Life on Earth did not happen by mistake. You are here as part of God’s plan of happiness for all of us. Little by little, in tranquil moments or in deliberate meditation, there will come to one the revelation of errors in conduct and thought which, until then, one did not know were errors. Values refer to the tendency of any living beings to show preference in their actions, for one kind of object or objective rather than another. This preferential behaviour is called “operative values.” It need not involve any cognitive or conceptual thinking. It is simply the value of choice which is indicated behaviourally when the organism select one object, rejects another. When the earthworm, placed in a simple Y maze, chooses the smooth arm of the Y, instead of the path which is paved with sandpaper, he is indicating an operative value. A second use of the term might be called “conceived values.” This is the preference of the individual for a symbolized object. Usually in such a preference there is anticipation of foresight of the outcome of behaviour directed toward such a symbolized object. Usually in such a preference there is anticipation or foresight of the outcome of behaviour directed toward such a symbolized object. A choice such as “Honesty is the best policy” is such a conceived value. A final use of the term might be called “objective value.” People use the word in this way when they wish to speak of what is objectively preferable, whether or not it is in fact sensed or conceived of as desirable. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

The living human being has, at the outset, a clear approach to values. He prefers some things and experiences, and rejects others. We can infer from studying his behaviour that he prefers those experiences which maintain, enhance, or actualize his organism, and rejects those which do not serve this end. What him for a bit: Hunger is negatively valued. His expression of this often comes through loud and clear. Food is positively valued. However, when he is satisfied, food is negatively valued, and the same milk he responded to so eagerly is now spit out, or the breast which seemed so satisfying to the infant is now rejected as he turns his head away from the nipple with an amusing facial expression of disgust and revulsion. He values security, and holding and caressing which seem to communicate security. He values new experience for its own sake, and we observe this in his obvious pleasure in discovering his toes, in his searching movements, in his endless curiosity. He shows a clear negative valuing of pain, bitter tastes, sudden loud sounds. All of this is commonplace, but let us look at these facts in terms of what they tell us about the infant’s approach to values. It is first of all a flexible, changing, valuing process, not a fixed system. He likes food and dislikes the same food. He values security and rest, and rejects it for new experience. What is going on seems best described as an organismic valuing process, in which each element, each moment of what he is experiencing is somehow weighed, and selected or rejected, depending on whether, at this moment, it tends to actualize the organism or not. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

This complicated weighing of experience is clearly an organismic, not a conscious or symbolic function. These are operative, not conceived values. However, this process can none the less deal with complex value problems. I would remind you of the experiment in which young infants had spread in front of them a score of more of dishes of natural (that is, unflavoured) foods. Over a period of time they clearly tended to value the foods which enhanced their own survival, growth, and development. If for a time a child gorged himself on starches, this would seen be balanced by a protein “binge.” If at times he chose a diet deficient in some vitamin, he would later seek out foods rich in this very vitamin. He was utilizing the wisdom of the body in his value choices, or perhaps more accurately, the physiological wisdom of his body guided his behavioural movements, resulting in what we might think of as objectively sound value choices. Another aspect of the infant’s approach to value is that the source of locus of the evaluating process is clearly within himself. Unlike many of us, he knows what he likes and dislikes, and the origin of these value choices lies strictly within himself. He is the center of the valuing process, the evidence for his choices being supplied by his own senses. He is not at this point influenced by what his parents think he should prefer, or by what the church says, or by the opinion of the latest “expert” in the field, or by the persuasive talents of an advertising firm. It is from within his own experiencing that his organism is saying in non-verbal terms, “This is good for me.” “That is bad for me.” “I like this.” “I strongly dislike that.” He would laugh at our concern over values, he could understand it. How could anyone fail to know what he liked and disliked, what was good for him an what was not? #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

What happens to this highly efficient, soundly based valuing process? By what sequence of events do we exchange for the more rigid, uncertain, inefficient approach to value which characterizes most of us as adults? The infant needs love, wants it, tends to behave in ways which will bring repetition of this wanted experience. By this brings complications. He pulls baby sister’s hair, and finds it satisfying to hear her wails and protests. He then hears that he is a “naughty, bad boy,” and this may be reinforced by a time out. He is cut off from affection. As this experience is repeated, and many, many others like it, he gradually learns that what “feels good” is often “bad” in the eyes of others. Then the next step occurs, in which he comes to take the same attitude toward himself which the others have taken. Now, as he pulls his sister’s hair, he solemnly intones, “Bad, bad boy.” He is introjecting the value judgment of another, taking it has his own. He has deserted the wisdom of his organism, giving up the locus of evaluation and is trying to behave in terms of values set by another, in order to hold love. Or take another example at an older level. A boy senses, though perhaps not consciously, that he is more loved and prized by his parents when he thinks of being a doctor than when he thinks of being an artist. Gradually he introjects the values attached to being a doctor. He comes to want, above all, to be a doctor. Then in college he is baffled by the fact that he repeatedly fails in chemistry, which is absolutely necessary to becoming a physician, in spite of the fact that the guidance counselor assure him he has the ability to pass the course. Only in counseling interviews does he begin to realize how completely he has lost touch with his organismic reactions, how out of touch he is with his own valuing process. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Let me give another instance from a class of mine, a group of prospective teachers. I asked them at the beginning of the course, “Please list for me the two or three values which you would most wish to pass on to the children with whom you will work.” They turned in many value goals, but I was inspired by some of the items. Several listed such things as “to speak correctly,” “to use good English, not to use work like ain’t.” Others mentioned neatness—“to do things according to instructions”; one explained her hope that “When I tell them to write their own names in the upper right-hand corner with the date under it, I want them to do it that way, not in some other form.” I confess I was somewhat appalled that for some of these girls the most important values to be passed on to pupils were to avoid bad grammar, or meticulously to follow teacher’s instructions. I felt baffled. Certainly these behaviours had not been experienced as the most satisfying and meaningful element in their own lives. The listings of such values could only be accounted for by the fact that these behaviours had gained approval—and thus had been introjected as deeply important.  Perhaps these several illustrations will indicate that in an attempt to gain or hold love, approval, esteem, the individual relinquishes the locus of evaluation which was his in infancy, and places it in others. He learns to have a basic distrust for his own experiencing as a guide to his behaviour. He learns from others a large number of conceived values, and adopts them as his own, even though they may be widely discrepant from what he is experiencing. Because these concepts are not based on his own valuing, they tend to be fixed and rigid, rather than fluid and changing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

To analyze oneself occasionally comparatively easy and sometimes productive of immediate results. Essentially it is what every sincere person does when he tries to account for real motivations behind the way he feels or acts. If anything, without knowing much about psychoanalysis, a man who has fallen in love with a particularly attractive or wealth girl could raise with himself the question whether vanity or money plays a part in his feeling. A man who has ignored his better judgement and given in to his wife or his colleagues in an argument could question in his own mind whether he yielded because he was convinced of the comparative insignificance of the subject at stake or because he was afraid of an ensuing fight. I suppose people have always examined themselves in this way. And many people do so who otherwise tend to reject psychoanalysis entirely. The principal domain of occasional self-analysis is not the intricate involvements of the neurotic character structure, but the gross manifest symptoms, the concrete and usually acute disturbance which either strikes one’s curiosity or commands one’s immediate attention because of its distressing character. Thus the examples reported in this report concern a functional headache, an acute attack of anxiety, a lawyer’s fear of public performances, an acute functional stomach upset. However, a startling dream, the forgetting of an appointment, or an inordinate irritation at a taxidriver’s trivial cheating might just as well elicit a wish to understand oneself—or, more precisely, to discover the reasons responsible for that particular effect. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

This latter distinction may seem hairsplitting, but actually is expresses an important difference between occasional grappling with a problem and systematic work at oneself. The goal of occasional self-analysis is to recognize those factors that provoke a concrete disturbance, and remove them. The broader incentive, the wish to be better equipped to deal with life in general, may operate here too, but even if it plays some role it is restricted to the wish to be less handicapped by certain fears, headaches, or other inconveniences. This is in contrast to the much deeper and more beneficial desire to develop to the best of one’s capacities. One of the greatest factors of the importance for the understanding of man’s behaviour in present society: man’s need for certainty. Man is not equipped with a set of instincts that regulate his behaviour quasi-automatically. He is confronted with choices, and this means in all-important matters with grave risks to his life if his choices are wrong. The doubt that besets him when he must decide—often quickly—causes painful tension and can even seriously endanger his capacity for quick decisions. As a consequence, man has an intense need for certainty; he wants to believe that there is no need to doubt that the method by which he makes his decisions is right. In fact, he would rather make the “wrong” decision and be sure about it than the “right” decision and be tormented with doubt about its validity. This is one of the psychological reasons for man’s belief in idols and political leaders. They all take out doubt and risk from his decision making; this does not mean that there is not a risk for his life, freedom, etcetera, after the decision has been made, but that there is no risk that the method of his decision making was wrong. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

For many centuries certainty was guaranteed by the concept of God. God, omniscient and omnipotent, had not only created the World but also announced the principles of human action about what which there was no doubt. The church “interpreted” these principles in detail, and the individual, securing his place in the church by following its rules, was certain that, whatever happened, he was on the way to salvation and to eternal life in Heaven. In the Luteran-Calvinistic branch of Christian theology, man was taught not to be afraid of the risk of using false criteria for his decision making in a paradoxical way. Luther, belittling man’s freedom and the role of his good works, taught that they only decision man has to make is to surrender his will totally to God, and thus to be released of the risk of making decisions on the basis of his own knowledge and responsibility. In Calvin’s concept, everything is predestined, and man’s decision does not really matter; yet his success is a sign that he is one of then chosen. With the beginning of the scientific approach and the corrosion of religious certainty, man was forced into a new search for certainty. At first, science seemed to be capable of giving a new basis for certainty. This was so for the rational man of the last centuries. However, with the increasing complexities of life, which lost all human proportions, with the growing feeling of individual powerlessness and isolation, the science-oriented man ceased to be a rational and independent man. He lost the courage to think for himself and to make decisions on the basis of his full intellectual and emotional commitment to life. He wanted to exchange the “uncertain certainty” which rational thought can give for an “absolute certainty”: the alleged “scientific” certainty, based on predictability. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

This certainty is guaranteed not by man’s own unreliable knowledge and emotions but by the computers which permit prediction and become guarantors of certainty. Take as an example the planning of the big corporation. With the help of computers, it can plan ahead for many years (including the manipulation of man’s mind and taste); the manager does not have to rely any more on his individual judgment, but on the “truth” that is pronounced by the computers. The manager’s decision may be wrong in its results, but he need not be distrustful of the decision-making processes. He feels that he is free to accept or reject the result of computer prognostication, but for all practical purposes, he is as little free as a pious Christian was to act against God’s will. He could do it, but he would have to be out of his mind to take the risk, since there is not a greater source of certainty than God—or the computerized solution. This need for certainty creates the need of what amounts to blind belief in the efficacy of the method of computerized planning. The managers are relieved from doubt, and so are those who are employed in the organization. It is precisely the fact that man’s judgment and emotions allegedly do not interfere with the process of decision making that gives the computer-based planning its godlike quality. Those ancient social organisms of production are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and transparent. However, they are founded either on the immature development of man individually, who has not yet served the umbilical cord that unites him with his fellow man in a primitive tribal community, or upon direct relations of subjection. They can arise and exit only when development of the productive power of labour has not risen beyond a low state, and when, therefor, the social relations within the sphere of material life, between man and man and between man and nature, are correspondingly narrow. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

This narrowness is reflected in the ancient worship of Nature, and in the other elements of the popular religions. The religious reflex of the real World can, in any case, only then finally vanish when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellow men and to nature. The life-process of material production does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a certain material groundwork or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development. Man, as a race, slowly emancipates himself from mother nature through the process of work, and in this process of emancipation he develops his intellectual and emotional powers and grows up, becomes an independent and free man. When he will have brought nature under his full and rational control, and when society will have lost its antagonistic class character, “prehistory” will have ended, and a truly human history will begin in which free men plan and organize their exchange with nature, and in which the aim and end of all social life is not work and production, but the unfolding of man’s powers as an end in itself. This is the realm of freedom in which man will be fully united with his fellow men and with nature. The problem of human evolution is an essentially tragic one. Whatever man did, it ended in frustration; if he should return to become a primitive again, he would have pleasure, but no wisdom; if he goes on as a builder of ever more complicated civilizations, he becomes wiser, but also unhappier and sicker. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Clearly, evolution is an ambiguous blessing, and society does as much harm as good. History is a march toward man’s self-realization; society, whatever the evils produced by any given society may be, is the condition for man’s self-creation and unfolding. The “good society” becomes identical society of good men, that is, of fully developed, sane, and productive individuals. When it comes to psychologist, they even study the theory of theories and are provided at least with a modest ability to differentiate between “good” theories and “poorer” theories, qua theories. The impact of his exposure to methods for investigation of psychological phenomena, within the context of multiple theories that overlap only partially, should fit him with a generally critical orientation toward any univocal explanation of the mysteries of the human personality. And in seminars, in publications, in case conferences it is typically the psychologist, not the social worker or psychiatrist, who is dubious that an orthodox psychoanalytic formulation either truly accounts for the observed pathology or necessarily points to the optimal treatment. This is a generalization about psychologists as students of behaviour theory and personality. It must be recognized that there are some graduate departments of psychology in which the training of the clinical psychologist is as theoretically biased, id est, psychoanalytically oriented, as is that of the average psychiatrist or social worker. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Contrary to what the manipulator wants you to think, you are not the problem. You might be their problem as you will not conform to what they want you to, but you are not the problem. However, it is hard to deal with abusers and other types of manipulators because they are masters at blame-shifting. Somehow, in any argument, they are adamantly more capable of convincing victims that they are at fault, than victims are at realizing they are the victims of the entire debacle. Victim blaming is a manipulative tactic used by abusers to convince themselves and their victims that the problems lie with the other person, not with them. The ploy is very clever and effective. Beware of the tendency to play the game of “Find the bad guy,” in your intimate relationships. It is never healthy to use someone as a scapegoat for your problems. If you are in a relationship with someone needs to make you the “bad guy,” then be aware of what is going on and do not allow yourself to accept that mantle. The best way to understand victim blaming is to realize that two concepts are at play: Projection and judgmentalism. Projection occurs when one person displaces his or her own characteristics onto another person. An abusive person will “project” his or her own attributes on to the other person, particularly in a conflict. The main reason victims get in fights or arguments with abusers is because the abusers cause the problem in the first place by saying or doing something that engenders a negative emotional reaction in another person. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

The abuser may be rude, hurtful, hostile, or act in some other relationship-destroying manner. It takes superhuman strength to keep from being triggered by the anger-provoking tactics of an abusive or manipulative person. Once you have been triggered by the abuser, you may make one small mistake in speaking, or you may even commit the heinous crime of yelling back and defending yourself! Heavens forbid you have a reaction to a hostile instigation! And once you do react supposedly inappropriately you have just given the abuser a gift. He can now capitalize on your reaction and use it as the evidence that the problem resides with you. Therefore, do not take the bait. The abuser is trying to flip the script. Reminder yourself that you do not need to defend yourself because you did not do anything wrong. The other concept, along with projection, that your abuser is using is judgmentalism. When people use judgmentalism as a strategy, they are trying to make you a subordinate. Abusers are incapable of healthy human connections. They suffer from attachment issues, and true to form, they must sabotage any semblance of healthy attachment. This is why the term “interpersonal violence” is sued to describe domestic violence. It is abuse of an interpersonal relationship. Victim blaming keeps the abuser emotionally safe by projecting his interpersonal problems on to the other person, preventing insight and potential growth (not to mention resolution of the problem at hand.) It also helps the abuser feel personally superior and smug as he believes that it is his role to judge the victim. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Ideas influence their thinker himself; thoughts react on their generator if they are intensely held, deeply felt, and frequently born. Thus they help to form tendencies and shape character. The aspirant can take advantage of this truth. His moral thought and metaphysical ideation will be so deep and earnest that they will converge upon his emotional feeling, when that has been sufficiently purified, and coalesce with it. Thus they become part of his inner being. If he is to realize his higher purpose in life, each aspirant has to struggle with the demon inside himself. Nature seeks to achieve its own ends, which renders it indifferent to all personal ends. It considers no man’s feelings but only his level of development, that he might be raised to a higher one. The only greatness he may rightfully seek is a secret one. It is not power over others that he should strive for, but power over himself. He will have to grow into this higher consciousness. No other way exists for him. He has not only to be brave enough to accept the aloneness that comes with every serious advance in the quest, but also strong enough to endure it. If it is wrong in ethical theory, how can anything be right in Worldly practice? The value of such study is immense. It involves a re-education of the whole mind of man. It strikes at the root of his ethical ignorance and destroys the selfishness and greed which are its malignant growths. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Mentally, man can do what no animal can do. He can consider conduct from a purely ethical standpoint; he can struggle at heart between right and wrong, self and selflessness. Every man betrays himself for what he is. He can hide his thoughts and dissemble his feelings, but he cannot hide his face. Therein are letters and words which tell plainly what sort of a man he really is. However, few there be who can read in this strange language. Character can be changed. As if by magic, he who habitually contemplates such exalted themes finds in time that his whole outlook is altered and expanded. The new outlook will gradually strongly establish itself within him. As a man thinks in his hear so is he. As is one’s thoughts, so one becomes; this is the eternal secret. What is to be done where a weakness becomes abnormally strong, overpowering the will and forcing him to do what his better nature rejects? The cure in the end must be based on his willingness to regard it as something not really part of himself, something alien and parasitic. If there is to be any way out toward freedom from it, he must stop identifying himself with the weakness. The key to right conduct is to refuse to identify himself with the lower nature. The hypnotic illusion that it is really himself must be broken: the way to break it is to deny every suggestion that comes from it, to use the will in resisting it, to use the imagination in projecting it as something alien and outside, to use the feelings in aspiration towards the true self, and the mind in learning to understand what it is. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

The Sacramento firefighters like going to work, and there are few jobs at any level of pay about which this can be said with such certainty. They have to learn building laws, and the different types of building construction—frame, brick, steel, and the old cast-irons. Firefighters learn about the different kinds of windows—regular windows, casement windows, and the nonopening ones in skyscrapers—and the different locks people use to secure themselves from the harsh realities of the outside World—standard bolt locks, digital locks, police locks that lock on either side of the door, and fox locks, which have bars going down into the floor life flying buttresses. They have to learn the multitudinous knots used for moving equipment and people, and a whole communications system, the signals and alarms, the differences between “ten-four” and “ten-twenty-two.” They studied water hydraulics, the laws that govern the movement of water rushing through a two-and-a-half-inch hose and coming out of a one-inch nozzle. Outdoors, they learned about tools, everything from how to swing an ax to how to pull a hook and how to use your weight on a battering ram. They learned about the motorized tools, the power saw, the pneumatic tools and jacks used in collapse situations. Then there was the practical work of fighting the fire itself in controlled situations, where firefighters had to crawl into a room and pull out an inanimate 150-pound synthetic human being and carry it down six flights of stairs after taking a beating from the smoke. Later in the afternoon they had to carry ladders from one side of the street to the other. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

On one call, there was a fire on the third floor of a tenement building, going really goodly. It had evidently been cooking for a long time, because by the time the fire department got there the fire fully involved this apartment of five or six rooms. There was this long hallway, and the firefighters ran in crouching positions into the fire with an inch-and-a-half hose. They got to the end of the hallways, one of the firefighters opened up the hose and led the way into the room there. Immediately, a large part of the ceiling came down on one of them, knocking his helmet off. Embers went down his neck and back, and he was burned pretty severely. So, with the nozzle still in his hand, he shut it off, made a complete U-turn, and started back out of the room. When he got out into the hall, the embers had died out, and he had a lifetime three-inch burn down his neck from hairline to shoulder blade. The interesting thing is, he hardly mind getting hurt in the fire. A gash on his arm that took twelve stitches, a burn on his neck, a broken wrist, to him it was just a badge of courage that reinforced the things he believed about firefighting and reinforced his confidence in himself to do a tough, challenging, and dangerous job. Once this firefighter got hurt pulling a hose over a barbed wire fence. He had to tug so hard that he pulled a ganglion, or nerve center, in his back. It was one of the most painful things that he ever experienced. It was difficult to treat. He had to lie on his stomach in bed for three months, doing everything in that position, eating, reading, writing notes, watching television. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Finally a doctor shot a whole bunch of cortisone into his back, which completely relived the pain, and finally he was able to go back to work. The cortisone never disappeared, though, and still moves around. He still feels the pain from time to time, especially when he is tired. There is an overriding awareness of the possibility of getting badly hurt, because they see it around them all the time. Firefighters see people getting disabled permanently, and they learn not to take even the smallest fire for granted. Be sure to open your hearts to the Sacramento Fire Department and let them know the community is thankful by making a donation. Also, assembly member Kevin McCarty is running for mayor of Sacramento, he is endorsed by the Sacramento Fire Department, and two of his goals are creating more affordable housing and getting homeless people into homes. A vote for McCarty is a way of showing support for the City of Sacramento and the Sacramento Fire Department. 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 justice for all. Be wise not only in words, but in deeds; mere knowledge is not the goal, but action. Know the God of your fathers, and serve Him by your deeds. Let not your wisdom exceed your deeds, least you be like a tree with many branches but few roots. If the thoughts of your heart be pure, it is likely that so will be the words of your hand. Accustom yourself to do good; before long it will become your chief delight. One good deed leads to another, as every evil deed leads to more wrong-doing. If others do good through you, their deeds will be accounted to you as your own. #RanolphHarris 18 of 18

The Winchester Mystery House

A caretaker was hire to work at The Winchester Mystery House. Although she had never been to the mansion before, she was recruited for her skills in architecture and historical preservation. As she entered the library and explained that the beautiful ask paneling had been taken from trees that once surrounded the estate, she became restless. She knew very well that it was the kind of feeling that forewarned her of some sort of psychic event. As she was looking over toward a fireplace, farmed by two candelabra, she suddenly saw a very tall, white-haired man in a long black frock coat standing next to it. One elbow rested on the mantel, and his head was in his hand, as if he were pondering something very important. The caretaker was not at all emotionally involved with the house. In fact, the guided tour bored her, and she would have preferred to be outside in the stables, since she had a great interest in horses and nature. Her imagination did not conjure up what she saw: she knew in an instant that she was looking at the spirit of William Wirt Winchester. Because of the restless feelings that came over her while working in the mansion almost induced her to go into a trance several times, she decided to quit her job in a hurry.

Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. 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/