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The Weight of Invisible Forces

Very few people wake up thinking, “I’m going to be cruel today.” Instead, they reinterpret their actions so they can continue seeing themselves as decent. This is why the “guilty heart” does not jolt them awake at night—they have already rewritten the story. Harmful behavior tends to emerge from a combination of fear and insecurity, dehumanization, power without accountability, learned behavior, and moral disengagement. People who feel threatened often lash out, even when no real threat exists. When individuals or groups stop seeing others as fully human, cruelty becomes easier. Institutions and individuals who face no consequences often drift toward abuse. Harm is frequently inherited—passed down through families, cultures, or systems. Furthermore, people justify their actions by convincing themselves that the victim “deserved it. None of these excuses the harm. However, if we hope to interrupt it, understanding the roots of destructive behavior is essential. When someone is repeatedly harmed—emotionally, socially, or institutionally—the experience can create a sense of entrapment. The “black hole” metaphor becomes a lived reality as agency collapses, hope narrows, and trust erodes—the world feels hostile and coordinated against you. This is not weakness. It is a predictable human response to prolonged adversity. Our institute teaches that when people feel trapped in this way, they are not simply reacting to individual acts of cruelty—they are reacting to the cumulative weight of injustice. “Where justice is denied… neither persons nor property will be safe,” says Fredrick Douglas. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

One of the most disturbing features of human behavior is that evil is rarely committed by people who appear monstrous in everyday life. Ordinary individuals—neighbors, clerks, teachers, parents—have, in certain circumstances, participated in acts that violate the most basic moral norms. This is not just a historical curiosity; it is a structural feature of human psychology and social life. People rarely act from a single, clear intention. Fear, conformity, resentment, ambition, confusion, and misplaced loyalty can all combine in ways that even the person acting may not fully understand. That is why “Why did they do it?” is often unanswerable in a clean, satisfying way. A long line of research in social psychology suggests that context can exert enormous pressure on behavior. People who consider themselves decent can be swept into harmful actions when authority figures demand obedience, group norms reward compliance, responsibility feels diffused, and moral reflection is suppressed by urgency or fear. This does not excuse wrongdoing, but it helps explain why it can emerge so suddenly and so widely. Self‑Deception Is a Powerful Force. Humans have an extraordinary ability to reinterpret their own actions in ways that preserve a sense of moral adequacy. People can convince themselves that they are “just following orders,” the harm is necessary or justified, and the victims are less deserving of moral concern. Why does slandering the victim make it easier to cause harm? It reduces empathy. If someone can be portrayed as dangerous, immoral, foolish, or “less than,” then the natural human impulse to empathize weakens. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

People find it easier to ignore suffering when they have been convinced the sufferer somehow “deserves” it. This internal narrative can make even severe wrongdoing, to the perpetrator, feel like something other than what it is. When a community hears repeated negative claims about a group or individual, it becomes easier for bystanders to rationalize inaction. They may think: “Maybe it’s not my place to intervene.” “Maybe they really did something wrong.” “Maybe this is not as unjust as it looks.” Slander creates moral fog. Most people want to see themselves as decent. Slandering victims helps them maintain that self‑image even while doing something harmful. It is a form of self‑deception that shields them from confronting the moral weight of their actions. Human situations are often messy. Blaming victims provides a clean, emotionally satisfying story: “They are bad; we are good.” This simplicity is seductive, especially in moments of fear, uncertainty, or conflict. When people slander victims, they are not just attacking someone else—they are protecting themselves from the discomfort of acknowledging injustice. It is a way of avoiding moral responsibility. Whatever the resentment these people have against their victim, attacking the individual is a way of giving birth to values—a resentment experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary revenge. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Many moral philosophers—Kant most famously—argue that humans possess an innate or rational awareness of basic moral principles: that persons deserve respect, that harm requires justification, and that truthfulness is a duty. On this view, when someone commits wrongdoing, they are not acting in ignorance of morality but in defiance of it. They know the victim is a person deserving moral regard, but they choose to override that knowledge. Evil is often not a failure to know the good, but a refusal to honor it. Sociopaths can charm others into attempting dangerous ventures with them, and as a group, they are known for their pathological lying and conning, and their parasitic relationships with “family.” From a Kantian perspective, every rational agent possesses an awareness—however faint—of the basic demands of morality. What distinguishes morally corrupt action is not ignorance, but the deliberate subordination of the moral law to self‑interest, impulse, or desire. This refusal becomes especially stark in individuals whose psychological makeup includes profound deficits in empathy or emotional depth. Such persons may display a striking capacity for charm, manipulation, and deception, drawing others into harmful ventures through sheer force of personality. Their relationships tend to be exploitative rather than reciprocal, and their histories often reveal a pattern of rule‑breaking, irresponsibility, and a persistent unwillingness to acknowledge fault. From a Kantian standpoint, what is most troubling is not simply the absence of certain emotional capacities but the way these individuals consistently choose maxims that elevate their own advantage above the dignity of others. Their emotional shallowness does not absolve them of responsibility; rather, it reveals how fully they have embraced a principle of action that treats other persons merely as instruments. Without empathy to restrain them and without remorse to recall them to the moral law, they do not experience the inner conflict that troubles most human beings. Their callousness is not merely a psychological fact—it is a moral posture, a systematic rejection of the humanity of others. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Not all harmful or disruptive behavior stems from malice; sometimes it reflects deeper patterns rooted in personality and emotional functioning. Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is a mental health condition that can affect the way a person thinks and interacts with others, and it may involve manipulating or deceiving people, exploiting others for personal benefit, disregarding the law or the rights of others, and feeling little or no remorse for harmful actions. When these behaviors are misunderstood, they can easily be mistaken for deliberate cruelty, but in many cases, they reflect an underlying mental health condition that has never been recognized or addressed. People diagnosed with ASPD often show a consistent lack of respect for others, ignore the consequences of their actions, or refuse to take responsibility for the harm they cause. Because these patterns can lead to physical or emotional harm to oneself or others, ASPD is considered a serious condition. It is one of several personality disorders, which are conditions that influence the way a person thinks, feels, and behaves over time. How common is antisocial personality disorder? Antisocial personality disorder affects an estimated 1 to 4 percent of adults in the United States of America. What we first began investigating might have looked like deliberate cruelty or evil, but in some cases, these behaviors can actually stem from an underlying mental health condition rather than intentional malice. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

What are the symptoms of antisocial personality disorder? Symptoms of antisocial personality disorder may include physical aggression, hostility, or violence toward others; reckless or impulsive behavior; breaking the law; disregarding rules and social norms; feeling angry, more powerful, or superior to others; using wit, flattery, or charm to manipulate, lie, or deceive for personal gain or enjoyment; refusing to take responsibility for actions; and showing little or no remorse, regret, or concern for harmful behavior. The person we were describing earlier displayed many of these same behaviors, but recognizing the symptoms of antisocial personality disorder helps us see that such actions may not always be intentional or rooted in malice. Antisocial personality disorder may look different for each person who experiences it, and individuals might lean more toward certain behaviors than others. This variation means that the same underlying condition can appear in many different ways, depending on the person and their circumstances. What age does antisocial personality disorder develop? Antisocial personality disorder usually begins before age 15, and the initial diagnosis in childhood is called conduct disorder. Children with conduct disorder often show a pattern of aggressive or disobedient behavior that can harm others. They may lie, steal, ignore rules, or bully other children, and two behaviors that are considered early warning signs of ASPD are setting fires and harming animals. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Sometimes parents or healthcare providers miss the early signs of conduct disorder, especially because its symptoms can overlap with other conditions such as attention‑deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, or oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). When conduct disorder is identified and treated early in childhood, there is a chance that the behaviors may not continue into adulthood. If they do persist, the diagnosis becomes antisocial personality disorder after age 18. Studies suggest that symptoms of ASPD tend to be most severe between ages 20 and 40 and often improve after age 40. The causes of antisocial personality disorder remain uncertain, for no single influence can fully account for its development. Physicians and scholars alike have long observed that such a condition appears to arise from a confluence of forces—some rooted in one’s inherited constitution, others shaped by the circumstances of early life. Increasing attention has been given to the workings of the brain itself. Certain individuals seem to possess irregularities in the regulation of serotonin, a chemical substance believed to steady the emotions and govern one’s sense of well‑being. When this delicate balance is disturbed, it may give rise to the impulsive, aggressive, or detached behaviors so often associated with the disorder. Thus, what may outwardly appear as willful misconduct may, in truth, reflect deeper disturbances within the mind’s own machinery. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Is antisocial personality disorder genetic? It has long been observed that one’s hereditary constitution may incline an individual toward the development of antisocial personality disorder. Though modern inquiry continues to investigate the precise manner in which our genes contribute to this condition, the particular elements responsible have yet to be identified with certainty. Nevertheless, studies consistently show that the likelihood of exhibiting such traits increases when a biological relative has been similarly afflicted. Thus, heredity appears to play a notable, though not yet fully understood, role in the emergence of this disorder. Borderline personality disorder, marked by unstable moods and at times manipulative conduct, may present in ways that resemble the disturbances seen in antisocial personality disorder. Likewise, narcissistic personality disorder, characterized by an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance, can give rise to behaviors that appear similar in nature. Even disorders of substance use—wherein an individual becomes dependent upon alcohol or other intoxicating agents—may imitate the outward signs of antisocial tendencies. Such conditions, though distinct in their origins and course, can easily be mistaken for one another when viewed only through the lens of their external manifestations. Antisocial personality disorder is notoriously difficult to treat, for the individual so afflicted may scarcely perceive that his thoughts and actions are harmful to himself or to others. It is not uncommon for such a person to respond with agitation or resentment when assistance is offered, mistaking concern for intrusion. Yet it is important to understand that treatment remains available whenever one is prepared to receive it. Though the undertaking is neither simple nor swift, proper care can safeguard the individual and protect those within his sphere. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

At times, when one finds oneself among persons whose conduct appears disordered in mind, or who seem united in concealing misdeeds of a dubious nature, it becomes exceedingly difficult to discern whether their actions arise from illness of the spirit or from a deliberate inclination toward wrongdoing. When escape from such company is not immediately possible, the confusion and strain upon one’s own faculties may grow severe. In circumstances where an individual feels oppressed or unsettled by the behavior of others, it is often wise to seek the counsel of a trusted professional or confidant, for the constant pressure of such surroundings can weigh heavily upon one’s emotions. Should formal assistance be beyond one’s means, the simple practice of keeping a private journal—recording the events of the day, the feelings they stirred, and envisioning a just and honorable resolution—may offer a measure of clarity and steadiness to the mind. While antisocial personality disorder may heighten the likelihood of harmful or unlawful conduct when left unaddressed, it does not, by any means, determine the ultimate course of a person’s life. Many who bear this condition never engage in acts of violence, and likewise, numerous individuals who commit grievous offenses do not meet the criteria for such a disorder. For those who seek to understand the behavior of another—or who have themselves been troubled by the actions of someone in their midst—it is essential to recall several truths. Only a trained professional is qualified to render a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. Harmful deeds arise from a multitude of influences, of which mental illness is but one. Above all, one’s own safety and well‑being remain of the utmost importance, irrespective of the causes that may lie behind another’s conduct. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

However, should you find yourself in circumstances where your safety feels uncertain, and those around you have issued threats or committed acts of violence or damage against your person or property, and you are aware that they have escaped consequence for grievous harm done to another, it is prudent to consider that such conduct may yet escalate. In such a case, it is wise to convey your concerns to a person of proper authority, that your welfare may be safeguarded and the matter attended to with the full seriousness it warrants. The pursuit of one’s destiny is a strong, slow, and boring field of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly, all historical experience confirms the truth he had reached for the impossible. However, to do that, a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has the calling for the art of living who is sure that they shall not crumble when the world, from his point of view, is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who, in the face of all this, can say, “In spite of all,” has the struggle for a meaningful life. There is usually an eerie balance between destructiveness and constructiveness, between suicidal Nothingness and dictatorial Allness, in a young man who feels responsible for everything, is dominated by an overweening conscience and a kind of premature integrity such as characterizes all ideological leaders. Many a delinquency, on a smaller scale, begins by society’s denial of the one gift on which a destructive individual’s precarious identity depends—for instance, Prew’s bugle in From Here to Eternity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Therefore, it is of great importance that one not permit the malice of others to draw him into delinquency, for those who seek to do harm will often endeavor to corrupt the very character of the one they persecute. To withstand such influence is an act of quiet fortitude, and a safeguard to one’s own integrity. One would like to believe that great men of more “abstract” aspirations—in science or theology, say—are totally removed from any comparison with men of political and of destructive military action. While we learn to mistrust power seekers, we glorify men of science, determined to consider their role in making machines of destruction possible as a historical accident which they surely did not desire when they directed their genius to the mastery of physical forces. However, if one scans history, one may well want to consider the relationship between the will to master totally, in any form, and the will to destroy. Leonardo, the creator of the immortal da Vincian smile, was also an inveterate tinkerer with war machines; on occasion, he caught himself and relegated a design to the bottom of a deep drawer. Today, however, only a large-scale reconsideration of conscious aims and unconscious motives can help us. Some people who have gone on to become great men, because of their situations, had an almost pitiful fear that they might be nothing. Such men sometimes chose to challenge this possibility by being deliberately and totally anonymous; and only out of this self-chosen nothingness could a man become everything. Allness or nothingness, then, is the motto of such men; but what specific gifts and what extraordinary opportunities permit them to impose this alternative on whole nations and periods—of this, we know little. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Doubt may be regarded as the brother of shame; for while shame depends upon a consciousness of one’s outward aspect—of having, as it were, both a front and a back, and most especially a “behind”—doubt arises from that same inward division of the self. Each is born of an awareness that one may be seen, judged, or exposed, and thus they walk together as close and troublesome kin. For this reverse area of the body, with its aggressive and libidinal focus in the sphincters and buttocks, cannot be seen by the youth, and yet it can be dominated by the will of others. The “behind” is the small being’s dark continent, an area of the body which can be magically dominated and effectively invaded by those who would attack one’s power of autonomy and who would designate as evil those products of the bowels which were felt to be all right when they were being passed. This basic sense of doubt, in whatever one has left behind, is the model for the habitual “double take” or other later and more verbal forms of compulsive doubting. It finds its adult expression in paranoiac fears concerning hidden persecutors and secret persecutions threatening from behind (and from within the behind). Again, in adolescence, this may be expressed in a transitory total self-doubt, a feeling that all that is now “behind” in time—the childhood family as well as the earlier manifestations of one’s personality—simply do not add up to the prerequisites for a new beginning. All of this may then be denied in a willful display of dirtiness and messiness, with all the implications of “dirty” wearing at the world and at oneself. The compulsive or “anal” personality has its normal aspects and its abnormal exaggerations. If eventually integrated with compensatory traits, some impulsiveness releases expression even as some compulsiveness is useful in matters in which order, punctuality, and cleanliness are of the essence. The question is always whether we remain the masters of the modalities by which things become more manageable or whether the rules master the ruler. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

It takes stamina as well as flexibility to train a child’s will to help him to overcome too much willfulness, develop some “goodwill,” and (while learning to obey in some essential ways) maintain an autonomous sense of free will. As far as psychoanalysis is concerned, it has focused primarily on excessively early toilet training and on unreasonable shaming as causes of the child’s estrangement from his own body. It has attempted at least to formulate what should not be done to children, and there are, of course, any number of avoidances which can be learned from the study of the life cycle. Many such formulations, however, are apt to arouse superstitious inhibitions in those who are inclined to make anxious rules out of vague warnings. We are gradually learning what exactly not to do to what kind of children at what age; but then we must still learn what to do, spontaneously and joyfully. The expert, to quote Frank Fremont-Smith, can only “set the frame of reference within which choice is permissible and desirable.” The kind and degree of a sense of autonomy which parents are able to grant their small children depends on the dignity and sense of personal independence they derive from their own lives. An infant’s sense of trust is a reflection of parental faith; similarly, the sense of autonomy is a reflection of the parents’ dignity as autonomous beings. For no matter what we do in detail, the child will chiefly perceive the spirit in which we live—whether we stand before him as loving, co‑operative, and steadfast beings, or whether we reveal ourselves as anxious, divided, and embittered. From this it follows that children are not merely raised by instruction, but by the very character and conduct of those who surround them; and thus, their welfare and the cultivation of their interests become matters of the greatest social concern. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Politics is the most inclusive means of creating a world order in this world; theology is the most systematic attempt to deal with man’s existential nothingness by establishing a metaphysical Allness. The monastery, in its original conception, is a systematic training for the complete acceptance of earthly nothingness in the hope of partaking of that allness. The aim of monasticism is to decrease the wish and the will to the master and to destroy to an absolute minimum. “I was holy,” Martin Luther said, “I killed nobody but myself.” To this end, the monastery offers methods of making a meditative descent into the inner shafts of mental existence, from which the aspirant emerges with the gold of faith or with gems of wisdom. These shafts, however, are psychological as well as meditative; they lead not only into the depths of adult inner experience, but also downward into our more primitive layers, and behind into our infantile beginnings. We must try to make this clear before we encounter our own struggles, so that we can build a bridge between the historical condition of greatness and its condition in individual childhood. Ideological leaders, so it seems, are subject to excessive fears which they can master only by reshaping the thoughts of their contemporaries; while those contemporaries are always glad to have their thoughts seem to fear only more consciously what in some form everybody fears in the depths of his inner life; and they convincingly claim to have an answer. The actor identifies with the socially objectivated typifications of conduct actu, but re-establishes distance between the actor and his action can be retained in consciousness and projected to future repetitions of the actions. In this way, both acting self and acting others are apprehended not as unique individuals, but as types. By definition, these types are interchangeable. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

We can properly begin to speak of roles when this kind of typification occurs in the context of an objectified stock of knowledge common to collectivity of actors. Roles are types of actors in such a context. It can readily be seen that the construction of the role of typologies is a necessary correlate of the institutionalization of conduct. Institutions are embodied in individual experience by means of roles. The roles, objectified linguistically, are an essential ingredient of the objectively available world of any society. By internalizing these roles, the same world becomes subjectively real to him. In the common stock of knowledge, there are standards of role performance that are accessible to all members of a society, or at least to those who are potential performers in the roles in question. In the common stock of knowledge, there are standards of role performance that are accessible to all members of a society, or at least to those who are potential performers of the roles in question. This general accessibility is itself part of the same stock of knowledge; not only are the standards of role X generally known, but it is known that these standards are known. Consequently, every putative actor of role X can be held responsible for abiding by the standards, which can be taught as part of the institutional tradition and used to verify the credentials of all performers and, by the same token, serve as controls. The origins of roles lie in the same fundamental process of habitualization and objectivation as the origins of institutions. Roles appear as soon as a common stock of knowledge containing reciprocal typifications of conduct is in process of formation, a process that, as we have seen, is endemic to social interaction and prior to institutionalization proper. The question as to which roles become institutionalized is identical with the question as to which areas of conduct are affected by institutionalization, and may be answered the same way. All institutionalized conduct involves roles. Thus, roles share in the controlling character of institutionalization. As soon as actors are typified as role performers, their conduct is ipso facto susceptible to enforcement. Compliance and non-compliance with socially defined role standards cease to be optional, though, of course, the severity of sanctions may vary from case to case. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

The roles represent the institutional order. This representation takes place on two levels. First, the performance of the role represents itself. For instance, to engage in judging is to represent the role of a judge. The judging individual is not acting “on his own,” but qua judge. Second, the role represents an entire institutional nexus of conduct. The role of the judge stands in a relationship to other roles, the totality of which comprises the institutional law. The judge acts as the representative of this institution. Only through such representation in performed roles can the institution manifest itself in actual experience. The institution, with its assemblage of “programmed” actions, is like the unwritten libretto of a drama. The realization of the drama depends upon the reiterated performance of its prescribed roles by living actors. The actors embody the roles and actualize the drama by representing it on the given stage. Neither drama nor institution exists empirically apart from this recurrent realization. To say that roles represent institutions is to say that institutions endure only insofar as living individuals enact them, allowing these structures to appear again and again as a real presence in human experience. In this light, the economic forecasts of Marx—however compelling in theory—have been called into question precisely because the roles individuals assume within economic life have not always aligned with the patterns he anticipated. Institutions persist or transform not by historical necessity alone, but through the daily conduct, choices, and contradictions of the people who inhabit them. What remains true to his vision of the economic world is the establishment of a society more and more defined by the rhythm of production. However, he shared this concept, in the enthusiasm of his period, with bourgeois ideology. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

The bourgeois illusions concerning science and technical process, shared by the authoritarian socialists, gave birth to the civilization of the machine-tamers, which can, through the stress of competition and the desire for domination, be separated into enemy blocs, but which on the economic plane is subject to identical laws: the accumulation of capital and the rationalized and continually increasing production. The political difference, which concerns the degree of omnipotence of the State, is appreciable, but can be reduced by economic evolution. Only the difference in ethical concepts—formal virtue as opposed to historical cynicism—seems substantial. However, the imperative of production dominates both universes and makes them, on the economic plane, one world. The accumulation of capital, together with the rationalized and ever‑increasing demands of production, creates a continual pressure for businesses to seek higher returns. This relentless pursuit contributes to the rising cost of goods and services, for expansion requires ever‑greater consumption. Not long ago, many believed the world to be approaching the limits of its population at five billion souls; yet today, more than eight billion people inhabit the earth. Governments may at times contemplate limiting population growth, but large commercial enterprises often depend upon expanding markets, and a growing populace increases both potential revenue and the tax base upon which states rely. At the same time, however, a larger population also increases the number of individuals who depend upon public services, creating a tension between economic ambition, governmental capacity, and human need. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

In any event, if the economic imperative can no longer be denied, its consequences are not what Marx imagined. Economically speaking, capitalism becomes oppressive through the phenomenon of accumulation. It is oppressive through being what it is, it accumulates in order to increase what it is, to exploit it all the more, and accordingly to accumulate still more. At that moment, accumulation would be necessary only to a very small extent in order to guarantee social benefits. However, the revolution, in its turn, becomes industrialized and realizes that, when accumulation is an attribute of technology itself, and not of capitalism, the machine finally conjures up the machine. Every form of collectivity, fighting for survival, is forced to accumulate instead of distributing its revenues. It accumulates in order to increase in size and so to increase in power. Whether bourgeois or socialist, it postpones justice for a later date, in the interests of power alone. However, p, by its very nature, opposes other forms of power. It arms and rearms because others do the same; it accumulates ceaselessly, driven by the conviction that only greater strength can secure its survival. It does not willingly halt its advance, and one might imagine that it would continue to expand until the day it reigned alone upon the earth. In our own age, this restless impulse is mirrored in the rapid development of artificial intelligence. Many already fear that such systems may one day supplant their labor, and speculate that machines could assume an ever‑greater share of human tasks. Yet even as technology grows more capable, its role will always be shaped by the choices, constraints, and values of the societies that create and govern it. In other words, one day the world will only be populated by a small percentage of humans who are considered “desirable.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Moreover, for that to happen, it must pass through a war or another pandemic. Some have come to believe that the pandemic served as a kind of proving ground for the management of future crises, observing how swiftly populations accepted restrictions upon movement, commerce, and daily life. Many felt that their customary liberties were suspended with startling ease, as governments sought to contain a threat whose nature was still imperfectly understood. Generous unemployment benefits were welcomed by some as a temporary relief, though such measures inevitably carried costs that would later be felt elsewhere. Only those deemed “essential” continued their labors, a distinction that revealed how fragile many occupations had become in an increasingly automated age. With the rapid advance of artificial intelligence, there is a growing apprehension that even these essential roles may one day be assumed by machines. After the crisis, certain workplaces required vaccination as a condition of return, a policy that, for many, symbolized the tension between public health, personal choice, and economic necessity. This dynamic was captured with unsettling clarity in the Ray Bradbury Theater adaptation of The Pedestrian, in which David Ogden Stiers and Grant Tilly portray two men who are stopped and pursued by a hovering police craft simply for stepping outside during a mandated lockdown. Bradbury’s vision, though fictional, reflects a deeper anxiety about how swiftly ordinary freedoms may be suspended when authority deems it necessary, and how easily individuals may be treated as suspects for engaging in the most human of acts—walking, talking, or seeking fresh air. The scene serves as a reminder that power, once mobilized in the name of safety, can become self‑justifying, expanding its reach not through overt coercion alone but through the quiet expectation that people will comply. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Until that day, the proletariat will receive only the bare minimum for its subsistence. The revolution compels itself to construct, at a great expenditure in human lines, the industrial and capitalist intermediary that its own system demands. Revenue is placed by human labor. Slavery then becomes a general condition, and the gates of heaven remain locked. Such is the economic law governing a world that lives by the cult of production, and the reality is even more bloody than the law. Revolution, in the dilemma into which it has been led by its bourgeois opponents and its nihilist supporters, is nothing but slavery. Across the country, people are already protesting the rising cost of living, for the strain has become impossible to ignore. Foreclosures have increased by 32 percent since last year, and many households find themselves unable to keep pace with wages that lag behind inflation. Yet public attention is often diverted toward other, more immediate controversies. Large demonstrations form around immigration policy, while the deeper economic pressures that make life increasingly unaffordable receive far less sustained focus. It is as though the nation’s anxieties have been redirected from the structural conditions that shape everyone’s daily existence to issues that, while important, do not address the fundamental question of how ordinary people are to live, work, and support themselves in an economy that no longer seems to support them in return. Unless the system changes its principles and its path, it can have no other final result than servile rebellions, obliterated in blood or the hideous prospect of atomic suicide. The will to power, the nihilist struggle for domination and authority, has done considerably more than sweep away the American Dream. This has become, in its turn, a historic fact destined to be put to use like all other historic facts. This idea, which was supposed to dominate history, has become lost in history; the concept of abolishing means has been reduced to a means in itself and cynically manipulated for the most banal and bloody ends. The uninterrupted development of production has not ruined the capitalist regime to the benefit of the revolution. It has equally been the ruin of both bourgeois and revolutionary society to the benefit of an idol that has the snout of power. Therefore, it becomes essential to cultivate an understanding of psychology, of the conditions of life, of the workings of family, and of the forces that shape political society, so that one may act not out of fear or confusion but with informed judgment. Only through such knowledge can individuals discern the pressures placed upon them, recognize the motives of those who wield authority, and make decisions that genuinely serve their own well‑being and the common good. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

The Winchester Mystery House: Where Legend Walks Beside Every Stair

The Winchester Mystery House is not merely a mansion—it is a legend carved in timber and shadow. To historians, it is a marvel of Victorian craftsmanship. To gardeners, its grounds are a sanctuary of color and quiet. But to those who come seeking the uncanny, it is something far more compelling: a labyrinth built on whispers, grief, and the enduring myth of a woman who refused to surrender to silence.

For 36 unbroken years, from 1886 until her death in 1922, Sarah Winchester oversaw the ceaseless construction of this sprawling estate. Hammers rang through the night. Lanterns glowed in upper windows long after midnight. Rooms appeared, vanished, and reappeared in impossible configurations. Doors opened into walls. Staircases climbed into ceilings. Hallways twisted like riddles.

Some say Mrs. Winchester built to confuse the restless spirits said to follow her. Others claim she was simply a visionary—an architect of her own private universe. Whatever the truth, the mansion stands today as a monument to the tension between fact and folklore, beauty and dread.
On the guided Mansion Tour, guests traverse 110 of the home’s 160 rooms—each one a fragment of the myth.

You will step into the rooms where Mrs. Winchester walked alone at night, consulting her mysterious “Blue Séance Room.” You will see the infamous staircases that lead nowhere, the doors that open into thin air, and the ornate details that seem almost too deliberate to be accidental.

Every corner feels touched by intention. Every turn feels like a question.

The Winchester Mystery House is not simply visited—it is experienced.

It is a place where history breathes, where architecture bends toward the uncanny, and where the line between myth and memory blurs just enough to make you wonder what Sarah Winchester truly saw in the shadows of her vast, ever‑growing home.

Café 13: A Rest Stop on the Edge of the Mystery

After wandering the winding halls of the Winchester Mystery House—where staircases defy logic and whispers seem to cling to the walls—Café 13 offers a welcome return to warmth and grounding. Newly reopened and serving guests daily from 10 AM to 3 PM, this cozy hideaway invites you to pause, breathe, and gather yourself before diving back into the mansion’s secrets.

Here, you can enjoy breakfast, lunch, snacks, and refreshing drinks in a calm indoor space that feels worlds away from the mansion’s twisting corridors. Settle in with a warm meal, challenge a friend to a board game, or simply rest and recharge as sunlight filters through the windows.

Café 13 is more than a café—it’s a moment of calm between chapters of the Winchester legend, a place to steady your nerves before returning to the gardens, the grandeur, and the mysteries that await.

The Mercantile Gift Shop: Your First Step Into the Mystery

Your journey into the Winchester Mystery House begins long before you cross the mansion’s threshold. It starts at the Mercantile gift shop—a welcoming outpost standing at the edge of a world where history and myth intertwine.

Here, beneath warm lights and shelves lined with curiosities, you can secure your tour tickets and prepare for the adventure ahead. Guests often pause for a souvenir photograph, capturing the moment before they step into Sarah Winchester’s enigmatic domain. As you explore the shop, you will find an eclectic array of gifts and keepsakes: tokens of the mansion’s lore, echoes of Victorian elegance, and mementos that carry a touch of the house’s enduring mystery.

The Mercantile is more than a gift shop—it is the gateway.
Once you pass through its doors, the legend begins to unfold. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

A Shadowed History and the Echoes That Remain

In the late 1800s, long before the mansion became a destination for curious travelers, the surrounding lands were steeped in fear and superstition. When deer and cattle were found dead under mysterious circumstances, panic spread through nearby communities. Whispers of curses and shapeshifters took hold, and in an era ruled more by fear than fact, several residents were tragically accused—and even executed—under the belief that they were werewolves. The land carried those stories like scars.

Today, the legends have not entirely faded. Staff and visitors alike have reported strange occurrences within the mansion’s twisting halls and shadowed corners: sudden banging sounds with no source, footprints appearing where no one has walked, drifting white mists that vanish as quickly as they form, and the unsettling sensation of someone exhaling softly against the back of the neck.

Whether these moments are echoes of the past or simply the house playing tricks on the senses, one thing is certain—the Winchester Mystery House has a way of reminding guests that history never truly stays silent.

The palace is now one of the most popular tourist attractions in Santa Clara, California; but according to some tales, some of its former royal residents still linger. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Silenced by Fear: How Chronic Threat and Institutional Betrayal Shape C‑PTSD

Situational depression, unresolved trauma, and anxiety often weave together in a way that can feel overwhelming, but they are also deeply human responses to prolonged stress and unmet emotional needs. These three experiences are not a personal flaw; this is a system under strain. Situational depression can present itself in an individual who feels emotionally “stifled” or alienated. One may notice a loss of motivation or interest, fatigue that feels heavier than normal tiredness, and difficulty concentrating or making decisions. It is the psyche’s way of saying: “This situation is too much for me to carry alone.” Trauma does not disappear just because time passes. It tends to linger in the body and mind, presenting symptoms of: hypervigilance, emotional numbing, sudden waves of sadness or anger, feeling unsafe even in safe environments, and difficulty trusting others or oneself. Unresolved trauma often fuels both depression and anxiety because the nervous system stays stuck in survival mode. When your system has been under threat—emotionally, physically, or psychologically—anxiety becomes the alarm bell that never fully shuts off. It can manifest as: constant worry, racing thoughts, physical tension, feeling on edge, difficulty relaxing or sleeping. Anxiety is often the mind’s attempt to prevent further harm, even when the danger is no longer present. When a person is being terrorized, threatened, or chronically harmed by others, and help is not coming despite reaching out, the emotional suffering that follows is not a “mental problem” in the sense of a personal defect. I think this type of situation can often be mistaken as a mental problem because people are taught that we live in a society where it is illegal to terrorize, threaten, and harass an individual, so professionals often think there is a chemical imbalance in the person because this just does not happen. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (C‑PTSD) does not arise from a single adverse event but from sustained, repetitive interpersonal harm in contexts where the individual is subjected to ongoing threat, coercion, and isolation without access to protection or escape. Rather than representing a transient episode of situational depression or a deficit within the individual, C‑PTSD reflects the cumulative psychological imprint of prolonged domination, fear, and abandonment. Conceptualized as “type II trauma,” it encompasses emotional exhaustion, hypervigilance, pervasive distrust, affective dysregulation, and periods of psychological collapse. Contemporary clinical literature identifies C‑PTSD as a characteristic outcome of environments marked by totalitarian control—whether in cultic systems, coercive domestic relationships, chronic childhood abuse, or organized sexual exploitation—where the individual’s autonomy, safety, and social connection are systematically undermined. In such conditions, the resulting symptoms are best understood as adaptive responses to sustained coercive stress rather than as indicators of intrinsic psychopathology. The role of totalitarian control—C-PTSD is strongly associated with totalitarian environments—not just political ones, but interpersonal ones. Psychologists describe these environments as having: control over information, control over movement, control over relationships, control over meaning, punishment for resistance, and sometimes reward for compliance. This is why survivors of cults, domestic battering, organized sexual exploitation, and long-term coercive relationships often present with the same psychological profile as survivors of political imprisonment or war. The structure of the oppression is the same, even if the setting is different. Isolation is also used as a weapon. Isolation is not a side effect—it is a method of control. When a person is cut off from support, disbelieved, ignored by authorities, unable to escape, left alone with the abuser or the threat, the psychological damage deepens. Isolation is what turns trauma into complex trauma. When someone has been terrorized for years and abandoned by the systems meant to protect them, their emotional collapse is not a mental problem. It is a wound, a survival adaptation, a response to chronic danger, the imprint of prolonged coercion, the consequence of being left alone in harm. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Prevalence estimates for Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) in the general population range from approximately 2.6 to 7.7 percent, with substantially higher rates observed among at‑risk groups, including adults with histories of psychological adversity. CPTSD is associated with marked impairments in psychosocial functioning, often manifesting as fear of interpersonal closeness, relationship‑related depressive symptoms, and persistent preoccupation with intimate relational dynamics. Psychological trauma constitutes a major developmental stressor in childhood and adolescence, and when such experiences are unrecognized or untreated—particularly when they are cumulative—they can disrupt emotional maturation and compromise both psychological and somatic functioning. In some cases, these developmental disruptions reflect a long‑term impact of sustained adversity on the individual’s capacity for regulation, attachment, and adaptive functioning. When C‑PTSD begins in adolescence and continues unbroken into adulthood, the effects are stronger, more pervasive, and more structurally embedded in the nervous system than when trauma begins later in life. Adolescence is a period when the brain, identity, and relational capacities are still forming, so prolonged threat during this window alters developmental trajectories rather than merely disrupting an already‑established system. When chronic trauma begins during this stage, the nervous system organizes itself around survival, not exploration or growth. This means the individual enters adulthood with stress‑response circuits that were never allowed to develop normally. The stress system becomes chronically activated. Continuous threat during adolescence trains the body to: maintain elevated cortisol, keep the amygdala hyper-responsive, suppress prefrontal regulatory circuits. By adulthood, this pattern becomes the baseline. The person may experience: chronic fatigue, emotional volatility, difficulty concentrating, sleep disruption, and a sense of being “always on guard.” These are not personality traits — they are physiological adaptations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

This can lead to attachment and relation patterns that are altered. Adolescence is when the brain learns how to trust, how to form intimacy, how to read social cues, and how to negotiate conflict. If trauma is ongoing, the person may enter adulthood with fear of closeness, difficulty trusting others, preoccupation with abandonment, avoidance of intimacy, and intense relational anxiety. These patterns are not “relationship problems”—they are the imprint of developmental trauma. Identity formation becomes trauma-shaped. Adolescents are supposed to experiment with roles, values, and self-concept. Under chronic threat, identity becomes organized around vigilance, self-protection, shame, survival, and appeasement. By adulthood, the person may feel uncertain who they are, disconnected from their own preferences, defined by fear or duty, and chronically self-doubting. This is a developmental consequence, not a character flaw. Emotional regulation remains underdeveloped. Because the adolescent brain is still wiring its regulatory system, prolonged trauma can lead to difficulty calming down, emotional shutdown, dissociation, overwhelm, and difficulty accessing positive emotions. These patterns often persist into adulthood because the brain never had a stable environment in which to complete its regulatory development. The body internalizes exhaustion. Years of continuous threat produce: autonomic fatigue, endocrine dysregulation, chronic depletion, collapse responses. By adulthood, the person may experience profound, persistent exhaustion that is not explained by medical tests. This is a known effect of long-term survival stress. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

The worldview becomes shaped by danger. When trauma spans adolescence into adulthood, the person’s worldview is built on unpredictability, threat, betrayal, abandonment, and lack of protection. This can lead to: pessimism, anticipatory fear, difficulty imagining a future, and difficulty trusting institutions or systems. These are logical outcomes of lived experience. When C-PTSD begins in adolescence and continues into adulthood, it does not simply “affect” the person—it forms them. The nervous system, identity, relational patterns, and worldview are all shaped in the context of chronic threat. The resulting difficulties are not signs of internal pathology but the long-term imprint of developmental trauma. Sarah Winchester lived through profound, repeated losses — the death of her infant daughter, the death of her husband, and the collapse of her family line. In the 19th century, people often interpreted tragedy through spiritual or supernatural frameworks, especially when medicine had few explanations for emotional suffering. Within that cultural context, it is understandable that she might have believed she was cursed or haunted. From a modern psychological perspective, it is also possible that she was experiencing chronic grief, prolonged stress, and symptoms consistent with what we now call complex trauma. When trauma begins early and continues across years, it can shape a person’s worldview, heighten fear, and make them more vulnerable to explanations that give structure to overwhelming experiences. The idea of being “haunted” can function as a metaphor for: intrusive memories, unresolved grief, persistent fear, and a sense of being pursued by past events. People throughout history have used spiritual language to describe psychological pain long before we had clinical terms for it. Stories of ghosts, curses, and spirits often emerge when a person’s suffering is intense, the losses feel inexplicable, the environment is isolating, and the culture provides supernatural explanations. These narratives reflect how human beings try to make sense of overwhelming emotional realities. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

It is possible that Mrs. Winchester was haunted and that she was suffering from C-PTSD. C‑PTSD develops when a person is exposed to prolonged, inescapable emotional threat or loss, especially when the suffering is met with isolation rather than support. Trying to create a world that felt safe, predictable, and non‑threatening could indeed help explain Mrs. Winchester’s relentless construction of her home. From a C‑PTSD perspective, individuals who have endured prolonged grief, fear, and emotional destabilization often attempt to regulate their internal chaos by exerting control over their external environment. For Sarah Winchester, the act of continually building, altering, and expanding her home may have functioned as a trauma‑driven coping strategy—a way to impose order on a world that had become terrifyingly unpredictable after the deaths of her daughter and husband. The Winchester Mansion is more than an architectural curiosity; it is a physical manifestation of trauma adaptation. Continuous construction could have served several psychological functions. It created a sense of agency in the face of overwhelming helplessness and was a distraction from intrusive memories and grief. Also functioned as an avoidance of stillness, which often intensifies trauma symptoms. The building of this Victorian labyrinth created a controlled environment where Mrs. Winchester dictated every detail, which formed symbolic protection from a threat that most certainly was external as well as internal. For trauma survivors, especially those with C‑PTSD, the nervous system often remains locked in a state of hypervigilance. The mind searches constantly for ways to reduce perceived danger. In Sarah Winchester’s case, building may have been her way of constructing a world that felt less threatening—one she could shape, modify, and expand in response to her internal sense of danger. Seen through this lens, her behavior is not eccentricity or superstition but a deeply human attempt to manage overwhelming psychological pain in an era with no language for trauma and no support systems for survivors. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

In the 19th century, spiritualism was widespread, and many people believed that spirits could influence the living. Being a wealthy widow came with many vulnerabilities. Sarah Winchester lived in a time when grief, illness, poverty, and unexplained tragedy were often interpreted through supernatural frameworks. Her immense wealth, her isolation, and her losses made her particularly vulnerable to both real-world dangers and cultural narratives about spiritual threat. These are well‑documented features of complex trauma, and they can make a person feel as though danger is everywhere — human, spiritual, or otherwise. It is also true that Sarah Winchester was not imagining the danger. As a wealthy widow living alone, she was vulnerable to threats and theft. She was a target for opportunists, she lived in a time with limited law enforcement, she was socially isolated, and had no close family to protect her. Individuals who have experienced multiple traumas are, by definition, likely to have many unmet needs. Belief in ghosts is mainstream, not fringe. Roughly half of Americans believe in some form of ghost or spirit. About 1 in 5 say they have had a direct experience they interpret as a haunting, and unexplained home experiences, also known as “hauntings,” are reported by 40% of people surveyed. In Sarah Winchester’s case, the folklore of haunting may have blended with her trauma responses, creating a worldview where every kind of threat — spiritual, emotional, and physical — felt or was intertwined. Sarah Winchester’s resonates so deeply because belief in supernatural presence is widespread, and personal experiences—whether psychological, environmental, or interpretive—are common. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

While Sarah Winchester’s story is often framed around her financial resources, the broader principle applies far beyond wealth. raditional trauma frameworks often assume that vulnerability is tied primarily to socioeconomic disadvantage. However, contemporary research on Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (C‑PTSD) demonstrates that vulnerability arises from exposure to sustained interpersonal threat, not from wealth or poverty alone. Individuals may become targets because of their identity, lineage, social visibility, or unique personal characteristics, and these forms of vulnerability can be as consequential as economic deprivation. In some cases, people are pursued or threatened because of what they know — for example, witnessing serious crimes that remain unresolved or unprosecuted — which creates a persistent sense of danger that the legal system fails to extinguish. When a person is unable to escape such conditions, the nervous system adapts to chronic threat through mechanisms that mirror captivity, coercive control, or prolonged persecution. C‑PTSD develops in environments where threat is repetitive, unpredictable, and inescapable, and where the individual lacks adequate protection or social support. These conditions can occur in contexts of domestic violence, organized exploitation, stalking, institutional betrayal, or long‑term exposure to criminal activity. They can also occur among individuals who, despite material resources, are isolated, socially targeted, or burdened by knowledge that places them at risk. In such cases, wealth does not confer safety; it may even intensify exposure by increasing visibility, attracting opportunistic harm, or limiting the individual’s ability to trust others. Thus, vulnerability must be understood as a relational and situational construct, shaped by power dynamics, social context, and the individual’s position within networks of threat. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

From this perspective, C‑PTSD is not a disorder of the weak but a predictable adaptation to prolonged danger, regardless of the person’s socioeconomic status. The key determinants are not income or class but duration of threat, inability to escape, and absence of protection. This broader theoretical lens reframes vulnerability as a complex interplay of identity, circumstance, and exposure — and positions C‑PTSD as a consequence of sustained harm rather than a reflection of personal fragility. When someone becomes a target — whether due to identity, knowledge of crimes, or perceived value — the nervous system adapts to chronic threat. This is the exact environment in which C‑PTSD develops. In many cases of Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (C‑PTSD), the threat of retaliation plays a central role in sustaining psychological harm long after the initial traumatic events have occurred. Individuals who have witnessed serious wrongdoing or been exposed to environments of coercive control may remain silent not because the trauma is resolved, but because they are attempting to rebuild their lives, avoid further conflict, or distance themselves from overwhelming memories. However, when institutions or individuals implicated in misconduct perceive the survivor’s continued existence as a potential source of exposure, the survivor may experience ongoing intimidation, surveillance, or other forms of pressure designed to discourage disclosure. These dynamics transform trauma from a past event into a continuing condition, reinforcing hypervigilance, fear, and emotional exhaustion. In such contexts, the persistent threat—whether explicit or implicit—prevents the nervous system from returning to a state of safety, thereby entrenching the core features of C‑PTSD. The result is a chronic psychological environment in which the survivor’s attempts to move forward coexist with a sustained sense of danger, institutional betrayal, and the belief that speaking out may provoke further harm. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Shame and guilt are increasingly understood as important affective risk factors for suicidality among individuals who have experienced traumatic events or who meet criteria for Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (C‑PTSD). These self‑conscious emotions often arise when survivors internalize responsibility for events that were outside their control, or when they interpret their reactions to trauma as personal failures rather than adaptive responses to overwhelming threat. Shame, in particular, is associated with global negative self‑evaluation (“I am bad”), whereas guilt tends to involve specific behaviors (“I did something bad”). Both emotions can intensify feelings of worthlessness, isolation, and hopelessness, which are well‑established contributors to suicidal ideation. In the context of C‑PTSD—where individuals frequently struggle with chronic fear, relational disruption, and a persistent sense of threat—shame and guilt may compound emotional dysregulation and heighten psychological distress. As a result, these emotions function not merely as by‑products of trauma but as active mechanisms that can increase the risk of suicidality, underscoring the importance of trauma‑informed approaches that address self‑blame, internalized stigma, and the survivor’s sense of moral injury. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 800,000 people die by suicide every year worldwide, making it a major public health concern with profound social and psychological implications. This global burden underscores the importance of understanding the emotional and neurobiological mechanisms that contribute to suicidality, particularly among individuals exposed to chronic trauma. Shame, guilt, and persistent fear—common in those with Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (C‑PTSD)—can intensify feelings of hopelessness and isolation, which are known to elevate risk. These emotional states often emerge when survivors internalize responsibility for traumatic events or when they have lived for extended periods under threat, coercion, or unresolved danger. In this context, suicidality is not a sign of personal weakness but a reflection of overwhelming psychological distress shaped by prolonged adversity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

A suicidal crisis can emerge following exposure to a potentially traumatic event, and individuals confronted with actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence—whether directed at themselves or others—frequently develop acute stress reactions characterized by intrusive, dissociative, avoidance, and arousal symptoms. When these symptoms persist beyond one month, the clinical framework of Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) becomes applicable. Empirical findings underscore the severity of this trajectory: in a study of 94 patients with chronic PTSD, Tarrier and Gregg reported that 56.4% had experienced at least one form of suicidality since the traumatic event, a rate far exceeding that of the general population. These patterns are even more pronounced in Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (C‑PTSD), which arises from prolonged, repeated, and inescapable trauma. C‑PTSD includes the core features of PTSD but adds disturbances in self‑organization—such as chronic emotion dysregulation, persistent negative self‑concept, and severe relational impairment—that further heighten vulnerability to suicidality. The cumulative nature of chronic interpersonal threat, coupled with shame, guilt, and the enduring sense of danger characteristic of C‑PTSD, creates a psychological environment in which hopelessness and self‑blame can become deeply entrenched. Thus, the mechanisms linking trauma exposure to suicidality in PTSD are amplified in C‑PTSD, where the prolonged duration, interpersonal nature, and inescapability of the trauma significantly increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Shame and guilt influence our behavior and then directly impact our interpersonal sphere, but also how we perceive ourselves. In fact, shame and guilt are related to self-awareness and are part of self-assessment and introspection. Shame and guilt are central emotional sequelae of prolonged trauma, and both contribute meaningfully to the psychological burden experienced by individuals with Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (C‑PTSD). Shame reflects a global negative evaluation of the self and often leads to withdrawal, concealment, and a persistent sense of unworthiness, whereas guilt involves negative appraisal of specific actions and may generate chronic rumination, regret, and self‑reproach. Many individuals with C‑PTSD spend years revisiting the circumstances that precipitated their trauma, imagining alternative outcomes, and simultaneously strategizing ways to protect themselves or escape ongoing threat. Although fear and anxiety may remain pervasive, survivors often anchor themselves in future‑oriented goals or personal aspirations, which can serve as protective factors against suicidal despair. Yet this forward movement is frequently complicated by the anticipation of further setbacks, retaliation, or destabilizing events, which can erode confidence and reinforce hypervigilance. Even when their hopes feel fragile or uncertain, many survivors continue to persevere by focusing on incremental progress and sustaining themselves through day‑to‑day coping. This coexistence of fear, determination, and emotional exhaustion reflects the complex psychological landscape of individuals living with C‑PTSD. The suicidal crisis model suggests that individuals who perceive only inadequate solutions and coping strategies may come to think of suicide as a means of alleviating their suffering. According to this model, someone in a suicidal crisis is overwhelmed with emotions and feelings of helplessness. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

For individuals living with Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (C‑PTSD), efforts to improve their immediate environment—through acquiring material objects, decorating their space, or investing in personal appearance—can function as adaptive strategies that support psychological survival. These behaviors may provide a sense of control, stability, and self‑continuity in circumstances where external conditions remain threatening or unchanged. Survivors who have endured prolonged interpersonal trauma are often socially isolated, not because they lack the desire for connection, but because the people around them may be entangled in the traumatic dynamics or perceived as unsafe. In such contexts, isolation becomes both a protective measure and a consequence of chronic fear. While survivors may experience significant anxiety and uncertainty about the future, their focus on achievable goals, daily routines, and small improvements can help sustain hope and prevent emotional collapse. Yet this forward movement is complicated by the persistent anticipation of further harm or setbacks, which reinforces hypervigilance and undermines their sense of safety. The result is a complex psychological landscape in which self‑preservation, fear, and determination coexist, and in which environmental self‑care becomes a meaningful way of prolonging life and maintaining a fragile sense of agency. The interpersonal theory of suicide defines more precisely the implications of shame and guilt in suicidality. According to this theory, guilt has an interpersonal dimension. This theory is based on the following observation: social isolation is one of the strongest predictors of Suicidal Ideation (SI), which refers to thoughts about suicide and Suicide Attempt (SA), which refers to any non-fatal action taken with at least some intent to end one’s life, and death by suicide. For example, when the need for belonging is unmet, feelings of isolation and of being disconnected from others are strengthened by SI. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Also, the discomfort experienced when individuals perceive themselves as a burden to others may give rise to self-hatred and the thought that they have so many failings that others are forced to be responsible for them. When the perception of being a burden to others and a sense of not belonging anywhere are combined with helplessness, individuals do not perceive the possibility of positive change, which causes active SI and a potential SA. Psychiatric models have long demonstrated the impact of disorders such as depression on suicidality across diverse populations. As Hegerl notes, depressive states can heighten risk for suicide attempts and suicide because the disorder distorts perceptions of reality, leading individuals to experience their suffering as unbearable and to view the future as devoid of hope. Importantly, depressive symptoms are strongly associated with shame and guilt across age and gender, emotions that can intensify self‑blame and internalized distress. A meta‑analysis by Krysinska and Lester further indicates that the relationship between PTSD and suicidality is significantly shaped by comorbid depression and pre‑existing psychiatric vulnerabilities. These findings have direct relevance for understanding suicidality in Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (C‑PTSD), where prolonged, interpersonal, and inescapable trauma often produces chronic emotion dysregulation, persistent negative self‑concept, and relational disturbances. The cumulative effects of shame, guilt, and depressive symptoms—combined with the enduring sense of threat characteristic of C‑PTSD—can deepen psychological exhaustion and heighten vulnerability to suicidal ideation. Thus, while depression and PTSD independently contribute to suicidality, the prolonged and relational nature of trauma in C‑PTSD amplifies these mechanisms, creating a complex interplay of emotional pain, hopelessness, and chronic fear that requires careful, trauma‑informed understanding. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Why a person might not report SI or SA? Shame can make people feel defective or embarrassed about needing help. Many trauma survivors have learned to survive by projecting strength, competence, or emotional control. Admitting SI or SA can feel like exposing a vulnerability they have spent years trying to hide. A very common reason people stay silent is the fear that disclosure will lead to involuntary hospitalization. For many, the idea of losing autonomy feels terrifying, especially if they already feel unsafe or controlled. The belief that medical professionals cannot help is another reason. Some individuals have had experiences where they reached out and were dismissed, their concerns were minimized, even if they were experiencing life-threatening situations. Their trauma was misunderstood, and their environment remained dangerous despite seeking help. This can create the belief that “a doctor cannot fix this,” especially when the threat is external, ongoing, or tied to systemic issues. Furthermore, there is a fear that reporting will not address the real problem. When someone’s trauma is tied to unsafe environments, unresolved crimes, institutional betrayal, corruption, and retaliation, they may feel that medical intervention cannot change the external danger. Medication cannot fix a dangerous environment. Hospitalization cannot resolve systemic failures. So, the person may think, “Why tell a doctor something they cannot fix?” Some survivors stay silent because they are trying to rebuild their lives, avoid triggering more danger, focus on escape, and keep their symptoms manageable until they are safe. They may believe that once they are out of the situation, their symptoms will lessen — and often, that belief is what keeps them going. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Hopelessness after being ignored by the authorities does happen. If someone has reported crimes, documented injuries, reached out repeatedly, been dismissed or disbelieved, it can create profound hopelessness. They may think, “If no one believes the danger I’m in, why would they believe my emotional pain?” This is a form of institutional betrayal, and it can silence people for years. Isolation caused by the trauma itself is real. When trauma involves interpersonal harm — especially by people in positions of power — survivors often become isolated. Isolation increases fear, reduces trust, and makes disclosure feel dangerous. Fear of retaliation is a major factor in chronic trauma. If someone believes that speaking up — even to a doctor — could trigger more harm, they may stay silent to protect themselves. This fear is not irrational. It is a survival strategy shaped by experience. Some people turn to spirituality for help, but also experience spiritual or existential invalidation. Being told things like “Jesus won’t help you” can be deeply destabilizing. It attacks a person’s coping system, their sense of meaning, and their spiritual grounding. This kind of invalidation can increase isolation and make disclosure feel even more unsafe. Therefore, people do not stay silent because they do not care about themselves. They stay silent because they are trying to survive in the best way they know how. Silence is often a protective strategy, a response to past dismissal, a way to avoid retaliation, an attempt to maintain control, a reflection of hopelessness created by external failures. Not reporting SI or SA is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of how complex, frightening, and overwhelming trauma can be—especially when the danger is ongoing or tied to systems that should have protected them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Because the precipitating factors of Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (C‑PTSD) often begin in childhood or adolescence and continue into adulthood, many survivors initially lack the capacity, language, or safety to seek help. Early attempts to reach out may be met with dismissal, minimization, or institutional inaction, which reinforces silence and deepens feelings of helplessness. As individuals age, they may discover new avenues for support, yet obtaining meaningful assistance becomes profoundly difficult when the perceived or actual sources of threat include governmental bodies, public institutions, or media actors. In such cases, survivors may feel trapped within systems that appear complicit in their harm or indifferent to their safety. When trauma is intertwined with institutional betrayal—such as unaddressed reports, ignored evidence, or public narratives that distort or exploit a person’s experiences—the process of seeking help can consume years, if help arrives at all. This prolonged struggle reflects not only the severity of the trauma but also the structural barriers that prevent survivors from accessing protection, validation, or justice. The result is a chronic psychological environment in which fear, vigilance, and uncertainty persist, even as individuals continue searching for pathways to safety and recovery. In situations of prolonged interpersonal or institutional trauma, individuals who were once trusted may begin to reinterpret the survivor not as someone in need of protection but as a threat to their own reputation, status, or self‑interest. This shift can lead to behaviors that feel like demonization: spreading false narratives, distorting the survivor’s character, or engaging in actions intended to undermine their credibility. In the trauma literature, these patterns are understood as forms of secondary victimization or institutional betrayal, where the survivor is harmed not only by the original trauma but also by the reactions of those around them. When individuals or institutions fear exposure of wrongdoing, they may engage in defensive behaviors designed to protect themselves. These can include discrediting the survivor, isolating them socially, or creating narratives that cast doubt on their experiences. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

From the survivor’s perspective, these actions can feel like a coordinated effort to silence them, especially when the trauma involved power imbalances or when the survivor has previously been dismissed by authorities. The psychological impact is profound: the survivor may experience heightened fear, mistrust, and hypervigilance, all of which are core features of Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (C‑PTSD). The survivor’s sense of danger becomes shaped not only by the original trauma but by the ongoing relational and institutional dynamics that follow. When people who were once trusted become sources of harm or invalidation, the survivor’s world becomes unpredictable and unsafe. This reinforces the chronic threat environment that sustains C‑PTSD symptoms, including emotional dysregulation, negative self‑concept, and difficulty forming or maintaining relationships. In this context, the survivor’s isolation is not a sign of weakness but a protective adaptation. They may withdraw because the social environment feels contaminated by betrayal, or because past attempts to seek help were met with dismissal or hostility. The combination of interpersonal retaliation, institutional inaction, and the fear of further harm creates a psychological landscape in which the survivor must navigate both the trauma itself and the social consequences of having lived through it. Low levels of social support have been strongly associated with the development and persistence of Complex Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (C‑PTSD). Survivors who lack reliable emotional, relational, or institutional support are more vulnerable to the long‑term effects of trauma because they must navigate overwhelming experiences without the buffering effects of safety, validation, or assistance. In this context, early detection and intervention are essential for mitigating the severity of symptoms and preventing the entrenchment of chronic distress. Identifying individuals who are isolated, unsupported, or repeatedly dismissed by those around them is particularly important, as the absence of social protection not only increases the likelihood of C‑PTSD but also reduces access to pathways of recovery. Some people are haunted by what they have seen. Some are haunted by what was done to them. Some are haunted by systems that refuse to acknowledge their humanity. And some feel pursued by all three at once. In the end, every haunting is simply the echo of something that refuses to be forgotten. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

If You Hear Voices, You’re Crazy!

In the struggle to preserve self-worth, pride often becomes both shield and prison—deflecting painful truths that threaten one’s constructed identity. Aside from a Perpetrator’s externalizations, one’s main defense on this score is an armor of self-righteousness so thick and so impenetrable that it often makes one inaccessible to reason. In arguments that may arise, a harmful actor may seem to be unconcerned about the truth of any statement one interprets as a hostile attack, but automatically responds with counterattacks—like a porcupine when it is touched. One simply cannot afford to consider even remotely anything that might engender a doubt in one’s rightness. The impulse to dominate others often masks deeper insecurities, manifesting as a vindictive refusal to share rights or respect with others. Many people engaging in harmful behavior excel at manipulating individuals who have no interest in them at all, relying on power—not connection—to maintain control. When people who feel rejected gain access to legal, medical, or financial systems and misuse them for revenge, the recipient of the behavior faces an especially dangerous and unjust situation. A subtle form of this manipulation occurs when individuals are cut off from their true peers and instead placed among those who posture superiority to keep them feeling small and dependent, and it keeps the problematic individual in control because the environment itself becomes part of the manipulation. If it were not for the cogent necessity of a manipulator protecting oneself against the onslaughts of one’s own self-hate, even with all one’s vindictiveness, one could be more reasonable in what one demands of others.

Seen from this viewpoint, the person exhibiting controlling behavior claims that others should behave in such a way as not to arouse in one any guilt feelings or any self-doubts. If one can convince oneself that one is entitled to exploit or frustrate them without their complaining, criticizing, or resenting it, then one can keep from becoming aware of one’s tendencies to exploit or frustrate. If the aggressor is entitled to have the affected individual not expect tenderness, gratitude, or consideration, then their disappointment is their hard luck and does not reflect on one’s not giving them a fair deal. Any doubt the perpetrator might allow to emerge about one’s failings in human relations, about others having reason to resent one’s attitudes, would be like a hole in a dike, through which the flood of self-condemnation would break and sweep away one’s whole artificial self-assurance. When we recognize the role of pride and self-hate in this type, we not only have a more accurate understanding of the forces operating within the person engaging in harmful behavior, but may also change our whole outlook on that individual. As long as we primarily focus on how the harmful actor operates in one’s human relations, we can describe that individual as arrogant, callous, egocentric, sadistic—or by any other epithet indicating hostile aggression which may occur to us. And any of them would be accurate. However, when we realize how deeply the aggressor is caught within the machinery of one’s pride system, when we realize the efforts one must make not to be crushed by one’s self-hate, we see the problematic individual as a harassed human being struggling for survival. And this picture is also accurate.

Of these two different aspects, seen from two different perspectives, is one more essential, more important than the other? It is a question difficult to answer, and perhaps unanswerable, but it is in one’s inner struggle that analysis can reach one at a time when one is averse to examining one’s difficulties in regard to others, and when these difficulties are so infinitely precarious that one rather anxiously avoids touching them. However, there is also an objective reason for tackling the intrapsychic factors first in therapy. We have seen that they may contribute, in many ways, to one’s outstanding trend, the arrogant vindictiveness. We cannot, in fact, understand the height of one’s arrogance without considering one’s pride and its vulnerability—or the intensity of one’s vindictiveness without seeing one’s need for protecting oneself against one’s self-hate, et cetera. However, to take a further step: these are not only reinforcing factors; they are the ones which make one’s hostile-aggressive trends compulsive. And this is the decisive reason that it is and must be ineffective and indeed futile to tackle the hostility directly. The patient cannot possibly evolve any interest in seeking it, and still less in examining it, as long as the factors which render it compulsive persist (in simple terms: as long as one cannot do anything about it anyhow). One’s need for a vindictive triumph, for instance, certainly is a hostile-aggressive trend. However, what makes it compulsive is the need to vindicate oneself in one’s own eyes. This desire originally is not even neurotic.

The problematic individual starts so low on the ladder of human values that one cannot simply must justify one’s experience, prove one’s values. However, then, the need to restore one’s pride and protect oneself from lurking self-contempt makes this desire imperative. Similarly, one’s need to be right and the resulting arrogant claims, while militant and aggressive, become compulsive through the necessity to prevent any self-doubt and self-blame from emerging. And, finally, the bulk of one’s faultfinding, one’s punitive and condemnatory attitudes toward others—or, at any rate, what renders these attitudes compulsive—stem from the dire need to externalize one’s self-hate. Moreover, if the forces usually counteracting it are malfunctioning, as we pointed out at the beginning, a rank growth of vindictiveness can occur. And again, the intrapsychic factors constitute the main reason for these checks not operating. The choking off of tender feelings, starting in childhood and described as the hardening process, is necessitated by the actions and attitudes of other people and is meant to protect one against others. The need to make oneself insensitive to suffering is greatly reinforced by the vulnerability of one’s pride and climaxed by one’s pride in invulnerability. One’s wish for human warmth and affection (both giving and receiving it), originally thwarted by the environment and then sacrificed to the need for triumph, is finally frozen by the verdict of one’s self-hate, branding one as unlovable. Thus, in turning against others, one has nothing precious to lose. One unconsciously adopts the maxim of the Roman emperor: oderint dum metuant. In other words: “It is out of the question that they should love me; they hate me anyhow, so they should at least be afraid of me.” Moreover, healthy self-interest, which otherwise would check vindictive impulses, is kept at a minimum through this utter disregard for one’s personal welfare. And even the fear of others, though operating to some extent, is held down by one’s pride in invulnerability and immunity.

In this context of missing checks, one factor deserves special mention. If any, the person with the problematic behavior has very little sympathy for others. This absence of sympathy has many causes, lying in one’s hostility toward others and in one’s lack of sympathy for oneself. However, what perhaps contributes most to one’s callousness toward others is one’s envy of them. It is a bitter envy—not for this or that particular asset, but pervasive—and stems from one’s feeling excluded from life in general. And it is true that, with one’s entanglements, one actually is excluded from all that makes life worth living—from joy, happiness, love, creativity, and growth. If tempted to think along too neat lines, we would say here: had not one turned one’s back on life? Is one not proud of one’s ascetic not-wanting and not-needing anything? Does one not keep on warding off optimistic feelings of all sorts? So, why should one envy others? However, the fact is, one does. Naturally, without analysis, the person creating the hostile environment has such an arrogance that would not permit the individual to admit it, in plain effect, that, of course, everybody is better off than the perpetrator. Or one may realize that one is infuriated at somebody for no other reason than that the latter is always cheerful or intensely interested in something. The individual responsible for the behavior indirectly explains. The controlling person feels that such a person wants to humiliate one viciously by flaunting their happiness in one’s face. Experiencing things this way not only gives rise to such vindictive impulses as wanting to kill joy but also produces a curious kind of callousness by stifling one’s sympathy for others’ suffering.

Thus far, the perpetrator’s envy reminds us of a dog locked in a manner attitude. It hurts his pride that anybody could have something which, whether he wants it or not, is out of his reach. However, this explanation does not go deep enough. In analysis, it gradually appears that the grapes of life, though one has declared them sour, are still desirable. We must not forget that one’s turning against life was not a voluntary move, and that the surrogate for which one exchanged living is a poor one. In other words, the perpetrator’s zest for living is stifled but not extinguished. In the beginning of analysis, this is only a hopeful belief, but it proves justified in many more instances than is usually assumed. Upon its validity hinges the auspices for therapy. If there were not something in the individual with the problematic behavior that does want to live more fully, how could we help the individual? This realization is also relevant for the analyst’s attitude toward such a patient. Most people respond to this type either by being intimidated into submissiveness or by rejecting the person with the problematic behavior altogether. Neither attitude will do for the analyst. Naturally, when accepting the individual as a patient, the analyst wants to him the controlling individual. However, if the analyst is intimidated, they will not dare to tackle one’s problems effectively. If the analyst inwardly rejects the perpetrator, one cannot be productive in one’s analytic work. The analyst will, however, have the necessary sympathetic and respectful understanding when one realizes that this patient, too, despite one’s protestations to the contrary, is a suffering and struggling human being.

Among the indispensable co-ordinates of identity is that of the life cycle, for we assume that not until adolescence does the individual develop the prerequisites in physiological growth, mental maturation, and social responsibility to experience and pass through crisis as the psychosocial aspect of adolescing. Nor could this stage be passed without identity. We may, in fact, speak of the identity crisis as the psychosocial aspect of adolescing. Nor could this stage be passed without identity having found a form which will decisively determine later life. For man, in order to remain psychologically alive, he constantly resolves these conflicts just as his body unceasingly combats the encroachment of physical deterioration. A healthy personality actively masters its environment, shows a certain unity of personality, and is able to perceive the world and oneself correctly—it is clear that all of these criteria are relative to the child’s cognitive and social development. In fact, we may say that childhood is defined by its initial absence and by its gradual development in complex steps of increasing differentiation. How, then, does a vital personality grow or, as it were, accrue from the successive stages of the increasing capacity to adapt to life’s necessities—with some vital enthusiasm to spare? Whenever we try to understand growth, it is well to remember the epigenetic principle which is derived from the growth of organisms in utero. This principle states that anything that grows has a ground plan, and that out of this ground plan the parts arise, each part having its time of special ascendancy, until all parts have arisen to form a functioning whole.

This, obviously, is true for fetal development, where each part of the organism has its critical time of ascendance or danger of defect. At birth, the baby leaves the chemical exchange of the womb for the social exchange system of its society, where one’s gradually increasing capacities meet the opportunities and limitations of one’s culture. How the maturing organism continues to unfold, not by developing new organs but by means of a prescribed sequence of locomotor, sensory, and social capacities, is described in the child-development literature. As pointed out, psychoanalysis has given us an understanding of the more idiosyncratic experiences, and especially the inner conflicts, which constitute the manner in which an individual becomes a distinct personality. However, here, too, it is important to realize that in the sequence of one’s most personal experiences the healthy child, given a reasonable amount of proper guidance, can be trusted to obey inner laws of development, laws which create a succession of potentialities for significant interaction with those persons who tend and respond to one and those institutions which are ready for one. While such interaction varies from culture to culture, it must remain with “the proper rate and the proper sequence” which governs all epigenesis. Personality, therefore, can be said to develop according to steps predetermined in the human organism’s readiness to be driven toward, to be aware of, and to interact with a widening radius of significant individuals and institutions.

For the most fundamental prerequisite of mental vitality, a sense of basic trust is a pervasive attitude toward oneself and the world derived from the experiences of the first year of life. By “trust,” I mean an essential trustfulness of others as well as a fundamental sense of one’s own trustworthiness. In describing a development of a series of alternative basic attitudes, including identity, we take recourse to the term “a sense of.” It must be immediately obvious, however, that such “senses” as a sense of health or vitality, or a sense of the lack of either, pervade the surface and the depth, including what we experience as consciousness or what remains barely conscious or is altogether unconscious. As a conscious experience, trust is accessible to introspection. However, it is also a way of behaving, observable by others; and it is, finally, an inner state verifiable only by testing and psychoanalytic interpretation. All three of these dimensions are to be inferred when we loosely speak of “sense of.” As usual in psychoanalysis, we learn first of the “basic” nature of trust from adult psychopathology. In adults, a radical impairment of basic trust and a prevalence of basic mistrust are expressed in a particular form of severe estrangement which characterizes individuals who withdraw into themselves when at odds with themselves and with others. Such withdrawal is most strikingly displayed by individuals who regress into psychotic states in which they sometimes close up, refusing food and comfort and becoming oblivious to companionship. What is most radically missing in them can be seen from the fact that, as we attempt to assist them with psychotherapy, we must try to “reach” them with the specific intent of convincing them that they can trust us to trust them and that they can trust themselves.

Familiarity with such radical regressions as well as with the deepest and most infantile propensities in our not-so-sick patients has taught us to regard basic trust as the cornerstone of a vital personality. Children express their wishes in visual images; but what do they say about them, the final display through the final common pathway, is determined by auditory images, or voices in the head, the result of a mental dialogue. This dialogue between parent, adult, and child is not “unconscious,” but preconscious, which means that it can easily be brought into consciousness. Then it is found that it consists of sides taken from real life, things which once were actually said out loud. The therapeutic rule is a simple derivative of this. Since the final common pathway of the patient’s behavior is determined by voices in one’s head, this can be changed by getting another voice into one’s head, that of the therapist. If this is done under hypnosis, it may not be effective, since that is an artificial situation. However, if it is done in a waking state, it may work better because the original voices were implanted in the patient’s head also in the waking state. Exceptions occur when a witch or ogre parent shouts the child into a state of panic, which is essentially a traumatic fugue. As the therapist gets more and more information from different patients as to what the voices in their heads are saying, and becomes more and more experienced in relating this to their behavior as expressed through final common pathways, one develops a very acute ability and judgment in this regard. One begins to hear the voices in a patient’s head very quickly and accurately, usually before the patient can clearly hear them.

If the therapist asks a loaded or sensitive question, which the patient takes a little time to answer, the therapist can observe a twitch here, a contraction there, and a shift of expression, so that the therapist can follow the “skull dialogue” almost as though one were listening to a tape recording. Once the therapist understands what is going on, their next task is to give the patient permission to listen, and to teach the patient how to hear the voices which are still there in their pristine force from childhood. Here, the therapist may have to overcome several kinds of resistance. The patient may be forbidden to listen by Parental directives, such as: “If you hear voices, you’re crazy.” Or the patient’s inner child may be afraid of what one will hear. Or the patient’s adult self may prefer not to listen to the people governing one’s behavior in order to maintain one’s illusion of autonomy. Many “actionistic” therapists become very skilled at bringing these voices to life by special techniques, where the patient finds oneself carrying on the dialogue out loud, so that both the individual and the audience can plainly see that what he says has been in his head all along. Gestalt therapists often use “the empty chair,” where the patient moves from one chair to the other, playing two parts of oneself. Psychodramatists supply trained assistants who play one role while the patient themselves plays another. Watching or reading about such sessions, it soon becomes clear that the sides for each role come from different ego states or different aspects of the same ego state, and consist of dialogue which has been running in the patient’s head since one’s early years.

However, almost everybody mutters to oneself at some time or another, so every patient has a good start toward unearthing one’s mental dialogue without such special techniques. As a general rule, phrases in the second person (“You should have,” et cetera) come from the Parent, while those in the first person (“I must,” “Why did I?” et cetera) come from the Adult or Child. With some sort of encouragement, the patient soon becomes aware of one’s most important script directives as spoken in one’s head, and can report them to the therapist. The therapist must then give the patient the option of choosing between them, discarding the nonadaptive, useless, harmful, or misleading ones, and keeping the adaptive or useful ones. Even better, one may enable the patient to get a friendly divorce from one’s parents and make a fresh start altogether (although often the friendly divorce will be preceded by an angry phase, as most divorces are at the beginning, even if they eventually end up friendly). This means one must give the patient permission to disobey the Parental directives, not win rebellion, but rather in autonomy, so that one will be free to do things one’s own way and not have to follow one’s script. An easier way to handle this is to give the patient medication such as meprobamate, phenothiazines, or amitriptyline, all of which mute the Parental voices. This relieves the Child’s anxiety or depression and thus “makes the patient feel better.” However, there are disadvantages. First, these drugs tend to dumb down the whole personality, including the voice of the Adult. Some physicians, for example, advise the patient not to drive a car while one is takeing them.

Second, the medications make psychotherapy more difficult precisely because the Parent’s voices cannot be heard clearly, and so the script directives may be masked or de-emphasized. And third, therapeutic permission given under such conditions may be freely exercised, since the Parental prohibitions are temporarily out of commission, but if and when the medication is discontinued, the Parent usually comes back in full force, and may even take revenge on the Child for the liberties one took while the Parent was decommissioned. Growth, according to the present metaphor, entails a return to the place one had left, in order to make it suitable for living, and moreover, living as a person of enlarged perspective. A growth cycle is completed when persons affirm their larger experience of self and world and modify their concept of self, their public self, and their self-ideal in the light of enlarged awareness. They now know they are more, and can be more, different, than they hitherto believed possible. This alteration and enlargement of one’s sense of self is desirable and conducive to a healthy personality. The process of integrating the larger consciousness of self and world is helped immeasurably by re-engagement in life projects and personal relationships. Indeed, it is the demands, challenges, and rewards of work, play, and personal relationships that provide the incentive to grow, and the rewards of such growth. Without such ways of being engaged in the world, I believe efforts to let go and to open oneself to new experiences have destructive and regressive consequences. Chronic users of psychedelic drugs, like fanatics at yoga or meditation, confuse means with ends; they spend their time “in their experience,” but out of action.

The return is often difficult because the people with whom one has been engaged may not have changed; further, they may resent the changes that the growing person has introduced into their world. They may impose considerable pressure upon the individual to revert to the way one was prior to the episode of growing. To yield to such pressure is disastrous, for it makes a non-event out of the persons’ growth. At about the seventh year, says Aristotle, man can differentiate between good and bad. Conscience, ego, and cognition, we would say, are by then sufficiently developed to make it probable that a child, given half a chance, will be able and eager to concentrate on tasks transcending play. One will watch and join others in the techniques of one’s society, and develop an eagerness for completing tasks fitted for one’s own age in some craftsmanlike way. All this, and not less, is implied when we say that a child has reached the “stage of industry.” At the age of seven, there was a boy who was sent to a school which would teach him Latin—then the principal tool of the technology of literacy. Obviously, only parents with higher aspirations for their children would send them to such a school. However, halfway-qualified teachers were employed at schools like this only when they could get no other work—while they were still young, or when they were no longer employable. In either case, they were apt to express their impatience with life in their treatment of the children, which was very similar to the treatment that some people give their donkeys. The teachers rarely relied, and therefore, could not rely on conscience, ego, or cognition; instead, they used the old and universal method of Pauken, “drumming” facts and habits into the growing minds by relentless mechanical repetition. They also drummed the children themselves mit Ruten in die Aefftern, on the behind, other body parts being exempt.

According to the professor, an occasional “lusty caning” did not harm the student any more than it did any other children: but the professors and his school must present him as entirely intact and unweakened by any ordinary or special childhood event, so that the divine event, the catastrophe, which later concluded his academic education so unexpectedly, appears as divine interference. The priest and the psychiatrist, however, believed that this was an impressionable age for a child, and school years can make a child fearful for life. In retrospect, the student found that the gains in learning were in no way commensurate with the “inner torture.” At the most, he felt such teaching prepared a man to be a priest of low caliber, a Pfaff; otherwise, he was not taught enough to “either cackle or lay an egg.” It is certain that the disciplinary climate of home and school, and the religious climate in community and church, were lumped together in his mind as decidedly more oppressive than inspiring; and that, to him, this seemed a damned and unnecessary shame. He blamed his atmosphere for his strict and rigid doctrines, his intensity of monastic “scrupulosity,” his obsessional preoccupation with the question of how on earth one may do enough to please the various agencies of judgment—teacher, father, superior, and most of all, one’s conscience. School children, he reported, were caned on the behind; it is probable that home discipline was concentrated on the same body area. To those who believe in corporal punishment, this seems to take the sting out of the matter, and even to make it rather funny.

We grant the buttocks can take a lot of pressure, and lend themselves to bawdy jokes; but we cannot ignore the fact, brought out by the researchers of psychoanalysis, that the anal zone, which is guarded and fortified by the buttocks, can, under selective and intense treatment of special kinds, become the seat of sensitive and sensual, defiant and stubborn, associations. The devil, according to the student, expresses his scorn by exposing his rear parts; man can beat him to it by employing anal weapons, and by telling him where his kiss is welcome. Language provides the fundamental superimposition of logic on the objectivated social world. The edifice of legitimations is built upon language and uses language as its principal instrumentality. The “logic” thus attributed to the institutional order is part of the socially available stock of knowledge and taken for granted as such. Since the well-socialized individual “knows” that his social world is a consistent whole, he will be constrained to explain both its functioning and malfunctioning in terms of this “knowledge.” It is very easy, as a result, for the observer of any society to assume that its institutions do indeed function and integrate as they are “supposed to.” De facto, then, institutions are integrated. However, their integration is not a functional imperative for the social processes that produce them; it is rather brought about in a derivative fashion. Individuals perform discrete institutionalized actions within the context of their biography. This biography is a reflected-upon whole in which the discrete actions are thought of not as isolated events, but as related parts in a subjectively meaningful universe whose meanings are not specific to the individual, but socially articulated and shared. Only by way of this detour of socially shared universes of meaning do we arrive at the need for institutional integration.

This has far-reaching implications for any analysis of social phenomena. If the integration of an institutional order can be understood only in terms of the “knowledge” that its members have of it, it follows that the analysis of such “knowledge” will be essential for an analysis of the institutional order in question. It is important to stress that this does not exclusively or even primarily involve a preoccupation with complex theoretical systems serving as legitimations for the institutional order. Theories also have to be taken into account, of course. However, theoretical knowledge is only a small and by no means the most important part of what passes for knowledge in a society. Theoretically sophisticated legitimations appear at particular moments of an institutional history. The primary knowledge about the institutional order is knowledge on the pretheoretical level. It is the sum total of “whatever everybody knows” about a social world, an assemblage of maxims, morals, proverbial nuggets of wisdom, values and beliefs, myths, and so forth, the theoretical integration of which requires considerable intellectual fortitude in itself, as the long line of heroic integrators from Homer to the latest sociological system-builders testifies. On the pretheoretical level, however, every institution has a body of transmitted recipe knowledge, that is, knowledge that supplies the institutionally appropriate rules of conduct. Such knowledge constitutes the motivating dynamics of institutionalized conduct. It defines the institutionalized areas of conduct and designates all situations falling within them. It defines and constructs the roles to be played in the context of the institutions in question. Ipso facto, it controls and predicts all such conduct.

Since this knowledge is socially objectivated as knowledge, that is, as a body of generally valid truths about reality, any radical deviance from the institutional order appears as a departure from reality. Such deviance may be designated as moral depravity, mental disease, or just plain ignorance. While these fine distinctions will have obvious consequences for the treatment of the deviant, they all share an inferior cognitive status within the particular social world. In this way, the particular social world becomes the world tout court. What is taken for granted as knowledge in the society comes to be coextensive with the knowledge, or at any rate provides the framework within which anything not yet known will come to be known in the future. This is the knowledge that is learned in the course of socialization, and that mediates the internalization within individual consciousness of the objectivated structures of the social world. Knowledge, in this sense, is at the heart of the fundamental dialectic of society. It “programs” the channels in which externalization produces an objective world. It objectifies this world through language and the cognitive apparatus based on language, that is, it orders it into objects to be apprehended as reality. It is internalized again as an objectively valid truth in the course of socialization. Knowledge about society is thus a realization in the double sense of the word, in the sense of ongoingly producing this reality.

For example, in the course of the division of labor, a body of knowledge is developed that refers to the particular activities involved. In its linguistic basis, this knowledge is already indispensable to the institutional “programming” of these economic activities. There will be, say, a vocabulary designating the various modes of hunting, the weapons to be employed, the animals that serve as prey, and so on. If one is to hunt correctly, there will be a collection of recipes that must be learned. This knowledge serves as a channeling, controlling force in itself, an indispensable ingredient of the institutionalization of this area of conduct. As the institution of hunting is crystallized and persists in time, the same body of knowledge serves as an objective (and, incidentally, empirically verifiable) description of it. A whole segment of the social world is objectified by this knowledge. There will be an objective “science” of hunting, corresponding to the objective reality of the hunting economy. The point need not be belabored that here “empirical verification” and “science” are not understood in the sense of modern scientific canons, but rather in the sense of knowledge that may be borne out in experience and that can subsequently become systematically organized as a body of knowledge. Again, the same body of knowledge is transmitted to the next generation. It is learned as objective truth in the course of socialization, and this is internalized as subjective reality. This reality, in turn, has the power to shape the individual. It will produce a specific reality.

The reality will produce a specific type of person, namely the hunter, whose identity and biography as a hunter have meaning only in a universe constituted by the aforementioned body of knowledge as a whole (say, in a hunters’ society) or in part (say, in our own society, in which hunters come together in a subuniverse of their own). In other words, no part of the institutionalization of hunting can exist without the particular knowledge that has been socially produced and objectivated with reference to this activity. To hunt and to be a hunter implies existence in a social world defined and controlled by this body of knowledge. Mutatis mutandis, the same applies to any area of institutionalized conduct. There is a certain measure of safety in the deliberate cultivation of rational thought based on observed fact as a guide to action. This is the way that science has travelled with the discoveries of, and profits by, natural law. This is the way that industry and commerce have traveled, with solid results for all to see. Its value, when applied to methods of achievement, is a proven one. The sciences are useful to man and need not be cursed for the evil results of their abuse by man. He needs rather to learn how to make a better, more prudent, and wiser use of them. The spirit of science—which happens to be the spirit of this age—has rationalized us, and we are naturally impatient of all misguided persons who appear irrational. Even if we later recognize that certain educational methods were harsh or misguided, they shaped us during a time when we did not have alternatives. Our success gives us the space to reflect on them critically, but those experiences still formed part of the path that brought us here.

If there is a Fog, the Monsters Can’t See Me!

Domestic burglary is a huge societal problem, and one of the most frequently occurring crimes. In the United States of America, 1.1 million domestic burglaries are reported to the police each year. To give a sense of community dysfunction associated with the problem of domestic burglary, the very commonly reported issue is theft of goods and money from the family home or mailbox, which may be used buy drugs. And, sometimes, it is not always by a family member; the theft could be perpetrated by one’s neighbor, or even a stranger. There is, of course, the inconvenience of the theft to consider, but the damage is far greater than can be measured in material terms. Domestic burglary victimization is a traumatic experience, because most people consider their home as an extension of the self and a place where the self is protected against others. Intrusions to such a highly valued place are therefore regarded as attacks to both one’s personhood and one’s safety and privacy, and may render victims at risk of psychological distress. Some of the victims develop trauma-related disorders or mood or anxiety disorders, which may put them at risk of social, financial, economic, and physical health problems. The monetary costs of these burglaries (exempli gratia, due to damaged properties and stolen goods, police investigations, and victim services) are enormous. For example, the total monetary costs of domestic burglary have been estimated to amount to more than $9 billion a year in the United States of America (which comes down to $2,675) per burglarized house. #RandolphHarris 1 of 32

To mitigate crime victims’ psychological distress, they must receive adequate support services. To ensure that they have access to such services, police officers and other professionals working with crime victims should screen them for factors shown to be related to the experience or development of psychological distress. Drug users in the general population are more likely than nonusers to commit crimes. Another dimension of drug-related crime is that 25 percent of State prison inmates and 20 percent of convicted jail inmates reported committing their offenses to get money to buy drugs. Offenders convicted of robbery, burglary, and larceny/theft were most likely to commit their offense to obtain money to buy drugs. Many chronic drug abusers—the individuals we commonly regard as addicts—often simultaneously suffer from a serious mental disorder. Drug treatment and medical professionals call this condition a co-occurring disorder or a dual diagnosis. Chronic drug abuse is the habitual abuse of licit or illicit drugs to the extent that the abuse substantially injures a person’s health or substantially interferes with his or her social or economic functioning. Furthermore, any person who has lost the power of self-control over the use of drugs is considered a chronic drug user. Chronic drug abuse may occur in conjunction with any mental illness identified in the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV). Some common serious mental disorders associated with chronic drug abuse include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, manic depression, attention deficit hype disorder (ADHD), generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, and antisocial personality disorder. #RandolphHarris 2 of 32

Co-occurring disorders are very common. Approximately 6 million adults met the criteria for both serious mental illness and substance dependence or abuse in the past year. Some people suffering from serious mental disorders (often undiagnosed ones) take drugs to alleviate their symptoms—a practice known as self-medicating. According to the American Psychiatric Association, individuals with schizophrenia sometimes use substances such as marijuana to mitigate the disorder’s negative symptoms (depression, apathy, and social withdrawal), to combat auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions, or to lessen the adverse effects of their medication, which can include depression and restlessness. In other cases, mental disorders are caused by drug abuse. For example, MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, commonly known as ecstasy) produces long-term deficits in serotonin function in the brain, leading to mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. Chronic drug abuse by adolescents during formative years is a particular concern because it can interfere with normal socialization and cognitive development and thus frequently contributes to the development of mental disorders. However, chronic drug abusers who suffer from mental illness, and especially whether treating both conditions simultaneously leads to better recovery. Currently, the two conditions are often treated separately or without regard to each other. As a result, many individuals with co-occurring disorders are sent back and forth between substance abuse and mental health treatment settings. #RandolphHarris 3 of 32

Although one cannot always distinguish neatly between alienation from the actual self and that from the real self, the loss of self is sickness unto death; it is despair—despair at not being conscious of having a self, or despair at not being willing to be ourselves. However, it is a despair which does not clamor or scream. People go on living as if they were still in immediate contact with this alive center. Any other loss—that of a job, say, or a leg—arouses far more concern. Patients coming for consultation complain about headaches, sexual disturbances, inhibitions in work, or other symptoms; as a rule, they do not complain about having lost touch with the core of their psychic existence. There are many forces, including drugs, responsible for the alienation from self. It is in part the consequences of the whole neurotic development, especially of all that is compulsive in neurosis. Of all that implies, “I am driven instead of being the driver.” It does not matter in this context what the particular compulsive factors are—whether they operate in relation to others (compliance, vindictiveness, detachment, et cetera) or in relation to self, as in self-idealization. They very compulsive character of these drives inevitably deprives the person of his full autonomy and spontaneity. As soon as, for instance, his need to be liked by everybody becomes compulsive, the genuineness of his feelings diminishes; so does his power to discriminate. As soon as he is driven to do a piece of work for the sake of glory, his spontaneous interest in the work itself decreases. Conflicting compulsive drives, in addition, impair his integration, his faculty to decide and give direction. Last but not least, the neurotic pseudo-solutions, though representing attempts at integration, also deprive him of autonomy because they have become a compulsive way of living. #RandolphHarris 4 of 32

It does not matter, in this context, what the particular compulsive factors are—whether they operate in relation to others (compliance, vindictiveness, detachment, et cetera) or in the relation to self, as in self-idealization. The very compulsive character of these drives inevitably deprives the person of his full autonomy and spontaneity. As soon as, for instance, his need to be liked by everybody becomes compulsive, the genuineness of his feelings diminishes; so does his power to discriminate. As soon as he is driven to do a piece of work for the sake of glory, his spontaneous interest in the work itself decreases. Conflicting compulsive drives, in addition, impair his integration, his faculty to decide and give direction. Last but not least, the neurotic pseudo-solutions, though representing attempts at integration, also deprive him of autonomy because they become a compulsive way of living. Secondly, the alienation is furthered through process, likewise compulsive, which can be described as active moves away from the real self. The whole drive for glory is such a move, particularly through the neurotic’s determination to mold himself into something he is not. He feels what he should feel, wishes what he should wish, like what he should like. In other words, the tyranny of the should drives him frantically to be something different from what he is or could be. And in this imagination, he is different—so different, indeed, that his real self fades and pales still more. #RandolphHarris 5 of 32

Neurotic claims, in terms of self, mean the abandoning of the reservoir of spontaneous energies. Instead of making his own efforts, for instance, with regard to, human relations, the neurotic insists that others should adjust to him. Instead of putting himself into his work, he feels entitled to having it done for him. Instead of making his own decisions, he insists that others should be responsible for him. Therefore, his constrictive energies lie fallow, and he actually is less and less a determining factor in his own life. Neurotic pride removes him a step further from himself. Since he now becomes ashamed of what he actually is—of his feelings, resources, activities—he actively withdraws his interest from himself. The whole process of externalization is another active moving away from his self, actual and real. It is astonishing, by the way, how closely this process coincides with Dr. Kierkegaard’s “despair of not wanting to be oneself.” Finally, there are active moves against the real self, as expressed in self-hates. With the real self in exile, so to speak, one becomes a condemned convict, despised and threatened with destruction. The idea of being oneself even becomes loathsome and terrifying. The terror sometimes appears undisguised, as one patient felt it when thinking: “This is me.” This appeared at a time when the neat distinction she had made between “me” and “my neurosis” started to crumble. As a protection against this terror, the neurotic “makes himself disappear.” He has an unconscious interest in not having a clear perception of himself—in making himself, as it were, deaf, dumb, and blind. #RandolphHarris 6 of 32

Not only does he blur the truth about himself, but he has a vested interest in doing so—a process which blunts his sensitiveness to what is true and what is false not only inside but also outside himself. He has an interest in maintaining his haziness, although he may consciously suffer under it. One patient, for instance, in his associations often used the monsters of the Beowulf legend, who emerged at night from the lake, to symbolize his self-hate. And one he said: “If there is a fog, the monsters can’t see me.” The result of all these moves is an alienation from self. When we use this term, we must be aware that it focuses on only one aspect of the phenomenon. What is expressed accurately is the subjective feeling of the neurotic of being removed from himself. He may realize in analysis that all the intelligent things he has said about himself were, in reality, disconnected from him and his life, that they concerned some fellow with whom he had little if anything to do, and the findings about whom were interesting but did not apply to his life. In fact, this analytic experience leads us straight into the core of the problem. For we must keep in mind that the patient does not talk about weather or television: he talks about his most intimate personal life experiences. Yet, they have lost their personal meaning. And, just as he may talk about himself without “being in it,” so he may work, be with friends, take a walk, or sleep with a woman without being in it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 32

His relation to himself has become impersonal; so has his relation to his whole life. If the word “depersonalization” did not already have a specific psychiatric meaning, it would be a good term for what alienation from self essentially is: it is a depersonalizing, and therefore a devitalizing process. The alienation from self does not show as directly and blatantly as its significance would suggest, except (speaking of neuroses only) in the state of depersonalization, feelings of unreality, or amnesia. While these conditions are temporary, they can occur only in person who are estranged from themselves anyhow. The factors precipitating the feelings of unreality are usually severe injuries to pride together with an acute increase of self-contempt, exceeding what is tolerable for the particular person. Conversely, when—with or without therapy—these acute conditions subside, his alienation from self is not thereby essentially changed. It is merely again restrained within such limits that he can function without conspicuous disorientation. Otherwise, the trained observer would be able to perceive certain general symptoms pointing to an existing alienation from self, such as deadness of the eyes, an aura of impersonality, an automatonlike behavior. For the analyst, it is a source of never-ending astonishment how comparatively well a person can function with the core of himself not participating. Let us consider a problem from another region. A woman from the Middle West, rather unusually feminine and sensitive, uses a visit with relatives in the East to consult a psychoanalyst concerning a general feeling of affective constriction and an all-pervasive mild anxiety. #RandolphHarris 8 of 32

During an exploratory analysis, she seems almost lifeless. After some weeks, she occasionally produces a sudden flood of associations, all concerning horrid impressions of pleasures of the flesh or death. Many of these memories emerge not from unconscious depths, but from an isolated corner of her consciousness where all those frightening matters were boarded off which on occasion had broken through the orderly factualness of the upper-middle-class surroundings of her childhood. This isolation of life segments is similar to that met with in compulsive neurotics anywhere. In this case, it was part of a sanctioned way of life, an ethos, which in our patient had become truly uncomfortable only at a time when she was being courted by a European and was trying to envisage life in a cosmopolitan atmosphere. She felt attracted but at the same time inhibited; her imagination was vividly provoked but restrained by anxiety. Her bowels reflected this conflict with disturbing alternations between constipation and diarrhea. The final impression gained was one of a general inhibition rather than of a basic impoverishment of imagination in matters either dealing with pleasures of the flesh or social. The patient’s dreams gradually reveled a hidden source of untapped freedom. While she still seemed pained and lifeless in her free associations, her dream life became humorous and imaginative in an almost autonomous way. She dreamed of entering a quiet church congregation in a flaming red dress and of throwing stones through respectable windows (which would be a major felony and probably ban her from being hired for most jobs after a lengthy prison sentence). However, her most colorful dreams put her into Civil War days—on the Confederate side. #RandolphHarris 9 of 32

The climax was a dream in which she sat on a toilet, set off by low partitions in the middle of a tremendous ballroom, and waved to elegantly dressed couples of Confederate officers and southern ladies who swirled around her to the sounds of powerful brass. These dreams helped to unearth and highlight an isolated part of her childhood, namely, the gentle warmth awarded her by her grandfather, a Confederate veteran whose world was a fairy tale of the past. However, for all its formalism, the grandfather’s patriarchal masculinity and gentle affection had been experienced through the child’s hungry senses and had proved more immediately reassuring to her searching ego than either her father’s or mother’s promises of standardized success. With the grandfather’s death, the patient’s affects went dead because they were part of an abortive ego-identity formation which failed to receive nourishment either in the form of affection or of social rewards. The psychoanalytic treatment of women with a prominent identity element of the southern lady (an identity which pervades more than one class or race) seems complicated by special resistances. To be sure, our patients are usually dislodged southerners, their ladyhood a defense, almost a symptom. Their wish for treatment finds its limits in three ideas which are all connected with the particular provisions in southern culture for safeguarding caste and race identity by imposing the prototype of the lady on the small girl. #RandolphHarris 10 of 32

There is, first, a pseudoparanoid suspicion that life is a series of critical tests in which vicious gossips attempt to stack up minor weaknesses and blemishes against the southern woman toward an inexorable final judgment, namely, to be—or not to be—a lady. Second, there is the all-pervading conviction that men, if not restrained by the formalities of a tacitly approved double standard which grants them lesser and darker sex objects at the price of overt respect for ladies, will prove to be no gentlemen and that they will at very least try to blacken the lady’s name and with it her claim to a socially superior husband and the prospect of having her children marry upward. However, there is also the equally ambivalent implication that any man who does not proceed to shed his gentleman’s inhibitions when the opportunity of sexual conquest offers itself is a weakling who only deserves to be mercilessly provoked. The usual feelings of guilt and inferiority thus all exists within the co-ordinates of a life plan dominated by the conscious hope for higher social status, and made morbid by its ambivalent counterpart, the hidden hope for the man who will dissolve the woman’s need to be a lady in a moment of reckless passion. In all this, there is a basic inability to conceive of any area in life where the standards and the words of a man and a woman could honestly coincide and be lifted above a certain primeval antagonism. Needless to say, such unconscious standards cause severe suffering in sincere and enlightened women, but only the verbalization of these internalized stereotypes, concomitantly with the analysis of the patient’s transfer to the analyst of her whole conflictful imagery of men, makes psychoanalysis possible. #RandolphHarris 11 of 32

Psychoanalysts, of course, are consulted primarily by those who cannot stand the tension between alternatives, contrasts, and polarities which governs the American style of today: the unceasing necessity to remain tentative in order to be free for bigger and better opportunities. In their transferences and in their resistances, patients repeat abortive attempts at synchronizing fast-changing and sharply contrasting remnants of national, regional, and class identities during critical stages of their childhoods. The analyst is woven into the patient’s unconscious life plan. Especially if he is European-born, and compared with the patient’s more homogeneous ancestors, or he is resisted as the brainy enemy of a potentially successful American identity, he is idealized. The patient, however, can gain the courage to face the discontinuities of life in this country and the polarities of its struggle for an economic and cultural identity not as an imposed hostile reality, but as a potential promise for a more universal human identity. This, as we have seen, finds its limits where individuals were either fundamentally impoverished in their childhood sensuality or are stalled by the “system” in their freedom to use opportunities. Why did Pythagoras put mathematics among the necessary preliminary disciplines for the study of philosophy? Here was part of the way to counteract man’s natural materialism. It trained him to think abstractly, to hold pure ideas whose exactitude and truthfulness were indisputable. And he supported the teaching by pointing to the fact that the universe was founded on a number. Finally, the higher use of mathematics was as an assistant in symbolizing metaphysical principles. #RandolphHarris 12 of 32

When we begin to operate with abstract concepts in the practical world, we begin to know their true worth. Except as an intellectual exercise, I would discourage abstract speculation upon which so many intellectuals have frittered away their time, as our medieval theologians frittered theirs. We seek truth for various reasons. One is because is possesses a certitude that gives us anchorage and rest. Mathematics is fortunate in having been able to invent a language of symbols and signs which is adequate to the most exacting demands of precision. The connotation of each sign is definite. It derives a fixed meaning from the common universe of discourse which is implicit as the background of both speaker and hearer. The mathematician must give every symbol he uses a clear meaning in his own mind as well as to those who are to read his symbols. Therefore, he is compelled to provide a common medium of understanding about which there can be no two opinions. Mathematics is thus placed in a position of superiority in reference to language and rigorous reasoning when compared to other subjects. It provides perfect instruments for the expression of an idea. The meaning of the arithmetical minus sign is forever invariable and forever precise. The man who has thought well about thinking itself may put forward more clever ideas in a single hour than others do in a single week. The brain of the intellectual man multiplies thoughts, but the brain of the self-actualized Christian subtracts and reduces them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 32

Thinking in terms of mental images is a valuable faculty, but thinking in words alone is not less valuable. Both are needed to the balanced person. The value assigned to the symbol X must be strictly adhered to throughout the series of equations, and, being predetermined, no confusion concerning what it stands for can ever arise. However, when we turn to words, we find them to be imperfect, elastic, and indeterminate. When we deal with mathematical symbols, we expect and find a determinate meaning has been assigned to them, but when we deal with words, we cannot always expect and often fail to find any fixed meaning at all. The ordinary man who is used to dealing only with concrete things his eyes can see and his hands can touch, quite pardonably feels, when he is asked to deal with abstract conceptions, that he is at once out of his depth. When one does not know his Real Self, that is, his own deepest being, it is of little avail to ponder on difficult questions of an intellectual nature. The symmetry of the universe’s patterns appears best in the figure of a circle. The ability to think abstractly and metaphysically is not a waste of time as so many scientists, activists, and practical men of the world think. On the contrary, it is needed as a counterbalance to the ability to think concretely. So long as a man gets all his ideas from experiences gained through the body alone, so long may he pardonably accept the belief in materialism. However, as soon as he begins to get them from thinking alone—and the difference can not be properly grasped until he has practiced prayer sufficiently and successfully—so soon will he see the falsity of this belief. #RandolphHarris 14 of 32

There was a body named Jeff, and he was one of four children, none of whom had permission to succeed. The parents were both a little dishonest in socially acceptable ways, and the children each carried this tendency a little further. One day, Jeff told about his troubles at university. He was falling behind in his work, so he had paid a ghost writer in advance to do his thesis. The group listened with interest as he described his negotiations with this man, and told how the ghost writer had also undertaken to write theses for some of Jeff’s friends, all of whom had paid in advance. The other members asked questions here and there, until finally Jeff came to the point. The writer had absconded to Europe, taking all the money, he had collected, and without leaving any theses behind. At this, the group broke into uproarious laughter in which Jeff joined. The others said they thought the story was funny for two reasons: first, the way Jeff told it, as though he expected them to laugh, and would be disappointed if they did not; and second, because it was the sort of thing they expected, or perhaps even hoped, would happen to Jeff because of the complicated way he went about doing things instead of carrying out his obligations in a straightforward, honest way. They all knew that Jeff was supposed to fail, and it was amusing to see how much effort he put into it. They joined in Jeff’s laughter the same way the crowd had joined in Jeff’s when they first heard. Later, they would all be depressed about it, Jeff most of all. His laugh said, “Ha, ha, ha mother, you always loved me when I failed, and here I go again.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 32

The Adult in the Child, the Professor, has had the task from earliest years of keeping mother contented so that she will stay with him and protect him. If she likes him and expresses the liking with a smile, he feels safe even when he is actually in trouble or even in dire peril of death. In normal mothering, mother’s Parent and Child both like kids. So when mother smiles, both her Parent and her Child are pleased with her offspring, and things will proceed smoothly between them. In other cases, mother’s Parent smiles at her son because she is supposed to, while her Child is angry at him. He can get on the good side of her Child, and get a smile that way, by behavior which her Parent might disapprove of. For example, by demonstrating that he is “bad,” he may get a Child smile because he has proven that he is not-O.K., and that pleases the Child in mother—what we have previously called “the witch mother.” Both script and anti-script can be considered attempts to evoke mother’s smile: the anti-script for the approving smile of mother’s (and father’s) Parent, the script for the smile of mother’s Child, who enjoys the baby’s pain or discomfiture. The gallows laugh, then, occurs when Jeff “finds himself” with the rope around his neck, and his Child says: “I did not really want to end up this way: How did I get here?” Then Mother (in his head) smiles, and he realizes that she has conned him into it. He then has the choice of either going crazy, killing her, himself, or laughing. At such moments, he may envy the brother who chose instead to go to the mental hospital, or the sister who elected to kill herself, but he is not ready for either of those—yet. (Suicide or Crisis Lifeline call or text 988. A counselor is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and the help is free.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 32

The gallows laugh or the gallows smile occurs after a special kind of stimulus and response called the “gallows transaction.” A typical example is an alcoholic who has not had a drink for six months, as everyone in the group knows. Then one day, he comes in and lets the others talk for a while. When they have gotten all their troubles off their chests, so that he has the stage to himself, he says: “Guess what happened over the weekend?” One look at his slightly smiling face and they know what happened. They get ready to smile, too. One of them sets up the gallows transaction by asking: “What happened?” “Well, I took one drink and then another, and the next thing I knew”—by this time he is laughing and so are they—“I went on a three-day bender.” In the case of the Alcoholic, when the audience is told about last week’s bender while the audience (including, perhaps, the therapist) beams with delight. The smile of the Children in the audience parallels and reinforces the smile of the witch mother or ogre who is pleased when people obey the injunction (“Don’t think—drink), and in effect tightens the noose around their necks. The gallows laugh (which results from a gallows transaction) means that if the patient laughs while recounting a misfortune, and particularly if the other group members join in the laughter, that misfortune is part of the catastrophe of the patient’s script. When the people around him laugh, they reinforce the payoff, hasten his doom, and prevent him from getting well. In this way, the parental come-on is brought to fruition, ha ha. Semantics deals with those subtleties of language which escape the notice of uneducated people and are ignored by those who shrink a little labour. #RandolphHarris 17 of 32

Technology should be viewed as a vital layer of protection, but it does have its limitations, and we should not become overreliant on technology because some time in the near future, America could be without power, without Interent and no GPS, so people will have to park their cars like their parents did, they may have to use maps to find locations, and they may have to go to the library to do research with physical books. Therefore, it is still a good idea to learn how to use a compass, drive a car with a manual transmission, and learn how to drive without technology assistance. However, for most of us, it is hard to imagine a time when emergency vehicles responded to emergencies and had no communication with dispatch or other apparatus once en route to an incident. Technology will continue to be an asset to emergency services, adding safety and providing more effective operations. Although it should be welcome, we must continue to insist on rigorous testing and consider the applications to emergency services. The new technology must be trained on and used in conjunction with the other tools we must provide an effective system. Clinicians are even in the process of testing technology to scan the brain to see what mental impairments human beings have. While that is welcoming, critics worry it could lead to “mental profiling.” Based on brain scans, the government could track people who are at high risk of committing violent crimes without knowing or having due process, and take them into custody. Few words invoke more fear than the word investigation. We never want to be a suspect in a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigative and intelligence process, an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigation, a murder investigation, or a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) investigation. #RandolphHarris 18 of 32

Humans have natural defense mechanisms that resist being probed, examined, or scrutinized by any authority that has the power to discipline, sanction, or even confiscate aspects of our lives. The fear that is that an investigation could conclude with the allocation of blame for something we did or were a part of. Although it is true that a component of investigations is to find fault where faults exist, it is not limited to liability. Another valuable component is to search for and identify the actions and contributing factors that allowed an event to occur. By identifying these aspects, actions can be taken to prevent future occurrences. Take, for instance, a firefighter who falls from an extension ladder at a structural fire. Although seriously injured, he survives the fall. Which of the following is a thorough investigation likely to lead to: Disciplinary action for the incident commander and the firefighter holding the ladder? Liability for the ladder manufacturer, resulting in a lawsuit? Recommendations to eliminate contributing factors in order to prevent a similar incident? Obviously, the last choice is the most probable. Fault and culpable liability are always possible, but recommendations and changes in policy are almost guaranteed. Initiative 9 calls for the thorough investigation of all injuries, deaths, and near-misses in an effort to reduce the chances of the next one. As a result, specific components of an effective system include reporting, investigating, evaluating, and implementing changes. The award-winning Sacramento Fire and Emergency Services have several individual components in place, yet continue to work toward linking information into one effective system. #RandolphHarris 19 of 32

Little do Fire Chief’s know at the time, but they are often witnesses to many large fires in their career. Some are massive and dangerous. On one occasion, there was a blaze in September in response to the report of smoke coming out of the front of a mid-rise apartment building. As the four firemen stretch a hose into the basement of the building, little did they know that they were beginning a fight that would last 40 hours and would send eight people to the hospital with injuries before it was declared out. The men worked their way slowly towards the seat of the fire near the front of the building. After nearly two hours in the intense heat and blinding smoke, a fireman collapsed to the floor and was dragged outside. The decision was then made to leave the basement as it was discovered that the fire had spread along the rafters into the building next door. The entire fire department had arrived by that time and lines were being stretched around the building to try and contain the rapidly spreading blaze. Around 2.30 a.m., an explosion rocked the building. Two firemen were operating a hose just inside the front doors of the building when the explosion occurred. They were blown 15 feet out into the street as the front of the building was destroyed by the blast. In the rear alley, Fire Chief and Police Chief were spraying water into a basement window. Fire Chief was knocked to the ground, but the Police Chief was not as fortunate. He was blown across the alley and through a window at a neighboring house. Both men were treated for minor injuries but remained at the scene. One of the other firemen in the explosion at the front of the building was taken to the hospital with burns on his face, eyes and nose and the other fireman was treated for minor burns but stayed at the scene as well. #RandolphHarris 20 of 32

Both buildings had now become a mass of flames and looked to engulf the entire block. Nine streams were deployed to try to contain the fire. Apparatuses fought the fire from the roofs of the buildings and the blaze was kept to the two affected buildings. The fire raged until the floors collapsed into the basement around 7 a.m. Around the same time, another firefighter collapsed, giving in to smoke inhalation and exposure. As he was being helped into an ambulance, an EMT also collapsed and was taken to the hospital. That firefighter spent the rest of the weekend in the hospital with burns and an infected throat from the smoke. He was x-rayed and it was discovered that he had broken several bones in his back. He wore a back brace for months afterward. An additional firefighter spent the night in the hospital due to smoke inhalation. Three other firefighters were treated for minor burns and released. The collapse of the floors was the beginning of the end of the fire. Several containers of cooking grease in the kitchen and propane tanks continued to feed the flames in the basement until Sunday morning, when the fire was finally declared out, 40 hours after the first alarm was sent into the department. The Fire Captain later said that the fire was one of the worst in the city’s history. The estimated losses later added up to $15 million. The two buildings were completely destroyed. Other businesses and homes on the same block reported heavy smoke damage and heavy losses from smoke and water after the fire. An investigation revealed that the buildings were not up to code. One had indoor hallways with open-air windows with no glass to the outside, which gave the fire fuel to rage out of control. High-rise buildings with indoor hallways and windows without glass can be a violation of specific fire codes and regulations. The fire department was also undermanned and short on firefighting equipment. The fire departments were badly in need of more aerial trucks and other equipment. #RandolphHarris 21 of 32

If you see a fire truck stopped in the street without the lights on, be very careful. Sometimes there is an emergency, and you should not pass the fire truck. It might be a good idea to safely turn around and go another way because if you hit someone and they happen to die, you could be charged with manslaughter. Sometimes fire firefighters are getting back into their vehicle, and if you pass the apparatus, you may collide with a firefighter who is on foot. Also, be sure to look at their signals; sometimes emergency vehicles are in motion, albeit slowly, and drivers try to pass them, and this could lead to a dangerous situation. Also, if you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other people’s problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation, and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. #RandolphHarris 22 of 32

California is the third most expensive state in the nation. In 37 percent of counties, a family of four living on a six-figure income is now considered low-income. The average home price in California is nearly $1,000,000.00 USD, while the average salary is $96,036.00, meaning that most Californians cannot even afford to buy a home. California is having an affordability crisis. A single person making an income above $100,000 is now considered low-income in five counties in California. This distinction now applies to individuals living in Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, and Marin counties. The maximum percentage of your gross income that you should earmark for a monthly mortgage payment is calculated at 28 percent, and no more than 36 percent of your gross income to all debts, including mortgage. If you take 28 percent of the median household income per home in Sacramento County, homeowners can only afford a mortgage of $2,070.23 per month. And if you take 36 percent of their gross income to all debts, including mortgage, they should be devoting no more than $2,661.72 a month to these debts. The mortgage lenders must be using some kind of sorcery to get buyers into these expensive homes. To afford one of these homes using traditional guidelines, a household would need to gross $11,280.24 per month or $135,362.88 per year, but the median household in Sacramento County is grossing $7,393.67 a month or $88,724.00 annually, and that typically means two to four people in the home are working and contributing to the mortgage. Home prices in Sacramento County are rivaling the Bay Area, and in some cases, homes in the Bay Area are more affordable. Historically, homes in the Bay Area have been more expensive because they have higher-paying jobs, a larger population, and the Bay Area is a tourist destination. Contributing to the housing affordability crisis is Gavin Newsom, who has been lavishing illegal immigrants with taxpayer-funded resources and cash aid, when state workers should be receiving a 25 percent wage increase instead. #RandolphHarris 23 of 32

In 2025, many people in California saw their bills increase by an estimated $500 a month. This includes items such as food, automobile insurance, homeowners’ insurance, and electricity. In fact, more than 3 million people in California are facing household hardship, and more than 300,000 of them are facing eviction soon. This comes at a time when California is having a shortage of affordable housing. The crisis is caused by nearly half a century-old laws that discourage home sales and encourage higher rents. The incompetence in California is very easy to see. From 2018 to 2023, California received $24 billion, which they used to fund 30 homeless and housing programs. These programs created 100,000 units. That is an average cost of $240,000 per unit. In comparison, Roger Lucas, owner of Grand Castle, LLC, spent $50 million to build The Grand Castle, which is a 522-unit residential apartment community in Grandville, Michigan. The community includes studios, 1 bedroom, 2 bedrooms, 3 bedrooms, and even a multi-level penthouse. Rents generally range from $1,000 to $2,500. The community is a 23.6-acre site. It features 750 covered parking spaces, a clubhouse, a resort-style swimming pool, and was built over a period of 12 to 18 months. The average cost was about $95,785.45 per unit, which is $144,214.55 less per unit than California spent. California also has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.4 percent, while the national average is 4.5 percent. As people are seeing their bills skyrocket, and minimum wage has increased to $20 an hour, people on Social Security retirement are really bearing the burden with the checks the typically equate to $5-$7 an hour. Furthermore, while Americans are struggling to find and afford housing, Gavin Newsom, Democrat governor of California, signed two bills into law on February 7, 2025, to protect illegal immigrants. Bills SBX 1 1: Budget Act of 2024, and SBX 1 2: Budget Act of 2024, allocates $50 million to protect illegal immigrants from deportation. Governor Gavin Newsom also granted 700,000 illegal immigrants free health care, which costs taxpayers $3 billion annually. At the same time, Newsom cut vital programs for veterans, school children, the disabled, and the homeless. The California crisis created by Democrats is driving up home prices and mortgages, and rents all over the nation and the world, making living unaffordable for all, and advocates say the crisis is far from over. #RandolphHarris 24 of 32

Meanwhile, China, where we are sending all our jobs and money, has more than 50 ghost cities, with 65 million vacant homes. Ghost cities are regions where housing has been overdeveloped to the point that these places are uninhabited. If they are all officially counted, California has approximately 4 million homeless people. The highest home prices in the nation, the highest taxes, and the most unfriendly business regulations known to man. Because California is so hostile towards people and businesses, more than 360 companies have fled the state since 2020. Businesses like Chevron, SpaceX, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard are among the names on that list. Also, more than 500,000 people a year are abandoning California because it is too expensive to live in, Gavin Newsom has criminalized homelessness and actually started arresting people without homes, crime is out of control, and they are losing their jobs due to companies relocating. More than 100 companies have announced layoffs in California for 2025. Intel is cutting 15,000 jobs, PayPal is cutting 2,500, and Meta has terminated 4,000 employees. California also has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.4 percent, while the national average is 4.1 percent. The California crisis created by Democrats is driving up home prices and mortgages, and rents all over the nation and the world, making living unaffordable for all, and advocates say the crisis is far from over. Accordingly, California has more than 3.5 million illegal immigrants. Having the Southern American border open and not having American farmland protected, not producing beef, poultry, fish, fruit, produce, and dairy in America, and without American goods and services being our number one manufactured and selling items, America has created a dangerous and significantly elevated risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health. Some people may believe that these claims are overstated, but by not routinely monitoring Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CEVs) or other security-relevant alerts, such as the end-of-life of machinery is how the Oroville Dam Crisis occurred in 2017. #RandolphHarris 25 of 32

Additionally, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom seems to be uneducated about economics. Newsom has spent $300 million to try to stop proposition 50. Proposition 50 would replace the maps drawn by the state’s independent commission with districts drawn by legislators solely to gain or protect Democratic seats. Newsom only cares about the environment when his policies allow him to raise taxes and restrict freedoms. To further highlight this illustration of incompetence by Governor Gavin Newsom, Mexico has been causing one of America’s worst environmental disasters. Fifty million gallons a day of industrial chemicals, untreated sewage, and trash flow from Tijuana, Mexico, into southern San Diego County daily. This toxic waste has been turning up on Imperial Beach and is causing the miles of white sands to become polluted and the ocean breeze to smell of feces, which has been sickening residents and wildlife and costing San Diego millions in the form of lost tourism and health problems. The problem has been going on for more than a century, and by 2030, Mexico plans to dump one hundred and twenty million gallons of sewage a day into Imperial Beach. Other crises that have occurred due to neglect of critical infrastructure such as the 2025 Palisades fire. Southern California ran out of water because Newsom is totally neglecting the state and the American people. And while the fire departments in California are critically understaffed and underfunded, Governor Newsom vetoed firefighter pay raise. The Palisades fire cost $275 billion, which is money that could have been used to insure the State of California had the resources it needed. Furthermore, when Southern California is located next to an ocean, Newsom should have invested in desalination plants to help with the water shortage in California. The water in the ocean is so plentiful that it is currently eroding land and causing homes to fall into the sea. Desalination has been identified as one technology that will help solve California’s water scarcity problem. Desalination is a cost-effective technology that can transform an abundance of salt water into a reliable supply of potable, fresh water, which is a great way to fight climate change and have enough water for our region’s water requirements. Ras Al Khair, Saudi Arabia, is producing 1,036,000 meters (273,682,192) per day of desalinated water. #RandolphHarris 26 of 32

America needs an approach to eliminate safety vulnerabilities in American cities. There needs to be a road map by the end of 2025, outlining a prioritized approach to eliminate crisis situations in America. There is enough money to send aid to foreign nations, but the American government does not have enough money to care for its infrastructure, provide adequate resources, or end the affordable housing crisis. Nor is there enough money to fund other national critical functions (NCFs). These bad practices of putting America and Americans last are considered exceptionally risky, particularly to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. As a result, the American automobile trade deficit with Japan was $39 billion. Additionally, Japan exported 1.4 million cars to the United States of America, but only imported 16,000 American-built automobiles. However, Japan imported approximately 143 thousand motor vehicles from the European Union. This is why President Trump created tariffs. We need to balance the trade deficit that America faces with other nations so we are not taken advantage of and so America can go bank to being a creditor nation, instead of borrowing money for other countries. Each year, President Trump is bringing $400 Billion in Tariff revenue into America and hundreds of thousands of new jobs. With this money, America is paying down debt, and with a portion of it, President Trump plans to send Americans a stimulus check anywhere in the range of $1,000 to $2,000. However, if President Trump’s Tariffs are deemed illegal by the Supreme Court, taxpayers will have to pay back trillions and trillions of dollars. As we literally and /or figuratively see gangs, federal judges, and Governor Gavin Newsom fighting with federal law enforcement and President Trump– states and cities refusing to honor federal laws. Politicians are also showing an utter disregard for the Constitution of the United States of America, and anarchy is becoming increasingly common. #RandolphHarris 27 of 32

Anarchism is a cluster of doctrines and attitudes centered on the belief that government is both harmful and unnecessary. Derived from the Greek root anarchos, meaning “without authority,” anarchism, anarchist, and anarchy are used to express both approval and disapproval. The anarchist denies man-made laws, regards property as a means of tyranny, and believes that crimes are merely the product of property and authority. However, the anarchist would argue that their denial of constitutions and governments leads not to “no justice” but to the real justice inherent in the free development of human sociality—the natural inclination, when unfettered by laws, to live according to the principles and practice of mutual aid. Anarchism is also a form of treason. Treason, the crime of betraying a nation or a sovereign by acts considered dangerous to security. In English law, treason includes the levying of war against the government and the giving of aid and comfort to the monarch’s enemies. In the United States of America, treason was defined restrictively by the framers of the Constitution. Treason against the United States of America “shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them aid and comfort,” which is something that many politicians are currently guilty of. The American government should know all exploitable vulnerabilities and fix them before the situation becomes a crisis. Failure to take such mitigating actions is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. The American government must understand that significant time and resources must be invested in America. They must also encourage corporations to plan for both mitigating safety vulnerabilities in the short term and eliminating them in the long term. For instance, a company might begin by reaching out to the federal, state, or local government and requesting tax incentives to provide security to dangerous communities, to help the government repair bridges and potholes. #RandolphHarris 28 of 32

Drug cartels have been threatening the health and safety of Native American communities. The trafficking of dangerous and illegal drugs into their territories is leading to a second genocide. The overdose rate for Indigenous people is 42 percent higher than the national average. A recent bust on Montana’s Blackfeet Nation’s Tribal Reservation resulted in the seizure of more than 700,000 fentanyl pills, which was the largest bust in Montana history. Recently, the Blackfeet Nation had to declare a state of emergency after facing 17 overdoses in just one week. There are only 6.8 million Native Americans left in the world, which is 2 percent of the American population. We should be doing more to protect these proud and honorable people; they should not want for anything. People rush and give away resources to illegal immigrants, but totally disregard the Indigenous people of this land, as their race silently fades away into extinction. We must secure our borders and increase federal funding to Native American tribes so we can save this precious population. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom has given billions of taxpayer dollars away to illegal immigrants and protected them from law enforcement, while arresting law-abiding Americans because they cannot afford to pay rent or mortgage, and the homeless shelters are unsafe, overcrowded, and have restrictions on who is allowed inside. He has also totally ignored the cartel problems on American lands. Clean air, water, land, and preserving our heritage are extremely important. We cannot just allow criminals to kill off the people who are native to this land and do nothing about it. Wars have been started over governments that tax citizens without representation. Taxation without representation is what led to the American Revolution. #RandolphHarris 29 of 32

Much like the land crisis in Las Vegas, we could also run out of land to farm and will not be able to grow or cultivate our own food. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. Also, country of origin labeling is very important so Americans can know where their food is coming from and can support American farmers and ranchers. As money flows, it influences further investment. Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. Once the land is built on, we lose it forever. And in the future, there may be food wars. Also, to ensure that we have farmland and buildable land for future use, we need to start limiting the number of people allowed to immigrate to America. Perhaps with the immigrants we do allow into America, there needs to be a diversity program to make sure we have a population that equally represents all races of people. If Americans continue to spend money on American products, then more need to be made to keep up the inventory. When investors notice these goods are selling, it gives them the confidence to pour more money into that local business. It shows that people want these goods made in America and pressures investors to keep these goods and services in America. The jobs stay here, the business stays in America, wages naturally increase, and more money is invested to keep up with demand. This reduces the burden on the taxpayer. When you support American businesses, that money stays in our economy and can help to reduce the national debt. The government creates debt by borrowing from businesses in the private sector or from foreign countries. It also increases the national debt by spending more than it gains in tax revenue in a fiscal year. #RandolphHarris 30 of 32

When people shop locally, more tax money stays in the economy and goes to the government. This way, it keeps more money in our national economy and keeps more jobs located in America which also sends more taxes to the government, which can again help to reduce the national debt. When you buy foreign goods, these companies usually have lighter tax loads or exemptions, meaning less money for the national debt, plus you are helping to strengthen these foreign nations by sending more money overseas. Buying American-made products is also better for the environment and helps to reduce the carbon footprint because these products do not have to travel nearly as far. Furthermore, American companies and manufacturers are held to much higher standards on pollution. American companies must be more careful about air, land, and water pollution and have proper ways to dispose of waste. Under President Trump’s administration, he has make America a priority. President Trump has closed the southern border, illegal crossings have fallen to an all time low, and are 90 percent lower than under the previous administration. Since President Trump’s crack down on crime, violent crimes in Washington D.C. have dropped by approximately 80 percent. He has stopped thousands of pounds of drugs from entering America and killing citizens. And since President Trump took office, investments in America have increased by trillions of dollars in U.S.A. manufacturing, production, and innovation. As you can see, President Donald Trump and his pledge to “Make America Great Again” is exactly what America needs to save the country and the American people. And yes, diversity is important, so you can see why it is also important to preserve blonde hair and blue eyes, as the people with these characteristics are becoming a minority in America. #RandolphHarris 31 of 32

We must think before we can understand the soul’s existence; we must understand before we can realize it. The earliest beginnings of thought, as apart from instinct, when it was itself still but a lurking tendency, belong far back in primeval time. The human intellect as we find it today, so rich and developed an instrument for the consciousness of the ego, did not arrive at this fullness without a series of graduated stages. We have had plenty of scientific thinking, business thinking, and political thinking long enough, but we have had very little inspired thinking. That is the world’s need. The intellect is cradled in selfishness but runs the evolutionary track into reason, where it will one day finish at the winning-post of selflessness. As a reminder, parents, please teach your children to love America and be patriotic citizens, and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. It is inborn in the human mind to wish to know. If this begins with the endless surface questions of a child’s curiosity, if it continues into deeper questions of a scientist’s probing investigation, it cannot and does not stop there. For the higher part of the mind will eventually come into unfoldment, that union of abstract reflective thought with mystical intuition, which is true intelligence, which needs and sees a view of the whole of things. And so, the knowing faculty enters the realm of philosophy. Therefore, remember to take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. Also, to make sure they have all the resources required, please donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to help improve our national security. “Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” #RandolphHarris 32 of 32


According to locals, over a century ago, the land that houses The Winchester Mansion had been vacant forever. Then, sometime in the early afternoon of Saturday, March 13, 1886, Sheriff Angel Camilio began getting reports that a massive castle made of wood had suddenly appeared. Gables rose, towers peaked into the sky as the mansion mushroomed into a labyrinth overnight.

The house’s sudden manifestation had been both disconcerting and fascinating to the community. Some felt dark curses flowing from the estate, and things moving around in the darkness. Others saw a fairytale castle glimmering in the spring sunlight. Perhaps this is why there are no records of construction, no blueprints, and no permits filed with the county. And then one day, a hearse came tearing through the gates, and in that hearse was a coffin, some believed it contained Mrs. Winchester.

According to legend, when Sarah Lockwood Pardee (Winchester) married William Wirt Winchester in 1862, she enjoyed a life of extravagant luxury. William Winchester, President of the Winchester repeating rifle, became a very wealthy man through the sale of his guns, and the couple were among the elite New England society.

However, in 1866, the death of their infant daughter drove Mrs. Sarah Winchester into a deep depression from which many thought she would never emerged. Several years later, she lost her husband to tuberculosis, and her grief was overwhelming. Mrs. Winchester sought the counsel of a Boston medium to reach her beloved dead family members. The medium told the grieving widow that she was cursed and demons straight from hades had sought revenge by ending the lives of her beloved husband and darling baby girl.

She also told Mrs. Winchester they would kill her too, unless she moved out West and built a great house for the spirits. In addition, Mrs. Winchester was told construction on the house must never end in order to appease the spirits and keep her alive, perhaps even give her eternal life. Mrs. Winchester followed the medium’s suggestions, and in 1886, she moved to the Santa Clara valley just outside San Jose, where she bought an 18-room farmhouse and property to build her mansion. At its peak, the Mansion once stood 9-stories tall and had as many as 600-rooms. Today, the stately mansion is 4-storys, and over 100,000 square feet.

Experience an unforgettable journey back to the time of kings and queens with this entry ticket for The Winchester Mansion in Santa Clara, California, which was the residence of Heiress Sarah L. Winchester. Come and see what secrets this so-called, “Winchester Mystery House” may hold. Take advantage of this fascinating experience. After the tour, there will be time to enjoy the mansion’s splendor at your own pace. You might even discover secret passages that lead to hidden chambers within the mansion. These chambers served as safe places for valuables, precious documents, and as private sanctuaries for Mrs. Winchester, and allowed her to move stealthily throughout her home. At one time, there were even secret tunnels that extended beyond the mansion, leading to nearby Victorian houses that were also on the property, and other structures, creating a network of escape routes or hidden pathways.

Please come and enjoy a delicious meal at Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, which once spanned 740 acres, all the way down to Stevens Creek Boulevard; wander 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 for purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/


Harris Plumbing, Heating, Air, & Electric has been in business for 30 years. How many businesses can say that? We take pride in everything we do – no matter how big or small the service call might be. We’re here to help your home be as safe and comfortable as possible for you and your family. We take that responsibility very seriously as a company.

Harris will ensure you have the information you need to decide what to do next, whatever your home is facing. We’ll perform a diagnosis and detail what issues are present before starting any work. This gives you a personalized quote and service plan specific to your home’s needs, not some random quote based on the best guess. The only way we can do our best work is to make sure we handle the issues at hand. https://www.callharrisnow.com/about-us/


With its top ranking in Consumer Reports’ Auto Brand Report Card and consistent market share growth, BMW, The Ultimate Driving Experience, has demonstrated its ability to produce high-performing, reliable vehicles that meet consumer demands. BMW stands out due to its focus on driving dynamics and engineering excellence. While other luxury brands prioritize comfort and opulence, BMW is known for creating cars that are fun to drive and offer a unique connection between the driver and the machine. This is why BMW is known as The Ultimate Driving Machine. https://www.brianharrisbmw.com/

Randolph Harris San Francisco Taxation & Mergers

Building strong and lasting client relationships is crucial for a successful legal career. Many lawyers mistakenly believe that mastering legal skills alone ensures success, but law is fundamentally a service industry—our job is to solve problems through the time we sell. To build long-term relationships, attorneys must focus on three core elements: knowing their clients, understanding how their legal issues fit into a larger context, and consistently delivering exceptional service.

Randy advises clients with regard to business transition, taxable and tax-deferred mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, restructuring, integrated tax planning, federal and state tax controversy resolution, and real estate transactions. Trust is the cornerstone of any client relationship. Ultimately, my clients feel they are in capable hands with someone who genuinely understands their problems and goals. https://www.jmbm.com/l-randolph-harris.html


Rancho Cordova, CA | low $500s
Now Selling!

Welcome to Cresleigh Park Haven, the newest home community in Rancho Cordova.

Nestled in the heart of Rancho Cordova, Park Haven is a thoughtfully planned neighborhood of 71 homes designed for comfort, convenience, and connection. Adjacent to Exploration Park, it offers the perfect blend of modern living and outdoor adventure right at your doorstep.

Choose from five floor plans ranging from 1,342 to 2,547 square feet, with options for 3 to 5 bedrooms, flexible spaces, and open layouts tailored to today’s lifestyles. Whether you are a first-time buyer, a growing family, or looking to simplify without giving up style, there is a home here for you.

Select homes include 100 percent owned solar at no extra cost, providing lasting savings, energy efficiency, and the confidence of ownership.

With maintenance friendly yards, nearby shopping and dining, and access to top rated schools, Park Haven is more than just a place to live. It is a place to thrive. https://cresleigh.com/park-haven/

Every house where love abides and friendship is a guest is surely a Cresleigh Home. https://cresleigh.com/park-haven/residence-4/

“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.” -President Abraham Lincoln

America is a nation founded on godly principles, by God-fearing men. As a nation, we have convinced ourselves of our uniqueness with concepts such as Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism. Manifest destiny was the imperialist belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand from sea to shining sea.

American exceptionalism, idea that the United States of America is a unique and even morally superior country for historical, ideological, or religious reasons. As a nation we appear favored and blessed by the Lord with success and prosperity unparalleled in human history.

America has a lot of amazing things – its beautiful natural scenery, vibrant cities, unique culture, and some of the world’s most iconic landmarks — it us no wonder many choose to make America their home.
Do Not Tell Any of the Family Secrets!

I remember when I was younger and people had “cool” parents or grandparents; it was intriguing, a novelty, something many believed was amazing because older adults were generally quiet, reserved, and boring. However, as people my age are now adults and many have kids of their own, immature senior citizens are no longer cool. Now that they are retired, many of these “cool” adults have picked up habits such as alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence, cyberstalking, vandalism, intimate partner violence, fraud, and theft. They are no longer cool. Instead of enjoying the cool breeze of a winter’s afternoon, it has now been replaced they the stench of skunk weed and alcohol. My children are now in high school, and we have an apartment in the city. Oftentimes, when my son comes home from school to study or do his homework, he complains about being harassed by drunk old people who stink of liquor, body odor, urine, and sometimes feces. After the sun goes down is when the senior citizens bring out the heavier drugs, such as crack cocaine and meth. The pungent odors seep through the walls and doors. Now, it is not just teenagers being told by their parents, “Turn that music down!” or “Stop running in and out!” or “Be quiet!” or “Don’t do drugs!” I frequently hear my son asking his friend, “Dude! What’s wrong with your grandpa and his friends?! Why are they so loud?” Behaviors that were once thought to be unique to youth are now being observed in the elderly. However, unlike a child, you cannot punish a senior citizen or make them follow the rules. #RandolphHarris 1 of 29

There has even been a rise in senior citizens bullying the youth and trying to start fights with them. The young people, on the other hand, are typically seen and not heard. They obey the rules, are respectful, clean up behind themselves, and stay clean and sober. For various reasons, some adults never mature. Society has changed, and people have become more outrageous and criminally inclined. Seniors have difficulty losing their mental faculties and often feel like they have lost their autonomy. Sometimes, their frustration turns into childish behavior, as often happens with loss of control out of frustration and limited options. Additionally, digression of behaviors may also indicate serious developments in your parent’s health, such as a progression in mental decline or depression. It can be really frustrating, painful and stressful to others when they are at home trying to relax, study, get work done, or are not feeling well, and senior citizens are having wild parties and getting “turnt up.” A party once in a while would not be such a bad thing, but because they have nothing to do with their time, some old people are involved in degenerate behavior every day. When your elderly parent, or in some cases, grandparent, acts infantile, the first step to take is to avoid assuming they are acting this way to annoy or frustrate others. Often, the cause bothers them more than it does their family, caregivers, or community, and they need empathy. Take this time to examine their behavior for mental illness, such as dementia. If you see any symptoms of mental deterioration, call their doctor. #RandolphHarris 2 of 29

Additionally, check for changes in medications and environmental factors. Aging could possibly lead to social and physical changes that may increase vulnerability to substance misuse. Little is known about the effects of drugs and alcohol on the aging brain. However, older adults typically metabolize substances more slowly, and their brains can be more sensitive to drugs. One study suggests that people addicted to cocaine in their youth may have an accelerated age-related decline in temporal lobe gray matter and a smaller temporal lobe compared to control groups who do not use cocaine. This could make them more vulnerable to the adverse consequences of cocaine use as they age. Older adults may be more likely to experience mood disorders, lung and heart problems, or memory issues. Drugs can worsen these conditions, exacerbating the negative health consequences of substance use. Additionally, the effects of some drugs—like impaired judgment, coordination, or reaction time—can result in accidents, such as falls and motor vehicle crashes. These sorts of injuries can pose a greater risk to health than in younger adults and coincide with a possible longer recovery time. Chronic health conditions tend to develop as part of aging, and older adults are often prescribed more medicines than other age groups. Some steal medications from their friends, family members, or neighbors, leading to a higher rate of exposure to potentially addictive medications. One study of 3,000 adults aged 57-85 showed common mixing of prescription medicines, nonprescription drugs, and dietary supplements. #RandolphHarris 3 of 29

More than 80 percent of participants used at least one prescription medication daily, with nearly half using more than five medications or supplements, putting at least 1 in 25 people in the age group of 57-85 at risk for a major drug-drug interaction. Other risks could include accidental misuse of prescription drugs, and possible worsening of existing mental health issues. For example, a 2019 study of patients over the age of 50 noted that more than 25 percent who misuse prescription opioids or benzodiazepines expressed suicidal ideation, compared to 2 percent who do not use them, underscoring the need for careful screening before prescribing these medications. Nine percent of adults aged 50-64 reported past-year marijuana use in 2015-2016, compared to 7.1 percent in 2012-2013. The use of cannabis in the past year by adults 65 years and older increased sharply from 0.4 percent in 2006 and 2007 to 2.9 percent in 2015 and 2016. However, the potential benefits of medical marijuana must be weighed against its risks, particularly for individuals who have other health conditions or take prescribed medications. Regular marijuana use for medical or other reasons at any age has been linked to chronic respiratory conditions, depression, impaired memory, adverse cardiovascular functions, and altered judgment and motor skills. Marijuana can interact with many prescription drugs and complicate already existing health issues and common physiological changes in older adults. Approximately 8 of every 100 adults aged 65 and older smoke cigarettes, increasing their risk for heart disease and cancer. While this rate is lower than that for younger adults, research suggests that older people who smoke have an increased risk of becoming frail, though smokers who quit do not appear to be at higher risk. Although an estimated 300,000 smoke-related deaths occur each year among people who are age 65 and older, the risk diminishes in older adults who quit smoking. A typical smoker who quits after age 65 could add two to three years to their life expectancy. Within a year of quitting, most former smokers reduce their risk of coronary heart disease by half. #RandolphHarris 4 of 29

Alcohol is the most used drug among older adults, with about 65 percent of people 65 and older reporting high-risk drinking, defined as exceeding daily guidelines at least weekly in the past year. Of particular concern, more than a tenth of adults age 65 and older currently binge drink, which is defined as drinking five or more drinks on the same occasion for men, and four or more drinks on the same occasion for women. In addition, research published in 2020 shows that increases in alcohol consumption in recent years have been greater for people aged 50 and older relative to younger age groups. Alcohol Use Disorder: Most admissions to substance use treatment centers in this age group relate to alcohol. One study documented a 107 percent increase in alcohol use disorder among adults aged 65 years and older from 2001 to 2013. Alcohol use disorder can put older people at greater risk for a range of health problems, including diabetes, high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, liver and bone problems, memory issues, and mood disorders. While the use of illicit drugs in older adults is much lower than among other adults, it is currently increasing. Older adults are often more susceptible to the effects of drugs, because, as the body ages, it often cannot absorb and break down drugs and alcohol as easily as it once did. Older adults are more likely to unintentionally misuse medicines by forgetting to take their medicine, taking it too often, stealing medication from others, or taking their wrong amount. Some older adults may take substances to cope with big life changes such as retirement, grief and loss, declining health, or a change in living situation. #RandolphHarris 5 of 29

Most admissions to substance use treatment centers in this age group are for alcohol. Many behavioral therapies and medications have been successful in treating substance use disorders, although medications are underutilized. It is never too late to quit using substances—quitting can improve quality of life and future health. More science is needed on the effects of substance use on the aging brain, as well as into effective models of care for older adults with substance use disorders. Providers may confuse symptoms of substance use with other symptoms of gaining, which could include chronic health conditions or reactions to stressful, life-changing events. In addition, older adults are more likely to hide their substance abuse and less likely to seek professional help. Many relatives of older individuals with substance use disorders, particularly their adult children, are ashamed of the problem and choose not to address it. The result is thousands of older adults who need treatment and do not receive it. Aging changes sleep architecture, decreasing the amount of time spent in the deeper levels of sleep (stages three and four) and increasing the number and duration of awakenings during the night. It is recommended that every 60-year-old should be screened for alcohol and prescription drug abuse as part of his or her regular physical examination. However, problems can develop after the screening has been conducted, and concurrent illnesses and other chronic conditions may mask abuse. It is also recommended that if the senior is having behavioral problems or worsening physical condition, or if the older person is undergoing major life changes or transitions that they should be screened. #RandolphHarris 6 of 29

Although it is preferable to use standardized screening questionnaires, friendly visitors, Meals-On-Wheels volunteers, caretakers, and health care providers also can interject screening questions into their normal conversations with older homebound adults. Although the line of questioning will depend on the person’s relationship with the older person and the responses given, it is recommended that anyone who is concerned about an older adult’s drinking practices try asking direct questions. Delirium is a serious, potentially preventable, neuropsychiatric disorder occurring in association with other underlying medical conditions. Delirium is under-recognized and underdiagnosed, making accurate prevalence and incidence difficult to gauge. Delirium can affect up to 50 percent of individuals over the age of 65 years. Predisposition risk factors include older age, dementia, dementia, severe illness, surgery, pain, dehydration, sepsis, electrolyte disturbance, urinary retention, fecal impaction, and exposure to high-risk medications. Delirium is often unrecognized and undocumented by clinicians. Rates of unrecognized delirium, which is defined as the diagnosis of delirium after being unrecognized by a primary physician or nurse, is estimated to be about 60 percent of all cases. This high rate of unrecognized delirium underscores the need for screening to detect delirium early. Early recognition and treatment can improve outcomes. The best tool is the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM) is a standardized evidence-based tool that enables non-psychiatrically trained clinicians to identify and recognize delirium quickly and accurately in both clinical and research settings. #RandolphHarris 7 of 29

The real self, is the alive, unique, personal center of ourselves; the only part that can, and wants to grow. Unfortunate conditions prevent its unimpeded growth from the very beginning. There are forces in the individual which usurp its energies and lead to the formation of a pride system which becomes autonomous and exerts a tyrannical and destructive power. It terms of the devil’s pact, the abandoning of self corresponds to the selling of one’s soul. In psychiatric terms we call it the “alienation from self.” This latter term is applied chiefly to those extreme conditions in which people lose their feeling of identity, as in amnesias and depersonalizations, et cetera. These conditions have always aroused general curiosity. It is strange and even startling that a person who is not asleep and has no organic brain disease does not know who he is, where he is, or what he does or has been doing. If we do not regard them as isolated occurrences but see their relation to less conspicuous forms of alienation from self, these are, however, less bewildering. In these forms there is no gross loss of identity and orientation, but the general capacity for conscious experience is impaired. There are, for instance, many neurotics who live as if they were in a fog. Nothing is clear to them. Not only their own thoughts and feelings but also other people, and the implications of a situation, are hazy. Also related, in still less drastic terms, are conditions in which the dimming out is restricted to intrapsychic processes. I am thinking of people who can be rather astute observers of others, who can lucidly size up a situation or a trend of thought; yet experiences of all kinds (in relation to others, nature, et cetera) do not penetrate to awareness. And these states of mind, in turn, are not unrelated to those of apparently healthy people who suffer from occasional partial blackouts or from blind spots concerning certain areas of inner or outer experience. #RandolphHarris 8 of 29

All these forms of alienation from self can concern as well as the “material self”—the body and the possession. A neurotic may have but little feeling of or for his body. Even his bodily sensations may be numbed. When asked for instance whether his feet are cold, he may have to arrive at an awareness of feeling cold through a process of thinking. He may not recognize himself when seeing himself unexpectedly in a full-length mirror. Similarly, he may have no feeling of his home being his home—it is for him as impersonal as a hotel room. Others have no feeling that the money they possess is their money, even though it may have been earned through hard work. These are only a few variations of what we could properly call an alienation from the actual self. All of what a person actually is or has, including even his connection of his present life with his past, the feeling for this continuity of his life, may be blotted out or dimmed out. Some of this process is intrinsic in every neurosis. Sometimes patients may be aware of disturbances on this score, as in the case of one patient who described himself as a lamppost with a brain on top. More often, they are unaware of it, although it may be fairly extensive; and it may gradually unfold only in analysis. At the core of this alienation from the actual self is a less tangible phenomenon, although more crucial. It is the remoteness of the neurotic from his own feelings, wishes, beliefs, and energies. It is the loss of the feeling of being an active determining force in his own life. It is the loss of feeling himself as an organic whole. These in turn indicate an alienation from that most alive center of ourselves which I have suggested calling the real self. #RandolphHarris 9 of 29

The real self provides the “palpitating inward life”; it engenders the spontaneity of feelings, whether these be joy, yearning, love, anger, fear, or despair. It is also the source of spontaneous interest and energies, “the source of effort and attention from which emanate the fiats of will”; the capacity to wish and to will; it is the part of ourselves that wants to expand and grow and to fulfill itself. It produces the “reactions of spontaneity” to our feelings or thoughts, “welcoming or opposing, appropriating or disowning, striving with or against, saying yes or no.” All this indicates that our real self, when strong and active, enables us to make decisions and assume responsibility for them. It therefore leads to genuine integration and a sound sense of wholeness, oneness. Not merely and harmonious, but they function without serious inner conflict. In contrast to those artificial means of holding ourselves together, which gain in importance as the real self is weakened, there is little or no attendant strain. The history of philosophy shows that we can deal with the problems of self from many vantage points. Yet it seems as though every treating this subject has found it difficult to go beyond describing his special experiences and interests. From the viewpoint of clinical usefulness, I would distinguish the actual or empirical self from the idealized self on the one hand, and the actual or empirical self from the idealized self on the one hand, and the real self on the other. The actual self is an all-inclusive term for everything that a person is at a given time: body and soul, healthy and neurotic. We have it in mind when we say that we want to know ourselves; id est, we want to know ourselves as we are. #RandolphHarris 10 of 29

The idealized self is what we are in our irrational imagination, or what we should be according to the dictates of neurotic pride. The real self is the “original” force toward individual growth and fulfillment, with which we may again achieve full identification when freed of the crippling shackles of neurosis. Hence, it is what we refer to when we say that we want to find ourselves. In this sense, it is also (to all neurotics) the possible self—in contrast to the idealized self, which is impossible of attainment. Seen from this angle, it seems the most speculative of all. Who, seeing a neurotic patient, can separate the wheat from the chaff and say: this is his possible self. However, while the real or possible self of a neurotic person is in a way an abstraction, it is nevertheless felt and we can say that every glimpse we get of it feels more real, more certain, more definite than anything else. We can observe this quality in ourselves or in our patients when, after some incisive insight, there is a release from the grip of some incisive insight, there is a release from the grip of some compulsive need. In the face-to-face situation, language possesses an inherent quality of reciprocity that distinguishes it from any other sign system. The ongoing production of vocal signs in conversation can be sensitively synchronized with the ongoing subjective intentions of the conversants. I speak as I think; so does my partner in the conversation. Both of us hear what each says at virtually the same instant, which makes possible a continuous, synchronized, reciprocal access to our two subjectivities, an intersubjective closeness in the face-to-face situation that no other sign system can duplicate. #RandolphHarris 11 of 29

What is more, I hear myself as I speak; my own subjective meanings are made objectively and continuously available to me and ipso facto become “more real” to me. Another way of putting this is to recall the previous point about my “better knowledge” of the other as against my knowledge of myself in the face-to-face situation. This apparently paradoxical fact has been previously explained by the massive, continuous and prereflective availability of the other’s being in the face-to-face situation, as against the requirement of the reflection for the availability of my own. Now, however, as I objectivate my own being by means of language, my own being becomes massively and continuously available to myself at the same time that it is so available to him, and I can spontaneously respond to it without the “interruption” of deliberate reflection. It can, therefore, be said that language makes “more real” my subjectivity not only to my conversation partner but also to myself. This capacity of language to crystalize and stabilize for me my own subjectivity is retained (albeit with modification) as language is detached from the face-to-face situation. This very important characteristic of language is well caught in the saying that men must talk about themselves until they know themselves. Men understand more easily what they can see, touch, and hear—that is, images, forms, and pictures—in short, symbols. These are the idols honoured by simpler minds. However, when they develop their minds sufficiently, they become able to think in terms of simple arithmetic, progressing of the laws of geometry, and from algebra on to higher mathematics. #RandolphHarris 12 of 29

The fact is it is utterly impossible to form an abstract idea in the mind. We can only think of particular ideas. When the self-actualized Christian does indulge in the luxury of a conversation with an inquirer or spiritual aspirant, he usually adopts the Socratic method. There is probably no more powerful or effective method of compelling a man to think, to exercise his own reason, instead of repeating parrot-like phrases, than this of thrusting question after question at him. The first use of general principles, the first worth of general theories is to economize thought and thus to avoid going over the same ground again and again. This is a remarkable and little-known power of abstract reflection—that, just as one thorn may be used to pick out a second from the skin, so a line of thinking can be used as to bring all thinking to an end. It is striking that whenever persons are asked why they did anything, their motives usually appear exemplary, to them and to the observer. A person will seldom admit intentions of an immoral or antisocial sort. Yet, the consequences of many actions are often discrepant with the admitted motive. Thus, a person intends to help a friend and actually interferes drastically with the friend’s success. A man loves his wife, yet his behavior toward her may produce grief and discomfort for her. For any action that a person undertakes, it can be assumed that its consequences were desired by the person. If the aim is denied, or if the consequences appear at variance with the aim, then the observer may assume the intent has been repressed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 29

The motive that the person admits may be called a rationalization. It is an explanation for an action and its consequences that is compatible with the individual’s self-structure. The motive behind rationalization is not to give a factual account of authentic intent; rather, it is to do justice to the need to explain conduct and at the same time protect the self-structure. A rationalization, then, is an explanation of one’s conduct that has been selected from many possible explanations because it enhances and defends the individual’s self-structure. A theology student has asked a girl for a date. She was known to be quite proud of her sexually “liberated” attitudes. He said he wanted to persuade her to change her ways and denied any sexual interest in her. He was quite possibly rationalizing. Some people’s awareness is marred by a return of demons, whoever they may have been. Man’s rebellion often centers in the question of his differential debt of obedience to God, to the Pope, and to Caesar—or rather, to the multitude of Caesars then emerging. There is often a preparatory dichotomy that preoccupies people: that between the obedience owed to their natural father, whose views are always brutally clear, and the obedience owed to the Father in heaven, from whom many youths have received a dramatic but equivocal call. The average man has not the patience to, and does not want to, inquire into meanings of his words. He says, “My meaning is the right one and good enough for me.” This implies that he knows, but in fact he does not, because he has not examined it. The intellect cannot work accurately with blurred concepts. Pitfalls await to receive it under such conditions. This is one reason why the process of discovering and clarifying meanings leads its advance into truth. Many think it is useless to discuss the meaning of a term. This is often correct in the case of a logician who seeks merely to score a cheap intellectual triumph over an opponent, however dishonestly, but in the case of a true metaphysician who seeks truth in its genuine sense, such a procedure may be most helpful to him. At the least, it may point out pitfalls. #RandolphHarris 14 of 29

Some people are forbidden to finish anything or come to the point, so when they talk, they “run off at the mouth.” Their sentences are strung out with conjunctions: “Yesterday I was sitting at home with my husband and… and…and then…and…and then…” Often, the directive is “Do not tell any of the family secrets!” so they go all around the secret and play with it as long as they can without giving it away. Some speakers are careful to balance everything: “It’s raining, but the sun will come out soon.” “I have a headache, but my stomach is better.” “They are not very nice, but on the other hand, they look cheerful.” The directive in this case seems to be “Do not look at anything too closely.” The most interesting example of this type was a man who had been a diabetic since the age of five, and had been taught to balance his diet with the utmost care. When he spoke, he weighed every word with similar care, and balanced each of his sentences very cautiously and precisely. These precautions made him very difficult to listen to. All his life, he had been in a rage against the unfair restrictions imposed on him because of the disease, and his speech became very unbalanced when he was angry. (The implications of this for the psychology of diabetes must await further study.) Another type of sentence structure is the dangling point, with free use of “and so forth” and “et cetera.” “Well, we went to the movies, and so forth, and then I kissed her and so forth, and then she stole my wallet and so forth.” Unfortunately, this often conceals a deep anger against the mother. “Well, I would like to tell her what I think of her, et cetera.” “What is ‘et cetera?’” “What I would really like to do is cut her to pieces.” “Et cetera?” “No, more ‘et cetera.’ That is the et cetera.” Sentence structure offers a fascinating field of study. #RandolphHarris 15 of 29

Historically, the big dilemma with regard to fitness is the term fit for duty versus wellness. Most firefighters are more than willing to partake in a wellness program, one designed as a voluntary program to help make healthy choices in diet and exercise. The term fit for duty generally refers to being able to complete specific skills or meet set criteria to be permitted to work. Some career fire departments have phased in a fit for duty clause in their union contract. Some fire departments already get discounts on insurance workers’ compensation by instituting programs that reduce risks, such as a drug-free workplace and emergency vehicle driving. We can expect that if more fire departments see improved health and financial savings by requiring fit for duty, others will follow. Firefighters should not see this as a career-ending situation, but, rather, an opportunity to prevent a life-ending situation. NFPA 1583, Standard on Health-Related Fitness Programs for Fire Fighters, describes the necessary components of a health-related fitness program. These include a fitness coordinator, a fitness assessment, an exercise training program, education and counseling, and data collection. The five components of a fitness evaluation include: Body composition, aerobic capacity, muscular strength, muscle endurance, and flexibility. The fire department physician must be familiar with the duties of firefighting and the associated risks. Through thorough exams, the doctor screens the member for injuries or diseases likely to interfere with firefighting duties. The physician identifies disqualifying medical conditions that must be acted on immediately, and ensures proper referral to the appropriate specialist. #RandolphHarris 16 of 29

By discussing the results of the examination and answering questions, the physician also can make individual recommendations for the member to improve his or her health. Although specific findings are confidential, the physician reports back to the department whether the member is cleared for firefighting duties. NFPA 1582, Standard on Comprehensive Occupational Medical Program for Fire Departments, outlines what specific body systems should be evaluated and what diagnostic tests should be completed. The purpose of these tests is to find a medical problem before it becomes debilitating, as well as to identify trending. For instance, a pulmonary function test (spirometry) is one recommended component of the annual diagnostics. If a firefighter has continually done well on the tests for the past 7 years but now cannot pass, it is clear that something has occurred. Perhaps the member was involved in an emergency incident that caused injury to his pulmonary system that had not yet been identified. Without annual testing, it could go unnoticed, and a direct cause could be more difficult to pinpoint down the road. Sometimes firefighters argue that they should be permitted to see their own doctor rather than the department physician. The biggest problem is that some primary care physicians are not capable of administering some tests, such as spirometry, and may not understand their value. #RandolphHarris 17 of 29

Another important component of the testing is blood work analysis. Next time you get a blood draw for a physical, take your results to a computer and pull up the American Heart Association’s website. Punch your readings and personal information into the heart attack calculator to see what your chances are of having a heart attack in the next year. Of course, the calculator does not take into account the increased cardiac stress of your job, so it might actually be on the low side. However, by trending these results each year, you can monitor the progress of your improvement. The last component involves the specific needs of members. Firefighters are at a significantly greater risk of developing cancer because of continuous contact with carcinogens. These cancer-causing chemicals can easily be inhaled or absorbed during or after firefighting operations, including diesel exhaust at the station. NFPA 1582 specifies the test procedures and frequency at which cancer screenings should occur based on age and gender. Hazardous materials term members might go through more extensive diagnostic testing, such as chest X-rays. Staff members who do not wear SCBA may not receive the same amount of pulmonary testing as a line firefighter, whereas members over a certain age or with a specific medical history will probably get additional tests. Sometimes tests are necessary due to a specific medical history will probably get additional tests. Sometimes tests are necessary due to a specific hazard in their response area. A good example of this is a fire brigade for an industrial fire department working around specific chemicals. See what else the award-winning Sacramento Fire Department is doing to keep firefighters, EMTs, and paramedics in great shape. https://www.instagram.com/p/DQFmNfpEsIX/ #RandolphHarris 18 of 29

If you see a fire truck stopped in the street without the lights on, be very careful. Sometimes there is an emergency, and you should not pass the fire truck. It might be a good idea to safely turn around and go another way because if you hit someone and they happen to die, you could be charged with manslaughter. Sometimes fire firefighters are getting back into their vehicle, and if you pass the apparatus, you may collide with a firefighter who is on foot. Also, be sure to look at their signals; sometimes emergency vehicles are in motion, albeit slowly, and drivers try to pass them, and this could lead to a dangerous situation. Also, if you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other people’s problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation, and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. #RandolphHarris 19 of 29

California is the third most expensive state in the nation. In 37 percent of counties, a family of four living on a six-figure income is now considered low-income. The average home price in California is nearly $1,000,000.00 USD, while the average salary is $96,036.00, meaning that most Californians cannot even afford to buy a home. California is having an affordability crisis. A single person making an income above $100,000 is now considered low-income in five counties in California. This distinction now applies to individuals living in Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, and Marin counties. The maximum percentage of your gross income that you should earmark for a monthly mortgage payment is calculated at 28 percent, and no more than 36 percent of your gross income to all debts, including mortgage. If you take 28 percent of the median household income per home in Sacramento County, homeowners can only afford a mortgage of $2,070.23 per month. And if you take 36 percent of their gross income to all debts, including mortgage, they should be devoting no more than $2,661.72 a month to these debts. The mortgage lenders must be using some kind of sorcery to get buyers into these expensive homes. To afford one of these homes using traditional guidelines, a household would need to gross $11,280.24 per month or $135,362.88 per year, but the median household in Sacramento County is grossing $7,393.67 a month or $88,724.00 annually, and that typically means two to four people in the home are working and contributing to the mortgage. Home prices in Sacramento County are rivaling the Bay Area, and in some cases, homes in the Bay Area are more affordable. Historically, homes in the Bay Area have been more expensive because they have higher-paying jobs, a larger population, and the Bay Area is a tourist destination. Contributing to the housing affordability crisis is Gavin Newsom, who has been lavishing illegal immigrants with taxpayer-funded resources and cash aid, when state workers should be receiving a 25 percent wage increase instead. #RandolphHarris 20 of 29

In 2025, many people in California saw their bills increase by an estimated $500 a month. This includes items such as food, automobile insurance, homeowners’ insurance, and electricity. In fact, more than 3 million people in California are facing household hardship, and more than 300,000 of them are facing eviction soon. This comes at a time when California is having a shortage of affordable housing. The crisis is caused by nearly half a century-old laws that discourage home sales and encourage higher rents. The incompetence in California is very easy to see. From 2018 to 2023, California received $24 billion, which they used to fund 30 homeless and housing programs. These programs created 100,000 units. That is an average cost of $240,000 per unit. In comparison, Roger Lucas, owner of Grand Castle, LLC, spent $50 million to build The Grand Castle, which is a 522-unit residential apartment community in Grandville, Michigan. The community includes studios, 1 bedroom, 2 bedrooms, 3 bedrooms, and even a multi-level penthouse. Rents generally range from $1,000 to $2,500. The community is a 23.6-acre site. It features 750 covered parking spaces, a clubhouse, a resort-style swimming pool, and was built over a period of 12 to 18 months. The average cost was about $95,785.45 per unit, which is $144,214.55 less per unit than California spent. California also has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.4 percent, while the national average is 4.5 percent. As people are seeing their bills skyrocket, and minimum wage has increased to $20 an hour, people on Social Security retirement are really bearing the burden with the checks the typically equate to $5-$7 an hour. Furthermore, while Americans are struggling to find and afford housing, Gavin Newsom, Democrat governor of California, signed two bills into law on February 7, 2025, to protect illegal immigrants. Bills SBX 1 1: Budget Act of 2024, and SBX 1 2: Budget Act of 2024, allocates $50 million to protect illegal immigrants from deportation. Governor Gavin Newsom also granted 700,000 illegal immigrants free health care, which costs taxpayers $3 billion annually. At the same time, Newsom cut vital programs for veterans, school children, the disabled, and the homeless. The California crisis created by Democrats is driving up home prices and mortgages, and rents all over the nation and the world, making living unaffordable for all, and advocates say the crisis is far from over. #RandolphHarris 21 of 29

Meanwhile, China, where we are sending all our jobs and money, has more than 50 ghost cities, with 65 million vacant homes. Ghost cities are regions where housing has been overdeveloped to the point that these places are uninhabited. If they are all officially counted, California has approximately 4 million homeless people. The highest home prices in the nation, the highest taxes, and the most unfriendly business regulations known to man. Because California is so hostile towards people and businesses, more than 360 companies have fled the state since 2020. Businesses like Chevron, SpaceX, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard are among the names on that list. Also, more than 500,000 people a year are abandoning California because it is too expensive to live in, Gavin Newsom has criminalized homelessness and actually started arresting people without homes, crime is out of control, and they are losing their jobs due to companies relocating. More than 100 companies have announced layoffs in California for 2025. Intel is cutting 15,000 jobs, PayPal is cutting 2,500, and Meta has terminated 4,000 employees. California also has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.4 percent, while the national average is 4.1 percent. The California crisis created by Democrats is driving up home prices and mortgages, and rents all over the nation and the world, making living unaffordable for all, and advocates say the crisis is far from over. Accordingly, California has more than 3.5 million illegal immigrants. Having the Southern American border open and not having American farmland protected, not producing beef, poultry, fish, fruit, produce, and dairy in America, and without American goods and services being our number one manufactured and selling items, America has created a dangerous and significantly elevated risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health. Some people may believe that these claims are overstated, but by not routinely monitoring Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CEVs) or other security-relevant alerts, such as the end-of-life of machinery is how the Oroville Dam Crisis occurred in 2017. #RandolphHarris 22 of 29

Additionally, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom seems to be uneducated about economics. Newsom has spent $300 million to try to stop proposition 50. Proposition 50 would replace the maps drawn by the state’s independent commission with districts drawn by legislators solely to gain or protect Democratic seats. Newsom only cares about the environment when his policies allow him to raise taxes and restrict freedoms. To further highlight this illustration of incompetence by Governor Gavin Newsom, Mexico has been causing one of America’s worst environmental disasters. Fifty million gallons a day of industrial chemicals, untreated sewage, and trash flow from Tijuana, Mexico, into southern San Diego County daily. This toxic waste has been turning up on Imperial Beach and is causing the miles of white sands to become polluted and the ocean breeze to smell of feces, which has been sickening residents and wildlife and costing San Diego millions in the form of lost tourism and health problems. The problem has been going on for more than a century, and by 2030, Mexico plans to dump one hundred and twenty million gallons of sewage a day into Imperial Beach. Other crises that have occurred due to neglect of critical infrastructure such as the 2025 Palisades fire. Southern California ran out of water because Newsom is totally neglecting the state and the American people. And while the fire departments in California are critically understaffed and underfunded, Governor Newsom vetoed firefighter pay raise. The Palisades fire cost $275 billion, which is money that could have been used to insure the State of California had the resources it needed. Furthermore, when Southern California is located next to an ocean, Newsom should have invested in desalination plants to help with the water shortage in California. The water in the ocean is so plentiful that it is currently eroding land and causing homes to fall into the sea. Desalination has been identified as one technology that will help solve California’s water scarcity problem. Desalination is a cost-effective technology that can transform an abundance of salt water into a reliable supply of potable, fresh water, which is a great way to fight climate change and have enough water for our region’s water requirements. Ras Al Khair, Saudi Arabia, is producing 1,036,000 meters (273,682,192) per day of desalinated water. #RandolphHarris 23 of 29

America needs an approach to eliminate safety vulnerabilities in American cities. There needs to be a road map by the end of 2025, outlining a prioritized approach to eliminate crisis situations in America. There is enough money to send aid to foreign nations, but the American government does not have enough money to care for its infrastructure, provide adequate resources, or end the affordable housing crisis. Nor is there enough money to fund other national critical functions (NCFs). These bad practices of putting America and Americans last are considered exceptionally risky, particularly to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. As a result, the American automobile trade deficit with Japan was $39 billion. Additionally, Japan exported 1.4 million cars to the United States of America, but only imported 16,000 American-built automobiles. However, Japan imported approximately 143 thousand motor vehicles from the European Union. This is why President Trump created tariffs. We need to balance the trade deficit that America faces with other nations so we are not taken advantage of and so America can go bank to being a creditor nation, instead of borrowing money for other countries. Each year, President Trump is bringing $400 Billion in Tariff revenue into America and hundreds of thousands of new jobs. With this money, America is paying down debt, and with a portion of it, President Trump plans to send Americans a stimulus check anywhere in the range of $1,000 to $2,000. However, if President Trump’s Tariffs are deemed illegal by the Supreme Court, taxpayers will have to pay back trillions and trillions of dollars. As we literally and /or figuratively see gangs, federal judges, and Governor Gavin Newsom fighting with federal law enforcement and President Trump– states and cities refusing to honor federal laws. Politicians are also showing an utter disregard for the Constitution of the United States of America, and anarchy is becoming increasingly common. #RandolphHarris 24 of 29

Anarchism is a cluster of doctrines and attitudes centered on the belief that government is both harmful and unnecessary. Derived from the Greek root anarchos, meaning “without authority,” anarchism, anarchist, and anarchy are used to express both approval and disapproval. The anarchist denies man-made laws, regards property as a means of tyranny, and believes that crimes are merely the product of property and authority. However, the anarchist would argue that their denial of constitutions and governments leads not to “no justice” but to the real justice inherent in the free development of human sociality—the natural inclination, when unfettered by laws, to live according to the principles and practice of mutual aid. Anarchism is also a form of treason. Treason, the crime of betraying a nation or a sovereign by acts considered dangerous to security. In English law, treason includes the levying of war against the government and the giving of aid and comfort to the monarch’s enemies. In the United States of America, treason was defined restrictively by the framers of the Constitution. Treason against the United States of America “shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them aid and comfort,” which is something that many politicians are currently guilty of. The American government should know all exploitable vulnerabilities and fix them before the situation becomes a crisis. Failure to take such mitigating actions is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. The American government must understand that significant time and resources must be invested in America. They must also encourage corporations to plan for both mitigating safety vulnerabilities in the short term and eliminating them in the long term. For instance, a company might begin by reaching out to the federal, state, or local government and requesting tax incentives to provide security to dangerous communities, to help the government repair bridges and potholes. #RandolphHarris 25 of 29

Drug cartels have been threatening the health and safety of Native American communities. The trafficking of dangerous and illegal drugs into their territories is leading to a second genocide. The overdose rate for Indigenous people is 42 percent higher than the national average. A recent bust on Montana’s Blackfeet Nation’s Tribal Reservation resulted in the seizure of more than 700,000 fentanyl pills, which was the largest bust in Montana history. Recently, the Blackfeet Nation had to declare a state of emergency after facing 17 overdoses in just one week. There are only 6.8 million Native Americans left in the world, which is 2 percent of the American population. We should be doing more to protect these proud and honorable people; they should not want for anything. People rush and give away resources to illegal immigrants, but totally disregard the Indigenous people of this land, as their race silently fades away into extinction. We must secure our borders and increase federal funding to Native American tribes so we can save this precious population. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom has given billions of taxpayer dollars away to illegal immigrants and protected them from law enforcement, while arresting law-abiding Americans because they cannot afford to pay rent or mortgage, and the homeless shelters are unsafe, overcrowded, and have restrictions on who is allowed inside. He has also totally ignored the cartel problems on American lands. Clean air, water, land, and preserving our heritage are extremely important. We cannot just allow criminals to kill off the people who are native to this land and do nothing about it. Wars have been started over governments that tax citizens without representation. Taxation without representation is what led to the American Revolution. #RandolphHarris 26 of 29

Much like the land crisis in Las Vegas, we could also run out of land to farm and will not be able to grow or cultivate our own food. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. Also, country of origin labeling is very important so Americans can know where their food is coming from and can support American farmers and ranchers. As money flows, it influences further investment. Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. Once the land is built on, we lose it forever. And in the future, there may be food wars. Also, to ensure that we have farmland and buildable land for future use, we need to start limiting the number of people allowed to immigrate to America. Perhaps with the immigrants we do allow into America, there needs to be a diversity program to make sure we have a population that equally represents all races of people. If Americans continue to spend money on American products, then more need to be made to keep up the inventory. When investors notice these goods are selling, it gives them the confidence to pour more money into that local business. It shows that people want these goods made in America and pressures investors to keep these goods and services in America. The jobs stay here, the business stays in America, wages naturally increase, and more money is invested to keep up with demand. This reduces the burden on the taxpayer. When you support American businesses, that money stays in our economy and can help to reduce the national debt. The government creates debt by borrowing from businesses in the private sector or from foreign countries. It also increases the national debt by spending more than it gains in tax revenue in a fiscal year. #RandolphHarris 27 of 29

When people shop locally, more tax money stays in the economy and goes to the government. This way, it keeps more money in our national economy and keeps more jobs located in America which also sends more taxes to the government, which can again help to reduce the national debt. When you buy foreign goods, these companies usually have lighter tax loads or exemptions, meaning less money for the national debt, plus you are helping to strengthen these foreign nations by sending more money overseas. Buying American-made products is also better for the environment and helps to reduce the carbon footprint because these products do not have to travel nearly as far. Furthermore, American companies and manufacturers are held to much higher standards on pollution. American companies must be more careful about air, land, and water pollution and have proper ways to dispose of waste. Under President Trump’s administration, he has make America a priority. President Trump has closed the southern border, illegal crossings have fallen to an all time low, and are 90 percent lower than under the previous administration. Since President Trump’s crack down on crime, violent crimes in Washington D.C. have dropped by approximately 80 percent. He has stopped thousands of pounds of drugs from entering America and killing citizens. And since President Trump took office, investments in America have increased by trillions of dollars in U.S.A. manufacturing, production, and innovation. As you can see, President Donald Trump and his pledge to “Make America Great Again” is exactly what America needs to save the country and the American people. And yes, diversity is important, so you can see why it is also important to preserve blonde hair and blue eyes, as the people with these characteristics are becoming a minority in America. #RandolphHarris 28 of 29

We must think before we can understand the soul’s existence; we must understand before we can realize it. The earliest beginnings of thought, as apart from instinct, when it was itself still but a lurking tendency, belong far back in primeval time. The human intellect as we find it today, so rich and developed an instrument for the consciousness of the ego, did not arrive at this fullness without a series of graduated stages. We have had plenty of scientific thinking, business thinking, and political thinking long enough, but we have had very little inspired thinking. That is the world’s need. The intellect is cradled in selfishness but runs the evolutionary track into reason, where it will one day finish at the winning-post of selflessness. As a reminder, parents, please teach your children to love America and be patriotic citizens, and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. It is inborn in the human mind to wish to know. If this begins with the endless surface questions of a child’s curiosity, if it continues into deeper questions of a scientist’s probing investigation, it cannot and does not stop there. For the higher part of the mind will eventually come into unfoldment, that union of abstract reflective thought with mystical intuition, which is true intelligence, which needs and sees a view of the whole of things. And so, the knowing faculty enters the realm of philosophy. Therefore, remember to take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. Also, to make sure they have all the resources required, please donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to help improve our national security. “Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” #RandolphHarris 29 of 29


According to locals, over a century ago, the land that houses The Winchester Mansion had been vacant forever. Then, sometime in the early afternoon of Saturday, March 13, 1886, Sheriff Angel Camilio began getting reports that a massive castle made of wood had suddenly appeared. Gables rose, towers peaked into the sky as the mansion mushroomed into a labyrinth overnight.

The house’s sudden manifestation had been both disconcerting and fascinating to the community. Some felt dark curses flowing from the estate, and things moving around in the darkness. Others saw a fairytale castle glimmering in the spring sunlight. Perhaps this is why there are no records of construction, no blueprints, and no permits filed with the county. And then one day, a hearse came tearing through the gates, and in that hearse was a coffin, some believed it contained Mrs. Winchester.

According to legend, when Sarah Lockwood Pardee (Winchester) married William Wirt Winchester in 1862, she enjoyed a life of extravagant luxury. William Winchester, President of the Winchester repeating rifle, became a very wealthy man through the sale of his guns, and the couple were among the elite New England society.

However, in 1866, the death of their infant daughter drove Mrs. Sarah Winchester into a deep depression from which many thought she would never emerged. Several years later, she lost her husband to tuberculosis, and her grief was overwhelming. Mrs. Winchester sought the counsel of a Boston medium to reach her beloved dead family members. The medium told the grieving widow that she was cursed and demons straight from hades had sought revenge by ending the lives of her beloved husband and darling baby girl.

She also told Mrs. Winchester they would kill her too, unless she moved out West and built a great house for the spirits. In addition, Mrs. Winchester was told construction on the house must never end in order to appease the spirits and keep her alive, perhaps even give her eternal life. Mrs. Winchester followed the medium’s suggestions, and in 1886, she moved to the Santa Clara valley just outside San Jose, where she bought an 18-room farmhouse and property to build her mansion. At its peak, the Mansion once stood 9-stories tall and had as many as 600-rooms. Today, the stately mansion is 4-storys, and over 100,000 square feet.

Experience an unforgettable journey back to the time of kings and queens with this entry ticket for The Winchester Mansion in Santa Clara, California, which was the residence of Heiress Sarah L. Winchester. Come and see what secrets this so-called, “Winchester Mystery House” may hold. Take advantage of this fascinating experience. After the tour, there will be time to enjoy the mansion’s splendor at your own pace. You might even discover secret passages that lead to hidden chambers within the mansion. These chambers served as safe places for valuables, precious documents, and as private sanctuaries for Mrs. Winchester, and allowed her to move stealthily throughout her home. At one time, there were even secret tunnels that extended beyond the mansion, leading to nearby Victorian houses that were also on the property, and other structures, creating a network of escape routes or hidden pathways.

Please come and enjoy a delicious meal at Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, which once spanned 740 acres, all the way down to Stevens Creek Boulevard; wander 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 for purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/


Harris Plumbing, Heating, Air, & Electric has been in business for 30 years. How many businesses can say that? We take pride in everything we do – no matter how big or small the service call might be. We’re here to help your home be as safe and comfortable as possible for you and your family. We take that responsibility very seriously as a company.

Harris will ensure you have the information you need to decide what to do next, whatever your home is facing. We’ll perform a diagnosis and detail what issues are present before starting any work. This gives you a personalized quote and service plan specific to your home’s needs, not some random quote based on the best guess. The only way we can do our best work is to make sure we handle the issues at hand. https://www.callharrisnow.com/about-us/


With its top ranking in Consumer Reports’ Auto Brand Report Card and consistent market share growth, BMW, The Ultimate Driving Experience, has demonstrated its ability to produce high-performing, reliable vehicles that meet consumer demands. BMW stands out due to its focus on driving dynamics and engineering excellence. While other luxury brands prioritize comfort and opulence, BMW is known for creating cars that are fun to drive and offer a unique connection between the driver and the machine. This is why BMW is known as The Ultimate Driving Machine. https://www.brianharrisbmw.com/

Randolph Harris San Francisco Taxation & Mergers

Building strong and lasting client relationships is crucial for a successful legal career. Many lawyers mistakenly believe that mastering legal skills alone ensures success, but law is fundamentally a service industry—our job is to solve problems through the time we sell. To build long-term relationships, attorneys must focus on three core elements: knowing their clients, understanding how their legal issues fit into a larger context, and consistently delivering exceptional service.

Randy advises clients with regard to business transition, taxable and tax-deferred mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, restructuring, integrated tax planning, federal and state tax controversy resolution, and real estate transactions. Trust is the cornerstone of any client relationship. Ultimately, my clients feel they are in capable hands with someone who genuinely understands their problems and goals. https://www.jmbm.com/l-randolph-harris.html


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“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.” -President Abraham Lincoln

America is a nation founded on godly principles, by God-fearing men. As a nation, we have convinced ourselves of our uniqueness with concepts such as Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism. Manifest destiny was the imperialist belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand from sea to shining sea.

American exceptionalism, idea that the United States of America is a unique and even morally superior country for historical, ideological, or religious reasons. As a nation we appear favored and blessed by the Lord with success and prosperity unparalleled in human history.

America has a lot of amazing things – its beautiful natural scenery, vibrant cities, unique culture, and some of the world’s most iconic landmarks — it us no wonder many choose to make America their home. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
The Curse of Bigness

Approximately sixty six percent of Americans report that high inflation has made their financial situation worse. Families with lower incomes are especially suffering. Another twenty percent of Americans have reported that the rising prices have made their financial health much worse. Housing costs in California have long been higher than the national average. In recent years, these costs have grown substantially—in some cases, growing at historically rapid rates. California’s home prices have far exceeded the rest of the country and the state is about thirty three percent more expensive than a mid-tier home in the rest of the country—a gap that has widened over the last decade. Monthly payments for a newly purchased mid-tier home—including mortgage, taxes, and homeowners’ insurance—have increased dramatically over the last couple of years. Payments for a mid-tier home were over $5,000 a month in March 2024—an eighty percent increase since January of 2020. Payments for a bottom-tier home versus renting are near levels that have not been seen since the housing bubble in the mid-2000s. This rapid increase in monthly costs for homebuyers was driven by higher home prices and increasing mortgage rates. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Costs of buying a home have grown by more than median income. Affordability depends on both the costs of the housing, as well as the income and/or wages of households. Annual household income needed to qualify for a mortgage on a mid-tier California home in March 2024 was about $235,000—over two times the median California household income in 2022 ($85,300). For a bottom-tier home, about $140,000 in annual income is required to qualify for a mortgage—more than 50 percent higher than median household income in 2022. Furthermore, rental prices are unaffordable for a record number of American with half of all renters paying more than thirty percent of their income on rent and utilities. In New York, rent for a 1-bedroom apartment is $4,300 a month; Santa Clara the number is $3,290 per month; and in Sacramento the average 1-bedroom apartment is $2,135 per month. If it were true that the terrible results of the degrading conditions forced upon the dwellers in the slums were transmitted to their children by heredity, and within few generations they become fixed character, the hope for a regenerated society would be much more difficult to realize. If that were the case, these unfortunate creatures would continue to act in the same way for several generations, no matter how their environment had been transformed by the corporate actions of society. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

The poverty line for a family of four is $62,300. Many of the people who make this amount of money are those with high school diplomas and graduate degrees as well as blue-collar and white-collar workers who live in both rural and urban American. Also, about 4o percent of Americans are unable to plan beyond their next paycheck, while nearly fifty percent of them said they do not have $500 saved for emergencies. Price increases are devasting for lower-income Americans because they tend to spend more their paychecks on necessities and have less money to save. The typical American household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 compared with three years ago. For those on Social Security retirement, cost of living adjustments are not helping them much. Our affair is not with the evolution of life and its adaptation to the natural environment, but with the evolution of man, and the adaptation of life to his purposes. And even the control of life around us matters less than that of our psychological evolution and of social progress. If no Utopia is in the making, at least, some believe there should be a shift away from the free competitive order. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Capitalism is beginning to turn into the welfare capitalism; the frustrations of the middle class and the needs of the poor are accelerating the change. Men sense that a different order is slowly arising. Although they can seldom describe it, they have expressed it variously in their slogans and titles: they speak of the New Nationalism, the Square Deal, the New Nationalism, the Square Deal, the New Freedom, the New Competition, the New Democracy—and, in time, of the New Deal. Previous reform and protest movements have been disjointed and uncoordinated uprisings of workers and farmers; now the middle class is drawn into the fray. The middle-class citizen, as producer and consumer, is beginning to feel the growth of inflation and fears that he will be grounded between large combinations of capital, labour, and Artificial Intelligence. As the standard of living, the figure of the great capitalist entrepreneur, hitherto heroic, lost much of his glamour. He is condemned as an exploiter of labour and an extorter from the consumer, pilloried as an unfair competitor, and exposed as a corrupter of political life. In a society of great collective aggregates, the traditional emphasis upon the exploits of the individual lost much of its appeal. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

The old problem of defending competition from critics on the left now pales as people are forced to face “the curse of bigness,” the more imminent threat to competition from the offspring of competition itself. Our industry is a fight of every man for himself. The prize we give the fittest is monopoly of the necessary life, and we leave these winners of the powers of life and death wield them over us by the same “self-interest” with which they took them from us. “There is no hope for any of us, but the weakest must go first,” is the golden rule of business. There is no other field of human associations in which any such rule of action is allowed. The man who should apply in his family or in his citizenship this “survival of the fittest” theory as it is practically professed and operated in business would be a monster, and would be speedily made extinct. It is laissez faire as policy that is most completely discredited. While the old, simple apotheosis of competition has faded, few have ceased altogether to believe in it. One of the primary aims, indeed, of the middle-class revolt is to restore so far as possible the pristine conditions of competitive business. However, even if the supposed benefits of competition were to be retained, some form of government regulation is needed to restrain monopoly. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

American industry is not free, as once it was free. The man with only a little capital is finding it harder to get into the field, more and more impossible to compete with the big fellow. Why? Because the laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak. This the small entrepreneur and his sympathizers are trying to change the laws because the middle class is grasping for life and capital and many fear becoming homeless. The little individualist, recognizing his individual impotence, realizing that he does not possess within himself even the basis of a moral judgement against his big brother, begins to change his point of view. He no longer hopes to right all things by his individual efforts. He has turned to the law, to the government, to the state. The right of competition must be limited to preserve it. For instance, the American Automobile industry produces some of the best designed and best performing vehicles in the World, but when Japanese automobiles flooded the markets back in the 1970s and 80s, during the gas crisis, people got hooked on them and have yet to return to their roots. To encourage people to buy American cars, we need to put tariffs on Japanese cars to not kill the American automobile industry. For excesses of competition leads to monopoly, as excesses of liberty lead to absolutism. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

The issue therefore is: Regulated competition versus regulated monopoly. In the past, as serious attempts to alter the business structure through legislation increased, there came a flood of laws to relieve the working class. Intellectuals, humanitarians, and social workers threw themselves on the side of labour, and drew support from a middle class which had no desire to see industrial oppression bring collectivism from the left. In increasing numbers, state legislatures adopted laws increasing minimum wage, limiting worker’s compensation, and similar measures of reform. Sympathy for union activity grew stronger among intellectuals. If we are not careful, with the amount of inflation we are experiencing today, Americans could return to child labour, more people may engage in selling pleasures of the flesh and peddling contraband. We could see comfort stations popping up in suburban communities and becoming as popular as liquor stores in the cities. We already have drug shops peddling illegal drugs to anyone who walks through the doors. And 65,000 catalytic converters were stolen in 2022. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Women have been convinced that their place is no longer in the home. They are encouraged to hire nannies and order already prepared meals kits. They are sent the message that they are no longer homemakers and care givers to their families. If there is a “housing shortage” and people cannot afford the supply of housing, means that there is too much demand from overpopulation. The masses as well the classes must be judged impartially through the arbitrament of the universal struggle. The state is conceived by all reformers to be an indispensable instrument of the new reconstruction. We must have a fervent plea for the abandonment of the traditional American mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism in favour of a more positive attempt to realize the national promise. Americans must learn to think in terms of purpose rather than destiny, and, without fear of the centralizing powers of government, to realize their purpose through a national policy. We can no longer treat life as something that has trickled down to us. We must deal with it deliberately, devise its social organization, alter its tools, formulate its method, educate and control it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

In endless ways we put intention where custom has reigned. We break up routines, make decisions, choose our ends, select means. The managed society which we anticipate must become a reality. If our children are to survive, the state of intervention must come of age. Despite the interruption of the Obama administration, the trend toward social cohesion must keep growing so the sons of the generation can witness the creation of a state machinery as great as any that could have appeared in the Victorian individualist’s worst nightmares. Whatever the human potentialities of this apparatus, for good or evil, the ideals of a cohesive and centralized society will become increasingly triumphant over those of the heyday of the age of information. While individualism has by no means disappeared, it is increasingly on the defensive. The religious keynote, the economic keynote, the scientific keynote of the twenty first century must be the overwhelming realization that mankind has such a mental and spiritual powers and such control over nature that the doctrine of the struggle for existence is definitely outmoded and placed by the higher law of cooperation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

We live in a consumer drive economy, and the attempt to question the pattern of unlimited consumption meets with a difficulty. Compulsive consumption compensates for anxiety. The need for this type of consumption stems from the sense of inner emptiness, hopelessness, confusion, and tension. By “taking in” articles of consumption, the individual reassures himself that “he is,” as it were. If consumption were to be reduced, a good deal of anxiety would become manifest. Resistance against the possible arousal of anxiety would result in an unwillingness to reduce consumption. The most telling example of this mechanism is to be found in the public’s attitude toward cigarette consumption. In spite of the well-known dangers to health, the majority goes on consuming cigarettes. It is because they would rather take a chance of earlier death than forgo pleasure? An analysis of the attitude of smokers shows that this is largely a rationalization. Cigarette consumption allays hidden anxiety and tension, and people would rather risk their health than to be confronted with anxiety. Yet, once the quality of the process of living becomes more important than it is now, many people will stop smoking or overconsuming, not for the sake of their physical health but because only when they face their anxieties can they find ways to more productive living. (If they are compulsive, most urges for pleasures, including pleasures of the flesh, are not caused by the wish for pleasure but by the wish for avoidance of anxiety.) #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

The problem of limits to consumption is so difficult to assess because, even in the affluent society of the United States of America, not all unquestionably legitimate needs are fulfilled. This holds true for at least 52 percent of the population. When the optimum consumption level has not been reached, how can we even think of reduced consumption? First, in the affluent sector, we have already reached the point of harmful consumption; second, the aim of ever-increasing consumption creates, even before the optimal consumption level is reached, an attitude of greed in which one wishes not only to have one’s legitimate needs fulfilled but dreams of a never-ending increase in desires and satisfactions. In other words, the idea of the limitless rise of production and consumption curve greatly contributes to the development of passivity and greed in the individual, even before peak consumption is reached. Despite these considerations, the transformation of our society into one which serves life must change the consumption and thereby change, indirectly, the production pattern of present industrial society. Such a change would obviously come not because of bureaucratic orders but of studies, information, discussion, and making on the part of the population, educated to become aware of the problem of the difference between life-furthering and life-hindering kinds of needs. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Awareness of illusions is the condition for freedom and human action. Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless World, just as it is the spirit of an unspiritual situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man will wear the chain without any fantasy or consolation, but so that he will shake off the chain and cull the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, to make him think and act and shape his reality like a man who has been disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve round himself and therefore round his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun, which revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself. How can man attain the goal of freeing himself from illusions? The behaviourists try to explain human activity without recourse to terms referring to consciousness, such as reward or satisfaction. #Randolphharris 12 of 18

Instead, behaviourists invoke a circular argument, stating that behaviour is “shaped” (into skills, or patterned habits) by reinforcers. A reinforcer is any consequence to action which strengthens, that is, increases the probability of the recurrence of, a response. To an observer who is not a behaviorist, the “reinforcing stimulus” may look suspiciously like a reward or a pleasant experience; the behaviourist prefers to avoid such subjectivistic terms. Skinner and his followers have been consulted by officials concerned with the management of prisoners’ behaviour in prisons and the behaviour of patients in mental hospitals, and by administrators of school systems who wish to make teaching and learning more efficient. There is considerable controversy between humanistic and behaviouristic psychologists about the issue of behaviour control, and the student should become familiar with the points of debate. Healthy personality, according to a behaviouristic view, calls for competence and self-control—the ability to suppress action that no longer yields positive reinforcers, and to learn action that is successful in attaining the good things. Such rapid adaptability is mediated by the ability to discern the contingencies, or rules implicit in nature or in society, according to which needs are gratified and dangers averted. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

I have always been uneasy about the behaviouristic approach to human nature, because it appeals to the power motive in the behaviour scientist. Moreover, research in behaviourism is frequently funded by agencies interested in controlling the behaviour and experience of other persons for the institution rather than the person. If a definite distinction is thus established between freely associating and understanding, when does one stop associating and try to understand? Fortunately, there are no rules whatever. If thoughts flow freely there is no sense in arresting them artificially. Sooner or later, they will be stopped by something stronger than themselves. Perhaps the person arrives at a point where he feels curious about what it all may mean. Or he may suddenly strike an emotional chord that promises to shed light on something that is troubling him. Or he may simply run out of thoughts, which may be a sign of resistance but also may indicate that he has exhausted the subject for the time being. Or he may have only a limited time at his disposal and still want to try himself at interpreting his notes. As the understanding of associations, the range of themes and combinations of themes that they may present is so infinite that there cannot possibly be any fixed rules regarding the meaning of individual elements in individual contexts. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

When a person stops associating and begins to go over his notes to understand them, his method of work must change. Rather than being entirely passive and receptive to whatever emerges, he becomes active. Now his reason comes into play. He no longer excludes reason. Even now he does not use it exclusively. It is difficult to describe with any accuracy the attitude he should adopt when he tries to grasp the meaning of a series of associations. The process should certainly not degenerate into a mere intellectual exercise. If he wants, he will do better to play chess or predict the course of World politics or take to crossword puzzle. An effort to figure out completely rounded interpretations, not missing any possible connotation, may gratify his vanity by proving the superiority of his brains but will scarcely take him much closer to a real understanding of himself. Such an effort entails a certain danger, for it may hamper progress by engendering a smug know-it-all feeling while he has only catalogued items without being touched by anything. The other extreme, a merely emotional insight, is far more valuable. If it is not further elaborated this is not ideal either, because it allows many significant leads, not yet altogether lucid, to drop out of sight. However, as we have seen from Clare’s analysis, an insight of this kind may set something going. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Early in her work, Clare experienced an intense lost of feeling in connection with her dream of the foreign city; it was mentioned than that although it is impossible to prove whether this emotional experience had any effect upon the further analysis, through its disquieting nature it may well have loosened her rigid tabu against touching any of the complex ties that fastened her to Peter. Another instance occurred during Clare’s final battle with her dependency, when she felt her defiance against taking her life into her own hands; she had then no intellectual grasp of the meaning of this emotional insight, yet it helped her to get out of a state of lethargic helplessness. Instead of wanting to produce a scientific masterpiece, the person who is working alone should let his interpretation be directed by his interest. He should simply go after what arrests his attention, what arouses his curiosity, what strikes an emotional chord within him. If he is flexible enough to let himself be guided by his spontaneous interest, he can be reasonably certain that he will intuitively select those subjects which at the time are most accessible to his understanding, or which fall in line with the problem on which he is working on. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

When I first learned to read, I was absorbed in the joy of my learning. At the same time, it is true that until I could read for myself, I was dependent on my mother’s time: I had to wait for her to read to me. That could be called a problem. However, when I was eight and went to German school on Saturday mornings, I was lost in the enchantment of writing German script, the light lines up, the heavy lines down. It was utter fascination to find that a completely different set of sounds and “pictures” (letters)—like frau—meant in another part of the World what my mother was. To discover that kindergarten, to which I had gone, was a German word, not an English one, was like discovering that I had been in Germany instead of America. Then there were the words that were same as ours, and others that were nearly the same, which brought together what had seemed so far apart. I do not think I had a problem that led to my learning German. I did have some familiarity with it, to begin with. My German grandfather still spoke German when he had someone to speak it with. German was in this sense already a part of my life. However, what did my love of Latin in high school have to do with my life? The only connection that I can find is that I liked words, and the meaning of words, and the derivations of words. However, after a year I had got the hang of that and could look up the rest for myself when I needed. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

No one can be devoid of feeling, and the philosopher will not be exempt from this rule. However, whereas the ordinary man’s feelings are transient emotions, passions, stresses, or moods, the philosopher’s feelings nourish a sustained, elevate state. The mistake of taking personal feelings as fit judges of truth or reality is a grave barrier which often lies across the portal of philosophy. People put a grossly exaggerated value on them and are thus led astray from the true knowledge of a fact or a situation. Without changing a person’s feelings, no change for the better in his own life, in himself, and in his relationship with other persons can be stable. When his feelings are really a conscious or subconscious cover for other feelings, nothing will help, save the uncovering of what the ego has hidden. Generous feeling must be directed by sound judgment, fervent devotion must be led by wise discrimination. The longing for inward security and invulnerable peace is one which a man can certainly satisfy. However, he cannot satisfy it on his own terms. Life has always and inseparably dictated the price which must be paid for it. It is easy to talk vaguely of lofty ideas, hard to put them where they belong—in our personal relationships. The line of conduct which impulse suggests is often different from that which deliberate reflection or deeper intuition suggests. Only when a man so develops himself that the two lines harmoniously coincide will he know the peace of never being torn in two—either mentally or emotionally. Then only, when desire and duty agree perfectly with one another, will he be happy. For, when reason approves what feeling chooses, and the inner balance is perfect, the resulting decision is more likely to be a right one than not. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

The Winchester Mystery House

In 1890, there was an abundance of evidence concerning unspeakable horror lurking in the blackness beyond. The butler was sleeping in the front left bedroom on the second floor, and he felt that something was in there; he could hear someone breathing. He got up and turned the light on, and at that every moment he saw something go up the wall and up the fireplace. He did not know what it was. He could hear the noise, and saw it go up the chimney and then take off. That scared him. He sat up the rest of the night. Other times he has heard something walking behind him. Four or five different servants had the same experience.

Please 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/

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If Nature is Hard, Truth is Cruel

Life can be difficult for people who do not have peace in their homes or environments due to the increase of people who are living with untreated mental illness. Unlike when people are committing crimes, and one has the option to call the police, when an individual or a group of people are displaying extremely immature behaviour and displaying symptoms of mental illness, there is no one to call. Close to 66 percent of adults with mental illness and adolescents with major depressive disorder do not get treatment. Nearly 1 in 7 California adults experience mental illness, and one in 26 has a serious mental illness that makes it difficult to carry out daily duties. Mental health challenges can impact anyone, regardless of education, geography, faith, calling, or family. They are nothing to be ashamed of and should be met with love. More than half the World’s population lives in cities, and the number is expected to continue to increase in the coming years. Living in urban areas has been associated with increased risk for mental disorders, including anxiety, depression and schizophrenia. Research using functional magnetic resonance imaging had identified changes in the brain indicating that urban upbringing and city living are linked to social stress processing. Among the potentially contributing factors to poorer mental health in urban areas are air pollution and other exposure to toxins, increased noise, lack of open space, crime and social inequalities, and the stress of sensory overload. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Extreme heat has been associated with a range of mental health impacts. Research indicates that when people must endure extreme heat, this increases irritability, symptoms of depression and an increase in suicide. It can also affect behaviour, contributing to increased aggression, incidence of domestic violence, and increased use of alcohol or other substances to cope with stress. Also, rural people and/or those who are unemployed, and united rented to multiple individuals who are related do not tend to do well in high-rise buildings. High occupancy of these types of people in high-rise buildings turns the atmosphere into one like a jail or mental hospital. People do not respect personal space, private property, nor do they follow the laws or rules in their contracts. They start to feel like everyone is their family and friend, many people stop caring about how people perceive them, people do not clean up messes they make in common areas, and a lack of respect spreads and animosity throughout the community because of a loss of autonomy. However, high-rise buildings where rules are enforced, and people follow the laws tend to be more peaceful. And cities can provide advantages, such as better access to health care and education, and potential for social interaction. Mental health problems are common, so it is important to be aware of possible signs. Feeling worried, depressed, guilty, worthless or feeling an exaggerated sense of “high” may be signs of a mental health issue. If signs do not go away after two weeks, although there may not be a serious problem, it is best to seek help from a professional. If someone talks about suicidal thoughts or is engaging in high-risk activities, do not ignore this. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

A mental health disorder may start out as subtle changes to a person’s feelings, thinking and behaviour. If they have ongoing and significant changes, it could be a sign that they are developing a mental health disorder. If something does not seem “quite right,” it is important to have a conversation about getting help. An important part of good mental health is the ability to look at problems or concerns realistically. Everyone has days when they feel sad, stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed by life’s challenges. If you continue to struggle for several weeks or longer or your symptoms begin interfering with your daily life—at home, work, school, or in your relationships—seek help. Addressing mental health concerns early and often is the most effective approach and can help prevent a crisis in the future. Struggling with your mental health does not indicate a weakness in your character or spirit. Earthly situations may not be ideal, man’s spiritual DNA is perfect because his identity is as a son or daughter of God. A diagnosis connected to mental health should not be viewed as any less real than another medical diagnosis. Think about the following as you consider talking with a mental health professional: How long have you experienced these challenges? How much do these symptoms affect your daily life? Are you aware of others in your family who have experienced similar challenges? Are these problems causing significant distress in your life? Are your own attempts to make yourself feel better not helping? Has anyone who you trust mentioned something about your mood or behaviour? As you talk with someone working through mental health challenges, the most important things you can do are to listen and show empathy. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

However, you are not expected or encouraged to diagnose or provide treatment to others struggling with mental health issues. Yet, you can help them feel welcomed and included, find meaningful ways to contribute, and deepen their faith in Jesus as the Christ. Pray for guidance on what to say. Comforting someone can be intimidating, but it is most often better to reach our an say something than to say nothing. It is important that people who are working through mental health challenges know you care and want to support them. However, also let them know that happiness is a choice. No one else is to be regarded as responsible for man’s troubles, irritations, or disabilities. If he will analyse them aright, that is, with utter impersonality, he would see that the responsibility is not really in the other person, who apparently is the agent for these calamities, but in his own undisciplined character, his own egoistic outlook. The very fact that he has become aware of these faults arises because the light has come into existence and begun to play upon the dark places in his character, thus generating a conscious desire for self-improvement. This awareness is not a matter for depression, therefore. To wish one’s history to have been different from what it was, to pile up blame for one’s bad deeds, choices, and decisions, is to cling to one’s imaginary ego although seeking to improve it. Only by rooting up and throwing out this false imagination which identifies one with the ego alone can the mind become freed from such unnecessary burdens. You are to be penitent not only because your wrong acts may bring you suffering but also, and much more, because they may bring you farther away from the discovery of the Overself. To repine for past errors or to wish that what has been should not have been has only a limited usefulness. Analyse the situation, note effects, study causes, draw lessons—then dismiss the past completely. If the ego is discarded, all regrets over past acts are discarded with it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

He may be ashamed of what he did in the past but then he was that sort of man in the past. If he persists in identifying himself with the “I,” in time such feelings will come to him and cause this kind of suffering. However, if he changes over to identifying himself with the timeless being behind the “I” there can be no such suffering. If it is to effect this purpose, repentance must be thorough and whole-hearted. He must turn his back upon the former way of life. If Nature is hard, truth is cruel. It is unsparing to our egoistic desires, merciless in ferreting out our personal weaknesses. If it is right to forgive others for their sins against us, it must also be right to forgive ourselves and not constantly condemn ourselves to self-reproach. However, we ought not do so prematurely. When a man becomes aware of his wrong-doing and realizes its meaning for himself and its effect upon others, he has taken the first step towards avoiding its inevitable consequences. When he becomes deeply repentant, he has taken the second step. When he tries to eliminate the fault in his character which produced the evil conduct and to make amends to others, where possible, he has taken the final step. The quest will uncover the weakest places in his character, one by one. It will do so either by prompting him from within or by exposing him from without. If he fails to respond to the first way, with its gentle intuitive working, he must expect to endure the second way, with its harsh pressure through events. The only protection against his weaknesses is first, to confess them, and then, to get rid of them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

The constant nagging of those with whom he is compelled to live, work, or associate, so far as there is any truth in their exaggerations or misunderstandings, can be made to serve a most useful purpose by arousing in him the necessity of change and self-improvement. However much of his self-love is wounded and however long it may take to achieve this and to correct his faults, he will only profit by it. With his success a separation may occur, and they may be set free to go their own way. It may be brought about by their own voluntary decisions or by the compulsion of destiny. When a relationship is no longer useful to evolution or justified by universal law, an end will come to it. This acceptance of other people’s criticisms, humbly and without resentment, may be compared to swimming against the current of a stream. Here the stream will be that of his own nature. In this matter he should look upon the others as his teachers—taking care however to separate the emotional misunderstandings and egoistic exaggerations from the truth. He is to regard the others as sent by the Overself to provoke him into drawing upon or deliberately developing the better qualities needed to deal with such provocations, and not only to show him his own bad qualities. Out of the shadows of the past, there will come memories that will torment as they teach him, pictures that will hurt as they illustrate error, sin, and weakness. He must accept the experience unresistingly and transmute it into moral resolve and ethical guidance for the future. The seeker should try to regard his weakness and faults from a more balanced and impersonal point of view. While it is correct for him to be ashamed of them, he need not go to the other extreme and fall into a prolonged fit of gloom or despair about them. Since repentance, coupled with an unswayable determination to prevent further recurrences, is the philosophic way to deal with them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

To have discovered a sin in oneself, and to have gone on committing it, is to sin doubly. We civilized men do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. Thus, the weak members of civilized society propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. However, a ruthless policy of elimination would betray the noblest part of our nature, which is itself securely founded in the social instincts. We must therefore bear with the evil effects of the survival and propagation of the weak, and rest our hopes on the fact that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound. All who cannot spare their children abject poverty should refrain from marriage; the prudent should not shirk their duty of maintaining the population, for it is through the pressure of population and the consequent struggles that man has advanced and will continue to advance. Primeval men and their apelike progenitors, along with many lower animals, were probably social in their habits, and remote primitives practiced division of labour. Man’s social habits have been of enormous importance in his survival. Selfish and contentious people will not cohere, and without coherence nothing can be effected. Man’s moral sense to be an inevitable outgrowth of his social instincts and habits is a crucial factor in group survival. The pressure of group opinion and the moral effect of family affections is ranked with intelligent self-interest as biological foundations of moral behaviour. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

In the question of the possibility of making the unconscious conscious, it is of the foremost importance to recognize factors which obstruct this process. There are many factors which make it difficult to arrive at insight into the unconscious. Such factors are mental rigidity, lack of proper orientation, hopelessness, lack of any possibility to change realistic conditions, etcetera. However, there is probably no single factor which is more responsible for the difficulties of making the unconscious conscious than the mechanism which Dr. Freud called “resistance.” What is resistance? Like so many discoveries, it is so simple that one might say anyone could have discovered it—yet it required a great discoverer to recognize it. Let us take an example: your friend must undertake a trip of which he is obviously afraid. You know that he is afraid, his wife knows it, everyone else knows it, but he does not know it. He claims one day that he does not feel well, the next day that there is no need to make the trip, the day after that there are better ways to achieve the same result without traveling, then the next day that your persistence in reminding him of the trip is an attempt to force him, and since he does not want to be forced, he just will not make the trip, and so on, until he will say that it is now too late to go on the trip, anyway, hence there is no use in thinking any further about it. If, however, you mention to him, even in the most tactful way, that he might not want to go because he is afraid, you will get not a simple denial, but more likely a violent barrage of protestations and accusations which will eventually drive you into the role of having to apologize, or even—if you are now afraid of losing his friendship—of declaring that you never meant to say that he was afraid and, in fact, ending up with enthusiastic praise of his courage. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

What has happened? The real motivation for not wanting to go is fear. (What he is afraid of is of no significance for the purposes of this discussion; suffice it to say, that his fear could be objectively justified or the reason for his fear merely imagined.) This fear is unconscious. Your friend, however, must choose a “reasonable” explanation for his not wanting to go—a “rationalization.” He may discover every day a new one (anyone who has tried to give up smoking knows how easily rationalization comes) or stick to one main rationalization. It does not matter, in fact, whether the rationalization as such is valid or not; what matters is that it is not the effective or sufficient cause for his refusal to go. The most amazing fact, however, is the violence of his reaction when we mention the real motive to him, the intensity of his resistance. Should we not expect him to be glad, or even grateful for our remark, since it permits him to cope with the real motive for his reluctance? However, whatever we think about what he should feel, the fact is that he does not feel it. Obviously, he cannot bear the idea of being afraid. However, why? There are several possibilities. Perhaps he has a narcissistic image of himself in which lack of fear is an integral part, and if this image is disturbed, his narcissistic self-admiration and, hence, his sense of his own value and his security would be threatened. Or perhaps his super-ego, the internalized code of right and wrong, happens to be such that fear or cowardice are bitterly condemned; hence to admit fear would mean to admit that he has acted against his code. Or, perhaps, he feels the need to save for his friends the picture of a man who is never frightened because he is so unsure of their friendship, that he is afraid they would cease liking him if they knew he was afraid. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Any of these reasons may be effective, but why is it that they are so effective? One of the answers lies in the fact that his sense of identity is linked with these images. If they are not “true”—then who is he? What is true? Where does he stand in the World? Once these questions arise, the person feels deeply threatened. He has lost his familiar frame of orientation and with it his security. The anxiety aroused is not only a fear of something specific as Dr. Freud saw it, like a threat to the genitals, or to life, etcetera; but it is also caused by the threat to one’s identity. Resistance is an attempt to protect oneself from a fright which is comparable to the fright caused by even a small earthquake—nothing is secure, everything is shaky; I do not know who I am nor where I am. In fact, this experience feels like a small dose of insanity which for the moment, even though it may last only for seconds, feels more than uncomfortable. It seems quite feasible that many functions of the art of medicine can be taken over by computer, like diagnosis, treatment, prescriptions, etcetera. However, it appears doubtful that the capacity for highly individualized observation, which the outstanding physician has, can be replaced by the computer, exempli gratia, observation of the expression in a person’s eye or face, a capacity impossible to quantify and to translate into programming language. Outstanding achievement in medicine will be lost in a completely automatized system. However, beyond this, the individual will be so completely conditioned to submit to machines that he will lose the capacity to take care of his health in an active, responsible way. He will run to the ”health service” whenever he had a physical problem, and he will lose the ability to observe his own physical processes, to discern changes, and to consider remedies for himself, even simple ones of keeping a diet or doing the right kind of exercise. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

If man should be relieved of the task of being responsible for the functioning of the productive and administrative system, he would become a being of complete helplessness, lack of self-confidence, and dependence on the machine and its specialists; he would not only be incapable of making active use of his leisure time, he would also face a catastrophe whenever the smooth functioning of the system was threatened. In this respect, even if machines could take care of all work, of all planning, of all organizational decisions, and even of all health problems, they cannot take care of the problems arising between man and man. In this sphere of interpersonal relations, human judgment, response, responsibility and decision the machine cannot replace human functioning. There are those, like Marcuse, who think that in a cybernated and “non-repressive” society that is completely satisfied materially there would be no more human conflicts like those expressed in the Greek or Shakespearean drama or the great novels. I can understand that completely alienated people can see the future of human existence in this way, but I am afraid they express more about their own emotional limitations than about future possibilities. If there are no materially unfulfilled needs, the assumption that the problems, conflicts, and tragedies between man and man will disappear is a childish daydream. The young lady we have been discussing for several weeks, Clare suffered from an incapacity to be alone. Clare could have started from the consideration that her spells of misery had already decreased markedly within the last year. They had decreased to such an extent that she herself dealt more actively with external and internal difficulties. This consideration would have led to the question of why she had to resort to the old technique at just this point. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Granted that Clare was unhappy alone, why did solitude present such an intolerable distress as to call for an instantaneous remedy? And if being alone was thus distressing, why could she not do something actively about it herself? Clare could also have started from an observation of her actual behaviour. She felt miserable when alone, but she made hardly any effort to mix with friends or to make new contracts; instead she withdrew into a shell and expected magic help. Despite her otherwise astute self-observation Clare overlooked completely how odd her actual behaviour was on this score. Such a blatant blind spot usually points to a repressed factor of great potency. However, if we miss a problem it catches up with us. This problem caught up with Clare some weeks later. She then arrived at a solution by a somewhat different route from either of those I have suggested—an illustration of the fact that also in psychological matters there are several roads to Rome. Since there is no written report on this part of her analysis, I shall merely indicate the steps that led up to the new insights. The first was a recognition that she could see herself only in the reflected light of others. The way in which she sensed that others evaluated her entirely determined the way she evaluated herself. Clare did not recall how she arrived at that insight. She remembered only that it suddenly struck her so forcibly that she almost fainted. The average person, like Clare, comes to fear living and experiencing the here and now. Rather, she tends to live mainly in the past, through obsessive remembering, and in the future, through obsessive remembering, and in the future, through anxious expectations of catastrophe. The average person is chronically self-conscious and dreads spontaneous action. Experiencing the self as dependent and helpless, this person turns to others for support and becomes angry when they do not live up to expectations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Much of our understanding about healthy personality has come from those who had been intimately acquainted with unhealthy personality. These include present-day counseling theorists such as Carl R. Rogers and original psychotherapists such as Dr. Sigmund Freud, who dedicated their professional lives to the alleviation of emotional suffering. While it is important to search out the unique characteristics of the healthy personality, the high-level functioning person, there is a wealth of learning that is derived from those clients or patients who have shared their innermost anxieties, fears, and sorrows with counselors. The healthy personality struggles to emancipate itself from morbidly dependent relationships with others and is capable of direct awareness of perceptions and feelings, rather than engaging chronically in abstract thinking, in recall, or in wishful or anxious imagination. The healthy personality can trust itself to be spontaneous in action. Sometimes dreams are focused on in therapy because every aspect of a dream represents some dimensions of a person’s experience, much of which the person disowns. By identifying with the different parts of the dream, the person could increase self-awareness, which, in turn, would increase the sense of vitality and foster continuing personal growth. Self-sufficiency, standing on one’s own two feet rather than relying on others for one’s security is extremely important. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

We must all understand that there is no one to blame, and all that I can do is get to work on myself now and break the chain, so that I will not do unto others what has been done to me. It is not enough that I simply know this. I can know without any action taking place either within me or outside me. (The one follows upon the other.) I can feel superior to someone who does not know what I know, without being one white a better person for my knowing. I must undo what has been done to me, by doing in another way. That is where the scary part comes in, in my experience: I can find it comforting to know, and almost terrifying to do. However, it is in the doing that I change too. When I moved to a town a thousand miles away where I knew no one, the doctor who had been recommended to me by his training would not cooperate with the regime which the previous doctor I have found—through painful trial and many errors—worked for me. I decided that it would have to get alone without one. This went well for a while, but then I hit a phase when I got worse in a way that I knew meant that the dosage of cortisone should be adjusted. I could not tell whether I should take more or less. I wanted to telephone the previous doctor for help. I did not and I felt noble about not calling him. This was the first time that I latched onto what has since proved to be a fact of my life, that when I feel noble about not doing something, it is not myself who is doing it. I got worse and worse and felt nobler and nobler. I thought that I was not calling the doctor, and in the objective or physical sense this was true: this person, this body, did not make the phone call. However, the inside World is not so simple as that. It could be, but it has an enormous capacity for getting mixed up because other people have got into me through their directives. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

I had a dream which made this clear to me. It is really beautiful, the way that something inside me goes on seeing clearly, even when what I call my “conscious” mind is so mixed-up that it is hell I live in. In my dream, I came into a room where a young lady sat rigidly on a bench with her eyes tight shut, in paint from sunlight that was glaring through a window in a band across her eyes. I thought how silly she was to sit there in torment, when all that she had to do was move and then she would be relieved, and her eyes could open. I (feeling very superior about acting), went to the window and let down the venetian blind, to free her. There were many people sitting around a refectory table absorbed in their conversation with each other. They had no interest in us. When I woke up, I lived with that dream until I knew that the foolish young lady was me—or that part of myself which programmed by other people, my robot self. I was not making the expensive phone call that would relieve me. The people who did not “care” about us were the gossipers who criticized people for being “extravagant” and “neurotic.” At this time, I had paid off my major debts incurred during illness, including fifteen months of back mortgage. I had a thousand $10,000 in the bank. However, I was still haunted by the years of being heavily in debt when I was criticized for expenditures and for being neurotic. The doctor I had not gone back to had told me that I was neurotic. Everyone knows neurotic people plague doctors with telephone calls. I was not going to. It was a completely unreal World that I was living in because the previous doctor did not think I was neurotic to call him when the cortisone needed to be changed, and as for the cost of the call, it would be less than the cost of going to a local doctor, which I would have felt no qualms about doing if I had had confidence in the doctor. When my mind gets mixed up, it just does not make sense. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

When I understood my difficulty, I started toward the phone. However, when I had taken a few steps, I stopped as though I had been stopped—not as though I had stopped myself. I could not go any farther. So I walked away, thought and did other things, and tried again. And got stopped again. When this happened, the effort of making myself take even one more step seemed too much, like trying to push a steam roller out of the way. It seemed foolish to try. Then my mind said to me, over and over, that it was all right, that if I understood what was wrong and knew what had happened to me, everything was fine. It was very convincing, although this told me nothing of what to do about the cortisone. This went on for two days before I fully knew that I had to put an end to it, that there was a battle going on in me that I had to win. I made myself go to the phone. When I heard the doctor’s voice, I said, with quavers that are not reproducible on paper, “This started out to be a medical call, but it has wound up as a psychiatric one.” Then we got around to the cortisone. Ater that, I had some difficulty about calling the doctor, but none that I could not break through fairly easily. After the first several times, I phoned him if I needed his help, and not if I did not, and that was all there was to it. This freedom was very beautiful to me, as it always is when I am free to act in accordance with the total circumstances on my own authority, not on what someone else thinks or says or has thought or has said that I or someone else should do. I live directly with the facts themselves. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

In this blend of analysing the results of past actions, reasoning about the probable results of present tendencies, measuring up to the standards of spiritual ideals, and obeying the quiet whispers of intuition, man will find a safe guide for shaping his future course of conduct. One should be eager and quick to judge, condemn, and correct himself, reluctant and slow to judge, condemn, and correct others. When he can bring himself to look upon his own actions from the outside just as he does those of other men, he will have satisfied the philosophical ideal. His errors and shortcomings can be excused by his sincerity and intentions, but that is not enough. He may accept such excuses but life itself will not. The explicit psychotherapy needs of our population are currently being served primarily by the members of three major professions. No one of these professions trains primarily and emphatically for the practice of psychotherapy. The trainings of the members of each of these professions is lengthy, expensive, and provides them respectively with unique skills and knowledge which are either irrelevant or at best tangential to the practice of psychotherapy. While there are a variety of schools of psychotherapy, diverse techniques and approaches to therapy, and different theories as to how it works, there is no evidence that the differences in these academic properties are significantly related to differences in the actual effectiveness of the psychotherapies carried out within them. As a matter of fact, the sheer amount of experience in doing therapy appears to be a major determinant of how the therapists think about or conduct theory. Major differences are found among the least experienced therapists; experienced therapists are more alike in their conceptualizations and practices than they are different. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

As yet a very limited amount of practical research has been conducted into this phenomenon. It has not yet been demonstrated to the general satisfaction of behaviour scientists that psychotherapy is in fact effective in relieving neurotic symptoms or achieving major and lasting re-orientation of disturbed personalities. The need for research is great and, in terms of the numbers of persons participating in therapeutic conversations, the opportunities are equally great. However, the highly trained experts who should be devoting major portions of their time to collaborative research are prevented (or dissuaded) from investigation by virtue of the pressure they feel to render those services whose efficacy is yet uncertain. If we are going to do more and better research, we must provide more therapy and at the same time permit our most highly skilled experts to do less direct therapy. Obviously, we need more therapists—and the only logical way we can hope to get them is to develop a more efficient program for training therapists. A host of persons untrained or partially trained in mental health principles and practices—clergymen, family physicians, teachers, probation officers, public health nurses, sheriffs, judges, public welfare workers, scout masters, county farm agents, and others—are already trying to help and to treat the mentally ill in the absence of professional resources. With a moderate amount of training through short courses and consultation on the job, such persons can be fully equipped with an additional skill as mental health counselors. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Each aspect of today’s fire service requires skill in mental health and the development of basic strategies. The Sacramento Fire Department does some kind of planning. Whether it called budgeting, prefire planning, long-range planning, comprehensive planning, five-year planning or strategic planning, the fire service has a long history of trying to look into the future to predict what will be needed. “My first firehouse turned out to be the same engine company my father had been in. A relatively quiet house. When he got sick and had to retire, that created the vacancy the commissioner appointed me to fill. It was nice of him, he didn’t have to do it. I actually took my father’s locker and everything else. My father was proud to see both my brother and me in the fire department, although he never pushed us to it. It was a great thrill to walk in the door of that firehouse as a fireman for the first time. I don’t know if I even touched the pavement. It was the realization of a lifelong dream. Neither my brother, nor I had dreamt of being an officer. But after a while, through the encouragement of other officers, we got to studying, and we studied together all the time. The tough part of our studies was the laws and ordinances. They were challenging and full of legal terminology. The interesting part, of course, was the firefighting tactics and all the fire hazards. Even the building construction information was interesting, I thought. At least it pertained to the job. But exactly how many feet a fire escape ladder must be from the ground and how many pounds a certain beam must support, that was very important to learn. Over the years the questions come up, and you do remember it, even if you have to look it up to be sure. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

“The tests are a sort of elimination contest, and winning involves a combination of two things. You have to do a lot of studying, and you have to be lucky. I don’t care who you are, they can always ask you about things you don’t know. A lot of fellows do all the work and still don’t make it. My brother ended up a battalion chief, and I made it to division chief. As I said, I never expected to be an officer, and this is just frosting on the cale all the way.” The World has surpassed the visions of our forebearers beyond their wildest dreams. The fire service is no different in this respect. The combined resources of the fire service, support from the community, and its peripheral industries have created a service that is beyond the wildest dreams of the fire chiefs of even a few short years ago. To help the Sacramento Fire Department continue to thrive, you can make a contribution. The range of one with a goodwill excludes none, includes all. One recognizes no enemies, only unloved men. To help preserve America and create more patriots, teach your children to love America and respect law and order. 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. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously, a man against his brother? We, the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish a Constitution of the United States of America. #Randolph Harris 20 of 20

The Winchester Mystery House

Mrs. Winchester was having her tea in the morning one early on a Sunday. Suddenly an extraordinary volley of noises broke out throughout the entire house. She described them as “banging, thumping, the whole place shaking.” The dog, Zip, was shut up in the library, while Mrs. Winchester took refuge in the Daisy Bedroom; the dog whined in terror as the noises increased in volume and in violence. Suddenly the noises ceased. When Mrs. Winchester looked up, she saw a woman in grey, with about half of her figure passed through the bedroom door. She ran to the door, but it was stuck. It was clear that this was no normal haunting.

Please 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/
Reality is Created by the Mind

Reality is created by the mind, we can change our reality by changing our minds. A sharply self-accusing honesty of purpose, a blunt integrity of conscience, will have again and again to thrust its sword into his conduct of life. An ethic that far outleaps the common one will have to become his norm. Conventional ideas of goodness will not suffice him; the quest demands too much for that. Few characters are completely good, totally selfless, and it leads only to dangerous illusions m when this is not remembered. New evils grow in those who deceive themselves, or others, by tall talk and exaggerated ideals. The goodness which philosophy inculcates is an active one, but it is not a sentimental one. It is more than ready to help others but not to help them foolishly. It refuses to et mere emotion have the last word but takes its commands from intuition and subjects its emotions to reason. It makes a clear distinction between the duty of never injuring another person and the necessity which sometimes arises of causing pain to another person. If at times it hurts the feelings of someone’s ego, it does so only to help his spiritual growth. This goodwill becomes instinctive but that does not mean it becomes unbalanced, wildly misapplied, and quite ineffectual. For the intelligence which is in wisdom accompanies it. The goodness which one man may express in his relation to another is derived ultimately from his own divine soul and is an unconscious recognition of, as well as gesture to, the same divine presence in that other. Moreover, the degree to which anyone becomes conscious of his true self is the degree to which he becomes conscious of it in others. Consequently, the goodness of the fully illumined man is immeasurably beyond that of the conventionally moral man. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Teachers value their students having worth, and this prizing extends to each and all the facets of the individual. Such a teacher can be fully acceptant of the fear and hesitation of the student as he approaches a new problem, as well as of the satisfaction he feels in achievement. If the teacher can accept the student’s occasional apathy, his desire to explore by-roads of knowledge, as well as his disciplined efforts to achieve major goals, he will promote this type of learning. If he can accept personal feelings which both disturb and promote learning—rivalry with a sibling, hatred of authority, concern about personal adequacy—then he is certainly such a teacher. This means acceptance of the whole student by the teacher—a prizing of him as an imperfect human being with many feelings, many potentialities. This prizing or acceptance is an operational expression of the teacher’s essential confidence in the capacity of the human organism. Why did Jesus as the Christ ask his followers to refrain from calling him good? By all ordinary standards he was certainly a good man, and more. It was because his goodness was not really his own; it derived from the Overself having taken over this whole person, his whole being. He will awaken to the realization that the chaotic unplanned character of the ordinary man’s life cramps his own possibilities for good. He will perceive that to let his thoughts drift along without direction and his feelings without purpose, is easy but bad. The term “good” is used here with clear consciousness that there is no absolute standard of goodness in common use, that which is regarded as good today may be unacceptable as such tomorrow, and that what one man calls good may be called evil by another man. What then is the sense which the student is asked to give this word? He is asked to employ it in the sense of a pattern of thinking, feeling, and doing which conforms to his highest ideal. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Another element in the teacher’s attitude is his ability to understand the student’s reactions from the inside, an empathic awareness of the way the process of education and learning seems to the student. This is a kind of understanding almost never exhibited in the classroom; yet when the teacher is empathic, it adds an extremely potent aspect to the classroom climate. When a child says, in a discouraged voice, “I cannot do this,” that teacher is most helpful who naturally and spontaneously responds, “You are just hopeless that you can ever learn it, are you not?” The usual denial of the child’s feelings by a teacher who says, “Oh but I am sure you can do it” is not nearly so helpful. These then are the essential attitudes of the teacher who facilitates learning to be free. There is one other function performed by such a teacher which is very important. It is the provision of resources. Instead of organizing lesson plans and lectures, such a teacher concentrates on providing all kinds of relevant raw material for use by the students, together with clearly indicated channels by which the students can avail themselves of these resources. This not only includes the usual academic resources—books, workspace, tools, maps, movies, recordings, and the like. It also incorporates human resources—persons who might contribute to the knowledge of the student. Most important in this respect is the teacher himself as a resource. He makes himself and his special knowledge and experience clearly available to the students, but he does not impose himself on them. He outlines the ways in which he feels he is most competent, and they can call on him for anything he is able to give, but this is an offer of himself as a resource, and the degree to which he is used is up to the students. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

The teacher thus concentrates on creating a facilitative climate and upon providing resources. He may also help put students in contact with meaningful problems. However, he does not set lesson tasks. He does not assign readding. He does not evaluate and criticize unless the student wishes his judgment on a product. He does not give examinations. He does not set grades. Perhaps this will make it clear that such a teacher is not simply giving lip service to a different approach to learning. He is, operationally, giving his students the opportunity to learn to be responsibly free. What is sin? It may be defined, first, as any act which harms others; second, as any act which harms oneself; third, as any thought or emotion which has these consequences. Goodness is naturally allied to the truth, is the perfume of it exhaled without self-consciousness. Evildoing is too vulgar. The spiritually fastidious man does not find himself set with a choice between it and the opposite. He cannot help but choose the good spontaneously, directly, and unhesitatingly. In the end the question of goodness involves the question of truth: one may be correctly known only when the other is also known. Whatever else he may be, he is no aspirant for sainthood. That admirable goal is quite proper for those whose innate vocation lies that way. However, it is not the specific goal for would-be philosophers. The same truth, ideal, or master that shows him the glorious possibilities of goodness within himself, will also show the ugly actualities of evil within himself. No sun, no shadow. Morally, emotionally, and intellectually, no man is all weakness or all strengths. All are a mixture of the two, only their proportion and quality varies. The good in man will live long after his faults have been forgotten. He who has achieved goodness in thought and feeling cannot fail to achieve it in action. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Sin is simply that which is done, through ignorance, against the higher laws. Virtue is the obedience to, and cooperation with, those laws. A sharp distinction between physical, or animal, purposeless evolution and mental, human evolution decisively modified by purposive action. Free trade societies are scattering tracts with a liberal hand, in the hope of stemming the tide. When society was being freed from monarchical and oligarchical rule, the natural-law and laissez-faire dogmas had been useful intellectual devices in those days. It was natural enough to oppose governmental interference when government was in the hands of autocrats, but it is folly to cling to this opposition in an age of representative government when the popular will can be exerted through legislative action. The assumptions are obsolete. There is no necessary harmony between natural law and human advantage. The laws of trade result in enormous inequalities in the distribution of wealth, which are founded in accidents of birth or strokes of low cunning rather than superior intelligence or industry. Nor is natural law a barrier against monopolies. Classical theory says that competition keeps prices down, but often competition multiplies the number of shops far beyond necessity, each of which must profit by exchange, and to do this all must sell dearer than would otherwise be necessary. This is particularly true of the distributive industries. In other lines competition breeds huge corporate organizations with dangerously broad powers. To break them up would be to destroy the legitimate product of natural law, the integrated organisms of social evolution. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The only constructive alternative is government regulation in the interest of society at large. Historic attempts at government regulation or management have not been the disasters that individualists charge. Witness the telegraph in Great Britain and the railroad systems of German and Belgium. The sphere of social control has been gradually expanding in the history of civilization, but for nearly two centuries, the English school of negative economists has devoted itself to the task of checking this advance. The goal is to utilize the social forces for human advantage in precisely the same manner as the physical forces have been utilized. It is only through the artificial control of natural phenomena that science is made to minister to human needs; and if social laws are analogous to physical laws, there is no reason why social science may not receive practical applications such as have been given to physical laws. The value system is based on the concept of what Albert Schweitzer called “reverence for life.” Valuable or good is all that which contributes to the greater unfolding of man’s specific faculties and furthers life. Negative or bad is everything that strangles life and paralyzes man’s activeness. All norms of Christianity or from the great humanist philosophers from the pre-Sokratics to contemporary thinkers are the specific elaboration of this general principle of values. Overcoming one’s greed, love for one’s neighbour, knowledge of the truth (different from the uncritical knowledge of facts) are the goals common to all humanist philosophical and religious systems of the West and the East. Only when he had reached a certain social and economic development which left him enough time and energy to enable him to think exclusively beyond the aims of mere physical survival, could Man discover these values. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

However, since this point has been reached, these values have been upheld and, to some extent, practiced within the most disparate societies—from thinkers in the Hebrew tribes to the philosophers of the Greek city-states and the Roman Empire, theologians in the medieval feudal society, thinkers in the Renaissance, the philosophers of the Enlightenment, down to such thinkers of the industrial society as Goethe, Marx, and, in our age, Einstein and Schweitzer. There is no doubt that in this phase of industrial society, the practice of these values becomes more difficult, precisely because the reified man experiences little of life and instead follows principles which have been programed for him by the machine. Any real hope for victory over the dehumanized society of the megamachine and for the building up of a humanist industrial society rests upon the condition that the values of the tradition are brought to life, and that a society emerges in which love and integrity are possible. Having stated that the values called humanistic deserve respect and consideration because they represent a consensus among all higher forms of culture, one must consider whether there is objective, scientific evidence which could make it compelling, or at least highly suggestive, that these are the norms which should motivate our private lives and which should be guiding principles for all the social enterprises and activities we plan. The character orientation, in Dr. Freud’s sense, is the source of men’s actions and of many of his ideas. Character is the equivalent of the animal’s instinctive determination which man has lost. Man acts and thinks according to his character, and it is precisely for this reason that “character is man’s fate,” As Heraclitus put it. Man is motivated to act and to think in certain ways by his character, and at the same time he finds satisfaction in the very fact that he does so. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The character structure determines action, as well as thoughts and ideas. Let us take a few examples: for the anal-hoarding character, the ideal of saving is most attractive and, in fact, he tends to regard saving as one of the major virtues. He will like a way of life in which saving is encouraged and waste prohibited. He will tend to interpret situations in terms of his dominant striving. A decision, for instance, of whether to buy a book, to see Winchester in the movies, or what to eat, will mainly be made in terms of “what is economical,” quite regardless of whether his own economic circumstances warrant such a principle of choice or not. He also will interpret concepts in the same way. Equality means to him that everybody has the same share of material goods and not, as it would mean t others of a different character, that men are equal because no man must be made the means for the purpose of another. A person with an oral-receptive character orientation feels “the source of all good” to be outside, and he believes that the only way to get what he wants==be it something material, be it affection, love, knowledge, pleasure—is to receive it from that outside source. In this orientation the problem of love is almost exclusively that of “being loved” and not that of loving. Such people tend to be indiscriminate in the choice of their love objects, because being loved by anybody is such an overwhelming experience for them, that they “fall for” anybody who gives them love or what looks like love. They are exceedingly sensitive to any withdrawal or rebuff they experience on the part of the loved person. Their orientation is the same in the sphere of thinking. If intelligent, they make the best listeners, since their orientation is one of receiving, not producing, ideas; left to themselves, they feel paralyzed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

It is characteristic of these people that their first thought is to find somebody else to give them the needed information, rather than to make even the smallest effort of their own. If religious, these persons have a concept of God in which they expect everything from God and nothing from their own activity. If not religious, their relationship to persons or institutions is very much the same; they are always in search of a “magic helper.” They show a particular kind of loyalty, at the bottom of which is gratitude for the hand that feeds them and the fear of ever losing it. Since they need many hands to feel secure, they must be loyal to numerous people. It is difficult for them to say no, and they are easily caught between conflicting loyalties and promises. Since they cannot say no, they love to say yes to everything and everybody, and the resulting paralysis of their critical abilities makes them increasingly dependent on others. They are dependent not only on authorities for knowledge and help but also on people in general for any kind of support. When alone, they feel lost because they feel that they cannot do anything without help. This helplessness is especially important about those acts which, by their nature, can only be done alone—making decisions and taking responsibility. In personal relationships, for instance, they ask advice from the very person about whom they must make a decision. When making important decisions, it is crucial to take a moment or even longer to really think about things before you make the final decision. You cannot just go on anyone’s word after all. You have got to take the time to research and find things out on your own. When you take enough time to evaluate your final decision, you can often avoid a bad situation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

We have been talking a lot about Clare recently. After much tribulation, Clare learned to search within herself for the sources of her troubles, and only after that work had proceeded, she investigated Peter’s share of her problems. Originally her self-examination was an attempt to find an easy clue with which to solve the difficulties of the relationship, but it led her eventually to some important insights into herself. Anyone in analysis must learn to understand not only himself but also the others who are a part of his life, but it is safer to start with himself. If he is entangled in his conflicts, the picture he will gain of the others will usually be a distorted one. From the data about Peter that Clare assembled in the course of her entire analytical work, her analysis of his personality was correct. Nevertheless, she still missed the one important point: that Peter, for whatever reasons of his own, was determined to break away from her. Of course, the assurance of love which he apparently never failed to give her must have betwixt her. On the other hand, this explanation is not quite sufficient, because it leaves open two questions: why her effort to reach a clear picture of him stopped where it did; and why she could visualize—though not put into effect—the desirability of her breaking away from Peter, but closed her eyes to the possibility of his breaking away from her. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

As a result of this remaining bond, Clare’s wish to break off remained short lived. She was unhappy while she was away from him and as soon as he joined her, she succumbed to his charm. Also, she still could not stand the prospect of being alone. Thus, the relationship went on. She expected less of him and was more resigned. However, her life still centered around him. Three weeks later she woke up with the name Margaret Brooks on her lips. She did not know whether she had dreamed of her, but she knew the meaning immediately. Margaret was a married friend whom she had not seen for years. She had been pitifully dependent on her husband even though he ruthlessly trampled on her dignity. He neglected her and made sarcastic remarks about her in front of others; he had mistresses and brought one of them into their home. Margaret had often complained to Clare in her spells of despair. However, would still turn out to be the best of husbands. Clare had been staggered at such a dependency and had felt contemptuous of Margaret’s lack of pride. Nevertheless, her advice to Margaret dealt exclusively with means of keeping the husband or of winning him back. She had joined her friend in the hope that all would be fine in the end. Clare knew that the man was not worth it, but since Margaret loved him so much this seemed the best attitude to adopt. Now Clare thought how stupid she had been. She should have encouraged Margaret to leave him. However, it was not this former attitude toward her friend’s situation that upset her now. What startled her was the similarity between herself and Margaret, which struck her immediately upon awakening. She had never thought of herself as dependent. And with frightening clarity she realized that she was in the same boat. She, too, has lost her dignity in clinging to a man who did not really want her and whose value she doubted. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Clare saw that she was bound to Peter with ties of overwhelming strength, that life without him was meaningless, beyond imagination. Social life, music, work, career, nature—nothing mattered without him. Her mood depended on him; thinking about him absorbed her time and energies. No matter how he behaved she still returned to him, as the cat is said to return to the house it lived in. During the next days, she lived in a daze. The insight had no relieving effect. It merely made her feel the chains more painfully. For people like Clare, psychotherapy is a great tool. The long-standing, mutually oriented and reciprocally respectful friendship provides a relationship with definite potential for the provision of therapeutic conversation. There are basic processes that are natural to all conversations with therapeutic intent, and if certain of these processes (such as ventilation) may account for a significant portion of the benefits derived, then certainly the benefits of such conversation could be expected from communication with close and respected friends. Everyone could be encouraged to recognize these qualities that contribute to the character of the very special form of “friendship” that exists between psychotherapist and client. If it is the character of the relationship that affords much if not most of the therapeutic effect (as distinguished from specifics of the content or management of the conversations) then all thoughtful and sensitive persons could be supported in the effort to provide this kind of relationship, when needed in the context of their natural friendships. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

It is pertinent to note that friendships as psychological phenomena have received very little attention as the subject of research. Some investigations have been made into certain of the more obvious demographic and situational determinants of the formation of friendships. There has been remarkably little probing research into the way friendship relationships function in the total psychological economy of the individual. Perhaps in twenty-first century Western culture there is a general absence of the kind of friendship that could readily provide the relationship required for therapeutic conversation. Certainly there is much evidence of an activity focus rather than relationship focus in our friendships. We have bowling friends, golfing friends, hunting and fishing friends, and social media friends. Shared interests, cultural or political, athletic or aesthetic, provide the medium of friendship rather than the interdependencies that foster the close, sharing friendships of older, less urbanized communities. It is possible that the cult of the psychotherapy expert may have contributed to the deterioration of the “best friend” and “confidant” relationships. It would be well for mental health experts to examine carefully their attitudes toward friendships as potential resources of therapy for the mildly maladjusted. It is a proper part of mental hygiene for the individual to understand the necessity for and functions of friendship, and to be encouraged to look to friends for something more than playful companionship. It may be argued that some neurotics are in the very nature of their illness persons without friends, without effective or satisfying personal relationships, and with a reduced or absent capacity to form sound relationships. This is frequently the case, but it does not alter the need for the therapist to seek as rapidly and effectively as possible to move the patient in the direction of achieving his supplies of affectionate acceptance from the natural reservoir of spontaneous relationships. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

It is equally probable that there are many disturbed, conflicted, and unhappy persons who, neither finding nor affording a professional therapist, would experience significant relief by sharing their problems with a trusted friend. If this avenue of help has been doubly closed by the impact of an injudicious public campaign that has denied the potential therapy of friendships and dissuaded the more thoughtful and sophisticated members of the public from offering the therapy of friendship, while at the same time over-selling the therapeutic power of experts who are in very short supply, it is unfortunate. It is not dangerous for people to talk to each other about their problems. The person who shares his perplexities with one close and respected friend is more likely to be helped rather than harmed. If his needs exceed what can be afforded by the therapy of friendship the experience is more likely rather than less likely to encourage him toward expert counsel. The net result of a careful effort to educate the public to the proper and potential role of the friendship as a source of therapeutic conversation should be to reduce that part of the case load of the skilled psychotherapist composed of individuals with good natural supplies who are responding to the paradoxically repressive effect of the “cult of the expert.” It is a well-accepted part of the operation of many psychiatric clinics that a sizable number of clients are carried in what is commonly designated as “supportive therapy.” On any scale of evaluation of the potency or value of various types of psychotherapy, most therapists would rate supportive therapy at or close to the bottom; among experts it is not a prestigious form of therapy. Yet all recognize it as a type of therapist-patient relationship that must be offered and developed with certain patients. This form of therapy is emotionally supportive. It affords an anchor, a stabilizing, personal point of reference for the patient whose history, symptoms, or attitudes are blocking him from achieving mature and satisfying personal relationships in his natural environment. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

When a patient appears to have achieved maximum response to earlier more intensive treatment procedures (including insight therapy, drugs, and, possibly, hospitalization) but has a residual discomfort that warrants continued contact with the therapist, sometime supportive therapy is undertaken. Sometimes supportive therapy is indicated for the essentially healthy personality that has been disrupted by sudden situational stress or emotional trauma. Supportive therapy may yield significant benefits to the distressed person who is not motivated (or lacks aptitude) for an intensive, uncovering, interpretive form of therapy. It is unfortunate that too few therapists seem to be adequately oriented toward supportive psychotherapy as a distinctive type of therapy, with specific goals and of reasonably limited duration. For many therapists, supportive therapy is approached as a “continuing relationship therapy” without critical examination of either the appropriateness or necessity of their continuing indefinitely as the patient’s sole “support.” This uncritical acceptance of a long-term surrogate role may partly reflect the instruction to the supportive therapist to attempt to win the patient over to a conviction that the therapist is a helpful friend. It undoubtedly reflects also an implicit assumption that the patient either has no other accessible friendship or is neurotically prevented from realizing the emotional support that could afford (rather than simply inhibited by current cultural proscriptions against use of the friendship relationship for anything other than recreational purpose). Each passive acceptance of a role as long-term surrogate friend seriously reduces the availability of the therapist to contribute his unique professional knowledge or his specific psychotherapeutic talents toward the care of persons with a real need for skilled treatment. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

It is a particularly serious defect for the supportive therapist to fail to see his responsibility and opportunity to teach and encourage his patient continuously to generalize the emotional learning of the therapy relationship to his extra-therapy life, to seek and to find the satisfaction of his emotional needs in the natural supplies of his social World. The passive continuation of a supportive relationship has potential to defeat its very own purpose by encouraging the patient’s delusional, derogatory self-concept: “only a therapist could love me!” It would be hygienic for all therapists and clinics to make an audit at not less than six-month intervals of all patients being carried in supportive therapy to determine whether there is in fact a therapeutic process entailing more than an emotionally supportive substitute friendship, and whether it is a fact that the patient has no extra-therapy resources for friendship that are psychologically accessible to him. All therapists should be critically sensitive to the recognition of those cases in which they are in essence functioning as no more than culturally accepted “professional friends.” If prostitution is the oldest of professions, is there any pride to be taken in the fact that the sale of friendship may be the commerce of the newest? Although it is unlikely that you will ever face being brainwashed, it is nice to know what to look for if someone is attempting to put you under their control. Most brainwashers start out slowly, using systematic approaches to gain your trust and begin the process of breaking you down. It sounds kind of crazy to think that anyone would hang around a person who was doing things to break them down. Not every person will hang around for another person to wear them down then build then back up again in the image of someone they want. However, some people have little to no friends or family. Some people are desperately alone and seek friends wherever they can. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Being desperate for attention makes you an easy target for any manipulator. Another thing that makes a person an easy target is being a naivete. You may have lots of friends, but you might be naïve, and that alone makes you an easy target for those seeking to use you. Why does anyone want to use another person in the first place? You guessed it. Monetary gains. This can be money, but it can also be work. Some even do it just for the thrill of being able to bend someone so wholly to their will. How they do it is straightforward and simple. They spot the victim. The person must be ripe for the picking. Once they have that person in their sights, they swoop in. Whether charming and charismatic or quiet and looking near the intended victim, they stalk their prey. Once they get to talk to you, they will build you up; flattery is used to make you think that they think a lot about you. However, after a while—weeks, months, or even years, they will begin the process of tearing you down. “Your hair is looking thin and greasy. What have you been doing to it? You should let me help you find some things to make it look better.” “You’re gaining a lot of weight. You should let me help you diet.” “You’re mismanaging your money. I guess you just don’t have the mental capacity to handle it. You should let me deal with your finances.” The first thing you allow them to help you with gives them the in they need. First, it is your haircare. Next, it is what you eat and how often you exercise and what kinds of exercise you do. Then it is handing every paycheck over to them to let them handle your money. It just keeps going on until you are handing them everything and every power you have—and you are doing it on what seems like your own free will. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

“When I was in high school, I was riding with the Sacramento Fire Department, and we went to a four-story brownstone apartment building that had a fire in a store on the first floor. Back then the firemen weren’t using masks. I watched those firemen go into smoke that was so thick it was like heavy drapery, and I saw them carry out those little kids, some of them down ladders and some out the front door. What an experience, to see somebody’s life actually being saved. After that, I knew this was what I wanted to do. To me the things kids did in school, football games and all that, was kid stuff. When I became a volunteer firefighter in Sacramento, I felt I was a man at eighteen. I wasn’t just an observer like used to be, I was a full-fledged volunteer fireman, and there the volunteers were paid on call, that is, for the time they put in a fire call. They paid for my fire science degree. I remember making $2,500 that year. That was a good buck back in 1973, when I was still at home. I lost my teeth and just about lost my lip driving to a fire one winter night. The department paid my medical bills. I became a full-time firefighter eventually which gave me some experience. I thought I was hot stuff. A lot of other firefighters were more mature than me, they kept their mouths shut going through the fire college, which is our four-month-long academy. I found out I wasn’t such a hotshot. I was assigned to a relatively slow fire station. I didn’t fit in. I don’t drive a pickup truck, and I don’t listen to country-and-western music. They’re great guys, but I’m not one of their people, and I didn’t fit in at all. They looked at me a little strange when I was studying fire engineering at the station. I wanted to go out and drill. I think I’m starting to sound pompous. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

“The first fire was a typical old, what we call an Oak Park pine wood frame house, one-story with a huge attic and a porch in front built up on concrete block piers. This was in a poor neighborhood. This Oak Park pine is coated with resin, resistant to just about any kind of insect, and it’ll last forever. You don’t have to paint it or anything. But if you ever see one of these houses burn, you can hear it, it sounds like shotgun shells going off. Pop, bam, bam, bam. And what it is, it’s these resins boiling off, adding to the fuel load, and these things burn unbelievably hot. I’ve fought wood frame fires up north, but they were just regular pine. These suckers here are unbelievable for the speed and heat of the fire. We were attacking the fire, I remember, with a couple of inch-and-a-half lines, and the fire was laughing at us. I was starting to find out that this was no joke. The academy was tough, too. I thought I knew a lot about firefighting from my experience, but I found out that Sacramento County has certain ways of doing things, and I figured I better just keep my mouth shut and learn their way. It was no piece of cake. It was tough for me, both physically and mentally. I tell people that the firefighter earns his pay in an environment that is very hot, very poisonous, and without being able to use his sense of sight. So he has to follow some kind of search pattern—first of all, to get his own self out, and second, to save somebody’s life and get that person back out. Another thing, you’re only staying in the building and being of use as long as that supply of air stays on your back. That is why staying in shape is vitally important. Experience. The more you work with a breathing apparatus, the more relaxed you are going to be with it, the more confidence you are going to have with it. And stamina is the name of the game. I work out an hour a day, every day of the month. I do calisthenics, pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, and running. I gave up lifting weights about a year ago, because I think it’s only cosmetic. The average citizen gets his opinion of firefighters from what he sees on the news. But the news media don’t come to the little house fire and show the man crawling in smoke so think he can’t see his hand in front of his face, doing his job without worrying that the fire may be burning over his head or kick back over him.” Please donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they need. 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. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

The Winchester Mystery House

Our Explore More Tour is returning with even more rooms to discover! 🗝️

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And for the first time ever, we will be unlocking doors to the oldest sections of the home, giving you access to previously restricted areas. Enhance your visit by adding this extra layer of discovery, starting May 25th, 2024. Tickets on sale now!

Please 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/
The Next One Will be Better

Whoever does a wrong to another man is not doing it to him alone. He does it also to himself. The nature of the means used will help to predetermine the nature of the end reached. Even though mixed with some good, an evil means cannot lead to a good end, but only to one of its own kind. When it is sought, the truth comes, but is found only when we are ready. This is why the aspirant must take himself in hand, must improve his character and discipline his emotions. There is to be nothing in himself to impede the intuitive power. Moral nobility is not the sole possession of either the rich or the poor, the education or the ignorant. Spencer deplored not only poor laws, but also state-supported education, sanitary supervision other than the suppression of nuisances, regulation of housing conditions, and even state protection of the ignorant medical quacks. He likewise opposed tariffs, state banking, and governmental postal systems. Accused of brutality in his application of biological concepts to social principles, Spenser was compelled to insist repeatedly that he was not opposed to voluntary private charity to the unfit, since it had an elevating effect on the character of the donors and hastened the development of altruism; he opposed only compulsory poor laws and other state measures. Spencer traces the parallels between the growth, differentiation, and integration of society and of animal bodies. Although the purpose of a social organism is different from those of an animal organism, he maintained that there is no difference in their laws of organization. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Among socities as among organisms, there is a struggle for existence. Since it made possible successive consolidation of small groups into large ones and stimulated the earliest forms of social cooperation, this struggle was one indispensable to social evolution. It was assumed that in the future these intersocial struggles would lose their utility and die out. The conflict between lower and higher values, between the false and the true interpretation of life, goes on all the time within all men. However, he who brings it into the open and looks it in the face is the man who had gained more than a little wisdom from the impact of experience. The very process of social consolidation brought about by struggles and conquest eliminates the necessity for continued conflict. Society then passes from its barbarous or militant phase into an industrial phase. In the militant phase, society is organized chiefly for survival. It bristles with military weapons, trains its people for warfare, relies upon a despotic state, submerges the individual, and imposes a vast amount of compulsory cooperation. In contest among such societies those best exemplifying these militant traits will survive; and individuals best adapted to the militant community will be the dominating types. The creation of larger and larger social units through conquests by militant states widens the areas in which internal peace and application to the industrial arts become habitual. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The militant type now reaches the evolutionary stage of equilibration. There emerges the industrial type of society, a regime of contract rather than status, which unlike the older form is pacific, respectful of the individual, more heterogeneous and plastic, more inclined to abandon economic autonomy in favour of industrial cooperation with other states. Natural selection now works to produce a completely different individual character. Unless there is honest effort to apply practically the knowledge got and the understanding gained from this teaching, unless there is real striving after personal betterment and individual discipline, the interest shown is mere dabbling, not study. Industrial society requires security for life, liberty, and property; the character type most consonant with this society is accordingly peaceful, independent, kindly, and honestly. The emergence of a new human nature hastens the trend from egoism to altruism which will solve all ethical problems. The first moral slip is also the worst one. For the effort to cover it up involves further lapses. Then the road runs downhill from slip to slip. Small mentalities cannot comprehend big truths. Greedy mentalities cannot comprehend generous truths. Bigotry keeps vital facts outside the door of knowledge. This is why philosophic discipline is needed. In the interest of survival, cooperation in industrial society must be voluntary, not compulsory. State regulation of production and distribution, as proposed by socialist, is more akin to the organization of militant society, and would be fatal to the survival of the industrial community; it would penalize superior citizens and their offspring in favour of the inferior, and a society adopting such practices would be outstripped by others. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Spencer was animated by the desire to foster a science of society that would puncture the illusions of legislative reformers who, he believed, generally operated on the assumption that social causes and effects are simple and easily calculable, and that project to relieve distress and remedy ills will always have the anticipated effect. A science of sociology, by teaching men to think of social causation scientifically, would awaken them to the enormous complexity of the social organism, and put an end to hasty legislative panaceas. Fortified by the Darwinian conception of gradual modification over long stretches of time, Spencer ridiculed schemes for quick social transformation. The great task of sociology is to chart the normal course of social evolution, to show how it will be affected by any given policy, and to condemn all types of behaviour that interfere with it. Social science is a practical instrument in a negative sense. Its purpose is not to guide the conscious control of societal evolution, but rather to show that such control is an absolute impossibility, and that the best that organized knowledge can do is to teach men to submit more readily to the dynamic factors in progress. This is the function of a true theory of society as a lubricant but not a motive power in progress: it can grease the wheels and prevent friction but cannot keep the engine moving. There cannot be better done than that of letting social progress go on unhindered; yet an immensity of mischief may be done in the way of disturbing, and distorting and repressing, by policies carried out in pursuit of erroneous conceptions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Man is called upon to reconcile spiritual aspirations with life’s demands. Too many people are willing to make an assault upon the outward effects of evil while leaving untouched the inward causes of evil. Those who want only to gratify bodily appetites and have no use for spiritual satisfactions may regard ideals as quite futile. They may find the only rational purpose in human action is to cast out all aims except selfish ones, subordinating all moral restraints to the realization of those aims in the process. However stubborn and intransigent his character may seem, let him never despair of himself. Even if he keeps making mistakes, let him pick himself up and try again. However slow and laborious such a procedure seems, it will still be effectual in the end. He must purify the will by abandoning error. What he does in his personal relations with others or in the way he meets events is no less a part of his spiritual life than his formal exercises in meditation. If the goals of life are not redefined on a higher plane, the status of life remains—hovers—between that of the animal and the human and does not become fully human. He needs to be war of his own animal self and its interfusion with his human self and its hostility to angelic self. A justly balanced picture would show every man to be good in some points, bad in other points. There is no exception to this. Therefore, there is necessity for the false pride of anyone who ignores his bad points. However, in the spiritual aspirant, such pride is not only unnecessary but also deathly to his progress. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

The tyranny of negative thoughts and negative feelings can and must be broken. For this he can look for help from the best in him and the best in others. It is said that necessity shapes its own morality. This is often true. However, the exceptional man listens to a higher command. As if one were no longer identified with them, if repeated regularly, standing aside from one’s thoughts, observing their nature and results quite critically, becomes a means of self-betterment. It is tremendously important to safeguard the fruits of one’s studies by purification of character. On this Quest, the aspirant’s motives must necessarily be of the highest quality. Each should do what he or she can to prepare himself by learning how to recognize and eliminate weaknesses. It is equally essential to keep the thoughts, emotions, and actions on as high a level as possible. The discipline of self is a prerequisite to the enlightenment of self. It is true that most people realize that they do not yet come anywhere near such an ideal as philosophy proposes to them regarding their personal development. At least if they are aware of the ideal and if they accept it, they will find that practice can make quite a difference. When these first appear, the simple practice of holding back their own negative thoughts, holding back their own negative feelings and nipping them in the bud is the beginning of becoming their own master. If a man regrets his own conduct, be it a single action or a whole course of actions, he will feel some self-contempt and get depressed. This is a valuable moment, this turning of the ego against itself. If he takes advantage of it to ferret out the cause in his own character, in his own person as it got built up through its reincarnations in Jesus as the Christ, he may remold it in a more satisfactory way. This inner work is accomplished by a series of creative and optimistic prayers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

The experience I have had with my clients causes me profoundly to disagree with the notion that the individual is no more than a link between a series of complex causes and their inevitable and predetermined effects. When I think of the explanation in which Skinner concurs as to his presence at the conference, I cannot make it apply to human events as I know them. When I try to tell myself, for example, that a Freedom Rider did not choose to expose himself to danger, did not voluntarily risk his life for a right which he valued, and had, as a person, no part in his behaviour, my judgment rebels. When I try to tell myself that behaved in this way, went into a dangerous situation, accepted a brutal beating, served a jail sentence, simply because his genetic constitution and his individual and cultural conditioning caused him to move in certain geographical directions, emit certain sounds when beaten, and further vocalizations when arrested, and that all those behaviours were emitted because he had been conditioned to find them rewarding—this seems to me a most inadequate and degrading view of man. He becomes a meaningless phenomenon in a World which has no sense. If I object to the concept of man as a meaningless molecule in an equation which he had no part in writing, I must be willing to define what I mean when I speak of freedom, when I say that I have observed in others, and have experienced in myself, the process of learning to be free. This may seem especially difficult since, as a behavioural scientist, I agree as much in the psychological as in the physical World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Freedom is essentially an inner thing, something which exists in the living person, quite aside from any of the outward choices of alternatives which we so often think of as constituting freedom. Freedom is a quality where everything—possessions, identity, choice—is taken away from one. However, even months and years in a hostile environment will prove that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. It is this inner, subjective, existential freedom which I have observed. It is the realization that “I can live myself, here and now by my own choice. It is the quality of courage which enables a person to step into the uncertainty of the unknown as he chooses himself. It is the discovery of meaning from within oneself, meaning which comes from listening sensitively and openly to the complexities of what one is experiencing. It is the burden of being responsible for the self one chooses to be. It is the recognition by the person that he is an emerging process not a static product. The individual who is thus deeply and courageously thinking his own thoughts, becoming his own thoughts, becoming his own uniqueness, responsibly choosing himself, may be fortunate in having hundreds of objective outer alternatives from which to choose, or he may be unfortunate in having none, but his freedom exists regardless. So, we are speaking of something which exists within the individual, of something phenomenological rather than objective, but to be prized. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

In defining this experience of freedom is that it exists not as contradiction to the picture of the psychological universe as a sequence of cause and effect, but as a complement to such a universe. Freedom, rightly understood, is a fulfillment, by the person, of the ordered sequence of his life. The free man…believes in destiny, and believes that it stands in need of him. He moves out voluntarily, freely, repsonsibly, to play his significant part in the World whose determined events move through his spontaneous choice and will. He who forgets all that is caused and makes decisions out of the depths…is a free man, and destiny confronts him as the counterpart of his freedom. It is not his boundary but his fulfillment. This is the answer of the modern philosopher to the prevailing view that man is no more than the sum of his condition. Even more is no more than the sum of his conditioning. Even more convincing than the intellectual answer is the experience of one client after another, as he moves in therapy toward an acceptance of the realities of the World outside and inside himself, and moves toward becoming a responsible agent in this real World. We are speaking then, of a freedom which exist in the subjective person, a freedom which he courageously uses to live his potentialities. We are speaking of a freedom in which the individual chooses to fulfill herself by playing a responsible and voluntary part in brining about the destined events of his World. This experience of freedom is for my clinets a most meaningful development, one which assists them in becoming human, in relating to others, in being a person. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Contemporary industrial man has undergone an intellectual development to which we do not yet see any limits. Simultaneously he tends to emphasize those sensations and feeling experiences which he shares with the animal: desires for pleasures of the flesh, aggression, fright, hunger, and thirst. The decisive question is, Are there any emotional experiences which are specifically human and which do not correspond to what we know as being rooted in the lower brain? The view is often voiced that the tremendous development of the neocortex has made it possible for man to arrive at an ever-increasing intellectual capacity but that his lower brain is hardly different from that of his primate ancestors and hence that, emotionally speaking, he has not developed and can at best deal with his “drives” only by repression or control. There are specifically human experiences which are neither of an intellectual character nor identical with those feeling experiences which by and large are like those of the animal. Not being competent in the field of neurophysiology, I can only guess that relations between the large neocortex and the old brain are the basis for these specifically human feelings. There are reasons to speculate that the specifically human affective experiences like love, tenderness, compassion, and all affects which do not serve the function of survival are based on the interaction between the new and the old brain; hence, that man is not distinguished from the animal only by his intellect, but by new affective qualities which result from the interaction between the neocortex and the base of animal emotionality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

The student of human nature can observe these specifically human affects empirically and he cannot be deterred by the fact that neurophysiology has not yet demonstrated the demonstrated the neurophysiological basis for this sector of experiences. As with many other fundamental problems of human nature, the student of the science of man cannot be placed in the position of neglecting his observations because neurophysiology has not yet given the green light. Each science, neurophysiology as well as psychology, has its own method and necessarily will deal with such problems as it can handle at a given point in its scientific development. It is the task of the psychologist to challenge the neurophysiologist, urging him to confirm or deny his findings, just as it is his task to be aware of neurophysiological conclusions and to be stimulated and challenged by them. Both sciences, psychology and neurophysiology, are young and very much at their inception. They must develop relatively independently and yet remain in close touch with each other, mutually challenging and stimulating. As far as the “drives” which function for the sake of survival are concerned, it does not sound implausible that a computer could be developed which would parallel this whole aspect of feeling sensations, but as far as the specifically human feeling aspect, which does not serve survival purposes, is concerned it seems difficult to imagine that a computer could be constructed with nonsurvivial functions. One might even say that the “humane experience” could be negatively defined as one which cannot completely duplicated by a machine. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Seeing alienation as a pathological phenomenon must not obscure the fact that Hegel and Marx considered it a necessary phenomenon, on which is inherent in human evolution. This is true regarding the alienation of reason as well as of love. Only when I can distinguish between the World outside becomes an object, can I grasp it and make it my World, become one with it again. The infant, from whom the World is not yet conceived as “object,” can also not grasp it with his reason and reunite himself with it. Man must become alienated to overcome this split in the activity of his reason. The same holds true for love. If the infant has not separated himself from the World outside, he is still part of it, and hence cannot love. To love, the “other” must become a stranger, and in the act of love, the stranger ceases to be a stranger and becomes me. Love presupposes alienation—and at the same time overcomes it. The same idea is to be found in the prophetic concept of the Messianic Time and Marx’s concept of socialism. In Paradise man still is one with nature, but not yet aware of himself as separate from nature and his fellowman. By his act of disobedience man acquires self-awarteness, the World becomes estranged from him. In the process of history, according to the prophetic concept, man develops his human powers so fully that eventually he will acquire a new harmony with men and nature. Socialism, in Marx’s sense, can only come, once man has become completely alienated and thus is able to reunite himself with men and nature without sacrificing his integrity and individuality. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Returning to our case study of Clare, while she was going over her association of a memory, it occurred to her in connection with the “foreign city” of the dream she had. Once when she was in a foreign city, she had lost her way to the station; since she did not know the language, she could not ask directions and thus she missed her train. As she thought of this incident it occurred to her that she had behaved in a silly manner. She might have bought a dictionary, or she might have gone into any great hotel and asked the porter. However, apparently, she had been too timid and too helpless to ask. Then it suddenly struck her that this very timidity had played a part also in the disappointment with Peter. Instead of expressing her wish to have him back for the weekend she had encouraged him to see a friend in the country so that he could have some rest. An early memory emerged of her doll Emily, whom she loved most tenderly. Emily had only one flaw: she had only a cheap wig. Clare deeply wanted for her a wig of real hair, which could ne combed and braided. She often stood before a toy shop and looked at dollars with real hair. One day she was with her mother in the toy shop, and the mother, who was generous in giving presents, asked her whether she would like to have a wig with real hair. However, Clare declined. The wig was expensive, and she knew that the mother was short of money. And she never got it, a memory which even now moved her almost to tears. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

She was disappointed to realize that she had still not overcome her reluctance in expressing her wishes, despite the work on this problem during her analytical treatment, but at the same time she felt tremendously relieved. This remaining timidity appeared to be the solution to her distress of the previous days. She merely had to be franker with Peter and let him know her wishes. Clare’s interpretation illustrates how an only partially accurate analysis can miss the essential point and blur the issue involved. It also demonstrates that a feeling of relief does not in itself prove that the solution found is the real one. The relief resulted from the fact that by hitting upon a pseudo solution Clare succeeded, temporarily, in circumventing the crucial problem. If she had not been unconsciously determined to find an easy way out of her disturbance, she would probably have paid more attention to the association. The memory was not just one more example of her lack of assertiveness. It clearly indicated a compulsion to give first importance to her mother’s needs to avoid becoming the object of even vague resentment. The same tendency applied to the present situation. She had been too timid in expressing her wish, but this inhibition arose less from timidity than from unconscious design. Peter was an aloof person, hypersensitive to any demands upon him. At that time Clare was not fully aware, but she sensed it sufficiently to hold back any direct wishes concerning his time, just as she refrained from ever mentioning the possibility of marriage, though she often thought of it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

If she had asked him to be back for the weekend, he would have complied, but with resentment. Clare could not have recognized this fact, however, without a dawning realization of the limitations within Peter, and this was still impossible for her. She preferred to see primarily her own share in the matter, and to see that part of it which she felt confident of overcoming. It should be remembered, too, that it was an old pattern of Clare’s to preserve a difficult relationship by taking all the blame on herself. This was essentially the way in which she had dealt with her mother. The result of Clare’s attributing the whole distress to her own timidity was that she lost—at least consciously—her resentment toward Peter, and looked forward to seeing him again. This happened the next evening. However, a new disappointment was in store for her. Peter not only was late for the appointment but looked tired and did not express any spontaneous joy at seeing her. As a result, she became self-conscious. He was quick to notice her freezing up and, was apparently his habit, he took the offensive, asking her whether she had been angry at his not coming home for the weekend. She answered with a weak denial but on further pressure admitted that she had resented it. She could not tell him of the pathetic effort she had made not to resent it. He scolded her for being childish and for considering only her own wishes. Clare was miserable. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

While a person must be aware of the usual type of hypnosis, covert hypnosis is a thing done to you, and you are unaware of what is happening. If you have been covertly hypnotized or not, you may never know. Chances are though that you have experienced things then later wondered why in the World you participated in that thing or acted the way you did. Those who seek to use covert hypnosis on you to get you to do what they want, generally will not want to let you in on what they did to you. It is not like they must use a pocket watch to put you under their spell. Often, the reasons to hypnotize you are to get you to darker things than you normally would. Other times, it may be used to distract you from something so they can get away with what they have done. Whatever the reason is, you can bet it is never a good one. If it was, then the hypnotist would be happy to let you in on what they are doing to you. We live in the Age of Anxiety. Certainly, we have much to be anxious about and worried. Uncertainty is perhaps the greatest stimulus to anxiety, and at the present time we are confronted by a universal uncertainty as to the future of our World that has an urgency and immediacy surpassing that of any previous period of history. We are faced with the imminent possibility of cataclysmic destruction of the World through nuclear war. Insofar as all peoples of the World know this uncertainty, they share for the first time in a universal anxiety. However, the fact of a common and heavy anxiety does not mean obviously that ours is a more anxious World than ever before. Uncertainty is a condition of life; anxiety has been experienced by all men in all periods. Civilization is the process whereby men change what it is they fear. However, ultimate uncertainties have always been coupled with immediate dangers to make men anxious. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

If this is the Age of Anxiety, it is not so simply as a function of absolute increase in the things about which man is fearful. Rather it is so because we have taught man to be anxious about his anxiety. We have attributed to anxiety and to the efforts of escape anxiety all of man’s neurotic ills. We have sensitized ourselves to recognize the signs of anxiety, and we have been taught that the signs of anxiety are symptoms. We have been encouraged to the fallacious values of a total avoidance of anxiety as a goal of life; we have been led to believe that complete freedom from anxiety would be the distinguishing characteristic of an adjusted life. Many people are unaware that the psychopathology of a significant portion of psychiatric patients (the so-called psychopaths and character disorders) is attributed by some authorities to a pathological incapacity to experience anxiety. Much of what we have learned about psychopathology, and especially about the etiology of neuroses, has come through an understanding of the effects of severe anxiety and of the mechanisms by which the individual copes with anxiety. It is essential to the aims of mental health education that the importance and role of anxiety be understood by everyone. However, in this endeavour, there has been a failure to distinguish between normal and pathological anxiety. If a person were totally incapable of experiencing pain, his life would be seriously jeopardized. The experiencing of continual pain is abnormal and signals the need for efforts to correct that cause of the pain. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

However, it would be inimical to the welfare of a normal person to drug him so that this pain sensitivity was continuously reduced or absence. Medical literature contains fascinating accounts of injuries and illnesses (and abnormal complications thereof) of persons apparently suffering a congenital defect in their neurological system for the sensation of pain. The capacity to experience pain is normal, and the sensation of pain is normal under certain conditions. Likewise, anxiety is a normal experience when present to certain degrees in appropriate situations. When taking an examination, when applying for a job, when getting married, when being prepared for surgery, when making a speech, it is normal to be anxious. When facing any new situation or demand for which there is an uncertain outcome, it is normal to experience much anxiety. The signs of anxiety (such as increased heart rate, dry throat, perspiring hands) are indications that one’s physiological apparatus is in a state of readiness for special effort. One could interpret these experiences as signs that one is keyed up and “ready to go.” Or one can interpret these as symptoms of anxiety, and become anxious about them—and this may have a disrupting effect on performance. It is an unfortunate result of the massive attention which has been given to anxiety that people have been led to view all experiences of the signs of “nervousness” as symptoms of pathological anxiety. Once the arrive at this orientation they are potential candidates for psychotherapy, and in presenting their complaints of incapacitating anxiety, it may not be immediately clear to the therapist that their symptoms represent the circular, autocatalytic effects of being “anxious about anxiety.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

The limited resources for expert psychotherapy should not be dissipated upon individuals who have inappropriate attitudes and expectations. Mental health educators must make a concerted effort to teach the public about normal anxiety and its necessary role in adjustment. They must teach that physiological changes under stress are signs of normal functioning, not symptoms of pathology. The adult public must be helped to correct its currently predominant and unhealthy tendency to overinterpret and be fearful of normal anxiety. In the instruction and rearing of children we have the opportunity both to teach them the biological utility of anxiety and to assist them in the progressive development of tolerance for it. Being a firefighter is a job where one must deal with a lot of anxiety. “I can still remember the day the Sacramento Fire Department called me. I was so happy. That was the place I wanted to work. I had just taken the fire exam in San Francisco, where I had gone to high school and where my parents still lived. I really didn’t want to go back there. I was back in San Francsico about a week, when somebody from the city personnel department called, saying, ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days. Where have you been? We want you to come in and talk to us.’ The exam process consisted of an initial interview with a personnel staff member, covering general stuff like, ‘Why do you want to be a firefighter? Why do you think you’re qualified for this work? Do you get along well with people?’ Then there was an interview with one of the department’s chief officers that was a lot more specific. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

‘If you passed the interview, you were given a physical agility examination, where you ran a dash of, I’m not sure how many hundred yards, you had to walk a balance beam and climb a fifty-foot ladder up to the department’s drill tower. Once on top of the tower, you had to lift a hose bundle. That was 150 feet of inch-and-a-half hose tied into a bundle, with a rope tied to it that went up over a hose roll at the top of the grill tower. You had to pull that up, hand over hand, to the top, and then set it back down again. You wore a doughnut roll like a backpack for a couple of sessions and had to climb a ladder to the third floor and back down. You had to take a twenty-four-foot ladder off the side of a pumper, set it down, then put it back on. All this was timed. Then there was a mechanical aptitude test, where you had a series of nuts and bolts you had to assemble. That was the exam at the time. It was funny because the hose bundle pull was the thing I was most concerned about. I had been running for a long time and felt good about my heart, lungs, and legs, but having been a student, I wasn’t pumping iron, and my arms weren’t real strong. I had a summer job managing a gymnasium for San Francisco parks department. We had a rope that went up to the ceiling, and the test for the fire department then was a rope climb, so I spent the whole summer climbing the rope and did it with no problem. Then I returned to Sacramento, and my friends in the fire department said, ‘They changed the test. There’s no longer a rope climb. Now you’ve got to pull a bundle up, hand over hand.’ Anyway, I wound up passing the test without any trouble, and came to work a few weeks after that. Please keep the Sacramento Fire Department in your heart and donate to ensure they receive all the resources they need. 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. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Human Perfection is Not Only Possible but Inevitable

There is all the difference between a sturdy independence and an inflated self-esteem. An experience which is a blow to his ego ought to be received with humility and analysed with impartiality. However, too often the man receives it with resentment and analyses it with distortion. In the result he is doubly harmed: there is the suffering itself and there is the deterioration of character. We sin by wandering away from our true inner selves, by letting ourselves become immersed in the thoughts and desires which surround us, by losing our innermost identity and taking up an alien one. This is the psychology of sin as philosophy sees it. However, if it had not succeeded overcoming the bondage of flesh, feeling, and thought and penetrating by means of its flawless technique into the World of the divine spirit, which is the real man, it could not have gained the knowledge for such a view of man. He is to live for the praise and blame, not of other people, but of his own higher self. The distance from lip to heart is sometimes immense. Who has not known men who had God prominent in their heard speech but evil prominent in their silent desires? The philosophic way of living asks for more than most men possess, more command of the passions, more discipline of the thoughts, and more submissiveness to intuition. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

The moral injunctions which he finds in this teaching and must follow out in his life, are based on understanding the relation between his higher self and his lower self. They are not arbitrary commands but inevitable consequences of applying the adage, “Man, know thyself.” When anyone takes advantage of it to bloster his own ego at the expense of those under him, there is an abuse of authority. He will be virtuous not merely because so many others are–it is safer, it stops the prodding of conscience, etcetera—but much more because it is essential to put up no obstructions to the light flowing from the Overself. When applying evolution and social Darwinism to society, we are doing poetic justice to its origins. The “survival of the fittest” was a biological generalization of the cruel processes which reflective observers saw at work in early nineteenth century society, and Darwinism was a derivative of political economy. The miserable social conditions of the early industrial revolution had provided the data for Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population, and Malthus’ observations had been the matrix of natural-selection theory. The stamp of its social origin was evident in Darwinian theory. “Over the whole of English Darwinism,” Nietzsche once observed, “there hovers something of the odor of humble people in need and in straits.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Darwin acknowledged his great indebtedness to Malthus: “In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement ‘Malthus on Population,’ and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.” Spener’s theory of social selection, also written under the stimulus of Malthus, arose out of his concern with population problems. In two famous articles that appeared in 1852, six years before Darwin and Wallace jointly published sketches of their theory, Spencer had set forth the view that the pressure of subsistence upon population must have a beneficent effect upon the human race. This pressure had been the immediate cause of progress from the earliest human times. By placing a premium upon skill, intelligence, self-control, and the power to adapt through technological innovation, it has stimulated human advancement and selected the best of each generation for survival. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Because he did not extend his generalization to the whole animal World, as Darwin did, Spencer failed to reap the full harvest of his insight, although he coined the expression “survival of the fittest.” He was more concerned with mental than physical evolution, and accepted Lamarck’s theory that the inheritance of acquired characteristics is a means by which species can originate. This doctrine confirmed his evolutionary optimism. For if mental as well as physical charactersitics could be inherited, the intellectual powers of the race would become cumulatively greater, and over several generations the ideal man would finally be developed. Spencer never discarded his Lamarckism, even when scientific opinion turned overwhelmingly against it. Spencer called for a return to natural rights, setting up as an ethical standard the right of every man to do as he pleases, subject only to the condition that he does not infringe upon the equal rights of others. In such a scheme, the sole function of the state is negative—to insure that such freedom is not curbed. Fundamental to all ethical progress, Spence believed, is the adaptation of human character to the conditions of life. The root of all evil is the “non-adaptation of constitution to conditions.” Because the process of adaptation, founded in the very nature of the organism, is constantly at work, evil tends to disappear. While the moral constitution of the human race is still ridden with vestiges of man’s original predatory life which demanded brutal self-assertion, adaptation assures that he will ultimately develop a new moral constitution fitted to the needs of civilized life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Human perfection is not only possible but inevitable: “The ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain—as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for instance that all men will die…Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower.” Some young much, such as actor Ian Nelson, who is wise beyond his years, also believes in the idea of human perfection. He has helped other people gain more success in their careers by sharing with them opportunities that were meant for him. And he has a very optimistic attitude about helping others become successful and sharing in their joy, but I guess that is why he is so successful. However, Spencer was ultra-conservative. His categorical repudiation of the state interference with the “natural,” unimpeded growth of society led him to oppose all state aid to the poor. They were unfit, he said, and should be eliminated. “The whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the World of them, and to make room for better.” Nature is as insistent upon fitness of mental character as she is upon physical character, “and radical defects are as much causes of death in the one case as in the other.” He who loses his life because of his stupidity, vice, or idleness is in the same class as the victims of weak viscera or malformed limbs. Under nature’s laws alike are put on trial. “If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

To some, it must seem strangely out of tune with the modern World to speak of learning to be free. The growing opinion today is that man is essentially unfree. He is unfree in a cultural sense. He is all too obviously a pawn of government. He is molded by mass propaganda into being a creature with certain opinions and beliefs, desired and pre-planned by the powers that be. He is the product of his class—lower, middle, or upper—and his values and his behaviour are shaped by the class to which he belongs. So, it seems increasingly clear from the study of social institutions and influences, that man is simply the creature of his culture and his circumstances, and most decidedly is not free. At a still deeper level the behavioural sciences have added to this conception of man as unfree. Man is determined in part by his heredity—in his intelligence, his personality type, perhaps even his tendency toward mental aberration. He is above all the product of his conditioning—the inevitable result of the fortuitous events which have “shaped up” his behaviour. Many of our most astute behavioural scientists agree that this process of conditioning, of “shaping up” the individual’s behaviour, will no longer be left to chance, but will be planned. Certainly, the behavioural sciences are developing a technology which will enable us to control the individual’s behaviour to a degree which now would seem fantastic. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Along with the developlement of this technology has gone an underlying philosophy of rigid determinism in the psychological sciences which can perhaps best be illustrated by a brief exchange which I had with Professor B.F. Skinner of Harvard at a recent conference. A paper given by Dr. Skinner led me to direct these remarks to him. “From what I understood Dr. Skinner to say, it is his understanding that though he might have thought he chose to come to that meeting, might have thought he had a purpose in giving that speech, such thoughts are illusory. He made certain marks on paper and emitted certain sounds here simply because his genetic makeup and his past environment had operantly conditioned his behaviour in such a way that it was rewarding to make these sounds, and that he as a person does not enter this. In fact, if I get his thinking correctly, from his strictly scientific point of view, he, as a person, does not exist.” In his reply, Dr. Skinner said that he would not go into the question of whether he had any choice in the matter (presumably because the whole issue is illusory) but stated, “I do accept your characterization of my own presence here.” I do not need to labour the point that for Dr. Skinner the concept of “learning to be free” would be quite meaningless. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Thus, though there are opposing voices, the general thrust of the cultural trend throughout both the West and Communist World is to say that man is not free, that there is no such thing as a free man. We are formed and moved by forces—cultural forces without, and unconscious forces within—which we do not comprehend, and which are beyond our control. We will soon be formed more knowingly and more precisely by scientific technology which will replace the crude way in which we have been molded by practically fortuitous natural events. The age of information of our time prides itself on the fact that millions of people have a chance and, in fact, use the chance to listen to excellent live, recorded, or streamed music, to see art in the many museums in the country, and to read the masterworks of human literature from Plato to Anne Rice in easily available, inexpensive editions. No doubt for a small minority this encounters with art and literature is a genuine experience. For the vast majority, “culture” is another article of consumption and a status symbol since having seen the “right” pictures, knowing the “right” music, and having read the good books indicates college education and hence is useful for climbing the social ladder. The best of art has been transformed into an article of consumption, and it is reacted to an alienated fashion. The proof of this is that many of the very same people who go to concerts, listen to classical music, and buy a paperback Plato view tasteless and vulgar offerings on television without disgust. If their experience with art were genuine, they would turn off their television sets when they are offered artless, banal “drama.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Yet man’s longing for the dramatic, that which touches upon the fundamental of human experience, is not dead. While most of the drama offered in theaters or on the screen is either a nonartistic commodity or is consumed in an alienated fashion, the modern “drama” is primitive and barbaric when it is genuine. In our day the longing for drama is manifested most genuinely in the attraction which real or fictionalized accidents, crimes, and violence have for most people. An automobile accident or fire will attract crowds of people who watch with great intensity. Why do they do so? Simply because the elemental confrontation with life and death breaks into the surface of conventional experience and fascinates people hungry for drama. For the same reason, nothing sells a newspaper better than reports of crime and violence. The fact is that whole on the surface the Greek drama or Rembrandt’s paintings are held in the highest esteem, their real substitutes are crime, murder, and violence, either directly visible on the television screen or reported in the newspapers. Some people suffer from an alienation of hope. One characteristic of the alienation of hope is the future becoming transformed into an idol. This idolatry of history can be clearly seen from Robespierre’s point of view. “O posterity, sweet and tender hope of humanity, thou art not a stranger to us; it is for thee that we brave all the blows of tyranny; it is thy happiness which is the price of our painful struggles: often discouraged by the obstacles that surround us, we feel the need of thy consolations; it is to thee that we confide the task of completing our labours, and the destiny of all the urban generations of me!… Make haste, O posterity, to bring to pass the hour of equality, of justice, of happiness!” #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Similarly, a distorted version of Marx’ philosophy of history has often been used in the same sense by Communists. The logic of this argument is: whatever is in accord with the historical trend is necessary, hence good and vice versa. In this view, whether in the form of Robespierre’s or the communist argument, it is not man who makes history but history that makes man. It is not man who hopes and has faith in the future but the future that judges him and decides whether he had the right faith. Marx expressed very succinctly the opposite view of history to the alienated one I just quoted. “History,” he wrote in The Holy Family, “does nothing, it possesses no colossal riches, it fights no battles! It is rather man, actual and living man, who does all this; ‘history’ does not use man as a means for its purposes as though it were a person apart; it is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his ends.” Not only are all forms of depression, dependence and idol worship (including the “fanatic”) direct expressions of, or compensations for, alienation; the phenomenon of the failure to experience one’s identity which is a central phenomenon at the root of psychopathological phenomena is also a result of alienation. Precisely because the alienated person has transformed his own functions of feeling and thought to an object outside, he is not himself, he has no sense of “I,” of identity. This lack of a sense of identity has many consequences. The most fundamental and general one is that it prevents integration of the total personality, hence it leaves the person disunited within himself, lacking either capacity “to will one thing” or if he seems to will one thing his will lack authenticity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

In the widest sense, every neurosis can be considered an outcome of alienation; this is so because neurosis is characterized by the fact that one passion (for instance, for money, power, women, etcetera) becomes dominant and separated from the total personality, thus becoming the ruler of the person. This passion is his idol to which he submits even though he may rationalize the nature of his idol and give it many different and often well-sounding names. He is ruled by a partial desire, he transfers all he has left to this desire, he is weaker the stronger “it” becomes. He has become alienated from himself precisely because “he” has become the slave of a part of himself. Now, in our case study, Clare was unable to let go of a man, for whatever reasons. The repression of her resentment is striking as she was fully aware of her disappointment at Peter, the man she was involved with, staying away. Moreover, on such an occasion resentment would certainly have been a natural reaction, and it was not in her character never to allow herself to be angry at anyone; she often was angry at people, though it was characteristic of her to shift anger from its real source to trivial matters. However, raising this question, while apparently only a routine matter, would have meant broaching the subject of why the relationship with Peter was so precarious that any disturbance of it had to be shut out of awareness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

After Clare had thus managed to shake off the whole problem from her conscious mind, she fell asleep again and had a dream. She was in a foreign city; the people spoke a language that she did not understand; she lost her way, this feeling of being lost emerging very distinctly; she had left all her money and luggage deposited at the station. Then she was at a fair; there was something unreal about it, but she recognized gambling stands and a freak show; she was riding on a merry-go-round which turned around more and more quickly so she was drifting on waves, and she woke up with a mixed feeling of abandon and anxiety. The first part of the dream reminded her of an experience she had had in adolescence. She had been in a strange city; had forgotten the name of her hotel and had felt lost, as in the dream. Also, it came back to her that the night before, when returning home from the movie, she had felt similarly lost. The gambling stands and the freak show she associated with her earlier thoughts about Peter making promises and not keeping them. Such places, too, make fantastic promises and there, too, one is usually cheated. In addition, she regarded the freak show as an expression of her anger at Peter: he was a freak. What really startled her in the dream was the depth of the feeling of being lost. She immediately explained away her impressions, however, by telling herself that these expressions of anger and of feeling lost were but exaggerated reactions to her disappointment, and that dreams express feelings in a grotesque way anyhow. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

It is true that the dream translated Clare’s problems into grotesque terms, but it did not exaggerate the intensity of her feeling. And even if it had constituted an exaggeration, it would not have been sufficient merely to dismiss it on that score. If there is an exaggeration it must be examined. What is the tendency that prompts it? Is it not an exaggeration but an adequate response to an emotional experience, the meaning and intensity of which are beyond awareness? Did the experience mean something quite different on the conscious and unconscious level? Clare felt just as miserable, as lost, as resentful as the dream and the earlier associations indicated. However, since she still clung to the idea of a close love relationship this realization was unacceptable to her. For the same reason she ignored that part of the dream about having left all her money in the luggage at the station. This was probably a condensed expression of her feeling that she had invested all she had in Peter, the station symbolizing Peter and connoting something transitory and indifferent as opposed to the permanence and security of home. And Clare disregarded another striking emotional factor in the dream when she did not bother to account for its ending with anxiety. Nor did she make any attempts to understand the dream. She contended with the superficial explanation of this and that element, and thus learned from it no more than she knew anyhow. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

If Clare had probed more deeply, she might have seen the main theme of the dream as this: I feel helpless and lost; Peter is a great disappointment; my life is like a merry-go-round, and I cannot jump off; there is no solution but drifting; but drifting is dangerous. We cannot discard emotional experiences, however, as easily as we can discard thoughts unconnected with our feelings. And it is quite possible that Clare’s emotion experience of anger and particularly of feeling lost, despite her blatant failure to understand them, lingered on in her mind and were instrumental in her pursuing the path of analysis she subsequently embarked upon. While the public has been effectively educated to recognize symptoms of personality disorder and has been encouraged to seek professional consultation for emotional problems, the mental health movement has inevitably created problems as it has offered solutions. The nature of neurosis as presently defined is such as to encourage overinterpretation of the significance of a host of idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. The mental health educator has understandably, in the first phase of the moment, operated within the pathological framework afforded by essentially gross medical definitions of emotional illness. Emphasis has been upon detection and prevention of illness, rather than upon modes of achieving and maintaining beneficial mental health. The meaning of neurosis, ambiguous to begin with, has been subtly extended to cover a variety of cultural delusions, perhaps the most prominent which is the Western myth that a state of happpiness is both a primary and achievable goal of life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

One effect of the mental health movement has been to encourage many people to see their unhappiness. Psychotherapist, both visible and “invisible,” are increasingly confronted by would-be patients who do not manifest any of the more objective hallmarks of a neurotic problem, who do not complain of failures of productivity or achievement, who do not suffer from serious interpersonal conflicts, who are free of functional somatic complaints, who are not incapacitated by anxiety, or tormented by obsessions, whose objective life circumstances they confess are close to optimal. These seekers of help suffer freedom from complaint. The absence of conflicts, frustrations, and symptoms brings a painful awareness: of absence—the absence of faith, of commitment, of meaning, of the need to search out personal, ultimate values, or of the need to live comfortably and meaningfully each day in the face of final uncertainty. For increasing numbers of rational, educated, and thoughtful men the central struggle becomes one of finding and keeping an emotional and psychological balance between the pain of doubt and the luxury of faith. A distaste for this struggle, or an insistence on its resolution as a necessary condition for continued existence is at the heart of the philosophical neuroses. In contrast to the psychoneuroses, we have no established knowledge or technique to bring to bear this form of dis-ease. We do not have a scientifically confirmable matrix of ideas concerning how or what to teach those who suffer philosophical neuroses. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

The philosophical neurotic suffers in his struggle to be both reasonable and hopeful, and he can be helped in his skirmish by access to human wisdom and by encouragement to expose himself to it. However, in this seeking for counsel and for opportunity to test doubt against faith or faith against doubt, he must not be misled to think that any group of experts has a corner on some specialized wisdom about the meaning of life or how to live it. It is an unfortunate side-effect of the mental health movement that a large portion of the limited psychotherapeutic resources afforded by psychiatrists and psychologists is being consumed by persons who suffer a philosophical anomie for which neither psychiatrist nor psychologist can offer specific therapy. The person with a philosophical neurosis deserves care and can be helped; it would be in his own interests and in the interest of social economy for him to be encouraged to seek guidance from those who are most practiced and equipped to think with him in the domain of values, meaning, ethics, and eschatology. Recognition of the philosophical neurosis and the special problems its presents have been delayed on the part of psychotherapists because the well-bred, well-fed, well-read qualities typical of this patient appeal to the intellectual and social prejudices of the therapist and make for spontaneous rapport and empathy. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

In combating the general ignorance and superstition of the public about mental illness, the mental health movement has necessarily attacked the idea that emotional and mental problems should be a source of shame. The public has been taught that everyone has a basic susceptibility to psychological maladjustment and, furthermore, that a very large number of people in fact suffer from some degree of “nervousness.” All of this teaching is true and was most necessary in ending the shameful connotations that formerly prevailed. However, as an unfortunate consequence of these beneficial changes, neurosis has achieved respectability. In some sophisticated segments of our society it has become expected and accepted for the individual to acknowledge his “neurosis”–and to have all manner of immature, selfish, irresponsible behaviours explained by him (and accepted by his companions) as “symptoms” of his “sickness.” Among persons whose work demands some degree of creative imagination there is a popular stereotype which equates genius with neurosis. It becomes a tempting apology to substitute symptoms for effort; to manifest the temperament of an artist may be an easier road to achieving an artistic identity than to be truly creative. When individuals are volubly proud that they are “in therapy,” although they remain silent on the content and course of that self-discovering endeavour, with discussion of the causes and treatment reserved by socially sanctioned conspiracy of silence between therapist and client (or with normal social respect for the individual’s privacy), it may be wondered if the continuation of therapy is required at least in part because the patient is reluctant to lose the dramatic appeal of his status. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

And when the patient does speak freely of the content of his therapeutic conversations to all willing listeners, it may be wondered if he suffers from lack of any other mental content with which he would hope to hold an audience. To be proud of an illness or a defect is a separate illness, and perhaps needs to be treated first. Man’s capacity to feel shame is not pathological in itself; pathology arises from what he does or fails to do about shame. Shame can be hidden by repression and denial, but the massive effort required to hide one’s shame results in symptoms. Or, shame can yield a sense of responsibility, and this can power a search for self-understanding, for self-acceptance, and for better behaviour. The mental health movement has lifted the pathological shame previously associated with emotional illness. Now it must be attentive to combat the tendency for the unashamed to have pathological pride in their maladjustment. Liars have a dangerous maladjustment, which is why they often answer a question with one of their own. The tactic of answering a question with a question buys the liar time to come up with something plausible. They are not the type to let the silence go by, so they fill it with something that cannot be used against them. And the old, I swear on a stack of Bibles tactic is an oath to beware of. What people will say to try to get themselves off the hook is insane. When you are sure they are lying, how important is it to you that you get to the bottom of things and make someone tell you the truth? #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

All that is best in the Christian virtues you will find in philosophic ones. Few are those who are psychologically ready for philosophy’s disciplines, which call, not merely for a reluctant control of the animal nature, but for an eager aspiration to rise above it altogether. Few are ready for its ethics, which all not merely for a willingness to abide by society’s protective laws, but for a generous disposition contently putting itself in someone else’s place. Firefighters with the Sacramento Fire Department certainly display the Christian virtues. One firefighter said, “I think just being around firefighters got me. It’s like being a sports fan, being there and watching you get to know more about it, and you have more admiration for the good ones. The firefighting process is like a well-oiled machine going to work. I for fascinated watching it and wanted to be a part of it. I was just so happy to go in there, and I always wanted to do the very best job I could, to keep it that way. When I was a kid, I thought the World of the Sacramento Fire Department. I want to hold up my end of it.” Today, I think the best way to get to know someone is by listening to their first-hand accounts about themselves. Many people are cowards and like to tear down people who shine, and do not get to know them personally. Instead, they choose to gossip about them, become jealous and form hate groups. I personally like talking to people and getting to know their story and about them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Not everyone has a tragic story, nor is it unhappy. Recently, I found out a 29-year-old had been listening to classical music all week. And that really impressed me because it shows a rare level of maturity, and it gave me insight into his personality. It tells me that he is intelligent, cultured and probably very interesting. To make friends with someone, you have to know something about them and have something in common, and it is rare for people to disclose things about themselves to others. The Sacramento Fire Department has developed prestige in the community. People think, “boy, if you belong to that fire department, you’re really ‘in.’” People may say that they are a bunch of prima donnas, but they must be. If you belong to their fire department, you earn it. It is not easy to get in, but once you are in, you must produce, or you are out. Because you must get along with thirty other people or more, and if you do not pull your share, you will have a hard time. There is always a waiting list, people waiting to get in. And that is good. It may take two or three years before your number comes up. And there are sometimes some limiting factors. Sometimes residents are shown a preference. They pay attention to how long you have lived in the community and are you going to continue going to continue to live here. Once a team member is taken in, they want to keep them for at least twenty years. Please be sure to donate to the Sacrament Fire to ensure they are receiving all their resources. 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. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20


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