative new arrangements for accommodating the legitimating diversity—new institutions that are sensitive to the rapidly shifting needs of changing and multiplying minorities. Someday future historians may look back on voting and the search for majorities as an archaic ritual engaged in by communicational primitives. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Today however, in a dangerous World, we cannot afford to delegate total power to anyone, we cannot surrender even the weak popular influence that exists under majoritarian systems, and we cannot allow tiny minorities to make vast decisions that tyrannize all other minorities. This is why we must drastically revise the crude Second Wave methods by which we pursue the elusive majority. We need new approaches designed for a democracy of minorities—methods whose purpose is to reveal differences rather than to paper them over with forced or fake majorities based on exclusionary voting, sophistic framing of the issues or rigged electoral procedures. We need, in short, to modernize the entire system so as to strengthen the role of diverse minorities, yet permit them to form majorities. In Second Wave societies, voting to determine the popular will provide an important source of intermittent feedback for the ruling elites. When conditions for one reason or another became intolerable for the majority, and fifty-one percent of the voters registered their pain, the elites could, at a minimum, shift parities, alter policies, or make some other accommodations. Even in yesterday’s mass society, however, the fifty-one percent principle was a decidedly blunt, purely quantitative instrument. Voting to determine the majority tells us nothing about the quality of people’s views. It can tell us how many people at a given moment want X, but not how badly they want it. Above all, it tells us nothing about what they would be willing to trade off for X—crucial information in a society made up of many minorities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
When a minority feels so threatened or attaches such life-and-death significance to a single issue that its views should perhaps receive more than ordinary weight, nor does it signal us then. In a mass society these well-known weaknesses of majority rule were tolerated because, among other things, most minorities lacked strategic power to disrupt the system. In today’s finely wired society, in which all of us are members of minority groups, that is no longer true. For a de-massified Third Wave society, the feedback systems of the industrial past may be considered too crude. Thus we will have no use voting and the polls in a radically new way. Also, because the de-massification and redistribution of media outlets, we are no longer creating stars as famous Worldwide as Aaliyah, Britney Spears, Beyonce, Paris Hilton, Brad Pitt, Tyson Beckford, Tyra Banks, Jennifer Lopez, or Lucy Lui. Fortunately, Third Wave technologies provide pathways toward Third Wave democracy. They reopen, in a startling new context, fundamental issues that our founders considered two hundred years ago. These technologies make possible new, hitherto impractical forms of democracy. Although the transition from the problem phase to the proposal phase of planning is usually gradual, the formulation of proposals is qualitatively distinct from the definition of public and problem. Proposals are creative responses; they call for imagination, invention, even genius. The making of proposals has to be properly timed, not coming too early in the planning process. For any given problem there may be a number of solutions, and thus new potentialities of divergence are introduced into the public’s discussion. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If those who make proposals are anxious that they be accepted or at least taken seriously and attended to, they should ideally wait until a public has become quite clear and coherent s to the nature of its problem and its desire to act. This is especially true when a proposal is likely to threaten this or that section of the public’s interest; a premature proposal is more easily exiled from discussion by an alter minority, or even without opposition may lose force, when its relevance is not yet apparent. Perhaps the proposal phase could be said to begin where “to act or not to act” ceases to be the question and consideration turns to serious alternatives. It ends when the proposal or proposals go before a policy-making body for decision. If the outcome is to be a full-fledged proposal of the planning type, during the interim a considerable number of developments ideally must occur. During this phase, proposals may be legion, running from the most casual sort of suggestion to massive reports prepared by many experts and taking years of work. If it is to deserve serious considerations, despite such variation in their elaborateness, the proposal must contain some basic elements. There must be a statement of an effective and feasible way of solving the problem as it has been defined. An estimate of the resources, human and material, required for carrying out the proposal. A schedule of the rate at which these recourses will be applied. A statement of certain quantitative goals for achievement within the schedule set. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Any proposal containing these elements is a planning proposal, and is often called a plan, sometimes with the name of its author prefixed, exempli gratia, the Marshall Plan (although technically it does not become a plan until it has been subject to a policy commitment, and then of course it becomes a program). The injection of proposals into the public’s discussion of the problem is frequently, at first, on what might be called an amateur basis. While each serious proposal may contain the four essential elements, their development is neither elaborate nor exact. The multiplicity of proposals and their rudimentary nature, given a strong feeling of concern, then quite readily lead to a conscious demand for more careful study of the situation and comparative examination of the proposals. Then, and not before then in most cases, is the appropriate time for commencing the formal organization of the public. At this point, another custom is often to constitute some expert committee, commission, or board and to charge it with making a study and some definite recommendations for action. The composition of the more successful committees tends to be drawn, with certain exceptions, from all the significant elements in the public to which the situation is a problem. To give them their charge may call for further definition of the appropriate scope of the planning area. This calls for judgment and may itself be a matter of disagreement. If action is truly desired, the planning area ought to be confined to those to whom the situation is definitely a problem in which they are actively involved, and it ought not to include everyone who might potentially experience some consequence from the action taken. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
After admitting the possibility of deception in supernatural things, and a doubt has come into mind whether certain “experiences,” either personal or otherwise, were of God after all, the next stages are: The discovery of the deception. Light and truth alone can make free, and when once a doubt comes in and the man opens his mind to the truth that he is as liable to be deceived as anyone else, then to the mind and attitude light is given (John 3.21). Sometimes the specific deception is seen at once, but more often the discovery is gradual, and patience is needed while the light slowly dawns. Certain fact in connection with various experiences of the past, which the believer has failed to note, may now emerge into the light, and the half-truths which the Adversary had used to deceive are clearly seen: the twisting of words, the wrenching of sentences out of their context in the Scriptures—all come into a view as the light is given. Then comes: the acknowledgement of the deception. This is now imperative. The truth must not only be faced but owned up to, so that things are called by their right names, and the father of lies defeated by the weapon of truth. The Book of Mormon and the Christian Holy Bible keeps one from sin, and draws one near to virtue. You shall teach diligently the word of God to your children. The moral World is maintained by the instruction of our young; their education shall not be interrupted even to rebuild the Temple. When parents encourage their children to study The Book of Mormon and the Christian Holy Bible, their influence lives beyond the grave. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
One who has studied in one’s youth may be compared to writing set down on new parchment; but one who begins to study when one is old, is like writing set down on re-used parchment. If one studies The Book of Mormon and the Holy Christian Bible in one’s youth, its words are woven into the texture of one’s life. Train a child in the way one should go, and when one is older, one will not depart from it. As long as the voices of children resound with the study of The Book of Mormon and the Holy Chistian Bible, no enemy can triumph over America. The Book of Mormon and the Holy Christian Bible are each a Tree of Life; happy are they who understand its teachings, and fulfill God’s commandments. The significance of the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus as the Christ can be summed up in one word: salvation. One can be saved from many things, but salvation is salvation from the ultimate negativity. Salvation is healing for healing means reuniting that which is estranged, giving a center to what is split, overcoming the split between God and man, man and his Worl, man and himself. It is the revelation of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ which brings salvation. Consequently, where there is revelation, there is salvation, for the revelation of the ground of being transforms and heals. Revelation and salvation are identified. The revelational history of mankind—preparatory revelation before the appearance of the New Being, and receiving revelation afterwards—testifies that men have shared in the healing power of the New Bring, or else they would have succumbed to the destructive tendencies of existential estrangement and have ceased to exist. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Traditional theology has presented the rigid alternatives of total condemnation and total salvation. However, we reject them both, for, although the healing power of the New Being is never absent, even those who experience it are healed but fragmentarily. The divine act overcomes estrangement by removing guilt, and man reacts by accepting reconciliation. The effects of atonement are threefold, and together they constitute the meaning of salvation: Regeneration, Justification, and Sanctification, or, in Tillichian terminology, participation, acceptance, and transformation. Regeneration stresses the objective power of the New Being to grasp estranged mankind and draw it into itself. Man participates in the new reality revealed in Christ only by being seized by it. Thus, Regeneration is the new state of things, the new eon, which the Christ brought; the individual enters it, and in so doing he himself participates in it and is reborn through participation. Since Regeneration is participation in the objective power of the New Being, it precedes Justification, for faith as the state of being grasped by the divine presence is not a human act, but the work of the Spirit. Justification is acceptance. It is the act of God by which He accepts sinful man in spite of his guilt. It is also the act of man by which man accepts God’s saving mercy. Indeed, there is nothing in man which enables God to accept him. However, man must accept just this. He must accept that he is accepted; he must accept acceptance. This in spite of his anxiety, man accepts God’s justifying act. In spite of is the paradox of simual peccator, simul Justus. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
As a divine act, Regeneration and Justification are one, for Regeneration is the actual reunion of the estranged, and Justification is its paradoxical character. Sanctification is distinct from both of them in the sense that a process is distinguished from the event in which it is initiated. Sanctification is the process in which the New Being transforms both individuals and communities. Sanctification, as transformation, takes place both within religion and outside it in the secular realm. Up to now emphasis has been laid upon the individual man as the one who is saved. However, our vision is broader than that. At the crucifixion of Jesus the sun was darkened, the temple veil split, rocks cracked, and the dead rose. Nature was in an uproar, and the event at Golgotha is one which concerns the Universe, including all nature and history. The Christ cannot be restricted to one area; Christology must be cosmic. Salvation extends to the whole World, and World means nature as well as man. It is through man, the microcosm, that the saving power of the New Being reaches out to the Universe. The tragedy of nature is bound to the tragedy of man, as the salvation of nature and nature is in man. Consequently, the impact of the Spiritual Presence upon beings inferior to man is indirect and, in a quantitative sense, severely limited. However, in a qualitative sense it is enormous. Salvation is found within the Kingdom of God which embraces the Universe. It is the place where there is complete transparency of everything for the divine to shine through it. In His fulfilled kingdom, God is everything for everything. Salvation, the healing of the disrupted, is brought about by love, for love is the drive towards the unity of the separated. The New Being is the love of Jesus who is the Christ, reuniting estranged mankind with its ground. The Spiritual Presence manifests itself as love. After distinguishing divine love from human love, we come to an understanding that man’s love for God is the drive toward the reunion of the separated. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
However, since salvation is an act of God, God’s love must first extend to man and grasp him. The distinction between faith and love disappears, for being grasped by God in faith and adhering to Him in love is one and the same state of creaturely life. We belong to the Old Creation, and the demand made upon us by Christianity is that we also participate in the New Creation. What is this New Being? The only thing that counts, regardless of faith, is the union with Him in whom the New Reality is present. No religion matters—only a new state of things. The New Creation—this is our ultimate concern; this should be our infinite passion—the infinite passion of every human being. This matters; this alone matters ultimately. In comparison with it everything else, even religion or non-religion, even Christianity or non-Christianity, matters very little—and ultimately nothing. And now again we ask: What is this New Being? It is a renewal of the Old which has been corrupted, distorted, split, and almost destroyed. Therefore, we can speak of the New in terms of a re-newal: The threefold “re,” namely, re-conciliation, re-union, re-surrection. The word “resurrection” has for many people the connotation of dead bodies leaving their graves or other fanciful images. However, resurrection means the victory of the New state of things, the New Being born out of death of the Old. Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future, but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death, here and now, today and tomorrow…Resurrection happens now, or it does not happen at all. It happens in us and around us, in soul and history, in nature and Universe. The message of Christianity is not Christianity, but a New Reality. A New state of things had appeared, it still appears; it is hidden and visible, it is there and it is here. Accept it, enter into it, let it grasp you. And like God saves all, the Fire Department will rescue you no matter how rich or poor you are, no matter or age, or what you look like or where you live! Be sure to thank your local heroes, and feel free to make donations to them, they are understaffed and underfunded. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
MAGNOLIA STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA | low USD $600,000.00s
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/residence-2/
P.S. The limo is not cheap. Wor
Money Can Buy Happiness for Some
Some people are still nice and happy. Happiness is a mental or emotional state of wellbeing characterized by optimistic or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Media and advertising are selling happiness as a utopian experience. And more and more people interpret it as bliss. The popular misconception is that happiness is looking gorgeous, laughing all day long, coming by the way driving fancy cars, et cetera. However, bliss is a rare out-of-body moment and not a routine. Consider it as a beautiful vacation, but no matter how amazing the holiday is, one must return home because home is a constant anchor in our lives. We learn how to navigate through every other complex emotion by our state of being. If we re not in the best of space, we will end up making decisions that will further prolong a state of being to an unexpected duration. Most people gauge their happiness with the barometer of their feeling. If it is sadness, they feel they would make efforts to feel better. Feelings are tools to carve a state of mind. There are many actions that fluctuate the state of being we are in, particularly that of happiness. Drawing a sense of comparison with others, overthinking about the past, allowing situations to get the better of oneself are some of the factors that tend to make us happy. Happiness, as a state of mind, is cultivated over time. It is something that can be practiced with time and strengthened like a muscle; the effort is not to find it so much but rather to maintain a state of mind. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
When we tend to outsource our happiness or hyperlink it to circumstances externally, we heavily rely upon the success of those scenarios to achieve happiness as a goal. It is only then happiness gets mistaken to be a by-product of situations rather than an ingredient in the action to be executed. We anticipate its arrival and chase it with all our might. Happiness is not determined by what is happening around you but rather by what is happening inside of you. Most people depend on others to gain happiness, but the truth is, it always comes from within. Happiness means different things to various people, but we think it is a state of wellbeing and contentment. Happy people, too, can be sad or disappointed, but they do not let it hamper their long-term mood. Happy individuals are more likely than their less happy peers to have fulfilling marriages, and relationships, high incomes, superior work performance, community involvement, robust health, and even a long life. Happy and unhappy people generally have the same number of adverse events in their lives. It is their interpretation or approach toward tragic events where the major difference lies. Optimistic people try to negotiate an action plan to equilibrize negative situations in their lives, whereas, on the other hand, pessimists are more likely to complain about circumstances and then step into the quicksand of negativity or cynicism, perhaps even depression. In many ways, our hope is our knowledge. A doctor with a highly coveted medical degree, not believing that he will be able to treat his patients, will end up not using his knowledge to his advantage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Similarly, if he is not definite about being able to sell the products or fearing it will not rain, a farmer will not sow seeds at the beginning of his agricultural season. Optimism and pessimism are evaluative styles of reacting to life events that determine a positive vs. negative mood and all-embracing or all-excluding behaviour. Individuals with optimistic explanations of life try to look for the good in the bad; they generally feel happier and more equipped to handle challenges and do not self-label themselves as failures as the advent of every setback. Optimists tend to analyse how much of the situational they could control and how much was beyond their grip. Optimism is a form of positive thinking, allowing our interactions to have a positive spin resulting in better health, longer lives, long-lasting relationships, and healthier babies. There is no single great strategy to come with adversities. Most happy people adapt to how they respond to a situation and are ore agile in circumstances that may otherwise lead to emotional gymnastics. There is a lot to be learned from how well we cope with adversities. Human beings can cope pretty well with really bad things. We are finding that people who deal best with adversity are people who have flexible responses. They have multiple coping strategies, which is part of what we think of as mental health. Happy people also accept that adversity allows them to strengthen their coping skills. Without any challenges, one will hardly be able to evaluate one’s response. Therefore, happy people learn from each setback and bounce more resolutely. Over time, they are able to read situations and behave appropriately. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Money along cannot compensate for happiness. It allows one to live comfortably or feel secure. However, it is that all one needs to rise on the happiness metrics? Perhaps not. Out of 4,000 millionaires interviewed said that if you want you and your heirs to be happier, you should give your money away and let them make it on their own. (However, you will notice none of them do this and they continue to squeeze every penny they can get out of consumers.) Money helps procure resources to meet our basic needs, but more money does not always guarantee more happiness. Making money oneself instead of inheriting it resulted in people with peers with equal wealth feeling a bit happier. The pursuit of wealth demands multitasking on other fronts of an individual’s life. It means balancing working overtime with spending time with family, traveling for business trips to hanging out with friends, juggling weekend work mode with pursuing personal hobbies, cutting down on vacations, or lazing around with a high-pressure need to meet deadlines. Apart from the bank account, a person may have a limited circle to share that money with. However, a person not managing their financial foothold well will also crumble under the pressure of paying bills, living hand to mouth, and eventually feeling miserable. The honest answer to the question of whether money can or cannot buy happiness is that every individual is different. Each person makes decisions prioritizing what they need most. As long as our sense of value of life, people around us, and the World overall is not dictated by the currency in our wallet, we shall be able to create a fulfilling life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
No matter what your personality type is, you can embody happiness. Extrovert find happiness through their external Worlds and feel energized through the social circles they are part of. Introverts, on the other hand, find contentment in their inner Worlds. Going for a walk, sitting by themselves, painting, or reading a book might comfort them in a similar fashion as it does an extrovert in public interaction. Despite the numerous comparisons between whether one is better than the other, what a lot of studies vouch for is that the key factor in happiness amidst both personality types is to accept oneself, create a quality tribe that you can trust and not marinate one’s mind in other people’s way of living. It might work for them, but because there is no formula for happiness, you are free to discover your own route to it. If there are people who are happy permanently, it is debatable. Yet, there definitely exist people who are genuinely satisfied with their lives. There are people who feel good about life more often than others. This regular happiness mode labels them as happy people. There are people who acknowledge the happy people around them and celebrate them for their characteristics. These characteristics, when analysed, show the common thread of similar values, mechanisms, and behaviour traits running across all the people. Happy people exist because they choose to. While there are a million things that spark joy if we allow ourselves the time just to pause and look around, below, we have jotted down a few that we keep going back to, id est, our happiness trail and where to find them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The expert who is skilled in getting attention, provoking discussion, and dramatizing problems plays an indispensable role in the planning process in an agency, family, or group, and deserves perhaps more honour than one gets, since too often one is treated as one who troubles the sleep of others. Poets and prophets may be indispensable as movers of opinion and intolerable as team mates. The unquestioning assurance with which we habitually assume that everyone knows what is meant by social problem attests that we are dealing here with one of the valid preconceptions of our culture. Yet our and other cultures show that what is problematical to some people is not so to others. In our culture, circumstances such as the condition of the weather and the coming of death are regarded as natural and inevitable concomitants of human existence. They cannot be changed or improved, they are not subject to progress, nothing can be done about them except to submit and adjust to them; they are not problems. The problematical situation is one where it appears that something can be done, something which is defined by the comparison of a better future and a worse present. Thus the concept of problems is closely linked historically and culturally with the idea of progress and the increase of man’s power over nature. To the extent tht the laboratories of General Electric raise hopes of regulating rainfall, the weather will become a problem. Thus, in the most advanced cultures almost any state of affairs can potentially be treated as a problem. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
In considering matter like ill health, it may at first appear that for a state of affairs to be defined as problematic, it must inflict discomfort upon someone. Certainly it is true that many actions carried on by planning bodies are of this order; they are aimed at correcting some deficiency or restoring some status quo ante. It is also true, on the other hand, if they can be said to originate in any form of distress at all, that many actions of planning bodies originate only in that “divine discontent” created by an awareness of a discrepancy between what is an what might be. For propaganda purposes, it may be an advantage to publish each problem as an evil to be disposed of, rather than a good to be attained. However, it must be noted how in the planning process it is often the unfolding of new possibilities that crates the problem, not the intensification of some threat of pain. Failure to recognize the prospect of continuous, dynamic change leads not to planning but to fire-fighting, not to cumulative advance in power and technique but to stagnant routine. The definition of problems in terms of the progressive setting of new and positive goals is thus one of the major distinctions between the planning and the therapeutic approach to the conduct of family agencies. Also, the therapy, as well as the charity approach, is likely to assume the existence of a natural order. According to this view, problems arise when something goes wrong with the natural order. Some external disturbance is said to interfere with normal functioning, and the problem is assumed solved when the natural order is restored. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The planning approach, in contrast, denies the assumption of some pre-existent natural order, and construes the social order as the product or construction of purposeful human activity. There is no valid question of whether to plan or not to plan, but only of which plans are good and which plans are bad. The structure of all human organizations—from the smallest to the largest—is taken as the embodiment of certain rules of the game which have been invented or accepted by their participants. Problems from this point of view require some reconstitution of the group to accomplish some change of purpose. From the therapeutic point of view, it is common to speak of “society as the patient.” However, from the planning point of view, all parties affected by the problem are equally patients and therapists, who are engaged not in restoring their constitution but a sacred attitude toward the structure of the social order, the planning approach takes a very secular attitude. Personality likewise becomes problematic when it is viewed as a construction from the elements of experience. The basic assumption of all research on the development of personality is that ultimately something can be done about it, something distinguishable in terms of better and worse. How much can be done, of course, is not ascertainable a prior but only by exploration and experiment. As the reflection of the social order in which it occurs, personality can be no more a “natural order” than the rules of the game which constitute the social order. The identity of Americans is a social problem in 2023. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
We have so far spoken mainly of the anxiety and of the feeling of powerlessness pervading the personality of the member of the middle class. We must now discuss another trait which we have only touched upon very briefly: his hostility and resentment. That the middle class developed intense hostility is not surprising. Anybody who is thwarted in emotional and sensual expression and who is also threatened in his very existence will normally react with hostility; as we have seen, the middle class as a whole and especially those of its members who were not yet enjoying the advantages of rising capitalism were thwarted and seriously threatened. Another factor was to increase their hostility: the luxury and power which the small group of capitalists, including the higher dignitaries of the Church, could afford to display. An intense enby against them was the natural result. However, when hostility and envy developed, the members of the middle class could not find the direct expression which was made possible for the lower classes. These hated the rich who exploited them, they wanted to overthrow their power, and could thus afford to feel and to express their hatred. The upper class also could afford to express aggressiveness directly in the wish for power. The members of the middle class were essentially conservative; they wanted to stabilize society and not uproot it; each of them hoped to become more prosperous and to participate in the general development. Hostility, therefore, was not to be expressed overtly, nor could it even be felt consciously; it had to be repressed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Repression of hostility, however, only removes it from conscious awareness, it does not abolish it. Moreover, the pent-up hostility, not finding any direct expression, increases to a point where it pervades the whole personality, one’s relationship to others and to oneself—but in rationalized and disguised forms. Mr. Luther and Mr. Calvin portray this all-pervading hostility. Not only in the sense that these two men, personally, belonging to the ranks of the greatest haters among the leading figures of history, certainly among religious leaders; but, which is more important, in the sense that their doctrines were coloured by this hostility and could only appeal to a group itself driven by an intense, repressed hostility. The most striking expression of this hostility is found in their concept of God, especially in Mr. Calvin’s doctrine. Although we are all familiar with this concept, we often do not fully realize what it means to conceive of God as being as arbitrary and merciless as Mr. Calvin’s God, who destined part of mankind to eternal damnation without any justification or reason except that this act was an expression of God’s power. Mr. Calving himself was, of course, concerned with the obvious objections which could be made against this conception of God; but the more or less subtle construction he made to uphold the picture of a just and loving God do not sound in the least convincing. This picture of a despotic God, who wants unrestricted power over men and their submission and humiliation, was the projection of the middle class’s own hostility and envy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Hostility or resentment also found expression in the character of relationships to others. The main form which it assumed was moral indignation, which has invariably been characteristic for the lower middle class from Mr. Luther’s time to Mr. Hitler’s. While this class was actually envious of those who had wealth and power and could enjoy life, in terms of moral indignation and in the conviction that these superior people would be punished by eternal suffering. However, the hostile tension against others found expression in still other ways. Mr. Calvin’s regime in Geneva was characterized by suspicion and hostility on the part of everybody against everybody else, and certainly little of the spirit of love and brotherliness could be discovered in his despotic regime. Mr. Calvin distrusted wealth and at the same time had little pity for poverty. In the later development of Calvinism warnings against friendliness towards the stranger, a cruel attitude towards the poor, and a general atmosphere of suspiciousness often appeared. Aside from the projection of hostility and jealousy onto God and their indirect expression in the form of moral indignation, one other way in which hostility found expression was in turning it against oneself. We have seen how ardently both Mr. Luther and Mr. Calvin emphasized the wickedness of man and taught self-humiliation and self-abasement as the basis of all virtue. What they consciously had in mind was certainly nothing but an extreme degree of humility. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
However, to anybody familiar with the psychological mechanisms of self-accusation and self-humiliation there can be no doubt that this kind of “humility” is rooted in a violent hated which, for some reason or other, is blocked from being directed toward the World outside and operates against one’s own self. In order to understand this phenomenon fully, it is necessary to realize that the attitudes toward others and toward oneself, far from being contradictory, in principle run parallel. However, while hostility against others is often conscious and can be expressed overtly, hostility against oneself is usually (except in pathological cases) unconscious, and finds expression in indirect and rationalized forms. One is a person’s active emphasis on his own wickedness and insignificance, of which we have just spoken; another appears under the guise of conscience or duty. Just as there exists humility which has nothing to do with self-hatred, so there exist genuine demands of conscience and a sense of duty which are not rooted in hostility. This genuine conscience forms a part of integrated personality and the following of its demands is an affirmation of the whole self. However, the sense of “duty” as we find it pervading the life of modern man from the period of Reformation up to present in religious or secular rationalization, is intensely coloured by hostility against the self. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“Conscience” is a slave driver, put into man by himself. It drives him to act according to wishes and aims which he believes to be his own, while they are actually the internalization of external social demands. It drives him with harshness and cruelty, forbidding him pleasure and happiness, making his whole life the atonement for some mysterious sin. It is also the basis of the “inner Worldly asceticism” which is so characteristic in early Calvinism and later Puritanism. The hostility in which this modern kind of humility and sense of duty is rooted explains also one otherwise rather baffling contradiction: that such humility goes together with contempt for others, and that self-righteousness has actually replaced love and mercy. Genuine humility and a genuine sense of duty towards one’s fellow men could not do this; but self-humiliation and self-negating “conscience” are only one side of an hostility, the other side of which is contempt for and hatred against others. The hostility of man against himself is contained in the superego. The superego was originally the internalization of an external and dangerous authority. Unless regeneration by the Holy Spirit and the indwelling of the Spirit means sinlessness, and the present possession of a resurrection body, not every part of a believer is yet renewed and freed by the redemption of Calvary from the effects of the Fall. HENCE THERE IS GROUND FOR THE POSSIBLE OPERATION OF DECEIVING SPIRITS. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Since absolute sinlessness and the present possession of the resurrection body are not taught in the Scriptures as attainable while on Earth, the chance of deception is logically and reasonably possible—even while the spirit and heart of man is renewed by the Holy Spirit. If we come to facts of experience, the proofs are so abundant as to be beyond our capacity to handle in the limited space of this essay, not only in the unregenerated World but in those who are undoubtedly children of God and spiritual believers. If we knew ourselves and our actual condition as sinners, s depicted in God’s Word, we would be in greater safety from the enemy. It is the ignorance of our true condition even with the new life from God implanted in us, and our blind confidence of safety without an intelligent basis for that assumption, which lays us open to being deceived by Satan through our very certainty of being free from his deception. Since the government and public schools no longer instill patriotism in Americans, it is your jobs as parents to teach your children to be patriotic and to buy American cars. Back in the 1950s, housekeepers would brag about teaching the children they took care of to be the first in the neighbourhood to memorize the pledge of allegiance. However, today’s kids are taught by the TV how to sing theme songs to their favourite cartoons. Let us not forget to remind our children of what an honour it is to live in America and to be an American. “Christology is a function of soteriology.” The Christ who brings the New Being is a unique event which saves the whole of humanity and the whole of the Universe. The task of Christology is to work out the universal significance of this simple and unrepeatable historic fact. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The New Testament account supplies the concrete details of an individual, personal life, whole the Christological symbols convey the universal significance of the Christ. Thus, myth and symbols are the very language of religion, and to demythologize “would silence the experience of the holy.” Two central Christological symbols reveal the significance of Jesus as the Christ: the Cross, which symbolizes His subjection to existence, and the Resurrection, which symbolized His Victory over it. The Cross and the Resurrection are mutually interdependent, for the triumph of the Resurrection supposes the death on the Cross, and the Cross would have been no different from the death of any other man if the Christ had not risen. Building on this close relationship, we establish the Cross as the paradigm according to which the Resurrection is to be understood. The Cross is both an event and a symbol or, better, a symbol based on an event. As the crucifixion story of Jesus, it enjoys a comparatively high degree of historical probability. As the Cross of Jesus who is the Christ, it is the myth of the bearer of the new eon who suffers the death of a convict and slave under the powers of that old eon which He is to conquer. The Resurrection must be viewed in the same way, as event and symbol, but with this difference, that the New Testament reports of the factual element of the Resurrection are far more mysterious and uncertain than those of the crucifixion. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The resurrection system was a familiar one in ancient religions, but a real experience made it possible for the disciples to apply the known symbol of resurrection to Jesus, thus acknowledging Him definitely s the Christ. This experienced event brought the certainty that He who is the bringer of the new eon cannot finally have succumbed to the power of the old eon. The physical resurrection of the body of Jesus, holds that the soul of Jesus first appeared to His disciples, which allowed them to communicate with the dead. However, the full resurrection revived the whole personality, body and soul. It was a negativity which was overcome, and this negativity was not the death of one man, but the disappearance of Him in whom the New Being was manifest. By His death he disappeared from the present experience of the disciples. Jesus of Nazareth became indissolubly united with the reality of the New Being. He is present wherever the New Being is present. In this way the concrete individual life of man Jesus of Nazareth is raised above transitoriness into the eternal presence of God as Spirit. The Resurrection is the restitution of Jesus as the Christ, a restitution which is rooted in the personal unity between Jesus and God ad in the impact of this unity on the minds of the apostles. The experience of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ had to come first, but, after the death of Jesus, the disciples’ experience of His living presence restored Him to His Christhood. Faith in the Resurrection of the Christ does not depend upon historical research or theological theories. Certainty can come only from faith, and faith assures us the victory of Jesus the Christ over the conditions of existence. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Faith is based on the experience of being grasped by the power of the New Being through which the destructive consequences of estrangement are conquered. It is certainty of one’s own victory over the death of existential estrangement which creates the certainty of the Resurrection of the Christ as event and symbol; but it is not historical conviction or the acceptance of biblical authority which creates this certainty. Jesus of Nazareth is the medium of the final revelation because He sacrifices Himself completely to Jesus as the Christ. The Christ possesses perfect unity with God. However, since Jesus of Nazareth is only the bearer of this revelation, He must not point to Himself, but to the ground of being. The Cross says No to Jesus while revealing the Yes of the Christ’s unbroken union with God. In other words, the Cross is the symbol of the Protestant principle. When it comes to the criterion of faith, that symbol is most adequate which expresses not only the ultimate but also its own lack of ultimacy. Jesus could not have been the Christ without sacrificing Himself as Jesus to Himself as the Christ. What is particular in Him (Jesus) is that He Crucified the particular in himself for the sake of the Universal. This liberates His image from bondage both to a particular religion…and to the religious sphere as such. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
With this image, particular yet free from particularity, religious yet free from religion, the criteria are given under which Christianity must judge itself. Moreover, the No of the Cross applies equally to the followers of the Christ: No finite being can attain the infinite without being broken as He who represented the World, and its wisdom and its power, was broken on the Cross. And, finally, of special interest to us, theonomy is based upon the Protestant principle, the Yes and the No of the Cross. For Jesus the Christ overcomes autonomy by His transparency to the ground of being (the Yes), and He resists heteronomy by the humiliation of His death (the No). One who delights in the Lord shall be like a tree planted by streams of waters, that bring forth its fruit in its season, and whose lead does not wither; and whatever one does one shall prosper. Teach me, O Lord, Thy way, that I may walk in Thy truth; make my heart firm to revere Thy name. Open my eyes that I may behold the wonders of Thy Holy Christian Bible. O my way be directed to observe Thy statutes. Guide me in Thy truth, and teach me, for Thou art the God of my salvation. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God. Thy teachings ever make for righteousness; give me understanding, and I shall live. The only real poverty is poverty of mind. Reverence for God is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Eternal is true understanding. Where there is no knowledge, there is no reverence for God; where there is no reverence for God, there is no true knowledge. The Book of Mormon and Holy Christian Bible endows man with modesty and reverence. And taches one to be virtuous, pious, upright and faithful. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Expressing the beliefs of his revolutionary generation, it was Mr. Jefferson, once again, who asserted that governments must behave with “absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority.” The United States of America and Europe—still at the dawn of the Second Wave era—were just beginning the long process that would turn them eventually into industrial mass societies. The concept of majority rule perfectly fit the needs of these societies. Our present mass democracy is the political expression of a mass production, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass society. Today, as we have seen, we are leaving industrialism behind and rapidly becoming a de-massified society. In consequence it is growing increasingly difficult—often impossible—to mobilize a majority or even a governing coalition. In the United States of America, I do not see the basis for any positive majority on anything today. In the place of a highly stratified society in which a few major blocs ally themselves to form a majority, we have a configurative society—one in which thousands of minorities, many of them temporary, swirl and form highly novel, transient patterns, seldom coalescing into a consensus of major issues. The advance of Third Wave civilization thus weakens the very legitimacy of many existing governments. The Third Wave also challenges all of our conventional assumptions about the relationships of majority rule to social justice. Throughout the era of Second Wave civilization in fight for majority rule was humane and liberating. In still-industrial countries like Africa today, it remains so. In Second Wave societies, majority rule almost always meant a fairer break for the poor. For the poor were the majority. As an economy expands or as it trade with other countries grows, a point will come when the present value of the social benefits of shifting toward a more rule-based governance will exceed the costs of the required investment. However, the switch need not occur at the optimal point. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
There are many reasons why the political and economic realities will delay the shift. First and foremost, the fixed costs of rule-based governance are a public investment; therefore society must solve a collective-action problem to put such a system in place. This is not automatic; there are the usual problems of free riding, underestimation of the benefits to future generations in today’s political process, and the veto power held by those who stand to lose from the change. Even when public investment for a rule-based system has been made, people used to the relation-based system who want to switch must make some private investments to learn the rules and their operation. Their benefit from the switched will depend on how many others make the switch. This positive feedback externality can lean to too few switchers, or even a lock-in that keeps the old system in use. In turn, the expectation of this can reduce the social benefits of the changeover and therefore delay or deter the initial public investment. The benefits of the new system may be unequally distributed, and some participants may even lose. The reputational capital in the relation-based system is an asset that would become worthless in a pure rule-based system, so incumbents stand to lose from the change and will therefore resists it by political means. They currently successful businesspeople and financiers, who are almost by definition the heaviest users of the existing relation-based system, are also usually active participants in the political process, and adept at marshaling their special interests in an organized way. They can also stall and frustrate a government’s attempts at reform. And it seems like if a Republican wants to take office in California, where 30 percent of residents are poor or near poor, and 12.3 percent are below the poverty line, they will have to focus on policies to help the poor and on family values. The same holds true for the President of America. The middle class is at 50 percent and has consistently been shrinking since a peak of 61 percent in 1971. Currently, 12 percent of Americans are poor. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
CRESLEIGH HOMES HAVENWOOD | HOMESITE 67
Home Site 67 is a Residence Four plan, the largest home offered in Cresleigh Havenwood. This two-story, 3,377 square foot home features four bedrooms, including one suite on the first floor, three and one half bathroom, and a true three-car garage.
The covered porch provided a warm entry and the dining room is located right off the entry way. The Kitchen is connected through the Butler’s Pantry providing ample storage. The great room and loft upstairs allow for various uses that will suit your family and lifestyle.
This home includes over $50,000 in options and upgrades
• Durable luxury vinyl plank flooring throughout the first floor
• Gray Shaker Cabinetry with Soft-Close Doors & Drawers
• Over Island Pendants and Under-Cabinet Lighting
• Gourmet Kitchen option with upgraded appliances
• Stainless Steel Farm Sink and Upgraded Faucet
• Flat Screen Prewire in Great Room
• Owned Solar
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Home Mini! https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
Everyone is Afraid of the Dark
Magnolias, orange trees, thick evergreen and palm trees sprouted from the sweeping lawns growing tall, as their green leaves beautifully filled the sky providing shade from the hot sun. Shielded behind the lush proliferation of gardens stood gorgeous Llanada Villa built in the Queen Anne Victorian style with soaring roofs and columned porticoes. The farmland provided crops for food. It was Sunday January, 1888, and the famers and servants were buoyant with excitement, undampened by undue religious solemnity. Good nature was inescapable that Sunday. Conversation abounded with joy and optimism. Several planters, dressed in gloves, hats, and cravat, strolled my estate. The road bustled with carriages and horses; men and women strolled along the green lawns in their Sunday finery; and the servants hunted and played games in the field. Somehow, in the midst of it all, I had grown tired and went to my bedroom to rest. It was past midnight when I awoke, and when I looked out the moon was rising over the Observational Tower. I heard a battle, but I could not see it for the smoke and flames, and the broken marble battering me from all sides. Doors were broken from their hinges, and the light bulbs exploded, and in the darkness, I was thrown against the walls or the floors. I felt an intense heat pass over me, and I struggled to get to my feet as the broken and fragmented tiles swirled about the chamber. Ghastly screams came from Arkie, the son of one of the farmers. “I have seen an evil thing this night,” he said. “Tell me what you have seen,” I replied. Arkie told me everything he had seen. “The estate was covered with smoke, through which, through which flashes were incessant, whilst the air seemed filled with shell, whose sharp explosions, with the hurling of their fragments hurling between flashes. Flashes that lit up the night sky. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
“We were at war against a monstrous progeny of demon-possessed men and women, wearing velvet tunics and stockings, and marvelous cloaks trimmed in rare fur. They brandished huge glittering swords. The fountains bulled over, flowing with blood. Several of the servant fled through the streets, yards, and orchards, many taking refuge in the Victorian cottages, outbuildings, and mansion already filled with the wounded and dying. The smoke was so dense we could not perceive an object ten feet in front of us. The gloom of the moment was beyond description. We felt and heard the tread of our enemy, our minds were in tumult, whether to lie still, to yield, or to die fighting. I jumped in and found myself confronted by a giant’s sword pointed by my breast. I grasped the blade and reversed the handle of my sword in a twinkle and offered to surrender. The beast said in the excitement, he thought I had run him through and he dropped his sword.” I was so thankful for each servant who fought for my home, their families, and their way of life, even though death was knocking on their door. A few days later, it was a dark moonless night, and as silent as a tomb. Arkie was still shaken up by the events that had recently taken place. There was a terrible fear, a physiological fear. Something beyond life that I was able to catch for a second. The air was cold now, icy all around me. It suddenly felt as though time stood still and yet as a foggy substance silently closed in the air was getting cold enough to freeze the blood. My nose, face, hands and feet felt ice cold. I was standing in silence, as I watched what was unfolding before my eyes. This misty essence was swirling noiselessly around us as we stood, observing a steam so fine the scene felt surreal. Along with the white mist came a whirl of emotions and confusion. What was happening in my home? I braced myself for some hellish effects. It swirled around us as though blown by a high wind, rising above our heads and dropping as it was moving quickly and yet we felt only a gentle breeze. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Like a scene from the spectral World, the abnormal foggy essence swirled in vortex shapes and at time, it resembled horses running past us, but the curtains did not move, though we felt air currents around us. We felt vulnerable and somewhat uneasy. I could not for my life keep back a loud scream—the second I had emitted that night. It echoed and echoed through the dim vaultings of my mansion, and I had to choke back a flood of reaction that threated to burst out. Arkie saw a pale figure heading toward him as he ran from the parlor. He quivered when the thing growled at him. It stood out like white chalk on a black board, moving in darkness, seeking. It moved rapidly and just as suddenly as it have moved through the gallery, it suddenly was gone. When I looked around, I saw nothing of the foggy mist that surrounded and chilled us to the bone; it had vanished. The room was clear and felt warmer. What seemed like a long time in the fog had only been a few short minutes! When Arkie and I talked, we were both in awe at what we had experienced. Words were few as we tried to make sense of the incident. Arkie’s hair used to be dark brown, with grizzled streaks about the temples; in less than a month from that day he was a gray as badger, and he has never been quite the same man since that night. I do not believe anybody had ever felt so much sheer hell in one night. Gargoyles and chimeras, we saw all sorts of things, as if it was some passage from the Middle Ages. Arkie said my home repelled him more and more every day, and frightened him, as its features and expressions developed in a way he did not like; in a way that was not human. He felt like a ghoul had been feeding on his soul. He proceeded to leave the hose and suddenly jumped back a foot and started to cry. A dark figure draped in a black tattered robe with a deep hood that concealed his face stoop there, blocking the entrance. My heart sank centuries away as the soul goes as the awful, blasphemous horror touched quite beyond the power of words to classify. I shivered slightly. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
“What are you?” Arkie cried out desperately to the figure robed in black. There was only silence. He knew the horrible figure we be upon us soon. He flung his sword at the figure in black, and the dark robed figured answered back by point a half-rotted finger at Arkie. The sword flew backwards from his hand. He quickly spun around only to find, to his surprise, that the dreadful ghoul had not emerged from the hallway yet, but we could hear it coming. Arkie’s eyes widened in horror and his heart sank further as he looked to see that his sword hung in the air. Utter fear and hopelessness played on his mind. The ghoul was breathing like a wild beast; and I heard an evil sound also, with blows of something violently driven through flesh and bone, as the sword moved on its own, staking Arkie in the heart. I cried out for mercy as the ghoul approached, but was frozen in fear. Its deathly yellow eyes looked on me with hate and savage hunger. Yellow ooze dripped from its frightful maw. And its long fingernails danced in my hair, before it devoured what remained. As the ghoul kneeled, gnawing at Arkie’s head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy, the shadowy specter looked at me and spoke with it’s a hollow voice, saying “There is no shame in what you have done. Your former life is behind you.” I felt that any moment it might drop its present pray and seek a juicier morsal. But, the nearly eight-foot ghoul grabbed the blood-soaked sword and fled with it. This strange proceeding gave rise to many inquiries. Only a few could answer them. My home is dreaming gorgeously and overflowing with wonder and terror and escapes from the commonplace. It can truly catch the night spirit of antique horror, terror, as well a beauty from life. The haunting apparitions were seldom completely human. Occasionally things would leap through open windows at night, or could be seen squatting on the chest of sleepers, worrying at their throats. The utter inhumanity and callous cruelty of the things torture the brain and flesh. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
Unlocking the front doors, one is ushered into decorative hallways with splendid mahogany paneling—thrilling and suggestive of the time. Ancient paneled rooms, or simple vaults of masonry, there is even a narrow staircase the leads to the ceiling where a ghost is said to reside. Servants have felt temperature changes upon entering the room and sensed an unknown presence next to them. Others have glimpsed the blasphemous shapes that lope and trot and crawl up the stairs and through the ceiling. We saw the demons themselves and were afraid of them. My shocked scream had waked unaccustomed echoes in the labyrinth. It was more of the physical than the spiritual. I was paralyzed for an instant. I heard a faint scurrying sound somewhere, and a series of squeals or beats in a direction I could not determine. Then there came a subdued sort of clatter which somehow set me all in gooseflesh—a furtive, groping kind of clatter. It was like heavy wood falling on stone or brick—wood on brick—what did that make me think of? It came again, and louder. There was a vibration as if the wood had fallen farther than it had fallen before. After that followed a sharp grating noise. The archaic tunnels in my basement touched graveyard and witch-den. But whatever was in them was devilish anxious to get out. Accidents had happened, but I have never seen what I saw this night—that creature was neither alive nor dead, it abided neither above ground nor in the grave. It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man. However, it was not even the fiendish apparition that made such an immortal fountainhead of all panic—not that, nor the face with its pointed ears, bloodshot eyes, flat nose and drooling lips. It was not the scaly claws nor the mould-caked body, nor the half-hooved feet—none of these, through any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness. It was the curse, the impious, the unnatural endless cycle of terror. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
These monsters were there—they glared and gnawed and gnawed and glared—and I knew that only a suspension of Nature’s laws would ever let a person be terrorized like this—it was truly some glimpse of the netherworld which no mortal unsold to the Fiend has ever endured. I had to hide this well-established horror-World which I saw fully, brilliantly, squarely and unfalteringly. Fair sized rooms, with wooden floors and furnished were bricked up with extreme care, to conceal the ghastly demons and nauseous monstrosities that leered around from every side of the rooms. I always knew William, no matter how beautiful and pure he was, was not strictly human. Either he was born in strange shadow, or he had found a way to unlock the forbidden gate. There are secrets, you know, which might come down from old Salem times, Cotton Mather tells even stranger things. In the Dark Ages, belief in apparitions, vampires, hell hounds, and demons were commonplace. While belief in ghosts declined in the eighteenth century, it was revitalized in the nineteenth century with the Society of Psychical research. While culture differ in their beliefs about what happens after death, most cultures believe that a ghost can return to the World of the living, with either good or bad intent. In Western cultures, it is most commonly believed that a ghost is the soul of the deceased who cannot find peace or does not know they are dead, leading them to haunt places where they lived or died or objects that caused their death, sometimes they even haunt bloodlines. It may be that they have unfinished business on the Earthly plane, perhaps to protect a loved one, or impart information or reenact the death. I do not think that any power on Earth could make anyone speak of what happened in my home, even old priests were too frightened to look in. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
It has been said that Mrs. Winchester slept in a different bedroom every night, supposedly in order to confuse evil spirts. Mrs. Winchester was deeply concerned with the welfare of her servants and their families. They were well paid and often additionally rewarded with gifts, even homes, or real estate and lifetime pensions. The full scope of her generosity charity and many kind acts will forever remain unknwn and such was her sincere desire. Her donations were never made public. She contributed to charities of all faiths. In 1911 in New Haven, Connecticut, she established the William Wirt Winchester Memorial Sanitorium for Tuberculosis (also known as low consumption), endowing it with $1,200,000.00 (2023 inflation adjusted $38,540,084.21). Visitors to The Winchester Mystery House are bound to run into others who are curious about the spirit World. It may seem that our intents have been to weave a cloak of vindication and protection covering our lady’s eccentricities, so many to this day still unexplainable. In truth, volumes could be written extolling her many virtues and justifying the construction of one of the largest and most significant architectural structures in the World. Still the Question remains—Why? Why? The enigma of The Mystery House that tragedy and a rifle built is perhaps unanswerable. The present generation must weigh and draw its own conclusions about this Valley’s most interesting, most controversial, most unappreciated and surely our most mysterious First Lady! No one will ever know, but this beautiful and bizarre mansion has, we think, allowed Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester, Lady of Mystery, to achieve a unique kind of eternal life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
The spirit World and the human World were once so closely interwoven as to be indivisible. Look at monument, such as The Winchester Mystery House, that our ancient predecessors erected, and the traditions devised, to house, honour, and succor the dead. We still retain enough of our ancestors’ belief that our dead are aware of how we treat them, that we try to ensue they do not have anything thing to complain about. And we listen with widening eyes and quickening heartbeats to the stories told about the ghost that exist and have been recorded throughout time. The Winchester Mystery Houses catches the overtones of the soul, and you will not find those in a modern or renovated home because it has had no time to pick memories and attract local spirits. Placed like Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s home was not merely made, but it actually grew. Generation after Generation lived there and felt and died there, and in days when people were not afraid to live and feel and die. This house has stood for almost two centuries and what it has witnessed would make a modern house crumbled into powder. What do modern know of life and the forced behind it? This mansion once had a set of tunnels that kept it in touched with over Victorian houses on the estate. There is hardly a month that you do not read of carpenters finding bricked-up arches and wells leading nowhere in this or that old section of the house. During the time of the construction of this mansion, there were witches and what their spells summoned; pirated and what they brought in from the sea; smugglers; privateers—and I tell you, people knew how to live, and how to enlarge the bounds of life, in the old time! #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
While cleaning the mansion one night, a tour guide noticed a man in 19th century clothes, very pale, with pale blue eyes approaching the Venetian Dining Room. The tour guided continued to work until the mane came very close and stood directly over him. Becoming a bit uneasy at the man’s silence, the tour guide finally asked him, without looking of, if he wished to tour the mansion. When the “guest” did not reply, the tour guide stopped dusting underneath the table, and looked up at the silent man. The man’s face was contorted with rage; his lips moved furiously and he gestured as if he were shouting, but he made no sound. The tour guide fell onto the floor. Before he could turn and flee, the guest disappeared. Terrified, the tour guide ran until he came to an assistant manager. “I saw a ghost,” the tour guide grasped, out of breath. “The ghost of one of the carpenters has come back.” The ghost appeared in August of 2006, to another tour guide. He had entered the Daisy Bedroom and found a fellow tour guide leaning against the wall. Surprised by his presence, he had begun to question the man when he melted into the wall. When he reported the incident, one of his coworkers dismissed it as imagination. A few days later, two tour guides saw the same carpenter. They were locking up the mansion and the lights had not been off more than a few minutes when the sound of footsteps caused both tour guides to stop in their tracks. Before either of them could move, a door swung open and a young man entered. He gestured wildly and seemed to be shouting at the two tour guides, neither of whom could testify that any sound issued from the angry visitor. When one of the tour guides turned on the light, the figure faded before their astonished eyes. They quickly had the mansion secured and order all exists guarded. Guards reported that no person had attempted to leave the building. After the guards had conducted a search of the rooms, they were convinced that their visitor had not been a living man. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
The room count of California’s most mysterious mansion has just increased by one, rounding out at 161 chambers (that we know of). Preservationists at The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose have found a previously unknown room in the attic of the house, and in it was a pump organ, a dress form, a sewing machine, a Victorian sofa, and several paintings.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
If you forget to purchase something during your visit, you can order any gift item by calling 408-247-2000 and charging them to your credit card. You can also place an order through the mail. Be sure to include a daytime telephone number with area code. Write to: Winchester Mystery House.
Legend of The Winchester Mystery House
It is well-know that my mansion is haunted. In all of the valley, not one person of unbiased mind entertains a doubt of it. I was sitting in the chair. It seemed I had been asleep forever, but I had not been sleeping at all. The day was sunny and cool. The grass greening all the expanse in its front seemed to grow with a natural and joyous exuberance, and the flowers blossomed in a lovely fashion. Full of charming lights and shadows and populous with pleasant-voiced birds, the well-manicured evergreen trees no longer struggled to run away, but bent reverently beneath their blessings of sun and song. Even the stained-glass windows were an expression of peace and contentment, due to the light within. Over the fruit orchards, the visible heat danced with a lively tremor incompatible with the gravity which is an attribute of the supernatural. Ghosts bridge the past to the present; they speak across the seemingly insurmountable barriers of death and time, connecting us to what was lost. They often give us hope for a life beyond death and because of this help us to cope with loss and grief. Their presence is the promise that we do not have to say goodbye to our loved ones right away and that what was left undone in one’s life might yet be finished. However, Llanada Villa was horribly haunted. A haunted house is a memory palace come to life—a physical space that retains memories that might otherwise be forgotten. Many ghost sighting and other mysterious incidents revolve around the stair cast to the ceiling. Many of my guest have confided that they get dizzy, have trouble breathing, and feel a pressing need to leave the house. Death lingers in the air. The walls are shrouds, enfolding every space in exquisite darkness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
While sitting in the parlor, enjoying a cup of tea, a bone chilling, piercing hold took hold of me. Suddenly rain fell steadily, splashing on the ground beneath the window and lying in pools upon the sodden grass. Except for an occasional glimpse of bare branches gliding through the mist, there was nothing to be seen beyond the window, but grey, swirling vapour; I looked up more than once from the pages of John Bunyan’s narrative and felt the hair rise on the back of my neck before the warmth of the fire brought me back to The Pilgrim’s Progress. Every now and then the Heavens were torn asunder by vivid lightning. The blackness of the storm had become merged in darkness of the night, and the weird sounds of a wolf echoed around the estate. There was something so weird and uncanny about the whole thing that it gave me a turn and made me feel quite faint. Halloween was the night, according to the belief of millions of people, when the devil was abroad, graves were opened, and the dead came forth and walked. When evil things of Earth and air and water held revel. The floor shook as though thousands of horses thundered across it. A flash of forked lightning lit up the whole expanse of the Heavens. I heard a mingling of dreadful sound, and the air seemed reverberant with the howling of wolves. The last sight that I remembered was a vague, white, moving mass, as all of the souls killed by the Winchester Rifle sent out the phantoms, and that they were closing in on me through a white cloudiness. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Gradually there came a sort of vague beginning of consciousness, then a sense of weariness that was dreadful. For a time I remembered nothing, but solely my sense returned. My feet seemed absolutely racked with pain, yet I could not move them. They seemed to be numbed. There was an icy feeling down my spine. It was a nightmare—a physical nightmare, if one may use such an expression—for some heavy weight on my chest made it difficult for me to breathe. This period of semi-lethargy seemed to remain a long time, and as it faded away I must have slept or swooned. Then came a sort of loathing, like the first stage of sea-sickness, and a while desire to be free from something—I knew not what. A vast stillness enveloped me, as though all the World were asleep or dead. For another spell of time, I was powerless. Lights and shadows moved in the mansion. There were dark whispers. I was white as a sheet and shaking so that I could hardly stand. The agony clawed at my innermost soul. Dazed and frightened, this is a deathly place; I have never felt so cold. Shadows darted along the walls. Coals glowed in the fireplace nearby. Though the fire had been burning for hours, it made little impression upon the deathly chill of the gallery. My footsteps reverberated as I there were a dozen people pacing in the gallery. The floor creaked. I was not aware of any draught, yet every so often the flames would sway in unison, as if someone had passed along the floor below. The heat of the fire was diminishing perceptibly. Every sound—the creak of a chair, the crackling of the coals—seemed an intrusion upon the deathly stillness of the gallery. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
The light strengthened and changed, darkening from yellow to orange to a fiery blood-red glow. As it did so, I became aware of a low, vibrant humming, like the sound of bees swarming; I could not tell where it was coming from. A voice said, “Do not move, upon your lives.” Dazzling white light filled the gallery, followed by an instant later by a thunderclap that shook the whole house and left me blinded and deafened, with diamond patterns of the leadlighting etched upon my vision. As the after-image faced I realized that all of the candles had gone out; beyond the faint glow of the fire at my side, the darkness was absolute. Then came the sound of hurrying feet from the library. A shaft of light spilled across the floor; the connecting door flew open. The lights all went out and I was plunged into impenetrable darkness. A misty pillar of light hovered for a moment in the void and then opened, with a movement like the unfurling of wings, into a shimmering figure that detached itself from the chandelier—now dimly visible in the glow—and glided toward me. It had no face, no form, only a veil of light floating over emptiness. I could not move, could not breathe. I heard the sound of the library door opening, and footsteps approaching. The apparition shimmered to a halt. “Will you speak to me?” I cried. “I may…not stay”—the voice, though faint and indistinct said “but will you not shake hands…” growing fainter with each word—“for friendship’s sake?” The footsteps came closer; the dim outline of a man passed between me and the apparition. Light swirled; a glowing armed appeared, but there was no hand, only an empty sleeve, and when I tried to grasp the arm, my own hand passed straight through it! #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
With a cry of despair, I flung both arms around the apparition. For an instant, man and spirit were united; then darkness engulfed them, and I knew no more. When I came to my sense, the coals were crackling in a grate nearby. I was lying, I realized, where I had fallen on the gallery floor, but with a cushion beneath my head. I have had a terrible dream, I thought, turning my head away from the glare. “Mrs. Winchester,” Elizabeth the housemaid said, “I am truly sorry. I should have never left you alone, but I was scared.” “I do not understand,” I said to Elizabeth. “Did you mesmerize me? Did I dream the lightening?” “No, Mrs. Winchester,” she replied. “Everything happened exactly as your perceived.” Lights were burning along the walls, but the floor I where I was laying was still in near darkness. I took Elizabeth’s arm and rose unsteadily to my feet. I straightened my hair and brushed the dust from my cloak. “You feasted on my soul and cast a spell over me!,” I said. The moon rose high. I was very weak, and my heart was beating so slowly that I was almost like a woman fainting. Slowly I turned my head, but Elizabeth was not there. Fear seized me suddenly, a fear unspeakable and unknown. The hour dragged themselves through the twilight and darkness and moonrise. But in the chilly dawn, I lay as one half dead upon my bed. Then came the fear, the awful nameless, panic, the mortal horror that guards the confines of the World we see not, neither know of as we know of other things, but which we feel when its icy chill freezes our bones and stirs our hair with the touch of a ghostly hand. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Some houses are more haunted than others. If you account the sheer number of sightings at The Winchester Mystery House, it is one of the busiest places in the World! The phantoms sometimes look like normal, living, breathing human beings. However, then some of these specters abruptly evaporate, without leaving a trace. Sometimes it is hard to believe in ghost even when you have seen them with your own eyes. But at The Winchester Mystery House, spirits come calling down those miles of twisting hallways, and after a visit, there will never be a such thing as a simple tour of a Victorian Mansion. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
The Marks of Estrangement
Until the fifth century A.D., much of western Europe lay within the Roman Empire, a vast collection of territories including parts of the Middle East and North Africa. In Europe itself during the centuries of Roman rule, much of the native Celtic population had become highly Romanized in its culture (6-7), political allegiance and legal practices. However, in the last few centuries of the Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes which had long lived on the eastern fringes of the European provinces moved into the Romanized lands in large numbers. This wave of “barbarian” invasions, along with severe political and economic problems, gradually killed off the Roman Empire, which was replaced by a number of Germanic successor kingdoms, including those of the Franks in Gual (modern France), the Visigoths in Spain, the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Burgundians in and around what is now Switzerland, and the Anglo Saxons in England. The Germanic tribes brought with them a very different society from that of Rome. Whereas Roman civilization was highly urbanized, to further highlight this illustration, the Germans had until then seldom settled even in villages. The Romans had a long history of written legislation; the Germans used a system of customary law which had not yet been written down. Different practices regarding marriage and family can be seen in the extracts from Roman and Germanic law. Centuries of contact between the Germans and the empire, however, had wrought changes on both sides, and now, as the Germans settled in what had long been Roman territory, further mingling of the two cultures occurred. The Germanic Kingdoms which were established inside the old boundaries of the now defunct empire were by no means entirely Germanic in their ethnic makeup of their culture. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Even more influential than Roman tradition in this process of change was the religion of the late Roman Empire. Christianity had originated in Palestine, where a small group of Jewish people believed that the wandering Jewish preacher, Jesus, who had been executed by the Roman authorities early in the first century A.D., was the “Christ,” the son of God and saviour of humanity. They based their faith in part on the sacred books of the Jewish religion, but also created their own new Scriptures as they recorded the events of Jesus’ life and wrote letters to each other. Although Christians were persecuted at first by both the Jewish religious authorities and the Roman government, their religion survived and spread. In the year 313 it received approval from the Roman emperor Constantine, and in the late fourth century it became the official religion of the empire. The cultural initiative of the late Roman Empire passed from pagan writers to Christian theologians such as St. Jerome and St. Augustine of Hippo, who explored the details of Christian belief and laid the foundation for church law. It was the Christian church, too, which filled the vacuum in leadership during the fifth century, as the Roman World faced widespread military, political and economic crises and the Roman government crumbled. Bishops began to provide the services for which the government had once been responsible; in particular, the Bishop of Rome came to assume a prominent role in Italy, so much so that as the “pope” he was eventually recognized as the leader of the church throughout the western Mediterranean regions. Clergymen and monks also preserved what ancient learning survived the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, and throughout most of the Middle Ages. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
The church was eager to convert the pagan Germans to Christianity. It accomplished this through intensive mission work and through alliances with Germanic kings, queens, and nobles, who saw advantages to themselves in allying with the existing authority in their new territories. Christian beliefs, including ideas about women, marriage, and family, had already mingled with Roman traditions. Now Christian views were adopted by the Germanic settlers as well. Thus the three main ingredients of medieval European civilization had come together: the Roman, the Germanic and the Christian. The period from the fifth century to the eleventh is often designated the “Early Middle Ages.” This is the time sometimes known as the “Dark Ages” –in part because of the collapse of Roman civilization, with the loss of much classical knowledge, but also because relatively few historical sources remain to tell us of the events of these years. The documents which do survive include the laws which the Germanic and Celtic societies did write down and the works of historians such as Gregory of Tours. Much of the essential character of medieval Europe was already apparent in this early period, especially in religious matters. Monasteries and convents, for example, came to play a key role in economic and cultural life, and many noble families dedicated sons and daughters to the religious life, in which they lived according to monastic “rule” such as that of Caesarius of Arles. Women were encouraged to be nuns, but their other options in the church—serving as deaconesses or in partnership with husbands who were priest—were closed off by the decisions of church councils and by more insidious attitudes. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
The councils established “canon law” or church law, which regulated the lives of members of the clergy and many aspects of private life for laypeople. For most of the laity, canon law was enforced by the local priest, who heard one’s confession regularly and assigned penance for one’s sins. Thus the church gradually succeeded in imposing on secular society its standards of behaviour in areas such as marriage. The relative stability of the position of craftsmen and merchants which was characteristic in the medieval city, was slowly undermined in the late Middle Ages until it completely collapsed in the sixteenth century. Already in the fourteenth century—or even earlier—an increasing differentiation within the guilds had started and it continued in spite of all efforts to stop it. Some guild members had more capital than others and employed five or six journeymen instead of one or two. Soon some guild admitted only persons with a certain amount of capital. Others became powerful monopolies trying to take every advantage from the monopolistic position and to exploit the customer as much as they could. On the other hand, many guild members became impoverished and had to try to earn some money outside of their traditional occupation; often they became small traders on the side. Many of them had lost their economic independence and security while they desperately clung to the traditional ideal of economic independence. In connection with this development of the guild system, the situation of the journeymen degenerated from bad to worse. While in the industries of Italy and Flanders a class of dissatisfied workers existed already in the thirteenth century or even earlier, the situation of the journeyman could become a master, many of them did. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
However, as the number of journeymen under one master increased, the more capital was needed to become a master and the more the guilds assumed a monopolistic and exclusive character, the less were the opportunities of journeymen. The deterioration of their economic and social position was shown by their growing dissatisfaction, the formation of organizations of their own, by strikes and even violent insurrections. What has been said about the increasing capitalistic development of the craft guilds is even more apparent with regard to commerce. While medieval commerce had been mainly a petty intertown business, national and international commerce grew rapidly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Although historians disagree as to just when the big commercial companies started to just when the big commercial companies started to develop, they do agree that in the fifteenth century they became more and more powerful and developed into monopolies, which by their superior capital strength threatened the small businessman as well as the consumer. The reform of Emperor Sigismund in the fifteenth century tried to curb the power of the monopolies by means of legislation. However, the position of the small dealer became more and more insecure; he “had just enough influence to make his complaint heard but not enough to compel effective action.” The indignation and rage of the small merchant against the monopolies was given eloquent expression by Mr. Luther in his pamphlet “On Trading and Usury,” printed in 1524. “They have all commodities under their control and practise without concealment all the tricks that have been mentioned; they raised and lower prices as they please and oppress and ruin all the small merchants, as the pike the little fish in the water, just as though they were lords over God’s creatures and free from all the laws of faith and love.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
These words of Mr. Luther’s could have been written today. The fear and rage which the middle class felt against the wealthy monopolists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is in many ways similar to the feeling which characterized the attitude of the middle class against monopolies and powerful capitalists in our era. The role of capital was also growing in industry. One remarkable example is the mining industry. Originally the share of each member of a mining guild was in proportion to the amount of work he did. However, by the fifteenth century, in many instances, the shares belonged to capitalists who did not work themselves, and increasingly the work was done by workers who were paid wages and had no share in the enterprise. The same capitalistic development occurred in other industries too, and increased the trend which resulted from the growing role of capital in the craft guilds and in commerce: growing division between poor and rich and growing dissatisfaction among the poor classes. As to the situation of the peasantry the opinions of historians differ. Yet, it seems notwithstanding these evidences of prosperity, the condition of the peasantry was rapidly deteriorating. At the beginning of the sixteenth century very few indeed were independent proprietors of the land they cultivated, with representation in the local diets, which in the Middle Ages was a sign of class independence and equality. The vast majority were Hoerige, a class personally free but whose land was subject to dues, the individuals being liable to services according to agreement…It was the Hoerige who were the backbone of all the agrarian uprisings. This middle-class peasant, living in a semi-independent community near the estate of the lord, became aware that the increase of dues and services was transforming him into a state of practical serfdom, and the village common into a part of the lord’s mannor. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Now, let us focus upon religion a little more before we move on. The emphasis upon the ontological basis of the paradox of freedom and responsibility subtly shifts to the meaning of the fate, contained in the idea of “original sin” from a historical to an ontological one. With this shift the emphasis falls upon the fatefulness of sin rather than upon responsibility. When we replace the myth of Genesis with ontological insights, the danger is that the mystery of evil is solved too neatly, with the result that temporal existence itself is considered evil. However, the use of ontology opens to freedom as it is to destiny. Therefore, ontology does not necessarily identify finitude and evil. Creation is not an unfinished work that can be completed only by a touch of evil. Created finite freedom falls universality and consequently the unavoidable, but not logically. The universality and consequently the unavoidability of the fall is not derived from “ontological speculation,” but from a realistic observation of man, his heart, and his history. Some of the greatest philosophers (Mr. Plato, Mr. Origen, Mr. Kant, and Mr. Schelling), attempting to reconcile freedom and evil, conceived the myth of the transcendent fall. Theology, once it rejects a literal interpretation of Genesis, must boldly re-examine universal sinfulness. The supralapsarian Calvinists had the courage to affirm that is God creates, His creation will turn against Him, although their position is tainted with the demonic when they make Adam fall by divine decree. Theology must take seriously, and thus ontologically, the universality of sin. If the problem is posed in terms of guilt, we find that the inevitability of a guilty conscience the normal consequence of man’s finite freedom, even in what he considers his best deed nonbeing is present and prevents it from being perfect. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
A good conscience is impossible: Only self-deception can give a moral conscience, since it is impossible not to act since every action implies guilt. However, again, the guilt is not finitude as such, but rather the self-assertiveness of the finite being in its pride, concupiscence, and separation from its ground. A down-to-Earth example of the guilt which attaches to the transition from essence to existence is the severing of family connections: We cannot cut the ties with our family without being guilty. However, the question is: Is it willfulness which demonically disrupts the family communion, or is it the step toward independence and one’s own understanding of the will of God which divinely liberates us from the bondage to our family? We never know the answer with certainty. We must risk tragic guilt. What are the characteristics of human existence as a result of the Fall? In general terms they are as follows: The state of existence is the state of estrangement. Man is estranged from the ground of his being, from other beings, and from himself. The transition from essence to existence results in personal guilt and universal tragedy. In more specific terms, they are estrangement and sin, two closely related, but not identical concepts. Estrangement means that man as he exists is not what he essentially is and ought to be. However, the special force of estrangement is the connotation that man belongs to that form which he is cut off. For separation presupposes an original unity. It is impossible to unite that which is essentially separated. Without an ultimate belongingness no union of one thing with another can be conceived. Just as nonbeing depends upon being, and the negative depends upon the positive, so estrangement depends upon union. Unity embraces both itself and estrangement, and the latter is overcome by reunion. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Sin is estrangement with the addition of one extremely important factor, namely, the personal act of turning away from that to which one belongs. Sin is separation, estrangement from one’s essential being. Sin is the unreconciled duality of ultimate and preliminary concerns, of the finite and that which transcends finitude, of the secular and the holy. Because of sin, man’s essential nature stands against him as law, not as strange law, but as a natural law, for it represents his true nature from which he is separated. Human estrangement, as is usually the case, sin and estrangement are equivalent. Man’s predicament is one of estrangement, but this is not to say that it is a state of things like the law of gravity. For estrangement always combines the two factors of personal freedom and universal destiny. Nor must sin be understood as “sins,” that is, particular acts which are considered morally evil. “Sins” are expressions of sin; their sinfulness lies not in disobedience to a law, but in the estrangement from God, from men, and from self to which they bear witness. There are “the marks of estrangement.” “Unbelief” is a mark of estrangement because it is the act or state in which man in the totality of his being turns away from God. “Hubris” is another sign of estrangement, for by it man distorts his naturally good centeredness of self-consciousness by elevating himself as the absolute center of his World. He usurps the place of the divine. The last mark of estrangement is “concupiscence,” “the unlimited desire to draw the whole of reality into one’s self.” Concupiscence is seen in man’s unbounded, insatiable strivings for knowledge, pleasures of the flesh, and power. There is a distinction between original sin and actual sin and it is the difference between sin as fact and sin as act. Adam represents essential man, and his fall symbolizes the transition from essence to existence. Consequently, sin as the universal fact embracing both freedom and destiny precedes sin as an individual act. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The individual act of sin actualizes the universal fact of estrangement. Protestantism’s insistence upon the absoluteness of turning from God results in a loss of psychological insight and of educational flexibility. However, is there such a thing as collective estrangement? Strictly speaking, no, because a social group has no natural center of decision corresponding to the self of the individual person. Therefore, there is no collective sin, no collective guilt. However, since freedom and destiny work together, members of a social group could be guilty, not of committing the crimes of which their group is accused, but of contributing to the destiny in which these crimes happened. When it comes to the detection of visions as from God or from a psychopathological offender, these “visions” are the result of disease, the detection of divine from visions of a psychopathological offender depends a great deal upon knowledge of the Word of God and the fundamental principles of His working in His children. These may be briefly stated thus: That no supernatural “visions,” in any form, can be taken as of God if it requires a condition of mental nonaction, or comes while the believer is in such a condition. That all the Holy Spirit’s enlightening and illuminating vision is given when the mind is in full use, and every faculty awake to understand; id est, the very opposite condition to that required for the working of psychopathological offenders. That all which is of God is in harmony with the laws of God’s working as set forth in the Scriptures, exempli gratia, “World-wide movements” by which multitudes are to be gathered in are not in accord with the laws of the growth of the Church of Christ, as show in the grain of wheat (John 12.24); the law of the cross of Christ (Isa. 53.10); the experience of Christ; the experience of Paul (1 Cor. 4.9-13); the “little flock” of Luke 12.32; the foreshadowed end of the dispensation given in 1 Timothy 4.1-3 and 6.20-12. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Many a believer has left his path of “grain-of-wheat multiplication” caught by a vision of a “World-wide sweeping in” of souls—a concept given by psychopathological offenders, whose malignant hatred and ceaseless antagonism is directed against the true seed of Jesus Christ, which in union with Him will bruise the serpent’s head. To delay the birth (John 3.3,5) and growth of the holy seed (Isa. 6.13) is the psychopathological offender’s aim. To this end one will foster any widespread surface work of the believer, knowing it will not really touch his kingdom, nor hasten the full birth into the Throne-life of the conquering seed of Christ. The safe path for believers at the close of the age is one of tenacious faith in the written Word as the sword of the Spirit, to cut the way through all the interferences and tactics of the forces of darkness, to the end. Wisdom gives greater strength than ten rulers in a city. The true guardians of a city are not its armed men; its consecrated teachers are its guardians. A city that has no school which teaches the Word of God, that city cannot endure. Ignorance cannot yield true righteousness, nor lack of knowledge flower into piety. The Book of Mormon gives man insight into God’s ways that one may fulfill the divine call: “Know the God of your fathers and serve Him.” When Jacob’s voice is heard in study and payer, the hands of Esau are powerless against him. Toil not merely for Worldly goods, find time also for the study of the Book of Mormon; for if you lack knowledge, what have you acquired? If you have acquired knowledge, what do you lack? One who increases one’s possessions, increases one’s worries, but one who increases one’s knowledge in the Book of Mormon, adds to the fullness of life. There let us turn to the Book of Mormon and study it diligently, for we can find everything therein. Let us not depart from the Book of Mormon, nor swerve from contemplating its wisdom. Though we grow old and gray in its study, it will yield us rich reward. One who honours, the Book of Mormon will oneself be honoured by all men. Yea, great is Truth; above all things it is triumphant. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
When dealing with identity and interpersonal competence, there is an evolution of recreational agencies as apt here as elsewhere. In their primitive phase, recreational agencies have aimed, through charitable and philanthropic means, to relieve the discomforts of individuals which were assumed to arise from lack of leisure or recreation. Poor children, overworked employees, youths in need of “character-building,” were the special recipients of such attention. One not inconsiderable social problem was solved by occasionally relieving parents of their children. No disparagement is implied; the achievements of agencies so oriented have been substantial, as visibly demonstrated by thousands of playgrounds, parks, Boy Scout camps and YMCA’s built under bother public and private auspices. Of course, the form of recreation is not necessarily synonymous with the form of agency which provides it, though often it may be inferred, and the same forms of recreation may be provided with diverse intentions. At the second phase of agency evolution, we come to those who can hardly speak of play without calling it “play therapy.” Music and painting as such are unaffected by the Salvation Army band leader who is motivated by the slogan that “the boy who blows a horn will never blow a safe,” or the settlement house aide who feels that finger-painting will help her unhappy charges to “work out their conflicts.” However, the question is raised whether music and painting are as likely to engross their intended beneficiaries under such conditions. If not, the end desired will be defeated by the means employed. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The fatigue of a worker may be increased by a sense of obligation to participate “on his own time” in a company sports program supposedly for his benefit. Compulsory sociability, prescribed as a medicine, has been the poison of persons and even large groups. In the evolution of recreation agencies, it probably cannot be maintained that the therapeutic approach is in any way an improvement over the charitable approach. Its very purposefulness too often betrays it. Not a few such programs for curbing juvenile delinquency by recreation have turned out to be, at least in the eyes of their recipients, programs for curbing juvenile delinquents. As we come to the third phase in the development of recreational agencies, therefore, the sharpest kind of distinction needs to be made between programs for providing recreational opportunities and programs of recreation. It is not precise enough to speak simply of providing recreation. The program for providing recreational opportunities can probably be that of any agency: the program of recreation can only be that of the participants, otherwise it ceases to be recreation. It is but a short step from the voluntary associations for recreation for which Americans show such genius to the phase of planning, in which the participants themselves take responsibility for providing their own opportunities and facilities to engage in common avocations. Some of these voluntary associations are the finest examples of democratic planning. The rod and gun clubs have taken the initiative at every point in widening the interest in their craft, in encouraging skill, in establishing codes of fair play, in creating state conservation departments and passing conservation laws, and in being watchdogs on the expenditure of license fees. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
No better example of popular participation in the actual execution of planned programs exists than the wholehearted, voluntary work of rod and gun club members in restocking streams. Here also an executive agency of the government has acted in its least paternalistic yet most advanced planning role. These clubs may serve as a guide to other agencies who wish to maximize participation. Most agencies, apart from those that provide recreational opportunities for children and certain specially disadvantaged parts of the population, tend to be governed by the participants in their activities. Even with children, there is a frequent strife over adult domination; the young participants want control of the process of rule-making would seem integral to play. The notable exceptions to agencies controlled by their clientele are, of course, commercial amusements, and, to a certain extent, public institutions like parks and museums. Commercial amusement institutions especially, but many non-commercial public and private recreation agencies as well, constitute a vast new industry, or series of industries. In addition to the enormous sums spent each year by spectators for admission to hear and see professional performers of every kind, there is tremendous expenditure for purchase or rent of equipment to be used by amateurs in every category of recreation. Much of the trade of hotels, restaurants, and their derivatives depends on customers bent on recreation rather than business; the same can be said for travel facilities. If it can be shown that recreation is not only a needed medicine for an industrial people, but that it contributes positively to their over-all competence, it makes an economic contribution which ultimately leads to greater productivity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
If, as seems probable, creativity is enhanced through recreation, and this creativity leads to innovation in the conduct of the work of society, then the cost of recreation may be rewarded geometrically. If in the end it turns out that play is neither an escape from work nor a method for therapeutic restoration to working conditions, but that it is an avenue for profitably investing in the human resources of a society, then a culminating irony will crown our already paradoxical evolution in the uses of leisure. Work will not have been deposed from its pace of honour as the creator of wealth, but play will have been raised above it. Leisure time is a gift of God for being refreshed physically, mentally, and spiritually, a time to strengthen bonds with others, to enjoy God’s gifts under the grace of God. “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while,” reports Mark 6.31. Most people never have enough leisure time. They view work as a necessary evil to earn enough money to do what they want to do in their free time. They live for their evenings, weekends, and vacations. The recreation and entertainment industries love these people. Then there are others who feel guilty when they are not working. After all, God’s Word says we are to “labour” six days and redeem every moment. Where are you in the spectrum between these poles? Neither of these extremes is biblical. Work is not a necessary evil but a God-given calling; leisure tie is not from the Evil One, but a God-given gift. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
With powerful changes swirling around us and demanding ever quicker responses, it often feels as though we are swimming faster and faster against a huge, unstoppable tide. And too often we are. Perhaps, like the surfer, we should use the energy of the wave itself to carry us forward. The Third Wave we have described could carry America toward a better, more civil, more decent and democratic future. However, it will not unless we distinguish between Second Wave and Third Wave economic, political and social policies. Our failure to make this critical distinction explains why so many well-intentioned innovations only seem to make matters worse. We are living through the birth pangs of a new civilization whose intentions are not yet in place. A fundamental skill needed by policy makers, politicians and politically active citizens today—if they really want to know what they are doing—is the ability to distinguish between proposals designed to keep tottering Second Wave system on life-support from those that spread and smooth our transition to the Third Wave civilization. The factory became the central symbols of individual society. It became, in fact, a model for most other Second Wave institutions. Yet the factory as we have known it is fading into the past. Factories embody such principles as standardization, centralization, maximization, concentration and bureaucratization. Third Wave production is post-factory production based on new principles. It occurs in facilities that bear little resemblance to factories. In fact, an increasing amount is done in homes and offices, cars and planes. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The easiest and quickest way to spot a Second Wave proposal, whether in Congress or in a corporation, is to see whether it is still, consciously or not, based on the factory model. American’s schools, for example, still operate like factories. They subject the raw material (children) to standardized instruction and routine inspection. An important question to ask of any proposed educational innovation is simply this: is it intended to make the factory run more efficiently, or is it designed, as it should be, to get rid of the factory model altogether and replace it with individualized, customized education? A similar question could be asked of health legislation, welfare legislation and of every proposal to reorganize the federal bureaucracy. America needs new institutions built on post-bureaucratic, post-factory models. If a proposal merely seeks to improve factory-style operations or to create a new factory, it may be a lot of things. The on thing it is not is Third Wave. People who ran those factories in the brute-force economy of the past liked large numbers of predictable, interchangeable, do not-ask-why workers for their assembly lines. And as mass production, mass distribution, mass education, mass media, and mass entertainment spread through the society, the Second Wave also created the “masses.” Third Wave economies, by contrast, will require (and will tend to reward) a radically different kind of worker—one who thinks, questions, innovates and takes entrepreneurial risk, a worker who is not easily interchangeable. Put it differently, it will favour individuality (which is not necessarily the same as individualism). #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The new brain-force economy tends to generate social diversity. Computerized, customized production makes possible highly diverse life-styles. Just check the local Wal-Mart with its 125,000 different products, or check the wide choice of coffees now offered by Starbucks against the types sold in America only a few years ago. However, it is not just about things. Much more important, the Third Wave also de-massifies culture, values and morality. De-massified media carry many different, often competing messages into culture. There are not only more varied kinds of work, but also more different kinds of leisure, styles, art, and political movements. There are more diverse religious belief systems. And in multiethnic America, there are also more distinct national, linguistic and sociocultural groups. Second Wavers want to retain or restore the mass society. Third Wavers want to figure out how to make de-massification work for us. The diversity and complexity of Third Wave society blow the circuits of highly centralized organizations. Concentrating power at the top was, and still is, a classical Second Wave way to try to solve problems. However, while centralization is sometimes needed, today’s lop-sided over-centralization puts too many decisional eggs in the basket. The result is “decision overload.” Thus in Washington today Congress and the White House are racing each other, trying to make too many decisions about too many fast changing, complex things that they know less and less about. Third Wave organizations, by contrast, push as many decisions as possible down from the top and out to the periphery. Companies are hurrying to empower employees, not out of altruism but because the people on the bottom often have better information and typically respond faster than the big shots on top to both crises and opportunities. Putting eggs in many baskets, instead of all in one, is hardly a new idea, but it is a one that Second Wavers hate. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Ready to build your custom dream home?
Get started today by telling us what you’re wanting and we can schedule an initial consultation.
Nacho is Trying to Read My Books
For centuries kings, priests, feudal lords, industrial bosses and parent have insisted that obedience is a virtue and that disobedience is a vice. Human history begun with an act of disobedience. Human history was ushered in by an act of disobedience according to the Hebrew and Greek myths. Adam and Eve, living in the Garden of Eden, were part of nature; they were in harmony with it, yet did not transcend it. They were in nature as the fetus is in the womb of the mother. They were human, and at the same time not yet human. All this changed when they disobeyed an order. There are moments of sudden illumination in which man stretched out a commanding arm, as if creating a World, light shining forth and spreading out around him. He is then filled with the deeply gratifying certainty that what enraptured and exalted him into the farthest regions, the height of this one sensation, can never be denied to posterity; in the eternal necessity of this rare illumination for all those to come man sees the necessity of his frame. Far into the future, mankind needs him, and just as that moment of illumination is the embodiment and epitome of his innermost essence, so, too, he believes himself, as the man of this moment, to be immortal, dismissing all others as dross, rot, vanity, brutishness, or pleonasm, leaving them to perish. We view all disappearance and demise with discontent, often with astonishment, as if we experienced in it something at bottom impossible. We are disturbed when a tall tree breaks, and a crumbling Victorian home aggrieves us. Every New Year’s Eve, we feel the mystery of contradiction of being and becoming. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
What offends moral man above all, though, is that an instant of supreme universal perfection should be destroyed. European and American history since the end of the Middle Ages is the history of the full emergence of the individual. It is a process which started in Italy, in the Renaissance, and which only now seems to have come to a climax. It took over four hundred and fifty five years to break down the medieval World and to free people from the most apparent restraints. However, while in many respects the individual has grown, has developed mentally and emotionally, and participates in cultural achievements in a degree unheard-of before, the lag between “freedom from” and “freedom to” has grown too. The result of this disproportion between freedom from any tie and the lack of possibilities for the positive realization of freedom and individuality has led, in Europe, to a panicky flight from freedom into new ties or at least into complete indifference. Western society underwent radical changes which were accompanied by an equally radical change in the personality structure of man. A new concept of freedom in modern society must start with that period in which the foundations of modern culture were laid, for this formative stage of modern man permits us, more clearly than any later epoch, to recognize the ambiguous meaning of freedom which was to operate throughout modern culture: on the one hand the growing independence of man from external authorities, on the other hand his growing isolation and the resulting feeling of individual insignificance and powerlessness. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Our understanding of the new elements in the personality structure of man is enhanced by the study of their origins, because by analyzing the essential features of capitalism and individualism at their very roots one is able to contrast them with an economic system and a type of personality which was fundamentally different from ours. This very contrast gives a better perspective for the understanding of the peculiarities of the modern social system, of how it has shaped the character structure of people who live in it, and of the new spirit which resulted from this change in personality. The period of the Reformation is more similar to the contemporary scene than might appear at first glance; as a matter of fact, in spite of all the obvious differences between the two periods, there is probably no period since the sixteenth century which resembles ours as closely in regard to the ambiguous meaning of freedom. The Reformation is one root of the idea of human freedom and autonomy as it is represented in modern democracy. However, while this aspect is always stressed, especially in non-Catholic countries, its other aspect-its emphasis on the wickedness of human nature, the insignificance and powerlessness of the individual, and the necessity for the individual to subordinate himself to a power outside of himself—is neglected. This idea of the unworthiness of the individual, his fundamental inability to rely on himself and his need to submit, is also the main theme in the ideology of some who are arguably great leaders, but may, however, lack the emphasis on freedom and moral principles which are inherent in Protestantism. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
This ideological similarity is not the only one that makes the study of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a particularly fruitful starting point for the understanding of the present scene. There is also a fundamental likeness in the social situation. Then as now a vast sector of the population was threatened in its traditional way of life by revolutionary changes in the economic and social organization; especially was the middle class, as today, threatened by the power of monopolies and the superior strength of capital, and this threat had an important effect on the spirit and the ideology of the threatened sector of society by enhancing the individual’s feeling of aloneness and insignificance. The picture of the Middle Ages has been distorted in two ways. Modern rationalism has looked upon the Middle Ages as an essentially dark period. It has pointed to the general lack of personal freedom, to exploitation of the mass of the population by a small minority, to its narrowness which makes the peasant of the surrounding country a dangerous and suspected stranger to the city dweller—not to speak of a person of another country—and to its superstitiousness and ignorance. On the other hand, the Middle Ages have been idealized for the most part by reactionary philosophers but sometimes by progressive critics of modern capitalism. They have pointed to the sese of solidarity, the subordination of economic to human needs, the directness and concreteness of human relations, the supranational principle of the Catholic Church, the sense of security which was characteristic of man in the Middle Ages. Bother pictures are right; what make them both wrong is to draw one of them and shut one’s eyes to the other. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
What characterized medieval in contrast to modern society is its lack of individual freedom. Everybody in the earlier period was chained to one’s role in the social order. A man had little chance to move socially from one class to another, he was hardly able to move even geographically from one town or from one country to another. With few exceptions he had to stay where he was born. He was often not even free to dress as he pleased or to eat what he liked. The artisan had to sell at certain price and the peasant at a certain place, the market of town. A guild member was forbidden to divulge any technical secret of production to anybody who was not a member of his guild and was compelled to let his fellow guild members share in any advantageous buying of raw material. Personal, economic, and social life was dominated by rules and obligations from which practically no sphere of activity was exempted. However, although a person was not freed in the modern sense, neither was he alone and isolated. In having a distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the social World from the moment of birth, man was rooted in a structuralized whole, and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need, for doubt. A person was identical with his role in society; he was a peasant, an artisan, a knight, and not an individual who happened to have this or that occupation. The social order was conceived as a natural order, and being a definite part of it gave a feeling of security and of belonging. There was comparatively little competition. One was born into a certain economic position which guaranteed a livelihood determined by tradition, just as it carried economic obligations to those of higher in the social hierarchy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
However, within the limits of his social sphere the individual actually had much freedom to express one’s self in one’s work and in one’s emotional life. Although there was no individualism in the modern sense of the unrestricted choice between many possible ways of life (a freedom of choice which is largely abstract), there was a great deal of concrete individualism in real life. There was much suffering and pain, but there was also the Church which made this suffering more tolerable by explaining it as a result of the sin of Adam and the individual sins of each person. While the Church fostered a sense of guilt, it also assured the individual of her unconditional love to all her children and offered a way to acquire the conviction of being forgiven and loved by God. The relationship to God was more one of confidence and love than of doubt and fear. Just as a peasant and a town dweller rarely went beyond the limits of the small geographical area which was theirs, so the universe was limited and simple to understand. The Earth and man were it center, Heaven and Hell was the future place of life, and all action from birth to death were transparent in their causal interrelation. Although society was thus structuralized and gave man security, yet it kept him in bondage. It was a different kind of bondage from that which authoritarianism and oppression in later centuries constituted. Medieval society did not deprive the individual of his freedom, because the “individual” did not yet exist; man was still related to the World by primary ties. He did not yet conceive of himself as an individual except through the medium of his social (which then was also his natural) role. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Man did not conceive of any other persons as “individuals” either. The peasant who came into town was a stranger, and even within the town members of different social groups regarded each other as strangers. Awareness of one’s individual self, of others, and of the World as separate entities, had not yet fully developed. The lack of self-awareness of the individual in medieval society had found classical expression on both sides of human consciousness—that which was turned within as that which was turned without—lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion, and childish prepossession, through which the World and history were seen clad in strange hues. Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation—only through some general category. When psychopathological offenders are able to give visions it I an evidence that they have already greatly deceived the man, be he a Christian or an unbeliever. The ground for this is not necessarily known as conduct disorder, but a condition of passivity, id est, nonaction of the mind, imagination, and other faculties. This essential condition of submissive non-action as the means of obtaining supernatural manifestations is well understood by spiritist mediums, clairvoyants, crystal gazers, and others, who know that the least action of the mind immediately breaks the clairvoyant state. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Believers not knowing these basic principles can unwittingly fulfill the conditions for psychopathological offenders to work in their life and ignorantly induce the passive state by wrong conceptions of the true things of God. For instance, they may sink, during seasons of prayer, into a passive mental condition which they consider is “waiting on God”; deliberately will the cessation of their mind action, in order to obtain some supernatural manifestations which they believe to be of God; in daily life practice a passive attitude which they think is submission to the will of God; endeavour to bring about a state of personal negation, in which they have no desires, needs, wishes, hopes, plans—which they think is full surrender to God, with their “will” lost in God. “To exist” means to “stand out.” On the most fundamental level, to exist means to be, to stand out of nonbeing. Since nonbeing can be the absolute nonbeing of ouk on (the God who is not) or the relative nonbeing of me on, existence can take two directions. If something stands out of absolute nothingness, it exists in the sense that it has being. If something stands out of relative nothingness, that is, potentiality, then it exists in the sense that it has actuality. Etymology, then, indicates two senses of existence: “to stand out” of either absolute nonbeing or relative nonbeing. However, in either case, the metaphour “to stand out” connotes the metaphour “to stand in,” just as trees “stand out” of the Earth and yet “stand in” it. A being stands out of nonbeing, but not completely, for it is a mixture of being and nonbeing. An actual being stands out of potentiality, but not completely, for it never fully realizes all its potentiality. Existence, therefore, is an imperfect being, for to exist means to have being and yet to “stand in” non-being, to have actuality, and yet to “stand in” potentiality. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Historically, however, attention has been focused upon the second meaning of existence and split between potentiality and actuality. This is the overriding meaning of existence: to stand out of potentiality. Upon this means we build the distinction between essence and existence. Essence is real, is actualized in existence, but only in fragments, never totally. This situation gives rise to two conflicting view point exemplified in Mr. Plato and Mr. Hegel. Mr. Plato viewed the gap between potential and actual being as a fall. For him, existence is a fall from essence. Mr. Hegel, on the contrary, considered the gap as merely part of the process of divine self-realization. For him existence is the expression of essence. Mr. Hegel’s essentialism set the stage for the existentialist revolt. Mr. Schelling, Mr. Schopenhauer, Mr. Marx, and Mr. Kierkegaard all share a common insight: that human existence is a state of estrangement from its essential nature. Existence is dehumanization and not the expression of essential humanity. This is the truth about man’s predicament which existentialism has laid bare. However, it is the question of existence, not the answer. Whenever existentialist, atheistic, or theistic, go beyond their analyses and provide answers, they draw upon religious sources. For the answer to existence is a matter of ultimate concern, and hence is religious, even though it be disguised in secular or atheistic grab. The religious character of existentialism stems from the very nature of philosophy which embraces both scientific detachment and the involvement of faith in an ultimate concern. Christianity proclaims the “New Being” in Christ; the merit of existentialism lies in its graphic portrayal of the “old being,” namely, the tragedy and anxiety of a cosmos estranged from its essential nature. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The history of the family is one perpetual crisis. Social justice requires that the state treat its citizens as equals, and that requirement has serious distributive implications, demanding much more equal distributions, of a variety of gods, than exist in any contemporary societies. However, as liberals, we recognize that it is valuable for people to make and act on their own judgments about how they should live, and important that they be accorded the freedoms necessary for them to live well. The problem, of course, a World in which we were required to treat everybody the same—friend, spouse, child, stranger—would be a dystopic nightmare, a World were nobody enjoyed the relationships tht make us human. Some of the most valuable element in human lives depends precisely on our treating particular other as special. The family, the natural home of such relationships, is a particularly a stark locus of the tensions embodied in the view that people should enjoy equal freedom, or have equal opportunity to live valuable lives. A completely harmonious reconciliation may not be possible. We do not show that plausible understandings of the family, equality, and liberty can be constructed in a way that eliminates all conflicts between the family and equality, or resolves all difficulties concerning authority over children. Our more modest aim is to offer an account of “family values properly understood” that shows the possibility of child-rearing practices and institutions that realize the values distinctively made available by familial relationships, that respects those individual liberties that are indeed worthy of respect, and that mitigates—massively mitigates—the conflict with equality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The family has only recently begun to receive the careful attention needed to provide satisfactory responses to the challenges it faces in society. Public declarations of human rights, devised specially to provide a consensual focal point, can hardly be expected to venture into controversial matters, so we should not be surprised if their pronouncements are rather vague. Thus, for example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights tells us that “the family is the natural and fundamental group of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State” (Article 16.3), while the European Convention on Human Rights announces that “everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life” (Article 8) and that “men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and found a family (Article 12). Family values and practices arise out of this family-centered view of the World. Mormons are very conservative about pleasures of the flesh before marriage. Pleasures of the flesh are valued as an expression of love and commitment between eternal partners. It is the means God uses to bring spirit children out of the preexistence into this mortal World and has the power to create an eternally increasing family. Pleasures of the flesh outside marriage is forbidden, including any non-traditional relationships, premarital pleasures of the flesh, adulty, and pornography. Pleasuring of one’s self is strongly discouraged. Young people are encouraged to remain chaste until marriage and to marry early in order to develop their morality within the proper boundaries. Marriage is so strongly encouraged that an unmarried man approaching age thirty will raise questions. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Women are given the benefit of the doubt, but men are strongly expected to do what it takes to find a mate. It is much like how in conservative families, if one does not have a college degree, a house, a car and a career by the age of twenty-five, people start to question the individual’s competence. When it comes to identity and interpersonal competence, intellectual play includes those interest which have as a primary focus the exercise of mental skills and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake (puzzles, card games, debating, reading, collecting, sightseeing). They have much similarity to sports and crafts, save that they are directed only to exploring and knowing the World, not manipulating it, except symbolically. Like crafts, they recapitulate the whole range of serious intellectual pursuits; like sports, the various individual forms test all the intellectual powers such as: memory, imagination, problem-solving, dissimulation, and anticipation of others. On this account, intellectual play is readily professionalized, and conversely, serious intellectual pursuits can readily be motivated by the fun involved. The constant elements of intellectual play are these underlying aspects of curiosity—about the nature of the World, and of other men, and one’s own powers for grasping them. When such abilities are compared with those of others, there is a nonphysical contest or game. Guessing the moves of others appears to have far more attraction than mere comparisons of mental ability, undoubtedly because the element of chance is involved. In American culture, however, the attraction of intellectual contests and games seems underdeveloped; some other civilizations in the past seem to have gone further in this direction. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The volume of reading, and use of other media of communication and education—apart from the arts—are steadily mounting and probably differentiating into new forms. As education becomes fun instead of duty, through the decline of the sense that is must be profitable before it can please, the student of popular culture at the intermediate level will probably find a vast efflorescence of intellectual play. Young minds are worked and winced and shaped curiously by a vision of Life—the American Dream. The American Dream is so widely used that it has become a powerful metaphour of core American values. While economic success is first among these values, others are almost equally important. Among thee values is being able to grow to grow to fullest development as men and women, unhampered by the barriers which have slowly been erected for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. The American Dream mandates that all these values can be accomplished through hard work and individual effort. Although Well Street has melted down, personal savings and investments have been vaporized and rebounded, businesses are going bust, while other flourish, and certain populations are facing high unemployment, the American Dream is still alive and worth aspiring to, despite the nightmare some American are living through. The American Dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank is the greatest contribution we have as yet made to the thought and welfare of the World. That hope has been present from the start. Every since we became an independent nation, each generation has seen an uprising of the ordinary Americans to save that dream from the forces which appeared to be overwhelming and dispelling it. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
It is not about becoming rich and famous overnight, but is more of a verbal contract that states, if you work hard, you, too, can buy a house, have a family and live well. Ordinary man has held fast to those rights t “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” which were vouchsafe to us in the past in vision and on parchment. The Providence, the eighteenth and nineteenth century term for God, had ordained that the United States of America extend its unique and relatively new form of government, the so-called “great experiment of liberty and federate self-government.” Manifest Destiny embodies a higher law—God’s law—and so hold the moral high ground. Manifest Destiny means expansion, prearranged by Heaven, over an area not clearly defined. Therefore, the expansion of America’s boarders may not be finalized yet. Many believe that the United States of American will some day encompass the entire Western Hemisphere, and possibly beyond. Regardless of the interpretation, the concept of Manifest Destiny spurred a political movement in the 1840s. The justifications for Manifest Destiny is that first of all, American society and citizens are virtuous. Because of their virtue, they are justified in expanding. Second, it is the mission of American to undertake the task of accomplishing these things. That is why the National Anthem means so much to Americans because it speaks of expanding her boarder “from sea to shining sea.” And China understands this, which is why they are not allowing American corporations to purchase large companies in China. This is also why Americans are also worried about companies overseas buying American land and corporation. Many understand that political parities may not really matter so much anymore because so many politicians are looking to get rich quick and may not care about America. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
To further highlight this illustration, on March 1 2017, less than two months after Vice President Joe Biden left public office, State Energy HK Limited, a Chinses Company, wired $3 million to Rob Walker’s company. The next day, the company wired $1,065,000 to a company associated with James Gillar, another Biden associate. Afterwards the Biden family received approximately $1,065,000 in payments over a three-month period in different bank accounts. From the bank records, it appears that the Biden family received approximately one-third of the money obtained from the China wire, which leads many people to believe that the Biden administration of compromised. “Over the course of several years, members of the Biden family and their companies received over $1.3 million in payments from accounts related to their associate, Rob Walk. Most of this money came as a result of a wire from a Chinese energy company and went not only to Hunter and James Biden, but also to Hallie Biden and an unknown ‘Biden.’ It is unclear what services were provided to obtain this exorbitant amount of money. The Oversight Committee is concerned abut the national security implications resulting from President Biden’s family receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals. We will continue to follow the money trail and facts to determine if President Biden is compromised by his family’s business scheme and if there is a national security threat,” reports Chairman James Comer (R-ky). Millions of upper-class, middle-class and poor American have a justified fear that they will be left behind, will lose their jobs and slide further down the economic and social slope. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The West is also cautious about China’s acquisitions of its firms, but overall the restrictions it imposes are less tight than those that Western acquirers are facing in China. Take a close look at the Chinese attempts to acquire Western companies. First, China is buying ailing but famous firms striving to keep afloat. While you may think the classic American brands you see every day are entirely domestic, many are actually owned by Chinese investors. The United States of America is home to many iconic American brands that dominate the global market; however, while these brands may seem All-America, even they have important stakeholders all over the globe. AMC, a popular cinema company, short for American Multi-Cinema, has been around for over a century and is headquartered in Leawood, KS. In 2012, Beijing-based Dalian Wanda Group became the majority stakeholder, giving them the power to make decisions at the executive level. Wanda invested $2.8 billion in the historical deal. General Motors, based in Detroit, Michigan, is known as America’s largest automobile manufacturer. While this company is not owned by a Company from China, it relies on its partnership with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp (SAIC) to stay profitable. In 1998, the two auto giants teamed up to form SAIC-GM, a Chinese brand with a 6 million square-foot facility in Shanghai. While GM is still extremely popular in the U.S.A., its extra sales in China through SAIC help to being in revenue regularly. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
General Electric covers a wide range of industries and their appliance division is manufactured in the U.S.A. with global parts (and with domestic parts whenever possible). However, in 2016, Chinese investor Haier bought the company’s appliance division for $5.4 billion. While all products are still made in America, the ideas are generated in China. It is quite different from other American brands because GE has been around since 1892. While investors do not necessarily affect where a product is made, in many cases, they have a large influence in how a business is run and marketed. It is dangerous when any large American brand is partially owned by companies from China or other foreign investors because they have greater responsibilities in their homeland. China is purchasing American brands and obtaining technologies, know-how, distribution networks, and high-skilled personnel. Furthermore, they are interest in buying dynamic technology companies, including small and medium entities, and they are targeting natural resource firms. If information flow in a group is sufficiently good, a cooperative outcome may emerge automatically as an equilibrium of the repeated game of random pairwise matching. Otherwise, the group has to seek other institutions of governance, and these many include more formal court-like organization. One might think that modern technology has improved information flows to perfect. Indeed, eBay had developed a good system where buyers give ratings to sellers and vice versa, and each transactor can check the average rating of the person with whom one is contemplating doing business. However, this too has its limits, and eBay has expanded, it had found it necessary to institute more formal methods to prevent fraud. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
A system based on voluntary information flows and self-enforcing equilibrium works for small or well-knit groups, large groups need more formal institutions of information dissemination and enforcement. Self-enforcing “relation-based” based groups face rising marginal costs: members added at the margin are almost by definition less well connected, making it harder to communicate information with them and to ensure their participation in any punishments. Formal or “rule-based” governance has high fixed costs of setting up the legal system and the information mechanism (disclosure rules and auditing procedures), but once these costs have been incurred, the marginal costs of the relation-based system will be smaller at small sizes, and those of the rule-based system will be smaller at large sizes. This makes intuitive sense, but for a deeper understanding one must make more precise the way in which diminishing returns or rising marginal costs set in as a relation-based system grows larger. This is also necessary to understand what happens at intermediate sizes. Relation-based governance works well in small groups that are connected by extended family relationships, neighbourhood structures, and ethno-linguistic ties, because such links facilitate repeated interactions and good communication. This idea is similar to the sociologists’ concept of embeddedness. Economists recognize the importance of family and social networks in less-developed economies, but often regard them as being unimportant in modern advanced economies, and therefore ignore them in that context. The differences are much less sharp than is commonly thought. The persistence or relational arrangements under the shadow of the law in advanced economies is now well recognized. However, the relation-based governance does indeed lose its relative efficacy as the scale of economic transaction grows. This supports the usual economic distinction as a matter of degree, if not as a sharp dichotomy between less-developed and advanced economies. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
Lincoln, CA | from the high $600s
Now Selling!
No appointment needed! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,377 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms.
Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!
Get the most out of your new home with Cresleigh’s All Ready smart home featuring all the connectivity needed to keep your house running. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes with owned solar included!
Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/quick-move-homesite-66/
American Dream, a fact that the United States of America is a land of opportunity that allows the possibility of upward mobility, freedom, and equality for people of all classes who work hard and have the will to succeed.
An Artifact from Another Level of Being
The silence closed in. Something was building in Llanada Villa. Something was happening in the very air itself. Something changed in the golden glow of a late autumn afternoon. And as I heard the music, a long stab of terror drove through my heart. I assented to the window. As I looked out, I saw a handsome old-fashioned carriage, with a troop of couriers and footmen. I saw the slim figure of the pale gentleman in black, as he held a thick velvet cloak. He looked about him at the others as he went on, his voice ringing clear in the silence. “Never such a place as this has existed before. A place where demons have been invented by aggrieved souls. I wondered if Mrs. Winchester was perhaps a member of the Freemasons, or some other secret society. Maybe she holds some exalted rank.” I felt a great shudder pass through me at these words. However, there had been a conviction in those appalling words. Secret societies were very fashionable just then. Secret societies and psychiatry were the contrasting en vogue activities of the moment. I folded my arms and leaned against the frame of the door, obscuring for the moment the light behind me. I had an urge to venture outside, to walk in silence amongst the trees. However, the fruit orchard was dark enough even in daylight; by moonlight it would be all too easy to imagine terrors—as I keep imagining I can hear soft footsteps moving across the floor above my head. But when I sit on the sofa to listen, I hear only the beating of my heart. I walked for hours examining the trees and the splendid fruit that would be harvested. Before long, I was overtaken by night while still in the fruit orchard. Utterly bewildered and overcome with fatigue, I had lain down near the root of a large plumb tree and fallen into a dreamless sleep. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
It was hours later, in the very middle of the night, that one of God’s mysterious messengers, gliding ahead pronounced the awakening word in my ear. Waking from a deep sleep at night in the midst of what seemed like a forest, front among the tree on either side I caught broken and incoherent whispers in a strong tongue which I partly understood. They seemed to me fragmentary utterances of a monstrous conspiracy against my body and soul. It was now long after nightfall, yet the interminable fruit orchard through which I journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lamination nothing cast a shadow. A shallow pool in the guttered depression of an old well met my eye with a crimson gleam. I stooped and plunged my hand into it. It stained by fingers; it was blood! Blood, I then observed, was about me everywhere. The fallen fruit showed blots and splashes of blood. The girds of the orchards were pitted and spattered as with red rain. Defiling the trunks of the trees were broad maculations of crimson, and blood dripped like dew from their foliage. All this I observed with a terror which seemed not incompatible with the fulfillment of a natural expectation. It seemed to me that it was all in expiation of some crime. So frightful was the situation—the mysterious light burned with so silent and awful a menace; the noxious plants, the trees that by common consent are invested with a melancholy or baleful character, so openly in my sight conspired against my peace; from overhead and all about came so audible and startling whispers and the sighs of creatures so obviously not of Earth—that I could endure no longer, and with a great effort to break some malign spell that bound my faculties to silence and inaction, I screamed with the full strength of my lungs! #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
My voice was broken, it seemed, into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, went babbling and stammering away into the distant reaches of the orchard, died into silence, and all was as before. Despair succeeded hope. Gratitude gave place to curse. As I preceded down the path, sobbing quietly to myself, in the misery of fear, the stern light of the Observational Tower became a tiny speck, yellower but scarcely bigger than some of the stars, which here and there shone between the clouds. Nearly twenty minutes passed, and my fatigue began to change to exhaustion. The overpowering sense of the inevitable pressed upon me. With the weariness came a strange comfort. On, and on I went through the thicket of trees. I knew of my probable presence in the spirit World. The moon, then in her third quarter, pushed out from behind the concealing clouds and shed a pale, soft glitter upon my mansion. My last appeal had been heard. I made it home. About half an hour after getting home, I still felt energized but I began to feel a sensation around my forehead as I have many times since. I suddenly felt weak. I went in and sat at the foot of my bed and passed out. I have never been given to fainting or passing-out spells, but I did not fall asleep—I passed out cold. When I woke up, I had no concept of time. When I woke up, a low, wild peal of laughter broke out at a measuresless distance away, and growing even louder, seemed approaching ever nearer; a soulless, heartless, and unjoyous laugh, like that of loon; a laugh which culminated an unearthly shout close at hand, then died away by slow gradations, as if the accursed being that uttered it had withing over the verge of the World whence it had come. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Sitting here in my temple of a house, I felt trapped and compromised, and even terrified. I got a feeling that the presence was still nearby and had not moved. A strange sensation began slowly to take possession of my body and my mind. I could not say which, if any, of my sense were affected; I felt it rather as a consciousness—a mysterious mental assurance of some overpowering presence—some supernatural malevolence different in kind from the invisible existences that swarmed about me, and superior to them in power. I knew that it had uttered that hideous laugh. And now it seemed to be approaching me; from what direction I did not know—dated not conjecture. All my former fears were forgotten and merged in the gigantic terror that now held me in thrall. Powers were traversing my haunted mansion. My senses were heightened as I found myself starting into the sharply dawn face and blank, dead eyes of my own mother, standing white and silent in the garments of the grave! The apparition confronting me—the thing so like, yet so unlike my mother—was horrible! It stirred no lover nor longing in my heart; it came unattended with pleasant memories of a golden past—inspired no sentiment of any kind; all the finer emotions were swallowed up in fear. I turned to turn and run from before it, but my legs were as lead; I was unable to life my feet from the floor. My arms hung helpless at my sides; of my eyes only I retained controlled, and these I dared not remove from the lusterless orbs of the apparition, which I knew was not a soul without a body, but that most dreadful of all existences infesting my haunted mansion—a body without a soul! #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
In its blank state was neither love, nor pity, nor intelligence—nothing to which to address an appeal for mercy. For a time, which seemed so long that the World grew gray with age and sin, and the haunted forest, having fulfilled its purpose in this monstrous culmination of its terrors, vanished out of my consciousness with all its sights and sounds, the apparition stood within a pace, regarding me with a mindless malevolence of wild brute; then thrust its hand forward and sprang upon me with appalling ferocity! The act released my physical energies without an unfettering my will; my mind was still spellbound, but my powerful body was and agile limbs, endowed with a blind, insensate life of their own, resisted stoutly and well. For an instant I seemed to see this unnatural contest between a dead intelligence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator. Despite my struggles—despite my strength and activity, which seemed wasted in a void, I felt the cold fingers close upon my throat. Brorne backward to the floor, I saw above me the dead and drawn face within a hands breadth of my own. Its eyes were shallow to the point of blankness, and then all was black. Until I awoke, the passage outside my room had been pitch dark. Now the gasoliers illuminated the hall, but the glass was so blackened that they yielded only a dim, murky light. The air was stale and close. Expecting at every turn to find a housemaid awaiting me with a smile, I made my way through the gloom to the landing. The double doors to the gallery stood open. Along each wall, a row of wavering light receded. Transom windows shone with a faint cold light; higher still, the ceiling was shrouded in darkness. Some twenty feet away from me, candles burned upon a small round table, lighting of the face of the pale man and Mrs. Haas. “Ah, there you are, my dear,” said he, just as if he had last seen my five minutes—rather than several days—ago. I moved reluctantly to join them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Mrs. Haas, resplendent in crimson silk and displaying a large expanse of white bosom, greeted me with disdain. Behind them, the wall at the far end of my gallery was dominated by the immense fireplace, and the armour towering in the shadows beside it. The sword glittered beneath its gloved hand; in the shifting light it seemed alert, alive, watchful. Within the fireplace was a massive chest of dark metal. “Dr. Cottam was about to tell us,” said Mrs. Haas impatiently, “of a discovery he had made amongst your late husband’s papers.” He spoke as if I had kept them waiting. “Indeed I was.” His tone was as cordial as ever, but with an edge of anticipation. His teeth caught the light as he smiled; the pupils of his eyes shone like twin flames. “Now, in going through his study the other day, I found a page of notes you must have missed after relocating from New Haven—scrawled in haste, and sometimes quite impenetrable—which had slipped behind a row of books.” On the table was a crumpled sheet of paper. “I shall not weary you with the tale of my efforts to decipher this. He believed that if he were inside the armour when lighting struck, he would pass unharmed into the next World, jut as the risen body, according to Scripture, will ascend to Heaven upon the day of judgement.” “Oh dear Heavens,” cried Mrs. Haas. “Mrs. Winchester, I have been dying for a grand tour of your estate. My companion Dr. Cottam is rather a bore with such foolish tales of science fiction!” “There is a theory, you know, that the basis of spirit may be electrical. For spirits to communicate with the living,” expressed Dr. Cottam, the man with the very pale face. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
“Dr. Cottom, I have begun to wonder whether your obsession with William Winchester is not, perhaps, quite as mad as I assumed,” explained Mrs. Haas, “but I do wish to get on with this tour. Mrs. Winchester has already delayed us several hours after he invitation, and I am growing quit weary.” “Well, Mrs. Haas, as I do recall, Gods are often said to wield lightening; and whilst this represents primitive awe at the power of nature, it may also shroud a genuine intuition. The same applies to the spiritualist practice of linking hands around a table. Ghosts and spirits are generally depicted as emanations of light; one thinks of St. Elmo’s fire or the very rare phenomenon of ball lightning…a far fetched analogy, you may say, but just as a magnetic field will cause a heap of iron filings to arrange themselves into a complex pattern, so the soul, the vital principle—call it what you will—animates the Earthly body. Might it not be that the vital principle is electrical, perhaps in some subtler form that science has not yet grasped?” said Dr. Cottam. “Dr. Cottam, while your theories are very fascinating, I fear Mrs. Haas is growing impatient and I should like to give her a tour now,” I explained. I liked Mrs. Haas more and more every minute. Her gossip, without being ill-natured, was extremely diverting to me, who had been so long out of the great World. I thought what life she would give to my sometimes-lonely evenings at home. There was a ball going on in the Grand Ballroom, this house seemed to run itself sometimes, which would not be over until the morning sun had almost reached the horizon. It pleased the Grand Duke to dance till then, so loyal people could not go away, or think of bed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
We had just got through a crowded parlor, when Dr. Cottam asked me what had become of Mrs. Haas. I though she had been by his side, and he fancied she was by mine. The fact was, we had lost her. All my efforts to find her were in vain. I feared that she had mistaken, in the confusion of the momentary separation from us, other people for her new friends, and had, possibly, pursued and lost them in the extensive grounds which were thrown open to us. Morning broke. It was clear daylight before I gave up my search. It was not till near two o’clock next day that we heard anything of Mrs. Haas. At about that time a servant knocked at my door, to say that he had been earnestly requested by a young, who appeared to be in great distress, to make out where she could find Mrs. Winchester and Dr. Cottam. There could be no doubt, notwithstanding the slight inaccuracy that my friend had turned up. I had a housemaid go to the guest room and summon Dr. Cottam. I went down to the parlor and reunited with Mrs. Haas. She told me a story to account for having failed to recover us for so long. Very late, she said, she made a detour and wandered around, not before long becoming afraid and getting lost. She got into the Crystal Bedroom in despair of finding us, and had then fallen into a deep sleep which, long as it was, had hardly sufficed to recruit her strength after the fatigues of the ball. It the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of far more urgent kind presented itself. My dear friend began to lose her looks and health, and that in manner so mysterious, and even horrible, that I became thoroughly frightened. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
People, since as long ago as the 1800s, have reported a vast array of unexplained events, experiences, and sightings at what is now known as The Winchester Mystery House. Over the years, people have reported bone-chilling sightings ghosts, angels, demons, fairies, giants, orbs, lights, mist, vampires, witches, warlocks and werewolves. In 2007, a man was attending Santa Clara University, and he was lucky enough to get hired as a tour guide at The Winchester Mystery House. He had no sooner moved into his apartment and had the telephone installed when he received a call warning him never to return to Sacramento again. During a later call, a woman with a high-pitched voice informed “G” that he was being kept under surveillance by a group who felt that he had acted unjustly in the past by not returning things to their proper owners. G emphasized that he had led a very quiet life as an undergraduate.
Yet he probably received 30 or more telephone calls from anonymous voices advising him not to return to Sacramento. The voices reprimanded him for having taken something that did not belong to him. G said that he did not carry anything with him that was from Sacramento and did not often visit the beautiful city, and he seldom discussed his life with any but a few of his closet acquaintances. He wondered who could have possibly taken such a long-term interest in him? About the third year after working at The Winchester Mystery House, a guest unknown to him stopped to say hello. G knew that such an act was hardly unusual, since guests will often do this to find out interest facts about tour guides and secrets about Sarah L. Winchester’s mansion. However, he noticed the boy was strangely inquisitive. G was astonished when the teenager drew a design on a piece of paper that he had seen somewhere in the mansion. He smiled at G, then asked if he knew what the symbol meant.
When G pressed the boy, in turn for some answers, the guest threw away the design, laughed, and said that he was just fooling around, that he did not mean anything about it. G never saw the alleged guest again. He descried him to a could of tour guides, but no one was able to identify him. After several years of watching at The Winchester Mystery House, G graduated from University. He had not been in possession of his diploma for more than four days when someone rang his apartment and scolded him for taking things that did not belong to him. The voice told G that he should always leave things where they were. He reported to his supervisors that he kept receiving mysterious calls. On one occasion the voice told G that he has discovered a strange key to other dimensions, but the entities had long since reclaimed it. However, apparently, some spirit masqueraders were determined that he should never forget the day he came into contact with an artifact from another level of being. What is The Winchester Mystery House?
And please be sure to check out the online gift store: https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Would Satan Have Found Companions without this Overpowering Craving?
The extraordinary powers of the TV news media threaten the civil rights and health of all humans because it is like a constant signal of unbalanced propaganda being fed through a tube into minds of people who may not be aware that the news media often lies, and the some of their stories are engineered and totally untrue. If smoking cigarettes comes with a warning, because they can be hazardous to your health, then so should the TV news media. Stories presented over the air can be dangerous, especially to young, influential minds. For instance, a TV news program explained to viewers how they could barbeque meant in the oven by placing it on the rack. However, they did not explain that underneath the rack there should be a drip pan to catch any liquids that come from the meat, so they do not drip on the heating elements, which could cause a fire. And that may not be common sense to all people, which the TV director probably assumed. Therefore, all TV new media should contain a warning, letting the audience know that the story, even if it has some facts in it, is based on an opinion and may not be the full truth, so viewers know to use discretion and do further research of themselves. In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all aspects essential to mutual progress. The economic structure of a society in determining the mode of life of the individual operates as condition for personality development. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
These economic conditions are entirely different from subjective economic motives, such as the desire for material wealth which was looked upon by many writers, from the Renaissance on up to certain Marxist authors who failed to understand Mr. Marx’s basic concepts, as the dominant motive of human behaviour. As a matter of fact, the all-absorbing wish for material wealth is a need peculiar only to certain cultures, and different economic condition can create personality trait which abhor material wealth or are indifferent to it. The physiologically conditioned needs are not the only imperative part of man’s nature. There is another part just as compelling, one which is not rooted in bodily processes but in the very essence of the human mode and practice of life: the need to be related to the World outside oneself, the need to avoid aloneness. To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death. This relatedness to others is not identical with physical contact. An individual may be alone in a physical sense for many years and he may be related to ideas, values, or at least social patterns that give him a feeling of communion and “belonging.” On the other hand, he may live among people and yet be overcome with an utter feeling of isolation, the outcome of which, if it transcends a certain limit, is the state of insanity which schizophrenic disturbances represent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
This lack of relatedness to values, symbols, patterns, we may call moral aloneness and state that moral aloneness is as intolerable as the physical isolation, or rather that physical seclusion becomes unbearable only if it implies also moral lonesomeness. The spiritual relatedness to the World can assume many forms; the self-actualized in his cell who believes in God and the political prisoner kept in isolation who feels one with his fellow fighters are not alone morally. Neither is the English gentleman who wears his dinner jacket in the most exotic surroundings nor the petty bourgeois who, though being deeply isolated from one’s fellow men, feels one with one’s nation of its symbols. The kind of relatedness to the World may be noble or trivial, but even being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone. Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with other, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation. The compelling need to avoid moral isolation is a deep concern However, learn one thing, impress it upon your mind which is still so malleable: man has a horror for aloneness And of all kind of aloneness, moral seclusion is the most terrible. The first hermits lived with God, they inhabited the World which is most populated, the World of spirits. The first thought of man, be he a leper or a prisoner, a sinner or an invalid, is: to have a companion of one’s fate. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
In order to satisfy this drive which is life itself, man applies all his strength, all his power, the energy of his whole life. Would Satan have found companions without this overpowering craving? On this theme one could write a whole epic. Any attempt to answer the question why the fear of isolation is so powerful in man would lead us far away from the main road we are following in this report. However, in order not to give the reader the impression that the need to feel one with others has some mysterious quality. One important element is the fact that men cannot live without some sort of co-operation with other. In any conceivable kind of culture man needs to co-operate with others if he wants to survive, whether for the purpose of defending himself against enemies or dangers of nature, or in order that he may be able to work and produce. Even Robinson Crusoe was accompanied by his man Friday; without him he would probably not have become insane but would have actually died. Each person experiences this need for the help of others very drastically as a child. On account of the factual inability of the human child to take care of itself with regard to all-important functions, communication with others is a matter of life and death for the child. The possibility of being left alone is necessarily the most serious threat to the child’s whole existence. There is another element, however, which makes the need to “belong” so compelling: the fact of subjective self-consciousness, of the faculty of thinking by which man is aware of himself as an individual entity, different from nature and other people. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Although the degree of this awareness varies. Its existence confronts man with a problem which is essentially human: by being aware of himself as distinct from nature and other people, by being aware—even very dimly—of death, sickness, aging, he necessarily feels his insignificance and smallness in comparison with the Universe and all others who are not “he.” Unless he belonged somewhere, unless his life had some meaning and direction, he would feel like a particle of dust and be overcome by his individual insignificance. He would not be able to relate himself to any system which would give meaning and direction to his life, he would be filled with doubt, and this doubt eventually would paralyze his ability to act—that is, to live. Human nature is neither a biologically fixed and innate sum total of drives nor is it a lifeless shadow of cultural patterns to which it adapts itself smoothly; it is the product of human evolution, but it also has certain inherent mechanisms and laws. There are certain factors in man’s nature which are fixed and unchangeable: the necessity to satisfy the physiologically conditioned drives and the necessity to avoid isolation and moral aloneness. We have seen that the individual has to accept the mode of life rooted in the system of production and distribution peculiar for any given society. In the process of dynamic adaptation to culture, a number of powerful drives develop which motivate the actions and feelings of the individual. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The individual may or may not be conscious of these drives, but in any case they are forceful and demand satisfaction once they have developed. They become effective in molding the social process. How economic, psychological, and ideological factors interact and what further general conclusion concerning this interaction one can make are things for future discussion that deals with the reformation and of fascism. Man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an “individual,” has no choice but to unite himself with the World in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the World as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self. However, the hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads to some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners. Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interest are most nearly touched,–criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led,–this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society. If the best of the Americans receives by outer pressure a leader whom they had not recognized before, manifestly there is here a certain palpable gain. Yet there is also irreparable loss,–a loss of that peculiarly valuable education which a group receives when by search and criticism it finds and commissions its own leaders. The way in which this is done is at once the most elementary and nicest problem of social growth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
History is but the record of such group-leadership; and yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character! And of all yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character! And of all types and kinds, what can be more instructive than the leadership of a group within a group?—that curious double movement where real progress may be negative and actual advancement where real progress may be negative and actual advance be relative retrogression. All this is the social student’s inspiration and despair. Nonetheless, the spirit of play can and does invade every department of culture. Every kind of work has its counterpart in play. Crafts include recreational forms which represent the categories of serious economic activity all the way from hunting and fishing, which have their counterparts in extractive industries, through fabrication and construction, distribution and communication, to services and consumption. Although such activities, as distinguished from the work the represent, are engaged in for their own sake, they all involve practice in the intelligence adaptation of physical means to envisaged ends. Thus “industrial” play is distinguished from physical play in being directed toward the exploration and manipulation of the physical environment rather than toward the exercise of the body. While some product or service of economic value may result from engaging in crafts, this is not primary objective. The distinction between work and play is perhaps less obvious where crafts are concerned than any other type of play. Also, any hobby which is pursued as recreation may also be undertaken as a livelihood, just as every hobby is in a direct sense an imitation of a serious occupation. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Even though work merges into play and there are no hard and fast margins between the two, it is yet useful to make some polar contrast between them. Work seems to be performed in response to the routine obligations. In the economic sense it provides the goods and services to maintain a customary standard of living. Play—including economic play—is a break in routine. It is free, not required. It explores new possibilities and potentialities, so that invention and discovery bear the closet relation to it. Treating familiar pursuits as play permits their idealization. Work is most fully work when it evokes no free release of energy and when it is all drudgery and chores, making demands for a minimum, not an optimum performance. Play is most fully play when it is spontaneous, unrestrained and unforced. To look upon play as a childish preparation for adult activity is therefore to run the risk of making it work. The ambiguities of play are at their liveliest in crafts, which makes sketchy resort to common sense in defining them a less futile strategy than attempts to define them with more precision. In economic activity, as in sport, chance can according to taste play a great or a small part; or economic activity can entirely be reduces to pure chance, as in gambling. Likewise with competition, though of course competition in economic life is different from competition in sport. Competition in sport is most zestful and fair when it occurs between equals, or when rules and devices, such as handicapping, are employed to simulate equality between competitors. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Rivalry between teams is perpetuated through this balancing of powers. In business, by contrast, the effort of each competitor is to enlarge rather than to diminish the advantages one possesses, with the ultimate effect of eliminating competitors. To be sure, there are many similarities between the two kinds of competition, for example, competition between business institutions is often, as in sport, invoked simply as an added stimulus to effort. Certain large organizations in particular, which have largely lost their external competitors, encourage a nondestructive sort of sporting competition among their internal units for the sake of the gains in motivation it brings. Perhaps it is not too crude a simplification of economic evolution to suggest that as the one type of competition in business runs its course, the other which emphasizes competition within, rather than between, organizations may take its place. A significant distinction is made by farmers between regular kinds of work known as chores and the work that different from day to day. The latter kind is for many farmers very close to play, just as the work of some professions gives such scope and variety to the expression of capacities that they continue to be absorbing. It is evident that the skilled practitioner of every kind of play can change from amateur to professional status, and that many people have found their vocations by this route. Happy is the person who can make one’s living by getting paid for what one loves to do. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
In other kind of play is the shift from amateur to professional status of such broad social significance as in crafts, because in the possibility of conducting industry as the crafts are conducted lies—as thinkers like William Morris foresaw long ago—the means of restoring joy to work, and of ending the alienation from work which plagues so many contemporary occupations. The democratic revolution which has been abolishing the division of society into leisure and working classes may be completed when work and play, vocation and avocation, are merged in economic activity itself. This extreme polarization in conceptual analysis may therefore frustrate the full understanding of their interrelation. With minor exceptions, state socialism led not to affluence, equality, and freedom, but to a one-party political system, a massive bureaucracy, heavy-handed secret police, government control of the media, secrecy and the repression of intellectual and artistic freedom. Setting aside the oceans of spurting blood needed to prop it up, a close look at this system reveals that every one of these elements is not just a way of organizing people but also—and more profoundly—a particular way of organizing, channeling and controlling knowledge. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
A one-party political system is designed to control political communication. Since no other party exists, it restricts the diversity of political information flowing through the society, blocking feedback and thus blinding those in power to the full complexity of their problems. With very narrowly defined information flowing upward through the approved channel and commands directed downward, it becomes very difficult for the system to detect errors and correct them. In fact, top-down control in the socialist countries was based increasingly on lies and misinformation since reporting bad news up the line was often risky. The decision to run a one-party system is a decision, above all, about knowledge. The overpowering bureaucracy that socialism created in every sphere of life was also a knowledge-restricting device, forcing knowledge into pre-defined compartments of cubbyholes and restricting communication to “official channels,” whole delegitimating informal communication and organization. The secret police apparatus, state control of the media, the intimidation of intellectuals and the repression of artistic freedom all represent further attempts to limit and control information flows. In fact, behind each of these elements we find a single obsolete assumption about knowledge: the arrogant belief that those in command—whether of the party or of the state—should decide what others should know. These features of all the state socialist nations guaranteed economic stupidity and derived from the concept of the precybernetic machine as applied to society and life itself. Second Wave machines for the most part operated without any feedback. Plug in the power, start the motor, and they run irrespective of what is happening in the outside environment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Third Wave machines, by contrast, are intelligent. They have sensors that such in information from the environment, detect changes and adapt the operation of the machine accordingly. They are self-regulating. The technological difference is revolutionary. However, Marxist theoreticians remained stuck in the Second Wave past, as even their language suggests. Thus for Marxian socialists the class struggle was the “locomotive of history.” A key task was to capture the “state machine.” And society itself, being machine-like, could be preset to deliver abundance and freedom. Mr. Lenin, on capturing control of Russia in 1917, became the supreme mechanic. A brilliant intellectual, Mr. Lenin understood the importance of ideas. However, for him, symbolic production—the mind itself—could be programmed. Mr. Marx wrote of freedom, but Mr. Lenin, on taking power, undertook to engineer knowledge. Thus he insisted that all art, culture, science, journalism and symbolic activity in general be placed at the service of a master plan for society. In time each branch of learning would be neatly organized into an “academy” with fixed bureaucratic departments and ranks all subject to party and state control. “Cultural workers” would be employed by institutions controlled by a Ministry of Culture. Publishing and broadcasting would be monopolies of the state. Knowledge, in effect, would be made part of the state machine. This constipated approach to knowledge blocked economic development even in intermediate, smokestack economies; it is diametrically opposed to the principles needed for economic advancement in the age of the computer. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
In international economic affairs, the most controversial component of the indigenous innovation policy is China’s government procedure system. According to the government organizations, with a few exceptions, have to be limited to domestically made products. In May 2007, “Measures for Administration of Government Procurement Budgets for Indigenous Innovation Products” prescribed governments at all levels to compile indigenous innovation procurement plans. In December of the same years, the Ministry of Finance issues “Measures for the Administration of Government Procurement of Imported Products.” To purchase imported goods, government entities were obliged to get an approval from a board of experts. Among foreign suppliers, they were recommended to favour those who transfer technologies and train Chinese personnel. Next, in November 2009, the “Circular on Carrying Out the Work on Accreditation of National Indigenous Innovation Products” announced the creation of a new national level catalog of high-tech indigenous innovation products (in the areas of computers and communication, office equipment, software, energy devices, and so on) that were eligible for preferential treatment in government procurement. An indigenous innovation product was defined as the one that has intellectual property rights (IPR) owned by a Chinese company and a commercial trademark initially registered inside China. A month later the government produced a catalog of 240 types of equipment whose production by domestic companies would be encouraged in order to upgrade the country’s manufacturing base. Along with a priority status as indigenous innovation products suppliers, their makers were promised tax incentives and R&D subsidies. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Western government procurement system as it effectively deprived foreign companies of the access to this very substantial augment of the Chinese market. In April 2010, the Circular was reversed. The requirements about IPR ownership by a Chinese company and initial registration of the trademark in China were dropped. Also, the Chinese side proclaimed that preferential treatment of and incentives for procedures of indigenous innovation products were fully applicable to foreign-owned companies operating in China. The government procurement system was modified to prioritize domestically designed and manufactured goods (meaning that the value created inside China exceeds a certain percentage of the total value—normally 50 percent) including those designed and manufactured by foreign-invested firms. From the very start of the market reforms, China’s message to foreign companies has been “Better produce in China than export to China.” This time it added a new message of similar character: “Better innovate in China (and share your technologies) than in your home country or anywhere else.” It looked almost like an ultimatum: Unless you innovate and produce inside China you will not be allowed to sell to the government. The West protested. In January 2011, President Hu Jintao promised President Obama to cancel the rule requiring foreign companies to design and manufacture inside the country the products they wanted to sell to Chinese government entities. In May the same year, at the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue it was reportedly confirmed that the Chinese government would not buy indigenous innovation products on a preferential basis. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
However, at the time of writing Western businessmen working in China are still complaining that procurement practices have not changed and provincial authorities appear or pretend to have heard nothing about the promises made by the central government. It is just a familiar bureaucratic muddle and incoherence or a new way of pursuing the old policy? At this point it is still to early to give an accurate answer. However, there is little doubt that China will continue to press foreign companies hard not only to bring in advanced technologies and products, but also, more and more, to develop them within its borders—even though they are already doing it at a rapidly growing scale on their own initiative. Given the advantages of direct reciprocity when it comes to sustaining cooperation, we should expect that traders will try to sustain good bilateral relationships, and that is indeed the case. For instance, when we surveyed firms in the transition economy of Romania, and gave weighted scores to the importance these respondents attached to various mechanisms that support their transactions, almost 56 percent of the weight was on bilateral mechanisms (“personal relationships and trust,” and “relying on each other’s own incentives”). However, in many economic situations, each member of a group plays the dilemma game against different others at different ties. For example, a seller may meet different buyers at different times, and any one buyer of a durable good does not meet the same seller at all frequently. Thus almost half of the weight in our survey went to non-bilateral mechanisms, and in turn half of that was on the kinds of non-state mechanisms that are the focus of this essay (third-party social or business relationships” and “using private dispute-resolution services”). #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Psychopathological offenders can also counterfeit conduct disorder, by causing some apparent manifestation of the psychopathological nature in one’s life. Mature believers should be able to tell whether such a manifestation really is conduct disorder from the old nature or a manifestation from psychopathological offenders. The purpose in the latter case is to get the self-actualized to take what comes from them as from oneself, for whatever is accepted from the psychopathological offenders gives them power. When a self-actualized individuals knows the cross and one’s position of death to conduct disorder, and one’s will and practice rejects unflinchingly all known conduct disorder, if a “manifestation” of personal conduct disorder takes place one should at once take a position of neutrality to it until one know the source. If one calls it conduct disorder from oneself when it is not, one believes a lie just as much as in any other way; and if one “confesses” conduct disorder that did not come from oneself, one brings the power of the enemy upon one—power to drive one into the conduct disorder which one has confessed as one’s own. Many believers are thus held down by supposed “besetting conduct disorder” which they believe is theirs, and which no “confessing to the ultimate concern” removes, but from which they would find liberty if they attributed them to their right cause. There is no danger of “minimizing conduct disorder” in the recognition of these facts, because, in either case, the self-actualized desires to be rid of the conduct disorder or one would not trouble oneself about it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
We have developed a positive doctrine of God as the ground and power of being, a God whose sustaining and vitalizing activity constantly touches every corner of the Universe and penetrates to the deepest level of every creature, its very being. With this positive conception we replace the divinity of the supranaturalists and deists, a God so remote from the World that He is irrelevant once His creative push has set the wheels of time in motion. God is not at the farther fringe of our Universe as the last, desperate answer when the natural sources of knowledge have run dry for people. The danger is that, as man’s circle of knowledge widens, God recedes father and father from the center of one’s life. For example, is it not true that, in the minds of most people, evolution dispenses with, or greatly diminishes, God’s role in the creation of man? A theology for an adult World places God at the hub of human activity as the wellspring of man’s strength, love, accomplishments, and hopes, instead of establishing Him as an oracle that sends answers from the darkness beyond the frontier of science. By this ontological approach, we bring God into the heart of the cosmos, for there is nothing closer to beings, nothing more fundamental than the structure of being and its ground. In more human terms, the interplay of anxiety (non-being) and courage (being) is the very stuff of life. Love, power, and justice—the profoundest beneficial motivations of human behaviour—are rooted in God as being-itself. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The divine power is a thoroughly biblical doctrine, and I believe in God the Father almighty. In our age of power—nuclear, electronic, ballistic, to cite examples only of physical power—the God who is power-itself is especially apropos. By finding God at the depth of life and not at its fringes, we are paying the way for our close union of religion and culture. However, this is possible only if creation is essentially good, it there is no independent negative power which escapes the divine dominion. Non-being is a dialectical notion, that is, it is dependent upon being and helps to explain the positive power of being and the negative weakness of finite beings, but it is not a self-sufficient evil power. While, admittedly, there may be obscurities, perhaps even deficiencies, in this principle, but the divine and demonic are two aspects of the same creative surge from the abyss of being. The difference is that, in the demonic, the destructive aspect predominates over the creative, while, in the divine, creativity controls the destructive tendency. However, even in the latter cause destructivity is not entirely absent, for the old form has to be broken and cast off so that the new creation can come to be. Consequently, it is hard to see how the divine and the demonic constitute a dualism in the pejorative sense any more than do being and nonbeing. A symbol, then, is a door which opens into a religious experience and which opens out to communicate it. In both cases the pivotal hinge is analogy, the participation of the symbol in the ground of being. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
However, the symbol primarily mediates and communicates the experience of God, not conceptual knowledge about him. Symbols yield knowledge of God only in the biblical sense of knowledge, that is, an existential relationship which enkindle the fire of love. When theology comes along with its conceptual, rational apparatus, its task is to show the relevance of the Christian symbols to the human situation, not to discover propositions which contain “revealed knowledge.” It is evident that the center of our symbolism is the religious experience of ultimacy. The “point” of immediate awareness of the unconditional which is empty but unconditionally certain; and the “breadth” of a concrete concern which is full of content but has the conditional certainty of venturing faith. Theology deals with the second element, while presupposing the first and measuring every theological statement by the standard of the ultimacy of the ultimate concern. Studying and wandering, thinking and enduring, learning and suffering, fill long periods of time. Thinking is as characteristic a trait of the Christians as suffering, or, to be more exact, thinking rendered suffering possible For it was our thinkers who prevented the wandering nation, this true “wandering Christian” from sinking to the level of brutalized vagrants, or vagabonds. The Word of God is compared to water, it cleanses man from what is debasing in life. The Word of God is compared to spirits, time cannot render it useless; yea, time increases its power. The Word of God is compared to oil, it mixes not with other elements but preserves its own distinctiveness. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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!
All Cresleigh Homes have expansive Great Rooms, plenty of space to entertain friends and family, large Family Dining area, and gourmet Kitchens.
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/
Evils of Ignorance–Creation is the Beginning of the Fall
Public sentiment is a growing power the World over. In our country its influence is most marked. Here it creates law and repeals it. A law in violation of public sentiment is dead letter, and therefore demoralizing, for laws habitually violated tend to lawlessness. Reverence for law is a wholesome sentiment, which should be early implanted in the juvenile mind. Laws in reference alike to the support of schools or attendance upon them must depend largely upon public sentiment. Laws, just and right in themselves, and adapted, if sustained, to promote the greatest good of the greatest number, may yet fail utterly from the want of popular sympathy and support. The question, therefore, of the expediency of compulsory attendance at school in any given State depends on the enlightened public sentiment of the community. Wherever good schools have been so long maintained that the people generally regard them as essential to their individual thrift and happiness and to public security, morality, and prosperity, laws for the prevention of illiteracy may be wisely enacted. In those States where free public schools are still a novelty, or where illiteracy most abounds, where multitudes appreciate neither the advantages of education nor the evils of ignorance, compulsory attendance is considered impracticable. However, in those States where the traditions of the people from their earliest history have fostered the general appreciation of common-school education as their most precious heritage, as the source of their success and prosperity, as indispensable to their future growth, as essential to skilled industry, as the cheapest police-agency comes at length to be recognized as the universal right, duty, and interest of humans. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
If the State has a right to provide for any internal improvements, it has the right to provide for that education which is the condition of all progress. If the State may enforce regulations for the health of the body, it may do the same for the mind. If the State has a right to hang a criminal, it has a better right to prevent one’s crime by proper culture. The right to imprison and to execute implies the right to use the best means to prevent the need of either. What have to get this fatalistic idea out of people’s heads that we are on a downward spiral that cannot be stopped. The public school system in which the United States of America takes pride is one of the most paradoxical if not self-contradictory institutions in American life. On the other hand, it is completely socialized. No family pays directly for the education of those of its children who attend it; each family pays taxes more or less according to its ability, receives according to its need. All the children in the school share its services, expect where segregation and discrimination occur. The public high school in particular is the most cosmopolitan and equalitarian congregation of people in any community. Education is not merely available to all children, but compulsory during certain ages in each state. No child can be rejected as a pupil, save for reason of severe defect. The entire staff of the school—administrative, professional, and maintenance—is salaried. The whole roster of citizens in each community is eligible to participate in selecting members of its board of education and in affecting their policies. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
On the other hand, in the actual conduct of teaching and learning, conventional procedure is the incarnation of competitive individualism. The assignment of pupils to grades, rooms, and seats usually ignores the social ties among them. The marking systems rank each on the basis of rivalry with all. Beyond this marking system is the swarm of psychological test devised on the premise of an individualistic psychology to which few theorists remain willing to commit themselves. The tasks imposed on pupils are for the most part individual tasks, with no group decisions and no group responsibilities. To the extent that the problem of motivation is consciously considered at all, it is generally assumed sufficient to rely on the stimulation of rivalry for grades, and on parental interest in fostering the art of getting on in the World. Yet realistically, the spectacle is one of a majority sentenced to unfavourable comparisons and burdensome compulsions, from which they escape daily and yearly as fast as they can—5.3 percent dropouts in the high school years is still the rough national average; but California has a dropout rate of 10 percent. It would be redundant to recite here the long struggle between those who want the school to concentrate upon putting vocationally useful knowledge into children’s heads, and those who have declared their aim as the development of the entire personalities of children. The liberal educationalists tend to be those who emphasize the school’s functions in developing people for their responsibilities of citizenship; the vocationalists, those who emphasize training for economic competition. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Nevertheless, there occur numerous crossings for these lines. To further highlight this illustration, if one considers the method of examination employed in purely vocational schools run on a commercial basis, the pupil is usually passed on the achievement of a standard level of objective competence, rather than upon the calculation of a minimum numerical average maintained in competition with other pupils. As the scope of formal education comes to include adults and the very young, it is notable also that this new population in nursery schools and adult programs is not subjected to the usual competitive apparatus. Methods in adult education especially, where participation is completely voluntary, relay largely on noncompetitive motivation such as: group recognition, recruitment through friends, sociability, a degree of student choice of subject matter, choice of instructors, and design of methods. Forums, workshops, round table, committees, conferences, and seminars characterize adult methods. In public school extracurricular activities, it is obvious that only voluntary methods seem appropriate to induce participation, that motivation depends primarily upon the membership standing of a person in a group. Any teacher in a high school can give examples of seemingly dull, resistant, apathetic youths, who suddenly come alive in extracurricular activities, and exhibit prodigies of ability, energy, and ingenuity when given a responsible share in the tasks of a voluntary group. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Any teacher in a high school can give examples of seemingly dull, resistant, apathetic youths, who suddenly come alive in extracurricular activities, and exhibit prodigies of ability, energy, and ingenuity when given a responsible share in the tasks of a voluntary group. Not as many teachers have grasped the possibility of finding ways in which channels of motivation can be put to the service of serious learning. Since much of the best learning occurs in extracurricular activities, how could this be made to include more of the ordinary curriculum subject matter, thus making the child’s learning a art of one’s active involvement with one’s fellows? The evolution of policy within the school falls readily int our familiar three stages, although this may not be as readily apparent as with other types of family agencies. At the first stage, the intervals of spontaneous activity by pupil—recess, playground periods, assemblies, and singing—are regarded as concessions, as ways for children to let off steam, so they can return more seriously to the work of learning. At the second stage, extracurricular activities are recognized as having some values on their own account, more facilities and encouragement are provided, and these activities become more definitely and extensively organized on a group basis, but with a substantial element of adult guidance; counseling services grow, starting with health and going on to home visits and intensive testing. At the third stage which is far from being realized, the responsible self-governing group which is characteristic of many extracurricular activities permeates school activities, less as a concession to recreational demands, or as an attempt to supply social graces to children from limited home environments, but as a beneficial program of complete education. #RandophHarris 5 of 19
The parent-teacher associations connected with public schools are potentially the bodies through which all adult citizens may participate directly in the planning and evaluation of the educational programs in their communities. At present, however, the bords of education are too remote from ordinary citizens on the one hand, and the parent-teacher associations are too frail on the other. School boards, consisting of a handful of unpaid citizens elected for several years on a normally nonpartisan basis, tend to leave initiative and leadership to the salaried administrators. They are less governing boards than boards of audit and review. Their members are often so busy and exhausted that they have less intimate day-by-day knowledge of what goes on in the schoolrooms than do the parents of school children. Yet, in the hands of boards of education rests the ultimate power to modify what goes on in the schoolrooms day by day. Lacking any such power, parent-teacher associations normally operate (save in certain small school districts) under the handicap of seeming to be purely “social” organizations, where acquaintances may be made, tea drunk, and speeches heard. Biennial elections of school boards, and, in smaller places, annual school meeting to hear and accept reports, are usually pale and bloodless versions of what might be possible if the powers and functions of boards of education and parent-teacher associations could be fused in some workable manner. A few boards have made grouping efforts in this direction, of course, is not peculiar to public school systems. It is the characteristic shortcoming of local government in general. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The frequently heard suggestions for a revival of town meetings or their equivalent fail to appreciate the peculiarly modern nature of the problem—the frustration of citizenship in the city. So far no inventor of social procedures has suggested a solution which has worked as well as town meetings are reputed to have worked in their time. As it is universally admitted that the members of the human family must be prepared by instruction, and training, for the service which devolves upon them in this life, many are advocating for the maintenance of our public schools. Without education, each human must begin jut where one’s ancestors began, and however much wisdom or knowledge on obtains by one’s own efforts, one leaves none of it to one’s posterity when one dies; there is no opportunity for the advancement of one’s race. Humans, uneducated, are not prepared either to serve the World most effectively, or to enjoy the World most fully. The difference between a human who has been well instructed and trained from one’s youth, and what the same human would have been like if one had grown up untaught and untrained, is the difference, in some cases, between a civilized human and an uncultured human. The one may fulfill a noble mission, lead a life of high enjoyment, add to the happiness of one’s fellow humans, many of whom one never saw, and, when one dies, after a brief sojourn here, may leave the World better, richer, and more prosperous for one’s having lived in it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The other, in some cases, may become a burden to one’ fellow humans to oneself, while one adds nothing to the World’s wealth, and, at the best, renders no more service to one’s race than if one had been a horse or an ox. People in China are certainly preparing for the World of the future. China is breaking existing rules in three major ways. First, it combines participation in the resource development projects in Less Developed Counties (LDCs) with large-scale development assistance focused on the building of their infrastructure. The government is acting in tandem with resource companies, providing financial and organizational support. Western firms do not work together with their governments in this fashion and thus cannot offer similar packages. (To compete with China, Japan, and South Korea are starting to rapidly move in the same direction at this point.) Second, the development assistance China provides is, mostly, neither official development aid ( developing country itself, China does not want to bear donors’ responsibilities), nor purely commercial loans and investment. It is something in between: concessional loans (extended on better terms than commercial credit) and investment backed and subsidized by the state. China often extends resources-backed development loans, meaning that the borrowers pay its debt not in cash but with oil, cocoa beans, or metal ores. It is a mutually beneficial scheme. The Chinese side gets resources it needs, while cash-strapped loan recipients do not have to pay in precious hard currency. In the late 1970s, to build its own infrastructure, China obtained similar loans from Japan leveraging its coal, oil, and other resources. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Third, unlike the West and to its great embarrassment, China’s assistance is not conditioned on the recipient states’ record regarding democratization, human rights, economic liberalization, or anticorruption measures. To access natural resources, it does not hesitate to cooperate with the most dictatorial and abusive regimes in the World. In such countries it easily becomes a de facto monopolist as Western firms are prohibited from going there by law. Compared to the West, China provides its assistance quicker and more easily, without complicated screening procedures, and often on a larger scale. Let us pick up Africa as one of the major examples. Here, between 2004 and 2010, Beijing concluded agreements on the resource-backed loans with at least seven states for a total of nearly $14 billion. It extended the oil-backed loan o Angola with Chinese companies building roads, railways, hospitals, schools, and water systems. Nigeria got two loans to finance projects for utilization of gas to generate electricity. The hydropower project in the Congo was prepaid in oil and the one in Ghana in cocoa beans. The former also received a $3 billion copper-backed loan to build infrastructure, hospitals, and universities. In 2004, the Export-Important Bank of China extended three loans to the Angolan government at interest rates ranging from LIBOR plus 1.25 percent to LIBOR plus 1.75 percent, with generous grace periods and long repayment terms. Commercial lenders, such as Standard Chartered Bank, charged Angola LIBOR plus 2.5 percent or more, without any grace periods, and required faster repayment. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
China’s $3 billion joint mining venture in the Congo gives the Congolese government a 32 percent stake, while in the joint ventures (JVs) with companies from other countries its share ranges from 7 percent to 25 percent. Also, China is starting to actively create and manage Special Trade and Economic Cooperation zones in Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Zambia, and so on, building infrastructure and facilities, especially with the aim of boosting low-cost manufacturing production and exports. This is exactly what African countries need to diversify and upgrade their industrial structure and to create jobs. In fact, the Chinese are replicating their own pattern of economic development at its earlier stages. The zones also serve as platforms for the entry by Chinese companies searching for new markets and lower costs. Encouraging the transfer of production of low-end and/or energy-intensive manufacturing items, the government subsidizes part of their start-up expenses. The $5 billion China-Africa Development Fund has acquired equity shares in three of the seven planned zones. In contrast, the U.S.A. Congress does not all the U.S.A. Agency of International Development to finance any activities leading to the relocation of Americans’ jobs overseas. Parties to an economic transaction can exploit their high-quality inside information using a relational contract, and a formal contract that must be based on lower-quality publicly verifiable information acts as a fallback in the event of cheating within their relationship. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Actions are costly to the agent, and observable only to oneself. The principal cares only about one’s own outcome minus one’s payment to the agent. The principal wants to motivate the agent’s actions, but there is some uncertainty so actions cannot be inferred precisely from the outcome. In the standard theory of the agency, the principal’s outcome is assumed to be verifiable, so outcome-based bonus or incentive payments can be designed and written into a contract that can be enforced in a court of law if necessary. However, in reality the principal’s true outcome is rarely verifiable to outsiders, even though the parties may have good information about. External, legally enforceable contracts then have to relay on some other performance measure that is an imperfect proxy for the principal’s outcome, and an even more imperfect proxy for the agent’s action. (The traditional economic theory of agency formulated the problem as a trade-off between giving the agent stronger incentives and making one bear more risk.) The simplest example of this situation is an employment contract, where the principal is the owner of a firm and the agent a manager or worker. However, it can also be interpreted in the context of a firm’s outsourcing decision. The principal firm buys from an agent firm a component that I an input to one of the principal’s final products. The principal firm’s ultimate objective is profit, but the contribution of the component to the final product, and indeed the contribution of the final product to the profit of the firm as a whole, are so thoroughly concealed in the account of the firm as to be unverifiable to a court of law. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Matters like the quantities and time of delivery of the component are recorded and easily verifiable; therefore a contract that specifies the firm’s payment to the component supplier as a function of these matters can be written and enforced by the government’s civil courts. However, the two firms may have a much better idea of other matters, such as the quality of the work, and can base a relational contract on such inside information. The finding that relational contract work best when the parties value the future highly and when the external performance measure is of very poor quality is surprising. However, one result is not so immediately obvious, and repays further thought. This is the finding that when the incentive constraint is binding and the relational contract yields a second best, a partial improvement in the external performance worsens the outcome of the relational contract. This reminds one of various “second-best” propositions in economics: when an economy has two or more distortions, a reduction in the size of one distortion may aggravate the overall distortion and reduce economic welfare. In this instance the explanation is tied to a general property of tacitly cooperative equilibria of repeated games. The harsher is the punishment that faces a deviator, the better the equilibrium that can be achieved. In this model, the punishment consists of having to fall back on the formal contract based on the external performance measure. The more accurate is that measure, the better is the payoff from the formal contract and therefore the weaker the punishment. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Similar results appear in other contexts. For example, Kranton (1996) models self-governing repeated interactions with well-matched partners, when the consequence of cheating is having to go to an anonymous arms-length market with inferior matching but enforceable contracts. A partial improvement in the quality of matching in the market then tightens the incentive constraint on self-governance and worsens its outcome. In Kranton’s context this leads to a cumulative process leading to an equilibrium where one or the other of the modes survives. More generally, one can argue that cooperation within a group is better sustained if the consequences of deviation are made worse, which requires worse outcomes from dealing with people outside the group. This is a trade-off: better within-group cooperation may require worse cross-group relations. In starker terms, a beneficial sense of “us” may be fostered only by sharpening the sense of “us versus them” hostility. In the economic context, the result has potentially serious implications of less-developed countries and transition economies that are attempting to install a formal system of contract law or to improve an existing one. The new institution of governance cannot be expected to leapfrog to perfection. The organizations and people are sure to need a period of trial and error, of experimentation and learning. The above results say tht the process of gradual improvement of state law may inflict an interim cost on the economy, by worsening the outcomes of the currently used relation-based system. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Therefore it is important to explore the results in greater depth, and look for empirical evidence bearing on it. In an established bilateral relationship it is the relationship itself that determines the degree of cooperation, regardless of whether the courts are effective. This is encouraging for the prospects of improving the courts gradually without causing short-term harm. However, the finding runs contrary to the theoretical result. If the theoretical model is broadly right, effectiveness of the courts would be irrelevant to the outcome of relational contract only if the parameters puts the equilibrium in a region that increases one’s temptation to renege on the relational contract. A second possibility is that the accuracy of the external measure is so poor that the alternative relational contract is not recourse to the courts but a total breakdown of the interaction. The third possibility, of course, is that the theoretical model is missing some key aspect of reality; that provides a challenge and an opportunity for future research. The upper-symbolic economy makes obsolete not only our concepts of unemployment but our concepts of work as well. To understand it and the power struggles that it triggers, we will even need a fresh vocabulary. Thus, even the division of the economy into such sectors as agriculture, manufacturing, and services today obscures rather than clarifies. Today’s high-speed change blur once-neat distinctions. Instead of clinging to the old classifications, we need to look behind the labels and ask what people in these companies actually do to create added value. Once we pose this question, we find that more and more of the work in all three sectors consists of symbolic processing, or “mind work.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Farmer now use computers to calculate grain feeds; steelworkers monitor consoles and video screens; investment bankers switch on their laptops as they model financial markets. In matter little whether economist choose to label these as agriculture, manufacturing, or service activities. Even occupational categories are breaking down. To label someone a stockroom attendant, a machine operator, or a sales representative conceals rather than reveals. It is a lot more useful today to group workers by the amount of symbolic processing or mind work they do as part of their jobs regardless of the label they wear or whether they happen to work in a store, a truck, a factory, a hospital, or a office. In what might be called the “mind-work spectrum” we have the research scientists, the financial analyst, the computer programmer or, for that matter, the traditional file clerk. We include file clerks and scientists in the same group because, while their functions obviously differ and they work at vastly different levels of abstraction, both—and millions like them—move information around or generate more information. That makes their work symbolic. In the middle of the mind-work spectrum we find a broad range of “mixed” jobs—tasks requiring the worker to perform physical labour but also handle information. The Federal Express or United Parcel Service driver also operates a computer at one’s side. In advanced factories the machine operator is a highly trained information worker. The hotel clerk, the nurse, and many others have to deal with people—but spend a considerable fraction of their time generating, getting, or giving out information. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Auto science engineers at BMW dealers, for example, may still have greasy hands, but they also use a computer system designed by Hewlett-Packard that provides them with an “expert system” to help them in trouble-shooting along with hundreds of gigabytes of technical drawings accessible via the Internet. The system asks them for data about the car they are repairing; it permits them to search through the masses of technical material intuitively; it makes inferences and then guides them through the repair steps. When they are interacting with this system, are they “auto science engineers” or “mind workers”? It is the purely manual jobs at the lower end of the spectrum that are disappearing. With fewer manual jobs in the economy, the “proletariat” is now a minority, replaced increasingly by a “cognitariat.” More accurately, as the super-symbolic economy unfolds, the proletariat becomes a cognitariat. The key questions about a person’s work today have to do with how much of the job entails information processing, how routine or programmable it is, what level of abstraction is involved, what access the person has to the central data bank and management information system and how much autonomy and responsibility the individual enjoys. We will continue more of this discussion in the upcoming days. The “voice of the devil” as an angel of light is more difficult to detect when it comes with wonderful strings of texts which makes it appear like the voice of the Holy Spirit. Voices from without, either as from God or angels, may be rejected, yet the believer may be deceived by “floods of texts” which one thinks are from God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Therefore, detection of the source of supernatural voices requires further inquiry: Does the believer rely upon these “texts” apart from the use of one’s mind or reason? This indicates passivity. Are these texts a prop to one, an undermining of one’s reliance on God Himself; weakening one’s power of decision and one’s (proper) self-reliance? Do these texts influence one and make one elated and puffed up as “specially guided by God,” or crush and condemn one, and throw one into despair and condemnation, instead of leading one to sober dealing with God Himself over the course of one’s life—with a keen and increasing knowledge of right and wrong obtained from the written Word by the light of the Holy Spirit? If these and other such-like results are the fruit of the “texts” given, they may be rejected as from the deceiving spirits, or at least an attitude of neutrality should be taken concerning them until proof of their source is obtained. The voice of the devil is also distinguishable from the voice of God by its purpose and outcome. If the outcome is not in accordance with the guidance given, then one definitely needs to check with fellow believers regarding its validity. For, obviously, if God speaks directly to a human, the human will then be infallibly correct with regard to the specific matter in question. Thus far, creation has been considered within the order proper to it, the essential order. However, man as the creature the exercises freedom brings us to the boundary line of the existential order of tragedy and dissolution. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
God as the creator is beyond the distinction of essence and existence. He does not depend upon essences or divine ideas which govern His creativity. His creative vision simultaneously embraces both the essence of a creature and each moment of its existence. However, created being does not lie buried within the divine life. It exists in the universe of reality, and its existence is different from its essence. Humans provide the clearest insight into creaturely existence because only they possess finite freedom. Humans, and analogously the rest of reality, is not only grounded in the creative ground of being, but they are also outside it inasmuch as one “stands upon” one’s self when one exercises one’s freedom. One can only actualize one’s essence, be a real human, by positing free acts which inevitably clash with one’s essential nature. Fully developed creatureliness is fallen creatureliness. At this pivotal point of freedom the doctrine of creation (the essential order) and the doctrine of the fall (the existential order) merge and become indistinguishable. Being a creature means both to be rooted in the creative ground of the divine life and to actualize one’s self through freedom. Creation I fulfilled in the creaturely self-realization which simultaneously is freedom and destiny. However, it is fulfilled through separation from the creative ground through a break between existence and essence. Creaturely freedom is the point at which creation and fall coincide. Creation is the beginning of the fall. One who feels in one’s heart genuine tie with the life of one’s people cannot possibly conceive of the existence of the Christian people apart from “Queen Sabbath.” We can say without exaggeration that more than America preserved the Sabbath, the Sabbath preserved America. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
If I were asked to single out one of the great historical institutions more essential for our preservation than all others, I would not hesitate to declare that it is the observance of the Sabbath. Without this, the home of the Church or Mormon Temple, the festivals and the holy days, the language and the history of our people, will gradually disappear. If the Sabbath will be maintained by those who have observed it and will be restored to those who have abandoned it, then the permanence of Christianity or Mormonism is assured. Every Christian or Mormon who has it within one’s power should assist in the effort to restore the Sabbath to the man from whom it has been taken away from. No deeds of charity or philanthropy, no sacrifices of tie or fortune made by anyone, equals in beneficent result the expenditure of time and money looking toward the re-establishment of the Sabbath among God’s people. No amounts of prating about morals will ever take the place of rooted habits ruthlessly plucked out. The observance of the Sabbath brings deep and abiding rewards to the Christian and Mormons. It re-creates one’s spirit as it regenerates one’s physical and nervous system. It brings one into communion and with God, links one with the profoundest aspirations of America, and draws one into the orbit of the Book of Mormon or the Christian Bible. It therefore follows inseparably that the failure to observe the Sabbath brings its penalties in the impoverishment of the spirit, the denudation of Christian and Mormon values and alienation from Christian and Mormon community, literally “that soul is cut off from its kinsmen.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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/
Randolph Harris II International 