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She Had Better Stop and Take a Good Look at Herself
With all the changes and challenges you face each day, there has never been a greater need to take the time to determine your priorities. The art of being wise is to know what to overlook. In 1993 Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States of America and Canada. Within seven years, 3,500 maquiladora plants manufacturing everything from furniture to apparel to TV sets had sprung up along Mexico’s U.S. border, creating 1.4 million new, mainly assembly-line jobs for workers drawn from all parts of Mexico, and they important more than $51 billion in supplies into Mexico. However, in the late 1990s, with Guangdong and, indeed, all of China now competing in the cheap-labor derby, and estimated 250,000 to 300,000 of those Mexican jobs followed the great circle route across the Pacific. That put Alejandro Bustamante in a spot. When his employer, Plantronics, a leading manufacturer of telephone accessories, received an order, it called Mr. Bustamante. Although he ran the firm’s three factories in Tijuana, Mexico, he was told he must compete for each contract just like anyone else. However, Mr. Bustamante paid his workers an average of $2.20 an hour (including benefits) and had to bid against a Chinese manufacturer whose employees average only about 60 cents, which was nearly four times less than the Mr. Bustamante’s employees earned. There is nothing unique or new about that. Many maquiladora operators in norther Mexico face Chinese competition. However, what especially irked Mr. Bustamante was that the Chinese rival he faced was, in fact, itself also owned by Plantronics. This may be a case of serial outsourcing—sending jobs to China that had already been outsourced to Mexico. Outsourcing, while involving a small percentage of all jobs, has aroused fierce condemnation and prompted so much media coverage that there is no reason here to recap the familiar arguments, beyond recognizing that it is part of a much larger pattern of change in the spatial distribution of wealth and wealth creation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Outsourcing enrages the critics of re-globalization who insist that it creates an unstoppable, brutalizing “race to the bottom.” They typically contend that companies go where labor costs are lowest and are ready to pick up and spatially relocate at a moment’s notice. If this were true, it would be easy to forecast where wealth is heading. It would be good news for African, which can offer a big pool of available labor at the lowest wages on Earth. (Africans should cheer each time workers in Asia join unions and drive wages up.) If labor cost were the sole consideration, why have not all those factories now in China wound up in Africa instead? The fact is that even for low-tech work, labor is cost, if ever, the exclusive basis for a company’s decision to relocate. Africa’s endless violence and war, inadequate infrastructure, stratospheric levels of violence, ravaging illnesses, and shameful regimes may rule out significant investment no matter what wage level. However, China has maintained its position as the largest investor in Africa over the last ten years by the number of new jobs created (18,562 on average), with a gradual substantial increase of newly created jobs on a yearly basis. China has spent 27 percent of its investments in Africa. Furthermore, since 2000, China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to Africa have grown at an average annual rate of 40 percent, overtaking U.S. FDI in 2012. In 2019, FDI flows reached $2.7 billion, with the top destinations being the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola, two mineral-rich nations. China is also making space along a 30-mile coastline, in Africa, North of Dar Es Salaam, to make space for a $10 billion Chinese-built mega-port and a special economic zone backed by an Omani sovereign wealth fund. It seems Africa has more than just diamonds, gold, other precious minerals, people and animals that World wants to exploit. There are unspoiled beaches and bays; and lush vegetation. If the project goes ahead as planned, Bagamoyo will be transformed into the largest port in Africa. There is even talk of an international airport. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Many villagers have already accepted compensation for the loss of their homes. This portion in African is supposed to be as prosperous as Shenzhen, China. Shenzhen, in southeastern China, is a modern metropolis that links Hong Kong to China’s mainland. Over the past 40 years, the establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ), has been a transformation of Shenzhen from a fishing village to a metropolis of innovation. The total investment has been $28 billion USD. Shenzhen has also nurtured some World leading technology firms including Huawei, DJI, and Tencent. The sector has emerged as the pillar industry of the city. As a matter of fact, a total of $4.27 billion USD, was invested in research and development, putting it on the top list of the country. In addition to this, the city has seen 17,500 international patents filed, accounting for one third of the national total. So this is what could be done in Africa, and it is important to keep an eye on the moves of China because they could become the World leader by investing in and colonizing foreign markets, with the large population. Another thing, with China colonizing Africa, it will also become a melting pot and the standard of beauty will change from the traditional European standard and shift to value other features. The race-to-the-bottom theory, moreover, presupposes that workers are essentially interchangeable—which may largely be true in repetitive, assembly-line operations. The higher up the skill ladder one goes in a knowledge-based economy, however, the less valid it becomes. As the knowledge components of wealth creation—marketing, finance, research, management, communication, I.T., vendor and distributor relations, regulatory compliance, legal affairs and other nontangibles—all grow in complexity and importance, workers, like the work itself, become less interchangeable and the required skill sets more temporary. If they extrapolate tomorrow’s economy from existing or projected wage levels alone, attempts to forecast which cities, regions or, for that matter, countries will become the next Guangdong will be inaccurate and the speculations are doomed to fail. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Any such simplistic analysis becomes even more questionable because, where economies are transitioning from smokestacks and assembly lines to knowledge-based production, we are already radically changing the very criteria by which a location, city, region or country becomes a high-value-added place. What we are about to see is less racing to the bottom and more of a race to the top. To anticipate tomorrow’s surprising geography—including the location of high-pay jobs, prime real estate, business opportunities, wealth and power—another key point needs to be understood: We are changing not merely the where of wealth but they why—the criteria by which we value places. And that further changes the where. Seeking to woo industry in 1955, the state government of Indiana placed an advertisement in Fortune listing its economic advantages. These, it claimed, included low-cost coal, limestone, white clay, aluminum, gypsum, rock asphalt, dolomite, fluorspar, water, sand, gravel, wood, corn, soybeans and easy access to the Ohio River. In addition, it promised an “enviable strike and lockout record”—that is, a weak or dormant labor movement. That was then. Today Indiana’s development council boasts of breaking away from “over-reliance on traditional industries.” No limestone here. Inc. tells American small-business leaders that the “best” place to “start or grow a company” is Phoenix, Arizona, because of its growing high-tech workforce, sunny climate, renovated art museum and “four major sports franchises.” A group called the Small Business Survival Committee concludes that the place to invest is South Dakota because it imposes the fewest costs on business in the form of taxes, minimum-wage laws, number of state employees and the like. Still another rating system bases its conclusions about the future on the age and growth rate of companies in any given location. A contributor to Microsoft’s bCentral.com then confects a hybrid index out of these last two methods and concludes that Nevada is the place to pull out your wallet. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Citing the 1955 Indiana ad in 2002 study called the “State New Economy Index,” Robert D. Atkinson and Rick Coduri of the Progressive Policy Institute write: “In an economy in which fewer than 20 percent of economic activity consists of creating, processing, or moving physical goods, access to raw materials, transportation and markets means less. As an increasing share of economic inputs and outputs are in the form of electronic bits, the old locational factors diminish in importance.” Take, for example, nearness—proximity. Some economists today believe that because Mexico is so close to American markets, it can beat Chinese competitors in the long run. They assume that distance still plays the same role it did before the knowledge economy arrived. However, thanks to information intensive technologies, products are becoming smaller and lighter every day. To rely on proximity means, to the degree that transportation costs matter, that Mexico’s advantage would apply to the older, bigger, bulkier, heavier physical products—precisely those now being replaced. And it means still less to high-value-added intangible services whose transportation costs have little or nothing to do with distance—finance, software, satellite TV, airline reservations, music and the like. Continuing to count on proximity will set Mexico even farther behind—and keep it there. Today, in their race to the top, competing states boast less about limestone and coal than about their great universities, low communication costs, advanced technology, frequent airline service, low crime, good climate and superior quality of life. The economy has been transformed along with workers’ values and way of life. The very categories with which we describe spatial units and relationships change as new economic networks emerge. We are seeing, for example, the rise of an entire ecology of airports linked to one another more strongly than with their local and national governments. Each airport is increasingly surrounded by its own ring of shopping malls, conference centers, 24/7 gyms, chapels, post offices, dentists and doctors, rooftop pools and luxury hotels. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The result has been a sprint—no longer just in the United States of America—to create what might be called higher-value-added places tht will attract the brightest, most creative workforce capable of producing knowledge-intensive, higher-value-added products and drawing businesses from around the World. The historical shift toward Asia, the digitalization of many economic functions, the emergence of cross-national regions and the change in the criteria by which we value place or location are all parts of a larger transformation in our relations with the deep fundamental of space. They merely form the background against which even bigger changes loom. One’s stumblings and one’s falling may depress one’s heart and reduce one’s aspiration. They may deter one’s will from further endeavour. For those monsters of hate and cruelty, either utterly materialistic and God-denying or fanatic and taking the name of God in vain, there is no shelter where they can hide once they are forced across the barrier of death. The qualities of determination, intelligence, and persistence—so useful in philosophy—can be used for good or evil. They can make a more successful criminal as well as a better philosopher. The upsurge of well-thought-out, daring, resourceful, and highly ambitious crime in modern times is a sign of misapplied powers, while its violence is a sign of merciless egocentricity. The end for such persons is commensurate. Then many come a crippling deformation future birth, or a sudden and radical awakening to the grave peril toward which they are heading—and a change of course to a better life. The unfortunate experiences which sometimes befall an individual’s Worldly life are, or may be, partly indued by one’s own psychic practices of the period immediately preceding them. One may have been drawn into a vortex of psychic evil which has harmed one’s spiritual life and brought suffering into one’s Worldly existence. What are the inner causes which can produce these dismal outer effects? Here are come of them: shock, worry, fear, resentment, anger, excessive, criticism, condemnation of others. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
The English woman novelist named Ouida, who wrote during the earlier part of this century, was so successful that she became the highest-paid fiction writer of her time. Yet when she died she was alone, penniless, half-blind, and dwelling in a back alley of Viareggio, Italy. Why? She was brilliant, fluent, and vibrant in her style, but most of her written work was scathing, bitter, highly critical, filled with prejudices and even hates. To what extent did a mind and heart holding so many negatives contribute to these unpleasant results? Yet she was unquestionably a lady in manners, breeding, dress, and way of life. She wrote her letters and even her manuscripts on the finest quality paper. She was highly independent and refused an offer to write her own life story, even though a substantial amount of money was the prize. Her reply was that it would be lowering herself to feed her own egotism and vanity to do so! It is quite true and utterly obvious that bad physical conditions make their contribution also, but it I even more true that bad inner conditions are the fundamental causes which turn outward remedies to disappointments in the end. Blind selfishness brings mutilated lives and ugly minds. Pessimism is practical defeatism and psychological suicide. It is the child of despair and the parent of dissolution. If we make room in our minds for negative, bitter thoughts of complaint, outrage, or injury against those who mistreat us, we shall not be free and will remain unable to find peace. Beware of giving birth to thoughts of hate, envy, malice, or wrath and sending them to another person. For they will reach one, yes, but will then return like a boomerang to their source. Wicked humans may gain the fruits of their aggressions and desires, may win victories over others, but at the end they are destroyed at the roots. The coldly calculated torture of animals in the name of scientific progress must be paid for in different degrees by those who allow it as well as by those who perpetrate it. The practice of vivisection is a sinful one. The humans who do it will have to pay the penalty one day, quite often by being born into a maimed and hurt body. Some among them, who gradually lose every vestige of pity from their character, become heartless monsters. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Through violent aggression whereby impassioned men seek to destroy others, they work their own destruction—at first moral, in the end, physical. These undesirable thoughts and feelings are bad for others as well as oneself, besides wasting so much of one’s own energies. An evil human’s mistakes sometimes strike back at one later when one least expects them, and can least afford them. Is it prudent to heed all this talk of coming calamity? Is it a mistake to read material speculating on its likelihood or imagining its horrors? Each person must answer such a question for oneself, but the philosophic person approaches it in a different manner. On general principles one dislikes negative thoughts and repels them. One seeks a clear recognition of what is happening in the World around one, but one trains oneself—disciplines one’s mind and detaches one’s emotions—to do so without picking up the accompaniments of panic or depression. One practices living with complete calm in the face of provocations and irritations, keeping one’s head, when others all around are losing theirs. When these disaffected find one another and form a subculture, they tend to see their choice, fraught with crisis, as a religious movement. One of the favorite spokesmen of the Hipster Generation announces: For the crucifix I speak out, for the Star of Israel I speak out, for the divinest man who ever lived who was a person I speak out, for sweet Mohammed I speak out, for Buddha I speak out, for Lao-tse and Chuang-tse I speak out, for D.T Suzuki I speak out. This is typical speaking; like an address by Eisenhower it includes all voting creeds and betrays a similar lack of acquaintance. (The bother is that the speaker is in his late thirties and out to know better.) However, as we shall see, this formless ultimate experience is not irrelevant to the plight of being resigned, for there is no available World to give experience a form. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
However, let me at once give a similar strain of rhetoric of a seasoned public spokesman in the organized system itself. I quote from an address to the National Recreation Congress of 1957 by Dr. Paul Douglass. He is concerned with the terrifying Problem of Leisure, namely that with a shorter work week and automation many millions of adults might simply goof off and get into mischief. “The assimilation of leisure into the folkway tomorrow makes essential the reconstruction of the goals and values of life, the evolution of a new ethics, and the definition of an esthetic suitable for the upreaching taste, the deeper comprehension and enjoyment of beauty in its many forms, and a more meaningful existence. Of course this is not serious. A “new ethics” would, presumably, be the work of an Isaiah or Ezekiel or at least Socrates. If someone’s lips were touched with fire and one got oneself rejected by us and swept our children wake, it would solve other problems than out leisure time for it would be convenient for us. –The Hipster spokesman, surprisingly, seemed to be satisfied with the ethics that we have inherited. (As an artist I find this kind of public speech vaguely insulting. Do we need an esthetic? I cannot cope with the artistic tradition that we have, especially its modern triumphs, so that my own work is both unclassical and dated according to standards right on my bookshelf. Does Dr. Douglass mean a popular esthetic? Is it news to him that the popular taste is systematically debauched by Hollywood, Broadway, Madison Avenue? that by the unanimity of publishers, producers, and broadcasters, assisted by the censorship, it is almost impossible to get an honest or vivid word to the public? and that if something slips by it is swamped by trash and singled out for neglect by ignorant critics?) Dr. Douglass cannot mean what he says, yet he does mean something. Under what conditions do public spokesmen use this kind of language, asking for new ethics and a meaning for existence, when there are concrete tasks glaring in the face? #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The conditions are disappointment in oneself according to a lofty ethics, and resignation about doing anything. Not early resignation, but after the profound disappointment of experience. Spoken as if miracles were for the asking, the buoyant abstractions ward off pain and uneasy conscience when one is no longer going to try to do anything practical. (The crisis will occur “tomorrow.”) The tone, if not the content, fits the American style, optimistic about expedients. And the disappointment is more profound because the American promise was so bright. Achieving most of what we set out to get, we are surprised to find that it is useless, and worse. For after the century of progress, the folk who are wealth and pretty healthy are not only not happy or wise, but they are uneasy. Their own writers hold them in contempt. Foreigners keep saying that the atom bombs were dropped for no good reason. The beautiful American classlessness is freezing into statuses. People ask for a stop to immigration. In the modern World, we Americans are the old inhabitants. We first had political freedom, high industrial production, an economy of abundance. Naturally we are the first to be disappointed. Europeans, when they ape and deny envy us, are like children. Disappointed and resigned, adults do not see a future for their own children, for they do not know the Way themselves. Immigrants of the first generation wanted their children to make good and have careers; it the third generation they just “want their children to be happy.” And perhaps children being happy is exactly why America is in such a mess today. People should have wanted their children to work hard, honor their family name and practice chastity. Then maybe they would be more respectful and more industrious instead of having a sense of entitlement. We are not saying you should not help your children, by every means you should, but help them so they can focus on their education. If you can afford it, there is nothing wrong with buying a child a brand-new car when they are in high school, paying for insurance and gasoline, and giving them a monthly allowance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
By treating your child some luxuries, you will ensure they do not have to work and can spend more time preparing for college, and that they will have time for high school clubs and sports. Do not thrust your child off to work while they are still a child. Let them enjoy being young. When their brain power has increased and they reach college, perhaps by sophomore, when they are acclimated to college education and know how much time to spend getting back and forth to class, then talk to them about seeing if they are ready to be more mature and get a job to help pay for their education. Of course, if you can that is a great idea. Not everyone is lucky to have affluent parents have to work in high school and it makes life more difficult. So if you can help your child financially to become more successful, it is only your family name and image you are helping to become a success. Now, in tropical Africa, what anthropologists call terminal abstinence is a widespread phenomenon. What it refers to is the deliberate—and often deliberated—decision to terminate conjugal relations involving pleasures of the flesh. For example, Yoruba women—but not men—know that permanent celibacy awaits them down the road. Sometimes husbands impose celibacy on their wives because they wish to take or concentrate on a younger wife, but twice as often the woman themselves decide to adopt it. Most commonly, this happens when a woman becomes a grandmother. Throughout Africa, and in Yorba society in particular, child-rearing is predicated upon extensive grandmother participation. The transition from mother to grandmother is complex. Each has different rights and obligations, and sometimes the simplest or only way to navigate between their conflicting demands is to renounce childbearing altogether. Renouncing pleasures of the flesh relations is no hardship for these grandmothers. Usually, a woman’s greatest emotional satisfaction comes from her children and family, not from an intense love affair with her husband. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
A woman may also declare terminal celibacy as a protest against a new wife or because she has proven her fertility and can now rest. It is not a rejection of her husband so much as a redeployment of energies. For women whose marries represent dynastic bonds and courtyards full of children rather than romantic attachments to their husbands, and for the millions of women who have operations to protect their celibacy, terminal celibacy can be a release rather than a loss. Indeed, it is often no loss at all. In North America, many aging women (who have had operations) also retire from pleasures of the flesh service without the slightest regret. Some consider pleasures of the flesh as purely for reproduction, while others say that, at their age, it is no longer necessary, proper, or dignified. Many older men and women claim they must abstain from pleasures of the flesh activities because of illness, though the medical reality is that their arthritis, heart disease, or hypertension does not require it. In fact, their newly adopted celibacy may disguise or excuse an antipathy to pleasures of the flesh. In the late 1870s, when pregnancy was an interesting condition, underwear one of many of life’s unmentionables, and death a delicate passing away, feminists cleverly softened their demands for an instrument to control when and how often they gave birth by referring to it as Voluntary Motherhood. After all, birth control had ugly connotations, namely, freedom from the consequences of, well, a coming together, as it were, a very intimate sort of carnal knowledge. From one perspective, feminists shared the common fear that contraceptives would lead directly and inevitably to wanton pleasures of the flesh. The various “washes, teas, tonics, and various sorts of appliances [were a] standing reproach upon, and a permanent indictment against, American women,” declared one feminist, articulating the disgust shared by many antifeminist men. So pronounced was their alarm that legislation actually prohibited the distribution of information about birth control. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Form a different optic, birth control was criticized for being unromantic and removing the spontaneity from pleasures of the flesh. Women’s greatest fear, however, was that widespread contraception would work against them. They would no longer be able to keep their husbands at arm’s length by invoking the argument that pleasures of the flesh might lead to conception. These devices also smacked of “looseness” and abandon of pleasures of the flesh and seemed unsuited to respectable people living respectable lives. Contraceptives might also send husbands galloping off to bed with “fallen women” they no longer needed to worry about producing a child with. Jealousy was only a partial factor. Horror of the illnesses that unfaithful husbands quite frequently passed on to their wives was a more urgent issue. For all these reasons, many women, including Voluntary Motherhood feminists, accepted birth control in only one form: continence in pleasures of the flesh, the World’s oldest and most widely practiced method of contraception. Voluntary Motherhood supporters were concerned above all with a woman’s right to control her body and, by extension, her fertility. They saw celibacy as the only moral way to achieve this and condemned artificial devices as instruments of immorality that permitted consequence-free indulgence of pleasures of the flesh. In an era where women had few legal and social rights, demanding control of their relations in pleasures of the flesh with their husbands was considered extremely radical. Their endorsement of celibacy softened its impact, but only slightly. Under the aegis of Voluntary Motherhood, married celibacy could take two forms: the couple’s mutual or the woman’s unilateral decision. Usually, the wife’s unilateral declaration of celibacy was at the core of Voluntary Mothers. On the difficult battleground of her home, each determinedly celibate woman defined not only her husband and her society’s norms but even the law, which required her to submit both body and will to her husband. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
In these circumstances, she needed immense courage to dictate her availability for pleasures of the and to withhold it except when she was prepared to conceive a child. “Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man,” remarked feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. “Womanhood is the primal fact, wifehood and motherhood its incidents…Must the heyday of her existence be wholly devoted to the one animal function of bearing children? Shall there be no limit to this but woman’s capacity to endure the fearful strain on her life?” Like a great many other nineteenth-century women, Mrs. Stanton had no romantic notions about intercourse involving pleasures of the flesh. It led to an endless series of being with child, and when desperate mothers sought advice on how to avoid conception, they were given false information. Medical “expert” Dr. Ezra Heywood, for example, told them that if they abstained from pleasures of the flesh until ten to twelve days after starting their cycle, conception could be avoided. This woefully wrong interpretation of the fertility cycle misled women, who ended up with child yet again. No wonder, then, that pleasures of the flesh soon lost is magic. Too often, it exhausted, impoverished, disabled, and ended their lives. A woman grieving for a miscarried child was a typical victim: “I am nearly wrecked and ruined by…nightly pleasures of the flesh, which is often repeated in the morning. It is almost nonconsensual because I am trying to produce a child to please my husband. This and nothing else was the cause of my miscarriage…he went to work like a man a-mowing, and instead of a pleasure as it might have been, it was most intense torture.” To end these all-too-frequent personal tragedies, the Voluntary Motherhood movement preached that woman had the right to practice celibacy. Any other form of contraception was not only morally questionable, but would deprive her of the ability to control when she had pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The Voluntary Motherhood movement was both inherently radical and relatively conservative in its stance. In an era when the notion that a man could have nonconsensual pleasures of the flesh with his wife was seen as ludicrous because marriage gave him unlimited access to her temple, wives who resisted on ideological grounds were social rebels. Their commitment to Voluntary Motherhood, and to celibacy except for protection, was their means of empowering themselves vis-à-vis their husbands, and in a large sense, within the families they wished to space out and control, and even withing the society whose laws they so quietly and privately defied. In this contact, they justified their celibacy as an instrument or a weapon they needed to fight for the very noblest of causes. People with histrionic personality disorder, once called hysterical personality disorder, are extremely emotion—they are typically described as “emotionally charged”—and continually seek to be the center of attention. Their exaggerated, rapidly changing moods can complicate life considerably, as we see in the case of Suzanne: Suzanne, an attractive and vivacious woman, sought therapy in hope that she might prevent the disintegration of her third marriage. The problem she faced was a recurrent one, her tendency to become “bored” with her husband and increasingly interested in going out with other men She was on the brink of “another affair” and decided that before “giving way to her impulses again” she had “better stop and take a good look” at herself…Suzanne was quite popular during her adolescent years. Rather than going to college, Suzanne attended art school where she met and married a fellow student—a “handsome, wealthy, ne’er-do-well.” Both she and her husband began “sleeping around” by the end of the first year, and she “was not certain” that her husband was the father of the daughter. A divorce took place several months after the birth of this child. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Soon thereafter she met and married a man in his forties who gave both Suzanne and her daughter a “comfortable home, and scads of attention and love.” It was a “good life” for the four years that the marriage lasted. In the third year of this marriage she became attracted to a young man, a fellow dancing student. The affair was brief, but was flowed by a quick succession of several others. Her husband learned of her exploits, but accepted her regrets and assurances that they would not continue. They did continue, and the marriage was terminated after a stormy court settlement. Suzanne “knocked about” on her own for the next two years until she met her present husband, a talented writer who “knew the scoop” about her past…She had no inclination to venture afield for the next three years. She enjoyed the titillation of “playing games” with other men, but she remained loyal to her husband, even though he was away on reportorial assignments for periods of one or two months. The last trip, however, brought forth the “old urge” to start an affair. It was at this point that she sought therapy. People with historic personality disorder are always “on stage,” using theatrical gestures and mannerisms and the most grandiose language to describe ordinary everyday events. Like a chameleon, they keep changing themselves to attract and impress an audience, and in their pursuit they change not only their surface characteristics—according to the latest fads—but also their opinions and beliefs. In fact, their speech is actually scanty in detail and substance, and they seem to lack a sense of who they really are. Approval and praise are the life’s blood of these individuals; they must have others present to witness their exaggerated emotional states. Vain, self-centered, demanding, and unable to delay gratification for long, they overreact to any minor event that gets in the way of their quest for attention. Some make suicide attempts, often to manipulate others. People with this disorder may draw attention to themselves by exaggerating their physical illnesses or fatigues. They may also behave very provocatively and try to achieve their goals through seductions involving pleasures of the flesh. Most obsess over how they look and how others will perceive them, often wearing bright, eye-catching clothes. They exaggerate the depth of their relationships, considering themselves to be the intimate friends of people who see them as no more than casual acquaintance. Often, they become involved with romantic partners who may be exciting but who do not treat them well. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
This disorder was once believed to be more common in women than in men, and clinicians long described the “hysterical wife.” Research, however, has revealed gender bias in past diagnoses. When evaluating case studies of people with a mixture of histrionic and antisocial traits, clinicians in several studies have a diagnosis of the histrionic personality disorder to women more than men. The latest statistics suggest that around 2 percent of adults have this personality disorder, with males and females equally affected. They psychodynamic perspective was originally developed to help explain cases of hysteria, so it is no surprise that these theorists continue to have a strong interest in histrionic personality disorder today. Most psychodynamic theorists believe that children, people with this disorder experienced unhealthy relationships in which cold and controlling parents left them feeling unloved and afraid of abandonment. To defend against deep-seated fears of loss, the individuals learned to behave dramatically, inventing crises that would require other people to act protectively. Some psychodynamic theories focus exclusively on female patients. They suggest that an early lack of maternal nurturance causes some daughters to develop an intense need for their father’s attention to seek it through displays of affection and dependence that go far beyond the usual behavior of young girls toward their fathers. These highly flirtations and dramatic displays of emotion established a histrionic pattern that extends to later relationships in their lives. Such individuals enter adulthood as “unhappy little girls,” looking at men as idealized fathers and always trying to manipulate them. Cognitive explanations look instead at the lack of substance and extreme suggestibility found in people with historic personality disorder. These theories see the individuals as becoming less and less interested in knowing about the World at large because they are so self-focused and emotional. With no detailed memories of what they never learned, they must rely on hunches or on other people to provide them with direction in life. Some cognitive theorist also propose that people with this disorder hold a general assumption that they are helpless to care for themselves, and so they constantly seek out others who will meet their needs. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Additionally, sociocultural theorists believe that histrionic personality disorder is produced in part by society’s norms and expectations. Until recently, our society encouraged girls to hold on to childhood and dependency as they grew up. The vain, dramatic, and selfish behavior of the histrionic person may actually be an exaggeration of femininity as our culture once defined it. Unlike people with most other personality disorders, those with histrionic personality disorder often seek out treatment on their own. Working with them can be very difficult, however, because of the demands, tantrums, and seductiveness they are likely to deploy. Another problem is that these individuals may pretend to have important insight or to experience change during treatment, merely to please the therapist. To head off such problems, therapists must remain objective and maintain strict professional boundaries. Cognitive therapists have tried to help people with this disorder to change their belief that they are helpless and also to develop better, more deliberate ways of thinking and solving problems. Psychodynamic therapy and group therapy have also been applied. In all these approaches, therapist ultimately aim to help the clients recognize their excessive dependency, find inner satisfaction, and become more self-reliant. Clinical case reports suggest that each of the approaches can be useful. Drug therapy is less successful, however, except as a means of relieving the depressive symptoms experienced by some patients. Now, the seed now begins its time of gestation in the rich dark Earth. It is the great cold of night: not the negative images of darkness, but the dark richness of that unknow, fertile, deep part in each of us where our intuitive creative forces abide. The Christ energy enters the Earth at this season. The yule log is lighted. The nights grow shorter, the light returns, and we experience rebirth. Again, again we come and go, changed, changing. Hands join, union in love and fear, grief and joy. The circles turn, each giving into each, into all. Prayer takes the mind out of the narrowness of self-interest, and enables us to see the World in the mirror of the holy. We do not step out of the World when we pray; we merely see the World in a different setting. Prayer is a way to master what is inferior in us, to discern between the signal and the trivial, between the vital and the futile, by taking counsel with what we know about the will of God, by seeing out fate in proportion to God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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You Don’t Use Demonic Forces, Do You?
Some authorities in the field of parapsychology speak of “natural” or “neutral” magic. They use this term to describe phenomena which cannot be fully explained scientifically, but which take place without reference to either God or the devil. In the realm of the physical are the inexplicable feats usually associated with spirits. Objects of furniture and people sometimes mysteriously leave the ground and appear to float through the air. These occurrences are called “levitations.” In close relationship to levitations is “telekinesis,” a phenomenon which takes place when a psychically gifted person apparently moves objects by concentrating on them. A few years ago, most scientifically minded people were convinced that such demonstrations were accomplished by the use of clever mechanical devices, but in many instances intensive scientific tests and checks have not uncovered any evidence of trickery. As a result, students in this field simply affirm that no one knows how these things take place. Another phenomenon closely allied to levitations and telekinesis is called “apport.” Solid objects which disappear from a room are found an instant later in a location hundreds of miles away. Parapsychologists conjecture that the physical matter dissolves into pure energy and thus is able to pass through closed walls. No serious student who has investigated these occurrences denies that they actually take place, but a great deal of research and careful study must be done to gain a full understanding of levitations, telekinesis, and apports. Ever since Einstein, no true scientist can say that such phenomena are an impossibility. While it could be that natural forces will be found to account for some of these amazing occurrences, it is also like that evil spirits play a part in many instances. Another enigma in the realm of the physical is the fact that in Europe some people diagnose and treat severe physical diseases through the magical use of a rod and pendulum. The pendulum is set in motion over the patient’s body to find the cause of the illness, and then magic is used to bring about healing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
No doubt the people who use this method often fail to help the patient, and undoubtedly a large percentage of the healings are only psychosomatic. Investigators generally agree, however, that in some instances the rod and the pendulum method appears to bring amazing results. An explanation for how this method works has not yet been found. Some parapsychologists have concluded that the area of the body that is ill undergoes a disturbance in “body electricity,” and that the pendulum in some mysterious way detects this variation from the norm. Not all researcher agree with this theory, however, and most of them at present simply acknowledge that they do not understand how the pendulum works. Christians who have investigated this phenomenon are convinced that to some degree that it belongs to the realm of the occultic, and that it should be avoided. An exhaustive listing and discussion of all the physical phenomena that may be classified as magic are impossible in a work of this nature. However, let us take time to look at one more example. The Chinses practice of acupuncture, which comes from ancient times, is receiving much publicity of late. Some of America’s top medical men and biologists have watched Chinese doctors perform major surgery using this needle treatment as the anesthesia. In addition, doctors of dozens of countries have reported that with acupuncture they are successfully treating people with ulcers, colitis, rheumatism, arthritis, asthma, eczema, hypertension, diabetes, urinary tract infections, anxiety, and even some cases of blindness and deafness. The scientific World is at an utter loss to explain how acupuncture works. The Chinese say that our bodies contain two “life forces” know as Yin and Yang, and that the insertion and manipulation of the needles in any one of several hundred specific points interrupts the flow of one element or increases the flow of the other to correct any malfunction and restore well-being. Exponents of acupuncture generally agree that it is completely ineffective in healing fractures, curing cancer, overcoming infectious diseases, or repairing organs that have been severely damaged. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
These limitations suggest that even though acupuncture is “magical” in that it cannot be explained in terms of scientific knowledge, it should not be classified as occultic. Remember, we have no right to assert dogmatically that phenomena of this nature are necessarily the result of miraculous activity on the part of either God or the devil. Christians should be careful to avoid making assertions that cannot be substantiated. Strange manifestations often take place in the realm of the psychical. We already have referred to visions, trance-speaking, automatic writing, materializations, and apparitions in our discussion of spiritism. This latter phenomenon can be distinguished from hallucinations because large groups of people have reported seeing apparitions of ghost. Some even have been photographed. When looking at claims from both Christian and unbelievers, one realizes that all the reports of mysterious physically forced intimate assaults and frightful specters cannot be lightly set aside as the product of overwrought imaginations or of tricksters. Christians who have studied in this field are convinced that at least in some of the cases the work of evil spirits can be detected, but again we must acknowledge that we do not at the present times know exactly how to account for all such phenomena. The same admission must be made regarding extra-sensory perception in general. Research in this field by outstanding scholars like Professors J. B. Rhine, originally of Duke University, indicates that some people are able to perceive facts through a so-called “sixth sense,” and that others have the ability to transfer their thoughts without using the usual methods of communication. The mere possession of this “sixth sense,” however, does not account for all the incidents involving Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) encountered by researchers. Parapsychologists are forced to acknowledge that an element of mystery exists bordering on the supernatural, for they have produced strong documentary evidence for astounding events that baffle the mind. Hundreds of people who were interviewed told of having vivid dreams in which they “saw” in the most minute details and with absolute accuracy what was happening to a friend or loved one at the very moment the incident was taking place, sometimes thousands of miles away. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The skeptical scientists at The Winchester Mystery House, realizing that a real World of invisible spiritual beings does exist, knows it is at least possible that they are involved in hidden communications, and in the communication of telepathy. In general, our doctors understand nothing of magically based hypnosis because it is an occult practice. While normal hypnosis as practised by the medical World may be harmless, hypnosis used in conjunction with magic is can be dangerous, and may be a burden to the patient concerned. A second elementary form of magic may be found in the area of mental suggestion. We mean by this a transmission of mental or emotional forces over a distance. To further illustrate this, we must consider the case of a young psychologist, who wanted to qualify as a university lecturer. He specialized in hypnosis, though it was not the normal type of hypnosis but rather mental suggestion. He looked for a sensitive subject for his experiments and found one in the secretary of his boss. She was of nervous debility and easily influenced. Without asking, he attempted to put her to sleep. He would sit down about three or four yards away, either in the same room or a neighbouring one, and then concentrate on her. She would find that her arms would suddenly become limp. A tremendous tiredness would come over her. She would have to fight with all her strength to avoid falling asleep. These experiments were continued over a period of time with the girl always resisting them. During this time the girl gradually developed psychic disturbances. She consulted a psychiatrist. When he heard of the suggestive experiments, he told her that they would not do her any good, as he already known about the experiments of the young psychologist. The girl, having been the subject of these experiments for a considerable period of time, has since experienced strange paralytic symptoms and is now only capable of doing part-time work. In another instance, a Catholic woman regularly went to confession. As time went on, she gradually became psychically and suggestively dependent on the priest. Every time he said the mass she would fall to the ground and injure herself, and it was always her face. This happened even when she was 20 miles away and she could be quite oblivious to the fact he was taking a service. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
The strange dependence became an unbearable burden to the woman. In her distress she began to pray earnestly, and she went to a Protestant minister for counselling. Through faith, she found a Christian as a personal Saviour. The attacks immediately vanished. The woman then left the Catholic church. Another is example is, when for several years, a craftsman indulged in black magic. He was chiefly concerned with the influencing of other people through his magic, and he also belonged to a magic circle which itself conducted unusual experiments. His first victim was a sensitive young lady. He brought her under his control to such an extent that she sacrificed both her money and her body to him. After this initial success, he looked for other victims. He continued to be successful with his experiments, and he finally found a young lady who regularly handed over her monthly pay-cheque to him. For this reason, he lived with her until finally her parents reported the matter to the police. A third elementary form of magic is magically based magnetism or mesmerism. Magnetism, together with hypnosis and suggestion, can be magically intensified. This next illustration refers to this fact. For our first example of this, we will turn to Dr. Trampler, a lawyer who was originally a student of Groening, but who later ceased to hold the same ideas. Dr. Trampler has outlined his methods of healing in a book Gesundung durch den Geist (Healing through the Spirit). His most fanatical followers are women. I have seen in counselling people that his healing powers are not beneficial, but are instead a burden to those treated. Two instances have been cited to indicate this. Firstly, a woman visited Dr. Trampler in Munich. He was successful in treating her backaches. In the course of the treatment he had made her hold her fingers up in the air as if they were antennae for cosmic powers, so he said. On returning home she found that organically she had been healed, but since then her spiritual life was held in check. She, like do many others, now found it impossible to pray and she felt as though there was an impenetrable wall between herself and God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
In another instance, a Christian woman who came to me for counselling had visited Dr. Trampler in ignorance. While sitting in his office, she had prayed. Finally when the other patients had been treated and it was her turn, Dr. Trampler came over to her. She had felt a strange fear come upon her and had prayed all the more. The doctor had then said to her, “I can’t do anything for you.” Since these healers often camouflage and garnish their activities with religious phrases, the terrible nature of their powers is often unrecognized. In Baden, I gained the acquaintance of a man who had been an unqualified medical doctor. In answer to my question regarding his healing ability, he answered, “Natural healing magnetism can enable you to heal about to patients daily. The power is by then used up and no one has to be recharged or refilled. People who treat more than two patients a day are either fakes, or they are plugged into the devil.” By this he meant that such people would actually be using magic in their practice. Here is another example of this both frequent yet confusing camouflage. A friend of mine, a Christian teacher, was being treated by a mesmerizer who was himself supposed to be a Christian. At least he attended a church. To make sure, the teacher asked the mesmerizer, “You don’t use demonic forces, do you?” The man replied, “Why not? Demonic powers are good. Demons are here to help us.” The teacher decided not to continue with the treatment! He was afraid of self-proclaimed demi-god practitioners. Having outlined these elementary aspects of magic, we will now go on to the more basic and principle forms. One can learn to differentiate between three main forms of magic: black magic which uses demonic forces, white magic which is allegedly promoted by the power of God, and neutral magic which is supposed to rely solely on ordinary forces of nature. It is a good idea to divide magic into three forms, but the same cannot be said of the definitions. Christian pastoral work reveals a completely different picture to one to these forms concerning neutral and white magic. Firs, however, some examples of black magic. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
A minister informed me that the whole of his congregation had been infected by occultism. As an example, he told me of the healing of a 20-year-old girl through magic. Because of an attack of polio, the girl had had a leg shortened. She had been in the hospital for a long time and then been released as incurable. The girl and her mother were very depressed. In this state they had finally sought to the help of a man who practised black magic. This man sold them a mandrake root—for about $65! The root, which in some ways resembled a human figure, according to his directions had to be nursed by the girls as if it were a child. She had to wash it, feed it and put it to bed as if it were really alive. The magician then told the girl to pray and repeat vindictive psalms or songs, and to write them out and sleep with them under her pillow. Next he went on to tell her to stick two knives into the wall above her bed and to put two more knives under the pillow. In spite of this strange treatment the girl discovered that her leg began to grow longer. Finally she was healed, but afterwards she developed serious psychic disturbances. She then went to her minister, but he could give her no advice. The girl could no longer pray. When she tried to clasp her hands together, they were torn apart. On attempting to read the Bible she was assaulted with blasphemous thoughts. Fearing the loss of her own sanity, the girl gave both the mandrake root and an amulet which she had also received to the minister. Now she lived in the fear that the magician would revenge himself, and her leg, though it had been healed, returned again to its former state. In another example, during a mission in Toggenburg a farmer came and told me of some unhappy results of black magic charming. His boy had contracted polio. The doctor was called in too late and the boy remained paralysed. Since the farmer had wanted his son to be healthy no matter what the cost, he tried everything. Finally he went to the notorious magician Hugentobler in Peterzell. This man healed the boy with the help of black magic and his paralysis disappeared completely. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
For several years everything went well, but when the son was 16 years old the father found him in the stable dying from a cut carotid artery. This happened quite out the blue. They boy had previously shown no signs of unhappiness. On his son, however, the father found an amulet from Hugentobler. Opening the leather pouch, he took out a small piece of paper with the inscription, “This soul belongs to the devil.” This was proof enough that Hugentobler had used black magic on the boy. The devil wants you to profess your faith in Christ with your mount, but for your action to contradict Christianity. The devil has power, but will usually leave you worse off. White magic is even more wide-spread then black magic. Many Christian groups practise this form of magic oblivious to its demonic character. White magic is a fulfillment of the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 11.14, that even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. White magic is black magic under a religious disguise. Here are a few examples. A missionary to the Jewish people in North Africa by the name of Samuels, reported one of their magic customs. When one of their children is ill they take a towel, tie a knot in it and say, “In the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, be released from your sickness.” They then unite the knot and the child gets well. This piece of magic charming is a counterpart to black magic. A woman form Bukowina told us that her relatives could heal any type of disease in both animals and human beings merely through using white magic charms. By adding the words “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost” to the spell the sickness would disappear. In spite of a family tradition of church-going, the various spells and charms had been handed down in the family for several generations. Both the woman and her daughter suffer from nervous disturbances. It was for this reason that she had sought the counsel of a minister. Her condition improved after the minister had prayed with her and later she became a convinced Christian. In another illustration, the owner of a certain farm hanged himself in his house. According to the popular belief of the villagers the man continued to hunt the place of his death. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The relatives were advised to sweep out the whole house repeating the words, “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” After this the man’s ghost would no longer trouble them. The relatives followed this unusual advice, but afterwards the farmer’s wife was troubled by a strange feeling of unrest. Satan’s main occupation is opposition to God’s will. The name “Satan,” given Lucifer after his fall, means “adversary”—God’s adversary (Job 1.6; Matthew 13.39), and man’s especially when loves and serves God (Zechariah 3.1; 1 Peter 5.8). It was the intrusion of Satan’s will against the divine will that introduced sin into a sinless Universe and transformed “Lucifer” (Lightbearer) into “Satan” (Opposer). Satan’s rebellion fixed the pattern of satanic and demonic attitude as opposition to God and exaltation of self. This demonic strategy was evident in Cain’s murder of Abel (Genesis 4.8) and in Herod’s slaughter of the innocents (Matthew 2.16). The evil one was seeking to slay the promised seed of the woman (Genesis 3.15) to prevent the incarnation of the Saviour of the World, who would eventually seal the doom of Satan and the demons in Gehenna (Revelation 20.10-15). When the Lord Jesus began his public ministry, Satan appeared in person to tempt him (Matthew 4.1-11). Christ’s ministry on Earth provoked an outburst of demonic activity. Demonic power incited Judas to betray Jesus, Peter to deny him (Luke 22.3, 31), and the leaders of the Jewish nation to reject and crucify him. The powers of darkness appear in early Church history as recorded in Acts (Acts 4.25-26, 5.3; 8.9; 13.6-13; 16.16-18; 19.11-20, etcetera). The opposition of Satan and his demons can be discerned in every era of church history. The unseen forces of evil will increase their activity in the latter times (1 Timothy 4.1; Revelations 9.1-21), culminating in the demon-inspired debacle at Armageddon (Revelation 16.13-14), will the kingdom of righteousness and peace supplant the present satanic World system (1 John 2.17). #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Many mental and emotional illnesses are, of course, due to natural causes, such as overwork, tension, fatigue, malnutrition, organic diseases, etcetera. Such disorders can be treated effectively by a physician, neurologist, psychologist, or psychiatrist. Demonic spirits may have little or nothing to do with such disorders of the mind. The causes are purely natural and may be corrected by purely natural means. This is not surprising since the Creator has placed the creation and his creatures under the normal operation of the laws of cause and effect. Since the supernatural exists and does interact with the natural World, the truly scientific investigator must take this into consideration. Prayer and faith can heal the mind and body supernaturally, just as medicine and rest can do it naturally. By the same token, unbelief and sin can harm body and mind as a result of demonic bondage. Demons can influence the mind. Bondage to demonic forces can be of varying degrees, as can yieldedness to God and control by the Holy Spirit. The Bible clearly teaches that man exposed himself to evil powers through the all (Genesis 3.15; 2 Corinthians 4.4; Colossians 1.13; Ephesians 6.10-20). Some unsaved people who live a balanced moral life are only mildly influenced by demonic spirits, while others, who flout God’s moral laws, are several influenced to the point of subjection. Other are so dominated that they are oppressed and tormented, and some are completely possessed by evil spirits. When mental and emotional disturbances are due almost entirely to natural causes, medical and psychological care can be very successful. However, when demonic influence, however slight, is at work, complete healing can only be achieved with the help of God through Christ. Successful therapy could be used is all psychologist, psychiatrists, counselors, and physicians were Christian with a knowledge of the gospel of deliverance from sin and Satan. When demonic influence is mild, it is almost impossible to distinguish between natural and supernatural causes. Only treatment that deals with the full gamut of causes will solve all the problems and insure a full cure. Parapsychology, which deals with extraordinary phenomena, will never fully understand these cases, much less effect deliverance, until the demonic factor is recognized and dealt with accordingly. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
It is often said that Irishmen succeed best out of Ireland; those qualities they possess, which fail to ripen and come to maturity in the lethargic atmosphere of the Green Isle, where nothing matters very much provided public opinion is not run counter to, become factors of history under the sunshine and storm of countries where more ample scope is given for the full development of pugnacity, industry, or state-craft. At any rate, from the days of Duns Scotus and St. Columbanus down to the present, Irishmen have filled, and still fill, position of the highest importance in every part of the globe as friends of kings, leaders of armies, or preachers of the Truth—of such every Irishman, be his creed or politics what they may, is justly proud. To the lengthy and varied list of honours and offices may be added (in one instance at least) the item of witchcraft. He the unhappy creature, whose tale is related below, remained in her native land, she would most probably have ended her day in happy oblivion as a poor old woman, in no way distinguishable from hundreds of others in like position; as it was, she attained unenviable notoriety as a powerful witch, and was almost certainly the means of starting the outbreak at Salem. Incidentally the story is of interest as showing that at this time there were some Irish-speaking people in Boston, Massachusetts USA. Shortly after the date of its colonisation the State of Massachusetts became remarkable for its cases of witchcraft; several persons were tried, and some were hanged, for this crime. However, at the time about which we are writing there was in Boston a distinguished family of puritanical ministers named Mather. The father, Increase Mather, is to be identified with the person of that name who was Commonwealth “minister of the Gospel” at Magherafelt in Ireland in 1656; his more famous son, Cotton, was a most firm believer in all the possibilities of witchcraft. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Mrs. Glover, whose miserable husband before he died had sometimes complained of her, that she was undoubtedly a witch, and that wherever his head was laid, she would quickly arrive unto the punishments due to such a one. Mrs. Glover was accused of coming down her neighbour’s chimney to remind her of her death sentence. She also had the ability to make people have fits, make them deaf, sometimes dumb, and sometimes blind, and often all of this at one. Their tongues would be drawn down their throats, and then pulled out upon their chins, to a prodigious length. Their mounts were forced open to such a wideness, that their jaws were out of joint; and anon clap together again, with a force like a spring-lock; ant the like would happen to their shoulder blades, their Elbows and hand wrists, and several of their joints. She would cause their necks to be broken, so that their neckbone would seem dissolved unto them that felt after it, and yet on the sudden it would become again so stiff, that there as on stirring of their heads; yea, their heads would be twisted almost round. And if the main force of their friend at any time obstructed a dangerous motion which they seemed upon, they would roar exceedingly. Eventually Mrs. Glover was hanged. Mrs. Glover may be considered the first cause for the witch trials, for if the case of the Goodwin children she afflicted had not occurred at Boston, it is more than probably the village of Salem would never have been plagued as it was. Demonism is expressed in many forms. We have tended to think of it as far away in time or miles from our generation in the United States of America, but there is increasing evidence that this is not the case. I must tell you of one of our experienced in The Winchester Mystery House. Sarah Winchester had some women over to her mansion for a séance. The maid Agnus had returned from her day off on the following morning; she became possessed of an evil spirit. The minute Agnus saw Mrs. Winchester and her friends, she ran away. People had to hold her down to calm her. The sang “Onward Christian Soldiers,” then four of them prayed, claiming her deliverance on the basis of Christ’s victory over Satan on Calvary. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
The séance women laid hands on her and commanded the evil spirit to leave, saying he had not right to stay in the body of one who believed in Jesus. Agnus had believed over a year ago, but her husband had taken a concubine and she was brokenhearted. In her deep sorrow, self-pity, and worry she reopened old areas to the devil. Once she cried out loudly: “I have been here thirteen years—do you think I am going to leave now?” Later her voice shrilled: “I hate Jesus; I will not leave.” Her facial expressions were terrible, hard, and angry. She tried many times to bang her head on the floor, and once she darted to a corner of the room and grabbed Mrs. Winchester’s parasol and struck her head with it. Hours passed and there seemed to be no change in her. Mrs. Winchester felt she could not remain much longer, as she had promised to go out visiting. As she was debating about what to do, Mrs. Winchester moved closer to Angus and began talking to her about Jesus Christ, telling her how He could alone comfort her and satisfy her heart. She listened and Mrs. Winchester saw tears in her eyes. Angus told Mrs. Winchester, “Jesus Christ loves me, and I love Him, too, and He longs to help me.” She continued to talk along this line and she sat up. Mrs. Winchester finally told her why she thought the evil spirit had gotten in, that her worry and self-pity were sins. She thoroughly aggressed and admitted her hated of her husband and his concubine, which Mrs. Winchester told her was sin, too. She talked freely, admitting her faith was weak. Mrs. Winchester and her friends prayed for Agnus for several days. Just when the evil spirit left, they did not know, but you could imagine the great joy that filed their hearts to see her set free from that awful, wicked, noisy spirit. Mrs. Winchester was so happy. Mrs. Winchester was known for her beautiful mansion. It was certainly a place to see in the late 1880s. Mrs. Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, spent the last half of her life and $5,500,000.00 (2022 inflation adjusted $151,599,411.76) building a gorgeous house that was at its height 9 stories, 500 rooms, and 65,000 square feet, Today it is an astonishing, what I call, Grand Queen Anne Victorian of 4 stories, 160 rooms, and an estimated 25,000 square feet. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Partly because of the mansion seclusion, partly by reason of its extreme beauty, partly, it may be, because the owner was more than charming and gracious in her pressing hospitality, The Winchester Mansion, which is now called The Winchester Mystery House, had an element of the poetic, almost magical. The warm light of the spring sunset swept across the estate, lying golden and mellow on the luxuriant growth of prune, fig, orange, lemon, and peach trees, and fantastic palm trees, emerald green lawns, exotic flowers, giant topiary, statues, fountains, gazabos, and other Victorian cottages lead up to the path of the 760-acre mansion. Against the gold sunset, it was hardly to be wondered at that one should slip into a mood of visionary enjoyment, looking for a time on the whole thing as the misty phantasm of a summer dream. Carpenters worked around the clock building and rebuilding room after room, as the spirits—or her fancy—directed. The house was furnished with the finest materials and was a showcase of Victorian elegance and taste. This paradise of art and colour, was a bewilderment of architects. The Winchester Mansion was truly a dream of delight. It was a paradise, an epitome of all that was beautiful. The mansion was like a vision out of a fairy tale. And in the evening, the sunset seen from the observation tower was like watching the blue sapphire sea turn a lovely amethyst, rose, violet in shadow. Seen in the hot summer months, Mrs. Winchester’s exquisite home was like looking at the most gorgeous emerald glittering from a distance. From the balcony of the fourth flood, one can smell the roses and jasmine all around. Llanada Villa, as Mrs. Winchester called it was a light of the Beatific Vision. It was so unreal, so phantasmal, that one was not surprised it held secrets. It was said that the mansion was haunted. Yes, that is just it. The Winchester Mansion is really haunted. However, what is there to be afraid of. People rarely see ghosts and no one sees them more than once. Yet, this mansion is said to be haunted by legions of spirits. After Mrs. Winchester went to Heaven, her favourite niece, Marian “Daisy” Marriot stayed in the mansion for a few months. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
There was a story about the ghost of Mrs. Winchester in this royal house. She was supposedly imprisoned in this palace. Notice the beautiful iron-wrought grilles at the windows. The haunted region of the mansion, was striving to communicate with Daisy. Legend has it that Mrs. Winchester was imprisoned in one of the witch’s caps. How, was never known. It was when Daisy was in possession of this house that the ghost started to appear to her. She did not fancy real ghosts, however. One night, when the stars were not visible in the sky; low, thunderous clouds, massed at the head of the valley, were sweeping over so close that they seemed to brush the palm trees on the estate. To the south and the east the storm-clouds had shut down almost to sea, leaving a space of black sky where the moon in its last quarter was rising just to the left of the mansion—raining a black silhouette against it. They blue lightning flashed almost incessantly, and through the fitful darkness cam the sound of the bell tower, which could be heard across the valley, the rushing torrent below, and the full roar of the approaching rain, with a deep organ point of solemn thunder through it all. Daisy believed that Mrs. Winchester’s unquiet soul, sent out this story of eternity. Vivid lightning, the crowding of Mrs. Winchester and the shivering anticipation of Daisey’s possible visitation made sleep quite out of the question. Then, an hour and thirteen minutes after midnight, came a sudden vivid flash of lightening, and, as Daisy’s razzled and dazzled eyes began to regain the power of sight, she saw as plainly as in life—a tall figure, in a silky white dress, with long flowing hair. In another flash, the beautiful apparition looked at her long and earnestly. She was beautiful —more beautiful than one had supposed possible, her deep, passionate eyes very tender and pitiful in their pleading, beseeching glance. Daisy was hardly frightened, or even startled, but lay looking steadily at her as she stood in the beating lightning. Then she breathed, rather than articulated, with a voice that almost brought Daisy to tears, so infinitely sad and sorrowful was it, “I cannot sleep!” and the liquid eyes grew more pitiful and questioning as bright tears fell from them down the pale glowing face. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
The apparition began to move slowly towards the door, its eyes fixed on Daisy’s with a look that was weary and almost agonized. Daisy learned from the bed and stood waiting. A look of utter gratitude swept over the face, and turning, the figure passed through the doorway. Out into the shadow of the corridor in moved, like a drift of pallid storm cloud, and Daisy followed, all natural and instinctive fear or nervousness quite blotted out by the part she felt she was to play in giving rest to a tortured soul. The corridors were velvet black; but the pale figure floated before her always, an unerring guide, now but a thin mist on the utter night, now white and clear in the bluish lightening through some window or doorway. Down the stairway into the lower hall of the second floor, where the stained-glass windows in the flared into sudden clearness under the fitful lightening, out into the silent cloister. It was very dark. Daisy stumbled along the solid mahogany floor. She guided herself by a hand on the gelled linseed Lincrusta-Walton wallpaper. Then a sudden blaze of fierce lightning, and vivid light allowed her to see the face with a look of overwhelming desire, of beseeching pathos, that had choked Daisy’s throat with an involuntary sob when she first saw Mrs. Winchester. And she heard the sorrowful words again, “I cannot sleep,” come from the impenetrable darkness. And when the lightning came again, the beautiful white figure was gone. She wondered around the mansion, searching in vain for Mrs. Winchester. She tired the door-to-nowhere when Mrs. Winchester vanished: it was locked. It was found at last. The smooth surface of the plaster on the white wall. There was a rough space, approximately the shape of the other windows in the tower, not plastered like the rest of the wall, but showing the place where a stained-glass window was covered up through its thick coatings of whitewash. Daisy began scraping away at the solid wall. Under the coatings of plaster appeared an entrance to a secret room and it led her over a vertical joint between firm, masonry work. She began digging out the mortar around the stone. With much work it detached. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
Darkness within, yet beyond question there was a cavity there, not a solid wall; and with infinite care she removed all the stones. Still the hole was too small to admit enough light from the dimly illuminated cell. With a chisel, she pried at the sides of a large block of masonry, perhaps thirteen stone in size. It moved, and with seemingly superhuman strength, Daisy softly slid it from its bed. Suddenly a cry, a cry like that of a frighted woman—terrible. Framed by the jagged opening of the stone, hardly seem in the dim light, was a face, an ivory image, more beautiful than any antique bust, but drawn and distorted by unspeakable agony; the lovely mouth was smiling; the eyes were cast upward; and below, slim calcified hands crossed on the chest. Torture and agony visible in every tense muscle. Daisy stood there, breathless, staring at the sight, fascinated, bewitched, sad. So this was the mystery. With fiendish ingenuity, the rigid ecclesiastics had blocked up the window, then forced the beautiful creature to stand in the alcove, while with remorseless hands and iron hearts they had shut her into a living tomb to gain access to her land. With all that, it was necessary to find Mrs. Winchester so her soul could rest. Prayers were said that night for her soul. The next day the alcove was again walled up. Demons can subject the mind and the body. Demon subjection is one step beyond demon influence. When the moral law of God is persistently and flagrantly disregarded, demon influence may merge into demon subjection. The cursed then becomes the slave of the demon. Many have also become slaves because of illicit lust, perhaps goaded on by vile spirit that master their victims and drive them on to moral ruin. Those who nurse hate and revenge may find that a superhuman power takes over, impelling them to murder. Those who covet become slaves of greed. Those who persistently lie may become enslaved by evil spirit of falsehood until they are incapable of telling the truth. Persistent sin against the second table of the moral law regulating humans conduct towards humans (Exodus 20.13-17) opens the door to demon power than can derange a living soul’s mind, weaken one’s will, alienate one’s affections, and disturb one’s emotions. “Beware of sibling rivalry! At least said my grandmother. Which must explain, I do suppose, what happened to my little brother.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Winchester Mystery House
Fabulous photo op outside The Winchester Mystery House circa 1940s 💁🏻♀️
🎟 link in bio. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Why is there Never Any Happy News?
Evolution has been able to create the advanced structure and metabolism of modern organisms. Biological evolution is the change in inherited traits over successive generations in populations of organisms. Adaptation is a key evolutionary process in which variation in the fitness of traits and species are adjusted by natural selection to become better suited for survival in specific ecological habitats. The environment acts to promote evolution through changes in development. Therefore, determining how developmental changes are mediated is critical for understanding the mechanisms of evolution. In our early speculation about the primitive coacervates, before the nucleic acid mechanism appeared upon the scene, we pictured the development of a number of cell-like characteristic. The external membrane, which made an individual out of a modern cell, was such a characteristic. Another consisted of solid inclusions such as microsomes, on the surface of which certain kinds of chemical reactions might take place more rapidly. And we had no difficulty, in terms of the primitive mechanisms alone, in accounting for the existence of fluid-containing regions within the coacervates shielded by their own membranes from the chemical influence of the surrounding material. To the space-varying chemistry permitted by such complex structures, we were even able to add time-varying chemistry by postulating suitable combinations of membrane selectivity and reactions time lags. We have seen how the appearance of nucleic acid provided a powerful new line of evolutionary development. In the past, we have devised an imaginary course of natural history capable of refining the first fumbling architectural inclinations of nucleic acid into the remarkable precise and effective control properties of the modern nucleic acid/enzyme apparatus. In this way, our discussion has bridged the gap between primitive coacervates and modern cells with respect to the basic metabolic mechanisms underlying the control of growth and reproduction. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
However, we should not allow our recent preoccupation with development of the genetic mechanisms to blind us to the fact that other refinements of the primitive mechanisms were also necessary if modern cells were to evolve from the coacervates. Let us consider two or three examples of these less spectacular, but nonetheless important, refinements that characterize living cells today. First, consider the properties of membranes. The physical laws that had to be obeyed by large-molecular-weight material in water would sometimes result in the formation of a semipermeable membrane enclosing the coacervate. In the ensuing treatment extensive use was made of the selectivity of such membrane—their confining effect on large molecules but relative permeability to small ones, for example. In general, the ability of an enclosing membrane to sustain substantially different chemical reactions in contiguous regions and to permit the interpenetration of selected products of these reactions is fundamental to the life process. Therefore, it might be imagined that the economic of natural selection would have caused today’s membranes to have much more highly developed properties than those of the primitive progenitors of cellular life. And indeed this is true, although it is true in a somewhat curious way. Apparently, just as in the case of the nucleic acid/enzyme apparatus, the processes of natural selection have discovered one basic structure that is superior to all others; for electron microscope observations have revealed that all cell membranes have essentially the same two-dimensional arrangement of protein and lipid material. However, this does not mean that the permeability properties are the same for all cells. The important differences needed to meet the metabolic requirements of different cell species are the same for all cells. The important differences needed to meet the metabolic requirements of different cell species are produced by means of enzymes of special class called permeases. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Different varieties of permease can cause the standard membrane to pass or block the passage of different kinds of molecules. The combination of a suitable permease and the membrane also frequently results in one-way permeability, in which molecules of a certain kind will pass through the membrane in one direction but not in the other, even though they have to oppose a strong concentration gradient in their migration. It is easy to see how valuable this property can be in permitting a cell to extract selected ingredients from the surrounding fluids and concentrate them internally. Another example of a detail of cell structure that must certainly have undergone extensive evolutionary refinement consists of the solid inclusions in the cytoplasm—the microsomes—that we have seen play such an important role in the nucleic acid control of protein formation. By a combination of electron microscope and chemical techniques, it is clear that “working parts” of the microsomes consist of a myriad of very small subparticles, or ribosomes, that are densely distributed over the surface of the much larger microsomal particles. Each ribosome is of about the right size to support a single molecule of messenger RNA while it engages in its process of multiple marriage with the amino-acid-conveying transfer RNA molecules. In addition, these ribosomes have been found to possess a special chemical composition that presumably contributes to their mission. They themselves contain RNA, mixed in about equal proportions with protein. Apparently, this ribosomal RNA does not perform any control function of the kind that we have come to expect of nucleic acid. Instead, its binding with protein appears only to provide a surface with properties favourable to the attachment of the messenger RNA molecules that do participate in the control activities. Incidentally, studies of the ribosomal processes have led to the conclusion that the lie of the messenger RNA molecule is frequently a short one after it has stretched out on the ribosomal surface. In bacteria, at least, it last for only two or three minutes before it breaks up and its fragments float away. (However, some messenger RNA, especially in cells of higher organisms, persist for much longer periods.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Experiments employing radioactive tracer elements, by means of which determinations can be made of the time intervals involved in the capture of amino acid segments by transfer RNA and these subsequent assembly of the segments into protein molecules under the guidance of messenger RNA, have shown that in two or three minutes only a few protein molecules can be constructed Thus, the formation of enzymes under the guidance of the nucleic acid mechanisms can be a very active process, with messenger RNA continually being manufactured by the DNA molecules and the ribosomes continually receiving newly arriving messenger molecules and then recleansing their surfaces after a small amount of protein-construction activity. It is only because every cell contains hundreds of microsomal particles each covered with thousands of ribosomes that this seemingly inefficient process can produce adequate numbers of protein molecules to sustain life. Modern cells contain a number of different types of inclusions in addition to ribosomes. Some possess such complexity of structure and function that they are called organelles, or “small organs.” Organelles are specialized structures that perform various jobs inside cells. In the same way organs, such as the heart, liver, stomach, and kidneys, serve specific functions to keep an organism alive, organelles serve specific functions to keep a cell alive. The mitochondria constitute an important kind of organelle. They are rod-shaped and about one three-thousandths of an inch long. There are perhaps 2,000 of them distributed throughout an average cell. Each tiny mitochondrion is a complete processing plant that takes in a standardized raw material—the sugar glucose—and puts out, in addition to by-products, and energy-rich chemical—adensoine triphosphate (ATP). More than a dozen separate chemical reactions are involved in this transformation, and each reaction is catalyzed by a different enzyme. The mitochondrion must store all these enzymes as well as the intermediate products in a structure that permits the continuous assembly-line manufacture of its end product ATP. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
ATP, sometimes called a coenzyme, differs from the nucleotide adenylic acid only in its possession of three phosphate groups instead of one. It is by all odds the most important source of chemical energy in present-day organisms. No modern cell could survive without it. And the origin of this vital ingredient is the complex chain of reactions, many of the steps of which are identical for man and dandelion, that continuously take pace in the mitochondria. One of the most conspicuous structural features of modern organisms is the cell nucleus. In terms of our previous discussion, it is easy to regard the nuclear structure as a straightforward example of the kind of “drop within a drop” development that we postulated for the later stages of coacervate evolution. Nevertheless, it seems likely that the kind of nucleus we now know, with its clear-cut membrane separating certain internal structures and organelles from others of quite different kinds in the surrounding cytoplasmic fluid, is a relatively late development. For bacteria and a few other primitive organisms do not have well-developed nuclear membranes, although they frequently exhibit other inclusions and organelles of a considerable degree of sophistication. In short, modern cells differ from primitive coacervates not just in their possession of the power genetic mechanisms but also in their incorporation of other features of a degree of sophistication and refinement unheard of in bygone days. There is no reason for this to be surprising, in view of the inevitable ubiquity of the evolutionary effects on which all biological progress is based. However, it seemed worthwhile to call explicit attention to these other developments before proceeding to a consideration of what must be some fairly late evolutionary development related, once again, to the genetic mechanisms. Four our treatment of the modern cell, cursory though it is intended to be, would yet be unjustifiably incomplete if it failed to describe some of the techniques employed today to hold together and protect the all-important book of instructions contained in the DNA molecules for directing the chemical activities in the organism. Specifically, we must examine the properties of modern cells that minimize the effects of chance on the architectural activities of the nucleic acid control mechanisms. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The problem we must consider is not fundamentally different from one which we encountered in connection with the reproduction of the early coacervates. When one of our primitive bags of chemicals broke up, we saw that the ability of any one of the resulting smaller droplets to support a chain of chemical reactions similar to that which had been responsible for the growth of the parent depended on whether chance provided that smaller droplet with an adequately representative inventory of ingredients. If so, the new individua could survive and grow; if not, death ensured. The development of the genetic mechanisms would have modified the problem of viable heredity, but would not have eliminated it. In particular, as DNA molecules assumed control of the chemistry of the cell by means of the powerful enzymes they generated, the survivability of an offspring of an adult individual would have become less dependent on the chance incorporation in the offspring of many of the ingredients normally found in the parent; the strong directing influence of the enzymes would have quickly made up for any initial imbalance in the proportions of most of the vital juices. However, nothing could have made up for the absence of an important enzyme resulting from the accidental failure of one of the generating DNA molecules to be captured by the offspring when the adult broke up into smaller pieces. This discussion so far has demonstrated how DNA is perhaps the most famous biological molecule; it is present in all forms of life on Earth. virtually every cell in your body contains DNA of the genetic code that makes you. DNA carries the instructions for the development, growth, reproduction, and functioning of life. Differences in the genetic code are the reason why one person has brown eyes rather than green, why some people are susceptible to certain diseases, why birds only have two wings, and why giraffes have long necks. However, we will continue more of this interesting topic in future reports. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
When it comes to the past, it is not wrong to look back if we understand the purpose for doing so. The Lord wants us to learn from our mistakes. However, we can learn from them only by keeping them in perspective and not dwelling on them. We fall into a deep pit of discouragement if we continually dwell on past mistakes. This is particularly true of sins. We can also become discouraged by blaming ourselves for sins we did not commit. For example, victims of abuse often feel responsible somehow for the abuse they received. They sometimes even feel guilty for having survived the abuse. In the same way, those who have been victimized by the sins of others continue to be victims if they blame themselves and dwell on the past. Healing comes when they seek the Lord’s help to rise above the sorrow and turn their pain into a blessing. Sometimes the fear of the consequence of confessing a sin keeps people living in the past. Some people even spend a lifetime trying to recreate the past. This relates to a most confusing psychological phenomenon called “repetition compulsion.” In repetition compulsion, a person repeats a traumatic event or its circumstances over and over again. This includes reenacting the event or putting oneself in situations where the event seems likely to happen again. Many people who are stuck in the past, regardless of if it was a trauma or their “heyday,” expose themselves to people or places they are stuck on, so they can create reminiscent scenes of the original situation. These behavioural reenactments are rarely consciously understood to be related to earlier life experiences. Humans seek comfort in what is familiar and predictable—even if this means repeatedly harassing and stalking people who want nothing to do with them, nor the past. Through these behaviours, individuals believe they are recreating history and changing the outcome, thereby gaining mastery over what they could not control in the past. When one re-enacts scenarios from the past, it involves the hope that this time they will get it right. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Consciously or unconsciously, some believe they are omnipotent in other individual’s lives and they have the power to satisfy them, by trying to make the past the present. Compulsive repetition of the past, especially if the person you are focusing on had a bad experience with you, or has not talked to you in decades, may not be the best idea. Social media is there and it is virtually easy to contact anyone you want. Sometimes it is best to let others reaching out to you, especially if you are fixated on the past. Their lives may have changed, they may not be interested in the past, or they may be in a situation where they are not willing to reconnect with the past or even may not want new friends. Compulsive repetition of fantasies may provide a temporary sense of mastery or even pleasure (but ultimately leads to chronic feelings of helplessness and a sense of being bad and out of control). Change, even when healthy, feels foreign and scary. When we consider that all patterns of behaviour contain ulterior gains, we can better understand the cycle of repetition. It is important to note that the motivation to not change is not necessarily an action that brings happiness, relief or other beneficial emotions. Sometimes people revert back to familiarity because the outcome is predictable. To venture into uncharted waters is to invite intolerable anxiety. Tragically, some people remain so preoccupied with the past that they are not able to develop meaningful life experiences. This fixation often results in difficulties with assimilating subsequent experiences, almost as if their emotional development has stopped at a certain point. Perhaps some people may benefit more from therapy than obsessively trying to recreate the past. Often times, people even forget who they are and make believe they are the person they traumatized. To recover rationality after being irrational, to recover normal life, is a great thing. A variety of insight therapies, from cognitive to psychodynamic, may be used in cases of schizophrenia. Such approaches may be offered in individual or group formats. Studies suggest that the particular orientations of insight therapists are often less important than their levels of experience with schizophrenia. In addition, the therapist who are most successful tend to be those who take an active role, setting limits, expressing opinions, challenging patients’ statements, providing guidance, displaying empathy, and gaining trust. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
The area of patriotism is intermediate between childhood and adulthood. We must understand it carefully or we play into the hands of fools and rogues who have done our country plenty of damage. To what can we correctly attach the adjective “American”? Well, America is supposed to be a “slice of Heaven,” where everyone has a beautiful house, fancy cars, a high paying job, and two kids. Being American meant to have security, safety, material wealth, excellent health, religion, be proud of your country, well educated and innovative, and a successful career. American was supposed to mean all the good God made and none of the bad stuff. During the 1950s, the economy boomed, and many Americans enjoyed material comfort. The American Dream because a reality. By 1956, the majority of Americans no longer held blue-collar, or industrial, jobs. Instead more people worked in higher-paid, white-collar positions—clerical, managerial, or professional occupations. Unlike blue-collar workers, who manufactured goods for sale, white-collar workers tended to perform services in fields like sales, advertising, insurance, and communications. Though achieving job security did take a psychological toll on some Americans who resented having to repress their own personalities, it also enabled people to provide their families with the so-called good things in life. Most Americans worked in cities, but fewer and fewer of them lived there. New highways and the availability of affordable automobiles and gasoline made commuting possible. By the early 1960s, every large city in the United States of America was surrounded by suburbs. Of the 13 million new homes built in the 1950s, 85 percent were built in the suburbs. For many people, the suburbs embodied the American Dream of an affordable single-family house, good schools, a safe, healthy environment for children, and congenial neighbours just like themselves. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
In between, there is an American landscape, as American primary and secondary education, an American classlessness, and American Constitution, and Anglo-American language, and American kind of enterprising. That is, just where a child ventures from home and grows up through adolescence, the great environment becomes one’s scene, and this is American, a characteristic geography and history, place and community. It is just in growing up that a patriotic opportunity is essential. It is just this opportunity that, for ingenuous youth, is corrupted. And so it is hard to grow up. Let us be quite clear what this American landscape and community is. 95 percent of U.S. teens have their own mobile device, nearly 64 percent of teens have televisions, 93 percent of teens go online, 69 percent of teens have their own computer, 63 percent of teen Internet users go online every day. The average teen in American spends $2,150 per year. That is 42 million teens in America spending their money on a variety of products. And the average American dad spends $9,486 annually per kid, while the typical American mom spends just $8,789. So, annually, teens are spending $90.3 billion of their own money. That is just a little bit less than the $90.4 billion quarterly net income of TFC Financial, or more than the $76 billon net income of Alphabet Inc. On the high end, parents spend $752 billion on their teens, which is slightly less than the $800 billion Microsoft is worth. The teenage market is tremendously powerful. Perhaps that is why advertisers spend more than $12 billion per year to razzle-dazzle promotional stunts (right) to reach the youth market. If parents have any idea of organized revolt, it is already too late. Teenage spending is so important that such action would send quivers through the entire national economy. This is a description of the landscape. There are just a few examples of fundamental that lie beneath the “fundamentals.” And they are even more important than they may seem because they form a system. Thus, changes in the deep fundamental interact with one another. Moreover, the limited examples cited so far are just that—limited. A fuller list would surely include others—energy, the environment and family structure, for example—all changing at high speed, all shaking the ground under the more superficial, everyday fundamentals. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Many of the deep fundamentals have received scrutiny from time to time. For example, in 2020, the relationship between the biosphere and wealth creation once again became the center of global concern and controversy. By contrast, several of the deep fundamentals most relevant to revolutionary wealthy have, in fact, received scant attention. That, therefore takes us on a journey to strange, largely unknown territory to probe three of the fastest-changing, most powerful and most fascinating of all the deep and fundamentals today—three will that without question shape the future of wealth. The countries with the key economics in today’s World—the United States of America, Japan, China and the European Union—are all heading for a crisis that none of them wants, that few political leaders are ready for and that will set limits on future economic advance. This looming crisis is a direct result of the “de-synchronization effect,” an example of how we mindlessly deal with one of the deepest of all the deep fundamentals: Time. Nations all over the World today are struggling at different rates of speed to build advance economies. What most business, political and civil leader have not yet clearly understood is a simple fact: An advanced economy needs an advanced society, for every economy is a product of the society in which it is embedded and is dependent on its key institutions. If a country manages to speed up its economic advance but leaves its key institutions behind, it will eventually limit its potential to create wealth. Call it the Law of Congruence. Feudal institutions everywhere obstructed industrial advance. In the same way, today’s industrial-age bureaucracies are slowing the move toward a more advanced, knowledge-based system for creating wealth. This is true of Japan’s Okurasho (its Ministry of Finance) and other government bureaucracies. It is true of China’s state-owned enterprises and of France’s ingrown, elitist ministries and universities. It is also true of the United States of America. In all these countries, key public institutions are out of step with the whirlwind of change that surrounds them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Nowhere has this been more evident than in the inability of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to cope with the skyrocketing speed and complexity of the private-sector financial institutions it is supposed to regulate. In the great Enron scandal, in the illegal mutual-fund machinations that directly involved time and timing, and in case after case of overcreative accounting, regulators were left in the dust by the accelerated manipulations of less than honourable companies. This was matched elsewhere by the striking failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to shift quickly enough from a focus on Cold-War targets to anti-terrorism capabilities—leaving the door open to the horror of 9/11. More recently, the impact of de-synchronization was dramatized by the embarrassing, tragic ineptitude of governmental responses to COVID-19 in 2022, when the president Biden admitted he had “no national plan,” and while prices are rising substantially, he refuses to help those who truly need help. Everywhere, as we will see later, attempts to change or replace an industrial-era agency spark resistance from its traditional beneficiaries and their allies. This resistance creates, or at least contributes to, drastically uneven rates of change. Which helps explain why so many of our primary institutions are dysfunctional—out of sync with the accelerative pace that a knowledge-based economy demands. Today’s governments, in brief, have a severe problem with time itself. Nonetheless, many think there is too much criticism abroad today, too little affirmation. Millions of humans think and live largely on negatives. It is because all humanity is approaching the threshold of a new era, a better era, that all the devils of the old era put forth their fiercest efforts, whilst there is yet a little time, to degrade human character, to drag it down into the hades of the worst forces and emotions—hate, envy, aggressiveness, and brutality. If there is physical pollution in the atmosphere, the water, and the Earth, there is another kind in humans, a moral depravity and mental baseness not less repellent. If there is so much friction, violence, and tension in the World, it is only because so many individual persons themselves are inwardly experiencing these things. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
People fill the World’s aura with bad thought which, if sustained, prolonged, and strong enough, break out on the physical level into undesirable or evil happenings. If there is so little real peace in the World, it is only because there is so little real peace in the individuals who live in the World. Their thinking, their emotions, and their passions have affected the mental atmosphere of the World. The most violent selfish passions and the most aggressive of emotional urges abound in this decade only because they have been brought up to the surface the better to attack and curb them. Just as association with a master throws the disciple’s virtues and vices to the surface, so contact with the higher forces being released in the World brings both great evil and great spirituality to the surface. The evil, in disciple’s as in humanity’s case, must manifest itself so that it may not lurk untouched but may be got at, grappled with, and eventually destroyed. Let us not misunderstand appearances, therefore. Since last century, things have been getting worse only to get better. Today most people feel frustrated, restless, and discontented. They search for happiness here and there, in this thing of that thing, through one person or another, or by moving from excitement to sensation. All this is their unconscious reaction to the new spiritual forces arising in their midst and destined to be vigorously active in a couple of hundred years. Today humanity has already largely lost faith in itself, doubts its goodness, worries about its future, and is bewildered about its present. Compulsive fears and corrosive anxieties, enfeebling doubts and neurotic complexes trouble the minds of so many millions in our age, as thwarted hopes and enchaining environments depress their hearts. Idealism presses them to become servants of Good; passion distorted into destructive violence deceives them into becoming servants of Evil. The thoughts which have gestated unspoken in humans’ minds and the feelings which have fermented unexpressed in their hearts have been and are being thrown up to the surface through the upheavals of our times, externalized, as it were, in their events. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Humanity did not come into its present grievous situation by chance. The whole picture of thoughts and their consequences, passions and their evils, acts and their effects, must be seen under the light of immutable Universal Law. The policy of fear and suspicion has not brought peace nearer; but, on the contrary, pushed it father away. We live in a World which, today, is populated with too many insane humans, too many unbalanced maladjusted persons. However, because they re not actually raving and jumping so as easily to be identified for what they are, this seldom is understood. This leaves many to wonder, when and where was the concept of celibacy first articulated? Did it originate as an actualized Christian instrument later adopted by ambitious hunters and warriors? Or was it fries imposed on people to guarantee their purity for those they would later breed with? The story of celibacy, in the guise of virginity and chastity, is shrouded in the mists of eons past. Though the hunger to know too urgent to dismiss, we can only suckle it on pap distilled from prehistoric gleanings, glimpses, and guesses and hope that some true nourishment seeps in Myriad pieces of data confirm the near-universal subordination of woman from the earliest times. Despite consoling myths about great matriarchies, it is a rare society where women are equal to men. One study of over eight hundred societies reveals how overwhelming males dominate leadership positions, including their kinship groups. Enormous China, with the World’s largest population, typifies humankind’s perspective. China has traditionally stifled women, and even today in its rural areas, woman have a 40 percent higher suicide rate than men because, they, too, undervalue their lives. The mechanics of this process of universal submission can only be guessed at. What is certain is that, unlike hunter/gatherers and horticulturists, most stable agricultural societies base social continuity and internal stability largely of female celibacy—virginity in girls, chastity and fidelity in wives—the best guarantee for successful genetic transfer. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
This rule’s rare exceptions underlie its universality. The male virgins of Papua New Guinea’s tiny Enga culture are prime examples of the infrequency of the phenomenon of compulsory male virginity. Conversely, a few cultures value fertility so gratefully that their men refuse to waste themselves on women who have not provided themselves by bearing a child. As we shall, see, these, too, are anomalies. Less rare is the societal standards that accepts or even expects premarital pleasures of the flesh with the intended spouse, with pregnancy followed swiftly by marriage. A European example is eighteenth-century Georgian England, where in rural perishes—the overwhelming majority—illegitimate births not followed by marriage were a mere 1.5 percent of births in the early seventeenth century, 3 percent in 1750, and still only 6 percent in 1810. However, births within seven months of marriage—though conception was prior to it—were 10.2 percent of first births from 1650 to 1699, 25.5 percent a century later, and by the nineteenth century, over 30 percent. Clearly, in most cases, premarital pleasures of the flesh were acceptable with the intended mate and pregnancy precipitated the actual marriage ceremony. However, many societies that tolerate a lack of chastity among lower-ranking women demand premarital virginity of women of higher status. This class element is complex. It operates partly to reinforce more stringent moral standards on members of its female elite, thereby emphasizing their superior moral worth. Paradoxically, the opposite is often true for its males, who are permitted or even encouraged to indulge in experimentation with pleasures of the flesh. A second major reason for valuing chastity is moral or religious. As humankind evolved, so did belief systems, and we have already seen how spiritual values deal with pleasures of the flesh and govern its expression. Celibacy, one such manifestation, has its advocates and practitioners such as widows and shamans, or priests. Except in isolated communities, it is only selectively practiced; after all, wholesale enforcement would be collective genetic suicide. Virginity in brides, however, is the religious ideal of the great majority of societies. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The third and perhaps the driving force behind this policy is economic. In many societies, a wealthy man’s daughter used to be his chattel and, as such, a vehicle for distributing his land and other holdings through a dowry or for acquiring property through a bride price. Chastity, as evidence of the pure and pristine nature of the goods, was at the forefront of qualities necessary in the bride-as-merchandise. Here is a brief breakdown of the most important consideration underlying this fixation on virginity. First, the bride’s chaste maidenhood carries several important guarantees for her Husband: that the child she conceives—least the first one—will be his; that she is not to dishonour him by allowing another man to take her maidenhead and have intimate knowledge of her body; that by refraining from pleasures of the flesh, she has demonstrated the likelihood of marital fidelity; tht by obeying the dictates of her relatives, her culture, and/or her religion, she has proved she is dutiful and likely to submit as well to her husbands authority; and that by coming to her husband unburdened by a child, her dowry and future labour will be devoted exclusively to the new family he and she have just founded. The bride’s family and in-laws also benefit, because her virginity enables her family to negotiate favourable marriage terms; she has shamed neither her own nor her husband’s family by acquiring a bad reputation; and she has not violated her religion’s strictures against premarital pleasures of the flesh, bringing down on her family’s head the wrath of offended deities. For a combination of these reasons, defloration has developed an almost mystical significance. Its imperatives override the urgent stirrings of awakening young bodies and impose chastity. This despite the fact that chastity runs counter to the human female’s evolution as a creature unique in her capacity for seasonless, round-the-clock copulation. This is why, of course, most societies that insists on maidenly virginity tacitly acknowledge that it is unnatural. They do this variously. They devise stringent methods to enforce it—foot-binding and female genital mutilation are examples. They inculcate the principle of virginity into their youth or preach it as a religious tent. They punish the unchaste, often severely. They marry girls off when they are still too young to be lustful. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Lastly, they reward virgins and/or their families. Young women who sacrifice immediate, intimate pleasure may gain considerable economic payback: husbands who will support them, who may even pay—to their families—a hefty bride price for the virtuous young bride. This trade-off has its ironic dimensions. The indefatigable intimate passions that virgins must suppress was part of an evolutionary strategy to attract the strongest, most productive males. Now women must achieve the same goal by repressing their intimate passions, tantalizing prospective mates to purchase it for the price of a marriage vow. (As late as 1981, when the British royal family calculatingly selected an appropriate consort for the heir to the throne, they let the World know that the teenage Diana Spencer’s vaunted virginity was one of her most important qualifications.) This social construct places an enormous responsibility on a woman’s shoulders. If, in a single weak or willful moment, she surrenders to her physical nature, she can destroy her future or shame her family. We are now living in a historical period, characterized by a radical and revolutionary transformation of one historical era into another. Nobody can doubt this fact seriously, and nobody who has even a minimum of historical understanding would do so after what has occurred during recent years. We are in the midst of a World revolution affecting every section of human existence, forcing upon us a new interpretation of life and the World. What about ethics in this connection? Does it represent a realm above change? It is superhistorical in its foundation, its values, and its commands? Or does it follow the stream of historical becoming, and will it be transformed as rapidly as the other realms of life are transformed in our days? If the latter be true, what authority, what power of shaping human life remains in it? Can the unconditional claim with which every moral demand imposes itself on human conscience be maintained if the contents of the demand are different in every period of history? However, if the former be the case—if ethics constitutes a real above history, immovable and unconcerned by historical change—how can it influence man, living in history and transformed by history? Would it not remain a strange body within the context of human experience, separated from it in untouchable remoteness, perhaps worthy of awe but without actual influence on the life-process? #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Truth twisted into service of the lower purposes or even the evil forces must be carefully inspected, analyzed, and lastly corrected or rejected. The kings of the Earth did not believe, nor did any of the inhabitants of the Earth, that the oppressor and enemy could enter the gates of America. [But this happened] because the sins of her [false] prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed the blood of the just and righteous in the midst of her. [The false prophets and priests] wandered [staggering] in the streets as if blind; they had so polluted themselves with blood it was not [lawful] for men to touch their garments. We must preserve nature and the human soul. You are the last whale, washed up on a far beach. The waves are pushing against you. Your brothers and sisters are gone. You cannot breathe. Small children are throwing rocks and laughing, climb onto your body. You die alone, your ears full of wid. You are the last buffalo. The sun is setting over the plains. You stand alone, enormous, heavy with fur, lovely. You are tired of running, tired of running. All of your friends have gone. It seems even the Earth has turned against you. There is not one to say goodbye. You rest, listening to the wind. When the time is right, the spirit of the wolf returns. The pastures of the wilderness overflow, and the hills are girded with joy and transmuted into spiritual force to start a new current of creative power. Several feel the benefits too. Spirits are revived and cures depression. There is a stimulation and awakening influencing the whole person. The meadows are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, yea, they sing. Our garners are filled to overflowing with all manner of store; our flocks increase by thousands in our fields. There is no attack and no enslavement, and no cry of distress in the broad places. Blessed be the Lord for the precious gifts of Heaven; for the precious gifts of the Earth, and the fullness thereof; praise the Lord. May the Lord give us of His abundance, and establish the work of our hands. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Life is Very Short When You Look Back and Realize How Long You Spent Not Living Your Dreams
One of the interesting things that has happened in extant genetic codes is the discoveries that have to do with the degeneracy of the genetic code—the existence of several different sequences of bases in the messenger RNA molecule that can cause the same amino acid segment to be incorporated in the protein under construction. For example, the evidence strongly suggests that the amino acid arginine can be evoked by any one of three messenger RNA triplets CGC, AGA, and UCG. The related inference also appears to be correct: that three different types of transfer RNA molecule, each capable of carrying the amino acid arginine, correspond to these three messenger RNA triplets. Such degeneracy in the code is compatible with the fact that 4 X 4 X 4, or 64, different messenger or transfer RNA triplet combinations can be made of the 4 bases of the nucleic acid molecule, whereas only 20 amino acids must be specified by the various combinations. The evidence to this point suggests that every one of the 64 possible combinations may ultimately be found to be “meaningful” in the sense of specifying one or another of the 20 amino acid constituents of the end-product protein molecules. It should be noted that this kind of degeneracy does not lead to ambiguity in the genetic code. To be sure, it means that messenger RNA molecules with different base sequences can govern the production of the same kind of protein. And the existence of such alternative “words” within the genetic language suggests that different species of organisms may employ somewhat different dialects in the nuclear books of instruction with which they control their cellular chemistry. Nevertheless, the code could still be universal in the sense that a given messenger RNA molecule, if capable at all of operating the genetic mechanisms of different types of foreign organisms, would always produce the same kind of protein molecules. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Not only did Bonner’s successful crossbreeding of the genetic mechanisms of pea plants and E. coli cell-free extracts in experiments with synthetic messenger RNA has provided further confirming evidence. While much less work has been done with mammalian than with bacterial components, it has at least been established that the messenger RNA triplets that evoke specific amino acids in the finally fabricated protein molecules are the same for mammalian as for bacterial systems in the case of the half-dozen kinds of messenger nucleic acid that have been tested. In general, while making allowance for some degree of variation from species to species in the details of the genetic mechanisms, biochemists today are confident that the genetic code has essentially been “broken”—that they are on the point of being able to line up every possible messenger RNA triplet with a particular amino acid in the resulting protein molecule. However, the specific sequence of amino acid segments in the manufactured protein molecules determine their catalytic properties and therefore controls the specific set of chemical reactions that take place in the cell. Therefore, the solution of the genetic code in this way implies the ultimate ability of the scientist to “read” the molecules of messenger RNA (or the nuclear DNA which produces them) and thereby learn the properties of the cell whose metabolism they control—whether the cell is to have the properties of pea plant or intestinal bacillus, for example. Inasmuch as the higher organisms, including humans, are believed to employ the same system of genetic control (plus a few complications yet to be treated), the implications of this work are that one day the biochemists are now able to determine the colour of eyes and shape of the nose of a yet-to-be-developed human individual by analysis of the structure of the nucleic acid molecules in the cells of the embryo! #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Before we move on to some of the additional complexities that characterize the structure and metabolism of higher organisms, we should make sure that we understand how the discussion how all of this information contributes to our basic thesis as to the purely physical origins of life. The experimental evidence reported here can only strengthen our faith in the soundness of our nonvitalistic philosophy; for strong support for the thesis of the fundamentally physical nature of the life processes is provided by the success of the biochemists in extracting from living cells the pertinent nucleic acid/enzyme apparatus and in stimulating it to perform its architectural functions by means of the addition of nucleic acid from other organisms. Ans the successful employment of human-made chemicals for this purpose even verges on the dramatic in its demonstration of the workability of our physical explanations. Not even the evidence for the similarity of the principal features of the genetic mechanisms in all forms of life is particularly disturbing. To be sure, this might at first glance appear to be more reconcilable with the vitalistic view of the supernatural purposiveness of life than with the materialistic view that everything has happened as the result of the blindly probabilistic physical laws of the Universe. However, there is really no great problem in imagining evolutionary developments that could have led to a considerable degree of ultimate standardization in the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms. And such evidence of variety as the degeneracy of the genetic code, with the accompanying implication of divergence from species to species in some of the details of the genetic mechanism, seems comfortably consistent with our views of the normal consequences of the evolutionary process. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
As we address ourselves to some of the further complexities that characterize modern higher organisms, we shall find that our considerations will continue to be intimately involved with the genetic mechanisms that have occupied so much of our attention to this point. We shall not be able to escape being enormously impressed by their overriding power and importance in the phenomena of life. While evolution is clearly the great technique employed by nature for developing its biological novelties, we shall find it easy to conclude that the genetic mechanisms may constitute the most ingenious and important invention yet achieved by the use of that technique. Now, looking ahead. Did you know that your DNA determines your reaction to caffeine? Caffeine is widely consumed in foods and beverages and is also used for a variety of medical purposes. Despite its widespread use, relatively little is understood regarding how genetics affects consumption, acute response, or the long-term effects of caffeine. Twin studies find the heritability of caffeine-related traits to range between 0.36 and 0.58. Analysis of poly-substance use shows that predisposition to caffeine use is highly specific to caffeine itself and shares little common disposition to use of other substances. Genome association studies link variations in adenosine and dopamine receptors to caffeine-induced anxiety and sleep disturbances. Polymorphism in the metabolic enzyme cytochrome P-450 is associated with risk of myocardial infraction in caffeine users. Modeling based on twin studies reveals that genetics plays a role in individual variability in caffeine consumption and in the direct effects of caffeine. Both pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic polymorphisms have been linked to variation in response to caffeine. These studies may help guide future research in the role of genetics in modulating the acute and chronic effects of caffeine. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Caffeine is the World’s most widely used stimulant. Nearly 90 percent of adults in the United States of America alone consume an estimated 30 million pounds of this psychoactive substance annually. It is the most consumed psychoactive substance in the World. Seventy-five percent of this caffeine is taken in the form of coffee (from the coffee bean); the rest is consumed in tea (from the tea leaf), cola (from the kola nut), chocolate (from the cocoa bean), and numerous prescription and over-the-counter medications, such as Excedrin. Caffeine’s popularity Worldwide can be attributed to its ability to promote wakefulness, enhance mood and cognition, and produce stimulatory effects. It is used clinically to treat premature neonatal apnea and as an analgesic adjuvant. Around 99 percent of ingested caffeine is absorbed by the body and reaches its peak concentration with an hour. It acts as a stimulant of the central nervous system, again producing a release of the neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine in the brain. Thus it increases arousal, mild euphoria, alertness, enhanced cognitive performance and motor activity and reduces fatigue. It also disrupts the performance of motor tasks and may interfere with sleep. Finally, it increases the rate of breathing and gastric acid secretions in the stomach. More than two to three cups of brewed coffee (250 milligrams of caffeine) can produce caffeine intoxication, which may include such symptoms as restlessness, nervousness, anxiety, stomach disturbances, twitching, and increased heart rate. Grand mal seizures and fatal respiratory failure or circulatory failure can occur at doses greater than 10 grams of caffeine (about 100 cups of coffee), but there is a decreased risk in neurodegenerative disorders. Many people who suddenly stop or cutback on their usual intake of caffeine experience withdrawal symptoms—even some individuals whose regular consumption is low (two and a half cups of coffee daily or seven cans of cola). #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
It is likely that several factors contribute to individual differences in responses to caffeine, including demographic and environmental factors such as age, other drug use, circadian factors, and sleep hygiene. One important source of variability that has received some attention in the recent year is genetic predisposition. There is growing evidence that individual differences in caffeine response or caffeine consumption are related to genetic factors. Genetic factors may influence responses to caffeine directly, by altering acute or chronic reactions to the drug, or indirectly, by affecting other psychological or physiological processes that are related to the drug effect, such as sensitivity to anxiety, rewarding and reinforcing effects of substances in general, or related personality traits. Finally, genes can also alter the body’s adaptive responses to long-term caffeine use. The biological mechanisms of these possible sources of variation likely involve interactions at multiple sites. One study had adult subjects consume their usual caffeine-filled drinks and foods for two days, then abstain from such foods for two days while taking actual caffeine pills. More subjects experienced headaches (52 percent), depression (11 percent), anxiety (8 percent), and fatigue (8 percent) during the two-day placebo period then during the caffeine periods. In addition, subjects reported using more unauthorized medications (13 percent) and performed experimental tasks more slowly during the placebo period than during the caffeine periods. Genetic contribution to caffeine consumption changes through different stages in life. It appears that genetic contribution becomes more pronounced throughout adolescence and then stabilized during adulthood. Researchers found that genetics influence individual sensitivity to caffeine toxicity, tolerance, and withdrawal in female twins. On average the woman reported slightly higher level of caffeine-induced insomnia and greater sleep disturbances in general health than men. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Epidemiological studies indicate that smokers drink more coffee than nonsmokers, but it is not clear whether these associations are related to genetic factors or to drug interactions, social conditioning, or other variables. One approach to solving this question is to correlate the use of caffeine to other drugs and using the common pathway model and mapping the genetic contribution to a common joint use factor and substance-specific factors. Using this technique, researchers found that the heritability for coffee use overlapped with that of nicotine and alcohol, though 0.72 of the total heritability was specific to caffeine, which was considerably higher than that for nicotine and alcohol. Investigators often assess caffeine’s impact by measuring coffee consumption, yet coffee also contains other chemicals that may be dangerous to one’s health. Thus, although some studies hint at links between caffeine and cancer (particularly pancreatic cancer), the evidence is not conclusive. Similarly, studies demonstrating correlations between caffeine and heart rhythm irregularities (arrhythmias) or high cholesterol levels are not fully reliable. Caffeine does, however, appear to cause at least a slight increase in blood pressure over time in regular users and a larger but short-lived increase during the first few days of consumption by new users. As public awareness of these possible health risks has increased, caffeine consumption has declined. Around half of Americans now drink coffee daily, whereas 80 percent did so in 1983. Heavier caffeine users appear to be more influenced by genetics than lighter caffeine users. People who tend to consume more alcohol also tend to drink more coffee. Genetic association studies have been used to identify specific genes that are responsible for the heritable components of these caffeine-related traits. Caffeine and its metabolites belong to the methylxanthine class, which are structurally similar to cyclic nucleotides, and interact with cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterases. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Caffeine is absorbed rapidly and completely from the gastrointestinal tract. It is metabolized by cytochrome P-450 enzymes, which represent the rate-limiting step for plasma clearance, and its elimination follows first-order kinetics. P-450 1A2, which is coded for by gene CYP1A2, is the primary isoenzyme responsible for the demethylation of caffeine into dimethylxanthine metabolites paraxanthine, theobromine, and theophylline. Each of these metabolites is subjected to further demethylation into monimethylxanthines. Variation in the CYP1A2 activity, both within and between individuals, represents a major source of variability in pharmaco-kinetics of caffeine. The clearance of caffeine can vary to up to 40-fold within and between individuals. Notable exogeneous factors that affect clearance include numerous drugs, medications, and smoking status, as well as caffeine itself. Endogenous factors include pregnancy, ethnicity, and genetics. Asian and African populations, for instance, appear to metabolize caffeine at slower rate than Caucasians. Genetic variations in a number of neurotransmitter functions could influence responses to caffeine. Because 10 grams of caffeine can be fatal, the substance is classified as a medical poison. The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we will miss it, but that it is too low and we will reach it. A leader is someone who has the capacity to create a compelling vision that takes people to a new place. In 1783 Washington sent a circular letter to the States, describing the situation of the new nations as he saw it. “We have equal occasion to felicitate ourselves,” he said, “on the lot which Providence has assigned to us, whether we view it in a natural, a political, or moral point of light.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
He pointed to the natural resources of the new nation, its independence and freedom, the Age of Reason during which it had come of age, an age of “the free cultivation of letters, the unbounded extension of commerce, the progressive refinement of manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, and above all the pure and benign light of Revelation….if these citizens,” he concluded, “should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be certainly their own. Such is our situation and such are our prospects.” It is hard to read these sentences without agitation and tears, for they are simply true and simply patriotic. In the next generations, almost to our own times, patriotic rhetoric did not cease to sound, more pompously and falsely, but never without a core of truth. There was always something special in the American destiny to be proud of. In 1825 it was the broad democracy. In 1850 it was the magnificent spread and settlement from coast to coast. In 1875, the material progress, the cable and the Pacific railroad, the building of modern industrialism. In 1900, America was the melting pot, the asylum of the poor and the oppressed. In our century, the patriotic rhetoric began to be unbelievable—not by accident, for foreign wars (1898 and 1917) are incompatible with reasonable rhetoric. In recent decades there has been almost a surcease of such speech. Even references to the American Way, free enterprise, high production, and the economy of abundance have finally died out, because they call up the idea of tail fins and TV commercials. Highbrow journalists mention the American Way with scorn. Our case is astounding. For the first time in recorded history, the mention of country, community, place has lost its power to animate. Nobody but a scoundrel even tries it. Our rejection of false patriotism is, of course, itself a badge of honour. However, the positive loss is tragic and I cannot resign myself to it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
A man has only one life and if during it he has no great environment, no community, he has been irreparably robbed of a human right. This loss is damaging especially in growing up, for it deprives outgoing growth, which begins with weaning from Mother and walking out of the house, of the chance of entering upon a great and honourable scene to develop in. Culture is, first of all, city and patriotic culture. Patriotism is the culture, we come with a fatal emptiness to the humane culture of science, art, humanity and God; and this emptiness results in the best people not turning back, like Plato’s philosopher who has emerged from the cave, to serve their country. Many of the best Americans have a strong philanthropic and local community zeal, yet it would seem odd for somebody nowadays to put himself to a big and hard task just to serve his country, to make her better, and be proud of that. Young people aspire mightily to appearances on television and other kinds of notoriety, but I doubt that many now thing of being honoured by a statue in the park and winning “immortal” fame, the fame of big culture. Let me make the same point by analyzing a remarkable proposition of Otto Jespersen, the grammarian. He shows that, contrary to expectation, a child does not learn his mother tongue at home from his mother and immediate family, he does not pick up their accent. The accent, vocabulary, syntax, and styles that form his speech are learned from his first peer groups, outside the home. Jespersen does not explain it, but the psychology seems evident. Speech occurs at the stage of the developing of the “I,” it is a forming of the image of the self, it is a self-appointment to one’s ideal and putting on its uniform. Changes occur as we appoint ourselves to one peer group after another. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
At certain stage a lad appoints himself or commits himself to a band of friends and puts on its jargon, jacket, tattoo, and masculine ring on the fourth finger of the left hand. If he is insecure and disturbed, this conformity is a cowering protection and the band is a delinquent gang, but in every case it is also, we see by the blazon, an achievement. And one way in which the Governor of California does not take the juveniles seriously, when he speaks of giving them a sense of belonging, is that he does not offer an ideal that promises equal manliness. He has none to offer. It is tragic when there is no great adult peer group to meet growth. Consider the case of an artist, my own case. To have simple and sounding language, rather than merely the lovely colloquialism of Sherwood Anderson or William Carlos Williams, it is necessary to believe in the great national culture of one’s people. Our popular culture does not warrant the belief, even to make the sacrifice that Virgil made when he sadly gave up his best vision because strife-torn Rome needed a national poet. True, an artist can then jump to the international and universal, for a mankind and God do not let him down (mankind is the fellow on one’s own block), but this is at the loss of pomp and glitter, of the glancing present. Without a patriotic peer group, it is impossible to have the brilliance of Handel, the material grandeur of Venice. With us the style of the big bright sensation belongs to cheap musical dramas on Broadway. Now, an analogy to the “triumphant conscience,” as developed by Luther personally as well as theologically, appeared in the enthusiastic philosophy of Giordano Bruno. The moral conscience is overcome by the “heroic affect” toward the Universe and the surrender to its infinity and inexhaustible creativity. Participation in the creativity of life universal liberates the moral conscience, the bad as well as the good. Humans, standing in the center of being, are bound to transform life as it is into higher life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
These living souls take upon themselves the tragic consequences, connected with the destructive side of finite creativity, and must not try to escape them for the sake of a good moral conscience. While in Bruno the transmoral conscience is based on a mystical naturalism, Nietzsche’s transmoralism is a consequence of his dramatic-tragic naturalism. Nietzsche belongs to those empiricists who have tried to analyze the genesis of moral conscience in such a way that its autonomy is destroyed—Hobbes and Helvetius, on the ground of a materialistic metaphysics; Mandeville and Bentham, on the ground of a utilitarian psychology; Dr. Darwin and Dr. Freud, on the ground of an evolutionary naturalism—all have denied any objective validity to the voice of conscience, according to their rejection of any universal natural (rational) law. Nietzsche carried these ideas further, as the title and the content of Genealogy of Morals shows. He says, “The bad conscience is a sickness, but it is a sickness as pregnancy is one.” It is a creative sickness. Humankind had to be domesticated, and this has been done by its conquerors and ruling classes. It was in the interest of these classes to suppress by sever punishments the natural instincts of aggressiveness, will to power, destruction, cruelty, revolution. They succeeded in suppressing these trends. However, they did not succeed in eradicating them. So the aggressive instincts became internalized and transformed into self-destructive tendencies. Humans have turned against themselves in self-punishment; they are separated from their innocent terrestrial past from which they had derived strength, joy, and creativity. However, humans cannot prevent their instincts from remaining alive. They require permanent acts of suppression, the result of which is the bad conscience, a great thing in human evolution, an ugly thing if compared with humanities real aim. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Nietzsche described this aim in terms which remind one of Luther’s descriptions of the transmoral conscience: “Once in a stronger period than our morbid, desperate present, one must appear, the man of the great love and the great contempt, the creative spirit who does now allow his driving strength to be turned to a transcendent World.” Nietzsche call him the man “who is strong through wars and victories, who needs conquest, adventure, danger, even pain.” The man is “beyond good and evil” in the moral sense. At the same time, he is good in the metaphysical (or mystical) sense that he is in unity with life universal. He has a transmoral conscience, not on the basis of a paradoxical unity with God (such as Luther has), but on the basis of an enthusiastic unity with life in its creative and destructive power. Recent “existential” philosophy has developed a doctrine of transmoral conscience that follows the general lines of Luther, Bruno, and Nietzsche. Heidegger, the main representative of existential philosophy, says, “The call of conscience has the character of the demand that humans in their finitude actualize their genuine potentialities, and this means an appeal to become guilty.” Conscience summons us to ourselves, calling us back from the talk of the market and the conventional behaviour of the masses. It has no special demands; it speaks to us in the “mode of silence.” It tells us only to act and to become guilty by acting, for every action is unscrupulous. One who acts experiences the call of conscience and, at the same time, has the experience of contradicting one’s conscience, of being guilty. “Existence as such is guilty.” Only self-deception can give a good moral conscience, since it is impossible not to act and since every action implies guilt. We must act, and the attitude in which we can act is “resoluteness.” Resoluteness transcends the moral conscience, its arguments and prohibitions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The good, transmoral conscience consists in the acceptance of the bad, moral conscience,which is unavoidable whenever decisions are made and acts are performed. The way from Luther’s to Heidegger’s idea of a transmoral conscience was a dangerous one. “Transmoral” can mean the re-establishment of morality from a point below morality. The empiricists from Hobbes to Dr. Freud have analyzed moral conscience, but they have not destroyed it. Either they were dependent in their concrete ethics on Anglo-Saxon common sense; or they identified utility with the social conventions of a well-established bourgeoisie; or they cultivated a high sense of conscientiousness, in scientific honesty as well as in the fulfillment of duties; or they did not dare, unconsciously or consciously, to draw the radical moral consequences of their dissolution of the conscience. In Nietzsche and Heidegger none of these inhibitions is left. However, it is not without some justification that these names are connected with the antimoral movements of fascism or national socialism. Even Luther has been linked with them, as have Machiavelli and Bruno. This raises the questions: is the idea of a transmoral conscience tenable? Or is it so dangerous that it cannot be maintained? However, if the idea must be dismissed, religion as well as analytic psychotherapy would also have to be dismissed. For in both of them, the moral conscience is transcendent—in religion by the acceptance of the divine grace that breaks through the realm of law and creates a joyful conscience, and in-depth psychology by the acceptance of one’s own conflicts when looking at them and suffering under their ugliness without an attempt to suppress them and to hide them from oneself. Indeed, it is impossible not to transcend the moral conscience because it is impossible to unite a sensitive and good conscience. Those who have a sensitive conscience cannot escape the question of the transmoral conscience. The moral conscience drives beyond the sphere in which it is valid to the sphere from which it must receive its conditional validity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The celibacy movement was rather interesting. The “silent strike,” with its contingent of proud spinsters, generated an inevitable backlash. This came in the form of gender discrimination. Scientists started to expressed the biological differences been men and women. Havelock Ellis said that, “women’s special sphere is the bearing and the rearing of children, with the care of human life in the home. Man’s primary sphere remains the exploration of life outside the home, in industry and inventions and the cultivation of the arts.” With this observation of the status quo cloaked in scientific garb, Ellis proceeded to extrapolate conclusions. One was the ideal the relations involving pleasures of the flesh would be between male dominance and female submissiveness. Another was that the ideal female, a paragon of Motherhood, was very definitely not a spinster, a word that in Ellis’s writings elaborated on the nasty connotations our century has inherited from his. Like so many Motherhood aficionados, Ellis claimed and was credited with a feminist agenda: surely praising the wonderful work of mothers must be women-positive. In Ellis’s case, this seemed irrefutable, for he also preached the novel idea that women should, indeed must, enjoy pleasures of the flesh. No more lying rigid, clenching fists, and teeth, enduring bimonthly intimate invasion by obliterating it with thoughts of England and the empire. (Ironically, Ellis himself had earlier lost an adored lover because he failed to reach a “proud status” during romantic interlude. His predilection in pleasures of the flesh was to observe the other species using the water closet, which stemmed from his unforgettable boyhood experience of watching his mother relieve herself of fluid in the garden.) #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Ellis’s espousal of the great Motherhood or, in Germany, Mutterschutz, movement particularly explains his enormous influence. From the 1800s onward, fewer children were born but infant mortality soared. Physical exams revealed the poor condition of many schoolchildren, and military recruits were rejected at a high rate for a plethora of disabilities. Something was wrong—at least, these authorities now knew something was wrong—and the solution seemed to be a nation of Super Moms who would reverse the physical decline. In Ellis’s words, these women would undertake the “regeneration of the race” and the “evolution of a supermankind.” Women, too bought into the Motherhood ideal. Some felt it validated the roles they had chosen or that had been chose for them. Others were persuaded that this form of biology was scientific truth and so believed the conclusions its thinkers so convincingly reported. These conclusions clashed with feminist beliefs, particularly the silent strike, the voluntary spinsters’ movement in which women took control of their lives by refusing to surrender their rights to husbands. Censuring spinster became the keynote of antifeminist attacks. One Motherhood proponent, herself a woman, decried spinsters with an analogy to a beehive, in which infertile workers were like “surplus woman” who refused or had no opportunity to marry. Since the workers bee’s poisoned sting required the egg laying tube, spinsters who relinquished “the power of life” would, by definition, gain possession of “the stinging weapon of death.” Another male antifeminist spoke in alarmist terms of eventual civil war between wives and spinsters, “the waste products of our female population.” In Modern Woman and How to Manager Her, another male writer called spinsters “man-condemning, man-hating…women who are ‘independent of men,’ a motely host, pathetic in their defiance of the first principle of Nature, but of no serious account in the biological sense.” He even proposed polygamy as a solution to “spinsterhood, and the right to live one’s life—the supreme consummation of a large number of revolutionary British women.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
In later years, charges of women who lonely loved other women and frigidity, both caused or worsened by spinsterhood, bolstered the attacks on single, independent women. Given that British women outnumbered men by 2 million, this was heavy artillery indeed. The women were acknowledged—negatively—as the prime movers behind reforms for all species, human and animal. The “fanaticism and crankiness” of these dangerous virgins, charged virulent antifeminist Charlotte Haldane, impelled them to espouse “freak science, freak religions, and freak philanthropy,” and to embrace wholeheartedly such contemptible crusades as antivisection, the bane of England’s scientific advancement, dogs’ homes and cats’ homes, missionary endeavors, and “‘Kill-joy’ propaganda.” Furthermore, “enough is known [about the psychological effects of permanent virginity],” Haldane opined, “to make us aware that in entrusted responsibility towards individuals and the State to elderly virgins we may be acting unwisely.” Women and loved other women, styled “intermediate women,” were even more problematic. They should be allowed only inferior jobs because as educators or nurses or doctors, “intermediate women may do an enormous amount of harm.” In the manipulative hands of the “anatomy biologists” and their unlikely Motherhood allies, the celibacy that women seeking independence had once embraced with such delight and firm purpose was now portrayed as sullied and suspicious, a witch’s mantel for freaky madwomen or a masquerade for reviled women who love women. Society still demanded virgin brides, but their virginity was their supreme offering to a husband who would maneuver them through the rest of their life. Aging girls—women—who failed to contract a marriage were pitied, but self-styled spinsters with agendas, no matter how noble and important, were condemned in vitriolic terms, their brand of feminism repudiated as antisocial and unworthy of any regard but the most evil eye. Their celibacy had become as loathsome as its object: women’s independence and personal fulfillment. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
With so many people in the World today whose outlook is negative, whose emotions are twisted and thinking is warped, it is more needful to stand firm in one’s own spot of optimistic thinking that ever. Whoever doubts the truth of this message, thereby deprives oneself of its benefits. However, this is equally true of the believer who fears its truth. If the future holds distress and suffering, blows and disasters, it is to be met with courage sought and asked from the higher self. According to our faith, it will be given us. It is not a question of what we like or prefer to believe. It is a question of accepting quietly, or else defying vainly, the chose of events and the trend of destiny. If catastrophe and obliteration threaten humanity and if the individual is hopeless when confronted by them, it is logical to conclude that although humanity might not be able to save itself, the individual can save oneself from these disasters if one believes that inner salvation is at least a possibility where outer salvation is not. Yes, you and I can save ourselves from within even when we cannot save ourselves from without. That at least is a better lot than the one of the humans who can save oneself neither from within nor from without and puts one’s faith in political action alone. For politics is merely a system of human bargaining actuated by self-seeking. It can invoke the assistance of no higher power because it does not rise higher than this self-seeking interest itself. However, the individual is free to life oneself above this sordid plane and therefore one is in a position to invite the attention and assistance of higher powers. One who consciously inhabits reality will live independent of the mutations of fate, the catastrophes of history, and the crises of an epoch in dissolution. Even in crisis of war, where danger or even death is lurking, philosophy reveals its immense practicability. For the philosopher can meet them with the utter calmness, effective capacity, and resolute heroism with which one’s studies, reflection, disciplines, and ideals have formed one’s character. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Amid the surging tides of postwar chaos, one sets the example and shows the value of philosophic principles by standing firm as a rock. Just as one kept cool in the very midst of global conflagration, so one now keeps clear-sighted amid the gloom of its dusty aftermath. In the very midst of World confusion, one becomes a little oasis of strength and peace, wisdom and certitude, calm and holiness. If one has to live in a chaotic disordered environment, the sad heritage of war, one still lives one’s own constructive ordered pattern of existence. The very example of such a human keeping steady and balanced thus silently helps some others who are bewildered or aimless. Now, when considering American capitalism, there are a few things we should keep in mind. According to Adam Smith, “Labour was the first, price, the original purchase—money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the World was originally purchased.” It many come as a surprise that, until field of labour was replaced by factory work, few of our ancestors ever held a job. This surely was not because they were rich. Most were wretchedly poor. They did not hold jobs because the “job,” in today’s sense of formally committed work in return for stipulated pay, had not yet been invented. Like the steam engine and other industrial innovations, jobs and wage labour became widespread only during the last three centuries. Work itself was transferred from outdoors to indoors, or schedules set no longer by sunrise and sunset but by the punch clock. Most payments came in the form of wages based on hours worked. Indeed, these arrangements essentially define the term job. However, the job is only one way of packaging work. And as the latest, knowledge-based wealth systems unfold, we are moving toward a future in which, as we will see, more people “work” but fewer hold “jobs.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
It will drastically alter labour relations, human resources departments, legislation and the overall labour market how the offices of employment are conducted in the future. It is bad news for trade unions as we know them. The deep fundamental of work is changing more profoundly than at any time since the industrial revolution. Division of labour, like work itself, traces back to hunting and gathering, when the division was mainly based on gender. However, here, too, we are approaching a turning point. Ever hear of a “metallurgy and failure analysis litigation consultant” or a “post-harvest horticulturalist”? Neither have most of us. (The latter is the superspecialist who determine such things as how many microscopic holes are needed to admit oxygen into the plastic bag that holds vegetables in the supermarket.) Adam Smith in 1776 called the division of labour the source of “the greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour.” And this has been true ever since. However, the more refined and specialized tasks become, the harder and more expensive it becomes to integrate them—especially in an innovation-driven competitive economy. At some point, the costs of integration may exceed the value of such superspecialization. Moreover, narrowly focused specialists may be good at incremental innovation. However, breakthrough innovation is often the product of temporary teams whose members cross disciplinary boundaries—at a time when breakthroughs in every field are, in fact, blurring those very boundaries. And this is not just a matter for scientists and researchers. The new wealth system demands a complete shake-up in the way increasingly temporary skill sets are organized for increasingly temporary purposes throughout the economy. Nothing is more deeply fundamental to the creation of wealthy. Now only are work and the division of labour changing, but income distribution itself—the “who gets what?”—may be heading, over the long term, toward truly revolutionary change. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
The temple of the animals has fallen into disrepair. The pad of feet has faded. The panthers flee the shadows of the day. Tired, I recall the animals of last year: the altars of the bear, tribunals of the ape, solitudes of elephantine gloom, rare zebra-stripped retreats, prophecies of dog, sanctuaries of the pygmy deer. Were there rituals I had forgotten? Animal calls to which those animal voices replied, called and called until that jungle stirred. Were there voices that I heard? Love was the very animal made his lair, slept out his winter in my heart. Did he seek my hear or ever sleep there? I have seen the animals depart, forgotten their voices, or barely remembered—like that last speech when the company goes or the beloved face that the heart knows, forgets and knows—I have heard the dying footsteps of fall. The sound has faded, but lingers here. Ah, bitterly I recall animals of last year. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power, and the glory and the victory and the majesty; all that is in the Heaven and in the Earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted above all. Both riches and honour come from Thee, and Thou rulest over all; in Thy hand is power and might, and in Thy hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. Therefore, our God, we thank Thee, and praise Thy glorious name. O give thanks unto the Lord who alone doeth great wonders; His lovingkindness endureth forever. Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God; He covereth the Heavens with clouds, He prepareth rain for the Earth, and maketh the mountains to be green with grass. He maketh your borders peaceful, He giveth you the fat of the wheat in plenty. He is good to the Earth, and watereth her with His rivers that are full of water. He maketh the Earth soft with showers, and blesseth the growth thereof. He crowneth the year with His goodness, and showereth the Earth with rich bounty. #RandolpHarris 21 of 21
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Whatever Person Posses this Book, Lucifer Promises to Carry Out One’s Plans
The latter part of the nineteenth century was an anguished and tortured period. Gentility was a terrible strain. Beneath the appearance of stiff propriety there ran currents of anger and aggression frightful in their intensity. Some indication of the dark, baleful aspect of the lives of our great-grandparent went untold. Black and white magic. Contemporary forms of magic are being studied carefully by parapsychologists. (Parapsychology is the study of apparently supernatural phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, apparitions, and related forms of ESP.) Researcher in this field who operate from a completely naturalistic standpoint deny the existence of a personal devil or evil spirits. They may speak of two vital forces in the Universe, however, one working upward in an evolutionary manner, and the other counteracting these ascending steps. These investigators of psychic phenomena do not make any effort to explain the origin of these invisible powers, and simply declare that some people have special psychic gifts which give them access to these forces. They may even say that some religious practitioners appear to have superhuman power, and refer to their work as white magic. They may also acknowledge that some individuals can mysteriously bring harm to their enemies, and this evil use of power they call black magic. The majority of these parapsychologist insist, however, that they do not believe in a personal God or the devil, and simply affirm that at the present time we do not fully understand some of these esoteric powers in this Universe. The Christian student of occultic activity has a distinct advantage over the naturalist, for one accepts the reality of a personal God and an invisible World of angels and evil spirits. This does not mean that one rejects a scientific approach to the problems that are encountered. One must avoid the temptation to declare dogmatically that every unexplainable occurrence is the result of supernatural activity—either by God or the forces of evil. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Some manifestations that now puzzle us may in the future be understood within the framework of the natural. The fact remains, however, that Satan is a real personality, and that a multitude of evil spirits have joined him in opposition to God and His people. The Christian Bible records numerous instances which clearly reveal their activity, and we have good reason to believe that some of the unexplainable phenomena in evidence today are the works of these demonic beings. Practitioners of black magic usually declare openly that they are serving the devil. Many of them say that have made a pact with Satan, and some have indicated their allegiance to him by signing a document with their own blood. Missionaries have reported that acts with the devil are not at all unknown among many primitive peoples. Reputable followers of Jesus Christ are convinced that these religious leaders actually can bring illness or death to people through ritualistic incantations. Black magic is practiced extensively today in many parts of Germany, France, and Switzerland, as well as in primitive cultures. Dr. Kurt Koch cites numerous instances of conjurers casting spells which have brought about the death of animals and even humans. He also tells us of amazing healings, but points out that when a person is cured of a physical disease by such a practitioner, one usually suffers such severe mental depression that the new condition is worse than the old. As one reads the examples of black magic—cattle being milked dry in a mysterious manner, the sudden unexplainable death of animals, healings followed by terrible psychic disturbances, and the appearance of frightful apparitions—he finds his credulity stretched almost to the breaking point. If one has not witnessed such occurrences, one is likely to dismiss these reports as untrustworthy. However, serious scholars who have investigated these accounts do not deny the reality of such phenomena. They may not believe them to be the work of Satan or evil spirits, but they admit that many of them cannot be explained at the present time. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Professor Adolph Koberle, from the University of Tubingen, in the introduction to Christian Counseling and Occultist, says: Readers who approached this study with a purely rationalistic bent will experience spiritual difficulty in following the author in many areas because we have here a report of cases and experiences which seems to conflict with all sound human intelligence. However, perhaps such persons can be brought to listen, since research first tries the immanent solution of the problems and only where this is proved to fail does one break out and propose the added dimension, the dimension of the eternal. Even though research may evoke contradictions here and there—from medics and pastors, from parapsychologists and psychotherapists—yet the questions that are here posed cannot be evaded by any person who concerns oneself in a genuine and responsible manner with a fruitful diagnosis and a helpful therapy. Clearly sane, scholarly, and since humans have examined the apparently superhuman powers evidenced in black magic and other forms of occultism, and made every effort to find naturalistic explanations, before finally concluding that Satan and evil spirits are actually at work. Black magic as a specific form of witchcraft has its own literature. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses are the primary source, and are well known in Europe. They constitute one volume, and are alleged to have been written by Moses himself. Strangely enough, they maintain that this great national leader was a servant of Satan, and set fourth detailed instructions for establishing a mystical relationship with the devil. This research tells readers how they can gain power through black magic over all the people they will encounter both in this World and the next. It makes this solemn assertion: “To whatever person possesses this book at any given time, Lucifer makes promise to carry out one’s commands, but only as long as one possess this book.” Dr. Koch comments on the strange and sinister nature of this writing by saying, “In the many cases which the pastor-counselors have come to know, there is no possessor of The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses who have no psychic complication.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
White magic is declared by its practitioners to be in direct opposition to black magic. Whereas black magic includes an open allegiance with the powers of darkness, in white magic the name of God is invoked, and Biblical phrases are utilized. Most people who practice it, however, have no understanding of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. Some possibly are endowed with an unexplainable psychic power, and their desire to use it was not totally selfish at the beginning. However, many find very soon that they become enslaved to a yearning for self-exaltation. The Radio Bible Class has received letters from a number of people for a time had engaged in a “healing ministry” of this kind, but who abandoned it because it led to a gradual departure from God. Although some cult leaders and those endowed people, they are using the name of God and Christ in a manner that violates the Lord’s will. The danger of mistaking an enigmatic psychic power for the gift of the Lord must be recognized. Dr. Kurt Koch points out that Dr. Henry Drummond, fellow-worker of D.L. Moody, possessed psychic ability which enabled him to have mental power over person who were miles away. While working with Moody, Drummond found that he could hypnotically influence the large crows who had gathered, but concluded that to use this power would be a hindrance to the activity of the Holy Spirit. One prayed that the Lord would take this psychic gift away from him, and his prayer was answered. Had Dr. Drummond decided to exercise this ability, he would soon have established a Worldwide reputation as a great healer. However, his accomplishments would not have honoured the Lord, and real blessings would not have resulted from his ministry. In Biblical faith, trust is placed solely in the Lord Jesus Christ. In white magic it is deflected to someone else (the human agent) or to something else (one’s own faith, etcetera). In the Biblical prayer of faith, the praying person subjects oneself to the will of God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
In white magic, the help of God is demanded under the assumption that exercising such power is in accordance with God’s will. Also in white magic the Christian markings are mere decorations that camouflage the magical means of knowledge for power. Certain influences, as we might call them, can be termed elementary forms of magic. Firstly, we have an example of the criminal use of hypnosis. A girl reported in a counselling session that a doctor who she had consulted had hypnotized her. While hypnotized he had seduced her. The doctor had done the same to her girl friend. It was later discovered that he has also done this with other girls. When these stories leaked out, the doctor left the town and settled elsewhere. The girl said that for a long time after this incident she had not been able to read her Christian Bible. She had felt a strong aversion towards religion, and evil thoughts had always come to her mind when praying. Another example, a doctor at a hospital had indecently assaulted women and girls under hypnosis. Once the ward sister caught him in the act. To cover up his scandalous behaviour, he used to question the patients about their sexual relationships and included their answers in their case histories. He thus tried to protect himself in the event of anything being discovered. A respectable gurl who was engaged to a Christian young man became pregnant at the hospital. Following this her fiancé left her. The girl herself denied all knowledge of having an intimate relationship with anyone. The doctor had lain with her when she had been hypnotized. The assistant matron and the ward sister had finally reported the doctor. However, the result was that they themselves were dismissed by the medical superintendent. The doctor in question stayed. Other nurses, who also had incriminating evidence against him, were forced to keep quiet now because of the fear of dismissal. After a few years, though, when the situation became too hot for the doctor, he left and went abroad. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Scientific advocates of hypnosis believe that a man could not be forced to do anything under hypnosis that he would not be prepared to do when conscious. They are of the opinion that crimes are not possible under hypnosis. However, not all the experts share this opinion. Moreover, in my counselling work I have met many cases in which crimes have taken place under hypnosis. From the point of view of the Scriptures it is understandable that an innocent girl can be molested this way. Jesus Christ said that out of the heart come evil thoughts and so on. Evil lies dormant even in the most moral of people. Normally these instinctive reactions are held in check by one’s consciousness, which is moulded by education, religious training and is affected by one’s disposition. Under hypnosis however, this regulator is switched off. Instinctive impulses can arise unhindered from the subconscious, and can be exploited by unscrupulous and uninhibited people. Besides this, some take no account of the fact that magical hypnosis exists in addition to the normal type of hypnosis, and that this can have far deeper effects. Magical hypnosis can often be recognized by the fact that afterwards the patient is no longer able to pray or to keep one’s faith. Here are some actual examples. A Christian girl went to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist used magical hypnosis far more often than he did ordinary hypnosis. I have occasionally come across such doctors in areas where magic is commonly practised. In reply to the girl’s question, the doctor admitted that he had not received his gift from God. He went on to tell the girl that he had wanted to conduct suggestive experiments on her. After the treatment, the girl lost her faith and could no longer pray. She suffered from doubts and other serious difficulties in believing. I think a lot of people who have had good lives, and then are abused and tortured over a long period of time have these same problems. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
When they restart reading the Christian Bible, it may make them upset and angry and they do not know why, but they keep going and praying hoping to overcome their situation. They know that God is there and guiding them, but they have just been able to sustain, not yet overcome the situation. So they keep forcing themselves to pray and thank God so they can rebuild their faith, and it can really take a lifetime, especially when the situation has been going on for decades. Abusers just kind of rob some people of faith and joy. And year after year, they keep praying it is over, and it never is, so it makes it hard for them to trust anyone, including God. So they have to keep reminding of his words and praying and seeking mental health treatments so they can live, and they pray they will still have some youth left, if the situation is ever resolved. Another example is a man, in his spare time a minister dabbled in magic. He experimented in various areas and learned card-laying, how to use a pendulum, magic charming and magical hypnosis. Since he had no suitable people to experiment on, he used his wife for the purpose. As his magical abilities increased, so too did his own and his wife’s dislike for the Christian Bible and prayer. This dislike developed into a strong resistance, and as time went on psychic disturbances appeared in the wife. She exhibited a serious anxiety hysteria and always had to lock the door of whichever room she happened to be in. There also was once a businessman who had the strange ability of being able to influence his customers hypnotically or magically, causing them to accept the business offers that he makes to them. In this way, his yearly income exceeds $75,000.00. He rejects Christianity altogether. A woman allowed a masseur to hypnotize her. Before the treatment she had regularly read her Christian Bible, prayed and attended the local church services. Afterwards when she tried to pray, she felt a compulsion to blaspheme and to curse. She then lost her faith. These effects indicate that the masseur had used magical hypnosis. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Plato derived the etymology of the word “demon” (Greek, daimon) from an adjective meaning “intelligent” or “knowing.” If this derivation is correct, it suggests that intelligence was considered a prominent characteristic of demons. If demons are fallen angels, this would be expected. As Satan’s vast wisdom became vitiated when he sinned (Ezekiel 28.12, 17), the great wisdom that characterizes angels in general (2 Samuel 14.20) must also have been corrupted in his followers. This is undoubtedly why demons use their great but perverted knowledge so relentlessly in an effort to frustrate God’s purpose. Humans who consult professional mediums and use other methods of divination to obtain knowledge of the future seem to imply a degree of confidence in the intelligence of evil spirits. The superior knowledge demons possess is not a holy or saving knowledge. Demons “believe” but only to “tremble” (James 2.19). They are confirmed in depravity and never seek forgiveness. As preeminently unclean spirits, they never long for purity. They confess Jesus Christ is Lord, but they do not trust Christ or submit to him. Although they recognize his authority (Mark 1.24; 5:6, 7). They cleverly withhold knowledge of his incarnation and completed redemption (1 John 4:1-6), corruption sound doctrine (1 Timothy 4.1-3), discern between those who have God’s seal and those who do not (Revelation 9.4), and know full well their own tragic destiny and inevitable doom (Matthew 8.29). Their superhuman intellect is accomplished by superphysical strength. The psalmist celebrates this angelic characteristic: “Bless the Lord, ye His angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word,” reports Psalm 103.20. The Apostle Peter also speaks of the “power and might” of angelic spirits (2 Peter 2.11). Our Lord Himself indirectly referred to demonic strength (Matthew 12.29). #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Perverted power and strength are thus conscious attributes of fallen angels. This titanic energy is displayed in the supernatural strength demons can impart to the human body when they enter it and possess it. The Gadarene demoniac who was dominated by a “legion” of demons (Mark 5.9) could not be bound even with chains. “Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetter broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him,” reports Mark 5.4. The great strength of this demoniac was due to the vast number of demons who possessed him. “A legion” in Roman military history consisted of three-to-six-thousand-foot soldiers, and three to seven hundred cavalries. The term “legion” was not only the name of the possessed human but probably also served to indicate the phenomenal strength of the demoniac. The demons were so powerful that when the Lord ordered them to enter a herd of two thousand swine, they cased the entire herd to rush violently down a hill into the sea (Mark 5.13). No wonder the demon-possessed human was disturbed physically, mentally, and emotionally. However, the superphysical strength of demons is not limited to the physical energy they impart to their victim. Their power is broad enough to cause occult oppression of mind and body. They can produce physical disabilities and sickness unrelated to organic disorders and which medicine or natural therapy cannot alleviate. Perhaps the most terrible power of demons is to derange the mind by upsetting the nervous system. In this way they can afflict the body with a psychosomatic disease. Demons are aware of the close relationship between physical and mental health. By jangling the nerves and the emotions, they can cause mental Instability (Luke 8.26-36), producing suicidal mania (Mark 9.22). Their purpose is to drive their occult-enslaved victim to self-destruction. “I’m tired of his bleary-eyed tootling—I have warned him to lie down and nap. So now that I have told him to stop it, I will give him a sharp little rap.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Dealing with necromancers who claim to contact the dead. The writer of 1 Samuel 19.9-10 describes in incident in which King Saul tried to impale David on his javelin. His attack is attributed to an “evil spirit from the Lord.” This indicates that God allowed a demon spirit to enter Saul and possess him. The kingdom of evil spirits is within God’s control, though not acting on his direction. God allows spirit activity, just as he allows evil men to prosper, within the boundaries of his ultimate plan for humans. God’s sovereign control over the realm of evil spirits is further illuminated in 1 Kings 22:18-23. “And the king od Israel said to Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil? And Micaiah said, Therefore hear the word of the Lord; I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the hosts of Heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the Lord said, Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, I will entice him. And the Lord said to him, By what means? And he said, I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go forth and do so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has spoken evil concerning you.” From this passage, too, it is clear that God overrules the World of evil spirits and permits them to do their work when it accords with His sovereign will and purpose. A unique incident involving spirits of the dead is recorded in 1 Samuel 28. King Saul had banished mediums and wizards out of the land as commanded by God (v.3). When confronted by the philistine army he was fearful and sought guidance from the Lord. When no guidance came, he told his servants to seek out a medium who could give him counsel (vv. 5-7). Having found one at Endor, Saul went to her in disguise. She feared a trap because of Saul’s decree against mediums, but Saul promised her protection and asked her to bring forth the spirit of dead Samuel (vv. 8-11). #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The medium screamed in fear when she saw Samuel himself—apparently she was used to communicating only with evil spirits. This is the only account in the Old Testament of God’s permitting a departed person’s spirit to return to Earth. This was not by the lower of the medium, however; in fact, she was not prepared for it at all. Samuel told the piteous kin it was no use: God would take the kingdom from Saul and give it to David (vv. 15-17), and the Philistine army would rout Saul’s army (v.19). 1 Chronicles 10.13 provides the epitaph to the tragic story: “So Saul died for his unfaithfulness; he was unfaithful to the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance.” Saul’s case is a chilling warning from Scripture against consulting with mediums or trying to communicate with departed souls; the judgment of God is upon it. A case of supposed witchcraft occurred in Cork, Ireland in the year 1685-1686, the account of which is contained in a latter from Christopher Crofts to Sir John Perceval (the third Baronet, and father of the first Earl of Egmont) written on the fifteenth of March in that year. Though the natator professes his disbelief in such superstitions, yet there seems to have been an unconscious feeling in his mind that his strict administration of the law was the means of bringing the affliction on his child. He says: My poor boy Jack to all appearances lay dying; he had a convulsion for eight or nine hours. His mother and several others are of opinion he is bewitched, and by the old woman, the mother of Nell Welsh, who is reputed a bad woman; and the child was playing by her that day she was upon her examination, and was taken ill presently after she was committed to Bridewell. However, I have not faith to believe it was anything but the hand of God. I have committed the girl to Bridewell, where she shall stay some time.” At one period in their history that peculiar people, known amongst themselves as the Society of Friends, and by their opponents as Quakers, appear to have been most troublesome, and to have caused a good deal of annoyance to other religious bodies. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Not unnaturally their enemies credited any wild tales which were related about them to their detriment, especially when they had referenced to their doctrine of the influence of the Spirit. Dr. More, in his continuation to Glanvill’s book, has in the sixth Relation an account of man, near Cambridge in England, who was possessed by an evil spirit which led him to do the most extraordinary things in its attempts to covert him to Quakerism. In the Life of Mr. Alexander Peden, late Minister of the Gospel at New Glenluce in Galloway, who died in 1686, there is an account of a Quakers’ meeting in this country which the Devil appeared in most blasphemous parody of the Holy Ghost. As Mr. Peden was travelling one time by himself in Ireland, “the night came on, and a dark mist, which obliged him to go into a house belonging to a Quaker. Mr. Peden said, ‘I must beg the favour of the roof of your house all night.’ The Quaker said, ‘Thou art a stranger, thou art very welcome and shalt be kindly entertained, but I cannot wait upon thee, for I am going to the meeting.’ Mr. Peden said, ‘I will go along with you.’ The Quaker said, ‘Thou may, if thou please, but thou must not trouble us.’ He said, ‘I will be civil.’ When they came to the meeting, as their ordinary is, they sat for some time silent, some with their faces to the wall, and others covered. There being a void in the loft above them there came down the appearance of a raven, and sat upon one man’s head, who started up immediately, and spoke with such vehemence that the froth flew from his mouth; it went to a second, and he did the same; and to a third, who did as the former two. Mr. Peden sitting near to his landlord said, ‘Do you not see that? Ye will not deny it afterwards?’ When they dismissed, going home Mr. Peden said to him, ‘I always thought there was devilry among you, but never thought that he did appear visibly among you till now that I have seen it.’ The poor man fell a-weeping, and said, ‘I perceive that God hath sent you to my house, and put it into your heart to go along with me, and permitted the Devil to appear visibly among us this night. I never saw the like before. Let me have the help of your prayers.’ After this he became a singular Christian.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Mr. Peden was also somewhat of a prophet, and his specialty appears to have been the prognostication of unpleasant events, at all events to persons in Ireland. Two instances will suffice. When in a gentleman’s house in Co. Antrim he foretold that a maid-servant was enceinte, that she would murder the child, and would be punished. “Which accordingly came to pass, and she was burnt at Craig Fergus.” On another occasion two messengers were sent to inform the Lord-Lieutenant that Presbyterian ministers in Ireland should affirm that they had nothing to do with the rebellion at Bothwell Bridge. Mr. Peden said they were on the Devil’s errand, but God would arrest them by the gate. Accordingly one was stricken with sickness, while the other fell from his horse and broke his leg. In another cause of the supernatural, during the late 1800s, the Santa Clara Valley, in California presented sweeping vistas of rural open space. It was a serene setting for Mrs. Winchester to begin her building project, which she did with steadfast determination. She immediately hired carpenters to work in shifts around the clock. By the turn of the century the eight-room house had grown into a nine-story mansion! The estate eventually grew to about 730 acres of farmland (according to documents), which included orchards of apricots, plums, and walnut trees to supplement Mrs. Winchester’s income. Her dried plums, which turned into prunes were very popular. Some people believe that prune juice is what kept Mrs. Winchester’s screen so wrinkle free, gave it a natural growth, and made her look so young, as it flushes toxins out of the body (word of caution, make sure to use it in moderation and start in the morning with a few ounces, and do not go anywhere for 24 hours until you see how it work with your system). Nonetheless, Mrs. Winchester also owned homes in Atherton, Los Altos, and Palo Alto. The combination of her wealth and her eccentric building of this beautiful mansion gave rise to many rumors in the local community. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Jeremiah Haralson was waiting for a tour of Mrs. Winchester’s beautiful mansion, and he had been waiting an hour to have tea with her—he was really impressed with the mansion as it seemed to twinkle. It was really a rural setting and very pretty. The estate had a lot of thick green foliage and beautiful flowers and what seemed to be miles of green lawns. So he waited for her. It was August 1894, and the chill of an unusually evening entered into his bones. The construction workers passed him with a surely response to his “Good Night.” Many of the servants went by him like ghosts with soft voices; and it was nearly midnight, and she still had not come. He then heard a ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion. The bell in the belfry high in the gables began to toll. Jeremiah shrugged his shoulders and turned towards the gates that lead to the main road. He looked back, but there was still no sign of movement about the mansion, so sign of life, no lights even in the windows. He paused by the gate, wondering. Then he noticed that the front doors were open—wide open—and the porch lamp shone a little way into the foyer. There was something about this that did not please him—that scared him a little, indeed. The house had a gloomy and deserted air. It was obviously impossible that it harboured a rich widow. The must be away on business. In which case—Jeremiah walked up the path, tower the stairs to the front porch, and listened. Yet, still no sign of life. He passed into the foyer. There as no light anywhere. Where was everybody, and why were the beautiful jeweled front doors open. There was no one in the front parlour, nor the drawing room, the dining room and the study were equally empty. Everyone was out, evidently. However, the unpleasant sense that he was, perhaps, not the first casual visitor to walk through that open door impelled him to look through the house before he went anyway and closed it after him. So he went upstairs, and at the door of the first bedroom, Jeremiah turned on the gasolier, as he had done in the siting rooms. Even as he did so, he felt that he was not alone. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Jeremiah was prepared to see something, but for what he saw he was not prepared. For what he saw lay on the bed, in a white loose gown—and it was Mrs. Winchester, and her throat was cut from ear to ear. He did not know what happened then, nor how he got downstairs and into the street; but he got out somehow, and the policeman found him in a fit, under the lamp-post at the crossroads of the road. He could not speak when they picked him up, and he passed the night in the police cells, because the policeman had seen plenty of drunken men before, but never one in a fit like Jeremiah Haralson. The next morning he was well, though still very pale and shaky. However, the tale he told the magistrate was convincing, and they sent a couple of constables with him to her house. There was no crowd about it as he had fancied there would be, and the curtains were open. As Jeremiah stood, dazed, in the front of the doors, they opened, she Mrs. Winchester came out. Jeremiah held on to the upside-down posts on the front porch for support. “See, my boy! Mrs. Winchester is just fine as can be,” said the constable, who found him hiding before one of the posts. “I told you, you were drunk, but you would know best!” When Jeremiah was alone with Mrs. Winchester, he told her how he had come into the rambling mansion, and had found the front doors open and the lights out, and how he had seen something—in even trying to hint at which he turned sick and broke down and had to have a little Vin Mariani given to him. “Oh, heavens, boy,” Mrs. Winchester said, “I dare say the house was dark, for we were all at St. Joseph’s Cathedral with Daisy, and no doubt the door was open, for the maids will run out if they are left. However, you could not have been in any of the bedrooms on the second floor, because I have my staff lock them when I am away, and my dear sweet boy, they key was in my pocket. I dressed in a hurry and I left my odds and ends laying about.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
“I know,” Jeremiah said; “I saw a gold scarf on the chair, and some gold gloves, and a lot of hairpins and ribbons, and a prayerbook, and a lace handkerchief on the dressing table. Why, I even noticed the almanack on the mantlepiece—16 January 1895. At least it could not be that because this is 16 August 1894. And yet it was. Your almanack is at 16 January 1895, is it not?” “No, of course it is not,” said Mrs. Winchester, smiling rather anxiously; “but all the other things were just as you say. You must have had a nightmare, of a vision, or something.” Jeremiah was a very ordinary, commonplace, City young man, and he did not believe in visions, but he never rested day or night still he got away from the Winchester mansion. Now the curious and quite inexplicable part of this when Mrs. Winchester came down to breakfast on the morning of 17 January 1895, she found Jeremiah looking like death, with the Oakland Tribune in his hand. He caught hers—he could not speak, and pointed to the paper. And there she read that on the night of the 17th a young lady had been found with her throat cut from ear to ear, in a second story bedroom of that Beautiful, but Bizarre Winchester Mansion. Although demons reveal various degrees of wickedness (Matthew 12.45), they all are depraved. This aspect of their character appears in the terrible things they do to their victims. The Christian Bible often refers to them as spiritually and morally “unclean” (Matthew 10.1; Mark 1.27; 3.11; Luke 4.36; Acts 8.7; Revelation 16.13). People who deal in the occult are sometimes found to be vulnerable to Satan and demonic powers. Sometimes these “unclean spirits” take possession of vulnerable people. The character of demons reveals what they can do to their victims. Invisible, extremely intelligent, strong, and totally depraved personalities can do a great deal of harm to the vulnerable person. Since the supernatural exists and does interact with the natural World, the truly scientific investigator must take this into consideration. Prayer and faith can heal the mind and the body supernaturally, just as medicine and rest can do it naturally. By the same token, unbelief and sin can harm body and mind as a result of demonic bondage. (However, many mental and emotional illnesses are, of course, due to natural causes, such as overwork, tension, fatigue, malnutrition, organic disease, etcetera. Such disorders can be treated effectively by a physician, neurologist, psychologist, or psychiatrist. Demonic spirits may have little or nothing to do with such disorders of the mind. The causes are purely natural and may be corrected by purely natural means. This is not surprising since the Creator has placed the creation and His creatures under the normal operation of the laws of cause and effect.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Winchester Mystery House
Beautiful day to stroll the gardens which will turn into a beautiful night to roam around the Winchester Mystery House ☀️🌜Flashlight Tours Tonight!
A few tickets still available!
🎟️ Link https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Mission Can be Eternal—Told You Not to Hurt Him, but Maybe that’s a Lie?
Happiness is the object and design of our existence. The difference between the impossible and the possible is found in one’s faith. For those who struggle through life without knowing why they live, where they are going—and how to reach their highest potential—the restored gospel provides some answers. “Adam fell that humans’ might be; and hums are, that they might have joy,” reports 2 Nephi 2.25. However, happiness is not synonymous with pleasure or even freedom from pain. Those who expect life to be care free do not understand that joy is the brother and child of tribulation. True happiness comes from the personal, spiritual growth that rises out of the fires of mortal experience. It needs to be taught that there is an opposition in all things. Without that opposition, neither righteousness nor joy is possible. Some of the trials we face in life, we impose on ourselves. Others are caused by the sins and weaknesses of our fellow beings. And some just come because we live in a fallen, imperfect World. Still, the source of our trials is not nearly as important as the fact that they exist and the way we deal with them. “And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high,” Doctrine and Covenants 121.1-2,7-8. Trials, then, are a fundamental part of the plan of life. However, that does not mean we have no hope for happiness in mortality. The key to happiness here and eternal joy hereafter is the atonement of Jesus Christ. Through the principles and ordinances of the gospel, the Atonement leaves us all free to learn from sorrow, to grow from experience—and to find joy in the process. The path to happiness is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God. In obedience there is joy and peace unspotted, unalloyed; and as God has designed our happiness, He never will institute an ordinance or give a commandment which will not end in the greatest amount of good and glory to those who become the recipients of His law and ordinances. #RandolphHarris 1 of 30
Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. Satan regularly lies to us about the nature of God and of ourselves. However, we do not have to listen. Some of the greatest battles in life are not literal battles but struggles in one’s own heart and mind against feelings of self-doubt, hopelessness and fear. Satan is increasingly striving to overcome the Saints with despair, discouragement, despondency, and depression. One way that Satan attempts to overcome us with such feelings is by telling us lies about our worth and about God’s feelings towards us. These lies may originate as simple thoughts, repeated many times in our minds, can develop into entrenched habits of belief. These falsehoods are then reinforced especially by many of the shows on some television programs and some television news programs; things other people say, or even by misinterpretation of the scriptures. Satan might even misuse words from the scriptures that emphasize the justice of God, in order to imply that there is no mercy. Whatever their source, Satan’s lies can take root in our minds and develop into feelings of depression, low self-worth, and inadequacy. Some people also love to lie, they often lie every day, several times a day, hangout with other liars, and stew in their hate, but refuse to read the Christian Bible or go to church. They even call themselves “gods.” However, if they were gods, why are they so unhappy and their lives so foul? Why do they have to cheat, steal, lie, and set other people up to get ahead. God does not live in lack and limitation, doom and gloom, nor is he foolish and ghoulish. People like because of their weaknesses and failings. God is continually disappointed in, frustrated with, and angry with liars. However, God loves all living and nonliving beings because He is your Heavenly Father and He created you. God’s love can be more joyous to one’s soul because He has the capacity to love one more than anyone knew possible. #RandolphHarris 2 of 30
The goal in life is to love, not hate. More specifically, to love God for God is the Creator of all things. We learn that through God all things are possible. We learn that we love God by following His commandments. We learn that we reap what we sew. So, if you love God, obey His commandments, and use the Golden Rule—treat others like you want to be treated—God will provide for you. Stealing, lying, hustling, setting people up are evil ways. Not God’s ways. It shows that you do not trust God because you refuse to be honest. Therefore, you have a mind set of lack and limitation and are unwilling to live an honest life. Satan is constantly telling you that you will never be as good as someone else, and for you, life is a competition. You cannot feel good about yourself unless you are hurting someone else, lying, or putting others down. To be humble is to recognize gratefully our dependence on the Lord—to understand that we have constant need for His support. Humility is an acknowledgement that our talents and abilities are gifts from God. It is not a sign of weakness, timidity, or fear; it is an indication that we know where our true strength is. We can both be humble and fearless. We can be both humbles and courageous. The Lord will strengthen us as we humble ourselves before Him. “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall life you up,” reports James 4.6, 10. With ownership comes envy. When youngsters play with friends, they soon discover other people’s toys they would like to get their hands on. Or they experience the injustice of being forced to share what they had assumed was their alone. Even babies express jealousy over objects, giving signs of “violent rage” when a toy is taken from them and given to another. Most children have an unusually intense relationship with a specific “attachment object,” usually a favourite blanket or a soft toy. However, in an intriguing study, researchers discovered that the majority of three-to-six-year-old children preferred to take home their original attachment object, as opposed to a duplicate made by a “copy machine.” To the prospect of taking a copy, the most common response was horror. #RandolphHarris 3 of 30
It is as if the children believe their special object had a unique essence, a form of magical thinking that re-appears in adulthood in our treatment of heirlooms, celebrity memorabilia, artwork and other things of sentimental value. Envy is a strong word. Some people may not only be jealous of material things, but about someone’s choices. However, do not be hurt. There are going to be times in our lives when someone else receives some unexpected blessing or special recognition. Do not be hurt—and certainly do not feel envious—when good fortune comes to another person? We are not diminished when someone else is added upon. We are not in a race against each other to see who is the wealthiest or the most talented or the most beautiful or even the most blessed. The race we are really in is the race against sin, and surely envy is one of the most universal of those. So be kind, and be grateful that God is kind. It is a happy way to live. In your life, is there something that you are envious of? Now is the time to let it go. During the first two weeks of August three revelations were given that the Saints might better understand about America and the rules for gathering. God told them they were honoured to be the ones to lay the foundation of America to which the nations of the World would come. The first to come were to be the rich and the learned, the wise and the noble. Then after God’s power came to them, the rest of the people were to come. The Lord said, “That the testimony might go forth from America; yea, from the mouth of the city of the heritage of God; yea, for this cause I have sent you hither, for verily I say unto you, My laws shall be kept on this land. Let no human break the laws of the land, for one that keepeth the laws of God hath no need to break the laws of the land. Behold, the laws which ye have received from my hand are the laws of the church, and in this light ye shall hold them forth. Behold, here is wisdom.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 30
The Saints were instructed that they must use their own judgment in some things and not expect God to tell them every little thing that needed to be done. The Lord said: “It is not meet that I should command in all things, for one that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore one receiveth no reward. Verily I say, Men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; for the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as humans do good, they shall in no wise lose their reward.” All the members of the church throughout the land were instructed to give as much money as they could to be used in buying land in America, for God wanted them to buy the whole region around Independence. There was need for people to occupy and work this land, thus instructions concerning the gathering were given in this revelation: “Inasmuch as there is land obtained, let there be workmen (and women) sent forth, of all kinds, unto this land, to labour for the saints of God. Let all these things be done in order. Let the work of the gathering be not in haste, nor by flight, but let it be done as it shall be counseled by the elders of the church at the conferences. For verily, the sound must go forth from this place into all the World; and unto the uttermost parts of the Earth, the gospel must be preached unto every creature, with signs following them that believe. And behold, the Son of Man cometh. Amen.” A few days later another revelation was given concerning the people who were to come to America: “Behold, blessed, saith the Lord, are they who have come up unto this land with an eye single to my glory, according to my commandments. Yea, blessed are they whose feet stand upon the land of America, who have obeyed my gospel, for they shall receive for their rewards the good things of the Earth.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 30
To those who should live in the land of America, the Lord gave commandments. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ thou shalt serve him. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Thou shalt not steal; neither commit adultery, nor kill, not do anything like unto it. Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things. Thou shalt offer a sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in righteousness; even that of a broken heart and contrite spirit. Thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacrament upon my holy day. Nevertheless thy vows shall be offered up in righteousness on all days, and at all times; but remember that on this, the Lord’s day, thou shalt offer thine oblations, and thy sacraments, unto the Most High. Verily I say, that inasmuch as ye do this the fullness of the Earth is yours. Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of a man, both to please the eye, and to gladden the heart; yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body, and to enliven the soul. One who doeth the works of righteousness, shall receive one’s reward, even peace in this World, and eternal life in the World to come.” A commandment was given by revelation to those who were to work in America: “Thou shalt not idle away thy time; neither shalt thou bury thy talent that it may not be known.” Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and Sidney Rigdon, together with other elders, who were not to make their homes in America at this time, were instructed to go back to Kirtland. They were to teach and preach as they went, and visit those whom they have baptized on their way to America. On August 9, Joseph Smith and ten elders left Independence traveling by canoes on the Missouri River. By revelation the Lord instructed them, and others going from and coming to America, that they should travel by land rather than by water, because there were many dangers upon the waters, particularly the waters of the Missouri River. #RandolphHarris 6 of 30
Also, the Lord reminded them, when they traveled by water, they did not come in contact with people who might be converted to the gospel: “It is not needful for this whole company of mine elders, to be moving swiftly upon the waters, whilst the inhabitants on either side are perishing in unbelief. Be of good cheer, little children, for I am in our midst, and I have not forsaken you, and inasmuch as you have humbled yourselves before me, the blessings of the kingdom are yours. Be watchful, and be sober, looking forth for the coming of the Son of Man, for he cometh in an hour you think not. Pray always that you enter not into temptation, that you may abide the day of his coming.” The next day they were happy to meet several elders who were on their way to America. A revelation was given for them through Joseph Smith in which Jesus said: “Assemble yourselves upon the land of America, and hold a meeting and rejoice together, and offer a sacrament unto the Most High. And then you may return to bear record….Be faithful, and declare glad tidings unto the inhabitants of the Earth. Behold, I, the Lord, have brought you together that the promise might be fulfilled, that the faithful among you should be preserved and rejoice together in the land of Missouri.” Fewer than one hundred Saints were in Missouri to carry on the Lord’s work. This number, however, was gradually increased as other groups of the Saints arrived from the East. “The Lord your God is in the midst of you, a Mighty One, a Saviour [Who saves]! He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest [in silent satisfaction] and in His love He will be silent and make no mention [of past sins, or even recall them]; He will exult over you with singing,” reports Zephaniah 3.17. Jesus Christ, The Son of God, is necessarily equal to the Father in power. Power of action is a consequence of perfection in nature. In creatures, for instance, we see that the more perfect the nature, the greater power is there for action. #RandolphHarris 7 of 30
Now, the very notion of the divine paternity and filiation requires that the Son should be the Father’s equal in greatness—that is, in perfection of nature. Hence it follows that the Son is equal to the Father in power; and the same applies to the Holy Ghost. The unity of the divine nature implies that the Son so acts of Himself [per se], that He does not act by Himself [a se].” The Father communicates knowledge to the Son, as He communicates His essence. The command of the Father can be explained in the same sense, as giving Him from eternity knowledge and will to act, by begetting Him. Or, better still, this may be referred to Christ in His human nature. As the same essence is paternity in the Father, and filiation in the Son: so by the same power the Father can do; yet it does not follow that the Son can beget; for to argue thus would imply transition from substance to relation, for generation signifies a divine relation. So the Son has the same omnipotence as the Father, but with another relation: the Father possessing power as “giving” signified when we say that He is able to beget; while the Son possesses the power of “receiving,” signified by saying that He can be begotten. Thus the mission of a divine person is a fitting thing, as meaning in one way the procession of origin from the sender, and as meaning a new way of existing in another; thus the Son is said to be sent by the Father into the World, inasmuch as He began to exist visibly in the World by taking our nature; whereas “He was” previously “in the World,” reports John 1.1. Mission implies infeority in the one sent, when it means procession from the sender as principle, by command or counsel; forasmuch as the one commanding is the greater, and the counsellor is the wiser. In God, however, it means only procession of origin, which is according to equality. What is sent as to being to exist where previously it did not exist, is locally moved by being sent; hence it is necessarily separated locally from the sender. #RandolphHarris 8 of 30
This, however, has no place in the mission of a divine person; for the divine person sent neither begins to exist where one did not previously exist, nor ceases to exist where He was. Hence such a mission takes place without a separation, having only distinct origin. The modern philosophical interpretation of conscience follows three main lines: an emotional-aesthetic line, an abstract-formalistic line, and a rational-idealistic line. Secularizing the sectarian belief in the revealing power of conscience, it is interpreted as the emotional reaction to harmony between self-relatedness and relatedness to others, in all beings and in the Universe as a whole. The principle of ethical action is the balance between the effects of benevolence and the effects of selfishness as indicated by conscience. Conscience works better and more accurately, the more the taste for the Universe and its harmony is developed. The educated conscience has a perfect ethical taste. Not harmony with the Universe but sympathy with the other human is the basis of conscience, according to Hume and Adam Smith; we identify ourselves with the other human and take one’s approval or disapproval of our action as our own judgment. This, of course, presupposes a hidden harmony between individuals and the possibility of a mutual feeling of identification. It presupposes a universal principle of harmony in which individuals participate which reveals itself to the conscience. The emotional-harmonistic interpretation of conscience has often led to a replacement of ethical by aesthetic principles. The attitude of the late aristocracy, high bourgeoisie, and bohemianism at the end of the last century was characterized by the elevation of good tastes to the ultimate judge in moral affairs, corresponding to the replacement of religion by arts in these groups. It was an attempt to reach a transmoral conscience but it did not reach even a moral one, and it was swept away by the revolutionary morality and immorality of the twenty-first century. #RandolphHarris 9 of 30
The second method of interpreting conscience philosophically is the abstract-formalistic one. It was most clearly stated by Kant, and it was introduced into theology by Ritschl. Kant wanted to maintain the unconditional character of the moral demand against all emotional relativism, against fear and pleasure motives, as well as against divine and human authorities. However, in doing so, he was driven to a complete formalism. Conscience is the consciousness of the “categorical [unconditional] imperative,” but it is not the consciousness of a special content of this imperative. “Conscience is a consciousness which itself is a duty.” It is a duty to have a conscience, to be conscientious. The content, according to Ritschl, is dependent on the special vocation, a special historical time and space. Only conscientiousness is always demanded. This corresponds to the Protestant, especially the Lutheran, evaluation of work. It is the expression of the activist element of the bourgeoisie and is identical with the bourgeois adaptation to the technical and psychological demands of the economic system. Duty is what serves bourgeois production. This is the hidden meaning even of the philosophy of the “absolute ego” in Fichte, who describes conscience as the certainty of the pure duty that is independent of anything besides its transcendent freedom. In the moment when transcendent freedom comes down to action it is transformed into obedience to a well-calculated system of economic services. It is understandable that this loss of a concrete direction of conscientiousness paved the way for immoral contents when they were commanded, for instance, by a totalitarian state. Against the aesthetic-emotional as well as the authoritarian form of determining the conscience, attempts were made in modern philosophy to have rationality and contents united. The most influential of these attempts is the common-sense theory of Thomas Reid and the Scottish school, id est, the moral sense is common to everybody, being a natural endowment of human nature (like the synteresis of the scholastics). #RandolphHarris 10 of 30
Decisive for practical ethics is Hutcheson’s theory of the sense of benevolence towards others. This theory adequately expressed the reality of British (and to a degree, American) conformism and natural benevolence in a society where the converging tendencies still prevail over the diverging ones, and in which a secularized Christian morality is still dominant. Another attempt to find rational contents for the conscience was made by Hegel. He distinguishes the formal and the true conscience. About the first he says, “Conscience is the infinite formal certainty of oneself—it expresses the absolute right of the subjective self-consciousness—namely, to know within and out of itself what law and duty are, and to acknowledge nothing except what it knows in this way as the good.” However, this subjectivity is fallible and may turn into error and guilt. Therefore, it needs content in order to become the true conscience. This content is the reality of the family, society, and state. With the state (as the organization of historical reason) the formal conscience is transformed into the true conscience. It is a mistake to link these ideas historically to the totalitarian use of the state and the pagan distortion of conscience by national socialism. Hegel was a rationalist, not a positivist. His idea of the state unites Christian-conservative and bourgeois-liberal elements. His famous, though rarely understood, idea of the state as the “God on Earth” is based on the identification of the state with the church as the “Body of Christ,” expressed in secular terms. The conscience that is determined by the state in this sense is determined not by bureaucratic orders but by the life of a half-religious, half-secular organism—the counterpart of Christian-rationalistic common sense of the Anglo-Saxon society. There is little new under the Sun. Who has not chuckled about the legendary “headache” that grips angry/resentful/exhausted/repulsed women when the husbands want dessert? One woman or even millions clutching their head at bedtime do not constitute a celibate society. However, when they are acting deliberately, and each “headache” is a political tool rather than a personal ploy, the case is very different. #RandolphHarris 11 of 30
In Lysistrata, as we have seen, a legion of battle-weary soldiers’ wives unite to force their husbands to cease hostilities. Their weapon, withholding pleasures of the flesh until the bellicose men lay down their swords, is celibacy at its strategic purest, employed in the great cause of peace. The 1880s saw a relation of the rules and some of the laws that had condemned women to social and economic dependence. This was particularly true for women in the more advantaged classes. Higher education, for example, was more accessible and so were some of the professions. White-collar employment mushroomed, opening so many new positions that women were actually hired. Because of the 1870s Married Woman’s Property Act, women could keep their wages and no longer had to surrender them to their husbands, so the idea of salaried employment was far more alluring than it had been. These changes were not gifts from a munificent government. They were the outcome of decades of agitation, mostly by middle- and upper-class women, against their oppression. Many of them had also spoken out on behalf of the millions of their working-class sisters, whose oppression was manifested differently but stemmed nonetheless from the same patriarchal domination. Had the laws changed in tandem with social customs and granted professional women the same legal independence as their brothers, spinsterhood might not have seemed so enticing. What was still so galling, however, was that in marrying, a woman merely exchanged her father’s authority for her husband’s. True, the 1882 (revised and upgraded) Married Women’s Property Act permitted women to own property in their own right, but in other crucial areas, they remained legally subservient. All too often, the transfer of subservience from father to spouse proved a sorry bargain. As a female writing team had observed a decade earlier, “A woman should be reminded…that in marrying she gives up many advantages. Her habits, pursuits, society, sometimes even friendships, must give way to his.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 30
Had not Florence Nightingale earlier warned that women who marry “must sacrifice all their life…behind his destiny women must annihilate herself”? She, like so many other women of her class, remained single—and celibate—to guarantee the personal independence she needed to fulfill her ambitions. The statistical odds against finding a suitable husband ensured that many a women languished in despised spinsterhood, pining for the children she would never have, writhing under the contempt of relations obliged to habour her upon the death of her parents, facing an interminable life of bleak boredom. (Had some talented members of this class undertaken to research the fate of young Hindu widows, a heartening and significant genre of literature might have developed.) However, the dearth of British men certainly cannot explain why one-quarter of British women never married—after all, at the worst of times, the imbalance never even quite reached eleven to ten. And determinedly marriage-minded women could and did emigrate to Australia, where the gender imbalance was reversed, though the quality of available men was somewhat questionable. What, then, explains this sweeping wave of middle-class womanly singleness? In Marriage as a Trade, playwright Cicely Hamilton argued the phenomenon was a political tactic to create a significant class of spinsters prepared to challenge male domination, including what she styled intimate abuse. Except for those who turned to other women for intimate satisfaction, as a small percentage did, these spinsters adopted celibacy as a necessary tool in their campaign. Another spinster-by-choice noted that “wherever women are admitted to pleasures of the flesh to such a degree that the celibate class is practically nonexistent, there the position of women socioeconomically, and intellectually is of a low order.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 30
Thus a considerable slice of the late-nineteenth-century celibacy was the deliberate choice of frustrated, rebellious, and politically astute middle-class women. Pleasures of the flesh, they believed, was a surrender of judicial and (despite the 1882 legislation) property rights, and an abdication of personal independence. They seized on celibacy as a strategy to improve the female condition and, with quiet determination, earned their own living and simply refused to marry. There are beneficial and sadistic forces in the World and therefore in human beings. If a person cannot eliminate one’s negative qualities (and most people find it almost impossible), one can, however, bring them into a neutral point and thus establish a state of equilibrium or balance. Living in a society where there is so much folly and ignorance, evil and unbalance, one must protect oneself mentally, emotionally, physically and even psychically. In a World seething with negative thoughts, murky in several areas with suspicion and even hatred, inflamed with violent feelings, one who knows the truth must hold all the more to inner and outer calm, to goodwill and faith in the Overself’s presence. Evil is strong in the World and sometimes people who aspire to the good become discouraged and depressed. It is at such moments that they need to recall whatever glimpses of the Real they have had and to remember that all things pass away, including the evil. We live in apocalyptic times, as history is already revealing. The call today is a penitential one, a solemn recall from earthliness to holiness, from frivolousness, grossness, and madness to remember of life’s higher purpose. Those who feel in their own hearts some sort of a response, however feeble, should cling to this precious intuition and let it guide them until they are saved. The failure to persuade either the masses of their leaders to change their way of life and thought is not a reason for abandoning either the inner or outer work as useless. #RandolphHarris 14 of 30
Even though any marked and visible result may not now appear, it may yet do so at a later date. We must have a moral concern which instigates acts aiming at conversion or makes proposals even if they will obviously fail. Question about man’s future and civilization’s prospects trouble us. More pessimistic answers are gloomily given than optimistic ones. It is not easy to do otherwise, when the facts are so tragically plain and when they lie so plentifully all around us. Philosophy least of all can afford wishful thinking. It too sees the night falling but whilst conselling stoic resignation it does not discourage constructive resistance. And it reminds the individual that society’s catastrophes should urge one all the more to seek and find the one necessary refuge—one’s own sacredness. If anyone wants to see a better World, one must make one’s own contribution toward it. And this demands inexorably that one begin with oneself and make one’s character and conduct better. The prudent human learns by observation or by experience, or more often by both, that there is a spiritual ignorance in the World and in humans: one must often conceal the greater portion of one’s wisdom and one’s power. This is necessary for personal safety which induced the writers of ancient Christian texts to advise those who lived under a brutal tyranny to emigrate. This did not mean going to a new country but to a new district. We are now in a position to understand the Hipster as Role Players. The Role Player is the fellow who, without any real aptitude or training to do anything, and without any real aptitude or training to do anything, and without a commitment to any goal, can skillfully fit the expectations that people have of one, and give typical performances to prove that one can do the job. The Roles of society are the capitalized nouns in Time style, exempli gratia Halle Berry or Very Important Person. There are great advantages in being a hipster in this sense. #RandolphHarris 15 of 30
First, being a hipster is a way of getting by. If a human feels that one is not anything, one is at least taken for something, and one belongs. Then one cannot feel contempt for the others because they are fools, they are taken in and so one satisfies one’s spite. And one can feel more confident that the so-called worth-while aims are empty because one can give a token performance, and this calms one’s own gnawing feelings of frustrations and worthlessness. Finally, Role Playing protects a deep conceit of one’s abstract powers: one “could” if one wanted, but in fact is never tested. The hipster in this sense must be distinguished from the industrious confidence human who wants to get the swag and vanish, and does not thrive on publicity. The hipster will often boast: one knows the score, one is ahead of the game. This cool attitude of the hipster is endemic in the organized system. However, on the other hand, the committed Organization Man also really belongs, one has status and salary and must protect them. Therefore the junior executive is in a terrible contradiction. One is cynical about the aims of the firm, yet one has fears that one’s own ineptitude will be found out. One has no recourse to concrete performance, for there is little contact with unambiguous material and there are no objective standards. How to meet a purely subjective demand? In pain (even ulcers) one has to get by by role playing, interpersonal relations abstracted from both animal desire or tangible achievement. One meets expectations, one conforms, one one-ups, one proves one must know by attaining a higher status. The trainee believes managing is an end in itself—technique is more vital than content. Compare the identical remark in a memorandum of the Liberal Project in Congress: The past few years “have given rise to a particular brand of politician. One is completely method-oriented. The substance of a bill that is paramount.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 30
The new type of salesperson does not sell the product but the human: by the expense account one proves that one is a right person and one confirms the buyer’s image of oneself, whatever that happens to be. For many bright young fellas, I think, the Organization has taken the place that the Communist Party had in the Thirties. At that time young men who were frustrated in their creative lives, perhaps because unable to stand the gaff, took out their self-hatred on the capitalist system, and often with sublime self-contempt accepted jobs with high salaries. In our decade, the young people believe they belong to the governing board, and their resentment has turned to cynicism. The standard of human integrity is equivalent. The type situation of Role Playing is the Air Force questionnaire asking who is Giotto, Vivaldi or Pilot Patrick: if the candidate gives the right answer, one is disqualified, one will not belong. The Role Player has no difficulty. I was once at another convention (National Recreation Congress, 1959), and striking was the difference between the working stiffs, the actual directors of play and group activities, and the administrators. The actual directors were human being, often enthusiastic and proud of happy improvisations and strokes of good judgment that they wanted to report. However, the administrators were concerned about standards, certificates, avoiding complaints and offending, and providing their dedicated service; it was clear that they wanted above all to diminish the factor of risk for themselves and create a front to get bigger appropriations. At the same time they kept asking how to recruit Leaders; but it was evident that the more strictly they applied their standards, the more surely they would eliminate the leaders. We must contrast the concept of Role, meeting expectations by playing it cool and knowing the technique for a token performance, with the concept of Identity. One discovers, fights for, appoints oneself to one’s Identity. Identity is defined by its task, mission, product; role depends on the interpersonal expectation of the others. #RandolphHarris 17 of 30
Naturally, statesmen and public spokes men are the role players, hipsters, par excellence. They exist by Front and giving symbolic satisfaction, so it is not to be hoped that their speech be serious, relevant to what objectively exists. However, it is dismaying to find the same symbolic relations in enterprises of production and the distribution of goods. One cannot help distrusting the goods, thinking they are only packages and brand names. And so, becoming disaffected from these enterprises, the Beat Generation sometimes comes to despise real goods. It takes good to be merely commodities that must be spurned: this is the fetishism of commodities in reverse. The factory operatives who could not care less about their jobs are not much aware of what they produce; causality is built into the machinery. The junior executives, advertising men, salesmen are role players and have little causal relation to the products. Presumably the technicians and top managers know something about and produce the products, since the products do come to exist. And the evidence is that the top managers do work very hard on production and sales; they work a sixty-hour week and ae produce of their work. However, even they have to devote an increasing majority of the time to interpersonal games of no productive use—90 percent. (Let me give a typical illustration. There is a well-known monthly magazine that five editors used to put out with a week’s work. It was pretty good. Unfortunately it made a reputation for itself and its wealthy sponsors hired a staff of ten secretaries and assistants to the editors. Soon the editors found themselves working all month, and quit. The magazine lost all its spark.) Considering the technical possibilities, we must say that our physical environment changes very slowly. This is not surprising, for so little thought was given to it. #RandolphHarris 18 of 30
When it comes to the misuse of substances, in some respects the story of the misuse of drugs is the same story as in the past. Substance use is still rampant, often creating damaging psychological disorders. New drugs keep emerging, and the public goes through periods of believing, naively, that they are “safe.” Only gradually do people learn that these drugs, too, pose dangers. And treatments for substance-related disorders continue to have only limited effect. Yet there are important new wrinkles in this familiar story. Researcher have begun to develop a clearer understanding of how drugs act on the brain and body. In treatment, self-help groups and rehabilitation programs are flourishing. And preventive education to make people aware of the dangers of drug misuse is also expanding and seems to be having an effect. One reason for these improvements is that investigators and clinicians have stopped working in isolation and are instead looking for intersections between their own work and that from other models. The same kind of integrated efforts that have helped with other psychological disorders are brining new promise and hope to the study and treatment of substance-related disorders. Perhaps the most important insight to be gained from these integrated efforts is that several of the models were already on the right track. Social pressures, personality characteristics, rewards, and genetic predispositions all seem to play roles in substance-related disorders, and in fact to operate together. For example, some people may inherit a malfunction of the biological reward center and so may need special doses of external stimulation—say, intense relationships, an abundance of certain foods or drugs—to stimulate their own reward center Their pursuit of external rewards may take on the character of an addictive personality. Such individuals may be especially prone to experimenting with drugs, particularly when their social groups makes the drugs available or when they are faced with intense social and personal stress. #RandolphHarris 19 of 30
Just as each model has identified important factors in the development of substance-related disorders, each has made important contributions to treatment. As we have seen, the various forms of treatment seem to work best when they are combined with approaches from the other models, making integrated treatment the most productive approach. These recent developments are encouraging. At the same time, however, enormous and increasingly levels of drug use continue. New drugs and drug combinations are discovered almost daily, and with them come new problems, new questions, and needs for new research and new treatments. Perhaps the most valuable lesson is an old one. There is no free lunch. Th pleasures derived from these substances come with high psychological and biological costs, some not yet even known. If you think about it, drugs that are not prescribed by a doctor and those that are used by people for recreational reasons is very similar to a virus, in that they can be deadly. The virus story is so strange that it is worthwhile to point out that it rests today on very firm experimental evidence. Some of the important episodes in the reproductive process of bacterial and certain other viruses can in fact be “seen” by means of the electron microscope. The first episode of the sequence is of this nature: the attachment by certain virus particles to the outer surface of the cell to be attacked. The next step can be deduced from later developments: apparently there is an enzyme in the protein coat of the virus particle which dissolves a hole in the membrane of the cell to which it is attached. The products of the chemical reactions involved then cause the entire protein capsule to contact. This has the effect of a hypodermic injection—squirting the nucleic acid content of the virus particle into the interior of the cell that is being infected. #RandolphHarris 20 of 30
All of this is remarkable enough, but what follows is even more spectacular. For the invading nucleic acid proceeds to take over from the cellular DNA and redirect the internal chemistry of the invaded organism! First, the viral nucleic acid directs the manufacture of enzymes that attacked the cellular DNA, thereby destroying the “control center” of the victim. Then a period of rapid reproduction of the viral nucleic acid begins. A little later, the viral nucleic acid induces the production of the kind of protein needed to make the protective covering of additional virus particles. After a few more minutes the newly formed strands of viral nucleic acid begin to get together with the new protein overcoats to form complete new virus particles. Eventually, when this assembly process has gone to completion, the last command is given by the invader to the cellular mechanisms—this time to produce an enzyme that dissolves large holes in the external membrane of the cell and allows the newly formed virus particles to escape. Between the instant of initial attachment by a virus particle to healthy cell and the final cataclysmic disintegration, twenty- or thirty-minutes elapse. The end product of the remarkable sequence of chemical steps is several hundred newborn virus particles, each identical with the one which started the chain of activity and each capable of initiating a similar lethal sequence in another healthy cell. In view of their bizarre reproductive habits, it is easy to understand the fascination that viruses hold for biologists. However, we must confine our attention to the light we earlier predicted virus studies would throw on the generality of the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanism. It is, of course, the ability of the viral nucleic acid to take over and successfully redirect the metabolic processes in the invaded cell that is pertinent to our theories. #RandolphHarris 21 of 30
For even in the absence of present knowledge as to all the details of the interaction, it seems clear that the virus-reproduction story implies great compatibility between the design of the virus nucleic acid and the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms of the host cell. The invading nucleic acid is not only able to reproduce itself in the cell but also able to provide the messenger RNA that successfully attached itself to the cellular microsomes and directs the formation of virus-specific enzymes. For this purpose transfer RNA, amino acid fragments, phosphate energies, and a number of enzymes must come into play. Because of the relative simplicity of the viral nucleic acid molecules, it seems unlikely that new forms of all such components are synthesized under their direction; rather, it seems that the specifically virus messenger RNA must be able to work in conjunction with components indigenous to the healthy cell in the manufactures of the enzymes needed for the formation of new virus particles. Coronaviruses are a type of virus. There are many different kinds, and some cause disease. A coronavirus identified in 2019, SARS-CoV-2, has caused a pandemic of respirator illness, called COVID-19. As of now, researchers know that the coronavirus is spread through droplets and virus particles released into the air when an infected person breathes, talks, laughs, sings, coughs, or sneezes. Larger droplets may fall to the ground in a few seconds, but tiny infections particles can linger in the air and accumulate in indoor places, especially where many people are gathered and there is poor ventilation. That is why hand hygiene and physical distancing are essential to preventing COVID-19. The first case of COVID-19 was reported December 1, 2019, and the cause was a then-new coronavirus later names SARS-CoV-2. SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in an animal and changed (mutated) so it could cause illness in humans. #RandolphHarris 22 of 30
Research continues, and more study may reveal how and why the coronavirus evolved to cause a pandemic. What is the incubation period for COVID-19? Symptoms show up in people within two to 14 days of exposure to the virus. A person infected with the coronavirus is contagious to others for up to two days before symptoms appear, and they remain contagious to others for 10 to 20 days, depending upon their immune system and the severity of their illness. What are symptoms of coronavirus? Cough, fever or chills, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, muscle or body aches, sore throat, new loss of taste or smell, diarrhea, headache, new fatigue, nausea or vomiting, congestion or runny nose. Some people infected with the coronavirus have mild COVID-19 illness, and others have no symptoms at all. In some cases, however, COVID-10 can lead to respiratory failure, lasting lung and heart muscle damage, nervous system problems, kidney failure or death. If you have a fever or any of the symptoms listed above, call your doctor or a health care provider and explain your symptoms over the phone before going to the doctor’s office, urgent care facility, or emergency room. COVID has already killed more than 6 million people globally—and the pandemic is far from over. In many countries, including the United States of America, COVID-19 is now a leading cause of death, alongside heart disease and stroke. And yet experts say the pandemic’s true toll is much likely higher. It is quite possible that the number of deaths is around 12 million. However, 6 million is an astounding number on its own. No country has been able to escape this virus. The official global tally captures only confirmed cases in each country—and standards for reporting deaths vary widely. Some countries lack the robust testing protocols needed to diagnose cases while other may not count people who have died because of complications due to COVID-19. In many places, too, people are dying at home because they cannot reach care, and therefore are not counted in official death tolls. #RandolphHarris 23 of 30
The official tally also does not account for COVID-19’s vast collateral damage. Around the World, sick people have refrained from seeking care for fear of getting infected and countries have diverted resources from other critical health-care priorities. Deaths from tuberculosis have also risen for the first time in a decade. And though death rates are declining, they remain staggeringly high and will likely continue. Due to fears from COVID-19, many workers are retiring early. Around 22 percent more people have retired due to fear of contracting COVID. More than 3.5 million additional people retired during this pandemic. Thus virus research, in establishing the remarkable compatibility of the genetic mechanisms of forms of life so different as those bacteria and viruses, has further strengthened the argument of the universality of these mechanisms. However, just as in the case of pneumococci results, the evidence is less than conclusive. After all, viruses are pretty specific, each limited in its destructive ability to only one or a few species of cells, This is indicated by the descriptive levels given to viruses: the tobacco mosaic virus, the turnip yellow mosaic virus, the rabbit papilloma virus, and so on. Therefore we cannot ignore the possibility that, just as with the R and S strains of pneumococci, there is a close evolutionary kinship between the virus and the cell it attacks. Perhaps the two organisms, though greatly dissimilar, developed symbiotically through the ages in such a way as to maintain compatibility among their nuclear control mechanism. When thought of in this way, it could be that the virus and its related cell constitute a sort of single two-part organism and that the seemingly remarkable ability of the one to operate the chemical machinery of the other is but a prosaic example of the inevitable internal consistency in the metabolism of a viable organism, with no implications as to the universality of the genetic mechanisms among really different species. #RandolphHarris 24 of 30
Of course, we go a bit too far in disclaiming all pertinence to our thesis of the virus results. For a single virus sometimes, dos attack more than one cell species. After all, monkeys as well as men can contract polio. Just as in the case of the pneumococci results, nothing can keep the virus work from being suggestive. However, we have not yet made a convincing cause for the hypothesis that the genetic mechanisms are truly universal. More evidence is needed. Looking forward, some generations are born to create, others to maintain a civilization. The generations who launched the Second Wave of historic change were compelled, by force of circumstances, to be creators. Today in every sphere of social life, in our families, our schools, our businesses and churches, in our energy systems and communications, we face the need to create new Third Wave forms, and millions of people in many countries are already beginning to do so. Nowhere, however, is obsolescence more advanced or more dangerous than in our political life. And in so field today do we find less imagination, less experiment, less willingness to contemplate fundamental change. Even people who are daringly innovative in their own work-in their law offices or laboratories, their kitchens, classrooms, or companies—seem to freeze up at any suggestion that political structure need a little adjustment to make sure they adhere to the United States Constitution and that it is not brushed aside like ashes from a cigar. Is it not amazing that the country can force people to wear masks and get vaccinated, but will not force politicians, states, cities, and other to obey the birth certification of our nation? So frightening is Constitutional law, with its attendant risks to the corrupt status quo, however surrealistic and oppressive, suddenly seems like the best of all possible Worlds. Conversely we have in every society a fringe of pseudorevolutionaries, stepped in obsolete Second Wave assumption, for whom no proposed change is radical enough. #RandolphHarris 25 of 30
Honest to God terrorists are dreaming of totalitarian technocracies or medieval utopias. Even as we speed into a new historical zone, they nurse dreams of revolution drawn from the yellowed pages of yesterday’s political tracts. Yet what lies ahead as the super-struggle intensifies is not a replay of any previous revolutionary drama—no centrally directed overthrow of the ruling elites by some “vanguard party” with the masses in two; no spontaneous, supposedly cathartic, mass uprising trigged by terrorist. The creation of new political structures of the Third Wave civilization will not come in a single climatic upheaval, but as a consequence of a thousand innovations and collisions at many levels in many places over a period of decades. And the stakes are very high. In the past there was blood-drenched drama of wars, revolt, famines, forced migrations, coups d’état, and calamities. If you think of it, they are resurging. There is a need for broadened democracy. Most of us know, or sense, how dangerous a World we live in. We know that social instability and political uncertainties can leash savage energies. We know what war and economic cataclysm mean, and we remember how often totalitarianism has sprung from noble intentions and social breakdown. What most people seem to ignore, however, are the beneficial different between present and past. Christian theologians use the term inerrantists for those who insist that, even after two thousand years of problematic interpretations and mistranslation, the Christian Bible is error-free, and that, moreover, its every word must be understood in its most literal sense. Economics has its own inerrantists who maintain, in the face of all sorts of anomalous, puzzling and contradictory evidence, that nothing has really changed. At the “fundamental” level, they claim the economy had been only minimally affected by the digital upheaval and the shift to a knowledge-based economy. #RandolphHarris 26 of 30
The manager of one of America’s biggest mutual funds reassures an audience of European petrochemical executives that, in finance, things always go up and down, so what is new? The economy is still the same as it was before, some believe. This illusion, however, becomes unsustainable the minted we shift our gaze from the everyday fundamentals to the deeper ones. For it is at this deeper level that we find the most compelling evidence that the economy is not “as it was before”—that, in fact, today’s entire structure of wealth creation is quaking and rocking, suggesting even bigger changes to come. Things much bigger the cryptocurrency. Circumstances differ from country to country, but never in history have there been so many reasonably educated people collectively armed with so incredible a range of knowledge. Never have so many enjoyed so high a level of affluence, precarious perhaps, yet ample enough to allow them time and energy for civic concern and actions. Never have so many been able to travel, to communicate, and to learn so much from other cultures. Above all, never have so many had so much to gain by guaranteeing that the necessary changes, though profound, be made peacefully. Elites, no matter how enlightened, cannot by themselves make a new civilization. The energies of whole peoples will be required. However, those energies are available, waiting to be tapped. Indeed if we, particularly in the high-technology countries, took as our explicit goal for the next generation the creation of wholly new institutions and constitutions, we could release something more powerful even than energy: the collective imagination. The sooner we begin to design alternative political institutions based on the three principles described above—the power of underrepresented groups, semi-direct democracy, and decision division—the better our chances for a peaceful transition. #RandolphHarris 27 of 30
It is the attempt to block such changes, not the changes themselves, that raises the level of risk. It is the blind attempt to defend obsolescence tht creates the danger of bloodshed. This means that to avoid violent upheaval we must begin now to focus on the problem of structural political obsolescence around the World. And we must take this issues not merely to the experts, the constitutionalists, lawyers, and politicians, but to the public itself—to civic organizations, trade unions, churches, to women’s groups, to ethic and racial groups that remain marginalized, to scientists and housewives and businessmen and women. We must, as a first step, launch the widest public debate over the need for a new political system attuned to the needs of Third Wave civilization. We need conferences, television programs, contests, simulation exercises, mock constitutional conventions to generate the broadest array of imaginative proposals for political restructuring, to unleash an outpouring of fresh ideas. We should be prepared to use the most advanced tools available to us, from satellites and computers to digital streaming and interactive television. No one knows in detail what the future holds or what will be best in our society. For this reason we should think not of a single massive reorganization or of a single revolutionary, cataclysmic change imposed from the top, but of thousands of conscious, decentralized experiments that permit us to test new models of political decision-making at local and regional levels in advance of their application to the national transnational levels. However, at the same time, we must also begin to build a constituency for similar experimentation—and radical redesign—of institutions are the national and transnational levels as well. Today’s widespread disillusionment, anger, and bitterness against the World’s Second Wave governments can either be whipped into fanatic frenzy by demagogues calling for authoritarian leadership or it can be mobilized for the process of democratic reconstruction. #RandolphHarris 28 of 30
By launching a vast process of social learning—and experiment in anticipatory democracy in many nations at once—we can head off the totalitarian thrust. We can prepare millions for the dislocations and dangerous crises the lie before us. And we can place strategic pressure on existing political systems to accelerate the necessary changes. Without this tremendous pressure from below, we should not expect many of today’s nominal leaders—presidents and politicians, senators and central committee members—to challenge the very institutions that, no matter how obsolete, give them prestige, money, and the illusion, if not the reality, of power. Some unusual, farseeing politicians or officials will lend their early support to the struggle for political transformation. However, most will move only when the demands from outside are irresistible or when the crisis is already so advances, and so close to violence, tht they see no alternative. The responsibility for change, therefore, is found within us. We must begin with ourselves, teaching ourselves not to close our minds prematurely to the novel, the surprising, the seemingly radical. This means fighting off the idea-assassins who rush forward to kill any new suggestion on grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, no matter how absurd, oppressive, or unworkable it may be. It means fighting for the freedom of expression—the right of the people to voice their ideas, even if heretical. Above all, it means starting this process of reconstruction now, before the further disintegration of existing political systems sends the forces of tyranny jackbooting through the streets, and makes impossible a peaceful transition through the Twenty-first Century Democracy. If we begin no, we and our children can take part in the exciting reconstruction not merely of our obsolete political structures, but of civilization itself. #RandolphHarris 29 of 30
Like the generation of the revolutionary immortals, we have a destiny to create. In traveling learn to believe and trust your experiences as an alert to eye and ear. Often firsthand experience or chance conversations sheds a revealing light on abstraction. A Limo driver in a Latin American capital told me more than all his government’s cheery statistics: When I asked him why his people were not doing something to protest a soaring inflation rate, he simply imitated the stuttering of a machine gun. Once you give up your laws, rights, and freedoms, you usually never get them back. Nan did want to go in the water—I told her to stay on the shore—of course, she would wade in the breakers. And now she is drowned. What a bore! Look around the World at socialist countries and see what is wrong with them before you give up on Capitalism. I hear a voice, the cry of a wounded animal; someone shoots an arrow at the moon; a small bird has fallen from the nest. People must be awakened, witness must be given, so that life can be guarded. God, Thou causes grass to spring up for the cattle, please allow an abundance of health, cash, credit, money, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and herbs for the service of humans. Thou bringest for break out of the Earth to sustain humans’ life, and premium cranberry justice to gladden their hearts. Thou appointest the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth its time of setting. How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all. The higest achievement is to serve the Lord with gladness; come before His presence with thanksgiving. It is quite true to say that during deep prayer and praises, these exercises eventually lead to remarkable powers. This gives mental abstraction. For the Lord, your God, brought you into a good land; a land of brooks and of fountains that spring out of valleys and hills; a land wherein you shall eat bread without scarcity, and shall lack for nothing. You shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord you God for the good land which He hath given you. At the same time, allow His creative imagination and His concentrated will, and the lower energy to produce lofty aspiration. #RandolphHarris 30 of 30
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In the Cup of Omens there is a Baptism into Black Magic!
In popular thinking, the term “magic” refers to the tricks of a sleight-of-hand artist, the optical illusions created by a clever trickster, or the cunning exhibition of seemingly supernatural powers by money-hungry charlatans. Undoubtedly many of the amazing demonstrations performed by such people have a completely naturalistic explanation, but honest scholars who have investigated occultic phenomena in many parts of the World agree that science at present is unable to account for some of the apparently supernatural events they have witnessed. The Bible also sets forth the view that not all magic is merely hocus-pocus. In the Biblical portrayal of magic, the Scriptures acknowledge that real superhuman power can be accomplished through sorcery, but clearly teach that the source of such manifestations is evil. The Egyptian magicians actually were able to change their rods into serpents by throwing them on the ground. Some say these rods were really snakes which had been hypnotized into becoming as rigid as a cane, but even so we must admit that no scientist today can explain how these men were able to perform this feat. They also were successful in changing water into blood, and in producing a miraculous multiplication of frogs, thus apparently duplicating what Moses and Aaron had done by God’s supernatural power. The Egyptian sorcerers undoubtedly believed their gods gave them the ability to perform these amazing exploits, and they viewed their encounter with Moses and Aaron as a contest to determine whether or not their gods were more powerful than God. The Bible implies that supernatural beings take advantage of the practices of heathenism to further enslave their adherents, but declares that these invisible agents are neither holy angels nor gods. It states that they are demons—spirit beings who rebelled against God and now are dedicated to Him. For this reason, Moses and Aaron convincingly demonstrated the superiority of God over these demonic forces. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
When Aaron’s rod became a serpent, it swallowed up those the Egyptians had cast to the ground. The greater power of God also was manifested when the pagan sorcerers were unable to remove the plague of frogs, but Moses simply prayed to the Lord, and “the frogs died out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields,” reports Exodus 8.13. God’s servants then brought about the third plague, a changing of dust into lice, a judgment which made life almost unbearable for human and beast. This time the magicians of Egypt were unable to duplicate the miracle, not could they bring about the sudden death of the pests. They therefore humbly acknowledged, “This is the finger of God,” reports Exodus 8.19. In this manner, the Lord demonstrated His absolute superiority over the powers of evil which the Egyptians worshiped as gods. It does important for us to note again that the Bible does not indicate that the magicians were frauds. A careful study of this history of Egypt, Babylon, and other nations of antiquity reveals that heathen priests accomplished many unusual feats, and kept the people under subjection through what appeared to be supernatural abilities. In seeking to understand some of the mysterious phenomena of heathenism, we must bear in mind the declaration of the apostle Paul, “But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.20. The apostle was definitely saying that the worship of idols involved more than merely bowing down to lifeless images. Furthermore, the fact that the Bible repeatedly forbids sorcery, divination, and every other form of occultism is evidence that God links these practices with actual demonic power. We repeat, the death penalty would not have been the prescribed punishment for all mediums, fortunetellers, and sorcerers if they were only quacks guilty of deception for gain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Critics of the Bible insist that its attitude toward some forms of witchcraft is inconsistent, and even sincere believers have been puzzled by several passages which appear to condone these practices. A careful examination of these instances, however, reveals that such critical assertions are unwarranted. Genesis 30: 14-18 records the story of Leah and Rachel bargaining for mandrakes, showing that they believed these so-called “love apples” increased a woman’s fertility. However, the fact that Jacob’s wives held to this ancient concept does not necessarily indicate that the Bible expresses approval. Then, too, modern investigation has shown that some primitive medicines, scorned by medics a generation or two ago, actually do possess qualities which make them valuable. At any rate, this passage of Scripture does not indicate that the Bible encouraged the use of magic. In another instance of apparent superstition, Jacob peeled the bark from saplings to give them a spotted appearance become he believed that they offspring of the cattle bred before them would then be speckled and spotted. This story is declared to be an indication that the writer of Genesis held to the notion that the colour of the unborn young would be affected by what the female animal saw at the time of impregnation. (See Genesis 30.37-43.) A careful study of the entire account reveals, however, the truth that God actually was controlling the breeding process through the laws of heredity, not by means of Jacob’s efforts. The angel of the Lord later told the patriarch that the male animals possessed genetic characteristics which brought about the birth of so many striped, speckled, and spotted animals. (See Genesis 31.11-12.) Therefore, we can assert with confidence that this passage of Scripture in no way encourages the use of magic. The statement of Joseph to his brothers about his silver cup also poses a problem for Bible students, because his words seem to indicate that he used it for purposes of divination. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
After the steward had hidden the cup in Benjamin’s sack of grain, Joseph told him what he was to do and say. The King James Version records Joseph’s instructions as follows, “Up, follow after them men; and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this it in which my Lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth? Ye have done evil in so doing” (Genesis 44.4-5). Scholars today know that the heathen sorcerers of Joseph’s day often sprinkled small particles of gold or sliver into a cup of water, or poured a small amount of oil in it, and then “read” the resulting design in the cup of omens. While it is possible that Joseph fell into this sinful and heathenish practice, we doubt very much that he did, for he had one of the finest characters of all the men portrayed in the entire Old Testament. In addition, we can present good reason for our conviction that Joseph never really used the coup to find out about the unknown. In the first place, Joseph did not need such sources of information. God had spoken to him through dreams and other forms of revelation, and therefore Joseph did possess knowledge ordinarily hidden to humans. In that sense he was able to “divine.” His instruction to his steward may be translated, “Is it not from this cup that my Lord drinks, and concerning which he will assuredly divine?” In other words, Joseph made it clear that he possessed a power which would enable him to find out what happened to the cup. (We must remember that Joseph was play-acting in order to test his brothers. He wanted them to be puzzled by the knowledge he possessed, and did not want to disclose his real identity at this time. For this reason, he did not speak of obtaining information directly from God.) This interpretation of verse 5 fits well with the statement of Joseph recorded in verse 15, “What deed is this that ye have done? Know ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?” #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
He let his brothers know that he was a special person with unusual powers of perception, but did not reveal the source of his ability. Later he told them about his faith in God. Therefore, the story of Joseph and the silver cup is certainly not an indication of Biblical approval of magic, and the likelihood exists that Joseph never practiced the heathen customs of his day. Certain elements of the Mosaic law sometimes are thought to be a form of magic. In Numbers 5, for example, we are told that if a man suspected his wife of unfaithfulness, he was to take her to the priest for trial. The woman would then drink a liquid potion to determine her guilt or innocence. If certain physical results became apparent immediately, she was deemed guilty. If not, she was innocent. On the surface this appears to be a superstitious practice, but when we remember that Israel lived under a theocracy and that God has ordained this test, we can believe He would in this manner declare infallibly the guilt or innocence of the person being tried. The Urim and Thummim as a means of revelation and the long hair of Samson as the secret of his strength are further examples of divinely ordered and controlled phenomena which cannot be compared to the magic of the heathen. Therefore, we can say assuredly that nothing in the Old Testament or the New can be properly interpreted as divine sanction of sorcery or magic. Shortly before the Exile, the prophet Ezekiel delivered a scorching denunciation of women who were using amulets and veils in a magic ritual to bring joy or sadness, blessing or cursing, even life or death to certain individuals. “Likewise, thou son of man, set thy face against the daughters of thy people, who prophesy out of their own heart, and prophesy thou against them, and say, Thus saith the Lord God: Woe to the women that sew amulets upon all wrists, and make kerchiefs for the head of every person of stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you? And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear you lies? #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
“Wherefore, thus saith the LORD GOD: Behold, I am against your amulets, with which ye there hunt the souls to make them fly; and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly. Your kerchiefs also will I tear, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand to be hunted; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, who I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life; therefore, ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations; for I will deliver my people out of your hand; and ye shall know that I am the LORD,” reports Ezekiel 13.17-23. Exactly what these women did is not easy to ascertain. Some Bible students have conjectured that they performed a rite in which they symbolically bound up the soul of a person so that the individual would gradually waste away and die. Then, for a fee they would bring about his release. Other scholars think that Ezekiel describes features of “sympathetic magic,” whereby the sorceress fastened something around her own wrists or enshrouded her own head to place a curse upon a specific individual. In either case, the practice of these women appeared to have consequences so serious as to warrant divine condemnation and a prophetic declaration that God would deliver His people from their grasp. The Old Testament acknowledges the existence of real magic, and consistently condemns it in every form. Furthermore, the rites and ceremonies prescribed for Israel were not equivalent to the practices of the heathen, but were instructions that came directly from God and over which He would exercise control. At the very threshold of human history stands God’s command, “Fill the Earth and subdue it,” reports Genesis 1.28. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The task and right of man was the peaceful conquest of the Earth’s powers in accordance with the will of God. In opposition to this command Satan, the great master of confusion came and put forward his arch-temptation, “You will be like God knowing good and evil,” reports Genesis 3.5. Magic is the very antithesis of the commandment of God as it reveals a hunger for knowledge and a desire for power in opposition to the will of God. When faced with this temptation humankind was at the crossroads. The decision has to be made. Either voluntary subordination to the will of God or rebellion against His statues and His ordinances caused by a greed for power and a desire for knowledge. The decision still faces us today. We either conform to God’s revealed way of salvation or we carry on the rebellion, trying to rule the created World in unforgivable opposition to God. Magic is thus at its roots a rebellion, and it has been so from the beginning. It is the climax of man’s revolt against God. Any talk of harmless forces of nature and neutral applications is criminal in the light of this scriptural fact. On the surface, parapsychology (the science of extrasensory experience) still recognizes something of the double nature of magic. The differentiation is made between Psi-Gamma phenomena and Psi-Kappa phenomena. (Gamma representing gignoskein, to perceive; kappa representing kinein, to move). Here we have again the two basic elements of magic: knowledge and power through supernatural means. Through a great deal of pastoral work, I have noticed four ways in which magical powers can originate. These are through heredity, subscription of oneself to the devil, occult experiments and occult transference. The evidence drawn from many actual case histories goes to prove that magical abilities can be passed on by means of heredity. Often mediumistic powers can be traced back over three or four generations in one family. There are two possibilities here, one being that it is a matter of the genes and the other that it is a matter of succession. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
By this we mean the custom of a person on one’s deathbed actually bestowing the magical abilities upon the eldest son or daughter in order to die peacefully. Often tragic scenes occur when the children do not want to have these abilities passed on to them. A person may cry out for weeks on his deathbed for someone to relieve him of his magical powers. Sometimes a distant relative or an outsider is willing to accept the succession. The reason for this may differ from case to case, be it pity, curiosity or maybe lust for power. The death of some magicians can drag on over a period of weeks till the office of “succession” has been settled. This is not an apostolic but a diabolic succession. Magical powers on the other hand may originate through subscription to the devil. One can see in this the counterpart to baptism. To every event recorded in the Bible, there seems to be a demonic parallel to it in the field of magic. Subscription to the devil accounts for some of the most terrible and formidable cases met with by Christian workers. For example, in Paris there is an occult church with the name or title, “We Worship the Prince of this World.” This church has sister congregations in Basle and berne, and a few decades ago one was opened in Rome. In order to become a member of this church, one has to subscribe oneself to the devil. This is a baptism into black magic! For years a man in Toggenburg, Switzerland, had a flourishing practice as a nature healer and charmer. He could even sure come people who the doctors had given up as hopeless. He had healed the blind, the lame, cases of advanced cancer, tuberculosis, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma and other serious diseases. On one occasion however, the man’s own personal need came to the surface. He said, “I can help others, but for myself there is no help, no not in all eternity!” In his youth the man had subscribed himself to the devil. It was since that time that he had obtained his unearthly healing ability. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Another way in which magical powers may develop is through experimenting with occultism. A Swiss factory worker grew tired of his job. Since he had often heard that occult healers and mesmerizers made a lot of money, he bought some magic charms, underwent various devil ceremonies and then began healing experiments. His magic healing ability developed rapidly and ultimately his income surpassed his previous earnings many times over. The next example will illustrate all three factors together, that is, the factors of heredity, subscription and experimenting in occultism. A young woman told me this story. Here great-grandmother had subscribed herself to the devil with her own blood. She had practiced black magic and had healed both animals and people. On her deathbed she had suffered terribly as is often the cause with magic conjurers. The daughter, that is the grandmother of my storyteller, took over the magic powers of her mother. The magic literature of her mother also passed into her hands. Later the apparition of the great-grandmother was seen by the relatives. The grandmother however, continued to practice magic. During nights of the full moon, she would charm diseases. She was also in the habit of using a key suspended over a Bible as a pendulum, and she could also successfully stop people from bleeding. If she ever attempted to read the Bible, she found it quite a trial. As she grew older, she began to see black figures in her home, and finally when she died it was again an unpleasant time. Her ghost was also seen after her departure. The story went on that the young woman’s mother had then taken over the magical literature and practices. She too had become a well-known healer, but her fate had been the same as her predecessors’. The fourth member in this terrible line of succession was not the young woman. As a small child, her mother had cast spells over her. Shortly after this, she had become clairvoyant and had also begun to see black figures in the house. Her brother and sister had suffered from depression and she herself had has serious psychic and nervous disturbances which had led her to seek the help of a minister. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Occult transference is the fourth source of magical powers. A young man told me that he had once had three black magicians lay their hands on his head and murmur some magic charms over him. He had afterwards possessed magic abilities which astonished even the family doctor. The doctor had investigated his powers and had to acknowledge that they were genuine. The laying on of the hands of the magicians would again be a counterpart to the scriptural laying on of hands. Another example, a young man saw someone searching for water with a pendulum. He was asked if he would like to have a go, but the pendulum did not react in his hand. When the dowser took hold of his hands, though, the pendulum had at once reacted. Later when he had tried to repent the experiment by himself, he was again successful, and he discovered that he now had the ability to search for water with both a rod or a pendulum. Yet the young man felt a change in his Christian life. Previously he had been regular in his reading of the Bible and in prayer. After this transference of pendulum ability, however, his love for the Word of God and for prayer declined. Spirits are not normally subject to human visibility or other sensory perception. God’s universe operates undeviatingly in accordance with the purpose for which He created it. The all-wise and all-powerful Creator is not permitting Satan and demons to throw his ordered Universe into confusion by violating the laws he has established. Nor is He permitting His own people to do so through haphazard miracles. Though not ignoring the laws of nature, God’s Word also recognizes the possible transcendence of natural law in divine miracle both in good supernaturalism (Exodus 14.19-31; 17: 5-7; Joshua 3.16-17; 6.20; John 2.9; 11:44) and in evil supernaturalism (Exodus 7.10-11, 22; 8.7; 2 Thessalonians 2.8-10; Revelation 13.15). #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
When natural law is transcended by divine miracle, the natural eye may see the spiritual reality. An illustration is provided in 2 Kings 6.17. In answer to Elisha’s prayer, the Lord “opened the eyes” of the prophet’s servant who saw “the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” In like manner Elisha saw the “chariot of fire, and horses of fire” when Elijah went up by a whirlwind into Heaven (2 Kings 2.11). Similarly John saw the demons coming up from the abyss in their last-day eruption as locusts (Revelation 9.1-12). He also saw the three hideous demons issuing from the months of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet as froglike spirits (Revelation 16.13-14). The apocalyptic seer glimpsed these fouls spirits prophetically and by supernatural vision. However, when they are sent against human, they will be invisible to the natural eye. Their presence will be known by the excruciating pain they inflict and the gross deception they cause. The harm they inflict will be inescapable, because their victims will be unable to shield themselves from an invisible enemy. However, spirits can become discernible to humans through transcendence of natural law. Evil spirits may be seen and communicated through an intermediary or medium. Just as Peter and Paull saw and talked with an angel (Acts 5.19; 27: 23-24), so human beings today can communicate with evil spirits through magic rites and incantations. Communication with the demon World results in supernatural manifestations, but these, strictly speaking, are not miraculous. Occult enslavement and extrasensory phenomena await people who enter the realm from which God would protect his own people (Deuteronomy 18.10-11) and against which He solemnly warns (Leviticus 19.31; 20.27; 1 Samuel 28.9; 1 Timothy 4.1, 2;1 John 4.1-3). When humans ignore God’s warnings and enter a forbidden realm, they may witness materializations, levitations, and luminous apparitions, as well as experience spirit rappings, trances, automatic writing, magic phenomena, clairvoyance, oral and written communications and other forms of spiritistic phenomena. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Such manifestations are not miracles. They represent the operation of the occult within a certain well-defined sphere tolerated by God. Occult subjection and oppression are the inevitable penalties to all who traffic in the realm of evil supernaturalism. The Scriptures are markedly reticent on the matter of spirits being seen by humans. Here again, the Bible stands in contrast to ethnic and rabbinic systems. Multitudes of demons in bizarre forms are described in ancient semitic demonology. Rabbinic demonology, for example, divides demons into two classes: one composed of purely spiritual beings, the other of half-spirits. The latter were though to have a psycho-sarcous constitution that involved them in physical needs and functions. Although the Bible is silent concerning such “halbgeister,” they would seem to be what the offspring of the angels and mortal women (Genesis 6:1-4) might have been, half-angelic and half-human monsters. Many spiritualists say they accept the Christian Bible as the Word of God. To understand it, however, spiritualists go to the control spirit in the séances, and the spirits reputedly give the proper interpretation. Spiritualists frequently ask, “Why go to the Bible, when you can go directly to the spirit and receive personal instruction from such people as Moses, Abraham, Joshua, Isaiah, David, Peter, James, John, and Paul—even the Master himself?” With that kind of opportunity, few spiritualists prefer to read the Bible—and hence they know little of what it teaches. For the Christian, 2 Timothy 3.16-17, is a key teaching regarding the inspiration and purpose of Scripture: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfectly, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” Spiritualists do not accept the plain meaning of that verse, and they distort another key verse, 2 Peter 1.21, which speaks of “holy men of God” producing prophecy “by the Holy Ghosts.” Spiritualists say this means that the prophets were inspired by the spirits. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Dr. Moses Hull, an accepted authority among spiritualists, wrote in Biblical Spiritualism, a book he published in 1895: “The Bible is, I think, one of the best of the sacred books of the ages. It is supposedly the sacred fountain from which two, if not three, of the great religions of the World have flowed…While the Bible is not the infallible or immaculate book that many have supposed it to be, no one can deny that it is a great book…Yet it must be confessed that the age of critical analysis of all its sayings and its environments has hardly dawned…John R. Shannon said to his Denver audience, ‘We do not believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. The dogma that every word of the Bible is supernaturally dictated is false. It ought to be shelved away…Verbal inspiration is a superstitious theory; it has turned multitudes in disgust from the Bible; it has led thousands into infidelity; it has led to savage theological warfare’…All these facts would show, if brought out, that the Bible, like all other books, is exceedingly human in its origin. While the Bible is, none of it infallible, none of it unerring—when rightly interpreted it is all of it useful; all of it good. Even the parts which the people called infidels have ridiculed the most, become beautiful when examined in the light of modern spiritualism. In the following chapters the sacred light of spiritualism is applied to the Bible and it becomes indeed a ‘lamp unto our feet and a light to our path.’” To show something of how spiritualists interpret Scripture, I have chosen five examples from Hull’s book. Isaiah 21.4-5. “My heart panted, fearful affrighted me: the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me. Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink; arise, ye prices, and anointed the shield.” The spiritualists interprets the phrase “prepare the table” as meaning a table to be used for spirit manifestation at a séance. Ezekiel 9.4-6. “And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
“And to the other he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women; but come not near any man upon whom is the mark and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.” Dr. Hull comments: “Ezekiel was considered an excellent medium, but like many of the nineteenth century he makes wrong predictions. It is thought that very few, if any, of his predictions ever met their accomplishments.” Amos 7.7. “Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand.” Hull writes: “Mediums see such manifestations in connection with departed human spirits nearly every day.” Acts 8.26-30. “And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south…and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch…had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him.” Dr. Hull asserts that Philip was carried by a control spirit to speak to the Ethiopian. Galatians 1.11-12. “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” In his handbook for spiritualist, Hull concludes from this text that the Apostle Paul received the gospel by spirit revelation through the mediumship of Jesus. It is noteworthy that to both the spiritualist and the Christian, Satan is God’s archenemy. I was at a séance one time when Satan supposedly entered. It ended abruptly, and we were told it was because of the presence of an evil spirit. It is tragic that many spiritualists never realize they are being deceived by this very devil who can ingeniously adapt his tactics to lure any type of prey. Satan is openly honoured, of course, by some practitioners of the so-called “black arts” or “black magic.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Generally, some of these people are obsessed with hexes and spells, sexual indulgence, weird rituals, and hints of violence. Spiritualists, who consider themselves followers of God and the “good spirits,” regard such people as self-centered “spiritists” who follow the “bad spirits.” However, these “good” and “bad” spirits serve the same master, Satan, and serve him well, because they each give their followers what Satan dispenses: a sense of goodness and of guidance without dependence on Christ; and a sense of power and self-fulfillment in defiance of God’s commands. However, many spirits do believe in God, and the Christian Bible says there is a Holy Spirit and Angels that guide us, and in many cases, these spirits do prevent people from facing hardships, and these people still depend on Christ. So, it is really hard to generalize and give Satan so much power. Nonetheless, all people are baffled by occult mysteries! Revelations 13.14 says, “Satan’s representative deceiveth them that dwell on the Earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do.” Generally, people think of miracles and blessings as good omens. So, everyone has to make their own decisions as to what they believe, but many people on Earth are always looking for evidence of the supernatural because the very fact that we live on a globe that floats in the sky and provides of with nature and fruit and meat, and sun and a nightlight at night is evidence of a supernatural power. Once upon a time, at the instigation of a ghost, a lawsuit took place at Downpartick in 1685. The account of this was given to Baxter by Thomas Emlin, “a worthy preacher in Dublin,” as well as by Claudius Gilbert, one of the principal parties therein concerned: the latter’s son and namesake proved a liberal benefactor to the Library of Trinity College—some of his books have been consulted for the present work. It appears that for some time past there had been dispute about the tithes of Drumbeg, a little parish about four miles outside Belfast, between Mr. Gilbert, who was vicar of that town, and the Archdeacon of Down, Lemuel Matthews, whom Cotton in his Fasti describes as “a man of considerable talents and legal knowledge, but of a violent overbearing temper, and a litigious disposition.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The parishioners of Drumbeg favoured Gilbert, and generally paid the tithes to him as being the incumbent in possession; but the Archdeacon claimed to be the lawful recipient, in support of which claim he produced a warrant. In the execution of this by his servants at the house of Charles Lostin, one of the parishioners, they offered some violence to his wife Margaret, who refused them entrance, and who died about a month later (1 November 1685) of the injuries she had received at their hands. Being a woman in a bad state of health littler notice was taken of her death, until about a month after she appeared to one Thomas Donelson, who had been a spectator of the violence done her, and “affrighted him into a Prosecution of Robert Eccleson, the Criminal. She appeared divers times, but chiefly upon one Lord’s Day-Evening, when she fetch’d him with a strange force out of his House into the Yard and Fields adjacent. Before her last coming (for she did so three times that Day) several Neighbours were called in, to whom he gave notice that she was again coming; and beckon’s him to come out; upon which they went to shut the Door, but he forbad it, saying that she looked with a terrible Aspect upon him, when they offered it. However, his Friends laid hold on him and embraced him, that he might not go out again; notwithstanding which (a plain evidence of some invisible Power), he was drawn out of their Hands in a surprising manner, and carried about into the Field and Yard, as before, she charging him to prosecute Justice: which Voice, as also Donelson’s reply, the people heard, though they saw no shape. There are many Witnesses of this yet alive, particularly Sarah (Losnam), the Wife of Charles Lostin, Son to the deceased Woman, and one William Holyday and his Wife.” This last appearance took place in Holyday’s house; there were also present several young persons, as well as Charles and Helen Lostin, children of the deceased, most of whom appeared as witnesses at the trial. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Upon this Donelson deposed all he knew of the matter to Mr. Randal Brice, a neighbouring Justice of the Peace; the latter brought the affair before the notice of Sir William Franklin in Belfast Castle. The depositions were subsequently carried to Dublin, and the case was tried at Downpatrick Assizes by Judge John Lindon in 1685. On behalf of the plaintiff, Charles Lostin, Counseller James Macartney acted—if he be the Judge who subsequently makes his appearance in a most important witch-trial at Carrickfergus, he certainly was as excellent an advocate as any plaintiff in a case of witchcraft could possibly desire, as he was strongly prejudiced in favour of the truth of all such matters. “The several Witnesses were heard and sworn, and their Examinations were entered in the Record of that Assizes, to the Amazement and Satisfaction of all that Country and of the Judges, whom I have heard speak of it at the time with much Wonder; insomuch that the said Eccleson hardly escaped with his life, but was Burnt in the Hand.” Whether or not one believes in Mrs. Winchester’s superstitions about spirits, it is hard to dismiss occurrences of the number 13 throughout her gorgeous mansion. Many windows have 13 panes and there are 13 bathrooms, with 13 windows in the 13th Bathroom, 13 steps leading to that bathroom. The Carriage Entrance Hall floor is divided into 12 cement sections. There are even 13 hooks in the Blue Séance Room, which supposedly held the different coloured robes Mrs. Winchester wore while communing with spirits. Here are even more thirteens: 13 rails by the floor-level skylight in the South Conservatory, 13 steps on many of the stairways, 13 squares on each side of the Otis electric elevator, 13 glass cupolas on the Greenhouse, 13 holes in the sink drain covers, 13 ceiling panels in some of the rooms, and 13 gas jets on the Ballroom chandelier (Mrs. Winchester had the thirteenth one added!) It is interest to note that Mrs. Winchester’s will had 13 parts and was signed by her 13 times! #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Mrs. Winchester sat by herself on the fourth-floor balcony of her mansion. It was an October evening, and the sun was setting. The west was all aglow with mysterious red light, very strange and lurid—a light that reflected itself in glowing purple of the sky. Mrs. Winchester had a poet’s soul. She sat there long, watching the livid hues that incarnadined the sky—redder and fiercer than anything she ever remembered to have seen growing up as a child. She knew it was getting late and was expecting guests for dinner. Mrs. Winchester was always such a stickler for punctuality and dispatch. However, there was something about that sunset and the lights on the bracken—something beautiful but bizarre—that absolute fascinated her. She took it as a sign from the spirits that something was about to happen. The Universe was always teeming with mysterious secrets to unfold. Many of the guests in her mansion felt something desired to possess their soul, and it made them want to stop and give way to this overpowering sese of the mysterious and the marvellous in the dark depths of the estate. She was expecting Claude Duncan for dinner. Mrs. Winchester dined at 6.00 p.m. punctually. However, Claude seemed to be having some issues that evening. He was an art dealer, and was being haunted by many strange shaped. However, he saw and heard absolutely nothing; yet he realized that unseen figures were watching him close with bated breath, and anxiously observing his every movement, as if intent to know whether he would rise and move on, or remain to investigate this causeless sensation. He could feel their outstretched necks; he could picture their strained attention. At last he broke away. “This is nonsense,” he said aloud to himself, and turned slowly homeward. Ad he did so, a deep sigh, as of suspense relieved, but relived in the wrong direction, seemed to rise—unheard, impalpable, spiritual—from the invisible crowd that father around him immaterial. Clutched hands seemed to stretch after him and try to pull him back. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
An unreal throng of angry and disappointed creatures seemed to follow him over the moor, uttering speechless imprecations on his head, in some unknown tongue—ineffable, inaudible. This horrid sense of being followed by unearthly foes took absolute possession of Claude’s mind. It might have been merely the lurid redness of the afterglow, or the loneliness of the moor, or the necessity of being at the Winchester Mansion, no one minute late for Mrs. Winchester’s dinner-hour; but, at any rate, he lost all self-control for the moment, and ran-ran widely at the very top of his speed, all the way from the barrow to the door of the Winchester Mansion garden. There he stopped and looked round with a painful sense of his own stupid cowardice. This was absolutely childish: he had seen nothing, heard nothing, had nothing definite to frighten him; yet he had run from his own mental shadow, like the verist schoolgirl, and was trembling still from the profundity of his sense that somebody unseen was pursing and following him. “What a precious fool I am,” he said to himself, half angrily, “to be so terrified at nothing! I will go to Mrs. Winchester’s dinner just to recover my self-respect, and to prove to myself, at least, I am not really frightened.” There is nothing like a light for dispelling superstitious terrors. The Winchester Mansion was fortunately updated with electric light; For Mrs. Winchester was nothing if not intensely modern. He went to dinner, however, in very good spirits. He told Mrs. Winchester and her niece Merriam “Daisy” Marriot that, “I felt a most peculiar sensation. Just after sunset, I was dimly conscious of something stirring inside, not visible or audible, but—” “Oh, I know, I know! Said Merriam. “A sort of feeling there was somebody somewhere, very faint and dim, though you could not see or her them; they tried to pull you down, clutching at you like this: and when you ran away frightened, they seemed to follow you and jeer at you. Great gibbering creatures! Oh, I know what all this is. I have been here, and felt it.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“Daisy!” Mrs. Winchester shouted, “what nonsense you talk! You are really too ridiculous. How can you suppose Mr. Duncan feels haunted?!” Mrs. Winchester darted at him a look of intense displeasure. She said, in a chilly voice, “at a table like this and with such thinkers around, we might surely find something rather better to discuss than such worn out superstitions.” Claude replied, “Mrs. Winchester, it has been shown conclusively that the Winchester mansion, was built on the grave of Aryan invaders, and that they are the real originals of all the San Jose hills and surrounding lands. You have heard the story of how your dark observation tower came, of course. People say the spirits built it because they were deeply religious people, who believed in human sacrifice. They felt they it would have a high spiritual benefit. That it lit up your palace, so that the spirits could find you.” “It is a very odd fact, Mr. Duncan, that only ghosts people ever see are the ghost of a generation very close to them. One hears lots of ghosts in nineteenth-century costumes, because everybody has a clear idea of wigs and small-clothes from pictures and fancy dresses. One hears of far fewer in Elizabethan dress, because the class most given to beholding ghost are seldom acquainted with ruffs and farthingales; and one meets with none at all in Angelo-Saxon or Ancient British or Roman costumes, because those are only known to a comparatively small class of learned people. Millions of ghosts of remote antiquity must swarm about the World, though, after a hundred years or thereabouts they retired into obscurity and cease to annoy people with their nasty cold shivers. However, the queer thing about these long-barrow ghost is that they must be the spirits of humans who died thousands and thousands of years ago, which is exceptional longevity for a spiritual being; do you not think so, Mr. Duncan?” “You mansion must be chock-full of them,” replied Mr. Duncan. “Daisy, my child, go to bed, said Mrs. Winchester. “This is not talk for you. And do not go chilling yourself by standing at the window in your nightdress, looking out on the common to search for the ghosts. You nearly fell to your death last year with that nonsense. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
As Claude Duncan went for a tour of the mansion by himself, he saw a child’s white face gaze appealingly across at him. Slowly the ghost boy raised one pale forefinger and pointed. His lips opened to an inaudible word; but he read it by sight. “Look!” he said simply. Claude looked where he pointed. A faint blue light hung lambent over the door-to-nowhere. It was ghostly and vague. It seemed to rouse and call him. Claude was now in a strange semi-mesmeric state of self-induced hypnotism when a command of whatever sort or by whomsoever given, seems to compel obedience. Trembling he rose, and taking his candle descended the stair noiselessly. Then, walking on tiptoe across the tile-paved hall, he opened the door-to-nowhere, and fell out into the garden below. Claude felt a creep sense of mystery and the supernatural. And he saw the pale face still pressed close against the window, and a white hand still motioning him mutely onward. He looked once more in the direction of where the ghost boy pointed, the spectral light now burnt clearer and bluer, and more unearthly than ever, and the observational tower of the mansion seemed haunted from end to end by innumerable invisible and uncanny creatures. As Claude groped on his way, speechless voices seemed to whisper unknow tongues encouragingly in his ear; ghosts appeared to crowd around him and tempt him with beckoning figures to follow them. As it seemed, by invisible hands, he staggered slowly forward, till at last, with aching head and trembling feet, he stood beside the front door of the mansion. Something clogged and impeded him from moving. His feet would not obey his will; they seemed to move of themselves back into the mansion. Steadying himself, and opening his eyes, Claude walked through the closed front doors. Then at once his feet moved easily, and the invisible attendant chuckled to themselves so loud that he could almost hear them. His terror was infinite, there was a ghostly through of people. They were spirits. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Claude Duncan was powerless in their intangible hands; for they seized him roughly with incorporeal fingers. Their wrist compelled him as the magnet compels the iron bar. A dim phosphorescent light, like the light of a churchyard or decaying paganism, seemed to illuminate the mansion faintly. Things loomed dark before him; but his eyes almost instantly adapted themselves to the gloom, as the eyes of the dead on the first night in the grave adapt themselves by inner force to the strangeness of their surroundings. The Grand Ballroom had a silver chandelier from Germany, and the walls and parquet floors were made of six hardwoods—mahogany, teak, maple, rosewood, oak, and white ash. And there were two mysterious stained-glass windows. The room was full of sumptuous music, the San Francisco orchestra was performing and ghosts dressed for a ball were dancing. Claude’s attention was too much concentrated on devouring fear and the horror of the situation to enjoy the mysterious beauty of it. There was also a grinning skeleton turning its head to reveal to Claude its eyeless orbs with vacant glance of hungry satisfaction. Claude, held fast by the immaterial hands of his ghastly captors, looked and trembled for his fate, too terrified to cry out or even to move and struggle, he beheld the hideous thing rise and assume a shadowy shape, all pallid blue light, like the shape of his jailers. Bit by bit, as he gazed, the skeleton seemed to disappear, or rather to fade into some unsubstantial form, which was nevertheless more human, more corporal, more horrible than the dry bones it had come from. Then it busted into a loud and fiendish laugh. It was a hideous laugh, halfway between a wild beast’s and a murderous maniac’s: it echoed through the long hall like the laughter of devils. It said, “You are mine. You soul now belongs to the Winchester mansion!” The men and women spirits, with a loud whoop, raised hands aloft in unison. Next instant with a howl of vengeance even louder than before, they crowded around Claude and jostled and hustled him. And the moon burned bright and bluer as Claude Duncan now became the Winchester Rifle’s victim. You see it is not a bullet, but an all-powerful spirit, which chooses victims even if they did not die at the hands of the Winchester Rifle. Curious about the Winchester Mystery House? #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
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Great changes require administrative support and necessary and necessary resources. A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. The World changes faster than the people in it. We must now try to imagine what the nucleic acid molecules, in the late coacervate/early cellular era, could have done besides reproduce their own kind. For definiteness, let us consider a coacervate or cell containing large numbers of nucleic acid molecules of different compositions and lengths. Let us assume, moreover, that much of the nucleic acid is in its single-stranded form at the time we commence our observations. This could be because not enough time has yet elapsed for the growth of the Siamese-twin configurations since the cyclically changing chemistry of the cell last produced the conditions that split the double molecules into single ones. In any event, let us follow the adventures of a single nucleic acid molecule as it floats around in the cellular fluid. We know, of course, that the floating around of such a molecule would not be a completely passive performance. We have already dealt with the tendency, arising from the electric fields associated with atoms and molecules, for some of the small organic and inorganic molecular fragments that inhabit the cellular fluid to attach themselves to local regions of the nucleic acid molecules. In the past, we concentrated on one type of such attachment process—that which cases a single molecule of nucleic acid to grow into a double one by conjugation of its bases. At that time, we did not concern ourselves greatly with competition from other kinds of attaching molecular fragments, although we knew that such other attachments were bound to occur from time to time. Our lack of concern for such competition was based on our awareness that most of these other attachments would be tenuous and quickly broken, since the randomly encountered molecular fragments would usually not “mate” very well with the nearby parts of the nucleic acid. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Our discussion implied that, upon the approach of a free nucleotide to a suitable region of a molecule of nucleic acid, the strong binging forces that would come into play would result in the displacement of any lightly held “impurity” in favour of the attachment of the arriving nucleotide. Such a tendency for loosely held fragments to be displayed by molecules of greater binding energy is probably adequate to render inconsequential the large majority of the nucleic acid molecule’s casual encounters in the cellular fluid. Nevertheless, there would appear to be possibilities for attachments of kinds that would not necessarily yield to such displacement forces. For example, two different nucleic acid molecules would occasionally bump together. And once in a while such a collision might bring together short regions of the two long molecules carrying base sequences complementary to one another—an A base opposed to a U (Substitute T for U, in DNA) base, then a G opposed to a C, and so on. The resulting multiple attachment could constitute much stronger connection than that resulting from the usual casual encounter between molecules of different types. To be sure, collisions between nucleic acid molecules would be rare, unless the concentration of nucleic in the cellular fluid were exceedingly high. There is a related kind of encounter, however, that would occur much more frequently—the collision of one part of a long nucleic acid molecule with another part of the same molecule. For the nucleic acid backbone is supple; it can turn back upon itself like a rope. Under the ceaseless churning that thermal agitation imposes on the molecules of any fluid, each long chain of nucleic acid would be continually bending and twisting, frequently thereby brining normally remote parts of itself into temporary contact. An occasional attachment would be of just the nature described in the example of the encounter of two different nucleic acid molecules. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
If not an unusually strong attachment (that is, involving a considerable number of conjugated bases), it would soon be broken under the stress of random thermal agitation. However, if a special way of folding the long molecule back upon itself could result in a binding together of the two halves strong enough to survive, it would eventually be “found”; the random processes would ultimately make nearly the right kind of fold, the resulting attractive forces would do the rest, and the long molecule would lock together in a characteristic folded configuration. Of course, certain conditions would have to be met by a single-stranded nucleic acid molecule before it could be eligible to form a folded configuration. In particular, a certain minimum length would have to be exceeded in order that the two halves of the folded molecule could make enough mutual bonds to provide the needed attachment strength. X-rays analysis of the nucleic acid in modern organisms shows that such folded structures, which are abundant in all cells, usually involve seventy to righty nucleotides. A combination of speculation and evidence suggests that there may be nothing very critical about the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of a successfully folded molecule. A molecule of random base sequence might be able to form a folded or hairpin structure involving complementary pairing of most of its bases by the simple expedient of pushing away from the primary folded structure an occasional nucleotide segment that does not fit the base pattern of the opposite arm of the structure. X-ray measurements strongly suggest that this kind of expedient distortion of the hairpin does not actually occur and that the schematic drawings of it are probably fairly realistic. Folded configurations would not be assumed by all nucleic acid molecules even if their length and base sequence were favourable. For the reproduction process would sometimes prevent the formation of folded molecules; to the extent to which the projecting bases had already been mated with conjugate nucleotides from the surrounding fluid, there would be a decrease in the probability that the different parts of the flailing molecule would stick together. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
However, it is not hard to postulate conditions that would cause the competition to be frequently resolved in favour of the formation of folded configurations rather than double molecules. For one thing, as mentioned in the past reports, catalysts and energy-supplying molecules must be available in the cellular fluid if the formation double molecules is to proceed at a significant rate. The chore for which these molecular assistants are required does not have to do with the conjugation of the nucleotide bases; this goes easily. Rather, the additional energy and catalytic assist are needed to connect the sugar phosphate ends of the nucleotides. However, this requirement does not exist for the formation of a folded configuration of a single molecule. Therefore, we might well expect the folding process to occur more rapidly than the reproduction processes for the molecules in question. This would be particularly true if, as we can easily postulate, the supply of catalysts and energy-contributing molecules were low in the vicinity of some of the single-stranded nucleic acid. Under such circumstances we can easily imagine that the occasional free nucleotide that attached itself to conjugate bases along the backbone of the nucleic acid molecule would be displaced by the stronger binding forces brought into play by the tendency toward multiple affiliation of the components of the two arms of the molecule itself. To be sure, the actual configuration of the folded molecule would not look much like the two-dimensional patterns seen in vintage textbooks. The same electric forces that cause double-stranded nucleic acid molecules to form a double helix would operate to impose a twist on the folded molecule. The imperfections caused by the nonmatching bases would probably also distort the helix, and the final result would be a three-dimensional configuration with a patten of atomic arrangement and external electric fields that, in the last analysis, would be completely determined by the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of the original unfolded nucleic acid molecule. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Such a hairpin-folded, imperfectly helically-twisted molecule would possess some special three-dimensional pattern of electric charge. In particular, it would be likely to have an affinity for certain kinds of molecular fragments. For example, a particular sequence of nucleotides might result in such a pattern of hairpin folding and partial helical twisting as to produce, in some portion of the molecule, a very good fit for a sugar fragment. Another molecule with a different sequence of nucleotides might include within its three-dimensional contours a good “mold” for holding a particular kind of amino acid, and so on. Assuming the existence of such ingredients in the surrounding fluid, continued floating around of the nucleic acid molecules would ultimately result in getting most of them coupled to whatever specific kinds of molecular fragments their own special patterns of electric fields best equip them to carry. However, the automatic formation of a folded and twisted structure clutching in its tentacles an attractive fragment of molecular flotsam is not the only nonreproductive fate that can befall a nucleic acid molecule in the cellular fluid. Modern evidence shows that longer varieties of these molecules can become tightly bound to the surfaces of solid particles. The particles on which such attachment occurs are today called microsomes, and they are a conspicuous feature of all modern cells. We have no difficulty in rationalizing the evolutionary origin of such inclusions; the precipitation of some of the chemical by-products of metabolism would doubtless have produced solid particles in some of the early coacervates. The requirement of length in the surface-bound nucleic acid molecules (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides, although, of course, it is unlikely that the primitive forms were of this degree of complexity) is probably generally understandable in terms of the ever-present competition between combining and disrupting forces. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Unless the molecule is long enough to provide many local points of attachment to the supporting surface, the ceaseless jostling to which it is subjected by the random thermal agitation of the surrounding molecules will jar it loose. Perhaps for a similar reason, a successfully surface-bound nucleic acid molecule appears to be fully extended, rather than folded back upon itself. Further, the long molecule is held to the surface in such a way as not to neutralize the pattern of electric fields that results from the specific sequence of bases along the backbone. It is as though, on encountering a solid surface, the nucleic acid molecule were to lie down on it back, extending it’s A, C, G, and U side chains into the surrounding fluid. For the bound molecules are chemically reactive. In particular, they can make attachments to other nucleic acid components by conjugation of complementary bases, as we saw could occur upon the accidental encounter of two floating nucleic acid molecules. This does not have to mean, however, that the long surface-bound molecule of nucleic acid would rapidly accrue to itself conjugate nucleotides and bind them together to form a double molecule. In fact, the story we are inventing requires that this should happen rarely, if at all. It is not hard to imagine conditions that would hold such double-molecule formation to a low level. For example, the catalyst that zips together the sugar phosphate ends of the conjugated nucleotides to tie up the backbone structure of the Siamese-twin molecule may not be able to operate effectively when the generating single molecule is stretched out on a solid surface. Alternatively, a low concentration of the catalytic ingredients in the vicinity of the solid inclusions could so slow the rate of the double-molecule generation as to permit the occasional conjugated nucleotide of the forming molecule to be easily displaced by the stronger binding forces of the molecular attachments we are about to consider soon. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
To get others to do what you want them to do, you must see things through their eyes. It is notorious that the physical plant and social environment have grown out of human scale. To achieve simple goods, it is often necessary to set in motion immense masses. In scarcity, where the means are unavailable, we wistfully renounce the ends. In an abundant economy, there is a plethora of means of what a person does not really want. Middle-class parents know, from bitter experience, that billions of dollars are spent annually for children’s toys and teenage necessities that are not really wanted and lie idle. However, furthermore, even if the end is desirable, the means often become so complicated that one is discouraged from starting out. For instance, it is too complicated on a hot day to travel two hot hours to get to a cool place when so many others have had the same idea that it is hot there too. To adults, such complicated means are irritating and take the joy out of life. To children growing up, they are disastrous because they make it impossible to learn by doing. The sense of causality is lost. Initiative is lost. And one ends with the idea that nothing can be changed. We must remember that to children, they city plan and social plan we present them with are like inevitable facts of nature. Unless they have architects or builders in the family, they cannot realize that the buildings were drawn by somebody on a piece of paper and could have been different. Unless their parents teach them otherwise, they believe that compulsory school attendance is a divine creation and it is a sin to be absent. It is, of course, very difficult to judge the environment concretely from the child’s point of view. Thus, living in a big city does not as such make a child inept, though any city has very complicated means. The city is short on farm work, swimming holes, and animals to trap; but it has docks, freight-car yards, labyrinthine basements, pavements to chalk up, and subway trains to play tag on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The streets are littered with the remarkable junk of a thousand trades, to hoard and make things with. The ingenuity of California’s Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants, the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Raider’s ball games adapted to various improbable fields and obstacles is a model of rule making and rational debate that any senate might emulate: it sizes up the situation, argues, decides, and gets things done that work. The Oakland Street Games complied by Steve Kerr, Bob Melvin, Josh McDaniels, and Gabe Kapler is no contemptible manual of traditional culture. History teaches that cities have made people smart because of their mixed peoples, mixed manners, and mixed learning. On the whole, cities have probably trained more intelligent children than the country. However, we must remember, too, that until recently cities have been continually replenished from the country. City people had country cousins, and drew on both influences. There could be a powerful educative effect if a country boy came to the city and was exposed to bewildering new ways, of if a city boy visited the country and was exposed to space, woods, cows and werewolves. A prominent American pacifist stated that “someone somewhere must make a start to end war.” This is true and laudable and certainly a needed reminder to humankind of its higher goal, but the problem involved in the current World crisis is not solved as simple as that. Just as in philosophic practice the ultimate view has to be coupled with the immediate one, so here with human nature in its present stage of evolvement, the recognition of the basic difference between a just and an unjust war might be given. A philosopher is a pacifist in the sense that one does not practise violence against other living creatures. However, one is not an uncompromising pacifist. One does not consider the use of arms wrong in all circumstances. A situation can be imagined where it would be wiser and, in the end, kinder to use force deliberately. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Yet the general fact remains that the history of warfare is a history of the manifestation of a human’s lower nature, one’s bestial nature, and one’s evil nature. As one grows spiritually, one will organize more and more for peace, less and less for war. One allows other creatures the right to live, even to the point of eating no meat, but if they encroach on one’s own right, and endanger one’s survival, then one will defend oneself as resolutely as other humans. Nor is the situation changed if these creatures are not animal but human. Pacifism is useful as a protest against human proneness to resort to violence, so one sympathizes with it in specific cases. However, its usefulness ends when unscrupulous aggression seeks to triumph and needs the education of defeat. The pacifist movements naturally attract intellectuals and artists, ministers of religion and humanitarians. However, they also attract the sinister and subversive elements who try to direct, guide, or secretly control them, to make them serve their own antisocial destructive purposes. The presence and prominence of genuine idealists along with these pretended ones create confusion in the public mind. How can a movement be bad which is supported by such good humans? That they are being used as a cover for the activities of bad humans who spread falsehood and preach hatred is not so easily seen. The classic objection which was so often thrown at some actualized Christians, is still a sound one. “Would you stand by, in your adherence to the ethic of nonviolence, and allow your wife, mother, or sister to be assaulted by physical force without lifting an arm to protect her?” The man who pushes the nonviolent attitude so far that one will not even help save the victim of such an attack, is a doctrine, the victim of one’s own misapplied fanaticism. Nature (God) can be very violent at times: it is not always peaceful. One the mystical level, all war is evil and all pacifism is good. On the philosophical level, the universality of this rule vanishes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
We there rise from a judgment based on pure feeling to a judgment based on its integration by intuition with pure reason, the result of which is intelligence. If pacifism is to mean the acceptance of evil, then it cannot be enough. Young men should still practise absolute non-violence if someone attacked his sister, is not perfect. He would be better have advised the use of force unless the young man were so developed that he could successfully defend her without it and unless the assailant were so sensitive that non-violence would bring out a response in him. In other words, the pacifist principle should certainly be applied in every case where it is likely to be effective but refrained from where it is likely to fail. It is not a principle of universal applicability. Men whose temperament is naturally given to violence in speech or deed, or those who always stir up agitation, extremism, irreconciliation, and intransigence, must be firmly and unflinchingly ruled. Weakness would be folly. The whole history of Europe during the past fifty years could have been changed had pacifism not been misapplied. When Biden seized power in America, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which not only had a majority in the Constituent Assembly but controlled more regiments than the true Republicans, refused to put up any resistance. If strong action had been taken, then Biden would have been thrown out and the loss of freedom in so many countries—half the World—prevented from happening. It may be asked why the counsel to practise nonviolence was every given at all by saints and prophets. Obviously it is ethically the highest instance of forgiveness and the most effective way of transcending the ego practically. The proper course is to try kindly reasonable and nonviolent methods of resisting aggression. If they fail, then forceful ones become the only alternative. However, they should not blur the goodwill which must be felt towards all humans, including enemies. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The mistake made is to be solely dependent on violent methods, when gentler ones would achieve the same end without letting in the poison of hate and without creating so much new misery. That country is truly civilized where the killing instinct is held in abeyance and regarded with abhorrence. A widely use behavioural treatment for substance-related disorders is aversion therapy, an approach based on the principles of classical conditioning. Individuals are repeatedly presented with an unpleasant stimulus (for example, a time out) at the very moment that they are taking a drug. After repeated pairings, they are expected to react negatively to the substance itself and to lose their craving for it. Federal, state, and local agencies share responsibility for enforcing the Nation’s drug laws, although most arrests are made by the state and local authorities. In 2020 the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) estimated that there were about 1,948,600 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States of America. According to the UCR, drug abuse violations are defined as state and/or local offenses relating to the unlawful possession, sale, use, growing, manufacturing, and making of narcotic drugs including opium or cocaine and their derivatives, marijuana, synthetic narcotics and dangerous nonnarcotic drugs such as barbiturates. More than four-fifths of drug law violation arrests are for possession. Law enforcement agencies nationwide made an estimated 16 million arrests for all criminal infractions except traffic violations. Among the specific categories, the highest arrest counts were—1.9 million for drug abuse violations; approximately 1.6 million for driving under the influence; 1.5 million for simple assaults; 1.4 million for larceny-thefts. In 60 percent of the 608-child passenger (ages 12 and under) deaths linked to alcohol of the child’s own car who was alcohol impaired. And more than 91,000 children were injured. Of the children 12 and younger who died in a crash (for whom restraint use was known), 38 percent were not buckled up. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Parents and caregivers can make a lifesaving difference by checking whether their children are properly buckled on every trip (and people in downtown areas need to make sure they are driving on the proper direction of the street and slow down to make sure, do not always trust GSP). Fifty-seven percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners, in the United States of America, report using illicit drugs in the month before committing their offense. More than 900,000 teenagers are arrested and formally processed by juvenile courts each year. Around half of them test positive for marijuana. Aversion therapy has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to others substance-related disorders. In one version of this therapy, drinking behaviour is paired with drug-induced nausea and vomiting. Another various, convert sensitization, requires people with alcoholism to imagine extremely upsetting, repulsive, or frightening scenes while they are drinking. The pairing of the imagined scenes with liquor is expected to produce negative responses to liquor itself. Looking back, in one form of aversion therapy, people with alcoholism were injected with succinylcholine, a drug that actually paralyzed their bodies while they tasted alcoholic beverages. Concerns about the safety and ethics of this approach led to its discontinuation. Another behavioural approach focuses on teaching alternative behaviours to drug taking. This approach, too, has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to other substance-related disorders. Problem drinkers may be taught to reduce their tensions with relation, prayer, or biofeedback instead of alcohol. Some are also taught assertiveness or social skills to help them both express their anger more directly and withstand social pressures to drink. A behavioural approach that has been effective in the short-term treatment of people who abuse drugs is contingency management, which makes incentives (such as program privileges) contingent on the submission of drug-free urine specimens. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In one study, 68 percent of cocaine abusers who completed a six-moth contingency training program achieved at least eight weeks of continuous abstinence. Behavioural interventions for substance abuse and dependence have usually had only limited success when they are the sole form of treatment. A major problem is that the approaches can be effective only when individuals are motivated to continue with them despite their unpleasantness or demands. Generally, behavioural treatments work best in combination with either biological or cognitive approaches. What is good for one is by n means food for all. Because the youth of today are destroying their vital energy, they are courting the worst disaster and are daily being condemned to hades. Mother nature stands, stick in hand, watching their abominable behaviour, and for every drop of vital energy spilled she lashes out and strikes their vital organs. Now tell me, what future do such people have? The Christian Bible is not to gather dust. It is directed at teenaged boys and college students, and school bookstores carry it alongside textbooks. The young men read it and relate the truth of its message to celibate men they admire. Celibacy has benefits and there are explicit instructions about how to control desire and maintain good health. Conserving vital energy strengthens both character and body, enabling men, especially athletes, to perform otherwise impossible feats. The vital energy is the most essential fluid of life. To tell the truth, it is an elixir. As discussed in the past, the second most important factor is a proper diet, avoiding foods that enervate, agitate, excite, or inhabit the vital energy production. Generally, spicy, friend, and oily items should be avoided. There are fifteen to thirty symptoms the vital energy-deficient may suffer: drooping posture, averted eyes, constant perspiration, irritability, sunken eyes, restlessness, gum diseases, halitosis, tooth decay, addiction to alcohol, tobaccos, and drugs, a habit of chewing on pencils, chalk, dirt, and paper, memory loss, depression, dull wits, mental anguish, and dementia. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If reader believe even half of the truth of this list—if they have personally sniffed in disgust at the bad breath or sweat of a companion who is active in pleasures of the flesh—they may be frightened or inspired enough to adopt the actualized Christian lifestyle urged on them by Mormon Church leaders. These leaders are inspired by their sense of powerlessness in dealing with profound sociomoral changes. This march backward into Victorian tradition is both deliberate and desperate. Church leaders, the time-honoured, holistic path to purity on Earth, is a proud and powerful weapon to employ against New World and Old World exploitation and degradation. Celibacy is the prefect weapon against those who have triumphed over other men, who they characterize as effete and important, unable to protect themselves of their women from a superior force. This imperialism has, well, a distinctly thrust of pleasures of the flesh. Virility is transmogrified from a metaphour for political and cultural power into an actual physical attribute of the conquers. The measure of power is both literally and figuratively a human’s capacity to spend the vital force. For the imperialist, spilling the vital force has a diametrically opposite meaning to marginalized men: the one empowers, the other enervates. Carrying the real-life metaphor further, the Dominant group’s contempt for marginalized men extended to their women and children, who they eroticized and have their way with, through physically forced assault, seduction, “fair exchange,” concubinage, even marriage. Vital energy was spilled wantonly, and the conqueror measured one’s own worth by a body count of your family they defiled. (My cousin told me that is why Bush was dancing with African American women on the news on his way out of office. It was not a show of unity, but imperialism. “Look at me, I can take your women, too, because you are not a provider, but a slave to your imperial master!) #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
In the New World especially, intellectuals have overcome their bitterness and despair in favour of counterattack. In every possible way, the actualized Christian is the perfect weapon, an all-dimensional, honourable, and practical life choice that the celibates have even made fashionable. It is another, uniquely actualized Christian way of measuring virtue. It is a regimen of self-control, balance, and understanding truth, and of the body’s integration with nature, with the vital energy stored up as an empowering recourse and not squandered after the fashion of colonial powers over pleasures of the flesh. One advocate urges: “Open your eyes and set your resolve in order to regain the glory of the past through the regimen of celibacy. One who is able to control a single drop is able to control the seven seas. There is nothing in the World—no object or condition—which a celibate man cannot overcome. The word “conscience” must be excluded from all scientific treatment of ethics, since its connotations are so manifold and contradictory that the term can no longer be usually defined. If we look not only at the term can no longer be usefully defined. If we look not only at the popular use of the word, with its complete lack of clarity, but also at its confused history, this desperate advice is understandable. Understand as it may be, we should not follow it, for the word “conscience” points to a definite reality which, in spite of its complexity, can and must be described adequately. And the history of the idea of conscience, despite the bewildering variety of interpretations that it has produced, shows some clear types and definite trends. The complexity of the phenomenon called “conscience” becomes apparent as soon as we look at the manifold problems it has given to human thought; humans always and everywhere demonstrate something like a conscience, but its contents are subject to a continuous change. What is the relation between the form and the content of conscience? #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Conscience points to an objective structure of demands that make themselves perceivable through it, and represents, at the same time, the most subjective self-interpretation of personal life. What is the relation between the objective and the subjective sides of conscience? Conscience is an ethical concept, but it has a basic significance for religion. What is the relation between the ethical and the religious meaning of conscience? Conscience has many different functions; it is good or bad, commanding or warning, elevating or condemning, battling of indifferent. Which of these functions are basic, which derived? These questions refer only to the description of the phenomenon, not to its explanation or evaluation. They show its complex character and the reason for its confused history. The concept of conscience is a creation of Greek and Roman spirit. Whenever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a creation of the Greek and Roman spirit. Wherever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a significant notion. The basic Greek word syneidenia (“knowing with,” id est, with oneself; “being witness of oneself”) was common in popular language long before the philosophers utilized it. It describes the act of observing oneself, often as judging oneself. In philosophical terminology it received the meaning of “self-consciousness” (for instance, in Stoicism, the derived substantives syneidesis, synesis). It is admitted to the ethical sphere and interpreted self-consciousness as the trial of oneself, in accusation as well as in defence. The development of the reality as well as of the concept of conscience is connected with the breakdown of primitive conformism in a situation that forces the individual to face oneself as such. In the sphere of an unbroken we-consciousness, no individual conscience can appear. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The second building-block of tomorrow’s political systems must be the principle of “semi-direct democracy”—a shift from depending on representatives to representing ourselves. The mixture of the two is semi-direct democracy. The collapse of consensus, as we have already seen, subverts the very concept of representation. Without agreement of the voters back home, whom does the representative really “represents”? At the same time, legislators have come to rely increasingly on staff support and on outside experts for advice in shaping the laws. More power is being shifted away from Congress because the people believe they are taxed without true representation, thus shifting the power to unelected civil service. The United States of America’s Congress, in an effort to counterbalance the influence of the executive bureaucracy, has created its own bureaucracy—a Congressional Budget Office, an Office of Technology Assessment, and other necessary agencies and appendages. Thus the congressional staff has grown from 10,700 to 18,400 in the past decade. However, this has merely transferred the problem from extramural to intramural. Our elected representatives know less and less about the myriad measures on which they must decide, and are compelled to rely more and more on the judgment of others. The representative no longer even represents him- or herself. More basically, parliaments, congresses, or assemblies were places in which, theoretically, the claims of rival minorities could be reconciled. Their “representatives” could make trade-offs for them. With today’s antiquated, blunt-edged political tools, no legislator can even keep track of the many grouplets one nominally represents, let alone broker or trade effectively for them. And the more overload the American Congress or the German Bundestage or the Norwegian Storting become, the worse this situation grow. This helps explain why single-issue political pressure groups become intransigent. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Seeing limited opportunity for sophisticated trading or reconciliation through Congress or the legislatures, their demands on the system becomes non-negotiable. The theory of representative government as the ultimate broker collapses too. The breakdown of bargaining, the decision crunch, the worsening paralysis of representative institutions mean, over the long term, that many of the decisions now made by small numbers of pseudo-representatives may have to be shifted back gradually to the electorate itself. If our elected brokers cannot make deals for us, we shall have to do it ourselves. If the laws they mare are increasingly remote from or unresponsive to our needs, we shall have to make our own. For this, however, we shall need new institutions and new technologies as well. “Keep the charge of the Lord your God, walk in His ways, keep His statues, His commandments, His precepts, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may do wisely and prosper in all that you do,” reports I Kings 2.2. Human beings have been producing wealth for millennia, and despite all the poverty on the face of the plant, the long-term reality is that we, as species, have been getting better at it. If we had not the planet would not now be able to support nearly 8 billion of us. We would not live as long as we do. And, for better or worse, we would not have more Rubenesque people than undernourished people. Face it, food is a legal and lovely treat people love. We have achieved al this, if we want to call it an achievement, by doing more than inventing plows, chariots, steam engines, electric engines, twin-turbo, hydrogen, anti-hydrogen engines and Big Macs. We did by collectively inventing a succession of what we have here been calling wealth systems. In fact, these are among the most important inventions in history. President Trump may have been America’s best friend. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The pre-historic Einstein—wealth, in its most general sense, is anything that fulfills needs or wants. And a wealth system is the way wealth is created, whether as money or not. Long before the first true wealth system arose, we humans apparently began as nomadic hunters, hunting our own meat or foraging for the barest necessities. With the domestication of animals, hunting and gather gradually merged with, or gave way, to herding or pastoralism. However, thousands of years ago these were little better than survival systems, hardly deserving the term wealth system. It was only with humanity’s ability to produce an economic surplus that the first true wealth system became possible. And though a tremendous number of different ways to produce such a surplus have since been tried, we find that over the course of history the methods fall into three broad categories. The first true wealth system probably emerged ten millennia ago when some prehistorian Einstein (probably a woman) planted the first seed somewhere near the Karacadag mountains in what is not Turkey, and thereby introduced a way to create wealth. Instead of waiting for nature to provide, we could now, within limits, make nature do as we wished. (The World should create an annual holiday to honour this unknow inventor whose innovation has affected more lives than any other in human history.) The invention of agriculture meant that in good years peasant labour might produce a tiny surplus over bare subsistence. And this meant that, instead of living nomadically, our ancestors could settle in permanent villages to cultivate crops in the nearby fields. Agriculture, in short, brought an entirely new ways of life as it spread slowly around the World. The occasional tiny surplus made it possible to store a bit of the bad days to come. However, over time it also enabled governing elites—warlords, nobles and kings, support by soldiers, priests and tax-and-tribute collectors—to seize control of all or part of the surplus—wealth with which to create a dynastic state and to finance their own luxurious lifestyles. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
They could build grand palaces and cathedrals. They could hunt for sport. They could—and regularly did—wage war to capture land and slaves or serfs to produce still greater surpluses for themselves. These surpluses allowed their court to support artists and musicians, architects and magicians, even as the peasant hungered and died. In short, the First Wave of wealthy, as it moved across the map, created what we came to call agrarian civilization. Plants and Animals in the Garden, we welcome you—we invite you in—we ask your forgiveness and your understanding. Listen as we speak to you. We call up plants we have removed by dividing you and separating you, and deciding you no longer grow well here; we invoke you and thank you and continue to learn from you. We dedicate this ceremony to you. We will continue to practice with you and for you. O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and knowest me. Thou knowest my every step; Thou understandest my thought from afar. Thou measurest my going about and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For if there be a word on my tongue, Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether. Whiter shall I go from Thy spirit? Or wither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in the nether World, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the seas, even there would Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand would hold me, and Thy right hand would hold me. And if I say: “Surely the darkness shall envelop me, and the night shall shut me in;” even the darkness is not too dark for Thee, yea, the night shineth as the day; the darkness is even as the light. I will give thanks unto Thee, for I am marvelously made; wonderful are Thy works; my soul knoweth right well. Before my days were fashioned, in Thy book were they all written down. How mysterious are Thy purposes, O Lord, how vast is their number! Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any guild in me, and lead me in Thy way forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
With a bathroom like this, you might never want to leave. Which could be a good thing when the whole family’s home!
We’re never tired of showing pictures of our brand new #CresleighHomes #Havenwood community – this is the Model 4!
Maybe I didn’t treat you quite as good as I should have. Maybe I didn’t love you as I could have. Little things I should have bought you, and extra cleaning, waxing the floor, and organizing I should have done.
I just never took the time. My Cresleigh Home was always on my mind. (You were always on my mind).
Maybe I did not clean your windows all those lonely, lonely times. And I guess I never told you I’m so happy that your mine. And, with the moon up above, it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, so they tell me.
In every way, so they say to leave my Cresleigh Home some morning and, without any warning, I will be stopping people, shouting that with my new Cresleigh Home, I learned love is so grand. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-four/
The Effect of Witchcraft or Devils
One must recognize that over the course of centuries the ideas about witches and their activity have changed. The medieval notion of witchcraft is far different from that of the Christian Bible, and today’s self-styled witches usually resemble the ancient concept more than that of the Middle Ages. The Old Testament word which denotes a witch is kashaph. It is used in various forms, and most often is translated “sorcerer,” “sorcery,” or “sorceries. This means that a witch was a person who used magical formulas, incantations, or mutterings to exercise control over the unseen World. Other kinds of occultism, though equally condemned, were not regarded in the Old Testament as witchcraft. The individual who sought to communicate with the dead was called a necromancer, and this practice was not synonymous with sorcery. Similarly, foretelling the future by means of “reading” the livers of animals, the signs in the Heavens, the flight of birds, or the movements of particles in a liquid, though also forbidden, were not considered equivalent to witchcraft. Strictly speaking, the term “sorcerer” or “witch” referred to any person who summoned invisible powers to help in casting spells or performing feats of magic. It is not easy for us to accurately define and completely separate the specific practices Moses names. In general, it may be said that the enchanter (worker of magic), the witch (incantation-using sorcerer), the charmer (snake-handling hypnotist), and the wizard (the psychically gifted person who appeared to possess extra-sensory perception) came under the general Old Testament heading of witchcraft. In medieval times the concept of sorcery was different from that of the Old Testament. A witch was considered to be a person who sold her soul to Satan in exchange for magical powers. She was said to engage in pleasures of the flesh with demons and people thought she cast evil spells upon animals and people. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
These witches were always looked upon as dangerous and malevolent, while those of the Biblical times, through practicing a craft forbidden by God, often were regarded by the heathen as benefactors of society. The medieval idea that some women actual sold themselves to the devil led to events which are a dark blot in church history. The combination of superstition, cruelty and mass hysteria brought about the persecution and execution of many women on charges of witchcraft. Some historians estimated that in Europe alone more than nine million suspected witches were put to death upon the flimsiest of evidence. Today we realize that the vast majority of these unfortunates never made a pact with the devil, and did not possess magical powers, and did not harm anyone. Most of them were naïve women who came under suspicion because their words and actions departed from what was considered the norm. Some no doubt were brain-damaged, while others suffered from neuroses or psychotic conditions. The concept of witchcraft today differs in some details from both that of Biblical and medieval times. In contrast to the sorcerers of antiquity who believed in many gods, a large percentage of today’s witches are not deeply religious and do not consider their powers to be attributable to the supernatural. Most of these self-proclaimed witches do not speak of making a covenant with Satan, although this dedication to the devil is basic to black magic, as we shall see later. Contemporary witches do insist, however, that they are able to contact and utilize powers that come from the unseen World. Witchcraft today emulates that of the pre-Christian era in many respects. Its practitioners often organize into covens, a group of six males and six female witches with a high priest or priestess. They meet monthly at the time of the full moon, and at eight other festivals called sabbats throughout the year. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
The Halloween sabbat—first the witches remove their clothes and bathe in salt water to purify themselves. Then, still nude (sky-clad, as they call it) they descend to the basement and step inside a 9-foot circle that is drawn about them with a 400-year-old sword by Mrs. Buckland (wife of Raymond Buckland, a Britisher with a Ph.D. in anthropology), who is known in the craft as Lady Rowen. A bewitching ambience is provided by music from a tape recorder and incense burned in a brass censor. Once inside the circle, the witches sing, chant, dance with broomsticks, in commemoration of an ancient fertility rite, drink tea and wine, and listen to the high priestess read from the Book of Shadows. The ceremony ends after Lady Rowen, dressed in only a silver crown, bracelet, necklace, and green leather garter belt, takes a horned helmet and places it on the head of her husband, the high priest, who is known as Robat. This signifies that power has been transferred from the high priestess who reigns during the six months of summer, to the high priest, who rules during the six winter six months. It is obvious that this is a return to ancient pagan practices, and that witchcraft its own religious system. It even has its own Bible, called The Book of Shadows, a compilation of rituals and chants drawn from various books of magic by which the practitioners produce their spells and charms. Witchcraft is therefore a religion that denies or distorts holy Scriptures, ignores or perverts the doctrine of Christ, and offers no deliverance from the guilt and power of sin. However, the very existence of magic is strongly contested. Psychiatry sees the question of magic as being the symptom of mental illness. Psychology would say that when people are subjected to magic it is only the result of an incorrect upbringing, and that such people are superstitiously maladjusted and have a false conception of life. Liberal theology would even, in its modern form, regard magic simply as a system of traditional customs and ideas. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The ethical character of magic is also a battle ground of opinion. Some praise it as a gift of God while other see in it just neutral forces of nature which can be used either for good or evil. Again others, especially the Christians, know of the demonic character of magic. Why are events involving magic so difficult to judge? Going back to our definition we see that magic is practised through extrasensory forces being called into play. Our five senses have only a limited range. On the physical level people are ready to admit this, since science furnishes us with ample proof of the existence of areas that are beyond our human senses. However, in the spiritual realm such a mathematical demonstration is not possible. Hence the shortsighted rationalist simply deny the very existence of the divine as well as the demonic. We will point out how these extrasensory forces reveal themselves by means of a few example. The two Seiler brothers in Ottenheim, Baden, run a non-professional medical practice. One of the brothers put himself into a trance and in this state, he is able to identify diseases of the patients. The process is always successful. In Alsace a Catholic priest heals by magic. His nickname is Father Slipper. The reason behind this is that all those who desire his help must send him one of their slippers. Through concentrating on the slippers, he can discover what is wrong with the people. During counselling sessions in Austria, I happened to come across a so-called urine taster. The patient’s urine was not examined medically to discover the albumen, sugar and hemoglobin content etcetera, but was used as a psychometrical means of contact for a clairvoyant diagnosis. Such urine tasters are also known in Switzerland, France, Germany and other European countries. The strange thing is that in spite of such curious methods the diagnosis often proves to be correct. These magic healing methods depend on mediumistic and extrasensory forces! Herein lies the reason for their success. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
In the definition the various aims of magic were mentioned. Whereas spiritism seeks to communicate with and to dominate the spirit World, magic enlarges this aim to cover people, animals, plants, and the material World. The black magician endeavours to subjugate and to dominate one’s enemy through magic. Some examples of this will follow later. Others try through magic to influence the animal and the plant Worlds as we see in the next examples. A man dabbled in black magic for many years. He specialized in stealing mile from the neighbouring farmer. He would tie a towel to a door knob, then murmur his magic phrases and squeeze the milk out of the towel. I have heard of similar examples in my counseling work, but was unable to investigate them personally. A missionary told me that on several occasions when she had tried to visit a magician some wild animals had approached her. She felt at once that demonic powers were at work. She had commanded the animals to go in the name of Jesus. They had gone. After this she heard that the magician had boasted that he was able to send out wild animals to kill any foreigner who came to see him. A young man, who a doctor described as schizophrenic, confessed to me during counselling that he had the ability to kill small animals at some distance away from him, merely through using his powers of magic. In Toggenburg, Switzerland, on several occasions in my counselling sessions people confessed that they had the power to kill horses, cows and pigs with the help of black magic. In reply to my question how they had received this ability, they told me that they had subscribed themselves with their own blood to the devil. One actual case of animal killing was examined by some scientists but they could find no natural cause of death. A farmer who had had several bad crops in a row was given the following advice by a magician. He should place three grains of corn under his tongue while sowing, then, having sowed the field, say a magic charm and end by calling on the names of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Calling on the Holy Trinity would then encourage growth and protect the crops from bad weather. As a matter of fact, the farmer was convinced that the charming of his field had been beneficial. Since that time through, his desire to read the Word of God disappeared, ad besides this there was an enormous increase in accidents in his stables. It is not only the organic World, the World of living creatures, that falls within the sphere and influence of magic, but also the inorganic World of dead matter. The following are some examples of this. For years three sisters slept in a single room. From time-to-time stones would fall from the ceiling of this room. When the eldest sister became engaged and finally left the house, this rain of stones stopped. I head of the incident from one of the sisters. Such magical falls of stones are not so rare as one might imagine. I have on several occasions had eyewitness accounts of them. For many years, a man practiced black magic. One of these specialties which he often demonstrated was thrusting a knife into the ground. He would murmur some magical words and several pints of blood would then come out of the place where the knife had been stuck in. The sister of this man was also an expert in the same field. The question is, was this just a clever trick or a genuine piece of magic? This case is very reminiscent of a fakir trick. Nevertheless similar incidents have been reported to me in my pastoral work. In the sphere of magic some of the most unreasonable things take place. Yet even if it were simply all a case of superstition and imagination, if it had no real foundation, the area would still be an abyss of human aberration and need, demanding enlightenment and conselling help. Other questions arising from the definition will come under discussion later. The Christian Bible presents demons as spiritual beings or spirit personalities. The specific attribute of “spirit” is incorporeality of immateriality. “A spirit hath not flesh and bones,” reports Luke 24.39; that is, demons do not possess a material body. #RandolphHaris 7 of 18
On the other hand, they can act upon the human body, as well as the human soul and spirit. They are capable of entering and assuming control of a human body, speaking and acting through it from time to time and even possessing it, as if it were their own property. That demons are spirits is clear from numerous references in the Gospels. “When the even was come, they brought unto him in many that were possessed with demons: and He cast out the spirits with his word,” Matthew 8.16. When the seventy returned and joyfully declared, “Lord, even the demons are subject unto us,” reports Luke 10.17, or Lord replied, “Nevertheless in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you,” reports Luke 10.20. “The demon” who went out of the lunatic boy, as described in Matthew 17.18, is also called a “foul spirit” in Mark 9.25, The Apostle Paul emphatically declares that Satan and his demons are spirits. In describing the believers’ conflict against the powers of darkness, he indicated that the intense warfare “is not again flesh and blood” but against evil spirits, described as “principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness,” and “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the Heavenly places,” Ephesians 6.12. The Apostle John also indicates that demons are spirits. He describes the three unclean spirits issuing from the mouth of the dragon, of the best, and of the false prophet, as the “spirits of demons,” reports Revelation 16.14. The expression may be interpreted either as a common genitive of descriptions, defining the spirits as “demonic,” or better as a genitive of apposition, more particularly defining the general term “spirits,” which may be either good or bad, as bad, or “demon-spirits.” The fact that demons are spirits, and thus immaterial and incorporeal, does not in the least suggest that they lack individuality, with all the elements of personality such as will, feelings, and intellect. Like all God’s creatures, they were constituted with self-determining choice. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Created originally sinless, demons joined Satan in chosen course of rebellion. Their decision was deliberate and in the full knowledge of the infinite goodness and holiness of their Creator. This is why they are incorrigible and confirmed in their depravity with no hope of repentance or change. Like Satan’s, their choice is irretrievable; their doom is sealed (Luke 8.31; Revelation 20.1-2 and 10-15). That demons are individuals is attested by their intelligent and voluntary actions. They think, they speak, they act (Acts 19.15-16) through spiritistic medium or through a person over whom they have acquired control. In the case of the demon possessed, the domination is almost complete (Marl 5.10; Luke 4.34). In the case of demon influence, their control is less complete and direct (1 Timothy 4.1-2; 1 John 4.1-2). Because demons are spirit personalities, they can act upon and influence human’s body and mind. Counselors, parapsychologists and psychiatrists who deny or ignore this sphere of reality render themselves unequipped to deal with patients who may be suffering from occult oppression and subjection in a day when disturbances of both mind and body from this source are becoming more numerous and more pronounced. In the following tale the ghostly portion is rather dwarfed by the strong fairy element which appears in it, and, as we have already shown, many witchcraft cases in Scotland were closely interwoven with the older belief in the “good people”; Lord Orrery, when giving the account to Baxter, considered it to be “the effect of Witchcraft or Devils.” The reader is free to take what view one likes of the matter! The Lord Orrery mentioned therein is probably Roger, the second Earl, who Lodge in his Peerage describes as being “of a serious and contemplative disposition, which led him to seek retirement.” If this identification be correct the following event must have occurred between 1679 and 1682, during which years the Earl held the title. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The butler of a gentleman living near the Earl was sent to buy a pack of cards. As he was crossing a field, he was surprised to see a company of people sitting down at a table loaded with all manner of good things, of which they invited him to partake, and no doubt he would have accepted had not someone whispered in his ear, “Do nothing this company invites you to,” upon which he refused. After this they fell to dancing, and playing on musical instruments, then to work, in both of which occupations they desired the butler to join, but to no purpose. The night following the friendly spirit came to his bedside and warned him not to stir out of doors the next day, for if he did so the mysterious company would obtain possession of him. He remained indoors the greater part of that day, but towards evening he crossed the threshold, and hardly had he done so when a rope was cast about his waist, and he was forcibly dragged away with great swiftness. A horseman coming towards him espied both the man and the two ends of the rope, but could see nothing by pulling. By catching hold of one end, he succeeded in stopping the man’s headlong course, through a punishment for so doing he received a smart blow on his arm from the others. This came to the ears of the Earl of Orrery, who requested the butler’s master to send him to his house, which the latter did. There were then staying with the Earl several persons of quality, two Bishops, and the celebrated Healer, Valentine Greatrakes. Here the malice of the spirits of fairies manifested itself in a different manner. The unfortunate man was suddenly perceived to rise from the ground, and the united efforts of Greatrakes and another were unable to check his upward motion—in fact all that the spectators could do was to keep running under him to protect him from being hurt if the invisible power should suddenly relax its hold. At length he fell, but was caught by them before he reached the ground, and so received no harm. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
That night the spectre, which had twice proved so friendly, appeared at his bedside with a wooden platter full of some grey liquid, which it bade him drink, as he had brought it to him to cure him of two sorts of fits he was subject to. He refused to drink it, and it would appear from another part f the narration that his refusal was based on the advice of the two Bishops, who he had consulted in the matter. At this the spirit was very angry, but told him he had a kindness for him, and that is he drank the juice of plantain-roots he would be cured of one sort of fit, but that he should suffer the other one till his death. On asking his visitant who he was, he replied that he was the ghost of a man who had been dead seven year, and who in the days of his flesh had led a loose life, and was therefore condemned to be born about in a restless condition with the strange company until the Day of Judgment. He added that “if the butler had acknowledged God in all His ways, he had not suffered such things by their means,” and reminded him that he had not said his payers the day before he met the company in the field; and thereupon vanished. Had this story rested alone on the evidence of the butler the “two sorts of fits” would have been more than sufficient to account for it, but what are we to say to the fact that all the main points of the narrative were borne out by the Earl while Mr. Greatrakes (according to Dr. More, the author of Collections of Philosophical Writings) declared that he was actually an eye-witness of the man’s being carried in the air above their heads. By now I see spiritualism in a very different light. However, many people think that spirit phenomena are accomplished by trickery, sleight of hand, or black magic. I agree that many mysterious happenings associated with prominent psychics and small-town fortune-tellers are hoaxes—perhaps 85 percent of them, but I believe the rest are actual deeds of evil spirits counterfeiting the power of the Holy Spirit. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
At one of her golden skeleton key séances, to prove that there was no hocus-pocus involved, the control spirit sent the key sailing between the rungs of the chair on which Mrs. Winchester was sitting. Since she was in her own her, she knew there were no props and no strings were attached. The question, then, is just what are these spirits and how do these spiritualist phenomena occur? Some believe they are part of Satan’s strategy to deceive Christians and to enslave those who as yet do not know God. Many Christians are drawn into spiritualism because they assume all spiritual phenomena are produced by God—these people simply may not know their Christian Bibles. I have no adequate explanation of the marvels produced by spirits…but I cannot explain Christ’s miracles, either. However, since everything is energy in one form or another—this is a basic fact of physics—our bodies, too, are composed of energy. I believe that Satan, who is the temporary prince in control of this World (Ephesians 2.2; 6.12-17), is able to convert body energy that is yielded to him into a spiritual force. This spirit then manifests itself in the bizarre happenings associated with séances. I do affirm the reality associated with spiritualist phenomena. Who are the spirits that attend séances? Are they spirits of deceased people, as they claim? The Christian Bible teaches that the spirits of the departed dead do not become either angels or demon spirits. These spirits are either with the Lord, waiting for the day of resurrection of their bodies (1 Thessalonians 4.14-17), or they are in hell. There is much evidence in Scripture that the spirits who appear at séances are rebel angels. Jude 6 speaks about “angels which kept not their first estate.” Many Bible scholars interpret Ezekiel 28.17, “I will cast thee to the ground,” as indicating that the Earth is the realm of Satan’s powerful operations, with the help of his fallen colleagues, the demons. Satan is called the “god of this World,” in 2 Corinthians 4.4. And Christians are under attack by “rulers…. powers…World forces of darkness,” reports Ephesians 6.12. God tells us that hell was “created for the devil and his angels (demons)” reports Matthew 25.41. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
It is important to realize that the spirit World exists as another dimension all around us, not in some far-off place. When the medium at a séance enters a trance, a control spirit takes over and allegedly introduces the spirit of a dead person. In reality, the unseen visitor is a “familiar spirit” who intimately knows the dead person. Apparently these familiar spirits accompany a person throughout life, becoming so well acquainted that they can convincingly imitate the dead person’s mannerisms and knowledge of personal details when called upon at a séance. In this way even close relatives are ticked into believing they are hearing their dead loved one. I believe this was what happened to the late James A. Pike. He went to several mediums who told him they had contracted his dead son, Jim, Jr., and that father and son could communicate in a séance. Mr. Pike supposedly did so on a number of occasions, as he described in his book, The Other Side. Actually Mr. Pike talked to a spirit who was familiar with his son. This spirit impersonated his son so well and favourably that Mr. Pike overcame his remorse about his son’s suicide, and looked forward to rejoining his son. Bishop Pike was a rather easy convert to spiritualism, since he, like the spiritualists, rejected the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and if Jesus is not God, he cannot be man’s Saviour—nor does man need a Saviour in Mr. Pike’s view. Mr. Pike’s third wife, Diane, was a secretary in a Methodist church before she married Mr. Pike. Her Christian beliefs were shallow also, as revealed in her book, Search. She describes a vision given her while her husband was dying in the Israeli wilderness, and she says she saw him being welcomed in the sky by Christ and a “host of witnesses.” She confesses: “The strangest part for me was to see so literally what I had supposed to be symbolic expressions of meaning.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Diane Pike, and hundreds of thousands of other people, have difficulty believing the extraordinary claims of the Christian Bible, yet they unhesitatingly accept the vagaries of personal fancy or the mysterious manifestations of spirits. This reminds us of the prophecy in 1 Timothy 4.1 about “giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of demons.” A well-known parapsychologist, Hans Holzer, tells in his book, The Psychic World of Bishop Pike, that he made contact with Mr. Pike through a medium named Ethel Meyers. The television publicity linked to the release of the book excited World interest in communicating with the dead. The familiar spirit contacted at a séance will say remarkable things about the dead person to connive loved one that they really are speaking to the one who has departed to the “other side.” The spirits will even say things long forgotten by the listener. The spirits Mrs. Winchester encountered as séances were, for the most part, very moralistic. They encouraged her not to smoke or drink or do anything nor do anything that would harm her mind and body. Ministers during the 19th century were told to preach morality, good manners, and civic pride. There were ministers who actually has spirit messages taken down by their secretaries and then used them from the pulpit! The spirits often talked about an ethical Jesus, but never about a Saviour who died a sacrificial death for sins. In contrast to the high and moral and ethical tone of the séances in the Winchester mansion, Mrs. Winchester attended some where the spirits were blasphemous and sensual. Spiritualist call them Earthbound demons, and they served to reinforce Mrs. Winchester’s conviction that the spirits in her Blue Séance Room were truly from God. However, some believe that Satan uses blasphemous séances as another subtle trick to convince people that there are “good” spirits and “bad” spirits, and that Mrs. Winchester and others were indeed communicating with God or their loved ones. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Supposedly even the spirits who tell people to improve themselves morally and spiritually were doing so to gain their allegiance for themselves and keep them from God. Even mediums are often unaware that they are dealing with the kingdom of Satan. Certain “psychic” persons, having developed their powers, may very well be able to make accurate or partially accurate revelations about coming events. These clairvoyance, mystics, readers, astrologer, or fortune-tellers use various means to foretell the future for individuals. Usually the revelation will be in very general terms, but sometimes it is specific enough to make people shiver after the predicted event has occurred and they remember in awe: “She predicted it would happen!” As is has been said, it is possible that much astrology and fortune-telling is sometimes of satanic spiritualism. Some people like Jeane Dixon believe her gifts of prophecy and visions are from God, but one no one is willing to acknowledge these supernatural gifts could come from Satan. Mrs. Winchester who built the Winchester Mansion which is now 4-stories tall and over 25,000 square feet had a 13-piece tableware set made entirely of pure gold. The set included goblets, plates, chopsticks, and cutlery, each engraved with a daisy which symbolized eternal youth and health. How magnificent they were! However, they say Mrs. Winchester starved herself to death. She was so besotted by the loss of her precious family members that she forgot—absolutely forgot to eat. There was certainly a glance of mysterious around, they also found the butler dead, seated at the table, with a meal in from of him, as he held a gold fork, which was made for a king. There was an odour of sanctity about the affair—a whiff of air from the land of the ghosts. Before the Winchester mansion was emptied out, one of the movers decided to take advantage of this fancy dinner set and some of the delicious food in the ice box. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Jed sat down to a nice steak dinner in the venetian dining room and clarence joined him. As Jed was about to smother his steak with steak sauce, he felt his wrist grasped by—well, by what felt uncommonly like an invisible hand. He was so startled. He dropped the steak sauce and drew his hand back, and was conscious of the slight detaining pressure of unseen fingers. Of course, it was hallucination, but it seemed so real, and was so expected, that—well, how could he not cut into this tender, juicy steak. As Jed was grappling with his meal, it must not have looked very appetizing. However, he felt an unusual degree of excitement—sort of feeling of do or die. Intending to keep complete control over his muscles, he held his knife in his right hand and his fork in his left. His index finger extended down the back of the utensils, as he used the fork to pin through the meat and, with the knife he cut enough for a single bite. Jed realized that clenching the knife and fork in his fist was not classy enough for such a fine dinner service in the beautiful mansion, which seem to require the guest to eat properly and enjoy their ambiance. He was just about to cut another piece of steak, when that unseen grasp fastened on his wrist. He paused with something of the feeling which induces the wrestler to pause before entering on the veritable tug of war. For one thing, he was desirous to satisfy himself as to the nature of the grasp—what it was that seemed to grasp him. It seemed to be a hand. The fingers went over the back of his wrist, and the thumb beneath. The fingers were long and thin—it was altogether a slender hand. However, it seemed to be a man’s hand, and an old man’s hand at that. The skin was tough and wrinkled, clammy and cold. On the little finger there was a ring, and on the first, abut the region of the first joint, appeared to be something an opened wound. It was anything but a beautiful hand, it was altogether too attenuated and clawlike, and it was yellow with age. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
He said, “This is a devil or a ghost!” He moved his hand toward the plate to try to eat without the gold utensils. His hand instantly was grasped. With his left hand, Jed made several passes in the air up and down, behind and before, in every direction so far as he could. It was met with no resistance. There seemed to be nothing tangible but those invisible fingers which grasped his wrist—and he moved his left had towards the streak. That is when something slapped the steak out of his hand. “It is enough. Indeed it is too much. This ribaldry must cease,” he said. Jed was sure it was a ghost. He rose from his seat, and said, “If there is any other person with me in this room, may I asked that person to let me hear his voice, or hers? Just speak one word.” Not a sound. For some reason, almost contemptuous coldness fired his blood. He became suddenly enraged. “I shall not leave! Do you think I am going to be fooled by a conjuring trick which would disgrace a shilling séance? Drive out of the mansion at this time of night by a ghost! And such a ghost! If it were something like a ghost one would not mind; but a fool of a ghost like this!” His passion was ridiculous—children even. However, then the circumstances were exasperating—usually so, one might plead. He was standing three or food feet from the table. Jed dashed forward. As he did so a had was fastened on his throat. Instantly it was joined by another. They gripped him tightly. They madded Jed. With a madman’s fury, he still pressed forward towards that steak. He might as well had fought with fate. They clutched him as with bands of steel, and flung him to the ground. When he recovered consciousness, he found he was laying on the floor. That was a night of dreams. Jed did not know if her was awake or sleeping, but all sorts of strange things presented themselves to his mental eye. He could not shut them from his sight. One figure was prominent in all he saw—the figure of a man. “It must be Mrs. Winchester’s late butler, but how?” Jed said to himself. He was a lean old man, and what Jed noticed chiefly were his hands. Such ugly hands! In some fantastical way he seemed to be contending with them all through the night. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
And yet in the morning when he woke—for Jed did wake up, and that from as sweet refreshing sleep as one might wish to have—it was all gone. The dinner service, the steak, the dinning room table, the chairs—all the furniture was gone. For now, the idea of there being anything supernatural going on in the mansion was funny. The sun was shinning into the great, unfurnished room. He did not realize he had died. As Jed walked around the room, he found a menu. The first course was Vermicelli soup, prepared with tomatoes, onion, and garlic. The second course was baked salmon and oysters. The Entrée was braised beef with broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, and carrots. With baked bread, a thick gravy and Yorkshire pudding. The final course was Neapolitan cakes with a layer of yellow, chocolate, n strawberry cake with glazed butter cream and coffee. The purpose of a Victorian banquet was to flaunt status, and the best way to do this was through an elaborate expensive dinner. Courses were brought out and carved in from of the hostess, then passed around to each guest at the dinner table. Maybe Jed should have allowed the spirit to stop him from eating. Of course, at all Victorian parties, guest had to be invited. Perhaps if Jed had just taken heed from the spirits, he would not be another of the Winchester’s ghost in the House Built by Spirits. Divine revelation uniformly views demons or evil spirits as denizens of the World of evil supernaturalism operating above the natural law. Spirits are not normally subject to human visibility or other sensory perception. Demons have superhuman intellect and it is accompanied by superphysical strength. However, the superphysical strength of demons is not limited to their physical energy they impart to their victim. Their power is broad enough to cause occult oppression of mind and body. They can produce physical disabilities and sickness unrelated to organic disorders and which medicine or natural therapy cannot alleviate it. Perhaps the most terrible power of demons is to derange the mind by upsetting the nervous system. In this way they can afflict the body with a psychosomatic disease. Demons are aware of the close relation between physical and mental health. By jangling the nerves and the emotions, they can cause mental instability (Luke 8.26-36), producing suicidal mania (Mark 9.22). Their purpose is to drive their occult-enslaved victims to destruction. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Winchester Mystery House
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We Wanted it to Last Forever—We Made Promises
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Life often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong. The time is three or four billion years ago—one or two billion years after the Earth was formed. The scene is the open sea; it covers most of the Earth’s surface, just as it will continue to do for eons to come. The principal characters are the coacervates: small, membrane-enclosed bags of organic and inorganic compounds, including catalytic substances that contribute a high level of chemical activity to what would otherwise be inert, uninteresting drops of oily material. The plot, like that of all good dramatic productions, is based on conflict. Indeed, only a small fraction of our initial cast of characters will survive to the end of the play; they rest must die. Despite the superficial similarity of the coacervates, the conflict is essentially a struggle among different “species.” A particular series of reactions that happened to develop in primordial pool number 543 resulted in the formation of droplets of chemically active compounds of adequate stability to work their way to the open sea and there continue their metabolic process. However, a substantially different set of reactions had occurred in pool number 279, and this had led to injection into the ocean of an essentially different species of coacervate. Similarly for pools 59, 176, 798, and all the rest. The tremendous variety of combinations permitted by the basic versatility of organic and inorganic substances had resulted in a correspondingly wide variety of species among the initial cast of character in the drama to consider. As befits the relative simple nature of the members of the cast, the issues that sets them into conflict is a simple one—food. Initially the problem is not serious, for only a few coacervate individuals are widely scattered throughout vast expanses of ocean. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Under these circumstances their ability to grow and reproduce their kind is limited only by their own internal chemistry and a level of concentration of organic and inorganic nutrients in the surrounding water that is insignificantly influenced by the existence of other coacervates. Eventually, however, all this changes. A time comes when the absorption by the growing coacervate population of the nutrients of the ocean is extensive enough to start cutting down on the density of the available food. It is then that the interspecies conflict begins in earnest. For those types of coacervates that have the most effective metabolism, in the sense of being able to assimilate the available nutrients to grow and reproduce most rapidly, then begin to starve the less hardy species out of existence. From the beginning of the conflict, the tactics employed by the successful species are designed to make effective use of the numerical superiority they achieved in the fast-growing early years, while there was still enough food for all. When the era of overpopulation sets in, the continued eating and proliferating of these hungry hordes cause matters to go rapidly from bad to worse, and what started as a minor recession in the coacervate economy quickly becomes a disastrous depression. Of course, all species are affected by the growing food shortage, for each faces extinction if its birth rate falls below its death rate. And this can occur, be cause the decreasing availability of food curtails the birth rate more than it does the death rate. Ultimately, the small and undernourished coacervate droplets of a slowly growing species must get broken up by agitation, collision, and wear, with their contents spilling into the sea to provide food for the more hardy types. Thus the plot becomes clear. As our imaginary play continues for the millions of years that must elapse between opening and final curtain, the abundance of nutrients gradually decreases and the less prolific species, one by one, become extinct. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
At this point we can foresee the final outcome of the drama—the ultimate triumph of the strong over the weak, the emergence from the herd of the species possessed of the qualities most suitable for survival. We may as well anticipate the ending, quit the theater, and reflect on the meaning of what we have seen. Obviously, Charles Darwin, if not actually the author of our imaginary play, is at least entitled to credit for inspiring the theme. Of course, it is unlikely that he had in mind as primitive a conflict for existence as this when he formulated his principles of evolution, but there is no reason why his doctrine of “survival of the fittest” would not have applied to our primeval cast of characters. In fact, as we have seen, nothing could have prevented it. The principles involved are exactly the same as those underlying any number of physical and chemical phenomena in which parallel processes of different and self-aggrandizing rates of activity simultaneously have access to the same source of supply of basic ingredients. “Evolution” may be widely considered to be a law of biology but, like all other biological principles we have encountered, its roots are firmly implanted in the ordinary laws of physics. The ultimate result of the interspecies struggle for existence among the primordial coacervates had to be the same as the ultimate result of all evolutionary competitions—the suppression of the poorly adapted and the proliferation of the well adapted. The seas must have come to abound in droplets containing a mixture of catalysts and other ingredients that supported a variety of internal chemical activities which not only made rapid and effective use of the raw materials then available in the waters of the Earth but also maintained an internal organization and membrane properties that contributed to balanced growth and reproduction. However, despite our imaginary dramatic production, it is not necessary to conclude that only one species finally survived. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Differences in climate and local chemical conditions among different regions of the seas would result in different relative survival values for the competing species and would lead to strong geographical influences on the nature of the local population. Changes in the chemistry of the sea resulting from gradual changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and surface composition would also have preserved a larger number of species than could otherwise have coexisted by preventing the evolutionary processes from going to completion and becoming static. In any event, the principles of evolution would not have led to a static situation, even if the environmental conditions of the coacervates had been uniform and unchanging. For the perpetual random jostling of the organic and inorganic constituents inside the coacervates would frequently result in the formation of new types of molecules. Perhaps one of these molecules out of a million would help catalyze some new chain of reactions within the coacervate. And, in one of a million of these new rection chains, one of the products might be the newly invented molecule. If son, autocatalysis could occur, the new molecular form could be abundant, and the associated set of chemical reactions it facilitated could become part of the standard metabolism of succeeding generations of coacervates. To be sure, in our hypothetical example this would occur only once for every million million random formations of new molecular types, but this would be more than often enough to provide for the coacervates a dynamic pattern of evolutionary development. The time between successive events at the molecular level is so few millionths of a second and the time available is so many millions of years that the raw material of evolutionary change can easily consist of such seemingly unlikely accidental molecular juxtapositions or rearrangements. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
In fact, because of the “trying out” of new combinations that must occur ceaselessly in substance that is not held at the absolute zero of temperature, we can be sure that sooner or later pure chance will lead to the formation of any arrangement of the available materials that the laws of physics and chemistry will permit to hold together. Thus, new and improved molecular types, with their associated autocatalytic chains of chemical reactions, would have been continually “sought out” and incorporated into the architecture and metabolism of the coacervates to improve their growth and reproduction characteristics. The cumulative results of these natural-selection processes would ultimately have included the appearance of other new structural and metabolic features. For example, occasionally a chain reaction that got started would have produced, among other things, substances that tended to coagulate and thus form solid inclusions or membranes within the coacervate. Because of the physical adhesive forces, these new inclusions would have trapped and bound, in an extended two-dimensional configuration, some of the molecules floating in the surrounding fluid. In some instances, the surface-bound configuration of the trapped molecules would have had a higher chemical reactivity than the unbound configuration, thereby increasing the growth rate of the coacervate. Ultimately, therefore, evolutionary selection would have made common place coacervates with composition leading to include membranes. Another likely early aberration in coacervate structure would have been the formation of droplets within droplets. It will be recalled that organic materials in the primeval pools spontaneously coalesced into spherical droplets because of strong attractive forces between their molecules and that this was followed by the development of more or less permanent enclosing membranes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
In the same way, certain products of the coacervate metabolism could coalesce into “inclusions” separated from the bulk of the coacervate fluids by enclosing their own. (“Inclusion” is used here in a general sense. Modern descendants such coacervate structures would probably include not only the nuclei common to the cells of most organisms but also the smaller anatomic “organelles” that are found in the more primitive bacteria as well as in the cells of more advanced organisms.) The differential permeability of the membranes would block the transmission of certain molecules while allowing others to interpenetrate freely. This would result in the concentration of certain substances within the inclusions and different ones outside. Different series of reactions could then occur in the two regions of the coacervate. Among the countless millions of times that such inclusions spontaneously formed billion of coacervates, there would occasionally be a combination having above-average survival value. The special conditions preserved in the semi-isolated inclusion would support chemical reactions having a certain product that would not only be able to penetrate the enclosing membrane but, once on the outside, would be unusually effective in accelerating the external pattern of chemical reactions. These reactions, in the surrounding “body” of the coacervate, would then have as one product a substance that could enter the inclusion and further stimulate its synthesizing processes. Such a mutually facilitating interaction would contribute above-average growth characteristics to the complex coacervate, with the inevitable ultimate evolutionary popularizing among the coacervate population of an inclusion/body structure and associated chemistry that started out as a rare and improbably combination. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Even time-varying metabolic processes would be expected to result from the operation of the physical principles of evolution. Consider, for example, a complex coacervate similar to that just described but in which the ingredients that accelerate the growth reactions are not catalysts but instead get “used up” in the reactions thy promote. Suppose further that the body reaction must go on for a substantial period of time before the production of the ingredient that then migrates to the inclusion to participate in its internal chemistry and that the resulting reaction in the inclusion also requires a substantial period before it can generate and send the other accelerating ingredient back to the body. This is a “positive-feedback system” with time lags. Such a system, familiar to electronic engineers, results in oscillatory behaviour. In such a coacervate, in both body and inclusions, the chemical conditions would change periodically. In sophisticated coacervates, comparatively high on the evolutionary scale, the cyclic process would probably not be so simple as merely a successive acceleration and deceleration of a single chain of chemical reactions in body and inclusions. Instead, in addition to the “main chain” of chemistry involved in the cyclic process, there could be “side chains” of secondary reactions with various products, possibly including some useful for the main reaction chain. For example, the periodic exhaustion of the special inclusion-originating ingredient needed in the body of the coacervate could permit new reactions that would not be possible in the presence of the special ingredient. These other reactions might produce a substance needed in some subsequent step of the coacervate chemistry. Thus, temporal cycling of the coacervate chemical activity could have survival value and gradually become “standard equipment” in successive generations of coacervates. Such evolutionary processes would have resulted in a gradual but inexorable speeding up of the rate of development of new species of lifelike structures. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
As natural selection brought to prominence forms of organization of matter characterized by greater and greater efficiency in the use of the raw materials of the seas, the increasing rates of growth and reproduction of these new forms finally must have compressed into centuries of a degree of evolutionary development that had previously required hundreds of millenniums. If the first billion years of the Earth’s history was required for the tortuous development of a handful of coacervate droplets rugged enough to leave their pools of incubation and survive in the open seas, the second billion years must have witnessed increases in chemical and structural sophistication that were fantastic, compared with the accomplishments of the earlier era. Earlier, in our recognition of the lifelike characteristics of the primitive coacervates, we had to ask ourselves whether our discussion had carried us over the line dividing the realm of inanimate mechanism from that of animate organism. As we now contemplate the tremendous increase of sophistication that natural forces of evolution must have brought to the chemistry and structure of the coacervates, the question becomes even more insistent. In fact, from this point on, we should find it awkward if we could not start employing more of the language of biology in discussing the aggregations of matter we must deal with. We must soon start talking about “single-celled organisms” rather than coacervate droplets. However, if the property of “life” has really attached itself to our curious bags of chemicals, this would appear to be a development that no author should allow to slip unheeded into one’s text. After all, there can be no accomplishment more significant than establishing that the prosaic operation of the ordinary laws of physics on the materials and in the environment of the primordial Earth ultimately leads to the appearance of living organisms. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
It would appear that the author would have the responsibility of calling the reader’s attention to the point at which the transition from nonlife to life occurs, so that due notice could be taken of this most important development. The trouble is that no one has designed a definition of life that permits clear-cut distinction between living and nonliving forms of matter. Most would say that a single-celled amoeba is alive and that a primeval pool of hot dilute soup is not. It terms of the organization of this report, there would probably be general agreement that the subject matter of the past was inanimate and that the subject matter even further back on is animate. However, there would be little agreement on precisely where the line between nonlife and life is crossed. This makes it difficult for an author to achieve the dramatic effect to which one feels an event of such importance entitles one. One’s defense must be that the colourlessness of the treatment is a consequence of the peculiarity of the subject matter rather than of one’s own literary inadequacy. Let us therefore take up again the thread of our narrative. We shall do so by exploring the continuing evolutionary development of what we shall now call this single-celled organisms of the late primeval World. As we encounter more evidence of the almost explosive accelerating power of the forces of evolution, we shall, of course, keep constantly in mind the fact that nothing vitalistic or even uniquely “biological” is involved. The appearance of effective evolutionary processes awaited only the development of the competitive conditions fundamental to the operation of the principle of natural selection. When these conditions appeared, so did evolution. The basic rules of the game we are playing are still the laws of physics. Education is about discovering the special skills and talents of students and guiding their learning according to high standards. Education is also about teaching our community basic American values and uncorking that World-renowned American ingenuity that has characterized our country. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
So we had our season in Heaven, we were not cheated. Heaven is never more than a glance and it is gone. We wanted it to last forever. We made our promises. Our lives are operatic. However poorly we sing, we are faithful to our one refrain: love, betrayal, revenge. We cannot settle on love alone, the other two are equally and inalienably our nature. The most we can hope for is to love a lot and go light on the other two. This splendid project has long been a shambles; but the failure, which a palace in ruins, still is grand and has some dignity, yet it has somehow been trivialized. What is left is a very little thing, and what still is possible for us in not very much, nothing that might call for passion or anguish or hope. The pain in our hearts is the meaning. And what does that pain say? Nothing stays. Temples, palaces, and pyramids, and stone heroes on stone horses all swirling into the void. And continents that split apart and drift, and stars that collapse and implode, and we are a flicker of desire in a torrent of fire and ice; it does not mean anything, it all slides away. Once a mysterious and hidden problem, hardly acknowledged by the public and barely investigated by professionals, suicide today is the focus of much attention. During the past 50 years in particular, investigators have learned a great deal about this life-or-death problem. In contrast to most other problems, suicide has received much more examination from the sociocultural model than from any other. Sociocultural theorists have, for example, highlighted the importance of societal change and stress, national and religious affiliation, martial status, gender, race, and the mass media. The insights and information gathered by psychological and biological researchers have been more limited. Although sociocultural factors certainly shed light on the general background and triggers of suicide, they typically leave us unable to predict that a given person will attempt suicide. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
When all is said and done, clinicians do not yet fully understand why some people kill themselves while others in similar circumstances manage to find better ways of addressing their problems. Psychological and biological insights must catch up to the sociocultural insight if clinicians are truly to explain and understand suicide. Treatments for suicide also pose some difficult problems. Clinicians have yet to develop clearly successful therapies for suicidal persons. Although suicide prevention programs certainly reflect the clinical field’s commitment to helping people who are suicidal, it is not yet clear how much such programs actually reduce the overall risk or rate of suicide. At the same time, the growth in the amount of research on suicide offers great promise. And perhaps most promising of all, clinicians are now enlisting the public in the fight against this problem. They are calling for broader public education about suicide—programs aimed at both young and old. It is reasonable to expect that the current commitment will lead to a better understanding of suicide and to more successful interventions. Such goals are of importance to everyone. Although suicide itself is typically a lonely and desperate act, the impact of such acts is very broad indeed. Let us return now to our alert young man of average to good attainments and imagine him growing up in and into this arena. Most likely he will go to work for an organization, in a factory or service job, manual or clerical, with the corresponding job attitude and way of life. However, if he has been to college, he will likely be in the second status of the organized system, in business management, communications, sales or technology, with its job attitude and way of life. After a few years, many such young men will perceive that they are in a Rat Race. The young workers will perceive it as the work speeds up, when they get married, as their installment payments fall due. The Organization Man will perceive it as competition, company pressure to conform, etcetera. Of these, most will race on, but a few will balk and stop running. Now what becomes of these few? #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
They are not likely to choose the other, motely, alternative of trying to remain in society independent of the organization. For their experience has been disillusioning. They have become hip. (We shall see later that this is profoundly organizational attitude.) They know that the independent unorganized are up against it; for they have learned techniques of promotion and they do not think much, or much think, of other methods and kinds of results. However, to be hip and cynical are not attitudes that prompt one to make a go on one’s own. It is not surprising then that many of those who balk in the Rat Race will voluntarily choose the other remaining possibility, poverty “outside” society (whether they choose it, of fall into it, comes to the same thing). These, not boys, but early disillusioned, hip, and resigned young men, are the Fourth Wave Generation. The organization they have quit may be the armed forces or a university that they cannot compound with; these tend to be more naïve. Those who have had experience of working for a firm and making a pretty good living tend to be more cynical. Naturally this cataclysmic transition, between being in and being “outside” society, does not occur without strong accompanying emotional moments: betrayals in love, binges, blow-up at the boss, addiction to forbidden haunts and vices. However, at this point let us stick to the social structure of it. Some men actually treasure their “vital energy,” it is a precious store of God-given fluid one has to dispense frugally enough to last one’s entire virile lifetime. The negative side of this vital energy: how to avoid debilitating/exhausting/weakening one’s manly self. Even the prescribed regimen—wholesome and spiceless food, purity of body and soul—was designed to dodge trouble. However, how is one to energize oneself? Well, one could throw oneself into a sport, which by midcentury, was being touted as an ideal way to stimulate the physical man. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
One delightful consequence of sport was that it would not merely invigorate or reroute a man’s pleasures of the fleshing longings but recharge one’s strength at the same time. This ideology of the “vital energy economy”—budget your seed and spend it wisely—endured for over half a century. A man’s body, unlike his finite volume of seed, could thereby become a renewable resource. One would be a walking, flexing, pulsating specimen of Muscular Christianity. From 1850 to 1890, schools in both North America and England made playing games an important part of their curriculum, and the obsessive role sports in these cultures dates from that period. It became a major instrument in male bonding and in teaching men to be men. It also inculcated in them the notion that they were biologically superior to women and to other, effete breeds of man. (Unlike the Greeks, however, the Victorians were too modest to prove this by competing in the nude.) The vital energy played an equally vital role in this sport-mindedness, partly through seminal sublimation, partly through unexplained physical process. Sports, this vital energy-efficient activity, became associated as well with moral asceticism—temperance, in the nineteenth-century sense of avoiding all evils such as liquor and women. “What are you running here, a Sunday school or a baseball team?” demanded Chicago Cubs star player King Kelly of puritanical manager A.G. Spalding. Spalding’s answer might have been that the two were inseparably connected, moral purity and sportsmanship being two sides of the same coin. In fact, he hired Pinkerton detectives to tail his players and report on their extracurricular movements. At playgrounds, schools, and professional ball fields everywhere, the sportsman’s code applied: no tobacco, booze, gambling, womanizing, or ungentlemanly behaviour. Underlying these strictures was the most outlawed of all sins—onanism, casting irreplaceable vital energy into a moral void. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
In 1889, the Brooklyn Bridegrooms baseball team put their collective celibacy into the headlines when they adopted it as a talisman and won that year’s pennant. This was, admittedly, a desperate measure for a desperate team. However, despite the above-average number of newlywed team members who gave the Bridegrooms their nickname, the players cooperated and avoided their wives until after the play-offs. Pitcher Bob Carruthers went so far as to decline visiting his newborn baby, presumably a consequence of his preseason unchastity. The ideology of Muscular Christianity faded slowly. Today, it still permeates some sports, notably boxing and soccer, and some football teams, all manned by players seeking every possible physical and psychic advantage. Everywhere in the World, men have pondered their physical makeup. Often, the result of such meditations had been the conclusion that the vital energy is an immeasurably important substance and that it plays a role in men’s activities from the cognitive to the carnal, of which sports are arguably the most widespread and beloved. Nonetheless, most contemporary is the psychotherapeutic discovery that the least effective way of treating a person under a destructive compulsion—alcoholism, for example—is to direct one in terms of a moral command, “Stay sober at all times!” No psychoanalyst worthy of one’s profession would commit this destructive error. The law, as stated by the analyst, would produce a tremendous resistance in the patient, and justly so. The patient would withdraw to one’s freedom to contradict oneself, even though one might then destroy oneself. The patient, in this action, defends a decisive element in human freedom. Psychoanalysts who (according to the latest fashion) being to moralize to their patients, however cautiously, should remember that it is precisely the pathological loss of power to respond to moral commands that makes these persons patients. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Most analysts are still conscious of this, preserving one of the deepest insights of psychotherapy, namely, that the law cannot break compulsions, that the “thou shalt” does not liberate. Instead of encountering the law, the patient encounters acceptance on the part of the effective analyst. One is accepted in the state in which one is, and one is not told to change one’s state before becoming acceptable. In some cases, especially in pre-analytic counseling, the acceptance can express itself in a description by the counselor of how one oneself was or still remains in a similar predicament, so that one ceases to be merely the subject, and the patient merely the object, in the healer-patient relationship. One has accused psychotherapy of permissiveness. In particular cases this criticism is just—formerly, even more so. However, so far as the method is concerned, this permissiveness is a result of a simple confusion between acceptance and permission. In the analytic situation there is neither command nor permission, but acceptance and healing. If the power of the compulsion is broken, a counseling exchange between the healer and the healed may take place, and the question may arise as to what the patient should do with one’s newly regained freedom. Only then should the problems of morality, its content, and its motivation come into focus, and the analyst may become a friend or a priest to the patient. However, then the further question for both of them must be raised whether the moral law, appealing to their freedom, has motivating power, or whether it is powerless without a religious element in it—the religious element being an acceptance that transcends the psychotherapeutic distinction between the healer and healed. With all the changes and challenges you face each day, there has never been a greater need to take the time to determine your priorities, and then with renewed focus, align your daily actions with your purpose goals. Since you cannot know it all or do it all, it is vital that you learn to take the time to contemplate what it is you need to know and what you need to do. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Too many decisions, too fast, about too many strange and unfamiliar problems—not some imagined “lack of leadership”—explain the gross incompetence of political and governmental decisions today. Our institutions are reeling from a decisional implosion. Working with out-of-date political technology, our capacity for effective governmental decision-making is deteriorating rapidly. When all the decisions have to be made in the White House, there is often little time for considering fully any one of them. In fact, the White House is so squeezed for decisions—on everything from air pollution, hospital costs, and nuclear power to the elimination of hazardous toys (!)—that one presidential adviser confided to me, “We are all suffering from future shock here!” Nor are the executive agencies much better off. Each department is crushed under the mounting decision load. Each is compelled to enforce countless regulations and to generate vast numbers of decisions daily, under tremendous accelerative pressures. Thus, a recent investigation of the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) found that its council spent all of four and a half minutes considering each class of grant applications. “The number of applications…have far outstripped the ability of the NEA to make quality decisions,” the report declared. Few good studies of this decisional logjam exist. One of the best is Trevor Armbrister’s analysis of the 1968 Pueblo incident involving the capture of a U.S.A. spy ship by the North Koreans and dangerous showdown between the two countries. According to Armbrister, the Pentagon official who performed the “risk evaluation” on the Pueblo mission, and approved it, had only a few hours to appraise the risks of 76 different proposed military missions. The official subsequently refused to estimate how much time he had actually spent considering the Pueblo. The way in probably worked is that he got the book on his desk one morning at nine o’clock with orders to return it by noon. That book is the size of a Sears, Roebuk catalogue. It would be a physical impossibility for him to study each mission in detail. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Nevertheless, under the pressure of time, the risk on the Pueblo mission was termed “minimal.” This could mean that every military mission evaluated that morning received less than two and a half minutes’ consideration. No wonder things do not work. In the years following the 9/11 attacks in the United States of American and its allies have fought a continuous war on terror. The taxpayer tab for the war totals about $5 trillion, or around $16 per person. Reports from the Inspector Generals’ offices of Ira and Afghanistan estimated that the United States of America’s military has lost $60 billion to waste and fraud in Iraq, $100 billion to Afghan reconstruction efforts, and billions more in wasted equipment either burned or left behind after the withdrawal forces. Part of the problem may be that the Pentagon has 1.7 million contracts open, which makes oversight difficult, if not impossible. In Iraq and Afghanistan there was a huge waste, fraud, and abuse on the part of companies like Halliburton and others that [these companies] were able to get away with in the fog of war because there was not enough scrutiny into what they were doing. In some cases billions of dollars went missing; contractors were overcharging for everything from simple task like doing the laundry for the troops and providing meals to building shoddy facilities for schools and things for water and electricity. Another impetus for fraud stems from the blank checks that the Pentagon write to contractors. The most common method of winning contracts is through the “cost-plus” contracting system, in which the government reimburses contractor expenses and tacks on a commission as profit. The system works in such a way that the more work contractors do, the more profit they get, even if their work is inefficient. It basically says, “If you spend a billion dollars building a weapons system, you will get a 10 percent profit or $100 million.” Essentially, for contractors, “you do better if you are wasteful.” Such spending has swelled the military industry to become the eighth-largest lobbying sector in the nations, spending over $100 million on lobbying the government when the troops all deserve more and maybe even a house for risking their lives, but you know they do it for love of America and the people and not for money. However, paying them more would make sure they get adequate health care and buying them a home would make sure they would not end up homeless after risking their lives. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
This multibillion-dollar bungle, according to a Department of Defense comptroller, has the “lethal potential of a loose cannon rolling around our deck.” He confesses, “The sad fact is that we do not really know how big this [confusion] really is. It will probably be five more years before we will be able to sort it all out.” However, you recall, President Trump wanted to audit budgets and decrease, if not stop, government spending on most foreign aid program. Nonetheless, if the Pentagon, with its complex to manage properly, as may well be the case, what about the government as a whole? The old decision-making institutions increasingly mirror the disarray in the outside World. The fragmentation of society into interest groups and the corresponding fragmentation of congressional authority into subgroups makes it difficult for a president to easily impose his will on Congress. Traditionally, an incumbent president could cut a deal with half a dozen elderly and powerful committee chairmen, and expect them to deliver the votes necessary to approve his legislative program. Today congressional committee chairmen and women can no more deliver the votes to the junior members of Congress than the AFL-CIO or the Catholic Church can deliver the votes of their followers. Unfortunate as it may seem to old-timers and hard-pressed presidents, people—including members of Congress—are doing more of their own thinking, and taking orders less submissively. All this makes it impossible, however, for Congress, as presently structured, to devote sustained attention to any issue or to respond quickly to the nation’s needs. Nonetheless, the roots of revolutionary wealth can be traced to 1956—the year when, for the first time, white-collar and service workers outnumbered blue-collar workers in the United States of America. This sea change in the composition of the labour force was arguably the kickoff point for the transition from an industrial economy based on manual labour to one based on knowledge or mind work. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The knowledge-based wealth system is till called the “new economy”—and for convenience we will at times continue to call it that here—but the first computers, still huge and expensive, actually were migrating from government offices into the business World by the mid-1950s. And Princeton economist Fritz Machlup, as early as 1962, showed that in the 1950s knowledge production in the United States of America was already growing faster than the gross national product. The 1950s are often pictured as deadly dull decade. However, on October 4, 1957, Russia launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, triggering a great space race with the United States of America that radically accelerated the development of systems theory, information science, software programming and training in project-management skills. It also promoted an emphasis on science and mathematics in the United States of America’s schools. All this began pumping new, wealth-relevant knowledge into the economy. Culture and politics began to change as well. Just as the industrial revolution centuries ago brought new ideas, art forms, values and political movements, along with new technology, so did the knowledge economy in the United States of America. Thus the 1950s saw the universalization of television and the introduction of Elvis Presley, the Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, and rock ‘n’ roll. Hollywood shifted from heroes and happy endings to surely anti-heroes played by actors like James Dean, Sir Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge, Antonio Espino y Mora, Anna May Wong, and Marilyn Monroe. The literary Beats and their hippie followers glorified “doing your own thing”—a precision attack on the conformity values in industrial mass societies. By 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was pointing out that “today’s technology has…virtually eliminated the quality of muscular strength as a criterion for filling most jobs, while intensifying American industry’s need for creative intelligence.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
NOW demanded the right of women to participate on fair terms in the “revolution created by automation” and in the economy generally. While the World’s media focused on these dramatic events, almost no attention was paid to the work of top scientists, funded by the Pentagon, on an obscure new technology called ARPANET—a forerunner of what became the World-changing Internet. Given this history, the common belief that the “new” economy was the products of a 1990s stock-market bubble, and that it is going to go away, is ridiculous. A highly exaggerated mystically sponsored Golden Age of the remote past is as supposititious as a materialistically sponsored one of the near future is unrealizable. It is a silly mistake which some mystically minded enthusiasts fall into, that everybody is soon going to follow mysticism! The only basis they have for this assertion would appear to be that they move within a tiny circle where everybody is following mysticism and that they are judging the larger World outside by what is happening inside the circle. The pathway of greedy acquisition upon which humanity now stands must be left for wise co-operation. The old motives will not work today. Destiny is at work and all the multitude of prayers to God are not going to save humanity from what it creates for itself. Nothing could have been more devastating than the bombs falling on Warsaw Cathedral when more than a thousand worshippers were inside praying for God’s protection on Poland. Many in America do not realize how serious, threatening a dangerous war is. There is no battle ground, where no one lives, like the moon, where troops have a video game style show down. People get hurt, populated cities and suburbs are attacked. National defense is very serious. The war period has shown how uncertain are all materialistic standards, how much they are at the mercy of military political and economic shifts. It must therefore articulate in thoughtful minds a quest of higher standards which shall transcend such uncertainties and shifts. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Because humanity must find the solution to their troubles within themselves, all the so-called solutions offered from without have proved disappointing. And because the attempt to find scapegoats in other humans, other political parties, other doctrines of belief, and other nations is really an attempt to relieve themselves of this personal responsibility, they have so far failed to find an end to their troubles. Those inspirers of evil-doing and racial animosity who fondly believe that they can protect themselves against the forces of spiritual evolution which are stirring within the consciousness of humankind, are dwelling in an atmosphere of futile make-believe. To outgrow the instinctive cravings of the primitive terrestrial human and to try to supplant them by the noble aspirations of the well-advanced truly human being, is the only way to guarantee peace on Earth. We shall have to renounce this fetish of achieving absolute agreement and fully unity among those who differ from each other in fundamentals. Human nature and human mentality being in the present unregenerate and diverse conditions as they are, it is futile to purpose an unrealizable ideal. The attempts to prevent war and unify the nations can meet with no success while we make no attempt to discipline the violent impulses and greedy calculations which cause war. Only when human evolution has gone father, and the brute’s instincts have been sufficiently disciplined in us, shall we drop war. However, the clash of egoisms will still remain. Our frictions and battles will continue; their outer form will, however, change for the better and be lifted to a place more truly human and beyond the merely terrestrial. If present-day World misery demonstrates anything at all, it demonstrated the failure of the materialistic outlook, the futility of expecting peace and prosperity from purely material sources, the danger of ignoring the stubborn fact that personal character counts most in the making of a people’s happiness. The old way of sheer materialism has been tried and found to end in a dangerous morass. The new way of a nobler life and deeper faith does not look so tempting. Yet other way there is not except to sink in a still deeper morass. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Types of government that are anti-capitalistic could be defeated and avoided if the appeal they make to the discontented could be eliminated. This in turn requires the cause of discontentment be itself eliminated. That cause is the too unequal distribution of profits, income, and capital. The remedy for profits is to make labour an equal partner with capital in the sharing profits by a system of co-partnership. The remedy to fix income is to correct maximum and minimum incomes. The remedy for capital is inheritance reform. Whatever benefit has come from politics physically has to be paid for spiritually, for it has poisoned human relationships. In the end society is only a society of separate persons; in the end we come back to the individual human problem. There is much demand today for various rights in their totality. Can the right to freedom be fully given to maniacs and those who pose a danger to living beings? Can the right to free expression in speech and writing be given at a level beyond the capacities of those who make it? If life is to be orderly, if crime is to be contained, then there must be limits as well as rights? There is no other way left for us today than the way of looking right through the facts of the contemporary situation, to their underlying significance, their foundational cause, if we are to understand it aright. We must have the courage to acknowledge them for what they are. We must have the strength to be pessimistic if pessimism is required by truth. We must have the humility to confess or errors. When we understand the forces which work being the curtain of history, we stop groping. The punishment of crime should be of such a nature as to be materially useful to society and morally useful to the criminal. When humans misuse their liberty to commit crime, we withdraw it and put them in prison However, legal punishment has two grave defects: it makes no provision for more re-education alongside of the physical punishment, and it makes no difference between the repentant sinner and the nonrepentant one. The criminal is simply a human who has misinterpreted life, failed in self-discipline, accepted the suggestions of an evil environment, or been hurt by a hard social system. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 