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Evil Behind Smiling Eyes
Obviously, one must hold oneself responsible for the evil impulses. Therefore, beware of the evil behind the smiling eyes. As we increase our understanding and love for the Saviour, His light will illuminate everything around us. We will then see evil for what it is. Working as a special agent for the FBI, my friend investigated organized crime groups transporting illegal drugs into the United States of America. On one occasion, he and another agent approached an apartment where they believed a known drug dealer was distributing cocaine. My friend describes what happened: “We knocked on the door of the drug dealer. The suspect opened the door, and upon seeking us, tried to block our view. However, it was too late’ we could see the cocaine on his table. A man and a woman who were at the table immediately began removing the cocaine. We had to prevent them from destroying the evidence, so I quickly pushed the drug suspect who was blocking the door to the side. As I pushed him, my eyes met his. Strangely, he did not appear angry or afraid. He was smiling at me. His eyes and disarming smile gave me the impression that he was harmless, so I quickly left him and started to move toward the table. The suspect was now behind me. At that instant, I had the distinct, powerful impression come into my mind: ‘Beware of the evil behind the smiling eyes.’ #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
“I immediately turned back toward the suspect. His hand was in his large front pocket. Instinctively I grabbed his hand and pulled it from his pocket. Only then did I see, clutched in his hand, the semiautomatic pistol ready to fire. A flurry of activity followed, and I disarmed the man.” Later, in another case, the drug dealer was convicted of murder and boasted that he would have also killed my friend had he not turned around at that very moment. He was a weak sniveling punk. A born snitch. He caused my friend trouble before. He had this place near Palm Springs. Used it for a hideout. It was loaded with guns and heroin. One weekend, there was this underaged girl that the heat was looking for and they went to the door. They were looking for this girl, and he said get a warrant. My friend in the FBI said he would. So, the other dudes covered the side doors, and one of them got a shotgun and two pistols and waited at the end of the hallway. His old lady answered the door, but when the FBI came, the sixteen-year-old girl went to the door and gave herself up. So, the offenders piled the guns in the car, and drove to another location. On this planet, evil has been allowed a position of influence to give us the chance to choose between good and evil. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
The scripture says: “God gave unto man that he should act for himself. [And] man could not act for himself [unless] he was enticed by one or the other. The choice between good and evil is at the very heart of our experience on Earth. If we are rich or poor, if we were athletic or not, if we had friend or were often forgotten, in the final review of our lives, it will not matter. The suspect with the guns in the car was apprehended. The morning after sentencing, the orders came through transferring him to the State Prison. Emigration from short-time County Jail to long-term penitentiary. In the basement holding tank, stripped of county wrappings, he dressed for the final time in mod flannels. He was stored in a special isolated holding tank until the County Jail bus drove through the smoggy freeways to the Prison Reception Center at Chino, California. The welcoming committee was grim and blunt. “Strip naked. Throw your personal belongings in the box. Bend over for body inspection. Run your hands through your hair, both your ears. Open your mouth. Wag your tongue. Lift your testicles. Turn around spread your buttocks. Left foot. Right foot. Shower,” the authorities told him. He dressed in the new prison uniform. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
A tall African American in blue danced over. He gave him ten hand-rolled cigarettes. The rumor wind was blowing around him. They were going to put him in the hole. The Captain wanted to see him. They were going to ship him to the Medical Center at Vacaville. And he would be getting bailed out the next day. The sergeant checked inmate for long hair and ordered him to the barber. He got a last mirror glimpse at forest hair and moustache. He asked the barber to leave as much as he could, but the barber grunted and clipped. “Don’t complain, man. You look twenty years younger,” he said. Our offender then took sheets and blankets and followed the sergeant to solitary confinement. It was a bad-boy lock up for him. He walked by the cages of the dangerous wild men. They shouted in pleasure to see him. An African American man shouted: “Hey man, we gotta talk to you. We cannot see each other. Just cries from cage to cage.” A nasty Brooklyn voice denounced the offender. “Oh, he’s that bad man! Hang him.” Another African American defended him. Shorty’s Brooklyn voice turned friendly. “Hey Doc, look at these pictures.” A hand from the next cell appeared holding colour snapshots. Sadeyed blue wife and clear-eyed kids. “Hey Doc, here’s a record of my trial. Read it.” “Hey Doc, you want some cigarettes.” “Hey Doc, you need some stamps and envelops.” “Hey Doc, you wanna a Playboy magazine?” #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Dinner was passed through a slot in the bars of the narrow white counter bod. Then the evening sports. African American used mirrors to catch the setting sun, playing sunshine tag, racing reflected birds of light against the wall. Laughing and shouting. At the hour of romance, from his solitary cell a young man sadly coos a soft message and an African American voice rumbles back: “You Karl I going to get you expletive. What I’m gonna do to you girl! Hoooeee. I got me twenty inches for you. You my expletive.” “Oh no big boy, I’m my own man,” he repiles. “Great God almighty, I gotta het me some sweet white meat. I sick to death of my own right hand. Wheee—here I come Karl. Ohhhhh what I’m gonna to do to you siter. I gonna split your pink expletive girl. Stuff my tool up your belly, split yo kidneys girl. Gut you baby so you gonna never be able to walk again. Oh, Mr. Guard let that man out. Oh let him loose. I need that man.” Our offender now has a momentary reflex, fear of being trapped in a cell holocaust was calmed by the cement steel of maximum security. Next morning the offender is called to the Captain’s office; sitting watching trustees run the prison, typing, phoning, filing, serious responsible people working proudly. “We’ve finally got you, huh. You are going to be with us a long time. Ha ha. You’re smaller than on TV. I guess we cut you down to size, huh,” said the Captain. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Prison is a very dangerous place. Be sure to think before committing an illegal act. You may think you are high and mighty, until the cell doors close on you. We can work, study, laugh and have fun, dance, sing, and enjoy many different experiences. These are a wonderful part of life, but they are not central to why we are here. The opportunity to choose good over evil is precisely why we are here. Not one of us would say, “I want to choose evil.” We all want to choose the right. However, the choice of good over evil is not always easy, because evil frequently lurks behind smiling eyes. Listen to these warnings: “Take heed…that ye do not judge that which is evil to be of God.” “Ye must watch and pray always lest ye enter into temptation; for evil desireth to have you.” The message is: Beware of the evil behind the smiling eyes! I have known a few young men who began with every intention to stay firm in their loyalty to the Saviour but who slipped from the path because they did not see the evil behind eyes that appeared quite harmless. They saw the fun, the pleasure, the acceptance, but they did not see the other consequences. How, then, can we discern the evil being something that does not appear evil? First, talk to your parents. We fathers know we are far from perfect, but we love you, and along with your mothers, have deep interest in your choosing the right. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
Very importantly, let the Holy Ghost be your guide. The Lord has promised us that as we live righteously, the still, small voice will come into our mind and into our heart. You have felt this influence. You know this voice. The gift of the Holy Ghost is a spiritual gift. It is sensitive and will not be associated with unworthiness. You cannot offend or ignore it one day and expect it to strengthen you the next day. However, as you heed its promptings and remain righteous, it will grow stronger within you. The Holy Ghost warned my friend of physical danger; they Holy Ghost will also warn you of spiritual danger. Finally, gain your own testimony of the Saviour. Pray passionately. When no one is watching, read the Christian Holy Bible and the Book of Mormon. Take time alone to think about who Jesus Christ really is and how His life and sacrifice are important to you. If we bother to look back at America’s foreign policy after the 2020 election, we are shocked by the constant failures of our government. The August 2024 jobs report reveals a sharp contrast in employment trends between American born and foreign-born workers. Native-born Americans lost over 1.3 million jobs over the last year, while foreign-born workers gained more than 1.2 million jobs. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
New York City hands illegal immigrants $4,000 and gift cards to move out of shelters. And the Department of Justice reports an illegal immigrant used a stolen identity to vote. A man who sees the constant and incomprehensible decline of his government can only drop his head in despair, or feel the beginning of an internal desire for a flaming rebellion against such a regime. However, as we increase our understanding and love for the Saviour, His light will illuminate everything around us. We then will see evil for what it is. Children need the peace that comes from knowing they have a loving Heavenly Father, who sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to bring light and hope into the World. It is up to us as adults to direct children to that peace and light. From the flight against the authority of Church, State, and family which characterize the last centuries, we have come back full circle to a new obedience; but this obedience is not one to autocratic persons, but to the organization. The “organization man” is not aware that he obeys; he believes that eh only conforms with what is rational and practical. Indeed, disobedience has become almost extinct in the society or organization men, regardless of their ideology. Yet one must remember that the capacity for disobedience is as great a virtue as the capacity for obedience. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
One must remember that, according to the Hebrew and Greek myths, human history began with an act of disobedience. Adam and Eve, living in the Garden of Eden were still part of nature, as the fetus is in the womb of the mother. Only when they dared to disobey an order were their eyes opened; they recognized each other as strangers and the World outside as strange and hostile. Their act of disobedience broke the primary bond with nature and made them individuals. Disobedience was the first act of freedom, the beginning of human history. Prometheus, stealing the fire of the gods, is another disobedient dissenter. “I would rather be chained to this rock than be the obedient servant of the gods,” he said. His act of stealing the fire is his gift to men, thus laying the very basis for civilization. He, like Adam and Eve, was punished for his disobedience; yet he, like them, has made human evolution possible. Man has continued to evolve by acts of disobedience not just in the sense that his spiritual development was possible only because there have been men who dared to say “no” to the powers that be in the name of their conscience or of their faith. His intellectual development was also dependent on the capacity for being disobedient, disobedient to the authorities who tried to muzzle new thoughts, and to the authority of long-established opinions which declared change to be nonsense. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
If the capacity for disobedience constituted the beginning of human history, obedience might cause the end of human history. I am not speaking symbolically or poetically. There is the possibility that the human race will destroy itself and all life on Earth within the next tend to fifteen years. There is no rationality or sense in it. However, the fact is that while we are living technically in the atomic age, the majority of men live emotionally still in the stone age, including most of those who are in power. If mankind commits death by suicide, it will be because people will obey those who command them to push the deadly buttons, because they will obey the archaic passions of fear, hate, and greed; because they will obey obsolete cliches of state sovereignty and national honour. By the time he gets to “I Guess I’D Better Drive You, Dear” or “Getcher Expletive Outa Bed,” or even, “I’ll Beatcher Goddam Brains Out If You Don’t,” the child already has certain convictions about himself and the people around him, especially his parents. These convictions are likely to stay with him the rest of his life, and may be summarized as follows: I’m O.K. or; I’m not-O.K; You’re O.K. or; You’re not-O.K. On the basis of these he makes his life decisions. “It’s a World, some day I’ll make it a better one”—through science, service, poetry, or music. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
“It’s a bad World, someday I’ll kill myself”—or kill someone else, go crazy, or withdraw. Perhaps it is a mediocre World, where you do what you have to do and have fun in between; or a tough World, where you make good by putting on a white collar and shuffling other people’s papers’ or a hard World, where you sweep or bend or deal, or wiggle or fight for a living; or a dreary World, where you sit in a bar hoping; or a futile World, where you give up. I believe that we are in great danger of being converted into complete organization men, and that means, eventually, into political totalitarianism, unless we regain the capacity to be disobedient and to learn how to doubt. In working with unusually defensive, withdrawn or fearful individuals we find it even more important than ever not to impose ourselves on them. How is non-imposition consistent with a therapist who expresses more of himself more openly and actively, and who initiates relationships by expressing himself? Tentatively, if he will express himself—his own imaginings, his own feelings, desires, the events which transpire in him—and if he does this clearly and explicitly as statements about himself, or about events transpiring within him at the moment, I think the answer is: the therapist can be more active and at the same time present less imposition and threat. In this way he shares himself more openly, yet he does not impose on the client’s experience. He speaks for himself with events in the client. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
The content of our field of perception is necessarily selective; it cannot include all inner and outer reality that exists at a given moment. Only part of the ongoing flow of feelings, thoughts, and external events is defected by our sense organs and represented in our field of awareness. Our sense organs resemble TV or radio receivers, in that they are differentially sensitive to stimuli of different intensities and qualities. However, even within the receptive range of our senses, we still notice only a fraction of all the sensory information reaching our brain. Some of the important determiners of figure, that is, of our focus of attention, are unfulfilled needs. Our feelings and our needs direct our perception, thinking, remembering, and fantasy, so that the figure will be that perception, thought or memory most relevant to our needs of the moment. Our cognitive processes are thus servants of our needs. When we are hungry, we think and dream about food, we search for it, and we tend to ignore everything in the World that is indelible or that will not help us to get food. If we are deprived of pleasures of the flesh, we tend to have fantasies with erotic themes, we find it difficult to think about other things, and we look at the World from the standpoint of the gratification of pleasures of the flesh and frustration it is likely to afford. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
If we are anxious because of some threat to our security; we are too busy seeking the source of danger so that we might escape from it. There have been many experiments conducted to demonstrate how needs determine our attention and the content of our consciousness, and so we need not dwell further upon this point. More germane to our discussion is the manner in which emotions and unfulfilled needs operate to distort our perceptions and beliefs. We hear much from the moralists about the need of encouraging young men and young women to express themselves and of not letting society impose its will upon them, as we hear much from the psychoanalysts about the need of liberating them from secret inhibitions and of satisfying their repressed emotions. Both these movements are excellent. They are antidotes to the tyrannic soul-crushing, hypocrisy-breeding, and self-deceiving conventions of the old society. However, a good overdone may become an evil a virtue stretched too far may become a vice, and a method which ignores all the facts of the diamond of psychological truth except a single one may become unbalanced. The new morality may free people to the point where liberty is merely license and expression a dangerous disregard for the knowledge yielded by experience and age. The new psychoanalysis may free them to the point where mental liberation is mere lack of self-control and emotional satisfaction is dangerously anti-social. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
This is not to say that we would belittle the value of either. Both standard points may be philosophically used, which means they may be used in a balanced manner as a part of a wider one. The whole man is the natural man. Whoever sets up a cleavage between the intellectual and emotional functions, and would ignore the latter in order to enthrone the former, is unnatural and cannot attain that truth which is the voice of nature. This is not to say that emotional or reason should run riot; it is proper and necessary to give reason the reins, but this done, any sharper division will lead to unbalance, distortion, and error. Yes, the emotions of a person who is called hard and dry may need to be released, but this applies only to the positive ones. The negative ones are not worth releasing and should be got rid of. Anger and hatred are dangerous emotions to carry about with you. Whether or not they lead to actions harmful to the person they are directed against, they are certainly harmful to you. Conquer them quickly, get these psychological poisons out of your system. There is another kind of negative trait which, although unaggressive, is only less unpleasant by a matter of degrees than the aggressive ones. It is the black and bitter mood of sullen coldness, of the self-centered, self-tormenting, self-pitying sense of being wronged by the other person, the introverted, withdrawn, sulky, resentment at being hurt, a resentment so deep as to find no fitter expression than gloomy, frozen, and tense silence. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
He places all the blame for the situation on the other and consequently adopts a grieved unconciliatory attitude towards the other. He wounds by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being boorish. The atmosphere around him is full of sustained and hostile emotional tension. It is, of course, an adolescent trait and cannot endure when spiritual maturity is really attained. What the unawakened man feels as fear, the awakened one transmutes into needful caution and careful forethought. It is a feat of emotional surgery to relinquish attachments and to renounce possessiveness. Emotions unchecked by reason may become our betrayers. Beware of them when exceptionally strong and unduly excessive. The fears which are natural or necessary should not be confused with the fears which are neurotic or excessive. If the aspirant is to remake himself effectively, he must begin by attacking the lower emotions. They must be killed and eliminated from his life scene. So long as they dominate it, so long will experience yield poisonous fruits instead of healthy-giving ones. Every fresh situation will only give fresh life to his ego because those emotions will involve themselves in that situation and cause him to misread it. The first enemies, the hidden sources of his own difficulties, are within himself. To take the attitude in a depressing situation that the only action is to sit down and be depressed by it is unphilosophical. He should never give himself up to despair, although he may give himself up in hard situations to gravest reflection and deepest resignation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
The Sacramento Fire Department provides Sacramento City with the best possible all-risk emergency service in the protection of lives and property. They are and will continue to be identified by their dedication and pride in outstanding customer service, public health, safety, prevention and education. “For the last three years in fire prevention week, another firefighter and I go to all the different schools—anywhere from preschool up to twelfth grade—and teach fire prevention. The students enjoy it. It’s amazing how many students actually remember you. I’ve had kids come up to me in church, and say, ‘I remember you. Stop, drop, and roll!’ And I say, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ Then I say, ‘What do you do if you have smoke in your room?’ And they’ll tell me, ‘I stay low, and I crawl.’ To me, that’s worth every ounce of time I’ve spent with these kids. If I can just save one of these kids, ever, that’s all I can ask. I couldn’t want any more. One Christmas Eve, we came home from my family’s party, and we tucked our children in. Just like in the storybook, they were all nestled in bed. And my wife and I were being Santa’s helpers, setting out all of Santa’s gifts with their name tags on them, when I got a call that we had a house fire. I remember giving her a kiss and saying, ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ And I left her sitting among all these toys that weren’t put together yet, and all this stuff scattered around, and I went on the house fire. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
“Thankfully, there was nobody in the house, they were out visiting, but their house was destroyed, a total loss. I came back home, and it was like magic: everything had been done. And there my wife was sitting, with a cup of coffee for me, and she made my Christmas really special. In fact, it was Christmas morning by the time I got back. But she didn’t complain. It didn’t upset her. There have been a lot of occasions when I’ve had to leave her. She has been really good, very supportive, and she’s proud of me, she really is.” The lives and well-being of the citizens of Sacramento, visitors, and department members is their highest priority. The Sacramento Fire Department is fiscally responsible in all they do. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. To keep our community peace, please raise your children to love America, love God, and love Jesus Christ. It is also important to be patriotic and buy American cars and other American made goods and services. In order to maintain the tranquility of our city, we must always remember to respect law and order, and treat our elders with the utmost dignity, reverence, and honour. Good neighbours play a vital role in creating a strong and resilient community. They come together in times of need, facing challenges as a united from. Good neighbours build a foundation of unity and creative a beneficial impact on the neighbourhood as a whole. 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 17 of 17
The Winchester Mystery House
“One Halloween night, after work, I was playing with another tour guide the front of The Winchester Mystery House. It was Autumn, and the grass was stiff; I remember it was cold that day. We were tumbling on the grass, throwing each other over our shoulders, laughing. I remember the other tour guide twirling me around. We were both getting dizzy and were laughing uncontrollably. We had wandered somewhat from the center of the lawn and started to pick the roses; the petals were stiff and dry. I could see the sun on their dry red, pink, and yellow petals. The other tour guide was laughing. I was running around chasing him, and he picked me up, a bit too fast, tumbling me over his shoulder. I remember the roses coming at my eyes like colorful orbs in slow motion, and then into them. I started screaming, hearing myself scream, and I was flailing my arms and hands, trying to pull the orbs from my eyes, sitting on the ground and screaming uncontrollably, shrieking, my entire body shaking, and then feeling hands on me. His hands were on my face, and the sticky mass of tears and blood, and then I could feel him tugging at the roses, orbs, pulling them free one at a time, gently, and there was a sound as he did it, a sucking sound. The last thing I remember seeing was my coworker’s face after he pulled the last orb free. I could see his face through blood, though I could not see very clearly. There was a look of horror on his face, and then my eyes began to unfocused, as if the world were being pulled away, taking the light with it, and I was alone and screaming. I was so alone. I was sent away to have my eyes cared for. They told me later, much later, that I had been traumatized. I was ill for a very long time, and would not eat or speak; I lived inside. I went through a lot of therapy, and there were a lot of different doctors and hospitals. I was never sent home. I remember screaming, lot of crying, and then, after a long, long time, a kind of peace came over me. I became calm. I told them I was alright, that I wanted to go home. But they wouldn’t listen to me. They wouldn’t send me home. I started to cry. I wanted to see my friend from work again, I want to see him, to tell him I was all right, that he didn’t have to have that look on his face anymore, that it wasn’t his fault. But they wouldn’t send me him. I became so hysterical again, and the therapy began again. For a whole year I didn’t speak. For another year I screamed. And then I became calm again. The other tour guide was sent to an institution. No one knows what actually happened that day. Whatever the case may be, there is no denying that The Winchester Mystery House is a truly mysterious place… and its ghosts just keep getting creepier!”
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/
Disappearance of the American Type
The capacity to give and receive love is not to be destroyed, nor can it be. Nature has planted its roots too deeply for that destruction to be attempted with success or desired with wisdom. However, the man or woman who aspires to the highest cannot let it stay ungrown and benefit from its finest fruits. He should nurture it, purify it, exalt it, and spiritualize it. He should direct it toward his best self, his Overself, aspiring and yearning. And when it comes back to him in the blessed form of Grace, he should be ready and fit to receive it. Loved mixed with the sense of intimacy, or with the emotion of personal companionship, is what most people take to be love itself. They have not experienced it as it is, unmixed with anything else. Yet if its adulterated forms give them so much satisfying feeling, how much more could they get from seeking it at its source, pure and intense! Passion, with its savage insistencies and appeasements, its animalist intrusion, has no place in this serene, tender affection which unites their minds—the hushed peace, the mesmeric strangeness, and the golden felicity of this mood. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
It is by trial and error, reflection and experience, that the paradoxical art of loving without becoming possessive, of being affectionate without becoming attached, of accepting outward attachments with inward detachment, is learnt, and this applies to family. What do you say after you say hello? This childlike question, so apparently artless and free of the profundity expected of scientific inquiry, really contains within itself all the basic questions of human living and all the fundamental problems of the social sciences. It is the question that babies “ask” themselves, that children learn to accept corrupted answers to, that teenagers ask each other and their advisors, that grownups evade by accepting the corrupted answers of their betters, and that wise old philosophers write books about without ever finding answer. It contains the primal question of social psychiatry: Why do people like to be liked? Its answer is the answer is the response posed by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: war or peace, famine or plenty, pestilence or health, death or life. Since most go through life without every finding the aster to the question which precedes it: How do you say hello? it is no wonder that few people find the answer in their lifetimes. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
To say hello rightly is to see the other person, to be aware of him as a phenomenon, to happen to him and to be ready for him to happen to you. Perhaps the people who show this ability to the highest degree are the Fiji Islanders, for one of the rare jewels of the World is the genuine Fijian smile. It starts slowly, it illuminates the whole face, it rests there long enough to be clearly recognized and to recognize clearly, and it fades with secret slowness as it passes by. It can be matched elsewhere only by the smiles of an uncorrupted mothers and infant greeting each other, and, in Western countries, by a certain kind of open personality. To say Hello, you first get rid of all the trash which has accumulated in your head ever since you came home from the maternity ward, and then you recognize that this particular Hello will never happen again. It may take years to learn how to do this. To say Hello back, you get rid of all the trash in your head and see that there is somebody standing there or walking by, waiting for you to say Hello back. It may take years to learn how to do that. After you say Hello, you get rid of all the trash that is coming back into your head; all the after-burns of the grievances you have experienced and all the reach-backs of all the troubles you were planning to get into. Then you will be speechless and will not have anything to say. After more years of practice, you might think of something worth saying. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The way people speak who are learning to say Hello is called “Martian,” to distinguish it from everyday Earth-talk, which, as history shows from the earliest recorded times in Egypt and Babylonia to the present, has led to wars, famines, pestilence, and death; and, in the survivours, to a certain amount of mental confusion. It is hoped that in the long run, Martian, properly learned and properly taught, will help to eliminate these plagues. Martian, for example, is the language of dreams, which show things they way they really are. During these same years when social Darwinism was under increasingly strong criticism among social theorists, it was being revived in a somewhat new guise in the literature of the eugenics movement. Accompanied by a flood of valuable genetic research carried on by physicians and biologists, eugenics seemed not so much a social philosophy as a science; but in the minds of most of its advocates it had serious consequences for social thought. The theory of natural selection, which had assumed the transmission of parental variations, hard greatly stimulated the study of heredity. Popular credulity about the scope and variety of hereditary traits had been almost boundless. Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, had laid the foundations of the eugenics movement and coined its name during the years when Darwinism was being sold to the public. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
In the United States of America, Richard Dugdale had published in 1877 his study of The Jukes, which although its author gave more credit to environmental factors than did many later eugenists, had nevertheless offered support to the common view that disease, pauperism, and immorality are largely controlled by inheritance. While Galton’s first inquiries into heredity—Hereditary Genius (1869), Inquiries into Human Faculty (1883), and National Inheritance (1889)—had been received here with much acclaim, it was not until the turn of the century that the eugenics movement took organized form, first in England and then in the United States of America. Eugenics then grew with such great rapidity that by 1915 it had reached the dimensions of a fad. While eugenics has never since been so widely discussed, it has proved to be the most enduring aspect of social Darwinism. At the turn of the century, there was a notable rise of interest in the social significance of hereditary characteristics. The Nation Conference on Race Betterment in 1914 showed how thoroughly the eugenic ideal had made its way into the medical profession, the colleges, social work, and charitable organizations. The ideas of the movement began to receive practical application in 1907, when Indiana became the first state to adopt a sterilization law; by 1915 twelve states had passed similar measures. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Doubtless the paid urbanization of American life, which created great slums in which were massed the diseased, the deficient, and the demented, had much to do with the rise of eugenics. The movement was also favoured by a growing interest in philanthropy and increasing endowments for the hospitals and charities and appropriations for public health. Especially stimulating the study of mental disease and deficiency was the rapid expansion of American psychiatry and social workers, it was easy to confuse the rising mass of known cases with a real increase. The influx of a large immigrant population from peasant countries of central and southern Europe, hard to assimilate because of rustic habits and language barriers, gave colour to the notion that immigration was lowering the standard of America intelligence; at least so it seemed to nativists who assumed that a glib command of English is a natural criterion of intellectual capacity. The apparent economic deceleration at the end of the century was also seen by many observers as the beginning of a national decline; and it was in accordance with the habits of a Darwinized era to find in this apparent social decline a biological deterioration associated with the disappearance of “the American type.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The Eugenist believes that no other single factor in determining social conditions and practices approaches in importance that of racial structural integrity and sanity. Early eugenists tacitly accepted that identification of the “fit” with the upper classes, and the “unfit” with the lower that had been characteristic of the older social Darwinism. Their warnings about the multiplication of morons at the lower end of the social scale, and their habit of speaking of the “fit” as if they were all native, well-to-do, college-trained citizens, sustained the old belief that the poor are held down by biological deficiency instead of environmental conditions. Their almost exclusive focus upon the physical and medical aspects of human life helped to distract public attention from the broad problems of social welfare. They were also in large part responsible for the emphasis upon preserving the “racial stock” as a means of national salvation—an emphasis so congenial to militant nationalist like Theodore Roosevelt. They differed, however, from earlier social Darwinists in that they failed to draw sweeping laissez-faire conclusions; indeed a part of their own program depended upon state action. Still, they were almost equally conservative in their general bias; and so authoritative did their biological data seem that they were convincing to me like E.A. Ross, who had thoroughly repudiated Spencerian individualism. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The social preconceptions of Sir Francis Galton were not seriously questioned by the early eugenists; and Galton, like Bowen, Summer, and Arthur Latham Perry, had postulated the free competitive order in which awards are distributed according to ability. He was convinced “that men who achieve eminence, and those who are naturally capable, are, to a large extent, identical.” “If a man is gifted with vast intellectual ability, eagerness to work, and power of working,” he added, “I cannot comprehend how such a man should be repressed.” Galton insisted that “social hindrances” cannot prevent men of high ability from becoming eminent, and, on the other hand, that “social advantages are incompetent to give that status to a man of moder ability.” When he estimated that heredity accounts for nine-tenths of a man’s capacity, Karl Pearson set the tone of eugenics on this point. Henry Goddard, because of his investigation of the Kallikaks, concluded that feeble-mindedness is “largely responsible” for paupers as well as criminals, prostitutes, and drunkards. David Starr Jordan declared that “poverty, dirt and crime” could be ascribed to poor human material, and added, “It is not the strength of the strong but the weakness of the weak which engenders exploitation and tyranny.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Lewellys F. Barker, a distinguished physician, suggested that the decline and fall of nations could be explained through the relative fertility of the fit and unfit elements. Charles B. Davenport, the leader of American eugenics, challenged the environmentalist assumptions which dominated current social practice, and argued that “the greatest need of the day for progress of social science is additional precise data as to the unit characteristic of man and their methods of inheritance.” Edward Lee Thorndike did much to spread among educators the eugenists’ idea of inherited mental capacity. Thorndike believed that men’s absolute achievements can be affected by environment and training, but that their relative achievements, their comparative performances in rivalry with each other, can be accounted for by original capacity. Fundamentally it is the soundness and rationality of the racial stock that creates the environment and not vice versa. “There is no certain and economical way to improve man’s environment as to improve his nature.” For education policy this view demanded the development of the intellectual faculties of the few who have outstanding abilities, and giving limited vocational training to the mediocre. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The consequences for social policy of the eugenic point of view were treated at some length by Popenoe and Johnson in their popular textbook, Applied Eugenics. Among the reforms they favoured were large inheritance taxes, the back-to-the farm movement, the abolition of child labour, and compulsory education. Rural living would counteract the dysgenic effect of urban society. The abolition of child labour would cause the poor to restrict their breeding. Compulsory education would have the same effect by making the child an expense to its parents; but it should not be supplemented by subsidies to children of the poor in form of free lunches, free textbooks, or other benefits that would lower the cost of childcare. The authors opposed minimum-wage legislation and trade unions on the ground that both favoured inferior workmen and penalized the superior by fixing wages in industry without regard to individual merit. They also opposed socialism for its belief in the benefits that would flow from environmental changes and for its faith in human equality; but they did break with individualism in so far as eugenics sought a social end requiring some individual subordination. When Alleyne Ireland, a noted critic of democracy, wrote in the Journal of Heredity that Weismann’s germ-plasm theory sapped the intellectual foundations of democracy by ruling out the possibility that the inferior could be improved from generation to generation by education and training, he was immediately challenged by biologists who saw no inevitable contradiction between natural inequality and democratic government. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The concept of ostracism as the basis of repression could lead to the rather hopeless view that every society can dehumanize and deform man in whatever way it likes because every society can always threaten him with ostracism. However, to assume this would mean to forget another fact. Man is not only a member of society, but he is also a member of humanity. While man is afraid of complete isolation from his social group, he is also afraid of being isolated from humanity which is inside him and which is represented by his conscience and his reason. To be completely inhuman is frightening, even when a whole society has adopted inhuman norms of behaviour. The more human a society is, the less need is there for the individual to choose between isolation from society or from humanity. The greater the conflict between the social aims and human aims, the more is the individual torn between the two dangerous poles of isolation. To that degree which a person—because of his own intellectual and spiritual development—feel his solidarity with humanity, can he tolerate social ostracism, and vice versa. If only his material needs are satisfied, thus guaranteeing his psychological survival, but not those needs and facilities which are specifically human—love, tenderness, reason, joy, etcetera, the man does not function properly. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Indeed, since he is also a terrestrial being, man needs first to satisfy his material wants; but his history is a record of the search for and expression of his transsurvival needs, such as in painting and sculpture, in myth and drama, in music and dance. Religion was almost the only system which incorporated these aspects of human existence. A while ago, a person who has been a member of the Church for many years asked me, “Why do I need Jesus Christ?” I keep the commandment; I am a good person. Why do I need a Saviour?” This member’s failure to understand this most fundamental part of our doctrine, this foundational element of the plan of salvation, took my breathe away. This is a good message for many to understand. There is this small matter of death. I assume you do not want your death to be your final status, and without Jesus Christ there would be no resurrection. Also, Christ teaches the importance of forgiveness and how cleansing of sin is possible only through the Saviour’s atoning grace. Many people believe in God and a postmortal existence but assume that because God loves us, it does not matter so much what we do or do not do; He just takes care of things. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
However, doing things the way the Father has planned offers us an essential mortal experience. By “mortal experience,” I mean choosing our course “tasting the bitter, that we might know to prize the good,” reports Moses 6.55; learning, repenting, and growing, becoming beings capable of acting for ourselves rather than simply being “acting upon,” reports 2 Nephi 2.13; and ultimately overcoming evil and demonstrating our desire and ability to live a celestial law. This requires a knowledge of good and evil on our part, with capacity and opportunity to choose between the two. And it requires accountability for choices made—otherwise they are not really choices. Choice, in turn, requires law, or predictable outcomes. We must be able by a particular outcome or result—and by the opposite choice create the opposite outcome. If actions do not have fixed consequences, then one has no control over outcomes, and choice is meaningless. Using justice as a synonym for law, Alma states, “Now the work of justice [that is, the operation of law] [cannot] be destroyed; if so, God would cease to be God” reports Alma 42.13. It is His perfect understanding and use of law—or in other words, His justice—that gives God His power. We need the justice of God, a system of fixed and immutable laws that He Himself abides by and employes, so that we can have and exercise agency. This justice is the foundation of our freedom to act and is our only path to ultimate happiness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
One must also accept the fact that one is a living being driven by needs and interests, and drop the illusion that one’s mind operates with a well-greased, machinelike perfection. In this process, as in so many others thoroughness in penetrating to one or another implication counts more than completeness. The implications that are missed will turn up at some later time when one is perhaps more ready to see them. Continuity of work is likely to be disturbed also by causes outside a person’s control. He mut expect interruptions because he does not live in an experimental vacuum. Any number of daily experiences will encroach upon his thinking, some of them perhaps eliciting emotional responses that call for immediate clarification. Suppose, for instance, our friend Clare had lost her job while she was working at the problem of her dependency, or that she had assumed a new position requiring more initiative, assertion, and leadership. In either case other problems than her dependency would have stepped into the foreground. All anyone can do in such circumstances is to take these interruptions in his stride and to deal with the problems arising as best he can. He may just as well, however, have experiences that help him with the problem at hand. Thus, her boyfriend Peter’s breaking of the relationship certainly stimulated Clare to do further analytical work at her problem. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Overall, there is no need to worry too much about outside interferences. I have found in working with patients that even decisive outside events deflect the course of analysis only for a short while. Rather swiftly, and often without knowing it, the patient swings back to the problem on which he was working, resuming it sometimes at exactly the point where he had left it. We need not resort to any mysterious explanation for this occurrence, such as an assumption that that problem appeals more to the patient than happenings in the outside World. It is more likely that since most experiences elicit several responses, that one which is closet to the problem at hand will touch him most deeply and thereby lead him to retrieve the thread he was about to abandon. The fact these remarks have emphasized subjective factors rather than presenting clear-cut directions may recall the criticism raised against analysis that it is more an artistic than a scientific procedure. A discussion of this argument would lead us too far astray because it would involve a philosophical clarification of terms. What counts here is a practical consideration. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
If analysis is called an artistic activity this would suggest to many people that one must be especially gifted to undertake it. Naturally, our endowments differ. And just as some people are particularly skillful in mechanical matters or have a particularly clear vision for politics, others have a special flair for psychological thinking. Yet what really matters is not an enigmatic artistic endowment but a strictly definable factor—which is one’s interest or incentive. This remains a subjective factor, but it is not the decisive one for most of the things we do? What matters is the spirit and not the rules. “The which is governed by law is also preserved by law and perfected and sanctified by the same,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 88.34. However, we must admit that none of us has always and unfailingly been “governed by law.” And we really cannot look to the law or justice to preserve and perfect us when we have broken the law. “And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil. And the law is given unto me. And by the law no flesh is justified; or, by the law men are cut off. Yea, by the temporal law they were cut off; and also, by the spiritual law they perish from that which is good, and become miserable forever,” reports 2 Nephi 2.5. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
So, being just but also being motivated by love, our Heavenly Father created mercy. He did this by offering His Only Begotten Son as propitiation for our sin, a sinless Being who could, with His Atonement, satisfy justice for us, putting us right with the law so that it is once again supporting and preserving us, not condemning us. “And now, the plan of mercy could not be brought about except an atonement should be made; therefore God Himself atoneth for the sins of the World, to bring about the plan of mercy, to appease the demands of justice, that God might be perfect, just God, and a merciful God. However, there is also a law given, and a punishment [or consequence] affixed, and a repentance granted; which repentance, mercy, claimeth; otherwise, justice claimeth the creature and executeth the law, and the law inflicteth the punishment; if not so, the works of justice would be destroyed, and God would cease to be God. However, God creaseth not to be God, and mercy claimeth the penitent, and mercy cometh because of the atonement,” reports Alma 42.15, 22.23. The penitent, of course, are those who take responsibility and accept His mercy by repenting. Or, in other words, repenting is what we do to claim the gracious gift of forgiveness that a just Father in Heaven can offer us because His Beloved Son atoned for our sins. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
We must also learn to prize others in a total, rather than a conditional way. Babies to not accept certain feelings in their parents and disapprove of others. They feel an unconditional positive regard for their parents. This is an outgoing, optimistic feeling without reservation and without evaluations. It means not making judgments. I believe that when this nonevalutative prizing is present in the encounter between parent and child, or others, constructive change and development is more likely to occur. Certain one does not need to be a professional to experience this attitude. The best of parents show this in abundance, while others do not. A friend of mine, a therapist in private practice on the east coast, illustrates this very well in a letter in which he tells me he is learning about parents. He says: “I am beginning to feel that they key to human being is the attitudes with which the parents have regarded him. If the child was lucky enough to have parents who have felt proud of him, wanted him, wanted him just as he was, exactly as he was, this child grows into adulthood with self-confidence, self-esteem; he goes forth in life feeling sure of himself, strong, able to lick what confronts him. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is an example… ‘my friends…’ He could not imagine anyone thinking otherwise. He could not imagine anyone thinking otherwise. He had two adoring parents. He was like a pampered dog who has never known rejection or harshness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
“Even if you should kick him, he’ll come right back at you, his tail frisker than ever, thinking you’re playing a game with him and wanting more. The animal cannot imagine anyone disapproving or disliking him. Just as unconditional regard and love was poured into him, he has it now to give out. If a child is lucky enough to grow up in this unconditionally accepting atmosphere, he emerges as strong and sure and he can approach life and its vicissitudes with courage and confidence, with zest and joy of expectation.” However, the parents who like their children—if. They would like them if they were changed, altered, different; if they were smarter or if they were better, or if, if, if. The offspring of these parents have trouble because they never had feelings of acceptance. These parents do not really like these children; they would like them if they were like someone else. When you come down to the fundamental, the parent feels: “I do not like this child, this child before me.” They do not say that. If parents did, I am beginning to believe that it would be better for all concerned. It would not leave such horrible ravages on these unaccepted children. It is never done that cruelly. “If you were a nice boy and did this, that and the other thing, then we would all love you.” I am coming to believe that children brought up by parents who would like them “if” are never quite right. They grow up assuming that their parents are right and that they are wrong; that somehow or other they are at fault; and even worse, very frequently they feel they are stupid, inadequate, inferior. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
This is an excellent contrast between an unconditional positive regard and a conditional regard. I believe it holds as true for counselors as for parents. Our experiencing is always of some meaningful content, such as a person’s face, or the sound of a voice, or the recollection of someone’s acts. This content stands forth as figure in one’s field of awareness. Another basic characteristic of experiencing is that it always has some emotional quality. Thus, my memory of my father is accompanied by feelings of warmth, nostalgia, and sometimes laugher as I recall some of his conversation. My perception of a lovely woman is accompanied by aesthetic and sensual feelings. “Unemotional” experiencing is an outcome of the repression of affect and represents an effort on the part of the unemotional person to imitate a camera or tape recorder. Remember parents, raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus Christ, to honour law and order, and treat all people, property and living beings with dignity. Our goal is to leave things better than we received them. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, under God, indivisible with Liberty, and Justic for all. Father of Peace, please grant us Thy peace, please Grant us Thy blessing, Thy blessing of peace. Wherever they be, please great America peace; Merciful One, Thou art He who grantest Thy people peace. O may we see our children, our children, and their children Devoted to the Lord, to the scripture—yea, please grant America peace. Thou wondrous Counsellor, mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace! #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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He Who Does Not Work Should Not Eat
We can forgive a child who is afraid of the dark, but it is deeply concerning when a man is afraid of the light. Man is a creature of desires, universally motivated by self-interest; the mechanism of competition, if free and fair, transmutes the self-seeking of the economic man into deeds that work for “the greatest good of the greatest number.” However, this machinery is delicate and must be permitted to operate under “normal” conditions and must not be overridden by government interference; to enjoy the fruits of an inherently beneficent natural economic law, men must permit it to operate unhampered; they must be industrious, frugal, temperate, and self-reliant; self-help, and not a weak recourse to state intervention, is the way of economic salvation. We must not, however, always have blind faith in the doctrines and simplicity of classical laissez faire economics, and its belief in the adequacy of self-interest as an explanation of human conduct. The historical method cannot lead to such doctrinaire extreme. This younger political economy no longer permits the science to be used as a tool in the hands of the greedy and the avaricious for keeping down and oppressing the labouring classes. It does not acknowledge laissez-faire as an excuse for doing nothing while people starve, nor allow the all-sufficiency of competition as a plea for grinding the poor. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Malthus assumed that man has a definite and unalterable set of attributes; but Darwinism holds that man is pliable and circumstances determine his characteristics. On true Darwinian premises one can assume no such thing as a permanent natural rate of increase; for the human rate of increase would be susceptible to change in accordance with man’s surroundings and circumstances. We regard the state as an agency whose positive assistance is one of the indispensable conditions of human progress. We believe that political economy as a science is still in an early stage of its development. While we appreciate the work of former economists, we look not so much to speculation as to the historical and statistical study of actual conditions of economic life for the satisfactory accomplishment of that development. The most fundamental things in our minds are on the one hand the idea of evolution, and on the other hand, the idea of relativity. A new World is coming into existence, and if this World is to be a better World we know that we must have a new economics to go along with it. If the consumer challenges the corporation to respond to his wishes, the management will begin to respond to this challenge. However, as it stands, many corporations are taking on the form of a dictator and demanding that the consumer be thankful for allowing them to purchase from their businesses and that the consumer accepts whatever the business gives them, even if it is substandard quality and service. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Accusations will not help to clarify or to improve the situation. Managers as well as consumers are part of the same alienated system; they are its prisoners rather than its creators. The managers tend to seduce the consumer into passiveness, but the consumer is attracted to his passive role; he makes it easy to be seduced. The resistance to basic change exists on both sides, but the wish for imaginative change, for liberation of energies, for new or creative solutions exists on both sides, too. A further measure would be legal restrictions on present methods of advertising. This point hardly needs an explanation. It refers to all semihypnotic and irrational advertising which has developed in the last three quarters of a century. It could be effected by a simple law, like the one requiring cigarette manufacturers to put a warning of danger to health on their product, or as fake and misleading advertising in interstate commerce and specifically false advertisements with respect to food, drugs, and cosmetics are forbidden by federal statutes. Whether such a law has a chance to be passed against the combined powers of the advertising industry, the newspapers, television, radio, and, most of all, that part of industry for which hypnotic advertising is an important aspect of its planning and production, depends on certain changes in our democratic process, and chance to be informed, to debate and to discuss this problem, and whether the power of citizens is superior to that of lobbies and those members of Congress who are influenced by lobbies. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
What about a redirection of production itself? Assuming that the best experts and an enlightened public opinion came to the conclusion that the production of certain commodities is preferable to that of others in the interest of the population as a whole, could the freedom of the enterprise to produce that which is most profitable or requires least vision, experimentation, and daring be restricted within the framework of our Constitution? Legally this would not cause any great problem. While in the twentieth century such change might required the nationalization of industry, today it can be achieved by laws which require no change in our Constitution. The production of “useful” things could be furthered and the production of useless and unhealthy things could be discouraged by tax laws which favour those industries that agree to fit their production into the pattern of a sane society rather than into a pattern of “profit regardless.” The government could influence adequate production by loans or, in certain instances, by government-owned enterprises which would pave the way for private initiative, once feasibility of profitable investment was proved. It is also important to increase investment in the public sector in relation to investment in the private sector. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
All investments in the public sector—like public transportation, housing, schools, parks, theaters, and so on—have a twofold merit: first, of fulfilling needs adapted to man’s aliveness and growth; second, of developing a sense of solidarity rather than one of personal greed and envy and hence competitiveness with others. Our society, like many of the past, has accepted the principle “he who does not work should not eat.” (American Communism has elevated this old principle into a “socialist” precept, phrasing it slightly different.) The problem is not whether a man fulfills his social responsibility by contributing to the common good. In fact, in those cultures which have explicitly or implicitly accepted this norm, the rich who did not have to work, were exempted from this principle, and the definition of a gentleman was a man who did not have to work to live in style. The problem is that any human being has an inalienable right to live regardless of whether he performs a social duty. Work and all other social obligations should be made sufficiently attractive to urge man to desire to accept his share of social responsibility, but he should not be forced to do so by the threat of starvation. If the latter principle is applied, society has no need to make work attractive and to fit its system to human needs. It is true that in many societies of the past the disproportion between the size of the population and the available techniques of production did not permit the freedom to dispense with the principle of what is, in fact, forced labour. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
In the affluent industrial society there is no such problem, and yet even the members of the middle and upper classes are forced to follow norms laid down by the industrial system for fear of losing their jobs. Our industrial system does not give them as much leeway as it could. If they lose a job because they lack “the right spirit”—which means they are too independent, voice unpopular opinions, marry the “wrong” women—they will have great difficulties in finding another job of equal rank, and getting a job of inferior rank implies that they and their families feel that their personality has been degraded; they lose the new “friends” whom they had gained in the process of rising; they fear the scorn of their wives and the loss of respect from the children. We must uphold the principle that a person has an inalienable right to live—a right to which no conditions are attached and which implies the right to be treated at least as well as the owner of a dog or a cat treats his pet, which does not have to “prove” anything in order to be fed. Provided this principle were accepted, if a man, woman, or adolescent could be sure that whatever he did his material existence would not be in jeopardy, the realm of human freedom would be immensely enhanced. Acceptance of this principle would also enable a person to change his occupation or profession by using one or more years in preparing himself for a new and, to him, more adequate activity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
It happens that most people decide about their career at an age when they do not have the experience and judgment to know what activity is the most congenial to them. Perhaps in their mid-thirties they wake up to the fact that it is too late to start that activity which they now know would have been the right choice. In addition, no woman would be forced to remain unhappily married because she did not have what it takes even to prepare herself for a job at which she could make a living. If he knew he would not starve during the time he looks for a job more to his liking, no employee would be forced to accept conditions which to him are degrading or distasteful. This problem is by no means solved by unemployment or welfare dole. As many have recognized, the bureaucratic methods employed here are humiliating to such a degree that many people are afraid of being forced into the dole-receiving sector of the population, and this fear is sufficient to deprive them of the freedom not to accept certain working conditions. How could this principle be realized? Several economists have suggested as a solution an “annual guaranteed income” (sometimes called a “negative income tax”). The guaranteed annual income for work in order not to arouse resentment and anger in those who work. If it is to guarantee a modest but still adequate material basis, the present wage level would have to rise considerably. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
It is feasible to determine a minimum standard of living which is as high as the present minimum standard for a modest and adequate material basis. Anyone who is attracted by a more comfortable life would be free to achieve a higher level of consumption. The guaranteed annual income could also serve, as some economists have observed, as an important regulating feature in our economy. What we need is some device that can be permanently instituted as a regular feature of the industrial economy by which demand can be made to keep pace with a constantly proliferating supply. The guarantee of a basic income to all members of the community irrespective of the earnings of employment, as Social Security payments are now guaranteed to all persons over the age of seventy-two years of age, would provide the flow of effective demand that the economy more and more desperately requires. However limited the impact of Darwinism on economic theory, one could doubtless compile a formidable list of obiter dicta in which competition was justified in Sumnerian fashion as a special case of the struggle for existence. The survival of the fittest was a precept of sheer brutality and nothing else. I must deem any man very shallow in his observation of the facts of life who fails to discern in competition the force to which it is mainly due that mankind has risen from stage in intellectual, moral, and physical power. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
An aspect of the filter which makes awareness possible is the logic which directs the thinking of people in each culture. Just as most people assume that their language is “natural” and that other languages only use different words for the same things, they assume also that the rules which determine proper thinking are natural and universal ones’ that is what is illogical in one cultural system is illogical in any other because it conflicts with “natural” logic. A good example of this is the difference between Aristotelian and paradoxical logic. Aristotelian logic is based on the laws of identity which states that A is A, the law of contradiction (A is not non-A), and the law of the excluded middle (A cannot be A and non-A, neither A nor non-A). Aristotle stated: “It is impossible for the same thing at the same time to belong and not to belong to the same thing in the same respect…This, then, is the most certain of all principles.” In opposition to Aristotelian logic is what one might call paradoxical logic, which assumes that A and non-A do not exclude each other as predicates of X. Paradoxical logic was predominant in Chinese and Indian thinking, in Heraclitus’ philosophy, and then again under the name of dialectics in the thought of Hegel and Marx. The general principle of paradoxical logic has been clearly described in general terms by Lao-tse: “Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical.” And by Chuang-tzu: “That which is one is one. That which is not-one, is also one.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Inasmuch as a person lives in a culture in which the correctness of Aristotelian logic is not doubted, it is exceedingly difficult if not impossible, for him to be aware of experiences which contradict Aristotelian logic, hence which from the standpoint of his culture are nonsensical. A good example is Dr. Freud’s concept of ambivalence, which says that one can experience love and hate for the same person at the same time. This experience, which from the standpoint of paradoxical logic is quite “logical,” does not make sense from the standpoint of Aristotelian logic. As a result, it is exceedingly difficult for most people to be aware of feelings of ambivalence. If they are aware of love, they cannot be aware of hate—since it would be utterly nonsensical to have two contradictory feelings at the same time. In therapy, the personal growth is facilitated when the counselor is what he is, when in the relationship with his client he is genuine and without “front” or façade, openly being the feelings and attitudes which at that moment are flowing in him. We have used the term “congruence” to try to describe this condition. By this we mean that the feelings the counselor is experiencing are available to him, available to his awareness, that he is able to live these feelings, be them in the relationship, and able to communicate them if appropriate. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Congruence means that he comes into a direct personal encounter with his client, meeting him on a person-to-person basis. It means that he is being himself, not denying himself. No one fully achieves this condition, yet the more the therapist can listen acceptantly to what is going on within himself, and the more he is able to be the complexity of his feelings without fear, the higher the degree of his congruence. I think that we readily sense this quality in our everyday life. We could each of us name persons whom we know who always seem to be operating from behind a front, who are playing a role, who tend to say things they do not feel. They are exhibiting incongruence. We do not reveal ourselves too deeply to such people. On the other hand, each of us knows individuals whom we somehow trust, because we sense that they are being what they are, that we are dealing with the person himself, and not with a polite or professional façade. This is the quality of which we are speaking, and it is hypothesized that the more genuine and congruent the therapist is in the relationship, the more probability there is that change in personality in the client will occur. Therefore, never accept more than you believe. A person may feel obliged, for instance, to accept whatever “bad” things emerge concerning himself, and to suspect a “resistance” if he hesitates to do so. However, if he regards his interpretation as merely tentative, and does not try to convince himself that it is definite, he will be on much safer ground. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The essence of analysis is truthfulness, and this should extend also to acceptance or nonacceptance of interpretations. The danger of making an interpretation that is misleading or at least unprofitable can never be excluded, but one should not be overawed by it. If one does not weaken, but carries on in the right spirit, a more profitable path will open sooner or later, or one will become aware of being in a blind alley and perhaps even learn from that experience. Clare, for instance, before embarking on her analysis of the dependency, had spent a couple of months digging after an alleged need to have her own way. From the data that emerged later we can understand how she was led in that direction. She told me, though, that during these attempts she had never had a feeling of conviction remotely like those she experienced later, during the period reported. Also, the ultimate reason why she had taken that earlier course was that Peter (her boyfriend) often reproached her for being dominating. This illustrates the importance of following one’s own interests; and the importance of not accepting anything without full conviction. However, while this early search of Clare’s meant a waste of time it petered out without harm and did not prevent her from doing highly constructive work afterward. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The constructive character of Clare’s work was due not only to the essential correctness of her interpretations but also to the fact that her analysis in this period showed a remarkable degree of continuity. Without intending to concentrate on one problem—for a long time she did not even know what it was—everything she embarked upon turned into a contribution to the problem of her dependency. This unanswering unconscious concentration upon a single problem, which made her approach it relentlessly from ever-new angels, is desirable but rarely attained to the same degree. We can account for it in Clare’s case, for at that period she was living under a formidable pressure—how formidable she fully recognized only later—and hence she unconsciously bent all her energies into solving the problems that contributed to it. Such a compelling situation cannot be created artificially. However, the more absorbing one’s interest in a problem, the more will a similar concentration be approximated. Clare’s self-analysis illustrates the recognition of a neurotic trend; understanding its implications; and discovering its interrelations with other neurotic trends. In Clare’s analysis, the steps overlapped to some extent: she recognized many of the implications before she finally detected the trend itself. Nor did she make any effort to cover definite steps in her analysis: she did not deliberately set out to discover a neurotic trend, and she did not deliberately examine the connections between her dependency and her compulsive modesty. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
The recognition of the trend came of itself; and, similarly, the connecting links between the two trends almost automatically became more and more visible as the analytical work proceeded. Clare did not select the problems—at least not consciously—but the problems came to her, and in their unfolding they displayed an organic continuity. There was in Clare’s analysis a continuity of still another kind, even more important, and more possible to emulate: at no time was there any insight that remained isolated or disconnected. What we see develop is not an accumulation of insights that a person gains in an analysis is correct, he may still deprive himself of the greatest benefits of his work if the nights remain scattered. Thus Clare, after recognizing that she let herself be immersed in misery because she secretly believed she could thereby command help, might merely have traced the origin of this trait in childhood and regard it as a persistent infantile belief. That might have helped some, because nobody really wants to be miserable for no good reason; the next time she found herself succumbing to a spell of misery, she might have caught herself up short. However, at best this handling of her insight would have diminished in the course of time the gross attacks of exaggerated unhappiness. And these attacks were not the most important expression of the trait. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Or Clare might have gone no further than the next step, connecting her finding with her actual lack of self-assertion and recognizing that her belief in magic help substituted for an active dealing with life’s difficulties. This, although still inadequate, would have helped considerably more, because it would have opened a new incentive to do away with the whole attitude of helplessness lying behind the belief. However, if she had not linked up the magic-help belief with her dependency, and seen the one as an integral part of the other, she could not thoroughly have overcome the belief, because she would always have made the unconscious reservation that if she could only find the permanent “love,” help would always be forthcoming. It was only because she saw that connection, and because she recognized the fallacy in such an expectation and the excruciating price she had to pay for it, that the insight had the radically liberating effect it did. Wilhelm Reich, originally a psychoanalyst, became more and more convinced that healthy personality was impossible if a person defended himself or herself from the experience of vitality, pleasures of the flesh, and other emotional repression. Such repressions produce muscular tension. He gave the name muscular armor to those groups of muscles that a person keeps in chronic tension in order not to feel unwanted dimensions of experience. One indication that a person is not living a chronically “armored” life is the capacity to experience an enjoyable experience during pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Alexander Lowen adapted some of Reich’s ideas and techniques and founded a school of therapy that he calls bioenergetic analysis. He observes a person’s body, noting peculiarities of chronic tension and posture that are the outcome of the way the person lives. For example, a person with chronically hunched shoulders, who breathes shallowly, may reveal thereby a sense of personal helplessness in a hostile World. Lowen has his patients do certain stretching exercises to identify areas of tension; but he also encourages them to yell, and to beat a pillow or mattress with a tennis racquet, or fists and feet, to release tension. “Unarmoring” a person frees that person from repressions that protect one from pain but also destroy the capacity for pleasure. The man who reposes his emotional strength or mental peace on any single person is taking a chance whose outcome may disappoint him. The feelings of the transformed man no longer come out of the ego but out of the Overself’s life deep within the ego. A fuzzy sentimentality which passes for mystical feeling is only its counterfeit. If a man had trained himself to reject self-pity as an emotional egoism that is harmful, he is not likely to encourage its display in other men merely because they conventionally expect him to be sympathetic. Yet it must always be remembered that when pity, which begins in the emotions, is filtered through the reasons, it is not destroyed but balanced. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The Sacramento Fire Department must be as technically advanced as their communities so that when an emergency involving technology occurs, they are equipped and trained effectively to deal with the issue that results. Often lives depend on their readiness and skill levels as new hazards develop into emergency incidents. “I had been through EMT experience, and I had learned all the basic firefighting techniques from the local firehouse, where they let me take the pipe and open roofs. My brother was on the truck, and he’d take me on the roof with him. The knowledge I got there was unbelievable. And then, I had twelve relatives of one kind or another who are or have been firemen. When I went to training school, I probably knew as much as some of the instructors there. But you’re in there to learn, so you keep your mouth shut and do as you’re told. That’s just what I did, and I never had a problem. We were in training school five months, and the last month and a half we would go to school for a day and be assigned to a fire company for a day, wherever they needed us. I’m a very proud fireman. My wife thinks I’m crazy. I’ve got pictures all over my wall of my father, my brother, because I like to walk by them and think of me following in my father’s and brother’s footsteps. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
“The first time I went to a fire in a special unit, I felt excited, yes, also proud I was here following my father. This is what I always wanted to be. A person could go to college for years and years and never gain the goal they want. And here I am, a couple of years out of high school. I got what I want.” The challenge for today’s leaders in the fire service is to create a vision for the future and make it happen. They have no way of knowing what the future will be like, however. You can do your part to help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. Also, remember to raise your children to love America, be patriotic, love God and Jesus Christ, respect law and order and show reverence their elders. It is a privilege to be an American citizen, and one of the many benefits of that privilege is the ability to earn an education. Stay in school and study hard. In tribute to the Founding Fathers of this blessed Republic, may we strive to keep these United States of America forever righteous and just. May ours be a land where none shall prey upon or exploit his fellowman, where bigotry and violence shall not be tolerated, where poverty shall be abolished, and all men live amicably as bothers. 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 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House calls to mind cracking thunder above the secretive mansion, howls of strange animals in the night, and spiky iron gates. Inside this legendary fortress may lurk angels, ghosts, and demons. The Winchester Mystery House is celebrating 101 years of giving tours. As many of you know, when Mrs. Winchester died in 1922, it took six moving vans, six weeks to remove all her furniture. On the last day, when almost everything had already been removed, Daisy stood in the now almost empty mansion once more. There were still a few boxes left in the basement. Two of the movers went back into the basement to get them out, while Daisy waited for them upstairs. The bell in the belfry started to strike twelve midnight. They loaded the boxes into the van, carefully locked the front door of the house and then the garden gate. At this precise moment, all three clearly heard the front door open and close again, and loud steps reverberated inside the empty mansion. “There must be someone in there,” one of the movers said. Quickly he unlocked the gate and front door once more and re-entered the dark house. After a few moments, he returned, relocked the door and gate, and somewhat sheepishly, shook his head. “Nothing. It’s all empty.” Not at all, Daisy thought, as the car pulled out into the night, not at all. That was only the reception committee for the tours that were to begin in 1923.
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/
It Feels Like Home
How members of immigrant communities can make positive adjustments and contribute to their new communities is an issue challenging policy makers and advocates in many countries. Although there are ways in which the participants adopt new identities, or mask their real ones, there are strong indications that they also experience several of the elements associated with a sense of community. Some are reflected in the clear membership boundaries imposed, forms of social support offered, private language and symbols used, and the sanctions used under the influence sphere to ensure members adhere to permitted forms of behaviour. It appears that the anonymity offered by the virtual environments can facilitate social interaction and openness that membership of communities is usually seen as encapsulating. As a Worldwide church is dealing with many complex issues across the globe, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints promotes broad, foundational principles that have Worldwide application: We follow Jesus as the Christ by loving our neighbour. The Saviour taught that the meaning of “neighbour” includes all of God’s children, in all places, always. We recognize an ever-present need to strengthen families. Families are meant to be together. Forced separation of working parents from their children, is something that every American faces, and it weakens families and damages society. We acknowledge that every nation has the right to enforce its laws and secure its borders. All persons subject to a nation’s laws are accountable for their acts in relation to them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The Lord is depending on you to assist in the exaltation of your eternal family. Public officials should create and administer laws that reflect the best of our aspirations as a just and caring society. Such laws will properly balance love for neighbours, family cohesion, and the observance of just and enforceable laws. When someone says the word “home,” what comes to mind? The meanings for the term home are numerous. Everyone probably has a sense of what is meant by the phrase “going home” or what is meant by characterizing a place as “homey.” For example, when looking through a new house, a prospective buyer may say that it “feels like home.” Throughout history, home has had both spiritual and emotional connotations. For example, “Swing low, sweet chariot, Comin for to carry me home” from the old, anonymous Southern African American spiritual, connotes a celestial home. Disillusioned with the World, Ralph Waldo Merson penned “Goodbye, proud World! I’m going home; Thou art not my friend and I’m not thine” in Poems (1847). Many authors have written about the emotional aspects of the term. For example, Pandects (533 AD) wrote, “One’s home is the safest refuge to everyone.” Similarly, Oliver Wendell Holmes in Homesick in Heaven wrote, “Where we love is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” Although the colloquial expression “Home is where the heart is” captures the emotional component of home, it fails to address the dynamic interaction between a physical space and our need to have surroundings reflect who we are. Home also has been used in nationalistic and patriotic senses. To further highlight this illustration, Irving Berlin (1938) inspired Americans with the lyrics from God Bless America with, “From the mountains to the prairies, To the oceans white with foam, God bless America, My home Sweet Home!” #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Each Day from Santa Clara to Oakland to Rancho Cordova, the people of the Church repeat these words: “We will be prepared to strengthen home and family, make and keep sacred covenants, receive the ordinances of the temple, and enjoy the blessings of exaltation.” Being part of a family is a great blessing. Not all families are the same, but each is important in Heavenly Father’s plan. All families need strengthening, from the ideal to the most troubled. That strengthening can come from you. In fact, in some families you may be the only source of spiritual strength. The Lord is depending on you to bring the blessings of the gospel to your family. It is important to establish patterns of righteousness in your own life, which will enable you to set a good example for your family, whatever form your family may take. The example of your righteous life will strengthen your family. A simple four-point program will not only assure your happiness, but will bless your family as well. Pray, study, pay your tithing, and attend your meetings. Seeking the help of the Lord daily through prayer will bring great blessings to your family. Ask yourself: “Who in my family could benefit from my personal prayers?” “What could I do to support and encourage family prayer?” As you personally study the scriptures, you will come to know the Saviour and His teachings. From His example, you will know how to love, serve, and forgive members of your family. Consider how you could share your understanding of the scriptures with your family. Get all the education you can. Your education will benefit your family now and will surely bless your future family. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The Holy Ghost will guide you and will teach you what you should do to bless your family. As you commit to these patterns of righteousness, you will be blessed throughout your life and will develop the spiritual foundation from which you can strengthen your family by example. In 1 Timothy, Paul teaches us about example: “Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4.12). Be cheerful, helpful, and considerate of others. Concern yourself with the needs of other family members. Honour your parents by showing love and respect for them and by being obedient. Participate in family activities and traditions, including family prayer, family home evenings, and family scripture reading. These traditions strengthen and unify families. Strengthen your relationships with your brother and sisters. They can become your closets friends. My siblings and I were “born of goodly parents” (1 Nephi 1.1). who loved and made great sacrifices for us, but our family have not been blessed with the sacred ordinances of the temple. However, as we established family patterns of righteousness, praying together, studying about the ordinances of the temple, paying tithing, and attending our meetings regularly—as a family—the Lord heard and answered our prayers. As we surrounded the holy altar in the temple and were sealed as a family for time and all eternity, each person learned a better way and in so doing blessed the lives of those around us and taught correct traditions for the generations that followed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
John Howard Payne in his opera Clari, the Maid of Milan (1823) wrote, “Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. Clearly, literature and the media have conceptualized the term home in diverse ways. Most individuals might argue that it does not necessarily take a “heap of living,” yet there is some sense that we must “do” something to make an abode a home. We must imprint it in some way, make it ours. Why do we spend so much time and energy making a house our home? Time and energy are invested into transforming a house into a home because they experience positive consequences from doing so. This concept of action and benefit represented the basis for further development of the psychological home construct. Remember, the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children. Eternal families are made up of individuals. Do your part to build a happy home. Establish patterns of righteousness in your life. And be an example of the believers. The Lord is depending on you to assist in the exaltation of your eternal family. I know that Jesus as the Christ lives. He knows you and loves you. He has blessed me and my family, and I know He will bless you and yours. Of this I humbly testify in the name of Jesus as the Christ. In addition to a primary physical location (id est, a person’s house), many individuals will often make an aspect of their office homier. Office workers may place a personal photograph or memorabilia in their cubicle to make that space their own. What drives us to do this? Could it be that we are afraid of being swallowed up and losing our individuality in a sea of cubicles? #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
We desire to belong to groups and community, yet we also want to keep a place in our hearts and surroundings that is separate from others. We need to impact our surroundings (exempli gratia house, dorm, office space, car) in such a way that it reflects our personality, our sense of self, and in so doing, derive benefits. We contend that modifying physical space to have it better reflect our self-identity reflects the core of psychological home. Three principles that will help you strengthen your home and family are nurturing, sacrifice, and prayer. We are on the Lord’s team, and He will always be there for us to help us bring home the gold. As children of God, some of you may have great athletic ability, but all you have been blessed with many talents and gifts. One of the most meaningful gifts is your ability to strengthen your home and family. Tonight it is my prayer that the Spirit will burn within you, that you will have a greater desire to strengthen your family now and prepare for your future family. The scriptures are filled with ways to teach us how to strengthen our families. There is no greater teacher than the Saviour. As you study His teachings and follow His example, you can make your family life better. As you gather in your family, you can do so much to invite a spirit of unity. When was the last time you put your loving arms around your mom and dad and thanked them for all they do? Parents do most of the nurturing, but they need to be nurtured too. When our Father in Heaven introduced the Saviour to the World, He demonstrated good nurturing by using a soft voice. The language in the scriptures says, “As if it came out of the Heavens, they heard a voice; and it was not a harsh voice, neither was it a loud voice; notwithstanding it being a small voice it pierced them that did hear to the center” (3 Nephi 11.3). #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
In our homes, this can be a model for the way we talk to our family members. When we talk to those we love, let us not use a loud voice but a soft voice. This is the way our Heavenly Father speaks to His children. Except for a possible reversion to a cultural situation strongly characterized by ideas of emulation and status, the ancient racial bias embodied in the Christian principle of brotherhood should logically continue to gain ground at the expense of the pecuniary morals of competitive business. The struggle for existence many of us are facing is a glimpse of life which just now seems to many the dominant fact of the universe, chiefly because attention has been fixed upon it by copious and interesting exposition. As it has had many predecessors in this place of importance, so doubtless it will have many successors. Evolution had a profound impact upon psychology, ethnology, sociology, and ethics but it failed to work a similar transformation in economics. The most plausible explanation of the inflexibility of the received political economy is that its spokesmen were satisfied that there was little their science could learn from biology. The accepted function of political economy, as taught in American colleges and propagated in the forums of opinion, was apologetic. It had always been an idealized interpretation of economic processes under the competitive regime of property and individual enterprise; violations of the set patten had been discouraged as infringements of natural law. Here in the United States of America, it was not made the test of economic orthodoxy, merely. It was used to decide whether a man was an economist at all. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The common failure of orthodox economists to embrace social Darwinism as preached by Sumner—so obviously adapted to the function of their science as they conceived it—was only incidentally due to the unsettled status of evolution in its relation to religious beliefs. More important was the fact that classical economics already had its own doctrine of social selection. Since it had one of the great figures of the classical economic tradition who had led Spencer, Darwin, and Wallace toward their evolutionary theories, the economists might have had some justification for proclaiming that biology had merely universalized a truth that had been in their possession for a long time. A parallel can be drawn between the patterns of natural selection and classical economics, suggesting that Darwinism involved an addition to the vocabulary rather than to the substance of conventional economic theory. Both assumed the fundamentally self-interested animal pursuing in the classical pattern, pleasure or, in the Darwinian pattern, survival. Both assumed the normality of competition in the exercise of the hedonistic, or survival, impulse; and in both it was the “fittest,” usually in a eulogistic sense, who survived or prospered—either the organism most satisfactorily adapted to its environment, or the most efficient and economic producer, the most frugal and temperate worker. Economics was the better suited to a kindly interpretation of the status quo since it accepted the present environment as a natural datum, while conscientious and perceptive followers of Darwin saw that the “fittest” might be understood to be fit to inferior and degrading surroundings. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Veblen, writing in 1900, found that “identification of the categories of normality and rights gives the dominant note of Mr. Spencer’s ethical and social philosophy, and that later economists of the classical line are prone to be Spencerians. Further, both classical economics and natural selection were doctrines of natural law. At this point, once again, classical economics was more conducive to intellectual stability, because its concept of equilibrium was Newtonian and hence static, whereas a dynamic theory of society raised possibilities of an unsettled World. The conception of the pressure of population upon subsistence, so important in the historical connection between biology and political economy, not only played its part in the doctrine of Malthus but was closely related to the classic wage-fund doctrine. According to the wage-fund theory, which was popular among extreme proponents of laissez faire in the United States of America, labour is paid out of a capital fund which is fixed at any given time; and the average wage of the labourers is determined by the ratio of the number of workers seeking employment to the amount of the wage-fund. According to the logic of the wage-fund theory, neither legislative regulation nor any action of the labourers could alter this situation, and a policy of strict acquiescence was indicated. Competition was generally considered the perfect means of distributing wealth. According to this doctrine the increase in numbers among the working class pressed upon the limited wage-fund with the same inexorability as the total population on the means of subsistence. This doctrine was not a little favored by the fact that if afforded a complete justification for the existing order of things respecting wages. The peace that comes when we avoid debt and the temporal and spiritual blessings we receive when we pay tithes and offerings succeeds in making a fortune. If there is any one thing that will bring peace and contentment into the human heart, and into the family, it is to live within our means. And if there is any one thing that is grinding and discouraging and disheartening, it is to have debts and obligations that one cannot meet. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
God our Heavenly Father has instituted laws to improve his people physically, spiritually, intellectually, and one of the best laws in all the World to make better Latter-day Saints is the law of tithing. There are many people who believe the gospel and would probably embrace it, but for the fact that they are young, they still need to be guided. Many people cannot endure the gospel because of financial requirements that are made of them, and they allow the things of this World, which they have grasped firmly and steadfastly, to rob them of the greatest of all God’s gifts, namely, life eternal. The great criterion of success in the World is that men can make money. However, this is not true success. As a man grows and increases in the things of this World, if he is not careful, he will lose the Spirit of the Lord, and he will set his heart upon the things of this World. And if he loses the Spirit of the Lord, and fails to be honest with God in the payment of his tithes as strictly and honestly as he would account to a partner if he were engaged in business, that man will lessen his strength, will lessen his power, will lessen the testimony of the Spirit of God within his soul. There is no question of it in my mind. We must be honest with the Lord. The great trouble is that there are many people who, as they grow and increase in the things of this World, set their hearts upon them and lose the Spirit of the Lord. Therefore, that which is counted by the World as success is failure; because if a man starts out for a prize and he fails to secure it after labouring nearly a lifetime for that prize, certainly his life has been a failure. Be honest with the Lord and I promise that peace, prosperity, and financial success will attend those who are honest with our Heavenly Father because they are fulfilling the law and an obligation. God will bless them for doing so. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
It is feasible that many individuals experiment with changes in the consumption pattern. To some extent this has already been done in small groups. The point here is not asceticism for poverty, but life-affirming as against life-denying consumption. This distinction can be made only on the basis of awareness of what life is, what activeness is, what is stimulating, and what their opposites are. A dress, an object of art, a house may be in the one or in the other categories. The dress which follows the fashion presented by the profit interests of the dressmakers and their public relations staffs is quite different from the dress which is beautiful or attractive and the result of personal choice and tastes. A number of dressmakers might choose to sell their products to women who prefer to wear what they like rather than what is forced upon them. The same holds true of art objects, and all kinds of aesthetic enjoyment. If they lose their function as either status symbols or capital investments, the sense for the beautiful will have a chance for a new development. The unnecessary, or merely laziness-promoting, would be out. If it became a useful vehicle for transportation and not a status symbol, the Ultimate Driving Machine would change in significance. Certainly there would be no reason to buy a new Ultimate Driving Machine every two years, and industry would find itself forced to make some drastic changes in production. To put it in a nutshell: up to now the consumer has permitted and even invited industry to brainwash or control him. The consumer has a chance of becoming aware of his power over industry by turning around and forcing industry to produce what he wants or suffer considerable losses by producing what he rejects. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The revolution of the consumer against the domination of industry has yet to come. It is perfectly feasible and its consequences far-reaching, unless industry takes control of the state and enforces its right to manipulate the consumer. From the standpoint of conscious rational thought, fright and admiration are distinct feelings, hence they cannot denoted by the same word; and if there is one word like awe, it is used in the one or the other sense, and the fact is forgotten that it actually means fright and admiration. In our feeling experience, fear and admiration are frequently part of one complex feeling, which, however, modern man is usually not aware of as such. It seems that the language of peoples who emphasized less than we do the intellectual aspects of experience, has more words which expressed the feeling as such, while our modern languages tend to express only such feelings which can stand the test of our kind of logic. Incidentally, this phenomenon constitutes one of the greatest difficulties for dynamic psychology. Our language just does not give us the words which we need to describe many visceral experiences which do not fit our scheme of thoughts. Hence psychoanalysis has no adequate language at its disposal. It could do what some other sciences have done and use symbols to denote certain complex feelings. For instance, a/t could stand for that complex feeling of admiration and terror which was once expressed by one word. Or xy could stand for the feeling of “aggressive defiance, superiority, accusation + hurt innocence, martyrdom, being persecuted and falsely accused.” Again, this latter feeling is not a synthesis of different feelings, as our language would make us believe, but one specific feeling which can be observed in oneself and in others once one transcends the barrier of the assumption, that nothing can be felt which cannot be “thought.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
If one does not use abstract symbols, the most adequate, paradoxically enough, scientific language for psychoanalysis is actually that of symbolism, poetry or reference to themes of mythology. (Dr. Freud often chose the latter way.) However, if the psychoanalyst thinks he can be scientific by using technical terms of our language to denote emotional phenomena, he deceives himself and speaks of abstract constructs which do not correspond to the reality of felt experience. However, this is only one aspect of the filtering function of language. Different languages differ not only by the fact that they vary in the diversity of words they use to denote certain affective experiences, but also by their syntax, their grammar, and the root-meaning of their words. The whole language contains an attitude of life, is a frozen expression of experiencing life in a certain way. Here are a few examples. There are languages in which the verb form “it rains,” for instance, is conjugated differently depending on whether I say that it rains because I have been out in the rain and have got wet, or because I have seen it raining from the inside of a hut, or became somebody has told me that it rains. It is quite obvious that the emphasis of the language on these different sources of experiencing a fact (in this case, that it rains) has a deep influence on the way people experience facts. (In our modern culture, for instance, with its emphasis on the purely intellectual side of knowledge, it makes little difference how I know a fact, whether from direct or indirect experience, or from hearsay.) Or in Hebrew, the main principle of conjugation is to determine whether an activity is complete (perfect) on incomplete (imperfect), while the time in which it occurs—past, present, future—is expressed only in a secondary fashion. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
In Latin both principles (time and perfection) are used together, while in English we are predominately oriented in the sense of time. Again it goes without saying that this difference in conjugation expresses a difference in experiencing. The significance of this difference becomes quite apparent in the English and German translation of the Old Testament. Often when the Hebrew text uses the perfect tense for an emotional experience like loving, meaning, “I love fully,” the translator misunderstands and writes, “I loved.” Still another examples is to be found in the different uses of verbs and nouns in various languages, or even among different people speaking the same language. The noun refers to a “thing”; the verb refers to an activity. An increasing number of people prefer to think in terms of having things, instead of being or acting; hence, they prefer nouns to verbs. Language, by its words, its grammar, its syntax, by the whole spirit, which is frozen in it, determines which experiences penetrates to our awareness. A wide variety of professional work involving relationships with people—whether as a psychotherapist, teacher, religious worker, guidance counselor, social worker, clinical psychologist—it is the quality of the interpersonal encounter with the client which is the most significant element in determining effectiveness. I have been primarily a counselor and psychotherapist. In the course of my professional life I have worked with troubled college students, with adults in difficulty, with “normal” individuals such as business executives, and more recently with hospitalized psychotic persons. I have endeavoured to make use of the learnings from my therapeutic experience in my interactions with classes and seminars, in the training of teachers, in the administration of staff groups, in the clinical supervision of psychologist, psychiatrists, and guidance workers as they work with their clients or patients. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Some of these relations are long-continued and intensive, as in individual psychotherapy. Some are brief, as in experiences with workshop participants or in contacts with students who come for practical advice. They cover a wide range of depths. Gradually, learning which applies to all these experiences is that it is the quality of the personal relationship which matters most. With some of these individuals I am in touch only briefly, with others I have the opportunity of knowing them intimately, with others I have the opportunity of knowing them intimately, but in either case the quality of the personal encounter is probably, in the long run, the element which determines the extent to which this is an experience which releases or promotes development and growth. I believe the quality of my encounter is more important in the long run than is my scholarly knowledge, my professional training, my counseling orientation, the techniques I use in the interview. In keeping with this line of thought, I suspect that for a guidance worker also the relationship he forms with each student—brief or continuing—is more important than his knowledge of tests and measurements, the adequacy of his record keeping, the theories he hold, the accuracy with which he is able to predict academic success, or the school in which he received his training. In recent years, I have thought a great deal about this issue. I have tried to observe counselors and therapists whose orientations are very different from mine, in order to understand the basis of their effectiveness as well as my own. I have listened to recorded interviews from many different sources. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Gradually, I have developed some theoretical formulations, some hypotheses as to the basis of effectiveness in relationships. As I have asked myself how individuals sharply different in personality, orientation and procedure can all be effective in a helping relationship, can each be successful in facilitating constructive change or development because they bring to the helping relationship certain attitudinal ingredients. It is these that I hypothesize as making for effectiveness, whether we are speaking of a guidance counselor, a clinical psychologist, or a psychiatrist. What are these attitudinal or experiential elements in the counselor which makes a relationship a growth-promoting climate? Gemeinschaftsgefuhl is the most important goal of personal growth and therapy. The German word gemeinschaftsgefuhl has been translated as “social interest” or “social feeling.” It refers to a feeling of oneness, a brotherly feeling toward one’s fellow human beings. The concept of social feeling accords with the highest precepts of ethics and religion and represents a wholesome corrective to the more pathology-oriented psychoanalytic writing. Healthy personality implies the courage to become a separate, distinct person, the courage to express and celebrate one’s difference from others, and the courage to be inventive and creative in various spheres of existence. A healthy personality can respond to the human situation in inventive, creative ways. One must have a conscious aspect of the psyche and covert the “shadow” side, which remains unknown to the individual and invisible to others. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Personal growth is a gradual unfolding and expression of the unconscious, shadow side and the integration of these unfolding aspects of personality into a coherent, meaningful way of life. Humans experience the World in various ways; this is a basic polarity of attention, called extraversion-introversion. The extraverted person is most attentive to the happenings of the external World. The introvert is more given to reflection and introspection, attending to personal experience as it is affected by the external World. Through upbringing, and perhaps hereditary and congenital influences, persons grow to emphasize one of these fundamental attitudes, while the opposite attitude remains undeveloped. Although the attitude of extraversion or introversion defines direction of interest for the person, that person’s ways of contacting the World are also diverse. The fundamental ways of experiencing the World are designated as sensing, intuition, feeling, and thinking. Sensing refers to the act of receiving the disclosure of the World by way of one’s several sensory systems. Intuition refers to a kind of imaginative knowing; it consists of rapid guessing about what lies behind obvious sensory inputs. Feeling refers to the emotional quality of experience—its pleasant or unpleasant, frightening, or ugly qualities. Thinking, of course, refers to the human capacity for reasoning, conceptualizing, and abstract thought. The most singular and important characteristic about humans is the capacity to symbolize experience in dreams, myths, art, and folklore. In dreams there are hints for the next stages of a person’s growth toward fuller self-realization. Self-realization, becoming an “individuated” person, requires that a person become aware of repressed “shadow” sides in the personality and struggle to express these in his or her way of life. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
The motive for attempting such self-discovery is to alleviate suffering. Many people do not want help on overcoming childhood hangups. They seek help because their lives are stale. The goal is to resume growth. A healthy personality entails the endless struggle to transcend one’s initial socialization (training to become a socius, a citizen) to discover and express one’s own repressed possibilities of functioning. Integration of the capacities to think, feel, intuit, and sense is fostered by commitment to new purposes for existence. Thus, persons whose growth was adequate to enable them to marry, raise families, and achieve vocational success would arrive at an impasse in their growth and would suffer from it. Their attainment of healthier personality—self-realization—was fostered by relinquishing projects that had animated their youthful years and choosing new aims. In the selection of problems that arise one must pass easily from deliberate thinking to intuitive grasping of connections. This latter requirement might be compared to the attitude required in studying a painting: we think about composition, colour combinations, brush strokes, and the like, but we also consider the emotional responses that the painting elicits in us. This corresponds, too, to the attitude an analyst adopts toward the patient’s associations. While listening to a patient, I sometimes do hard thinking about possible meanings, and sometimes I arrive at a conjecture merely by letting the patient’s talk play on my intuitive faculties. The verification of any finding, however, no matter how one has arrived at it, always demands full intellectual alertness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
A person may find, of course, that in a series of associations nothing commands his particular interest; he merely sees one or another possibility but nothing illuminating. Or, at the opposite extreme, he may find that even as he delves into one connection certain other elements also strike him as noteworthy. In both instances he will do well to put down in the margin the questions left open. Perhaps at a future time, in going over his notes, the mere theoretical possibilities will mean something more to him, or the shelved questions can be taken up in more detail. In the New Testament Apocrypha we find a curious sentence: “For the Lord Himself, having been asked by someone when His kingdom should come, said, ‘When the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside and the male with the female.’” The loss of property and the break-up of possessions may be a terrible happening, but it may also have the effect of driving the sufferer into himself. He may disintegrate with his things, or he may steel his mind and school his emotions to endure the event while he tries to start life anew. So in the end, he will become stronger than he was when the World’s pleasures and riches were available to him. We may wallow in the lowest kind of emotions and passions, or we may rise the whole feeling-nature to a level where love and beauty, refinement and sensitivity reign serenely. When the good in hum overbalances the bad, his selfishness will be purged by pity. He can transcend gender by turning inward and finding the inner bliss. He should cultivate therefor joy, love, and happiness as attributes of the inner self. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Working for the Sacramento Fire Department is a prestigious accomplishment for many. However, being a firefighter is dangerous, with risks including dealing with collapsing structures, operating heavy equipment, climbing high ladders, and being suspended in unsafe places during rescues. “My first fire was a taxpayer, a group of one-story stores. It was a pullbox alarm, and we were first due in. I had the nozzle. The fire was in the ceiling and the walls, and it had gotten a little bit into the floor, but it was mostly smoke. Danger never entered my mind. I remember thinking through the whole thing, ‘Don’t fall. Pace yourself.’ I was very conscious of not making a mistake. The danger, the hell with the danger, I didn’t want to look stupid. I didn’t want to be pointed out. I mean, this was my first. This was my proving ground. ‘Don’t make a fool of yourself.’ It’s still like that. I’m disappointed when I’m given control of the door, because inevitably somebody says, ‘How come you’re outside, and not inside?’ Sometimes I take it too seriously; they could be teasing, but I get my back up a little bit. That’s my main concern—to be a professional and to do it right, to stop and think about what I’m doing. Having the nozzle in that first fire was wonderful. Just the exhilaration and the high afterwards. My feet didn’t touch the ground. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“Of course, nobody said, ‘Wow, you did a good job.’ It was just a nod or a look, or a small feeling of acceptance. My officer was my backup man. I fell in love with him. It was like a woman and her obstetrician. I thought, ‘This is it.’ I never felt closer to anybody. It’s a very close relationship. It’s magnetic. It’s very magnetic for a woman. I also remember thinking that this was really hard work, that the guys were right: ‘I’m not going to be able to do this.’ You can’t see anything. It’s claustrophobic, you’re moving in, and you don’t know where. You’re climbing over stud, and you don’t know what it is. There’s a lot of noise, a lot of yelling. I remember being scared and doubting whether I was physically able to do this. I was constantly talking to myself: ‘Don’t give up, you’ve got to keep going.’ That was the first. It wasn’t seven floors in an occupied building, with people coming down carrying their TV sets. I remember thinking how happy I was. But when I look back on it now, it really wasn’t anything.” Please remember to raise your children to love America, love God and Jesus Christ, respect law and order, do well in school, respect their elders, and be proud to be a member of the best country on Earth. You can help save lives and property by making a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We are grateful for the faith that made fearless, and the courage that kept firm these valiant men and women. Above all, we are grateful that the spirit of America’s Prophets lived in their hearts that they knew all men are created equal in Thy sight, by Thee endowed with the imperishable right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Take Care of this Baby as though it Were You Own
The really mature person is an optimistic person. He prefers goodwill to hate, peace to aggression, and self-control to unloosed passions. During the war, in southern California, my daughter wanted to take a course in aircraft production illustration. The man in charge said he could not accept her because she would not be eighteen by the time she was through with the course. That was the rule. I went to see him, and he was really a swell person, but he would not budge even when I said, “Look. Here is a girl who is very good at drawing and she loves planes. She has come from a war zone and wants to do something that does not seem futile to her. She is just what you need, so why not admit her?” He said, “Oh, I couldn’t do that! I’d have to go over several dead bodies.” I thought of the bodies dumped into trenches in Honolulu, and the bodies left rotting in ships in Pearl Harbour because there was not time to do anything about them. His remark in this context was too much for me. I said, “In war, what is a few more dead bodies” That was too much for him, too. He got her in. When my husband was in charge of the pediatric service at a hospital in New York in the twenties, there was an infant whom none of the doctors could find anything wrong with, but all of them agreed that the baby was dying. My father spoke privately to a young nurse who loved babies. He swore her to secrecy before telling her what he wanted her to do. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The awful secret was, “Take care of this baby as though it were your own. Just love it.” At that time, “love” was nonsense even to psychologist; to doctors and nurses, it still seems to be what you must have for a patient. The baby took hold. All the doctors agreed on that. However, if someone had told the my father how this happened, he would have ceased to be medical man (trustworthy) and would have become a mystic (unreliable). Even if some of his colleagues might have become a mystic (unreliable). Even if some of his colleagues might have agreed with him, they would not have dared to speak in support of him because then they would have lost caste too. Love was not “scientific” because it could not be measured. So let the baby die? Two quite well-known scientists have told me, separately of things they had observed about life, their own knowing, and when they were leaving said, in identical words, “Don’t tell anyone I said that!” A psychologist said one thing at school and another within his own home. When asked about the discrepancy he said, “That was my professional opinion (at school). This is my personal opinion.” If schizophrenic means “split mind,” then who is not? No wonder that when William Menninger was asked how many of us suffer from emotional illness he asked “One out of one of us.” It hurts deeply to be told that I am irresponsible—like a knife thrust into my chest and given a twist. So I know somewhat how it must feel to other professional people, and why they do not speak out more than they do. When I do and say what everyone says and does, then no one calls me irresponsible. However, sometimes I am. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
I am inconsistent, not congruent, (sometimes called a hypocrite) if I complain about bribery and deceit in politics, government, business, the police, when I myself do and say, at the expense of my own integrity, what I will be rewarded for smiles, friendship, acceptance, position, a nice house and all the other things which are supposed to be our good and proper goals. The wickedness is not in what I have accepted, but in what I have given up, which is myself, my own authority based on my own knowing. This process begins so early in our lives even under relatively good conditions that I cannot blame anyone else or me for becoming confused, but no matter who got me into what I got into, I am the only person who can get me out of it. Others can certainly help—and they have—by letting me think what I think, choose what I choose, and feel what I feel, However, still, I have to be willing to let this surge into me and become the basis for my actions. This can be ridiculously difficult and frightening. It may be about something that does not seem in the least important when looked at from the outside, but the inside scene is altogether different. As part of the age I lived in and my profession, was contemptuous of “mysticism.” This was the same man who cured a baby by assigning it to a loving nurse. His feeling about swamis and ochre robes—of which he had not direct experience whatever—was so strong that when Aldous Huxley, who he had admired, joined the Vedantists my husband said bitterly, “Get along, little yogi.” I had got infected by his shudders. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
When I was on the mainland with the children for a year and started out in search of my own values, I went to the Vedanta temple in Hollywood to find out for myself what I thought of swamis and ochre robes. That is true, and yet the way that is stated is misleading. It expresses a clarity which was not present at the time. A more accurate way of saying it is, “I did not know what I was doing, but I knew that I had to do it”—the wisdom of the organism making its own corrections. I sat through the service with ants running up my back. I felt that I must have gone out of my mind to be there, because I did not know anyone who would not disapprove of me. Something made me stay, not run away. Afterward, although I had been a devotee of the non-handshaking cult for many years, I went to the swam and shook hands with him. I did not know why: it was just something that I had to do. As I looked at him, suddenly I felt very shaky and by voice cracked as I said, with deep and genuine feeling, “Thank you!” I felt a fool for my shakiness and my emotion, but it made no difference to the swami: there was no change in him. His acceptance of me was the same before, during, and after. I did not know what I was thanking him for until I realized that I respected the guy. He was real. His being real, not phoney, had helped me to break through what had blocked me, which was such a battle taking place in me that it felt like exorcising the devil, like breaking out of a strait-jacket. However, somehow I got out. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
I am sure there are phoney swamis just as there are phoney everything else—ministers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, scientists—but this one was not, and I could never have that awful block against a whole group—swamis—again. That was my only face-to-face encounter with a swami and almost my total experience of him. I had lunch once with a swami recently arrived from India—a very sincere young man who was also very nervous. Another swami, I listened for an hour at a lecture and kept looking at my watch. I have not since been able to think of “swamis” as anything, but only of individual swamis, and this I like because it is real. I have never yet known anyone who fit a category or who was only the category in which he was placed. Some were worse, some better, but the category itself was misleading. At the same time, I was left open to “mysticism.” I did not accept it, but neither did I block it out. I was free to explore it or not, but I knew that I could not say anything about it until I had explored it—until I could speak from my own experience and know what I was talking about. This seems to be part of the built-in pathfinder, that it fins its own way regardless of what anyone else says or thinks. It acts on the information that it has, but tentatively—open to change as further information comes in. Irrational as it seems to my rational mind, it is—in terms of my own life—more scientific. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
It explores, discovers, tests, is forever open to re-evaluation and perpetual learning. It does not get fuddled or irritated by mistakes: it is interested in what happens, learns, moves on. It is not “coldly scientific” any more than Nobel prize-winning scientists like Linus Pauling and Albert Szent-Gyorgyi are “cold”—they are warm, human, enthusiastic, do not take themselves too seriously and are very much alive. One needs only to watch a healthy infant or small child, forever testing and exploring and enjoying this, to know what I have rediscovered in myself. When I was small, one of the things that puzzled me was that when I saw something that I wanted to try, and did it, sometimes the grownups said that I was bright, sometimes that I was silly. A little later, with people outside the family who did not love me as my family did, it was sometimes I was “bright” and sometimes I was “stupid.” I could not understand at first what made the difference. As I went into doing things, they looked the same to me. Gradually I learned that “bright” or “silly” depended not on how it looked to me when I went into it, but on how it came out. That was puzzling to me, because how it came out was something that I never knew until after I had done it. I did things to see what would happen. So how could I be “bright” when it came out one way and “silly” when it came out another? I was the same both ways, it seemed to me. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Later on, I learned, especially in school, to value success” and to hide “failure” so that I would not be scolded or ridiculed. That was not the way that I started out, when both were interesting, and failure was sometimes more stimulating than success because it raised more questions When I turned my mine to concealing failure—being clever about it—I did not notice the questions any more. In our past case study of Clare, during the period in which she tried to solve her dependence on her friend Peter, she dreamed that another man put his arm around her and said he loved her. He was attractive to her, and she felt happy. Peter was in the room, looking out of a window. The dream might suggest offhand that Clare was turning from Peter to another man, and thus be an expression of conflicting feelings. Or it might express a wish that Peter would be as demonstrative as this other man. Or it might represent a belief that turning to another attachment would solve the problem of her morbid dependency; in this case it would constitute an attempt to evade a real solution of the problem. Or it might express a wish to have a choice about remining with Peter, a choice that she actually did not have because of her ties to him. If some progress has been made toward understanding, then a dream may provide confirmation for an assumption; it may fill a gap in one’s knowledge; or it may open up a new and unexpected lead. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
However, if the picture is befogged by a resistance a dream is not likely to clarify matters. It may do so, but also it may be so intricately interwoven with unrecognized attitudes that it defined interpretation and merely adds to the confusion. These warnings should certainly not deter anyone from attempts to analyze his dreams. In another case study we did on John in the past, his dream about bedbugs, for instance, was a definite help to him in understanding his feeling. The pitfall to be avoided is merely a one-sided concentration on dreams to the exclusion of other observations equally valuable. And a warning of an opposite character is equally important: we frequently have a compelling interest not to take a dream seriously, and by its very grotesqueness or exaggeration a dream may lend itself to such an ignoring of its message. In reference to Clare’s self-analysis, she spoke in a distinct enough language as to a serious turmoil in her relationship with her lover, yet she managed to take it lightly. The reason was that she had stringent reasons for not letting herself be moved by its implications. And this is not an exceptional situation. Thus dreams are an important source of information, but only one among several. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, keep in my that dreams do not give a photographic, static picture of feelings or opinions but are primarily an expression of tendencies. It is true that a dream may reveal to us more clearly than our waking life what our true feelings are: love, hatred, suspicion, or sadness otherwise repressed may be felt in dreams without constraint. However, the more important characteristic of dreams is, as Dr. Freud expressed it, that they are governed by wishful thinking. This does not necessarily mean that they represent a conscious wish, or that they directly symbolize something we regard as desirable. The “wishful thinking” is likely to lie in the purport rather than in the explicit content. Dreams, in other words, give voice to our strivings, our needs, and often represents attempts at a solution of conflicts bothering us at the time. They are a play of emotional forces rather than a statement of facts. If two powerful contradictory strivings clash, an anxiety dream may result. Thus if we dream of a person whom we consciously like or respect as a revolting or ridiculous creature we should look for a need that compels us to deflate that person rather than jumping to the conclusion that the dream reveals our hidden opinion of him. If a patient dreams of himself as a dilapidated house that it beyond repairs, this may, to be sure, be an expression of his hopelessness, but the main question is what interest he has in presenting himself in this way? #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Is this defeatist attituded desirable for him as the lesser evil? Is it the expression of a vindictive reproach, at his own expense, revealing his feeling that something should have been done for him earlier but that now is too late? The second principle to be mentioned here is that a dream is not understood until we can connect it with the actual provocation that stimulated it. It is not enough, for instance, to recognize in a dream derogatory tendencies or vindictive impulses in general. The question must always be raised as to the provocation to which this dream was a response. If this connection can be discovered we can learn a good deal as to the exact type of experience that represents us to a threat or an offense, and the unconscious reactions it elicits. There are various possible answers to the question that human existence raises. They are centered around two problems: one, the need for a frame of orientation, and the other the need for a frame of devotion. What are the answers to the need for a frame or orientation? The overriding answers which man has found so far is one which can also be observed among animals—to submit to a strong leader who is supposed to know what is best for the group, who plans and orders and who promises to everyone that by following him he acts in the best interest of all. In order to enforce allegiance to the leader, or, to put it differently, to give the individual enough faith to believe in the leader, the leader is assumed to have qualities transcending those of any of his subjects. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The leader is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, sacred; he is a god himself or a god’s viceroy or a high priest, knowing the secrets of the cosmos and performing the rituals necessary for its continuity. To be sure, the leaders, have usually used promises and threats to manipulate submission. However, this is by no means the whole story. Man, as long as he has not arrived at a higher form of his own evolution, has needed the leader and was only too eager to believe the fantastic stories proving the legitimacy of the king, god, father, monarch, priest etcetera. This need for the leader still exists in the most enlightened societies of our day. Even in countries like the United States of America or Russia, decision affecting the life and death of everyone are left to a small group of leaders or to one man who is acting under the formal mandate of the constitution—whether it is called “democratic” or “socialist.” In their wish for security, men love their own dependence, especially if it is made easy for them by the relative comfort of material life and by ideologies which call brainwashing “education” and submission “freedom.” There is no need to seek for the roots of this submissiveness in the phenomenon of dominance-submission among animals. In fact, in quite a few animals it is not as extreme or widespread as it is in man, and the very conditions of human existence would require submission even if we disregarded our animal past completely. However, there is one decisive difference. Man is not bound to be sheep. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
In fact, inasmuch as h is not an animal, man has an interest in being related to and conscious of reality, to touch the Earth with his feet, as in the Greek legend of Antaeus; man is stronger the more fully he is in touch with reality. As long as he is only sheep and his reality is essentially nothing but the fiction built up by his society for more convenient manipulation of men and things, he is weak as man. Any change in the social pattern threatens him with intense insecurity and even madness because his whole relationship with reality is mediated by the fictitious reality which is presented to him as real. The more he can grasp reality on his own, and not only as a datum with which society provides him, the more secure he feels because the less completely dependent he is on consensus and hence the less threatened by social change. Man qua man has an inherent tendency to enlarge his knowledge of reality and that means to approximate the truth. We are not dealing here with a metaphysical concept of truth but with a concept of increasing approximation, which means decreasing fiction and delusion. In comparison with the importance of this increase or decrease of one’s grasp of reality, the question whether there is a final truth about anything remains entirely abstract and irrelevant. The process of increasing awareness is nothing but the process of awakening, of opening one’s eyes and seeing what is in front of one. Awareness means doing away with illusions and, to the degree that his is accomplished, it is a process of liberation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In spite of the fact that there is a tragic disproportion between intellect and emotion at the present moment in industrial society, there is no denying the fact that the history of man is a history of growing awareness. This awareness refers to the facts of nature outside of himself as well as to his own nature. While man still wears blinders, in many respects his critical reason has discovered a great deal about the nature of the Universe and the nature of man. He is still very much at the beginning of this process of discovery, and the crucial question is whether the destructive power which his present knowledge has given him will permit him to go on extending this knowledge to an extent which is unimaginable today, or whether he will destroy himself before he can build an ever-fuller picture of reality in the present foundations. Looking back over history it may appear that there has been more change in the perception and explanation of mental illness than there has been in the basic forms of treatment. It is notable, however, that there have been significant changes in the identity of the persons who have assumed major responsibility for the care of management of the emotionally ill. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The earliest approach to management of disordered behaviour deserving to be called treatment was the responsibility of priests and religious healers. In the enlightened period of the Greco-Roman culture there evolved a special group of therapists who combined the role of religious functionary with the ministrations of early medicine. These were the priest-physicians and their sanitaria combined the functions of temple and hospital. Because of their dual roles and orientations it is possible that these priest-physicians may have achieved an unusually integrated (and possibly never replicated), truly psychosomatic approach to psychosomatic ailment. With the growth of medical science and with the final acceptance of naturalistic explanation of mental phenomena (including disorders of adaptive behaviour), the mentally ill became the charge of the physician. The institutional history of medical psychology begins with the establishment of asylums for the insane under the direction of medics. The medical superintendents of these early asylums steeped themselves in the clinical material of their wards and whenever possible made intensive study of associated nervous system pathology. Then the hospital clinic came into existence as a place where less severe symptoms were presented for treatment and from study of this outpatient material came gradual recognized. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Johann Weyer (1515-1588) is credited as being the first psychiatrist: He was the first physician whose major interest turned toward mental diseases and thereby foreshadowed the formation of psychiatry as a medial specialty…Dr. Wayer more than anyone else completed, or at least brought close to completion the process of divorcing medical psychology from theology. However, the roots of modern psychiatry are seen most clearly in the writings and teachings of the neurologist, the “neuropsychiatrists” led by Charcot, Janet, Liebeault, and Bernheim, who first demonstrated the power of the mind both to cause and to alleviate symptoms, physical and mental. With Dr. Freud’s discovery of the critical mechanism of the psychoneuroses and with his establishment of psychoanalysis, we have what has become for many a new religion, a current philosophy for modern man—and with it we have a new “priest.” We have come full circle in assignment of authority in the treatment of mental illness: from priest-physician to psychiatrist and, finally to the analyst-priest (who frequently is not a physician). And there are signs that we may increasingly recognize the potential therapeutic powers of the spiritual authority. In ancient times the deranged person’s wildness was believed due to a possession by evil spirits; today, there is a distinct trend to see that emotional suffering of many persons as stemming from a defect of faith, a lack of meaning. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
As the definition of neurosis has been gradually broadened so as to encompass symptoms ranging from actual failure of performance to a lack of basic zest for living, and as the optimal treatment of such disorders has increasingly assigned a critical role to therapeutic conversation, it becomes less and less clear that there is any one group of experts in our culture whose background and professional training uniquely equips them to function in the role of psychotherapist—as emotional tutor, as intimate counsel, as master philosopher, or as guide in the quest for self-realization. Hegal, taking God as the subject of history, has seen God in man, in a state of self-alienation and in the process of history God’s return to himself. Feuerbach turned Hegel upside down; God, so he thought, represented man’s own powers transferred from man, the owner of these powers, to a being outside of him, so that man is in touch with his own powers only by his worship of God; the stronger and richer God is, the weaker and poorer becomes man. Marx was deeply stirred and influenced by Feuerbach’s thought. Marx wrote, “The worker becomes poorer, the more wealth he produces and the more his production increases in power and extent.” It may not be too farfetched to speculate the Marx was influenced in his erroneous theory of the increasing impoverishment of the work in the process of capitalistic evolution by this analogy between religious and economic alienation even though his economic assumption seems to be nothing but the logical outcome of his economic theory of labour, value, and other factors. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Marx also wrote: “All these consequences follow from the fact that the worker is related to the product of his labour as to an alien object. For it is clear on this presupposition that the more the worker expends himself in work, the more powerful becomes the World of objects he creates in face of himself, the poorer he becomes in his inner life and the less he belongs to himself; it is just the same as in religion. The more of himself man attributes to God the less he has left in himself. The worker puts his life into the object and his life then belongs to himself but to be object. The greater his activity, therefore, the less he posses…The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, assumes an external existence, but that it exists independently, outside himself that is stands opposed to him as an autonomous power. The life which he has given to the object sets itself against him as an alien and hostile force. However, so Marx goes on to say, the worker is not only alienated from the products which he creates; “alienation appears not only in the result, but also in the process, of production, within productivity itself.” And again he returns to the analogy of alienation in labour with alienation in religion, “Just as in religion the spontaneous activity ‘Selbsttaetigkeit’ of human fantasy, of the human brain and heart, reacts independently as an alien activity of gods and devil upon the individual, so the activity of the worker is not his own spontaneous activity.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Temperament and circumstance, happening and universal law will combine to decide whether he lets go the bad tendency or habit suddenly or whether he will need a period to adjust and settle down anew. When a person does not want to talk about something, especially something you think is important, they can give too little detail to the story to hide the things they do not want you to know about. When someone is going to lie, premediating the lie, they might make up a lavish story. This story will have endless details that are meant to make the story sound believable, but it only serves to make the listener sure the story is made up. The lair has rehearsed this story over and over again in their minds. In their opinion, it is the details that make it so believable. Saying way too much shows the listener that the speaker has rehearsed the story many times. Again, the use of details most people would not bother with shows us the lair believes throwing them in makes them sound believable. We Westerners have to bring two polar opposites into harmony, for we have to adjust our temperamental inclination towards the partial, the actual, the visible, and concrete with rising other-Worldly needs of the transcendental, the real, the silent, the invisible, and abstract. It is from this deeper part of our being that there arise our noblest ethics and our loftiest ideals. Philosophy creates and maintains the highest standards of conduct. However, they are not necessarily conventional ones. It is time preachers began to realize that giving naïve admonitions to the weak and sinful is not enough. The latter must not only be told to be good but, not less important, taught how to be good! #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Many firefighters have tragic stories. One firefighter we will call Blake had to come to terms with a tragedy at the age of seven. His father was killed in a fire. He was a battalion chief at the time. Everybody respected him, and Blake is so proud of that fact. He aims to be as honourable and dedicated as his father. Blake and his brother, whom we will call Brad, used to go to the firehouse with their father. Brad is now a captain in the fire department. Blake is a third-generation fireman. His grandfather was a captain, and died on the job of a stomach ailment. He also had his hand crushed at a fire in the stockyards, but he was able to go back to work. Blake’s uncle was a battalion chief in the same house as Blake’s brother. He is retired now, but his three sons, Blake’s cousins, are firemen. Blake’s father-in law is deputy district chief, and his two sons, Blake’s brothers-in-law, are firemen. Blake’s sister’s husband, another brother-in-law, is a fireman. From the age of seven on, Blake would be at the firehouse. Fire fans were not allowed to go into the building, but he was sort of accepted as one of the firemen. Blake was able to go in and go to work. He was injured a few times, but he covered it up by saying he had done it at home. The firehouse is essentially where he got his background. This went on for several years until a fire fan fell off a truck and was killed. The Fire Commissioner stopped all unauthorized people from riding fire apparatus, and Blake had to go down and get a special letter from him, which gave Blake permission to have special privileges. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
When Blake was in grammar school and high school, he was not looking forward to college or anything. His goal was to be a fireman. And the first test that came along, he took it. He had to wait a few years before he would be called. He took his Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) courses, and applied to get on the city ambulances, which are part of the Sacramento Fire Department. If he was not going to be a fireman, Blake figured this would be the next best thing. So Blake was an EMT, and he was assigned to the firehouse where his father had been a lieutenant. The ambulance in that house was the busiest in the city, and he went there because he wanted to get experience. He was there about nine months before he got called to become a firefighter. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? Yet if I am for myself alone, of what good am I? Please show your love to the Sacramento Fire Department and make a donation. Although some calls they receive may not be emergencies, they all are dangerous because they have to race to get to the scene and they never know what to expect. 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. Who is strong? He who is master over his impulses. Who is rich? He who rejoices in whatever is his portion. Who is honoured? He who honours his fellowmen. Let not your learning exceed your deeds, least you be like a tree with many branches and few roots. Knowledge of God avails much, yet the chief purpose of its study is the doing of God’s will. The more understanding one has, the more righteousness; the more righteousness, the more peace. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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His Fearlessness is Based on Lack of Love
When hope has gone life had ended, actually or potentially. Hope is an intrinsic element of the structure of life, of the dynamic of man’s spirit. It is closely lined with another element of the structure of life: faith. Faith is not a weak form of belief or knowledge; it is not faith in this or that; faith is the conviction about the not yet proven, the knowledge of the real possibility, the awareness or pregnancy. Faith is rational when it refers to the real yet unborn; it is based on the faculty of knowledge and comprehension, which penetrates the surface and sees the kernel. Faith, like hope, is not prediction of the future; it is the vision of the present in a state of pregnancy. The statement that faith is certainty needs a qualification. It is certainty about the reality of the possibility—but it is not certainty in the sense of unquestionable predictability. The child may be still born prematurely; it may die in the act of birth; it may die in the first two weeks of life. This is the paradox of faith: it is the certainty of the uncertain. (In Hebrew the word “faith” (Emunah) means certainty. Amen means certainly.) It is certainty in terms of man’s vision and comprehension; it is not certainty in terms of the final outcome of reality. We need no faith in that which is scientifically predictable, nor can there be faith in that which is impossible. Faith is based on our experience of living, of transforming ourselves. Faith that others can change is the outcome of the experience that I can change. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
There is an important distinction between rational and irrational faith. While rational faith is the result of one’s own inner activeness in thought or feeling, irrational faith is submission to something given, which one accepts as true regardless of whether it is or not. The essential element of all irrational faith is its passive character, be its object an idol, a leader, or an ideology. Even the scientist needs to be free from irrational faith in traditional ideas in order to have rational faith in traditional ideas in order to have rational faith in the power of his creative thought. Once his discovery is “proved,” he needs no more faith, except in the next step he is contemplating. In the sphere of human relations, “having faith” in another person means to be certain of his core—that is, of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes. In the same sense we can have faith in ourselves—not in the constancy of our opinions, but in our basic orientation to life, the matrix of our character structure. Such faith is conditioned by the experience of self, by our capacity to say “I” legitimately, by the sense of our identity. Hope is the mood that accompanies faith. Faith could not be sustained without the mood of hope. Hope can have no base except in faith. There is still another element linked with hope and faith in the structure of life: courage, or, as Spinoza called it, fortitude. Fortitude is perhaps the less ambiguous expression, because today courage is more often used to demonstrate the courage to die rather than courage to live. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Fortitude is the capacity to resist the temptation to compromise hope and faith by transforming them—and thus destroying them—into empty optimism or into irrational faith. Fortitude is the capacity to say “no” when the World wants to hear “yes.” However, unless we mention another aspect of it: fearlessness, fortitude is not fully understood. The fearless person is not afraid of threats, not even of death. However, as so often, the word “fearless” covers several entirely different attitudes. I mention only the three most important ones: First, a person can be fearless because he does not care to live; life is not worth much to him, hence he is fearless when it comes to the danger of dying; but while he is not afraid of death, he may be afraid of life. His fearlessness is based on lack of love of life; he is usually not fearless at all when he is not in the situation of risking his life. In fact, he frequently looks for dangerous situations, in order to avoid his fear of life, of himself, and of people. A second kind of fearlessness is that of the person who lives in symbiotic submission to an idol, be it a person, an institution, or an idea; the commands of the idol are scared; they are far more compelling than even the survival commands of his body. If he could disobey or doubt these commands of the idol, he would face the danger of losing his identity with the idol; this means he would be running the risk of finding himself utterly isolated, and thus at the verge of insanity. He is willing to die because he is afraid of exposing himself to this danger. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The third kind of fearlessness is to be found in the fully developed person, who rests within himself and loves life. The person who has overcome greed does not cling to any idol or any thing and hence has nothing to lose; he is rich because he is empty, he is strong because he is not the slave of his desires. He can let go of idols, irrational desires, and fantasies, because he is in full touch with reality, inside and outside himself. If such a person has reached full “enlightenment,” he is completely fearless. If he has moved toward this goal without having arrived, his fearlessness will also not be complete. However, anyone who tries to move toward the state of being fully himself knows that whenever a new step toward fearlessness is made, a sense of strength and joy is awakened that is unmistakable. As if a new phase of life had begun, he feels. He can feel the truth of Goethe’s lines: “I have put my house on nothing, that’s why the whole World is mine.” (Ich hab mein Haus auf nichts gestellt, deshalb gehoert mir die ganze Welt.) Hope and faith, being essential qualities of life, are by their very nature moving in the direction of transcending the status quo, individually and socially. It is one of the qualities of all life that it is in a constant process of change and never remains the same at any given moment. If the stagnation is complete, death has occurred; life that stagnates tends to die. It follows that life in its moving quality tends to break out of and to overcome the status quo. We grow either stronger or weaker, wiser or more foolish, more courageous or more cowardly. Every second is a moment of decision, for the better or the worse. We feed our sloth, greed, or hate, or we starve it. The more we feed it, the stronger it grows; the more we starve it, the weaker it becomes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
What holds true for the individual holds true for a society. If it does not grow, it decays; it is never static; if it does not transcend the status quo for the better, it changes for the worse. Often, we, the individual or the people who make up a society, have the illusion we could stand still and not alter the given situation in the one or the other direction. This is one of the most dangerous illusions. The moment we stand still, we begin to decay. This concept of personal or social transformation allows and even compels us to redefine the meaning of resurrection, without any reference to its theological implications in Christianity. Resurrection in its new meaning—for which the Christian meaning would be one of the possible symbolic expressions—is not the creation of another reality after the reality of this life, but the transformation of this reality in the direction of greater aliveness. Man and society are resurrected every moment in the act of hope and of faith in the here and now; every act of love, of awareness, of compassion is resurrection; every act of sloth, of green, of selfishness is death. Every moment existence confronts us with the alternatives of resurrection or death; every moment we give an answer. This answer lies not in what we say or think, but in what we are, how we act, where we are moving. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Modern man is threatened by a World created by himself. He is faced with the conversion of mind to naturalism, a dogmatic secularism and an opposition to a belief in the transcendent. He begins to see, however, that the Universe is given not as one existing and one perceived but as the unity of subject and object; that the barrier between them cannot be said to have been dissolved as the result of recent experience in the physical sciences, since this barrier has never existed. Confronted with the question of meaning, he is summoned to rediscover and scrutinize the immutable and the permanent which constitute the dynamic, unifying aspect of life as well as the principle of differentiation; to reconcile identity and diversity, immutability and unrest. He begins to recognize that just as every person descends by his particular path, so he is able to ascend, and this assent aims at a return to the source of creation, an inward home from which he has become estranged. It is the hope of RELIGIONS PERSPECTIVES that the rediscovery of man will point the way to the rediscovery of God. To this end a rediscovery of first principles should constitute part of the quest. These principles, not to be superseded by new discoveries, are not those of historical Worlds that come to be and perish. They are to be sought in the heart and spirit of man, and no interpretation of a merely historical or scientific Universe can guide the search. The rediscovery of man will point the way to the rediscovery of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
To this end, a rediscovery of first principles should constitute part of the quest. These principles, not to be superseded by new discoveries, are not those of historical Worlds that come to be and perish. They are to be sought in the heart and spirit of man, and no interpretation of a merely historical or scientific Universe can guide the search. We are attempting not only to ask dispassionately what the nature of God is, but also to restore to man life at least the hypothesis of God and the symbols that relate to him. It endeavours to show that man is faced with the metaphysical question of the truth of religion while he encounters the empirical question of its effects on life of humanity and its meaning for society. Religion is here distinguished from theology and its doctrinal forms and is intended to denote the feelings, aspirations and acts of men, as they relate to reality. Our souls are nourished by the spiritual and intellectual energy of World thought, by those religious and ethical leaders who are not merely spectators but scholars deeply involved in the critical problems common to all religions. It is important to recognize that human morality and human ideals thrive only when set in a context of transcendent attitude toward religion and when we point to the ground of identity and the common nature of being in the religious experience of man, the essential nature of religion may be defined. Thus, we must be committed to re-evaluating the meaning of everlastingness, an experience which has been lost and which is the content of the visio Dei constituting the structure of all religions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
It is the many absorbed everlastingly into the ultimate unity, a unity subsuming the fluency of God and the everlastingness of passing experience. Jesus as the Christ is united to God, and man is united to God in Eternal life. Jesus as the Christ has an essential manhood that appears and it is our destiny also to realize this essentialized humanity. Revelation also insists that Jesus as the Christ is the Son of God and promises that we shall become sons of God. Grace is needed somehow to about for their mysterious union. If this is supernaturalism, so be it. However, the problem demands a solution. There is an ambivalent attitude toward the historicity of Jesus as the Christ: on the one hand, it is of supreme importance because the New Being appeared in Jesus, but, on the other hand, the Christ would in no way be affected if no trace of the historical Jesus could be found. Jesus of Nazareth is the historical locale of particularly striking upheaval of creative ontological dynamism. The New Being was manifest in Jesus, but not identified with him. Thus, after the resurrection the power of the New Being is just as operative as it was before the moment of the incarnation, but Jesus lies dead in the tomb. Such an interpretation tends to makes Jesus expendable, once he had manifested the eternal principle that being overcomes nonbeing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
If the timeless New Being overshadows the historical Jesus, there is danger that an impersonal principle may replace the personal intervention of God. The New Being imparts a metaphysical profundity and stability to the system. Certainly theology must speak intelligibly to man, but revelation far outstrips the range of human questions. Finally, the separation of the New Being from Jesus runs the risk depersonalizing the New Being and making Jesus superfluous. The demand to give up illusions about life and its condition as life humanity demands we give up conditions which need illusions. Men cannot remain children forever; they must in the end go out into “hostile life.” We may call this “education to reality.” If man asks himself how he ever became interested in those fields of thought which were destined to occupy the most important place throughout his life, he will not find it easy to give a simple answer. Perhaps he was born with an inclination for certain questions, or perhaps it was the influence of certain teachers, or of current ideas, or of personal experiences which led him along the path of his later interests—who knows which of these factors have determined the course of life? Indeed, if one wanted to know precisely the relative weight of all these factors, nothing short of a detailed historical autobiography could even attempt to give the answers. There is a strange and mysterious reason for human reactions. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
This was the incident: I had known a young woman, a friend of the family. Maybe she was twenty-five years of age; she was beautiful, attractive and in addition a painter, the first painter I ever knew. I remember having heard that she had been engaged but after some time had broken the engagement; I remember that she was almost invariably in the company of her widowed father. As I remember him, he was an old, uninteresting, and rather unattractive-looking man, or so I thought (maybe my judgment was somewhat biased by jealousy). Then one day I heard the shocking news: her father had died, and immediately afterwards she had killed herself and left a will which stipulated that she wanted to be buried together with her father. I had heard of the Elektria complex—the incestuous fixation between daughter and father. However, I was deeply touched. I had been quite attracted to the young woman; I had loathed the unattractive father; never before had I known anyone to commit suicide. I was hit by the thought “How is it possible?” How is it possible a beautiful young woman should be so in love with her father, that she prefers to be buried with him to being alive to the pleasures of life and of painting? Certainly I knew no answer, but the “how is it possible” stuck. And it was a puzzling and frightening experience at a time when I was beginning to develop into an adolescent. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Dreams and fantasies are also of eminent importance as a means toward understanding. Since they are relatively direct expression of unconscious feelings and strivings, they must open up avenues for understanding that are otherwise hardly visible. Some dreams are rather transparent; as a rule, however, they speak a cryptic language that can be understood only with the assistance of free associations. The particular point at which the patient turns from co-operation to defensive maneuvers of one kind or another furnishes another help for understanding. As the analyst gradually discovers the reasons for these resistances, he gains increasing understanding of the patient’s peculiarities. Sometimes the fact that a patient stalls or fights, and the immediate reason why he does so, are transparent. More often astute observation is necessary to detect that a blockage exists, and the help of the patient’s free associations is necessary to understand the reasons for it. If the analyst succeeds in understanding the resistance, he will gain an increased knowledge as to the precise factors that hurt or frighten the patient and the precise nature of the reaction they produce. If he touches upon then, similarly illuminating are the themes that the patient omits, or deserts quickly. If, for example, the patient rigidly avoids expressing any critical thoughts concerning the analysts, though he is otherwise overexacting and overcritical, the analyst will have an important. Another example of this kind would be a patient’s failure to tell a specific incident which had occurred the previous day and had upset him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
All these clues help the analyst to obtain gradually a coherent picture of the patient’s life, past and present, and of the forces operating in his personality. However, they also help toward an understanding of the factors operating in the patient’s relationship to the analyst and the analytical situation. For several reasons it is important to understand this relationship as accurately as possible. If, for instance, a hidden resentment toward the analyst remained under cover, for one thing, it would block the analysis entirely. If he has an unsolvd resentment in his heart toward the person to whom he reveals himself, with the best will in the World, a patient cannot express himself freely and spontaneously. Second, since the patient cannot feel and react differently toward the analyst from the way he does toward other person, he unconsciously displays in analysis the same irrational emotional factors, the same strivings and reactions, that he displays in other relationships. Thus the co-operative study of these factors makes it possible for the analyst to understand the patient’s disturbances in his human relationships in general, and these, as we have seen, are the crucial issue in the whole neurosis. The clues that may help toward a gradual understanding of the patient’s structure are, in fact, practically infinite. However, it is important to mention that the analyst makes use of the clues not only be means of precise reasoning but also, as it were, intuitively. In other words, he cannot always precisely explain how he arrives at his tentative assumption. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
In my own work, for example, I have arrived sometimes at an understanding through free associations of my own. While listening to a patient some incident may emerge in my mind that the patient has told me long ago, without my knowing offhand what bearing it has on the present situation. Or a finding regarding another patient may occur to me. I have learned never to discard these associations, and they have often proved helpful when they were seriously examined. When people are given little to no time to make decision, using this tactic, the manipulator has his mind made up. He has just got to get you to agree. However, the thing you need to agree on is pretty important, and you do not like the rush he is putting you in. The rush people put on others to sign contracts, for instance, before they have time to read the document and think about the subject often times makes one suspicious. Therefore, it is always good to do a bit of research. Sometimes you will find out the person who is trying to force you into a contract is somehow connected to the benefactors of that contract and is going to get a kickback when they get you to sign. It is important to be careful about what you sign because some people can get fired for signing contracts without understanding them or they may lose something valuable. Do not let anyone rush you into making any decision and research things. It seems like since we have not been honouring immigration laws, people have been coming to America, and some of them working at reputable companies, and running scams on consumers, which cause them to get arrested, lose their homes, cars, and several hundreds of thousands of dollars, in some case millions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
The psychiatrist is a graduate physician. As a holder of the M.D. degree, he has received basic education in medical sciences (anatomy, bacteriology, pathology, physiology, and so on) and supervised experiences with each of the clinical specialties (such as medicine, surgery, neurology, obstetrics). The basic structure of undergraduate medical training is essentially standard in a majority of American medical schools; most commonly there are two years of basic science instruction followed by two years of training and supervised apprenticelike experience in the clinical fields. The basic four years of medical college instruction received by the man who ultimately becomes a psychiatrist (and who may have had this as a goal upon entering medical school) are not different from those of any other M.D. He has spent the same number of class hours as any other physician in the study of chemistry, anatomy, pathology, bacteriology. (He may have entered medical college after completing a four-year college degree; more frequently he will have started his medical training at the end of three years of premedical study. His premedical education has to emphasize the sciences (especially chemistry and physics), and depending upon his initiative and ability and upon the quality of his premedical school, he may have studied more or less of psychology, sociology, history and other subjects.) The amount of instruction and exposure to general human psychology and particularly to psychopathology and to psychiatric illness which he received during the two preclinical years will depend upon the medical college he attended; it may be as little as 20 hours and rarely exceeds 180 hours. By contrast he is likely to have devoted at least 500 hours to the study of anatomy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Following medical school, the aspirant psychiatrist must complete a one-year internship in an accredited hospital in which his clinical diagnostic and therapeutic skills are further developed over the full range of medical illness. At the end of this internship, he had satisfied the basic requirement to qualify for the practice of medicine, and he may then undertake specialized training in the field of psychiatry. This training is knowns as a “residency” and encompasses a three-year period of instruction and supervision by the staff of an accredited psychiatric hospital. As a psychiatric resident he will be exposed to some formal, didactic instruction on the subjects of psychiatric nosology, psychopathology, techniques of interviewing, special diagnostic procedures, special medical therapies (exempli gratia, electroshock, drugs), and principles of psychotherapy. How much formal instruction he receives will depend upon the particular psychiatric staff responsible for his training. Also, whether his theoretical orientation is “psychobiologic,” “psychoanalytic,” or “eclectic” will depend upon the setting in which he happens to take his residency. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Apart from these possible particulars of his training he will over the course of the three years be exposed to a wide variety and large number of patients (hospitalized and outpatient) for which, with varying degrees and emphases of supervision, he will be directly responsible and whose treatment, especially when it is psychotherapy, he will provide. In essence, the psychiatric residency is an intensive and extensive apprenticeship in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with emotional disorders who are referred to clinics or hospitals. At the end of the three years, some eleven or twelve years after his high school graduation, at an average age of thirty-plus, the physician is fully qualified to begin his professional career as a psychiatrist and, if he chooses (and many do), to specialize in psychotherapy with the ambulatory patient. (If he wishes to specialize in the field of child psychiatry, he must complete two years of residence on a children’s service in addition to two years of experience on adult services. Many men take additional specialized training in psychoanalysis; to qualify as a full-fledged analyst the psychiatrist must complete several additional years of training in an analytic institute. If he sees fit to do so–when the analyst has recognized some possible connection, when he has gained an impression as to the unconscious factors that may be operating in a certain context, he will tell the patient his interpretation. If he thinks the patient can stand it and can utilize it, the analyst will offer an interpretation. In the following days, we will cover the clinical psychologist and the psychiatric social worker. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
With all the responsibilities the Sacramento Fire Department and EMS has, such has having to be experts in dealing with weapons of mass destruction, saving people from burning buildings, extracting people from serious cars accidents, and even being shot at and attacked in the line of duty, what makes it even tougher is that they have to do it with little to no funding. The Sacramento Fire Department has to expand their programs and provide additional services without any additional money each time the fire services have been called upon to do something else, and it is usually beyond what they always envisioned was the job of being a firefighter. The fire department is always taking on more responsibilities. And it seems that as son as they learn a new area and skill, expectations and tasks increase. It is going to keep happening as long as the fire service is as talented and as full of as many service heroes as it is. The public is going to continue to call them every time there is a new problem or challenge. When you look at the history of the fire service as a whole, you will see that, given any problem, they will always come up with a solution. Please take time to donate money to the Sacramento Fire Department to insure they are well taken care of and have all the supplies and resources they require. 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 17 of 17
The need to reach out to a loved one is of cardinal importance in the release of a trapped spirit, commonly called a ghost. In the Winter of 2010, a caretaker was shingling the roof, and he was just coming in from the roof on the fourth-floor balcony on a cold day—he had left the window ajar and secured—when suddenly he heard the window sash come down. He turned around on the fourth-floor platform and he saw the young girl, her hair windswept behind her. She was wearing white. He could not see anything blow the waist, and he confronted her for a short period, but could not being himself to talk—and she went away. Another caretaker was in one of the kitchens when she felt the presence of someone in the room. She turned around and saw an older man dressed in black at the other end of the kitchen. Then the cabinets creaked loudly and began to open on their own; she ran out of the kitchen and never went back in that particular one again.
One night, on a Friday the 13th tour, a wild, abnormal impulse came over guest to run all over Mrs. Winchester’s mansion screaming. Then the guest suddenly started rolling on the floor, and groaning and pulling the chairs around, beating on the floor with one’s hands and feet, but the guest eventually distinctly perceived that the impulse had something wild in it, and was contrary to the gentleness and sweetness of Mrs. Winchester. A medium that was present believed that the individual had likely given a fanatical demon admission to one’s emotional nature. Counterfeit workings of evil spirits may take place of a “blank mind” and “passive body” and is the primary condition necessary for evil spirits to work. Evil supernatural powers respond to the law of passivity fulfilled in mind and body. They then can produce manifestations. “I pray that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernments: so that ye may distinguish the things that differ, that ye may be sincere and void of offence.” (Phil. 1.9-10 mg.)
The demonic presence in the atmosphere is felt by the senses of the body, as breath, wind, et cetera, while the mind is passive or inactive. The person affected by this demonic presence will be moved almost automatically to actions one would not perform of one’s own will and with all one’s faculties in operation. One may not even remember what one had done when under the power of this presence, just as a sleepwalker knows nothing of one’s actions when in that state. The inaction of the mind can often be seen by the vacant look in the eyes. Ghosts by their very nature are quite unable to understand fully their own predicament. They are kept in place, both in time and space, by their emotional ties to the spot. Nothing can pry them loose from it so long as they are reliving over and over again in their minds the events leading to their unhappy deaths.
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/
Evilness is Not Only Human, but Tragic
The charismatic and his society are bonded in crisis through a mutual attempt to break free of anomie and alienation, and a sense of powerlessness. Hope is a decisive element in any attempt to bring about social change in the direction of greater aliveness, awareness, and reason. However, the nature of hope is often misunderstood and confused with attitudes that have nothing to do with hope and in fact are the very opposite. What is it to hope? Is it, as many think, to have desires and wishes? If this were so, those who desire more and better Ultimate Driving Machines, Millhaven Homes, and gadgets would be people of hope. However, they are not; they are people lusty for more consumption and not people of hope. If hope’s object is not a thing but a fuller life, a state of greater aliveness, a liberation from eternal boredom; or, to use a theological term, for salvation; or, a political term, for revolution, is it to hope? Indeed, this kind of expectation could be hope; but if it has the quality of passiveness, and “waiting for”-until the hope becomes, in fact, a cover for resignation, a mere ideology, it is non-hope. Kafka has beautifully described this kind of resigned and passive hope in a story The Trial. A man comes to the door leading into Heaven (the Law) and begs admittance from the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper says he cannot admit the man at the moment. Although the door leading into the Law stands open, the man decides that he better wait until he gets permission to enter. So he sits down and waits for days and years. He repeatedly asks to be allowed in, but is always told that he cannot be allowed to enter yet. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
During all these long years the man studies the doorkeeper almost incessantly and learns to know even the fleas in his fur collar. Eventually, he is old and near death. For the first time, he asks the question, “How does it come about that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?” The doorkeeper answers, “No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for you. I am now going to shut it.” The old man was too old to understand, and if he had been younger, maybe he would not have understood. The bureaucrats have the last word; if they say no, he cannot enter. If he had had more than this passive, waiting hope, he would have entered and his courage to disregard the bureaucrats would have been the liberating act which would have carried him to the shining palace. Many people are like Kafka’s old man. They hope, but it is not given to them to act upon their heart’s impulse, and as long as the bureaucrats do not give the green light, they wait and wait. (The Spanish word esperar means at the same time waiting and hoping, and quite clearly it refers to that particular kind of passive hope that I am trying to describe here.) This kind of passive hope is closely related to a generalized form of hope, which might be described as hoping for time. Time and the future become the central category of this kind of hope. Nothing is expected to happen in the now but only in the next moment, the next day, the next year, and in another World if it is too absurd to believe that hope can be realized in this World. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Behind this belief that hope can be realized in this World is the idolatry of “Future,” “History,” and “Posterity,” which began in the French Revolution with men like Robespierre, who worshipped the future as a goddess: I do nothing; I remain passive, because I am nothing and impotent; but the future, the projection of time, will bring about what I cannot achieve. This worship of the future, which is a different aspect of the worship of “progress” in modern bourgeois thought, is precisely the alienation of hope. Instead of something I do or I become, the idols, future and posterity bring about something without my doing. The Stalinist concept that history decides what is right and wrong and good and evil is a direct continuation of Robespierre’s idolatry of posterity. It is the extreme opposite of the position of Marx, who said, “History is nothing and does nothing. It is man who is and does.” Or, in Theses on Feuerbach, “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating. While passive waiting is a disguised form of hopelessness and impotence, there is another form of hopelessness and despair which takes exactly the opposite disguise—the disguise of phrase making and adventurism, of disregard for reality, and of forcing what cannot be forced. This was the attitude of the false Messiahs and of the Putsch leaders, who had contempt for those who did not under all circumstances prefer death to defeat. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
In these days, the pseudo-radical disguise of hopelessness and nihilism is not rare among some of the most dedicated members of the young generation. They are appealing in their boldness and dedication but they become unconvincing by their lack of realism, sense of strategy, and, in some, by lack of love for life. Such hopelessness shines through Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955) and One-Dimensional Man (Beacon Press, 1964). All traditional values, like love, tenderness, concern, and responsibility, are supposed to have had meaning only in a pretechnological society. In the new technological society—one without repressed and exploitation—a new man will arrive who will not have to be afraid of anything, including death, who will develop yet-unspecified needs, and who will have a chance to satisfy his “polymorphous sexuality” (I refer the reader to Dr. Freud’s Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex); briefly, the final progress of man is seen in the regression to infantile life, the return to the happiness of the satiated baby. No wonder that Marcuse ends up in hopelessness. “The critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap between the present and its future; holding no promise and showing no success, it remains negative. Thus it wants to remain loyal to those who, without hope, have given and give their life to the Great Refusal” (One-Dimensional Man, p. 257). These quotations show how wrong those are who attack or admire Marcuse as a revolutionary leader; for revolution was never based on hopelessness, nor can it ever be. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
However, Marcuse is not even concerned with politics; for if one is not concerned with steps between the present and the future, one does not deal with politics, radical or otherwise. Marcuse is essentially an example of an alienated intellectual, who presents his personal despair as a theory of radicalism. Unfortunately, his lack of understandings and, to some extent, knowledge of Dr. Freud builds a bridge over which he travels to synthesize Freudianism, bourgeois materialism and sophisticated Hegelianism into what him and other like-minded “radicals” seems to be the most progression theoretical construct. This is not the place to show in detail that it is a naïve, cerebral daydream, essentially irrational, unrealistic, and lacking love of life. Credo Perspectives constitute an endeavour to alter the prevailing conceptions, not only of the nature of knowledge and work, but also of creative achievements in general, as well as of the human agent who inquires and creates, and of the entire fabric of the culture formed by such activities. In other words, this is an endevour to show that what we do are no more and no less than what we are. It is the endeavour of Credo Perspectives to define the new reality in which the estrangement of man from his work, resulting in the self-estrangement in man’s existence, is overcome. This new reality is born through the reconciliation of what man knows with what a man is. Being itself in all its presuppositions and implications can only be understood through the totality, through wholeness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
St. Paul, who, like Isaiah before him, went into the marketplace not to secularize truth but to proclaim it, taught man that the “new creation” could be explained only by conquering the daemonic cleavages, the destructive split, in soul and cosmos. And that fragmentation always destroys a unity, produces a tearing away from the source and thereby creates disunity and isolation. The fruit can never be separated from the tree. The Tree of Life can never be disjoined from the Tree of Knowledge for both have one and the same root. And if man allows himself to fall into isolation, if he seeks to maintain a self-segregated from the totality of which he too has his place—including his own labours—then this act of apostasy bears fruit in the demiurgical presumption of magic, a form of animism in which man seeks an authority of the self, placing himself above the law of the Universe by attempting to separate the inseparable. He thus creates an unreal World after having destroyed or deserted the real. And in this way the method of analysis, of scientific objectivity, which is good and necessary or deserted the real. And in this way the method of analysis, of scientific objectivity, which is good and necessary in its right place, is endowed with a destructive power when it is allowed to usurp a place for which it is not fitted. The naturalist principle that man is the measure of all things has been shattered more than ever in our own age by the question, “What is the measure of man?” Postmodern man is more profoundly perplexed about the nature of man than his ancestors were. He is on the verge of spiritual and moral insanity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
And having lost the sense of who and what he is, man fails to grasp the meaning of his fellow man, of his vocation and of the nature and purpose of knowledge for itself. For what is not understood cannot be known. And it is this cognitive faculty which is frequently abrogated by the “scientific” theory of knowledge, a theory that refuses to recognize the existence of comprehensive entities as distinct from their particulars. The central act of knowing is indeed that form of comprehension which is never absent from any process of knowing and is finally its ultimate sanction. Science itself acknowledges as real a host of entities that cannot be described completely in materialistic or mechanistic terms, and it is this transcendence out of the domain of science into a region from which science itself can be appraised that Credo Perspectives hope to define. For the essence of the ebb and flow of experience, of sensations, the richness of the immediacy of directly apprehended knowledge, the metaphysical substance of what assails our being, is the very act itself of sensation and affection and therefore must escape the net of rational analysis, yet is intimately related to every cognitive act. It is this increasing intellectual climate that is calling into birth once more the compelling Socratic questions, “What is the purpose of life, the meaning of work?” “What is man?” Plato himself could give us only an indirect answer: “Man is declared to be that creature who is constantly in search of himself, a creature who at every moment of his existence must examine and scrutinize the conditions of his existence. He is a being in search of meaning.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
From this it is evident that there is present in the universe a law applicable to all nature including man and his work. Life itself then is seen to be a creative process elaborating and maintaining order out of the randomness of matter, endlessly generating new and unexpected structures and properties by building up associations that qualitatively transcend their constituent parts. This is not to diminish the importance of “scientific objectivity.” It is, however, to say that the mind possesses a quality that cannot be isolated or known exclusively in the sense of objective knowledge. For it consists in that elusive humanity in us, our self, that knows. It is that inarticulate awareness that includes and comprehends all we know. It consists in the irreducible active voice of man and is recognized only in other things, only when the circle of consciousness closes around its universe of events. We have to recognize the cause of human suffering—greed. Man must be confronted with the choice between remaining chained to the wheel of terrestrial life, or of renouncing greed and thus ending suffering and focusing more on Godly qualities. Man can choose between these two real possibilities: there is no other possibility available to hm. We have examined man’s heart, its inclination for good and evil and should be more on solid ground than we had been in the past. As far as we know at this time, evilness seems to be a specifically human phenomenon. It is the attempt to regress to the pre-human state, and to eliminate that which is specifically human: reason, love, freedom. Yet evilness is not only human, but tragic. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Even if man regresses to the most archaic forms of experience, he can never cease being human; hence he can never be satisfied with evilness as a solution. The animal cannot be evil; it acts according to its built-in drives which essentially serve his interest in survival. Evilness is the attempt to transcend the realm of the human to the realm of the inhuman, yet it is profoundly human because man cannot become an animal as little as he can become “God.” Evil is man’s loss of himself in the tragic attempt to escape the burden of his humanity. And the potential of evil is all the greater because man is endowed with an imagination that enables him to imagine all the possibilities for evil and thus to desire and act on them, to feed his evil imagination. (It is interesting to note that the word for the good and evil impulse is jezer, which in biblical Hebrew means “imaginings.”) The idea of good and evil expressed here corresponds essentially to the one expressed by Spinoza. “In what follows, then,” he says, “I shall mean by ‘good’ that which we certainly know to be a means of approaching more nearly to the type of human nature, as Spinoza also calls it]; by ‘bad’ that which we certainly know to be a hinderance to us in approaching the said as completely destroyed by being changed into a man, as by being changed into an insect.” Good consists of transforming our existence into an ever-increasing approximation to our essence, evil into an ever-increasing estrangement between existence and essence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Evil is often present in even the best intended situations. For example, a young girl tells e that she had an attack of heart pounding when shopping. Her heart was not strong, but she did not see why shopping should affect it since she could dance for hours without harm. Nor could she see any psychic reasons for the heart-pounding. She had bought a superbly beautiful blouse for her older sister as a birthday gift, and was delighted to do so. She anticipated with pleasure how much the sister would enjoy and admire the gift. Actually, she had spent her last penny on it. She was short of money because she had straightened out all her debts, or at any rate had made arrangements by which she could pay them off in several months. This she said with distinct self-admiration. The blouse was so beautiful that she would have liked to have it herself. Then, after having apparently dropped the subject, a number of grievances against the sister appeared. She complained bitterly about how the sister interfered with her, how she made nonsensical reproaches. These grievances were intermingled with derogatory remarks which made the sister appear quite inferior to the patient. Even at first sight, this unpremeditated sequence of emotions indicates conflicting feelings toward the sister: a wish to win her love, on the other hand, resentment. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
When shopping, this conflict was accentuated. The loving side asserted itself in the purchase of the present; the resentment had to be suppressed for the time being and thus clamoured all the louder for its share. The result was the heart pounding. Such clashes of contradictory feelings will not always elicit anxiety. Usually one of the incompatible feelings is repressed, or both join in some compromise solution. Here, as the associations show, no side of the conflict was altogether repressed. Instead, love and resentment, both on a conscious level, were placed on a seesaw. When the one feeling went up, in awareness, the other went down. On closer scrutiny the associations disclosed more details. The theme of self-admiration, blatant in the first series, reappears implicitly in the second. The derogatory remarks about the sister not only express diffuse hostility but serve to make the patient’s own light outshine the sister’s. The tendency to put herself above the sister is evident throughout the associations, in the fact that she continually, even though inadvertently, contrasted her own generosity and sacrificing love with the sister’s bad behaviour. This close connection between self-admiration and rivalry with the sister suggests the possibility that the need to be superior to the sister was an essential factor in the development and maintenance of the self-admiration. This assumption also sheds another light on the conflict that occurred in the store. The impulse to buy the expensive blouse represented not only, as it were, a heroic determination to resolve the conflict but also a wish to establish her own supremacy over the sister, partly by winning her admiration, partly by showing herself the more loving, sacrificing, forgiving. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
On the other hand, by giving to the sister a more beautiful blouse than she had, she actually placed her in a “superior” position. In order to understand the importance of this point, it should be mentioned that the question of who was better dressed played a significant role in the battle of rivalry; the patient, for instance, had often appropriated the sister’s dresses. Therefore, it is clear, that no observation should be regarded as unimportant. Just as the patient should express without reserve everything that comes to his mind, the analyst should regard every detail as potentially meaningful. He should not discard offhand any remark as irrelevant but should take seriously every single observation, without exception. Furthermore, he should constantly ask himself why this particular feeling or thought of the patient comes up just now. What does it mean in this specific context? A friendly feeling toward the analyst, for instance, may in one context indicate genuine gratitude for help and understanding; in another it may connote the patient’s increased need for affection because in the preceding hour the tackling of a new problem aroused anxiety; in a third it may be the expression of a desire to one the analyst body and soul because a conflict has been uncovered which the patient hopes that “love” will solve. Sometimes people feel it is unfair that their expectations are not met. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
A failure to examine an association’s exact connections with preceding and succeeding associations, and with preceding experiences, may not only lead to wrong interpretations but also deprive the analyst of an opportunity to learn something about the patient’s reactions to a specific occurrence. Nonetheless, in confrontational situations, beware of tactic of someone wanting to get you on his turf. To further highlight the illustration, your boss comes to your office and asks you to come to his office, he would like to talk to you about something. Some people would get right up and follow their boss without asking a thing. Others might want to know why the conversation could not occur right where they are not. Savy people would ask why they need to take the walk down the long hallway when they could talk it right there. That is because they are aware of the home court advantage. Maybe your boss wants to ask you to do something that is not in your job description. Maybe he wants to ask you questions about a fellow employee he is pretty sure you will not want to give him information on. Whatever his motive is, he is not wanting to risk having the conversation anywhere but, on his turf, the place he feels the most powerful. Before you go to meet anyone in a place you know they feel the most at home in, think about why they want to meet there. You can still go, just be prepared for what they might ask of you and be ready to say no if you feel you should not. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
In the prolonged relationships of intensive psychotherapy, it must be recognized that the patient has opportunity for repeated expression of “punishable” ideas and feelings which do not lead in therapy to punishment or rejection. The anxiety originally accompanying the thoughts is gradually extinguished or reduced through repeated expression without pain. Then it is possible for the patient to see his betes noires differently, to think differently about them, and to plan imaginatively to react differently to their real-life representations. Eventually, with the support and positive suggestion of the therapist, he is able to experiment with new modes of response to those persons and situations which are anxiety symbols and, eventually, to extend the process of learning (and extinction of inappropriate, anxious responses) to the “real” World outside of his therapist’s office. Although there are differences in interpretation as to the elements of the process, differences in emphasis as to whether it is mostly an extinction of old, inappropriate responses or an acquisition of new more appropriate responses, differences as to whether there are basic generalities or necessary specifics in the content of neurosis, nearly all psychotherapists agrees that psychotherapy is a learning process. In this learning, the therapist serves as guide, tutor, model, and primary source of reward. To the extent that all therapists partake of the role of teacher, self-acknowledged or not, we have yet another common dimension. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Considering the range and basic nature of these dimensions and processes which are common to all forms of conversation with therapeutic intent, it is remarkable that so many have found so much to say about such a variety of apparent diversities in theory and practice. However, in our culture it is far more acceptable to present oneself as an expert in some moderately occult and complex professionalized technique than to suggest the more modest (grandiose?) claims of being generally perceptive and intelligent about personal problems. Certainly the average counselor can much sooner be confident that he is technically proficient than he can be assured that he is wise. In view of the extensive variety and possibly sizable therapeutic power of those factors which do appear to be shared by all schools of psychotherapy, it is suggested that we might do well to concentrate our researchers on these potential mechanisms of the psychotherapeutic effect, and to emphasize carefully the methods of optimizing their influence when selecting and training psychotherapists, rather than to pursue almost exclusively the search of differences in therapeutic practice that theoretically should be there and theoretically should make a difference. There are men who come as ambassadors from Heaven, and the writings or arts of men, which come as revelators. However, unless the reaction includes recognition, the contact is fruitless, the meeting useless. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The Holy Spirit dwells in and acts through the spirit of man, and not through either nerve center, which have both to be under the control of the spirit. If in any way he is given ground, exempli gratia, if the cerebral nerves cease to act by “letting the mind go blank,” and the vegetative nerves are awakened to act in their “streams of life” though the body, then “claiming the blood” cannot protect us from the enemy. No claiming of the precious blood of Christ will prevent these physical laws acting when the conditions for action are fulfilled. Hence, the strange fact which has perplexed many, that abnormal experiences manifestly contrary to the Spirit of God have taken place while the person was earnestly repeating words about the “blood.” Moreover, the arousing of the “vegetative nerves” to such abnormal activity that “floods of life” have appeared to pour through the whole body—the enemy whispering at the same moment. “This is divine!”—(1) dulls the mind and makes it inert in action, (2) causes a craving in the recipient for more of this “divine” life, (3) leads to the danger of ministration of it to others, and all that follows, as the path is pursued in honest faith and confidence of being “specially advanced” in the life of God. Should any who are reading this discover their own case depicted, let them thank God for knowledge of the truth, and (1) simply reject by an attitude of will all that is not of God; (2) consent to trust God in His Word without any “experiences”; (3) stand on Romans 6.11, with James 4.7, in respect to the Adversary, and on John 16.12 in respect to the Holy Spirit. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
It is important to invigorate the dry bones of being, finitude, essence, existence, potentiality, actuality, and teleology by interpreting them in terms of courage, power, anxiety, estrangement, fulfilment, and the ambiguities of life. Whether this procedure is a happy wedding of metaphysics to psychology or a betrayal of one or the other is a problem which we leave to the philosophers to decide. However, there is an awareness that pure ontology is too strong a medicine for the modern palate. When one reflects upon man’s existential condition, the mind is positively staggered by the enormity and complexity of the task. Who is competent to venture into “all the areas of culture” in order to formulate man’s basic problems? Yet this is what the method of correlation requires: The analysis of the human situation employes materials made available by man’s creative self-interpretation in all realms of culture. Philosophy contributes, but so do poetry, drama, the novel, therapeutic psychology, and sociology. The theologian organizes these materials in relation to the answer given by the Christian message. They only way such a project could conceivably be executed would be to suppose from the beginning that all these cultural areas are ultimately rooted in ontology. The human situation is structured according to his basic metaphysical concepts. The divine is the true Subject to the human being, and thus from Spirit to life, and the Kingdom of God to history. Each quest thus has its own character and its own personality. This it shapes by the act of dedicating itself to the incorruptible integrity of the higher life. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
After the Sacramento Fire Department was formed nearly 200 years ago, it was not long before it was realized that they could provide first aid. When you are hurting, call the fire department. They started with this basic first aid, Red Cross first responders, and the like, and then moved into the emergency medical technician field—you know the men and women with the big patches—which elevated the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) platform just a little bit higher. And then came paramedicine. Shortly after their introduction to paramedicine, the fire department began getting called to chemical spills and releases, because, when it came down to it, no one else would respond or take care of them due to the serious nature of these incidents. The hazardous waste team if referred to as the “mop” n’ glow crew.” However, anyone who has been around an incident involving hazardous materials, especially a bad one, knows that the haz-mat technicians are definitely the people you want to rely on when the ethyl-methyl-bad-stuff ends up on the ground or in the air. Please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to make sure they have the resources necessary to protect the community. Also, Kevin McCarty is running for Mayor of Sacramento. He is a Democrat for Sacramento—on the City Council and in the State Assembly, he had led on housing and homelessness. Sacramento Firefighters endorse McCarthy for Mayor. 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 18 of 18
Ever since the dawn of humankind, people have believed in ghosts. The fear of the unknown—the certainty that there is something in The Winchester Mystery House, bigger than life, beyond its pale, and more powerful than anything walking the Earth—has persisted for nearly century a half. These fears had their origin from Mrs. Winchester and her staff. To them, there were good and evil forces at work in the mansion and on the estate, both ruled over by supernatural beings, and to some degree capable of being influenced by the attitudes of humans and séances. The fear of death was, of course, one of the strongest emotions, which lead Mrs. Winchester to construct the World’s most beautiful and bizarre mansion over nearly forty years of non-stop construction.
In 1906, Daisy, Mrs. Winchester’s niece told a friend in confidence that the hauntings of The Winchester Mansion were not the usual array of footfalls, presences, and the dog starting at someone unseen. It was around the middle of January, Daisy and Mrs. Winchester were having supper, when Daisy looked up, she saw a man. He was standing by the fireplace wearing a white shirt, dark trousers with suspenders, and glasses with round metal frames. He was tall and sturdy. Then suddenly he was gone. No disappearing act or anything fancy, just vanished. Then the brass candlesticks next flew off the mantelpiece, going towards the back door. Everything flew towards the door. Mrs. Winchester nor Diasy could account for the occurrences; but both agreed in attributing the spiritual demonstration to powers higher than human.
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/
Gossipy and Notoriously Indifferent to the Ethics of Personal Confidences!
A man must stay in his own orbit and take his directives from within. If through fear of loneliness, intimidation, or suggestion, he joins the marching groups of his time, he will not reach his best. Returning from the “real possibilities” in the field of constitutional factors to our past example of the cigarette smoker, he is confronted with two real possibilities: either remaining a chains smoker or no longer smoking a single cigarette. His belief that he has the possibility of continuing to smoke, but only a few cigarettes, turns out to be an illusion. In our past example of the love affair, the man has two real possibilities: either not to take the young lady out or to have a love affair with her. The possibility which he thought of, that he could have a drink with her and not have a love affair, was unreal, considering the constellation of forces in his and hear personalities. The American democratic party had a real possibility of a long-term dictatorship—or at least, of not turning the country into a disaster—if they had not treated the conquered populations with such brutality and cruelty, if these politicians had not been so narcissistic as to strip the public of so many rights and playing favourtism to other populations. However, there were no real possibilities outside of these alternatives. To hope, as the Democrats did, that they could give vent to their destructiveness toward the conquered citizens, and satisfy their vanity and grandiosity by never accommodating the American population, and threatening all other capitalist powers by the scope of their own ambitions, and honestly win elections—all of this is not within the gamut of real possibilities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
The same holds true for the growing threat of World War III: there is a strong inclination toward war, caused by the presence of nuclear weapons on all sides and by the mutual fear and suspicion thus engendered; there is a destruction of national sovereignty caused by foreign interests; a lack of objectivity and reason in foreign policy. On the other hand, there is the wish, among the majority of the populations in both blocs to avoid the catastrophe of nuclear destruction; there is the voice of the rest of mankind, which insists that the big powers should not involve all others in their madness; there are social and technological factors which permit the use of peaceful solutions, and which open the way to a happy future for the human race. While we have these two sets of inclining factors, there are still two real possibilities between which man can choose: that of peace by ending the nuclear arms race and the brewing cold war; of that of World War II by continuing the present policy. Even if one has greater weight than the other, both possibilities are real. However, there is another factor to consider, the revolt of citizens who are tired of being overtaxed and not having representation and hyperinflation. Even the freedom of choice seems to be restricted due to voter fraud, federal, state, and local corruption. Furthermore, as President Trump is explaining, there is no possibility that we can go on with the arms race, and World War III, and a paranoid hate mentality, and at the same time avoid nuclear destruction. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
In 2020, it seemed as if the freedom of decision had already been lost due to voter fraud, and that the catastrophe would occur against everybody’s will, except perhaps that of some mad death-lovers. On that mankind was stripped of their freedoms to work, made to take vaccines, forced to wear masks that covered their nose and mouth, and locked in their homes. An increasing of tension against the government followed because no negotiations nor compromises were possible. The present time—2024—is probably the last time at which mankind will have the freedom to choose between life or destruction. If we do not go beyond superficial arrangements which symbolize good will but do not signify an insight into the given alternatives and their respective consequences, then our freedom of choice will have vanished. If mankind destroys itself, it will not be because of the intrinsic wickedness of man’s heart; it will be because of his inability to wake up to the realistic alternatives and their consequences. The possibility of freedom lies precisely in recognizing which are the real possibilities between which we can choose, and which are the “unreal possibilities” that constitute our wishful thoughts whereby we seek to spare ourselves the unpleasant takes of making a decision between alternatives that are real but unpopular (individually or socially). #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The unreal possibilities are, of course, no possibilities at all; they are ideas or plans that are impossible or very unlikely to happen. However, the unfortunate fact is that most of us, when confronted with the real alternatives and with the necessity of making a choice that requires insight and sacrifices, prefer to think that there are other possibilities that can be pursued; we thus blind ourselves to the fact that these unreal possibilities do not exist, and that their pursuit is a smoke-screen behind which fate makes its own decision. Living under the illusion that the non-possibilities will materialize, man is then surprised, indignant, hurt, when the choice is made for him and the unwanted catastrophe occurs. At that point he falls into the mistaken posture of accusing others, defending himself, and/or praying to God, when the only thing he should blame is his own lack of courage to face the issue, and his lack of reason in understanding it. Man’s actions are always caused by inclinations rooted in (usually unconscious) forces operating in his personality. If these forces have reached a certain intensity, they may be so strong that they not only incline man but determine him—hence he has no freedom of choice. In those cases where contradictory inclinations effectively operate within the personality there is freedom of choice. This freedom is limited by the existing real possibilities. These real possibilities are determined by the total situation. Man’s freedom lies in his possibility to choose between the existing real possibilities (alternatives). Freedom in this sense can be defined not as “acting in the awareness of necessity” but as acting on the basis of the awareness of alternatives and their consequences. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
There is never indeterminism; there is sometimes determinism, and sometimes alternativism based on the uniquely human phenomenon: awareness. To put it differently, every event is caused However, in the constellation previous to the event there may be several motivations which can become the cause of the next event. Which of these possible causes becomes an effective cause may depend on man’s awareness of the very moment of decision. In other words, nothing is uncased, but not everything is determined (in the “hard” meaning of the word). The view of determinism, indeterminism, and alternativism developed here essentially follow the thought of three thinkers: Spinoza, Marx, and Freud. All three are often called “determinists.” There are good reasons for doing so, the best being that they have said so themselves. Spinoza wrote: “In the mind there is no absolute or free will—which for Kant s for many other philosophers was the very proof of the freedom of our will—as the result of self-deception: we are aware of our desires but we re not aware of the motives of our desires. Hence we believe in the “freedom” of our desires. Dr. Freud also expressed a deterministic position; belief in psychic freedom and choice; he said indeterminism “is quite unscientific…It must give way before the claims of a determinism which governs even mental life.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Marx also seems to be a determinist. He discovered laws of history which explain political events as results of class stratification and class struggles, and the latter as the result of the existing productive forces and their development. It seems that all three thinkers deny human freedom and see in man the instrument of forces which operate behind his back, and not only incline him but determine him to act as he does. In this sense Marx would be a strict Hegelian for whom the awareness of the necessity is the maximum of freedom. Not only have Spinoza, Marx, and Dr. Freud expressed themselves in terms which seem to qualify them as determinists; many of their pupils have also understood them in this way. This holds particularly true for Marx and Freud. Many “Marxists” have talked as if there were an unalterable course of history, that the future was determined by the past, that certain events had necessarily to happen. Many of Dr. Freud’s pupils have claimed the same point of view for Dr. Freud; they argue that Dr. Freud’s psychology is a scientific one, precisely because it can predict effects from foregoing causes. However, this interpretation of Spinoza, Marx, and Dr. Freud as determinists entirely leaves out the other aspect in the philosophy of the three thinkers. Why was it that the main work of the “determinist” Spinoza is a book on ethics? That Marx’s main intention was the socialist revolution, and that Dr. Freud’s main aim was a therapy which would cure the mentally sick person of his neurosis? #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
Well, all three thinkers saw the degree to which man and society are inclined to act in a certain way, often to such a degree that the inclination becomes determination. However, at the same time they were not only philosophers who wanted to explain and interpret; they were men who wanted to change and transform. For Spinoza the task of man, his ethical aim, is precisely that of reducing determination and achieving the optimum of freedom. Man can do this by self-awareness, by transforming passions, which blind and chain him, into actions (“active affects”), which permit him to act according to his real interest as a human being. “An emotion which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a distinct and clear picture thereof.” Freedom is not anything which is given to us, according to Spinoza; it is something which within certain limitations we can acquire by insight and by effort. If we have fortitude and awareness, we have the alternatives to choose. The conquest of freedom is difficult and that is why most of us fail. As Spinoza wrote at the end of the Ethic: “I have thus completed all I wished to set forth touching the mind’s power over the emotions and the mind’s freedom. Whence it appears how potent is the wise man and how much he surpasses the ignorant man who is driven only by his lusts. For the ignorant man is not only distracted in various ways by the external causes without ever gaining the true acquiescence of his spirit, but moreover lives, as it were, unwitting of himself, and of God, and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer [in Spinoza’s sense, to be passive], ceases also to be. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
“Whereas the wise man, in as far as he is regarded as such, is scarcely at all disturbed in spirit, but, being conscious of himself, and of God, and of things, by a certain eternal necessity, never ceases to be, but always possesses true acquiescence of his spirit. If the way which I have pointed out as leading to this result, seems exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” Spinoza, the founder of modern psychology, who sees the factors which determine man, nevertheless writes an Ethic. He wanted to show how man can change from bondage to freedom. And his concept of “ethic” is precisely that of the conquest of freedom. This conquest is possible by reason, by adequate ideas, by awareness, but it is possible only if man makes the effort with more labour than most men are willing to make. Surely the human race has by this time, by this quarter of the century in history found the truth? Why, the does the man who wants it have to make his own personal search all over again? It is because one must know it for himself within himself. He should verify the truth not by reference to a book or Christian Bible but by reference to his own private experience. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The analyst’s general task is to help the patient to recognize himself and to reorient his life as far as the patient himself deems it necessary. In order to convey a more specific impression of what the analyst does in pursuing this goal, it is necessary to divide his work into categories and discuss these individually. Roughly, his work can be broken down into five main divisions: observation; understanding; interpretation; help in resistance; and general human help. To some extent the analyst’s observations are not different they have a specific character. Like everyone else, behaviour, such as aloofness, warmth, rigidity, spontaneity, defiance, compliance, suspicion, confidence, assertiveness, timidity, ruthlessness, sensitivity. In the mere process of listening to the patient he will, without direct effort, gain many general impressions: whether the patient is able to let himself go or is tense and constrained; whether he talks in a systematic, controlled fashion or is jumpy and scattered; whether he presents abstract generalities or concrete details; whether he is circumstantial or to the point; where he talks spontaneously or leaves the initiative to the analyst; whether he is conventional or expresses what he really thinks and feels. In his more specific observations the analyst learns first, from what the patient tells him about his experiences, past and present, his relationships with himself and others, his plans, his wishes, his fears, his thoughts. Second, he learns from observing the patient’s behaviour in his office, for each patient reacts differently to arrangements concerning fees, time, lying down, and other objective aspects of analysis. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
And each patient reacts differently to the fact that he is being analyzed. One patient regards analysis as an interesting intellectual process but refutes the idea that he really needs it; another treats it as a humiliating secret; while a third is proud of it as a special privilege. Moreover, patients exhibit an endless variety of attitudes toward the analyst himself, with as many individual shades as exist otherwise in human relationships. Finally, patients show innumerable subtle and gross vacillations in their reactions, and these vacillations themselves are revealing. These two sources of information—the patient’s communications about himself and the observation of his actual behaviour—complement each other just as they do in any relationship. Even if we know a great deal about a person’s history and all his present ways of dealing with friends, women, business, politics, our picture of him becomes far more complete if we meet him personally and see him in action. Both sources are indispensable; one is no less important than the other. Like any other observation, that of the analyst is tinged by the nature of his interest. A saleswoman will heed other qualities in a customer than a social worker will in a client applying for help. An employer interviewing a prospective employee will focus on questions of initiative, adaptability, reliability, while a minister talking to a parishioner will be more interested in questions of moral behavior and religious belief. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
The analyst’s interest does not focus upon one part of the patient, not even upon the disturbed part, but necessarily embraces the whole personality. Since he wants to understand its entire structure, and since he does not know offhand what may be more relevant and what less, his attention must absorb as many factors as possible. The specific analytical observations derive from the analyst’s purpose of recognizing and understanding the patient’s unconscious motivations. This is their essential difference from general observations. In the latter, too, we may sense certain undercurrents, but such impressions remain more or less tentative and even unformulated; also, we do not bother as a rule to distinguish whether they are determined by psychic factors of our own or by those of the observed person. The analyst’s specific observations, however, are an indispensable part of the analytic process. They constitute a systematic study of unconscious forces as revealed in the patient’s free associations. To these the analyst listens attentively, trying not to select any one element prematurely but to pay an even interest to every detail. Some of the analyst’s observations will fall in line immediately. Just as one discerns in a foggy landscape that dim outline of a house or a tree, the analyst will have no difficulty in quickly recognizing one or another general character trait. However, for the most part his observations are only a maze of seemingly unconnected items. How, then, does he arrive at an understanding? #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
The relationship between the therapist and his patient is not a spontaneous one. The frequency of visits, generally regular (and most commonly weekly), their timing and duration are explicitly determined. What is permissible and desirable for the patient to do during the treatment hour is controlled and what demands he may make of his therapist are very definitely limited. In light of the prolonged nature of the relationship, the intimacy of the material shared, and the qualities of rapport and mutual respect that are engendered, this fact of definite controls on what the patient may do or fail to do, and what he can require of the therapist, constitutes what may be the most distinctive feature of the therapeutic relationship. This feature of controlled relationship is espoused in nearly all methods of psychotherapy. The quality of the relationship is given specific attention in all formulations of psychotherapy and certain aspects of the relationship are given universal emphasis. There is general agreement that it is the responsibility of the therapist to be accepting of the patient and to communicate his acceptance to the patient. This acceptance of the patient is a complex of therapist attitudes that include respect for the patient as an individual, positive regard for his personality and his potential, warmth, kindness, and continuing willingness to help no matter what the symptoms or defects of the patient. Most crucially, this attitude of acceptance requires that the therapist relate to his patent in a nonjudgmental, noncritical, nonpunitive way. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Of course, failure of conformity, socially inimical attitudes, or even antisocial behaviour may not be at the heart of the problem for which the patient seeks help and the therapist may learn of them only incidentally, but he must avoid value assessments which cause him inadvertently to communicate a rejection of the patient. This is a difficult quality of relationship both to describe and to establish effectively. The therapist may share many of his society’s values and mores and will not think that it is good for them to be violated or neglected, but it is not his function to condemn or to try to re-create an individual in his own image. This quality of “acceptance” in our culture at this time is peculiarly restricted to the psychotherapeutic contract, but it is common to all such contracts. In this sense, psychotherapy provides a very special, perhaps ideal, form of friendship. It is reasonable to presume that a further reflection of the communality of quality of acceptance is found in the expectation of the average patient who seeks a therapeutic relationship. When it is available, the hopeful expectation of “unconditional positive regard” from somebody may well be one of the common factors leading to an increasing demand for psychotherapy and contributing to a positive response. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Whether or not the impact of the mental health movement and its attendant educational programs has created a general expectation of the therapeutically prescribed acceptance, it seems that a majority of patients have an expectation that their revelation of self and others will be treated with complete confidentiality. Again, in principle that the patient’s communications are “privileged” and protected in principle and by law from release in any form or medium which would cause him or others embarrassment or hurt, we have a structural factor shared by all schools of psychotherapy. As a common factor of the therapy contract, it may significantly contribute to the total therapeutic impact of the relationship. It is, by contrast, a notable characteristic of our general culture that we are gossipy and notoriously indifferent to the ethic of personal confidences! All of us have been brainwashed, manipulated, and lied to a bit by our parents and society. As humans, we are hardwired to take in information and use it as a basis to live by. If we want to live with other people, it is what is expected out of us. Some of the things we have been told are lies meant to keep us safe, so we will not wander off and get ourselves into danger. Bloody Mary was made up to keep us in our beds at night, instead of wandering all over the house while our parents slept. Knowing yourself is always a good idea. First of all, most people need to reflect on themselves from time to time. We all change as life goes on and seeing what those changes are is good for us to know and understand. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Having a child changes people dramatically. Suddenly, all the irresponsible things we have done are not things we want to take a chance on anymore. We want to be around for our child. Going to jail, or worse, getting ourselves killed by doing foolish things, it is not worth it anymore. When looking at yourself, ask questions about who is in your life and why they are there. Ask yourself if they are really fulfilling a need in your life. Are they making your life better? Or is their presence making your life worse? And why? You might have someone who is hurting you mentally or even physically. How long will you keep dealing with that? Standing up to someone with one or more of the traits of the Dark Triad can be done. Once they know that they cannot manipulate you, they change the way they act with you. It does not change them completely, but they understand that what they want to do will not work on you. Some people lie so much that it is hard to believe anything they say, it is hard to even trust them. Even if you ask them to stop lying, they will continue to do so. When this is the case, people often want concrete proof of anything the habitual liar has to say. To hold his individual accountable, sometimes loved one’s will tell other people in the liar’s life of their shortcomings to make people know what they are getting involved with and to stop the individual from lying to everyone. Do not the your soul get shut up in torment and despair. Keep in mind that in life, there is an evil quest too, whose disciples seek to serve their lower nature rather than to conquer it, and whose masters show themselves by action or teaching to be monsters. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
The Lord Jesus is supposed to have said: “The manifestations of the Spirit, in some things, are very strange. Sometimes He will twist the body this way, and that, and the meaning is dark to you. I want you to know somethings about this part of the Spirit’s work. I want you to see that they are not useless. If you had spoken in your own tongue, when the Spirit came in, it would have graciously blessed you; but perhaps you might have thought it was yourself, as many have. So the Spirit comes in and speak in an unknown tongue to you, that you might know that it was NOT YOURSELF SPEAKING. Your hands He has often lifted up, and again He has raised your fingers in various ways. Your eyes open and shut by the Spirit now, as they did not before. Your very head has been shaken by the Spirit and you have not known why He did this. You have thought, sometimes, it was just to show He was living there, and that is true, but there is more in it than that, and He will show you as well as He can, in a few words, what some of these things are. Some things in the manifestations are very peculiar to you. You have gone on wondering about them. DO not think it is strange that the Spirit works in you in many ways. His work is more than two-fold work. It is manifold. This is puzzling many minds. They see the Spirit shaking. They hear Him singing. They feel Him laughing, and they are sometimes tried with His various twistings and jerkings, as though He would tear them to pieces. Sometimes it seems He is imitating the animals in various sounds and doings. This has been all a mystery to the saint. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
“This has been all a mystery to the saints. His work, I say, is manifold. He seeks, in some, to show them that they are all one with each other, in the whole creation…If He shows you, by making a noise as of some wild animal, that you are like that, you must not despise His way of working, for the Holy Spirit knows why He does it. He makes these noises in the animals, can’t He make them in you?” Christ as the depth of culture signifies a close union between the two humanity and theonomy, the union of substance with form. However, religious substance lies at the depth of cultural form, a depth not always visible or attainable due to the currents of estrangement. The depths can be fathomed only in the depth-experience which is faith. It is the impact of the divine Spirit which drives man beyond the shallow surface life of autonomous secularism to the depth-dimension where he encounters the New Being. In the New Being he finds the teleological meaning of his life and the spiritual power to fulfill it. Our vision comprises three elements: Christ, depth, and culture. They represent the three major themes of theology: the New Being, ultimate concern, and man. Enter not the path of the wicked, and walk not in the way of evil men. He that walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks the truth in his heart with have the honour of sojourning in the Lord’s Tabernacle, and shall dwell upon the Lord’s holy mountain. 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. For more than 200 years, the Sacramento Fire Department has responded to just about every type of call for help and emergency imaginable without hesitation, attitude, or complaint. And over the years, those calls have grown in number and complexity. The needs of the communities have pushed and prodded the fire department into performing tasks and handling situations that no one ever imagined the fire department handling. Please kindly make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they receive all of the resources and latest technology to protect the community. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
In December of 1924 an investigator, Mr. Pierre Bernard, was called to The Winchester Mystery House to witness supernatural events. He reported at the time that “it may be stated generally that there was no possibility, in most cases, of the objects having been thrown by hand…Moreover it is hard to conceive by what mechanical appliance, under the circumstances described, the movements could have been effected. To suppose that these various objects were all moved by mechanical contrivances argues incredible stupidity, amounting almost to imbecility on the part of all persons present who were not in the plot.” William Lyon Mackenzie King testified that “doors do not just open and suddenly close by themselves; but they certainly do in the Winchester Mansion.” There has been no convincing explanation for the events here related.
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/
Fearfulness Hath Surprised the Hypocrites!
When a man has the right stuff in him, all he needs is just opportunity, and nothing else. If he possesses a sufficient degree of talent plus the determination to succeed, there is no stage so humble that it cannot be made a jumping-off ground to better things. The welfare principles of the Church are not simply good ideas; they are revealed truths from God—they hare His ways of helping the needy. In the Lord’s plan, our commitment to welfare principles should be at the very root of our faith and devotion to Him. Since the beginning of time, our Heavenly Father has spoken with great clarity on this subject: from the gentle plea, “If thou lovest me…thou wilt remember the poor, and consecrate of thy properties for their support”; the direct command, “Remember in all things the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted, for he that doeth not these things, the same is not my disciple”; to the forceful warning, “If any man shall take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment.” The two great commandments—to love God and our neighbour—are a joining of the temporal and the spiritual. It is important to note that these two commandments are called “great” because every other commandment hangs upon them. In other words, our personal, family, and Church priorities must begin here. All other goals and actions should spring from the fountain of these two great commandments—from our love for God and for our neighbour. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
We make attempts to preserve the “both-and” of Christ and culture and that is a dualism which holds them together in paradox. The dualist begins with two absolute principles: grace is in God, and sin is in man, and there is no bridging the chasm. This differs from the synthesis in that we see a deeper and more extensive corruption in man and culture, but over this human depravity is cast the cloak of divine forgiveness and reconciliation in Jesus as the Christ. As examples of this motif, we refer to St. Paul, Marcion, and especially Luther. The latter distinguishes but does not divide the Kingdom of God from the kingdom of the World. The dualism is spanned by attributing to Christ the spirit or the how of moral action, but leaving to an autonomous culture the what of the content: From Christ we received knowledge and the freedom to do faithfully and lovingly what culture teaches or requires us to do. Although sinful culture stands under the condemnation of God, the same divine authority commands us to participate in it. Hence the paradox of Christ and culture. The estimate is that this dualistic paradox corresponds to the human experience in which man is forever bumping up against the prevalence of sin, and yet always receiving the gift of grace. This dualist’s position inclines also to a cultural conservatism because it does not contribute to the content of culture, but views social and political institutions as bulwarks against sin rather than as beneficial agencies for good. However, we try to keep in our theonomy a beneficial side, religious substance in culture. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The Giver of all life has proclaimed, “All things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a low which was temporal.” This means to me that, “spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.” Unfortunately, there are those who overlook the temporal because they consider it less important. They treasure the spiritual while minimizing the temporal. While it is important to have our thoughts inclined toward Heaven, if our hands are not also inclined toward our fellowman, we miss the essence of our religion. Evil spirits sometimes work in “Christian” gatherings. Suppose “conviction of sin” by deceiving spirits…I untied with a number of brethren and sisters one whole week every month, in prayer to God to pour out more of His Spirit, gifts and power. After having done this for some time with great earnestness, such powerful and wonderful manifestations of God and His Holy Spirit (apparently) took place that we no longer doubted God had heard our prayer, and His Spirit had descended into our midst, and on our gathering. Amongst other things, this spirit, which we thought to be the Holy Spirit, used a fifteen-year-old girl as his instrument, through whom everyone belonging to our fathering, and having any sin or burden of conscience, had it revealed to the gathering. Nobody could remain in the meeting with any burden of conscience without it being revealed to the meeting by this spirit. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
To further highlight this illustration: a gentleman of esteem and respect from the neighbourhood came to the meeting, and all his sins were exposed in the presence of the gathering by the fifteen-year-old girl. Thereupon he took me into an adjoining room, so broke down, and admitted to me, with tears, that he had committed all these sins which the girl had exposed. He confessed this and all other sins known to him. Then he came again into the meeting, but hardly had he entered when the same voice said to him, “Ha! you have not confessed all yet; you have stolen ten gulden, that you have not confessed.” In consequence, he took me again into the adjoining room and said, “It is true, I have also done this…” This man had never seen this fifteen-year-old girl in his life, neither she him. With such events, was it astonishing that a spirit of holy awe came over all at the meeting, and there was one controlling note which can only be expressed in the words, “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? Fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites.” There was a most earnest spirit of adoration, and who could doubt when even the strong were broken down, and nobody dared remain in the meeting if they were a hinderance. And yet we had to unmask this spirit which had brought about these things—and which we took to be the Holy Ghost—as a terrible power of darkness. I had such an uneasy feeling of distrust which could not be overcome…As I made this know for the first time to an older brother and friend…he said, “Brother Winchester, if you continue to foster unbelief, you can commit the sin against the Holy Ghost which will never be forgiven.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
These were terrible days and hours for me, because I did not know whether we had to do with the Power of God or a disguised spirit of the ultimate negative, and once thing only was clear to me, that I and this meeting should not let ourselves be led by a spirit when we did not have clear light and confirmation whether this power was from above or below. Thereupon I took the leading brethren and sisters to the uppermost room of the house, and made known to them my position and said we must all cry and pray that we may be able to prove whether it was a power of light or darkness. As we came downstairs the voice of this power said, using the fifteen-year-old girl as his instrument, “What is this rebellion in your midst? You will be sorely punished for your unbelief.” I told this voice that it was true we did not know with whom we had dealings. However, if it was an angel of God, or the Spirit of God, we wanted to be in that attitude that we would not sin against Him, but if it was an ultimate negative, we would not be deceived by him. “If you are the power of God, you will be in accord as we handle the Word of God.” “Try the spirits whether thy be of God.” We all knelt down and cried and prayed to God in such earnestness, that He would have mercy upon us, and reveal to us in some manner whom we had dealings with. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Then the power had to reveal itself of its own accord. Through the person which he had been using as his instrument he made such abominable and terrible grimaces, and shrieked in such a piercing tone, “Now I am found out, now I am found out…” There are many good people and organizations in the World that are trying to meet the pressing needs of the less affluent and those who have not, everywhere. We are grateful for this, but the Lord’s way of caring for the less affluent is different from the World’s way. The Lord has said, “It must needs be done in mine own way.” He is not only interested in our immediate needs; He is also concerned about our eternal progression. For this reason, the Lord’s way has always included self-reliance and service to our neighbour in addition to caring for the less affluent. This very hour there are many members of the Church who are suffering. They are hungry, stretched financially, and struggling with all manner of physical, emotional, and spiritual distress. They pray with all the energy of their souls for succor, for relief. Brethren, please do not think that this is someone else’s responsibility. It is mine, and it is yours. We are all enlisted. “All” means all—every Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood holder, rich and poor, in every nation. In the Lord’s plan, there is something everyone can contribute. The lesson we learn generation after generation is that rich and poor are all under the same scared obligation to help their neighbour. It will take all of us working together to successfully apply the principles of welfare and self-reliance. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Not only are teachers more rare, but the most sensitive seekers feel shyly inhibited from approaching them. Statistical studies of psychotherapy consistently report that about two thirds of neurotic patients are improved immediately after treatment, regardless of the type of psychotherapy they have received, and the same improvement rate has been found for patients who have not received any treatment that was deliberately psychotherapeutic. It has been suggested that some sort of “systematic ideology” may be an essential element in successful therapy: Whether the therapist talks in terms of psychoanalysis or Christian Science is from this point of view relatively unimportant as compared with the formal consistency with which the doctrine employed is adhered to, for by virtue of this consistency the patient receives a schema for achieving some sort and degree of personality organization. In essence, psychotherapy is conversation with therapeutic intent. As conversation it entails all of the modes of communication (some facilitant and some deterrent) that are active whenever two persons speak to one another. Language carries the major mediational load and is the primary transmitter of communication in conversation. We have long been aware of the distinction between connotative and denotative language—words have “agreed upon” meaning as specified by the dictionary, but they also have more or less individualistic meanings for each person who uses them. If it were humanly possible for persons to restrict their language to purely denotative words, communication would be easier (simple and more accurate); it is not. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
While members of a culture may share the same official dictionary, they naturally do not share in identical personal experiences whereby words acquire the personal connotations that individuals unconsciously seek to use in their conversations. Some words make for better communication because they have a scientifically precise definition, or in the nature of things to which they refer there is a limited range of possible connotations; other words tend to contribute a lot of “static” to communication because they do not permit of objective definition but rather represent certain personal meanings of high frequency in a particular group of persons. Th following lists will suggest this aspect of communication problem. More Denotative Words: Inch, minute, black, round, north. More Connotative Words: Good, strong, liberal, pretty, smart. This is only one of the problem areas receiving intensive investigation in the rapidly evolving technical fields known as psycholinguistics and communication theory. Man has long been aware that his oral communications are neither given nor received purely in terms of the words spoken (and their explicit or implicit meanings) but that additional and particular meanings are communicated by the general contextual communication is undoubtedly the facial expression of the conversants. The particular meaning of a word is frequently signaled by a frown or a smile or a grimace. And responses to questions or assertions may be wordlessly communicated by a nod, by a smile, by “silence freighted with meaning.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
When communication is emotionally charged, when the topic of conversation is loaded with emotional “meanings” as is frequently the case in psychotherapy, it is imperative that the therapist be skilled in receiving (and sending?) wordless messages or words whose meaning has been silently labeled by the emotional attitude of the sender. In accepting candidates for advanced training in the specialty of psychotherapy, it is generally true that considerable emphasis is given to intellectual ability, with applicants of every superior general intelligence being preferred. There is little in the nature of substantive information or treatment technique to be learned that justifies such emphasis. However, sensitivity to the subtle aspects of the wordless communications in psychotherapy is a most important dimension of therapeutic skill. This skill is not too readily learned but rather reflects native or very early acquired aptitudes that are highly correlated with general intelligence. And a high level of general intelligence is required to meet the scholastic requirements (many of them irrelevant to psychotherapy) that loom large in the formal education of the physician, psychologist, and social worker. This nonlinguistic aspect of oral communication is a difficult area for research but it is part of the total domain of psycholinguistics. Any general theory of communication must and will encompass the conversations of psychotherapy and, as a general theory, the researches generated by it must inevitably show those particulars of the communication process which are common to all such conversations. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Thus, the essentials of the communication process are identical regardless of the school of psychotherapy under whose aegis a particular therapeutic conversation is being conducted. The participants do not have access to special communication media beyond those of any other conversation—they are limited to words and sentences, to assertions and questions, to the silent “labels” of smiles and frowns, tics and tears, and to silences. Within the frame of the communality of the communication process which is shared by all approaches to psychotherapy is a particular common factor—the therapist. Regardless of his theoretical allegiance, the therapist is an expert conversationalist whose specialized equipment include: sensitivity to the emotional nuances of the patient’s communication, an ability to listen selectively, facility in encouraging the patient to start and continue conversations, deftness in leading the patient to particular topics, capacity both to tolerate the patient’s silences and to use his own silence in communication. These are basic common skills of all expert psychotherapists, contributing to their capacity to establish and maintain communication. The presence of these skills in high degree is, unfortunately, not necessarily correlated with the achievement of a valid understanding of the patient (a common goal of most schools) nor with achievement of successful treatment (the ultimate goal of all schools). #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Closely related to the liberation of energies, the lifting of a repression frees the way for action. As long as a striving or feeling is repressed the person is caught in a blind alley. As long as he is entirely unaware of a hostility to others, for example, and knowns only that he feels awkward with people, he is helpless to do anything about his hostility; there is no possibility of understanding the reasons for it or of discovering when it is justified or of diminishing or removing it. However, if the pression is lifted and he feels the hostility as such, then and only then can he take a good look t it and proceed to discover the vulnerable spots in himself which produced it and to which he has been as blind as to the hostility itself. By thus opening up the possibility of eventually changing something about the disturbing factors, the insight is likely to produce considerable relief. Even if immediate change is difficult, there is the vision of a future way out of the distress. This holds true even though the initial reaction may be one of hurt or fright. If you remember or cast study on Clare, well, her insight into the fact that she had excessive wishes and demands for herself provoked a panic in her at first, because it shook the compulsive modesty which was one of the pillars supporting her feeling of security. However, as son as the acute anxiety subsided it gave her relief, for it represented the possibility of a liberation from the shackles that had tied her hand and foot. However, the first reaction to an insight may be one of pain rather than relief. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
There are two principal kinds of negative responses to an insight. One is to feel it only as a threat; the other is to react in discouragement and hopelessness. Different though they appear, these two responses are essentially merely variations in degree. They are both determined by the fact that the person is not, or not yet, able and willing to give up certain fundamental claims on life. Which claims they are depends of course, on his neurotic trends. It is because of the compulsive nature of these trends that the claims are so rigid and so hard to relinquish. One who is obsessed by a craving for power, for instance, can do without comfort, pleasure, women, friends, everything that usually makes life desirable, but power he must have. As long as he is determined not to relinquish this claim, any questioning of its value can only irritate or frighten him. Such fright reactions are produced not only by insights disproving the feasibility of his particular striving but also by those revealing that its pursuit prevents him from attaining other objectives that are also important to him, or from overcoming painful disabilities and sufferings. Or, to take other examples, one who suffers from his isolation and his awkwardness in contacts with others, but is still basically unwilling to leave his ivory tower, must react with anxiety to any insight showing him that he cannot possibly attain the one objective—less isolation—without abandoning the other—his ivory tower. As long as a person basically refuses to relinquish his compulsive belief that he can master life through the sheer force of his will, any insight indicating the fictitious nature of that belief must arouse anxiety, because it makes him feel as if the ground on which he stands is pulled away from under him. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
If he wants to become free, the anxiety produced by such insights is the person’s response to a dawning vision that he must eventually change something in his foundations. However, the factors that must be changed are still deeply entrenched, are still vitally important to him as a means of coping with himself and others. He is therefore afraid to change, and the insight produces not relief but panic. And if he feels deep down that such a change, though indispensable for his liberation, is entirely out of the question, he will react with a feeling of hopelessness rather than fright. In his conscious mind this feeling is often overshadowed by a deep anger toward the analyst. When he cannot do anything about them anyhow, he feels that the analyst is being pointlessly cruel in leading him to such insights. If they do not ultimately serve some purpose we affirm, this reaction is understandable because none of us is willing to endure hurts and hardships. A negative reaction to an insight is not necessarily the last word in the matter. Sometimes, in fact, it is of relatively short duration and quickly changes to relief. The factors that determine whether a person’s attitude toward a particular insight can change through further psychoanalytic work require that the change is within the range of possibility. Brainwashing—a scary word. No one wants to believe that they could be brainwashed, but it happens. It happens more than you ever know. Brainwashing is known by other names too—mind abuse, coercive persuasion, and thought control. What happens, is a person or even a group of people use systematic methods to get the victim to bend or conform to things they would not conform to otherwise. Think about members of a cult. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
That is scary, but even scarier is the fact that advertisers have learned these dark techniques and use them regularly on the unsuspecting public. By controlling the physical and social environment, an attempt is made to destroy loyalties to any unfavourable groups or individuals, to demonstrate to the individual that his attitudes and patterns of thinking are incorrect and must be changes, and to develop loyalty and unquestioning obedience to the ruling party. The term is most appropriately used in reference to a program of political or religious indoctrination or ideological remolding. The techniques of brainwashing typically involve isolation from former associates and sources of information; and exacting regimen requiring absolute obedience and humility; strong social pressures and rewards for cooperation; physical and psychological punishments for non-cooper ranging from social ostracism and criticism, deprivation of food, seep, and social contact, to bondage and torture; and continual reinforcement. Furthermore, currently we do know for sure that our brain processes result from the interactions of different factors: genetics (for small part), experience and thus learning, as well as triggers deriving from internal and external environments. Without the constant relationships with the context, we could not exist. The complete absence of context is “impossible.” Every kind of triggers and stimuli leaves traces in our brain that, if beneficial, may become good incentives or memories somehow comforting us in bad days, but if negative, may represent a sort of “wound” that might lead to a permanent “scar.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
In both cases there are new fingerprints in the brain that continuously changes and remodels itself through neuroplasticity, that is one of its most peculiar functions permitting neuronal development, growth, repair and survival. Perhaps, while trying to answer the question of being or not being free, we could say that we are slavers of the dynamic activity of the brain working in the range of milliseconds, the so-called connectome that modifies functions through neuroplasticity, just to simply explain the complexity of these processes. People often persuade people that they need particular foods or products because they are good for them and will help them achieve goals that they want so people start to associate these items with their desires and consumer them. When people ask too many questions, like a series of questions, but are not having a conversation, that is an indication that they are up to something. It is also possible to use fear to control people and get them to do things that they would not do. These methods have been used to get people to commit suicide or jump out of buildings, when they were not actually in any danger. However, because individuals are naïve, or unaware, psychopathological offenders know that it is easy to use fear to manipulate individuals. Some may even use anger to try to control an individual, and make them do something they had not intended to do. A girl pushed her sister down the stairs and she died. However, she blamed in on her young brother and everyone believed that he was guilty. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Why did everyone believe the little brother was the guilty party? Well, when he was born, doctors discovered he had an extra Y chromosome (XYY). They told his parents that this was a killer gene because it makes men more aggressive. As a result, his father and mother called him a freak and just knew that he was going to grow up and be a killer. So, when his sister killed the other sister, they knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was guilty. However, he was innocent. Because he was blamed and sent to juvenile hall, when he got out, he fulfilled a self-fulfilling prophecy and because a kill. However, in the process, his sister also became a series killer because she was able to get away with murder at a young age. Had the boy not been stigmatized, and people listened to him, they could have got his sister the help she needed to become a well-rounded adult. Later research indicated that having an extra Y chromosome does not necessarily make someone more aggressive. So because this boy was stigmatized and framed, countless lives were ruined. Sometimes this kind of stigmatization is done intentionally so doctors can create a case study to back up their junk science. Isolation is also another way of brainwashing an individual. Psychopathological offenders like to isolate youth and convince them of certain things that are not true so these individuals grow up disoriented and disturbed, it is a method of control. For instance, if you can isolate someone in a community where everyone they come into contact with is crazy, incompetent, violent, and a criminal, they may believe that is how the World really is. However, there are some good people out there. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Awareness of what is good and evil is different from theoretical knowledge of what is called good and evil in most moral systems. To know on the authority of tradition that love, independence, and courage are good and that hate, submission, and cowardice are bad means little, as the knowledge is alienated knowledge learned from authorities, conventional teaching, etcetera, and is believed to be true only because it comes from these sources. Awareness means that the person makes that which he learns his own way, by experiencing it, experimenting with himself, observing others and, eventually, gaining a conviction rather than having an irresponsible “opinion.” However, deciding on the general principles is not enough. Beyond this awareness one needs to be aware of the balance of forces within oneself, and the rationalizations which hide the unconscious forces. Let us take a specific example: A man is greatly attracted by a woman and experiences a strong wish to have pleasures of the flesh with her. He thinks consciously that he has this wish because she is so beautiful, or so understanding, or so in need of being loved, or that he is so sexually starved, or so in need of affection, or so lonely, or…He maybe aware that by having an affair with her he might mess up both their lives; that she is frightened and seeking for protective strength, and hence will not easily let him go. In spite of knowing all this he goes ahead and has an affair with her. Why? Because he is aware of his desire but not of the forces underling it. What could these forces be? The forces are his vanity and narcissism. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
If he has set his mind on the conquest of this young lady as a proof of his attractiveness and value, he will usually not be aware of this real motive. He will fall for all the rationalizations mentioned above, and many more, and thus act according to this true motive precisely because he cannot see it, and is under the illusion that he is acting according to other more reasonable motives. The next step of awareness is that of the full awareness of the consequences of his act. At the moment of decision his mind is filled with desires and soothing rationalization. If he could clearly see the consequences of his act; if he could see, for instance, a long-protracted, insincere love affair, his getting tried of her because his narcissism can be satisfied only by fresh conquests, yet his continuing to make false promises because he feels guilty and afraid of admitting that he never really loved her, the paralyzing and weakening effect of this conflict on him and on her, etcetera, his decision, however, might be different. However, even awareness of the underlying, real motivations and of the consequences is not enough to increase the inclination for the right decision. Another important awareness is necessary: that of when the real choice is made, and to be aware of what the real possibilities are between which a person can choose. Assume he is aware of all motivations and of all consequences; assume he has “decided” not to go to be with this woman. He then takes her out to a show and before taking her home he suggests, “Let’s have a drink together.” On the face of it this sounds harmless enough. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
There seems to be nothing wrong in having a drink together; in fact, if the balance of forces were not already so delicate, there would be nothing wrong. If at the moment he could be aware of what “having a drink together” will lead to, he might not ask her. He would see that the atmosphere will be romantic, that the drink will weaken his willpower, that he will not be able to resist the next step of dropping into her apartment for another drink, and that almost certainly he will find himself enjoying pleasures of the flesh with her. With full awareness he would be able to foresee the sequence as being almost unavoidable, and if he could foresee it, he could refrain from “having a drink together.” However, since his desire makes him blind to seeing the necessary sequence, he does not make the right choice when he still would have the possibility of doing so. In other words, the real choice here is made when he invites her to have a drink (or perhaps when he asked her to the show) and not when he starts enjoying pleasures of the flesh with her. At least point of the chain of decision he is no longer free; at an earlier point he might have been free had he been aware that the real decision was to be made right there and then. The argument for the view that man has no freedom to choose the better as against the worse is to some considerable extent based on the fact that one looks usually at the last decision in a chain of events, and not at the first or second ones. Indeed, at the point of final decision the freedom to choose has usually vanished. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
However, the freedom to choose may still have been there at an earlier point when the person was not yet so deeply caught in his own passions. One might generalize by saying that one of the reasons why most people fail in their lives is precisely because they are not aware of the point when they are still free to act according to reason, and because they are aware of the choice only at the point when it is too late for them to make a decision. 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. The thoughtless person passing a fire engine house and seeing the men and women sitting around or amusing themselves with games or sports sometimes conclude that the firefighter has an easy life, but a little reflection brings the conviction that they are under a watchful, waiting strain. With long hours, deprived of many of the pleasures of family life, the gong may at any moment send them to battle with the flames for days and nights without sleep or as long as human endurance permits. And the gong may also send them to their deaths. The firefight leads a strenuous life and faces death frequently. However, the victories of peace achieved by firefighters are their own best reward, though they should have a full mead of appreciation and support from the public they serve fearlessly, loyally, faithfully. Therefore be sure to open up your hearts to the Sacramento Fire Department and make a donation to ensure that they have support from the community and the resources they need to continue saying lives and property. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
After Mrs. Winchester died in 1922, construction ceased. Carpenter left their tools and immediately stopped all work. The furniture was moved out of the home and auctioned off. It took six moving trucks, six weeks to empty her house of all the furniture. Although the house was empty, it did not seem to be. A caretaker had been closing the house one evening when he became aware of a sound issuing from somewhere inside of the house that was very much like the sawing of wood. Then other noises began to accompany this sound—among them knocking and hammering and planning. It was as if half a dozen carpenters were in busy employment. The caretaker was of a bold disposition and, wishing to discover more, took off his shoes, and quietly descended the stairs with a flashlight in his hand. The noises of work continued as he came down into the hallway; but then, when he unlatched the door and went into the parlour, all was silent and still. None of the tools had been touched. None of the wood had been moved. Having examined every part of the room, he began to doubt the evidence of his sense in this matter. However, after he was leaving the house, the noises of sawing and hammering began again and continued for approximately half an hour. When they ceased, he went home. He had decided to tell no one about his experience, but, instead, to listen the next day for any unusual sounds. On the following day they began again, just as before. So he confided in the board of trustees, and a few of them agreed to watch with him on the next day. The noises commenced once more but, instead of entering the parlour, many of them rushed horrified out of the house. A few months later, the haunted house was opened as a tourist attraction.
Take pleasure in the antiques, the gardens and experience the homemaking of Victorian times. Enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café. 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/
I Could be Stringing Pearls for the Joy of Heaven
The great man knows he has limitations, he knows his defects and faults—but he is not afraid of them. The power of persuasion is one way to get what you want. And it is not that evil to persuade people to do things, is it? Advertisements are powerful persuasions. Everyone uses ads to get what they want. Politicians use them, and companies use the. So how bad can it be, really? When used for beneficial purposes, this power is not anything bad. However, when used for unethical, immoral, illegal, and dangerous things, persuasion can get people into real trouble. There are some errors, which have a major importance. One error lies in the habit of speaking of the freedom of choice of man rather than that of a specific individual. Choice, by definition, lies between alternatives. That an alternative is genuinely and psychologically open to choice can be supported by the observation that people have chosen it. That people have sometimes failed to choose it, has no tendency to show that it is closed to choice. As soon as one speaks of the freedom of man in general, rather than of an individual, one speaks in an abstract way which makes the problem insoluble; this is so precisely because one man has the freedom to choose—another has lost it. If applied to all men, we either deal with an abstraction, or with a mere moral postulate in the sense of Kant or of William James. Deception is something we have to deal with every day. Therefore, trusting what someone says about anything is not always the best practice. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Another difficulty in the traditional discussion of freedom seems to lie in the tendency, especially of the classical authors from Plato to Aquinas, to deal with the problem of good and evil in a general way, as if man had the choice between good and evil “in general,” and the freedom to choose good. This view greatly confuses the discussion because, when confronted with the general choice most men choose “good” as against “evil.” However, there is no such thing as the choice between “good” and “evil”—there are concrete and specific action that are means toward what is good, and others that are means toward what is evil, provided good and evil are properly defined. Our moral conflict on the question of choice arises when we have to make a concrete decision rather than when we choose good or evil in general. Still another shortcoming of the traditional discussion lies in the fact that it usually deals with freedom versus determinism of choice, rather than with the various degree of inclinations. The problem of freedom versus determinism is really one of conflict of inclinations and their respective intensities. Finally, there is confusion in the use of the concept of “responsibility.” “Responsibility” is mostly used to denote that I am punishable or accusable; in this respect it makes little difference whether I permit others to accuse me or whether I accuse myself. If I find myself guilty, I punish myself; if others find me guilty, they will punish me. There is another concept of responsibility, however, which has no connection with punishment or “guilt.” In this sense responsibility only means “I am aware that I did it.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
In fact, as soon as my deed is experienced as “sin” or “guilt” it becomes alienated. It is not I who did this, but “the sinner,” “the band one,” that “other person” who now needs to be punished; not to speak of the fact that the feeling of guilt and self-accusation creates sadness, self-loathing, and loathing of life. Whoever talks about and reflects upon an evil thing he has done, is thinking the vileness he has perpetrated, and what one thinks, therein is one caught—with one’s whole soul one is caught utterly in what one thinks, and so he s still caught in vileness. And he will surely not be able to turn, for his spirit will coarsen and his heart rot, and besides this, a sad mood may come upon him. What would you? Stir filth this way and that, and it is still filth. To have sinned or not to have sinned—what does it profit us in Heaven? In the time I am brooding on this, I could be stringing pearls for the joy of Heaven. That is why it is written: “Depart from evil, and do good”—turn wholly from evil, do not brood in its way, and do good. You have done wrong? Then balance it by doing right.” We become alive as we take, knowingly, fully responsibility for our own life and as we stop blaming circumstances. What then does it mean to be free? Freedom means to have matured to the full knowledge of our dangerously many responsibilities as a human being. We have learned that everything we do, and even say or think, has consequences. We realize that too long we have believed that we were victims of circumstances. In the Gospel of John, 8.32, we read that following: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
As we open our hearts to the message of God’s truth, as it was restored in our time, we begin to understand why there was, and still is, so much misery, pain, suffering, and even starvation. In the same dimension as we are learning to accept the revealed truth in our own life, our faith in the living Son of God will grow, and therefore we will receive spiritual gifts of heretofore unknown capacity. We will learn that nothing is impossible for those who believe in Jesus as the Christ. False bondages will be loosened. Narrow thinking born in tragedies of false traditions will disappear. The more our understanding of the vastness and the completeness of the plan of salvation is developing, the more we see ourselves in our smallness, in our incompleteness. And seeing ourselves in that humility, with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, will let us understand and finally accept this most sacred covenant with our Heavenly Father in the form of baptism. We gladly will submit ourselves into this covenant, knowing that there is a big difference between mere desire and covenant. When we just desire something, we will work towards achieving it only when convenient. However, when we are bound by a sacred covenant, like baptism, we are learning to overcome all obstacles through obedience, and in so doing we will be blessed with the presence of the Spirit and therefore eventually with achievement. One thing, of course, we know: having “freedom to” means that we have the potential of making wrong choices. Wrong choices have their merciless consequences, and when they are not stopped and corrected, they lead us into misery and pain. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
If not corrected, wrong choices will lead us to the ultimate possible disaster in each person’s life: to become separated from our Heavenly Father in the World to come. Jesus as the Christ wants to empower our lives, according to our own righteous choices, to that dimension that, through our faith and our doings, the circumstances whose prisoners we were in the past will eventually change. It is in the same spirit that the Old Testament word chatah, usually translated as meaning “sin,” actually means “to miss” (the road); it lacks the quality of condemnation which the words “sin” and “sinner” have. Similarly, the Hebrew word for “repentance” is teschubah, meaning “return” (to God, to oneself, to the right way), and it also lacks the implication of self-condemnation. This the Talmud uses the expression “the master of return” (“the repentant sinner”) and says of him that he stands even above those who have never sinned Assuming we agree that we speak of the freedom of choice between two specific courses of action which one specific individual is confronted with, then we might begin our discussion with one concrete, commonplace example: the freedom of choice between smoking or nor smoking. Let us take a heavy smoker who has read the reports on the health hazard of smoking and has arrived at the conclusion that he wants to stop smoking. He has “decided that he is going to stop.” This “decision” is no decision. It is nothing but the formulation of hope. He has “decided” to stop smoking, yet the next day he feels in too good a mood, the day after in too bad a mood, the third day he does not want to appear “asocial,” the following day he doubts that the health reports are correct, and so he continues smoking, although he had “decided” to stop. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
All these decisions are nothing but ideas, plans, fantasies; they have little or no reality until the real choice is made. This choice becomes real when he has a cigarette in front of him and has to decide whether to smoke this cigarette or not; again, later he has to decide about another cigarette, and so on. It is always the concrete act which requires a decision. The question in each situation is whether he is free not to smoke, or whether he is not free. Several questions arise here. Assuming he did not believe in the health reports on smoking or, even if he did, he is convinced that it is better to live twenty years less than to miss this pleasure; in this case there is apparently no problem of choice. Yet the problem may only be camouflaged. His conscious thoughts maybe nothing but rationalizations of his feelings that he could not win the battle even if he tried; hence he may prefer to pretend that there is no battle to win. However, whether the problem of choice is conscious or unconscious, the nature of the choice is the same. It is the choice between an action which is dictated by reason as against an action which is dictated by irrational passions. According to Spinoza, freedom is based on “adequate ideas” which are based on the awareness and acceptance of reality and which determine actions securing the fullest development of the individual’s psychic and mental unfolding. Human action, according to Spinoza, is casually determined by passions or by reason. When ruled by passions, man is in bondage; when by reason, he is free. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Irrational passions are those which overpower man and compel him to act contrary to his true self-interests, which weaken and destroy his powers and make him suffer. The problem of freedom of choice is not that of choosing between two equally good possibilities; it is not the choice between playing tennis or going on a hike, or between visiting a friend or staying at home reading. The freedom of choice where determinism or indeterminism is involved is always the freedom to choose the better as against the wore—and better or worse is always understood in reference to the basic moral question of life—that between progressing or regressing, between love and hate, between independence and dependence. Freedom is nothing other than the capacity to follow the voice of reason, of health, of well-being, of conscience, against the voices of irrational passion. In this respect we agree with the traditional views of Socrates, Plato, the Stoic, Kant. The freedom to follow the commands of reason is a psychological problem that can be examined further. Free associations do not work miracles, but if carried out in the right spirit they do show the way the mind operates, as X-rays show the otherwise invisible movements of lungs or intestines. And they do this in a more or less cryptic language. #Randolphharris 7 of 18
To associate freely is difficult for everyone. Not only does it contrast with our habits of communication and with conventional etiquette, but it entails further difficulties which differ with each patient. These may be classified under various headings though they are inevitably overlapping. In the first place, there are patients in whom the whole process of association arouses fears or inhibitions, because if they should permit free passage to every feeling and thought, they would trespass on territory that is tabu. The particular fears that will be touched off depend ultimately on the existing neurotic trends. A few examples may illustrate. An apprehensive person, overwhelmed since his early years by the teat of the unpredictable dangers of life, is unconsciously set upon avoiding risks. He clings to the fictitious belief that by straining his foresight to the utmost he can control life. Consequently, he avoids taking any step of which he cannot visualize the effects in advance: his uppermost law is never to be caught off guard. For such a person free association means the utmost recklessness, since it is the very meaning of the process to allow everything to emerge without knowing in advance what will appear and whither it will lead. The difficult is of another kind for a highly detached person who feels safe only when wearing a mask and who automatically wards off any intrusion into the precincts of his private life. Such a one lives in an ivory tower and feels threatened by any attempt to trespass into its vicinity. For him free association means an unbearable intrusion and a threat to his isolation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
And there is the other person who lacks moral autonomy and does not dare to form his own judgments. He is not accustomed to think and feel and act on his own initiative but, like an insect extending its feelers to rest out the situation, he automatically examines the environment for what is expected of him. His thoughts are good or right when approved by others, and bad or wrong when disapproved. He, too, feels threatened by the idea of expressing everything that comes into his mind, but in quite a different way from the others: knowing only how to respond, not how to express himself spontaneously, he feels at a loss. What does the analyst expect of him? Should he merely talk incessantly? Is the analyst interested in his dreams? Or in his sexual life? Is he expected to fall in love with the analyst? And what does the latter approve or disapprove of? For this person the idea of frank and spontaneous self-expression conjures up all these disquieting uncertainties, and also threatens an exposure to possible disapproval. And finally, a person caught within the traps of his own conflicts has become inert and has lost the capacity to feel himself as a moving force. He can proceed with an endeavour only when the initiative comes from the outside. He is quite willing to answer questions but feels lost when left to his own resources. Thus he is unable to associate freely because his capacity for spontaneous activity is inhibited. And, if he is one to whom success in all things is a driving necessity, this inability to associate may provoke in him a kind of panic, for he is likely then to regard his inhibition as a “failure.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
These examples illustrate how for some persons the whole process of free association arouses fears or inhibitions. However, if it is touched upon, even those who are capable of the process in general have in them one or another area that gives rise to anxiety. Thus in the example of Clare, who on the whole was able to associate freely, anything approaching her repressed demands on life aroused anxiety at the beginning of her analysis. Another difficulty lies in the fact that an unreserved expression of all feelings and thoughts is bound to lay bare traits that the person is ashamed of and that he is humiliated to report. As mentioned in the report on neurotic trend, the traits that are regarded as humiliating vary considerably. If he betrays idealistic propensities, a person who is proud of his cynical pursuit of material interests will be bewilder and ashamed. A person who is proud of his angelic façade will be ashamed to betray signs of selfishness and inconsiderateness. And the same humiliation will occur when any pretense is uncovered. The problem is not anxiety. The problem is what causes the person to experience anxiety and what determines the pattern of his reaction to the experience of anxiety. We do not presently possess a broadly based and reasonably detailed classification of the anxiety-generating problems of the twenty-first century man which cuts across all dimensions of our society. We know that problems of the very young man are different from those of the very mature, but this is hardly a sufficient differentiation on which to base selective approached to problem solutions. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Among adolescents, there are some who experience acute anxiety because of problems of school achievement. There are others who are greatly distressed by the complexities of heterosexual maturation. There are some who suffer from conflicts and frustrations in both of these areas. All of them may show comparable amounts and patterns of anxiety. However, anxiety is not the problem, and no single, uniform approach to the counseling of these youths is likely to prove equally effective with all. Experts in the mental health filed generally accept the professional platitude that one must not “treat the symptoms,” but rather one must attack the cause. There is also general acceptance of the motion that anxiety is only a symptom of an underlying pathology. However, the overwhelmingly predominant approach to the current psychotherapy of the neuroses is based on a theory in which anxiety plays a most central role and in which the basic source of anxiety is traced to the circumscribed sphere of psychosexual development. Furthermore, that theory evolved basically from clinical observations of a handful of upper-class patients from Dr. Freud’s late nineteenth-century Vienna. Elaborations and revisions of the basic Freudian theory while to some extent correcting for the differences between the culture of nineteenth-century Europe and twenty-first century U.S.A. have not significantly broadened the clinical observations on which the theory and the technique of treatment are based. It is still an orientation to etiology and treatment based on experience with middle-class and upper-class patients. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
In the absence of detailed information about the nature, frequency, and patterning of psychological problems across the complete range of those major demographic variables that we know are related to personality functioning, we cannot know what manner of psychological approach is most likely to prove effective. In turn, we cannot know what program of training is best adapted to the production of therapists who will be maximally effective either with the complete spectrum of psychoneurosis, if this is a reasonable goal, or with the dynamics of special forms of personality disruption which very well may prove to be particular to the members of certain subcultures. We have mentioned the peculiar ambiguities of diagnosis of mental illness. These ambiguities are especially troublesome in the diagnosis of the psychoneuroses, those forms of emotional disturbance for which psychological treatment is indicated. We have mentioned in the prevailing system of diagnosis by symptom pattern rather than by underlying problem. And we have indicated the extreme paucity of information about the psychological problems of people who represent the complete range of our population in regard to defining characteristics of major psychosocial classes—age, gender, and so on. Finally, we have commented on the absence of agreed upon “rules of exclusion.” All of these factors conjoin to create a situation in which the person who presents himself as a candidate for therapeutic conversation has made a self-diagnosis—and, significantly, he is most generally accepted on the basis of that diagnosis. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
This fact presents the possibility that out limited resources for psychotherapy may be overburdened in pat by the presence of individuals who in fact are not proper candidates for that type of therapeutic conversation which the major therapists of our present professional culture are equipped to give. This likelihood is enhanced by still other considerations. There is good reason to believe that the major impact of the mental hygiene movement has been on the members of the upper social classes. It is these persons whose education has made them psychologically sensitive and whose sophistication has made them socially receptive who, while not the prime target of the mental hygienists any more than any other social class, have the greatest readiness for self-referral. It is a corollary of the readiness for self-referral that the problems which the psychological sophisticate takes to the psychotherapist may be not only of lesser severity but may in fact be not focally psychoneurotic. Thus, any reasonably critical and honest therapist of long experience will have to confess that he has been confronted by some supplicants who have suffered not from anxiety nor from depression but rather from a loss of meaning in the lives, an absence of purpose, a failure of faith. Some of these persons suffer what has been termed “alienation.” Their condition has been characterized by one thoughtful clinician as a very special disturbance, that noogenetic neurosis. Frequently they are successful, effective, productive people. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
These individuals, together with many others who lack the customary symptomatic hallmarks of anxiety, depression, obsession, or compulsion yet who present themselves to the psychotherapist for help, might be uniformly described as unhappy. Their lives may be rewarding in a variety of ways and generally comfortable, but nonetheless joyless. They are responsive to certain implicit messages of the mental hygiene movement—namely, that unhappiness is a gorm of mental illness and that the psychiatrist or psychologist is an expert in treating unhappiness. It would be well for those who are responsible for programs of public mental health education to consider carefully whether or not there are any conditions of man’s psychic life which, while painful or distressing, do not constitute neurosis and are not in their essential nature responsive to the techniques of the psychotherapist. Our Declaration of Independence claimed as one of the rights of our citizens the “pursuit of Happiness.” However, freedom for this pursuit, like any other search, entails the possibility of failure. This possibility need be threatening only in an atmosphere which suggests that an absence of happy emotion is a sign of illness. Our capacity for introspection and our inwardly directed sensitivity to our own feelings can be major sources of satisfaction and of pleasure. From these same sources spring much of our most painful experiences. We cannot have the luxury of introspective sensitivity without the cost of self-questioning and doubt. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
When sensitive persons become stuck in an introspective rut of uncertainty, when they become immobilized by doubt, or when they are struggling against surrender to a conviction in an area in which all final convictions must necessarily be acts of faith, then they can be heled in their struggle by the challenge of perspectives elicited in the questions and suggestions of wise men. However, the wisdom needed to elicit such perspectives is hardly the exclusive possession of any existing professional group. Neither the psychiatrist nor the psychologist is trained to be wise. They should be trained to recognize those cases that call not for psychotherapy but for exposure to wise counsel. All the work of the ancient World in vain: I have no words to express my feelings about something so monstrous. And considering that its work was preliminary work, that the foundations for the work of millennia had just been laid with granite self-confidence, the entire meaning of the ancient World in vain! Wherefore Greeks? Wherefore Romans? All preconditions for a learned culture, all scientific methods were there already, the great, incomparable art of reading well had already been established—that precondition for a tradition of culture, for the unity of science; natural science, in concert with mathematics and mechanics, was moving along the best paths—the sense for facts, the ultimate and most precious of all senses, had its schools, its already centuries-old tradition! Do we understand this? #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Everything essential for moving forward with the work had been found—the methods, it must be said ten times, are precisely what is essential, and most difficult, and are what have for the longest time faced the obstacles of habit and laziness. What we today have reconquered, with incomparable self-mastery—for we all somehow still have bad instincts, Christian instincts in our bones—a clear view of reality, a careful hand, patience and seriousness, in the smallest matters, complete integrity in knowledge: it was already there! Already, more than two thousand years ago! And in addition good, subtle tact and taste! Not as brain training! Not as “German” education with loutish manners! However, as body, as gesture, as instinct—as, in word, reality…All in vain! Overnight, just memory! Greeks! Romans! The refinement of instinct, of taste, methodical research, the genius for organization and administration, the faith, the will to a future of man, the great Yes to all thing visible as an imperium Romanum, visible to all the senses, the grand style become not just art but reality, truth, life…And not buried overnight by natural events! Not crushed by Germanic tribes and others trampling them underfoot! However, done in by sly, sneaky, invisible, anemic vampires! Not vanquished—merely sucked dry! Covert vindictiveness, petty envy become master! Everything pathetic, suffering of itself, afflicted with bad feelings, the entire ghetto World of soul on top, all at once! #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
One need only read any Christian agitator, Saint Augustine, for example, in order to grasp, to grasp, to smell what sort of filthy hirelings have thereby risen to the top. One would be deceiving oneself in assuming any intellectual inferiority among the leaders of the Christian movement—oh, they are smart all right, smart to the point of saintliness, these gentle church fathers! What they lack s something altogether different. Nature has neglected them—she forgot to bestow upon them a modest dowry of respectable, decent, clean instincts. The self-actualized is to be able to stand against the wiles of the ultimate negative, and put on the whole armour for doing this. However, if he does not know what the wile is, how does man stand against a wile? There is a difference between the temptation and wiles—between the principles and working of the ultimate negative (and his emissaries) and their wiles; id est, they themselves are tempters. Temptation is not a while. A wile is the way they scheme to tempt. If one is able to stand against their wiles, of these wiles can be detected, then the ultimate negative’s objective can be frustrated and destroyed. The spiritual man needs the fullest concentration and sagacity of mind for reading quickly his spirit-sense, and detecting the active operations of the foe; he also requires alertness in using the message his spirit conveys to him. A spiritual believer ought to be able to read the sense of his spirit with the same instinctive adroitness as a person recognizes cold by his physical sense when he feels a draft, and then immediately uses his mental faculties for actively protecting himself from it. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
So the spiritual man needs to use his spirit-sense in locating and dislodging the foe by prayer. 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. Do not be afraid of evil tidings; let your heart be steadfast, trusting in the Lord. Happy are they that keep justice, that do righteousness at al times. Happy are they that are upright in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Happy are they that keep His testimonies, that seek Him with their whole heart. Happy is the people that thus know Him, happy is the people whose God is the Eternal. It is important to keep in mind the heroism and hardships, sacrifices and brilliant achievements of the Sacramento Fire Department and their history of fighting and the development of fire prevention and fire control, which has become an exact science. When you stop to think of the loss of life, and that the fire losses in the United States of America alone, the cost of property fires in 2022 is estimated at $18 billion. Local fire departments responded to an estimated 1.5 million fires. These fires caused 3,790 civilian fire deaths, and 13,250 reported civilian fire injuries. You must realize how important it is for the Sacramento Fire Department to be efficient and have all the resources they need. You must know that insurance rates are based on fire loses, and no matter how great may be the care and skill exercised in construction of buildings to prevent fires, no matter what precautions may be taken, the need of efficient firemen and women is ever preset for the saving of life and property. In this poor economy, the Sacrament Fire Department is not receiving all of their resources, please make a donation to ensure they have adequate support. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
One afternoon in December of 2007, two caretakers were walking around the mansion with a guest. “As we were walking up the path to the Grand Ballroom,” he wrote, “I stopped and said,” ‘The organ is playing.’ My first though was that maybe the was a Christmas party. The other caretaker stopped and looked at me. He turned to beckon me with a smile, so I thought that he had found it was just someone practicing. To my amazement the Grand Ballroom was empty and silent. We sat down near the organ for a moment and he said, ‘Have you heard the story of the organ playing before?’ I assured him that I had not…We afterwards went up and down the hallway sever times to see if we could hear it again but could not. The whole event was over in half a minute, and it was absolutely impossible for anyone to have escaped in that time.” There have been many attempts at explanation or elucidation of the events surrounding The Winchester Mystery House. It has been calculated that the phenomena connected with the house and garden have been described by over three thousand separate witnesses. It has even been conjected that the witnesses themselves have been the agents of the unusual activity; unknow to themselves, some force draws their energies. This is true of many “ghost stories.” However, while one can be skeptical about any individual instance, the sum total presents a body of evidence that is impossible to ignore.
Take pleasure in the antiques, the gardens and experience the homemaking of Victorian times. Enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café. 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/
Randolph Harris II International 