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I’m a Pharmacist, I Know What I am Doing
Recreational drug use is often portrayed in popular culture and music. To further highlight this illustration, probably the best known musical cliché of recent decades was “sex, drugs, and rock’ n’ roll,” while the Billbooard charts have been filled with songs involving drugs, such as Eric Clapton’s Cocaine or the Rolling Stones’ Sister Morphine and Mother’s Little Helper. Popular culture portrays not just recreational drug use but tragedy associated with drugs, for example, the deaths of guitarist Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison and many others. Of course, not all common-use drugs are understood as dangerous or associated with tragedy. We found clear evidence of two very different modes of entry among the respondents, namely recreational abusers and therapeutic self-medicators. However, it is important to note tht these were not mutually exclusive categories of offenders. In other words, these two categories were not completely dichotomous. As is usually the case, real life seldom fits cleanly into nice, neat categories. In fact, we were able to identify a number of cognitive and behavioural themes that were common to almost all of the drug-using pharmacists interviewed. These themes were expressed by nearly all of the drug-abusing pharmacists that we interviewed, regardless of how the individual initially began their illicit drug abuse career. The existence of these common themes suggest that pharmacy-specific occupational contingencies play a center role in the onset and progression of illicit use of prescription medicines. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Intuitively, it should not be surprising that pharmacists would steal prescription medicines as a way of treating their own physical ailments. After all, they have been exposed to years of pharmacy training that emphasized the beneficial, therapeutic potential of these medicines. Each pharmacist has dispensed the medicines to hundreds of patients and then watched the drugs usually produce the predicted beneficial results. They have all read the literature and drug inserts detailing the chemical composition of drugs and studied the often dramatic curative effects of the chemical substances. Pharmacists, more so than any other member of society, are keenly aware of how and why drugs work. There was strong evidence to suggest that both the therapeutic self-medicators and the recreational abusers actively used the years of pharmacological knowledge that they had acquired. In their eyes, it made perfect sense that they should put their pharmacy knowledge to work on themselves. This application of knowledge can be seen in the comments of a 40-year-old female self-medicator: “So, in 1986 I was sent to the psychologist. That was when I was forced to recognize that I had an alcohol problem. And I recognized that I had to do something. And in my brilliant analysis, I made a decision that since alcohol was a central nervous system depressant, the solution for me was to use a central nervous system stimulant. That would solve my alcohol problem. So I chose the best stimulant that I had access to, and that was [pharmaceutical grade] cocaine. I started using cocaine in 1986. I never thought that it would progress. I never thought it was going to get worse. I thought, ‘I’m just going to use it occasionally.’” #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Similar trends were observed among the recreational abuser group, only here, the applied use of drugs was based upon more recreational motives. Almost all of the therapeutic self-medicators and recreational abusers described how they became masters of quickly diagnosing their own ailments or emotional needs and then identifying the appropriate pharmacological agent that would remedy the problem. Moreover, as professionals, they were confident that they would be able to self-regulate their drug intake so as to never become addicted. All of the respondents drew upon their social status as pharmacists to convince themselves that their drug use would not progress into dependency. They recall being adamant in their view that personally they were immune from such problems, believing that only stupid, naïve people became addicted to drugs. As a 40-year-old female self-medicator put it, “I’m a pharmacist, I know what I am doing.” A 39-year-old male self-medicator went so far as to say: “I mean, we know more [about the effect of drugs] than doctors. We have all the package inserts. We have the knowledge. We know a lot about the drugs, so what’s the big deal?” Elsewhere we refer to this denial mechanism as a “paradox of familiarity,” because familiarity can breed consent, not contempt toward prescription drug use. Members of both categories of pharmacists claimed that they had never been warned about the dangers of drugs, insisting instead that their training had only stressed the beneficial side of prescription medication. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
To further highlight this illustration, a 48-year-old male misuser stated: “I never had anybody come right out and tell me that [prescription drug abuse] was probably unethical and illegal because they assumed that we knew that. But nobody ever said this is something that is not done.” Let without guidance on the issues, some pharmacists assumed that self-medication was acceptable behaviour. To this end, a 39-year-old female self-medicator said: “It’s [self-medication] just part of it [the pharmacy job]. It’s just accepted because we know so much. I’m sure it’s the same way when the doctors do it. It wasn’t a big stretch to start going “You know, I got a headache here, maybe I should try one of these Percocets [narcotic analgesic]?” Many pharmacists spoke about their prescription drug theft/use as if it were an entitlement that went along with being a pharmacist. Much like a butcher always has fresh meat at home or a car dealer always drives a state-of-the-art automobile, pharmacists will always have the best drugs. This theme is illustrated in an exchange that occurred between the interviewer and a45-year-old-male pharmacist: “Why take plain Aspirin or plain Tylenol when you’ve got this [Percocet-narcotic analgesic]? It works better….[so] you don’t even have to struggle with it. I really believed that I had license to do that…as a pharmacist. I mean with all that stuff sitting there, you know. Oh, my back was just killing me during that period of time and this narcotic pain reliever is sitting right there. I thought, ‘why should [I] suffer through back pain when I have this bottle of narcotics sitting here?” #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The above-mentioned themes involve cognitive dimensions of the pharmacists’ drug abuse in that they speak to common motivational and justification themes that were present in all of the interview. Perhaps more important is the fact that there was a common behavioural characteristic shared by all 50 pharmacists. In ever case, occasional prescription drug abuse eventually gave way to an advanced addictive state that was marked by an enormous intake of drugs, unmistakable habituation, and the constant threat of physical withdrawal. Members of the recreational abuser and therapeutic self-medicator groups alike routinely reported daily use levels exceeding 50-100 times the recommended daily dosage. One pharmacist reported that his drug use regimen progressed to 150 Percocets [strong narcotic analgesic] per day. Another individual reported injecting up to 200 mg of Morphine each day. Still another respondent described a daily use pattern that, among other things, included 5g of cocaine. Invariably, these advanced levels of drug use led to clear signs of habituation and the constant threat of physical withdrawal. At this point, the individual recalls growing increasingly desperate. Consider the following quote from a 44-year-ol male pharmacist who was in charge of ordering the narcotics at the independent retail pharmacy where he worked: “I was ordering excessive quantities and chasing down tracks. That’s what I used to do. I was really reaching my bottom. I would chase these delivery trucks down in the morning because I didn’t come to my store until mid-afternoon. I was in withdrawal in the morning and I was without drugs, so I had to have it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
“I was just going nuts. Many mornings I had gone to work sweating. It would be 30 degrees (Fahrenheit), it would be January, and the clerk would say, ‘you look sick,’ and I would say, ‘It’s the flu.’ So I would pay the delivery guys extra money to deliver my drugs first or I would chase the delivery trucks down in the morning. I knew the trucks delivered at 6 in the morning, they came by my area, and I would get up early and chase the trucks down the highway. I would go in excess of 100 miles an hour trying to catch up with this truck and flag it down.” The advanced stages of drug addiction invariably produced traumatic physical psychological outcomes. Eventually, “out-of-control” drug use patterns along with the realization of chemical dependency left the pharmacists in a problematic mental state. It was at this point that al of the pharmacists recalled coming to grips with their addiction. This personal realization was accompanied by a shift in the way they thought about their drug use. They no longer denied that situation by drawing upon recreational or therapeutic explanations. Instead, they finally admitted the dire nature of their situation and became more and more reclusive. In short, all of the respondents grew to realize that they had a drug problem, turning then to fear and ignorance to foster the final weeks or months of their drug addiction. Two identifiable criminal career trajectories were observed among the pharmacists who we interviewed: recreational abusers and therapeutic self-medicators. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Careful scrutiny of contemporary drug theory, policy, and practice in all areas, from prescription pharmaceuticals to illegal recreational drugs, reveals numerous apparent inconsistencies and pervasive incoherence. This results, in part, from a kind of silo thinking in which attention to drug theory and drug policy, however sophisticated in its own realm, is encapsulated within distinct professional, practical, and economic spheres or “silos.” Silos are descriptively and prescriptively dense but stand isolated from each other in an empty landscape. In other words, people in one arena of drug theory, policy, or practical programs have plenty to say to each other about the way things are and the way things should be with respect to drugs, but they don’t talk much across the open spaces between their areas of focus. Not only do they not talk much between their fields, for reasons to be explored, they cannot really do so. Clearly, our discussion of the therapeutic self-medicator category goes far beyond what is present in the existing literature. However, the first documentation of recreational drug use among health professionals, had minimal impact on the way that the various healthcare professions think about or address problem of substance abuse within their ranks. The pharmacy profession has been especially reluctant to address the reality of the prescription drug abuse situation. For instance, existing self-reports and interview research on drug using pharmacists largely ignores the recreational origins of drug use and, instead, describes the affected individuals as having misplaced therapeutic motivations. This assumption is reinforced by published biographical accounts of recovering drug using pharmacists. While principally intended to raise awareness among fellow pharmacists, these confessionals consistently emphasize the well-intentioned motives behind the individuals’ destructive drug use past. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Information is called observable when it is available symmetrically to both parties, and verifiable when it can be proved to third parties such as a court. In practice, this is a matter of cost, and the standard of proof required. Contracts that are intended to be enforced in a court of law can only stipulate actions that are conditioned on verifiable information; courts cannot judge whether a breach of the contractual terms has occurred if they cannot verify whether the circumstances that call for an action have actually transpired. However, observable information can be the basis for contracts that are enforced by extralegal or private methods, because the two parties can know fully well whether a breach has occurred. Such extralegal methods of enforcement come in to broad types. One is enforcement by insider third parties with specialized knowledge that enables them to verify information that outsider general courts of law cannot; arbitrators in industry associations are the most prominent enforcers of this kind. The second is based on a relationship or ongoing interaction between the parties; a breakup of this relationship constitutes the punishment that may deter one of the parties from breaching. This covers many possibilities. The same two parties may meet repeatedly; the two may not have a direct repeated interaction with each other, but each may interact with others in a group or network that transmits information about any breach to all members and collectively sanctions the miscreant, using ostracism in business interactions or social relationships or both. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The distinction between observable and verifiable information is standard in the economic theory of contracts. The New York Stock Exchange developed its internal rules and procedures for dispute resolution, and even Taiwanese shoe manufacturers and Western fashion houses performed dispute-resolution functions in addition to their primary matchmaking ones. One may think that these alternative methods of private ordering must suffer a crippling disadvantage relative to the government’s courts, namely their lack of coercive power to ensure that their decisions are obeyed. However, the difficulty is often nonexistent or easily overcome. First, the sanctions available for private ordering are often very effective. Breach of contract can be deterred in ongoing relationships by the threat that the miscreant will be barred from future business with this particular partner or the group; this can be buttressed by social ostracism if the group fosters social ties among its business members. Sometimes this threat may be even more severe than the fines that courts would impose in the matter. If the threat is credible, in the sense of being a part of the strategies in the subgame-perfect equilibrium of the repeated game that constitutes the ongoing relationship, then the contract is self-enforcing. Second, arbitrators may have similar sanctions at their disposal; if they can bar the miscreant from the industry association, they can instantly put one out of business, which can be a more effective sanction than the fines the courts will impose. Of course, the feasibility of such sanctions depends on the availability of the requisite information, and in the case of repeated interactions, on how highly the participants value the future relative to the present. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Finally, courts recognize the informational advantage of the alternative institutions. Therefore when a relational or implicit contract serves such an informational purpose, courts refuse to intervene to modify its terms, or to insert missing provisions, or to overrule the availability of discretion to one party. They also enforce the awards of industry arbitration tribunals, using the government’s power of coercion to obtain compliance if the loser in the arbitration attempts to defy the ruling. In the United States of America, this has been so since 1920; in the international context, over 100 countries now accede to the 1958 New York Convention of the Recognition and Enforcement of Arbitral Awards. By providing for the appointment of industry-expert arbitrators, who can make many factual determinations more accurately and less expensively than a judge or jury can, the rules greatly expand the “contractible” aspects of an exchange. The use of stream-lined procedures together with the appointment of expert adjudicators transforms considerations that in the public legal system would have been only observable to the parties…into considerations that are also verifiable…thereby encouraging transactors to enter into more complete contracts. The point is not that arbitrators have access to more information. Any relevant information can be elicited and brought before the court by either party to the dispute through the legal process of discovery. Conversely, many arbitration forms do not allow discovery, although the arbitrator can request additional information. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The key is how information is used; industry arbitrators can use their expertise to interpret it—make factual determinations—more accurately and at a lower cost than non-specialized courts can. This is the sense in which verifiability should be interpreted in this context. Arbitration is used in other contexts for other reasons. In international transactions, each party may suspect that the other country’s courts will be biased in favour of its own nationals; this can deter them from entering into contrast that may end up in national courts. Therefore both may agree ex ante to settle any disputes in an agreed international forum of arbitration. Several of these exist, based in London, Paris, Stockholm, et cetera. They differ in their procedures (degree of formality, time taken, fees charged, et cetera) and the range of legal traditions they cover (civil, common, Islamic, et cetera). These affect the choice of forum by the parties to each transaction. These forums usually lack the expertise that industry-specific forums can provide. Therefore they are not likely to lower costs or improve verifiability and permit more complete contracts; instead, removing the suspicion of bias may be their most important function. The different modes of private and official governance can interact in various ways. To further highlight the illustration, if an ongoing relationship based on the superior observability of information by the two parties breaks down, the best alternative available to the parties may be recourse to a contract based on verifiable information enforceable in a court of law, not total cessation of transactions. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
And if an arbitrator’s award is not enforceable by direct sanctions such as fines, it may nonetheless form part of a relational arrangement where the arbitrator can terminate the miscreant’s access to future trades. Not only do modes like arbitration evolve and apply to provide governance for transactions where they have an informational advantage and can reduce transaction costs, but also transactions take forms that adapt to the available information and governance. As for the emergence and prevalence of barter and countertrade in post-Soviet Russia in this way: The advantage of paying with goods rather than money is that they can be earmarked s property of the creditor. Money is fungible and liquid; a buyer can hide money easily if he chooses to renege on his promised payment to the seller. Goods in a barter or countertrade contract are more difficult to hide, and therefore can act as deal-specific collateral that mitigates opportunism. When it comes to systems of integration, rising complexity in the economy calls for more sophisticated integration and management. In a not atypical case Nabisco, the food company, as to fill 500 orders a day for literally hundreds of thousands of different products that must be shipped from 49 factories and 13 distribution centers, and at the same time take into account 30,000 different sales promotional deals with its customers. Managing such complexity requires new forms of leadership and an extremely high order of systemic integration. That, in turn, requires greater and greater volumes of information to pulse through the organization. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
To hold everything together—to track all the components and products, to synchronize deliveries, to keep engineers and marketers appraised of each other’s plans, to alert the R&D people to the needs of the manufacturing side and, above all, to give management a coherent picture of what is going on—billions of dollars are being poured into electronic networks that link computers, data bases and other information technologies together. This vast electronic information structure, frequently satellite based, knits whole companies together, often linking them into the computers and networks of suppliers and customers as well. Other networks link networks. Japan has targeted $250 billion to develop better, faster network. All these changes further accelerate the pace of operations and transactions. Economies of speed replace economies of scale. Competition is so intense and the speeds required so high that the old “time is money” rule is increasingly updated to “every interval of time is worth more than the one before it.” Time becomes a critical variable as reflected in “just-in-time” deliveries and a pressure to reduce DIP or “decisions in process.” Slow, sequential, step-by-step engineering is replaced by “simultaneous engineering.” Companies wage “time-based competition.” Expressing the new, it is clear that money moves at the speed of light. Information has to move faster. Thus acceleration pushed Third Wave business closer and closer to real time. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Taken together, these ten features of the Third Wave economy, among many others, add up to a monumental change in how wealth is created. The conversion of the United States of America, Japan and Europe to this new system, though not yet complete, represents the single most important change in the global economy since the spread of factories brought about by the industrial revolution. This historical transformation, picking up speed in the early-to mid-1970, was already fairly well advanced by the 1990s. Unfortunately, much of America’s economic thinking was left behind. Global markets of energy and mineral resources are undergoing far reaching irreversible changes, and so are perceptions about the policies needed to provide their stable supply. Global demand is surging due to a dramatic increase of consumption by the fast-growing large emerging economies. Experts project that, absent significant changes in policy or technology, global energy consumption will increase nearly 50 percent over the next 30 years. Energy consumption is growing faster than the GDP in many countries. On the supply side, uncertainties and destabilization risks are exacerbating due to rising political instability in exporting countries, periodical redirections of sales from external to domestic markets by leading suppliers, and, to a certain extent, a depletion, in some major producing countries, of existing deposits in the absence of new ones whose discovery and exploitation could make up for the loss. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Therefore, oil and some other natural resources are becoming more and mor attractive targets for speculators. In these circumstances, countries highly dependent on natural resources imports, especially those that do not have their own powerful resource multinationals, get increasingly concerned about supply destabilization risks. Predictions about an all-out resource war or bitter fights among buyers for limited amounts of oil or metallic ores look like an exaggeration. However, buyers’ competition for particular kinds of resources within particular periods of time due to particular circumstances is becoming a more frequent phenomenon. For instance, the Philippines and Vietnam protested to China against its patrol boats hindering their oil exploration activities near the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. China demanded that its neighbours stop exploration work in this area. Tensions rose as the United States of America declared that the South China Sea was in the sphere of its national interest and that it would stand by the Philippines as its ally. Now, when it comes to supernatural affairs, the angels are “sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation,” reports Hebrews 1.14, but not to take the place of Christ or the Holy Spirit. The apocalypse seems to show that this ministration of angels to the saints on Earth is a ministration for war in the spiritual realm against the forces of Satan; but there is little indication given of ministry in any other way. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
After the first Advent, when there was great angelic activity over the wondrous event of the Father brining the “Firstborn: of the new race (Romans 8.29) into the inhabited Earth (Hebrew 1.6), and again at the Advent of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost to begin His work of forming a Body like unto the Risen Head—and during the early years of the Church—the employment of an angel in direct and visible communication with believers seems to give way to the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit. The entire work of witnessing to Christ, and leading the Church into all truth, has been committed to the Holy Spirit. Therefore all intervention of “angels” or of audible voices from the spiritual realm purporting to be from God may be taken as counterfeits of psychopathological offenders, whose supreme object is to substitute the workings of their own wicked offenders in the place of God. In any case, it is best and safest in these days of peril to keep in the path of faith and reliance upon the Holy Spirit of God working through the Word of God. Man, the microcosm, the mirror of reality has structures of beings found in him, and are found analogously in the subhuman realm. Selfhood, inner awareness, freedom and destiny—all are verified analogously in subhuman beings. Furthermore, the concepts of courage, love, power, and justice are used to describe analogously the characteristics of all beings and of being-itself. The point we wish to make is that this use of analogy based on human experience seems to yield valid knowledge. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Moving up now to the relationship between man and God, one would expect that on the same principle, but with proper adjustments, man could get an analogous knowledge of God. Symbols are not a means of knowing God, but rather a way of speaking about Him. If one wishes to talk about God, finite material must be used, and this is justified by the fact that all finite beings participate in being-itself. Without such an analogy nothing could be said about God. However, the analogia entis is in no way able to create a natural theology. It is not a method of discovering truth about God; it is the form in which every knowledge of revelation must be expressed. In this sense anlogia entis, like “religious symbol,” points to the necessity of using material taken from finite reality in order to give content to the cognitive function in revelation. What is boils down to is that analogy or symbolism is the expression of an encounter with God. Through the revelatory experience is far more than an intellectual communication—it is primarily a reunion with the ground of being—it contains a cognitive element conveyed by symbols which are qualified as channels of communication by their participation in being-itself. Yet, it seems not, for every creature participates in being-itself, and yet not everything is a religious symbol, although it has the potentiality to become one. What is the decisive ingredient of symbolism beyond ontological participation? These symbols are not arbitrary interpretations of the concrete revelatory experiences. However, they appear within this experience itself. They are not created intentionally, but they are born in the same dimension in which the revelatory experience takes place. In and through its symbols the religious encounter with reality opens up the dimension of reality in which ultimacy appears. There is no other way of expressing our encounter with the holy than in symbols. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
From the standpoint of the counselor who finds one’s role ambiguous, it seems more than likely that exploration of a developmental perspective would help resolve the conflicts implicit in one’s professionalization. For the psychotherapist who thinks of oneself as a physician who cures sickness, or who avoids this and speaks only of the “difficulties of living,” there may appear to be no conflict in one’s role. One may be satisfied to reduce symptoms of disorder, to solve the problem presented and to think of oneself primarily as someone who relieves distress, without defining one’s goals beyond that. However, apparently more and more thoughtful counselors do not think they can stop there, or do any permanent good, unless they leave their patients better able to cope with later problems and future strains. Some even feel that their job to plan for the optimal development of their clients, or to organize clients to plan for their own. The ambiguous feelings of the professional who presumes to assist in the personal problems of family members may be all to the good if these are construed in a framework of family relations which includes oneself. The concept of transference goes only part way. The client in the course of the counselor-client interaction frequently construes the counselor as a figure representative of previous others, with whom relations have been unresolved but are thus worked out through the interviews. The difficulty, however, from the client’s standpoint, is that no matter how versatile one’s counselor may be, and no matter how facile or fantastic one’s own imagination, the range of persons with whom a person needs intimate discourse in order to achieve one’s optimal development of self far exceeds the resources of this single relationship. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Moreover, there is the fact that the client must pay in cold cash for the kind of communication which the best families afford on a basis of affectional reciprocity; thus the most sacred disclosures hover at times on the verge of something equivalent to prostitution. Regardless of ethics and their enforcement by professional insistence upon its eventual termination, and the limitation of reciprocity to monetary reward; in a word, the elaboration of this relationship lead nowhere. The best hope for fruition of any gains that accrue is tht they serve as a bridge to the regeneration of their client’s involvement in a quasi-family constellation which includes near-rivals and critics, models and admirers, other ages and other genders, in both work and play. Only through others can one obtain the continual characterizations of self essential to valid knowledge of self. Research and experience have already shown that the human being, from birth until death, almost to the degree that the fish requires water, thrives only in social interaction. Neglect, isolation, loneliness, solitary confinement, and deteriorative influences very hard to endure, even though every physical condition of survival is met. And among all kinds of interaction, the most potent of all for personal development are those characterized by the unconditional acceptance of family relations. Only here is the listener who always finds more in the person than one presents in one’s actual behaviour. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Only here is the audience that never grows tried. Only here is the person of similar background, for whom every aspect of the culture—of class and ethic experience—resonates with comparable meaning. That a counselor could ever aspire to duplicate these functions of the optimal family is beyond the hope of those who have thought and written about it. In a sense this analysis of the implicit or potential demands on the counselor’s role both justifies and specifies a therapeutic approach. It also shows that one’s role must be transcended by more adequate institutions for providing each client with a stable constellation of significant others, who can be the precisely appropriate self-definers at each critical stage in one’s personal development. For the person whose actual family has failed one the solution suggested by this analysis is the invention of effective quasi-families. The process by which each person contributes to the self-knowledge of others, and others contribute to one’s knowledge of oneself, it immanent in human society. Where self-knowledge and self-control are deficient relative either to norms or ideals, the best means for reversing these deficiencies is effective utilization of all available knowledge of how selves originate, operate, and co-operate. Recognition that some tasks are beyond the powers of the unassisted individual does not mean that society must be divided into two classes, therapists and their patients. It means, or at least can be made to mean, joint action to perform these tasks. Such an approach is as relevant and applicable to the tasks of counseling agencies as to the other types of family agencies. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The Mystery Before Us Which We Have Raised
Drugs are everywhere, both figuratively and literally. At any given moment, a large percentage of people nearly everywhere in the World are using one or more drugs as a medical requirement, a lifestyle choice, or to satisfy a desire or addiction. The consequences of drug use, from prescription pharmaceuticals to illicit substances, are felt on a daily basis by the individual and society at large. The recreational abusers unanimously agreed that there was no shortage of socially acceptable experimental drug use while in pharmacy school. For those who were interested, this environment provided ample opportunity to refine and expand their usage. One 48-year-old male pharmacist described the makeup of his pharmacy school cohort as follows: “There was a third of the pharmacy students in school because Mom and Dad or Grandfather or Uncle Bill were pharmacists, and they looked up to them and wanted to be one. Good enough. They had never seen a pharmacy. A [second] third had been in the [Vietnam] war. They were a pharmacy tech in the war or had worked in a pharmacy. They had the experiential effect of what pharmacy is and found a love for it or a desire to want it…Then you had the other third over here, and we were just drug addicts…It had nothing to do with altruism. We didn’t know what the practice was all about, but we did know that we got letters after our names, guaranteed income if we didn’t lose our letters, and we had access to anything [drugs] we needed.” Many of the recreational abusers claimed that they specifically sought out fellow pharmacy students who were willing to use prescription drugs. The most common locus for these associations were in pharmacy-specific fraternities. The respondents said that there was usually ample drug use going on in these organization and that they allowed them the opportunity to cautiously scout out and identify with other drug users. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Once they were connected with other drug users, the prescription drug use of all involved parties increased. This type of small-group drug use allowed for access to an expanded variety of drugs, a broader pharmacological knowledge base, and even larger quantities of drugs. However, numerous respondents clearly stated that these drug-based associations were tenuous and temporary in nature. Over time, as the intensity of their drug use increased, the recreational abusers described how they became more reclusive and guarded and selective in their relationships, fearing that their heightened use of prescription drugs would come to be defined as a problem by their fellow pharmacy students. One 43-year-old male pharmacist said: “You get the sense pretty quickly that you are operating [using] on a different level. Those of us that were busily stealing [prescription drugs] from our internship sites began to tighten our social circle. We might party a little bit with the others but when it came to heavy use, we kept it hush, hush.” Unlike other pharmacy students who were genuinely experimenting with drugs on a short-term basis, these recreational abusers noticed an added intensity associated with their own prescription drug use. While most of these recreational abusers entered pharmacy school with some prior experiences in recreational street drug use, their pre-college prescription drug use was usually not extensive. As such, it was not until they got into pharmacy school that they began to develop more pronounced street an prescription drug use habits. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
A 38-year-old female pharmacist discusses this transition into increased usage in the following interview excerpt: “I went off to pharmacy school. That was a 3-year program. I had tried a few things [before that], but I would back off because it was shaming for me not to get straight A’s. The descent to hell started when I got to pharmacy school. There were just so many things [prescription drugs] available and to many things that I thought I jut had to try. It might be a different high; it might be a different feeling, anything to alter the way that I just felt. I was pretty much using on a daily basis by the time I got to my last year.” Once the recreational abusers got into a permanent practice setting, they quickly deduced that they had free reign over the pharmacy stock. At first, they referenced other pharmacists for normative or behavioural guidance in access or using the prescription drugs. However, they soon realized that their nearly unrestricted access meant that they could not try any drugs that they wanted without guidance, and most did. More importantly, increased access allowed the young pharmacists to habitually and secretly use the drugs that they liked most. Not surprisingly the levels and frequency of their drug use usually skyrocketed shortly after entering pharmacy practice and going more solo with their use. A 41-year-old male pharmacist explained: “By the time I got to pharmacy school in 1971, I was smoking dope probably every day or every other day, and drinking with the same frequency, but not to the point of passing out kind of stuff. Then in 1971, that was also the year that I discovered barbs [barbiturates]. I had never had barbs up until I got to pharmacy school. So it was like ’75 or ’76 [when I got out of pharmacy school], I was using heavy Secondals and Quaaludes and Ambutols [all barbiturates]. I withdrew and it [the heavy misuse] just took off.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
At the start, the recreational abusers’ drug use was openly displayed and took on an air of excitement, much like others’ experimentation with street or prescription drugs. However, as it intensified over time, the majority described how they slowly shielded their use from others. They thought it important to appear as though they still had the situation under control. As physical tolerance and psychological dependence increasingly progressed, these individuals began to lose control. Virtually all of the recreational abusers eventually developed serious prescription drug use habits. Using large quantities and sometimes even multiple drug types, their prescription drug use careers were usually marked by a steep downward spiral. This trend was clearly evidenced in the hand-sketched life history timeline that was drawn by each respondent. What started out as manageable social drug experimentation persistently progressed to increasingly more secretive drug abuse. In almost every case, it took several years for the drug use to reach its peak addictive state. The intense physical and psychological effects of the drug use meant that the recreational abuser’s criminal/deviant career was punctuated by a very “low bottom.” Commonly identified signs of “bottoming out” included life-threatening health problems, repeated dismissals from work, having action taken against their pharmacy licenses, habitual lying, extensive cover-ups, divorces, and suicide attempts. By all accounts, the personal and professional lives of these recreational abusers suffered heavily from their drug abuse. In the end, most were reclusive and paranoid—what started out as collective experimentation ended in a painful existence of solitary addiction. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The criminal/deviant career paths of the remaining 27 interviewees (54 percent) fit a different substantive theme. To differentiate these individuals from the recreational abusers, we call this latter group of pharmacists “therapeutic self-medicators.” One of the defining characteristics of this ground was that they had little or no experience with street or prescription drug use prior to entering pharmacy school. In fact, many of these individuals did not even use alcohol. What little drug involvement they did report was usually occasional experimentation with marijuana or other “soft” drugs. If they had ever used prescription drugs, it was done legitimately under the supervision of a physician. Members of this group did not begin their illicit prescription drug use until they were well into their formal pharmacy careers. The onset of the therapeutic self-medicators’ drug use was invariably attributed to a problematic life situation, accident, medical condition, or occupationally related pain. When faced with such problems, these pharmacists turned to familiar prescription medicines for immediate relief. Rather than reporting a recreational, hedonistic, or pleasure motivation, these pharmacists simply decided to use readily available prescription drugs to treat their own medical maladies. The therapeutic self-medicators unanimously insisted that their prescription drug use was never recreational—that they never used drugs solely for the euphoric effects. Instead, their drug use was focused on specific therapeutic goals. This trend is illustrated in the comments of a 33-year-old male pharmacist: “There was no recreation involved. I just wanted to press a button and be able to sleep during the day. I was really having a touch time with this sleeping during the day. I would say by the end of that week I was already on the road [to dependency]…the race had started.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Other pharmacists described how their drug use began as a way of treating insomnia, physical trauma (exempli gratia, a car accident, sports injury, or a broken bone), or some chronic occupationally induced health problem (exempli gratia, arthritis, migraine headaches, leg cramps, or back pain). It is important to point out that during their earliest stages of their drug use, these individuals appeared to be “model pharmacists.” Most claimed to have excelled in pharmacy school. Moreover, occupational and career success usually continued after they entered full-time pharmacy practice. Personal appraisals, as well as annual supervisory evaluations, routinely described these individuals as hard working and knowledgeable professionals. Since they were usually treating the physical pain that resulted from the rigors of pharmacy work, all of the therapeutic self-medicators described how their prescription drug use started and progressed under seemingly innocent, or even honorable, circumstances. In many cases, they were treating the physical pain that resulted from the rigors of work. Instead of taking time off from work to see a physician, they chose to simply self-medicate their own ailments. A 50-year-old male pharmacist described this situation as follows: “When I got to Walgreen’s the pace there was stressful. We were filling 300 to 400 scripts a day with minimal support staff and working 12, 13 hours days. The physical part bothered me a lot. My feet and my back hurt. So, I just kept medicating myself until it got to the point where I was up to 6 to 8 capsules of Fiorinol-3 [narcotic analgesic] a day. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Without exception, the therapeutic self-medicators described how they always engaged in solitary and secretive drug use. Although they usually kept their drug use to themselves, many claimed that their initial use was shaped by their interactions with co-workers. That is, they got the idea to begin self-medicating from watching a co-worker do so or merely followed the suggestion of a concerned senior pharmacist who was seeking to help them remedy a physical malady, such as a hangover, anxiety, physical pain. To further highlight this illustration, a 38-year-old male pharmacist described an incident that occurred soon after being introduced to his hospital supervisor: ‘I remember saying one time that I had a headache. [He said] “got take some Tylenol-with-Codeine elixir [narcotic analgesic].’ I would never have done that on my own. He was my supervisor at the time, and I said, ‘okay, if you think I should.’ He said, ‘that’s what we do.’ I guess that started the ball rolling a little bit mentally.” Members of the therapeutic self-medicator group took notice of the drug-related behaviours and suggestions of their peers but never acted upon them in the company of others. Instead, they maintained a public front condemning illicit prescription drug use but quietly followed through on the suggestive behaviours when in private. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Whereas the recreational abusers used drugs to get high, the therapeutic self-medicators saw drug use as a means to a different end. Even as their drug use intensified, they were able to convince themselves that the drugs were actually having a beneficial effect on their work performance. This was not all together inaccurate, since they began using the drugs to remedy some constraining health problem that was detracting from their work efficiency. Some therapeutic self-medicators looked to their notion of professional obligation to justify their drug use. To further highlight this illustration, in describing his daily use of Talwin, a Schedule II narcotic analgesic, a 43-year-old male pharmacist maintained: “I thought I could work better. I thought I could talk better with the nurses and patients. I thought I could socialize better with it.” This type of convenient, altruistic-based explanation was quite common among the therapeutic self-medicators. That is, they were adept at convincing themselves that their patients and employers needed them to produce at a certain level. When their performance fell below this level, they turned to prescription medicines as a way of neutralizing whatever inhibiting force that was deemed responsible. At first, the pharmacists’ therapeutic self-medication behaviours seemed to work well. They remedied the problematic situation (pain, insomnia, et cetera) which allowed them to return to normal functioning. However, over time, they began to develop a tolerance for the drugs and thus had to take larger quantities to achieve the same desired effects. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The following interview excerpt from a 50-year-old male pharmacist offers a good overview of the life history of a therapeutic self-medicator: “Well, I didn’t have a big problem with that [early occasional self-medication behaviour]. I wasn’t taking that much. It was very much medicinal use. It was not an everyday thing. It really was used at that point for physical pain. But that’s when I started tampering with other things and started trying other things. I would have trouble sleeping so I would think, ‘You know, let’s see what the Dalmane [benzodiazepine] is like?’ When I was having weight problems… ‘Let’s give this Tenuate [amphetamine] a try.’ And I just started going down the line treating the things that I wanted to treat. And none of it got out of hand. It wasn’t until I came down here [to Sacramento]…that things really started to go wild.” In generally took between 5 and 10 years for these pharmacists to progress into the later stages of drug abuse. That is, they were able to control their use for a long time without it interfering with their personal or professional life. A handful of therapeutic self-medicators were not so lucky. For them, there was less time between the onset of their use and their entry into drug treatment. Their progression was much faster. This trend is illustrated by the comments of a 49-year-old male pharmacist: “About two or three years after I had my store, I was working long, long hours. Like 8.00 to 8.00 Monday through Saturday and some hours on Sunday. And my back hurt one day. It was really killing me and I started out with two Empirin-3 [narcotic analgesic]. Just for the back pain. I mean I hurt, my back hurt, my head hurt. I don’t know why, but I just reached for that bottle and I knew it was against the law to do that, but I did it any way. Man I felt good. I was off and running. This was eureka. That was it. It progressed. I started taking more and more then I finally…” #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
The key to self-medicator’s fast-paced progressive drug use seemed to lie in the given individual’s perceived need to treat a wider and growing array of physical ailments. It got to the point that many “drug thirsty” pharmacists recognize that they were actively seeking out or inventing ailments to treat in themselves. As a 40-year-old female put it, “I had a symptom for everything I took.” Several other quotes illustrate this tendency for therapeutic self-medicators to invent ailments. In all, there were 27 pharmacists who fit into the category of therapeutic self-medicators. These individuals were admittedly naïve about drug abuse when they entered their pharmacy careers. They were either counseled or convinced themselves that there was no harm in the occasional therapeutic use of prescription medicines. The normative and behavioral advanced in their deviance were gained largely by exploiting or manipulating their professional position and knowledge. The therapeutic self-medicators always used their drugs in private and kept their use from others around them. Over time, their false confidence and denial that allowed their drug use to significantly progress. Once their façade was broken, these pharmacists awoke to the reality that they were chemically dependent on one or more of the drugs that they so confidently had been dispensing to themselves. If you have a drug addiction, consider seeking help from the church or a trusted medical professional. Counseling of family members by persons and agencies outside their family is very old, probably as old as humanity. Nevertheless, the process of differentiation, specialization, and professionalization which had brough into being agencies staffed by full-time counseling personnel is decidedly recent. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
And the application of the concepts and findings of social science to counseling is more recent still. Since counseling agencies were started a few decades ago their methods and philosophy have only become systematized in some areas of their work. The rapidity and unevenness of their growth—further consumed by conflicting schools of thought—makes generalization risky, but for any appraisal of their place in the institutions affecting American families some rough summery of their emergence is necessary. The development of family counseling agencies can be schematized in several ways. When their characteristic techniques in successive periods are considered, it may be said that they proceeded from moral exhortation and sanction, through individual guidance or therapy, to procedures adapted to work with groups. Some of these group methods are oriented to conventional individual psychology, others stress interactional conceptions. When the doctrines rather than the techniques of the agencies are considered, it appears that successive periods saw emphasis on religion and morals, then on individual psychology or psychiatry, and finally on social psychology or sociology. As mentioned before, these phases of development have overlapped and still do. Also, certain family agencies primarily devoted to activities like medical care or economic rehabilitation carry on family counseling, although it is not their main duty. Every family-serving professional, whether lawyer, clergyman, teacher, or even architect, can rarely avoid being asked to advise on matter for which the psychiatrist, social worker, and clinical psychologist are especially trained. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
The quest for guidance goes far beyond a mere demand for information. Similarly, many agencies listed as primarily engaged in counseling do not always limit their work to guidance, advice, and insight, but may offer such services as recreation, participation in clubs, or education. From the standpoint of their personnel, it might be fairer to survey and evaluate counseling agencies according to their success in reaching goals they have set for themselves. The main focus of attention of counselors in the strict sense intended is the personalities of their clients. To be sure, questions of vocational guidance or family budgeting frequently involve personality questions, and cannot be avoided or isolated in a doctrinaire manner from economic concerns. It is only when personality problems are paramount in the concern and responsibility of the agency, however, that it will be called a counseling agency. Or all types of family agencies, the counseling agencies are most conspicuously bunched at the second or therapeutic phase. They show an especially lively interest and experimental attitude to group therapy. A number of mental hospitals are actively experimenting with various forms of milieu and play therapy as major tools for providing large numbers of patients not merely with custody but with psychiatric care. Crime prevention bureaus in certain cities are exploring the value of clubs for delinquent modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous, and some experiments in group rehabilitation are actually going on with correctional institutions. While much of the development through official and professional channels is still handicapped by an individualistic approach, some agencies in theory and procedure are adopting a much more interactional outlook. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Yet even where community organizers have set up community councils and conducted community self-surveys, the therapeutic motive had in the end predominated, and tended to lead to clinics and casework. Inevitably such observations appear disparaging, yet the intent is not to criticize or condemn but merely to note the direction these developments have taken. The feeling that progress is not as rapid as originally hoped, and that some sort of ceiling is soon reached by efforts aimed only at correction psychopathology, had pervaded several studies of social work. Various kinds of families in trouble had characteristic persons or groups to which they turned when in trouble. In the same way, each family counseling agency appears to attract a characteristic clientele. When an agency had recruited as its clientele all that segment of the community which habitually turns with its kind of problem to that kind of agency, its operations are likely to settle into a routine procedure. Its progress then becomes measured mainly in terms of technique, such as its interview methods or efficiency in spending its means. Only where it can set before citizens a creative succession of new and positive goals does it have a fair chance to avoid such a ceiling of routinization. There are still immense areas and many strata of communities in the United States of America which barely enjoy the philanthropic or charitable phase of development of counseling agencies; there are many more which have yet to reach professional standards at the therapeutic phase; and there are only a handful who have made the step from individual casework to group work. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
It may thus seem premature to suggest inadequacies in the therapeutic approach. Yet there is no apparent reason, other than the failure to conceive goals beyond adjustment, to prevent the adoption of a beneficial, planning approach to the functions of counseling agencies. Psychological offenders are able to counterfeit the voice of God because of the ignorance of believers that they can do so, and their ignorance also of the true principle of God’s way of communication with His children. The Lord said: “My sheep know My voice….,” id est, My way of speaking to My sheep. He did not say this voice was an audible voice, nor a voice giving directions which were to be obeyed apart from the intelligence of the believer; but, on the contrary, the word “know” indicates the use of the mind, for although there is knowledge in the spirit it must reach the intelligence of the man, so that spirit and mind become of one accord. The question whether God now speaks by His direct voice audibly to men needs consideration at this point. A careful study of the epistles of Paul—which contain an exhaustive summation of God’s will for the Church, the Body of Christ, even as the books of Moses contained God’s will and laws for Israel seems to make it clear that God, having “spoke to us in His Son,” no longer speaks by His own direct voice to His people. Nor does it appear that, since the coming of the Holy Spirit to guide the Church of Christ into all truth, He frequently employs angels to speak or to guide His children. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
God must be approached cognitively through the structural elements of being-itself because God is the ground and the structure of being. The structural elements serve as symbols which are rooted in and point toward their ground. However, before speaking symbolically of God, the theologian must make at least one nonsymbolic statement about Him. Otherwise there would be an infinite series of symbols pointing ever onward, for it is the nature of symbols not to rest in themselves, but to point. That statement that God is being-itself is a nonsymbolic statement. It means what it says directly and properly. After this, nothing else can be said about God as God which is not symbolic. Our ability to speak about God depends upon whether or not the finite can be used to asset something about the infinite. The infinite is being-itself, and everything finite participates in it. The analogia entis gives us our only justification of speaking at all about God. Thus, by its participation in the ground of being, them meaning of the symbol is affirmed. Yet, at the same tie, its proper meaning is negated, for the ground of being transcends its structural elements; the ground is also the abyss. Religious symbols operate in two directions. They bring the infinite down to the finite by concretizing it; and they elevate the finite by revealing its participation in the infinite. For example, if God is symbolized as “father” or “king,” He is brought down to the level of human relationships. Yet simultaneously fatherhood and kingship are consecrated, for their theonomous depth, their holy character is revealed. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
When it comes to resolving disputes, there are reasons for using private ordering when pertaining to information. In this context we have a threefold key distinction, between private, observable, and verifiable information. Consider a transaction between two parities. Information is private when it is available to one of the parties but not the other. Sometimes the informed party wants to convey the information truthfully to the other party, but must do so in a credible way because the uninformed party will be wary of strategic misrepresentation. Id the two parties’ interests are well aligned, mere declaration (cheap talk) may work. Otherwise the informed party has to look for a costly action (signal) that credibly conveys the truth of the matter, because that action would not have been optimal had the information been different. Sometimes the uninformed party can devise tests (screening or mechanism design), requiring the informed party to undertake actions that will reveal the truth. They theory of asymmetric information is now a standard part of economic theory. Signaling and screening can be parts of contracts between the two parties. For example, if the seller of a car knows its quality much better than the buyer can find our by inspection, then a warranty may serve as a signal of quality. However, the terms of such a contract cannot specify actions to be taken under circumstances that only one of the parties can observe, because that party would have every reason to misrepresent the circumstances so as to avoid taking a costly action. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Thus the warranty cannot specify the circumstances under which a part of the car has to be replaced in such a ways that only one party can observe them. If the buyer is the sole judge of whether the transmission operates satisfactorily, he may claim that it is unsatisfactory at the slightest excuse and obtain a new one. Contracts must implicitly or explicitly give each party the discretion to act on the basis of its private information. To address environmental challenges of our time, it is crucial to overcome existing global stereotypes and think of alternative approaches. The time is ripe to go far beyond the UNFCCC framework (though it does not mean a call to bury it altogether) and, first of all, to make it clear that today’s environmental issues should be looked upon from a much wider angle than the one of the climate change talks. We are facing a really big global problem of the deterioration of the natural environment on our Mother Earth, which includes deforestation, extinction of many species of plants and animals, air pollution, water contamination, more and more frequent extreme weather events, unbearable noise levels in the cities, and so on. Obviously, the problem is not limited to CO2 emissions or rising temperatures. Every country or groups of countries must do their utmost to find and implement the solutions taking into account their development stage, economic and social conditions, financial and technological capabilities, and so on. Comprehensive environmental solutions have to be well balanced with policies and measure aimed at achieving other key social and economic goals. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Countries should actively exchange information and experience in this area, launch joint projects (both at the bilateral and multilateral level) where possible, and set binding or nonbinding environmental targets for themselves if they consider them useful. The UN should not be looked upon as the only coordinator of international efforts—furthermore, it is unlikely to be the most efficient coordinator. Definitely, the West should actively assist developing countries working to preserve and improve their natural environment—financially, technologically, and intellectually. However, it has to be made clear that, especially in the area of financing, limits exist as most Western economies themselves are facing touch fiscal constraints. Perhaps other countries should be willing to accept the role of one of the major sources of global environmental financing. With the economies of Japan and Europe recovering from World War II, American firms face heavy competitive fire. Constant innovation is needed to compete—new ideas for products, technologies, processes, marketing, finance. Something on the order of 1,000 new products are introduced into America’s supermarkets every month. Even before the model 486 computer replaced the model 386 computer, the new 586 chip was on its way. Thus smart firms encourage workers to take initiative, come up with new ideas and, even if necessary, to “throw away the rulebook.” Work units shrink. The scale of operations is miniaturized along with many of the products. Vast numbers of workers doing much the same muscle work are replaced by small, differentiate work teams. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Big businesses are getting smaller; small businesses are multiplying. In just 30 years, the number of IBM employees has gone from 370,000 to 288,300. As its employees are being pecked to death by small manufacturers around the World, to survive, it lays off many workers and splits itself into thirteen different—smaller—business units. In the Third Wave system, economies of scale are frequently outweighed by diseconomies of complexity. The more complicated the firm, the more the left hand cannot anticipate what the right hand will do next. Things fall through the cracks. Problems proliferate that may outweigh any of the presumed benefits of sheer mass. The old idea that bigger is necessarily better is increasingly outmoded. Struggling to adapt to high-speed changes, companies are racing to dismantle their bureaucratic Second Wave structures. Industrial-era complies typically had similar tables of organization—pyramidal, monolithic and bureaucratic. Today’s markets, technologies, and consumer needs change so rapidly and put such varied pressures on the firm, that bureaucratic uniformity is on its way out. The search is on for wholly new forms of organization. “Re-engineering,” for example, the current buzzword in management, seeks to restructure the firm around processes rather than market or compartmentalized specialties. Relatively standardized structures give way to matrix organizations, “ad hocratic” project teams, profit centers, as well as to a growing diversity of strategic alliances, joint ventures and consortia—many of these crossing national boundaries. Since markets change constantly, position is less important than flexibility and maneuverability. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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My Soul to Nothingness, but I Will Strive
Many persons accustomed to travelling the old country side were sure so fair a place was never seen. Of all that charmed the romantic eye, it seemed an emerald through the clouds of fleecy white, and cerulean sky. As the sun crowned its lawny crest, smiling upon the flowers and trees, bright eyes reflected the majesty of Llanada Villa. The lively and robust body of this remarkable house contrasts its physicality against the darkness, secrets, and void of the dense ancient elms. Tall ornamental hedges maintain the privacy of the dwelling. The fruit orchard much like an enchanted forest, in which the bluebirds returning to their nest, guard the fruit from pests, as the straggling deer who peep from beneath the branches, do not startle the natural and undisturbed dominion. Heightened by euphoria, delightful shapes of mystery and fear clear in youthful bloom of its immortal spirit. On stormy nights, as the guard described, one can hear the doors clapping inside, and the howl and sobbing of the wind through it ornate galleries. I carried with me some blessings and a good many curses. I was woken in the early morning, by hearing my name called softly. I rose and went to my door in my nightgown, but there was no one in the passage. The voice sounded like my niece Daisy’s, but when I came to her door, it was closed. All was silent; the bathroom door stood slightly open; there was the morning room beyond; then the landing and the staircase. I heard my name called again, only this time the voice boomed like a gong inside my head; the light failed, as if a candle had been snuffed, and something rushed at me out of the gloom. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
I screamed and struggled until the light came back with the sound of running feet and I realized that the demon who had seized me was, in fact, a Welsh priest. A fornight or so later—certainly, after the doctor had pronounced me well on the way to recovery—I was sitting up in bed reading when my grandmother came into the room and sat down in the chair beside me, looking exactly as he had when we first met: the same calf length frock coat, double-breasted vet, and wool trousers, with his hair parted on the left and neatly combed to the side, the same familiar scent of alone wood, orange flower, musk and spices. The chair creaked as he settled himself in it, smiled at me and took up his work, just as if he had only been gone for five minutes, rather than resting in the Evergreen Cemetery for nine years. I was vaguely aware that my husband was supposed to be dead, but somehow this did not matter; his presence at my bedside seemed entirely natural and comforting. And though my own tranquil acceptance of the visit would later seem, to me, as strange as the visit itself, we sat in companionable silence for an indefinite interval until my husband gathered up his work, smiled once more at me and went slowly from the room. Daisy came in so soon after that I thought they must have passed each other in the hall, so I asked, “Did you see your uncle William?” I saw from her look of consternation that I had best not pursue the subject, and agreed that I must have been dreaming. As with the strange radiance of William’s appearance was followed by one of the worst headaches I had ever endured. But I felt certain I had been wide awake. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Even after the strangeness of the experience had become fully apparent to me, I found I could not think of my visitant as a ghost. My reading in sensational literature had enhanced an already vivid imagination of how ghosts ought to conduct themselves: a hint of transparency and one or two bloodcurdling groans was surely the least that could be expected, whereas William had been—well, just my husband. And though nothing like this had ever happened to me before, I had not felt in the slightest afraid. Dr. Wayland had declared me well enough to get up, and the memory of my husband’s visit had faded to the point where I could almost believe it had been a dream, when one evening after dinner I saw my father-in-law crossing the hall ahead of me. He was no more than ten paces away, I heard the floor creak under his tread. Looking neither right nor left, he entered his study and closed the door behind him, just as he would have done in life. Again I felt no fear; only an overwhelming impulse to go up to the door and knock. When there was no answer, I tried the handle. The door opened readily, but there was no one there, only the familiar cracked brown leather armchairs on the worn Persian rug, the elaborate desk with its feet carved into the fierce face carved into faces of angels, the bookshelves crammed with Blue Book and army lists and regimental histories and accounts of gun dealers, the lingering faint scent of timber, leather and bindings. I remained in the doorway for a long time, lost in a trance of recollection. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
I picked up one of Willian’s old letters and went out into the garden and sat down on a charming bench, under a group of magnificent lime trees. The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendour being the horizon, and the fountains wound through a group of noble trees, almost at my feet, reflecting in their current the fading crimson of the sky. His letter was extraordinary. So much so that I read it twice over—the second time to the spirits. It said, “I miss you my darling wife, for as such I love you. During these last days of my illness, I was too weak to write you. Before then I had no idea of the danger. I will soon no longer be with you. Thank you for the hospitality. Thank you for receiving me into your heart, gaiety, and for being a charming companion. Heaven! I devote my remaining days to the gleaming light that you cast upon my heart. I hope you may accomplish your merciful purpose. I curse my conceited incredulity for unduly leaving you to mourn my absence. If only I could live for eternity, I would remain by your side. Farewell. I love you, my beloved.” My eyes filled with tears at his passion and intelligence. The sun had now set, and it was twilight by the time gone back inside. It was a soft evening, and I loitered, speculating upon seeing him again. I could hear his voice in animated dialogue and recall how proud he was to be a father, and turned about to admire the beautiful scene. The glade which I had just walked lay before. At the left narrow of the path wound away under the clumps of lordly trees, and was lost to sight amid the thickening forest. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
At the right of the path stands the Observational Tower, which guarded the estate. Over the grounds, a thin film of mist was stealing, like smoke, marking the distances with a transparent veil; and here and there I could see the fountains flashing in the moonlight. No softer, sweeter scene could be imagined. I enjoyed the picturesque, and I, stood looking silence over the expanse beneath me. Standing a little way behind me, discoursed upon the scene, and were upon the eloquent moon. When the moon shone with a light so intense it is well known that it indicates a special spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy is manifold. It acts on dreams, it acts on lunacy, it acts on nervous people; it has a marvellous physical influence connected with life. One of the carpenters, having taken a nap on the balcony on such a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side. The moon, this night, is full of odylic and magnetic influences—and when one looks behind at the front of the mansion, how all its windows flash and twinkle with that silvery splendour, as if unseen hands had lighted up the rooms to receive fairy guests. There are indolent states of the spirits in which, indisposed to talk ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our listless ears; and I gazed on, pleased with the tinkle of the stars. But I felt as is some great misfortune were hanging over me. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
O THOU great, powerful, and mighty KING AMAIMON, who bearest rule by the power of the SUPREME GOD EL over all spirits both superior and inferior of the Infernal Orders in the Dominion of the East; I do invocate and command thee by the especial and true name of God; and by they Thou Worshippest; and by the Seal of thy creation; and by the most mighty and powerful name of GOD, IEHOVAH TETEAGRAMMATON who cast thee out of Heaven with all other infernal spirits; and by all the most powerful and great names of God who created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all things in them contained; and by their power and virtue; and by the name PRIMEUMATON who commandeth the whole host of Heave; that thou mayest cause, enforce, and compel the Spirit Murmus—The Fifty-fourth Spirit and His 30 Legions of Spirits, Lord of darkness and liberation come forth! Murmus awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the God of limitation Ahura Mazda! Murmus, Zairich, and Tairich, unholy fever and thirst come forth! Murmus awaken! Tairich awaken! Zairich awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Amardad! Akiman, demon of evil mind come forth! Akoman awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Vohuman! Naikiyas, Div or rebellion and discontent come forth! Naikiyas awake! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Spandarmad! #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Andar, Div of antinomian fire come forth! Andar awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fllen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Arwahist! Taromat, beautiful Div of rebellion come forth! Taromat awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Spandarmad! Aeshma, wielder of the bloody mace! Demon of the wounding spear and bringer of wrath come forth! Aeshma awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel Srosh! Sovar, merciless leader of Divs come forth! Sovar awaken! Rise up within that I may compel the rise of the fallen ones and devour the very essence of the Holy Angel shahrewar! I stand alone as the embodiment of the Adversary known as Ahriman, the Black Dragon of Chaos and becoming! I devour the natural order of stasis brought forth by Ahura Mazda and forge my destiny through the power of the Black Sun! By the figurative mystery of this holy mansion, I will clothe it with the armour of salvation in the strength of the Most High, ANCOR, AMICAR, AMIDES, THEDONIAS, ANITOR, that so the end which I desire may be effected, O ADONAI, through Thy strength, to whom be praise and glory for ever and ever. I adjure thee, Emperor Lucifer, as the agent of the strong living God, of His beloved Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and by the power of the Great ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM, to appear instantly, or to send thy Messenger Astarot, forcing thee to forsake thy hiding-place, wheresoever it may be, an warning thee that it thou didst not manifest this moment, I still straightway smite thee and all thy race with the Blasting Rod of the great ADONAY, ELOIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
In 2007, while closing up The Winchester Mystery House, Jeff kept catching sight of a shadow moving. He would turn quickly to see if it was a person, but nothing was there. It unnerved him, not knowing what was taking place. The activity picked up when they started to decorate for the Christmas season. Finally, he consulted one of the guests about the strange occurrences. He was very talkative, and would relate experiences about a ghost. During one conversation with the guest, Jeff related that he heard people upstairs laughing and thumping around in the Grand Ballroom, almost like they were dancing country-western style. When he investigated, he would find nothing out of place and no living person upstairs. When opening the mansion in the morning, they found linen that had been neatly arranged, laying on the floor, yet no one had been in the mansion since he had closed it the night before.
One morning he found an entire display sitting at the foot of the stairs. Everything had been moved during the night. His first thoughts were that someone had broken into the place, but there were no signs of an intruder. Early another morning, Jeff and a few other employees heard a music box playing. They went deep in the mansion to find the source. After searching for hours, they found nothing in the mansion, until they went up the dark stairs to the fourth floor. The stairs were steep, and when Jeff got to the top, he snapped a picture down the stairway. He took the picture at that moment because he had a strange feeling. After the investigated the fourth floor, Jeff said he felt a cold draft come by him, as though it was rushing past them down the stairs. The resulting picture was a tragic and forlorn figure dressed in nineteenth century clothes. People have reported seeing her figure walking toward doors that lead to parts of the mansion that are off limits to guest and that she passes unimpeded through locked doors. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Do Injustice and Evil Rule Over the Progress of Humanity?
Those who have never lost by death some one deeply loved have never sounded the depths of despair, have never bruised themselves against the closed door of the tomb. We seek, and an impenetrable wall rises inexorably before the terror that confronts us. If the existence of human beings leads to nothing, what is this comedy all about? It is hard not to desire an answer to the formidable question that presents itself when we think of our destiny, or when a cruel death has taken from us someone we love. How is it possible not to ask whether or not we shall find each other again, or if the separation is for eternity? Does a Deity or Goodness exist? Do injustice and evil rule over the progress of humanity, with no regard for the feelings that nature has placed in our hearts? And what is this nature itself? Has it a will, an end? Could there be more intelligence, more justice, more goodness, and more inspiration in our infinitesimally small minds than in the great Universe? How many questions are associated with the same enigma! We shall die; nothing is more certain. When the Earth on which we live shall have turned only a hundred times more around the sun, not one of us, dear readers, will still be on this World. Ought we to fear death for ourselves, or for those whom we love? From among the many symbols of the divine, we select that of “personal God” in order to illustrate in one stroke the theory and symbolism, the implications of God as being-itself, and one aspect of the living God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The religious encounter, the experience of the holy, demand an I-Thou relationship. God cannot be an “It.” Anything less than a personal God is incapable of arousing an ultimate concern in man. A sub-personal God is not God. That is the reason that the symbol of the Personal God is indispensable for living religion. However, there are difficulties. Is not God as being-itself an impersonal God? Nothing seems more incompatible than the warmth of a person and the bleakness of being-itself. Moreover, if God is a person, is He not reduced to the status of a being along side other beings? Due to these difficulties, particularly the latter, the personal God is a confusing symbol. The solution is the divine transcendence. Calling God a person does not necessarily pull Him down to the same level as other persons and beings, for the absolute individual is also the absolute participant. The other polar element of participation guarantees that God remains being-itself who participates in all beings as their ground. Furthermore, God as being-itself means that God is the ground of everything personal and the He carries within Himself the ontological power of personality. He is the Personal-Itself, the ground and abyss of every person. God is transpersonal in the sense the He includes the personal, but transcends it. Religiously speaking, man encounters the personal God. Theologically speaking, he encounters the ground of everything personal. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
However, in either case the symbol of the personal God indicates that our personal center is grasped by the manifestation of the inaccessible ground and abyss of being. God declares that are bodies are His temple, and we are to keep them pure. This also means abstaining from fornication and drugs. One-time drug abuse can be harmful, and in the few cases where people are sensitive to the drug, it can be lethal. Continued recreational use of drugs cause brain damage and increasingly compromises your ability to make decisions. Habit forming drugs not only affect your body, but as you surrender your body and will to them, they will also destroy the other command center of your body—your spirit. Choosing to disobey the Word of Wisdom will lead you away from the Lord. Trying drugs “just once” can physically harm you in some cases. However, “just once” will always harm you spiritually. Narcotic addiction serves the design of the psychopathological offender, for it disrupts the channel to the holy spirit of truth…Addiction has the capacity to disconnect the human will and nullify moral agency. It can rob one of the power to decide. Agency is too fundamental a doctrine to be left in such jeopardy. Stay away from illegal drugs. If the federal government forbids their use, that means they are illegal. Drugs will take away your powers of reason. They will enslave you in a vicious and terrible way. They will destroy your mind and your body. They will build within you such cravings that you will do anything to satisfy them. The same goes for abusing prescription drugs or any other addictive substance, including alcohol and tobacco. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
The need for governance arises because, in its substance, individuals pursing their own interests would generate an inferior equilibrium outcome. American pharmacists fill over 4 billion controlled drug/mediation prescription orders annually. This is up from 1.4 billion in 1994. Every day, hundreds of thousands of Americans walk into their local drug stores and rely on pharmacist to accurately dispense their medications. What the public does not realize, however, is that some of themselves using the drugs that they are entrusted to dispense. Self-report studies reveal that somewhere between forty and sixty-five percent of all practicing pharmacists have engaged in illicit prescription drug use. Moreover, these inquiries tell us that roughly twenty percent of practicing pharmacist use drugs on a regular basis and that five to ten percent consider themselves to be drug abusers. Given our specific interest in the various career aspects of deviant behaviour, after examining the transcripts of the interview it became apparent that the initiation and subsequent progression of pharmacist’ illicit prescription drug use followed one of two criminal career trajectories: recreational abusers and therapeutic self-medicators. Of the 50 pharmacists interviewed, 23 (46 percent) could be classified as recreational abusers. One of the defining characteristics of recreational abusers is that they all began experimenting with street drugs, such as marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, and various psychedelics, while in high school or during their early college years. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
These pharmacists described their early drug use as exclusively recreational. The motivation behind this use was quite simple, they were adventurous and wanted to experience the euphoric, mind altering effects that the drug offered. Because of procurement problems, these individuals reported that they engaged in little, if any prescription drug use before entering pharmacy school. For the recreational abuser, the onset of the illicit prescription drug use career usually began shortly after entering pharmacy training. These respondents were quick to point to the recreational motivations behind their early prescription drug use. As one 42-year-old-male pharmacist stated, “I just wanted the effect, I really just wanted the effect. I know what alcohol is. But what is you take a Quaalude and drink with it? What happens then?” Similarly, a 36-year-old male pharmacist said: “It was very recreational at first, year. It was more curiosity…experimental. I had read about all these drugs. Then I discovered I had a lot of things going on with me at that time and that these [drugs] solved the problem for me instantly. I had a lot of self-exploration issues going on at that time.” Trends in the data indicate that pharmacy school provided these individuals with the requisite access to prescription drugs. They recalled how they exploited their newly found access to prescription drugs in an effort to expand or surpass the euphoric effects that they received from weaker street drugs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
To further highlight this illustration, a 27-year-old male pharmacist said: “It was a blast. It was fun…It was experimentation. We smoked a little pot. And then in the “model pharmacy” [a training facility in college], there was stuff [prescription drugs] all over the place. ‘Hey this is nice…that is pretty nice.’ If it was a controlled substance then I tried it. I had my favorites, but when that supply was exhausted, I’d move on to something else. I was a ‘garbage head!’ It was the euphoria…I used to watch Cheech and Chong [movies]. That’s what it was like. I wasn’t enslaved by them [or so I thought]. They made the World go round.” Over half of the recreational abusers claimed that they specifically chose a career in pharmacy because they expected that it would offer them an opportunity to expand their drug use behaviours. For example, a 37-year-old male pharmacists said: “That’s one of the main reasons I went to pharmacy school, because, I’d have access to medications if I needed them.” Further evidence of this trend can be seen in the comments of a 41-year-old male pharmacist: “I [had to] change my major. So I [based my choice] on nothing more than: ‘well, it looks like fun and…gee all the pharmacy majors had drugs.’ The guys [pharmacy students] that I knew…every weekend when they came back from home, they would unpack their bags and bags of pills would roll out. I thought, ‘Whoa, I got to figure out how to do this.’ [I would ask:] ‘How much did you pay for this?’ [They would respond:] ‘I haven’t paid a thing, I just stole them. Stealing is okay. I get sh*t wages so I got to make it up somehow. So we just steal the sh*t.’ Well, I thought, ‘this is it, I want to be a pharmacist.’ So I went to pharmacy school.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
While many of these recreational abusers entered pharmacy school with prior experiences in drug use, their pre-college drug use was usually not extensive. It was not until they got into pharmacy school that they began to develop more pronounced and progressive drug habits. A 41-year-old male pharmacist discusses this transition into increased usage, in the following interview excerpt: “It [pre-college use] had been recreational type use. It was pretty consistent. But I was still just experimenting. I hadn’t, at that point, become actively addicted. [I was] smoking pot and drinking beer, [doing] psychedelics and Quaaludes [depressant]. Just whatever [I] would come across, if [I] came across [it], great, if I didn’t, no big deal…That was before pharmacy school. By the time I got into pharmacy school, the recreational drug use turned into a fairly steady drug use. Certainly not more than a month to two months would go by without something…I really started drinking and drugging. A lot of my friends after high school said, ‘Oh great, you’re going into pharmacy school. You can wake up on uppers and go to bed on downers,” all that stuff. At first, [I said] no. The first time I ever [used prescription drugs] I thought, ‘no, that’s not why I’m doing it. No, I’m doing it [in pharmacy school] for the noble reasons.’ But then after a while I thought, well, maybe they had a point there after all. Once in pharmacy school, the recreational abusers consistently described how they adopted an applied approach to their studies. For example, if they read about particularly interesting drugs in pharmacy school, they wanted to try them. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
If they were clerking or interning in a pharmacy setting which offered them access to prescription medicines, they wanted to steal drugs and use them. If a teacher or employer told them about the unusual effects of a new drug, they recalled how they wanted to experiment with it. This meant that these individuals usually began using prescription drugs soon after entering pharmacy school or while working in the pharmacy during school. This pattern of application-oriented learning is exemplified in the comments of a 44-year-old male pharmacist: “When we studied Valium [benzodiazepine], I had to find out what Valium was…If I studied a class of drugs, I had to say, ‘Well, I don’t know that. I don’t understand that. What did they mean by tranquilizer? What did they mean?’ I’d have to find out. Then, of course, I found the ones that I liked and the ones I didn’t…got worse when I got on the job. It was so fascinating to me, reading the prescriptions and going and finding the drug back there [on the shelf]…I would take inserts home and read about it. It was just so fascinating to me. That’s when I was learning about it and reading it as much as I could…That’s where it [the use] definitely…definitely started.” They explained that they wanted to experience the drug effects that they read about in pharmacy textbooks. These individuals adeptly incorporated their newly found scientific training and professional socialization in a way that allowed them to excuse and redefine their use. They began to see their own drug use as beneficial to their future patients. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
This adaptation strategy is illustrated in the comments of a 59-year-old male recreational abuser: “In a lot of ways, it [college drug use] was pretty scientific. [I was] seeing how these things affected me in certain situations….testing the waters…‘better living through chemistry.’ I thought, ‘I’ll be able to counsel my patients better the more I know about the side effects of these drugs. I’ll be my own rat. I’ll be my own lab rat. I can tell [patients] about the shakes and chills and the scratchy groin and your kin sloughing off. I can tell you all about that stuff.” We will continue this discussion on “socially acceptable drug use in pharmacy school” in the next few days. As one’s spiritual life develops, the believer knows to a great extent the true guidance of the Spirit of God. One knows true inward constraint to act, and restraint from action in like manner—such as when to speak to another about one’s soul, when to rise and testify in a meeting, et cetera. However, after a time one may cease to watch for this pure inward moving of the Spirit—often through ignorance of how to read the monitions of one’s spirit—and may begin to wait for some other incentive or manifestation to guide one in action. This is the time for which the psychopathological offenders have been watching. Since at this point the self-actualized has ceased, unknown to oneself, to cooperate with the inward spirit action—to use one’s volition, and to decide for oneself—one is not watching for some parallel, supernatural indication of the way to go, or the course to take. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Hence one must have “guidance” somehow—some “text,” some “indication,” some “providential circumstance,” et cetera, et cetera. This is the moment of opportunity for a deceiving spirit to gain one’s attention and confidence. And so some words are whispered softly—words that are exactly in accordance with the inward drawing that one has had, but which one does not recognize as from another source. The Holy Spirit, however, led via a deep inner constraining and restraining of one’s spirit. The soft whisper of the deceiving spirit is so delicate and gentle that the believer listens to and receives the words without question, and begins to obey this soft whisper, yielding more and more to it, without any thought of exercising mind, judgment, reason or volition. The “feelings” are now in the body, but the believer is unaware that one is ceasing to act from one’s spirit and by the pure unfettered actions of one’s will and one’s mind, which, under the illumination of the Spirit, are always in accord with one’s spirit. This is a time of great danger if the believer fails to discriminate the source of one’s “drawing” feelings and yields to them before finding out. One should examine one’s basic principle of decision, especially when it has to do with feeling, lest one should be led away by a feeling without being able to say where it comes from and whether it is safe for one to go by it. One should know there are physical feelings, soulish feelings, and feelings in the spirit—any of which can be divine or unholy in their source; therefore reliance on “feelings”—feeling drawn, et cetera—is a source of great mischief in the Christian life. From this point deceiving spirits can increase their control, for the believer had begun the listening attitude, which can be developed acutely until one is always watching for an “inner voice” or the voice of God in the spirit; and thus the believer moves and acts as a passive slave to “supernatural guidance.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Generally speaking, the development of social competence is a matter of learning by doing. If one family member has the opportunity to meet strangers, to plan and conduct parties, to speak before audiences, to obtain the co-operation of others in group activities which one leads, one develops social competence. One learns not only how to avoid giving offense to others, but how to elicit their approval, sympathy, and collaboration—“how to win friend and influence people.” If such experience is not available to one, one’s potentialities for social growth remain undeveloped. Moreover, one’s social ineptitude is not merely an embarrassing handicap or distressing lack to one; it is a serious impediment to the equal exercise of one’s right as a citizen to participate in group matters involving one’s welfare. Inequalities of this character are hazards to the genuine enjoyment of that political equality which is supposedly guaranteed by law. As long as individuals were relatively independent and government was minimal, the one-man-one-vote principle displayed on election day may well have been sufficient evidence of political and legal equality. However, now with the increasing requirement for individuals to participate daily in large organizations, something more than the mere opportunity to vote in periodic elections becomes more conspicuously necessary—namely, the power and ability to exercise one’s voice in governing the conduct from day to day of these enveloping organizations. Otherwise, as critics of Anglo-American political democracy contend, membership in the community for large numbers of presumed citizens becomes formal and empty, conveying no sense of sharing in its control. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
It has always been recognized that experience in forming and operating voluntary associations has been the best training ground for responsible citizenship outside the family itself. In this sense at least, all voluntary associations, whatever their concrete aims, might be termed family agencies for the development of the necessary competence. For this reason, it is impossible to list here as legal and political agencies all the countless voluntary associations which exist. Instead, when we come to consider potential changes in the operation of the various other types of family agencies, the function of equipping individuals for active citizenship will have to be considered as distributed among all of them. The emphasis of historians and other observers of American society upon our characteristic plethora of voluntary associations may well deserved. Nevertheless, numerous as the many forms of association are, membership in them is confined to a relatively small segment of each community (one-third is a generous estimate), and activity to an even smaller segment. Where members of one family may belong and hold office in half a dozen organizations, another half-dozen families belong to none at all. In almost every community, the cry goes up constantly that leadership, activity, and influence are concentrated in a few hands, and among the older rather than the young people. This cry goes up no more often as a complain from critics than as a plea from the leaders themselves. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
In public as well as in private forms of association, the complaint is chronic that far too few people exercise their rights to vote, to petition representatives, to keep informed on issues and to exert influence upon their outcome. Perhaps these persistent exhortations and condemnations are but the negative expression of our national ideal of full and equal citizenship; perhaps they point to a grievous deficiency which demands remedy; in either case there is a need for a considerable development of competence if there is to be successful working with others in accomplishing common ends. From this standpoint alone we can presume to suggest that ways are needed whereby family agencies can contribute a great deal more to universalizing such competence. From this standpoint also, it seems fair to point to legal and political agencies as the type of family agencies which have done the least to go beyond the mere redress of correction of grievances, into the therapeutic and positive planning stages of development. Even in modern advanced economies where the state promulgates and enforces laws bearing on economic conduct, these laws rarely govern all detailed aspects of transactions and contracts. Most business transactions between, as well as within, firms are conducted using various informal arrangements, such as handshakes and oral agreements, ongoing relationships, and custom and practice. If disputes arise, the parties first attempt to resolve them by direct negotiation. The law is available if these attempts at private settlement fail, but recourse to it is usually the last step, not the first, and often signifies the end of an ongoing relationship. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Evidence bearing on this goes back at least as far as the classic article of Macaulay (1963), and covers many countries with well and poorly functioning legal systems alike. Such private ordering in the shadow of the law arises for different reasons, and takes different forms that attempt to respond appropriately to each reason. Perhaps the simplest of these reasons is the cost of using the formal legal system. The cost can arise in many ways. Firs, even in countries with well-functioning state civil law, obtaining and enforcing a judgement in the court system takes a long time; three years is not uncommon. The court may include interest when calculating damages, but for most traders who are somewhat constrained in access to capital markets, the interest rate used in this calculation is likely to be an underestimate of the rate at which they discount the future. Next, in its calculation of damages, the court may underestimate or even leave out items like lost profit that are speculative and can be overstated by the plaintiff. Third, judges in state courts have to cover all conceivable matters that could arise under civil law, and therefore lack the expertise that insiders would be able to acquire about a specific industry. Therefore their verdicts in commercial disputes can be less predictable than those available in alternative specialized forums. Both parties to a dispute dislike this unpredictability. Finally, courts may require public both parities to the dispute would prefer to keep secret. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Sometimes the parties wish to avoid public knowledge of the mere fact that they were involved in litigation, because potential future transactors may think of them as inflexible and unwilling to renegotiate deals in response to changed circumstances. When the operation of the law is costly, both parities can benefit by resolving their dispute through bargaining or renegotiation, in which the expected outcome of recourse to legal systems constitutes the fallback, or the best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA) in Harvard Business School jargon. In turn, their initial contract and economic choices will be affected by this prospect of future renegotiation. This view of bargaining in the shadow of the law is well developed in the Law and Economics literature. Mass production, the defining characteristic of the Second Wave economy, becomes increasingly obsolete as firms install information intensive, often robotized manufacturing systems capable of endless inexpensive variation, even customization. The revolutionary result is, in effect, the demassification of mass production. The shift toward smart flex-techs promotes diversity and feeds consumer choice to the point that a Wal-Mart store can offer the buyer nearly 110,000 products in various types, sizes, models and colours to choose among. However, Wal-Mart is a mass merchandiser. Increasingly, the mass market itself is breaking up into differentiate niches as customers need diverge and better information makes it possible for businesses to identify and serve micro-markets. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Specialty stores, boutiques, superstores, TV home-shopping systems, computer-based buying, direct mail and other systems provide a growing diversity of channels through which producers can distribute their wares to customers in increasingly de-massified marketplace. Visionary marketers no longer focus on “market segmentation.” They now focus on “particles”—family units and even single individuals. Meanwhile, advertising is targeted at smaller and smaller market segments reached through increasingly de-massified media. The dramatic breakup of mass audiences is underscored by the crisis of the once great TV networks, ABS, CBS, and NBC, at a time when digital streaming offers virtually an infinite number of TV programs that can be ported into your home via WiFi and play on your television. And you select the times when you want to watch a program and what program you want to watch. Such systems means that sellers will use stealth advertising to target buyer with even great precision. The simultaneous de-massification of production, distribution and communication revolutionizes the economy and shifts it from homogeneity to ward extreme heterogeneity. Work itself is transformed. Essentially interchangeable muscle work drove the Second Wave. Mass, factory-style education prepared workers for routine, repetitive labour. By contrast, the Third Wave is accompanied by a growing non-interchangeability of labour as skill requirements skyrocket. Muscle power is essentially also hard to find because over time the body breaks down and some people are not as strong or skilled as others. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Thus a worker who quits or is fired cannot always be replaced quickly, and training is also expensive. Organizations sped an average of $3,678 per employee on training and development initiatives, and it also takes time. Therefore, the rising level of skill in white-collar jobs and blue-collar jobs makes finding the right person with skills harder and more costly. Although one may face competition from many other jobless muscle worker, it still takes time to learn the systems and procedures. The electronics engineer who has spent years building satellites does not necessarily have the skills needed by a firm doing environmental engineering. A gynecologist cannot do brain surgery. Rising specialization and rapid changes in skill requirements reduce the interchangeability of labour. Now, when it comes to climate change and the green energy scheme, it definitely looks better not to hurry too much with the launch. Along with more research on CO2, and other pollutants’ contribution to global warming and, maybe, on the danger of global warming as such, it is vital to have a deeper look at and put a stronger emphasis on the relationship between emission cuts on the one hand and economic growth and people’s lives on the other. A few think tanks, especially in Europe, have published very optimistic estimates about the effects these cuts will have on economic growth and employment, emphasizing the role of investment in an array of environment-friendly industries. The tough reality, however, is that, though opening a range of new business opportunities, emission cuts will also force both households and industries to make sacrifices. And it looks very strange that the UN-sponsored talks are based just on the calculations of the CO2 emissions cuts necessary to keep the temperature rise within two degrees, while detailed estimates of the effects those cuts will have on the other countries’ economic growth and development, employment, consumption, and living standards are on the table. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Absolute emissions cuts may cause a really serious slowdown in the global economy, possibly causing a social explosion—a revolt of hundreds of millions of people deprived of any real chance they had to overcome poverty and rise from primitive to modern lifestyles. The poor and the middle class are totally suffering and being ignored, but they are often times our essential workers, both with their labour and technical skills. Keep in mind that the United States of America is only responsible for 25 percent of the total emissions, while most of the rest comes from transportation, commercial, and residential use. However, on per capita basis, China emits 78 percent less than the United States of America, and emissions by an average urban Chinese household are estimated to still be around one-third those by an average household in the West. Therefore, it seems our technology is not really the problem. We are having a people problem. The World is, perhaps, overpopulated. Also, surprisingly, Western negotiators are not much concerned about the fact that imposition of too harsh emission constraints on China, the main engine of today’s global growth, may have negative consequences for the West itself, as China’s slowdown will squeeze the most dynamically expanding market, crucially important sources of many products’ supply, and, after all, one of the major channels of financing of Western governments and businesses. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Cresleigh Homes are so beautiful that I could spend all day looking at them. Marvelling about the space, and how I would use it; enjoying the rolling green lawns and picturing myself relaxing in my backyard, and of course, enjoying the architecture.
Many of these homes are so large that they even come with walk-in closets in the secondary bedrooms. I always say, even if you do not need it, but can afford it, considering getting the largest home. That way, you could turn the closets into home offices or a library, and if they get messy, just close the door and still enjoy your model home.
However, the single story homes are very spacious, and sometimes buying a smaller home is a good idea if you want to add a lot of custom features.
People often wonder, “What would I do with a 4,000 square foot house?” well, they do come with a few extra spaces, like next generation suits, which are like apartments with in your home, where your grown kids or parents can live, and many of them have their own kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom and laundry room so they are self-contained, but still part of the house, and has its own separate entrance.
Also, in these homes, you will notice the spaces are larger, so that is why they are so big. It is still like a traditional home, but with all the space you wish you had. You could even add Murphy Doors and have hidden rooms that only you know about. There are so many options and so many things you can do with your house. Some of the single-story homes are nearly 3,000 square feet. https://cresleigh.com/magnolia-station/
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This is the Presence You Have Longed for
Despite—or perhaps because of—the great public and policy interest, organized crime remains a fuzzy and contested umbrella concept. The understanding of organized crime has since the 1920s shifted back and forth between two rivaling notions: a set of stable organizations illegal per se or whose members systematically engage in crime; and a set of serious criminal activities, particularly the provision of illegal goods and service, mostly carried out for monetary gain. The general public, the media, and most policy-makers primarily use the expression “organized crime” to refer to criminal organizations, such as the Sicilian and America Cosa Nostra, the Japanese Yakuza, Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, and other large-scale criminal grounds around the World though to have a hierarchical lasting structure. However, even some of your local news stations may be involved in organized crime. There exists variation in the skills and techniques that go along with crimes that are committed within an organizational context. Organizational (id est, corporate) and state-authority occupational crimes tend to take on relatively sophisticated forms. To further highlight this illustration, we found evidence of complex and collective offending in our analysis of the savings and loan scandal. We grouped these offenses into three categories: desperation dealing, collective embezzlement, and cover-ups. Desperate dealing took shape as a series of complicated, high-risk investment and loan actions employed by executive to save their sinking financial institutions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
These practices included writing multiple loans to insolvent borrowers, inadequate loan underwriting practices, and other “go for broke” investment schemes. The term collective embezzlement refers to self-interested “looting” or unauthorized spending sprees that corporate executives pursued using investors’ money. The authors contend that extravagant parties and high ticket purchase were the order of the day as executives sought to enjoy the last days of their sinking business enterprises. Once things began to come unglued, cover-up practices were used to keep their insolvent ships afloat. These scams ran the gamut from criminal accounting practices (id est, misrepresenting capital reserves or capital-to-assets ratios) to money laundering, to hush money that was delivered to high-ranking state authorities and policy makers. Crimes that are committed by state agencies or institutions also tend to take on an elaborate character. To further highlight this illustration, numerous discussions, including one which documents how Nazi Germany and other rogue states have systematically embarked on genocidal plans to exterminate certain classes or creeds of people. Mr. Hitler’s “final solution for the Jewish problem” included a concerted effort of persecution, mass murder, and cover-up. Similarly, the hearings of the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s taught us that our own government is capable of hatching and carrying out some complex and especially devious criminal plans. By comparison, acts of professional occupational crimes or individual occupational crime tend to be much more simplistic. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
More often than not, the employee simply pockets the money or materials and makes little or not effort to cover his or her tracks. A similar trend has been observed among embezzlers. The same can be said about most crimes that are perpetrated by professionals. For example, we will discuss how pharmacists who steal and use prescription drugs on the job tend to rely on simple and predictable routines. White-collar crime and criminals are spread throughout the landscape of the American industrial complex. No one type of business/industry, or even any one type of job role (secretaries versus executives), is disproportionately represented in the available samples of known offenders. In light of this observation, researchers have begun to adopt a more individual-level focus, targeting the role that occupational settings play in the spread of deviance. Companies that operate in autonomous space, free of external social and regulatory control, will be more likely to engage in criminal behavior. This type of free-wheeling, self-regulatory work environment allows profit motives to blur the lines between acceptable and unacceptable “business practices.” High levels of internal or external competition and cut-throat inter-office or industry-level politics appear to exacerbate matters. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Organizational offenders are disproportionately, European-American, middle-aged men who possess modest to high levels of social capital. In our case files, there are 968 white-collar offenders who were sentences in seven U.S.A. district courts over a 3-year period. The bast majority of the offenders were men. The sample was also lopsided in terms of race, as better than 75 percent of the subjects were European-America. The average offender was well into his thirties and several offense types (antitrust, securities, tax, and bribery offenses) were dominated by offenders over 40 years of age. The participant’s elevated social capital was evident by the fact that most were salaried employees with modest financial assets. Most of the perpetrators were married homeowners with college degrees. Many occupied supervisory positions in their organization. Organizational offenders do not usually have squeaky clean pasts. We found that 36 percent of the 965 white-collar criminals in our sample had at least one prior arrest and 67 percent had been arrested more than once in the previous 8 years. Of the repeat offenders, 33 percent recorded five or more arrests. We found little evidence of criminal specialization. Of the 465 repeat offenders, only 15 percent were exclusively arrested on white-collar charges. Repeat offenders tended to stay away from violent crimes, but they often drifted into property or public order offering. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
However, the longer the person’s rap sheet, the more likely that one would face additional white-collar charges. Faced with comparisons to traditional street criminals, using arrest as indicator of offending, white-collar criminal careers begin and end later, and include smaller numbers of recorded criminal events, than do those of street criminals. However, they are similar to common crime careers in that they are unlikely to evidence a high degree of specialization, and that offenders seem to age out of crime. Moreover, the same variables that predict recidivism in street criminals (id est, marital status, history of drug use, prior record, gender, employment states) are predictive recidivism in white-collar offenders. Criminal intent is a difficult concept to nail down in the case of most crimes committed with an organizational context. This is partly a result of the fact that there are so many cognitive and behavioral variations present in these criminal events. Different jobs take on different cultural forms. For example, the term “hawk jobs” refer to those work environments that stress entrepreneurial creativity. Persons working in this type of environment are drawn toward innovative offenses directed toward enhancing their self-image among peers. Academics and business owners are examples of hawks. The term “donkey jobs” refers to those environments that are known for their “isolated subordination.” Deviance in this workplace manifests itself as sabotage or resentment and stems from low job satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Some cashiers and non-unionized line workers provide good examples of donkeys. The term “vulture jobs” characterize occupations with loose work groups and high levels of individual-level decision-making power (exempli gratia, outside salespeople). These persons will involve themselves in self-interested abuses intended to enhance their standing in the incentive-based reward system. Finally, “wolfpack jobs” were described as environments with tight work groups, for example, union employees and police officers. These persons will engage in habitual and collective forms of deviance intended to enhance group solidarity and camaraderie. Instrumental motivation is a cornerstone of crimes that are committed within an organizational context. Regardless of whether the outcome is monetary or physical loss, most of these crimes can be traced back to greed or a thirst for power. The vast majority of the incarcerated embezzlers in our sample suffer from an “unsharable problem.” This might include a self-imposed financial pinch resulting from promiscuous or seedy pursuits away from the job, sudden losses from a part-time business or investment venture, or the inability to finance an ever-increasing social status. Faced with the knowledge and skills of their jobs, these embezzlers came to exploit their position of trust as a means of alleviating the problem. We have also observed a slightly different motivational pattern among the female embezzlers; namely, the women tended to steal in order to provide for their families. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Analyses of corporate and/or state violators reveal that executives and politicians tend to commit their crimes to keep pace with the competition or to protect their own position within the organization. For example, most agree that former President Clinton committed perjury in an effort to avoid the political fallout associated with having extramarital sex in the White House. Regardless of the gender or organizational standing of the offender, these tend to be persons who commit their crimes because they see them as a way of alleviating some sort of specific threat. It is difficult to assess the amount of planning that goes into the commission of organizational crimes, since most of them come about as exaggerations of normal operating procedures. In the end, onlookers have difficult discerning where normal planning and implementation ends and where illegal and unethical cognition and behaviours begins. Persons who steal from their employers tend to construct their thefts as fringe benefits or simple extensions of normal business practices. To further highlight this illustration, a bank embezzler might claim that they simply loaned him or herself the money. A person who steals scrap metal from a manufacturing plant might say that they were simply taking out the trash. By equating these thefts to everyday business, it is difficult to determine how much planning exists. For decades, scholar have maintained that normative neutralizations play a central part in the initial and repeated offending that takes place among organizational offenders. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
More often than not, the source of these rationalizations and justifications can be found in the very workplace from which the offending emanates. To further highlight this illustration, in our seminal study of embezzlers, we use the term “vocabularies of adjustment” to describe how thieves routinely implied a sense of ownership or borrowing over the money that they stole as a means of denying their guilty mind. Some manufacturing employees adhere to a “cognitive mapping of property. Most of the materials in the factor are afforded a status as either personal or company property and thus rarely subject to theft. However, other property is afforded a status as “property of uncertain ownership” and thus fair game for theft. The workers reason that taking scrap material or component parts is not the same as taking a coworker’s wallet or an assembled television set in a box, but it is. You know, this really puts workplace theft into perspective. Stealing from work is a lot like if you went to a friend’s house and walked out with a glass, or their silverware. Through adequate education and upraising children properly and putting things in perspective, we can really train them to be model citizens. A tangential set of cognitive excuses has been uncovered among deviant professionals and corrupt state authorities. Blue ribbon commissions charged with investigating police misconduct have repeatedly unearthed evidence of a mindset in which habitual offenders deny criminal responsibility for their actions. The rogue officers claim that they were simply playing within the rules of aggressive crime fighting or explicitly following orders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
We have documented how workgroups norms centering around the need for effective and efficient patient care can lead nurses to excuse their repeated theft of hospital supplies and medications. Irrespective of the profession, we find that employees do not have to look or far to find the normative definitions that they use to neutralize their acts of wrongdoing; more often than not, they are derived from established workgroup norms or accepted business practices. Institutions are the overarching framework of rules and constraints, formal and informal, that govern interactions among individuals; constitutions and social norms are examples. Organizations are groups of individuals that operate within the general framework of institutions, and implement the rules and norms of the institutions; examples are legislatures, political parties, and universities. Of course there are interactions and feedbacks between institutions and organizations. The rules and constraints imposed by institutions do not eliminate all freedom for organizations to act, and since organizations have members with differing interest and abilities, interesting issues of “the play of the game” at this level must be analyzed. Institutions can then evolve to alter the rules of the game so as to achieve better outcomes from the play at the organizational level. Finally, individuals interact within the frameworks set up b both institutions and organizations, and these transactions have their costs of information, commitment, and so on. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Institutions and organizations attempt to economize on transaction costs, but usually fall short of optimality, especially when changing economic and technological conditions require changed or new institutions. There are two categories of reasons for the long lags and bottlenecks in the process of institutional change: first, resistance by powerful special interests with stakes in the old system; and second, multiple equilibria and historical accidents. A regularity in social behaviour that is agreed to by all members of society, specifies behaviour in specific recurrent situations, and is either self-policed or policed by some external authority. Thus, the strategies that the individuals choose, include aspects of the play of the game as well as the rules, and also specifies the equilibrium that is to be played. An individual’s expectation of the response to one’s action is often an important part of the institutional environment; that is, the institutional environment also serves to coordinate beliefs and select equilibria. At the (highest or most basic) level stand informal institutions, such as religion, social customs and norms. These are slow to change, over the timescale of centuries or millennia. At the second level is the institutional environment, consisting of formal rules, such as constitutions and laws. The timescale of evolution of these is measured in decades. The play of the game occurs at the third level, and this includes the choice of appropriate modes of governance for each type of transaction, or organization, the aim being to economize on transaction costs. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Finally, the fourth and lowest level contains routine economic activities such as production, employment, market equilibration. Societies make conscious efforts to instill some norms into their members, enlisting the help of parents, teachers, media, and leaders of opinion because norms and other informal institutions have mainly spontaneous origins and have a lasting grip on the way society conducts itself. Man of the norms pertain to civic duties such as voting, but others pertain to honestly in economic matters. This process of social conditioning and education can respond to changing needs much faster than the evolutionary timescale. Many of the communities facing collective-action problems treat laws, like prices, as incentives for behavior. Various branches of civil law—liability, tort, contract, property—govern situations where two or more individuals can enter into a contractual relationship, explicit or implicit, as well as ones where one person’s actions have spillover effects on others without any voluntary agreement on their side. These legal rues affect the incentives of individuals to take actions, or to refrain from actions, that carry benefits or costs to others, and that in turn affect overall economic outcomes and efficiency. Many changes in the society’s knowledge system translate directly into business operations. This knowledge system is an even more pervasive part of every firms environment than the banking system, the political system, or the energy system. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Apart from the fact that no business could open its doors if there were no language, culture, data, information and knowhow, there is the deeper fact that of all the resources needed to create wealth, none is more versatile than knowledge. Take Second Wave mass production. In most smokestack factories it was inordinately expensive to change any product. It required highly paid tool-and- die makers, jig setters and other specialists, it and resulted in extended downtime during which the machine were idle and ate up capital, interest and overhead. That is why cost per unit went down if you could make longer and longer runs of identical products. This gave rise to the theory of economies of scale. However, the new technology stands Second Wave theories on their heads. Instead of mass production, we are moving towards de-massified production. The result is an explosion of customized and semicustomized products and services. The latest computer-driven manufacturing technologies make endless variety possible and inexpensive. New information technologies, in fact, push the cost of diversity toward zero and reduce the once vital economies of scale. Or take materials. A smart computer program hitched to a lathe can cut more pieces out of the same amount of steel than most human operators. Making miniaturization possible, new knowledge leads to smear, lighter products, which, in turn, cuts down on warehousing and transportation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Up-to-the-minute tracking of shipments—id est, better information—means further transportation savings. New knowledge also leads to the creation of totally new materials ranging from aircraft composites to biologicals and increases our ability to substitute one material for another. Deeper knowledge now permits us to customize materials at the molecular level to produce desired thermal, electrical or mechanical characteristics. The only reason we ship huge amounts of raw materials like bauxite or nickel or copper the planet is that we lack the knowledge to convert local materials into usable substitutes. Once we acquire that know-how, further drastic savings in transportation will result. In short, knowledge is a substitute for both resources and shipping. The same goes for energy. Nothing illustrates the substitutability of knowledge for other resources better than the recent breakthroughs in superconductivity, which at a minimum will drive down the amount of energy that now must be transmitted for each unit of output. In addition to substituting for materials, transportation and energy, knowledge also saves time. Time itself is one of the most important of economic resources, even though it show up nowhere on a Second Wave company’s balance sheet. Time remains, in effect, a hidden input. Especially when change accelerates, the ability to shorten time—for instance, by communicating swiftly or by bringing new products to market fast—can be the difference between profit and loss. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
New knowledge speeds things up, drives us toward a real-times, instantaneous economy, and substitutes for time. Space, too, is conserved and conquered by knowledge. GE’s Transportation System division builds locomotives. When it began using advanced in formation processing and communications to link up with its suppliers, it was able to turn over its inventory twelve times faster than before and to save a full acre of warehouse space. Not only miniaturized products and reduced warehousing but other savings are possible. Advanced information technologies, including document scanning and new telecommunications capacity based on computers and advanced knowledge, make it possible to disperse production out of high-cost urban centers and to reduce energy and transport costs even further. There is currently an economic war going on. It is the war for dominance and wealth on a global scale, and political establishments and business elites are involved. It is also the fight to survive, involving myriads of small and medium businesses and hundreds of millions of ordinary working people. It is one of the strangest wars in World history. America is fighting at full strength, but unlike previous wars, even economic, America does not want its rival to suffer a complete defeat. America needs to remain rich, economically and socially stable, and technologically-progressive, it also needs to rebound and become cash abundant. America has to remain sufficiently healthy and strong and keep on running. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
This war for global dominance is a real war. The country that is the superpower is the one who gets to determine the rules of conduct on the global economic arena and the ways key international issues are approached. This is important because some governments are predatory or kleptocratic. As time goes by, America needs to keep the situation on the battlefield under control. Bargaining power, though absolutely nonquantifiable, exerts decisive influence on how key international economic issues are handled. To maintain status as a World Superpower, it is important for citizens become mature and competent individuals. There are extrinsic conditions for the development of competent personalities other than the kind of income possessed, and there are conditions intrinsic to family structure which may give even children within the same family differing starts in life. If individuals are to enjoy equal opportunity for the development of competent personalities, and this is limited by the resources of their families, then the objective of a community sharing such an ideal must be to provide these families, if not unlimited availability, at least some fair minimum of such resources. In general, this has been a guiding principle, though sometimes none too consciously, for the development of the agencies concerned. Equality before the law has been, of course, the bedrock principle upon which all these protective activities have been founded. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Pursuit of this ideal virtually require the state to take over and monopolize the function of securing justice for individuals when they were injured or threatened by other individuals, rather than leaving retribution to private feuds. The state taking over the elementary protection of life, liberty, and property could thus be regarded as the earliest and most irrevocable of transfers to another institution of a family function. There is, however, a function centered on family life which was in the hands of another institution even earlier than that, although it is not a function which the family itself ever possessed. That is the legitimation in the eyes of the community, through ritual and certain binding commitments, of marriage and parenthood. While the enforcement of these responsibilities has long since been concentrated in the state, in a society such as ours where there are so many faiths and churches the element of ritual with which these monogamic commitments are solemnly chartered by the community still remains conspicuous. The ritual testifies to the view that from its beginning any family is as much the creation and concern of the community as of its principals. In addition to formal legitimation of marriage (and of course of its rupture through divorce), there is a large area of family law, exempli gratia, inheritance of estates, administered through the appropriate legal institutions. The legal responsibility of a husband for the economic support of his wife, his children up to certain ages, and even his parents and siblings, remain in effect, though some of the economic burden has been taken over by family agencies. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Specific provisions vary widely among the states. Proposals for change in family law are more often concerned with codification on a national basis than with release of family members from their responsibilities. Indeed the notion, however fallacious, that by stringent limitation of divorce, family stability is somehow conserved, has served to arrest the liberalization that might narrow the gap between profession and practice; while efforts to move into a therapeutic phase, exempli gratia, family courts, have been largely resisted. How the powers of psychological offenders counterfeit the presence of God to those ignorant of their devices may be somewhat as follows. At some moment when the believer is yearning for the sense of God’s presence, either alone or in a meeting, and certain conditions are fulfilled, the subtle foe approaches, and wrapping the senses round with a soothing, lulling feeling—sometimes filling the room with light, or causing what is apparently a “breath from God” by a movement of the air—either whispers, “This is the presence you have longed for,” or leads the believer to infer that it I what one has desired. Then, off one’ guard, and lulled into security that the psychopathological offender is far away, some thoughts are suggested to the mind, accompanied by manifestations which appear to be divine. A sweet voice speaks, or a vision is given, which is at once received as “divine guidance,” given in the “divine presence,” and hence beyond question as from God. If accepted as from God when actually from the psychopathological offender, the first ground is gained. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The human is now sure that God has bidden one do this or that. One is filled with the thought that one has been highly favored of God and chosen for some high place in His Kingdom. The deeply hidden self-love is fed and strengthened by this, and one is able to endure all things by the power of this secret strength. One has been spoken to by God! One has been singled out for special favor! One’s support is not within—based upon one’s experience—rather than established upon God Himself and the written Word. Through this secret confidence that God has specially spoken to one, the human becomes unteachable and unyielding, with a beneficial trending on infallibility. One cannot listen to others now, for they have not had this “direct” revelation from God. One is in direct, special, personal communion with God, and to question any “direction” given to one becomes the height of sin. Obey one must, even though the direction given is contrary to all enlightened judgment and the action commanded is opposed to the spirit of the Word of God. In brief, when the human at this stage believes one a “command” from God one will not use one’s reason, because one thinks it would be “carnal” to do so. “Common sense” is lack of faith, and therefore sin; and “conscience,” for the time being, has ceased to speak. Some of the suggestions made to the believer by psychopathological offenders at the time may be: “You re more advanced than others”—working to blind the soul to sober knowledge of itself. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“You are a special instrument for God”—working to feed self-love; “You are different from others”—working to make one think one needs special dealing by God; “You must take a separate path”—a suggestion made to feed the independent spirit; You must give up your occupation and live by faith”—aiming at causing the believer to launch out on false guidance, which may result in the ruin of one’s home, and sometimes the work for God in which one is engaged. All these suggestions are made to give the human a false concept of one’s spiritual state; for one is made to believe one is more advanced than one actually is, so that one may act beyond one’s measure of faith and knowledge (Romans 12.3), and consequently be more open to the deceptions of the beguiling foe. Ontological categories of time, space, causality, and substance are the basic forms of thought and being through which the mind makes contact with reality. Since they are forms of finitude, they express a mixture of being and nonbeing, positive and negative elements which we discuss in terms of courage and anxiety. Humans’ experience of time includes the anxiety of transitoriness and the courage of a self-affirming present. Space is not only physical, but also social—a sphere of influence, a place in the framework of value and meaning. The anxiety of insecurity arises from the danger of losing one’s place, only to be met by the courage to carve out a niche for oneself. Causality brings forth the anxiety of contingency, the awareness that one does not possess one’s own power of being. However, courage is there too, for causality affirms the reality of being by pointing to its sources in the power of being. Substance expresses the anxiety of change, of loss off identity, along with the courage to affirm the finite by laboring to produce cultural creations. Significance expresses the union of being and nonbeing in everything finite. They articulate the courage which accepts the anxiety of nonbeing. The question of God is the question of the possibility of this courage. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Professional Occupational Crimes—It was Obvious that they Had Made a Covenant with the Devil!
The first line of defense against employee fraud and embezzlement is to hire the most qualified and most trustworthy individuals to work in your business, especially those employees who will have access to your company’s finances. The problem is, in this day and age, that is easier said than done. There are so many laws and rules geared toward protecting potential employee from improper hiring practices that even when you perform proper due diligence with your candidates, you will be limited in what you can ask, where you can gain information, and how you can us the information you do obtain in your hiring decision. In the real world of embezzlement, the perpetrators rarely fit the stereotypical image of someone capable of concocting and carrying out fraud schemes. Rather, they are almost always someone above suspicion! Embezzlers are of any age, gender, race, religion, and income bracket. Why? Despite the appearance of honesty, you can never be sure of what is going on in someone’s personal life, and desperate people are capable of taking desperate action. To further highlight this issue, it is probable that you have no idea that a fellow employee may: Have a gambling issues, have an alcohol problem, have a substance abuse situation, be experiencing financial difficulties, have expensive medical bills, or—enjoy living life on the edge! The fraud triangle—and the top of the triangle is incentive. Incentive is the starting point of fraud. Then there comes opportunity. Too much trust, poor internal controls, lack of supervision, no financial audit by independent CPAs, and the like, all create opportunity for fraud. The basic purpose of effective internal controls is to remove the opportunity for fraud. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Rationalization: After a period of time, the perpetrator actually convinces themselves that they are not stealing, but rather self-correcting a perceived wrong such as a pay discrepancy of the life. The Uniform Crime Reports collect data annually from law enforcement authorities on the crime of embezzlement. However, this crime is categorized as a Part II offense, which means that arrest data are disseminated to public but data on the number of known offenses are not readily available. In 2022, state and local law enforcement authorities effected 22,176 embezzlement arrests. There were 4,180 white-collar prosecutions in 2022. Annual losses from white-collar crimes as of 2021 are anywhere from $426 billion to $1.7 trillion. The wide range here is due to the lack of prosecution. It is estimated that up to 90 percent of white-collar crimes go unreported. White-collar crimes affect over 35 percent of U.S.A. businesses. It is estimated that 75 percent of all employees steal from their employer at least once, and another half of that percentage is repeatedly stealing. Plus, over 50 percent of embezzlers are managers. There are roughly 5,000 white-collar crime-related arrests for every 100,000 people in the U.S.A. Fraud makes up 63 percent of white-collar crimes, making it the most common. The painful reality is that there exists no reliable source of data on the incidence and/or prevalence of crimes within complex organization. For one, the vast majority of these offenses never get reported—a recent national telephone survey of white-collar crime victimization found that less than 1 in 10 victimizations were reported to law enforcement or any other regulator entity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
It is widely reported that corporate victims of embezzlement or employee theft prefer to handle these matters in-house for fear that external involvement will bring negative publicity or unnecessary scrutiny, or even jeopardize propriety information (id est, trade secrets). When members of government (id est, law makers or law enforcers) or corporate executives engage in economic or violent crimes against the public, they can usually rely on norms of secrecy or the threat of dire organizational sanctions to keep the matter from going public. Even if the public, media, or investigators begin suspecting foul play, corporate lawyers and the legal protections that are afforded to organizational entities will usually allow them to produce a formidable smoke screen. In these professional occupational crimes (id est, crimes committed by members of a profession), perpetrators can readily hide behind the collective code of silence, structures of self-regulation, and privileged information clauses as a way of controlling the flow of damaging information. In light of these structural impediments, one must rely upon data from small-scale and narrowly focused research efforts to speak to the descriptive aspects of these criminal events. Several studies have explored the topic have explored the topic of theft by employees. Property deviance refers to the theft of hard assets (id est, money, goods, raw materials). Production deviance refers to counterproductive behaviors such as the theft of time, the abuse of sick leave, on-the-job substance use, and engaging in intentionally slow and sloppy work. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Of the 9,175 interviews with retail, hospital, and manufacturing employees working in forty-seven corporations located across the United States of America, we found that one-third of the interviewees admitted to some form of property deviance in the past year. A similar study involving restaurant employees found that 60 percent had engaged in at least one form of property deviance and a full 82 percent had engaged in production deviance in the preceding year. Experts note that as much as 40 percent of all shoplifting that is experienced by retailers can be traced back to acts of collusion in which one or more dishonest employees choose to assist the external thief in one’s crime. Research on corporate-level violations reveals that companies engage in a good amount of offending as well. First, there were 6,558 white-collar crime case involving 8,670 defendants tried by U.S.A. attorney in 2021. There were an additional 6,332 persons investigated and 3,224 persons tried by U.S. attorneys’ offices tht year for violating federal regulatory statue such as the Food and Drug Act or any one of the other special congressional provisions that were previously outlined. In 2022, there were 371 antitrust cases brought before the U.S.A. district courts (90 percent were pursued as civil, rather than criminal cases). There is a general consensus that these numbers represent only a fraction of the actual corporate wrongdoing. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Numerous scholarly studies have attempted to more accurately estimate levels of corporate misconduct. In the study of court and administrative actions taken against the seventy largest U.S.A. corporations in, we found widespread evidence of abuse. All seventy firms in the sample had at least one formal action brought against them. The average number of violations per company was fourteen. A full 60 percent of the firms had been convicted in criminal court. All total, these seventy firms accounted for 980 violations of the law. Similar offending trends were found among the fifty largest corporations in Canada. Nearly two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies had come under fire from one or more of twenty-four federal regulatory agencies for violating corporate law during a 1-year time period. Abuses of state authority also appear to be widespread. There are 1,134 elected or appointed U.S.A. officials facing some form of criminal indictment. These offenses are capable of permeating every level of government. There have been more than 17 governors or former governors indicted between 1970 and 2009. There have been 487 instances of alleged and actual misconduct by legislators in the United States of America’s Congress from 1789 to the present. At least 13 mayors arrested on child sex crimes since 2021. And a considerable assortment of country officials have been indicted. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Crimes by government agencies are yet another type of offense that must e assessed through targeted cases. There are several noteworthy examples. An estimated 63,000 developmentally disabled Americans were sterilized under eugenics statues that were widely imposed across the South for the better part of the early 1900s. Also U.S.A. Public Health Service withheld treatment from more than 400 impoverished African Americans in the notorious “Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.” The excessive use of force by police offers represents one of the most prevalent and “newsworthy” forms of state crime. Voluntary data provided by 100+ police agencies reveals 25,067 incidents of use of force occurring in 2022 and 1,200 people were killed by police. Each year, fewer than 3 percent of killings by police result in officers being charged with a crime. A broad-based survey of citizens made it known that as many as 1 percent of police-public contacts that occurred in 2022 involved some form of force or threatened force on the part of the officer. Research suggests that as many as 40 percent of all use-of-force incidents involve improper force tactics on the part of the officer(s). Taken on face value, these findings suggest that somewhere in the neighbourhood of 180,000 abuses of police force occur each year in this country. Crimes by persons of professional status are yet another form of crime for which we have little incidence and prevalence data. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Members of the health care community engage in a broad range of criminal behaviors. Estimates suggest that as many as 50 percent of all doctors, nurses, and pharmacists will engage in illegal prescription drug use at some point during their careers—5 percent to 10 percent will come to abuse these drugs. AN untold number of doctors are said to defraud Medicare and Medicaid through overbilling or retainer scams, engage in prescription violations, conduct illegal abortions, and take part in self-referral or fee-splitting schemes (id est, providing kickbacks to other doctors for unnecessary or illegal referrals). It is estimated that as many as 15 percent of all elective surgeries are unnecessary; and documented is a considerable ineptitude and malpractice among doctors. Other professional groups have also evidenced considerable levels of criminal and unethical behavior. It is estimated that somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent of all practicing psychotherapist have had sexual relationships with a patient. Additionally, 27 percent of university researchers surveyed admitted to having personal knowledge of research fraud or plagiarism on the part of one or more colleagues. Also, considerable numbers of lawyers have licensure complaints and criminal action filed against them. The monetary and social costs that go along with crimes within complex organizations are staggering. On average, there are over $50 billion in losses due to employee theft in a single year nationwide. Retail loss prevention professionals estimated employee theft to cost $18 billion a year. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly estimated that faulty goods, monopolistic practices, and other violations annually costs consumers between $200 and $275 billion. A Department of Justice estimate put the total annual loss of taxpayers from reported and unreported violations of federal regulations by corporations at $20 to $30 billion, and the Internal Revenue Service estimated that about $2.2 billion goes unreported each year in corporate tax returns. Given the fact that these estimates for each would be significantly larger. Even more disturbing figures emerge when one shifts the focus to the physical harms perpetrated by corporate entities. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that commercial entities are responsible for 90 percent of the more than 292 tons of toxic waste that are released into the environment each year. These toxins produce untold levels of harm to the air, water, and land of this country. Routine exposure to these poisons can produce cancer or other fatal diseases. The heavily polluted air of Los Angeles produces 220 cancer deaths each year and 240,000 persons will die from asbestos-related cancer over the next 30 years. Also, there are other things to consider when it comes to climate change. We have pumped so much groundwater that we have changed the Earth’s spin. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
By pumping water out of the ground and moving it elsewhere, humans have shifted such a large mass of water that the Earth tilted nearly 80 centimeter (31.5 inches) east between 1993 and 2010 alone. Based on climate models, humans pumped 2,150 gigatons of groundwater, equivalent to more than 6 millimeters (0.24 inches) of sea level rise, from 1993 to 2010. Therefore, it is important to slow the amount of water we are sucking out of the Earth, as this could add to the planet heating up. You will notice areas with oceans tend to be cooler and have more vegetation, but places like the desert are hot and have no vegetation. Anyone reading this page has an amazing skill called literacy. It comes as a shock sometimes to remember that all of us had ancestors who were illiterate. Not stupid nor ignorant, but invincibly illiterate. Not only illiterate, they were also “innumerate,” meaning they could not do this simplest arithmetic. Those few who could were deemed downright dangerous. A marvelous warning attributed to Augustine holds that Christians should stay away from people who could add or subtract. It was obvious they had “made a covenant with the Devil.” It was not until a thousand years later that we find “reckoning masters” teaching pupils bound for commercial careers. What this underscores is that many of the simplest skills taken for granted in business today are the products of centuries and millennia of cumulative cultural development. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Knowledge from China, from India, from the Arabs, from Phoenician traders as well as from the West, is an unrecognized part of the heritage relied on today by business executive all over the World. Successive generations have learned these skills, adapted them, transmitted them, and then slowly built on the results. All economic systems sit upon a “knowledge base.” All business enterprises depend on the preexistence of this socially constructed resource. Unlike capital, labor, and land, it is usually neglected by economists and business executives when calculating the inputs needed from production. Yet this resource is now the most important of all. Today we are living through one of those exclamation points in history when entire structure of human knowledge is once again trembling with change as old barriers fall. We are not just accumulating more facts. Just as we are now restructuring companies and whole economies, we are totally recognizing the production and distribution of knowledge and the symbols used to communicate it. What does this mean? It means that we are creating new networks of knowledge…linking concepts to one another in startling ways…building up amazing hierarchies of inference…spawning new theories, hypotheses and images based on novel assumptions, new languages, codes and logics. Businesses, governments and individuals are collecting and storing more sheer data than any previous generation in history. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, more important, we are interrelating data in more ways, giving them context and thus forming them into information; and we are assembling chunks of information into larger and larger models and architectures of knowledge. Not all this new knowledge is “correct,” factual, or even explicit. Much knowledge, as the term is used here, is unspoken, consisting of assumptions piled atop assumptions, of fragmentary models, of unnoticed analogies, and it includes not simply logical and seemingly unemotional information or data, but values, the products of passion and emotion, not to mention imagination and intuition. It is today’s gigantic upheaval in the knowledge base of society—not computer hype or mere financial manipulation—that explains the rise of a super-symbolic, Third Wave economy. Contrary to conventional wisdom, today’s Western trade and economic relationship does provide for a certain kind of global equilibrium. It may be far from optimal, but it is not as bad as how you feel when you read numerous publications in the Western media or listen to politicians’ speeches. Here is the equilibrium’s outline. If American households’ savings increase, this translates into a higher investment rate (ratio of domestic investment to the GDP), rapid growth of production, and increasing exports to the East. Earning a lot of foreign currency, America boosts its foreign reserves (they expand further as American monetary authorities buy foreign reserves). The reserves are used to purchase securities, which fight with budget deficits and ease the pain of deep public spending cuts. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
We have to look at the global economy as an entity, with national economies as its integral parts. For decades, America’s enormous current account deficits were the focus of attention of economists, policy makers, and the media. All though those decades, critics, and skeptic did not stop saying that they were unsustainable. However, in reality they have proved to be quite sustainable: The U.S.A. economy remains safe as long as the inflow of capital continues and the capital and financial account remains in a comfortable black. Running large trade and current account deficits, the United States of America played the role of the major market creator for the World, supporting global growth, including growth in countries that were its major creditors. It was and is kind of a deal: market for money. Having become the U.S.A. government’s major, Beijing is and will be committed to playing its part because economic stability of America is indispensable for China itself: The United States of America is one of its most important trading partners. However, there has been a remarkable transformation of the U.S.A. international investment position occurring over the last 40 years. U.S.A. net foreign assets were larger than combined net foreign assets of all other creditors. By 1990, foreign-owned U.S.A. securities and real assets were larger than U.S.A. owned foreign securities and assets. This change occurred without the U.S.A. Treasury borrowing in foreign purchases of U.S.A. securities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Inferences from the currency composition of portfolio changes of those who acquired U.S.A. dollar securities suggest that foreign savers took the initiative on cross-border investment inflows. The U.S.A. could not have developed a larger capital account surplus after 1980 unless a similar increase in the U.S.A. current account deficit increase was the surge in U.S.A. stocks and other asset prices, resulting in a U.S.A. household wealth surge and consumption boom. The foreign saving inflow displaced domestic saving. In addition, an increase in the price of the U.S.A. dollar led to expenditure-switching from U.S.A. goods. When investor demand for U.S.A. dollar securities declined, the U.S.A. dollar price fell in 1992, 2002, and 2020 and the price of the U.S.A. dollar securities declined. Therefore, the U.S.A. has to stop living for today and pay off our debts, so we can once again become a creditor nation. We have to reduce the amount of goods and services that we import, and increase the amount of commodities we export. The good thing is that in the wake of this crisis, American households actually have begun to save more. However, Americans will have to learn to reduce their consumption to keep their savings high. This will encourage the central banks to raise policy interest rates to contain soaring inflation and prevent overheating. Of course, it will take time to rebalance the American economy. The private sector must continue to get stronger. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Generally speaking, the original so-called protective functions of the family as an institution are in modern times discharged by legal and political agencies. Beyond basic physical protection against human and nonhuman enemies, such institutions as police departments, child welfare agencies, marriage license bureaus, legal aid bureaus, inspection and regulation bureaus, traveler’s aid for desertees and the runaway child, and courts of every kind, are principally devoted to guarding the rights and safety of citizens. In the past, these functions have been construed ad largely negative or corrective. That is, when someone encroached upon another, or deviated from given rules or standards, it became the duty of one of these protective agencies to set matters right. In more recent times these bodies have tended to take a more affirmative approach. There are no clearly marked stages in the transition, and new functions have often been simply superimposed on old ones. This steady transformation of family legal agencies, though quite in accord with the ancient principle of equality before the law, nonetheless involves a conspicuous paradox if not a contradiction. For, all institutions, the family is traditionally the most addicted to conserving inequality, among, if not within, families. Many critics of the family have seen it primarily as a means for transmitted advantages from one generation to the next. The rewriting of family law, exempli gratia, on inheritance, has repeatedly run across the grain of this profound impulse of people to favor their own kin. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Nepotism is a term of discredit in the United States of America. Legal responsibility for misdoing is uniformly fastened on the individual, but upon one’s family. The near-legend of the Hatfields and the McCoys gain its popular interest largely from the extraordinary uniqueness of interfamily feuds in this society. Surnames, instead of being treated as facts of nature, are continually being changed by immigrants, members of minority groups, and people who, like entertainers, appear before the public. Antagonism to vestiges of primogeniture is as vehement among younger sons and daughter today as it was in the breast of Jefferson; heir must share alike, estates be broken up, and dynasties be avoided. Sons of great men find a thousand knives sharpened to whittle them down to size. Evidence like this could be multiplied to exhibit unmistakably the clash between our majority sentiment of individualism and philosophies of feudalistic or neofeudalistic familism. In spite of some opposition by a minority, purist of that idealized state of affairs, in which the person’s standing in the community is entirely a product of one’s own character and not all the result of one’s family connections, appears to be waxing, not waning. It has at least the vitality it had in Jefferson’s day and probably more. This ideal, however, would be absurd prima facie if it failed to recognize the overwhelming influence of the family in formation of the individual character. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Perhaps this fact was unrecognized in Jefferson’s day; perhaps he and his allies though that the leveling off of the extrinsic advantages and disadvantages of inherited property was the most important step toward equality. Anyhow, it is recognized today by students of the family that there are other advantages and disadvantages, just as important as those of inherited wealth and poverty, which must be dealt with, before every America child can truly asset that one enjoys equality of opportunity. The Lord said, “If ye abide in Me [id est, in the glory], and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will…” reports John 15.7. Christ abides in us by His Spirit and through His words, but He Himself, as a Person, is in Heaven, and it is only as we abide in Him there that His Spirit and His life, through His Word, can be manifested in us here. “Abiding” means an attitude of trust and dependence on Him in Heaven; but if one’s attitude is changed into trust and dependence upon a Christ within, it is really a resting upon an inward experience and a turning from the Christ in Heaven. This actually blocks the avenue for the inflow of His life, and disassociates the believer from cooperation with Him by the Spirit. Any manifestation, therefore, of a “presence” within cannot be a true “manifestation” from God if it uncenters the believer from one’s right attitude toward the Christ in Heaven. There is a true knowledge of the presence of God, but it is in the spirit, when joined to Him who is within the veil—a knowledge of spiritual union and fellowship with Him which lifts the believer, so to speak, out of oneself to abide with Christ in God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The counterfeit “presence” of God is nearly always manifested in the guise of love, to which the believer open oneself without hesitation. One may find that it fills and satiates one’s innermost being; but being deceived, one does not know that one has opened oneself to the activity of psychological offenders. The concept of finitude is the center of being which draws us to God. Man is terrified of nonbeing because his being does to secure him against it. His ability to question being, his separation from it, reveal that he shares in nonbeing. The undialectical concept of being is ouk on, the nothingness referred to in the phrase creatio ex nihilo. It has no relation whatsoever to being; it is pure negation, and hence undialectical. Me on, on the other hand, is the dialectical concept of nonbeing. It is related to being in the sense of resistance to being, or perversion of being, or menace to being. It is dialectical. The problem of finitude, then, is the dialectical problem of nonbeing. For being, limited by nonbeing, is finitude. Nonbeing appears as the “not yet” of being and as the “no more” of being. Being is the power of being! Power, however, presupposes, even in the metaphorical use of the word, something over which it proves its power. That which is conquered by the power of being is nonbeing. Being, therefore, is the power of being which resists nonbeing. Nonbeing is not a stranger to being. Metaphorically, it is that quality of being by which everything that participates in being is negated. Nonbeing is the negation of being within being itself. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Human experience of the ontological structure and elements shows that to be something is to be infinite. Yet the limitations of nonbeing are visible only against the backdrop of a potential infinity. For example, one realizes the finiteness of death only by imagining the possibility of something beyond death. Finitude is seen as finitude only if finite being transcends itself, steps out of itself in the direction of infinity. Infinity is a demand, not a thing. Infinite negates the limitations of finitude; it negates nonbeing. However, infinity is not being-itself. One must understand that infinite in the sense of infinite self-transcendence, while being-itself manifests itself to finite being in the infinite drive of the finite beyond itself. Infinity is a manifestation of being-itself, but the two can never be identified, for being-itself precede nonbeing and its negation by infinity. The awareness of finitude produces an ontological anxiety, for finitude contains the threat of nonbeing. Fear is psychological and stems from a menacing object, but anxiety is the self-awareness of the finite self as finite. Anxiety is all-pervasive as nonbeing. Since anxiety is the existential awareness of nonbeing, it is perfectly natural to man. Finitude and anxiety appear also in the ontological element. A polarity supposes a balance, each pole limiting and supporting the other. However, because of its finitude a polarity becomes tension, the tendency of elements within a unity to draw away from one another, to disintegrate. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Thus, the polarity of individualization and participation becomes the tension of loneliness and collectivization. Dynamics and form become chaos and formalism. Freedom and destiny become arbitrariness and necessity. These tensions are threat to finite man, for if he loses one side of the polarity, he loses the other side. Once the polarity disintegrates, he is destroyed as a self. It must be insisted upon, however, that these finite tensions are only possibilities, tendencies, threats, if you will. However, they do not necessarily lead to actual disintegration, just as every threat is not inevitably carried out. Freedom is the pivot, for it is only through freedom that the threat is carried out, that the finite tensions snap, that potential disruption is actualized. Freedom ushers in the basic distinction between essential being, threatened but integral, and existential being, real but distorted. “Essence” is ambiguous in that it denotes a fact and connotes a value. It signifies the nature of being, the universal, the logical ideal. However, essence also pronounces judgment, for it is the undistorted state from which the being has fallen. Essence makes the being what it is and judges it. “Existence” exhibits the same ambiguity of meaning, for it signifies not only actuality, standing out from potentiality, but also imperfection, the failure to measure up to essence. Whatever exists, that is “stands out” of mere potentiality, is more than it is in the state of mere potentiality and less than it could be in the power of its essential nature. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Christian theology considers existence a positive fulfillment of creation, of essence. It also points out the split between essential created goodness and its existential distortion. The theologian cannot avoid this problem. The distinction between essence and existence, which religiously speaking is the distinction between the created and the actual World, is the backbone of the whole body of theological thought. If man is that being who asks the question of being, he had and has not the being for which he asks. He is separated from it while belonging to it. Certainly we belong to being—its power is in us—otherwise we would not be. However, we are also separated from it; we do not possess it fully. Our power of being is limited. We are a mixture of being and nonbeing. This is precisely what is meant when we say that we are finite. Hope in God, His goodness, and His power refreshed us with courage during difficult challenges. Hope has the power to fill our lives with happiness. Its absence—when this desire of our heart is delayed—can make the heart sick. Hope is a gift of the Spirit. It is a hope that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the power of His Resurrection, we shall be raised unto life eternal and this because of our faith in the Savior. This kind of hope is both a principle of promise as well as a commandment, and, as with all commandment, we have the responsibility to make it an active part of our lives and overcome the temptation to lose hope. Hope in our Heavenly Father’s merciful plan of happiness leads to peace, mercy, rejoicing and gladness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Whenever a single wave of change predominates in any given society, the pattern of future development is relatively easy to discern. Writers, artists, journalists and others discover the “wave of the future.” Thus, in nineteenth-century Europe many thinkers, business leaders, politicians and ordinary people held a clear, basically correct image of the future. They sensed that history was moving toward the ultimate triumph of industrialism over premechanized agriculture, and they foresaw with considerable accuracy many of the changes that the Second Wave would bring with it: more powerful technologies, bigger cities, faster transport, mass education and the like. This clarity of vision had direct political effects. Parties and political movements were able to triangulate with respect to the future. Preindustrial agricultural interests organized a rearguard psychological action against encroaching industrialism, against “big business,” against “union bosses,” against “sinful cities.” Labor and management grappled for control of the main levers of the emergent industrial society. Ethnic and racial minorities, defining their rights in terms of an improved role in the industrial World, demanded access to jobs, corporate positions, urban housing, better wages and mass public education. This industrial vision of the future had important effects as well. The shared image of an industrial future tended to define options, to give individuals a sense not merely of who or what they were but of what they were likely to become. It provided a degree of stability and a sense of self, even in the midst of extreme social change. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
This industrial vision of the future had important psychological effects as well. The shared images of an industrial future tended to define options, to give individuals a sense not merely of who or what they were but of what they were likely to become. It provided a degree of stability and a sense of self, even in the midst of extreme social change. In contrast, when a society is struck by two or more giant waves of change and none is yet clearly dominant, the image of the future is fractured. It becomes extremely difficult to sort out the meaning of the changes and conflicts that arise. The collision of wave fronts creates a raging ocean full of clashing currents, eddies and maelstorms which conceal the deeper, more important historic tides. In the United States of America—and in many other countries—the collision of Second and Third Wave creates social tensions, dangerous conflicts and strange new political wave fronts that cut across the usual divisions of class, race, gender, or party. This collision makes a shambles of traditional political vocabularies and makes it very difficult to separate progressive from reactionaries, friends from enemies. All the old polarizations and coalitions break up. The apparent incoherence of political life is mirrored in personality disintegration. Psychotherapists and gurus do a land-office business, people wander aimlessly amid competing therapies. They slip into cultus and covens or, alternatively, into a pathological privatism, convinced that reality is absurd, insane or meaningless. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Life may indeed be absurd in some large, cosmic sense. However, this hardly proves that there is no pattern in today’s events. In fact, there is a distinct, hidden order the becomes detectable as soon as we learn to distinguish Third Wave changes from those associated with a diminishing Second Wave. The crosscurrents created by these waves of change are reflected in our work, family life, sexual attitudes and personal morality. They show up in life-styles and voting behavior. For in our personal lives and political acts, whether we know it or not, most of us in the rich countries are essentially Second Wave people committed to maintaining a dying order. Third Wave people constructing a radically different tomorrow or a confused, self-canceling mixture of the two. The conflict between Second and Third Wave groupings is, in fact, the central political tension cutting through our society today. The more basic political question, as we shall see, is not who controls the last days of industrial society but who shapes the new civilization rapidly rising to replace it. On one side are the partisans of the industrial past; on the other, growing millions who recognize that the most urgent problems of the World can no longer be resolved within the frame work of an industrial order. This conflict is the “super struggle” for tomorrow. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
This confrontation between the vested interest of the Second Wave and the people of the Third Wave already runs like an electric current through the political life of every nation. Even in the nonindustrial counties of the World, all the old battle lines have been forcibly redrawn by the arrival of the Third Wave. The old war of agricultural, often feudal interests against industrializing elites, either capitalist or socialists, takes on a new dimension in light of the coming obsolescence of industrialism. Now that Third Wave civilization is making its appearance, does rapid industrialism imply liberation from neocolonialism and poverty, or does it, in fact, guarantee permanent dependency? It is only against this wide-screen background that we can begin to make sense of the headlines, to sort out our priorities, to frame sensible strategies for the control of change in our lives. Once we realize that a bitter struggle is now raging between those who seek to preserve industrialism and those who seek to supplant it, we have a new tool for changing that World. To use this tool, however, we must be able to distinguish clearly those changes that extend the old industrial civilization from those which facilitate the arrival of the new. We must, in short, understand both the old and the new, the Second Wave industrial system into which so many of us were born and the Third Wave civilization that we and our children have inhabited. America has a lot of structural problems. Almost all of them are similar to those faced by developing nations. However, they are more acute and visible to the World because of America’s unique status. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The list is well-known. We no longer manufacture a significant portion of products we use in our own country. Although we are technologically advanced, new technology is often not used in many buildings and infrastructure because older technology is more cost efficient. And there is a battle between polluting enterprises and green technology, both of which pose problems for the environment. There is high latent unemployment and underemployment in rural and urban areas. Large-scale migration to the cities overstrains their infrastructure causing a lot of ultra-urbanization pains. Obviously mismatch exists between the labor supply (and those willing to work for lower wages, tend to get most of the work). And so on, and so forth. Discussion of America’s present and future usually focuses on a gentlemanly set of problems. They are often looked upon as critical and posing a threat of abrupt and disruptive economic downturn, social and political turmoil or, in the extreme case, the country’s collapse. Such views do not look convincing. The gentlemanly set of problems is manageable, especially for America with its remarkable ability to address crucial issues a gradual, evolutionary, but persistent change. Let us have a loot at a conventional Problem List. Aging Population and Labor Shortages? Yes, population of the working age is apparently approaching its peak and will start to decline in the second half od this century. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
However, labor force constraints can and most likely will be offset by further gains in labor productivity. Also, there is still a lot of underused human resources in the countryside (about 40 percent of all American worker live in suburban areas) whose migration to the cities will continue to boost labor supply. However, many businesses are now leaving the decaying urban centers, for the suburbs, and many people are working from their electronic cottages. As a result, more businesses will move to the suburbs, which should decrease inner state traffic. As for the growing number and share of elderly people, America with its high migration rates, unhealthy public finance, extremely high social spending, and high dependency toward social safety nets in the future, is in a good position to address the population aging issues in a realistic and financially sustainable way. However, many senior citizens are now small business owners and in good health and are working and support their families, while their kids go to college to obtain degrees, and one day may take over the family business and expand it. Also, the genetic engineer and stem cell technology, we may be able to prevent and cure disabilities. Therefore, most of the population will be in the condition to work and pay taxes. One day, scientists may even find a cure for aging. So, there is a lot of hope for the future. Growing Income Gaps? Well, indeed, they are growing, but, on the other hand, low-income families are mostly elevating their earnings and consumption standards; social safety nets are improving; and, overall, today’s America provides a lot of opportunities to enhance revenues and life a better life to those who really want to make it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Intra-Regional Development Gaps Threatening the Country’s Integrity? Not at all. It is not a critical problem as less developed provinces are becoming the country’s major growth engines and the state has enough financial and other resources to support and amplify the trend. Environmental Damage Endangering the Very Basis of Human Life? No doubt, a whole lot of issues have become critical. However, America is more and more establishing the position of the World leaders in most areas of sustainable smokestack energy, as these companies like Standard Oil are starting to tackle the environmental problems in the same gradual, evolutionarily, but persistent manner it tackled the other ones. And, finally, is there a threat of a big political and social turmoil that may occur as people’s anger with the authoritarian Capitalist regime and democratic political system bursts out and they take to the streets again? Fringe groups of Americans have also been dissatisfied with law and order and hard work, and their anger with the regime is really strong and apparently growing, impacted by numerous cases of power abuse, rampant corruption, disrespect for law enforcement, abuse elder and contempt for leaders, and a lack of respect for patriots and Americana, and other violations of basic human rights. A fresh memory of mine…Some three or four years ago, during a reception in hour of a group of American professors visiting Africa, two of them approached me for a greeting and asked a tough question: “Sir, why don’t you write plainly the America’s present political system is outdated and has to be changed? It worked, but now it has ceased to work. For us it is kind of problematic to write such a thing. Why don’t you?” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
What could I say to this? For sure, democracy and human rights have a basic, universal value and are perhaps not less (or even more?) important than economic growth and rising living standards, but really all of that is intertwined. Generally speaking, people are disrespected because they do not have enough money, because the color of their skin, religion, physical appearance and what type of house they live in and the car they drive. However, as standards of living increases, through economic growth, people become more rational, better education, and have more money to defend themselves in a court of law, so people reconsider violating these peoples’ human rights because they know they may suffer dire financial and legal consequences as a result, which could impact their freedom and reputation. However, on a macro level, we are seeing people raging against the capitalistic regime and they are actually fighting to restrict freedoms and destroy human dignity; information block-outs are now occurring because a handful of corporations own the media outlets and are fighting to conceal the truth; as well as cynical politicians consorting with the World’s most dictatorial and criminal regimes, which often get a helping hand from Washington when the global community tries to do something to put an end to their brutalities (notably, America tends to mind its own business and condemns brutal regimes for massacres of all people or for developing weapons of mass destruction; it always repeats honest and genuine calls to resolve issues peacefully and not to interfere with internal affairs when possible), naturally, this causes resentment, anger, and indignation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
It is a moral and historical obligation of all America and all honest people in the World who care about justice, the rule of law, mortality, and individual freedom to do their best to send the global leadership a clear message about it. On the other hand, values, ideals, and emotions are not the right starting point when your task is to analyze the logic of the evolution of the country’s political system. And there the truth is that America is approaching the task of changing its political system in the very same way it has approached the task of the economic reforms; gradual, evolutionary, but persistent. Its ruling elite is really trying to find workable answers to key and very difficult questions, while avoiding, by all means, any abrupt revolutionary change. At the dawn of 2020, President Trump proclaimed that everything which is good for a human being is capitalism, that is it not so important if you drive a Cadillac or BMW as long as it is made in America or Europe, and that there is no problem with some Americans becoming rich earlier than others. A variety of forms of ownership is encouraged to give a boost to private enterprise and less the burden on social programs. Many affluent people, this may come to a surprise to some, when they retire, it is funded 100 percent by private investments. Wealthy and upper-class Americans have always felt shameful to use government resources, that is why they believe in capitalism. They want to pay for their lunch. After his election, President Trump boosted the stock market to record highs, we saw property value soar (which is a good thing because it puts money in the banks of homeowners), and unemployment reach a historic low. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Also, although President Trump is a Republican, he is also a business owner. He fought to make sure each and every America, no matter if they pack income taxes or not, and every business received stimulus money. This helped avoid a depression that would have been much more severe than the Great Depression. Because people have hope, they did not jump from buildings to end their lives like they did during the great depression. President Trump also made sure all Americans has access to medical care, that they had food on the table and that fuel prices remained low so people could get back to work and school. He also told people that they have a right to tell authorities about their grievances, in a respectful manner, but that is they got out of line that the situation would be dealt with by using necessary force. He also told Congress and state and local leaders that they are to listen to what the people say, as long as they are respectful, and seek solutions for the issues they pose. Also, perhaps, America is the World leader in terms of the number of high-ranking officials executed for corruption-related crimes. The FBI prosecuted several government officials in Sacramento when they raided the state capitol. Again, any changes America makes will not be abrupt: from one party of rule to full-fledged multiparty politics, but evolutionary and very gradual, which is why it is very important to people to actually to research about political issues and politicians and vote accordingly. Many people used to vote democratic because they wanted high welfare benefits and more social programs, but as you see, many democrats are using the money to build sports complexes and remodel state buildings and put in bike lanes and resurface sidewalks, while affordable housing needs are ignored. So a Republican may be your best bet. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
As any business owner will tell you, if your employees cannot take care of themselves, they will not take good care of your business. Therefore, a business owner might make a better President, than a politician because they are used to dealing with human concerns. Citizens are being encouraged by federal law enforcement to stop criticizing the ruling party too strongly because otherwise they may face tough penalties—for example, for disturbing the social order or for being a public nuisance. President Trump was even in the works of making a government news broadcast channel, like FOX News or CNN, so you could get the information directly and unfiltered from the government. That way, private entities and special interest groups will not be able to distort the information for profit. In other words, the major trend is and will be a shift from an outdated communist dictatorship of the traditional type to a more sophisticated political system with a democratic base. This will make the information projected over the airwaves more legitimate in the eyes of World and public opinion or at least to argue that it is legitimate and that it cares about democracy. Look around you and you will see: America is one of the best countries in the World. Now, prostitution is an economic activity, and it is one many people turn to when they cannot feed their families, and this is why the government likes to keep social programs because no matter how rich a person is or what political party, they are part of, their kids could become involved in prostitution if they have no other way to survive. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The prostitutes-as-business-women and prostitutes-as-loving-partners identifications were made possible by a men-as-expense symbolic landscape where men were defined in relation to money because involvement with them was seen as necessitating payment in the form of “opportunity costs” (id est, vales which must be given up in order to achieve something) and “hidden costs” (id est values which are unknown at the time of calculation). The men-as-expense symbolic nexus was a construction of involvement with men in general rather than involvement with men in the context of engagement in prostitution. Hence, Sophie (aged 28) made the comment: “If you get involved with a man—ANY MAN—there’s always a price to pay. There’s always responsibility to give him money or something. You never can get away with it for free.” Throughout all the respondents’ talk there were differences drawn between the actual opportunity cost incurred by relationships with different categories of men. Involvement with pimps, boyfriends and the police were described as necessitating an opportunity cost in that the women understood involvement with all these men as providing them with “sanctuary” from prostitution or protection from prostitution-related risks, but at different and specific prices. “What I was left with was absolute fear and terror—a loneliness on a level I didn’t know existed. I didn’t feel like a human being anymore,” Michelle shares of her heartbreaking story of addiction—an addiction that eventually drove her to become a prostitute. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Most of the women spoke about boyfriends with whom they were or had been involved and who gave them sanctuary from prostitution through financially supporting them. However, the women described such involvement as costing them their independence and it was their unwillingness to pay this price that, they believed, lead to the break up of those relationships. Similarly, involvement with policemen was seen as offering the women protection from prostitution-related violence, especially against violence from pimps. In her moments of deepest darkness, Michelle began entertaining the idea that maybe God could help her, maybe He could provide hope and light like to one else could. “My World changed. You don’t life a life like that and then have things change overnight. It took some time,” she says. Indeed, two other women recalled that it was only after the intervention of the police that they were able to leave their pimps. However, here, the police did not arrest the pimps, rather they arrested the women and took them to hostels or other helping agencies. The price for this was understood as being both provision of information to the police, and more importantly being “indebted” to the particular policeman who provided the help. In one of her moments of desperation, Michelle heard a knock on the door. Two police officers were on her doorstep and wanted to share a message with her. “I needed to know that Heavenly Father loved me. Once I started to believe that—to believe that I was a child of God, that I want not the sum of my behavior, that I was not too broke and not too damaged. I was not unlovable. I was loveable and I was worth it, and He would send His police officers to knock on the door to make me feel loved that night.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Lastly, in relation in relation to pimps, more than half of the interviewees talked of making calculations about the quality of protection that pimps could offer them (against violence from johns or intimidation by other pimps) in exchange for the financial exploitation to which they would have to submit. This was most clearly seen in the women’s discussion of “big, bad pimps.” “Once they know who you’re working for and what status he’s got—like who’s the baddest, who’s got the gun and who hasn’t. You have only to mention his name and that was that. People leave you alone. Other [pimps] and other girls just leave you be. They don’t meddle because he’s psychotic! He’s notorious! He’s one very sick and twisted individual. People are afraid of him. (Anna, aged 36.) Of course, the obvious irony is that, although the women understood involvement with their pimps as a form of opportunity cost, providing them with protection, in reality, these pimps provided them with little protection and, in fact, exposed to them further violence and certainly to further financial exploitation. (I supposed they must have shorted him on his money.) In contrast, involvement with men as partners was described by the women as incurring “hidden costs.” In two cases, the hidden cost was initial entrance into prostitution. Both women talked about “having the knickers charmed off” them and being talked into engaging in prostitution. The cost was hidden because it only emerged after their relationships with these men were established. More commonly, however, was the woman’s understanding of the cost of maintaining their relationships as being their continued involvement in prostitution. As Anna (aged 36) stated: “There’s a lot of pressure. You have to do it, coz you need the money yourself. Then you get mixed up with someone and you have to do it again to help him, to keep a hold of him.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
A community committed to the optimal development of all its citizens will usually find—unless it is very small—that it has an array of all six types of agencies, both public and private. At the national level these are mostly grouped in the new Department of Health, Education and Welfare; at the local level, the city departments (plus some units of county and state) tend to cover the range, though very unevenly, and so do the councils of social agencies on the private side. Together they make up an impressive complement of personnel and machinery. From the administrative standpoint, not more machinery but its co-ordination to sever the family as a unit, appears to be the most pressing demand. From the standpoint of the citizen and family, however, the salient point is the effect achieved by the expenditure of resources; what matters is whether the agencies encourage dependency or foster development. Expressed in terms of values rather than functions, does the family agency attempt to define and achieve an optimal family, or does it avoid such responsibility, and merely seek to supply the most obvious and agreed-on deficiencies, as if these deficiencies were objective facts, not subject to different interpretations? In most parts of the United States of America, the hospital rather than the home is the place where babies are born and where patients with the more acute illnesses are cared for. Professional nurses and subordinate assistants have largely displaced kind relatives and helpful neighbors. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Yet while the hospitals have been taking over certain medical functions from the home, the biological scientists have been urging that greater responsibilities for nutrition, sanitation, and mental hygiene should fall upon the family itself. The vast and burdensome scale of mental disease in particular, which cannot possibly be reversed solely by psychiatric treatment at the point of breakdown, as well as an increased consciousness of the contribution of disturbed mental states to physical illness, have led physicians to expect more from the family than in the past. Nursing education steadily includes more social science. Likewise, the modern knowledge of bacterial and other origins of disease, and the biochemistry of healthful nutrition, have led to the elaboration of genuinely new functions, whereby the family may contribute to the physical competence of its members. Even if desirable, it would not be possible to have a psychiatrist, a bacteriologist, and a dietitian stand over every living unit of the community. If there is to be a rise in health along these lines, the members of each living unit must co-operate in supervising their own hygiene. It is not easy to think of a better institution for performing these functions than the competent family. There is a conspicuous problem for present families who attempt to cultivate the physical competence of their members. This is not really a medical problem at all but an economic one. It is the problem of hospital and doctor bills, and of spreading the risks of chronic or catastrophic illness. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The believer needing deliverance from the condition of passivity must first seek to understand what should be one’s normal or right condition, and then test or examine oneself in the light of it to discern if psychopathological offenders have been interfering. To do this, let one recollect a moment in one’s life which one would call one’s “best”—either in spirit, soul and body, or in one’s whole being—and then let one look upon this as one’s normal condition, one which one would want to be maintained, and never rest satisfied below it. Since the passivity has come about gradually it can only end gradually, as it is detected and destroyed. The full cooperation of the human is necessary for its removal—a major reason for the long period needed for deliverance. Deception and passivity can only be removed as the human understands, and cooperates by the use of one’s volition in the refusal of both the deception and the ground upon which it was based. It is important to keep perpetually in mind the standard of the normal condition, and should at any time the believer drop below it, to find out the cause, so as to have it removed. Whatever faculty or part of one’s being has been surrendered into passivity, and therefore lost for use, must be retaken by the active exercise of the will, and thus brought back into personal control. The ground which had been given—which caused the fall into bondage to the enemy—must be eliminated and then refuse persistently, in a steady resistance to the spirits of evil in their hold of it. Remember, the powers of psychopathological offenders will fight against the loss of any part of their kingdom in human, just as any Earthly government would fight to protect its own territory and subjects. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
However, the “Stronger than he” is the Conqueror, and will strengthen the believer for the battle and full recovery of the spoil. First of all, the method of correlation is seen in action, the posing of existential questions followed by theological answers in the form of Christian symbols. Up to now the method of correlation has not been explicitly operative; rather, we have synthesized the union of religion and culture. Second, God, the Christ, the church, history—corresponds to the major divisions of Systematic Theology, and so we gradually progress systematically and express a lifetime of theological endeavor. The existential question is the question of being, and the answer is God. Also treated is the problem of the natural-supernatural and the problem of symbolism, or the way to speak about God. Thus we probe into the depth-dimension which underlies theonomous cultural forms, the holy which shines through the secular, the ground of being which alone can command the ultimacy of an ultimate concern. God is the answer to the question implied in being. We are nominalist by birth. And as nominalist we are inclined to dissolve our World into things. However, the true ontological question does not try to describe the nature of beings, either in their universal, generic qualities, or in their individual, historical manifestation. It simply asks: What does it mean to be? The profundity and the seriousness of the question is realized only in a “metaphysical shock”—the shock of possible nonbeing. The question, “Why is there something, why not nothing” produces the shock by peering into the abyss of possible nothingness. However, the answer to the question is always in terms of being, which permits it to be posed again and again in infinite regression. Furthermore, nonbeing cannot answer it, for nonbeing depends upon being. Therefore, we cannot go beyond being in order to explain being. However, there could be something, a state, beyond being and nonbeing that we cannot comprehend. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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I confess that what I saw during my time of travel and investigation left me with a very heavy heart. The work to be done in order to lift these people up seemed almost beyond accomplishing. The debate over the nature and extend of the relationship between heroin used and criminal activity is a long-standing one which has generated a voluminous literature. An increase in criminality commonly occurs in conjunction with increased heroin use in the United States of America. The addict of lower socioeconomic class is generally a criminal primarily because illicit narcotics are costly and because one can secure one’s daily requirements more readily by committing crimes that will pay for them. The Heroin addict has a criminality that maybe a consequence of addiction, albeit an indirect one. As physical dependence upon and tolerance for heroin increases, and the cost of progressively larger dosages of heroin increase proportionally, some addicts seem to be driven to criminal means to satisfy his or her habit. Empirically, this hypothesis predicts a linear increase in heroin consumption and a corresponding increase in criminal activity necessary to support it. In contrast, a second hypothesis maintains that the principal explanation for the association between drug abuse and crime is likely to be found in the subcultural attachment comprised of the criminal associations, identifications, and activities of those persons who eventually become addicted. The basis for this hypothesis can only be understood in the context of the contemporary sociolegal milieu in which narcotics use takes place. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Since the criminalization of heroin in 1914, the social World of narcotics has become increasingly intertwined with the broader criminal subculture. Consequently, would-be narcotics users inevitably associate with other criminals in the highly criminal copping areas of inner cities, and, indeed, are often recruited from delinquent and criminal networks. Through these criminal associations, therefore, the individual is introduced to heroin, and both crime and heroin use are facilitated and maintained. Empirically, this second hypothesis predicts increases in heroin use following or coinciding with periods of criminal association and activity. A shorthand title for the first hypothesis is “Drugs cause crimes”; for the second “Crimes cause drugs.” Our contribution to understand the dynamics of the drugs-crime connection is based upon life-history interviews with 32 hard core heroin addicts in the Sacramento, California area. We purposely selected the respondents on the basis of their extensive involvement in the heroin subculture. All of the respondents had extensive contact with the criminal justice system. At the time of interview, 24 of the 32 respondents were incarcerated or under some form of correctional authority supervision (exempli gratia, supervised custody, work release, parole, or probation). While this places certain limits on the generalization that can be made from these data, the focus of this study is the dynamics of addiction among heavily-involved street addicts. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
To further highlight this experience, controlled users or “chippers” will not have experienced many of the dynamics reported here. Similarly physicians, nurses, and middle class “prescription abusers” are not typically subject to many of the constraints experienced by lower-class street users. Hence, it is important to emphasize that the findings we report here are intended to describe “hard core” urban heroin addicts. Women are slightly overrepresented, constituting 14 of the 32 respondents. Ethnically, the sample consist of 23 African-Americans and nine European-Americans; Hispanic-Americans are not represented because there was no access to them at the time of this study. Respondents were paid five dollars per hour for their interview time, which undoubtedly contributed to the 100 percent response rate. The interviews ranged from 10 to 25 hours in length, with each interview session averaging between three and four hours. With a single exception, all of the interviews were tape recorded and transcribed. Respondents and most of the street respondents were selected with the assistance of treatment personnel who were carefully instructed regarding the goals of the research and selection criteria. This strategy proved invaluable for two reasons. First, by utilizing treatment personnel in the screening process, we were able to avoid the time-consuming task of establishing the “appropriateness” of respondents for the purposes of this research: the treatment personnel were already intimately familiar with the drug-using and criminal histories of the respondents. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Second, the treatment personnel had an unusually positive relationship with Sacramento-area drug users. The treatment counselor in the prison system was regarded as an ally in the quest for better living conditions, appeals for early release, et cetera, and was regarded as highly trustworthy in the prison subculture. His frequent confrontations with prison inmates. Similarly, the treatment counselor who assisted in the selection of street respondents was carefully selected on the basis of his beneficial involvement with street addicts. His relationship with area addicts is a long-standing and multifaceted one. His reputation among street addicts was firmly established when he successfully negotiated much needed reforms in one of the local treatment agencies. Because of the long-standing beneficial relationship they had with area addicts, this initial contact by treatment personnel greatly facilitated our establishing necessary rapport. After a few initial interviews were completed, several broad focal areas emerged which formed the basis for future questioning. Respondents were interviewed regarding: childhood and early adolescent experiences which may have served as predisposing factors for eventual drugs/criminal involvement: initial encounters with various types of drugs and criminality; the evolution of their drug and criminal careers; their patterns of activity during peak periods of drug use and criminality, including descriptions of typical days during these periods; their preferences for types of crimes and drugs; the structure of understanding guiding drug use and criminal activity; and their perception of the nature and effectiveness of drug treatment. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Structuring the life-history interviews in this way insured that most relevant career phases were covered while at the same time it permitted the respondents a great deal of flexibility in interpreting their experiences. One of the earliest strategies for testing the Drug-cause-crime versus Crimes-cause-drugs hypotheses involved trying to establish that a pattern of regular or extensive criminal behavior typically precedes heroin addiction, that finding would tend to support the Crimes-cause-drugs hypothesis. Conversely, is a pattern of regular or extensive criminality tends to develop after the onset of heroin addiction, that finding would tend to support the Drugs-cause-crimes hypothesis. Previous research on this question is mixed, but mixed in a systematic way. Most of the early studies found little criminality before the onset of opiate addition. Later studies, by contrast, have shown a high probability of criminality preceding heroin addiction. Our life-history interviews are consistent with the findings of the recent studies. All of our respondents reported some criminal activity prior to their first use of heroin. However, for nearly all of our respondents, both their criminal careers and their heroin-using careers began slowly. For the respondents in our study, a median of 3.5 years elapsed between their first serious criminal offense and subsequent involvement in criminal activity on a regular basis. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Likewise, all of our respondents reported at least occasional use of other illicit drugs prior to their first experience with heroin. Moreover, many of our respondents indicated that they spent substantial periods of time—months and even years—using heroin on an occasional basis (“chipping” or “chippying”), either inhaling the powder (“sniffing” or “snorting”), injecting the prepared (“cooked”) mixture subcutaneously (“skinpopping”), or receiving occasional intravenous injections from other users before becoming regular users themselves. Perhaps most importantly, virtually all of our respondents reported that they believed that their criminal and drug careers began independently of one another, although both careers became intimately interconnected as each evolved. In the earliest phases if their drug and crime careers, the decision to commit crimes and the decision to use drugs were choices which our respondents believed they freely chose to make and which they believed they could have discontinued before either choice became a way of life. From our interviews it appears that two very general factors shape and influence the drug and crime careers of our respondents, not only during the early stages of each career but as each career evolves through different stages. The first of these factors in the availability of heroin rather than the level of physical tolerance the user has developed “The more you had the more you did,” explains “Mona” a thirty-year-old female. “And if all you have was $10 than that’s all you did…But if you had $200 then you did that much.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Addicts are able to adjust to periods of sharply decreased availability (exempli gratia “panic” periods when supplies of street heroin disappear) by reducing consumption or my using alternative drugs (exempli gratia methadone). They are also able to manipulate availability, increasing or decreasing it in ways and for reason we will discuss. As we use the term, availability also means something more than access to sellers of heroin who have quantities of the drug to sell. By availability we also mean the resources and opportunities to buy the drug to sell. By availability we also mean the resources and opportunities to buy heroin or obtain it in other ways as well as the skills necessary to use it. In short, availability is understood to include considerations of all of those opportunities and obstacles which may influence a heroin user’s success in introducing a quantity of the drug into his or her bloodstream. The second general factor shaping the drugs and crime careers of our life-history interviewees is life-structure. By “life structure” we mean regularly occurring patterns of daily domestic, occupational, recreational, or criminal activity. Recent ethnographic accounts of heroin-using careers in several major cities reveal that, like their “straight” counterparts, most addicts maintain reasonably predictable daily routines. Throughout their lives or respondents fulfilled, to one degree or another, conventional as well as criminal and other subcultural roles. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
In fact, during most periods of their crime and drug careers, our interviewees spent far more time engaged in conventional as well as criminal and other subcultural roles. In fact, during most periods of their crime and drug careers, our interviewees spent far more time engaged in conventional role activities than in criminal deviant ones. Many worked conventional jobs. Women with children performed routine housekeeping and child-rearing duties. Many leisure-time activities did not differ from those of non-addicts. These hard-core addicts spent time grocery shopping, tinkering with cars, visiting relatives, talking with friends, listening to records, and watching television in totally unremarkable fashion. Life structure in the hard core criminal addict’s life can be also provided by some rather stable forms of criminal activity. Burglars spend time staking out business establishments. Shoplifters typically establish “runs,” more or less stable sequences of targeted stores from which to “boost” during late morning, noon, and early afternoon hours, saving the later afternoon for fencing what they have stolen. Prostitutes typically keep a regular evening and night-time schedule, which runs from 7 P.M. to 3 A.M. Mornings are usually spent sleeping and afternoons are usually occupied with conventional duties. It is within this structure of conventional and criminal roles that buying (“copping”), selling (“dealing”), and using (“shooting”) heroin takes place. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Likewise, prostitutes seek to manage their drug use so that neither withdrawal symptoms (“joneses”) nor periods of heroin-induced drowsiness will interfere with their work. In order to meet the demands of criminal or conventional roles, addicts in our sample often used other drugs (exempli gratia marijuana, barbiturates, alcohol, amphetamines, methadone) to alter their moods and motivations, saving heroin as a regard for successful completing a job or meeting other obligations. Of one thing I felt more strongly convinced than ever, after spending time in seeing the actual life of these people, and that was that, in order to life them up, something must be done more than merely imitate New England education as it existed. I saw more clearly than ever the wisdom of the system which General Armstrong had inaugurated at Hampton. To take these people, and each day give them a few hours of education, I felt would be almost a waste. The shock is great when one first apprehends the truth of deception as possible for oneself; but as the ultimate issue is realized, the joy of the one who sets oneself to understand and fight through to full deliverance is more than words can tell. Light pours in upon the unsolved problems of years, in both one’s personal experience and in the perplexities surrounding one, as well as on the conditions in the Church and in the World. As one seeks for light from the ultimate concern, the subtle inroads of the deceiving spirits into one’s life slowly become clear to the open-minded believer; and their many devices to deceive one stand revealed as the searchlight of truth goes far back into the past, uncovering the cause of unaccountable difficulties in experience and life, and many mysterious happenings which had been accepted as “the inscrutable will of God.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
PASSIVITY! How many have fallen into it, little knowing their state! Through the misuse of their faculties much time is lost in dependence upon the help of outward circumstances and environment. In the lives of so many there is much “doing,” with so little accomplished…many beginnings, and few endings. How familiar we are with the words, “Yes, I can do that,” and the impulse is there, but by the time the need for action has come the passive man has lost his momentary interest. This is the key to much of the lamented “apathy” and the dulled sympathy of Christians to really spiritual things, while they are keenly alive to the social or Worldly elements around them. The Worldling can be stirred in acutest feeling for the sufferings of others, but many of the children of God have, unknowingly, opened themselves to a supernatural power which has dulled them in thought and mind and sympathy. Ever craving for comfort and happiness and peace in spiritual things, they have sung themselves into a “passivity”—id est, a passive state of “rest,” “peace” and “joy”—which has given opportunity to the powers of darkness to lock them up in the prison of themselves, and thus make them incapable of sensitively understanding the needs of a suffering World. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The equilibrium between cultural substance and form is achieved in a theonomy which embraces the truth of autonomy and heteronomy while avoiding their errors. Theonomy rejects both a divine law imposed by outside authority and a self-sufficient reason divorced from its depth. It demands that man seek a superior law which is at the same time rooted in the divine ground of being that lies at the depth of reason. The result is a theonomous culture which expresses in its creation an ultimate concern and a transcending meaning not as something strange but as its own spiritual ground. Theonomous creations are vessels of a spiritual content. Religion is the substance of culture, and culture the form of religion. Theonomy, autonomy, and heteronomy as cultural types constantly act and interact in dialectical fashion. The shallowness of an autonomous, secularized culture creates a vacuum of despair, a sacred void which preludes the advent of a theonomous period in which empty cultural forms receive substance and depth. Theonomy, however, tends to degenerate into an oppressive heteronomy which, in turn, provokes an autonomous reaction, and so the cycle begins anew. For instance, Clement and Origen created a Christian theonomy which later came under the heteronomous influence of Athanasius and Augustine. The Middle Ages stated a theonomy and ended in heteronomy. The Renaissance had theonomous qualities, but deteriorated into autonomy. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The Reformation itself developed into the heteronomy of Protestant orthodoxy and then succumbed to the triumphant autonomy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These examples illustrate that theonomy, though realizable, is ever fragile and incomplete. Its victory is always fragmentary because of the existential estrangement underlying human history, and its defeat is always limited by the fact that human nature is essentially theonomous. A description of the general qualities of a theonomous culture serves to highlight the reciprocal influence of the three cultural types. The first characteristic of theonomy is that it communicates the experience of holiness, of something ultimate inbeing and meaning, in all its creations. This theonomous style appears even in the most limited vehicles of meaning—a painted flower, a family habit, a technical tool, a form of social intercourse, the vision of a historical figure, an epistemological theory, a political document, and so on. The second characteristic is the affirmation of the autonomous forms of the creative process. The moment theonomy fails to respect legitimate autonomy and the freedom of the human spirit, it becomes heteronomy. The third characteristic of a theonomous culture is its permanent struggle against both an independent autonomy and an independent heteronomy. Only theonomy can prevent them from inflicting upon mankind either a meaningless or a destructive culture. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Asking which nations will dominate the 21st century is an exciting game. However, it is, in fact, the wrong question to ask—or at least the wrong form on which to ask it—because it overlooks what could turn out to be the biggest change in global affairs since the rise of the nation-state: the coming of the Global Gladiators. A new group of power-seekers are leaping onto the World stage and seizing sizable chunks of the clout once control by nations alone. Some are good; some, decidedly psychopaths. When a blood-besotted Ayatollah Khomeini called for a martyr to murder Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses Mr. Khomeini denounced as blasphemous, he sent a historic message to all the World’s governments. That message was instantly communicated via satellite, television, and print. The message, however, was totally misunderstood. One may argue that Mr. Rushdie’s book was in bad taste, that it deliberately offended many Muslims, that it derided an entire religion, that it violated the Koran. Indeed, Mr. Khomeini said these things. However, that was not the real message. Mr. Khomeini was telling the World that the nation-state is no longer the only, or even the most important, actor on the World stage. Superficially, Mr. Khomeini seemed to be saying that Iran, itself a sovereign state, had the “right” to dictate what the citizens of other equally sovereign nations could or could not read. In claiming this right, and threatening to enforce it with terrorism, Mr. Khomeini suddenly catapulted censorship from a matter of domestic concern to the level of a global issue. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
In a World that is witnessing the glocalization of the economy and the globalization of the media, Mr. Khomeini was demanding the globalization of mind-control. Other religions, in past eras, have asserted a similar right, and burned heretics at the stake. However, in threatening cross-border assassination, Mr. Khomeini was doing more than attacking Salman Rushdie—a British citizen. He was challenging the most fundamental right of any nation-state, the right to protect its citizens at home. What Mr. Khomeini was really telling us was that “sovereign” states are not sovereign at all, but subject to a higher Shiite sovereignty, which he alone would define—that a religion or church had rights that supersede those of mere nation-states. He was, in fact, challenging the entire structure of “modern” international law and custom, which until then had been based on the assumption that nations are the basic units, they key players on the global stage. This assumption pictured a planet neatly divided into states, each with its flag and army, its clearly mapped territory, a seat in the U.N., and certain reasonably defined legal rights. It is no accident that, to much of the World, Mr. Khomeini seemed a cruel throwback to the preindustrial era. He was. His assertion of the rights of religion over nation-states paralleled the doctrine medieval Popes expressed during centuries of bloody church-state conflict. The reason this is important is that we may well be circling back to the kind of World system that existed before industrialism, before political power was packaged into clearly defined national entities. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
That pre-smokestack World was a hodgepodge of city-states, pirate-held ports, feudal princedoms, religious movements, and other entities, all scrambling for power and asserting rights that we, today, assume belong only to governments. What we might now call nations were few and far between. It was a heterogeneous system. By contrast, the nation-state system that evolved during the smokestack centuries was far more standardized and uniform. We are now moving back to a more heterogeneous global system again—only in a fast-changing World of high technology, instantaneous communication, nuclear missiles, and chemical warfare. This is an immense leap that carries us forward and backward at the same time, and propels religion once more to the center of the global stage. And not just Islamic extremism. A totally different case in point is the growing global power of the Catholic Church. Papal diplomacy has figured recently in major political changes from the Philippines to Panama. In Poland, where the church won admiration for its courageous opposition to the communist regime, it has emerged as a dominant force behind the first noncommunist government. Vatican diplomats claim that the recent changes all across Eastern Europe were, in large measure, triggered by Pope John Paul II. The Pope is no fanatic and has reached out to other religions. He has spoken out against interethnic violence. Yet echoes of a long-distant pre-secular past are heard in his call for a “Christian Europe” and his repeated criticism of Western European democracies. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The Pope’s policies call to mind a long-forgotten document that was circulated in European capitals in 1918 urging the creation of a Catholic superstate made up of Bavaria, Hungary, Austria, Croatia, Bohemia, Slovakia, and Poland. The Pope’s proposed Christian (though presumably not exclusively Catholic) Europe today embraces all of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, with a population of nearly 800 million people. Such religious stirrings are part of the gathering attack on the secular assumptions that underpinned democracy in the industrial era and kept a healthy distance between church and state. (If Europe is Christian, as distinct from secular, where do nonbelievers fit in, or Hindus or Jews, or the 13 million Muslim immigrants encouraged to come to Europe to serve as affordable labor in the recent past? (Some Muslim fundamentalists actually dream of Islamicizing Europe. Says the director of the Institute of Islamic Culture in Paris: “In a few years Paris will be capital of Islam, just as Baghdad and Cairo were in other eras.”) The emerging global power game in the decades ahead cannot be understood without taking into account the rising power of Islam, Catholicism, and other religions—or of global conflicts and holy wars among them. I know that one who makes a mistake does so because of one’s own lack of opportunity for the highest growth. I pity those type of people because I know that they are trying to stop the progress of the World, and because I know that in time the development and the ceaseless advance of humanity will make one ashamed of one’s weak and narrow position. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Self-regulation and autonomy have emerged as key predictors of health and well-being in several areas of psychology. Autonomy has been provisionally defined as the ability to be one’s self. Analytically considered, it involves and requires knowing one’s self; having or finding an unambiguous identity to refer to in each situation; and being able to govern one’s self in the sense of being able to choose among alternatives. The development of autonomy is not synonymous with the development with a self, though emergence of a self is indispensable. The growth of autonomy is taken as measurable and as varying within and among individuals over time. Preliminary work indicates that a satisfactory index can be devised, although the invention of such a measure requires considerable analysis of the pattern in which autonomy is exhibited, so as to differentiate these as consequents from the reproducible condition hypothecated as their regular antecedents. The giving and receiving of characterizations of self and others not only exhibit various degrees of ease and constraint, but whether one’s self-concept is ratified rather than enforced by others is often ambiguous. That human beings are characterized by the possession of selves. Experimentally, it requires that the antecedent conditions conducive to increase in autonomy be distinguishable from autonomy as a dependent variable. Because autonomy is perhaps more vulnerable than any other component of competence to being constructed as a state of affairs, a trait, or a form of virtuous conduct following definite commandments, it is important to reiterate that it is here regarded as an acquired ability to handle certain aspects of problematic interpersonal situations with greater or lesser success. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Health which itself is one of the components of competence, significantly conditions all the other components including autonomy. The condition of health—nutrition, rest, hygiene—are therefore indirectly biological conditions of autonomy. However, there are a few biological conditions which more directly affect autonomy than through their influence upon physical health. In marriage and family living, these concern sexual adequacy and fertility, where these enter into self-respect and sense of worth, in the estimation of self and others. To the extent that sexual adequacy and skill can be improved by knowledge, practice, or medical treatment, a contribution is made by knowledge, practice, or medical treatment, a contribution is made to autonomy, id est, the person becomes more able to handle interpersonal situations making demands upon one’s sexual competence. The fact that there is a circular relationship here, in which autonomy significantly affects sexual functioning, implies the reverse proposition as a corollary hypothesis worthy of investigation. Fatigue as a biological variable distinguishable from health significantly conditions autonomy, and is also often the product of absence of autonomy. If practices are followed by which energy is fostered and fatigue diminished, at those times when the severest demands are made upon autonomy, autonomous capacity is itself increased. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Association in play exclusively with those with whom one is at a physical disadvantage, especially in the same family, leads to recurrent experiences of failure and submission which inhibit the development of autonomy. The optimal distributional of success and failures occurs when physical opponents are evenly matched in competition. The more adequate sexual satisfaction is in marriage, the less frequent is extra-marital sexual experience and consequent threats to mutually supported self-esteem. Cultivation of physical appearance—ccomplexion, weight, grace, posture, grooming—contributes to the growth of autonomy. Space for physical privacy and quiet—reduction of stimulation—facilitates the integration of new conceptions of self, especially during adolescence, and thus contributes to the development of autonomy. Autonomy is positively corelated with children’s opportunity progressively to earn money for performance of economically significant work and to gain practice in the management of their own economic affairs. (Safeguards against exploitation are assumed.) Economic independence develops autonomy, while chronic dependence undermines autonomy, unemployment undermines autonomy. Work which continually challenges the capacities of the person without taxing them beyond their limits enhances autonomy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Continuous employment at work far below one’s level of capacity reduces autonomy. Continuous employment at work which exceeds one’s capacities and causes a chronic judgment of failure by others and self reduces autonomy. Continual exposure to marked differences of reward for comparable effort reduces autonomy, whereas recognition of differences of effort by differences of reward enhances autonomy. Autonomy develops in direct proportions to the experience of participation in governing the conditions of economic life. Constant exposure to the inducement of wants which cannot realistically be satisfied reduces autonomy, whereas the inducement of wants which cannot realistically be satisfied reduces autonomy, whereas the inducement of wants within the range of realistic anticipation of achieving the means of realizing them encourages the growth of autonomy. Exclusive evaluation of personal worth by monetary standards reduces autonomy, whereas making available multiple criteria of personal worth cultivates autonomy. Voluntary and informed participation in the production of valued goods and services develops autonomy. Team play means that you alone cannot get too far out ahead of the troops. You cannot because in our company it is necessary to consult and check over everything. Someone will ask whether this does not lead to a certain amount of mediocrity. It does. There is an optimal balance of work and leisure which maximizes autonomy. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
It would be safe to say that overall, China has been fighting excessive lending and financial bubbles more persistently and successfully than most countries in the West. Chinese financial institutions do not play with tricky structured financial instruments the way their Western counterpart do—both because of tight government regulations and the lack of market infrastructure as well as financiers who are versed in such transactions. It goes without saying that financial sectors in China and in the West are going through different development stages. However, in the global economic arena China and the West are competing in a real-time format—and in this competition, paradoxically, China’s earlier stage works as a source of strength, shielding it from financial gambling risks the West is fighting, often unsuccessfully. Also, there is little doubt that from now on, while further developing its financial instruments, China will act much more cautiously than most of its Western counterparts, paying much more attention to accommodating and minimizing associated risks. In the West it is often argued that a wide variety of financial instruments, including risky ones, is needed to create money, which is invested in various industries. Nevertheless, China provides plenty of funds for the country’s industries—sometimes, according to Chinese financial authorities, even more than necessary. Today it is Western businesses that are facing a tighter credit squeeze. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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The Feeling of Being Watched and Impending Danger Gradually Increased
Shortly before nine o’ clock, a butler, dressed in an azure tailcoat and navy-blue breeches, escorted Me to my estate. A coldly sumptuous hall, it was the first point of entry to the 600-room mansion. Rows of muskets, taller than a man, and hundreds of swords, their blades sharp-edged and glinting lined its walls. From the vaulted ceiling hung several beautiful chandeliers. Directly in front of them, a magnificent staircase swept to the state rooms on the upper floors; and yet, as the butler led me across the hall, he veered to the right, heading for its farther corner. There, he ushered me through a discreet swing door. We had stepped into the “invisible World.” Behind the secret door, the entire ground floor was devoted to privacy. A magnificent hinterland of fifty rooms, some cavernous, some no larger than a closet, it was where many of the servant lived and worked. From here, a network of passages coursed through the mansion: hidden routes, which spiraled up the narrow turrets and towers to the splendid rooms above, enabling the servants to carry out their duties unobserved. One might ask, why was I touring the part of my home? It was through this labyrinth of passages, deep in the servants quarters, where the rooms were subjects of wild speculations, fueled by servants’ fears that someone had come back from the dead. It seems a few of the servants had been thinking of ways to make money. One of the servants, Olov told Stellan about a plan to end their money troubles. The scheme was simple. Each of the men would take a life insurance policy out of another one of the servants, twenty-year-old Leif Titus. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
They would say that they had helped raise and support Leif in his life and were looking for reimbursement for their help upon his death. There was nothing illegal about that. Then they would wait awhile before killing Leif, collect on the policies, and all of their money troubles would be over. Stellan asked who would kill Leif. “That’s the beauty of it,” Olov told his friend. “We each kick in a percentage of the policy money to pay an assassin so none of us has to do the killing.” Stellan was quiet for a moment, and then he nodded. They could get someone at the tavern to do it. Olov arranged for a meeting with Duke. They worked it all out the details of the murder plot and agreed to execute the plan. The other men paid Duke $400 to arrange and carry out the murder. This was a lot of money, so Duke agree to do the deed. June 6, 1890, was just another day to Leif Titus as he went about his work on the estate. He was not surprised when Olov told them that their friend Duke had come by to see if he might want to go for a drink later that evening. The two men had hung out at the tavern from time to time, so he readily accepted the invitation. The two men set off after work. It was after dark and Leif and Duke rode horse back to the tavern. However, before getting their Duke fired his rifle, Leif horse was scared, threw him from the saddle. He fell off the horse, hitting his head on the cobble stones and his life had been snuffed out for $9,000 in life insurance policies. It was the perfect crime, or so it seemed to the men. They said that Leif fell off his horse and died on the way back from the tavern. And they seemed to have gotten away with it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Saturday night, Olov arrived back to my estate, and went to his room to lie down on his bed. He had not been there long when he heard noises. As he was just involved in a plot that robbed another man of his life, he became quite nervous. That night, there were doors opening and closing, footsteps of unseen guests. As he got up to go investigate, Olov felt a strange touch at his back; then a tug; then he felt the back of his sweater pulled several inches away from his back. He turned to look over his shoulder and wondered how, without moving, he could have hooked his sweater on something. However, there was nothing upon which his sweater could have been stuck. Just then he saw Stellan, eyes wide with astonishment. He blurted out to Olov, “I just saw the back of your sweater pull out all by itself!” Later the following evening Olov was closing up the mansion for the night, at about 9.00 P.M. Like all Victorian homes, “The House Built by Spirits” has its share of creaks and groans. Creaks and groans are one thing—but witnessing something supernatural is another thing entirely. He was turning out the lights. The house, as the light are slowly being extinguished, does have a certain “feeling” to it: as it grows dark, one gets the inkling that one need to hurry, that someone—or something—cannot wait for you to leave so that they may get on with their existence—if that is what one could call it—in peace. Moving from the parlor to the morning room, he casually looked into the darkened stairwell. His eye was caught by the manifestation of a spectral being. A strange man with long hair appeared in the morning room. Olov mistake this spectral man for a servant. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
When he realized his mistake, Olov hurried forward to see who the person was. As he watched the figure, the long-haired man moved out of the morning room, he followed him. Just as the icy fingers of fear had begun to trace a slow, deliberate path up the length of his spine, the figure floated the through the mahogany wall and disappeared. Stellan arrived to find Olov in a near state of panic. While in the servants’ quarters, he had been sitting in a chair with his back to the door. He heard the door open and close and the sound of footsteps enter the house and approach the spot directly behind his chair. Imagine the horror when he turned around and saw a misty figure take the form of a tall man all in gray. The ghost, wearing a tattered Revolutionary War uniform, looked unkempt with long hair and a grizzled appearance. Olov screamed, but it was only second before the specter faded away. When Stellan reached him, his was quivering and inconsolable. Stellan then figure it would be a good idea for the two men to quit their jobs and move north. After all, they now had the money to do so, they were rich. On that evening, Olov wandered into a dark and deserted section of the mansion. This was the most active area of the mansion and too dangerous to inhabit. The stairway to the attic was narrow and winding. Suddenly a shrill scream came from the attic. Stellan ran to the fourth floor where Olov was discovered lying on the floor, stabbed through the heart. He was dead. Stellan figured the men had been hexed, and he would be the next one to die. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Stellan went into a secret room under one of the kitchens through a trap door—a secret room that house Mrs. Winchester’s magic. He was looking for her book of spells in the secret room. However, there was someone in that room, perhaps waiting for a century or more, for someone to open the trap door. Walking through the small, arched doorway, the room was furnished and there were antique carpets near the alter. He heard music and instruments. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure of a small woman, seemingly cloaked in a long, dark, flowing dress with a wide-brimmed, black hat, standing in the corner. He stood for a brief moment, seeing her out of the side vision, afraid to look directly at her, since he realized that entities can sometimes only be seen through peripheral vision. Indeed, when he turned to confront the dark lady, he was struck on the head with a piece of stove wood, killing him. The story of a mysterious man in the servants quarters had spread throughout the estate, as we were touring the room that belonged to Leif, we herd the sounds of horses hooves and whips. Then sudden sound heralded the appearance of a bright figure we immediately recognized of Leif. He told us how he had died and how his poor mother was near a breakdown; after someone had dug up bushes in her yard, she took it as a sign that Leif’s body would also be dug up. He had him exhumed and reburied in the flower bed outside her house. Here she piled a huge mound of stones over his grave. Vowing to get revenge, she would sit up nights watching for grave robbers and crying for her lost son, until she died from a broken heart. And from beyond the grave, she had discovered who took the life of her son and returned the favor. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Through the years the servants on occasion have hear Olov’s shrill last crimes repeated over and over again. The antique carpets in the secret alter room were cleaned, but the bloodstain frequently reappears. One of the servants mentioned that he saw an injured man, blood, and a woman in a dark dress in the alter room, leaning up against the walls, exhausted, dirty, bloody, smelling like sweat and fear. After hearing the specter’s story, I was trembling. I said nothing for a second or two, trying to find the words. Nothing ever came to mind. It is when things are busiest in their dwelling-places that the spirits are most active. Already disposed once out of their bodies, they react when they are again dispossessed of their homes. There was a great deal of strong, negative energy coming from this particular corner of the room. From the moment on, I closed off this section of the house and had Mr. Hansen build Victorian cottages for the servants to live in and increased their pay three times more than the going rate. The servants were good and faithful people. Perhaps these ghosts and restless spirits return to remind mortals of the evil that can be done in the name of good. Many people whisper that no one can make it through this area of the mansion. It is said that strange fear grips people as they approach the servant’s wing. As they pass through the threshold, they feel that they should turn back. A feeling of being watched and of impending danger gradually rises as they wander deeper and deeper into this wing. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
O thou great and powerful King AMAYMON, who rulest by the power of the Supreme God El, over all Spirits, superior and inferior, but especially over the Infernal Order in the Dominion of the East, I invoke and command thee by the particular and true Name of God, and by the God whom thou dost worship, by the Seal of thy creation, by the most mighty and powerful Name of God TETRAGRAMMATION, who cast thee out of Heaven with the rest of the Infernal Spirits, by all the other potent and great names of God, Creator of Heaven, Earth, and Hell, of all contained therein, by their powers and virtues, and by the Name PRIMEMATUM, which commands the whole host of Heaven. Do thou force and compel the Spirit ADONAI, king of Kings here before this circle, in a fair and comely shape, without injury to myself or to any creature, that he may tide and time receive our wish, and grant us new beginnings so that we may accomplish our desires, whatsoever the be, provided that it is proper to his office, by the power of God, EL, who hath created and doth dispose of all things, celestial, aerial, terrestrial, and infernal. ASTRACHIOS, ASACH, ASARCA, ABEDUMABAL, SLLAT, ANABOTAS, JESUBLIN, SCIOIN, DOMOL, Lord God, who dwellest above the Heavens, whose glance searchest the abyss; grant us, we pray Thee, the power to conceieve in our minds and to execute that which we desire to do, the end of which we would attain by Thy help, O God Almighty, who livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
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Many False Opinion May be Exchanged for True Ones
I have learned from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the result. The American public, for example, are quite as raw and undiscerning on subjects of political economy since the nation has been converted to free-trade, as they were before; and are still further from having acquired better habits of thought or feeling, or being in any way better fortified against error, on subjects of a more elevated character. For, though they have thrown off certain errors, the general discipline of their minds, intellectually and morally, is not alerted. I am now convinced, that no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought. Unfortunately, our country’s ardent commitment to capitalism and the accumulation of wealth comes with a downside: Faced with the pressing need to obtain and expend monetary resources, untold scores of people simple take from their fellow citizens as a means of getting what they want. It is widely accepted that crimes against property account for the vast majority of criminal victimizations that occur annually in this country. However, these offenses tend to remain in the background of our discussions of crime, as society is much more concerned with the documentation and prevention of violent crime. This means that one must traverse a fragmented empirical and conceptual landscape when trying to piece together the nature and dynamics of what constitutes common property crime. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
When it comes to shear incidence and law enforcement workload allocation, common property crimes collectively constitute a most menacing foe. Turning to the limited list of eight Part I index crimes, we see that property offenses (burglary, arson, larceny/theft, and motor vehicle theft) accounted for 88 percent of all offenses known to the police in 2022. That translated to an official property crimes rate of 3,656 per 100,000 persons. These four offenses generated 1.6 million arrests in 2022, but this is only part of the picture. Several noteworthy forms of property crime are included on the supplemental list of Part II index offenses, namely, fraud, forgery and counterfeiting, embezzlement, receiving stolen property, and vandalism. When these offenses are added to the mix, we see that more than 2.5 million arrests for crimes against property occur each year in this country. One could legitimately include, a long list of offense when trying to frame a discussion of what constitutes “common” property crime. The list might include such offenses as burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, fraud, forgery and counterfeiting, embezzlement, receiving stolen property, and vandalism. Given its unique status as a “crime of intrusion,” burglary had been allocated its own separate discussion. Even with this significant paring, a full treatment of the remaining laundry list of property crimes is far beyond the scope of this report. Luckily, this sort of comprehensive discussion is not necessary because the similarities between these crimes far outweigh the differences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
In the tradition of the typologies approach, we will use the single conceptual category that is termed common property crime. These two offenses were chosen for several reasons. First, they are among the most recognizable and pure forms of crimes against property. Second, their status as Part I index crimes means that comprehensive data are readily available on each. These two offenses comprise roughly 80 percent of known Part I property crimes each year and more than 50 percent of all Part I and II property crime arrests that are effected each year. The crime of larceny is steeped in a rich legal history. In common law times, the larceny statue was comprised of five essential parts: (1) an act of wrongful taking; (2) an act of carrying away; (3) a piece of property; (4) a rightful owner; and (5) the intent to permanently deprive the owner of possession. As the nature of property and property relationships grew more complicates, so too did the larceny statue. In particular, the courts had to grapple with such complex issues as ownership versus possession, misappropriations that occur while a property owner has voluntarily relinquished possession to another for shipping or safekeeping, and what exactly constitutes “property.” The result was the gradual emergence of a flexible and more amorphous legal definition of larceny that incorporates all acts of wrongful property misappropriation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Today, most jurisdictions follow the direct of the Model Penal Code and rely upon a consolidated larceny-theft statue. For example, the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) defines larceny-theft as any “unlawful taking, carrying, leading, or riding away of property from the possession or constructive possession of another.” Note that this definition effectively incorporates all forms of property theft under a single heading, regardless of the means or motivations that lay behind the act. There are two important caveats that accompany the UCR’s consolidated definition of larceny-theft. First, it does not apply to the theft of a motor vehicle. In particular, the theft or attempted theft of a self-propelled vehicle (id est, any nonmanual, nonrailrunning vehicle including cars, trucks, motorboats, construction equipment, airplane, or farming equipment) is in its own category named motor vehicle theft. Second, the UCR’s consolidated definition does not apply to acts of theft or conversion that are accomplished by “false pretenses” (id est, fraud), those thefts committed during the course of a contractual or work relationship (id est, embezzlement), or other legal contexts that would allow for the act to be categorized under the heading of specialized form of property crime. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) collapses all form of theft by taking, regardless of their manifestations (id est, by stealth or deceit) into one generic category—theft. Motor vehicle theft is afforded a separate offense designation. The NCVS classifies all nonviolent thefts from the body of a person under the heading of purse snatching or pocket picking. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Approximately 14,135,090 thefts, 1,008,720 motor vehicle thefts, and 188,370 purse snatchings/pocket pickings occurred in 2022. Combined, generic thefts, motor vehicle thefts, and purse snatchings/pocket pickings accounted from almost two-thirds of the overall victimization tall from 2022. Because crimes rates are so high and homeowners want more security than stationary cameras, within the next decade, it is predicted that homeowners will be able to purchase a noninvasive form of a satellite, probably smaller than a golf ball, which will blend in with the environment, that will hover over their homes and give them an aerial view of their property, and will detect body temperature and have infrared sensors that will allow homeowners to detect if there is an intruder hiding on their property, as thieves are becoming more and more stealth due to all of the modern technology. Nonetheless, the raw property crime numbers produce some lofty victimization rates. For example, the 2022 theft rate was reported at 129 per 1,000 persons or households. This is more than 4 times higher than the rate of any other type of crime that is tracked by the NCVS (burglary is second with a rate of 28.7 per 1,000). The rate of 9.2 motor vehicle thefts per 1,000 persons or households was also among the highest crime-specific victimization rates that year. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The public is hesitant to report most property crimes to the police. This trend is illustrated by the reporting rates of 30.1 percent and 35.2 percent that are observed for the larceny-theft and purse snatchings/pocket pickings offenses in the 2022 NCVS. Debriefings indicate that victims see little benefit from reporting property crimes, as police are thought to be too busy to attend to such minor crimes, thus making the recovery of their lost property unlikely. Motor vehicle theft stands as a glaring exception to the rule. In 2022, 82 percent of all automotive vehicle theft victims reported the incident to the police. No other form of crime surpasses the 66 percent reporting level. This inordinately high reporting rate is drive primarily by insurance regulations that require victims to file police reports prior to having their automobiles replaced or repaired. In the aggregate, common property crimes generate a sizable price tag. Conventional victimization reports set the property losses due to larceny-thefts round $5.5 billion annually, with an average loss per incident of roughly $500. However, it is important to note that crimes against institutional or corporate entities are beyond the scope of the NCVS. This results in the exclusion of sizeable numbers of shoplifting, employee theft, and embezzlement offenses that are perpetrated against business. Shoplifting alone costs retailers an estimated $15 billion each year. In light of this oversight, it seems reasonable to conclude that the actual dollar loss from larceny-theft offenses is far larger than what is reported by the NCVS. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Equally disturbing dollar losses are attributed to motor vehicle theft. Victimization data suggest that the average auto theft victim experiences approximately $8,886 loss. There were an estimated 721,885 thefts of motor vehicles nationwide in 2019. The estimated rate of motor vehicle thefts was 219.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. More than $6.4 billion was lost nationwide to motor vehicle thefts. There appear to be no clear-cut regional disparities for common property crimes. Data from the Uniform Crime Reports shows that theft-larceny rates were highest in Texas, Florida, Arizona, New Mexico and Louisiana. West Virginia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and North Dakota were found to have the lowest theft-larceny rates that year. Shifting our attention to state-level rates of motor vehicle theft offending, we see that Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Washington, and Michigan were top of the 50-state list. Officials in New Hampshire, South Dakota, Wyoming, Maine, and Idaho reported the lowest rates of motor vehicle theft in 2022. Residents in densely populated, inner-city areas clearly experiences a higher risk of property crime victimization than do their counterparts who live in more sparsely populated outlying areas. The 2022 NCVS data reveal an inverse relationship in theft rates across urban, suburban, and rural locales (rates of 160.4, 123.9, and 101.6, respectively). A similar trend is observed in the 2022 motor vehicle theft victimization, where the rates in urban areas exceed those of suburban and rural areas. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Critics observe that motor vehicle theft rates appear to be more a function of automobile density (measured either in terms of cars per square mile or per capita automobile registrations) than population density. A city-level analysis of UCR data reveals tht New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Huston consistently rank among the top five most problematic locales in terms of larceny and motor vehicle theft rates. The larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft rates in the United States of America compare favorably to those reported by other developed countries. The United States of America experienced a larceny rate of 2,728.1 per 100,000 persons and an auto theft rate of 459.0 per 100,000. The official larceny and motor vehicle theft rates of our peer nations were as follows: England and Wales (3,460.2 and 753.0), Australia (3,033.7 and 706.2), France (2,527.5 and 546.1), Canada (2,431.0 and 547.10, Germany (2,406.3 and 137.4), Israel (2,149.0 and 694.1), Japan (1,198.1 and 28.4), and Spain (650.8 and 343.1). A guessing game of more than playful significance can be played among persons who have spent a few days sociably together, as in a series of parties or at a resort: one person attempts to describe the kinds of families from which the group members came, with no prior knowledge of their personal histories. The same is most successfully played when the group includes mainly young adults but some other and younger people. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Still, if the attitudes of the group members toward waiters or clerks can be observed, more clues can be secured. Hits or misses are determined by checking guesses against the facts, and score is kept by noting the correct guesses and comparing them with the record of other guessers, or with the results that might be obtained by chance alone. A practiced observer of normal sensitivity and adult experience can usually make a surprisingly large number of correct guesses. The kind of questions to which one can most frequently give accurate answers are these: Did the person have any brothers or sisters? Were these brothers or sisters older or young? Ho much was one loved by one’s mother? Father? (Another adult?) With which did one tend to identify more? Was one’s family close and demonstrative, or cold and distant? Were one’s parents young or old when one was born? Was one’s mother or father dominant, or were they equal in authority? Was either parent repeatedly cruel or arbitrary in disciplining one? Which parent was more influential in the person’s career choices? Were one’s parents, or one’s siblings, approving or critical of one’s achievements? Which parent was the more intellectual? Action-oriented? Sociable? Sometimes, though less frequently, even such characteristics as the presence and importance of grandparents, adoptive status, father’s occupation, mother’s education, the family’s social status, and some quite idiosyncratic circumstances can be guessed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
As the guesser goes from the common relations of authority and affection among parents and children into these more peculiar features of another person’s upbringing, one’s chances of being right go down; one’s chances of being right by luck alone, however, decrease still faster. Yet the validity of some of one’s faintest premonitions can be quite astounding to one’s audience. Indeed, the more accurate in detail the guesser become, the more likely it is that the game will encounter two specific hazards. The person whose family origins are so closely described may suspect and charge that one ha been previously investigated and resent the implied invasion of one’s privacy, or one may be embarrassed by the disclosure of such intimate and perhaps ungratifying facts to the remainder of the group. Yet, if this game is played correctly, the guesser has depended for clues entirely upon what each particular subject has already disclosed about oneself through the characteristic patterns of one’s interactions with others. Whether consciously or not, each person tells one’s history publicly in one’s behavior, and could only conceal it by withdrawing from society, an act that in itself is diagnostic and occasionally observed. There is nothing mysterious or occult about the inferences employed. They are all derived from the theorem that one reproduces one’s earlier family relations in one’s interpersonal relations beyond the family. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Father-figure, mother-figures, brother-figures, sister-figures, rivals, servants, authorities, as first experienced in the family, furnish the prototypes for apprehending and responding to all later intimates. Especially in the rapid development of intimate association with strangers, the prototypical family constellation is most recognizably reproduced, and the characteristic actions which it guides from the “person” that becomes known to others. When a person is most spontaneously free, these same expressive acts are usually subjectively taken by one to be one’s natural self. A person’s identity in such a group is thus—or can be—simultaneously one’s self as privately conceived. Yet even one’s reactions to constraints upon one’s self-expression tell something of the figures one fears; in this sense, all one’s acts are representative. And it is precisely upon the evidence of many small but representative encounters witnessed between each subject of this game and the others that successful guesses and generalizations can be made. In later discussion, the basis for errors through insufficient evidence or mistaken inference may be brought out, but no evidence used is found invalid. (Such checking back is useful for improving the skill of the guesser.) To be sure, no single episode leads directly back to a specific family pattern. Rather, by recurrence of similar episodes in orderly relationship to episodes of other kinds, the generic constellation is pieced together. As more information is added, the more the pattern hangs together and even indicates missing evidence to be sought for by reviewing a wider range of incidents. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
For instance, a girl bumps a boy and blushes; he speaks to her cordially and thereafter her eyes follow him about the room; a younger boy tries to gain her attention, but is ignored; she appears respectful toward a male teacher and defends him against gibes by other girls; after a downpour, she organizes the drying out of clothes by other girls; her female teacher speaks equivocally of her as independent. Is it possible that her father was a widower, and let her play the role of a “little mother” to her small sister—which she did out of a desire to please him, who she admires? Even with these many observed details, much of the complex is missing from which a successful guess might be made; but at least the principle employed is evident. If it is remembered that boys who have dated her found her somewhat repressed and inclined toward intellectual conversation, further confirmation may be added, but also complications may emerge which reduce the plausibility of the previous guess. From experience in playing this game, several limitations become evident. The older the person—the further one had left one’s parental family behind, in time or in any other sense—the less does one’s present behavior tell about one’s past. And if one’s succeeding experience has been markedly heterogeneous, with strong emotional attachments intervening between one’s original family and one’s present circle of intimates, the less does the present constellation tell us about the original. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
If the person’s cultural or sub-cultural background is markedly foreign to the guesser’s, of course the latter has more difficulty in interpreting the biographical significance of behavior. Patterns of sociability among teenagers still living at home, by contrast, almost transparently reveal the structure of their families. Although there is thus no mystery as to why successful guessing is not really guessing or intuition, but complex inference from objective evidence, explanation of the procedure does not dimmish the uncanny feeling of some of the subjects that they are being laid bare. Even when the bits of evidence are painstakingly pointed out and are admitted to be public knowledge, the sense of exposure may persist and give rise to mild dismay on the part of the beholders as well. If the procedure were explored systematically and no longer used mainly as a game, what might develop is a matter for speculation. However, questions are raised by the demonstration of the underlying theorem which are far more important than the mild shock of the shyer players. If postdiction is this easy, why is prediction so hard? And if prediction from pervious to future behavior is hard, does not this fact qualify the determinisitic assumption which underlies an characterizes much research and writing in social science? And finally, what might this game of revelation disclose about the role of the social scientists and one’s ultimate audience? #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
There is a mistake about forgiveness by the ultimate concern that many people make. First, a mistake conception about the “shelter of the blood,” claimed upon an assembly as a guarantee of absolute protection from the working of the powers of darkness. However, if we walk in light, if we confess our transgression, then the blood of Jesus cleanses from sin. The blood of Jesus gives us access to the Holiest of all, because of the cleansing power from sin. The blood of Jesus is the ground victory over the Offender, because of its cleansing from every confessed sin, and because at Calvary the Offender was conquered. (However, remember, you can confess your sins silently in prayer. Not all religious figures uphold their oath and keep the things you say confident, much like therapists or their employers.) However, nowhere do we read that any person can be put “under the blood” apart from one’s own volition and individual condition before God. Therefore, if the “shelter of the blood” is claimed over an assembly of people and someone present is giving ground to the Offender, the “claiming of the blood” does not avail to prevent Offender from working on the ground to which one has a right in that person. This misconception about the protecting power of the blood is serious; for those who are present at a meeting where the Offender as well as God is working many believe they are personally safe from the Offender’s workings apart from their individual condition and dealing with God. However, through the ground they have given—even unknowingly—to the Adversary, they are open to one’s power. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Faith, religion, and revelation, are readily intelligible. If one simply stated that religion is ultimate concern, a turning toward the unconditional, and that it is not a special function of man’s spirit but a centered act of his personality, that would be an adequate summation of the broad sense of religion. Here faith and religion are identical. The narrow sense of religion is the “churchy” sense—doctrine, rites, and all the appurtenances of an institution. While the above paragraph sufficiently describes religion, a somewhat deeper examination is called for. The ultimate concern is what we rely on chronologically as an evolved insight of religion more than faith. Doctrine is developed under the heading of religion. Religion cannot be identified with any of the functions of spirit and it cannot be placed beside them as a special function animated by one’s thinking at a very early date, and this insight is decisive. Religion is an attitude of spirit which participates in all these spheres. Spirit depends on two other concepts, thought and being, which are in constant dynamic tension. Spirit is neither pure thought nor pure being, but involves both. Being and Spirit are the essential components of the act of knowledge. The act or intention is thought, and the object or thing intended is being. For Spirit is the form of thought-in-being. Every being has something of thought in it, but the more thought it contains the more reality is possesses. The most real of beings is the one in which thought as thought is realized, that is, a spirit-bearing totality—man. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
In the economy, there are power triads, and wealth is one, which is experiencing deep transformation as the new system for wealth creations spreads across the planet. As corporations integrate their production and distribution across national boundaries, acquire foreign firms, and draw on brainpower from around the entire World, they inevitably need fresh sources of capital in many countries. They also need it fast. Thus we see a race to “liberalize” capital markets so that investments can flow more or less freely across national frontiers. The result is a surging ocean of capital free of restraining walls. This, however, shifts power away from central banks and individual nations, undermining sovereignty and introducing new dangers of financial fibrillation on a Worldwide scale. After the 1987 Wall Street crash, it was understood that building a single completely open financial system, subject to minimal regulation, is like building a supertanker without airtight compartments. With adequate dividers or safety cells, a big system can survive the breakdown of certain parts. Without them, a single hole in the hull can sink a tanker. There was also a warning that the creation of multinational securities firms that buy, sell, underwrite and invest in many nations increases the risk of large-scale breakdown. A loss by one or more of these firms, could result in transmitting a disturbance from one country to another. As finance is globalized, nations risk losing control over one of the keys to their power. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The proposed all-European currency, for example, would reduce the flexibility of individual nations to cope with their own unique economic problems. Another proposal would arm the EC commissioners with far greater control over the budgets of Europe’s supposedly sovereign nations than the federal government of the United States of America exerts over its fifty states—a centralizing power shift of massive proportions. While this power redistribution is going on, the entire wealth system becomes, as we have seen, super-symbolic. Like violence, wealth, too, is shifting and being transformed at the same time. Until recently, China was not on the list of the World’s major foreign direct investor nations. An important breakthrough came in 2008. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, outbound FDI increased dramatically to $55,907 million from $26,506 million in previous years (flow; FDI by financial institutions is not included). In 2009, it rose further to $56,529 million, in 2010 it hit $59 billion. In recent years, China has been the second largest recipient of foreign direct investments (FDI) Worldwide, attracting approximately USD $181 billion in 2021. That is extremely significant. Compared to the U.S.A FDI of USD $367.38 billion. According to preliminary figures, monthly foreign direct investments (FDI) inflows to China amounted to approximately USD $20.69 billion dollars in February 2023. For the whole year of 2022, FDI flows to China reached around $189.1 billion, an increase of 12 percent compared to the year before. Western companies have become a hot topic around the World. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Acquisitions account for 40 percent of China’s total FDI. The major targets are mining industry, high-tech manufacturing firms, and well-known but usually ailing companies possessing famous brands. Such acquisitions are usually carried out with the backing of the government, mostly by state-owned companies. On the other hand, Chinese companies, especially the private ones, are gradually increasing FDI of quite a conventional Character. They are investing in India, Africa, North Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, and elsewhere in the developing World seeking lower production costs or better access to local markets. Also, more and more often, they are coming to the West entirely on their own initiative (without the government’s backing), attracted by markets, technologies, and high-skilled human resources. In these cases, Chinese investors act basically the same way and pursue the same goals as investors from any other country, whether America, a European state, or Japen. China’s foreign portfolio investment reached an all-time higher of USD $99.45 billion in December 2020. United States of America’s foreign portfolio investment accounted a record deficit of USD $206.805 billion in December 2022. American leaders should be scrambling to invest in improving technology and infrastructure in American cities, investing more in education and recruitment of students for medical, engineering, and computer science careers. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 