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Sensuality Often indulges Impurity—The Hugh O’Connor Act
Who you are often determines what you see. It will be found a common case, that when we have yielded to our instincts, and then have to soothe conscience, we must slaughter somebody, for a sacrificial offering to our sense of comfort. As we perceive events, the brain actively selects, organizes, and integrates sensory information into a photograph or model of the World. A man was in the supermarket when an eight-year-old girl suddenly came running around the corner. She looked back and screamed, “Stop! Stop! You’re killing him! You’re killing my father!” Naturally the witness was interested! He quickly retraced her path, and was greeted by a grisly scene. A man was sprawled out on the floor with another man on top of him. The guy on top was huge and looked only half human. He has his alleged victim by the throat and was allegedly beating his head against the floor. There was blood everywhere, and the witness decided to do the right thing and run to get help. By the time the store manager and the witness returned to the alleged scene of the crime, the police were just arriving. It took quite a while to figure out what happened, but it turns out this was not a crime scene at all. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
The guy sprawled out on the floor had passed out and hit his head. This caused a cut that accounted for the blood everywhere. The man that appeared to be on top of him saw the individual fall and was trying to keep him from further injuring himself, and was also loosening his collar. If the witness had never returned, he would have sworn in court that he saw murder. The little girl’s description completely shaped the witness’s perceptions. This perhaps is understandable. However, the witness will never forget the shock he felt when he met the alleged murderer—the man he had seen a few moments before as huge, vicious, and horrible-looking. It turns out that the alleged murderer was not a stranger after all. He was a neighbor of the witness and they had seen each other several times before and actually knew each other by name. Also, he was not a big man, but a small, nice looking man. The mental process of organizing sensations into meaningful patterns is called perception. This process is so automatic that it can take a drastic misperception to call attention to it. Perception creates faces, melodies, works of art, illusions, and other misrepresentations due to a lack of understanding. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
Perception refers to interpretations we take in through our senses. “All in the Family” is a television series with a lead character called Archie Bunker, he is the head of the family, hardworking, and very outspoken. His wife, Edith, is a sweet woman, and like to tell stories to express her feelings so that she is considerate of everyone, hoping they will pick up on the message without outright saying what she means. Edith is a housewife and works very hard to do her job, she organizes her work by the days of the week and because she is a woman she faces discrimination in banking and finding employment outside of the house. Their beautiful daughter Gloria is a loving wife and married to a young man name Michael, whom Archie calls “Meathead.” They all live in the same house, while Gloria works at a department store, which she was fired from for being pregnant, and Meathead is in school studying to become a college professor. Many people would assume that Archie is a bigot because of some of the things he says, but he does not really mean them, it was just the way he was raised. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
Archie is not racist, and he actually stands up for women’s rights, like the time he got Edith’s friend a job at his factory. Archie also supports equality and let his neighbor’s son, who is African American move in with them for a while when his father threw him out for being engaged, to a young lady who is half European American and African American. The reason people think Archie is racist is because of some of the things he says, but he learned these words and ideas from his father and never questioned his father because he was the man who raised him, fed him, provided “bread and bored” for him and protected him. So, in Archie’s eyes his father could never be wrong. And although Archie was conditioned to say certain things, he was a very loving man. When Michael finally got a job as associate professor and had to move from the East Coast to the West Coast, Archie was so very sad and did not want him to take the job. He had actually grown to love Meathead, and did not want to be far from his daughter Gloria and his grandson Joey. Sometimes we have to look beyond the surface to see what is really going on. Actions speak louder than words. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
As I was watching this television show, I would call home to my mother and tell her about the funny things that Archie Bunker did and said. I really enjoyed watching the show because he reminded me of my grandfather and Edith reminded me of my grandmother. And I also started watching “The Jefferson’s,” and when I would go home I will tell my mother about the funny things that George Jefferson did. These shows are new to me, but when I was looking up the actor who played George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley), I found out he had died. And it kind of made me sad. I was talking to my mother about how I see this man on TV every day and he is so very much alive to me, but how he was dead. And it is kind of sad to get attached to people and find out they are dead. Then, she broke the news to me that Archie Bunker is dead, too. I kind of had a feeling. So, I went home to look up information on Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor). Carroll O’Connor was Born 2 August 1924 and died 21 June 2001. He suffered a heart attack. His career spanned over four decades. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
Carroll O’Connor went to the University of Montana-Missoula, he was an actor, producer, and director. His wife is still alive, her name is Nancy Fields O’Connor. In 1962, while he was in Rome filming “Cleopatra,” Carroll O’Connor and his wife adopted a six-day-old- boy, and named him Hugh O’Connor. They took him back to America and at the tender age of 17, Hugh worked with his father on the set of “Archie Bunker’s Place, which was starring Carroll O’Connor, of course. Then both father and son went on to work on the television show “In the Heat of the Night.” Unfortunately, Hugh O’Connor became addicted to drugs and when he could not break the habit, he called his father and told him that he was going to kill himself. By the time Carroll was able to get help to his son, he was already dead. Following his son’s death, Carroll O’Connor spent the rest of his life working to raise awareness about drug addiction. He successfully lobbied to get the state of California to pass legislation allowing family members of an addicted person or anyone injured by a drug dealer’s actions, including employers, to sue for reimbursement for medical treatment and rehabilitation costs and other economic and noneconomic damages. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
The law, known as the Drug Dealer Civil Liability Act in California, went into effect in 1997. It is also referred to as the Hugh O’Connor Act. Hugh O’Connor started the fight against the man who sold the drugs to Hugh. He called Harry Perzigian a partner in murder of Hugh O’Connor. “I can’t forget it. There isn’t a day that I don’t think of him and want him back and miss him, and I’ll feel that way until I’m not here anymore,” said Carroll O’Connor. It would be well I those who stifle their consciences, and commit crimes, would set up a sort of medico-moral diary, and record their symptoms minutely day by day. Such records might help to clear away some vague, conventional notions. Drug addiction is a serious problem in America. An estimated 570,000 people in America die from drug overdoses every year. Many people do not understand why or how other people become addicted to drugs. They mistakenly think that those who use drugs lack moral principles or willpower and that they could stop their drug use simply by choosing to. In reality, drug addiction is a complex disease, and quitting usually takes more than good intentions or a strong will. Drugs can change the brain in ways that make quitting almost impossible, even for those who want to. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
Drug addiction is a chronic disease characterized by drug seeking and use that is compulsive or difficult to control, despite harmful consequences. The initial decision to take drugs is usually voluntary for most people, but repeated drug use can lead to brain changes that challenge an addicted person’s self-control and interfere with their ability to resist intense urges to take drugs. These brain changes can be persistent, which is why drug addiction is considered a relapsing disease—people in recovery from drug use disorders are at increased risk for returning to drug use even after years of not taking the drugs. People who suffer from addiction often have one or more accompanying medical issues, which may include lung or cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, and mental disorders. Imaging scans, chest X-rays, and blood tests show the damaging effects of long-term drug abuse throughout the body. For example, research has shown that tobacco smoke causes cancer of the mouth, throat, larynx, blood, lungs, stomach, pancreas, kidney, bladder, and cervix. In addition, some drugs of abuse, such as inhalants, are toxic to nerve cells and may damage or destroy them either in the brain or the peripheral nervous system. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
Drug abuse and mental illness often co-exist. In some cases, mental disorders such as increased stress, depression, or schizophrenia may precede addiction; in other cases, drug abuse may trigger or exacerbate those mental disorders, particularly in people with specific vulnerabilities. Some research suggests that marijuana use is likely to precede use of other licit and illicit substances and the development of addiction to other substances. It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of heroin users have used marijuana (and many other drugs) not only long before they used heroin, but while they are using heroin. Like nearly all people with substance abuse problems, most heroin users initiated their drug use early in their teens usually beginning with alcohol and marijuana. There is ample evidence that early initiation of drug use primes the brain for enhanced later responses to other drugs. And Marijuana use is positively correlated with alcohol use and cigarette use, as well as illegal drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine. Allowing recreational use of marijuana is dangerous because of the aggressive commercialization of marijuana is now rampant and growing. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
The legalization of marijuana increases availability of the drug and acceptability of its use. This is bad for public health and safety not only because marijuana use increases the risk of heroin use, but also because it markets marijuana and an array of increasingly potent products in ever more attractive ways that encourage marijuana use. Legalizing marijuana will have lasting negative effects on future generations, it will increase the national drug abuse problem, including expanding the opioid epidemic. Lawmakers in California “have been darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of their ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more,” (Ephesians 2-17-19). People who are addicted to marijuana are three times more likely to be addicted to heroin. With California allowing recreational marijuana to be sold in California, but it still being considered an illegal drug by the federal government, it seems with the Drug Dealer Civil Liability Act, families and employers can now seek help to pay for the problems and rehabilitation cost of their children and family members. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
The Dole Foundation’s Hidden Criminal
The mass media plays an important role in defining deviance in the United States of America and other industrialized and technological societies. The United States of America has approximately 300 million guns, nearly one for every member of the population. There were 372 mass shootings in the United States of America in 2015, killing 475 people, and wounding 1,870. Altogether these deaths by gun violence consisted of 13,286 people being shot and killed by fire arms in the United States of America, 26,819 people were injured. On 2017 June 2017, Gunman kills 3, wounds 2 and shoots himself at a UPS facility in San Francisco, California USA. Also, on this day same day, in Alexandria, Virginia USA at about 7am, at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park, about seven miles away from the White House in Washington, D.C., where several lawmakers were practicing for the annual charity congressional baseball game planned for 2017 June 15, James Hodgkins (age 66) of Belleville, Illinois USA opened fire and shot Republican Representative Steve Scalise, and four others, including 2 capitol Police officers. The suspect died from his injuries and Steve Scalise is in critical condition. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Coincidentally, these shootings on Capitol Hill happened the same day, Ryan Phillippe, the star of a TV show called Shooter, which is glorifying gun violence testified in a hearing about service for veterans. Ryan Phillippe was selected by Senator Elizabeth Dole as ambassador for Dole Foundation’s Hidden Heroes program. As the son of a Vietnam Veteran and grandson of a World War II veteran, I am deeply offended by Ryan Phillippe representing veterans because he is a desperate and deeply troubled man. He is reckless and involved in the production of a show that promotes gun violence, and he also has a fan page that engages in soliciting nude photographs from fan and shares them without their knowledge. Ryan Phillippe has done nothing worthy to be the ambassador of anything that has to do with veterans. He is an embarrassment to Americans and a disgrace to veterans everywhere. Veterans are people who stood up and gave their lives for this country, sacrificed their freedom and quality of life, as well as their finances to defend our honor, and many of them passed away in battle, came home deeply injured, and were not able to life full lives and be there with their families. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
It is absolutely despicable that the Dole Foundation would have a sleazy actor such as Ryan Phillippe, who fails to correct his own material, moral, and spiritual defects and evils to represent American heroes. Ryan Phillippe never can become independent and recognized as a human being who is truly equal with other human beings. He hides from the truth behind his wigs, makeup, and a façade of grinning, foot shuffling, and head-scratching. And Ryan Phillippe has no conscience whatsoever because he has built up, deep in his psyche, an absolute conviction that he is superior. How can the Dole Foundation figure on selling they are concerned about the caregivers, veterans, and their families, when they are represented by someone engaged in trouble and peril? Just face the truth. Facts! Whether or not Ryan Phillippe is able to face truth, and facts, about the true reasons for his trouble, he should not be the one that essentially will determine what kind of care surviving veterans should receive. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Today, we are seeing this revolution of people who are frozen in horror by gun violence, and Ryan Phillippe and exploiting veterans and their families for profit, and recognition. If you hear every day of the unethical and illegal situations Ryan Phillippe is involved in, how can he be used to represent a class of heroes who have loved America, slaved for America, tended to America, and nursed America? These veterans have jumped into uniform and gone off and died when this America was attacked by enemies. Such a faithful group of people, many of who when came home from war were spit on, had dogs set on them, fires hoses on them, beat bloody, and a manner of other crimes inflicted upon them. When these veterans were acting as Ambassadors for America, their limousines were burned, they were stoned, they experienced defilings and wreckings of embassies and legations, they were told they were not welcomed home. Our veterans have had to face attacks, and bombings, and tearing down of their flags they so deeply care about. American veterans deserve someone who is a veteran representing this Hidden Heroes program, someone who cares about people and this country and understands their struggles. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Veterans and their caregivers and families deserve someone of their own kind, representing them, and that is the way we can make sure they get the respect they deserve and have someone representing their legacy who truly cares about their struggles, and victories, not some wig wearing, fake, like Ryan Phillippe, who is engaged in criminal activity and cannot even be considered a real man. He does not even take care of his own children, he does not spend time with his son or daughters, he does not even care about them. All Ryan Phillippe cares about is fame and money and tattoos, and will use anyone in his path to get what he wants. Ryan Phillippe is one installment payment away from disaster, what does he look like downtown out to dine, grinning at some headwaiter who has more money than he does? That bourgeois wig wearing monster out draping big tablecloth-sized napkins over his knees and ordering quail under glass and stewed nails. Veterans deserve a representative who will make sure their heritage is persevered and not a fraud like Ryan Phillippe. Take time to find out how Ryan Phillippe used and exploited the son of a veteran to rebuild his career. Ryan Phillippe is nothing more than a tattooed thug. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
Do you Believe you have a Soul?
Humans are beings of love through and through. Why? Because human beings are Earth beings. The Earth is the cosmos of love, meaning that wisdom, and the soul of the World, is destined to become consciousness and this takes place through wisdom transformed into love. While the constant flux of human relationships creates enormous variance that is problematical and troublesome from a scientific point of view, it also provides us with the best hope of understanding what it is about human companionship that prevents premature death. Who are we? Are we parasites living on Earth? Imagine someone incapable of developing the force of love. Without love we would actually perish, physically die. There are literally thousands of exceptions to the general statistical rule that unmarried men and women die prematurely. One cannot be blind to the fact that there are many happy and healthy 80- and 90-year-old unmarried individuals, and many people who live active, productive, and happy lives for decades after they have lost a husband or wife. Their physical and psychological adjustment must be carefully studied, for their lives clearly point out that being unmarried need not be a physical state itself that leads to disease and death, but rather one’s social adjustment to it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
The future of love concerns the full development of individuality, which is responsible for the creation of a new, conscious unity of the World, brought forth out of the freedom of love. It is amazing that some people love one so much that even though they see an individual trying to build a career, when they see that person is being used as a slave, they will remove them from that situation, which totally makes sense. If you want animals to stop attacking your house, you remove their food source. The forms of love from the past have been severely damaged as a result of the kind of consciousness responsible for nuclear weapons. None of these forms has the strength to hold together relationships without being renewed through the development of individual love. Individual love, on the other hand, cannot develop in isolation from the World because individual love is at the same time World oriented. One of the best things you can do when you are hurting is go out and help someone else who is in pain. Get your mind off your problems and pain by helping someone else in need. When you help others in your time of need, you are creating a separate, but equal reactions (Newton’s III Law of Physics) and God can use this to change your situation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
There is much talk these days about the living Earth. When you walk on the Earth, imagine that this is the skin of a living being. Imagine the flow of the waters in the streams, ocean, and rivers as the blood of this being, and the air you breathe is the breath of the Earth. This simple act of caring will bring an uncanny experience that will help you love other living beings. What is it about human contact that makes it so important to our health? Why should marriage be statically so beneficial to the health of the heart? Why is loneliness so physically destructive? Why do people die of broken hearts? Human beings are a manifestation of consciousness. They are the quality of warmth, of feeling. The quality of warmth of consciousness, the feeling of this warm creates a dream like state and gives beings the motivation to keep on living. Money can only buy so much happiness and if you are poor it is the love of your family that gives you the drive to keep striving, the love of God the forces you to open your eyes and breath. When the source of love is not there, it is as if the dream is over, and one has difficulty in trying to consciously make the dream reappear or stay clear. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
When the attraction of love between people exists, the quality of love tends to be more permanent. We know that we cannot buy love, we cannot force people to love us, and even when we do kind things for others out of love, they may use us and expect our help and give nothing back in return, but pain. All human beings are bound by identical obligations, although these are performed in different ways according to particular circumstances. No human being, whoever he or she may be, under whatever circumstances, can escape them without being guilty of crime. It is eternal and unconditional, the World has an elementary sense of justice, the ability to see things as others do, a sense of transcendental responsibility, archetypical wisdom, good taste, courage, compassion, and faith in the importance of particular measures that do not aspire to be a universal key to salvation. Soul, individual spirituality, firsthand personal insight into things; the courage to be oneself and go the way of one’s conscience points, humility in the face of the mysterious order of being, confidence in its natural direction and, above all, trust in one’s own subjectivity as one’s principal link with the subjectivity of the World—these are qualities that people of the future should have? #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
All of the living makes the mistake of drawing too sharp distinctions. Angels (it is said) would be often unable to tell whether they moved among the living or dead. Our impoverished state is marked by our awareness that we are not very reliably at home in the interpreted World. Hence, in order to regain for ourselves something that would equal spiritual and existential fervor that characterized the ages of faith, we must take upon ourselves the task of endowing the World (the World of things of the intimate personal relations) with the inwardness of feeling that other ages directed toward a divinity. Joy, love, and above all suffering and pain should not diffuse sensations accompanying an unending series of vague hopes and regrets; they must become the objects of a total commitment. Thus, since we are not yet strong enough to give ourselves totally in love, we have better follow the example of the lover and draw our strength from an unrequited, uninterrupted feeling, or indeed of Narcissus, who used the natural World as a magnifying mirror of his feelings. In a World in which all actions are liable to remain uncompleted, I know my redeemer lives. God will pay you back double what you have loss and the rest of your life will be the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
God will always have another plan in store for you. The truth is you need prayer more than a friend. Arise from the depression in which the circumstances have kept you. Rise to a new life. Notice, if you want a new life, there is something you have to do. You cannot sit back and focus on negativity. You have a full life ahead of you. God will bind up your broken heart, and help you proclaim freedom as you are released from darkness. We must pray for the grace to endure problems as our spiritual will is perfected. This is not a social phenomenon, but a pageant of situations and persons in whom the ideal of completion and strength of feeling is realized, just as the contemporary World is a series of images that portray our deprivations and stunted responses. To make something of one’s fate, of one’s experiences, is to give them the permanence (essentially poetic) of a moment of intensity. Similarly, the supreme task, set by the imminence of death, is to repair the adventitiousness of death by drawing into my life, by making of it my own death. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
The immensity of the task of creating a new spirituality is betrayed by the complex, and quite conscious, ambiguities of transcendence, chief of which is the image of the Angel. He is a messenger (angelos) from another sphere; hence, there must be one who spent him. However, the Angel comes upon us with a terrible majesty and strength which, to us who are weak, is all his own. The Angel is pure and necessary contradiction and he sees the foundation of our being: only living in total commitment to the Earth, the here and now, can we transform it into the heart’s inner space, and thus wrest some eventual transition into a soundless Beyond. This is the creative act, stills all strife by transforming it into a song, eternalizes the moment by making of it a monument of inwardness, and transfixes suffering into the eternally valid image of God. In a World of yearning for the security of faith and finding it in ideology, there is a new purpose for living, as all concerted action is an escape from defective selfhood. God has a specific plan by which great blessing will come out of difficulty. Arise and wipe away your tears and press on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Secrets and Lies—Unauthorized
My heart is in the happy position of a country which has no history or debt. Our friendships and intimacies are only calculated for strong life and health. People reap only the harvest they have sown in the World. Even in this life, God is righteous. This Thanksgiving, let us not forget about those who have suffered a loss of a loved one. The pressure of grief is sometimes such as to prompt us to seek a refuge in voluntary death. Everybody thinketh their own grief greatest. For most people, the feeling of loss and sadness fade with time and support. Some people, though, experience grief on a deeper level. When the situations surrounding their loss are unusual, we may forget that death may be a natural part of life. The grief does not go away. Instead, it may lead to fear, anger, hatred, and aggression. Ben Crawford experiences immense grief because they experienced immense loss. Understanding the way grief and modern views of masculinity interact may help explain how some people view Ben Crawford as privileged and ruthless. Sorrow is a deep emotional distress that is caused by the loss or distance of a loved one. Sometimes intense sadness and yearning for a loving relationship may occur, and it may be challenging to control. People who have unwanted distance from a loved one may feel vulnerable or worthless. It typically changes one’s views of the World and the future. Understandably, there is a lot of work to get through emotionally when you lose someone you love.
Grief usually follows a predictable pattern that starts with shock or emotional numbness. A person may be in a dazed state where they how no emotion because they cannot accept the reality of their loss. Then they will experience sharp pangs of grief. These re episodes of painful yearning for the person that has departed or moved on. Sometimes the one left suffering will sometimes have anguished outburst of anger because their desire to have you back in their life is intense, and they may form relationships or friendships with others and pretend that they are you. They may hear your voice, or see you vividly in their dreams. A person who experiences a loss may even try to resurrect you by bargaining. That means they are making deals or offerings with others or a higher power to bring you back. The person suffering the loss begins to dwell how they could have avoided losing the one they loved in the first place. The powerful reactions of grief gradually give way to apathy, demoralization, and deep despondency because the person is facing a new emotional landscape with a large gap that cannot be filled. Life seems to lose much of its meaning. They may also experience insomnia, loss of energy and appetite. Not everyone reaches the stage of acceptance. They cannot and will not let go and have a deep faith that you will return. In the TV show, “Secrets and Lies,” the lead character, Ben Crawford experiences these stages when his son is kidnapped and killed by someone he loves. He spends months trying to figure out what happened and even blames himself and suspects that he may have killed his own son. No one else in Ben’s life seems to experience as much pain as he does about the loss of his son, mostly because they were upset that he had been born and blame the boy for breaking up their family. The mother of Ben’s son even convinces herself that Ben raped her because she was trying use the birth of their son to break up his marriage and win Ben back, but when her plan did not work, she reported him to the police.
However, Ben remained resilient, he was able to cope with the loss of his son, even though the people in his life tortured him mentally and physically. Ben remained emotionally stable through the process. Some people who experience psychopathological conditions, such as depressive symptoms, will return to their normal level of functioning after a period of healing. Others, like the mother of Ben’s son, will experience chronic dysfunction, which is a psychological symptom that may not heal as quickly as those following a traditional recovery trajectory. Chronic dysfunction in their everyday life can be traced to the grief and troubles with resiliency. In people who do not initially shows signs of distress, symptoms may appear months later, and if they are trying to replace the loved one with someone new, this is when the substitute is rejected. Regarding trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder may not manifest full diagnostic criteria until six months or more after the traumatic event. Ben Crawford’s trajectory is that of chronic dysfunction, but the symptoms were delayed. His losses affect him throughout his lifespan, he was disowned by his father, rejected by his wife, and even his children looked down on him. This guides Ben’s wild and reckless behavior. His lack of love makes him act out in anger and hurt because he is trying to release his pain, and may not be aware. Ben Crawford was diagnosed by Detective Cornell with persistent complex bereavement disorder (PCBD). In PCBD, the feelings associated with grief last longer than expected for the bereavement process. This process was intensified because Ben had no idea the boy was his son, but had spent time with him and loved him, until Ben was accused of murder of the boy and a DNA sample was taken. What makes matters more challenging is someone Ben loves deeply and sees everyday killed his son out of a jealous rage. Though the time frame is longer, PCBD involves the same symptoms as bereavement. PCBD, which some joking call “Politically Correct Baby Daddy” in this case may also be diagnosed when the loss is traumatic in nature.
If the trauma leads to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a person might also exhibit symptoms of both PTDS and PCBD. In a case like Ben Crawford, PTSD is a reaction to avoid constantly being reminded of the trauma and PCBD is preoccupation with the loss. As you can see, grief for men can be complicated by a phenomenon known as normative male alexithymia, a mild condition wherein men are unable to put their feelings into words. This stems from the social engineering that says if men express emotions they are weak. So when people interact with Ben Crawford, the notice he is very intense, he does not talk much and he generally seems sad, depressed or like he is ready to fight. Ben does not want to be seen as feminine because he already feels like a victim, but does not want anyone to know that. So anything that is feminine, like smiling and expressing joy, is inherently seen as undesirable by Ben. He wants his wife, who is about to divorce him, and his children and friends to see him as a Roman God, a pillar of strength, control, power, and masculinity. Ben also wants people to know he is in control, so he manipulates his loved ones, but he is doing it out of love. He wants them to see that he really loves them and his tyrannical ways are his means of protecting them. Ben Crawford also takes risk by trying to resurrect his son. The more dangerous the risk, the more masculine the individual (some of these scenes did not make it into the mini-series, and the director actually recast the show with all new actors, only retaining Detective Cornell as producers thought the content was too mature for audiences).
Ben Crawford’s inability to voice his feelings is common in many men, and societal pressure to act in a masculine fashion directly interferes with the processing of grief. Out of fear of his feelings, Ben turns to substance abuse and becomes angry, hateful, and everyone can tell he is suffering as his dark soul shines through, and at times his baby blue eyes appear black as night because his grief becomes more intense overtime and this turns into anger and rage. He chokes his wife and steals her money, then cheats on her; is he trying to be her? It was truly a “Single White Female” moment. He even tries to pass the cheap copy off as his wife, she is pretty, but does not hold a candle to his wife. Ben’s grief is transformed into anger and he blames his family for the loss of his son, as he throws something at the wall, he finally breaks down and cries, as he falls to his knee screaming, “I hate them!” Ben Crawford’s wife finally divorces him, takes his kids, and moves on. She meets a new man, and Ben almost ruins her new marriage with his antics and drama. However, she was able to put some distance between her new life and Ben, and saved her marriage. Ben Crawford is finally released from prison, after claiming he murdered his son, to protect someone he loves. He changes his career, changes his partners, starts drinking, doing drugs, having sex with a lot of people because he is attempting to surpass his emotions through willpower.
One night, after a Halloween party, Ben wakes up feeling like his intestines were reorganized and pounded, he concludes that he was drugged and raped by two fat gay guys, who had been in his hotel room that night. However, no one believes that Ben was raped because the was seen taking pictures with the guys, posting them on social media, and have even admitted to picking guys up off the street to party with him. One inspector tells Ben, “You are a got damn liar! You took this guys back to your hotel room to play cards?!” A reporter, however, defends Ben Crawford and explains that he may have “jet lag,” and been unaware that he may have enticed these men to violate him. Still, no charges were filed. Ben Crawford, now alienated by friends and family, is still trying to resurrect his son, and tells people, “Nothing can stop that now!” Everyone thinks Ben has lost his mind. He is trying to get away from the darkness by making things right. Fatherhood is a complicated thing—as is parenthood itself, of course—but this father has a different role to play in the child’s life than the mother does. Ben does not know it, but his son came back to life. He sees him on Twitter, and hears all of these wild stories about how no one knows where this boy came from, how his mother rejects him, and how people literally attack the young man. Although time has passed, Ben starts to suspect this is his son, and they start chatting. The young man has no idea he is talking to his father, and he has no idea that his father has been spying on him and following him around. You see, a strong father-child bond correlates with that child being able to regulate his emotion states in a healthy way, exhibit social competence, make friend, have meaningful relationships, and few psychological and behavioral difficulties. This young man is having so many problems because society believes that his father betrayed him, and he was brought back from the dead, but has no idea.
Ben’s son spends time trying to figure out what is wrong with him and why people hate him. He even gets involved in dark sciences and finds an explanation, and when he tries to explain some of his theories to his only friend, she tries to kill him and tells him that he is off kilter. The funny thing is that this happens on a Summer day, it is 100 degrees Fahrenheit and she is wearing a heavy scarf around her neck. This case study or mini-series is a cautionary myth about why boys need a strong father figure, what happens with the identity of a child is conceal from the producer, and how using dark science can have consequences. The losses Ben Crawford endues—and the brutality by which those losses turn him into a fearsome monster shows us that redemptions is possible through faith and love of his son. Ben Crawford finally gets to look into the eyes of his son, for the very first time in years, and he smiles. We can choose God as our ruler by seeking out and practicing true worship based on God’s word, the Bible. We can reject darkness as our ruler by keeping out of politics and war, as Ben Crawford did. Darkness uses his power to promote immoral, harmful practices. When we reject such practices, some friends and relatives may not understand and ridicule or oppose us. So we face a choice. Will we associate with people who love God? Will we obey his wise and loving laws? If we do, we prove that Satan lied when he claimed that under pressure no one would do as God says. God’s love for mankind guarantees that evil and suffering will end. Those who demonstrate that they believe this will enjoy life on Earth forever, and you loved one will return also and you will have peace.
Randolph Harris II International Institute 