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I Have Been Struck by the Way that Most People Finally Say Good-Bye!
The final good-bye does not involve words, almost as if words lone are insufficient to communicate their true feelings. The ideas that people gather over time about what a couple is supposed to be like is derived from overt messages and less direct influences from their family, neighborhood, school, ethnic community, racial, religious, and class identity. Management of feeling and expression enhances the functioning of groups by allowing continuity of action, building solidarity among members, and indicating status differences. Expressive control allows collective action to continue without the situation becoming redefined as the interrupted action or novelty that emotional arousal implies. To further highlight this illustration, expressive control suppresses the potential embarrassment in intimate examinations by a medical professional. Nonemotional voice tines and other nonintimate gestures suppress stress, giving the interaction a routine, technical meaning. A similar display rule in public settings shields onlookers from intimate gestures that would disrupt civil comportment. Kissing, fondling, and other gestures between lovers are normally prohibited in public settings. Intimate expressions remind onlookers that they are being excluded from a desirable relationship. Violators of this display rule are usually the young, tourists, and others who disregard public sensitivity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
The most simple and direct type of human communication does not need words. Let us awaken tomorrow with all our zest and seal by embracing and creating life. Sentiment management can build group solidarity. The disruptive effects of envy are controlled universally by belief systems that proscribe envy, and by norms that diminish conditions for envy. These norms require that enviable goods be concealed from observation, that people show humility over good fortune, and that enviable objects or events be shared symbolically or materially. Solidarity can also be enhanced by evocation of humor. Laughter and humor among hospital patents has been observed to be invitations to decrease social distance, emphasizing shared experiences and common definitions of the situation. The liberating effect of joined laughter consists in the consensus that it brings about in a brief span of time. As soon as humans discovered the existence and function of the heart, they recognized that it was influenced by human companionship and love. Most of us have, at one time or another, felt our hearts beating rapidly when we are close to those we love or, occasionally, when we have been offended by others. Many of us have felt our heart sink, as if pressed by some crushing weight, after the loss of loved ones. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The psychological impact of suddenly finding oneself a patient in a hospital can be devastating. Lying in bed with needles in one’s arms, tubes in one’s chest recording every heartbeat on a television screen, being forces to use a bedpan, threatened with imminent death, rendered totally helpless and dependent on others—the experience is shattering. As his heart blips ominously on a television screen next to his bed, a patient’s life is reduced to a few essentials. What does it all mean? Is he going to die? Would he have done anything differently? The World of the patient’s wife or children or loved ones is also reduced to a few stark essentials, for the man or woman they visit in such a unit may not be alive the next time they come back. What do you say in such circumstances—what can you sat to help—what is important to communicate? The very existence of units that house people faced with the imminent possibility of death helps outline in stark simplicity certain elementary facts about life. One of those is our basic need to communicate. We ought always to thank God for you, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you, and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. Assumptions are ideas which one holds to be true without any proof that they are true—things that are taken for granted. Some people are more gifted at living than others. They do have an effect on those around them, but the process stops there because there is no way of describing in technical terms just what it is they do. Expression management is a continual affirmation of a group’s structure of status and deference. We may claim statuses by displaying affective coolness when greater involvement would ordinarily be expected. Some male groups admire men who can attract and conquer a beautiful woman without becoming involved, or who can engage in homosexual prostitution while displaying affective detachment. Business managers are expected to control their emotional reactions, in contrast to ordinary workers who are not believed to be able to do so. The value of humanistic psychology is not limited to the mentally unwell. Its techniques can be useful in your life, but they should not be used to manipulate other people. Psychology can be most useful in helping you to become more fully human. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
High status includes the power to elicit beneficial and optimistic gestures from subordinates and to inhibit their hostile expressions. Smiling and laughter are usually offered upward in statues hierarchies, ostensibly indicating pleasant, egalitarian relations and concealing status differences temporarily when the later have invited a decrease in social distance. In traditional Far Eastern cultures, a subordinate is expected to conceal anger or sulk when criticized, and to mask these feelings by showing pleasure at being corrected. In contemporary New World societies, women are more likely than men to smile, even when angered or frustrated. Women’s initial facial expression of anger is masked or covered up instantly. Groups manage sentiments through the kinds of information they allow to enter open awareness. Growing numbers of physicians now recognize that the health of the human heart depends not only on such factors as genetics, diet, and exercise, but also to a large extent on the social and emotional healthy of the individual. A fully human person values human beings above material goods, and feels strongly that human rights are far more important than material rights. These also recognize they have a capacity for enjoyment and pleasure, and they try to be real and open in their relationships with others. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
People who are fully human are willing to risk another person’s reaction to his or her open expression of feelings. They use openness and authenticity, not to manipulate or control, but to share knowledge of oneself with others. Hatred is sustained by emphasizing an enemy’s perceived negative qualities, overlooking or explaining away anything favorable, and then directing hatred toward this contrast conception. Love between parents and their grown children may be strengthened by limited contact that allows earlier conflicts to be forgotten. Generational gaps in attitudes and behavior are accentuated by accurate knowledge about each other, weakening love bonds. Selective recall is sometimes a conscious feeling-management technique. College men reported control over jealousy by prohibiting any mention of their girlfriends’ previous lovers. The couple jointly censured anyone who indiscreetly disclosed information about the woman’s earlier relationships. Sentiments are managed by sensitivity and avoidance within the social framework of memory. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you to, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders so that you will not be dependent on anybody (1 Thessalonians 4.11).” #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
When faces with danger or the threat of danger, human beings can derive an enormous sense of comfort from their fellow humans. Whether the danger is artificially contrived in a laboratory or part of the infinite variety of real life stresses, human beings instinctively seek out each other’s company in adverse circumstances. In all our distress and persecution, we are encouraged about you because of your faith. For now, we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord. How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you? Night and day, we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith. Now may our God and Father himself clear the way for us to come to you. May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and virtuous in the presence of our God and Father. When someone’s life is in mortal peril, the medical effectiveness of proper care is well documented. Incidence of sudden death dropped by 56 percent in hospitals that are trained to properly treat a person’s symptoms and offer emotional support. Also, it is clear that the heart of human relationships and human love ultimately moves belong anything that can be objectively described or measured. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Love and Virtue—Joy to Continue Living Together
God did not call us to be impure, but to live a virtuous life. Therefore, those who reject this instruction does not reject humanity but God, who gives us this virtuous Spirit. For each unsuccessful or incomplete relationship in your past, there are also moments for you to honor. Effective social communication does not require feelings to be consistent with expressive gestures. Displaying a gesture in the absence of any corresponding feeling is a form of obeisance to society, showing that one recognizes the appropriate sentiment even if he or she does not feel it. Mouring is not a natural movement of private feelings, but is a duty imposed by the group. It is a ritual attitude one is forced to adopt out of respect for custom, but which is, in large measure, independent of one’s affective state. While people do feel the loss of an individual when they pass into Heaven, and it can take years to let go of the pain from their departure from Earth, even a lifetime for some, certain cultures are also made to mourn publicly to show respect. For instance, after the passing of her daughter and husband, Mrs. Sarah Winchester was celibate and never remarried, nor did she allow men, who were not her employees, into her mansion. She also wore black and abstained from social functions and kept to herself, she did not even allow photographers or painters to reproduce her image out of respect for her husband. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
We have been taught by God to love each other. People learn more about themselves from each missed connection, bruised feeling, or wounded heart. These situations are valuable building blocks in the creation of our whole self. The aim of learning through soul is to increase porosity on the side of giving out and to reduce it on the side of taking in. This is not an abstract process, but something that can be seen in the World. Our Sun is the best instance of porosity that gives out and does not take in. Our Sun is a star, and all the stars gives out without taking in, until they die and become a blackhole. Life is the most beautiful and precious thing upon the Earth and has the power to pull down kings and princesses. Western civilization has been described as the gradual domestication of impulsive expression—an increasing tendency to self-consciously check our behavior and mold it to group standards. Public expression of affect has been controlled by an intensifying range and rigor of restraints since the Middle Ages. Violations of display rules are met with shame, embarrassment, and disgust in an ever-broadening scope of situations. People are free and all things are given to them which are expedient to humanity. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
For middle-class parents, deviant and immature temper may signal serious difficulty in an individual’s attempt at self-mastery. Colonial Americas believed that feeling can be channeled, but its basic nature cannot be altered. Social control was directed at regulating behavior, rather than at shaping inner impulses. A belief that emotion is disclosed involuntarily and inevitably became widespread in the nineteenth century. If a person were genuinely moved, the feeling would show beyond any power of the person to conceal it. Withdrawal from feeling itself became the only recourse, if one’s feelings were not to be read by others in public through gestures, slips in speech, and other cues. Suppression of both feeling and gestures made them consistent. These cultural values and beliefs are reflected in expression and feeling management when we indicate their meaning to the social self. And not choose eternal death, according to the will of the flesh and the evil which is therein, which gives the spirit of the adversary power to captivate, to bring you down to hell, that he may reign over you in his own kingdom. Soul learning does not consist of the internalization of knowledge, the determination of right mean, the achievement of accuracy, but is to be found in what sounds right. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9It was discovered in ancient psychology that the soul sings. At one time, it was possible to hear celestial sounds as one viewed the aurora borealis, which the solar particles blown into the Earth’s magnetic field more than 60 miles above the Earth’s surface. The movement of the planets in their relation to each other could be heard. We manage our feelings and gestures after indicating to ourselves the probable meaning that they would have for other people. We transform feeling and expression according to their implications for our self-conception, our more stable, continuous, unifying idea of the real me. A self-conception is a working compromise between one’s ideals and values and the self-images one infers from how others react to one’s feelings and behavior. Some self-images will be accepted as representative of one’s self-conception, but other images will be rejected as spurious or unrepresentative of one’s real, deeper identity. In situations and relationships that we value in relation to self, we pursue credit for optimistic images, and seek to avoid responsibility for feelings and acts that generate negative self-images. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
We manage expression and feeling by taking our self-conception into account in at least three ways: assuming or avoiding responsibility for a sentiment, detecting social support for the meaning of a sentiment, and committing oneself to a relationship. Our-self image in a situation reflects the appropriateness of our feeling; we feel proud or guilty about feeling a certain way. The incongruity between a trifling event and a deep sense of shame can evoke a double shame; we are ashamed because of the original episode and shame because we feel so deeply about something so slight that a sensible person would not pay any attention to it. If we do not modify our feelings into an appropriate quality and intensity, it becomes merged with our moral reaction to it. For example, we may feel guilty love if, as in traditional Japan, love marriages are defined as selfish. Even in modern Japan, individuals who have contracted love marriages are often reported to feel considerable guilt about it. However, keep in mind, you are the author and can go back to check out all the separate parts of your story when you need to. Reviewing old relationships is hard work emotionally, no matter how carefully one has been trying to use the past as material to study in the service of creating a healthier present. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
Society requires us to undertake many actions for which we do not want to assume full responsibility. These actions may have uncertain outcomes, or conflict with our predispositions not to perform them. Feeling management that intensifies feeling can facilitate these behaviors while shielding the self from responsibility. A functionally determined emotion carries one through the situation, such as the bitterness which enters into the divorce process and so often disappears just afterwards. The institutionalized irrationality of romantic love overcomes self-restraint in courtship and guides lovers into marriage, although rational self-seeking might dictate against this certain commitment. A socially structured and legitimated passion conquers doubt and gives behavior spontaneity, while exempting the self from full responsibility for its outcome. How does this intensification of feeling occur? Emotion is the experience of passivity, during which we interpret our behavior as being beyond our control. Deeply internalized desires and aversions erupt as compelling passions. The soldier for whom fury or courage has become second nature rushes into combat in spite of its dangers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
Overwhelmed by emotion, we enact socially prescribed punishment even through other norms forbid aggression. The self is not held responsible for violating those norms, however, because it was passive within the experience of emotion. The passive self may be an important interpretation we make within romantic love, jealousy, indignation, and other intense sentiments. For example, a study found that students who believed that life events are generally caused by external forces beyond their control reported falling in love more often than others, and viewed love as a mysterious, emotional experience. However, there are consequences. Samantha, for instance, learned her lesson about lack of self-control. She grew more self-blaming when she began to watch herself distancing from Darren. She had fled from her first marriage to escape the burden of being forced to be a mother to her husband. Her leaving reinforced her growing image of herself as hard-hearted and unfair. However, she had not adequately resolved her decision to leave her first marriage, so her self-blame became almost immobilizing as she felt herself pulling away from Darren. Moreover, the self also enters into feeling and expression management by restraining sentiments that we anticipate would not be validated meaningfully by a particular person or group. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
By fully engaging in almost any form of group or community, we will have more people to learn from, people whose actions and ways of being can teach us a lot about relationships. This can be particularly helpful when one has been stuck in a narrow, little emotional room filled with our solitary thoughts about closeness, or when we have been limiting oneself to the thoughts and beliefs contained within our couple relationship. In some cultures, jealousy is nothing short of a crime. Some societies have a code, and if one is hurt in these light affairs, one must expect no sympathy. So, if one falls in love, one conceals it from one’s friends as best one can. Our self-indication of a sentiment’s meaning to others may lead us to segregate it from another sentiment that an audience would see as being incompatible. For example, Samantha and Darren were undergoing marital separation, and much like others, they desired to re-unit, at least temporarily, but they also wanted to express anger against one another. A common pattern that has been observed was couples would meet secretly to express affection, concealed from the social circle of kin and friends who had observed the bitter rivalry in the couple and would not understand the contradictory sentiment. That is why it is best for us to stay out of people’s business when they have a dispute. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Feeling management may reflect the self as a commitment to a relationship the supplementary character of faithfulness is directed toward the continuance of the relationship, independently of the original forces that brought it about. Communes, families, fraternal organizations, and other groups require love as a voluntary, responsible commitment to enhance the lives and growth of other persons. Groups foster love by eliminating sources of seduction, subversion, and competing loyalties. Love is routinized to promote steady, unrewarded care, effort, and self-sacrifice. People withdraw from commitments by rationing or restricting feeling. Women, more than men, report diminishing their love consciously in faltering relationships. Women also identify more problems in their heterosexual relationships, and women’s scores on a longitudinal measure of love predict relationship outcomes better than do the love scores of their male partners. The more vulnerable and emotionally perceptive partner is likely to modulate feeling more consciously in response to relationship trends. “It is God’s will that we should be sanctified: that we should avoid sexual immorality; that each of us should learn to control our own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like a heathen, who does not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong their family nor take advantage of them. The Lord will punish people for all such sins, as we have already told you (1 Thessalonians 4.3-4).” #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
A Sigh for Lack of Heaven and Angels Know the Rest
Doubt me, my dim companion! Why, God would be content with but a fraction of the love poured thee without a stint. The whole me, forever, what more can one—say, quick, that I may share a natural gift of endowment with thee! It cannot be my spirit, for that was thine before; I ceded all of dust I knew—what opulence the more had I, a humble soul, whose farthest of degree was that one might, some distant Heaven, dwell timidly with thee! Give up your abstraction and you will give up your question along with it. Do not think, do not question me. A vocabulary of sentiments is a linguistic expression of experiences shared by group members, and mirrors their interest and concerns. Each concept imposes meaning on experience as a way of preserving distinctions that are of importance in group life. Sentiment vocabularies differ among subcultures in a complex society such as social classes, men and women, and age cohorts. Modern women distinguish between liking and loving more clearly than men. The socioeconomic implications of mate selection pressure women to be more cautious and interpretive than men in their heterosexual relationships, in order to distinguish male friends from potential husbands. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Philosophy is the love of knowledge or truth; its aim is personal salvation. It springs from the love of being; philosophy is humanities loving endeavor to perceive the order of being and attune oneself to it. Generally speaking, in comparison to the working class, middle-class language contains more words and makes finer, more complex differentiations of experience. This elaborated code permits the middle class to vernalize feelings and to react to them more precisely. A genuine statement must be capable of conclusive verification. If there is no possible way to determine whether a statement is true, then that statement has no meaning whatsoever. For the meaning of a statement is the method of its verification. Gnosis desires dominion over being; in order to seize control of beings, Gnosticism uses heresy which is made up of a diverse set of beliefs. Gnostics for political mass movements, and their theories and jargons have shaped the thinking of millions of people in the Western World, very often without their being aware of it. Gnostics believe that global warming is real, while others think it is an act of God. God has promised to “Turn desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs (Psalm 107.35).” Many fail to understand that the Earth is alive and will not always stay the same. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Sentiments that are devalued or of little practical importance in a culture are poorly discriminated for lack of an expressive vocabulary. Because moral sanction in some cultures they operate mainly through teasing, ridicule, and other forms of shame, these feelings have undergone considerable cultural definition and elaborator in contrast, the feeling of guilt is culturally played down to the point of conceptual invisibility. Similarly, feelings that we term sadness or longing contradiction, these societies value and are not culturally organized as sentiments. The rule and prescription actually disturbs or even hinders the genuine illumination of life. It is an act of spiritual violence. Separation and isolation from others evoke sensations that these fake news practitioners describe in terms of nonspecific, troubled, or subdued bodily states, such as heaviness or weariness. Without meaningful concepts for designating a feeling to self and others, the person’s emotional response remains private and socially amorphous. Sensations are served from their external social cause, minimizing the social significance of the event. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Power and status are the significant relational meanings to which people respond emotionally. Cultures and individuals vary in the specific stimuli and language that reflect power and status relationship, but power and status are the basic dimensions to which people are sensitized that underlie the differentiation of emotions. To use one’s influence usually implies actively and intentionally working through or on other people, and one who can do this recurrently has influence. Of course, people who have power (that is, who can do many things they want and induce many other people to accept their initiative) are likely on that account to influence (that is, to have effects on) other aspects of society in ways that neither they nor their social inferiors necessarily understand. Other classes, envying and admiring them, may imitate their tastes and practices, and in this sense, they may be influenced by them. However, this influence is not a manifestation of power; it is only one of its effects. Emotions result from real, imagined, or anticipated outcomes involving excess or deficit in power status. For example, power deficits produce fear or anxiety; status loss generates anger or depression. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
There is also accepted evidence that specific physiological states underlie different emotions to some degree, so that physiological, psychological, and sociological (power-status) levels of differentiation coincide. Experiences, thoughts and emotions are translated into chemical expressions or codes by our bodies. If you have an emotionally charged experience or memory, that experience activates the brain’s limbic system, where it gets filtered and associated with other information and catalyzes, a chain reaction release of ligands (peptides, hormones). The receptor, having received a message, transmits it from the surface of the cell deep into the cell’s interior, where the message can change the state of the cell dramatically. New proteins are manufactured and that is how the emotional life and stress levels can actually be hard on your body, and then cause a response. One sentiment may be defined as a precondition for another sentiment, so that grief is not regarded as credible or authentic unless the mourner is known to have loved the deceased. Alternatively, the consequent sentiment may be used as a criterion for inferring the precondition. “You must have loved him very much,” the mourner is told. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
One sentiment may be believed to transform into another sentiment consistently. We may believe that men and women cannot be friends without falling in love eventually. Sentiments may be seen as opposites (love and hatred), or as acceptable substitutes from another person (guilt and shame). A belief that humor when we are feeling awe. These beliefs provide ideological support for a sentiment’s social reality. Any doubt about one sentiment’s reality would have to challenge the whole system of interconnected meanings. Sentiment vocabularies change historically in content and appropriateness. A shift was detected in culturally approved sentiments toward children. A medieval pattern of harsh egalitarianism changed to a sentiment of tenderness, protection, coddling, and charm over childish antics. Historical forces promoting this change included the higher survival rate of infants, a shift from social life to home life for families, and the emergence of childhood as a distinctive life stage. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Many new shades and varieties of sentiments are developing in modern times, but with less feeling. Refinement of feeling is diffusing from the higher classes to the common people, whose lives are becoming more varied and less crudely determined by primitive conditions. Although primitive societies made occasional but sever demands of feeling, with alternations of apathy and explosion, modern emotional life if made up of diverse but mostly mild excitements. However, those who imagine up some vain thing in their hearts, that is was wrought by people and by the power of the great deceiver, to lead away people and deceive the hearts of the people; and thus, did the adversary get possession of the hearts of the people, insomuch that he did blind their eyes and lead them away to believe that the doctrine of God was a foolish and a vain thing. And it came to pass the people began to wax strong in wickedness and abominations; and they dud not believe that there should be any more signs or wonders given; and the great adversary did go about, leading away the hearts of the people, tempting them and causing them that they should do great wickedness in the land (3 Nephi 2.3).” Grief, pain, and humiliation may be experienced at the loss of exclusive love and favors, but if the community does not sanction one’s feelings, they can hardly express themselves as jealousy. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Dare You See a Soul at the White Heat?
If you were coming in the Spring, I would brush the Winter by with half a smile and half a spurn, as love does fly. If I could see you in a year, I would wind the months in balls, and put them each in separate drawers, until their time befalls. If only centuries delayed, I would count them on my hand, subtracting till my fingers dropped. If certain, when this life was out, that yours and mine should be, I would toss it yonder like a rind, and taste eternity. However, not, all ignorant of the length of time’s uncertain wing, it goads me, like the goblin bee, that will not state its sting. Anticipation of a relationship can stimulate arousal. An individual awaiting a loved one’s return may work up a feeling for a spontaneously intimate reunion. Imaginative rehearsals stir anxiety, muscular tension, and ready gestures for the forthcoming interaction. Anticipatory arousal is functionally important when immediate, full enactment of a sentiment is required. Parental love cannot be left to a gradual, haphazard acquisition. Parents-to-be are primed for the infant’s arrival by anticipatory socialization and by the anxiety cued by the mother’s pregnancy. The newborn’s amorphous personality serves as the perfect screen for the projection of parental emotions, as sentiments long held in abeyance are released like coiled springs by the baby’s birth. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
A death-blow is a life-blow to some who, till they died, did not alive become; who, had they lived, and died, but when they died, vitality begun. Anticipation of tragic events, or worry work, focuses attention on possible dangers and allows planning. Anticipatory grief precedes the death of a loved one. This anticipatory sentiment sensitizes survivors to the impending change of relationship, and allows them to experience part of the emotion appropriate to the disaster before it occurs. The right to perish might be thought an undisputed right, attempt it, and the Universe upon the opposite will concentrate its officers—you cannot even die, but nature and humankind must pause to pay you scrutiny. Memories of past interactions and relationships evoke heightened feeling within the extended time frame of sentiments. Reminiscent arousal often develops when members of an enduring group, such as a family, recall shared sentiments from their collective past. Reference to some symbol that designates the whole event triggers an in-group meaning, including the corresponding sentiment. Through collective worship, faith is created and periodically recreated through rites, as a result of which people are more confident because they feel themselves stronger, and they really are stronger, because forces which were languishing are now reawakened in the consciousness. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
As people experiment with deepening their awareness in family and social influences, one will find that one can be creative and playful in learning more about oneself. This is also an area where one can invite their partner, or someone an individual is getting to know, to join in awareness skills of curiosity and mindfulness. Group membership provides the reference points and categories in which memories reside. Individual memories become assimilated to collectively defined and revised memories, which in enduring groups are partial to optimistic, bonding sentiments. New feet within my garden go, new fingers stir the sod; a troubadour upon the elm betrays the solitude. New children play upon the green, new weary sleep below; and still the pensive Winter returns, and still the punctual snow! Take care, for God is here, that is all. The breaking of the day addeth to my degree; if any ask me how, artist, who drew me so, must tell! Arousal may be stimulated by observing another person’s situation or that person’s effective expressions, conventional or innate. Perhaps the important sociological questions about gestures is not their origin, but whether natural ones have different social effects than conventional ones. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
A picture of deep connection and happiness for one person can be another person’s nightmare of disconnection and dissatisfaction. The point is to keep talking about it and see where the conversation takes you. Rapid transmission and intensification of collective feelings occur when people respond directly to innate gestures instead of interpreting them. This unites people on the most primitive level to overcome problems and occurs in groups where people are sensitizing to one another’s reactions. Asserting that the basic communicative expressions in rituals are innate signals, people are vulnerable to control by elites who gain power over ritual resources that excite our natural affectivity. Our innate responsiveness to gestures like crying, jeering, and laughter leaves us susceptible to political and emotional manipulation. However, the Spirit of the Lord is Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no disposition to do evil, but to do good continually. And we, ourselves, also, through the infinite goodness of God, and the manifestation of his Spirit, have great view of that which is to come; and were it expedient, we could prophesy of all things. And it is the faith which we have had on the things which our king has spoken unto us that has brought us to this great knowledge, whereby we do rejoice with such exceedingly great joy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
And we are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do his will, and to be obedient to his commandments in all things that he shall command us, all the remainder of our days, that we may not bring upon ourselves a never-ending torment, as has been spoken by the angel, that we may not drink out of the cup of the wrath of God. We have a choice, we do not have to be the victims of loneliness. Remembering and understanding the lessons of the past will give one much more control over how we choose to act in the present. Emotional arousal is generated by the singing, dancing, chanting, and other ritual actions of people in collective assembly, which awakens religious sentiments upon reaching a certain level of intensity. This social effervescence changes the conditions of psychic activity: vital energies are overexcited, passions are active, sensations stronger. This arousal is socially interpreted. Excitement becomes generalized to religious symbols and meanings, which are imbued with a sacred character as extraordinary as the feeling generated by collective ritual. The person feels oneself transformed and consequently transforms the environment one finds oneself in. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Not knowing when the dawn will come I opened every door. Arousal may result from emotional contagion, but soon becomes interpreted according to social meanings Sentiments are finely discriminated for aspects of relationships and personality that are highly valued and strongly regulated. This is see more easily in cross-cultural studies. Traditionally, people in the British Colombian Village of Kelowna live in a manner which strongly enforces gentleness, mildness, honesty, and even-tempered restraint in expressing affection and disagreement. Respect for kin, age, gender, and other status differences in the central them in Kelowna, where the vocabulary makes fine distinctions among feeling states associated with respectful behavior. There is generally a feeling of respectful politeness in the community in which one displays kind impulses so as not to disturb the emotional equanimity of a spiritually superior person. These people made s covenant with God, and they are called the children of God, his sons and daughters; for behold this day he has spiritually begotten them; for he says that their hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, they are born of him and have become his sons and daughters. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Life is but a Walking Shadow
Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in one’s own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others. One will notice that the psychological state of a person in an attitude of reflection is entirely different from that of a person who is observing one’s psychic process. In reflection there is a greater play of psychic activity than in the most attentive self-observation; this is shown even by the tense attitude and the wrinkled brow of the person observing himself or herself. Facial, gestural, and postural expressions of certain emotions are universal and biologically determined, the product of human evolution. These expressive acts formerly had functional utility as internal adjustments needed in emergencies and as signals to one’s own species, enemies, and prey. For example, clenching one’s jaw in anger is a preparation for, and a warning of, biting. Emotional expressions are basically continuous between human beings and lower animals, but have lost their functional utility for humans and survive as remnants of evolution. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
An emotion is a sequence of cognitive appraisal, feeling, impulses to act, and overt behavior that has evolved to cope with the environmental stimulus that triggers the emotion. Destruction of barriers is enhanced by anger, for example, and the avoidance of harmful substances s promoted by disgust. All species have the same basic emotions behaviorally, but the subjective element increases in higher species. Basic emotions combine into mixed emotions. Thus, contempt is a mixture of anger and disgust. Embarrassment also protects social norms. Wen norms conflict, a person’s embarrassment draws blame onto oneself and away from the norms. This temporary sacrifice of identity shows that one is perturbed about one’s current performance, promises to improve, and recognizes the norms. Sentiments should be analyzed for the adaptive functions they serve for groups and for individuals within a group. An emotion is the outcome and not the cause of bodily reactions. Bodily changes directly follow the perception of the exciting fact, and our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion. This is the spirit that beauty must every induce: wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all delight. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Each emotion is distinguished in our awareness by its unique physiological correlate, a distinctive pattern of change in the heart, lungs, tear ducts, and other organs. We do not tremble because we are afraid; rather, we are afraid because we tremble. Visceral changes do contribute to emotional intensity. The face not only expresses emotion, but also stimulates a corresponding feeling. Unlike the viscera, facial expressions could therefore stimulate differentiated and immediate emotions. Evidence currently suggests that facial expression can influence emotional intensity, but, as with the viscera, discrete qualities of emotion are not produces. Facial expressions also have been studied for evidence of an innate, universal set of human emotions. In a typical study, photographs of posed facial expression representing selected emotions are shown to subjects in different cultures. Subjects agree substantially in matching each photograph with a label chosen from a short list of emotions. There are distinctive facial expressions for anger, disgust, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise, and possibly other emotions, researchers conclude, and each emotion is expressed the same universally. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Is Heaven a physician? They say that God can heal; but medicine posthumous is unavailable. Is Heaven an exchequer? They speak of what we owe; but that negotiation I am not a party to. There is not one special kind of purposive activity in which we expect a person to engage just because the individual is overjoyed or embarrassed. There are typical overt expressions of these emotions such as broad expansive movements and squirming, respectively. However, it seems that American society is becoming to loose and relaxed, and even mature adults in some industries are not as professional as they used to be. With the globalization, it is important that we try to be more careful with the messages that we send out. We should encourage peace and dialogue. Also, the cartoon faces in electronic messages is concerning. Certain hand gestures or contorted faces might be offensive to some cultures, as they are not necessarily universal. Also, in kindergarten, it might have been normal to give a student a simile face sticker or a star sticker on an assignment they did well on, but that might be considered condescending to do the same thing when sending a message to an adult. When we doubt whether the intensity or quality of our emotion is situationally appropriate, we define it by comparing ourselves with how others in a similar situation are reacting. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
As often happens, it is small things—small yet significant—which enables us to grasp the reality of change. It is the minute points which fascinate us, for they enable us to realize profound differences in the attitude of other people compared with our own. When people lack an explanation for their sensations, these subjects tend to feel and behave emotionally according to emotional cues displayed by another person in the situation. We interpret our emotion reactions not only be seeing how other react, but also by observing our own behavior. However, with collective behavior, a group of people can come together, who are misfits because they have deviant behaviors, and become the norm, and the people who fit (with the national goal) end up becoming minorities because a counterculture has taken over. Competitive relationships, where each person or group poses an obstacle to others’ goal attainment, often generate disjunctive sentiments such as a strong dislike. Sometimes when people communicate and define social unrest, which develops over disturbances in their usual form of living or from events that cannot be explained by existing cultural definitions, sentiment take on greater significance in guiding behavior. When a family’s task bonds are ineffective, love rises into mutual awareness, often sustaining the relationship until other bonds can once again stabilize the attachment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Relationship beginnings are characterized by high levels of stimulation. We are highly conscious of the other person and the sentiment that is developing toward him or her. Beginnings of romances, for example, pose a choice among alternative love partners. Anxious tension accompanies each new romantic involvement, contributing to passion. In order to infer that I am jealous, I must perceive that I feel aroused, attribute this feeling to someone’s threat to my love relationship (and not to some internal cause or other external cause), and decide that a twinge of jealousy is normal and appropriate in this situation. All human activities lead to personal growth and creativity are accompanied by a type of tension or excitement. Physiological studies have revealed certain disturbances in normal bodily functioning as regular features of emotional states. These include increased adrenalin secretion, increased heartbeat, alteration of the distribution of blood to various parts of the body, changes in patters of respiration, suspension of digestive activities, and increases in red corpuscles in the blood. It is these changes which are manifested in the involuntary overt expressions of emotion which have long been noted—paling, blushings, panting, trembling, and so on. And it is the sensation of these changes or some of their results which constitutes the felt disturbance or perturbation characteristic of emotion. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Because the ideology surrounding romance describes anxious tension as part of the experience, the sentiment is recognized when these sensations occur. Passionate feelings can be stimulated by sources other than direct attraction, such as guilt, loneliness, and sharply lowered self-esteem. These increase arousal which is attributed to the potential romantic partner in the same setting. Arousal may be interpreted as undeniable evidence for the continued vitality of a sentiment. We learn that romantic love requires frequent reiteration of its intensity to self and the partner. This testing for latent feeling may also occur in other passionate sentiments such as hatred, jealousy, and religious feeling. Heightened self-monitoring may itself generate or intensify arousal, as an anxious tension accompanying the repeated search for spontaneous feeling, but mainly when one expects to find heightened arousal. Love may be validated by shared excitement, quarrels and reconciliations, intimacy, and other episodes of intense feeling. Parental opposition to their college-age children’s love affairs was found to be associated with more intense attachment between the lovers. Emotional turmoil may have contributed to the lovers’ passion. Jealousy may be interpreted as evidence of a partner’s continued love. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
A study found that woman were told to avoid situations which might make her husband jealous, but to interpret his small expression of jealousy as evidence of his love. Arousal is not simply the source of a sentiment, then, but also a criterion by which its continuity can be validated. Dear Lord in Heaven, please wrap us in your love. Snuggle up tight, warm with forgiveness, safe in your light. Draw near to us and hold safe in your arms, melt any resentment, protect us from harm. Refining these impatient ores with hammer and with blaze, until the designated light repudiates the forge. How many Legions overcome? God, please completely take us under your wing, come and transform us and teach us unending love, pure truth, and sweet promise. Please heal all the hurt and pain until we become soft in your presence again so that we may give love and find love and freedom again. Dear God, loving essence of all there is. Please fill us with your sacred presence. Grant us your love and guidance and blessing as we explore the deep reaches of our hearts. We ask for your assistance in releasing that which stands in the way of true love. Our hearts our pure, our intentions are clear. Please bring us to our perfect partners. “And also, the Lord will remember the prayers of the righteous, which have been put up onto him for them (Mormon 5.21).” #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Hope Preaches in the Soul
Beautiful objects arouse pleasure. Beauty relaxes, but the experience of sublimity is of great emotional intensity. Every sentiment is organized around a relationship to a social object, usually another person or a group such as a family. We associate a sentiment closely with particular persons or groups. If we try to recall love, pity, or other sentiments, we usually think of people by whom or toward whom these sentiments have been felt. We feel shame, pride, guilt, or embarrassment toward our selves as social objects when we imagine how other people judge our appearance to them. A sentiment may develop around a nonhuman object, such as love for a pet or reverence for a deity, but the object is usually personified with human qualities. The soul is said to strive toward beauty, which is a manifestation of the spiritual force that animates all of reality. Given that beauty is an objective property, attainable artistically and knowable critically, by reference to the rules, the question of the percipient’s response to it is usually scant. However, beauty can be expected to arouse the appropriate response, which is referred to briefly and loosely as pleasure or delight. It is the total object, the whole of form and expressiveness and what the form is of, that possesses the beauty. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Just as one can see the Sunlight without looking into the Sun itself, so can one have knowledge of divine ideas. A sentiment established a framework of meaning within which specific events, gestures, and sensations can be given a social interpretation. A sentiment is identified through an organization of responses toward a person, not through particular acts viewed separately. For example, a sentiment may be detected by others even when the individual does not acknowledge his or her feelings. One may deny being in love with a person, but may be imputed the love sentiment by observers who detect a pattern of protection and preoccupation with another person. We believe that we have detected a man’s love for a woman when he demonstrated joy in her presence, sorrow in her prolonged absence, fear when there is danger of losing her, and anger when she is criticized. The characteristic organization of hatred includes being sorry over the enemy’s good fortune, feeling anger at his or her very presence, being happy at their misfortune, and sensing anxiety over his or her possible success. We interpret, justify, and anticipate acts and feelings in relation to the sentiment’s overall pattern. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
We attain these ideas in terms of the residual effects of the divine actions—effects which remain in the soul like habitual or buried memories. Our mind is simultaneously enlightened so that it is moved to judge correctly about the object and is hence in accord with God’s own mind on the subject. A sentiment sustains a relationship as an enduring, latent tendency to respond emotionally and overtly toward another person when the opportunity is given. Situational constraints often inhibit direct expression. One factor is over view of what the relationship means to the other person. Sentiments differ in the importance of reciprocal feeling. Reciprocation of hatred will magnify animosity. Failure by the other to reciprocate romantic love may simply heighten the lover’s passion as much as reciprocation. The other person may validate a sentiment with an appropriate but different pattern of gesture and feeling, such as showing gratitude for my kindness. The meaning of a sentiment depends on how the other responds to it. When people have a bad experience, they are often more concerned about how they feel about it, than the issue itself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Timely and effective communications can help one manage negative sentiment, rebuild trust, and promote loyalty. We become highly aware of a sentiment when a controversial discrepancy arises. A single salient act can seem to contradict the whole pattern. Stealing from a loved one, helping an enemy, or cursing a deity are acts that call the sentiment into question. Most acts within a relationship, however, are assimilated into a sentiment and are anticipated and assessed as reflecting its meaning. Bodily sensations are an intermittent phase of every enduring sentiment. Arousal is more frequent and intense in passionate sentiments, such as romantic love, jealousy, and awe, than in others like kindness, loyalty, and gratitude. These visceral and muscular sensations are essentially autonomic arousal symptoms associated with the flow of adrenaline: heart palpitations, accelerated breathing, flushes, and tremor. However, they may be experienced simply as diffused, generalized excitement. Arousal does not persist unabated, even in passionate sentiments, but arises intermittently. Get involved with your business and reputation to reduce the risk of negative perceptions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Bodily sensations do not define the nature of the sentiment. Even if regulatory issues make your company leery of social media, it is becoming riskier not to have a readily available, reassuring presence online because your people expect you to be there. As individuals often voice concerns online, you may receive double the negative feedback if you do not respond. Even a few thoughtful communications can show people that you are listening and ready to help, and that is a good thing. Listen to people’s concerns, admit any mistakes, and be clear about how you will improve their experience. There are no explicit patterns of arousal that correspond to different sentiments. Instead, we interpret our sensation in terms of the encompassing relationship. A feeling of excitement can be interpreted as indicating the continued vitality of a sentiment, whether love or hatred. We express sentiments more spontaneously when we are aroused. Of course, we feel bodily sensations of various types much of the time, and many of these—dizziness, fatigue, hunger, aches—have nothing to do with social relationships. We are socialized to attend selectively to our own sensations, however, and to sometimes attribute them a social meaning in terms of the course of interaction with another person. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
A sentiment is expressed situationally through a person’s conventional gestures, such as kissing, and overt, involuntary bodily signs of arousal, such as trembling. A review of cross-cultural differences in gestures such as hand movements, laughter, crying, and posturing concluded that there is no natural language of emotional gesture. In dealing with negative sentiment, do not try to respond to everything. Focus on concerns to create the greatest optimistic response. Think beyond a simple apology or refund to what people might expect; what might delight them—perhaps a bonus gift or new benefit. By showings you care about your people and reputation, you may win loyalty and motivate them to praise your brand to others. For facial expressions of emotion, however, there is evidence that anger, disgust, fear, and several other emotions may be expressed and recognized similarly across very diverse cultures. Researchers admit however that in social situations, any natural, innate facial emotion is masked beneath culturally conventional expressions. Even when negative sentiment looms in social media, you can often find loyal customers who will defend your brand. Engage people directly to express appreciation, learn what they like about your company and how you might delight them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Your personal attention might motivate more business and prompt people to help influence more beneficial sentiment online. Social media is a powerful channel to quickly address key concerns, clarify misconceptions, and offer reassurance. Showing people that you are listening and that you care about how they feel can help transform negative sentiment into a winning experience. We interpret a conventional gesture, such as a smile, in terms of situational factors, previous interactions with a person, subtle details in expressive style, and other social criteria. Human gestures are parts of social communication that become significant to symbols when they arouse the same meaning in the observer as in the expressing person. We indicate ourselves the meaning of our own gestures in terms of the perspective of the other person and shape our gestures in terms of the perspective of the other person and shape our gestures according to the meaning we intend them to have. Gestures become meaningful when interpreted as sentiments, which serve as significant categories or symbols held in common by group members. “Those who live without God in the World, judgment of an everlasting punishment is just upon them; and they shall quake, and tremble, and shrink beneath the glace of God’s all-searching eye (Mosiah 27.31).” #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
All Love is the Love of Some Degree of Beauty
The love of God is the force that holds the universe together. Thus, it is asserted that love is a single principle permeating all things, from the material through the spiritual, and that this principle is the dynamic factor in cosmic change. There is no difference in essence between the attraction the elements have for one another and the forms of love that exist in human beings. Love, shame, gratitude, contempt, jealousy, and other affective states are experiences frequently and vividly in everyday social life. These states often include a psychic excitement expressed through bodily gestures, and, therefore, may seem to be too private and psychological to bear much relevance for sociology or to be amenable to sociological analysis. The sociological perspective allows us, however, to demonstrate how seemingly individual behavior and experience are shaped by social features, culture shapes the occasion, meaning, and expression of affective experience. Love, pity, indignation, and other sentiments are socially patterns of feelings, gestures, and meaning. One must lose oneself in order to find oneself, but in so doing, one finds that what one has really discovered is God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Differences in feeling, action, and meaning among sorrow, guilt, and love are socially created, and that is how we learn enduring societal relationships. Social life produces emergent dimensions of emotion that resist reduction to properties inherent in the human organism. One strong tradition takes the conscious feeling to be the emotion. Thus, a passion of the soul is perception, a conscious state, in which the soul is passively affected, as in sense perception, but in which what is perceived is attributed to the soul itself, rather than some physical body. Emotion is merely a sensual feeling, but is refined by communication and sympathetic imagination in primary-group relationships. Thus, love is a sentiment, while lust is not; resentment is, but not rage; the fear of disgrace or ridicule is, but not terror. Shame originates through the organizing influence of social processes upon arousal sensations, bodily gestures, and other emotional elements. If similar sentiments are found in different societies, their origin should be sought in similarities among social relationships, rather than in innate human nature. The one and only way to know what love, happiness, joy, and remorse is, is to actually experience these feelings. Gratitude, for example, supplements exchange and reciprocity relationships everywhere as a powerful means of social cohesion that effects the return benefit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Thus, the emotion is only cognitions which give rise to it and its expressions, whether voluntary or involuntary. A socially emergent dimension of affect is the prolonged time span of love, hatred, resentment, and most other sentiments. In enduring social relationships, previous interaction and anticipations of the relationship’s future course influence feeling. These social affects transcend the single situation, while rage, surprise, terror are confined to the duration of intense arousal and its transient stimulus. In contrast, a feeling like love or hatred reflects the developing properties of the social relationship over time. The significant sociological problem here is how changes in the social relationships are linked with shifts in the associated feelings. Sometimes when we say what we are feeling, we are actually saying what we are thinking. For example, “I feel that you are not hearing me” is a statement of perception or opinion, rather than of actual feeling, a statement that is debatable (unlike a straightforward statement of real feeling). If you cannot figure out what emotion(s) you are feeling, then give data about what sensations you are feeling: “There is a good fragrance in here” or “My heart is fluttering” or “I feel like a light just turned on in my head.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Many people suffer by shutting themselves off from their own depths. The structural coherence of feeling, gesture, meaning, and occasion for jealousy or indignation is maintained by social, not psychological, forces. The structure or pattern of jealously, for example, is socially constructed and meaningful. Jealously can be accompanied by diverse psychological dynamics and motives across individuals. One person may be mainly angry at the rival, another person may fear losing his or her partner, while yet another’s jealousy has to be prompted by pressure from concerned friends. The structural coherence of jealousy does not derive from these diverse psychological factors, but from social forces, such as how people respond to expressions of jealousy and how the course and meaning of jealousy are socially defined. Faithfulness to a relationship gradually supplements the psychic forces that originally brought the relationship about. These initial feelings and motives gradually weaken, but in spite of all variety of origin, the original psychic states attain, in the form of faithfulness, a certain similarity. Even a relationship begun for extrinsic reasons develops its own faithfulness which, in turn, gives rise to deeper and more adequate feeling states. That is how that popular term “catch feelings” came to be. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Truly fulfilling relations encompass empathy, vulnerability, and capacity for emotional literacy. The true power and resolve of relationships also comes from their authenticity, their capacity to anchor themselves in real integrity. Emotion is the modifiability of feeling, expression, and meaning in response to social interaction and cultural norms and beliefs. Love, guilt, and compassion are not fixed in innate human nature. Instead, we identify and act upon them in terms of social events, relationships, and values. Psychologists usually conceive of emotion as acting through the person, motivating and directing his or her behavior and experiences. In addition, that activation process may work mainly in the opposite direction, from consciousness and ongoing action toward feeling and gesture. The social person is sentient, reflecting upon feelings and sometimes changing feeling about how they are interpreted. For example, we may summon up feelings of love, or strive to diminish their intensity. We can also try to mobilize love in another person, directing our gestures to shape their feelings. There is a deeper life for humanity, a life in which responsibility and freedom are connected, a life in which happiness not the foundation of what we have, but in what we fundamentally are. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
On a larger, historical scale, love and other sentiments change in how they are expressed, where they are appropriate, and what they mean culturally. These social levels of change in feeling and expression are irreducibly independent from the physiological dynamics of emotion, and are an appropriate and important subject for sociological explanation. Emotion is activity and reactivity of the tissues and organs innervated by the autonomic nervous system. An emotion can occur without its typical overt expressions. One can be happy, or feeling love, or excited, or overjoyed, or even angry without anyone else even knowing it. Thus, it seems that the emotion itself is something inner which may or may not issue in overt behavior. Each of your emotions is worth getting to know very well—its nature, its purpose, its expression, its containment, its values, your history with it, your use and misuse of it. Even plants have emotions. I have two potted trees that have been touching for eight years, I move one of them, it took a month, but the other started leaning towards its mate. “And blessed at thou because thou hast established a church among this people; and they shall be established, and they shall be my people. Yeah, blessed is this people who are willing to bear my name (God); for in my name shall they be called; and they are mine” (Mosiah 26.17-18). #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The Culture of Poverty—It Tends to Perpetuate itself from Generation to Generation!
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. The social structural conditions to which the poor are exposed (chronic unemployment and under-employment, low income, lack of property ownership, absence of saving and chronic shortage of food, money, medical care, and other necessities of life) give rise to distinctive patterns of community and family disorganization. These, in turn, produce a distinctive set of beliefs, attitudes, and values (that is, strong feelings of marginality, of helplessness, of dependence, and of inferiority, weak ego structure; confusion of sexual identification; lack of impulse control; strong present-time orientation, with relatively little ability to defer gratification and plan for the future. The cultural of poverty, however, is not only an adaptation to a set of objective conditions of the larger society. Once it comes into existence, it tends to perpetuate itself from generation to generation because of its effect on the children. By the time underprivileged children are age six or seven they have usually absorbed the basic values and attitudes of their subcultural and are not psychologically geared to take full advantage of the changing conditions or increased opportunities that may occur in their lifetimes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. Initially (time/generation I) structural conditions of poverty give rise to subcultural patterns (that is, family and community disorganization), and both of these create in children and adults the patterns of individual personality and behavior characteristic of the poor (for example, weak ego structure, inability to delay gratification). For persons who first become poor as adults (for example, as a result of migration, economic depression, drought, and so forth), this personality and behavior pattern is an adaptation to changed structural conditions. However, their children know nothing else and tend to recreate the same subcultural patterns and to pass on these same personality and behavior patterns to their children. And so on for succeeding generations—a shared set of individual beliefs, values, and attitudes (cultural of poverty) become self-perpetuating and may persist in spite of changes in the larger structural conditions. Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth, these are one and the same challenge. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
New generations resemble preceding ones because they confront the same structural conditions and hardships. A housing crisis is increasing poverty levels in California. As of now, 51 percent of adults live in middle-income households, and 29 percent live in lower-income households, while only 20 percent live in upper-income households. The lack of affordable housing, and apartments for middle class, and lower-income families is the reason so many people are struggling to make it. The median cost of a house is now $500,000.00, which is twice the national cost, and homelessness is rapidly increasing across the state. While the region’s median household income is $61,320.00 and the nationwide median is $53,291.00. In contrast the poor are bring in between $14,000.00 to $24,000.00 a year, and there is no place less than $1,000.00 a year for rent. As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our World, none of us can truly rest. Poverty, including rates of unemployment, crime, school dropout rates, and drug use, are assumed to be the result of behavior preferred by individuals living within conditions of poverty. The culture of poverty theory presumes the development of a set of deviant norms, whereby behaviors like drug use and gang participation are viewed as the standard (normative) and even desired behaviors of those living in low-income neighborhoods. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Alternatively, individuals behave in ways that are nominally illegal, like participation in the underground economy or participation in gangs, not because they wish to do so or are following cultural norms, but because they have no choice, given the lack of educational and job opportunities available in their neighborhoods. In other words, individual living in poverty may see themselves as forced to turn to illegal methods of getting money, for example by selling drugs, simply to survive within the conditions of the hot economy. Poor children generally share the values, beliefs, and attitudes of the larger society, but as they experience the same lack of socioeconomic opportunity as their parents, they adopt the peculiar social and individual modes of response that characterize the culture of poverty. Also, some people who turn to selling drugs, for instance, to make a living, after they get started, they are not willing to turn to conventional means of earning a living because some of them can make $10,000.00 in a weekend, others have reported making $60,000.00 a month, and they are not willing to give that up to make $10 an hour, as they are making more than a lot of doctors. Hard core drug users spend approximately $60 billion a year on drugs. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Although the dealers are putting their lives and freedom in danger with every transaction they make, and many do get shot and beat up, they feel it is worth it because the money gives them something to live for. They can buy brand new cars, houses, and where there is money, there are a lot of beautiful women. If the set of structural conditions persist, they will recreate the same sociocultural and personality patterns in the new generation. Living in poverty and being unable to participate in the economy is oppressive. People are walking on eggshells. If they are accepted for affordable housing, it is a blessing, because most of the waiting lists in most cities are 20,000 people long. Then affordable housing is no way to live. The people are usually the undesirable people like criminals, uneducated, prostitutes, and drug attics. Also, because most people in affordable housing are on government assistance, they do not work due to physical disability or serious mental problems and tend to be dirty, loud, rude, and violent. They also attract a lot of homeless people and that is why people do not want affordable housing in their communities. The solution would be to give people vouchers, like a supplement to their rent, so they could spread out the undesirables, and they are not segregated to one apartment building or neighborhood. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
When affordable housing is erected in high-income areas, the strong housing prices drop very locally and then it radiates outward over time. The new low-income building can lead to a loss of approximately $17 million, as the poverty values individual decrease by 15 percent. That is why education is to important. Education promotes equality and lifts people out of poverty. It teaches children how to become good citizens, how to work for a living, and the righteous values. Education is not just for the privileged few, it is for everyone. It is a fundamental human right. When people are educated it changes their culturally patterned ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that will be passed on from one generation to the next. That is why a lot of people in the early 19th and 20th century enlisted in the armed services, it taught them discipline and provided education benefits, and helped them learn to deal with society. “The poor and the needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. However, if I the Lord will answer them; I, the God, will not forsake them. I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched grounds into springs.” (Isaiah 41.17-18) #RandolpHarris 6 of 6
That was the Straw that Broke the Camel’s Neck!
Newcomers may have been prodded by dreams of self-betterment. They did not always provide for others or for the justice necessary between persona and peoples. Social movements are organized collective manifestations of issues for which people have considerable concern. Movements deliberately attempt to promote or resist change in a group, society, or World order of which they are a part. They do so through a variety of means, not excluding violence, revolution, or withdrawal into Utopian communities. Depending upon the degree of correspondence between the goals of a movement and the value orientation of the observers, a movement can be heroic or despicable, on the side of the angels or in the league with the devil. Some movements are more dramatic than others; some are more successful than others; and some are more significant than others in terms of the range and depth of their consequences. However, seldom are they bland or without controversy. Rarely do they not reflect the ongoing dialectic between the individual and society. Hardly ever do they not demonstrate the relativity of belief systems and the importance of human agency or social action in the ebb and flow of social life. Social movements can function as an important bridge for understanding the relation between the individual and society, between structure and process, and between psychology and sociology. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
People power is one of the most important resources movements need in order to advance their interests. If a movement is to make headway in its goal attainment efforts, it must reach out, make contact with, and secure potential participants, and then transform at least some of the new recruits into committed members or devotees. Father gives meaning to the environment in which they (the participants) live. Complexity, confusion, hopelessness, and purposelessness are changed into simple understanding, peace, happiness, and a faith in the abstract principles embodied in the person of Father. (He thus) provides an escape from a tortuous mental confusion caused by complex, conflicting circumstances. He gives meaning to the individual life and to the World. However, Individuals who are seen as being especially susceptible to the appeals of movements on the radical right and left are usually dogmatic, highly prejudice, and insecure. The submission to an external cause or authority compensates for the feelings of self-inadequacy, and the desire to escape from an unwanted self. The permanent misfits can find salvation only in complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
By renouncing individual will, judgement, and ambition, and dedicating all their powers to the service of an external cause, people involved with movements are lifted off the restless treadmill which can never lead them to fulfillment. Their moral failing often stems from their own wounded vanity, and perhaps from their well-grounded fear that someone or something has indeed successfully unmasked their pretensions. The underlying participation in various contemporary movements is a collective search for identity. It is a search symptomatic of mass society’s failure to generate and sustain meaningful symbols and anchorages, which are seen as the functions of rituals. These people are demanding that society guarantee each individual a sense of personal worth and dignity. Movement participants are seen as those individuals who lack a series of institutional affiliations and group loyalties. In contrast, those people who are well integrated into kinship groups, cohesive local communities, and various intermediate associations are less susceptible to the appeals of social movements. Readiness to participate thus comes from an absence of those conditions that integrate people into the system and constrain them from involvement. Participants in such movements hypothetically meets the previously isolated participants’ needs for social affiliation, a sense of belongingness, and group identity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
The belief that one’s life situation is largely a matter of fate or destiny has also been discussed in relation to movement participation. It is hypothesized that subjective powerlessness or little internal control renders the person susceptible to movement appeals and participation. It has also been hypothesized that a strong sense of personal control or system blame, is more likely to lead to movement participation, particularly when the movement is political in orientation. A riotous husband, or a loose wife, has an easy opportunity, assisted by means of the persecution, to rid themselves of one who is a check to their vices. When the inquisitors have taken umbrage against an innocent person, all expedients are used to facilitate one’s condemnation; false oaths and testimonies are employed to prove the accused to be worthy of torture and sacrificed to the bigoted revenge. When making a martyr, people involved in the movement pretend to wish the individual well and act like they are advising one well; and pretended kind hints. If the individual is mute, they will shut that individual up without light, or some other necessity to cause harm; and if that individual declares innocence, they torment one till one either dies with pain or confess oneself guilty. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
As an important determinant of movement susceptibility is the frustration or tension that supposedly results from status dissonance or inconsistency. The more frequently acute status inconsistencies occur within a population, the greater will be the proportion of that population willing to support programs of social change, even if it is harms innocent people. Some people are, as odd as this sounds, still seeking retribution for the Iberian Conquest of America. From 1492 to 1518, Spanish and Portuguese explores opened up vast parts of Asia and the Americas to European knowledge. In some of the bloodiest chapters in recorded history, the Spanish nearly exterminated the native peoples of the Caribbean islands, toppled and plundered the great inland empires of the Aztec and Incas in Mexico and Peru. Within a single generation of Christopher Columbus’s death in 1506, Spanish conquistadores explored, claimed, and conquered most of South America (except Brazil), Central America, and Southern parts of North America from Florida to California. Led by audacious explorers and military leaders, and usually accompanied by enslaved Africans, they established the authority of Spain and Catholicism over an area that dwarfed their homeland in size and population. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
They were motivated by religion, growing pride of nation, and dreams of personal enrichment. “We came here,” explained one Spanish foot soldier in Cortes’s legion, “to serve God and the king, and also to get rich.” In two bold and bloody strokes, the Spanish overwhelmed the ancient civilizations of the Aztec and Incas. In two bloody strokes, the Spanish overwhelmed the ancient civilizations of the Aztecs and Incas. In 1519, Hernando Cortes set out with 600 soldiers from coastal Veracruz and marched over rugged mountains to attack Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico City), the capital of Montezuma’s Aztec empire. At its height, centuries before, the ancient city in the Valley of Mexico had contained perhaps 200,000 people, but in 1521, following two years of tense relations between the Spanish and the Aztecs, it fell before Cortes’s assault. The Spanish use of horses and firearms provided an important advantage; so did a murderous smallpox epidemic in 1520 that felled thousands of Aztecs. Of course, Puritan Protestantism forcefully shaped much of early America and indirectly influences it still, but millions do not recognize the ethos and many reject it. God exists within and also beyond our World. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
The past is done. We are supposed to learn from it so not to repeat it. Trying to make one individual pay for the sins of many is insane. Also, if you do not like your own country, you are welcome to leave. “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3.13). Thanksgiving is a day that should be celebrated. It is a day of giving thanks to God for his goodness and his enduring love. It is also a day that we can take time from our busy lives to come together with our families and have a meal. The federal government gives people time off school, and sometimes work so they can go home, eat and bond with their families. Family, gratitude, and thankfulness are the true meaning of Thanksgiving. Put aside differences. Families can be wonderful and enjoyable, focus on the aspects of your family which you are grateful. Have some fun. Maybe you can start a new tradition like baking a cake together, or sharing happy stories. And eat some turkey, but “No legs for me, you can never tell where a bird’s been walkin’” says Archie Bunker. You are children of God, “I covenant with thee that thou shalt have eternal life; and thou shalt serve me and go forth in my name, and shalt gather together my people” (Mosiah 26.20). #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
When You Write with a Wright Pen You Will Always be Right
Although it is usually difficult to find the person responsible for printers’ errors, the psychologic mechanisms underlying them are the same as in other mistakes. Typographical errors also well demonstrate the fact that people are not at all indifferent to such trivialities as mistakes, and, judging by the indignant reactions of the parties concerned, one is forced to the conclusion that mistakes are not treated by the public at large as accidents. An attitude is the disposition to behave in particular ways toward specific objects, and the degree of optimistic or pessimistic affect associated with some psychological object. Attitude can also be a predisposition to evaluate some symbol or objects, and a delimited totality of behavior with respect to something. A typesetter was imprisoned because instead of ending an article with the official formula ‘Heil Hitler,’ he inadvertently permitted a ‘t’ to attach itself to ‘Heil’ so that it read ‘Heilt Hitler,’ meaning ‘Heal Hitler’ instead of ‘Heil Hitler.’ His pleading that it was a mistake was of no avail. It seems that the Nazis who burned Dr. Freud’s works, nevertheless, recognize the truth of Dr. Freud’s teachings. This mistake plainly showed the typesetter’s view of Adolph Hitler’s personality. His mistake was unconsciously expressed his wish that the Lord may heal Hitler of his perceived tyranny. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Ordinarily, we should not have noticed one of the expected inevitable slips in writing. In fact, William Randolph Hearst said, “Do not be afraid to make a mistake, your readers might like it.” All writes for the press know what pits they are liable to fall into any day. Why does a mistake that glares and gibbers at you in print hide itself so successfully in the copy or the proof? How do you come to set down Rudolf when you mean Randolph? Some students of demonology believe firmly in the constant presence and maleficence of the writer’s devil. We venture to doubt the editor’s assumption of demonological influences. Examination of a great many typographical errors clearly shows that they are based on the mechanisms of a certain kind of situation. Psychologist believe that contributions of typographical and spoken errors sometimes provides evidence to support the postulated existence of stable, underlying attitudes within the individual which influences both his or her verbal expressions and actions. Adolph Hitler was the only person to hold the position of Fuhrer, which is a German word meaning leader or guide. Attitudes are alive and well and gainfully employed in the sphere of action. Despite the confusion, pessimism, and negative evidence some social psychologist refuse to give on their commitment to the belief that attitudes and behaviors must be related. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
However, even those who are nearest to the Fuhrer and constantly sing his praises to the Germans, do not really believe what they say, as shown by the wireless from Berlin to the New York Times (12 November 1936), congratulating eighteen hundred boys and girls of the Hitler Youth for taking part in the mightiest Freiheitsbewegung (movement of liberty) in German History. Rudolf Hess, the vice-leader of the Nazi party, used instead the word Freiheitsberaubung (robbery of liberty). The last word appeared in the Lokalanzeiger and caused the publishers no small amount of annoyance. Abstract statements of a highly moral content are not seldom changed erotically through a typographical mistake. Though, the correlations that do occur are large enough to indicate that important causal forces are involved, whatever one’s model of the underlying causal process may be. Evidence must conclude that attitudes and behaviors are related under a variety of conditions and over a range of substantive areas. There is something to this relationship that is sufficient to suggest the operation of causal forces. To establish a pattern or a motive, measures of attitudes that range from a single survey, personal letters, multi-item scales, field observation, task performances, archival records, and self-reports of daily activities must be analyzed. Again, interpretations often vary. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
When modest relations between variables are found repeatedly, social scientists frequently recite a litany of reasons that might explain the results. The measures of the variables are unreliable. The measures of the variables are unreliable. The measures are inappropriate or invalid. The independent variable is only one of several determinants of the dependent variable. If time elapses between the measurement of the independent and dependent variable, other variables intervene to mask the relationship or alter the variables under investigation. In one way or another, social psychologist have involved all of the above explanations for their findings regarding the relationship between attitude measures and behavioral criteria. A woman wrote to her sister, felicitating her on the occasion taking possession of a new spacious residence. A friend who was present noticed that the writer put the wrong address on the letter, and what was still more remarkable was the fact that she did not address it to the previous residence, but to one long ago given up, but which her sister had occupied when she first married. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
When the friend called her attention to the incorrect address, the writer remarked, “You are right; but what in the World made me do this?”, to which her friend replied: “Perhaps you begrudge her the nice big apartment into which she has just moved because you yourself are cramped for space, and for that reason you put her back into her first residence, where she was no better off than yourself.” “Of course, I begrudge her new apartment,” she honestly admitted. As an afterthought she added, “It is a pity that one is so mean in such matters.” The growth of the mind is the widening of consciousness and each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement. If anyone should be inclined to overrate the state of our present knowledge of mental life, all that would be needed to force one to assume a modest attitude would be to remind one of the function of memory. Ego development inevitably entails the rejection of some parts of the person that are threatening a relatively painless experience of living. The unconscious mind often represents the individual’s discordant desires, instincts, or shortcomings. Because the conscious ego can only know itself, the contents of the Persona and the hidden messages reside in the unconscious. Father in Heaven, may we all learn to love unconditionally and treat each other with respect and workout or own problems instead of taking them out on innocent beings. Bless it be. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Randolph Harris II International 