Home » suburbs (Page 40)
Category Archives: suburbs
Of Course, We All Need Friends, or there is No Way We Can Survive!
From the time our earliest ancestors looked to the stars, they have wondered what secrets the Heavens held. But, will we be ready when these secrets are disclosed? The Celestial Kingdom is the highest of the three degrees of Kingdoms of glory in Heaven. Those who inherit this Kingdom dwell in the presence of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. In the scriptures, the glory of the Celestial Kingdom is compared to the glory of the Sun. “And many of them that sleep in the dust of Earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever,” report Daniel 12.2-3. “The Kingdom of God is within,” said the Lord,” reports Luke 17.21. Therefore, turn your back on the wretched ways some people in this World. Grab hold of your heart and stand facing the Lord. Do that, wrote Evangelist Matthew 11.29, and your soul will find peace. The outside World? You know where that is at already. However, as to the whereabouts of the inside World, do you have a clue? No matter. The Kingdom of God will find you. How? The “Peace and Joy in the Holy Spirit,” as Paul wrote to the Romans (14.17), comes only to the pious; that is to say, only to those who invite Him. Clear out the rubbish within, then, and prepare a cool, bare place. Christ will come and take up residence. He will furnish it with “all of His glory,” as the Psalmist has song in the Latin Bible (45.14), and make it a warm, chatsworthy spot. Visit Him whenever you like. Feel at home there. It is your own True Home at last. Who would have believed it? #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
O Faithful Soul, prepare your heart for this committed Friend of yours. Make it a worthwhile retreat so that He will come visit and visit again. How? By keeping His word, as the Evangelist John put it (14.23). Do that, and He will establish quite a respectable presence under your very roof. Give Christ some space, therefore, and bar the door to the rest of your crowd. Why? When you have Christ, you have everything, as Paul phrased it in First Corinthians (1.5). He will take care of your needs; you will never want for a thing. The rest of Humankind? Forget about that reckless rabble! They are deflatable, defatigable. Christ, however, speaking in John (12.35), remains a friend, firm and fast forever. Even if you need people to do for your or jus to be friends with, do not put any great confidence in them; they try, of course, but eventually they trip up. Which is another way of saying, if they behave badly in public, do not shed a tear. One day they are slapping you on the back, and the next, they are stabbing you in the back. Rudderless, their skiffs are battered to smithereens on the gusty Nordsee. Of course, we all need friends, or there is no way we can survive. However, invest your friendship in God, as the Proverb has it (3.5). Let Him be your friend in good times and bad. He will respond in your behalf when the going gets rough; when things smooth out, He will look to your best interests. Why is this so? Because He knows, and He will teach you to know, that on this Earth you do not have “a city that lasts,” as the Letter to the Hebrews described it (13.14). Yet trudge you must. The beds are hard; the pillows, rocks; so Paul warned the Hebrews (11.13). No rest for the weary. No, no comfort until you have made room for Christ in your life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Why do you look for a comfortable rendezvous on this Earth when your heart’s True Home is not really here? “Heaven ought to be your home,” read Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians (5.2). Earth, therefore, ought to be viewed as a hostile hostelry, as the Wisdom of Solomon had it (5.9). What I mean to say is, all things pass away, and you with them. See, then, that you do not hand around too long. Why? The danger is that you will be sucked under and die. Let your rumination to rise to the Most High, as Paul wrote to the First Thessalonians (5.17). Let your meditation seek Christ. However, if your gaze rises too high for your nose and it begins to bleed, then lower your gaze and let your eyes rest on the Passion of Christ and His Holy Wounds. Flee to Jesus and let your eyes tend to His welts and wounds. When the World is falling apart, you will feel great comfort there; there you will recover the reputation your rivals stole from you; you will bear up under the blizzard of verbal abuse. When Christ walked among us, He suffered because of us. The neglect reached its climax at the time of the Great Necessity. The friends and acquaintances with whom He enjoyed euphoria left Him behind alone to suffer opprobria. Which raises some reasonable questions. Christ was willing to be assaulted and despised, and yet you have the nerve to moan and to wail just because something untoward happened to you? Christ had accusers and detractors, and yet you want to have only friends and benefactors? If it has never been crushed by adversity, how can your patience be crowned with prosperity? #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
If you are going to cry out every time you stub your toe, how will you ever be a friend of Christ’s. What is the answer? Face up to it. If you want to rule with Christ, then, as Paul put it to Timothy (2.12), you are going to have to suck it in and wade through the same muck as Christ. If you ever have the chance to visit the heart of Jesus, you will feel the love glowing in His hearth. No longer would you care about such petty things as conveniences or inconvenience. Instead, you would rejoice over the woeful opprobria that were laid on Him. Truth to tell, Jesus could and does get mad, but oftentimes He does not. He just allows Humankind to make a fool of itself. What is the moral? Whoever loves Jesus and Truth—that is to say, the truly internal soul who has disciplined one’s rumbustious affections—can turn to God whenever one wants, rise above oneself in spirit, and refresh oneself at one’s leisure. The person who trusts one’s own taste at the banquet of life, and not the finicky palates of the theological gourmets—one is the individual who is truly wise; that is how the prophet Isaiah would describe one (54.13). One’s knowledge comes more from God than humans. The Devout who knows from within how to walk and from without how to think does not require much space. Now does one expect scheduled times to do one’s devotions. The internal human can recollect oneself as quickly as need be. That is because one has not filled one’s shelves with baubles and bibelots. External labour does not maim a self-actualized, nor does an occupation that is deemed necessary for one’s community. No, one does an occupation that is deemed necessary for one’s community. No, one does not hesitate to make adjustments from time to time when survival is the issue. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Whoever is well disposed and well ordered within does not cause the wonderful or horrible things that Humankind does. As the details of the transaction tend to absorb one’s attention, one must be on guard lest they appear in prayer as impediments and distractions. If you would have disciplined yourself right from the start, as Paul wrote to the Romans (8.28), everything would have turned out all right, at least with regard to your own spiritual progress. However, apparently you did not. How do I know? So many things still displease you, drive you to distraction, sadden, even madden you. Why? You are not completely dead to yourself; that is to say, you have not really drawn the line between yourself and all the trinkets and trifles of this World. After all, nothing so soils or embroils the human heart as a reckless love of created things. What is the moral? Stand up to it! Put your foot down! Refuse all Worldly consolations! Only then can you get a clear vision of Heaven. Only then can you celebrate what little spiritual progress you have made to date. The push into the depths of the sea provides us with a mirror image of the drive into outer space, and lays the basis for the third cluster of industries likely to form a major part of the new Technosphere. The first historic wave of social change on Earth came when our ancestors ceased to rely on foraging and hunting, and began instead to domesticate animals and cultivate the soil. We are now at precisely this stage in our relationship to the seas. In a hungry World, the ocean can help break the back of the food problem. Properly farmed and ranched, it offers us a virtually endless supply of desperately needed protein. Present-day commercial fishing, which is highly industrialized—factory-ships sweeping the seas—results in ruthless overkill and threatens the total extinction of many forms of marine life. Already 93 percent of mega fish have been wiped out. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
By contrast, intelligent “aquaculture”—fish farming and herding, along with plant harvesting—could make a major dent in the global food crisis without damaging the fragile biosphere upon which all our lives depend. The rush to offshore oil drilling, meanwhile, has obscured the possibility of “growing oi” in the sea. Dr. Lawrence Raymond at the Battelle Memorial Institute has demonstrated that it is possible to produce algae with a high oil content, and efforts are under way to make the process economically effective. Th oceans also offer an overwhelming array of minerals, from copper, zinc, and tin, to sliver, gold, platinum and, even more important, phosphate ores from which to produce fertilizer for land-based agriculture. Mining companies are eyeing the hot waters of the Red Sea which hold an estimated $3.4 billion worth of zinc, silver, copper, lead, and gold. About 100 companies, including some of the World’s largest, are now preparing to mine potato-shaped manganese nodules from the sea bed. (These nodules are a renewable resource, forming at the rate of six to ten million tons per year in a single well-identified belt just south of Hawaii.) Today four truly international consortia are gearing up to start ocean mining on a multibillion scale, and this is expected to revolutionize World mining activities for selected minerals. In addition, Hoffmann-La Roche, the pharmaceutical company, has been quietly sourcing the seas for new drugs, such as anti-fungal agents and pain-killers or diagnostic assistant drugs that stop bleeding. As these technologies develop, we are likely to witness the construction of semi- or even wholly submerged “aquavillages” and floating factories. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The combination of zero real estate costs (at east at present) plus cheap energy produced on the spot from ocean sources (wind, thermal currents, or tides) can make this kind of construction competitive with that on the land. The technical journal Marine Policy concludes that “Ocean floating platform technology appears to be inexpensive enough and simple enough to be within the reach of most nations of the World, as well as numerous companies and private groups. At present, it seems likely that the first floating cities will be built by crowded industrial societies for the purpose of offshore housing…Multinational corporations may see them as mobile terminals for trade activities, or as factory ships. Food companies may build floating cities to carry out mariculture operations. Corporations seeking tax havens and adventurers seeking new lifestyles may build floating cities and declare them to be new states. Floating cities may achieve formal diplomatic recognition or become a vehicle for marginalized populations to achieve their independence.” Technological progress associated with the construction of thousands of offshore oil rigs, some anchored to the bottom but many positioned dynamically with propellers, ballast, and buoyancy controls, are developing very rapidly and laying the basis for floating city and enormous new supporting industries. Overall, the commercial reasons for moving into the sea are multiplying so swiftly that, according to economist D. M. Leipziger, many large corporations today, “like homesteaders in the Old West, are queuing up waiting for the starter’s pistol to stake out large areas on the ocean floor.” This also explains why the non-industrial countries are fighting to guarantee that the resources of the oceans become the common heritage of the human race rather than of the rich nations alone. However, even these examples are small in comparison with the techno-quake now rumbling in our molecular biology laboratories. Biological industry will form the fourth cluster of industries in tomorrow’s economy, and may have the heaviest impact of all. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
We will eventually be able to “pre-design” the human body, “grow machines,” chemically program the brain, make identical carbon copies of ourselves through cloning, and create wholly new and dangerous life-forms. Who shall control research into these field? How shall new findings be applied? Might we not unleash horrors for which humans are totally unprepared? Some people thought the forecast is farfetched. That, however, was before 1973 and the discovery of the recombinant DNA process. Today the same anguished questions are being asked by citizen protestors, congressional committees, and by scientists themselves as the biological revolution gains runway speed. Furthermore, there are a few types of residential suburbs that deserve special notation. A new of these variations follow. High-income suburbs are not new to the urban scene. As noted on romantic suburbs, the nineteenth century saw many examples of exclusive suburbs designed as refuges for the wealth. Then as now upper-status suburbs usually feature large, imposing homes built on extensive properties that are screened off from casual external observation by shrubbery and trees. Generally, such suburbs have been located at the outer suburban edges, but there are some clear exceptions, such as centrally located Grosse Points, bordered by Detroit, and Beverly Hills, surrounded by Los Angeles. Beverly Hills is now undergoing a real estate boom which, since the community has no open land, means that older mansions are being torn down so newer mansions can be constructed on the same sites. However, what gives most upper-status suburbs their character is not so much their housing style as the style of life and patterns of social interaction among the residents. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Demographically, high-income suburbs tend to have an older median age population and a low proportion of women employed in the labour force. Population turnover, except by death, is low. Particularly in the east and Midwest, the older elite suburbs were, and in many cases still are, socially closed WASP communities. Social life in earlier decades traditionally centered heavily around a few mainline churches. In more recent decades it has been more likely to focus on membership in an exclusive country club. Older elite suburbs have never been believers in multiculturalism. Wealth is required for entry, but nouveau riche outsiders are not considered suitable for membership either in the clubs or the community. Many ethnic groups are sparsely welcomed, as are some Whites from non-traditional backgrounds and certain religious groups. When the Kennedy family bought a large home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, several neighbours moved out on the ground that they felt the community was going downhill. Opposition remained even after John Kennedy became President of the United States of America. Similarly, the richest suburb in the country, Kenilworth, on Chicago’s North Shore, had, until fairly recently, a reputation for discouraging certain religions. Homes simply would not be sold to those who did no have the proper Anglo Saxon Protestant heritage. Those religions that were excluded found their own exclusive suburbs and country clubs. For example, some Jewish people responded by no being welcomed in North Shore suburbs, by developing Glencoe and Highland Park as wealthy suburbs. Yet, there is a tendency to equate the high costs of housing in an area with the affluence of the residents. This generally is the case, but it can be misleading insofar as it might suggest that counties with high housing costs, such as those in southern California, necessarily also have the highest percentages of affluent householders. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
In fact, recent census indicates that the East Coast dominates the list of counties where residents have the highest median household incomes. There are 38 counties with median household incomes above $100,000. Of the top 15 counties, six were located in Virginia or Maryland, just outside the nation’s capital, while four were located not far from New York City and three were in the San Francisco Bay Area. The top five riches counties in America are Loudon County, Virginia with a median household income of $142,299; Fall Church city, Virginia with a median household income of $127,610; Fairfax County, Virginia with a median household income of $124,831; Santa Clara County, California with a median household income of $124,055; San Mateo County, California with a median household income of $122,641. Before representative signs of wealth had been invented, it could hardly have consisted of anything but lands and livestock, the only real goods humans can possess. Now when inheritances had grown in number and size to the point of covering the entire landscape and of all bordering on one another, some could no longer be enlarged except at the expense of others; and the supernumeraries, whom weakness or indolence had prevented from acquiring an inheritance in their turn, became poor without having lost anything, because while everything changed around them, they alone had not changed at all. Thus they were forced to receive or steal their subsistence from the hands of the rich. And from that there began to arise, according to the diverse character of the rich and the poor, domination and servitude, or violence and theft. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
For their part, the wealthy had no sooner known the pleasure of domination, than before long they disdained all others, and using their old slaves to subdue new ones, they thought of nothing but the subjugation and enslavement of their neighbors, like those ravenous wolves which, on having once tasted human flesh, reject all other food and desire to devour only humans. Thus, when both the most powerful or the most miserable made their strength of their needs a sort of right to another’s goods, equivalent, according to them, to the right of property, the destruction of equality was followed by the most frightful disorder. Thus the usurpations of the rich, the acts of brigandage by the poor, the unbridled passions of all, stifling natural pity and the still weak voice of justice, made humans greedy, ambitious and wicked. There arose between the right of the strongest and the right of the first occupant a perpetual conflict that ended only in fights and murders. Emerging society gave way to the most horrible state of war; since the human race, vilified and desolated, was no longer able to retrace its steps or give up the unfortunate acquisitions it had made, and since it laboured only toward its shame by abusing the faculties that honour it, it brough itself to the brink of ruin. Horrified by the newness of the ill, both the poor human and the rich human hope o flee from wealth, hating what they once had prayed for. In is not possible that humans should not have eventually reflected upon so miserable a situation and upon the calamities that overwhelm them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
The rich in particular must have soon felt how disadvantageous to them it was to have a perpetual war in which they alone paid all the costs, and in which the risk of losing one’s life was common to all and the risk of losing one’s goods was personal. Moreover, regardless of the light in which they tried to place their usurpations, they knew fully well that they were established on nothing but a precarious and abusive right, and that having been acquired merely by force, force might take them away from them without their having any reason to complain. Even those enriched exclusively by industry could hardly base their property on better claims. They could very well say: “I am the one who built that wall; I have earned this land with my labour.” In response to them it could be said: “Who gave you the boundary lines? By what right do you claim to exact payment at our expense for labour we did not impose upon you? Are you unaware that multitude of your brothers perish or suffer from need of what you have in excess, and that you needed explicit and unanimous consent from the human race for you to help yourself to anything from the common subsistence that went beyond your own?” Bereft of valid reasons to justify oneself and sufficient forces to defend oneself; easily crushing a private individua, but oneself crushed by troops of bandits; alone against all and unable on account of mutual jealousies to unite with his equals against enemies united by the common hope of plunder, the rich, pressed by necessity, finally conceived the most thought-out project that ever entered the human mind. It was to use in his favour the very strength of those who attacked one, to turn one’s adversaries into one’s defenders, to instill in them other maxims, and to give them other institutions which were as favourable to one as natural right was unfavourable to one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
With this end in mind, after having shown one’s neighbours the horror of a situation which armed them all against each other and made their possessions as burdensome as their needs, and in which no one could find safety in either poverty or wealth, one easily invented specious reasons to lead them to one’s goal. “Let us unite,” one says to them, “in order to protect the weak from oppression, restrain the ambitions, and assure everyone of possessing what belongs to one. Let us institute rules of justice and peace to which all will be obliged to conform, which will make special exceptions for no one, and which will in some way compensate for the caprices of fortune by subjecting the strong and the weak to mutual obligations. In short, instead of turning our forces against ourselves, let us gather them into one supreme power that governs us according to wise laws, that protects and defends all the members of the association, repulses common enemies, and maintains us in an eternal concord.” Considerably less than the equivalent of this discourse was needed to convince crude, easily seduced humans who also had too many disputes to settle among themselves to be able to get along without arbiters, and too much greed and ambition to be able to get along without masters for long. They all ran to chain themselves, in the belief that they secured their liberty, for although they had enough sense to realize the advantages of a political establishment, they did not have enough experience to foresee its dangers. Those most capable of anticipating the abuses were precisely those who counted on profiting from them; and even the wise saw the need to be resolved to sacrifice one part of their liberty to preserve the other, just as a wounded human has one’s arm amputated to save the rest of one’s body. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Such was, or should have been, the origin of society and laws, which gave new fetters to the weak and new forces to the rich, irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, established forever the law of property and of inequality, changed adroit usurpation into an irrevocable right, and for the profit of a few ambitious humans henceforth subjected the entire human race to labour, servitude and misery. It is readily apparent how the establishment of a single society rendered indispensable that of all the others, and how, to stand head-to-head against the united forces, it was necessary to unite in turn. Societies, multiplying or spreading rapidly, soon covered the entire surface of the Earth; and it was no longer possible to find a single corner in the Universe where someone could free oneself from the yoke and withdraw one’s head from the often ill-guided sword which everyone saw perpetually hanging over one’s own head. With civil right thus having become the common rule of citizens, the law of nature no longer was operative except between the various societies, when, under the name of the law of nations, it was tempered by some tacit conventions in order to make intercourse possible and to serve as a substitute for natural compassion which, losing between one society and another nearly all the force it had between one human and another, no longer resides anywhere but in a few great cosmopolitan souls, who overcome the example of the sovereign being who has created them, embrace the entire human race in their benevolence. Gandhi denounced surgical techniques as unnatural and urged his followers to have nothing to do with them. Yet he lived to modify his view, for when he was stricken by appendicitis, he accepted the help of those very techniques. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The operation was successful. The medieval Church placed a ban upon those who performed any operation upon the human body that was accompanied by the shedding of blood. The modern Church has removed the ban and, in its hospitals, permits the extensive practice of surgery. Thus the erroneous theory of Gandhi and the erroneous superstition of the Church were corrected by time which brought the facts of experience into play. I have always associated hospitals with gloom, with drabness, with ugliness, and with despondency. The association was once falsified in California and again in Denmark. However, not till I was taken through the hospital founded by Padre Pio at San Giovanni Rotondo did I associate such intensively beneficial values as cheerfulness, beauty, hopefulness, and the last word in modernity with such an institution. Iconoclastic science came into the World and in a few short centuries turned most of us into sceptic. It may therefore surprise the scientists to be told that within two or three decades their own further experiments and their own new instruments will enable them to penetrate into, and prove the existence of, a superphysical World. However, the best worth of these eventual discoveries will be in their beneficial demonstration the reality of a moral law pervading human’s life—the law that we shall reap after death what we have sown before it, and the law that our own diseased thoughts have created many of our own bodily diseases. There are diseases of the mind quite apart from those of the body, yet too often neither the sufferer nor those in one’s surroundings will recognize the morbid symptoms. One considered oneself, and they consider one, normal. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The moderns refuse to split up Mind into Consciousness and its Consciousness and Contents and they will not believe that Consciousness per se has its pure, unalloyed existence. Hence the utter confusion of modern psychology. Ye it is the light of this Consciousness which enables their own busy intellects to function and their bodies to believe themselves to be conscious entities. Everything in Nature works by Its reflected light. The inner nature that is rent by unresolved conflicts and unhappy divisions needs healing just as much as the outer body that is afflicted by pain-bringing disease. If they are to fulfil their own best possibilities, psychoanalysis and psychiatry have to deepen themselves. If the existence of the higher Self is denied or ignored, the emotional vacillations and mental perturbations of the lower self must be studied and understood. The psychoanalysts, who are so body pointing out the complexes of other people, have themselves one supreme complex that dominates and obsesses. It is psychoanalysis itself! The mistake of the analysts is to treat lightly what ought to be taken seriously, to regard as parental fixation or repression of pleasures of the flesh what is really deep spiritual malady of our times—emptiness of soul. “A Spirit and a Vision,” said Blake, “are not, as the modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour, or a nothing. They are organized and minutely articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing nature can produce.” He is speaking only of how to draw pictures of apparitions which may well have been illusory, but his words suggest a truth on the metaphysical level also. God is basic Fact or Actuality, the source of all other facthood. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
At all costs therefore God must not be thought of as a featureless generality. If He exists at all, He is the most concrete thing there is, the most individual, “organized and minutely articulated.” God is unspeakable not by being indefinite but by being too definite for the unavoidable vagueness of language. The words incorporeal and impersonal are misleading, because they suggest that God lacks some reality which we possess. It would be safer to call His trans–corporeal, trans–personal. Body and personality as we know them are the real negatives—they are what is left of positive being when it is sufficiently diluted to appear in temporal of finite forms. Even our intimate desires should be regarded as the transposition into a minor key of that creative joy which in Him is unceasing and irresistible. Grammatically the things we say are of Him are “”metaphorical”: but in a deeper sense it is our physical and psychic energies that are mere “metaphours” of the real Life which is God. Divine Sonship is, so to speak, the solid of which biological sonship is merely a diagrammatic representation on the flat. And here the subject of imagery, which crossed our path can be seen in a new light. For it is just the recognition of God’s positive and concrete reality which the religious imagery preserves. The crudest Old Testament picture of Jahweh thundering and lightening out of dense smoke, making mountains ship like rams, threatening, promising, pleading, even changing His mind, transmits that sense of living Deity which evaporates in abstract thought. Even sub-Christian images gets in something which mere “religion” in our own days has left out. We rightly reject it, for by itself it would encourage the most blackguardly of superstitions, the adoration of mere power. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Perhaps we may rightly reject much of the Old Testament imagery. However, we must be clear why we are doing so: not because the images are too strong but because they are too weak. The ultimate spiritual reality is not vaguer, more inert, ore transparent than the images, but more positive, more dynamic, more opaque. Confusion between spirit and soul (or “ghost”) has here done much harm. Ghost must be pictured, if we are to picture them at all, as shadowy and tenuous, for ghosts are half-men, one element abstracted from a creature that ought to have flesh. However, Spirit, if pictured at all, must be pictured in the very opposite way. Neither God nor even the gods are “shadowy” in traditional imagination: even the human dead, when glorified in Christ, cease to be “ghosts” and become “saints.” The differences of atmosphere which even now surrounds the words “I saw a ghost” and the words “I saw a saint”—all the pallor and insubstantiality of the one, all the gold and blue of the other—contains more wisdom than whole libraries of “religion.” If we must have a mental picture to symbolize Spirit, we should represent it as something heavier than matter. There will be a precise moment when one knows with a certitude totally and unequivocally unwavering, but until then it will more likely be unplanned, uncertain explorations. This may surprise some persons but it is still true hat the wind bloweth where it listeth. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Or the Spirit enlightens who it chooseth. Of course the human element of seeking and trying must be there, but in the end it is the divine element which wins out. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Out of visible light which rapidly increases in intensity and drew nearer, the face and form of Jesus appeared in this twentieth century of ours to two mystics, Sundar Singh in India and Martinus in Denmark. They saw him plainly, heard him speak clearly. In both cases they were already familiar with his name and story. Out of a not very dissimilar light, Jesus appeared to Saul on the Damascus Road. He too was familiar with them. A part of the source of these visions is to be traced back to the suggestive power of the thought-form already implanted in the mind; but the other part, the sudden and dramatic and total change of heart and shift of outlook, has still to be accounted for. What is the secret? It is contact with the Overself, Grace. The divine moment happens. It is the gift of grace. Its arrival is unbidden. Yet the previous longing and working for it have not been futile. The significant flash of night may come at any moment, the sacred presence of the Overself may be felt when it is not being sought, and the noble peace of reality may even visit one who has never practised any technique at all. For as the New Testament has warned one, “The wind bloweth where is listeth,” and as the Katha Upanishad has informed him, “Whomsoever the Divine chooses, by one alone is It reached.” The Glimpse is sometimes given to one and sometimes created by one. Sometimes the connection between one’s effort and its appearance may not be visible. Only by the Divine lovingly possessing three can this transcendental knowledge be got. The glimpses are not directly caused by one’s own endeavours. They are experiences of the working of Grace, gifts from the Overelf, echoes from former lives on Earth, or belated responses to one’s knocking on the door. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
It is essentially a grace-given experience. One day there will be a response to the search of one’s mind for its creative inspirational source. One’s “I,” hemmed in by its ignorance and limitations, is a small affair compared with the “I” which is drawing one onward and upward through the quest and which one must one day become. One’s personal self, controlled and purified, kept in its place, humbly prostrating itself before the Overself, can gratefully receive even now glimpses of that day, momentary revelations that bless the mind and put intense peace in the heart. Whoever does not feel that these affirmations apply to one but who is yet able to believe in their truth, will be befriended by grace at the time of death. The good karma or God allows one this glimpse of a loftier World in which one could live and thus put one’s personal turmoil to flight. If with the purpose of seeking to disidentify oneself with the ego a human practices the necessary self-denial, makes the requisite sacrifices, and trains one’s thoughts and feelings, after a certain time and at a certain point of one’s path the forces of Heaven will come to one to complete the work which one has started. One should be profoundly grateful for even a single glimpse. It is a grant of grace. Many beings on this Earth which have lived in the society of humans can sense their intent enough to fear death when one is taken to the slaughterhouse. It is are nature to fear a darkness in what we do not understand, but true evil may lie more in ignorance that what we do not understand. Is the peaceable human to reduce or stop violent aggression against one fellow beings but to continue it against other fellow creatures? We are not entitled to destroy life without an adequately necessary and morally justifiable purpose. Therefore it is well to enquire from the wise and good into the character of such purposes, be guided by their counsel rather than by environmental customs. For the latter has led us, through its utter ignorance and total unawareness of the higher laws, into a situation where blow after blow falls heavily upon the human race. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Why should we be so astonished that peace is so hard to obtain, that all too often flaming violence of war and death and mutilation is carried across the land despite our prayers to God and our plans to the contrary? So long as millions of innocent people are bred only to be sent to the slaughterhouses, so long will Life pay us in like coin. The lower characteristics are taken into the body, the blood, the nerves, and the brain. They become part of us. The mind’s response to higher ideals is dulled. The passions which make for strife and thence for war meet with less opposition from conscience and reason. The fear, suspicion, fright, and desire for self-protection which contribute toward war, being impregnated into the blood of our body during the moments we watch doom and gloom and violence and hopelessness on the TV screen news media. It is not helping anyone. No one is learning how to stay alive nor anything educational. They are feeding you fear, and little by little this fear is brought into us through the glands, the nervous system, and the brain, as our own blood feeds them in turn. It would be desirable, although admittedly difficult, gradually to adopt a diet without news as a help to secure both the individual’s development and the World’s peace. Everything is polarized, whether in the visible Universe, or in the invisible forces of life itself. This is what the Hindus called the pairs of opposites and the Chinese call the Yin and Yang. All things are complementary and compensatory, yet at the same time antagonistic. If Yang gives us energy, Yin gives us calm. Both are necessary. Likewise, we should seek balance in diet as study. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Lord, please make this World to last as long as possible. Who took the dream of the land, who staked down “private property” through the soul of the deer? Who diverted streams, cleared forests, burned fields? I seek to know my own name. I seek to know why after all that I have done to hurt her, does the Mother Earth continue to embrace me. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for His nae alone is exalted. His glory is above the Earth and Heaven. He hath given glory unto His people, praise to all His faithful ones, to all the children of America, a people near unto Him. Hallelujah. When the Ark rested, Moses said: Mayest Thou, O Lord, dwell among the myriads of the families of America. Arise, O Lord, unto Thy sanctuary, Thou and they Ark of Thy strength. Let Thy priests be clothed with salvation, and Thy faithful ones exult. For the sake of David, Thy servant, reject not Thine anointed. I have given you good teachings; forsake not My Scripture. It is a Tree of Life to them that hold fast to it, and everyone that upholds it is happy. Its ways were ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace. Turn us unto Thee, O Lord, and we shall return; renew our days as of old. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His Kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed forever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Cresleigh Homes
Both forwards ➡ and backwards, ⬅ the Mills Station Residence 2 features two story amenities with 1 story convenience. It’s a story of YOUR satisfaction. 😘 And there are so many floor to ceiling windows that it feels like an ethereal palace.
Residence Two at Mills Station is a two story home that has all the conveniences of a single story! At 2,317 square feet, this home features the Owner’s suite on the first floor with two secondary bedrooms on the “pop top” second story. Take advantage of the vaulted ceilings offered in this plan!
The open floor plan includes three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, Home Hub, Loft and more! Walk into the great room and feel the height of the ceilings and all the light brought in from the high windows. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-2/
Know that Through that Very Same Peephole the Eyes of the World are Ogling You!
Our survival as a species depends more upon our trust of one another than upon the machines that we increasingly rely. Perhaps we can never fully escape the animals we once were. But with our mind and our hearts, we can always fight to remain human. We did not actually evolve from animals, but our behavior, through evolution has become less savage or animalistic. When we say or hear the “Kingdom of God,” that literally mean the rulership of God; which is the extension of God in the Earth. Satan is not God’s adversary, but yours! The battle lines are drawn! Become built for the battle. Onward, Christian Soldier! Marching as to war. Paul said, “For if the trumpet give an uncertain sounds, who shall prepare oneself to the battle,” reports 1 Corinthians 14.8. In the book of Revelation, we are told of a war in Heaven. “And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his Angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his Angels fought back,” report Revelation 12.7. What kind of battle? What kind of war? He war is for the souls of men. The battle lines have been drawn since Adam: evil versus righteousness. In this the final dispensation and in preparation for the Millennium, the forces of evil have intensified and united under the powerful influences of Satan. On the opposite side of the line, the Kingdom of God is clearly sounding the trumpet of righteousness, as perhaps never before. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint is on the offensive in the declaration of good to be good and evil to be evil. Isaiah prophesied of our time on this very subject when he said, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” reports Isaiah 5.20. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Satan offers a stranger mixture of just enough good to disguise the evil along his downward path to destruction, as described by Nephi, an ancient prophet, when he said: “For behold, a that day shall he rage in the hears of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good. And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell,” reports 2 Nephi 28.20-21. Satan does rage in the hearts of some. Many he will lull away into carnal security; others he flattereth, or he says there is no hell. He has lured and enlisted many followers with enticements of fame, riches, and power. He forges a Rembrandt-quality representation by calling evil good and good evil. He has confused many people, even nations and leaders, to the point of an immoral approach to moral issues. For example, one of the voices that are ungodly and powerful among Satan’s proclamations is the idea that the individual agency is justification for the destruction of a human life through murder; also that chastity and fidelity are old-fashioned and narrow-minded—to freely engage in pleasures of the flesh actively with free expression is acceptable. At this very moment, many role models are living immoral lives around the World through the powerful influence of the media. They are idolized and accepted by millions Worldwide. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The World in general seems to have lapsed into a coma of unrighteousness, leaving God-given and time-honored moral values and principles behind. However, we must hold fast to forceful proclamations from God regarding the sanctity of life, His eternal and never-ending instruction to be chaste and pure. His loving counsel that families are ordained of God with a father, mother, and children to live together forever was not intended to be the exception, but the rule. A return to Christ by an individual will bring peace of mind in place of turmoil, tranquility to replace strife, courage and optimism in place of fear. Who makes progress in the virtues? The one who takes the Godly way out; that is to say, isolates the things that are wrong with oneself and methodically destroys them one by one. People often say, “It is not fair that I have to suffer and work so hard to be good! I did not ask to be born!” Yes you did in premortality. Premortality refers to our life before we were born on this Earth. In our pre-Earth life, we lived in the presence of our Heavenly Father as His spirit children. We did not have a physical body. In this premortal existence, we attended a council with Heavenly Father’s other spirit children. At that council, Heavenly Father presented His great plan of happiness. “Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the World was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones; and God saw these souls that they were good, and He stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for He stood among those that were spirits, and He saw that hey were good; and He said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou was born. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
“And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an Earth whereon these may dwell; and we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them; and they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; and they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom with those who keep their first estate; and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever. And the Lord said: Whom shall I send? And one answered like uno the Son of Man: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first. And the second was angry, and kept not his first estate; and at that day, many followed after him,” reports Abraham 3.22-27. In harmony with the plan of happiness, the premortal Jesus Christ, the Firstborn Son of the Father in the spirit, covenanted to be the Saviour. “But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father Thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever,” reports Moses 4.2. Those who followed Heavenly Father Jesus Christ were permitted to come to the Earth to experience mortality and progress toward eternal life. Lucifer, another spirit son of God, rebelled against the plan and “sought to destroy the agency of man,” reports Moses 4.3. He became Satan, and he and his followers were cast out of Heaven and denied the privileges of receiving a physical body and experiencing mortality. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Throughout our premortal life, we developed our identity and increased our spiritual capabilities. Blessed with the gift of agency, we made important decisions, such as the decision to follow Heavenly Father’s plan. These decisions affected our life then and now. We grew in intelligence and learned to love the truth, and we prepared to come to the Earth, where we could continue to progress. When one conquers the Enemy and mortifies one’s spirit, one makes progress down the spiritual path and deposits more grace in one’s Heavenly Account. Each of us has to general one’s own spiritual battles, right down to dealing death to one’s own vices. Who will win the spiritual race? The wild, unbridled human, with a bundle of prickly passions under one’s saddle, but with a good nature overall? Or the well-bridled fellow who strives for virtue but at one’s own well-modulated gait? If you wan to accelerate your spiritual progress, two things will help. First, spot what human nature draws you to and haul yourself with all deliberate speed in the opposite direction. Second, inventory your virtues and concentrate your efforts in filling in the gaps. One clue. If self-analysis has never been one of your strong suits, do not despair. Note down the nil admirari’s in others and avoid the same sort of things. Let that be your own personal agenda for the future. Make spiritual hay wherever you go. If and when you see or hear examples of good behaviour, make haste to imitate them. On the other hand, if you run into something immovable, pick up your feet and fly. If you make a wrong turn, do make up the ground you lost with all deliberate haste. As you see the faults of the World, know that through that very same peephole the eyes of the World are ogling you. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
What a pleasure it is to happen upon a community of fervent and devout brothers, sand the Psalmist (133.1), well-seasoned fellows who have grown easy over the years with the disciplined life! What a troubling and demoralizing experience it is to bump into brothers in another religious house who are walking about aimlessly, not the daily experiences that are so much part of their vocation! How devastating it is to neglect the monastic vocation for an occupation that has no true home in the monastery! Recall your shaggy life as self-actualized and compare it to the image of the Crucified. You would do well to be ashamed. You have been in the monastery long enough to know the life of Jesus Christ inside out, and yet you have striven so little to conform your life to His. Why is that? How can that be? Whoever pours over the Most Holy Life and Passion of the Lord with intensity and devotion will find in it everything one needs to get ahead. At last one can discontinue one’s perennial search; one has found the person of Jesus Christ, the subject of all holy quests. If only the Crucified Jesus would come into our hearts! He would teach us all we need to know. The fervent Religious does tolerably well in the monastery, and that makes one’s superior’s life an easier one. The negligent and tepid Religion, though, undergoes one tribulation after another and ends up claustrophobic to boot! Consolation is the reason. One cannot find it inside the walls, and one’s prohibited from seeking it outside the walls. The Religious who has left discipline behind leave oneself wide open to gravest ruin. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The Religious who plays fast and loose with the monastic life will always find oneself in a bind. That is because laxness and looseness, lateness and loutishness, no matter how attractive they may seem or feel at the time, are never benign. How come there are so many self-actualized who have lived fairly satisfied lives under the discipline of the cloister? They rarely leave the monastery grounds, they live without much external event to speak of, eat like paupers, dress uncomfortably, labour much, speak little, watch long hours, arise early, prolong their prayer time, read frequently, and keep a guard on themselves with every discipline. Carthusians, Cistercians, and a rainbow of other religious orders—they rise every night to psalm the Lord. So it is matins and lauds, and the whole of monasticism has already begun to sing “Joy to the Lord!” Why, then, are you always the last one to straggle into the chapel and take your place in choir? Sham bells in excelsis! Just one thing I wish for monasticism. To praise the Lord without interruption and devote ourselves to spiritual studies without fainting or complaining. We would be a happier lot, you and I, doing any one of these than having to stop every now and then to attend to our corporal needs. Would that there no such things as baths or using the toilet! Just supposes there were only sweetmeats of the spirit, a platter of them on the sideboard at the Heavenly Banquet. The taste? Out of this World! Though offered to us more frequently than we think, these nibblings often go unnibbled. Why is that? #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
When you stop seeking consolation from created things below, you start receiving Godly wisdom from above. However, how will you know the transformation is taking place? You will no longer rejoice in greatness or weep about insignificance. Instead, you will place yourself wholly and confidently in God. God is all in all, as Paul wrote to the Colossians (3.11). He loses nothing, He lets nothing perish. For Him every created things lives and obeys His every wink without His ever having to miss a wink. Some thumbnails and nutshells. Everything comes to an end, and time lost is gone forever. Without Solicitude and Diligence you will never acquire Virtue. Grow tepid, and you will begin to behave badly. Give yourself to fervor, and you will feel the great weight lift, all due to the grace of God and the love of virtue. The fervent and diligent self-actualized is ready for any and everything, whatever, to rip. The rigors of the soul vastly outsweat the labors of the body. Whoever stub one’s toe on small vices will take a header on large defects. Only if you spent the day making progress, will you enjoy the evening. Vigilate. Actuate. Remonstrate. Whatever bothers you about others, do not neglect in yourself. You get out of it only what you put into it. Amen to that! One explanation for our persistent overconfidence is our tendency to search for and to recall instances that confirm our ideas. We are eager to verify our beliefs, less eager to seek evidence that might refute them. All superstition is much the same whether it be that of astrology, dreams, omens, retributive judgment, or the like, in all of which the deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect and pass over their failure, though it be much more common. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
When considering the biasing power of perception, keep in mind the human mind resembles those uneven mirrors which impart their own properties of different objects. The human understanding, when any proposition has once been laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords), forces everything else to add fresh support and conformation. One of the most significant facts about our minds is the extent to which our preconceived notions bias how we view, interpret, and remember information. To believe is often to see and remember what we believe. The implications of this principle extend to our understanding of Scripture. The Bible always comes interpreted. Oppressors and the oppressed, people in power, and people out of power, Baptists of more sorts than one—all these read the book differently. Fanatic followers of naturopathy as well as of Christian Science reject the service of surgery. Yet do the humans among them ever stop to think that the acts of shaving, which they preform daily, is itself the performance of a minor surgical operation? For the hair is as much a tangible part of their anatomy as the bony skeleton. This also applies to finger nails, toe nails, calluses, and corns. Such opposition to surgery on the part of those who are unorthodox in their views of healing is based partly on blind fanaticism and partly on blind ignorance. The excessive attachment to their own particular system prevents them from seeing its true place and surgery’s true relation to it. If there is time, natural methods should be tried first, surgical methods only last. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
If natural methods are too late or tried without result, then it is quite proper to resort to surgery if any hope lies there. They should be given their chance in the earlier stages of a disease but if they are not, if the disease has advanced to a serious or chronic degree, surgery may fitly be considered, either alone or in conjunction with them. Even in divine healing, the spiritual force may still use a surgeon through which to express itself. It does not necessarily have to use only a saint to do so. Spiritual healing completes and does not displace the conventional allopathic or the unorthodox physical healing systems. It does not supplant but supplements them. Opposition to the new and powerful drugs is not because of their ineffectiveness. That they produce swift and curative results is admitted. The opposition is instigated by the harmful effects upon other organs or parts of the body subsequent to the cure, and sometimes accompanying it. To reject the valuable contribution of surgical art is to neglect human knowledge of anatomy and human capacity to co-operate with Nature. Thousands of years ago, a gifted Hindu writer and medico even acclaimed it in these words: “Surgery is the first and highest division of the healing art, least liable to fallacy.” Exaggerated, perhaps, but it is certain that the ancient Hindus knew and practiced a well-developed form of this art—even including plastic surgery—but it mysteriously disappeared in the course of time. The successive foreign invasion and their massacres of intellectuals may have something to do with it. Our leap beyond the classic technologies of the Second Wave are very striking in modern times. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The space industry forms a second cluster in the emerging techno-sphere. Despite delays, five space shuttles may soon be moving cargo and people back and forth between the Earth and outer space on a weekly schedule. The impact of this is as yet underestimated by the public, but many companies in the United States of America and Europe regard the “high frontier” as the source of the next revolution in high technology and are acting accordingly. Grumman and Boeing are working on satellites and space platforms for energy generation. According to Business Week, “Another group of industries only now is beginning to understand what the orbiter may mean to them—manufacturers and processors whose products range from semi-conductors to medicines. Many high technology materials require delicate, controlled handling, and the force of gravity can be a nuisance. In space, there is no gravity to worry about, no need for containers, and no problems with handling poisons or highly reactive substances. And there is a limitless supply of vacuum, as well as super-high and super-low temperatures.” As a result, “space manufacturing” has become a hot topic among scientist, engineers, and high-technology executives. McDonell Douglas offers to pharmaceutical companies a space shuttle device that will space. Space-produced single-crystal semiconductors make Earth-made models primitive. Urokinase, a blood clot dissolver needed for patients suffering from certain forms of blood disease, now cost $1,205.00 for 1 milligram. According to Jesco von Puttkamer, chief of space industrialization studies of NASA, it could be manufactured in space for less than one fifth that amount. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
More important are the totally new products that simply cannot be made on Earth at virtually any price. TRW, an aerospace and electronics company, has identified four hundred different alloys that we cannot manufacture on Earth because of the pull of gravity. General Electric, meanwhile, has begun the design of a space furnace. Daimler-Benz and M.A.N. in West Germany are interested in the space manufacture of ball bearings, and the European Space Agency and individual companies like British Aircraft Corporation are also designing equipment and products aimed at making space useful commercially. Business Week tells its readers that “such prospects are not science fiction and a growing number of companies are deadly serious in pursuing them.” Equally serious, and even more zealous, are the supporters of Dr. Gerard O’Neill’s plan for creation of space cities. Dr. O’Neill, a Princeton physicist, has been indefatigably educating the public about the possibilities of building very large scale communities in space-platforms or islands with populations in the thousands—and has won enthusiastic support from NASA, and former President Trump (whose knows California’s economy is heavily space dependent), and more surprisingly, from a band of former hippies lead by Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog. Dr. O’Neill’s idea is to build a city in space, bit by bit, out of materials mined on the Moon or elsewhere. A colleague, Dr. Brain O’Leary, has been studying the possibilities of mining the Apollo and Amor asteroids. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Regular conferences a Princeton bring together experts from NASA, General Electric, U.S. energy agencies, and other interested parties to swap technical papers on the chemical processing of lunar and other extraterrestrial minerals and on the design and construction of space habitats and closed ecological systems. The combination of advanced electronics and a space program that moves beyond terrestrial production possibilities carries the techno-sphere to a new stage, no longer limited by Second Wave considerations. Here on Earth, we take it for granted that city neighborhoods will change in socioeconomic statues over time. One-time prosperous neighborhoods are expected to decline and possibly be rebuilt or gentrified. For example, a neighborhood may have been built as upper-middle class at the turn of the century, drifted down to middle class by the 1930s, becomes rooming-house area by the 1950s, and been gentrified in the 1980s. This model of local community status change is basically a life-cycle model and is consistent with the earlier Burgess concentric zonal theory, which posited neighborhood change due to competition for land and the outgoing movement of affluent populations. However, when our focus shifts to suburbs, the assumption of status change is supplanted by the assumption of status consistency. Suburbs are seen as changing less than cities. There is a greater tendency to view suburban areas as locked in time. It is as if suburbs are not subject to the same laws of aging and change. For example, Chevy Chase, outside of Washington, and Berwyn, west of Chicago, remain, respectively, upper-middle-class and ethnic-working-class just as they were ninety-five years ago. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The community of Chevy Chase includes many “Sears Catalog Homes,” a popular housing option in the early twentieth century that allowed individuals to order by mail the materials and instructions for a home and build them themselves. This status-persistence suggests that this assumption of less economic and social change over time in suburbs has a base in reality. Research done by Reynolds Farley and replicated by Avery Guest suggests that there is suburban persistence, with suburbs holding their position over time. Farley examined 137 suburbs of twenty-four cities and found that at least for the older established suburbs there was considerable consistency. In fact, one could accurately predict the educational level of a suburb by looking at the school attendance records of the high-school-age population forty year earlier. Guest further found that in the postwar period, growth of high-status populations enhanced rather than changed the status of suburb through advantages such as superior schools and facilities, and thus they protected their own investment. This political-power model is usually associated with scholars taking a conflict perspective, while the status-persistence model is usually associated with those holding an ecological model. However, in this instance both approaches seem to reinforce rather than contradict each other. Older and more affluent suburbs have had the greatest success in maintaining their favored position. There also appears to be regional variation. Specifically, in the north and Midwest, involuntary annexation of suburbs had ceased by the beginning of the twentieth century, while in some of the south, and especially in Texas, annexation is still possible. Thus, one would expect to find the greatest number of affluent suburbs practicing exclusionary zoning in the north and Midwest. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Exclusionary zoning is not a recent development. Zoning has been used by suburbs since the 1920s as a means of keeping out undesirable activities, housing, and people. An excellent example of a contemporary system is affluent Hoffman Estates, northwest of Chicago. To upgrade its image, it hired an additional fifteen building inspectors to clamp down on owners of low rent apartments. A strict adherence to the letter of the housing code makes it difficult to make a profit renting to lower-income populations. This was the intent. However, even more important than keeping undesirables out is attracting new high-status residents. Here a self-fulfilling prophesy seems to occur for affluent suburbs. A suburb having an established reputation as a high-status area employs its social prestige to attract new high-income newcomers toward what are perceived and being the more prestigious areas. Reputation creates a reality, which in turn reinforces reputation. In this fashion a suburb such as Lake Forest on Chicago’s North Shore has maintained its upper-states position for well over a century. When Burges posited his concentric zonal pattern of metropolitan growth, he suggested that socioeconomic status was directly related to distance from the center of the city. Centrally located space goes to those functions that can use space intensively and are willing to pay the costs. Costs include not only purchase price, but also taxes and factors such as congestion, pollution, noise, and so forth. As a consequence, central land was most expensive and peripheral space less so. This means that those affluent families living further out can afford more space. Thus, there is a tendency for an inverse relationship between the value of land and the status of those who occupy it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
In the inner ring adjacent to the city, the oldest suburbs often had the bulk of their housing completed prior to World War II. Many of these inner-ring suburbs are composed of substantial homes built originally for upper- and upper-middle-class occupancy. Some of these older suburbs still maintain their elite status. Outer-ringer suburbs have almost all been built in the postwar era of mass suburbanization, and they differ substantially in socioeconomic status. They tend to vary based on type of housing, characteristics of the residents, and direction from the city. Within the metropolitan area different ethnic, religious, and racial groups often suburbanized in specific directions. In Atlanta, for instance, African Americans went south and European Americans went north. Ethnic groups also followed specific patterns. In Chicago over the past century, Polish-heritage populations have moved near-north side to the northwest side and into northwest suburbs such as Niles. The Jewish housing pattern was roughly similar, with upper-middle-class Jewish people moving into the northwest suburbs such as Skokie and wealthy Jewish people moving north to Glencoe and Highland Park. Italian-heritage populations, on the other hand, moved progressively west, and in time into western suburbs such as Melrose Park. WASPs, by contrast, moved up the North Shore to Evanston, Wilmette, and Winnetka. Thus, the pattern of ethnic inner-city neighborhoods was in modified form carried to the suburbs. People whose experiences are dominated by phantasy relations with Frustrating Exciting and/or Rejecting Object will come to feel more and more that it is no use wanting good things. They will eventually cease to each out for what they cannot get. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Eventually the phantasy of something good simply raises anxiety or anger rather than a wish to get it: an Anti-Libidinal Ego has developed which protects the individual from the pain of frustration, though it in turn may be painfully experienced. The Anti-Libidinal Ego is a set of reactions to the Libidinal Ego which ensure that the individual’s needs remain hidden; it remains unconscious of them. Thus the Anti-Libidinal Ego keeps the libidinal part of the personality out of touch with the World of potentially satisfying as well as frustrating people and things—there is a basic fault between Libidinal and Anti-Libidinal Ego. A third personality-structure called the Central Ego, rather like Dr. Freud’s Ego, comprises the set of calculating reactions through which currently incoming information is registered and evaluated and retained for future planning—a useful structure for survival purposes. There may not be much connection between this structure and the other two—another basic fault. As we coon ourselves in the comforts technology affords, are we shielding ourselves from the very things that make us human? People need to look harder into themselves and persevere longer at the practices. They also need to get God’s grace. Furthermore, they need to get Jesus’s grace. Additionally, their destiny may have been unfavorable in this matter or, if favorable, was possible due to maturate at a later time. All these explanations seem to have some truth in them, but which the aspirant knows with any certainty which one of them—or which two in combination—apply to one’s own particular case? #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
It seems to me that as with other major events in human life obeying some law of nature, some process operated by infinite intelligence, there must be an invisible pattern behind these mystical happenings too. And when the truths of the higher philosophy were unveiled to me, I found that this was indeed so. These revealings of inner life, which put its truths before the mind so vividly, seem to come by chance to some, by working for them for others. Faith in a divinely-ordered Universe tells us, and philosophy confirms, that we may be sure that they follow certain laws even when we know nothing about those laws. The glimpse is as much subject to grace as the Enlightenment which endures forever. It happens outside the human’s own will, although inside one’s consciousness. Such a glimpse represents a bestowal of Grace. This is why it comes unsought and unworked for, and why some who inwardly work hard fail to experience the Glimpse. One can no more make the Glimpse come by personal endeavours than one can make oneself fall in love. The gifted—rather than the achieved—nature of the glimpse is much more frequent and may be seen from is unexpected manifestation at unforeseen times. The glimpse does not necessarily have to come to you during meditation, even though the work in meditation helps to bring about its occurrence. It may come at any time. Many self-actualized are made but some are also born. Destiny transcends all training and often it needs but a mere touch of illuminate’s finger to release the pent-up stores of secret power within a soul. These glimpses come on rare occasions, for the mind’s tumult is hard to still—only the Overself’s Grace can do so. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The glimpse is a blessing which is given to those who have earned it, or those who have sought it in the right spirit. These illuminative glimpses do no come at will or at once. They do not come once for all or when it pleases us. They come and go like the wind and when it pleases them. For they come by Grace. The belief that mystical illumination is solely luck or accident or destiny must be refuted. That a human must work one’s way into this experience is one view. That a higher power must induce it in one is another. Such a mystical experience is not an after-effect of illness but the latter is used by the Overself to open the way for its reception in the conscious mentality. It is an uncommon experience, a visitation of the Overself, and a manifestation of its grace. Why it occurs could only be explained in terms of theory of reincarnation. One must find out by personal experience what one’s stomach can easily digest, and strictly take nothing else. This is one rule. One must each of such foods no more than one’s body really needs, which is always less than what custom and society have suggested one needs. Whatever we eat beyond that which the body really needs, gives no strength and yields no benefit. Instead, it actually harms us. Instead of strengthening, it weakens us. Instead of benefiting, it poisons us. How can the human race avoid the fate of being slaughtered in war when it itself slaughters so many innocent creatures in peace? The exploitation of other living beings to gain unnecessary resources, must be protested against. Forcing their enslavement to human service and slowly distorting their bodies into having unnatural exaggerated functions is a crime against them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Here we are, God—a planet at prayer. Attune our spirits that we may hear your harmonies and bow before your creative power that we may face our violent discords and join with your Energy to make heard in every heart your hymn of peace. Here we are, God—a militarized planet. Transforms our fears that we may transform our war fields into cow pasters and wheatfields, arms into beautiful Winchester Repeating Arms with inlaying gold, silver, or platinum, gold or silverplating, engravings, carving or fancy checking by Tiffany & Co., done with the most artistic manner by the company’s own employees and used as display models. May our missiles be turned into brilliant light shows of Independence Day. May our Flag be a symbol of honor and highly respected. Here we are, God—a polluted planet. Please purify our vision that we may perceive ways to purify our beloved lands, cleanse our precious waters, de-smog our life-giving air, remove contaminants from our soil, abolish traffic jams, and produce cars that run on an abundant form of gasoline that produces no emissions and will never be depleted. Here we are, God—an exploited planet. Please heal our heart, that we may respect our sources, hold priceless our people, and provide for our starving child an abundance of Gold Leaf Bread from the master baker Moreno. Praised be the Lord who is blessed for all eternity. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Unver, who didst choose us from among all the peoples by giving us Thy Scripture. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Giver of the Bible. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who in giving us a Word of Truth, hast planted everlasting life within us. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Giver of the Scripture. This is the Scripture proclaimed by Moses to the Children of America at the command of the Lord. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
Graphic wall detailing is trendy, classic, and timeless…and it never goes out of style? You will also enjoy thoughtful floor plans that maximize space in the bedroom and luxury in the bathroom. We’re loving Brighton Station Res 2 for its single story living that amplifies comfort!
This floor plan features a strategically designed layout that separates the primary suite from the home’s two other bedrooms with a spacious, centralized great room, chef-inspired kitchen and cozy den or formal dining room, which is connected to the kitchen by a butler’s pantry.
There is tranquil primary retreat, resort-style primary walk-in shower, beautiful walk-in closet, and a yard that would delight anyone. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-2/
The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home. This single story home boats an ideal layout with 2,427 square feet, of thoughtfully designed living space, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a three car garage.
#CresleighHomes
#CresleighRanch
No One Lives on this Earth without Tribulation–Life is Lived Forwards, but Understood Backwards!
Are lives are defined by our choices. Paths taken and worlds explored. But once we commit, we can never go back, or can we? Bondage of the will is an essential foundation for the doctrine of grace. By ourselves, we are unable to act righteously, to have faith, or to contribute to our own salvation. All credit belongs to God. What then is left to free will? “Nothing! In truth!” insisted Marlin Luther. John Calvin was just as forceful: because the term free will “cannot be retained without great peril, it will…be a great boon for the church if it is abolished.” The divine determinism assumed by the doctrines of God’s foreknowledge, sovereignty, and grace is not identical to naturalistic cause-effect determinism. Yet biblical faith assumes that God works through the created order. Thomas Aquinas argued (in the words of Michael Novak) that “grace operates (except in the rarest cases) through the ordinary contingencies and processes of nature…The whole environment, the whole ‘schedule of contingencies’ that constitutes history is graced.” Believing in God opens one to the possibility of miracles; yet if we accept that all nature is from moment to moment sustained, ordered, and upheld by God, then we no longer need miracles in order to “make room for God.” Whatever their differences, the concepts of absolute determinism and absolute divine sovereignty converge in affirming our dependence on forces beyond our conscious knowledge. Thus they share the problem of how to accommodate ultimate more responsibility. If a superhypnotist were to plant an irresistible suggestion that you should commit a crime, which you then did with a sense of having chosen to do it, surely no one who knew the hidden cases of your behaviour would hold you responsible. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Likewise, if we understand the conditions that triggered someone’s acting desirably, we tend to credit the conditions rather than the person. It is only when we are surprised by a person’s heroism—when we do not expect people to behave o nobly under such circumstances—that we give special credit and honour to the hero. In a deterministic World we can judge any behaviour as worthy of praise or blame, but it becomes more difficult to hold the person as ultimately responsible. One is therefore tempted to create a gap in the schemes of natural and divine determination—to open the door to just a dash of ultimate free will, however much is needed to restore our accountability before God and before our human judicial system. God’s sovereignty, we may tell ourselves, does not extend all the way down to the little things, such as what I ate for breakfast this morning. God is concerned only with big events, the ultimate ends. However, as Jonathan Edwards and the other theological masterminds recognized, this assumption of agent causation creates as many problems as it solves. A God who is detached from what you ate for breakfast (or whether you ate breakfast) is not a God who is continuously involved with all events of the creation. And consider: How are the big ends in life achieved apart from the little means? Looking back on our lives, we see our path winding through countless little event and chance encounters, from our initial conception right up to the present. At any decision point we feel free, but looking back, we see causation. “What I so proudly call ‘myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never stared and which I cannot stop,” suggested C.S. Lewis. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Or as Soren Kierkegaard noted, “Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.” Thus the apostle Paul could sense, “I yet not I, but the grace of God.” So both the absolute determinist and the one who believes in God’s utter sovereignty (perhaps the same person) are left baffled. To limit natural and divine powers makes little sense and only opens that door for pride in self and a judgmental attitude toward others. Yet somehow human accountability must be affirmed. Faced with this paradox of faith, we can take comfort in remembering that we cannot expect to comprehend fully this wisdom and justice of a being whose cognitive stage is infinitely beyond our own. Our situation is like that of someone stranded in a deep well with two ropes dangling down. If we grab either one alone, we sink still deeper into the well. Only when we hold both ropes at once can we climb out, because at the top, beyond where we can see, they come together around a pulley. Grabbing only the rope of determinism or the rope of human responsibility plunges us to the bottom of a well. So instead we grab both ropes, without yet understanding how they come together. In doing so, we may also be comforted that in science as in religion, a confused acceptance of irreconcilable principles is sometimes more hones than a tidy oversimplified theory that ignores evidence. (Remember that advocates of agent causation have no trouble explaining our responsibility, but do face a different mystery—how God could accomplish divine purposes while granting us freedom to do as we choose.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
We also do well to remember both ropes in our everyday attitudes—by viewing ourselves as free and responsible agents and others as influenced by their biology, their past experience, and their current situation. Such a view has the effect of cultivating within us the practical fruits of self-discipline and self-initiative, while being more understanding of the forces that constrain others. Scripture, too, tends to adopt the perspective of self as free and other as caused. When the Bible addresses us directly, it emphasizes our responsibility for our failings. When talking to us about others, especially the poor and disadvantaged, it frequently advocates the complementary perspective: do not judge; act with compassion toward the oppressed; take the beam out of your own eye before worrying about the motes in others; let judgment begin with the house of the Lord. Are we determined or free? Christian psychologists who assume absolute determinism struggle to rationalize human responsibility; those who assume self-causation have solved the problem of human responsibility butt struggle to accommodate natural causation and divine sovereignty in human affairs. Nevertheless, on this much both camps agree: in the fabric of contemporary psychology and Christian doctrine, natural order and human responsibility are the interwoven threads. The new enlightenment which resulted from this development increased human superiority over others terrestrial beings by making them aware that they are from a divine being and created in His image. “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground,’” reports Genesis 1.26. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
And because humans learned they were superior to animals, they trained themselves to set traps for them; they tricked them in a thousand different ways. And although several surpassed them or hurt them, humans became the master of the former and the scourge of the latter. Thus the first glance they directed upon themselves produced within them the first string of pride; thus, as yet hardly knowing how to distinguish the ranks, and contemplating themselves in the first rank by virtue of their species, they prepared themselves from afar to lay claim to it in virtue of their individuality. Although their fellow humans were not for one what they are for us, and although they had hardly anything more to do with them than with other animals, they were not forgotten in their observations. The conformities that tie could make one perceive among the, their female, and oneself, made the human beings judge of those they did not perceive. And seeing that they all acted as one would have done under similar circumstances, one concluded that their way of thinking and feeling was in complete conformity with their own. And this important truth, well established in their mind, made them follow, by a presentiment as sure as dialectic and more prompt, the best rules of conduct that it was appropriate to observe toward them for their advantage and safety. Taught by experience that love of well-being is the sole motive of human actions, one found oneself in a position to distinguish the rare occasions when common interest should make one count on the assistance of their fellow humans, and those even rarer occasions when competition ought to make one distrust them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
In the first case, humans untied with them in a herd, or at most in some sort of free association, that obligated no one and that lasted only as long as the passing need that hard formed it. In the second case, if one believed that one could, everyone sought to obtain one’s own advantage, either by overt force. Of it one felt oneself to be weaker, one sought to obtain advantage by cleverness and cunning. This is how humans could imperceptibly acquire some crude idea of mutual commitments and of the advantages to be had in fulfilling them, but only insofar as present and perceptible interests could require it, since foresight meant nothing to them, and far from concerning themselves about a distant future, they did not even give a thought to the next day. Were it a matter of catching a deer, everyone was quite aware that one must faithfully keep to one’s post in order to achieve this purpose; but if a hare happened to pass within reach of one of them, no doubt one would have pursued it without giving it a second thought, and that, having obtained one’s prey, one cared very little about causing one’s companions to miss theirs. It is easy to understand that such intercourse did not require a language much more refined than that of crows or monkeys, which flock together in practically the same way. Inarticulate cries, many gestures, and some imitative noises must for a long time have made up the universal language. By joining to this in each country a few articulate and conventional sounds, whose institution, as I have already said, is not too easy to explain, there were individual languages, but crude and imperfect ones, quite similar to those still spoken by carious savage nations today. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Constrained by the passing of time, the abundance of things I have to say, and the practically imperceptible progress of the beginnings, I am flying like an arrow over the multitudes of centuries. For the slower events were in succeeding one another, the quicker they can be described. These first advantages enabled humans to make more rapid ones. The more the mind was enlightened, the more industry was perfected. Soon they ceased to fall asleep under the first tree or to retreat into caves, and found various types of hatches made of hard, sharp stones, which served to cut wood, dig up the soil, and make huts from branches they later found it useful to cover with clay and mud. This was the period of a first revolution which formed the establishment of the distinction among families and which introduced a kind of property, whence perhaps there already arose many quarrels and fights. However, since the strongest were probably the first to make themselves lodgings they felt capable of defending, presumably the weak found it quicker and safer to imitate them than to try to dislodge them; and as for those who already had huts, each of them must have rarely sought to appropriate that of one’s neighbour, less because it did not belong to one than because it was of no use to one, and because one could not seize it without exposing oneself to a fierce battle with the family that occupied it. The first development of the heart were the effect of a new situation that united the husbands and wives, fathers and children in one common habitation. The habit of living together gave rise to the sweetest sentiments known to humans: conjugal love and parental love. “God blessed them and said to them ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the Earth and subdue it,’” reports Genesis 1.28. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Each family became a little society all the better united because mutual attachment and liberty were its only bonds; and it was then that the first difference was established in the lifestyle of the two genders, which until then had had only one. Women because more sedentary and grew accustomed to watch over the hut and the children, while the man went to seek their common subsistence. With their slightly softer life the two genders also began to lose something of their ferocity and vigour. However, while each one separately became less suited combat savage beasts, on the other hand it was easier to assemble in order to jointly to resist them. In this new state, with simple and solitary life, very limited needs, and the tools they had invented to provide for them, since humans enjoyed a great deal of leisure time, they used it to procure for themselves many types of conveniences unknown their fathers; and that was the first yoke they imposed on themselves without realizing it, and the first source of evils they prepared for their descendants. For in addition to their continuing thus to soften body and mind (those conveniences having through habit lost almost all their pleasures, and being at the same time degenerated into true needs), being deprived of them because much more cruel than possessing hem was sweet; and they were unhappy about losing them without being happy about possessing them. At this point we can see a little better how the use of speech was established or imperceptibly perfected itself in the bosom of each family; and one can further conjecture how various particular causes could have extended the language and accelerated its progress by making it more necessary. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Great floods or earthquakes surrounded the inhabited areas with water or precipices. Upheavals of the globe detached parts of the mainland and broke them up into islands. Clearly among humans thus brought together and forced to live together, a common idiom must have been formed sooner than among those who wandered freely about the forests of the mainland. Thus it is quite possible that after their first attempts at navigation, the islanders brought the use of speech to us; and it is at least quite probable that society and languages came into being on islands and were perfected there before they were known on the mainland. Everything begins to take on a new appearance. Having previously wandered about the forest and having assumed a more fixed situation, humans slowly came together and united into different bands, eventually forming in each country a particular nation, united by mores and characteristic features, not by regulations and laws, but by the same kind of life and foods and by the common influence of the climate. Eventually a permanent proximity cannot fail to engender some intercourse among different families. Young people of difference genders live in neighbouring huts; the passing intercourse demanded by nature soon leads to another, through frequent contact with one another, no less sweet and more permanent. People became accustomed to consider different objects and to make comparison. Imperceptibly they acquire the ideas of merit and beauty which produce feelings of preference. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
By dint of seeing one another, they can no longer get along without seeing one another again. A sweet and tender feeling insinuates itself into the soul and at the least opposition becomes an impetuous fury. Jealousy awakens with love’ discord triumphs, and the sweetest passion receives sacrificed of human blood. In proportion as ideas and sentiments succeed one another and as the mind and heart are trained, the human race continues to be tamed, relationships spread and bonds are tightened. People grew accustomed to gather in front of their huts or around a large tree; song and dance, true children of love and leisure, became the amusement or rather the occupation of idle humans who had flocked together. Each one began to look at the others and to wan to be looked at oneself, and public esteem had a value. The one who sang or danced the best, the handsomest, the strongest, the most adroit or the most eloquent became the most highly regarded. And this was the first step toward inequality and, at the same time, toward vice. From these first preferences were born vanity and contempt on the one hand, and shame and envy on the other. And the fermentation caused by these new leavens eventually produced compounds fatal to happiness and innocence. On 8 August 1960, a West Virginia-born chemical engineer named Monroe Rathbone, sitting in his office high over Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, New York United States of America, made a decision that future historians might someday choose to symbolize the end of the Second Wave era. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Few paid any attention when Mr. Rathbone, chief executive of the giant Exxon Corporation, took steps to cut back on the taxes Exxon paid to the oil-producing countries. His decision, though ignored by the Western press, struck like a thunderbolt at the governments of these countries, since virtually all their revenues derived from oil company payments. Within a few days the other major oil companies had followed Exxon’s lead. And one month later, on 9 September, in the fabled city of Baghdad, delegates of the hardest-hit countries met in emergency council. Backed to the wall, they formed themselves into a committee of oil-exporting governments. For fully thirteen years the activities of this committee, and even its name, were ignored outside the pages of a few petroleum industry journals. Until 1973, that is, when the Yom Kippur War broke out and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) suddenly stepped out of the shadows. Chocking off the World’s supply of crude oil, it sent the entire Second Wave economy into a shuddering down-spin. What OPEC did, apart from quadrupling its oil revenues, was to accelerate a revolution that was already brewing in the Second Wave techno-sphere. In the earsplitting clamour over the energy crisis that has since followed, so many plans, proposals, arguments, and counterarguments have been hurled at us that it is difficult to make sensible choices. Governments are just as confused as the proverbial human in the streets. One way to cut through the murk is to look beyond the individual technologies and policies to the principles underlying them. Once we do, we find that certain proposals are designed to maintain or extend the Second Wave energy base as we have known it, while others rest on new principles. The result is a radical clarification of the entire energy issue. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The Second Wave energy base, we saw earlier, was premised on non-renewability; it drew from highly concentrated, exhaustible deposits; it relied on expansive, heavily centralized technologies; and it was nondiversified, resting on a relatively few sources and methods. These were the main features of the energy base in all Second Wave nations throughout the industrial era. Bearing these in mind, if we now look at the various plans and proposals generated by the oil crisis we can quickly tell which ones are mere extensions of the old and which are forerunners of something fundamentally new. And the basic question becomes not whether oil should sell at forty dollars (2021 inflation adjusted $363.78) per barrel or whether a nuclear reactor should rise at Seabrook or Grohnde. The larger question is whether any energy base deigned for industrial society and premised on these Second Wave principles can survive. Once asked in this form, the answer is inescapable. Through the past half-century, fully two thirds of the entire World’s energy supply has come from oil and gas. Most observers today, from the most fanatic conservationists to the deposed Shah of Iran, from solar freaks and Saudi sheikhs to the button-down, brief-case-carrying experts of many governments, agree that this dependency on fossil fuel cannot continue indefinitely, no matter how many new oil fields are discovered. Statistic vary. Disputes rage over how long World has before the ultimate crunch. The forecasting complexities are enormous and many past predications now look silly. Yet one thing is clear: no one is pumping gas oil back to replenish the supply. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Whether the end comes in some climatic gurgle or, more likely, in a succession of dizzyingly destabilizing shortages, temporary gluts, and deeper shortages, the oil epoch is ending. Iranians know this. Kuwaitis and Nigerians and Venezuelans know it. Saudi Arabians know it—which is why they are racing to build an economy based on something other than oil revenues. And although we are having issues supplying electricity to major cities in America, and an element used to create batteries in electric cars is expected to run out in the near future, this is why leaders are pushing to increase the demand of electric cars. Petroleum companies know it—which is why they are scrambling to diversify out of oil. (One president of a petroleum company told me at a dinner in Tokyo not long ago that, in his opinion, the oil giants would become industrial dinosaurs, as the railroads have. His time frame for this was breathtakingly short—years, not decades. Perhaps in the next ten years.) However, the debate over physical depletion is almost beside the point. For in today’s World it is price, not physical supply, that has the most immediate and significant impact. And here, if anything, the facts point even more strongly to the same conclusion. The suburban ideology fits somewhat uncomfortably into the urban dichotomy. Suburbs are neither one nor the other. Proponents of suburban living historically have resolved this by emphasizing how suburbs ideally combine the best features of urban and rural living. Opponents stress that they contain the worse of both Worlds. The argument that suburbs have best of both is not new. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
An 1873 promotional tract pushing development of the North Shore of Chicago proclaims, “The controversy which is sometimes brought, as to which offers the greater advantage, the country of the city, finds a happy answer in the suburban ideal which says both—the combination of the two—the city brought to the country. This is a practical and valuable reply. The city has its advantages and conveniences, the country its charm and health; the union of the two (a modern result of the railway), gives to humans all they could ask in this respect.” As the earlier section on romantic suburbs indicates, the suburb was to allow the nineteenth-century city man of business to have it both ways. One would make one’s fortune during the day in the dynamic and vita industrial city and then retire by commuter railroad to the health and domestic tranquility of the picturesque suburb. Although homes in turn-of-the-century streetcar suburbs were far less grand and often occupied minimal size lots, the imagery of suburbs being at least surrounded by country persisted. Sometimes the open spaces lasted only until all the planned housing was constructed. Automobile suburbs built prior to the second World War, if anything, accentuated and sharpened the image of suburbs as being distinct from the city. Real estate developers and realtors found it was good for business to foster the image of both spatial and social distance from the central city. The mass suburbanization during the postwar years may have changed the reality, not the ideology, of suburban exclusivity. Builders and developers continued to advertise based upon the image of suburbia as an exclusive enclave where one’s fellow suburbanites would all be upwardly mobile and community involved. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Advertisements spoke less about square footage than about “moving up” and the “quality of life.” Nonetheless, the reality was that suburbia was now open to virtually all. Exclusively had come down to the basics of being employed and European American. Some of the postwar criticisms by cultural elites of the new suburbs were, in fact, a recognition of his change. Literary and cultural criticisms of standardized subdivision housing as an aesthetic wasteland, and the attacks on the middle-brow values of those inhabiting such housing, were in part an elitist response to rapid social change. This “there goes the neighbourhood” response, combined with a glorification of the past, was clearly evident in the comments of influential intellectuals such as Lewis Mumford. One can feel the disdain when he described postwar suburbia as “a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at unform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group…conforming in every outward and inward respect to a common mold.” To many of the urban critics of the 1950s and 1960s, the major crime of the new suburbs was that they were common. Unlike the affluent and exclusive suburbs of earlier decades, the new suburbs, and suburbanites, were seen as lacking the true urbanite’s sense of good taste. Underlying the criticisms is the assumption that the new suburbanites went to the wrong schools, read the wrong books, and even bought the wrong furniture. It was as if former workers and service help had aspired to rise above their true station in life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
There is a World of other people and things—the point of individuation. At this point, there may be either a more home-loving or a more space-loving orientation, but either way, if all goes well, a person will emerge with an integrated personality. However, all may not go well. A person may be struck by a trauma, after which development will be fundamentally influenced by the method which that person invented to cope with the trauma. The Basic Fault is at the point at which people begin to have to “cope.” Use of the English “coping” refers to ego-function! It gives recognition to our ability to survive and to deal with people and things in order to survive, not necessarily with much regard to the moral dimension. “Coping” has two independent and equally relevant root, according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: A. Form the Old French coper, Modern French couper, to strike (a blow), to cut. From this root we get our meanings (1) to strike; to come to blows; encounter; engage; (2) to be or prove oneself a match for, content successfully with; (3) to have to do with; (4) to meet, to come in contact (hostile and friendly) with; (5) to match a thing with another equivalent. B. From Middle English Kopen – to buy (cf. cheap). From this root we get (1) to buy; (2) to exchange, barter; (3) to make an exchange, bargain. There is even a third root, from cope meaning cape: to cover with a cope, to hang over like a coping. All very appropriate. To return to our theme after this linguistic digression, trauma is not necessarily a single even. Trauma is more likely to be caused by a long-standing situation in which there was some painful misunderstanding—a lack of fit—between the child and the adults around it. #RandolphHarrs 16 of 25
True, despite the general lack of fit, in some cases some adult may be on the child’s side, but much more often, immature and weak individuals have to cope on their own with traumatic situations: either no help is available, or the only help is of a kind that is hardly more than a continuation of the misunderstand, and thus useless. For lack of the right support, the individual is forced to find its own method of coping, a method hit upon a time of despair or thrown at it by some un-understanding adult who may be a well-wisher, or just indifferent, or negligent, or even careless or hostile. This method will be incorporated in the individual’s personality, and thereafter anything beyond or contrary to this method will strike the person as a frightening and more or less impossible proposition. The individual’s further development will then be prescribed or at least limited by this method which, although helpful in some respects, is often costly, and above all, alien. Most patients cannot tell us what causes their resentment, lifelessness, dependence, what the fault or the defect in them is…some can express it by phantasies about perfect partners, perfect harmony, untroubled contentment….Over and over they repeat that they feel let down, that nothing in the World can ever be worth while unless something hey were deprived of is restored to them. Sophisticated patients may express this something irretrievably lost or gone wrong as the male organ or the breast, usually felt to have magical qualities, and speak of male organ or breast, or castration fear. However, in nearly all cases this is coupled with an unquenchable and incontestable feeling that if the loss cannot be made good, the patient oneself will remain no go. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
It is always a dry season until you give way to the sorrowing of the heart. Only then will the drops of devotion come. Heart-felt sorrow opens many a door. Deep-down compulsion slams the door in your face every time. We may stumble onto happiness, but, remember, we are exiles and the World is alive with peril. You laugh at the defects of the World, but your own spiritual defects you shrug off. Yet hey bedevil your soul, and what do you do about it? You laugh. Nobody laughs in public these days, expect you. You laugh uproariously, but the joke is on you. It is the other way around. Your peccadillos are laughing at you when you should be weeping uncontrollably where no one can see. What is missing is the fear of God and a working conscious. If we do not feel the pain of reformation in our souls, Joy or Liberty cannot be true and good. Happy the self-actualized who can scatter one’s distractions and collect oneself into holy sorrowing of the heart! Happy is the self-actualized who can shield one’s snow-white conscience from bilious gray pigeons! That is to say, from the dropping of one’s own inordinate affections. Face it! When it comes to power, it takes a good habit to whip a bad habit. If you do not care a fig for the World, the World will not care a farthing for you. Do not inundate yourself with the affairs of the low and unlovely, and do not insinuate yourself into the affairs of the high and mighty. Remember, you are a member of a holy company dedicated to spiritual progress. Hence, keep a steely eye on yourself. When necessary, unbraid yourself. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
If you cast a knowing wink at the World and the World does not return the wink, do not tear up, do not waste a single tear of your own. Give serious thought to this possibility. You may not have the right stuff to be a servant of God and live the devout life. After all, we do not have many consolations in this sort of life; at least as Flesh counts them. That is what our experience tells us. And rarer still, at least as the Soul counts them, are the Divine Consolations. There has go to be a reason, and it is sin. We just do not seek the sorrowing of the heart hard enough. The least we could is throw our vanities to the wind. Are you worth Divine Consolation? Face it, all you are worth is a bundle of snakes! When you are contrite to the point of perfection, the face your present to the World is never cheerful, always chary. The good person has more than enough to be sorrowful for, to weep for. No matter how you look at it—and your neighbour will confirm it—no one lives on this Earth without tribulation. The more you eye the condition of your own soul, the more openly you weep. The causes of just sorrow and internal contrition are our sins and the vice that lead to our sins. And is it not true that we spend so much time on Earthly grapplings that we have almost no time to give to celestial contemplations? Death is approaching more quickly than life is unfolding. Think about that now, and put more shoulder into your reformation of life. We are on the near side of death now, but on the far side await he pains of Hell or Purgatory. Weigh that in your heart, and maybe now you will be willing to undertake the laborious program of reform, readying yourself for the Final Rigour. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
Why is it that considerations like these do no hit the target? Why are we as blind to the blandishments banded about us? Are we as lazy and loutish as that? What spirit is left in that wretched body of yours? A whistle? A whimper? A whisper? Pray, therefore, humbly to the Lord that He give your spirit of contrition. Say as the Psalmist said (80.5), “With the bread of tears satisfy my hunger, Lord, and with a measure of tears satisfy my thirst.” The number of the predestined is certain, and can neither be increased nor diminished. The number of predestine is certain. Some have said that it was formally, but not materially certain; as if we were to say that it was certain that a hundred or a thousand would be saved; not however these or those individuals. However, this destroys the certainty of predestination; of which we spoke of above. Therefore we must say that to God the number of predestined is certain, not only formally, but also materially. It must, however, be observed that the number of the predestined is said to be certain to God, not by reason of His knowledge, because, that is to say, He knows how many will be saved (for in this way the number drops of rain and the sands of the sea are certain to God); but by reason of His deliberate choice and determination. For the further evidence of which we must remember that every agent intends to make something finite, as is clear from what has been said above when we treated of the infinite. Now whosoever intends some definite measure in one’s effect thinks out some definite number in the essential parts, which are by their very nature required for the perfection of the whole. For of those things which are required not principally, but only account of something else, one does not select any definite number “per se”; but one accepts and uses the in such numbers as are necessary on account of that other thing. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
For instance, a builder thinks out the definite measurements of a house, and also the definite number of rooms which one wishes to make in the house; and definite measurements of the walls and roof; one does not, however, select a definite number of stones, but accepts and uses just so many as are sufficient for the required measurements of the wall. So also must we consider concerning God in regard to the whole Universe, which is His effect. For He pre-ordained the measurements of the whole of the Universe, and what number would befit the essential parts of that Universe—that is to say, which have in some way been ordained in perpetuity; how many spheres, how many stars, how many elements, and how many species. Individuals, however, which undergo corruption, are no ordained as I were chiefly for the good of the Universe, but in a secondary way, inasmuch as the good of the species is preserved through them. Whence, although God knows the total number of individuals, the number of oxen, flies and such like, is not pre-ordained by God “per se”; but divine providence produces just so many as are sufficient for the preservation of the species. Now of all creatures the rational creature is chiefly ordained for the good of the Universe, being as much incorruptible; more especially those who attain to eternal happiness, since they more immediately reach the ultimate end. Whence the number of the predestination is certain to God; not only by way of knowledge, but also by way of a principal pre-ordination. It is not exactly the same thing in the cause of the number of the reprobate, who would seem o be pre-ordained by God for the good of the elect, in whose regard “all things work unto good” Romans 8.28. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Concerning the number of all the predestined, some say that so many human will be saved as Angels fell; some so many as there were Angels left; others, as many as the number of Angels created by God. It is, however, better to say that, “to God alone is known the number for whom is reserved eternal happiness [From the ‘secret’ prayer of the missal, “pro vivis et defunctis.’]” These words of Deuteronomy must be taken as applied to those who are marked out by God beforehand in respect to present righteousness. For there is increased and diminished, but not the number of the predestined. The reason of the quantity of any one part must be judged from the proportion of that part of the whole. Thus in God the reason why He has made so many stars, or so many species of things, or predestined so many, according to the proportion of the principal parts to the good of the whole Universe. The good that is proportionate to the common state of nature is to be found in the majority, and is wanting in the majority. Thus is clear that is the majority of humans have a sufficient knowledge for the guidance of life; and those who have not this knowledge are sad to be half-witted or foolish; but they who attain to a profound knowledge of things intelligible are a very small minority in respect to the rest. Since their eternal happiness, consisting in the vision of God, exceeds the common state of nature, and especially in so far as this is deprived of grace through the corruption of original sin, those who are saved are in the minority. In this especially, however, appears the mercy of God, that He has chosen some for that salvation, from which very many in accordance with the common course and tendency of nature fall short. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
All thinking keeps one’s awareness out of the Overself. That is why even thinking about the Overself merely produced another thought. Only in the case of the self-actualized, who has established oneself in the Overself, is thinking no barrier at all. In this case, thinking may coexist with the larger awareness. So it is not enough to be a good thinker; one also has to learn how to be a good non-thinker. Of course, the way to do this is through the practice of deep and meaningful prayer. Appetite has really become an artificial and abnormal thing, having taken the place of true hunger, which alone is natural. The one is a sign of bondage but the other, of freedom. It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life uncecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of one’s ethical standard. If the body is intolerant of particular treatments and allergic to particular foods, it should not be forced to accept them. When either faith healing or naturopathic treatment is too passive, when it refrains from timely co-operation with nature by the use of positive means, by they nontoxic medicines or essential operations, it becomes guilty of sacrificing the patient to its own narrowness. No healer’s treatment is always successful nor is the cure always permanent. Failures are many and relapses are common. Those who shout and splutter from evangelistic public platforms exhibit the ego’s arrogance, not the Overself’s quiet humility. They hold the view which conforms with their presuppositions, their inborn tendencies and governing prejudices, in short, with their little ego, not their impersonal higher Self. This is why there are so many contesting theories, why the body’s ill health may cause the mind to be governed by negative thoughts, why this conflict of authorities shows their worthlessness. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
All these cults and groups which acknowledge the power of mind over body but which leave out the acknowledgment of the body’s power over the mind, are out of balance and so out of truth to that extent. This statement may be a matter of arguable theory partisan adherents of either side, but it is a mater of tested fact with creative leaders who consciously exercise both powers. If mental and spiritual healing agents are also joined in, the physical cure will surely be accelerated and the physical therapy will surely be helped. In this way the individual limitations of the method of treatment being used will be overcome and each healing agent will contribute to bringing about a complete and successful result. It is foolish to believe that there is any particular healing method which has only to be applied for it to be universally and equally successful or that there is any particular human healer who has only to be visited for one to be cure. If we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed, something will have gone out of us as people; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the World, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural World and competent to belong in it. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
And a redeemer shall come to America and to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, saith the Lord. And as for Me, this is My covenant with them, saith the Lord: My spirit that is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your children nor your children’s children henceforth and forever. Thou art holy, O Thou that art enthroned upon the praises of America. And one called to another and said: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole Earth is full of His glory. [And they receive sanction one from the other, and say: Holy upon Earth, the works of His mighty power; Holy forever and to all eternity is the Lord of hosts; the whole Earth is full of the radiance of His glory.] And a wind lifted me up, and I heard behind me a mighty chorus proclaiming: Blessed be the glory of the Lord everywhere. [Then a wind lifted me up, and I heard behind me the mighty moving sound of those who uttered praises and said: Blessed be the glory of the Lord from the place of His abode.] The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. [Then Kingdom of the Lord is established forever and to all eternity.] The time has come to arouse the conscience of all those who sincerely the Good and the Right to their duty in the matter of harming innocent terrestrial beings and the environment and vehicles, a conscience which, if it could speak unperverted by racial habits, would emphatically repeat the Mosaic commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” These are cruelties practiced on objects to gain wealth and pleasures for others, sometimes clothes, entertainment and medicinal drugs. The human claim of necessity as a justification is a mistake one. Whether forged of metal or born of flesh, every form of life has one unquenchable thirst, the urge for freedom. Christianity is not something to be endured, but something to be treasured. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Cresleigh Homes
Do you call it a living room, family room, or great room? Whatever your favorite term, this space is the heartbeat of the home. ❤️
Can you imagine all the holidays, game nights, and birthdays spent here? Brighton Station Res 4 creates a beautiful transition between the indoor and outdoor spaces. https://youtu.be/TikCeN8MlLA
This home by Cresleigh is an artfully designed, two-story home for those who love open floor plan living and space. At nearly 4,000 square feet, the design features a spacious kitchen with a large center-island , a built-in breakfast bar that overlooks the great room and a butler’s pantry that leads to the formal dining space.
There is also an office on the first floor, along with a bedroom, and two bathrooms. This home comes with up to five bedrooms or a loft in place of one of the bedrooms, and has an optional workspace, which . https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-4/
More Often than Not, You Will Find in Your Cell What You Lost in the Streets!
We denounce bigotry of the past, unlike our own. However, if we encounter a race totally different from our own, are we doomed to repeat that past? Peering down into those mysterious depths of the “I” which are far deeper than its human and bestial layers, one will come to a region where personality becomes essence. The psychoanalyst cannot reach it by one’s intellectual and hypnotic methods, but the mystic, by one’s intuitive and contemplatives ones, can. The Soul has its chance to have its voice heard also when the conscious self it too fatigued by the troubles of life to offer resistance. If one understands that the origin of these spiritual moments is one’s own best self, one will understand too that the shortest and quickest way to recapture them is to go directly to that self, while the surest way to keep their happiness for life is to keep constantly aware of the self. Only when the heart has been utterly emptied of all its ties can the divine presence come into it. If you can empty it only for a few moments, do not lament in despair when the visit of the presence comes to an end after a few moments. Sometimes one is lifted up by the beauty of Nature’s forms or man’s arts, sometimes by the discipline of moral experience or religious worship, sometimes by the personal impact of a great soul. Some people have even felt this calmness, which precedes and follows a glimpse, in a warm-water bath; while enjoying or luxuriating in its comfort, they have half-given themselves up to a half-drowsy half-emptiness of mind. Some self-actualized are able to pass from this calmness to the deeper stage, or state, of the glimpse itself. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
If one understands the process where by one arrived at illumination, one will know how to recover it if and when it fades away. However, if arrived at it by an unconscious process, then when one loses it one will not know how to help oneself. Is it possible, if the Divine is formless, motionless, voiceless, and matterless, to recognize It when the quest brings us to a glimpse of It? The answer is Yes! but either intuition well-developed or intelligence well-instructed is needed: otherwise it happens by faith. Whether it be a mountain scene or a peaceful meadow, a distinguished poem or an impressive opera, the particular source of an unaccustomed exaltation is not the most important thing. Such a visitation can also have its origin in no outside source but within oneself. It should be remembered that whatever kind of prayer is adopted, the glimpse which comes from it comes because we have provided the right condition for its appearance, not because our own doing makes the glimpse appear. For it comes from the realm of timelessness with which we come into some sort of harmony through the intuitive nature. What we do is in the realm of time, and it can only produce effects of a like nature. It contracting the Overself, one does not really sense a bigger “I.” One senses SOMETHING which is. This is first achieved by forgetting the ego, the personality, the “I.” However, at a later stage, there is nothing to forget for then one finds that the ego, the personality, and the “I” are of the same stuff as this SOMETHING. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Who does not seek transitory joy? Who does not occupy oneself with the World? We all do. However, the one who has a good conscience, serves all tentacles to attachment, mediates on divine and salutary things—one has the one who places one’s whole hope in Go. One has the one who sails one’s yacht on a sea of calm. No one can ascend to Heavenly Consolation. That is because there is no sure stair. One solid step, though, is our heart’s True Sorrow. And where else can this sorrow be found but in one’s cubicle. There you can shut out the hubbub of the World. “In your cubicles, on your cots, work out your sorrowful contrition,” said the Psalmist (4.4). More often than not, you will find in your cell what you lost in the streets. A cell that is much prayed in is a pleasant spot. A cell that is rarely prayed in is a forbidding place. That makes sense, does it not? In the first blush of your conversion you cultivated the solitude of your cell, and guarded against all invasion of your quietude. Now you find it warming, welcoming, like a Victorian mansion or a cottage in the forest. In quiet and silence the faithful soul makes progress, the hidden meanings of the Scriptures become clear, and the eyes weep with devotion every night. Even as one learns to grow still, one draws closer to the Creator and farther from the hurly-burly of the World. As one divests oneself of one set of friends and acquaintances, one’s visited by another, God and His Holy Angeles. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Two courses of action. Better, to lie still in one’s cubicle and worry about one’s spiritual welfare. Worse, to roam the streets a wonder-worker for others to the neglect of one’s own spiritual life. Laudable it is for the Religious to go to market only rarely. Laudable too is that, even when one does go, one refrains from meeting the eyes of others; from one’s very mien they know that one lives in another World. Why do you want to go out and see what you really should not need to see? “The World passes, as does its concupiscence,” wrote John the Evangelist in his First Letter (2.17). Our sensual desires promise us a promenade, but deliver us only a dragonnade. A sprightly step in the forenoon turns into a draggled tail in the afternoon. All-nighters of roister-doistery lead only to mornings of hugger-muggery, that is to say, of sickness and sadness. Need I ask? Every carnal joy begins with a caress, or so the Proverb goes (32.31-32), but in the end curls up into a furry ball and dies. I ask the question again. What can you see outside the monastery walls that you cannot see inside? Behold Heaven and Earth and all the elements; from these all things are made. What can you see on the outside that will survive the Sun? That was the sort of question the Ancient Preacher in Ecclesiastes asked (2.11). What is your answer? Perhaps you can find satisfaction somewhere out there, but truth to tell, you still cannot reach out to touch it. If you were to see all the things in all the World crammed into one still life, no matter how large the canvas, you would still be no better off. “Raise your eyes to God in the highest,” said the Psalmist (123.1). #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Pray for your own sins and negligences. Forgive the vain things vain people have done to you. Look to the precepts God gave you. “Shut he door behind you,” wrote the Evangelist Matthew (6.6). Call Jesus, your Beloved Friend, to join you. Remain with Him in your cell. Why? You will no find peace like this anywhere else in the World. If you had not gone outside the walls, you would not have heard the disturbing rumors; better for you to have stayed inside in blissful ignorance. From which it follows that you may delight in hearing the latest news on the strand, but you will surely have to deal with the terrible dislocation that results. In January 1950, just as the second half of the twentieth century opened, a gangling twenty-two-year-old with a newly minted university diploma took a long bus ride through the night into what he regarded as the central reality of our time. With his girl friend at his side and a pasteboard suitcase filled with books under the seat, he watched a gunmetal dawn come up as the factories of the American Middlewest slid endlessly past the rain-swept window. America was the heartland of the World. The region ringing the Great Lakes was the industrial heartland of America. And the factory was the throbbing core of this heart of hearts: steel mills, aluminum foundries, tool and die shops, oil refineries, auto plans, mile after mils of dingy buildings vibrating with huge machines for tamping, punching, drilling, bending, welding, forging, and casting metal. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The factory was the symbol of the entire industrial era and, to a boy raised in a semi-comfortable lower-middle-class home, after four years of Plato and T.S. Eliot, of art history and abstract social theory, the World it represented was as exotic as Tashkent or Tierra del Fuego. I spent five years in those factories, not as a clerk or personnel assistant but as an assembly hand, a millwright, a welder, a forklift driver, a punch press operator—stamping out fans, fixing machines in a foundry, building giant dust-control machines for African mines, finishing the metal on light trucks as they sped clattering and screeching past on the assembly line. I learned firsthand how factory workers struggled to earn a living in the industrial age. I swallowed the dust the sweat and smoke on the foundry. My ears were split by the hiss of steam, the clank of chains, the roar of pug mills. I felt the heat as the white-hot steel poured. Acetylene sparks left burn marks on my legs. I turned out thousands of pieces a shift on a press, repeating identical movements until my mind and muscles shrieked. I watched the managers who kept the workers in their place, white-shirted men themselves endlessly pursued and harried by higher-ups. I helped lift a sixty-five-year-old woman out of the bloody machine that had just torn four finger off her hand, and I still hear her cries—“Jesus and Mary, I won’ be able to work again!” The factory. Lone live the factory! Today, even as new factories are being built, the civilization that made the factory into a cathedral is dying. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
And somewhere, right now, other young men and women are driving through the night into the heart of the emergent Third Wave civilization. Our task from here on will be to join, as it were, their quest for tomorrow. If we could pursue them to their destinations, where would we arrive? In the launching stations that hurl flaming vehicles and fragments of human consciousness into outer space? In oceanographic laboratories? In communal families? In teams working on artificial intelligence? In passionate religious sects? Are they living in voluntary simplicity? Are they climbing the corporate ladder? Are they running guns to terrorists? Where is the future being forged? If we ourselves were planning a similar expedition into the future, how would we prepare our maps? It is easy to say the future begins in the present. However, which present? Our present is exploding with paradox. Our children are supersophisticated about contraband, pleasures of the flesh, space shots; some know far more about computers than their parents. Yet educational test scores plummet. Divorce rates continue their climb—but so do remarriage rates. Counterfeminists arise at the exact same time that women win rights even the counterfeminists endorse. Gays demand their rights and come charging out of the closet—only to find Anita Bryant, Tim Wildmon and the spirit of Jerry Falwell Sr. waiting for them. Intractable inflation gripped all the Second Wave nations, yet unemployment continued to deepen, contradicting all our classical theories. At the very same time, in defiance of the logic of supply and demand, millions are were demanding not merely jobs but work that was creative, psychologically fulfilling, or socially responsible. Economic contradictions multiplied. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
In politics, parties lose the allegiance of their members at the precise moment when key issues—technology, for example—are becoming more politicized than ever. Meanwhile, over vast reaches of the Earth, nationalist movements gain power—at the exact instant that the nation-state comes under intensifying attack in the name of globalism or planetary consciousness. Faced with such contradictions, how might we see behind the trends and countertrends? No one, alas, has any magic answer to that question. Despite all the computer printouts, cluster diagrams, and mathematical models and matrices that futurist researchers use, our attempts to peer into tomorrow—or even to make sense of today—remains, as they must, more an art than a science. Systematic research can teach us much. However, in the end we must embrace—not dismiss—paradox and contradiction, hunch, imagination, and daring (though tentative) synthesis. In probing the future in the pages that follow, therefore, we must do more than identify major trends. Difficult as it may be, we must resist the temptation to be seduced by straight lines. Most people—including many futurists—conceive of tomorrow as a mere extension of today, forgetting that trends, no matter how seemingly powerful, do not merely continue in a linear fashion. They reach tipping points at which they explode into new phenomena. They are reverse direction. They stop and start. Because something is happening now, or has been happening for three hundred years, is no guarantee that it will continue. We shall, in the pages ahead, watch for precisely those contradictions, conflicts, turnabouts, and breakpoints that make the future a continuing surprise. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
More important, we will search out the hidden connections among events that on the surface seem unrelated. It does little good to forecast the future of semiconductors or energy, or the future of the family (even one’s own family), if the forecast springs from the premise that everything else will remain unchanged. For nothing will remain unchanged. The future is fluid, not frozen. It is constructed by our shifting and changing daily decisions, and each event influences all others. There is a growing use of Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) devices that are being used to improve and maintain health of machines and people. MEMS technology supports motion sensors that detect, report, and collect information on anything that moves. The data these sensors generate are applied to many aspects of our daily lives, ranging from necessary and practical safety standards to augmented reality entertainment. There are three sensors that detect specific types of motion: accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers. An accelerometer sense, title, acceleration, vibration, and impact. With calculations and sampled measurements, acceleration measurements can be used to determine speed. A gyroscope senses rotation relative to an axis. A magnetometer detects magnetic fields on Earth. Like a compass, which also responds to magnetic fields, a magnetometer indicates which way is North. These components are often used together either on a board or integrated in an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). AN IMU may comprise two or three sensors. For example, a 6-axis IMU contains a 3-axis accelerometer and a 3-axis gyroscope; adding a 3-axis magnetometer create a 9-axis IMU. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
This technology is applied in many ways that can enhance our daily lives. These devices can revolutionize things like automotive repair and health care. These MEMS are as small as a grain of coffee, but they are tiny computers that can be embedded into a vehicle and made to make engine repairs. Only one our as many as a group of 30 can be used to do the repair without harming the system. An accelerometer is part of many safety devices. It is often used to trigger an alarm when abrupt acceleration occurs, helping prevent physical damage. Accelerometer are also used for maintenance. With ongoing stress of motion, when moving parts eventually become worn or misaligned a new vibration occurs. By monitoring active machinery, accelerometers detect such vibrations at an early stage, long before you can feel or see the effects of wear and tear. This capability of detecting this minute beginning of wear and tear allows lower-cost maintenance to be performed, long before significant and expensive damage occurs. MEMS are used to monitor the health and wellness of people. They can also monitor the body from the inside and make getting blood test and checks of vitals unnecessary. Biosensors also have Early Warning System (EWS). They constantly monitor the body from the inside and send codes to make the necessary adjustments to the system. Additionally, vital signs are transmitted from the patient to the EWS. The information is processed with advanced algorithms that provide caregivers with the status of a patient’s current condition. When medical intervention is needed, the EWS sends an alert. They can also be used to perform surgery. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Many people are personally interested in maintaining and improving their health. Imagine if these MEMS could detect how much sugar, fats, salt and water and other nutrients is needed that day to keep you at optimal health. And could also tell you how much exercise you needed that day to gain or lose with or maintain weight, and come up with a healthy program for that day. MEMS can also provide enhanced self-care a step further by reminding a person when medication is necessary. Second Wave civilization placed an extremely heavy emphasis on our ability to dismantle problems into their components; it rewarded us less often for the ability to put the pieces back together again. Most people are culturally more skilled as analysts than synthesists. This is one reason why our images of future (and of our selves in that future) are so fragmentary, haphazard—and wrong. Our job here will be to think like generalists, not specialists. Today I believe we stand on the edge of a new synthesis. In all intellectual fields, from the hard sciences to sociology, psychology, and economics—especially economics—we are likely to see a return to large-scale thinking, to general theory, to the putting of the pieces back together again. For it is beginning to dawn on us that our obsessive emphasis on quantified detail without context, on progressively finer and finer measurement of smaller and smaller problems, leaves us knowing more and more about less and less. Our approach in what follows, therefore, will be to look for those streams of change that are shaking our lives, to reveal the underground connections among them, not simply because of these is important in itself, but because of the way these streams of change run together to form even larger, deeper, swifter rivers of change that, in turn, flow into something till larger: the Third Wave. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Like that young man who set out in mid-century to find the heart of the present, we now begin our search for the future. This search may be the most important of our lives. The negative attacks on the suburbs was short-lived. Events on the national and international scene soon shifted elsewhere. The outbreak of urban riots in central cities, the focus on the War on Poverty, and growing protests regarding the continuing wars in other counties all contributed to attention sharply shifting away from suburbs lacking rootedness and maturation. The focus of researchers, politicians, and citizens now was on the inner city. The pressing needs of the city eclipsed other urban activities. The emphasis was on “relevancy,” and suburban patterns and concerns were not judged to meet the test. With all the inner-city problems, why “waste” attention on suburbs? By the late 1970s, terms “urban research” and “urban studies” had all but become synonymous with the study of central-city problems such as poverty, racial conflict, crime, and drugs. Suburbs continued to rapidly expand, but there was only minimal interest by researchers and funding agencies in carrying out new suburban-based research. As a result, new suburban-oriented research came to a virtual halt. There were a few exceptions to the general fixation on inner cities. One of the most promising was the emergence of emergence of urban history as a distinct and viable area of historical research. City residents emphasized the importance of location, while suburbanites ranked the quality of house and the characteristics of neighbours ahead of location. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Another sign of our growing understanding of suburbs was the comparative examination of suburbanization in different settings. The higher-density garden apartment and high-rise, mid-level rise, and low-rise buildings of the suburbs in Sweden were built both to be self-contained and to have easy access to the city by public transportation. By contrast, the dispersed American pattern of detached single-family homes provides less social support and access to the larger area for groups such as woman and children. The 1980s saw the study of suburbanization experience a mild revival. Suburbia was losing it solely residential character. Looking toward the future of multicentered metropolises. The 1990s was the rise of the Mc Mansions and gated communities. These larger than average homes, nearly the size of mansions, and some actually legally are mansions, made suburban research fully come into its own. They were called Mc Mansions because they were not mansions like those produced in the gilded ages, but they were more like baby mansion track homes with custom features and oversized rooms, which caused a lot of people to envy products of new money. They were grander than the typical homes produced, and came with butler’s panty’s, walk in pantries, floor to ceiling windows, vaulted ceilings, zero-threshold showers, wider door openings, wider hallways, backing for future grab bars, lowered light switches, upstairs lobbies, workshops, sever patio areas, California Rooms, Florida Rooms, and there was a reemergence of formal dining rooms. These changes made it increasingly clearly recognized that the outer cities are not an aberration from, or extension of, the old core-periphery model. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Rather, outer cities (suburbs) represent a new organizational model. The increasing ethnic diversity in suburbs also is beginning to receive major attention. It is now apparent that for North America, the twenty-first century will be suburban dominated. This represents a major departure from how we have for centuries viewed our urban places. Overlapping but somewhat separate from the question of suburban lifestyles is that of a unique suburban ideology. By ideology we mean the set of belief that provide a symbolic rendering of social reality. Community ideologies not only provide shared views of the World as it is perceived to be, they also provide a community moral landscape of what is identified at the “good life.” In the case of suburbs, the mass postwar migration was for many the pursuit of the “American Dream.” This was he belief that there was something about living in lower-density, single-family homes outside the city that produced new forms of community. This is what was discussed earlier as the “myth of suburbia.” Here, when we discuss ideology, as was the case with lifestyles, the focus is on the ideology of upper-middle and middle-class residential suburbs. We definitely are not speaking of older industrial suburbs such as Cudahy, Wisconsin; Calumet City, Illinois; or Hamtramck, Michigan. In fact, our image of what a suburb looks like who lives there, and how they view themselves does not at all fit these old, working-class, industrial communities. If not antagonistic, Americans continue to have an ideology that is largely ambivalent about great cities. There is nothing particularly recent about this ambivalence. Throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, Americas have been pouring into the cities while idealizing the country. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The writings of Thomas Jefferson are typically American in equating the city with evils and corruption of the old order while having the yeoman farmer and his wife and children typify wholesome virtue. As expressed by Jefferson in a letter to his friend and neighbour James Madison: “I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant land in many parts of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.” The image of the Jeffersonian self-sufficient yeoman working the Earth as the real genuine American as opposed to someone associated with the pomp, artifice, and degeneracy of the city still resonates today. The anti-Washington ideology of recent political campaign certainly is, in some respects, a lineal descendant of Jefferson’s views as to the corrupting effect of urban life. American ideology for two hundred years has viewed individualism and self-reliance as more compatible with rural than urban habits. The frontiersman clearing the wilderness or the cowboy riding he range have been glorified into American myths. Immigrant factory workers or less affluent women garment workers slaving in sweatshops are somehow less laudable. In practice, we behave as if we consider the history of our urban ancestors as somewhat discreditable and, thus, best forgotten. Henry David Thoreau, sitting in rural solitude at eventide at Walden Pond, is ideologically acceptable. Mr. Thoreau sitting on this front stoop in Boston during the evening rush hour creates a less acceptable image. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Surveys clear demonstrate the abiding strength of antiurban images and ideologies in American life. In fact, in a 2021 survey, 40 percent said they plan to move out of San Francisco, California USA because of increasing crime and homelessness. Some 43 percent of Boston residents, 48 percent of those living in Los Angeles, and a full 60 percent of those living in New York City say if they could leave, they would. The extent of suburban disconnection is apparent among New York’s suburbanites over half (53 percent) visited the city for nonbusiness purposes fewer than five times a year; 25 percent of the suburbanites totally avoided the city, and 75 percent felt their lives unaffected by what occurred in the city. However, most disconcerting to those believing the Big Apple is the essential center of the Universe was that over half (54 percent) the New York suburbanites felt they did not even belong to the New York area. They did no want to be thought of as New Yorkers. Ideologically, they had disassociated themselves from the city. At the same time we denigrate urban living, we idealize rural life. The mental construct of “rural” living continues to enjoy an existence that is antithetical to reality. This can be clearly seen when American are polled on the basic question of where they desire to live. The reality is that America counts over half its population living in metropolitan areas of a million or more, while less than two percent of the population still resides on farms. Americans nonetheless, show a considerable gap between where they say they want to live and where they actually live. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Put in simplest terms, Americans live in cities and metropolitan suburbs, but they say they prefer farms and small towns. With the cost of affordable housing becoming hard to find, and major cities becoming less desirable, many people are turning to the website Instagram and looking at site like old_house_life, and www.cheapoldhouses.com to find Victorian houses in small towns that are often between 3,000 to 5,000 square feet and priced between $100,000.00 to $250,000.00, often times with acers of land that need restoration, and choosing to buy them. There is also another site on Instagram called syrlandbank. They have many Victorian houses in Syracuse, New York that are for sale for between $2,000.00 to $10,000.00, but need approximately $100,000.00 in renovation. The Home Ownership Choice program allows someone to purchase the home, as long as they show proof of funds in the amount of purchase price and renovation costs, and sometimes they require that the home remains owner-occupied. Essentially, one can buy a house for approximately $100,000.00. Nonetheless, three quarters (77 percent) of Americans live in metropolitan areas of over 100,000 persons, but slightly less than a quarter (23 percent) say they want to live in metropolitan areas that large. Polls over the years have contined to demonstrate the lure of rural and smaller places. Today only 2 percent of the population still live on a farm, but 17 percent of the population express the wish to live on a farm, and an additional 8 percent would like to live in a rural area but not on a farm. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Rural images and supposed rural values continue to hold popular appeal (often while simultaneously being judged to be dull and confining). In seems to make no difference that our ideas of what constitutes rural life and the nature of rural values come to us largely from the urban-based mass media. For most of us, our image of small-town life comes to us from television productions written in New York or Los Angeles and produced in Hollywood, California; Atlanta, Georgia; and Toronto, Canada. Commercials also play to our yearning for open spaces and honest relationships. Advertisements for everything from cereal to cars rely heavily on Norman Rockwell nostalgia filled with friendly “down-home” folks. The manipulative use of vintage cars and trucks, farmhouses, and verandas with porch swings fills out the essentially ideal images of rural life. How much of this glorification of rural and small-town life is nostalgia for a World that is now gone, and that most Americans alive today never knew, is difficult to day. There is also considerable expressed support for small-town living. Nonetheless, it is clear that among those expressed support for small-town living. Nonetheless, it is clear that among those saying they want to move out to rural areas, there is no real desire to isolate themselves from urban advantages. Research continues to indicate that the bulk of those seeking to live within 30 miles of a big city. Are greatest achievements do more than heal the sick, and give strength to the weak. They also lead us to a place of hope and light. With each new generation, hopes of a brighter future are rekindled, but until we shrug off the shackles, we will remain prisoners of our own ignorance. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Attacks on the idea that we are self-made people—that thanks to our free will we are independently capable of righteousness—have come not only from determinist but also from several theological masterminds, among them Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonatan Edwards. Together they remind us that our conception of human responsibility must not deny three attributes of God: foreknowledge, sovereignty, and grace. Scripture portrays the selling of Joseph into slavery, the evil acts of Pharaoh, Peter’s denial, Judas’s betrayal of Christ, and the crucifixion as all the result of human choices that God anticipates. Such evidence moved Luther to conclude, “If we believe it to be true that God foreknows and foreordains all things; that He cannot be deceived or obstructed in His foreknowledge and predestination; and that nothing happens but at His will (which reason itself is compelled to grant); then, no reason’s own testimony, there can be no “free-will” in man, or Angel, or in any creature. God’s foreknowledge need not imply divine determinism. Surely, God is unbound by time and therefore able to see out past, present, and future. Consider, however, the implication of God’s sovereignty and grace: John Edwards would not give so much as an inch to human free will, because to the extent that human will is indeterminant—spontaneous and free—God’s plans become dependent on our decisions. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
However, this said Edwards, would necessitate God’s “constantly changing his mind and intentions” in order to achieve His purposes. “They who thus plead for man’s liberty, advance principles which destroy the freedom of God Himself,” the sovereign God of whom Jesus Chris said not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from His will. Nor is human will added to God’s will such that the two together equal 100 percent. Rather, agreed Augustine, “Our wills themselves are included in that order of causes which is certain to God.” God is working in and through our lives, our choices. Spirit that hears each one of us, hears all that is—listens, listens, hears us out—please inspire us now! Our own pulse beats in every stranger’s heart, and also there within the flowered ground beneath our feet, and— please teach us to listen! We can hear it in water, in wood, and even in stone. We are Earth of this Earth, as we are bone of its bone. This is a prayer I sing, for we have forgotten this and so the Earth is perishing. However, happy are they that dwell in Thy house; they will ever praise Thee. Happy is the people who thus fare; yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord. I will extol Thee, my God, O King, and I will bless Thy name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless Thee, and I will praise Thy name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall laud Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy might acts. On the majestic glory of Thy splendor, and on Thy wondrous deeds will I meditate. And humans shall proclaim the might of Thy tremendous acts; and I will recount Thy greatness. They shall make known the fame of Thy great goodness, and shall exult in Thy righteousness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Jdaarch
Love #MillsStation by @cresleighhomes as much as we do? Just wait until we tell you about all the #LivableDesign elements it has tucked away inside! We believe your home should change as YOU change.
That’s why we implement design features such as: zero-threshold showers, wider door openings, wider hallways, backing for future grab bars, and lowered light switches.
Right sized bedrooms and open living spaces make this 3 bedroom home with a loft, court yard, and full sized private backyard an exceptional value. Enhance your outdoor experience with a grill. Learn more at the link in our bio! https://linktr.ee/jdaarch
Make No Mistake About it–Which of the Five is in Need of Psychiatric Treatment?!
The United States of America was primarily established to serve as a base for the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have not celebrated often or deeply enough the birth of this promised land, this choice and beautiful and still-young land, which we possess as the Lord’s gift in freedom and joy—just as long as we serve Him. Men and women and children of courage and vision and faith, strengthened by God as a part of His plan, who struggled, froze, starved, and when necessary died, that these free states in union might me born, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “To assume, among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them. It is worth a lot to the new Americans of that hour to begat this nation—worth all they had, all they were, and all that they had dreamed. What it was worth today, to you and me, and especially to us Christians, who alone know that the Lord is doing, to asset our free agency toward the fulfilling of His plan? The religious commitment of the self-actulized depends more on the grace of God than on one’s own wisdom. One always relies on one’s vows no matter what the labour one puts one’s hand to. Humans proposes, but God disposes, as the Book of Proverbs has it (16.9). And as a sad prophet has happily noted, “A human’s path is not always a product of one’s own planning”; do look at Jeremiah (10.23). If a scheduled spiritual exercise is omitted for a good reason—say, so that you can hide an act of charity or help a needy brother—it can easily be rescheduled. If, however, the reason it is left undone is soul weariness or just plain negligence, that is enough to make it culpable in itself, and may be considered injurious to spiritual progress. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Try through we do, we know we are going to fall short in many ways. However, that is no excuse. Let us try again as hard as we can. Second Wave civilization not only built up new images of time and space and used them to shape daily behaviour, it constructed its own answers to the age-old question: What are things made of? Every culture invents its own myths and metaphors in an attempt to answer this question. For some, the Universe is imagined as a swirling “oneness.” People are seen as a part of nature, integrally tied into their lives of their ancestors and descendants, stitched into the nature, integrally tied into the lives of their ancestors and descendants, stitched into the natural World so closely as to share in the actual “livingness” of animals, trees, rocks, and rivers. In many societies, moreover, the individual conceives of herself or himself less as a private, autonomous entity than as part of a larger organism—the family, the clan, the tribe or the community. Other societies have emphasized not the wholeness or unity of the Universe but its dividedness. They have looked upon reality not as a fused entity but as a structure built up out of many individual parts. Some two thousand years before the rise of industrialism Democritus put forward the then extraordinary idea that the Universe was not a seamless whole but consisted of particles—discrete, indestructible, irreducible, invisible, unsplittable. One called these particles atomos. In the centuries that followed, the idea of a Universe built out of irreducible blocks of matter appeared and reappeared. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
In the middle of the seventeenth century a French abbe named Pierre Gassendi, an astronomer and philosopher at the Royal College in Paris began arguing that matter must consist of ultra-small corpuscula. Influenced by Lucretius, Gassendi became so forceful an advocate of the atomic view of matter that his ideas soon crossed the English Channel and reached Robert Boyle, a young scientist studying the compressibility of gas. Dr. Boyle transferred the idea of atomism from speculative theory into the laboratory and concluded that even air itself was composed of tiny particles. Six years after Dr. Gassendi’s death, Dr. Boyle published a treatise arguing that any substance—Earth, for example—that could be broken down into simpler substances is not, and could not be, an element. Meanwhile, Rene Descartes, a Jesuit-trained mathematician whom Dr. Gassendi criticized, contended that reality could only be understood by breaking it down into smaller and smaller bits. In his own words, it was necessary “to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible.” Side by side, therefore, as the Second Wave began its surge, philosophical atomism advanced with physical atomism. Here was a deliberate assault on the notion of oneness—an assault promptly joined by wave after wave of scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers who proceeded to break the Universe into even smaller fragments, with exciting results. Once Descartes published his Discourse on Method, writes the microbiologist Rene Dubos, “innumerable discoveries immediately emerged from its application to medicine.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
In chemistry and other fields the combination of atomic theory and Descartes’s atomic method brought startling breakthroughs. By the mid-1700’s the notion that the Universe consisted of independent separable parts and subparts was itself conventional wisdom—part of the emerging indust-reality. Every new civilization plucks ideas from the past and reconfigures them in ways that help it understand itself in relationship to the World. For a budding industrial society—a society just beginning to move toward the mass production of assembled machine products composed of discrete components—the idea of an assembled Universe, itself composed of discrete components, was probably indispensable. There were political and social reasons, too, for the acceptance of the atomic model of reality. As the Second Wave crashed against the old pre-existing Firs Wave institutions, it needed to tear people loose from the extended family, the all-powerful church, the monarchy. Industrial capitalism needed a rational for individualism. As the old agricultural civilization decayed, as trade expanded and towns multiplied in the century or two before the dawn of industrialism, the rising merchant classes, demanding the freedom to trade and lend and expand their markets, gave rise to a new conception of the individual—the person as atom. The person was no longer merely a passive appendage of tribe, caste, or clan but a free, autonomous individual. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Each individual had the right to own property, to acquire good, to wheel and deal, to prosper or starve according to his or her own active efforts, with the corresponding right to choose a religion and to pursue private happiness. In short, indust-reality gave rise to a conception of an individual who was remarkably like an atom-irreducible, indestructible, the basic particle of society. The atomic theme even appeared, as we have seen, in politics where the vote became the ultimate particle. It reappeared in our conception of international affairs as consisting of the self-contained, impenetrable, independent units called nations. Not only physical matter but social and political matter were conceived in terms of “brick”—autonomous units or atoms. The atomic theme ran through every sphere of life. This view of reality as composed of organized sparable chunks, in turn, fitted perfectly together with the new images of time and space, themselves divisible into smaller and smaller definable units. Second Wave civilization, as it expanded and overpowered both “primitive” societies and First Wave civilization, propagated this increasingly coherent and consistent industrial view of people, politics, and society. Implicit in the developing myth regarding suburbanites and their lifestyles was a naïve determinism that assumed that the characteristics of the built environment changed how people believed and acted. Thus, moving from city to suburb could and would change patterns of socialization to say nothing of modifying political, religious, and child-reading practices. In brief, suburban residence changes social behaviour. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
William H. Whyte, if willing to make broad-stroke statements about life in Park Forest, was more careful in his generalizing to other types of suburbs and suburbanites. Other writers showed restraint. Even some scholars such as David Riesman got carried away, charging that the suburban family was surrendering all individuality and creativity. Implied was the view that all suburbs were similar and all produced conformity and a long list of social maladies. As portrayed in the postwar caricatures, suburbia was a producer of conformity, compulsive socializing, adultery, alcoholism, divorce, and boredom. Psychiatrists argued that the stress of suburban living additionally led to psychosomatic illness, suicide, and mental illness in general. Typical of the stereotypic statements was that of the late Margaret Mead, who stated that, “Settled in their new homes and finding themselves with nothing to do at home, suburbanites are caught in the boredom characteristic of the American family when its members are imprisoned with one another.” Suburban life had, in her view, degenerated into “a living room or a recreation room which often resembles a giant playpen into which the parents have somewhat reluctantly climbed.” Particularly influential was an article by David Riseman, “The Suburban Dislocation” (later reprinted as “The Suburban Sadness”), which further popularized the stereotype of suburbs as a monocultural destroyer of urban diversity. Suburbs were, in his view, antithetical to developing a true urban culture, which could only be found in the density and diversity of large unban centers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Moreover, when men (and Mr. Riseman’s focus in this earlier era, when there were few female suburban commuters, was on males) moved from the city to the suburbs, they were accused of removing their attention and abilities from important urban concerns and problems. They were portrayed as wasting their talents on parochial suburban activities such as Little League. They had become obsessed with family concerns to the detriment of their civic responsibilities. Such portrayals of suburban life were widely accepted as factual. Interestingly, the criticisms of husbands being overinvolved with family matters was the reverse of the criticism of progressive writers at the turn of the century. Then, the concern was the middle-class husbands did not become sufficiently involved in, nor spend enough time with, their families. According to the wisdom of the 1950s, suburban husbands and fathers were too family focused. Currently, the pendulum has swung again, and fathers are again portrayed in popular magazines as needing to be more involved in day-to-day family life. A much-quoted social-psychological study of an affluent suburb, Crestwood Heights, (actually not a suburb, but an outer-city neighbourhood of Toronto), carried out by John Seeley and his colleagues, seemed to provide empirical support for the belief that suburban lifestyles were bad for one’s mental health. Crestwood Heights was in many respects a fine ethnology of a suburb where people worn minks and were driven around in limousines, but its analysis was prone o psychological overanalysis. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Also, there is the technicality of Crestwood Heights, one of Canada’s wealthy residential districts—not being a suburb, but an outer area of Toronto. In Crestwood Heights there supposedly little individuality. Children were carefully socialized to conform to their parents’ culture of status consciousness and using their homes more for status displays then for living. Suburbia, thus, was seen as encouraging pathological family and child-rearing behaviours. The children were seen as “overprivileged” because the parents in general took an enlightened rather than a frightened attituded toward their children’s mental hygiene. Because they were enlightened and because they could afford it. The parents and children probably spent more time on personality tests and on psychiatrists’ couches than any comparable group in Canada. The mental health services among these fewer than 2,000 pupils were rated among the best in the country. However, the community was attacked so newspapers could produce something sensational by picking out exciting bits. Such as the descriptions of the large homes being cold and lacking in life, or looking like department stores. There was also an interpretation that one and five of these affluent children needed psychiatric attention. Stories sprouted up about a woman whose fanatic devotion to broadloom caused her to lay it wall to wall—right into the fireplace. Others were censorious: tales of rich children dwelling like mushrooms in the basements of their immaculate homes, or of that school were many kids walked around naked. Many more of these stories were unprintable. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
The immediate result was that demand in Crestwood Heights increased. These shocking stories of Stepford Wives, and children from Keeping Up With The Joneses actually made the community more appealing. These problems that normal people did not have. They were struggling to keep their kids out of jail, pushing their husbands to find jobs, and praying that the rent money would not get “stolen” out of the sock drawer this month. Affluent Crestwood Heights children, baffled at first by the odd stories in the papers, eventually found them hilarious. Five would pose together in yearbook group pictures, and ask, “Which of the five is in need of psychiatric treatment?” The picturesque community full of parks and parkettes, not only were the houses one hundred and fifty thousand dollars more expensive than surrounding communities, but they were ringed by churches. Woman played a distinctly subsidiary role. Their place was seen as restricted largely to child rearing, consumerism, and coffee klatching. The postwar studies took it for granted that suburban women did not work outside the home. The studies also assumed that all suburban women were married. The studies, with the exception of Crestwood Heights, also said relatively little about the effect of suburbs on children, although suburbia was criticized for having a particularly pernicious impact on children rearing practices. It is amazing, in retrospect, that article after article would purport to show parents suffering from suburban-induced conformity, alcoholism, or promiscuity in respects to pleasures of the flesh, but little of this seemed to rub off on the children. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Suburbia might be deadly for adults, but there was little suggestion that suburbia ruined children or was in any way bad for them, as it was for their parents. The studies have no indication that for the suburban adolescents growing up in this simpler age, there were any serious family or community problems with delinquency, drugs, or dropping out. These topics were noticeable for their absence. Reading works of the 1950s, one gets the impression that most serious problems facing teenage makes was “momism,” brought on by overprotective and overpossessive mothering. According to one of he most quoted books of the time, an excess of female-dominated domesticity was raising a generation of sons lacking independence from the domination of their mothers (Philip Wylie, A Generation of Vipers, Ferrar and Rinehart, New York, 1942). Other problems rarely surfaced. Only in the occasional controversial movie such as Rebel Without a Cause or Clueless was there any suggestion that there could be a dark side to growing up in the suburbs. And even in the movies James Dean’s problems were clearly blamed on his parents’ drinking and neglect, and Alicia Silverstone’s problems were blamed on her father’s hard work and success, which robbed her of a female role model, and replaced her with money and designer clothes. Not surprisingly, adults criticized the “negativism” of these films, while teenagers in these simpler eras “rebelled” by seeing these films over and over and tried to emulate the characters. It was as if they found the holy grail. The experience that “I depend on parents who do not care” or that “I depend on another who does not care” will, in relatively mild circumstances, lead the individual (in us) to the sense that “I cannot direct my hopes toward my parents or others. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
In more severe circumstances, there is likely to be a sense that “the parents in whose power I am, is against me.” I believe that in truly severe cases, not only does the child feel “You and I are not us,” but the sense of “us” does not develop at all. Hence neither does the sense of you-as-part-of-us, nor the sense of me-as-part-of-us. The individual then has to live by relationships between “I” and “them,” and “him,” “her.” There is no real “you.” The object(s) of guardianship or dependence can then be experienced only as impinging and exploiting, never as protecting or sharing. When there is no “us” in which “I” and “they” are embedded, it must seem natural that others should resent any reminder that I have feelings and needs of my own in competition with theirs. The other disappears except as a menace: “I must not leave myself open to attack—I must not be found. I must keep myself safe from the guardian or object of dependence.” (We need perhaps to be reminded again at this point that we are not considering the guardian or object of dependence as known by other people—we are here considering how some dependent individuals may experience the World. However, perhaps we need also to remind ourselves that there are many more desperate and occasionally out of control guardians and people who others depend on than we dare publicly acknowledge.) “I” keep “myself” safe from “them.” This sentence, which is grammatically correct, is fully of splits and boundaries. It might indeed describe a person’s mind correctly, but a person on whose map such splits and boundaries are very marked could not be happy and rich and psychologically integrated personality. The “I” regions are cut off from “myself,” and both are cut from “them.” “We” and “you-as-part-of-us,” both integrating structures, are not established. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Such splits would cut off a person’s conscious “I” from much that is going on with “me” at the level of the body—the level of feelings and emotions, needs and impulses. In order to survive, I may have to make a habit of disregarding or disowning my feelings and my needs—I may have to alienate some regions of my self from other regions which have to do with feeling and needs. (Theory is assuming that needs and feelings are impulses and hopes are originally part of my “self” regions as these get established, so that a major effort has to be made to separate them out, a deliberate disintegrative effort.) A patient, in the following example, shows the depths at which “a cruel despising of weakness” can maintain a dramatic split between an active “I” and a suffering “me.” “She would rave against girl children and in fantasy would describe how she would crush a girl is she had one, and would then fall to punching herself (which perpetuated the beatings her mother gave her). One day I said to her, ‘You must feel terrified being hit like that.’ She stopped and started and said, ‘I’m not being hit. I’m the one that’s doing the hitting.’” This woman achieved an almost complete split of “I” from “me” and withdrew consciousness from these regions of herself which were “me.” Differentiation between self-regions is obviously a necessary ego-function. We all have to establish a split between “I” and “me.” When I say “I can see what is happening to me,” I reveal a split between “I” and “me,” but it is a necessary one, not a dangerous one. It is clear that I am not unconscious of “me,” rather that my consciousness can cover both “I” and “me.” However, sometimes there is too great an erosion of the natural connections between regions, as when someone says, “I do no know what is happening to me.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
It is in silence, and not in commotion, in solitude and not in crowds, that God best likes to reveal Himself most intimately to humans. Humans are by nature social beings What is true of nature in general—that no being exists on its own resources—is plainly true of humans as well. Babies, before and after birth, depend on their mothers and fathers. Beggars are dependent on the charity of the rich. The rich in turn are dependent on the services of those who make them rich and bring food to their table. Recognizing our interdependence, we value togetherness, communal fellowship, group activities, team sports, close relationships, self-disclosure, social support. To be withdrawn, a hermit, a loner, is an aberration. In recent psychology we have, however, seen a complementary awareness emerge. Too much social stimulation can be stressful. Crowding, noise, sensory overload, loss of privacy, anonymity, social anxiety, fear of victimization, extreme competitiveness, and impatience all take a toll on human well-being. What is more, times of social solitude can heal and renew. Such is the conclusion of an impressive series of studies conducted by the University of British Columbia researcher Peter Suedfeld and his colleagues. Dr. Suedfeld knew from earlier studies of sensory restriction that being alone in a monotonous environment heightens a person’s sensitivity to external or internal stimuli. So he offered hundreds of people an opportunity to tune more deeply into themselves through a twenty-four-hour experience of Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy—a literal day of REST. For a day, the person does nothing but lie quietly on a comfortable bed in the isolation of a dark and soundproofed room. Food, water, and a chemical toilet are available to service the body, and communication is possible over an intercom system through which brief persuasive messages may also be transmitted to the person. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
The day of REST has been notably successful in assisting people who wish to increase their self-control—to gain or lose weight, reduce alcohol intake, improve speech fluency, reduce hypertension, overcome irrational fears, boost self-confidence, or stop smoking. People report that the experience is a pleasant and stress-free way of reducing external stimulation to the point where still, small internal voices can be heard. The healing power of a period of aloneness can also be found in the lives of people who, by choice or necessity, have experienced periods of solitude. If one feels threatened, helpless, or malnourished, to be shipwrecked, to be placed in solitary confinement, or to be a solitary voyager can be traumatic. However, often there is a beneficial side to such experiences. The lone explorer or sailor may have a deep mystical experience—a new relationship with God, a feeling of oneness with the ocean or the Universe, a life-changing new insight into one’s personality. If prisoners in solitary confinement are otherwise assured of humane care, free of privation and torture, they often alleviate the boredom by studying, thinking, solving personal problems, or even planning their own rehabilitation. Scores of cultures on the American, African, Asian, and Australian continents incorporate a period of solitude into the life history of every individual, or at least of every male. The boy entering manhood leaves his community to wander alone in the desert, mountains, forest, or prairie. During this time he searches his soul, dreams a vision, communicates with the gods, or experiences the oneness of nature. Through the experience the boy grows beyond his previous self to a new level of consciousness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Backpacking Outward Bound adventuring (a monthlong program of outdoor physical activities) can offer similar experiences to level up. During the “Solo” component of Outward Bound and of many camping programs, the participants sometimes have mystical experiences that would do credit to any meditator. One study of 361 graduates of the twenty-six-day Australian Outward Bound programs found that the experience produced enduring improvements in self-concept. Traditional folk therapies for psychological disorders often have isolated the disturbed person for a time of aloneness. Many of today’s institutions for mentally disturbed juvenile or adult offenders use “time out” rooms in which an agitated person experiences solitude. In Japan, “quiet therapies” combine solitude with traditions inherited from Zen Buddhism. The depressed or anxious person may commence therapy with a week of bed rest and mediation, after which activities are gradually reintroduced. Dr. Suedfeld notes that many autobiographies and biographies confirm the creative power of solitude. Philosophers, scientists, and artists have experienced novel ideas while isolated. When we are freed from distraction and social demands, unusual things sometimes happen-vivid fantasies and memoires, relaxed emotions, beautiful sensory experiences, deep insight. You can experience a modest form of sensory restriction by practicing what Herbert Benson calls the relaxation response. Assume a comfortable position, breathe deeply, and relax your muscles from foot to face. Now, concentrate on a single word or phrase. (About 80 percent of Dr. Benson’s patients choose to focus on a favour prayer.) Close your eyes and let other thoughts drift away when they intrude as you repeat your phrase continually for ten to twenty minutes. As stress worsens pain, infertility, and insomnia and suppresses the immune system, so meditative relaxation counteracts all these effects, Dr. Benson reports. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Mediation is a modern phenomenon with a long history. Food does not directly supply energy but its presence in the body during the process of metabolism acts as a channel for energy to be set free in the body. This is why those who fully undergo the purification process of the Quest and this regenerate their body, not only need less food than others do, but subsist on finer forms of food. When meditating: Sit down alone and in silence. Lower your head, shut your eyes, breathe out gently, and imagine yourself looking into your own heart. As you breathe out, say Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me…Try to put all other thoughts aside. Be calm, be patient, and repeat the process very frequently. From yesterday’s hermits, monks, and nuns to today’s spiritual seekers, retreat, solitude, and quiet have enabled people to hear a still small voice—the whispers of intuition. God’s spirit dwells within, their faith teaches them. In prayer and meditation, a spiritual presence is felt as one sense something beyond self and as unexpected thoughts surface in consciousness. The foremost examples are the great religious visions that have followed times of solitude and contemplation. Jesus Christ, who began his ministry after forty days alone and who lived a rhythm of retreat and engagement, provides the most noteworthy example. Other religious visionaries, including Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, and countless mystics, monks, hermits, and prophets, have found inspiration in times of contemplative silence. The Christian discipline of a daily quiet time affirms the value of restricted simulation—not as an otherworldly end, but as a spiritual recharging for living in this World. “It is in silence and not in commotion, in solitude and not in crows that God best likes to reveal Himself,” wrote Thomas Merton in The Silent Life. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
The Old Testament reminds us of this in its account of Elijah’s encounter with God: “Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was no in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” And it was in the sound of silence that Elijah heard God’s voice. We live in a time when the hustle and bustle of working, shopping, and entertainment has become a seven-day-a-week affair. Ironically, our European and American cultures are tuning away from the day of rest at the very time that researchers are affirming the healing and renewing power of a day of REST. And should renewing power surprise us? We are, after all, made in the image of the one who on the seventh day “finished one’s work which one had done, and…rested…So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation.” A narcotic experience may give a distorted reflection of the real; it cannot give the real itself. Even so, the price that must be paid for the mirrored images is even greater than the attendant perils. Drugs weaken and may eventually even destroy reason. Alcohol is a drug which removes symptoms. However, like most drugs, it removes the only temporarily Even a little liquor may excite a person, and much liquor makes one mentally unbalanced. G.K. Chesterton wrote voluminously in defense of drinking wine and beer (he never touched spirits), yet drank himself into a long serious illness which nearly cost him his life and after which he was forbidden for some years to take any alcohol at all. Do not confound the drugged vision of God with an authentic one. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
It is not only intoxicating drinks which can cause humans to become heedless and lose self-control; certain drugs can have the same result even though the symptoms are different. Therefore they are banned except when used medically in some situations. Contrary to common belief, the drinking of alcohol does not make a person more “human.” It deprives one of truly human characteristics and makes one more Worldly. Those who try to find the kingdom of Heaven through drugs, whether plants like magic mushrooms or hashish, or chemicals like lysergic acid, may gain glimpses, gets signs, and receive hints, but they may get stuck in an altered state of relative and experience neurosis, or psychosis, and they will not, and cannot escape paying the price of inner deterioration in the end. The fascination which follows the taking of those drugs which seem to have given instant mystic experience is deceptive. A scrutiny of such experience shows that there are liabilities because the seeming enlightenment is illusory, and the taker has no control over the drug and its effects—some of which can be quite bad. One has no means of judging in advance how tolerant one’s body and mind are towards it, whether it will give one nausea, sickness, headaches, nightmares, or momentary insanity instead of the alleged enlightenment. Both drugs and alcohol interfere with the proper practice of meditation, and after taking one or the other one would have to wait a period until the effect wore off before the real practice of mediation could begin. Just as the imagination can weave all kinds of phantasies and experiences in dream which are simply not true, so can it do precisely the same during drug usage. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
The resort o drugs for spiritual purposes can never be justified, for the same drug which raise or widens the taker’s consciousness today may cast one into a pit of devils and horrors the next week. One of the bad effects of drugs, in certain cases, is to create schizophrenia. To gain apparent serenity at the cost of real sanity is hardly a profitable transaction. By using drugs to have spiritual experiences you are saying hat the Kingdom of Heaven is not within you but within a pill or a tablet. It takes time to have a true glimpse of Heaven and it cannot be rushed artificially. It is true that a number of persons who have used a plant (not chemical) drug have had visions of previous embodiment in animal and human forms. However, because they got it in an illegitimate way, they often have to suffer a penalty, either in self-damage or in self-entangled karma. It is an ancient knowledge although a neglected modern one, that many vegetables and fruits have strong medicinal properties. Some people do not drink alcohol because they fear it will interfere with the efficiency of their work, and much more because of one’s spiritual effort at self-conquest. Some do not smoke, first because one regards smoking as physically unhealthy, and second because one’s body becomes so refined as to feel a physiological reaction of strong nausea to it. Thus, these renunciations are both preoccupations with bodily welfare and with ethical ideals; indeed, they are actually tokens of one’s balanced ideals. One can find within oneself, the Stillness of the Void. One will then know, and always will know one’s spiritual being. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
The true self cannot come to those who live on the surface of things, for merely to discover and recognize its existence requires the deepest attentiveness and the strongest love. All the human forces must unite and look for this divine event. The affirmations of the true self made by some creeds are contributions as useful as the denials of the false self made by other creeds. Both are on the same plane, and therefore both have only a limited usefulness as one-sided contributions only. They do not solve the problem of eliminating that false self or of uniting with the true self. Only the Quest n all its integral many-sided nature can do that. It uses every function of the psyche in the effort to change the pattern of the mind—not the imagination alone, nor the intellect alone, nor the intuition alone, nor the will alone, nor the emotions alone, but all of them combined. If one has freed oneself from the ego’s domination, one is entitled to receive the Overself’s benedictory influx. One’s contemplation of the Divine has to become so absorbing as to end in self-forgetfulness. Predestination is the foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits of God, by which whoever are freed will most certainly be freed. Predestination most certainly and infallibly takes effect; yet it does not impose any necessity, so that, namely, its effect should take place from necessity. For it was said that predestination is a part of providence. However, not all things subject to providence are necessary; some things happen from contingency, according to the nature of the proximate causes, which divide providence has ordained for effects. Yet the order of providence is infallible. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
So also the order of predestination is certain; yet free-will is not destroyed; whence the effect of predestination has its contingency. Moreover all that has been said about the divine knowledge and will must also be taken into consideration; since they do not destroy contingency in things, although they themselves are most certain and infallible. The crown may be said to belong to a person in two ways; first, by God’s predestination, and thus no one loses one’s crown: secondly, by the merit of grace; for what we merit, in a certain way is ours; and thus anyone may lose one’s crown by mortal sin. Another person receives that crow thus lost, inasmuch as one takes the former’s place. For God does not permit some to fall, without raising others. “He shall break in pieces many and innumerable, and make others to stand in their stead,” reports Job 34.24. Thus humans are substituted in the place of fallen angels; and the Gentiles in that of Jewish people. One who is substituted for another in the state of grace, also receives the crown of the fallen in that eternal life one will rejoice at the good the other has done, in which life one will rejoice at good whether done by oneself or by others. Although it is possible for one who is predestinated considered in oneself to die in mortal sin; yet it is not possible, supposed, as in fact it is supposed, that one is predestinated. Whence it does not follow that predestination can fall shot of its effect. Since predestination includes the divine will as stated above: and the fact that God wills any created thing is necessary on the supposition that He so wills, on account of the immutability of the divine will, but is not necessary absolutely; so the same must be said of predestination. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Wherefore one ought not to say that God is able not to predestinate one whom He has predestinated, taking it in a composite sense, thought, absolutely speaking, God can predestinate or not. However, in this way the ceretainity of predestination is not destroyed. The life of a good being must be seen as strong in all the virtues. However, often what Humanity sees is only the spit and polish; that is to say, in some respects the interior life lags behind the exterior. Therefore, the good self-actualized should appear to the rest of the World not as one really is, but as one wishes one were. Nonetheless, one’s interior life is always to be evaluated on a higher scale than one’s exterior life. The reason for all this is that our Inspector General is God, whom we ought to reverence in all our pomps a poops. We never leave His sight. Wherever we go, we should walk, step smartly, march with the Angels. Every day we ought to renew our commitment and excite ourselves to fervor. We should recapture the excitement of that first day of our conversion. To that end we should say: “Help me, Lord God, in good commitment and holy service, and grant that I may begin this day as though it were my birthday in the Lord, for what I have done up to now is more the work of a mole than the self-actualized.” The course of our spiritual progress has already been charted by our religious commitment. That is to say, the self-actualized of goodwill has to progress with all possible diligence toward the ultimate goal. The self-actualized who lives out one’s commitment slapdashedly rarely succeeds. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Make no mistake about it! A slippage in religious commitment, regardless of who makes it and however slight it is, causes sin to seep in and damage to the fabric of all monasticism. We have forgotten who we are. We have forgotten who are are. We have alienated ourselves from the unfolding of the cosmos. We have become estranged from the movements of the Earth. We have turned our backs on the cycles of life. We have forgotten who we are. We have exploited simply for our own ends. We have distorted our knowledge. We have abused our power. We have forgotten who we are. Now the land is barren, and the waters are poisoned, and the air is polluted. We have forgotten who we are. Now the forests are dying, and the creatures are disappearing, and humans are despairing. We have forgotten who we are. We ask forgiveness. We ask for the gift of remembering. We ask for the strength to change. We have forgotten who we are. Eternal God, who sendest consolation unto all sorrowing heart, we turn to Thee for solace in this, our trying hour. Though bowed in grief at the passing of our loved ones, we reaffirm our faith in Thee, our Father, who art just and merciful, who healest broken hearts and art ever near to those who are afflicted. May the Christian prayer, proclaiming America’s hope for Thy true Kingdom here on Earth, impel us to help speed that day when peace shall be established through justice, and all humans recognize their brotherhood in Thee. With trust in Thy great goodness, we who mourn, rise to sanctify Thy name. Life is good and life’s tasks must be performed. Help us, O Lord, to rise above our sorrow and face the trials of life with courage in our hearts. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH
Plumas Lake, CA |
Now Selling!
Cresleigh Meadows is now selling! Found just north of Feather River Boulevard, Cresleigh Meadows is home of the largest neighborhood in Plumas Ranch as well as the popular Bear River Park. With four floor plans available, ranging from approximately 2,000 – 3,500 square feet offering, three to five bedrooms, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle.
Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Multi-generational living options also available in select homes.
Homeowners will love the convenient commuter access to nearly Sacramento and Yuba City.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Go! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/
If Brooklyn Had Jet Bombers, Would it be a Nation?
Scientists declare laguage is a human quality that separates humans from all other species. Perhaps it is the same quality that can link us to the beyond, but only if we are willing to listen. Abaco is an island. It has a population of seventeen thousand, two hundred, and twenty-five and forms part of the Bahamas lying off the coast of Florida. Several decades ago, a group of American businessmen, arms merchants, free enterprise ideologues, an intelligence agent of African descent, and a member of the British House of Lords determined that it was time for Abaco to declare its independence. Their plan was to take over the island and break it away from the Bahamian government by promising each of the native residents of the island a free acre of land after the revolution. (This would have left over a quarter of a million acres for use by the real estate developers and investors behind the project.) The ultimate dream was the establishment on Abaco of a taxless utopia to which wealthy businessmen, dreading the Socialist apocalypse, might flee. Alas for free enterprise, the native Abaconians showed little inclination to throw off their chains, and the proposed new nation was stillborn. Nevertheless, in a World in which nationalist movements battle for power, and in which some 152 state claim membership in that trade association of nations, the United Nations, such parodic gestures serve a useful purpose. They force us to challenge the very notion of nationhood. At the time of the revolution in the 1970s, the population was sixty-five hundred and the question was if the sixty-five hundred people of Abaco, whether financed by oddball businessmen or not, constitute a nation? #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
If Singapore with its 2.3 million people (5.9 million in 2021) is a nation, why not New York City with its 8 million (18.8 million in 2021)? If Brooklyn had jet bombers, would it be a nation? Absurd as they sound, such questions will take on new significance as the Third Wave batters at the very foundations of Second Wave civilization. For one of those foundations was, and is, the nation-state. Until we cut through the foggy rhetoric that surrounds the issue of nationalism, we cannot make sense of the headlines and we cannot understand the conflict between First and Second Wave civilizations as the Third Wave strikes them both. Before the Second Wave began rolling across Europe most regions of the World were not yet consolidated into nations but were organized, rather, into a mishmash of tribes, clans, duchies, principalities, kingdoms, and other more or less local units. “Kings and princes,” write the political scientists S. E. Finer, “held powers in bits and blobs.” Borders were ill-defined, governmental rights fuzzy. The power of the state was not yet standardized. In one village, Professor Finer tells us, it amounted only to the right to collect tolls on a windmill, in another to tax the peasant, elsewhere to appoint an abbot. An individual with property in several different regions might owe allegiance to several lords. Even the greatest of emperors typically ruled over a patchwork of tiny locally-governed communities. Political control was not yet uniform. Voltaire summed it all up: In traveling across Europe, he complained, he had to change laws as frequently as horses. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
There was more to this quip than met the eye, of course, for the frequent need to change horses reflected the primitive level of transport and communications—which, in turn, reduced the distance over which even the most powerful monarch could impose effective control. The farther from the capital, the weaker the authority of the state. Yet without political integration, economic integration was impossible. Only if they produced goods for larger-than-local markets, could costly new Second Wave technologies be amortized. However, if outside their own communities, they ran into a maze of different duties, taxes, labour regulations, and currencies, how could businessmen buy and sell over a larger territory? For the new technologies to pay off, local economies had to be consolidated into a single national economy. This meant a national division of labour and a national market for commodities and capital. All this, in turn, required national political consolidation as well. Put simply, a Second Wave political unit was needed to match the growth of Second Wave economic units. Not surprisingly, as Second Wave societies began to build national economies, a basic shift in public consciousness became evident. The small-scale local production in First Wave societies had bred a race of highly provincial people—most of whom concerned themselves exclusively with their own neighbourhoods or villages. Only a tiny handful—a few nobles and churchmen, a scattering of merchants, and a social fringe of artists, scholars, and mercenaries—had interests beyond the village. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
The Second Wave swiftly multiplied the number of people with a stake in the larger World. With steam- and coal-based technologies, and later with the advert of electricity, it became possible for a manufacturer of clothing in Frankfurt, watches in Geneva, or textiles in Manchester to produce far more units than the local market could absorb. He also needed raw materials from afar. The factory worker, too, was affected by financial event occurring thousands of miles away: jobs depended on distant markets. Bit by bit, therefore, psychological horizons expanded. The new mass media increased the amount of information and imagery from far away. Under the impact of these changes, localism faded. National consciousness stirred. Starting with the American and French revolutions and continuing through the nineteenth century, a frenzy of nationalism swept across the industrializing parts of the World. Germany’s three hundred and fifty marginal, diverse, quarreling mini-states needed to be combined into a single national market—das Vaterland. Italy—broken into pieces and ruled variously by the House of Savoy, the Vatican, the Austrian Hapsburgs, and the Spanish Bourbons—had to be united. Hungarians, Serbs, Croats, Frenchmen, and others all suddenly developed mystical affinities for their fellows. Poets exalted the national spirit. Historians discovered long-lost heroes, literature, and folklore. Composers wrote hymns to nationhood. All at precisely the moment when industrialization made it necessary. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
Once we understand the industrial need for integration, the meaning of the national state becomes clear. Nations are not “spiritual unities” as Spengler termed them, or “mental communities” or “social souls.” Noor is a nation “a rich heritage of memories,” to use Renan’s phrase, or a “shared image of the future,” as Ortega insisted. What we call the modern nation is a Second Wave phenomenon: a single integrated political authority superimposed on or fused with a single integrated economy. A ragbag collection of locally self-sufficient, sparsely connected economies cannot, and does not, give rise to a nation. If it sits atop a loose conglomeration of local economies, nor is a tightly unified political system a modern nation. Nationalist uprisings triggered by the industrial revolution in the United States of America, in France, in Germany and the rest of Europe, can be seen as efforts to bring the level of political integration up to the fast-rising level of economic integration that accompanied the Second Wave. And it was these efforts, not poetry or mystical influences, that led to the division of the World into distinct national units. As each government sought to extend its market and its political authority, it came up again outer limits—language differences, cultural, social, geographic, and strategic barriers. The available transport, communication, and energy supplies, the productivity of its technology, all set limits on how large an area could be effectively ruled by a single political structure. The sophistication of accounting procedures, budgetary controls, and management techniques also determined how far political integration could reach. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Within these limits, the integrational elites, corporate and governmental alike, fought for expansion. The broader the territory under their control and the bigger the economic market area, the greater their wealth and power became. As each nation stretched its economic and political frontiers to the utmost, it ran up not merely against these inherent limits but also against rival nations. To break out of these confines the integrational elites used advanced technology. They hurled themselves, for example, into the “space race” of the nineteenth century—the building of railroads. In September 1825 a rail line was established that linked Stockton to Darlington in Britain. In May 1835, on the continent, Brussels was tied to Malines. That September in Bavaria the Nuremberg-Furth line was laid. Next were Paris and St. Germain. Far to the east, in April 1838, Tsarkoe Selo was connected to St. Petersburg. For the next three decades or more, railroad workers stitched one region to another. The French historian Charles Moraze explains: “The countries which were already almost united in 1830 were consolidated by the coming of the railway…those still unprepared saw new bands of steel…tightening around them…It was as if every possible nation was hastening to proclaim its right to exist before the railways were built, so that it might be acknowledged as a nation by transport system which defined the political boundaries of Europe for over a century.” In the United States of America the government awarded vast land grants to the private railroad companies, inspired, as historian Bruce Mazlish has written, by “the conviction that transcontinental roads would strengthen the ties of union between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Hammering in the golden spike that completed the first transcontinental rail line opened the door to a truly national market—integrated on a continental scale. And it extended the actual, as distinct from nominal, control of the national government. Washington could now move troops quickly all across the continent to enforce its authority. What one saw, therefore, in one country after another, was the rise of this powerful new entity—the nation. In this way the World map came to be divided into a set of neat, nonoverlapping patches of red, pink, orange, yellow, or green, and the nation-state system became one of the key structures of Second Wave civilization. Beneath the nation lay the familiar imperative of industrialism: the drive toward integration. However, the drive for integration did not end at the borders of each nation-state. For all its strengths, industrial civilization had to be fed from without. It could not survive unless it integrated the rest of the World into money system and controlled that system for its own benefit. How it did so is crucial to any understanding of the World the Third Wave will create. In examining America’s postwar transformation of rural farm tracts into instant suburbs we must keep in mind several factors. First, without doubt, by far the most important factor in making possible the postwar suburban exodus was the liberalization of loan leading polices by federal government agencies. As noted earlier, prior to the war, mortgages would commonly only be given for a five-year period with a balloon payment at the end. A borrower would have to hope one could get a new mortgage when the note became due. Moreover, the mortgage would cover only half to at most two-thirds the value of the property. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
The new Veterans Administration loads radically changed all this. The new Veteran Administration (VA) loan guarantees made loans available to veterans at low interest rates, below conventional mortgages, with no money down with a twenty-five- or thirty-year repayment schedule. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) similarly liberalized its lending policies for nonveterans. The government, in effect, guaranteed the lending institutions profits by agreeing to make good any leans on which the borrower defaulted. This was a truly radical change. Bank suddenly wanted to make loans to millions of middle- and lower-middle-class families who they previously would have spurned. Families with a steady breadwinner could, for the first time, realistically expect to get mortgages to purchase their own homes. Moreover, it was easy to do. The whole process was streamlined by developers such as the Levitt brothers so that all the paperwork could be completed in a few hours. In an era when closing costs run thousands of dollars, it is worth noting that the total closing cost as of 1954 at the second Levittown outside Philadelphia, in New Jersey, was $10 ($100.07 in 2021 dollars). Following World War II, developers rushed to build acres of new suburban subdivisions. The were modest story book houses, and especially designed to be marketed to ex-GIs and their brides. For instance, Argo Homes offered detached brick and stucco bungalows for veterans only for $7,900.00 full price ($79,057.27 in 2021 dollars) for $53 monthly ($530.38 in 2021 dollars), which paid all carrying charges (total principle and interest payment of $636 a year, with a 4 percent mortgage for twenty-five years). Given such terms, veterans could hardly afford not to move to the suburbs. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
In this particular subdivision, the landscaped plots were 40×100, the houses had 4 rooms, automatic gas heat, fully insulated, large closets, scientific kitchen with built-in cabinets, modern gas range and inlaid linoleum floor, poured concrete foundation, steel lally columns, copper piping, unique balance double hung windows. Government lending policies—whether by design or accident—actively fostered purchasing suburban over city homes. Following World War II, VA and FHA government-guaranteed loans were readily available for new homes in the suburbs. Young veterans could and did purchase new—sometimes still-to-be-built VA and FHA approved suburban subdivision homes with nothing down and mortgage rates below the conventional amount. The above-mentioned Levittown in New Jersey sold homes in the mid-1950s for $8,990 ($89,965.17 in 2021 dollars). Veterans were required only to place a $100 ($1,000.72 in 2021 dollars) good-faith deposit, which was returned at the time of closing. Nonveterans needed only $450 ($4,503.26 in 2021 dollars) down. To purchase existing city homes required far larger down payment. The low housing prices, and particularly the availability of a long-term, no-money-down mortgage, was a crucial factor for new families just becoming economically established. By 1972, the FHA alone had made some 11 million new-home loans. Also important was the fact that purchasing in the city took time. To see if they met FHA standards, existing older homes in the city would have to be inspected, and this took weeks or months. By contrast, once a developer’s plans were approved, all the standardized models of that home he built automatically qualified. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
By contrast, once a developer’s plans were approved, all the standardized models of that home he built automatically qualified. A family could drive out to a new subdivision, pick a lot, put down a $100 ($644.01 in 2021 dollars from 1972 figures) deposit, and do the majority of the paperwork in a Sunday afternoon. Conventional mortgages were also easier to obtain in suburban locations. Two wars later, this was still the case. The author, a Vietnam-ear veteran with three young children and barely enough for a down payment, found mortgage funds readily available on suburban homes. For homes across the line in the city the funds were harder to obtain, and came with higher interest rates. Second, the Federal government further subsidized out-movement from the cities by initiating, in the 1950s, the construction of a federally financed metropolitan freeway system. Secretary of Commerce Weeks described the building of the national freeway system as, “the greatest public works program in the history of the World.” Without the newly built freeways, many of the new suburban subdivisions would have been all but impossible to reach. Automobile commuting would have been out of the question. The freeways meant distance from the city was now measure in time rather than mileage. Developers often put up billboards advertising their tract development as being, “Only 25 minutes from here.” Ironically, the very freeways that speed commuters from the city were originally pushed to be built by downtown business interests and city mayors. They mistakenly expected that new road would bring more shoppers and businesses downtown. They forgot that the roads could be used to go out rather than in. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
Third, Following World War II, open land for buildings was almost by definition suburban land. By the 1950s cities had largely developed all the land within their legal boundaries. This was particularly true of the cities in the eastern and middle-western sections of the country. Without annexation, additional growth in urban areas would thus, by definition, have to be suburban growth. By the end of the way, there was an extreme need for new housing. As noted earlier, for over a decade and a half little had been built. The 1930s were the years of the Great Depression, and during the first half of the 1940s, there was World War II. Thus, by the 1950s there was a tremendous pent-up demand for housing, and this demand could only be met in the suburbs. It was not so much that families were fleeing the city; rather, it was that mot of he land available for development was, by definition, suburban. Forth, for decades following World War II, young families bought homes in the suburbs not so much for “togetherness” or to escape the supposed ills of the city, but because houses in suburban subdevelopment were both more available and more affordable with larger lots than those in the city. However, in communities like Pocket/Greenhaven in Sacramento, California USA; families did want to be close to each other and not live together, so many of the bought homes in the same community to have a sense of a true community, but with separation and privacy. In attempts to analyze he postwar move to the suburbs, this basic economic motivation is often given less weight than it deserves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Economic, more than social-psychological needs for togetherness, propelled young could to the suburbs. In many cases it was more economical and safer to buy in the suburbs than to rent in the city. Safety concerns is why, before becoming President, Governor of California (1967-1975) Ronald Reagan’s wife, Nancy Reagan decided to move out of the Governor’s Mansion, and left in to the California State Parks to be managed as Governor’s Mansion State Historic Park. The mansion was built in 1877, and after the First Lady of California felt it was not a safe community, it sat vacant until 2015 and again is unoccupied since 2019. A family with a mortgage on a tract house in the suburbs found that monthly principal and financing costs usually were lower than on available housing in the city. Moreover, taxes were almost always lower than in the central city. This was in part because developers rarely put in the “extras,” such as city water, sewers, parks, sidewalks, curbs, street lighting, and, of course, schools that were taken as givens in the city. In time the demand for services and the assessments to pay for them increased in new suburbs. However, the initial front-end costs were ow and in a rough fashion met the needs of those at the beginning of their work careers who expected their incomes to increase with time. The 1950 and 1960 constituted a period in which unionization had brought even blue-collar workers high wages and benefits. Fifth, survey data consistently show that Americans have a strong preference for single-family home on their own lots. This is the type of housing that was most commonly built in the suburbs in the decades following the war. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
The homes in the original Levittown in Long Island were modestly beautiful Cape Cod houses. The architectural characteristics denoted a home that was generally with a steep roof, shingled exterior, symmetrical façade, with a large chimney in the middle, and built on a slab. The Cape Cod architecture was considered all-American, as fresh as grandmother’s apple pie, and people stood in line for days waiting to get one. Planners and architects decried these subdivisions of little boxes, “all made out of ticky-tack and all in a row,” but they were vastly popular with the buying public. Lewis Mumford and other critics might rail about the problems of poor design and one-social-class communities, but people literally lined up to buy houses in the newly opened Levittown and other suburban developments. Actually, even if buyers wanted one, there was not a choice. Apartments were not covered by GI loans, and town houses were not being built. Still, even if people are given a choice between high-rise units, town houses, or single-family homes, suburban sprawl will win every time! This is true even for those without children. Research indicates that most families living in apartment buildings view their residency as temporary location before moving to a single-family house. If a suburban home is too expensive, a suburban town house, or even a garden apartment, may be temporarily substituted. Even those academics holding neo-Marxian views, which see suburban sprawl as a product of conscious decisions made by powerful economic interests, still acknowledges that people want single-family homes on separate lots. Imagine that, even socialists and communists like private property. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
Suburban critics may feel that such housing is a blight on the landscape, but others believe when it is tastefully done and includes nature and the neighbourhood does not look like a parking lot, there is no question suburban sprawl looks like a glimpse of Heaven and is what the masses of the population wanted after the war and still want as we approve the half century mark. Postwar suburbia was “caused” by demographic changes. The return of both the veterans and of economic prosperity created a marriage boom that was followed in short order by the famous “baby boom.” The latter lasted from 1947 to 1964. Existing housing in cities and towns was simply not adequate for absorbing the exploding number of new families. Some 10 million new households were created in the decade after the war. In the tight postwar market, they were not welcome as renter. The result was that young couples with children were more or less forced from the overcrowded cities toward the new built standard-format suburb. And anyway, many families did not feel safe with their children living in cities because of the traffic and the rift raft the jails attracted. They needed space to grow families—a need that suburban developers were delighted to fill. “As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling,” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1891-92). #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
At the core of the religious impulse is a sense of awe, an attitude of bewilderment, a feeling that reality is more amazing than everyday scientific reasoning can comprehend. Wonder-struck, we humbly acknowledge our limits and accept that which we cannot explain. For many religious people the ultimate threat of science is therefore that it will demystify life, destroying our sense of wonder and with it our readiness to believe in and worship an unseen reality. Once we regarded flashes of lightening and explosions of thunder as supernatural magic. Now we understand the natural and humanmade process at work. Once we viewed certain mental disorders as demon possession. Now we are coming to discern genetic, biochemical, and stress-linked causes. Once we prayed that God would spare children from COVID-19. Now we vaccinate them. Understandably, some Christians might get the idea that science is elbowing out religion. We can also understand why such people therefore grasp at hints of the supernatural—at bizarre phenomena that science cannot explain. Browse your neighbourhood religious bookstore and you will find books that describe happenings that defy natural explanation—people reading minds or foretelling the future, levitating objects or influencing the roll of a die, discerning the contents of sealed envelopes or solving cases that dumbfounded detective. Whether viewed as a divine gift or as demonic activity, such a phenomena are said to refute a mechanistic Worldview that has no room for supernatural mysteries. Most research psychologist and professional magicians (who are wary of the exploitation of their arts in the name of psychic powers) are skeptical, for several reasons. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
They are skeptical because in the study of ESP and the paranormal there has been a distressing history of fraud and deception; most people’s beliefs in ESP are now understandable as a by-product of the efficient but occasionally misleading ways in which our minds process information; the accumulating evidence regarding the brain-mind connection more and more weighs against the theory that the human mind can function or travel separately from the brain; and, more important, there has never been demonstrated a reproducible ESP phenomenon, nor has there been found any individual who could defy chance when carefully rested. One National Research Council investigation of ESP concluded that “the best available evidence does not support the contention that these phenomena exist.” And in 1995, a CIA-commissioned report evaluated ten years of military testing of psychic spies, in which $20 million ($35, 327, 427.82 in 2021 dollars) had been invested. The result? The program produced nothing, and the psychic spy program was scrapped. After one hundred and twenty-five years of research, and after hundreds of failed attempts to claim a $1-million prize that has for two decades been offered to the first person who can demonstrate “any paranormal ability,” many parapsychologists conceded that what they need to give their field credibility is a single reproducible phenomenon and a theory to explain it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
We Christians can side with scientific skeptics on the ESP issue. We can heed not only the repeated biblical warnings against being misled by self-professed psychics who practice “divination” or “magic spells and charms,” but also the scientific spirit of Deuteronomy: “If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and what He does not come true, then it is not the Lord’s message.” We believe that humans are finite creature made by the one who declares, “I am God, and there is no one like me.” We are aware of how cult leaders have seduced people with pseudopsychic tricks. And we affirm that God alone is omniscient (the able to read minds and know the future), omnipresent (thus able to be in two places a once), and omnipotent (the capable of altering—or, better yet, creating—nature with divine power). In the biblical view, humans, loved by God, have dignity but not deity. If our senses of mystery is not to be found in the realm of the pseudosciences and the occult, then where? Having cleared he decks of false mysteries, where shall we find the genuine mysteries of life? We can take our clue from Sherlock Holmes, who was fond of telling people: “It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious. Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.” The more scientists learn about sensation, the more convinced they are that what is truly extraordinary is not extrasensory perception, claims for which inevitably dissolve upon investigation, but rather our very ordinary moment-to-moment sensory experiences of organizing formless neural impulses into colourful sights and meaningful sounds. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
As you read this sentence, particles of light energy are being absorbed by the receptor cells of your eyes, converted into neural signal that activate neighbouring cells, which process the information for a third layer of cells, which converge to form a nerve tract that transmits a million electrochemical message per moment up to the brain. There, step by step, the page you are viewing is reassembled into its component features and finally—in some as yet mysterious way—composed into a consciously perceived image, which is instantly compared with previously stored images and recognized as words you know. The whole process is rather like taking a house apart, splinter by splinter, transporting it to a different location, and then, through the work of millions of specialized workers, putting it back together. All of this transpires in a fraction of a second. Moreover, it is continuously transpiring in motion, in three dimensions, and in colour. Twenty-five years of research on computer vision has no yet begun to duplicate this very ordinary, taken-for-granted part of our current experience. Further, unlike virtually all computers, which process information one step at a time, the human brain carries out countless other operations simultaneously, enabling us all at once to sense the environment, use common sense, converse, experience emotion, and consciously reflect on the meaning of our existence or even to wonder about our brain activity while wondering. The deeper one explores these very ordinary things of life, the more one empathizes with Job: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
To be sure, sometimes we use the word mystery not in its deep sense, as when the mind seeks to fathom it brain, but rather to refer to unsolved scientific puzzles. When wonder is based merely on ignorance, it will fade in the growing light of understanding. Science is a puzzle-solving activity. Among the still unsolved puzzles of psychology are questions such as, Why do we dream? Why do some of us become heterosexual, others homosexual? How does the brain store memories? The scientific detectives are at work on these “mysteries,” and they may eventually offer us convincing solutions. Already, new ideas are emerging and progress is occurring. Often, however, the process of answering one question exposes more and sometimes deeper questions. A new understanding may lead to a new, more impenetrable sense of wonder regarding phenomena that seem further than ever from explanation or that now seems more beautifully intricate than previously imagined. Not long ago scientists wondered how individual nerve cell communicated with one another. The answer—that they communicated through chemical messengers called neurotransmitters—raised new questions: How many neurotransmitters exist? What are the functions of each? Do abnormalities in neurotransmitter functioning predispose disorders such as schizophrenia and depression? If so, how might such problems be remedied? And how, from the electrochemical activity of the brain, do experienced emotions and thoughts arise: How does a material brain give rise to consciousness? #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
Deeper and deeper go to the questions, the deepest one of all being the impenetrable mystery behind the origin of the Universe: Why is there something and not nothing? (If a miracle is something that cannot be explained in terms of something else, then the existence of the Universe is a miracle that dwarfs any other our minds can conceive.) Human consciousness has long been a thing of wonder. More recently, wonder has also grown regarding the things our minds do subconsciously, automatically, out of sight. Our minds detect and process information without awareness. They automatically organize our perceptions and interpretations. They respond intelligently, via the brain’s right hemisphere, in ways that we can explain only if our left hemisphere is informed of what is going on. They effortlessly encode incoming information about the place, timing, and frequency of events we experience, about words meanings, about unattended stimuli. They ponder problems we are stumped with, and they occasionally spew forth a spontaneous creative insight. With the assistance of hypnosis, they may even, on orders, eliminate warts on one side of the body but not on others. There is, we now know, more to our minds than we are away of. And how fortunate that it should be so. For the more that routine functions (including well-learned activities such as walking, biking, or gymnastics) are delegated to control systems outside of awareness, the more our consciousness is freed to function like an executive—by focusing on the more important problems at hand. Our brains operate rather like BMW, with a few important matters decided by chair of the board, and everything else, thankfully, handled automatically, effortlessly, and usually competently be amazingly intricate native infotainment system. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
Language researchers, too, have been awestruck by an amazing phenomenon: the ease with which children acquire language. Before children can add two and two they are creating their own grammatically intelligible sentences and comprehending the even more complex sentences spoke to them. Most parents cannot state the intricate rules of grammar. Yet before being able to tie their shoes, preschoolers are soaking up the complexities of language by learning several new words a day and the rules for how to combine them. They do so with a facility that puts to shame many college students who struggle to learn a new language with correct accents and many computer scientists who are struggling to simulate natural language on computers. Moreover, they, and we, do so with minimal comprehensions of how we do it—how we, when speaking, monitor our muscles, order our syntax, watch out for semantic catastrophes risked by the slightest change in word order, continuously adjust our tone of voice, facial expression, and gestures, and manage to say something meaningful when it would be so easy to speak gibberish. Our womb-to-tomb individual development is equally remarkable. What is more ordinary than humans reproducing themselves, and what is more wonder-full? Consider the incredible god fortune that brought each one of us into existence. The process began as a mature egg was released by the ovary and as some 300 million sperm began heir upstream race toward it. Against all odds, you—or, more exactly, the very sperm cell together with the very egg it would take to make you—won this one-in-300 million lottery (actually one in billions, considering that your conception had to occur from particular unions involving pleasures of the flesh). #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
What is more, a chain of equally improbable events, beginning with the conception of your parents and their discovery of one another, had to have extended backward in time for the possibility of your moment to have arrived. Indeed, when one considers the improbable sequence of unnumerable events that led to your conception, from the birth of the Universe onward, one cannot escape the conclusion that your birth and your death anchor the two ends of a continuum of probabilities. What is more improbable than that you, rather than one of your infinite alternatives, should exist? What is more certain than that you will not live on Earth endlessly? Most beings of life fail to survive the first week of existence. However, again, for you, good fortune prevailed. Your one cell became two, which became four; and then by the end of your first week even more astonishing thing happened: brain cells began forming and within weeks were multiplying at a rate of about one-quarter million per minute. The scientist-physician Lewis Thomas explains the wonder of that single cell, which had as its descendant all the cells of the human brain. The mere existence of that cell should be one of the greatest astonishments of Earth. People ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hour, calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell. If you like being surprised, there is the source. One cell is switched on to become the whole trillion-cell, massive apparatus for thinking and imagining and, for that matter, being surprised. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
All the information needed for learning to read and write, playing the piano, arguing before senatorial subcommittees, walking across a street through traffic, or the marvelous human act of putting out one hand and leaning against a tree, is contained in the first cell. All of grammar, all syntax, all arithmetic, all music. No one has the ghost of an idea how this works, and nothing else in life can ever be do puzzling. If anyone doe succeed in explaining, it, within my lifetime I will charter a skywriting airplane, maybe a whole fleet of them and send them aloft to write one great exclamation point after another, around the whole sky, until all my money runs out. Human life—so ordinary, so familiar, so natural, and yet so extraordinary. Looking for mystery in things bizarre, we feel cheated when later we learn that a hoax or a simple process explains it away. All the while we miss the awesome events occurring before, or even within, our very eyes. The extraordinary within the ordinary. So it was on that Christmas morning two millennia ago. The most extraordinary event of history—the Lord of the Universe coming to the spaceship Earth in human form—occurred in so ordinary a way as hardly to be noticed. On a mundane winter day at an undistinguished inn in an average little town the extraordinary one was born of an ordinary peasant woman. Like our human kin at Bethlehem and Nazareth long ago, we, too, are often blind to the mystery within things ordinary. We look for wonders and for the unseen reality—the hand of God—in things extraordinary, when more often His presence is to be found in the unheralded, familiar, everyday, events of which life is woven. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
O Lord, Thou art on the sandbanks as well as in the midst of the current; I bow to Thee. Thou art in the little pebbles as well as in the calm expanse of the sea; I bow to Thee. O all-pervading Lord, Thou art in the barren soil and in crowded places; I bow to Thee. We thankfully acknowledge that Thou art the Lord our God and God of our fathers, the God of all that lives, our Creator and Creator of the Universe. We offer blessings and thanksgiving to Thy great and holy name because Thou hast kept us in the life and sustained us; so mayest Thou continue to keep us in life and sustain us. O gather our exiles into the courts of Thy holy sanctuary to observe Thy statues, to do Thy will, and to serve Thee with a perfect heart. We give thanks unto Thee. Blessed be God to whom we are ever grateful. For all this, Thy name, O our King, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who art our salvation and our help. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whim our thanks are due. Our God and God of our fathers, bless us with the threefold blessing written in the Book of Mormon and Holy Bible, and in the Torah of Moses, Thy servant, and spoken by Aaron and his sons, Thy consecrated priests: May the Lord bless thee and keep thee; so may it His will. May the Lord make His countenance to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee; so may it be His will. May the Lord turn His countenance unto thee and give thee peace. So may it be His will. Please grant peace, well-being and blessing unto the World, with grace, lovingkindness and mercy for us and for all America, Thy people. To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose is the next best. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
Cresleigh Homes
Imagine entertaining in a space with so many seating options! It’s a dream. 🙌 Riverside Residence 2 is approximately 2,600 square feet, and designed to maximize every bit of space, in a one story home. Special features in this home designed to maximize comfort include a centralized great room.
Extend the living environment outdoors with a corner sliding glass door in the great room for easy indoor-outdoor entertaining. Implement an executive gourmet kitchen perfect for cooking up holiday meals in. The more, the merrier! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/residence-2/
O Wicked Wit and Gifts that Have the Power So to Seduce!
I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange story. Almost all humans are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no parallel or response in a lister’s internal life, and might be suspected or laughed at. A truthful traveller who should have seen some extraordinary creature in the likeness of a devil, would have no fear mentioning it; but the same traveller having had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental impression, would hesitate considerably before one would own to it. To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in which subjects are involved. We do not habitually communicate our experiences of these subjective things, as we do our experiences of objective creation. The consequences is, that the general stock of experiences in this regard appears exceptional, and really is so, in respect of being miserably imperfect. The Devil had been raised among us, and his rage was vehement and terrible; and, when he shall be silenced, the Lord only knows. It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain Murder was committed in Boston in 1688, which attracted great attention. We hear more than enough of Murders as they rise in succession to their atrocious eminence, and if I could, I would bury the memory this this atrocious eminence, as hi body was buried, in the Witch House’s basement. When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion fell—or I ought rather to say, for I cannot be too precise in my facts, it was nowhere publicly hinted that any suspicious fell—on the man who was afterwards brought to trial. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
As no reference was at the time made to him in the newspapers, it is obviously impossible that any description of him at that time have been given in the newspapers. It is essential that this fact be remembered. Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account of that first discovery, I found it to be deeply interesting, and I read it with close attention. I read it twice, if not three times. The discovery had been made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a flash—rush—flow—I do not know what to call it—no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive—in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river. Though almost instantaneous in its passing, it was perfectly clear; so clear that I distinctly, and with a sense of relief observed the absence of the dead body from the bed. As the circumstances of the Murder, gradually unravelling, took stronger and stronger posses of the public mind, I kept them away from mine, by knowing as little about them as was possible in the midst of the universal excitement. John Hathorne asked most of the questions and established the judicial attitude that was to prevail throughout most of the examinations and the trials. Many people suspected that the devil killed this man and he had been summoned by Sarah Good because she had also been accused of bewitching a few girls in the town. Mr. Hathorne asked the children to look at Sarah God and say whether she was one who afflicted them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
They accused her to her face, “upon which they were all dreadfully tortured and tormented for a short space of time.” When they recovered from their fits, they charged her with causing them, saying that her specter had come and tormented them although her body remained “at a considerable distance from them.” This was spectral evidence, that is, evidence concerning a specter or apparition of the accused, rather than her bodily person. It was eventually to become the central legal issue of the trials, but at the moment we need only see why it seemed initially so convincing to the examining magistrates. Here were girls afflicted with violent physical symptoms which had no known physical cause, but which a physician had attributed to witchcraft. There was a malicious old woman accused of causing them. When the sufferers accused her they were immediately thrown into convulsions. What could be more plausible than that the convulsions were inflicted as revenge for the accusation? Yet such behaviour was still unfamiliar enough in Salem so that one of the recorders noted that “none here see the [specters of the] witches but the afflicted and themselves.” However, the change was so startling that I fully believed the girls derived their impression in some occult manner. For instance, we knew there was something occult going on because the throat of the murdered man had been cut straight across. In the opening speech for the defense, it was suggested that the deceased might have cut his own throat in the dreadful condition referred to. Yet, it would have been impossible for such a wound to be self-inflicted by either hand. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Certainly, Mr. Hathorne was convinced; when the children had recovered and repeated their accusation he turned to the accused woman. “Sarah Good, do you not see now what you have done? Why do you not tell us the truth? Why do you this torment these people children?” Certainly many of her neighbours though her malicious, since they attributed to her a number of inexplicable events, including the death of a cow which perished in a “sudden, terrible and strange unusual manner.” Such testimony was common in witchcraft cases, and it has caused much unseemly hilarity among the modern historians. It is likely, they have asked, that His Satanic Majesty the Devil or any of his minions would stop to concern themselves with the fate of a New England cow? The answer is that nothing is more likely. What else would a fertility god concern himself with but the health or sickness of crops, of animals, and of humans? From the standpoint of a society that still remembered who the Devil was, no testimony could be more relevant. As a matter of fact, the village witches who still exist in rural England are often expert in folk medicines, human and animal, as well as charms, and until recently many of them were midwives. Sarah Osburn also denied that she had hurt anyone, but the girls feel again into fits. Mr. Hathorne asked her how this happened. Perhaps, she said, the Devil went about in her likeness doing harm, but she knew nothing about it. Sarah Osburn was the first at Salem to assert the principle that the Devil can impersonate an innocent person. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Whether the devil could or not was a matter of debate in the seventeenth century, but most Protestant authorities agreed with Goodwife Obsurn that, as Hamlet put it, “The Devil hath power/ to assume a pleasing shape.” However, the principle was not discussed at this hearing, since Sarah Osburn was a likely a suspect as Sarah Good, if for no other reason than her lying. Lying was still considered a serious sin in the seventeenth century, and a crime as well, legally punishable by the courts. Nine of us had not the smallest doubt about those passages, neither, I believed, had any one in Court. When Mr. Hathorne tried to find out how well Sarah Osburn knew Sarah Good she said she did not know her by name. Mr. Hathorne asked if Sarah Osburn had been tempted by the devil, and she said no. Why then, he asked, had not she been at church? She had been sick, she said, and unable to go. However, her husband and others contradicted her. “She had not been at meeting,” they said, “this year and two months.” To understand why the matter of church attendance was considered so significant one must remember that the seventeenth century saw witchcraft as literal Devil worship, and therefore as a rival religion to Christianity. This is why the magistrates sometimes asked accused persons, as they asked Sarah Good, what God they served. And if the accused person avoided speaking the name of God (as Sarah Good did), they had reason to think it a suspicious circumstance. The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the judge, on the other side of the court. He slowly shook a great grey veil, which he carried on his arm for the first time, over his head and whole form. Then he collapsed, all was gone, and his place was empty. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
The examinations of Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn afford grounds for suspicion and for further examination. However, the major event of that first day of March was the examination of Tituba. It began like the others, but it changed very quickly: “Tituba, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?” “None.” “Why do you hurt these children?” “I do not hurt them.” “Who is it then?” “The Devil, for aught I know.” “Did you never see the Devil?” “The Devil,” said Tituba, “came to me and bid me serve him.” She went on, with a minimum of judicia prodding, to provide a detailed confession of witchcraft, the first of approximately fifty that were made during the Salem trials. On March first and second, in her examination, Tituba said that the Devil had come to her in the shape of a man—a tall man in black, with white hair. Other times he had come in the shape of an animal. He had told her he was God, that she must believe him and serve him six years, and he would give her many fine things. He had shown her a book and she had made a mark in it, a mark that was “red like blood.” Many people thought this to be a revelation. “Then I saw another beast, coming out of the Earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. He exercised all authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to comedown from Heaven to Earth in full view of men. Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the Earth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
“He ordered them to set up an image in honour of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless one had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name,” reports Revelation 13.11-17. Sarah Osburn was to die there on the tenth of May. Tituba, like later confessors, was never brought to trial. She lay in jail until she was sold to pay the jailer’s fees, her master refusing to pay them. Sarah Good was brought to trial. Another reaction to Tituba’s confession was to confirm the community in its fear of witchcraft, and particularly its fear of the three accused women. The night of March First William Allen and John Hughes heard a strange noise; it continued frightening them, but the approached and “saw a strange and unusual beast lying on the ground. Going up to it, the said beast vanished away and in the said place started up two or three women fled, not after the manner of other women but swiftly vanished out of sight, which women we took to be Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and Tituba.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
The next night William Allen again had hallucinations: “Sarah Good visibly appeared to him in his chamber, said Allen being in bed, and brought an unusual light with her. The said Sarah came and sat upon his foot. The said Allen went to kick at her, upon which she vanished and the light with her.” Notice that in this hallucination as in many others the hallucination stops as soon as the subject is able to move or speak. A curse is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particular, “curse” may refer to such a wish or pronouncement made effective by a supernatural or spiritual power, such as a god, or gods, a spirit, or natural force, or else as a kind of spell by magic or witchcraft. The Winchester rifle is a handsome gun that legend has it was forged in Hell. Whoever possesses the cursed rife either suffers disaster or fortune. Oliver Fisher Winchester was an American businessman and politician, best known as being the founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Oliver Winchester was born November 30, 1810 and dead December 10, 1880. Oliver Winchester was known for manufacturing and marketing the Winchester repeating rifle, which was a much re-designed descendant of the Volcanic rifle of some years earlier. Mr. Winchester was more learned than his kind in the mysteries of a deep and thrilling lore of peculiar fascination. He was a man highly honoured for his natural gifts and knowledge of learned books which nobody else could read, that was when he took his second orders the bishop gave him a mantle of scarlet silk to wear upon his shoulders in which, and his lordship had put such power into it that, when the parson has it rightly on, he could govern any ghost or evil spirit, and even stop an Earthquake. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Such a powerful man, in combat with supernatural visitations discovered that a division of Smith & Wesson firearms was failing financially with one of their newly patented arms. Having an eye for opportunity, Mr. Winchester assembled venture capital together with other stockholders and acquired the Smith & Wesson division, better known as the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, in 1855. By 1857, Mr. Winchester had positioned himself as the principle stockholder in the company and relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, and changed the name to New Haven Arms Company. After experiencing a slow start, and then a booming success with the Henry rifle, the company reorganized once again and the first Winchester rifle was the Model 1866, which had been nicknamed the Yellow Boy. The gun was called Yellow Boy because it should be remembered that, howsoever strange and singular it may sound to us that a mere lad should formally solicit such a performance at his own hands. Gradually Mr. Winchester amassed a considerable fortune. When Mr. Oliver Winchester died on December 10, 1880, his ownership in the company passed to his son, William Wirt Winchester (who married Sarah Lockwood Pardee in 1862), and died March 7 1881 at the young age of 43. The couple has also had a child, Annie Pardee Winchester, born June 15, 1866, and died 6 weeks later on July 25, 1866. Mrs. Winchester was deeply troubled by the loss of her daughter. In the course of her daily walk, she had to pass a certain heath or down where the road wound along through tall blocks of granite with open spaces of grassy sward between them. #RandpolphHarris 9 of 13
There in a certain spot, and always in the same place, she declared that she encountered, every day, a baby with a pale and troubled face, clothed in a little dress of white pique, made with two skirts. The pique was cut slightly Gabriele, and rounded off in the front with scallops, bound with white braid, with a button in each scallop, and ribbon-sash, tied at the left side, with one hand always stretched forth, and the other pressed against her side. “She is my baby,” Mrs. Winchester would say, and she often used to come to her parents house in New Haven; but that which troubled her was, that she had now been dead three years, and she had seen her body laid in the grave at her burial, this that she saw every day must needs be her soul or ghost. The hair of the appearance, sayth Mrs. Winchester, is not like anything alive, but it is so soft and light that it seemth to melt away while you look; but her eyes are set, and never blink—no, not when the sun shineth full upon her face. She maketh no steps, but seemth to swim along the top of the grass; and her hand, which is stretched out alway, seemth to point to something far away, out of sight. It is her continual coming; for she never failth to meet Mrs. Winchester, and to pass on, that hath quenched her spirits; and although she never seeth her by night, yet cannot she get her natural rest. Mrs. Winchester went to see a doctor who told her, “The case is strange but by no means impossible. It is one that I will study, and fear not to handle, if you will be free with me, and fulfill all that I desire.” Mrs. Winchester was overjoyed, but she perceived that the doctor turned pale, and was downcast with some thought which, however, he did not express. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
The doctor knew that this might be a doemonium meridianum, the most stubborn spirit to govern and guide that any human can meet, and the most perilous withal. He made an appointment to go with Mrs. Winchester to the spot where she had these encounters. They had hardly reached the accustomed spot, when they both saw her at once gliding towards them; punctually as the ancient writers describe their “lemures, which swoon along the ground, neither marking the sand nor bending the herbage.” The aspect of the baby girl was exactly that which had been related by Mrs. Winchester. There was a pale and stony face, the strange misty hair, the eyes firm and fixed, that gazed, yet not on them, but on something that they saw far, far away; one hand and arm stretched out, and the other grasping the girdle of her waist. She floated along the field like upon a stream, and glided past the spot where they stood, pausingly. But so deep was the awe that came over the doctor, as he stood there in the light of day, face to face with a human soul separate from her bones and flesh, that his heart and purpose both failed him. He had resolved to speak to the spectre in the appointed form of words, but he did not. He stood like one amazed and speechless, until she had passed clean of out sight. When they returned to the house, and after he had said all he could to pacify Mrs. Winchester, he took leave for that time, with a promise that when he had fulfilled certain business elsewhere, when then he alleged, he would return and take orders to assuage these disturbances and their cause. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
The doctor later told Mrs. Winchester that he thought it was best that they try an exorcism, but his Church, as is well known, hath abjured certain branches of her ancient powers, on grounds of perversion and abuse. So he referred her to a medium. The medium told Mrs. Winchesters, “There is a danger from the demons, but so there is in the surrounding air every day.” There was a kind of trouble in the air, a soft rippling sound, and all at once the shape appeared, and came towards the medium gradually. She opened her parchment scroll, and read aloud the command. The spirit paused, and seemed to waver and doubt; stood still; then she rehearsed the sentence again, sounding out every syllable like a chant. The spirit then swam into the midst of the circle, and there stood still, suddenly. Her knees shook under her, and the drops of sweat ran down her flesh like rain. But, although face to face with the spirit, the medium’s heart grew calm, and her mind was composed. The spirit then commanded Mrs. Winchester to move West and build a mansion in honour of the spirit killed by the Winchester rifle and “as long as the hammer keep pounding, her heart would continue to beat.” The medium dismissed the troubled ghost, until she peacefully withdrew, gliding towards the west. Mrs. Winchester moved to San Jose, which was near her family Member, Enoch Pardee, an occultist, prominent physician, free mason, and Mayor of Oakland, California USA, had built his family’s mansion in 1868, which is now known as the Pardee House Museum. Masonry has influenced more the modern witchcraft; it has influenced dozens of occult orders. Mrs. Winchester bought a farm house and built a massive mansion. There was something very painful and peculiar in the position of the Winchester mansion through the nineteenth century. The estate in those days was in a transitory state, and Mrs. Winchester, like her formularies, embodied a strange mixture of the old belief with the new interpretation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
However, the mansion is now flanked by a pleasantness, a beautiful garden and lawn, and it is surrounded by a sole grove of palm trees. It has also the aspect of age and of solitude, and looks the very scene of harmony and supernatural events. A legend might well belong to every beautiful glade of grass around, and there must surely be a haunted room somewhere within its walls. The incredible mansion, scenery of the legend still survives, and, like the field of the forty footsteps in another history, the place is still visited by those who take interests in the supernatural tales of old and new. Freemasons supposedly conducted a séance in the mansion in August of 2019. A phantom made an answer willingly. It stated, “before the next Yule-tide, a fearful pestilence will lay waste the land, and myriads of souls will be loosened from the flesh, until our valleys will be full.” The general facts stated in this diary are to these matters of belief accounted a strong proof of the veracity of the Ghost that the plague, fatal to so many millions, did break out in the global village at the close of the year. How sorely must the infidels and heretics of this generation be dismayed when they know that this Black Death, which is now swallowing its thousands in the streets of the great city, was foretold several months before the outbreak, under the séance of a freemason, by a visible and suppliant ghost! And what pleasure and improvements do such deny themselves who scorn and avoid all opportunity of intercourse with souls separate, and the spirits, glad and sorrowful, which inhabit the unseen World! May they who observe the Sabbath and call it a delight, rejoice in Thy Kingdom. May the people who sanctify the seventh day be sated and delighted with Thy bounty. For Thou didst find pleasure in the seventh day, and didst sanctify it, calling it the most desirable of the days, in remembrance of creation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
Winchester Mystery House
Today is the return of our guided Mansion Tour! The tour guide-led experience allows guests to access areas of the mansion that have been closed since March 2020. Click the link in our bio for more information. winchestermysteryhouse.com/recent-links
Nature, in Giving Humans Tears, Bears Witness She Gave Humans the Softest Hearts!
Last year was not all that bad. We led the league in flu shots. Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one. The split-up of production and consumption also created, in all Second Wave societies, a case of obsessive “macrophilia”—a kind of Texas infatuation with bigness and growth. If it were true that long production runs in the factory would produce lower unit costs, then, by analogy, increases in scale would produce economies in other activities as well. “Big” became synonymous with “efficient,” and maximization became the fifth key principle. Cities and nations would boast of having the tallest skyscraper, the largest damn, or the World’s biggest miniature golf course. Since bigness, moreover, was the result of growth, most industrial governments, corporations, and other organizations pursued the ideal of growth frenetically. Japanese workers and managers at the Matsushita Electric Company would jointly chorus each day: “Doing our best to promote production, sending our goods to the people of the World, endlessly and continuously, like water gushing from a fountain. Grow, industry, Grow, Grow, Grow! Harmony and sincerity! Matsushita Electric!” In 1960, as the United States of America completed the stage of traditional industrialism and began to feel the first effects of the Third Wave of change, its fifty largest industrial corporations had grown to employ an average of 80,000 workers each. General Motors alone employed 595,000, and one utility, Vail’s AT&T, employed 736,000 women and men. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
This meant, at an average household size of 3.3 that year, that well over 2,000,000 people were dependent upon paychecks from this one company alone—a group equal to one half the population of the entire country when Hamilton and Washington were stitching it into a nation. (Since then AT&T has swollen to even more gargantuan proportions. By 1970 it employed 956,000—having added 136,000 employees to its work force in a single twelve mother period. By 2020, because of diversification and advanced technology in telecommunications, the company AT&T had 230,000 employees, but is still the largest employer in the U.S. telecommunications industry today, ahead of Verizon, T-Mobile U.S. and Sprint. AT&T was a special case and, of course, Americans were peculiarly addicted to bigness. However, macrophilia was no monopoly of the Americans. In France in 1963 fourteen hundred firms—a mere .0025 percent of all companies—employed fully 38 percent of the work force. Governments in Germany, Britain, and other countries actively encouraged mergers to create even larger companies, in the belief that larger scale would help them compete against the American giants. Nor was this scale maximization simply a reflection of profit maximization. Karl Marx had associated the “increasing scale of industrial establishments” with the “wider development of their material power.” Dr. Lenin, turn, argued that “huge enterprises, trusts and syndicates had brought the mass production technique to its highest level of development.” His first order of business after the Soviet revolution was to consolidate Russian economic life into smallest possible number of the largest possible units. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Mr. Stalin pushed even harder for maximum scale and built vast new projects—the steel complex at Magnitogorsk, another at Zaporozhstal, the Balkhash copper smelting plant, the tractor plants at Kharkov and Stalingrad. He would ask how large a given American installation was, then order construction of an even larger one. In The Cult of Bigness in Soviet Economic Planning, Dr. Leon M. Herman writes: “In various parts of the USSR, in fact, local politicians became involved in a race for attracting the ‘World’s larges projects.’” By 1938 the Communist party warned against “gigantomania,” but with little effect. Even today Russian and East European communist leaders are victims of what Dr. Herman calls “the addiction to bigness.” Such faith in sheer scale derived from narrow Second Wave assumptions about the nature of “efficiency.” However, the macrophilia of industrialism went beyond mere plants. It was reflected in the aggregation of many different kinds of data into the statistical tool known as Gross National Product (GNP), which measured the “scale” of an economy by totting up the value of goods and services produced in it. This tool of the Second Wave economists had many failings. From the point of view of GNP it did not matter whether the output was in the form of food, education and health services, or munitions. The hiring crew to build a home or to demolish one both added to GNP, even though one activity added to the stock of housing and the other subtracted from it. GNP also, because it measured only market activity or exchanges, relegated to insignificance a whole vital sector of the economy based on unpaid production—child-rearing and housework, for example. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
Despite these shortcomings, Second Wave governments around the World entered into a blind race to increase GNP at all costs, maximizing “growth” even at the risk of ecological and social disaster. The macrophiliac principle was built so deeply into the industrial mentality that nothing seemed more reasonable. Maximization went along with standardization, specialization, and the other industrial ground rules. Finally, all industrial nations developed centralization into a fine art. While the Church and many First Wave rulers knew perfectly well how to centralize power, they dealt with far les complex societies and were crude amateurs by contrast with the men and women who centralized industrial societies from the group floor up. All complicated societies require a mixture of both centralized and decentralized operations. However, the shift from a basically decentralized First Wave economy, with each locality largely responsible for producing its own necessities, to the integrated national economies of the Second Wave led to totally new methods for centralizing power. These came into play at the level of individual companies, industries, and the economy as a whole. The early railroads provide a classic illustration. Compared with other business they were the giants of their day. In the United States of America in 1850 only forty-one factories had a capitalization of $250,000.00 USD ($8,740,097.40 USD in 2021 dollars) or more. By contrast, the New York Central Railroad as early as 1860 boasted a capitalization of $30,000,000.00 USD ($972,993,975.90 USD in 2021 dollars). To run such a gargantuan enterprise, new management methods were needed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
The early railroad managers, therefore, like the managers of the space program in our own era, had to invent new techniques. They standardized technologies, fares, and schedules. They synchronized operations over hundreds of miles. They created specialized new occupations and departments. They concentrated capital, energy, and people. They fought to maximize the scale of their networks. And to accomplish all this they created new forms of organization based on centralization of information and command. Employees were divided into “line” and “staff.” Daily reports were initiated to provide data on car movements, loadings, damages, lost freight, repairs, engine miles, et cetera. All this information flowed up a centralized chain of command until it reached the general superintendent who made the decisions and sent orders down the line. The railroads, as business historian Alfred D. Chandler Jr., has shown, soon became a model for other large organizations, and centralized management came to be regarded as an advanced, sophisticated tool in all the Second Wave nations. In politics, too, the Second Wave encouraged centralization. In the United States of America, as early as the late 1780’s, this was illustrated by the battle to replace the loose, decentralist Articles of Confederation with a more centralist Constitution. Generally the First Wave rural interests resisted the concentration of power in the national government, while Second Wave commercial interest led by Hamilton argued, in The Federalist and elsewhere, that a strong central government was essential not only for military and foreign policy reasons but for economic growth. The resultant Constitution of 1787 was an ingenious comprise. Because First Wave forces were still strong, the Constitution reserved important powers to the states rather than the central government. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
To prevent overly strong central power it also called for a unique separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers. However, the Constitution also contained elastic language that would eventually permit the federal government to extend its reach drastically. As industrialization pushed the political system toward greater centralization, the government in Washington took on an increasing number of powers and responsibilities and monopolized more and more decision-making at the center. Within the federal government, meanwhile, power shifted from Congress and the courts to the most centralist of the three branches—the Executive. By the Nixon years, historian Arthur Schlesinger (himself once an ardent centralizer) was attacking the “imperial presidency.” The pressures toward political centralization were even stronger outside the United States of America. A quick look at Sweden, Japan, Britain, or France is enough to make the United States of America’s system seem decentralized by comparison. Jean-Francois Revel, author of Without Marx or Jesus, makes this point in describing how governments respond to political protest: “When a demonstration is forbidden in France, there is never any doubt about the source of the prohibition. If it is a question of a major political demonstration, it is the [central] government,” he says. “In the United States of America, however, when a demonstration is forbidden, the first question everyone asks is, ‘By whom?’” Dr. Revel points out that it is usually some local authority operating autonomously. The extremes of political centralization were found, of course, in the Marxist industrial nations. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
In 1850 Mr. Marx called for a “decisive centralization of power in the hands of the state.” Mr. Engels, like Mr. Hamilton before him, attacked decentralized confederations as “an enormous step backward.” Latter on the Soviets, eager to accelerate industrialization, proceeded to construct the most highly centralized political and economic structure of all, submitting even the smallest of production decisions to the control of central planners. The gradual centralization of a once decentralization economy was assisted, moreover, by a crucial invention whose very name reveals its purpose: the central bank. In 1694, at the very dawn of the industrial age, while Newcomen was still tinkering with the steam engine, William Paterson organized the Bank of England—which became a template for similar centralist institutions in all Second Wave phase without constructing its own equivalent of this machine for the central control of money and credit. Paterson’s bank sold government bonds; it issued government back currency; it later began to regulate the lending practices of other banks. Eventually it took on the primary function of all central banks today: central control of the money supply. In 1800 the Banque de France was formed for similar purposes. This was followed by the formation of the Reichsbank in 1875. In the United States of America, the collision between First and Second Wave forces led to a major battle over central banking shortly after the adoption of the Constitution. Mr. Hamilton, the most brilliant advocate of the Second Wave policies, argued for a national bank on the English Model. The South and the frontier West, still wedded to agriculture, opposed him. Nevertheless, with the support of the industrializing Northeast, he succeeded in forcing through legislation that created the Bank of the United State—forerunner of today’s Federal Reserve System. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Employed by government to regulate the level and rate of market activity, central banks introduced—by the back door, as it were—a degree of unofficial short-range planning into capitalist economies. Money flowed through every artery in Second Wave societies, both capitalist and socialist. Both needed, and therefore created, a centralized money pumping station. Central banking and centralized government marches hand in hand. Centralization was another dominating principle of Second Wave civilization. What we see, therefore, is a set of six guiding principles, a “program” that operated to one degree or another in all the Second Wave countries. These half-dozen principles—standardization, specialization—were applied in both the capitalist and socialist wings of industrial society because they grew, inescapably, out of the basic cleavage between producer and consumer and the ever-expanding role of the market. These principles in turn, each reinforcing the other, led relentlessly to the rise of bureaucracy. They produced some of the biggest, most rigid, most powerful bureaucratic organizations the World had ever seen, leaving the individual to wander in a Kafka-like World of looming mega-organizations. If today we feel oppressed and overpowered by them, we can trace our problems to the hidden code that programmed the civilization of the Second Wave. This six principles that formed this code lent a distinctive stamp to Second Wave civilization. Today, as we shall shortly see, every one of these fundamental principles is under attack by the forces of the Third Wave. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
So, indeed, are the Second Wave elites who are still applying these rules—in business, in banking, in labour relations, in government, in education, in the media. For the rise of a new civilization challenges all the vested interests of the old one. In the upheavals that lie immediately ahead, the elites of all industrial societies—so accustomed to setting the rules—will in all likelihood go the way of the feudal lords of the past. Some will be by-passed. Others will be dethroned. Many will be reduced to impotence or shabby gentility. Several—the most intelligent and adaptive—will be transformed and emerge as leaders of the Third Wave civilization. To understand who will run things tomorrow as the Third Wave is becoming dominant, we must first know exactly who is running things today. Modern suburbia is the period of the twentieth century prior to the second World War was one of momentous changes in the volume of suburbanization. This was the era in which the city reached is zenith and suburbs fully came into their own. Cities were booming. The year 1920 was a watershed insofar as it marked the first time the nation was more than half (51.7 percent) urban. The Roaring Twenties exemplified the urban adolescence of a country that was now explicitly being shaped by urban goals and values. As stated during the Depression of the 1930s by the Report of the Urbanization Committee to the National Resources Committee: “The faults of out cities are not those of decadence and impending decline, but of exuberant vitality crowding its way forward under tremendous pressure—the flood rather than the drought. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
“The city is both the great playground and the great battleground of the Nation…An unprecedented mobility arising from the harnessing of stream, electricity, and internal-combustion engine to humans and materials are responsible for this phenomenal urban development. Swifter forms of urban and interurban transportation have further led to suburban migration and caused the emergence of metropolitan districts instead of individual cities as the actual areas of urban life.” Thus, in the period before the second World War, the cities appeared robust and growing in economic and social dominance, not in decline and decay. Suburbs were part of the growth of the urban area, no longer simply a footnote. With some 17 million residents in 1930 (the total American population was 123.1 million), suburbs were becoming a majority component of metropolitan population. Suburban population was already 45 percent as large as the central-city population. Suburbs built between the first and second World Wars (1918-1942) represented the first steps toward mass suburbanization. Elite suburbs of the nineteenth-century model—that is large, large architecturally designed homes—continued to be built. However, such suburbs, as for example, Shaker Heights, east of Cleveland, Ohio; were now more oriented to streetcar lines than railroads. Moreover, the growing upper-middle class use of automobiles for commuting now put a premium on living in a quality suburb not too distant from downtown offices. Thus, across the country, upper-status inner-ring suburbs on the “good side” of the city saw fine homes constructed during the 1920s. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
These pre-World War II suburbs were built to have the best of both Worlds. They could appeal to the long standing antiurbanism of many Americans. They also appealed to those seeking to remove themselves from heavy concentration of new immigrant populations in the central cities. The suburbs could also boas that with their greenery they were closer to nature and thus better places to raise children. All this could be enjoyed while residents remained within a short commute of the city and kept all urban advantages. This meant not only the city’s cultural life and nightlife, but more importantly, the advantages of the city’s gas, electric, and telephone utilities. Inner-ring suburbs might have their own government, run their own schools, and collect their own lower taxes, but they were connected to city gas mains, electric lines, water and sewer systems, and telephones. Affluent suburban residents thus obtained all the practical advantages of living in the city while escaping the costs and problems. No wonder the popular middle-class women’s magazine such as Ladies’ Home Journal, Redbook, and Good Housekeeping extolled the benefits of suburban living. You could have the mythical American Pie Life with a beautiful house with the gorgeous roses surrounded by the pristine white picket fence while surrendering none of the urban comforts and advantages. Housing styles in affluent lace curtain between-war suburbs reflected the privileged positions of their owners. Depending on one’s preference, the homeowner could build an ideal home in a Colonial New England style while next door a Grand Queen Anne Victorian and next to an English half-timbered Tutor, and across the Street from a center-entrance Georgian and at the corner a Spanish-Moorish style villa. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
The last style reflected the importance of the expanding Southern California movie industry. Films such as The Sheik created a fad for all things thought to be Moorish Arab, which, when combined with the Spanish influences in Southern California, produced an ersatz Spanish-Moorish style found in places as far from the ocean and sun as Milwaukee, Wisconsin. An excellent example of the ersatz style then called Spanish is expensive Palos Verdes, Estates outside of Los Angeles. The style has come to be known as Californian style; that is, low hacienda-style stucco-sided and red-tiled-roofed homes with terraces and verandas. Overall, if not exciting, Palos Verdes produced a very pleasant and harmonious physical perspective. Architectural styles during the 1920s and early 1930 were often mixed in occasionally bizarre and electric fashions. For example, for a number of years I lived in the suburb of Shorewood, just north of Milwaukee, in a marvelous 1930 Dutch Colonial home that had a living room done in Spanish-Moorish style complete with rounded arches and rough Spanish plaster. The builders of such homes created for themselves far more than housing; they created the romantic idealization of earlier eras. “A man’s home was his castle,” where he could life if not as a lord, at least as a latter-day country gentleman. And all this could be had while benefiting from twentieth-century urban technology of indoor plumbing, central heating, and electricity. In the words of President Herbert Hoover, “To own one’s home is a physical expression of individualism, of enterprise, of independence, and of the freedom of spirit” (Speech quoted in American Home, February 1932, p. 253). #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
It should be remembered that most of the communities in which these “expressions of individualism” were located were deliberately racially, religiously, ethnically, and economically restricted In Palos Verdes, for example, cost restrictions mandated minimum lot sizes, set back requirements, and minimum construction costs. Residential covenants attached to the deeds excluded most groups and religions. An exception was made for live-in servants. The irony of such exclusive housing is that the heritage for the architecture that was so popular came from a community development designed to copy Mexican-style hacienda architecture apparently never occurred to the developers or residents. The feeling of being accepted by someone we love is a basic human need. In the pas 100 years, the United States of America has changed significantly and become far more loving and accepting. Being accepted by good people motivates us. It increases our sense of self-worth and self-confidence. Those who cannot find acceptance from desirable sources often seek it elsewhere. They may look to people who are not interested in their well-being. They may attach themselves to false friends and do questionable things to try to receive the acknowledgement they are seeking. They may seek acceptance by wearing a particular brand of clothing to generate a feeling of belonging or status. For some, striving for a role or a position of prominence can also be a way of seeking acceptance. They define their worth by a position they hold or status they obtain. Even in the Church we are not always free from this type of thinking. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
Seeking acceptance from the wrong sources or for incorrect reasons puts us on a dangerous path—one that is likely to lead us astray and even to destruction. Instead of feeling cherished and self-confident, we will eventually feel abandoned and inferior. However, see that you look to God and live. The ultimate source of empowerment and lasting acceptance is our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. They know us. They love us. They do not accept us because of our title or position. They do not look at our status. They look into our hearts. They accept us for who we are and what we are striving to become. Seeking and receiving acceptance from Them will always lift and encourage us. As we look into our hearts, we screen ourselves. What no one around us knows, we surely know. We know our motives and desires. When we engage in sincere, honest reflection, we do not rationalize or deceive ourselves. As we sincerely and prayerfully ponder he extent to which our hearts are hones and broken, we will be taught by the Holy Ghost. We will receive a sweet confirmation or gentle correction, inviting us to act. At first it would seem that humans in the World, having among themselves no type of moral relations or acknowledged duties, could be neither good nor evil, and had neither vices nor virtues, unless, if we take these words in a physical sense, we call those qualities that can harm an individual’s preservation “vices” in one, and those that can contribute to it “virtues.” In that case it would be necessary to call the one who least resists the simple impulses of nature the most virtuous. However, without departing from the standard meaning of these words, it is appropriate to suspend the judgment we could make regarding such a situation and to be on our guard against our prejudices, until we have examined with scale in hand whether there are more virtues than vices among civilized humans. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Or whether all things considered they would not be in a happier set of circumstances if they had neither evil to fear nor good to hope for from anyone, rather than subjecting themselves to a universal dependence and obliging themselves to receive everything from those who do not oblige themselves to give them anything. Above all, let us not conclude with Dr. Hobbes that because humans have no idea of goodness one is naturally evil; that one is vicious because one does not know virtue; that one always refuses to preform service for one’s fellow humans which one reasonably attributes to oneself, to those things one needs, one foolishly imagines oneself to be the sole proprietor of the entire Universe. Dr. Hobbes has very clearly seen the defect of all modern definitions of natural right, but the consequences one draws from one’s own definition show that one takes it in a sense that is no less false. Were he to have reasoned on the basis of the principles he established, Dr. Hobbes should have said that since the state of nature is in the state in which the concern for our self-preservation is the least prejudicial to that of others, that state was consequently the most appropriate for the peace and the best suited for the human race. Dr. Hobbes says precisely the opposite, because he had wrongly injected into the savage human’s concern for self-preservation the need to satisfy a multitude of passions which are the product of society and which have made laws necessary. The evil human, he says, is a robust child. It remains to be seen whether savage humans are a robust child. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
Were we to grant Dr. Hobbes this, what would we conclude from it? That is this human were as dependent on others when one is robust as one is when one is weak, there is no type of excess to which one would not tend: one would not tend: if she was too slow in offering one nourishment, one would disrespect one’s mother; should one find one’s younger brother annoying, one would harm him; should one be assaulted or aggravated by an individual, one would bite that person’s leg. However, being robust and being dependent are two contradictory suppositions in the state of nature. When they are dependent, humans are weak, and when one is emancipated from that dependence before one is robust. Dr. Hobbes did not see that the same cause prevents them at the same time from abusing their faculties, as one oneself maintains. Hence we could say that savages are not evil precisely because hey do not know what it is to be good; for it is neither the development of enlightenment nor the restraint imposed by the law, but the clam of the passions and the ignorance of vices which prevents the from doing evil. So much more profitable to these is the ignorance of vice than the knowledges of virtue is to those. Moreover, there is another principle that Dr. Hobbes failed to notice, and which, having been given to humans in order to mitigate, in certain circumstances, the ferocity of one’s egocentrism or the desire for self-preservation before this egocentrism of one came into being, tempers the ardor one has for one’s own well-being by an innate repugnance o seeing one’s fellow humans suffer. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
I do not believe I have any contradiction to fear in grating the only natural virtue that the most excessive detractor of human virtues was forced to recognize. I am referring to pity, a disposition that is fitting for beings that are as weak and as subject to ills as we are; a virtue all the more universal and the more useful to humans in that it precedes in one any kind of reflection, and so natural that even animals sometimes show noticeable signs of it. Without speaking of the tenderness of mothers for their young and of the perils hey have to brave in order to protect them, one daily observes the repugnance that horses have for trampling a living body with their hooves. An animal does not go undisturbed past a dead animal of its own species. There are even some animals that give them a kind of sepulchre; and the mournful lowing of the cattle entering a slaughterhouse voices the impression they received of the horrible spectable that strikes them. One notes with pleasure the author of The Fable of the Bees, having been forced to acknowledge humans as a compassionate and sensitive being, departing from one’s cold and subtle style in the example one gives, to offer us the pathetic image of an imprisoned human who sees outside one’s cell a ferocious animal tearing a child from its mother’s arms and nourishment, mashing its frail limbs with its murderous teeth, and ripping with its claws the child’s quivering entrails. What horrible agitation must be felt by this witness of an event in which one has no personal interest! What anguish must one suffer at this sigh, being unable to be of any help to the fainting mother or to the dying child. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Such is the pure movement of nature prior to all reflection. Such is the force of natural pity, which the most depraved mores still have difficulty destroy, since everyday one sees in our theaters someone affected and weeping at the ills of some unfortunate person, and who, were one in the tyrant’s place, would intensify the torments of one’s enemy still more; [like the bloodthirsty Sulla, so sensitive to ills he had not caused, or like Alexander of Pherae, who did not dare attend the performance of any tragedy, for fear of being seen weeping with Andromache and Priam, and yet who listened impassively to the cries of so many citizens who were killed every day on his orders. Nature, in giving humans tears, bears witness that she gave the human race the softest hearts.] If nature have not given humans pity to assist their reason, there is a clear awareness that, with all their mores, humans would have never been anything but monsters; but one has not seen that from this quality alone flow all the social virtues that one wants to deny in humans. In fact, what are generosity, mercy, and humanity, if not pity applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to the human species in general. Benevolence and even friendship are, properly understood, the products of a constant pity fixed on a particular object; for is desiring that someone not suffer anything but desiring that one be happy? Were it true that the commiseration were merely a sentiment that puts us in the position of the one who suffers, a sentiment that is obscure and power in savage humans, develop but weak in humans dwelling in civil society, what importance would this idea have to the truth of what I say, expect to give it more force? #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
In fact, commiseration will be all the more energetic as the witnessing animal identifies itself more intimately with the suffering animal. Now it is evident that this identification must have been infinitely close in the state of nature than in the state of reasoning. Reason is what engenders egocentrism, and reflection strengthens it. Reason is what engenders egocentrism, and reflection strengthens it. Reason is what turns humans in upon oneself. Reason is what separates one from all that troubles one and afflicts one. For centuries, philosophers have debated what it means to be human. However, the answer has eluded us. Perhaps it is because it is so simple. To be human means to choose. Philosophy is what isolated one and what moves one to say in secret, at the sight of a suffering human, “Perish if you will; I am safe and sound.” No longer can anything but danger to the entire society trouble the tranquil slumber of the philosopher and yank one from one’s bed. One’s fellow humans can be killed with impunity underneath one’s window. One has merely to place one’s hands over one’s ears and argue with oneself a little in order to prevent nature, which rebels within one, from identifying one with the human being assassinated. Savage humans do not have this admirable talent, and for lack of wisdom and reason one is always seen thoughtlessly talent, and for lack of wisdom and reason one is always seen thoughtlessly giving in to the first sentiment of humanity. When there is a riot or a street brawl, the populace gathers together; the prudent human withdraws from the scene. It is the rabble, the women of the marketplace, who separate the combatants and prevent decent people from killing one another. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
It is therefore quite certain that pity is a natural sentiment, which, by moderate in each individual the activity of the love of oneself, contributes to the mutual of the entire species. Pity is what carries us without reflection to the assistance of those we see suffering. Pity is what, in the state of nature, takes the place of laws, mores, and virtue, with the advantage that no one is tempted to disobey its sweet voice. Pity is what will prevent every robust savage from robbing a weak child or an infirm old man of one’s hard-earned subsistence, if one oneself expects to be able to find one’s own someplace else. Instead of the sublime maxim of reasoned justice, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, pity inspires all humans with another maxim of natural goodness, much less perfect but perhaps more useful than the preceding one: Do what is good for you with as little hard as possible to others. In a word, it is in this natural sentiment, rather than in subtle arguments, that one must search for the cause of the repugnance at doing evil that every human would experience, even independently of the maxims of education. Although it might be appropriate for Socrates and minds of his stature to acquire virtue through reason, the human race would long ago have ceased to exist, if its preservation had depended solely on the reasoning of its members. With passions so minimally active and such a salutary restraint, being more wild than evil, and more attentive to protecting themselves from the harm they could receive than tempted to do harm to others, humans were not so subject to very dangerous conflicts. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
Since they had no sort of intercourse among themselves; since, as a consequence, they knew neither vanity, nor deference, nor esteem, nor contempt; since they had not the slightest notion of mine and thine, nor any true idea of justice; since they regarded the acts of violence that could befall them as an easily redressed evil and not as an offense that must be punished; and since they did not even dream of vengeance except perhaps as a knee-jerk response right then and there, like the dog that bites the stone that is thrown at one, their disputes would rarely have had bloody consequences, if their subject had been no more sensitive than food. Likewise, a mother who is overwhelmed by power negative emotions, like anger or grief, while nursing her infant, could be the cause of its spasms and convulsions. Even medical science admits that a depressive kind of emotionalism contributes towards causing hardening of the arteries and hence earlier old age. Whenever Gandhi had an important decision to make, and went through protected self-wrangling in the process, the physician who attended him noted that his blood pressure rose considerably. Once Gandhi went to sleep in such a condition. Next morning the pressure had fallen to normal. During the night he had ended the mental pressure and arrived at a decision! Angina pectoris is recognized by many physicians now as a very serious disease, often fatal and always painful, mostly brought on by extreme nervous tension. The power of the mind over flesh is proved convincingly even by such simple, everyday experiences as the vomiting caused by a horrible sigh, the weeping caused by a tragic one, the loss of appetite of positive indigestion caused by bad news, and the headache caused by quarreling. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
As long as we live in this World, trails and tribulations will dog our steps. Job has it right. “Human life on Earth is just one unending trudge” (7.1). Each one of us, therefore, ought to take care. Do not underestimate the power of a temptation. Do no overestimate your own power of a temptation. Do not overestimate your power to resist a temptation. After all, we do not want the Devil to take us by surprise. He never sleeps. He goes about seeking whom he may devour, as Peter wrote in his First Letter (5.8). What is the moral? No one’s so honied and wholesome that one cannot be deviled for dinner. And at dinner, or so the Gospels would have us believe, the Devil’s the guest from Hell. Yes, temptations are often useful to the human race, whether they come n small packages or large. However, how can this be? They bring us low, purge, scourge, and school us in the fire; that is to say, they scare the living daylights out of us. All the Saints have passed barefoot over the coals and in the process still made some spiritual progress. Alas, those who cannot withstand temptations become the shipwrecked, cast adrift forever. Yes, there is a moral. There is no religious order so lofty or monastery so remote that the Unwanted Visitor cannot slip in and make some mischief. Over time Humankind has not been able to defend itself successfully from the assaults of all temptations. Our common experience tells us that. And the reason why? The source of our temptations has already invaded us; that is to say, we were born in concupiscence, and in concupiscence we thrive. Sad to say, we did not need the Letter of James to remind us that (1.14). #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
We do have some success in the fight. However, as one temptation or tribulations is dispatched, another will soon take its place. We will always have something to whack away at, it seems, for are no we still paying the price for pummeling our Primal Felicity? Many seek to flee he temptations altogether. Alas, the escape route is clogged, and the refugee is destined to succumb! Advancing to the rear, then, is not the answer. We cannot hope to conquer that way. However, through spiritual cunning—that is to say, through Patience and True Humility—we become the stronger, and the tempters have to try harder. If a wildly successful plant—that is to say, a temptation—causes you pain, you will probably take the pruning knife and trim it back. Do that, and it will return the hardier. Pull out its root, however, and it is gone forever. You will feel better, and your spiritual garden will recover its charm. The way we stand, you can see we have grown up this way together, out of the same soil, with the same rains, leaning in the same way toward the Sun. See how we lean together in the same direction. How the dead limbs of one of us rest in the branches of another. How those branches have grown around the limbs. How the two are inseparable. And if you look you can see the different ways we have taken this place into us. Magnolia, loblolly bay, sweet gum, Southern bayberry, Pacific bayberry; whenever we grow there are many of us; Monterey pine, sugar pine, white-bark pine, four-lead pine, single-leaf pine, bristle-cone pine, foxtail pine, Torrey pine, Western red pine, Jeffrey pine, bishop pine. And we are various, and amazing in our variety, and our differences multiply, so that edge after edge of the endlessness of possibility is exposed. You know we have grown this way for years. And to no purpose you can understand. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
Yet what you fail to know we know, and the knowing is in us, how we have grown this way, why these years were not one of them heedless, why we are shaped the way we are, not all straight to your purpose, but to ours. And how we are each purpose, how each cell, how light and soil are in us, how we are in the soil, how we are in the air, how we are both infinitesimal and great and how we are infinitely without any purpose you can see, in the way we stand, each alone, yet none of us separable none of us beautiful when separate but all exquisite as we stand, each moment heeded in this cycle, no detail unlovely. Our God and God of our father and mothers, please remember the merit of our ancestors who, from year to year, appeared before Thee in America, Thy Holy City. How deep was their rejoicing as they brought their offerings before Thee! We pray Thee, imbue us, O Lord our God, with their faith in Thee and their joy in Thy World, their love for Thy Scripture and their yearning for freedom and justice. May we, in their spirit of sacrificial devotion, fulfill our duty toward the rebuilding of Thy Holy Land, the fountain of our life, that we may ever serve Thee in reverence as in days of yore. Because of our sins we were exiled from the Holy Land and removed far away from its sacred soil We cannot therefore make our festival pilgrimages before Tee nor can we fulfill our obligations in Thy chosen House, the great and holy Temple which was called by Thy name, because of the destruction that has come upon Thy Sanctuary. May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our fathers and mothers, merciful King, in Thine abundant compassion, again to have mercy upon us and upon Thy Sanctuary. O rebuild it speedily and please enhance its glory. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
Cresleigh Homes
What’s better than the most priceless art in the world? A view like this! The incredible wall of windows in the Mills Station Res 3 model is worth checking out; a home with everything you need, including truly remarkable outdoor living space. It’s truly breathtaking! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-3/
All of the Brain Structures are Online
When some people remember horrendous accidents that they were in, two key areas of the brain go blank: the area that provides a sense of time and perspective, which makes it possible to know that was then, but I am safe now, and another area that integrates the images, sounds, and sensations of trauma into a coherent story. When those parts of the brain are knocked out, you experience something not as an event with a beginning, a middle, and an end but in fragments of sensations, images, and emotions. A trauma can be successfully processed only if all those brain structures are kept online. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) allow some to access their memories of an accident without being overwhelmed by them. When the brain areas whose absence is responsible for flashbacks can be kept online while remembering what has happened, people can integrate their traumatic memories as belonging to the past. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
In some, dissociation (shutting down completely) can complicate recovery in a different way. None the brain structures necessary to engage in the present were online, so that dealing with the trauma is simply impossible. Without a brain that is alert and present there can be no integration and resolution. These type of people need to be helped to increase their window of tolerance before they can deal with their posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Hypnosis was the most widely practiced treatment for trauma from the late 1800s. However, hypnosis fell out of favor in the early 1990s and there have been no recent studies of its effectiveness for treating PTSD. Still, hypnosis can induce a state of relative calm from which people can observe their traumatic experiences without being overwhelmed by them. Since that capacity to quietly observe oneself is a critical factor in the integration of traumatic memories, it is likely that hypnosis, in some form, will make a comeback. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Still, many people turn to spirituality to calm their minds down and heal their bodies, as spirituality arises from an authentic longing to know God. For us to evolve and maintain a vital, mature personal self out of our inborn potentials, we require caregivers who facilitate our individuation by meeting certain developmental requirements. We have a holding requirement, a requirement for caregivers who suspend the expression of their own subjectivity and are present simply as loving onlookers who give us room to discover our own subjective reality. This imagine of God helps to heal people because they are able to fill in holes in their psyche that formed as a result of childhood needs inconsistently met due to the lack of guidance or abandonment. Many of us want to experience ourselves as part of a calm, wise, loving authority who possess qualities we admire and are latent with us. We require relationships with others who are very much like ourselves. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Our caregivers facilitate the emergence of our authentic individual selfhood when they optimally respond to these requirements of forming a loving and protective bond with us. People who feel safe and loved are usually happy and want to make others in their presence feel comfortable and at peace also. I see ahead of me the City of God, all golden and shimmering in the distance. I am so excited. I want it so much. When we feel a connection we God and His house, we experience so many wonderful feelings of love and joy. If you feel empty, keep going, far beyond this emptiness until you melt into God’s love and feel a blissful union with him. Some people feel that the World is so painful, and humiliating. They may feel rejected, abandoned, and alone. Well, these feeling pop up, turn them off and think about how that beautiful tree in the park appears to be alone, but has a root system blow it that helps it thrive and develop. Just like we may not be able to see the roots, we know they are there, much like God is here feeding and protecting us, but we may not be able to see him. Yet our faith tells us God is here with us. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Some of us try to prove our value through some activity of earning it. Perhaps we try to earn it by being kind and accommodating toward others—whatever fits our concept of having value. However, the more that we try to earn our value, the more that that very project reinforces the underlying premise that we do not intrinsically have it—it forever remains something extrinsic to who we are. And then that premise propels us to keep trying to earn it, and we are caught in a loop. This phenomenon manifests in relationship dynamics all the time. Perhaps we are drawn to someone, and so we try to get them to love us. The problem is, who we become in that attempt usually is not very appealing. We are trying to make something happen rather than allowing it to happen naturally, so we are constantly manipulating ourselves, or the other person or both. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
In the process of trying to manipulate love, we may present ourselves in a way that is not open nor authentic, or we may try to pressure or control the other—none of which is likely to evoke feelings of love. Our attempt to get the other to love us actually makes them less likely to love us, and then we feel even more desperate for love, even more convinced that love will not arise unless we make it arise—and the cycle continues. Or perhaps we are trying to maintain our sense of space in our relationship. Perhaps we see our space as something that could be easily consumed or usurped by the other. So we assert our requirement for space in a way that is hard-edged or hostile, that has a quality of pushing the other away. The very way that we go about promoting our requirement for space makes it hard for the other to welcome giving us our space. And then we feel even more convinced that the other does not want us to have our space, and we all the more antagonistically go about asserting our requirement for space. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
We keep going around in circle doing the same. Insanity is believing that we can keep doing the same thing and get different results. We keep doing the same thing in order to avoid feeling some experience of emptiness, and when it does not work, rather than recognizing that it does not work, we keep doing it harder. We think that is we try harder at the thing that does not work, we can make it into something that works. This is the way that the conditioned mind works and we find ourselves in an environment that does not support our full openness, and this leads to us being lost and confused. Perhaps our environment remains stable as long as we are happy, confident, and doing well, but begins to unravel if we are having a hard time and do not get over it quickly. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Victorian Frame of Mind
Currently, perhaps the most common reason for intimacy to suffer or vanish entirely is an exclusive focus on someone’s history of past trauma and the resulting issues. Fire in straw will not be hidden, and the flames of affection will burst forth at length, though it be long kept under. Reliving a strong negative emotion causes significant changes in the brain areas that receive nerve signals from the muscles, gut, and skin—areas that are crucial for regulating basic bodily functions. The brain scans, as you recall, showed that recalling an emotional event from the past causes us to actually re-experience the visceral (internal organs) sensations felt during the original event. Each type of emotion produced a characteristic pattern, distinct from the others. For instance, a particular part of the brain stem was active in sadness and anger, but not in happiness or fear. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
All of these brain regions that produce emotions are below the limbic system, to which emotions are traditionally assigned, yet we acknowledge their involvement every time we use one of the common expressions that ink strong emotions with the body: You make me sick; it made my skin crawl; I was all choked up; my heart sank; he makes me bristle. The elementary self-system in the brain stem and limbic system is massively activated when people are faced with the threat of annihilation, which results in an overwhelming sense of fear and terror accompanied by intense physiological arousal. To people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fears or blind rage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
People who are traumatized have their mind and body constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger. They startle in response to the slightest noises and are frustrated by small irritations. Their sleep is chronically disturbed, and food often loses its sensual pleasures. This in turn can trigger desperate attempts to shut those feelings down by freezing and dissociation. How do people regain control when their caveman brains are stuck in a stand your ground or escape for survival mode? If what goes on deep inside our caveman brains dictates how we feel, and if our body sensations are orchestrated by subcortical (subconscious) brain structures, how much control over them can we actually have? #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way. If we are aware of the constant changes in our inner and outer environment, we can mobilize to manage them. However, we cannot do this unless our watchtower, the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), which controls a person’s personality, learns to observe what is going on inside us. This is why mindfulness practice, which strengthens the MPFC, is a cornerstone of recovery from trauma. However, do not be discouraged. Many people have survived trauma through tremendous courage and persistence, only to get into the same kinds of trouble over and over again. Trauma has shut down their inner compass and robbed them of the imagination they require to create something better. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, the often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from themselves. The more people try to push away and ignore internal warning signs, the more likely they are to take over and leave them bewildered, confused, and ashamed. People who cannot comfortably notice what is going on inside or become vulnerable to respond to any sensory shift either by shutting down or by going into a panic—they develop a fear of fear itself. People’s lives will be held hostage to fear until that visceral (internal organs) experience changes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The price for ignoring or distorting the body’s messages is being unable to detect what is truly dangerous or harmful for you and, just as bad, what is safe or nourishing. Self-regulation depends on having a friendly relationship with your body. Without it you have to rely on external regulation—from medication, drugs like alcohol, constant reassurance, or compulsive compliance with the wishes of others. Do not let anyone look down upon you because you are young. Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you. Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Preserve in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Randolph Harris II International Institute 