Self-resurrection – Page 51 – Randolph Harris II International Institute

Should I Ever Take Ease Upon a Bed of Leisure, May that Same Moment Mark My End!

July 30, 2019 12:04 am

It is a lust again of time and for the future, for the mysteries of the natural World. For being the watcher that I became that long-ago night in Paris, when I was forced into it. I lost my illusions. I lost my favorite lies. You might say I revisited that moment and was reborn to darkness of my own free will. The transition to a study of the negative aspects of bureaucracy is afforded by the application of Veblen’s concept of trained incapacity, Dewey’s notion of occupational psychosis, or Warnotte’s view of professional deformation. Trained incapacity refers to that state of affairs in which one’s abilities function as inadequacies or blind spots. Actions based upon training and skills which have been successfully applied in the past may result in inappropriate responses under changed conditions. An inadequate flexibility in the application of skills, will, inchanging milieu, result in more or less serious maladjustments. Thus, to adopt a barnyard illustration used in this connection by Kenneth Burke, chickens may be readily conditioned to interpret the sound of a bell as a signal for trained chickens to their doom as they are assembled to suffer decapitation. In general, one adopts measures in keeping with one’s past training and, under new conditions which are not recognized as significantly different, the very soundness of this training may lead to the adoption of the wrong procedures. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Again, in Burke’s almost echolalic phrase, “people may be unfitted by being fit in an unfit fitness”; their training may lead to the adoption of the wrong procedures. Dewey’s concept of occupational psychosis rests upon much the same observations. As a result of their day to day routines, people develop special preferences, antipathies, discriminations and emphases. (The term psychosis is used by Dewey to denote a “pronounced character of the mind.”) These psychoses develop through demand put upon the individual by the particular organization of one’s occupational role. The concepts of both Veblen and Dewey refer to a fundamental ambivalence. Any action can be considered in terms of what it attains or what it fails to attain. “A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing—a focus upon object A involves a neglect of object B.” In his discussion, Weber is almost exclusively concerned with what the bureaucratic structure attains: precision, reliability, efficiency. This same structure may be examined from another perspective provided by the ambivalence. What are the limitations of the organizations designed to attain these goals? For reasons which we have already noted, the bureaucratic structure exerts a constant pressure upon the official to be “methodical, prudent, disciplined.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

If the bureaucracy is to operate successfully, it must attain a high degree of reliability of behavior, an unusual degree of conformity with prescribed patterns of actions. Hence, the fundamental importance of discipline which may be as highly developed in a religious or economic bureaucracy as in the army. Discipline can be effective only if the ideal patterns are buttressed by strong sentiments which entail devotion to one’s duties, a keen sense of the limitation of one’s authority and competence, and methodical performance of routine activities. The efficacy of social structure depends ultimately upon infusing group participants with appropriate attitudes and sentiments. As we shall see, there are definite arrangements in the bureaucracy for inculcating and reinforcing these sentiments. At the moment, it suffices to observe that in order to ensure discipline (the necessary reliability of response), these sentiments are often more intense than is technically necessary. There is a margin of safety, so to speak, in the pressure exerted by these sentiments upon the bureaucrat to conform to one’s patterned obligations, in much the same sense that added allowances (precautionary overestimations) are made by the engineer in designing the supports for a bridge. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

However, this very emphasis leads to a transference of the sentiments from the aims of the organization onto the particular details of behavior required by the rules. Adherence to the rules, originally conceived as a means, becomes transformed into an end-in-itself; there occurs the familiar process of displacement of goals whereby an instrumental value becomes a terminal value. Discipline, readily interpreted as conformance with regulations, whatever the situation, is seen not as a measure designed for specific purposes but becomes an immediate value in the life-organization of the bureaucrat. This emphasis, resulting from the displacement of the original goals, develops into rigidities and an inability to adjust readily. Formalism, even ritualism, ensures with an unchallenged insistence upon punctilious adherence to formalized procedures. This may be exaggerated to the point where primary concern with conformity to the rules interferes with the achievement of the purposes of the organization, in which case we have the familiar phenomenon of the technicism or red tape of the official. An extreme product of this process of displacement of goals is the bureaucratic virtuoso, who never forgets a single rule binding his or her actions and hence is unable to assist many of one’s clients. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

A case in point, where strict recognition of the limits of authority and literal adherence to rules produced this result, is the pathetic plight of Bernt Balchen, Admiral Byrd’s pilot in the flight over the South Pole. According to a ruling of the department of labor Bernt Balchen cannot receive his citizenship papers. Balchen, a native of Norway, declared his intention in 1927. It is held that he has failed to meet the condition of five years’ continuous residence in the United States of American. The Byrd Antarctic voyage took him out of the country, although he was on a ship carrying the American flag, was an invaluable member of the American expedition, and in a region to which there is an American claim because of the exploration and occupation of it by Americans, this region being Little America. The bureau of naturalization explains that it cannot proceed on the assumption that Little America is American soil. That would be trespass on international questions where is has no sanction. So far as the bureau is concerned, Balchen was out of the country and technically has not complied with the law of naturalization. Such inadequacies in orientation which involve trained incapacity clearly derive from structural sources. The process may be briefly recapitulated. An effective bureaucracy demands reliability of response and strict devotion to regulations. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Such devotion to the rules of an effective bureaucracy leads to their transformation into absolutes; they are no longer conceived as relative to a set of purposes. This interferes with ready adaptation under special conditions not clearly envisaged by those who drew up the general rules. Thus, the very elements which conduce toward efficiency in general produce inefficiency in specific instances. Full realization of the inadequacy is seldom attained by members of the group who have not divorced themselves from the meanings which the rules have for them. These rules in time become symbolic in cast, rather than strictly utilitarian. The usefulness of organizations makes them a necessity. The appointment of people to administer those organizations is unavoidable. In the arrangements of human society, there is a necessary place for human institutions. However, organizations and bureaucracy may lead to anxiety. A way of escaping anxiety that is considered most radical consists in avoiding all situations, thoughts or feelings which might arouse anxiety. This may be a conscious process, as when the person who fear driving or mountain climbing avoids doing these things. More accurately speaking, a person may be aware of the existence of anxiety and aware of avoiding it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

One may also, however, be only dimly or not at all aware of avoiding activities. One may, for instance, procrastinate in matter which, without one’s knowledge, are connected with anxiety, such as making decision, going to the doctor or writing a letter. Or one may pretend, that is, subjectively believe that certain activities one contemplates—such as taking part in a discussion, giving orders to employees, separating oneself from another person—are unimportant. Or one may pretend not to like doing certain things and discard them on that basis. This a young lady whom going to parties involves gears of being neglected may avoid going altogether by making herself believe that she does not like social gatherings. If we go one step farther, to the point where such avoidance operates automatically, we have the phenomenon of an inhibition. An inhibition consists in an inability to do, feel or think certain things, and its function is to avoid the anxiety which would arise if the person attempted to do, feel, or think those things. There is no anxiety present in awareness, and no capacity for overcoming the inhibitions by conscious effort. Inhibitions are present in their most spectacular form in the hysterical losses of functioning: hysterical blindness, speechlessness or paralysis of a limb. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

In the sphere pleasures of the flesh and frigidity and impotence represent such inhibitions, although the structure of these inhibitions may be very complex. In the mental sphere inhibitions in concentration, in forming or expressing opinions, in making contacts with people are well-known phenomena. It might be worth while to spend several pages merely enumerating inhibitions, as to convey a full impression of the variety of their forms and the frequency of their occurrence. I think, however, that I may leave it to the reader to review one’s own observations on that score, because inhibitions are nowadays a well-known phenomenon and easily recognizable, if they are fully developed. Nevertheless it is desirable to consider briefly the preconditions that are necessary in order to become aware that inhibitions exist. Otherwise we should underestimate their frequency because usually we are not aware of how many inhibitions we really have. In the first place, we must be aware of the desire to do something in order to be aware of the inability to do it. For instance, we have to be aware of possessing ambitions before we can realize that we have inhibitions on that score. The question may be asked whether we do not always at least know what we want. Decidedly not. Let us consider, for example, a person listening to a paper and having a critical thought about it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

A minor inhibition would consist in a timidity about expressing the criticism; a stronger inhibition would prevent one from organizing one’s thoughts, with the result that they would occur to one only after the discussion was over or the net morning. However, the inhibition may go so far as not to permit the critical thoughts to come up at all, and in this case, assuming that one really feels critical, one will be inclined to accept blindly what has been said or even to admire it; and one will be quite unaware of having any inhibitions. In other words, if an inhibition goes so far as to check wishes or impulses there can be no awareness of its existence. A second factor that may prevent awareness occurs when an inhibition has such an important function in a person’s life that one prefers to insist that it is an unchangeable fact. If, for instance, there is an overpowering anxiety of some kind connected with any sort of competitive work, resulting in an intense fatigue after every attempt to work, the person may insist that one is not strong enough to do any work; that belief protects one, but if one admitted an inhibition one might have to return to work and thereby expose oneself to the dreaded anxiety. Truth comes after states and ecstasies and then takes it place. It is easier to glimpse the truth than to stay in it. For the first, it is often enough to win a single battle; for the second, it is necessary to win a whole war. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Compensatory trends in an individual will influence the forms of his or her creating will take, but they do not explain the process of creativity itself. Compensatory needs influence the particular bent or direction in culture or science, but they do not explain the creation of the culture or science. Because of this I learned very early in my psychological career to regard with a good deal of skepticism current theories explaining creativity. And I learned always to task the questions: Does the theory deal with creativity itself, or does it deal only with some artifact, some partial, peripheral aspect, of the creative act? The other widely current psychoanalytic theories about creativity have two characteristics. First, they are reductive—that is, they reduce creativity to some other process. Second, they generally make it specifically an expression of neurotic patterns. The usual definition of creativity in psychoanalytic circles is regression in the service of ego. Immediately the term regression indicates the reductive approach. I emphatically disagree with the implication that creativity is to be understood by reducing it to some other process, or that it is essentially an expression of neurosis. Creativity is certainly associated with serious psychological problems in our particular culture—Van Gogh went psychotic, Gaugin seems to have been a schizoid, Poe was an alcoholic, and Virginia Woolf was seriously depressed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Obviously creativity and originality are associated with persons who do not fit into their culture. However, this does not necessarily mean that the creativity is the product of the neurosis. The association of creativity with neurosis presents us with a dilemma—namely, if by psychoanalysis we cured the artists of their neuroses would they no longer create? This dichotomy, as well as many others, arise from the reductive theories. Furthermore, if we create out of some transfer of affect or drive, as implied in sublimation, of if our creativity is merely the by-product of an endeavor to accomplish something else, as in compensation, does not our very creative act then have only a pseudo value? We must indeed take a strong stand against the implications, however they may creep in, that talent is a disease and creativity is a neurosis. We sail on a vast expanse, ever uncertain, ever drifting, hurried from one to the other goal. If we think to attach ourselves firmly to any point, it totters and fails us; if we follow, it eludes our grasp…vanishing forever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, yet always the most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find a steadfast place and an ultimate fixed basis whereon we may build a tower to reach the infinite. However, our whole foundation breaks up, and Earth opens to the abysses. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

We may not then look for certainty. Our reason is always deceived by changing shows, nothing can fix the infinite between the two infinities, which at once close and fly from it. The heart has its reason which reason know not. The relationship between power and love is shown in myth. Recall that Eros, god of love, is the offspring of Aphrodite and Ares, god of war or strife. In what better way could the ancient Greeks have told us that there is no love without aggression? However, even more surprising is the name of another child which blessed this union, Harmonia. The word means that which is fitting, in proportion, in concord—and it seems paradoxical in the extreme. However, is it not appropriate that harmony should be a dynamic proportion between strife and beauty? The empirical relationship of power and love is illustrated in the closeness of the two in the problem of violence, the converse of power. Violence is most apt to occur between persons who are closely tied emotionally and, therefore, vulnerable to each other. According to a statistical study of homicides in the city of Sacramento, which is in the state of California, the majority of murders are committed against a member of the family. The most dangerous room, again judged in terms of the likelihood of murder occurring there, is the bedroom. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

According to M. E. Wolfgang, “If you are a woman over 16, your murderer will most likely be a husband, lover, or relative. When a man is killed, the killer is most likely to be his wife. The bedroom is the most murderous room in the house.” Maybe that is why bad partners are sent to sleep on the couch. In marriage and in relationships between couples we see a similar relationship between love and power. There is a necessity of combining self-assertion (power) with tenderness (love) in the pleasures of the flesh. Without tenderness, the caring and the sensitivity for the feelings and delight of the other is absent; and without self-assertion the capacity to put one’s self fully into the act is missing. When love and power are seen as opposites, love tends to be the abject surrender of one partner and the subtle (or not so subtle) domination by the other. These are often the sadomasochistic marriages. When the aim is to be guided only by love, assertion and aggression are obviously ruled out as being too tainted with power. There results a clinging to one another, an absorption in each other. Missing are the firmness of assertion, the structure and the sense of dignity that guard the rights of each of the partners. Such relationships may swing back and forth, from surrender as a form of love to violence as a form of power. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Everyone is familiar with the news clippings telling how a devoted wife or husband of thirty years suddenly took a hatchet to his or her mate in a peculiarly bloody murder. This extreme example reveals the problem in a love that does not have within it a realistic assertion of power. There is statistical grounds for the common saying that marriage with someone who is undercontrolled—for instance, blows up from time to time—may make for turmoil and frequent fighting, but it does not make for murder. The docile, overcontrolled individual, the one who appears kind all the time, can be the one who releases one’s aggression in one big blowup. This accords with our thesis that violence occurs when a person cannot live out one’s needs for power in normal ways. It is only when one’s intermittent nature becomes obvious, however remarkable and uplifting they may have seemed, that one who experienced them is ready to seek for the higher Truth. This is not only a matter of personal feeling, but also of impersonal intuitive knowledge confirmed by reason and experience. Not everyone will enter into the kingdom of Heaven. Only to a very few is it given to enter and remain stabilized in the kingdom; many more must be content with glimpses only. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

The belief is all too common that union with God is experienced as a tremendous uprush of ecstatic emotion. This is true in several cases, but not in all. In any case, only after the excitement has abated and calm has descended on the being will one be able to see whether this is merely another of those temporary glimpses or whether it is really a lasting discovery of one’s divine identity. For the truth is that such a durable discovery of one’s divine identity. For the truth is that such a durable discovery, such an ever-present fulfillment of one’s highest possibilities, comprises much more than this inspired, but still personal experience. It is true that our sins and faults are automatically dispersed by the inrush of Enlightenment, but it is equally true that they will return if we have no prepared our selves to be able to stay in the Light. To gaze upon this great light without sufficient precious training of the inward life is ordinarily not possibly for more than a short time. The few exceptions who were able to stay in the light unbrokenly were beings of special genius and special destiny. Those who have obtained the abiding state are in the sanctuary, but those who have attained the transient one are only at the gate. Visions, mental states, and experiences may succeed each other progressively, but they are not the same as a continuous stabilized awareness of that which is behind all these temporary states. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

In one’s earlier years, if it does not fulfill one’s expectations, the seeker may try one kind of institution of a religious or mystical character and then move to a different one. In this way one may experiment with different creeds and different forms of practice. This may be useful so far as it exposes one to the influences which are needed to balance one another. However, if one ever does, it may be bewildering. Most traditional forms, or the newer organizations which have some sort of spiritual teaching, are useful in the beginning to most people. However, this is not to say that they are going to be useful always. They have their limitations, and at certain stage may prevent further advance. However, those who can stand alone are always smaller in number: most persons will frankly admit that they cannot, certainly most young and elderly persons. This is the justification for the need of organizations, groups, churches, and priesthoods. They offer what seems fixed support in life, stable in doctrine, superior nobler holier and wiser than what the ordinary person finds in oneself. This is why philosophy attracts the few, those who are, or who can be trained to become, strong enough to walk a lonely path. For us, the end is always on the covenant path through the temple to eternal life, the greatest of all gifts of God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

We know this flight in our dreams, perhaps because we knew it in some celestial realm beyond this Earth before we were born. However, sometimes we cannot conceive of the sight of eternal life as Earthly creatures because we have somehow forgotten, or damaged and torn our heart and soul. Seeing darkness where we expect to see light reminds us that one of the fundamental needs we have in order to grow is to stay connected to our source of light—Jesus Christ. He is the source of our power, the Light and Light of the World. Without a strong connection to Christ, we begin to spiritually die. Knowing that, Satan tries to exploit the Worldly pressures we all face. He works to dim our light, short-circuit the connection, cut off the power supply, leaving us alone in the dark. Satan operates a lot like Lestat in Ann Rice’s Tales of the Body Thief. When David is reborn in a new body, tall, with tan skin and blonde hair and lean, Lestat turns him into a Vampire to steal his joy. He was infuriated that David experienced a miracle which allowed him to give up his 74-year-old body and take over the beautiful body of a twenty-six-year-old male. Out of the miracle came youth, rebirth, and Lestat could not stand to see David profit. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Pressures in life are common conditions in morality, but Satan works hard to isolate us and tell us we are the only one experiencing them. When tragedies overtake us, when life hurts so much we cannot breathe, when we have taken a beating like the man on the road to Jericho and been left for dead, Jesus come along and pours blessings into our wounds, lefts us tenderly up, takes us to an inn, looks after us. Jesus will ease the burdens which are put upon our shoulders, that even we cannot feel then upon our backs, that we may know of a surety that the Lord, our God will and does visit his people in our afflictions. It is not intended that we run faster than we have the strength. However, in spite of that many of us run very, very fast and the energy and emotional supply sometimes registers close to being on E—empty. When expectations overwhelm us, we can step back and ask Heavenly Father what to let go of. Part of out life experience is learning what not to do. However, even so, sometimes life can be exhausting. Jesus assures us, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” reports Matthew 11.28. Christ is willing to join with us in the yoke and pull in order to listen our burdens. Christ is rest. Should I ever take ease upon a bed of leisure, may that same moment mark my end! #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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You Who Must Guide, Before You Trust Me to that Arduous Passage, Look to Me and Look through Me—Can I be Worthy?

July 24, 2019 1:00 am

I do believe you! Every word you have said. And the literal truth is unimportant. You seek something that the saints sought when they renounced their normal lives, when they blundered into the service of Christ. And never mind that you do not believe in Christ. It is unimportant. What is important is that you have been miserable in the existence you have lived until now, miserable to the point of madness, and that my way would offer you an alternative. Nature is mortal’s inorganic body, that is, nature apart from the human body itself. TO say that beings live on nature means that nature is one’s body, that is, nature apart from the human body itself. To say that beings live on nature means that nature is one’s body with which one must remain in constant and vital contact in order not to die. And to say that being’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature is simply an expression of the interdependence of all natural forces, for beings themselves are part of nature. Just as alienated labor separates beings from nature and from themselves—one’s own active functions and life activity—so too its alienated one from the species, from other beings. What happens in the end is that beings regard their labor—their life-activity, one’s productive life—merely as a means of satisfying one’s drive for physical existence. Yet productive life is the real life of the species. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

The whole character of a species is evident in its particular type of life-activity; and free, conscious activity is the genetic character of human beings. However, alienated labor reduces this area of productive life to a mere means of existence. To make us connected to our product and labor, beings design in accordance with the laws of beauty. They produce things that make them happy and use the money they earn from their labor to buy private property, something the love that connects them with their work, and makes it more enjoyable. Just because you do not yet sort memos, do not yet sit in conferences, and do not yet sip martinis from your lunch box, do not let your attitude toward your work be generally compounded of hatred, shame and resignation. I have worked on the line with men who have doubled as mechanics, repairmen, salesmen, contractors, builders, farmers, cab-drivers, lumberyard workers, countermen. I would guess that there are many more of these than show up in the official statistics: often people will work for less if one can be paid under the counter with tax-free dollars. Nor is that all. The factory worker with dependents cannot carry the debt load one shoulders—the middle-class debt load, if you like, of nagging payment on car, washer, dryer, TV, clothing, house itself without family help. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

Even if one puts in fifty, sixty, or seventy hours a week at one or two jobs, one has to count on his wife’s paycheck, or his son’s, his daughter’s, his brother-in-law’s; or on his mother’ social security, or his father’s veteran’s pension. The working-class family today is not typically held together by the male wage-earner, but by multiple wage-earners often of several generations who club together to get the things they want and need—or are pressured into believing they must have. It is at best a precarious arrangement; as for its toll on the physical organism and the psyche, that is a question perhaps worthy of further investigation by those who currently pronounce themselves bored with Utopia Unlimited in the Fat Millennium. But what of the worker’s middle-class expectations? If these expectations have changed at all in recent years, they would seem to have narrowed, rather than expanded, leaving a psychological increment of resignation rather than of unbounded optimism (expect among the very young—and even among them the optimism focuses more often on better-paying opportunities elsewhere in the labor market than on illusory hopes of swift status advancement). #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

The worker’s expectations are for better pay, more humane working conditions, more job security. As long as one feels that one is going to achieve them through an extension of existing conditions, for that long one is going to continue to be a middle-class conservative in temper. But only for that long. I suspect that what middle-class writers mean by the worker’s middle-class expectations are one’s cravings for commodities—one’s determination to have no only fin-tailed cars and single-unit washer-dryers, but McMansions with butterfly chairs in the rumpus room, African masks on the wall, Greek statues, a gorgeous Monet, a couple of small Picassos, a ruby red egg tempera panel of the medieval period, and power boats in the garage. Before the middle-class intellectual condemn these expectations too harshly, let them consider, first, who has been utilizing every known technique of suasion and propaganda to convert luxuries into necessities, and second, at what cost these new necessities are acquire by American working-class family. Think of the American worker: satisfied, doped by TV, essentially middle class in outlook. This is an image bred not of communication with workers (except as mediated by hired interviewers sent into the field like anthropologist or entomologists), but of contempt for people, based perhaps on self-contempt and on a feeling among intellectuals that the worker has let them down. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

In order to see this clearly, we have to place it again in the intellectual’s changing attitudes toward the worker over the last one hundred and ten years. At the time of the Chief Information Officer (CIO), the middle-class intellectual saw the proletarian as society’s figure of virtue—heroic, magnanimous, bearing in one’s loins the seeds of a better future. The glamorization of the worker has been taken over as a function of government. Many intellects, as government employees, found themselves helping to create this portrait of the worker as patriot. However, all workers are doing now is making things that other people buy. That, and participating in the great commodity scramble. The disillusionment, it would seem, is almost too terrible to bear. Word has gotten around among the highbrows that the worker is not heroic or idealistic; public opinion pills prove that they want barbecue pits more than foreign assistance and air-conditioning more than desegregation, that they do not particularly want to go on strike, that they are reluctant to form a Labor Party, they vote for Trump because the economy is good, and they are animated by the same aspirations as drive the middle-class onward and upward in suburbia. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

Manipulative power may have originally been invited by the person’s own desperation or anxiety. Some people accede to their employer’s demand that they accept being a lady or man of the night because her or his own hopelessness and inability to do anything else. After this initial agreement, there is very little spontaneity or choice left to the person. The shift of exploitative to manipulative power is seen on our own frontier in the superseding of the gunman or woman by the “con” man or woman. If for no other reason than one left his or her victim living, in all of one’s dishonesty and misuse of Protestant ethics, the con person represents a less destructive power than the brute force of the gun person. Manipulative power works gratifyingly with those who are already mentally limited, such as children with intellectual disabilities, some backward psychotics, prisoners, and neurotics in limited spheres. And it works certainly well with pigeons. Some people think it is impowering to be controlled, they want to feel like a possession—a trophy wife with silicone trinkets, or a boy toy with a flashy sports car. These are groups in whom spontaneity has already been largely handicapped or rendered ineffective and for whom the principle of manipulative power is necessary. Much of human life is manipulative and that manipulation is used for socially justifiable aims. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

Many beings no longer consciously confront their power needs. It is often pointed out that Americans, in the years before 2007, were in such a state of economic hopelessness and anxiety that they succumbed to the manipulative power of Obama in the hope that “hope and change” would assuage their anxiety. The dangers similarly are, giving the despair and anxiety of men and women living in this time of transition between historical periods, that people today will turn toward the socialism proposals of Obama and other democrats in the hope of escaping their anxiety. Anxiety is synonymous with fear, thereby indicating a kinship between the two. Bother are in fact emotional reactions to danger and both may be accompanied by physical sensations, such as trembling, perspiration, violent heart-beat, which may be so strong that a sudden, intense fear may lead to death. Yet there is a difference between the two. When a mother is afraid that her child will die when it has only a pimple or a slight cold we speak of anxiety; but if she is afraid when the child has a serious illness we call her reaction fear. If someone is afraid whenever he stands on a height or when he has to discuss a topic he knows well, we call his reaction anxiety; if someone is afraid when he loses his way high up in the mountains during heavy thunderstorm we would speak of fear. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

Thus far we should have a simple and neat distinction: fear is a reaction that is proportionate to the danger one has to face, whereas anxiety is a disproportionate reaction to danger, or even a reaction to imaginary danger. This distinction has one flaw, however, which is that the decision as to whether the reaction is proportionate depends on the average knowledge existing in the particular culture. However, even if that knowledge proclaims a certain attitude to be unfounded, a neurotic will find no difficulty in giving one’s action a rational foundation. In fact, one might get into hopeless arguments if one told a patient that one’s dread of being attacked by some raving lunatic reporter is neurotic anxiety. He would point out that one’s fear is realistic and would refer to occurrences of the kind he fears. The primitive would be similarly stubborn if one considered certain of one’s fear reactions disproportionate to the actual danger. For instance, primitive man in a tribe which as taboos on eating certain animals in mortally frightened if by any chance he has eaten the tabooed meat. As an outside observer you would call this a disproportionate reaction, in fact an entirely unwarranted one. However, knowing the tribe’s beliefs concerning forbidden meat you would have to realize that the situation represents a real danger to the being, danger that the hunting or fishing grounds may be spoiled or danger of contracting an illness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

There is a difference, however, between the anxiety we find in primitives and the anxiety we consider neurotic in our culture. The content of neurotic anxiety, unlike that of primitive, does not conform with commonly held opinions. In both the impressions of a disproportionate reaction vanishes once the meaning of the anxiety is understood. There are persons, for example, who have a perpetual anxiety about dying; on the other hand, because of their sufferings they have a secret wish to die. Their various fears of death, combined with their wishful thinking with regard to death, create a strong apprehension of imminent danger. If one knows all these factors one cannot help but call their anxiety about dying an adequate reaction. Another, simplified example is seen in persons who become terrified when they find themselves near a precipice or a high window or on a high bridge. Here again from without, the fear reaction seems to be disproportionate. However, such a situation may present to them, or stir up in them, a conflict between the wish to live and the temptation for some reason or another to jump down from the heights. It is this conflict that may result in anxiety. The past cannot be relived but every step one can leave the past behind. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

The capacities of the imagination that living beings possess are the hallmark of our paradoxical condemnation and our epiphany as beings. The Green Light God gives us is to lend some balance, some dialectic to us as individuals as well as to America. It is a safeguard against [the unalloyed] arrogance of the chosen people, and it makes clear that no one leads us astray. The legend of the Promised Land requires us to pause in our progression of this promised America-the-beautiful to pray about our purposes and to clarify our aims. Other countries like China are producing Smart Cities which aim to reduce crime and improve the quality of life. The American Dream has not yet collapsed; we can still find the way to an ecstasy which balances our dreams, anxiety, and fears. Available to us is inspiration of a new age in which we can directly confront our despair and use it constructively. We know then that the meaning of human existence is infinitely deeper than the American Dream, no matter how far we are borne back into the past of fatigue and ultimate death, we have harbored some ecstatic thought, we have wondered and experiences some poignancy as well as sadness in our wondering. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

Let us not match our petty limited minds against the infinite and incomprehensible World-Mind, and let us not say with some foolish mystic that we are God. Let us say rather what we can truly say, which is that there is something of God in us. And for a while the sadnesses are freed from guilt and the joys are relieved of anxiety. It is not for the philosopher to inflate oneself with the arrogance of such pompous self-deification. One remains humble adorer, the meek suppliant. When eternity breaks into time, as it does in legends, we suddenly become aware of the meaning of human consciousness. We are the servants of God. God is within us and that is very true. Although the mystic’s claim to become one with God is, in the full sense of the term, an unquestionable exaggeration, a splendid illusion, one can certainly claim to have entered into a conscious relationship with God. The mystic proudly declares, “I have attained union with God.” The philosopher mostly says, “I have obtained union with my soul and to that extent drawn nearer to God.” This allows one to make sense of our otherwise senseless efforts; it throws light on the darkness of our routine labors and lends some zest to our monotony. This is true whether push our yachts against a current that blocks progress, or work like a robot in a factory, or struggle say after day to express some recalcitrant thoughts in words that always seem to elude us. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

The ultimate challenge of the American Dream is that we are required—destined, if you will—to recognize our being stat of consciousness in that we are Divine Incarnations inspired by God. We represent God’s Infinite Consciousness, this affirms that any being may approach nearer to and be uplifted by that Consciousness, even if they are not an American. God is never identified with any particular being, not incarnated for one. For God alone is uniquely the Unindividuated whereas all beings are individualized creatures. Even the highest type of being is a particular light, whereas God is the light itself. Every creative encounter is a new event; every time requires another assertion of courage. Every being must start at the beginning. And to encounter the reality of experience is surely the basis for all creativity. The task is to forge in the smithy of my soul, as arduous as the blacksmith’s task of bending red-hot iron in his smithy to make something of value for human life. The conscience is not something that is handed down ready-made from Mount Sinai, despite reports to the contrary. It is created, first of all, out of the inspiration derived from the artist’s symbols and forms. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

Every authentic artist is engaged in this creating of the conscience of the race, even though one may be unaware of the fact. That the Divine has descended into holy being’s mind and heart is philosophically tenable. That the Divine has actually and specifically incarnated in one is not. The artist is not a moralist by conscious intention, but is concerned only with hearing and expressing the vision within his or her own being. However, out of the symbols the artist sees and creates—as Giotto created the forms for the Renaissance—there is later hewn the ethical structure of the society. Nothing can contain the divine essence although everything can be and is permeated by it. The time has come to repudiate all this foolish worship of human beings and to transfer our reverence and obedience to the pure divine Being alone. The more metaphysical comprehension we develop, the less we shall look to the person of a teacher. We shall then regard the Teaching itself as the essential thing. It is always a profitable game for the priesthood of various religions to maintain superstitions like that of a chosen race or fallacies like that of a divine incarnation. This wrong idea of incarnate Godhood is, however, not a moisture without some rain within it. For it is the corruption of a true idea. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

The REAL is unique and indivisible, sole and unadulterable. It never becomes less than it is, never descends to become human, never mixes with what is mere phenomena. Free from sin or guilt; blameless. When one’s thoughts and action are clean in every way, one becomes pure. Your faith to sustain servants of God has been at the heart of your happiness in this life. When one begins a spiritual quest, it is solely by one’s own strivings that one makes one’s initial progress. The time comes, however, when this progress seems to stop and when one seems to stagnate. One has to come to the end of a stage which was really a preparatory one. The stagnation indicates that the path of self-effort is no longer sufficient and that one must now enter upon the path of reliance upon Grace. This is because in the earlier stage, the Ego was the agent for all one’s spiritual activities, whilst it provided the motives which impelled one into these activities. “Behold, O Lord, their souls are precious, and many of them are our brethren; therefore, give unto us, O Lord, power and wisdom that we may bring these, our brethren, again unto thee,” report Alma 31.35. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

My Heart Turned to a Small, Tight Knot Inside Me, but His Manner Became Completely Authoritative and Commanding at Once!

July 19, 2019 2:03 am

And of course, this deepening knowledge of him made me ache for him all the more. I considered again that in my dark preternatural youth, I had made companions for myself who could never really be companions—Gabrielle, who had no need of me; Nicolas, who had gone mad; Louis, who could not forgive me for having seduced him into the realm of the mysterious, even though he had wanted the secrets himself. There is one psychoanalytic term that has gained wide popularity and in popular use has changed its meaning. Such popular use always indicates a significant fact about a society and therefore deserves our attention. I refer to the term “ego.” People say that something is good or bad for their “ego.” They mean by this that their self-feeling—in the sense of the status which they accord themselves—rises when something is good and falls when something is bad for their ego. In this usage ego is only part of the person. My “ego” is not identical with “I” or “self.” It is not identical with the I who is well or ill, who sees and hears and touches and tastes and smells, who acts, walks, sits, stands, lies, who is moved by others, by what is seen and experienced. Moreover, what is “good” or “bad” for my who is not at all necessarily good or bad for me, although I may be inclined to think so. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

The popular “ego” gains from success, winning in competition, status, being admired, flattered, loved; it does not gain from facing the truth, from loving somebody else, from humility. It behaves like a stock or a piece of merchandise endowed with self-awareness: if it is much in demand it rises, is blown up, feels important; if not, it falls, shrinks, feels it is nothing. Thus, it I an alienated part of the self. Alienation can be like a psychic accident. Like when the soul of a dead person takes over a living body; a spirit possessing a human being; it has to be persuaded to let go. However, while it is only part of the self, it has the tendency to become the focal point of the feeling of identity and to dominate the whole life of the people who ae involved with their “ego” to a significant degree. Their mood fluctuates with their ego. They are haunted by their “ego” and preoccupied with its enhancement and downfall so much so that the vibration and the constriction coming from egotistical individuals may make others sense that they are being forced quite literally out of their physical self. These individuals may feel that they have a life apart from their “ego,” but they stand or fall with it. The “ego” has become their identity and at the same time the main object of their worry, ambition, and preoccupation, crowding out any real concern with themselves and with others. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

The popular ego can serve as the most important model of an alienated concept of identity, even though it may be surpassed in rigidity and fixedness by some other examples of such concepts, to which we shall turn now. There once was a man named Pavel Smerdyakov who, on trial for the murder of his father, suffers his worst misery when the prosecutors asked him to take off his socks. They were very dirty and now everyone could see it. All his life he had thought both his big toes hideous. He particularly loathed the coarse, flat, crooked nail on the right one and now they would all see it. Feeling intolerably ashamed. The accidental, unchangeable appearance of his feet, of the nail of his right big toe, here becomes the focal point of his identity. It is on this that Pavel feels the less affluent who stand around him and look at him will judge him and that he judges himself. Very often real or imagined physical attributes, parts of the body image or the entire body image, become focal points of identity. Many beings build around such a negative identity the feeling that this particular feature unalterably determines the course of their lives, and that they are thereby doomed to unhappiness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

The idea of escaping alienation is much like how Anne Rice’s Lestat de Lioncourt dreams of becoming human again in The Tale of the Body Thief, “I rose from the table, struggling, in my excitement, to move like a human. Ah, move like a human. Think of it, to be inside a human body. To see the Sun, really see it, a tiny blazing ball in a blue sky!” Usually, in these cases, qualities such as attractiveness and beauty are no longer felt to be based on the alive expression and flux of human feelings, but have become fixed and dead features, or a series of poses, as so many Hollywood stars or fashion models These features are cut off from the center of the person and worn like a mask. Unattractiveness is experienced as not possessing this mask. In the same way, other real or imagined attributes, or the ack of them, become focal points for a reified, alienated, negative identity. For example: feeling not sufficiently masculine or feminine, being born on the wrong side of the river, being a member of an underrepresented group or gender against which racial or religious prejudices are directed, and, in the most general form, feeling intrinsically inadequate or bad. I do not imply, of course, that in our society the accident circumstance of being born as the member of one social, national, or religious group or class rather than another does not result in very real, objective difficulties, disadvantages or privileges. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

I am concerned here only with the attitude which the person takes toward such handicaps or advantages or privileges, which is important for one’s ability to deal them. In this attitude the structure of the sense of identity and the way in which such factors as the social background and innate advantages or handicaps are incorporated in the sense of identity play a decisive role. What are the dynamics of such alienated concepts of identity? Sometimes they crystallize around repeated parental remarks which, rather than referring to a particular act of the child, say or imply that the child is or lacks, by its very nature, such and such; that Tom is a lazy good-for-noting or that he is “just like Uncle Harry,” who happens the be the troublemaker in the family. Frequently they develop from an ego-ideal that is alien to the child’s own personality, but about which one has come to feel that, unless one is such and such, one is nothing. Whatever their genetic origin, I shall consider here mainly the phenomenological structure of alienated identity concepts and the dynamics of this structure which tend to perpetuate self-alienation. By making some quality or circumstance, real or exaggerated or imagined, the focal point of a reified identity, I look upon myself as though I were a thing (res) and the quality or circumstance were a fixed attribute of this thing or object. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

However, the “I” that feels that I am this or that, in doing so, distances itself from the very same reified object attribute which it experiences as determining its identity and very often as a bane on its life. In feeling that I am not such and such, I distinguish between the unfortunate I and the presumably unalterable quality or lack which, for all time, condemns me to have this negative identity. I do not feel that I am doing this or that or failing to do it, but that there is a something in me or about me, or that I lack something and that this, once and for all, makes me this or that, fixes my identity. The person who has this attitude toward oneself usually is unaware of its being a particular attitude with concrete and far-reaching implications. One takes one’s attitude for granted as a natural, inevitable one and is aware only of the painful self-consciousness and self-preoccupation it involves. One cannot imagine how anyone with one’s fate could have any other attitude. The two most significant implications of this attitude to oneself are: the severance from the living I of the reified attribute which is experiences as a fixed, unchangeable quality, and the severance of this reified attribute from its dynamic and structural connection with other qualities, needs, acts, and experiences of the person. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

In other words, the reified attribute is cut off from the living, developing, fluctuating I in time, since it is experienced as immutable. However, it is also cut off from being experiences as an integral part of the living personality, connected with the totality of the person’s strivings, attitudes, perceptions, feelings, with one’s acting and failing to act. In reality, of course, we can observe that certain actions, moods, and experiences cause changes in the role of the negative identity in the conscious feelings and thoughts of the person. However, one usually does not experience the reified attribute which forms the core of one’s negative self-feeling as something connected with, and due to, one’s own actions and attitudes, but as something fixed on which one has no influence. Furthermore, just as the person’s feeling about oneself may fluctuate with the ups and downs of one’s “ego,” so it also varies with the intensity of the negative self-feeling based on some reified attribute which, at times, may disappear altogether from the conscious thoughts of the person. However, when it reappears it is recognized as the same unfortunate quality that throughout the past has tainted—and will forever taint—the person’s life. Thus, in spite of such fluctuations, the alienated attribute is experienced as a “something” that basically does not and cannot change. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

To be saddled with a reified, negative identity seems, on the face of it, noting but a painful burden. Yet one often can see people cling to such negative self-images with a great deal of stubbornness and in the face of contradictory evidence. In psychoanalytic therapy, it is often seen that the patient who comes for help tries to convince the therapist that nothing can be done for one, since one is born with such and such a handicap or without such and such an advantage. On closer scrutiny, one may find that such insistence by the patient on the hopelessness of the situation has a way of occurring at a point when the patient is afraid to face an issue, or when one wants to be pitied rather than helped. Thus, the reified identity concept often provides a protection against an anxiety-arousing challenge, a way out of a feared situation, and thereby a certain relief. This relief is dynamically similar to the relief observable in certain hypochondriacal and paranoid patients. It sounds paradoxical to speak of relief in the case of patients who are obviously beset by worry, suffering, and fear as the hypochondriac and the paranoid. However, the hypochondriacal patient who is preoccupied with imagined, anticipated, or real ailments sees oneself as the “customarily handicapped” one and thereby avoids the anxiety-provoking prospect of facing and dealing with one’s real problems. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

One’s hypochondriacal preoccupation get the patient off the sport with oneself—namely, off the spot where one would have to deal with one’s realistic personality problems. There are neuroses which may occur in individuals whose personality is otherwise intact and undistorted, developing as a reaction to an external situation which is filled with conflicts. Character neuroses is a condition in which—through the symptomatic picture may be exactly like that of a situation neurosis—the main disturbance is possessed in the deformation neurosis—the main disturbance is possessed in the deformations of the character. They are the result of an insidious chronic process, starting as a rule in childhood and involving greater or lesser intensity. Seen from the surface a character neurosis, too, may result from an actual situation conflict, but a carefully collected history of the person may show that difficult character traits were present long before any confusing situation arose, that the momentary predicament is itself to a large extent due to previously existing personal difficulties, and furthermore that the person reacts neurotically to a life situation which for the average healthy individual does not imply any conflict at all. The situation merely reveals the presence of a neurosis which may have existed for some time. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

In the second place, we are not so much interested in the symptomatic picture of the neurosis. Our interest is possessed predominantly in the character disturbances themselves, because deformations of the personality are the ever-recurring picture in neuroses, whereas symptoms in the clinical sense may vary or be entirely lacking. Also from a cultural viewpoint character formation is more important than symptoms, because it is character, not symptoms, that influences human behavior. With greater knowledge of the structure of neuroses and with the realization that the cure of a symptom does not necessarily mean the cure of a neurosis, psychoanalysts in general have shifted their interest and given more attention to character deformations that to symptoms. Speaking figuratively we may say that the neurotic symptoms are not the volcano itself but rather its eruptions, while the pathogenic conflict, like the volcano, is hidden deep down in the individual, unknown to oneself. These restrictions granted we may rise the question whether neurotic persons today have traits in common which are so essential that we may speak of a neurotic personality of our time. As to the character deformations which accompany different types of neuroses, we are struck by their differences rather than by their similarities. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

The hysterical character, for instance, is decidedly different from the compulsive character. The differences which strike our attention, however, are differences of mechanisms or, in more general terms, differences in the way the two disturbances manifest themselves and in the ways in which they are solved, such as the great role of projection in the hysterical type as compared with the intellectualization of conflicts in the compulsive type. On the other hand, the similarities which I have in mind to do not concern the manifestations or the ways in which they have brought about, but they concern the content of the conflict itself. To be more exact, the similarities are not so much in the experience which have genetically prompted the disturbance but in the conflicts which are actually moving the person. In Tales of the Body Thief, by Anne Rice, Lestat was in Paris, France with his mother Gabrielle at a café on the Left Bank. It was a lovely spring day and a grand time to be in Paris, as all the songs say. He was drinking a beer, reading the English papers, and realized that he was overhearing a conversation. He drifted away again. And Lestat realized that he was overhearing this strange conversation and it was not in English and it was not in French. Gradually he came to know that it was not in any language really, and yet it was fully understandable to him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Lestat then put down his paper, and began to concentrate. On and on it went. It was a sort of argument. He looked down and slowly turned around and there were two beings, seated at the table talking to each other, and just for a moment, it seemed normal—two men in conversation. He started to feel like he was fading out and realized that the two individuals were not human beings. It was painfully clear that there were illusory. They simply were not of the same fabric as everything else. They were not being illuminated by the same light, for instance, they existed in some realm where the light was from another source. Like the light in Rembrandt. Their clothes and their faces were smoother than those of human beings. The whole vision was of a different texture, and that texture was uniform in all its detail. God and Satan pretended not to see Lestat, but they allowed him to hear their discussion. The devil said he feels for humankind in their wretchedness, and humans have become more bestial than any beast because they have reasons. The Lord agreed that human beings too easily become lax; they need vigilance, even though beings ever errs the while one strives. God proposed that the human beings should be ever active, ever live creation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

God told the Devil that he must go on doing his job. And the Devil did not want to do it. He explained that his term had already been too long. The same thing was happening to him that had happened to all the others. God said the he understood, but the Devil ought to know how important he was, he could not simply shirk his duties, it was not that simple, God needed him, and needed him to be strong. And all this was amicable. This conversation tells us that it is crucial for us to take action, strive, and put in effort. Forever the active deed takes supremacy over other forms of human existence. In the beginning in Genesis, when it is declared, “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” this may be to intellectualistic. Perhaps sensibility will do, in the beginning was the Sense. In the beginning there was the Deed. The Big Bang was when the cells of God began to divide. One may well be a bit suspicious of offers and guarantees, of salvation by a guru. How this can be done without thwarting Nature’s intent to develop us fully on all sides is difficult to see. If we are granted absolution from such effort, we shall be robbed of the important values implicit in self-effort. This is why people consider human beings to be an experiment. We are supposed to see what we are made of and overcome our destructive nature and heal, love and create. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

The searcher who is undeceived by fine phrases and knows when to look for the self-interest behind them, will know also when emphasis on the need of a master is cunningly or emotionally turned into exaggeration of the need. I will be the most deferential of beings before the teaching and in the presence of a truly illuminated being. However, I will stubbornly resist, and stand firm on my ground, when I am asked to surrender my intellectual freedom and become one’s bonded disciple, open no longer to the teaching or influence of any other being. One has to detach oneself—or to let oneself become detached by book or teacher—from false ideas, conventional fallacies, or blind leadership. The statement of high truth made by any prophet or sage will always remain an individual interpretation—this is a point that is too often unnoticed or unknown or unacceptable. All history authenticates it. The highest authority by which any mystic can speak is really one’s higher self’s. One revelation and communication cannot therefore be valid for, or binding upon, other beings. If, however, they do accept one’s pronouncements as such, they do so as a venture of faith. When a mystic takes one’s inner voice to be nothing less than God’s, one’s inner experience to be nothing else than the uttermost union with God, and then proceeds to use them as justification for imposing one’s commands on other mortals, one is no longer a true mystic. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

One has introduced an “other.” One no longer touched the perfect unity of one’s own innermost being but has returned to the World of duality. And because no finite being can really become the infinite God, that “other” reduces itself to being a figment of one’s imagination at best or a lying, possessing spirit at worst. Full enlightenment is not attainable, expect the exuberant emotional fancy of over-enthused followers, for the gulf between being and God is too deep and too wide to be crossed. However, partial enlightenment is attainable, for something like godlike has been reflected into the human being’s heart. However, if it is impossible to become a part of God, it is possible to become a Child of God—that is, a being inspired and guided by God. In time one’s relation to the higher self becomes more intimae than any Earthly friendship, closer than any human union could ever be. Yet it always remains a relation, never becomes an absorption; always a nearness, never a merger. We never become God. We only become a channel for part of God’s light, wisdom, and power. If perfect union, is not attainable, what is attainable is the intimate presence of, and mental communion with, God in our heart, which brings peace and truth. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Social courage requires the confronting of two different kinds of fear. The first is called life fear. This is the fear of living autonomously, the fear of being abandoned, the need for dependency on someone else. It shows itself in the need to throw one’s self so completely into a relationship that one has no self left with which to relate. One becomes, in effect, a reflection of the person he or she loves—which sooner or later becomes boring to the partner. This is the fear of self-actualization. The opposite fear is called death fear. This is the fear of being totally absorbed by the other, the fear of losing one’s self and one’s autonomy, the fear of having one’s independence taken away. This is the fear most associated with men, for they seek to keep the back door open to beat a hasty retreat in case the relationship becomes too intimate. Both kind of fear have to be confronted, in varying proportions to be sure, by both men and women. All our lives we oscillate between these two fears. They are, indeed, the forms of anxiety that lie in wait for anyone who cares for another. However, if we are to move to self-realization, the confronting of these two fears, and the awareness that one grows not only by being one’s self but also by participating in other selves, is necessary. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Power was originally a sociological term, a category used chiefly to describe the actions of nations and armies. However, as students of the problem have increasingly realized that power depends upon emotions, attitudes, and motives, they have turned to psychology for the needed clarification. In psychology, power means the ability to affect, to influence, and to change other persons. Each person exists in an interpersonal web, analogous to magnetic fields of force; and each one propels, repels, connects, identifies with others. Thus such considerations as status, authority, and prestige are central to the problem of power. I have used the phrase “sense of significance” to refer to a person’s conviction that one counts for something, that one has an effect on others, and that one can get recognition from one’s fellows. What is the relationship between power and force? Certainly force, the lowest common denominator of power, has been widely identified with power in America; it is the automatic first association with power of most people in this country. This is the chief reason power has been scorned and disparaged as a dirty word. Power is the coercive force in the middle ground between power as energy and power as violence. Not to depend upon and utilize force is simply to be without a foothold in the real World. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

In Loving Memory of Jill Harris’ Grandmother “Boomba.”