For a while, Llanada Vila was the scene of lavish parties and cheerful laughter. Well-dressed visitors came and went, and rumours ran wild about the loud and raucous legion of ghosts said to be held behind its stately walls. One woman claimed she saw a “black ghost” and another said she was attacked by a “big black dog” in the hallway. The stories grew—and so did people’s fears of my home. Perhaps a great horror—or a greater marvel is reaching out. The reality of what I have been through is highly uncertain in my mind, but I feel that something hideous lay in the background. I must get away from evil. Despite weakness, hunger, horror, and bewilderment, you can see by looking at me that there are no obvious clues to my unique nature. However, believe me, an examination of any depth by even a half-sleeping medical practitioner would reveal some alarming deviations from the norm. I take pains to stay health, and I seem to be gifted with an exceptionally hardy constitution, even though I was gradually being consumed by an unnamable abyss of darkness and alienage. And, at times, I found myself almost unable to shut my eyes. I hear strange things in my sleep, and awake with a kind of terror. Despite the enveloping terror, I found myself ensnared by a bizarre allure, an unexplainable attraction to my home that was a petrifying as it was captivating. The mansion’s very walls seemed to whisper tales of the ghosts that inhabited them. One evening, I was alone dressing for a very late dinner, and as I rose from my looking-glass to get some articles of dress, I saw standing near my bed—a little iron one, placed out in the room away from the wall—the figure of a child dressed in a very quaint frock, with an odd little ruff around its neck. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
From some moments, I stood and stared, wondering how this strange little creature could have entered my chamber. The full glare of the candle was upon its face and figure. As I stood looking at it, the child began to run round the bed in a wild distressed way, with a look of suffering on its little face. In a rough whisper, “I offer beauty as well as terror,” the child said. “Mrs. Winchester, let me in.” I still more and more surprised, walked up to the bed and stretched out my hand, when the child suddenly vanished, how or where I could not see, but apparently into the floor. I went at once to the maid’s room, and enquired of her to whom the little girl could belong I had just seen in my chamber, expressing my belief that it was supernatural and that the child was in odd dress and troubled face. We went down to dinner, for many guests were staying in the house. The feeling of entrapment was all-consuming, it was as though I was locked in a ceaseless nightmare. Several savage windstorms had burst upon us from the west, but we had escaped damage, as they roared by. This was in addition to a raging storm of terror and uncertainty which whipped me mercilessly. The dining room was brimming with a disquieting energy that was impossible to ignore. It echoed with a spectral silence, haunting ambience and delectable cuisine. A huge raven swooped at the window, thudding into the glass. Stunned, it fell to the ground and lay still. William Kemmler and Renee Meckelburg hurried to the door, opened it and went out on the veranda, both kneeling to examine the bird. Screeching, it righted itself and flapped its enormous winds, and dived at them so quick they were barely able to duck. William and Renee came back inside. William pulled the cord to close the drapes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
I felt a twinge between pain and irritation. I patted their heads good night. Each night, sleep came like a malevolent specter, pulling me into a realm of nightmares. I found myself lost in an intricate catacomb of shadows, chased by formless figures that bore a macabre intent. Each breath I drew was laced with the cold sting of dread, and the ominous throb of my heart was reminiscent of a death echo. This particular light, I was woken from sleep by a tremendous crash in the room below; it sounded as though all the chairs and tables had been collected together, and then thrown violently down upon the wooden floor. Suddenly, icy hand clamped around my throat. The spectral fingers were skeletal, remorseless, biting into my flesh like the talons of vulture. I stumbled through the darkness, as grotesque formed twisted and pulsed with an unholy luminescence. Fear wrapped its icy tentacles around my heart, my eyes bulged with horror as the twisting wind’s wail chilled my soul to the quick. Going down stairs to investigate, carrying a book in my hand, is when I discovered the shape of a woman sitting in a chair dressed a modern costume. She was adored in a black gown, a kerchief, and a white stomacher’ that covered the chest and bosom of this dead woman. I was so astonished at this apparition that I could not speak to it nor stir; it lingered for quarter of an hour, and then vanished. I remained trembling in a state of understandable fright and horror. Then I heard the sound of feet moving about the room as if several men were moving about without stockings. I was in such an agony of terror that I was reassured by the sudden cry of a housemaid who slept in a room on this floor—“Lord have mercy on us!” #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I was in a nervous state. The troubling spirit had crept over me, and held me. While sitting by the kitchen fire, I was hit by a number of stones on my back and shoulders, presumably coming through the open window behind me. Unhurt but frightened, I retreated to the morning room on the first floor, where I was barraged with more stones, hurled with so much force they caused the curtain to move. As the curtains flew open, I felt a presence crawl slowly over my body, starting at my feet. I then fruitlessly searched the pitch-black room as the windows and the shutters opened and closed repeatedly, apparently of their own accord. Finally, I rested at midnight after my evening of terror and bafflement. Only for my pillow to be pulled from my head and my bed-covers and blankets mysteriously removed. Seeking a natural explanation, I lit a candle and searched the room. Once the candle was lit, quiet descended on the room, but when extinguished the disturbances started once more. As night was widely believed to belong to supernatural entities such as ghosts, I knew I was dealing with something not of the temporal World. The next morning while sitting at the kitchen fire, a boy appeared before me and my servant Renee Meckelburg. The boy was ten or twelve years of age, wearing a torn black vest, a black bonnet and a tattered blanket over his shoulders. Given his ragged appearance, I assumed the boy was a strolling beggar looking for something to eat. More unusual was the fact that the boy covered his face with his hand, despite my repeated requests for him to remove it and name himself. He then became agitated, danced frantically and menacingly around the kitchen, before leaping out of an open window and running to the end of the garden into the cow house. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
My servants gave chase, but soon lost sight of him, only to discover later, when they returned to the mansion, that he was waiting for them. This charade was repeated around a dozen times before Renen confronted the boy who then turned into a black mist, vanishing into thin air leaving behind blood everywhere. The servant’s eyes were wild, faces chalky with salt. They had never seen anything like this. We were trying to find out was causing the disturbance when all the men on the farm went missing in the blink of an eye. The butler, William Kemmler, let out a demonic yell his eyes agitated with a fiery rage. A shower of blood rained down his face, as he stared at the thick red blood coating his hands and the bodies that appeared around us. He had somehow torn the man asunder. He seethed for several minutes, taking quick breaths that did not calm him down. He took care of the bodies and the mess he just made. I ran to my room and shook and sobbed from under my bed, curled up into a ball. “Why?” I said over and over, trying to understand. There were demonic wounds on my spirit…on my soul caused by a curse to flog every aspect of my life. Unfortunately, it was clear that a demon had entered my home. Demons were considered to be the spirits of natural forces such as fire, plagues, and other misfortunes. I employed amulets and other magical deterrents to stave off demonic attacks. Around my home were potent charms, and post placed upside down to catch demons and prevent them from entering. However, I have no idea how many demons were able to penetrate the forcefield. It could be as few as five or six. It could be a legion. When these demons are near, flames turn blue; dogs howl; a sound of rustling silk can be heard; the temperature is lowered. These are just some of the signs of a haunting. Often times when these supernatural forces appear, people cannot speak at the moment of seeing. “I dare not speak,” one of my guests told me. “I was afraid of the sound of my own voice.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The fortune of my father-in-law, Oliver Winchester and his rapidly growing firearms company surged during the years of 1873 and 1876. The new rifles caught the public’s fancy immediately upon reaching the market. These new models, in carbine, rifle, and musket various, were part of the evolution of the firm as the dominant American maker of lever-action repeating arms. However, it was believed that these weapons were immensely successful because demons were hidden in the weapons. Demons made their abode in them, because men, in these times, worshipped weapons, and the weapons were regarded as supernatural protectors. My father-in-law’s ivory-gripped Volcanic Navy pistols were magical. One evening he and my husband William were gathered in the banqueting hall, and had left their guns on the table, when rushed in a pack of renegades. Before they had time to get to their feet, Oliver called out to his pistol to come to him. The gun knew its master’s voice, and leaped straightway from the table to meet him, killing thirteen men on its way; and in placed itself in the Oliver’s hands, who took in its magic. From the day on, every rifle made by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company had the distinguished mark of this demonic power. Because these weapons were forged with such marvelous power, there was a price to pay. They possessed a hunger that was only quenched by human blood, making them the most powerful and vicious weapons to ever exist. The Winchester fortune is cursed and whomsoever benefits from its estate inherits the curse. It will be passed from generation to generation until the Winchester Bloodline is no more. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
A report states that in 2007, a tour was besieged by unusual phenomena. The records state that on one occasion a “ball of fluorescent mist” drifted past a group of spectators in the Grand Ballroom before vanishing through a doorway. In another recorded case, a couple of tour guides had been separately disturbed by an apparition and by the sound of scratching, the male tour guide reported seeing a ball of light changing size constantly and floating around the morning room. Tour guides have often meet with innumerable cases in which this phosphorescent light is one of the accompaniments of unusual activity. There was an instance in which this ball of flickering light caused excessive trembling in a guest who witnessed it; this was followed by the complete doubling up of his body into a round ball. It has been suggested that these hovering or floating lights, well attested in many accounts, are some wayward forms of energy. During the night tours, a corpse candle has intrigued many. On occasions, a translucent candle has appeared hovering in a few of the rooms. It has often been suggested that it represents nothing more than the gaseous emanation from some rotting matter. Bog vapours have also been witnessed. Two of them seeming to play one with other. The sight often robs people of their philosophical reasoning, and they leave the estate believing in spirits.
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There is one requirement that is absolute in money managing, as well as in life, and you have already learned it with the first Irregular Rule: If you do not know who you are, this is an expensive place to find out. The requirement is emotional maturity. You have to use your emotions in a … Continue reading →
Like so many things, competition can be either good or bad, depending on how you approach it. It is bad if you define it as “seeking to humiliate and destroy others” or “obsessively comparing myself to others” or “placing winning above everything, including my character, integrity, love of others, and covenants with God.” However, it can be good if it is about coming together with others to bring out everyone’s best or have harmless fun. When it is done in the right spirit, it can make winning and losing less a matter of ego and can help you take joy in the accomplishment of others (as well as yourself). Whether it is sports, board games, a dance contest, or any other endeavour, healthy competition can sometimes enhance the experience for everyone. Unhealthy competition, on the other hand, can make everyone miserable. You can usually tell which is which by the spirit that accompanies it. “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.13. It is interesting to observe that in connection with this crude Darwinism the “socialist” Mr. Hitler champions the liberal principles of unrestricted competition. In a polemic against co-operation between different nationalistic groups he says: “By such a combination the free play of energies is tired up, the struggle for choosing the best is stopped, and accordingly the necessary and final victory of the healthier and stronger man is prevented forever.” Elsewhere he speaks of the free play of energies as the wisdom of life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
To be sure, Dr. Darwin’s theory as such was not an expression of the feelings of a sado-masochistic character. On the contrary, for many of its adherents it appealed to the hope of a further evolution of humankind to higher stages of culture. For Mr. Hitler, however, it was an expression of and simultaneously a justification for his own sadism. He reveals quite naively the psychological significance which the Darwinian theory had for him. When he lived in Munich, still an unknown man, he used to awake at 5 o’clock in the morning. He had “gotten into the habit of throwing pieces of bread or hard crusts to the little mice which spent their time in the small room, and then of watching these droll little animals romp and scuffle for these few delicacies.” This “game” was the Darwinian “struggle for life” on a small scale. For Mr. Hitler it was the petty bourgeois substitutes for the circuses of the Roman Caesars, and a preliminary for the historical circuses he was to produce. The last rationalization for his sadism, his justification of it as a defense against attacks of others, finds manifold expressions in Mr. Hitler’s writings. He and the German people are always the ones who are innocent and the enemies are sadistic brutes. A great deal of this propaganda consists of deliberate, conscious lies. Partly, however, it has the same emotional “sincerity” which paranoid accusations have. These accusations always have the function of a defense against being found out with regard to one’s own sadism or destructiveness. They run according to the formula: It I you who have sadistic intention. Therefore I am innocent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
With Mr. Hitler’s defensive mechanism is irrational to the extreme, since he accuses his enemies of the very thing he quite frankly admits to be his own aims. Thus he accuses the Jewish people, the Communists, and the French of the very things that he says are the most legitimate aims of his own actions. He scarcely bothers to cover this contradiction by rationalizations. He accuses the Jewish people of brining the French African troops to the Rhine with the intention to destroy, by the bastardization which would necessarily set in, the white race and thus “in turn to rise personally to the position of master.” Mr. Hitler must have detected the contradiction of condemning others for that which he claims to be the most noble aim of his race, and he tries to rationalize the contradiction by saying of the Jews people that their instinct for self-preservation lacks the idealistic character which is to be found in the Aryan drive for mastery. The same accusations are used against the French. He accuses them of wanting to strangle Germany and to rob it of its strength. While this accusation is used as an argument for the necessity of destroying “the French drive for European hegemony,” he confesses that he would have acted like Clemenceau had he been in his place. The Communists are accused of brutality and the success of Marxism is attributed to it political will and activistic brutality. At the same time, however, Mr. Hitler declares: “What Germany was lacking was a close co-operation of brutal power and ingenious political intention.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
The Czech crisis in 1938 and this present war brought many examples of the same kind. There was no act of Nazi oppression which was not explained as a defense against oppression by others. One can assume that these accusations were mere falsifications and have not the paranoid “sincerity” which those against the Jewish people and the French might have been coloured by. They still have a definite propaganda value, and part of the population, in particular the lower middle class which is receptive to these paranoid accusations on account of its own character structure, believed them. Mr. Hitler’s contempt for the powerless ones becomes particularly apparent when he speaks of people whose political aims—the fight for national freedom—were similar to those which he himself professed to have. Perhaps nowhere is the insincerity of Mr. Hitler’s interest in national freedom more blatant than in his scorn for powerless revolutionaries. Thus he speaks in an ironical and contemptuous manner of the little group of National Socialists he had originally joined in Munich. This was his impression of the first meeting he went to: “Terrible, terrible; this was clubmaking of the worst kind and manner. And this club I now was to join? Then the new memberships were discussed, that means, my being caught.” He calls them “a ridiculous small foundation,” the only advantage of which was to offer “the chance for real personal activity.” Mr. Hitler says that he would never have joined one of the existing big parties and this attitude is very characteristic of him. He had to start in a group which he felt to be inferior and weak. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Mr. Hitler’s initiative and courage would not have been stimulated in a constellation where he had to fight existing power or to compete with his equals. He shows the same contempt for the powerless ones in what he writes about Indian revolutionaries. The same man who has used the slogan of national freedom for his own purposes more than anybody else, has nothing but contempt for such revolutionists who had no power and who dared to attack the powerful British Empire. He remembers, Mr. Hitler says, “some Asiatic fakir or other, perhaps, for all I care, some real Indian ‘fighters for freedom,’ who were then running around Europe, contrived to stuff even otherwise quite intelligent people with the fixed idea that the British Empire, whose keystone is in India, was on the verge of collapse right there…Indian rebels will, however, never achieve this…It is simply an impossibility for a coalition of cripples to storm a powerful State…I may not, simply because of my knowledge of their racial inferiority, link my own nation’s fate with that of these so-called ‘oppressed nations.’” The love for the powerful and the hatred for the powerless which is so typical for the sadomasochistic character explains a great deal of Mr. Hitler’s and His followers’ political actions. While the Republican government thought they could “appease” the Nazis by treating them leniently, they not only failed to appease them but aroused their hatred by the very lack of power and firmness they showed. Mr. Hitler hated the Weimar Republic because it was wea ad he admired the industrial and military leaders because they had power. He never fought against established strong power but always against groups which he thought to be essentially powerless. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Mr. Hitler’s—and for that matter, Mr. Mussolini’s—“revolution” happened under protection of existing power and their favourite objects were those who could not defend themselves. One might even venture to assume that Mr. Hitler’s attitude toward Great Britain was determined, among other factors, by this psychological complex. As long as he felt Britain to be powerful, he loved and admired her. His book gives expression to this love for Britian. When he recognized the weakness of the British position before and after Munich his love changed into hatred and the wish to destroy it. From this viewpoint “appeasement” was a policy which for a personality like Mr. Hitler was bound to arouse hatred, not friendship. So far we have spoken of the sadistic one. There is the wish to submit to an overwhelmingly strong power, to annihilate the self, besides the wish to have power over helpless beings. This masochistic side of the Nazi ideology and practice is most obvious with respect to the masses. They are told again and again: the individual is nothing and does not count. The individual should accept this personal insignificance, dissolve oneself in a higher power, and then feel proud in participating in the strength and glory of this higher power. Mr. Hitler expresses this idea clearly in his definition of idealism: “Idealism alone leads men to voluntary acknowledgement of the privilege of force and strength and thus makes them become a dust particle of that order which forms and shapes the entire Universe.” Mr. Goebbles gives a similar definition of what he calls Socialism: “To be a socialist,” he writes, “is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Sacrificing the individual and reducing it to a bit of dust, to an atom, implies, according to Mr. Hitler, the renunciation of the right to asset one’ individual opinion, interests and happiness. This renunciation is the essence of a political organization in which “the individual renounces representing his personal opinion and his interests…” He praises “unselfishness” and teaches that “in the hunt for their own happiness, people fall all the more out of Heaven into Hell.” It is the aim of education to teach the individua not to assert his self. Already the boy in school must learn “to be silent, not only when he is blamed justly but he has also to learn, if necessary, to bear injustice in silence.” Concerning his ultimate goal he writes: “In the folkish State the folkish view of life has finally to succeed in brining about that nobler era when men see their care no longer in the better breeding of dogs, horses, and cats, but rather in the uplifting of mankind itself, an era in which the one knowingly and silently renounces, and the other gladly gives and sacrifices.” This sentence is somewhat surprising. One would expect that after the description of the one type of individual, who “knowingly and silently renounces,” an opposite type would be described, perhaps the one who leads, takes responsibility, or something similar. However, instead of that, Mr. Hitler defines that “other” type also by his ability to sacrifice. It is difficult to understand the difference between “silently renounces,” and “gladly sacrifices.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Mr. Hitler recognizes clearly that his philosophy of self-denial and sacrifice is meant for those whose economic situation doe not allow them any happiness. He does not want to bring about a social order which would make personal happiness possible for every individual; he wants to exploit the very poverty of the masses in order to make them believe in hi evangelism of self-annihilation. Quite frankly he declares: “We turn to the great army of those who are so poor that their personal lives could not mean the highest fortune of this World…” This whole preaching of self-sacrifice has an obvious purpose: If the wish for power on the side of the leader and the “elite” is to be realized, the masses have to resign themselves and submit. However, this masochistic longing is also to be found in Mr. Hitler himself. For him the superior power to which he submits is God, Fate, Necessity, History, Nature. Actually all these terms have about the same meaning to him, that of symbols of an overwhelmingly strong power. He starts his autobiography with the remark that to him it was a “good fortune that Fate designated Braunau on the Inn as the place of my birth.” He then goes on to say that the whole German people must be united in one state because only then, when this state would be too small for them all, necessity would give them “the moral right to acquire soil and territory.” The defeat in the war of 1914-1918 to him is “a deserved punishment by eternal retribution.” Nations that mix themselves with other races “sin against the will of eternal Providence” or, as he puts it another time, “against the will of the Eternal Creator.” Germany’s mission is ordered by “the Creator of the Universe.” Heaven is superior to people, for luckily one can fool people but “Heaven could not be bribed.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
In Russia, what happened by 1922 is clearer for the historian today than it was for the participants in those events. The hope for the revolution had failed. Just as Mr. Marx and Mr. Engles in the middle of the nineteenth century had underestimated the vitality of capitalism, so Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky between 1917 and 1922 had failed to recognize that the majority of the workers in the West were not willing to give up the economic and social advantages the capitalist system had provided for them for the dangerous and insecure course of a socialist revolution. At first, in 1921 and 1922 the revolutionary retreat was made in good faith by Mr. Lenin and other leaders. They made a strategic retreat and hoped that some time in the future a new revolutionary situation would arise. However, with Mr. Lenin’s illness and death, Mr. Trosky’s slow elimination, and Mr. Stalin’s ascendancy, the retreat turned into a plain fraud. Although there is probably no single point at which this change could be said to have occurred, its development can be followed quite clearly in the sequence of events from the Rapallo pact in 1922 to the pact with Mr. Hitler in 1939. After the Putsch in Germany in 1923, through which “Communist prestige suffered a new and this tine an irreparable blow” Mr. Stalin’s view of the supremacy of Russia’s national interests over the revolutionary interests of the communist parities gained steady ascendency. He always had contempt for foreign Communist Parties and expressed this contempt many times. “The Comintern represents nothing. It exists only because of our support,” he said to Lominadze in the twenties. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The same attitude was expressed many years later when Mr. Stalin said to the Polish leader Mikolajczyk “communism fits Germany as a saddle fits a cow.” His personal contempt for the Chinese Communist was notorious. Under him, the relationship between Russian and the Communist movement changed drastically the might of Russian was the goal, and the Communist Parties had to serve this goal. For the first time Mr. Stalin acknowledged officially in 1925 that the acute revolutionary period after the First World War had passed and was being followed by a period of “relative stabilization.” Only in 1947 did he publish a speech to Communist students that he made in 1925, which throws a retrospective light on his attitude: “I suppose that the revolutionary forces of the West are great; that they grow; that they will grow, and that they may overthrow the bourgeoisie here of there. That is true. But it will be very difficult for them to hold their ground…The problem of our army, of its strength and readiness, will inevitably rise in connection with complications in the countries that surround us…This does not mean that in any such situation we are bound in duty to intervene actively against anybody.” This statement is a good example of the difference between ritualistic language and real policy which would from then on pervade all Russian statements. The expressions of hope in the growth of the revolutionary forces are the ritual, without which no Communist statement could be made, but the operative part of the statement lies in the point that Mr. Stalin evaded any commitment tht the Red Army would come out to help foreign revolutions hold their ground. He left this open, but insisted that the was not “bound in duty” to intervene. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Russia’s foreign policy seemed to be successful for a while in the attempt to open friendly relations with the West, especially with Great Britain. However, the British conservative government moved clearly toward a break with Russian between 1924 and 1927. The Soviet Trade Delegation in London was raided on May 12, 1927, and, although the raid apparently did not yield any very incriminating evidences, the British government nevertheless served all official relations with Russian on May 26, 1927. After this setback in it foreign policy, “the Soviet government turned its back even more resolutely than before on actual revolutionary activities abroad, retired into a semi-isolation, and devoted its efforts to the accomplishment of two great internal programs.” These two programs were the rapid industrialization of Russia, expressed in the first Five Year Plan, 1928-33, and the establishment of a tight control over Russian agriculture. Mr. Trotsky was expelled from the party, and Mr. Stalin began the construction of a Russian managerial industrialism. As George Kennan has pointed out, this new program demanded tremendous sacrifices from the Russian population, and Mr. Stalin, as a justification for these hardships, had to emphasize the appearance of an external danger. He also used radical phraseology to hide the final abandonment of the revolutionary ideas and, in addition, to show the Western powers the nuisance value of the Communist Parties as a response to their hostile reaction after 1924. These three motives explain the new militant course of the Comintern after 1927. Mr. Stalin declared in his report on 3 December 1927, that “the stabilization of capitalism is becoming more and more rotten and unstable.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The official Comintern line was changed to say that the capitalist World had now entered upon another “cycle of wars and revolutions.” This new “revolutionary” line has been often interpreted by America Sovietologists as a proof that Stalinism never relinquished its revolutionary plans. These observers do not see that this radical line was purely in the service of Russian foreign and internal policy, and not the expression of any genuine revolutionary plants. The best over-all judgment on the new revolutionary line is presented by Gustav Hilger, the Counselor of the Germany Embassy in Moscow at the time. “Thus a competent Moscow observer of that day,” writes Mr. Kennan, “was able later, in describing Soviet policy during the first Five Year Plan period, to say that the Soviet Union ‘concealed an ironclad isolationism behind a façade of intensified Comintern activity which was designed in part to detract attention from her internal troubles.’” It must be noted furthermore that in spite of all radical talk, the Comintern did not send out any directives that demanded the seizure of power, but demanded only the continued struggle against “the capitalist offensive.” With the consolidation of Mr. Stalin’s power over all opponents, Mr. Hitler’s accession to power, and the beginning of the Roosevelt era, Mr. Stalin ordered another switch. He did not try to mobilize the German workers against Mr. Hitler with the goals of establishing a leftist government in Germany. On the contrary, led by a Moscow stooge who was treated with the complete contempt by the Moscow bosses, the K.P.D. was told to follow a policy which was plainly suicidal. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Treating the socialists as their main enemies and making a tactical pact with the Nazis, the Communist Party did everything possible not to prevent a Nazi victory. It is unthinkable that Mr. Stalin would have demoralized and stultified the Germany Communist Part so completely had his aim been a revolution in Germany, or even the defeat of Mr. Hitler. This is not to imply that Mr. Stalin wished for Mr. Hitler’s victory. He certainly saw himself threatened by Mr. Hitler and tried his best to avert this threat. However, there are many good reasons—although no conclusive proof—to think that Mr. Stalin preferred the victory of Mr. Hitler to an authentic worker’s revolution in Germany. The German dictator was a military threat with which Mr. Stalin could hope to cope with diplomatic maneuvers and military preparation. A German workers’ revolution would have undermined the basis of his whole regime. As a society, we declare that the World’s splendour has been enriched by a new beauty; the beauty of speed. A racing motor-car, its frame adorned with great pipes, like snakes with explosive breath…a roaring motor-car, which looks as though running on a shrapnel is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. We shall sing of the man at the steering wheel, whose ideal stem transfixed the Earth, rushing over the circuit of her orbit. Why should we look behind us, when we have to break in the mysterious portals of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. Already we live in the absolute, since we have already created speed, eternal and ever-present. We wish to glorify War—the only health-giver of the World—militarism, patriotism, the destructive arm of the Anarchist, the beautiful Ideas that kill, the contempt for women. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
We wish to destroy the museums, the libraries, to fight against moralism, feminism, and all opportunistic and utilitarian meanness. There is indeed no greater distinction among human beings than that between those who love life and those who love death. This love of death is typically human acquisition. Humans are the only beings that can be bored, they are the only beings that can love death. While the impotent human (not referring to sexual impotence) cannot create life, one can destroy it and thus transcend it. The love of death in the midst of living is the ultimate perversion. There are some who are the true necrophiles—and they salute war and promote it, even thought they are mostly not aware of their motivation and rationalize their desires as serving life, honour, or freedom. They are probably the minority; but there are many who never made the choice between life and death, and who have escaped in busy-ness in order to hide this. They do not salute destruction, but they also do not salute life. They lack the joy of life which would be necessary to oppose war vigorously. Mr. Goethe once said that the most profound distinction between various historical periods is that between belief and disbelief, and added that all epochs in which belief dominates are brilliant, uplifting, and fruitful, while those in which disbelief dominates vanish because nobody cares to devote oneself to the unfruitful. The “belief” Mr. Goethe spoke of is deeply rooted in the love of life. Culture which create the conditions for loving life are also cultures of belief’ those which cannot create this love also cannot create belief. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The historical future is already determined; there are certain limited and ascertainable alternatives. Our alternative is that between the end of the nuclear arms race—and destruction. Whether the voice of this prophet will win over the voices of doom and weariness depends on the degree of vitality the World and especially the younger generation has preserved. If we are to perish we cannot claim not to have been warned. Every word becomes a concept, not just when it is meant to serve as a kind of reminder of the single, absolutely individualized original experience to which it owes its emergence, but when it has to fit countless more or less similar—that is, strictly speaking, never equal, hence blatantly unequal—cases. Every concept arises by means of the equating of the unequal. Just as certain as it is that no one leaf is exactly the same as any other, so, too, it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily ignoring these individual differences, by forgetting what distinguishes one from the other, thus giving rise to the notion that there is in nature something other than leaves, something like “The Leaf,” a kind of prototype according to which all leaves were woven, drawn, delineated, coloured, crimped, painted, but by unskilled hands, so that no specimen turned out correctly or reliably as a true copy of the prototype. We call a man honest. We ask, “Why did he act so honestly today?” Our answer is, usually, “Because of his honesty.” Honesty! Which is again like saying, “Leaf is the cause of leaves.” We really have no knowledge at all of an essential quality called Honesty, but we do know countless individualized, hence unequal, actions, which we equate by leaving aside the unequal and henceforth designate as honest actions; finally, from them we formulate a qualitas occulta with the name Honesty. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Overlooking the individual and the actual yields concepts, just as it yields forms, whereas nature know neither forms nor concepts, hence no species, but only what remains for us an inaccessible and indefinable X. For even the distinction we draw between the individual and the species is anthropomorphic and does not stem from the essence of things, though neither can we say that it does not correspond to the essence of things, for that would be a dogmatic assertion and as such just as indemonstrable as its counterpart. What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphours, metonymies, anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations that have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, translated, and embellished, and that after long use strike a people as fixed, canonical, and binging: truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions, metaphours that have become worn-out and deprived of their sensuous force, coins that have lost their imprint and are now no longer seen as coins but as metal. We still do not know where the drive to truth comes from, for we have hitherto heard only of the obligation to be truthful, which society imposes in order to exist-that is, the obligation to use the customary metaphours, hence morally expressed, the obligation to lie in accordance with a fixed convention, to lie in droves in a style binding for all. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Humans forget, of course, that his is how things are; one therefore lies in this way unconsciously and according to centuries-old habits—and precisely by means of this unconsciousness, precisely be means of this forgetting, one arrives at the feeling of truth. A moral impulse pertaining to truth is awoken out of this feeling of being obligated to designate one thing red, another cold, a third mute: in contrast to the liar, whom no one trusts, whom everyone shuns, man proves to himself how venerable, trustworthy, and useful truth is. As a rational being he now submits his actions to the rule of abstractions: no longer does he let himself be swept away by sudden impressions, by intuitions, one first generalizes all these impressions into paler, cooler concepts in order to hitch the wagon of one’s life and one’s action to them. Everything that distinguishes man from beast hinges on this capacity to dispel intuitive metaphours in a schema, hence to dissolve an image into a concept. For in the realm of those schemata something becomes possible that could never be achieved by intuitive first impressions, namely, the construction of a pyramidal order of castes and degrees, creating a new World of laws, privileges, subordinations, and boundary demarcations, which now stands over against the other intuitive World of first impressions as the more fixed, more universal, ore familiar, more human, hence something regulatory and imperative. Whereas every metaphour of intuition is individual and without equal and so always knows how to escape al classification, the great edifice of concepts exhibits the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium and in logic exhales the severity and coolness proper to mathematics. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Whoever has felt that breath will scarcely believe that concepts, too, as bony and eight-cornered as dice, and just as moveable, are not the lingering residues of metaphours, and that the illusion of the artistic rendering of a nerve stimulus into images is, if not the mother, then at least the grandmother of every concept. In this dice game of concepts, however, “truth” means using every die s it is marked, counting it dots precisely, establishing correct classifications, and never violating the order of castes and rankings of class. Just as the Romans and Etruscans carved up the sky with rigid mathematical lines, installing a god in each circumscribed space as in a templum, so, too, every people has above it just such a mathematically divided Heaven of concepts and understands the demand of truth to mean that each concept of god is to be found only in its own sphere. In this, one may well admire man as a great architectural genius who manages to erect an infinitely complicated cathedral of concepts on shifting foundations and flowing water. Of course, in order to rest on such foundations, it must be a structure made as if of spiderwebs, delicate enough to be carried way by the waves, firm enough not to be blown apart by the wind. Measured thus, man as architectural genius far surpasses the bee: the latter builds with wax, which it gathers from nature; man builds with the much more delicate material of concepts, which he must first fabricate from out of himself. In this, he is to be admired—but not on account of his drive to truth, to the pure cognition of things. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The clatter at the eastern door was terrific. The paneling was beginning to splinter. A wave of almost abnormal horror swept over me, as days bled into weeks. Glancing up at the window, I observed that it was still dark outside, though to the north I could see lights ominously blazing from the Tower of Babel. There has seemed to be no one in the courtyard below. Every waking hour and every spectral sound seemed like a piece of an intricate puzzle. Llanada Vila was an enigma of tantalizing secrets and I was entangled in its spectral web. Its ghoulish spirits looming over me like ominous storm clouds threatening to consume me. I was a prisoner within the walls of my labyrinth, and each passing day bore a heavier, more costly weight than the day before. Llanada Villa had become my World, my obsession. Its spirits whispered to me, enticing me to build new rooms and enhance architectural features to feed its haunting heart. Echoes answers my foot falls and the gaze of the mansion’s eyes weaved their dark emotions into my skin. Walking softly on the third floor, the hallway was black, and I perceived several open doorways. Uncanny shapes were pouring in as my lantern bobbed in the darkness. Figures moved with uncertainty and I realized to my relief that they did not know where I had gone; but for all that they sent a shiver of horror through my frame. Their features were indistinguishable, but their crouching, and shambling git was abominably repellent. My reality was painted in shades of terror. Shadows pulsating with a life of their own. From several directions in the distance, I could hear the sound of hoarse voices, of footsteps, and of a curious kind of pattering which did not sound quite like footsteps. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Ascending the staircase, the steps creaked under my weight, each groan echoing the palpitations of my heart. I was shackled by dreadful anticipation. I walked rapidly, and knew there would be plenty of doorways to shelter me in case I came face to face with a macabre delight. As the figures spread throughout the fourth floor, I felt my fears increase. It was an arduous climb, and there were two shambling figures crossing in front of me. They looked dangerous. Terror washed over me with an icy wave that froze my blood. They moved with a curious gliding motion into the darkness and melted away. When I looked behind me, there was a specter disappearing into the mansion’s tapestry. To my great surprise, I saw, as it were, a dead corpse, a scream clawed its way up my throat, tearing through the silent mansion. As I thought, the corpse was lying extended upon the floor, just as a dead body should be, excepting that foot of one leg was fixed on the ground as it is in bed, when one lies with one knee up; I looked at it awhile, and by degrees withdraw my eyes from so unpleasing an object: however a strange kind of air of curiosity soon overcame my fears, and I ventured a second time to look that way, and saw it a considerable time longer fixed as before. I durst not stir from my position. I again turned from the horrible and melancholy spectacle, and, resuming my courage, after a little reflection, got up with a deign to ascertain myself of the reality of the vision by going nearer to it; but it was vanished! My home has become a haunted stage where my fears came to life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Llanada Villa was veritable gateway to realms of unfathomed horror and inconceivable abnormality. As I was sitting, no, moving about, in an old-fashioned sort of paneled room, there was a fireplace and a lot of burnt papers in it, and I was in a great state pf anxiety about something. There were intermittent flashes of light in the distance. They were definite and unmistakable, and awakened my mind to a blind horror beyond all rational proportion. There was someone else—a servant, I suppose, and I heard several people coming upstairs and a noise like spurs on the wooden floor, and then the door opened and whatever it was that I was expecting happened. It was the sort of shock that upsets you in a dream. You either wake up or else everything goes black. That was what happened to me. Then I was in a big dark-walled room, paneled like the other, and a number of people, and I was being tried, for my life. I had no one speaking for me, and somewhere there was a most fearful fellow—on the bench; he was pitching into me most unfairly, and twisting everything I said, and asking most abominable questions about dates when I was at particular places, and letter I was supposed to have written, and why I had destroyed some papers; and he was laughing at answers I made in a way that quite daunted me. It does not sound like much, but it was really appalling. This man, he was such a horrible villain. The things he said. The next morning, I awoke to a horrifying sight. Tracing the length of my arm were savage scratches, crimson welts etched into my skin. Then I recollected an attack, claws ripping into me in the room on the fourth floor while I was being questioned. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
From that day on, the hauntings gained a monstrous momentum. I would find myself in unknown corners of Llanada Villa, with no recollection of my journey. Each phenomenon brought new marks, bruises blooming on my skin, cuts etching their painful paths. Fear was my constant companion, ghoulish shadows leered at me from the corners of my home. I was lost in a whirlwind the supernatural. There were cryptical flashings of ghosts and unexplainable beacons appeared before my eyes. For a moment my brain reeled with sheer hopelessness. The feeling of being watched amplified, a malevolent crescendo in the haunting symphony of my mansion. A dread, bone-deep and paralyzing, filled me. There was a spectral figure inching closer, its icy breath on my neck. I became conscious of a peculiar sound in the room—a sort of shuddering sound in the room, as of suppressed dread. It seemed close to me. I gave little heed to it at first, setting it down for the wind in the chimney, or a draught from the half-open door; but moving about the room I perceived that the sound moved with me. Whichever way I turned it followed me. I went to the furthest extremity of the chamber—it was also there. Feeling uneasy, and being quite unable to account for the singularity of this stranger horror, I closed my eyes and put every ounce of will power into the task of holding my eyelids down. Of course, my resolution to keep my eyes closed failed. It was foredoomed to failure—for whom could crouch blindly while a legion of croaking, ghouls hovered noisomely around? #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
I thought I was prepared for the worst, and I really ought to have been prepared considering what I had seen before. My other pursuers had been accursedly abnormal. Can it be possible that this mansion actually spawned such demonic, blasphemous things that human eyes have never truly seen? Despite Llanada Villa’s imposing grandeur, its gilded embellishments, and regal expanse, I found myself unable to dispel the gnawing sense of dread that lingered on the fringe of my reality. Each creak of the ancient wood, the muted rustle from the ghouls’ cloaks, the cold draughts of phantom breath, and the ghostly echoed in my heart. My mansion’s cryptic maze, each chamber was a portal to some other realm. I was a woman divided. Caught in the eternal conflict between the angel of my better nature and the demon of my dark distress. As heiress to the Winchester Rifle Fortune, I was curse for all eternity to be haunted. As the days went on, the atmosphere of Llanada Villa grew denser, the air chillier. They very walls were constricting around me, Llanada Villa was swallowing me into its haunted foundation. Even as I expanded the mansion, my mind found itself incessantly pulled back to the clandestine otherworldly depths manifestations that waver between the phlegmatic and the melancholy. As I gaze over Llanada Villa’s grandiosity, I saw it clearly. Spirits swept through the veins of my mazelike corridors, casting eerier shadows through this ancient mansion, which concealed ghastly secrets for ages untold. It seemed to me that there were limitless swarms of them—and certainly my momentary glimpse could have shewn only the least fraction lurking beneath the foundation and ancient towers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Winchester Mystery House
In 1923 when the Winchester Mansion opened for tours, the ghosts were known as “hobs.” They often performed the role of nightwatchmen, and under cover of night and darkness their footsteps could be heard. One of the tour guides became so accustomed to the tread that she would call out “Hello there, I’m quite all right, thank you,” Then the hob would depart. The owners were alerted to the presence of the ghost when they heard from time to time the noise of skittles in one of the kitchens; when they would investigate, no one was playing However, glasses left on the counter overnight to dry, would often be returned to their proper places. Clean linen was pressed and folded.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
We have seen that certain socioeconomic and political changes, notably the decline of the middle class, war on vehicles powered by gasoline, and the rising power of the monopolistic capital, has had a deep psychological effect. These effects are increased or systematized by a political ideology—as by religious ideologies in the sixteenth century—and the psychic forces thus aroused became effective in a direction that was opposite to the original economic interest of that class. Nazism resurrected the lower middle class psychologically while participating in the destruction of its old socioeconomic position. It mobilized its emotional energies to become an important force in the struggle for the economic and political aims of German imperialism. Mr. Hitler’s personality, his teachings, and the Nazi system express an extreme form of the character structure which we have called “authoritarian” and that by this very fact he made a powerful appeal to those parts of the population which were—more or less—of the same character structure. Mr. Hitler’s autobiography is as good an illustration of the authoritarian character as any, and since in addition to that it is the most representative document of Nazi literature used for analyzing the psychology of Nazism. The essence of the authoritarian character has been descried as the simultaneous presence of sadistic and masochistic drives. Sadism was understood as aiming at unrestricted power over another person more or less mixed with destructiveness; masochism as aiming at dissolving oneself in an overwhelmingly strong power and participating in its strength and glory. Both the sadistic and the masochistic trends are caused by the inability of the isolated individual to stand alone and one’s need for a symbiotic relationship that overcomes this aloneness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The sadistic craving for power funds manifold expression in Mein Kampf. It is characteristic of Mr. Hitler’s relationship to the German masses whom he despises and “loves” in the typically sadistic manner as well as to his political enemies towards whom he evidences those destructive elements that are an important component of his sadism. He speaks of the satisfaction the masses have in domination. “What they want is the victory of the stronger and the annihilation or the unconditional surrender of the weaker.” “Like a woman,…who will submit to the strong man rather than dominate the weakling, thus the masses love the ruler rather than the suppliant, and inwardly they are far more satisfied by a doctrine which tolerates no rival than by the grant of liberal freedom; they often feel at a loss what to do with it, and even easily feel themselves deserted. They neither realized the impudence with which they are spiritually terrorized, nor the outrageous curtailment of their human liberties for in no way does the delusion of this doctrine dawn on them.” Mr. Hitler described the breaking of the will of the audience by the superior strength of the speaker as the essential factor in propaganda. He does not even hesitate to admit that physical tiredness of his audience is a most welcome condition for their suggestibility. Discussing the question which hour of the day is most suited for political mass meetings he says: “It seems that in the morning and even during the day men’s power revolts with highest energy against an attempt at being forced under another’s will and another’s opinion. In the evening, however, they succumb more easily to the dominating force of a stronger will. For truly every such meeting presents a wrestling match between two opposed forces. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
“The superior oratorical talent of a domineering apostolic nature will now succeed more easily in winning for the new will people who themselves have in turn experienced a weakening of their force of resistance in the most natural way, than people who still have full command of the energies of their minds and their will power.” Mr. Hitler himself is very much aware of the conditions which make for the longing for submission and gives an excellent description of the satiation of the individual attending a mass meeting. “The mass meeting is necessary if only for the reason that in it the individual, who is becoming an adherent of a new movement feels lonely and is easily seized with the fear of being alone, receives for the first time the pictures of a greater community, something that has a strengthening and encouraging effect on most people…If he steps for the first time out of his small workshop or out of the big enterprise, in which he feels very small, into the mass meeting and is now surrounded by thousands and thousands of people with the same conviction…he himself succumbs to the magic influence of what we call mass suggestion.” Mr. Goebbels describes the masses in the same vein. “People want nothing at all, except to be governed decently,” he writes in his novel Michael. They are for him, “nothing more than the stone is for the sculptor. Leader and masses are as little a problem as painter and color.” In another book Mr. Goebbels gives an accurate description of the dependence of the sadistic person on his objects; how weak and empty he feels unless he has power over somebody and how this power gives him new strength. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
This is Mr. Goebbels’ account of what is going on in himself: “Sometimes one is gripped by a deep depression. One can only overcome it, if one is in front of the masses again. The people are the fountain of our power.” A telling account of that particular kind of power over people which the Nazi ca leadership is given by the leader of the German labour front, Mr. Ley. In discussing the qualities required in a Nazi leader and the aims of education of leaders, he writes: “We want to know whether these men have the will to lead, to be masters, in one word, to rule…We want to rule and enjoy it…We shall teach these men to ride horseback…in order to give them the feeling of absolute domination over a living being.” The same emphasis on power is also present in Mr. Hitler’s formulation of the aims of education. He says that the pupil’s “entire education and development has to be directed at giving him the conviction of being absolutely superior to the others.” The fact that somewhere else he declares tht a boy should be taught to suffer injustice without rebelling will no longer strike the reader—or so I hope—as strange. This contradiction is the typical one for the sado-masochistic ambivalence between the craving for power and for submission. The wish for power over the masses is what drives the member of the “elite,” the Nazi leaders. This wish for power is sometimes revealed with an almost astonishing frankness. Sometimes it is put in less offensive forms by emphasizing that to be ruled is just what the masses wish. Sometimes the necessity to flatter the masses and therefore to hide the cynical contempt for them leads to tricks. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
To further highlight that illustration: In speaking of the instinct of self-preservation, which for Mr. Hitler as we shall se later is more or less identical with the drive for power, he says that with the Aryan the instinct for self-preservation has reached the most noble form “because he willingly subjects his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour should require it, he also sacrifices it.” While the “leaders” are the ones to enjoy power in the first place, the masses are by no means deprived of sadistic satisfaction. Racial and political minorities within Germany and eventually other nations which are described as weak or decaying are the objects of sadism upon which the massed are fed. While Mr. Hitler and his bureaucracy enjoy the power over the German mases, these masses themselves are taught to enjoy power over other nations and to be driven by the passion for domination of the World. Mr. Hitler does not hesitate to express the wish for World domination as his or his party’s aim. Making fun of pacifism, he says: “Indeed, the pacifist-humane idea is perhaps quite good whenever the man of the highest standard has previously conquered and subjected the World to a degree that makes him the only master of this globe.” Again he says: “A state which in the epoch of race poisoning dedicates itself to the cherishing of its best racial elements, must some day be master of the World.” Usually, Mr. Hitler tries to rationalize and justify his wish for power. The main justifications are the following: his domination of other peoples is for their won good and for the good of the culture of the World; the wish for power is rooted in the eternal laws of nature and he recognizes and follows only these laws; he himself acts under the command of a higher power—God, Fate, History, Nature; his attempts for domination are only a defense against the attempt of others to dominate him and the German people. He wants only peace and freedom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
An example of the first kind of rationalization is the following paragraph from Mein Kampf: “If, in its historical development, the German people had possessed this group unity as it was enjoyed by other peoples, then the German Reich would today probably be the mistress of this globe.” German domination of the World could lend, Mr. Hitler assumes, to a “peace, supported not by the palm branches of tearful pacifist professional female mourners, but found by the victorious sword of a people of overloards which puts the World int the service of a higher culture.” In recent years his assurance that his aim is not only the welfare of Germany but that his actions serve the best interests of civilization in general have become well-known to every newspaper. The second rationalization, that his wish for power is rooted in the laws of nature, is more than a mere rationalization; it also springs from the wish for submission to a power outside oneself, as expressed particularly in Mr. Hitler’s crude popularization of Darwinism. In “the instinct of preserving the species,” Mr. Hitler sees “the first cause of the formation of human communities.” This instinct of self-preservation leads to the fight of the stronger for the domination of the weaker and economically, eventually, to the survival of the fittest. The identification of the instinct of self-preservation with power over others finds a particularly striking expression in Mr. Hitler’s assumption that “the first culture of mankind certainly depended less on the tamed animal, but rather on the use of inferior people.” He projects his own sadism upon Nature who is “the cruel Queen of all Wisdom,” and her law of preservation is “bound to the brazen law of necessity and of the right of the victory of the best and the strongest in this World.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Russian is another power the people believe wants to eventually dominate the World. The thesis that the aim of Russia is to dominate the World is based on two assumptions. The main one is the Mr. Khrushchev, being a communist and a successor of Mr. Lenin, wanted to revolutionize the World for the victory of communism. The auxiliary assumption is that Mr. Khrushchev, as the successor of the Czars, is the leader of Russian imperialism, the aim of which is World domination. Sometimes the two assumptions are combined, sometimes it is even said that it is futile “to debate whether the Soviet Union is ‘really’ interested in World domination. For the problem may be that the Soviet conception of security results in undermining all other states.” Furthermore, there are also divided opinions about how the Soviet Union wants to achieve World domination. The opinion prevailing until recently—and maybe still today—is that the Soviet Union wants to conquer the World by the force of arms, while in view of Russian peace gestures the added assumption is frequently made that, if not by violence, the Soviet Union want to achieve domination and examine the validity of the arguments in favour of the thesis. The oldest, and probably still the most popular concept is that of the continuity of the Lenin-Stalin-Khrushchev regies and from the revolutionary communism of 1917-21 to Soviet power forty hears later. Indeed, if Mr. Khrushchev were the legitimate successor of Mr. Lenin and a Communist in the Marx-Leninist tradition, his main interest would be to the communization of the World; for, no doubt, Mr. Lenin hoped and worked for an international revolution, for the victory of communism—not of the Russian state—in the World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
However, Mr. Stalin and Mr. Khrushchev, all ideology to the contrary, do not represent revolutionary communism but a conservative, totalitarian managerialism, and the dominate class of this system. The question arises whether the representatives of this system and this class can be communist revolutionaries—whether they can desire, or even be in sympathy with, revolutions abroad, the spirit of which would be the opposite of that which dominates Russian. We must consider if the internal structure of a regime determines it attitude toward revolutions. A conservative power has by its very nature no use for revolutionary movements abroad. For one thing, the leaders of a conservative power are humans who rule on the basis of authority and obedience, and revolutions are movements that fight authority and obedience. Those who come to power in conservative systems are, as persons, unsympathetic to anti-authoritarian attitudes. More important, however, is the fact that revolutions in other countries, especially if they are not too distant (geographically and culturally), constitute a threat to the conservative countries. This means, concretely, that if there were workers’ revolutions in Berlin, West Germany, France, Italy, for example, the Soviet bureaucracy would have a difficult task in keeping these revolutions from spreading to East Germany, Poland, Hungary, et cetera. At best the Soviet regime would have to use tanks and machine guns again, as it had to use them against the uprising in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary to crush the uprising of the revolutionary workers. Would, or could, Mr. Khrushchev like this? #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The idea that the Soviet Union, being a conservative, hierarchical system, is against revolutions, will at first strike many readers as little better than nonsense. They will think of Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky’s hope for a World revolution, of Mr. Stalin’s and Mr. Khrushchev’s declarations about the “victory of communism,” and of the conquest of the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Rumania by Russia. How, so they will argue, can one maintain that Khruschevism is not a revolutionary system in view of all the obvious evidence to the contrary? There has always been ambiguity in the relationship between Russian and the international Communist movement. However, the nature of this ambiguity changed drastically between 1917 and 1925. Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky had believed that only a revolution in Germany (or Europe) could save the Russian revolution. Their foreign policy was subordinated to their revolutionary aims; but when the German revolution failed to materialize and Russian remained the only Communist country, she became the symbol and the center of the Communist hopes. The survival of Soviet Russian became a goal in itself although it was still believed that the survival of Russian was necessary for the final victory of communism. Yet, in a subtle way the interest for foreign Communist Parties began to be subordinated to the interests of Soviet foreign policy. This development began as early as 1920. After the threat from the civil war and allied intervention had virtually been ended, there were first attempts to open negotiations with the West and to put the interest of the survival of the Russian state above that of the World revolution. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Mr. Chicherin sent out an appeal to the allied governments to enter into peace negotiations, and both he and Mr. Radek declared for the first time that capitalist states and Soviet Russia could peacefully coexist, just as “liberal England did not fight continuously against serf-owning Russia.” However, the French-supported Polish attack on Russian and the initial Russian successes put a stop to this first appearance of the hope for coexistence. Instead, these events brought the revolutionary hopes of Mr. Lenin to a last intense climax. The disappointment of these hoes was virtually the end of Moscow’s revolutionary strategy in the West. The years 1921 and 1922 mark this end unmistakably. In 1921 the German Communist uprising was defeated, Mr. Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy or NEP, concluded a trade agreement with Great Britian, and supposed the Kronstadt rebellion. Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky did not give up their revolutionary hopes, but they acknowledged defeat. For the first time in the history of the Comintern, the suspicion was voiced both by Italian and by German Communists and left socialists, that there might be a latent contradiction between the interests of Russian and those of the Comintern and its member parties. One of the first signs of the subordination of communism to Russian foreign policy may be seen in the new line of the Germany Communist Party (K.P.D.) about the time the Rapallo treaty. While, until then, the K.P.D. had declined to support a German bourgeois government (as evidenced in its passive attitude toward the reactionary Kapp Putsch), between the summer of 1921 to the conclusion of the Rapallo pact in April 1922, a new attitude developed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The Communist supported the treaty in the Reichstag, and the Rote Fahne praised it as “the first independent act of foreign policy by the German bourgeoisie since 1918.” These events meant, writes Mr. Carr, “that among the most advanced Communist parties in the World, attitudes and policies would be different according to whether the governments of their respective countries were in hostile or friendly relations with the Soviet government, and would have to be modified from time to time, to take into account the changes in those relations. These consequences took a long time to develop fully, and were certainly not realized by those who made the Rapallo treaty in the spring of 1922.” Six months after Rapallo, the Soviet government made a second attempt for a comeback as a World power by its support of the Turk at the Lausanne conference; the persecution of the Communist in Turkey was no hindrance to the Russo-Turkish friendship. By 1922 the failure of the revolutionary hopes was openly acknowledge. Mr. Radek declared at the IV Congress of the Comintern (November-December 1922): “The characteristic of the time in which we are living is that, although the crisis of the World capital has not yet been overcome, although the question of power is still the center of all question, the broadest masses of the proletariat have lost belief in their ability to conquer power in any foreseeable time…If that is the situation, if the great majority of the working class feels itself powerless, then the conquest of power as an immediate task of the day is not on the agenda.” The speeches of Mr. Lenin and Mr. Zinoviev, while not as drastically pessimistic, were essentially in the same minor key. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The Revolution failed. People do not cling to life when it is threatened; how else could one explain their passivity before the threat of nuclear slaughter? Furthermore, people confuse excitement with joy, thrill with love of life. They are “without joy in the midst of plenty.” The fact is that all the virtues for which capitalism is praised—individual initiative, the readiness to take risks, independence—have long disappeared from industrial society and are to be found mainly in westerns and among gangsters. In bureaucratized, centralized industrialism, regardless of political ideology, there is an increasing number of people who are fed up with life and willing to die in order to get over their boredom. They are the ones who say “better dead than red,” but deep down their motto is “better dead than alive.” The extreme form of such an orientation was to be found among those fascists whose motto was “Long live death.” Nobody recognized this more clearly than did Miguel de Unammo when he spoke for the last time in his life at the University of Salamanca, where he was Rector at the time of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War; the occasion was a speech by General Millian Astray, whose favourite motto was “Viva la Muerte!” (Long live death!) and one of his followers shouted it back from the hall. When the general had finished his speech Mr. Unamuno rose and said: “…Just now I heard a necrophilous and senseless cry: ‘Long live death!’ And I, who have spent my life shaping paradoxes which have aroused the uncomprehending anger of others, I must tell you, as an expert authority, that this outlandish paradox is repellent to me. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“General Millan Astray is cripple. Let is be said without any slighting undertone. He is a war invalid. So was Cervantes. Unfortunately there are too many cripples in Spain just now. And soon there will be even more of them if God does not come to our aid. It pains me to think that General Millian Astray should dictate the pattern of mass psychology. A cripple who lacks the spiritual greatness of a Cervantes is wont to seek ominous relief in causing mutilation around him.” At this General Millan Astray was unable to restrain himself any longer. “Abajo La inteligencia!” (Down with the intelligence!) he shouted. “Long live death!” There was a clamour of support for this remark from the Falangist. However, Mr. Unamuno went on: “This is the temple of the intellect. And I am its high priest. It is you who profane its sacred precincts. You will win, because you have more than enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right in the struggle. I consider it futile to exhort you to think of Spain. I have done.” However, the attraction to death which Mr. Unamuno called necrophilia is not a product of fascist thought alone. It is a phenomenon deeply rooted in a culture which is increasingly dominated by the bureaucratic organization of the big corporations, governments, and armies, and by the central role of man-made things, gadgets, and machines. This bureaucratic industrialism tends to transform human beings into things. It tends to replace nature by technical devoices, the organic by the inorganic. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
In some remote corner of the sprawling Universe, twinkling among the countless solar systems, there was once a star on which some clever beings invented knowledge. It was the most arrogant, most mendacious minute in “World History,” but it was only a minute. After nature caught its breath a little, the star froze, and the clever beings have to die. One could invent a fable like this and still not have illustrated sufficiently how miserable, how shadowy and fleeting, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect appears in nature. There were eternities in which it did not exist, and when it vanished once again, it will have left nothing in its wake. For the human intellect has no further task beyond human life. Instead, it is merely human, and only its owner and producer regards it so pathetically as to suppose that it contains in itself the hinge on which the World turns. If we could communicate with a mosquito, we would learn that it, too, files through the air with this same pathos, feeling itself to be the moving center of the entire World. There is nothing in nature so abject and lowly that it would not instantly swell up like a balloon at the faintest breath of that cognitive faculty. And just as every baggage carrier wants admirers, so, too, the proudest man of all, the philosopher, thinks one sees the eyes of the Universe trained from all sides telescopically on one’s thought and one’s deeds. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
It is remarkable that the intellect manages this, considering it is simply an expedient supplied to the unluckiest, the most delicate, the most transitory creatures in order to detain them for a minute in existence; from which, without that added extra, they would have every reason to flee as swiftly as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s son. The arrogance involved in cognition and sensation, spreading a blinding fog over men’s eyes and senses, deceives them about the value of existence by implying the most flattering evaluation of cognition. Its most general effect is deception—but even its most particular effects have something of the same quality. The intellect, as a means of preserving the individual, develops its principal strengths in dissimulation, for this is the means by which weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves, it being denied to them to wage the battle of existence with the horns or shape fangs of a breast of prey. This art of dissimulation reaches it peak in humans: here deceptions, flattery, lying, and cheating, talking behind the backs of others, keeping up appearances, living in borrowed splendour, donning masks, the shroud of convention, playacting before others and before oneself—in fort, the continual fluttering around the flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that virtually nothing is as incomprehensive as how an honest and pure drive to truth could have arisen among human. They are deeply immersed in allusions and dream images; their eyes glide only over the surface of things and see “forms”; their sensations nowhere lead to truth but content themselves with registering stimuli and playing a touching—feeling game, as it were, on the back of things. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
What is more, humans let their dreams lie to them at night, their whole life long, their moral sense never trying to prevent it; whereas they say there are people who have managed to quit snoring by sheer willpower. What does man actually know of himself? Could one ever be capable, even just once, of perceiving oneself entire, laid out as if in a glass case? Does nature not conceal virtually everything from one, even one’s body, banishing and locking one up in a proud, spurious consciousness, far removed from the convolution of the bowels, the rapid flow of the bloodstream, the intricate vibrations of nerve fibers? Nature has thrown away the key; and woe unto that fateful curiosity that might once manage to peer out through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and gain intimation that humans rest in the indifference of one’s ignorance on the merciless, the greedy, the insatiable, the murderous, suspended in dreams on the back of a tiger. Where in the World, given this setting, can the drive to truth ever have come from? In the natural state of things, that individual, inasmuch as one wants to protect oneself against other individuals, uses one’s intellect mostly for dissimulation. However, because, out of both necessity and boredom, one wants to exist socially and in herds, humans need a peace treaty and strive at the least to rid their World of the crudest forms of bellum omnium contra omnes.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
This peace treaty, however, brings with it something like the first step in the attainment of that enigmatic drive to truth. Namely, what is henceforth to count as “truth” is now fixed, that is, a uniformly valid and binding designation of things is invented, and the legislation of language likewise yields the first laws of truth. For here a distinction is drawn for the first time between truth and lie: the lair uses valid designations—words—to make the unreal appear real; he says, for instance, “I am rich,” precisely when the proper designation for his condition would be “poor.” He misuses fixed conventions by various substitutions or even inversions of names. If he does this in self-serving or otherwise injurious ways, society will no longer trust him and will therefore exclude him from its ranks. So it is that humans flee not so much from being cheated as from being harmed by cheating. Even on this level, it is at bottom not deception they hate but the dire, inimical consequences of certain kinds of deception. So, too, only to a limited extent do humans want truth. Humans desire the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth; to pure knowledge without consequences one is indifferent, to potentially harmful and destructive truths one is even hostile. And besides, what is the status of those linguistic conventions? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, of our senses for truth? Do the designations and the things coincide? Is the language the full and adequate expression of all realities? Only through forgetfulness can one ever come to imagine that one possesses truth to that degree. If one does not wish to rest content with truth in the form of tautology, this is, with empty husks, one will forever be passing illusions off as truth. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
What is a word? The copy of a nerve stimulus to cause outside us, however, is already the result of a false and unjustified application of the principle of sufficient reason. If truth alone had been decisive in the genesis of language, and the standpoint of certainty in the genesis of the designations of things, how would we be entitled to say, “The stone is hard,” as if “hard” were something otherwise known to us and not a wholly subjective impression? We divined things according to genders: we call the tree (der Baum) masculine, the plant (die Pflanze) feminine—what arbitrary transferences! How far-flung beyond the canon of certainty! We speak of a snake: the designation pertains only to its slithering movement and so could as easily apply to a worm. What arbitrary demarcations, what one-sided preferences for now this, now that property of a thing! All the different languages, set alongside one another, show that when it comes to words, truth—full and adequate expression—is never what matters; otherwise there would not be so many languages. The “thing it itself” (which would be, precisely, pure truth without consequences) is utterly unintelligible, even for a creator of language, and certainly nothing to stive for, for one designates only the relations of things to human beings and helps oneself to the boldest metaphours. The image again copied in a sound—second metaphour! And each time a complete leap out of one sphere into an entirely new and different one. One can imagine someone profoundly dear who has never had any sensation of tone or of music: just as one will gaze in amazement at Chladnian sounds figures in sand, will find their causes in the vibration of the strings, and will swear that one now surely knows what people call a tone—so it is for all of us when it comes to language. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
How may a believer be victorious over the powers of darkness? How may one have authority and victory over psychopathological offenders rather than be mastered by them? Any Christian who has come to recognize the devices of the enemy in one’s own life, and has learned the way of deliverance, will be deeply concerned that others also be set free. “Authority…over all the power of the enemy,” reports Luke 10.19—what a wonderful goal, for oneself and for others! A believer must learn to walk in personal victory over the ultimate negative at every point if one is to have the fullest victory over darkness. For this, one needs to know the Lord Christ in all the aspects of His name and character, so as to draw upon His power in living union with Him. The believer must also learn to know the Adversary in his various workings, as described in his names and character, so that one may be able to discern the presence of the Ultimate Negative and all one’s wicked spirits wheresoever they may be—either in attacks upon oneself, upon other, or in their working as “World-rulers” of the darkness in the World. Although the ambiguous churches are not immune to demonic distortion, nevertheless the impact of the Spiritual Presence on the functions of cultural creativity is impossible without an inner-historical representation of the Spiritual Community in a church. Culture is not vague and indeterminate; cultural creations are produced by definite individuals and social groups. The Spiritual Community must be just as specific if its force is to be felt. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The Spiritual Community must be localized in a human community; the Spiritual Presence, concertized in the symbols of cult and doctrine. And yet, the Spiritual Community is broader than any church which represents it, for the Spirit cannot be fettered. The Spiritual Presence works latently to prepare for the fuller manifestations of the Spiritual Community in a church. Consequently, the role of the Spiritual Community as embodies in the churches can be described as both cause and effect. The Spiritual Presence is felt within a culture because the Spiritual Community has first opened men’s hearts to it, and the free stirring of the Spirit within the cultural realm leads humans to the Spiritual Community. The free impact of the divine Spirit on a culture prepares for a religious community or is received because such a community has prepared human beings for the reception of the Spiritual impact. Giving is not the essential thing, but to give with delicacy of the feeling. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it Stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justic for All. The generous heart shall be enriched, and one that satisfies others shall be satisfied oneself. And this is the offering you shall take: Gold, silver, and copper. One who give when well, one’s gift is gold; one who gives only when ill, one’s gift is silver; one who gives only in one’s will, one’s gift is copper. From Thee, O Lord, comes our wealth, and from Thine own, do we give unto Thee. Please be sure to show charity to the Sacramento Fire Department by making a donation; they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Residence Three is the largest of the single story homes offered at Magnolia Station. At 2,827 square feet you’ll be hard pressed to a contemporary floorplan that offers this much space.
There are four bedrooms, two and one half bathrooms, and a three car garage. Utilize the den as your own private study or convert into an optional fifth bedroom if needed. The Dining Room and Kitchen are well situated to make entertaining a breeze.
The location of the Owner’s Suite makes it feel like a separate wing from the rest of the home allowing for maximum privacy and retreat.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier.
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Colleges such a University of Southern California—Los Angeles, Cornell, Duke and Chapman are now offering courses on how to be a social media influencer as part of their business and communications department. A social media is someone who has a platform on the Internet and vast amounts of fans. Some of these influencers have hundreds … Continue reading →
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