Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. The World is imperfect; enlightenment comes from the progressive betterment of the World through the beneficent influence of Reason and Nature, the moral order of the Universe is unchanging. In the lowest as well as in the highest strata of human society, filial piety towards parents is wont to recede before other interests. The obscure legends which have been handed down to us from the primeval ages of human society in mythology and folklore give a deplorable idea of the despotic power of the father, and the ruthlessness with which it was exercised. Even in our own middle-class families, the father commonly fosters the growth of the germ of hatred which is naturally inherent in the paternal relation, by refusing to allow the son to be a free agent or by denying him the means of becoming so. A physician often has occasion to remark that a son’s grief at the loss of his father can quench his gratification that he has at last obtained his freedom. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 8
Fathers, as a rule, cling desperately to as much of the sadly antiquated potestas patris familias as still survives in our modern society, and the poet who, like Ibsen, puts the immemorial strife between father and son in the foreground of his drama is sure of this effect. The causes of conflict between mother and daughter arise when the daughter grows up and finds herself watched by her mother when she longs for real sexual freedom, while the mother is reminded by the budding beauty of her daughter that for her the time has come to renounce sexual claims. All these circumstances are obvious to everyone, but they do not help us to explain dreams of the death of their parents in persons for whom filial piety has long since come to be questionable. The only way you can get to know the truth of God is to stop trying to find out by being born again. If you obey God in the first thing He shows you, then He instantly opens up the next truth to you. God will never reveal more truth about Himself to you until you have obeyed what you already know. I thank you, Father that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 8
Suppose two similar dates in front of an individual who has a strong desire for them, but who is unable to take them both. Surely the individual will take one of them through a quality in that individual’s nature of which is to differentiate between two similar things. All the distinguishing qualities have mentioned, like beauty or nearness or facility in taking, we can assume to be absent, but still the possibility of the taking remains. You can choose between two answers: either you merely say that an equivalence in respect to one’s desire cannot be imagined—but this is a silly answer, for to assume it is indeed possible—or you say that if an equivalence is assumed, the individual will remain for every hungry and perplexed, looking at the dates without taking one of them, and without a power to choose or to will, distinct from one’s desire. And this again is one of those absurdities which are recognized by the necessity, in the human and the divine, the real working of the act of choice, must necessarily admit a quality the nature of which is to differentiate between two similar things. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 8
No one likes to acknowledge that they have made a mistake in the choice of one’s profession, and every individual, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before one allow oneself to cry out, “I am baffled!” and submits to be floated passively back to land. Every individual’s work, pursed steadily, tends to become an end itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of one’s life. Reason can find no preference, that will is incapable of any immediate selection, yet delay is dangerous and pointless. The imagination, moreover, is most strongly affected by what is suggested or hinted at and not by what is plainly stated. Fear plays a large part in our enjoyment of the sublime. Such fear is diminished by knowledge, but sharpened by veiled intimations. Obscurity, not clarity, is the property of the most powerfully moving art; it is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions. The first duty of rulers and legislators is to the present, not to the future; their energies should be devoted to the correction of real ills, not to the promotion of an ideal order that exists only in the imagination. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 8
An employer owes a good worker something beyond the wages paid, and a worker owes a good employer something beyond work done. We must put great faith in the inherited wisdom of tradition. The moral order of the temporal World must necessarily include some evil, by reason of original sin. People ought not to reject what is good in tradition merely because there is some admixture of evil in it. In human’s confused situation, advantages may lie in balances and compromises between good and evil, even between one evil and another. It is an important part of wisdom to know how much evil should be tolerated. To search for too great a purity is only to produce fresh corruption. People are simply not at liberty to destroy the state and its institutions in the hope of some contingent improvement. On the other hand, people have a paramount duty to prevent the World from getting worse—a duty to guard their inherited liberties and privileges. A wonderful thing about God’s silence is that His stillness is contagious—it gets into you, causing you to become perfectly confident so that you can honestly say, “I know that God has heard me.” #RyanPhillippe 5 of 8
One day, I found a lady depressed and weeping. She said: “I do not want to see my relatives any more; they must shudder at me.” Thereupon, almost without any transition, she tells me that she had remembered a dream, whose significance, of course, she does not understand. It seems that it was contrary to nature and therefore impossible to achieve liberty without any real knowledge of what she meant by it. It does moral social hard by pretending that real differences were unreal, as they inspire false hopes and vain expectations in those destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life. God’s silence is the very proof that He has heard you. If Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorying of His Father, the He will give you the first sign of His intimacy—silence. Although God often speaks the language understood by that age—the language of calculation, expediency, utility, and political rights—He has a mind which His contemporaries, and many others, cannot readily comprehend. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 8
Being conscious, above all things, of the reality and unavoidability of evil, might lead one to the claim that the only hope for humankind is to cling to safeguards which have stood the tests of time. One’s hope for bliss may lay in Heaven; on Earth, our policy is to defend the tolerable, and sometimes the bad, against the immeasurably worse. Instead of becoming less personal, we are required to become more personal. What we could gloss over in other circumstances can no longer be avoided. Whereas we may have seen each other through a glass darkly, now we are to attend to each other in person and in the same location. The transition from a negative to an optimistic event requires our human presence. Of what does human presence consist? The end and the means of human presence are truth in the situation. There is to be as much full human contact as possible. What we say and what we do is communication in the search of communion. We intentionally seek a relationship. There is no dignity and no courage in deception. Living calls out all of our fullness. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 8
If we have known only a fraction of the truth previously, now we are to know it as fully as possible. For that is the heart of love, and faith and grace somehow have their grounding in love. The issue is not whether we share what is happening. Instead the issue is how we share what is happening. Truth that looms so awesome in anticipation looks so simple in retrospect. What we felt would damage and destroy, we discover actually helps us heal. However, how to see reality and how to get to the truth seems so complicated. One must understand, it does not force presence where one prefers privacy. It does not perpetuate privacy where one wants presence. Truth creates a genuinely human relationship. With such an invitation from the living, what matters is reaching out in love. We can help others by responding to their life situation as theirs. Many people may still be in a state of shocked denial. They may have moved into bitterness and envy. They may engage in magical maneuverings, negotiating now for this and now for that. They may be staggered by the loss of livelihood and life and love. They may have found the peace that nothing can dislodge. What is important is not what they are experiencing, but rather that we be present to them in their experience. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 8
Britney Spears makes her own runway, I make my own news. All good ends can be worked out by good means. Those that cannot, are bad; and may be counted so at once, and left alone. Whoever offends against the laws of honor in the least instance is treated as the highest delinquent. Here is no excuse, no pardon; and one doth nothing who leaves anything undone. Because of the nature of attachment, the first state preceding the actual experiencing of loss is that of fear of loss. This is usually defended in one of two ways. One is to increase the intensity of the attachment by ever persistent attempts to strengthen the bonds. This approach is based on the fantasy that the greater the bond, the less likelihood of loss. However, this is the very maneuver that often precipitates loss in person relationships, because the other person struggles to be free of the possessive attachment and the amount of restrictive control they feel being placed upon them. Thus, because what we hold in mind tends to manifest, the fear of a loss can, paradoxically, be the mechanism of bring about that loss. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 6
Our highest state is love, and it all begins with ourselves. When we love ourselves, others will love us. When we respect ourselves, other will respect us. Hope is a charming passion, the only real friend of a human thought. The most precious gift of Heaven, hope. Another way that the fear of loss is handles is by the psychological mechanism of denial. We see this around us every day, many people want to play ostrich, bury their heads in the sand and pretend that they do not see nor hear what is going on around them in an effort of refusing to face the inevitable. All the warning signs are there, but the person does not take heed. Thus, for example, the man who is obviously in the process of losing his job tends not to notice. Death and dying force upon us a certain honesty about life and living. Where truth is lacking in living, truth will be lacking in dying. In fact, life and death appear related: the more life the easier death; the less life the more terrible death. I do not mean these in the physical and literal sense, but rather in the human and figurative sense. In the face of finitude, we find ourselves driven to deal with our work, our worth, our love, our life. #RyanPhiliipee 2 of 6
What is most terrifying about dying and death is the lack of living connectedness. Without presence, we are without hope; without contact, we are without grounding. So, we find we are required to face what separates the living from the dying. We find we are required to face our own limits and our own end. For we, too, will die. In facing death, we are finding life. And in finding life, we establish a living connectedness. We come closer to one another for mutual gratification and upbuilding. The courage to be is inseparably linked with the courage to be known. The existential demand upon each of us individually has its accompanying interpersonal demand. I can be courageous if I can communicate to a significant other what matters desperately to me. Communication constitutes the core of the doing of being. When I can say to you what I am experiencing, then we have entered into a transforming communion. Distance disappears. Loneliness lessens. Isolation is swallowed up by oneness. As I am known, so I am. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 6
There is no love without a ray of faith and trust. Now is the time. Here is the place. What one person says to another in the face of death counts more intensely than in any other here-and-now. The one who is anticipating the end wants to be heard, aches to be understood, longs to be in touch. There is a heightened awareness that every word matters, each moment counts, every gesture carries special weight. The quality of the connectedness replaces the quantity of the connections. A sense of eternity comes with experiencing being known by another and knowing the other right here and right now. The letters to my father meant so very much to him and there were some things he wanted to say to express the struggle and pain that he felt about losing relationships that were important to him….as I sit here writing this, I think about all the time we spent together and all the car rides and how he probably went home and cried in silence, but was always happy when I saw him. Time is the pacifier of every woe, the qualifier of every disappointment. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 6
Countless times I have had very little courage of my own, and I know that such an attitude is wrong and one certainly should pray about it. Pray for strength and courage and grace to meet whatever proves to be the experience. And that I have done, or I do not see how I could have gotten through these past years. I think worst of all is that no one is dying, but it feels like it when people you love have wronged you. These days sometimes seem unendurable. When one thinks of words to describe them, the words kaleidoscopic hell are the only ones that some to mind. Without prayer, I do not see how I could have endured this. The thing that meant so much to me was your understanding of me enough to know that you could say what you did then—that it looked as though we were heading for a certain crisis, you hoped and prayed it might be for the better, but realized it might be for the worse. The fact that we have been able to show our love and affection for each other is one of the precious things of life. We have faced the ultimate issues of life together. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 6
There is abundant love in the Universe, there is abundant love in me, and I see myself as the eternal soul that I really know I am. I play an important part in the World. Lord, give me guidance to help me see my path. Give me clarity to help me discover my worth. I am a Divine being and I love myself deeply, as I am worthy of love of others. The soul’s life has seasons of its own; periods not found in any calendar, times that years and months will not scan. I call upon the energies of the Sun and Earth to help me find my confidence. You want nothing but patience; or give it a more fascinating name: call it faith. Also, with self-love comes clarity and compassion, two treasured ingredients in magic. Therefore, it is important that we practice self-love, it is a muscle that requires exercise. Time heightened our blessing, and our precious years are like a setting Sun, which gathers fresh splendor, as it gradually vanishes from our sight. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 6
When you start guessing what people will react to, you can find all kinds of reasons why not to write a story. After a story appears pressure sometimes occurs, sending clear signals never to do it again. Special interest sometimes try to squelch stories or insist on self-serving angles, and usually these attempts are made quietly, even tacitly, among executives—country club decision-making. Sometimes the pressure is exerted on media advertising people, who quietly exert influence on the newsroom. However, news is supposed to have an agenda and that agenda is to make society a better place, educate people, give them facts, scientific information, stories about technology, the environment, and health material. Lately, all these puzzling instabilities in the news and reporters’ repertoire are not careless or stupid blunders of reasoning. They are calculated, illuminating, disturbing indications of how immensely hard it is becoming for the government to control America and keep foreign interest out of American business. Unreality is a big business. It involves the expenditure of billions of dollars annually. It is deliberately manufactured and sold on a gigantic scale. The consequence is society is less and less able to face its true problems directly, honestly, and intelligently. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
A pervading, powerful sense of unreality has infiltrated the land. Right now, many people are rioting and looting and protesting the coronation of President Donald Trump, but they do not understand why he is trying so hard to secure American boarders. It has nothing to do with racism, but he is trying to prevent terrorist attacks and reduce crime rate. We already have an immigration system, where people apply to get citizenship, and in due time they are granted the privilege of becoming an American, or not. God did not intend for everyone to be an American, or else we would have a one World government, no boarders, and President Trump would control the World. What people like about America is the resources and the fact that people are free to earn money and have property. However, other people, and a lot of them do not like Americans, they do not like America, and they want to come over here and bring their lawless culture, tear things up, and cause conflict, and that is what the President is trying to stop. Our unique cultural history predisposes the U.S. especially towards a cult of unreality because no one is speaking, no one is reading, and according to the principals of evolution, this will produce a population indistinguishable from organic drones. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
The vast, powerful entertainment industry and the influence it now wields over every part of American society suggest that a bleak and torpid epic may lie ahead. Aviv Nevo is a Jewish man born in 1965 in Bucharest, Romania and then moved to Tel Aviv, Israel as an infant. He is an Israeli and American venture capitalist who is a major shareholder in Time Warner. Time Warner, Inc. is an American multinational media and entertainment conglomerate business, which has its main office in New York City. It is currently the World’s third largest entertainment company in terms of revenue. Time Warner also controls HBO, Turner Broadcasting, The CW Television Network, Warner Brothers, CNN, DC Comics, and Hulu. So, Aviv Nevo is basically controlling much of the American news and entertainment that you have seen and that is probably why so much of the news is gossip, lacking sources, fake, distorted, and why so many of the reporters are now at work lying, displaying adolescent behavior, and becoming extremely sloppy and their commentary does not make sense. Aviv Nevo does not have Americans best interest at heart and as long as he can keep you all in an uproar and distracted, he is able to divide America. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
We have empowered the TV to become one of the most powerful forces in our lives. The consequences is that the TV news not only defines what is reality, but much more importantly and disturbingly, the perception that a news organization has of its audience is evident by the stories that they provide you with. Several New York newspaper publishers, concerned about the escalating expense of sending reporters to gather faraway news, got together in 1848 to share stories. By together sending one reporter, the newspapers cut costs dramatically. They called their cooperative venture the Associated Press (AP). So, the stories could be used by member newspapers of different political persuasions, reporters were told to write from a nonpartisan point of view. The result was supposed to be a fact-oriented kind of news writing often called objective reporting. However, this many not always be the case. Some reporters still have a commitment to social improvement, and include a willingness to crusade against corruption, but if most of the news is coming from one main source, it may be biased and distorted. Unreality has become in effect our primary mode of reference. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
The TV news now dominates how we think and what we think of ourselves and others, and how we define our World. When writing an essay in college, your professors always tell you to get at least three sources, none of which are internet based to make sure you do a fair job. Much of the information you are receiving today from the news, usually all comes from the same source, and is reported exactly the same on all of the stations and it is hyperbolized and fabricated news to attract viewers. Commercial television news makes so much money doing its worst, it cannot afford to do its best. Astronomers have found structures that look like faces on Mars, and other animals, and river beds that no longer have water. I am convinced that Mars was once inhabited by rational human beings like ourselves, who had the misfortune, some thousands of years ago, of creating an Associated Press and digesting the information they received as fact, and not questing the content or demanding the truth. I bet you did not even know the rings of Saturn produce noise that was recorded by NASA, and it sounds like music from a 1960s-horror film, but it is actually very relaxing and soothing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Many of you have absolutely no idea what is going on in the real World, how you kids are feeling at school, or even if your spouse is getting enough to eat because you are overwhelmed with fake political news. Their hearts could be bleeding and you would not know because you are so obsessed with TV news. So many of our current problems seem to generate the same general kind of solution, which actually intensifies the problems themselves! Protesting is making Americans look like idiots around the World, and people are getting hurt and dying and no one seems to care. You all are upset because people have to obey gender laws that are in place to keep us safe. You guys are upset because the President wants to enforce immigrations rules, but no one is upset that 100 people have been killed in Chicago, Illinois USA this year already and it is only the second month of 2017?! In a World gone mad as the result of overwhelming complexity, the need for coherence does not diminish. It becomes even greater. An economic interest suggests that the news-gathering process produces an emphasis on the deviant Black villains or the President to produce higher ratings. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
Now that we are getting a better picture of how the news media is misrepresenting people, all people, we really need to spend more time investigating what news viewing might do to news viewers. All viewers should also work to be more critical and challenging of the news that we consumer, especially with regards to economics, crime, and race. Perhaps if such steps are taken we can begin to move toward breaking down the stereotypes and ignorance that divide us, and stop the jazz journalism that has a tabloid form of information. Journalistic policy about race should only be revealed when it is a key component of the story. For instance, Ida Wells brought first-class ticket for a car at the front of the train, but when the conductor saw she was Black, he told her to go to the rear. First-class, he reported was “set apart for White ladies and gentlemen.” Ida Wells, refused and she was thrown off the train. She sued, citing various constitutional guarantees, and won before a Memphis, Tennessee USA jury. The Tennessee Supreme Court, however, said she was harassing the railroad and overturned the jury verdict. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
The cause, in 1885, was among the first involving racial equality in public transportation. The attention the Ida Wells case received made it clear that the 21-year-old schoolteacher was a powerful force in American history, and that so was the press. She bought into a small weekly newspaper, the Free Speech, and began crusading for better schools for Black children. The school board, embarrassed, fired her. So she went into journalism full times as editor. In 1892, a mob lynched three Black grocers whose store had been successful against their competitors. Idea Wells pulled out all the stops in her coverage, reporting the details that led to the lynchings and denouncing the community for condoning what had happened. It was thorough, courageous reporting, and it received wide attention. Soon Ida Wells was writing for the New York Age, with her articles a fixture in almost all of the nation’s 400 Black newspapers. Ida Wells continued her work on lynchings as mob vigilantisms, amassing data that there were becoming more common. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
In 1892, Ida Wells counted 2,565 lynchings, which was three times higher ten years earlier. She urged readers to arm themselves for self-protection: “A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every home.” Her office was attacked. To continue her crusade, Ida Wells went to England, beyond the mobs’ reach, to rail against American racial injustice, including lynchings of Black men, on every forum she could find. Her boos, A Red Record, contained alarming statistics on American lynchings. By now an internationally recognized figure, Ida Wells felt relatively safe to return to the United States on the lecture circuit with the press sure to follow her every word. States in American began prosecutions for lynchins, and the number declined. Memphis, Tennessee USA had no more lynchings for 25 years. Ida Wells eventually settled in Chicago, Illinois USA, were she continued her journalistic crusade for social justice and other reforms, including women’s rights. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
In fearless pursuit of the facts, Ida Wells went alone to lynchings and riots. Her factual reports, published widely, provided indisputable evidence of injustice and persecution and built general sympathy for both law enforcement and legislation to correct social wrongs. And in continuing Mrs. Ida Wells-Barnett’s work, I would like to tell you how important women are. In China, by the year 2024, there will be one woman to every twenty-four men, and dating has become a business. Men have to not only be extremely attractive, but they have to have great careers and houses in prime real estate. Dates with women are arranged by a broker, and within 10 minutes a woman reviews your credentials, meets you in person, and if she does not like you, or you do not qualify, she will seriously walk away without a second thought. Also, while we are talking about World news, why do we not have more information about Vivek Ranadive, who is the chairman of the Sacramento Kings, who built that new arena, which cost more than $588 million, which was more than 50 percent funded by the public, and the public was not even allowed to vote on it, nor does the arena have parking and it is responsible for all the expensive parking tickets many of you are getting and the extended ticketing hours that go until 10pm. If we cannot find coherence in ideas or intellectual patterns alone, then we seek it in alternate forms such as in cult personalities; in pseudo, popular heroes; in entertaining and amusing faces that soothe over our need for satisfying explanations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
TV news has become almost pure entertainment and is a clear from its adoption of most of the techniques that are characteristic of entertainment. I personally cannot wait to move into a house so I can enjoy a new yard and turn the TV news off and stop watching it. The easy flowing conversation and back and forth banter among the news team that has the appearance of being spontaneous is often annoying and rehearsed as much as any talk show. At best we witness a form of improvisational melodrama. The fact that rarely if ever do we witness open conflict, debate, and confrontation between news anchors. However, if you watch news in Japan, you will notice it is far more informative and serious. Furthermore, while many male anchors in American become feminized and lack the skills to do serious news reports, several of the women have been picking of the slack and doing stories, I would not feel safe doing, going to place and talking to people, I myself would not feel comfortable. So, I commend the excellence in journalism displayed by the women and a few of the men. Many cultures, one World. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
In so complex a thing as human nature, it is hard to find rules without exceptions. The World, or cosmos, is an organic whole animated by a World soul or an entelechy that is revealed in the structure, function, and connection of its parts. We cannot know the real nature of things, but only their appearances and effects. God, or the Absolute, in creating the cosmos out of nothing, created it not as something external or alien to him (for then it would limit the Absolute, which is impossible), but as an emanation of his own nature; the World is God as becoming, the divine fused with nothingness. Many people speak of karma, and it usually means what goes around comes around. The path to creating a good destiny or fate, has to do with a person’s actions in this state of existence, and their actions and words are what brings them their reality. This path has the following stages: right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right contemplations. It all has to do with one’s frame of mind and the aspirant and the mystical knowledge of the ultimate truth for the serenity that goes with it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The goal is to restore good health. We have been taught that humans have free will, but how can this true? If God tells us that we have to be good in order to receive his grace, how can we really have free will? Good actions lead to grace and this restricts accountability to a narrow and extrinsic sphere of material liberty. Some people do not know good behavior from deviant behavior and will do things like donate to charity and become spokes people for underrepresented groups as a means of masking their bad behavior and making themselves feel better about their wicked behavior. Others do charity work because they really care about people and the community and truly want to save lives. Practical psychology is a great means of understanding acceptable human behavior because it is more concrete and explains why certain behaviors are unhealthy and why others behaviors are good, and this will help to heal the human will from sin. However, revelation is essential to this healing process. The human will’s independence of the intellect is important in revelation. People have it within their power to reflect, to weigh, and to appreciate, before they act. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
When food is scarce, and when food is plenty, a wolf grows bold. Some religions ban the taking of life; stealing; wrong sexual relations; wrong use of speech (not just lying; malicious gossip, for instance, even if true is forbidden); and the consumption of drugs and alcohol. And this is why some people practice celibacy. Also, intoxicants are banned, since it is held that these cloud such awareness. Mediating between the Absolute and the cosmos, uniting them both within itself, is a third being—Sophia, the principle of divine wisdom. As the World of Platonic ideas, Sophia is the ideal basis of the cosmos; as the object of divine love, purely receptive and conceiving everything within herself as the womb of being, Sophia is eternal femininity; as the principle of the Divine within the created, she is the World soul, or entelechy; as a participant with the Trinity in the generation of the cosmos, she is kind of a fourth hypostasis in God. However, still, the ultimate metaphysical identity is consubstantiality of God and the cosmos. Nonetheless, humans are not by nature destitute of truth and love, nobility and purity—the annals of the World show how untrue it is. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Many people still are confused with the problem of evil and human freedom. Evil, perhaps, can be attributed to the nothingness or nonbeing that is the substratum of the cosmos: through the willfulness of created beings, nothingness is actualized as a chaotic force erupting into the created World, which in itself is not evil but simply incomplete. And yet, it not much of human kind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. Therefore, human freedom must be a doctrine of self-creation: humans are free even in act by which one comes into existence, for God allows humans to collaborate in their own creation; at the same time, Sophia guides history by kind of necessity. If one sees success from within the labyrinthine path, sees the kind of soul involved in success, sees also what success looks like from the point of view of the soul of the World, well, the whole quality of success changes. One things it through thoroughly from the side of the individual and from the side of the World and this thinking through becomes a way of ensouling. This kind of thinking forms the path to freedom because the forces of the soul have been released. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
We find this direction of soul movement in individual development. In early life of a person, during childhood, all the powers of the soul are bound up in bodily development; they make the body. Later, during adolescence, the soul forces go into the development of the ego—the ego is simply consciousness as a mirror of the body. By body here, we are speaking more of thoughts, memories, sensations, and images that one already has; these are all reflected in what is called the ego. Later, these creating forces of soul become more and more free. Violence belongs to imagination as its inherent shaping force, and when it does not have the container of image it goes wild because something essential has been removed. In present culture violence, itself has become a dominant image as if it were expressing a need for attention. Nearly every contemporary film centers on violence and lack of beauty. During the medieval person, Christianity proclaimed the strictly spiritual nature of God and Christ and stigmatized all material existence as the work of the Devil. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
In Medieval times, the Bogomiles rejected the doctrine of the Incarnation and of the bodily life of Christ as well as every material aspect of religious thought and practice—sacraments, the cross, church edifices, and ecclesiastical ceremonies. They advocated asceticism and simple spiritual devotion. Even with all considered, the World God created is good, and when human begin to work alongside God in creation, things become very good. Time is not the mind’s form of comprehending the events it perceives. The heart says yes there is something here to behold beyond what I think or feel about it. The heart does not strive after meaning, but rather allows the things to disclose themselves. Therefore, the true nature of humans is far from being in itself evil; it abounds with benevolence, charity, and pity, coveting praise and honor, and shunning shame and disgrace. Bad education, bad habits, and bad customs, debauch our nature, and drive it headlong as it were into vice. No one is born into the World without one’s allotment. Nature equips all creatures with what is most expedient for them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
It is just like that time in life where not much makes sense and you want to call your dad and get his advice on life. I know that he had it harder than I do, being a Vietnam veteran, and coming home from the war with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a rare cancer that impacts less than 200,000 people a year, and then having an operation, where he was cut from his sternum to his stomach to remove the cancer. After the surgery, he was told that he had three to five years to live and would never have kids. Before enlisting in Vietnam, his father was a veteran of World War II, and he got a young lady pregnant, my father’s mother, and they had to get married because it was the right thing to do, but they were not in love. Years later, they divorced, and my grandfather’s second wife could not have kids of her own, and she did not want to be a stepmother to my father because it reminded her of something she could never have, could never do, and I guess it made her feel like less of a woman. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
As a young man, my dad went to live with his grandmother, and she did her best to support him, and she did a really great job. However, I guess it can be really hard growing up and knowing that your parents did not want you. He went on to buy a go to college and buy a house in Oakland Hills, and defying all odds, he ended up having four daughters and one son. His only son being the young of them all. It just goes to show that miracles do happen. Nonetheless, because of my father’s exposure to agent orange, in the Vietnam war, that is how he contracted Hodgkin’s lymphoma (cancer), and I was born with Spina Bifida, which is a birth defect that is a result of the Agent orange altering his genetic code, I suppose. All of the other kids are lucky, they were born perfectly normal. Being born with a birth defect, it is always something I have tried to hide all of my life. From looking at me, you never would know that I had one. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
As a child, I was always under a doctor’s care, and have had some very serious medical procedures done, which have caused nerve damage, one almost caused me to bleed to death, and another one that was done to correct some damage caused prolonged bleeding that was unexpected. And as a teen, I got a job at a coffee shop, had a lot of friend, and had a pretty normal life as a teen, but I never played sports because with two spinal surgeries, I never wanted to push the limits. And I saved up my money and got a car I really love, right from the dealership. So anyway, it is kind of sad when you are born with limitations and people do the best they can to alienate you and destroy the thing you have worked for. However, I have faith in God that he will somehow deliver me from this situation and things will be restored. Since my father has not been around, things have gotten really strange. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The World seems like a totally differ place now than it used to, and I know that is not the norm for everyone. People still have normal lives and live in harmony. However, for some reason, nothing in my life is private anymore, from my therapy sessions to my medical records. Somehow a group local reporters has unbridled access to my life, and they stop by my parents’ house and talk to them, and have just seemed to invade my family and kind of made relationships rocky and rather mysterious to the point where many people do not talk, others have had to go to rehab. It is like many of them have been a curse and some of them a blessing. However, the last ten years, my life have never been the same. These reporters follow me around assaulted me, and you would be surprised, they will even show up at family functions, and can even slam into the back of your car and use you. Yeah, the President is right, “Freedom of the Press,” has gone a little too far. In the process, because my information is being leaked all over the place someone has even filed a tax return using my social security number. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Nevertheless, I am also sure many of you have heard the rumors these reporters have spread about me and because of “accidents” and dangerous situations, like my car getting shot at, it is not really safe to go anywhere, and I have lost many of my friends and just spend my days writing, in hopes of being discovered and building a career, while waiting on justice. And it can be rather lonely. I was watching “48 Hours: Stalked” last night and I know what it is like to feel like a prisoner in your own home, but the benefit is those people have one individual stalking them, not a group of people who feel like they own you. I have also heard rumors that I was “bought,” and I am like how do you buy a person, you do know this is America, right? Not only that, but I am a grown man and single and an American citizen, so how does this happen? #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Nonetheless, I suppose I am kind of lucky, I have experienced hardships, but am luckier than some others. I am sure you have heard of Alexander Umansky, who at the age of 35, was a business man in North Hollywood, when he was set up to be kidnapped by one of his employees and held for a ransom of $235,000.00. The family paid the ransom and their beloved some was still killed, his organs were harvested and his body was dumped in a reservoir. It was later discovered that a gang in America did that to him. Hard to believe an employee, someone who was paying, would put his life in danger, but it just goes to show you, some people are willing to do some strange thangs for some change. And the kidnappers were doing very well, they were not struggling to get buy, they had mansions and nice cars, but wanted to turn to organized crime to make easy money. So, in being a live, I guess I am lucky. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Nonetheless, I really desire family. I do not know much of my father’s family, as they were very private. In fact, the only Harris’ I got meet were my dad, siblings, and grandfather. And my grandfather was a very professional man, tall, straight auburn hair, beige skin, and was always very calm. He did not talk much. I mean, he would talk, but we never knew much about him. He did pretty well in his life, and besides his service in the war, I had no idea what he did for a living. He passed away in 2010, and he had a private funeral service, only one person was invited. So, over the years, I have been online looking for other Harris’, and have found a few on social media. No idea if we are related, but I see some typical Harris features, like the hairline and the lips. Some of them are from Europe, where my grandfather’s family was from and some for other countries. A couple of them are famous and I am like their biggest fans, in my opinion, and look at them as a virtual family. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
My biggest thing, is I want a normal life, and family and do not care for all of the uncertainty and mystery of my life, and my virtual family gives me a sense of normalcy. Other than that, I live around a bunch of people I have nothing in common with, I have one friend and we joke around daily, and whenever I talked to my mother, she tries to convince me what is going on in my life is normal, but I know it is not. The fact is most people have never been victims of crime and do not know anyone who has. Many families are very loving and have dinners together and totally normal lives. Normal people do not use others, steal from them, slander them, terrorize them and vandalize their property. I really have no idea what is going on, but when you have gone through it most of your life, some might convince you this is the new normal, but it is not. I think back to childhood and remember when my life was actually normal. Like, it is just really weird when you get a text from a phone with your sister’s name on it, then the person calls you and it is a guy who sounds just like you….yeah. This is not normal. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
On that note, I would say stay away from reporters, and celebrities, they are dangerous people. They have resources and access to information and are often above the law. If you want a normal life, you will listen to me. When people are used to breaking the laws, and getting away with it, or buying their ways out of trouble, no telling what they will do to cover it up. And finally, once they get caught up and cannot lie or buy their way out of trouble, they can become very dangerous people. Other than that, I have been kind of helping someone I am not really happy with and want to cut ties with this person because a lot of this has to do with a prostitute he was dating, but people keep telling me to stick with him, and I really do not want to. Let us remember, to not imagine evils which we do not feel, nor injure life by misrepresentations. Either people improve upon their character or they do not.#RandolphHarris 9 of 13
It is too often assumed that a person’s fancy is a person’s real mind. I too, much like my grandfather, always wanted to keep my life private, but hopefully telling my truth will somehow help me regain my freedom and life. This is not what I thought what life was about, nor is this the life I thought I would be living, especially when several generations of my family has fought for American freedom, but this is what life is like. One just has to realize that this is how these people behave in this area, it is in accordance with their nature, so that behavior should be accepted or expected even if it is not what I like. I just have to give up my self-determination and yield to the teachings, designs, and instructions of God. One either deals with it or get ate up. The lesson is to be thankful to be alive. Living is a blessing. It is a society built upon wickedness, evil, and atrocity. I cannot convince them what they are doing is wrong. If they do not change their ways, God will bring about destruction on them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
They are using the law as a shield for their misdeeds and bad behavior. People do not miss freedom until they are put in a position like this. And when they sit around and see other people living their lives as they wish to live, that is when one realizes how important human rights are. The degree of civilization attained by a society depends upon its wealth and upon the manner in which this wealth is distrusted; such factors are in turn dependent upon the population of the country concerned, and the size of the population is determined by its food supply. In countries where cheap food is plentiful, the population increases in a fashion that has led to the labor’s market’s becoming overstocked; as a consequence, there is unemployment and also poverty, since there is an inevitable tendency in societies where there is a surplus of labor for laborers to be underpaid and for immense economic inequalities to develop. Such examples are Egypt, Peru, Mexico, India, and America where riches are concentrated in a very few hands and where the vast majority of the inhabitants live in a miserable and depressed condition: Among nations subjected to these conditions, the people have counted for nothing, they have no voice in the management of the state, no control over the wealth their own industry created. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
Whenever we follow our desires and our passions, we become compromises. What is it that makes you compromised? Cookies, chips? Or do you what the power? What is it that makes you compromises, or why do you choose to become compromised? I realize that there was a World where human beings were bought and sold and that people could show such cruelty and shamelessness, but I did not realize this happens in America. It is like God himself died. I guess God put me in this type of situation, this type of environment to see if my focus was really on God and not materialism. America is supposed to be a nation of ideal conditions. Here, the food supply is not supposed to be so abundant as to lead to overpopulation, nor was it so scanty as to make the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of leisure (on which intellectual progress depends) impossible. Here, also, the temperate climate is favorable to enterprise and the energetic exploitation of natural resources; moreover, the aspect that nature has presented to human beings is of less extreme and unpredictable character than in other parts of the World. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Thus, America is not regarded with a superstitious awe as a terrifying and insuperable power, but is saw instead as something that obeys regular laws and is therefore capable of being tamed and utilized for their purposes. Here, people are supposed to be the master of their nature, and consequently the key to the development of American culture lay in the influence exercised by the laws of the human mind. The progress America has made from barbarism to civilization is entirely due to its intellectual activity. Rulers of the nation are only the creatures of the age, never its creators. Enlightened legislation occurs only as some consequences of the pressure exerted by the changes in the climate of opinion, these being due in the first instance to the efforts of cold and able thinkers who belong to the intellectual, and not the governing, classes; nor will such legislation be effective unless the ground has been prepared for it and the age is ripe. Generally speaking, the legitimate functions of the government is to such things as the maintenance of order and the preservation of public health. We must help to turn the eyes of the public away from the political surface of events, making them look more closely at the technological and economic realities of human life that lie beneath. This is important for our intellectual progress and the spirit of time. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
There can be no matter without force, no mind without matter, no arrangement without nature, no Earth without Heaven, no time without eternity—and vice versa. The rattling thunderbolt hath but his clap, the lightning but his flash, and as they both come in a moment, so do they both end in a minute. Human laws necessarily presuppose some controlling will or lawyer, but laws of nature do not. In no sense are natural laws imposed upon matter or upon nature; rather, they express the interaction of physical force. Scientific laws are mechanical and immutable, and describe all possible behavior. Nothing can happen in any aspect of nature that violates natural laws, and no outside influence can change them. Human behavior is, of course, no exception. We must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony. In short, all nature is unified, including the unexplored parts of the Universe, and the same laws hold everywhere and at all times. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Thinking can and must be regarded as a special mode of general natural motions and is characteristic of the central nervous elements in the same way that contraction is characteristic of muscles. Waves know the last secrets of many a stout ship, never heard of from the days she let port. Every wave in my eyes seems a soul. Better slay the body than the soul; and if it be the direst of sins to the murderers of our own bodies, how much more to be a soul-suicide. (Disclaimer: That is a metaphor, do not harm anything.) All intellectual activity stems from sensations and the responses to sensations. The words: mind, spirit, thought, sensibility, volition, and life do not designate any entities; rather, they designate properties, capacities, or actions of living substances. Mind, for example, is only a collective word that comprehensively includes all of the activities of the brain and its parts. Consciousness is an activity of certain parts of the brain, but it is not known precisely how matter brings forth consciousness. The detailed explanation of consciousness must wait until more is known about matter. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
There is no house for the soul where dwells a shadow of untruth. Souls differ like locks, preachers must differ like keys, or the fewer should the Church open for God to pass in. Souls will not be saved by brute force. Natural laws cannot but be reflected or reproduced in some measure in human knowing, since that knowing is derived from sensation. The two great movements of the soul are the desire of honor and the fear of shame. Humans are no poor drifting seaweed of the Universe. Human intellectual behavior, although dependent to a considerable extent on the size and weight of the brain, is also dependent on other factors. Humans have souls; which, if they will, puts them beyond fortune’s finger and the future’s spite. In addition to morphological, histological, and chemicophysical circumstance within the brain, exercise, training, and environmental factors are important. Sometimes, many individuals are unlikely to develop their intellectual potentialities because of their geographical environment; day laborers compelled to live in constant drudgery likewise will not be likely to realize their capacities. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Lukewarmness of soul, which sends forth but feeble desires, sends also but feeble lights; so that those who are guilty of it, not knowing anything clearly, cannot fasten on anything with perseverance. All things-in-themselves, exists only for each other and derive significance only from their mutual relations. If there is not a sex in the soul, custom and education have established one in our ideas. Theological notions are relative to culture and often to individuals. Not only what humans are, but also what they want, do, think, feel, depends on the necessities of nature, and there might be a minute scope for free volition. The acceptance of determinism would lead to a change in many attitudes, especially in regard to criminals. The vast majority of criminals should be looked upon as unfortunates rather than as objects of execration. Morality can be defined as the law of an equal mutual respect for general as well as private human rights, which law itself has for its object to provide the largest amount of human happiness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
That which promotes happiness is good; that which disturbs or undermines it is evil. Self-love is the most powerful motive of all human actions. A proper social organization will assume that the welfare of one person is not detrimental to the welfare of others and that promotion of the individual’s happiness will promote general welfare. Given the way people behave, the adoption of ethical theory might lead some people to strive only for their own transitory pleasure. However, if this should happen, such egoistic hedonists will do no more damage than that done by those supposedly following a theological morality. Pantheism is an attempt to season old dishes with new sauces. The “Unknowable” of the agnostics is nothing more than the good old God of the theologians. A soul is something that has eluded all the search of the anatomist. If a human optician were to supply an instrument made in the same way, it would be at once rejected as a bad piece of workmanship. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Wondrous Worlds on World! Lo, round and round me, awful spells: all glorious, vivid constellation’s, God’s diadem ye are! To you, ye stars, humans owes their subtlest raptures, thoughts unspeakable, yet full of faith. The existence of the planet Vulcan was proved. Superstition and ignorance are two of the most dangerous enemies of humanity. The truth is often unpleasant, and inveighed against a fictitious happiness based on emotionally consoling falsehoods. The divorced mates, Spirit and Substance, were hard to reunite: they greeted each other, not in an embrace, but a racking sort of struggle. Is the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or is the body really in the soul? The separation of spirit from matter is a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter is a mystery also. Seeing every power and virtue is from above, from God, from the intelligences and stars, who can neither err nor do evil, it is necessary, that all evil, and whatsoever is found disagreeing and dissonant in these inferior things, do proceed, not from the malice of the influence, but from the evil disposition of the reviver…Therefore we being well disposed, the celestial influences cooperate all things for good; but being evil disposed, and having for our sins, that divine good, which was in us, departed from us, all things work for evil. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
