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The Theme of the Devil’s Pact Begins to Emerge
Imagination is a way to escape reality and fulfill unconscious desires. The role imagination plays in the search for glory may show unmistakably and directly in daydreams. In the teenager, they may have a frankly grandiose character. It is a way to bridge the gap between imagination and reality. There is for instance the college boy who, although timid and withdrawn, has daydreams about being the greatest athlete, or genius, or Don Juan. There are also in later years people like Paris Hilton, who almost constantly indulge in dreams of romantic expression, of a mystic perfection, or of a mysterious saintliness. Sometimes these take the form of imaginary conversations in which others are impressed or put to shame. Others, more complicated in their structure, deal with shameful or noble suffering through being exposed to cruelty and degradation. Frequently daydreams are not elaborate stories but, rather, play a fantastic accompaniment to the daily routine. When tending her children, playing the piano, or combing her hair, a woman may for instance see herself in much the way a tender mothers, a rapturous pianist, or an alluring beauty would be presented in the movies. In some cases, such daydreams show clearly that a person may, like Paris Hilton, constantly live in two World. Again, in others equally engaged in the search for glory daydreams are so scarce and abortive that they may say in all subjective honesty that they have no fantasy life. Needless to say, they are mistaken. Even if they only worry about possible mishaps that might be fall them, it is after all their imagination that conjures up such contingencies. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
However, daydreams, while important and revealing when they occur, are not the most injurious work of imagination. For a person is mostly aware of that fact that he is daydreaming, id est, imagining things which have not occurred or are not likely to occur in the way he is experiencing them in fantasy. At least it is not too difficult for him to become aware of the existence and the unrealistic character of the daydreams. The more injurious work of imagination concerns the subtle and comprehensive distortions of reality which he is not aware of fabricating. The idealized self is not completed in a single act of creation: once produced, it needs continuing attention. For its actualization the person must put in an incessant labour by way of falsifying reality. He must turn his needs into virtues or into more than justified expectations. He must turn his intentions to be honest or considerate into the fact of being honest or considerate. The bright ideas he has for a paper make him a great scholar. His potentialities turn into factual achievements. Knowing the “right” moral values make him a virtuous person—often, indeed, a kind of moral genius. And of course, his imagination must work overtime to discard all the disturbing evidence to the contrary. Imagination also operates in changing the neurotic’s beliefs. He needs to believe that others are wonderful or vicious-and lo! there they are in a parade of benevolent or dangerous people. It also changes his feelings. He needs to feel invulnerable—and behold! His imagination has sufficient power to brush off pain and suffering. He needs to have deep feelings—confidence, sympathy, love, suffering: his feelings of sympathy, suffering, and the rest are magnified. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The perception of the distortions of inner and outer reality which imagination can bring about when put to the service of the search for glory leaves us with an uneasy question. Where does the flight of the neurotic’s imagination end? He does not after all lose his sense of reality altogether; where then is the border line separating him from the psychotic? If there is any border line with respect to feats of imagination, it certainly is hazy. We can only say that the psychotic tends to regard the process in his mind more exclusively as they only reality that counts, while the neurotic—for whatever reasons—retains a fair interest in the outside World and his place in it and has therefore a fair gross orientation in it. Nevertheless, while he may stay sufficiently on the ground to function in a way not obviously disturbed, there is no limit to the heights to which his imagination can soar. It is in fact the most striking characteristic of the search for glory that it goes into the fantastic, into the realm of unlimited possibilities. All of the drives for glory have in common the reaching out for greater knowledge, wisdom, virtue, or powers than are given to human beings; they all aim at the absolute, the unlimited, the infinite. Nothing short of absolute fearlessness, mastery, or saintliness has any appeal for the neurotic obsessed with the drive for glory. He is therefore the antithesis of the truly religious man. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
For the latter, only to God are all things possible; the neurotic’s version is: nothing is impossible to me. His will power should have magic proportions, his reasoning be infallible, his foresight flawless, his knowledge all encompassing. The theme of the devil’s pact begins to emerge. The neurotic is the Prince Lestat who is not satisfied with knowing a great deal, but has to know everything. This soaring into the unlimited is determined by the power of the needs behind the drive for glory. The needs for the absolute and the ultimate are so stringent that they override the checks which usually prevent our imagination from detaching itself from actuality. For his well-functioning, man needs both the vision of possibilities, the perspective of infinitude, and the realization of limitations, of necessities, of the concrete. If a man’s thinking and feeling are primarily focused upon the infinite and the vision of possibilities, he loses his sense for the concrete, for the hear and now. He loses his capacity for living in the moment. He is no longer capable of submitting to the necessities in himself, “to what may be called one’s limit.” He loses his sight of what is actually necessary for achieving something. “Every little possibility even would require some time to become actuality.” His thinking may become too abstract. His knowledge may become “a kind of inhuman knowing for the production of which man’s self is squandered, pretty much as men were squandered for the building of the Pyramids.” His feelings for others may evaporate into an “abstract sentimentality for humanity.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
If, on the other hand, a man does not see beyond the narrow horizon of the concrete, the necessary, the finite, he becomes “narrow-minded and mean-spirited.” It is not, then, a question of either-or, but of both, if there is to be growth. The recognition of limitations, laws, and necessities serves as a check against being carried away into the infinite, and against the mere “floundering in possibilities.” The checks on imagination are malfunctioning in the search for glory. This does not mean a general incapacity to see necessities and abide by them. A special direction in the further neurotic development may make many people feel safer to restrict their lives, and they may then tend to regard the possibility of being carried away into the fantastic as a danger to be avoided. They may close their minds to anything that to them looks fantastic, be averse to abstract thinking, and overanxiously cling to what is visible, tangible, concrete, or immediately useful. However, while the conscious attitude toward these matters varies, every neurotic at bottom is loath to recognize limitations to what he expects of himself and believes it possible to attain. His need to actualize his idealized image is so imperative that he must shove aside the checks as irrelevant or nonexistent. There are over one million people locked up in mental hospitals because they cannot shut up about the crime. One thing is clear in my years with these people—the more mentally ill they are, the more they are caught in egocentricity, selfishness, and uselessness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
In mental hospitals, there are many relics of people with vaunted selfhood even though their World is riddles with strange influences. The more vaunted, the more riddled. It is apparent to us, but not to the mentally ills, that this diseased World is representative of them since the disease walks where they walk. They contend that it occurs only in the hospital, but when they visited a large city, there is this same monstrous business going on. It is the same thing whether we say they are diseased or their World is diseased. The two are really one. In ordinary social intercourse with others, or in the more intense experience of group psychotherapy, there is a manifest difference between the person who must explain and must defend their view from the person who enjoys and easily accepts the Worlds of other persons. The first is a bore, a difficult person, one who rouses anger or needs to be treated carefully. The second is an easier, more likeable person. In group psychotherapy one often sees the clever professional or layman who must tell, must be right, must interpret what the other person really means. A less obnoxious egotism is the one who is very concerned what to say, how a thing will be taken, whether he is understood or appreciated. These people are painfully trapped in the evaluations of others because they are so concerned for themselves. In my own little World, it has become clear to me that I am of use to others insofar as I am not concerned for my reputation. I have seen brilliant intuitive insights come out of me when I was only aware of the other person. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
I have also seen miserable failure when I was out to prove that I was clever. I look for pride in me, and if it is there, I had best be silent. In both therapy and social relations, there is an almost mystic beauty when my self vanishes and the style, nuances of bodily movement, voice inflection and concerns of the other person fill the whole stage. I am liked best when I am not. For most of my young life, I had been told it was not okay to display anger. Thus, the journey from manipulation to mastery is not a neat, two-dimensional, passionate, random, helter-skelter journey, with our emotions swinging from one polarity to another, from love to dependency to weakness to criticalness—often many times in a matter of minutes. Exactly how the process takes place should not concern you, unless you are a therapist. All you need to be concerned with is that the process does work—and you can use it to improve the quality of your life, the dynamism of your relationships. What therapy does is start a person on the road to mastery. It starts them looking at their internal conflicts. The process of dealing with polarities goes on through life—at all times and on all fronts. Those who follow spiritual ideals will have to take their stand. Nonviolence is a good. Violence is an evil. However, in the compulsory choice between violent defense against violent aggression or passive submission to such aggression, it is often the lesser of the two evils. For the first may bring the aggressor to suffer the consequences of his crime whereas the second may condone it. The first may re-educate him to abandon his evil ways whereas the second may encourage him in them. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
There are savage creatures, moral monsters and insane animals who look like men but have only partially risen into the human species in their passage from the lower ones. Having human faces and limbs, digestive and sense organs, is not enough to render them worthy of human classification. With a wise mercy, which need not be stretched too far but must not be stretched too little, we must temper natural desire to punish the violent criminal adequately. The pacifist who believes that his attitude will affect the war-makers and alter their attitude is as irrational as the sparrow who appeals to the hawk for his life to be spared. However, pacifism has a far sounder basis than this weak one. The adherence to nonviolence is not a sign of ignorable weakness but rather of noble wisdom. The folly of war cannot be reconciled with the dictates of reason. To use violent means for the defense of nonviolent ideals can only lead to the loss of those ideals. To use violent means for the defense of nonviolent ideals can only lead to the loss of this ideals. What is conquered by violence must be maintained by violence. Every form of totality is restrictive. Surrealism is not concerned with action, but with asceticism and spiritual experience. The profound originality of the movement is the restoration of the sacred and the conquest of unity, which make surrealism so invaluable for a consideration of the problem of rebellion. Surrealism—the fusion of a dream and of reality, the sublimation of the old contradiction between the ideal and the real. We know the surrealist solution: concrete irrationality, objective risk. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Poetry is the conquest, the only possible conquest, of the “supreme position.” A certain position of the mind from where life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future…cease to be perceived in a contradictory sense. What is this supreme position that should mark the “colossal abortion of the Hegelian system”? It is the search for the summit-abyss, familiar to the mystics. Actually, it is the mysticism without God which demonstrates and quenches the rebel’s thirst for the absolute. The essential enemy of surrealism is rationalism. Should we dissolve contradictions in the fires of love and desire and demolish the walls of death? Magic rites, primitive or naïve civilization, alchemy, the language of flowers, fire, or sleepless nights, are so many miraculous stages on the way to unity and the philosophers’ stone. Vitality on old age depends on three factors: constitutional robustness; physical health; type of script. The onset of old age is determined by the same three factors. Thus, some people are vital at eighty and others start vegetating at forty. Constitutional robustness is a force majeure, that is, it cannot be changed by Parental programing. Physical disability is sometimes a force majeure, and sometimes a script payoff. In the “Cripple” Script it is both. The crippling itself may occur because of unavoidable physical illness, but it is welcomed because it is part of the script and fulfills mother’s injunction to end up disabled. #RandolpHarris 9 of 23
This occurs occasionally in cases of poliomyelitis in young adults, where the man in the wheel chair says: “When I knew I had polio I almost welcomed it, as though I had been waiting for something like that.” If his script called for him to be a cripple, and Nature did not help him out, he might have crashed a car. Nature’s solution is simpler to deal with. Older people may similarly welcome a stroke or a coronary occlusion, but for a different reason: not because it is part of the script, but because it relieves them of the compulsion to carry on with their script strivings. For the Child in them, these catastrophes become “Wooden Leg” or “Wooden Heart,” so that they can say to the Parent in their heads: “Even you cannot expect a man with a Wooden Leg or a Wooden Heart to carry on your witch’s curse.” Faced with a blood clot in Jeder’s brain or heart, only the most ruthless parent does not concede defeat. If a disability occurs early in life, it may fit very well into a mother’s script, or may throw it off completely. If it fits, the child will be raised as a professional cripple, sometimes with the help of outside organizations devoted to helping Crippled Children (as long as they stay cripped) or Children with Intellectual Disabilities (as long as they have an intellectual disability). (If the child recovers, the drag is due to the fact that the government subsidy usually stops.) In such cases, the mother learns to “face it,” and teaches the child to do likewise. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
If it does not fit the mother’s script, however, she does not learn to face it. She keeps trying, and the child learns to do likewise, so that he ends up as a one-legged jitterbug, a clubfooted broad-jumper, or a brain-damaged orthopedic specialist (all these examples exist or have existed in real life). The Crippled Children’s organization and the Mentally Ill organization pitch in here, too, and are delighted if one of their proteges makes it (with outside help). If the mother’s script does not call for a physically or mentally disabled child, and the disability is so severe that it is necessarily permanent, then her life becomes a script-frustrated tragedy. If her script does call for a disabled child, and the disability is borderline, and possibly remediable, then the child’s life becomes an unnecessary, script-inflicted tragedy. Now to return to old age. If they have “Open-Ended” Scripts, even people with robust constitutions and no physical disabilities (or only minor or hypochondriacal ones) can begin to vegetate at an early age. These are commonly people living on pensions. The Parental precept is: “Work hard, and do not take any chances,” and the payoff is “After that, give up.” Once Jeder has put in his twenty or thirty years, and Santa Claus has come and given him his retirement banquet and gold watch, he does not know what to do. He is accustomed to following his script directives, but now they are exhausted, and he has no further programing in his head. Therefore, he is content to sit and wait until something turns up: Death, for instance. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
This raises an interesting question. What do you do after Santa Clause comes? With an “Until” Script, he comes down the chimney and brings a Freedom Certificate. Jeder has fulfilled the requirements of his script, is freed of the curse by the antiscript, and is now at liberty to do what he always wanted to do since he was a little boy. However, going his own way is full of dangers, as many Greek myths attest. While he is free of his witch parent, he is also unprotected, and can easily come to grief. This is shown in fairy tales as well. A curse gives protection as well as trial and tribulation. The same witch that laid on the curse sees that the victim continues to live while he is under it. Thus, Sleeping Beauty was protected by the briar forest for a hundred years. However, the moment she woke up, and could tell the witch to buzz off, her troubles began. A handy situation is to have a double script: an “Until” Script from one parent and an “After” Script from the other. In the commonest case this reads “You cannot be free until you have raised three children” (from mother), and “After you are free you will become creative” (from father). Thus, in the first half of her life Zoe is controlled and protected by her mother and in the second half by her father. In the case of a man, the double-script directive may be the same as above, but the control and protection are reversed: Father during the first phase and Mother during the second. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
The vegetating age are divided into three classes, and in this country the insignia are financial. Those with losers’ scripts live alone in rooming houses or rundown hotels, and are called old men and old women. Those with nonwinning scripts own and live in small houses where they are free to develop their idiosyncrasies and eccentricities, so that they are known as old characters. Those with winning scripts live in retirement homes run by financial promoters, and are called Senior Citizens, or Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, which is how they sign their Letters to the Editor. The cure for the scriptless age is permission, but they seldom use it. There are thousands of older men living in small rooms in every large city, each of them wishing there was someone to cook for him, talk to him, and listen to him. At the same time, there are thousands of older women living under the same circumstances, wishing they had someone to cook for, talk to, and listen to. Even if the twain do happen to meet, they rarely take advantage of it, each preferring to remain in his or her familiar drab surroundings hunched over a glass or a TV set, or sitting with folded hands, waiting for a riskless, sinless death. Those were mother’s directives when they were little, and these are the directives they are following seventy or eight years later. They never took chances before, beyond a small bet at the racetrack of the stadium, so why should they jeopardize everything now? The script has vanished by its own fulfillment, but the old slogan lingers on, and when death comes, they will greet him gladly. And on the front of the tombstone, they will carve: “Gone to rest with his forebears,” and on the back it will say: “I lived a good life, and never took any chances.”. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
They say that in this century, children will be grown in bottles, according to specifications laid down by the state and the parents, and there they will be genetically programed However, everybody is already raised in a bottle according to specifications laid down by the state and his parents, and there he is script-programed. Script-programing is easier to shake off than genetic programing, but few people exercise the privilege. For the ones who do, there can be a more inspiring tombstone. Nearly all pious epitaphs, translated into Martian, come out “Raised in a bottle, and stayed there, too.” And so they stand, row after row of crosses and other symbols in the graveyard, all with the same motto. Only here and there is a surprise: “Raised in a bottle—but I jumped out.” Many people refuse to do that, even when there is no cork. Genetic history, as opposed to political history, is a record of those moments when a successful gene pool migrates in response to swarming pressures when the hive castes out its future probes. The migrating waves produce the highest peaks of civilization, of culture, of hive philosophy and of art and science. Civilization began in the East. Shuttling up and down the spinal column from Suez to China. The great pyramids of Egypt remind us that long ago women and men looked at the stars and built enormous highways aloft. Inside the pyramids, they assembled all the instruments and comforts needed in a post-terrestrial life. The Egyptian gene pool evolved rapidly and prematurely because they had temporarily solved the four terrestrial survival problems—security, political autonomy, technological predominance and a national sociosexual mythos. The Nile Valley geography produced this early genetic probe into the future. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
If you are not intelligent about your leadership, the best training in the World cannot make you an effective, respected leader. An intelligent firefighter or EMT is one who is mentally agile, sound in judgement, innovative, tactful, and knowledgeable. Intelligent action will get you through many difficult situations. The Sacramento Fire Department’s intelligence draws on their mental tendencies and resources, shaping their conceptual abilities. These conceptional abilities enable them to exercise sound judgement about their duties and responsibilities even before they implement their concepts and plans. They help the firefighters and EMTs think creatively and reason analytically, critically, ethically, and with cultural sensitivity. Conceptual abilities enable them to consider unintended consequences. The Sacramento Fire Department always thinks through what they expect to occur as a result of a decision. Some decisions may set off a chain of events, so they must attempt to anticipate the second- and third-order effects of their actions. The conceptual components affecting the Sacramento Fire Department’s intelligence include: Mental agility, judgement, innovation, interpersonal tact, and domain knowledge. “I met my wife in 1995, but we didn’t get married until 2000. One of the first things that got us acquainted was when I found out that she went to the same oral surgeon that I did. It wasn’t just broken teeth, I had shattered my upper jaw, I busted it in a million pieces, and I was all wired up. We didn’t meet in the doctor’s office, but once we started talking, you known when you first meet somebody, you have to have something to talk about. She had some problems and went to the same doctor, so we started talking about different ordeals. That’s what we talked about. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
“I was crazy about the fire department, and she knew before we were married that she was going to be second to the fire department. She doesn’t tell me she worried about the dangers, but when there are firemen’s funerals on TV, she says, ‘Please don’t ever do that to me.’ I tell her I’m real careful. I am aggressive, but I’m careful. She knew about the dangers early on. We were just about to get married, we were getting ready for the pictures and the parties and all that stuff, when we had a fire in the high school library. I was on the hose with this other guy. We crawled in. You know you can take the heat before you crack the line. This guy put the nozzle on a narrow fog. If it had been me, I would have put it on a straight stream, because that stuff turns around and the steam comes right back. I was behind him, and the man behind the line takes a rose beating than the man on the nozzle, because they hit the ceiling. Everything was hot. It burned this guy and myself. So the big worry of everybody at the wedding was whether I was going to look like a wreck in my wedding pictures. I had these Dumbo ears. When the blisters went down, I still had a lot of scars, but it wasn’t so bad. But it was a big concern to her. How was I going to look? We have one, child, a two-year-old boy. He better get all the education that he can, because I think that we’re looking at two-class society—the people that have the education and the wealth, and the people that don’t have anything. I don’t know where the firefighters are going to fit in, but if firefighters don’t continue to increase their skills—and we’re heading in the right direction—in areas like hazardous materials and emergency medical, we could easily end up down there with the huddled masses #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
“My wife knows that the fire department is giving me something no one can give me, including herself. She knows it is giving me a sense of satisfaction and a sense of personal worth. You see some joker win a million-dollar lottery on TV, I don’t need that. I want to be comfortable, and I want to be secure. My wife knows it. If I ever lost this job or became crippled, I don’t know what I could do. I would have to go to a psychiatrist and have him tell me that I am worth a damn as a human being, and try to get me interested in something else. But I would have a heck of a time, and my wife realizes that.” All members of the Sacramento Fire Department are loyal, dedicated to duty, respectful, selfless, honourable, possess a great deal of integrity and display personal courage in the face of danger and adversity. You can save lives by making a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. The proud members of the Sacramento Fire Department are committed to providing the highest quality and highest level of courteous and responsive services to the residents, businesses, and visitors of Sacramento. This is accomplished by implementing comprehensive strategies and training in fire prevention, fire suppression, emergency medical services, and all risk mitigation, including human-caused and natural disasters, emergency preparedness, emergency services and community-based fire services. The Sacramento Fire Department physical requirements for the firefighters and EMTs state that you must be medically and physically fit, and able to pass the Occupational Physical Assessment Test. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Therefore, physical and mental toughness are just the basic requirements. You achieve excellence when you habitually show discipline and commitment to the department’s values. Individuals and organizations pursue excellence to improve. Citizens, remember to give the right-of-way to any law enforcement vehicle, fire engine, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle using a siren and red lights. Failure to pull over may result in a ticket. Drive to the right edge of the road and stop until the emergency vehicles(s) have passed. When approaching a stationary emergency vehicle with flashing emergency signal lights (hazard lights), move over and slow down. If you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. Moral courage is the willingness to stand firm on values, principles, and convictions. It enables you to stand up for what you believe is right, regardless of the consequences. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. Having the Southern American boarder open and not having American farmland protected, not producing beef, poultry, fish, fruit, produce and dairy in America, and without American goods and services being our number one manufactured and selling items, America has created a dangerous and significantly elevated risks to national security, national economic security, and national public health. Some people may believe that these claims are overstated, but by not routinely monitoring Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CEVs) or other security relevant alerts, such as end-of-life of machinery is how the Oroville Dam Crisis occurred in 2017. Other crises that have occurred due to neglect of critical infrastructure is the 2025 Palisades fires because Southern California ran out of water, when they are located next to an ocean and they could have simply created desalinating plants to help with the water shortage. The water is so plentiful that it is currently eroding land and causing homes to fall into the sea. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
American government should know all exploitable vulnerabilities and fix them prior to the situation becoming a crisis. Failure to take such mitigating actions is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. The American government must understand that significant time and resources must be invested in America. They must also encourage corporations to plan for both mitigating safety vulnerabilities in the short term and eliminating them in the long term. For instance, a company might begin by reaching out to the federal, state or local government and requesting tax incentives to provide security to dangerous communities, to help the government repair bridges and potholes. America needs an approach to eliminate safety vulnerabilities in American cities. There needs to be a road map by the end of 2025, outlining a prioritized approach to eliminate crisis situations in America. There is enough money to send aid to foreign nations, but the American government does not have enough money to care their infrastructure, provide adequate resources, nor end the affordable housing crisis. Nor is there enough money to fund other national critical functions (NCFs). These bad practices of putting America and Americans last is considered exceptionally risky, particularly to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
In an effort to help America pull through the massive national deficit, please buy American made cars. American made cars used to be the envy of the World and because American car brands are offering a wide range of options, from family SUVs to electric vehicles and luxury sedans, we are now seeing a resurging interest. American made cars are equal or superior to those made overseas. The Chevrolet Trax, for instance, is a well-designed, fuel efficient, and safe SUV. And as you know, there is no better car on Earth than 1950-1970s American Muscle Car. Americans make sure superior product, but we are buying things from other nations. American food imports have risen by 300 percent since 1999. American farmland declined by nearly 20 million acres between 2017 and 2022. As of 2022, there were 880.1 million acres of land dedicated to farming, compared to 900.1 million in 2017. The data shows there are now little more than 1.9 million farms in the country. Americans and American corporations spent $136 billion on food and beverages from other countries. It is a national security risk to lose American Farms and farmers. If there is a war, and most of our meat, produce, poultry, dairy, and fruit is coming from foreign counties, we stand the risk of starving. With war breaking out all over the World, in these uncertain times, it is very important to bring American farms back. Las Vegas is running out of buildable land and is expected to reach its maximum number of homes in 2032. So, home prices are expected to rise dramatically. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Additionally, State Farm is asking the California Department of Insurance if they can raise homeowner insurance rates by 22 percent. If election for an unprecedented third term, to make housing more affordable and offset the cost of homeowner’s insurance, President Trump plans to abolish property taxes. Much like the land crisis in Las Vegas, we could also run out of land to farm and will not be able to grow or cultivate our own food. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. Also, country of origin labeling is very important so Americans can know where their food is coming from and have the ability to support American farmers and ranchers. As money flows, it influences further investment. Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. Once the land is built on, we lose it forever. And in the future, there may be food wars. Also, to ensure that we have farmland and buildable land for future use, we need to start limiting the number of people allowed to immigrant to America. Perhaps with the immigrants we do allow into America, there needs to be a diversity program to make sure we have a population that equally represents all races of people. If Americans continue to spend money on American products, then more need to be made to keep up the inventory. When investors notice these goods are selling, it gives them the confidence to pour more money into that local business. It shows that people want these goods made in America and pressures investors to keep these goods and services in America. The jobs stay here, the business stays in American, wages naturally increase, and more money is invested to keep up with demand. This reduces the burden on the taxpayer. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
When you support American businesses, that money stays in our economy and can help to reduce the national debt. The government creates debt by borrowing from businesses in the private sector or from foreign countries. It also increases the national debt by spending more than it gains in tax revenue in a fiscal year. When people shop locally, more tax money stays in the economy and goes to the government. This way, it keeps more money in our national economy and keeps more jobs located in American which also sends more taxes to the government, which can again help to reduce the national debt. When you buy foreign goods, these companies usually have lighter tax loads or exemptions, meaning less money for the nation debt, plus you are helping to strengthen these foreign nations by send more money overseas. Buying American made products is also better for the environment and helps to reduce the carbon footprint because these products do not have to travel nearly as far. Furthermore, American companies and manufacturers are held to much higher standards in regard to pollution. American companies have to be more careful about air, land, and water pollution and have proper ways to dispose of waste. Moreover, please remember to respect law and order and treat your elders with the utmost dignity and kindness possible. And take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. It is inborn in the human minds to wish to know. If this begins with the endless surface questions of a child’s curiosity, if it continues into deeper questions of a scientist’s probing investigation, it cannot and does not stop there. For the higher part of the mind will eventually come into unfoldment, that union of abstract reflective thought with mystical intuition, which is true intelligence, which needs and sees a view of the whole of things. And so, the knowing faculty enters the realm of philosophy. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. 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 23 of 23
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Be Wary of Others, Those Closet to You, The Poison They Feed You and The Voo Doo They Do!
Dr. Freud and psychoanalysis taught us that rebellion is what guarantees our independence and our creative abilities. However, in the contemporary “entertainment” culture, is rebellion still a viable option? In a certain sense, rebellion, with Nietzsche, ends again in the exaltation of evil. The difference is that evil is no longer revenge. It is accepted as one of the possible aspects of good and, with rather more conviction, as part of destiny. Thus, he considers it as something to be avoided and also as a sort of remedy. In Nietzsche’s mind, the only problem was to see that the human spirt bowed proudly to the inevitable. We know, however, his posterity and what kind of politics were to claim the authorization of the man who claimed to be the last antipolitical German. He dreamed of tyrants who were artists. However, tyranny comes more naturally than art to mediocre men. “Rather Ceare Borgia than Parsifal,” he exclaimed. He begat both Caesar and Borgia, but devoid of the distinction of feeling which he attributed to the great men of the Renaissance. As result of this insistence that the individual should bow before the eternity of the species and should submerge himself in the great cycle of time, race has been turned into a special aspect of the species, and the individual has been made to bow before this sordid god. The life of which he spoke with fear and trembling has been degraded to a sort of biology for domestic use. Finally, a race of vulgar overlords, with a blundering desire for power, adopted, in his name, the “anti-Semitic deformity” on which he never ceased to pour scorn. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
He believed in courage combined with intelligence, and that was what he called strength. Courage has been turned in his name against intelligence, and the virtues that were really his have thus been transformed into their opposite: blind violence. He confused freedom and solitude, as do all proud spirits. His “profound solitude at midday and at midnight” was nevertheless lost in the mechanized hordes that finally inundated Europe. Advocate of classic taste, of irony, of frugal defiance, aristocrat who had the courage to say that aristocracy consisted in practicing virtue without asking for a reason being honest was not to be trusted, addict of integrity (“integrity that has become an instinct, a passion”), stubborn supporter of the “supreme of fanaticism,” he was set up, thirty-three years after his death, by his own countrymen as the master of lies and violence, and his ideas and virtues, made admirable by hos sacrifice, have been rendered detestable. In history of the intelligence, with the exception of Marx, Nietzsche’s adventure has no equivalent; we shall never finish making reparation for the injustice done to him. Of course, history records other philosophies that have been misconstrued and betrayed. However, up to the time of Nietzsche and National Socialism, it was quite without parallel that a process of thought—brilliantly illuminated by the nobility and by the sufferings of an exceptional mind—should have been demonstrated to the eyes of the World by a parade of lies and by the hideous accumulation of corpses in concentration camps. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
We must first of all realize that we can never confuse Nietzsche with Rosenberg. We must be the advocates of Nietzsche. He himself said so, denouncing in advance his bastard progeny: “he who has liberated his mind still has to purify himself.” However, the question is to find out if the liberation of the mind, as he conceived it, does not preclude purification. The very movement that comes to a head with Nietzsche, and that sustains him, has its laws and its logic, which, perhaps, explain the bloody travesty of his philosophy. Is there nothing in his work that can be used in support of definitive murder? Cannot the killers, provided they deny the spirit in favour of the letter (and even all that remains of the spirit in the letter), find their pretext in Nietzsche? The answer must be yes. From the moment that the methodical aspect of Nietzsche thought is neglected (and it is not certain that he himself always observed it), his rebellions logic knows no bounds. We also remark that it is not in the Nietzschean refusal to worship idols that murder finds it justification, but in the passionate approbation that distinguishes Nietzsche’s work. To say yes to everything supposes that one says yes to murder. If the slave says yes to everything, he consents to the existence of a master and to his own sufferings: Jesus Christ teaches nonresistance. If the master says yes to everything, he consents to slavery and to the suffering of others; and the result is the tyrant and the glorification of murder. “Is it not laughable that we believe in a sacred, infrangible law—thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not kill—in an existence characterized by perpetual lying and perpetual murder?” #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
Actually, metaphysical rebellion, in its initial stages, was only a protest against the lie and the crime of existence. The Nietzsche affirmative, forgetful of the original negative, disavows rebellion at the same time that it disavows the ethic that refuses to accept the World as it is. Nietzsche clamoured from a Roman Caesar with the soul of Christ. To his mind, this was to say yes to both slave and master. However, in the last analysis, to say yes to both was to give one’s blessing to the stronger of the two—namely, the master. Caesar must inevitably renounce the domination of the mind and choose to rule in the realm of fact. “How can one make the best of crime?” asks Nietzsche, as a good professor faithful to his system. Caesar must answer: by multiplying it. “When the ends are great,” Nietzsche wrote to his own detriment, “humanity employs other standards and no longer judges crime as such even if it resorts to the most frightful means.” He died in 1900, at the beginning of the century in which that pretension was to become fatal. It was in vain that he exclaimed in his hour of lucidity, “It is easy to talk about all sorts of immoral acts; but would one have the courage to carry them through? For example, I could not bear to break my word or kill; I should languish, and eventually I should die as a result—that would be my fate.” From the moment that asset was given to the totality of human experience, the way was open to others who, far from languishing, would gather strength from lies of murder. Nietzsche’s responsibility lies in having legitimized, for reasons of method—and even of only for an instant—the opportunity for dishonesty of which Dostoievsky had already said that if one offered it to people, one could always be sure of seeing them rushing to seize it. However, his involuntary responsibility goes still further. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
Nietzsche is exactly what he recognized himself as being: the most acute manifestation of nihilism’s conscience. The decisive step that he compelled rebellion to take consists in making it jump from the negation of the ideal to the secularization of the ideal. Since the salvation of man is not achieved in God, it must be achieved on Earth. Since the World has no direction, man, from the moment that he accepts this, must give it one that will eventually lead to a superior type of humanity. Nietzsche laid claim to the direction of the future of the human race. “The task of governing the World is going to fall to our lot.” And elsewhere: “The time is approaching when we shall have to struggle for the domination of the World, and this struggle will be fought in the name of philosophical principles.” In these words he announced the twentieth century. However, he was able to announce it because he was warned by the interior logic of nihilism and knew that one of its aims was ascendancy; and thus he prepared the way for this ascendancy. Anyone born after 1945 is a mutant. Now, let us fine-tune the time machine and focus on what has happened since 1945. We are all so involved that we may not appreciate the incredible changes in the first quarter of the 21st Century. We choose the year 1945 for obvious reasons; that was when our species fissioned nuclear structure thoughtfully at Alamogordo and blindly at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The release of atomic energy is a mutational moment in the history of every nursery planet. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
It is useful to assume that in 1945, every living organism of every species, on this planet, picked up this fallout and radiation message and transmitted it through their nervous system to RNA and back to DNA: “Hey, the domesticated primates are fissioning the atom! It is time to leave the planet because nuclear energies are not supposed to be used on a tiny, shrinking planet like ours.” At this moment an astounding acceleration of intelligence occurred! The best evolutionary stages to inhabit are those of intense, dramatic inner-outer exploration—like 1960-1980. Since 1945, we have fissioned and fusioned the atom. Decoding the DNA Code allowed us, at that moment in history, to confront the possibility of genetic engineering, cloning, and biological immortality. Since 1945, medical science has eliminated, one by one, most of the scourges and plagues which have terrorized our species since the beginning of recorded history. One of the most important things to happen to the new species born after 1945 is neuroelectronic consumerism—Television. Every American child born after 1945 crawled out of the crib, toddled across the room, and with tiny, waxen arms and cubby, baby hands reached the boob tube and began dialing and tuning realities. Wheaties, no! Post Toasties? Maybe. Coke? Maybe. &-Up, Ford, Carter, Chevrolet, Ford, Carter. Disneyland, Disneyland, Disneyland, Disneyland. Children learned how to be reality consumers, watches of reality commercials, selectors of reality products, actively dialing a wide frequency spectrum of passive receptivity. Eventually TV programmer got the message and rolled out one Reality Program after another and the public lapped it up. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
The Sun Belt kid born after 1945 experiences more realities in one week than most affluent aristocrats of the past experienced in a lifetime. Only six times int eh 10,000 years preceding the 1920s did a paedomorphic rejection of terminal adulthood by the juveniles of the species occur. This means that thirteen times in 2Y2 billion years one generation was called upon to assume the most difficult responsibility assigned to any individual nervous system. The role of genetic traitor emerged—active resistance to the monolithic pressure of adult domestication, a dramatic break with hive culture, escape from the very gene pool that gives continuity and safety to individuals. Neoteny requires inconceivable strength. The species, at the peak of its strength and specialized skill, and crazed by the sense that it has peaked, throws all of its resources against the youthful traitors. A genetic intelligence test results. Attempting to thwart the mutation, the species hurls its moral sanctions, its scorn, its police forces, it is wily, canny old tricks at the mutating juveniles. The species attempts to check, test and challenge the upstart renegades. If the paedomorphic rebels appear too soon, or in the wrong place—not on the Western Frontier—then they are easily crushed. The kids do not make any headway east of La Brea—too bad if they appear in Madrid or Athens or Jerusalem or Moscow. Only when the genetic hour has struck and only on the changeable Western rim can neoteny or the rejection of terminal adulthood succeed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
In the decade 1964-1974, small handful—less than 100,000—juveniles performed this extraordinary genetic feat. Using the available electronic communication technology, they formed a global network and sent out the signal—Drop Out. The adult fury unleased upon this small band of Evolutionary Agents was savage and brutal. The pressures were incalculable. The visible leaders were singled out for particular attack by the adult authority and the casualty rate was tragically high. Janis Joplin. Jimmy Hendrix. Jim Morrison. James Dean. Evil Presley. Aaliyah paid the ultimate price. Young Evolutionary Agents, however brutal the treatment they received from the hive authorities, were linked together in an unspoken peer-network. They were all together in rejecting adult authority. In spite of the scorn heaped on “hippies” they all shared a moral superiority to their parents. This gene pool was committed to change and did not offer the solidity of the traditional parent-hive. A man should take care that opponents are not permitted to disturb the equanimity of his mind. Conscious of the loftiness of his motives where they suspect sordid ones, aware of the true facts of a situation which they construe falsely, he must discover his own strength by trusting the higher laws to take care of them, while he takes care to protect his thoughts from being affected negatively. If he cannot afford to take offense at the criticisms of others, but use them as food for self-examination, neither can he afford to become elated at their praise. For it he does, then that also will be a triumph for his ego, a worship at its altar which would become in time a source of fresh weakness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
If misunderstanding comes to him from other people, he will meet it with a calm smile rather than a resentful thought. If misfortune comes to him from a source seemingly outside his own causation or control, he will meet it prudently, endure it bravely, and emerge from it profitably. If he can get nothing more, he will get the lesson of nonattachment. If he trains himself in thought control as a means of ego control, then neither flatters nor critics can reach him with their praise or blame. He comes to a point where he is not only willing to identify his own faults without having to wait for some self-made misfortune to wring the admission from him, but where he does so calmly, without emotional distress, as if he were identifying them in someone else. Even more, he will seek criticism from others in order to profit by it. The discipline should be as relentless in his periodic, critical observation of himself as he should be merciful in his observation of other people. He must never shrink from exposing his own faults to himself and he should not trouble himself with the faults of other people, except that his dealings with them render in essential to allow for such faults. Although he should heed criticisms of himself to sift them for their truth or falsity, he need not to be too concerned about them. His real judge is his own Overself, not any human being. If his actions are right in the Overself’s sight, he is under no compulsion to justify, explain, or defend them to meaner or lesser minds. He will never take personal umbrage about the criticisms other people make of him. On the contrary, he will take an impartial and objective view of them. Whoever thinks more of himself than he ought to, or lets the praise of others cause him to forget the weaknesses which he alone knows, needs to drink from the cup of humility. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
My experience of dreams since I have learned how to notice and accept them is that they are accurate and honest, utterly without deception, speaking the only language that they know. To understand them, I must not twist what they are say, but accept it, sink into it, and let them speak to me. Frank Barron writes of a dream he had: “The dream was one of almost total darkness. Gradually in the darkness I discerned shadowy figures, almost lost so shadowy they were: first one or two, then a few more, then by the tens and by the hundreds, all dimly bodies forth. Soon I realized that I could see them only from the waist up, and that from the waist down they were caught in a mire, an oozy swamp which was gradually sucking them downwards and out of sight. Then I saw that each of the figures was holding on for dear life, left hand and right hand, to the hands of two other persons in the more. Suddenly the dream became a nightmare, for in an instant of recognition and realization I knew that each one in the swamp thought that with his right hand he clasped the hand of someone on firm ground, and with his left hand he clasped the hand of someone deeper in the swamp, but that actually everyone was stuck to the same extent in the swamp and each had the same illusion. Then I recognized the dim figures in the dream, one after another; those lost figures were psychologists and psychiatrists all, and in the light of day they were connected with one another in some such wise as my dream.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
The last sentence gives Frank Barron’s own knowing of the dream, his recognition of its meaning to him. Then he writes, “The state of affairs in psychotherapy (even in such a hotbed of self-examination with the help of someone else as Berkeley, California, was in those days) was never quite that bad.” It seems to me that the dream was more accurate before a part of it was rejected. Whatever I add or take away from what is given—added or taken away by what I think of as “myself”—seems to reduce accuracy. Many psychologists and psychiatrists learn heavily on one authority or another, not standing on their own, which to me is a mire in itself. This may come about in part through the academic notion of “giving credit,” which is a bondage. If I am forever giving credit to someone else, I tie myself to the other person’s thinking, and am unaware that all creation (including mine) is free. At the same time, by giving credit to someone else I avoid responsibility. Any criticism or discredit that may arise can be referred to the other. This is illusion, for in fact, what I do with someone else’s thinking becomes my own. It stands or falls as mine, and is my responsibility. What anyone does with anything that I have written is theirs, not mine, and is their responsibility. They cannot shove it off on me. As for the vast unknowns about people that seem to be indicated in Frank Barron’s dream, I think this is true. I sometimes want to throw out this manuscript because of all that I do not know, that is now known to the “experts” either. Waiting for proof is what hangs us up all the time; we are never going to arrive at anything final, and so it seems to me best to make available to everyone what is or seems to be known for them to use in working things out for themselves, each in his own fashion, not as a “follower” believing in outside authority. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
What we find in the World rests on our beliefs. We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. That is a deep level statement, for some not easily grasped. The story of your life is the story of your relationships. Very little of what you do—or even who you are—has any significance outside the context of your relationships with other people. The English mystic, John Donne, wrote, “No man is an island…,” but even this is an oversimplification. Actually, an island is defined by its relationship to water and other land around it. We could not conceive of an island without considering its relationship to every other kind of land. Nor could we conceive of a person without considering his or her relationship to all other persons. Our relationships with others are intricately woven in and around everything we do, even those things which on the surface seem solitary and private. Take for example of one man, sitting down all alone, to read a book. The first relationship that comes into play here is between the author and reader. They must have a common language. They must have some elements of commonality in their backgrounds. They must share the common purpose of the author wanting to transmit and the reader received certain ideas of information. Next, why is the reader reading? Just for pleasure? If so, this suggests that the reader has chosen to seek pleasure by this solitary means rather than seeking it in the company of others. Maybe he is tired of dealing with others, feels uncomfortable with them or fears them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Is he reading for information? Maybe he simply wants to have information he can later use in his work or his conversations with people. Maybe he feels inferior in a particular subject and is reading the book so as to be ready and “on his toes” the next time the subject comes up. Or maybe a friend has mentioned the book and the reader wants to be able to have a lively discussion on it sometime. Regardless of the circumstances in which it is done, even the most solitary deed has ramifications and meaning, but only in the context of relationships. This is important because as you can see from a cursory look around, our relationships are in trouble. Divorce rates continue to escalate everywhere. The family is fragmenting. “When it comes to intimate passions in the martial bedroom, do you thin it is healthy or acceptable or whatever word you might use, to push…(Starting again) If two people are timid, or one persons (laughter), do you not think that they should surge forth and try something different anyway? Because then they will sort of feel better for having tried it even though at a time it may not have seemed such a good idea.” Well, I do not think they should grit their teeth and close their eyes and say, “I will, I will, I will!” However, on the other hand, it seems desirable for a couple to want to evolve, to experiment together, to move toward experiences that will enrich their relationship. Such an approach can open up an incredible spectrum of responsiveness of the intimate passions. However, do not expect to live everything. Do not expect everything to represent you—not only should you not expect that, but for Heaven’s sake, do not reject something you have not tried, saying, “I know I will not like it.” Or do not turn away after you have tried it only once—that is a big mistake. You have no idea what you are going to like or dislike until you have had some experience. And I do not know what “some” means, but I know it means more than one! #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
“Is there any such thing as normalcy in relationships involving pleasures of the flesh? Or is it up to the individuals and whatever they are comfortable with?” Our basic concept is that any practice of pleasures of the flesh taking place in private between consenting adults is acceptable. And by “consent” we do not mean in writing or anything like that. Mutual consent implies that the practice is mutually enhancing, mutually pleasurable or does not occur at either partner’s expense. “Some things, I just do not think I could handle them.” Certainly. These particular feelings are always a problem in terms of initial anticipation of something unfamiliar or something which seems contrary to your established values. You approach it with some trepidation. Take manual or oral stimulation, for example, both areas of some concern. How should it be handled? How may it affect intercourse in a relationship? Wil it become the preferred way of expression of pleasures of the flesh instead of just a variation on a theme? This rarely happens, and it also may be a good idea to consult a proper therapist or medical doctor to make sure you are being safe and properly prepared. For what it may be worth to you, I will point out that in general the higher the level of formal education people have had, the more varies are their pleasures of the flesh practices. “But what do you do if you know that your partner would like to try something new and yet it makes you feel uptight?” Why do you feel uptight? Maybe just because you have never done it. However, it could also be that you are afraid of being graceless or tasteless? You see, with pleasures of the flesh, we cannot suddenly start something new and strange just because we have heard about it or because our partner suggests it. Because it, whatever “it” may be, then becomes something to be done, an act to be performed instead of a moment to be experienced. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Pleasures of the flesh, after all, should be a spontaneous expression of your personality, how you feel at a particular moment. To turn it into a performance, as something with a goal, where you start here and do this, this and this on some kind of checklist, is to lose the capacity to express your most private self. Instead of making your goal to perform with grace and good taste, make it to me yourself: “I am me, I feel a little scared and foolish, but I would like to know what other experiences are like.” That is the first line of communication—if you are not in touch with yourself, you cannot be in touch with anyone else. However, once you are aware of your thoughts and feelings, let your partner know them. If you are afraid, say so. Perhaps together you can discover what you are afraid of and why, and perhaps your partner can help you find ways of overcoming your fears gradually. Then as you move alone the way, you will be acting in accordance with your feelings, not in spite of them. And in time you should be able to include in your lovemaking al that you now enjoy, the sharing and exchanging that is warm and familiar and understandable, as well as this wild, mad…it over here. “Sometimes it is hard to get the words out.” However, there are so many easy, simple ways to communicate without words! A touch, a glance, a sound, can say a great deal. As long as your spouse listens, a sigh can be as good as a paragraph. It is important to understand that this interaction between husband and wife, this spoken or unspoken communication, is crucial to pleasures of the flesh stimulation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
There are two basic sources of stimulation. When you approach your partner and please her with a touch, the greatest reward that comes to you is her pleasure in the approach you took. Her pleasure, communicated to you, stimulates you. The second source of stimulation is, obviously, when your partner approaches you. Both sources stimulate your intimate passions; both sources bring you pleasure. Fundamentally, if you think of any technique of approach involving pleasures of the flesh as giving of yourself to get back from your partner—it is a delightfully selfish thing! It becomes very self-center. And a moment’s reflection should make clear that climax itself, male or female, is entirely a self-centered I-me proposition. Because at that moment you are totally involved with your own experiences. However, such self-realization is a real compliment to your partner, of course, since your pleasure has been produced by the relationship between you. You have to realize that even men with a great deal of experience cannot always identify the onset or the duration of the female climax. Now, women do not have the same difficulty; you are jolly aware when the man is near completion. Your husband deserves the same privilege. He wants to be aware because it is incredibly stimulating for a man to have a climaxing woman in his arms. That does not mean you have to say, “Now, Carter!” However, if you can find a way to communicate the intensity of your feelings, you may discover that instead of detracting from your experience, you may have intensified it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Even if talking is put off until shortly afterward, it helps to share the experience. You do not have to intellectualize it to death. However, a little descriptive communication of what it was like will help your husband associate that which what he himself felt and observed. And the next time he may be more sensitive, more away of your responses, and he will know what he needs to know. That is how you develop your own private signal system, your own way of communicating without words. Then when you are caught up in that self-centered moment, when you are subjectively enjoying your own experience—as you should be—your partner can share your pleasure and be stimulated by it. When he feels that unjust criticism is levelled against him, let him remember that it is wiser to keep silent than to stir up a hornet’s nest. At such times it is his duty to extend the utmost goodwill and compassionate forgiveness to the parties concerned and to their dupes. For they act as they do through ignorance or misunderstanding. When they begin to love truly, they will begin to understand aright. To the self-actualized Christian, these are pinpricks, for he is not interested in his personal fortunes but in the Quest for truth. He has quite enough to do to attend to his own faults and to criticize himself without going about criticizing others. To turn the critical faculty on himself exclusively is the best way to improve personal character. However, because few persons can detach themselves from their own egos sufficiently, few persons are fit to be the sole judges of their own actions. It is therefore useful to ask for criticisms from other people. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Adolescence means high school and college days, driver’s license, baptism, initiation, coronation, having you own thing and your own things. It means hair here and there, brassieres and menstruation, shaving, and maybe an undeserved affliction that blows your plans and your mind—acne. It means deciding what you are going to be the rest of your life, or at least how to full in your time until you do decide. It means (if you really want to find out what it means) reading the three hundred or so books in print on the subject, as well as some of the very good ones that have gone out of print, and several thousand articles in magazines and scientific journals. For the script analyst it means a rehearsal, or a tryout before the show takes to the road. It means now you really are on the spot to answer the question, because if you do not, you may not make it: “What do you say after Hello?” or “When your parents and teachers no longer structure your time completely, how do you structure your time?” Silence can be filled in by talking about things, cars, or sports, cooking, usually a form of showing off, with points the one with the most knowledge. The script comes into play by knowing more than anybody pr less than anybody, by talking about triumphs, but not misfortunes. Another thing is to compare philosophies. Talk about quotes from Shakespear or movies. It is even okay to admit you cried during a movie, it shows a girl you have a sensitive side. A winner can be nobler or tougher, while a loser can produce bigger guilts and suffers; in between a nonwinner may be stuck with merely mediocre feelings. And do not be afraid to go to the gym. Young ladies like a man with some substance to him. This is the Life Crows, waiting for Santa Clause, who will bring a BMW with the competition package, a better football team, better times, or better teachers, parents, boy- or girlfriends. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
The Death Crowd may despise all this and spend their time in more scripty ways, smoking marijuana (stay away from that crowd), dropping LSD (can be deadly or cause severe mental problems), going on trips together, and really rapping. In any case, whichever crowd he runs with, Jeder learns what is acceptable and what is not acceptable to day and how to say it, and compares trading stamps with others of his ilk. Some persons will joke about things that probably should be taken seriously using frivolity as a defense. People who are afraid to admit their righteous and justified anger, or who are afraid to be taken seriously, may cloak matters of genuine concern in laughter. When they do this is chronically, they permit situations to be perpetuated that could be changed for the better if they dropped the humorous façade. A cleaver and even off-colour story can add zest to a gathering, but it takes a certain savouir-faire to be able to distinguish between those times when a joke will contribute enjoyable laughter to a situation and when it will bring agonizing embarrassment to the listeners. Healthier personalities are able to find humor in situations, they are able to laugh at themselves as well as at others who might strut or huff and puff in phony pretense, but they will not be addicted to jokes that inflict or harm or express malice. It should not be forgotten, however, that there are some situations, as in dictatorships, where overt hostility against the leaders of a regime might bring death or imprisonment to the rebels, as occurred to Solzhenitsyn. Under conditions of this sort, satire, jokes, and cartoons that cleverly deride the ruling regime may be the only available outlet for feelings. Furthermore, such humour may serve a valuable function in sustaining morale. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
The Sacramento Fire suppression and emergency services that preserves life and protects property at the most vulnerable times of life will always be here. They engage with their community, in risk reduction efforts, that maximize safety, fire prevention and well-being—because the best way to deal with an emergency is to prevent it. The Sacramento Fire Department promotes their culture of excellence through commitment to each other, teamwork, diversity and professional development; because their community depends on them. “My first fatal fire was a particularly tragic one, in a 9-story apartment building. The alarm came in at five-thirty in the morning. I wasn’t there on the first-in company, I was called later. There was a party in the fraternity house, and obviously a lot of alcohol had been consumed. The fire started in a chair. As we later pieced it together, a young man and woman had gone up into a third-floor room. They had a door closed between them and the fire. But the door was giving way very quickly, and the only way out for them was through the window, which was a three-story drop. The fire company had not yet arrived. The man went out to window and was hanging onto the window ledge. The young woman looked out the window and saw that she couldn’t do it. So she panicked. She opened the door and ran right through the point of origin of the fire. And by opening that door, she sealed his situation. He was hanging by his hands when the first-in company got there. There were flames blowing twenty feet out into the night over where he was. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“Of course, the young woman got a couple of lungsful of superheated air, and that was it. We found her above five feet from the fire’s point of origin. I was one of the guys who found her, and we had to put her in the bag and carry her down the stairs. When I first began, those things bothered me, then after a while I got to a point where I was better able to cope with these situations, and that bothers me even more. What struck me was the sheer stupidity of that whole situation. It just seemed like such a waste. I wound up writing an essay on it. The frustration is in seeing the same thing happen over and over and over again—the absence of sprinkler systems, smoke detectors that aren’t properly maintained, fire doors that are left propped open or with grated vents above them which allows air to feed the fire. People just never consider themselves to be potential victims of those kinds of situations. It only happens to other guys. And yet, if you’re a firefighter, you see those ‘other guys’ day after day after day. I can’t understand how some of these properties even pass city inspection. Perhaps the documents are forged or have been purchased?” The Sacramento Fire Department aims to preserve life, protect property, prevent hard, and promote excellence. Please make donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to asset them in their fire prevent duty and other programs. To help keep America a God loving, Christian community, please raise your children to love America and to love God and Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. In a afford to help America pull through the massive national deficit, please buy American made cars. American made cars used to be the envy of the World and because American car brands are offering a wide range of options, from family SUVs to electric vehicles and luxury sedans, we are now seeing a resurging interest. American made cars are equal or superior to those made overseas. The Chevrolet Trax, for instance, is a well-designed, fuel efficient, and safe SUV. American food imports have risen by 300 percent since 1999. American farmland declined by nearly 20 million acres between 2017 and 2022. As of 2022, there were 880.1 million acres of land dedicated to farming, compared to 900.1 million in 2017. The data shows there are now little more than 1.9 million farms in the country. Americans and American corporations spent $136 billion on food and beverages from other countries. It is a national security risk to lose American Farms and farmers. If there is a war, and most of our meat, produce, poultry, dairy, and fruit is coming from foreign counties, we stand the risk of starving. With war breaking out all over the World, in these uncertain times, it is very important to bring American farms back. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. As money flows, it influences further investment. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. Once the land is built on, we lose it forever. Also, to ensure that we have farmland for future use, we need to start limiting the number of people allowed to immigrant to America. Perhaps with the immigrants we do allow into America, there needs to be a diversity program to make sure we have a populations that equally represents all races of people. If Americans continue to spend money on American products, then more need to be made to keep up the inventory. When investors notice these goods are selling, it gives them the confidence to pour more money into that local business. It shows that people want these goods made in America and pressures investors to keep these goods and services in America. The jobs stay here, the business stays in American, wages naturally increase, and more money is invested to keep up with demand. This reduces the burden on the taxpayer. When you support American businesses, that money stays in our economy and can help to reduce the national debt. The government creates debt by borrowing from businesses in the private sector or from foreign countries. It also increases the national debt by spending more than it gains in tax revenue in a fiscal year. When people shop locally, more tax money stays in the economy and goes to the government. This way, it keeps more money in our national economy and keeps more jobs located in American which also sends more taxes to the government, which can again help to reduce the national debt. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
When you buy foreign good, these companies usually have lighter tax loads or exemptions, meaning less money for the nation debt, plus you are helping to strengthen these foreign nations by send more money overseas. Buying American made products is also better for the environment and helps to reduce the carbon footprint because these products do not have to travel nearly as far. Furthermore, American companies and manufacturers are held to much higher standards in regard to pollution. American companies have to be more careful about air, land, and water pollution and have proper ways to dispose of waste. Moreover, please remember to respect law and order and treat your elders with the utmost dignity and kindness possible. And take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. It is inborn in the human minds to wish to know. If this begins with the endless surface questions of a child’s curiosity, if it continues into deeper questions of a scientist’s probing investigation, it cannot and does not stop there. For the higher part of the mind will eventually come into unfoldment, that union of abstract reflective thought with mystical intuition, which is true intelligence, which needs and sees a view of the whole of things. And so, the knowing faculty enters the realm of philosophy. 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 24 of 24
Laguna Park, CA | From the Mid 500’s
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Welcome to the New Fabulous Forties! This intimate enclave of 37 homesites with available one- and two-story floorplans is the place to be in Sacramento. Waking up to a home you love sets just the right tone for what is ahead. Ventris Place offers beautifully designed homes. Danville, Residence 4, has 3 to 4 bedrooms and a loft across 1,846 square feet of living space.
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Love begins at home, and it is not about how much we do, but how much love we put in the action. #VentrisPlace
When it comes to cars that offer the ultimate driving experience, few brands can compete with BMW. Known for its precise engineering, powerful engines, and luxurious designs, BMW has earned a reputation as the best car ever engineered for driving enthusiasts.
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Hell is Empty, All the Devils are Here
Personal colouring of the truth is inevitable the moment it is given a shape in thoughts or words. If a man speaks at all—for in the divine presence he hangs his head—let it be with the high voice of true authority. Let it come out of the great stillness to shame lesser voices of the mean, the petty, and the ignorable. In this World rid of God and of moral idols, man is now alone and without a master. No one has been less inclined than Nietzsche (and in this way he distinguishes himself from the romantics) to let it be believed that such freedom would be easy. This complete liberation put him among the ranks of those of whom he himself said that they suffered a new form of anguish and a new form of happiness. However, at the beginning, it is only anguish that makes him cry out: “Alas, grant me madness…Unless I am above the law, I am the most outcast of all outcasts.” He who cannot maintain his position above the law must in fact find another law or take refuge in madness. From the moment that man believes neither in God nor in immortal life, he becomes “responsible for everything alive, for everything that, born of suffering, is condemned to suffer from life.” He who cannot maintain his position above the law must in fact find another law or take refuge in madness. From the moment that man believes neither God nor in immortal life, he becomes “responsible for everything alive, for everything, born of suffering, is condemned to suffer from life.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 26
It is he, and he alone, who must discover law and order. Then the time of exile begins, the endless search for justification, the aimless nostalgia, “the most painful, the most heart-breaking question, that of the heart which asks itself: where can I feel at home?” Because his mind was free, Nietzsche knew that freedom of the mind is not a comfort, but an achievement to which one aspires and at long last obtains after an exhausting struggle. He knew that in wanting to consider oneself above the law, there is a great risk of finding oneself beneath the law. That is why he understood that only the mind found its real emancipation in the acceptance of new obligations. The essence of his discovery consists in saying that if the eternal law is not freedom, the absence of law is still less so. If nothing is true, if the World is without order, then nothing is forbidden; to prohibit an action, there must, in fact, be a standard of values and an aim. However, at the same time, nothing is authorized; there must also be values and aims in order to choose another course of action. Absolute domination by the law does not represent liberty, but no more does absolute anarchy. The sum total of every possible amounts to slavery. Chaos is also a form of servitude. Freedom exists only in a World where what is possible is defined at the same time as what is not possible. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26
Without law there is no freedom. If fate is not guided by superior values, if chance is king, then there is nothing but the step in the dark and the appalling freedom of the blind. On the point of achieving the most complete liberation, Nietzsche therefore chooses the most complete subordination. “If we do not make of God’s death a great renunciation and a perpetual victory over ourselves, we shall have to pay for that omission.” In other words, with Nietzsche, rebellion ends in asceticism. A profounder logic replaces the, “if nothing is true, everything is permitted,” of Karamazov by, “if nothing is true, everything is permitted.” To deny that one single thing is forbidden in this World amounts to renouncing everything that is permitted. At the point where it is no longer possible to say what is black and what is white, the light is extinguished and freedom becomes a voluntary prison. It can be said that Nietzsche, with a kind of frightful joy, rushes toward the impasse into which he methodically drives his nihilism. His avowed aim is to render the situation untenable to his contemporaries. His only hope seems to be arrived at the extremity of contradiction. Then, if man does not wish to perish in the coils that strange him, he will have to cut them at a single blow and create his own values. The death of God accomplishes nothing and can only be endured in terms of preparing a resurrection. “If we fail to find grandeur in God,” says Nietzsche, “we find it nowhere; it must be denied or created.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 26
To deny the grandeur in God was the task of the World around Nietzsche, which he saw rushing toward suicide. To create was the superhuman task for which he was willing to die. He knew in fact that creation is only possible in the extremity of solitude and that man would only commit himself to this staggering task if, in the most extreme distress of mind, he was compelled to undertake it or perish. Nietzsche cries out to man that the only truth is the World, to which he must be faithful and in which he must live and find his salvation. However, at the same time he teaches him that to live in a lawless World is impossible because to live explicitly implies a law. How can one live freely and without law? To this enigma man must find an answer, on pain of death. Nietzsche at least does not flinch. He answers and his answer is bold: Damocles never danced better beneath the sword. One must accept the unacceptable and hold to the untenable. From the moment that it is admitted that the World pursues no end, Nietzsche proposes to concede its innocence, to affirm that it accepts no judgment since it cannot be judged on any intention, and consequently to replace all judgments based on values by absolute assent, and by a complete and exalted allegiance to this World. Thus, from absolute despair will spring infinite joy, from blind servitude, unbound freedom. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26
To be free is, precisely, to abolish ends. The innocence of the ceaseless change of things, as soon as one consents to it, represents the maximum liberty. The free mind willingly accepts what is necessary. If it is absolute, Nietzsche’s most profound concept is that the necessity of phenomena, without rifts, does not imply any kind of restraint. Total acceptance of total necessity is his paradoxical definition of freedom. The question “free of what?” is thus replaced by “free for what?” Liberty coincides with heroism. It is the asceticism of the great man, “the bow bent to the breaking-point.” This magnificent consent, born of abundance and fullness of spirit, is the unreserved affirmation of human imperfection and suffering, of evil and murder, of all that is problematic and strange in our existence. It is born of an arrested wish to be what one is in a World that is what it is. “To consider oneself a fatality, not to wish to be other than one is…” Nietzsche asceticism, which begins with the recognition of fatality, ends in a deification of fate. The more implacable destiny is, the more it becomes worthy of adoration. A moral God, pity, and love are enemies of fate to the extent that they try to counterbalance it. Nietzsche wants no redemption. The joy of self-realization is the joy of annihilation. However, only the individual is annihilated. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26
The movement of rebellion, by which man demanded his own existence, disappears in the individual’s absolute submission to the inevitable. Amor fati replaces what was an odium fati. “Every individual collaborates with the entire cosmos, whether we know it or not, whether we want it or not.” The individual is lost in the destiny of the species and the eternal movement of the spheres. “Everything that has existed is eternal, the sea throws it back on the shore.” Nietzsche then turns to the origins of thought—to the pre-Socratics. The philosophers suppressed ultimate causes so as to leave intact the eternal values of the principles they upheld. Only power without purpose, only Heraclitus’ “chance,” is eternal. Nietzsche’s whole effort is directed toward demonstrating the existence of the law that governs the eternal flux and of the element of chance in the inevitable: “A child is innocent and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a gamble, a wheel that spins automatically, a first step, the divine gift of being able to consent.” The World is divine because the World is inconsequential. That is why art alone, by being equally inconsequential, is capable of grasping it. It is impossible to give a clear account of the World, but art can teach us to reproduce it—just as the World reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26
The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same shore. However, at least he who consents to his own return and to the return of all things, who becomes an echo and an exalted echo, participates in the divinity of the World. By this subterfuge, the divinity of man is finally introduced. The rebel, who at first denies God, finally aspires to replace Him. However, Nietzsche’s message is that the rebel can only become God by renouncing every form of rebellion, even the type of rebellion that produces gods to chastise humanity. “If there is a God, how can one tolerate not being God oneself?” There is, in fact, a god—namely, the World. To participate in its divinity, all that is necessary is to consent. “No longer to pray, but to give one’s blessing,” and the Earth will abound in men-gods. To say yes to the World, to reproduce it, is simultaneously to re-create the World and oneself, to become the great artist, the creator. Nietzsche’s message is summed up in the word creation, with the ambiguous meaning it has assumed. Nietzsche’s sole admiration was for the egotism and severity proper to all creators. The transmutation of values consists only in replacing critical values by creative values; by respect and admiration for what exists. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26
Divinity without immortality defines the extent of the creator’s freedom. Dionysos, the Earth-god, shrieks eternally as he is torn limb from limb. However, at the same time, the represents the agonized beauty that coincides with suffering. Nietzsche thought that to accept this Earth and Dionysos was to accept his own sufferings. And to accept everything, both suffering and the supreme contradiction simultaneously, was to be kind of all creation. Nietzsche agreed to pay the price for his kingdom. Only the “sad and suffering” World is true—the World is the only divinity. Like Empedocles, who threw himself into the crater of Mount Etna to find truth in the only place where it exists—namely, in the bowels of the Earth—Nietzsche proposed that man should allow himself to be engulfed in the cosmos in order to rediscover his eternal divinity and to become Dionysos. The Will to Power ends, like Pascal’s Pensees, of which it so often reminds us, with a wager. Man does not yet obtain assurance but only the wish for assurance, which is not at all the same thing. Nietzsche, too, hesitated on this brink: “That is what is unforgivable in you. You have the authority and you refuse to sign.” Yet finally he had to sign. However, the name of Dionysos immortalized only the notes to Ariadne, which we wrote when he was mad. Be grateful to the one who criticizes you, whether he be a friend or a foe. For it his criticism be true, he renders you a real service. He may point out a flaw in your character that you have long neglected, with unfortunate results to yourself and others. His words may prompt you to remedy it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26
The wartime psychological technology was also converted to civilian consumption. Personality assessment techniques were taken over by the managerial powers and used to select and train employees. A new, gigantic industry emerged employing clinical psychologist and counselors and a new social-moral concept of human nature—adjustment. Those who matured during the self-discovery 1960s and the self-actualized 1970s did not know that the aim of personality-clinical psychology and psychiatry during the 50s was hive-adjustment. Not surprising, really, when we recall that the Firm started in all in the 1940s “Their” aim was, we recall, the preservation of the past, the prevention of change. To understand the gravity of the situation, remember: there was no concept of personal change in the 1950s. Human personality was seen as a fixed quality, which could and should be adjusted to the system. Old-style psychiatrists—formerly called alienists—guarded the psychotic. The radical wing, psychoanalysis, taught that after five years of intensive treatment, five hours a week, the patient might get enough insight to wearily adjust and to discuss his neurosis at cocktail parties. The mind has to be cleansed. Speech and thought must be undefiled by treacherous backbiting, slanderous gossip, and all unkind words. The law of recompense declares: “As you speak of other so shall you be spoken of.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 26
While I live, it is life that I explore. I feel fairly sure that his is also the best preparation for dying when it comes. One moves then easily from one into the other, not clinging to what one should (for one’s own happiness and the relief of others) give up. Throughout life it is the same, that I must always be ready to receive and ready to relinquish, in accord with the time. I am arriving at an understanding of my knowing that I must live with life, that is the problem. It seems to me futile to study the problems of infants, the problems of children, the problems of the first child, of the last child, of the menopausal age, of geriatrics; of the poor, of the rich, of the middle-class, of marginalized groups, and all the other problems. If all that time, energy, intelligence, and money were put into a study of the problem of being human, all others would be resolved. There is just one problem—a very big one, but still just one. When I lose touch with life, and the life and goings-on in me, I can trust myself to regain it through my dreams, which are good advisors. When I was small my dreams, even when I was terribly afraid of them, were helpful. When I acted on what they told me, I did not have them anymore. When I first went to school, I was exposed to tickling by other children. I fell to the ground and writhed in agony. At night I was afraid to go to sleep because of what I dreamed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26
In my dream, I was lying on bare ground in a clearing (there were no sidewalks in the village where I lived) and out of the woods that surrounded me (there were woods in the village) would stream in single file half a dozen little dwarfs (the way the children looked to me when they tickled me.) They were heading straight for my body. I knew with horror that if I moved the least little bit I would be discovered and they would pounce on me, torture me, and I would not be able to shake them off. So I lay utterly quiet—not a quiver, made myself dead. Then they changed their course to swing around me, beyond my head, and streamed off into the woods on the other side. When the last one had disappeared in the woods, I was safe. I do not recall that I made any conscious connection between this frequent dream which was always exactly the same, and my being tickled, but I learned that absolute inner stillness was something I could arrive at in my walking life when someone began to tickle me. Then I felt nothing when I was “tickled,” and the children said, “Heck, you’re no fun!” and left me. The stillness was useful to me in other emergencies, for many years. When shock threatened to disorganize me, I could arrive at immediate inner stillness and do whatever needed to be done. Later, I lost touch with that, chiefly through my strong and forceful mentor who insisted that I must think first. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26
When I had got into the habit of doing that, then the only way that I could still chaos was to make myself still, hold myself together, use force on myself to keep my exterior calm, instead of arriving at the stillness which is in me, as I think it must be in all of us. Within this stillness I do not think: if thoughts are needed, thoughts occur to me; otherwise, I act, without thinking. This comes out much better than when I think first, or “try to figure things out.” When I was sick and could not get well, and all my money had got used up and all my efforts to correct both conditions failed, and I lost faith in me, I arrived at this stillness again in another way—while awake—and it has never entirely left me since. It was a different image this time, one that I have since seen described by someone else. However, the image itself is not important, or whether it agrees with that of anyone else. The importance (to me) is in what it says: inner wisdom showing me something that in my panic I had overlooked. Trust in my dreams is something quite new to me. My early conditioning said that dreams were nonsense, to be laughed at and ignored. My later conditioning said to mistrust them (and myself) and then I did what a young man did recently in telling me about his recurrent dream: “There is a mound of boo boo, with a bright shining jewel on top. The feeling is good with it…I suppose what it is telling me is that I’m just a pile of feces.” With that good feeling? #RandolphHarris 12 of 26
In actuality, this young man had been told by his conventional family and friends that he was a horrible person because of things he did. He was made to feel dirty and foul (“smelly”). His own opinion of himself shows in his dream—what “should” be smelly and awful was pleasant to him. Playing with feces and/or obsessing with it is also a sign of schizophrenia. It also means that one has a problem with authority and/or one’s father. The mythical “cloacal sphincter” exists in the minds of confused people whose Child thinks that there is only one opening down below in both genders, which opening can be closed off at will. This leads to scripts which are difficult for more realistic people to understand, especially if the mouth is also included. Thus, a catatonic schizophrenic may close off everything at once: he keeps al his sphincters clamped down so that nothing can get in or out of his mouth, bladder, or rectum, and he may have to be tube-fed, catheterized, and clystered at regular intervals to insure his physical well-being and survival. Here the script slogan is “Beter death than let them in!” and this taken literally by the Child who controls the sphincters and who, in such cases, is very confused about how they are assembled and how they work. Most scripts, however, are centered mainly around one particular sphincter, and the psychology of the script it related to that physiological area. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26
The constant tightening of one sphincter can affect all the muscles of the body, and this muscle set is related to the person’s emotional attitude and interests and also influences the way others respond to him. This works according to the model of “infected splinter.” If Jeder has a small infected splinter in his right big toe, he will start to limp. This affects the muscles of his leg, and in order to compensate, the muscles of his back will tighten up. After a while, the muscles in his shoulders will also be affected, and pretty soon the muscles in his shoulders will also be affected, and pretty soon the muscles of his neck are involved. If he walks a lot, the disturbance in muscular balance progresses until eventually the muscles of his head and scalp are also affected; then he may get a headache. As walking becomes more difficult and his body is held more and more stiffly and the infection progresses, his circulation and digestion may become laboured. At this point, someone might say: “This is a very difficult condition to cure, since it involves his internal organs and his head as well as all the muscles in his body. This is a disease of the whole organism.” However, along comes a surgeon, and says: “I can cure the whole thing, including his fever, his headache, and all his muscular tension.” He pulls out the splinter, the infection subsides, Jeder stops limping, his scalp and neck muscles relaxes, everything returns to normal. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26
Thus, even though the condition involves the whole body, it can be cured by looking in the right place for the splinter and removing it. Then not only Jeder, but all the people around him are relived, and they can relax, too. When a sphincter is held tight, a similar chain of events happens. In order to give the sphincter traction and support, the surrounding muscles tighten up. To compensate for that, more distant muscles are affected, and eventually the whole body is involved. This is easily demonstrated. Suppose the reader, as he sits reading, tightens up his anus. He will immediately notice that this involves the muscles of his lower back and legs. If he now rises up out of his chair, keeping his anus tight, he will note that he has to purse his lips, which in turn affects the muscles in his scalp. In other words, keeping his anus tight changes the muscular dynamics of his whole body. That is exactly what happens with people whose script calls for them to “Keep a tight a** hole or you will get screwed.” Every muscle in their bodies becomes involved, including their muscle of facial expression. The facial expression influences that way other people respond to them, and in fact gives the come-on to the Child of the other person, the script antagonist, who is destined to bring about the script switch. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26
Here is how it works. Supposed we call the man with the tight anus Arkie, and his opposite number, his script antagonist, Lenka. Lenka is look for an Arkie, Arkie is looking for a Lenka. Lenka knows instantly when she has found an Arkie because of his facial expression. She confirms her Child’s intuitive judgment in the course of their conversation as he reveals his attitudes and interests. Lenka’s role in the script of an Arkie is to bring about the script switch. Arkie’s counterscript is to keep tight at all times, but his script is something else. No matter how hard he tries to keep tight according to the parental precept, sooner or later he drops his guard for a moment, and then hos script takes over. In this moment of weakness, he relaxes. That is just what Lenka has been waiting for. She pulls the switch, and somehow or other, Arkie “gets screwed” as she moves in to fulfill her mission. And as long as Arkie tries to keep a tight anus, he is going to “get screwed again and again. That is how the script works—unless it calls for him to be a winner, and then he is the one who will do the screwing, as in the same of some anal financiers. Thus, the script analyst thinks sphincter so he will know what he is dealing with. The patient who gives up his script is much more relaxed in all the muscles of his body. The woman who formerly kept a tight anus, for example, will stop squirming in her chair, and the one who kept a tight vagina will no longer sit with her arms and legs tensely crossed and her right foot wrapped tightly around the inside of her left ankle. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26
With these remarks about the autocrats of the dinner table, who teach their children which muscles to anchor their bodies to for the rest of their lives, we conclude our survey of those incluences which are most important in later childhood, and are now ready to consider the next stage in the development of the script. When a man, who was once the bright-eyed, optimistic young professional becomes disenchanted with his career because his coworkers are suffering from apathy and do not want a sense of community. Instead of wanting to connect at work, the other employees wanted to seek out their friendly bartender. This can lead to career problems, and can out stress on your wife, which causes her to get sick. You will notice as your dissatisfaction with work increases, your wife’s health will further decline. And anytime you and your wife have a conversation, one of two things will happen: Either your husband will start to argue or he will become morosely silent. The combination of the headaches, the money problems and the quarreling produce a tremendous strain on a wife—and it will begin to show. People will notice that your wife is missing club meetings, claiming she was too sick to attend. Her normally sunny personality will take on a sharp edge. Her face will become pinched and drawn. The beauty will still be there, but will lose its conversion-stopping quality. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26
Her relations with her husband will further become more strained. He might decide to nurse his frustrations with food, and soon his shirts will begin to stretch at the wait. His collars will become too tight; the sight of him might began to repulse his wife. Their life involving pleasures of the flesh will deteriorate to an occasional few moments of physical intimacy before they drop off to sleep. A couple will realize that they are drifting apart, and in an effort to regain some of the closeness, they will do things like read books on love and relationships. If he speaks at all—for in the divine presence he hangs his head—let it be with the high voice of true authority. Let it come out of the great stillness to shame lesser voices of mean, the petty, and ignoble. What is permissible about such topics in private talk may not be in printed or public statement. Abrasive, provocative, violent, or hostile speech is objectionable and unsuited to a philosopher. You keep silent and It speaks; you speak and It is silent. He must always remember that what he feels is not necessarily felt by everyone else, that caution and restraint in speaking of it to others need to be exercised. The more speech and thought are kept free from negative statements about other faiths, other teachings, other person, and other organizations, and the more we practise courtesy and silence in matters where we do not agree with them, the better will it be for our true development. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26
Many people wonder, “A wife should have the same right to ask for pleasures of the flesh as her husband, is that not true?” The same privilege, of course. However, there is a slight difference. A female, no matter how liberated she may be, is often more reluctant to deliberately express her desire for intimate passions, and for what she assumes to be good physiological reason. She usually waits for some signal from the male before she makes an overture because she has been led to believe—and therefore really fears—that any indication of her interest in pleasures of the flesh might place him in the position of wanting to give something he may be physically incapable of producing at the moment. In trying to protect him from what she anticipates may happen—the inability to be “excited”—she sometimes managers to eliminate that very stimulation which he would benefit from: knowing that he is desired for pleasures of the flesh. I think we can put that problem aside for now by simply assuming that when either partner approaches the other under mutually acceptable circumstances, functions involving pleasures of the flesh will occur. If it does not, then the greatest mistake in the World is for either partner to persist and force the issue or to feel rejected. If you are in the mood, you should always let your partner know. Always. Provided that you remain sensitive to your partner’s responses, you can’t importune too much. You can importune too little. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26
When a relationship is unfriendly or irritating, there is often some fault on both sides, although more heavily on one particular side. If the submissive wishes or is compelled to continue the relationship, or one’s conscious troubles one, one must consider those faults which lie on one’s side alone, and try to correct them. Neither one’s personal feelings, nor even those of the other individual, are so important—for they are both egotistic—as the need of self-improvement and self-purification. When dealing with the impulsive, independent, irritable, but large-heated type, do not offer criticism, however constructive, and do not preach. Offer instead a silent example of superior conduct, as this may be followed. Do not answer angry words with the same kind but change the subject or remain silent. Show warm appreciation of the other’s good work or deeds or qualities; such favourable notice may create harmony. Un unfailingly kind. When men are criticized by other great people, they should be all ears. When they are criticized by unworthy people, they should be quite deaf. The capacity to see humor in situations and to respond with laughter is an indication of being well. Loss of the ability to laugh at oneself and at comic situations is one of the early symptoms of more serious personality disorders. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26
When a person can laugh even in potentially grim situations, it implies some degree of freedom from the press of date and circumstances. People who were enslaved in America during the era of slavery could find something to laugh at, though they lived tortured lives and a hairbreadth from death. Laughter is a response that can be made only by persons who have transcended their animal heritage as well as the conformity-producing pressures of society. Laughter is defiance of brute necessity, a proclamation of freedom, and the ability to transcend the limits of otherwise grim circumstances. Of course, there are rough norms defining the appropriateness or inappropriateness of laughter. Schizophrenics will often laugh in situations where a more intact person might weep or become angry. However, a good sense of humour, the ability to find something ludicrous in situations, is not only a social asset; it is an indication that a person is able to do more than just struggle to exist. One of the major factors found in high-level functioning persons is a childlike sense of humour. Children reported that teachers who use humour in the classroom reduce the psychological distance between teacher and child, create a more agreeable atmosphere in the classroom, and make it easier to concentrate. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26
The Sacramento Fire Department works consistently to improve upon current emergency responses to enhance the delivery of fire, rescue, and emergency medical services to the community. “We were at a fire with a neighboring fire company. My guys were up on the roof with them, opening it up. The roof collapsed. There was a big roar. When that roof caved in, my first concern was, where are my guys? Each one on my team has a radio, and I knew where they were at. Everyone was okay. We were forcing entry in the back door and had a hell of a time with it. I looked up and saw this fireman, he was pitch black and his helmet shield was melted. He was on the coping of a roof next door. The was a ladder there, the guys rolled it over, and I ran up. I said, “Sit in the rain water.” His fire coat was burning. The guy behind him was yelling, “Roll, roll.” He stood up, hopped around, wanting to get down. I guided him down the ladder. I didn’t want to touch his a** because his pants were down, and it was all raw skin. We helped him to the ambulance. We tried to take a line over the roof next door, but we couldn’t het near the fire roof because of the heat. When we finally got it, we knew what we were doing to find, because there was no possible way anybody could have lived through that. But you have to get them. You have to get all of them. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26
“Everybody was exhausted. It was cold. The first thing we found was a child. I’ll never forget it. The kid was nice-looking, he had a big smile, but he was just completely burned up. He had roof and tarpaper over him. It’s not going to help them, but you bust your back to get them out as fast as you can. You want to show that you tried to help them. That bothers you forever. Three firefighters were killed in that fire. We found two pretty fast, and we dug and dug looking for the third guy. Finally there was another shift waiting, and Deputy Commissioner X told us to get out and let the fresh guys take over. I went back to the firehouse, took a shower, put my civilian clothes on, and went back to the fire. I wasn’t going to leave until they found him. I sat in the command van until they found him. I think he tried to run toward the front of the roof. It took a lot of overhauling to find him. Then I felt a little at ease. They had at least found his body. There was something left of him. When you go to the funerals and wakes, you look at the little kids, and they have no idea. Someday those little kids will realize what happened, but at the time, at the funerals, they have no real idea. It’s sad. I remember being there when I was a boy.” The man who requites me with ingratitude or betrayal does not deserve my resentment anger or hatred but my pity. Someone, somewhere, will requite him in the same way. The other part will be what he does to himself by strengthening the faults which led him to act in this way. And these in turn, although inside himself, must lead to the eventual appearance of troubles corresponding to them outside himself. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26
The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to working closely with fire service organizations and other proactive groups to enhance solutions to the fire problem. The services provided by the agency include: arson investigations, fire prevention safety in buildings, boiler and pressure vessel safety, the program for petroleum and chemical tanks, collecting and analyzing fire reports, and the personnel standards and education for the firefighters in Sacramento. Awaken compassionate thoughts and actions by helping others realize that, like our Saviour, they too have compassion for others. Please make donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to asset them in their fire prevent duty and other programs. To help keep America a God loving, Christian community, please raise your children to love America and to love God and Jesus Christ. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. In a afford to help America pull through the massive national deficit, please buy American made cars. American made cars used to be the envy of the World and because American car brands are offering a wide range of options, from family SUVs to electric vehicles and luxury sedans, we are now seeing a resurging interest. American made cars are equal or superior to those made overseas. The Chevrolet Trax, for instance, is a well-designed, fuel efficient, and safe SUV. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26
Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. As money flows, it influences further investment. If Americans continue to spend money on American products, then more need to be made to keep up the inventory. When investors notice these goods are selling, it gives them the confidence to pour more money into that local business. It shows that people want these goods made in America and pressures investors to keep these goods and services in America. The jobs stay here, the business stays in American, wages naturally increase, and more money is invested to keep up with demand. This reduces the burden on the taxpayer. When you support American businesses, that money stays in our economy and can help to reduce the national debt. The government creates debt by borrowing from businesses in the private sector or from foreign countries. It also increases the national debt by spending more than it gains in tax revenue in a fiscal year. When people shop locally, more tax money stays in the economy and goes to the government. This way, it keeps more money in our national economy and keeps more jobs located in American which also sends more taxes to the government, which can again help to reduce the national debt. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26
When you buy foreign good, these companies usually have lighter tax loads or exemptions, meaning less money for the nation debt, plus you are helping to strengthen these foreign nations by send more money overseas. Buying American made products is also better for the environment and helps to reduce the carbon footprint because these products do not have to travel nearly as far. Furthermore, American companies and manufacturers are held to much higher standards in regard to pollution. American companies have to be more careful about air, land, and water pollution and have proper ways to dispose of waste. Moreover, please remember to respect law and order and treat your elders with the utmost dignity and kindness possible. And take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. It is inborn in the human minds to wish to know. If this begins with the endless surface questions of a child’s curiosity, if it continues into deeper questions of a scientist’s probing investigation, it cannot and does not stop there. For the higher part of the mind will eventually come into unfoldment, that union of abstract reflective thought with mystical intuition, which is true intelligence, which needs and sees a view of the whole of things. And so, the knowing faculty enters the realm of philosophy. 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 26 of 26
The Winchester Mystery House
Experience an unforgettable journey back to the time of kings and queens with this entry ticket for The Winchester Mansion in Santa Clara, California which was the residence of Sarah L. Winchester. Take advantage of this fascinating experience. After tour, there will be time enjoy the mansion’s splendor at your own pace. You might even discover secret passages.
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 is the Cry of Outraged Innocence
When I went to Hawaii in 1934 and the traffic in Honolulu looked like madness—totally disorganized—this was because it was so different from the order that I was used to. I was like the little boy who had has a crooked body all his life and when the doctor straightened it, he turned to his father and said, “He made me crooked!” The Honolulu traffic looked “crooked” to me. However, as I walked around doing errands on many different days, still failing to find any order in the driving, gradually I became aware that there were no accidents, not even near-collisions—and nobody got angry at anyone else. Then I became aware that the drivers of the cars—especially the Hawaiians without formal educations, and the other natives—were doing what I did: noticing. There were some rules—like driving on the right-hand side of the road and stopping for pedestrians, but the drivers went clear over on the left-hand side any time that was appropriate either to moving on their way or to getting out of someone else’s, and cars stopped as soon as a pedestrian stepped from the sidewalk to the street, even if this happened in the middle of the block. The driving was very much person-to-person, with recognition on both sides. Usually there was just an instant of this recognition between driver and driver or pedestrian and driver, but there was this moment of awareness of each other, of human “speaking” to human, and although I did not know anyone I felt surrounded by friends. When I had got the hang of it, I went right into Honolulu and drove the way that everyone else did. I have never had so much fun driving in my life. It was even more fun than driving in the Southwest where people were scarce and noticed each other when they passed on the road. In Honolulu there was no lack of people and cars, and still there was this noticing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
In Hawaii then, when I was thirty-two-year-old, there were many ways in which I arrived at my own normal, which I could know by the feeling of ease and happiness, of having left an alien World and come home for the first time in my life. I had felt that way before with a place—the land, the country—as in the Southwest, but never with so many people. It seems to me that the present “chaos” in psychotherapy has something in common with the “chaos” that I saw in Honolulu traffic. I have read several books in which many or several psychotherapists were included, sometimes presenting their cases separately, sometimes discussing cases or psychotherapy together. There is so much difference and differing among them that when I first read them it looked like madness: Does not anyone know what he is doing? (If they knew what they were doing, they would all be doing it the same way—going by rules which I could recognize.) Gradually they sorted themselves out in my mind into two groups: those who are following some Authority by copying him, and those who are struggling to find their own way, which seems to have the common base (or direction) of spontaneity, or responsiveness, of being in touch with myself and what is going on in me (the therapist) as well as what is going on in the person who has come for help. Should we live with people in any other way? These individual strugglers, as far as I know them, have a good deal of acceptance of and respect for each other even when they disagree, and although their apparent methods are so different that they seem not to be the same thing. There is “client-centered therapy” and there is “communication” therapy and there is therapy through swimming instruction and there are therapists who fall asleep repeatedly during therapy sessions, as part of the therapy, and when they wake up report their dreams to the person who has come for help. There is therapy by “guided daydreams,” and there is “transactional analysis” which makes clear to people the games that they are playing with each other and helps them to give up these games. Essentially, all of these methods achieve, when successful, a switch from dishonesty and competition to honesty and cooperation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
All of them attempt to relieve us of what is binding us. However, when a therapist (or anyone) tries to copy what is spontaneous, immediately this is defeated. When I try to copy, spontaneity is lost. I reverse what I have seen and liked and want to follow. With my intellect I have picked up a picture of what I think I “should” do or be. The more that I do this, the more inflexible I become, and spontaneity cannot happen no matter how much I wish it to. What I have seen in the therapist (or other person) whom I am “copying” is the result of an effort toward spontaneity and free response. I am copying the result. The more that I hold myself to it, the farther I am from my aim. (My aim is not a goal, but my direction.) The happenings which preceded the result are missing. What should come second has been placed first. Then, what should come first has become impossible. It is very easy for me to read myself incorrectly afterward even when I have moved in the right way. I mistake what happened for what I did myself. It happened by itself through me. However, later, I take credit for myself, as for something that “I” have done. A young therapist described a therapy session to me in this way: “This fellow—a young guy, nineteen—was laughing at himself and his friends for sitting on the beach day after day laughing at themselves for the way they were ‘all messed up’—mixed up in homosexuality, doing crazy things that got them nowhere. They called themselves names and ridiculed themselves, and he went on doing this with me. I could not get him to feel anything. He just kept on laughing at what dopes they all were, including him. So then, I started laughing too, laughing with him at his being such a dope—and then he got mad, and began to say how he really felt about it. Then he knew that what he was really feeling was not funny.” After that, they began to move in therapy. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
I asked the therapist, “Was that something that you figured out and then did, or did it happen and afterward you saw the sense of it and why it was successful?” He looked a bit disconcerted and unhappy for a moment—the way that I have often felt when I have realized that what I have taken credit for happened through me but was not done by me (except in the objective sense that it could be observed as having been done by me). Then he said that it had happened to his surprise, and afterward he figured out why it had worked the way it did. The way that he told it sounded as though he had figured it out first. I do this too, in part because this is our habit, but also because the other way around is acceptable to very few people. The Age of Reason insists that we figure things out first, then do them. Any other way may seem unrealistic. However, if consciousness does not prematurely share in the perceptual experience, in this connection there are many situations in ordinary experience which demonstrate that much can be reacted to more effectively. There are many illustrations, to further highlight this illustration, of man’s capacity to register perception accurately in space and time categories provided that conscious cognitive processes are postponed. With this knowledge of man’s superior judgment when using his precognitive capacities for certain tasks, the army trains its artillery observers to utilize their capacities to the utmost. The observers must always call the position of a shot as quickly as possible—there must be “zero delay” between noting the fall and shouting out the location. All beginners wish to estimate with the aid of rational judgment, but experience has shown that there is unquestioned superiority of performance when rational estimation is suspended. The first flashing quick guess turns out to be the best guess. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Hive-moralists for the millennia have lamented the innate, pervasive tendency of human beings to kick-out in bursts of irrationality and pleasure seeking. It is looked on as extra-social self-indulgence. There is a distinction between two very different hedonic reactions. Pleasures are hedonic experiences caused by activating higher-faster-future brains at the service of and controlled by self. Satisfactions are intoxication and narcotic escape experiences caused by activating slower-lower past circuits. Both experiences take consciousness away from domesticated robot-hood. Pleasures move one up from hive routine into the self-actualized future. Intoxicants, tranquilizers and narcotics move one back to the past—down from domestication, to primate and mammalian instinctual satisfactions. Civilized terrestrial humans, robotically and blindly harnessed to species tasks, and dependent upon gene-hive rewards for duty well-done, need to slowdown, turnoff, escape domesticated pressure. Boredom and social inefficiency would result without some sequential opportunity to regress from hive morality, to activate the primitive circuits of the brain. Intoxicants and narcotic escapes are built-in devices to allow ritual regression to earlier, lower, slower stages. That they are conventionally naughty is their power and delight. The dutiful domesticated adult brain and the retiring elder brain insectoids live in a reality centered upon hive duty. The ten earlier brains are there, but are taboo, often blanked from consciousness. Brains are turned on and off by means of neurotransmitter chemicals. Civilization provides ritualistic means of allowing reactivation of the earlier brains—temporarily naughty immorality, programed animalism—permissible retrogression in every successful eleventh and twelfth stage domesticated adult and retiring elder brain. Each civilization produces ritualistic drug taking which allows temporary animalistic reversion. This process is best seen in the Japanese culture—surely the most insectoid society in World history. The Japanese have developed ritualistic inebriation which permits even the most dutiful to regress to animalism as seen in stages four to six—rodent-brained toddlers, mammalian-brained demanding kids, and monkey-brained territorial children. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The German culture, another highly domesticated-duty society also allows its citizens a scheduled intoxication-regression in the Fasching-Carnival. Even the sober, tidy Swiss permit each other a Springtime return to pseudo-bestiality when these paragons of the domesticated adult get tipsy and lurch around like sodden bears shamelessly littering the streets of Basel with confetti! Masks are worn at these carnival regressions—the Burghers do not want to have their inner animals seen. Other methods for ceremonial return of the animal-brain-stages involve totems exhibited at athletic events, parades, and social gatherings. The unrepressed emotions released at these events are not sexual, however. Genital satisfaction is not the central motive. Middle-age, middle-class folks return to preadolescence and become exhibitionistic monkeys or noisy, often savage mammals as when thousands of spectators engage in physical violence directed against the territorial rival in soccer games around for the World, for example. The orchestrated revival of earlier brains is a basic issue in any stable gene pool. Each of our twelve terrestrial brains has its own ego, demands activation and must be allowed to cut loose on some regular basis. The best-run civilizations have worked out a weekly return of the regressed. Domesticated adults work dutifully Monday through Friday. On Saturday they are allowed to assemble in animal-totem competitions—the Bulldogs of Yale versus the Horned Toads of Texas Christian. Saturday night the socially approved intoxicant is imbibed, permitting a temporary explosion of mammalian territorial competition and sexual low-jinks. Sunday morning the chastened and hung-over domesticate attends a DNA adoration ceremony in which the dignified gene-hive Creator is recognized, the brief foray back to animalism exercised. Purged and reborn, the domesticate adult hum-ant is ready to start the next week of hive duty. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Psychological “trading stamps” are called that because they are used the same way as the little blue, green, or brown stamps that people get as a premium when they buy groceries or gasoline. The following are some observations concerning commercial trading stamps. They are usually obtained as a bonus in the course legitimate business transactions; that is, the person must buy groceries to get trading stamps. Most people who collect them have a favourite colour. If offered other colours, they may not bother to take them, or may give them away. Some people, however, will collect any type of trading stamp. Some people paste them into their little “books” every day, and others at regular intervals, while still others leave them lying around until some day when they are bored and have nothing better to do, and then they paste them up all at once. Some neglect them until they need something, and then count them in the hope that they have enough to get it free from the trading-stamp store. Some people like to talk about them, look through the catalogue together, boast about how many stamps they have, or discuss which colour offers better merchandise or better bargains. Some people save only a few and then turn them in for trivial premiums; others save more, and get bigger bonuses; and still other become deeply involved in trying to collect enough stamps for one of the really large prizes. Some people know that the trading stamps are not really “free” because their cost must be added to the cost of the groceries; some really do not stop to think about this; some know it, but pretend they do not, because they enjoy both the collecting and the illusion of getting something for nothing. (In some cases, the cost of the trading stamps is not added to the cost of the groceries; in such cases, the grocer must take their cost as his own loss. However, in principle, it is the customer who pays for the trading stamps.) Some people prefer to go to “straight” grocery stores where they pay only for the groceries; with the money they save, they can then buy their own merchandise wherever and whenever they want to. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
For those who are eager to get something “free,” it is possible to buy counterfeit trading stamps. It is usually hard for a person who seriously collects trading stamps to give them up. He may put them in a drawer and forget about them for a while, but if he suddenly gets a large fistful in some special transaction, he may pull them out again to count them and see what they are good for. Psychological trading stamps are the currency of transactional “rackets.” When Jeder is young, his parents teach him how to feel when things get difficult” most commonly, angry, hurt, guilty, scared, or inadequate; but sometimes stupid, baffled, surprised, righteous, or triumphant. These feelings become rackets when Jeder learns to exploit them and play games in order to collect as many as possible of his favourite, partly because in the course of time this favourite feeling becomes sexualized, or is a substitute for feelings involving pleasures of the flesh. To further highlight this illustration, much “justified” grownup anger belongs in this category, and is usually the payoff in a game of “Now I Have Got You, You Male Chauvinistic Pig.” The patient’s Child is full of suppressed anger, and he waits until someone does something to justify his expressing it. Justification means that his Adult goes along with his Child in saying to his Parent: “No one can reasonably blame me for getting angry under such conditions.” Thus relieved of Parental censure, he turns on the offender and says in effect: “Ha! No one can blame me, so now I have got you,” et cetera. In transactional language, he gets a “free” mad, that is, free of guilt. Sometimes it works differently. The Parent says to the Child: “You are not going to let him get away with that, are you?” and the Adult sides with the Parent: “Anyone would get angry under such conditions.” The Child may be only too happy to comply with these urgings; or on the other hand, he may be as reluctant to do battle as Ferdinand the Bull, but is forced to enter the fray. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Even after Sade’s time, men of letters continue to dominate the scene. Romanticism, Lucifer-like in its rebellion, is only useful for adventures of the imagination. Like Sade, romanticism is separated from earlier forms of rebellion, at this stage, forgets its positive content. Since God claims all that is good in man, it is necessary to deride what is good and choose what is evil. If not to the exercise, hatred of death and of injustice will lead, therefore, at least to the vindication, of evil and murder. The struggle between Satan and death in Paradise Lost, the favourite poem of the romantics, symbolizes this drama; even more profoundly in that death (with, of course, sin) is the child of Satan. To combat evil, the rebel renounces good, because he considers himself innocent, and once again gives birth to evil. The romantic hero first brings about the profound and, so to speak, religious blending of good and evil. This type of hero is “fatal” because fate confounds good and evil without man being able to prevent it. Fate does not allow judgments of value. It replaces them by the statement that “It is so”—which excuses everything, except for the Creator, who alone is responsible for this scandalous situation. The romantic hero is also “fatal” because, to the extent that he increases in power and genius, the power of evil increases in him. Every manifestation of power, every excess, is thus covered by this “It is so.” That the artists, particularly the poet, should be demoniac is a very ancient idea, which is formulated provocatively in the work do the romantics. At this period there is even an imperialism of evil, whose aim is to annex everything, even the most orthodox geniuses. “What made Milton write with constraint,” Blake observes, “when he spoke of angels and of God, and with audacity when he spoke of demons and of hell, is that he was a real poet and on the side of the demons, without knowing it.” The poet, the genius, man himself in his most exalted image, therefore cry out simultaneously with Satan: “So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, farewell remorse…Evil, be thou my good.” It is the cry of outraged innocence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
If God has a favourite place on Earth, she thought, it must be Colorado. Surely God would be proudest of his handiwork in that magnificent state: the overpowering beauty of the mountains, with their dancing crystal streams and tall sweet-smelling pines. Of all the places she had lived, Trish loved Colorado and its mountains the most. The solid, reliable, never-moving mountains symbolized everything Paris wanted her life to be, but seldom was. As the daughter of an Air Force officer, Trish lived in seventeen states during her first seventeen years. In those years, her family never bought a house, joined clubs or made any lasting friends. Trish longed for one good, reliable friend, but because of the constant moving, she made only casual acquaintances. Her personal relationships were limited almost exclusively to her family; her father, mother, sisters, and two brothers. Trish’s father was hard to love—easy to pity, but difficult to cherish. He seemed to live on the verge of disaster. He drank so heavily that it damaged his career, and that caused him to drink even more. In his early Air Force years, he had loved to fly, but later his superiors wisely kept him on the ground and passed him over for promotion again and again. The burden of keeping the family together fell to Trish’s mother, a matronly, above average weight woman who seemed to draw from a cornucopia of love and support. She kept her husband’s uniforms pressed and shoes polished. In the morning, she would nurse his hangovers enough so that he could at least report for duty standing up. And when he could not stand up, she would call and make excuses for him. She managed the family budget, helped the children with their homework, and sand them to sleep at night. She was the bedrock of Paris’s life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
During Trish’s last two teenage years, her father was stationed in Colorado. They were the best two years of her life. She felt she had at last found a home: in the safe, dependable, protective mountains. However, they were transferred again—to California, where everyone moved constantly, and the mountains were a fuzzy image on the horizon. She went to small college and majored in home economics. She wanted to get married and make a comfortable, stable home. Yet she finished college without marrying and took a job as a clerk at the Air Force base. She lived alone in a small apartment, and hated it. Emile came into her life in an ordinary way. She met him at the complaint desk of the electric company, where she had gone to check a mistake in her bill. He was courteous in handling her problem, handsome behind his wire glasses and bold enough to ask her to dinner. She felt a ruse in her pulse as she dressed for the date and thought, this must be how love begins. And so it was. The dinner date led to movies, motor trips, ski weekends and finally an engagement ring. Their bouts of pleasures of the flesh were hot, but restrained, she having no intention of going to bed with a man who was not her husband. Emile was patient, and seemed more interested in her as a potential wife than someone as just a partner for pleasures of the flesh. Though she did not know it at the time, what attracted her to Emile the most was his reliability. He had worked for the electric company for four years when she met him and was prepared to spend his entire career reporting to the same building in the same city. He drank a single whiskey and water before dinner and nothing afterward. At parties, his limit was a self-imposed two drinks. He arrived home at five-thirty every evening, went to bed after the eleven o’clock news and was content to take the same vacation every year. For the first few years of their marriage, Trish felt she had everything she could ever want: her husband, her son and daughter, her own house, her neighbourhood, and, most of all, an address that never changed. She loved it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Them Emile got The Promotion. From the time he first started talking about it, Trish thought of “The Promotion” in capital letters. It was an unheard-of opportunity—the chance to jump over three levels of management to Senior Vice President, Customer Relations. His salary doubled, but so did his responsibilities. He seldom got home before eight o’ clock in the evening and often went to the office on Saturdays. Trish did not know whether to be ecstatic or depressed. The extra money was marvelous, but the new job upset her routine. Emile spent less time with her and the children. He began to drink more—straight whiskey, without the water, sometimes without ice. Odd-jobs about the house simply went undone. When she reminded him about them, he would growl, “Hire someone. We can afford it.” By the time Trish found out about Kim, Emile had been sleeping with her for more than three years. Trish was not shocked as much by the fact of the affair as she was by Emile’s ability to keep it from her as long as she did. She knew husbands had affairs and that eventually wives found out about them. What she did not expect was that the affair would go so long undetected and that when confronted with it, her husband would admit to it without shame or remorse. “Of course I’m sleeping with her,” Emile had said. “Every chance I get. Do you think I go to all the trouble of meeting her just so we can play gin rummy?” “But now that I know about it, it has to stop,” Trish had demanded. “What the hell for?” he had laughed. “Kim’s a lot more fun to be with than you are, and one hell of a lot better lay. Face it, Paris, you’re a great mother and queen of the homemakers, but as a wife, not so much.” Panic-stricken, seeing her perfectly neat and orderly life crumbling around her, Paris had begged Emile to consider the children, their home, their thirteen-year marriage. She appealed to his sense of duty, of right and wrong, of stability. None of it worked. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
She told her Elder about it in confidence; he suggested a trial separation. However, this she would not do. It would bring down the framework of domestic normality she had so carefully built around them. She told Emile’s parents about it. When they confronted him and demanded he end the affair, he merely laughed again. All of Trish’s friends recommended the standard California solution: divorce. She balked at the idea for several reasons, not the least of which was her devout Mormon faith. Also, she feared the effect a “broken home” would have upon her children. And she felt that the promises she had made on her wedding day created an unbreakable bond. Paris was married, for better or worse, for life. It was her duty. Refusing to let anything upset the stability of her home life, Trish continued to cook the meals, chauffeur the children, and wax the floors. However, the gnawing sense of loss and disruption was taking its toll on her. She too began to drink a lot, and with the drinking came fear and guilt, two emotions which eventually led her to seek therapy. I felt she would mesh neatly with our group, and I overcame her early objections to joining it. I was right. The trouble was, she helped with everyone’s problems but her own. After a time, I began to view our discussions about Trish’s problems as a series of paths leading to brick walls. When the conversation progressed to a point at which she held a strong position, it would stop. Trish was sad when her husband was gone late at night, but as soon as he came home, she would feel a sense of relief. However, moments later, she would feel dirty because she knew he had been with that other woman. It made her want to cry and scream, but she never did because she felt it was her duty to be married for life and the children getting their sleep was more important than her feelings. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
What has been lacking in your life at times when you have found yourself bored, miserable, or even sick? What can you do about these lacks? Upon whom do you depend to gratify these needs? What does your dependency “cost” you in the way of submission to the wishes of the person upon whom you are dependent? What you do believe you cannot do without? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. showed that it is possible not only to survive, but moreover to transcend lethal circumstances; he struggled to survive and was ultimately murdered to end segregations and demand that African Americans be protected under the law. Can you identify what you need to enhance your life, and learn the skills that will enable you to gratify these needs? This is how to overcome insecurity through action—the way of independent security. Whenever you become sick—with a cold, influenza, mononucleosis, or other illness—reflect upon your life and see if you can identify an episode of dispiritedness brought on by loss of someone’s love, an abrupt change in way of life (such as moving to another residence), or some failure. Or consider whether your style of life or family role is preventing you from gratifying certain basic needs; prolonged deprivation may have stressed or dispirited you. Sickness is a splendid opportunity to reflect upon your way of living, so that when you have recovered, you can make changes that will reduce the likelihood of becoming sick again. Sickness is often an indication that one’s habitual way of life has not yielded those basic need gratifications that sustain health and keep a person growing in vital ways. When all is not well in your life, it is good to record dreams for hints as to possible changes you could make to revitalize yourself. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Getting back to nature—a walk in the woods or by the sea, away from machinery and work—can provide an opportunity to meditate and gain perspective upon an unsatisfying life style. Sometimes dispiritedness will hit one without the symptoms of physical illness, but rather in signs of disinterest in life, loss of ability to enjoy life, and feelings of worthlessness. The healthy person can recognize these as indicators of time to seek professional help, time to make changes, or time to seek out good, listening friends. In choosing commitments, one needs to examine deeply the possibility of being able to change one’s mind, to keep the mind free and to leave psychologically, spiritually, or physically when one chooses. Avoidance of false, unworthy commitments is an indicator of the healthy personality. Especially during periods of dispiritedness, you are vulnerable to persons who offer easy ways out. Racial animosity is really a pathological state which clouds vision and falsifies judgment. It raises prejudice to the dignity of a principle. Hate is a mental poison. It is the worst possible sin of our thought life. It damages those we hate, infects our own environment, and in the end, it severely damages ourselves. The ability to treat all kinds and classes of people equally, and with universal goodwill, does not imply the inability to observe the comparative differences and even defects among them. It is not enough to possess a wide tolerance in these matters; it should also be a wise tolerance. Otherwise one may merely condone and increase self-destruction. Not to tell another person “No!” when all prudence, intelligence, foresight, and experience bid us do so is simply moral and verbal cowardice. He can be polite without being fulsome and effusive. His sincerity will dictate the proper measure. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The need for finer manners where coarse vulgarity, aggressive obscenity, and raucous noisiness prevail speaks for itself to those who seek escape from materialism. In an atmosphere of disorderly or non-existent manners, materialistic thought flourishes even more. He has much contempt for human folly but much tolerance for human weakness. He will keep serene, even-tempered, detached amid the recurring irritations of life and the petty provocations from persons who cross his path. They may face him, but they cannot hurt, much less infuriate, him. However, if he identified himself with the ego alone, all this aloofness of spirit would not be possible. However, it is not only inner calmness that he needs to acquire; inner clearness is also requisite. Both the intellect with its ideas and the character with its qualities should share this effort to secure greater clarification. His tolerance is so vast that he will not intrude upon others’ freedom, not even to the extent of seeking the betterment of their character or the improvement of their mind. As a man advances in inward development, gaining ever richer experience in fresh embodiments, he comes to see that he will gain more by practising co-operation than by selfishly seeking his own isolated benefit alone. It is as such moments of remembrance that he is here also to ennoble his character that it becomes easier to extend goodwill to those he dislikes, or who dislike him, those who have brought him trouble and others who radiate materialism or destructiveness. It would be a mistake to believe that because he makes no sharp exclusions and practises such all-embracing sympathy toward every possible way of looking at life he ends up in confusion and considers right and wrong to be indistinguishable from each other. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Instead of falling into mental vacillation, he attains and keeps mental integrity, a genuine individuality which no narrow sect can overcome. Instead of suffering from moral dissolution, he expands into moral largeness which sees that no ideal is universal and exclusively right. Although generally he will be infinitely considerate of other persons, there will be certain situations wherein he will be infinitely hard upon them and utterly indifferent to their feelings. All are benefited by always remembering the practice of harmlessness towards all creatures in thought, word, and action. He should not consider himself alone, but ought also consider his duty to those other beings who cross his path, including animal beings and trees. Elegance is often found as an accompaniment of refinement. This is not only true of physical things, behaviour, and conduct, but also of character and mind. The true gentleman does not cast aside fine manners however much one may become intimate, familiar, or friendly with him. The man of exemplary manners will always have an advantage over those who have none. The charm of dealing, or conversing, with him gives him the preference, all else being equal. Assert the ego aggressively against others and you provoke their egos to assert themselves. Hostility breeds hostility, violence encourages the others to be violent. He keeps this composure. If he has moods, ups-and-downs of feeling, others will not know it. By presenting them with an imperturbable front, they are helped without his particularly seeking to do so. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
A well-mannered child is a testimony to a well-mannered home. It does not mean that he is to force himself to like everyone under the sun equally well, or that he is to negate every personal preference and deny every personal repulsion. It does not mean that he is no longer to discriminate his perceptions of human status and quality. He is never the enemy of any human being, but only of the sin in that being. All his social-relational thinking is governed by goodwill, but his conduct is ruled by reason added to the goodwill. In that way, he does not fall into unbalanced sentimentality nor harm others under the delusion that he is benefiting them. He shows an uncommon patience because that is Nature’s way. He expresses an impartial understanding because that is Truth’s way. He accepts people just where they are and is not angry with them because they are not farther along the road of life. He is not only different in that he seeks both to commend and to criticize, whereas the ordinary man seeks only to do the one or the other, but also in that he seeks to understand the World view and life-experience which have given rise to such a viewpoint. He must be ready to bestow an intellectual sympathy towards the attitudes of other men, no matter how foolish or how wicked these attitudes may be. Such sympathy enables him to understand them, as well as the experiences and the thoughts which have led to them. However, it does not necessitate acceptance of the emotional complexes and spiritual ignorance which accompany them. It is not necessary to be sullen to be serious. The man who walks rudely through the crowded streets of life, who flings his contempt from mien and speech, is but a melancholy misanthrope, not a philosopher. He thinks he has surrounded himself with an atmosphere of detachment, when he has merely succeeded in surrounding himself with an atmosphere of surliness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The Sacramento Fire Department has a wide range of responsibilities to ensure the safety of their citizens. It is equally important to recognize the significant work and effort involved in managing the department. “In the same ways fire fighters have a hard job, with EMS it can be worse because of the blood factor. In fires, people are burned, and they look awful. In EMS, you have the blood factor and severed limbs. And sometimes the trauma and the violence. We see quite a bit of violence. At times we are there before the police arrive in violent situations. Our response times are so quick that we sometimes get there in the heat of the battle, when the shooting is still going on. We have to be very aware and cautious. That can be stressful. We have some old neighborhoods that are low-income areas, where the crime rate is high, arson is high. These are mostly single-family homes, no tenements. One summer we had ten or eleven homicides near downtown, where I worked. Sometimes we had two in a night. We provide basic life support until the paramedics get there. You’re concerned for yourself. You’re surrounded by people. You look for an area of refuge. You advance cautiously. It’s a hectic, hyper type situation. We went to one nightclub downtown where we had five people who were shot. When we arrived there were only two, but three more were subsequently shot while we were there, right near where we were operating. Captain X was a seasoned veteran who had seen a lot of things, but he was upset after that incident. We all were. I have never seen him sit down in a chair, put his feet up, and smoke a cigarette. He didn’t talk. The whole company was kind of lethargic after it was over. It was the emotional stress, dealing with gunshot wounds in a large crowd without much police protection. There was so much going on. We went from one victim to the next to the next. We just followed the trail, logistically getting the equipment there. One person did all the shooting. Apparently it was the result of a rivalry between high school football teams. The neighborhoods here are very involved in their high schools, which is good. They are very proud of their sports teams, which is good. Until it ends up in a shooting, which is not good. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“Not too long ago they had a big drug shoot-out. An automatic weapon was used, several hundred rounds were shot, and eight or nine people were transported to the hospital. To get back to the blood factor, I’m absolutely concerned with AIDS just as much as I am with hepatitis. We try to take the precautions of wearing gloves and cleaning up very well afterwards. We keep a mental list of known cases, and we wear masks as well as rubber gloves when we deal with these people, whether they have hepatitis, tuberculosis, or AIDS. We wear paper masks, like surgical masks. The city is also providing us with hepatitis vaccinations now, which I think is a great thing. It’s an expensive series of three shots, about a hundred dollars per man, but they realize the need for us to have that kind of protection. You don’t get blood on your person every day, but the big problem is, the blood spurts. So we take those precautions not to come into contact with the blood. And maybe they’ll cure these things some day. You’ve just got to keep going. You have to say to yourself, ‘When the alarm comes, I’m going to be ready.’” The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to providing exceptional service and adapting to the evolving needs of the community. Specifically, the desire to prevent the loss of life and property by responding to emergencies in a professional manner. Parents, please be sure to raise your children to love America and make them aware that being patriotic is our duty. Also, it is a good idea to buy American made cars and other products to endure the longevity of this great nation. We also want to respect law and order, love God and Jesus Christ and treat every human being with care and compassion. You can also help save lives and property and protect the future of our community by donating 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! Come, O Sabbath-day, and bring peace and healing on thy wing; and to every troubled breast speak of the divine behest: Thou shalt rest. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The Next Baby Will Go to House 17
All creatures are rooted in the same primal Being, but all remain at different levels of awareness or distance from this Being. Because of the oneness we must practise goodwill to all, but because of the distances we must see them for what they outwardly are. Those who object—as so many young people do today—against formal social behaviour or convention courtesy such as Confucius propagated and such as well-brought-up persons were taught to accept in our own modern West until recently, do not see how much it smooths everybody’s way including their own and how much it oils the wheels of social existence for all of us. Behing time and ego, behind all the conditions in which we find others to be, there is that which is divine within them. For the sake of that we may honour them even when their outer self is unworthy of it and dishonourable. It is not a question of defective social manners or wrong accents but of two traits of good character—consideration for others and respect for oneself. The conventional and not seldom hypocritical smile, the pretense of goodwill where there is none, constitute false manners, not good manners. Courtesy is the oil which lubricates the wheel of life. At a time when goodwill and courtesy seem to be fading out, we need all the more to support them staunchly. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
What is called correct social behaviour can vary from period to period, century to century. It is not the same as, and not to be confused with, courtesy. There are those who dismiss the subject as unconnected with philosophy, unessential to spiritual self-cultivation. However, Jesus Christ constantly exhorted his disciples to cultivate courteous manners and gentlemanly behaviour. It is not better that men should learn to discipline their unpleasant traits, instead of inflicting them on other people? It is not only better for society but also for the men themselves, for it is part of their spiritual evolution. If it becomes an empty arid formality, devoid of the corresponding feeling, it is not courtesy, but hypocrisy. If we are asked to resist our innate natural selfishness and include other people’s welfare along with our own, it is only because in this way they too are being asked to include ours. This at least helps us and them. This is the practical benefit of politeness. Refinement is not so much a matter of birth as of quality, which may be born in a man or fashioned for himself. The young child should be taught how to grow up into a civilized well-behaved person, who naturally and not hypocritically behaves with consideration for the feelings of others. Culture is not only the enrichment of personal experience: it is the enrichment of the person himself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Supposed you know that this was to be your last day on Earth. How would you behave towards others? Would you not sink all short-range attitudes and rise above the petty selfishness, the pitiful enmities, and the harsh discords which may have marred your past? Would you not try at least to feel goodwill toward all men? This is how philosophy bids you behave at all times and not merely on your deathbed. We must see men not only as they are today, but also as they shall be in an evolutionary tomorrow. If we listen to the voice of experience, we tend appraisal of humanity should combine the two, recognizing and not denying unattractive faults and dark frailties, but at the same time being graciously tolerant and forgiving. He is opened-eyed enough to see men as they are, but also generous enough to see them as they must one day become. As the full meaning of reincarnation and of the universal law sinks deeper and deeper into his mind, a generous tolerance will rise higher and higher in his feelings. He will begin to see that every wrong-doer is what he is because of his past experience and present mentality and has to act in the way he does and cannot act in any other way. The life of such a man develops inevitably and naturally out of his character, out of his mode of thought, and out of his experience on this Earth in the present and in former lives. If a man’s attitude towards spiritual truth is determined by the fact that he was born in a particular place and not by wide search and deep thought, he does not deserve and will not find the highest truth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
If the practices goodwill to others, it is more likely that the higher power will bestow grace upon him through others. There is never any justification for being unmannerly, or worse, rude. The man of such immeasurable goodwill will express it in all ways all the time. The more he refuses to let negative emotions capture him, the more will an inner harmony permeate him. He will keep a secret untroubled poise amongst those who are utterly bereft of any reverence for life’s higher meaning as amongst those who possess it. Beaware of projecting your own negative reactions, ideas, colourings, or feeling son displeasing situations and abrasive persons. If he is to keep his inward peace unruffled, he must live above the level of those who have it not. Only if he obeys the practical injunction of Jesus Christ, only if he keeps out of his emotional systems all the negatives like resentment, bitterness, quarrelsomeness, jealousy, spite, and revenge this can be done. If philosophic calm is to be the supreme fact and philosophic wisdom the guiding factor in his life, these lower emotions must definitely be outgrown. When other men show their enmity and meanness toward him, he is to retaliate by showing his indifference and generosity. When they falsely assail his character or enviously calumniate his work, he is to forbear from harsh feelings and not let them forfeit his goodwill. He is not to succumb to the human temptation to retaliate in kind. For he is engaged on a holy ascent, and to succumb would be to slip grievously back. Indeed, out of the base actions of others, he may kindle noble reactions which assist his upward climb. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Whoever expands his consciousness in advance of the contemporary level must not expect more than a few to understand him. Yet it is his business to understand them as it is their misfortune to misunderstand him. Marquis de Sade, the French writer and activist, suffered and died to stimulate the imagination of the intelligentsia in literary cafes. However, that is not all. Sade’s success in our day is explained by the dream that he had in common with contemporary thought: the demand for total freedom, and dehumanization coldly planned by the intelligence. The reduction of man to an object of experiment, the rule that specifies the relation between the will to power and man as an object, the sealed laboratory that is the scene of this monstrous experiment, are lessons which the theoreticians of power will discover again when they come to organizing the age of slavery. Two centuries ahead of time and on a reduced scale, Sade extolled totalitarian societies in the name of unbridled freedom—which, in reality, rebellion does not demand. The history and the tragedy of our times really begin with him. He only believed that a society founded on freedom of crime must coincide with freedom of morals, as though servitude had its limits. Our times have limited themselves to blending, in a curious manner, his dream of a universal republic and his technique of degradation. Finally, what he hated most, legal murder, has availed itself of the discoveries that he wanted to put to the service of instinctive murder. Crime, which he wanted to be the exotic and delicious fruit of unbridled vice, is no more today than the dismal habit of a police-controlled morality. Such are the surprises of literature. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Later childhood, from six to ten, is called by psychoanalysis the latent period. It is a “locomotor” phase, when the child locomotes himself around the neighbourhood to see what he can see. So far, he has only a sketchy idea, a protocol, as to how he is going to put his script equipment together to make himself into a person with a goal in life. He is ready to turn from animals who eat people or who act like people, to people themselves. A child who starts out wanting to live forever or love forever can be made to change his mind in the course of five or six years, until he decides, quite appropriately in view of his limited experience, to die young or never to risk loving anyone again. Or he may learn from his parents that life and love with all their risks are worthwhile. Once the decision is made, he knows who he is, and begins to look at the outside World with the question: “What can happen to people like me?” He knows what the payoff is supposed to be, but does not really know what it means, how it will feel, or how to go about getting it. He has to find some sort of plot or matrix into which all his script equipment will fit, and some sort of hero to show him the path. He also looks wistfully for heroes with similar equipment who have followed different, and perhaps happier, paths, hoping to find a way out, or a way in. The matrix and the hero are offered to him in stories which he reads in books or which are read to him or told him by some reliable person: mother, grandmother, or children on the street, or perhaps a carefully indoctrinated kindergarten teacher. The telling of these tales is a story in itself—more real and fascinating than the rale that is told. What happens between Jeder and his mother, for example, between the time she says? “After you have brushed your teeth, I will read you a story,” and the moment when she smiles, “That is all!” and tucks him in? What is his final question, and how does she tuck him in? #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Those times help form the flesh of his life plan, while the tales told or the book story give him the bones. What he ends up with, bonewise, are a hero—someone he would like to be; a villain—someone he may find an excuse to be; a type—what he knows he has to be; a plot—a matrix of events which enables him to switch from one to the other; a cast—those others who will motivate the switches; and an ethos—a set of ethical standards which will justify him in feeling angry, guilty, righteous, or triumphant. If external events permit, his life course will then be the same as the life plan he forms around this armature or matrix. For this reason, it is important to know what his favourite story or fairy tale was as a child, since this will be the plot of his script, with all its unattainable illusions and avoidable tragedies. During this period, Jeder also makes a definite decision about what kind of feelings he will work for. He was previously experimented with this, feeling by turns angry, hurt, guilty, scared, inadequate, righteous, and triumphant, and he as discovered that certain of these are treated with indifference or outright disapproval by his family, whole one of them is acceptable and gets results. That is the one that becomes his racket. The favoured feeling becomes a sort of conditioned reflex which may persist for the rest of his life. For clarity, we can use the roulette-wheel theory of feeling. Suppose there is a housing development with 36 houses built in a circle around a central plaza, and suppose that there is a baby waiting to be born wherever it is that babies wait to be born. The Great Computer in charge of such matters spins the roulette wheel, and the ball falls in slot 17. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The Great Computer then announces, “The next baby will go to house 17.” He makes five more spins, and comes up with 23, 11, 26, 35, and 31, so the next five babies go to the houses with those numbers. Ten years later, each of the children has learned how he is supposed to react. The one in house 17 has learned: “In this family, when the going gets rough, we feel angry.” The one in house 23 has learned: “In this family, when the going gets rough, we feel hurt.” The babies at 11, 26, and 35 have learned that when the going gets rough their respective families feel guilty, scared, or inadequate. The baby in 31 learns that “In this family, when the going get rough, we find out what to do about it.” It should be apparent that numbers 17, 23, 11, 26, and 35 are likely to be losers, and 31 is more likely to be a winner. However, supposing when the Great Computer made the spins, other numbers had come up, or the same numbers in a different order? Perhaps Baby A, instead of anger, and Baby B, in 23, might have traded places with Baby F in 31. Then instead of Baby B being a loser and baby F a winner, it would be the other way round. This is another way of saying that aside from a doubtful influence of the genes, favourite feelings are learned from the parents. If he had been born in a different household, a patient whose favoured feeling is guilt might go for anger. Yet each will defend his favoured feeling as the natural or even inevitable one in a given situation. This is one reason for having treatment groups. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
If those six babies were in such a group twenty years later, and Baby A related an incident, ending: “Naturally, I felt angry!” Baby B would say: “My feelings would have been hurt”; Baby C: “I would have felt guilty,” Baby D: “I would have felt scared”; Baby E: “I would have felt inadequate”; and Baby F (who would presumably be the therapist by this time): “I would have found out what to do about it.” Which of these babies is right? Each one is convinced that his is the “natural” reaction. The truth is that none of them is “natural,” really; each one has been learned, or rather decided upon, in early childhood. To put it in simpler terms, nearly all angers, hurts, guilts, fears, and inadequate feelings are rackets, and in any well-run group it is not difficult to distinguish the few such reactions which are genuinely appropriate. A racket, then, is a feeling, out of all the possible feelings, that is habitually turned on by a given person as his payoff in the games he plays. Group members soon recognize this, and can predict when a certain patient is going to collect a hurt trading stamp, and so on. The object of collecting such trading stamps is to turn them in for a script payoff. Each person in the group is scandalized at the idea that his favoured feeling is not a natural, universal, and inevitable response to the situations he meets. When their feelings are questioned, just as people in the hurt racket feel hurt, people in the anger racket, in particular, become very angry. One of the most misunderstood ideas of modern times is the thing we call “support.” Most people think of it as paying someone’s way, or at least providing for a person’s necessities. It usually implies a great sacrifice or price to be paid by the person doing the supporting. The meaning I prefer is: to promote someone’s cause or interests. To me, this implies helping another, yet without hurting oneself. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
When you are trapped on the support polarity, you become a manipulator with an overdeveloped mother complex. Even men can have this complex, characterized by a compulsion to meet the needs of others. Unfortunately, in this position, your frequently feel like a martyr because you do so much for people, who never seem to appreciate your efforts enough. You also feel resentful that your sacrifices go unnoticed. Often, you are physically and emotionally exhausted from carrying the burdens of so many. Ironically, you lose contact with your own being trying to do only for others. If, on the other hand, you experience support as a master, you have learned to balance your needs with the needs of others. Although you believe in helping others when they are in trouble, you do not make helping your main vocation—because you have confidence in their ability to care for themselves. By the same token, you are not afraid to express criticism because you know it can be a beneficial force in creating honest, caring interaction. Mastering the support polarity improves your life because it frees you of impossible burdens and growing resentments. It enables you to care for others without sacrificing your own being. It allows you to “flow” with life rather than fight for it. You are at ease in your relationships, which now are determined, not by obligation to, but by concern for others. Your friends respond to you, not for what you have done for them, but for what you are to them. When we look at the condition of schizophrenia as an absence of a certain type of felt interaction (an absence rather than an illness or a content) has important consequences. It seems that we think of ourselves not so much as working with something ill in the person, but rather as providing the necessary personal relationship in the context of which someone can again come alive as a person. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
As for “schizophrenia,” how we love to think that we know what is wrong with those others. What about ourselves? How many of us can accept people as we can accept the sea? There are of course people who are foolish enough to want to change the sea, who want to change the weather, too, instead of living accord with it. However, why are so many of us so hell-bent on the madness of changing other people to suit ourselves, and forcing them to do what we want them to? Perhaps all the sensitive human people get scrapped and sent off to mental hospitals? Perhaps “mental illness” is a sign of health—of a person who refuses to knuckle under to a distorting and inhuman society? Who is healthier, the German youth who had no conflicts about shoveling people into hospitals, or the one who has a “nervous breakdown” because of his conflict about being pushed into doing something he did not approve of? Offered a choice, I say No to both. When I say no to both, I have to find my own alternative. When I am going someone else’s way, I require that others go along with me. When I am going someone else’s way, I have to let myself be sold on this—it does not come from me. Coming from outside as it does, I have an image of “what is good,” and then it seems to me that all others should follow this image too, and do “what is good,” “is right,” “like me.” At a deep level I am afraid, but it is not the fear which has made me follow the image, but having images that has separated me from myself and so I am afraid. In my fear, then I need others around me to do the same things that I do, to reassure me. When I am going my own way in freedom, I wish most for everyone else to go their way in freedom. When all of us are moving in freedom, there are no collisions. Only if I have a picture in my head of “how things should be,” this freedom looks chaotic to me because it does not match with what is happening. With established society actively discouraging recruitment into the pleasure professions, how do we account for the fact that in every gene pool and in every age a certain percentage of young adults pop up as pleasure-dispensers? We have to look into the genetic caste to understand this phenomenon. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Good looks and chemistry are the giveaways. Observe any group of children at play and you can forecast those who are robot-templated by DNA to play hedonic roles, who give off the radiation of magnetism and the flamboyant self-confidence of the budding performer. An interesting dilemma appears at this point. We do not have a formal, precise language to classify and describe the various pleasure-roles and hedonic processes. Indeed, before The Principles and Practice of Hedonic Psychology was written there has been a little scholarly attention to pleasure in Western literature. Whereas there exists an enormous nosology or disease classification of pain, an endless clinical listing of negative pathological states. There is no psychiatric or psychological classification of the states of excellence, elite accomplishment, or pleasure. It is true that a crude literature of beauty-pleasure exists in the East—pillow books, Tantric Hindu text, and Islamic-Sufi works. Neurocensorship is why there is no terminology for beauty-pleasure in the West. If words are invented for these myriad hedonic delights, then people will talk about them and enjoy them—a turn of events which Christian-Marxist hive establishments can not tolerate. Before the 1960s, in Western culture, hedonic bliss was taboo—reserved only for the aristocracy. Sexual pleasure was limited to martial intercourse—and then only for hive reproductive purposes. The taboo against the recognition of pleasure began to crumble in the 1960s and for the first time in the history of humanity a mass middle-class awakened to self-actualized hedonism. We can justly use the term “awaken” to describe the sudden insight that the body is a pleasure instrument, designed to receive a wide range of sensory stimuli that can be self-directed and self-controlled. Aesthetic artist sensory castes: Hedonic Consumer—those who receive pleasure. Hedonic Director—those who create pleasure realities for themselves and others. Hedonic Producer—those who exchange pleasure. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
If a person is successfully satisfying basic needs, his or her energy and thoughts are freed for other interests. The exact nature of these interests will differ from person to person, but the diversity and intensity of involvement in matters outside the self is a good indicator of healthy personality. Dr. Maslow has suggested that having successfully dealt with these basic needs, the person can move on to B-motivation (being motivation), which involves giving joyous vent to the highest aspirations and needs; fullest self-actualization and attending to aesthetic needs; and appreciation of beauty, art, and the higher realms of thought or cognition. When we cease to be a problem to ourselves, because we have fulfilled our needs for security, love, and status, we will begin to see the World in a manner that differs from the way “deficiency-motivated” persons see it. We can forget ourselves and become involved in play, or in another person’s problems, and perhaps with the wellbeing of humanity as a whole. When one is in the midst of such privation oneself, it is difficult to become concerned about the hunger or enslavement of another person. When we have experienced and transcended these conditions, we can empathize with (id est, imagine vividness) the experience of others and devote ourselves to serving them. Many interests and values grow out of a person’s earlier quest for the means of gratifying basic needs. Thus, someone may become a physician as a means of assuring economic security. However, once the person is earning the money he or she was seeking, that person may (indeed should) find intrinsic fascination in the challenges posed by illness. The motivation for the practice of medicine changes then from a quest for money to a quest for knowledge of new ways to relieve suffering. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Whenever an interest in some activity comes into being as a means of satisfying basic needs, and then changes into a spontaneous fascination, the motive is said to be functionally autonomous of its more basic origins. We do not fully understand the mechanisms by which functional autonomy of motives occurs; it appears to be a matter of commitment. Human beings need meaningful activity to give direction and value to their existence. We have little difficulty understanding much human action, because it clearly serves the most basic needs. However, when a person has assured access to the basic requirements, the question arises what shall I do now with the time and energy that have become available? What is worth doing? One can consume only so much food, one can only be loved a certain amount, one can only be safe to some degree. What will I do next with my time and resources? We are dealing fundamentally with the question of persuasion. Some challenges, tasks, hobbies, and vocations that have little to do with one’s basic needs are “invested” with value and worth by our observation of someone else. We see someone doing something with his or her time that seems to give that person much satisfaction. Either by invitation or by self-initiative, persons explore ways to spend their time, and commit themselves to such activity. The billions of interests that absorb persons attest to the fact that we can give value to anything from collecting speedpods to scaling mountains at great risk to life and limb, because they are there. The capacity to commit oneself to activities and projects beyond basic need fulfillment is a further defining characteristic of healthier personality. While almost all writers in the field see attention to the self as the primary, basic preoccupation of the normally healthy person, all also see commitment outside of self as being characteristic of the healthy personality. This includes commitment to activities such as political change, social welfare, problems of the aged, commitment to an abstract ideal such as freedom or beauty, preservation of the environment, or commitment to another person—a beloved friend, wife, lover, or trustworthy leader. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
It is important also to note that in the search for a direction of commitment, once can choose an unworthy and even dangerous commitment, especially when it is presented under the cloak of religion, politics, or even of psychology or some other abstract ideal. Thus, the many people who accompanied the Reverend Jim Jones to Guyana and to their deaths in 1978 were committing themselves to a leader, charismatic and hypnotic, who destroy them. There are many effective, meaningful religious and political commitments that a person can make that will better self and society. Some of the false commitments will offer false, cheap surcease for one’s personal pain. A wise young person will select commitments with care and with attention both to the maintenance of the freedom of the mind and to the assurance that one can change one’s mind and one’s commitment without fear of coercion, whether psychological or physical. No commitment or choice should ever be made to renounce your freedom to think for yourself. The man who is no longer disturbed by the presence or working or characteristic of his own ego will not be disturbed by that of others. No negative feeling will enter his attitude toward them. Although the repulsions to uncongenial persons may be acknowledge frankly, he can and should rise high above them. On the practical level, it is necessary to rectify the outer and visible causes of the disharmony between him and the other person, as far as that is possible. On the mental level, it is necessary to deal with the inner and invisible causes. The easiest way to begin such work is to begin it in creative meditation. There he should take up the picture of that person and mentally rectify the relation with him, adjust the thought of it to what it should be from the highest standpoint. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
He should finish by prayerfully sending good thoughts for his inner improvement, and by forgiving any sins against himself. Thus, instead of criticizing or attacking the person against whom he has a grievance, with results that may provoke still more trouble, he should remain emotionally undisturbed whilst using constructive endeavours in right meditation and unselfish prayer for that person. This may bring about a remarkable change in him, or lese in the relationship with him, or at least in the aspirant’s own attitude towards that person. For whatever is given out to others, in the end comes back to oneself. When a superior patrician ancestry, or higher education, or greater wealth, or influential social position, lead in speech or behaviour to arrogant hauteur and scornful contempt for the less fortunate, it leads to the snob. In him, outward and formal good manners do not come from the heart; in him, the spirit contradicts the letter. Consequently, they are not really good manners at all. The question has been asked: what is one to do in the face of another person’s rudeness pushed to a point which is almost insulting? If on the belief in reincarnation it is viewed as a sign of the other person’s ill-formed character and low caste, this could be ignored in many instances. However, when it is not of such a kind and where one is constantly thrown into contact through work or relationship or residence so that one is exposed constantly to the same kind of contact, how should a spiritual aspirant deal with it? Regard it as a test and a challenge. It is a test of certain qualities which must be sought within oneself and drawn upon, such as patience, calmness, and learning. It is a challenge, and if one lacks those qualities, it is necessary to seek deeper and try to draw from the inner resources of the Higher Self. This means working previously both in meditation and in thought to picture the needed emotional and mental response, plus the resulting physical conduct, as a daily exercise, until this reaction has become somewhat regular. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Or we can supplement this with moving to the metaphysical field and remembering at the end that it is all part of the dream-like experience which, in appropriate conditions, or on sufficient degree of mental perception being attained, one sees life to be. When one has had a large experience of the World with widely different groups of people, races, tribes, nations, classes, and castes, one is unwilling to offer admiration without some sort of qualification to any human institution or any human being. And when one has studied the human entity metaphysically and psychologically, discovering the place and power of the ego, one finds philosophical support of this mental reservation. However, this need not imply cynicism: the presence of goodwill and the faith in ultimate salvation of all would preclude it. Since he needs to rule emotions and not let them rule him, to overcome passions and not become their victim, he must cultivate a diamond-like hardness. However, this is not directed toward others, only to himself, unless evil or foolish influences are seeking to sway him. No person who is really refined, that is to say by character and taste and not by birth or wealth, can bear the crudity, the unattractiveness, and the decadence of those literary, artistic, psychoanalytic, or “progressive” circles which take a delight in uttering filthy four-letter words. Spirituality shrinks into silence in such garrulous company, takes curtained-off refuge in its own natural fastidiousness and refinement; but again, I say these develop from within and are not imposed by the family of the “finishing school.” Whatever superficial interest these circles may take in so-called mystic experience, materialism and egotism are their real religious creeds, just as courtesy is not a genuine characteristic of their behaviour, whatever outward show of it they may hypocritically have to make at times. The noisy cheap mannerless and brassy cafes of Montmarte and Montparnasse are their familiar spiritual homes. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to life safety and protection of property for all residents and visitors of Sacramento, in addition to the safety and continuing education for all Sacramento Fire Department members. The Sacramento Fire Department is acutely aware of the importance of training and preparedness and works with many external groups and organizations to ensure that Sacramento is as prepared as any metropolitian city can be. The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to having a membership that mirrors the communities it serves, and for the Department to be an inclusive work environment for all members. “The fire happened about two in the afternoon, a quiet Saturday. It was an old hotel, which had two wings, one about five or six stories high and other six or seven stories, with a penthouse with a bay window on the top floor. Originally, it was a grand hotel, but it was under renovation for several months at that time. It was going to be restored. The only thing that was open was a restaurant on the ground floor. There were four alarms. There was very little fire to be seen, but a tremendous amount of smoke. We did an aggressive interior attack. There were all kinds of plywood partitions the workmen had put up to make temporary hallways. So the windows weren’t much help, and ventilation was poor. We went at it, and we thought it was a touch fight but a good fight, and we managed to knock this thing down. Some of the fire was in the coping and parts of the cockloft, and not too accessible. At about give o’clock we were relieved by the night tour. We had our lines up to the top floor, and the relief guys came in and they found us. Oh, yeah, here you are. Okay, we’re around the corner with the pumper. Okay, everybody’s here, we’re going to take off, see you later. The fire was pretty much knocked down, so we left. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“The station was only six blocks away, so we walked back. There were a million sirens going, and the firehouse was empty. One guy, who was late coming in for the night tour, was there. I said, ‘What happened?’ He said, ‘The hotel collapsed!’ And we went, ‘Holy God, it can’t! The fire is out! It can’t!’ Being young and on the job just short of two years, I was in a total state of shock. I couldn’t believe this. How could it happen? So we ran back. We were only gone about fifteen minutes. The whole back end of the building had collapsed from the top floor down to the basement. The pile of rubble was in a pyramid shape, about three stories high. Our ladder company, Ladder X, was in the back alley, and they had their stick up, their aerial ladder, and the entire rig was just crushed to a pulp. The whole scene looked like pictures of a bad earthquake. Just mountains of bricks. And nobody knew, especially with the change of tours and all the running and milling around, who had been inside the building and who hadn’t. There were innumerable roll calls, trying to figure it out. And then we started on it, brick by brick. Some of the guys were right there on top of the mountain, because they had been on the top floor. The top of the heap was apparently the way it had been on the top floor. The top of the heap was apparently they way it worked out: the higher up you were, the easier it was, so to speak, even though they had to ride down seven floors. So our lieutenant from the night tour was found almost immediately, badly injured, also another of our firefighters from the night tour, Y. After that, with the plies of cement and brick, you just knew it was hopeless. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“We went from the top piece by piece, brick by brick, piece of cement by piece of cement, still watching to make sure the other two sides of the interior walls didn’t collapse on us. They got the last guy out about one in the morning. Somewhere around eleven o’clock, I just took my helmet and fire coat off, and I just walked away. I walked away like I was a zombie. I guess that’s exactly what I was. It was a way of saying, without actually saying it, ‘I can’t handle this anymore, I’m leaving.’ I don’t know how to explain it, it’s like I was hypnotized. Unfortunately, I can never forget seeing the guy from our company. His helmet was all crushed up. And all you can say to yourself is, there but for a couple of minutes…or if somebody had called and said, ‘I’m going to be late, will you hang in there for me?’ I literally fell apart, because I was saying to myself, this isn’t what the job is supposed to be like. It was not a good time at all because I didn’t really know how to deal with it. I later found out that the fire was not the major cause of the collapse. The contractors had removed a good portion of the fire wall down in the basement, and with a duct had penetrated the remining wall right next to a lone bearing column. And it turned out that this one column was the only thing that was holding up the entire section of the building. So I walked away, and I walked back to the firehouse, and there was a relocated company there from some other part of the city. They said, ‘We got people calling here.’ Then I realized I hadn’t called anybody at home. I’d never thought of it. I called my wife, Z. I didn’t have much to say. She said everybody had been calling and all that stuff. The day of the funeral was a cold, rainy day, driving rain. At Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. I had never seen so many firefighters in one place before. Because of one the guys was from our company, we got seats inside, up front. Seeing everybody lined up outside, it was starting to sink it—okay, this job isn’t fun. You’ve heard stories of other guys getting killed on the job, but nothing has the impact of the guy being in your own company and you being there. And it never stopped raining once, the whole time, and nobody said a heck of a lot afterwards. But you could tell everybody was thinking the same thing.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
One quality of his everyday conduct which will be noticeable to others will be his self-effacement. He is immediately ready to enter into their standpoint, sympathetically and helpfully, to listen patiently whilst they talk only about themselves. To be in public service, one must free himself from all narrow racialist views, national prejudices, class feelings, and personal selfishness. The Sacramento Fire Department understands that all people are linked together and strives to sustain and improve the health, safety, convenience, and welfare of the citizens of Sacramento and to plan for the future development of the community. You can help save lives and property by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember parents, please raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus, respect law and others, treat others with dignity and respect, and remind them of the importance of education. To help America survive the global recession and bring manufacturing jobs back to America and to get American wages at pace with inflation, it is important to buy America cars, American meat, American produce and other American made goods and services. 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. Our Father, our King, be gracious unto us and answer us, for we are wanting in good deeds; deal with us in charity and lovingkindness, and please save us. One who regard impartially friends and foes, foreigners and relatives, the righteous and unrighteous, he excelleth. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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It Comes on You Like a Spell and Your Poor Mind is Full of Hell
Every cross roads has a story. The Devil and his works have long assumed many forms. In modern America, rebellion for the sake of rebellion has taken precedence over genuine need for change. The frozen sperm of Satan’s magical children have been born upon the Earth. The child is no longer made in the image of God, but in the form of Satan. The quality of children has become more important than the quantity because relative material stability has been reached with the help of technology. A child who can produce is more important than having many children. A swordsman needs but a good smith to forge him a stout blade. Christians are facing a conflict because as man becomes more able to extend his life and prevent death, many consider this to be due to witchcraft and demonic elixirs which are not natural. Some question if Christians will want to experience immortality because they cannot afford to be aligned with things of the Devil. Satanism differs from other religion because it does not hold man enthrall of a fantasy, it rather President a little slice of Heaven here on Earth, known as The American Dream. Satanism is taken out of logical rather than desperation. The need for a cultural stimulus and aesthetic satisfaction has been with us every since the struggle to stay alive ceased to be so whelming that it absorbed all of man’s time and energy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
William was a general practitioner in an isolated area in the Rockies. There was no other doctor for miles around. He worked day and night, but no matter how hard he worked there was never enough to support his large family and he was always in debt to the bank. For a long time, he had advertised in medical journals for a partner to give him some relief, but he insisted that no one suitable had ever shown up. He operated in fields, homes, and hospitals, and sometimes at the bottom of a mountain crag. He was immensely resourceful and almost completely exhausted, but not quite. He came for treatment with his wife because they were having marital problems, and his blood pressure was going up. In the end, he found a University Hospital not far away which has some fellowships for general practitioners who wanted to become specialist. This time he did find someone to take his pace as a country doctor. He gave up his complex and lucrative practice and found that he had enough assets to keep his family going while he settled down as a surgical resident with a small stipend. “I’ve always wanted to do this,” he said. “But I never thought I’d get away from my driving Father Part until I’d had a coronary. But I didn’t have a coronary, and this is the happiest time of my life.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
It is evident that his spellbreaker was to have a coronary, and he thought that was the only way he would ever get off the hook. However, with the help of the group, he did manage to break out of his script in good health. William illustrates in a relatively simple and clear-cut way the action of the whole script apparatus. His counter script came from both parents: “Work hard.” His father than gave him the pattern of a hard-working doctor. His mother’s injunction was “Never give up. Work hard until you drop dead.” However, his father gave him the spellbreaker: “If you have a coronary, you can relax, ha ha.” With his treatment did was get into that part of his brain or mind whence all these voices sent their directives. The injunction was then lifted by giving him permission: “You can relax without having a coronary.” When this permission made it way through all the shells and devices protecting the script apparatus, it broke the curse. Note that it was useless to say to him “If you keep on this way, you will have a coronary.” He was well aware of that threat, and telling him again only made him feel more miserable because he wanted a coronary, which would free him one way or another. What he needed was not a threat, nor an order (he already had enough orders in his head), but a license that would liberate him for those orders, and that is what he got. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Then he ceased to be a victim of his script, and became his own master to do his thing. He still worked hard, and he still followed his father’s medical pattern, but he was no longer script-ridden to overwork nor script-driven to drop dead. Thus, at the age of fifty, he became from to fulfill the autonomous aspirations of his own choice. Make sure what you really want before you go after it. The bitter experience in life is to find after years of effort that the thing you have gained is not the thing you want. It is admittedly painful to tear one’s will away from one’s desires but it is still more painful to have it torn away by life’s experiences. Hence, the philosophical method to conquer desire is a twofold one. We must let it wear itself out by submitting to it through experience and letting it come up against inevitable disappointment, disillusionment, or suffering whilst alongside this we must become reflectively and analytically aware of its causes, self-deceptions, and consequences. It is a matter of gradually letting the desires lost their intensity until we become free of them not through their forcible renunciation nor through the long-drawn process of waiting for the golden years to comes but through the process of learning to live more and more within the satisfactory beatitude of the Overself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
We give up our desires not by negating them but partly by comprehending their mechanistic cause and mentalistic nature and partly by superseding them with the exalted peace of the Overself. The undeveloped mind lives only for the day. It can see the immediate events in a series but cannot conjure up the ultimate ones. The disciple dares not risk such a blind condition. He must deliberately set out to bring the two together, by the use of creative imagination or by analytic reflection or by both. If passion rises in him, at least its counterbalance, the mental picture of the evil consequences of passion, rises a second later with it. If a man is not free from lust, fear, and anger, be sure he is not united with the Overself, whatever other qualities, powers, or virtues he shows. Long continued reflection turned sharply and analytically upon desires and cravings helps to counter them, but does not basically weaken them. For that, contrary emotions must be aroused. This is most effectually done by happenings and experiences. However, because these are mostly beyond our choice, the third way left to us is to seek Grace. One way to invite this Grace is by sitting in mediation upon the non-self. He may complain of his weakness and immediately submit to a temptation. Or he may recognize that the Higher Self is also him; he may try to use will and grow in strength by this resistance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
He finds that he is perceptibly pulled away from fleshly lust to a deeper level where the calmness and the judgement enable him to realize that the lust belongs to his animal physical inheritance and not to his inmost character and that, therefore, it may be brought under control and discipline. If he acquires the power to achieve this, it will come imperceptibly for it will come mostly by grace. The satisfaction of passion has a claim on the animal body, but it must always be subject to the higher claims of reason and intuition and the need for the sense of human responsibility. The amoral is always the first step to the immoral. The idea that he has to attain mastery over the desires of the flesh is a correct one. However, that this mastery will lead to reunion with a “soul-mate” is not the teaching of the best mystics or philosophers. What really happens is a reunion with the true “Beloved,” who is none other than the Soul of the individual, his higher Self. This is a real living entity, whose presence is felt, whose words are heard, and whose beauty arouses all one’s love. Where man is open only to Worldly forces and not to inner ones’ where he submits to the World’s demands and ignores the soul’s; and where he succumbs to his own terrestrial forces without thoughts of regulating, controlling, and disciplining them, we may expect to find that he is quite insensitive to any teaching of this kind. He is like a person who has been caught in a mire and with every movement gets deeper into it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
He will learn the pleasure of self-control. It is not always easy but all effort for the rewards bear fruit. The man who can develop emotional placidity and rise above passions begins to know what peace of mind means. That is only a beginning for in its fullness it can come only with the knowledge and the enlightenment of Truth. Until then this placidity will free him from the constant alternation, the rise and fall of feeling, the elation and depression to which the average person is subject. Whether it be to acquire fame or accumulate wealthy or any of the other major desires, what he wants from life will in the end rest on his stage of spiritual evolution. The terrestrial man is there, but it must be brought under control or it will claim too much and diminish his aspirations. Then they become fitful, coming less and less, departing more and more. The passions contain futility, danger, and defilements. Self-conquest must be his secret wish’ deliverance must become his impassioned yearning. When wholetime meditations and his spare time thoughts are unremittingly given to uprooting passions that hinder spiritual progress and cultivating ideas that promote it, the neophyte will not be left without reward. Restricted by no monastery’s vows and obeying no order’s rules, he may yet be purer in thought and conduct than most of the self-actualized Christians. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The terrestrial of our inheritance will then be kept in its proper place, subjugated, its strength absorbed into his higher will. Within this highly structured and orderly society, the exterior developments of industrialism and progress within the natural sciences has brought not only material wealth but also increased pollution and waste, without forgetting increased ill health in the wake of this pollution and stress. The focus must now lay on health, nature, spirituality, and so forth. However, the contemporary focus on a profitable present and an almost superstitious belief in a science for the future should bring about a romantic longing for distant pagan pasts. The current generation born in America is fed up with what is being offered. What better way to protest than to just head out into nature in a highly romanticized state of mind? They have also found out that there have already been precursors in older generations who have explored exciting phenomena like nudism and vegetarianism. Americans have also simply started acting out rather than just talking about change. And I do not mean these Americans who are perceived by the World as being so weak because they cannot deal with the outcome of the American election. I am talking about those who have stopped placing their faith in a human being and place it in God. They are minding their own business and working with their hands to amass money so they can live a life they desire. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
In an age where even kids playing hopscotch and hiking has become politicized, turning to spirituality is one of the most mature things a man can do. Being able to step out and embrace the California morning sunshine is much better than seeing a guard in the gun tower. The threat of being in the center of the most cellblock of a prison in the State, where men are kept in cages with walkways above so it is possible for guards to stroll around and look down into the pits; cells with no furniture except a drain-hole toilet, and when the prisoners go out guards are carrying clubs surround them is often where people who do not go to Church and fear God end up. No students of American politics could fail to see the inevitable uprising of this revolutionary tribe of young Christian activists, religions offspring of the first social media-Einstein-multidimensional-simultaneous-immediate-energy generation. All the computers are turned on. Jet streams across WiFi, seamlessly transitioning spiritual healing as it sweeps through the homes and corridors of those in desperate need of the gospel of Christ, turning on fourteen-year-olds through the computer screen. Wise ancient children, the smartest, best endowed, healthiest. Time’s sweet pollen laughing answer to the lethal pressure of computerized humnoids pumping out propaganda over Obama TV. As these reports smoke and laugh, they do not realize that their days are numbered and streaming content is stealing thousands of viewers away from free TV daily. With lower ratings, the station’s revenue declines, the quality of programs suffers and less people tune in to the fake news. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
And everyone complains about everything becoming so political, but it is because that it what the TV news finds profitable and it is all that people talk about. However, for decades, people have been complaining that the news is rubbish. It is not what they consider news to be. People used to think news was investigative reports about things like the artic ice, or how there were actually Pilgrims, like Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, who had peaceful dinners with the Native Americans on Thanksgiving Day. Or how planet TOI 700 d, the outermost known planet in the system and the only one in the habitable zone, is 20 percent lager than Earth and can sustain life. Everything has become political or about getting famous because that is what people focus on. Once you turn your attention to more important things, like learning to cultivate the land, how to create the perfect drought resistant lawn, or why ICE cars are important for our future, then you will start to see the beauty in life again. The advocate of crime really only respects two kinds of power: one, which he finds among his own class, founded on the accident of birth, and the other by which, through sheer villainy, an underdog raises himself to the level of the libertines of noble birth whom Sade makes his heroes. This powerful little group of initiates knowns that it has all the rights. Anyone who doubts, even for a second, these formidable privileges is immediately driven from the flock, and once more becomes a victim. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Thus, a sort of aristocratic morality is created through which a little group of men and women manage to entrench themselves above a caste of slaves because they possess the secret of a strange knowledge. The only problem for them consists in organizing themselves so as to be able to exercise fully their rights which have the terrifying scope of desire. They cannot hope to dominate the entire Universe until the law of crime has been accepted by the Universe. Sade never believed that his fellow countrymen would be capable of the additional effort needed to make it “republican.” However, if crime and desire are not the law of the entire Universe, if they do not reign at least over a specified territory, they are no longer unifying principles, but ferments of conflict. They are no longer the law, and man returns to chaos and confusion. Thus, it is necessary to create from all these fragments a World that exactly coincides with the new law. The need for unity, which Creations leaves unsatisfied, is fulfilled, at all costs, in a microcosm. The law of power never has the patience to await complete control of the World. Even if it means surrounding it with barbed wire and observation towers, it must fix the boundaries, without delay, of the territory where it holds sway. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
At its best, criticalness is a sincere effort to help other improve. At its worst, it is the compulsion to get other people before they get you. If you are a manipulator who exaggerates the values of criticalness, you distrust and blame others. This keeps you “above” their level, but it often keeps you isolated and lonely as well. It is as if you were playing a game which you often win, but cannot enjoy winning because it is a secret game, and only you know about it. If you expose it, you cannot play anymore. So you sit at home, all alone, never admitting to anyone the secret of your game. The game is called, “I am better than you,” and you can find all the evidence you need to support the fact that you are winning. However, with no one to share the victory with, you only feel more isolated from others and think less of them. If you are a master, you are learning to trust others more and more every day. You are becoming more willing to forgive them for their natural tendency to be human. In particular, you are learning to appreciate your own humanness. Having done this, you see yourself, not as above others, yet not below them either. You begin to regard them as friends, rather than enemies or competitors. Your actions toward them are rewarded with love and caring rather than a hollow victory in being “right.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
As a master, you appreciate your supportiveness as well as your criticalness. You do things for others rather than to them. You stop judging others, because you stop judging yourself. Ultimately, bring right loses importance. Winning loses importance. And being with people grows more important every day. If it is not cultivated, attitudes toward transference, for instance, range from considering it a fiction which protects the therapist from the consequences of his real behaviour and its effects, to viewing it as early stereotypic behaviour which will be extinguished in the natural course of events. Symbolic analysis plays little role, partly because it is usually content-specific and covered by response to emotion. (I believe the so-called archaic symbols are significant, chiefly because they are cleaner communicants; like new words in a foreign language, they shake loose the multiple complexities of conventional meanings, and say just the elementary things each person means them to say.) The unconscious does not currently figure in client-centered literature. It is considered a reductionist assumption about phenomena better understood in terms of attention and “levels of awareness.” An ahistorical bias has always been plain among us, and this is one of the currents which moves us to an appreciation of some of the existential writings. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Diagnosis is a moot point too, though our departures are not as radical as they once were. The word “schizophrenia” becomes a damning designation. To have it once applied to a young man can be to ruin a career, despite all evidence of subsequent healthiness. A name implies a concept; and if this concept is unsound, the diagnosis can ruin treatment; the very naming it can damage the patient who we essay to help. The sick in mind…are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of those about them; they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, in infinite repetition. It is not that we decry classification as such; we recognize it as a useful scientific tool. However, when it leads to reification of terms, it is dangerous. We have been in an unprecedented era of self-actualization. Young people and most intelligent older people who appear to be laid back are taking care of their own situation first. They are “getting their heads together,” discovering and tending their bodies, learning how to produce their reality movies. College students are not charging after partisan dogmas or idealistic rhetoric. However, do not be deceived by this quiescence. It denotes neither apathy nor stupidity. In fact, it may well be the better part of wisdom to lay back until something worthy of your intelligence comes alone. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The existentialists also have pointed out that the self is made through decisions. You become what you decide. If, in the choice between running away or facing an unpleasant task, you choose to face up to the issue, you have become a better person. If you choose the weaker and more cowardly alternative, you become, at that moment, on the basis of your own choice, a weaker, lesser person. The behaviourists have, on the other hand, suggested that you have no “choice” but that your choices are determined by factors that control you, such as your parents’ wishes, your genes, and social demands upon you. Again the existentialists reply that one can also choose to let others make decisions for oneself but that the responsible direction is to recognize that, in almost all difficult decisions, the choice is still yours. The fake-nationalists are such terrible creatures, that on one occasion, they drove our unforgettable former President Clinton to bluntly express his opinion. State authority can guarantee peace and order only when the state World-concept and the World-concept of the people agree. Violent elements promoting a World-concept, one that differs from the people’s, will look like individual criminal groups and will not be seen as champions of a great idea which is opposed to the views of the state. If this were not the case, and the opposition held a World-concept that the people’s World-concept, the state can apply the most violent measures for centuries against the terror threatening it, but, in the end, the state will submit because it is unable to defeat the opposing idea. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The Sacramento Fire Department provides the professional personnel and programs for the citizens of Sacramento and is committed to protecting life and property from fire and explosions through inspection, investigation, training, education, data processing and statistical fire reports. “A child was caught in one of the rooms. The main fire was on the second floor of this apartment building, and there were women and kids downstairs screaming at us. We used every length of hose in the bed, it was a long stretch, because we had to go around a courtyard and up the stairs. The fire was coming around the cracks of the door to the second-floor doorway. I remember thinking, ‘This is it, this is where the stuff hits the fan.’ We had to knock down the fire before the guys from the truck could get in to search. I was on the nozzle, and we crawled through the doorway, and suddenly I had excruciating pain in my knees. The heat went right through my boots. We first hit the doorway with the line, then the hallways and the ceiling. The heat was extraordinary. We didn’t do it scientifically, we went in very, very fast because there was somebody in there. Halfway down the hall, I screamed, ‘My knees are burning.’ My officer said, ‘My knees are burning, too, but we have a job to do. Move in.’ I said to myself, ‘He’s right.’ #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
“It was the most fire I had ever seen, it was from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. There was all sorts of junk on the floor—a baby carriage frame, a shopping cart. The metal was glowing. It was blocking our way. I said, ‘We’ve got to pass this stuff out.’ I couldn’t move around it, and I couldn’t climb over it. The guy behind me thought I said, ‘I’m going to pass out.’ Realizing that communications were down, I handed the line over to the backup, grabbed the shopping cart, stood up, and moved it out of the way. When I lifted the shopping cart, just for those few seconds, I got second-degree burns on my fingers. I got back down and grabbed for the line, and they gave it back to me. I realized that this must be really bad, because you never get the line back. We went on, and I was thinking, ‘This is it. My sanity is gone. Nobody can stand this much pain. I can’t give in to it.’ Then I told myself, ‘You don’t feel it.’ A lot of guys don’t feel it when they’re burned. I did. I felt the whole thing, the whole time. I was making a conscious effort not to pay attention to it. I just kept moving. I have visions that I wasn’t going to have any knees left, they were just going to be done. Afterwards I really didn’t think I did that good a job. I was disappointed in myself. While I was throwing that stuff out, it must have looked like I was backing out. Maybe I could have climbed over that stuff. I felt I was too slow. I should have moved in a lot faster. And then, when I got outside, my knees were killing me. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
“I found out the rescue had been made by a die-hard fireman I know, X, the salt of the earth. He always has a frown on his face. He had gone up the fire escape and into one of the back windows and found a kid in the bathroom, a three- or four-year-old boy who was in the next bed to me in the emergency room. Rosy pink cheeks, he looked like he was half Black and half Irish. Really beautiful-looking child. They were taking him to the air chamber at the hospital, a decompression chamber for smoke inhalation victims. Anyhow, after the fire was out, we went back up with the hose, and I remember I had trouble walking upstairs because of my knees. The truck really took most of the line up. I wasn’t doing much of anything. I was dragging. I didn’t say anything about my knees. I kept thinking it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. I was making too much of it, and everybody else must be just as sore. I did say to somebody, ‘Boy, my knees are really killing me.’ And he said, ‘God bless you. My wife and I will pray for you.’ I got back to quarters, and my lieutenant said, ‘You don’t look so good. Are you sure you had the right gloves on?’ He was worried about my hands. I told him it wasn’t my hands, it was my knees. He said, ‘Well, all of our knees hurt a little.’ I said, ‘No. They really hurt.’ This was bout forty-five minutes after getting back. He said, ‘All right, let me see.’ #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
“I pulled up my pants, and my knees looked like a couple of golf ball blisters. I said, ‘Holy God.’ I had pulled some of the skin off. The chief took me to the hospital. I was dirty. They put on a sulfa drug, which is supposed to be a miracle drug for burns. They determined I had second-degree burns. At the burn center a few days later, they determined that the burns were third-degree. The doctor at the burn center said it was the most common kind he treats at the hospital. Burned knees. From kneeling on a hot surface. It seems that each time I knelt, I was burning the knees deeper and deeper. The doctor said I had cellulitis, which is a bad infection. ‘You have to be admitted right now. You’re going to have to go on intravenous for six or seven days. Then you’re going to have grafting.’ I was shocked. I had to call my wife and tell her and the family. That was very hard. I spent thirty-three days there, on and off. I’ve had three surgical grafts since then. I don’t think the guys who haven’t been in that situation know how painful it is. The burn is just the beginning. After that is when all the pain starts. Being in the burn center with other firefighters, there is a lot of camaraderie there. You’re all in the same boat. There were two others there, one with knees and the other had a hot cinder down his boot and he grabbed it with his hand. I thought I was in hell. I woke up in this icy room, and I was in a room full of men. God is punishing me, I thought. It was like a MASH unit. What an education. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“The skin grafts came from my hips and pelvis. Supposedly it wouldn’t show so much there. Because I was a firefighter, they took deeper sections of skin, because I was going to be back on my knees. One of the guys was a probie. His recovery was going to be a lot longer than mine. You’re lying in bed, half naked, but we tried to make the best of it. We became very close. When we were separated at one point, we came to see each other on crutches or in a wheelchair. His wife had a baby since. I remember feeling very close to him. We shared the experience of the job.” The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to working closely with fire service organizations and other proactive groups to enhance solutions to the fire problem. The services provided by the agency include: arson investigations, fire prevention safety in buildings, boiler and pressure vessel safety, the program for petroleum and chemical tanks, collecting and analyzing fire reports, and the personnel standards and education for the firefighters in Sacramento. Awaken compassionate thoughts and actions by helping others realize that, like our Saviour, they too have compassion for others. Please make donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to asset them in their fire prevent duty and other programs. To help keep America a God loving, Christian community, please raise your children to love America and to love God and Jesus Christ. In a afford to help America pull through the massive national deficit, please buy American made cars and other American made good and services. Also, please remember to respect law and order and treat your elders with the utmost dignity and kindness possible. And take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
The Winchester Mystery House
Paranormal investigators have recorded disembodies voices and witnessed strange shadows following them through The Winchester Mystery House. The enormous 19th century mansion once was nine stories tall, and had 600 rooms, but the 1906 earthquake demolished the nine-story observation tower, and took much of the 4th floor with it. However, 160 rooms, of which 110 are available for tour, still exist in this meandering catacomb.
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/
Happy Veteran’s Day!
Does it Feel that Way to You?
Through life, some people have as a dominant value their strength. A man’s physical strength is sometimes obvious. However, he also may use his intelligence as an asset to do what his physical strength cannot do. After an injury, a man may no longer be able to come out on top by using his physical force, when this happens, he must use his acumen successfully. Due to addictions that sometimes occur when a person is disabled or because of physical constraints, some men find that they are no longer able to manage their money, and they have no where to turn. He may perceive that inability as a weakness, and rather than admit the weakness and deal with it, he might decide to avoid it, pretending that it is not there. Thus, his money situation will simply get worse. Viewing strength and weakness as a duality, a man might believe that his only choice is to have one or the other—not both. In his mind, to admit weakness is tantamount to giving up his physical prowess. And from a man’s point of view, strength is what has kept him alive. He is therefore a slave to brute force. He cannot abandon it. He is “stuck” on it. It takes courage to move from strength to weakness and back again. It takes a brand of courage some men do not have. Many men are “stuck” on strength because of their inability (or at least unwillingness) to experience weakness by going through and getting in touch his inner core, his being. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
A man who is not able to use his physical strength to support himself or his family may see himself as a spaceship without a pilot—in a sense, empty. He does not see himself as having a core, or essence. In his mind, he is not a complete human being. He is no more than a shell he carries himself around in. That is why some men who become disabled have the constant, gnawing feeling that “something is missing.” Since men with physical limitations see themselves, and therefore others, as “things,” their lives can become an endless round of manipulation, using his own “strengths” and others’ “weaknesses” to constantly come out on top. This, then, is how some men become manipulators. And their styles of manipulation may be quite simple. He merely overpowers people in getting what he wants. As boys growing up in less affluent neighbourhoods, some of them overpower people with their superior body strength. However, as men in business and in marriage, they overpower people with what they believe to be their superior intelligence. A man becomes a walking embodiment of his own attachment to strength. What a man is looking for, though he does not have words for it, is a balance between the values of strength and weakness—a state of emotional mastery, where he can be in touch with his own core, his real self. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Whereas a man, the manipulator, is saying, “I am out here, all alone, and I have to be strong to survive,” a man who is a master would say, “I am a man, and I am tough and strong. I have strength and I have weakness. Even thought I am strong sometimes and weak other times, the real me always survives/ It is OK for me to be weak; it is OK for me to need people. I am not my strength, nor am I, my weakness. I am something more. I am me, and that is enough.” This is the essence of a man’s journey. It is a journey which might very well resemble your own. The strength/weakness polarity is a common one, especially among men. How does it apply to where you are, in your World? Well, your life is like a stream. And if you are a manipulator, the twigs and rocks are the values to which you cling so desperately. If you are like most people, security is what prompts you to keep clinging. The polarity in life is that it consists of clinging to your security—your dubious, unwanted yet comfortable situation, and taking a chance by opening up your innermost self, making yourself vulnerable, risking insecurity. In choosing to take a risk, you go to your core, you find your being, you become what others will call “Messiah.” You become a master. However, those who cling to their comfort zones tend to become manipulators. They are “stuck” on their exaggerated values. Though unwilling to risk letting go themselves, they nevertheless condemned the “Messiah” creature for his willingness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
A man who lets of what does not strengthen him is not necessarily smarter, stronger or better than any of the other men. What separates him from the rest is his willingness to risk. In risking, he goes into his core, finds courage, and through it becomes truly free. This is something that manipulators—and indeed all of us—have yet to learn fully. When you truly learn to take strength, you take the first step on your journey from manipulation to mastery. This allows a man to experience the loss of his physical strength and survive it. He is able to see that there is still a whole, completely person left, a person who can be weak and still exist. Men will also find that weakness—which they avoid and deny their whole life—also has power to it. Men learn their weakness has the power to make them more “real” and brings people closer to them. For many men, weakness opens the door to power of loving, the power which comes from letting others be strong. Weakness enables us to relax, stop competing, let go and regain our strength for another time. When a man learns to have an encounter with weakness, sometimes people will offer to help him get his finances straightened out. However, it is difficult for most men to admit to others that they are in financial trouble and that they cannot handle it themselves. It is an admission of weakness. Yet it is something that a man is able to do when he confronts his weakness in Church and/or therapy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
A real man can survive weakness. However, this weakness still may cause a man to withdrawal from his friends and loved ones because he still cannot face himself. For many, his strength is still too important to him and discovering more weakness would be too uncomfortable. Yet once his journey has begun, and once begun can never be turned back. For a brief moment, some men are able to give up strength, retreat to their inner core and find something there. It is something he will never be able to “unexperience.” And it will assist him in his journey many times in the future. However, other men continue to grow. Man’s true intelligence is feeble while it remains imprisoned in egoism and narcotized by sensuality. He must liberate it by the philosophic discipline before it can become strong. So many of our feelings and so many of our thoughts have until now been dictated by the body. Is it not time to think and feel also as the true self would have us do? The terrestrial heritage has given him instincts, appetites, impulses, and desires; the human holds out higher possibilities to be worked for and realized. One message of the Sphinx is to balance the human mind with the brutish terrestrial being in us. This is not the same as the ascetics’ message, which is to exterminate the terrestrial being altogether. He who has not overcome his passions finds himself compelled to act against the clearest warnings of his reason. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
What really moves a man to act is his feeling; that is why the passion which are strong feelings, need more deliberate effort of the will to bring them under restraint. An action which is spontaneous and not a calculated one—that can be safe only for the enlightened man. For others it may be mere impulse or mere passion. The point is not that natural impulses of the body are wrong—how could that be?—but that men have made them wrong. Originally the satisfaction of the pleasure-instinct was in harmony with higher will as a lesser part of a greater function. However, now human will have reversed its role and exaggerated it to first place. The result is disharmony and disease. On one thing all men in all lands are agreed, that it is immeasurably more preferable to be released from anxieties than to suffer them. Yet, these same men throw themselves into situations or bring about events which will rivet the chains of anxiety upon them. How is it that such a contradiction exists everywhere? What causes them to do this? It is the strength of their desires, the power of their ambitions, the tendencies inherited from past births. This being the cause of the trouble, the remedy for it becomes plain. The more a man frees himself from desires, that is, the more he masters himself, the more is he freed from numerous anxieties. And even if he too is subject to the painful tests and unpleasant ordeals which inescapably affect human existences, he does not consider them to be misfortunes but as devices to draw out his latent qualities. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The way out from tyrannical desires may have to be staged. First becomes a witness—indifferent and dispassionate—every time there is a surrender. This way is taking a new direction, starting to disidentify from the desire. On the one hand, he must tear himself away from his Earthly passions. On the other hand, he must give himself up to his sacred aspirations. The eagerness of desire betrays him into romantic self-deceptions and leads him into wounding frustrations. The ego lures his hopes constantly onward only to lacerate them in the end. Whilst we are still limited by the body and its inescapable needs, it is an impossible task to extirpate desire and negative self-interest. Philosophy adds that it is also an undesirable one. Only, put desire and self-interest down in their proper place, it says, do not permit them to obstruct higher and spiritual needs. It is not that they have to abandon joy but to purify it. If the joy which comes from debased pleasures is thereby lost, the joy which comes from ennobled thoughts and refined feelings is gained. When Earthly desires are extinguished, calm befalls a man. He must needs declare open war on his own passions, for he now sees that he cannot have them and peace too. Like all war this one will witness both victories and defeats, hardships and sufferings. However, out of these battles with himself he may progress, learning discrimination and gaining willpower. If uncontrolled, he realizes that he has to break his passions, or they will break him. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
In this work of purification, the need for mortal intellectual and emotional honesty will have to be stressed. It is satisfied by discriminating examination of thoughts, feelings, and motives, with constant self-distrust as a guide in the work. The more he trains himself to recognize and reject the impulses that come from his lower nature, the more will clarity of comprehension become his. The brute creature that he is most be kept at bay; his freedom as a man must be gained by degrees. Personally, I knew about my wife’s World to understand something of how life was to her. I even knew the terror of it because once, before we were married, I got swept into her agony, his suicidal chaos, and all the World became morbid to me in a most frightening, unmitigated and unmitigable way—everything was going haywire and out of control. I wanted to kill myself. I said so. She spoke to me as though I were a peasant who thought she new the passions of a kind. She thrust me out. In two shakes I thought, “Whew! I will never get into that again.” In thrusting me out, she got out of it herself (when she became the King?” but to be in it at all was too dangerous for me. Of course, I have wondered through the years since her suicide whether there was anything I could have done to help her. Everything I read or heard of psychotherapy I thought of in relation to my wife, questioning, and always I got the same answer: “With her, it would not have worked.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
This made me wonder whether I was white-washing my own failure. However, if so, why could I not ever be satisfied? Why did I not let it drop? Did I know that I was guilty, deep down in some sub-non-unconscious way? (When I mistrust me, there is no end to it, because then what I live with is mistrust.) If I were guilty, why could I not feel that?—instead of living with the knowing that I had tried very hard, I had loved her very much, and I had stayed too long. I received a latter from a man who stayed too long with his wife, in which he said “I have tentatively concluded (for me) that more time and more suffering than make sense are required to get on top of the mores and our personal motivations and unenlightened advice, to work through to the point where you can know yourself free of guilt for the life you can’t save.” It was only last spring, nearly twenty years after my wife’s suicide, that I understood something that I might have done. My relief expressed itself in a sign (letting go). I felt better about it. Not good, but better, and better is a kind of good. And then I knew—by feeling it clearly within myself—that the “bad” that I had been feeling was not guilt but sad. My “better” feeling was because it was not solidly inevitable that people like my wife must suffer so much all their lives and wipe out other people along the way. I do not know that I could have helped. However, I could have been more in touch with my thoughts and feelings (acceptance of myself) and more acceptant of his distress, sharing it her. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Instead of both of us trying to shove out her distress and replace it with a happiness which was phoney, I could have let her agony be, and then there might have been the beginning of change. Where to everything else I had said, “No, it would not have worked. She would not have let it,” when I thought of this in relation to my wife, I remembered the times when I might have got through to her. Even if I had not, I would have been more me and that would have been better for all of us. The most beautiful times that I remember with my wife are the many hours that we spent together saying only a few words now and then, like a touch on the shoulder or a hand touching hand. Our chairs were yards apart, but we were together. At such times she was in touch with the wordless resonance, the love that was in her and in me, and let it live awhile. However, then I would be sure that I, eighteen years younger, must be unhappy, must want to be “doing something,” and then I lost my awareness of all that was going on in myself and between us, and the sensing with all my senses that I had been enjoying, and I thought that I had to reassure her. She never did entirely take my word for it, and I never asked her, “Does it feel that way to you?” My wife was exceptionally good at explaining astronomy, anthropology, medicine, English literature and history, Greek and Latin poetry, and probably some other things which I have forgotten. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, in the person sense, my wife explained nothing. Perhaps she was so out of touch with herself that she could not. There were times and ways in which I understood (or heard) her no better than she did herself, and that was because at those times I did not hear me too. The human needs varied stimulation, not just to avoid boredom but actually to preserve the ability to perceive and to act adequately. When a person is radically deprived of the customary variety of sights, sounds, smells, conversation, and so on—as happens in solitary confinement—he or she begins to feel strange and may show signs of deteriorating as a person. “Sensory deprivation” experiments show that when volunteer subjects are placed in a special room that is soundless, with their vision closed off by special goggles, and immersed in warm water kept at body temperature (to reduce the experience of tactile stimulation), some begin to hallucinate and go through other psychoticlike experiences. I have been in such an isolation chamber, and I found it tranquil and conducive to meditation. Variety in “stimulus input,” then, may be regarded as a basic need, even though deprivation as extreme as that produced in the laboratory seldom occurs in everyday life. The “evil twin” of varied experience is boredom—a form of dispiriting in style of life. Travel, risk-taking, excitement, and simply trying something new in the way of clothes, reading, vacations, or challenges are the antitheses of boredom—varying one’s experience of life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Even moonrises and sunsets can get monotonous for the jaded tastes of the daily skywatcher. The healthy personality is also nurtured by meaningful variety. Excitement has often been thought of as a need for the young only. We now recognize that it is part of the fullest of lives in all generations. The excitement experience is one of the most difficult to create. Not all excitements involve risk-taking, and excitements are quite individually determined. One person may be thrilled by the firs parachute jump—another is equally excited about the first sighting of the sandhill crane. The Correspondence Principle requires that every new theory contain a limiting transition to the old theory it replaces. Insofar as the old theory has fitted some sound experiments, the new theory must concur. If Planck’s constant h tends towards zero, the quantum equations become just the classical ones. If the speed of light approaches infinity, Einstein’s kinematic and dynamical equations go over to Newton’s, and so on over a large number of examples from contemporary physics. As we apply the Correspondence Principle to sociobiology and exo-psychology, we expect that each new Einsteinian, relativistic theory of human behaviour and neurogenetic evolution will include a translation back to the old theory it replaced. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Darwinians are clearly in violation when they fanatically summarily reject the Monotheistic Creation theories of the Judeo-Christian Bible. Newer theories of evolution must provide new insights into the validity of the older theories—specifying the historical neurotechnical factors which limited the earlier metaphours. Any new theory of neurogenetics must relate to and lovingly demonstrate why the previous philosophic theory was “right” for its time arid its gene-pool—knowing that those to come will affectionately do the same for our theories. Historically speaking, the first coherent offensive is that of Sade, who musters into one vast war machine the arguments of the freethinkers up to Father Meslier and Voltaire. His negation is also, of course, the most extreme. From rebellion Sade can only deduce an absolute negative. Twenty-seven years in prison do not, in fact, produce a very conciliatory form of intelligence. Such a long period of confinement produces either weaklings or killers and sometimes a combination of both. If the mind is strong enough to construct in a prison cell a moral philosophy that is not one of submission, it will generally be one of domination. Every ethic based on solitude implies the exercise of power. In this respect Sade is the archetype, for in so far as society treated him atrociously, he responded in an atrocious manner. The writer, despite a few happy phrases and the thoughtless praises of our contemporaries, is secondary. He is admired today, with so much ingenuity, for reasons which have nothing to do with literature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
He is exalted as the philosopher in chains and the first theoretician of absolute rebellion. He might as well have been. In prison, dreams have no limits and reality is no curb. Intelligence in chains loses in lucidity what it gains in intensity. The only logic known to Sade was the logic of his feelings. He did not create a philosophy, but pursued a monstrous dream of revenge. Only the dream turned out to be prophetic. His desperate demand for freedom led Sade into the kingdom of servitude; his inordinate thirst for a form of life he could never attain was assuaged in the successive frenzies of a dream of universal destruction. In this way, at least, Sade is our contemporary. The militaristic history of Germany has many imagines of a strong silent sentry soldier on guard, watching, protecting, which made the Germans feel secure and strong. The content of the American news media was once honourable, but most of the enterprises are managed in a way that has made it impossible for them to function as a business. The first duty of TV news media has become that of the propagandists, to win over people who can subsequently be taken into the organization. And they train men and women to carry on their propaganda. The second duty of the TV news media has become to disrupt the existing order of things in America and thus make room for the penetration of the new teaching of sin, lawlessness, and corruption. The organizers of the propaganda department (the TV News media) have been fighting for the purpose of securing power, so that their doctrine of sin and corruption may finally triumph. After propaganda has converted the entire population over to an idea, only a handful of men are needed to finish the job. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Great theorists are rarely great organizers. The greatness of a theorist lies in his ability to understand and establish correct, abstract laws, while the organizer must primarily be an expert in understanding the human mind. The script controls are inserted and take effect early in life, while the counterscript slogans only become meaningful later. Added difficulty are scripts that tell it like it is: people really do act clumsy, as the child well knows; while the counterscript is usually square as far as his experience is concerned: he may or may not have seen someone attain happiness by working hard, being a good person, saving money, or being on time, not eating starches, avoiding public toilets, taking laxatives, and not masturbating. The problem we are having in America currently is that American people are being ignored and public works projects that have been in desperate need of completion are being ignored to add things like new bike lanes that people do not use anyway. Also, democrats are teaching Americans to expect everything for free, to feel entitled, to ignore the law, to rebel and be destructive and that breaking the law and discrimination is acceptable. The way you live your life determines your ultimate destiny. If you are harmonious, you may pass by unnoticed on the inside of the pages, but if you are in conflict, you may bring surprises and make headlines. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Thus, Hard-Working Church Deacon may end up President of Council, Retires After Thirty Years, or Jailed For Embezzlement, and Devoted Housewife comes out Mother of the Year, Celebrates Golden Anniversary, or Leaps From Roof of Building. In fact, it seems as though there are two kinds of people in the World: real people and plastic people, as the Flower Children used to say. The real people make their own decisions, while the plastic people are run by fortune cookies. The Fortune Cookie Theory of human living says that each child gets to pull two cookies from the family bowl: one square and one jagged. The square one is a slogan, such as “Work hard!” or “Stick with it!” while the jagged one is a scripty joker, such as “Forget your homework,” “Act clumsy,” or “Drop dead.” Between the two, unless he throws them away, his lifestyle and his final destiny are written. The conflict which we have sought to avoid is upon us. It is a comfortable, self-indulgent cop-out to look for conventional economic-political solutions. This is a war for survival. There is no choice left but to defend life against the genocidal machine. There are no neutrals in genetic warfare. Do not be deceived. It is a classic stratagem of genocide to camouflage their wars as law-and-order police actions, but democrats are telling illegal aliens how to evade ICE. Remember the Sioux and the pogroms and the African slaves and the indignation over airline hijackings and 9/11! If you fail to see that we are the victims of genocidal way you will not understand the rage of the oppressed, the fierceness of the Weathermen, and the pervasive resentment of the young. We cannot allow our government to become a lethal instrument. Remember the buffalo, the Iroquois, and the deer in the Sacramento Valley! #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The members of the Sacramento Fire Department are professionals dedicated to providing services that are innovative and progressive, ensuring the safest environment for their community. “I’m going through EMT right now. I was an ECA, that’s emergency care attendant. With that I could run first aid for the fire department. There are widespread deaths from vehicle accidents in the Sacramento area. We have a lot of busy intersections, and we also have people who go out and party, and they get on the roads and bring death with them. I have handled a lot of situations. We had a baby born on one run. It was pretty exciting, even though I’ve done it with my wife. We were called out to a house, and a lady was having good contractions. She was in the third stage of delivery. So, in the ambulance, I assisted a paramedic and we delivered the child. We set him up on the mother’s stomach so that the two of them could be pretty comfortable together, for the hospital was maybe seven miles away.” “We responded to a fire at an apartment. On arriving at the scene, we saw black smoke billowing into the sky from the nineth floor, and tenants were out on the balconies waving for help. Our company, Engine X, entered the lobby just as Rescue Y brought down a lady who was pretty charred. This was the first time that the seriousness of the fire dawned on us. We went to the fifth floor and took a lone up to the nineth. There we searched and found about five occupants whom we helped to exit the fire. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
“It appeared to be a racing fire, which engulfed the elevator and much of the nineth floor. The carpets and wall coverings were involved. A flash fire raced down the corridor. There was a lot of heat and smoke. They had a lot of plastics, and the smoke was black and thick, like flowing oil. If you held your hand in front of your face, you couldn’t see it, the smoke was that bad. The exit lights couldn’t be seen. We could hear people talking, and we could hear people screaming. People were trying to find their way out. They were helpless. We led some of them back into their rooms and out onto their balconies. Others we led to the fire escape that came down through the entire building. Some of them were in wheelchairs and could not walk. Then, as our air pipes were running low, we came across a man in one of the rooms. He was wedged under a vanity or dresser of some type. He appeared to be dead, so Lieutenant X took his self-contained and gave the guy some air. We saw his lips move a little, so we knew he was alive. Our next thought was to rescue him. The exit we wanted to take him to was about seventy-five feet away. When we tried to remove him from under the vanity, it was quite a tug. We realized that he had been burned through his clothing, and his skin was stuck to the carpet. We managed to pull the guy up and drag him down the floor. He was a large individual, weighing about 300 pounds. We started the three-man carry and got him down the hallway about fifty feet from the exit, when we ran out of air. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
“Our oxygen supplies ran out simultaneously because we had all entered the building at the same time. It was his only chance, now or never. I helped carry the guy maybe twenty feet from the exit. I knew the smoke was filled with PVC, and I knew it was toxic. So what I did was hold my breath while we were carrying him, until I couldn’t hold it anymore. I told Lieutenant X and Y that I had to leave. I dove out of the exit, but not before I did breathe in some of it, and I went through the coughing and the spit and that stuff. Lieutenant X and Y succeeded in carrying the guy the rest of the way out. A relief crew was there to resuscitate him. X and Y were taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation. Since then, Y has retired from the department for respiratory problems, and Lieutenant X is still on the job. So it affected one firefighter enough to end his career. I didn’t take nearly as much smoke as they did, but it had some effects on me. I have sore throats and a skin problem, but all in all, I don’t think it had too much of a lasting effect. The victim’s name was O.G. That’s all I know, we called him The O.G. What his real name was, I have no idea. I never got to talk to him, but he sent us some letters, saying that he was grateful for what we had done. I think he was a veteran, and, as far as I know, he is alive and well. If you weren’t spiritual before, this job would probably make you that way. It has made me appreciate life, believe me. If you asked if I would do it again, I would tell you yes. I know I would do not again. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“After that, going on fires, it isn’t the fire I worry about, it’s finding somebody in that same position again. I think that bothers me more than anything else. Because that stuck with me for a long time. To see an individual I rescued, see him that close to death, it really bothered me for a long time. one time I went on a call to that building there was a big guy. We all knew he had been dead for at least twelve hours. His body was cold, but there were about ten of us. A few of us guys spent nearly an hour trying to resuscitate the body. There was a little boy and a distraught woman there and I guess we wanted to give them hope. We all knew he was dead. That building is like a warzone. A lot of people end up dead, there are a lot of suspicious fires, a lot of crime and an extremely large number of emergency calls. I worry about the people who live there. Something is wrong. The building constantly wreaks of drugs and foul odors and is filthy.” Because of the Sacramento Fire Department, Sacramento City has been blessed with a great and noble heritage that offers a pathway to salvation. The dedicated EMTs, Fire Fighters, CHP and Police risk their lives to protect that community and keep people safe. The people of Sacramento do not underestimate the worth of emergency services. The Sacramento Fire Department has a firm adherence to a code of moral and ethical standards: Honesty, Trust, and Accountability. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. It is also very important to raise your children to love America and to be patriotic. By having pride in America, and purchasing American made cars and other goods and services, we can make America a creditor nation again and ensure that this sacred land will be enjoy by your family for generations to come. Teaching children to love God and Jesus Christ will also preserve our American heritage and allow us to make sure our children are set on a path that will lead them to success and help them reserve a seat in Heaven. The Ten Commandments in the Christian Bible are a good guideline of how everyone should live. Furthermore, by respecting law and order, we will ensure the tranquility of this great nation and make sure that we are setting an exemplary example for other nations to follow. And by treating others with dignity, respect, and compassion, this will ensure that we are following the golden rule, “Do on to others as you would have them do on to you,” reports Luke 6.31. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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There is Too Much Love Without an Object
The venerable language of zodiac types is useful to start a dialogue about casting. The twelve signs of the Zodiac are useful labels for basic structural human castes. Philosophers—good ones—are human ethologists. For five thousand years, the shrewdest human ethologists have worked on this twelve-fold typecasting—based on extensive and empirical observation. If we ignore the “astro” part we are left with the “logic” of twelve survival tactics—Pisces, Aries, etcetera. In the future more sophisticated classifications of human types based on neurological differences will replace the crude zodiac classification. There will be some among you, those scientific and intellectual bent, who are offended by use of this “sloppy occult astrological superstitious” technology. Before you fuse out, reread the crude, generalized list of the twelve personality types. Admittedly, astrology is a primitive attempt at introducing the notion of temporal caste, seriality and developmental order. The survival characteristic assigned to each type describes an evolutionary technology and a developmental stage. Pisces is baby and amoeboid. Aquarius is the most elderly, orderly, mature. Sense how this list tries to recapitulate the evolution of the twelve basic neurotechnological functions—both in the species and individuals. When we can replace it by a better personality typology based on the sequential evolution of intelligence, in species and individuals, we can reject this list. For now, however, it is a useful system. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Intellectuals, scholars, academics, salaried scientists and all other categories of verbal bureaucrats unanimously denounce astrology. Such condemnation immediately alerts Evolutionary Agents that an important genetic nerve is being touched. These paper-pedants and their civil-service followers make such solemn, judicial pronouncements: “I do not believe in astrology.” This statement means: “I do not understand seasonal ethology and I automatically reject everything my brain is not wired to receive.” Look, therefore, for the valid reasons why hive philosophers fear astrology and you will find, hidden in the tangle of zodiac ravings, three important items of neurogenetic wisdom. Wisdom of the zodiac: Regular cycles influence neural development. Each of us is born a robot, templated and controlled by rhythms with which we can decipher and harmonize. Each of us is born into a caste, or into a complex of castes. Suspend belief and assume, for the moment, that Zodiac types define structural castes. Each of the twelve terrestrial intelligence-functions plays an important role in the human social molecule. No human gene pool can exist unless it has people and institutions playing out these twelve neurotechnological parts. Each of the twelve terrestrial intelligence-functions plays an important role in the human social molecule. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
It would be possible for us to define the positive aspect of the values implicit in every act of rebellion by comparing them with a completely negative concept like that of resentment as defined by Scheler. Rebellion is, in fact, much more than pursuit of a claim, in the strongest sense of the word. Resentment is very well defined by Scheler as an autointoxication—the evil secretion, in a sealed vessel, of prolonged impotence. Rebellion, on the contrary, breaks the seal and allows the whole being to come into play. It liberates stagnant waters and turns them into a raging torrent. Scheler himself emphasizes the passive aspect of resentment and remarks on the prominent place it occupies in the psychology of women who are dedicated to desire and possession. The fountainhead of rebellion, on the contrary, is the principle of superabundant activity and energy. Scheler is also right in saying that resentment is always highly coloured by envy. However, one envies what one does not have, while the rebel’s aim is to defend what he is. He does not merely claim some good that he does not possess or of which he was deprived. His aim is to claim recognition for something which he has and which has already been recognized by him, in almost every case, as more important than anything of which he could be envious. Rebellion is not realistic. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
According to Scheler, resentment always turns into either unscrupulous ambition or bitterness, depending on whether it is implanted in a strong person or a weak one. However, in both cases it is a question of wanting to be something other than what one is. Resentment is always resentment against oneself. The rebel, on the contrary, from his very first step, refuses to allow anyone to touch what he is. He is fighting for the integrity of one part of his being. He does not try, primarily, to conquer, but simply to impose. Finally, it would seem that resentment takes delight, in advance, in the pain that it would like the object of its envy to feel. Nietzsche and Scheler are right in seeing an excellent example of this in the passage where Tertullian informs his readers that one of the greatest sources of happiness among the blessed will be the spectacle of the Roman emperors consumed in the fires of hell. This kind of happiness is also experienced by the decent people who go to watch executions. The rebel, on the contrary, limits himself, as a matter of principle, to refusing to be humiliated without asking that others should be. He will even accept pain provided his integrity is respected. It is therefore hard to understand why Scheler completely identifies the spirit of rebellion with resentment. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
His criticism of the resentment to be found in humanitarianism (which he treats as the non-Christian form of love for mankind) could perhaps be applied to certain indeterminate forms of humanitarian idealism, or to the techniques of terror. However, it rings false in relation to man’s rebellion against his condition—the movement that enlists the individual in the defense of a dignity common to all men. Scheler wants to demonstrate that humanitarian feelings are always accompanied by a hatred of the World. Humanity is loved in general in order to avoid having to love anybody in particular. This is correct, in some cases, and it is easier to understand Scheler when we realize that for him humanitarianism is represented by Bentham and Rousseau. However, man’s love for man can be born of other things than a mathematical calculation of the resultant rewards or a theoretical confidence in human nature. In face of the utilitarians, and of Emile’s preceptor, there is, for example, the kind of logic, embodies by Dostoievsky in Ivan Karamazov, which progresses from an act of rebellion to metaphysical insurrection. Scheler is aware of this and sums up the concept in the following manner: “There is not enough love in the World to squander it on anything but human beings.” Even if this proposition were true, the appalling despair that it implies would merit anything but contempt. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
In fact, it misunderstands the tortured character of Karamazov’s rebellion. Ivan’s drama, on the contrary, arises from the fact that there is too much love without an object. This love finding no outlet and God being denied, it is then decided to lavish it on human beings as a generous act of complicity. Nevertheless, in the act of rebellion as we have envisaged it up to now, an abstract ideal is not chosen through lack of feeling and in pursuit of a sterile demand. We insist that the part of man which cannot be reduced to mere ideas should be taken into consideration—the passionate side of his nature that serves no other purpose than to be part of the act of living. Does this imply that no rebellion is motivated by resentment? No, and we know it only too well in this age of malice. However, we must consider the idea of rebellion in its widest sense on pain of betraying it; and in its widest sense rebellion goes far beyond resentment. When Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights, says that he puts his love above God and would willingly go to hell in order to be reunited with the woman he loves, he is prompted not only by youth and humiliation but by the consuming experience of a whole lifetime. The same emotion causes Eckart, in a surprising fit of heresy, to say that he prefers hell with Jesus to Heave without Him. This is the very essence of love. Contrary to Scheler, it would therefore be impossible to overemphasize the passionate affirmation that underlies the act of rebellion and distinguishes it from resentment. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended. People can go too far with rebellion, however, and end up in prison. Sometimes the prison dope supply becomes irregular and during periods of neurological famine, waves of nervousness overcome inmates. As they are waiting for the verdict of the California Supreme Court, waiting for the call to the sergeant’s office to receive the telegram. They wait for the Counselor’s interview and learn all about he or she as they can. Back in the day, “San Quentin Sally,” was famous for hard custody-oriented maximum-security recommendations. She was cynical and suspicious of being conned. She respected convicts who told the truth. However, the details of her domestic problems, her martial history, her previous employment, her emotional characteristics, and her neurotic symptomatology were no secret to some. Also, sometimes prison guards that are hard on prisoners have issues. You see, one prison guard in particular had a teenaged daughter. He knew she smoked pot and low-rides with a kid who dealt dope. In his mind, he could see the nipples of his daughter Hilary trembling under the hypnotic passes of dope pushers, her thin white legs contorted in yoga positions, offering her flower for the demon drug. His daughter Hilary, with fingers of limp hair bedraggled with cannabis smoke and the expression of total rapture on her innocent face. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Man, he could see her pusher in his mod suit with satin cuffs propped up among the pillows on a fur coated bed resting ermine boots on the antique coffee table, running the palm of his evil hands across the hard sharp nipples of Hilary’s breasts. He saw her kneeling unzipping his pants. And you wonder why he hates inmates? He is not the only one. They say inmates do not deserve equal treatment. Can you dig that? Equal treatment. After breakfast, a sturdy executive elite con named Conrad, the sergeant’s clerk, comes over to the inmate’s table. “Were you expecting some sort of Court action?” “Yes, it should be here today.” “Well, I just heard on the radio that they shot you down. The California Appeals Court denied your appeal, you and Scott Peterson. I’m sorry about it.” “It is up to Justice Walker now,” he said. The inmate spent the day inside of gloom. His legal life now depended upon Justin R. Walker, naturalist, rebel, friend of youth, solace of the persecuted, outspoken libertarian, hope of the friendless, the husband of a woman, father of a child, protector of wild flowers and clear streams. And he is young. It all depends on his wife. During the next few days, the inmate reclined in the monastic peace of single cell reading newspaper stories about pending impeachment of President Biden and assassination attempts against former president Trump. His case was to come before Walker at a crucial time in his life. Freeing the inmate on bail would bring down on his head more angry outcries. It is a soap opera. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
The lawyers assured the inmate that he would be freed by Justice Walker in 5 days. However, he was still working on the escape plan while the trustees gathered around to share the fruits of prison grapevine. The administration is meeting this week to decide where he is going to be transferred. He thinks that he will be out on bail soon so it does not matter really, but was curious about the possibilities? The espionage system reported that Custody was easier on him then Treatment. The psychologist wanted to send him to Quentin to make an example of him. As of Monday morning, he had been in prison for nine weeks. Friday night was the worst time. He visited the next-door neighbour to hit his coffeepot. He tore off three numbers—Saturday, Sunday, Monday. During the morning, they make arrangements for writing each other when he leaves. Late in the afternoon a clerk leaned in the door. “Well, you are going.” He was waving a mimeographed sheet. “Shipping out to CMC West.” The trustees came crowding round. “CMC West is a country club, man, the best prison in the World. They have a golf course. No lockup. It’s three bunk counts a day. There’s a bowling alley. They are all long-term cons just living quietly. There are no young cons there burning sheets. Picnic visits on the yard. Visitors can buy lunch at the visiting room. Fried chicken. You eat like a kind. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
“Some cons love it there so much they hate to leave. When they get paroled, they violate so they can get sent back. You have private radios there. No smog. Near the ocean. You can plant your own garden. Contact visits! Conspiracy of breath. Touch. Change. New scene. I’m thinking about that fence near Highway 1.” The inmate spent the rest of the day collecting his personal gear to ship out. Two ball-point pens, some rubber shower shoes given to him by an old murderer, two packages of rolling tobacco. They travel light. “No gun towers or walls there?” “Just low fence. Minimum security.” Perhaps subverbal interaction is so important with schizophrenics because so much of their experience seems incommunicable to them, seems cut off from other people in its very nature. Often, the content—that what is said—is only a small bit of verbal content, but to the experiencing. In this way one attempts to restore the connection, the interpersonal interaction process within which the normally functioning individual lives and feels. This is not to say that one mysteriously responds to experience without having some verbalization to go on. Rather, one views verbalization differently. Instead of concerning oneself with its content one asks: What larger inward process is this bit of verbalization coming from? One’s answer to this question will be something felt, a conceptually vague but concrete felt meaning which the client feels and thinks, and which the therapist can only imagine. However, the therapist need not know it, guess it, or correctly imagine it. He can point his response at it, no matter how unknow it is to him. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
For example, my client says that he wants to know where, in the hospital, they keep that electronic machine which compels people to return to the hospital. He can prove there is such a machine, he says, because how else can you explain the fact that patients with ground privileges return to the hospital of their own accord? Now, I could, of course, argue with him that no such machine exists, that I would know if it did, that he does not trust me to tell him the truth on that subject, that he is having an unrealistic hallucination, or, closer to his feelings, that he does not like the hospital and cannot understand anyone’s coming to it voluntarily. However, what is his experiencing as he talks of this machine? What is the “pre-conceptual” or “felt” meaning from which this bit of bizarre verbalization comes? I do not know, of course. However, I want to respond to it somehow. So, I say back to him: “You have felt in yourself the effects of this machine you are talking about?” “Of course, I sure have,” he says and goes on to say that the machine makes him feel “not himself.” This phrase I recognize as somehow communicating to me something of the inward experiencing at which I pointed my words. I am using this example to illustrate what I mean by pointing one’s words at the experiencing, the wider inward process about which one does not know very much—except that it is there—and that verbalization arise from it (or in regard to it). #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Actually, I had not quite correctly imagined what he experienced. For my part, I thought he felt compelled inwardly but his next words expressed a slightly unexpected but still understandable aspect of his experiencing. And this is what usually happens. Usually, when one points one’s words at the experiencing rather than the verbal content, one finds that one’s imagination was not accurate, but the very fact of responding to this ever-present experiencing establishes the possibility of communicating concerning the deeper meanings from which the verbalizations arise. This man went on to tell me that his “not feeling like himself” was the result of the fact that his parents moved into the country when he was a schoolboy, and that therefore he had to ride a bus to school through the snow many miles. Again, one might have argued that this alone could not have caused him to feel “not himself.” However, one senses that this bit of memory comes form a whole pageant of memories, and, since it involved “not being himself,” I imagine endless weird, snowy bus rides I sense his feeling cut off from everyone he knew, way out there, snowbound, in the country, those many years all of which he now feels, I suppose. I say something about these bus rides and feeling cut off and we establish a new vehicle of communication. He too now uses the phrase “feeling cut off.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Perhaps I was right—but more importantly, I spoke to that mass of felt meanings and thoughts, that feeling process, which was just then occurring in him as he spoke, not to what he spoke as a bit of verbal communication. And, in this way, although often very stumblingly, one can gradually communicate more meaningfully, despite bizarre or externalized and trivial verbalization. Before this man told me about the electronic compelling machine, we spent six hours together with only trivia and silences. It was necessary for me to respond to him when, as yet, he would share nearly nothing with me. What I was trying to do with him, he wanted to know, and when would I be through? When would he not have to come any more? When could he go home? He had nothing to say. Silence, more silence. Once I interrupted one of these silences in which he had been sitting very quietly, apparently thinking, and said very gently: “You seem to be thinking some important thoughts or feelings. I do not know, of course, but that is what I imagine. I do not want to interrupt but I sure would like it if you felt like sharing those thoughts with me.” He said, very loudly: “What? Who, me? What, thinking what?” It was quite clear that he was startled. Also, he seemed to consider my statement inappropriate, false, and stupid. Yet, if one of us does not make it so, it is necessary to bear such moments, for how else can our interaction come to be warm and close and personal? #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
After a while such expressions of mine, such imaginings, or implications that we both experience important feelings, are no longer met by surprised rejection but often by a silence that is close to assent; and then, later, by an explicit sense on the part of the client that our silent times are subverbally important, deep, and eventful. One client named it when she said: “I’m having quiet therapy for a while.” If we perceive the World accurately and from valid beliefs about it, our changes of behaving effectively are increased. However, we know that unfulfilled needs and strong emotions can so shape our experience that we misinterpret facts, arrive at erroneous conclusions, and, indeed, frequently fail to see and hear what is there. How does a person go about increasing the efficiency of perception and thinking? How does a person carry out reality testing? Indeed, when unreality is often more pleasant in the short run, why would a person seek the truth? Reality testing means applying the rules of logic and scientific inquiry to everyday life. When we engage in reality testing, we are systematically doubting our own initial perceptions and beliefs until we have scrutinized them more carefully and checked them against further evidence. We do this when we have learned that truth, ultimately, is the best servant of our needs and is value in itself. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Some have to learn that rashness is not courage, and only the painful results of their actions may succeed in teaching them this lesson. The personal emotions entangle us in the events of life, whereas the impersonal intuitions enable us to see them from above. Even if the intuitive leading or reasoned reflection opposes his wishes, the imperativeness of following truth and preserving integrity will force him to desert his wishes. Emotion is valuable as a driving power, but doubtful as a means for discovering truth. If unbridled by reason and ungoverned by will, it may even drive a man to foolishness and disaster. The neurotic introduces emotional factors into purely business matter, creates hysterical scenes, and cannot take a single word of constructive criticism or admonitory counsel. Look through the miserable emotions of the ego and go beyond them to the smiling serenity of the Overself. It is not the emotions which are to be kept out but the disturbances which they may give rise. Do not respond to negative or base emotion with the like. The greater the animosity shown you, for instance, the greater is the inward calm with which it should be met. There is vital difference between being merely callous in the presence of other people’s suffering and being philosophically calm. A settled composed disposition will be one of the fruits perseverance in rejecting negative moods and undesirable thoughts as soon as they arise. Self-control is your greatest friend through all the incidents and accidents of life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Former President Trump’s policies not only interrupted or even started to end the process of making the American economy and workers dependent on other nations. America was once again forming alliances and establishing herself as a sovereign nation, and American was less dependent on other nations economically. It was becoming a stronger country and democratic leaders were facing problems of maintaining their positions in the government. What the democrats feared most was any effort that would make American independent of foreign countries. Such an effort could eventually be disastrous to those in power who want to make the country dependent on international elements. National sentiment was building and the people’s patriotic spirit was nationalized to a fevered pitch, as American was being put first. Man is the product of natural evolution; he is part of nature and yet transcends it, being endowed with reason and self-awareness. Man’s essence is ascertainable. However, this essence is not a substance which characterizes man at all times throughout history. The essence of man consists in the above-mentioned contradiction inherent in his existence, and this contradiction forces him to react in order to find a solution. Man cannot remain neutral and passive toward this existential dichotomy. By the very fact of his being human, he is asked a question by life: how to overcome the split between himself and the World outside of him in order to arrive at the experience of unity and oneness with his fellow man and with nature. Man has to answer this question every moment of his life. Not only—or even primarily—with thoughts and words, but by his mode of being and acting. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
There are a number of limited and ascertainable answers to this question of existence (the history of religion and philosophy is a catalogue of these answers); yet there are basically only two categories of answers. In one, man attempts to find again harmony with nature by repression to a prehuman form of existence, eliminating his specifically human qualities of reason and love. In other, his goal is the full development of his human powers until he reaches a new harmony with his fellow man and with nature. The first answer is bound with failure. It leads to death, destruction, suffering, and never to the full growth of man, never to harmony and strength. The second answer requires the elimination of green and ego-centricity, it demands discipline, will, and respect for those who can show the way. Yet, although this answer which is the more difficult one, it is the only answer which is not doomed to failure. In fact, even before the final goal is reached, the activity and effort expended in approaching it has a unifying and integrating effect which intensifies man’s vital energies. Man’s basic alternative is the choice between life and death. Every act implies this choice. Man is free to make it, but this freedom is a limited one. There are many favourable and unfavourable conditions which incline him—his psychological constitution, the condition of the specific society into which he was born, his family, teachers, and the friends he meets and chooses. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
It is man’s task to enlarge the margin of freedom to strengthen the conditions which are conducive to life as against those which are conducive to death. Life and death, as spoken of here, are not the biological states, but states of being, of relating to the World. Life means constant change, constant birth. Death means cessation of growth, ossification, repetition. The unhappy fate of may is that they do not make the choices. They are neither alive nor dead. Life becomes a burden, an aimless enterprise, and busyness is the means to protect one from the torture of being in the land of shadows. Neither life nor history has an ultimate meaning which in turn imparts meaning to the life of the individual or justifies his suffering. Considering the contradictions and weaknesses which beset man’s existence it is only too natural that he seeks for an “absolute” which gives him the illusion of certainty and relieves him from conflict, doubt and responsibility. Yet, no god, neither in theological, philosophical or historical garments saves, or condemns man. Only man can find a goal for life and the means for the realization of this goal. He cannot find saving ultimate or absolute answer but he can strive for a degree of intensity, depth and clarity of experience which gives him the strength to live without illusions, and to be free. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to improve the lives of the people they serve every day. The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to protecting the lives and property of those who live in, work in, and visit Sacramento. Their department operates on a 24/7 basis, so you can rest assured that they are always ready to respond in case of an emergency. “I had been at the hardware store with my wife and daughter, and we were going home, driving through a residential neighborhood. The first thing I noticed was the smell of the smoke. Black smoke was hanging over the street. I saw this lady in the front yard of a one-story frame house, screaming. As I pulled up, I could see the fire pushing out of one window at the front of the house and smoke seeping out of the two side windows. I got out of my car and ran over to the lady. My wife and daughter followed me but didn’t say anything. The lady said her husband was in the house and his name was Jim. I could hear the flames cracking. It was a pretty good fire in the living room and through the window next to the door, not pushing yet. Just bending, like the flames were swaying. I never stopped. I went to the front door, and when I opened it, I immediately had to go on my stomach because of the smoke, I was wearing just Levi pants and a flannel shirt, because it was January. As I crawled through the front door, the heat was not too bad, but I could see the red glow to my right and up over my head. As I went forward through the room, there was some kind of electrical short or something, and the electric wires behind me started jumping and popping. That kind of concerned me. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“I had my mouth right down on the floor, and it was beginning to be hard to breathe. I started coughing. I was getting in deeper and deeper, and there was a faint light to the left of me, and I took that as a way out. I found out later that it was a room and the light was coming in that way. So I was pushing in, and I was right at the point—this is something that has stayed in the back of my mind—I was right at the point where I had to make a decision: ‘Do I go deeper to the right and see if I can find this man, or do I go to the left and bail out?’ I was coughing, and it was really bad, but I went right anyway. Then I heard the man moan and say, ‘Help me.’ I don’t really know what I was doing, it was like being desperate, but I started crawling toward him, and I kept crawling, and I heard him continue moaning. If I hadn’t heard him calling and moaning, I probably wouldn’t have found him, the smoke was too dense. Nothing was visible. I’d get to a chair and tell it was a chair only by feel, that type of thing. When I go to him, he was lying on the floor. If he had been in a bed or something higher, he might have been dead, I don’t know. He had a little bit of air to breathe down there. He said he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t get up. He was coughing. I knew I couldn’t drag him back the way I came, because of the electrical short and the wires popping. You could still hear them popping. The glow was still over my head, and to the right of me the fire was up the wall and working its way across the ceiling. So I started dragging him straight to the eft to get him away from that glow. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“One thing I did have, I had a vent. The fire had blown out the front window, and it was venting naturally. That helped me. If I hadn’t had the vent, things probably would have been different. The fire was bending out that window by the front door and was keeping it kind of confined. It was rolling, though. All the other windows were closed, it being wintertime. There was no smoke venting out, but at least the fire was bending towards that open window. So I kept dragging him as far away from the fire as I could, because the smoke was really getting to me. Luckily, then I came across a wall, and then I felt a window. I couldn’t see, but I could feel the outline of the window, and a little bit of light was coming through. I got hold of a stand or a little table. I took a pretty good breath down on the floor and raised up to knock the window out. I threw the thing at the window, but it was light and I didn’t have much force behind it, because all I could think about was getting back down on the floor to get some air. The window didn’t break, the thing just kind of bounced off. God, that was a disappointment. I was choking and things were bad, but I remembered there was a telephone on that stand. So I grabbed the phone and the receiver, all in one hand, and broke the window that way. By then, I could hear the fire engine coming down the street, and I could hear people. I guess the people heard the breaking glass, and they started coming around to where I was at a side window. They started taking out some of the glass which added oxygen. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“The fire began to break out again, now towards me. I knew I had to get my head outside that window. I got down then, got a couple of good breaths, pulled on this guy with whatever energy the smoke didn’t take from me, and laid him across the window. He was tall but not really heavy, about a hundred sixty pounds, in his mid-fifties. By then, one of the firemen was there, and was I glad to see him. We handed him to a fire fighter outside the window. Then I tumbled myself out. When I came across the window, the glass went through my shoes and into my feet. Both arms were cut and blessing. Except for the smoke inhalation, that was it. My wife said she was very concerned for me, that it seemed like I was in there forever. I don’t know exactly how long I was in there, but I don’t think it was very long. They say it only takes a few minutes to kill you. My daughter was too young to be worried, but my son was very disappointed that he wasn’t there to see it. He had decided to stay home and do his homework. The newspapers played it up pretty big. I ended up with seven awards, I went to a lot of banquets. The public thinks a lot of firemen, they really do. I got more recognition from the public than I did from my own fire department. Sure, I got a pat on the back from the guys I work with, but one of the upper-echelon people just said, ‘Well, what’s the big deal?’ I didn’t say anything, but I guess the only thing that matters is that I know it was a little bit hairy. Not too long after that we went to a fire on Christmas night to a little house over where the middle-class people live. We got there and it was a fire in the bedroom. Christmas night, nobody home. The people had gone visiting, just in the neighborhood, and had left on an electric blanket. It has ignited the room. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“So, we do our normal procedures. I’m in there searching again, and I find this little dog underneath the bed in one bedroom. The dog had been overcome by smoke. I grabbed the dog and took him out under my arm, put the resuscitator on him and got him breathing. In the meantime the people returned. The dog belonged to a little boy who had gotten him earlier that morning for Christmas. I gave the dog to him, and he was just thrilled. His face just lit up, he was so excited about getting his dog back. I turned around then and walked off. There was never anything said. That was pretty moving to me, just to save that little dog. It really had to do with the dog’s relationship to the little boy and with Christmas.” You people, it is said that we take animal rights so seriously because they cannot call out for help. The Sacramento Fire Department also prioritizes community outreach and education. They offer several programs and opportunities; you can find out more on their website. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. “Chairty suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things,” reports Moroni 7.45. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which in stand, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We do declare it our purpose to keep intact the original name and initial spirit and purpose of this great country. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Experience Over Everything
When building a custom home, your experience is just as vital as the final product you live in. Whether you’re building a custom home in Utah or another state, we can help.
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An Altar Boy Just Escaped from Mass or Something
The choices you make—mission, education, marriage, career, and faith in God—will shape your eternal destiny. Much has been written and said about today’s generation of young adults. Research shows that many resist organized religion. Many are in debt and unemployed. A majority like the idea of marriage, but many are reluctant to take that step. A growing number do not want children. Without the gospel and inspired guidance, many are wandering in strange paths and losing their way. However, your righteous choices will keep you from getting off course. Think of it: If you choose not to take a drink of alcohol, you will not become an alcoholic! If you never choose to go into debt, you will avoid the possibility of bankruptcy! The Lord will always keep Hos promise: “I will lead you along.” The only question is, will we let ourselves be led? Will we hear His voice and the voice of His servants? If you are there for the Lord, I testify that He will be there for you. If you love Him and Keep His commandments, you will have His Spirit to be with you and guide you. “Put your trust in that Spirit which leadeth to do good…By this shall you know, all things…pertaining unto things…pertaining unto things of righteousness.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
If we are steadfast and immovable in doing good, our customs will help us to stay on the covenant path. We all have customs and traditions that are personal, from our family, or from the community in which we live, and we hope to keep all those that align with the principles of the gospel. Edifying customs and traditions are fundamental to our efforts to stay on the covenant path, and those that are an obstacle, we ought to reject. A custom is the practice or the frequent and habitual way of thinking for a person, culture, or tradition. Frequently, the things we think and do in a habitual way we recognize as normal. Few people know what love really means because with nearly all it is filtered through the screens of bodily and selfish considerations. In its pure native state, it is the first attribute of the divine soul and consequently it is one of the most important qualities which the seeker has to cultivate. The love for which man is searching exists; it is as perfect, as beautiful, as perpetual, and as healing as he can imagine it to be. However, it does not exist where one wants to find it. Only the inner kingdom holds and gives it at the end of his search. No other human being can do so unless he or she has previously entered the kingdom, and then only through all the limitations and colourings of the Earthly consciousness. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Although we have learned that a love restricted to the limited circle of wife, family, or friends is unphilosophic and should be extended in universal compassion to all mankind, this should not be mistaken to mean that such a restricted love ought to be abandoned. On the contrary, it should have its fullest place within the larger one. We also believe that “love” is one of the most misused words in English. We may now add that it is also one of the most debased words. Why? Because, very often, it is based on sheer self-interest and not on the beloved’s interest and gives only so lang as it gets; because, not seldom, the greater the ardour with which it begins, the greater the antipathy with which it ends; and because it frequently mistakes the goading of animal glands for the awakening of human affection. True love does not change or falter because the beloved has changed and wavered or because the physical circumstances wherein it was born have become different. It cannot be blown hither and thither by the accidents of destiny. It is not merely an emotional attraction, although it will include this. “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, …O no! it is an ever-fixed mark…” wrote Shakespeare. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
It expressed itself outwardly in an exceptionally kindly behaviour. He will not hurt others unnecessarily. He feels that one of the best pieces of advice he can give others is: “Be kind.” In this way you abrase your own egoism and show forth something—just an echo—of this love which emanates from the indwelling spiritual self. The cost in thus weakly and briefly identifying yourself with others is little: the gain in moral growth is large. When your duties, activities, or responsibilities in life call for critical judgment of any person, that is allowable. However, when you fall into it for the sake of idle gossip or, what is worse, when you are nastily censorious, slanderously back-biting, for the sake of malice, that is unkind and unpardonable. Above his own deliberate willing or wishing, quite spontaneously and impulsively, a feeling of pure love begins to well up within him. It is unconnected with physical or egoistic causes, for all those who touch his orbit benefit by it. If they are foolish or dreadful, sinful or deformed, unclean or disagreeable, it does not stop flowing. No one has ever unraveled the mystery of love as it exists between a man and a woman. Since it is usually beyond our power to accept or reject, we should regard it as a Divine Message and seek out its meaning to our spiritual life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
What is normal for some may be odd for others, depending on their customs and traditions. Which customs and traditions are normal in our lives? Today, we often hear about “a new normal.” If you really want to embrace a new normal, I invite you to turn your heart, mind, and soul increasingly to our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus as the Christ. Let that be your new normal. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things,” reports Articles of Faith 1.13. At its peak moments, which can arise only in its first or last stages and which belong only to its affectional rather than passional side, human love catches and reflects feebly the nature of divine love. The romantic aureole which young persons put around love, the demands made on it for that which it cannot give, point to the need of maturer instruction. Yet there is a relationship where two can grow in virtues side by side, learning wisdom from one another, harmonizing more and more with each other. However, this calls for self-control, eliminating negatives, cultivating positives. No one has the right to bind, hinder, or restrict the free spiritual movement of another person—no matter how close his blood, contractual, or emotional relationship may be—who enters into the pursuit of higher well-being. If it is done in the name of love, then that word has its meaningly sorely misrepresented, for it is really being done in selfishness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
This quality of “love” is not to be measured by the exhibitions of effusiveness on the part of its possessor; it is to be measured by the presence or absence in him of egolessness. Whoever talks of his love for mankind will reveal it better by positive deeds than by sentimental displays. When brought down to individuals, the fact is, however, that such love is hard to feel. Only the actualized Christian really possesses it. Our Heavenly Father’s love for each of His children is real. He is there for each one. The eternal principle of love is manifested by living the two great commandments: love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbour as yourself. We are willing to help each other because we love one another, and our loved one’s needs become our needs, and ours become theirs. No matter what language a child of God speaks or what country he comes from, we love each other because we are brothers, children of the same Father. It is not enough to avoid being a stumbling block for others; it is not enough to notice the needy on the road and pass by. Even if it is the first and only time, we meet him or her in this life, let us take advantage of every opportunity to help our neighbour. By loving the Overself within you in worship you are loving it in all men, because it is present in them, too. Hence, you do not have to go out of your way to love any individual specially, separately, although you will naturally feel affection for some. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Adversity in our lives can cause doubt about the fulfillment of the promises that have been made to us. Please trust in our Father. He always keeps His promises, and we can learn what He wants to teach us. Traces of earlier customs survive in present-day cultures. According to the Doctrine of Survival, meaningless customs must be survivals. When and where they first arose, they had a practical or at least a ceremonial intention, but are now fallen into absurdity from having been carried on into a new state in society where the original sense has been discarded. If we can accept the conclusion that every established and settled institution is justifiable, in its setting, as an adaptation, it seems to me that we are thereby accepting the extension of the Darwinian theory to the field of science and society. Sociology is a psychology rather than a biological science. The consciousness of kind, which is the basis of all social organization, is a mental state and not a biological process. Although the fittest is not always the best, the characteristic of the social process makes them identical. Society, however, in selecting the best, gives weight to such qualities as sympathy and mutual aid. It usually eliminates the incompetent and the irresponsible. The improvement of society must be a slow evolutionary process waiting upon the gradual increment of personal characteristics “adapted” to the life conditions of modern industrial society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The individual is a product of his social life and society is an organization of such individuals. Man’s psychical outfit is not divisible into the social and the non-social; but that he is all social in a large sense, is all a part of the common human life. We may desire abolition of war, industrial justice, greater equality of opportunity for all. However, no amount of preaching good will or the golden rule or cultivation of sentiments of love and equity will accomplish the results. There must be change in objective arrangements and institutions. We must work on the environment, not merely on the hearts of men. The prevailing code of morals fails to pierce the veil of the impersonal corporate relations of modern society, and the blame for social ills must be fixed on the absentee malefactors. If we were to cut back unnecessary dehumanizing consumption today, it would mean less production, less employment, and less income and less profit generated in certain sectors of the economy. Clearly, if this were done willy-nilly, with no planning, etcetera, it would cause extreme hardship for the economy as a whole and for specific groups of people. What would be required is a planned process of spreading the increased leisure across all areas of work, retraining of people, and a redeployment of some material resources. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Time would be needed, and planning would of course have to be social rather than private, since no one industry could organize and implement a plan affecting wide sectors of the economy. Given proper planning, the reduction in total income and profit would not seem to be an insurmountable problem, since the need for income would have been reduced with the lowering consumption. As our productive potential has increased, we have been faced with the choice of much less work with a much higher production and consumption with a steady level of work. Somewhat begrudgingly we have chosen a mixture of the two. Production and consumption have been increased, and at the same time work hours have been reduced and child labour largely abolished. This choice was not dictated by technical necessity, but was the result of changing social attitudes and political struggle. Whatever the merits of theses suggestion are, they are of little importance in comparison with what economists can suggest in response to the question, Is a stationary technological society possible? The important point is that the specialists address themselves to this problem, and they will do so only if they see the relevance of the question. One should not forget that the main difficulty may be found not in the economic and technical aspects of the problem but in its political and psychological aspects. Habits and ways of thought do not bend easily, and since many powerful interest groups have a very real stake in maintaining and speeding up the consumption treadmill the struggle to change the pattern will be hard and long. As have been said many times, the all-important point at this time is that we make a beginning. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
We are not alone in our fixation on material consumption—other Western nations, Russia, China, Japan, and East European nations also seem to be caught in the same destructive trap. Witness the Chinese claim that they will bury us in washing machines, cars, minerals, refrigerators, etcetera. The real challenge would be not to engage them in the wrong race, but to transcend this stage of social development and challenge them to build a truly human society—which will not be defined and measured by the number of Smart TVs or cars. If the consumers were to reduce their consumption to satisfy their real needs as living human beings, while this question of an eventually stationary production level is at the moment an essentially theoretical one, there is a very practical one which would arise. If this were to happen, if we redirected and transferred production from certain “unnecessary” private consumption to more humane forms of social consumption, the present rate of economic growth could be maintained. The needs here are clear and have been noted by many contemporary analysts and writers. A partial list of activities would include: a reconstruction of much of the nation’s living spaces (millions of new housing units), a vast expansion and improvement in public education and public health, development of urban and intercity systems of public transportation, tens of thousands of small and large recreation projects in American communities (parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, etcetera), a major beginning in the development of cultural life—brining drama, music, dance, painting, movie making, etcetera, into hundreds of thousands of communities and millions of lives which currently have no real sense of this dimension of human existence. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
All these efforts involve physical production and the development of vast human resources. Such projects have the immediate virtue of attacking the problems of the impoverished minority, at the same time engaging the imagination and energies of the non-poor. If not completely eliminate, they also soften the problems created by cutting back on consumption. If major programs of this kind were to be undertaken, national economic and social planning would, of course, be required since substantial shifts in the use of human and material resources would be involved. A prime result of such efforts would be to show that we were indeed moving toward a genuinely human community. If we guaranteed that in each aspect of such programs the people and communities involved would be responsible for project development and implementation, this would be another great step in the direction of creating an alive, involved society. At the national level, enabling legislation is necessary plus adequate financing, but given this all-important minimum, maximum public participation and project diversity should be the prime principle. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
In such a shift from the private to the public sector of consumption, private spending would be restrained as more income was diverted to higher taxes, and there would be a measurable shift from deadening, dehumanizing private consumption to new forms of public consumption that would involve people in creative community activities. Needless to say, such a shift would require careful planning to avoid severe upsets in the economic system; in this respect, we face the same problem in the convention from armament to peace production. For man, inasmuch as he is man—that is to say, inasmuch as he transcends nature and is aware of himself and of death—the sense of complete aloneness and separateness is close to insanity. Man as man is afraid of insanity, just as man as terrestrial being is afraid of death. Man has to be related, he had to find union with others, in order to be sane. This need to be one with others is his strongest passion, stronger than pleasures of the flesh and often even stronger than his wish to live. It is this fear of isolation and ostracism, rather than the “castration fear,” that makes people repress the awareness of that which is taboo since such awareness would mean being different, separate, and hence, to be ostracized. Even if his own eyes could convince him that it is false, for this reason the individual must bling himself from seeing that which his group claims does not exist, or accept as truth that which the majority says is true. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The herd is so vitally important for the individual that their views, beliefs, feelings, constitute reality for him, more so than what his sense and his reason tell him. Just as in the hypnotic state of dissociation the hypnotist’s voice and words take the place of reality, so the social pattern constitutes reality for most people. What man considers true, real, sane, are the clichés accepted by his society, and much that does not fit in with these clichés is excluded from awareness, is unconscious. There is almost nothing a man will not believe—or repress when he is threatened with the explicit or implicit threat of ostracism. Retuning to the fear of losing one’s identity, for the majority of people, their identity is precisely rooted in their conformity with the social clichés. “They” are who they are supposed to be—hence the fear of ostracism implies the fear of the loss of identity, and the very combination of both fears has a most powerful effect. Let us imagine a person who has observed that in certain situations in which he would like to participate in discussions he is tongue tied because he is afraid of possible criticism. If he allows this observation to take root within himself he will begin to wonder about the fear involved, since it is out of proportion to any real danger. He will wonder why the fear is so great that it prevents him not only from expressing his thoughts but also from thinking clearly. He will wonder whether the fear is greater than his ambition, and whether it is greater than any consideration of expediency, which for the sake of his career, would make it desirable that he produce a good impression. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Having thus gained an interest in his problem, he will try to find whether similar difficulties operate in other areas of life, and, if so, what form they take, He will examine his relations with women. Is he too timid to approach them because they might find fault with him? What about his life that involves pleasures of the flesh? Was he once important for a while because he could not get over a failure? Is he reluctant to go to parties? What about shopping? Does he buy an expensive house because otherwise the real estate agent might think he is too economical? Does he tip too generously because the waiter might look down upon him? Furthermore, exactly how vulnerable is he in regard to criticism? What is sufficient to touch off an embarrassment or to make him feel hurt? Is he hurt only when his wife overtly criticizes his necktie or is he uneasy when she merely praises Justin for always matching his tie and his socks? Such considerations will give him an impression of the extent and intensity of his difficulty and of its various manifestations. He will then want to know how it affects his life. He knows already that it makes him inhibited in many areas. He cannot assert himself; he is too complaint with what other expect of him, and therefore he can never be himself but must automatically play a part. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Not being able to be himself makes him resentful against others, for they appear to dominate him, but it also lowers his own self-esteem. Finally, he looks out for the factors that are responsible for the difficulty. What made him so fearful of criticism? He may remember that his parents held him to very rigid standards, and may recall any number of incidents in which he was scolded or made to feel inadequate. However, he will also have to think of all the weak spots in his actual personality which, in their totality, render him dependent on others and therefore make him regard their opinion of him as of compelling importance. If he can find the answers to all such questions his recognition that he is afraid of criticism will no longer be an isolated insight, but he will see the relationship of this trait to the whole structure of his personality. It may well be asked whether I mean by this example that a person who has discovered a new factor should deliberately ransack his experiences and feelings in the various ways indicated. Certainly not, because which a procedure would involve the same danger of merely intellectual mastery that was discussed before. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
However, he should grant himself a period of contemplation. He should mediate on his finding in much the same manner as an archaeologist who has discovered a buried statues, badly mutilated, looks at his treasure from all angels until the original factor that a person recognizes is like a searchlight turned on certain domains of his life, lighting up spots which have hitherto been dark. If only he is vividly interested in recognizing himself, he is almost bound to see them. These are point at which the guidance of an expert would be particularly helpful. I hypothesize that growth and change are more likely to occur the more that a counselor is experiencing a warm, optimistic, acceptant attitude toward what is in the client. It means that he prizes his client, as a person, with somewhat the same quality of feeling that a parent feels for his child, prizing him as a person regardless of his particular behaviour at the moment. It means that he cares for his client in a non-possessive way, as a person with potentialities. It involves an open willingness for the client to be whatever feelings are real in him at the moment—hostility or tenderness, rebellion or submissiveness, assurance of self-depreciation. It means a kind of love for the client as he is, providing we understand the word love as equivalent to the theologian’s term agape, and not in its usual romantic and possessive meanings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
This description is a feeling which is not paternalist, not sentimental, nor superficially social and agreeable. It respects the other person as a separate individual, and does not possess him. It is a kind of liking which has strength, and which is not demanding. We have termed it a beneficial regard. Consciousness is awareness, the state of or faculty of being mentally cognizant or aware of anything. This important state of being not only refers to the unique capacity to perceive, remember, think about, and imagine the World in its many realities and possibilities. It includes a special human capacity—to reflect upon the person’s immediate way of being aware. Thus, you can engage in remembering the past; of someone asks, “What are you doing right now?” you can reply, “I am trying to remember something.” You can tell the difference, through such reflection, between perceiving, remembering, and imagining. Indeed, loss of the capacity for such discriminating reflection, confusion of seeing with imagining, is one of the signs by which students of abnormal personality identify psychosis. The first property of human consciousness to which we call attention, then, is that it can be reflected on. Humans are capable of being self-conscious, as well as conscious of the World beyond themselves. This strange ability of the human to “clamber outside of self” and look back at self is a valuable tool of consciousness expansion. It enables the person to see self as others see the person. In gives one an added foothold on reality. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
We do not have to be hindered by self-judgment. Compassion is an attribute of Christ. It is born of love for others and knows no boundaries. Even when we do what is right, the circumstances in our life can change from good to bad, from happiness to sadness. God answers our prayers according to His infinite mercy and love and in His own time. Our Saviour’s plea is to “let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven,” reports Matthew 5.16. We want to see Jesus for who He is and we want to feel His love. Worthiness is a process, and perfection and an eternal trek. We can be worthy to enjoy certain privileges without being perfect. There is a natural, probably a mortal, tendency to compare ourselves with others. Unfortunately, when we make these comparisons, we tend to compare our weakest attributes with someone else’s strongest. Obviously these kinds of comparisons are destructive and only reinforce the fear that somehow we do not measure up and therefore we must not be as worthy as the next person. We need to come to terms with our desire to reach perfection and our frustration when our accomplishments or behaviours are less than perfect. Salvation does not come all at one; we are commanded to be perfect even as our Father in Heaven it perfect. It will take us ages to accomplish this end, for there will be greater progress beyond the grave, and it will be there that the faithful will overcome all things, and receive all things, even the fulness of the Father’s glory. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
As California’s Capitol City fire department, it is the Sacramento Fire Department’s mission to provide unparalleled fire, rescues, and emergency medical services to their community. “Firefighters are individuals unto themselves, with a tremendous sense of humor. I think you need it in this type of job. I don’t think there is another occupation where a sense of humor is so important. The pranks that are played on one another, the fraternity house atmosphere at times, is necessary to cut both the tension of what it is you actually do when you go to work and the tedium in between. Sometimes you meet guys in the job who think they know everything, but the job doesn’t let them get away with it for every long. There was this kid, one of those people who don’t know anything but think they have it all together. He was a probie, a probationary fireman, and he looked like an altar boy just escaped from Mass of something. When you tell him something, he says, ‘I know that. I know that. I’ll tell you something. My friend X and I have been tight because we work together in the same station. I’ve never been to Vietnam or anything like that, but they say that when you are close to death and you’re with somebody, it makes you closer. Well, I know that since we found that baby in that collapsed building, X and Y and I are a lot closer than we were. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“I guess just knowing that you could die, just that fact does something to bring you together. We knew that is something happened we were all going together.” California’s Capital City fire department stives to maintain a focus on providing value to the residents, business owners, and visitors who live, work and play within in boundaries. The Sacramento Fire Department promotes safety and assists people in their time of crisis. They seek not only to make a good impression, but to provide the public piece of mind that their fire department is capable, ready, and willing to help them when they need it. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. As this is a community of family values, it is essential to raise your children to love America, be patriotic, love God and Jesus Christ, respect and obey law and order, and treat others with dignity and kindness. 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. God of the World, eternity’s sole Lord! King over kings, be now Thy name adored! Blessed are we to whom Thou dost accord this gladsome time Thy wonderous ways to scan! This is the day bless above all others, for the Rock of Ages rested thereon. Six days are days for toil and labour, but the seventh day is a day unto the Lord. Toil not! This day is not for labour! In six days was the World created. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The Curse of Bigness
Approximately sixty six percent of Americans report that high inflation has made their financial situation worse. Families with lower incomes are especially suffering. Another twenty percent of Americans have reported that the rising prices have made their financial health much worse. Housing costs in California have long been higher than the national average. In recent years, these costs have grown substantially—in some cases, growing at historically rapid rates. California’s home prices have far exceeded the rest of the country and the state is about thirty three percent more expensive than a mid-tier home in the rest of the country—a gap that has widened over the last decade. Monthly payments for a newly purchased mid-tier home—including mortgage, taxes, and homeowners’ insurance—have increased dramatically over the last couple of years. Payments for a mid-tier home were over $5,000 a month in March 2024—an eighty percent increase since January of 2020. Payments for a bottom-tier home versus renting are near levels that have not been seen since the housing bubble in the mid-2000s. This rapid increase in monthly costs for homebuyers was driven by higher home prices and increasing mortgage rates. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Costs of buying a home have grown by more than median income. Affordability depends on both the costs of the housing, as well as the income and/or wages of households. Annual household income needed to qualify for a mortgage on a mid-tier California home in March 2024 was about $235,000—over two times the median California household income in 2022 ($85,300). For a bottom-tier home, about $140,000 in annual income is required to qualify for a mortgage—more than 50 percent higher than median household income in 2022. Furthermore, rental prices are unaffordable for a record number of American with half of all renters paying more than thirty percent of their income on rent and utilities. In New York, rent for a 1-bedroom apartment is $4,300 a month; Santa Clara the number is $3,290 per month; and in Sacramento the average 1-bedroom apartment is $2,135 per month. If it were true that the terrible results of the degrading conditions forced upon the dwellers in the slums were transmitted to their children by heredity, and within few generations they become fixed character, the hope for a regenerated society would be much more difficult to realize. If that were the case, these unfortunate creatures would continue to act in the same way for several generations, no matter how their environment had been transformed by the corporate actions of society. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
The poverty line for a family of four is $62,300. Many of the people who make this amount of money are those with high school diplomas and graduate degrees as well as blue-collar and white-collar workers who live in both rural and urban American. Also, about 4o percent of Americans are unable to plan beyond their next paycheck, while nearly fifty percent of them said they do not have $500 saved for emergencies. Price increases are devasting for lower-income Americans because they tend to spend more their paychecks on necessities and have less money to save. The typical American household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 compared with three years ago. For those on Social Security retirement, cost of living adjustments are not helping them much. Our affair is not with the evolution of life and its adaptation to the natural environment, but with the evolution of man, and the adaptation of life to his purposes. And even the control of life around us matters less than that of our psychological evolution and of social progress. If no Utopia is in the making, at least, some believe there should be a shift away from the free competitive order. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Capitalism is beginning to turn into the welfare capitalism; the frustrations of the middle class and the needs of the poor are accelerating the change. Men sense that a different order is slowly arising. Although they can seldom describe it, they have expressed it variously in their slogans and titles: they speak of the New Nationalism, the Square Deal, the New Nationalism, the Square Deal, the New Freedom, the New Competition, the New Democracy—and, in time, of the New Deal. Previous reform and protest movements have been disjointed and uncoordinated uprisings of workers and farmers; now the middle class is drawn into the fray. The middle-class citizen, as producer and consumer, is beginning to feel the growth of inflation and fears that he will be grounded between large combinations of capital, labour, and Artificial Intelligence. As the standard of living, the figure of the great capitalist entrepreneur, hitherto heroic, lost much of his glamour. He is condemned as an exploiter of labour and an extorter from the consumer, pilloried as an unfair competitor, and exposed as a corrupter of political life. In a society of great collective aggregates, the traditional emphasis upon the exploits of the individual lost much of its appeal. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The old problem of defending competition from critics on the left now pales as people are forced to face “the curse of bigness,” the more imminent threat to competition from the offspring of competition itself. Our industry is a fight of every man for himself. The prize we give the fittest is monopoly of the necessary life, and we leave these winners of the powers of life and death wield them over us by the same “self-interest” with which they took them from us. “There is no hope for any of us, but the weakest must go first,” is the golden rule of business. There is no other field of human associations in which any such rule of action is allowed. The man who should apply in his family or in his citizenship this “survival of the fittest” theory as it is practically professed and operated in business would be a monster, and would be speedily made extinct. It is laissez faire as policy that is most completely discredited. While the old, simple apotheosis of competition has faded, few have ceased altogether to believe in it. One of the primary aims, indeed, of the middle-class revolt is to restore so far as possible the pristine conditions of competitive business. However, even if the supposed benefits of competition were to be retained, some form of government regulation is needed to restrain monopoly. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
American industry is not free, as once it was free. The man with only a little capital is finding it harder to get into the field, more and more impossible to compete with the big fellow. Why? Because the laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak. This the small entrepreneur and his sympathizers are trying to change the laws because the middle class is grasping for life and capital and many fear becoming homeless. The little individualist, recognizing his individual impotence, realizing that he does not possess within himself even the basis of a moral judgement against his big brother, begins to change his point of view. He no longer hopes to right all things by his individual efforts. He has turned to the law, to the government, to the state. The right of competition must be limited to preserve it. For instance, the American Automobile industry produces some of the best designed and best performing vehicles in the World, but when Japanese automobiles flooded the markets back in the 1970s and 80s, during the gas crisis, people got hooked on them and have yet to return to their roots. To encourage people to buy American cars, we need to put tariffs on Japanese cars to not kill the American automobile industry. For excesses of competition leads to monopoly, as excesses of liberty lead to absolutism. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
The issue therefore is: Regulated competition versus regulated monopoly. In the past, as serious attempts to alter the business structure through legislation increased, there came a flood of laws to relieve the working class. Intellectuals, humanitarians, and social workers threw themselves on the side of labour, and drew support from a middle class which had no desire to see industrial oppression bring collectivism from the left. In increasing numbers, state legislatures adopted laws increasing minimum wage, limiting worker’s compensation, and similar measures of reform. Sympathy for union activity grew stronger among intellectuals. If we are not careful, with the amount of inflation we are experiencing today, Americans could return to child labour, more people may engage in selling pleasures of the flesh and peddling contraband. We could see comfort stations popping up in suburban communities and becoming as popular as liquor stores in the cities. We already have drug shops peddling illegal drugs to anyone who walks through the doors. And 65,000 catalytic converters were stolen in 2022. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Women have been convinced that their place is no longer in the home. They are encouraged to hire nannies and order already prepared meals kits. They are sent the message that they are no longer homemakers and care givers to their families. If there is a “housing shortage” and people cannot afford the supply of housing, means that there is too much demand from overpopulation. The masses as well the classes must be judged impartially through the arbitrament of the universal struggle. The state is conceived by all reformers to be an indispensable instrument of the new reconstruction. We must have a fervent plea for the abandonment of the traditional American mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism in favour of a more positive attempt to realize the national promise. Americans must learn to think in terms of purpose rather than destiny, and, without fear of the centralizing powers of government, to realize their purpose through a national policy. We can no longer treat life as something that has trickled down to us. We must deal with it deliberately, devise its social organization, alter its tools, formulate its method, educate and control it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
In endless ways we put intention where custom has reigned. We break up routines, make decisions, choose our ends, select means. The managed society which we anticipate must become a reality. If our children are to survive, the state of intervention must come of age. Despite the interruption of the Obama administration, the trend toward social cohesion must keep growing so the sons of the generation can witness the creation of a state machinery as great as any that could have appeared in the Victorian individualist’s worst nightmares. Whatever the human potentialities of this apparatus, for good or evil, the ideals of a cohesive and centralized society will become increasingly triumphant over those of the heyday of the age of information. While individualism has by no means disappeared, it is increasingly on the defensive. The religious keynote, the economic keynote, the scientific keynote of the twenty first century must be the overwhelming realization that mankind has such a mental and spiritual powers and such control over nature that the doctrine of the struggle for existence is definitely outmoded and placed by the higher law of cooperation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
We live in a consumer drive economy, and the attempt to question the pattern of unlimited consumption meets with a difficulty. Compulsive consumption compensates for anxiety. The need for this type of consumption stems from the sense of inner emptiness, hopelessness, confusion, and tension. By “taking in” articles of consumption, the individual reassures himself that “he is,” as it were. If consumption were to be reduced, a good deal of anxiety would become manifest. Resistance against the possible arousal of anxiety would result in an unwillingness to reduce consumption. The most telling example of this mechanism is to be found in the public’s attitude toward cigarette consumption. In spite of the well-known dangers to health, the majority goes on consuming cigarettes. It is because they would rather take a chance of earlier death than forgo pleasure? An analysis of the attitude of smokers shows that this is largely a rationalization. Cigarette consumption allays hidden anxiety and tension, and people would rather risk their health than to be confronted with anxiety. Yet, once the quality of the process of living becomes more important than it is now, many people will stop smoking or overconsuming, not for the sake of their physical health but because only when they face their anxieties can they find ways to more productive living. (If they are compulsive, most urges for pleasures, including pleasures of the flesh, are not caused by the wish for pleasure but by the wish for avoidance of anxiety.) #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The problem of limits to consumption is so difficult to assess because, even in the affluent society of the United States of America, not all unquestionably legitimate needs are fulfilled. This holds true for at least 52 percent of the population. When the optimum consumption level has not been reached, how can we even think of reduced consumption? First, in the affluent sector, we have already reached the point of harmful consumption; second, the aim of ever-increasing consumption creates, even before the optimal consumption level is reached, an attitude of greed in which one wishes not only to have one’s legitimate needs fulfilled but dreams of a never-ending increase in desires and satisfactions. In other words, the idea of the limitless rise of production and consumption curve greatly contributes to the development of passivity and greed in the individual, even before peak consumption is reached. Despite these considerations, the transformation of our society into one which serves life must change the consumption and thereby change, indirectly, the production pattern of present industrial society. Such a change would obviously come not because of bureaucratic orders but of studies, information, discussion, and making on the part of the population, educated to become aware of the problem of the difference between life-furthering and life-hindering kinds of needs. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Awareness of illusions is the condition for freedom and human action. Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless World, just as it is the spirit of an unspiritual situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man will wear the chain without any fantasy or consolation, but so that he will shake off the chain and cull the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, to make him think and act and shape his reality like a man who has been disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve round himself and therefore round his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun, which revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself. How can man attain the goal of freeing himself from illusions? The behaviourists try to explain human activity without recourse to terms referring to consciousness, such as reward or satisfaction. #Randolphharris 12 of 18
Instead, behaviourists invoke a circular argument, stating that behaviour is “shaped” (into skills, or patterned habits) by reinforcers. A reinforcer is any consequence to action which strengthens, that is, increases the probability of the recurrence of, a response. To an observer who is not a behaviorist, the “reinforcing stimulus” may look suspiciously like a reward or a pleasant experience; the behaviourist prefers to avoid such subjectivistic terms. Skinner and his followers have been consulted by officials concerned with the management of prisoners’ behaviour in prisons and the behaviour of patients in mental hospitals, and by administrators of school systems who wish to make teaching and learning more efficient. There is considerable controversy between humanistic and behaviouristic psychologists about the issue of behaviour control, and the student should become familiar with the points of debate. Healthy personality, according to a behaviouristic view, calls for competence and self-control—the ability to suppress action that no longer yields positive reinforcers, and to learn action that is successful in attaining the good things. Such rapid adaptability is mediated by the ability to discern the contingencies, or rules implicit in nature or in society, according to which needs are gratified and dangers averted. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
I have always been uneasy about the behaviouristic approach to human nature, because it appeals to the power motive in the behaviour scientist. Moreover, research in behaviourism is frequently funded by agencies interested in controlling the behaviour and experience of other persons for the institution rather than the person. If a definite distinction is thus established between freely associating and understanding, when does one stop associating and try to understand? Fortunately, there are no rules whatever. If thoughts flow freely there is no sense in arresting them artificially. Sooner or later, they will be stopped by something stronger than themselves. Perhaps the person arrives at a point where he feels curious about what it all may mean. Or he may suddenly strike an emotional chord that promises to shed light on something that is troubling him. Or he may simply run out of thoughts, which may be a sign of resistance but also may indicate that he has exhausted the subject for the time being. Or he may have only a limited time at his disposal and still want to try himself at interpreting his notes. As the understanding of associations, the range of themes and combinations of themes that they may present is so infinite that there cannot possibly be any fixed rules regarding the meaning of individual elements in individual contexts. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
When a person stops associating and begins to go over his notes to understand them, his method of work must change. Rather than being entirely passive and receptive to whatever emerges, he becomes active. Now his reason comes into play. He no longer excludes reason. Even now he does not use it exclusively. It is difficult to describe with any accuracy the attitude he should adopt when he tries to grasp the meaning of a series of associations. The process should certainly not degenerate into a mere intellectual exercise. If he wants, he will do better to play chess or predict the course of World politics or take to crossword puzzle. An effort to figure out completely rounded interpretations, not missing any possible connotation, may gratify his vanity by proving the superiority of his brains but will scarcely take him much closer to a real understanding of himself. Such an effort entails a certain danger, for it may hamper progress by engendering a smug know-it-all feeling while he has only catalogued items without being touched by anything. The other extreme, a merely emotional insight, is far more valuable. If it is not further elaborated this is not ideal either, because it allows many significant leads, not yet altogether lucid, to drop out of sight. However, as we have seen from Clare’s analysis, an insight of this kind may set something going. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Early in her work, Clare experienced an intense lost of feeling in connection with her dream of the foreign city; it was mentioned than that although it is impossible to prove whether this emotional experience had any effect upon the further analysis, through its disquieting nature it may well have loosened her rigid tabu against touching any of the complex ties that fastened her to Peter. Another instance occurred during Clare’s final battle with her dependency, when she felt her defiance against taking her life into her own hands; she had then no intellectual grasp of the meaning of this emotional insight, yet it helped her to get out of a state of lethargic helplessness. Instead of wanting to produce a scientific masterpiece, the person who is working alone should let his interpretation be directed by his interest. He should simply go after what arrests his attention, what arouses his curiosity, what strikes an emotional chord within him. If he is flexible enough to let himself be guided by his spontaneous interest, he can be reasonably certain that he will intuitively select those subjects which at the time are most accessible to his understanding, or which fall in line with the problem on which he is working on. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
When I first learned to read, I was absorbed in the joy of my learning. At the same time, it is true that until I could read for myself, I was dependent on my mother’s time: I had to wait for her to read to me. That could be called a problem. However, when I was eight and went to German school on Saturday mornings, I was lost in the enchantment of writing German script, the light lines up, the heavy lines down. It was utter fascination to find that a completely different set of sounds and “pictures” (letters)—like frau—meant in another part of the World what my mother was. To discover that kindergarten, to which I had gone, was a German word, not an English one, was like discovering that I had been in Germany instead of America. Then there were the words that were same as ours, and others that were nearly the same, which brought together what had seemed so far apart. I do not think I had a problem that led to my learning German. I did have some familiarity with it, to begin with. My German grandfather still spoke German when he had someone to speak it with. German was in this sense already a part of my life. However, what did my love of Latin in high school have to do with my life? The only connection that I can find is that I liked words, and the meaning of words, and the derivations of words. However, after a year I had got the hang of that and could look up the rest for myself when I needed. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
No one can be devoid of feeling, and the philosopher will not be exempt from this rule. However, whereas the ordinary man’s feelings are transient emotions, passions, stresses, or moods, the philosopher’s feelings nourish a sustained, elevate state. The mistake of taking personal feelings as fit judges of truth or reality is a grave barrier which often lies across the portal of philosophy. People put a grossly exaggerated value on them and are thus led astray from the true knowledge of a fact or a situation. Without changing a person’s feelings, no change for the better in his own life, in himself, and in his relationship with other persons can be stable. When his feelings are really a conscious or subconscious cover for other feelings, nothing will help, save the uncovering of what the ego has hidden. Generous feeling must be directed by sound judgment, fervent devotion must be led by wise discrimination. The longing for inward security and invulnerable peace is one which a man can certainly satisfy. However, he cannot satisfy it on his own terms. Life has always and inseparably dictated the price which must be paid for it. It is easy to talk vaguely of lofty ideas, hard to put them where they belong—in our personal relationships. The line of conduct which impulse suggests is often different from that which deliberate reflection or deeper intuition suggests. Only when a man so develops himself that the two lines harmoniously coincide will he know the peace of never being torn in two—either mentally or emotionally. Then only, when desire and duty agree perfectly with one another, will he be happy. For, when reason approves what feeling chooses, and the inner balance is perfect, the resulting decision is more likely to be a right one than not. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
In 1890, there was an abundance of evidence concerning unspeakable horror lurking in the blackness beyond. The butler was sleeping in the front left bedroom on the second floor, and he felt that something was in there; he could hear someone breathing. He got up and turned the light on, and at that every moment he saw something go up the wall and up the fireplace. He did not know what it was. He could hear the noise, and saw it go up the chimney and then take off. That scared him. He sat up the rest of the night. Other times he has heard something walking behind him. Four or five different servants had the same experience.
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Randolph Harris II International 